The JvL Bi

The JvL Bi-Weekly

James van Luik

Publisher & Editor & Compiler

Please forward the Bi-Weekly to any who might be interested

Monday, May 31st, 2004

Volume 3, No. 10

6. Articles

1. People and Government

2. The Dominance of American Foreign Policy

3. Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot Act

4. A New American Dream

5. Israel Ignores Founding Principles

6. Cuba Retaliates with Clampdown on the Dollar

1. PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT

NELSON CAMPBELL

In The Letters to: Al-Jazeerah info. editor of 15 May, 2004, there was one from a Canadian which condemned not only "Bush and Blair" in the context of current events but also "Americans" (meaning those of the United States) in general. An editorial comment in response cautioned us to differentiate between the government of the US and its people, which may well soon vote in a different government.

I am sorry to say, as a citizen of the US, that I cannot agree with this charitable and hopeful outlook. One could comment on this at great length but it might suffice to note the economic and military strangulation of Iraq which was ongoing throughout the (Democratic) Clinton administration. Furthermore, both national polls and casual chat with friends and acquaintances showed that support for the war policies of the US was overwhelming in the days when it was said that it was imply a matter of going into Iraq (and Afghanistan) with overwhelming force and destruction in order to impose the will of the United State in establishment of a vaguely defined "better world." That support, often tinged with a blind and oddly curious bitterness, is still very strong among the people of the US.

Consider also the words of those opposing the Republicans in the upcoming elections. They reveal quite clearly that they intend not to do anything fundamentally different, only "better."

Furthermore, one must recognize not only the tacit approval but explicit support by the United States and its people for Israel throughout all the years of its tragic and brutal attempt to colonize Palestine.

Question about such policies boil down to questions of national interest. Opinions on this are very often obscured by ignorance, often intentionally exploited. It is all too easy for some to say only "This is good" or "That is bad" or "We need this or that" to be believed blindly by many. But even if opinions of "national interest" have at least some basis in reality, what should be done when the interests of some are decidedly not in the interests of others?

I feel that it is time now not only to improve education and understanding of many (including many in the US) but also to mediate national interest in the context of international or global interest. It is very like personal interest, which sometimes be subjugated to community interest, and the interest of tribes, regions, states or provinces, which must harmonize with those of the nations they comprise.

We have at least a sketch of an international authority in the United Nations. It works, but might work much more effectively, not only to improve education and understanding of reality among many but also to mediate among competing national interests. We should, I think, support the idea of a United Nations – not as it now is, but as a true government of the people, by the people and for the people.

2. THE DOMINANCE OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

JAMES VAN LUIK

(This article constitutes an outline of what I consider to be two important and commonly repeated misconceptions, repeated, for example, in the previous article, above, "People and Government," by Nelson Campbell.)

Firstly, in the 4^th paragraph where Nelson Campbell writes: "Furthermore, one must recognize not only the tacit approval but explicit support by the United States and its people for Israel throughout all the years of its tragic and brutal attempts to colonize Palestine."

This is mostly misleading. The facts are different and very important.

There is no Israeli foreign, or domestic policy as it affects the Palestinians. There is only American foreign policy. Israel receives over 4 billion dollars every year via the US taxpayer. This money is mostly, by far, for American armaments. This is part of the US plan to have Israel as a military outpost to play a crucial rôle in the US control of the Middle East. The US made it possible for Israel to build a nuclear force as it helped Pakistan to do the same. And, one should add that significant private funds comes into Israel through generally Jewish donations from all over the world, but mostly from the US. The job assigned, by the US, to Israel along with Pakistan and Turkey is to control the Middle East. Notice these three states are non-Arab.

It is worth reading Nathan and Ruth Ann Perlmutter's book "The Real Anti-Semitism in America." Nathan Perlmutter was National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith. There you will find that to criticize American foreign policy is to be an anti-Semite. And why is this the case? Because Israeli foreign policy is American foreign policy. It is of great importance to understand that the US, since the realization by the American military that Israel could be a great military asset in the Middle East, has prevented a Middle East peace. The US has no interest in Israel except as a military asset. This has prevented Israel from integrating itself into the Middle East. Obviously, if Israel were integrated into the Middle East it would be of no use to the US. And certainly it wouldn't be receiving this enormous amount of foreign "aid". I think it is hardly unfair to generalize this idea further by stating that the US government has had and continues to have illusions of high delusional content that US foreign policy must necessarily be the world's foreign policy.

Secondly, and I quote Mr. Campbell again in his last paragraph: "We have at least a sketch of an international authority in the United Nations. It works, but might work much more effectively, not only to improve education and understanding reality among many but also to mediate among competing national interests. We should, I think, support the idea of a UN – not as it now is, but as true government of the people, by the people and for the people."

The mistake here is to think that the UN is even a sketch of an international authority. The UN is an American agency in fact. If the US vetoes a resolution or even abstains in the Security Council it is the same thing as assigning it to oblivion. If any resolution is passed in the General Assembly against US interests on say the war in Iraq, or on the Middle East, or most famously, historically, concerning Nicaragua by amazing margins of 120 to 3 or even 2, with Israel voting with the US, it is the same story the resolution passes into oblivion. It's no secret, it should be understood: the US chooses the UN Secretary General. As is Blair so is the Secretary General a lackey of the US. Also, one mustn't forget that if the US disapproves of some member of the UN appointed administration that person is replaced. The UN does not work, true, it doesn't because it can't work if it opposes the US in any significant way. When the US decided not to go to the UN for validation relating to its desire to go to war with Iraq it was saying very plainly as Kissinger, Albright and Powell and other Secretaries of State have said: If you don't want to approve our resolutions we'll do what we want anyway. In other words the US does not want validation of its policies by any other power, countries, UN legislators or UN courts.

I would like to make one last statement regarding American foreign policy. It has been a consistent one since the Constitutional Convention of 1787. There was a newspaper of the time called "The Federalist." This newspaper published many articles from people such as James Madison. There were several articles laying out American foreign military interventionist policy. I recommend reading a collection of the Federalist papers for the constitutional period of 1787. Also, in conjunction: Charles Austin Beard wrote an outstanding scholarly work relating to the formation of the American Constitution of 1787 which I strongly recommend: "An Economic History of the United States Constitution."

(Editor's Note: The article above was just published in Aljazeerah Info., (based in Texas). However, the editor, Dr. Hassan El-Najjar, removed three sentences without my permission or consultation. Since I am not employed by this publication, but submitted an unsolicited article the protocol concerning editing other than: 1. grammatical problems, 2. acceptance of the article or 3. its rejection, is to consult with the author. This he did not do, and so he published an article purportedly mine with its meaning changed. He simply wrote to me just before publication that he had removed three sentences of mine, which he quoted. When I asked, why? He wrote back, after publication, saying that two of those sentences would require a lengthy article to explicate fully. The third he found to be contradictory. I explained that there were no contradictions, and therefore he could not have understood the article, but what he had done was to change the essence of what I had written favoring his anecdotal perspective against my attempt to answer whose political forces dominate the Palestinian-Israeli debacle. And a reading of the article below, "A New American Dream", exhibits further evidence, from a European perspective, by whom fundamental foreign policy power is dictated concomitantly supported by a huge global military attempting to enforce this hegemony.)

3. TAKING A CLOSER LOOK AT THE PATRIOT ACT

BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

(Where Are You Heading, America?)

The parallels with 1930s Germany are ominous …

Have you read USA PATRIOT ACT right through, and examined every one of its amendments to existing legislation? Has anyone done this, apart from its authors and a few agitated souls in media, academia and some Congressional offices? It is 342 pages long, and went through the legislative process of the US like a hot knife through butter. Senators voted 98 to 1 for the Act, and the House endorsed it by 357 to 56, but no one of those who approved its terms could possibly have had time to read it and cross-reference its details before endorsing it. This was governance by misplaced trust, because the Patriot Act is potentially the most dangerous piece of legislation in US history.

The Act alters 15 Statutes. The prerogatives, personal authority and dominance of the president of the US have been extended to include drastic and quasi-imperial powers that threaten the liberties of all Americans.

One reason the Patriot Act is worrying for foreigners is that US military expansionism and economic domination are drastically affecting the entire world. What is decided in Washington today is immensely important for every other capital tomorrow. We are all dependent in one way or another on US policies. Therefore it is appropriate rather than impertinent that the rest of the world should comment on US domestic matters that inevitably impact on every person on the globe.

Another reason for concern is that there are alarming echoes of the 1930s, when a semi-elected and eventually-appointed national figure amassed such power as to be unaccountable to the people of his country, and went on to create mayhem and chaos to the extent that the entire world was shaken to its foundations.

You question or deride the notion that there could be parallels between Bush and Hitler? Very well. But please read the Act before you finally make up your mind.

The Patriot Act is hideously reminiscent of the "Decree for the Protection of Nation and State" that became law in Nazi Germany in February 1933. Its provisions were described by John Toland, in his masterly "Adolf Hitler", as ostensibly innocuous while in practice destroying every reasonable humanitarian right formerly possessed by the German people. There were "Tribunals set up to try enemies of the state", and Toland observed that Hitler made his legislation (the "Enabling Act") "sound moderate and promised to use its emergency powers "Only in so far as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures." Does that sound horribly familiar? And who would decide whether a measure was "vitally necessary"? Why, the man wielding total power, of course. ("Trust me!" is ever the cry of the incipient dictator.)

So Hitler's Decree and the Reichstag's subsequent Enabling Act were never modified or repealed because they gave the man who was served by a compliant and intensely "patriotic" legislature the instruments he needed to keep him in total control. This is the reason for Bush's energetic campaign to prevent the Patriot Act being subject to the existing "sunset clause" whereby most of its more despotic provisions should lapse next year. It was passed by a compliant and intensely "patriotic" legislature: will it be repealed by one?

It is far from irrelevant that Hitler was appointed Germany's Chancellor, in legal accord with the Weimar Constitution, by President Hindenburg in 1933, just as Bush was appointed president of the US by the Supreme Court in December 2000. Shortly after Hitler came to power the chamber housing the Parliament, the Reichstag, was set ablaze. Hitler thought this an excellent opportunity to consolidate his dominance. As Toland records, he cleared: "Now we'll show them. Anyone who stand in our way will be mown down". Nobody died in the Reichstag fire, but it was Hitler's 9-11, and it spawned the Patriot Act of its era.

Hitler's sweeping Decree provided that "…restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right of association, and violations of the privacy of postal communications, and warrants for house-searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed."

The USA Patriot Act also restricts personal liberty "beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed". Every provision of the 1933 Protection of National and State Decree, save that of speech and press freedom, is mirrored in the Patriot Act which permits investigators, without having to show "probate cause", to obtain a subpoena to search anyone's personal details held by their library, bank, credit card and insurance companies" in fact by any organization or institution that keeps records.

This is Orwell's "Big Brother at work", but the Act is relished by those who advocate more and more state supervision and investigation of the private lives of ordinary US citizens. The Ashcroft Act (as it should be named) is accepted and even welcomed by countless millions of Americans who are kept totally unaware of its terms.

The Senate and House approved colossal extension of state control without any debate of consequence on the dangers to ordinary people posed by this modern version of the "Decree for the Protection of Nation and States". Only a tiny number of citizens have the remotest notion of the Act's contents, because it is the intention of state-control freaks to avoid explanation and to repeat endlessly the mantras that "The Patriot Act defends our liberty"; "It's essential law". "It's a law that is making America safer … It doesn't make any sense to scale it back," all of which comforting slogans were uttered by Bush in the Chocolate Ballroom in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on April 20^th.

But if an American dares criticize the president in vehement terms, and that fact is recorded in the minutes of a private meeting, then the FBI can place such information on a citizen's action file. The citizen will never know about this, because the FBI's subpoena cannot be challenged in court, and the target, the victim, to put it bluntly, is legally kept in ignorance about its every being served. How is that for a slam dunk against civil liberties?

It is not only in the Patriot Act and the Decree for Protection of Nation and State that the regime of Hitler and the Administration of Bush strike parallels. There is the business of God:

"God heard the nations, scram and sing and shout:

"God punish England! God save the King!". And God this, and God that, and God the other thing. "Good God!" said God. "I've got my work cut out."

And there is no doubt God has got his work cut out, because some of the people who have quoted Him and assured the world that His support for them is their … well … God-given right, have to be somewhat presumptuous in their approaches to the Deity.

Take Hitler, on February 1, 1933:

"May God almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people, for we are fighting not for ourselves but for Germany."

And Bush on January 28, 2003:

"We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the living God behind all of life, and all of history. May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America."

Or Nazi propaganda master Goebbels on December 31, 1938, when he asked "may God hold His hand of blessing over Germany in the future."

Then there is the serving US army three star general Boykin who announced, without censure by his superiors, that "…our spiritual enemy [Islam] will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus". NBC News reported on October 15, 2003 that "Boykin routinely tells audiences that God, not the voters, chose President Bush. [Boykin asks]: "Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why his he there? I tell you this morning [at a prayer meeting] that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this." Politicized to his revolving eyeballs, and energized by militant religious fundamentalism, Boykin would have fitted well into Hitler's scheme of things. And how many followers does he have in the army?

Doctor Johnson observed pithily that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel", but he might have added that Christian piety is the first recourse of the western politician with tendencies to totalitarianism. It is, after all, a weapon against which it is difficult to argue in a Christian country in which millions regard the man at the top as little short of a deity. Remember Britney Spears' loyal declaration that "I think we should just trust the president and go along with whatever he says"? This is what many millions of Americans support, without doubt or question.

Just as Hitler rejoiced to the sound of happily-duped citizens screaming "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!", so did Bush last week welcome the orchestrated chants of "four more years! four more years!" during his recent political tour, during which the Winona (Wis) Daily News of May 8 reported that: "Hundreds of soldiers from Fort McCoy, all wearing white T-shirts with an American flag on the front, enthusiastically cheered the president, especially his remarks about the war on terror. 'I will never relent in bringing justice to our enemies. I will defend the security of America, whatever it takes,' Bush said to enthusiastic chants of Four More Years!"

Who sent these soldiers to cheer for Bush? Were they on official duty at the time of their attendance at a political function? Who provided transport for them to go to the Republican rally? If Bush visits soldiers on duty, as commander-in-chief, then it is proper they should pay respect to him. And if soldiers want to attend a republican Party supporters' mass meeting as individuals, that is their right as citizens. But when they are publicly and jubilantly highlighted as soldiers by the organizers of a partisan electioneering jamboree it appears that they are being used in a political propaganda operation, just as was the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Mission Accomplished.

According to the La Crosse Tribune: "Servicemen and women from Fort McCoy filled an entire bleacher section. The soldiers, who wore t-shirts with American flags on the front and the wording 'I am an American soldier' on the back, drew lots of applause form the rest of the crowd. When Larry Gatlin of the Gatlin brothers stopped to let the soldiers sing a line of America the Beautiful solo 'America, America, God shed His grace on thee' people responded with huge applause."

It's back to Boykin's militant God, again, and this time linked with stage-managed, football-game, strident patriotism to get votes for Bush. You might think that the Bush vote-shenanigan was appropriate use of the time of American soldiers (and of US taxpayers' money), but, even if you believe that it was, you may care to bear in mind sinister memories of other places, years ago, when massed ranks of soldiers behaved and chorused in similar fashion.

Have you seen the film of Hitler's 1934 Nuremberg Rally made by Leni Riefenstahl? (It was a classic of its time. She died last year, aged 101.) The Nazi Storm Troopers wore crisp brown shirts rather than casual white T-shirts, of course, but the same enthusiasm, the same emotional, excited, starry eyed devotion, was on public display. The army was politicized and followed the chief politician, the charismatic Adolf Hitler, whose soldier sang the Horst Wessel Song (Flag high, ranks closed, the Storm Troopers [Brownshirts] march with silent solid tread), which is set to the tune of the Christian hymn My God, How Great Thou Art.

What goes around, comes around, and reappears in the enthusiastic chorus of America the Beautiful, God shed His grace on thee by hundreds of happy-clappy, US soldiers at a party political rally arranged to whip up support for a traveling politician. Sure, they were wearing T-shirts not Brown shirts, but just like the young Storm Troopers of seventy years ago they cannot differentiate between a commander-in-chief, in which appointment the incumbent is deserving of deference, and cheapjack gobbet of political slime who was taking them for a ride in the interests of maintaining power. And why should they? How could they? The are, after all, taught to revere the great leader and when their superiors encourage them to join in politics, who are they to question them? (Orders are orders … )

The American author William Shirer lived in Germany in the 1930s, and produced his definitive and terrifying "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" in 1959. Among other things he traces the policy of Hitler regarding the German army in which "it became obvious that Nazi Propaganda was making headway … especially among the younger officers." Before Hitler came to power the German defence minister, General Groener, "requested soldier to refrain from politics and to serve the state aloof from all [political] party strife." No chance, of course, because Hitler knew he could expect absolute obedience from all sections of the military to whom he promised glory in patriotic defence of the interest of the Nation.

Hitler relied on the discipline that is instilled in all soldiers to ensure that their loyalty centered on him, and him alone. In an uncanny replay of history, the 21^st Century US military is being manipulated through its members' instinctive patriotic feelings to believe that it is Bush and only Bush who can save the nation from unknown horrors. The strategy is identical: link patriotism and religiosity with the loyalty of gullible people who are inherently deferential to authority, or have been encouraged to be so, and you have the recipe for power, especially over those who know nothing about the outside world.

Do you think that the average American is well-informed about the world? It appears not to be the case. In fact it seems that the average American citizen has been thoroughly deceived by the very person they have been taught to revere.

It is terrifying that millions of down-to-earth, ordinary, decent people in the US believe that torturing Iraqis is permissible and even admirable, because of "what happened on 9-11". Take, for example, one particular supporter of the woman soldier, Lynndie England, who was photographed grinning at a heap of naked Iraqis. The Independent (UK) reported that the justifier of torture was "Mrs Gainor, good-natured woman [in Lynndie England's home town], who works for an internet company". She was "even more explicit in her defence of Ms England. She said: 'We are not there [in Iraq] for a tea party. We are there because they blew up 5,000 of our people.' She was then asked if she believed Iraq was involved in the terror attacks of 11 September 2001, and replied 'They were definitely involved….'"

In that ignorance we see an eerie and disturbing picture of compliance with authority and unquestioning acceptance of what the powerful ones "the all-knowing, the benevolent, far-sighted Big Brothers of the masses: desire to be seen as a threat to complacency and normality. It is not just that the figure of 5,000 is wildly wrong, it is that the statement "[the Iraqis] were definitely involved [in 9-11]" is contrary to demonstrable fact. But the continual linking by Bush, and his supporting propagandists, of 9-11 with "the just war" on Iraq has convinced half of all Americans, including this poor benighted soccer-mom defender of US torture, that the war on Iraq was necessary to punish those responsible for 9-11. Selling of the attractive lie bout Iraqi responsibility for terrorism directed against America has become more urgent since it became obvious that other justifications for war, such as tales of "imminent threat" from nuclear weapons, "thousands of tons of chemical agents" and so forth, have been shown as the product of the Bush administration's group psychosis, which is defined as "severe mental derangement, especially when resulting in delusions and loss of contact with external reality".

Enormous damage has been done. Much of the American public now begs to hear such declarations as "I will defend the security of America, whatever it takes" that Bush makes, time after time, to emotional audiences. A cheerleader for torture such as the seriously psychopathic Senator James Inhofe is considered patriotic when he declares "these prisoners [tortured in Abu Ghriab], they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands, and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals. I am outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human-rights violations while our troops, our heroes, are fighting and dying." Little wonder Mr. And Mrs. Average American are attracted to the notion that true patriotism and moral decency are exemplified by the grotesques and amorality preached by such as he. Inhofe is in need of urgent psychiatric treatment and a dose of morality therapy, but this does not alter the fact that what he says has a great deal of appeal to a surprising number of people.

The willingness of millions of Americans to believe what is comfortable and good and patriotic, in defiance of evidence that what has been taking place in Iraq is uncomfortable and evil and nationally disgraceful, is shown by the supportive yellow ribbons displayed in the hometown of the grinning sadist, Lynndie England. Direct, undeniable evidence of wickedness is ignored, derided or explained away. The facts are not patriotic; they are not what America should be about; they are not NICE; therefore they cannot be accepted. The Nazi propaganda chief, Goebbels, was an expert at such manipulation. He and Inhofe are a lovely pair.

It is in the interests of furthering state control over any population that threat a to the nation be presented and described, repeatedly and in simple terms (sound bites; quick video clips), with the overlaying message that the looming menace can be neutralized and "normality" restored only by constant vigilance and action on the part of a kindly and all-seeing "and all-powerful" overlord. Of course it is the responsibility of government to deter, detect and neutralize threats to the citizenry, but it is not the responsibility of government to indulge in willful misrepresentation in order to achieve its aims. Suspension of belief in morality is not usually enforceable. But it can be willingly embraced, just as it was by ordinary, decent people in Nazi Germany, who were encouraged, at first gradually and then by a mighty propaganda campaign, to believe that minor and defenseless nations present a threat to their personal security and to their country.

Germans lost their freedom beginning with the Decree for Protection of Nation and State. If the Patriot Act is not repealed, Americans will lose their freedom, too. The parallels with Nazi Germany are too close for comfort.

4. A NEW AMERICAN DREAM

EDITORS OF THE OBSERVER

The United States and Britain have an Iraq crisis on their hands, but the US has something worse, a crisis of thought and assumption in the mainstream intellectual community over foreign policy.

The second crisis involves much more than the derailment of US policy in Iraq. It concerns what has been done and said to redefine America's place in global society and, by implication, in contemporary history, since 11 September – after which, as Americans said, nothing could ever be the same.

A 'new America' was said to have emerged, but it would be better to say an old one found new empowerment. It was recently described by former US ambassador to France Felix Rohatyn as 'more radical and more committed than ever to the need for unchallenged military dominance. It is more individualistic than Europe, more religious, conservative and patriotic … [These factors][ will influence everything America does from now on, both in its foreign and its domestic policies.'

That is undoubtedly true, but this 'new' America amazingly resembles the isolationist and xenophobic America between 1920 and 1941, What is new is that it has become the most heavily-armed nation on Earth and believes it is, and should remain, number one.

Like pre-1941 America, it includes a strong streak of populist anti-European sentiment. What's new is that many political intellectuals and political leaders are anti-European too, annoyed by Europe's pretension to offer a valid alternative to what America considers its manifest destiny, and preoccupied by the threat that the EU might becomes a serious international rival.

Despite everything some Americans say today about their future being tied to a dynamic new Asia, Europe remains the society against which the US measures itself. Americans know Europe as the society against which the US rebelled and, in the American mind, superseded.

A comparison with Britain reassures it; one with continental Europe upsets it. (It was the opposite in pre-1941 America; popular sentiment then was probably more anti-British than anti-continental.) Tony Blair has played the reassurance role with intuition and success, although the benefits to Britain remain in doubt.

The persistent note of denigration and condescension in talk about Europe (mostly recently, as a waning 'Venus' to an American 'Mars"), has to be understood as expression of an anxiety two centuries old and too deep to be acknowledged.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans produced several theories about their new position as sole superpower. The most popular one said that history had come to an end in the American political and economic system, all other possibilities exhausted or discredited. The US was history's culmination, the system the rest of the world had to adopt. The rest was detail.

This was an American Marxism, a dialectical interpretation of history as having been a march from the Neolithic cave to US military and moral superpower – and inevitable hegemony.

The 'realistic' version of this progressive dialectic, the one favoured by Republicans, said that the US should use power as well as persuasion to hustle the others along for their own good. This was held essential in the case of those who found the idea of an Americanised destiny less alluring than it seems to Americans. The Iraqis currently benefit from such attention.

In 2001, the main reason the New York and Washington attacks produced so traumatic an effect in the US was that they defied the notion of America as the morally righteous fulfillment of history. Americans were abruptly made to see themselves as victims of what they interpreted as the hate and envy of people who obstinately refused to acknowledge (as George Bush angrily complained) 'how good we are'.

Americans were under attack by enemies who not only were multiple and elusive, malevolent and inventive, but who asserted their own outrageous claim to moral superiority over Americans, as well as a divine mandate of their own. The war on terror, with its adjunct war in Iraq, was meant to reconfirm this pre-eminence. Both, of course, have done the opposite. They have demonstrated the inability of badly overextended military power even to impose stability on the two countries in the developing world which the US has invaded.

The prospect of stabilising and reforming what Washington now calls the 'Greater Middle East' seems slight, to put it politely. Terror has multiplied, rather than been disarmed. Now an American moral disaster has been revealed, composed of torture, secret prisons and international illegality. No one in Washington anticipated this. "Certainly not the neo-conservatives, the most aggressive promoters of a 'righteous' imperialism, who drove the march to war in Iraq. They have dropped from sight.

The mainstream commentators and foreign policy experts never imagined defeat in Iraq. The latest American election-year books on foreign policy are entirely concerned with managing the challenges of success and hegemony.

Nearly all express a calm confidence that America has entered a new stage in its relations with the rest of the world, produced by the singularity of American power and the superiority of its conceptions of how the world should be ordered (not to speak of the mandate confided to America, and particularly to the present administration, by the English-speaking deity).

A year ago, when these books were drafted, few in the policy community and corps of commentators, and no one in the Bush government expressed any doubt that American military power was invincible; that it rested on moral foundations that are beyond serious reproach; that pacification, control and reform of Iraq and the Greater Middle East by the US and its allies was both feasible and desirable; and that 'the war on terror' was finite, intellectually and morally coherent – and winnable. War in Iraq was even expected to turn a profit since, as Paul Wolfowitz noted, the country was 'floating on oil'.

Most warned about where the world would find itself if America failed to lead all the rest. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, argue that the US has a right to 'more security than other countries', since without America's worldwide military deployment, there would be chaos in the Middle East, war in Asia, 'pell-mell' rearmament in Europe, a rush by Europeans to make 'special arrangements' with Russia, and rekindled 'fears of German power and historically rooted national animosities'.

Now the assumed decadence of Venus Europe, and its inevitable submission to the American Mars, has lost plausibility. The confident notion that a 'new' Atlanticist Europe would replace 'old' Europe disappeared with Spain's unapologetic withdrawal from Iraq and Polish intimations that its commitment was not unlimited. The faithful Blair suffers grave domestic consequences from having plunged down a blind alley in Washington.

The war on terror was founded on an edifice of illusions that virtually no one in the US policy community questioned. That has collapsed. Since they really were illusions about the US itself, the collapse has internal implications.

The country suffered a disruptive and doubt-filled domestic aftermath of the defeat in Vietnam for more than decade. The war in Iraq was supposed to give the US the triumph it was denied in Vietnam. Instead, it has doubled the defeat. The consequences of this, abroad as well as at home, are unforeseeable.

5. ISRAEL IGNORES FOUNDING PRINCIPLES

DANIEL BARENBOIM

(speaking on May 9^th before the Israeli Knesset)

It was in 1952, four years after the declaration of Israel's independence, that I, as a 10-year old boy, came to Israel with my parents from Argentina.

The declaration of independence was a source of inspiration to believe in ideals that transformed us from Jews to Israelis.

This remarkable document expressed the commitment: "The state of Israel will devote itself to the development of this country for the benefit of all its people; it will be founded on the principles of freedom, justice and peace, guided by the vision of the prophets of Israel; it will grant full equal, social and political rights to all its citizens regardless of differences of religious faith, race or sex; it will ensure freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture."

The founding fathers of the state of Israel who signed the declaration also committed themselves and us "to pursue peace and good relations with all neighboring states and people."

I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the declaration of independence promised and what was fulfilled; the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel?

Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the declaration of independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other?

Can the Jewish people, whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people?

Can the state of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice?

I believe that despite all the objective and subjective difficulties the future of Israel and is position in the family of enlightened nations will depend on its ability to realize the promise of the founding fathers as they canonized it in the declaration of independence.

I have always believed that there is no military solution to the Jewish-Arab conflict, neither from a moral nor a strategic one, and since [another kind of] solution is therefore inevitable I ask myself: Why wait? It is for this very reason that I founded with my late friend, Edward Said a workshop for young musicians from all the countries of the Middle East, Jews and Arabs.

Despite the fact that as an art, music cannot compromise its principles, and politics, on the other hand, is the art of compromise, when politics transcends the limits of the present existence and ascends to the higher sphere of the possible, it can be joined there by music. Music is the art of the imaginary par excellence, an art free of all limits imposed by words, an art that touches the depth of human existence, an art of sounds that crosses all borders. As such, music can take the feelings and imagination of Israelis and Palestinians to new unimaginable spheres.

I therefore decided to donate the money, from the Wolf Foundation Prize, to music education projects in Israel and Ramallah.

6. CUBA RETALIATES WITH CLAMPDOWN ON DOLLAR

ANDREW GUMBEL

Cuba suspended abruptly the sale of all but a handful of essential goods at hard currency stores yesterday in apparent retaliation for tighter restrictions on travel and currency transfers, announced by President Bush last week in an overt effort to pry Fidel Castro from power.

Warning of "days of work and sacrifice" ahead, the Cuban government announced that only food, personal hygiene and cleaning products would be sold in dollar-denominated stores until further notice. It also warned of price increases for petrol and other consumer goods. Shortly before the rules took effect, Cubans jammed into late-night stores on Monday night, May 10^th, to buy cooking oil, canned food, pasta, soap and toilet paper.

A government statement blamed the measures squarely on the US, saying that President Bush's new restrictions were a major squeeze on hard currency coming into the country.

"The brutality of the measures adopted by the government of the United States will unfortunately increase the prices in the shops that offer goods in dollars and at gasoline stations," the statement said.

"The brutal and cruel measures, on top of a strict blockade of 45 years … are directly aimed at strangling our development and reducing to a minimum hard currency resources vital to cover food needs and medical, educational and other essential services that our population needs."

This tough rhetoric was greeted skeptically by many observers, who saw President Bush's new restriction and the Castro government's reaction to them as being more about election-year politics in Florida – home to the greatest concentration of Cuban exiles in the US – than it was about economic realities or the desire for immediate "regime change" on the island.

Based on the 500-page recommendations of a specially convened Cuba commission, President Bush announced last Thursday that the $1200 that Cuban Americans were allowed to send home each year would be restricted to immediate relatives. Members of the Cuban Communist Party – some 800,000 people – would not be eligible to receive the money.

President Bush also decided that Cuban Americans would be allowed to travel home every three years instead of every year, and limited the amount that relatives could carry into Cuba to $50 a day from $164.

He said these moves were designed specifically to end the "tyranny" of the Castro regime.

What was remarkable about them, [the restrictions], however, is that they were far less stringent than originally envisioned. The White House had considered halving or even abolishing the $1200 currency transfer figure but changed its mind after moderate Cuban exile groups in Florida, who maintain strong ties to family members back home, expressed strong opposition.

The remittances add up to around $800 million a year – a crucial lifeline in a country where many essential goods are available only in hard currency stores.

One likely motivation for the new restrictions on the Cuban side was to stir up anti-Bush sentiment in Florida and entice John Kerry, his Democratic challenger, to pledge a more moderate stance – something he has yet to do.

Even in watered-down form, the Bush measures went down badly with the younger generation of Cubans in Florida. Andres Gomez, the head of a moderate exile group called the Antonio Maceo Brigade, told The Miami Herald: "Some 140,000 Cuban exiles visited the island last year; 100,000 of those lived in south Florida. This will mean many of those who can't travel to the island will vote against Bush, and for a candidate who allows travel to Cuba."