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The differences thrust in my face while returning home to America from Iraq are glaring. It starts with the little things. That I could even leave Iraq to come to a Western country felt?well, simply unjust and unfair. My Iraqi friends don?t have that option. I went to see the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. Just that I can go see a movie in safety is an oddity to me now. In addition, the options for fun and relaxation here are only limited by my own imagination. The one amusement park in Baghdad, Fun City, has been closed since the war. Hanging out in a park there is a good way to get kidnapped or looted. There are no movie theaters, or they would most certainly be the target of a car bomb.
It was the second Wednesday of September 2001. Terrorist attacks had grounded all commercial and private aviation throughout the entire United States for the first time in history. Former vice-president Al Gore was stranded in Austria because his flight to the United States was cancelled. Former president Bill Clinton was stuck in Australia. Major League Baseball games were postponed. American skies were nearly as empty as they had been when the Wright brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk. America was paralysed by terror, and for 48 hours, virtually no one could fly ...… No one, that is, except for the Saudis.
Two of Australia?s most distinguished newspapers reported on Saturday two independent claims that Iyad Allawi, the USA-installed Iraqi interim prime minister, personally murdered six handcuffed and blindfolded prisoners in June this year. The newspapers seem to have had the story for several weeks, deciding to publish on July 17, after “the failure by Iraqi and US officialdom to mount convincing denials”. Thus far, no major USA newspaper or television network has reported the allegations, which, if substantiated, should result in the immediate arrest of Allawi on murder charges. The same media that promoted last year?s invasion with stories of murder, torture and rape-rooms under Saddam Hussein is displaying no interest in the growing evidence that the USA-installed regime of Allawi will rule in essentially the same fashion.
Countering concerted pressure from the USA and its allies, the World Court has decided to apply the universal principles of justice to the actions of an Occupation that in its malicious intent, its devastating effects, its lengthening history, and its potential for fueling wars has no parallels in recent times. Yet, as predictably as it is tragic, Zionists in Israel and the USA ? both Christians and Jews ? have responded to the Court’s decision with hollow clich?s that carry little conviction except with a segment of Americans, some of whom are avowed Christian Zionists, others white supremacists, but most have been coaxed into hating Palestinians by a media that is both mendacious and malicious in the ways in which it constructs the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Palestinians are terrorists and anti-Semites to boot; the Israelis, under threat and in peril, are their innocent victims.
Since Israel is not willing to address how it is that she has brought destruction on to her own people because she will not dismantle her own illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, and she refuses to glance at the 5,000,000 plus Palestinians of whom she has made refugees, then she should build a wall. If necessary, she should build a wall that?s taller and thicker than this one. Build that wall and shut out the world, maybe even put a lid on it, and only give the key to your only friend, America. Build that wall, but build it on your own land (stolen) between Israel and Palestine, and not between Palestinians and their homes and families.
Gwynne Dyer
Britain’s capacity for mean and underhanded behaviour towards its former colonial subjects has never been in doubt, but last week saw an especially ugly example. Four years ago, the high court in London ruled that the former inhabitants of Diego Garcia and the other Chagos Islands, removed from their homeland between 1967 and 1973 to make way for a huge US air base, had been evicted illegally. It looked like an old injustice was finally on the way to being rectified ? but that depended on the British government obeying its own courts. Fat chance.
Jonathan Cook
An Israeli Knesset committee is currently formulating the first constitution for Israel in its fifty-six years of existence. The consensus among the Jewish committee members is that the constitution will proclaim the state to be both “Jewish and democratic”. The sole Arab committee member, Azmi Bishara, believes that the state cannot be both Jewish and democratic at the same time. Who is right? In considering the Jewish state?s track record in fostering democracy, we will restrict ourselves to its record in governing the population within its own borders, and in particular the one million Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship. How have they fared in what the Knesset wishes to call a Jewish and democratic state?
Farish A. Noor
One of the many frustrations of academics like myself who teach politics and history is having to deal with insolent students who raise the irritating question: “What is the relevance of all this, since everything you have taught us has passed and is no longer relevant in the present?” On a bad day I would be inclined to pick up a hefty classical text and try my best to aim it at the head of the ingrate in question, hoping that upon its landing on the hard skull across the room the victim?s IQ level would have risen by a point or two. But these days, thanks to the ?benevolent imperialism? of the United States of America, I can say that what I teach does make sense and is indeed relevant for the sad times we live in.
Phyllis Bennis
It’s hard to imagine what $151 billion actually means. Well, here are some facts to prod our imagination. To begin with, $151 billion can pay for health care for 23 million uninsured Americans; or housing stipends for 27 million homeless people in this country; or a year’s salary for 3 million new elementary school teachers; or more than 678,000 new fire engines. That same $151 billion could feed half the hungry people in the world for two years and provide clean water and sanitation for the entire developing world and fund a comprehensive global AIDS program and pay for childhood immunizations for every child in poor countries that constitute the global South.
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