With a nod to Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.
"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)
"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.
"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the
price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, " 'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace," ... —William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."
In "Indians at home – Indians in Cornwall, Indians in Wales, Indians in Ireland," I wrote about how one member of the Anglo-America elite equated the indigenous people of North America and the indigenous Celtic peoples of Great Britain and how tools of Anglo-American colonialism were first tested in Europe.
In an 1897 article Myron Eels compared Indians to the "lower class of whites." He wrote:
I should say of the greatest part of those under forty-five years of age, that if they had white skins, talked the English language,--and if a part of them had abandoned their belief in their medicine men,--as some have not done,--if they travelled in boats instead of canoes, if their women wore hats or bonnets on their heads, if they were neater, they would be called civilized, at least as much so as the lower class of whites.
I got this quote from Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities around Puget Sound by Alexandra Harmon (Univ. of California Press, 1998) pp. 122-3. For Harmon, this illustrates how much "Indians remained aliens" and, certainly, that is so but I can't help but notice, too, just how little, to Eels' mind, separates Indians from the "the lower class of whites." One wonders about the gulf that separates them from upper class Whites like Eels.
20 years to the fall of the Berlin wall: Demonstrators toppled 8 meters tall concrete wall in Ni’ilin
Three protest marches were held today in the West Bank to mark the 20th anniversary to the fall of the Berlin wall, which has been declared an international day of action against Israel’s barrier. In Ni’lin, the 300 demonstrators managed to topple a part of the eight meters tall concrete wall that cuts through the village’s land. Following the direct action, the army fired scores of live rounds at the demonstrators.
Demonstrators topple concrete wall
Using small tools, Ni’lin residents push concrete wall
No matter how tall, all walls fall
The concrete wall in Ni’lin – five to eight meters (15 to 25 feet) in height – has only recently been laid on the path of the wall cutting through Ni’lin’s lands, in addition to the already existing electronic barrier and razor-wire.
Since the Wall was built to allow more land to annexed to the nearby settlements rather than in a militarily strategic manner, demonstrators have been able to repeatedly dismantle parts of the electronic fence and razor-wire surrounding it. The section of the Wall in Ni’lin is the only place along the route of the barrier where a concrete wall has been erected in an attempt to deal with the civic, unarmed campaign waged by the village in protest of the massive land theft that will enable the expansion of the illegal settlements of Modi’in Il’it and Hashmonaim.
Since Israel began its construction in the year 2002, This is the first time demonstrators succeed in toppling a part of Israel’s barrier which is a concrete wall. One of the demonstrators, Moheeb Khawaja, said during the protest: “Twenty years ago no one had thought the monster that divided Berlin into two could be brought down, but in only two days in November, it did. Today we have proven that this can also be done here and now. It is our land beyond this wall, and we will not give up on it. We will win for a simple reason – justice is on our side.”
Background
Israel began construction of the Wall on Ni’lin’s land in 2004, but stopped after an injunction order issued by the Israeli Supreme Court (ISC). Despite the previous order and a 2004 ruling from the International Court of Justice declaring the Wall illegal, construction of the Wall began again in May 2008. Following the return of Israeli bulldozers to their lands, residents of Ni’lin have launched a grassroots campaign to protest the massive land theft, including demonstrations and direct actions.
The original route of the Wall, which Israel began constructing in 2004, was ruled illegal by the ISC, as was a second, marginally less obtrusive proposed route. The most recent path, now completed, still cuts deep into Ni’lin’s land. The Wall has been built to include plans, not yet approved by the Army’s planning authority, for a cemetery and an industrial zone for the illegal settlement Modi’in Ilit.
Since the Wall was built to annex more land to the nearby settlements rather than in a militarily strategic manner, demonstrators have been able to repeatedly dismantle parts of the electronic fence and razor-wire surrounding it. Consequently, the army has erected a 15-25 feet tall concrete wall, in addition to the electronic fence. The section of the Wall in Ni’lin is the only part of the route where a concrete wall has been erected in response to civilian, unarmed protest.
As a result of the Wall construction, Ni’lin has lost 3,920 dunams, roughly 30% of its remaining lands. Originally, Ni’lin consisted of 15,898 dunams (3928 acres). Post 1948, Ni’lin was left with 14,794 dunams (3656 acres). After the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the illegal settlements and infrastructure of Modi’in Ilit, Mattityahu and Hashmonaim were built on village lands, and Ni’lin lost another 1,973 dunams. With the completion of the Wall, Ni’lin has a remaining 8911 dunams (2201 acres), 56% of it’s original size.
Ni’lin is effectively split into 2 parts (upper and lower) by Road 446, which was built directly through the village. According to the publicized plan of the Israeli government, a tunnel will be built under road 446 to connect the upper and lower parts of Ni’lin, allowing Israel to turn Road 446 into a segregated-setter only road. Subsequently, access for Palestinian vehicles to this road and to the main entrances of upper and lower Ni’lin will be closed. Additionally, since the tunnel will be the only entryway to Ni’lin, Israel will have control over the movement of Palestinian residents.
Israel commonly uses tear-gas projectiles, rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition against demonstrators.
Since May, 2008, five of Ni’lin’s residents were killed and one American solidarity activist was critically injured from Israeli fire during grassroots demonstrations in Ni’lin.
5 June 2009: Yousef Akil Srour (36) was shot in the chest with 0.22 caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.
13 March 2009: Tristan Anderson (37), an American citizen, was shot in the head with a high velocity tear gas projectile. He is currently at Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv with uncertain prospects for his recovery.
28 December 2008: Mohammed Khawaje (20) was shot in the head with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition. He died in a Ramallah hospital 3 days later on 31 December 2008.
28 December 2008: Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22) was shot in the back with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.
30 July 2008: Yousef Amira (17) was shot in the head with two rubber coated steel bullets. He died in a Ramallah hospital 5 days later on 4 August 2008.
29 July 2008: Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.
Israeli armed forces have shot 40 demonstrators with live ammunition in Ni’lin. Of them, 11 were shot with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and 24 were shot with 0.22 caliber live ammunition.
Since May 2008, 87 arrests of Ni’lin residents have been made in relation to anti-Wall demonstrations in the village. The protesters seized by the army constitute around 7% of the village’s males aged between 12 and 55. The arrests are part of a broad Israeli intimidation campaign to suppress all demonstrations against the apartheid infrastructure in the West Bank.
It is part of the wisdom, I think, of the religious tradition always to be skeptical of what governments are doing. ... One has to keep reminding oneself and other people that an exalted contempt for human life lies at the basis of diplomacy; and that one had better think of the unprotected and innocent, and be prepared for the bad news when the leaders meet.
-Daniel Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh. The Raft is Not the Shore: Conversations Toward a Buddhist/Christian Awareness. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975) p. 69.
University of Michigan law professor Monica Hakimi worked at the State Department in the last administration. She does not like the idea of long-term detention. But, she says, none of the alternatives seem much better.
"The benefit of capturing them is that we might be able to get from them certain intelligence that we can use to hunt down future terrorists," says Hakimi. "The cost is that once we capture them it's not really clear what we're supposed to do with them."
Hakimi is a 2001 Yale Law grad--one of America's 'best and brightest' young scholars. In "International standards for detaining terrorism suspects: moving beyond the armed conflict-criminal divide" (Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 40.3 (Fall 2009)), the solution she articulates to the problem of "what we're supposed to do with them" is, in the main, the legalization of existing illegal practices of "administrative detention."
The current dilemma facing governments, according to Hakimi, is two-fold. First, many prisoners from the "fight against transnational al jihadi groups" are seized "away from any recognizable battlefield ... in houses, on street corners, and at border crossings around the globe." Thus, the "law of armed conflict" is inapplicable for justifying their imprisonment.
Second, criminal procedure is no good because "its focus is retrospective, rather than prospective; it is maladroit for transnational operation; and it often fails to accommodate the tools used and evidence available in terrorism cases." Another way of putting this is that a criminal justice approach won't work because you are not normally allowed to prosecute "precrime;" other countries might not want to or be able to cooperate in your non-battlefield raids on their populace; most courts won't accept evidence obtained by torture or otherwise in violation of due process principles. In short, you just can't easily lock up as many people as you might want to lock up.
What's a poor government to do? According to Hakimi, "pure security-based detention" are permitted under "An alternative legal framework [that] already exists under human rights law in the form of administrative detention." She notes approvingly that "India and Israel--two states with long histories of trying to combat transnational terrorism--consistently have used such detention for that purpose." Her argument here rests in large part on her contention that "pure security-based detention is permitted under the ICCPR," i.e. the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (she also cites the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in support of her argument but I do not mention it here because the US is not a state party to that treaty).
In effect, what she has done is to take the ICCPR--a treaty putatively designed to impose obligations on each state party to respect the rights of "all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction" (Article 2)--and turn it into an instrument justifying repression of individuals by state parties under the rubric of human rights.
I would like to be able to say that Hakimi's is a completely incredible reading of the ICCPR but that wouldn't be true. For while there is no affirmative provision in the treaty for "administrative" or "security-based detention" and the only articles explicitly mentioning detention restrict it, the state parties generously gave themselves the right to ignore most of the individual rights (incl., most crucially, Article 9) during "time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation ..."(Article 4). (I should note that Hakimi does not rely on Article 4 for her argument but interprets Article 9 as making implicit provision for administrative detention).
In concluding, Hakimi says:
International practice demonstrates that, although most states have declined to detain non-battlefield terrorism suspects based on the law of armed conflict, many are looking for options for incapacitating these suspects outside the criminal process. The bipolar paradigm for thinking about non-battlefield detentions--as armed-conflict or criminal--is out of step with that practice and is mistaken as a matter of law. Human rights law permits administrative detention for reasons of national security, subject to important constraints. Those constraints are not now sufficient in the counterterrorism context. But if the law in this area is developed, administrative detention may strike the most appropriate balance between liberty and security for certain categories of terrorism detainees.
Get it? The law needs to catch up--to be "developed"--to what governments are already doing. Hakimi is a fine example of what Gramsci called "experts in legitimation" and one wonders how human societies made it this far without the benefit of her helpful take on human rights law. I couldn't help being reminded by Hakimi's arguments of her colleague Alan Dershowitz's call to legalize torture.
My first response this morning to the news of Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was disbelief. My next response was to recall part of a story on I heard on NPR yesterday, entitled "Capture Or Kill? Lawyers Eye Options For Terrorists." Below is a relevant excerpt:
Given the difficulty of detaining high-value terrorists in the United States, Cuba, Afghanistan, black sites or foreign countries, another possibility exists.
"To be perfectly blunt, I don't think that they'll pick them up at all," says Ken Anderson of the Hoover Institution and American University's Washington College of Law, who has written about these issues. "I think that we've actually allowed the courts to arrange the incentives to kill rather than capture."
Many national security experts interviewed for this story agree that it has become so hard for the U.S. to detain people that in many instances, the U.S. government is killing them instead.
Last month, American forces staged a raid on a car in Somalia. The man inside the car was a suspected terrorist on the FBI's most wanted list. American troops did not seize him. Instead, helicopters fired on the car, and commandos retrieved his body.
The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama has been widely described as "aspirational." It may be, however, that delusional is a more apt description in light of Obama's campaign promises and track record as president. Consider the following partial list:
Candidate Obama pledged to expand the combat forces of the Marines and Army
Candidate Obama pledged to escalate the war in Afghanistan
President Obama authorized killer drone attacks in Pakistan in his very first week in office
President Obama has not ended the US occupation of Iraq
President Obama has not closed the Guantanamo prison
As with other key stages, emotional engagement is necessary to challenge mindsets. The rigour of historical methods of enquiry is essential, but not powerful enough in themselves to necessarily overcome prejudice and stereotyping. Emotional engagement forms a significant partner in the structuring of activities. The use of local history, reconstructions, a focus on child labour and making deliberate links to the present is how one history department seeks to hook pupils' personal engagement.
As part of the teaching of Arab-Israeli coursework at Abraham Moss School in Manchester, students take on the role of UN commissioners given the task of dividing Palestine in the late 1940s. They are reminded of the horrors of the Holocaust and the likely impact on world opinion. The students also consider how the survivors of the Holocaust would respond to the question Why did I survive? and how that might have impacted on the desire for a Jewish state. A timeline of events and information about who lived in the area and attitudes of different organisations, states and peoples are provided to help pupils consider the division of land. Given the predominance of Muslim pupils in the School and the existence of potential anti-Jewish sentiment or ignorance of Jewish culture, this task presents a complex challenge. The results are very interesting. The vast majority of students partition the land evenly between Arabs and Jews, even though the Jewish population was far smaller, and they establish Jerusalem as a neutral zone. The reasons pupils give for their decisions vary, but they are predominantly associated with the following: issues of fairness, acknowledgement of the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust, a recognition that Jews had lived in the region for centuries before the Arabs, and a desire to find a solution where both sides could live in peace.
Boiling it down, after establishing your authority as a 'teacher,' the first task is to set the agenda: Don't raise the question of whether it is/was right for UN commissioners divide another people's land, just simply give your subjects students the "task of dividing Palestine." Then to make sure they divide it and divide it properly, drill them in the catechism of "the Holocaust" while studiously ignoring Zionist collaboration with the Nazis (beginning in 1933). Encourage them to emotionally identify with victims of "the Holocaust" (Zionist Jewish victims only, please; I mean, does anyone else really matter?). Don't encourage them to identify with or consider partition from the perspective of "Arabs" (not Palestinians). Don't encourage them to consider the inherent injustice of forcibly taking away one people's land to give it to another group of people allegedly on account of the crimes of a third party. Don't encourage them to consider more just alternatives. Don't let them know that Jewish designs on Palestine long predate "the Holocaust." Do teach them the Jewish narrative/Orientalist perspective as if it were uncontested historical fact, e. g. "Jews had lived in the region for centuries before the Arabs." Follow these simple do's and dont's and you, too, can brainwash the "vast majority of students" (Christian children, too, undoubtedly) into becoming Zionists.
We're not the enemy. We're not. We're on your side. We believe in America. That's why Indians have the highest percentage of [military] service of any ethnic group in America.
A few days before viewing the film I asked a friend, who is also an enrolled member of the Flathead tribe, why he thought so many Indians served in the US military his response was "Survival."
In discussing the matter with another friend, I observed that high rates of military service in the conquering armies are an apparent characteristic of many conquered peoples such as White Southerners and Filipinos in the US military and the Gurkha and Scottish regiments in the British Army. The French Foreign Legion has also attracted large numbers of soldiers from French colonies. Going back further, many Roman Legions were also populated by non-Romans. Serving in a conquering army is a way of demonstrating (and being rewarded for) military prowess, valor, and loyalty to the dominant society and, yes, it can also be a survival tactic.
Our dear Arab/Muslim-American community plans to meet with the CIA on the 27th of Ramadan, known as the Night of Power, one of the holiest nights in the Islamic calendar. Per the Quran, praying on the 27th is worth more than praying a thousand nights. The main agenda of the meeting is to discuss the establishment of courts in Baghdad and Gaza to try American and Zionist war criminals who've killed Iraqis and Palestinians.
OK, that last sentence was a joke. But the first one is disgustingly true. Think again if you thought the Night of Power will stop anyone from showing up to the meeting. The community wouldn't miss a meeting with the CIA even if it were to coincide with the return of the Messiah himself.
Dinner in Dearborn will come on 'wrong night' amid Ramadan
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
Dearborn -- CIA Director Leon Panetta plans to visit Dearborn on Sept. 16 for an invitation-only dinner and speech with 150 leaders of the Arab and Muslim communities, officials confirmed Tuesday.
The visit comes amid an unprecedented outreach effort by the Central Intelligence Agency and as Panetta seeks to double the number of CIA analysts who are proficient in Arabic and other Mideast languages.
But the date chosen for the meeting -- the 27th night of Ramadan or "night of power," when many devout Muslims and imams spend the entire night worshiping in the mosque -- is drawing criticism.
"They picked the entirely wrong night on this," said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "This is our leading intelligence agency who doesn't know this."
Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Dearborn, acknowledged the sensitivity of the night but said he and other community leaders, not the CIA, should take any blame because the agency consulted with the community before choosing the date. [the community does deserve blame because it should have scheduled the CIA visit a week later, on Eid, a joyous celebration during which sacrifices are made to whomever you worship.]
"It's a simple miscall," said Hamad, who added that most Muslims would break their fast before going to the mosque on the night of power. [If the CIA wants us to skip prayer on the night of power, surely God will understand]
Once among the most secret of agencies, the CIA has been setting up booths at events in Dearborn and Detroit and spending tens of thousands of dollars annually sponsoring galas and other events and scholarships. CIA spokesman George Little said Tuesday the agency's outreach to "first- and second-generation Americans" in Dearborn and elsewhere began about five years ago.
"These individuals have the kinds of skills, knowledge and experiences that can strongly advance our vital intelligence mission and protect the nation's security," Little said. "The number of job applications from the Detroit area has risen steadily over that time period."
The CIA was a platinum sponsor -- representing a contribution of at least $10,000 -- to the ADC's 29th annual fundraising gala in December, according to the committee's Web site. The CIA also contributes about $10,000 to the annual gala of the Arab American and Chaldean Council, said Executive Director Radwan Khoury. The agency also is a sponsor of the Arab International Festival and the Arab American Scholarship Foundation, according to the Web site of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce and Hamad.
In March, the CIA hosted an appreciation dinner for leaders of the Arab American and Chaldean communities at the Westin Hotel in Southfield. Top CIA officials, but not the director, attended.
Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News, said the CIA also spends money on image and recruitment advertisements in his newspaper. [and boasting about it]
"I don't know that they're recruiting people, but I know that they're making a great effort," Siblani said.
Walid said his organization has never sought sponsorship money from the CIA and would not accept it. "We would lose our credibility as an advocacy agency," he said. "We've criticized openly some of the tactics of the CIA, particularly under the previous administration."
Hamad said the CIA's outreach shows his community is as valued and as American as apple pie. ["and as Israeli as falafel"]
"We'd rather have the CIA, like the FBI or other government agencies, do their work in the open," he said. "The CIA did its job years and years ago, and we didn't meet any of them one to one."[did you get that, Lynndie? Torture Iraqis on an outdoor plaza in downtown Dearborn, not behind the walls of Abu Ghraib]
In all wars of liberation, some portion of the local population casts it lot with the foreign forces. Civil Air Patrol commander Long Nguyen's (pictured right) father was one of those people.
The Seattle Times reports: "Because his father had worked for U.S. forces, helping to find soldiers and airmen missing in action, his whole family was evacuated. They were among the first wave of Vietnamese refugees to come to Washington that summer [of 1975]."
I see a bitter irony in how Long Nguyen now makes his living: "His day job is a freelance mix: He flies private planes for several wealthy families who need [sic] a pilot to ferry them to the San Juans or up and down the coast ..."
Here's some background on the American war in Vietnam. Just months before the end of World War II, Japanese troops took control of an area that the French imperialists who had previously occupied it called Indochine française.
With the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the nationalist Viet Minh forces took control of parts of their homeland, which they called Việt Nam. Since 1941, the Viet Minh had enjoyed official support from the US government in fighting their common enemy, Japan, but that changed with the end of the war. The French wanted their colony back and, disregarding the Atlantic Charter, the US government supported the French. Before 1945 was over, the US was facilitating a French reconquest by transporting French soldiers to Vietnam on US troop transport ships.
Those Americans who knew anything about Vietnam during World War II knew that the United States had been allied with the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese liberation movement led by Ho Chi Minh, and had actually provided some arms to their guerrilla forces, commanded by Vo Nguyen Giap. American fliers rescued by Giap's guerrillas testified to the rural population's enthusiasm for both the Viet Minh and the United States, which they saw as the champion of democracy, antifascism, and anti-imperialism. American officials and officers who had contact with Ho and the Viet Minh were virtually unanimous in their support and admiration. The admiration was mutual. In September 1945 the Viet Minh issued the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, which began with a long quotation from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, proclaiming the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The regional leaders of the O.S.S. (predecessor of the C.I.A.) and U.S. military forces joined in the celebration, with General Philip Gallagher, chief of the U.S. Military Advisory and Assistance Group, singing the Viet Minh's national anthem on Hanoi radio.
But in the following two months, the United States committed its first act of warfare against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. At least 8 and possibly 12 U.S. troopships were diverted from their task of bringing American troops home from World War II and instead began transporting U.S.-armed French troops and Foreign Legionnaires from France to recolonize Vietnam. The enlisted crewmen of these ships, all members of the U.S. Merchant Marine, immediately began organized protests. On arriving in Vietnam, for example, the entire crews of four troopships met together in Saigon and drew up a resolution condemning the U.S. government for using American ships to transport troops "to subjugate the native population" of Vietnam.
The full-scale invasion of Vietnam by French forces, once again equipped and ferried by the United States, began in 1946. An American movement against the war started to coalesce as soon as significant numbers of Americans realized that Washington was supporting France's war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.*
France's war ended with the ignominious defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954; the US war continued to escalate until it, too, was defeated in 1973.
* A more complete description appears in Franklin's book, Vietnam and Other American Fantasies (UMass Pr. 2001) pp. 49-50.
That is not my real name My name is Branches-strung-with-raindrops My name is Trees-lined-with-snow
I would not be an asset to your company Nor to anything or anybody else I am a dreamer A waster of time A thinker of long thoughts A player of solitaire
I only want you to hire me Because I need the money And I only need the money Because as Grace Paley says Everyone has to make some kind of deal to survive
I started out the same as you A baby--fat and confident My mother was a receding marble statue My grandmother warm but too soon gone
I have a terrible stutter And I can't hear very well I don't like the telephone I never learned to type without looking So I can't type very fast
I think we are on a continuum Even you with your manager's lenses
I want to know why The corporate mentality sucks so bad Why it expects people To do without windows Or decent lunches Or talking to one another
I want to know why When there are 713 references in the Bible To feeding the poor, being kind to strangers And protecting orphans You only focus on one in Leviticus Which is an instruction to the priest class anyway
These are the things I'm interested in And which I will secretly research On the company computers
I'm smart and I'll do your work But don't expect me to care about it.
Source: Elizabeth Romero. "My (Real) Resume." Real Change (Vol. 16, No. 34), July 29, 2009. p. 10.
