Posting 2. on the Jewish-Israeli Lobby, posted by George Salzman

These excerpts, from roughly the first 40% of Mearsheimer and Walt’s article, “The Israel Lobby”, concern the lobby’s success in exerting pressure on the U.S. government and in largely controlling public discourse in the media to insure uncritical support for the Israeli government. For the entire article, see

The Israel Lobby
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
The London Review of Books, Vol. 28 No. 6, 23 March 2006
on line at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html

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[The Lobby] “strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy.” —Mearsheimer and Walt

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[I]f neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America’s support for Israel, how are we to explain it?
 
The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. We use ‘the Lobby’ as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that ‘the Lobby’ is a unified movement with a central leadership . . .
 

. . . Many of the key organisations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, are run by hardliners who generally support the Likud Party’s expansionist policies . . .

Not surprisingly, American Jewish leaders often consult Israeli officials, to make sure that their actions advance Israeli goals. As one activist from a major Jewish organisation wrote, ‘it is routine for us to say: “This is our policy on a certain issue, but we must check what the Israelis think.” We as a community do it all the time.’ There is a strong prejudice against criticising Israeli policy, and putting pressure on Israel is considered out of order. Edgar Bronfman Sr, the president of the World Jewish Congress, was accused of ‘perfidy’ when he wrote a letter to President Bush in mid-2003 urging him to persuade Israel to curb construction of its controversial ‘security fence’. His critics said that ‘it would be obscene at any time for the president of the World Jewish Congress to lobby the president of the United States to resist policies being promoted by the government of Israel.’

Similarly, when the president of the Israel Policy Forum, Seymour Reich, advised Condoleezza Rice in November 2005 to ask Israel to reopen a critical border crossing in the Gaza Strip, his action was denounced as ‘irresponsible’: ‘There is,’ his critics said, ‘absolutely no room in the Jewish mainstream for actively canvassing against the security-related policies . . . of Israel.’ Recoiling from these attacks, Reich announced that ‘the word “pressure” is not in my vocabulary when it comes to Israel.’

Jewish Americans have set up an impressive array of organisations to influence American foreign policy, of which AIPAC is the most powerful and best known. In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was ranked second behind the American Association of Retired People . . .

The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all of whom believe Israel’s rebirth is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God’s will. Neo-conservative gentiles such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley, the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; and the influential columnist George Will are also steadfast supporters.

. . . There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better. By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak . . .

The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker’s own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the ‘smart’ choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy.

A key pillar of the Lobby’s effectiveness is its influence in Congress, where Israel is virtually immune from criticism . . . One reason is that some key members are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey, who said in September 2002: ‘My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.’ One might think that the No. 1 priority for any congressman would be to protect America. There are also Jewish senators and congressmen who work to ensure that US foreign policy supports Israel’s interests.

Another source of the Lobby’s power is its use of pro-Israel congressional staffers. As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once admitted, ‘there are a lot of guys at the working level up here’ – on Capitol Hill – ‘who happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . . to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.’

AIPAC itself, however, forms the core of the Lobby’s influence in Congress. Its success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. Money is critical to US elections (as the scandal over the lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s shady dealings reminds us), and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel political action committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to his or her political opponents. AIPAC also organises letter-writing campaigns and encourages newspaper editors to endorse pro-Israel candidates.

There is no doubt about the efficacy of these tactics. Here is one example: in the 1984 elections, AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles Percy from Illinois, who, according to a prominent Lobby figure, had ‘displayed insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns’. Thomas Dine, the head of AIPAC at the time, explained what happened: ‘All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians – those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire – got the message.’

AIPAC’s influence on Capitol Hill goes even further. According to Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, ‘it is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or administration experts.’ More important, he notes that AIPAC is ‘often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes’.

The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that US policy towards Israel is not debated there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world. In other words, one of the three main branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting Israel. As one former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, noted on leaving office, ‘you can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.’ Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, ‘when people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them: “Help AIPAC.”’

Thanks in part to the influence Jewish voters have on presidential elections, the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive branch. Although they make up fewer than 3 per cent of the population, they make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. The Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates ‘depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 per cent of the money’. . .

Key organisations in the Lobby make it their business to ensure that critics of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. Jimmy Carter wanted to make George Ball his first secretary of state, but knew that Ball was seen as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would oppose the appointment. In this way any aspiring policymaker is encouraged to become an overt supporter of Israel, which is why public critics of Israeli policy have become an endangered species in the foreign policy establishment.

When Howard Dean called for the United States to take a more ‘even-handed role’ in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Senator Joseph Lieberman accused him of selling Israel down the river and said his statement was ‘irresponsible’. Virtually all the top Democrats in the House signed a letter criticising Dean’s remarks, and the Chicago Jewish Star reported that ‘anonymous attackers . . . are clogging the email inboxes of Jewish leaders around the country, warning – without much evidence – that Dean would somehow be bad for Israel.’

This worry was absurd; Dean is in fact quite hawkish on Israel: his campaign co-chair was a former AIPAC president, and Dean said his own views on the Middle East more closely reflected those of AIPAC than those of the more moderate Americans for Peace Now. He had merely suggested that to ‘bring the sides together’, Washington should act as an honest broker. This is hardly a radical idea, but the Lobby doesn’t tolerate even-handedness.

During the Clinton administration, Middle Eastern policy was largely shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel organisations; among them, Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC and co-founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Dennis Ross, who joined WINEP after leaving government in 2001; and Aaron Miller, who has lived in Israel and often visits the country. These men were among Clinton’s closest advisers at the Camp David summit in July 2000. Although all three supported the Oslo peace process and favoured the creation of a Palestinian state, they did so only within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israel. The American delegation took its cues from Ehud Barak, co-ordinated its negotiating positions with Israel in advance, and did not offer independent proposals. Not surprisingly, Palestinian negotiators complained that they were ‘negotiating with two Israeli teams – one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American flag’.

The situation is even more pronounced in the Bush administration, whose ranks have included such fervent advocates of the Israeli cause as Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis (‘Scooter’) Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these officials have consistently pushed for policies favoured by Israel and backed by organisations in the Lobby.

The Lobby doesn’t want an open debate, of course, because that might lead Americans to question the level of support they provide. Accordingly, pro-Israel organisations work hard to influence the institutions that do most to shape popular opinion.

The Lobby’s perspective prevails in the mainstream media: the debate among Middle East pundits, the journalist Eric Alterman writes, is ‘dominated by people who cannot imagine criticising Israel’. He lists 61 ‘columnists and commentators who can be counted on to support Israel reflexively and without qualification’. Conversely, he found just five pundits who consistently criticise Israeli actions or endorse Arab positions. Newspapers occasionally publish guest op-eds challenging Israeli policy, but the balance of opinion clearly favours the other side. It is hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing a piece like this one. [emphasis added —G.S.]

‘Shamir, Sharon, Bibi – whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me,’ Robert Bartley once remarked. Not surprisingly, his newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, along with other prominent papers like the Chicago Sun-Times and the Washington Times, regularly runs editorials that strongly support Israel. Magazines like Commentary, the New Republic and the Weekly Standard defend Israel at every turn.

Editorial bias is also found in papers like the New York Times, which occasionally criticises Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but is not even-handed. In his memoirs the paper’s former executive editor Max Frankel acknowledges the impact his own attitude had on his editorial decisions: ‘I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert . . . Fortified by my knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of our Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognised, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.’

News reports are more even-handed . . . because it is difficult to cover events in the Occupied Territories without acknowledging Israel’s actions on the ground. To discourage unfavourable reporting, the Lobby organises letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts of news outlets whose content it considers anti-Israel. One CNN executive has said that he sometimes gets 6000 email messages in a single day complaining about a story. In May 2003, the pro-Israel Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) organised demonstrations outside National Public Radio stations in 33 cities; it also tried to persuade contributors to withhold support from NPR until its Middle East coverage becomes more sympathetic to Israel. Boston’s NPR station, WBUR, reportedly lost more than $1 million in contributions as a result of these efforts. Further pressure on NPR has come from Israel’s friends in Congress, who have asked for an internal audit of its Middle East coverage as well as more oversight.

The Israeli side also dominates the think tanks which play an important role in shaping public debate as well as actual policy. The Lobby created its own think tank in 1985, when Martin Indyk helped to found WINEP. Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel, claiming instead to provide a ‘balanced and realistic’ perspective on Middle East issues, it is funded and run by individuals deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda.

The Lobby’s influence extends well beyond WINEP, however. Over the past 25 years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). These think tanks employ few, if any, critics of US support for Israel.

Take the Brookings Institution. For many years, its senior expert on the Middle East was William Quandt, a former NSC official with a well-deserved reputation for even-handedness. Today, Brookings’s coverage is conducted through the Saban Center for Middle East Studies, which is financed by Haim Saban, an Israeli-American businessman and ardent Zionist. The centre’s director is the ubiquitous Martin Indyk. What was once a non-partisan policy institute is now part of the pro-Israel chorus.

Where the Lobby has had the most difficulty is in stifling debate on university campuses. [I will post excerpts from this section of the article subsequently —G.S.]

Posting 1. on The Jewish-Israeli Lobby, by George Salzman

      In my recent essay, “Changing History, 1”, which is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2006-03-18.htm, I started to try to understand how it came about that Adolph Hitler, who began life as innocent as each of us, developed into an adult capable of instigating what ought to be unspeakably horrendous acts. The culture he lived in was suffused, as is every cultural environment, with an entire set of values which affect the development of every normal person, into which category I would place Hitler.

      He was, according to what I know, an avid reader of newspapers and political pamphlets, which, along with his personal experiences in Vienna from age 18 to 23, played an important — I think crucial — role in the development of his conviction that “the Jews” were largely responsible for the terrible conditions in Vienna, as well as elsewhere, and his obsession — it was really an obsession — to eliminate all European Jewry.

Photograph of Adolph Hitler in prison in 1924, following the unsuccessful
“Beer Hall Putsch”, from Tiempo de Guerra: História Ilustrada de la Secunda
Guerra Mundial (Time of War: Illustrated History of the Second World War),
p.15, published by Reader’s Digest in Spanish, in 1992 in Mexico. The book
is essentially a glorification of war, promoting the ideology typical of the
Reader’s Digest Corporation’s publications.
      Clearly, what people believe is extremely important. This is well-recognized in the United States (as well, I am sure, as everywhere), where Joesph Goebbel’s role as the Minister of Propaganda in the Third Reich is widely credited with the success of the Nazi state in promoting belief, among ordinary Germans, in the righteousness of the government’s programs, including World War II and ridding Germany of Jews. The effort to shape people’s beliefs is pursued by every government, as part of the arsenal for controlling “its” population. That “All governments lie” is a truism.
 
      But governments are not alone in lying to influence public opinion. For example, corporations are notorious liers in advertising their products, and in denying their lack of guilt for illegal behavior. The immediate “special interest” that motivated me to initiate this category is raised in a major article exploring the impact of what Mark Bruzonsky <> refers to, I think with reasonable accuracy, as “The Jewish-Israeli Lobby”. According to the article, “The Lobby” has had, and continues to have, great influence on the U.S. government and on American public opinion, to the detriment of the United States, in the supposed interest of Israel. The article, in The London Review of Books, Vol. 28 No. 6, 23 March 2006, at www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html, titled The Israel Lobby is by John Mearsheimer, Prof. of Political Science, Univ. of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, Prof. of International Affairs, Harvard Univ. Bruzonsky’s preface follows:
 
MER - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 18 March: This is a vital subject, The Jewish-Israel Lobby, but it is one rarely paid the attention it is due and one hardly ever discussed as openly and thoughtfully, and as honestly and ‘candidly’, as it should be. These two well-known American academics . . . make a limited stab at doing so in this nevertheless quite important article. But they gloss over far too much, almost totally overlook far more, and at the end of the day pull far too many punches in view of the unique sensitivities this subject arouses within American society and American Jewry. Furthermore the article comes only now, it seems, because two of the most important long-time American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) figures are under indictment — not as ‘spies’ which in other settings could and would be the charge, but for improperly handling ‘classified’ information which in the end got to the Israelis. All this is said to provide the requisite context. This article . . . makes very interesting and necessary weekend reading.
 
It’s a lengthy article, but I strongly recommend it. —George

Posting 1. to On the Ground, from Adam Sacks

Oaxaca, Monday, March 20, 2006

Friends,

      A short note from Adam Sacks related to the important grassroots-level work he is doing motivated me to add a new category, “On the Ground” to the blog. It is for items, perhaps brief like this first one, devoted to “News about local grassroots efforts and struggles undertaken with a global perspective”. Here is the note from Adam:

Subject: Declaring Democracy in Barnstead, NH
From: Adam Sacks <>
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 08:17:15 -0800 (PST)

Hi George –

      . . .The small town of Barnstead, NH has just this weekend passed an anti-corporate rights and water withdrawal ordinance, standing up to illegitimate state and federal law and precedent. It’s the first town outside of Pennsylvania to do so.

Hope you’re well, maybe see you soon!
Cheers,
Adam

Posting 9. to General (no specific category), a new posting announced, and replies, posted by George Salzman.

Here is the e-mail, followed by responses.

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Subject: Understanding Hitler’s obsession - a new website posting, and blog news
From: George Salzman <>
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2006 20:09:24 -0600
To: undisclosed-recipients
 

Oaxaca, Sunday, March 19, 2006

Friends,

1.    In a new posting today, “Changing History,1″, at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2006-03-18.htm, I begin to try to understand why normal human beings can (and do) become capable of terrible actions. Some excerpts follow:

      Does this new creature enter the world from its mother’s womb with any preconceptions as to its identity? Nature stamps it only with an instinctual drive to begin breathing and to fasten its tiny toothless gums to a breast, a breast it initially does not know is its mother’s, and to suckle, as do all newborn

(picture of a newborn infant)
mammals. Totally ignorant, a finger touched to its lips elicits an effort to suck the finger. So the miracle of a new human life begins with the first breaths and the initial nursing and the warmth and closeness to its mother’s body. It knows not of religion, nationality, ethnicity, race, pride, patriotism, shame, sex, greed, love, hatred, killing, and so on. Totally innocent. That’s how each of us began our rocky journey through life.
. . .
      In discussing lying and killing, it’s clear that I am unable, in strictly logical terms, to provide a “proof” [that we are not a genetically flawed species], that is, a “proof” in the rigorous sense in which a mathematician would judge a theorem to be proved. Nevertheless, it seems to me indisputably clear that the argument is also obviously correct.
. . .
      Now consider the act of killing. Specifically, think of a newborn boy who first saw the light of day eighteen years ago in Israel, a son of Jewish parents. It would be ridiculous to imagine that he knew anything at birth about his “identity”, his forthcoming ritual circumcision which would mark him indelibly as Jewish (or Muslim), or that he would be called upon to serve in the Israeli military to enforce imposed curfews in the occupied territories, in some cases killing Arab schoolchildren for crossing the street to get to their school, children acting in resistance by violating the curfew. Nor, of course, did he know he would come to despise Arabs, to regard them as less than human, and to feel no compassion for them, no remorse as he lined up the cross-hairs of his sniper-scope and squeezed the trigger. One might try to argue that although as a newborn he was totally innocent of all such ideas, he was actually programmed by his “Jewish genes” to develop into a killer of Palestinians. But this “development stage” argument is as ludicrous for killing as it is for lying. And in fact it ought to be particularly repugnant to those of us who identify (or are identified) as Jews, because it was promoted as a core justification of the Nazis’ attempt to exterminate all the Jews, i.e. the idea that Jews were despicable and dangerous because we are Jews, a genetic group that deserved to be got rid of.
 

2.    The weblog at georgesalzman.org is now quite functional. You can add comments directly following a post, with no need to register first. If you want to write your own post, i.e. not just a comment on an item already posted, you need to first register. Some comments have already been posted.

      My hope is that the blog will contribute to open direct discussion among us without the need for me to post your letters (as was the case with my website). I encourage you to provide your name and e-mail address with all your comments and postings so that others can, if they wish, write you privately, as well as publicly on the blog.
 

3.   From now on I do not expect to announce blog postings on the page

Latest postings – mostly on current struggles.
Please let me know if you have ideas how to improve this setup.
 

4.    Openness and secrecy. I’ve encountered a couple of people, just within the very recent past, who are fearful of having their e-mail addresses known, not because of the nuisance of commercial spamming but because of clandestine government spying. This is new to me. My personal preference is to refuse to be intimidated, to be absolutely open about what I’m doing, and to take my chances. I would encourage those of you who want to use the blog or to communicate with me to also do so openly.

All comments and criticisms are welcome <>

If your want me to add or remove your name from my
e-mail distribution list, please let me know

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From: Kwaku Duren <>
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2006 18:33:04 -0800
 

George, I would strongly encourage those who are studying this issue to purchase and read “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness” [1973] by Eric Fromm [also author of volumes including “The Art of Loving,” [1956] “Escape from Freedom,” [1941], “Man for Himself” [1947] and “The Sane Society” [1955].]

      Fromm basically believed that our character [or personality] is a socio-economic and cultural construct; and “Man” “may be defined as the animal that can say I.” Kwaku

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Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2006 22:07:10 -0600

      Thank you Kwaku, I did read, a long time ago, Escape from Freedom, but not the particular volume you recommend. I will see if I can borrow a copy of The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness locally. I posted your recommendation on my blog.

Sincerely,
George

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From: Michael Milburn <>
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2006 22:18:28 -0500

George,
     You should read the chapter on Hitler (and in fact the entire book) of Alice Miller’s For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelties in Childhood and The Roots of Violence. Also see my book, The Politics of Denial.

Best,
Mike Milburn

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Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2006 22:53:51 -0600

Thanks Mike,

      I read Miller’s For Your Own Good, but a long time ago, and don’t recall anything specific about Hitler, though I’m confident she “did a job” on his father, which he might well have deserved. But I don’t recall ever having read Roots of Violence. Nor your The Politics of Denial. Right now I’m reading Mein Kampf, as well as several other books sporadically (each one gets interrupted, it seems, can’t keep up). I’ll post your note on my blog, so others can see it too.
All best wishes,
George

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From: Robert Mann <>
Date:Mon, 20 Mar 2006 20:55:24 +1300
To: Science for the People list <>
 

      The most depressing work on this that I’ve discovered so far - I couldn’t read its entirety - is Hitler’s Willing Executioners. Among its many dismal assertions is evidence that the few SS men who refused orders were not even penalised.

R

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Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2006 10:27:35 -0600

Hi Robert,

      First, on a light note. When I read your second sentence I thought of replying, for fun, as though I had misread it, “Yes, they weren’t even punished. They got away without murder. How un-German! Not to obey orders. And then not to punish the violators. It’s enough to kill the usual stereotype of Germans.”
      But seriously, I would be interested to read Hitler’s Willing Executioners, and will see if it’s in the local English language lending library. Or I may order a copy from the States. Because that is, for me, a major focus of interest, i.e. that the so-called “leaders” cannot effect the actions they want — in Hitler’s case eliminating all European Jewry — without the cooperation of the mass of people who actually carry them out. What seems to be factually true is the enormous malleability of human beings. I was struck, in reading Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil and Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews, in the great variation, among different countries that were occupied by the Nazis, in the degree of cooperation or resistance to the Nazi’s program of Judeocide. And these include relatively small geographical areas in which the cultural factors influencing popular attitudes varied greatly from one to another. Even among the German military, the impact of popular attitudes among the occupied people was not always negligible. Arendt writes, regarding events in Denmark, “Politically and psychologically, the most interesting aspect of this incident is perhaps the role played by the German authorities in Denmark, their obvious sabotage of orders from Berlin. It is the only case we know of in which the Nazis met with open native resistance, and the result seems to have been that those exposed to it changed their minds. They themselves apparently no longer looked upon the extermination of a whole people as a matter of course. They had met resistance based on principle, and their “toughness” had melted like butter in the sun, they had even been able to show a few timid beginnings of genuine courage. That the ideal of “toughness,” . . . was nothing but a myth of self-deception, concealing a ruthless desire for conformity at any price, was clearly revealed at the Nuremberg Trials …”

      Thanks for writing and calling Hitler’s Willing Executioners to my attention.
George

Posting 8. to General (no specific category), A young anarchist makes contact, posted by George Salzman.

Subject: Personal Introduction - After visiting your personal pages and blog
From: Antonio García García <>
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 04:53:25 +0000
To: George Salzman <>

Hi, George.

      I stumbled upon your pages accidentally, link-hopping from one site to another, and it inmediately caught my eye that we might well consider ourselves soulmates labouring in the same struggle to achieve highly interchangeable goals.

      I have done a superficial overview of some of your pages, and felt such feeling of compatibility I could not wait any longer to try to get in touch.

      My name is Antonio García, and I am a native anarchist (this is, I have the right feelings without the burden of indoctrination through the historical literature that most of the time is being interpreted verbatim without regards for situational positioning in their apropiate time and space, nor the ulterior changes like anarcho-syndicalism that adapted the natural theories to harden them against the extremely hostile environment in which they had to survive. Having built and consolidated my own anarchistic theories, I’ve had no trouble reading whatever comes my way regarding anarchy: Kropotkin, Proudhon, Makhno, Malatesta, Bakunin, … too many to risk the pretention of being exhaustive. Also modern up to date thinkers have been read. Lecture has never been limited to anarchist thinkers though. One should not only try to understand the mindset of friends, most of the time it is far more useful to step aside ones own creed and try to objectively assimilate the antagonist believings as a way to better understand how to efficiently fight them: Von Mises, Friedmann, Huntington, Fukuyama, … also an endless list.

      Yet all those writers’ production is in urgent need of reinterpretation so that their ideas can be extrapolated to the current historical moment and social, political and economic circumstances, something that is almost always ommitted.

      I am fluent in english, spanish, french and dutch, and able to understand with some difficulty languages that share a common root with these in the linguistical evolution.

      While I have great plans myself, I look forward to helping you by whatever means I can contribute to your own personal effort.

      So far there is not much about me to be found on the internet, but what there is should be quite easy to find if you search for my wartime pseudonym: NingúnOtro, not to be confused with the standard spanish noun ningúnotro (meaning “nobody else” or “no other”), something that should become crystal clear from the context.

      I’ve been quite active at two precise spots lately: http://www.zeztamerica.org/Foro, and some interesting comments and contributions to a friend’s blog: http://www.tonyto.net/blog/

      Have a look and say hello if you think I’m worth some of your time.

Saludos Anarquistas,
Antonio

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Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 16:23:52 -0600
To: Antonio García García <>
CC: James Herod <>
 

Oaxaca, Friday, March 17, 2006

Hi Antonio,

      Your e-mail came to me rather late last night, when I was too tired to gather my thoughts and write back. I’m guessing from the indicated time in the heading that maybe you’re living in Great Britain, or somewhere that the local time is Greenwich Mean Time. Clearly your name suggests Spanish parentage, and your English, although extremely fluent, shows hints of Spanish phraseology, so I’m also guessing that maybe that’s your idioma materna. In any case, I was very glad to get your enthusiastic comments. I wish I had your fluency, but even now in my seventh year in Mexico my Spanish is still far from adequate. If in fact you want to join in the effort I’m making, which is mainly in what I call counter-propaganda, I would be delighted. I put in the “If in fact” not because I doubt your sincerity but because my experience has been that oftentimes people are very enthusiastic, especially younger people, and in the zest of their enthusiasm overestimate what they are actually prepared to do. However, I welcome whatever efforts you care to make, whether together with me or independently. It’s certainly very encouraging to get an unsolicited letter like yours, and I thank you for writing.

      Right now the overall movement of Latin America is towards freeing itself from domination by the United States. It’s one of the more hopeful signs of constructive change, especially because of the important role of millions of people at the grassroots level, who are pushing for governmental changes and, I think more importantly, for gaining control over their own lives by taking over factories, other enterprises and running them themselves. It is this economically poor, working, and also unemployed class, by far the overwhelming part of the population, that it seems to me most important to try to reach with our anarchist vision and values. The two major essays on my website are those of Jaime Martinez Luna, Comunalidad y Autonomia, at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Estrate/ComunEs/indexEs.htm, and James Herod, Getting Free: A sketch of an association of democratic, autonomous neighborhoods and how to create it, at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/GetFre/index.htm.

      I managed to translate some of the first part of Jaime’s essay into English, and a bit of Herod’s into Spanish (or possibly Spanglish). My opinion is that the ideas that Herod puts forward would be very catalytic if they could be widely circulated in Latin America. So it seems to me it would be a most significant contribution if you were to take on a part of this work, i.e. translating part of it into Spanish. Perhaps you might take the time to read some of it and see what you think. If you disagree with my sense of its importance and want to go in another direction, that’s fine too. Also, if you have other ideas of how we might work together, please let me know what they are.

      When I did a Google search for NingúnOtro, I found a discussion with your fairly brief comments at http://www.tonyto.net/blog/index.php?blog/show/19#comment136. Clicking on http://www.zeztamerica.org/foro returned the message Not Found, but the URL http://www.tonyto.net/blog/ has extensive material you’ve written. I’ll try to get back to read some of it when I have a chance (slow going for me, in Spanish).

      I added your name to my e-mail distribution list, which by now has reached about 1,400 recipients. I write somewhat irregularly, and am trying to shift to using a still new weblog that a friend set up for me. Part of my vision is that we build a network of thousands of individuals, each of us with many many contacts, that enables us to communicate our thoughts and news about our activities very broadly. That will prevent any sense of isolation and futility as we struggle against the psychological assault of the corporate and government-allied media. So I will likely post our exchange on the blog, which you can get by typing simply “georgesalzman.org” in your browser, or via my website, where there’s a link to the weblog near the top of the home page.

With all best wishes, y un grand abrazo, fuerte y anarquista,
George

---

Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2006 03:48:45 +0000
 

George,

     The devil cares about details. Because of your affinity with the zapatista movement, I was particularly interested in showing you I am having big trouble with them (or at least a few of them that form a strategical bottleneck to my efforts of communicating with them at high levels in order to straighten things out) and beg for some kind of help on the issue. More than ever now I see you write from as close to them as neighboring state Oaxaca. As part of my effort, it was crucial to me that you got a straight and honest insight into the nature of my problems with them. Some sparks show through tOnYtO’s blog, because he is also involved, but most of it spreads crystal clear through the wordings and the created situation at zeztamerica. Since you had no time to have a look yet anyway, not that much is lost, other than the time involved in saying hello to Mr. Devil (once again, I’m afraid he is an old friend of mine). The only problem involved is the fact that the server is a linux box and thus case-sensitive. The URL should have been www.zeztamerica.org/Foro with a capital F. Stupid insignificant details can ruin great and vital plans without leaving a clue as to why, driving honest revolutionaries to despair. It might be useful to notice that I contacted Al Giordano on the matter, but with no signs as to whether he has done anything about it.

     I see you have forwarded your answer to James Herod, and that is fine with me as I can really use and offer some brainstorming potential. In fact, if I started a quest for like-minded soulmates on the internet it is because I am at a stage in my personal revolutionary process where allmost all the thinking has been done to the extent that, due to the global aproach of my own thought processes, everything I happen to find seems to fit in as a subset of my global framework as a partial or incomplete thought. I’m not anywhere close to thinking I’m God though.

     But as an inteligentsia I might say I am pretty damn good, short of being the richest man in the world because something as “stupid” as ethics keeps me jailed much in the same way the given word would jail a gentleman far more effectively than Guantanamo Bay “citizenship”.

     The brain is a wonderful “instrument”, but once we are past thinking and looking for some action, the first practical problem that arises in any revolutionary process is the fact that you need more than two arms (I mean to say anthropological apendixes here, though the other meaning might sometimes be important too) to get anything done. More than two automatically call for another brain to be in charge … and through the proven lack of universal ethics in todays world there statistically follows that with an open call for help you are more likely to find interested government officials and corporate private mercenaries than true comrades. You have been thus carefully chosen and a proper risk evaluation based on your public profile has been done (you still might be a dormant undercover agent for the Mossad though, publicly anti-zionist jews could easily be forged and serve well as detectors against dissidents). I’m not that shrewd though, and I sure hope you are not either.

     So have a look at that forum and let me hear some of your thoughts.

     I am not in a hurry, I’ll have other things to do, so sleep over it if you need to.

Antonio.

P.S: Actually, timezone is GMT+1, and I was born in Belgium, first son of spanish inmigrants from the early sixties.

---

Subject: On the Zapatistas, and using the blog
From: George Salzman <>
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2006 08:28:59 -0600
To: Antonio García García <>
CC: Nancy Davies <>,
        Benjamin Melancon <>,
        Alberto M. Giordano <>,
        James Herod <>,
        Scott Pinkleman <>
 

Oaxaca, Saturday, March 18, 2006

Hola Antonio:

      From your message that I got last night, it’s clear that you’re troubled about some aspects of the Zapatista’s Otra Compaña. I will try to read what you’ve written, especially on the site www.zeztamerica.org/Foro, where you said the problems are pretty clearly shown. The truth is that my Spanish isn’t good enough for me to do this easily, and at the moment I’m trying to complete an essay that I began in late February, but which has been repeatedly interrupted, so I’m not sure just how soon I can get to it.

      However, Nancy (and the others to whom I’m CCing this note) are also very interested in the Zapatista struggle, and I just this morning posted our correspondence so far in order that it be available to her (and them). Nancy is much more proficient in Spanish than I am.

      From what you’ve written, my impression is that you might be expecting too much in terms of replies from either people at “high levels” in the Zapatista cadre or from Al Giordano, all of whom are working like crazy doing basic interviewing and reporting at the on-the-ground level here in Mexico. I’m inclined to think that right now that’s a higher priority for them than communicating with a member of the European intelligentsia. But this is only a first, and superficial impression of mine. Until I know what the problems are that you’ve had with them, I can’t say more.

      I think it will be easy for you to post comments directly to the blog. From what Ben told me you won’t even have to register if all you want to do is make a comment. If you want to post a statement that’s independent of another posting, i.e. that’s not simply a comment on a prior posting, then you need to register first. Once you’ve registered then you can login and write your post. If you want me to make any corrections to your earlier letters, please let me know and I’ll take care of them. Thanks again for writing.

All best wishes,
George

Posting 7. to General (no specific category), Walter A. Davis on censorship, posted by George Salzman

An alert from Thomas K. Wilson <> yesterday titled “Must read on the Rachel Corrie issue” sent me right to the Counterpunch article I’d missed earlier. Without rereading it now (it’s pretty long), one of the points emphasized is that art (in the author’s case in particular, theatre) is inseparable from politics, from life itself. I wrote to the author:

Subject: Your article, The Play’s the Thing
From: George Salzman <>
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 22:08:24 -0600
To: Walter A. Davis <>
CC: Thomas K. Wilson, O’Kelly McCluskey <

Oaxaca, Saturday, March 11, 2006

Dear Walter Davis,

      I just read your article,

Theater, Ideology and the Censorship
of “My Name is Rachel Corrie”
The Play’s the Thing
in Counterpunch www.counterpunch.com/davis03062006.html after T.K. Wilson called it to my attention. It is a magnificent essay. In Endnote 3 you said, in part, “I’ll also take that occasion to address the ideologically self-serving and misleading article on all of this by Edward Rothstein published in today’s (March 6) Arts section of The New York Times www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/theater/newsandfeatures/06conn.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print pagewanted=print. “If that was not or will not be published in Counterpunch, where I could not find it, I would very much appreciate knowing where I can read it.

      I also wanted to call your attention to material on this deeply revealing action by the New York Theatre Workshop which is on my website, including my scathing criticism of Edward Rothstein’s New York Times article.

The New York Times doing “damage control” for the Israeli Government, posted 10 March 2006. (site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2006-03-07B5.htm)

Suppressing Truth in the Theatre — Anne Frank’s Diary good, Rachel Corrie’s bad!, posted 9 March 2006. (site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2006-03-05B4.htm)

      Thank you very much for writing your essay, which touches profound issues on ideology and its role in “our” society.
Sincerely,
George

==================================================

site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/

Professor Emeritus
Physics Department (generally inactive/dirección inactiva generalmente)
Univ of Massachusetts
Boston, MA 02125

---

This morning I received the following reply:

Subject: Re: Your article, The Play’s the Thing
From: Walter A. Davis <
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 07:31:09 -0500
To: George Salzman <

Dear George,

     Thank you for your letter and for your superb piece exposing Rothstein’s article. The follow up article I mention I haven’t yet written. I’m hoping to do so today. But as you know this is an evolving situation. If and when I get the article written I’ll send it your way.

     Please feel free to share my article with all those you communicate with. You can also run it or reference to it on your web if you wish.

     Thanks again. I think we have a chance here to expose some central issues about ideology and its operation. (I’m in touch with people in NY and in London who don’t want to let this thing die).

best, walter

Posting 6. to General (no specific category), by George Salzman

Nancy Davies <> forwarded me a letter with the preface: “Note: forwarded message attached. This is from JK, he mentions you and the struggle.” After losing my cool Friday evening in rage and telling her I didn’t want her to forward any more of his messages, I chilled down, apologized to her, and yesterday morning, still rankled by his obliviousness, wrote him as follows, where the material in boldface is my emphasis, and the italicized comments in parentheses are mine:

J, I’m inserting remarks in your note below.
George

Subject: everything
From: JK <>
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:09:29 -0800 (PST)
To: Nancy Davies <>

        Hi Nancy, Sorry it’s been so long. I’m getting ready to go back to the good old USA (Ha! Ha!), probably March 15 to May 15, then Europe till Nov 15, then the USA and maybe India next Jan/Feb - Mexico can wait. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can get to Oaxaca for quite a while. Traveling is agreeing with me and I figure I’d better move while I have the energy. You mentioned parallels - I see the parallels you see, but I see them as minuscule, and others are more glaring (the inquisition of christianity and espec Spain = the purge trials of Stalin = the mind set of Latin America down to Fidel. (What do you mean by “the mind set of Latin America”? It’s as if homophobia — I’m guessing — isn’t present in the good old USA.) There could never be a parallel to Rachel Corrie in the Moslem or Fidel world - she’d be dead before anybody heard of her. It’s good to bring out the contradictions of the system and push improvement, but I’m grateful we have contradictions (What does this mean?). At last someone who replied to George actually had something to say about the difficulty of speaking out in much of the world (he was leftist but he didn’t mean in the USA) and had some compassion for people living under unbearable silence (Who was this that you’re referring to?) - I think in the long run shutting people like you up is more debilitating for society than all sorts of inequality. It’s easy to see the diff in health and educ in Cuba now and before, it isn’t as easy to see the harm done by regimenting minds, and it is easy to see the harm done to straight and gay bodies in the fight to control minds. Of course you are right to fight injustice but I don’t understzand how anybody as old as I am can be so messianic, and of couse I feel injustice that you consider minor and vice versa (minor only in the sense of less ghastly, not that it isn’t ghastly). Life is great, hopefully I’ll reform some day and do good. Love, J

      (J, I think you’re far too gentle on yourself, and that you’ve never really dealt with the tough questions. As long as you can satisfy your lust for travelling, seeing marvelous architecture, and enjoying exotic (to we westerners) foods, you’re ready to accept the horrendous PHYSICAL deaths and mutilations — remember some 50 to 60 thousand people die of starvation and its associated plagues EVERY SINGLE DAY — and essentially pay no attention, rationalizing that the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc. (Oh! Yes, let’s get a little of your anti-Communism in too, Stalin and Castro) were/are worse. It’s similar to the kind of so-called “cost/benefit” analysis that the promoters of genetically modified foods use. It’s not a question, or at least it shouldn’t be, of trying to justify the good old USA and the contradictions you welcome, as you dance around the world using money over which you happen to have legal control as a result of your birthplace, your retirement income, and the contradictions that maintain your relative privileges. Have you thought about how much wealth is squandered by the well-to-do people of this world while billions live and die, and millions are murdered to maintain the injustices? Talk about freedom to think, you’re not in Cuba or Stalin’s Soviet Union, so you can give it a shot. Don’t think I don’t like to have fun. I do, but not at the expense of other people. I like you personally, but I don’t respect the life you’re leading, and what seems to me the shoddy pseudo-intellectualizing that “justifies” it. Of course Nancy will call me down for being judgemental, but I spent most of my life being trained (in physics and mathematics) to evaluate, think critically, to make judgements, supposedly good skills, and for what? To keep my mouth shut?)
————————————————————————————-
Subject: Dancing around the USA, then Europe
From: JK <>
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 09:48:43 -0700 (PDT)
To: George Salzman <>

Hi George, Judgmental, Shudgmental, I do realize I provoked your reply. I trust my critical thinking abilities and am as grateful for the awareness and insights that came with the study of French lit and phil as you with the study of physics and math. I will keep the list of writers you mentioned in your latest e mail and look at them when I’m settled in Mexico and hope for new insights. I don’t know most of them but since Pinter is on the list, perhaps some others are worthy; certainly the fact that subcom marcos is on the list iindcates there is prob a lot of pablum. Beautiful baby face and baby thoughts (true, I haven’t read much of him). Your scolding takes me back to the good nuns of my childhood, instilling guilt and the need for sacrifice - a 50s Catholic will never get over it - and that was not all bad - But for the grace of God, there go I. It was interesting to hear Joe B lives in Wincheser Va of which I know little in spite of the fact that I was a novice at the Trappist Monastery there. Does he welcome visitors? I think the 2 yr experience was good for me in spite of falling in love with another novice and getting kicked out. It indicates my difficulty in incorporating spirituality and gay sexuality in my life and growing up with the homophobia of the McCarthy area ( I remember at around 13 yrs old reading about the danger posed by homosexuals in the state dept and and feeling without being able to articulate it to myself that this included me) and then the homophobia of the cuban rev feeling the diff of incorporating gay sexuality with political life. The new leftist hope of Peru has distanced himself from some of his crazy family but his mother said all gays should be shot and I think this shows that homophobia and the left is still a combination to be feared, similar to a vjisceral anti semit apparent in the attack on Chomsky (comments I have heard over the years have given me the impression that anti semit is part of latin culture) and as you said it has some basis in econ and polit reality, and so some gays prob epitomize the selfish indiv west in the eyes of ultra altruistic socialists. So I am lenient on myself as I was not in my youth (I gave $500 to Balto Core in the 60s when it was a lot of money and meant putting off going to Europe, went on a union educ project in Mississippi one summer and it was educ for me altho prob less for the poor black kids but I was scared at first). I finally realize i count too and if I am a very happy person, that is one happy person, a surer thing than being unhappy to make someone else happy. Of course you can be fulfilled and altruistic and I haven’t tried hard enough to do that, but c’est la vie. I know a lot of people like the Cambidge elite who talk the talk, but they live better than I do so I’ve given up letting them make me feel guilty because I’m aware of my priv life and they aren’t of theirs even tho they are more priv than I am. (This doesn’t necessarily refer to you). I now have $350 000 dollars, a lot of it ill gotten gains from the stock market, and $800 a mth soc sec. If anything is left at my demise, 1/3 will go to family, 1/3 to an org that is really doing good in the world, and 1/3 to an org that is really doing good for gays in the world. Meanwhile I will dance around the world as long as seems right, then go to Mex and enjoy it while trying to learn the culture incl polit and econ possiblities, and hopefully eventurally find some volunteer work that will really help in some way. I’m ony 65, I don’t see the nec of rushing to save the world. There are people dying tragically every day, there were infinite numbers in the past, and forcing myself to do good rather than letting fulfillment and altruism come together naturally doesn’t seem important. The appreciation of art and beauty all over the world is a supreme value for me. You seem to have a puritan disdain for esthetic experience. I travel simply, it certainly is a form of exploitation, but I am able to do it on $20 000 a yr and use a lot less resources than a lot of pious speaking people and hopefully some money will be left to do good after I’m gone. I’m not pure but I’ve given up on that. Viva Mexico, J

Posting 5. to General (no specific category), James Herod’s comments, posted by George Salzman

James Herod <> doesn’t let ‘em get away with shit. Yesterday he sent me part of an exchange with Scott Pinkleman <> that reminded me of one of the first books recommended when Nancy and I went (for the first time) to Chiapas in 1996,

First World, Ha Ha Ha!about the Zapatista uprising in the Lacandon Jungle and its challenge to the so-called “First World”.
 _________Here’s what I got of the Pinkleman-Herod correspondence_________
 
Hi Scott,

From your last email:

I read this report [Latin America’s Autonomous Organizing www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-03/13trigona.cfm] this morning actually. It is rather amazing. There seems to be such a different tone to something like this compared with NCOR [National Conference on Organized Resistance]. I guess that’s part of the difference between the first and third worlds. (By the way, what is your terminology for that; developed versus developing is ridiculous, core and periphery doesn’t seem to get it quite right. People have criticized me for using the numerical ranking, but I thought that was bullshit! What do you use?) Or maybe it’s brutal dictatorships followed by neoliberalism.

        Good question, about what terminology to use. I’m afraid that I agree that Third World is no good. I turned against the term thirty-five years ago, although I occasionally lapse into it, out of laziness (its use is so predominant), or because it seems too complicated to use some other term. There was never a ‘third world’. What was called the third world were merely colonies, or former colonies, of the imperial capitalist powers (or a few rare countries who had more or less escaped colonization, or partially so, like Yugoslavia, which was finally subdued only after 78 days of bombing in 1999). For radical analysts who argued that the Soviet Union was just another form of capitalism, state capitalism, there was not even a Second World. These terms (First World, Third World, with the Second World, the Soviet Union, implied) were mainstream (i.e., capitalist, conservative, status quo) concepts. There has ever only been one world, a capitalist world, these past several centuries. Concepts like Third World helped to camouflage or suppress this fact.

      Similarly, with Developed and Developing, which are actually third or fourth generation terms. Originally the term was Underdeveloped. Then Less Developed. Now Developing (with a couple of other variations in there somewhere). There was a whole academic field devoted to the study of ‘underdevelopment’. (I lost a whole decade on this misguided endeavor.) It was the dominant paradigm in the universities, and also in the popular culture at large, for decades. The theory was demolished in the ’60s by radical scholars, like Immanuel Wallerstein, but it continued on even so, in fossilized academic departments, but also especially in popular culture, as well as in ruling class ideology, where this conceptual framework is still deeply rooted. It carries with it a picture of how societies evolve. It takes the nation-state as the unit (rather than the worldwide capitalist system), and argues that each nation passes through stages of development. The task of national elites was to facilitate this process. The task for foreign aid from rich countries (according to capitalist ideology) was to help each nation along this road. The IMF is still hiding behind this ideology to this day.

      Core-Periphery is accurate, but like you say, lacks something. People probably feel this lack because unless they know the theory behind it, namely Wallerstein’s world-systems theory, it is not quite clear what the terms actually refer to. And in the absence of that theoretical background, one tends to place value judgments on it, like core is better than periphery, whereas actually these are just terms which describe a nation’s location within the capitalist system. (There is also an intermediary term, semi-periphery.) Wallerstein invented these terms (I think, but he may have picked them up from some other less prominent marxist theorist).

      Other terms have also been popular, like industrial versus nonindustrial, or North versus South. Both of these expressions are obviously inadequate, because many formerly nonindustrial countries are rapidly becoming industrial, and former industrial nations are reverting to nonindustrial, as capitalist production globalizes. Similarly, there were many colonized countries in the North, like in Eastern Europe. And how can South be used as a term to describe Northeast Asia, a rapidly emerging powerhouse of capitalism? For a while after the Bandung Conference of 1955, the term Nonaligned was used, instead of South, or Underdeveloped, or Third World. That expression rapidly fell by the way however.

      I have struggled with this problem in my own writing too. I’m sorry to say that I’m unaware of a good solution to it. What I usually end up doing is reverting to the old marxist categories of colonial or neocolonial. Most countries in the world today are neocolonial, especially since the recolonization of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe by Western Capitalists. Neocolonial, as a term, is a good one I think, as it recognizes the worldwide capitalist system, and locates a country within it. For example, the current very encouraging movements across Latin America are mostly just efforts (continuing, belated) to break out of the condition of being neocolonies of the USA and Europe. Neocolonial was a good term because it recognized that although the formal status of colonial had been overcome with the national independence movements, neocolonialism was rapidly established in its stead through economic mechanisms of dominance (of which IMF, World Bank, and WTO are the latest, with neoliberalism being the name given by exploited peoples — it is not used by the capitalist ruling classes themselves — to the most recent, aggressive, imposition of a more brutal form of neocolonialism on countries throughout the world). Colonial is associated with the capitalist empires of the European Powers, whereas neocolonial is associated with the capitalist empire of the USA. Neoliberalism (the so-called Washington Consensus, or the ’structural adjustment’ policies of the World Bank and IMF) is primarily a US offensive. This is why this current war in Iraq is such an anomaly. The US abandoned its decades old strategy of neocolonialism and reverted to overt colonial rule, in order to impose the Washington Consensus (corporate ownership of everything) on a country by military force, rather than merely through economic measures.

      So in the world today, with the three way struggle for who is going to be the next hegemonic capitalist power, a tri-polar fight between the USA, Europe, and Northeast Asia (or rather, which block is going to replace the US as the hegemonic power, as it appears obvious that the US ruling class has just shot itself in the foot and is on the verge of losing everything), it becomes harder and harder to properly locate countries in the system. China, a former colony, is rapidly becoming a core country (to mix metaphors). The USA may regress into a ‘third world’ country, to use an unfortunate phrase. Russia, a former semi-periphery country, may merge with Europe (or the Far East) to become part of the next hegemonic capitalist superpower.

      What are colonies, actually? They are just nations whose wealth is being drained out (stolen) by some more powerful capitalist nation or nations. So maybe we should talk about the “exploited countries” versus the “exploiting countries.” But now we are in a period of rather extreme fluctuation and transition between hegemons, and the status of various countries (their location in the system) may be on the verge of changing rather rapidly.

      Or what about this? With the emergence of enormously powerful and rich transnational corporations, and the morphing of capitalism into this newly germinated monster, and with the emergence of this new kind of world capitalist ruling class, operating through these transnational corporations (but still with the assistance of nation-states), with the assistance of newly established world institutions (WTO, Gatt, Nafta), the whole world has become one huge colony, even the so-called developed nations (hence the frequently heard expression: the ‘third-worldization of America’). So you have a colonizing (exploiting) apparatus floating above the world, with all nations within it being preyed upon, by this parasite. We should probably just stop talking about nations (which assumes that they are legitimate units of analysis), but instead talk about the world ruling class, local ruling classes, and the masses of victimized, exploited people these ruling classes oppress and feed upon.

      I regret that I couldn’t send you a less convoluted reply. But I hope this helps some.

Yours,
James

Posting 4. to General (no specific category), by George Salzman

Yesterday (March 9, 2006) Nancy forwarded me an e-mail from a friend that had an article, actually two, from Salt Lake City (I guess) newspapers, with a heading,

BYU Physicist Disputes U.S. Governments’s 9/11 Story
Says laws of physics beg to differ
Philip Sherman Gordon
February 08, 2006

BYU stands for Brigham Young University

It’s a highly dramatic account of how the collapse of the 3 buildings (don’t forget #7) collapsed in their footprints. Nancy wrote, “Note: forwarded message attached. I’m not in the physics dept- can you answer this? Or would you want to? Tracey is an old friend of mine. I haven’t seen this particular article before, have you?” Her friend had written, “Can any of you physicist/engineer folks dispute this guy’s claims? I don’t know what to think…. - Tracey [Bennett]

I’ll put the body of Tracey’s e-mail below, but first my comment. As long as we don’t have more info it’s not worth spending energy trying to dope out the likelihood that the theory is correct, or even plausable. It immediately came to mind that the coordination between the precision airplane trajectories and the precision explosions would have had to be remarkable. The conspiracy would have had to be vast, on a par with that managed by Roosevelt in keeping the military and naval commands at Pearl Harbor uninformed of the approaching attack in order to insure “A day of infamy” that would gain immediate popular support for U.S. entry into WWII.

www.utahvalleymonitor.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/02/08/43ea29f856cbc

BYU Physicist Disputes U.S. Governments’s 9/11 Story
Says laws of physics beg to differ
Philip Sherman Gordon
February 08, 2006

On Wednesday, February 1, a quiet, “churchy-looking” gentleman in a white shirt and tie walked into a packed auditorium on the campus of Utah Valley State College and electrified the room like a rock star. The 150-seat auditorium was filled to capacity, with every seat occupied, and people sitting in the aisles from the stage floor to the back of the room. Video cameras on tripods lined the back row. Two documentary-film crews were in attendance, in addition to the school’s camera crew, and various independent journalists. Seven “spill-over” rooms, with seating for 40-50 each, were also filled to capacity. On this very conservative campus (in the most conservative county in the most conservative state in the union), where community leaders pulled out all the stops in 2004 to prevent Michael Moore from speaking as part of his anti-Bush, pro-Kerry “Slacker Uprising Tour,” Dr. Steven Jones, this pious professor from the Mormon Church-owned Brigham Young University, calmly, gently, gave a simple physics lesson on the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, the implications of which awed the audience with a sense of world-historical significance, and implied an indictment of the present administration so utterly devastating that it made Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 look like a Bush apologia.

Dr. Jones argues that the physics behind the government’s explanation of the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11 do not make sense, and that a better (and perhaps only) explanation for their collapse was that they were demolished, exactly the way structural engineers bring down large buildings, by pre-positioned explosive devices set off in precise sequences. He argues that the 650 degree Celsius temperature of burning jet fuel would not have been hot enough to even bend the steel girders of the WTC Towers, let alone to melt or evaporate them, as recovered beams indicate. And even if it was hot enough to evaporate the steel, the towers should not have collapsed as they did, pancaking so perfectly into their own footprints. On the rare times when such structures have failed (always due to earthquakes), they have toppled over sideways. The towers would have had to have been perfectly sliced, at every point along a horizontal plane at exactly the same instant, for something even resembling a pancaking effect to occur. And even if they did somehow pancake perfectly into their own footprints due to a structural failure, they would not have done it in the time it took for them to collapse, falling at essentially the speed of an apple dropped from the top of one of the towers, with nothing between it and the ground but thin air. The steel and concrete in the floors that collapsed should have taken some measurable time to break, and thus slowed the collapse somewhat as it unfolded. And even if it did collapse, at super speed, phwack phwack phwack, floor by floor, as fast as an apple falling through the air, impelled by the weight of the decapitated structure above it, its solid steel frame severed like a head by a flaming guillotine, that does not explain the molten steel seen at the Ground Zero clean-up site many days after the event. What could have caused such heat? asked Professor Jones.

And on it went, point by point, for almost two hours. Nothing about the physics of “what we know” about 9/11 seemed to add up. And all that’s not to mention the mysterious collapse of the forgotten WTC-7, the third steel-frame building that imploded due to fire, not only that day, but in the history of architectural design–the building that was not hit by a plane, that was surrounded by other buildings equally impacted but structurally undamaged by the collapse of the towers, that, with no jet fuel or violent impact, but allegedly due to a small number of scattered “debris fires,” collapsed, pancaking perfectly into its own footprint, looking exactly like video images of buildings being demolished by pre-positioned explosive devices. Playing the one available video of WTC-7 collapsing at slow speed, Dr. Jones used his laser pointer to indicate the explosive “squibs” clearly seen shooting their way up the sides of the building as it collapsed from the top center down. He showed still images of similar micro-explosions on the sides of the Twin Towers, with steel beams clearly visible, ejected out of the sides of the buildings, ahead of the dust, blown out before the above portions collapsed.

It is a devastating presentation, and one could feel the disequilibrium of 150 minds reeling at once. The defining moment of contemporary American experience suddenly lost its definition. What is the meaning of 9/11? What really happened that day? If these things are true, the implications clearly point to some kind of “inside job” involving the government of the United States of America. (The Department of Defense, the FBI, and the CIA all had offices in the mysteriously collapsed WTC-7. Is it reasonable that outside terrorists could have infiltrated that building and filled it with explosives? ) If the WTC was brought down by pre-positioned explosive devices, somehow facilitated and covered up by the government, it would be the most audacious conspiracy in human history. When before have so many people been so spectacularly bamboozled, with so much death and destruction, and such massive implications for geo-politics? Never, that’s when.

And that is the problem Dr. Jones is facing with his research. People have knee-jerk reactions to “conspiracy theories,” at least to the ones that do not make it into their established and trusted news outlets. And the mainstream media, so far, despite a blip or two in the New York Times, is taking a pass on this story. Yes, my skeptical friends believe that the Bush administration cynically smeared the war records of both John Kerry and John McCain during the 2000 presidential election through the use of shill agencies. Yes, they believe there was suppression of black voters in Florida, and other schemes to cheat their way into the White House in the 2000 election. Yes, they believe the administration conspired to rig the intelligence they used to justify their invasion of Iraq. Yes, if they are regular readers of The New Yorker, they believe that the election fraud was worse in 2004, with rigged ballot machines, in Ohio in particular, being used to great effect. And, yes, they believe in massive wrong-doing and cover-up regarding October Surprise and the Iran/Contra affair, as well as the CIA-orchestrated overthrows of democracies in Chile and Iran, to name only two well-known examples. But no, they don’t believe in conspiracy theories.

These are hardcore leftists who refuse to even entertain the question of whether science supports the conclusion that the planes brought the towers down. “Too many people would have to know about it for them to get away with it,” one friend said. “They’re not that smart,” said another. “It’s just not plausible,” said a third. The issues raised by Professor Jones are not breaking along standard political fissures. People’s relative amounts of skepticism and credulity, rather than their political affiliations, seem to determine their openness to giving the professor’s analysis a hearing. Jones himself claims to have been a lifelong Republican, but now affiliates with no political party. The audience Wednesday night was definitely not the usual suspects of progressive professors and pierced and tattooed activists and students who regularly gather to share criticism of the President, although there were a few of those, too. Mostly, they looked like a cross-section of average middle-Americans. But by the end of the evening, it is no exaggeration to say that most had become political radicals, not of the left and the right, but of the right and the wrong.

If Dr. Jones’s work ever breaks into the mainstream media, and the rest of the country reacts the way the Utah County audience reacted, traditional political divisions will evaporate like steel beams exploded with thermite, and the whole lot of them, the Democrats and the Republicans, will be swept away, along with the military-industrial complex that has apparently managed to subvert the constitution of these United States and to con the American public, mesmerized by the shock of 9/11 and hypnotized by spell-binding incantations of freedom and patriotism, into going along with their mad plans for world domination.

Related Sites
• Scholars for 9/11 Truth
• WTC7 clips
• What really happened at the Pentagon?

Physics Professor Steven Jones Packs Lecture Hall and Overflow Rooms
Huge Crowd Hears of 9/11 Big Lie, WTC Controlled Demolition
www.gnn.tv/B12675 (great pictures!)
www.heraldextra.com/content/view/163875/3/

Questions remain from 9/11 report, professor says
ANNA CHANG-YEN - Daily Herald

A BYU physics professor speaking on Wednesday night implied a government cover-up of what really happened on Sept. 11, 2001, and cast doubt on the blame placed on Osama bin Laden.

Professor Steven E. Jones suggested before the attacks the Bush administration was seeking a way to increase military spending and invade Iraq. The ensuing attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan have created most of Muslims’ disdain for America, he said.

He spoke at Utah Valley State College to a packed lecture room, and by video to adjacent overflow rooms, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Ethics.

Center director David Keller said, “The collapse of the World Trade Center buildings illustrates a strange convergence of physics, engineering, ethics and politics.”

(More at: www.heraldextra.com/content/view/163875/3/)