MORE ON THE TREACHERY OF NOAM CHOMSKY , PART FOUR

2007-09-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

THE 50th ARTICLE IN THIS SERIES OF ARTICLES TO EXPOSE THE TREACHERY OF NOAM CHOMSKY, THE MOST NOTORIOUS ZIONIST IMPOSTOR IN THE USA

by Benjamin Merhav

It is now well over 2 years since I began this series. I actually never intended it to be a series of articles, much less publishing 50 of them for over 2 years, but the continued intransigence of Noam Chomsky in his false pretences, his continued masquerade as the champion of peace and justice, and the influence of his zionist cabal on the Left, compelled me to keep doing this very necessary job which others have refused to do.

It all began in early 2005 when someone, within a small private circle of peace activists, quoted an article by Israel Shamir, a Russian immigrant in Israel, which very mildly criticised Noam Chomsky's pro-zionist views. Reading it I then contributed to the small forum by supporting the criticism, adding that it helps to expose the treachery of Noam Chomsky. Those couple of lines of mine brought on me the wrath of Jennifer Loewenstein, a crony of Noam Chomsky, who was one of that small circle. She swiftly reacted by a reply to my brief note, pouring on me a torrent of abuse for having accused Chomsky of treachery. It prompted me to immediately write the first article in my series : More on the Treachery of Noam Chomsky.

As I did not have then an internet site of my own, I tried unsuccessfully to get it published by Left websites. Then a friend of Mary Rizzo recommended her blog to me, and I sent her the article. To my horror, she decided without consulting me to change the title of my article into : "About Noam Chomsky - Reflections
From Benjamin Merhav", so as to take the sting out of the article. I then demanded of her to immediately delete my article from her blog, but she refused, and she keeps it there to this day. From then on I became determined to publish on my own site a series of articles under the original title, so as to smash once and for all the wall of lies and pretences built by Noam Chomsky and by his zionist cabal to the detriment of the Left and to the detriment of Palestinians and other oppressed people.

Noam Chomsky's articles and books serve as very dangerous traps for genuine anti-imperialists and for many peace and justice activists. As I pointed out many times in this series, Noam Chomsky is a wealthy bourgois, and a dishonest zionist intellectual in the USA. He is a zionist impostor masquerading as the "guru of the Left".

At the same time he has been a loyal supporter of the USA ruling class, despite his writings to the contrary. The mere fact that he chose MIT as his academic work place for over half a century testifies to that. As is well known - and as Chomsky himself has admitted - the MIT is financed by the Pentagon, and it serves as the brain centre for the USA military-industrial complex. MIT bosses love Chomsky, as do the top brass of the West Point miltary academy, rather than consider him hostile. They are all essential, very essential to USA imperialism,
therefore a great danger to the entire humanity.

2007-09-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

MORE ON THE TREACHERY OF NOAM CHOMSKY (article 49)

by Benjamin Merhav

Having quoted a couple of articles ,which expose Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn (a Chomsky crony) dishonesty, in article 40, the first post on this blog, I have pointed out that Noam Chomsky supports the USA rulers' cover up of both the assassination of Presiden J.F. Kennedy in 1963 and the 9/11 events of 2001. I have also pointed out the involvement of the zionist Gestapo in both events, a factor which leads back again to Chomsky, namely, to ask again the inevitable question : is Chomsky's loyalty to zionism so strong in his mind that it supersedes even his loyalty to the USA rulers, or are the two options compatible, perhaps ?

The 44th post on this blog deals with Chomsky's support for the JFK assassination cover-up. Now is the time to draw the necessary conclusions regarding Chomsky's support for the official 9/11 cover-up. The following article emailed to me today by "Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences)" sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu ,adds one more very important evidence of a scientific expert to the long list of experts which proved beyond doubt that the official 9/11 story is false. Yet Noam Chomsky continues to stick to it.

Here is the article :

Prior to his 13 years of service at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Dr. Hirschhorn was Professor of Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison from 1965 - 1978. He has a Bachelors and Masters degree in Metallurgical Engineering and a PhD in Materials Engineering. Dr. Hirschhorn is one of 200 engineers and architects who have publicly criticized the official account of 9/11.

Former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Senior Staff Member Calls for New Investigation of 9/11

By Alan Miller

OpEdNews

Sept. 5,2007

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070905_former_congressional.htm

Analyses by many experts reveal the collapse of the three WTC buildings was not caused by the two airplanes exploding into the twin towers...The general view is that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition... Horrific possible answers can cause us to shun a question. But clearing our minds of the fear of painful truths is essential to clearing our nation of destructive lies. Otherwise, we stay stuck in a delusional democracy."

In an online editorial yesterday, Joel S. Hirschhorn, PhD, former Senior Staff Member of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), called for a new investigation of 9/11. First, let the technical truth emerge. Then, if necessary, cope with the inevitable political, conspiracy and other questions. But let us not allow a possible painful truth block the primary task of determining once and for all what caused the collapse of the WTC towers and building no. 7.Dr. Hirschhorn is a nationally recognized engineer who has testified before Congress more than 50 times on technology, science, and environmental issues. In addition to his work for the OTA, Dr. Hirschhorn also served as Director of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources for the National Governors Association.Dr. Hirschhorn admitted to his own personal growing skepticism about the official WTC story. He wrote : analyses by many experts reveal the collapse of the three WTC buildings was not caused by the two airplanes exploding into the twin towers. He noted the general view is that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition.

Dr. Hirschhorn endorsed the efforts of a new group, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, to launch a new, honest and comprehensive investigation that considers all the evidence and which examines the possibility of controlled demolition.Dr. Hirschhorn issued a challenge to supporters of the official account of 9/11, if those that believe the official 9/11 story - especially elected officials - trust their views, then let them support a serious effort to test the validity of the controlled demolition hypothesis. If they fear and reject doing so, then let us see that as suspicious and unacceptable.He concluded, "horrific possible answers can cause us to shun a question. But clearing our minds of the fear of painful truths is essential to clearing our nation of destructive lies. Otherwise, we stay stuck in a delusional democracy."The full text of Dr. Hirschhorn's statement can be found at http://blogcritics.org/

Prior to his 13 years of service at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Dr. Hirschhorn was Professor of Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison from 1965 - 1978. He has a Bachelors and Masters degree in Metallurgical Engineering and a PhD in Materials Engineering. He has been a consultant to industrial and chemical companies, DOE laboratories, state governments, and public interest organizations. He currently is a Member of the Board of Directors of the National Foundation for Environmental Education and a Member of the Board of Directors of Sustainability Now! He is the author of more than 150 papers, articles, guest editorials, and book chapters on environmental science and technology.Dr. Hirschhorn is one of 200 engineers and architects who have publicly criticized the official account of 9/11. Statements and short bios of many of the others can be found at PatriotsQuestion911.com .

(Emphasis added - B.M.)

2007-09-03T17:35:00.000-07:00

MORE ON THE TREACHERY OF NOAM CHOMSKY
(article 48), by Benjamin Merhav

For a zionist to admit that Israel is an apartheid state is no more than making a honest statement, namely, admitting the truth, the reality. From then on the options are obvious : chose to remain a racist by supporting the zionist apartheid regime, or oppose racism and therefore oppose that regime. Noam Chomsky has chosen to continue his support for that regime, thereby has chosen to remain racist , yet he refuses to admit that he is ! Furthermore, he is much more supportive of zionist racism than some Israeli zionists are.

Thus, for example, Danny Rubinstein, Haaretz editor for Arab affairs, has now admitted that Israel is an apartheid state, whereas Noam Chomsky still refuses to do so. Moreover, although a loyal zionist like Noam Chomsky, Danny Rubinstein is against the apartheid wall no matter where it would have been built, but Chomsky supports an apartheid wall had it been built on the Green Line.

The following cuttings from the Israeli zionist press report the recent statements by Danny Rubinstein. I got them today by email from Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences). They read :

Ha'aretz editor: Israel is an apartheid state

http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/103912.html

Ha'aretz editor slams Israel at U.N. conference
08/30/2007

The Arab affairs editor for the Israeli newsaper Ha'aretz, Danny
Rubinstein, told participants at a United Nations conference in Brussels
Thursday that Israel is an apartheid state.

"Today Israel is an apartheid state with different status for different
communities," Rubinstein said, according to observers at the event,
which is being held at the European Parlaiment. Observers also quoted
Rubenstein, a prominent columnist and member of the newsaper's editorial
board, as saying: "Hamas won the election of the international community
and Israel cannot ignore that." Rubinstein was one of the few Israelis speaking among a
sea of Palestinian activists at a United Nations conference entitled "International
Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestine Peace."
......................................
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3444320,00.html

Zionist Federation cancels Haaretz journalist
Columnist Danny Rubinstein reportedly likens Israel to apartheid South Africa
Yaakov Lappin 08.31.07 Israel News

The Zionist Federation of Great Britain has cancelled a scheduled appearance by Haaretz
columnist Danny Rubinstein, after he reportedly likened Israel to apartheid South Africa
during a UN conference in Brussels on Thursday.

According to a UN report, Rubinstein said that "Israel today was an apartheid State with
four different Palestinian groups: those in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and
Israeli Palestinians, each of which had a different status."

The report quoted Rubinstein as condemning the security fence, saying that "even if the wall followed strictly the line of the pre-1967 border, it would still not be justified.The two peoples needed cooperation rather than walls because they must be neighbors."

On Friday, the Zionist Federation released a press release, saying "Rubinstein's
participation in this weekend's Zionist Federation conference in London has been cancelled by
mutual agreement."

"The ZF regularly holds meetings where a wide variety of views are expressed, and while
there is no question that Rubinstein has every right to express his views about Israel, it
was mutually agreed that his participation in the Zionist Federation conference became
untenable," the statement said.

Andrew Balcombe, Chairman of the ZF, said: "Criticism of Israeli policy is acceptable.
However, by using the word 'apartheid' in a UN conference held at the European Parliament,
Danny Rubinstein encourages the demonisation of Israel and the Jewish people. I believe
he was naïve to attend the UN conference."

Ynetnews was unable to reach Rubinstein for comment.

Adam Mouchtar, Director of Bnei Brith's European Union Affairs Office, attended the conference, and said he was "surprised and disappointed" by Rubinstein's comments. Earlier, he told Ynetnews: "This is a conference of Israel-haters," adding that delegates were clearly guided by a single agenda: "To prove that Israel is a racist apartheid state, and therefore Israel should be boycotted internationally, as South Africa was."

Rubinstein was also slammed for his comments by the Geneva-based UN Watch organization,headed by Hillel Neuer, which said in a statement, "That a leading Israeli journalist -presented by the UN as a member of the Haaretz editorial board - would participate and grant legitimacy to a Soviet-era enterprise born out of the 'Zionism is Racism' canard, whose sole aim is to assault Israel morally, legally and financially, was disturbing enough. But that he would full-throatedly join the jackals, calling Israel an 'apartheid state,'is a scandal."

(Emphasis added - B.M.)

2007-08-03T23:00:00.000-07:00

MORE ON THE TREACHERY OF NOAM CHOMSKY(article 47)
by Benjamin Merhav

The latest interviewer of Noam Chomsky begins his interview (see text below, as published by counterpunch.com on August 3, 2007) quoting from Chomsky's speech to MIT students in 1969. Noam Chomsky had been holding a teaching position at MIT for some 14 years by then, and he would continue to work for that Pentagon financed institution until very recently,for well over half a century of dedicated work. He sure has been well acquainted with this academic center of the USA's industrial-military complex. In fact, he had admitted that much himself in the quote, when he told his student audience :

"...in fact, you’re invited and encouraged to enter it. The community of technical intelligentsia, and weapons designers, and counterinsurgency experts, and pragmatic planners of an American empire is one that you have a great deal of inducement to become associated with. The inducements, in fact, are very real; their rewards in power, and affluence, and prestige and authority are quite significant."

So not only did he participate in that "community" of "weapons designers, and counterinsurgency experts, and pragmatic planners of an American empire", he also encouraged students to join it too ! He certainly could have discouraged them if he wanted to do so, and he could have condemned the militaristic role of the MIT instead, but he didn't then, and he still does not now !

It is a matter of honesty, first and foremost, and Noam Chomsky is a dishonest man. He had to be so all his life, and he still is now, because he has been all his life a loyal zionist, yet he has been masquerading at the same time as a champion of peace and justice, and as anti-imperialist guru of the Left.

Note, for example, the following question and answer during this interview :

"...do you think it’s worth ‘speaking truth’ to the professional scholars?

I’m always uneasy about the concept of "speaking truth," as if we somehow know the truth and only have to enlighten others who have not risen to our elevated level. The search for truth is a cooperative, unending endeavor. We can, and should, engage in it to the extent we can and encourage others to do so as well, seeking to free ourselves from constraints imposed by coercive institutions, dogma, irrationality, excessive conformity and lack of initiative and imagination, and numerous other obstacles."

Yes, of course, he must feel uneasy to tell the truth, or he would risk exposing his dishonesty and his false claims ,as the "anti-imperialist" guru. Telling the truth should make people relaxed not uneasy, as honest people are, and it matters not if they or their audience are "professional scholars" or just ordinary people. However, Noam Chomsky did not have much trouble in overcoming his "uneasiness" in deceiving his listeners and readers. His method in writing and in his speech has been to interlace the truth with his zionist loyalty in such a way as to avoid detection, thus making his books,articles and speeches veritable traps for his trusting readers and listeners. A good example of his method is provided by Chomsky during this interview as follows.

Masquerading a champion of human morality this wealthy and dishonest zionist quotes the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals to show that George W. Bush, the USA President, has been perpetrating crimes like the punished leaders of the Hitler regime in Fascist Germany. This is true, of course, except that Noam Chomsky has never demanded publicly that President Bush be put on trial and be punished as a war criminal, much less did he demand the punishment of the zionist war criminals - the heads of the zionist apartheid regime of Israel and - for their war crimes and crimes against humanity ! In fact, he is not opposed to the zionist apartheid regime ; instead he is opposed to any sanctions against it, and he is opposed to the legitimate return of the Palestinian refugees too !

Here is the text of the interview :

An Interview with Noam Chomsky
On Responsibility, War Guilt and Intellectuals
By GABRIEL MATTHEW SCHIVONE

Schivone: In 1969, addressing a community of mostly students during a public forum at the steps of MIT, you said: “This particular community is a very relevant one to consider at a place like MIT because, of course, you’re all free to enter this community -- in fact, you’re invited and encouraged to enter it. The community of technical intelligentsia, and weapons designers, and counterinsurgency experts, and pragmatic planners of an American empire is one that you have a great deal of inducement to become associated with. The inducements, in fact, are very real; their rewards in power, and affluence, and prestige and authority are quite significant.”

Let’s start off talking about the significance of these inducements, on both a university and societal level. How crucial is it that students understand the function of this highly technocratic social order of the academic community?

CHOMSKY: How important it is, to an individual, depends on what that individual’s goals in life are. If the goals are to enrich yourself, gain privilege, do technically interesting work -- in brief, if the goals are self-satisfaction -- then these questions are of no particular relevance. If you care about the consequences of your actions, what’s happening in the world, what the future will be like for your grandchildren and so on, then they’re very crucial. So, it’s a question of what choices people make.

What makes students a natural audience to speak to? And do you think it’s worth ‘speaking truth’ to the professional scholars?

I’m always uneasy about the concept of “speaking truth,” as if we somehow know the truth and only have to enlighten others who have not risen to our elevated level. The search for truth is a cooperative, unending endeavor. We can, and should, engage in it to the extent we can and encourage others to do so as well, seeking to free ourselves from constraints imposed by coercive institutions, dogma, irrationality, excessive conformity and lack of initiative and imagination, and numerous other obstacles.As for possibilities, they are limited only by will and choice.Students are at a stage of their lives where these choices are most urgent and compelling, and when they also enjoy unusual, if not unique, freedom and opportunity to explore the choices available, to evaluate them, and to pursue them.

What is it about the privileges within university education and academic scholarship which correlate with a greater responsibility for catastrophic atrocities such as the Vietnam War or those in the Middle East in which the United States is now involved?

There are really some moral truisms. One of them is that opportunity confers responsibility. If you have very limited opportunities, then you have limited responsibility for what you do. If you have substantial opportunity you have greater responsibility for what you do. I mean, that’s kind of elementary, I don’t know how it can be discussed.

And the people who we call ‘intellectuals’ are just those who happen to have substantial opportunity. They have privilege, they have resources, they have training. In our society, they have a high degree of freedom -- not a hundred percent, but quite a lot -- and that gives them a range of choices that they can pursue with a fair degree of freedom, and that hence simply confers responsibility for the predictable consequences of the choices they make.

From where may we trace the development of this strong coterie of technical experts in the schools, and elsewhere, sometimes referred to as a ‘bought’ or ‘secular priesthood’?

It really goes back to the latter-part of the nineteenth century, when there was substantial discussion -- not just in the United States but in Europe, too -- of what was then sometimes called ‘a new class’ of scientific intellectuals. In that period of time there was a level of knowledge and technical expertise accumulating that allowed a kind of managerial class of educated, trained people to have a greater share in decision-making and planning. It was thought that they were a new class displacing the aristocracy, the owners, political leaders and so on, and they could have a larger role -- and of course they liked that idea.
Out of this group developed an ideology of technocratic planning. In industry it was called ‘scientific management’. It developed in intellectual life with a concept of what was called a ‘responsible class’ of technocratic, serious intellectuals who could solve the world’s problems rationally, and would have to be protected from the ‘vulgar masses’ who might interfere with them. And, it goes right up until the present.

Just how realistic this is, is another question, but for the class of technical intellectuals, it’s a very attractive conception that, ‘We are the rational, intelligent people, and management and decision-making should be in our hands.’Actually, as I’ve pointed out in some of the things I’ve written, it’s very close to Bolshevism. And, in fact, if you put side-by-side, say, statements by people like Robert McNamara and V.I. Lenin, they’re strikingly similar. In both cases there’s a conception of a vanguard of rational planners who know the direction that society ought to go and can make efficient decisions, and have to be allowed to do so without interference from, what one of them, Walter Lippmann, called the ‘meddlesome and ignorant outsiders’ , namely, the population, who just get in the way.

It’s not an entirely new conception: it’s just a new category of people. Two hundred years ago you didn’t have an easily identifiable class of technical intellectuals, just generally educated people. But as scientific and technical progress increased there were people who felt they can appropriate it and become the proper managers of the society, in every domain. That, as I said, goes from scientific management in industry, to social and political control.

There are periods in history, for example, during the Kennedy years, when these ideas really flourished. There were, as they called themselves, ‘the best and the brightest.’ The ‘smart guys’ who could run everything if only they were allowed to; who could do things scientifically without people getting in their way.

It’s a pretty constant strain, and understandable. And it underlies the fear and dislike of democracy that runs through elite culture always, and very dramatically right now. It often correlates closely with posturing about love of democracy. As any reader of Orwell would expect, these two things tend to correlate. The more you hate democracy, the more you talk about how wonderful it is and how much you’re dedicated to it. It’s one of the clearer expressions of the visceral fear and dislike of democracy, and of allowing, again, going back to Lippmann, the ‘ignorant and meddlesome outsiders’ to get in our way. They have to be distracted and marginalized somehow while we can take care of the serious questions.

Now, that’s the basic strain. And you find it all the time, but increasingly in the modern period when, at least, claims to expertise become somewhat more plausible. Whether they’re authentic or not is, again, a different question. But, the claims to expertise are very striking. So, economists tell you, ‘We know how to run the economy’; the political scientists tell you, ‘We know how to run the world, and you keep out of it because you don’t have special knowledge and training.’

When you look at it, the claims tend to erode pretty quickly. It’s not quantum physics; there is, at least, a pretense, and sometimes, some justification for the claims. But, what matters for human life is, typically, well within the reach of the concerned person who is willing to undertake some effort.

Given the self-proclaimed notion that this new class is entitled to decision-making, how close are they to actual policy, then?

My feeling is that they’re nowhere near as powerful as they think they are. So, when, say, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote about the technocratic elite which is taking over the running of society -- or when McNamara wrote about it, or others -- there’s a lot of illusion there. Meaning, they can gain positions of authority and decision-making when they act in the interests of those who really own and run the society. You can have people that are just as competent, or more competent, and who have conceptions of social and economic order that run counter to, say, corporate power, and they’re not going to be in the planning sectors.
So, to get into those planning sectors you first of all have to conform to the interests of the real concentrations of power.
And, again, there are a lot of illusions about this -- in the media, too. Tom Wicker is a famous example, one of the ‘left commentators’ of the New York Times. He would get very angry when critics would tell him he’s conforming to power interests and that he’s keeping within the doctrinal framework of the media, which goes back to their corporate structure and so on. And he would answer, very angrily -- and correctly -- that nobody tells him what to say. He wrote anything he wanted -- which is absolutely true. But, if he wasn’t writing the things he did he wouldn’t have a column in the New York Times.
That’s the kind of thing that is very hard to perceive.

People do not want,or often are not able, to perceive that they are conforming to external authority. They feel themselves to be very free, and indeed they are, as long as they conform. But power lies elsewhere. That’s as old as history in the modern period. It’s often very explicit.
Adam Smith, for example, discussing England, quite interestingly pointed out that the merchants and manufacturers, the economic forces of his day, are the ‘principal architects of policy’, and they make sure that their own interests are ‘most peculiarly attended to’, no matter how grievous the effect on others, including the people in England. And that’s a good principle of statecraft, and social and economic planning, which runs pretty much to the present. When you get people with management and decision-making skills, they can enter into that system and they can make the actual decisions within a framework that’s set within the real concentrations of power. And now it’s not the merchants and manufacturers of Adam Smith’s day, it’s the multinational corporations, financial institutions, and so on.
But, stray too far beyond their concerns and you won’t be the decision-maker.
It’s not a mechanical phenomenon, but it’s overwhelmingly true that the people who make it to decision-making positions (that is, what they think of as decision-making positions) are those who conform to the basic framework of the people who fundamentally own and run the society.

That’s why you have a certain choice of technocratic managers and not some other choice of people equally or better capable of carrying out policies but have different ideas.
What about degrees of responsibility and shared burdens of guilt on an individual level? What can we learn about how those in positions of power or authority often view themselves?
You almost never find anyone, whether it’s in a weapons plant, or planning agency, or in corporate management, or almost anywhere, who says, ‘I’m really a bad guy, and I just want to do things that benefit myself and my friends.’

Almost invariably you get noble rhetoric like: ‘We’re working for the benefit of the people.’ The corporate executive who is slaving for the benefit of the workers and community; the friendly banker who just wants to help everybody start their business; the political leader who’s trying to bring freedom and justice to the world--and they probably all believe it. I’m not suggesting that they’re lying. There’s an array of routine justifications for whatever you’re doing. And it’s easy to believe them. It’s very hard to look into the mirror and say, ‘Yeah, that guy looking at me is a vicious criminal.’ It’s much easier to say, ‘That guy looking at me is really very benign, self-sacrificing, and he has to do these things because it’s for the benefit of everyone.’

Or you get respected moralists like Reinhold Niebuhr, who was once called ‘the theologian of the establishment’. And the reason is because he presented a framework which, essentially, justified just about anything they wanted to do. His thesis is dressed up in long words and so on (it’s what you do if you’re an intellectual). But, what it came down to is that, ‘Even if you try to do good, evil’s going to come out of it; that’s the paradox of grace’. And that’s wonderful for war criminals. ‘We try to do good but evil necessarily comes out of it.’ And it’s influential. So, I don’t think that people in decision-making positions are lying when they describe themselves as benevolent. Or people working on more advanced nuclear weapons. Ask them what they’re doing, they’ll say: ‘We’re trying to preserve the peace of the world.’ People who are devising military strategies that are massacring people, they’ll say, ‘Well, that’s the cost you have to pay for freedom and justice’, and so on.

But, we don’t take those sentiments seriously when we hear them from enemies, say, from Stalinist commissars. They’ll give you the same answers. But, we don’t take that seriously because they can know what they’re doing if they choose to. If they choose not to, that’s their choice. If they choose to believe self-satisfying propaganda, that’s their choice. But, it doesn’t change the moral responsibility. We understand that perfectly well with regard to others. It’s very hard to apply the same reasoning to ourselves.In fact, maybe the most elementary of moral principles is that of universality, that is, If something’s right for me, it’s right for you; if it’s wrong for you, it’s wrong for me. Any moral code that is even worth looking at has that at its core somehow. But that principle is overwhelmingly disregarded all the time. If you want to run through examples we can easily do it. Take, say, George W. Bush, since he happens to be president. If you apply the standards that we applied to Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, he’d be hanged. Is it an even conceivable possibility? It’s not even discussable. Because, we don’t apply to ourselves the principles we apply to others.

There’s a lot of talk about ‘terror’ and how awful it is. Whose terror? Our terror against them? I mean, is that considered reprehensible? No, it’s considered highly moral; it’s considered self-defense, and so on. Now, their terror against us, that’s awful, and terrible, and so on.
But, to try to rise to the level of becoming a minimal moral agent, and just enter in the domain of moral discourse is very difficult. Because, that means accepting the principle of universality. And you can experiment for yourself and see how often that’s accepted, either in personal or political life. Very rarely.

What about criminal responsibility and intellectuals?

Nuremberg is an interesting precedent.
The Nuremberg case is a very interesting precedent. Of all the tribunals that have taken place, from then until today Nuremberg is, I think, the most serious by far. But, nevertheless, it was very seriously flawed. And it was recognized to be. When Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor, wrote about it, he recognized that it was flawed, and it was so for a number of fundamental reasons. For one thing, the Nazi war criminals were being tried for crimes that had not yet been declared to be crimes. So, it was ex post facto. ‘We’re now declaring these things you did to be crimes.’ That is already questionable.

Secondly, the choice of what was considered a crime was based on a very explicit criterion, namely, denial of the principle of universality. In other words, something was called a crime at Nuremberg if they did it and we didn’t do it.So, for example, the bombing of urban concentrations was not considered a crime. The bombings of Tokyo, Dresden, and so on -- those aren’t crimes. Why? Because we did them. So, therefore, it’s not a crime. In fact, Nazi war criminals who were charged were able to escape prosecution when they could show that the Americans and the British did the same thing they did. Admiral Doenitz, a submarine commander who was involved in all kinds of war crimes, called in the defense a high official in the British admiralty and, I think, Admiral Nimitz from the United States, who testified that, ‘Yeah, that’s the kind of thing we did.’ And, therefore, they weren’t sentenced for these crimes. Doenitz was absolved. And that’s the way it ran through. Now, that’s a very serious flaw. Nevertheless, of all the tribunals, that’s the most serious one.

When Chief Justice Jackson, chief counsel for the prosecution, spoke to the tribunal and explained to them the importance of what they were doing, he said, to paraphrase, that: ‘We are handing these defendants a poisoned chalice, and if we ever sip from it we must be subject to the same punishments, otherwise this whole trial is a farce.’ Well, you can look at the history from then on, and we’ve sipped from the poisoned chalice many times, but it’s never been considered a crime. So, that means we are saying that trial was a farce.

Interestingly, in Jackson’s opening statement he claimed that the prosecution did not wish to incriminate the whole German for the crimes they committed, but only the “planners and designers” of those crimes, “the inciters and leaders without whose evil architecture the world would not have been for so long scourged with the violence and lawlessness … of this terrible war.”

That’s correct. And that’s another principle which we flatly reject. So, at Nuremberg, we weren’t trying the people who threw Jews into crematoria; we were trying the leaders. When we ever have a trial for crimes it’s of some low-level person like a torturer from Abu Ghraib, not the people who were setting up the framework from which they operate. And we certainly don’t try political leaders for the crime of aggression. That’s out of the question.

The invasion of Iraq was about as clear-cut a case of aggression than you can imagine. In fact, by the Nuremberg principles, if you read them carefully, the U.S. war against Nicaragua was a crime of aggression for which Ronald Reagan should have been tried. But, it’s inconceivable; you can’t even mention it in the West. And the reason is our radical denial of the most elementary moral truisms. We just flatly reject them. We don’t even think we reject them, and that’s even worse than rejecting them outright.

If we were able to say to ourselves, ‘Look, we are totally immoral, we don’t accept elementary moral principles,’ that would be a kind of respectable position in a certain way. But, when we sink to the level where we cannot even perceive that we’re violating elementary moral principles and international law, that’s pretty bad. But, that’s the nature of the intellectual culture--not just in the United States--but in powerful societies everywhere.

You mentioned Doenitz escaping culpability for his crimes.

Two who didn’t escape punishment and were among the most severely punished at Nuremberg were Julius Streicher, an editor of a major newspaper, and -- lso an interesting example -- Dr. Wolfram Sievers of the Ahnenerbe Society’s Institute of Military Scientific Research, whose own crimes were traced back to the University of Strasbourg. Not the typical people prosecuted for international war crimes, it seems, given their civilian professions.
Yes; and there’s a justification for that, namely, those defendants could understand what they were doing. They could understand the consequences of the work that they were carrying out. But, of course, if we were to accept this awful principle of universality, that would have a pretty long reach, to journalists, university researchers, and so on.

Let me quote for you the mission statement of the Army Research Office. This “premier extramural” research agency of the Army is grounded upon “developing and exploiting innovative advances to insure the Nation’s technological superiority.” It executes this mission “through conduct of an aggressive basic science research program on behalf of the Army so that cutting-edge scientific discoveries and the general store of scientific knowledge will be optimally used to develop and improve weapons systems that establish land-force dominance.”

This is a Pentagon office, and they’re doing their job. In our system, the military is under civilian control. Civilians assign a certain task to the military: their job is to obey, and carry the role out, otherwise you quit. That’s what it means to have a military under civilian control. So, you can’t really blame them for their mission statement.
They’re doing what they’re told to do by the civilian authorities. The civilian authorities are the culpable ones. If we don’t like those policies (and I don’t, and you don’t), then we go back to those civilians who designed the framework and gave the orders.
You can, as the Nuremberg precedents indicated, be charged with obeying illegal orders, but that’s often a stretch. If a person is in a position of military command, they are sworn, in fact, to obey civilian orders, even if they don’t like them. If you say they’re really just criminal orders, then, yes, they can reject them, and get into trouble and so on. But, this is just carrying out the function that they’re ordered to carry out. So, we go straight back to the civilian authority and then to the general intellectual culture, which regards this as proper and legitimate. And now we’re back to universities, newspapers, the centers of the doctrinal system.

It’s just the forthright honesty of the mission statement which I think is also very striking.

Well, it’s like going to an armory and finding out they’re making better guns. That’s what they’re supposed to do. Their orders are, ‘Make this gun work better.’ and so they’re doing it. And, if they’re honest, they’ll say, ‘Yes, that’s what we’re doing; that’s what the civilian authorities told us to do.’
At some point, people have to ask, ‘Do I want to make a better gun?’ That’s where the Nuremberg issues arise. But, you really can’t blame people very severely for carrying out the orders that they’re told to carry out when there’s nothing in the culture that tells them there’s anything wrong with it. I mean, you have to be kind of like a moral hero to perceive it, to break out of the cultural framework and say, ‘Look, what I’m doing is wrong.’ Like somebody who deserts from the army because they think the war is wrong. That’s not the place to assign guilt, I think. Just as at Nuremberg. As I said, they didn’t try the SS guards who threw people into crematoria, at Nuremberg. They might have been tried elsewhere, but not at Nuremberg.

But, in this case, the results of the ARO’s mission statement in harvesting scholarly work for better weapons design, it’s professors, scholars, researchers, scientific designers, etc., who have these choices to do intellectual work and to be so used for such ends, and who aren’t acting necessarily from direct orders but are acting more out of free will.

It’s free will, but don’t forget that there’s a general intellectual culture that raises no objection to this.Let’s take the Iraq war. There’s libraries of material arguing about the war, debating it, asking ‘What should we do?’, this and that, and the other thing. Now, try to find a sentence somewhere that says that ‘carrying out a war of aggression is the supreme international crime, which differs from other war crimes in that it encompasses all the evil that follows’ (paraphrasing from Nuremberg). Try to find that somewhere. I mean, you can find it. I’ve written about it, and you can find a couple other dozen people who have written about it in the world. But, is it part of the intellectual culture? Can you find it in a newspaper, or in a journal; in Congress; any public discourse; anything that’s part of the general exchange of knowledge and ideas? I mean, do students study it in school? Do they have courses where they teach students that ‘to carry out a war of aggression is the supreme international crime which encompasses all the evil that follows’?
So, for example, if sectarian warfare is a horrible atrocity, as it is, who’s responsible? By the principles of Nuremberg, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice -- they’re responsible for sectarian warfare because they carried out the supreme international crime which encompasses all the evil that follows. Try and find somebody who points that out. You can’t. Because, our dominant intellectual culture accepts as legitimate our crushing anybody we like.
Take Iran. Both political parties and practically the whole press accept it as legitimate and, in fact, honorable, that ‘all options are on the table’, presumably including nuclear weapons, to quote Hilary Clinton and everyone else. ‘All options are on the table’ means we threaten war. Well, there’s something called the U.N. Charter, which outlaws ‘the threat or use of force’ in international affairs. Does anybody care? Actually, I saw one op-ed somewhere by Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist close to the government, who pointed out that threats are serious violations of international law. But that’s so rare that when you find it it’s like finding a diamond in a pile of hay. It’s not part of the culture. We’re allowed to threaten anyone we want--and to attack anyone we want. And, when a person grows up and acts in a culture like that, they’re culpable in a sense, but the culpability is much broader.
I was just reading a couple days ago a review of a new book by Steven Miles, a medical doctor and bioethicist, who ran through 35,000 pages of documents he got from the Freedom of Information Act on the torture in Abu Ghraib. And the question that concerned him is, ‘What were the doctors doing during all of this?’ All through those torture sessions there were doctors, nurses, behavioral scientists and others who were organizing them. What were they doing when this torture was going on? Well, you go through the detailed record and it turns out that they were designing and improving it. Just like Nazi doctors.
Robert Jay Lifton did a big study on Nazi doctors. He points out in connection with the Nazi doctors that, in a way, it’s not those individual doctors who had the final guilt, it was a culture and a society which accepted torture and criminal activities as legitimate. The same is true with the tortures at Abu Ghraib. Just to focus on them as if they’re somehow terrible people is just a serious mistake. They’re coming out of a culture that regards this as legitimate. Maybe there are some excesses you don’t really do but torture in interrogation is considered legitimate.
There’s a big debate now on, ‘Who’s an enemy combatant?’; a big technical debate. Suppose we invade another country and we capture somebody who’s defending the country against our invasion: what do you mean to call them an ‘enemy combatant’? If some country invaded the United States and let’s say you were captured throwing a rock at one of the soldiers, would it be legitimate to send you to the equivalent of Guantanamo, and then have a debate about whether you’re a ‘lawful’ or ‘unlawful’ combatant? The whole discussion is kind of, like, off in outer space somewhere. But, in a culture which accepts that we own and rule the world, it’s reasonable.
But, also, we should go back to the roots of the intellectual or moral culture, not just to the individuals directly involved.

At my school, the University of Arizona, there are courses in bioethics -- required ones, in fact, to hard scientific undergraduates (I took one, out of interest)-- which mostly just discuss scenarios in terms of ‘slippery slopes’ and hypothetical questions within certain bounds. There are l none at all in the social sciences or humanities. Do you think there should be? Would that be beneficial?

If they were honest, yes. If they’re honest they’d be talking about what we’re talking about, and doing case studies. There’s no point pontificating about high minded principles. That’s easy. Nazi doctors could do that, too. Let’s take a look at the cases and ask how the principles apply - to Vietnam; to El Salvador; to Iraq; to Palestine -- just run through the cases and see how the principles apply to our own actions. That’s what is of prime importance, and what is least discussed.

As a note to end on, There seems to be some very serious aberrations and defects in our society and our level of culture. How, in your view, might they be corrected and a new level of culture be established, say, one in which torture isn’t accepted? (After all, slavery and child labor were each accepted for a long period of time and now are not.)

Your examples give the answer to the question, the only answer that has ever been known. Slavery and child labor didn’t become unacceptable by magic. It took hard, dedicated, courageous work by lots of people. The same is true of torture, which was once completely routine.If I remember correctly, the renowned Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie wrote somewhere that prisons began to proliferate in Norway in the early 19th century. They weren’t much needed before, when the punishment for robbery could be driving a stake through the hand of the accused. Now it’s perhaps the most civilized country on earth.There has been a gradual codification of constraints against torture, and they have had some effect, though only limited, even before the Bush regression to savagery. Alfred McCoy’s work reviews that ugly history. Still, there is improvement, and there can be more if enough people are willing to undertake the efforts that led to large-scale rejection of slavery and child labor--still far from complete.

2007-06-30T16:53:00.000-07:00

More on the Treachery of Noam Chomsky ( article 46 )
by Benjamin Merhav

As I have indicated earlier in this series, Noam Chomsky has been a zionist all his life, as well as a supporter of USA imperialism. This correlation between his more obvious zionist loyalty and his well hidden support for the USA ruling class has come to the fore in recents months with his downplay and ridicule of the Mearsheimer and Walt paper ,which exposed the zionist lobby's influence in Washington. Yet ,Noam Chomsky continues to masquerade as "champion of peace and justice", and as "anti-imperialist guru of the Left", thus misleading many people into trusting his books and articles which are no more than traps for the unwary.

The following article was emailed to me today by "Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences)" . Although it has no mention of Noam Chomsky it is a one more eye opener, to see what is happening in the "most free country in the world", and be aware of the dangerous role of the zionist lobby in Washington on behalf of the zionist apartheid regime of Israel.

"30 Jun 2007 12:37:31 -0400
From: "Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences)"

Paul Findley: Subservience To Israel, from the sinking of the
Liberty to now
June 8, 2007

In the greatest service of his long public life, former President Jimmy
Carter warns of the grave consequences of America's phenomenal
subservience to Israel. In his latest book and recent lectures, he
focuses on how Israel's cruel occupation, made possible by massive and
unconditional U.S. support, has subjected the Palestinian people to
terrible suffering for forty long years. Beyond that grave human
tragedy, candid observers must cite U.S. complicity in Israeli
lawlessness as the major factor that prompted the horror of 9/11 and
lured America into launching three costly, wrong-headed, and failing
wars, - Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Terror.

The linkage is easily identified.

America's support of Israel's brutality was the main motivation for
9/11. It was the ultimate expression of Arab fury over America's
double standard that routinely ignores Israeli violations of Arab human
rights. Nine-eleven would not have happened if any U.S. president in
the last forty years had refused to finance Israel's humiliation and
destruction of Palestine. Michael Scheuer, a former CIA analyst now a
consultant to CBS News, recently told a congressional committee that
"our unqualified support of Israel" was the main reason for 9/11.
Marine General Anthony Zinni, President George W. Bush's first special
envoy to the Middle East, has stated that the United States invaded Iraq
for Israel and oil. Osama bin Laden repeatedly said it was payback for
U.S. support of Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians and other
Arabs and for U.S. complicity in 1982 when Israeli forces used
U.S.-donated munitions to massacre over 18,000 innocent Arabs in Lebanon.

The U.S. acts of war in Afghanistan and the War on Terror were President
Bush's retaliation for 9/11. Israel-and only Israel-urged the United
States to invade Iraq. Israel's lobby in Washington pushed hard and
prevailed. To our foreign critics, these wars focus on killing people
outraged by our pro-Israel bias. Our government has done nothing to
redress the grievances of Israel's victims.

Despite this grim record, U.S. subservience to the wishes of Israel''s
leaders does not change. Unconditional aid to Israel keeps flowing, as
does Israel's savage treatment of Palestinians and other Arabs.
Moreover, the Bush administration is fully and openly pledged to do
whatever is necessary---even acts of war--to halt Iran's nuclear
program even if its projects are lawfully limited to peaceful purposes.

Israel is the only nation urging the United States to attack Iran.
The lobby is pushing hard again. If the U.S. assaults Iran it will be on
Israel's behalf.

Congress, like the rest of America, is totally devoid of debate on the
amazing role of this small nation in critical U.S. policy. Members are
fulsome in public praise of the Jewish state, but no politician mentions
the illegal behavior of Israel or the staggering burden it imposes on
our country.

How did Israel gain this influence?

It all started 40 years ago. On June 8, 1967, the U.S.
commander-in-chief, President Lyndon B. Johnson, turned his back on the
crew of a U.S. navy ship, the USS Liberty, despite the fact that the
ship was under deadly assault by Israel's air and sea forces. The
Israelis were engaged in an ugly scheme to lure America into their war
against Arab states. They tried to destroy the Liberty and its entire
crew, then pin the blame on the Arabs. This, they reasoned, would
outrage the American people and immediately lead the United States to
join Israel's battle against Arabs.

The scheme almost worked. It failed because, despite the
carefully-planned multi-pronged assault, the Liberty crew managed to
broadcast an SOS over a makeshift antenna. When the appeal reached U.S.
aircraft carriers nearby, the commanders immediately launched fighter
planes to defend the ship. Informed of the launch, President Johnson
ordered the rescue planes to turn back immediately.

For the first time in history, forces of the U.S. Navy were denied the
right to defend a Navy ship under attack. Johnson said, "I don't care
if the ship sinks, I am not going to embarrass an ally." Those were his
exact words, heard by Navy personnel listening to radio relays. The
ally Johnson refused to embarrass was Israel. To him, saving Israel
from embarrassment was more important than saving the lives of the
Liberty crew.

The day yielded infamy, - deceit, lies and cover-up at the highest level.
When the SOS reached the top military commanders in Israel, they
immediately canceled the assault, claiming it was a case of
mistaken identity. At the White House, Johnson accepted
Israel's claim, even though he knew it was a lie. Then Johnson
magnified the day's infamy by ordering a cover-up of the truth.
Liberty survivors were sworn to secrecy. Even those in hospital beds
and badly wounded were threatened with court martial if they told anyone
what actually happened. The cover-up has been continued by every
administration since Johnson's.

It proved to be a fateful turning point in Israel's power over U.S.
foreign policy. The Liberty experience convinced Israeli officials that
they could get by with literally anything---even the murder of U.S.
sailors--in their manipulation of the U.S. government. Financial aid to
Israel began to pour like a river, all of it with no stings attached.
According to The Christian Science Monitor, this outpouring has now cost
U.S. taxpayers over $1.4 trillion.

Costs go far beyond money.

Thousands of American families are blighted forever, with America's
once high moral standing in shambles. Because of its unqualified
support of Israel, Washington is hated worldwide as never before.
The principal source of Israel's influence is the fear it seems to
instill in every sector of our society. The most effective instrument
of intimidation employed by its lobby is the reckless accusation of
anti-Semitism, often leveled at anyone criticizing any aspect of Israeli
behavior. Several organizations, fundamentalist Christian as well as
Jewish, lobby for Israel, but the principal one is the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC]. I can personally certify that for
many years it has cast a blanket of fear over Capitol Hill and blocked
any semblance of unfettered discussion.

I unintentionally contributed to that fear in 1985 when my book, They
Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby, was
published. It reports in detail the efficiency of Israel's U.S. lobby,
its history and tactics. Most of the text arose from my personal
experience as AIPAC''s prime target during my last five years as a
Member of Congress. It also details the lobby's important role in
the defeat of Senators Charles Percy and Adlai Stevenson, and U.S. Rep.
Paul "Pete" McCloskey. In a rare burst of public candor about its
partisan activities, AIPAC claimed credit for defeating re-election bids
by myself in 1982 and Senator Percy in 1984.

My book became a bestseller. I hoped it would inspire public officials
and other citizens to revolt against the lobby's influence on U.S.
policy, but several of my former colleagues told me it had the opposite
effect. One said, "After what AIPAC did to you and Percy, I vote with
the lobby every time."

Israel's grip on America seems impervious. Two distinguished political
scientists, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen
Walt of Harvard, strode resolutely into the Middle East minefield a year
ago by co-authoring a paper on Israel's lobby. More recently,
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, a book written by former President
Carter, revered worldwide for his effective work on international
conflict resolution, was published.

These brave statements should have produced a groundswell of public
protest demanding America's liberation from Israel. Although the
professors and Carter have pursued the lecture circuit, no tide of
outrage has developed. With few exceptions, America's major editors,
producers, commentators, academics and politicians have given these
courageous initiatives the silent treatment. Democratic leaders on
Capitol Hill simply said, "Carter doesn't not speak for the Democratic
Party."

Nationwide, the lobby's influence is pervasive, sustained and deep, a
phenomenon unprecedented in U.S. history. Because of that power, the
"other" Israel is almost never discussed openly and candidly any place
in America, even in private conversation. It is impossible to explain
the silence except as a reflection of profound fear.

The situation is highly dangerous. America has already paid a towering
price for our subservience to Israel, and great additional burdens seem
inevitable. If the United States is involved in acts of war against
Iran, anti-American protest will rise to new heights, especially
throughout the Islamic world. It will inevitably deepen the widely-held
belief among Muslims that America seeks to undermine Islam.

The outlook for reform is grim. Elected officials of both major
political parties in Washington seem hopelessly captured by Israel's
agents. So does every serious candidate for the presidency in 2008. A
senior U.S. Senator told me recently that Israel cannot expect to
experience true security until Palestinians are secure in an independent
state of their own, but he spoke off the record and has not made that
wise declaration in public.

All U.S. citizens must accept a measure of responsibility for Israel's
grip on America. Those of us who knew what was happening did not
protest with sufficient force and clarity. Those who did not know
should have taken their responsibility as citizens more seriously. They
should have informed themselves.

The scene is likely to improve only if U.S. elected officials are
criticized so forthrightly from home that they fear a constituent revolt
more than they fear Israel's lobby. This, of course, will not happen
until the countryside benefits from a rigorous and edifying public
debate about Israel's role in our national life."

(Emphasis added- B.M.)

2007-06-04T23:20:00.000-07:00

MORE ON THE TREACHERY OF NOAM CHOMSKY
(article 45) by Benjamin Merhav

The following Jerusalem Post article was emailed to me by "Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences)" with his introduction. The Jerusalem Post is an Israeli zionist daily run by fanatical zionists, and I would never quote a zionist paper's poisonous propganda, unless it reveals/admits zionist crimes. This quoted article, however, goes even further to provide proof of the actual mechanism by which Israel's rulers/the zionist lobby in the USA dictate the present policies of USA imperialism, including those of the next USA President and his/her administration.

The name of Noam Chomsky is not mentioned in the quoted article, and yet it provides irrefutable evidence of his loyalty to both the zionist apartheid regime of Israel and to the USA ruling class.

Doesn't he insist that the USA is "the most free country in the world" ? Doesn't he ridicule the people who have warned of the dangerous influence by the zionist lobby ?
Doesn't he support the zionist apartheid regime of Israel to the point of rejecting the Palestinian demand for international sanctions (BDS) against that racist and fascist regime ? The answer is,of course ,yes he does to all the questions, as well as to many more similar questions which bedevil the minds of people who are misled by Chomsky's masquerade as an
anti-imperialist Left guru, and as a puported champion of peace and justice around the world.

Let it be clear without a shadow of a doubt that Noam Chomsky has been a loyal zionist all his life, and therefore - of necessity ! - also a loyal supporter of the USA ruling class.

It cannot be an accident nor coincidence that he chose the MIT, a Pentagon financed academic institution, as his work place for over half a century ! It cannot be a mere aberration that he never condemned or opposed zionism . He did not because he is a zionist, as he always has been. He accepts the fundamental tenet (and big lie!) of zionism, namely, that there is a "Jewish nation", and that its "homeland" is in Palestine. Which is why he supports the zionist apartheid regime of Israel, and he opposes a democratic non-racist Palestine all over historic Palestine. Also, that same racist reasoning applies by him to the right to return of the Palestinian refugees which he opposes very vehemently !

In brief : Noam Chomsky is a zionist impostor, and he should be so considered by his devotees too !

"Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences)" :

Candidates Agree to Obey Summons from Jerusalem Post for Reports Every Two Weeks

Am I alone in thinking it peculiar that a newspaper in a foreign country should think it
both appropriate and possible to get all the leading candidates for the U.S. presidential
nominations of both parties to compete, on a biweekly basis and in writing, in displaying
the intensity of their allegiance to that foreign country and that all of these
candidates should deem it both appropriate and essential to their hopes of remaining a leading candidate that they should participate in this degrading exercise in competitive
obeisance?

Transmitted below is the first installment in the Great Group Grovel, as published in the
JERUSALEM POST.

WARNING: For those living in the United States, reading these pledges of allegiance to a
foreign country risks provoking hopeless depression and despair and/or an intense urge to
emigrate to saner shores. The first reaction, while eminently rational in the
circumstances, should be resisted. The second reaction should be seriously considered.
John Whitbeck (international lawyer)

-------------------------

http://blogcentral.jpost.com/index.php?cat_id=4&blog_id=73&blog_post_id=11May242007

The Road to the White House: Israel-US ties
Jerusalem Post
May 24, 2007

In the run-up to the 2008 US presidential elections, The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition
JPost.com has invited central presidential contenders to respond to questions on matters
of importance to Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world.

We will be sending out questions to the candidates every two weeks or so. We started out
with a relatively general inquiry about the importance they attach to the US's strategic
alliance with Israel and how, if elected, they would work to foster that alliance (see
below). The questions will get more specific as the campaign heats up.

The first question was sent to John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama,
John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and Sam Brownback.

The contenders are being invited to participate, and given as much space as they wish to
respond. We believe this platform offers a tremendous opportunity for the would-be
presidents to detail their positions on key issues for our millions of readers, potential
voters and supporters. And we are delighted that, from the outset, so many of the candidates
have found the time to participate, with carefully drafted, nuanced answers that offer
real insight into their thinking.

David Horowitz, Editor-In-Chief
Question #1
What's the importance of Israel as a strategic ally and how would your administration
manage ties between the two countries?
Contributors: (read it all or click on name to read post)
· Senator John McCain of Arizona (R)
· Senator Hillary Clinton of New York (D)
· Senator Barack Obama of Illinois (D)
· Former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts (R)
· Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico (D)
· Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas (R)
The question was sent to John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama, John
Edwards, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and Sam Brownback.
..................................................................
John McCain: Late last year, I had the opportunity to visit with the families of two
Israeli soldiers - Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser - who were captured last summer by
Hizbullah during a cross-border raid.
My visit with the loved ones of these brave and noble young men reminded me of the great
sacrifices the Israeli people have made to defend their sacred soil and win their
rightful status as a beacon of freedom and faith. To this day, Eldad and Ehud continue to be
held captive.
Indeed, Israel has never had the opportunity to take a holiday from history, for it has
been tested more, in less time, than any nation on Earth. The tests continue today in the
form of suicide bombers and rocket fire and in the existential threats issued routinely
by the Iranian president.
Long considered a dear friend to America, today Israel is our natural ally in what is a
titanic struggle against Islamic extremists - an enemy whose sinister nature I need not
explain to the people of Israel.
If elected President of the United States, I will strengthen America's bedrock commitment
to the security of the State of Israel.
First and foremost, we must continue to provide Israel with whatever military equipment
and technology required to retain Israel's qualitative military advantage and to defend
itself.

Just as important is the strengthening of our diplomatic ties. As President, I will
invite Israel to play a leading role in the League of Democracies that I have proposed - an
organization of like-minded nations working together in the cause of peace.
I would work to further isolate the enemies of Israel such as Syria, Hamas and Hizbullah
and I would never pressure Israel to make concessions to states or movements committed to
its destruction.

Finally, Teheran's pursuit of nuclear weapons plainly poses an unacceptable risk to the
international community, and Israel above all others.
Recently, it was reported that the Iranian regime has begun enriching uranium at an
accelerated pace, which means we are that much closer to seeing Israel's security being placed
in grave jeopardy.
As President, I will pursue every option at my disposal to neutralize that threat. We
cannot and must not allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons. I will make sure the American
people understand that if we are to defeat the extremists that threaten our way of life,
Israel's security cannot be compromised.

Hillary Clinton: Israel is an important ally and strategic partner of the United States.
Our nations are united by shared values, a commitment to democracy, and a belief in the
dignity of men and women. We are also united by a common strategic interest in fighting
back against the forces of terrorism and nihilism.
Israel and the United States have worked together for years on national security
objectives, including developing innovative defense technologies. Today, as the United States
deals with issues of homeland security, we are also learning from Israel's experience in
preventing attacks and preparing emergency responses.

I believe the relationship between our countries should be that between allies, based on
mutual respect, appreciating our shared values and a shared commitment to national
security policies that reduce the danger of terrorist attacks on free and democratic nations
anywhere in the world.

Recognizing the very real challenges we face, I believe we must think rationally and
strategically - and jointly - about how our values and our beliefs can be translated into
effective action.
It is not enough for us to say the right things; we've got to be smart and tough enough
to do the right things that will protect American and Israeli interests now and forever.
It is with these principles in mind that my Administration would work to sustain, nourish,
and enhance the vital partnership between America and Israel.
...........................................................

Barack Obama: Israel is our most reliable ally and the only established democracy in the
Middle East. Israel's security and close US-Israel cooperation is the linchpin of so much
of what we want to achieve in the Middle East.
The United States and Israel share important interests - promoting a peaceful Middle
East, combating terrorism, and encouraging reform in the Arab and Muslim world. We share
adversaries - Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizbullah. And we share deep economic, cultural,
academic, and scientific ties that benefit both our nations.
The special relationship between the United States and Israel requires an open and honest
dialogue, and strong personal ties, between our nations' leaders. As President, I would
maintain regular communication with the Israeli Prime Minister, and instruct members of my
administration to do the same at all levels.

I would continue and deepen the strategic dialogue between our nations' defense
establishments, insist on fully funding military assistance to Israel to ensure it can defend
itself, and expand cooperation on the development of the Arrow and other missile defense
systems.

Israel's security - which is of vital importance to the United States - can best be
guaranteed by reaching negotiated peace agreements with its neighbors. But Israel must have
credible partners with whom to negotiate.
As President, I would actively involve myself in the effort to strengthen moderate
Palestinians and others who can be such partners, and to make such negotiations successful,
while working to isolate and weaken those who seek Israel's destruction. But I would never
try to dictate to Israel what its security requires. The United States should never try to
drag Israel to, or block Israel from, the negotiating table.

Finally, I would pursue a comprehensive strategy - of direct engagement, increased
economic pressure through international and US sanctions, and keeping the military option on
the table - to keep Iran from achieving its goal of acquiring nuclear weapons, which is a
danger we cannot tolerate.

Just last week, I introduced legislation to make it easier for states to divest their
pension funds from companies that support Iran's oil and gas industry. Israel does not have
the luxury of ignoring the Iranian president's genocidal threats, and neither should the
United States.
..........................................................

Mitt Romney: In January, I had the good fortune of traveling to Israel, a beautiful,
historic and diverse country with a people I respect and admire. America's friendship with
Israel is based on our common interests and common values.
Israel's democracy has flourished and its economy has prospered in spite of multiple wars
it has had to fight and the diplomatic and economic isolation by most of its neighbors.
Israel is a trusted friend and ally in an increasingly hostile region.
Israel stands on the front lines of the struggle against radical Islam's jihad, whose
goals are not confined to the Middle East. Indeed, Jihadism's goal of destroying Israel is
coupled with its desire to overthrow modern Muslim nations and replace them with a
caliphate, and to assault our security and our way of life on a global scale.
Among the many existential threats that Israel faces today, Iran poses the most serious.
Iran's leaders are determined to destroy Israel, dominate the region, and spread the
poison of fear and intolerance far beyond their borders.

I believe the United States, Europe and others can and should do more to exploit the
vulnerabilities of Iran's regime. To this end, I have outlined a strategy consisting of
economic sanctions, greater cooperation with modern Muslim states, a stronger military, and
support for progressive Muslim communities and leaders.

As President, I would put this strategy to work in defense of US interests, in defense of
Israel and for the sake of peace and stability in the Middle East and beyond.
My administration would also remain focused on stopping the financial and weapons flows
to Hamas and Hizbullah, insist that the Palestinians abandon terror and recognize Israel's
right to exist, and actively work towards a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli
conflict where Israelis and Palestinians can each live in security and dignity.

As we approach the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, these threats remind us once
again that we must never take Israel's security for granted and that the price of freedom is
perpetual vigilance.

As President, I will continue America's efforts to realize fully the vision articulated
in the aftermath of Israel's victory in 1967 by that great solider and statesman, Yitzhak
Rabin, for the right of the people of Israel to live in its own State free, independent,
in peace and tranquility.
.............................................................

Bill Richardson: I am firmly committed to one of the United States' closest and most
important allies - the State of Israel. Throughout my career, I've steadfastly supported
Israel, obtaining a consistently pro-Israel voting record in Congress and defending Israeli
interests as Ambassador to the United Nations.

As Governor of New Mexico, I'm proud that my state has invested heavily in Israel's
economy. We re-opened New Mexico's trade office with Israel and in 2005 generated $27.7
million in Israeli-New Mexican trade. We also invested $10 million in the form of Israel bonds.
This is the first bond purchase of its type in New Mexico's history.

While George Bush has sought to support Israel, his actions have made Israel less secure
in my view. Syria is stronger than ever. Iran's influence in the region has increased and
is now in a stronger position to procure nuclear weapons.
As President, I will:
· Re-engage the Middle East peace process; reinstate a Permanent Special Envoy to the
Middle East
· Ensure that the United States uses its all of its power within the United Nations to
protect Israel's sovereignty and national security
· Provide Israel with the assistance and support to ensure its safety and security
· Ensure that Iran doesn't obtain or develop nuclear weapons
· Strengthen Palestinian moderates and promote a two-state solution
· Spearhead a multilateral Marshall Plan for the Middle East and North Africa. For a
small fraction of the cost of the Iraq war, which has made us so many enemies, we could
coordinate a multinational effort to support and stabilize this volatile region and reduce
anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments throughout the entire area
· Pressure Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other friends to reform their education
systems. It is unacceptable for any country to teach hatred of Israel

For the past fifty years, the United States and Israel have been linked by common values
and interests. I believe that our two nations also share a common future. Neither can
prosper without the safety and security of the other.

The challenges that confront us are formidable, but under my administration, the United
States will stand alongside Israel to protect the citizens of our two nations and work
towards a lasting peace in the Middle East. In the process, the special bond between our two
countries will only grow stronger.
......................................................................

Sam Brownback: I am tempted here to discuss all the reasons why I support Israel, to
thank the people of Israel for bringing the message of G-d into this world, and to explain my
commitment to a united Jerusalem that has always been, and should always remain, the
capital of the Jewish people. But I will limit my answer only to the importance of Israel as
a strategic ally of the United States.

The simple answer is to point out the strategic benefits of allying with the only
democracy in the Middle East. These benefits come in the form of economic opportunities,
military cooperation, and political stability - all of which are derived from a shared system of
values. But this is only part of the answer.
I submit that the United States and Israel share not only democratic values, but also a
common moral vision.

We are engaged in a great struggle against militant Islamo-fascism. Our enemies have many
targets - Western democracies, free societies, moderate Muslims - but if you listen to
our enemies' words and follow their actions, they single out America and Israel.
Why? Our two nations represent the greatest threat to the Islamo-fascists because, at our
core, we strive for goodness. We seek wisdom, compassion, and humility. We aspire for
moral excellence.

While campaigning I have said that if America ever loses its goodness, it will surely
lose its greatness. Herein we see the importance of Israel: that it remains good in the face
of darkness and hostility. America learns from Israel's example. We learn when the people
of Israel take great risks for peace, when Israeli response teams are first on the ground
in disaster sites around the world, and when Israel removes from danger thousands of
Ethiopian Jews and welcomes them into the country with open arms.

In my administration, I would center diplomatic ties with Israel on the fact that
Israel's existence is not only fully justified, but in fact it has enhanced the Middle East and
the world. My administration would continue to support a peace process, but only from
this perspective. Too often it seems that Israel is viewed by others as a burden - an
obstacle to stability that must be overcome.

Nothing could be further from the truth. To be sure, Israel has problems and
difficulties, and my support for any particular Israeli policy or government would not be
unconditional. However, my administration would always reaffirm that at its heart Israel is good, because of that, Israel can help America and the world be great."

(Emphasis added - B.M.)

2007-05-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

MORE ON THE TREACHERY OF NOAM CHOMSKY(article 44)
by Benjamin Merhav

As mentioned earlier in this series (see article 40, the first post on this blog), Noam Chomsky has been supporting the official cover-up for the assassination of J.F. Kennedy. It has got to do,possibly, with the zionist loyalty of Noam Chomsky, because the most likely conspirators-murderers of Kennedy were the chiefs of the zionist Gestapo.

As the rulers of the zionist apartheid regime of Israel were just beginning their secret nuclear bombs production at the Dimona pile in the early 60's, President Kennedy had then voiced his opposition to this new zionist adventure-crime. The other co-conspirators,namely, the CIA and the USA mafia hated the Kennedy brothers too, but did not have the vengeful urgency that the zionist Gestapo chiefs had.

Nothing and no one represented that crime more than Jack Ruby who murdered Lee Oswald so as to prevent the truth from emerging. Jack Ruby was a mafia man with connections to both the CIA and to the zionist Gestapo. He himself died shortly after, presumably, because he "knew too much" and was therefore too big a risk for the zionist Gestapo.

In article 40 I quote two articles which condemn Chomsky's support for the cover-up :

http://www.geocities.com/mdmorrissey/rechom1.htm
Rethinking Chomsky ,by M.D. Morrissey.

The other one is :
http://www.rtis.com/reg/bcs/pol/touchstone/february97/worsham.htm
JFK CONSPIRACY: THE INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY AND COWARDICE OF ALEXANDER COCKBURN AND NOAM CHOMSKY
by Michael Worsham.

Today, a third article was emailed to me by
"Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences)" . Although Noam Chomsky is not mentioned in it, the gist of it is similar to that of the above two articles. Here it is :

www.news.independent.co.uk
Doubt cast on JFK 'lone assassin' theory
by Andrew Buncombe in Washington
18 May 2007,

More than 40 years after he was fatally shot in
Dallas, researchers have added fresh fuel to the
speculation over who was involved in the assassination
of President John F Kennedy by claiming the original
bullet analysis was flawed and cannot rule out that a
second gunman was involved.

Using new scientific techniques not available to
previous researchers and analysing bullets from the
same batch purportedly used by Lee Harvey Oswald, the
team has argued that it cannot be assumed that Oswald
was the only assassin involved. While they do not
claim evidence to prove a second gunman participated,
they say the original fragments of the bullets
recovered from the scene of the shooting should be
re-examined.

"Given the significance and impact of the JFK
assassination, it is scientifically desirable for the
evidentiary fragments to be reanalysed," the
researchers write in the journal Annals of Applied
Statistics.

Kennedy, the 35th US president, was fatally shot as
his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas on
22 November 1963. The official Warren commission that
investigated the killing concluded the following year
that the president had been killed by two of three
shots fired by Oswald - his first shot having missed -
from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book
Depository.

The second shot - the so-called magic bullet - struck
Kennedy in the back and exited through his neck before
striking the Texas Governor John Connally, who was
travelling in the same limousine. The third shot hit
Kennedy in the head and killed him.

Despite the official conclusion that Oswald acted
alone, there has been endless speculation other gunmen
participated in the killing and that the authorities
sought to cover up their participation. Grainy
photographs and footage from a home movie, the
Zapruder film, are examined for other possible
assassins standing on the grassy knoll or else behind
the white picket fence - locations surrounding Dealey
Plaza that have entered conspiratorial lore.

The team arguing that five fragments of bullet
recovered from Dealey Plaza be re-examined include
William Tobin, the FBI's former chief metallurgy
analyst, who examined evidence from cases such as the
1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1996 bombing of TWA
Flight 800.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that after he
retired, Mr Tobin drew national attention by
questioning the FBI's methods of matching bullets to
suspects based on their lead content. As a result of
his questions, the bureau switched its methods.
The original analysis, based on lead content,
concluded the five fragments came from just two
bullets, traced to the same batch that Oswald bought.
Mr Tobin and his colleagues purchased bullets from the
same batch owned by Oswald - available on the internet
as collectors' items - and used new techniques to
analyse them. They found the science and statistical
assumptions used by the original examination to
conclude the fragments were from just two bullets was
wrong.

"This finding means that the bullet fragments from the
assassination that match could have come from three or
more separate bullets," the researchers write. "If the
assassination fragments are derived from three or more
separate bullets than a second assassin is likely."

Conspiracists have received support from many areas,
not least Oswald's background as a visitor to the
Soviet Union and his interest in Cuba. The fact that
he himself was shot just days after the assassination
by a man with low-level links to the Mafia - and who
himself died soon afterwards from cancer - have only
added to speculation.

A 1979 report by the House Select Committee on
Assassinations concluded it was likely Oswald acted as
part of a conspiracy and that a second gunman is
likely to have fired at Kennedy but missed.
But for each point raised by the conspiracists, others
have been able to offer a rebuttal. Just last month,
former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi published an
exhaustive 2,792-page book, Reclaiming History, that
also concludes Oswald acted alone and seeks to knock
down most, if not all, the surviving conspiracies.

Despite this, polls show that a majority of Americans
still believe there was more to Kennedy's
assassination and the official version is not
complete. Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed,
another convincing study that concludes Oswald acted
alone, hits upon one reason why people cannot accept
that Oswald, armed with a $12 rifle, could be
responsible for such an epic event.

In the book he quotes the historian William
Manchester: "Those who desperately want to believe
that President Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy
have my sympathy. If you put the murdered President of
the United States on one side of the scale and that
wretched waif Oswald on the other side, it does not
balance. You want to add something weightier to
Oswald."

The conspiracy theories :

* Kennedy was killed by Cuban agents in retaliation
for the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.
* Four gunmen killed Kennedy but Oswald was not among
them and knew nothing of the plot - a theory expounded
by Ron Rice, a member of staff at Dallas's Conspiracy
Museum.
* Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, who then became
President, arranged the assassination - a theory
outlined in a book by Barr McClellan, father of
President Bush's former spokesman Scott McClellan.
* A second gunman was involved in the killing, a
theory given even more oxygen by Oliver Stone's 1991
movie JFK which shows a puff of gunsmoke on the
plaza's grassy knoll. Norman Mailer has also posited
this theory.
* Kennedy's killing was organised by the Mafia because
of the increasing pressure put on them by his brother,
the attorney general, Robert Kennedy.
* Israel organised the killing to retaliate against
Kennedy's opposition to its nuclear weapons ambitions.

(Emphasis added - B.M.)

2007-05-01T01:17:00.000-07:00

MORE ON THE TREACHERY OF NOAM CHOMSKY(article 43)
by Benjamin Merhav

Noam Chomsky's notorious statement that the USA is the "most free country in the world" alerted me to write 4 consecutive articles (see articles 34-37 in this series : http://treacheryof.blogspot.com/ ) so as to warn people not be complacent. However, on the surface, apart from the fascist Military Commissions Act there were no obvious signs of an approaching military dictatorship in the USA, so nobody seemed to worry over there. Now, with the added USA piece of fascist legislation, the Defense Authorization Act,as well as other fascist laws, and with the deterioration of USA adventure-crimes in Iraq and in Afghanistan, as well as in the rest of the Milddle East,and in Latin America, the danger of full scale fascism in the USA is much more ominous to ignore. Yet Noam Chomsky and his cabal are keeping silent, as if the USA continues to be the "most free country in the world".

The following article by Justine Raimondo, of antiwar.com, is not following the Chomsky complacency advice (albeit he wrogly trusts Alexander Cockburn, who is one of Chomsky's cronies). The article is alerting people to the imminent danger of full scale fascism in the USA, a great danger to the entire humanity.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10895
April 30, 2007
Blueprint for Dictatorship
Recent legislation sets us up for tyranny
by Justin Raimondo

America is headed for a military dictatorship – and recent legislation makes this all but inevitable. Last September, Congress passed the Defense Authorization Act, which empowered the president to declare martial law with very little provocation, namely in the aftermath of a "terrorist attack or incident." Having determined that "the execution of the laws" is hampered by the "incident," the president can unilaterally impose martial law – without the consent of Congress, which need only be informed of the event "as soon as practicable." The only condition attached instructs the president to report to Congress after 14 days, and every 14 days thereafter.

This use of the military to enforce domestic order is a new development in American history, one that augurs a turning point not only in terms of law, but also in our evolving political culture. Such a measure would once have provoked an outcry – on both sides of the aisle. When the measure passed, there was hardly a ripple of protest: the Senate approved it unanimously, and there were only thirty-something dissenting votes in the House. Added to the Military Commissions Act [.pdf], this new brick in the wall of domestic repression creates the structure of a new imperial system on the ruins of the old constitutional order. George W. Bush and his hard-core neoconservative henchmen may have lost the war in Iraq, but they have won a virtually uncontested victory at home: the conquest of the old republic by an emerging imperial order.

This recalls the opening of Garet Garrett's 1952 philippic, Rise of Empire, wherein he diagnosed the essential indeterminacy of the transition:
"We have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire. If you ask when, the answer is that you cannot make a single stroke between day and night; the precise moment does not matter. There as no painted sign to say: 'You are now entering Imperium.'"

The usually prescient Garrett got it somewhat wrong here: The single stroke between day and night can be fixed precisely in time, at 8:45 a.m. EDT on Sept. 11, 2001, and the Military Commissions Act and the disturbing changes in the U.S. Code outlined above are the closest to painted signs we are likely to get. Waiting in the wings, an infamous cabal took advantage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, moving with preternatural speed to consolidate a dictatorship of fear. With the passage of more recent legislation, they are now moving to consolidate their gains. Sinisterly, the new legislation also alters the language of Title 10, Chapter 15, Section 333 of the U.S. Code (the so-called Insurrection Act) in an ominous manner:

"Whenever the president considers it necessary to use the militia or the armed forces under this chapter, he shall, by proclamation, immediately order the insurgents or those obstructing the enforcement of the laws to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time."
Why insert the bolded phrase – unless your objective is to widen the category of miscreants to include those exercising their First Amendment rights? No one expects an insurgency to be launched in this day and age in America, yet peaceably assembling to protest government policies can easily be interpreted to include "obstructionists" who might be "dispersed." As José Padilla discovered, any American can be kidnapped and held without trial – or even formal charges – on the orders of the president, and the granting of unprecedented power to rule by decree builds on this neo-royalist theory.

The Bushian doctrine of the "unitary executive," which gives the occupant of the White House monarchical power in wartime, has now been approved by the Democrats, who can't wait to wield it themselves. Of course, they would exercise such unholy power only in a good way – say, if a state refused to cooperate in enforcing or implementing federal legislation instituting a draft, or, more likely, federalizing a state National Guard unit to be shipped to the Middle East.

Oh, you mean that's not so good? Just wait until the Democrats get their hands on all that power: then you'll see the real collapse of the movement to preserve civil liberties in America. Remember, it was Hillary Clinton who said of the Internet: "We are all going to have to rethink how we deal with this, because there are always competing values. There's no free decision that I'm aware of anywhere in life, and certainly with technology that's the case." Yes, the technology is very "exciting," she averred, yet "there are a number of serious issues without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function. What does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation, or to respond to what someone says?"

The First Amendment is not big with Hillary and never has been. She's power-mad, and every once in a while the frigid mask gives way to the face of a real authoritarian, albeit a different one than that of the red-state fascists, as Lew Rockwell describes the anti-libertarian Right. Blue-state fascists trample on our civil liberties "for the children," but the effect is the same: bipartisan support for the abolition of our old republic and the inauguration of a new era in American history: the Age of Empire.

With the neoconized "conservative" movement transformed into a force fully committed to outright authoritarianism, and the "liberals" defending the depredations of the Democrats in power, who will be left to defend what's left of the Constitution? Just Ron Paul and Alexander Cockburn. The rest will go with the herd instinct of sheep threatening to stampede at the apparent intrusion of a wolf in their pasture.

Under the terms of this legislation, who defines a terrorist "incident"? The president. Who defines an "unlawful combination"? The president. Who determines that a "conspiracy" is in progress, one that threatens national security and domestic order? The president of these United States – which are to be united, in our darkest future, by a superpresident who can outlaw the opposition with the stroke of a pen and is more a military leader than the chief executive of an ostensible republic.

Stop, for a moment, and consider where we are in the spring of 2007.
On the home front, the representatives of the people have conceded the last of their waning powers to the executive branch and paved the way for the restoration of royalism in America. Overseas, American troops are fighting a war of conquest – there is no other way to describe it – in an effort to prop up a rapidly failing puppet government in the Middle East. Meanwhile, U.S. forces are gathering in the Persian Gulf for what looks to be a strike against Iran.

The unpopularity of our foreign policy is increasingly a cause for concern in the Imperial City, where both parties have colluded – with surprisingly little dissent – in ensuring a permanent U.S. military presence in the Middle East. It is merely a question of the size of our footprint that divides the two major parties on this all-important question. The Democrats want to "redeploy" – to Qatar and other neighboring countries. The Republicans won't give up an inch of conquered Iraqi territory and instead want to extend the battle into Iran, which is already the target of a not-so-covert campaign aiming at "regime change." (The Iran Freedom Support Act, authorizing millions in aid to "democratic" groups, was supported by the leadership of both parties in Congress.)

Rising antiwar sentiment worries William F. Buckley Jr., who opines that "There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican Party will survive this dilemma." Given the authoritarian proclivities of the Bush administration and the neoconized GOP, there are grounds for wondering whether the republic will survive. We are just a terrorist "incident," either real or imagined, away from a declaration of martial law and all its attendant consequences. Buckley grimly notes the polls are "savagely decisive" on the war question, and he asks: "Beyond affirming executive supremacy in matters of war, what is George Bush going to do?" The answer may be contained in Title 10, Chapter 15, Section 333.

Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.) are sponsoring legislation that would repeal the changes, but, as Sen. John Warner pointed out the other day, when the Insurrection Act was revised to give the president extraordinary powers, no one raised any objection. Now, suddenly, the senators, including Warner, see some reason to regret their hasty actions – do they know something we don't?

I fear, however, that it may be too late. Bush will surely veto the Leahy-Bond measure – and, if necessary, declare America's governors, who all oppose this brazen usurpation, an "unlawful combination," as the Insurrection Act puts it. Then he will be empowered to "disperse" them, and the Senate, at will.

I'm back to Garet Garrett, who never fails to come up with some apt aphoristic prognostication, this one being from his classic The Revolution Was:

"There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom." (Emphasis added -B.M.)

2007-04-28T01:27:00.000-07:00

MORE ON THE TREACHERY OF NOAM CHOMSKY
(article 42) by Benjamin Merhav

One by one, it seems, the Noam Chomsky and the Uri Avnery devotees are deserting their masters' sinking ships. One by one all the masks are falling off the faces of these two zionist impostors, and there is very little left for them to masquerade and to hide behind and cover up their true zionist loyalties. The following article is the latest evidence for this inevitable trend.
At the bottom of the article the author, Roger Tucker, who is the editor of OneState.net, adds the following note : "I forgot to add Michael Lerner, the Editor/Publisher of Tikkun to the list of crypto Zionists pushing for the "two state solution." He belongs on it. " This is true, of course, but Rabbi Lerner is not the only crypto zionist who was left out of the Tucker list. Tucker's website has a list of its most favourable authors (which includes Noam Chomsky and Uri Avnery) and the majority of them are crypto zionists ( and most are devotees of Chomsky and/or Uri Avnery). Therefore, the question arises : is the author/editor himself a crypto zionist too ? There are several reasons for suspecting that he still remains a crypto zionist. Here are some :

1. The short article which follows his is by Prof.Virginia Tilley, and it is appropriately titled ,Uri Avnery's Loyalty, as she avoids mentioning Noam Chomsky at all. The reason is that she is a Chomsky devotee herself, and therefore a crypto zionist herself , of necessity !

2. The article, which is supposed to be critical of crypto zionists like Uri Avnery, is instead full of admiration for Uri Avnery. Some of his expressions of exaltation begin with a distorted role Avnery's zionist Gush Shalom organisation as follows : "Following the lead of Gush Shalom, pretty much the entire Israeli left opposes the Occupation, decries apartheid, the wall, the deeply racist character of Israeli society, the truly horrible and revolting actions of the Israeli state against the indigenous people of Palestine, and so on." Then Tucker moves to the extolling of Uri Avnery in person as follows : "And how could a man as intelligent, knowledgeable, well-intentioned and courageous as Uri Avnery be party to this travesty of common sense?", and further more: "Mr. Avnery, this heroic figure, this lion of a man, is what I call a "closet," or "crypto" Zionist."

3. Tucker says that "Yassir Arafat, who managed to lead the Palestinian people down the garden path to utter destruction, provided Mr. Avnery, a man of conscience who was also a Zionist, with a lifeline." This is as Arafat has been viewed by fanatical zionists,namely,blaming Arafat for the suffering and oppression of the Palestinians,not the zionists,not the zionist apartheid regime of Israel! Uri Avnery is "a man of conscience who was also a Zionist".How could anyone be a "man of conscience" if he is a zionist ?

Nevertheless, the article as a whole proves the demise of Uri Avnery, Noam Chomsky, and their ilk.
Here it is :

http://countercurrents.org/tucker280407.htm

Open Letter To Uri Avnery,
Noam Chomsky And Jimmy Carter
By Roger Tucker
28 April, 2007
OneState.net

This essay is prompted by a piece, Bed of Sodom, by Uri Avnery (1), posted on the Gush Shalom website on April 21st. It is amusing and instructive that the article's name provides its organizing metaphor, taken from the Old Testament, but without acknowledging that the story is a Jewish version of the older Greek myth that tells the tale of one Procrustes, who insisted that one size fit all. The piece is a spirited defense of the two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, with Avnery contesting that the now popular comparison of Israel with the former South Africa is a force fit. No wonder Martin Luther said that "reason is a whore."

For those who don't know, Gush Shalom is the Israeli Peace Bloc, the oldest and largest, and one might say, most prestigious "progressive" group on the Israeli Left. Following the lead of Gush Shalom, pretty much the entire Israeli left opposes the Occupation, decries apartheid, the wall, the deeply racist character of Israeli society, the truly horrible and revolting actions of the Israeli state against the indigenous people of Palestine, and so on.

So far so good, but there's a nasty, disease ridden and contagious fly in the ointment. Gush Shalom, under the leadership of Mr. Avnery, is foursquare behind the so-called Two State Solution, along with some strange bedfellows, such as the hard line Zionist government and military, the American neo-cons, the Republicrats, the puppet Palestinian "government," the "Christian" Zionists, and the somewhat reluctant European nations. Strange bedfellows indeed. (For links to numerous articles on the relevant subjects, click on Zionism and the Israel Lobby.)

How could this be? Bed of Sodom is a strident, one might almost say desperate, attempt to rationalize and sustain this fantasy. And how could a man as intelligent, knowledgeable, well-intentioned and courageous as Uri Avnery be party to this travesty of common sense? There is an answer, and it explains not only the Israeli Left's clinging to this horses' ass of a "solution," but the American and European Left's complicity in this tragic fraud. The answer is a narrative, a mythology or religion of sorts, a seductive ideology that has trapped tens of millions of decent people in its web - it is called political Zionism, and at its heart, the core mythology, the narrative that must not be questioned (lest ye fall afoul of the Inquisition), is the cult of the Holocaust. (5)

The essential premise and point of the "Holocult" is that the Jews are 'perpetual victims,' who must have their own state if they are to survive. The now standard, orthodox Shoah story is used to disguise and justify actions which are in essence the same as those of the Nazis, but which nobody acknowledges as such. As Avnery himself has written, "Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the philosopher who was an observant orthodox Jew, told me once: "The Jewish religion died 200 years ago. Now there is nothing that unifies the Jews around the world apart from the Holocaust."

A short but incisive rebuttal of the Bed of Sodom was written by Virginia Tilley (2). (Included on the linked page is a more extensive rebuttal by John Spritzler.) Ms. Tilley takes a shot at answering the aforementioned question, but she leaves out a bit of tantalizing history that is very telling. Early on, Mr. Avnery befriended Yassir Arafat, the would be Fidel Castro of a proposed Palestinian state. It seems that Mr. Avnery was infatuated, perhaps to the point of idolizing Arafat, and he speaks of this friendship as if it were the defining relationship in his life. Go figure.

Alright, let's attempt to figure it out. Mr. Avnery, this heroic figure, this lion of a man, is what I call a "closet," or "crypto" Zionist. So are Mr. Chomsky and Mr. Carter, but we'll get to them later. The bottom line of Zionism is the requirement that there be a "Jewish State." Given that this State actually came into existence in the 20th Century, a stepchild of the Western Enlightenment (and bastard child of the UN, which thereby lost its legitimacy according to its own founding principles - sacrificing the natural sovereignty, not to mention basic human and civil rights, of indigenous peoples on the altar of a state and population superimposed by dubious 'international legal' fiat. Israel had, perforce, to masquerade as a "democracy," but if you're as fond of oxymorons as I am, the notion of a "Jewish Democracy" must give you pause.

Yassir Arafat, who managed to lead the Palestinian people down the garden path to utter destruction, provided Mr. Avnery, a man of conscience who was also a Zionist, with a lifeline. Here was a true partner to people like himself who wanted to have their cake and eat it too. Had Arafat not insisted on a separate Palestininan state (of which he, of course, would be the leader) the problem would have been resolved many years ago.

There is not the space here to go into the myriad reasons why the Two State Solution is a total chimera. A visit to www.one-state.net will provide you with most of the articles ever written on the subject, and this page references all of the books. I highly recommend Obstacles to Peace: A Reframing of the Palestinian - Israeli Conflict, 3rd Edition, by Jeff Halper and Michael Younan, because any reasonably intelligent high school kid, after perusing the excellent maps therein of the West Bank, will easily grasp that the idea is absurd. The maps, and the accompanying text, illustrate the infrastructure that the Israelis have created over the years. It is now a sheer physical, geographical reality that utterly precludes a viable Palestinian state, unless, of course, the Israelis, were to pick up their marbles and leave, or just roll over and die. Not to mention that it would take hundreds of billions of (mostly American) dollars to create even the semblance of such a state - not a likely eventuality.

Now let's turn to Noam Chomsky (3). Also something of a hero, his is the uncompromising voice of the elite American leftist intelligentsia. Fiercely attacked by the troglodytes of America, as Avnery is in Israel, he has shown grit and courage in the face of insufferable insults and unremitting attacks. His analyses of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and shifting sands of the Middle East has been nonpareil. And yet he is another closet Zionist. What a shame.

With all of these people, the bottom line is the continued existence of a Jewish entity, no matter how truncated or humbled. Why do they hold on to this 19th Century colonialist, racist, indeed fascist, ideal? They can't shake it off, this mesmerizing notion, which was born as a byproduct of British Imperial strategy, was then taken up in a fit of irrational desperation by liberal Jewish intellectuals like Theodor Hertzl, and became solidified in response to Auschwitz and Belsen-Belsen. Since then it has been nurtured, maintained, and effectively marketed by some of the most ruthless, unscrupulous and genocidal characters in history.

This is not a sideshow. The Zionist disease drives the American lust for empire that imperils the whole world, both its people and the planet itself.

And now we come to Jimmy Carter, who needs no introduction. He is not the war hero turned peace activist that Avnery is, nor the towering intellectual that Chomsky is. But he is an ex-President and a Christian who actually practices what he preaches. In spite of having being deeply sunk in the noxious sewers of Washington, DC politics, and in spite of having been immersed from childhood in the heartland of (a deeply pagan) Christian Zionism, the man acts like a saint, and is admired as such by millions of people. Obeying his conscience, he pointed out the rather obvious fact that Israel is an apartheid state, extraordinarily similar to the former South Africa. (4)

But President Carter was on my list even before he published that book. For here was a man that people would listen to, someone who had seen and heard enough to have realized that the faux peace negotiations were a time honoured Israeli tactic to forestall any possibility of peace until the job was done - that job being the final expulsion and/or destruction of the Palestinians, in order to finally establish Eretz Yisroel, Greater Israel. And he had the moral authority, credibility and gravitas, not to mention the audience, to speak the truth and be heard. What he actually did was lift up the merest corner, an inch or so, of the carpet, and point to a little bit of dirt. He didn't even mention that apartheid was part and parcel of Israeli policy within Israel itself, nor did he say a word about the ethnic cleansing going on - well, let's call a spade a spade, the deliberate and methodical genocide that has openly been Israeli policy for 60 years. And all this to further the fantasy of a "two state solution." Another closet Zionist.

It is because these men are among the best, that they are admirable, decent and well-intentioned people that I take them to task. Were they to acknowledge the obvious, be willing to suffer the pain involved in letting go of a cherished but hopelessly flawed and self-defeating wish-fulfillment fantasy, they could have an enormous effect on public opinion, perhaps bringing about the necessary paradigm shift that would not only prevent further suffering for millions of Palestinians, not to mention everyone else in the Middle East, including the hapless Israelis themselves, but could be the only thing that might forestall the looming spectre of WW III.

The laudable aims of the idealistic, cultural and spirtiual Zionism that preceded the creation of the Jewish State could yet be achieved, but only in the context of what is, after all, the gold standard of modern nations, a democratic, secular and pluralistic state, not a fascist, militaristic, racist, ethnocentric, paranoid entity that can never be anything but a nuclear armed bully, reviled and resisted in its immediate neighborhood, and a permanent pariah in the world at large.

Sometimes the truth hurts, as in an operation to remove a cancer. But it is the way to health. Some people say to me "But you want to wipe Israel off the map." My answer is always the same. "Please, someone, just give me the eraser."

(1) Uri Avnery is former Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, "Ha'olam Haze" newsmagazine, served 3 Terms as member of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), founding member of the Israeli council for Israeli-Palestinian peace, founding member, "Gush Shalom" (Peace Bloc) - Independent Peace Movement, Member of Samson's Foxes (commando unit) 1948 (twice wounded in action), Member of the Irgun 1938-1942.
(2) Virginia Tilley, a professor of Political Science, is the author of The One-State Solution : A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock, and is now working at the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa.
(3) Noam Chomsky is the Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at MIT. He has become widely known — especially internationally — for his media criticism and politics. Author of The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, he is also co-author, with Gilbert Achcar, of Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy.
(4) Avnery is battling the growing perception that Israel closely resembles the former So. Africa, and is at pains to point out the differences.
"One has to learn from South Africa that there is nothing to be gained from appealing to the conscience of the ruling people. Among the white minority in South Africa, there was no real difference between Left and Right, between open racists and liberals, who were but better disguised racists, with the exception of a few white heroes who joined the fight for freedom.
Therefore, redemption could only come from the outside. And indeed, world public opinion saw the injustice of apartheid and imposed a world-wide boycott on South Africa, till in the end the white minority capitulated."
But he doesn't draw the obvious conclusion, that the same thing must happen in Israel/Palestine. On the contrary, he argues that such a boycott couldn't succeed. He quotes his friend Adam Keller, "The entire world has imposed a blockade on the Palestinian people. But in spite of the terrible misery of the Palestinians, they have not been brought to their knees. Why do you think that a boycott would break the Israeli public, which is far stronger economically, so that they would give up the Jewish character of the state?"
What he has conveniently left out is the well known fact that without massive American support, Israel wouldn't last a month, with or without a boycott. It is crucial, therefore, that Americans wake up and take the lead in advocating a single state. Were they to do so, the Israelis would accept the inevitable, and far preferable idea, of one democratic, secular state for all the people between the river and the sea, and the nightmare would end.
(5) Lest the reader think that I am a "holocaust denier," let me put your mind at rest. I don't believe there are any such people, unless they're locked away in some mental asylum. I am, however, an admirer of the mainstream Holocaust revisionist historians (a number of whom are languishing in prison for being so audacious as to question the official story of the Cult). Here's a very interesting article on the subject. A here's a website that publishes scholarly works in the field.
The writer is the Editor/Publisher of www.one-state.net.

2007-04-18T18:19:00.000-07:00

MORE ON THE TREACHERY OF NOAM CHOMSKY(article 41)
by Benjamin Merhav

The author of the following article is a former Noam Chomsky devotee. For any reader who still trusts Noam Chomsky, the notorious zionist impostor, the article is an eye opener as it proves once more Chomsky's loyalty to both zionism and to USA imperialism.
Following the article is a report about Israel's recent attempts to drop nuclear bombs on Iran.

Here it is :

http://www.countercurrents.org/hassan190407.htm

Iran: The Price Of Being Defenceless
By Ghali Hassan
19 April, 2007

Ever since the U.S. began its preparation for aggression against Iran, Western media and Western elites have continue to demonise Iran and provide misleading propaganda to justify U.S. attacks against the Islamic Republic. On her part, Iran has the right to defend her sovereignty against any unprovoked act of aggression. A defenceless Iran would pay the heavy price Iraq is paying.

The same Western media and Western analysts who demonised Iraq to justify the illegal aggression are at it again, promoting new war of aggression against Iran. Like Western governments and Western media, the American linguist Noam Chomsky wasted no time in condemning Iran. In a recent article (Tom Dispatch, April 05, 2007) Chomsky writes: "Doubtless Iran's government merits harsh condemnation, including for its recent actions that have inflamed the crisis". What "actions" did Iran take to deserve "harsh condemnation"? Chomsky doesn’t elaborate?

If the "recent actions" are the apprehension of the 15 British "sailors" by the Iranian Navy, then Iran acted within her sovereign right to apprehend them.

The "sailors" have admitted on Iranian TV that they were knowingly trespassing in "Iranian water". According to Sky News, the captain of the British ship admitted that part of his team's mission in the Shatt al-Arab waterway was "to gather intelligence on the Iranians". In fact, the British Defence Secretary, Des Browne, defended the operation as an "important intelligence gathering" to "keep our people safe".

Unlike Iraqi prisoners and detainees in Iraq, who are enduring torture, and sexual abuses by U.S. and British occupying forces, the British "sailors" were well-treated and released unharmed.

It is astonishing that the abduction, imprisonment and torture of five Iranian officials – in violation of international accords – in Iraq by U.S. forces seem to have escaped Chomsky analysis. This wilful blindness of condemning Iran provides the U.S. with the necessary propaganda to demonise Iran and provides legitimacy for economic sanctions and war.

Moreover, Chomsky failed to show any hard evidence that Iran is actively engaged in anti-Occupation activities and supporting the Iraqi Resistance against the occupying forces in Iraq.
Furthermore, citing Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank (Mother Jones, March 01, 2007), Chomsky reinforcing the liberals’ propaganda that an attack on Iran will increase "terrorism". Since when are the legitimate rights to self-defence and resistance to unprovoked aggression has become "terrorism"?

Are the Iraqi people – the victims of terrorism – terrorists? Chomsky should know better. Moreover, credible sources reveal that Israel and the U.S. are interfering in Iran domestic affairs and are fomenting civil strife in the country, provocations acknowledged by Chomsky.
Lacking from Chomsky’s analysis is also the role of Israel and pro-Israel Zionists promotion for war against Iran. There is overwhelming evidence that Israel and the pro-Israel forces in the U.S. are promoting the current anti-Iran propaganda. It is Chomsky’s brilliant way of shielding Israel.

What is so ironic is that Iran, who is signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is being accused of having "nuclear ambitions" and threatened – with war – by the U.S. and Israel. Israel, meanwhile, continues to enjoy Western policy of deliberate hypocrisy and unconditional support. Israel has refused to sign the NPT despite having the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the region.

The aim is to fabricate pretexts (e.g. Weapons of Mass destruction), engineer crisis and justify war of aggression against Iran for the sake of Zionism. Since it’s creation on Palestinian land, Israel has lived with the myth of military "superiority", dominating the region and terrorising the defenceless Palestinian people and expropriating their land. Nevertheless, challenge to Israel domination and monopoly on violence by Palestinian and Lebanese resistance has demolished the Israeli myth and Israel’s misguided Zionist policy.

As a result of its defenceless state – enforced by the 13-years U.S.-Britain genocidal sanctions –, Iraq paid a heavy price. From 1991, U.S. and British forces subjected Iraq to daily indiscriminate air bombardments. The U.S.-Britain imposed illegal "no-fly zones" were designed to violate Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Unhindered by Iraq’s inability to defend its national airspace against invading aircrafts, U.S. and British warplanes were killing Iraqi civilians and destroying properties in violation of international law and civilised norms. The aim of the daily aggression and the economic sanctions were to prepare Iraq for the 2003 illegal invasion and Occupation.

As the Indian scholar, Aijaz Ahmed, pointed out in a recent article (Frontline, Mar. 24-Apr. 06, 2007): "The war against Iraq began not in 2003 but in 1991, when the U.S. attacked the country in order to recover Kuwait and ruin Iraq. U.S. aircraft flew 110,000 sorties between January 17 and February 28, 1991, averaging one aerial attack every 30 seconds, and dropped 88,500 tonnes of explosives, which is the TNT equivalent of seven and a half Hiroshima’s. No accurate figures are available but many sources, including the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), estimated that perhaps as many as two million Iraqis died during the six years between 1990 and 1997, including more than half a million children" under the age of five years.

Professor Ahmed added that; "some two million [Iraqi] refugees have left the country; almost an equal number have become refugees within Iraq; over half of Iraq's 4.5 million children are malnourished; and unemployment stands at over 70 per cent. These numbers should be seen in the perspective of the total population of the country, which was considerably less than 25 million at the onset of the war. We are talking of perhaps as much as half the population killed, maimed and injured, driven out of the country, driven into starvation, malnutrition, epidemic diseases, despair, and even crime". Why?

According to recent reliable estimate, over a million innocent Iraqis have been murdered in cold blood, as a direct result of four years of Occupation. The majority of the victims were innocent women and children. In addition, hundreds of Iraqis, including women and children are enduring torture and sexual abuses in hundreds of U.S.-Britain run prisons throughout Iraq. The situation for Iraqi civilians is in "ever-worsening humanitarian crisis" with the worst decline in child mortality, said the recent report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). "The suffering that Iraqi men, women and children are enduring today is unbearable and unacceptable", said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the director of operation of ICRC.
Iraq’s health situation accurately summarised by Bert De Belder of Medical Aid for the Third World in Belgium as: "[W]orse than ever because of the U.S.-led Occupation. The only way in "[r]eversing the current trend of ever-deteriorating health conditions requires first and foremost the end of the Occupation", added De Belder. (Al-Ahram Weekly, 5 - 11 April 2007).
In sum, an entire nation was violently taken hostage and deliberately and brutally destroyed. The U.S.-Britain aggression against the Iraqi people and the destruction of Iraq are premeditated war crimes.

Instead of being held responsible and tried for war crimes, the perpetrators of the aggression against Iraq have been re-elected, and are preparing for another war of aggression. Their agenda is the domination of the entire planet – hegemonic imperialism – through violence. The declared objective and true intent are to conquer people’s natural resources and using these resources to enhance an imperialist ideology.

If Western governments, the U.S. and Britain in particular, are sincerely committed to disarmament, peace and "democracy" in the region as they pretend to be, then they should disarm Israel of nuclear weapons, liberate the Palestinian people from Israel’s terror and end their imperialist Occupation of Iraq, as demanded loudly by the Iraqi people.
Finally, Iran is an important Muslim nation. After the destruction of Iraq, Iran remains the only nation in the Middle East not under Western-imperialist (U.S.-Britain) domination. Therefore, Iran struggle is a struggle for the liberation of Muslims not only in the Middle East, but also around the World.

To counter this imperialist threat, Iran should pursue a strategy of self-defence to deter any foreign aggression on her sovereignty, and protect the Iranian people.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.

==========

http://www.willthomas.net/Convergence/Weekly/Israeli_Nuclear_Strike_On_Iran.htm

Israeli Nuclear Strike On Iran Turned Back
By William Thomas
Jan 18th 2007

A recent strike by nuclear-armed Israeli Air Force fighter-bombers bound for targets in Iran was turned back after being intercepted by U.S. fighters over Iraq, this reporter has learned.
Two sources have independently confirmed the encounter, which took place on January 7, 2007.

Though the first informant offered few details beyond an initial tip, a second source long-known by this reporter to have well-placed U.S. and "non-U.S." military and government contacts provided specific information regarding the raid, which was aimed at the radical religious ayatollahs holding ultimate power in Iran.

Israeli nuclear strikes are not unprecedented. Soon after Desert Storm, U.S. Navy pilots told this reporter in Kuwait how in late 1990 Israel made good on its pledge to respond in kind to WMD attacks by launching nuclear-armed aircraft against Baghdad following a lethal assault on Tel Aviv by Scud missiles tipped with chemical warheads. That air strike was called off when the Americans refused to provide the vital IFF codes needed to fly through U.S.-controlled airspace.

When questioned concerning the "Identification Friend or Foe" transponder codes needed to overfly Iraq today, this source said that allied Israeli aircraft are routinely provided "squawk codes" when flying missions aimed at acquiring the characteristics of air defence radars triggered by their approach to Syrian, Jordanian, Iranian and U.S.-controlled Iraqi airspace.
This source added that visiting IAF warplanes are routinely "topped off" by American aerial refueling tankers, but only on condition that the Israeli jets fly a "racetrack" holding pattern—and do not continue "downtown" toward Iran.

The designated turn back point is the "160 station"—a clearly charted tapline road located 160 kilometers from Baghdad. Any aircraft proceeding beyond this point must declare its intentions. Otherwise, a USAF F-15 will take position off its wingtip. After waggling its own wings to attract attention, if the interloper fails to turn back, the American Eagle "drops behind and gets tone" by locking a Sidewinder anti-aircraft missile onto the offending plane.

According to this very reliable source, on two previous occasions Israeli fighter-bombers armed with nuclear bombs have headed "downtown" before being turned back over Iraq.
The January 7th mission, which trespassed beyond 160 station before being recalled by Israeli authorities, comprised three IAF F-16s. Each carried conventional munitions—as well as a single 20-kiloton nuclear bomb.

The atomic detonation that razed the city of Hiroshima and killed 140,000 people outright was a 13-kiloton blast. [Agence France-Presse Aug 6/05]

DEADLY DEFENCES

This report of an attempted nuclear strike contradicts military analysts who have long maintained that Israel would deploy as many as 25 I-model F-15 fighter-bombers from the 69th Squadron based at Hatzerim Air Base in the northern Negev, about 50 miles south of Tel Aviv. Any Israeli Air Force attack, it is believed, must first suppress Iranian air defenses, while ensuring that enough conventionally-armed F-15s get through to set back that country’s widely dispersed nuclear program for many years.

The latest model F-15 can carry as much ordnance as a neighborhood-flattening World War II B-17 heavy bomber. As the independent think tank Strategic Forecasting points out, the IAF "has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to conduct long-range strikes"—including the 1976 raid on Entebbe, 2,600 miles from Israel, and a 1985 attack on the PLO headquarters in Tunis, 1,500 miles away. [www.stratfor.com]

But Iran’s air defenses are far more formidable than any the Israeli Air Force has yet faced. Manufactured at the KBM factory near Moscow, Russian-supplied SA-18 Igla-S mobile missile batteries are said to be highly effective against low-flying jets. According to Russian intelligence sources known as DEBKA, the Igla’s mobility "makes them difficult to target and limits the maneuverability of Israeli planes."

DEBKA has also revealed that Russian advisers from the Raduga OKB engineering group based in Dubna near Moscow have completed installing two advanced radar systems around the Bushehr nuclear reactor on the Persian Gulf. Codenamed "Tin Shield", the mobile 36D6 systems are modified to protect Iran’s Russian-supplied nuclear facilities from American or Israeli aircraft, stand-off missiles, and cruise missile attacks. On January 12, 2006, Tin Shields also went operational around the uranium enrichment plants at Isfahan in central Iran.

Other air defenses supplied by Moscow to Syria—and most likely Iran—include advanced mobile SS-26 Iskander-E surface to surface missiles carrying a 1,000-pound multiple warhead capable of dodging air defense radars and electronic jamming, as well as surface-to-air SA-10 "Grumble" missiles capable of engaging several targets simultaneously at various altitudes, and SA-18 "Grouse" shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles fitted with a 4.5-pound high-explosive warhead. The SA-18 has a maximum range of 5.2 kilometers and a maximum altitude of 3.5 kilometers.

Another major worry for Israeli pilots is Iran’s first satellite. Carried into orbit by a Russian booster in October 2005, the Sinah-1 can provide a "look down" capability to spot low-flying aircraft long before they intrude Iranian airspace.
"The Iranians’ space programme is a matter of deep concern to us," said an Israeli defence source at the time. "If and when we launch an attack on several Iranian targets, the last thing we need is Iranian early warning received by satellite."

Moscow has also supplied an estimated $1 billion worth of advanced Tor-M1 anti-missile systems capable of destroying guided missiles and laser-guided bombs dropped from high-flying aircraft. "Once the Iranians get the Tor-M1, it will make our life much more difficult," worried an Israeli air force source. "We can’t waste time on this one." [www.envirosagainstwar.org ; Sunday Times Dec 11/05; WorldNetDaily.com Dec 11/05]

OSIRIK, THE SEQUEL

According to DEBKA, Moscow intends to secure its investment at Bushehr "against the fate of the Saddam Hussein’s French-built Tamuz nuclear center, which the Israeli air force bombed out existence 24 years ago."

Fitted with modified drop tanks to extend their range, a trio of smaller, more agile F-16s presents a much more difficult challenge to Iran’s defenders than a larger force of twin-engine F-15s. Renowned for their ability to "tweak" American-supplied weapons, the Israelis have, according to my inside source, managed to reduce the F-16’s radar profile "to the size of a kid’s tricycle."

As he described it, "We fuel ‘em up and they go off the reservation, hit afterburners, hit the deck, and vanish..."

Demonstrating his insider knowledge, he further noted that the Israelis have modified the original drop tanks supplied by the Americans to simultaneously feed the F-16’s single engine, thereby avoiding the fuel management distractions required to keep the fighter in balance using the one-tank-at-a-time U.S. system.

Also unlike their USAF counterparts, Israeli F-16s can simultaneously jettison their spent underwing fuel tanks without the risk of a tumbling drop tank striking live ordnance suspended under the fighter’s wings.

ONE-WAY MISSION

But even fitted with drop-tanks, unless assisted by USAF tankers or allowed to land in Iraq, low-flying F-16’s will burn too much fuel to return. Unless they receive a message in flight to turn back, this source said, Israeli pilots "have already been told before they get into the plane they are not coming back." He added that volunteer pilots are prepared to fly their nuclear bombs "into their targets" if necessary.

On January 7, after crossing into Iranian airspace, the three ground-hugging nuclear-armed Israeli F-16s would have turned north. Using conventional munitions, the jets would have attacked the 3rd Tactical Air Base at Hamadan to preclude pursuit by the obsolete Iranian air force F-4s stationed there.

Because the small Israeli strike force was expected to be flying a one-way mission, more modern Iranian F-5s and MiG-29s based at the 2nd Tactical Air Base at Tabriz would not have presented a problem on egress. [www.stratfor.com]

This source further stated that the crowded Iranian capitol and the "huge" Revolutionary Guard training facility at Hamadan are "defined targets." He added that Hamadan is also the Revolutionary Guard’s "central depository for WMD."

IRAN’S WMD

Late in 1990, as a Desert Storm gathered on Iraq’s western border, a convoy of six blacked out transport trucks departed a heavily guarded al-Jesira factory loading dock just outside Mosul. The vehicles included a 1983 red and white Scania transport van, a 1985 Scania with white cab and red box, an orange 1975 MAC truck, an orange 1986 Scania, a brown and white Volvo truck of unknown vintage, and another Scania transport sporting an orange cab and red box.
Already targeted by allied war planners, the al-Jesira Factory produced the uranium hexaflouride used in the difficult technical task of turning low-grade uranium into highly enriched uranium for weapons purposes.

License plates obscured with mud, and traveling only at night, the trucks drove south to a second loading stop in Baghdad, before turning east into Iran. According to a declassified U.S. military intelligence report, the containers sent to Shiite Teheran by Saddam’s dissident Shiite generals were clearly labeled: "Tularemia," "Anthrax," "Botulinum" and "Plague".
Their gift package also included an advanced Hewlett Packard computer, and a Linatron X-ray machine marked "pbg". Both were shipped from Iraq’s nuclear weapons facility at Mosul, along with sealed containers of uranium hexafluoride. Details of these WMD transfers were contained in a September 30, 2004 U.S. Department of Defence intelligence report widely distributed among U.S. government and military leaders: Filename:22010744.91r, PATHFINDER RECORD NUMBER: 11224; SUBJ: TRANSFER OF NUCLEAR, BIOLOGICAL, AND CHEMICAL (NBC) MATERIEL DURING DESERT STORM [original text: www.gulfwarvets.com/gulflink/95071920.txt]

DECAPITATION

Also contradicting military aviation experts and IAF cover stories, this source revealed that the intended targets on July 7th were not aimed at turning Iran’s five heavily defended nuclear reactors into as many Chernobyls. Nor could the Israeli attackers expect to hit Iran’s hundreds of widely dispersed nuclear research facilities. Instead, the January 7 mission objective was to pre-empt Teheran’s ability to attack Israel by eliminating Iran’s "Command and Control"—the religious leadership holding the "go codes" required to launch an Iranian attack on Israel.

"This cuts off the head of the snake and makes response impossible," my source said. "Decapitating" the country’s top leaders is possible, he went on, because they tend to feel safer by congregating. "Iranians are so untrusting of the communications networks and methodologies most other people use, they don’t use the Internet," he asserted. "They use the ‘sneaker net’ to walk the message over."

According to a London newspaper, a "massive" Israeli intelligence operation has been underway in Iran since that country was designated the "top priority for 2005." [Sunday Times Dec 11/05]

But my source described "years" of insertions of Israeli agents into Iran. Besides locating that country’s underground nuclear installations, Israeli "moles" are principally charged with "pinpointing individuals that would have to be taken out," he said. "To assure that the government is nonfunctional, you have to go at least 10 people back" from Iran’s top religious and political leaders.

" It’s like a fatwa," he continued. Acting as "target designators," Israeli agents equipped with miniaturized homing beacons "stay glued" to Iranian leaders." Because Iran’s religious and civil leadership often holds meetings on trains, a single well-timed Israeli strike "can take them all out," he affirmed. "Going downtown, goin’ for the black robes, they have on the ground confirmation."

Unlike a conventional high-explosive bomb, detonation of a hydrogen bomb ensures "success" in aborting a perceived Iranian attack by frying that all of that country’s computers, phones, radio and other electronic equipment in a massive Electromagnetic Pulse. Because Iranian military electronics are not "hardened" against EMP, and because Iranian war-fighting doctrine stipulates that commanders "use everything they have and hold nothing in reserve," this source pointed out that if an Israeli air raid is suspected, "all their stuff will be lit up." As a consequence, after an EMP from an atomic air burst, "Everything on will now be permanently off."

So will everyone caught in the initial blast wave and firestorm extending more than a dozen miles from the mushrooming blast’s epicenter, as well as all those caught in the radioactive fallout that follows. Ensuring regional radiation sickness, the sharkay day wind blows from NW to SE over Iran and surrounding countries, before shifting 180 degrees during the nighttime shamal.

CROSSING THE RED LINE

With Iranian missiles able to hit Tel Aviv and the Israeli nuclear plant and atom bomb dump at Dimona, and major powers pledged to Teheran’s defense, how Israel and the world expects to escape the moral, military and political consequences of another Hiroshima was not explained.
According to my informant, the three "warning" nuclear strikes launched against Iran and aborted by Israel came in response to threatening military moves that accompanied belligerent public statements by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"When they start to deploy, you decapitate so they can’t issue a go order," he said. "What would you do if your country was as small and vulnerable as Florida? If someone keeps saying they are going to punch you in the face, and then they start to get up out of their chair, what are you going to do? When it’s the survival of your family, the survival of your [race], there are no rules."

Though this source would not confirm the other two dates, one Israeli nuclear strike might
have been
launched shortly after December 14, 2005, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust a "myth" and suggested that Israel’s Jews be relocated to Europe or Alaska.
Dubbing Ahmadinejad, "Admin-job", this source dismissingly described the Iranian President’s role as "tech support" for the radical ayatollahs, whose national constitution calls for unremitting terror attacks against Israel and the United States—despite near unanimous opposition by Iran’s predominantly younger demographic.

Because Ahmadinejad "does what the black robes tell him," the Iranian president’s pre-approved public utterances are taken seriously by Israelis, who reportedly became alarmed just prior to
January 7 when the Iranian political leader made a short radio statement to his nation saying that a "consolidated" response was required to Bush "and the Zionists". That the Iranian president issued his address over more publicly accessible shortwave radio, instead of making his usual televised announcement was apparently considered especially menacing by Israeli intelligence.

Likening Israel to a tiny white desert scorpion that is "utterly fearless" in its own defense, this source emphasized that its leaders are "more than deadly serious" in defending their UN-imposed homeland. Determining the point where Iran becomes "a mortal threat" to Israel’s security by crossing the so-called red line "is a minute by minute decision," he said.

That red line was said to be breached in March 2006, when an Israeli army assessment warned that Iran was capable of enriching enough uranium to start producing nuclear weapons within three years. The previous December, Israeli President Ariel Sharon had declared, "Israel—and not only Israel—cannot accept a nuclear Iran. We have the ability to deal with this, and we’re making all the necessary preparations to be ready for such a situation." [www.stratfor.com]

Israeli military intelligence chief Aharon Zeevi Farkash also warned the Knesset, "If by the end of March the international community is unable to refer the Iranian issue to the United Nations Security Council, then we can say the international effort has run its course." [www.envirosagainstwar.org; Sunday Times Dec 11/05; WorldNetDaily.com Dec 11/05] (Emphasis added - B.M. )

2007-04-15T00:36:00.000-07:00

MORE ON THE TREACHERY OF NOAM CHOMSKY
(article 40) by Benjamin Merhav

This article, the 40th in my series, is being posted on my blog only six weeks away from the 40th anniversary of the zionist military invasion and occupation of Arab lands in early June, 1967. This coincidence also marks Noam Chomsky's service to the zionist apartheid regime of Israel, beginning with its formation in 1948 - which he supported along with its war of
ethnic cleansing against the Arab people of Palestine - and culminating in the zionist war of 1967(which was a copy of the Hitler regime invasion of the Soviet Union inWW2) . Repeat : he then strongly supported the zionist military aggression, yet now he purports to oppose its results, namely, the continued brutal occupation of the West Bank and of the Gaza Strip.

However, this article deals with the other side of the same coin, namely, with the long service by this notorious zionist impostor to USA imperialism, to the USA ruling class, while throughout that same time masquerading as the champion of anti-imperialist struggle, and as the worldwide guru of the Left.

The three parts of this article are as follows :

1. Noam Chomsky's service to the Pentagon funded MIT where he had held a teaching position for over 50 years.

2. Noam Chomsky's alliance with Alexander Cockburn in opposing the truth about the JFK murder, and in their support for the Warren Commission cover-up of the murder case.

3. Similarly, the refusal of the two to support the truth about the 9/11 events, sticking instead to the official White House wrong version of those events.

Chomsky's MIT service

In my first article in this series I have briefly raised the patent absurdity of Noam Chomsky holding a position of teaching at the Pentagon funded MIT while purporting to champion the struggle against USA imperialism ( see http:www.benmerhav.blogspot.com/ ). How could anyone overlook this ,so obvious a service, by this zionist impostor to USA imperialism for over 50 years is beyond me !

To explain how he got the job there, at MIT during 1955, Noam Chomsky resorts to the old zionist tactics : "anti-semitism". No other university/academic institution was then prepared to hire him, he "explains" now, because of "anti-semitic" reasons. This must be an obvious lie, because many other people of jewish background had been holding then teaching positions in USA universities. However, even if his "explanation" would be accepted, it does not explain why he kept on holding that position for over 50 years, knowing full well that the Pentagon was the major source of funding for MIT !

Under the title, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky's Ties to the Military , Bob Feldman recounts the truth ( see his article : http://www.remoteviewer.nu/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=274&newlang=fra )
as follows :

"In 1955, Chomsky's friend Roman Jakobson arranged for him to work as a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Chomsky, in his own words, `had no identifiable field or credentials in anything', but MIT, `a scientific university which didn't care much about credentials,' was willing to overlook his lack of certifiable `professional competence'.
Chomsky was made an assistant professor and assigned, ironically, to a machine translation project of the type he had often criticized.
The project was directed by Victor Yngve and was being conducted at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, which was subsidized by the U.S. military.
"...He was...interviewed by laboratory director Jerome Wiesner for the position...Chomsky was hired as a full-time faculty member, which meant that he was required to spend half his time working in the research lab...Here, his ASPECTS OF THE THEORY OF SYNTAX was hatched...The funding for the research published in ASPECTS was provided by `the Joint Services Electronics Program (U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force), the Electronics Systems Division of the U.S. Air Force, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and NASA..." (from NOAM CHOMSKY: A Life of Dissent by Robert Barsky).

Jerome Weisner later became the head of JFK's Science Advisory Committee during the early 1960s; and according to the 1965 annual report of the Ford Foundation-subsidized Institute for Defense Analyses Pentagon weapons-research think-tank, Jerome Weisner was an Adviser to IDA's Jason Division group of university professors who performed counter-insurgency, Vietnam War-related weapons research every summer during the 1960s Viet Nam War Era.

When students shut down Columbia University in 1968 in support of the demand that Columbia resign its institutional membership in IDA, MIT Professor Chomsky constructed a left anti-war rationalization for opposing the Columbia student revolt - but he did not disclose at the time that an IDA Jason Division consultant, Jerome Weisner, was the person who hired him as an MIT professor and military lab researcher during the McCarthy Era.

As Barsky also notes in his NOAM CHOMSKY: A Life of Dissent book: "While he admired `the challenge to the universities' that the students were so vehemently presenting, Chomsky thought their rebellions were `largely misguided,' and he `criticized [them] as they were in progress at Berkeley (1966) and Columbia (1968) particularly."

Today, of course, MIT is still the 12th-largest recipient of U.S. Air Force war research contracts and among the top recipients of U.S. Air Force war research contracts.

Also, there doesn't appear to be any reference to the $350,000 Inamori Foundation/Kyoto Prize grant that was given to MIT Professor Chomsky in the late 1980s, in the index of the Barsky biography of him.

The reference to the military links is also in CAMPUS, INC.: Corporate Power in the Ivory Tower, edited by Geoffry D. White,. In an interview in the last chapter, MIT Professor Chomsky says: "...The universities did receive large-scale subsidies, quite often under the cover of defense . I happened to be on a committee that was set up to investigate these matters about thirty years ago. It was the first such committee for me as a result of student activism that was concerned about the reliance of MIT on military spending, what it meant, and so on. So there was a faculty/student committee set up and I was asked to be on it, and I think it was the firstreview ever of MIT fundidng...My memory is that at that time, about half of MIT's income came from two military laboratories. These were secret laboratories. One was Lincoln Labs and one then called the I Labs, now the Draper Labs, which at the time was working on guidance systems for intercontinental missiles and that sort of thing. These were secret labs and that was approximately half of the income. And, of course, that income in all kinds of ways filtered into the university through library funds and health funds and so on. Nobody knew the bookkeeping details and nobody cared much, but it was an indirect subsidy to the university.

"The other half, the academic budget, I think it was about 90 percent Pentagon funded at that time. And I personally was right in the middle of it. I was in a military lab. If you take a look at my early publications,they all say something about Air Force, Navy, and so on, because I was in a military lab, the Research Lab for Electronics. But in fact, even if you were in the music department, you were, in effect, being funded by the Pentagon because there wouldn't have been a music department unless therewas funding for, say, electrical engineering. If there was, then you could dribble some off to the music department. So, in fact, everybody was Pentagon funded no matter whatever the bookkeeping notices said. "

"Well, it's important to recognize that during that period, the university was extremely free. The lab where I was working, the research lab for electronics, was also one of the centers of anti-Vietnam War resistance. We were organizing national tax resistance and the support groups for draft resistance were based there to a large extent. I mean, I, myself, was in a jail repeatedly at the time. It didn't make any difference. The Pentagon didn't care. In fact, they didn't care at all as far as I knew."

"Their function, they understood very well, is to provide the cover for the development of the science and technology in the future so that the corporate system can profit. "

GW: So they were just too big and powerful to be threatened. You were too minor of a threat?

MIT Professor Chomsky: "They just didn't care. What happened at the administrative level I didn't know, but nothing ever got to us. I had perfectly good relations with the administration. In fact, I'd tell them if I knew I was going to get arrested. I had no particular interest in embarrassing them, but it didn't matter. "

GW: Okay, but before things started shifting more and more to corporate funding, are you saying that when the funding came from the Pentagon it was completely `free'?

MIT Professor Chomsky: "Overwhelmingly it was free. You could do pretty much waht you wanted. And there was nothing secret on campus. In fact, we investigated secrecy specifically in the committee. Although it was regarded in the government as military-related work, there was virtually nothing that was secret. In fact, the parts that were secret were mostly an impediment to research. It wasn't because anybody wanted it (secrecy), it was just some technical detail that hadn't been ironed out. You could do what you wanted in your personal and political life, and also in your academic and professional life, wihtin a broad range. It [MIT] must've been one of the most free universities in the world."

GW: Who had access to the results of all this work and research?

MIT Professor Chomsky: "But that's a joke. I remember a discussion once with the head of the instrumentation lab, which was the lab that was working on guidance stystems for intercontinental missiles. Of course it was all classified, but he said that from his point of view, he woul be perfectly happy to declassify everything and give the books to the Russians and the Chinese. He said they can't do anything with them anyway. They don't have the industrial capacity to use the technology that we're developing. So the whole effect of the classification system was to impede communication among the American scientists. "

GW: With what result?

MIT Professor Chomsky: "Well, nothing, I mean, they kept that system classified and sort of spun it off, it's now a secret lab, independent of MIT. But, in answer to your question, right now, for example, there's an agency in the Pentagon, DARPA, the Defense Advance Research Project Agency,which has been the center of innovation for many years. It's where the Internet comes from. .."

Of course, what MIT's Chomsky is failing to disclose in this interview is that if you check out MIT's web site and the Draper Lab web site, the military research that's going on today at MIT LIncoln Laboratory and Draper Lab is related to space warfare technology development.
And DARPA is more about developing the weapons technology that's been used during the last few years than just doing "Internet" research.

The MIT LIncoln Laboratory web site states, for instance: "MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Suface Surveillance Program develops advanced technology for detecting and identifying vehicles and facilities on and beneath the surfacein wide-area, heavily cluttered and electronically hostile battlefields. MIT Lincoln Laboratory has developed clutter cancellation technology that isused in today's airborne surveillance systems...We are developing technology capable of detecting and tracking moving targets that are partially or fully obscured by foliage."

And Draper Lab President Vincent Vitto said in 2001: "Draper's core work remains focused on the development of innovative solutions for theDepartment of Defense's future technology needs.... These areas includeprecision targeting and weapons systems..."

Chomsky's Support for the Warren Commission Cover-Up of the JFK Murder Case

The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Oswald was the lone gunman who killed JFK, the USA President, in Dallas, Texas,on the 22 November, 1963, by a single bullet to his head. This conclusion has since been proven beyond doubt to be wrong, and a cover-up for the real murderers who had connections to the CIA, the American Mafia and to the zionist Gestapo in Israel. Jack Rubby, the man who murdered Lee Oswald (so as to prevent the truth from emerging for the American public) turned out to be the man with connections to all those three secret organisations. In fact, of the three, the zionist Gestapo had the most "urgent reason" to murder President Kennedy, because he was the first and only American president who opposed Israel's nuclear bombs production in Dimona, which was then at its early stages.

Noam Chomsky, along with his mate, Alexander Cockburn, have supported the Warren Commission cover-up, and ridiculed the people on the Left who opposed them. Here are some of the reactions on the Left in the USA to the treachery of those two :

http://www.geocities.com/mdmorrissey/rechom1.htm

"Rethinking Chomsky

Rethinking Camelot (Boston: South End Press, 1993) is Noam Chomsky's worst book. I don't think it merits a detailed review, but we should be clear about the stand that "America's leading intellectual dissident," as he is often called, has taken on the assassination. It is not significantly different from that of the Warren Commission or the majority of Establishment journalists and government apologists, and diametrically opposed to the view "widely held in the grassroots movements and among left intellectuals" (p. 37) and in fact to the view of the majority of the population.

For Chomsky, the only theories of the assassination "of any general interest are those that assume a massive cover-up, and a high-level conspiracy that required that operation." These he rejects out of hand because "There is not a phrase in the voluminous internal record hinting at any thought of such a notion," and because the cover-up "would have to involve not only much of the government and the media, but a good part of the historical, scientific, and medical professions. An achievement so immense would be utterly without precedent or even remote analogue."

These arguments can be as glibly dismissed as Chomsky presents them. It is simply foolish to expect the conspirators to have left a paper trail, much less in the "internal record," or that part of it that has become public. It is equally foolish to confuse the notion of conspiracy and cover-up with the much more broadly applicable phenomenon of "manufacturing consent," to use Chomsky's own expression. You don't have to be a liar to believe or accept or perpetuate lies. This is exactly what Chomsky himself and Edward Herman say about the media, and it applies to the "historical, scientific, and medical professions" as well:

"Most biased choices in the media arise from the preselection of right-thinking people, internalized preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints of ownership, organization, market, and political power. Censorship is largely self-censorship, by reporters and commentators who adjust to the realities of source and media organizational requirements and by people at higher levels within media organizations who are chosen to implement, and have usually internalized, the constraints imposed by proprietary and other market and governmental centers of power (Manufacturing Consent, NY: Pantheon, 1988, p. xii).
Nevertheless, Chomsky admits that a "high-level conspiracy" theory makes sense if "coupled with the thesis that JFK was undertaking radical policy changes, or perceived to be by policy insiders." Rethinking Camelot is devoted to refuting this thesis.

I've addressed this subject before ("Chomsky on JFK and Vietnam," The Third Decade, Vol. 9, No. 6, pp. 8-10), so I won't repeat myself. But two things should be clear. First, Chomsky has loaded the deck. The theory that Kennedy was secretly planning to withdraw from Vietnam regardless of how the military situation developed is not the only one that supports a conspiracy view of the assassination. This is John Newman's highly speculative argument in JFK and Vietnam (NY: Warner Books, 1992), which is so easy to refute that one wonders if it was not created for this purpose. Why else would the CIA, in the form of ex-Director Colby, praise the work of Newman, an Army intelligence officer, as "brilliant" and "meticulously researched" (jacket blurb)? In any case, accepting the fact that we cannot know what JFK's secret intentions were or what he would have done, the fact that he was planning to withdraw by the end of 1965 is irrefutable.

Secondly, it should be clear that Chomsky's view of the relation, that is, non-relation, of the assassination to subsequent policy changes is essentially the same as Arthur Schlesinger's. They are both coincidence theorists. Schlesinger says Johnson reversed the withdrawal plan on Nov. 26 with NSAM 273, but the idea that this had anything to do with the assassination "is reckless, paranoid, really despicable fantasy, reminiscent of the wilder accusations of Joe McCarthy" (Wall Street Journal, 1/10/92). The assassination and the policy reversal, in other words, were coincidences.

I suspect Chomsky knows he would appear foolishly naive if he presented his position this way, so he has constructed a tortured and sophistic argument that "there was no policy reversal" in the first place, which, if true, would obviate the question of its relation to the assassination. A neat trick if you can pull it off, and Chomsky gives it a good try, but in the end he fails. In fact, he undermines his own position by making it even clearer than it has been that the reversal of the assessment of the military situation in Vietnam, which caused the reversal of the withdrawal policy, occurred very shortly after the assassination, and that the source of this new appraisal was the intelligence agencies:

The first report prepared for LBJ (November 23) opened with this "Summary Assessment": "The outlook is hopeful. There is better assurance than under Diem that the war can be won. We are pulling out 1,000 American troops by the end of 1963." ... The next day, however, CIA director John McCone informed the President that the CIA now regarded the situation as "somewhat more serious" than had been thought, with "a continuing increase in Viet Cong activity since the first of November" (the coup). Subsequent reports only deepened the gloom (p. 91).
By late December, McNamara was reporting a "sharply changed assessment" to the President (p. 92).

The only difference between this and Schlesinger's view is that Chomsky says the assessment of the military situation changed first, and then the policy changed. So what? The point is that both things changed after the assassination. The President is murdered, and immediately afterward the military assessment changes radically and the withdrawal policy changes accordingly. It matters not a whit if the policy reversal occurred with NSAM 273, as Schlesinger says, or began in early December and ended de jure in March 1964, as the Gravel Pentagon Papers clearly say (Vol. 2, pp. 191, 196).

Nor does it matter what JFK's secret intentions may have been. It is more important to note that according to Chomsky's own account, whose accuracy I do not doubt, the source of the radically changed assessment that began two days after the assassination was the CIA and the other intelligence agencies. Furthermore, this change in assessment was retrospective, dating the deterioration of the military situation from Nov. 1 or earlier. Why did it take the intelligence agencies a month or more to suddenly realize, two days after the assassination, that they had been losing the war instead of winning it?

This question may be insignificant to coincidence theorists like Schlesinger and Chomsky, but not to me. Rethinking Camelot has shown me -- sadly, because I have been an admirer -- that Chomsky needs to do some serious rethinking of his position, and that I need to do some rethinking of Mr. Chomsky."

http://www.rtis.com/reg/bcs/pol/touchstone/february97/worsham.htm

"JFK CONSPIRACY: THE INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY AND COWARDICE OF ALEXANDER COCKBURN AND NOAM CHOMSKY
by Michael Worsham

When JFK came out in 1991, I felt Oliver Stone hit the nail on the head. During 1992, some progressive/liberal writers, including Alexander Cockburn of The Nation, criticized Stone, and said there was no conspiracy, and even if there was, it did not matter because Kennedy, despite his great personal charisma, dynamic speaking, etc., was underneath, the same as all the other power-hungry and money-loving capitalists.

I asked Alexander Cockburn about JFK when he visited TAMU in 1992 (with the help of Danny Yeager and The Touchstone), but he seemed bored talking about Kennedy. As I sat and chatted with Mr. Cockburn along with the rest of the Touchstone gang (as it existed back in 1992) around a table at a local College Station restaurant, I was extremely puzzled and just could not understand how someone as educated, well-read, and perceptive about so many national and world affairs as Mr. Cockburn could really believe a complete load of crap like the Warren Commission report. It just did not make sense.

I learned a little later that Noam Chomsky also took the position that there was no conspiracy. Most of what I know about Mr. Chomsky is what I read in his occasional editorials in the now-defunct Lies Of Our Times magazine, and through the movie Manufacturing Consent (a biography of Mr. Chomsky worth watching, especially for the section on the N.Y. Times and East Timor).

Now, an answer as to why these and other progressive writers smart enough to know better, support (at least publicly) the Warren Commission has surfaced in the Jan-Feb issue of Probe (the newsletter of Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination, http://www.webcom.com/ctka).

According to a Probe article by Ray Marcus, back in early 1969 Mr. Chomsky met with several Kennedy experts and spent several hours looking at and discussing assassination photos. Mr. Chomsky even cancelled several appointments to have extra time. There was a followup meeting with Mr. Chomsky, which also lasted several hours. These meetings were ostensibly to try to do something to reopen the case. According to the Probe article, Mr. Chomsky indicated he was very interested, but had to give the matter careful consideration before committing.

After the meeting, Selwyn Bromberger, an MIT philosophy professor who had sit in on the discussion, said to the author: "If they are strong enough to kill the President and strong enough to cover it up, then they are too strong to confront directly . . . if they feel sufficiently threatened, they may move to open totalitarian rule." According to the author, Mr. Chomsky had given every indication that he believed there was a conspiracy at these meetings.

However, Mr. Chomsky never got involved with trying to reopen the case.

The same Probe article mentions that (the late) I.F. Stone, another leading progressive writer of the past, also took a position supportive of the Warren Commission in I.F. Stone's Weekly for Oct. 5, 1964.

Alexander Cockburn now writes for CounterPunch, a solid bi-weekly newsletter associated with the liberal Institute for Policy Studies. CounterPunch is fine, and worth reading, although its articles are never authored. CounterPunch also overly dwells on Washington D.C. politicians, like the tabloids, except that CounterPunch emphasizes financial instead of sexual misdeeds—i.e., it follows the money. (Recently CounterPunch was also the only organization of about 20 which refused my renewal check, subject to a simple agreement not to release my name or pester me with junk mail—more on this in a future issue of The Touchstone).

It has now become clear to me that leading progressive/left/liberal thinkers and writers like I.F. Stone, Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn will only criticize the monied and powerful to the extent that they think it is safe for them to do. This is no different in principle from what the mainstream news media does: critiques are within a constrained margin of what is acceptable and not acceptable to the powers that be.

The only difference is that Mr. Chomsky and Mr. Cockburn have much wider margins than ABC (now owned by Disney), NBC (owned by General Electric), CBS (owned by Westinghouse), The Washington Post (with long ties to the intelligence community), and the N.Y. Times (so biased that the previously mentioned Lies Of Our Times was created to combat the rampant disinformation).

Mr. Chomsky and Mr. Cockburn are also really no different than Dan Rather. Mr. Rather publicly supports the Warren Commission, but has a private position on the assassination we have not heard. On specials about Kennedy, Mr. Rather will spout some mealy-mouthed nonsense like "The mystery of the assassination burns like an eternal flame" while the camera pans over Rather's shoulder to the Kennedy torch that burns at Arlington Cemetery.

To some extent Mr. Chomsky and Mr. Cockburn practice what the Kennedy research community is often accused of—they have created a cottage industry—standard left-wing/liberal criticisms of power. Their critiques are well-meaning and accurate, and provide a comfortable if not wealthy living, but don't really make a substantial dent in the problems they write about. Mr. Chomsky has been writing for over 30 years now, yet how many people have even heard of Noam Chomsky—even after the feature film about him (Manufacturing Consent) was produced? Has corporate power been reigned in any? How many Americans know about East Timor?

I hope these and all progressive writers will develop the courage to speak all of the truth that they know, or at least be honest about it, because even repeated, sharp, and direct-to-the-point criticisms of power, are not worth much if they are deliberately mis-aimed against the most important and critical problem: That forces in the supposedly constitutional democracy of the U.S. will murder democratically elected leaders like John F. Kennedy (and progressive leaders like Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) and get away with it. "

http://www.questionsquestions.net/documents2/conspiracyphobia.html

From Dirty Truths by Michael Parenti
(1996, City Lights Books)
(Pages 172 - 191)
"THE JFK ASSASSINATION II:
CONSPIRACY PHOBIA
ON THE LEFT

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary.

Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon's downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as "a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery," the greatest financial crime in history.

Conspiracy or Coincidence?

Often the term "conspiracy" is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against "overheating" the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, "Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?" In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people.

At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, "Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?" I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that "free-market reforms" are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, "more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies" (New York Times 11/25/95).

Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: "Do you actually think there's a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?" For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together - on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot - though they call it "planning" and "strategizing" - and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

Yet there are individuals who ask with patronizing, incredulous smiles, do you really think that the people at the top have secret agendas, are aware of their larger interests, and talk to each other about them? To which I respond, why would they not? This is not to say that every corporate and political elite is actively dedicated to working for the higher circles of power and property. Nor are they infallible or always correct in their assessments and tactics or always immediately aware of how their interests are being affected by new situations. But they are more attuned and more capable of advancing their vast interests than most other social groups.
The alternative is to believe that the powerful and the privileged are somnambulists, who move about oblivious to questions of power and privilege; that they always tell us the truth and have nothing to hide even when they hide so much; that although most of us ordinary people might consciously try to pursue our own interests, wealthy elites do not; that when those at the top employ force and violence around the world it is only for the laudable reasons they profess; that when they arm, train, and finance covert actions in numerous countries, and then fail to acknowledge their role in such deeds, it is because of oversight or forgetfulness or perhaps modesty; and that it is merely a coincidence how the policies of the national security state so consistently serve the interests of the transnational corporations and the capital-accumulation system throughout the world.

Kennedy and the Left Critics

In the winter of 1991-92 Oliver Stone's film JFK revived popular interest in the question of President John Kennedy's assassination. As noted in part I of this article, the mainstream media launched a protracted barrage of invective against the movie. Conservatives and liberals closed ranks to tell the public there was no conspiracy to murder the president for such things do not happen in the United States.

Unfortunately, some writers normally identified as on the Left have rejected any suggestion that conspiracy occurred. While the rightists and centrists were concerned about preserving the legitimacy of existing institutions and keeping people from seeing the gangster nature of the state, the leftists had different concerns, though it was not always clear what these were.

Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, and others challenge the notion that Kennedy was assassinated for intending to withdraw from Vietnam or for threatening to undo the CIA or end the cold war. Such things could not have led to his downfall, they argue, because Kennedy was a cold warrior, pro-CIA, and wanted a military withdrawal from Vietnam only with victory. Chomsky claims that the change of administration that came with JFK's assassination had no appreciable effect on policy. In fact, the massive ground war ordered by Johnson and the saturation bombings of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos ordered by Nixon represented a dramatic departure from Kennedy's policy. On some occasions, Chomsky says he refuses to speculate: "As for what JFK might have done [had he lived], I have nothing to say." Other times he goes on to speculate that Kennedy would not have "reacted differently to changing situations than his close advisers" and "would have persisted in his commitment to strengthen and enhance the status of the CIA" (Z Magazine, 10/92 and 1/93).

The evidence we have indicates that Kennedy observed Cambodian neutrality and negotiated a cease-fire and a coalition government in Laos, which the CIA refused to honor. We also know that the surviving Kennedy, Robert, broke with the Johnson administration over Vietnam and publicly stated that his brother's administration had committed serious mistakes. Robert moved with the tide of opinion, evolving into a Senate dove and then a peace candidate for the presidency, before he too was murdered. The two brothers worked closely together and were usually of like mind. While this does not provide reason enough to conclude that John Kennedy would have undergone a transition comparable to Robert's, it still might give us pause before asserting that JFK was destined to follow in the direction taken by the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

In the midst of this controversy, Chomsky wrote a whole book arguing that JFK had no intention of withdrawing from Vietnam without victory. Actually, Kennedy said different things at different times, sometimes maintaining that we could not simply abandon Vietnam, other times that it ultimately would be up to the Vietnamese to fight their own war.1
One of Kennedy's closest aides, Kenneth O'Donnell, wrote that the president planned to withdraw from Vietnam after the 1964 elections. According to Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who headed military support for the clandestine operations of the CIA, Kennedy dictated "the rich parts" of NSAM 263, calling for the withdrawal not only of all U.S. troops but all Americans, meaning CIA officers and agents too. Prouty reflects that the president thereby signed "his own death warrant." The Army newspaper Stars and Stripes ran a headline: "President Says - All Americans Out by 1965." According to Prouty: "The Pentagon was outraged. JFK was a curse word in the corridors."

Concentrating on the question of withdrawal, Chomsky says nothing about the president's unwillingness to escalate into a ground war. On that crucial point all Chomsky offers is a speculation ascribed to Roger Hilsman that Kennedy might well have introduced U.S. ground troops in South Vietnam. In fact, the same Hilsman, who served as Kennedy's Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, the officer responsible for Vietnam, noted in a long letter to the New York Times (1/20/92) that in 1963 "President Kennedy was determined not to let Vietnam become an American war - that is, he was determined not to send U.S. combat troops (as opposed to advisers) to fight in Vietnam nor to bomb North Vietnam." Other Kennedy aides such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and General Maxwell Taylor made the same point. Taylor said, "The last thing he [Kennedy] wanted was to put in our ground forces . . . I don't recall anyone who was strongly against [the recommendation], except one man and that was the President." Kennedy opposed the kind of escalation embarked upon soon after his death by Lyndon Johnson, who increased U.S. troops in Vietnam from 17,000 to approximately 250,000 and committed them to an all-out ground war.

Kennedy and the CIA

Chomsky argues that the CIA would have had no grounds for wanting to kill JFK, because he was a dedicated counterinsurgent cold warrior. Chomsky arrives at this conclusion by assuming that the CIA had the same reading of events in 1963 that he has today. But entrenched power elites are notorious for not seeing the world the way left analysts do. To accept Chomsky's assumptions we would need a different body of data from that which he and others offer, data that focuses not on the Kennedy administration's interventionist pronouncements and policies but on the more private sentiments that festered in intelligence circles and related places in 1963.

To offer a parallel: We might be of the opinion that the New Deal did relatively little for working people and that Franklin Roosevelt actually was a tool of the very interests he publicly denounced as "economic royalists." From this we might conclude that the plutocrats had much reason to support FDR's attempts to save big business from itself. But most plutocrats dammed "that man in the White House" as a class traitor. To determine why, you would have to look at how they perceived the New Deal in those days, not at how we think it should be evaluated today.

In fact, President Kennedy was not someone the CIA could tolerate, and the feeling was mutual. JFK told one of his top officials that he wanted "to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds" (New York Times, 4/25/66). He closed the armed CIA camps that were readying for a second Bay of Pigs invasion and took a number of other steps designed to bring the Agency under control. He fired its most powerful and insubordinate leaders, Director Allen Dulles, Deputy Director Charles Cabell, and Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell. He tried to reduce its powers and jurisdiction and set strict limits as to its future actions, and he appointed a high-level committee to investigate the CIA's past misdeeds.
In 1963, CIA officials, Pentagon brass, anti-Castro Cuban émigrés, and assorted other right-wingers, including FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, hated JFK and did not believe he could be trusted with the nation's future. They referred to him as "that delinquent in the White House." Roger Craig records the comments of numerous Dallas police officers who wanted to see Kennedy done away with. Several years ago, on a San Francisco talk show on station KGO, I heard a listener call in as follows: "this is the first time I'm saying this. I worked for Army intelligence. In 1963 I was in Japan, and the accepted word around then was that Kennedy would be killed because he was messing with the intelligence community. When word came of his death, all I could hear was delighted comments like 'We got the bastard'."

In his book First Hand Knowledge, CIA operative Robert Morrow noted the hatred felt by CIA officers regarding Kennedy's "betrayal" in not sending the U.S. military into the Bay of Pigs fiasco. One high-level CIA Cuban émigré, Eladio del Valle, told Morrow less than two weeks before the assassination: "I found out about it last night. Kennedy's going to get it in Dallas."2 Morrow also notes that CIA director Richard Helms, "knew that someone in the Agency was involved" in the Kennedy assassination, "either directly or indirectly, in the act itself - someone who would be in a high and sensitive position . . . Helms did cover up any CIA involvement in the presidential assassination."

Several years after JFK's murder, President Johnson told White House aide Marvin Watson that he "was convinced that there was a plot in connection with the assassination" and that the CIA had something to do with it (Washington Post, 12/13/77). And Robert Kennedy repeatedly made known his suspicions that the CIA had a hand in the murder of his brother.
JFK's enemies in the CIA, the Pentagon, and elsewhere fixed on his refusal to provide air coverage for the Bay of Pigs, his unwillingness to go into Indochina with massive ground forces, his no-invasion guarantee to Krushchev on Cuba, his overtures for a rapprochement with Castro and professed willingness to tolerate countries with different economic systems in the Western hemisphere, his atmospheric-test-ban treaty with Moscow, his American University speech calling for reexamination of U.S. cold war attitudes toward the Soviet Union, his antitrust suit against General Electric, his curtailing of the oil-depletion allowance, his fight with U.S. Steel over price increases, his challenge to the Federal Reserve Board's multibillion-dollar monopoly control of the nation's currency,3 his warm reception at labor conventions, and his call for racial equality. These things may not have been enough for some on the Left but they were far too much for many on the Right.

Left Confusions and the Warren Commission

Erwin Knoll, erstwhile editor of the Progressive, was anther left critic who expressed hostility toward the conspiracy thesis and Oliver Stone's movie in particular. Knoll admitted he had no idea who killed Kennedy, but this did not keep him from asserting that Stone's JFK was "manipulative" and provided false answers. If Knoll had no idea who killed Kennedy, how could he conclude that the film was false?

Knoll said Stone's movie was "a melange of fact and fiction" (Progressive, 3/92). To be sure, some of the dramatization was fictionalized - but regarding the core events relating to Clay Shaw's perjury, eyewitness reports at Dealey Plaza, the behavior of U.S. law officers, and other suspicious happenings, the movie remained faithful to the facts unearthed by serious investigators.

In a show of flexibility, Knoll allows that "the Warren Commission did a hasty, slipshod job" of investigation. Here too he only reveals his ignorance. In fact, the Commission sat for fifty-one long sessions over a period of several months, much longer than most major investigations. It compiled twenty-six volumes of testimony and evidence. It had the investigative resources of the FBI and CIA at its disposal, along with its own professional team. Far from being hasty and slipshod, it painstakingly crafted theories that moved toward a foreordained conclusion. From the beginning, it asked only a limited set of questions that seemed to assume Oswald's guilt as the lone assassin.

The Warren Commission set up six investigative panels to look into such things as Oswald's background, his activities in past years and on the day of the assassination, Jack Ruby's background, and his activities on the day he killed Oswald. As Mark Lane notes, there was a crying need for a seventh panel, one that would try to discover who killed President Kennedy.
The commission never saw the need for that undertaking, having already made up its mind.
While supposedly dedicated to bringing the truth to light, the Warren Commission operated in secrecy. The minutes of its meetings were classified top secret, and hundred of thousands of documents and other evidence were sealed for seventy-five years. The Commission failed to call witnesses who heard and saw people shooting from behind the fence on the grassy knoll. It falsely recorded the testimony of certain witnesses, as they were to complain later on, and reinterpreted the testimony of others. All this took careful effort. A "hasty and slipshod" investigation would show some randomness in its errors. But the Commission's distortions consistently moved in the same direction in pursuit of a prefigured hypothesis.

Erwin Knoll talks disparagingly of the gullible U.S. public and says he "despises" Oliver Stone for playing on that gullibility. In fact, the U.S. public has been anything but gullible. It has not swallowed the official explanation the way some of the left critics have. Surveys show that 78 percent of the public say they believe there was a conspiracy. Both Cockburn in the Nation and Chomsky in Z Magazine dismiss this finding by noting that over 70 percent of the people also believe in miracles. But the fact that people might be wrong about one thing does not mean they are wrong about everything. Chomsky and Cockburn are themselves evidence of that.
In any case, the comparison is between two opposite things. Chomsky and Cockburn are comparing the public's gullibility about miracles with its unwillingness to be gullible about the official line that has been fed to them for thirty years. If anyone is gullible it is Alexander Cockburn who devoted extra column space in the Nation to support the Warren Commission's tattered theory about a magic bullet that could hit both Kennedy and Connolley while changing direction in mid-air and remaining in pristine condition.

Chomsky says that it is a "curious fact that no trace of the wide-ranging conspiracy appears in the internal record, and nothing has leaked" and "credible direct evidence is lacking" (Z Magazine, 1/93, and letter to me, 12/15/92). But why would participants in a conspiracy of this magnitude risk everything by maintaining an "internal record" (whatever that is) about the actual murder? Why would they risk their lives by going public? Many of the participants would know only a small part of the picture. But all of them would have a keen sense of the immensely powerful and sinister forces they would be up against were they to become too talkative. In fact, a good number of those who agreed to cooperate with investigators met untimely deaths. Finally, what credible direct evidence was ever offered to prove that Oswald was the assassin?

Chomsky is able to maintain his criticism that no credible evidence has come to light only by remaining determinedly unacquainted with the mountain of evidence that has been uncovered. There has even been a decision in a U.S. court of law, Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby, in which a jury found that President Kennedy had indeed been murdered by a conspiracy involving, in part, CIA operatives E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis, and FBI informant Jack Ruby.4

Nixon advisor H.R. Haldeman admits in his memoir: "After Kennedy was killed, the CIA launched a fantastic coverup." And "In a chilling parallel to their coverup at Watergate, the CIA literally erased any connection between Kennedy's assassination and the CIA."

Indeed, if there was no conspiracy, why so much secrecy and so much cover-up? If Oswald did it, what is there to hide and why do the CIA and FBI still resist a full undoctored disclosure of the hundreds of thousands of pertinent documents? Would they not be eager to reveal everything and thereby put to rest doubts about Oswald's guilt and suspicions about their own culpability?

The remarkable thing about Erwin Knoll, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, and others on the Left who attack the Kennedy conspiracy findings is they remain invincibly ignorant of the critical investigations that have been carried out. I have repeatedly pointed this out in exchanges with them and they never deny it. They have not read any of the many studies by independent researchers who implicate the CIA in a conspiracy to kill the president and in the even more protracted and extensive conspiracy to cover up the murder. But this does not prevent them from dismissing the conspiracy charge in the most general and unsubstantiated terms.

Let's Hear It for Structuralism

When pressed on the matter, left critics like Cockburn and Chomsky allow that some conspiracies do exist but they usually are of minor importance, a distraction from the real problems of institutional and structural power. A structural analysis, as I understand it, maintains that events are determined by the larger configurations of power and interest and not by the whims of happenstance or the connivance of a few incidental political actors. There is no denying that larger structural trends impose limits on policy and exert strong pressures on leaders. But this does not mean that all important policy is predetermined. Short of betraying fundamental class interests, different leaders can pursue different courses, the effects of which are not inconsequential to the lives of millions of people. Thus, it was not foreordained that the B-52 carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos conducted by Nixon would have happened if Kennedy, or even Johnson or Humphrey, had been president. If left critics think these things make no difference in the long run, they better not tell that to the millions of Indochinese who grieve for their lost ones and for their own shattered lives.

It is an either-or world for those on the Left who harbor an aversion for any kind of conspiracy investigation: either you are a structuralist in your approach to politics or a "conspiracist" who reduces historical developments to the machinations of secret cabals, thereby causing us to lose sight of the larger systemic forces. As Chomsky notes: "However unpleasant and difficult it may be, there is no escape from the need to confront the reality of institutions and the policies and actions they largely shape." (Z Magazine, 10/92).

I trust that one of the institutions he has in mind is the CIA. In most of its operations, the CIA is by definition a conspiracy, using covert actions and secret plans, many of which are of the most unsavory kind. What are covert operations if not conspiracies? At the same time, the CIA is an institution, a structural part of the national security state. In sum, the agency is an institutionalized conspiracy.

As I pointed out in published exchanges with Cockburn and Chomsky (neither of whom responded to the argument), conspiracy and structure are not mutually exclusive dynamics. A structural analysis that a priori rules out conspiracy runs the risk of not looking at the whole picture. Conspiracies are a component of the national security political system, not deviations from it. Ruling elites use both conspiratorial covert actions and overtly legitimating procedures at home and abroad. They finance everything from electoral campaigns and publishing houses to mobsters and death squads. They utilize every conceivable stratagem, including killing one of their own if they perceive him to be a barrier to their larger agenda of making the world safe for those who own it.

The conspiracy findings in regard to the JFK assassination, which the movie JFK brought before a mass audience, made many people realize what kind of a gangster state we have in this country and what it does around the world. In investigating the JFK conspiracy, researchers are not looking for an "escape" from something "unpleasant and difficult," as Chomsky would have it, rather they are raising grave questions about the nature of state power in what is supposed to be a democracy.

A structuralist position should not discount the role of human agency in history. Institutions are not self-generating reified forces. The "great continuities of corporate and class interest" (Cockburn's phrase) are not disembodied things that just happen of their own accord. Neither empires nor national security institutions come into existence in a fit of absent-mindedness. They are actualized not only by broad conditional causes but by the conscious efforts of live people. Evidence for this can be found in the very existence of a national security state whose conscious function is to recreate the conditions of politico-economic hegemony.

Having spent much of my life writing books that utilize a structuralist approach, I find it ironic to hear about the importance of structuralism from those who themselves do little or no structural analysis of the U.S. political system and show little theoretical grasp of the structural approach. Aside from a few Marxist journals, one finds little systemic or structural analysis in left periodicals including ones that carry Chomsky and Cockburn. Most of these publications focus on particular issues and events - most of which usually are of far lesser magnitude than the Kennedy assassination.

Left publications have given much attention to conspiracies such as Watergate, the FBI Cointelpro, Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate, CIA drugs-for-guns trade, BCCI, and savings-and-loans scandals. It is never explained why these conspiracies are important while the FJK assassination is not. Chip Berlet repeatedly denounces conspiracy investigations while himself spending a good deal of time investigating Lyndon LaRouche's fraudulent financial dealings, conspiracies for which LaRouche went to prison. Berlet never explains why the LaRouche conspiracy is a subject worthy of investigation but not the JFK conspiracy.

G. William Domhoff points out: "If 'conspiracy' means that these [ruling class] men are aware of their interests, know each other personally, meet together privately and off the record, and try to hammer out a consensus on how to anticipate and react to events and issues, then there is some conspiring that goes on in CFR [the Council for Foreign Relations], not to mention the Committee for Economic Development, the Business Council, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency." After providing this useful description of institutional conspiracy, Domhoff then conjures up a caricature that often clouds the issue: "We all have a tremendous tendency to want to get caught up in believing that there's some secret evil cause for all of the obvious ills of the world." Conspiracy theories "encourage a belief that if we get rid of a few bad people, everything will be well in the world."

To this simplistic notion Peter Dale Scott responds: "I believe that a true understanding of the Kennedy assassination will lead not to a few bad people but to the institutional and parapolitical arrangements which constitute the way we are systematically governed." In sum, national security state conspiracies are components of our political structure, not deviations from it.

Why Care About JFK?

The left critics argue that people who are concerned about the JFK assassination are romanticizing Kennedy and squandering valuable energy. Chomsky claims that the Nazi-like appeals of rightist propagandists have a counterpart on the Left: "It's the conspiracy business. Hang around California, for example, and the left has just been torn to shreds because they see CIA conspiracies . . . secret governments [behind] the Kennedy assassination. This kind of stuff has just wiped out a large part of the left" (Against the Current 56, 1993). Chomsky offers no evidence to support this bizarre statement.

The left critics fear that people will be distracted or misled into thinking well of Kennedy. Cockburn argues that Kennedy was nothing more than a servant of the corporate class, so who cares how he was killed (Nation 3/9/92 and 5/18/92). The left critics' hatred of Kennedy clouds their judgment about the politcal significance of his murder. They mistake the low political value of the victim with the high political importance of the assassination, its implications for democracy, and the way it exposes the gangster nature of the state.

In 1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus was a conservative militarist. Clemenceau once conjectured that if the man's name had not been Dreyfus, he would have been an anti-Dreyfusard. Does that mean that the political struggle waged around l'affaire Dreyfus was a waste of time? The issue quickly became larger than Dreyfus, drawn between Right and Left, between those who stood with the army and the anti-Semites and those who stood with the republic and justice.

Likewise Benigno Aquino, a member of the privileged class in the Philippines, promised no great structural changes, being even more conservative than Kennedy. Does this mean the Filipino people should have dismissed the conspiracy that led to his assassination as an event of no great moment, an internal ruling-class affair? Instead, they used it as ammunition to expose the hated Marcos regime.

Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was a member of the Salvadoran aristocracy. He could not have risen to the top of the church hierarchy otherwise. But after he began voicing critical remarks about the war and concerned comments about the poor, he was assassinated. If he had not been murdered, I doubt that Salvadoran history would have been much different. Does this mean that solidarity groups in this country and El Salvador should not have tried to make his murder an issue that revealed the homicidal gangster nature of the Salvadoran state? (I posed these questions to Chomsky in an exchange in Z Magazine, but in his response, he did not address them.)

Instead of seizing the opportunity, some left writers condescendingly ascribe a host of emotional needs to those who are concerned about the assassination cover-up. According to Max Holland, a scribe who seems to be on special assignment to repudiate the JFK conspiracy: "The nation is gripped by a myth . . . divorced from reality," and "Americans refuse to accept their own history." In Z Magazine (10/92) Chomsky argued that "at times of general malaise and social breakdown, it is not uncommon for millenarian movements to arise." He saw two such movements in 1992: the response to Ross Perot and what he called the "Kennedy revival" or "Camelot revival." Though recognizing that the audiences differ, he lumps them together as "the JFK-Perot enthusiasms." Public interest in the JFK assassination, he says, stems from a "Camelot yearning" and the "yearning for a lost Messiah."

I, for one, witnessed evidence of a Perot movement involving millions of people but I saw no evidence of a Kennedy revival, certainly no millenarian longing for Camelot or a "lost Messiah." However, there has been a revived interest in the Kennedy assassination, which is something else. Throughout the debate, Chomsky repeatedly assumes that those who have been troubled about the assassination must be admirers of Kennedy. In fact, some are, but many are not. Kennedy was killed in 1963; people who today are in their teens, twenties, thirties, and forties - most Americans - were not old enough to have developed a political attachment to him.

The left critics psychologize about our illusions, our false dreams, our longings for Messiahs and father figures, or inability to face unpleasant realities the way they can. They deliver patronizing admonitions about our "conspiracy captivation" and "Camelot yearnings." They urge us not to escape into fantasy. They are the cognoscenti who guide us and out-left us on the JFK assassination, a subject about which they know next to nothing and whose significance they have been unable to grasp. Having never read the investigative literature, they dismiss the investigators as irrelevant or irrational. To cloak their own position with intellectual respectability, they fall back on an unpracticed structuralism.

It is neither "Kennedy worship" nor "Camelot yearnings" that motivates our inquiry, but a desire to fight back against manipulative and malignant institutions so that we might begin to develop a system of accountable rule worthy of the name democracy."
Footnotes :
1 Kennedy's intent to withdraw is documented in the Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers ("Phased Withdrawal of U.S. Forces, 1962-1964," vol. 2, pp. 160-200). It refers to "the Accelerated Model Plan . . .. for a rapid phase out of the bulk of U.S. military personnel" and notes that the administration was "serious about limiting the U.S. commitment and throwing the burden onto the South Vietnamese themselves." But "all the planning for phase-out . . . was either ignored or caught up in the new thinking of January to March 1964" (p. 163) - the new thinking that came after JFK was killed and Johnson became president.
2 Del Valle's name came up the day after JFK's assassination when Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade announced at a press conference that Oswald was a member of del Valle's anti-communist "Free Cuba Committee." Wade was quickly contradicted from the audience by Jack Ruby, who claimed that Oswald was a member of the leftish Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Del Valle, who was one of several people that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison sought out in connection with the JFK assassination, was killed the same day that Dave Ferrie, another suspect met a suspicious death. When found in Miami, del Valle's body showed evidence of having been tortured, bludgeoned, and shot.
3 The bankers of the Federal Reserve System print paper money, then lend it to the government at an interest. Kennedy signed an executive order issuing over $4 billion in currency notes through the U.S. Treasury, thus bypassing the Fed's bankers and the hundreds of millions of dollars in interest that would normally be paid out to them. These "United States Notes" were quickly withdrawn after JFK's assassination.
4 See Mark Lane, Plausible Denial; Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1991). For testimony of another participant see Robert Morrow: First Hand Knowledge: How I Participated in the CIA-Mafia Murder of President Kennedy (New York: S.P.I. Books, 1992)."

Chomsky's support for the official 9/11 story rather than for the truth

http://www.oilempire.us/chomsky.html

"Where Noam will not roam:
Chomsky manufactures consent, supports the official stories of 9/11 and JFK

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
- Noam Chomsky

"That's an internet theory and it's hopelessly implausible. Hopelessly implausible. So hopelessly implausible I don't see any point in talking about it."
- Noam Chomsky, at a FAIR event at New York's Town Hall, 22 January 2002, in response to a question from the audience about US government foreknowledge of 9/11. At that time, 9/11 investigators had already presented substantial documented evidence for: prior warnings, Air Force stand-down, anomalous insider trading connected to CIA, cover-up of the domestic anthrax attacks, inconsistencies in identities & timelines of "hijackers", US connections to al Qaeda in Balkans, a Pak ISI-al Qaeda funding connection, etc etc etc.

Professor Noam Chomsky, one of the country's most famous dissidents, says that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in Dallas. Anyone who still supports the Warren Commission hoax after forty years of countering proofs is either ill-informed, dumb, gullible, afraid to speak truths to power or a disinformation agent.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where Chomsky has worked for decades, has a very good physics department (MIT is the largest university contractor to the military). Perhaps he could visit them and learn why it is physically impossible for Oswald to have been anything more than the "patsy" that he (accurately) claimed to be.

The truth is that Chomsky is very good in his analysis within certain parameters of limited debate -- but in understanding the "deep politics" of the actual, secret government, his analysis falls short.

Chomsky is good at explaining the double standards in US foreign policies - but at this point understanding / exposing the mechanics of the deceptions (9/11 isn't the only one) the reasons for it (Peak Oil / global dominance / domestic fascism) and what we can do (war crimes trials / permaculture to relocalize food production / paradigm shifts) is more important than more repetition from Chomsky.

Professor Chomsky was apparently part of a study group in the late 1960s that was investigating what really happened in Dallas (ie. he was a skeptic of the official story). It seems likely that Chomsky did indeed figure out what happened - and decided that this was too big of an issue to confront.

Maybe Chomsky gets more media attention these days than most other dissidents BECAUSE he urges people not to inquire into how the secret government operates.

Chomsky in his own words

9-11: Institutional Analysis vs. Conspiracy Theory
Submitted by Noam Chomsky on Fri, 2006-10-06 14:09.
Categories: Middle East United States US Foreign Policy
The following is an exchange between a ZNet Sustainer and Noam Chomsky, which took place in the Sustainer Web Board where Noam hosts a forum...

ZNet Sustainer: Dear Noam, There is much documentation observed and uncovered by the 911 families themselves suggesting a criminal conspiracy within the Bush Administration to cover-up the 9/11 attacks (see DVD, 9/11: Press for Truth). Additionally, much evidence has been put forward to question the official version of events. This has come in part from Paul Thompson, an activist who has creatively established the 9/11 Timeline, a free 9/11 investigative database for activist researchers, which now, according to The Village Voice’s James Ridgeway, rivals the 9/11 Commission’s report in accuracy and lucidity (see,http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0416,mondo1,52830,6.html, or www.cooperativeresearch.org).

Noam Chomsky: Hard for me to respond to the rest of the letter, because I am not persuaded by the assumption that much documentation and other evidence has been uncovered. To determine that, we'd have to investigate the alleged evidence. Take, say, the physical evidence. There are ways to assess that: submit it to specialists -- of whom there are thousands -- who have the requisite background in civil-mechanical engineering, materials science, building construction, etc., for review and analysis; and one cannot gain the required knowledge by surfing the internet. In fact, that's been done, by the professional association of civil engineers.

Or, take the course pursued by anyone who thinks they have made a genuine discovery: submit it to a serious journal for peer review and publication. To my knowledge, there isn't a single submission.

ZNet Sustainer: A question that arises for me is that regardless of this issue, how do I as an activist prevent myself from getting distracted by such things as conspiracy theories instead of focusing on the bigger picture of the institutional analysis of private profit over people?
[note: the Complete 9/11 Timeline does not focus on the physical evidence, Chomsky is either ignorant of the issue or steering people into a false dichotomy]

Noam Chomsky: I think this reaches the heart of the matter. One of the major consequences of the 9/11 movement has been to draw enormous amounts of energy and effort away from activism directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their institutional background, crimes that are far more serious than blowing up the WTC would be, if there were any credibility to that thesis. That is, I suspect, why the 9/11 movement is treated far more tolerantly by centers of power than is the norm for serious critical and activist work. How do you personally set priorities? That's of course up to you. I've explained my priorities often, in print as well as elsewhere, but we have to make our own judgments.

ZNet Sustainer: In a sense, profit over people is the real conspiracy, yes, yet not a conspiracy at all – rather institutional reality? At the same time, if the core of conspiracy theories are accurate, which is challenging to pin down, though increasingly possible, does it not fit into the same motivations of furthering institutional aims of public subsidizes to private tyrannies? I mean, through the 9/11 attacks, Bush Et Al. has been able to justify massive increases in defense spending for a "war without end," and Israel has been given the green light to do virtually whatever it wants since now ‘the Americans are in the same fight.’ Furthermore, there has been a substantial rollback of civil rights in our nation, with the most extreme example being strong attempt to terminate habeas corpus.

Noam Chomsky: Can't answer for the same reasons. I don't see any reason to accept the presuppositions. As for the consequences, in one of my first interviews after 9/11 I pointed out the obvious: every power system in the world was going to exploit it for its own interests: the Russians in Chechnya, China against the Uighurs, Israel in the occupied territories,... etc., and states would exploit the opportunity to control their own populations more fully through "prevention of terrorism acts" and the like. By the "who gains" argument, every power system in the world could be assigned responsibility for 9/11.

ZNet Sustianer: This begs the question: if 9/11 was an inside job, then what’s to say that Bush Et Al., if cornered or not, wouldn't resort to another more heinous attack of grander proportions in the age of nuclear terrorism – which by its very nature would petrify populations the world over, leading citizens to cower under the Bush umbrella of power.

Noam Chomsky: Wrong question, in my opinion. They were carrying out far more serious crimes, against Americans as well, before 9/11 -- crimes that literally threaten human survival. They may well resort to further crimes if activists here prefer not to deal with them and to focus their attention on arcane and dubious theories about 9/11.

ZNet Sustainer: Considering that in the US there are stage-managed elections, public relations propaganda wars, and a military-industrial-education-prison-etc. complex, does something like this sound far-fetched?

Noam Chomsky: I think that's the wrong way to look at it. Everything you mention goes back far before 9/11, and hasn't changed that much since. More evidence that the 9/11 movement is diverting energy and attention away from far more serious crimes -- and in this case crimes that are quite real and easily demonstrated.

ZNet Sustainer:Considering the long history of false flag operations to wrongly justify wars, our most recent precedent being WMD in Iraq, The Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam, going back much further to Pearl Harbor (FDR knowingly allowing the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor – which is different from false flag operations), to the 1898 Spanish-American War, to the 1846 Mexican-American War, to Andrew Jackson’s seizing of Seminole land in 1812 (aka Florida).

Noam Chomsky: The concept of "false flag operation" is not a very serious one, in my opinion. None of the examples you describe, or any other in history, has even a remote resemblance to the alleged 9/11 conspiracy. I'd suggest that you look at each of them carefully.

ZNet Sustainer: Lastly, as the world’s leading terror state, would it not surprise anyone if the US was capable of such an action? Would it surprise you? Do you think that so-called conspiracy theorists have anything worthy to present?

Noam Chomsky: I think the Bush administration would have had to be utterly insane to try anything like what is alleged, for their own narrow interests, and do not think that serious evidence has been provided to support claims about actions that would not only be outlandish, for their own interests, but that have no remote historical parallel. The effects, however, are all too clear, namely, what I just mentioned: diverting activism and commitment away from the very serious ongoing crimes of state." (Emphasis added - B.M.)