James van Luik

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With Israel waging an all-out war against the forces of Hezbollah, and the death toll in terms of civilian casualties mounting on a daily basis, the question of a diplomatic resolution to the crisis takes on an urgency that is being felt around the world. Everywhere, it seems, except in Israel and the United States. One should not be fooled by the "false" diplomacy being waged by the United States, fronted by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.

The draft Security Council resolution co-sponsored between the United States and France is but a tragic farce, a smoke screen designed to unilaterally protect Israeli interests at the expense of all others that is so transparent no Arab nation takes it seriously (it has been rejected outright by Lebanon, Syria and Hezbollah).

There are several reasons for this apparent lack of concern on the part of the primary belligerent (Israel) and its No. 1 underwriter (the United States). First and foremost is the fact that the ongoing violence being waged against Hezbollah is not, contrary to popular opinion, a knee-jerk reaction to the attack against Israel by Hezbollah that resulted in several dead Israeli soldiers and two taken prisoner. It is rather part and parcel of a long-planned strike designed not only to neutralize Hezbollah, but also its largest international supporters, namely Syria and Iran. As such, Israel (and by extension, the United States) has certain predesignated goals and objectives that need to be reached, and no cease-fire will be willingly undertaken until they are. These include the military destruction of Hezbollah and its political isolation, along with its major supporter Iran.

But as the global hue and cry over the indiscriminate death and destruction being inflicted on the innocent civilians of Lebanon by the Israeli Defense Force continues to mount, drowning out any legitimate counter Israel may have by citing similar indiscriminate loss of life and property caused by Hezbollah rockets, Israel and its supporters in Washington, D.C., recognize that there is a limit to what the world will be willing to tolerate.

Already Israel and the United States are feeling the brunt of a diplomatic backlash resulting from the horrific devastation rained down on the people of Lebanon as a result of Israel's blind rage and America's misguided support of everything that is done in the name of Israel.

This does not mean that America's support of Israel's legitimate security concerns is bad policy; just the opposite. Supporting Israel's right to exist, and its right to defend itself against those who wish to do it harm, is the soundest possible policy a democracy such as America could embrace. But as a nation built on the belief that all humans are created equal, and that oppression of one party by another represents a tyranny that must be opposed, it is high time that the United States learn to differentiate between what constitutes legitimate Israeli security concerns, and what constitutes regional hegemony, tyranny and oppression.

Knee-jerk reactions aside, there is really no foundation upon which Americans can morally continue to support the Israeli actions in Lebanon. Indeed, many Americans, joined by like-minded people around the world, are increasingly taking a position that opposes the Israeli military assault on Lebanon.

There is a difference between being opposed to Israeli action, and having a viable plan on what to do instead. One of the main problems is the fact that Israel (and its supporters here in the United States) have sagely exploited the lexicon of terror, a politically savvy move in post 9/11 America that makes the formulation of any viable opposition to what the Israelis claim to be a legitimate response in the face of terror virtually impossible.

When evaluating the Israeli position on Hezbollah, we should never forget that it was Hezbollah, alone among the forces in the Arab world, that defeated Israel, compelling the Israeli Defense Force to withdraw from southern Lebanon in May 2000 after a disastrous 18-year occupation. National pride, combined with hegemonic hubris born of out-of-control Zionism, prevents Israel from ever accepting this result or forgiving Hasan Nasrullah or his followers for this "crime."

Israel claims the moral high ground in this current round of conflict, citing the July 12 attack by Hezbollah on an Israeli Army patrol that left eight IDF soldiers dead and two captured. The disproportionality of response aside (Hezbollah fires hundreds of rockets into Israel, and gets thousands of artillery shells and aerial bombs in return; Israel's civilian casualties run in the scores, Lebanon's in the hundreds), Israel's claim as the aggrieved party simply does not withstand the test of history and fact.

Hezbollah is a direct byproduct of the 1982 Israeli invasion and subsequent occupation of Lebanon. In the chaos and anarchy that followed, Israel helped facilitate disunity and dysfunction within Lebanon by promoting the interests of the Lebanese Christian minority over Lebanese Muslims, Sunni and Shi'a alike. Hezbollah as an organization grew from this political morass, representing the legitimate aspirations of the Shi'a Lebanese of southern and eastern Lebanon. Albeit largely funded and supplied by Iran and Syria, Hezbollah is not an international organization, but one distinctly Lebanese. Its function has been to liberate Lebanon from Israeli aggression. To call Hezbollah a terrorist organization is not only a misuse of terminology, but also symptomatic of the larger problem that plagues both Israel and the United States when it comes to dealing with the Middle East as a whole.

Israel and the United States have become trapped by the lexicon born of the so-called "Global War on Terror." These two nations have collectively painted in their mind's eye a world of distinct black and white, or good and evil. In doing so, the reality that is the Middle East goes unrecognized, and as such, no viable solution can be found. If Hezbollah were a genuine non-state terror group, one could make an argument that direct military confrontation designed to isolate and destroy that group was viable. But Hezbollah is not a non-state player, but rather a legitimate expression of the legitimate desires of a not-insignificant percentage of the people of Lebanon.

Hezbollah is decidedly anti-Israel, as only a group born from the oppression of Israeli occupation of their homeland could be. This has led to fiery rhetoric on the part of Hezbollah and its supporters, which has been exploited by Israel and the United States to paint Hezbollah as an organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hezbollah has stated that its goals are the removal of all Israeli forces from Lebanon, the Golan Heights and the return of Palestinian refugees to Palestine. Hezbollah also continues to demand the release of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, some of whom have been imprisoned for nearly 20 years.

It was the prisoner issue that led to the most recent outbreak of violence between Israel and Hezbollah. Following Israel's retreat from southern Lebanon in May 2000, hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners were still held by Israel, which refused to release them. In October 2000, Hezbollah fighters disguised as U.N. soldiers captured three Israeli soldiers, as well as an Israeli reserve officer who was in Beirut on private business. Hassan Nasrullah declared that Hezbollah would exchange the Israelis for the Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. In a deal brokered by the German government, Israel agreed to release 430 prisoners in exchange for the bodies of the three captured Israeli soldiers (they had been killed shortly after their capture) and the Israeli reservist.

However, Hezbollah claims that Israel had agreed to release three specific prisoners -- Samir Kuntar (captured in a raid on an Israeli settlement in which four Israelis died, including a 4-year-old girl), Yahye Skaff (captured in 1978 after an attack on Israel by Fatah guerillas left 35 Israelis dead and over 100 wounded) and Nissim Mousa N'isr (an Israeli-Arab accused of spying on behalf of Hezbollah). Israeli Ariel Sharon apparently reneged on the deal at the last second, prompting Hassan Nasrullah to declare that Hezbollah retained the right to capture Israeli soldiers at any time in order to secure the release of these three prisoners. The July 12 attack by Hezbollah was nothing more than Nasrullah keeping his word.

Contrary to popular opinion, Hezbollah is not an "international terrorist organization." It has not been linked to any acts of terror outside the borders of Lebanon (the current shelling of Israel notwithstanding, Hezbollah claims these are legitimate military actions in response to Israeli "aggression"). The United States and Israel often speak of "Hezbollah terror attacks" outside of Lebanon, but in the end cannot trace these attacks to Hezbollah with anything stronger than circumstance and rhetoric. The reality of Hezbollah is that it is a decidedly nationalistic organization that has gone on record condemning the September 2001 terror attacks against the United States, rejecting Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, as well as any killing of innocent civilians in the name of Islam. If it were not for the Israeli angle, the irony is that Hezbollah actually represents the kind of home-grown political party that the United States should be supporting.

Hezbollah is very much a political reality. It is woven into the daily reality of the lives of Lebanese Shi'a, providing medical and education support to impoverished civilians who otherwise would have to go without. Hezbollah has participated in the legitimate political processes of the Lebanese democracy, winning over a dozen seats in the Lebanese Parliament, and holding several cabinet-level positions. The Lebanese government itself recognizes the unique character of Hezbollah, rejecting any notion that it is an illegitimate militia, but rather a legitimate national resistance movement that will continue to exist until Israel stops meddling in Lebanese affairs.

The United States and Israel continue to quote U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, which calls for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon, as well as the disarming of Lebanese militias. However, resolution 1559 does not mention Hezbollah by name, and the Lebanese government itself refuses to categorize Hezbollah as an illegal militia, but rather as a legitimate defender of Lebanese interests. As a result, there is a huge disconnect between the United States and Israel on the one hand, and Lebanon and Hezbollah on the other, in regard to the basic foundational element of any diplomatic resolution to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Lebanon. The fact of the matter is, Hezbollah is a reality that neither the United States nor Israel can negotiate away. To attempt to bomb Lebanon into submission as a proxy for its inability to militarily defeat Hezbollah is not only criminal, but counterproductive.

Hezbollah today has the support of nearly 90 percent of the Lebanese population. Hassan Nasrullah has taken on legendary proportions throughout the Arab world, where his and Hezbollah's ongoing stout resistance to Israel's mighty military stands in stark contrast to the impotence of the rest of the Arab world and its leaders.

If anything, the United States should be well-positioned to whisper advice to Israel as to the futility of its current operations in Lebanon. The United States has for more than three years now conducted similar military operations in Iraq, only to find that not only has the vaunted U.S. military been unable to defeat a popular-based resistance, but that the resistance has grown.

Worse, the misguided policies that embrace a unilaterally military solution have destroyed the basic social framework of Iraq, creating a seething morass of anarchy and chaos from which violence erupts that has no center or focus upon which to zero in for a solution. Iraq is very much a dead country, which exists only for the purpose of killing Americans and its own citizens. If Israel were to ponder its folly in Lebanon, it would realize that its actions, if continued, will ultimately result in a similar outcome for the Lebanese -- a society that exists solely for the purpose of killing Israelis and each other. The difference between Iraq and Lebanon is that eventually America will be able to retreat away from the borders of Iraq. Israel will never be able to retreat away from the disaster it is creating in Lebanon today.

Of course, all of this is basic common sense for anyone who takes the time to study the facts. The problem is the predisposition of the respective publics in Israel and the United States to buy into an ideology based upon semantics that is divorced from reality. Once anything or anyone is labeled "terrorist," the game is pretty much up in so far as forming public opinion is concerned, which means, as an extension, any hope of changing governmental policy is likewise doomed. The actions of the Israeli Parliament and the U.S. Congress prove this point.

Their respective unanimity in supporting the daily murder of Lebanese, while casting the blame for the violence solely on the shoulders of Hezbollah and its supporters in Syria and Iran, are not only reflective of bad policy, but also bad thinking brought on by the inability and unwillingness of the people of Israel and the United States to think critically on any issue involving Israel. The U.S. media is particularly at fault in this regard (it is ironic that the Israeli media, and by extension the Israeli people, have been much more critical of the Lebanese operation than have their counterparts in the United States).

So long as the American media collectively continues to masquerade as journalists, when in fact it serves as little more than the propagandistic arm of the U.S. and Israeli governments, the American people will continue to wallow in their collective ignorance of the world they live in, unable to discern solutions to problems because they are for the most part unable to define the problem itself. This is a very serious matter, one with huge potential consequences.

Take, in closing, the manner in which Israel and the United States have painted Hezbollah's military underwriters in Iran and Syria. If Hezbollah resistance continues (as it seems likely to do), the United States and Israel have stated that Syria and Iran become, by extension, legitimate military targets.

This discussion is offered without any thought or recognition of the "other side of the coin," namely the mindset in much of the Arab and Muslim world that if Iran and Syria are targeted for providing military support for Hezbollah, then the No. 1 underwriter for the ongoing Israeli slaughter of Lebanese, the United States, likewise becomes a legitimate military target.

Every citizen in the United States should take a minute while they sit back and enjoy the relative peace of summer and reflect on what that would mean, and if it is really the direction they want the United States to be drifting at the moment. Just don't ask the mainstream American media to assist with any reflective analysis. It is too busy promoting a larger war.

Every year during the first two weeks of August the mass news media and many politicians at the national level trot out the "patriotic" political myth that the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan in August of 1945 caused them to surrender, and thereby saved the lives of anywhere from five hundred thousand to one million American soldiers, who did not have to invade the islands. Opinion polls over the last fifty years show that American citizens overwhelmingly (between 80 and 90%) believe this false history which, of course, makes them feel better about killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians (mostly women and children) and saving American lives to accomplish the ending of the war.

The best book, in my opinion, to explode this myth is The Decision to Use the Bomb by Gar Alperovitz, because it not only explains the real reasons the bombs were dropped, but also gives a detailed history of how and why the myth was created that this slaughter of innocent civilians was justified, and therefore morally acceptable. The essential problem starts with President Franklin Roosevelt’s policy of unconditional surrender, which was reluctantly adopted by Churchill and Stalin, and which President Truman decided to adopt when he succeeded Roosevelt in April of 1945. Hanson Baldwin was the principal writer for The New York Times who covered World War II and he wrote an important book immediately after the war entitled Great Mistakes of the War. Baldwin concludes that the unconditional surrender policy ". . . was perhaps the biggest political mistake of the war . . . . Unconditional surrender was an open invitation to unconditional resistance; it discouraged opposition to Hitler, probably lengthened the war, costs us lives, and helped to lead to the present aborted peace."

The stark fact is that the Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the Emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war. This fact became known to President Truman as early as May of 1945. The Japanese monarchy was one of the oldest in all of history dating back to 660 B.C. The Japanese religion added the belief that all the Emperors were the direct descendants of the sun goddess, Amaterasu. The reigning Emperor Herohito was the 124^th in the direct line of descent. After the bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9 of 1945, and their surrender soon thereafter, the Japanese were allowed to keep their Emperor on the throne and he was not subjected to any war crimes trial. The Emperor, Herohito, came on the throne in 1926 and continued in his position until his death in 1989. Since President Truman, in effect, accepted the conditional surrender offered by the Japanese as early as May of 1945, the question is posed, "Why then were the bombs dropped?"

The author Alperovitz gives us the answer in great detail which can only be summarized here, but he states, "We have noted a series of Japanese peace feelers in Switzerland which OSS Chief William Donovan reported to Truman in May and June [1945]. These suggested, even at this point, that the U.S. demand for unconditional surrender might well be the only serious obstacle to peace. At the center of the explorations, as we also saw, was Allen Dulles, chief of OSS operations in Switzerland (and subsequently Director of the CIA). In his 1966 book The Secret Surrender, Dulles recalled that ‘On July 20, 1945, under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference and reported there to Secretary [of War] Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo – they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and their constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people.’" It is documented by Alperovitz that Stimson reported this directly to Truman. Alperovitz further points out in detail the documentary proof that every top presidential civilian and military advisor, with the exception of James Byrnes, along with Prime Minister Churchill and his top British military leadership, urged Truman to revise the unconditional surrender policy so as to allow the Japanese to surrender and keep their Emperor. All this advice was given to Truman prior to the Potsdam Proclamation which occurred on July 26, 1945. This proclamation made a final demand upon Japan to surrender unconditionally or suffer drastic consequences.

Another startling fact about the military connection to the dropping of the bomb is the lack of knowledge on the part of General MacArthur about the existence of the bomb and whether it was to be dropped. Alperovitz states "MacArthur knew nothing about advance planning for the atomic bomb’s use until almost the last minute. Nor was he personally in the chain of command in this connection; the order came straight from Washington. Indeed, the War Department waited until five days before the bombing of Hiroshima even to notify MacArthur – the commanding general of the U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific – of the existence of the atomic bomb."

Alperovitz makes it very clear that the main person Truman was listening to while he ignored all of this civilian and military advice, was James Byrnes, the man who virtually controlled Truman at the beginning of his administration. Brynes was one of the most experienced political figures in Washington, having served for over thirty years in both the House and the Senate. He had also served as a United States Supreme Court Judge, and at the request of President Roosevelt, he resigned that position and accepted the role in the Roosevelt administration of managing the domestic economy. Byrnes went to the Yalta Conference with Roosevelt and then was given the responsibility to get Congress and the American people to accept the agreements made at Yalta.

When Truman became a senator in 1935, Brynes immediately became his friend and mentor and remained close to Truman until Truman became president. Truman never forgot this and immediately called on Brynes to be his number-two man in the new administration. Brynes had expected to be named the vice presidential candidate to replace Wallace and had been disappointed when Truman had been named, yet he and Truman remained very close. Byrnes had also been very close to Roosevelt, while Truman was kept in the dark by Roosevelt most of the time he served as vice president. Truman asked Brynes immediately, in April, to become his Secretary of State but they delayed the official appointment until July 3, 1945, so as not to offend the incumbent. Brynes had also accepted a position on the interim committee which had control over the policy regarding the atom bomb, and therefore, in April, 1945 became Truman’s main foreign policy advisor, and especially the advisor on the use of the atomic bomb. It was Brynes who encouraged Truman to postpone the Potsdam Conference and his meeting with Stalin until they could know, at the conference, if the atomic bomb was successfully tested. While at the Potsdam Conference the experiments proved successful and Truman advised Stalin that a new massively destructive weapon was now available to America, which Brynes hoped would make Stalin back off from any excessive demands or activity in the post-war period.

Truman secretly gave the orders on July 25, 1945 that the bombs would be dropped in August while he was to be in route back to America. On July 26, he issued the Potsdam Proclamation, or ultimatum, to Japan to surrender, leaving in place the unconditional surrender policy, thereby causing both Truman and Brynes to believe that the terms would not be accepted by Japan.

The conclusion drawn unmistakably from the evidence presented, is that Brynes is the man who convinced Truman to keep the unconditional surrender policy and not accept Japan’s surrender so that the bombs could actually be dropped thereby demonstrating to the Russians that America had a new forceful leader in place, a "new sheriff in Dodge" who, unlike Roosevelt, was going to be tough with the Russians on foreign policy and that the Russians needed to "back off" during what would become known as the "Cold War." A secondary reason was that Congress would now be told about why they had made the secret appropriation to a Manhattan Project and the huge expenditure would be justified by showing that not only did the bombs work but that they would bring the war to an end, make the Russians back off and enable America to become the most powerful military force in the world.

If the surrender by the Japanese had been accepted between May and the end of July of 1945 and the Emperor had been left in place, as in fact he was after the bombing, this would have kept Russia out of the war. Russia agreed at Yalta to come into the Japanese war three months after Germany surrendered. In fact, Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945 and Russia announced on August 8, (exactly three months thereafter) that it was abandoning its neutrality policy with Japan and entering the war. Russia’s entry into the war for six days allowed them to gain tremendous power and influence in China, Korea, and other key areas of Asia. The Japanese were deathly afraid of Communism and if the Potsdam Proclamation had indicated that America would accept the conditional surrender allowing the Emperor to remain in place and informed the Japanese that Russia would enter the war if they did not surrender, then this would surely have assured a quick Japanese surrender.

The second question that Alperovitz answers in the last half of the book is how and why the Hiroshima myth was created. The story of the myth begins with the person of James B. Conant, the President of Harvard University, who was a prominent scientist, having initially made his mark as a chemist working on poison gas during World War I. During World War II, he was chairman of the National Defense Research Committee from the summer of 1941 until the end of the war and he was one of the central figures overseeing the Manhattan Project. Conant became concerned about his future academic career, as well as his positions in private industry, because various people began to speak out concerning why the bombs were dropped. On September 9, 1945, Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet, was publicly quoted extensively as stating that the atomic bomb was used because the scientists had a "toy and they wanted to try it out . . . ." He further stated, "The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment . . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it." Albert Einstein, one of the world’s foremost scientists, who was also an important person connected with the development of the atomic bomb, responded and his words were headlined in The New York Times "Einstein Deplores Use of Atom Bomb." The story reported that Einstein stated that "A great majority of scientists were opposed to the sudden employment of the atom bomb." In Einstein’s judgment, the dropping of the bomb was a political – diplomatic decision rather than a military or scientific decision.

Probably the person closest to Truman, from the military standpoint, was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Leahy, and there was much talk that he also deplored the use of the bomb and had strongly advised Truman not to use it, but advised rather to revise the unconditional surrender policy so that the Japanese could surrender and keep the Emperor. Leahy’s views were later reported by Hanson Baldwin in an interview that Leahy "thought the business of recognizing the continuation of the Emperor was a detail which should have been solved easily." Leahy’s secretary, Dorothy Ringquist, reported that Leahy told her on the day the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, "Dorothy, we will regret this day. The United States will suffer, for war is not to be waged on women and children." Another important naval voice, the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. Also, the opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was reported to have said in a press conference on September 22, 1945, that "The Admiral took the opportunity of adding his voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the atomic bombing and Russia’s entry into the war." In a subsequent speech at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz stated "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war." It was learned also that on or about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower had urged Truman, in a personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower’s assessment was "It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime." Eisenhower also stated that it wasn’t necessary for Truman to "succumb" to Byrnes.

James Conant came to the conclusion that some important person in the administration must go public to show that the dropping of the bombs was a military necessity, thereby saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, so he approached Harvey Bundy and his son, McGeorge Bundy. It was agreed by them that the most important person to create this myth was Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. It was decided that Stimson would write a long article to be widely circulated in a prominent national magazine. This article was revised repeatedly by McGeorge Bundy and Conant before it was published in Harper’s magazine in February of 1947. The long article became the subject of a front-page article and editorial in The New York Times and in the editorial it was stated "There can be no doubt that the president and Mr. Stimson are right when they mention that the bomb caused the Japanese to surrender." Later, in 1959, President Truman specifically endorsed this conclusion, including the idea that it saved the lives of a million American soldiers. This myth has been renewed annually by the news media and various political leaders ever since.

It is very pertinent that, in the memoirs of Henry Stimson entitled On Active Service in Peace and War, he states, "Unfortunately, I have lived long enough to know that history is often not what actually happened but what is recorded as such."

To bring this matter more into focus from the human tragedy standpoint, I recommend the reading of a book entitled Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6, September 30, 1945, by Michiko Hachiya. He was a survivor of Hiroshima and kept a daily diary about the women, children and old men that he treated on a daily basis in the hospital. The doctor was badly injured himself but recovered enough to help others and his account of the personal tragedies of innocent civilians who were either badly burned or died as a result of the bombing puts the moral issue into a clear perspective for all of us to consider.

Now that we live in the nuclear age and there are enough nuclear weapons spread around the world to destroy civilization, we need to face the fact that America is the only country to have used this awful weapon and that it was unnecessary to have done so. If Americans would come to recognize the truth, rather than the myth, it might cause such a moral revolt that we would take the lead throughout the world in realizing that wars in the future may well become nuclear, and therefore all wars must be avoided at almost any cost. Hopefully, our knowledge of science has not outrun our ability to exercise prudent and humane moral and political judgment to the extent that we are destined for extermination.

Last Monday, the U.S. government’s “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” (CAFC) released its 2006 Report and made public a new “Compact with the Cuban People.” The new CAFC Report, (available online at http://www.cafc.gov/rpt/2006/), reaffirms the direction of its 2004 report, which described the U.S. government’s vision for a post-Fidel Cuba, detailing what role the US would play there, and makes policy recommendations on how the U.S. government could hasten Cuba’s “transition.”

This new report raises concerns in the United States and Cuba because it represents a violation of our religious liberties and promises 80 million dollars to wasteful programs aimed at ousting the Cuban government. The “Compact” is also troubling because it promises further U.S. intervention in Cuban domestic politics, violating Cuba sovereignty with zero consultation of the Cuban people.

Please send an electronic letter today to defend religious freedoms and to stop the U.S. government from dictating which churches are off-limits in Cuba.
SEND YOUR LETTER HERE: http://ga3.org/campaign/cubareligiousfreedom

1. The Recommendations are an Intrusion on Religious Liberties.
The 2006 report recommends that the Department of Commerce “[t]ighten regulations for the export of humanitarian items, other than agricultural or medical commodities, to ensure that exports are consigned to entities that support independent civil society and are not regime administered or controlled organizations, such as the Cuban Council of Churches.”

This unprecedented stab at religious freedom puts almost half of Cuban Protestant Churches off-limits from receiving aid. The Martin Luther King Memorial Center is Witness for Peace´s main partner on-the-ground in Cuba. The Ebenezer Baptist Church, the church connected with The Martin Luther King Memorial Center, is a member of the Cuban Council of Churches and would be one of the churches affected by these measures.

“Ecumenical bodies have a right to determine their partners and to relate internationally. This raises grave concerns apart from the politics of U.S.-Cuban relations.”
-Rev. John L. McCullough, Director of Churrch World Service

“We have had an ecumenical relationship with the Cuban Council of Churches for a long time, as have churches and councils of churches around the world, if these recommendations are accepted by President Bush it would indicate that this administration is trying to dictate who our church partners can be and how our humanitarian agencies can deliver aid to people who need it. That is an incredible intrusion into free exercise of religion.”
-Dr. Kireopoulos, Associate General for Innternational Affairs and Peace at the National Council of Churches (NCC) USA

Take action: Church World Service and the NCC have started a letter writing campaign to defend the freedom of religious bodies. Please send an electronic letter today through their website to stop the U.S. government from dictating which churches are off-limits in Cuba. SEND YOUR LETTER HERE: http://ga3.org/campaign/cubareligiousfreedom

2. The Recommendations Mean More Taxpayer Money Wasted on Porkbarrel Programs.
The 2006 CAFC report recommends that 80 million dollars be spent over the next two years to support the ousting of the Cuban government. Many Cuban dissidents on the island are against this plan, arguing that it is counterproductive because it is illegal for them to receive money from the U.S. government. Much of this money will end up going to porkbarrel programs in Miami, such as the pro-U.S. “TV Martí,” which continues to receive funding, although it has been effectively blocked by the Cuban government since its inception, and think tanks who continue researching ways to overthrow the Cuban government, continuing 47 years of failed US policy.

3. The “Compact with the Cuban People” Document Is Not a Compact at All.
“Compact: an agreement or covenant between two or more parties.”
-Miriam-Webster Dictionary

The “Compact with the Cuban People” document lists seven prerequisites for a Cuban transition government to receive U.S. support. If the Cuban government fulfills these prerequisites, the U.S. government pledges to “discourage third parties from intervening to obstruct the will of the Cuban people.” As the definition of the word “compact” suggests, we might assume that this “Compact with the Cuban People” was written after a wide consultation with the Cuban people themselves—however, there was no disclosure of any such consultation process. This makes us ask what kind of liberty the United States wants in Cuba when the Cuban people lack any input into their own “compact.”

The message is clear: if a future Cuban government does exactly as the U.S. says, the U.S. government will defend it. But what “third party” does the U.S. government fear?. Might it be the voices of the Cuban people? Might the U.S. government itself be the unwanted third party in Cuban domestic politics?

In conclusion, although the language of this “Compact” and the new CAFC report may not be as aggressive as the 2004 report, it remains clear that the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba plans to play a huge role in Cuba's supposed transition process. Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza of the Organization of American States pointed out the absurdity of the Commission when he said, "There is no transition and it's not your country." Too bad U.S. policymakers fail to understand this very simple point!

4. DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS
(US Republicans are planning to change the law to stop black, Hispanic and Native American voters going to the polls in 2008.)
BY

GREG PALAST

Don't kid yourself: the Republican party's decision yesterday to "delay" the renewal of the Voting Rights Act has not a darn thing to do with objections of the Republican's white sheets caucus.

Complaints by a couple of good ol' boys to legislation have never stopped the GOP leadership from rolling over dissenters.

This is a strategic stall that is meant to decriminalise the Republican party's new game of challenging voters of colour by the hundreds of thousands.

In the 2004 presidential race, the GOP ran a massive, multi-state, multimillion-dollar operation to challenge the legitimacy of black, Hispanic and Native American voters. The methods used breached the Voting Rights Act, and while the Bush administration's civil rights division grinned and looked the other way, civil rights lawyers began circling, preparing to sue to stop the violations of the act before the 2008 race.

So Republicans have promised to no longer break the law - not by going legit but by eliminating the law.

The act was passed in 1965 after the Ku Klux Klan and other upright citizens found they could use procedural tricks - "literacy tests", poll taxes and more - to block citizens of colour from casting ballots.

Here is what happened in 2004, and what's in store for 2008.

In the 2004 election, more than 3 million voters were challenged at the polls. No one had seen anything like it since the era of Jim Crow and burning crosses. In 2004, voters were told their registrations had been purged or that their addresses were "suspect".

Denied the right to the regular voting booths, these challenged voters were given "provisional" ballots. More than 1m of these provisional ballots (1,090,729 of them) were tossed in the electoral dumpster uncounted.

A funny thing about those ballots: about 88% were cast by minority voters.

This isn't a number dropped on me from a black helicopter: they come from the raw data of the US election assistance commission in Washington DC.

At the heart of the GOP's mass challenge of voters was what the party's top brass called "caging lists" - secret files of hundreds of thousands of voters, almost every one from a black-majority voting precinct.

When our investigations team, working for BBC TV, got our hands on these confidential files in October 2004, the Republicans told us the voters listed were their potential "donors". Really? The sheets included pages of men from homeless shelters in Florida.

Donor lists, my ass. Every expert told us, these were "challenge lists" meant to stop these black voters from casting ballots.

When these "caged" voters arrived at the polls in November 2004, they found their registrations missing, their right to vote blocked or their absentee ballots rejected because their addresses were supposedly "fraudulent".

Why didn't the GOP honchos fess up to challenging these allegedly illegal voters? Because targeting voters of colour is against the law. The law in question is the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The act says you can't go after groups of voters if you choose your targets based on race. Given that almost all the voters on the GOP hit list are black, the illegal racial profiling is beyond even Karl Rove's ability to come up with an alibi.

The Republicans target black folk not because they don't like the colour of their skin; they don't like the colour of their vote: Democrat. For that reason, the GOP included on its hit list Jewish retirement homes in Florida. Apparently, the GOP was also gunning for the Elderly of Zion.

These so-called "fraudulent" voters, in fact, were not fraudulent at all. Page after page, as we have previously reported, are black soldiers sent overseas. The Bush campaign used their absence from their US homes to accuse them of voting from false addresses.

Now that the GOP has been caught breaking the voting rights law, it has found a way to keep using its expensively obtained "caging" lists: let the law expire next year. If the Voting Rights Act dies in 2007, the 2008 race will be open season on dark-skinned voters. Only the renewal of the Voting Rights Act can prevent the planned racial wrecking of democracy.

Before the 2000 presidential ballot, then Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black citizens' registrations on the grounds that they were "felons" not entitled to vote. Our review of the files determined that the crime of most people on the list was nothing more than VWB -- Voting While Black.

That "felon scrub", as the state called it, had to be "pre-cleared" under the Voting Rights Act. That is, the US justice department must approve "scrubs" and other changes in procedures.

The Florida felon scrub slipped through this "pre-clearance" provision because Katherine Harris's assistant assured the government the scrub was just a clerical matter. Civil rights lawyers are now on the alert for such mendacity.

The burning cross caucus of the Republican Party is bitching that "pre-clearance" of voting changes applies only to southern states. I have to agree that singling out the old confederacy is a bit unfair. But the solution is not to smother the voting rights law but to spread its safeguards to all 50 of these United States.

Republicans argue that the racial voting games and the threats of the white-hooded Klansmen that kept African-Americans from the ballot box before the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act no longer threaten black voters.

That's true. When I look over the "caging lists" and the "scrub sheets", it's clear to me that the GOP has traded in white sheets for spreadsheets.