Posted August 22, 2003

"The Real Terror Masters"

Is the IHR really completely off the wall? I read a few of their pamphlets and they did not seem entirely out of the realm of the possible. It seems to me they did not deny the Holocaust, but argue with some of the "facts" have been exaggerated as political propaganda. I have grown to be dubious of some of the holocaust industry's claims as a result of books like Hitler's Pope. Is IHR completely hopeless?

~ Robert J. Hanten

Justin Raimondo replies:

What's up with an organization that spends all that energy arguing about the numbers and ethnicity of those killed during the Holocaust? I mean, doesn't that strike you as slightly... deranged? Those guys have an agenda – and it gives me the creeps.

I have a hell of a lot more respect for Mark Webber and his work than you and the recycled already-seen-it-elsewhere-a-dozen-times crap you are peddling.

And why not get a respectable photo of yourself without the idiotic-looking cancer stick hanging out of your mouth?

You just permanently lost a semi-regular reader and potential donor.

~ Bill G., a Historical Revisionist

Justin Raimondo replies:

Tough. If the price of having your contribution is tolerating holocaust "revisionism" and anti-Semitic BS, then we don't need it or want it. Bye Bye.

Justin Raimondo notes that all three of the recent surface-to-air missile conspirators might be said to embody the Indo-Israeli alliance. Interestingly, the topic of that alliance just graced the pages of The Economist ("Tricky Diplomacy," 8/2/03):

"... India's growing links with Israel have alarmed the Pakistanis. While Pakistan has been starved of American weapons since sanctions were imposed on it in 1990, it notes that India has signed, or has in the pipeline, defence agreements with Israel worth $3 billion, making Israel the second largest supplier of arms to India after Russia."

~ Jim Gavitt

Justin's rebuttal of Ilana Mercer's peculiar and, to my eye, uncharacteristic defense of the Israeli wall was excellent.

I found Mercer's references to the Palestinians rather contemptuous and her unlibertarian attack on immigration per se (no one could protest controls or criteria for immigration) shrill. So, Ilana, are you saying capital should be free to move between borders in an unrestricted fashion, but labor should not?

Most tellingly, Raimondo picks up on the ethnicities of the 3 recently arrested alleged terrorists to suggest that not only Arabs, but some "allies" – in this case, Indians and Israelis – might have their own reasons for being involved in terrorism. Although we can't jump to conclusions about this case yet, it still seems to me that Raimondo makes a very good point – by fixating so much on Muslim/ Arab terrorists, the government runs the risk of painting terrorism as only an ethnic/ religious phenomenon whereas, undoubtedly, economic and security issues are just as much behind it. Ergo – fellow Judeo-Christians, Hindus, Europeans, Africans may all have or in the future come to have reasons to engage in terrorism against this country. We would be better off examining the geo-strategic rationale rather than searching in each and every case for the errant Arab.

Being of Indian origin, I can confidently state that many of the hard-line Hindu rightists who want to jump on the American anti-Muslim bandwagon, will at some further point make common cause with whomever (Israel possibly) against Christians. Take a look at the website of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or the even more shrill Sword of India and you will find sharp denunciations of Islam and Christianity for their history of exclusivity and bloody conquest. One doesn't have to deny the pasts of either of these religions to nevertheless feel less than sanguine about an alliance with the Hindu right wing.

By the way, Ilana, this natural affinity you see between Israelis and Europeans and Americans rather than with the pathetic natives among whom Israelis actually live and from whom they took their lands runs afoul of this question: why didn't those very Europeans who had Jewish populations for so long create a state within their own borders rather than succumb to the demands of Zionists?

Finally, Ayn Rand had her literary successes, but I think it is time not to treat her as anything more than a populariser of libertarian thought.

~ L.W.

I Want My AWC

Just a note to say I hope everything is OK at Antiwar.com. Your web page hasn't changed in a few days! OMG! I'd better get off my duff and send you some money. Looking forward to seeing your site back in action.

~ Jim Moore, Libertyville, Illinois

Managing Editor Eric Garris replies:

We have changed the page ten times a day! You must be caching pages in your browser.

You need to clear your cache. If you don't know how to do that, let me know what browser you use and I will give you instructions.

"Ethnic Cleansing: Past, Present and Future"

God richly blessed the descendants of Ishmael giving them untold riches – BUT God made His covenant with Abraham and Sarah's son, Issac.

Argue all you want but God made the universe and everything in it and what He says go.

REALITY CHECK.

~ Dianne Bailey

Ran HaCohen replies:

Do you mean the God who described the present Israeli government so well (Isa 1:23) – "Your princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves. Everyone loves bribes, and follows after rewards"? Well, He is quite worth listening to. Like when He says, "You shall not murder", which the descendants of Abraham and Sarah have breached thousands of time in the past three years. Or when he says, "The stranger who lives as a foreigner with you shall be to you as the native-born among you, and you shall love him as yourself" (Lev 19:34), the very opposite of which the descendants of Abraham and Sarah are doing.

I can imagine what God thinks of those who turn a blind eye on such sacrilegious breaching of His covenant, as you seem to do.

Libertarian Guide

I have just recently found this website and I am interested in your viewpoints. I have long been an advocate of non intervention to scant intervention with the intentions of humanitarian interests. I am wondering if there are any decent links to a run down of libertarian guide of views.

~ Joe L.

Associate Editor Mike Ewens replies:

First off, the best summary of our ideology can be found in Murray Rothbard's "War, Peace and the State": http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard26.html.

If you find this appealing and reasonable, they you should take a lot at the links listed below.

Columnist Joseph Stromberg made some reading lists: http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/s013001.html
http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/s022001.html

and book reviews...
http://www.lewrockwell.com/stromberg/stromberg23.html
http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/s072500.html
http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/s113099.html.

Antiwar.com Editorial Director Justin Raimondo is also a great resource. Here are some important links:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j101102.html
http://www.antiwar.com/Justin/j030303.html.

LewRockwell.com is also a great source for links: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/peace-arch.html.

Stromberg also writes about empire: http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/s092899.html.

More Rothbard:
http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/s061200.html
http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/s062000.html.

There are other noninterventionist organizations. Here is a short list:http://www.fff.org/
http://mises.org
http://www.fee.org/.

If you have any specific questions, please drop me an email!

"Iraqi Clerics Unite in Rare Alliance"

Your headline "Sunni, Shi'ite Clerics in Rare Alliance Against US" is, I believe, incorrect. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't Iraqi clerics united with Saddam against the pending U.S. invasion? If so the headline should be corrected to read "Sunni, Shi'ite Clerics in Rare Post-Conquest Alliance Against US."

~ Bob Fic

Assistant Editor Jeremy Sapienza replies:

Just correcting your wrongness – "rare" does not mean "unprecedented."

The headline is correct, in that it is rare when Sunnis and Shi'ites ally themselves with one another.

"Baghdad Bomb Blasted American Hubris"

Justin isn't being fair to Reason. They have no party line on the Iraq war. The contributors strike me as evenly split on the issue; and some of them, at least until today, were quite friendly to Antiwar.com.

And drug and lifestyle issues are hardly their central theme. There have been a lot of good articles there on the domestic collusion between big business and the corporate state.

~ Kevin Carson, Mutualist.net

Soldier from East Alton

On August 8, a soldier from East Alton, Illinois was killed in Iraq, they sent in a military honor guard and he was buried not too far from where I live.

According to the newspaper reports, the heat is what killed him, he was found dead in his bunk. He was twenty years old. What I would like to see is people in the government actually leading this war, or is it peace? For example I’d like to see our beloved warmonger commander in chief leading our troops in battle. I’d like to see him drinking canned water, living in a tent, putting up with a hundred and thirty-degree heat. I’d like the Vice President of Haliburton sweating it out with the grunts and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld riding around in a jeep, with air that’s more dust than oxygen, worrying constantly about an Iraqi shooting him in the back.

Let them shock and awe the Iraqis for a awhile, show us how it's done. I’d like for them to show some of this courage they’re constantly talking about.

I wonder if it’s as easy to say “Bring them on” when you’re about ready to faint from dehydration.

~ William Clough, Carrollton, Illinois

Civilized World

I'm a bit confused. We go to war with a country under false pretenses (remember when they had weapons of mass destruction and were six months away from a nuclear bomb?) and we're surprised by their uprising? Did Bush and his cabal actually believe that the Iraqis would shower them with flowers?

We killed at least 10,000 civilians (that's the low estimate) and countless soldiers (again, under false pretenses).

Are you telling me that we did not expect sabotage, car bombs and various attacks on our soldiers? Wouldn't the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians serve as a good example of how oppressed people fight back against their oppressors? Why is anyone surprised by the Iraqi uprising?

"The civilized world will not be intimidated," Bush said. Since when did civilized come to mean occupying a people, its country and its resources?

~ Gary Douglas Smith, Los Angeles, California

"Crouching China, Paper Tiger"

The so-called "high-tech surveillance" equipment Mr. Matuszak cited in this article has nothing to do with 'protecting' the US Consulate as he suggested. But instead, it would be used by US intelligence to listen on to host countries, that is, spying. Otherwise why would they so promptly fly back? If someone can copy a new technology (especially those high-tech equipment) by simple eye inspections, no government, including the US, would pay millions of dollars on high tech espionage. ...

~ Bill Wu

"A Politically Correct War?"

"The Constitution recognized slavery in an oblique manner without accepting it, and it never once used either the word slave or Negro. It referred instead to 'persons held to service or labor.'"

There is nothing oblique about that wording. It was thus worded because of the then common knowledge that there were many white as well as African slaves in the colonies, plus a few Indian slaves. The wording was simply all inclusive.

Britain's oligarchy had, for 200 years prior to Dutch importation and sale of African slaves, been in the habit of enslaving the Irish and its own poor and shipping them to its colonies everywhere. A great many of these were not "indentured servants" (a euphemism for about the same thing in practice) but were lifelong, no respite, no hope, slaves.

Matter of fact, since these white slaves were enslaved to rid them from the British Isles, they were acquired without cost and therefore expendable, while African slaves cost money; a valuable commodity to be taken care of like any other valuable commodity. It was the white slaves who were given the truly dangerous jobs, not the black.

This is perhaps the most scarlet secret of British perfidy and American history. If knowledge of it today became common it would destroy the whole of the "civil rights," reverse discrimination nonsense.

Slavery was a mixed bag. All races owned slaves from all races. Some blacks were slave owners, as were some Indians. Both owned slaves of their own races and some of each owned white slaves also. Of course, most white slaves were owned by whites.

So who should have a guilt trip about slavery? Do you know any slave owners in this country – other than the globalist corporations and their wage slavery, that is? Under that form of slavery the slave owners don't even pay the expenses of their slaves' lives.

~ Tony Blizzard

"A Pattern of Aggression"

Great job in your effort to dispel the ongoing distorted history of the U.S./ NATO "adventure" in Yugoslavia. How many of the major media published this piece or pursued similar examination of the West's corrupt and illegal involvement in that sovereign country? Note the author's use of the word "alleged" referring to the so-called atrocities that were headlined daily in front of the American public's eyes precipitating our acquiescence to this unprovoked unilateral Clinton "war" (in progress via US troop occupation of the present Administration). Compare how the unchecked/ unquestioned demonization of the Yugoslavs continues in current news articles – even many of those published here on the Antiwar.com board.

Is there more here: other than the ultimate but clandestine objectives to foist the capitalist system in the Balkans, to aid the Germany-supported Croat majority to secede by force in Croatia, to achieve a military foothold within the borders of a sovereign nation, to support a minority Muslim population to also break away as an independent government form in Bosnia, to join in cahoots with the Albanians to also secede the Kosovo territory who were just a few years before designated "terrorists", and to pave the way for some future plan to construct and guard a pipeline(s) of Western-controlled oil originating in the Caspian region? How was it possible to demonize the Serbian people, especially, so easily – of a country that was disparaged and ravaged by Hitler and whose citizens risked their lives to aid US pilots and other allies who were shot down or sought refuge in that region during World War II? Indeed, while the Serbs are a relatively small part of the American diaspora, they have played an impressive role in contributing to the American success story. Yet, interestingly during this same period, "millions" of populations of Africans were slaughtered in major civil wars and other internal "grabs" for power.

Why was there no similar effort by the US and other Western countries to get involved there militarily – even under the guise of so-called "humanitarian" reasons? Is there some kind of discrimination working here against those Serbs, et al – akin to what the Nazis vocally assigned collectively (as the "subhumans") to all those Eastern European Caucasian populations?

As an after thought: isn't it rather ironic that in our claimed objective to democratize the former Yugoslavia in the "melting pot" image of the US, where before we had a country that was indeed the most melting pot of diverse ethnic populations in Europe (before the breakup of the USSR) we now have created a group of isolated segregated ethnic entities!

~ Pyotr K.

Blackout

One day of blackout and look at the mess. I guess this would give us all an idea of the "inconvenience" that people are going through in Iraq. And I think there are handling it superbly! no power, no water, no gas, what a life at 120 F! Not counting the tanks, helicopters, gunfire, "collateral damage" and other "untidiness" around. And all the media cares about is NYSE. I guess this pretty much sums it up.

~ MM