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A third voice being(independently) convergent with Pelletiere, LaRouche, Europol approach and ..... ??
Please see especially the below paragraph:
"The second Question"
andreas
------------------------
IT IS HIGH TIME
FOR TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH
Reflections on Crime and Punishment
September 16, 2001
Raymond K. Kent, Emeritus
History Department
University of California, Berkeley
This writer was standing in a Madison, Wisconsin, bookstore, classical music
coming through a rather good radio, when a news-break announced that
President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. A sudden numbness was overtaken
by tears and a sense of helplessness. Given the political context of the
times, I automatically assumed that conspiracy to kill him was involved and
my being turned to anger and strong desire to find and put to death his
killer or killers and those who had planned the assassination. While not
supporting a number of JFK's foreign-policy moves I loved the man for his
elegance, his wit and his youth. Something inside of me was dying with him.
A strikingly similar progression came about early Tuesday morning in
California, when the CBS News reported over another rather good radio that
massive destruction in New York City's World Trade Center and in the
Pentagon had taken place, with huge loss of lives. There was one added
difference, beyond the number of lives lost. The anger and desire to punish
was augmented by an almost physically painful frustration.
The U.S. involvement in the Balkans and a general foreign-policy arrogance
during the Clinton Era, articulated most forcefully by Madeleine Albright,
led me to try and convince our foreign-policy "elite" of two major dangers.
One was that our unquestioned might and supremacy in the world spell neither
omnipotence nor a high degree of security. The other one was that the
American People will ultimately come to pay the price of this "elite's"
misguided, egregious and, at times, even deliberately evil influence on acts
abroad. In 1997, Congress was petitioned not to allow Madeleine Albright to
become the Secretary of State (extract reproduced below). The initial alarm.
(extract also reproduced below) was printed abroad in 1996. . There are two
latest ones. "Dangerous Gap - Legacy of the Clinton Era" was written in May
2001 and posted on the Internet. The last one appeared in the Washington
Times' Insight Magazine (as well as Pravda) on 31 August 2001.
Such sudden access came as a a miracle. Why? Because no one in the U.S.
would publish any of my articles penned in the course of six years. . Of the
dozens of letters to the Editor only one was printed in a truncated fashion.
I came to understand that a powerful thought control existed in this Land of
Freedom. It could turn rational, even learned and researched articles by a
reputable scholar into inconsequential rant, good mainly for use as toilet
paper.
Something else was learned the hard way too. During the so-called "air war"
against Yugoslavia (24 March-5 June 1999) a combination of Government and
Corporate Media manipulated the American People with shameless and
unmitigated savagery. The greatest allies of this manipulation were the
general apathy and various "humanitarian" agendas. One result was that the
public at large could not "connect" events in an area of no apparent
National Interest or proximity to the U.S. with any harm coming home. The
other is that American "Exceptionalism " and the moral purity of Innocence
precluded the possibility that completely amoral, perverse and obscene
persons could come to dominate our foreign policy and shape our acts abroad.
It was apparently not grasped then as it is not perceived now that no matter
what foreign policy decisions are made and implemented their Originators and
Executors are never held accountable and have never faced prison terms and
capital punishment for having caused destruction, loss of life and misery
abroad. .
The First Question
The attacks of last Tuesday have been compared with Pearl Harbor. They
represent another sneak attack. Pearl Harbor impelled the American People to
support the U,S. entry into World War II, going on for some two years then.
The carnage in New York City and Washington is impelling the American People
to support, as they are told, the U.S. entry into WWIII. But, this is where
the similarities terminate without being carried toward two questions that
must be asked.
The attacker at Pearl Harbor was geographically finite and fully
identified. It was not associated with a major religion. It synchronized the
State with its military might. The opposite holds true today. Potential and
proven anti-Ameriucan terrorists are diffused all over Asia, with some in
Africa, Europe, Latin America and even within the United States as
"sleepers." Most are, however, in areas in which Islam is the State
Religion. All of the governments which allow anti-American terrorist groups
on their turfs do not tolerate terrorism against themselves. The potential
anti-American terrorists are not synchronized with the States that harbor
them. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor aimed at expulsion of the U.S.
might and economic interests from Asia while seeking to replace them. While
there are some with an ardent desire to expel U.S. might and economic
interests from the Middle East, the U.S. is the major purchaser of its oil.
Equally, the anti-American terrorists are not seeking to overthrow and
replace the existing governments in states that allow them residence. Some
terrorists and would-be terrorists are nationals of a host state, others are
not. So, the first question must be: what is the aim or aims of "attack on
the United States?"
The answers given so far consist mainly of asserting our endemic goodness
and the terrorist evil. "They" are out to destroy our way of life." They"
come from an entirely different culture. "They" are religious zealots of
Islam, the Fundamentalists. "They" fear us as a Beacon of Freedom. "They"
call us "The Great Satan" because our secularism and economic system have
brought undeniable prosperity to the American People, an example replicated
in post-war Western Europe and Japan, with U.S. help. . " They" hate us
because of our unyielding support for Israel. "They" struck in order to
instill fear into the American psyche. There are some elements of truth in
all of this. The U.S. has been unpopular among the Middle Eastern Arab
populations (often called "The Street" by Middle Eastern specialists here)
since the mid-1940.s but attacks against the U.S. at home add up to just
two, one recent (first destruction of the World Trade Center) and the other
just three days old.
There has been such an escalation of hatred to the point that some 20 men,
including four professional pilots, could be found among the Arabs willing
to commit suicide in order to make a specific point of impact. Their
immediate aim was to convince " the Americans" that they can be hit badly AT
HOME, that they are hardly invulnerable and that if they are not to face
even worse attacks at home with other and more destructive weapons their
leaders MUST CHANGE their foreign policy abroad. A broader aspect of this
change is to provoke the U.S. into military retaliation against Islamic host
states. As this would involve necessarily attacks on civilian populations,
it would ignite and radicalize the whole world of Islam against the U.S. As
a member of our foreign policy "elite" might say, "Harrington's scenario of
the Clash of Civilizations is here." It is a nice pseudo-intellectual way of
closing the debate.
In so far as Israel is concerned, those adhering to the terrorist option
have concluded that Israel treats the Palestinians increasingly like a
Racist Colonial-Imperial Power, combining punishment with humiliation. More
than that, they perceive an "Israelization" of America's foreign policy over
the last decade as the U.S, which has armed, aided and "sanctioned" this
Imperial Israel, is now behaving as its replica toward the rest of the
world. This "twist" is the direct result not of the continuous U.S.
assistance to Israel but of its attack on Yugoslavia. Despite their
religious affainity with Kosovo's Muslim Albanians, the vast majority of
Arabs saw something new and most disturbing, with deep links to their own past.
They saw that a people IN EUROPE that had done no harm to the United States
got their infrastructure taken out, with civilian casualties, with bombs and
missiles for eleven weeks without any real defense and without the loss of a
single American soldier. They transposed this into their own future from
their own past. Few will remember today in this country the psychologically
devastating impact on the Arab world attained by the Napoleonic conquest of
Egypt at the end of the Eighteenth century. It was attained with
revolutionary modern weapons technology of the period, with the loss of one
French soldier. It was a point in time when the most advanced Muslim
theologians concluded that ways must be found to combine western technology
with an Islam that rejected materialism. The burden of that legacy and
testament provided the gravity which brought the terror jets down.
The Second Question
To carry the Pearl Harbor analogy to its logical conclusion, it has been
discovered decades after the defeat of Imperial Japan that President
Roosevelt and his Naval Intelligence high-ranking officers knew of the
impending Japanese attack on the Pearl Harbor Fleeet but did nothing to stop
it in order to jump-start a reluctant American People into WWII.. It is
painfully difficult to believe this but it happens to be true. An entire
fleet was sacrificed to that purpose by a Democratic and popular President.
It is virtually inconceivable that a multi-mega billon dollar Intelligence
Community in the U.S. has had not a clue of the impending attack on a target
that has been so prominently singled out once before, from the ground up.
One of the four pilots was "known" and shadowed. Four hijacked large jets
and no one knew anything until it was over? It is possible, perhaps even
probable that, at some level of intelligence, someone got wind of a planned
and limited air attack but let it simply "pass" either by design or by
having been exposed to too many false alarms. It should be recalled that,
twice during this Summer, the American public was generally alerted, in the
wake of high terrorism-related elctronic activity, both in respect to travel
abroad and possible terrorist acts at home. The Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency even briefed the Congress extensively in respect to
terrorism as the most immediate and major threat to the United States.
In addition, the economy was slowing down, Hi-Tech stocks as well as DOW
were badly mauled while spiraling downward, jobs were being lost by the
thousands and the budget surplus just about disappeared. The Hawks in-charge
of U.S. defense want wide support for unimpeded actions abroad from an
American People overwhelmingly opposed to wars. Star wars and nuclear shield
preparations are going forward whether the people approve or not.. There has
been around a distinct need to "galvanize" the American People again into
action and the Congress into another Gul -of- Tonkin Resolution. An "attack
on America" could therefore not have come at a better moment for the Hawks.
This is coupled with the laughable demand by the U.S. to NATO to implement
Article 5 of its Charter and come to the aid of the Echelon, NSA, DIA,
CIA,USAF, FBI offices abroad, Special Forces ready to strike anywhere,
Cruise Missiles and Tomahawks , Apache Helicopters and B-52s.
Economic pundits are predicting a further slump after the "attack on
America." But, as experience has shown, WAR , full war tends to produce full
employment and 'consumer confidence" goes on the rise with "victories." It
is not hard to imagine that hi-tech stocks will have even a remarkable
upswing with people buying newest computers and cell phones, with the
Pentagon placing orders for ever more advanced weapons systems. Silicon
Valley could just as well be humming again as it comes out of electric
blackouts to save energy while we, all of us, unite behind a President with
mounting popularity and back him up to "end the States that harbor terrorists."
We also must, or so we are told, start getting used to the violation of
"some" of our civil liberties. The Secretary of Defense threatens everyone
in the Pentagon and Intelligence Community with even criminal action if they
sneak out any information about where the "hits" are going to be made.
Individual "super-patriots" and "avengers" are already making life very
unpleasant for the Arab-Americans and other Americans of Muslim Faith. If
this "spirit" of "mobilization" continues it will not be long for the
blacklisting of home intellectuals who disagree with the Hawks, of even
"ordinary" Americans who can think for themselves? The same men and women
who so savagely manipulated the American People during the "air war" over
Yugoslavia are more than capable of solidifying a modern version of Fascist
totalitarianism at home in the name of "Patriotism:," "National Security"
and "National Interest." When that happens, the 20 dead terrorists will have
achieved at least one goal.
The Anger and Frustration through Autobiography
I am still angry but not only at the terrorists. I am angry at the inability
of our men and women with real powers to match the greatness of America.
Where America was founded on anti-Imperialism they have twisted it into a
new Imperial Power with global ambitions and new methods of domination which
is, at the same time, economic, political and cultural. It has been called
"Globalization" but this term only describes the obvious scope. The real
driving force behind it is the Newest Ideology, "the "ism" of ""Globalism."
Its aim is the New World Order in which only the most powerful states will
retain their sovereignty." It is thus clear that, in "ending the states
which harbor terrorists" this New Ideology would be backed by the force of
arms just as it has been already at work against the Serbs, one of the few
minor "holdouts." It was then that NATO became an aggressive arm of the
Pentagon, the expander of Globalism and police force of the New World Order.
I am angry at the new Political and Punishing Culture that has emerged
during the Clinton years, bordering on Fascism, new-style, with 33 out the
total 47 armed interventions since WWII, with Clinton looking more like an
American Peron and Hillary as "our" "people's Evita."
I am angry at the wanton, unnecessary and capricious destruction of Serbia,
at the constant and continuous humiliation of the Serbs, after setting them
up for total deformation and defamation for years through disinformation,
straight-faced lies, staged massacres and the attribution to an entire and
honorable people the collective guilt for the egregious crimes of the few.
All that to "galvanize" the American People to support the naked aggression
and war crimes of the U.S.-led NATO. I am angry at lingering Racism against
the Serbs at the Hague "Tribunal " set-up by Madeleine Albright. I am in a
state of disbelief that Washington never came up with a single prominent
Solon to get up on his feet and castigate the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs
>from Western Slavonia (August 1991-February 1992), from Krajina (August
1995), from Kosovo in 1999. I am astounded by the silence erected in
Washington over the well-documented legacy of ordinary crime by the
U.S.-trained Bastard Army for the "Liberation of Kosovo." I am saddened to
hear the cynical laughter when one complains that Kosovo is the birthplace
of the Serb religion and culture, when one finds it hypocritical to take an
area away from one ethnicity's patrimony to give it to the most unsavory
elements of another.
I am angry at that Moral Joe Lieberman who could say with a straight face
the never-repudiated claim that the KLA "is fighting for our values" despite
overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I am angry that he, too, as the most
moral of our Senators, has received a handful of ducats from the
American-Albanian Diaspora. I can no longer muster any respect for him. I do
consider Madeleine Albright to be a war criminal . Even Time Magazine put
her on its frontispiece for "Madeleine's War" and there is abundant evidence
that she was the main driving force and architect for the 78 days of
destruction of a people and their well being even after they had twice
sheltered warmly her family in flight. To say nothing about the 500,000
children of Iraq whose deaths she publicly deemed worthwhile because "we
care more about his people than Saddam." I consider General Wesley Clark
another major war criminal as he calibrated the destruction of Serbia to
break the will of the Serb people while complaining that civilian
authorities in NATO tied his hands to punish the Serbs even more and harder.
It was not enough for him to poison with all kinds of long-lasting and
gene-mutating toxins the soil, the air and the water of both Serbia and
Kosovo. I am just slightly less sure about the complicity of Anthony Lake
and Sanford Berger and, ultimately, of the ex-President Clinton. The
collective and diabolical arrogance of the named individual members of the
power elite is entirely UN-AMERICAN. It has nothing to do with any
discernible value of the American People but it does bring out the
background of Tuesday's tragedies in New York City, at the Pentagon and in
an empty field of rural Pennsylvania.
Yet, my innermost frustration comes from a paper trail of efforts to prevent
terrorism by suggesting, by begging, by pleading for changes in the
Punisihing Political Culture, in arrogance, in pettiness , in venality, in
lack of magnanimity in the aftermath of punishment, in financial blackmail
and in deliberate humiliation through what can only be described as a
cerebral terror, laced with Racism. For the record, herewith are some of the
extracts over the years, from first to last, kept at a bare minimum as the
the full texts could easily fill a large volume.
The Paper Trail
In December 1996, in the French Journal Dialogue (V/20, pp. 16-32) I pointed
out that every imperial punishment of the Serbs in this Century ended in a
disaster. This was true of Austria-Hungary in 1914. It was true of Nazi
Germany in 1941. It was true of the end of Soviet domination of Communist
regimes and parties in 1948. This when the Serbs in control of the Yugoslav
intelligence apparatus blocked an attempted Soviet take-over and Stalin
promptly expelled Yugoslavia from the Cominform, resulting in polycentric
and nationalist-dominated sequences. I wrote, "Can the U.S. really defeat
the pattern and avoid some disaster as result of its entrance into the
ex-Yugoslav tragedy? If it "wins" in Bosnia, the Clinton Administration will
conclude that the new Political Culture gives international confirmation
that might always makes right so that the world will be "re-invented" to
America's liking. What was done in Bosnia and the rest of the old Yugoslavia
can be done elsewhere, as the U.S. reserves the right to select its targets
for "necessary improvements." This will gain even more strength in the
second term because of one feature that absolutely defines the American
Liberals. They sincerely believe that they possess a monopoly on both
rationalism and reasoning higher than anyone else's and this underpins the
philosophical base of the dominant Political Culture. It cannot be stressed
often enough that the "Bosnian dimension" will serve to add impetus to U.S.
meddling in ethno-religious conflicts to impose "civilized behavior" (the
old French idea of Mission Civilisatrice) worked out in the U.S. policy
rooms and think-tanks and coupled with a forceful posturing and glaring
obsession with "leadership." In turn, this will make it certain that America
and Americans become the favorite targets of terrorist lunatics, obsessive
haters and nationalist avengers from every corner of the planet earth as the
pulsating Political Culture simply eggs them on." The article concluded that
"one can only hope that in punishing the Serbs, yesterday, today and
tomorrow at Kosovo, America's reigning Political Culture can be induced to
recall that the unsinkable Titanic fell prey to a block of ice." This was,
in 1996, an isolated voice in a petrified forest. If anyone with authority
and influence got to it, the message was dead on arrival. It seemed as if
Cassandra in the shape of a "Serb apologist" was out to spoil all the fun of
"Virtuous Wars," the "Civilizing Mission" and for "Humanitarians" full of
hate for "the Serbs." The American in the message became simply invisible.
The next extract is partly summarized. It comes from the same Journal in
1999 (VIII/29-30, pp.86-100). It is a reproduction of this writers petition
of two years earlier to the Congressional Review Committees not to approve
the nomination of Madeleine Albright as the incoming Secretary of State. Her
penchant for arrogance (already clear while she served in the United
Nations) was underscored and illustrated with some precise references. There
was a quote also relating this assessment by an African Delegate "that
Ambassador Albright is the only person who can unite all 180 countries
AGAINST the United Sates."
The petition was also an expose of her propensity to hide the truth and to
practice the most selective kind of self-professed "humanitarian concerns."
Her cold-blooded cruelty came out of the green light she gave for the Croat
blitzkrieg of August 1995 in Krajina which resulted in the most spectacular
ethnic cleansing of the Yugoslav fratricidal tragedy. . Some 250,000 Serb
civilians fled in panic as their homes were looted and torched and while the
elderly who remained behind were simply slaughtered.. Four of the U.S./NATO
jets took part in this gruesome undertaking which "disappeared" from the
corporate- media TV at home within a couple of days All this was in sharp
contrast to almost massive reports of considerably lesser crimes attributed
to the Serbs, some of which are true enough but others are not. I wrote that
"it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Madeleine Albright has used
the prestige and the power of the American People and the United States
Government to carry out a personal vendetta against a particular South
European ethnicity which has also contributed about a million Americans of
Serb origin." Her nomination was approved anyway, without delay and by
unanimous vote.
I then concluded that "if the U.S. foreign policy is to register future
successes its makers will need to shift from an aggressive model to what
could be called a preventive one. This implies a great deal more than just
sending diplomats to mediate in various regional conflicts, to threaten with
sanctions and military interventions. It would require a re-orientation in
both thinking and behavior. If Islamic "Fundamentalism" is perceived as one
of the principal threats to the U.S. and the "West" as a whole, the best
weapons against it are the 101 Suras of the Koran, Muhammad.s Oral
Traditions and the Maliki Law. "Jihad" is but a twisted perversion of the
noun and the verb which demand application in the Lord's path without any
reference to use the sword in this moral endeavor." While Islam is also a
political Religion it does not advocate, sanction or approve terrorism.
Therein lies a part of the solution which will be proposed at the end of
this bill of particulars. .
To conclude a drastically shortened trail I turn to the paper on "Dangerous
Gap-Legacy of the Clinton Era." It was written just four months earlier. In
it, I noted the outrage which greeted the ejection of the U.S. from the U.N.
Commission on Human Rights. "Hardly anyone argues seriously that this was a
symbolic and actually well-intended message to the American People that
something had gone wrong with those who govern them , that something had, in
fact, tarnished the United States and that the gap between self-perception
in Washington and the way the U.S. is widely perceived today has grown too
wide. It did not just happen to 'come with the territory.'"
It is actually an attempt to ring alarm bells and virtually impose the
understanding of an acute and very real gap between the outer-world
realities and the self-perception in Washington, New York and Los Angeles
This is a problem that the ruling American elites refuse to acknowledge." It
is an apt sentence with which to end the paper trail.
For just a flickering moment in time, George W. Bush, then the Republican
Candidate for President, began to talk about the need for "humility" and for
"paying attention" to our allies.Because of this, inter alia, I voted for
him. Not very long in Office, President Bush succumbed to the four or five
Hawks around him and did just the opposite. He was noit arrogant. He was
even charming in his assertions of the primacy of the National Interest.
But, much of the rest of the world had no trouble in finding that his
positions on a number of great issues spelled out the will to go it in
alone, damn the friends and enemies alike. No one tells US what to do. To
paraphrase one of the Hawks, "in this Administration" "we" do not care what
others think of us and make no attempts to ingratiate ourselves to anyone.
Some concrete steps
It is always easier to be critical than to propose how to solve real and
recurring problems. Without further ado, herewith are a few suggestions.
First, terrorism and Islam must be separated in such a way that the current
and prospective terrorists who are Muslims cannot claim the support of this
Great Religion. This can be achieved by convening a vast conference of the
leading Islamic theologians from all of the countries in which Islam is
either the state religion or the faith of substantial parts of populations.
It will be up to these Best Men of Islam to do the separating, to isolate
terrorism for what it is, to threaten excommunication from Islam to
terrorist perpetrators who seek to envelop their gruesome inhumanities to
men, women and children in Islam..
Following the end and final Resolutions of this Conference, the Arab League
and the legitimate Muslim governments should put the terrorists thus
isolated from Islam on notice that they no longer belong to that Faith and
will be dealt with as common criminals.
This country needs to respond to what was done to its citizens and property
last Tuesday. Bombing the suspected shelters in Afghanistan, perhaps even
parachuting special teams to capture or kill Bin Laden who has admitted to
the earlier anti-American terrorism deserves the support of all of us. But,
after this there shoud be a pause if unspecified duration. We must first of
all not allow any real harm to come to the Arab-Americans and other citizens
and legal residents who are of Muslim faith. Instead of deliberately fanning
the fires of latent and revanchist American Nationalism -which we have
roundly condemned everywhere else-we might be able to take some different
steps that would show a degree of magnanimity. A good start would be to
propose the World Bank to forgive the $22-billin all-Yugoslav debt on which
Serbia alone is paying huge interest. We took out its economy via decade of
sanctions and eleven weeks of bombings without even a declaration of war. It
should not be a big deal for a nation that has reconstructed its former
major enemies, Germany and Japan, to give some relief to a people that never
did us any harm and sided with us in Two World Wars. The President might
also instruct the armed forces in the ex-Yugoslav space to no longer regard
or treat the Serbs as an enemy. Without reducing our support for the
survival of Israel we should not become its co-belligerent vis-à-vis the
Palestinians and disallow a priori any criticism of its leaders out of fear
of being charged with "anti-Semitism."." To this writer, anyone who succumbs
to the lumping of all the Jews together is a racist candidate. . General
Sharon is not General Rabin. American Jews are not Israelis. Most hold
Israel in affection but they are Americans first, just like Serb-Americans
or any other hyphenated Americans. At home, we might forgo the missile
shield in favor of eliminating pockets of poverty and marginal existence. We
might revamp convalescent homes so that the elderly who find themselves in
one will pass away in dignity with kindness of others and the care each
deserves. We might increase the study of Humanities, English and foreign
languages at each educational level. All of that could easily be covered by
foregoing the shields of war and expanding the minds. We must be Athens not
Sparta. We must curb our own Hawks.