Twilight Zone: Pass through the portal to the alternate reality of the War Party’s propagandists

April 9, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative

by Gregory Cochran

I think almost everybody has wondered what would have happened if they had made a different choice in life, taken a different path. If you didn’t think of it by yourself, seeing “It’s a Wonderful Life” a few hundred times has probably driven the point home by now.

Many authors have applied this idea to big turning points, writing about alternative histories in which Hitler won World War II (Fatherland) or the South won the Civil War (Bring the Jubilee). The notion may not be pure fantasy: the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests that these Worlds-of-If may really exist, although forever unreachable.

Or maybe not so unreachable. A very odd pattern of statements by prominent supporters and members of the Bush administration suggests that we may have some truly unusual visitors—literally out-of-this-world.

You see, the president and his associates keep referring to historical events that never happened, at least not as they did in the fields we know. And they keep referring to the same ahistorical events. Over and over, the secretary of state and the (now former) secretary of defense have referred to guerrilla warfare in Germany after the Nazi surrender. But there just wasn’t any. You can’t find it in the history books or in the memories of people who were there at the time. My uncle was in Bavaria in the summer of 1945: no trouble. Secretary Rumsfeld repeatedly talked about the similarities between today’s Iraq and America after the Revolutionary War, but again, I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any. I don’t believe we found tortured corpses in the streets of Philadelphia every morning back in 1784. And why does President Bush keep saying that Saddam refused to admit those UN arms inspectors back in 2002 and early 2003? Why did Condoleezza Rice, in 2000, say that Iran was probably backing the Taliban, when in fact the two had almost gone to war in 1998?

Now some might say that these statements were just talking points—that is, lies—but I sure wouldn’t want to accuse anyone of lying. More to the point, there have been many ahistorical statements that are just strange and don’t seem to advance any particular political agenda. For example, when President Bush said that the Japanese lost two carriers sunk and one damaged at the Battle of Midway (instead of losing all four, which is what actually happened), who gained? When POTUS said that Sweden has no army (it does), what political argument was advanced?

We’re talking about the rulers of the most powerful nation on earth. It can’t be that they’re just pig-ignorant—of their own history, yet. There has to be a deeper, more subtle explanation.

We can learn more by examining these statements in detail, including those of the administration’s close supporters. They too keep diverging from the history we know. Recently, Rep. Don Young of Alaska quoted Lincoln as saying, “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.” Lincoln never said that, of course. Cliff May, at National Review, said “President Roosevelt waited until after World War II to put in place a commission to investigate what mistakes led to Pearl Harbor.” Pretty fly for a dead guy: FDR passed on just before Germany surrendered, well before the Japanese quit. And anyhow, the first of many Pearl Harbor investigations—the Roberts Commission—started only 11 days after the sneak attack.

More and more, I get the feeling that Bush and his friends come from one of the Worlds-of-If—a sad place, even worse than the one we actually live in, a world in which their odd statements are true.

When tired or stressed, they refer to the history that they lived and learned in school. But their briefing books recount an alternate history in which Iraq in 2002 was not a poor and backward country but the coming threat, as our Germany was in 1938. A history in which America, after the Revolution, was a flaming cesspool like Iraq today, a world in which Lincoln executed unruly legislators. One in which World War II dragged on long after the indecisive Battle of Midway. One in which our occupation of Germany was plagued by guerrilla warfare. One in which we’ve been fighting World War IV with Iran and Syria for 25 years, as Jim Woolsey has repeatedly said. One in which a hostile Islamic Caliphate has bothered to go through the formality of coming into existence.

Close study of such statements might eventually give a rough sketch of that other world’s history. This would be of immense value, for it would allow us to learn much about the inner workings of the historical process, just as the discovery of a different kind of life on Mars would be an epochal event in biology. The fact that a history that diverged from ours at least 200 years ago, judging from the differences in the Revolution, still bears some resemblance to ours—still had a battle of Midway, just not the same battle—suggests that unknown overarching forces constrain the course of events. But the story is never the same in detail.

The casual mention of World War IV strongly implies that these interlopers also had a World War III. They must have suffered greatly—maybe bombed out, likely short on resources such as oil. I would guess that those disasters irretrievably darkened their political perspective, just as our World War I left an entire generation embittered and disaffected. Certainly some kind of civilizational blight is needed to explain Vice President Cheney’s “Dark Lord” shtick.

Somehow they came here, so there must be a gate or portal. Judging from the spatial clustering of identifiable visitors, it’s somewhere in Washington, probably very close to the AEI building. Possibly inside. It may be an accident of nature, or it might be a scientific wonder used for judicial exile, just as bad Kryptonians were sent to the Phantom Zone. You have to wonder about that when you consider the kind of guys they’re sending.

If two-way transfer is possible, there could be vast business opportunities. There are reasons to suspect that science and engineering took a very different path over there: their limited understanding of nuclear weapons—they seem to think that nukes are roughly as easy to build as bottle rockets—suggests that nuclear fission may never have been developed on their timeline. But even if they’re behind us in some areas, they’re likely to be ahead in others. I’d guess that they know far more about torture than we do. Practice makes perfect.

Even if they’ve never split the atom, they have much to offer. The very existence of such a portal is the most significant new scientific result in a century, far more important than any result expected from the most advanced accelerator. The sheer physical presence of Condoleezza Rice on this plane suggests, indeed demands, new physics that may lead to the long-desired marriage of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It’s either this or string theory.

Of course this means that we need to corral some or all of these visitors for study and experimentation. Such experiments would, I suppose, interfere with their civil liberties, if they had any, but they’re obviously not citizens of these United States. Technically they’re illegal aliens. Gitmo’s a-waitin’.

And perhaps we can do more. Obviously this other world is in a sorry state and could stand some saving. They’re our closer-than-brothers—our other selves living in a world gone bad, a world in which the toast always falls butter-side down, a world where Mr. Potter owns the Building and Loan. Undoubtedly an irrepressible desire for freedom burns in every heart there. As soon as possible, we should begin preparing for their liberation.

It will be a cakewalk. .
___________________________________

Gregory Cochran is a physicist and evolutionary biologist.

Dispatch from Germany, Summer of 1939

February 24, 2007

Seymour Hersh, in an article published almost one year ago:

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be "wiped off the map." Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. "That’s the name they’re using. They say, 'Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?'"

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was "absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb" if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."

An article dated February 24, 2007, titled, "Cheney Hints at Iran Strike":

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has raised the possibility of military action to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

He has endorsed Republican senator John McCain's proposition that the only thing worse than a military confrontation with Iran would be a nuclear-armed Iran.

In an exclusive interview with The Weekend Australian, Mr Cheney said: "I would guess that John McCain and I are pretty close to agreement."

The visiting Vice-President said that he had no doubt Iran was striving to enrich uranium to the point where they could make nuclear weapons.

He accused Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of espousing an "apocalyptic philosophy" and making "threatening noises about Israel and the US and others".

He also said Iran was a sponsor of terrorism, especially through Hezbollah. However, the US did not believe Iran possessed any nuclear weapons as yet.

"You get various estimates of where the point of no return is," Mr Cheney said, identifying nuclear terrorism as the greatest threat to the world.

"Is it when they possess weapons or does it come sooner, when they have mastered the technology but perhaps not yet produced fissile material for weapons?"

The Democrats could take action to try to stop this criminal catastrophe, but they will not:

I indicated the other day some crucial actions the Democrats in Congress could take to stop these events, which are already gathering terrifying momentum. I repeat those suggestions here. ...

It simply is not true there's nothing the Democrats can do to stop the drive toward a wider war. For God's sake, they control Congress now. There's plenty they can do -- if they want to, and if they want to lead. The actions outlined above are critical; all of them together would throw a huge roadblock in the path of this criminal administration.

...

If, several months or a year from now, we are in the middle of a catastrophic and ever-widening war triggered by an attack on Iran (by either the U.S. or Israel), let no Democrat be heard to say: "But there wasn't anything we could do! We didn't want this to happen, but there wasn't anything we could do to stop it!"

It's absolutely not true. If this nightmare should come to pass, they will be its co-equal creators together with the executive branch.

From an article dated January 31, 2007:

Senior European policy-makers are increasingly worried that the US administration will resort to air strikes against Iran to try to destroy its suspect nuclear programme.

As transatlantic friction over how to deal with the Iranian impasse intensifies, there are fears in European capitals that the nuclear crisis could come to a head this year because of US frustration with Russian stalling tactics at the UN security council. "The clock is ticking," said one European official. "Military action has come back on to the table more seriously than before. The language in the US has changed."

Many similar stories have appeared in recent weeks.

The Democrats could take action to try to stop this immoral catastrophe, but they will not:

Yet, despite these crimes, the war chants rise once again, this time directed at Iran. If we should attack Iran in the near future, much of the world will treat us as we will fully deserve: as a barbarian, pariah nation, which no one can trust and which will join the most monstrous countries in history.

Is there a massive protest from Americans about the route we may follow? No. Are the Democrats who now control Congress at least trying to avert this catastrophe, which may be the last? No -- because they fully share the belief in American "exceptionalism" and in our "right" to worldwide hegemony. Is there even one prominent voice in America regularly explaining the horror of what we have already done, and what we may still do? No.

If this remains unchanged, and if we launch another war of blatant, unforgivable aggression, we will deserve everything we get -- and more. Historians, if there are any in the years to come, will see what we were and what we did, and they will judge us accordingly.

I honestly don't have the slightest idea what people are waiting for, before they finally begin to take action against the still worse nightmare that might be coming. I think most people must tell themselves that it won't be "that bad." But it will be; it will probably be worse than anything we can imagine.

I detailed the profound and horrifying immorality of a U.S. attack on Iran in the current circumstances, and some of the likely equally horrifying consequences, in "Morality, Humanity and Civilization: 'Nothing remains...but memories.'" From that essay:

Any military attack by the United States on Iran within the foreseeable future -- even an attack using only conventional weapons -- would be profoundly immoral, and eternally unforgivable. Remember the critical facts: all experts agree that Iran is approximately five to ten years away from having a nuclear weapon. Moreover, Iran is fully entitled to take the actions it does at present, including the enrichment of uranium it announced yesterday. It is entitled to take those actions under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory. While we condemn Iran and maintain that its actions are "intolerable" and "unacceptable" -- even though they are entirely permissible under the relevant agreements, and are only "intolerable" because we say so without any moral, legal or strategic justification for that stance -- we carve out exceptions for a country like India, which is not a signatory to the nonproliferation treaty. The position of the United States is an entirely unprincipled one, and one which devolves into incoherence.

These central facts lead to only one conclusion: an attack on Iran would represent a blatant, naked act of aggression against a country that does not threaten us. It would not be an act of self-defense, if that term has any meaning at all: there is nothing at present or in the immediate future to defend ourselves against. Of course, the same was true of Iraq. We refuse to learn any lessons at all.

So an attack on Iran, even if confined to the use of conventional weapons, would confirm beyond the point of any remaining dispute that we have abandoned all the constraints on military action that the world has accepted for some time. We would make indisputably clear that we believe we have the "right" to make war on any nation, at any time, and on the merest whim. The existence of a threat to the United States is irrelevant and unnecessary to our actions. In effect, we will have declared war on the entire world, at least by implication. No one will be able to view themselves as safe: those we consider allies today might be viewed as enemies tomorrow. All concepts of "right" and "morality" would be jettisoned forever. We will have entered a world where brute force and military superiority are all that matter. Since no other nation can view itself as safe from our wrath, we can expect the rest of the world to make plans accordingly.

When the unprovoked, aggressive and non-defensive use of nuclear weapons is added to this picture, we will have entered a world of potential global holocaust.

The Democrats in Congress could take action to try to stop this impending catastrophe. They will not.

In this connection, IOZ anticipates me. I've been working on a lengthy essay, the working title of which is: "John Edwards -- A Case Study in Foreign Policy Ignorance, Amorality and Failure." Part of that post will analyze the plaudits accorded to Edwards by some of the more intelligent progressive bloggers, to their considerable discredit. Edwards fully embraces all the basic assumptions, the overall perspective, and the gross misperceptions (which is here a kind word for lies) that have led us to this fateful moment. And these bloggers swallow all of it, and don't even realize they are doing so.

In my notes for that essay dated February 16, I included a reference to this Wikipedia entry, which IOZ mentioned only yesterday. Let me offer the introductory paragraphs concerning the Gleiwitz incident:

The Gleiwitz incident was a staged attack on 31 August 1939 against the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Germany (since 1945: Gliwice, Republic of Poland) on the eve of World War II in Europe.

This provocation was one of several actions in Operation Himmler, a Nazi Germany project to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany, which would be used to justify the subsequent invasion of Poland.

This is our posture and strategy toward Iran: the posture and strategy of Nazi Germany toward Poland. But we are America the Good. We cannot commit evil of this kind. Many Germans believed the same thing about their country.

Germany, in the summer of 1939. Like most Germans then, most Americans will do nothing. In the hysteria combined with national triumphalism that will almost certainly follow a U.S. attack on Iran -- aided in significant part by many hawkish Democrats with their eyes on 2008, and by our criminally propagandistic media -- it is more than possible that martial law may be imposed. Perhaps only in several major cities to begin with, but a start is all they need. All the mechanisms are already in place for such action by this administration -- and the Democrats still have not learned how to fight this battle, either.

In "Thus the World Was Lost," I set forth several excerpts from Milton Mayer's, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45. Mayer quotes one German, who said:

"You know," he went on, "when men who understand what is happening--the motion, that is, of history, not the reports of single events or developments--when such men do not object or protest, men who do not understand cannot be expected to. How many men would you say understand--in this sense--in America? And when, as the motion of history accelerates and those who don't understand are crazed by fear, as our people were, and made into a great 'patriotic' mob, will they understand then, when they did not before?

"We learned here--I say this freely--to give up trying to make them understand after, oh, the end of 1938, after the night of the synagogue burning and the things that followed it. Even before the war began, men who were teachers, men whose faith in teaching was their whole faith, gave up, seeing that there was no comprehension, no capacity left for comprehension, and the thing must go its course, taking first its victims, then its architects, and then the rest of us to destruction. ..."

I also offered parts of Mayer's recounting of the story of a chemical engineer, who first refused to take the "oath of fidelity" to the Nazi government, but finally did. When Mayer said that he didn't understand the engineer's reasons for contending that he should not have taken the oath, since the engineer did in fact save many innocent lives, the engineer replied:

"Perhaps not," he said, "but you must not forget that you are an American. I mean that, really. Americans have never known anything like this this experience--in its entirety, all the way to the end. That is the point."

And that, I fear more with each day that passes, is what we will finally learn: what "this experience" is like -- "in its entirety, all the way to the end."

And still, the Democrats in Congress and most Americans will do nothing that matters, and nothing to try to prevent catastrophe, should this administration decide to proceed with its plans to attack Iran.

I indicated recently that I would offer some specific suggestions about actions that might be taken (in addition to those genuinely critical actions I've already identified for the Congressional Democrats). Probably sometime in the next week, I still will do that. But I confess that I feel little motivation in connection with the task, for it strikes me as utterly futile.

I could observe how sad and pathetic it is, and what it reveals about our political culture generally and the world of political blogging more narrowly, that a writer with a very small readership needs to provide ideas of this kind -- while bloggers with huge audiences and "connections" to those in government appear to do absolutely nothing. But I'll let that go without further comment.

What destroys my motivation almost completely is my close to absolute conviction that, even when I do offer a number of suggestions, most of you will still do nothing, including virtually all the liberal and progressive bloggers. I honestly don't see any point in it whatsoever.

Still, I'll put forth those ideas I have. At least, I will know I did everything I could. [I'll post an entry setting forth the various ideas I have, and the rationales behind them, sometime on Monday, February 26.] In the meantime, I strongly suggest you think about this:

Germany. The summer of 1939. What could the Germans have done, and what could they have done earlier -- before events reached that point? And what are you prepared and willing to do now?

If you care at all, you need to think about that. Start this weekend. For if not enough of us take action, then we may very well learn what the Germans did, and we may finally face this:

"[T]he thing must go its course, taking first its victims, then its architects, and then the rest of us to destruction."

And those of us who survive will have to endure the same nightmares -- nightmares that will not end for the rest of our lives.

AND: Part II of this series is here.

Scooter Libby and World War III

February 21, 2007

How the Libby trial could impact US foreign policy

by Justin Raimondo

Cowed into funding a war neither they nor the majority of Americans believe in, congressional Democrats are taking the line that what's needed are some "benchmarks" – well-defined criteria by which to assess whether our efforts are paying off. The idea is to make continued U.S. support contingent on the Iraqis measuring up to these benchmarks. Hillary Clinton even says we should withdraw aid providing for the security of elected Iraqi political leaders if they fail to make the grade. Now that's a way to kill someone off without leaving any fingerprints! (And a good lesson to any other would-be U.S. sock puppets who think they can take the money and run.) The big problem with this approach, however, is that it fails to understand the dynamics of our continued presence in Iraq. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee given on Feb. 1, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the hawkish former national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, made a statement that should have set off alarm bells and sent everyone rushing for the lifeboats: "If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a 'defensive' U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan." Every moment we stay in Iraq increases the likelihood of war with Iran – that, in my view, is the most powerful argument, aside from this one, for a rapid withdrawal. No sooner had Brzezinski uttered these words than the administration began a concerted campaign to blame the Iranians for U.S. failure in Iraq, and accused Tehran of having a direct hand in the killing of American troops. We hear much about these accusations on the front pages of American newspapers, but what we don't hear about are acts of terrorism directed at both civilian and military targets by Iranian "dissidents," who are reportedly receiving covert U.S. assistance. These groups include the Jundallah organization in Baluchistan, said to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, and the sinister, cult-like Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), a shadowy Marxoid group that was supported by Saddam Hussein and still maintains a presence at Camp Ashraf [.pdf] in Iraq, as well as enjoying a wide array of bipartisan support in Congress. Jundallah recently struck southeastern Iran, in Sistan-Baluchistan, with a series of attacks, including a car bomb in the provincial capital of Zahedan. The Iranians claim that the Jundallah militants are trained in Pakistan, and Iran has displayed samples of alleged captured armaments with "Made in USA" stamped all over them. The leader of Jundallah reportedly announced the attacks on MKO-TV, the satellite television station run out of Great Britain by the MEK, a few minutes before they started. In an interview with the Telegraph, a Jundallah guerrilla fighter sounded very much like he was advertising his services to U.S. policymakers: "Asked whether the satellite telephone he was holding might not lead to his being located, he allowed himself a smile. 'We are not fighting against America,' he said. Support for Jundallah was growing, he said. 'There are hundreds of others who are desperate to sign in, but we ask them to wait because we do not have enough weapons or camps.'" That was last year: surely by this time the Jundallah "freedom fighters" have more than enough weapons and camps, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Scott Ritter, in his book Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change, has described CIA-MEK cross-border operations, in which the Americans – and the Israelis – are conducting provocations that could lead to an open conflict with Iran. The focus of these efforts, he says, is on Baluchistan and Khuzestan. With strong bipartisan support, Congress recently appropriated millions of dollars in aid to Iranian "resistance" groups, with practically no oversight as to how that money is being used – and the scramble for American gold is on. The American front group for the MEK, the National Council of Resistance, has plenty of high-level contacts in Washington, just as Ahmed Chalabi did in the run-up to war with Iraq. The MEK and other Iranian exile groups are busily lobbying for a similar gig as the administration escalates its plans for "regime change" in Tehran. The Iraqi government has recently reiterated its position that the MEK is a terrorist organization, an opinion shared by the European Union and the U.S. Department of State. However, not everyone in the U.S. administration agrees. And what are we to make of the near-total redaction of a mysterious document that came to light in the Libby trial – a memo to Libby from John Hannah detailing "views of MEK leaders on continuing role in Iraq"? That's all we're allowed to know: aside from a reference to MEK briefing slides, the rest is blanked out. The Office of the Vice President (OVP), which sponsored Chalabi, is just as intimately connected to the campaign to gin up a war with Iran as it was with the effort to lie us into war with Iraq. It is reasonable to assume the OVP is just as supportive of the MEK, and may even be directing its activities in collusion with its allies in the Pentagon. Given that U.S. foreign policy is, to a large degree, driven by domestic politics, the motive on the part of the administration to escalate provocative covert actions inside Iran has never been greater. With Scooter Libby likely to be convicted and Fitzgerald's sights increasingly turned on Cheney, the War Party, cornered, has every reason to lash out in one last desperate bid to save its political skin. Fitzgerald, by all indications, is coming for Cheney. After the trial but before the sentencing, Fitz will make a strenuous effort to "flip" Scooter and use his testimony to target the vice president. Murray Waas reports in the National Journal that Cheney wasn't taken in with Libby's Tim Russert fabrication for a moment: "At the time that Libby offered his explanation to Cheney, the vice president already had reason to know that Libby's account to him was untrue, according to sources familiar with still-secret grand jury testimony and evidence in the CIA leak probe." The Fitzgerald probe is a dagger pointed at the dark heart of the administration, the OVP, and the climactic moment of this epic battle is fast approaching. In the early days of the investigation, left-liberal bloggers were exulting in the possibility that they would see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House, but the trial has shown that Rove and Libby were antagonists rather than allies. Before it's all over we may yet see the vice president frog-marched out of the White House – at least metaphorically, in the form of an indictment with Dick Cheney's name on it. What better way to distract attention away from this coming political bombshell than by dropping some real bombs on Iran? In the midst of the regional conflagration feared by Brzezinski, prosecuting the Vice President for obstruction of justice and/or perjury would be problematic, at best. In any case, the widening of the war would drive the story off the front pages – think of this as a grand-scale version of Clinton's bombing of the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory just as the Monica Lewinsky was returning to the grand jury. U.S. war plans against Iran have apparently been in the making for quite some time, but the ratcheting-up of both the rhetoric and the actual war preparations indicates a new level of seriousness on the part of this administration. While most reports reassure us that the decision to go to war has not yet been made, one wonders what turn of events would push the key decision-makers, Bush and Cheney, over the line. A direct threat to one – or both – of them coming out of the Libby trial may be all the impetus they need. A cornered rat is dangerous.

The Insane Neocon Masterplan - Pitting Hindu India against Islam

Related

Firebomb attack kills 67 aboard India-Pakistan train
Terror blast kills 66 on India-Pakistan friendship train
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The Insane Zionist Masterplan - Pitting Hindu India against Islam

Don't make the mistake of assuming that because India is not in the Middle East that it's not an integral part of the Zionist master plan.

This opinion piece by Maryum Saifee published in the Columbia Spectator Online is crucial reading for anyone who wants to understand the latest horrific developments involving Pakistan and India and to figure out who is behind them.

Last Monday, a number of organizations convened a panel at Columbia University law school to celebrate emerging relations between India and Israel. As a person of Indian origin with a Middle East regional focus at SIPA, I was particularly intrigued by the subject matter of the talk and wanted to learn more about this budding relationship.

After attending the talk, I realized that much of the content was not academic in nature and was politicized to the point of propaganda.

The panelists included members of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the former Indian ambassador to Israel, and the United Nations Development Programme. By the end of the talk, I found the panelists to collectively reflect a very biased and unrepresentative point of view that is not shared by the majority of moderate-minded Indians and Israelis.

The AJC, one of the lead organizers, recently endorsed an article by Indiana University professor Alvin Rosenfeld conflating Jewish criticism of the Israeli state policies with anti-Semitism. The AJC's decree has sought to silence a constructive debate on Israeli state and foreign policies by labeling any dissent as falling inside the category of anti-Semitic hate speech.

Although the panelists harked back to long-time relations between India and Israel and glorified India as one of the only nations with no traces of "anti-Semitism," the two nations only established normalized diplomatic relations in 1992, coinciding with the rise of a Hindu nationalist-led Indian government. The talk offered little convincing substance that the two countries shared much in common aside from rising Hindu nationalist and intolerant AJC-style fundamentalisms.

The theme reiterated throughout the talk was that both India and Israel are democracies under attack by a Muslim fundamentalist threat-both internal and external. This rhetoric of fighting a common war on terror against an Islamic enemy serves to fuel a rising Islamophobia that has become mainstreamed in Israeli, Indian, and even American discourse. We can see manifestations of these policies in Israel to justify the occupation of the Palestinian territories, in India to create a motive for the state-sponsored pogrom against Gujarati Muslims in 2002, and in the United States with Guantanamo Bay and a wide array of civil-liberties infringements against Muslims/ Muslim-Americans.

Rather ironically, the panelists invoked the rhetoric of both Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to illustrate Indian and Israeli commitments to nonviolence and plurality. Nehru never supported the creation of a nation-state based on religio-political nationalism and I am confident that if Gandhi were alive, he would not have endorsed the Israeli occupation and apartheid wall as part of his definition of ahimsa (nonviolence).

The panelists described both Indian and Israeli principles guiding state policies by referring to Nehru's famous words that "the only alternative to coexistence is codestruction." While this is predominantly true in the case of India (with the exception of episodic outbreaks of politicized Hindu-Muslim violence, India's one billion plus do live in harmony), I do not believe this analogy extends to the state of Israel, as both Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter have analogized Israeli treatment of Palestinians to that of the South African apartheid system.

Another disappointing aspect of the talk was the perpetuation of the model-minority myth to describe Indian-Americans and Jewish-Americans. The AJC representative talked about the commonalities between both groups as being peoples tied by cultural ethics-such as hard work, family ties, and an emphasis on education. She identified cultural reasons as lending to the success of these two groups. As an Indian-American, I know that one of the main reasons I and my compatriots were able to succeed in this country had less to do with inherent cultural superiority, and more to do with immigration policies of the late 1960s.

During my parents' generation, the United States had an aggressive policy of recruiting skilled professionals (engineers and doctors) to come to the United States in response to a labor shortage. Most sociologists and historians who study the period would agree that the success of Indian-Americans in the United States context has to do with filtered immigration policies rather than cultural/racial superiority.

Aside from the racially charged content and questionable historical accuracy of the talk, I was most surprised by the fact that the Earth Institute, which generally sponsors events and conferences of high academic caliber, was included as one of the co-sponsors for an event promoting right-wing fundamentalists on both sides of the Indian and Israeli spectrums.

When I made an inquiry to professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, he stated that the talk was never approved by the Earth Institute and that an individual must have used the logo without the permission of Earth Institute's senior management. While Sachs is making a concerted effort to find out exactly what went wrong, it seems clear to me that at least one individual within the Earth Institute must have been aware the event took place as an announcement was circulated to the Earth Institute list on Friday, Feb. 9.

Whatever the case may be as to how and why the Earth Institute was involved in the talk, I was relieved to hear from Sachs that the Earth Institute had no intention of sponsoring such a talk. I was particularly concerned that the Earth Institute's sponsorship of such an event would not only lend credibility to such propaganda, but also tarnish the Earth Institute's reputation for rigorous academic standards.

The talk ended in a rather tasteless display of solidarity with participants indulging in spicy Kosher Vegetarian Indian cuisine. I left the talk depressed, but not discouraged. Despite the offensive nature of the content, the event has opened the door to what will hopefully be a more constructive debate on campus that will critique this one-sided Hindu nationalist/ right-wing AJC-style narrative of Indian-Israeli relations predicated on a common Muslim enemy.

To further understand the insane zionist masterplan, that involves pitting the Hindu world against Islam, I urge readers to review the maps in Redrawing Borders (to get at the oil) and israeli pipedreams.

2007-02-19 23:09. qrswave's blog