November 14, 2002 - December 9, 2002
The Roots Of The Sudan Problem
Posted: Monday, December 9, 2002
P. Barton
California, U.S.A.
The conflict is Sudan is an example of what can happen to Western Nations and others when religious imperialism joined with a racist and envious and chauvinist mentality and agenda is applied. Sudan also known as the ancient civilization of Nubia-Kush was the world's first civilization and according to present evidence, Sudan's civilization is about 3000 years older than the first Egyptian Dynasties. In fact, Egypt's Dynasties came from Sudan (known as "Ethiopia" by the ancient Greeks). Ancient Greek writers such as Herodotus and Diodorus mention this fact in their writings.
The very first example of the relentless application of war, terror and slave raiding to destabilize a great kingdom happened in Sudan (Nubia Kush) after the invasion of Egypt by the Semites during the 600's A.D. Yet, the Africans of Sudan from Emperor Kalydosos (600's A.D.) to the Funj (1500's A.D.) fought to keep their lands free of Semitic influence and defeated numerous Arab armies for 800 years.
Today's Nuba, Nubians, Dinka and a few groups in West and Central Africa are related to these ancient Cushites who migrated after the Arabs began slave raiding into Sudan during the 700's A.D. and to this very date, December 7, 2002 (see the book, "Destruction of Black Civilization," by Chancellor Williams, Third World Press, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.)
MANY AMERICAN PEOPLE INFURIATED BY ATTACKS ON KENYANS, WEST AFRICANS AND SUDANESE CHRISTIAN AFRICANS
Attacks on Africans in Sudan, Mauritania and West Africa, Kenya and elsewhere is causing a festering of anger in the U.S. as well as the rest of the Americas and the African Diaspora. One African commentator pointed out that the Semitic "welcome," in Africa is wearing thin. To many Africans, Sudan and Ethiopia have been Christian nations since before the 300's A.D. and the continued attacks on Africans of the Nubian Churches or modern Christianity in Sudan is an insult to Africans whether they are Christians or not.
In the opinion of many African Spiritualists (Animists) and Christians around the world, it is a matter of African religious, cultural and traditional rights and heritage. This lack of respect for Africans' culture, religion and heritage is one of the reasons for the rapid rise of Semitic slavery into Africa during the 700's A.D. In fact, one of the bloodiest and most devastating slave rebellions on the Semitic slave lands, took place in Baghdad during the 800's A.D., according to Runoko Rashidi's writings.
There are about 300 million people of African origins in the Americas. Among these millions are people of prehistoric African-American origins belonging to tribes such as the Washitaw, Gwale, Black Californians, Jamassee, Califunami, Guanini, Black Caribs, Chuarras, Afro-Darienite and many others. These groups particularly the ancient Olmec (Mende-Shi) and the descendants of the present-day Washitaw Nation who owned one million square miles of the Louisiana Territories before it was illegally sold, are the original inhabitants of the Americas along with the Mongoloid American Indians.
Today, particularly in parts of Latin America, the plight of Blacks/Africans of both slavery era as well as prehistoric era origins is similar to that of the original African people of Sudan. Ancient evidence also shows some of these prehistoric African-Americas people to be directly connected to civilizations in West Africa and Sudan.
CAN PEOPLE OF THE SAME RACE APPLY A RACIST POLICY FROM A FORMER DOMINANT GROUP AGAINST THIER OWN PEOPLE?
To begin this issue, both Arabs and Jews are Semites. Yet, over the past 40 years, those who follow the Arab/Isreali situation know very well that the terms "racist policies" is used in referring to the conditions there. The same reality applies to Sudan as well, where the only factor of division is an imposed Semitic religious imperialist and "colonial" culture on people who are both Black African Negroid by race and cultural heritage, (the term "negroid" applies to the Western Branch of the Black race, the other being the Negroid-Australoid of India and Australia)
There are many who continue to say that the situation of RACIST RELIGIOIUS IMPERIALISM in Sudan is a "local" problem. They don't seem to understand or fail to see that the people who began the genocide in Sudan, the rape of African women to create a "multiracial" "colored" population in the North, who are mislabeled "Arab" against the African law and tradition of tracing lineage on the Mother's side as well as the African father's side, race and group, were 'white" Semitic people from North Africa and the Middle East. These foreign races and peoples violated African women and the result was (and still is mixed children raised and trained to hate their African selves). These invaders have absolutely no claim to any children or child born of African women. That is the African law and it has been in effect long before Egyptian times.
"SEMITIC" AS AN ETHNIC, CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS ADVERSARY TO AFRICAN RACIAL, CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS IDENTITY
In using the term "Semitic" the idea is to describe a cultural and ideological system more than a specific ethnic type. Hence it does not refer to any specific group but to their culture, religions and agenda. White Arabs are the first to point out that Sudanese are Black Africans, no matter how "mixed" a few from the North of Sudan may be. As far as the African concept of racial identification is concerned, one traces on both the mother and father's line, but an invader group of a different race who has children with an African woman has no rights to any children by that woman, nor does his child becomes part of his "race" or group. That child is African.
The Western Media and the religious imperialists continue to label Sudan "Arab" North and "Christian/Animist" South. Pan-Africans see Sudan as Nubia-Cush, under present foreign religious and cultural colonialism, no different from that of the British who were the last European colonial power in Sudan.
Sudanese in Northern Sudan who are of "Arab" fathers and African mothers are African and Negroid. They are not "Arabs," and that fact is known through the "white" Semitic, Arab world, where Black Sudanese are treated like "Abed," or "slaves," are seen as Black Africans and called as such in a racist manner. WHERE IS THE PRIDE OF THESE BLACKS? In Syria, where there are Black Sudanese, their treatment should convince them that as far as "white" Arabs are concerned, Sudanese are Black African, no matter how much Arab blood a few may have.
RETURN AND REBUILDING AFRICAN CUSHITE CULTURE AND IDENTITY
Sudanese are the original Cushites, descendants of a powerful Black African people who had civilizations and cultures from Sudan to Kenya and from Sudan in the center to South Arabia, India, Indo-China, South China in the East, around the Pacific to Olmec-Shi Mexico, to West Africa. In fact, many West Africans such as the Yoruba, Walof, Nago-Mina, Mandinka, Serer, Ashanti, Tiv, Songhai and others continue to have related tribes in parts of South Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, South Arabia and that region.
These related tribes continue to exist to this very day. In fact not only did the ancient Cushites migrate to West Africa in prehistoric and ancient times, they also migrated to the Americas and their languages, culture, plastic arts, alphabets and even sculpture with everything from cornrows and tribal scarification to the languages have been found in Mexico and other parts of the Americas (see the world-famous, "A History of the African-Olmecs," pub. by 1stBooks Library, 2595 Vernal Pike, Bloomington, Indiana 47404 U.S.A. also the writings of Cheikh Anta Diop, "The African Origins of Civilization, Myth or Reality," pub. by Lawrence Hill Press, Brooklyn, NY: See Also "A History of Racism and Terrorism, Rebellion and Overcoming")
The other groups of Blacks in the Americas came from the Yoruba, Ashanti, Mandinka, Tiv and other groups from West Africa. A large number came from the Congo-Angola region. The third group came from Eastern Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia. Hence, we here in the Americas can trace our ancestors to places like Juba in Sudan and Gondar in Ethiopia.
AFRICAN-AMERICANS ANGER IS BREWING
The anger and disgust by Africans in the Americas, whose great-grandparents were captured in places like Sudan and West Africa and who know about the situation in Sudan are angered to the maximum extent. In places like Brazil, with about 100 million people of African origins with at least 25 million being of Sudanese/Congo, Ethiopian/East African origins, the situation in Sudan is very close to the hearts. As for African-Americans and Blacks in parts of the Caribbean and Latin America the anger is even hotter.
People of African descent or Americas-Africans in the Americas and elsewhere see the situation in Sudan as one of Semitic religious and cultural racism and imperialism against the descendants of the very Africans who built ancient Egypt, Nubia-Kush and Mesopotamia, long before the Semites arrived on the scene about 2000 B.C. This knowledge of self among Blacks in the Americas is as strong as the Chinese and Black Dravidian knowledge of self and history. That knowledge must be paramount in the minds of all the INDIGENOUS AFRICAN PEOPLE OF SUDAN.
THEY ARE THE PEOPLE WHO OWNED AND DEVELOPED WORLD CIVILIZATION AND THE SEMITES (WHITE SEMITES) ARE INVADERS WHO BEGAN ARRIVING DURING THE 700'S AD, WITH THE INVASION OF EGYPT (please get this great book, "The Destruction of Black Civilization," by Chancellor Williams, published by Third World Press, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
The time has come for Africans in Sudan to return African traditional culture and religion to the region. One of the first aspects of culture that must be changed is the idea that a white Semite or any other Semitic invader from the Semitic lands can take an African woman, force children on her and call the children by some other race or group other than African Negroid.
The attempt by African leaders in Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Black Egyptians and Nubians in Egypt, Eritheria, Somalia to REORGANIZE THE ANCIENT CUSHITE CULTURAL REGION MUST COMMENCE. As long as Black Africans accept the imposition of a foreign religion and culture and reject their names, cultures, religions, history and legacy, then Africans will always be seen as "Abed," or slaves by the racist Semites. The fact that Black Sudanese refugees in places like Syria are treated with such disgust, or that the white Semites think Africans should be their slaves and continue to hold the racist mentality while going around preaching "brotherhood," is ENOUGH TO CONVINCE AFRICANS THAT AFRICAN UNITY AND AFRICAN CULTURE MUST REPLACE ANY FOREIGN CULTURE AND RELIGION THAT IS APPLYING A NEW FORM OF IMPERIALISM ON THE CONTINENT.
Religions of alien invader peoples in Africa should never be allowed to dominate and change the mentality and indigenous culture of Africans. If people in the Cushite region (Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Eritheria, and others) have forgotten their history, all they have to do is re-introduce the history of Nubia, Egypt, Kush and Punt back into the school programs. TEACH AFRICAN CHILDREN AND PEOPLE WHO THEY ARE AND THAT THEY ARE NOT "SLAVES" OR SEMITES OR EVEN OF "WHITE" SEMITE CULTURAL OR RACIAL ORIGINS. The fact is the Semites came from the Black root (see the works of John Wilson (Kenya East African Standard article), where he discovered that some "white" nations from the Middle East to the Scottish Highlands were originally Blacks who lived in the Karamojong region. The program "Eve" (about ancient human origins clearly discusses this). So Semites did not create Africans.
The oldest living example of the Semitic languages is Iraqwu, a language of East Africa. Some historians have pointed out that both Hebrew and Arabic, Aramaic and others are dialects of languages like ancient Egyptian. On the other hand, languages like those of West Africa, East Africa and Southern Africa are offshoots and exactly like ancient Egyptian spoken before the invasions of foreign people into Egypt. Nuer, Nuba, Galla, Wallof and many others are examples.
In retrospect, to those who don't understand why there has been a TERROR WAR against Africans for about 1400 years, it is essential that they study African history and how slavery by Semites in East Africa and Sudan began.
When groups of people or nations are threatened with absorption, genocide or religious and cultural overwhelming, as is the case of Blacks in Sudan today who are now victims and part of the Semitic imperialistic agenda, and are being used by the Semites to continue the further enslavement of Africans and taking of African lands and resources, IT IS THE DUTY OF THESE AFRICANS TO UNITE WITH THEIR BROTHERS AND SISTERS WHO WANT TO MAINTAIN THEIR ORIGINAL RACIAL, CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS HERITAGE AND IDENTITY.
As far as Blacks in the Americas, Africa, Europe, India, West Papua, Melanesia and world over are concerned, that is what Pan-Africanism is all about. It is the duty of Africans and others realize that when the 'isms of others are forcibly imposed on them, it is their duty to reply with a more effective 'ism that helps to counter the imperialist and religious imperialistic agenda of other people.
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Patently absurd: It is now the turn of ATTA
Posted: Saturday, December 7, 2002
By Devinder Sharma
At a time when the World Trade Organization (WTO) is forcing developing countries to implement the trade-related intellectual property rights regime, the United States patent on "a method for producing atta flour -- typically used to produce Asian breads such as chapatti and roti " -- exposes the absurdity of the entire patenting regime.
A broad-based US patent (# 6,098,905, dated Aug 8, 2000) was granted to a Nebraska-based private company, ConAgra Inc. Interestingly, the so-called inventers - Ali Salem, Sarath K. Katta and Sambasiva R. Chigurupati - have Asian ancestry. Their 'invention', if at all it can be called an invention, relates to a method for producing wheat flour or atta. The novel method that they have created for making wheat flour and subsequently patented 'covers changes, variations, modifications, and other uses and applications which do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention'.
And what have they invented - a method to produce atta that includes "passing an amount of wheat through a device designed to crack the wheat so as to produce an amount of cracked wheat, followed by passing the cracked wheat through at least two smooth rolls designed to grind the cracked wheat into flour, with the smooth roll importantly grinding the wheat to a smaller particle size and shearing the wheat to cause starch damage in the finished atta flour." Isn't that a great 'invention' that merits a US patent? Isn't this similar to the manufacturing process being used by thousands of roller flourmills (many of them modernized) that exists throughout South Asia?
Since the 'inventors' have drawn a patent that covers the 'spirit and scope' of the invention, any modification and variation to this 'invention' too is patented. In other words, ConAgra has in one broad sweep ensured that the wheat flourmills throughout Asia (and in several other parts of the world) come under its monopoly control over the technology they have been using. With many big and even multinational food companies (including giants like Cargill) moving into the atta segment, ConAgra can literally make hay while we continue to consume chapattis and rotis. The patent application accepts that the requirement for wheat flour in countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia will grow in the years to come, and so therefore the company sees a huge market.
The patent application uses all the scientific jargons that are normally used in establishing novelty and its industrial application. Preliminary tests were conducted at the Kansas State University (US) and subsequent tests were carried out by the United Milling Systems of Denmark and of course at the ConAgra Milling Research facility in Omaha, Nebraska. One wonders why the company didn't think it proper to conduct these trials in India and by involving the best judge of the atta technology - the housewives. Their preference for a particular brand of atta is based on the kind and quality of chapattis that it makes. Fundamentally, a housewife will tell you that the best atta is the one, which is not 'hot' when it comes out from the flourmill.
In India, a majority of the big atta mills use the roller processing. Some like Golden Seal, Annapurna and Captain Cook use the stone milling technology. Interestingly, the starch damage percentage in the stone milling technology is much higher than the roller mills - 15 per cent against 5 to 9 per cent in rolling mills. This makes it suitable for the dough making, and at the same time the protein percentage hovers between 10-11 percent, almost equal or higher than the roller mills. Many of the roller mills in India use three rollers to crack wheat grains and grind the atta and therefore find nothing novel in the patent.
This is not the first time that the US or for that matter many other developed countries have granted patents that makes a mockery of the entire IPR regime. And that too at times when the patent system claims to look into three specific criteria - novelty, utility and its non-obviousness - before granting a monopoly control over a technological invention or method. Multinational Nestle has already been granted a European patent on vegetable pulao and parboiled rice. When asked what was novel about the patent, all that the multinational replied was that it has developed a 'unique' method of cooking vegetable pulao. In a country where hundreds of different recipes for making vegetable pulao already exists, one wonders what is the 'uniqueness' that Nestle claims to have developed. Patent examiners should have thrown out such a process patent application at first sight.
More recently, George Williamson Ltd., of England had filed for a patent on the entire manufacturing process of tea, from the plucking of leaves to its final packaging in chests, prompting the Tea Board of India to launch an offensive to counter the monopoly control over a process that has been in vogue throughout the country. So much so that a drug multinational, Burrough Welcome, has drawn a patent on the commonly used Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) by health workers. Irrespective of the fact that the therapy has been in vogue for ages in the developing countries but was first reported in an academic research paper in Bangladesh in 1971-72, and since then even the UNDP gives recognition to the Bangladesh researchers for the 'invention'. With a minor tinkering, the drug multinational subsequently got the patent.
Many IPR experts believe that one way to counter such unfair patents is to document the traditional knowledge that already exists and to make that available to the patent offices throughout the globe. What is not being understood is that it is perfectly right to 'educate' the patent lawyers who want to learn of the 'prior art' that exists elsewhere but what about those who refuse to see beyond a patent application. After all, it is difficult to imagine that the patent examiners in the US Patent & Trade Mark Office had never known what wheat flour is and so wasn't even aware of the process of producing it. There is something called 'common sense', and that cannot be built by producing digital libraries on traditional knowledge and commonly used production processes.
(Devinder Sharma is a New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst)
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How Kenyans see the land crisis in Zimbabwe
Posted: Friday, December 6, 2002
From Final Call.Com
WEB POSTED 03-12-2002
NAIROBI (PANA)—Like hundreds of thousands of his compatriots, Michael Karanja, who lives on the fringes of one of the large scale White-owned agricultural farms in Kenya’s Thika District, some 30 miles east of Nairobi—has been following with keen interest the ensuing feud in Zimbabwe between Pres. Robert Mugabe and White land holders. Mr. Karanja is especially interested in the European Union’s sanctions against Pres. Mugabe.
He says Mr. Mugabe is right to want to re-allocate stolen and unused land now owned by Whites to Black war veterans. Mr. Karanja also says that other African leaders are doing a disservice to the continent by not coming out openly to support an embattled freedom fighter.
"Mugabe is being vilified for standing up for the rights of his people. This land, the so-called farmers in Zimbabwe are now claiming to be theirs, was taken from Africans in a way of robbery, because they do not have the supporting documents to show that they rightfully bought it from Africans," charged Mr. Karanja, a 59-year-old father of six. And he is not alone.
Pres. Mugabe might be unpopular to the West and White Zimbabwean community, but he appears to be gaining support in Kenya where the issue is quite emotive because of the similarities in the two countries’ cases.
The Lancaster House (London) served as the venue for independence talks for the two countries—Kenya’s in 1960s and 1970s for Zimbabwe.
So, to the ordinary man on the street, scholars, politicians and even journalists in Kenya, Pres. Mugabe is right and Western powers are applying double standards to protect their cousins.
The rallying cry for the independence fathers in both countries was land, which they felt was wrongly wrenched from Africans.
Like in Zimbabwe, the White Kenyan settler community owns the choice agricultural land leaving the majority Black population on less productive areas.
Dennis Akumu, a former Pan-African Trade Unionist and ex-MP, is a key member of the Pan-African Reparations Movement (PARM), a group that has been vocal in support of Pres. Mugabe’s cause.
"People the World over are talking of equity, transparency and democracy. But these three virtues cannot exist in a country where the majority have been marginalized and their leaders ostracized (for pointing out the injustice)," he says.
John Kamau, editor of the Nairobi-based Rights Features Service, an NGO on human rights issues, agrees with Mr. Akumu.
According to Mr. Kamau, "there is no way any sane government in the world would allow 98 percent of its population to live in near penury while less than two percent own parcels of land they do not even need."
He argues that at the Lancaster House Conference, it was made clear that the White farmers had up to 1990 to either develop their land or give it up to the Zimbabwean government.
The same document gave the government the right to nationalize all land not developed or nationalized, he said.
Mr. Kamau dismisses the argument that the EU sanctions were imposed because of Pres. Mugabe’s "dictatorial" rule, saying the West has never cared about who is elected president in Africa so long as he played by their rules.
"Haven’t we had Idi Amin Dada (Uganda), Marcius Nguema (Equatorial Guinea), Mobutu Sese Seko (ex-Zaire) and Siad Barre (Somalia)? An elementary student of history would tell you that these (people) were maintained by Western support," he added.
Veteran journalist Phillip Ochieng, in a Sunday Nation article titled, "Fleet Street’s Jungle Justice in Zimbabwe," accuses the Western press of conspiracy against Pres. Mugabe.
Rejecting the forceful taking over of farms by Black Zimbabweans, Mr. Ochieng, however, feels the reporting is biased.
"But from what moral (ground) can you preach law and fair elections to them (Zimbabweans)? Fair elections? Why haven’t you applied sanctions on George W. Bush for rigging himself to the most powerful office in the free world?" he asked.
Whether Pres. Mugabe succeeds in his mission or not, he appears to be enjoying large support from Kenyans, who may not influence developments in his troubled country.
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Harare's concerns genuine, says envoy
Posted: Thursday, December 5, 2002
Diplomatic Reporter, www.herald.co.zw
INCOMING Dutch ambassador to Zimbabwe Dr Johannes Heinsbroek yesterday said Harare has genuine concerns over its differences with the European Union.
Dr Heinsbroek was speaking in a meeting with President Mugabe at State House after presenting his credentials.
Sources who attended the meeting said the ambassador was responding to Cde Mugabe who had wondered how Netherlands could be dragged into the fight between Zimbabwe and her former colonial master Britain.
Netherlands and the rest of the European Union have ganged up against Zimbabwe and imposed sanctions at the instigation of Britain.
Britain has been campaigning for Harare's isolation because of the Government's resolve to correct colonial imbalances by redistributing land, which was forcibly grabbed from locals by white settlers, mostly British descendants.
According to the sources, President Mugabe noted that relations between Netherlands and Zimbabwe were chequered saying it was difficult to explain the strain in ties between the two countries.
"I don't know how the Netherlands would want us to relate? But not through the medium of Britain.
"Where have we gone wrong? Our problem with the United Kingdom is clear, they are our former colonial master.
"We do not understand how the Netherlands could be dragged into a fight that is British, pretending there are issues of human rights and good governance. I don't know . . . ," the sources quoted President Mugabe as having told Dr Heinsbroek.
In response, the sources said, Dr Heinsbroek said it was important that Zimbabwe and Netherlands engaged in talks to restore good relations.
He pledged to work towards improving relations between the two countries.
"Zimbabwe has genuine concerns and Europe also has her own concerns and we just have to talk. It is important that we have to talk.
"We must prevent an exchange of monologues. We can start with preparatory talks so we can restore our relations," the sources quoted Dr Heinsbroek saying.
Speaking to journalists after the meeting, Dr Heinsbroek said it was important for Zimbabwe and Europe to talk noting that both sides had concerns, which should be addressed.
Cde Mugabe also said relations between the two countries could improve.
"Things cannot be worsened for all time. Bilateral relations have to improve at some time."
The sources added that Cde Mugabe told the Dutch ambassador that there was no perfect democracy in the world.
He said the Dutch had a monarch while Zimbabwe had its own system of governance and wondered why Netherlands wanted to change Harare's system.
Cde Mugabe said even the Lancaster House constitution that the British helped craft at Zimbabwe's independence was not perfect.
He told Dr Heinsbroek that British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair thinks he can rule Zimbabwe but Harare would resist any attempts to undermine its sovereignty.
"Even if Mugabe goes there will be people who will take over and resist any attempt to put authority on our sovereignty," the President reportedly said.
He said Zimbabwe respected the sovereignty of Europe and it expected the same of Europe.
"The days of Machiavellian are gone and countries wanted to be sovereign and democratic. I am supposed to be under sanctions… whatever that means in the eyes of Europe. But we are in year 2002. Are we that backward?"
Three other new ambassadors - Mr Tsaneshiye Iyama of Japan, Archbishop Joseph Edward Adams of the Vatican and Mauritian High Commissioner Mr John Dacruz - also presented their credentials to Cde Mugabe.
United Nations Secretary General Mr Kofi Annan's special envoy for HIV/Aids, Mr Stephen Lewis, also met Cde Mugabe to discuss the effects of the pandemic in Zimbabwe and how the country was fighting the scourge.
Mr Lewis is on a six-nation tour of Southern Africa to assess the HIV/Aids situation in relation to the drought gripping the region.
He said their talks also touched on how the UN could help the countries procure anti-retroviral drugs.
Mr Lewis said he was gratified that the Government was reconsidering plans, announced in the 2003 national budget, to gradually scrap the Aids levy.
Reproduced from:
http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=16580&pubdate=2002-12-06
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Alexander Pushkin: Russian-African genius
Posted: Tuesday, December 3, 2002
By Selwyn Cudjoe, July 4, 1999
WHEN I arrived in the United States in the 1960s-ages ago, it seems-one of the first books I encountered was JA Rogers's World's Great Men of Color. In the 1950s Rogers, a Jamaican, went from house to house selling his books in Harlem, trying to get his people to realise that Africa and Africans had made enormous contributions to the world. In that book I learned that writers such as Alexander Pushkin, Alexandre Dumas, Samuel Coleridge and Robert Browning were of black ancestry, an astonishing fact to someone cradled in a colonial education. It was the 1960s, an age of Black Power; a time when most of us came into a better awareness of our people and ourselves.
On June 6, Russia was ablaze in festivity as it celebrated the 200th anniversary of Pushkin's birth. As a London Times headline puts it, "Pushkin Mania rages: Russians cash in on bicentenary of their poet's birth". Reporting from Moscow, Anna Blundy noted: "Russia has been swept by Puskhinmania in preparation for tomorrow's bicentenary of the poet's birth...Russians all know long tracts of Pushkin's work by heart, and Sunday's festival is the dominant theme of most television, and radio broadcasts, newspaper articles and advertising campaigns."
Pushkin remains Russia's playful and elusive genius, a combination of Shakespeare and Mozart rolled into one. He holds the same status in Russian literature as Shakespeare has in the English language. Eugene Onegin, Pushkin's classic verse novel of 1833, has become a work to which Russian writers pay obeisance. Each school child knows it by heart and recites it at the drop of a hat.
During the weeks that led up to Pushkin's second centenary, a member of the public read out one line of Eugene Onegin and told viewers how many days there were to go before Pushkin's birthday. I only wish that we could do a similar thing for Maxwell Philip, CLR James or VS Naipaul.
But greatness or not, at the beginning of the 19th century, Pushkin's Africanness was an issue.
Throughout his life, his pronounced African features-thick lips, dark skin and kinky hair-remained an issue and Pushkin was acutely aware of them. Yet, he always took pride in his African ancestry.
In her new book on Pushkin, Elaine Feinstein tells us that Abram Petrovich Gannibal, Pushkin's great-grandfather, born in Northern Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in the 1690s, was of royal stock. Pushkin claimed that his great grandfather was a prince who lived a luxurious life. He was abducted from Ethiopia when he was eight years old by a "Frenchman collecting animals and other curiosities for Louis XIV" of France. Shipped to Istanbul, he was placed in the Sultan's seraglio where the Russian ambassador found him and sent him back to Russia as a present to Peter the Great (Pushkin, pp 17-18).
In the Russian court, Abram became a great favourite of Peter the Great. The Tsar became so attached to this precocious and intelligent child that he had him baptised into the Orthodox Church at Vilno where the Tsar himself became his godfather and the queen of Poland his godmother.
Feinstein reports that when Abram's brother, a person of standing in the African world, arrived to claim Abram, the Tsar refused to part with him. Sending him to study military strategy in France, Abram returned to Russia in 1725 and was given a commission in the Tsar's own regiment. When Elizabeth, the Tsar's daughter, came to the throne, Abram was made a Major General and granted an estate in Mikhaylovskoe in a province of Russia.
As he grew up, Pushkin took great pride in his great-grandfather and his Africanness which he openly embraced and celebrated in Eugene Onegin. Even so, Pushkin suffered from a sense of his own "ugliness" and the taunts of his classmates. At the lycee where he studied when he was 12, he was nicknamed "monkey". However some of his school friends called him "the Frenchman" because they thought he was a "mixture of a monkey and a tiger".
This "stain" of his blackness remained with him. In 1827, he returned to his family mansion in Mikhaylovskoe where he began his unfinished novel, The Negro of Peter the Great, based on the life of his great grandfather. In this highly fictionalised account of his ancestor Grannibal, Pushkin centred his story on "a Negro's wife, who is unfaithful to her husband, gives birth to a white child and is punished by being shut up in a convent". Even as he tells this gripping story, the sexual prowess of the black man in a white world assumes much importance.
Perhaps, it is wise that Pushkin did not finish telling this story. It would have had to come up against the scurrilous attacks of those who preferred to believe that he came from a slave background. In fact, he was forced to defend Abram's honour against the calumny of Fruddy Bulgarin, a crusading journalist. Putting the question in verse, Pushkin said: "Filyarin says he understands/That my black granddad, Gannibal/ Bought for a bottle of rum, once fell/Into a drunk sea captain's hands." To this, he responded: "My grandfather, so cheaply bought,/ The Tsar himself treated with trust/And gave him welcome at his court./ Black, but never again a slave."
Pushkin, it was rumoured, was a renowned womaniser. Yet when, in 1837, it was reported that a French officer, D'Anthes, was messing with his wife, Pushkin challenged him to a duel and was killed at the age of 38. Yet, he remains the people's poet, Russia's answer to Shakespeare and someone about whom we in T&T ought to know a lot more.
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US rapped for stance on Zimbabwe's land
Posted: Sunday, December 1, 2002
Herald Reporter
NEW York City councillors have attacked the United States government for its position on Zimbabwe's land issue which they say is heavily influenced by a biased former colonial power, Britain.
"We cannot expect Britain to have a neutral position on the land issue," the councillors said in a report compiled after a two-week fact-finding tour in Zimbabwe.
The report urges US to immediately lift travel restrictions against Government officials and help kick-start dialogue between Zimbabwe and Britain.
"It would be difficult for the Zimbabwean officials to state their case to the world if they are restricted from travelling to other countries.
"How can the US have dialogue with North Korea and Iraq, in the interest of peace, while preventing Zimbabwean officials from travelling to articulate their position?"
The US, they said, was supposed to be neutral and help resolve the dispute between Zimbabwe and Britain instead of taking sides.
"Without an independent US position, it will be difficult to act as an honest broker," they said.
"Some of the people in Zimbabwe are eager for independent facilitators to be involved."
Britain, the country most hostile to the land reform pogramme, has also been asked to assess its strategy of dealing with Zimbabwe.
"We urge the British government to reconsider its position and agree to compensate white farmers for their land," the councillors said.
"In the process, it should also discuss compensation for the expropriation of the land from the original African population."
The councillors said they had found that there were double standards when Western countries, especially Britain and the US, talked about democracy and human rights in Africa.
Zimbabwe, they said, had fallen victim to such double standards and was being called undemocratic, but democracy was thriving in the country.
They called for increased commercial contacts and visits by ordinary Americans to Zimbabwe, including the media, to observe the changes occurring in the Southern African country.
They said their investigations had established that the land issue was irreversible while media accounts on the programme were mostly exaggerated.
"We found a country where all sides agree that land reform is an idea whose time has come," said the councillors.
New farmers, they said, were grateful to the Government for having been provided with land while there was still a role being played by white farmers who had accepted the new dispensation and were willing to accept the policy of one farmer, one farm.
"In our meetings with various stakeholders affected by the land reform programme, we found that allegations by the media against it are largely unsubstantiated and are actually exaggerations or distortions of what is actually happening there.
"We also found that despite a steady flow of Western media reports of lawlessness, free-for-all land grab of commercial farms, this is not the case at all."
The city fathers said they were convinced that increased agricultural production, with the newly acquired lands by new farmers, would lead to economic growth in Zimbabwe.
The projected famine that threatened not only Zimbabwe but all of southern Africa, could not be substantially attributed to the land reform as had been charged in some quarters.
The real cause of the famine was drought that affected food production in the last season.
"The role of commercial farmers in staple food production has also been exaggerated by Western media reports.
"White commercial farmers had long since abandoned crop farming and turned to other more lucrative industries such as horticulture, tobacco, paprika, citrus, game ranching and safari services," they said.
It was also stated in the report that allegations that President Mugabe was giving land to his friends were surprising considering the number of people resettled.
At least 300 000 families have benefited under the Model A1 scheme, while 40 000 others were allocated plots under the A2 Model.
"In light of that fact, we find the charge that President Mugabe only gives land to his 'cronies' not credible.
"We are hard pressed not to believe that anyone could have that many 'cronies.'"
The councillors said they found a reasonably vibrant free Press in Zimbabwe, contrary to international reports that the media was routinely suppressed.
The delegation was led by New York City Council Member Charles Barron and consisted of other councillors and journalists.
It held meetings with President Mugabe, several Government ministers, members of opposition parties, farmers and Non-Governmental Organisations.
Reproduced from:
http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=16468&pubdate=2002-12-02
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President: Be fully geared for farming
Posted: Thursday, November 28, 2002
Herald Reporter
PRESIDENT Mugabe has urged newly-resettled farmers to use their ploughs to till the land in preparation for the coming agricultural season, instead of waiting for tractors from the Government.
He said it was imperative for people to be fully geared for the season since time was running out.
"It is encouraging to note that in some areas, crops have already started to grow.
"There are some areas which have not been ploughed, particularly in resettlement areas.
"In the rural areas, some have already started to plough. Do not wait for tractors. Those with cattle must start to plough maybe one or two hectares in the areas, in which they have been resettled."
The President said this when he officially opened a science and administration block at Chikaka Secondary School in Zvimba.
He urged those with tractors to assist those who were struggling to till the land owing to lack of equipment.
He said Zimbabweans should remain united to overcome challenges facing the country. MORE
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A Briefing On The History Of U.S. Military Interventions
Posted: Sunday, November 24, 2002
by Professor Zoltan Grossman
Assistant Professor of Geography
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, USA, 2001
KILLING CIVILIANS TO SHOW THAT KILLING CIVILIANS IS WRONG
Since the September 11 attacks on the United States, most people in the world agree that the perpetrators need to be brought to justice, without killing many thousands of civilians in the process. But unfortunately, the U.S. military has always accepted massive civilian deaths as part of the cost of war. The military is now poised to kill thousands of foreign civilians, in order to prove that killing U.S. civilians is wrong.
The media has told us repeatedly that some Middle Easterners hate the U.S. only because of our "freedom" and "prosperity." Missing from this explanation is the historical context of the U.S. role in the Middle East, and for that matter in the rest of the world. This basic primer is an attempt to brief readers who have not closely followed the history of U.S. foreign or military affairs, and are perhaps unaware of the background of U.S. military interventions abroad, but are concerned about the direction of our country toward a new war in the name of "freedom" and "protecting civilians."
The United States military has been intervening in other countries for a long time. In 1898, it seized the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico from Spain, and in 1917-18 became embroiled in World War I in Europe. In the first half of the 20th century it repeatedly sent Marines to "protectorates" such as Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. All these interventions directly served corporate interests, and many resulted in massive losses of civilians, rebels, and soldiers. Many of the uses of U.S. combat forces are documented in "A History of U.S. Military Interventions Since 1890".
U.S. involvement in World War II (1941-45) was sparked by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and fear of an Axis invasion of North America. Allied bombers attacked fascist military targets, but also fire-bombed German and Japanese cities such as Dresden and Tokyo, party under the assumption that destroying civilian neighborhoods would weaken the resolve of the survivors and turn them against their regimes. Many historians agree that fire- bombing's effect was precisely the opposite--increasing Axis civilian support for homeland defense, and discouraging potential coup attempts. The atomic bombing of Japan at the end of the war was carried out without any kind of advance demonstration or warning that may have prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
The war in Korea (1950-53) was marked by widespread atrocities, both by North Korean/Chinese forces, and South Korean/U.S. forces. U.S. troops fired on civilian refugees headed into South Korea, apparently fearing they were northern infiltrators. Bombers attacked North Korean cities, and the U.S. twice threatened to use nuclear weapons. North Korea is under the same Communist government today as when the war began.
During the Middle East crisis of 1958, Marines were deployed to quell a rebellion in Lebanon, and Iraq was threatened with nuclear attack if it invaded Kuwait. This little-known crisis helped set U.S. foreign policy on a collision course with Arab nationalists, often in support of the region's monarchies.
In the early 1960s, the U.S. returned to its pre-World War II interventionary role in the Caribbean, directing the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs exile invasion of Cuba, and the 1965 bombing and Marine invasion of the Dominican Republic during an election campaign. The CIA trained and harbored Cuban exile groups in Miami, which launched terrorist attacks on Cuba, including the 1976 downing of a Cuban civilian jetliner near Barbados. During the Cold War, the CIA would also help to support or install pro-U.S. dictatorships in Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and many other countries around the world.
The U.S. war in Indochina (1960-75) pit U.S. forces against North Vietnam, and Communist rebels fighting to overthrow pro-U.S. dictatorships in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. U.S. war planners made little or no distinction between attacking civilians and guerrillas in rebel-held zones, and U.S. "carpet-bombing" of the countryside and cities swelled the ranks of the ultimately victorious revolutionaries. Over two million people were killed in the war, including 55,000 U.S. troops. Less than a dozen U.S. citizens were killed on U.S. soil, in National Guard shootings or antiwar bombings. In Cambodia, the bombings drove the Khmer Rouge rebels toward fanatical leaders, who launched a murderous rampage when they took power in 1975.
Echoes of Vietnam reverberated in Central America during the 1980s, when the Reagan administration strongly backed the pro-U.S. regime in El Salvador, and right-wing exile forces fighting the new leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Rightist death squads slaughtered Salvadoran civilians who questioned the concentration of power and wealth in a few hands. CIA-trained Nicaraguan Contra rebels launched terrorist attacks against civilian clinics and schools run by the Sandinista government, and mined Nicaraguan harbors. U.S. troops also invaded the island nation of Grenada in 1983, to oust a new military regime, attacking Cuban civilian workers (even though Cuba had backed the leftist government deposed in the coup), and accidentally bombing a hospital.
The U.S. returned in force to the Middle East in 1980, after the Shi'ite Muslim revolution in Iran against Shah Pahlevi's pro-U.S. dictatorship. A troop and bombing raid to free U.S. Embassy hostages held in downtown Tehran had to be aborted in the Iranian desert. After the 1982 Israeli occupation of Lebanon, U.S. Marines were deployed in a neutral "peacekeeping" operation. They instead took the side of Lebanon's pro-Israel Christian government against Muslim rebels, and U.S. Navy ships rained enormous shells on Muslim civilian villages. Embittered Shi'ite Muslim rebels responded with a suicide bomb attack on Marine barracks, and for years seized U.S. hostages in the country. In retaliation, the CIA set off car bombs to assassinate Shi'ite Muslim leaders. Syria and the Muslim rebels emerged victorious in Lebanon.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the U.S. launched a 1986 bombing raid on Libya, which it accused of sponsoring a terrorist bombing later tied to Syria. The bombing raid killed civilians, and may have led to the later revenge bombing of a U.S. jet over Scotland. Libya's Arab nationalist leader Muammar Qaddafi remained in power. The U.S. Navy also intervened against Iran during its war against Iraq in 1987-88, sinking Iranian ships and "accidentally" shooting down an Iranian civilian jetliner.
U.S. forces invaded Panama in 1989 to oust the nationalist regime of Manuel Noriega. The U.S. accused its former ally of allowing drug-running in the country, though the drug trade actually increased after his capture. U.S. bombing raids on Panama City ignited a conflagration in a civilian neighborhood, fed by stove gas tanks. Over 2,000 Panamanians were killed in the invasion to capture one leader.
The following year, the U.S. deployed forces in the Persian Gulf after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which turned Washington against its former Iraqi ally Saddam Hussein. U.S. supported the Kuwaiti monarchy and the Muslim fundamentalist monarchy in neighboring Saudi Arabia against the secular nationalist Iraqi regime. In January 1991, the U.S..and its allies unleashed a massive bombing assault against Iraqi government and military targets, in an intensity beyond the raids of World War II and Vietnam. Over 200,000 Iraqis were killed, including many civilians who died in their villages, neighborhoods, and bomb shelters. The U.S. continued economic sanctions that denied health and energy to Iraqi civilians, who died by the hundreds of thousands, according to United Nations agencies. The U.S. also instituted "no-fly zones" and virtually continuous bombing raids, yet Saddam was politically bolstered as he was militarily weakened.
In the 1990s, the U.S. military led a series of what it termed "humanitarian interventions" it claimed would safeguard civilians. Foremost among them was the 1992 deployment in the African nation of Somalia, torn by famine and a civil war between clan warlords. Instead of remaining neutral, U.S. forces took the side of one faction against another faction, and bombed a Mogadishu neighborhood. Enraged crowds, backed by foreign Arab mercenaries, killed 18 U.S. soldiers, forcing a withdrawal from the country.
Other so-called "humanitarian interventions" were centered in the Balkan region of Europe, after the 1992 breakup of the multiethnic federation of Yugoslavia. The U.S. watched for three years as Serb forces killed Muslim civilians in Bosnia, before its launched decisive bombing raids in 1995. Even then, it never intervened to stop atrocities by Croatian forces against Muslim and Serb civilians, because those forces were aided by the U.S. In 1999, the U.S. bombed Serbia to force President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw forces from the ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo, which was torn a brutal ethnic war. The bombing intensified Serbian expulsions and killings of Albanian civilians from Kosovo, and caused the deaths of thousands of Serbian civilians, even in cities that had voted strongly against Milosevic. When a NATO occupation force enabled Albanians to move back, U.S. forces did little or nothing to prevent similar atrocities against Serb and other non-Albanian civilians. The U.S. was viewed as a biased player, even by the Serbian democratic opposition that overthrew Milosevic the following year.
Even when the U.S. military had apparently defensive motives, it ended up attacking the wrong targets. After the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the U.S. "retaliated" not only against Osama Bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, but a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that was mistakenly said to be a chemical warfare installation. Bin Laden retaliated by attacking a U.S. Navy ship in Yemen in 2000. After the 2001 terror attacks on the United States, the U.S. military is poised to again bomb Afghanistan, and possibly move against other states it accuses of promoting anti-U.S. "terrorism," such as Iraq and Sudan. Such a campaign will certainly ratchet up the cycle of violence, in an escalating series of retaliations that is the hallmark of Middle East conflicts. Afghanistan, like Yugoslavia, is a multiethnic state that could easily break apart in a new catastrophic regional war. Almost certainly many more civilians would lose their lives in this tit-for-tat war on "terrorism" than the 5,000 civilians who died on September 11.
Common Themes
Some common themes can be seen in many of these U.S. military interventions.
First, they were explained to the U.S. public as defending the lives and rights of civilian populations. Yet the military tactics employed often left behind massive civilian "collateral damage." War planners made little distinction between rebels and the civilians who lived in rebel zones of control, or between military assets and civilian infrastructure, such as train lines, water plants, agricultural factories, medicine supplies, etc. The U.S. public always believe that in the next war, new military technologies will avoid civilian casualties on the other side. Yet when the inevitable civilian deaths occur, they are always explained away as "accidental" or "unavoidable."
Second, although nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of "freedom" and "democracy," nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. elites. Whether in Vietnam, Central America, or the Persian Gulf, the U.S. was not defending "freedom" but an ideological agenda (such as defending capitalism) or an economic agenda (such as protecting oil company investments). In the few cases when U.S. military forces toppled a dictatorship--such as in Grenada or Panama--they did so in a way that prevented the country's people from overthrowing their own dictator first, and installing a new democratic government more to their liking.
Third, the U.S. always attacked violence by its opponents as "terrorism," "atrocities against civilians," or "ethnic cleansing," but minimized or defended the same actions by the U.S. or its allies. If a country has the right to "end" a state that trains or harbors terrorists, would Cuba or Nicaragua have had the right to launch defensive bombing raids on U.S. targets to take out exile terrorists? Washington's double standard maintains that an U.S. ally's action by definition "defensive," but that an enemy's retaliation is by definition "offensive."
Fourth, the U.S. often portrays itself as a neutral peacekeeper, with nothing but the purest humanitarian motives. After deploying forces in a country, however, it quickly divides the country or region into "friends" and "foes," and takes one side against another. This strategy tends to enflame rather than dampen a war or civil conflict, as shown in the cases of Somalia and Bosnia, and deepens resentment of the U.S. role.
Fifth, U.S. military intervention is often counterproductive even if one accepts U.S. goals and rationales. Rather than solving the root political or economic roots of the conflict, it tends to polarize factions and further destabilize the country. The same countries tend to reappear again and again on the list of 20th century interventions.
Sixth, U.S. demonization of an enemy leader, or military action against him, tends to strengthen rather than weaken his hold on power. Take the list of current regimes most singled out for U.S. attack, and put it alongside of the list of regimes that have had the longest hold on power, and you will find they have the same names. Qaddafi, Castro, Saddam, Kim, and others may have faced greater internal criticism if they could not portray themselves as Davids standing up to the American Goliath, and (accurately) blaming many of their countries' internal problems on U.S. economic sanctions.
One of the most dangerous ideas of the 20th century was that "people like us" could not commit atrocities against civilians.
German and Japanese citizens believed it, but their militaries slaughtered millions of people. *British and French citizens believed it, but their militaries fought brutal colonial wars in Africa and Asia.
Russian citizens believed it, but their armies murdered civilians in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere.
Israeli citizens believed it, but their army mowed down Palestinians and Lebanese.
Arabs believed it, but suicide bombers and hijackers targeted U.S. and Israeli civilians.
U.S. citizens believed it, but their military killed millions in Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere.
Every country, every ethnicity, every religion, contains within it the capability for extreme violence. Every group contains a faction that is intolerant of other groups, and actively seeks to exclude or even kill them. War fever tends to encourage the intolerant faction, but the faction only succeeds in its goals if the rest of the group acquiesces or remains silent. The attacks of September 11 were not only a test for U.S. citizens attitudes' toward minority ethnic/racial groups in their own country, but a test for our relationship with the rest of the world. We must begin not by lashing out at civilians in Muslim countries, but by taking responsibility for our own history and our own actions, and how they have fed the cycle of violence.
A century of US military interventions
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A History Of Bio-Chemical Weapons
Posted: Sunday, November 24, 2002
By Zoltan Grossman, Jan 24, 2002
History of bio-chemical warfare from 800 BC to 2001 AD
400s BC.: Spartan Greeks use sulfur fumes against enemy soldiers.
1346: Crimean Tatars catapult plague-infected corpses into Italian trade settlement.
1500s: Spanish conquistadors use biological warfare used against Native peoples.
1763: British Gen. Jeffrey Amherst orders use of smallpox blankets against Native peoples during Pontiac's Rebellion.
1800s: Smallpox and other diseases ravage Native American communities; U.S. officials use quarantine techniques to isolate diseases in white communities, but not in Native villages.
1907: Hague Convention outlaws chemical weapons; U.S. does not participate.
1914: World War I begins; poison gas produces 100,000 deaths, 900,000 injuries.
1920s: Britain proposes use of chemical weapons in Iraq "as an experiment" against Kurdish rebels seeking independence; Winston Churchill "strongly" backs "the use of poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes."
1928: Geneva Protocol prohibits gas and bacteriological warfare; most countries that ratify it prohibit only the first use of such weapons.
1935: Italy begins conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), using mustard gas.
1936: Japan invades China, uses chemical weapons in war.
1939: World War II begins; neither side uses bio-chemical arms, due to fears of retaliation in kind.
1941: U.S. enters World War II; President Roosevelt pledges U.S. will not be first to use bio-chemical weapons.
1943: U.S. ship damaged by German bombing raid on Bari, Italy, leaks mustard gas, killing 1000.
1945: Germans use Zyklon-B in extermination of civilians.
Japanese military discovered to have conducted biological warfare experiments on POWs, killing 3000. U.S. shields officers in charge from war crimes trials, in return for data. Soviets take over German nerve gas facility in Potsdam. The Nazis had stockpiles of nerve gas against which the Allies had no defenses, and had also been working on blood agents.
1947: U.S. possesses germ warfare weapons; President Truman withdraws Geneva Protocol from Senate consideration.
1949: U.S. dismisses Soviet trials of Japanese for germ warfare as "propaganda." Army begins secret tests of biological agents in U.S. cities.
1950: Korean War begins; North Korea and China accuse U.S. of germ warfare--charges still not proven. San Francisco disease outbreak matching Army bacteria used on city.
1951: African-Americans exposed to potentially fatal simulant in Virginia test of race-specific fungal weapons.
1952: German chemical weapons researcher Walter Schreiber, working in Texas, exposed as a perpetrator of concentration camp experiments, and flees to Argentina.
1956: Army manual explicitly states that bio-chemical warfare is not banned. Rep. Gerald Ford wins policy change to give U.S. military "first strike" authority on chemical arms.
1959: House resolution against first use of bio-chemical weapons is defeated.
1961: Kennedy Administration begins hike of chemical weapons spending from $75 million to more than $330 million.
1962: Chemical weapons loaded on U.S. planes during Cuban missile crisis.
1966: Army germ warfare experiment in New York subway system.
1968: Pentagon asks for the chance to use some of its arsenal against protesters to demonstrate the "efficacy" of the chemicals. Maj. Gen. J.B. Medaris says, "By using gas in civil situations, we accomplish two purposes: controlling crowds and also educating people on gas. Now, everybody is being called savage if he just talks about it. But nerve gas is the only way I know of to sort out the guys in white hats from the ones in black hats without killing any of them."
1969: Utah chemical weapons accident kills thousands of sheep; President Nixon declares U.S. moratorium on chemical weapons production and biological weapons possession. U.N. General Assembly bans use of herbicides (plant killers) and tear gasses in warfare; U.S. one of three opposing votes. U.S. has caused tear gas fatalities in Vietnamese guerrilla tunnels.
1971: U.S. ends direct use of herbicides such as Agent Orange; had spread over Indochinese forests, and destroyed at least six percent of South Vietnamese cropland, enough to feed 600,000 people for a year. U.S. intelligence sources gives swine-flu virus to anti-Castro Cuban paramilitary group, which lands it on Cuba's southern coast (according to 1977 newspaper reports).
1972: Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention. Cuba accuses CIA of instilling swine fever virus that leads to death of 500,000 hogs.
1974: U.S. finally ratifies 1928 Geneva Protocol.
1975: Indonesia annexes East Timor; planes spread herbicides on croplands.
1979: Anthrax leak from Soviet biological weapons lab kills 60 near Sverdlovsk. Washington Post reports on U.S. program against Cuban agriculture since 1962, including CIA biological warfare component. Anthrax outbreak among Africans in white-ruled Rhodesia (in the last stages of the Zimbabwe independence war) results in 10,000 cases,
182 of them fatal (according to Covert Action Quarterly #43)
1980: U.S. intelligence officials allege Soviet chemical use in
Afghanistan, while admitting "no confirmation." Congress approves nerve gas facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Iraq begins eight-year war with U.S. arch-enemy Iran.
1981: U.S. accuses Vietnam and allies of using mycotoxins (fungal poisons) in Laos and Cambodia. Some refugees report casualties; one analysis reveals "yellow rain" as bee feces. Israel bombs Iraqi nuclear reactor, leading to Iraqi decision to build chemical weapons.
1984: U.N. confirms Iraq using mustard and nerve gasses against Iranian "human wave" attacks in border war; State Department issues mild condemnation, yet restores diplomatic relations with Iraq,
and opposes U.N. action against Iraq. Bhopal fertilizer plant accident in India kills 2000; shows risks of chemical plants being damaged in warfare. President Reagan orders over a half-million M55 rockets retooled so they contain high-yield explosives as well as VX gas. (The Army later claimed that many of these rockets were "unstable" and leaking nerve gas.)
1985: U.S. resumes open-air testing of biological agents. U.S. firms begin supplying Iraq with numerous biological agents for a four-year period (according to a 1994 Senate report).
1986: U.S. resumes open-air testing of biological agents.
1987: Senate ties in three votes on resuming production of chemical weapons; Vice President Bush breaks all three ties in favor of resumption.
1988: Iraq uses chemical weapons against Kurdish minority in Halabjah; U.S. continues to maintain agricultural credits with Iraq; President Reagan blocks congressional sanctions against Iraq.
1989: Paris conference of 149 nations condemns chemical weapons, urges quick ban to emerge from Geneva treaty negotiations; U.S. revealed to plan poison gas production even after treaty signed.
1990: U.S., Soviets pledge to reduce chemical weapons stockpiles to 20 percent of current U.S. supply by 2002, and to eliminate poison gas weapons when all nations have signed future Geneva treaty. Israel admits possession of chemical weapons; Iraq threatens to use chemical weapons on Israel if it is attacked.
1991: U.S. and Coalition forces bomb at least 28 alleged bio- chemical production or storage sites in Iraq during Gulf War, including fertilizer and other civilian plants. CNN reports "green flames" from one chemical plant, and the deaths of 50 Iraqi troops from anthrax after air strike on another site. New York Times quotes Soviet chemical weapons commander that air strikes on Iraqi chemical weapons would have "little effect beyond neighboring villages," but that strikes on biological weapons could spread disease "to adjoining countries." Czechoslovak chemical warfare unit detects Sarin nerve gas during air war. Egyptian doctor reports outbreak of "strange disease" inside Iraq. U.S. troops use explosives to destroy Iraqi chemical weapons storage bunkers after the war.
1992: Reports intensify of U.S. and Coalition veterans of Gulf War developing health problems, involving a variety of symptoms, collectively called Gulf War Syndrome. U.N. sanctions intensify civilian health crisis inside Iraq, making identification of similar symptoms potentially difficult. Two members of anti-government Minnesota Patriots' Council arrested for plan to use ricin chemical against law enforcement officer.
1993: President Clinton continues intermittent bombing and missile raids against Iraqi facilities; U.N. inspectors step up program to dismantle Iraqi weapons. U.S. signs U.N. Chemical Weapons Convention, but approval later blocked in Senate.
1995: Japanese cult launches deadly Sarin nerve gas attack on Tokyo subway system.
1996: Congressional hearings on Gulf War Syndrome focuses on Iraqi storage bunker destruction, rather than other possible causes, and does not call for international investigation of symptoms among Iraqis.
1997: Cuba accuses U.S. of spraying crops with biological agents. Iraq expels U.S. citizens in U.N. inspection teams, which are allowed to continue work without Americans, but choose to evacuate all inspectors. U.S. mobilizes for military action. Senate act implements Chemical Weapons Convention, with a provision that "the President may deny a request to inspect any facility" on national security grounds.
1998: U.S. again bombs alleged Iraqi bio-chemical weapons sites, after Iraq questions role of American U.N. inspector, and restricts inspector access to presidential properties and security. U.S. launches missile attack on pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that it alleges produces nerve gas agents--a claim disputed by most of the international community.
1998-99: Series of anthrax hoaxes against U.S. targets, such as NBC, Washington Post, State Department, White House complex, post offices. Former Aryan Nations member Larry Wayne Harris carries out anthrax hoax to dramatize warning of alleged "Iraqi threat." Three members of Republic of Texas militia group arrested for intention to use anthrax and other biological agents against public officials. Upsurge in anthrax hoaxes against abortion clinics.
2000: "Topoff Exercise" involving federal and state authorities fails to cope with simulated chemical, biological and nuclear attacks in three widely separated metropolitan areas.
2001: U.S. withdraws from July's first round of Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC), crippling international efforts to establish global measures against bioogical weapons. In wake of September 11 attacks, anthrax spores sent by mail to multiple political and media targets around the U.S., resulting in anthrax exposures, infections, and deaths. Law enforcement authorities debate whether source of anthrax threat is foreign or domestic. Real anthrax attacks accompanied by enormous increase in anthrax hoaxes by "Army of God" and other groups and individuals.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Compiled from articles in "Z" magazine by Stephen Shalom and Noam Chomsky (February 1991) and Zoltan Grossman (March 1991), from the Council for a Livable World, William Blum's "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II," ADL Militia Watchdog by Mark Pitcavage (Feb. 1999) and from recent news reports.
Zoltan Grossman is a cartographer/geographer and writer on ethnic relations and geopolitics, based in Madison, Wisconsin.
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The History of Bioterrorism in America
Posted: Sunday, November 24, 2002
By Richard Sanders,
Coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade.
January 24, 2002
Who is behind the recent spate of Anthrax attacks? Who would intentionally expose Americans to such deadly germs? To answer these questions, it is useful to know that there have been previous cases bioterrorism in the U.S. Previous incidents of bioterrorism in America since WWII, although more widespread than this year's anthrax-related incidents, received very little media attention.
The identitities of those who planned and perpetrated decades ofbioterror attacks on Americans is known. Although they have admitted their guilt - in written confessions to Congress - they remain immune from prosecution. They are above the law.
In a 1977 special report to Congress, the U.S. Army admitted conducting hundreds of chemical and biological warfare tests, including at least 25 that deliberately targeted the unsuspecting public. The military disclosed evidence that it had released disease-causing germs in at least 48 open-air tests. (U.S. Army Activity in the U.S. Biological Warfare Programs, 1942-1977. Vols 1 and 2, February 24, 1977)
In 1994, Senator John D.Rocke-feller's report (Examining Biological Experimentation on U.S. Military) further revealed that over the previous 50 years, the U.S. military intentionally exposed hundreds of thousands of their own soldiers to dangerous microbes, mustard and nerve gas, radiation, hallucinogens and psychochemicals.
Recent bioterror attacks have prolonged the national crisis sparked on September 11. Widespread concerns about anthrax have served those who wish to promote the draconian laws that are descending upon the U.S. Curiously, the strain of anthrax bacteria being used most likely originates from the U.S. military (Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist, October 24)
The following quotations, compiled from various sources, summarize the shameful but little-known history of the U.S. military's responsibility for exposing Americans to the terror of biological weapons.
-------------------
1943 Fort Detrick:
The U.S. began research on biological weapons at Fort Detrick, MD.1 They studied anthrax, brucellosis, Botulinus toxin, plague, Sclerotium rolfoil, late blight, late blast, brownspot of rice, rinderpest, tularemia, mussel poisoning, coccidioidomycosis, rickettsia, psittacosis, neurotropic encephalitis, Newcastle disease and fowl plague.2
1945 Recruiting Nazis:
The U.S. State Department, Army intelligence and the CIA initiated Project Paperclip to recruit Nazi scientists and offer them immunity and secret identities in exchange for work on top secret, U.S. government projects [including bio-warfare experiments on unwilling human subjects].1
1946 Japanese war criminals:
The U.S. began negotiations with Japan to acquire their germ warfare data. In exchange, Japanese scientists received immunity from prosecution for their war crimes. Dr. Shiro Ishii, a physician and army officer who began experiments in germ warfare in 1932 when Japan invaded Manchuria, formed a biological-warfare unit (Unit 731) that used Chinese soldiers and civilians as test subjects. About 9,000 died of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases. U.S. soldiers captured in the Philippines were sent to Unit 731 so the Japanese could test biological weapons on them.2
1948 Cttee. on Biological Warfare:
The Secretary of Defense's Research and Development Board, requested an evaluation of biological agents as weapons of sabotage. The Committee on Biological Warfare recommended that methods be assessed for disseminating biological agents, with emphasis on special operations. It recommended research to test "innocuous organisms" in ventilation systems, subways and public water supplies. This influenced administrations for 20 years and the U.S. conducted highly-classified scientific tests on unknowing populations throughout the country.
The biological warfare research program in the early 1940s and 1950s involved antipersonnel, anticrop and antianimal studies. Field trials included open-air vulnerability testing, and contamination of public water systems with live organisms such as Serratia marcescens. Covert programs were conducted by the CIA. Pathogenic organisms were tested in Florida and the Bahamas in the 1940s. Chemical anticrop studies evaluated defoliation and crop destruction.3
1949 Germ bombs:
Explosive munitions tests with pathogens were begun.3
1950 The First "open air tests":
The first open-air tests with biological agents were conducted in various locales, including off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia.3
1950 Spraying San Francisco:
The first large-scale, aerosol test was conducted in San Francisco Bay in September 1950, using two species of bacteria (Bacillus globigii and Serratia marcescens). Many experiments used various Bacillus species because of their similarities to B. anthracis.3
On September 26 and 27, 1950, the U.S. Army sprayed S. marcescens from a boat off the coast. On September 29, patients at San Francisco's Stanford University Hospital began appearing with S. marcescens infections.4 Many residents came down with pneumonia-like symptoms and one died. A military, follow-up study showed that nearly every single exposed person became infected with the test organism.5
The death of Edward J. Nevin was associated with this release of S. marcescens.4 (The first lawsuit against the U.S. government was filed by his family [in 1981]. The court decided that the U.S. government could not be sued, under the Federal Tort Claims Act, since the decision to spray S. marcescens was a part of national defense planning.)3
1951 Racist Germs:
Army researchers deliberately exposed a disproportionate number of black citizens to the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus, to see if African Americans were more susceptible to such infection, like they were already known to be to coccidioidomycosis (Coccidioides immitis). Similarly, in 1951, unsuspecting [black] workers at the Norfolk Supply Center, Norfolk, VA, were exposed to crates contaminated with A. fumigatus spores.3
1955 Whooping Cough:
Tampa Bay, FA, experienced a sharp rise in Whooping Cough cases, including 12 deaths, following a CIA bio-war test in which bacteria from the Army's Chemical and Biological Warfare arsenal was released to the environment.5
1951-1969 Dugway Proving Ground:
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of open-air tests using bacteria and viruses that cause disease in human, animals and plants were conducted at Dugway Proving Ground, a military testing facility about 80 miles from Salt Lake City, Utah. These tests were to determine how the agents spread, survive and effect people and the environment.
It is unknown how many people in the vicinity were exposed to potentially harmful agents during these open-air tests. In 1969, concerns were expressed at a congressional hearing about the possible public health implications of the VEE virus tested there.
University of Utah scientists and doctors are greatly concerned about the potential health consequences not only for military personnel who work and train at Dugway, but also for civilians who live in a nearby small town and Indian reservation. Utah Medical Society physicians complained about the lack of information provided to the medical community.
According to Rutgers University political science professor Dr. Leonard Cole, the use of potentially harmful chemical and biological agents continues at Dugway. He testified that the U.S. Army uses Bacillus subtilis "which is is recognized as a potential source of infection and can cause serious illness in some people when they are exposed to it in large numbers and they inhale large numbers of those microorganisms."4
Mid1950s-early 1970s Project Shad:
The Dugway Proving Ground and Fort Douglas had a secret navy, called Project Shad. Their ships sailed through clouds of germ and chemical agents. Some sailors blame these tests for the cancer and other diseases that they suffer from.6
1956 Operation Transit III:
One of Project Shad's first tests occurred in San Francisco Bay as part of Operation Transit III. In September 1956, plans called for a 40-foot munitions boat to create clouds of Bacillus globigii germs that the Eastman would travel through. Plans called for enough germs to ensure that "a minimum respiratory dose of 10,000 organisms is received on deck." Planners considered B. globigii a safe "simulant" of more dangerous germs. (The U.S. Army still uses it for field testing.)
The tests included dropping "20,000 gallons of BG (B. globigii) slurry" from helicopters.6
1956 to 1958 Testing on Blacks:
The U.S. Army did field tests in the poor black communities of Savannah, Georgia, and Avon Park, Florida, in which mosquitoes were released into residential neighbourhoods from ground level and from planes and helicopters. Many were swarmed by mosquitoes and developed unknown fevers; some even died. After each test, Army personnel posing as public health officials photographed and tested the victims and then disappeared from town. It is theorized that the mosquitoes were infected with a strain of Yellow Fever. Details of the tests remain classified.5
1950s to 1970s Operation Whitecoat:
Many experiments that tested various biological agents on human subjects, referred to as Operation Whitecoat, were carried out at Fort Detrick, MD. The human subjects originally consisted of volunteer enlisted men. However, after the enlisted men staged a sitdown strike to obtain more information about the dangers of the biological tests, Seventh-Day Adventists who were conscientious objectors were recruited for the studies. Because they did not believe in engaging in actual combat, they became human subjects in military research projects that tested various infectious agents. At least 2,200 Seventh-Day Adventists were used in biological testing during the 1950s through the 1970s.4
1962 More on Project Shad:
Training outlines show that Project Shad sailors were briefed on work with germs causing some of the deadliest diseases known, including tularemia, anthrax, parrot fever, Q fever, African swine fever, the plague and botulism.6
1963-1965 Project Shad ships "participated in 111 tests" using nerve agents GB and VX, and biological agents Bacillus globigii, Serratia marcescens and Escherichia coli. (Letter from Maj.Gen. L.J.Del Rosso, Army director of space and special weapons, to Senator Steve Symms, R-Idaho, 1992)6
1966 New York Subway:
From June 7-10, the U.S. Army's Special Operations Division dispensed [Bacillus subtilis var niger3] throughout the New York City subway system. The Army's justification for the experiment was the fact that there are many subways in the USSR, Europe and South America. Details of the experiment are still classified.5 More than a million were exposed when army scientists dropped lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates.1
1987 Continued Research:
The Department of Defense admitted that, despite a treaty banning research and development of biological agents, it continues to do research at 127 facilities and universities in the U.S.1
Sources:
1. "A History of Secret Human Experimentation," Health News Network, http://www.healthnewsnet.com/humanexperiments.html
2. "Beyond AIDS: The West's Covert Chemical-Biological Warfare Programs" http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/biochem.htm
3. David R. Franz, D.V.M., PH.D., Cheryl D. Parrott and Ernest T. Takafuji, M.D., M.P.H., "The U.S. Biological Warfare and Biological Defense Programs" (Ch.19) http://ccc.apgea.army.mil/Documents/
4. Examining Biological Experimentation on U.S. Military, The Rockefeller Report (1994) http://www.trufax.org/trans/roc23.html
5. "Beyond AIDS: The West's Covert Chemical-Biological Warfare Programs" http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/biochem.htm
6. Lee Davidson, "Secrets at Sea: Cloud of Secrecy Lifting on Dugway Navy's Tests of Germ and Chemical Agents in the Pacific during Vietnam War" (October 22, 1995) Registry of Atomic Testing Survivors http://people.ne.mediaone.net/kknowlto/navy.htm
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A century of US military interventions
Posted: Saturday, November 23, 2002
Compiled by Zoltan Grossman
(revised October 8, 2001)
From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan a century of US military interventions
U.S. military spending ($343 billion in the year 2000) is 69 percent greater than that of the next five highest nations combined. Russia, which has the second largest military budget, spends less than one-sixth what the United States does. Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Iran, and Syria spend $14.4 billion combined; Iran accounts for 52 percent of this total.
The following is a partial list of U.S. military interventions from 1890 to 2000. This guide does NOT include demonstration duty by military police, mobilizations of the National Guard, offshore shows of naval strength, reinforcements of embassy personnel, the use of non-Defense Department personnel (such as the Drug Enforcement Agency), military exercises, non-combat mobilizations (such as replacing postal strikers), the permanent stationing of armed forces, covert actions where the U.S. did not play a command and control role, the use of small hostage rescue units, most uses of proxy troops, U.S. piloting of foreign warplanes, foreign disaster assistance, military training and advisory programs not involving direct combat, civic action programs, and many other military activities.
Among sources used, besides news reports, are the Congressional Record (23 June 1969), 180 Landings by the U.S. Marine Corps History Division, Ege & Makhijani in Counterspy (July-Aug. 1982), and Daniel Ellsberg in Protest & Survive. "Instances of Use of United States Forces Abroad, 1798-1993" by Ellen C. Collier of the Library of Congress Congressional Research Service.
SOUTH DAKOTA
1890 (-?)
Troops
300 Lakota Indians massacred at Wounded Knee.
ARGENTINA
1890
Troops
Buenos Aires interests protected.
CHILE
1891
Troops
Marines clash with nationalist rebels.
HAITI
1891
Troops
Black workers revolt on U.S.-claimed Navassa Island defeated.
IDAHO
1892
Troops
Army suppresses silver miners' strike.
HAWAII
1893 (-?)
Naval, troops
Independent kingdom overthrown, annexed.
CHICAGO
1894
Troops
Breaking of rail strike, 34 killed
NICARAGUA
1894
Troops
Month-long occupation of Bluefields.
CHINA
1894-95
Naval, troops
Marines land in Sino-Jap War.
KOREA
1894-96
Troops
Marines kept in Seoul during war.
PANAMA
1895
Troops, naval
Marines land in Colombian province.
NICARAGUA
1896
Troops
Marines land in port of Corinto.
CHINA
1898-1900
Troops / Boxer Rebellion fought by foreign armies.
PHILIPPINES
1898-1910(-?)
Naval, troops
Seized from Spain, killed 600,000 Filipinos.
CUBA
1898-1902(-?)
Naval, troops
Seized from Spain, still hold Navy base.
PUERTO RICO
1898(-?)
Naval, troops
Seized from Spain, occupation continues.
GUAM
1898(-?)
Naval, troops / Seized from Spain, still used as base.
MINNESOTA
1898(-?)
Troops
Army battles Chippewa at Leech Lake.
NICARAGUA
1898
Troops
Marines land at port of San Juan del Sur.
SAMOA
1899(-?)
Troops
Battle over succession to throne.
NICARAGUA
1899
Troops / Marines land at port of Bluefields.
IDAHO
1899-1901
Troops / Army occupies Coeur d'Alene mining region.
OKLAHOMA
1901
Troops
Army battles Creek Indian revolt.
PANAMA
1901-14
Naval, troops
Broke off from Colombia 1903, annexed Canal Zone 1914-99.
HONDURAS
1903
Troops
Marines intervene in revolution.
DOMINICAN REP.
1903-04
Troops
U.S. interests protected in Revolution.
KOREA
1904-05
Troops
Marines land in Russo-Japanese War.
CUBA
1906-09
Troops / Marines land in democratic election.
NICARAGUA
1907
Troops
"Dollar Diplomacy" protectorate set up.
HONDURAS
1907
Troops
Marines land during war with Nicaragua.
PANAMA
1908
Troops / Marines intervene in election contest.
NICARAGUA
1910
Troops
Marines land in Bluefields and Corinto.
HONDURAS
1911
Troops / U.S. interests protected in civil war.
CHINA
1911-41
Naval, troops
Continuous occupation with flare-ups.
CUBA
1912
Troops / U.S. interests protected in Havana.
PANAMA
19l2
Troops / Marines land during heated election.
HONDURAS
19l2
Troops / Marines protect U.S. economic interests.
NICARAGUA
1912-33
Troops, bombing
20-year occupation, fought guerrillas.
MEXICO
19l3
Naval / Americans evacuated during revolution.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
1914
Naval / Fight with rebels over Santo Domingo.
COLORADO
1914
Troops / Breaking of miners' strike by Army.
MEXICO
1914-18
Naval, troops
Series of interventions against nationalists.
HAITI
1914-34
Troops, bombing
19-year occupation after revolts.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
1916-24
Troops
8-year Marine occupation.
CUBA
1917-33
Troops / Military occupation, economic protectorate.
WORLD WAR I
19l7-18
Naval, troops
Ships sunk, fought Germany
RUSSIA
1918-22
Naval, troops
Five landings to fight Bolsheviks.
PANAMA
1918-20
Troops
"Police duty" during unrest after elections.
YUGOSLAVIA
1919
Troops
Marines intervene for Italy against Serbs in Dalmatia.
HONDURAS
1919
Troops
Marines land during election campaign.
GUATEMALA
1920
Troops
2-week intervention against unionists.
WEST VIRGINIA
1920-21
Troops, bombing
Army intervenes against mineworkers.
TURKEY
1922
Troops
Fought nationalists in Smyrna (Izmir).
CHINA
1922-27
Naval, troops
Deployment during nationalist revolt.
HONDURAS
1924-25
Troops
Landed twice during election strife.
PANAMA
1925
Troops / Marines suppress general strike.
CHINA
1927-34
Troops / Marines stationed throughout the country.
EL SALVADOR
1932
Naval / Warships sent during Farabundo Marti revolt.
WASHINGTON DC
1932
Troops / Army stops WWI vet bonus protest.
WORLD WAR II
1941-45
Naval,troops, bombing, nuclear
Fought Axis for 3 years; 1st nuclear war.
DETROIT
1943
Troops
Army puts down Black rebellion.
IRAN
1946
Nuclear threat
Soviet troops told to leave north (Iranian Azerbaijan).
YUGOSLAVIA
1946
Naval / Response to shooting-down of U.S. plane.
URUGUAY
1947
Nuclear threat
Bombers deployed as show of strength.
GREECE
1947-49
Command operation
U.S. directs extreme-right in civil war.
CHINA
1948-49
Troops
Marines evacuate Americans before Communist victory.
GERMANY
1948
Nuclear threat
Atomic-capable bombers guard Berlin Airlift.
PHILIPPINES
1948-54
Command operation
CIA directs war against Huk
Rebellion.
PUERTO RICO
1950
Command operation
Independence rebellion crushed in Ponce.
KOREA
1950-53
Troops, naval, bombing, nuclear threats
U.S.& South Korea fight China & North Korea to stalemate; A-bomb threat in 1950, & vs. China in 1953. Still have bases.
IRAN
1953
Command operation
CIA overthrows democracy, installs Shah.
VIETNAM
1954
Nuclear threat
Bombs offered to French to use against siege.
GUATEMALA
1954
Command operation, bombing, nuclear threat CIA directs exile invasion after new govt nationalizes U.S. company lands; bombers based in Nicaragua.
EGYPT
1956
Nuclear threat, troops
Soviets told to keep out of Suez crisis; MArines evacuate foreigners
LEBANON
1958
Troops, naval / Marine occupation against rebels.
IRAQ
1958
Nuclear threat
Iraq warned against invading Kuwait.
CHINA
1958
Nuclear threat
China told not to move on Taiwan isles.
PANAMA
1958
Troops / Flag protests erupt into confrontation.
VIETNAM
1960-75
Troops, naval, bombing, nuclear threats Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; 1-2 million killed in longest U.S. war; atomic bomb threats in 1968 and 1969.
CUBA
1961
Command operation CIA-directed exile invasion fails.
GERMANY
1961
Nuclear threat Alert during Berlin Wall crisis.
CUBA
1962
Nuclear threat, Naval
Blockade during missile crisis; near-war with USSR.
LAOS
1962
Command operation
Military buildup during guerrilla war.
PANAMA
1964
Troops / Panamanians shot for urging canal's return.
INDONESIA
1965
Command operation Million killed in CIA-assisted army coup.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
1965-66
Troops, bombing Marines land during election campaign.
GUATEMALA
1966-67
Command operation Green Berets intervene against rebels.
DETROIT
1967
Troops / Army battles Blacks, 43 killed.
UNITED STATES
1968
Troops / After King is shot; over 21,000 soldiers in cities.
CAMBODIA
1969-75
Bombing, troops, naval Up to 2 million killed in decade of bombing, starvation, and political chaos.
OMAN
1970
Command operation U.S. directs Iranian marine invasion.
LAOS
1971-73
Command operation, bombing U.S. directs South Vietnamese invasion; "carpet-bombs" countryside.
SOUTH DAKOTA
1973
Command operation Army directs Wounded Knee siege of Lakotas.
MIDEAST
1973
Nuclear threat World-wide alert during Mideast War.
CHILE
1973
Command operation CIA-backed coup ousts elected marxist president.
CAMBODIA
1975
Troops, bombing Gas captured ship, 28 die in copter crash.
ANGOLA
1976-92
Command operation CIA assists South African-backed rebels.
IRAN
1980
Troops, nuclear threat, aborted bombing Raid to rescue Emba-ssy hostages; 8 troops die in copter-plane crash. Soviets war-ned not to get involved in revolution.
LIBYA
1981
Naval jets Two Libyan jets shot down in maneuvers.
EL SALVADOR
1981-92
Command operation, troops Advisors, overflights aid anti-rebel war, soldiers briefly involved in hostage clash.
NICARAGUA
1981-90
Command operation, naval CIA directs exile (Contra) invasions, plants harbor mines against revolution.
LEBANON
1982-84
Naval, bombing, troops Marines expel PLO and back Phalangists, Navy bombs and shells Muslim and Syrian positions.
HONDURAS
1983-89
Troops / Maneuvers help build bases near borders.
GRENADA
1983-84
Troops, bombing Invasion four years after revolution.
IRAN
1984
Jets / Two Iranian jets shot down over Persian Gulf.
LIBYA
1986
Bombing, naval Air strikes to topple nationalist gov't.
BOLIVIA
1986
Troops Army assists raids on cocaine region.
IRAN
1987-88
Naval, bombing US intervenes on side of Iraq in war.
LIBYA
1989
Naval jets Two Libyan jets shot down.
VIRGIN ISLANDS
1989
Troops
St. Croix Black unrest after storm.
PHILIPPINES
1989
Jets / Air cover provided for government against coup.
PANAMA
1989-90
Troops, bombing
Nationalist government ousted by 27,000 soldiers, leaders arrested, 2000+ killed.
LIBERIA
1990
Troops
Foreigners evacuated during civil war.
SAUDI ARABIA
1990-91
Troops, jets Iraq countered after invading Kuwait; 540,000 troops also stationed in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Israel.
IRAQ
1990-?
Bombing, troops, naval Blockade of Iraqi and Jordanian ports, air strikes; 200,000+ killed in invasion of Iraq and Kuwait; no-fly zone over Kurdish north, Shiite south, large-scale destruction of Iraqi military.
KUWAIT
1991
Naval, bombing, troops Kuwait royal family returned to throne.
LOS ANGELES
1992
Troops
Army, Marines deployed against anti-police uprising.
SOMALIA
1992-94
Troops, naval, bombing U.S.-led United Nations occupation during civil war; raids against one Mogadishu faction.
YUGOSLAVIA
1992-94
Naval Nato blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.
BOSNIA
1993-95
Jets, bombing No-fly zone patrolled in civil war; downed jets, bombed Serbs.
HAITI
1994-96
Troops, naval
Blockade against military government; troops restore President Aristide to office three years after coup.
CROATIA
1995
Bombing
Krajina Serb airfields attacked before Croatian offensive.
ZAIRE (CONGO)
1996-97
Troops
Marines at Rwandan Hutu refuge camps, in area where Congo revolution begins.
LIBERIA
1997
Troops
Soldiers under fire during evacuation of foreigners.
ALBANIA
1997
Troops
Soldiers under fire during evacuation of foreigners.
SUDAN
1998
Missiles
Attack on pharmaceutical plant alleged to be "terrorist" nerve gas plant.
AFGHANISTAN
1998
Missiles
Attack on former CIA training camps used by Islamic fundamentalist groups alleged to have attacked embassies.
IRAQ
1998-?
Bombing, Missiles
Four days of intensive air strikes after weapons inspectors allege Iraqi obstructions.
YUGOSLAVIA
1999-?
Bombing, Missiles
Heavy NATO air strikes after Serbia declines to withdraw from Kosovo.
YEMEN
2000
Naval
Suicide bomb attack on USS Cole.
MACEDONIA
2001
Troops
NATO troops shift and partially disarm Albanian rebels.
UNITED STATES
2001
Jets, naval
Response to hijacking attacks.
AFGHANISTAN
2001
Massive U.S. mobilization to attack Taliban, Bin Laden. War could expand to Iraq, Sudan, and beyond.
(The first bombing began on October 7, 2001. Several Afghan cities come under aerial attack. The story continues).
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U.S. staff stage-managed food scramble-Zimbabwe
Posted: Thursday, November 21, 2002
Abstract from: www.alertnet.org
HARARE, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Two Americans detained by pro-government militants in Zimbabwe last week were part of a group that stage-managed and filmed a scramble for food among farm workers, the official Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The incident stemmed from "intrusive and interventionist behaviour by some U.S. embassy personnel," Information and Publicity Minister Jonathan Moyo told the newspaper.
Moyo said: "There are no displaced farm workers in Zimbabwe and the embassy knows that. As to claims that there is lawlessness, purely on the basis of this incident, that is over the top and quite preposterous."
The Herald said the embassy group was detained after allegedly throwing food from a moving vehicle to farm workers, who were then filmed as they jostled for the handouts.
A loaded camera and two computer discs were reportedly confiscated from the group, the newspaper added.
Earlier this month, Zimbabwe accused the United States of trying to use widespread food shortages as a pretext to interfere in its internal affairs.
More at www.alertnet.org
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Stage-managing food scramble
Posted: Wednesday, November 20, 2002
Wednesday November 20, 2002
Herald Reporters
TWO Americans and two Zimbabweans were last Friday briefly detained by war veterans at Inversnaid Farm in Melfort after they allegedly threw food from a moving vehicle to farm workers whom they then filmed as they jostled for the food.
The four - Mr Andrew John Simpson, Mr Audu Besmer, Mr Costain Chibanda and Mr Elias Shamu - are alleged to have done this on three separate occasions.
A loaded camera and two computer discs were reportedly confiscated from the group.
They are said to have visited Benridge Farm in Matepatepa and Bineer Farm in Glendale on November 14 to arrange for interviews and for the filming of what they described as "displaced farm workers", eye witnesses said.
More at www.herald.co.zw
Check the US-UK version of this story below and see if it gives any reason for the incident or if their reports are destined to give the impression that an attack was carried out by a bunch of mindless pro-Mugabe savages. The people were right to stop them from stage-managing a food scramble to use in their propaganda campaign.
US embassy worker beaten in Zimbabwe
Andrew Meldrum in Harare
Wednesday November 20, 2002
The Guardian UK
The diplomatic dispute between the United States and Zimbabwe has deepened after an employee of the American embassy in Harare was beaten by war veterans loyal to President Robert Mugabe.
The Zimbabwean employee was on an aid mission with a group which included another embassy employee who was an American citizen, and a United Nations official.
The team was studying how to help the former farm workers displaced by Mr Mugabe's land seizures who were "subsisting on a diet of berries and termites", according to a statement from the US government.
The embassy said that the UN official, the American, the Zimbabwean employee and another Zimbabwean citizen travelling with them were forcibly held and interrogated. The Zimbabweans were also beaten, it added.
More at www.guardian.co.uk
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More people will admit land reform is justified
Posted: Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Herald Reporter
IF Britain had accepted much earlier its responsibility in creating Zimbabwe’s land problem, the situation would not have deteriorated to what it is now, says the Minister of State for Information and Publicity, Professor Jonathan Moyo.
British foreign minister, Mr Jack Straw last week publicly acknowledged the role of his country’s imperialist expansionist policies in the problems besetting Zimbabwe, after pummelling the country for embarking on land reforms to correct historical injustices for over two years.
Prof Moyo said yesterday more people were going to admit that the country was justified in acquiring land for the landless majority in its quest to correct historical imbalances.
"Chickens are coming home to roost," he said during a lecture at the Zimbabwe Staff College. "Jack Straw now agrees. If he had agreed much earlier we should not have had this problem."
Mr Straw is reported to have ruffled feathers in British politics by blaming the current crises in Iraq and Zimbabwe on the legacy of British imperialism.
"A lot of problems that we are having to deal with now — I have to deal with now — are a consequence of our colonial past," he was quoted as saying in an interview published in the New Statesman magazine last Friday.
The British government has reneged on its colonial obligation to fund Zimbabwe’s land reform despite having agreed to do so at the 1979 Lancaster House talks.
"We are going to have more people admitting that we are right," Prof Moyo said. "Land is now in the hands of Zimbabweans. We are not going to give back an inch of that land."
"We don’t want to have this problem in future. In Zimbabwe there can be no better way of turning things around than to till the land," he said during a lecture attended by 100 army Junior Staff Course and Joint Command Staff Course students.
In his lecture, Prof Moyo outlined the role of his ministry, recent media development trends and challenges facing the information sector in the wake of fierce global capitalism and an onslaught on Zimbabwe’s sovereignty.
"It is important to know what the Government policy is. It is our duty to articulate Government policy, to explain Government policy and to appreciate what it is doing," he said.
He said the electorate expects the Government to implement what Zanu-PF as a party promised in its election manifesto.
"Government policy and its decisions are rooted in the vision and the thinking of our party," he said.
Prof Moyo narrated how the Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust was formed to rid the country’s national media from foreign domination.
With Nigerian funding, he said, the Trust was able to buy out shares of the South African Argus Press, which used to own titles under the Zimpapers Group.
"There was no way we could allow our national media to be controlled by apartheid media institution," he said.
He said he was surprised that critics called titles under Zimpapers "Government-owned or Government-controlled."
"They make their own editorial decisions," he said. If they are going to criticise the Government, they should criticise what they know. We see them not as Government media but as national media."
Prof Moyo criticised privately owned media for being used by Western countries to ridicule the Government and everything that was Zimbabwean.
"They are opposed to the history of the nation, they are opposed to the values of the nation … they are anti-nation.
"It is our desire to work with everyone. We have a media that is principally anti-nation, anti-nationalist, anti-pan-Africanist and against the land reform programme," he said.
The media, he said, had become an area of major contest, with some powerful countries using the privately owned media to demonise and topple the democratically elected Government.
He said the Daily News was being used by Western countries to attack the Government, the country’s values and traditions and the standing of the country’s national heroes who suffered to liberate Zimbabwe.
"This has put us in conflict with certain interests. It survives on sponsored criticism. It is a paper, which became the voice of farmers. It distorted the whole land issue saying the land issue was disorderly and that it was not done according to the rule of law.
"The rule of law is a product of the people in that country … law made by Zimbabweans and for Zimbabweans. This has become an issue in national politics."
He said the Daily News was obsessed with criticising the Government but turned a blind eye to any wrongdoing or shortcomings of the British government and the white world.
"They never ever, ever, find any wrong with the British, never find any wrong with the white world who criticise the Zimbabwean leadership," Prof Moyo said.
"We don’t think this is a reasonable thing."
The paper, he said, showed no regard of the colonial injustices perpetrated by white settlers when they dispossessed black Zimbabweans from their land a century ago, that lives were lost for the country to be independent and the fact that Britain has reneged on its colonial obligation to fund agrarian reforms.
"This is the point we have been making," he said. "Jack Straw now agrees."
Unlike in other countries, he said, his department defended national interest and articulated Government policy at the same time given the on-slaught on the country.
"We defend national interest, defend the Zimbabwean-ness through the promotion of Zimbabwean values, identity and our right to the nation. It’s none but ourselves."
Zimbabwe, he said, valued its participation and association with the Africa Union, Non-Aligned Movement, United Nations and Sadc.
"The Commonwealth is a club that has not rid itself from the colonial hangover," he said.
He said Zimbabwe had become a target of the British who were using BBC to set up a pirate radio station to churn out hate which sought to bring regime change.
SW Africa Radio, he said, was formed by the British and got funding from the US Transition Initiative, which got its money from USAID.
"We are the first country to be the victim. When you seek regime change, you are not seeking the change of the leader … you are seeking for a change of the process … regime change seeks to move us away from the foundation of the revolutionary struggle."
This, he said, was a threat to democracy as defined by the US and its allies.
He said the US government had openly accepted that it is working with some local journalists and media houses to effect "regime change".
"They use that phrase where they want to put a puppet. They will be interested in replacing values of the country. Regime change is a code word for a coup," he said.
Zimbabwe, he said, had proudly been able to hold elections when they were due and had one of the most vibrant democracies in the world.
"They are saying we will use information. It has become a most powerful tool since the collapse of the Cold War. You cannot defend your country without control of the information. AIPPA has brought some discipline in this country.
"It has comparable pieces of legislation, which are there in US."
Prof Moyo said there were some unpatriotic Zimbabweans who went to Britain and the US to urge these countries to invade or blockade the country.
"The Zimbabwe Democracy Act as drafted by Zimbabweans and perfected by the baas … the Uncle Toms ," he said.
He hailed the December 1987 Unity Accord signed by Zanu-PF and PF-Zapu describing it as firmly rooted in the revolutionary struggle.
"False pressures of a government of national unity has been created. We have a strong unity. There can be no unity between a nationalist and a reactionary, no unity between a nationalist and a puppet.
"They want to replace this through the back door. When it comes to national affairs, we deal with them ourselves," he said.
Global capitalism, he said, had led to the collapse of some economies of countries like Argentina and Brazil.
"Why should we all implement Tony Blair’s policy, George Bush’s policy? They should accept that within the international community there are differences.
"We don’t aspire to be like them...an American dream is not a Zimbabwean dream. The Zimbabwean dream is to own land unlike the American dream, which may be to own a hamburger," Prof Moyo said.
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Israel and White Supremacy
Posted: Thursday, November 14, 2002
by Aaron Michael Love
In 1945 Jan Smuts, then prime minister of South Africa appealed to the UN for an article on human rights to be included in the United Nations Charter. This incident, cited in W.E.B Du Bois's remarkable book The World and Africa, is a powerful reminder of the contradiction in the European conception of freedom. Freedom only applies absolutely to the white man, temporarily excluding the complications of class and of course, gender. Du Bois argued that the Atlantic slave trade produced this schism materially and culturally, although its origins no doubt go much farther back in European history. He concludes, "nothing so vividly illustrates the twisted contradiction of thought in the minds of white men."
Much ink has been spilled bemoaning the Zionist lobby in the United States. The success of this lobby in the Washington and media establishment, in terms of its limited objectives, is no doubt spectacular. However, it is a strange success, which has made strange bedfellows when considering the history of anti-Jewish racism in the U.S. After all, how could such a lobby hold sway over the Christian Right, Waspish conservative think tanks and a Congress filled with southern gentlemen?
The answer is the Zionist organizations do not hold sway over anyone and to imply otherwise, as some do, has the unintended consequence of flirting on the margins of a major Fascist conceit. Instead, the answer can be found in the history of white supremacy and imperialism within the United States and Europe themselves. In other words, Zionist Apartheid is seen as an old fashioned war on people of color and, as such is perfectly attune to the historical psyche of white America. Rather than trying to "liberate" American foreign policy from Zionist influence, I think it would be much more fruitful to ask why Americans, particularly the political, business class, and certain sectors of the white middle class, love Israel so much.
In an indispensable article, "Antisemitism: Real and Imagined", Tim Wise writes, "Zionism is a form of white supremacy". There are few places where Zionism is placed firmly within the operation of whiteness, though it has been indirectly touched on many times before, most notably in discussions of the relationship between Ashkenazi and Sephardim and Mizrahim Jews in Israel. Indeed, as one Israeli Black Panther put it in 1972, "We must reach a situation in which we shall fight together with the Arabs against the establishment. We are the only ones who can constitute a bridge of peace with the Arabs in the context of a struggle against the establishment." Zionism, like white supremacy, albeit in different keys, is a war against savage Arabs and only a less savage Arab and African Jew.
My experience as a divestment and solidarity organizer over the last couple of years has brought me first hand knowledge of the Zionist paradox in the Jewish community. More than once, young Jews approached us, confessing they struggle to maintain a Jewish identity outside of whiteness, revealing young minds trying to grasp with the irony of an alliance between Jews and White Supremacy. Micah Bazant has spoken of "the Jewish establishment" giving "tremendous lip-service to the concern of Jewish assimilation" but instead contributes "to assimilation of the worst kind." He explains, "they claim to value real Jewish traditions of social justice and tikkun olam, but in fact they have sold out and assimilated to U.S. values of capitalism, racism and imperialism."
Zionism developed in a time of reinvigorated white supremacy in the latter part of the nineteenth century when European states were busily dividing up the land of Africa and Asia. In the confrontation with the indigenous people of Palestine, its ideology belongs within the history of European racial theories and, like the Afrikaner ideology of Jan Smuts, has little problem with seeing itself in the forefront of democracy and civilization in the Middle East while at the same time implementing and justifying the complete and utter subjugation of one its most prominent people.
However, to understand Israel/Palestine as defined systematically by racial oppression has yet to be elaborated on its own. This is odd, given that the racial oppression of the Palestinian people is at the heart of the matter; all other things--land laws, religion, pass laws, racially designated roads and neighborhoods, etc.--are symptoms. This should not come as any surprise: the racial definition of the Zionist project existed from the very beginning. Theodor Herzel in his 1896 pamphlet "The Jewish State" wrote it would "form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism." This is the same Herzel who stated that Zionist colonization would be "representatives of Western civilization," bringing "cleanliness, order and the well-established customs of the Occident to this plague-ridden, blighted corner of the Orient." Recall Chomsky memorably quoting Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel, as saying of Palestine, "there are several hundred thousand negroes there but that this matter has no significance."
How little has changed. With the African liberation movements abroad and the civil rights struggle at home, the white supremacist war on African people has entered a new stage, but the war on the Arab has found its triumphant moment. In that story we hear about the Arab resistance to modernity in the infamous "Arab street", mitigated, of course, by friendly but nervous ruling classes. In the stirring street, like in the Intifada, we are told you find the irrational and the superstitious, not a working toward self-determination and freedom. And who holds the key to holding back this self-evident preternatural violence of the Palestinian and the Arab? Whether it is Bernard Lewis, the New York Times, the Heritage Foundation, Al Gore, the ADL or American Jewish Council Ads on Fox News, the answer is the Zionist State. Counterpoised to the Arab and the Palestinian in particular there is democracy, technology, Judeo-Christian values, the opera and shopping malls. Apartheid Palestine/Israel is necessary exactly because the Palestinian rejects all of these things. They hate "us". Unfortunately, the more honest imperialists say, this is a world of civilization and barbarism: Israel the white European nation in a sea of dark savagery.
That Israel should be in the vanguard of whiteness is actually a credit to the more than five decade old Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian struggle is on the fault-line of freedom and oppression and, as such, is in the forefront of the struggle against white supremacy and imperialism in the world today. Is it any wonder that the white supremacist imperialists holler the most when Palestine/Israel is brought up? It is exactly here that their "twisted contradiction" is most likely to be exposed. Apartheid Israel/Palestine is just another solution to the "problem of the color line." It is a solution that did not begin in 1948 but some 400 years ago and is still with us very much today.
Indeed, we have the rulers of the "western" world as proof. The idea of a Zionist lobby duping State Department officials, ignorant Congress people, the EU or UN bureaucrats, ignores the role of white supremacy. This complicates the popular Leftist view that America and Europe's largely unconditional support of the Zionist state is like a functional balance sheet: tallying the price between keeping a bully on the Middle East block, "a strategic asset", and bad relations with the wider Arab public. We should recall what Du Bois was trying to tell the Left in his day: race and class are not separable categories in modern world history.
But the implications go beyond the exigencies of Leftist anti-imperialism to the heart of the Palestinian struggle and solidarity itself. Typically, Palestine/Israel is argued in terms of an abstract discourse of "human rights", "UN resolutions", and "international law". This is problematic on several grounds. First, on a psychological level, the basic effrontery of Apartheid to human dignity is lost. On a more practical level, most Americans do not connect immediately to the Palestinian struggle because the direct connections to their historical experience are not revealed or emphasized. Further, rights, laws and resolutions bring a kind of equivalence to the Palestinian and Jewish experience in Israel/Palestine. The Zionist state can cite almost as many rights, laws and resolutions as their opponents. Even worse the application of these things, like the UN itself, is dominated by the United States. What is missing is a sense of right and wrong, of abnormality, and a lack of understanding the deep connections of the Palestinian struggle with the operation of the American historical psyche.
The importance of understanding white supremacy could also be important for the Palestinian struggle in Palestine/Israel. Israel Shahak wrote in his brilliant article:
"Analysis of Israeli policies: the priority of the ideological factor," that eventually, "the Palestinians are bound to perceive themselves first and foremost as victims of Israeli legal discrimination, applied against them by virtue of their being non-Jews. When this occurs, Israel's domestic and international position can be expected to become highly unstable."
Oppression-political, economic, legal, cultural-on the basis of race is what most intimately connects all Palestinians, at a most basic level, living throughout Palestine/Israel. If Shahak's observation is politically formulated and used in a struggle to trump the Zionist, white supremacist vision and enforcement of separation and expropriation, meanwhile coupled with an effective solidarity campaign to politically and economically isolate Israel, the Zionist state will eventually "become highly unstable" indeed.
I do not think this can be overstated at this time. Like the U.S. commitment to Israel, the Zionist commitment to the West Bank and Gaza exists over and above balance sheet considerations. Returning to Shahak's article, a particular passage is worth quoting in full:
"In other words, empirical evidence (valid as anything in politics can be valid) shows that Israeli policies are primarily ideologically motivated and that the ideology by which they are motivated is totalitarian in nature. This ideology can be easily known since it is enshrined in the writings of the founders of Labor Zionism, and it can be easily inferred from Israeli laws, regulations and pursued policies. Those who, like Arafat, his henchmen and most Palestinian intellectuals, have through all these years failed to make an intellectual effort to seriously study this ideology, have only themselves to blame for being stunned by all the developments of the 20 months after Oslo."
As I have tried to briefly lay out, the Zionist Apartheid project finds its force and appeal through its own conception of whiteness, not because Zionist organizations find better ways to get the ear of the white man. It is fully assimilated into this framework and all of its self-justification refers back to the matrix of white supremacy and empire. One cannot battle Zionism without battling white supremacy and the U.S. establishment--they are intimately linked. Seeking the ear of the establishment without speaking the truth about their racism underestimates their psychological and historical relationship with Apartheid. This means a solidarity built on an alliance with those who have been in the forefront of fighting white supremacy.
The brilliance of Du Bois's book is to show exactly how the "West" can be for human rights and for an unrelenting war on Arabs and, in particular, Palestinians. It explains how Jan Smuts in Du Bois's day or Shimon Peres in ours can lecture us on "human rights" and get away with it. Perhaps, most importantly, white supremacy reframes the Palestinian struggle in a historical continuum that better explains the reflexive support among a broad swathe of the American and European public for the Zionist adventure. It equally reframes it within a tradition that has deep reserves for overcoming the contradictions of race, freedom and oppression in European and American history with universal ideas of equality, democracy and fraternity, previously only thought available to the white man.
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