April 2007 Archives

This is a hard book to read. It is not that the words are too big or the sentences too long. Caroline Elkins writes well, and her message is very clear. The trouble is that many readers are going to find the subject too gruesome to make it to the end. It is a fairly big book, 475 pages of which 375 need to be read, another 100 of which are notes, a bibliography, and an index. Being very interested in East Africa and its history, I finished Imperial Reckoning by reading 30 or 40 pages a day. A sense of duty kept me going.

Caroline Elkins meant to write a dissertation on the savagery of the Mau Mau insurrection in 1950s Kenya, but as she researched her topic she found the British colonial reaction to the murders the more compelling story. Most of the administrative records were destroyed by the British authorities as they left Kenya, but the cover-up was incomplete.

Full story: Imperial Reckoning : The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins

Editor's note: The subject of political repression of free speech is a complex subject that we cannot discuss here. We would like, however, to point out the similarity between the new European Union laws on "racial incitement" and Article 59-7 of the 1934 Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic: "Propaganda or agitation, directed toward arousing national or religious enmity or discord, or likewise the dissemination or preparation and storage of literature of the same character, shall be punishable by - deprivation of freedom for a term up to two years." The Stalinization of the Western mind continues.

European interior ministers have agreed to make incitement to racism an EU-wide crime, but have stopped short of a blanket ban on Holocaust denial.

The agreement makes it an offence to condone or grossly trivialise crimes of genocide - but only if the effect is incitement to violence or hatred.

The deal follows six years of talks, and will disappoint Germany, which pushed hard for a Holocaust-denial law.

Berlin has also had to drop a proposal for an EU-wide ban on Nazi symbols.

The European Network Against Racism said most European countries already had laws against incitement to racism, and the "weak text" would leave many national legal codes unchanged.

Full story: EU agrees to new racial hatred law

Editor's note: A well-knit society is built upon merger of socioeconomics interests and cooperation. The effort to establish a parallel society based on outmoded social codes by Muslims or anyone else in Europe is therefore antisocial and should be opposed. Any defects in European laws or social mores can be dealt with in the public forum. As we have stated on this website previously, Europe does not need another dogma-based religion.

By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, UPI Editor at Large WASHINGTON, (UPI) - Islamic activists in Europe have taken a leaf out of the old Communist guidebook for the "long march through the institutions." In Antwerp, for example, the City Council has been infiltrated by Islamist fundamentalists - Belgian citizens, of course - who keep pushing the envelope with impunity. From the British city of Leeds to Livorno in Italy and from Luxembourg to Ljubljana in Slovenia, multiculturalism is pretty much a bust. Quicksand is the only common ground between Western values and militant Muslim fundamentalism. But some Islamist extremists have found willing partners among leftist radicals who never got over the end of the Cold War -- and jump at any opportunity to rumble against whatever government is in power. In Germany, the weekly Der Spiegel documented case after case of Muslims, and local German benefactors or sympathizers, busy paving the way for a Muslim "parallel" society. A Moroccan-born, 26-year-old German who had been subjected to her husband's "corporal punishment" and was denied grounds for divorce triggered a nationwide cry of outrage. Full story: Commentary : Multicultural boondoggle

The Chavez-Correa Model

By STEPHEN LENDMAN

Ecuadorean President Raphael Correa took office January 15 promising his people progressive, revolutionary social and economic change unlike anything this country of mostly impoverished people ever had before under its right wing only governments beholden solely to capital interests. Correa promised a "citizens' revolution" beginning by drafting a new Constitution in a Constituent Assembly for which a national referendum was held April 15 allowing Ecuadoreans the right to decide on it, not politicians.

Yesterday the people spoke loudly and clearly in favor of proceeding. The referendum was passed overwhelmingly by 78.1% in favor against a mere 11.5% opposed (with remaining ballots left blank or were void) according to a Cedatos-Gallup exit poll conducted among 40,000 voters with a margin of error around 2% that will be very close to the final official vote count due out in a week according to Ecuador's Supreme Electoral Council (TSE).

Full story: Ecuador Votes for Revolutionary Change

By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer

NEW YORK - Although it has already taken nearly four decades to get this far in building the Internet, some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap all that and start over.

The idea may seem unthinkable, even absurd, but many believe a "clean slate" approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock helped supervise the first exchange of meaningless test data between two machines on Sept. 2, 1969.

The Internet "works well in many situations but was designed for completely different assumptions," said Dipankar Raychaudhuri, a Rutgers University professor overseeing three clean-slate projects. "It's sort of a miracle that it continues to work well today."

Full story: Researchers explore scrapping Internet

According to economist Michael Harrington, it would have taken just $100 billion to rectify the economic injustices of the 1950s and 1960s. Moderates in powerful positions could have demanded these policy changes. Yet they did no such thing. In this case, what is the difference between so-called moderates and right-wing racists, except that conservatives speak straight and say they have no interest to end racism or poverty, while moderates are chameleons, changing their colors by the hour and using cunning rhetoric to convince the poor and disenfranchised that they are on their side but just need to wait until the right time, or even tell them that some things just cannot be changed; i.e., the capitalist economic structure. It is too much to ask, they say. For this very reason, the Reverend Martin Luther King called the liberals far more dangerous than the conservatives. - Garda Ghista (WPA)

"By the time, the British and American forces reached Northern Italy, it had been pretty well liberated by the resistance, they had driven out the Germans mostly, and they had established their own institutions: worker-managed industrial systems, cooperatives, and so on. The British and Americans were totally appalled, they had to dismantle the whole thing and restore the rights of owners..."

by Noam Chomsky and Dennis Ott

Dennis Ott: In a recent interview you quoted Thorstein Veblen, who contrasted "substantial people" and "underlying population."[1] At a shareholder's meeting of Allianz AG, major shareholder Hans-Martin Buhlmannn expressed the view that there is only one limit to the increase of the dividend: "The inferiors must not be bled so much that they can no longer consume. They must survive as consumers."[2] Is this the guiding principle of our economic system? And if so, is there any substance to the notion of a "social market economy"?

Noam Chomsky: Those are traditional questions in economics. It's part of Marx's reasoning about why there's going to be a continuing crisis of capitalism: that owners are going to try to squeeze the work force as much as possible, but they can't go too far, it'll be nobody to purchase what they buy. And it's been dealt with over and over again in one or another way during the history of capitalism; there's an inherent problem.

So for example, Henry Ford famously tried to pay his workers a higher wage than the going wage, because partly on this reasoning - he was not a theoretical economist, but partly on the grounds that if he doesn't pay his workers enough and other people won't pay their workers enough, there's going to be nobody around to buy his model-T Fords. Actually that issue came to court in the United States, around 1916 or so, and led to a fundamental principle of Anglo-American corporate law, which is part of the reason why the Anglo-American system is slightly different from the European social market system. There was a famous case called "Dodge v. Ford." Some of the stockholders of the Ford motor company, the Dodge brothers, brought Henry Ford to court, claiming that by paying the workers a higher wage, and by making cars better than they had to be made, he was depriving them of their profits - because it's true: dividends would be lower. They went to the courts, and they won.

Full interview: On Capitalism, Europe, and the World Bank

Ernst-Jan Pfauth

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - Italian diplomats at the U.N. are working hard to win over more support for their proposed resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions - but are still short of the necessary pledges to be certain that an eventual General Assembly vote would be decisive enough to give a historic boost to the abolitionist cause.

Some 88 countries have so far signed a declaration of association with Italy's death penalty moratorium proposal, according to an official from Amnesty International. "But the Italians need at least 100 signatures," one source here told IPS. This was the minimum number for Italy to be confident that the moratorium would win a majority vote in the 192-member General Assembly.

"There certainly is momentum for a U.N. moratorium," Louise Arbor, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, confirmed to IPS. "I sense that there is a growing will for a moratorium," she said, adding confidently, "and also for, in the end, abolishing the death penalty."

Full story: Death Penalty : Italy Keeps Up Pressure for U.N. Moratorium

Amra Bangali organized a massive rally in Jamsedpur on 31st March 2007 in protest against the CPI(M) - West Bengal-run massacre in Nandigram on 14th March 2007. The members of Amra Bangali burned the effigy of Mr. Buddhadev Bhattacarya, the Chief Minister of West Bengal on that occasion and demanded the immediate arrest of the chief minister and dismissal of his chief ministership.

"Her whole piece is a riff on victimological whining, and she delivers a virtuoso performance"

First They Came for the Spies

Why is the Wall Street Journal in favor of espionage?

by Justin Raimondo

The title of Dorothy Rabinowitz's Wall Street Journal [a prominent mainstream newspaper] screed defending two accused spies, "First They Came for the Jews," telegraphs the strategy apologists for Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman will be using when the two AIPAC officials' trial on charges of espionage, scheduled for June 4, finally begins. It is also a smear so outrageous it almost defies belief. What that headline communicates is the warped conception that the U.S. government, in prosecuting two prominent lobbyists on behalf of Israel for handing over sensitive classified information to Israeli officials, is the equivalent of the Nazi regime. What's next - the WSJ editorially attacking "Bushitler"?

Rosen, long the spark plug of AIPAC's very effective lobbying efforts, and Weissman, AIPAC's Iran specialist, are charged with espionage on Israel's behalf: here is the indictment. It shows that Rosen and Weissman weren't just "ordinary citizens," as Rabinowitz characterizes them, or even just high-powered lobbyists, acting, as is their right, to influence government policy. They were the leaders of a spy ring that was in the business of gathering classified information from their sources inside the U.S. government and feeding it to Israeli officials...

Full story: First They Came for the Spies

by Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, April 1, 2007

The US has completed major military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf within a short distance of Iranian territorial waters. This naval deployment is meant to "send a warning to Tehran" following the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1747, which imposes major economic sanctions on Iran in retaliation for its non-compliance with US demands regarding its uranium enrichment program.

The US war games off the Iranian coastline involved the participation of two aircraft carriers, the USS John Stennis carrier group and the USS Eisenhower with some 10,000 navy personnel and more than 100 warplanes. The USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier group, which is part of the US Fifth Fleet, entered the Persian Gulf on March 27, escorted by guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam (CG 54). (see http://www.navy.mil/).

John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group (JCSSG) and its air wing, Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 9 is said to have conducted "a dual-carrier exercise" together with the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group (IKE CSG):

"This marks the first time the Stennis and Eisenhower strike groups have operated together in a joint exercise while deployed to 5th Fleet. This exercise demonstrates the importance the ability for both strike groups to plan and conduct dual task force operations as part of the Navy's commitment to maintaining maritime security and stability in the region."

Editor's note: Intellectual dissent is a right supported by Prout propounder Shrii P.R. Sarkar in his lectures entitled Liberation of Intellect. By denying this right, as American, Canadian, German and other courts are consistently doing on select issues, not only is mental freedom suppressed, the opportunity to learn from public debate is lost, the minds of people become controlled, and the stage is set for economic and other forms of exploitation. In the modern age, one of the chief weapons of the exploiter is not the gun or the Star Chamber, but insulation from critique by means of making critique illegal. Another, though not discussed in the article below, is making critique of immorality itself appear immoral, the perversion of justice described by George Orwell in his book 1984. The choice is clear: freedom of thought, or a new Dark Age regulated by vested interests for their benefit. Intellectuals like Ernst Zundel should be allowed to express their views.

"Capitalism reverses the law of gravity, with money flowing up instead of down." By STEPHEN FLEISCHMAN There are winners and losers, an old, bearded, 19th Century economist told us once. That's the way the system works. Capitalists have been chewing each other up since the Industrial Revolution, said Karl Marx, world famous analyst of "the system", and the battle of mergers and acquisitions still goes on. Dog eat dog. There are always a few good men left at the table; but winners grow increasingly fewer and richer. There are now 946 billionaires in the world, according to Forbes, and 371 of them are in the United States with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett topping the list with $56 billion and $52 billion respectively. So, we wind up with a few winners, a lot of losers, and a plethora of monopolies and oligopolies. Full story: Winners and Losers : A Dog-Eat-Dog System

Roger Boyes in Berlin Fears that the German police force contains neo-Nazi sympathisers have been sparked after disdainful cadets delivered an extraordinary rebuff to a Holocaust survivor. Students at the Berlin police academy refused to listen to the harrowing testimony of Isaak Behar, 83, who had been invited to lecture them on his experiences as a Jew in the Third Reich. Mr Behar lost his parents and his two sisters in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The cadets shouted that they did not want to hear about the Holocaust any more, and said that the Jewish community was emotionally blackmailing Germany, according to German press reports. Dieter Glietsch, Berlin’s police commissioner, has opened an investigation. Full story: German neo-Nazi fear over police cadets

"In 1997, nearly half of French people saw Le Pen's ideas as unacceptable; now only a third do. His popularity speaks much about the continued disillusionment with the political leadership within French society."

Lionel Walsh

MANY French voters thought he was down and out. But 78-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen, France's far-right presidential candidate, has bounced off the ropes and is back in the ring. He will be running for president for the fifth time next month. The blustering founder of the French National Front says he is sure to win in the run-off vote on May 6. And his opponents are treating his return as more than a well-worn performance by an old entertainer.