The remarkable perseverance of Iran's cultural identity, and the perpetual permanence of PERSIA.

The remarkable perseverance of Iran's cultural identity, and the perpetual permanence of PERSIA.

Iran is now widely spoken of as a “regional superpower”. That status owes a good deal to the operation of a law that Michael Axworthy mentions in his book, the law of unintended (though in this case, predictable) consequences: the American elimination of its two hostile neighbours, the regimes of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iran’s influence with Shia militias in Iraq, with Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, and worries over its nuclear programme, mean that understanding the country and its people is a matter of far more than academic interest. That means trying to understand a history which Iranians perceive – not without good cause – as stretching back continuously for 2,500 years.

By the halfway point of Axworthy’s history of Iran, he has reached the eighteenth century: he has dealt with twenty-two centuries, and has three left for the second half of the book. This lack of balance means that Empire of the Mind is not an ideal textbook. One would not go to it for the details of what happened during the Seljuk or Mongol periods. But for a more general reader who wants to understand Iran, it is the most useful, readable and informative book currently available. It combines an outline knowledge of the political events of those long centuries with an appreciation of what makes Persian culture distinctive: the significance of the Sufi approach to Islam, or of the major role played by poetry in the culture, for example. Some of this poetry has influence beyond Iran’s borders. As Axworthy remarks, Rumi is currently the bestselling poet in translation in the United States; though he also comments that “it has been Rumi’s misfortune to be befriended by numb-brained New Agery”. Axworthy’s chapter on the period between the Arab conquest in the seventh century ad and the Safavid takeover at the beginning of the sixteenth is light on events but much fuller on the great poets who flourished during those times. This is important if one hopes to understand how Iran ticks. Axworthy quotes a passage from Roy Mottahedeh’s great book The Mantle of the Prophet (1985 – still the first point of reference if one wants to make sense of the mullahs, and much else about Iranian history and culture): “Persian poetry came to be the emotional home in which the ambiguity that was at the heart of Iranian culture lived most freely and openly. What Persian poetry expressed was not an enigma to be solved but an enigma that was unsolvable”.

That ambiguity expresses itself in many forms. It continually vexes Western politicians as they attempt to comprehend the inscrutable workings of the regime. Axworthy’s title perhaps offers a helpful hint: Iran is an “Empire of the Mind” – its identity (“iraniyyat”, “Persian-ness”) and the remarkable perseverance of that identity, is much more cultural than political or even geographical in essence.

The most influential part of the book is no doubt likely to be its chapters on modern Iran. But Axworthy tells us much that is well worth knowing about the earlier periods. His account of the troubles after the death of the Achaemenid King Cambyses has a deliberately familiar ring: “An Iranian revolution, led by a charismatic cleric, seizing power from an oppressive monarch, asserting religious orthodoxy, attacking false believers, and drawing support from economic grievances – in the sixth century bce”. The Greco-Persian wars are presented from the Persian perspective rather than from the “democracy versus autocracy” point of view that Western education has inculcated for so long. Anyone interested in the evolution of Judaism and Christianity would benefit from Axworthy’s pages on the pre-Islamic Persian religion of Mazdaism/Zoroastrianism. Alexander the Great gets a deservedly unenthusiastic press. The excellent pages on Shi’ism with which the chapter on the Safavids starts should prove very helpful to those who are baffled by the current divisions in the Islamic world – and some knowledge of the imposition of official Shi’ism on Iran by the Safavids, supplemented by what we are told about the religious developments of the eighteenth century, is essential to understanding the Islamic Republic. His suggestion, however, that the move to Shi’ism was “a deliberate political act” is anachronistic. Bernard Lewis once wrote of the Nizari Isma’ilis (the “Assassins”) that “when modern man ceased to accord first place to religion in his own concerns, he also ceased to believe that other men, in other times, could ever truly have done so, and so he began to examine the great religious movements of the past in search of interests and motives acceptable to modern minds.” Much the same applies to Shah Isma’il Safavi and his imposition of Shi’ism.

The chapters on modern Iran are very well-informed and characterized by common sense. Axworthy does not generally take sides, though he administers praise and blame where he thinks it is due. During the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth, the shadows of Russia and Britain loomed large. Axworthy is a former British diplomat, but that does not mean that Britain gets off lightly. Britain is often blamed for the coup which brought Reza Shah to power in 1921. That incident has perhaps still not been fully explained, but Axworthy is surely right to say that there is no convincing evidence of a “plot”: “The coup of 1921 and its aftermath”, he sums up, “came about as a result of a temporary coincidence of interests”. Still, it is one of the events that has contributed to the Iranian perception, widespread to this day, that everything that went wrong was the fault of the British, except what was the fault of the Russians. I am not sure he is right to dismiss this notion of British influence as early as he does: “From 1953 onwards it was plain to all that the US was now the dominant external power in Iran”. In the early 1970s, a highly educated Tehrani woman remarked to me that “Of course, it’s you British who decide everything that happens here”. I demurred: “Wouldn’t you say that, these days, the USA is the dominant power?”. She did not even blink. “Well, maybe, but it’s you British who tell the Americans what to do.” As Axworthy observes, with some justice, “Tehran in the 1970s was a strange place”. On the other hand, it probably was the British who, initially, told the Americans what to do about Prime Minister Mossadeq after his nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1951. Axworthy’s discussion of the 1953 coup is very even-handed, though the now fashionable view that the overthrow of Mossadeq was and has remained utterly crucial in damaging the prospects of good relations between Iran and the West is not entirely convincing. Even the much (and often justly) maligned Muhammad Reza Shah gets a fair crack of the whip: “The Shah’s rule was a mixture of failures and successes; neither all one nor all the other”. The life, career and character of Ayatollah Khomeini are perceptively described, though I doubt that his rise to a dominant position in the Shia hierarchy was as surprising as depicted. During her extensive travels across Iran in the 1960s, the late Professor Ann Lambton often asked the peasants, “Who is the marja-e taqlid?” (the supreme religious authority in Iranian Shi’ism). They always said, “Khomeini”. The causes and consequences of the 1979 revolution are lucidly discussed, and another common misperception corrected: “The revolution of 1979 was not solely and perhaps not even primarily a religious revolution”. An eyewitness in Tehran during the Revolution watched all the massive anti-Shah demonstrations without ever seeing a mullah. But the religious contribution and Khomeini’s effective leadership “lent cohesion and a sense of common purpose to disparate elements, even those that were not overtly religious at all”. Those who are responsible for formulating policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran should read Axworthy’s final chapter, “From Khatami to Ahmadinejad”. It is refreshingly sane and well-informed, notably on the nuclear issue. He is no fan of the regime, but he suggests that “the declaration by Iranian religious leaders against ownership of nuclear weapons should be given some credence”, although without implying that this should in any way be taken on trust. He suggests, very plausibly, that a nuclear capability rather than actual possession of nuclear weapons may be Iran’s aim. He makes the unpopularity of the Ahmadinejad government, because of its economic failures, very clear, and helpfully sheds light on the (probable) limits of the President’s power (some commentators in the West have trouble with the idea that the man with the title of President is not necessarily the man in ultimate charge). While giving the Islamic Republic credit for some significant domestic achievements, he shows that one result of three decades of rule by the mullahs has been that Iran is now the least religious major country in the Middle East.

There are of course a few slips and points with which to disagree. The Khwarazmians were not a tribe; Tabriz was not the Seljuk capital; I do not think the contemporary writers’ figures for the numbers massacred by the Mongols are “credible”. It is a pity that Axworthy’s dislike of Mani and Manichaeism should have tempted him into including several pages of irrelevant polemic about St Augustine of Hippo. But none of this detracts from the fact that this is a fine book, and a worthy successor to the author’s 2006 biography of Nadir Shah, the eighteenth-century Shah of Persia. It deserves a wide readership.

NSA Whistleblower: Grill the CEOs on Illegal Spying...

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NSA Whistleblower: Grill the CEOs on Illegal Spying...

Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice shed new light on the Bush administration's warrantless domestic spying last week when he told MSNBC that the NSA blended credit card transaction records with wiretap data to keep tabs on thousands of Americans.

But Tice didn't say where the credit card information, and other financial data, came from. Did the agency scoop it in as part of its surveillance of U.S. communications backbones, or did financial companies give up your records in bulk to the NSA?

The distinction is significant. Telecommunication companies, such as AT&T and Verizon, are embroiled in lawsuits over their alleged cooperation with the government's warrantless surveillance. If credit card companies and banks also provided information without a warrant, it's conceivable they could face a courtroom challenge as well.

I spoke with Tice extensively in the spring of 2006. With Bush still in power, the whistleblower was considerably more taciturn than on television last week. But looking back through the transcript of my interviews now, in the context of his new revelations, it seems clear that Tice was saying that credit card companies and banks gave the same kind of cooperation to the government that phone companies did.

"To get at what's really going on here, the CEOs of these telecom companies, and also of the banking and credit card companies, and any other company where you have big databases, those are the people you have to haul in to Congress and tell them you better tell the truth," he said at the time. "Because anyone in the government is going to claim executive privilege."

The New York Times broke the story in 2006 that the NSA obtained access to financial records in the international SWIFT database. But that database mostly involves wire transfers of money in and out of the U.S., not domestic transactions. Tice's comments reveal that the agency may have obtained bulk data on domestic credit card transactions as well from U.S. financial institutions -- all without a warrant.

I spoke with Tice for a story about a secret room at an AT&T facility in Bridgeton, Missouri that had the earmarks of an NSA data mining operation.

Shortly after Mark Klein, a retired AT&T employee in San Francisco, came forward with information about a secret room in a San Francisco building that appeared to be providing the NSA with a real-time data feed, two sources who once worked for the company told me about a similar room in the company's Bridgeton facility that appeared to be doing the same kind of data mining at a much greater level. Bridgeton is the network operations center for AT&Ts broadband services.

I turned to Tice for more details. Tice had already publicly identified himself as one of the sources the New York Times had used for its 2005 story on the government's warrantless wiretapping. Tice warned me at the start of our conversation that he believed our phone call was being monitored by the FBI and that there were a lot of things he wouldn't be able to discuss, on the advice of his lawyer.

Tice had been in the intelligence community since 1985. He entered the Air Force after finishing college, and went to work in signals intelligence. After leaving the military, he worked as an intelligence contractor, then was employed by the Defense Intelligence Agency before taking a job with the NSA.

His unclassified resume hides all of this history. "[It says] I deal with space systems. Space communications, all kinds of space weenie stuff. If it deals with outer space I'm your man," he said.

Do you have any connection to outer space stuff? I asked.

"I watch Buck Rogers."

What follows are excerpts from my interviews with Tice, beginning with his explanation of one way the NSA's data mining could operate.

Tice: Say you're pretty sure you're looking for terrorists, and you're pretty sure that the percentage of women terrorists as opposed to men is pretty [small]. So you just filter out all female voices. And there's a way to determine whether the signature of the voice is male or female. So, boom, you get rid of 50 percent of your information just by filtering there. Then from your intelligence work you realize that most terrorists never talk more than two minutes. So any conversation more than two minutes, you immediately filter that out. You start winnowing down what you're looking for.

Q: Without really knowing what it is you're looking for?

Tice: Right. And if you can develop a machine to look for the needle in the haystack and what you come out with from having the machine sift through the haystack is a box of straw, where maybe the needle's in there and maybe a few bonus needles, then that's a whole lot better than having humans try to sift through a haystack.

Q: Presuming that the NSA is collecting data in San Francisco or data mining, what happens to the data after it's collected? If they find actionable material in the data does the NSA pass it on to the FBI?

Tice: The NSA avoids sending anything to the FBI if they can help it. If there is a criminal element or activity in the data it has to be determined whether it's passed to the FBI, or Homeland Security, as it happens to be these days. When I was in the business, we all knew that the FBI leaked like a sieve. So we were very hesitant to take advantage of the FBI on anything because you were liable to see it on the news the next day. The FBI will compromise anything to get a conviction. But in the intelligence community you don't think that way. We're more than willing to let a criminal go to protect classified information. . . .

Q: But would the info be passed to the FBI if it involved terrorists and national security?

Tice: Yes, they would. And if it's some big mob thing, they would also give it to the FBI, but tell them to come up with some other way as to how they got the information.

Q: Why would the agency need to be so secretive about the AT&T rooms?

Tice: The big reason why they would put the San Francisco operation at such a high classification level is to hide the fact that they're breaking the law and to hide the fact that they're breaking the NSA's own policy. It should be [the sort of project] that any NSA analyst should be able to walk in and have access to. But to cloister it away where only a few people know about it means that it's something they don't want anyone to know about. ...

Say we're doing that same sort of deal overseas against a foreigner. ... More than likely anyone in NSA could potentially have access to that information. It wouldn't be compartmentalized. So if we set up that same scenario, even covertly in some frame room in Bucharest or something, anyone at NSA with a TS/SCI clearance could potentially look at intelligence reports from information garnered from that particular collection point. So all of a sudden that same thing is being used here in the states and it's being put into a special SAP program -- Special Access Program. ... They're extremely closely held programs that are super-duper clearance nonsense. It's what I specialized for the last eleven years or whatever.

Q: So you're saying that San Francisco and this other room [in Bridgeton] reek of "super-duper" secrecy?

Tice: Yes, it reeks of SAP. Potentially. For NSA to do what they did ... it means that they knew that it was illegal and the reason they put this super high clearance on it was because they were protecting their own hides to keep anyone within NSA from finding out that it was going on. ...

Let me tell you, the biggest sweat that happened at NSA happened when John Kerry almost got elected president [in 2004], because they were concerned they were all going to be thrown in jail. They were all wiping sweat off their forehead when he lost. That's the scuttlebutt.

Q: Is it correct to say that, if the NSA is doing what Mark Klein says they are doing, that this would be a departure from the NSAs mission? Meaning that this would be the first time since 1978 or so when FISA was passed that it was engaging in this kind of activity?

Tice: That's correct. This would be an entirely new business for them, especially since FISA.

If you look at USSID 18, the NSA's bible on how it operates, the number one commandment of the NSAs ten commandments is You Shall Not Spy on Americans. So when this was brought up, I assume by [former NSA Director Michael] Hayden, he knew that what he was proposing was a violation of the fourth amendment and of USSID 18. And everyone at NSA knows this, too, because it's drilled into our heads over and over again.

To get at what's really going on here, the CEOs of these telecom companies, and also of the banking and credit card companies and any other company where you have big databases, those are the people you have to haul in to Congress and tell them you better tell the truth. Because anyone in the government is going to claim executive privilege.

...

I just hope in the long run that ... at some point that the American people wake up and that this stuff is dealt with. Right now ... do you know the adage about the frog in the water? That's what we're dealing with here. The American people are the frog in the tepid water, and the temperature is slowly being turned up. And we're about to become frog soup, and the American people don't know what's happening.

Aristotle said that the biggest danger to democracy is not insurgency, it's apathy. And I think that's what we're seeing right now. To a large extent it's politicians doing CYA and doing everything they can to make sure that people don't know what's going on. But to another extent, it's the populace who is more concerned about Janet Jackson's breast jumping out of her dress at the Super Bowl as opposed to what's really important in this world. Who cares about Britney Spears having her baby on her lap or all that nonsense that you see on TV?

I've done my constitutional duty. I've done what I had to do. That's all I'll say. Let the chips fall where they may. I'm out of the game. I've fallen on my sword.

Change (in PNAC rhetoric) we can believe in....

Change (in PNAC rhetoric) we can believe in....

I’ve said all along that whatever good changes might occur in regard to non-foreign policy issues, such as what’s already taken place concerning the environment and abortion, the Obama administration will not produce any significantly worthwhile change in US foreign policy; little done in this area will reduce the level of misery that the American Empire regularly brings down upon humanity. And to the extent that Barack Obama is willing to clearly reveal what he believes about anything controversial, he appears to believe in the empire.

The Obamania bubble should already have begun to lose some air with the multiple US bombings of Pakistan within the first few days following the inauguration. The Pentagon briefed the White House of its plans, and the White House had no objection. So bombs away -- Barack Obama’s first war crime. The dozens of victims were, of course, all bad people, including all the women and children. As with all these bombings, we’ll never know the names of all the victims -- it’s doubtful that even Pakistan knows -- or what crimes they had committed to deserve the death penalty. Some poor Pakistani probably earned a nice fee for telling the authorities that so-and-so bad guy lived in that house over there; too bad for all the others who happened to live with the bad guy, assuming of course that the bad guy himself actually lived in that house over there.

The new White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, declined to answer questions about the first airstrikes, saying, “I’m not going to get into these matters.” [1] Where have we heard that before?

After many of these bombings in recent years, a spokesperson for the United States or NATO has solemnly declared, “We regret the loss of life.” These are the same words used by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on a number of occasions, but their actions were typically called “terrorist.”

I wish I could be an Obamaniac. I envy their enthusiasm. Here, in the form of an open letter to President Obama, are some of the “changes we can believe in” in foreign policy that would have to occur to win over the non-believers like me.

Iran

Just leave them alone. There is no “Iranian problem.” They are a threat to no one. Iran hasn’t invaded any other country in centuries. No, President Ahmadinejad did not threaten Israel with any violence. Stop patrolling the waters surrounding Iran with American warships. Stop halting Iranian ships to check for arms shipments to Hamas. (That’s generally regarded as an act of war.) Stop using Iranian dissident groups to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran. Stop kidnapping Iranian diplomats. Stop the continual spying and recruiting within Iran. And yet, with all that, you can still bring yourself to say, “If countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.” [2]

Iran has as much right to arm Hamas as the US has to arm Israel. And there is no international law that says that the United States, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not. Iran has every reason to feel threatened. Will you continue to provide nuclear technology to India, which has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while threatening Iran, an NPT signatory, with sanctions and warfare?

Russia

Stop surrounding the country with new NATO members. Stop looking to instigate new “color” revolutions in former Soviet republics and satellites. Stop arming and supporting Georgia in its attempts to block the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhasia, the breakaway regions on the border of Russia. And stop the placement of anti-missile systems in Russia’s neighbors, the Czech Republic and Poland, on the absurd grounds that it’s to ward off an Iranian missile attack. It was Czechoslovakia and Poland that the Germans also used to defend their imperialist ambitions -- The two countries were being invaded on the grounds that Germans there were being maltreated. The world was told.

“The U.S. government made a big mistake from the breakup of the Soviet Union,” said former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev last year. “At that time the Russian people were really euphoric about America and the U.S. was really number one in the minds of many Russians.” But, he added, the United States moved aggressively to expand NATO and appeared gleeful at Russia’s weakness. [3]

Cuba

Making it easier to travel there and send remittances is very nice (if, as expected, you do that), but these things are dwarfed by the need to end the US embargo. In 1999, Cuba filed a suit against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for economic losses and loss of life during the almost forty years of this aggression. The suit held Washington responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding and disabling of 2,099 others. We can now add ten more years to all three figures. The negative, often crippling, effects of the embargo extend into every aspect of Cuban life.

In addition to closing Guantanamo prison, the adjacent US military base established in 1903 by American military force should be closed and the land returned to Cuba.

The Cuban Five, held prisoner in the United States for over 10 years, guilty only of trying to prevent American-based terrorism against Cuba, should be released. Actually there were 10 Cubans arrested; five knew that they could expect no justice in an American court and pled guilty to get shorter sentences. [4]

Iraq

Freeing the Iraqi people to death . . . Nothing short of a complete withdrawal of all US forces, military and contracted, and the closure of all US military bases and detention and torture centers, can promise a genuine end to US involvement and the beginning of meaningful Iraqi sovereignty. To begin immediately. Anything less is just politics and imperialism as usual. In six years of war, the Iraqi people have lost everything of value in their lives. As the Washington Post reported in 2007, “It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.” [5] The good news is that the Iraqi people have 5,000 years experience in crafting a society to live in. They should be given the opportunity.

Saudi Arabia

Demand before the world that this government enter the 21st century (or at least the 20th), or the United States has to stop pretending that it gives a damn about human rights, women, homosexuals, religious liberty, and civil liberties. The Bush family had long-standing financial ties to members of the Saudi ruling class. What will be your explanation if you maintain the status quo?

Haiti

Reinstate the exiled Jean Bertrand Aristide to the presidency, which he lost when the United States overthrew him in 2004. To seek forgiveness for our sins, give the people of Haiti lots and lots of money and assistance.

Colombia

Stop giving major military support to a government that for years has been intimately tied to death squads, torture, and drug trafficking; in no other country in the world have so many progressive candidates for public office, unionists, and human-rights activists been murdered. Are you concerned that this is the closest ally the United States has in all of Latin America?

Venezuela

Hugo Chavez may talk too much but he’s no threat except to the capitalist system of Venezuela and, by inspiration, elsewhere in Latin America. He has every good historical reason to bad-mouth American foreign policy, including Washington’s role in the coup that overthrew him in 2002. If you can’t understand why Chavez is not in love with what the United States does all over the world, I can give you a long reading list.

Put an end to support for Chavez’s opposition by the Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, and other US government agencies. US diplomats should not be meeting with Venezuelans plotting coups against Chavez, nor should they be interfering in elections.

Send Luis Posada from Florida to Venezuela, which has asked for his extradition for his masterminding the bombing of a Cuban airline in 1976, taking 73 lives. Extradite the man, or try him in the US, or stop talking about the war on terrorism.

And please try not to repeat the nonsense about Venezuela being a dictatorship. It’s a freer society than the United States. It has, for example, a genuine opposition daily media, non-existent in the United States. If you doubt that, try naming a single American daily newspaper or TV network that was unequivocally against the US invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Grenada, and Vietnam. Or even against two of them? How about one? Is there a single one that supports Hamas and/or Hezbollah? A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a story concerning a possible Israeli attack upon Iran, and stated: “Several details of the covert effort have been omitted from this account, at the request of senior United States intelligence and administration officials, to avoid harming continuing operations.” [6]

Alas, Mr. President, among other disparaging remarks, you’ve already accused Chavez of being “a force that has interrupted progress in the region.” [7] This is a statement so contrary to the facts, even to plain common sense, so hypocritical given Washington’s history in Latin America, that I despair of you ever freeing yourself from the ideological shackles that have bound every American president of the past century. It may as well be inscribed in their oath of office -- that a president must be antagonistic toward any country that has expressly rejected Washington as the world’s savior. You made this remark in an interview with Univision, Venezuela’s leading, implacable media critic of the Chavez government. What regional progress could you be referring to, the police state of Colombia?

Bolivia

Stop American diplomats, Peace Corps volunteers, Fulbright scholars, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, from spying and fomenting subversion inside Bolivia. As the first black president of the United States, you could try to cultivate empathy toward, and from, the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Congratulate Bolivian President Evo Morales on winning a decisive victory on a recent referendum to approve a new constitution which enshrines the rights of the indigenous people and, for the first time, institutes separation of church and state.

Afghanistan

Perhaps the most miserable people on the planet, with no hope in sight as long as the world’s powers continue to bomb, invade, overthrow, occupy, and slaughter in their land. The US Army is planning on throwing 30,000 more young American bodies into the killing fields and is currently building eight new major bases in southern Afghanistan. Is that not insane? If it makes sense to you I suggest that you start the practice of the president accompanying the military people when they inform American parents that their child has died in a place called Afghanistan.

If you pull out from this nightmare, you could also stop bombing Pakistan. Leave even if it results in the awful Taliban returning to power. They at least offer security to the country’s wretched, and indications are that the current Taliban are not all fundamentalists.

But first, close Bagram prison and other detention camps, which are worse than Guantanamo.

And stop pretending that the United States gives a damn about the Afghan people and not oil and gas pipelines which can bypass Russia and Iran. The US has been endeavoring to fill the power vacuum in Central Asia created by the Soviet Union’s dissolution in order to assert Washington’s domination over a region containing the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world. Is Afghanistan going to be your Iraq?

Israel, the middle east and way beyond: thousands of tribes with flags...

The most difficult task for you, but the one that would earn for you the most points. To declare that Israel is no longer the 51st state of the union would bring down upon your head the wrath of the most powerful lobby in the world and its many wealthy followers, as well as the Christian-fundamentalist Right and much of the media. But if you really want to see peace between Israel and Palestine you must cut off all military aid to Israel, in any form: hardware, software, personnel, money. And stop telling Hamas it has to recognize Israel and renounce violence until you tell Israel that it has to recognize Hamas and renounce violence.

North Korea

Bush called the country part of “the axis of evil,” and Kim Jong Il a “pygmy” and “a spoiled child at a dinner table.” [8] But you might try to understand where Kim Jong Il is coming from. He sees that UN agencies went into Iraq and disarmed it, and then the United States invaded. The logical conclusion is not to disarm, but to go nuclear.

Central America

Stop interfering in the elections of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, year after year. The Cold War has ended. And though you can’t undo the horror perpetrated by the United States in the region in the 1980s, you can at least be kind to the immigrants in the US who came here trying to escape the long-term consequences of that terrible decade.

Vietnam

In your inauguration speech you spoke proudly of those “who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom . . . For us, they fought and died, in places like . . . Khe Sanh.” So it is your studied and sincere opinion that the 58,000 American service members who died in Vietnam, while helping to kill over a million Vietnamese, gave their life for our prosperity and freedom? Would you care to defend that proposition without resort to any platitudes?

You might also consider this: In all the years since the Vietnam War ended, the 3 million Vietnamese suffering from diseases and deformities caused by US sprayings of the deadly chemical “Agent Orange” have received from the United States no medical attention, no environmental remediation, no compensation, and no official apology.

Kosovo

Stop supporting the most gangster government in the world, which has specialized in kidnapping, removing human body parts for sale, heavy trafficking in drugs, trafficking in women, various acts of terrorism, and ethnic cleansing of Serbs. This government would not be in power if the Bush administration had not seen them as America’s natural allies. Do you share that view? UN Resolution 1244, adopted in 1999, reaffirmed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to which Serbia is now the recognized successor state, and established that Kosovo was to remain part of Serbia. Why do we have a huge and permanent military base in that tiny self-declared country?

NATO

From protecting Europe against a [mythical] Soviet invasion to becoming an occupation army in Afghanistan. Put an end to this historical anachronism, what Russian leader Vladimir Putin called “the stinking corpse of the cold war.” [9] You can accomplish this simply by leaving the organization. Without the United States and its never-ending military actions and officially-designated enemies, the organization would not even have the pretense of a purpose, which is all it has left. Members have had to be bullied, threatened and bribed to send armed forces to Afghanistan.

School of the Americas

Latin American countries almost never engage in war with each other, or any other countries. So for what kind of warfare are its military officers being trained by the United States? To suppress their own people. Close this school (the name has now been changed to protect the guilty) at Ft. Benning, Georgia that the United States has used to prepare two generations of Latin American military officers for careers in overthrowing progressive governments, death squads, torture, holding down dissent, and other charming activities. The British are fond of saying that the Empire was won on the playing fields of Eton. Americans can say that the road to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram began in the classrooms of the School of the Americas.

Torture

Your executive orders concerning this matter of utmost importance are great to see, but they still leave something to be desired. They state that the new standards ostensibly putting an end to torture apply to any “armed conflict.” But what if your administration chooses to view future counterterrorism and other operations as not part of an “armed conflict”? And no mention is made of “rendition” -- kidnapping a man off the street, throwing him in a car, throwing a hood over his head, stripping off his clothes, placing him in a diaper, shackling him from every angle, and flying him to a foreign torture dungeon. Why can’t you just say that this and all other American use of proxy torturers is banned? Forever.

It’s not enough to say that you’re against torture or that the United States “does not torture” or “will not torture.” George W. Bush said the same on a regular basis. To show that you’re not George W. Bush you need to investigate those responsible for the use of torture, even if this means prosecuting a small army of Bush administration war criminals.

You aren’t off to a good start by appointing former CIA official John O. Brennan as your top adviser on counterterrorism. Brennan has called “rendition” a “vital tool” and praised the CIA’s interrogation techniques for providing “lifesaving” intelligence. [10] Whatever were you thinking, Barack?

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi

Free this Libyan man from his prison in Scotland, where he is serving a life sentence after being framed by the United States for the bombing of PanAm flight 103 in December 1988, which took the lives of 270 people over Scotland. Iran was actually behind the bombing -- as revenge for the US shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July, killing 290 -- not Libya, which the US accused for political reasons. [11] Nations do not behave any more cynical than that. Megrahi lies in prison now dying of cancer, but still the US and the UK will not free him. It would be too embarrassing to admit to 20 years of shameless lying.

Mr. President, there’s a lot more to be undone in our foreign policy if you wish to be taken seriously as a moral leader like Martin Luther King, Jr.: banning the use of depleted uranium, cluster bombs, and other dreadful weapons; joining the International Criminal Court instead of trying to sabotage it; making a number of other long-overdue apologies in addition to the one mentioned re Vietnam; and much more. You’ve got your work cut out for you if you really want to bring some happiness to this sad old world, make America credible and beloved again, stop creating armies of anti-American terrorists, and win over people like me.

And do you realize that you can eliminate all state and federal budget deficits in the United States, provide free health care and free university education to every American, pay for an unending array of worthwhile social and cultural programs, all just by ending our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not starting any new ones, and closing down the Pentagon’s 700+ military bases? Think of it as the peace dividend Americans were promised when the Cold War would end some day, but never received. How about you delivering it, Mr. President? It’s not too late.

But you are committed to the empire; and the empire is committed to war. Too bad.

Notes

1. Washington Post, January 24, 2009

2. Interview with al Arabiya TV, January 27, 2009

3. Gorbachev speaking in Florida, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, April 17, 2008

4. Cuban Political Prisoners . . . in the United States

5. Washington Post, May 5, 2007, p.1

6. New York Times, January 11, 2009

7. Washington Post, January 19, 2009

8. Newsweek, May 27, 2002

9. Press Trust of India (news agency), December 21, 2007

10. Washington Post, November 26, 2008

11. The Bombing of PanAm Flight 103 -- Case Not Closed

Netanyahu will signal the come-back of the Neocons with a different name, and will shut the door on peace...

Netanyahu will signal the come-back of the Neocons with a different name, and will shut the door on peace...

Pundits and polls predict that Benjamin Netanyahu will be Israel’s next prime minister. We’ll have to wait until Israelis cast their ballots on February 10 to see if the tea leaves are right.

On Saturday, the slick-talking leader of the centre-right Likud party was five points ahead of his main rival, Israel’s current foreign minister Tzipi Livni. But nothing’s in the bag as 30 percent of Israeli voters remain undecided.

Provided Netanyahu is chosen and manages to form a coalition government with Labour, Yisrael Beiteinu or Shas, any hopes for Middle East peace that were recently revived by America’s new listening White House will be dashed. Choosing Netanyahu translates to Israelis choosing aggression and expansion albeit shrouded in the faux mantle of ‘security.’ In a nutshell, this former commando turned politician is bad news.

Articulate, US-educated and ruthless, Netanyahu knows how to charm the Western media and is a favoured guest of Fox News. In the past, he has rejected a two-state solution and has recently indicated he will allow the natural expansion of Jewish colonies on the West Bank while infusing the economy there. In other words, he wants to improve the economic status of Palestinian residents of the West Bank in return for killing their aspirations towards self-determination.

In 2005, he campaigned strongly against Israel’s pullout from Gaza describing it as “evil” and warning that Gaza would become “a huge base for terror” that would attract Al Qaida.

“Don’t give them guns. Don’t give them rockets. Don’t give them a seaport. Don’t give them an airport,” he told Knesset members.

And while the world largely condemns Israel for its recent disproportionate response to Hamas rockets, Netanyahu, who coined the term “Hamastan,” says “I’m sorry to say we haven’t gotten the job done and the next government will have no choice but to finish the job and uproot the Iranian terror base.”

His goal is to topple Hamas.

“Hamas, a terrorist organisation, must ultimately be removed from Gaza,” he told journalists last month. This probably implies that a Netanyahu-led government would reoccupy Gaza; a move that could suffocate any chance of peace for decades to come.

Netanyahu’s stance on the future of occupied Jerusalem is similarly intransigent. During a meeting with George W. Bush last year, he stressed that “Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish people and will remain under Israeli sovereignty for eternity.”

He has kicked a right-of-return for Palestinian refugees off the table too. In 2007, he said its removal from the agenda was a precondition to any peace negotiations.

His potential coalition partners are equally frightening. Labour party leader and Defence Minister Ehud Barak, responsible for the carnage in Gaza, is currently warning of more of the same. Avigdor Lieberman, who heads Yisrael Beiteinu, strongly opposes the peace process and has advocated the “levelling” of Iran if it continues enriching uranium.

Now that President Obama’s new Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, is in the region, Kadima-head Livni warns of “an unavoidable rift” between any Netanyahu-led government and the Obama administration. To support this contention, her campaigners are considering using excerpts from a book by Dennis Ross, titled The Missing Peace, which depicts Netanyahu as insufferable and arrogant. She’s right but she’s hardly the one to talk after suggesting that the future of her country’s Arab citizens lies elsewhere. It appears she wants to strip Israeli Arabs of their nationality before transferring them to a future Palestinian state.

Among this bad bunch Netanyahu is worst of all because his coming to power could thrust the region into another major war. At the recent Davos meet, Netanyahu claimed Iran is in a “100-yard dash” towards nuclear armaments and called for the Iranian leadership to be “neutralised.” During an interview on Israel’s Channel 2 network last Saturday, he announced his number one goal as prime minister will be to prevent Iran from producing atomic weapons. Previously, he has likened Iran to Nazi Germany warning that Israel has the military capacity to “prevent another Holocaust.” Last year, Israel Radio reported that Netanyahu had invited a receptive President Bush to join the Jewish state in a nuclear strike against Iran.

It’s time that all regional leaders saw the writing on the wall. Israelis care not a jot what the rest of the world thinks and has no serious intentions of offering land for peace. The only way to counter Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians and open threats is unity: Palestinian unity, Arab unity and regional unity.

Given this climate of Israeli brutality, Egypt and Jordan would do well to reconsider their peace agreements. At the same time, if the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayipp Erdogan is prepared to add bite to his courageous anti-Israel outburst at Davos, he could close the chapter on his country’s US-backed strategic alliance with Tel Aviv.

If by choosing Netanyahu the Israelis are saying ‘no’ to peace, then their neighbours should believe them and react accordingly. Enough paying lip service to an ever fading mirage that is being obliterated by Palestinian blood! How much longer can we go on fooling ourselves and each other?

Why no neocon assassinations? Because the ‘war on terror’ is a CIA2/MOSSAD/MI6 hoax

According to US government propaganda, terrorist cells are spread throughout America, making it necessary for the government to spy on all Americans and violate most other constitutional protections. Among President Bush’s last words as he left office was the warning that America would soon be struck again by Muslim terrorists.

If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us. We would know it from events. As there are no events, the US government substitutes warnings in order to keep alive the fear that causes the public to accept pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national ID cards, and inconveniences and harassments when they fly.

The most obvious indication that there are no terrorist cells is that not a single neocon has been assassinated....

I do not approve of assassinations, and am ashamed of my country’s government for engaging in political assassinations, via the odious White House Murder Inc, and Asef Shawkat in Damascus, among other convenient spots.... The US and Israel have set a very bad example for al Qaeda to follow....?

The US deals with al Qaeda and Taliban by assassinating their leaders, and Israel deals with Hamas by assassinating its leaders. It is reasonable to assume that al Qaeda would deal with the instigators and leaders of America’s wars in the Middle East in the same way.

Today every al Qaeda member is aware of the complicity of neoconservatives in the death and devastation inflicted on Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza. Moreover, neocons are highly visible and are soft targets compared to Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. Neocons have been identified in the media for years, and as everyone knows, multiple listings of their names are available online.

Neocons do not have Secret Service protection. Dreadful to contemplate, but it would be child’s play for al Qaeda to assassinate any and every neocon. Yet, neocons move around freely, a good indication that the US does not have a terrorist problem.

If, as neocons constantly allege, terrorists can smuggle nuclear weapons or dirty bombs into the US with which to wreak havoc upon our cities, terrorists can acquire weapons with which to assassinate any neocon or former government official.

Yet, the neocons, who are the Americans most hated by Muslims, remain unscathed.

The “war on terror” is a hoax that fronts for American control of oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security complex, the assault on civil liberty by fomenters of a police state, and Israel’s territorial expansion.

There were no al Qaeda in Iraq until the Americans brought them there by invading and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who kept al Qaeda out of Iraq. The Taliban is not a terrorist organization, but a movement attempting to unify Afghanistan under Muslim law. The only Americans threatened by the Taliban are the Americans Bush sent to Afghanistan to kill Taliban and to impose a puppet state on the Afghan people.

Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine, or what little remains of Palestine after Israel’s illegal annexations. Hamas is a terrorist organization in the same sense that the Israeli government and the US government are terrorist organizations. In an effort to bring Hamas under Israeli hegemony, Israel employs terror bombing and assassinations against Palestinians. Hamas replies to the Israeli terror with homemade and ineffectual rockets.

Hezbollah represents the Shi’ites of southern Lebanon, another area in the Middle East that Israel seeks for its territorial expansion.

The US brands Hamas and Hezbollah “terrorist organizations” for no other reason than the US is on Israel’s side of the conflict. There is no objective basis for the US Department of State’s “finding” that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. It is merely a propagandistic declaration.

Americans and Israelis do not call their bombings of civilians terror. What Americans and Israelis call terror is the response of oppressed people who are stateless because their countries are ruled by puppets loyal to the oppressors. These people, dispossessed of their own countries, have no State Departments, Defense Departments, seats in the United Nations, or voices in the mainstream media. They can submit to foreign hegemony or resist by the limited means available to them.

The fact that Israel and the United States carry on endless propaganda to prevent this fundamental truth from being realized indicates that it is Israel and the US that are in the wrong and the Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis, and Afghans who are being wronged.

The retired American generals who serve as war propagandists for Fox “News” are forever claiming that Iran arms the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents and Hamas. But where are the arms? To deal with American tanks, insurgents have to construct homemade explosive devices out of artillery shells. After six years of conflict, the insurgents still have no weapon against the American helicopter gunships. Contrast this “arming” with the weaponry the US supplied to the Afghans nearly three decades ago when they were fighting to drive out the Soviets.

The films of Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza show large numbers of Gazans fleeing from Israeli bombs or digging out the dead and maimed, and none of these people are armed. A person would think that by now every Palestinian would be armed, every man, woman, and child. Yet, all the films of the Israeli attack show an unarmed population. Hamas has to construct homemade rockets that are little more than a sign of defiance. If Hamas were armed by Iran, Israel’s assault on Gaza would have cost Israel its helicopter gunships, its tanks, and hundreds of lives of its soldiers.

Hamas is a small organization armed with small caliber rifles incapable of penetrating body armor. Hamas is unable to stop small bands of Israeli settlers from descending on West Bank Palestinian villages, driving out the Palestinians, and expropriating their land.

The great mystery is: why after 60 years of oppression are the Palestinians still an unarmed people? Clearly, the Muslim countries are complicit with Israel and the US in keeping the Palestinians unarmed.

The unsupported assertion that Iran supplies sophisticated arms to the Palestinians is like the unsupported assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. These assertions are propagandistic justifications for killing Arab civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in order to secure US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

Rove dances with special counsel while Obama Justice Department targets Rove’s main accuser

-- Although there are reports that George W. Bush top political adviser Karl Rove has signaled, through his attorney, Robert Luskin, his willingness to cooperate in the probe of the political use of U.S. attorneys in the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and the firings of U.S. attorneys, we have learned that Rove and the U.S. Attorney for Northern Alabama, Alice Martin, are, in concert with the Obama Justice Department, engaged in a fishing expedition against chief Rove accuser, former Alabama GOP research assistant Dana Jill Simpson.

Last September, Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed the acting U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, Nora Dannehy, as a special counsel in the probe of Rove, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and others in the political misuse of the Bush Justice Department.

Little was said at the time about Dannehy’s conflict-of-interest in investigating Gonzales and his subordinates in the political misuse of the Justice Department. In 2006, Gonzales awarded Dannehy the department’s Distinguished Service Award for her work as the Supervisory Assistant U.S. Attorney in Connecticut.

We have learned that the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which is only legally authorized to investigate corruption by government employees, has been used to dig up dirt on Simpson that could be used by Rove in his defense before both Dannehy’s investigators and the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative John Conyers (D-MI). Dannehy has done nothing to stop the misuse of OPR in conducting an illegal “fishing expedition” against Simpson, who testified last year before Conyer’s committee on Rove’s collusion with Martin and her colleague, U.S. Attorney for Middle Alabama Leura Canary, in prosecuting Siegelman and HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy, a contributor to the Democratic Party.

On January 8, 2009, We reported: “We have learned from knowledgeable sources that Assistant U.S. Attorney for Northern Alabama Jim Sullivan, who reports to U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, has been engaged in a detailed investigation on behalf of the OPR at Justice Department headquarters in Washington. This constitutes a major conflict of interest since the OPR investigation of the U.S. attorneys politicization involves Martin and her colleague in the Middle District of Alabama, Leura Canary. Essentially, Martin has permitted Sullivan, her top criminal investigator, to be used to investigate individuals who may have inculpatory evidence of the involvement of Martin and Canary in illegally using their positions for political purposes, including the political prosecution of former Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman. Essentially, Martin is having her subordinate assistant U.S. attorney investigate herself. We have learned that assisting Sullivan in his probe of individuals outside the Justice Department is Assistant Counsel for OPR William Causey.”

We have learned details from informed sources on the fishing expedition being conducted by Martin, Sullivan, and Causey. The Justice Department and Martin’s office in Birmingham are probing Simpson’s adoption of her 4-year old daughter in 2004, her taxes, her previous rental properties, and legal cases she argued as a defense attorney. Several of Simpson’s legal clients, business associates, and even her ex-husband have been questioned by federal officers, including FBI agents.

We have also learned that one of Simpson’s early supporters, Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL), a member of the House Judiciary Committee who spent Super Bowl Sunday with Barack Obama at a White House party, has decided to abandon his defense of Simpson because he has gubernatorial ambitions. Davis, who would be Alabama’s first African-American governor, has decided that it is more important to gain the support of the Business Council of Alabama, headed up by Leura Canary’s husband, Bill Canary, a major Republican official in the state and ally of current Republican Governor Bob Riley, than in getting to the bottom of Siegelman’s prosecution.

Davis beat Alabama Democratic Rep. Earl Hilliard in the 2002 primary, the same year Denise Majette defeated Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney in the Democratic primary in that state. Both Hilliard and McKinney were considered to be anti-Israel and too pro-Palestinian. Davis is a graduate of Harvard Law School, Obama’s alma mater. In addition, Davis is a main promoter of the EADS-Northrop Grumman U.S. Air Force tanker contract, a large portion of which is slated for Mobile, Alabama.

On March 6, 2008, We reported “The greasing for the EADS contract also involved Riley, who began cementing the EADS deal while he served until 2002 and his election as governor as a member of the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee, the committee with oversight for the Air Force tanker contract.” The selection of EADS/Northrop Grumman over Boeing resulted in massive Boeing layoffs in Alabama and a major set-back for “Buy America” Pentagon contract stipulations.

On March 19, 2008, We wrote: “The Rothschild connection to EADS, as reported by The Independent (UK), is through Diligence, a business intelligence firm chaired by former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard and founded in 2000 by ex-MI5 and Special Boat Service agent Nick Day and former CIA agent Mike Baker. Former Senior Bush chief arms control negotiator and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt was also a major force in the formation of Diligence. A Nathaniel Rothschild investment firm called JNR was reported by The Independent on February 18, 2007, to be involved in acquiring a stake in Diligence from a South American private equity firm. Diligence also attracted investments from the Republican lobbying firm Barbour [Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour], Griffith & Rogers. Diligence counts former CIA and FBI director William Webster and Carlyle Group managing director Edward Mathias among its advisory board members, along with Howard.”

In Alabama, Obama’s “change” is keeping a U.S. attorney in place who is involved in a political vendetta against someone who can put Rove behind bars. Which means that for some people, Obama is a “change” for the worse.

Obama's strange new political bedfellows....

-- On the evening of January 31, Washington’s political and business elite met under the aegis of the annual dinner of the Alfalfa Club, billed by the Washington corporate media as one of the nation’s capital’s most secretive and elite groups.

Ever since 1913, the Alfalfa Club, called such because the alfalfa plant in known as to have a voracious appetite for a “drink,” has met for their annual dinner the last Saturday of January. However, the club, which meets to celebrate the birthday of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, is much more than a drinking club. The beginning of the presidency of the segregationist Woodrow Wilson that year was seen as a further impetus for the racist policies of the “Jim Crow” South. And the Alfalfa Club was an important element in keeping the traditions of the antebellum South alive.

It was in 1913 that some of the well-heeled members of the Alfalfa Club helped kick in the funds for the groundbreaking for the Confederate Memorial project at Arlington National Cemetery sponsored by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

In fact, the Alfalfa Club did not admit African Americans as members until the 1970s and women until 1994.

Among the Alfalfa Club’s most active members are George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. Other members have included Henry Kissinger, Spiro Agnew, Madeleine Albright, Katharine Graham (of the Washington Post), Bill and Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle, Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Warren Buffett, Alan Greenspan, Richard Helms, Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, Ross Perot, and Harry Truman.

At the January 31 dinner, Barack Obama saw Missouri’s retiring Republican Senator Kit Bond assume the mantle as president of the Alfalfa Club, a distinction that previously was bestowed on Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and World Bank President James Wolfensohn. Missouri politicians are no strangers to the neo-Confederate cause. Former Missouri Senator and Attorney General John Ashcroft was once a contributing writer to the southern secessionist “Southern Partisan” magazine.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who was also present with Obama at the Alfalfa Club dinner, has supported the secessionist aims of the Alaska Independence Party, a political ally of the secessionist Southern Party.

Obama quipped at the dinner that if Robert E. Lee “were here with us tonight, the general would be 202 years old . . . And very confused.” Perhaps not.

Lee might have understood that Obama’s powerful chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, whose use of profanity was the butt of Obama’s jokes at the dinner, would not have permitted Obama to involve himself with a group with a segregationist and Confederate past if there were not a political benefit for Emanuel, Obama’s version of Karl Rove.

Lee’s immediate boss in the Confederacy was Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin, formerly a slave-owning U.S. senator from Louisiana. Anti-slavery Senator Benjamin Wade (R-OH) said of Benjamin in a Senate debate, “[He is an] Israelite in Egyptian clothing,” a reference to the fact that Benjamin’s Jewish ancestors were held as slaves by the Egyptians, yet he also held slaves. Benjamin replied to Wade’s comments, “[It] is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightnings of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain.”

Benjamin’s comments, while crude for their time, are in keeping with the more crass comments of Emanuel, a latter-day Judah P. Benjamin. As the Confederate secretary of state, Benjamin attempted to get Great Britain to enter the U.S. Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. Benjamin’s interlocutors in London included the powerful Rothschild banking family.

Obama’s appearance at the Alfalfa Club dinner was yet another example of how he is being controlled by Emanuel. A week and a half ago, Emanuel was, according to a New York Times report, cracking his knuckles at a meeting in the Cabinet Room attended by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Cabinet officials, and senior White House staff. Obama asked Emanuel to stop, finding the practice annoying, whereupon Emanuel cracked his knuckle in Obama’s ear. The incident, far from a joke, was a message to all those present, especially Pelosi, as to who is in charge at the White House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has, since she has been speaker, authorized a group of neo-Confederate members of the Sons of the Confederacy and United Daughters of the Confederacy to hold an annual celebration of Lee’s birthday at the base of his statue in Statuary Hall in the Capitol Building. However, this past Inaugural luncheon for Obama was also held in Statuary Hall. Pelosi, perhaps fearing a protocol breach, had the architect of the Capitol move Lee’s statue to the basement where the overflow of each state’s two authorized “native son” statues are maintained. In return, Pelosi is permitting the neo-Confederates, many with close ties to the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist groups, to hold their annual Lee commemorative affair on February 7, “out of sight and out of mind,” in the basement statuary “crypt” of the U.S. Capitol.

The question remains why, if Pelosi was so concerned about Lee’s statue being present at the Inauguration luncheon for America’ first African American president, was not Obama, himself, concerned about the message sent by attending a club dinner founded by a group of recalcitrant Confederates and segregationists?

Emanuel is, every day, steering Obama to the right and the Republican Party. Obama has now assured Republicans that New Hampshire’s Democratic Governor John Lynch will appoint a Republican to succeed incumbent Republican Senator Judd Gregg if Obama appoints him as Commerce Secretary. Such a move would prevent Lynch from naming a Democrat to the Senate and, if Al Franken is sworn in as Minnesota’s senator as the 59th Democrat in the Senate, prevent the Democrats from achieving a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority.

Obama condemned Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for allowing alleged outside interests to be involved in the now-impeached governor’s selection of Obama’s U.S. Senate replacement. Yet, Obama now has no problem pressuring Lynch on Gregg’s replacement.

There is now word that Obama will maintain the CIA’s kidnapping policy known as “extraordinary rendition.” The policy was introduced by the neocons in the George W. Bush administration and is an offshoot of the Israeli Mossad kidnapping operations that were used to kidnap Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann from Argentina; Umaru Dikko, the Nigerian political opponent of Nigerian dictator Mohammad Buhari, from London; and Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu from Italy.

Obama’s turn to the right is not surprising to one African American Democrat who spoke to us. The long-time politician observed, “With Obama, now you will see fascism with a black face.”