Divide & Conquer Policies 3-25-2008

 25 March 2008          Divide & Conquer Policies

 Email to Senator Feinstein,

I am most troubled by your recent email. I would respectively like to remind you that, contrary to your assertions, there weren’t long simmering sectarian conflicts between Sunnis and Shia’s prior to our illegal and immoral intervention in Iraq. Our unwanted presence fueled this conflict and our military strategy followed the old ‘divide and conquer policies’ which have been used by other imperial powers to weaken and pacify the local population.

Many Iraqi expatriates have challenged the fallacy of such statements reminding us of integrated neighborhoods and families prior to our ill-fated invasion. I sincerely hope you have heard the testimonies of US soldiers and veterans who barred the souls and spoke of committing the most horrific crimes against innocent Iraqis at the ‘Winter Soldiers’ meeting earlier this month – an event that was unreported by the local US mainstream corporate media but widely reported in over 80 countries around the world.

Our invasion has unleashed a war of terror, disdain and racially motivated crimes against the Iraqi people by the US military who freely admit that there was a complete absence of ‘rules of engagement’ which generated extremely hostile reactions. Tragically, they reported that the racist attitudes occurred at all levels of the US military.  Iraqis and brown skinned foreign workers are commonly addressed by the demeaning epithet as ‘Hajis’. I ask that you direct your energies to bringing about an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all combat US forces and private mercenaries (contractors) from Iraq. Finally, I ask that you demand the removal of the US embassy in Baghdad (largest embassy in the world) and US military bases which are an unwanted symbol of imperial power. Failure to take these steps will ensure a continuation of hostilities and further erosion of US influence and power. The Iraqis have suffered enough by our presence and must be granted billions of dollars in reparations for the destruction of their country and the death and injuries of millions of their people

ISRAEL 3-23-2008

23, March 2008                      ISRAEL (Response to local letter writer) 

         

In his letter of March 22, Desmond Tuck, offers some skewed statistics which demand a response. It is not surprising that the majority of Palestinians support their democratically elected government’s anger over the wanton killing of its innocent civilians. Overwhelming force, with the latest U.S. high-tech weapons, has been used to kill and maim hundreds of Palestinian civilians. In the past two-week Israeli forces invaded Gaza by land and air killing 126 people, mostly civilians including 24 children. Tuck, and other letter writers supporting Israel, are very loose and selective on using the word ‘terrorism’.

Theft of Palestinian land, demolitions of their homes, destruction of hundreds of olive trees, denying Palestinian free access to schools and clinics are all acts of terrorism. The destruction of the basic infrastructure of Gaza was an act of terrorism. Halting food supplies to starving Palestinians, withholding electricity and fuel shipments are acts of terrorism. Aerial arracks killing innocent civilians are acts of terrorism. Arbitrary arrests of innocent civilians, torturing them and tossing them into medieval dungeons are acts of terrorism. 

Hard liners such as Rabbi David Shalem, director of the Institute of Talmud Studies at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem, called for the Ehud Olmert government to attack Palestinians “everywhere, in Gaza, and the north and inside.” 

This yeshiva vigorously opposes any form of Palestinian sovereignty and seeks the theft of Palestinian land by terrorizing or killing its rightful occupants.

Footnotes:

Gideon Levy, columnist of Haaretz wrote a stinging indictment of Mercaz Harav in his March 10 article in Haaretz.  

This yeshiva vigorously opposes any form of Palestinian sovereignty and seeks the theft of Palestinian land by terrorizing or killing its rightful occupants. Thus, a creeping annexation (a term used by Gen. Moshe Dayan) has been an official Israeli policy since its founding.
With complete disdain for international law, Israel announced plans to expand yet another settlement, Givat Ze’ev, five miles from central Jerusalem, which invoked a strong rebuke from Condeleeza Rice. 

IRAQ 3-18-2008

18, March 2008                      IRAQ
         
As we approach the fifth anniversary of our occupation of Iraq (March 19) and close to 4,000 US fatalities, there is an urgent need to beat the drums for an immediate withdrawal. The war has been an unrelenting nightmare for the US and Iraq. Renowned economists, Joseph Stieglitz and Linda Bilmes, have conservatively estimated the war costs to be in excess of three trillion dollars. It has drained our economy and caused a free fall of our currency. The politically well-connected war profiteers such as Halliburton, and Blackwater have enriched themselves at the expense of working class youth, many of whom volunteered to join the army out of economic necessity. Our president and many of our lawmakers have embraced the medieval practice of torture and totally abandoned the teachings of Jesus Christ whom they claim to revere. Our public discourse regarding abortion reeks of hypocrisy. Our oil intoxicated politicians have aborted the lives of thousands of US soldiers and millions of Iraqis and still cling to the grotesque notion of ‘victory’. 


Over 1 million Iraqis have been killed and hundreds of thousands maimed. Sectarian fighting, absent prior to the occupation —makes daily life a living hell. Last week, former and current US soldiers bared their souls and provided testimony of war crimes they committed against innocent Iraqi civilians at the ‘Winter Soldier’ hearings. This important news was ignored by the US media but was widely reported in over 80 countries around the world.  

William Buckley 3-14-2008

14, March 2008                      William Buckley 
         

Contrary to the media’s gushing commentaries on William Buckley as the architect of modern conservatism, he was an unapologetic racial bigot. He likened Dr. Martin Luther King with the Nazi leader, George Lincoln Rockwell. In numerous articles in his National Review he vigorously supported white supremacy arguing in a 1957 editorial, “Why the South Must Prevail.” Unmoved by the lynch mob mentality of the South, Buckley argued there exists, “a median cultural superiority of White over Negro ... that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.”

He was a vehement supporter of apartheid in South Africa, opposing Mandela’s release from years of incarceration, famously commenting in 1985. “Where Mandela belongs, in his current frame of mind, is precisely where he is: in jail.” He railed on gays during his public exchanges with author, Gore Vidal. In 1986 he advocated tattooing HIV positive men, starkly reminiscent of Hitler’s Third Reich with its pink triangles. He repeated this monstrous proposal in 2005. He displayed monumental disdain for women’s liberation describing the literature as “so stupefying awful.” Buckley was an ardent supporter of the dirty war against Vietnam that killed millions. He described Spanish fascist dictator Franco “a national hero.” Like his nemesis, Henry Kissinger, Buckley supported the merchant of death merchant, Pinochet in Chile and the Argentine generals who tortured and “disappeared” thousands.