Undermining the Legacy of Martin Luther King
March 31, 2008
‘America lauds Martin Luther King, but undermines his legacy every day’, writes Gary Younge. ‘Forty years after the civil rights leader’s death, his myth masks how the US remains segregated in practice and attitudes’
The National Civil Rights Museum sits in what was the Lorraine Motel, just beyond the shadows of Memphis’s skyscrapers and the garish neon glow of Beale Street – the main drag made famous by the likes of BB King and James Baldwin. The first words of the first exhibit state: “Protest against injustice is deeply rooted in the African-American experience.” Then come pictures of lynchings, burning crosses, martyrs and heroes, alongside mock-ups of Rosa Parks in the bus and lunch counters waiting to be integrated.About two-thirds of the way through is a replica of the Birmingham jail cell from which Martin Luther King wrote his letter in response to the local white clergy asking him to stop the protests and leave town. “I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate … who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice,” he wrote. “Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
And from there begins the gradual incline past the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the emergence of black power and the assassination of Malcolm X, until you reach room 306 – where the story ends with King stepping out on to the Lorraine Motel balcony on April 4 1968 to be killed by a sniper’s bullet.
US Elite Opinion Behind Israel at 60
March 31, 2008
Kissinger, along with every other living former secretary of state, has signed on as a vice-chair of the National Committee for Israel 60, which will coordinate events to celebrate Israel’s anniversary.Co-chairing the national commemoration are former American presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Jerusalem Post
It looks like Israel has a stranglehold over US elite opinion. I guess, with these big names, celebrations in the USA of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine are going to be quite spectacular (not to mention sickening).
Its not much of a surprise that Kissingers onboard – war criminals have got to stick together. He learned that lesson after seeing what happened to Pinochet in the UK. Chomsky famously quotes his genocidal orders in Cambodia: “anything that flies on anything that moves.” I’m sure he fits in well in Israel – this appears to be their unofficial motto.
The Trails of Henry Kissinger
Kissinger’s Cold War schemes of bombing Cambodia, the genocidal invasion of East Timor by Indonesia and the coup and related atrocities in Chile are all well researched in this 80 minute film.
Not A Civil War
March 31, 2008
Sabah al Nasseri explains why the present fighting in Iraq is not a civil war. ‘Iraq ruling elite needs US troops to stay in power,’ tells Pepe Escobar in an interview with The Real News. ‘Gov. attack on Sadr movement meant to prevent their election victory’, he says.
The Senator, His Pastor and the Israel Lobby
March 31, 2008
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| Senator Barack Obama addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) forum on Foreign Policy in Chicago, March 2007. (Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty Images) |
Excellent commentary by Ali Abunimah of The Electronic Intifada.
US senator Barack Obama was widely hailed for his 18 March speech calming the media furor about the sermons of his pastor for twenty years Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s remarks, Obama said, “expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”
It might seem odd for Obama to mention Israel and “radical Islam” in a speech focused on US race relations, especially since Wright’s most widely reported comments were about America’s historic and ongoing oppression of its black citizens.
But for months, even before most Americans had heard of Wright, prominent pro-Israel activists were hounding Obama over Wright’s views on Israel and ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. In January, Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), demanded that Obama denounce Farrakhan as an anti-Semite. The senator duly did so, but that was not enough. “[Obama has] distanced himself from his pastor’s decision to honor Farrakhan,” Foxman said, but “He has not distanced himself from his pastor. I think that’s the next step.” Foxman labeled Wright “a black racist,” adding in the same breath, “Certainly he has very strong anti-Israel views” (Larry Cohler-Esses, “ADL Chief To Obama: ‘Confront Your Pastor’ On Minister Farrakhan,” The Jewish Week, 16 January 2008). Criticism of Israel, one suspects, is Wright’s truly unforgivable crime and Foxman’s vitriol has echoed through dozens of pro-Israel blogs.
Hiroshima Bombing – Barefoot Gen
March 31, 2008
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki, surely among the most unspeakable crimes in history.” Noam Chomsky
The Hiroshima bombing came at a time when the Japanese were negotiating peace with the USA. The United States however wanted to test its new weapon: demonstrating its power to the world, especially to the Soviets. When Gore Vidal was asked if he thought the Atomic Bombing was the end of the Second World War or the beginning of the cold war, he chose the latter.
I visited Hiroshima in 2004 and entered the “peace park” museum without giving it much thought (put in quotes because I think the American post war Government had a propaganda campaign promoting “peace” in Japan – worried that people might want revenge). Perhaps I was a little ignorant because I was in for a gut wrenching, stomach churning experience.
One of the exhibits that I remember vividly was something quite odd. I was looking at it in its glass case and couldn’t quite focus on what it was. Rather unusual, so I looked at the little plaque beside it – which had a story. It said that there was a young girl – 8 years old I think – that had been caught in the bomb blast. Her first instinct was to run home even although she was covered in burns. When she made it to her mothers arms much of her skin had peeled off and there she died. I can’t imagine how the little girl or her mother felt, I can only guess. But to help convey the full horror to her partner – the woman collected the little girls fingers, that had melted off, to keep and show him when he returned. Reading the story I was quite moved. Hesitantly I looked back and could see that indeed they were fingers with recognisable nails – on top of everything else I’d seen I almost threw up. Leaving the museum also hit me hard, walking onto a busy street I realised it was people just like these that suffered so terribly.
The following film is based on the work of a manga artist in Japan, Keiji Nakazawa, a 6 year old survivor of the bombing. I think the film, made in the 80′s reflects the true horror of the atomic bombings and the true horror of war. All through a childs eyes and loosely based on Nakazawa’s own experiences. An interview with Keiji can be seen here (15 mins into the show).
Unholy Wars
March 30, 2008
Gareth Porter on Antiwar Radio discussing developments in Iraq.
Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses the Iraqi Army’s targeting of the Mahdi Army, his suspicion that Cheney arranged this with Maliki on his recent trip, the doom this could spell for the occupation, Iran’s relative influence with the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps of the Hakim faction and the neoconservative propaganda that Iran backs al Qaeda.
MP3 here. (40:57)
Dr. Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on U.S. national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). He has written regularly for Inter Press Service on U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran since 2005.
Dr. Porter was both a Vietnam specialist and an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War and was Co-Director of Indochina Resource Center in Washington. Dr. Porter taught international studies at City College of New York and American University. He was the first Academic Director for Peace and Conflict Resolution in the Washington Semester program at American University.
A Cold War Getting Hot
March 30, 2008
Today’s guest editorial on Lebanon from Alberto Cruz in Nicaragua.
”Lebanon, a small country, perhaps destined to play a great part in the future, not just of the Middle East but of the whole Arab world.” With that remark some friends bade me farewell over a year ago in Beirut’s airport. The capital was beginning to put itself back together after the Israeli bombardments against Shi’ite districts and had witnessed something that may help better to understand what’s going on now. In the Spanish capital, Madrid, the Alcobendas and San Sebastian de los Reyes districts are separated by a street. I guess the same happens in other mega-cities that have expanded through urban development and speculation, rendering municipal limits obsolete. Something similar happens in Beirut, except that there a street can be a frontier between Christian and Muslim districts.
This is the case between the Maronite Christian Ain al-Rumaneh district and the Shi’ite Shayyah district. Here some of the bloodiest lines of the Lebanese civil war were written. They are barrios where, in the Christian case the lower middle class predominate and in the Shi’ite case, working class bordering on the impoverished. According to data from the Lebanese General Union of Workers, 54% of the Lebanese population live on the borderline of poverty. The government, as one might expect, plays down this figure and reckons it at 31%. Still a significant figure in any case. However, what the government cannot deny is that the purchasing power of people in Lebanon dropped 15% in 2007. (1) And it is this situation, with a middle class slipping progressively deeper into poverty and a working class already mired in poverty where a rapprochement has taken place and even a mutual understanding that sets aside stale religious confrontation.
The War Expert
March 30, 2008
‘Wrong, wrong, wrong again,’ writes Michael Massing. ‘But the media still want Ken Pollack’ (via Philip Weiss, my favorite blogger. Also check out his characteristically insightful comments)
On July 30, as the debate over the Bush administration’s “surge” in Iraq was heating up, The New York Times ran an op-ed article that enthusiastically endorsed it. Titled A WAR WE MIGHT JUST WIN, it was written by Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, both of the Brookings Institution, and, reading through it, I grew increasingly irritated. Part of the problem was the piece’s gushing tone. “After the furnace-like heat,” they wrote, “the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops.” Soldiers and marines “told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.”
From Ramadi, where they talked with a Marine captain whose company “was living in harmony” with Iraqi security forces; to Baghdad’s Ghazaliya neighborhood, which was “slowly coming back to life with stores and shoppers”; to the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul, where Iraqi security forces had “stepped up to the plate,” the surge was helping produce a “new Iraq,” O’Hanlon and Pollack argued, and as a result, “Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.”
U.S. Humanitarian Aid
March 30, 2008
Powerful artwork by Andy Singer.
I’m not sure why but this cartoon also reminds me of the Orwellian use of the term “Humanitarian Aid.” Often the US has used it when it’s actually delivering weapons, in other words, the bombs in the top section of the drawing might have been “Humanitarian Aid” too! Here’s a good example from Noam Chomsky.
Ten years ago …. the International Court of Justice was found to be an inappropriate forum for judging Nicaragua’s charges against Washington. The U.S. rejected ICJ jurisdiction, and when the Court condemned the U.S. for the “unlawful use of force,” ordering Washington to cease its international terrorism, violation of treaties, and illegal economic warfare, and to pay substantial reparations, the Democrat-controlled Congress reacted by instantly escalating the crimes while the Court was roundly denounced on all sides as a “hostile forum” that had discredited itself by rendering a decision against the United States. The Court judgment itself was scarcely reported, including the words just quoted and the explicit ruling that U.S. aid to the contras is “military” and not “humanitarian.” Along with U.S. direction of the terrorist forces, the aid continued until the U.S. imposed its will, always called “humanitarian aid.” Public history keeps to the same conventions.
For more see Peoples Geography (Thanks Ann!).
IAPA Does Venezuela
March 30, 2008
Britain’s state propaganda organ BBC continues the government’s campaign against Venezuela. “Chavez ‘stifles Venezuelan media‘”, it writes. In a country where press is gagged with legal injunctions for revealing government secrets (e.g., the UK gag over the minutes of the meeting where Bush-Blair discussed bombing Al Jazeera), it takes more than mere chutzpah to attack another government’s media practices. It takes willful blindness, for instance, when the CIA links of Inter-American Press Service, the organization criticizing Venezuela for its alleged stifling of the media, are overlooked.
IAPA has long served as a useful tool when any Latin American country undergoes democratic or revolutionary change. The scholar Fred Landis describes how newspapers in the target country become propaganda instruments manipulated by the CIA and its affiliated organs:
IAPA stands ready, with all its hundreds of cooperating member newspapers, to scream “Marxist Threat to Free Press” if any attempt is made by the target government to restrict the flow of hostile propaganda. In 1969 the CIA had five agents working as media executives at El Mercurio, all of whom in subsequent years were elevated to the Board of Directors of IAPA. The owner of El Mercurio was made head of the Freedom of the Press committee, and later President. IAPA bylaws permitted only working owners to be members, so the bylaws were changed to accommodate him. Then many of the CIA operatives at Copley News Service were made members of the Board of Directors of IAPA. Immediately before the campaign to oust socialist Prime Minister Michael Manley, Jamaica Daily Gleaner publisher Oliver Clarke was added to the Executive Committee; he has now been promoted to Treasurer. At the last annual convention in San Diego, IAPA elevated Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, Jr., to its Board of Directors. At that time he was not an editor or publisher of La Prensa, but the CIA needed him because he had the same name as his martyred father. After his elevation he was belatedly made Assistant Director of La Prensa, and when he was recently added to the IAPA Executive Committee, La Prensa began carrying the IAPA membership credential in its masthead. At the last IAPA meeting in Rio de Janeiro in October, speeches, including those by Vice-President Bush, were dominated by alarmist references to the situation of the press in Nicaragua.
Obviously the owner of a conservative newspaper in Latin America does not need CIA money to be against a socialist government. The assistance provided by the CIA is primarily technical, not financial. Without CIA help, the local newspaper’s opposition would be openly stated on the editorial page in language reflecting the ideology of the local conservative elite. That would be ideological warfare, not psychological warfare. But the CIA is not concerned, in these operations, with local ideology; it is concentrating on the use of its bag of technological dirty tricks. One of these tricks is disinformation.
Fred Landis, CIA Media Operations in Chile, Jamaica, and Nicaragua, Covert Action Information Bulletin, Number 16, March 1982, pp. 34 — 35.
