The Slippery Definition of Extremism

What About the Government?
By JAMES BOVARD
CounterPunch
April 22, 2010

Americans are once again hearing of the perils of extremism. But the definition of this offense is slippier than a politician’s campaign promise. The definition of extremism has continually been amended to permit government policies that few sober people previously advocated.

Prior to 2000, anyone who asserted that the Census Bureau was deeply involved with the roundup of Japanese-Americans for internment camps in 1942 was considered an extremist. The Census Bureau spent 60 years denying its role but finally admitted its culpability ten years ago after academics uncovered undeniable proof. Regardless of the Census Bureau’s past abuses or perennial deceit, only extremists believe that their answers to this year’s census could ever be used against them.

Prior to September 2001, anyone who suggested that the U.S. government lead a crusade to “rid the world of evil”would have been labeled both an extremist and a loon. But when George W. Bush promised exactly that three days after 9/11, the media cheered and his approval ratings soared.

Prior to November 2001, anyone who suggested that the president had the power to suspend the right of habeas corpus and perpetually detain anyone he accused of serious wrongdoing would have been considered an extremist. But Bush’s executive decree on enemy combatants made this the law — or at least the policy — of the land.

Prior to 2002, anyone who suggested that the U.S. government create a Total Information Awareness database of personal information on tens of millions of Americans would have been considered an extremist. But federal spy agencies rushed forward with exactly such plans, and the feds have stockpiled far more data on citizens.

Prior to April 2004, anyone who asserted that the U.S. military was torturing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan was seen as an anti-American extremist. The leaking of the Abu Ghraib photos and official reports on abuses at Guantanamo and elsewhere proved that the extremists’ worst fear had become national policy. And when Congress effectively ratified Bush’s torture policies in the 2006 Military Commissions Act, “extremists”came to connote people who believed that American democracy had utterly disgraced itself.

Prior to the war on terror, anyone who advocated using tortured confessions in judicial proceedings would have been considered an extremist and perhaps also a medievalist. But the Justice Department and Pentagon effectively claimed a right to use confessions regardless of how they were acquired.

Prior to late 2005, anyone who asserted that the National Security Agency was routinely and massively illegally wiretapping Americans’ phone calls and email without a warrant was considered paranoid — as well as an extremist. Within weeks of the New York Times’ exposing the government’s warrantless surveillance apparatus, Republican congressmen stood and cheered during Bush’s State of the Union address when he boasted of his intrusions.

Prior to recent years, anyone who suggested that Uncle Sam should be able to take naked snapshots of all airline passengers would have been considered a lunatic, as well as an extremist. But the Transportation Security Agency, with its Whole Body X-ray systems, is doing exactly that in many airports around the nation. And the TSA’s promises that such photos will not be stored or abused are as credible as TSA’s earlier promises that no one would be delayed more than 10 minutes waiting in airport checkpoint lines.

Prior to the post-9/11 era, if someone suggested that the federal government should bloat its Terrorist Watch List with more than a million names, the person would have been considered a fool and an extremist. But this is exactly what the feds have done — and that is part of the reason why the watch lists have become almost useless as well as a peril to scores of thousands of innocent Americans.

Prior to this decade, only extremists believed that the president should be permitted to order the assassination of American citizens — with no attempt to arrest or try the suspected wrongdoer. Yet, President Obama recently officially made this the national policy.

Time and again, the U.S. government has adopted policies that only extremists advocated a few years earlier. And yet, no one is supposed to think that the government has become the biggest extremist of them all.

James Bovard serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation and is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, Terrorism and Tyranny, and other books.

Why Obama's Middle East Peace Plan Will Fail

Stolen Land
By JEFFERSON CHASE
CounterPunch
April 23 - 25, 2010

To understand the present conflict, one has to realize that until 1895 Jews and Muslims had lived together in peace in Palestine for more than1200 years. After the Romans expelled them in 70 A.D., Jews were not allowed to live in Jerusalem for 600 years, but when the conquering Muslim army took that city they invited the Jews to return. And Jews and Muslims lived together in peace for all those centuries until that way of life was destroyed by the interference of Europeans and Americans.

During World War I, the Allied Powers promised self-determination to the Arabic-speaking peoples in the Middle East, but England’s Lord Balfour said, “In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country.” And the Balfour Declaration opened Palestine to Zionist-Jewish colonization despite the repeated protests of the native-born people. This completely illegal action was supported by the other European nations and the United States also. Then in 1946-48, tens of thousands of Zionist Jews invaded Palestine, massacred entire villages (men, women, and children) drove half the population (730,000 people) into exile, systematically looted their homes, farms, and businesses, and purposely destroyed more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages.

This should not have come as a surprise to anyone. Expulsion of the Palestinians has been the clearly stated aim of the Zionists from the beginning. In 1895, Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, said, “We shall endeavor to expel the Arab population across the border unnoticed.” In 1937, David Ben Gurion, a founder of Israel, wrote, “We must expel the Arabs and take their place.” In 1947, he said, “Every attack has to end with occupation, destruction, and expulsion.” In 1998, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said, “…there is no Zionism, colonization, or Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and expropriation of their lands.” And in 2006, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the U.S. Congress, “I believed, and to this day still believe, in our people’s eternal and historic right to this entire land.”

So the Palestinians are not attacking somebody else’s country, they are trying to drive those Jewish invaders out of their own country. Palestinians and their ancestors have been living on this land for more than 3000 years, but those Zionists just invaded and declared it to be the State of Israel. Their claim that God promised Palestine to them is unfounded because most of the Jewish invaders and 96% of all Jews today are not the descendents of the ancient Hebrews but are descendents of converts (Ashkenazi). And even a valid biblical claim would still not give them any territorial rights to Palestine under international law. In contrast, today’s Palestinians are the true descendants of the ancient inhabitants, the Philistines, as demonstrated by the Arabic rendition of the original name of that land – Filastiniya.

Even Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion admitted the legitimate claim of the Palestinians. In 1956 he said, “If I were an Arab leader, I would never make peace with Israel. That is natural: we have come here and stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” But he still believed that Zionists had the right to drive them out, and Jewish “settlers” have been relentlessly encroaching on Palestinian land ever since. And today, with more than 140 “settlements” already deliberately placed all throughout the West Bank, and more being built every year, the Israelis clearly have no intention of stopping until they have driven the Palestinians out entirely – the total ethnic cleansing that has been their goal since 1895.

So to be a sincere and credible peace-maker, President Obama would have to recognize that Zionism is not Judaism, it is neo-fascism, and that Zionism, not Islam, is responsible for the present hatred and killing. He would have to denounce the Nazi-like ethnic cleansing by Israel and demand justice and freedom for the dispossessed and brutalized Palestinians. He would have to admit that the “two-state solution” is an atrocious arrangement that we would never accept if the U.S. were invaded and occupied. But Obama has shown that he is just as ignorant as Bush, just as dismissive of international law, and just as unwilling to face the unpleasant truth about Israel. So his efforts at peace-making will fail also.

Author’s note: I have no connection whatever with any Arab country or the Muslim religion. In fact, being born and raised in the Mid-West “Bible Belt” I was originally a supporter of the State of Israel.

Jefferson Chase lives in Connecticut.

Demonizing Iran

U.S. Media Continue Beating War Drums

By DAVE LINDORFF
CounterPunch
April 23 - 25, 2010

Just yesterday, the Wall Street Journal had a lead story about Israeli planning to possibly “go it alone” in an attack on Iran if the US were not to “succeed” in its diplomatic efforts to get Iran to “stop” it’s alleged attempts to develop a nuclear weapon capability.

Aside from the fact that there is no hard evidence that Iran is trying to make a nuclear bomb or even to refine uranium to obtain nuclear-grade material, the paper ignored one crucial point: Israel cannot “go it alone” in any strike on Iran, since its key weapons--American fighter-bombers--are supplied to it, and kept flying, thanks to the equipment and spare parts provided by the United States. Indeed the entire Israeli military machine is largely financed and armed by the US.

No Israeli military effort can go forward without the full backing of the US, and to say otherwise is to simply perpetrate a fraud on the American public, implying that Israel is an independent actor on the world stage. It is not.

Another example of media warmongering came in an interview by Terri Gross on her program “Fresh Air,” which I believe is the most widely syndicated and popular program on National Public Radio, produced here in Philadelphia at the studios of NPR affiliate WHYY. Listening to “Fresh Air” this week, which featured an interview with New York Times war correspondent Dexter Filkins, a generally excellent reporter who distinguished himself for his reporting on the Iraq War, and particularly on the brutal US assault on the city of Fallujah, I heard Filkins refer casually to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as “America’s arch-enemy.”

Now it’s possible, and I certainly do hope it’s the case, that Filkens was being ironic here. But Terri Gross allowed this characterization of Iran’s president pass without comment.

America’s arch-enemy? Really? On what basis?

What, exactly, has Iran or Ahmadinejad done to make itself America’s arch- enemy? It has backed the same Shi’ite led government in Iraq that the US has been backing, and indeed, to the extent that Iraq has stabilized, it is largely Iran’s doing. It provided key help to the US in the early invasion of Afghanistan and the routing of the Taliban government, which was never favored by the Iranians.

We know also that two years before the election of Ahmadinejad to the presidency, Iran made an offer to the US to recognize Israel, help broker a two-state peace solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and end Iran’s support of armed groups in the Middle East region, all in return for the US accepting Iran as what the 70-million population nation unarguably is: a legitimate power in the region. That offer was slapped down by the Bush/Cheney administration, which had as its goal not peace in Palestine or with Iran, but the occupation and control of Iraq, and perhaps ultimately a war against Iran. In fact, since the Iraq invasion, the US is known to have been financing and helping to organize a terror campaign inside Iran that has led to many deaths by bombings. If any country is acting towards the other in an aggressive and warlike fashion, it is the US, towards Iran, and not the reverse.

It needs to be said, but somehow never is in the establishment US media, whether corporate or not-for-profit, that Iran historically is not an aggressive, expansive nation (can that be said with a straight face about our own country?). Though it is, by dint of its oil reserves and its population, one of the biggest and most powerful countries in the Middle East, Iran has not invaded another country since the 18th century, and there is no indication that it plans to invade any other country now.

Even nuclear experts scoff at the notion that a nuclear Iran would initiate an attack on Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, with an estimated 200 high-grade nuclear weapons, and a first-rate delivery system of missiles and supersonic bombers. For Iran to launch a crude nuke at Israel would be an act of national suicide, and while individual terrorists may kill themselves, nations don’t commit suicide. They may miscalculate, with devastating consequences, but they don’t deliberately self-immolate.

None of this makes its way into the US media, which continues the drumbeat for war, whether by Israel, with US backing, or by the US, with reports that Secretary of Defense (sic) Robert Gates is presenting the president with Iran attack options, and that the White House, while “preferring a diplomatic solution” to Iran’s supposed nuclear ambitions, is “keeping all options on the table.”

Most media reports refer to Iran’s “ability to produce bomb-grade uranium” within a year, without mentioning that there is no evidence that the country intends to do this (Iran insists it has no such plans). The New York Times, for instance, was reporting, incorrectly, back in 2008 that Iran had enough enriched uranium to make “one nuclear bomb.” Those reports, quoting Pentagon and CIA sources, now quote “experts” as saying that Iran could develop a bomb within three to four years, again generally failing to add that there is no evidence that Iran is trying to do that, or is even considering doing it.

And yet Iran is consistently portrayed as America’s “enemy” or even as its “arch-enemy”--a term that harks back to the Bush/Cheney claim that Iran was, along with Iraq and North Korea, part of a three-nation “Axis of Evil.”

On its face the idea that Iran is America’s arch-enemy is ludicrous. We are talking here about a third-rate country with an economy the size of Finland’s, with a third-rate military, the total budget of which, at $4.8 billion, is less than the annual replacement cost for the US military’s Chinook and Seahawk helicopter fleet, and which would be totally decimated in any all-out attack by the US.

Iran has no ability to attack the US, and even its ability to threaten US forces in Iraq or Afghanistan is severely limited, not to mention the fact that should it be foolhardy enough to initiate any such action, it would bring down the full force of the US military on its head in an instant.

Reading and watching American reporting on Iran reminds me of nothing so much as reading the Chinese state media about Taiwan when I was living in China back in the 1990s. It’s all pathetic nonsense, manufactured paranoia, and bluster. But at least the average Chinese citizen has enough sense to recognize that she or he is being fed a lot of propaganda. Americans, all to often, seem to ready to buy the garbage they hear and read about Iran. They may not be able to show you where on the globe Iran is, or tell you anything about the country other than perhaps that it is Muslim, but they will accept, uncritically, that it is our “arch-enemy.”

Note to Filkins: If, as I hope, you were being ironic on “Fresh Air,” please understand that irony requires a modicum of sophistication on the part of the listener--something I’m not sure you can count on with Times readers or NPR listeners.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. He is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation Into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu Jamal. He can be reached at dlindorff@mindspring.com