Monday, April 28, 2003

-(2001) A BRIEFING ON THE HISTORY OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

KILLING CIVILIANS TO SHOW THAT KILLING CIVILIANS IS WRONG
By Zoltan Grossman

Since the September 11 attacks on the United States, most people in the world agree that the perpetrators need to be brought to justice, without killing many thousands of civilians in the process. But unfortunately, the U.S. military has always accepted massive civilian deaths as part of the cost of war. The military is now poised to kill thousands of foreign civilians, in order to prove that killing U.S. civilians is wrong.

The media has told us repeatedly that some Middle Easterners hate the U.S. only because of our “freedom” and “prosperity.” Missing from this explanation is the historical context of the U.S. role in the Middle East, and for that matter in the rest of the world. This basic primer is an attempt to brief readers who have not closely followed the history of U.S. foreign or military affairs, and are perhaps unaware of the background of U.S. military interventions abroad, but are concerned about the direction of our country toward a new war in the name of “freedom” and “protecting civilians.”

The United States military has been intervening in other countries for a long time. In 1898, it seized the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico from Spain, and in 1917-18 became embroiled in World War I in Europe. In the first half of the 20th century it repeatedly sent Marines to “protectorates” such as Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. All these interventions directly served corporate interests, and many resulted in massive losses of civilians, rebels, and soldiers. Many of the uses of U.S. combat forces are documented in “A History of U.S. Military Interventions Since 1890” at http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/interventions.htm

U.S. involvement in World War II (1941-45) was sparked by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and fear of an Axis invasion of North America. Allied bombers attacked fascist military targets, but also fire-bombed German and Japanese cities such as Dresden and Tokyo, party under the assumption that destroying civilian neighborhoods would weaken the resolve of the survivors and turn them against their regimes. Many historians agree that fire- bombing’s effect was precisely the opposite--increasing Axis civilian support for homeland defense, and discouraging potential coup attempts. The atomic bombing of Japan at the end of the war was carried out without any kind of advance demonstration or warning that may have prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

The war in Korea (1950-53) was marked by widespread atrocities, both by North Korean/Chinese forces, and South Korean/U.S. forces. U.S. troops fired on civilian refugees headed into South Korea, apparently fearing they were northern infiltrators. Bombers attacked North Korean cities, and the U.S. twice threatened to use nuclear weapons. North Korea is under the same Communist government today as when the war began.

During the Middle East crisis of 1958, Marines were deployed to quell a rebellion in Lebanon, and Iraq was threatened with nuclear attack if it invaded Kuwait. This little-known crisis helped set U.S. foreign policy on a collision course with Arab nationalists, often in support of the region’s monarchies.

In the early 1960s, the U.S. returned to its pre-World War II interventionary role in the Caribbean, directing the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs exile invasion of Cuba, and the 1965 bombing and Marine invasion of the Dominican Republic during an election campaign. The CIA trained and harbored Cuban exile groups in Miami, which launched terrorist attacks on Cuba, including the 1976 downing of a Cuban civilian jetliner near Barbados. During the Cold War, the CIA would also help to support or install pro-U.S. dictatorships in Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and many other countries around the world.

The U.S. war in Indochina (1960-75) pit U.S. forces against North Vietnam, and Communist rebels fighting to overthrow pro-U.S. dictatorships in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. U.S. war planners made little or no distinction between attacking civilians and guerrillas in rebel-held zones, and U.S. “carpet-bombing” of the countryside and cities swelled the ranks of the ultimately victorious revolutionaries. Over two million people were killed in the war, including 55,000 U.S. troops. Less than a dozen U.S. citizens were killed on U.S. soil, in National Guard shootings or antiwar bombings. In Cambodia, the bombings drove the Khmer Rouge rebels toward fanatical leaders, who launched a murderous rampage when they took power in 1975.

Echoes of Vietnam reverberated in Central America during the 1980s, when the Reagan administration strongly backed the pro-U.S. regime in El Salvador, and right-wing exile forces fighting the new leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Rightist death squads slaughtered Salvadoran civilians who questioned the concentration of power and wealth in a few hands. CIA-trained Nicaraguan Contra rebels launched terrorist attacks against civilian clinics and schools run by the Sandinista government, and mined Nicaraguan harbors. U.S. troops also invaded the island nation of Grenada in 1983, to oust a new military regime, attacking Cuban civilian workers (even though Cuba had backed the leftist government deposed in the coup), and accidentally bombing a hospital.

The U.S. returned in force to the Middle East in 1980, after the Shi’ite Muslim revolution in Iran against Shah Pahlevi’s pro-U.S. dictatorship. A troop and bombing raid to free U.S. Embassy hostages held in downtown Tehran had to be aborted in the Iranian desert. After the 1982 Israeli occupation of Lebanon, U.S. Marines were deployed in a neutral “peacekeeping” operation. They instead took the side of Lebanon’s pro-Israel Christian government against Muslim rebels, and U.S. Navy ships rained enormous shells on Muslim civilian villages. Embittered Shi’ite Muslim rebels responded with a suicide bomb attack on Marine barracks, and for years seized U.S. hostages in the country. In retaliation, the CIA set off car bombs to assassinate Shi’ite Muslim leaders. Syria and the Muslim rebels emerged victorious in Lebanon.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, the U.S. launched a 1986 bombing raid on Libya, which it accused of sponsoring a terrorist bombing later tied to Syria. The bombing raid killed civilians, and may have led to the later revenge bombing of a U.S. jet over Scotland. Libya’s Arab nationalist leader Muammar Qaddafi remained in power. The U.S. Navy also intervened against Iran during its war against Iraq in 1987-88, sinking Iranian ships and “accidentally” shooting down an Iranian civilian jetliner.

U.S. forces invaded Panama in 1989 to oust the nationalist regime of Manuel Noriega. The U.S. accused its former ally of allowing drug-running in the country, though the drug trade actually increased after his capture. U.S. bombing raids on Panama City ignited a conflagration in a civilian neighborhood, fed by stove gas tanks. Over 2,000 Panamanians were killed in the invasion to capture one leader.

The following year, the U.S. deployed forces in the Persian Gulf after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which turned Washington against its former Iraqi ally Saddam Hussein. U.S. supported the Kuwaiti monarchy and the Muslim fundamentalist monarchy in neighboring Saudi Arabia against the secular nationalist Iraqi regime. In January 1991, the U.S..and its allies unleashed a massive bombing assault against Iraqi government and military targets, in an intensity beyond the raids of World War II and Vietnam. Over 200,000 Iraqis were killed, including many civilians who died in their villages, neighborhoods, and bomb shelters. The U.S. continued economic sanctions that denied health and energy to Iraqi civilians, who died by the hundreds of thousands, according to United Nations agencies. The U.S. also instituted “no-fly zones” and virtually continuous bombing raids, yet Saddam was politically bolstered as he was militarily weakened.

In the 1990s, the U.S. military led a series of what it termed “humanitarian interventions” it claimed would safeguard civilians. Foremost among them was the 1992 deployment in the African nation of Somalia, torn by famine and a civil war between clan warlords. Instead of remaining neutral, U.S. forces took the side of one faction against another faction, and bombed a Mogadishu neighborhood. Enraged crowds, backed by foreign Arab mercenaries, killed 18 U.S. soldiers, forcing a withdrawal from the country.

Other so-called “humanitarian interventions” were centered in the Balkan region of Europe, after the 1992 breakup of the multiethnic federation of Yugoslavia. The U.S. watched for three years as Serb forces killed Muslim civilians in Bosnia, before its launched decisive bombing raids in 1995. Even then, it never intervened to stop atrocities by Croatian forces against Muslim and Serb civilians, because those forces were aided by the U.S. In 1999, the U.S. bombed Serbia to force President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw forces from the ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo, which was torn a brutal ethnic war. The bombing intensified Serbian expulsions and killings of Albanian civilians from Kosovo, and caused the deaths of thousands of Serbian civilians, even in cities that had voted strongly against Milosevic. When a NATO occupation force enabled Albanians to move back, U.S. forces did little or nothing to prevent similar atrocities against Serb and other non-Albanian civilians. The U.S. was viewed as a biased player, even by the Serbian democratic opposition that overthrew Milosevic the following year.

Even when the U.S. military had apparently defensive motives, it ended up attacking the wrong targets. After the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the U.S. “retaliated” not only against Osama Bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan, but a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that was mistakenly said to be a chemical warfare installation. Bin Laden retaliated by attacking a U.S. Navy ship in Yemen in 2000. After the 2001 terror attacks on the United States, the U.S. military is poised to again bomb Afghanistan, and possibly move against other states it accuses of promoting anti-U.S. “terrorism,” such as Iraq and Sudan. Such a campaign will certainly ratchet up the cycle of violence, in an escalating series of retaliations that is the hallmark of Middle East conflicts. Afghanistan, like Yugoslavia, is a multiethnic state that could easily break apart in a new catastrophic regional war. Almost certainly many more civilians would lose their lives in this tit-for-tat war on “terrorism” than the 5,000 civilians who died on September 11.

Common Themes

Some common themes can be seen in many of these U.S. military interventions.

First, they were explained to the U.S. public as defending the lives and rights of civilian populations. Yet the military tactics employed often left behind massive civilian “collateral damage.” War planners made little distinction between rebels and the civilians who lived in rebel zones of control, or between military assets and civilian infrastructure, such as train lines, water plants, agricultural factories, medicine supplies, etc. The U.S. public always believe that in the next war, new military technologies will avoid civilian casualties on the other side. Yet when the inevitable civilian deaths occur, they are always explained away as “accidental” or “unavoidable.”

Second, although nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of “freedom” and “democracy,” nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. elites. Whether in Vietnam, Central America, or the Persian Gulf, the U.S. was not defending “freedom” but an ideological agenda (such as defending capitalism) or an economic agenda (such as protecting oil company investments). In the few cases when U.S. military forces toppled a dictatorship--such as in Grenada or Panama--they did so in a way that prevented the country’s people from overthrowing their own dictator first, and installing a new democratic government more to their liking.

Third, the U.S. always attacked violence by its opponents as “terrorism,” “atrocities against civilians,” or “ethnic cleansing,” but minimized or defended the same actions by the U.S. or its allies. If a country has the right to “end” a state that trains or harbors terrorists, would Cuba or Nicaragua have had the right to launch defensive bombing raids on U.S. targets to take out exile terrorists? Washington’s double standard maintains that an U.S. ally’s action by definition “defensive,” but that an enemy’s retaliation is by definition “offensive.”

Fourth, the U.S. often portrays itself as a neutral peacekeeper, with nothing but the purest humanitarian motives. After deploying forces in a country, however, it quickly divides the country or region into “friends” and “foes,” and takes one side against another. This strategy tends to enflame rather than dampen a war or civil conflict, as shown in the cases of Somalia and Bosnia, and deepens resentment of the U.S. role.

Fifth, U.S. military intervention is often counterproductive even if one accepts U.S. goals and rationales. Rather than solving the root political or economic roots of the conflict, it tends to polarize factions and further destabilize the country. The same countries tend to reappear again and again on the list of 20th century interventions.

Sixth, U.S. demonization of an enemy leader, or military action against him, tends to strengthen rather than weaken his hold on power. Take the list of current regimes most singled out for U.S. attack, and put it alongside of the list of regimes that have had the longest hold on power, and you will find they have the same names. Qaddafi, Castro, Saddam, Kim, and others may have faced greater internal criticism if they could not portray themselves as Davids standing up to the American Goliath, and (accurately) blaming many of their countries’ internal problems on U.S. economic sanctions.

One of the most dangerous ideas of the 20th century was that “people like us” could not commit atrocities against civilians.

German and Japanese citizens believed it, but their militaries slaughtered millions of people. *British and French citizens believed it, but their militaries fought brutal colonial wars in Africa and Asia.

Russian citizens believed it, but their armies murdered civilians in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere.

Israeli citizens believed it, but their army mowed down Palestinians and Lebanese.

Arabs believed it, but suicide bombers and hijackers targeted U.S. and Israeli civilians.

U.S. citizens believed it, but their military killed millions in Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere.

Every country, every ethnicity, every religion, contains within it the capability for extreme violence. Every group contains a faction that is intolerant of other groups, and actively seeks to exclude or even kill them. War fever tends to encourage the intolerant faction, but the faction only succeeds in its goals if the rest of the group acquiesces or remains silent. The attacks of September 11 were not only a test for U.S. citizens attitudes’ toward minority ethnic/racial groups in their own country, but a test for our relationship with the rest of the world. We must begin not by lashing out at civilians in Muslim countries, but by taking responsibility for our own history and our own actions, and how they have fed the cycle of violence. 

-From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan-U.S. Interventions

Compiled by Zoltan Grossman
(revised October 8, 2001)

U.S. military spending ($343 billion in the year 2000) is 69 percent greater than that of the next five highest nations combined. Russia, which has the second largest military budget, spends less than one-sixth what the United States does. Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Iran, and Syria spend $14.4 billion combined; Iran accounts for 52 percent of this total.

The following is a partial list of U.S. military interventions from 1890 to 2000. This guide does NOT include demonstration duty by military police, mobilizations of the National Guard, offshore shows of naval strength, reinforcements of embassy personnel, the use of non-Defense Department personnel (such as the Drug Enforcement Agency), military exercises, non-combat mobilizations (such as replacing postal strikers), the permanent stationing of armed forces, covert actions where the U.S. did not play a command and control role, the use of small hostage rescue units, most uses of proxy troops, U.S. piloting of foreign warplanes, foreign disaster assistance, military training and advisory programs not involving direct combat, civic action programs, and many other military activities.

Among sources used, besides news reports, are the Congressional Record (23 June 1969), 180 Landings by the U.S. Marine Corps History Division, Ege & Makhijani in Counterspy (July-Aug. 1982), and Daniel Ellsberg in Protest & Survive. “Instances of Use of United States Forces Abroad, 1798-1993” by Ellen C. Collier of the Library of Congress Congressional Research Service.

SOUTH DAKOTA
1890 (-?)
Troops
300 Lakota Indians massacred at Wounded Knee.

ARGENTINA
1890
Troops
Buenos Aires interests protected.

CHILE
1891
Troops
Marines clash with nationalist rebels.

HAITI
1891
Troops
Black workers revolt on U.S.-claimed Navassa Island defeated.

IDAHO
1892
Troops
Army suppresses silver miners’ strike.

HAWAII
1893 (-?)
Naval, troops
Independent kingdom overthrown, annexed.

CHICAGO
1894
Troops
Breaking of rail strike, 34 killed

NICARAGUA
1894
Troops
Month-long occupation of Bluefields.

CHINA
1894-95
Naval, troops
Marines land in Sino-Jap War.

KOREA
1894-96
Troops
Marines kept in Seoul during war.

PANAMA
1895
Troops, naval
Marines land in Colombian province.

NICARAGUA
1896
Troops
Marines land in port of Corinto.

CHINA
1898-1900
Troops / Boxer Rebellion fought by foreign armies.

PHILIPPINES
1898-1910(-?)
Naval, troops
Seized from Spain, killed
600,000 Filipinos.

CUBA
1898-1902(-?)
Naval, troops
Seized from Spain, still hold Navy base.

PUERTO RICO
1898(-?)
Naval, troops
Seized from Spain, occupation
continues.

GUAM
1898(-?)
Naval, troops / Seized from Spain, still used as base.

MINNESOTA
1898(-?)
Troops
Army battles Chippewa at Leech Lake.

NICARAGUA
1898
Troops
Marines land at port of San Juan del Sur.

SAMOA
1899(-?)
Troops
Battle over succession to throne.

NICARAGUA
1899
Troops / Marines land at port of Bluefields.

IDAHO
1899-1901
Troops / Army occupies Coeur d’Alene mining region.

OKLAHOMA
1901
Troops
Army battles Creek Indian revolt.

PANAMA
1901-14
Naval, troops
Broke off from Colombia 1903, annexed Canal Zone 1914-99.

HONDURAS
1903
Troops
Marines intervene in revolution.

DOMINICAN REP.
1903-04
Troops
U.S. interests protected in Revolution.

KOREA
1904-05
Troops
Marines land in Russo-Japanese War.

CUBA
1906-09
Troops / Marines land in democratic election.

NICARAGUA
1907
Troops
“Dollar Diplomacy” protectorate set up.

HONDURAS
1907
Troops
Marines land during war with Nicaragua.

PANAMA
1908
Troops / Marines intervene in election contest.

NICARAGUA
1910
Troops
Marines land in Bluefields and Corinto.

HONDURAS
1911
Troops / U.S. interests protected in civil war.

CHINA
1911-41
Naval, troops
Continuous occupation with flare-ups.

CUBA
1912
Troops / U.S. interests protected in Havana.

PANAMA
19l2
Troops / Marines land during heated election.

HONDURAS
19l2
Troops / Marines protect U.S. economic interests.

NICARAGUA
1912-33
Troops, bombing
20-year occupation, fought guerrillas.

MEXICO
19l3
Naval / Americans evacuated during revolution.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
1914
Naval / Fight with rebels over Santo Domingo.

COLORADO
1914
Troops / Breaking of miners’ strike by Army.

MEXICO
1914-18
Naval, troops
Series of interventions against
nationalists.

HAITI
1914-34
Troops, bombing
19-year occupation after revolts.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
1916-24
Troops
8-year Marine occupation.

CUBA
1917-33
Troops / Military occupation, economic protectorate.

WORLD WAR I
19l7-18
Naval, troops
Ships sunk, fought Germany

RUSSIA
1918-22
Naval, troops
Five landings to fight Bolsheviks.

PANAMA
1918-20
Troops
“Police duty” during unrest after elections.

YUGOSLAVIA
1919
Troops
Marines intervene for Italy against Serbs in Dalmatia.

HONDURAS
1919
Troops
Marines land during election campaign.

GUATEMALA
1920
Troops
2-week intervention against unionists.

WEST VIRGINIA
1920-21
Troops, bombing
Army intervenes against
mineworkers.

TURKEY
1922
Troops
Fought nationalists in Smyrna (Izmir).

CHINA
1922-27
Naval, troops
Deployment during nationalist revolt.

HONDURAS
1924-25
Troops
Landed twice during election strife.

PANAMA
1925
Troops / Marines suppress general strike.

CHINA
1927-34
Troops / Marines stationed throughout the country.

EL SALVADOR
1932
Naval / Warships sent during Farabundo Marti revolt.

WASHINGTON DC
1932
Troops / Army stops WWI vet bonus protest.

WORLD WAR II
1941-45
Naval,troops, bombing, nuclear
Fought Axis for 3
years; 1st nuclear war.

DETROIT
1943
Troops

Army puts down Black rebellion.

IRAN
1946
Nuclear threat
Soviet troops told to leave north (Iranian
Azerbaijan).

YUGOSLAVIA
1946
Naval / Response to shooting-down of U.S. plane.

URUGUAY
1947
Nuclear threat
Bombers deployed as show of strength.

GREECE
1947-49
Command operation
U.S. directs extreme-right in civil war.

CHINA
1948-49
Troops
Marines evacuate Americans before Communist victory.

GERMANY
1948
Nuclear threat
Atomic-capable bombers guard Berlin Airlift.

PHILIPPINES
1948-54
Command operation
CIA directs war against Huk
Rebellion.

PUERTO RICO
1950
Command operation
Independence rebellion crushed in
Ponce.

KOREA
1950-53
Troops, naval, bombing, nuclear threats
U.S.& South Korea fight China & North Korea to stalemate; A-bomb threat in 1950, & vs. China in 1953. Still have bases.

IRAN
1953
Command operation
CIA overthrows democracy, installs Shah.

VIETNAM
1954
Nuclear threat
Bombs offered to French to use against siege.

GUATEMALA
1954
Command operation, bombing, nuclear threat CIA directs exile invasion after new govt nationalizes U.S. company lands; bombers based in Nicaragua.

EGYPT
1956
Nuclear threat, troops
Soviets told to keep out of Suez crisis; MArines evacuate foreigners

LEBANON
1958
Troops, naval / Marine occupation against rebels.

IRAQ
1958
Nuclear threat
Iraq warned against invading Kuwait.

CHINA
1958
Nuclear threat
China told not to move on Taiwan isles.

PANAMA
1958
Troops / Flag protests erupt into confrontation.

VIETNAM
1960-75
Troops, naval, bombing, nuclear threats Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; 1-2 million killed in longest U.S. war; atomic bomb threats in 1968 and 1969.

CUBA
1961
Command operation CIA-directed exile invasion fails.

GERMANY
1961
Nuclear threat Alert during Berlin Wall crisis.

CUBA
1962
Nuclear threat, Naval
Blockade during missile crisis; near-war with USSR.

LAOS
1962
Command operation
Military buildup during guerrilla war.

PANAMA
1964
Troops / Panamanians shot for urging canal’s return.

INDONESIA
1965
Command operation Million killed in CIA-assisted army coup.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
1965-66
Troops, bombing Marines land during election campaign.

GUATEMALA
1966-67
Command operation Green Berets intervene against rebels.

DETROIT
1967
Troops / Army battles Blacks, 43 killed.

UNITED STATES
1968
Troops / After King is shot; over 21,000 soldiers in cities.

CAMBODIA
1969-75
Bombing, troops, naval Up to 2 million killed in decade of bombing, starvation, and political chaos.

OMAN
1970
Command operation U.S. directs Iranian marine invasion.

LAOS
1971-73
Command operation, bombing U.S. directs South Vietnamese invasion; “carpet-bombs” countryside.

SOUTH DAKOTA
1973
Command operation Army directs Wounded Knee siege of Lakotas.

MIDEAST
1973
Nuclear threat World-wide alert during Mideast War.

CHILE
1973
Command operation CIA-backed coup ousts elected marxist president.

CAMBODIA
1975
Troops, bombing Gas captured ship, 28 die in copter crash.

ANGOLA
1976-92
Command operation CIA assists South African-backed rebels.

IRAN
1980
Troops, nuclear threat, aborted bombing Raid to rescue Emba-ssy hostages; 8 troops die in copter-plane crash. Soviets war-ned not to get involved in revolution.

LIBYA
1981
Naval jets Two Libyan jets shot down in maneuvers.

EL SALVADOR
1981-92
Command operation, troops Advisors, overflights aid anti-rebel war, soldiers briefly involved in hostage clash.

NICARAGUA
1981-90
Command operation, naval CIA directs exile (Contra) invasions, plants harbor mines against revolution.

LEBANON
1982-84
Naval, bombing, troops Marines expel PLO and back Phalangists, Navy bombs and shells Muslim and Syrian positions.

HONDURAS
1983-89
Troops / Maneuvers help build bases near borders.

GRENADA
1983-84
Troops, bombing Invasion four years after revolution.

IRAN
1984
Jets / Two Iranian jets shot down over Persian Gulf.

LIBYA
1986
Bombing, naval Air strikes to topple nationalist gov’t.

BOLIVIA
1986
Troops Army assists raids on cocaine region.

IRAN
1987-88
Naval, bombing US intervenes on side of Iraq in war.

LIBYA
1989
Naval jets Two Libyan jets shot down.

VIRGIN ISLANDS
1989
Troops
St. Croix Black unrest after storm.

PHILIPPINES
1989
Jets / Air cover provided for government against coup.

PANAMA
1989-90
Troops, bombing
Nationalist government ousted by 27,000 soldiers, leaders arrested, 2000+ killed.

LIBERIA
1990
Troops
Foreigners evacuated during civil war.

SAUDI ARABIA
1990-91
Troops, jets Iraq countered after invading Kuwait; 540,000 troops also stationed in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Israel.

IRAQ
1990-?
Bombing, troops, naval Blockade of Iraqi and Jordanian ports, air strikes; 200,000+ killed in invasion of Iraq and Kuwait; no-fly zone over Kurdish north, Shiite south, large-scale destruction of Iraqi military.

KUWAIT
1991
Naval, bombing, troops Kuwait royal family returned to throne.

LOS ANGELES
1992
Troops
Army, Marines deployed against anti-police uprising.

SOMALIA
1992-94
Troops, naval, bombing U.S.-led United Nations occupation during civil war; raids against one Mogadishu faction.

YUGOSLAVIA
1992-94
Naval Nato blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.

BOSNIA
1993-95
Jets, bombing No-fly zone patrolled in civil war; downed jets, bombed Serbs.

HAITI
1994-96
Troops, naval
Blockade against military government; troops restore President Aristide to office three years after coup.

CROATIA
1995
Bombing
Krajina Serb airfields attacked before Croatian offensive.

ZAIRE (CONGO)
1996-97
Troops
Marines at Rwandan Hutu refuge camps, in area where Congo revolution begins.

LIBERIA
1997
Troops
Soldiers under fire during evacuation of foreigners.

ALBANIA
1997
Troops
Soldiers under fire during evacuation of foreigners.

SUDAN
1998
Missiles
Attack on pharmaceutical plant alleged to be “terrorist” nerve gas plant.

AFGHANISTAN
1998
Missiles
Attack on former CIA training camps used by Islamic fundamentalist groups alleged to have attacked embassies.

IRAQ
1998-?
Bombing, Missiles
Four days of intensive air strikes after weapons inspectors allege Iraqi obstructions.

YUGOSLAVIA
1999-?
Bombing, Missiles
Heavy NATO air strikes after Serbia declines to withdraw from Kosovo.

YEMEN
2000
Naval
Suicide bomb attack on USS Cole.

MACEDONIA
2001
Troops
NATO troops shift and partially disarm Albanian rebels.

UNITED STATES
2001
Jets, naval
Response to hijacking attacks.

AFGHANISTAN
2001
Massive U.S. mobilization to attack Taliban, Bin Laden. War could expand to Iraq, Sudan, and beyond.
(The first bombing began on October 7, 2001. Several Afghan cities come under aerial attack. The story continues).

http://www.zmag.org/list2.htm

-History of Biochemical Weapons

History of bio-chemical warfare
by Zoltan Grossman
Email: mtn (at) igc.org (unverified!)

By Zoltan Grossman Updated October 2001

400s BC.: Spartan Greeks use sulfur fumes against enemy soldiers.

1346: Crimean Tatars catapult plague-infected corpses into Italian trade settlement.

1500s: Spanish conquistadors use biological warfare used against Native peoples.

1763: British Gen. Jeffrey Amherst orders use of smallpox blankets against Native peoples during Pontiac’s Rebellion.

1800s: Smallpox and other diseases ravage Native American communities; U.S. officials use quarantine techniques to isolate diseases in white communities, but not in Native villages.

1907: Hague Convention outlaws chemical weapons; U.S. does not participate.

1914: World War I begins; poison gas produces 100,000 deaths, 900,000 injuries.

1920s: Britain proposes use of chemical weapons in Iraq “as an experiment” against Kurdish rebels seeking independence; Winston Churchill “strongly” backs “the use of poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.”

1928: Geneva Protocol prohibits gas and bacteriological warfare; most countries that ratify it prohibit only the first use of such weapons.

1935: Italy begins conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), using mustard gas.

1936: Japan invades China, uses chemical weapons in war.

1939: World War II begins; neither side uses bio-chemical arms, due to fears of retaliation in kind.

1941: U.S. enters World War II; President Roosevelt pledges U.S. will not be first to use bio-chemical weapons.

1943: U.S. ship damaged by German bombing raid on Bari, Italy, leaks mustard gas, killing 1000.

1945: Germans use Zyklon-B in extermination of civilians.  Japanese military discovered to have conducted biological warfare experiments on POWs, killing 3000. U.S. shields officers in charge from war crimes trials, in return for data. Soviets take over German nerve gas facility in Potsdam. The Nazis had stockpiles of nerve gas against which the Allies had no defenses, and had also been working on blood agents.

1947: U.S. possesses germ warfare weapons; President Truman withdraws Geneva Protocol from Senate consideration.

1949: U.S. dismisses Soviet trials of Japanese for germ warfare as “propaganda.” Army begins secret tests of biological agents in U.S. cities.

1950: Korean War begins; North Korea and China accuse U.S. of germ warfare--charges still not proven. San Francisco disease outbreak matching Army bacteria used on city.

1951: African-Americans exposed to potentially fatal simulant in Virginia test of race-specific fungal weapons.

1952: German chemical weapons researcher Walter Schreiber, working in Texas, exposed as a perpetrator of concentration camp experiments, and flees to Argentina.

1956: Army manual explicitly states that bio-chemical warfare is not banned. Rep. Gerald Ford wins policy change to give U.S.  military “first strike” authority on chemical arms.

1959: House resolution against first use of bio-chemical weapons is defeated.

1961: Kennedy Administration begins hike of chemical weapons spending from $75 million to more than $330 million.

1962: Chemical weapons loaded on U.S. planes during Cuban missile crisis.

1966: Army germ warfare experiment in New York subway system.

1968: Pentagon asks for the chance to use some of its arsenal against protesters to demonstrate the “efficacy” of the chemicals.  Maj. Gen. J.B. Medaris says, “By using gas in civil situations, we accomplish two purposes: controlling crowds and also educating people on gas. Now, everybody is being called savage if he just talks about it. But nerve gas is the only way I know of to sort out the guys in white hats from the ones in black hats without killing any of them.”

1969: Utah chemical weapons accident kills thousands of sheep; President Nixon declares U.S. moratorium on chemical weapons production and biological weapons possession. U.N. General Assembly bans use of herbicides (plant killers) and tear gasses in warfare; U.S. one of three opposing votes. U.S. has caused tear gas fatalities in Vietnamese guerrilla tunnels.

1971: U.S. ends direct use of herbicides such as Agent Orange; had spread over Indochinese forests, and destroyed at least six percent of South Vietnamese cropland, enough to feed 600,000 people for a year.  U.S. intelligence sources gives swine-flu virus to anti-Castro Cuban paramilitary group, which lands it on Cuba’s southern coast (according to 1977 newspaper reports).

1972: Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention. Cuba accuses CIA of instilling swine fever virus that leads to death of 500,000 hogs.

1974: U.S. finally ratifies 1928 Geneva Protocol.

1975: Indonesia annexes East Timor; planes spread herbicides on croplands.

1979: Anthrax leak from Soviet biological weapons lab kills 60 near Sverdlovsk. Washington Post reports on U.S. program against Cuban agriculture since 1962, including CIA biological warfare component. Anthrax outbreak among Africans in white-ruled Rhodesia (in the last stages of the Zimbabwe independence war) results in 10,000 cases, 182 of them fatal (according to Covert Action Quarterly #43)

1980: U.S. intelligence officials allege Soviet chemical use in Afghanistan, while admitting “no confirmation.” Congress approves nerve gas facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Iraq begins eight-year war with U.S. arch-enemy Iran.

1981: U.S. accuses Vietnam and allies of using mycotoxins (fungal poisons) in Laos and Cambodia. Some refugees report casualties; one analysis reveals “yellow rain” as bee feces. Israel bombs Iraqi nuclear reactor, leading to Iraqi decision to build chemical weapons.

1984: U.N. confirms Iraq using mustard and nerve gasses against Iranian “human wave” attacks in border war; State Department issues mild condemnation, yet restores diplomatic relations with Iraq, and opposes U.N. action against Iraq.  Bhopal fertilizer plant accident in India kills 2000; shows risks of chemical plants being damaged in warfare. President Reagan orders over a half-million M55 rockets retooled so they contain high-yield explosives as well as VX gas. (The Army later claimed that many of these rockets were “unstable” and leaking nerve gas.)

1985: U.S. resumes open-air testing of biological agents. U.S. firms begin supplying Iraq with numerous biological agents for a four-year period (according to a 1994 Senate report).

1986: U.S. resumes open-air testing of biological agents.

1987: Senate ties in three votes on resuming production of chemical weapons; Vice President Bush breaks all three ties in favor of resumption.

1988: Iraq uses chemical weapons against Kurdish minority in Halabjah; U.S. continues to maintain agricultural credits with Iraq; President Reagan blocks congressional sanctions against Iraq.

1989: Paris conference of 149 nations condemns chemical weapons, urges quick ban to emerge from Geneva treaty negotiations; U.S. revealed to plan poison gas production even after treaty signed.

1990: U.S., Soviets pledge to reduce chemical weapons stockpiles to 20 percent of current U.S. supply by 2002, and to eliminate poison gas weapons when all nations have signed future Geneva treaty. Israel admits possession of chemical weapons; Iraq threatens to use chemical weapons on Israel if it is attacked.

1991: U.S. and Coalition forces bomb at least 28 alleged bio- chemical production or storage sites in Iraq during Gulf War, including fertilizer and other civilian plants. CNN reports “green flames” from one chemical plant, and the deaths of 50 Iraqi troops from anthrax after air strike on another site. New York Times quotes Soviet chemical weapons commander that air strikes on Iraqi chemical weapons would have “little effect beyond neighboring villages,” but that strikes on biological weapons could spread disease “to adjoining countries.” Czechoslovak chemical warfare unit detects Sarin nerve gas during air war. Egyptian doctor reports outbreak of “strange disease” inside Iraq. U.S. troops use explosives to destroy Iraqi chemical weapons storage bunkers after the war.

1992: Reports intensify of U.S. and Coalition veterans of Gulf War developing health problems, involving a variety of symptoms, collectively called Gulf War Syndrome. U.N. sanctions intensify civilian health crisis inside Iraq, making identification of similar symptoms potentially difficult. Two members of anti-government Minnesota Patriots’ Council arrested for plan to use ricin chemical against law enforcement officer.

1993: President Clinton continues intermittent bombing and missile raids against Iraqi facilities; U.N. inspectors step up program to dismantle Iraqi weapons. U.S. signs U.N. Chemical Weapons Convention, but approval later blocked in Senate.

1995: Japanese cult launches deadly Sarin nerve gas attack on Tokyo subway system.

1996: Congressional hearings on Gulf War Syndrome focuses on Iraqi storage bunker destruction, rather than other possible causes, and does not call for international investigation of symptoms among Iraqis.

1997: Cuba accuses U.S. of spraying crops with biological agents .  Iraq expels U.S. citizens in U.N. inspection teams, which are allowed to continue work without Americans, but choose to evacuate all inspectors. U.S. mobilizes for military action. Senate act implements Chemical Weapons Convention, with a provision that “the President may deny a request to inspect any facility” on national security grounds.

1998: U.S. again bombs alleged Iraqi bio-chemical weapons sites, after Iraq questions role of American U.N. inspector, and restricts inspector access to presidential properties and security. U.S. launches missile attack on pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that it alleges produces nerve gas agents--a claim disputed by most of the international community.

1998-99: Series of anthrax hoaxes against U.S. targets, such as NBC, Washington Post, State Department, White House complex, post offices. Former Aryan Nations member Larry Wayne Harris carries out anthrax hoax to dramatize warning of alleged “Iraqi threat.” Three members of Republic of Texas militia group arrested for intention to use anthrax and other biological agents against public officials. Upsurge in anthrax hoaxes against abortion clinics.

2000: “Topoff Exercise” involving federal and state authorities fails to cope with simulated chemical, biological and nuclear attacks in three widely separated metropolitan areas.

2001: U.S. withdraws from July’s first round of Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC), crippling international efforts to establish global measures against bioogical weapons.  In wake of September 11 attacks, anthrax spores sent by mail to multiple political and media targets around the U.S., resulting in anthrax exposures, infections, and deaths. Law enforcement authorities debate whether source of anthrax threat is foreign or domestic. Real anthrax attacks accompanied by enormous increase in anthrax hoaxes by “Army of God” and other groups and individuals.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Compiled from articles in “Z” magazine by Stephen Shalom and Noam Chomsky (February 1991) and Zoltan Grossman (March 1991), from the Council for a Livable World, William Blum’s “Killing Hope:  U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II,” ADL Militia Watchdog by Mark Pitcavage (Feb. 1999) and from recent news reports.

Zoltan Grossman is a cartographer/geographer and writer on ethnic relations and geopolitics, based in Madison, Wisconsin.  Feel free to circulate or to publish (with attribution and copy).  E-mail: mtn (at) igc.org

Also see:
List of U.S. military interventions since 1890
http://www.zmag.org/list2.htm
A briefing on the history of U.S. interventions
http://www.zmag.org/grossmanciv.htm
Afghanistan is not simply like Vietnam
http://www.badgerherald.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/09/30/3bb7cc953e5bd
WORT interview with Robert Fisk
http://madison.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=1127&group=webcast
WORT interview with Ahmed Rashid
http://madison.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=1272&group=webcast

http://madison.indymedia.org/newswire/display/1519

-The History of American Occupations

by Ashley Smith

EARLY IN the 20th century, the U.S. socialist journalist John Reed explained the drive for plunder, profit and geopolitical domination that lay behind U.S. military interventions. “Uncle Sam never gives something for nothing,” Reed said in a speech. “He comes along with a sack stuffed with hay in one hand and a whip in the other. Anyone who accepts Uncle Sam?fs promises at face value will find that they must be paid for in sweat and blood.”

The U.S. government established itself as an imperial power at the turn of the 20th century with the Spanish-American War--when it grabbed colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific. The U.S. “liberated” the Philippines from Spain by killing close to 1 million Filipinos in order to seize the country as a beachhead for U.S. ambitions in Asia.

Most of the time, the U.S. preferred enforcing its dominion by quick military strikes to squelch popular movements for democracy and install friendly dictators. But Washington didn?ft hesitate to become a colonial occupier. It invaded and ruled over Panama (1901 to 1911), Nicaragua (1912 to 1933), Haiti (1914 to 1934), the Dominican Republic (1916 to 1924) and Cuba (1917 to 1933).

And where the U.S. military went in Latin America, U.S. big business was intimately involved. As Marine Corps Gen. Smedley Butler famously explained his role during this era: “I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism?cLooking back on it, I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

America?fs rulers have tried to bury this bloody history. Like every power before it, the U.S. government claims lofty principles as the justifications for its wars. In recent months, Bush and the right-wing ideologues who serve him have turned to the mythology of the Second World War to find a cover story for their war on Iraq.

The U.S. fought the Second World War, they claim, not for imperialist motives, but to liberate Germany and Japan from totalitarianism and bring democracy. And “after defeating enemies,” Bush recently boasted, “we did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments.”

This simply isn?ft true. The U.S. still maintains massive military bases in both Japan and Germany--bases that it has used ever since the war to manipulate politics in the two countries. In Japan, far from liberation, the U.S. waged a racist and barbaric war--and from 1945 to 1952, it presided over an occupation.

During the fighting, the U.S. ruling class had whipped up frenzy of hatred. Time magazine, for example, raved, “The ordinary unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing?cindicates it.” President Franklin Roosevelt interned 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps.

After defeating Japanese forces across the Pacific, the U.S. closed out the war by firebombing civilian neighborhoods in Tokyo and other major cities. Forty percent of Japan?fs urban areas were burned to the ground, killings tens of thousands and making millions more homeless.

The final act in this campaign of terror was the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--two civilian targets. The bombs and radiation poisoning killed more than 340,000 people.

Once Japan surrendered, the U.S. occupied the country with 430,000 troops--who went on a crime spree. In the Kanagawa prefecture, for example, Japanese historian Takemae Eiji documents that U.S. soldiers committed 1,336 rapes in the first 10 weeks of the occupation. The invading army took over the only standing buildings in some areas--and built themselves luxurious new homes amid a Japanese population that was destitute.

Unlike its occupations of undeveloped countries, the U.S. was taking over an advanced capitalist society that it hoped to reintegrate into the world order as a junior partner. In the initial phase of the occupation until 1947, the U.S. aimed to rehabilitate a section of the old guard, while granting reforms that would head off a revolution.

U.S. officials imposed a new Peace Constitution, granted both men and women the right to vote, conducted war crimes tribunals, purged hundreds of thousands of militarists from public life and broke up the power of the Japanese military. But these measures were all designed to stabilize the country under a conservative leadership that would serve U.S. interests.

First of all, this was no real democracy. An American general, Douglas MacArthur, decided all of the important questions. With the threat of hundreds of thousands of soldiers under his command, MacArthur would issue orders to the Japanese government, which had no choice but to obey.

Moreover, the U.S. poured old wine into new bottles. Instead of abolishing the monarchy, MacArthur decided to retain Emperor Hirohito--provided he would help convince the Japanese to obey the U.S.

The U.S. also relied on the reactionary, elitist and undemocratic bureaucracy of the old state. In Japan?fs new electoral politics, the U.S. backed a section of the old guard led by Yoshida Shigeru, who, after initially resisting many reforms, collaborated with the U.S. in controlling the country as standing prime minister for all but one year of the occupation.

Even with the emperor, bureaucracy and reformed old guard ruling the country, the U.S. was still suspicious of the Japanese people. So it set up the Civil Censorship Detachment to muzzle the media and monitor private phone conversations and personal letters.

Even limited democracy was denied to oppressed populations in Japan. The U.S. disenfranchised Koreans--and scapegoated them as unreliable elements who might be agents of Communist North Korea. On the strategically located island of Okinawa, off the southwest coast of Japan, the U.S. set up a dictatorship that robbed peasants of the best farmland to build military bases.

While the U.S. cared only to strengthen its grip on power, the masses of Japan took their limited democratic rights seriously. Driven by hunger and economic crisis, workers--often led by the Japanese Communist Party--struck for higher wages and benefits, occupied workplaces to keep them from closing, and prepared for a general strike against the Yoshida government, set for February 1, 1947. Okinawans, Koreans and other oppressed groups fought for democratic rights.

The whole of Japan was in rebellion a year into occupation. Washington began to fear that it would lose Japan and the rest of Asia to Russia. Already by 1947, in China, Mao?fs Communists were beating the U.S. puppet Chiang Kai-shek in the country?fs civil war.

U.S. policymakers feared that the countries of Asia would fall to Russia like dominos--maybe even their super-domino, Japan. To prevent this, the U.S. abandoned the democratic gloss of the first phase of the occupation. As in the U.S., Japan?fs Communist Party was witch-hunted.

Using the cover of the witch-hunt, U.S. forces repressed the working-class uprising, banning the planned general strike, attacking workers?f protests and taking away union rights from more than half of public-sector workers.

In 1950, the U.S. imposed an austerity budget called the Dodge Plan that threw the country into a depression--and Japanese companies took advantage, firing hundreds of thousands of unionized employees.

With the social rebellion suppressed, “conservative political forces within Japan joined with their American sponsors to rebuild the nation in ways that bore an uncanny resemblance to the prewar order,” wrote historian Michael Schaller.

The U.S. “de-purged” hundreds of thousands of war criminals, built a new Japanese army led by officers from the old Imperial Army and aided the economic revitalization of the old monopolies. Japan would serve as the main base for Washington?fs wars to maintain its influence in Asia and the Pacific--in Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam and elsewhere.

The U.S. granted Japan independence in 1952, but it was able to control the country like a puppetmaster for years afterward. Washington used its military bases as a stick to bully Japan into line--and old pre-war bureaucracy had grown so powerful during the U.S. occupation that it, and not the elected government, decided most important economic and political questions. For these reasons, author Chalmers Johnson calls Japan not a democracy, but an authoritarian regime “remarkably similar to that of the former East Germany.”

Washington and the Nazis

WHAT HAPPENED to the other conquered enemy in the Second World War? Unlike Japan, which the U.S. controlled outright, Germany was partitioned into eastern and western halves by the U.S., Britain and France on one side, and Russia on the other.

The U.S. set up a direct government to rule over its section of occupied Germany. The civilian administrator was John McCloy, who played a key role in the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Nuremberg war crimes trials punished the top layer of the former Nazi regime. But the U.S. feared another wave of revolution, similar to the one that exploded in Russia and the rest of Europe following the First World War.

So Washington hired Nazis for the core of a new state. As a representative from the U.S. spy agency explained: “They say, ?eWhy did you use the Nazis??f That is a stupid question. It would have been impossible for us to operate in southern Germany without using Nazis?cWho knew Germany better than anyone else? Who were the most organized? Who were the most anti-Communist? Former Nazis.”

As the Cold War standoff with Russia became the U.S. government?fs top priority, plans to try leading industrialists from major companies like Krupps--who had bankrolled the Nazis--were abandoned.

The U.S. quickly rebuilt the West German economy--as a counterweight to Russia?fs Eastern European empire. A new conservative party, the Christian Democrats, was put together to rule West Germany in accordance with U.S. demands.

The Marshall Plan to reconstruct Western Europe was introduced for two reasons--to stabilize the crisis-torn societies in order to prevent revolution, and to rebuild a market for U.S. products and investments.

Under the cover of “humanitarianism”

BETWEEN THE two Gulf Wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, the U.S. government carried out a number of “humanitarian” interventions. But the reality was different behind the rhetoric.

--"Operation Restore Hope,” the 1992 mission that sent 30,000 Marines into Somalia to help feed starving people by protecting food convoys blocked by local warlords, won the support of many liberals. But Somalis rightly came to view the U.S. as an occupier, not a liberator. The CIA estimates that some 10,000 Somalis were killed during the U.S. intervention. Those who survived were left with a country steeped in even worse violence.

--"Operation Restore Democracy,” launched less than a year later in Haiti, promised to reinstall the elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been overthrown by the military in 1991. But instead of going after the coup leaders, U.S. troops went after the Haitian people. While Raul Cedras and fellow death squad leaders escaped the country to live on millions stowed away in Swiss bank accounts, Haiti?fs people were terrorized by the former dictatorship?fs police, who patrolled the streets with U.S. troops as part of the interim police force.

--In 1999, the U.S. led a NATO bombing campaign against Serbia with the stated aim of stopping “ethnic cleansing” of Albanians in Kosovo. Not only did the air war wreck Serbia?fs civilian infrastructure, but it caused a refugee crisis in Kosovo--which Washington cynically used as an excuse for the occupation to come. After the war, Albanians carried out ethnic cleansing in reverse against Serbs in Kosovo--under the noses of “peacekeeping” troops.

Washington isn?ft just a failure at bringing democracy abroad. It?fs utterly incapable of it.

-Journalism, by John Pilger

On 8 April, newspapers around the world carried a despatch from a Reuters correspondent, “embedded” with the US army, about the murder of a ten-year-old Iraqi boy. An American private had “unloaded machine-gun fire and the boy . . . fell dead on a garbage-strewn stretch of wasteland”. The tone of the report was highly sympathetic to the soldier, “a softly spoken 21-year-old” who, “although he has no regrets about opening fire, it is clear he would rather it was not a child he killed”.

According to Reuters, children were “apparently” being used as “fighters or more often as scouts and weapons collectors. US officers and soldiers say that turns them into legitimate targets.” The child-killing soldier was allowed uncritically to describe those like his victim as “cowards”. There was no suggestion that the Americans were invading the victim’s homeland. Reuters then allowed the soldier’s platoon leader to defend the killer: “Does it haunt him? Absolutely. It haunts me and I didn’t even pull the trigger. It blows my mind that they can put their children in that kind of situation.” Perhaps guessing that readers might be feeling just a touch uncomfortable at this stage, the Reuters correspondent added his own reassuring words: “Before - like many young soldiers - he [the soldier] says he was anxious to get his first ‘kill’ in a war. Now, he seems more mature.”

I read in the Observer last Sunday that “Iraq was worth £20m to Reuters”. This was the profit the company would make from the war. Reuters was described on the business pages as “a model company, its illustrious brand and reputation second to none. As a newsgathering organisation, it is lauded for its accuracy and objectivity.” The Observer article lamented that the “world’s hotspots” generated only about 7 per cent of the model company’s £3.6bn revenue last year. The other 93 per cent comes from “more than 400,000 computer terminals in financial institutions around the world”, churning out “financial information” for a voracious, profiteering “market” that has nothing to do with true journalism: indeed, it is the antithesis of true journalism, because it has nothing to do with true humanity. It is the system that underwrote the illegal and unprovoked attack on a stricken and mostly defenceless country whose population is 42 per cent children, like the boy who was killed by a soldier who, says the Reuters story, “now seems more mature”.

There is something deeply corrupt consuming this craft of mine. It is not a recent phenomenon; look back on the “coverage” of the First World War by journalists who were subsequently knighted for their services to the concealment of the truth of that great slaughter.

What makes the difference today is the technology that produces an avalanche of repetitive information, which in the United States has been the source of arguably the most vociferous brainwashing in that country’s history.

A war that was hardly a war, that was so one-sided it ought to be despatched with shame in the military annals, was reported like a Formula One race, as we watched the home teams speed to the chequered flag in Baghdad’s Firdos Square, where a statue of the dictator created and sustained by “us” was pulled down in a ceremony that was as close to fakery as you could get. There was the CIA’s man, an Iraqi fixer of the American stooge Ahmad Chalabi, orchestrating that joyous media moment of “liberation”, attended by “hundreds” - or was it “dozens”? - of cheering people, with three American tanks neatly guarding the entrances to the media stage. “Thanks, guys,” said a marine to the BBC’s Middle East correspondent in appreciation of the BBC’s “coverage”. His gratitude was hardly surprising. As the media analyst David Miller points out, a study of the reporting of the war in five countries shows that the BBC allowed the least anti-war dissent of them all. Its 2 per cent dissenting views was lower even than the 7 per cent on the American channel ABC.

The honourable exceptions are few and famous. Of course, no one doubts that it is difficult for journalists in the field. There is dust and deadlines and danger, and a dependent relationship on an alien military system. It is unfathomable which of these constraints contributed to the Reuters travesty described above. None, I suspect; for what it represented was the essence of propaganda. The protection of and apologising for “our” side is voluntary; it comes, it seems, with mother’s milk. The “others” are simply not the same as “us”.

Imagine the terror of a mother, cowering with her children on the road as the “softly spoken 21-year-olds” decide whether to kill them, or kill the old man failing to stop his car? The children are clearly “scouts”; the old man is, well, who knows and who cares? Now imagine that happening in a British high street during an invasion of this country. Absurd? That only happens in countries like Iraq, which can be attacked at will and without a semblance of legitimacy or morality: weak countries, of course, and never countries with weapons of mass destruction; the Americans knew Saddam Hussein was disarmed.

The corruption of journalism is most vivid back in the commentary booth, far from the dust and death. “Yes, too many died in the war,” wrote Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer. “Too many people always die in war. War is nasty and brutish, but at least this conflict was mercifully short. The death toll has been nothing like as high as had been widely feared. Thousands have died in the war, millions have died at the hands of Saddam.”

Mark his logic, for it is at the heart of what is dispensed day after day, night after night. The clear implication is that it is all right to have killed thousands of people in the invasion of their homeland, because “millions” died at the hands of their dictator. The lazy language, the idle dismissal of human life - each life part of so many other lives - is striking. Saddam Hussein killed a great many people, but “millions”? - the league of Stalin and Hitler? David Edwards of MediaLens asked Amnesty International about this. Amnesty produced a catalogue of Saddam’s killings that amounted mostly to hundreds every year, not millions. It is an appalling record that does not require the exaggeration of state-inspired propaganda - propaganda whose aim, in Rawnsley’s case, is to protect Tony Blair from the grave charges of which many people all over the world believe he is guilty.

There is, for example, not a single mention by Rawnsley of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died as a direct result of the 12-year, medieval siege of Iraq conducted by America and backed by Britain - and enthusiastically by Blair. Professor Joy Gordon in Connecticut has spent three years studying this embargo as a weapon of social destruction. A preview of her voluminous, shocking work appeared in Harper’s Magazine. She describes “a legitimised act of mass slaughter”.

The protectors of Blair regard the entirely predictable crushing of a third-world minnow by the world’s superpower as a “vindication”. The great Israeli journalist and internationalist Uri Avnery wrote recently about this corruption of intellect and morality. “Let’s pose the question in the most provocative manner,” he wrote on 18 April. “What would have happened if Adolf Hitler had triumphed in World War Two? Would this have turned his war into a just one? Let’s assume that Hitler would have indicted his enemies at the Nuremberg war crimes court: Churchill for the terrible air raid on Dresden, Truman for dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Stalin for murdering millions in the Gulag camps. Would the historians have regarded this as a just war? A war that ends with the victory of the aggressor is worse than a war that ends with their defeat. It is more destructive, both morally and physically.”

-A Different Look at SARS

The depression hits me on a warm and humid Bangkok evening. I am just through with dinner in the city’s crowded Sukhumvit business district, my head full of the War on Iraq and I spot these people- with masks on their faces.

A couple of weeks ago anybody with a cloth covering his face in this city would have been branded a `jihadi’ a possible Arab/Muslim/dark skinned/dark intentioned `terrorist’. The city has been on alert well before the war on Iraq started to prevent `Arab looking’ people from doing bad things- for eg., looking Arab.

Just around the time of the Anglo-American attack on Iraq, if there were to be an `Arab’ behind a mask in Bangkok - the entire city would have been evacuated.

Apparently, not anymore. Respectable people wear masks now in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong. In fact mandatory they say to save yourself from SARS- the flu-like virus that has much of south-east Asia in deep panic. Tourists are canceling their trips in droves, schools are closing down, economies plunging, governments in crisis and the Chinese- oh those `super-contaminating Chinese’- are being spurned everywhere.

Suddenly, an irrational panic grips me.  God- there is no escape. If the Apostles of Armageddon running the White House do not get you some mysterious malevolent microbes will. For a fleeting moment, a deep frozen moment, I lose hope. We are finished. They will get us one way or the other. 

This is what the new/OLD colonial world order is going to be all about- complete helplessness for us common citizens. Caught between SARS and THEIR Wars the only safe place is soon going to be- you guessed right- on planet Mars.

Yes, the people I saw wearing those masks have a right to protect themselves. I will not mock them in any way. To paraphrase Voltaire I do not believe these masks medically help them in any way but I will defend to death their right to wear them. And then there are so many of THEM out there who deserve to have a mask fixed on their faces anyway (so we won’t have to `read their bloody lips’).

Yes, there are these microbes and many of them are dangerous. Yes, people have died and still continue to do so. And it is indeed true we really do not know which way this pandemic is going to turn out. There are constant references to the great Influenza outbreak after World War One which killed an estimated 20 to 40 million people. Is SARS going to be that big ?

I am no kin to any Indian sage and I cannot predict such things. But I am betting neither can the `medical experts’ or the `media’ give us a real idea of what is going to happen. At this stage, given the sparse information on hand about SARS, it is all idle speculation- an activity that SOME people usually make lots of money out of.

Even assuming the deeply depressing thought that much of humanity is going to be wiped out by SARS over the next year (that is what the media is making it sound like) let us take a step back from this approaching abyss, take a deep breath (go ahead, do it while it is still safe) and reflect on a few questions about other aspects of this PANDEMONIUM of a pandemic.

First the CONTEXT:  Why are we so full of fear only of THESE microbes and not those dozen other ways in which people die completely avoidable deaths ?

To anyone who is not already aware of these facts let me spell them out:

- 250,000 to 500,000 people die every year around the world due to ordinary influenza, the common `garden variety’ flu. In the United States alone, with a vaccine and medical care available, flu kills 36,000 people die every year.

- Anywhere between 1 to 2.7 million die every year due to Malaria- a vast majority of them in Africa, particularly children

- Tuberculosis kills 2 million people every year and 98 per cent of these in developing countries

- HIV/AIDS claimed 3 million lives in 2002, including an estimated 610,000 children.

- Traffic accidents kill 300,000 people every year in Asia alone.

- The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq killed at least 10 to 15,000 Iraqi soldiers and over 2,300 Iraqi civilians in just the initial two weeks and maybe several hundred British and American troops.

And I am not even counting those millions who die of poverty and malnutrition around the globe annually. Every year the Indian media attributes hundreds of deaths to the `cold wave’, `the heat wave’, `too much rain’ and `too little rain’. The fact is these deaths have nothing to do with the weather- in my country there people die every hour, wantonly, in PERFECTLY good weather. We all know WHY.

I would say this. If we choose to cover our faces let it be in anger and in shame- not just due to some microbes alone.

The RECORD so far: Here is the latest status of the number of SARS cases worldwide and deaths so far since 1 November 2002 when the disease is supposed to have broken out in southern China. In almost six months since the outbreak a total of 4439 cases of SARS and `suspected’ SARS have been recorded in 26 countries and 263 people have died. The mortality rate due to SARS is estimated between 3 to 4 percent- just above that of normal influenza-but even this is not confirmed because the total number of real SARS cases is not yet known. Nor is its exact method of transmission clearly understood- which is why wearing masks may not be a useful precaution at all. 

The MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT: The alarm bells about SARS started ringing only when the WHO issued a global alert in mid-March . A war of words broke out soon between the WHO and the Chinese health authorities- the latter being accused of `hiding information’ about SARS in its first few months. The Chinese said something back, which nobody understood (they are never going to be a `superpower’ this way). 

One of the big critiques of bodies like the WHO from health activists has been the way they have adopted a purely `vertical’ approach to global health problems at the cost of a sustained, holistic and long-term approach. So whenever there is an outbreak or more usually an `outcry’ about a particular disease WHO and other global health officials organize a `posse’, mobilize some resources, and ride into the wilderness ready to `lasso’ the villain. Once the `critter’ is temporarily caught or suppressed the issue is then mostly forgotten.

There is no attempt to even address underlying causes of new virus and diseases emerging for eg., due to super-intensive techniques of animal husbandry, recycling of animal offals in animal feed, the use of a variety of artificial hormones and growth-enhancers and of course from biological warfare experiments. Nor is there any attempt to mitigate the conditions, such as overcrowding, poverty and lack of housing infrastructure, under which infectious diseases such as SARS spread so rapidly. The WHO has failed to push policies that tackle other basic social and economic determinants of public health also - such as conflict, environmental pollution and privatization of health care.

The MEDIA: Has anybody really asked how much of the SARS scare is due to the media’s penchant for simplistic, alarmist reporting ?  One of the first `big’ SARS cases to make the headlines was that of Johnny Cheng, a Chinese-American businessman who died at a hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam after flying in from Hong Kong. Just a month ago Hanoi was one of the `epicentres’ of the SARS pandemic going by media reports. No more.  The country seems to have slipped down the hit list of `no go’ places with just 63 reported SARS cases and 5 deaths.

How did this `super-contagious’, `killer’ disease get contained in a crowded country like Vietnam with a very average public health system ? Nobody in the media is following the Vietnam story anymore because that is not on the map of the usual globe-trotting elites.  Hong Kong, Singapore and Toronto are on that MAP and hence the panic about viruses traveling on the business class seat next to THEM. (If nothing else, maybe there is a great `success story’ out there in Vietnam, with details of how a poor, third world country has successfully contained this deadly new infectious disease.)

And what happened to the media follow up to the various other health scares we have had in the past decade all around the globe ? Bubonic plague in India, Ebola in Africa, the Mad Cow Disease in the UK ( I won’t take a dig at Tony B on this one) ? And why was there virtually no coverage in the `international media’ of the influenza outbreak in Madagascar in mid-2002, where more than 27 000 cases were reported within three months and 800 deaths occurred despite rapid intervention ?

There is an apocryphal story going around this part of the world which shows how much of a media `thing’ this SARS scare probably is. The question asked is why is this new form of flu being called the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ? `Severe’ and `Acute’- two synonymous terms together - WHY ? Apparently- the term `Severe’ was added (only in early March this year) to avoid an awkward acronym resulting from what was originally dubbed the Acute Respiratory Syndrome ?  What’s the secret here- cover your face and save your --- ?

That story is most probably a bad joke-but let me tell you- I think so is the way the entire SARS scare is being reported and played out.

I AM NOT SAYING that the deaths due to SARS are not a real, serious tragedy or that it could not turn into a dangerous pandemic. Far from it. There is no moral mathematics involved here, please. Every human life is precious- Iraqi or American, Chinese or Singaporean. A very unique, irreplaceable Universe of its own- disappears forever with each physical death.  All I am pleading for is some more PERSPECTIVE.

WHY are those dying of malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and poverty in most developing countries every day not making the headlines ? Is it not because those who die unseen, unheard, untreated are not in the same league as the Gold Card holding frequent flyers of our world ? Is it not because there is such a `low probability’ of a TB infected African child coughing in the same air-conditioned corridors as our elites frequent ?

A couple of years ago a senior editor of one of India’s major newspapers, when asked by a women’s rights activist to publish a story about high rates of malnutrition among girl children, is reported to have refused and said ` The readers of our newspaper do not suffer from malnutrition’.  Sure, Mr Let Them Eat Cake- but aren’t YOU and YOUR readers who are the CAUSE of malnutrition in India. ( Ahem, what I wanted to say was -’ Will someone pass me that cutting edge of the French Revolution !’)

When one hears stories such as these a question arises in my mind. This is just a nasty, nasty question that I just can’t get out of my head. COULD IT BE that those who die unseen, unheard, untreated are themselves MICROBES in the worldview of our Masters ? Has the microbe become a metaphor for the unwashed, unwanted millions who don’t fit into the corporate globalisation of our Empire builders ?

Good riddance, THEY suppose, of those teeming, troublesome microbes- of so little value to the Empire. Microbes, who cannot afford to BUY and have nothing to SELL.

And from this high point of MORAL CLARITY it is just a little leap away to identifying those other microbes that need to be dealt with. The bearded, turbaned, different, DISSIDENT, multi-tongued microbes. To be screened and searched at every airline check-point, discouraged, disinfected, disposed off like a dirty secret. Microbes, whose very EXISTENCE, is a form of biological warfare to SOME.

No, I really want to bring this subject up.  However depressing the subject is to me and many of you reading this. It is important to see where our dear world is headed towards. A world in which there are perishable, pestilent MICROBES and there are those HUMAN BEINGS- moulded in the image of GOD.

OK, OK not all of us are microbes of course. Many of us are a slightly higher caste- tolerated, employed, paid, domesticated, sheep, cattle. And there is also that special category - well-fed, trained dogs. God bless the creatures- I really have nothing against their species. ( In fact, some of them are my best friends) But I can’t help objecting to the worst of canine qualities that many of these four-legged ones in our midst display. Whining and Dining with the Masters, Biting and Barking at the Poor.

I know all this is getting a bit too depressing and I don’t like it one bit. I have been reading too much Orwell these days, and that too, on the front pages of daily newspapers.

So how does one get out of this Animal Farm we all seem to be trapped in ? I would say- let’s go back to our roots and our traditions- the great traditions of the ancient microbes.

Think of it- the microbes- the first form of LIFE on Planet Earth. Microbes- mating, multiplying, mutating into higher, more virulent forms of cognitive, COMBATIVE life. Weathering all storms, RESISTING all predators and surviving every sterile environment.  Microbes evolving, exploring, EXPLODING till every form of LIFE finds its place under the sun.

( I know now why Dubya does not believe in the Theory of Evolution. Doesn’t matter. The Theory doesn’t believe in him either.)

I have got it figured now. What this globe really needs now is a Movement of All Microbes and the Mother of All Movements. A million MOAMS to match all THEIR murderous, misanthropic MOABs.

Satya Sagar is a journalist based in Thailand. He can be reached at

Sunday, April 27, 2003

-Information Clearing House

Here is another site with lots of information, such as the following picture which appeared on this website a week and a half ago.

The site is maintained by one person, just like this site is.

WEB SITE ADDRESS: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
MIRROR HERE. http://informationclearinghouse.literati.org/

================
Some recent stories include:

Just Back From Baghdad Robert Fisk, Speaks With Pacifica Radio.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3105.htm

==================

The Evil One: “Evil in its metaphysical, absolute sense, is a notion
so common to the fundamentalist, reactionary religious worldview
that Bush and bin Laden share...George Bush actually stands
today at the head of the Protestant fundamentalist movement
in the United States...”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3106.htm

===================

NO! AMERICA IS NOT A CHRISTIAN NATION:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3107.htm

===================

LEAKED DOCUMENT EXPOSES PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY’S MANIPULATION
OF US PUBLIC: The document advises supporters of Israel to
appear to affect a “balanced” tone, but admits that in arguing
for Israel’s policies, the illegal “settlements are our Achilles
heel,” for which there is no good defense.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1395.shtml

==============

MSNBC’s Banfield: Media filtered realities of war

======================
MOSSAD SWITCHES FROM ANALYSIS TO ACTION: General Dagan
has strengthened the “Caesaria” unit, the branch allegedly
responsible for special operations and assassinations.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3102.htm

======================
A TURKISH SPECIAL FORCES TEAM IS CAUGHT BY U.S. TROOPS IN IRAQ
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,446392,00.html
======================
THE WAR AT HOME: It’s time to defend our liberties before Patriot
Act II makes protest a crime.
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multi-page/documents/02844047.htm
======================
WILL PRE-EMPTIVE WAR, SUCH AS IN IRAQ, MAKE THE
UNITED STATES SAFER IN THE LONG TERM?
The United States is more at risk as a result of President
George W. Bush’s new policy of pre-emptive attack.
Consider just a few reasons for the decline in America’s safety.
http://www.insightmag.com/news/422261.html
======================
U.S. BRIDLES AS ANNAN CALLS IT ‘OCCUPYING POWER’:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1051125553479&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968705899037
======================
THE WAR NOBODY WON: PART 1: CHAOS, CRIME AND INCREDULITY.
If this war is about spreading US values, it has scored only
defeat by spreading barbarism.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3103.htm
======================
THE WAR NOBODY WON: PART 2: THE NEW AGINCOURT:
The issue is whether the Bush Grand Strategy is in the
United States’ long-term national interest. There is strong
argument that it falls very short on that measure.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3104.htm
======================
EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS OF HIGHWAY SLAUGHTER AT TAJI
http://www.rense.com/general37/taji.htm
======================
AFGHAN SECURITY DETERIORATES AS TALIBAN REGROUP:
Hekmatyar vowed Afghan “mujahideen” would “force
America out of their country like the Soviet Union”
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir030423_1_n.shtml
======================
DOLLAR HEADS FOR LOSING WEEK VERSUS EURO; JOBLESS CLAIMS SURGE:
The U.S. currency slid yesterday as stocks fell and the
government said 455,000 Americans filed unemployment
claims, the most in more than a year.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000101&sid=aX6JsDHptfSo&refer=japan
======================
NORTH KOREA’S WAR STRATEGY OF MASSIVE RETALIATIONS
AGAINST US ATTACKS:
North Korea has not only the military power but also the
political will to wage total war against the United States.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3099.htm
======================
N KOREA TALKS OVER: POWELL WARNED PYONGYANG T
HAT WASHINGTON WOULD NOT RESPOND TO THREATS:
As the second day of talks wrapped up, Pyongyang said the
situation on the peninsula was “so tense that a war may break
out any moment due to the US moves.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3100.0.htm
======================
N. KOREA CLAIMS TO HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS, U.S. OFFICIALS SAY:
North Korean negotiators told U.S. officials in Beijing that the
communist nation has nuclear weapons and threatened to
export them or conduct a “physical demonstration,”
U.S. officials said today.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32198-2003Apr24.html
======================

-Korea, South and North, at Risk from U.S. Policy

By Chalmers Johnson,
Pacific News Service
April 23, 2003

South Koreans are no doubt watching the “multilateral” talks between the United States, North Korea and China with great interest, but they would do well to chart their own course to security on the Korean peninsula.

South Korea is obviously worried about the North’s decision to arm itself with a “tremendous military deterrent.” But over the last two years, South Korean public opinion has shifted radically on the issue of North Korea. The South no longer fears the hungry, oppressed and well-armed North as much as they fear Washington’s enthusiasm for war.

New South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has pledged to continue opening to the North. His incoming administration is said to have told Bush that South Korea would rather live with a nuclear North than join the United States in another war. On Feb. 12, 2003, no doubt as a way to pressure the Roh government and punish it for its positions, the Pentagon announced that it was considering withdrawing some of the troops that have been based in South Korea since 1953.

On April 9, the day Baghdad fell, the Pentagon and the Roh government started negotiations over the future of U.S. forces in the region. The U.S. delegation showed extraordinary impatience to move the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division back from the Demilitarized Zone. One source quoted Adm. Thomas Fargo, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, as saying, “I’d like to be out yesterday.” As it was meant to do, this threw fear into South Korea that a sudden redeployment of U.S. troops out of harm’s way would not only look to the North like preparations for a pre-emptive strike, but might prove to be so.

Equally ominous, the United States sent B-1 and B-52 strategic bombers to Guam “in case they might be needed in Korea.” Radar-evading F-117 stealth fighter jets, highly suitable for attacking targets like the nuclear plant at Yongbyon, will also remain in South Korea for now. The last time F-117s were based in South Korea was in 1994, when the Clinton administration was contemplating a “surgical strike” on the North.

Such a strike, this time against the Yongbyon reactor, may well come after U.S. troop deployments in Iraq are reduced. The United States may even attempt “regime change” to consolidate its imperial position on the Korean peninsula.

President Roh continues to stress a “sunshine policy” of greater openness toward the North. For that to work, he must quickly distance himself from the Americans and their warlike posture. In recent weeks, however, his government has rushed to mollify Washington, reassuring the Bush administration that it wants American troops near the border and even sending about 700 noncombatants to Iraq as part of the “coalition” effort to wage war.

If President Roh were to ask American troops to leave South Korea altogether, with perhaps only a treaty promising an American “nuclear umbrella” in case the North ever did use nuclear weapons, a reconciliation between the two Koreas might come very speedily. The South risks little by trying this strategy, since its own armed forces are fully capable of matching any Northern threat short of a nuclear attack.

On the other hand, if it sticks with the Americans, the South risks everything. Even if Yongbyon is destroyed, Kim Jong-il has enough conventional weaponry (and perhaps even a nuclear bomb at a secret locale) to destroy Seoul, which is less than 50 miles from the demilitarized zone. The North Korean people, especially the highly disciplined, heavily regimented armed forces, will fight hard to retain control over their homeland, even if they hate their leader.

No one knows this better than the South Koreans, who feel exactly the same way about their half of the peninsula.

Time may be running out for the South Koreans, who may waste the next few months trying to convince Washington that this crisis can best be handled by diplomacy. Washington’s chicken hawks will try to soothe their fears about a preventive war with talk of precision- guided missiles, a commitment to avoiding civilian casualties, and talk of “liberation.”

Now that the generation that fought the Korean War is passing from the scene, the time is ripe for more flexible approaches to resolve this last remaining Cold War legacy. In the United States, however, the departure of this generation has apparently created such a case of historical amnesia that a new generation is preparing to start a war there all over again. Young South Koreans shouldn’t let that happen.

Chalmers Johnson is author of “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire” and, forthcoming, “The Sorrows of Empire: How the Americans Lost Their Country.”

Distributed by AlterNet

2003 Independent Media Institute. 

-Dyke labels US war coverage ‘too patriotic’

Financial Times April 25, 2003

By Tim Burt, Media Editor

Greg Dyke, BBC director-general, has condemned US media coverage of the Iraq war and accused American broadcasters of “swapping impartiality for patriotism”.

Mr Dyke said yesterday that the corporation had been surprised and shocked by the tone of war reporting from leading US television and radio networks.

In a speech defending the BBC’s reporting of the conflict, Mr Dyke warned that the proliferation of US tele-vision stations had weakened the country’s political coverage.

“The effect of this fragmentation is to make government, the White House and the Pentagon all- powerful, with no news operation strong enough or brave enough to stand up against it,” the BBC chief said.

“This is particularly so since September 11, when many US networks wrapped themselves in the American flag.”

Although the BBC’s own coverage has been criticised by some ministers, Mr Dyke claimed the corporation was winning record audiences in the US.

Speaking at Goldsmiths College, part of the University of London, the director-general said BBC World Service radio was attracting 4m US listeners every week, while almost a million were watching BBC bulletins on cable and public broadcasting networks.

Recalling a recent trip to the US, Mr Dyke told media students: “I was amazed by how many people just came up to me and said they were following the war on the BBC because they no longer trusted the American electronic news media.”

Executives at US television networks such as Fox News and NBC declined to comment. But Clear Channel, the country’s largest radio group, denied BBC allegations that it was orchestrating pro-war rallies in the US.

The company, which is regarded as a likely bidder for British radio stations, admitted that one talk-show host had urged demonstrations to support US troops. Executives, however, said the group had not endorsed the rallies.

Mr Dyke cited the case to warn of US broadcasting standards affecting British coverage of such conflicts.

“The communications bill currently before parliament will, if it becomes law, allow US media companies to own whole chunks of the electronic media in this country for the first time,” he said. “In the area of impartiality as in many other areas, we must ensure that we don’t become Americanised.”

While conceding that BBC reporters had made mistakes during the Iraq war, Mr Dyke insisted that its overall coverage was more balanced than that of US rivals.

He said: “Commercial pressures may tempt others to follow the Fox News formula of gung-ho patriotism but for the BBC this would be a terrible mistake.”

Friday, April 25, 2003

-Russian official predicts ‘catastrophic’ events in North Korea within 24 hours

Russian official predicts ‘catastrophic’ events
AFP via Sydney Morning Herald
April 24, 2003
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/23/1050777311990.html

A top Russian Foreign Ministry official was quoted as saying yesterday in Tokyo that a “catastrophic” development of events in the US-North Korean nuclear standoff was imminent and could occur within the next day.

“It is probable that, as early as tomorrow, there will be a catastrophic development of events,” Itar-Tass quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov as saying.

He added that the standoff had “reached an extreme stage” but did not give a more detailed explanation about his warning......

http://japan.indymedia.org/newswire/display/281/index.php

-Protest: Resisting Defeatism and Sectarianism (by Paul)

The war in Iraq has been “won” by the Bushites, and people who have been fighting to stop it, understandably, feel defeated.

They should not.

Meanwhile, factionalism WITHIN the anti-war movement, always a problem, threatens to turn people agaginst one another. In Japan, too, we see this.

Just as the U.S. has its “Answer” coalition, which on the one hand seeks to stage-manage the peace movement and on the other is unfairly used by rightists masquerading as leftists to attack the entire peace movement, Japan, too has its share of people out to fight each other rather than build a movement for social, eonomic and political justice.

Traditionally, in the mainstream peace movement here , there have always been destructive rivalries, like that of the Socialists and Communists. Not surprisingly, the views of most of the people who participate in these movements are closer to one another than the leadership would have us believe, yet so much energy has been wasted on NOT working together.

Then there are the various groups which claim to represent some corner of the sectarian left, frequently nominally Trotskyist, and often from a tradition of mindless violence toward one another. Very much a macho thing, they are represented by such groups as Chu-kaku-ha and Kakumaru, normally recognized by their helmets, sun glasses and face masks, though with the outbreak of SARS, it is not as easy to tell who is who anymore!!

Those in Chu-kaku-ha tend to make up a large part of what is called Zen-gaku-ren, an umbrella student group, which tends--like the party behind Answer--to be less than openabout its connection to the group.  They in turn fight traditional groups like the Communist Party-related Minsei.

Recently, there has been a new development, owing much to the anti-globalization movement, where young and not-so-young, mainly unaffiliated, gather together thanks to the Internet, to spontaneously challenge the linked issues of militarism, imperialism and capitalism run amok. With influence from various anarchist circles as well as the non-violent civil disobedience movements past and present, this is a refreshing tendency which promises to remain for the long term.

Even here though, we find a great deal of confusion as groups bent on maintaining a non-violent image at any cost clash with other groups who make use of direct action to try to get around police blockades. In fact, some of the more principled anarchists have found themselves, possibly unwittingly, participating in police confrontations that are dominated by the Trotsyist Chu-kaku-ha using new names so as to avoid being identified as just the same Zen-Gaku-ren sectarians.

There are now running battles with the Japanese police, who like the increasingly violent police in other states, particularly the United States, are also becoming more and more repressive in a society which has always allowed the police to get away with restricting civil liberties.

What happens next is that people on the fringes, people who have not been fooled by the lies of the media about this being a war of liberation, yet who are not sure how to make their voices heard, are scared off. And so the movement contracts as people stay away from confrontation, getting labelled reformists by the ultra radicals and the overly battle-hungry anarchists who mistake street battles with radical change. Meanwhile, those of us who are reluctant to engage in confrontation for confrontation’s sake are frustrated as some in the more traditional peace movement and even the newer, more spontaneous groups try to maintain a distance by dutifully obeying police orders to stay on the sidewalk and not seeking middle ground, at least with some of the more principled anarchists who know the difference between creative disobedience and chaos.

There has got to be an effort to be inclusive as we encourage those who are tired of being voiceless to find their voice without making them feel they have to risk everything, including injury and arrest, if they want to make a difference. This is movement building, but it is sadly lacking here, just as it is lacking most places. It is time for serious radicals to sit down and talk to each other to find ways of working together that make everyone feel a part of the global movement for justice and peace.

SEE ALSO

Activism in Japan: Where to now?
http://japan.indymedia.org/feature/display/227/index.php

Kyoto Peace Walk Grows-Movement Splits or Embraces?
http://japan.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/197

Letter To A Slightly Depressed Antiwar Activist
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=3477

A Few Ideas On Addressing A Meaningless Democracy
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-04/22azulay.cfm

Beyond Demonstration
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=3030

Arresting Disobedience
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=2908

Revisiting Civil (Un)arrest and (Dis)obedience
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-03/02azulay.cfm

Attack Of The Liberals
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2002-11/11dominick.cfm

Does Size Really Matter?
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=2897

Whose Standards?
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=3439

Resist
http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=3294

Thursday, April 24, 2003

-MSNBC Reveals Facts on Israel’s Weapons of Mass Destruction

MSNBC Reveals Facts on Israel’s Weapons of Mass Destruction
by Ira Chernus

Most astounding web page of the week: http://www.msnbc.com/news/wld/graphics/strategic_israel_dw.htm

Here is MSNBC, giving us more information on Israel’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD)than I’ve seen in any left-wing or peace-activist news source. Here is the mainstream U.S. media, that beast we love to hate, giving us a story that gives away the store.

It’s a story we expect the elite media to hide, because it is so embarrassing to U.S. policymakers. How could anyone cheer for the carnage in Iraq, where no WMD have yet been found, if they knew that Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation with a proven WMD arsenal? How could anyone approve of a U.S. policy that kills where WMD don’t seem to exist and turns a blind eye where they obviously do?

Far from hiding the story, though, MSNBC uses its graphic skills to put all the details just a mouse-click away. What’s going on?

Supporters of Israeli policy will give you an answer in a single word: anti-semitism. These folks are always amazing us with their charges of anti-Israel bias in the U.S. media, which they insist proves anti-semitism. It’s silly, of course. If the media were biased against Israel, the facts about Israeli WMD would have been headline news every day during the debate about the Iraq war. Those facts were headline news in the Arab world. They were absolutely crucial, because they undermined the Bush administration’s principal justification for war. But mainstream news sources here paid very little attention.

Even now, MSNBC is not making the information easy to get. It is tucked away in an obscure corner of the website. Try finding it from the home page, and if you figure out how, let me know. (I found it only through a direct link in an email I received.) When I searched the site for “Dimona” (Israel ‘s best-known nuclear weapons site), it came up blank. When I tried to access the root directory, I was told that I was “not authorized to view this page.............”

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0421-08.htm