Posted July 10, 2003

Regarding "The Apartheid Wall" by Ran HaCohen:

If this is the truth, why is it that we hear nothing of it on any of the major networks?

I cannot believe that we are so very censored in all of the U.S. and Europe. There has to be a way to place this information in the public realm.

Surely someone like Lou Dobbs on CNN or Fox News would have at the very least done some investigation and aired their thoughts or opinions. I think historically the US has had a seriously flawed Middle Eastern policy, but I think it is partially a result not only of economic interests but also of ignorance and lack of knowledge and information. Unfortunately, I believe the Israelis have always been better at P.R. than the Arabs – Certainly, a comparison between Arafat (complete with a dirty stubble, checkered "tablecloth" on his head and rather unpolished speechmaking!) and a Netanyahu has never been very helpful to the Palestinian cause.

This, fortunately, appears to be changing, so perhaps we will find a more level playing field in the future.

Basically, more and better marketing and communication is desperately needed. If I could have downloaded all the attachments with the text, I would have passed them on to a number of people and organizations myself!

~ Anne Orton Boss

Ran HaCohen replies:

Mainstream media have paid some attention to the Wall in the past weeks, most notably The Guardian, and – in Israel – Yedioth Achronot in an article available in an English translation at http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1546.shtml. The map of the Wall is also published at http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/index.html.

Still, comparing the coverage of the Wall to that of the Road Map, and given that the latter may or may not evaporate in no time, but the Wall is there to stay, immediately effecting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians – the term "censorship" for the silence on the Wall is indeed totally in place. Any effort to spread the word is of utmost importance.

Regarding "McNews Comes Gunning for Greece" by Christopher Deliso:

Thank you very much for this great article. It is because of people like you, who have the courage to report the truth, decency means something at last.

~ George Pavlou, Ohio

Christopher Deliso replies:

Thank you, George – but courage does not come into it. Though I am not Greek and have no Greek ancestry, I would be very, very upset if anything happened to their country. So it's more like a bizarre, illogical sense of duty than courage. Na eiste kala!

Excellent commentary!

Do you realize how long I've been waiting to read or hear some good, insightful and objective analysis on any issue concerning Greece? Good thing I didn't hold my breath waiting for CNN or MSNBC (forget about FOX).

Thanks again for a job well done. You guys are my first news stop every morning. I'm glad I donated money to your site, and please rest assured, I will donate more.

~ Jim G.

Christopher Deliso replies:

Euxaristo polu, Jim,

I'm sure I speak on behalf of the rest when I say we appreciate your support.

As a 20+ year resident of Greece (and a dual citizen), I was very pleased to read your article regarding ABCs shoddy treatment of Greece. Such attitudes as expressed in the ABC piece do far more harm than good, so it's reassuring to know that there are journalists with some knowledge of the real Greece willing to speak out against such media manipulation.

~ Don Schofield

Christopher Deliso replies:

Thanks, I appreciate your kind words.

Now, dammit, tell me how I can get such a "dual citizenship"!

Mike Ewens Replies

I know I have written you before, but don't you every print anything GOOD about American troops. If you lived in another Country you would be in jail for want you print. As a veteran I didn't like some of the things I did, but I always thought my country was behind me.

~ Glenn Brown

Associate Editor Mike Ewens replies:

First, please send me links concerning these "good" things.

Second, we at Antiwar.com find it difficult to consider our troops doing "good" while occupying a nation that should not have been invaded. Of course, they are doing their "duty" – and doing it well. The problem rests in how do we define that duty... the administration contends "duty" requires US troops act as global policemen who vanquish evildoers, while we at Antiwar.com maintain US troops should act as defenders who respect the sovereignty of other nations.

Supporting our troops does not mean turning a blind eye to dangerous and deadly missions just because that was what they were "ordered" to do. We are behind our troops enough to demand that they be brought home now.

When a person or two is killed in a terror bombing in Israel it makes the Antiwar.com headline, but when 20 are killed in a terror attack in Moscow, it's just in the 'bylines'?

~ CP

Mike Ewens replies:

We concentrate on the areas where the US intervenes or may intervene in the future. It is difficult to fully cover all the war-related issues of the world, so we focus on those most relevant to America. For instance, this policy explains our lack of coverage of the Aceh conflict. Israel is covered because they are a important part of American foreign policy and what occurs in the Middle East guides the neoconservative foreign policy we fight against.

Regarding "Mourning in America" by Justin Raimondo:

I have been an avid reader of Mr. Raimondo's column for the past year now and generally agree with his anti-imperialist, libertarian views. But I wanted to make some comments on Mr. Raimondo's contention that Native Americans had no right to the soil....

When Columbus made landfall in the West Indies during 1492, Columbus wrote in his log of the Arawak natives:

"They do not bear arms, ...They have no iron, their spears are made of cane... They would make fine servants... With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

And of course that is what the Europeans did. ...

In the 1820s the Indians had been almost wholly driven from the East Coast. ... The Choctaw and Cherokee Indian tribes had been driven steadily westward by a combination of military pressure, financial charlatanism, and false hopes. Finally the Cherokee Indians saw the writing on the wall and decided that the only way to avoid the colonial juggernaut was through assimilation. Hoping that espousing the ideals of John Winthrop (and Mr. Raimondo) would allow Indian possession of the land to be legally recognized, the Cherokee settled down and began to till the land. In 1826 a census showed 17,000 Cherokee living in Georgia in addition to "22,000 cattle, 7,600 horses, 46,000 swine, 726 looms, 2488 spinning wheels, 172 wagons, 2,943 plows, 10 saw mills, 31 grist mills, 62 blacksmith shops, 8 cotton machines, 18 schools" (Zinn, A People's History of the US p.135). In addition, the Cherokee created their own written language and began printing their own newspaper in 1828. Despite "subduing" the land, the Cherokee land claims were ignored and ultimately they were all forced west on the "Trail of Tears."

Asserting that these kinds of crimes are imperialist is labeled "anti-American" in Mr. Raimondo's view. I wonder how such a staunch libertarian can hold such Whitmanesque ideals that smack of manifest destiny.

~ Goh Joon

So the British wouldn't protect the poor, suffering colonists from the Indians? Guess again, it was their Libertarian principles that caused the colonists to revolt – they wanted a free ride! This is from Alistair Cooke's America:

"The British then reminded them that, inheritance or not, it was a new frontier that would have to be defended. London gave the colonists a year to suggest ways in which this might be done. At the end of that time, London offered them a choice: either to raise their own patrol or to pay through taxation for the maintenance of ten thousand British soldiers. The colonies didn't want to do either, so Parliament, in 1765, in a routine session with little debate or indignation, passed a tax bill, the Stamp Act. . . . its effect was to unite the colonists in a fury."

They come off sounding like spoiled children.

~ Earl Divoky

... Mr Raimondo serves the empire by doing one of its dirtiest tasks: attempting to disguise its past in order to make excuses for its present, thereby plopping one more stinking piece of agitprop onto the imperial dunghill. ... Let’s examine his hysterical anti-historical claims one by one:

The Indians had no right to the lands on which they lived, they will no doubt be surprised to learn, because they were all nomadic! ... If it weren’t for fast food restaurants at intervals along those paths, the natives would have starved, no doubt. It’s not as if they were occupied full time as farmers, fishermen and hunters, eh? (which, in fact, they were). It is Hollywood, by the bye, which came up with the image of "the pristine wilderness"; the native Indians were burning land to clear it for farming and irrigating fields and living in towns and cities ("pueblos", for one example) when Europeans were fighting off cave lions. History shows that they had such an impact as to completely alter the ecology of the very forests which the European invaders mistakenly assumed were "virgin." They were about as pristine as Madonna Louise Ciccone, comrade Raimondo; read some history some time.

Next, comes the standard Marxist attack on non-proletarians: "In mixing their labor with the land, they came into possession of it..." Yes, comrades, production is the basis of everything. The heroic worker and peasant alliance of the broad masses of the modern proletariat and blah, blah, blah.

But wait, this claim is made on the basis of "Lockean principles [which] the settlers brought with them," so we can pretend to ignore its inherent Marxism. Well, I challenge any claim that the majority of the "settlers" (not "invaders"?), all too often the rabble of England, were Locke-reading philosophers anyway. The broad masses of these invaders were not the literati of the United Kingdom, comrade.

Dang, but all this stuff rings familiar! The "liberators" (not "occupiers"?) of Iraq brought their "democratic principles" with them, too. In historical reality, however, the alleged "right" to conquest is based now, as then, on the arsenals and superior numbers which the invaders bring with them, not their supposed sociopolitical erudition. (I further doubt that the GIs now in Baghdad are any more conversant with Locke, Herzl, Marx or von Mises than was the louse-ridden Daniel Boone. Call me an heretic.)

This asinine "argument" in favour of the dispossession and slaughter of the native peoples isn’t even remotely true, anyway. The "first Thanksgiving", for example, was a feast to celebrate the survival of some of these supposedly superior farmers who would all have perished if not for the farming skills taught them by the native peoples. The native peoples who were permanently settled farmers got the same treatment as all the others at the hands of the Anglo-Saxon invader. ...

Even if Mr Raimondo’s false implication (that all native peoples were nomadic) had been true, it still would not have justified the dumping of England's trash on the shores of the "New World". That I make different use of my land than you do does not grant you the right to take it from me. Of course, that is a libertarian principle, whether it’s in Chapter 3 of The Gospel According to John Locke or not. ...

Note also, gentle readers, that the invaders’ alcohol "emboldened" the Indians. Obviously, they were too cowardly to commit their atrocities otherwise, we are left to infer. Interestingly, those who fought against the native warriors didn’t consider them to be either cowards or good fighters when intoxicated. But what did they know, they were only there (and they left behind a historical record of their perceptions and experiences which is much at variance with Mr Raimondo’s specious claims). ...

His misleading portrayal of the conquest of the rest of the mainland empire, which was covered with farms and ranches by the way, is as false as his attempt to whitewash the first US imperial acquisitions.

In fact, the Texan immigrants rebelled because them thar evil Mexicans, in whose country they were allowed to reside, had forbidden slavery. That, to the Noble Lockean, is anathema, of course. Something had to be done. Coincidentally, it was done by a lot of infiltrators who had never even seen Texas before spearheading the first of many "clandestine operations" of the day.

Also, the Yank invaders knew that they could overwhelm the Mexicans and that they could call on the imperial armed forces. What a surprise it was that "the Lone Star Republic (there’s that word again)" became a state within a matter of months. Forgive me if I don’t faint from surprise.

General Winfield Scott, the "hero" of one of the many imperial wars of conquest of the two-thirds of Mexico now occupied, said this of the Mexican-American War; "Never in history has such an unjust war been forced upon a weak nation by a stronger one." Of course, he was only there at the time, and possibly never read Locke, so what did he know.

The Mexicans had no legitimate right to their lands because they were farmers and ranchers and, by definition therefor, their lands were "sparsely populated." Heck, that was practically begging for an influx of American "liberators"! If you weren’t farming, we have a right to your land; if you were farming, we have a right to your land. ...

~ Manuel Miles, aka Kaptain Kanada

If America keeps looking for an Empire instead of looking its own borders, the day that California returns to Mexico would not be that far away. That is the way Texas was conquered by the US. The Mexican government could not be an example of efficiency but they know where the wealth is. At the present moment the US$10 billions that was sent back by Mexicans living in the US was equal to total amount of direct foreign investment in Mexico last year. So far the Mexico government has opened several offices in the US to support all Mexicans with legal documentation and even special Mexican IDs to make easier fund transfers from American banks to Mexico. Also very soon Mexicans living in the US would be able to elect a representative to their Mexican Parliament. This time the history is repeating again but in favor of the Mexicans.

~ Ed Kamisato

Regarding Ute-Marie Bauer's letter posted July 1:

David Batlle (Austin, Texas): No softballs here.

I don't know the figures of "deformed babies" allegedly from Gulf War I. But I have cause to doubt those figures if they come from the anti-western Left.

Mike Ewens: Hmmm, that really isn't an argument against the data? Just because you don't like the source (which I also don't like), does not make what they say completely false.

DB: Consider this. We now know that UN sanctions did not kill the thousands of infants displayed over the years – it was neglect by the Saddam Hussein regime according to the testimony of Iraqi doctors after the fall of Baghdad. The "dead baby parades" were staged by Saddam with the help of Iraqi doctors and morgues, and were a staple of Saddam's propaganda machine. These parades consisted of convoys of taxis, with the tiny coffins of dead infants strapped to their roofs – allegedly killed by United Nations sanctions – driven through the streets of Baghdad, past crowds of women screaming anti-Western slogans.

ME: I read the article that you are referring to and I agree (I believe it was in the Telegraph). However, I think you have to concede that sanctions played a role in harming the innocent in Iraq. Namely, when an industrialized nation is unable to purchase water sanitation equipment, sewer materials, many medical supplies and other life-enhancing products that it cannot produce itself, you must agree that the effects on the citizens – no matter their leader – can be horrendous. Consider the various goods that traverse our borders every day: the pesticides that keep crops growing, the x-ray equipment checking for internal damage or the pacemakers that kept my grandfather alive a little bit longer.

I was actually against the sanctions because they impeded free markets, which in the end benefit individuals and weaken the State.

DB: Iraqi doctors say they were told to collect dead babies who had died prematurely or from natural causes and to store them in cardboard boxes in refrigerated morgues for up to four weeks – until they had sufficient corpses for a parade. Many of the children died, they say, as a result of the Iraqi government's own neglect even as it lavished funds on military programmes and Saddam's palaces in the knowledge that it could blame sanctions for the lack of medicines and equipment in hospitals and clinics.

ME: Funny, it seems that you presuppose some form of socialism: the Iraqi government should have been providing hospital care. I disagree. I prefer that the markets provide the necessary goods. Unfortunately, the markets in Iraq were impeded in such a way that individual hospitals were not allowed into the world markets for crucial supplies. That had nothing to do with Saddam.

Every time I heard the number of dead from sanctions (500,000?), I usually paused. I approach statistics with skepticism. What if this number was in reality say 100,000 or 10,000? Are these under your threshold?

Harm had to be done to the citizens of Iraq living under the sanctions. Their lives were necessarily worse off because they could not trade for goods on the world markets. Clearly, some if not many died from such an arrangement. The number is irrelevant; one innocent Iraqi killed because of lack of medicine that the sanctions prevented is too much. Innocent life taken in small numbers is as unjust as innocent life taken in large numbers.

(Note: the same "doubt" you have of the rhetoric of the Left, you should also have for the Iraqi doctors who are party to the "Iraqi scientists" that told us of the horrors of Saddam's WMD program.)

DB: For years, the Left has preferred to blame western sanctions for these deaths – using Saddam's own figures at that! – rather than blame Saddam. Face it, the Left was duped once again. But now the facts are coming out, so why continue spouting the same old anti-western diatribes and slogans?

ME: Well David, if this is your "hardball" then you are throwing us a lob. We are not the Left and we are pro-Western. We at Antiwar.com rarely argued against sanctions from a strictly humanitarian perspective for the very reasons that you explain: they are difficult to measure and perhaps unreliable. We believed that sanctions were an implicit form of military intervention. Moreover, just as the US has no right imposing trade restrictions or tariffs on goods coming to this nation – they have even less of a right to do it to other nations! The sanctions – no matter their statistical consequences – fomented anger towards America and in fact were one of bin Laden's grievances.

Here is a rule of thumb we preach at Antiwar.com: if the US government can't do it here at home, they sure as hell can't do it abroad.