The
JvL Bi-Weekly
James
van Luik
Publisher
& Editor
Saturday,
November 15, 2003
Volume
2, No. 20
5
Articles
1
Poem
2.
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
4.
Smearing Edward Said and Hanan Ashrawi
BY
LESLIE
LOWE
The
invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq by US and UK forces had done more than alarm
Iran, Syria and neighboring states. More than most imagine, the greatest alarm
is probably within the Peoples Republic of China. Ever since the defeat of
Chiang Kai Shek's American armed military by Mao Zedong's Peoples Army 54
years ago, after which China became a Communist-Socialist State, China has
been on the US Government's hate list.
Chiang
had retreated to Taiwan, an island province of China. US President Harry
Truman warned Mao against attacking Chiang's forces and later signed a
military defense pact with Chiang, which is still in force today. This is so
even though Taiwan is not officially recognized by the US and the UN as a
legitimate State.
The
1950s were high tension times for China specially because of the Korean war.
China supported North Korea with military force to repel the US and the UK (a
so-called military alliance under UN aegis) invasion when these forces
approached the China/Korean border close to the industrial heartland of
northeast China.
US
commanding general Douglas McArthur was furious at being repelled by those
referred to as gooks and chinks. He wanted to incinerate China with atomic
bombs as had been done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman said no. This caused
a rift between them resulting in McArthur being fired. The UN at the behest of
the US and the UK declared China the aggressor, and sanctioned a global arms
embargo against China.
The
Korean war was the only time that the US and China faced each other in combat.
However, soon after, during Eisenhower's presidency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff
of the US military wanted to tame China in support of Taiwan. Their idea was
to attack China in support of Taiwan. Their idea was to attack China with
atomic bombs. President Eisenhower, like Truman, said no.
The
intervention in Vietnam by the US saw China and the Soviet Union as the main
suppliers of weapons to the North Vietnamese. US military activity in Vietnam
began openly after the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu, on 050754.
France had occupied South Vietnam since 1852. The US on 010155 began supplying
and training the army of the south.
The
infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 saw the US Congress passing the Gulf
of Tonkin Resolution officially authorizing the use of military force in
Vietnam without, however, issuing a declaration of war. Bombing of North
Vietnam began on 020765. After a long bloody war with some 58,000 US soldiers
killed and an estimated 3 to 5 million Vietnamese causalities, the US was
forced to retreat from Vietnam on 032973.
Incidentally,
the invasions of Vietnam, and Iraq have many similarities. Both official
reasons for the invasions were fabrications by the respective US presidents
and their cabinets. They lied to the American people to justify these wars.
Both times the American government solicited, bribed and coerced nations to
join in the conflict to give respectability to the invasions, and both
invasions were for reasons of economic hegemony.
President
Nixon made a bold move by being the first US President to visit China in
February of 1972, referred to then as ping pong diplomacy (US Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger had arranged a ping pong tournament with the Chinese)
and that year signed the Shanghai Communiqué. This brought a warming toward
China, encouraging China to become more like the West: freer in politics and
non-confrontational towards the US.
Though
tension was somewhat eased there still remained deep-seated uneasiness because
of the underlying fear of a US attack due to the Taiwan issue. The US had been
hoping for or trying to create an excuse to attack China, or so the Chinese
thought.
In
1996 China held military exercises at the time of Taiwan's elections.
President Clinton called this a provocation and sent two battleships to the
Taiwan straits to confront any hostile move by China.
New
Elections in Taiwan are set for the first half of 2004. The firm view of high
Taiwanese officials is that China will not hold military exercises
at that time as they did before. Why not? 1. They would not want to
revive apprehension among the Taiwanese towards China at a time when there is
some support for closer ties to the mainland. 2. China's policy towards Taiwan
for the first 30 years from 1949 was one of military liberation, but for the
past 25 years the policy has changed to one of peaceful unification with
Taiwan by allowing for its independent economic and internal political system.
Various
Taiwanese Presidents have so far rejected closer ties with China and with some
justification. Taiwan had built, with US help, a stable economy and a
democratic society. They were not about to cede it to a China where huge
internal changes were taking place while developing a political system very
different from that of Taiwan.
Mr.
Chen, when campaigning for the Presidency, advocated forming a Republic for a
separate China, a move China said it would oppose by force if necessary. Now
that Mr. Chen is President that idea appears not as pressing. Part of the
reason appears to be that China is becoming more open and less demanding.
Another reason is attributed to China's booming economy for the past 10 years
or so, while Taiwan's has decreased due in part to losing trade to China. In
fact, Taiwanese businessmen have been investing heavily in China to offset
losses at home.
American
and foreign companies too have invested tens of billions to exploit the cheap
labor and China's vast markets.
The
notion of a threat from China put forth by US governments, the Pentagon and
Neo-conservative groups since the 1950s is false propaganda designed to create
fear and hostility toward China. This was done in order to justify arms
expenditures and the stationing of US troops in the Far East as a prelude to
further American hegemony.
It
is widely reasoned that the US would not want a Taiwan/China reunification:
1.It would add to the industrial and military power of a one China. 2. It
would affect the US trade status quo with Taiwan. 3. It would diminish US
hegemony in the area.
US
military intelligence knows that the Chinese military is some 40 years behind
the US and other nations such as the UK, France and Israel. Even in the
question of air power the Chinese are no match for the likes of Japan, whose air
force is one of the most advanced in the world and armed with air to air
missiles; the same can be said of Taiwan's capabilities.
The
Chinese air force would also lose battles against the likes of Singapore,
Malaysia and Indonesia, all having advanced US or UK aircraft. This according
to the journal "US Foreign Affairs" in 1997. It can be assumed that
the US, since that time, has retained or increased the gap, due to its
concentration on weaponry sophistication to support its permanent war footing.
China's
recent first manned space flight can hardly be judged as a significant
advancement in military capability.
Referring
to views held of the Chinese: a survey conducted by the Yankelovich Partners
for the Committee of 100, in 2001, a non-partisan, national organization
composed of Chinese-Americans, found that 25% of Americans have a very
negative attitude toward Chinese-Americans, 43% a somewhat negative attitude
and only 32% a positive attitude.
The
Tianamen episode was an ugly thing that drew much criticism from the West, and
rightly so. But a view held by some Chinese is that the CIA in coordination
with some American students in China engineered the episode to discredit
China. Time might tell and one should not be surprised if that is so. The US
has a long history and masterful touch of doing such things around the world.
Should
a conflict with China occur millions of Chinese would likely be killed, but
what would be the fate of millions of people of Chinese heritage in the US?
Would they be confined to concentration camps as were the Japanese in WW 2?
And where would they be confined? Cuba's Guantanamo Bay is already occupied by
the Afghans and Iraqis and is probably not large enough any way. Also, would
they suffer the fate of the Arabs, arrested, not charged and held
incommunicado indefinitely?
Even
without a shooting war in the immediate future, China and the US will likely
end up rivals in the economic area. As the Chinese become more economically
successful, corporate America, the neo-conservative groups and the Pentagon
war lords will create reasons to destabilize China. It is the stated policy in
"The New American Century" that no nation will be allowed to develop
economically or militarily to oppose America's domination or to be independent
of her likes and dislikes.
How
many people today know that in the 1840s Britain attacked China on the pretext
of a balance of trade deficit resulting in the western powers extracting
wealth and imposing unequal and humiliating treaties on China. A China whose
wealth then was reputed greater than all of Europe combined. Presently the US
has a balance of trade deficit with China. And the US, in many ways, is
following in the footsteps of Britain which in its prime invaded, plundered,
terrorized and killed unknown numbers in many nations for their resources.
To
emphasize, the US and UK actions, over the UN Security Council's objections,
have not only alarmed China, but indeed the world, showing the US to be a
super military power rogue state willing to trample on accepted international
order and on militarily weak nations for material gains.
The
Chinese press reports that tens of millions of Chinese have a pathological
fear of the Bush Administration due to its "preemptive" attacks on
Afghanistan and Iraq and threats towards other nations. China feels a similar
thing could happen to it, specially since Bush had earlier said that he would
not hesitate to use nuclear weapons on China should the necessity (or more
precisely, the opportunity) arise.
More
recently "Sections of the Nuclear Posture Review" released by the
Pentagon named China as a potential Nuclear target, and also stated that it is
president Bush, the second's, intention to make the Chinese fearful so that
they won't attempt to develop a defense against the US proposed nuclear
shield. This was stated by Dr. Gregory Kulacki, China Specialist in the
"Global Security Program of the Union of Concerned Citizens."
Chinese
journalist V Tong states that the great majority of Chinese and the majority
of the world's people will not be allowed to develop but will face violence,
exploitation and environmental disaster from American hegemony and the clique
of American corporate oligarchs.
An
article by CNN's senior China analyst Willy Wo-Lap-Lam describes China's
President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao as being pressed by National
Security Groups and others to take a more aggressive stance in defense and
security. They see the US, aided by the UK as do most others, as a
unilateralist and indeed an imperialist power striving for world domination.
There are volumes of evidence to support that perception.
Because
China is not a military threat there remain only three prime reasons for
wanting to attack it: 1. China is the only remaining obstacle to US total far
east control, 2. material wealth controlled through hegemony, and 3. equally
important, the need to feed the US war machine, the benefactors of which are
the corporations and the very rich.
This
latter group includes many members of Bush's cabinet: insiders with shares in
the armament and oil and raw materials industry. The more wars that are made
the greater the increase of the military budget, and the more tens of billions
of dollars are made by these groups. A large number, in these groups, consists
of America's chief corporate executives. They sit at the round table to
determine America's foreign policy. Their true calling and profession are none
other than as speculators/wheeler dealers that feed off the American workers
with no more loyalty to them than the American government has to the besieged
Palestinians whom they keep in perpetual terror.
The
American people need to realize that their future and that of their offspring
are in the gravest jeopardy as never before and that they have been lied to by
their government, by corporate America and by those who control the mass media
outlets of the nation.
As
for Bush, the second, a thoroughly naïve person lacking in intellect,
imagination, human interests or values, it makes him a most dangerous, but
easy person for others to manipulate and guide in the direction of reckless
dreams of world power and grandeur.
Lastly,
it should be emphasized that an attack on China by the Bush, UK, Israeli,
American Christian extremists axis would surpass all the horrible crimes that
had been committed against humanity by the US in the name of
"democracy" and "national security." This would be the
culmination of an historical development that began before the birth of the
nation with the near extermination of the native inhabitants of North America.
2.
EMPIRE OF THE MEN OF BEST QUALITY
The
Ideology of the Polyarchy
BY
NOAM
CHOMSKY
A
few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst Mayr,
published some reflections on the likelihood of success in the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence. He considered the prospects very low. His
reasoning had to do with the adaptive value of what we call "higher
intelligence," meaning the particular human form of the intellectual
organization. Mayr estimated the number of species since the origin of life at
about fifty billion, only one of which "achieved the kind of intelligence
needed to establish a civilization," It did so very recently, perhaps
100,000 years ago. It is generally assumed that only one small breeding group
survived, of which we are all descendants.
Mayr
speculates that the human form of intellectual organization may not be favored
by selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote, refutes the claim that
"it is better to be smart than to be stupid," at least judging by
biological success: beetles and bacteria, for example, are vastly more
successful than humans in terms of survival. He also made the rather somber
observation that "the average life expectancy of a species is about
100,000 years."
We
are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the
question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid. The most hopeful
prospect is that the question will not be answered: if it receives a definite
answer, that answer can only be that humans were a kind of "biological
error," using their allotted 100,000 years to destroy themselves and, in
the process, much else.
The
species has surely developed the capacity to do just that, and a hypothetical
extraterrestrial observer might well conclude that humans have demonstrated
that capacity throughout their history, dramatically in the past few hundred
years, with an assault on the environment that sustains life, on the diversity
of more complex organisms, and with cold and calculated
savagery,
on each other as
well.
Two
Superpowers
The
year 2003 opened with many indications that concerns about human survival are
all too realistic. To mention just a few examples, in the early fall of 2002
it was learned that a possibly terminal nuclear war was barely avoided forty
years earlier. Immediately after this startling discovery, the Bush
administration blocked UN efforts to ban the militarisation of space, a
serious threat to survival. The administration also terminated the
international negotiations to prevent biological warfare and moved to ensure
the inevitability of an attack on Iraq, despite popular opposition that was
without historical precedent.
Aid
organizations with extensive experience in Iraq and studies by respected
medical organizations warned that the planned invasion might precipitate a
humanitarian catastrophe. The warnings were ignored by Washington and evoked
little media interest. A high-level US task force concluded that attacks with
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) within the US are "likely," and
would become more so in the event of war with Iraq. Numerous specialists and
intelligence agencies issued similar warnings, adding that Washington's
belligerence, not only with regard to Iraq, was increasing the long-term
threat of international terrorism and proliferation of WMD. These warnings too
were dismissed.
In
September 2002 the Bush administration announced its National Security
Strategy, which declared the right to resort to force to eliminate any
perceived challenge to US global hegemony, which is to be permanent. The new
grand strategy aroused deep concern worldwide, even within the foreign policy
elite at home. Also in September a propaganda campaign was launched to depict
Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat to the United States and to insinuate
that he was responsible for the 9-11 atrocities and was planning others. The
campaign, timed to the onset of the midterm congressional elections, was
highly successful in shifting attitudes. It soon drove American public opinion
off the global spectrum and helped the administration achieve electoral aims
and establish Iraq as a proper test case for the newly announced doctrine of
resort to force at will.
President
Bush and his associates also persisted in undermining international efforts to
reduce threats to the environment that are recognized to be severe, with
pretexts that barely concealed their devotion to narrow sectors of private
power. The administration's Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), wrote
Science magazine editor Donald Kennedy, is a travesty that "included no
recommendations for emission limitation or other forms of mitigation,"
contenting itself with "voluntary reduction targets, which, even if met,
would allow US emission rates to continue to grow at about 14% per
decade." The CCSP did not even consider the likelihood, suggested by
"a growing body of evidence," that the short-term warming changes it
ignores "will trigger an abrupt nonlinear process," producing
dramatic temperature changes that could carry extreme risks for the United
Sates, Europe, and other temperate ones. The Bush administration
"contemptuous pass on multilateral engagement with the global warming
problem," Kennedy continued, is the "stance that began the long
continuing process of eroding its friendships in Europe,"
leading to "smoldering resentment."
By
October 2002 it was becoming hard to ignore the fact that the world was
"more concerned about the unbridled use of American power than . . .
about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein," and "as intent on
limiting the giant's powers as . . . in taking away the despot's
weapons." World concerns mounted in the months that followed, as the
giant made clear its intent to attack Iraq even if the UN inspections it
reluctantly tolerated failed to unearth weapons that would provide a pretext.
By December, support for Washington's war plans scarcely reached 10 percent
almost anywhere outside the US, according to international polls. Two months
later, after enormous world wide protests, the press reported that "there
may still be two super powers on the planet: the US and world public
opinion" ("the US" here meaning state power, not the public or
even elite opinion).
By
early 2003, studies revealed that fear of the United States had reached
remarkable heights throughout the world, along with distrust of the political
leadership. Dismissal of elementary human rights and needs was matched by a
display of contempt for democracy, for which no parallel comes easily to mind,
accompanied by professions of sincere dedication to human rights and
democracy. The unfolding events should be deeply disturbing to those who have
concerns about the world they are leaving to their grandchildren.
Though
Bush planners are at an extreme end of the traditional US policy spectrum,
their programs and doctrines have many pre-cursors, both in US history and
among earlier aspirants to global power. More ominously their decisions may
not be irrational within the framework of prevailing ideology and the
institutions that embody it. There is ample historical precedent for the
willingness of leaders to threaten or resort to violence in the face of
significant risk of catastrophe. But the stakes are far higher today. The
choice between hegemony and survival has rarely, if ever, been so starkly
posed.
Let
us try to unravel some of the many strands that enter into this complex
tapestry, focusing attention on the world power that proclaims global
hegemony. Its actions and guiding doctrines must be a primary concern for
everyone on the planet, particular, of course, for Americans. Many enjoy
unusual advantages and freedom, hence the ability to shape the future, and
should face with care the responsibilities that are the immediate corollary of
such privilege.
Enemy
Territory
Those
who want to face their responsibilities with a genuine commitment to democracy
and freedom – even to decent survival – should recognize the barriers that
stand in the way. In violent states these are not concealed. In more
democratic societies barriers are more subtle. While methods differ sharply
from more brutal to more free societies, the goals are in many ways similar:
to ensure that the "great beast," as Alexander Hamilton called the
people, does not stray from its proper confines.
Controlling
the general population has always been a dominant concern of power and
privilege, particularly since the first modern democratic revolution in
seventeenth-century England. The self-described "men of best
quality" were appalled as a "giddy multitude of beasts in men's
shapes" rejected the basic framework of the civil conflict raging in
England between King and Parliament, and called for government "by
countrymen like ourselves, that know our wants" not by "knights and
gentlemen that make us laws, that are chosen for fear and do but oppress us,
and do not know the people's sores." The men of best quality recognized
that if the people are so "depraved and corrupt" as to" confer
places of power and trust upon wicked and undeserving men, they forfeit their
power in this behalf unto those that are good, through but a few. Almost three
centuries later, Wilsonian idealism, as it is standardly termed, adopted a
rather similar stance. Abroad, it is Washington's responsibility to ensure
that government is in the hands of "the good though but a few." At
home, it is necessary to safeguard a system of elite decision-making and public
ratification – "polyarchy," in the terminology of political
science – not democracy.
BY
ROBERT
REICH
Prescription
drugs are the largest single health-care expense for most Americans,
especially seniors. And drug prices are increasing at a whopping 17 percent a
year, more than four times faster than inflation. Pharmaceutical prices are
higher in the United States than in any other country in the world. That's why
increasing numbers of Americans are filling their prescriptions in Canada.
It's
also why politicians of all stripes are eager to put their names on
legislation providing prescription-drug benefits. Whatever comes from this
Congress is likely to be a complex and pricey scheme that will cost American
taxpayers upwards of $400 billion over the next decade.
Drug
companies say all this money is necessary because research and development on
new drugs is hugely expensive. Bringing a new drug to market costs between
$500 and $800 million. And we all benefit from what these new drugs can do.
But
pharmaceutical companies don't own up to the fact that you and I are already
paying twice for new drugs. Not only do we pay rapidly-escalating purchase
prices for them, we also pay through our taxes. You see, a portion of federal
tax revenues goes for drug research.
For
example, eight of the 10 most popular drugs produced by one of America's
largest pharmaceutical companies were developed at the National Institutes of
Health, which is a huge taxpayer-funded research complex. Most of today's
anti-cancer drugs also have been developed courtesy of the National Institutes
of Health.
Drug
companies do research and development, of course. But they devote only
12-and-a-half percent of their incomes to it. They spend more than twice that
on advertising and marketing. Much of the rest is profit. And drug companies
are very, very healthy. During the recent downturn, the nation's top 10
pharmaceutical companies reported a 33 percent increase in profits.
I've
got a proposal that won't add a penny to the federal budget, will hold down a
lot of drug prices, and won't harm research and development on new drugs.
Here's the deal: Any drug company that wants its research subsidized by
American taxpayers has to limit the price of its new drugs to the direct cost
of producing them—that is, materials, factory production, and
distribution—plus a fair return of say 15 percent.
No
drug company has to take this deal, of course, because it doesn't have to turn
to government to finance its research. But if it wants you and me to pay for
its research with our tax dollars, it can't expect us to subsidize it once
again by paying though the nose for its new drugs. Got it? One bite at the
apple. Either tax-payer supported research or consumer-supported research.
4.
SMEARING EDWARD SAID AND HANAN ASHRAWI
(When
Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?)
BY
ROBERT
FISK
Is
"Palestinian" now just a dirty word? Or is "Arab" the
dirty word? Let's start with the late Edward Said, the brilliant and
passionate Palestinian-American academic who wrote—among many other
books—Orientalism, the ground-breaking work which first explored our
imperial Western fantasies about the Middle East. After he died of leukaemia
last month, Zev Chafets sneered at him in the New York Daily News in the
following words: "As an Episcopalian, he's ineligible for the customary
72 virgins, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's honoured with a couple of
female doctoral graduates."
According
to Chafets, who (says the Post) spent 33 years "in politics, government
and journalism" in Jerusalem, Orientalism "rests on a simple thesis:
Westerners are inherently unable to fairly judge, or even grasp, the Arab
world." Said "didn't blow up the Marines in Lebanon in 1983 … he
certainly didn't fly a plane into the World Trade Centre. What he did was to
jam America's intellectual radar."
When
I read this vicious obituary, I recalled hearing Chafets' name before. So I
turned to my files and up he popped in 1982, as former director of the Israeli
government press office in Jerusalem. He had just published a book falsely
claiming that Western Journalists in Beirut—myself among them—had been
"terrorized" by bands of Palestinians. He even claimed my old friend
Sean Toolan, who was murdered by a jealous husband with whose wife he was
having an affair, was killed by Palestinians because they disapproved of a US
television progamme about the PLO.
So
I got the point. You can kick a scholar when he's dead if he's a Palestinian,
and kick a journalist when he's dead if you want to claim he was murdered by
Palestinians. But now the same sick fantasies are taking hold in Australia,
where a determined effort is being made by Israel's supposed friends there to
prevent the Palestinian scholar Hanan Ashrawi—of all people—from receiving
the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize this week. A Jewish writer in Sydney has bravely
defended her—not least because the local Israeli lobby appears to have
deliberately misquoted an interview she gave me two years ago, distorting her
words to imply that she is in favor of suicide bombings.
Ashrawi
is not in favour of these wicked attacks. She has fearlessly spoken out
against them. But Sydney University has already withdrawn the use of its Great
Hall for the presentation of the peace prize and the Lord Mayor of Sydney,
Lucy Turnbull, has dissociated
the City of Sydney, sponsor of the prize, from the presentation. And just to
show you what lies behind this—apart from the fact the Turnbull's husband
Malcolm is trying to get a nomination for a parliamentary seat—take a look
through the following exchange between Kathryn Greiner, former chairwoman of
the Sydney peace foundation, and Professor Stuart Rees, the foundation's
director:
KG:
"I have to speak logically. It is either Hanan Ashrawi or the Peace
Foundation. That's our choice, Stuart. My distinct impression is that if you
persist in having her here, they'll (sic) destroy you. Rob Thomas of City
Group is in trouble for supporting us. And you know Danny Gilbert [an
Australian lawyer] has already been warned off."
SR:
"You must be joking. We've been over this a hundred times. We consulted
widely. We agreed the jury's decision, made over a year ago, was not only
unanimous but that we would support it, together."
KG:
"But you're not listening to the logic. The Commonwealth Bank … is
highly critical. We could not approach them for financial help for the Schools
Peace Prize. We'll get no support from them. The business world will close
ranks. They are saying we are one-sided, that we've only supported
Palestine."
There
is more of the same but Professor Rees is standing firm—for now. So is
Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein in Zmag magazine. Ashrawi, he says,
"has endured campaigns of hate based on slander and lies for most her
life, from those who are intent on silencing the Palestinian narrative
…" But how much longer must this go on? Ashrawi, I notice, is now being
called an "aging (sic) bespoke terror apologist" by Mark Steyn in,
of all places, The Irish Times.
And
it's getting worse. Said's work is now being denounced in testimony to the US
Congress by Dr. Stanley Kurz, who claims that the presence of
"postcolonial theory" in academic circles has produced professors
who refuse to support or instruct students interested in joining the Sate
Department or American intelligence agencies. So now Congress
is proposing to set up an "oversight board"—with appointed
members from Homeland Security, the Department of Defence and the US National
Security Agency—that will link university department funding on Middle East
studies to "students training for careers in national security, defence
and intelligence agencies …"
As
Professor Michael Bednar of the History Department at the University of Texas
at Austin says, "the possibility that someone in Homeland Security will
instruct college professors … on the proper, patriotic, 'American-friendly'
textbooks that may be used in class scares and outrages me."
So
it's to be goodbye to the life-work of Edward Said? And goodbye to peace
prizes for Hanan Ashrawi? Goodbye to Palestinians, in fact? Then the radar
really will be jammed.
(Editor's
note: Hanan Ashrawi did receive, in person, in Sydney,Australia, the 2003 Sydney
University Peace Prize on schedule)
BY
JAMES
VAN LUIK
1.
All governments lie
2.
American foreign policy has historical consistency
3.
Finding relevant documentation for what I place in the Bi-Weekly is relatively
easy, and is a measure of the amazing success and persuasiveness of the Public
Relations Industry. That is to say they are hardly worried of what I might say
since the general public is so propagandized as to conclude that what is in
this journal can hardly be true, and emphasizes how democratic we are in that
I could hardly print these ideas in many countries.
4.
The Constitutional Convention of 1787
a. was created, with very little voter franchise
b. big government was the goal
c. the constitution was designed to be an economic and imperialist
document
5.
Neither the US government nor its elected representatives represent the
interests of the General Public
6.
Most American get their news from television
7.
Readers of the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times,
The Atlanta Constitution, The St. Louis Dispatch, The Washington Post,
Newsweek, Time Magazine, US Business and World Report and listeners to the
commercial channels which includes NPR, or watch National Public Television,
CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN the Fox Channels, i.e. the mass media conglomerates'
channels are reading, listening and watching, for the most part, government
generated news.
8.
US, UK reasons for bombing and invading Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were
and remain public consumption propaganda
9.
The reasons for these actions were and are wars of hegemony
10.
It is US Policy to prevent a Middle East Peace Treaty between Israel and the
Palestinians
11.
It is not the state of Israel that is in jeopardy but rather the Palestinians
(Editor's
note: This is a much shortened version of this poem. Anyone wishing the whole
poem please email me.)
BY
EMMANUEL
ORTIZ
Before
I start this poem,
I'd
like to ask you to join me in
a
moment of silence
in
honour of those who died
in
the World Trade Centre
and
the Pentagon
on
September 11th
I
would also like to ask you
A
moment of silence
for
all of those who have been
harassed,
imprisoned, disappeared,
tortured,
raped, or killed
in
retaliation for those strikes,
for
the victims in both
Afghanistan
and the US
And
if I could just add one more thing…
A
full day of silence
for
the tens of thousands of Palestinians
who
have died at the hands of
US-backed
Israeli forces
over
decades of occupation
Six
months of silence
for
the million and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly
children, who have died of
malnourishment
or starvation
as
a result of an 11-year US embargo
against
the country.
