{"id":809,"date":"2005-03-01T12:49:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-01T16:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=809"},"modified":"2008-07-24T02:14:13","modified_gmt":"2008-07-24T07:14:13","slug":"power-to-the-people-we-choose-to-acknowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=809","title":{"rendered":"Power to the People (we choose to acknowledge)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>“Syrian officials described the resignation on Monday as a “Lebanese issue.” “We hope that a Lebanese government will emerge to lead Lebanon to what is best for Lebanon and for the rest of the region in this very delicate time,” an official of the Foreign Ministry said.<\/p>\n

State Department officials, who have the called the fall of the government the cedar revolution – like Ukraine’s orange revolution – praised the opposition’s efforts. At the White House, officials were elated, though they cautioned that the government’s decision to resign did not assure a fair election.”<\/p>\n

Excerpted from<\/em> “Struggle Looms Over Role of Syria in Lebanon<\/em><\/a>“<\/p>\n

“Karami said: “Out of concern that the government does not become an obstacle to the good of the country, I announce the resignation of the government I had the honor to lead. May God preserve Lebanon.”<\/p>\n

The shock announcement stunned Parliament but was followed by cheers from inside the chamber and outside in Martyrs’ Square as the 25,000 people who had gathered there since late Sunday night watched the debate in Parliament live on large screens. <\/p>\n

Leading opposition MP Walid Jumblatt said: “The people have won.” Jumblatt was speaking from his home in Mukhtara, in the Chouf mountains, where he stayed yesterday due to security fears if he attended Parliament.” <\/p>\n

Excerpted from<\/em> “People power brings down Karami’s Cabinet<\/em><\/a>“<\/p>\n

You might think the photo I’ve included is from the recent “cedar” revolution in Lebanon. No, it was taken in Beirut during the March 2003 World-wide Anti-War Protests<\/a> which followed the “Largest Day of Protests in the History of the World<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Millions of protestors in unprecedented numbers turned out the world over<\/a> to demand that Iraq not be unmercifully bombed but their efforts received no glowing coverage on FOX News, no celebration of the people’s will in Billy Kristol’s Weekly Standard<\/em>. Spare me them now. Billy is going to need medication soon to temper his glee. According to the latest Harris poll<\/a>, “44 percent of Americans believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001 were Iraqis, up significantly from 37 percent in November.” This new campaign should be a slam dunk. <\/p>\n

Justin Raimondo is doing an exceptional job keeping tabs on the building campaign against Syria. This one<\/a> deals with American pundits and other media stars eager to blame Assad for the assassination of Hariri.<\/p>\n

Another item these “journalists” might refer to in the coming weeks is how the Iranian government sentenced blogger Arash Cigarchi to 14 years in prison. What they won’t be quick to point to is the item<\/a> that a U.S. backed radio station exposed him in the first place, a charge that Cigarchi himself has made. (via<\/em> brooding persian<\/a>)<\/p>\n

They’ll be too preoccupied reporting on the latest threats from Osama’s “top operative<\/a>” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. According to Homeland Security, he’s been enlisted to plan potential attacks on the United States. Thank goodness Tom Ridge has joined the board of Home Depot<\/a>. Duct tape anyone? <\/p>\n

Distorted Morality: America’s War on Terror?<\/a> is a talk delivered by Noam Chomsky to Harvard University in 2002. I happened to view it for the first time this weekend. Read<\/a>\/View<\/a> it all but don’t miss this:<\/p>\n

So who wins the prize for the worst acts of terrorism in the Middle East in 1985? Well, I know of three candidates, maybe you can suggest a different one. One candidate is a car bombing in Beirut in 1985, The car was placed outside a mosque. The bomb was timed to go off when people were leaving to make sure it killed the maximum number of people. It killed, according to the Washington Post, 80 people. It wounded over 250, mostly women and girls leaving the mosque. There was a huge explosion so it blew up the whole street, killing babies in beds and so on and so forth. The bomb was aimed at a Muslim sheik who escaped. It was set off by the CIA in collaboration with British intelligence and Saudi intelligence and specifically authorized by William Casey, according to Bob Woodward’s history of Casey and the CIA. So that is a clear-cut example of international terrorism. Very unambiguous and I think it is one of the candidates for the prize for the peak year of 1985.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Another candidate surely would be the so-called Iron Fist operations that Shimon Peres’ government was carrying out in occupied southern Lebanon in March of 1985. This is in southern Lebanon, which was under military occupation in violation of the Security Council order to leave, but with U.S. authorization. The Iron Fist operations were targeting what the high command called “terrorist villagers” in southern Lebanon. It included many massacres and atrocities and kidnapping of people for interrogation and taking them to Israel and so on. It reached new depths of calculated brutality and arbitrary murder, according to a Western diplomat familiar with the region, who was observing. There was no pretense of self-defense, rather it was openly undertaken for political ends. It was conceded, it wasn’t even argued. So that’s a clear case of international terrorism although here we might say that it is aggression. I’ll call it just “international terrorism” in line with the principle that we bend over backwards to give the United States the benefit of the doubt. Of course, this is a U.S. operation: Israel does it because they are given arms, aid and diplomatic support by the United States. So we will decide to call this just “international terrorism,” not the much more serious war crime of aggression. The same, incidentally, was true of the much worse operations of 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon and killed maybe twenty thousand or so people, again with crucial U.S. military, economic and diplomatic support. The U.S. had to veto a couple of Security Council resolutions to keep the slaughter going, provide the arms, and so on, for it. So it’s a U.S.-Israeli invasion, if we are honest. The goal was to install a friendly regime in Lebanon and oust the PLO, which would help persuade the Palestinians to accept Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza. That’s actually accurate and I have to compliment the New York Times in saying that on January 24th. As far as I know, this is the first time in mainstream U.S. literature that anyone has dared to say what was absolutely common knowledge in Israel and in the dissident literature 20 years ago. I was writing this in 1983 just using Israeli sources but it couldn’t penetrate U.S. commentary. You might check and see. As far as I know, this was the first breakthrough. I am not sure the reporter understood what he was saying. But anyway he did say that. James Bennet, January 24th, prize for James Bennet for telling the truth after 20 years. And it’s true and, of course, it’s a textbook illustration of international terrorism. This time we have to bend over backwards pretty far to call it international terrorism because it is hard to say why this isn’t overt aggression — the kind of action for which U.S. and Israeli leaders should be subjected to Nuremberg trials for real serious war crimes. But, again, let’s keep to the guidelines and let’s say it’s only international terrorism. Well, that’s the second example, the Iron Fist operations.<\/p>\n

Third, the only other example from 1985 that I know of took place two days before Shimon Peres arrived in Washington to join Reagan in denouncing the evil scourge of terrorism. Shortly before that, Peres sent the Israeli air force to bomb Tunis killing 75 civilians, torn to shreds with smart bombs. It was all rather accurately and graphically depicted by a highly respected Israeli reporter in the Hebrew press in Israel and corroborated by other sources. The United States cooperated with that by withdrawing the Sixth Fleet so that they did not have to inform their ally, Tunisia, that the bombers were on their way, presumably getting refueled on the way. So that’s the third candidate. I don’t know of any other candidates that even come close to being candidates… Incidentally, George Schultz, the moderate, immediately after the bombing, he telephoned the Israeli Foreign Minister to say that the United States had considerable sympathy for this operation but he backed away from open support for massive international terrorism or maybe aggression when the Security Council unanimously condemned the attack as an attack of armed aggression. The United States again abstaining against that.<\/p>\n

So those are the top three cases that win the prize for 1985, to my knowledge, and again I’ll assume that these are just international terrorism so we are not calling for Nuremberg trials. Just more “international terrorism” by “depraved opponents of civilization itself” and examples which are pretty hard to miss, remember, because these are the peak stories of the year for international terrorism in the Middle East. There are three perfect examples. In fact, the only three major examples that I know of. However, they aren’t candidates. In fact, they are not even in the running. They are not competitive. The examples that are in the running are, for example, cited in the Current History issue, to which I referred, which does discuss 1985 and gives two examples of the evil scourge of terrorism, namely the hijacking of TWA 847, killing one American Navy diver and the hijacking of the Achille Lauro which led to the killing of Leon Klinghoffer, a crippled American — both surely terrorist atrocities. Those are the two examples that are in the running, that are memorable, that count for international terrorism. Well, the hijackers for the TWA plane claim — correctly, in fact — that Israel was regularly hijacking ships in the international waters in transit between Lebanon and Cyprus, killing people and kidnapping others, taking them to Israel, either for interrogation or simply as hostages, keeping them in jail for years. Some people are still in jail without charges but that doesn’t justify the hijacking on the assumption, which I accept at least, that violence is not legitimate in retaliation against even worse atrocities or as preemption against future atrocities. Violence is not legitimate in such cases so we can dismiss those claims though they are in fact correct. Incidentally, the U.S.-Israeli hijackings — and remember, if Israel does it, we are doing it — those hijackings are also out of the historical records. Occasionally, you find a reference to them in the bottom of a column on something or other but they are not part of the history of terrorism. The hijackers of the Achille Lauro claimed that this was retaliation for the bombing of Tunis a couple of days earlier. Well, we dismiss that with contempt on the same principle, namely, violence is not justified in retaliation or preemption. Assuming that we can rise to the minimal, moral, level that I mentioned earlier — if we are not confirmed hypocrites, in other words — then some consequences follow about other acts of retaliation and preemption but that’s too obvious to talk about so I will just leave it for you to think about. Well, that’s 1985, the peak year of international terrorism in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

As a research project, you might see if I have left out anything that is a competitor for the prize that I am not aware of. None are mentioned in the literature on terrorism. As I said at the beginning, you don’t really have to work very hard to see these things. You have to work very hard not to see them. It takes a really good education to miss this. 1985 was, of course, not the first or the last act of international terrorism in the Middle East. There are many others that are very important. For example, in 1975, Israel, meaning Israeli pilots with U.S. planes and U.S. support, in December 1975, they bombed a village in Lebanon killing over 50 people. No pretext was offered but everybody knew what the reason was. At that time, the UN Security Council was meeting to consider a resolution which was supported by the entire world with marginal exceptions — only one crucial exception, the United States, which vetoed the resolution — calling for a diplomatic settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, incorporating UN 242 and all of its wording of the main resolution, security and territorial integrity and all those nice things on the internationally recognized border. The offending part of this one was that it also referred to Palestinian national rights and that’s not acceptable to the United States. It rejected them then and it rejects them now, contrary to a lot of nonsense that you read. The U.S. vetoed the resolution. That continued year after year and is still going on now, of efforts of diplomatic settlement, which the U.S. has unilaterally blocked. Israel does not have a veto at the Security Council so they reacted to the debate by bombing Lebanon and killing about 50 people without a pretext. That’s not in the annals of international terrorism either. The U.S. supported both of them, lots of deaths, hundreds of thousands of people driven out and so on. Clinton had to back off his support for the 1996 invasion after the Qana massacre, over a hundred people in a UN refugee camp. At that point he said, “can’t handle this any more, you better leave.” There was no pretext of self-defense in this case. This is just outright international terrorism or maybe aggression. And it continues.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Syrian officials described the resignation on Monday as a “Lebanese issue.” “We hope that a Lebanese government will emerge to lead Lebanon to what is best for Lebanon and for the rest of the region in this very delicate time,” … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-d3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=809"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3371,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions\/3371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}