RACHEL CORRIE: A victim of Israeli policy and US Complicity

We have got to understand that they dream our dreams,
and we dream theirs. We have got to understand that they are us.
We are them. -- Rachel Corrie, age 10

Rachel Corrie speaks through a megaphone to the operator of an Israeli
Army bulldozer before she was crushed by it, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip,
on March 16, 2003

By Henry Michaels - 19 March 2003

The more the circumstances surrounding the murder of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American student killed by an Israeli military bulldozer March 16, become known, the clearer it is that the Israeli government bears direct political and legal responsibility, and that the Bush administration is its political accomplice in her death.

Corrie, an extraordinary young woman, was deliberately crushed to death for trying to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes in the refugee town of Rafah, in southern Gaza.

She is a victim of the Sharon government’s violence in the Gaza Strip, which has gathered pace in tandem with Bush’s preparations to invade Iraq. Not only is the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians being carried out with the tacit sanction of the US government, the US Consulate in Tel Aviv explicitly refused to demand protection for US citizens and other international volunteers trying to halt the bulldozing of houses and killing of innocent civilians.

Two conclusions are inescapable from the evidence produced so far. The first is that Rachel Corrie’s killing was a premeditated act approved by the upper echelons of the Israeli regime—the culmination of a series of confrontations in recent months with International Solidarity Movement (ISM) “human shields.” The second is that the US government is complicit, having rejected repeated requests to intervene on behalf of the volunteers.

Eyewitnesses have refuted Israeli military claims that Corrie’s death was an accident caused by her own actions. Her fellow volunteers have confirmed that she was highly visible to the Israeli soldier who twice drove the giant US-supplied bulldozer over her body.

“She was wearing a fluorescent orange jacket and was plainly visible,” Greg Schnabel told journalists. “The bulldozer approached but she stood her ground. Then it pushed up a pile of dirt beneath her feet. She struggled to stay on top of the mound. At that point she was raised up to a level where she was probably looking the bulldozer driver in the eye.”

Based on the reports given by Schnabel and the six other activists who were with Corrie, the ISM media coordinator Michael Shaikh stated:

“The Israeli Army are attempting to dishonour her memory by claiming that Rachel was killed accidentally when she ran in front of the bulldozer. Eye-witnesses to the murder insist that this is totally untrue. Rachel was sitting in the path of the bulldozer as it advanced towards her. When the bulldozer refused to stop or turn aside she climbed up onto the mound of dirt and rubble being gathered in front of it wearing a fluorescent jacket to look directly at the driver who kept on advancing."

“The bulldozer continued to advance so that she was pulled under the pile of dirt and rubble. After she had disappeared from view the driver kept advancing until the bulldozer was completely on top of her. The driver did not lift the bulldozer blade and so she was crushed beneath it. Then the driver backed off and the seven other ISM activists taking part in the action rushed to dig out her body.”

It is inconceivable that an individual Israeli soldier would commit such a crime without prior discussion and approval at the highest official levels, military and civilian. Although Israeli army and settler paramilitary units have been responsible for the deaths of 2,181 Palestinians and the injuring of another 22,218 since September 2000, this is the first time that a US citizen has been killed.

Corrie’s murder was not an isolated incident. A month earlier, on February 14, the ISM reported an incident in which activists were nearly killed after the US Consulate refused to intervene. On that day, seven volunteers (three American, three British and one Dutch) came under Israeli rifle and machine gun fire when they approached bulldozers.

The ISM media office immediately made an emergency call to the US Consulate to request that it alert the Israeli military that international peace activists were coming under fire from Israeli troops and ask for restraint, a standard ISM procedure in such circumstances. The consular representative Ingrid Barzel refused to do so. “We do not accept any responsibility for anyone who ignores our travel advisories and illegally enters the Gaza Strip,” she replied. When a similar request was made to the British consulate, an official promised to phone back, but did not.

Soon after, a bulldozer trapped two activists in the corner of a building, but found its path blocked by rubble. Before it resumed its advance, the two escaped and stood on some barrels next to the building to photograph and film the destruction, but the bulldozer then began ramming the barrels.

Israeli policy

The house demolitions are part of Israel’s “Apartheid Wall” policy toward the Occupied Territories. Palestinian communities are being sealed from the outside world by a massive series of walls, complete with towers from which military sharpshooters can monitor their activities. The wall under construction near Rafah stretches along the entire length of Gaza’s border with Egypt. To give the snipers in the wall’s towers clear fields of fire, the Israeli occupation forces intend to demolish all the houses within 70-100 meters of the wall.

Rachel Corrie died trying to save the home of Dr. Samir Nasrallah, who had engaged in no hostile activities and had been charged with no offence. His house was demolished because, like 600 others that have been bulldozed in Rafah, it lay within Israel’s planned “security strip.” Nasrallah was offered no compensation or alternative housing and had no right of appeal to a court.

Despite Israeli government claims, the vast majority of demolitions have nothing to do with alleged terrorism. According to UN figures, less than 600 of the 10,000 houses demolished since the occupation began in 1967 involved security suspects. The policy, designed to leave families homeless, impoverished and traumatized, is illegal because international law forbids the demolition of houses by an occupying power.

During February, Israel forces nearly set a new record for killing Palestinians, mostly civilians, in a single month. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israeli assaults killed 82 Palestinians, 50 in the Gaza Strip and 32 in the West Bank, and wounded another 616.

Just two days after Corrie’s death, Israeli troops killed 11 Palestinians, including a toddler and a 13-year-old boy, in raids on the Gaza Strip. In one raid, some 30 armored vehicles with bulldozers and infantry advanced several hundred meters into the Nusseirat refugee camp just south of Gaza City.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has stepped up the killing since his re-election in January, particularly in Gaza. The Israeli military has conducted unprecedented armored operations there, repeatedly attacking deep into refugee camps. Sharon appears to be preparing a full-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip to complement the reconquest of the West Bank last April.

Continuing Palestinian resistance in Gaza stands in the way of Sharon’s scheme to confine the Palestinians to small, disconnected apartheid-style Bantustans surrounded by hundreds of Israeli settlements. With the Bush administration poised to invade Iraq, Sharon has evidently calculated that the time is ripe to reoccupy Gaza, even if it provokes further suicide bombings, which his government can use as a pretext for even larger actions.

US complicity

Rachel Corrie went to Palestine, in part, because she strongly opposed the US war against Iraq and understood that Israeli aggression was likely to increase when the US attacked. In one of her last emails to her family, sent on February 7, she wrote:

“I’ve been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great deal of concern here about the ‘reoccupation of Gaza.’ Gaza is reoccupied every day to various extents, but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here, instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren’t already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region, then I hope they will start."

“People here watch the media, and they told me again today that there have been large protests in the United States and ‘problems for the government’ in the UK. So thanks for allowing me to not feel like a complete Pollyanna when I tentatively tell people here that many people in the United States do not support the policies of our government, and that we are learning from global examples how to resist.”

Her message also expressed some of the horror and compassion that motivated her actions:

“I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what’s going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States—something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don’t know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons.”

Corrie’s friends and colleagues have been joined by Amnesty International in demanding an independent investigation into her death. After initially shrugging off the killing, the US State Department has cynically called for an Israeli government inquiry, but refused to condemn the incident. Likewise, the Israeli military has now promised an investigation, while still declaring in advance that Corrie’s death was not intentional.

Any inquiry conducted by Israeli military or civilian authorities will be a sham, conducted with the Bush administration’s connivance. A United Nations investigation would be no better, as last year’s cancellation of its inquiry into the Jenin refugee camp massacre demonstrates. Every crime carried out by the Israeli government has been whitewashed with Washington’s assistance.

Amnesty International and other international, Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups have reported repeatedly on Israel’s use of lethal force without regard to civilian lives—its indiscriminate attacks on civilians, extrajudicial executions and unwarranted destruction of civilian property by bulldozers and other equipment, resulting in deaths of innocent bystanders. The US State Department’s own Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2002 confirmed many violations and cited US-supplied helicopters, fighter aircraft, anti-tank missiles and flechettes being used as weapons to commit human rights abuses.

The Sharon government’s atrocities can continue only because they have the backing, explicit or tacit, of the White House. Only a truly international tribunal, completely independent of Washington and other governments, can lay bare the truth of Rachel Corrie’s death and the Israeli regime’s record of war crimes.

Strike the Root

By Sheila Samples

"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men"~~George Orwell

07/06/07 - Recently, Nova M Radio's Mike Malloy suggested the lethargy that appears to have descended on the American people is more "rage fatigue" than a lack of knowledge or comprehension of the damage wrought by this administration. I agree, although for many of us, rather than fatigue, it's more an inability to "focus" on any single atrocity about which to be enraged. There are just too many incoming horrors at any one time. We are in the throes of a national paralysis.

It's not that we don't know enough to be enraged. We know too much. About too many things. Our rage is splintered, spread too thin to be effective. For the past five years, people in this country and around the world have protested against Bush and Cheney's genocidal assault on two helpless nations. As they prepare openly for yet another bloody attack on yet another nation, we continue to sign petitions, hold meetings, march against the corporate machine -- all to no avail.

The issues catapaulting citizens into the streets are outrageous -- each one deserving of a "million man march" on its own merits. However, because we are frustrated by a relentless media blackout and by the deepening corruption, loss of freedoms and the tightening noose of tyranny, our cries are little more than a cacophony of discord -- an impotent racket.

Both Democrats and Republicans are branches of the same tree of corruption. When hacked off, a branch is instantly replaced by another, and another, each one stronger than the last. George Bush is but a snarled twig, waving at us with a frog in one hand and a firecracker in the other. As bodies of American citizens pile up in funeral homes and cemetaries across the nation; as more and more bodies of innocent men, women and children are strewn across the Middle East, it is becoming increasingly obvious the madness will not stop until we fell this tree -- dig into the darkness and strike the root. We must expose -- and impeach -- Dick Cheney.

There have been Cheneys throughout the annals of time who wreak their destruction from the shadows. In 743 BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero warned, "For the traitor appears no traitor -- he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city. He infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist."

Dick Cheney must be impeached -- now -- before he lashes out from the dark side, and Iran is aflame; its terrified citizens displaced, dying -- dead. Whether to impeach is not up to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, no matter how many "arrows" she claims to have in her quiver. We've moved way beyond playing Cowboys and Indians with this gang.

Pelosi's statement on July 2 that Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence "does not serve justice, condones criminal conduct, and is a betrayal of trust of the American people" is rather ironic, considering her steadfast refusal to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for their acts of treason after being elected to do just that.

Nor is impeachment up to the presidential wannabes flip-flopping in disgraceful political one-upmanship as they vie for money to pour into the ravenous media machine. Any American who would hesitate to impeach a destructive, treasonous, power-mad dictator does not deserve to be president of this United States -- now or ever.

Other than Ohio's courageous congressman Dennis Kucinich, whose co-sponsor list to impeach Cheney has grown to 14, no other candidate dares to take a stand. No other candidate deserves a single vote.

Whether to impeach Cheney is not even up to us. We have no choice. The U.S. Constitution is very explicit about this matter. In just 31 words, Article II, Section 4, tells us, "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

I can cite 3,588 reasons to impeach this man who lied -- is still lying -- so relentlessly to rush this nation into genocidal war. Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment barely scratch the surface of Cheney's treason and crimes against the state, but are more than enough to not only impeach, but to indict and convict him. A more detailed account can be found here.

The U.S. Constitution is the greatest perception of Liberty ever conceived. It was hammered out by men determined to prevent imperial presidencies, shadow governments and seizures of power by any one branch. It was conceived precisely to thwart efforts to destroy the republic by those whose only allegiance is to power and money. We must rid ourselves of the traitors in our midst, starting with Dick Cheney, the one man responsible for the corruption threatening our downfall.

If we are to survive, we must strike the root.

Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@sirinet.net

The Best of All Possible Worlds

It’s relentless. It just goes on day after day, month after month, year after year. The good guys; the corporations and the governments that serve them, the politicians who work in the governments that serve the corporations, the people who support the politicians that work for the governments that serve the corporations… all the lives on the trembling web that serve the hallucination of progress; of “moving forward”, of “staying the course” and supporting the troops “on the ground”… all these tired slogans that we didn’t have before that are now as essential as the cellphones that transmit the mindless chatter of the teenage girls that we have all become; more concerned with our hair than our fellows, more concerned with our stomachs than our hearts, more concerned with our self interest than the words which no longer have meaning such as, honor, integrity, courage and conviction…. but we are the good guys from the top down, working our way to the bottom where we will all be equal in the pecking order so described in this “best of all possible worlds”.

Then there are the rabble rousers that incite the public against the machine that so ably serves them. There are the mistaken handfuls in occupied countries; those known as terrorists who react against the occupier who has come to bring them freedom and democracy. They think of themselves as freedom fighters but we know them, for so we have been informed, as terrorists who put our righteous soldiers into Boothills on the ground.

Terror was once a small cottage industry, not a bustling concern by any means but certainly a potential growth industry. It took the wise minds of the corporations and their subsidiary of governments to recognize the opportunity that was there. In a few small years ‘terror’ has come to be as recognizable as Starbucks and, although not openly observable, is traded by proxy on the great stock exchanges of the day. Like a fire you must feed the flames and ‘they’ have shown themselves as able in this capacity as they have been in serving the common needs.

Some would say that the media which portrays and the fashion industry which clothes adolescent girls as full blown sluts, as the eternal seducing youth of those made weary by time… some would say that here were the instigators of the suddenly emerged child porn industry that now threatens the mind and attention of anyone so susceptible and which has given Dateline another growth industry and which has fed the corporate coffers of their subsidiary law enforcement branch, courts and prison and law industries which are a franchise of the governments that serve these corporations, but… we are all responsible for our actions. You cannot blame the man that goes looking for you dressed out of sight as a 12 year old who seduces you into an act with someone who doesn’t exist and then puts you into a system for something that wasn’t possible with someone who didn’t exist (except in your mind) where you become a product whose maintenance becomes yet another cash cow………….

………….riddle me this, if I work for a government enforcement arm which works for the alcohol and tobacco corporations and I ask you if you would like to get high on something other than the product that we serve and protect and you agree; have you not broken the law? It is pointless to argue that you were never going to get high. What is important was that you intended to. You might argue that the control of all substances, both legal and illegal are actually in the same hands, in the same way that the corporations have (through their governments) made the cottage industry of terror into a big business. But you see, even if this were so it is necessary for you to understand that the illegal side of the corporation’s product line must remain illegal due to the clear and untraceable profits that manifest and which… and here is the key… money is then put into research and supply so that you might have even better products on every level while still sustaining all of these feeding industries at a high level of profit so that those who make the money can share it out with all of us who are a part of Milo Minderbinder’s great plan for all of us in this best of all possible worlds. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.

There are those among us who see hypocrisy and greed as major threads in the eternal weaving tapestry of human lives but… hasn’t it always been this way? If it has always been this way then, of course, this is the way it is supposed to be; to each according to their abilities in relation to the connections they have in relation to the corporations that serve our greater interests. Tell me if you are willing to do without the satisfaction of any appetite, whether natural or manufactured? Look at the countries where our magnificent system has not yet penetrated, where life is simple to the point of the absurd by comparison. Do you want to live there? These very countries actually serve an important purpose in the great scheme of life. How are we to have the resources we need unless they come from places where people don’t use them? Furthermore, do you want to fight wars ‘on the ground’ in your own country? Of course not. These other countries provide us the landscape necessary to test the weapons produced from some of our most important corporations and the profits from the sale of our improved weapons feeds the economy that feeds you, you dumbbell. Yet you wish to tear this down? You might as well snatch the bread from the hands of your children.

Can our corporations grow unless they increase the theater of their operations? Certainly they need to put their products on the shelves of every store in every country of the world. In order for us to thrive, all of the world’s people must purchase the products of the corporations who house and clothe and feed us. So it is that imprisoning the weak for appetites which we inflame is necessary to put “food on your families”. So it is that the deaths of those in foreign lands are a vital part of many industries upon which we depend. We cannot do without them. So it is that both the legal and the illegal, in the same hands, are indispensable to our way of life. Takeovers, mergers, supportive legislations and all attendant efforts toward a brighter future make all of our futures bright, even if we only serve as product ourselves. Sacrifice for the common good on the part of the common man is the highest form of service any of us can render and not only do we all profit thereby but we also learn the most important lessons of compassion and understanding as a result. Knowing what you know now it becomes impossible to pass the sidewalk lunatic, the homeless family in the cardboard box, the junkie, the prostitute, the alcoholic and the pedophile without recognizing what a vital service they perform. You must thank them. They are among our most selfless assistants. But remember, thank them only. Don’t interfere with misguided ideas and efforts toward helping them. This would, as you can see, upset the whole apple cart.

This is why Paris Hilton should not have gone to jail and why she should have gone to jail. This is why life is designed to provide and frustrate at every turn. This is why there is no satisfaction in the products we desire because we must always be longing for something we will never get. This is our impetus toward the shining city on the hill; that place we shall never occupy but which, in the very hope for that city we shall certainly live therein forever.

No longer fear for the future. The uncertainty of the future is your greatest security and the greater the uncertainty the greater the good for all. Perhaps you now realize that freedom actually is slavery, that war is peace and that you do indeed live in the best of all possible worlds.

Smoking Mirrors - January 25, 2007

Grandpa, What Was America Like?

A Prophesy in the Making

We had the kids and grandkids over the other day and my granddaughter said to me, “Grandpa, what was it like growing up in America?” I sat down next to her and did my best to tell her. This is that story:

When I was young, there was no greater country on Earth. I was fiercely proud to be an American. We were the envy of all the people of the world, save maybe the French. We gave generously to humanitarian causes worldwide and earned the respect of the world for being the principled nation that we were. We were the champions of democracy and freedom.

When Americans traveled to other countries, we commanded the respect of the people. There were many times that we would be treated with special favors just because we were American.

When I was about 15 years old I had the occasion to travel to South Korea. After exploring some of the cities I ventured out into the residential areas. I happened upon a family that invited me into their home. They offered me a bottle of coca-cola. Their hospitality was amazing and they answered all of my questions about their life there. Their house was a shanty, what we would consider to be the poverty level, but it was clean. They told me that the rent they paid was the equivalent of U.S. $20. a month. I believe that at least part of the reason that they were so nice to me was that I was an American. The people of the world held Americans near to their heart.

When I was young we had all types of goods manufactured in America. We had steel mills that produced steel, we had textile factories that produced garments from cotton produced on our own soil. We had the best electronic manufacturers in the world. When we went to the store to buy a radio, we had our choice of various brands that were made in the United States. We could also buy a brand that was made in Japan if you felt like taking a chance, as it was inferior quality. You could count on the goods made in the U.S. to last longer and be better built. If you went to buy a pair of shoes you could choose between many pairs of shoes made in the Northeast, or pay four times as much for an imported pair.

Our cars were on par with the German and Japanese cars. Our airlines were unmatched by any others. Our education system was the best on earth. We were taking steps to preserve our air, water and forests. America was trying to reduce the national debt.

Then a cancer hit the country....

In America, they used to hold elections for the president every four years. In one of the last presidential elections held, in the year 2000, a big change happened to America. A foreign power took control of America. We now know that what appeared to the American public as a disputed election that saw George W. Bush elected president, was in fact the takeover of the United States by the worlds elite. A shadowy group of people aligned with Israel and Zionism. These elitists were determined to put in place a plan that they devised for world domination called the New World Order. More specifically they formed a think tank called the PNAC which called for a Pearl Harbor style attack on America to push America into invading Iraq and reshaping the Middle East for Israel.

The Zionists made many attacks on Western Civilizations that they blamed on Muslim extremists. Then the Zionists unleashed America’s military might against the Muslim nations. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslim people died due to America’s aggression.

At the same time, in America, the American people were losing their liberties that their forefathers fought so hard to secure. The puppet government that the Zionists led, shredded the Constitution and civil liberties disappeared. America’s demise was now at hand. She was spiraling downward.

Under the leadership of the Zionists, torture and human rights abuses thrived. America, once known as the outpost of freedom, was now known as the leading abuser of human rights on the planet. America had the highest percentage of its population in jails of any country. America would arrest people and fly them off to foreign countries to be tortured. This process was known as “rendering”. America had also setup foreign prisons where they would hold prisoners without charges for years, torturing and abusing them without regard to international treaties to ban such actions.

Bush was emulating Hitler’s rise to power. Indeed the parallels between Germany prior to WWII and America prior to WWIII are astounding. In both cases the people were too afraid to speak up against the aggressors. Those that did were eliminated by the fascist regimes. Both goverments embarked on a policy of aggression toward other countries that they cloaked under a banner of ‘Homeland Security’. Both countries passed laws to silence the resistance.

In America first they passed the so called ‘Patriot Act’ I and II which empowered the Zionists, then they passed laws making it a crime to speak out against the Zionist aggression. Finally the Zionists took control over the internet and stopped all forms of dissent. The Zionists, thinking that they could get away with anything now, embarked on a blitzkrieg against many countries, focusing on the Middle East. Their short term goal was to secure the world’s oil reserves and put them under Zionist control. Israel directed the operations.

As you know Russia and China did not allow the Zionists to achieve their goal of world domination. That is why the great war was fought. That is the reason the part of America that is west of the Mississippi is now known as Western China and that area east of the Mississippi Eastern Russia.

Webber 10/19/2005

What is Antisemitism?

By Michael Neumann - June 4, 2002

Every once in a while, some left-wing Jewish writer will take a deep breath, open up his (or her) great big heart, and tell us that criticism of Israel or Zionism is not antisemitism. Silently they congratulate themselves on their courage. With a little sigh, they suppress any twinge of concern that maybe the goyim--let alone the Arabs--can't be trusted with this dangerous knowledge.

Sometimes it is gentile hangers-on, whose ethos if not their identity aspires to Jewishness, who take on this task. Not to be utterly risqué, they then hasten to remind us that antisemitism is nevertheless to be taken very seriously. That Israel, backed by a pronounced majority of Jews, happens to be waging a race war against the Palestinians is all the more reason we should be on our guard. Who knows? it might possibly stir up some resentment!

I take a different view. I think we should almost never take antisemitism seriously, and maybe we should have some fun with it. I think it is particularly unimportant to the Israel-Palestine conflict, except perhaps as a diversion from the real issues. I will argue for the truth of these claims; I also defend their propriety. I don't think making them is on a par with pulling the wings off flies.

"Antisemitism", properly and narrowly speaking, doesn't mean hatred of semites; that is to confuse etymology with definition. It means hatred of Jews. But here, immediately, we come up against the venerable shell-game of Jewish identity: "Look! We're a religion! No! a race! No! a cultural entity! Sorry--a religion!" When we tire of this game, we get suckered into another: "anti-Zionism is antisemitism! " quickly alternates with: "Don't confuse Zionism with Judaism! How dare you, you antisemite!"

Well, let's be good sports. Let's try defining antisemitism as broadly as any supporter of Israel would ever want: antisemitism can be hatred of the Jewish race, or culture, or religion, or hatred of Zionism. Hatred, or dislike, or opposition, or slight unfriendliness.

But supporters of Israel won't find this game as much fun as they expect. Inflating the meaning of 'antisemitism' to include anything politically damaging to Israel is a double-edged sword. It may be handy for smiting your enemies, but the problem is that definitional inflation, like any inflation, cheapens the currency. The more things get to count as antisemitic, the less awful antisemitism is going to sound. This happens because, while no one can stop you from inflating definitions, you still don't control the facts. In particular, no definition of 'antisemitism' is going to eradicate the substantially pro-Palestinian version of the facts which I espouse, as do most people in Europe, a great many Israelis, and a growing number of North Americans.

What difference does that make? Suppose, for example, an Israeli rightist says that the settlements represent the pursuit of aspirations fundamental to the Jewish people, and to oppose the settlements is antisemitism. We might have to accept this claim; certainly it is difficult to refute. But we also cannot abandon the well-founded belief that the settlements strangle the Palestinian people and extinguish any hope of peace. So definitional acrobatics are all for nothing: we can only say, screw the fundamental aspirations of the Jewish people; the settlements are wrong. We must add that, since we are obliged to oppose the settlements, we are obliged to be antisemitic. Through definitional inflation, some form of 'antisemitism' has become morally obligatory.

It gets worse if anti-Zionism is labeled antisemitic, because the settlements, even if they do not represent fundamental aspirations of the Jewish people, are an entirely plausible extension of Zionism. To oppose them is indeed to be anti-Zionist, and therefore, by the stretched definition, antisemitic. The more antisemitism expands to include opposition to Israeli policies, the better it looks. Given the crimes to be laid at the feet of Zionism, there is another simple syllogism: anti-Zionism is a moral obligation, so, if anti-Zionism is antisemitism, antisemitism is a moral obligation.

What crimes? Even most apologists for Israel have given up denying them, and merely hint that noticing them is a bit antisemitic. After all, Israel 'is no worse than anyone else'. First, so what? At age six we knew that "everyone's doing it" is no excuse; have we forgotten? Second, the crimes are no worse only when divorced from their purpose. Yes, other people have killed civilians, watched them die for want of medical care, destroyed their homes, ruined their crops, and used them as human shields. But Israel does these things to correct the inaccuracy of Israel Zangwill's 1901 assertion that "Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country". It hopes to create a land entirely empty of gentiles, an Arabia deserta in which Jewish children can laugh and play throughout a wasteland called peace.

Well before the Hitler era, Zionists came thousands of miles to dispossess people who had never done them the slightest harm, and whose very existence they contrived to ignore. Zionist atrocities were not part of the initial plan. They emerged as the racist obliviousness of a persecuted people blossomed into the racial supremacist ideology of a persecuting one. That is why the commanders who directed the rapes, mulilations and child-killings of Deir Yassin went on to become prime ministers of Israel.(*) But these murders were not enough. Today, when Israel could have peace for the taking, it conducts another round of dispossession, slowly, deliberately making Palestine unliveable for Palestinians, and liveable for Jews. Its purpose is not defense or public order, but the extinction of a people. True, Israel has enough PR-savvy to eliminate them with an American rather than a Hitlerian level of violence. This is a kinder, gentler genocide that portrays its perpetrators as victims.

Israel is building a racial state, not a religious one. Like my parents, I have always been an atheist. I am entitled by the biology of my birth to Israeli citizenship; you, perhaps, are the most fervent believer in Judaism, but are not. Palestinians are being squeezed and killed for me, not for you. They are to be forced into Jordan, to perish in a civil war. So no, shooting Palestinian civilians is not like shooting Vietnamese or Chechen civilians. The Palestinians aren't 'collateral damage' in a war against well-armed communist or separatist forces. They are being shot because Israel thinks all Palestinians should vanish or die, so people with one Jewish grandparent can build subdivisions on the rubble of their homes. This is not the bloody mistake of a blundering superpower but an emerging evil, the deliberate strategy of a state conceived in and dedicated to an increasingly vicious ethnic nationalism. It has relatively few corpses to its credit so far, but its nuclear weapons can kill perhaps 25 million people in a few hours.

Do we want to say it is antisemitic to accuse, not just the Israelis, but Jews generally of complicity in these crimes against humanity? Again, maybe not, because there is a quite reasonable case for such assertions. Compare them, for example, to the claim that Germans generally were complicit in such crimes. This never meant that every last German, man, woman, idiot and child, were guilty. It meant that most Germans were. Their guilt, of course, did not consist in shoving naked prisoners into gas chambers. It consisted in support for the people who planned such acts, or--as many overwrought, moralistic Jewish texts will tell you--for denying the horror unfolding around them, for failing to speak out and resist, for passive consent. Note that the extreme danger of any kind of active resistance is not supposed to be an excuse here.

Well, virtually no Jew is in any kind of danger from speaking out. And speaking out is the only sort of resistance required. If many Jews spoke out, it would have an enormous effect. But the overwhelming majority of Jews do not, and in the vast majority of cases, this is because they support Israel. Now perhaps the whole notion of collective responsibility should be discarded; perhaps some clever person will convince us that we have to do this. But at present, the case for Jewish complicity seems much stronger than the case for German complicity. So if it is not racist, and reasonable, to say that the Germans were complicit in crimes against humanity, then it is not racist, and reasonable, to say the same of the Jews. And should the notion of collective responsibility be discarded, it would still be reasonable to say that many, perhaps most adult Jewish individuals support a state that commits war crimes, because that's just true. So if saying these things is antisemitic, than it can be reasonable to be antisemitic.

In other words there is a choice to be made. You can use 'antisemitism' to fit your political agenda, or you can use it as a term of condemnation, but you can't do both. If antisemitism is to stop coming out reasonable or moral, it has to be narrowly and unpolemically defined. It would be safe to confine antisemitism to explicitly racial hatred of Jews, to attacking people simply because they had been born Jewish. But it would be uselessly safe: even the Nazis did not claim to hate people simply because they had been born Jewish. They claimed to hate the Jews because they were out to dominate the Aryans.
Clearly such a view should count as antisemitic, whether it belongs to the cynical racists who concocted it or to the fools who swallowed it.

There is only one way to guarantee that the term "antisemitism" captures all and only bad acts or attitudes towards Jews. We have to start with what we can all agree are of that sort, and see that the term names all and only them. We probably share enough morality to do this.

For instance, we share enough morality to say that all racially based acts and hatreds are bad, so we can safely count them as antisemitic. But not all 'hostility towards Jews', even if that means hostility towards the overwhelming majority of Jews, should count as antisemitic. Nor should all hostility towards Judaism, or Jewish culture.

I, for example, grew up in Jewish culture and, like many people growing up in a culture, I have come to dislike it. But it is unwise to count my dislike as antisemitic, not because I am Jewish, but because it is harmless. Perhaps not utterly harmless: maybe, to some tiny extent, it will somehow encourage some of the harmful acts or attitudes we'd want to call antisemitic. But so what? Exaggerated philosemitism, which regards all Jews as brilliant warm and witty saints, might have the same effect. The dangers posed by my dislike are much too small to matter. Even widespread, collective loathing for a culture is normally harmless. French culture, for instance, seems to be widely disliked in North America, and no one, including the French, consider this some sort of racial crime.

Not even all acts and attitudes harmful to Jews generally should be considered antisemitic. Many people dislike American culture; some boycott American goods. Both the attitude and the acts may harm Americans generally, but there is nothing morally objectionable about either. Defining these acts as anti-Americanism will only mean that some anti-Americanism is perfectly acceptable. If you call opposition to Israeli policies antisemitic on the grounds that this opposition harms Jews generally, it will only mean that some antisemitism is equally acceptable.

If antisemitism is going to be a term of condemnation, then, it must apply beyond explicitly racist acts or thoughts or feelings. But it cannot apply beyond clearly unjustified and serious hostility to Jews. The Nazis made up historical fantasies to justify their attacks; so do modern antisemites who trust in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. So do the closet racists who complain about Jewish dominance of the economy. This is antisemitism in a narrow, negative sense of the word. It is action or propaganda designed to hurt Jews, not because of anything they could avoid doing, but because they are what they are. It also applies to the attitudes that propaganda tries to instill. Though not always explicitly racist, it involves racist motives and the intention to do real damage. Reasonably well-founded opposition to Israeli policies, even if that opposition hurts all Jews, does not fit this description. Neither does simple, harmless dislike of things Jewish.

So far, I've suggested that it's best to narrow the definition of antisemitism so that no act can be both antisemitic and unobjectionable. But we can go further. Now that we're through playing games, let's ask about the role of *genuine*, bad antisemitism in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and in the world at large.

Undoubtedly there is genuine antisemitism in the Arab world: the distribution of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the myths about stealing the blood of gentile babies. This is utterly inexcusable. So was your failure to answer Aunt Bee's last letter. In other words, it is one thing to be told: you must simply accept that antisemitism is evil; to do otherwise is to put yourself outside our moral world. But it is quite something else to have someone try to bully you into proclaiming that antisemitism is the Evil of Evils. We are not children learning morality; it is our responsibility to set our own moral priorities. We cannot do this by looking at horrible images from 1945 or listening to the anguished cries of suffering columnists. We have to ask how much harm antisemitism is doing, or is likely to do, not in the past, but today. And we must ask where such harm might occur, and why.

Supposedly there is great danger in the antisemitism of the Arab world. But Arab antisemitism isn't the cause of Arab hostility towards Israel or even towards Jews. It is an effect. The progress of Arab antisemitism fits nicely with the progress of Jewish encroachment and Jewish atrocities. This is not to excuse genuine antisemitism; it is to trivialize it. It came to the Middle East with Zionism and it will abate when Zionism ceases to be an expansionist threat. Indeed its chief cause is not antisemitic propaganda but the decades-old, systematic and unrelenting efforts of Israel to implicate all Jews in its crimes. If Arab anti-semitism persists after a peace agreement, we can all get together and cluck about it. But it still won't do Jews much actual harm. Arab governments could only lose by permitting attacks on their Jewish citizens; to do so would invite Israeli intervention. And there is little reason to expect such attacks to materialize: if all the horrors of Israel's recent campaigns did not provoke them, it is hard to imagine what would. It would probably take some Israeli act so awful and so criminal as to overshadow the attacks themselves.

If antisemitism is likely to have terrible effects, it is far more likely to have them in Western Europe. The neo-fascist resurgence there is all too real. But is it a danger to Jews? There is no doubt that LePen, for instance, is antisemitic. There is also no evidence whatever that he intends to do anything about it. On the contrary, he makes every effort to pacify the Jews, and perhaps even enlist their help against his real targets, the 'Arabs'. He would hardly be the first political figure to ally himself with people he disliked. But if he had some deeply hidden plan against the Jews, that *would* be unusual: Hitler and the Russian antisemitic rioters were wonderfully open about their intentions, and they didn't court Jewish support. And it is a fact that some French Jews see LePen as a positive development or even an ally. (see, for instance, "`LePen is good for us,' Jewish supporter says", Ha'aretz May 04, 2002, and Mr. Goldenburg's April 23rd comments on France TV.)

Of course there are historical reasons for fearing a horrendous attack on Jews. And anything is possible: there could be a massacre of Jews in Paris tomorrow, or of Algerians. Which is more likely? If there are any lessons of history, they must apply in roughly similar circumstances. Europe today bears very little resemblance to Europe in 1933. And there are positive possibilities as well: why is the likelihood of a pogrom greater than the likelihood that antisemitism will fade into ineffectual nastiness? Any legitimate worries must rest on some evidence that there really is a threat.

The incidence of antisemitic attacks might provide such evidence. But this evidence is consistently fudged: no distinction is made between attacks against Jewish monuments and symbols as opposed to actual attacks against Jews. In addition, so much is made of an increase in the frequency of attacks that the very low absolute level of attacks escapes attention. The symbolic attacks have indeed increased to significant absolute numbers. The physical attacks have not.(*) More important, most of these attacks are by Muslim residents: in other words, they come from a widely hated, vigorously policed and persecuted minority who don't stand the slightest chance of undertaking a serious campaign of violence against Jews.

It is very unpleasant that roughly half a dozen Jews have been hospitalized--none killed--due to recent attacks across Europe. But anyone who makes this into one of the world's important problems simply hasn't looked at the world. These attacks are a matter for the police, not a reason why we should police ourselves and others to counter some deadly spiritual disease. That sort of reaction is appropriate only when racist attacks occur in societies indifferent or hostile to the minority attacked. Those who really care about recurrent Nazism, for instance, should save their anguished concern for the far bloodier, far more widely condoned attacks on gypsies, whose history of persecution is fully comparable to the Jewish past. The position of Jews is much closer to the position of whites, who are also, of course, the victims of racist attacks.

No doubt many people reject this sort of cold-blooded calculation. They will say that, with the past looming over us, even one antisemitic slur is a terrible thing, and its ugliness is not to be measured by a body count. But if we take a broader view of the matter, antisemitism becomes less, not more important. To regard any shedding of Jewish blood as a world-shattering calamity, one which defies all measurement and comparison, is racism, pure and simple; the valuing of one race's blood over all others. The fact that Jews have been persecuted for centuries and suffered terribly half a century ago doesn't wipe out the fact that in Europe today, Jews are insiders with far less to suffer and fear than many other ethnic groups. Certainly racist attacks against a well-off minority are just as evil as racist attacks against a poor and powerless minority. But equally evil attackers do not make for equally worrisome attacks.

It is not Jews who live most in the shadow of the concentration camp. LePen's 'transit camps' are for 'Arabs', not Jews. And though there are politically significant parties containing many antisemites, not one of these parties shows any sign of articulating, much less implementing, an antisemitic agenda. Nor is there any particular reason to suppose that, once in power, they will change their tune. Haider's Austria is not considered dangerous for Jews; neither was Tudjman's Croatia. And were there to be such danger, well, a nuclear-armed Jewish state stands ready to welcome any refugees, as do the US and Canada. And to say there are no real dangers now is not to say that we should ignore any dangers that may arise. If in France, for instance, the Front National starts advocating transit camps for Jews, or institutes anti-Jewish immigration policies, then we should be alarmed. But we should not be alarmed that something alarming might just conceivably happen: there are far more alarming things going on than that!

One might reply that, if things are not more alarming, it is only because the Jews and others have been so vigilant in combatting antisemitism. But this isn't plausible. For one thing, vigilance about antisemitism is a kind of tunnel vision: as neofascists are learning, they can escape notice by keeping quiet about Jews. For another, there has been no great danger to Jews even in traditionally antisemitic countries where the world is *not* vigilant, like Croatia or the Ukraine. Countries that get very little attention seem no more dangerous than countries that get a lot. As for the vigorous reaction to LePen in France, that seems to have a lot more to do with French revulsion at neofascism than with the scoldings of the Anti-Defamation League. To suppose that the Jewish organizations and earnest columnists who pounce on antisemitism are saving the world from disaster is like claiming that Bertrand Russell and the Quakers were all that saved us from nuclear war.

Now one might say: whatever the real dangers, these events are truly agonizing for Jews, and bring back unbearably painful memories. That may be true for the very few who still have those memories; it is not true for Jews in general. I am a German Jew, and have a good claim to second-generation, third-hand victimhood. Antisemitic incidents and a climate of rising antisemitism don't really bother me a hell of a lot. I'm much more scared of really dangerous situations, like driving. Besides, even painful memories and anxieties do not carry much weight against the actual physical suffering inflicted by discrimination against many non-Jews.

This is not to belittle all antisemitism, everywhere. One often hears of vicious antisemites in Poland and Russia, both on the streets and in government. But alarming as this may be, it is also immune to the influence of Israel-Palestine conflicts, and those conflicts are wildly unlikely to affect it one way or another. Moreover, so far as I know, nowhere is there as much violence against Jews as there is against 'Arabs'. So even if antisemitism is, somewhere, a catastrophically serious matter, we can only conclude that anti-Arab sentiment is far more serious still. And since every antisemitic group is to a far greater extent anti-immigrant and anti-Arab, these groups can be fought, not in the name of antisemitism, but in the defense of Arabs and immigrants. So the antisemitic threat posed by these groups shouldn't even make us want to focus on antisemitism: they are just as well fought in the name of justice for Arabs and immigrants.

In short, the real scandal today is not antisemitism but the importance it is given. Israel has committed war crimes. It has implicated Jews generally in these crimes, and Jews generally have hastened to implicate themselves. This has provoked hatred against Jews. Why not? Some of this hatred is racist, some isn't, but who cares? Why should we pay any attention to this issue at all? Is the fact that Israel's race war has provoked bitter anger of any importance besides the war itself? Is the remote possibility that somewhere, sometime, somehow, this hatred may in theory, possibly kill some Jews of any importance besides the brutal, actual, physical persecution of Palestinians, and the hundreds of thousands of votes for Arabs to be herded into transit camps? Oh, but I forgot. Drop everything. Someone spray-painted antisemitic slogans on a synagogue.

* Not even the ADL and B'nai B'rith include attacks on Israel in the tally; they speak of "The insidious way we have seen the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians used by anti-Semites". And like many other people, I don't count terrorist attacks by such as Al Quaeda as instances of antisemitism but rather of some misdirected quasi-military campaign against the US and Israel. Even if you count them in, it does not seem very dangerous to be a Jew outside Israel.

Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario, Canada. He can be reached at: mneumann@trentu.ca

JUDAISM VS ZIONISM

What Americans need to know, but don't

The Zionists will try and make the case that there is no distinction between Judaism and Zionism. They want to label you anti-semitic if you criticize any Zionist policy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Judaism is a religion that has been around for thousands of years, Zionism is an ideology that started in Basel, Switzerland in 1897.

The Zionist movement created the Israeli state. Its essential goal was and is to change the nature of the Jewish people from that of a religious entity to a political movement. From Zionism's inception the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people have stood in staunch opposition to it.

The Torah Jews believe that they have been exiled from the Holy Land by God for sinning and cannot return until the Messianic redemption.

ACCORDING TO THE JEWISH FAITH AND TORAH LAW THE JEWISH PEOPLE ARE FORBIDDEN TO HAVE THEIR OWN STATE WHILE AWAITING THE MESSIANIC ERA!

The Torah Jews are staunch opponents of Zionism. A good example are the Rabbis in the Palestine region that protect the Palestinian people from hostile Jewish settlers. Despite what Zionists would like you to believe a large percentage of Jewish people DO NOT support Zionist policies.

Conversely, not all Zionists are Jews. Dick Cheney immediately comes to mind.

Many Zionists are Christian idealists that feel they are on God's side if they support the "chosen people" of Israel. The "chosen people", Jews, are actually not even the modern descendents of the Israel of the Biblical Old Testament:

According to both the early-20th-Century popular historian H.G.Wells and the Hungarian-Jewish intellectual and author Arthur Koestler, amongst numerous others, the people known today as Jews are primarily the descendents of a Turkish tribe known as the Khazars. The Khazars have no historical connection to Palestine. They converted to Judaism between 620 and 740AD, and have no genetic connection to biblical Israel, and hence to the narratives of the Bible and the Holy Land. Koestler actually devoted an entire book called The Thirteenth Tribe (1976 ISBN: 0091255503) to the fact that the Jews of eastern European origin, who are known as the Ashkenazi Jews and who make up about 95% of the Jewish population of today, are of Khazar origin. In other words - virtually all of the Jews of the modern world have no Hebrew ancestry, and no ancient connection with Palestine.

H. G. Wells also wrote a book in 1933 called The Shape of Things to Come, in which he accurately forecast that World War II would start, “out of a conflict between Germany and Poland circa 1939”. In the same book, Wells also wrote that World War III was to commence, “from some future [unidentified] event in Basrah, Iraq.”

Zionism is rampant in the business of elections, enabling the hijacking of the electoral process in America. This industry seems to be laden with Christian zealots intent on Zionist goals. One example is Walden O'Dell, Chairman of the Board of Diebold Election Systems, the second largest company in America, whose business it is to count your vote.

O'Dell recently wrote a letter to Ohio Republicans stating that he was, "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to (President Bush) next year."

Another example of Christian Zionists are Howard Ahmanson and Nelson Bunker Hunt of Election Systems and Software (ES&S). ES&S claims to have counted 56% of the vote in the last four presidential elections. Ahmanson and Hunt have both heavily contributed to The Chalcedon Institute, an organization that mandates Christian "dominion" over the world. Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the extremist "Christian Reconstructionist" movement, which openly advocates a theocratic takeover of American democracy, placing the entire society under the "dominion" of "Christ the King." This "dominion" includes the death penalty for homosexuals, exclusion of citizenship for non-Christians, stoning of sinners and -- we kid you not -- slavery, "one of the most beneficent of Biblical laws."

--Webber March, 2004

The Truth About The Tehran Holocaust Conference - By One Who Was There

When Alexander Baron returned from the Holocaust Conference in Iran, he found Western media "reporting" completely off-base. "They might as well have been on a different planet."

In December this year a fanatical Islamic Jew-hater convened a conference in Tehran dedicated to denying the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews as a prelude to wiping Israel off the map. Jew-haters including outright Nazis attended from all parts of the globe burying their ideological differences in order to put this fiendish plan into action.

The above sums up the consensus on the recent Tehran Conference on the Holocaust and on its convenor, Iran's charismatic President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As a participant in that conference, I can report that the Western media is up to its old tricks of lying in unison again, this time in order to stoke up the fuels of fire against Iran.

Not content with sending nearly three thousand American and over a hundred British servicemen to their deaths in Iraq while plunging that country into a civil war in all but name, the hawks in Washington are now preparing to start another war, this time against Iran.

Iran we are told is a threat to world peace, it is developing nuclear weapons which will be used against Israel. The lies go on. So what is the truth?

The truth is that the roots of this conference lie in a series of blasphemous cartoons which the enemies of Islam thought were hilarious; now the boot is on the other foot and the Islamophobes are laughing no more. In September last year a Danish newspaper published a number of cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad. Although Islam is far from the intolerant, patriarchal, totalitarian philosophy it is often portrayed as, there are two things you never do.

You do not spit on the Holy Koran, and you do not guy the Prophet. The prohibition against any representation of Muhammad is particularly severe, not because he is regarded as divine or sacred; unlike Jesus of Nazareth he did not claim to be the Son of God, and unlike Jesus, Muhammad was a real historical person, he actually existed. Just take it from me, you dont mess with Muhammad.

Nevertheless, some people regard this prohibition as a violation of their right of freedom of speech and freedom of expression, so they defended the newspaper in the wake of anger and protests from Islamic organisations. If this defence had gone no further than the usual mutterings about freedom of expression, that would have been the end of it, but seeing Muslim anger aroused, and determined to push their luck just for the sheer hell of it, a number of foreign newspapers reprinted the cartoons, an act which led not only to rising anger in the Islamic world but to violence and even murder.

While no reasonable person would condone acts of murder even in response to gross blasphemy, there can be no doubt that the Western media must bear the responsibility for a large slice of the violence that followed. Free speech or not, no one has the right to shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre; Western newspaper editors may be many things but by and large they are not stupid. They must surely have known that murder and mayhem would follow if Muslims felt they were being pushed too far. If nothing else, they must each and every one of them have been acutely aware of the fact that there are extremists within the Islamic community who will use any pretext to resort to violence. Havent they heard of September 11?

Seeing his religion offended and the blasphemers defended on the grounds of free speech, some bright spark in Iran decided that sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander, and the newspaper Hamshahri announced that it would hold a Holocaust cartoon competition.

"Does the West's freedom of expression extend to... an event such as the Holocaust or is this freedom of expression only for the desecration of the sanctities of divine religions?" the paper asked. That is what is known as a rhetorical question, because international outrage followed at this blasphemy against the religion of the Holocaust.

Enter the President of Iran. The name Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was all but unknown in the West until he called for Israel to be wiped off the map. True or false? The first part is true; the second part is a lie. What he actually said was that the Zionist entity Israel would go the same way as the Soviet Union, it would simply cease to exist, and all its citizens, Gentile and Jew, would be much better for it.

It may be that this claim is wishful thinking, but it is certainly not genocidal.
Ahmadinejad is a plain speaking man, and when it comes to International Zionism, he is totally fearless, unlike the overwhelming majority of Western politicians and all Western statesmen.

In December last year he was quoted thus by the official BBC website: "If someone were to deny the existence of God... or prophets and religion, they would not bother him. However, if someone were to deny the myth of the Jews massacre, all the Zionist mouthpieces and the governments subservient to the Zionists tear their larynxes and scream against the person as much as they can".

For once this quote is accurate. An honest person may disagree with the first part of that statement, but no honest person could take issue with the second part.

This week, the Iranian Government went one better than Hamshahri when it hosted the first ever Holocaust conference of its kind. There have of course been numerous conferences on the Holocaust before, including those organised by Revisionists, but never has a meeting of this nature been funded and hosted by a government.

I was one of those selected from some eight hundred applicants to present an original paper on the Holocaust. The Iranian Government paid for my ticket and accommodation, although I was not offered any inducement or bribe to attend. Our hosts extended us every courtesy, although they did not bend over backwards to try to impress us.

I have no illusions about Iran and although I saw precious little of Tehran in the short time I was there and nothing at all of the rest of the country, it was obvious that the good will of the regime was sincere. There was no hatred of either Westerners or Americans evident. Street signs and shop signs are often in
English as well as Farsi; Western TV programmes including American music are ubiquitous.

The title of my paper was THE NAZI GAS CHAMBERS: Rumours, Lies And Reality - One Researchers View. This is a subject dear to my heart. I dont claim to be an expert and am not an accredited historian, but I have been reading this subject for a quarter of a century, and over the past eighteen years, I have researched certain aspects of the Holocaust in greater depth than the vast majority of bona fide historians.

My researches have led me to believe that undeniable though it was during the Holocaust and World War II, the full extent of Jewish suffering has been greatly exaggerated, and I told my audience so adducing evidence in support of my arguments at every point. Not every speaker was so meticulous, but not every speaker shared my viewpoint.

Among the speakers at this conference were members of Neturei Karta, the ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist sect. Rabbi Ahron Cohen said it was ridiculous to deny the Holocaust, meaning the genocide of the Jews, and said that it didn't matter if six million, five million or some lesser number were murdered by the Nazis, nor did it matter if the victims died in the gas chambers or by the bullet, it was still genocide.

Neturei Karta are often derided as cranks, but they are the real Jews, the men and women who practise the undiluted, uncontaminated essence of Judaism.

All shades of opinion were present including one or two nutty Arabs and people who espoused genuine anti-Semitism, but the conference was all the better for it.

Contrary to the Western media's assertions, the conference did not declare the Holocaust a myth, although some individual participants were surely of that opinion.

At the end of the presentations on the second day the speakers were taken to what I presumed was the Presidential Palace where we met the great man himself. I say great man because that is what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is; he is the Tehranosaurus Rex of statesmen, Mahmoud the Tehranible.

You may not think he is right, you may not even like him, but you have to admire the guy. If half a dozen statesmen had exhibited the same courage, forthrightness and honesty over International Zionism and the so-called Jewish Question over the past fifty years the Middle East would not be in the sorry state it is in now, there would have been no Gulf Wars and probably no Six Day War or Yom Kippur War either.

The Palestinian problem would almost certainly have been solved, or at the very least these wretched people would not still be living in rat-infested camps strewn halfway across the region.

When we met Ahmadinejad he repeated what he had said about the Zionist entity, and so there could be no misunderstanding his intentions he embraced several rabbis. One of the major speakers at the Conference was David Duke. In an earlier incarnation Duke was a leading member of the Ku Klux Klan, something he has never been allowed to forget.

White Supremacist or White Separatist or both, Dukes bigotry, if it exists, does not extend to the mass murder of innocent civilians. He stated quite clearly that the US Government and media (which he sees as Zionist-controlled) is itching to start a war with Iran, and made an impassioned plea that it be averted.

Although like everyone else at this conference I have no illusions about Jewish/Zionist power or mendacity I dont see the hidden Jewish hand behind every event on the world stage, but there can be no denying the fact that International Zionism and its allies do want war.

In the last few weeks the Bush Administration has suffered an outburst of realism; a ground war and invasion of Iran is probably now out of the question, public revulsion at the inevitable loss of life would be too much for even the sheep-like American public, but it is not impossible that the Americans may make a "pre-emptive strike" against Irans nuclear facilities, or even more stupidly they may put the Israelis up to it.

If there is any sort of attack against Iran, the consequences for Iran, for the United States, for Britain and indeed for the world will be catastrophic. It must not be allowed to happen.

Ahmadinejad has no intention of using his countrys nuclear program for malignant purposes, but even if he had, it ill-behooves the only nation that has ever used nuclear weapons in anger to tell Iran or any other sovereign nation that it has no right to develop such a weapons programme.

We in the West, Christians, non-believers and Muslims, Gentile, Jew and Arab alike, must resist this folly. We must exert whatever pressure we can against both the American and British Governments to ensure that Iranian sovereignty is not violated on any pretext.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a man we can do business with. When Tony Blair condemned the Holocaust Conference, Iran's reaction was to invite him to attend it. Naturally this invitation was not accepted, but perhaps Blair, or whoever is running the country then, will attend the next one.

There is a saying that "jaw jaw" is always preferable to "war war"; many veterans of the First World War, the Great War - of which there are now so few remaining - believe this and have gone on record as such. They saw the horror of the trenches; we too have seen the horrors of war, although most of us fortunately not at first hand, we experience it vicariously through CNN or the BBC. Does anyone in the West really want the madness of Iraq to be extended to Iran?

And then where next? Syria? North Korea?

As I said, Ahmadinejad is a man the West can do business with. He is currently offering us an olive branch. Anyone who doesn't like Iran's Holocaust conferences will be more than welcome to attend the next one and put an alternate point of view - as did the Naturei Karta rabbis. And anyone who wants to discuss other matters with the Iranians, like mutual nuclear disarmament, swords into ploughshares and perhaps developing alternative energies, will find its President a more than willing listener.

Bear this in mind next time you read that Iran is a threat to world peace.

Declaration of Independence From Israel

Being of sound mind and having the clarity to see where world problems originate from and having the determination to bring about resolution to those problems, we hereby declare ourselves free from the state of Israel and it’s influence in our lives.

We understand that Israel is a Zionist state, which offers a refuge for the world’s criminals and is rife with drug and people trafficking, and that Jerusalem is the world’s center for organized crime and crimes against humanity. We understand that “Al Qaeda” is really Mossad creating terror in the world for it’s own objectives. We understand that the Zionist influence has spread across the world and has corrupted our goverments. In an effort to take back our rights as citizens of the world, we make the following pledge:

We refuse to engage or participate in any wars fought on Israel’s behalf.

We will no longer allow members of our government to hold dual-citizenship to Israel.

We will no longer allow our elected officials to pledge loyalty to Israel.

We will no longer allow our elected officials to visit Israel while in office.

We will no longer allow money from our government to be sent to Israel in the form of ‘Foreign Aid’ which is used to support Israel’s military buildup and human rights abuse.

We will no longer allow the Federal Reserve to print money for us. We realize that the Federal Reserve is a private bank with it’s leadership loyal to Israel.

We will no longer allow our government to pay interest on Federal Reserve notes to the Federal Reserve. We understand that this debt is more money that ends up funding Israel.

We will no longer allow our elected officials to accept money from people loyal to Israel. We understand that this makes it necessary to outlaw lobbying and influence peddling altogether.

We will no longer give any money to the Zionist controlled press. This includes advertising or buying any products from any entity considered part of the mainstream media (MSM).

We hereby agree to live by this pledge and to do all in our power to see that it stands.

Signed:

World Citizen

Remember the Liberty!

When Israel attacks, the Pentagon retreats - by Justin Raimondo

USS Liberty - the day after Israel's attack

It was 40 years ago this June 8 that the USS Liberty – a large, armorless, refitted freighter that was gathering intelligence in the Mediterranean at the outset of the Six Day War – was attacked by Israeli fighter jets and torpedoes. Thirty-four U.S. sailors were killed, and 172 were wounded.

The Liberty limped back to Malta. A U.S. Navy court of inquiry was on board investigating the damage, but – for some reason – the investigators were not allowed to proceed to Israel to find out what really went on. Orders from the top echelons of the Pentagon nixed the inquiry, and today, the families of the fallen still haven't gotten any answers as to why Israel was allowed to get away with it without even so much as a slap on the wrist – nor even any public acknowledgment that it was a deliberate attack.

Far from apologizing, the Israelis have to this day denied that they attacked the Liberty on purpose, and – incredibly – they stoutly maintain that the whole thing was an "accident." This in spite of the fact that the Liberty was proudly flying a U.S. flag and was easily identifiable as an American vessel. The Israel Lobby has even gone so far as to publish a book, The Liberty Incident, by Jay Cristol, that makes the case for the "accidental" scenario, but the survivors' families – and a number of credible commentators – aren't buying it. One of those commentators is a former captain in the Judge Advocate General Corps assigned to the Liberty investigation, Ward Boston, who has signed an affidavit stating unequivocally:

"The evidence was clear. Both Admiral [Isaac C.] Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack … was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. It was our shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and testimony we received firsthand, that the Israeli attack was planned and deliberate."

Capt. Boston says that Adm. Kidd, who was in charge of the subsequent inquiry, frequently referred to the Israelis as "murderous bastards," and a number of intelligence experts and U.S. officials seem to concur, albeit not in precisely those terms. Says former CIA director Richard Helms: "The board of inquiry [concluded] that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing in attacking the Liberty." Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk says:

"I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation. … Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept their explanations. I didn't believe them then, and I don't believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous."

Even more outrageous was the cover-up by the Pentagon – and the White House of Lyndon "Hey Hey LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?" Johnson. According to officer David Lewis, who was below deck at the time of the attack:

"[6th Rear Fleet Adm. Lawrence Geis] told me that since I was the senior Liberty survivor on board he wanted to tell me in confidence what had actually transpired. He told me that upon receipt of our SOS, aircraft were launched to come to our assistance, and then Washington was notified. He said that [Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara] had ordered that the aircraft be returned to the carrier, which was done. RADM Geis then said that he speculated that Washington may have suspected that the aircraft carried nuclear weapons so he put together another flight of conventional aircraft that had no capability of carrying nuclear weapons. These he launched to assist us and again notified Washington of his actions. Again McNamara ordered the aircraft recalled. He requested confirmation of the order being unable to believe that Washington would let us sink. This time President Johnson ordered the recall with the comment that he did not care if every man drowned and the ship sank, but that he would not embarrass his allies."

Rather than embarrass his "allies," the president of the United States caved in to the Lobby and buried the truth about the death of American servicemen under a mountain of obfuscation and official silence. As Tim Fischer, a former deputy prime minister of Australia and a former army officer, put it in The Age:

"If Israel did deliberately attack the most powerful nation on Earth, it knows it can do so and get away with murder. Worse still, U.S. military personnel now know that if the truth is politically inconvenient, they and their legacy are expendable."

When it comes to the calculations of the Lobby, we are all expendable – that is the bitter lesson we are learning as a futile war in the Middle East not only rages on but threatens to expand beyond the borders of Iraq. Our "ally" Israel is an albatross hung 'round our necks, and it is slowly strangling America's chances of defeating Islamic extremism in the battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide. Will no one rid us of this troublesome "ally"?

I'm afraid they won't. The power of the Lobby, as explicated by scholars John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, is as formidable as ever, if not more so. They ensure that there is no real debate over our Middle Eastern policy, either in Congress or in the councils of government policymakers. Their spies are allowed to get away with all sorts of activities that any other foreign power would soon feel Washington's wrath over. Their demands are considered the starting point for all policy decisions, and they are rewarded for their lack of loyalty to their main benefactor by being showered with all manner of gifts: "foreign aid," loan guarantees, and technology transfers that have enabled them to build up a military capacity – including nuclear weapons – that knows no rival in the region.

The attack on the Liberty and the subsequent whitewash of the Israelis is proof – if any more were needed – that Israel enjoys a position of preeminence within the councils of state that belies its small size and relative weakness as a settler colony totally dependent on outside infusions of support.

Critics may aver that this is all ancient history, that there is no reason to bring up the attack on the Liberty, and even if it wasn't an accident, it's time to let bygones be bygones. The Lobby constantly asserts that anyone who even mentions this "incident" is nothing but an anti-Semite, because, after all, why talk about it now? The reason is that it underscores the utter falsity of the argument that Israeli and American interests are uniquely and perpetually in perfect alignment. The Israelis attacked the Liberty, according to several books and a BBC documentary on the subject, in order to prevent the U.S. government from learning of Israeli plans to occupy the Golan Heights – a sliver of land that rightfully belongs to Syria, and which is still causing a great many problems for U.S. interests in the region. The stunning fact of the American government's complicity in hiding the truth about an attack on its own soldiers is all we need to know about what's wrong with American foreign policy – and what is the exact source of the problem.

If Iran Were America (And We Were Iran): A Timeline

by Jeffrey L. Bryan

This is for anyone interested in understanding what American foreign policy has done to people in Iran. (For simplicity's sake, I have combined the roles of the USA and the UK, as the USA was assuming control of the former British Empire at this time.)

1953: Coup in America

Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected President of the United States, a country that receives most of its income from oilfields in Pennsylvania and Texas. The oil is pumped and distributed by the Persian-American Oil Company, owned by Iran.

Fulfilling a major campaign promise, Eisenhower reviews the oil production-sharing agreements between Iran and the USA. As Iran is taking more than 90% of American oil revenues, Eisenhower attempts to renegotiate this arrangement on more even terms for his country.

Prime Minister Mossadegh of Iran is outraged at this show of "American greed." Instead of negotiating, Iran sends its intelligence agents to carry out a policy of regime change. They hire an assortment of American street gangs to do the grunt work.

Bombs destroy churches and community centers across the United States. Fliers and pamphlets appear everywhere, claiming that Eisenhower is a member of Communist Party USA. The Communists, according to the fliers, are destroying churches for Eisenhower to help liberate Americans from the "opiate of the masses." Local newspapers, covertly funded by Iran, echo these ideas. American public opinion is inflamed against President Eisenhower.

The Iranians bribe unpatriotic generals like L.L. Limnitzer to lead the coup against Eisenhower.

The Iranians want an authoritarian, fiercely anti-Communist dictator who will never attempt anything resembling nationalization of the American oilfields. After carefully weighing the options, Iran installs Senator Joseph McCarthy as their puppet king to rule the USA.

1953–1979: The McCarthy Era

King Joe McCarthy rules with an iron fist for 26 years. Though initially reluctant to obey a foreign government, King Joe soon embraces his sweeping new powers, as well as the constant flow of Iranian aid and weapons that makes it all possible. Iranian intelligence agents create, for McCarthy's regime, the Department to Surveil and Vet Americans for the King (SAVAK).

Hundreds of thousands of "suspected Communists" disappear from American society, in a general purge of teachers, newspaper reporters, and numerous government officials. It is rumored they are vanishing into a gulag of secret prisons in northern Alaska built by Brown & Root.

1978–1979: The Christianist Revolution

Under SAVAK rules, large groups of Americans can only congregate in two places: pre-arranged, pro-McCarthy rallies, and houses of worship. As a result, revolutionary tendencies sprout and grow in churches, led by radical clerics Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jim Bakker. With other evangelical leaders, they form the Supreme Council for the Christian Revolution in America (SCCRA), or the "Christian Coalition."

Anger at King Joe McCarthy, and the Iranians who control him, reaches a fever pitch in 1979. Millions of young Americans throw their support behind the SCCRA. The young people may not agree with all of the radical clerics' goals, but they cannot abide the brutal McCarthy era any longer. They overthrow the oppressive dictatorship of King Joe.

In the course of this, American revolutionaries seize control of the Iranian embassy in Washington, from which the puppet McCarthy government was controlled. Iranian TV manages to feature this "American hostage crisis" night after night for 444 days without mentioning that America had suffered for decades under a puppet regime installed by Iran.

Eventually, a secret deal is reached between the Christian Coalition – now the rulers of America – and Iran, and the hostages are released.

1980–1988: The America-Mexico War

The Iranians have previously maneuvered one of their long-time Mexican intelligence assets, whom we'll call "José Husseino," into the position of dictator of Mexico. Now they provide their pet dictator with arms, aid and intelligence, and launch Mexico into an invasion of the United States.

Ideally, this policy will topple the revolutionary Christianist government in Washington. Failing that, the Iranian leadership hopes Mexico will seize the oil-rich province of Texas, denying revenue to the new Washington government, while keeping Texas oil within the Iranian "sphere of influence."

1988: Oops

As it turns out, Americans are not about to surrender their country to the Mexican army. They fight hard to repel the foreign invader. Millions die on in each country, and infrastructure along both sides of the border is bombed into rubble.

Iran provides the Mexican regime with chemical and biological weapons, which the Mexican dictator Husseino wields against American soldiers and civilians alike. The war wounded and maimed number in the millions. Long trenches are dug to bury the American dead. The USA must cope with a generation of chemically-burned war orphans.

Husseino also uses these chemical weapons to crush an uprising in Chihuahua, earning himself the nickname 'Murderer of Mexico City.' The Iranian regime shows no concern about this humanitarian catastrophe, and continues supplying weapons of mass destruction to Husseino.

The war is fought to a draw. Husseino claims victory while his soldiers beat a hasty retreat back to Mexico.

1991: Oops again

Iranian politicians realize they have inadvertently built Mexico into one of the world's most powerful militaries. Mexico now threatens Iranian interests in the Caribbean, as well as Central and South America. When Husseino shows interest in invading the small neighboring country of Guatemala, the Iranian government decides to encourage him. The Iranian ambassador allegedly told Husseino: "We have no opinion on your American-American conflicts, such as your dispute with Guatemala. Secretary of State Mohammed Mossadegh III has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Mexico in the 1960s, that the Guatemala issue is not associated with Iran."

The Rendon Group is hired to cook up anti-Mexican propaganda. A teenage girl relates a sobbing story of the brutality of Mexican soldiers against innocent Guatemalan babies. The story is reported and repeated through every news outlet in Iran. (Years later, it will be revealed as propaganda. This, however, is never widely reported to the Iranian public, nor referenced by major journalists when the next round of wartime propaganda rolls out.)

Iran invades Guatemala and Mexico, destroying most of Husseino's military. They leave their formerly-favored dictator in power, however. The Iranian State Department advises that removing Husseino will lead to turmoil and civil war in Mexico, bogging down Iranian troops for an unknown number of years. Also, the removal of Husseino could only empower the hated Americans. Tehran decides not to go there.

Guatemala is now home to several new Iranian bases, which keep a close eye on events in Mexico, the United States, and other Iranian interests in the region.

1991–2001: The Interbellum Years

The destitute people of the United States struggle to recover from the massive loss of life and property during the America-Mexico War of the 1980s. We watch as Iran enforces a "no-fly" zone over Mexico, and we hope our troubles with those two countries are over. Perhaps they will finally leave us alone.

Still, Iran wields its enormous international influence to impose economic sanctions on both Mexico and the United States. Half a million children die from malnutrition, while depleted uranium left over from the "Gulf Coast War" of 1991 sows an epidemic of cancer throughout Mexico and the southern half of the United States.

Iran covertly funnels millions of dollars to any and every dissatisfied group in America. The KKK, the Black Panthers, the John Birch Society, and even the Vermont Secessionists experience a surge in anonymous foreign donations.

9/11/2001: 23 Jumada al-Akhar

An airplane crashes into Azadi Tower (or, interestingly, "Freedom Tower") in Iran. Within minutes, "counterterrorism experts" emerge from the woodwork to blame a relatively obscure terrorist group in Cuba. No other suspects, not even obvious contenders like Russian intelligence, are ever mentioned. A Latin American passport is found in the rubble of Azadi Square, and this apparently proves the first guessers correct.

Iranians are stunned to learn, via their news media, that the West is full of murderous killers driven by an extreme, violent religion. Apparently, these "Christofascists" are everywhere, and they hate Muslims for their way of life, especially Iranians. Iranians learn the West is full of groups that would kill and die for the chance to remake the Middle East in their own image.

(Hold on, I lost track of which was the real timeline and which was imaginary…OK, I'm back.)

October 2001: Iran Invades Cuba

Iran invades Cuba and topples the Castro regime, in spite of their previously close alliance. The United States offers its help to Iran, an attempt at friendship and solidarity against a common enemy after the horrific 23 Jumada attack, but Iran rebuffs America.

1/29/2002: Axis of Evil

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (we'll say) pronounces that the United States, Mexico and Venezuela constitute an "Axis of Evil" that threatens the world. He cites America's history of genocide, slavery, and segregation, its wars against the Philippines and Vietnam.

American citizens are puzzled. Our president and Venezuela's have been threatening each other for some time. And didn't we just fight a bloody, protracted eight-year war against the invading Mexicans? How can anyone believe we are three allied nations?

Iran accuses all three countries of developing nuclear weapons. This, too, puzzles the Americans. Iran has tens of thousands of nukes, and is the only country that ever actually used them. (Through baroque circumstances too complex to describe here, Iran obliterated two Argentinean cities in the 1940s).

America is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows us to create nuclear power plants for peaceful energy. America needs nuclear power –the Pennsylvania oil is long gone, and even the rich Texas fields are playing out. We will need alternative sources of energy to survive as a civilization.

However, this sort of logic is denounced as "pro-American propaganda" in the halls of Tehran.

March 2003

After endless harassment, Mexico's José Husseino fails to divest himself of the weapons of mass destruction he does not possess. Iran invades and occupies Mexico. No WMD are found, though it takes the Iranian government a year or two to gradually acknowledge this. No matter.

Mexicans suffered horrendously under the Husseino dictatorship. Remember how he gassed the poor Chihuahuans? (Forget the context, or where he got the weapons, just remember that it happened.) They should welcome Iranian occupation, even if the number of violent deaths soars!

2003–2005

After a quick victory over the Husseino government, Iran begins hurling threats at America and Venezuela, the other "Axis" members. However, Iran fails to neutralize the fierce Mexican resistance, and the situation devolves into factional fighting as various interests compete for power.

Iran responds by stepping up the threats against America.

August 6, 2005: America Radicalizes

In response to the drumbeat of threats from Iran, Americans vote out the somewhat-less-hawkish Bill Clinton (serving his, er, third term) and we elect a new, "tougher" prime minister to protect us: militant religious fanatic George W. Bush.

Iranian newspapers tell the world that "W," as his brainwashed followers call him, believes in a crazed End Times cult that expects God to destroy the world at any moment. Iranian politicians argue that such a fanatical extremist, with a head full of Armageddon and the Second Coming, can never be trusted with even one nuclear weapon.

The new Bush regime immediately cracks down on dissent and any sign of "Easternization" among Americans. Body piercings, tattoos, and belly shirts are immediately outlawed. Websites, from LewRockwell.com, to the American Conservative, to the Huffington Post, plus thousands of others, vanish without explanation overnight.

Congressmen Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich disappear into the Alaskan gulag. Filmmakers Michael Moore and Alex Jones are forced to share a prison cell, to their deep mutual annoyance. Fortunately, the prison was built by Halliburton. All of them escape in a general riot, in which the prisoners simply kick the walls until they topple over.

The New Jersey Department of Education sends Max Raskin to re-education camp. He stands accused of chanting "Death to the state!" rather than the legally mandated "Death to Iran!" at a football pep rally. Naturally, there will be no hearing to determine if the accusation is true. (It is.)

October 9, 2006: Boom.

The world is stunned when Hugo Chavez of Venezuela detonates a small nuclear bomb. Now that Venezuela is a nuclear power, Iranian leaders no longer speak of an "Axis of Evil." Iran dispatches ambassadors to Caracas to find a "reasonable solution" to Venezuela's entrance into the nuclear club.

This sets off high-level discussion between Ayatollahs Robertson and Dobson. (Ayatollah Bakker has been disgraced and removed from power, while Ayatollah Falwell is away having frosted-doughnut-related surgery, and is not long for this world.) Maybe, their thinking goes, America should develop a nuclear bomb to deter Iran, considering Iran's long history of aggression and subterfuge against America. They recognize the difference between Iran's treatment of nuclear Venezuela versus non-nuclear Mexico.

2007

Some level of trade across the USA-Mexico border continues, as it always has. However, Mexican society has disintegrated into endless conflict, and tens of millions of war refugees pour into the United States. The American government sends agents to monitor the situation in Mexico and search for solutions to the instability along the southern border.

Iran cites this involvement as proof that the USA is secretly behind the Mexican insurgency. The idea that the Mexicans themselves want to resist the foreign, Iranian occupation is still not allowed on Iranian television.

Iran steps up its threats against the United States, claiming that America is "very close" to building a nuclear weapon. (Iranian intelligence disagrees, but this is not exactly emphasized by Iranian media.) Iranian aircraft carriers and warships appear in the Gulf of Mexico and along the coast of New England. American children stand on piers in Maine and Florida to watch the Iranian war games.

The Iranian people, meanwhile, are weary of the prolonged, apparently endless wars in Cuba and Mexico. They have no desire for war with America, but neither do they control their government.

Ahmadinejad claims Bush is threatening to "wipe Canada off the map," though this has long been revealed as an inaccurate translation. (Bush's actual words: "Where the heck is Canada? I can't find it on the map.")

The world holds its breath, wondering if Iran will hit America with bombs, or even a pre-emptive nuclear strike, and ignite World War III, which will likely engulf the Americas. The future of civilization depends on the restraint and rationality of a foreign power whose leadership, so far, has displayed no evidence of possessing either trait.