DECEMBER 2005

Doremus Jessup, editor of the Fort Beulah The Daily Informer, in Sinclair Lewis' famous book "It Can't Happen Here", at its conclusion, after imprisonment and torture escaped and "drove out, saluted by the meadow larks, and onward all day, to a hidden cabin in the Northern Woods where quiet men awaited news of freedom.....still Doremus goes on, into the sunrise, for a Doremus Jessup can never die......

So there it was, on the cover of the Journal of the American Medical Association magazine, a Jan Steen painting called “As the old ones sing, so the young ones pipe.” Steen is quite the genre painter, and his 17th century Holland is more Tarantino than Norman Rockwell. This, one of his more over-the-top efforts, moved me to poetry…

A Thanksgiving Poem,
by Tom Buckner.

It’s another festive thanksgiving
In our festive house
We’re all of us half in the bag
And mom is half out of her blouse.

That’s Steen in the red hat, laughing his arse off, and for a few more of his hard-drinkin’, whore-gropin’, bar-fightin’ subjects, here ya go: Jan Steen Paintings

from:adventures in nonism
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 For other drawings on world news by Mariali  :
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/tableauxpastels/caricatures-mariali/

BradBlog reports:
A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody
...
Habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action. Therefore, the writ must be "administered with the initiative and flexibility essential to insure that miscarriages of justice within its reach are surfaced and corrected."
The right of habeas corpus goes back to
the Magna Carta of 1215 and is explicitly
recognized in the US constitution.
WIKIPEDIA:The right of habeas corpus has long been celebrated as the most efficient safeguard of the liberty of the subject. Dicey wrote that the Habeas Corpus Acts "declare no principle and define no rights, but they are for practical purposes worth a hundred constitutional articles guaranteeing individual liberty".

On Nov. 10, the Senate passed an amendment that strips detainees of any right to a petition of habeas corpus. It does allow the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to hear claims from them. The problem, though, is that those claims are very, very limited. To quote the new version: they "shall be limited to the consideration of whether the status determination of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal with regard to such alien was consistent with the procedures and standards specified by the Secretary of Defense for Combatant Status Review Tribunals."

Our country should never be the sort of place where the Secretary of Defense can just drop someone into a legal black hole, where the laws cannot reach, and whence there is no appeal. And we should not tolerate attempts to turn it into such a place. We claim to be a nation of laws; habeas corpus is one of the foundations of those laws, and it is too precious, and too important to the country we want to be, for us to throw it away.

COMMENT:The Supreme Court has already touched upon this matter in the recent case of Rasul v Bush, where the court held said:

Habeas corpus is, however, "a writ antecedent to statute, ... throwing its root deep into the genius of our common law." Williams v. Kaiser, 323 U. S. 471, 484, n. 2 (1945) (internal quotation marks omitted). The writ appeared in English law several centuries ago, became "an integral part of our common-law heritage" by the time the Colonies achieved independence, Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475, 485 (1973), and received explicit recognition in the Constitution, which forbids suspension of "[t]he Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus ... unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it," Art. I, §9, cl. 2 (ibid, bold added).

So, the tension, then, is about whether or not congress can limit the writ and how much, seeing as how it came to us thru the common law, and precedes statutes.

In other words the Supreme Court sees it as a constitutional liberty, right, or priviledge which neither the courts nor congress can remove.

The neoCons are busy removing every american value, from honesty to habeas corpus.
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To put a blanket condemnation on the judicial branch of government is a neoCon ploy because they have crime on their mind and don't like the courts because that is where they must face the music.

The congress has become a rubber stamp to the neoCon president in the past five years, and the only thing holding back fascism now is the courts.

What needs to be done is to vote out the rubber stamp neoCons and bring back sane congresswomen and congressmen.
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Guantanamo inmates to lose all rights

US law proposal attacked by campaigners

David Rose
Sunday November 13, 2005
The Observer

Human rights campaigners are calling it the 'November surprise' - a last-minute amendment smuggled into a Pentagon finance bill in the US Senate last Thursday.

Its effects are likely to be devastating: the permanent removal of almost all legal rights from 'war on terror' detainees at Guantanamo Bay and every other similar US facility on foreign or American soil.

'What the British law lord Lord Steyn once called a legal black hole had begun to be filled in,' said the British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, speaking from Guantanamo, where he represents more than 40 detainees. 'It looks as if it is back, and deeper than before.'

If the amendment passes the House of Representatives unmodified, one of its immediate effects is that Stafford Smith and all the other lawyers who act for Guantanamo prisoners will again be denied access, as they were for more than two years after Camp X-Ray opened in 2002.

The amendment was tabled by Lindsay Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and passed by 49 votes to 42. It reverses the Supreme Court's decision in June last year which affirmed the right of detainees to bring habeas corpus petitions in American federal courts.

As a result, about 200 of Guantanamo's 500 prisoners have filed such cases, many of them arguing that they are not terrorists, as the US authorities claim, and that the evidence against them is unreliable.

None of them were given any kind of hearing when they were consigned to Guantanamo. Instead, the Americans unilaterally declared they were unlawful 'enemy combatants', mostly on the basis of assessments by junior military intelligence personnel, who were often reliant on interpreters whose skills internal Pentagon reports have criticised.

The Supreme Court's 2004 ruling also meant that the handful of prisoners facing trial at Guantanamo by military commissions, which do not follow the normal rules of evidence and due process, have been able to file federal challenges to their legality.

Last Monday, the Supreme Court announced it would review the commission rules by agreeing to take the case of Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni detainee and allegedly once Osama bin Laden's driver. The Graham amendment, if passed, will stop this case, and the commissions will operate without further scrutiny.

Michael Ratner, the director of New York's Centre for Constitutional Rights which brought the 2004 case, said the amendment 'will create a thousand points of darkness across the globe where the United States will be free to hold people indefinitely without a hearing, beyond the reach of US law and the checks and balances in our constitution.'

A senior Pentagon lawyer who asked not to be named said that the Graham amendment will have another consequence. The same Pentagon bill also contains a clause, sponsored by Graham and the Arizona Republican John McCain, to outlaw torture at US detention camps - a move up to now fiercely resisted by the White House. 'If detainees can't talk to lawyers or file cases, how will anyone ever find out if they have been abused,' the lawyer said.

Most of the evidence of abuse at Guantanamo has emerged from lawyers' discussions with their clients.

Human rights groups and leading figures from the US military are urging the Senate to reconsider the amendment next week. Among those who have written open letters are John Hutson, the former Judge Advocate General of the US Navy, and the National Institute for Military Justice, a think-tank for military lawyers.

Methodist Bishops Repent
Iraq War 'Complicity'
  By Kaukab Jhumra Smith FoxNews.com
11-12-5  

WASHINGTON -- Ninety-five bishops from President Bush's church said Thursday they repent their "complicity" in the "unjust and immoral" invasion and occupation of Iraq.

"In the face of the United States administration's rush toward military action based on misleading information, too many of us were silent," said a statement of conscience signed by more than half of the 164 retired and active United Methodist bishops worldwide.

President Bush is a member of the <javascript:siteSearch('United Methodist Church');>United Methodist Church, according to various published biographies. The White House did not return a request for comment on the bishops' statement.

Although United Methodist leadership has opposed the Iraq war in the past, this is the first time that individual bishops have confessed to a personal failure to publicly challenge the buildup to the war.

The signatures were also an instrument for retired bishops to make their views known, said bishop Joseph H. Yeakel, who served in the Baltimore-Washington area from 1984 to 1996. The current bishop for the Baltimore-Washington area, <javascript:siteSearch('John R. Schol');>John R. Schol, also signed the statement.

The statement avoids making accusations, said retired Bishop Kenneth L. Carder, instructor at Duke University's divinity school and an author of the document.

"We would have made the statement regardless of who the president was. It was not meant to be either partisan or to single out any one person," Carder said. "It was the recognition that we are all part of the decision and we are all part of a democratic society. We all bear responsibility."

Stith, who spent more than three years after his retirement working in East Africa -- including with Rwandan refugees -- said going to war over the <javascript:siteSearch('Sept. 11, 2001');>Sept. 11, 2001, attacks did not solve the real problems behind them.

The real issues are that much of the world lives in poverty, desperation and depression, he said, while an affluent minority of the world often oppresses them. Americans need to take responsibility for their world, Stith said.

"To ignore things and to assume that persons in the government have all knowledge is to reject our franchise and our democracy," Stith said.

About six weeks ago, Carder discussed the idea of a public statement with other colleagues who "had concerns" about the war, and the idea just grew, Carder said.

Last week, the statement circulated during a biannual meeting of the Council of Bishops, "and before the week was out, we had 95 bishops," Carder said.

In their statement, the bishops pledged to pray daily for the end of the war, for its American and Iraqi victims and for American leaders to find "truth, humility and policies of peace through justice."

"We confess our preoccupation with institutional enhancement and limited agendas while American men and women are sent to Iraq to kill and be killed, while thousands of Iraqi people needlessly suffer and die, while poverty increases and preventable diseases go untreated," the statement said.

Some bishops declined to sign their names, although they supported the statement, Carder said.

This week's statement follows years of public opposition to the Iraq war by the church.

In May 2004, the <javascript:siteSearch('Council of Bishops');>Council of Bishops passed a resolution that "lamented the continued warfare" and asked the U.S. government to seek international help to rebuild Iraq. The church's women's division called for an end to the war in 2002. And in 2001, the church's head of social policy, Jim Winkler, said the push for war was "without any justification according to the teachings of Christ," according to a report by The (London) Observer.

Public approval of the war has steadily declined since the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003. At the time, seven of 10 Americans said the U.S. did the right thing. By this October, only four of 10 Americans did, according to CBS polls.

About 11 million people belong to the United Methodist Church, including 200,000 in the Baltimore-Washington area.

Carder and Stith said they hoped their statement would encourage more people to think about peacemaking.

"The only solution seems to be to stay the course. But if you're on the wrong course, you don't stay the course," Carder said. "At the heart of the Christian faith is the willingness to acknowledge mistakes."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175245,00.html

Historic Vermont Meeting in State Capital Passes Resolution to Secede from the U.S.  
The members of a peaceful freedom-fighting group want no part of neo-cons running the imperialistic U.S. government. Plan to secede from the U.S. gaining momentum in the fiercely independent Green Mountain state.

2 Nov 2005 

By Greg Szymanski
 

The neo-con band of criminals running Washington, trampling on civil rights at home and invading countries at will overseas, has led a large group of strong-minded Vermont freedom-fighters with no choice but to secede from the United States.

And last Friday at the state capital building in Montpelier, a historic independence convention was held, the first of its kind in the United States since May 20, 1861, when South Carolina decided to leave the Union.

A packed House Chamber in the Vermont statehouse, with more than 400 gathered, started the daylong secession convention with a speech by keynote James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, and ended with a resolution passed to secede from the United States.

Most people think of secession as impossible if not treasonous, but the concept is deeply rooted in the Declaration of Independence, reminding us that “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it and to institute new government.”

And with the neo-con takeover of Washington, including all its branches of government transforming America into a one-party dictatorship, that’s exactly what the resolution passed in Vermont seeks to do by members of grassroots movement growing in numbers daily.

Although the resolution is the first step in the long process that needs support from the state legislators – as well as an officially recognized convention - the grass roots group called the Second Vermont Republic passed the following citizen’s resolution:

“Be it resolved that the state of Vermont peacefully and democratically free itself from the United States of America and return to its natural status as an independent republic as it was between January 15, 1777 and March 4, 1791.”

Even though critics give the secession group ‘a snowball’s chance in hell,’ organizers are firmly convinced in the present-day tyrannical political climate secession will not only succeed but will prosper.

‘This could only happen in Vermont where people are still fiercely independent and fed up with the course the American government is taking,” said Thomas Naylor, the head of the group calling itself the Second Republic of Vermont. “We have a lot going for us and if you think about it, we have a lot in common with Poland’s Solidarity movement, who many said would never succeed.

“But Poland did get its freedom, mainly because it was a country liked around the world, sort of like how people in America feel about Vermont.  When people think of Vermont, they have a warm and fuzzy feeling, an image of black and white Holstein cows and beautiful scenery. I can also tell you there is now closet support in the legislature now and we are serious about getting the support needed to secede from the United States.’

Naylor, a former Duke University economics professor, said from his Vermont home this week that statewide independence is really a euphemism for secession, adding Vermont also will seek to join the group of Unrepresented Nations similar to the Lakota Indians and other international indigenous people.

“Secession is one of the most politically charged words in America, thanks to Abraham Lincoln,” said Naylor, adding he had been writing about secession for the better part of 10 years but the movement picked up tremendous steam after 9/11. “Secession really combines a radical act of rebellion grounded in fear and anger with a positive vision for the future. 

“It represents an act of faith that the new will be better than the old. The decision to secede necessarily involves a very personal, painful four-step decision process. It first involves denunciation that the United States has lost its moral authority and is unsustainable, ungovernable and unfixable. Second, there is disengagement or admitting ‘I don’t want to go down with the Titanic. Third, there is demystification that secession really is a viable option constitutionally, politically and economically. And finally, defiance, saying ‘I personally want to help take Vermont back from big business, big markets and big government and I want to do so peacefully.’” 

What started out as Naylor’s little fantasy to have an independent country made up of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, has already grown from a small group of 36 several years ago to a packed House Chamber in the state’s capital. Claiming to have a membership of 160 as of last April, Naylor said the numbers have doubled or even tripled.

“”I’m getting calls from all over the country supporting our movement,” said Naylor. “Although there are more than 20 states with some kind of secession movement, Alaska and Hawaii being the best examples, I think  Vermont really has the best chance at succeeding at seceding.” 

Besides holding the Vermont independence convention in Montpelier, the smallest state capital city in the United States, it also has the reputation as being the most fiercely independent and anti- big business, being the only one not allowing a McDonald’s in the entire country.

“First and foremost, we want out of the United States.  It’s not just an anti-Bush statement and if Kerry was elected, we still would have wanted out,” said Naylor. “The reality is that we have a one party system in this country, called the Republican party, that is owned and operated and controlled by corporate America.  So it’s not just a Bush protest, but a protest against the Empire.

Although many critics have said the mighty U.S. would not stand for Vermont’s secession, Naylor as will as others disagree, including Jim Hogue, a talk show host on Vermont Public radio.

“There’s nothing they would want here. There’s no oil, just mountains. We’re just not important enough. We’re funny, we’re small and we’re peaceful,” said Hogue several months ago in an article in the Montreal Gazette.

With most Vermont politicians, including the Congressional delegation, ignoring the grassroots secession movement or just laughing it off as good theatre, Vermont’s Lt. Gov., Brian Dubie, has weighed in on the issue, giving it a certain amount of merit but stopping short of outright support.

“I really salute their energy and passion,” he said in a local press interview. “we have an obligation to think of what is in our best interest as a state and for the people of out state, even as we approach federal and national issues.”

Besides Naylor and Kuntsler, others who spoke at the Oct. 28 independence convention included Professor Frank Bryan of the University of Vermont; Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale; J. Kevin Graffagnino, executive director of theVermont Historical Society; Professor Eric Davis, Middlebury College; Shay Totten, editor of the Vermont Guardian; and Dr. Rob Williams of Champlain College.

    During this uncertain period, as Bush's Presidency is under threat and the possibility of a Democrat resurgence in the polls - it is as well to kee an eye on the ambitions and activities of certain Democrats.

A Canadian journalist Kalle Lasn observes:American Jews overwhelmingly vote Democrat and many of them disagree strongly with Ariel Sharon's policies and Bush's aggression in Iraq.Deciding exactly who is a neocon is difficult since some neocons reject the term while others embrace it. Some shape policy from within the White House, while others are more peripheral, exacting influence indirectly as journalists, academics and think tank policy wonks. What they all share is the view that the US is a benevolent hyper power that must protect itself by reshaping the rest of the world into its morally superior image. And half of the them are Jewish.
Pointing out the following:Neocon Joshua Muravchik, in an article entitled "The Neoconservative Cabal," published in the September 2003 issue of _Commentary Magazine__, writes: "The neoconservatives, it turns out, are also in large proportion Jewish--and this, to their detractors, constitutes evidence of the ulterior motives that lurk behind the policies they espouse." [http://www.aei.org/include/news_print.asp?newsID=19107]
Commentary_ has been the flagship of neoconservatism and is published by the American Jewish Committee. And Muravchik's piece is actually a defense of the neoconservatives. So I guess it's OK for Jewish neocons to admit their Jewishness but it is criminal "anti-Semitism" for gentile critics to say the very same thing. Kalle Lasn, told The CJN he felt compelled to write his text because "the mainstream and alternative media are somehow scared of talking about the Jewishness of the neocons and the Zionism there. and the influence this has on American foreign policy in the Middle East."

Here is one interesting recall and this article could well be read in combination with Jean Baudrillard's analysis The Mask of War in this issue of The Handstand.JB.editor:
FPIF Commentary, Foreign Policy In Focus
By Jim Lobe | July 21, 2004http://www.fpif.org/

A bipartisan group of 41 mainly neoconservative foreign-policy hawks has launched the latest incarnation of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), whose previous two incarnations mobilized public support for rolling back Soviet-led communism but whose new enemy will be “global terrorism.” The new group, whose formation was announced at a Capitol Hill press conference July 20, said its “single mission” will be to “advocate policies intended to win the war on global terrorism—terrorism carried out by radical Islamists opposed to freedom and democracy.”

“The Committee intends to remain active until the present danger is no longer a threat, however long that takes,” said CPD chairman R. James Woolsey, who served briefly as former President Bill Clinton’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director and has often referred to the battle against radical Islam as “World War IV.”

Woolsey appeared with Senators Joseph Lieberman, a neoconservative Democrat who was former Vice President Al Gore’s running-mate in 2000, and John Kyl, a Republican from Arizona with strong connections to the Christian Right. In a joint column published July 20 in the Washington Post, the two senators argued, “Too many people are insufficiently aware of our enemy’s evil worldwide designs, which include waging jihad against all Americans and reestablishing a totalitarian religious empire in the Middle East.”

“The past struggle against communism was, in some ways, different from the current war against Islamist terrorism,” the two men wrote, evoking the two past CPDs. “But...the national and international solidarity needed to prevail over both enemies is...the same. In fact, the world war against Islamic terrorism is the test of our time.”

At the press conference later, Lieberman(whose long term ambition is to be President of USA; ed.JB)said the purpose of the new group was “to form a bipartisan citizens’ army, which is ready to fight a war of ideas against our Islamist terrorist enemies, and to send a clear signal that their strategy to deceive, demoralize and divide America will not succeed.” The two senators also claimed that the new CPD consists of “citizens of diverse political persuasions,” although the vast majority of the 41 members are well-known neoconservatives who have strongly helped lead the drive to war in Iraq and have long supported broadening President George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism” to include Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, as well.

Prominently represented are fellows from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), such as former UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Joshua Muravchik, Laurie Mylroie, Danielle Pletka, Michael Rubin, and Ben Wattenberg; from Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Policy Board (DPB), such as Kenneth Adelman, Newt Gingrich, and Woolsey himself; and from the Center for Security Policy (CSP), such as its president, Frank Gaffney, Charles Kupperman, William Van Cleave, and Dov Zakheim, who just stepped down as an Undersecretary of Defense under Rumsfeld. Board members or fellows of several other right-wing or mainly neoconservative think tanks have also joined the new CPD, including the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the Manhattan Institute, Freedom House, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the former Committee to Liberate Iraq, the National Institute for Public Policy, and the Americans for Victory Over Terrorism. The majority of members are associated with policy statements by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) whose charter members in 1997 included Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and a number of other men and women who have pushed for hawkish positions on the Middle East and China, particularly from their perches at senior levels in the Bush administration.

The original CPD was formed in 1950 with the help of anti-Communist hawks in the administration of former President Harry Truman as a “citizens’ lobby” by a high-powered group of Wall Street businessmen, public-relations specialists, and university administrators to raise public concern about Soviet and Chinese threats and to mobilize support for a huge military budget aimed at maintaining U.S. military supremacy. CPD-2, which was officially launched immediately after the election of President Jimmy Carter, was created as a coalition of neoconservatives—mostly hawkish Democrats who had supported the unsuccessful presidential candidacy of Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington State (organized as the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, or CDM)—and aggressive Republican nationalists, such as Rumsfeld, opposed to the detentist policies pursued by Henry Kissinger under former Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. During the Carter administration, CPD-2 essentially served as a “shadow” foreign-policy cabinet—by churning out position papers and opinion columns, holding conferences, appearing on television news shows, and brokering leaks from unhappy hawks to prominent news media—to build support for much bigger military budgets, a much more confrontational posture vis-à-vis Moscow and for “rollback” of Soviet gains in what was then called “the Third World.”

When Ronald Reagan was subsequently elected president in 1980, no less than 46 CPD members advised his transition team, and most of them were absorbed into his administration, many at senior foreign-policy-making levels. While none of the members of new CPD go back to the original one 50 years ago, a significant number played important roles in CPD-2, including Adelman, Kampelman, Van Cleave, Kupperman and Kirkpatrick—all of whom played prominent roles in the older group. Indeed, many CPD-3 members joined CPD-2 from the CDM, which was created to fight the anti-war forces that were becoming dominant in the Democratic Party in the early to mid-1970s. Besides being hawkish toward the Soviet Union and friendly toward the Pentagon, both the CDM and the CDP-2 were also staunchly pro-Israeli at a time when the Jewish State found itself increasingly isolated on the world state.

A number of members of the new CPD, including Kampelman, Kemp, Kirkpatrick, Muravchik, Gaffney, and Woolsey himself, overlap with the membership of the advisory boards of the Likud-oriented Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the Middle East Forum, or the US Committee for a Free Lebanon. In addition, a husband-and-wife team who played key roles in the evolution of neoconservatism from the late 1960s to the present and who also were associated with both CDM and CPD-2, former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz and his spouse, Midge Decter (who co-chaired the Committee for the Free World with Rumsfeld during the Reagan administration) have also joined the new CPD.

Still, the new group does not include a number of individuals who would be politically compatible with its political views and institutional genealogy. The former DPB chairman and top Jackson aide, Richard Perle, for example, was not listed as a member; nor was his AEI colleague, Michael Ledeen. Similarly, the PNAC’s leadership, including Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, contributing editor Robert Kagan, and staff director Gary Schmitt apparently opted out. Ironically, Kristol and Kagan were co-editors of an influential 2000 foreign-policy book that envisaged much of Bush’s post-September 11 foreign policy called Present Dangers.

(Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus (online at http://www.fpif.org/). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)

WHAT MAKES PALESTINIANS THINK THEY CAN?

By: Dr. Hesham Tillawi --- July 2005

30 years ago I was told that the liberation of Palestine must go through Washington. I understood that to mean that Washington has a say so in what has happened, and what is happening to the Palestinians. I was wrong; Washington turned out to be an Israeli occupied space just like Palestine.

I spent the last Twenty-Seven years trying to explain to the American public that the Palestinians are not the bad guys, only to find out that they, the Americans, were in worse shape than the Palestinians. At least the Palestinians knew who the enemy was, they could see him, he is the one with the big gun and the big CAT and wearing the star of David. The Palestinians and the Americans share the same enemy, the Zionist agenda ...

I spent the last Twenty-Seven years spinning wheels to the point of burning rubber only to find myself in the same place where I started.  Truth, Justice, facts, history, fairness, moral, right-thing …etc are just nouns that carry hardly any weight in front of the reality and cruelty of the human mind. American Muslims and Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular are wasting their time in approaching issues dealing with Zionism. For decades, unintentionally, they made fighting Zionism an Arab exclusivity. For years, we visited churches and spoke at universities, showed films and documentaries, demonstrated in various American cities, and formed organizations one after another, but at the end all we can show for is smoke and the smell of burnt tar. We spent years designing, forming, and reforming, and reforming again, and again the structure of our “organizations” but forgot to add substance to those organizations. We always thought about what is good for Palestine and the Arabs, and neglected –not by design- what is good for America. Muslim Americans and Arab Americans must think of themselves as Americans first. They must think, feel, integrate, and contribute to the formation of the American Culture. A distinct American culture other than Western is forming and we must be part of this formation for two reasons:  To be included, and to help our people in the homelands.

In Palestine they are visible now, in America they used to be hidden, just like they were in Palestine, and when they became strong enough they took over the country, just like they did in Palestine. “ This is precisely the case today with regards to the Jewish supremacist agenda, wherein those who are the operatives have become so confident in their success that they no longer go to the painstaking lengths that they used to in insulating themselves from the light of day.” Mark Glenn in his book ...
No Beauty In The Beast

To me the fight is not in Palestine, but right here in America. It’s a fight between good and evil, a fight to keep the principles of freedom and democracy we as immigrants were attracted to, and our forefathers fought and died for. It’s a fight to keep America free and clear of any single entity’s control. It’s a fight for information and knowledge that the Constitution granted as a right. We must join in this battle for America. Don’t think you Muslims and Arabs are the only one in this fight; as a matter of fact you are yet to enter this fight. You have been fighting for your own communities’ issues and neglected America. There are thousands if not millions of “ordinary”-whatever that means- Americans who like to see the Zionist influence in America diminish. Once that happens, solving your problems here, and there and everywhere will be a matter of choice.

So how bad is the Zionist influence in America? Well, consider this: the Jewish population of America is about 5 million people, which is a little over one percent of the total population, and keep in mind that not all Jews are Zionists- many Jews are anti-Zionist- we end up with a percentage of less than one who actually control the government, the media, and the financial aspects of America.  Let’s take a look at where some (few) of these people are:  Paul Dundes Wolfowitz – not long ago was the  Deputy Secretary, Department of Defense and now President of the World Bank, Richard Perle - Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, Ari Fleischer - was White House Press Secretary and a director of World Jewish Congress, Josh Bolten - Deputy Chief of Staff, Ken Melman - White House Political Director, Jay Lefkowitz - Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council, Daniel Fried - Special Assistant to President and Senior Director for European and Eurasian Affairs, David Frum – Speechwriter-wrote the axis of evil speech-, Brad Blakeman - White House Director of Scheduling( he decides who sees Bush and who doesn’t), Dov Zakheim - Undersecretary of Defense (Controller), decides where the money goes, I. Lewis Libby - Chief of Staff to the Vice President, should be tried for treason for exposing Valerie Plame, a CIA agent, Elliott Abrams , an Israeli- now Director of the National Security Council's Office for Near East affairs, that’s the office  overseeing  the U.S. Middle East policy. Abrams’ appointment is viewed as "a gift from heaven" for 'Israel.' , Douglas Feith – an Israeli,was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and was responsible for making up the big lies about Iraq buying Uranium from Africa, very close to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Michael Chertoff – Homeland Security Secretary, Allen Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chairman, a private firm that controls ALL financial aspects of the country, and many, many more. You can see some of them in this partial list. Add to that, most Ambassadors to Europe and to countries that count, plus most advisors on the National Security Council and other sensitive government positions. This gang and others were the ones who conned America into going to war against Iraq for Israel with a price tag of over 1700 American lives lost, and 400 billions of hard earned American money, and a loss of over 200 years of reputation building.

Senator William Fullbright of Arkansas who served until 1975 said, “ Israel   controls the United States Senate. Around 80 percent are completely in support of Israel; what Israel wants it gets. Jewish influence in the House of Representatives is even greater.”  This was back in the Seventies, now they wield partial to total control over 95 Senators and all 435 members of the House except maybe 23. Listen to Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “ I’ve never seen a President- I don’t care who he is- stand up to them (Jews). They always get what they want, If the American people understood what a grip these people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms.”  Paul Findley, a US Congressman for 22 years noted on the subject that:

“ Israel is able to stifle free speech, control our Congress, and even dictate our foreign policy.”

I would conclude by saying that the Zionists in America now are in the same position they were in back in 1948 in Palestine where they were in total control of the land but not the people. They were not interested in the people; they just wanted the land. In the case of America they are in total control of its people and resources, they are not interested in the land. They just want people to fight wars and the people’s money to finance their ambitions.

Is speaking out against Zionism, and its agents Anti-Semitic? No, but this is: “ The Palestinians should be crushed like grasshoppers, their heads smashed against boulders and walls.” Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir.

Hesham Tillawi, PhD International Relations is a Palestinian American writer, Political Analyst and a TV show host. His program Current issues with Hesham Tillawi can be viewed Live every Thursday evening between 8-10 PM Central Standard Time on Cox Cable system Channel 5 in Louisiana as well as Live on the Internet at www.currentissues.tv and can be contacted at Tillawi@aol.com