From One Dictator to the Next

Inter Press Service

Analysis by Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail*

BAGHDAD, Apr 12 (IPS) - Many Iraqis have come to believe that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is just as much a dictator as Saddam Hussein was.

"Al-Maliki is a dictator who must be removed by all means," 35-year-old Abdul-Riza Hussein, a Mehdi Army member from Sadr City in Baghdad told IPS. "He is a worse dictator than Saddam; he has killed in less than two years more than Saddam killed in 10 years."

Following the failed attempt by the U.S.-backed al-Maliki to crack down on the Mehdi Army militia of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the situation in Iraq has become much worse. Iraq appears to be splintering more widely under this rule than under Saddam's.

Fierce fighting has broken out between Sadr's Mehdi Army and Maliki's army and police forces in Baghdad, which comprise mostly the Badr Organisation militia, the armed wing of the political group, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC).

According to statistics compiled by the U.S. military in Baghdad, there has been a sharp increase in attacks against U.S. and Iraqi security forces, from 239 in February to 631 in March. Most of these attacks are believed to have been carried out by the Mehdi Army.

The Mehdi Army is known to have substantial control of the streets of Baghdad, Basra, and many other predominantly Shia areas in southern Iraq.

But there is also considerable Shia support for Maliki's effort to disarm the Mehdi Army. "Those who shout loud against Maliki and his legally elected government are all thieves and murderers and must be executed," says Aziz Mussawi, a resident of Hilla, 100km south of Baghdad, who fled for Baghdad when the clashes started there last month. "These militias will destroy Iraq if left unleashed."

Many Iraqis feel caught in a cross-fire in what they see as a battle for power between the Shia factions. "Over a thousand Iraqis got killed and more than that number wounded just for a game of chess between warlords," Mohammad Alwan, a lawyer in Baghdad told IPS. "All of them call for dissolving militias while they keep militias of their own. Most of those in power in the government are militia leaders."

Sadr and his followers are calling for unity, in an attempt to bring as many Iraqis as they can, Sunni and Shia, to their side. The rival Fadhila Party, that is powerful in many Shia provinces and in cities like Basra where it holds the governorship, has also called for unity.

It is widely believed in Iraq that parties who call for unity are using the issue to get public support against federalism, seen to be supported by the U.S. and Iranian backed parties such as the SIIC and Maliki's Dawa Party. Many in Iraq see federalism as the break-up of the country.

After five years of occupation and suffering, with no end to it in sight, many Iraqis have become skeptical of all political and religious leaders.

"Sadr is another face of the Iranian project, despite their pretending to be a national movement," Jassam Hady, a colonel of the former Iraqi army in Baghdad told IPS. "All those in the Iraqi government in the so-called Green Zone have militias that have killed Iraqis under one flag or another."

Hady, like many Iraqis, believes that the current spasm of violence will worsen as the two main Shia groups, the Sadr Movement and Maliki's affiliations, continue to vie for power ahead of the provincial elections slated for October.

Division has broken out also within tribes; many have now come to back Sadr, not because they like him, but because they hate the Badr militia of Hakeem's SIIC and Maliki's Dawa party.

"Our problem in the southern parts of Iraq and other Shia dominated areas is that all options are bad," the chief of a major tribe in Basra who fled for Baghdad, told IPS on condition of anonymity. "Iranian controlled militias killed so many chiefs of tribes because they refused to support these division projects concealed under the flag of federalism."

Several tribes in the south have formed unions to fight the separation project, but some sheikhs have formed counter unions to support the Badr and Dawa agenda.

Most people seem to oppose any federalism that would separate Shia from Sunni Muslims.

"We will be weak without our Sunni brothers," says Shamil Mahmood from Sadr City, the east district of two million in Baghdad. "The whole of the south will be swallowed by Iran, that will humiliate us and treat us like animals."

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East)

Petraeus Points to War With Iran

(thanks to Vahe for this contribution)

The Neocons may yet get their war on Iran.

by Pat Buchanan (from Human Events)

Ever since President Nouri al-Maliki ordered the attacks in Basra on the Mahdi Army, Gen. David Petraeus has been laying the predicate for U.S. air strikes on Iran and a wider war in the Middle East.

Iran, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee, has "fueled the recent violence in a particularly damaging way through its lethal support of the special groups."

These "special groups" are "funded, trained, armed and directed by Iran's Quds Force with help from Lebanese Hezbollah. It was these groups that launched Iranian rockets and mortar rounds at Iraq's seat of government (the Green Zone) ... causing loss of innocent life and fear in the capital."

Is the Iranian government aware of this -- and behind it?

"President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders" promised to end their "support for the special groups," said the general, but the "nefarious activities of the Quds force have continued."

Are Iranians then murdering Americans, asked Joe Lieberman:

"Is it fair to say that the Iranian-backed special groups in Iraq are responsible for the murder of hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians?"

"It certainly is. ... That is correct," said Petraeus.

The following day, Petraeus told the House Armed Services Committee, "Unchecked, the 'special groups' pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq."

Translation: The United States is now fighting the proxies of Iran for the future of Iraq.

The general's testimony is forcing Bush's hand, for consider the question it logically raises: If the Quds Force and Hezbollah, both designated as terrorist organizations, are arming, training and directing "special groups" to "murder" Americans, and rocket and mortar the Green Zone to kill our diplomats, and they now represent the No. 1 threat to a free Iraq, why has Bush failed to neutralize these base camps of terror and aggression?

Hence, be not surprised if President Bush appears before the TV cameras, one day soon, to declare:

"My commanding general in Iraq, David Petraeus, has told me that Iran, with the knowledge of President Ahmadinejad, has become a privileged sanctuary for two terrorist organizations -- Hezbollah and the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard -- to train, arm and direct terrorist attacks on U.S. and coalition forces, despite repeated promises to halt this murderous practice.

"I have therefore directed U.S. air and naval forces to begin air strikes on these base camps of terror. Our attacks will continue until the Iranian attacks cease."

Because of the failures of a Democratic Congress elected to end the war, Bush can now make a compelling case that he would be acting fully within his authority as commander in chief.

In early 2007, Nancy Pelosi pulled down a resolution that would have denied Bush the authority to attack Iran without congressional approval. In September, both Houses passed the Kyl-Lieberman resolution designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

Courtesy of Congress, Bush thus has a blank check for war on Iran. And the signs are growing that he intends to fill it in and cash it.

Israel has been hurling invective at Iran and conducting security drills to prepare its population for rocket barrages worse than those Hezbollah delivered in the Lebanon War.

Adm. William "Fox" Fallon, the Central Command head who opposed war with Iran, has been removed. Hamas and Hezbollah have been stocking up on Qassam and Katyusha rockets.

Vice President Cheney has lately toured Arab capitals.

And President Ahmadinejad just made international headlines by declaring that Tehran will begin installing 6,000 advanced centrifuges to accelerate Iran's enrichment of uranium.

This is Bush's last chance to strike and, when Iran responds, to effect its nuclear castration. Are Bush and Cheney likely to pass up this last chance to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities and effect the election of John McCain? For any attack on Iran's "terrorist bases" would rally the GOP and drive a wedge between Obama and Hillary.

Indeed, Sen. Clinton, who voted to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, could hardly denounce Bush for ordering air strikes on the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, when Petraeus testified, in her presence, that it is behind the serial murder of U.S. soldiers.

The Iranians may sense what is afoot. For Tehran helped broker the truce in the Maliki-Sadr clash in Basra, and has called for a halt to the mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone.

With a friendly regime in Baghdad that rolled out the red carpet for Ahmadinejad, Iran has nothing to gain by war. Already, it is the big winner from the U.S. wars that took down Tehran's Taliban enemies, decimated its al-Qaida enemies and destroyed its Sunni enemies, Saddam and his Baath Party.

No, it is not Iran that wants a war with the United States. It is the United States that has reasons to want a short, sharp war with Iran.

Ex-CIA analyst on Petraeus and Cheney

Ray McGovern: Was Cheney behind Iraqi army's failed Basra offensive?


Raymond McGovern is a retired CIA officer turned political activist. McGovern was a Federal employee under seven U.S. presidents over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House for many of them. McGovern was born and raised in the Bronx, graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University, received an M.A. in Russian Studies from Fordham, a certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University, and graduated from Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program.

Absolutely brilliant questionning of Petraeus and Crocker by Rep. Ron Paul

As my readers have already noticed, I am rather angry at Rep. Ron Paul for throwing in the towel in the 2008 election instead of doing what this SOB Lieberman (successfully) did and run as an independent. Still, when I heard Ron Paul's remarks to Petraeus and Crocker I found myself daydreaming about what a Paul Presidency could have meant to the rest of the world (I am not supportive of his socio-economic theories and agenda; however, there is no way he could impose it on the country without Congress anyway).

What Ron Paul said to General "ass-kissing little chickenshit" Betrayus was nothing short of brilliant.

Judge for yourself:

Who is the biggest employer in 'free market' America? The government!

Government is the Largest Employer: The Fading American Economy

by Paul Craig Roberts for the Baltimore Chronicle


According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy lost 98,000 private sector jobs in March, half of which were in manufacturing. Today 13,643,000 Americans are employed in manufacturing, of which 9,849,000 are production workers.

Government employs 22,387,000 Americans, 8,744,000 more than manufacturing. Even the category leisure and hospitality employs 13,682,000 Americans, slightly more than manufacturing. There are as many waitresses and bartenders as production workers.

Wholesale and retail trade employ 21,467,000 Americans. Professional and business services employ 18,036,000 Americans of which 8,368,000 are in administrative and waste services. Education and health services employ 18,699,000 Americans.

Financial activities employ 8,228,000 Americans. The information sector employs 3,010,000. Transportation and warehousing employ 4,532,000. Construction employs 7,338,000, and natural resources, mining and logging employ 751,000. Other services such as repair, laundry, and membership associations employ 5,516,000 Americans.

This is the portrait of the US economy according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is an economy in which government is the largest employer. Manufacturing employment comprises just under 10% of total employment and about 12% of private sector employment. Everything else is services, and not particularly high level services.

Is this a portrait of a super economy?

To help answer the question, consider that US imports in 2007 were 17% of US GDP, according to the National Income and Product Account tables provided by the Bureau of Economic Affairs. In contrast, the BEA industry tables show that in 2006 (2007 data not yet available) US manufacturing comprised only 11.7% of US GDP.

If US imports actually exceed total US manufacturing output by 5% of GDP, it does not seem possible that the US can close its massive trade deficit. Even if every item manufactured in the US was exported, the US would still have a large trade deficit.

The NIPA and industry tables from which the percentages come are not calculated identically, and I do not know to what extent differences might exaggerate the differences between the percentages. However, it seems unlikely that mere calculation differences would account for US imports exceeding US manufacturing output.

If the US cannot close its trade deficit, it is unlikely that the US dollar can remain the world reserve currency. If the dollar were to lose the reserve currency role, the US government would not be able to finance its annual red ink budget by borrowing from foreigners, as the US saving rate is about zero, and the US would not be able to pay its import bill in its own currency. The rest of the world continues to hold depreciating US currency, because the dollar is the world reserve currency. The dollar is certainly not a good investment having declined dramatically against other traded currencies.

From March 2007 to March 2008 the US economy created 1.5 million new jobs (in services). Legal and illegal immigration and work visas for foreigners exceed US job creation.

During the current school year, 3.3 million high school students are expected to graduate. If we assume that half will go on to college, that leaves 1.6 million entering the work force. College enrollment in 2007 totaled 18 million. If we assume 20% graduate, that makes another 3.6 million job seekers for a total of 5.2 million. Clearly, immigration, work visas, and high school and college graduates exceed the 1.5 million jobs created by the economy. Unless retirements opened up enough jobs for graduates, the unemployment rate has to rise.

The US unemployment rate is creeping up, and according to John Williams, the official unemployment rate greatly understates the real rate of unemployment. Williams has followed the changes that government has made to the official indices over the years in order to spin a more politically palatable picture. Williams uses the original methodology prior to the decades of spin. The original way of measuring unemployment indicates the current rate of unemployment in the US to be 13%, much higher than the 5.1% official number (check this site for alternative statistical data on the real condition of the US economy. VS)

Williams also calculates the CPI according to the same way it was officially calculated prior to the recent decades of spin. Williams estimates the current CPI at 12%, three times higher than the official 4% figure.

Williams reports that upward growth biases built into GDP modeling since the early 1980s "have rendered this important series nearly worthless as an indicator of economic activity." Williams estimates that US GDP growth has been in negative territory during almost all of the 21st century. The notion that the US is just now entering a recession is nonsense if we have in fact been in recession for most of the 21st century.

America's post-World War II economic dominance was based on the destruction of other economies by war and socialism. It is a different world now, and Americans have given little thought to the economic challenges of the 21st century.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Who Is Iraq's "Firebrand Cleric"?

(thanks to Ayaz for this contribution!)


By Justin Elliott for Mother Jones (via Truthout)

From Baghdad, veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn explains why Muqtada al-Sadr is no maverick.

"Interview in Baghdad," "Interview in Najaf," "Interview in Basra," "Interview in Amara": The endnotes at the back of Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn's new book read like an atlas of Iraq. Such is the depth of reporting in Cockburn's Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq, a political biography-cum-war chronicle due out April 8.

As the U.K. Independent's correspondent, Cockburn has spent about half of the last five years reporting, unembedded, around Iraq, a country he's been visiting since 1977. His subject is the real Iraq, and Iraqi voices predominate in his work. British and American officials rarely appear in the book. (He assiduously avoids the U.S. military's Green Zone press briefings.) When Cockburn does give airtime to the official line, he's usually debunking it. It was this irreverent attitude that got him barred from entering Iraq in the late 1990s when the regime was displeased with Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, a collection of Iraq reportage focusing on the aftermath of the Gulf War, which Cockburn wrote with his brother. In Muqtada Cockburn both explores the rise of al-Sadr, undoubtedly one of the most important men in Iraq today, and traces the disintegration of Iraq through five years of American occupation.

After several failed attempts, I reached Cockburn by phone at the Al-Hamra Hotel in Baghdad March 17, just before the start of the recent fighting in Basra. In between broken connections and over the loud whir of a military helicopter above the hotel, I asked him what al-Sadr's role will be in the future Iraq and if, on the fifth anniversary of the invasion, he sees any reason for hope.

Mother Jones: In the beginning of your book, you write that Muqtada al-Sadr leads "the only mass movement in Iraqi politics." Can you elaborate on that, especially given that in the American media we still hear more about the official Iraqi government than some of these other factions?

Patrick Cockburn: It's always sort of amazing, sitting here in Baghdad, to watch visiting dignitaries-today we had Dick Cheney and John McCain-being received in the Green Zone by politicians who have usually very little support and seldom go outside the Green Zone. Muqtada leads the only real mass movement in Iraq. It's a mass movement of the Shia, who are 60 percent of the population, and of poor Shia-and most Shia are poor. Otherwise the place is full of sort of self-declared leaders, many of whom spend most of their time outside Iraq. You know, if you want to meet a lot of Iraqi leaders, the best places are the hotels in Amman or in London. In general the government here is amazingly unpopular.

MJ: What are the roots of his credibility among the people?

PC: Muqtada belongs to the most famous religious family in Iraq, which is the al-Sadr family. He's really the third in line. [Muqtada's father] drew his power from the first really important al-Sadr, Muhammad Baqir, who was executed by Saddam in 1980, together with his sister. So it's really a family of martyrs, and that's why Muqtada suddenly emerged from nowhere with the fall of Saddam. If you had passed around a picture of him in Washington at the time of the overthrow of Saddam, I doubt if any of them would have heard of Muqtada.

MJ: Did anyone outside or inside the country predict Muqtada's rise?

PC: No, absolutely not. His father was dead along with two of his brothers, assassinated by Saddam in 1999. His father-in-law had been executed. He was under sort of house arrest in Najaf and was just within inches of getting executed himself. So everybody-those who knew the family history-thought that the whole organization had been destroyed. What Muqtada had going for him was that he had been a senior lieutenant of his father, so he had street experience of politics from the 1990s. Also he had a sort of core of people who revered him who were politically experienced, and he brought this together very fast just in the days after the fall of Saddam.

His father was a very interesting character because he's almost the only person who persuaded Saddam to trust him. Saddam thought it would be a really smart political move after the great Shia uprising of 1991 if he could have his own Shia religious leader who'd be in his pocket. So he chose this guy, Muqtada's father, who came from the right family. Muqtada's father used this to promote a mass movement. And then at the last movement Saddam discovered he had been fostering this extremely dangerous enemy, who was refusing to use Saddam's name when he called for prayers, so Saddam had him murdered in Najaf.

MJ: Is the Western media epithet for Muqtada as the "firebrand cleric" accurate?

PC: The idea that he's a maverick is 100 percent contrary to his track record over the last five years. In fact he's very cautious, never pushing things too far, trying not to be pushed into a corner. [L. Paul] Jerry Bremer tried to arrest Muqtada and ignited a tremendous uprising over most of southern Iraq in 2004. You could see all these Americans in the Green Zone had completely failed to realize the kind of support he could get. They announced they were going to arrest him and suddenly the whole of southern Iraq erupted and Bremer [couldn't] control it anymore-but Muqtada did. Then there was a big siege of Najaf. But Muqtada always sort of looked for a way out. So the idea of him as a maverick cleric, a firebrand, is one of these absurd journalistic clichés that takes on a life of its own, despite the fact that its contradicted by everything that happens.

MJ: Another thing you see is journalists frequently describing him as a "radical cleric." Is there anything radical about al-Sadr?

PC: Well, it's slightly more accurate. He's radical in the sense that he wants the U.S. occupation to end and has always said so from the beginning. Secondly, his support among the Shia really runs along class lines; it's mainly the poor who support him. His organization runs an enormous social network. Despite the fact that there's billions of dollars sitting in the Iraqi government reserves, somehow they are incapable of getting it out to the people. There are a very large number of people here who are on the edge of starvation. For those sort of people-a sizable chunk of people-that service makes them regard Muqtada as a sort of god.

Another thing is that he's always been able to call on a core of young men. Young Shia who have been brought up with nothing, who are pretty anarchic, pretty dangerous. My book begins with a run-in I had with them in 2004 when they came close to killing me, and of course they have killed very large numbers of other Iraqis. That's a major source of strength for Muqtada.

MJ: You write that from the U.S. perspective, Muqtada looks too much like a younger version of Ayatollah Khomeini. Is there anything to that?

PC: There's an element of truth to it. But from the moment George Bush decided to overthrow Saddam, the people who were going to benefit here were the Shia, who are 60 percent of the population. So if you were ever going to have an election, then the Shia would take over. An awful lot of the American problems in Iraq over the last five years come from the U.S. thinking that in some way it can devise a formula here that Saddam would be gone and the Shia religious parties-guys who look a bit like Khomeini, not just Muqtada, but all the other clergy-wouldn't take over. The U.S. never found it. I don't think it's there.

MJ: So if the Democrats win the election in the United States, and they make good on their promise to pull out or mostly pull out from Iraq, what role would al-Sadr play in that scenario?

PC: A very critical role. Here is sort of the biggest Shia leader with the most popular support. If there were elections tomorrow he would probably sweep Shia Baghdad and most of the south. He's not going to take over the whole of Iraq because Iraq is such a divided place these days. The Kurds are never going to let the Arabs take over their chunk, and the Sunni are going to fight like tigers to keep the Shia from taking over their areas.

MJ: What would an Iraq under al-Sadr look like?

PC: I don't think the whole of Iraq would be under al-Sadr, but I think he would be the predominant force on the Shia side. Quite contrary to his sort of maverick, firebrand image, he's shown a propensity to deal with the other side, to look for compromises, to negotiate. You might have a loose federation [in Iraq]. There are some things that could hold it together, notably oil revenues. But at the moment, the much vaunted surge has had a measure of success primarily, to my mind, because Sunni and Shia Iraqis hate and fear each other more these days than they hate and fear the Americans.

MJ: You write in the book that the U.S. as well as Iraqi politicians habitually fail to recognize the extent to which hostility to the occupation drives Iraqi politics. How much of al-Sadr's popularity do you ascribe to him speaking against the occupation?

PC: I was doing a lot of interviews today with ordinary Iraqis, and they all bring it up, the question of the American occupation. The latest opinion polls show that seven out of ten Iraqis want foreign forces to leave Iraq, and most want them to leave now. One of the problems of the Iraqi government sitting in the Green Zone [is that] being associated with the occupation taints them and reduces their authority. Lots of people you talk to here, particularly Sunni, don't just say "the government," they say "the traitor government." In some ways this is extremely simple and obvious. There are very few countries in the world that welcome being occupied. And it's sort of strange that this very obvious fact-which has probably been a critical fact for why the U.S. is in such trouble here-has never really penetrated Washington.

MJ: In your piece marking the fifth anniversary of the invasion, you describe Iraq as "a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls." That's a pretty grim picture. Do you see any reason for optimism on the horizon?

PC: Well, not greatly. Because it seems to me that all the things that have led to the violence are still there. The current situation reminds me of the war in Lebanon, which went on really from the mid-70s to 1990. You had periods where there was kind of an unstable balance of power. Baghdad has the same feeling at the moment. Sunni and Shia aren't coming together; they don't go into each other's areas. The Sunni-Shia dispute, the Arab-Kurd dispute, the Iraqi-American dispute-none of these things are resolved and any of them could ignite at any moment, and almost certainly will.

One of the problems with the media covering this place is that there are stereotypes of news, one of which is "war rages" and the other is "peace dawns." And there isn't much in between. When I talk to foreign journalists, often they are gritting their teeth because they've been asked for a piece about how shops are reopening and restaurants are reopening and so forth-happy pieces. And it just ain't so.

Justin Elliott is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones

The USA is fundamentally uncivilized

The great Russian author Dostoevsky once wrote: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons". By that measure, the United States cannot be considered a civilized society.

Anyone doubting this should carefully remember following:

Dozens of 13 and 14 year old children have been sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole in this nation. In a new report called Cruel and Unusual, the Equal Justice Initiative has documented 73 such cases. The United States is the only country in the world where a 13-year-old is known to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In fact, over 2225 juveniles (age 17 or younger) have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in the US. Read the full report "Cruel and Unusual" just published by the Equal Justice Initiative.

You can also listen to the excellent interview of Equal Justice Initiative's executive director Bryan Stevenson on Uprising Radio.

The USA has the highest incarceration rate on the planet. The USA employs 3.5 full-time law enforcement employees per 1'000 habitants (also one of the highest rates on the planet). These law enforcement employees are backed up by 16 (sixteen!) "intelligence" agencies which, in turn, are backed by a huge private intelligence network system.

Unsurprisingly, the Blacks are far more likely to be jailed than Whites. Equally predicable is the fact that most incarcerated inmates are nonviolent drug offenders.

The USA prison system also is unique among all the prison system in that is systematically uses rape (certainly a form of torture) as a form of punishment and coercion. The the full Human Rights Watch "No Escape: Male Rape in US Prisons". Even worse is the fact that rapes are something which the US society not only accepts, but *expects* to take place in prisons.

Imagine being a 13 year old boy in such a prison system!

"Bubba is going to make you his girlfriend" is something which you can see in American movies, books, and conversations. Inmates are supposed to "stand up for themselves" and those who are raped are considered as unworthy of respect. Needless to say, the vast majority of Americans are absolutely convinced that the kids of things which happens in US jails and prisons also happen in the rest of the world, they are absolutely incredulous when they are told that this is not at all the case.

In every single one of its aspects, and I have touched upon only very few here, the US immense prison system is an obscene affront to civilized mankind and can only be compared to the Soviet Gulag in terms of cruelty, inhumanity and lack of civilized norms. The big difference is that, unlike its Soviet counterpart, the US "Gulag" is also immensely profitable as it provides the government with a slave force of 2'000'000 inmates who are totally deprived from even their basic human rights. Not only that, but an increasing part of the American Gulag is now being run by private companies who pocket billions of dollars of taxpayer money and who provide the US government a 'cost-effective' black hole in which all the undesirable elements of society can be thrown.

Take the example of Marijuana laws. I won't even bother explaining that Marijuana is a totally harmless substance, or even that it is highly beneficial in many cases (if you do not understand that you are reading the wrong blog). I ask a simple question: is there a point in incarcerating millions of people solely because of their use of this substance? I believe that there very much is one: the point is to take those who are too critical of dumb laws, or those who do not unquestionably obey the government, off the streets while scaring all the others. This is just a social variation on the idea that the USA should bomb some small nations into smithereens every couple of years or so just to frighten everybody else. Add to this the ever present (and taser-carrying) cops and you will see why Americans are as passive as sheep and why they cannot even throw a decent riot when an arrogant dimwit steals the presidency.

Oscar Wilde famously said that "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between". Well, if "the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons " then the US prison system is the best proof that the USA is a fundamentally uncivlized country, a country which is barbaric for its poor and decadent for its elites.

That a country which fancies itself the "leader of the free world" endowed with a "manifest destiny" to lead mankind to a better future can sentence a 13 year old child to life without possibility of parole would be laughable if it wasn't so tragically sad. That this can happen in the quasi total indifference of everybody else is outrageous.

How can a presumably Christian society forget the warning of Christ "whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me, but whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matt. 18:5-6)?

Corporate media buzzing with signs of an impending US attack on Mehdi Army and Iran

Iran joined militias in battle for Basra

Sarah Baxter and Marie Colvin, Times Online

IRANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week.

Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think.

Petraeus intends to use the evidence of Iranian involvement to argue against any reductions in US forces.

Dr Daniel Goure, a defence analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia, said: “There is no question that Petraeus will be tough on Iran. It is one thing to withdraw troops when there is purely sectarian fighting but it is another thing if it leaves the Iranians to move in.”

US defence chiefs are concerned that the troop surge has overstretched the military. Admiral Mike McMullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, warned that the army and marines were at risk of crossing an “invisible red line” if the burden on forces remained. He said deployments of 15 months had to be reduced to a year “as fast as possible”.

Petraeus is likely to announce that combat tours will be reduced from 15 months to 12 months.

The number of US troops in Iraq is set to fall from 160,000 to 140,000 by July, but Petraeus is expected to recommend an indefinite pause in further troop cuts.

Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric, has called for 1m people to march on Baghdad on Wednesday – the fifth anniversary of the fall of the capital – when Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, will be briefing Congress.

A senior Iraqi official who met Petraeus last week said, “It will be difficult to show that the situation is improving.” Another Iraqi source described the US general as “furious” that al-Maliki moved against the militias into Basra without consultation and had to rely on US forces to bail him out.

Abu Ahmed, a senior military commander with the Awakening, the Sunni tribal movement cooperating with US forces, said progress was largely the result of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army ceasefire.

“When the Mahdi Army decides to resume its activities, neither the American troops nor the Iraqi government will be able to stop it,” he said.

Additional reporting: Hala Jaber
-------

British fear US commander is beating the drum for Iran strikes

By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, The Telegraph

British officials gave warning yesterday that America's commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government.

A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran's intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment. In closely watched testimony in Washington next week, Gen Petraeus will state that the Iranian threat has risen as Tehran has supplied and directed attacks by militia fighters against the Iraqi state and its US allies.

The outbreak of Iraq's worst violence in 18 months last week with fighting in Basra and the daily bombardment of the Green Zone diplomatic enclave, demonstrated that although the Sunni Muslim insurgency is dramatically diminished, Shia forces remain in a strong position to destabilise the country.

"Petraeus is going to go very hard on Iran as the source of attacks on the American effort in Iraq," a British official said. "Iran is waging a war in Iraq. The idea that America can't fight a war on two fronts is wrong, there can be airstrikes and other moves," he said.

"Petraeus has put emphasis on America having to fight the battle on behalf of Iraq. In his report he can frame it in terms of our soldiers killed and diplomats dead in attacks on the Green Zone."

Tension between Washington and Tehran is already high over Iran's covert nuclear programme. The Bush administration has not ruled out military strikes.

In remarks interpreted as signalling a change in his approach to Iran, Gen Petraeus last week hit out at the Iranian leadership. "The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets," he said. "All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts."
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The humiliation of the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki by the Iranian-backed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in fighting in Basra last week triggered top-level warnings over Iran's strength in Iraq.

Gen Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, will answer questions from American political leaders at the US Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday before travelling to London to brief Gordon Brown.

The Wall Street Journal said last week that the US war effort in Iraq must have a double goal.

"The US must recognise that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq," wrote the military analyst Kimberly Kagan.

There are signs that targeting Iran would unite American politicians across the bitter divide on Iraq. "Iran is the bull in the china shop," said Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi'ite groups, whether they be political or military."
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Al-Sadr militia prep for U.S., Iraqi fighting

By Sharon Behn, Washington Times

Militiamen loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are positioning explosives to defend the major routes into Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood in anticipation of a major battle with U.S. and Iraqi government forces, residents said yesterday.

Iraqis also said families in Sadr City and other Shi'ite areas of Baghdad are stocking up on food, fearing new fighting that will leave them unable to get to the markets.

While food prices in most of Baghdad are stable, they have increased in Sadr City and surrounding neighborhoods as people brace for a resumption of fighting that rocked the neighborhood late last month, said Sajad, an Iraqi translator who spoke with several residents in the Shi'ite stronghold on behalf of The Washington Times.

Tomatoes that were 30 cents to 40 cents a kilogram (2.2 pounds) are now $2.50 a kilo, and the price of eggs and cheese have gone up three to five times their normal price, said Sajad.

In a southwest neighborhood of Baghdad, where Shi'ite militiamen have recently been pushed out, neighbors warned Ahmed, the father of three young children in the area, that there could be another rebel Shi'ite uprising as soon as tomorrow — two days before Gen. David H. Petreaus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are to report to Congress on progress in the U.S. troop surge.

The warning, Ahmed said, appeared to come from Sadr City, so it would only affect Baghdad. Orders to Shi'ite militia across the country normally are issued from Najaf, a holy city in southern Iraq where Sheik al-Sadr's Mahdi Army is headquartered.

In Washington, U.S. intelligence officials said they had no way of confirming Mahdi Army preparations for the Sadr City battle, but added that it is "entirely possible."

One official said the Mahdi Army is likely to try to reignite violence. "It's obviously a fluid situation."

In the U.S.-protected International Zone in central Baghdad, private contractors were "hardening" their rooms to avoid getting killed or injured in the event of another rocket and mortar barrage, similar to the one that followed the government push against Sheik al-Sadr's militia last week in southern Iraq.

"I've moved my desk so that I won't be in the line of shrapnel," said Jack, a 32-year-old American working for a U.S. company who has spent 16 months in Iraq.

"I'm wearing my Kevlar a lot," he added, referring to his body armor. Jack, like others quoted in this story, asked that family names not be used.

The unease in Baghdad comes amid calls by Sheik al-Sadr for a massive anti-American rally Wednesday to mark the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

"The time has come to express your rejections and raise your voices loud against the unjust occupier and enemy of nations and humanity, and against the horrible massacres committed by the occupier against our honorable people," said a statement released by Sheik-al Sadr's office.

The statement called on all Iraqis to head toward Najaf, the site of large Shi'ite pilgrimages.

Shi'ite areas have been told to close their stores to commemorate the day, said Ahmed. The last time stores were ordered closed was when the battles between Iraqi troops and Shi'ite militias erupted last week in the southern city of Basra.

"All Shi'ite neighbors, they tell me — maybe Sunday — we have second attacks ... they will come back and attack the government," said Ahmed.

It was not possible to confirm the threats, but the reports were fueling unease in the capital, which only recently had begun to feel a modicum of security after months of concentrated military operations by U.S. and Iraqi forces.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — a Shi'ite once allied with Sheikh al-Sadr — had warned the crackdown against the Shi'ite militias would continue despite the truce ordered by the anti-American cleric.

Yesterday, however, Mr. al-Maliki backed off the threat, saying the arrests of Shi'ite suspects would be suspended.

But Sadr City residents are nervous, said Ahmed, and the militias are preparing for another showdown with U.S. and coalition forces.

"When they see American convoys, they quickly put IEDs in the street and everywhere they will attack Americans," he said, referring to bombs planted in roads.

Hassan, a Shi'ite doctor who lives in a different neighborhood and does not support the Mahdi Army militia, said he also expects the fighting to flare up again and that the streets of Sadr City are booby-trapped.

"This is the quiet before the storm," he said. "But I am sure that if anyone, government or coalition attack Sadr City it will be a big loss, because all the roads of Sadr City are filled with explosives."

Iraqi reactions to the fighting in Basra and Baghdad varied. Some praised the prime minister for taking on the Mahdi militia, others said Muqtada's ability to turn the violence on and off only strengthened his hand, and that of his backer, Iran.

While Iraqi government forces struck hard, they ended up by having to call on U.S. air support after being overwhelmed by the Shi'ite militia response.

Hundreds of police — many of whom were Sheik al-Sadr supporters — reportedly laid down their weapons and joined the militia in both Basra and Sadr City.

"In some areas around Sadr City, the militia are part of the police," said Ahmed.

In other areas, police responded differently he said. Some "left their post to return to their unit, some continued to attack militia."

• Sara A. Carter contributed to this article.

The life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs

by Kobi Nahshoni for Ynet

Some 1,000 people attended a memorial service at the Mercaz Harav rabbinical seminary Thursday, marking the one-month anniversary of the murderous attack which claimed the lives of eight young men.

Also attending the service were many prominent rabbis of the Religious Zionist Movement, who were not shy about expressing their rage against the government's policy.

Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, head of the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, chose to explain the attack by saying that "the Torah and the land of Israel are acquired only through agony."

Former Sephardi chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu called on the government to decree that for every life lost in the attack another yeshiva and township will be formed.

"Even when we seek revenge, it is important to make one thing clear – the life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs.

"The Talmud states that if gentiles rob Israel of silver they will pay it back in gold, and all that is taken will be paid back in folds, but in cases like these there is nothing to pay back, since as I said – the life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs," added Rabbi Eliyahu.

Ramat Gan's chief rabbi, Yaacov Ariel, chose to deliver a more moderate message: "We do not seek vengeance, we seek retaliation. The terrorist's house should have been demolished immediately, regardless of the law. It should have been done because it was a matter of life and death – the deterrence could help save future lives."

"We are against killing innocent people or harming children," he added, "but once terrorists hide behind children, we have to strike back. The blood of those living in Sderot is worth just as much as the blood of those the terrorists hide behind."

Mercaz Harav will be holding a vigil in memory of those killed in the attack all through Thursday night.

Putin warns NATO against further expansion to Russia's borders

BUCHAREST, April 4 (RIA Novosti) - Any further expansion by NATO toward Russia's borders will be interpreted as a direct threat to the country's security, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday.

"The appearance on our borders of a powerful military bloc... will be considered by Russia as a direct threat to our country's security," Putin told a news conference after meeting with leaders of the 26-nation alliance on the sidelines of a summit in Bucharest.

NATO members decided on Thursday to postpone offering the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine the chance to join the alliance's Membership Action Plan (MAP). However, it was later announced that their bids would be reviewed in December. Their bids had received strong U.S. backing.

The former Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, all which border Russia, are currently members of NATO.

Despite his warning, Putin said that the discussions had been "constructive," and that Moscow's position on the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty had been taken into account by NATO.

Russia temporarily withdrew from the crucial arms control treaty in December amid concerns over NATO's ongoing eastward expansion, Washington's missile defense plans for Europe and NATO countries' reluctance to ratify the document.

"My impression is that I was heard by our partners on the CFE problem. They are prepared either to ratify the existing treaty or discuss new arrangements. In any event, we have to do something together rather than taking unilateral steps ... such an approach has no future," he said.

He also said he was happy that Russia's concerns over U.S. plans to deploy a missile base in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic had also been heard by NATO, and that Washington and Moscow would continue to discuss the issue.

"A positive moment in today's dialogue was that our national security concerns over the possible introduction of the missile shield proposed by our American partners were finally heard," he said.

Putin added that he would continue to discuss the issue over the weekend with U.S. President George Bush in Russia's Black Sea resort city of Sochi. The meeting is set to be the last between the two leaders, who are due to step down in May and January 2009, respectively.

Putin also said a new Cold War was impossible as there were no more ideological divides in Europe.

"No, this is impossible. No one is interested in this," he said. "No global players, Europe, the United States and Russia, are interested in returning to the past. This is unnecessary," he said

However, he insisted that Russia would make no concessions to the West at the expense of its own security, saying, "Why should we be flexible if it's a question of a threat to our security?"

Swindler’s List

by Gilad Atzmon (originally posted here)

It is a common trend amongst rabid Zionists and notorious Islamophobes to quote some isolated and mistranslated verses from the Qur’an for the purpose of collectively libeling Muslims and presenting Islam as a regressive and violent belief system. Needless to say, so far, such repetitive attempts have been found futile if not actually counter-effective. Not a single Western politician, Zionist campaigner or Neocon think tank has managed to establish a comprehensive case against Islam. The reason is rather simple, in spite of the clear fact that some devastating atrocities have been committed in the name of Islam and in the name of Jihad, these acts were performed by sporadic radicalized and isolated cells. As at it seems, in the eyes of the Western masses, it takes more than just a few random acts of a very few to undermine a humanist universal belief system and implicate its one billion followers.In order to incriminate Islam and to discredit its believers, a broad argument is needed, a conclusive undeniable proof that would establish a continuum between a given immoral religious text, a religious infrastructure and mass following movement of worshipers who behave immorally and accordingly. For the matter, a CIA-created mysterious character who allegedly hides in a cave for 7 years is not nearly enough. What we really want to see is a continuation between a so-called ‘Islamic satanic Verses’ and an Organic active collective set of worshipers who are tempted to follow the very verses and perform horrifically. Somehow, such a conclusive and comprehensive link is always missing in the Zionists’ and Islamophobes’ call for action.

A radical Imam in London is not enough, a deliberate mistranslation of Ahmadinejad speeches won’t do either. Even repetitive images of the twin towers being chewed by airliners would not provide the goods. Seemingly, time after time the ZioCon’s defamation campaigns backlash. Instead of incriminating Islam and Muslims, ZioCons manage to marginalise themselves revealing their genuine faces. Time after time Zionists and Neocons are exposed marching along, side-by-side, with the most radical xenophobe bigots who happen to dwell amongst us in the West. Since the collective incrimination of Muslims stands at the premise of the Neocon philosophy as well as global Zionism, and since both Zionists and their Neocon twins are doing poorly on that front, I have decided to dedicate this paper to a pedagogic cause and try to help them out. I will give here a crash course in rhetoric. I will try to enlighten our foes and show them, step by step, how to establish a case based on continuum between the Holy Scripture and merciless collective barbarism. Assuming that Zionists (both Jews and Christians) as well as Neocons are rather familiar with the Old Testament (as much as they are unfamiliar with the Qur’an), I will point at a relatively very short extract from the Torah. For that purpose I picked up a small biblical extract that will help us to explore the current ZioCon plundering culture in the light of the Judaic teaching and God’s promise. The following verses are a part of an oratory made by Moses to his people while on their way to their ‘promised land’:“Listen, Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You must love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole being, and all your strength.” (Deuteronomy chapter six: 4-5). Considering the vast amount of beings around who are engaged in some relentless love seeking, I wouldn’t dare criticise the Judaic God for doing the same.

The Judaic God is entitled to demand the love of his chosen people. However, the Israelites’ God is at least kind enough to give something in return:“Then when the Lord your God brings you to the land he promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you – a land with large, fine cities you did not build, houses filled with choice things you did not accumulate, hewn out cisterns you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant – and you eat your fill.” (Deuteronomy: Six 10 -11).

On the face of it, the Old Testament verses above could stand as the most simplistic yet valid and solid proof for the existence of God. As we know, at least according to the Bible, God indeed managed to live up to his promise. He clearly brought his chosen people to the land of milk and honey and made them live in cities they didn’t build and drink their water from wells they didn’t dig. Clearly, the Lord did not abandon his people. A few millenniums later, the Judaic God capitalised on his might and brought the nations on their knees so they saw the light and willingly voted for the 1947 UN partition resolution. A fatal error that made it legal (rather than moral) for the new Israelite to live in cities he didn’t build and drink from wells he didn’t dig. Indeed, if there is a question regarding the existence of the Judaic God, the above should be enough to prove his existence.

However, it is rather obvious and very embarrassing to admit that the Judaic God, as portrayed by Moses in Deuteronomy 6:10 is an immoral evil God. It is a God who leads his people to plunder, robbery and theft. Yet, there are many ways to deal with this negative image of the almighty. On the literary level one can suggest that the given verses are not more than just two isolated lines in a gigantic text that is well meaning and offers some fundamental universal thoughts. On the contextual level, one may suggest that it wasn’t actually God himself who was talking to his chosen people but rather Moses who failed to deliver the true message of God. In other words, Moses may have ‘gotten it wrong’ or even ‘made it up’. In fact, there are many other ways to save the Judaic God from being the logos behind contemporary Israeli plundering, yet, it is not that easy to save the Israelites from being presented as robbers and plunders, especially in the light of their spiritual, cultural and religious heritage. In short, it is actually impossible not to see the continuum between Deuteronomy 6:10 and the crime against the Palestinian people that is committed by the Jewish State in the name of the Jewish people. Seemingly, Moses, his contemporaries and their current Zionist followers were and are rather excited about the possibilities laid ahead for them in the Land of Milk and Honey. Israel, the Jewish State, had been following Moses’ call to the elements.

The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in 1948 makes Deuteronomy 6:10 look like a prophecy has come true. On a daily basis the Israelis rob the indigenous Palestinians of their land, cities, villages, fields, orchards and wells. In fact this robbery has never stopped for over a century. For the last sixty years, Moses’ call for theft is put into a legal praxis. The Israeli looting of Palestinian cities, homes, fields and wells found its way into the Israeli legal system. Already in 1950-51 Israel legislators approved the ‘Absentee Property Law’, a racially orientated law that is there to prevent Palestinians from returning to their lands, cities and villages. A law that is there to allow the new Israelites to live in houses and cities they didn’t build. The never-ending robbery of Palestine by Israel in the name of the Jewish people establishes a devastating spiritual, ideological, cultural and obviously, practical continuum between the Judaic bible and the Zionist project. The crux of the matter is simple yet disturbing: Israel and Zionism are both successful political systems that put into devastating practice the plunder promised by the Judaic God in the Judaic holy scriptures. It seems obvious: Zionist and Neocon repetitive failure tendency to defame Islam and Muslims is actually nothing more than a banal projection. Zionists and Neocons are well familiar with the different immoral teaching within the Judaic spiritual and religious heritage that matured into a Zionist looting. Foolishly, they try to project it on Islam and Muslims. After reading Moses’ oratory we may have to confess, the Jewish nationalist project that is supported by the vast majority of Jewish institutions around the world is an attempt aiming at robbery of the indigenous Palestinians following a cultural and religious heritage that is overwhelmingly documented in the Judaic Bible. Yet we must never forget that not all Jews follow the Bible. Some are not even aware of the biblical text or its content. Some may even suggest to us that we must never forget the Bund and its progressive, secular and cosmopolitan heritage that is currently maintained by a half a dozen enthusiast Jewish Marxists around the world.

Indeed, we have to admit that out of the very few Bundists who didn’t immigrate to Israel after the war, half a dozen do not agree with Israel, Zionism and the robbery of Palestine. This is certainly a reason to be cheerful. However, Bundists believe that instead of robbing Palestinians we should all get together and rob who is considered to be the rich, the wealthy and the strong in the name of working class revolution. Here is the Bund’s call for action taken from ‘The Vow’ the Bund’s anthem: We swear our stalwart hate persists,Of those who rob and kill the poor:The Tsar, the masters, capitalists.Our vengeance will be swift and sure.So swear together to live or die!

On the face of it, robbing the rich, confiscating their homes and grabbing their wealth is seen as an ethical act within the progressive discourse. As a young revolutionary I myself took part in some righteous parades. I was ready to grab my sword and to join the hunt for a Tsar, a capitalist or any other enemy who may cross my way. But then, the inevitable happened, I grew up. I realised that such a vengeance towards an entire class of wealthy goyim is not more than an extension of Moses’ oratory of Deuteronomy Six. Robbery cannot be the way forwards. Whether it is Palestinians, Iraqis, world banking or even the Tsar himself. Robbing involves a categorical dismissal of the other. Hence, it must be premised on some inherent self-righteousness. Robbery and plunder doesn’t live in peace with a deep understanding of the notion of human equality.

Sadly we have to admit that hate-ridden plunder of other people’s possessions made it into the Jewish political discourse both on the left and right. The Jewish nationalist would rob Palestine in the name of the right of self-determination, the Jewish progressive is there to rob the ruling class and even international capital in the name of world working class revolution. I better stay out of it. Conclusion: It must be stated that if Neocons and Zionists are really interested in defaming Islam and Muslims, all they have to do is to provide us with a similar analogous extensive reading of Islam in which an alleged satanic verse is translated into an unethical praxis performed by a substantial organised collective.

However, bearing in mind the increasing influence of the Old Testament within the American political discourse due to the rise of popularity of Christian fundamentalism in America, the notion of the plundering God may help us to understand the American current conduct in Iraq and in Afghanistan. In other words, the growing popularity of Old Testament teachings may help us to grasp the predatory philosophy encouraged by the perpetrators of the notorious ‘New American Century’. Most importantly, within such a problematic reading of the Judaic God as presented in Deuteronomy 6:10 and its total dismissal of the Other, Jesus’ call to love one’s neighbour comes into life. This is the exact ingredient some of us miss in Moses’ oratory as reflected in Jewish political discourse and praxis. It is love to one’s neighbour that we lack in contemporary Anglo-American affairs. Human brotherhood is what we miss in Jewish nationalism both right and left.

Would the Zionists be open to the notion of brotherhood, they would be empathic to the Palestinian right of return. Would the Jewish Marxists and cosmopolitans be open to the notion of Brotherhood, they would give up on their unique exclusive banners and become ordinary human beings like the rest of us.

How a medieval concept of ethnicity makes NATO commit yet another a dangerous blunder

Acting as one - which of course they are - President Bush and the US House of Representatives announced yesterday that they both favor the entry of the Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. That Dubya would take such an idiotic position is of no surprise of course, but that the House would pass such a resolution unanimously is quite shocking: not a single Representative had the brains to understand what kind of message such a vote would send to Russia. Either that, or they did not care. I am not sure which is worse. Not even the fact that most Ukrainians want nothing to do with NATO could influence the crazed Neocons who nowadays run the USA: as always, knew they were right. So let's look at the bigger picture here and consider what exactly is going on.

NATO was founded with the unequivocal mandate to protect its member from any aggressor i.e, the Soviet Union. Considering that Stalin had just absorbed all of eastern Europe into his communist empire the establishment of NATO made sense. For all the bombastic statements about D-day, the RAF, Patton and Montgomery western strategists knew full well that it was the Soviet Union which had defeated Hitler and that the Western Front was little more than a sideshow to the real thing.

The only thing which the West could oppose to the might of the Soviet Army was the power of the US nuclear arsenal. It was therefore absolutely essential to demonstrate to the Soviets that any attack on Western Europe would involve the vital interests of the USA. Thus "a nuclear tripwire called NATO was laid down along the Iron Curtain to draw a line in the sand" (at least this is how the media pundits and the talking heads would have phrased it). Soon, however, the Soviets detonated their own nuclear device and it became clear to all the parties involved that a war, any war, could potentially rapidly escalate into MADness, as in Mutually Assured Destruction. Later, MAD was revised to a more elegant "flexible response", but the underlying ideas always remained the same: making a war unwinnable.

The thing to remember here is that NATO was created as an organization of last resort, something like the sniper's hand grenade: something which could only be used in a truly desperate, hopeless, situation; something which only an existential threat could justify.

When in the late eighties the Soviet leaders agreed to withdraw from Europe and to dismantle the Soviet Union they were given all sorts of promises by the West about how the West would never take advantage of this situation; they were given solemn promises of Western support and they were told that new democratic Russia would forever be considered a friend and a partner.

Not a single one of these promises has been kept. Not one. Quite to the countrary, the West embarked on what can only be called a systematic campaign to encircle and threaten Russia.

The USA withdrew from the ABM Treaty, the US Navy continued to aggressively patrol right off the Russian territorial waters, and the The West has not only absorbed all of eastern Europe into NATO, but it has even admitted the Baltic countries (nevermind that two of the latter endlessly violated the human rights of their not-so-small Russian minority). The West bombed Yugoslavia, a Russian ally, in a clear violation of the UN Charter. The West has even given full support to the crazed Chechen separatists even though the latter committed numerous atrocities reminiscent of the worst moments of the civil war in Sierra Leone. After 9/11, when the American public suddenly discovered Wahabi terrorism, this pro-Chechen stance was rapidly abandoned in favor of the new priorities of the GWOT.

Now US Neocons are pushing for the deployment of elements of an anti-ballistic missile system (clearly directed against Russia) in eastern Europe. Frankly, short of declaring war on Russia on behalf of Yakut separatists I don't see how the West could have been more vindictive, provocative and hostile to Russia.

But why does the West hate Russia so much?

First, it's of course not "the West". What we are taking about here are the western political establishment or, in other terms, the Neocons which now are firmly in power in most key western nations.

And what is a Neocon, if not a former Trotskyite? (just need to google 'neocon' and 'trotsky' and see for yourself). Of course, the Neocons have adapted their ideology to new circumstances, but the core of this ideology and the psychological makeup of its proponents has not changed very much since the times of Trotsky. But then, what is a Trotskyite?

Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the term "Trotskist" really only had one possible meaning in the Russian language: it simply meant a Jewish Bolshevik.

While most Russian Jews were not Bolsheviks at all (many were Mensheviks, Bundists, Anarchists, etc.) a majority of Bolsheviks was Jewish and a super-majority of members of the secret police, the infamous ChK, were Jewish Trotskists. These were the folks who butchered the Russian peasantry, the Russian nobility, the Russian intelligentsia, the Russian Orthodox clergy in what can only be considered a systematic campaign to exterminate any expression of the Russian culture (which, at that time, very much included the Ukrainian culture and people too, hence the many years of terror in the Ukraine and the carefully orchestrated "Golodomor" or famine).

There are many theories for why these Jewish Trotskists hated everything Russian or Orthodox with such a passion, some of them good, and many of them nonsense. Whether the Ukrainian pogroms are the cause of this hatred, or the Czarist discriminatory policies towards Jews, or whether there are far more fundamental religious reasons behind this hatred is besides the point. What matters is that Trotskists indisputably suffered from a Russophobia of a truly genocidal magnitude and that this hatred made them kill far, far more people than Hitler could have ever dreamed of exterminating.

The modern Neocons, who are the descendants and intellectual heirs of the Trotskists (primarily in an ideological sense, but sometimes even literally) still very much feel this hatred - hence all this talk about a "resurgent Russia" and the danger it presumably represents for the West.

The crucial thing to understand here is that far from seeing themselves as the butchers of Russia, the Trotskyite/Neocons see themselves as greatly victimized by the Russians. Why is that? Because, as any history book well tell you, the original Trotskists were eventually themselves persecuted (and often executed) by Stalin and his goons.

Stalin himself was a Georgian who could not even speak Russian properly, and his accomplices, whether ethnically Russian or not, can hardly been seen as a manifestation of Russian identity. Still, Stalin skilfully used the Russian national sentiment to promote his policies and, later, to get the Russian masses to fight the Nazis (who had originally been greeted as liberators from the Red Terror). Following the Soviet victory in 1945 Stalin never returned to the original Bolshevik "internationalism".

Stalin's purges did imprison and kill many Jews, but there were still plenty left in the Party apparatus. The point here is not to make ethnic distinctions, at least not at this stage, the point is to realize that when one Bolshevik group replaced another one of these groups had a very strong ethnic component. Here is how I would characterize the two groups:

a) The Trotskists: they were primarily intellectuals who truly believed in the ideas of communism; their aim was to spread communism to the rest of the world; they viewed terror as something which accelerates the course of history towards the inevitable triumph of communism; they believed in the Party as the collective vanguard of the people. Lastly, though Trotskists had no interest in, or need for, Judaism (or any other religion) most of them definitely saw themselves as culturally Jewish, communist 'internationalism' notwithstanding. While this might sound rather bizarre to the modern reader one needs to remember that the Russian Empire was in its nature and structure multi-ethnic (just as the Byzantine or the Ottoman Empires had been) and that at the turn of the 19th century 97% of all Jews of the Russian Empire spoke Yiddish and not Russian in their homes. There was no such thing as a "Russian Jew" in 1917. There were Jews, and there were Russians (a baptised Jew was, by the way, considered as Russian; even more interestingly, Karaites were not considered Jews at all).

b) the Stalinists: they were basically criminal thugs who believed in nothing besides power, and while they were more than happy to use the communist ideals as a justification for their struggle for power they did not care in the least about "world communism" and any other ideological nonsense. What they wanted is power in the Soviet Union. Period. For them terror was both a means towards the goal of absolute power and an end in itself, a method of ruling over Russia. Stalin understood that as long as the Party could exist as an aggregation of factions and individuals (as it had been originally; see democratic centralism) his power would not be absolute, he therefore aimed at transforming the Bolshevik into a party which he would absolutely control. Since many, if not most, top Party officials were Jews, Stalin's purges did, of course, affect many Jews, but it would be a mistake to think that these purges were aimed at Jews as such - they were aimed at the Party and its internal diversity. Ethnicity did not matter in the least to Stalin at least as long as he did not feel that some ethnic group might threaten his power.

We can observe exactly the same psycho-political divide among the Nazis, by the way. In this case, the ideologues, the "true believers" would be Goebbels , Himmler, SS and Hitler himself and the "petty thugs" - Roehm, Goering and the SA. I suppose that the same types can be found in any revolutionary movement which combines "intellectual terrorists" with petty criminals.

This digression is important because Stalin's purges and the gradual erosion of the influence of Jews in the CPSU between the 1930s to the end of the Soviet Union has left a very bitter sense of victimization in the Jewish circles which eventually spawned off the Neocon movement. This sense of victimization culminated in the mass emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel and the USA which was only made possible by a major political confrontation between the West and the Soviet leaders. The fact that non-Jews had no right to emigrate at all was given no attention whatsoever by the western political elites. Neither was the fact there were still plenty of Jews inside the Soviet elites. The order of the day was clear: "let my people go!!" said the US Congress lead by Neocon Senator "Scoop" Jackson and Representative Vanik and let go they were indeed.

The historical facts are important here, but they are not crucial. What is crucial is the Jewish/Trotskyite/Neocon narrative about Russia: pogroms, Stalin's purges, "anti-Semitism", the "dissident movement" and struggle over emigration, the Soviet assistance to Arab countries and the Soviet nukes aimed at the USA - this is what shapes the Neocon worldview. The fact that no pogrom ever took place in Russia proper (they all occurred in the Ukraine), that Stalin's purges were not anti-Jewish at all, that Jews constituted high proportion of the Soviet Nomenklatura right up to the fall of the Soviet Union, that non-Jews had even less rights to emigrate than Jews or that US nukes were also aimed at the Soviet Union (and that influential generals suggested that only ethnically Russian areas of the Soviet Union should be included in the SIOP) did not matter: this simplistic anti-Russian narrative fully permeated the worldview and cultural fabric of the Neocons. Today, this narrative is still the prime factor defining Neocon policies towards Russia.

Whether the Neocons nowadays hate everything Russian or Orthodoxy Christian more than they hate everything Arabs or Muslim is debatable (it probably depends on the individual Neocon anyway). What is sure is that these two hatreds are of a similar order of magnitude and that they are without equivalent. Once this is fully understood, the West's policies towards Russia since the end of the Soviet Union suddenly make perfectly good sense: Russia, just like Iran, is considered as an "existential threat" by the Neocons, although political expediency does not make it possible for them to openly say so.

It is important to note here that for a typical modern person, "ethnic politics" just make no sense and any analysis based on ethnicity just sounds too bizarre to be true. The danger here is to assume that because one believes that ethnic policies are plain racists, everybody else must think likewise. Sadly, this is not the case. There are plenty of people out there who very much think in ethnic or even racial categories, and Jews are amongst those most inclined towards this kind of thinking (for an earlier article on this issue please check out Daddy, what's a Neocon? Ethnic mafia wars in the USA).

The late Israel Shahak used to say that Jewish extremists have reversed the old Friends of the Earth slogan "think globally - act locally" into a far more omnious "think locally - act globally" (locally' should not be understood in a strictly geographical sense here, but also as a parochial, 'single-issue priority setting' meaning). The truly crazed idea of admitting the Ukraine and Georgia into NATO can only be understood in the context of such an Neocon ideological mindset.

Could there be a pragmatic reason to admit the Ukraine and Georgia into NATO? Of course, not! Both of these countries are highly unstable politically, their ruling elites are corrupt to the bone, their military forces are not even close to meet NATO standards and their geographic location truly begs the question of what kind of threat an entry into NATO would protect them from. Of course, Dubya explained that NATO was not an anti-Russian alliance at all, but that is laughable. NATO can *only* be anti-Russian as nothing else can justify its existence.

By the way, American strategists fully realize that NATO is becoming meaningless in any other context besides a war ("cold" or "hot") against Russia. This is why they talk about "coalitions of the willing" or a "league of democracies". From the Neocon point of view NATO has become useless (see the mess in Afghanistan) and only ad-hoc coalitions can work jointly for the promotion of the interests of the Neocon Empire. Thus NATO *sole* role remains to isolate Russia politically and threaten it militarily and that can only be explained by the Neocon's deep hatred and fear of Russia. The fact is that a medieval concept of ethnicity shared by a very small group of people has been allowed to become the determining factor in the formulation US and Western policies towards the only major nuclear power besides the USA. This is both frightening and sad because, as with any policy based on threats and violence, this will result in even more blowback for the US and its European allies.