[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Blum / The Anti-Empire Report / May 22

[Brussel]

Hi all. I'm in Chambery, urban center of mountain land, France, in a  
hotel with Wi-Fi. I haven't been keeping up that much with the news;  
it always seems to be the same, but I did read the recent article by  
Bill Blum which makes cogent commentary--especially regarding the  
Marshall Plan after WWII, and felt compelled to share it, and say hello.

Mort
>
> Today's commentary:
> http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-05/22blum.cfm
>
> ==================================
>
> ZNet Commentary
> The Anti-Empire Report May 22, 2006
> By Bill Blum
>
> "Come Out of the White House with Your Hands Up!"
>
> "I used to be called brother, John, Daddy, uncle, friend," John  
> Allen Muhammad said at his trial in Maryland earlier this month.  
> "Now I'm called evil."
>
>       Muhammad, formerly known as "the DC Sniper", was on trial for  
> six slayings in Maryland in 2002. Already sentenced to die in  
> Virginia for several other murders, he insisted that he was  
> innocent despite the evidence against him -- including DNA,  
> fingerprints, and ballistics analysis of a rifle found in his car.[1]
>
>       Bereft of any real political power, I'm reduced to day- 
> dreaming ... a courtroom in some liberated part of the world, in  
> the not-too-distant future, a tribunal ... a defendant testifying ...
>
>       "I used to be called brother, George, son, Daddy, uncle,  
> friend, Dubya, governor, president. Now I'm called war criminal,"  
> he says sadly, insisting on his innocence despite the overwhelming  
> evidence presented against him.
>
>      Can the man ever take to heart or mind the realization that  
> America's immune system is trying to get rid of him? Probably  
> not.   No more than his accomplice can.
>
>      Two years ago the vice president visited Yankee Stadium for a  
> baseball game. During the singing of "God Bless America" in the  
> seventh inning, an image of Cheney was shown on the scoreboard. It  
> was greeted with so much booing that the Yankees quickly removed  
> the image.[2] Yet last month the vice president showed up at the  
> home opener for the Washington Nationals to throw out the first  
> pitch. The Washington Post reported that he "drew boisterous boos  
> from the moment he stepped on the field until he jogged off. The  
> derisive greeting was surprisingly loud and long, given the  
> bipartisan nature of our national pastime, and drowned out a  
> smattering of applause reported from the upper decks."[3]
>
>      It will be interesting to see if Cheney shows up again before  
> a large crowd in a venue which has not been carefully chosen to  
> insure that only right-thinking folks will be present.
>
>      Even that might not help. Twice in the last few months, a  
> public talk of Donald Rumsfeld has been interrupted by people in  
> the audience calling him a war criminal and accusing him of lying  
> to get the United States into war. This happened in a meeting room  
> at the very respectable National Press Club in Washington and again  
> at a forum at the equally respectable Southern Center for  
> International Policy in Atlanta.
>
>      In Chile, last November, as former dictator Augusto Pinochet  
> moved closer to being tried for the deaths of thousands, he  
> declared to a judge: "I lament those losses and suffer for them.  
> God does things, and he will forgive me if I committed some  
> excesses, which I don't believe I did."[4]
>
>      Dubya couldn't have said it better. Let's hope that one day we  
> can compel him to stand before a judge, not one appointed by him.
>
>
> But what about the Marshall Plan?
>
> During my years of writing and speaking about the harm and  
> injustice inflicted upon the world by unending United States  
> interventions, I've often been met with resentment from those who  
> accuse me of chronicling only the negative side of US foreign  
> policy and ignoring the many positive sides. When I ask the person  
> to give me some examples of what s/he thinks show the virtuous face  
> of America's dealings with the world in modern times, one of the  
> things almost always mentioned is The Marshall Plan. This is  
> explained in words along the lines of: "After World War II, we  
> unselfishly built up Europe economically, including our wartime  
> enemies, and allowed them to compete with us." Even those today who  
> are very cynical about US foreign policy, who are quick to question  
> the White House's motives in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, have  
> no problem in swallowing this picture of an altruistic America of  
> the period of 1948-1952.
>
>       After World War II, the United States, triumphant abroad and  
> undamaged at home, saw a door wide open for world supremacy. Only  
> the thing called "communism" stood in the way, politically,  
> militarily, and ideologically. The entire US foreign policy  
> establishment was mobilized to confront this "enemy", and the  
> Marshall Plan was an integral part of this campaign. How could it  
> be otherwise? Anti-communism had been the principal pillar of US  
> foreign policy from the Russian Revolution up to World War II,  
> pausing for the war until the closing months of the Pacific  
> campaign, when Washington put challenging communism ahead of  
> fighting the Japanese. This return to anti-communism included the  
> dropping of the atom bomb on Japan as a warning to the Soviets.[5]
>
>      After the war, anti-communism continued as the leitmotif of  
> foreign policy as naturally as if World War II and the alliance  
> with the Soviet Union had not happened. Along with the CIA, the  
> Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations,  
> various corporations, and other private institutions, the Marshall  
> Plan was one more arrow in the quiver in the remaking of Europe to  
> suit Washington's desires -- spreading the capitalist gospel (to  
> counter strong postwar tendencies towards socialism); opening  
> markets to provide new customers for US corporations (a major  
> reason for helping to rebuild the European economies; e.g., almost  
> a billion dollars of tobacco, at 1948 prices, spurred by US tobacco  
> interests); pushing for the creation of the Common Market and NATO  
> as integral parts of the West European bulwark against the alleged  
> Soviet threat; suppressing the left all over Western Europe, most  
> notably sabotaging the Communist Parties in France and Italy in  
> their bids for legal, non-violent, electoral victory. Marshall Plan  
> funds were secretly siphoned off to finance this last endeavor, and  
> the promise of aid to a country, or the threat of its cutoff, was  
> used as a bullying club; indeed, France and Italy would certainly  
> have been exempted from receiving aid if they had not gone along  
> with the plots to exclude the communists.
>
>       The CIA also skimmed large amounts of Marshall Plan funds to  
> covertly maintain cultural institutions, journalists, and  
> publishers, at home and abroad, for the heated and omnipresent  
> propaganda of the Cold War; the selling of the Marshall Plan to the  
> American public and elsewhere was entwined with fighting "the red  
> menace". Moreover, in its covert operations, CIA personnel at times  
> used the Marshall Plan as cover, and one of the Plan's chief  
> architects, Richard Bissell, then moved to the CIA, stopping off  
> briefly at the Ford Foundation, a long time conduit for CIA covert  
> funds; one big happy family.
>
>      The Marshall Plan imposed all kinds of restrictions on the  
> recipient countries, all manner of economic and fiscal criteria  
> which had to be met, designed for a wide open return to free  
> enterprise. The US had the right to control not only how Marshall  
> Plan dollars were spent, but also to approve the expenditure of an  
> equivalent amount of the local currency, giving Washington  
> substantial power over the internal plans and programs of the  
> European states; welfare programs for the needy survivors of the  
> war were looked upon with disfavor by the United States; even  
> rationing smelled too much like socialism and had to go or be  
> scaled down; nationalization of industry was even more vehemently  
> opposed by Washington. The great bulk of Marshall Plan funds  
> returned to the United States, or never left, to purchase American  
> goods, making American corporations among the chief beneficiaries.
>
>      It could be seen as more a joint business operation between  
> governments, with contracts written by Washington lawyers, than an  
> American "handout"; often it was a business arrangement between  
> American and European ruling classes, many of the latter fresh from  
> their service to the Third Reich, some of the former as well; or it  
> was an arrangement between Congressmen and their favorite  
> corporations to export certain commodities, including a lot of  
> military goods. Thus did the Marshall Plan lay the foundation for  
> the military industrial complex as a permanent feature of American  
> life.
>
>      It is very difficult to find, or put together, a clear,  
> credible description of how the Marshall Plan was principally  
> responsible for the recovery in each of the 16 recipient nations.  
> The opposing view, no less clear, is that the Europeans -- highly  
> educated, skilled and experienced -- could have recovered from the  
> war on their own without an extensive master plan and aid program  
> from abroad, and indeed had already made significant strides in  
> this direction before the Plan's funds began flowing.   Marshall  
> Plan funds were not directed primarily toward feeding individuals  
> or building individual houses, schools, or factories, but at  
> strengthening the economic superstructure, particularly the iron- 
> steel and power industries. The period was in fact marked by  
> deflationary policies, unemployment and recession. The one  
> unambiguous outcome was the full restoration of the propertied  
> class.[6]
>
>
> Is someone finally learning a lesson ?
>
> The United States has been pushing the UN Security Council to  
> invoke Chapter VII of the UN Charter against Iran because of its  
> nuclear research. Chapter VII ("Action with Respect to Threats to  
> the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression") can be  
> used to impose sanctions and take military action against a country  
> deemed guilty of such violations (except of course if the country  
> holds a veto power in the Security Council). The United States made  
> use of Chapter VII to bomb Yugoslavia in 1999 and to invade Iraq in  
> 2003. On both occasions, the applicability of the chapter and the  
> use of force were highly questionable, but to placate Council  
> opponents of military action the US agreed to some modifications in  
> the language of the Council resolution and refrained from stating  
> explicitly that it intended to take military action. Nonetheless,  
> in each case, after the resolution was passed, the US took military  
> action. Severe military action.
>
>      In early May, John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN,  
> asserted: "The fundamental point is for Russia and China to agree  
> that this [Iran's nuclear research] is a threat to international  
> peace and security under Chapter VII." However, Yury Fedotov, the  
> Russian ambassador to the United Kingdom, declared that his country  
> opposed the Chapter VII reference because it evoked "memories of  
> past UN resolutions on Yugoslavia and Iraq that led to US-led  
> military action which had not been authorised by the Security  
> Council."
>
>      In the past, the United States had argued that the reference  
> to Chapter VII in a Council resolution was needed to obtain "robust  
> language," said Fedotov, but "afterwards it was used to justify  
> unilateral action. In the case of Yugoslavia, for example, we were  
> told at the beginning that references to Chapter VII were necessary  
> to send political signals, and it finally ended up with the Nato  
> bombardments."[7]
>
>      It remains to be seen whether the Russians or any other  
> Security Council members have taken this lesson to heart and can  
> stand up to the schoolyard bully's pressure by refusing to give the  
> United States another pretext for expanding the empire's control  
> over the Middle East.
>
>
> You can love your mom, eat lotsa apple pie, and wave the American  
> flag, but if you don't believe in God you are a hell bound subversive.
>
> A recent study by the University of Minnesota department of  
> sociology has identified atheists as "America's most distrusted  
> minority". University researchers found that Americans rate  
> atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, homosexuals and other  
> minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society."  
> Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least  
> willing to allow their children to marry. The researchers conclude  
> that atheists offer "a glaring exception to the rule of increasing  
> social tolerance over the last 30 years."
>
>      Many of the study's respondents associated atheism with an  
> array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to  
> rampant materialism and cultural elitism. The study's lead  
> researcher believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social  
> disorder is behind the findings. "Americans believe they share more  
> than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens, they share an  
> understanding of right and wrong. Our findings seem to rest on a  
> view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not  
> concerned with the common good."[8]
>
>      Hmmm. I've been a political activist for more than 40 years.  
> I've marched and fought and published weekly newspapers alongside  
> countless atheists and agnostics who have risked jail and being  
> clubbed on the head, and who have forsaken a much higher standard  
> of living, for no purpose other than the common good. Rampant  
> materialism? Hardly. "Secular humanism", many atheists call it. And  
> we don't read about mobs of atheists stoning, massacring, or  
> otherwise harming or humiliating human beings who do not share  
> their non-beliefs.
>
>      The public attitude depicted by this survey may derive in part  
> from the Cold-War upbringing of so many Americans -- the idea and  
> the image of the "godless atheistic communist". But I think more  
> than that is the deep-seated feeling of insecurity, even threat,  
> that atheists can bring out in the religioso, putting into  
> question, consciously or unconsciously, their core beliefs.
>
>      You must wonder at times, as I do, how this world became so  
> unbearably cruel, corrupt, unjust, and stupid. Can it have reached  
> this remarkable level by chance, or was it planned? It's enough to  
> make one believe in God. Or the Devil.
>
>
> Manure of the taurus
>
> The US Interests Section in Havana has been flashing electronic  
> messages on its building for the benefit of Cubans passing by. One  
> recent message said that Forbes, the weekly financial magazine, had  
> named Fidel Castro the world's seventh-wealthiest head of state,  
> with a fortune estimated at $900 million. This has shocked Cuban  
> passersby[9], as well it should in a socialist society that claims  
> to have the fairest income distribution in the world. Are you not  
> also shocked, dear readers?
>
>      What's that? You want to know exactly what Forbes based their  
> rankings on? Well, as it turns out, two months before the Interests  
> Section flashed their message, Forbes had already stated that the  
> estimates were "more art than science". "In the past," wrote the  
> magazine, "we have relied on a percentage of Cuba's gross domestic  
> product to estimate Fidel Castro's fortune. This year, we have used  
> more traditional valuation methods, comparing state-owned assets  
> Castro is assumed to control with comparable publicly traded  
> companies." The magazine gave as examples state-owned companies  
> such as retail and pharmaceutical businesses and a convention  
> center.[10] So there you have it. It was based on nothing. Inasmuch  
> as George W. "controls" the US military shall we assign the value  
> of all the Defense Department assets to his personal wealth? And  
> Tony Blair's wealth includes the BBC, does it not?
>
>      Another message flashed by the Interests Section is: "In a  
> free country you don't need permission to leave the country. Is  
> Cuba a free country?" This too is an attempt to blow smoke in  
> people's eyes. It implies that there's some sort of blanket  
> government restriction or prohibition of travel abroad for Cubans,  
> a limitation on their "freedom". However, the reality is a lot more  
> complex and a lot less Orwellian. The main barrier to overseas  
> travel for most Cubans is financial; they simply can't afford it.  
> If they have the money and a visa they can normally fly anywhere,  
> but it's very difficult to obtain a visa from the United States  
> unless you're part of the annual immigration quota. Cuba being a  
> poor country concerned with equality tries to make sure that  
> citizens complete their military service or their social service.  
> Before emigrating abroad, trained professionals are supposed to  
> give something back to the country for their free education, which  
> includes medical school and all other schools. And Cuba, being  
> unceasingly threatened by a well-known country to the north, must  
> take precautions: Certain people in the military and those who have  
> worked in intelligence or have other sensitive information may also  
> need permission to travel; this is something that is found to one  
> extent or another all over the world.
>
>      Americans need permission to travel to Cuba. Is the United  
> States a free country? Washington makes it so difficult for its  
> citizens to obtain permission to travel to Cuba it's virtually a  
> prohibition. I have been rejected twice by the US Treasury Department.
>
>      Americans on the "No-fly list" can't go anywhere.
>
>      All Americans need permission to leave the country. The  
> permission slip -- of which one must have a sufficient quantity --  
> is green and bears the picture of a US president.
>
>
> Save this for that glorious day when more than two centuries of  
> American "democracy" reaches its zenith with a choice between Condi  
> and Hillary.
> Condoleezza Rice, testifying April 5 before the Senate Foreign  
> Relations Committee about the US-India nuclear deal:
>
>      "India's society is open and free. It is transparent and  
> stable. It is multiethnic. It is a multi-religious democracy that  
> is characterized by individual freedom and the rule of law. It is a  
> country with which we share common values. ... India is a rising  
> global power that we believe can be a pillar of stability in a  
> rapidly changing Asia. In other words, in short, India is a natural  
> partner for the United States."
>
>      And here is a State Department human rights report -- released  
> the very same day -- that had this to say about India:
>
>        "The Government generally respected the rights of its  
> citizens and continued efforts to curb human rights abuses,  
> although numerous serious problems remained. These included  
> extrajudicial killings, disappearances, custodial deaths, excessive  
> use of force, arbitrary arrests, torture, poor prison conditions,  
> and extended pretrial detention, especially related to combating  
> insurgencies in Jammu and Kashmir. Societal violence and  
> discrimination against women, trafficking of women and children for  
> forced prostitution and labor, and female feticide and infanticide  
> remained concerns. Poor enforcement of laws, widespread corruption,  
> a lack of accountability, and the severely overburdened court  
> system weakened the delivery of justice."
>
>      Is it not enough to murder your brain?
>
>
> For the record
>
> In March I agreed to speak on a panel at the American-Arab Anti- 
> Discrimination Committee convention, to be held in June in  
> Washington, DC.  The panel is called: "America, Empire, Democracy  
> and the Middle East". Then someone at the ADC apparently realized  
> that I was the person whose book had been recommended by Osama bin  
> Laden in January, and they tried to cancel my appearance with  
> phoney excuses. I objected, calling them cowards; they relented,  
> then changed their mind again, telling me finally "all of the seats  
> on the journalism panel, for the ADC convention, are filled."  Two  
> months after our agreement, they had discovered that all the panel  
> seats were filled.
>
>      American Muslims are very conservative. 72% of them voted for  
> Bush in 2000, before they got a taste of a police state. Now,  
> they're still very conservative, plus afraid.
>
>      University officials are also conservative, or can easily be  
> bullied by campus conservative organizations which are part of a  
> well-financed national campaign (think David Horowitz) to attack  
> the left on campus, be they faculty, students or outside speakers.  
> Since the bin Laden recommendation, January 19, I have not been  
> offered a single speaking engagement on any campus; a few students  
> have tried to arrange something for me but were not successful at  
> convincing school officials. This despite January-May normally  
> being the most active period for me and other campus speakers.
>
>      Speakout, a California agency which places progressive  
> speakers on campuses, informs me that the Horowitz-type groups have  
> succeeded in cutting sharply into their business.[11]
>
>
> NOTES
> [1] (Thanks to Kevin Barrett of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian  
> Alliance for 9/11 Truth for the title of this section)
>      Washington Post, May 5, 2006, p.B1
> [2] New York Times, June 30, 2004
> [3] Washington Post, April 12, 2006, p.C3
> [4] Associated Press, November 16, 2005
> [5] See my essay on the use of the atomic bomb: http:// 
> members.aol.com/essays6/abomb.htm
> [6] See, for example, Joyce & Gabriel Kolko, "The Limits of Power:  
> The World and US Foreign Policy 1945-1954" (1972), chapters 13, 16,  
> 17; Sallie Pisani, "The CIA and the Marshall Plan" (1991) passim;  
> Frances Stoner Saunders, "The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the  
> world of arts and letters" (2000) passim
> [7] The Independent (London), May 8, 2006
> [8] http://www.ur.umn.edu/FMPro?-db=releases&-lay=web&
> -format=umnnewsreleases/releasesdetail.html&ID=2816&-Find
> [9] Washington Post, May 13, 2006, p.10
> [10] Reuters, March 17, 2006
> [11] http://www.speakersandartists.org/
>
>
>