Permanent War and & "The Color Line"
The Black Commentator
"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line - the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea." - W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, February, 1903. -- A young William Edward Burghardt DuBois wrote those words with some measure of hopefulness, inviting the reader to "behold a century new for the duty and the deed." The duty was to solve the "problem of the color-line" by decisive deeds. One hundred years later, the nation in which DuBois experienced "two-ness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body" - is engaged in a global race war. Dubois would immediately recognize the white supremacist character of the Bush men's New American Century. Although only a relatively small group of rich and venal men stand to profit from the present day Pirates' policy of Permanent War, the project requires the assent of an imperial-minded majority of white people, collectively demanding their entitlement: dominion. So it was in 1898, when the "White Fleet" sailed into the harbors of Manila and Santiago de Cuba. U.S. seizure of Spain's Pacific and Caribbean colonies benefited urban tenement dwellers and the rural majority of Americans not one bit. Yet they cheered President McKinley's aggression, romanticized the murder of a million Filipinos, and gloried vicariously in the subjugation of Cuba. "We" were a world power - and there was no doubt that "we" meant white America, now equal to the whites of Europe. President Teddy Roosevelt, owing his job to a media spectacle on San Juan Hill, sent American warships on a worldwide tour in 1907 designed to "deter" the other major powers, principally Japan. By now, the U.S. flotilla was called "The Great White Fleet." More cheers from a population that was already lagging behind Western Europeans in public sector provisions for the general welfare - yet felt itself far better off, high on white privilege at home and, suddenly, supremacy in colored lands across the seas as well. McKinley and Roosevelt both initially claimed to be on a mission to "liberate" Filipinos, Cubans and Puerto Ricans from Spanish tyranny. White America pretended to believe it.    Black bucks and Indians of the imagination: DuBois saw clearly that racism among the white masses was the political engine that rich men commandeered for their own greedy purposes. Yet the motives of the rich did not alter the character of the carnage committed by the nation on the rich men's behalf: race war. The economic aspects of the crime took place within the larger context of "the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea." Filipinos fought fiercely for their homeland, knowing not enough of the Americans to be jealous of their "way of life" and, on most of the islands, sharing a common Christianity with the invaders. The Americans imagined that they saw "niggers" and "injuns," the people they loved to hate, as evidenced by letters compiled by the Anti-Imperialist League in 1899, edited in 1995 by Jim Zwick. A private in the Utah Battery wrote that "it is not surprising that the boys should soon adopt 'no quarter' as a motto, and fill the blacks full of lead before finding out whether or not they are friends or enemies."...

Apocalypse soon
By Giles Fraser, The Guardian, June 9, 2003
Evangelicals in the US believe there is a biblical basis for opposing the Middle East road map -- Just as new life is being breathed into the peace process, religious groups throughout the US are whipping up hostility to the road map. The aim of the Christian-Jewish "interfaith Zionist leadership summit" held in Washington last month was "to oppose rewarding murderous Palestinian terrorism with statehood". Attending the conference were some of the most influential figures of the Christian right; behind them a whole infrastructure of churches, radio stations and bible college courses teaching "middle-east history". Since the late 19th century, an increasing number of fundamentalists have come to believe that the second coming of Christ is bound up with the political geography of Israel. Forget about the pre-1967 boundaries; for them the boundaries that count are the ones shown on maps at the back of the Bible. The acceptance of the state of Israel by the UN in 1949 brought much excitement to those who believed the second coming was being prepared for. A similar reaction greeted the Six Day war in 1967. The displacement of Palestinians mattered little compared with the fulfilment of biblical prophecy. Writing in Christianity Today immediately after the Six Day war, Billy Graham's father-in-law, Nelson Bell, claimed the fact that "for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews gives the student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in its accuracy and validity." So as the international community withdrew its embassies after the war, and the UN passed resolution 242 condemning Israel's occupation of the West Bank, the International Christian Embassy was set up to show support for Israel. Since then the Christian right has staunchly opposed trading land for peace or any attempt to broker a settlement by power-sharing arrangements. The destruction of the al-Aqsa mosque continues to be sought after by both Christian and Jewish fundamentalists. US churches are encouraged to form links with Jewish settlers via email and to support them through fundraising....

Who's Accountable?
By Paul Krugman, New York Times, June 10, 2003
I'll tell you what's outrageous. It's not the fact that people are criticizing the administration; it's the fact that nobody is being held accountable for misleading the nation into war.  -- The Bush and Blair administrations are trying to silence critics — many of them current or former intelligence analysts — who say that they exaggerated the threat from Iraq. Last week a Blair official accused Britain's intelligence agencies of plotting against the government. (Tony Blair's government has since apologized for January's "dodgy dossier.") In this country, Colin Powell has declared that questions about the justification for war are "outrageous." Yet dishonest salesmanship has been the hallmark of the Bush administration's approach to domestic policy. And it has become increasingly clear that the selling of the war with Iraq was no different. For example, look at the way the administration rhetorically linked Saddam to Sept. 11. As The Associated Press put it: "The implication from Bush on down was that Saddam supported Osama bin Laden's network. Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks frequently were mentioned in the same sentence, even though officials have no good evidence of such a link." Not only was there no good evidence: according to The New York Times, captured leaders of Al Qaeda explicitly told the C.I.A. that they had not been working with Saddam. Or look at the affair of the infamous "germ warfare" trailers. I don't know whether those trailers were intended to produce bioweapons or merely to inflate balloons, as the Iraqis claim — a claim supported by a number of outside experts. (According to the newspaper The Observer, Britain sold Iraq a similar system back in 1987.) What is clear is that an initial report concluding that they were weapons labs was, as one analyst told The Times, "a rushed job and looks political." President Bush had no business declaring "we have found the weapons of mass destruction." We can guess how Mr. Bush came to make that statement. The first teams of analysts told administration officials what they wanted to hear, doubts were brushed aside, and officials then made public pronouncements greatly overstating even what the analysts had said. A similar process of cherry-picking, of choosing and exaggerating intelligence that suited the administration's preconceptions, unfolded over the issue of W.M.D.'s before the war. Most intelligence professionals believed that Saddam had some biological and chemical weapons, but they did not believe that these posed any imminent threat. According to the newspaper The Independent, a March 2002 report by Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee found no evidence that Saddam posed a significantly greater threat than in 1991. But such conclusions weren't acceptable....

Non-theoretical incitement
By Ze'ev Segal, Haaretz, June 9, 2003 
In May 1994 the High Court of Justice rejected a petition against the attorney general, who had refused to indict Rabbi Shlomo Goren even though he said that IDF soldiers should refuse orders to evacuate settlements, "because the precept of settling the land of Israel is equivalent to all the other commandments in the Torah." The High Court felt that the attorney general's policy of "restraint" was reasonable, mainly because the matter in question was "future and theoretical," in "an egg that had yet to be laid." Since then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin has been murdered, and following the assassination, inciteful statements came to light that preceded the killing and may even have led to it. Now, given the acceptance of the road map, the Aqaba summit and the announcement that the evacuation of outposts can be expected in the near future, the matter is no longer in the future nor theoretical. Statements such as "the name of Rabin Square should be changed to Rabin and Sharon Square," attributed to extreme right-wing circles, can no longer be made without a thorough investigation to identify those making them. The declaration of the Union of Rabbis for the People of Israel that every soldier in Israel should prevent the evacuation of outposts does not refer to "an unlaid egg " against which it is better to refrain from activating criminal law because of the importance of freedom of speech. The words of senior settlement Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, who said that one who evacuates a settlement and the one who sent him to do so are in the same category as killers, are no less than a clear hint at the statement, "If someone comes to kill you, you must act to kill him first," which is an encouragement of physical violence. The rule of law and the justice authorities, without dangerous hesitation, must now prevent what Minister Avigdor Lieberman has called a civil war. The police and Shin Bet must make special arrangements, in the spirit of the recommendations of the state commission of inquiry into the Rabin murder. The Shamgar Commission's report stated that the changing and worsening circumstances must be constantly reevaluated....

Palestinians should set election date now
By Volker Perthes, Daily Star, June 10, 2003
With the Sharm el-Sheikh and Aqaba summits, cautious hopes have been nurtured for the eventual resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab peace moves, and for the establishment in a foreseeable future of a viable and sovereign Palestinian state. The US and Europe, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab states will all have to play their part in keeping that process on track. One thing the Palestinian Authority can and should also do to make it credible is to set a date and prepare for general elections. Remember 1996, when the Palestinians held their first legislative and presidential elections? There was a sense, at that time, that a state had been born, or almost. These were, generally speaking, good elections. International observers had some remarks on the conduct of the PA and of individual candidates, but overall the elections were considered free and fair and certainly better than what citizens of most Arab countries are used to. Yasser Arafat won a landslide victory, as did his party, Fatah, in the legislative elections. These were honest results. Arafat’s independent contender didn’t score too badly; and Fatah dissidents, independents, and representatives of other Palestinian parties gained more than 40 per cent of the seats. Moreover, on the part of the population, the elections created a sense of ownership of the political process, and of the institutions of the proto-state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This was despite the fact that the Israeli government did not like the idea that the citizens of Arab Jerusalem had their own, elected representatives in the Palestinian Legislative Council. The council’s was tied to the dynamics of the negotiations with Israel ­ new elections for a proper parliament were meant to take place once the interim period was over and a “final status agreement” had been reached. This should have been the case in 1999, but it wasn’t. Today, after another four years, both the 1996 council and the president of the PA are still in office, their mandate never having been renewed. Realistically, in order to allow for a review of the Palestinian election law and for a fair campaign, legislative and presidential elections could be foreseen for October or November....

Right of return
Editorial, Jordan Times, June 10, 2003
ALTHOUGH THE issue of the return home of Palestinian refugees has been slated for negotiation during phase three of the roadmap, it is becoming increasingly pressing due to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's open declaration that not one single Palestinian refugee will be allowed back to his original home, town or city. This precipitous posturing on the part of Sharon has led the Palestinian side to push the right of return forward on the agenda of the peace talks. Meanwhile, the Israelis and the Palestinians are searching for legal norms or international decisions to back their respective positions. The Israeli side rests its case on the proposition that UN General Assembly Resolution 194 was a mere recommendation that cannot be treated on par with other UN resolutions on the subject. They also maintain that "the Jewish character of Israel" must be maintained at all costs. According to Israel, allowing Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their homes in what is now Israel would erode its "Jewishness." Israel also maintains that neither Security Council Resolution 242 nor the roadmap calls for the implementation of Resolution 194. While Resolution 242 did not mention Resolution 194 per se, it did not revoke it. The same goes for the roadmap. The call for a just and practical solution to the Palestinian refugee problem under the roadmap does not necessarily mean the exclusion of the option to repatriate some of them at least. As for Israel's insistence on maintaining and sustaining its Jewish character, it must be pointed out that in contemporary times, the establishment of states on the basis of religion or ethnicity is no longer tolerated....

Israeli Government Sabotages Peace Efforts
Editorial, MIFTAH, June 10, 2003
The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH) strongly condemns Israel’s assassination attempt of a Hamas leader in Gaza today, and cautions against Sharon’s blatant efforts to sabotage Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbass’ efforts for peace. Shortly after midday on Tuesday 10 June 2003, Israeli helicopter gun ships fired approximately 7 rockets at a vehicle carrying Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantisi, Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, in an apparent assassination attempt at Rantisi’s life. In the attack, a Palestinian woman and a child were instantly killed, and 27 other bystanders were injured. Rantisi himself escaped with light injuries. This attack comes at a time when international efforts, particularly those of the U.S. and President George W. Bush personally, are focused on establishing calm in the region and resuming Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. Israel’s policy of assassinating Palestinian political leaders is a grave violation of international law, and a direct blow to any efforts for peace. It constitutes a great danger for the prospects of the ‘roadmap’ and threatens to provoke more violence and fuel an already volatile situation....

Road Map to Remote Destination
By David B. Green, MIFTAH, June 10, 2003
JERUSALEM - After last week's drama at the Red Sea summit meetings, those who still have the patience even to think about the problems of Israelis and Palestinians may well be wondering: Is peace about to break out? The answer, I'm afraid, is probably not. This is not to say that important things didn't happen in the weeks leading up to Sharm el Sheikh and Aqaba, and at the meetings themselves. The Palestinians have a leader in Mahmoud Abbas, who clearly seems to recognize that nearly three years of terror have only hurt their cause. And he appears sincere in his attempt to bring about an end to an intifada of violence. Ariel Sharon, too, has come a great distance since his January reelection. One of Israel's most indefatigable warriors has begun using terms never before heard from him, speaking of the need to end the "occupation," to "divide" the land of Israel, and to ensure that the emerging Palestinian state has "territorial contiguity." It is likely that none of this would have happened had not President Bush taken the leap and become personally involved in trying to facilitate a settlement. That, too, was a change of tack for which he deserves considerable credit. Why, then, the pessimism? I'll put aside, for the moment, the severe doubts any Israeli must have about the Palestinian prime minister's ability to impose a cease-fire on organizations like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, or even whether Abu Mazen, as Mr. Abbas is known, has the support of a majority of his people. I will assume, too, that Mr. Bush is in this to the bitter end, and will keep the pressure up on both sides....Israel, my country, has ample reason to doubt the ultimate intentions of the Palestinians, as well as their ability to put aside violence. But even if the Palestinians have largely concluded that their homeland must be in their own state, to be established on the lands that came under Israeli control in June 1967, the Israeli public has yet to grapple seriously with either the extent or full significance of the settlement enterprise in those lands. And that makes the prospects for a credible agreement as remote as ever....

Iraqi engineers roll in their country’s reconstruction
By Laith Abdul Wahid, Middle East Online, June 10, 2003
Bechtel should give Iraqi engineers the chance to participate in contracts awarded to companies in Iraq -- To date the giant American construction company Bechtel has been awarded a preliminary 680 million $US contracts by the American Administration for the reconstruction of Iraq. Subsequent to its role towards supporting US Aid’s Iraq Infrastructure Reconstruction they have arranged three meetings to provide Information on subcontracting and purchasing processes, at regional conferences held in Washington, D.C. on May 21st, London on May 23rd, and Kuwait City on May 28th. I was to attend the Washington conference, but due to the security circumstances at the existing time, I had to remain home in Montreal. Bechtel promised to post the information provided at the conferences, as well as questions asked along with the responses through their web site. The news that came from the London conference said that there were about 1000 registered companies from all over the world including their representatives had attended the meeting. We were not informed how many Iraqi companies were among those 1000 companies. It was not a surprise at all to know that all those companies have the desire in the reconstruction of my country, Iraq. News came later saying that the American administration is willing to award Egyptian companies subcontracts from Bechtel or other American companies to compensate Egypt for its economical losses after the war. In addition, we read that Kuwaiti companies and many other countries around the world as well as Israeli companies have already made their contacts and some of them have already been awarded some subcontracts. It is absolutely not my intention to interfere in neither Bechtel affairs nor how they chose their subcontractors to run their business. Nevertheless, I feel that I have a responsibility as an Iraqi engineer to wander about the true opportunity that the Iraqi Engineers may have to participate in the reconstruction of their country. Are they going to have priority to participate in this reconstruction as do so many other neighbouring countries currently have with their citizen, especially in the neighbouring Arab Gulf states?....

Interim is forever
By Mustafa Barghouti, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line,  5 -11 June 2003
A new Middle East peace initiative is getting underway. But, unless we are careful we can repeat the mistakes of Oslo -- The sacrifices the Palestinians made during two intifadas were painful, but without them the Palestinian struggle would not have emerged from the dark and long tunnel it had been pushed into. Sharon now recognises the right of the Palestinians to a state of their own. The credit for such a change of heart should go to Palestinian struggle, to the legendary steadfastness of millions of our people, in heroic Jenin as in valiant Rafah. Let's recall the general course of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Thirty years ago, Golda Meir bragged that no such a thing existed as the Palestinian people. Ten years ago, Sharon, this unreformed war criminal, claimed that the Palestinian state was in Jordan, and explored ways to deport the Palestinians or "transfer" them from their homeland. Today, the Palestinian people have made the world, not just Israel, recognise their existence. No self-respecting country, official, or intellectual, can now deny the right of the Palestinians for national independence and a state of their own. The Palestinian people have won the battle of survival and steadfastness by refusing to flee in 1967 -- having learned the lesson of 1948. The Palestinians have earned the right to an independent state thanks to two intifadas during which over 100,000 of them were killed or wounded. Israel has lost the battle over the Palestinians' right for independence. So, it is now initiating a final battle, one in which it is determined to empty independence from all meaning and hand the Palestinians a collection of cantons or ghettos, dismembered and shorn of sovereignty, on a mere 42 per cent of the area of the West Bank and Gaza. This ploy has been tried before, in Oslo, and successfully. The Oslo accords were thrown out of track. They ended in a charade of partial and transitive agreements. This gave Israel time and the type of truce it always wanted, a one-sided truce, a truce during which the Palestinians desist from struggle while Israel continues to impose the status quo and build more settlements. Over 100 new settlements have been built, and the previous ones have been doubled in size. This development triggered the ongoing intifada, in which 2,500 gave their lives, 40,000 were wounded, and unprecedented destruction of property and infrastructure took place -- all this just to save the Palestinian cause from the dark tunnel in which it had entered....

Thrills of the SUV Nation
By Ishmael Reed, CounterPunch, June 9, 2003
Iraqi Slaughter, Mayhem and Plunder -- The reason that a large part of the African-American public--up to 60%--opposed the war in Iraq, where defense contractors displayed their latest electronic weaponry, against an army that was supplied with 1917 Soviet rifles, is because many of the scenes that accompanied the slaughter of hundreds of Iraqi citizens looked familiar to them. Citizens lying on the ground with M-16s aimed at their heads. Homes broken into and frightened dwellers being threatened with weapons. (On May 18, The Times reported that an elderly black woman died from a heart attack after the NYPD burst into her home. They mistakenly thought that it was a crack operation.) The culture of those regarded as the enemy disrespected like African-American culture and history are disrespected at home. Even ridiculed by white American intellectuals and writers, who wish to keep white Americans and the rest of us in a cultural and intellectual backwoods. For example, an enterprising journalist managed to arrange a dialogue between American and Iraqi students. The exchange took place before the war, and was carried on the World Link network, a network that, unlike the inbedwith American media, presents a program called Mosaic, news from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan so that we get a balanced view of events taking place in the Middle East. The Iraqi students, who were receiving free education, knew more about international events than the American students. What does this say about our educational system that American students, who come in near the bottom when compared to students in other industrial countries when tested on math, history and geography are less informed than students who were living under a heinous American-sponsored regime? (And were receiving free education.) Perhaps these American students get all of their information about the world from television. 0n April 25th, the President of the B.B.C. was reported to have said that the American media's reporting of the war was characterized by so much patriotic cheerleading- my nomination for giddy hyper major domo for the war is CNN's Wolf Blitzer, who was goo goo eyed over the video-game display of "shock- and- awe" weaponry- that it would be hard to take the United States electronic media seriously....

Land of Clichés
By Robert Fisk, Dissident Voice, June 7, 2003
It was all about clichés. No longer a "peace process" - which, like a disobedient railway loco, constantly had to be put back on track - it's now a "road-map". Settlements built for Jews and Jews only on Arab land are now divided into "established settlements", the illegal kind Ariel Sharon does not intend to dismantle, and "unauthorised outposts", the equally illegal "caravanserais" that Israeli extremists have set up and that can be torn down in front of the television cameras as a demonstration of goodwill. On the Palestinian side, there was Abu Mazen, America's choice of successor to the failed colonial governor Yasser Arafat, promising that he would use "every means available" to end the intifada. "Every means" is almost UN-speak; it means Hamas and Islamic Jihad may have to be put down with gunfire - which in the real world could mean a Palestinian civil war. There was talk of a "restructured" Palestinian "security service". "Restructured" means "purged", something that Mr Arafat would understand at first hand. Then we had that old friend, the "viable sic Palestinian state", a cliché that the Quartet of the US, the EU, the UN and Russia has generously passed on to the Israelis. Mr Sharon didn't take too well to the "sovereign independent" state that the Quartet dreamt up. But since it was an internationally supported plan, it was "the only game in town", a cliché previously reserved for David Owen's gloomy map of Bosnia, which had the Serbs and Muslims at each other's throats in hours. But even President George Bush couldn't quite make it out of cliche land. Israel, he said before the Aqaba summit, had to "deal" (sic again) with settlements - no mention, of course, that these colonies are built against all international law on Arab land. Mr Bush talked about "contiguous territories" in Palestine without defining which bits of land had to be "contiguous". Did he mean adjacent, perhaps? Or adjoining? And there was much talk of "terror" - the Palestinian kind, of course, not the Israeli version....