Zion's (Mad) Dogs of War Unleashed Again?
By Sid Walker
July 14, 2006 in Political Debates
Peter McGuire
Dear Mark:
I have read through the exchange that happened on this forum with Michael Piper and to say I am not impressed by the conduct of some of the researchers here is an understatement.
"Final Judgment" does an excellent job of showing how the Lansky crime syndicate fits in with a lot of the research that is already out there. At the very least , you finally understand who Jack Rubenstein really is.
Until Final Judgment, most people also were not aware of Kennedys conflict with Ben Gurion. And rather than going over, ad nauseum , all the details of the execution day , Final Judgment finally looks at the big picture.
Angleton seems to be the link to the Mossad which makes it a combined CIA/Mossad operation. And the proposed motive is very clear; State Survival.
In any event, with the shut down of protection that day, it is very clear that it was an "inside job". While Johnson was covered by his bodyguards the moment shots were fired, Greer and Kellerman just looked at Kennedy and waited over 6 seconds until he was good and dead. All the other Agents were ordered not to do anything by Agent Emory P Roberts. The world was led to believe Hill actually tried to do something. All he did was cover Kennedys dead body after Jackie picked up her husbands brains. ( Off the BACK of the car) From the shot from the FRONT!
Edited August 10, 2006 by Peter McGuire
Owen Parsons
Norman Finkelstein's site has posted a very interesting August 3rd speech from Hassan Nasrallah.
An excerpt:
I reach the last part which pertains to the political part. I say this: I would like to confirm to our Lebanese people and the peoples of our nation as well as the world. I want to be very clear. The killings, massacres, destruction, atrocities and barbarism that have taken place since the first day of the war and continue to be, Bush and his US administration are the first ones to be blamed. In our opinion, Olmert and his government are mere executive tools of this war. I want to stress on this meaning and say that the blood of the women and children in Qana as well as the blood of all the old people and innocent civilians whose blood was shed in Lebanon are tainting the faces of Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney and this US administration. This administration is the assassin, murderer and assailant. Until now, this administration has been thwarting all attempts to stop the aggression and it is designing the terms and trying to dictate these terms. This issue must be clear to each Lebanese, each Moslem and Christian, and each noble person in this world. We are explaining this issue to eliminate any confusion.
Looks like I'm not the only who thinks the power of the Lobby is over-hyped.
Mark Stapleton
In any event, with the shut down of protection that day, it is very clear that it was an "inside job". While Johnson was covered by his bodyguards in a heartbeat, Kennedy was left to die.
Yes, it's true that the welcome afforded to Michael Piper by some on the Forum was less than couteous. It is, of course, a very sensitive subject.
While this topic would be more suited to the assassination section of the Forum, I will briefly say that I agree with your comments about Ruby and Angleton. Angleton's connection to Israel is rarely discussed, even though he ran the CIA's 'Israel desk' for many years. He spent most of his career accusing almost everyone of being a Russian spy, never missing an opportunity to fan the flames of US/Soviet mistrust. Piper claims that his CIA Mossad liason desk were central to the CIA's deep cover alliances with the Lansky crime syndicate, a claim I find quite plausible. In the photo section of the 6th edition of 'Final Judgement' there is a photograph of a monument, erected in Israel in honor of Angleton, inscribed 'in memory of a dear friend James J Angleton 1917-1987'. Piper claims it is the only known photograph of this monument ever to be published.
Sid Walker
Location:near Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Angleton also had connections to the 'Soviet' spy-ring in British 'Intelligence' (Philby, Brugess, Maclean and Blunt).
Recently, there has been some speculation that Victor Rothschild was the legendary 'fifth man'.
Lord Victor Rothschild a Soviet mole? It seems improbable to me - although he may have cut occasional deals with Moscow while operating deep inside the heart of the British capitalist beast.
More likely that Rothschild's primary national allegiance was to the fledgling State of Israel - although it may well have been useful to him to conceal this from both the Brits/Americans and the Russians.
Edited August 10, 2006 by Sid Walker
Owen,
Try as I might, I couldn't get your link to the article to come up, but it doesn't matter--I get the gist. Fiery anti-US rhetoric indeed, but where does Nasrullah explicitly state that, in his opinion, the power of the Israeli lobby in the US is over-hyped? I believe this is your conclusion, not his.
Does anyone not remember Scott Ritter? Yes, the former weapons inspector who resigned in 1998, claiming that Iraq had no WMDs. He has just written a piece about the current war in Lebanon ("Grave consequences of supporting war in Lebanon") which I believe is a very sobering wake-up call for all US citizens. Here's an excerpt, dealing with Hezbollah:
Contrary to popular opinion, Hezbollah is not an "international terrorist organisation". 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 US 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 organisation that has gone on record condemning the September 2001 attacks on the US, 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 the US should be supporting.
Hezbollah is very much a political reality. It is woven into the lives of Lebanese Shi'a, providing medical and education support to impoverished citizens 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 recognises the unique character of Hezbollah, rejecting the 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.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/40033/
Edited August 10, 2006 by Mark Stapleton
Of course Nasrallah isn't directly adressing the Israel Lobby, but by saying that the Bush regime is to blame and that Olmert and his thugs are just puppets ("mere executive tools"), he makes it pretty clear who he thinks is the dominant partner in this relationship. From that it follows that he would probably not put much stock in the notion that U.S. Foreign Policy is run by the Israel Lobby.
Also, I checked the link again and it works fine.
Edit: Here's another link for the Nasrallah speech. It has a transcript and video footage.
Edited August 11, 2006 by Owen Parsons
Blaming the USA - or its substandard, illegitimately-elected President - for the latest Lebanon debacle, is a predictable but unconvincing ploy.
Of course the USA shares culpability for what has happened. The USA funds and uncritically supports the terrorist State of Israel. It therefore shares culpability for its actions. But to suggest that Israel's Government was pushed unwillingly by Washington into assaulting The Lebanon, as various Zionist apologists now claim, is once again to falsify history in an attempt to deceive and gain current advantage.
Veteran British journalist Alan Hart gave a superb speech to the at International Institute of Strategic Studies, New Civilisation debate, on Thursday, August 10, 2006. I rarely post the full text of a reference when a link will do, but in this case, I believe it is merited. The speech is of interest for its insightful historical analysis as well as its contemporary significance.
Hart explains to his audicence "I'm not a politician or, any more, a working journalist and broadcaster who must write and speak in way that doesn't offend very powerful vested interests. I am a reasonably well informed human being who cares and who is free to say what he really thinks. (Which probably makes me a member of a very small club!)"
How true! If Hart is correct, the very future of humanity may depend on how quickly that small club can swell its ranks - and how effectively it can perform its essential role of honest explication to the confused, frightened, misled and manipulated populace.
The Hart transcipt follows:
THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE ZIONIST STATE OF ISRAEL?
Alan Hart at International Institute of Strategic Studies, New Civilisation debate, on Thursday, August 10, 2006.
I'm going to suggest to you that what we might now be witnessing is the long beginning of the end of the Zionist state of Israel. In the next 10 minutes or so I will talk my way to an explanation of why I think so; and then I'll address the question of what the most likely consequences would be. I can see two ­ One State of Palestine for All and real, lasting peace, or Catastrophe for All… and by "All" I don't just mean Israeli Jews and the Arabs of the region, I mean all of us, everywhere.
I thought I would be the first to give voice in public to the idea that Israel might be planting in Lebanon the final seeds of its own destruction, but while I was working on my text for this evening, I came across an interview given by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Carter's National Security Adviser. He said: "Eventually, if neo-con policies continue to be pursued, the United States will be expelled from the region and that will be the beginning of the end for Israel as well."
As Israel's bombardment of Lebanon unfolded, a great deal of nonsense was written and spoken by pundits and policymakers throughout the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian world about why it was happening. The main thrust of the nonsense was that Hizbullah started the war and that Israel was merely defending itself. I think the truth about Hizbullah's role in triggering the war can be summarised as follows ­ bearing in mind that the border incident of 12 July was one of many since Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, and which more often than not, according to UN monitors, were provoked by Israeli actions and/or Israeli violations of agreements. By engaging an IDF border patrol, killing three Israeli soldiers and taking two hostages, and firing a few rockets to create a diversion for that operation, Hizbullah gave Israel's generals and those politicians who rubber-stamp their demands the PRETEXT they wanted and needed to go to war ­ a war they had planned for months.
I was reminded of what was said to me on the second of the six days of the 1967 war when I was a very young ITN correspondent reporting from Israel. One of my sources was Major General Chaim Herzog. He was one of the founding fathers of Israel's Directorate of Military Intelligence. On the second day of that war he said to me in private conversation: "If Nasser had not been stupid enough to give us a PRETEXT for war now, we would have created one in the coming year to 18 months."
Hizbullah's purpose in taking Israeli prisoners/hostages was to have them as bargaining chips - to secure the return of Lebanese prisoners Israel had refused to release in a previous prisoner exchange. As former President Carter implied in an article for The Washington Post on I August, it was not unreasonable for Hizbullah to assume that an exchange would be possible because "the assumption was based on a number of such trades in the past."But on 12 July 2006 the government of Israel was not interested in trades. It did not give a single moment to diplomacy or negotiations of any kind. It did not even consider a local retaliation to make a point. Israel rushed to war. As Defence Minister Amir Peretz put it: "We're skipping the stage of threats and going straight to the action."On the subject of Hizbullah's rockets, (which are hit-and-miss low tech weapons when compared with Israel's state of the art firepower), it is right to ask ­ Why, really, were they there? What, really, explains Hizbullah's stock-piling and its bunkering down? The honest answer, which has its context in the whole history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Zionism's demonstrated designs on Southern Lebanon in particular, is this: Hizbullah was strengthening itself militarily for the same reason as Eygpt did when President Nasser, with great reluctance after America had refused to supply him, accepted weapons from the Soviet Union. Nasser did NOT upgrade Eygpt's military capabilities to make war on Israel. He wanted to be able to demonstrate to Israel that attacking Eygpt to impose Zionism's will on it was not a cost-free option. In other words, Hizbullah had been improving its military capability to deter Israeli incursions and attacks, which was something the Lebanese army was incapable of doing. Am I suggesting that Hizbullah would NOT have let loose its rockets if Israel had not gone for the war option? YES! The notion that, on 12 July 2006, Hizbullah was joined in conspiracy with Iran and Syria to wipe Israel off the face of the earth is nothing but Zionist and neo-con propaganda nonsense ­ to justify Israel's latest war of aggression and also, perhaps, to justify, in advance of it happening, war on Iran.
It's true that the rhetoric of Iran's President gave and gives a degree of apparent credibility to Zionist and neo-con spin ­ but only to those who are unaware of, or don't want to know, the difference between the facts and documented truth of the real history of the Arab-Israeli conflict (as in my book) and Zionism's version of it.
To those who really want to understand why the Zionist state of Israel behaves in the way it does, and is (as described in a recent article courageously carried by The Independent) "a terrorist state like no other", I say not only read my book, but give special attention to page 485 of Volume One. On it I quote what was said behind closed doors in May 1955 by Moshe Dayan, Israel's one-eyed warlord and master of deception. He was in conversation with Israel's ambassadors to Washington, London and Paris. At the time the Eisenhower administration was pressing Israel to abandon its policy of reprisal attacks.
Eisenhower was aware that Nasser did not want war with Israel, and that he would, when he could, make an accommodation with it. Eisenhower also knew that Israel's reprisal attacks were making it impossible for Nasser to prepare the ground on his side for peace with Israel.
In conversation with Israel's three most important ambassadors to the West, Dayan explained why he was totally opposed - whatever the pressure from the West - to the idea that Israel should abandon its policy of reprisal attacks. They were, he said, "a life drug." What he meant, he also explained, was that reprisal attacks enabled the Israeli government "to maintain a high degree of tension in the country and the army." What, really, did that mean?Israel's standing or full-time army was (as it still is and must be) relatively small, not more than about 23,000 souls in all. The other quarter of a million fighting men and women who could be mobilised in 48 hours were reservists from every walk of Israel's civil society. The real point? Without Israeli reprisal attacks and all that they implied ­ that the Zionist state was in constant danger of being annihilated - there was a possibility that some and perhaps many reservists would not be motivated enough to respond to Zionism's calls to arms.Put another way, what Dayan really feared was the TRUTH. He knew, as all of Israel's leaders knew, that Israel's existence was NOT in danger from any combination of Arab forces. And that was the truth which had to be kept from the Jews of Israel. Dayan's fear was that if they became aware of it, they might insist on peace on terms the Arab regimes could accept but which were not acceptable to Zionism. Among those present when Dayan explained the need for Israeli reprisal attacks as a "life drug" was the Foreign Ministry's Gideon Rafael. He reported what Dayan told the ambassadors to Prime Minister Moshe Sharret ­ in my view, and with the arguable exception of Yitzhak Rabin, the only completely rational prime minister Israel has ever had. And we know from Sharret's diaries what Rafael then said to him: "This is how fascism began in Italy and Germany!"
Ladies and gentlemen, I think future historians may say that was how fascism began in the Zionist state of Israel.
The idea of Israel as a fully functioning democracy is a seriously flawed one. It's true that Israeli Jews are free to speak their minds (in a way that most Jews of the world are frightened to do), and to that extent it can be said that Israel has the appearance of a vibrant democracy... But in reality, and especially since the countdown to the 1967 war, it's Israel's generals who call most of the policy shots, even when one of them is not prime minister.
In June 1967 Israel's prime minister of the time, the much maligned Levi Eshkol, did NOT want to take his country to war. It, war, was imposed upon him by the generals, led by Dayan. As I explain in Volume Two of my book, what really happened in Israel in the final countdown to that war was something very close to a military coup in all but name.
And that's where we are today ­ the generals effectively calling the shots in Israel, to the applause of the neo-cons.Why, really, did Israel's generals want to make war on Lebanon? There was obviously much more to it than the collective punishment of a whole people as part and parcel of a stated objective ­ the destruction of Hizbullah as a Moslem David which could hit and hurt the Zionist Goliath.I think there were two main reasons.The first was that Israel's generals believed they should and could restore the "deterrent power" of the IDF (Israel's war machine). They believed, correctly, that it had been seriously damaged by Hizbullah's success in not only confronting the IDF following Sharon's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, but eventually forcing it to withdraw, effectively defeated and humiliated… I think it is more than reasonable to presume that for most if not all of the past six years, Israel's generals were itching to make war on Lebanon to repair that damage ­ to restore the IDF's deterrent power. Put another way, it was time, Israel's generals believed, to give the Arabs (all Arabs, not just Hizbullah) another lesson in who the master was.
The second main reason for the insistence of Israel's generals on 12 July this year that war was the only option…?I think it's also more than reasonable to presume that they saw the opportunity to ethnically cleanse Lebanon up to the Litani River, with a view, eventually, to occupying and then annexing the ethnically cleansed territory. For Zionism this would be the fulfilment of the vision of modern Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion - a Zionist state within "natural" borders, those borders being the Jordan River in the East and the Litani River of Lebanon in the north. Israel gained control of the Jordan River border in its 1967 war of expansion, but prior to its rush to war on 12 July, all of its attempts to establish the Litani border had failed. Since 1982 because of Hizbullah's ability to cause the occupying IDF forces more casualties than Israeli public opinion was prepared to tolerate.According to those currently calling the policy shots - Israel's generals and politicians, the neo-cons in and around the Bush administration and their associate in Downing Street - the name of the game is creating a "new Middle East". It IS happening. A new Middle East is being created.
But what kind of new Middle East will it actually be? In my analysis it will be one in which the Zionist state of Israel, having rejected a number of opportunities to make peace with the Palestinians and all the Arab states, will become increasingly vulnerable and, at a point, actually for the first time ever in its shortish history, could face the possibility of defeat.In my view the seeds of that possible defeat have just been sewn in Lebanon. The fact is that Israel's latest military adventure has been totally counter-productive in that has caused Hizbullah to be admired by the angry and humiliated masses of the Arab and wider Moslem world. That being so, would it really be surprising if, in growing numbers, Arabs and Moslems everywhere begin to entertain ­ if they are not already entertaining ­ something like the following thought: "If 3,000 Hizbullah guerrillas can stand up to mighty Israel for weeks and give it a seriously bloody nose, what would happen if we all joined the fight?" (Do I hear the sound of pro-Western Arab regimes being toppled? Yes, I think so). I imagine that even the thought of Israel being defeated one day will bring joy to very many Arabs and other Moslems. But there ought to be no place for joy because there's no mystery about what would happen in the event of Israel actually being on the brink of defeat. I want to quote to you now from one of my Panorama interviews with Golda Meir. (It can be found, this quote, on the second page Volume One of my book, in the Prologue which is titled Waiting for the Apocalypse).
At a point I interrupted her to say: "Prime Minister I want to be sure I understand what you're saying… You are saying that if ever Israel was in danger of being defeated on the battlefield, it would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it?" Without the shortest of pauses for reflection, Golda replied: "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying." In those days Panorama went on-air at 8 o'clock on Monday evenings. Shortly after the transmission of that interview The Times had a new lead editorial. It quoted what Golda had said to me and added its view that "We had better believe her." How, actually, would the Zionist state of Israel take at least the region down with it? It would arm its nuclear missiles, target Arab capitals, then fire the missiles. Such an End-Game to the Arab-Israeli conflict, if it happened, and which I would describe as a self-fulfilled Zionist prophesy of doom, would probably take many years to play out. But the countdown to such a catastrophe would be speeded up if, as Brzezinski put it, "neo-con policies continue to be pursued." If they are, and if Iran is attacked, I think that a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, would become unstoppable.Is there no way to stop the madness and create a "new Middle East" worth having? Yes, of course, there is, but it requires the agenda of the neo-cons and their associates to be thrown into the dustbin of history, in order for there to be a resolution of the Palestine problem, which I describe as the cancer at the heart of international affairs.Unfortunately, and because of the facts Zionism has been allowed to create on the ground in Israel/Palestine, it's already much too late for a genuine two-state solution, one which would see Israel back behind more or less its pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem an open city and the capital of two states.The conclusion which I think is invited is this: If the countdown to catastrophe for all is to be stopped, the only possible solution to the Palestine problem is One State for All. That would, of course, be the end of Zionism's colonial enterprise and of Zionism itself. But in my view that's what has to happen if there's to be a "new Middle East" in which there can be security and peace for all, Arabs and Jews..Ladies and gentlemen: I'm not a politician or, any more, a working journalist and broadcaster who must write and speak in way that doesn't offend very powerful vested interests. I am a reasonably well informed human being who cares and who is free to say what he really thinks. (Which probably makes me a member of a very small club!) And in summary of all that I've said this evening, what I really think comes down to this: The equation is a very simple one: No justice for the Palestinians = no peace for any of us.
And it seems Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the organization with which Israel is at war, has fallen for this "unconvincing ploy." In reality, the only things that are "unconvincing" are these superficial analyses of the Israel Lobby which ignore some rather important evidence, as I have outlined elsewhere. Its all very convenient for the United States government, as most of the people who write this stuff go out of their way to portray the U.S. as an innocent lamb whose primary interest is fostering and protecting democracy. If only it weren't for the Israel Lobby, which has hijacked this magnificent institution. People here may not subscribe to this viewpoint when they endorse the "Israel Lobby controls the U.S." thesis, but that is what is being pushed.
Nowhere do I assert that Israel was "pushed unwillingly by Washington." What I am asserting is that the United States is the primary mover. In fact, it appears as if Israel had enough power of its own to reject the Bush administration's urging for an attack on Syria.
Some good articles by Robert Parry of Consortium News on the subject:
- Bush Wants Wider War
- A 'Pretext' War in Lebanon
- Israeli Leaders Fault Bush on War
Also, I don't think you are in any position to accuse others of "falsify[ing] history."
Quintessential Israel Shamir, hot off the keyboard...
Russia Hesitates
By Israel Shamir, from Moscow
Israel and the US, the terrible Siamese twins conjoined by their Jewish communities, are on the warpath. The usually knowledgeable Uzi Mahanaimi wrote in the Sunday Times that the plans have been laid out, and preparations are being completed for the resumption of the war on Syria and Iran temporarily stopped by the Hezbullah fighters in the mountains of Southern Lebanon. President Bush hopes to improve his sagging popularity by the war, says Alex Cockburn. A condemnation of Iran by the Security Council is all he needs before the attack at dawn. Until now, such resolutions were produced after a short period of haggling. Now there is a chance Russia will use its veto, and then the US plans would be shelved and the assault on Iran cancelled.
Before 1990, such a vote would be certain. In those days of the much-maligned Soviet Union, the Russians advanced many causes of which we still enjoy the fruits: together with their Cuban allies they stopped the apartheid tanks in Angola and brought about Mandela's release and the creation of a more egalitarian South Africa. The Russians supported European trade unions and Communist parties, preventing the onslaught of privatisation, outsourcing and globalisation. If you had it better before 1990, and you probably did, it was due to this Russian influence. The Russians supplied the enemies of the Empire with their cheap and good weapons, and they blocked the Empire's attempts to legitimise its aggressions via UN resolutions. Their planes and their ground-to-air missiles helped the Vietnamese and the Koreans to win the war. Their influence and abilities were limited: the Russians never could compete on an equal footing with the immense power of the West harnessed by Washington. But they could spike the wheels of the American Juggernaut, and so they did. The Empire hated them and wished them dead, and many Western intellectuals supported this wish.
My friend, Russian maverick poet Edward Limonov, wrote a short story in the 1980s: what would happen if Russia were to disappear altogether from the face of Earth? The US would intervene all over the world on massive scale, and capitalism and imperialism would regain ground lost since 1917 with a vengeance, he prophesied; and so it has happened: Panama, Nicaragua, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan were invaded. The rich grew richer, the middle class shrank, freedoms were undone on the pretext of a "War on Terror."
The Western Left contributed a lot to this unhappy development, for Soviet Russia was undone by double perfidy. In the end, their elites betrayed their masses and privatised the wealth created by the Soviet people. But before that, we, the Western Left, had internalized the Evil Empire cliché and repeated every slogan manufactured by the enemy. We chanted Let My People Go, and demanded an extra privilege for Jews, the right to emigrate. We did not care that the Palestinians had no right to return to their homes, while the Russian Jews wanted to move into settlements in occupied Palestine. We supported Russian dissidents, though they hated all we stood for and considered Pinochet 'a soft leftist'. We accused Russians of their long-gone Gulag, and brought in Abu Ghraib. We condemned Russians too much, and contributed to their feeling of isolation, and to the second, fatal betrayal by their elites.
We, good and sincere people, were misled and tricked by the media machine into an outburst of condemnation against our only mighty ally. The Western Left did not survive the collapse: it went into self-destruct mode, and what remains is represented by the likes of Tony Blair. All over the Western world, the elites celebrate their unlimited wealth and luxury, while ordinary people are worse and worse off. Not only industrial workers: unless you are a CEO you live worse than you did, and your chances to improve your lot are worse than they ever were.
But luckily Russia did not disappear forever, though it was a close call. Boris Yeltsin sold its resources to his cronies and to Western companies, shelled the Parliament and transferred media and oil into the hands of Jewish oligarchs. Yeltsin installed Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB officer and would-be Pinochet, with orders to keep the stolen property in the hands of thieves and the country in the Western grip. Now it appears that the enemies of Russia miscalculated with this man. Instead of doing a Pinochet on behalf of the oligarchs, Putin broke the oligarchs' grip; he exiled and jailed some crooked tycoons, and restored a semblance of law and order in the country. He returned the main TV channels to the people. My wealthy Jewish acquaintances in Russia tell me that money does not rule in the country anymore. One can buy comforts, but not the power.
The oil revenues began to flow into the country, not only to private coffers in Swiss banks. This revitalised the economy. The infrastructure ruined by Gorbachev and Yeltsin is being restored and improved; housing is being built in vast amounts; the once-degraded army is receiving new hardware; main streets shine with bright new shops; new and repaired highways with millions of cars connect villages and cities. The Chechen war is over; that republic has been reintegrated into Russia, and its dwellers enjoy full civil rights. Russian ballet again captures eyes and hearts. After the total collapse of the film industry in the 1990s, Russians are again making many movies, even blockbusters with mass appeal (like The Night Guard) as well as "festival art". Obsessive, guilt-ridden lamentation has given way to new prose and poetry. Thousands of churches have been refurbished and their onion domes gilded; all the churches are full on Sundays. Historically a country of Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam, Russia preserves this tradition, and here the Christians and Muslims live in relative harmony despite the efforts of pro-American forces to inject Islamophobia into Russian hearts. The state TV, taken away from Jewish oligarchs and freed from PC tyranny, shows a lot of footage of the venerable grey-bearded Patriarch (the Russian Pope) and the nimble karate-fighter of a President enforcing the faith-and-authority tradition of Russia.
A mammoth 1500-page-long novel by the Russian painter Maxim Kantor, The Drawing Textbook , le dernier cri of Russian literature, has been received by many readers as a proclamation of volte-face: Russia's ideological subservience to the Mammonite West is over! Kantor does not stop at condemning comprador capitalists: they were preceded by comprador intellectuals. Kantor defends Christ from the humanist assaults: Christianity was betrayed by humanists, in his view. Kantor is not fond of the new Russian regime: he regrets that Russia gave up its socialism, and considers 20 years of capitalist development as a flop: "barracks' socialism was replaced by barracks' capitalism". With this book, a modern War and Peace, Russia's re-invention is officially on the way, and this great country with its great people may yet turn the tide of history.
It is doubtful whether Russia will turn leftwards anytime soon. But the international activism of adventure-seeking Americans is not acceptable to any independent Russian state. Russians are not happy with the American military bases surrounding Russia, with the aggressive push of NATO, or with politically motivated limitations on Russian companies. The Russians feel that they were cheated 20 years ago, when the West proclaimed its desire to reach full peace and harmony, and to respect the independence of nations. Believing this bull, the Russian troops left East Europe, but American troops still lounge in Germany, Italy, Japan; they advanced into Poland and this summer tried to land in Crimea, next to the Russian fleet's home base. The Russians left Vietnam, but the Americans still occupy Okinawa.
Russia's leaders feel unsafe: since the Soviet Union's demise, leaders of independent sovereign states – Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic - have been snatched and imprisoned for denying the will of Washington. Neither is Russian wealth safe: Russia, like many nations, is obliged to keep its savings in the bottomless pit of the American economy, but nobody can collect on these investments yet. Norway invested all its oil income in the US stock market, and lost all of it; Swedish pension funds went the same way. If this is the case with the best friends of the US, what will happen to its enemies? Iran, Iraq, Palestine lost all their savings by decisions of the US administration. Moreover, its legal system allows the US to sue foreign states for unlimited amounts. Thus, the families of victims of the Lockerbie crash received from besieged Libya a cool ten million dollars per passenger, although the American courts authorise ten thousand times smaller sums for the victims of American bombings – if indeed they receive anything at all.
Russia feels unsafe, for the US has invaded other sovereign countries more often and with greater impunity than Hitler ever did. This feeling is shared by a less vocal China. "The great issue that divides the U.N. is no longer Communism versus capitalism, as it once was; it is sovereignty", preached the New York Times. Its scribe, James Traub, lists many countries that "abuse their citizens under protection of sovereignty". In vain will you look there for the name of Israel, though the Jews killed over a thousand people in Lebanon, and over 200 civilians last month in Gaza alone.
The great divisive issue of our times is actually somewhat different: whether the US and Israel are the only sovereign countries, while others have a limited "demo" version. Why does Israel get away with aggression (and now with its sea and air blockade of a sovereign UN member state, Lebanon) while peaceful Iran must be censured? Why has Israel been able to reject all pertinent UN resolutions and yet never had sanctions applied against it, while Iran is about to be bombed? Are non-Jews less valuable than Jews? The case of Iran provides a good opportunity for Russia and China to present a case for sovereignty and non-interference.
Some of better Soviet policies were embedded in the Christian ethos of Russia, and the tradition of helping the downtrodden and the weak, of resisting aggressor is one of them. Post-Soviet Russia inherited these traditions. But in this case practical need coincides with the call of compassion. Unless President Putin views with equanimity the possibility of being snatched and brought to some American kangaroo court himself, he may want to contemplate stopping this orgy of invasions. Iran is a case of one invasion too far. Iran is a sovereign country; it did not break international law. Its decision to enrich uranium is fully within its rights according to the NPT. Whether they worship Allah or Jehovah is entirely their internal affair. And by applying its right of veto, Russia would signal that interference in internal affairs of sovereign states will not be tolerated and legitimised in the UN. Russia won't be alone – China, equally unhappy with US interference, may support it with its own veto.
The alternative is too much to consider: even if the UN resolution doesn't refer to sanctions, the US is famous for its cavalier way of interpreting UN text. Any condemnation (even a soft one) will be used as carte blanche for nuking Iran and taking it over; then the US chain of military bases will run continuously around the south flank of Russia and China, through Turkey, Georgia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan. "Rebellious" Ahmadinejad will be brought to Tel Aviv in iron chains, while the US takes over the oil resources of Iran, and by using Iran and Iraq oil, undermines the Russian position in the world economy. Afterwards, under this or some other pretext, they may confiscate Russia's assets, threaten Putin with Ahmadinejad's fate and return Russia to its miserable position of Yeltsin's days. Thus, using their veto in the Security Council would be a very prudent and wise step for both Russia and China, especially if it were accompanied by granting Iran full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The results of a Russian veto would be greater than just postponement of the US assault on Iran: it would send a strong signal that the end of Pax Americana is nigh. The "Old" Europe may take it as a cue and regain its independence, even demanding to remove those vestiges of WWII, US military bases, from Europe. The "New" Europe may understand it is out of step, and curtail its pro-American and anti-Russian partisanship. Japan could demand an end to the occupation of Okinawa. The Law of Nations will rule the world again, instead of the will of the Pentagon.
And then the time for a new American independence drive will come, independence of America from its Jewish Lobby. Such a drive took place in the revolutionary Russia of the 1920s, when Russian Communists argued about whether they should go for world revolution, as Trotsky demanded, or for creating socialism in their own country, as proposed by Stalin and Bukharin. If their militant activism is rejected, Americans may discard their neo-Trotskyites, both Republicans and Democrats keen on spreading their "world democratic revolution", in favour of isolationists who prefer building to spreading. Supporters of spreading – from George W. Bush to Hilary Clinton – are great friends of Israel. The bipartisan support of Israel within the US political elites means also their subservience to the Jewish Lobby. Rejection of the Lobby may become the single slogan of a new American revolution, of a new American political party of independence and non-interference on the way to creating a United States the world can live with.
Edited September 9, 2006 by Sid Walker