UN General Assembly accuses Israel of Gaza 'genocide'

The president of the UN General Assembly has condemned Israel's killings of Palestinians in its Gaza offensive as "genocide".

Ten Reasons Why "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam to Justify the Next US Oil and Resource Wars in Africa

"The star-studded hue and cry to "Save Darfur" and "stop the genocide" has gained enormous traction in U.S. media along with bipartisan support in Congress and the White House. But the Congo, with ten to twenty times as many African dead over the same period is not called a "genocide" and passes almost unnoticed."

Is what the US has been doing in Iraq genocide?

"Dr. Douglas states that the United States began its genocide in Iraq 17 years ago and notes, “The 2003 US invasion of Iraq was the culmination and intensification of a consistent US policy of destroying Iraq as a national and state entity.” Having figured out that around 1.5 million people, most them children and women, died because of the 13-year UN-led embargo on Iraq, which was enforced as a result of heavy pressure from the US, Dr. Douglas adds that the number of people killed in the war since 2003 has exceeded 1 million."

Torture, Paramilitarism, Occupation and Genocide

by Stephen Lendman - Oct 25, 2007

On October 5, George Bush confronted a public uproar and defended his administration claiming "This government does not torture people." Again he lied. Once secret US Department of Justice (DOJ) legal opinions confirm the Bush administration condones torture by endorsing "the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency." It also condones paramilitary thuggery, oppressive occupation, and genocide. This unholy combination is the ugly face of an imperial nation run by war criminals. That's the state of things today. First, the practice of torture.

Torture as Policy under George Bush

In a hollow posturing gesture, DOJ publicly declared torture "abhorrent" in a December, 2004 legal opinion. That secretly changed after Alberto Gonzales became Attorney General in February, 2005 and authorized physical and psychological brutality as official administration policy. This continues unabated in violation of international and US laws that include fifth and eighth amendment prohibitions against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in all forms for any reason. These practices been long-standing US official policy, nonetheless, but the mask came off post-9/11 when former CIA Counterterrorism Center chief Cofer Black (now Blackwater USA's vice-chairman) told a joint House-Senate intelligence committee hearing September 26, 2002: "There was a before-9/11 and an after-9/11(on the use of torture). After 9/11, the gloves came off" and "old" standards no longer apply. They never did, and Congress knows and condones it.

Further, George Bush signed a secret September 17, 2001 "finding" authorizing CIA to kill, capture and detain "Al Qaeda" members anywhere in the world and rendition them to secret black site torture prisons for interrogation presumed to include torture.

As White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales then wrote a sweeping memorandum to George Bush January 25, 2002 calling the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete" and claimed the administration could ignore Geneva international law in interrogating prisoners henceforth. He also outlined plans to try prisoners in military "commissions" and deny them all protections under international law including due process and habeas rights. DOD Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was on board as well. In December, 2002, he approved a menu of banned interrogation practices that allowed most anything short of what would cause organ failure.

A new book called "Administration of Torture," by two ACLU attorneys, contains evidence (from FOIA requests) from over 100,000 newly released government documents. It reveals how US military interrogators carried out abuse and torture orders from their superiors on scores of prisoners. The book quotes Major General Michael Dunlavey who had DOD responsibility for interrogations of "suspected terrorists." He and Guantanamo commander General Geoffrey Miller both told the FBI they got their "marching orders" from Donald Rumsfeld to use harsh methods at Guantanamo that presumably were meant for all other US-run torture prisons as well. It was also revealed that Rumsfeld was "personally involved" in overseeing the torture-interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani. He was falsely accused of being the 20th 9/11 hijacker, confessed under torture, and then retracted his testimony later as completely untrue.

Torture violates international law. The (non-binding) Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlawed it in 1948. The four 1949 Geneva Conventions then banned any form of "physical or mental coercion" and affirmed detainees must at all times be treated humanely. Its first two conventions protect sick and wounded forces in battle. The third one defines who is a prisoner of war and establishes "minimum standards" for POW treatment. The fourth convention applies to civilians and affords them protections during war that require they be treated humanely. All four conventions have a common thread called Common Article Three. It requires non-combatants be treated humanely at all times. There are no exceptions for any reasons and violations are grave breaches under Geneva and other international law that constitute crimes of war and against humanity.

The European Convention followed Geneva in 1950. Then in 1984, the UN Convention Against Torture became the first binding international instrument dealing exclusively with the issue of banning torture in any form for any reason. These are sacred international laws all signatories, that include the US, are bound by. No longer under George Bush's unconstitutional "unitary executive" authority power grab Chalmers Johnson calls a "bald-faced assertion of presidential supremacy....dressed up in legalistic mumbo jumbo." Condoning torture as official policy under it is Exhibit A.

In her important new book, "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Defied the law," law professor and current National Lawyers Guild president Marjorie Cohn calls torture abhorrent and violates at least two US laws - the 1996 War Crimes Act and 1994 Torture Statute. The US is also party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) that guarantees the right to life and prohibits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

The 1996 War Crimes Act provides up to life imprisonment or the death penalty for persons convicted of committing war crimes within or outside the US. Administration memos from Gonzales, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and David Addington supported dictatorial powers for the president and advised Al Qaeda and Taliban interrogators were exempt from torture laws under George Bush's "commander-in-chief powers." Cohn, in her book, explained "the Torture Convention permits no such exemption, even during wartime."

Yoo and Bybee also distorted what constitutes torture by claiming psychological harm must last "months or even years." Otherwise, it's just harsh "enhanced interrogation" of the secret kinds George Bush authorized in a July, 2006 executive order. They reportedly include sleep deprivation, simulated drowning, stress positions, prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation and/or overload, beatings, induced hypothermia, and more that can cause irreversible physical and psychological harm including psychoses.

The October, 2006 Military Commissions Act followed, appropriately called the "torture authorization act." It gives the administration extraordinary unconstitutional powers to detain, interrogate and prosecute alleged terror suspects and anyone thought to be their supporters. The law lets the president designate anyone in the world an "unlawful enemy combatant," without corroborating evidence, and order they be arrested and incarcerated indefinitely in military prisons outside the criminal justice system without habeas and due process rights. US citizens aren't exempt. We're all "enemy combatants" under this law. Anyone charged under it loses all constitutionally protected rights and can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment including torture.

Ironically, on the one year anniversary of the Military Commissions Act enactment, Fr. Louie Vitale and Fr. Steve Kelly were both sentenced to five months in federal prison for opposing torture. They also oppose teaching it at Fort Huachuca, Arizona and tried to deliver a letter with their views to the base commander, Major General Barbara Fast, former head of military intelligence in Iraq. Both priests were arrested for trespassing while kneeling in prayer on the base driveway in November, 2006. In an appalling miscarriage of justice, the presiding judge refused to allow any evidence of torture to be introduced. He also ruled out discussion of the illegality of the Iraq war and all references to international law.

Relief from these type abuses are nowhere in sight as leading Democrats condone them and now assure extremist Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey's nomination won't be challenged. He promises business as usual that's bad news for supporters of the law. He earned his bona fides as a US District Court Southern District of New York judge by ruling Jose Padilla, a US citizen, could be imprisoned without trial and held indefinitely by the military.

Padilla spent three and a half years uncharged in a 9 by 7-foot isolated South Carolina Navy brig cell where he underwent alternating sensory deprivation and overload and was denied the right to counsel for two years. Months of beatings, mind-altering drugs, and denial of medical treatment destroyed his mind, turned him to mush, and him easy pickings to convict on all charges without evidence he broke any law. Under Bush administration justice, we're all potential Jose Padillas in a nation where the rule of law affords no protection, and torture is the preferred means of social control.

Administration Outsourced Paramilitarism

The Bush administration believes anything government can do private business does better, so let it. And that applies to the military as well with Blackwater USA's powerful emergence Exhibit A. Author Jeremy Scahill portrays the company as "the world's most powerful mercenary army" in his frightening new book about it. It describes a "shadowy mercenary company (employing) some of the most feared professional killers in the world....accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences....largely off the congressional radar." It has "remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus" with unaccountable license to practice street violence with impunity that includes cold-blooded murder.

A congressional report indicates Blackwater received more than $1 billion in mostly State Department no-bid contracts since 2001. It's to provide security services for US diplomats, officials and others once assigned to the military at around six times the cost and can be up to $1200 per man-day. With Bush administration backing, it operates outside the law and Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and is immune from civil lawsuits like the military. Scahill calls the company the "Bush administration's Praetorian Guard" with "immunity and impunity" to do as it pleases.

Today, around 200,000 private contractors operate in Iraq. Up to 100,000 of them are paramilitary mercenaries from companies like Blackwater, DynCorp, ArmorGroup, Erinys, Triple Canopy and others like the Australian-owned Unity Resources that murdered two Iraqi women October 9. Blackwater is the largest, is close to the Bush administration, and is cashing in big as a war profiteer from huge continuing no-bid contracts.

The company was founded in 1996 by former Navy SEAL Eric Prince who's also closely allied to the extremist Christian Right. Blackwater came into its own post-9/11 and is now the world's best connected, largest paramilitary army. It employs 2300 personnel in nine countries with 20,000 or more others on call as needed. The company also has its own 20 aircraft fleet that includes helicopter gunships as well as a private intelligence division and a 7000 acre Moyock, North Carolina headquarters Scahill calls "the world's largest private military base."

Controversary surrounding Blackwater made headlines after its mercenaries killed as many as 28 Iraqis in al-Nisour September 16 by some accounts and wounded dozens more. It was only the latest incident involving the company that has a disturbing history of instigating unprovoked violence and then falsely claim it acted in self-defense as Eric Prince told Congress saying his men act "appropriately at all times."

A new congressional account from State Department and company documents reveals otherwise. It shows the company has been involved in at least 195 "escalation of force" incidents since early 2005 that include previously unreported Iraqi civilian killings. In at least one of them, evidence proved Blackwater personnel tried covering up what happened with a falsified report, and the State Department made no effort to hold them accountable or order the company to pay compensation to the families of the victims.

Agence France-Presse reported on September 16 Blackwater personnel shot recklessly "at everything that moved with a machine gun and even with a grenade launcher (as well as from two hovering helicopters). There was panic. Everyone tried to flee. Vehicles tried to make U-turns to escape. There were dead bodies and wounded people everywhere. The road was full of blood. A bus was also hit and several of its occupants were wounded." Among the dead were women and children. A daughter witnessing her mother shot in the head and killed said: "They are killers. I swear to God, not one bullet was shot at them. Why did they shoot us?"

Following the incident, investigations were launched that are little more than damage control cover-up. The FBI is involved as well as a joint American-Iraqi inquiry. Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki has gone back and forth on this one. At first, he demanded Blackwater personnel leave Iraq. He then backed down under pressure. He'll likely await the inquiry's findings that are out in part from Iraqi investigators, but again said he wants Washington to sever all Blackwater ties, remove the company from Iraq in six months, and have it pay each family $8 million in compensation.

It won't ever happen, even though early findings conclude Blackwater's actions were unprovoked, the al-Nisour massacre was a deliberate crime, those involved in it should be charged, put on trial, and the families of victims fairly compensated. The findings are similar to an initial US military report that one Pentagon official confirmed saying Blackwater's actions were "obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong. The civilians....didn't have any weapons (and) none of the IP (Iraqi police) or any local security forces fired (on Blackwater)."

Investigations are still continuing, the State Department is in damage control mode, and an October 4 House-passed bill (not retroactive) just made US contractors accountable for felony crimes under the 2000 Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA). In addition, new operating procedures have been instituted to paper over the whole affair. Nothing, in fact, will change, however. Blackwater personnel will stay in place, none of them will face criminal charges, and things are again business as usual with the company's paramilitaries back on Iraqi streets after being banned from operating there by an impotent prime minister.

A sign of things to come came a day ahead of the October House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Blackwater hearing. It was revealed the company's Presidential Airways subsidiary got a new government contract to supply aircraft, crew and equipment for flight operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Blackwater personnel may likely show up anywhere and currently patrol New Orleans streets for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) post-hurricane Katrina. Their presence is menacing everywhere, and they may show up soon in a neighborhood near you as the "war on terrorism" touches down at home.

Imperial Conquest and Occupation

Current rhetoric aside, even Alan Greenspan's new book admitted what's "politically inconvenient to acknowledge (but) everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil" and it was "essential" Saddam be removed to control it. Unmentioned was Iraq's importance that explains why Washington plans permanent occupation of the country. The Middle East has two-thirds of the world's proved oil reserves; Iraq has the most untapped amounts of it; and it's the easiest gotten, cheap to refine light sweet kind Big Oil covets. The country is also strategically located between Saudi Arabia and Iran at the top of the Persian Gulf. That makes it a perfect site for military bases sitting atop an ocean of oil worth trillions of dollars and surrounded by lots more of it.

The strategy to seize it was simply conceived but hopelessly flawed - replace the "cradle of civilization" with a newly created free market paradise with all that oil as grand prize pickings. It's still up for grabs, but a huge supportive infrastructure is in place and still being built for permanent occupation.

By May, 2005, US forces were operating out of 106 bases around the country from an original 120 number of sites. They range in size from the huge Main Operating Base (MOB) Camp Victory complex near Baghdad airport with thousands of US troops to others for fewer numbers called Forward Operation Sites (FOS) that are still major installations. There are also many smaller Cooperative Security Locations (CSL) as well as prisons and detention facilities throughout the country plus others for Iraqi military and police units.

A sign of permanency are four to six or more super-bases built and planned, the largest of which is the huge Balad one. It's the major Air Force facility in the country with its state of the art "Kingpin" air traffic control center (called the Common Grid Reference System) that divides the country's airspace into "kill boxes." The Army's largest logistical support center and secret Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force (CJSOTF) are also there as well as well as thousands of civilian contractors in neighborhoods charmingly called "KBR-land."

Balad and other major bases are enormous in size and on the order of small towns. They encompass 15 - 20 square miles with double runways as long as 12,000 feet, and Balad's air traffic operates round the clock and is comparable in number of takeoffs and landings to Chicago's O'Hare that along with Atlanta's Hartsfield are the world's two busiest airports.

In addition, they have their own neighborhoods and kinds of amenities found back home. They include department store-sized post exchanges, fast food outlets, movie theaters with the latest films, swimming pools, miniature golf courses, elaborate gymnasium and sports facilities, satellite internet access, cable TV, air-conditioning, international phone service and more. All the comforts of home including takeout pizza and Monday night football in the middle of a war zone.

Other major facilities are at al-Talil near Nasiriya in the South; the largest Marine base at al-Asad in Western Anbar province; al-Qayyara, 50 miles southeast of Mosul in the North; the US military command HQ at Camp Victory/Camp Liberty near Baghdad International Airport; Camp Marez near Mosul Airport; Camp Cook north of Baghdad; and a new base near Irbil in the North. In addition, another new Forward Operating base is being built near Zurbatiya near the Iranian border to be completed in November. It's location is provocative as the centerpiece of a new border control surveillance, monitoring and logistical support strategy called "Combat Outpost Shocker."

Then, there's what critics call "Fortress Baghdad" or the "ultimate gated community" inside the city's four square mile fortress-like Green Zone. It's surrounded by thick blast-proof concrete walls, and to enter visitors must pass through up to eight checkpoints. Inside, security is intense and includes full body searches, electronic scanners, explosive-sniffing dogs and every other human and high-tech measure imaginable for security.

The US embassy compound is there as well that when finished will be the largest in the world. It's Vatican-sized in dimensions and hugely fortified atop 104 acres, or six times larger than the UN complex in New York. Reports vary on whether 21 or 27 buildings are planned but their cost plus all facilities and perimeter security will top $1 billion. Construction is continuing, far behind schedule, it's reported to be shoddy, and it's already way over budget as predicted so the final cost remains uncertain but will be plenty.

The compound has everything - its own water, electricity, sewers, apartment buildings, swimming pool, shops, Marine barracks and will house more than 1000 civilian staff plus a large private and military security contingent. For the Iraqi people, it's a hated symbol of imperial occupation Washington intends to be permanent, but it may in the end go the way of the Saigon embassy in 1975. That's where the last US Vietnam remnants were frenetically rooftop-helicoptered out of the country in humiliating drawdown defeat. It ended visions of permanence then the way history may one day repeat in Iraq.

Imperial Genocide in Iraq

By any estimate, the human toll in Iraq is horrific from all that happened after Saddam's August 2, 1990 Kuwait invasion. Four days later, Operation Desert Shield was launched. It began with US-led UN-imposed economic sanctions, large US and other troop deployments to the region, and a sweeping Kuwait-funded PR campaign to win public support for Operation Desert Storm that began January 17, 1991.

Before it ended six weeks later on February 28, US forces committed grievous war crime violations of the Hague and Geneva Conventions and UN and Nuremberg Charters. They included gratuitous mass killings as well as bombing and destroying essential to life facilities that included:

-- power generating stations;

-- dams;

-- water purification capabilities;

-- sewage treatment and disposal systems;

-- telephone and other communications;

-- hospitals;

-- mosques;

-- residential areas affecting 10-20,000 homes, apartments and other dwellings;

-- irrigation sites;

-- food processing, storage and distribution facilities;

-- hotels and retail establishments;

-- transportation infrastructure;

-- oil wells, pipelines, refineries and storage tanks;

-- chemical plants;

-- civilian shelters like Al Ameriyya that was attacked February 13, 1991 by two laser-guided "smart bombs" killing around 400 civilians including 142 children;

-- factories and other commercial operations;

-- government offices;

-- historical sites; and more in a willful malicious effort to return the country to a pre-industrial age and punish its people horrifically.

Lost was power, clean water, sanitation, fuel, transportation, medical facilities and medications, adequate food, schools, private dwellings and places of employment. Early post-war estimates placed the number of civilians killed at 113,000 (mostly children) according to the Red Crescent Society of Jordan. In addition, US CENTCOM commander, General Schwarzkopf and others, estimated 100,000 or more Iraqi military deaths plus thousands more killed gratuitously as they were retreating in disarray.

What then followed was 12 years of the most comprehensive genocidal sanctions ever imposed on a country as an act of vengeance and US-imposed imperial arrogance. They were first adopted in UN Resolution 661 four days after Iraq invaded Kuwait. They included a full trade embargo that crippled the country economically but initially allowed in food, medical and other essential humanitarian needs. UN Resolution 670 followed in September, 1990 that imposed an air blockade and measures to enforce it.

After the war in April, 1991, UN Resolution 687 was adopted. It required Saddam accept cease fire terms and comply with Geneva protocols banning biological and chemical weapons. It also affirmed Kuwait's sovereignty, but it wasn't good enough for US officials who wanted sanctions to remain in force until Saddam was removed.

Later on, the oil for food and medicine program was adopted under UN Resolution 986 in 1995 but was hopelessly inadequate by design. An internal UN report in 1999 revealed it delivered only $74 of food per annum per person (about 21 cents a day) and $15 worth of medicines (about 4 cents a day) with vitally needed items banned or in short supply like syringes, anesthetics, vaccines, antibiotics and other drugs. Everything with potential "dual use" was blocked - chlorine to purify water, vital medical equipment, chemotherapy and pain-killing drugs, ambulances, and anything Washington wished to deny the country punitively with horrific consequences.

Further complicating things, all Iraqi funds were frozen and administered through a US-controlled Development Fund for Iraq. In addition, UN Resolution 661 stipulated all goods entering the country had to be approved by a 15 member committee that included the five permanent Security Council members. Approval had to be unanimous with every member having veto power. The US representative abused his authority by blocking items or causing long delays in importing others. The practice became so extreme, on one occasion baby food was denied on the grounds adults might consume it. At other times, items on the World Health Organization (WHO) humanitarian priority list were blocked such as rice, school books, paper, agricultural pesticides, medical journals and catheters for babies.

The results were predictable and devastating. Normal life was impossible and became a daily struggle to survive. It became apparent by the mid-1990s many didn't or wouldn't:

-- the UN World Food Program (WFP) reported 2.4 million Iraqi children were severely at nutritional risk in September, 1995;

-- in December, 1995, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said 12% of Baghdad children were "wasted, 28% stunted and 29% under weight;"

-- by year end 1995, FAO reported 567,000 Iraqi children sanction-related deaths;

-- by March, 1996, WHO noted a six-fold mortality rate increase among children under five;

-- in October, 1996 UNICEF reported 4500 monthly Iraqi children deaths from sanction-caused starvation and disease;

-- by 1999, the under five child mortality rate rose three-fold from 1989, malnutrition doubled, and the entire young child population was affected;

-- UN Secretary-General Boutras-Boutras-Ghali noted how health conditions deteriorated dramatically by the mid-1990s, and by 1997 the WHO Director General said Iraq's health care system was systemically broken; in addition, malaria, typhoid, cholera and other life-threatening and communicable diseases were rampant.

These actions were committed willfully and are war crimes under relevant Geneva Conventions and other international law. They also constitute genocide under provisions of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that "means any (acts like those listed above) committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the national, ethnical, racial or religious group (by) killing (its) members; causing (them) serious bodily or mental harm; (or) deliberately inflicting (on them) conditions (that may destroy them in whole or in part)."

US administrations under GHW Bush, Bill Clinton and GW Bush are criminally liable under "the genocide convention" and other relevant international law. Up to the March, 2003 attack and invasion, more than 1.5 million Iraqis, including over one million children, likely died from the combination of war and economic sanctions. Two UN heads of Iraqi humanitarian relief resigned under them in anger and frustration with Dennis Halliday saying in 1998 he did so because he "had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over one million individuals, children and adults" including 5000 Iraqi children monthly in his judgment.

To date, most members of Congress are mute on the Iraq genocide and continue funding it with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Yet on October 10, the House Foreign Relations Committee hypocritically passed a non-binding resolution calling the 1915 - 1923 Armenian holocaust (taking 1.0 to 1.5 million lives) genocide with a full House vote on the measure still scheduled for November in spite of waning support for it and uncertainty where it will go in the Senate.

Speaker Pelosi still backs the measure and in 2006 as Minority Leader pledged to support legislation "that would properly acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. It is imperative that the United States recognize this atrocity and move to renew our commitment to eliminate genocide whenever and wherever it exists." Today, Speaker Pelosi is mute on Iraq, Afghanistan and fully supports AIPAC's agenda and its top priority of war with Iran. She's not bothered by her own government's genocide that far exceeds the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Turkish Armenian slaughter during and after WW I. The data below estimates as many as four million Iraqis have perished from 1990 - 2007, but speaker Pelosi's condemnation of it is nowhere in sight.

Dr. Gideon Polya is a well-published biological scientist who's book, "Body Count: Global avoidable mortality since 1950," came out this year. It "documents....non-reported (worldwide) avoidable death(s) of 1.3 billion people since 1950" including in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also published his data on millions of violent and non-violent deaths under the three most recent US administrations in articles like his October 7 one on Countercurrents.org. In it, he cites data on Iraq from the Lancet, UN and British polling firm ORB. His "Asian Wars" totals in Iraq, Afghanistan, Occupied Palestine and Lebanon are horrific, and, if correct, exceed any others published to date. A summary of his data follows.

-- Eight million total violent and non-violent deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon breaking down as follows:

-- 70,000 "US-backed" Israeli-caused deaths in Lebanon from 1978 - 2006, 10,000 of which were violent killings "by Israelis" or their "surrogates;"

-- 300,000 1967-2007 Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) deaths plus another 10,000 violent deaths;

-- 200,000 violent 1990-91 Gulf war deaths;

-- 1.7 million 1990-2003 Iraqi sanctions-caused deaths including 1.2 million children under age five;

-- 3.2 million 2001-2007 US Afghanistan war deaths including UN Population Division data totaling 2.5 million plus 700,000 children under age five;

-- 2.0 million 2003-07 US Iraq war deaths including 1.2 million UK polling firm ORB violence-related estimates plus 800,000 children under age five from UNICEF data; and

-- 500,000 2001-07 opiate drug-related deaths resulting from the resurgent Afghan opium industry under US-UK occupation; the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates its output at 93% of world production.

Polya cites the failure of occupying powers to supply essential "life-sustaining requisites" as a major cause of preventable deaths. He also notes his eight million estimate exceeds the Nazi-inflicted Jewish holocaust total of about six million. And he rightly observes that major media misreporting, denying or "ignoring of this horrendous, ongoing mass" slaughter is the equivalent of Jewish holocaust denial and doing it endangers security for "both....victims and....perpetrators."

There's no denying the toll on victims, but consider the cost at home post-9/11:

-- a nation with no outside enemies permanently at war and claims the right to wage preventive wars under the doctrine of "anticipatory self-defense" using first strike nuclear weapons even against non-nuclear states;

-- world stability and peace further threatened by the administration's abandoning NPT, ending Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty protection, rescinding and subverting the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, deploying so-called "missile defense" for offense, and plans to weaponize space toward the goal of "full-spectrum (unchallengeable) dominance" of all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems plus as much of the world's energy resources as possible;

-- a military budget hugely exceeding the rest of the world combined; The Independent Institute analyst Robert Higgs estimates the true FY 2007 budget exceeds $1 trillion with all defense-related items included;

-- a rogue government operating outside constitutional and international laws and norms with the Congress and courts criminally complicit;

-- an unprecedented wealth disparity in an omnipotent corporatist state;

-- growing social decay and poverty in the richest country in the world;

-- a secretive, intrusive, repressive administration under a president who disdains the public interest and is a serial liar and war criminal;

-- condoning and operating secret torture-prisons around the world as a weapon of cruelty, vengeance and social control; and

-- a cesspool of corruption stemming from incestuous business-govenment ties that defile democracy and mock any notion of government of, for and by the people.

The toll in Israel is evident as well. Angela Godfrey-Goldstein is an Israeli Jew, based in Jerusalem, and the Action Advocacy Officer with the Israeli Committee Against (Palestinian) House Demolitions (ICAHD). On August 30, 2007, she delivered an address at the UN Conference at the EU Parliament in Brussels commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Occupied Palestine. In it, she noted part of the toll on Israeli society caused by 40 years of Palestinian repression:

-- around one million Israeli Jews "voted with their feet and left the country;"

-- an estimate by some that up to 50% of Israeli youths refuse mandatory Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) service plus a "grey" Air Force refusal rate of around 30%;

-- a significant recent observation from John Pilger that "something (around the world) is changing. (There's a) swell of a boycott....growing inexorably....an important marker (may have) been passed, reminiscent of the boycotts (preceding) sanctions against apartheid South Africa" that led to the fall of its white-supremicist government; and

-- her experience working with "diplomats, politicians and aid workers in Israel and Palestine (shows) that, on an individual basis, there's enormous personal support and empathy for the Palestinian cause" because decades of abuse against them are intolerable and must end.

Push eventually will come to shove. We better hope it arrives soon. The world can't wait much longer.

The Iraqi Genocide

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts - October 20, 2007

Why has not the Turkish parliament given tit for tat and passed a resolution condemning the Iraqi Genocide?

As a result of Bush’s invasion of Iraq, more than one million Iraqis have died, and several millions are displaced persons. The Iraqi death toll and the millions of uprooted Iraqis match the Armenian deaths and deportations. If one is a genocide, so is the other.

It is true that most of the Iraqi deaths have resulted from Iraqis killing one another. But it was Bush’s destruction of the secular Iraqi state that unleashed the sectarian strife.

Moreover, American troops in Iraq have killed more civilians than insurgents. The US military in Iraq has fallen for every bit of disinformation fed to it by Al Qaeda personnel posing as “informants” and by Sunnis setting up Shi’ites and Shi’ites setting up Sunnis. As a result, American bombs and missiles have blown up weddings, funerals, kids playing soccer, and people shopping in bazaars and sleeping in their homes.

Not to be outdone, Bush’s private Waffen SS known as Blackwater has taken to gunning Iraqi civilians down in the streets. How do Blackwater and Custer Battles killers escape the “unlawful combatant” designation?

One can only marvel at the insouciance of the US Congress to the current Iraqi Genocide while condemning Turkey for one that happened
90 years ago.

People seldom see the beam in their own eye, only the mote in the eyes of others. Every member of the Bush Regime is busily at work denouncing Iran for causing instability in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the US has invaded two countries, throwing them into total chaos, while beating the drums for war with Iran and conspiring with Israel to invade Lebanon and to attack Syria.

The indisputable facts are that the US and Israel have attacked four Middle East countries and are determined to attack a fifth. Yet, it is peaceful Iran, at war with no one, that Bush and Israel blame for causing instability in the Middle East.

Not content with its many wars in the Middle East, the Bush Regime is sponsoring wars in Africa and is setting up an African Command. The US government has been bombing and attacking other countries ever since the cold war ended. Instead of peace, the gang in Washington DC chose war.

Other than the Israel Lobby, the greatest supporters of Bush’s wars are Christian evangelicals, specifically the “rapture evangelicals” and the “Christian Zionists.”

I remember when Christianity was about saving one’s soul. Today it is about bringing on Armageddon. While the various evangelical Christians preach war in the Middle East, they condemn Islam for being a “warlike religion.”

Americans are so full of themselves that they are blind to their extraordinary hypocrisy.

The US government has broken every agreement with Russia by withdrawing from the anti-ballistic missile treaty, pushing NATO to Russia’s borders, conniving to place missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, and buying governments in former Soviet republics and installing US military bases therein.

When Russian President Putin finally has enough and protests, the US Secretary of State blames Putin for being difficult and restarting the cold war.

Few Americans realize it, but they take the cake.

International polls show that the rest of the world regard the US and Israel as the greatest dangers to world peace. Americans claim that they are fighting wars against terrorism, but it is US and Israeli terrorism that worries everyone else. The rest of the world knows that the wars are about US and Israeli hegemony and that the US and Israel are prepared to engage in whatever acts of terror are necessary to achieve hegemony.

That is the bare fact.

When the US dollar loses its reserve currency status, the US empire will come to an abrupt end. Sooner or later the rest of the world will realize this and, in an act of self-protection, dethrone the dollar.

Christopher Hitchens and Genocide

He's For It!

by Justin Raimondo - Oct 17, 2007

I'm not surprised that Christopher Hitchens, the village atheist, is now advocating genocide. His recent speech to a conference of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, in Ann Arbor, Mich. – a portion of which can be seen here – dramatizes the completion of his evolution from a trendy leftist of the Trotskyist variety into a full-fledged, foaming-at-the-mouthneocon, whose homicidal tendencies have crystallized into a program, as he says in his talk, to "demolish" not only Iran but all religion everywhere.

Because, you see, it's not okay to be religious; it makes you, in Hitchens' book, a "positively wicked" person, and this necessarily involves "coercion" – so it's a war to the death. To his "credit," Hitchens doesn't discriminate: all religions come in for a vicious and quite emotional assault – including one riff on the evils of Judaism, which, I'm sure, will have Abe Foxman up in arms – but, not unexpectedly, he displays a particular animus for Islam. The portions of his speech posted on YouTube omit the more reprehensible pronouncements, but we have this account by Professor P.Z. Myers of the University of Michigan at Morris, which tells us all we need to know:

"It was Hitchens at his most bellicose. He told us what the most serious threat to the West was (and you know this line already): it was Islam. Then he accused the audience of being soft on Islam, of being the kind of vague atheists who refuse to see the threat for what it was, a clash of civilizations, and of being too weak to do what was necessary, which was to spill blood to defeat the enemy. Along the way he told us who his choice for president was right now – Rudy Giuliani – and that Obama was a fool, Clinton was a pandering closet fundamentalist, and that he was less than thrilled about all the support among the FFRF for the Democratic party. We cannot afford to allow the Iranian theocracy to arm itself with nuclear weapons (something I entirely sympathize with), and that the only solution is to go in there with bombs and marines and blow it all up. The way to win the war is to kill so many Moslems that they begin to question whether they can bear the mounting casualties….

"This was made even more clear in the Q&A. He was asked to consider the possibility that bombing and killing was only going to accomplish an increase in the number of people opposing us. Hitchens accused the questioner of being incredibly stupid (the question was not well-phrased, I'll agree, but it was clear what he meant), and said that it was obvious that every Moslem you kill means there is one less Moslem to fight you … which is only true if you assume that every Moslem already wants to kill Americans and is armed and willing to do so.

"Basically, what Hitchens was proposing is genocide. Or, at least, wholesale execution of the population of the Moslem world until they are sufficiently cowed and frightened and depleted that they are unable to resist us in any way, ever again."

Myers says Hitchens wasn't noticeably drunk, so he doesn't have his usual excuse for inexcusable behavior, such as in this previous instance. In any event, such antics are the logical extension of his increasingly warlike thought. This ex-Trotskyist, whose support for militant secularism led him to idolize the founder and first commander of the Red Army, has gone so over the top with his crusade against all religion that he has come to advocate wiping out entire populations. "Demolish it!" he said, when asked about Iran – with apparently no more moral compunctions about the slaughter of the innocent than one might normally exhibit toward a swarm of midges.

Myers is right: Hitchens is advocating genocide. Now, what we normally do with such people, in these sorts of situations, is isolate them: they are, after all, sick, and, furthermore, as history has shown, their sickness is sometimes very contagious.

I'm not advocating banning this sort of speech: he has the right to express his views, physically unmolested. That doesn't mean, however, that we are obliged to give him a forum.

After all, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, or any other respectable organization, would not invite a Nazi or some other proponent of mass murder to speak at their conference. There is a taboo against having any association with those who deny the Holocaust, and a similar outcry against deniers of the Armenian genocide has been in the news lately. Why, then, are we so lenient with the advocates of a new genocide, one perpetrated against the inhabitants of the Middle East?

It's well known that an upper-class British accent allows the speaker to get away with practically anything, but, really, there is – or ought to be – a limit to our tolerance, and in this case such a loud proclamation of the desire to kill large numbers of people ought to motivate us to crack down on this sort of thing once and for all.

For all his charm and genuinely likable public persona, bad boy Hitchens needs to be taught a lesson, and this means ostracism: no organization that wants its reputation to remain unsullied ought to be inviting him to speak anywhere, on any subject, even if he offers to do it for free. No television station should solicit his appearance, no radio station should entertain its listeners with his ranting – in short, no decent person should have anything to do with him, period. Send him to intellectual and social Coventry, where he can commune with his fellow rogues and miscreants, and do as little harm as possible.

I hasten to add that Hitchens isn't alone in his genocidal jihad: the Objectivists, the latter-day followers of Ayn Rand, also advocate dropping nuclear bombs on Iran and any number of Arab countries, on the grounds of "self-defense." They, too, are militant atheists, ideologues of a secularist creed based on their rather distorted interpretation of what Rand believed. Although I am not religious, I'm acutely aware of the dangers posed by radical secularists in the course of modern history, and the death of communism has left people like Hitchens still itching for Armageddon, the final showdown between the forces of Modernity (represented by his fat, smug self), and the forces of medieval Reaction (represented by Iran, or the Muslim enemy of the moment).

Hitchens is quite clearly marketing himself as a contemporary Robert Ingersoll, the spokesman for atheism and secularism in the English-speaking world, although, clearly, looking at the bestseller list, he has a lot of competition for that title. If someone with that kind of a public platform should use his status to spread and popularize the suggestion that it's a good idea to kill off the world's Muslims, then we, as a society, are poisoned by his prominence. Decent people cannot allow it.

Of course, television producers and radio talk show hosts will continue to book Hitchens, and publishers will no doubt continue to buy the rights to his written works: Vanity Fair will continue to employ him as a regular columnist, in spite of his increasingly indefensible views. But he's endangered all that and no longer deserves a platform: he's just begging to be treated like Don Imus – who, at least, was immediately and properly remorseful, quite unlike Hitchens.

At the Freedom From Religion conference, he was given the "emperor has no clothes" award for supposedly being a daring "freethinker," but the truth is that it is Hitchens who most resembles the emperor in that little parable. No one dares to say what everyone knows to be true: he's gone 'round the bend and over the top, and it's high time someone said so.

It's bad enough, as one wag pointed out – I think it was in Radar magazine – that all of the most prominent pundits who were the loudest voices in favor of the Iraq war have not suffered one whit for being so wrong: indeed, they have been rewarded with even more pulpits from which to preach their doctrine of perpetual war in the Middle East. So Hitchens isn't all that unique, in that sense, although his case is singular in one important respect: none of the neocons, not even the bloodthirsty Max Boot, has come out openly in favor of wiping out large numbers of Muslims by design. The implication is always there, of course: after all, what else can we expect if we invade Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Pakistan but large numbers of civilian dead? Hitchens, however, is the first one to plainly state that this ought to be one of our war aims: mass extermination as a deliberate policy, not the unfortunate result of "collateral damage."

So the next time you see this advocate of genocide on television, or hear him bloviating over the radio, take the trouble to write the station a note, expressing your displeasure that they would give Hitchens a platform. Would they have an advocate of the Khmer Rouge on as a guest? The next time he shows up at your university, you might show your displeasure in many ways, least of all being an inquiry into the expenditure of public funds to bring a well-known genocidal maniac to the campus. Who's next on the list of guest speakers – Charles Manson?

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

Speaking of Hitchens, there is another interesting piece on him by Richard Poe over at Taki's Top Drawer. And speaking of TTD, I've been blogging regularly over there: on David Horowitz getting caught in another lie, on how to take a look at Israel's WMD, and on what Wesley Clark is telling us about Washington's regime-change schedule.

Hitchens Calls for Genocide of Muslims

Oct 14, 2007

We're about to leave lovely Madison, Wisconsin and the Freedom from Religion Convention. So here's a short summary: it was a good meeting and I was impressed with most of the speakers; Christopher Hitchens "pissed off" most of us as he promised to do, and the organization of the meeting could have been greatly improved.

Now the details.

I already mentioned Katha Pollitt and Julia Sweeney, the opening night speakers, and they were hilarious and humane. I'd go listen to them anytime, and you should too, at any opportunity. They represent the happy, friendly atheists, and they do it very well.

Saturday morning opened with Ellery Schempp. You've all heard of him, right? Maybe not. He was at the center of an important constitutional law case, School District of Abington Township, Pennsylvania v. Schempp, back in the late 1950s. Coincidentally, when we lived in Pennsylvania our kids were all enrolled in the Abington School District, and the school does not make much mention of their moment in the limelight, although we were familiar with its historic importance, since it was part of our irreligious tradition. Pennsylvania schools used to open their day with readings from the Bible, a habit that was broken when a 16-17 year old Ellery Schempp defied them, got the ACLU involved, and took them all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was decided that it certainly was unconstitutional to use the public schools to advance sectarian religion.

Ellery gave a wonderful talk that both reviewed the law behind the decision and his personal role in it, and also talked about secular values. Great stuff; and you can learn more, there's a new book, Ellery's Protest: How One Young Man Defied Tradition and Sparked the Battle over School Prayer by Stephen D. Solomon(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), that recounts the whole story.

The next talk was amazingly apropos. It was by a 17 year old high school student who has been mentioned here before, Matt LaClair. Matt is from Kearney, NJ, and he was enrolled in a high school US History class in which the teacher seemed to prefer to ramble on about dinosaurs on Noah's Ark, and how non-Christians were going to hell, then to teach the students history. Matt not only challenged the guy in the face of widespread support for him from his peers and the community, but carefully documented the teacher's nonsense with recordings. David Paszkiewicz still teaches at that high school, and is apparently still dribbling out his superstitious nonsense to the students, which is unfortunate … but Matt LaClair is an incredibly poised and articulate young man who is going to rise above it and leave that school behind, soon enough.

The third talk was by Stephanie Salter, a columnist for the Terra Haute Tribune Star, and … oh, my! … a theist. She has worked for separation of church and state, and her work is funny and right on target with the goals of the FFRF. Unfortunately, and I'll mention this later, the organization of this conference left much to be desired, and coming as she did on the end of a long morning session, my attention was flagging a bit — no fault of hers, of course, but just the non-stop immobility of the session was a bit of a killer.

The last talk is the one everyone is going to be talking about for some time to come: Christopher Hitchens at his eloquent, acerbic best and his eloquent, acerbic worst. He got a standing ovation when he was introduced, and he should have stopped there, because the applause got thinner and thinner as the talk progressed, and by the end, people were walking out on him.

The talk began excellently. He gave some of the arguments from his book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and he had me cheering at his aggressive dismissal of the foolishness of religion. It was not, however, a great talk — he'd have a great couple of paragraphs of red meat that would then fade away into an unfinished anecdote…and then he'd start another one. It was clearly an exhibition of punctuated rhetoric.

Ah, but then at the end — he seemed uncertain about the time allotted and how much time he was using, furthering the impression that he was just making some unorganized, off-the-cuff remarks — he asked if we shouldn't break for questions, and then suggested that he "bang on", and when he got signs of approval, said he was going to say a few things to piss us off. And that he did.

Ouch.

Then it was Hitchens at his most bellicose. He told us what the most serious threat to the West was (and you know this line already): it was Islam. Then he accused the audience of being soft on Islam, of being the kind of vague atheists who refuse to see the threat for what it was, a clash of civilizations, and of being too weak to do what was necessary, which was to spill blood to defeat the enemy. Along the way he told us who his choice for president was right now — Rudy Giuliani — and that Obama was a fool, Clinton was a pandering closet fundamentalist, and that he was less than thrilled about all the support among the FFRF for the Democratic party. We cannot afford to allow the Iranian theocracy to arm itself with nuclear weapons (something I entirely sympathize with), and that the only solution is to go in there with bombs and marines and blow it all up. The way to win the war is to kill so many Moslems that they begin to question whether they can bear the mounting casualties.

It was simplistic us-vs.-them thinking at its worst, and the only solution he had to offer was death and destruction of the enemy.

This was made even more clear in the Q&A. He was asked to consider the possibility that bombing and killing was only going to accomplish an increase in the number of people opposing us. Hitchens accused the questioner of being incredibly stupid (the question was not well-phrased, I'll agree, but it was clear what he meant), and said that it was obvious that every Moslem you kill means there is one less Moslem to fight you … which is only true if you assume that every Moslem already wants to kill Americans and is armed and willing to do so. I think that what is obvious is that most Moslems are primarily interested in living a life of contentment with their families and their work, and that an America committed to slaughter is a tactic that will only convince more of them to join in opposition to us.

Basically, what Hitchens was proposing is genocide. Or, at least, wholesale execution of the population of the Moslem world until they are sufficiently cowed and frightened and depleted that they are unable to resist us in any way, ever again.

This is insane. I entirely agree that we are looking at a clash of civilizations, that there are huge incompatibilities between different parts of the world, and that we face years and years of all kinds of conflict between us, with no easy resolution. However, one can only resolve deep ideological conflicts by the extermination of one side in video games and cartoons. It's not going to work in the real world. We can't simply murder enough Moslems to weaken them into irrelevance, and even if we could, that's not the kind of culture to which I want to belong.

A clash of whole civilizations is a war of ideas. The way we can 'conquer' is on the cultural and economic level: the West should not invade and destroy, but should instead set an example, lead with strength, and be the civilization that every rational citizen of the other side wants to emulate. Yes, there will be wars and skirmishes, because not everyone on either side is rational, but the bloodshed isn't the purpose. Hitchens would make it the raison d'etre of the whole Western effort.

This whole last third of his talk had me concerned about the first part. He had just told us in strong terms about the failures of religion and its detrimental effect on our culture, and now he was explaining to us how the solution in the Middle East was to simply kill everyone who disagreed with you. He didn't relate the two parts of his talk, which was unfortunate. I'd like to know whether he thinks the way atheists ought to end religion in America is to start shooting Baptists, or whether he sees other ways to educate and enlighten … in which case I wonder why he doesn't see any virtue in applying those same methods to Islam. I didn't ask the question since the line for the microphone was long, and I had a depressing feeling that the solution would involve sending the Baptists over to Iraq to kill and be killed.

This is not my freethought movement. The Hitchens solution is not my solution.

I could tell that he did not have the sympathy of most of the audience at this point. There were a scattered few who applauded wildly at every mention of bombing the Iranians, but the majority were stunned into silence. People were leaving — I heard one woman sing a few bars of "Onward, Christian soldiers" as she left to mock his strategy. The questions were all angry or disputative, and were all dismissed with comments about the audience's intelligence. The answers were always, "War, war, war," and that we weren't good atheists if we didn't agree with murder as the answer. He seemed unable to comprehend that people could despise and oppose all religion, Christian, Moslem, or otherwise, yet have no desire to triumph by causing physical harm to the believers. I've noticed the same intellectual blindness in many Christians, actually.

Later that evening, someone in the FFRF was handing out an open letter to the freethought community, one that protested the inclusion of Hitchens and opposing any future speakers of his sort. I sympathized with the sentiment (and if the writer wants to send me an electronic copy, I'll post it here), but I think it was useful to have Hitchens stand up there and tell us what he thinks — and there was absolutely no reticence in his comments, which I admire. But while I agree with his goal of working towards a rational, secular world, a triumph of enlightenment values, I disagree entirely with his proposed strategy, which seems to involve putting a bullet through every god-haunted brain. To have a clearly stated position to which we can respond with clearly stated opposition is actually a kind of gift.

ADL's Foxman is a Genocide Denier

by Keith O'Brien, The Boston Globe - August 3, 2007

Antibias effort stirs anger in Watertown - Debate focuses on genocide

[Editor's note: The ADL takes this position primarily because Israel has close ties to Turkey and one of the job's of Israel's 5th Column lobby in the US is to keep the US Congress from recognizing the Armenian genocides even as its members mouth piles of crap about the Jewish Holocaust and fake concerns about the people of Darfur who are being pimped by the Jewish establishment as part of its world war against the Arab Middle East. He takes the position, secondarily, because for secular Zionists like Foxbreath as for the Orthodox, the lives of non-Jews are of no consequence nor are their deaths. His statement about only taking positions on current events is revealing. For the Jewish establishment, the Jewish Holocaust is considered a current event.-JB

WATERTOWN -- As far as town proclamations go, the one that declared Watertown a No Place for Hate community in July 2005 seemed like a pretty innocuous one. The goal was to celebrate diversity and challenge bigotry. And the program, in place in 67 Massachusetts communities and hundreds of others nationwide, has generated very little controversy elsewhere.

But that has not been the case in Watertown. In recent weeks, the town that bills itself as No Place for Hate on a sign outside Town Hall is abuzz with anger and frustration, especially among the large Armenian population. At issue is not the program itself, but the group behind it, the Anti-Defamation League, and in particular the ADL's refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide at the hands of Turks during World War I.

"It's kind of the worst hatred to deny genocide," said Nayiri Arzoumanian, a woman of Armenian heritage who has lived in Watertown for eight years. "It's the worst kind of hypocrisy."

The debate began in letters to the editor of the Watertown Tab newspaper and has pitted Watertown Armenians against the ADL's national director, Abraham H. Foxman. Now what was once considered a positive civic effort, declaring Watertown No Place For Hate, finds itself at the center of a debate burdened by divisive international history and politics.

For decades, Armenians have fought to get the Turkish government and other world leaders to recognize the deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians during World War I as genocide. The refusal of the ADL to support the Armenians, especially as they lobby Congress to recognize the genocide, has fueled the local war of words.

Sharistan Melkonian -- chairwoman of the Armenian National Committee of Eastern Massachusetts, based in Watertown -- accused Foxman of engaging in "genocide denial" in an interview with the Globe. She said she will call for the Watertown No Place for Hate program to sever its ties with the ADL unless it denounces Foxman's position and acknowledges the genocide.

In a separate interview, Foxman countered that it would be "bigoted" to dismantle a program focused on fighting hatred simply because the ADL does not share the Armenians' point of view. And Foxman maintained his position that the ADL, which has spoken out against ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and genocide in Darfur, does not have a role in the long-standing dispute between the Armenians and the Turks.

"We're not party to this, and I don't understand why we need to be made party," Foxman said.

It is a tense and tangled debate that has taken Watertown officials and the ADL by surprise. The ADL says it never faced this issue until it bubbled to the surface in Watertown, home to more than 8,000 Armenian-Americans. How the town will respond is not yet clear, said Mark Sideris, Town Council vice president.

But some residents of Armenian heritage are clearly troubled.

"I'm not against, particularly, No Place For Hate," said Dikran Kaligian, an Armenian-American who has been a Watertown resident for 17 years. "I think it's got its heart in the right place. But let's get some answers."

The ADL has certified No Place For Hate programs in hundreds of towns and cities across the United States. After a year, during which the town or city organizes anti-bias programs, the municipality receives a placard from the ADL to be posted for public display.

When town councilors declared Watertown a No Place for Hate community in July 2005, it generated just a few lines in the town minutes and passed unanimously by a voice vote. "It seemed like a reasonable thing for the town to do," Sideris said. And he never expected that it would become controversial. But in recent weeks that is what has happened.

According to Armenians and many historians, the Turks systematically killed as many as 1.5 million Armenians living under the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923. A Polish-Jewish lawyer later coined the term genocide, citing the Armenian experience. But the Turkish government has never acknowledged their history as such, leading to decades of anger and frustration among Armenians.

Foxman said he is surprised that he has become a target of Armenians. The ADL, a group founded in 1913 to fight anti-Semitism, has no official position on the Armenian genocide, he said.

"I'm not going to be the arbiter of someone else's history," he said in the interview, adding that he does not believe that Congress should either. When asked specifically if what happened to Armenians under the Ottoman Empire was genocide, he replied, "I don't know." The ADL only takes positions, he said, on current events, not on something that happened in the past.

But Armenian leaders say that is a disingenuous answer coming from an organization that often pressures people to stand up for human rights around the globe. They believe that Israel's ties to Turkey, a rare Muslim partner in the Middle East, have influenced the ADL's point of view. By refusing to become an "arbiter of history," Melkonian said, the ADL is suggesting that there is some question whether genocide happened, and that is what infuriates Armenians.

"You would never ever say that about the genocide in Darfur; you would never ever say that about the Holocaust," said Melkonian. "You need to stop genocide anywhere you can, and the only way to stop genocide in the future is to acknowledge that it happened."

The entire debate has become "politics at a different level," said Town Councilor Stephen Corbett, far beyond anything concerning Watertown's No Place for Hate program, a well-received effort that since 2005 has cosponsored public forums on immigration issues and produced a video and traveling exhibition about the many faces of Watertown.

"Ultimately, we'd like to get back to the business of doing the basic kind of local programs that we can do, free and clear of the shadow of this controversy," said Will Twombly, the cochairman of Watertown's No Place For Hate committee.

But Twombly, whose program receives corporate money through ADL's grant program, said it will not be possible to move forward until the committee meets with ADL's regional director Andrew H. Tarsy and asks some tough questions about its stance on the Armenian genocide. At that point, Twombly said, the committee will decide on the best course of action, including the option of severing ties with the ADL altogether, effectively ending the program. He said the committee acknowledges the Armenian genocide, even if the ADL does not.

"Clearly, No Place For Hate is a program based on tolerance, based on respect for differences, and based on mutual respect and care for individuals, and in no way does the Armenian genocide represent any of those values," Twombly said. "Not to condemn the genocide and fully recognize it for what it was, I personally find inconsistent with the mission of No Place for Hate."

Source: The Boston Globe