This is the United States and the
‘Special Relationship’ that Labour Politicians Defend – this is what the ‘anti-Semitism’
campaign is about
When the Board
of Deputies, which represents at best 20-30% of British Jews presented its
10 Commandments, Labour politicians fell over themselves to signal their
acquiescence. Not merely Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry but the ‘left’ candidate
Rebecca Long-Bailey
Of one thing we can be sure. The Board of
Deputies is not and never was concerned about anti-Semitism in Britain. Not
merely because it is at historically low levels (despite the propaganda that
tells you otherwise) but because the Board is a Zionist group. Zionism from its inception was founded on the
belief that anti-Semitism could not be fought. Which is why it never fought it.
Anyone disagreeing with me is invited to read
a copy of the founding pamphlet of Political Zionism, Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State
or more accurately The State of the Jews.
Herzl positively boasted of how useful and helpful anti-Semitism was to his
Zionist project:
‘the
governments of all countries scourged by Anti-Semitism will be keenly
interested in assisting us to obtain the sovereignty we want.... Great
exertions will hardly be necessary to spur on the movement. Anti-Semites
provide the requisite impetus’
In other words anti-Semitism was vital if the Zionist
movement was to succeed. Herzl also accepted all the calumnies and stereotypes
(or ‘tropes’ to use the current lingo) about Jews. He wrote:
‘When we sink we become a revolutionary
proletariat... when we rise there rises also our terrible power of the purse.’
In his Diaries he wrote
(p.9) that
I understand what anti-Semitism is about. We Jews
have maintained ourselves, even if through no fault of our own, as a foreign
body among’ the various nations. In the ghettos we take on a number of
anti-social qualities
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| The US in Iraq |
As Yigal Elam, an Israeli
Labour Zionist Historian wrote:
‘Zionism did not consider anti-Semitism an abnormal,
absurd, perverse or marginal phenomenon. Zionism considered anti-Semitism a
fact of nature, a standard constant, the norm in the relationship of the
non-Jews to the presence of Jews in their midst… a normal, almost rational
reaction of the gentiles to the abnormal, absurd and perverse situation of the
Jewish people in the Diaspora.’ [Zionism
and its Scarecrows, Moshe Machover, Maria Offenburg, Khamsin 6]
If the Board of Deputies was concerned about anti-Semitism
then it would have taken up the question of the Tory Party’s MEPs sitting in
the European parliament with fascists and anti-Semites. It might even have questioned Boris Johnson
over the many anti-Semitic and racist
phrases and parts in his 2004 book 72
Virgins.
But of course the attacks on Corbyn had
nothing to do with anti-Semitism but his anti-Americanism. This is well
understood by the Labour Right – Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry, Jess Philips.
It is part of our unwritten constitution that both major parties must not
question our relationship with the United States.
It is on that basis that I copy two articles. The first on hunger in the United States. At
a time when the US military is literally spending hundreds of billions of
dollars a year fighting wars abroad, 50 million Americans go hungry, in
particular children and 40 million Americans have no medical insurance cover.
‘The secret of politics under capitalism is to persuade the
poor that they should hate other poor people. Their enemy is the 'scrounger',
the asylum seeker, the disabled. Anyone but those responsible.’
The secret of politics under
capitalism is to persuade the poor that they should hate other poor people. Their
enemy is the 'scrounger', the asylum seeker, the disabled. Anyone but the rich.
Scapegoatism is built into capitalist politics. What is essential is that
people don't blame those who accumulate unprecedented wealth. They are the
'wealth creators' and in this New Labour was as complicit as the Tories.
The article by John Whitehead lifts the lid on
American imperialism and its reach across the globe. This is and should be one
of the major issues in the Labour Party leadership election. That is why the
craven and pathetic acceptance by Rebecca Long-Bailey of the BOD Commands is
not a triviality, some kind of irrelevancy. It is crucial to any definition of
what it means to be a socialist or left in the 21st century.
That is why the idea that RBL should be supported
is not one I support. Anyone who’s socialism rests on the shoulders of US
imperialism is not a socialist.
Tony Greenstein
By Larry Romanoff
In July of
2013, Rose Aguilar wrote a wonderful article for al-Jazeera (1), in which she
discussed the dire hunger crisis that envelops the US today. In her article,
she brought back a memory of something I had long forgotten, an event that so
outraged the American public that the government was temporarily forced to respond
with more humane policies. That event was a 1968 CBS special hour-long
documentary called Hunger in America, in which viewers literally watched a
hospitalized child die of starvation. Nixon responded because the public
outrage left him no choice, but Reagan quickly dismantled those improvements.
When Reagan
came to power in 1980, there were 200 food banks in the US; today there are
more than 40,000, all overwhelmed with demand and forced to ration their
dispersals. Before 1980, one out of every 50 Americans was dependent on food
stamps. Today, it is one out of four. Before Reagan, there were 10 million
hungry Americans; today there are more than 50 million and increasing.
A
substantial part of the Great Transformation included not only tax cuts and
other benefits for the wealthy, but a simultaneous massive reduction in budgets
for social programs – in spite of the fact that Reagan and the secret
government were creating the conditions that would desperately require those
same social programs.
That 50
million hungry Americans today includes the 25% of all children in the US who
go to sleep hungry every night. About 25% of the American population today
cannot buy sufficient food to remain healthy, with most of these being hungry
for at least three months during each year. It is so bad that many college
students have resorted to what we call “dumpster-diving” – looking in garbage
bins for edible food.
Larry
Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior
executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an
international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at
Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs
to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing
a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be
contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com. He is a
frequent contributor to Global Research.
Note
 |
| The United States Can't Afford Universal Health Care But It Can Afford a Massive Military |
By John W.
Whitehead
“Let us resolve that never again
will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up
a corrupt military dictatorship abroad. This is also the time to turn away from
excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. America
must be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through
the recovery of confidence in ourselves…. together we will call America home to
the ideals that nourished us from the beginning. From secrecy and deception in
high places; come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it
weakens our nation; come home,
America.”—George S. McGovern,
former Senator and presidential candidate
I agree
wholeheartedly with George S. McGovern, a former Senator and presidential
candidate who opposed the Vietnam War, about one thing: I'm sick of old men
dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
It’s time to
bring our troops home.
Bring them
home from Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Bring them home from Germany,
South Korea and Japan. Bring them home from Saudi
Arabia, Jordan and Oman. Bring them home from Niger,
Chad and Mali. Bring them home from Turkey, the Philippines, and northern
Australia.
That’s not
what’s going to happen, of course.
The U.S.
military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active
duty, with more
than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly
every country in the world. Those numbers are likely significantly higher in
keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many
troops are deployed for the sake of “operational
security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As
investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more
bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”
Don’t fall
for the propaganda, though: America’s military forces aren’t being deployed
abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to
guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial
interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends
about $81
billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.
The reach of
America’s military
empire includes close to 800
bases in as many as 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than
$156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even
US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and
Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the
military runs more than 170 golf courses.”
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| US military cadets |
This is how
a military empire occupies the globe.
Already,
American military service people are being deployed to far-flung places in the
Middle East and elsewhere in anticipation of the war
drums being sounded over Iran.
This Iran
crisis, salivated
over by the neocons since prior to the Iraq War and
manufactured by war hawks who want to jumpstart the next world war, has been a
long time coming.
Donald
Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton: they all have done their
part to ensure that the military industrial complex can continue to get rich at
taxpayer expense.
Take
President Trump, for instance.
Despite
numerous campaign promises to stop America’s “endless wars,” once elected, Trump has done a complete about-face,
deploying greater numbers of troops to the Middle East, ramping up the war
rhetoric, and padding the pockets of defense contractors. Indeed, Trump is even
refusing
to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in the face of a request from
the Iraqi government for us to leave.
Obama was no
different: he also pledged—if elected—to bring
the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and reduce America's oversized, and
overly costly, military footprint in the world. Of course, that
didn’t happen.
Yet while
the rationale may keep changing for why American
military forces are policing the globe, these wars abroad (in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and now Iran) aren’t making America—or the
rest of the world—any safer, are certainly not making America great again, and
are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.
War spending
is bankrupting America.
Although the
U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world's population, America boasts almost 50%
of the world's total military expenditure, spending more on the
military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.
In fact, the
Pentagon
spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on
health, education, welfare, and safety.
The American
military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its
breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the
earth.
Having been
co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent
government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the
country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.
In fact, the
U.S. government has spent
more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earns
in a year.
Future wars
and military exercises waged around the globe are expected to push
the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.
Talk about
fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have
on a military empire it can’t afford.
As
investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the
United States has been fighting
terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases
of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and
local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”
War is not
cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government
incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors. Indeed, a
leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t
account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”
Unfortunately,
the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.
A government
audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging
taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions
of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American
taxpayer paid:
$71 for a
metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than
a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price.
$1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been
bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight,
thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4
cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.
That price
gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within
the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the
people” have over our runaway government.
Mind you,
this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.
Americans
have thus far allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a steady diet of pro-war
propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less
inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the
ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone
killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our
own homeland into a warzone.
That needs
to change.
The U.S.
government is not making the world any safer. It’s making the world more
dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. military drops
a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since
9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of
around 500,000 human beings. Every one of those deaths was paid for with
taxpayer funds.
The U.S.
government is not making America any safer. It’s exposing American citizens
to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences
of the U.S. government’s international activities. Chalmers Johnson, a former
CIA consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s
use of its military to gain power over the global economy would result in
devastating blowback.
The 9/11 attacks were blowback. The Boston
Marathon Bombing was blowback. The attempted
Times Square bomber was blowback. The Fort
Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback.
The
assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. military drone
strike will, I fear, spur yet more blowback against the American people.
The war
hawks’ militarization of America—bringing home the spoils of war (the military
tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks,
ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.) and handing them
over to local police, thereby turning America into a battlefield—is also
blowback.
James
Madison was right: “No nation could
preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” As Madison
explained, “Of all the enemies to public
liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and
develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these
proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the
domination of the few.”
We are
seeing this play out before our eyes.
The
government is destabilizing the economy, destroying
the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of
resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars,
drone strikes and mounting death tolls.
At the
height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a
collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and
false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers
Johnson predicts:
The fate of
previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and
will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its
democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the
process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United
States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.
This is the
“unwarranted influence, whether sought or
unsought, by the military-industrial complex” that President Dwight
Eisenhower warned us more than 50 years ago not to let endanger our liberties
or democratic processes.
Eisenhower,
who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War
II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that emerged
following the war—one that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep
waging war.
We failed to
heed his warning.
As I make
clear in my book Battlefield
America: The War on the American People, there’s
not much time left before we reach the zero hour.
It’s time to
stop policing the globe, end these wars-without-end, and bring the troops home
before it’s too late.
Constitutional
attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new
book Battlefield America: The War on the American People is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
See
also No
Kid Hungry
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