The Extraterritorial Nature of the US Cuban Blockade

The US has imposed an embargo on Cuba since 1961. That embargo is probably never going to be lifted. 100% of the US power elite of both parties are all of the US media are against lifting the blockade. Imperialism demands not just free elections and what not but also a total dismantling of the socialist economic system on the island. The blockade has always been more about US capitalism’s international war on socialism that about anything else.

Various lies have been parroted about the blockade: That it was imposed due to the Cold War, that it was imposed because Cuba allied with the USSR, that it does not hurt Cuba at all and instead is used as an excuse by the regime, etc.

First of all, if it was imposed as a result of the Cold War, then with the fall of the USSR in 1991, it should have been lifted. The truth is that it was part of US capitalism’s war on the socialist economic system and not part of the war on the USSR. Hence with the fall of the USSR, the behavior of the US state did not change one bit.

It continued its war on socialism, attacking socialist countries, fomenting coups against progressive or socialist governments, blockading socialist countries, supporting fascist and rightwing governments around the word as they are “good for business,” funding anti-Left death squads all around the world, and continuing an ideological war against all progressive forces and states in the world.

We really must smash this lie once and for all that the US reluctantly did all sorts of bad things as a result of the War with the Soviet Union. The truth is that US imperialism simply evil, and it continued to do all of those same bad things after the USSR fell. The war was not against the USSR but against socialism itself, and that is why it continued after the USSR’s fall just as strongly as when the USSR was active.

The embargo was imposed in 1961 because Cuba began nationalizing some US properties of large US corporations. At the same time, the properties of many Cuban large capitalists was also taken. The US companies were offered 100% fair market values for their properties, but all of them told the Cubans to buzz off and those funds have not been collected to this very day. They never will be. However, if the US imposes regime change on Cuba then the first order of business will be a raid on the Cuban Treasury to pay back the US corporations and possibly the Cubans who got expropriated.

Also, Cuba began trading with the USSR. They were also trading with the US. Indeed, they were trading with the whole world. They imported oil from the USSR, but the US refineries on the island refused to refine Soviet oil, so the Cubans heroically confiscated the refineries of the imperialists.

Cuban exiles often say that the embargo doesn’t hurt Cuba at all. Instead Cuba’s economy is hurting due to Communism. One can look at photos of Eastern Europe and the USSR under Communism to see that Communism doesn’t have anything to do with buildings and infrastructure falling apart. I saw a video of Prague from ~1977 that could well have been shot in Paris or Berlin. It looked 100% like a modern Western city.

If you ask these same gusanos,* “Ok, since it doesn’t hurt them, why don’t we get rid of it then?” They will scream and yell and say no way! Obviously it hurts Cuba terribly, and that’s why the gusanos want to keep it. There is scarcely a human being on Earth who lies more than a gusano. Almost everything a gusano says about Cuba is a lie.

The embargo does indeed hurt them very badly. If a ship docks in Cuba, it can’t dock in the US for another six months. There are many penalties on foreign firms doing business with Cuba. It is not quite, “You can either do business with Cuba or you can do business with the rest of the world, but not both,” but it is close to that, similar to the blockade which has completely wrecked North Korea.

There have been massive penalties imposed on and collected from European banks for doing business with Cuba. As you can see below, a solidarity organization in the UK had $1000-2000 seized by the US because it had the world Cuba in its name. The US government says it can go ahead and confiscate that money of theirs and good luck getting it back.

Many products are made only in the US, and many, many products have parts that are made in the US. Any product with any parts made in the US cannot be sold in Cuba. Further, Cubans have many machines that need spare parts and those parts are made only in the US. They might be able to have the specially made by someone else, but that is quite expensive. The regime has to undertake expenses like this all the time.

I recall the case of a man residing in Cuba who made a trip to the UK and tried to deposit some money in Cuba to purchase something or other and he was not able to do so.

The law is crazy and its extraterritoriality is really scary. But US imperialism has always been one of the world’s worst monsters.

British NGO, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign (CSC) faces financial penalties or the risk having its funds seized by the US treasury department as a result of US blockade legislation against Cuba.

In April 2013, the British based campaign attempted to transfer funds to US publishing house Monthly Review Foundation to pay for 100 copies of The Economic War on Cuba by French academic and journalist Salim Lamrani.

CSC instructed its British bank, the Co-operative, to make the transfer to the publisher’s New York based Chase Bank. However, the payment was never made. Instead CSC received a letter from the Co-op bank stating that this payment has not been completed due to a reference which is similar to an entity related to sanctions as provided by the U.S treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). They require more info regarding Cuba.

The Campaign now faces the option of paying bank charges to try and recover the money, or providing details to the OFAC, who can decide to retain CSC funds if they
chose.

The book’s author Salim Lamrani, who is currently in Britain on a speaking tour to promote the book, said:

It is ironic that a British organisation that campaigns against the US blockade of Cuba, now faces penalties as a direct result of this legislation. Aside from the inhumane suffering the blockade causes the people of Cuba by restricting their access to US medicines and medical equipment, its extraterritorial measures break domestic laws in third countries.

CSC
Director Rob Miller said:

“It’ s farcical that extraterritorial blockade legislation is being used here to stop the sales of a book that itself exposes the breadth of the blockade against Cuba. Perhaps OFAC have specific objections to the book itself, although it is more likely that they object to allowing a payment from a British NGO with the word ‘Cuba’ in its name. Once again the ludicrousness of the US blockade is exposed in this case in trying to stop UK readers enjoying an excellent book published by a US publishing house.”

This is not the first time the British campaign has fallen victim to the extraterritorial nature of the US blockade. Dell computers has refused to sell the campaign a laptop without first being provided with the full name and addresses of directors and trustees of the organisation and bank transfers destined for projects in Cuba have regularly been refused. Salim Lamrani will be speaking in London on Tuesday 28 May, 6.30pm at Bolivar Hall, Grafton Way, London.

*Gusano means worm in Spanish. Cuban exiles are worms.

Islamophobes are Insane

Despite the fact that I have some critical views about Islam myself, I continue to hold that the Islamophobes of the world are insane. They make no sense at all. Another commenter noted recently that the Hindutvadis of India (really nearly all middle to upper class high caste Hindus) have a hatred of Islam that makes no sense whatsoever and is completely irrational. I would agree with that. The Hindutvadi commenters on this blog have a truly irrational hatred of Islam.

To some extent it is true that Islam is a menace, and it is a violent religion, but it’s mostly a problem in the various sandboxes that are ruled by Islam. In other words, Islam is mostly a problem for Muslims and not for the rest of us. To the extent that it is a problem for the rest of is is mostly due to the fact that we can’t seem to stop attacking and killing Muslims. As long as we do that, they will wage defense or revenge based Islam on us.

The truth is that that most Islamophobes are motivated by reaction. There are very few progressive Islam-haters (there are some in Afghanistan and Iran) because Islamophobia is not a progressive value.

Almost all Islamophobes in the West are motivated by political reaction. In other words, they are beasts themselves – they are the very beasts that they accuse the Muslims of being. In Europe, Islamophobes are associated with the most reactionary elements of Europe – European and even White nationalists. They are also associated with all of the fascist and quasi-fascist parties in Europe.

They are strongly aligned with Zionism, a vile imperialist and settler-colonial fascist project that occupies and conquers Arab lands and has expansionist aims on the rest of it.They are politically reactionary, and many of them have begun to rail against socialism and the welfare state and have started to rail for radical neoliberal economics. In the UK, they are responsible for Crusade-like invasions of Muslim lands in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Russia it is much the same, except the Islam-haters are even worse – more racist, more fascist and much more violent. They are associated with a violent project to deny the majority-Muslim lands in the Caucasus their right to self-determination, which is their inherent right after all. Instead, like Crusaders of recent European colonizers, the Russians have made much of the Caucasus into colonies. In the meantime, they committed genocide against the Muslims of Chechnya.

In Israel, the Islamophobes are associated with the most fascist,  backwards, conquering and expansionist elements of the Jews. I should note that these same elements hate Christians and non-Jews about as much as they hate Islam. These are the monsters of the Jewish people, as wicked as they accuse the Muslims of being. This group is also politically reactionary, and is responsible for imposing radical neoliberalism on Israel which has resulted in many social problems, including widespread homelessness.

In Lebanon, the Muslim haters are associated with the Maronite Christian Falangist movement, a true fascist movement that has the distinction of being the first movement to bring European style fascism (like the Nazis) to Lebanon. The founders of this movement worshiped Hitler. This is a true monstrosity, a blood and soil fascist movement that has deep roots in Maronite society. In addition, this group is politically reactionary, supporting the closest thing to radical neoliberalism anywhere in the Arab World.

In India, the Muslim haters are the most poisonous, backwards, fascistic and casteist elements of Indian society, strongly associated with the high caste Hindu elite. There is a lot of evidence that the hatred of Islam by Hindutvadis is because the Muslims humiliated the high castes and removed them from their position of privilege in Hindu society. This is an extremely fascist movement whose leaders also worshiped Hitler. They are responsible for a genocide against Muslims in Gujarat in which 2,500 Muslims were slaughtered with state support.

This movement is associated also with radical neoliberal economics and hatred for socialism and the poor and lower castes of India. It is an elite movement designed to deepen poverty in India, enrich the high castes and restore the high castes to their position of privilege which they felt was denied them in a movement since Independence. They represent the most primitive and barbaric elements of Hindu culture, which is backwards, cruel, amoral  and parasitic anyway. These are the monsters of India and the monsters of the world, a danger to the SubCon and to the rest of us as they spread out like a plague around the globe. They are every bit as vicious and monstrous as the Muslims they hate so much.

The bottom line is that Islamophobes are simply bad people.

Everywhere it exists on Earth, it is associated with idiotic and barbaric religious fundamentalism, either Jewish, Christian or Hindu. It is generally associated with the most reactionary elements in every society, and it usually wishes to impose radical rightwing economics on society in the form of neoliberalism.

This is an elite project designed to enrich the top 20% of society while impoverishing when it is not starving or killing off the bottom 80%. It has been responsible for many millions of deaths in the last few decades, mostly via denial of medical care through mandated state kickbacks. In some societies like Israel, Europe and Russia, it is associated with racism in the form of ethnic nationalism – Jewish nationalism in Israel and White nationalism in Europe and Russia.

If Islamophobes were decent people themselves then we might have a movement to counterpoise the backwards and violent nature of Islam. Instead they are just as bad as the Muslims and in fact in many cases, they are probably even worse. They vastly exaggerate and lie about Muslims and Islam, and ridiculous overplay the dangers associated with this religion, which is mostly a danger to its own adherents anyway.

A Capitalist World is a World of Crime, Corruption and Wars of Agression

Dota says:

I think Roger Hill is onto something here. Robert mistakes capitalism for opportunism and sociopathic behaviour in general. As I’ve pointed out before, we’ve seen exploitation in non-capitalist societies during various periods of history. Feudalism and Caste immediately come to mind.

Lee Kwan Yew once said that in order to spread the wealth around, a society must first create it. Capitalism is a good engine for wealth creation. Historically, its egalitarian societies that have been expansionist. The Arabs and Mongols come to mind. They were expansionist because they failed to create any wealth for themselves. Once they acquired wealth through conquest, they divided it amongst themselves equally (more or less).

It’s obvious that the Rockerfellers/Fords etc. represent a ‘capitalism’ that is alien to Smith’s wealth of nations. Capitalism is merely privately owned factors of production. The elites mentioned above represent plutocratic sociopathic insanity at its highest degree.

Under capitalism, all manner and degrees of opportunism, corruption, lying, cheating, stealing and sociopathic behavior becomes positively epidemic.

That is because in pursuit of money, humans will do just about anything: lie, cheat, steal, become opportunists or corrupt, and behave sociopathically in every manner and degree possible. They will also commit tons of crime and will tend to abuse women in all sorts of ways.

We saw much less of this behavior in the socialist societies of the last century. When these socieites such as Eastern Europe, the USSR and China went to capitalism, the crime rate went through the roof, entire nations became corrupt to the core, and the abuse of women increased dramatically. In fact, some socieites were almost completely taken over by organized crime. Russia to this day is significantly controlled by Organized Crime. Organized crime elements run Russia and rule it via the state.

In the past century, the most egalitarian societies committed little aggression, started few wars and committed few acts of conquest in order to obtain more land and acquire new markets and resources. On the contrary, almost all aggression in the past century was committed by unequal capitalist (and imperialist) countries trying to conquer new lands and peoples for new markets and to steal their resources for the capitalists.

In fact a world regime of capitalism virtually guarantees almost continuous wars among capitalist countries over dividing markets and resources. Capitalist countries will always fight each other over markets and resources.  This is almost guaranteed under capitalism, and there does not seem to be any way around it. A world of capitalism is a world of constant war with no way out.

Under more socialist systems, crime, corruption, abuse of women, wars of aggression, homelessness, hunger and preventive disease are dramatically reduced, as is all manner of egoistic sociopathic behavior.

As those societies transition to a capitalist model, crime, corruption, abuse of women, aggressive (imperialist) wars, homelessness, hunger and deaths due to preventive disease often skyrocket.

Bottom line is capitalism is bad for your health.

Greg Palast on Hugo Chavez

This article shows exactly how US imperialism works in the world today. It also shows just how evil US foreign policy really is. Now whether the behavior portrayed below is evil or good is a value judgment. I say it’s evil. Someone else may feel it’s the right thing to do.

But one thing for sure, the true story, as Greg Palast lays out below, is one you will never hear on US TV or radio or read in any US newspaper or magazine. The US media won’t even bring up charges like this even to deny them. Can you imagine if every day in the US you could turn on your TV to a debate on whether or not the US is an imperialist country? That’s a debate they don’t want you to have, even to deny it.

Problem is that no matter how hard they deny it, they don’t want you to hear the other side at all. There is too much risk that no matter how hard they ridicule the other side, a few people might decide to side with the opposition. A few Americans here and there might decide that, yes, the US is an imperialist country.

That the US is an imperialist country and that US capitalism is based on imperialism is beyond a doubt. There’s nothing to debate. It’s obviously true. Even the scores of US military bases and the huge US military are the armed faction of that imperial system. When you go enlist in the US military, you are joining as a foot soldier for imperialism, in general. You are carrying a weapon for Heinz, the Koch Brothers and Chevron more than you are defending US soil from shadowy enemies.

Almost all supporters of US capitalism (and we have many here on this blog) refuse to acknowledge that US capitalism is based on imperialism. Imperialism is its bread and butter.

It’s fine and dandy to support capitalism (I am not completely against the market myself), but I think if you support US capitalism, you ought to at least agree that it’s based on imperialism. That would be the brave and principled thing to do. And now do you support this system, this particular US capitalism buttressed by imperialism as laid out below. To me, that is a much harder thing to do, but supporters or US capitalism need to do that. They need to take a stand on imperialism. You either support US imperialism or you oppose it. Which will it be? No more dodging the question and pretending that imperialism doesn’t exist.

It is also interesting that we have Blacks on this board who hated Hugo Chavez. Yet Chavez was the great champions of the Blacks and Browns of Venezuela, as laid out below. Venezuelan capitalism, as is the case with capitalism in many parts of the world, was racially based. The Whites took all the money and left the Blacks and Browns with crumbs – starving, sickened, squatting in hovels with sewage running down the steep gutters. Why US Blacks would support such a racial spoils system is beyond me.

There is much talk that Chavez and other Latin American Leftists were all given cancer by the US. It’s an interesting theory, but there is no evidence for it at the moment.

I had an Argentine girlfriend once. We talked about the Dirty War in Argentina, supported to the hilt by the US (Henry Kissinger notoriously backed them to the hilt), in which 30,000 mostly unarmed and peaceful Leftists were murdered by a rightwing military dictatorship.

“Well,” she said thoughtfully. “The Latin American Left dreamed of a better world. And in Latin America, that is a dangerous thing.”

So it is with Hugo Chavez, so it is with the Americas, of which we in the north are increasingly a part.

“But why the GW Bush regime’s hate, hate, HATE of the President of Venezuela? Reverend Pat wasn’t coy about the answer: Its the oil. This is a dangerous enemy to our South controlling a huge pool of oil.”

Vaya con Dios, Hugo Chàvez, mi Amigo

By Greg Palast

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Venezuelan President Chavez once asked me why the US elite wanted to kill him. My dear Hugo: Its the oil. And its the Koch Brothers and its the ketchup.

Reverend Pat Robertson said, Hugo Chavez thinks were trying to assassinate him. I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.

It was 2005 and Robertson was channeling the frustration of George Bush’s State Department. Despite Bush’s providing intelligence, funds and even a note of congratulations to the crew who kidnapped Chavez (we’ll get there), Hugo remained in office, reelected and wildly popular.

But why the Bush regime’s hate, hate, HATE of the President of Venezuela? Reverend Pat wasn’t coy about the answer: It’s the oil. This is a dangerous enemy to our South controlling a huge pool of oil.

A really BIG pool of oil. Indeed, according to Guy Caruso, former chief of oil intelligence for the CIA, Venezuela hold a recoverable reserve of 1.36 trillion barrels, that is, a whole lot more than Saudi Arabia.

If we didn’t kill Chavez, we’d have to do an Iraq on his nation. So the Reverend suggests, We don’t need another $200 billion war…. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

Chavez himself told me he was stunned by Bush’s attacks: Chavez had been quite chummy with Bush Senior and with Bill Clinton.

So what made Chavez suddenly “a dangerous enemy”? Here’s the answer you wont find in The New York Times:

Just after Bush’s inauguration in 2001, Chavez congress voted in a new Law of Hydrocarbons. Henceforth, Exxon, British Petroleum, Shell Oil and Chevron would get to keep 70% of the sales revenues from the crude they sucked out of Venezuela. Not bad, considering the price of oil was rising toward $100 a barrel.

But to the oil companies, which had bitch-slapped Venezuela’s prior government into giving them 84% of the sales price, a cut to 70% was no bueno. Worse, Venezuela had been charging a joke of a royalty just one percent on heavy crude from the Orinoco Basin. Chavez told Exxon and friends they’d now have to pay 16.6%.

Clearly, Chavez had to be taught a lesson about the etiquette of dealings with Big Oil.

On April 11, 2002, President Chavez was kidnapped at gunpoint and flown to an island prison in the Caribbean Sea. On April 12, Pedro Carmona, a business partner of the US oil companies and president of the nations Chamber of Commerce, declared himself President of Venezuela giving a whole new meaning to the term, corporate takeover.

U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro immediately rushed down from his hilltop embassy to have his picture taken grinning with the self-proclaimed President and the leaders of the coup détat.

Bush’s White House spokesman admitted that Chavez was, democratically elected, but, he added, Legitimacy is something that is conferred not by just the majority of voters. I see.

With an armed and angry citizenry marching on the Presidential Palace in Caracas ready to string up the coup plotters, Carmona, the Pretend President from Exxon returned his captive Chavez back to his desk within 48 hours.

Chavez had provoked the coup not just by clawing back some of the bloated royalties of the oil companies. Its what he did with that oil money that drove Venezuela’s One Percent to violence.

In Caracas, I ran into the reporter for a TV station whose owner is generally credited with plotting the coup against the president. While doing a publicity photo shoot, leaning back against a tree, showing her wide-open legs nearly up to where they met, the reporter pointed down the hill to the ranchos, the slums above Caracas, where shacks, once made of cardboard and tin, where quickly transforming into homes of cinder blocks and cement.

He [Chavez] gives them bread and bricks, so they vote for him, of course. She was disgusted by them, the 80% of Venezuelans who are negro e indio (Black and Indian)and poor. Chavez, himself negro e indio, had, for the first time in Venezuela’s history, shifted the oil wealth from the privileged class that called themselves Spanish, to the dark-skinned masses.

While trolling around the poor housing blocks of Caracas, I ran into a local, Arturo Quiran, a merchant seaman and no big fan of Chavez. But over a beer at his kitchen table, he told me,

Fifteen years ago under [then-President] Carlos Andrés Pérez, there was a lot of oil money in Venezuela. The oil boom we called it. Here in Venezuela there was a lot of money, but we didn’t see it.

But then came Hugo Chavez, and now the poor in his neighborhood, he said, get medical attention, free operations, x-rays, medicines; education also. People who never knew how to write now know how to sign their own papers.”

Chavez Robin Hood thing, shifting oil money from the rich to the poor, would have been grudgingly tolerated by the US. But Chavez, who told me, We are no longer an oil colony, went further…too much further, in the eyes of the American corporate elite.

Venezuela had landless citizens by the millions and unused land by the millions of acres tied up, untilled, on which a tiny elite of plantation owners squatted. Chavez congress passed in a law in 2001 requiring untilled land to be sold to the landless. It was a program long promised by Venezuela’s politicians at the urging of John F. Kennedy as part of his Alliance for Progress.

Plantation owner Heinz Corporation didn’t like that one bit. In retaliation, Heinz closed its ketchup plant in the state of Maturin and fired all the workers. Chavez seized Heinz plant and put the workers back on the job. Chavez didn’t realize that he’d just squeezed the tomatoes of Americas powerful Heinz family and Mrs. Heinz husband, Senator John Kerry, now U.S. Secretary of State.

Or, knowing Chavez as I do, he didn’t give a damn.

Chavez could survive the ketchup coup, the Exxon presidency, even his taking back a piece of the windfall of oil company profits, but he dangerously tried the patience of Americas least forgiving billionaires: The Koch Brothers.

How? Well, that’s another story for another day.

Elected presidents who annoy Big Oil have ended up in exile or coffins: Mossadegh of Iran after he nationalized BP’s fields (1953), Elchibey, President of Azerbaijan, after he refused demands of BP for his Caspian fields (1993), President Alfredo Palacio of Ecuador after he terminated Occidentals drilling concession (2005).

Its a chess game, Mr. Palast, Chavez told me. He was showing me a very long, and very sharp sword once owned by Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator. And I am, Chavez said, a very good chess player.

In the film The Seventh Seal, a medieval knight bets his life on a game of chess with the Grim Reaper. Death cheats, of course, and takes the knight. No mortal can indefinitely outplay Death who, this week, Chavez must know, will checkmate the new Bolivar of Venezuela.

But in one last move, the Bolivarian grandmaster played a brilliant endgame, naming Vice-President Nicolas Maduro, as good and decent a man as they come, as heir to the fight for those in the ranchos. The One Percent of Venezuela, planning on Chavez’s death to return them the power and riches they couldn’t win in an election, are livid with the choice of Maduro.

Chavez sent Maduro to meet me in my downtown New York office back in 2004. In our run-down detective digs on Second Avenue, Maduro and I traded information on assassination plots and oil policy.

Even then, Chavez was carefully preparing for the day when Venezuela’s negros e indios would lose their king but still stay in the game. Class war on a chessboard. Even in death, I wouldn’t bet against Hugo Chavez.

“War’ s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good at the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns.”
–Ray Bradbury, from the short story, The Time Machine, 1957

The Catastrophe of the Iraqi Resistance

Repost from the old site. This is a good article, the first article I wrote on the Internet in December 2004. It was widely posted all over the Net and got a lot of comments on the Net. I believe it is still relevant today.

By any progressive standards, the Iraqi resistance seems to have morphed in recent days into one of the most unprincipled, unethical, fanatical, unreasonable, and reactionary resistance factions on Earth.

From a progressive standpoint, it would seem the Iraqi rebels have some principled grounds to fight for – we see them as resisting a US imperialist, neocolonialist and Zionist invasion of Iraq, one intended to subdue all of those forces in the Middle East resisting US and Israeli desires for total economic, military and political domination of the region.

The US invasion was completely contrary to international law, there has been massive colonization and outright theft of Iraq’s resources and economic base, and the US appears to be demanding the right to establish several colonial garrisons in the conquered land in furtherance of its imperial plans for the region.

We could go on and on about the larger political and economic schemes at play here, but that’s all been dealt with extensively by others. The point I am trying to make here is that merely from anti-imperialist or anti-colonialist point of view, the Iraqi resistance would seem to have a valid cause for armed struggle to throw the invaders and occupiers off their homeland.

Given the seedbed for a patriotic, nationalist, principled resistance the US has sown in Iraq, what have the Iraqi guerrillas done? In 2003, one could still hold out hope for some sort of a progressive, secular, nationalist armed resistance in Iraq. Through 2003, a plethora of resistance groups appeared, with new ones popping up every week or so.

A number of them were standard nationalist groupings, others stridently opposed sectarian politics, and a number were decidedly secular. Some of these groupings were associated with the former regime, but many were not.

They were generally made up of Sunni Arabs, though there were also a number of Shia Arabs, along with a few Kurds, Turkmen and even Iraqi Christians filling out the ranks. Further, there were a number of openly Leftist armed groups, though their numbers were small.

From the point of view of the Iraqi resistance, the best thing to do would be to cast aside all sectarian nonsense and try to unite as many groups as possible against the occupiers. This is what a sensible, intelligent, nationalist resistance does. Even in a region where tribal politics holds sway, the fighters close ranks in the name of “national unity”, as the guerrillas in Palestine have done.

The resistance should avoid imposing noxious, draconian law on the peoples under its control, proceed cautiously in the case of spies, and avoid trying to form local government. The case of Palestine is instructive for how a “national unity” resistance should be run.

Prior to the founding of Hamas in 1987, Islamists in Palestine were hardly involved in the armed struggle – they spent most of their time, believe it or not, arguing about how long to grow one’s beard. If one took up arms, one was regarded as a “Communist”, since armed struggle against Israel was for “Communists”.

There was a great deal of sectarian conflict in those days and the precursors to Hamas killed and wounded many Leftists, who the Islamists despised.

Around this time, Israel helped found Hamas as both a divide and conquer strategy against the Palestinians and to Islamicize the face of Palestinian struggle in order to make it less appealing on the international front. In many ways, this strategy was a complete failure. Before the founding of Hamas, the Islamists were attacking Leftists in Palestine all the time.

This internecine conflict came to an end soon after the founding of Hamas. After things settled down a bit, the Palestinian resistance moved to a point of equilibrium called “national unity”. Presently, open Leftists and Communists in the PFLP and DFLP fight side by side, with no problems whatsoever, with the hardline Islamists in Hamas.

Professors on Palestinian campuses write openly atheist and blasphemous tracts against Islam and are not harmed. One of the top figures in the PLO is an acknowledged atheist and no one bothers him. There are large marches against suicide bombings. Hamas eschews all local law enforcement and refuses to implement an Islamic dress code.

In Ramallah, one can walk into a bar and order a drink during Ramadan – the only place in the Arab World one may do this – and Hamas refuses to even issue an official denunciation. Hamas has never tried to shut down the numerous bars in Palestine.

Although Hamas is officially the Palestinian branch of Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas keeps this a big secret because the MB is so disliked in Palestine (it is regarded as an Islamic extremist organization). Most Palestinians are not even aware of the relationship. Last Christmas, Hamas members actually presented gifts and toys to churches in Bethlehem – an unthinkable act for a hardline Islamist group.

Hardline Islamist imams in Gaza have called for Palestinian Christians and Muslims to fight side by side against Israel. Palestinian Christians, and some Muslims, wear whatever they please, and miniskirts and not unheard of, even in Gaza. The Islamists don’t like Western dress, and comments are made, but Hamas has never tried to enforce any kind of Islamic dress code in Palestine.

Palestinian papers are filled with articles that many hardline Palestinians would consider to be openly treasonous – calls for calling off the armed struggle, for settling for the most debasing peace agreements with Israel, for peaceful struggle a la Gandhi, for disarming the armed groups, etc.

Through it all, Hamas and the hardliners generally keep their mouths shut and tolerate openly “sellout” positions, all in the name of national unity. Although the differences between the Left, the PLO and the Islamists are often very wide, there is not much discussion of these differences – they are all temporarily glossed over in the name of national unity.

PFLP and DFLP fighters, open Leftists, came out for the funerals of Hamas leaders Sheik Yassin and Abdulaziz Rantissi and were seen fighting in the battles with the IDF that erupted afterward. Human rights organizations operate openly in Palestine, criticizing both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides, and the armed factions leave them alone.

Most importantly of all, all Palestinian factions have deep roots in their communities and do not brutalize the people they live amongst. In many places, almost everyone in the community is part of the resistance in one way or another, from young kids to women to old folks – everyone serves some function. You can’t get closer to the people than that.

Journalists, politicians, government workers, UN employees, aid workers, Christians, Druze, students, innocent civilians, even ISF volunteers, have nothing to fear from Hamas, the most radical of the Palestinian factions. Hamas has never been known kidnap foreigners for ransom, or to behead prisoners, much less to do so on videotape.

Hamas has never attacked a Palestinian school, store, campus, neighborhood, mosque, church, bar, press office, polling place, government office or hospital. Only informers for Israel have something to fear, and usually only after a serious investigation.

Even on the rare occasions when Hamas has taken an Israeli soldier hostage, the captives were treated fairly well, at least until Israel made the mistake of trying to “free” them. Hamas held them as ransom to try to get its own prisoners out of Israeli prisons.

When Israel refused to negotiate and stormed the hideout, the guerrillas executed the prisoner, which is a crime, but that is still not the same thing as wanton execution of all enemy prisoners or beheading prisoners on tape and peddling the gorefest around the Internet.

Even during the 90’s, while the PA spent much of its time arresting Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists as favors for the US and Israel, Islamic guerrillas generally refrained from attacks on the PA, a breathtaking show of self-restraint.

While controversy has swirled over the Palestinian terror tactic of suicide bombings against civilians, the world fails to recognize that almost all Palestinian attacks have been against military or settler targets in the Territories, and only a relative few attacks have occurred inside the Green Line.

Palestinian guerrillas have repeatedly offered to cease all attacks on civilians inside Israel, only to be endlessly rebuffed. One gets the feeling that Israel wants a suicide attack inside the Green Line now and again to malign the enemy and feed its propaganda machine. Even here, though, Palestinian terrorists have taken a nuanced stance.

Note the International Solidarity Movement’s (ISM) volunteers that swarm the Territories, standing by the besieged Palestinian people and helping protect civilians. Most people don’t realize that 1/3 of ISM volunteers are Jewish.

Generally, these Jews who have chosen to stand by the Palestinian people do not complain of racism from the supposedly Jew-hating Palestinians. How long would a Jewish civilian volunteer last in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle, no matter how pro-resistance he was?

The point here is that all of these people – atheists, blasphemers, bartenders and bar patrons, women in miniskirts, “sell-outs” and compromise at any cost types, human rights activists, journalists, humanitarian workers, Leftists, Communists, feminists, Christians – are basically left alone!

There may be some words exchanged here and there, but in general, no one threatens them, puts a gun to their head, beats them up, attacks them, tortures them, much less kills them or chops their head off on tape. This is the intelligent way to run a principled, intelligent, nationalist resistance to a colonizer, occupier or invader.

Why? Because by fracturing and fighting amongst themselves, the resistance serves the needs of the occupier. Divide and conquer is the age-old colonial game and the smartest resistance movements try not to fall for it.

So what has the Iraqi resistance done? Exactly the opposite of the Palestinian resistance! Instance of uniting for national unity, they are presently pursuing one of the most reactionary, backwards, barbaric, sectarian, fascistic, oppressive, domineering, racist, tribalistic, and downright stupid agendas imaginable.

Allow me to elaborate: In late 2003, after the capture of Saddam, the resistance started moving towards Sunni Islamism and the pro-Saddam factions started drying up. Although there have been a couple of serious, and commendable, flare-ups of Shia nationalistic Islamism with the 2 Sadr rebellions in 2004, at the moment, the resistance is probably 90% Sunni Arab.

Furthermore, as 2004 wore on, the Sunni Islamists became more and more extreme, with a movement towards Salafism or Wahhabism, the most extreme Sunni Islam with roots in the Arabian Gulf.

Through 2004 the Leftist, nationalist, and unified front type groupings gradually seemed to give way to this extreme fanatical Sunni Salafist Islam, which now dominates the Iraqi resistance with its bleak, cruel, Medieval, puritanical, theocratic agenda.

With each passing month, more and more Shia are alienated from the resistance as the Sunni extremists attack the Shia with increasing regularity. In the areas they control, the Sunni fanatics have imposed the most backwards, insane, brutal and stupid version of Islamic law since the fall of the Taliban.

Even Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Sudan are not this harsh. Women are threatened and then shot dead for the crime of wearing blue jeans. Drivers listening to music are pulled out of their cars, beaten, and ordered to listen to religious music. Stores selling musical instruments and music and video CD’s are ordered to close and attacked when they don’t close. Hairdressers and makeup shops are ordered to close.

Women refusing to wear the hijab are threatened with guns and sometimes killed for not covering up. Alcohol stores are ordered to close and bombed when they don’t comply. Alcohol sellers are flogged in public. Men with long hair are given mock public trials where they are beaten and their “Western” haircuts shorn.

In recent days, the Sunni guerrillas around Latifiyah in the so-called Death Triangle have committed the ultimate outrage of shutting down the schools in the region, either in “solidarity with Fallujah” or because “schools are cooperating with the Occupation”.

One has to think hard to think of a resistance group in recent years that has shut down the schools of very same people they are claiming to “protect”. The damage that could be done to the Sunni youngsters in these areas from long-term school shutdowns is hard to calculate.

Journalists are kidnapped, beaten, tortured, shot dead, and even beheaded on tape in a frenzy of delirious rage that is hard for the sane mind to comprehend. News agencies are attacked for not sufficiently toeing the guerrilla line.

And in the ultimate crime and the nadir of stupidity, an aid worker who dedicated her life to the Iraqi people and hated the Occupation was kidnapped and brutally murdered for reasons only an asylum inmate could comprehend.

God forbid, even hospitals are attacked; in the most egregious case, after the idiotic bombing of a Christian church, in order to doubly punish the “infidel Christian” victims of the blast ferried to the hospital.

Execution of “spies”, “informers” and the like is utterly random and at the whim of the guerrillas, often without much evidence or the slightest hint of a proceeding.

The upshot of all of this is that in the areas where they Sunni fanatics hold sway, they are often feared and hated by a certain number of residents, Sunni Arabs themselves. Some residents are so fed up with guerrilla high-handedness and cruelty that they have welcomed the re-Occupation of their cities by US troops.

When a guerrilla faction is reduced to ruling and surviving through terror and not through the deep, passionate support of the people, that resistance faction is utterly failing in one of the primary rules of guerrilla war.

This rule, cited from Mao to Che to the finest war colleges on Earth, that the guerrillas need to gain support from civilian populations through good deeds and by the passionate commitment to the guerrilla cause of the people the guerrillas live amongst. The people’s support for the guerrilla works best when freely given and not coerced – terrorizing the people you claim to represent only gets one so far.

And how are the Sunni Islamists treating other religious groups, whom any half-sane Sunni resistance ought to be trying to enlist in a national resistance? Christians are threatened, ordered to close their alcohol, hairdressing and makeup shops and wear the hijab. If they refuse, they are killed.

Some Christians are being ordered to convert to Islam on penalty of death and there have been a few deaths in these cases. Iraqi churches, some of the oldest and most beautiful in the Christian World, have been repeatedly and shamelessly bombed.

It is true that many Christians have supported the Occupation in the past, but many others have not, and some large Christian parties have recently strongly opposed the Occupation.

The Shia are threatened, bullied, humiliated and ultimately ethnically cleansed. An entire region, from Abu Ghurayb down to Yusufiya and Latifiyah, is being systematically cleansed of Shia in an attempt to expand the Sunni Zone west of Baghdad.

Clearly, this is no better than what Israel does in their Territories. In Latifiyah, Shia mosques have been ordered to close and Shia are being thrown off the land so that Sunnis can take their farmland. Landowners renting to Shia are threatened with death unless they throw the Shia off the land.

The Sunni Islamists have begun setting up checkpoints in Latifiyah, on the popular Shia pilgrimage route between Baghdad and Najaf/Karbala. When Shia pilgrims arrive at these checkpoints, they are pulled out of their cars and ordered to denounce Ali, their patron saint. If they refuse, they are shot dead on the spot.

Other Shia are pulled out of their cars, beaten, and ordered not to come that way again. A Shia armed brigade, the Fury Brigades, was formed recently in Basra to deal with the blatant Sunni racism and oppression of the Shia in Latifiyah.

This Shia armed group recently fought a battle with Sunni Salafists in Latifiyah. Of course, US forces sat back and watched for a couple of hours while they bloodied each other. Obviously, it serves the occupier, the US Coalition, Israel, and imperialism in general to have various Iraqi factions fighting against each. This is exactly what the US and Israel want – the better to control Iraq.

The long-term strategy of the Israeli Right has long been that in order for Israel to survive its hostile neighborhood, Israel needs to become the dominant imperialist state in the Middle East and take control of the neighborhood by attacking its various hostile Arab neighbors (or getting the US to do it for them) and breaking up hostile Arab states into endlessly warring ethnic statelets.

This strategy was laid out in an internal Israeli document published in 1980 and uncovered and revealed to the world by the brave Israeli dissident Israel Shahak. Other more recent documents echo the same line, especially Securing the Realm in 1996 (The Securing the Realm document appears to lay the groundwork for the Iraq invasion).

The 1980 Israeli paper said that the optimal situation for Iraq, from Israel’s point of view, would be endless civil war between the various sects and ethnic groups, especially the Kurds and the Shia and Sunni Arabs. An eventual breakup of Iraq into unstable ethnic mini-states would be ideal.

A number of prominent American thinkers have also recently published on the benefits of breaking up Iraq into unstable, weak, easily controlled ethnic statelets. So, in their bottomless tribal stupidity, the Iraqi resistance is playing into the precisely laid plans and wildest dreams of their worst enemies – the Israelis and the Americans!

At the moment, the Sunni resistance has various goals. The first and only noble goal, from the point of view of an ideal resistance faction, is to throw the US Coalition out of Iraq. Beyond that, the Sunnis increasingly fear a Shia takeover in the coming elections in January. The Sunni Arabs have brutally ruled Mesopotamia, and later Iraq, for many centuries, lording it over the Shia Arabs in the process.

This 20% oligarchic elite, the Sunni Arabs, feel somehow entitled to lord it over Shia Arabs and Kurds like the worst feudal overlords.

A Shia victory in the coming elections would be the end of the reign of this racist ruling class Sunni elite, the end of their supremacism and domination of the other groups in the nation, and the end to their ill-deserved privileges obtained by brutally exploiting the other groups. The Sunni Arabs need to get used to the fact that they are a minority in Iraq.

If the Sunnis had any sense, they would be negotiating deals with the Shia at this very moment. Instead, like a typical ruling class thrown out of power, they are not giving up the tiniest bit of their illegitimate power and privileges without a vicious fight.

These deals would take the form of some sort of apology rituals by the Sunnis, such as statements of apology by the Sunni clergy for the crimes the Sunnis have committed against the Shia over the centuries, or perhaps pilgrimages to Shia mosques where prominent Sunnis essentially repent to the Shia for their crimes and ask for their forgiveness. The fact that these rituals would be largely symbolic is not the point.

In this sort of socio-political ritual, the symbolism itself can have potent sociological and political ramifications. The Sunnis could also cut deals for some sort of affirmative action or power sharing in government, a la Lebanon.

The Sunnis could point out that the Shia can hardly run the country without Sunni expertise and wealth. In return, the Shia would offer the Sunni Arabs, say, 20% of the seats in Parliament, 20% of the positions in the Cabinet, and perhaps one top-ranking post.

The basis for this deal would be that sharing power is preferable to civil war and that Iraqi Muslims ought to unite against the US and Israel instead of serving the enemy by infighting. Now that’s if the Sunni Arabs had any sense. But it appears that deep-rooted tribalism and bigotry and the towering arrogance and sense of entitlement of an ancient ruling class is trumping pragmatism in Iraq.

The Sunnis feel that they have enough power, guns and money to both throw out the US Coalition and then put the Kurds and Shia back under their boot, just like in the good old days. And they are willing to gamble a lot to get it all back. The game here is the zero-sum game.

Each group – Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Shia Arabs feels that either their tribe gets it all, or their tribe gets nothing. There is one winner who gets everything, and two losers who get zero. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Certainly sharing the wealth and power is preferable to endless civil war that only serves the enemy.

There are plenty of logical, historical reasons for Shia Arabs, secular Iraqis, progressive Iraqis, nationalist Iraqis and even Iraqi Christians to oppose the Coalition’s Occupation of Iraq. In 1920, all these groups rose up against the British.

At the moment, many amongst these groups are either supporting the US Coalition or sitting on the sidelines because the Taliban-like Sunni resistance either offers them nothing or seems even worse than the US. In this case, the US presence at least offers Christians, the Shia, the secular, progressives and even nationalists some modicum of protection against the nightmare of a brutal Sunni theocracy.

The leading figurehead for this insane, fanatical, brutal Sunni nonsense is none other than Mr. Zarqawi. This man is a certified sadist, a sociopathic freak with the mind of a serial killer who delights in personally sawing off the heads of live human beings for the whole world to see.

A few of his more famous victims have been utterly innocent in any sense of the word. Zarqawi harbors a crazed, pathological hatred of Shia Muslims and Christians in general, not to mention Sunni Muslims who are insufficiently fanatical. One could hardly think of a more backwards, terrifying, medieval, monstrous, criminal, racist pig of a man to head the Iraqi Resistance.

The US and Israel must be delighted. Zarqawi is a grade-A villain right out of the movies, with virtually no redeeming qualities and a mortifying, bloodthirsty, genocidal vision. The elevation of Zarqawi to the symbolic leadership of the Iraqi resistance symbolizes the depths of the depravity and lunacy to which the Iraqi Sunni Salafist rebels have sunk.

On the one hand, we have the ultra-reactionary, backwards, racist, corrupt, sexist, cruel-hearted, supremacist, chauvinist, criminal, fundamentalist, crusading Bush Administration and its imperial armies smashing around the globe picking fights and bullying the planet.

Lined up against them, in Iraq and Afghanistan, are some of the most backwards, ultra- reactionary, supremacist, chauvinist, medieval, fundamentalist, racist, corrupt, sexist, cruel-hearted criminals on Earth, offering a vision at least as vicious, animalistic, cold, primitive and fascist-like as Bush’s crusaders, if not much worse.

Rational people realize that religious wars are some of the stupidest of all possible wars. This war – the “War on Terror” – is a becoming a war between insane reactionary religious fanatics, one side waving the banner of Christianity (and more surreptitiously, Judaism), the other the banner of Islam.

The failure of the rest of the Earth, inhabiting the relatively sane terrain between these terrifying extremes, to offer a substantive vision between these two utterly bleak alternatives, is profoundly dispiriting.

“The Cry of the Wall”

Repost from the old site.

I received this nice poem in my email the other day from a source who shall remain anonymous in response to my post, Racial Holy Wars, Real and Phantom. Although I suppose the poem below could be construed by some as anti-Semitic, I do not really think it reaches that level.

On the surface, it is best read as an account of the religious Zionist enterprise to colonize Palestine in order to reconstitute Israel as a Jewish homeland. I will make an exception for the line where the Jews are promised, “The Earth, its wealth and all to be”, which is a bit problematical. Of course this line plays into the classic anti-Semitic trope of the Jews as desiring to control the world.

On the other hand, if one studies the Jewish religion carefully, a quite proper reading shows that according to the Jewish religion, the Jews are indeed supposed to rule the world at some point in the future. I believe the Messiah comes, the Jews get Israel back, and then they take over the world. The Gentiles are to serve as little more than slaves to the Jews.

A sort-of exception is made for “righteous Gentiles”, who agree to live according to Jewish Law. These laws being the Noahide Laws, or Jewish Law for the Gentiles. Penalty for violation of Noahide Laws is death. A student of Comparative Religions will note similarities with the Dhimmitude Laws for the People of the Book (Jews, Christians, and Sabeans) under Classic Islamic Law.

And a proper reading of Islam leads to the conclusion that Islam also desires to conquer the world, and either convert of enslave (force into dhimmitude) the non-Muslims. The radical Christian Reconstructionist movement (popular with US fundamentalist Christians) also apparently has desires to rule the world, and also envisions laws that non-Christians must live under and obey under penalty of death.

Can you see the similarities running through here? The desire for domination, even total (world) domination, a set of conservative religious laws, and a desire to subjugate and humiliate those of other religions who refuse conversion under a set of religious laws, violation of which is punishable by death.

So, what appears at first to be a sign of the unique evil of the Jews (the anti-Semitic line) becomes, on analysis, an unfortunate universal human tendency. And although the Jewish religion seems to envision world domination for the Jews, how many Jews, like your neighbor or the shopkeeper, are aware of that, and pine for such domination themselves? I would say few.

Now, in my opinion, there are Jews with the power and money to dream of world domination, and some of them dream of just that, to quote Israel Shamir. The neoconservatives, the Jews in the Russian Mafia, the Rothschilds, the media moguls, and a some Israelis like David Ben Gurion, do seem to be out to become the “Jews that control the world”, as an article in a recent issue of Tikkun Magazine noted.

But are they anywhere close to achieving this goal? I say a resounding no. There are many players in the world domination game, not just the Jews. The reactionaries in the Bush Administration clearly lust for world domination. Just read the missives from the Project for the New American Century.

In the World Control Sweepstakes, the Jews are a mosquito on my arm, while US imperialism is a wolf at my front door. For mosquitoes, there are always swats and repellents. For wolves, I will need a shotgun. Double-barreled. Enjoy:

Cry of the Wall

The day is nigh the Rabbi cried
From Moses to the Judah Tribe
A promise of the Holy Lands
And Lord o’er the Gentile Bands

But wasn’t Moses for us all
Plied the Gentiles from the wall
Not so replied the Rabbi lot
We’re the chosen Men in Frocks
To lead and guide the Judah flock

And they will follow thick and thin
To attain what Moses promised them
And what is that the Gentiles cried
What should they get that we’re denied

The earth, its wealth and all to be
Cried the Rabbi’s don’t you see
We’re the chosen, you are not
So get your butts off this block

But this is ours the Gentiles yell
We’re long time here as time will tell
You have no right to boot us out
So we’ll stand against your rout

Ahh!… the Rabbi’s cried, we’re right!
Just listen to the anti-Semite
Who persecutes our Godly flock
And denies our right to this Holy block

If won’t you bend to our Gods will
We use the power of our Till
To take what’s yours without ado
So hump your swag and bid adieu

The cry came back, we’ll never leave
Will join our men and fight your thieves
Once more the Rabbi’s joined in grist
Yelled!… now we have the Terrorists.

This tale goes on, will never end
Until the Judgment Day does rend
The souls of man from evils past
To blend with Natures soul…at last!…

Lord MacAulay’s Speech to British Parliament 1835

Repost from the old site.

I received this graphic in an email from an interesting colleague, Vijendra Rao, a fellow journalist in Mysore, India.

His interesting and intelligent blog, though written in impeccable English, is nevertheless rather difficult and somewhat inaccessible to non-Indian viewers due to the Indian English discourse style and the fact that it is deeply seated in Indian culture and politics.

Click it and read the MacAulay quote, if you are interested.

Note: I am a little upset, for it appears that I have been taken again. Research reveals that this quote is apparently a fake quote, made up out of whole cloth by devious Hindu nationalists. Nationalists, of course, being some of the worst liars on Earth. See here for an analysis of this quote that seems to reveal its fabricated nature.

Piss on the Hindu nationalist dog who made up this crap and knowingly distributed this lie across the Internet, and shame on all the Hindu nationalist liars who either don’t have the guts or who are too twisted by nationalist mental illness to figure out when they have been had.

Anyway, whether or not he actually said this, British colonialism, like any colonialism, was not exactly beneficial to the Indian people, no matter how much those nostalgic for colonialism may swoon.

You may be interested to know that there is still an element of British and Anglophiles out there (often in former colonies like Canada) who yet swoon for the lost days of the British Empire. They continue to carry on about how glorious Her Majesty’s imperial reign was to all of her poor backwards subjects.

Many of those in Britain tend to call themselves Conservative and vote Tory. Niall Ferguson, apparently a native of Canada and a professor of Financial History at New York University, is a particularly dangerous example of this trend, although Ferguson has decided that the United States is now the de facto Former British Empire and needs to grab the baton.

Look, darn it. Colonists have never been saints. All colonialism has always ultimately been about one bottom line item – the loot! Any reasonable historical analysis of the history of colonialism, from Rome to Iraq, ought to make that clear.

Sorry for getting taken again, but at least I have the decency to admit when I’ve been scammed.

I would like to make this post as an example for the “There are no conspiracies” crowd. This disgusting mindset has wormed its way deeply into the mindset of US and Israeli citizens and their supporters in all over the world.

But in most of the rest of world, there is much more support for conspiracy than in the US, where the oh-so-educated elite classes have a strong dislike of conspiracy theory.

In Israel too, and amongst its supporters worldwide, there is a strong dislike of conspiracy theory, which is odd considering that the nation has an incredibly sleazy business class and an ultra-devious political class, both of which engage in machinations with the same casual unthinkingness that rest of us apply to tasks like eating and eliminating.

The ferocity and puzzlement with which most Americans and Israelis reject all conspiracy theory implies that those who are some of the worst conspirators will always be among those who condemn conspiracy theory most strongly. It’s just a case of denial and projection, Freudian defenses widely used by abusers and aggressive personalities everywhere.

In the rest of world, even on the Right and amongst the elites, rich and business classes, there is strong support for conspiracy theory, which is an interesting phenomenon. Most of the world resents Western (especially US) imperialism and a lot of the world has had a negative experience with Western colonialism pretty recently (in the past century).

We could probably plot on a graph the hostility of a given nation to US imperialism and its history of being colonized by the West to that population’s support for conspiracy theory.

This is something that needs to be explained. Leaving aside for a moment that many conspiracy theories are flat out wrong, we still need to examine the enthusiasm for conspiracy theory in those countries, especially amongst elites who one would expect would deny most conspiracy theories (since elites the world over tend to spend much more of their time engaging in actual conspiracies than your average person).

Once a nation has had a recent history of being colonized or has had the “mugger with a gun to your head” feeling of being threatened by a major imperialist state (nowadays, the US), afterwards, that nation no longer seems to trust anyone, has a cynical view of international relations and expects the worst out of most other countries, especially powerful countries.

This must be akin to the distrust, cynicism, rage, heightened suspiciousness and wariness that we see in people who have been victimized by some sort of victimizer. The formerly colonized countries, and those abused and menaced by imperialism, develop something like Crime Victim Syndrome, along with an attitude of “never again”.

Just as victimizers seldom or never admit their abuse and always blame the poor soul they are abusing, so do the imperialist countries and guilty defenders of Western colonialism whitewash colonialism and deny that imperialism even exists in our modern era. Even if they say it exists, they will often counter with something silly like, “The only imperialists were the Soviets”, or “The only imperialists are Muslims”.

There are also a few other insipid rejoinders, including the notion that US imperialism only applies to the period, reaching its peak with Teddy Roosevelt, when the US actually held colonies and waged blatantly imperialist wars. Any attempts to build on that foundation to note that one does not need colonies to be an imperialist country are met with anger and blank, uncomprehending stares, even from strong liberals.

The notion that one’s nation is a vicious, criminal, imperialist bully of the most cruel, menacing, domineering and exploitative type is just too much for most Americans to bear. Since most Americans are patriots, valid criticism like that feels like a kick in the gut. Americans like me who point out the obvious are told that we hate our country, love the enemies of our nation and need to get the Hell out of the US now.

Americans need a crash course in imperialist theory. After all, why not study imperialism? It only undergirds out entire planet, like the moon, the tides, the weather and the axis we rotate on. One could start with Lenin’s seminal essay, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, but there are many others one could dip into, including Noam Chomsky, Gabriel Kolko, Chambers Johnson and John Pilger.

The problem is it takes a long time to fully comprehend US imperialism; such are its convoluted, deceptive and torturous contours. I spent years in deep study of it before I even began to connect the dots. Most people don’t have the interest or the time to do that.

The story of imperialism is not an argument about the veracity of a quote by a British colonist 170 hours ago. It is powerful countries and nations all over the world in 2006, and in every year going back for centuries. Imperialism now is much the same as the imperialism of decades or centuries ago.

We could almost state that imperialism is normative human behavior, like wars and wife-beatings and homicide. Not a good behavior at all, but a human tendency that needs to be combated by all progressive humans who do not wish to morally devolve.

Good Brief Analysis of Adolf Hitler

Via Daryl Basarab’s interesting Gangster Bolshevism page.

I agree with the analysis that Hitler’s style was to target the easy targets while the people with real power simply left the country or were declared “Aryans.” Harmless assimilated Jews were murdered, the Zionist movement encouraged, Poles butchered. Capitalists were left in place while socialists were purged during the night of the long knives. But Hitler underestimated the strength of the Soviet Union.

That’s about it. How anyone but a German nationalist could possibly support such a project is beyond me. How can even White nationalists, not to mention ordinary White people, get behind such a monstrosity? How many White nationalists, forget ordinary Whites, think that Slavs are an inferior race to be massacred on nearly the same level as Hitler slaughtered Jews?

How many people really think that the mentally and physically ill should be killed (their murder was rationalized via semantics as euthanasia but it was nothing of the sort). Even the retarded? Surely their lot is unfortunate, but do they deserve murder? Come on now.

Keep in mind that this was not even the same thing as the euthanasia we discuss nowadays. Now we ask if the suicidal, with terminal or even terrible illnesses, should be allowed the assistance of physicians or helpers in their quest for suicide. Nazism went way beyond that. There was no pretense at assisted suicide. The unfit were simply murdered, exterminated, slaughtered such as mercilessly as the Jews were cut down.

What sane White nationalist supported German colonization and resulting imperial exploitation of the conquered nations of Europe? The plan for the Slavic nations was much more evil. 25% were to killed, 50% were to be removed and the 25% who looked “German enough” were to be Germanized.

Their lands were to be stolen, the people conquered and ethnically cleansed off the land, similar to the Zionist project in Palestine. But it was even crueler than Zionism. The Zionists never even theorized murdering 25% of the Palestinian Arabs and in practice a very low number of Arabs were killed in any of the wars, and the overall number is surely quite low.

The rightwing likes to talk about the socialist nature of Nazism, but that isn’t really correct.

Nazism started out as socialist, but Hitler never cared one whit about economics. All he cared about was nationalism, race, militarism, colonialism, imperialism, etc. Hitler cared no more about capitalism than about socialism, and he cared nothing about either.

Hitler shrugged and went along with the early socialist nature of the project, but when his big money backers (the junkers – the large landowners, the big capitalist industrialists and the military) rebelled with alarm against socialism, Hitler quickly had the socialists dispatched in the Night of the Long Knives. Workers were often worked to death or nearly to death in this “socialist” country.

Unions were #3 to be targeted in the early stages. They were considered more of an enemy than Jews at number. Communists and socialists were numbers 1 and 2 to the concentration camps. What sort of socialist or even Left project goes after Communists, socialists and trade unionists as enemies numbers 1, 2 and 3? It makes no sense.

Once big German money was on board and the Jewish capitalist competitors were out the way, great profits were to be made making various products for the Reich. The rich and business were served very well by Nazism.

Of course Hitler underestimated the USSR. He thought that the Communists were decrepit and weak due to the essential degenerate nature of Communism itself.  Communism was always his true enemy deep down in his heart. He hated Communists more than he hated Jews, and he hated Jews something serious. In fact, much of the anti-Semitism stemmed from the peculiar prejudice of the time that “Communism was Jewish,” writ via the Nazis as “Judeo-Bolshevism.”

At the end of the day, this can only be seen as a mad ultranationalist project.

Extreme nationalism, colonialism and imperialism were the orders of the day, with racism shot through it all. But that’s not unusual, and colonial and imperial projects are typically racist, often brutally so.

There was also extreme militarism on a near Athenian level, but many nationalist projects are militaristic.

It was also deeply conservative socially, but this is also a hallmark of primordialist nationalist projects. After all, modernity and its cosmopolitanism are precisely the problem for which ultranationalism is the brutally molded solution, no?

Juan Peron on the Death of Che Guevara

Here.

Fantastic speech from Juan Peron in Madrid. Peron is often accused of being a fascist, but if this is what fascism looks like, sign me up tomorrow. Better than this mushy center-right Obama crap of the Libertarian neoliberal ultracapitalism of the Republicans. A pox on both their houses. Up with Juan Peron!

Economics of Imperialism

Absolutely superb website by a brilliant Marxist economist from the UK, Tony Norfield, who worked for many years in the financial sector. His analysis of capitalism, of course, is absolutely spot on.

Anyone who doesn’t think that capitalism sucks really needs to read that site. Of course it is possible that capitalism is horrible, except for all the other systems, to paraphrase Churchill’s famous quote about democracy.

But the fact that we haven’t come up with good alternatives to traditional capitalism doesn’t mean that capitalism doesn’t blow. Capitalism blows no matter what the alternatives look like. Things either blow or they don’t. They don’t blow or not only in comparison to competitors.