CORRELATIVE DOCUMENTS: NIETZSCHEISM AND AMERICA

Rafah and Guernica : Barbarity with an Israeli face, or what I would say to all persons of good will, including American citizens if I thought I had a chance to be heard. (January 13, 2002)

Do not spoil your victory ( November 22, 2001)and American Angels of Death at Masar e-Sharif (November 26, 2001)

EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW

By banning the political wing of the elected Lebanese Hezbollah party without also banning all Israeli parties and groups which support barbarous targeted assassination, Canada erred importantly (1). And, in so doing, betrayed the whole legal tradition of the country together with the constitutional provisions enshrining the Canadian citizens' fundamental and multicultural rights, that is by shamelessly violating the letter and the spirit of articles 2 to 15 and article 27 of the Constitution. This is clearly unacceptable and all legal means should be taken to either extend the ban to Israeli groups or to rescind the ban imposed on the political wing of the Hezbollah. It is a clear duty for all Arab and Muslim groups in this country to bring the issue to court without delay and, in so doing, to ask for the participation of other Canadian groups: this would allow for a class action proceeding and would unambiguously state the fact that the Hezbollah is not the main concern at issue here, the equality of all Canadians before the law is, notwithstanding what some self-elected fascistic "primus inter pares" might think. A Canadian fund should be set up to face the legal expenses and the Arab League should be asked to contribute its share.

It bears recalling that, as a matter of principle as well as a matter of political decency and diplomacy, no one condones suicide bombing, especially against civilians. But one should never be allowed to condemn suicide bombing without, in the same breath, condemning the barbarous targeted assassinations continuously perpetrated by the Israeli government and the incessant violent provocations perpetrated by the present Israeli government, starting with the war criminal Sharon's scoundrelous walk on Haram al-Sharif while Barak was supposedly negotiating peace. Israeli occupation and settlements of Palestinian Lands do constitute clear war crimes under the same international laws which some Canadians like to think they themselves helped to frame. No legal officer in Canada, whatever his/her rank, should be allowed to forget this simple evidence.

Immediate corrective legal actions at the Canadian and, if need be, at the UN level are an urgent necessity because democracy and judicial fairness in Canada is now coming under a double-pronged attack. First are the American precedents taken as convenient legitimizing pretexts. The Canadian Alliance is prone to use this sheepish ploy to mask its own utter vacuousness (showing once again its utter disrespect for Canadians laws and Canadian political and juridical mores). Secondly there is the issue of intimidation at the hands of "powerful" though demographically minute groups such as B'nai B'rith and the Canadian Jewish Congress. It takes a Wayne Easter to overrule a Bill Graham and characteristically mess up with the country's diplomatic position and traditions. But it does not take anything at all to entice a Clayton Ruby, a Jeff Rose or a Philip Berger ( see Globe and Mail, Dec. 6, 02) to loose their rational sense and their human common decency to accuse right-wing anti-Zionists (i.e all those who would recognize the sanctity of Israel inside its pre-June 1967 borders but not outside) of being anti-Semites just because they do not share their obvious and plain ignorant and simplistic equation of Jewish history (including non-Zionist Jewish history) with the recent history of the small contemporaneous Israeli State! The plain and painful truth is that we are dealing here with the shameless intimidation of political opponents and of prospective critics of right-wing Zionism and with the converse action which consists in mobilizing otherwise reserved and silent "bystanders" to artificially create a supportive "public opinion". In the December issue of Le Monde diplomatique, Dominique Vidal has shown once again the intimidating tactics used in France. In Canada, the right-wing, pro-American Jewish organizations and factions are so uniformly powerful that no overt intimidation is necessary: a simple request to actually do something becomes as powerful as a sustained intimidation. Even if Berger, Rose and Ruby acted on their own free volition, the deleterious context is such that they obviously did not take the time to give a second sober thought to their ludicrous, insulting and, in the end, suicidal main argument. In such a deleterious environment the voice of a Gabor Maté (Globe and Mail, Dec.. 12, 02) is as courageous and morally impressive as it is (publicly) isolated. My own, deeply thought through, contention is that, at a time when various scoundrels of various shapes and backgrounds are doing their best to rehabilitate a supposedly philo-Semite, overtly anti-democratic, Nietzscheism (2), the best way to combat anti-Semitism is none other that the pitiless criticism of right-wing Zionism and of Judeo-Fascism.

But this is another story: the immediate issue is equality of all Canadian before the law and the necessity to take immediate legal actions to redress the injustice just committed. Later, all necessary political steps should be considered, especially during elections and during the nomination processes at all levels.

Yours Very Truly,

Paul De Marco, ex-professor of International Relations.

Sunday December 15, 2002

1) the decision was taken at least partly on the basis of falsified - unchecked - facts, something Mr. W. Easter could not have ignored and which could represent enough ground for his resignation from a post which demand more impartiality and more circumspection. The Globe and Mail writes: "Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nazrallah was said to have urged his followers to "take suicide bombing worldwide -don't be shy about it." But the Washington Times, the newspaper that published the remarks, said yesterday the comments were obtained from a U.S. professor and it was investigating whether they were accurate." (see "Hezbollah labels ban as "grave mistake", December 13, 2002, p A1)

2) A complete refutation of this supposedly philo-Semite Nietzscheism will soon be posted on my web site at http://lacommune1871.tripod.com

xxx

ON THE DESIRABILITY OF A JEWISH "SEPARATION" FROM PALESTINIANS

AND ARABS.

If you were to ask a reasonably good first year student to comment on the prospect of the

present Israeli-Palestinian question, you would likely get three types of answers

depending on the student's emotive makeup or his/her political consciousness: A) one

answer would take a fatalistic view and argue on the somber likelihood of an enduring

and catastrophic status quo; B) an other would take a rather pessimistic view and predict

more bloodshed if not a new regional war; C) the last answer coming from an optimistic

soul well grounded in reality would still defend the prospect of regional peace and

prosperity: the only thing needed he/she would argue is some basic respect for

international law by all parties involved. Israel would unconditionally withdraw behind

its June 1967 borders and this would instantaneously win her an incredible pouring of

affection from all quarters of the Arab world and, indeed, from the world at large. He/she

would also point out the fact that the PLO had officially recognized the right of the State

of Israel to exist in the region on the basis of a simple trade off known as "land for

peace". Having done some worthwhile research he/she would probably argue in favour of

a shared sovereignty over an Urban Community of Greater Jerusalem inside the general

framework of Resolution 242 and he/she would even be willing to contemplate a form of

shared Palestinian/Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall, a mutually beneficial

arrangement to be implemented immediately after the complete Israeli withdrawal from

all the Occupied Territories.

You might think that these three alternatives would exhaust all feasible options worth

your time. However, as the proverb goes the "devil lies in the details". You would have

missed one more alternative presented as a serious one by no less than the good and

media-crowned Professor Alain Finkielkraut. Yes, the same Finkielkraut who is able to

say one thing about Yugoslavia one day and quite a different one the next day. Durkheim

had already noticed the influence of the "air du temps" on certain minds. Professor

Finkielkraut specialized in ethics and philosophy, of the kind so highly valued by

mathematician turn "epistemologist" Professor Sokal, as we all know! As a matter of fact

Finkielkraut, (the professor from Polytechnique, you understood correctly) proudly

advocates pure and simple "separation". In so doing, you have already noticed that the

worthy professor Alain Finkielkraut is as original and as useful as always. Of course, the

war criminals Sharon, Netanyahu, and probably even Shimon Peres during the days when

he does not feel irremediably "cursed" (according to his own words), do argue exactly the

same think, except for some light nuances not yet specified by Professor Finkielkraut. In

their minds, separation means an electrified wall (of shame?), which would annex East

Jerusalem. It also means the maintenance of some Israeli settlements and the annexation

of the Jordan Valley. In effect, in any versions of this truly colonial and Judeo-fascist

vision, it can only mean the creation of a Palestinian Bantustan. If Finkielkraut would

deny that these people are his very political masters, the plain fact is that they do make

the actual policies. Finkielkraut only tries laboriously to put an "ethical" spin on them.

Here is his song, in my translation (see footnote 1, for the "brilliant", concise and

revealing original text): Israel is not a colonial power; its regional wars are not forms of

colonial aggression but simply "national wars". The ethical professor Finkielkraut

generously advocates "separation" which in his ethical mind generously means the

dismantling of "most" (but not all) illegal Israeli settlements, despite the fact that such

settlements do constitute a crime under the Geneva Conventions. Whatever would be left

would be called a Palestinian State. And the good professor insists on the openness of his

ethical views: this would become a Palestinian (Bantustan) State beside Israel not in his

place!

We will come back to Finkielkraut "exclusivist" candeur. Let us deal first with the

concept of "separation". You might probably agree that it is not totally rational to

conjecture that the good professor Finkielkraut is under the spell of a silly "Ghetto

Wish". Idiosyncratic culture is sometime a powerful agent, yet no one takes Freud that

seriously, particularly when plain and stark reality hits, head on, days after days, on the

Hydra-like heads of exclusivit perceptions and wishful thinking. Besides, the ethical

professor is a man of the world and a media star! If he were to advocate a ghetto, it would

probably be one surrounded by high-electrified fences (!) somewhere in Neuilly or

similar neighborhoods where he might have some worthwhile highly-placed

"connaissances" and where, in any case, things would be totally kosher for his taste since

the original "modern" inspiration for these middle-class Massada actually comes from

brotherly American middle and upper-middle classes practices. Unless, of course, I stand

to be corrected, in which case you can trust that I would be reassured and would sincerely

value this piece of the new information! Since the media-star Finkielkraut could not

plausibly advocate a Yiddish-like "shtetle" kind of separation, it dangerously leaves but

one known option, to wit, a Nietzschean, exclusivist separated enclave, no doubt

permanently financed by the good American and European ordinary citizens, the same

citizens subjected to neocons policies yet continuously paying regressive taxes in order to

finance public services, such as "public education" where Finkielkraut and his kind can

(pretend to) excel, on top of lavishing financial aid to presumed non-rogue States!

Professor Finkielkraut would probably be offended if someone would inquire whether he

is sure to have really thought through the exclusivist and plain racist undertones and

implications of his "separation" theory. Yet, notwithstanding J. Habermas belated and

truly fake reworking of Kantian ethics, one feels compelled to ask, not so much in an

imperative form but in an astonished and frightened awe: would Finkielkraut be ready to

back such separation concept if it where coming from Hamas or, better still, from

religious or secular Western "academics" or lay, though not morally illiterate, persons? It

would seem to me that Jews and non-Jews, religious or seculars beings alike would to

well to immediately throw this "separation" concept where it truly belongs. And start

making sense in a reasonable if not universal way. What then is racism to the good

ethical professor and media star Finkielkraut. Indeed what is anti-Semitism?

The questions to ask the good ethical professor are these: since you cannot ignore the

conceptual political distinction between "anti-Zionism" (especially of the murderous and

Judeo-fascistic kind advocated by the likes of war criminals Sharon, Netanyahu et al) and

(non-Jewish?) anti-Semitism, why would you try to pass "colonial wars of aggression"

for "national (that is legitimate, defensive) wars"? International law and plain decency

would condemn your assertion without the slightest doubt if you have in mind any other

territories than those allocated to Israel by the 1947 UN Partition; and you, professor, you

cannot ignore this plain fact. There is however a sense by which you could claim a

"national" legitimacy of sort: it resides in the truly generous Palestinian and PLO

acceptance of Resolution 242 together with their recognition of the right of Israel to exist

inside the 1967 borders. But, good professor, this being the case, you could thank your

god if you actually believe in one or, better still, you can thank the PLO and the

Palestinian and still be decent enough to understand that any continued military presence

outside these 1967 borders constitutes, indeed, a "colonial" and, dare I say, (would you

have the chutzpah to contradict?) a brutal "Zionist and colonial" aggression. As for your

preposterous willingness nevertheless to keep "some" settlements, were you to use force

to do so, it would legally make of you a war criminal, plain and simple. Since it painfully

appears that you did not yet do so, you can always consult the Geneva Conventions if you

have any doubt on this matter. As far as the much abused "devoir de mTmoire" goes,

these Conventions constitute a very practical and useful manual, much better I would

argue than second hand and commercialized renditions (anti-Communist at that!) of the

"Holocaust"! Since you cannot ignore the philosophical and ethical distinction between

"singularity" and "universality", you will have to explain on what moral grounds any

human group, be it a specific Jewish group like the Zealots or any other religious or

secular Jewish community, can claim a right to "separate" from the rest of the miserable,

sad, rich and joyous common human folk! I will succinctly deal with matrilinearity in a

moment. For now suffices it to ask, how far would you be willing to push the notions of

purity or particularity of "nationality" which you wrong-headedly pretend to defend? A

philosopher like yourself would probably have overheard, somewhere, fragments of

Greek philosophy dealing with a go-between possibility immixing in the interstices left

between singularity and universality. Not "generality" the experimental partial mask of

universality, but "monstrosity", that is, what falls outside the realm of natural things.

Sometimes I try to reassure myself: the utopian and a-temporal clouds, where your kind

duly camped on the far right of the political spectrum as revealed by the sarcastic master

Aristophanes seems to be so well-mindedly lost, are presently so dramatically thick that

you probably can be excused for your sell-imposed blindness; especially since wrong-

headed (Christian) pity and "culpability" have so far spared you from the frank reactions

from Others, in particular from those unsettling Others who, in spite of all confessed

difficulties at times, continue to claim the indelible existence of an essential equivalence

between Self and Other. Yet the question should be asked: isn't the exclusivist view of

one's group, separated from all other human and neighbourly groups, a pure monstrosity?

And if not, on which ethical, philosophical and historical grounds could we

"exceptionally" sell "singularity" for "universality à and still be able to walk straight, if

not tall? Isn't the very idea that the "Jewish people" or "Nation", whatever that may be at

a specific time in history, is THE "elected" people to whom the "Promised Land" was

divinely and uniquely given, the summum of this exclusivist kind of thinking? By nature,

in its generic form, the true and original fountain of discrimination, racism and apartheid,

since history seems to show that a bad original myth can corrupt many diverse minds,

whatever their true ascendancy from their mother's side? The argument does not allow

any fake indignation: it has to be answered fully, if not in historical terms (theYugoslav

tragedy amply shows that history and politics are not professor Finkielkraut's strongest

domains!), at a minimum, the good professor and media star would have to concede that

the question has to be squared with in philosophical and ethical terms. An ancillary

question would naturally follow: a philosopher worth the name generally takes good care

to clear (and for non-media prone ones, to "make clear") their axioms and

presuppositions. The quotation by professor Finkielkraut produced here does not show

such a professional philosophical care. Nor do any other works of his, as far as I am

aware of. Quite the contrary: in the quotation reproduced here it is painfully clear that

Alain Finkielkraut "pontificated", and with a "good conscience" at that. Somewhat

tongue in cheeks, we have to ask: Has he lost his philosophical and ethical acumen or his

senses? Does he really know what he is talking about? Would he ask the Hamas to take

up the "separation" argument in order to hasten a definitive if not a final solution to the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Yet, we have seen that there is some reason in his folly. The

underlying Finkielkrautian logic is simply this: we, the "Jewish Nation"" are the "elected

people"; the Palestinians occupy a land that is rightfully ours, because god given to us;

since the Palestinian people are not reasonable enough to understand this "divine

sovereignty", the elected Jewish people has no other choice but to take what is theirs by

force (and "divine right") and cut off all relations with a non-elected Palestinian people

which, by generously being allowed to leave beside us, would nevertheless never be

living among us! I suppose if the French climate and social context were to induce the

good professor Finkielkraut to concede more settlements "outside the pale", as other

exclusivists with a good conscience used to say, then it does not need a great prophet to

foresee trouble between Science (such as it is being represented by Finkielkraut) and

Power (theocratically represented by Judeo-fascists leaders like Sharon, Netanyahu,

Obadiah Yossef et al and their accomplices like Peres)! Why concede anything at all and

risk the wrath of a fetishist god soon to be adored in a fetishist temple where illegitimate

High Priests would officiates (and sanctify approved communication flows, including

approves Judeo-Nietzschean philosophies)? Why stop there, good professor? What is the

ethical underpinning of such generosity? When pushes come to shoves, the good

ethicist's masters have already publicly said that they would use all their arsenals û

including those nuclear arsenals whose very existence constitute a crime and whose

possession is so shameful that it cannot be publicly admitted- against any threatening

adversary (Some hawks even go as far as to predict the inevitability of a new Flood South

of the Assouan Dam!) Because, the Jewish people is one people among many others, it is

not up to him or up to the sad ideologues it presently produces to dictate a solution. Like

it or not, any solution will have to be negotiated within the framework of an international

law which wisely got rid of "divine sovereignty" long ago in long, demo-cratic process.

A human historical evolution which (surely the good professor and ethicist and media

star must have forgotten it) simultaneously produced the concept and practices inherent

in citizenship together with the "spirit" of a vernacular which Finkielkraut should learn to

praise for more than its Académie's policed syntax, embodied in the proud motto of the

secular République, that is "liberté, égalité, fraternité". In this spirit underlying the

"universal declaration of the rights of Man", doesn't the good professor recognize the

definitive condemnation of a fake master and slave dialectics (kabala?), which pretends

to see progress where there only is shameful, "beastly" regression towards a pre-

Promethean world ensnared in primitive religious fetishism? In short, professor

Finkielkraut, how much are you philosophically and historically willing to risk to make

of Jerusalem the hideous capital of an exclusivist branch of an otherwise proud and

egalitarian people?

Some proponents of the suicidal and discriminatory "separation" "theses" have adduced a

demographic argument in a futile attempt to lend some credence to it. We do not know

that Finkielkraut is clearer on this issue than on the rest. The nightmarish argument (a

Jewish non-epigraphic version of the "Yellow peril") goes like this: Palestinian and Arab

demographic growth is such that, unless there is a separation between the two people,

Jews would soon become a "minority" and the Israeli State would loose its true "nature"

as a "Jewish State". Neither Albright, nor Badinter, nor Kouchner nor any other "Jewish"

"Nouveaux Philosophes" are known to have accepted such an argument coming from the

far right among Kosovo's Serbs, in spite of the fact that everyone would easily agree that

Kosovo is the historic cradle of the Serb Nation. Indeed, President Milosevic and all the

Serb and Yugoslav left had denounced such primitive and destructive "ethnic" rational,

arguing instead in favour of national coexistence inside a "multinational State" in spite of

the fact that Albanians had recently become a majority in the Kosovo province during the

last few decades. But as you would expect, the notion of a "multinational State" is an

entirely unknown political concept for the self-appointed media expert on Yugoslavia and

Kosovo, none other than our good professor Alain Finkielkraut. Indeed, this ignorance is

characteristic of all the Nouveaux Philosophes from any country who suddenly became

civil war "militants" in Yugoslavia. Together with the good professor and self-appointed

expert Finkielkraut they had no qualms about backing the new "Kosovar" majority's

armed struggle, thus violation both the UN Charter's and the Helsinki Treaty's provisions

concerning domestic affairs and the right of national minorities. Kouchner was even left

to preside on the deportation of most of the remaining Roms and Serbs from the Serb

province of Kosovo, and with Thaci on his side! In this instance, strategic, pro-Nato

reasons had the better over the alleged right of nations to defend their majority status by

appropriate means (separation today; deportation tomorrow?). The reader is already

familiar with the good professor chameleon nature: history is always present history,

preferably told by "divinely elected" masters who can choose the appropriate flavour

according to the philosophical and ethical task at hand.

Putting aside the nasty minds who would like to see Finkielkraut's separation and

national ghettoization project succeed, many sincere and honest Jews and non-Jews alike

do unwittingly fall into this demographic trap. The argument, though inherently

fallacious and demagogical, retains some plausibility. This plausibility is further

accentuated by strong social tendencies heavily displayed among secular Jews, especially

Diaspora Jews. Go figure: some Jewish girls are attracted to goys! Imagine Obadiah

Yossef and his and similar archaic crews taking notice of the presumed havoc created by

the interplay of these secular tendencies and the practice of matrilinearity among most

religious and non-religious Jews alike! Eros has suddenly transmuted into thanatos!

Could you for a moment imagine the consequence of a "tribal census" in these

conditions? Besides, occupational statistics might even end up looking sillier than they

are now, say, in the US at any level (and in France, mostly in the mass-media). Even a

mind like Vidal's seems to have felt the breath on his neck but at least he smartly argues

in favour of an inclusive integration based on non-discrimination between matrimonial

filiations. Whatever the case may be, the argument core is still exclusivist, and deeply

fallacious. Present numbers and statistics do not warrant such a demographic nightmare

(and present manipulations by some): there still are only about one million Arabs inside

pre-1967 Israeli borders. The complete shifting of demographic majority is therefore not

in the cards for today nor for tomorrow nor for anytime soon. Would this demagogic

nightmare have more weigh if the Israeli State in question would represent Sharon's,

Netanyahu and Finkielkraut's "separated" version of it? That is if it would occupy all the

Occupied Territories excluding a cantonized Palestinian Bantustan "State" living "on the

side", and reduced to the 20 or so percent of Palestine comprising more than 90 % of the

population corralled in overcrowded urban areas (3) Looking at the actual numbers and

statistics any objective mind would be forced to conclude that the demographic

catastrophe is not in the cards. Furthermore, any decent demographer would explain the

peculiar beauty of his/her discipline: scientifically grounded, socially essential, yet

methodologically plural and aleatory, that is, relying on many dependent and independent

variables of all kind. No iron-clad predictions can be expected, yet the discipline can shed

a luminous light over important social trends which can therefore be dealt with, more or

less successfully, depending on political will and economic resources. Yet, most

demographers will almost unanimously agree over one important general conclusion:

they would argue that a net increase in economic, social and cultural well-being of any

population, especially secularly minded populations, will translate into a sharp decrease

of the birthrate. Were the Judeo-fascists demagogically propagating this demographic

Israeli nightmare and the candid minds who fall prey to them, to recognize this scientific

conclusion, it would be clear to them that the solution does not lie with "separation" but

instead with the accelerated economic and social development of the Arab and

Palestinian populations wherever they currently are located, be it in Israel proper or in the

Occupied Territories. Yet, today, everyone can see that the proponents of the "separation

credo" are ruining the State of Israel in a futile effort to militarily crush an oppressed

population and to sabotage any prospect of economic and social development they may

otherwise have. Indeed, billions coming from external aid, including in the form of free-

trade privileges, are continuously squandered to make the everyday life of the Palestinian

people intolerable, to complicate their everyday movements, in short, to make life as

miserable as an colonizing people and army can make it for them. In fact, creating the

well-known form of silent resistance, which simply consists in taking a simple measure to

deny the oppressor what he cherishes most, that is the occupied people physical

disappearance. Judeo-fascism and an exclusivist kind of theocracy and the untold misery

they produce are thus the only real source of the demographic nightmare. And the

psychological Fanonian consequences of it all are so plain to see that there is no need to

elaborate further here.

Would anyone seriously wish to raise the specter of the "return of the refugees" after

Camp David II and Taba? They not only would be demagogical but also very ignorant: in

fact, if there was one single unrecognized success during these negotiations, consciously

sabotaged (4) by both Barak and Sahron, it would have to be the ability to finally treat the

difficult refugee question as a rational question having more to do with a search for a

concrete possibility of return for some and compensation for most, and a sensible long-

term immigration policy taking care of the rest. Although a difficult problem, the

"refugees' right of return" (Resolution 194) is largely a bogus, dishonest and

demagogical agitprop tactic when used to support specious arguments such as the

demographic nightmare adduced here.

There remain however a real and frightening problem. It is this : what exactly is a

"Jewish" State? Where should we be deeply pricked coming, for example from Ethiopia,

to qualify as a complete "Jew" in such a "Jewish" State? Nor should you take this

question lightly. In fact, I can easily and confidently rephrase it in the following manner:

despite Marx having been taxed as a notorious "anti-Semite" could you say that he is less

worthy to be a Jew than Obadiah Yossef, albeit a secular and atheist one? And yet we all

know what Marx himself thought of such spiritual narrowness as exhibited in such

"prehistoric" and alienated questions. Or, consider this other question: is Maimonide's

favorite criteria of Jewishness which, no more than Baruch Spinoza's, do not include the

reconquest of Jerusalem, less "Jewish" in nature than present Judeo-fascists willingness

to launch a world war of religion and civilization in order to rebuilt an illegitimate temple

(where in any case they should be the last to "set foot", even in a provocateur's way).

Surely Ernst Block would still have something precious to teach us all concerning the

"principe d'espérance", concerning the many Jewish narratives, including those prior and

subsequent to the creation of the State of Israel itself. As always, the real tragedy lies in a

propensity of leading classes everywhere to implement insidious and destructive

regressive strategies in order to preserve current privileges and sometimes in order to

lunatically reestablished old mythical ones, duly recreated for the occasion. It seems to

me, and the good professor Finkielkraut can correct me if I am wrong, that the liberating

hope in the concept of a Jewish "homeland" or of a State of Israel was to create the

conditions for the eclosion of all the modern attributes of full citizenship. Fortunately, it

was not the only way, Jews everywhere having conquered the right to pretend being

considered full citizens of the country where they chose to live and take their citizenship.

Finkielkraut and other like him are subverting (deconstructing?) this secular hope. Prime

Minister Rabin was not. For everyone's sake, one can only hope that the many

Finkielkraut of this world will not carry the argument. It would be a pitiful, Pyrrhic

victory.

Alain Finkielkraut! Beware that the world would learn from you. Unfortunately, there are

not many Stalin and Soviets left in a world where people like you could pretend to be

professors and media stars. A neoliberal, Christian-Zionist world is one where the Golden

Calf reigns supreme: cash and carry, lend and lease and no questions asked, even when,

in despair, poor souls go up in flame in front of 10 Downing Street! It seems to me that

you (and your masters) are blindly playing in a dangerous "cabaret". But I remain a

Marxist and have no taste to play Cassandra.

Paul De Marco, ex-professor of International relations

Richmond Hill, November 10, 2002

1) "Si j'estime, en effet, que la guerre israélo-plalestinienne n'est pas une guerre

coloniale, c'est pour ajouter qu'il s'agit d'une guerre nationale, dont la seule issue me paraît être - tous mes écrits en témoignent - la séparation, c'est-à-dire, en clair le démantèlement de la plupart des implantations et la création d'un Etat palestinien à coté d'Israël. A coté, pas à la place." in Le Monde diplomatique, novembre 2002, p 2

2) Isn't separation from Self (from Other as Self) a disastrous form of alienation,

more devastating than Abraham's mild form of "schizo-phrenia"? An alienation

in need of a strong dose of good old Marxist "recovery of Man by Man himself"?

3) I am afraid that the present European and Quartet Plan is much similar to this

Bantustan version, except that, in spite of all the time lost since Olso, Palestinian

are still asked to wait until 2005, that is until such time when Israel and the US will

have militarily convinced all Arab and regional States to give up internationally

recognized and inalienable Palestinian rights together with East Jerusalem (and

Haram al-Sharif) and together with the strategic Jordan Valley and the strategic

Golan Heights! In which case the future is dark indeed, but not because of any

demographic evolution.

4) By Barak, with his Jerusalem/temple ploy first and then by the war criminal

Sharon's provocateur stroll on Haram al-Sharif with the full knowledge of Barak

and his police (i.e. as later events proves, all had agreed tacitly or otherwise that

in the eventuality where President Arafat would not cede sovereignty over Haram

al-Sharif, negotiations would be broken and force would be used once more to

achieve this self-appointed and "divine" mission. Which explains why Barak

would have been ready to pretend to give up most Palestinian lands and even swap

some others, in exchange for the Temple, that is in exchange of an inescapable

war of religion!)

Note added on November 11, 2002: Perhaps because the case is so obvious I have

forgotten to mention one more argument adduced by some in favour of "separation",

namely "suicide attacks". I will not go here into the sacred and secular (Thoreau?)

rights of victims of oppression to defend themselves by all means deemed politically

necessary. Nor should I detail the Israeli government heinous, frequent and cowardly

provocations against an essentially disarmed people who is the object of officially

implemented feudal and racist "collective punishment" and "targeted assassination"

policies. I just want to point out the obvious, here. I merely want to raise the

irrefutable historical evidence concerning the almost complete absence of Palestinian

violence during the Oslo process and indeed during the long delays imposed by the

Israelis (and their international accomplices) to this Oslo process. In fact, during this

laborious process which should have brought peace to both Israelis and Palestinians,

the most extreme and politically directed violence came unilaterally from the

theocratic Judeo-fascist right, be it during the February 25, 1994 mass murders at the

Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron perpetrated by the right-wing and americanophile

doctor Baruch Goldstein or through the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin. The

sole honest conclusion is plain and simple: if the Israeli leaders really desire peace

and security, the only way to achieve them is through unconditional withdrawal

behind the June 1967 borders. This happens also to be the most rapid, the most legal

and the most human way to achieve peace, security and prosperity for the whole

region. It is also the best way to build a truly democratic and secular society for the

people living in Israel. The pretension to construct an Israeli Ghetto State vainly

sheltered behind an electrified fence in order to rebuild the Jewish temple on the

ashes of Al-Aqsa is sheer folly: it will not bring peace and security. Instead it will be

the surest way to corrupt the highest ideals, which could be derived from Jewish

experience and history. In turn, this fascistic election can only bring misery in its

wake.

xxx

ARCHEOLOGY, ANASTYLOSE OR IDEOLOGICAL WAR?

(Note December 2002: Archeology can sometimes become the field of political battles. It is most unfortunate but it necessarily seems to be the case where self-serving totems are erected in lieu and place of scientific investigation, perhaps because as Nietzsche clearly saw desinterested scientific methods and investigations in all fields including archeology has an uncany habit of being he best ally of egalitarianism and particularly of "spiritual" egalitarianism. An interesting chain of events regarding the nature of archeology and archeological methods and practices unfolded recently. It started with a timely article in the Globe and Mail concerning the forthcoming Bible and Archeology scolarly meeting in Toronto the begining of Nowember 2002. Because some of "Doctor" Shanks affirmations related in this article seemed so desperately hollow and intrumentalizing, I wrote this short little piece. A strange palnetary alignment, or a strange coincidence, perhaps even an impromptu surrealist archeological "cadavre exquis", suspicious minds might characteristically even hypothesize an obscure "machination" (who can know for sure?!!!) quickly followed which must even have baffled the good doctor Shanks himself. First an Israeli Joe Blow came up with a stone box bearing intriguing and diverse epigraphic marks. The box was perhaps intended to be the "clou" (pardon the coincidence) of the Biblical meeting when in fact some TV program had already shown it months earlier.Then the poorly packed box, after a politically correct touritic stop at the Big Appl, was damaged and its earlier cracks where thus exagerated. The media took the matter over in what I hope was a salutary embarrasing moment for the good doctor Shanks and people like him. Curiously it took a while for some people, even those professionally involved with archeology, to question why this Joe Blow was in private possession of such ancient artifacts, the more so since by his own admission it is not his sole known and priced archeological possession which he maintains in infra-normal conditions in various private flats. Notwistanding the authenticity (and the now almost impossibility to scientifically study the significance of the piece) the serious question to ask concerns the selectiveness of official Israeli archeology so patently displayed in this miserable episode. The second element is this: whoever tries to instrumentalise religious fetishs and relics dealing with Christianity should at least be culturally aware of the long cultural, religious and historical experience of the Christian churches and royal houses and in particular the Catholic and Orthodox institutions when dealing with potentially theologically dangerous icons and relics. Nothing is more feared than news potentially destabilising relics. Nothing should be more feared than variously mistaking the Golden Claf for the "spirit" (or conscience) itself! Le Goff, for example, has documented Byzantine flourishing trade in together with Saint Louis pathetic but interesting guilibility -which at least produced an architectural master piece with the Sainte-Chapelle. The protracted behind the scene theological battles around the Qumran rolls tells the same ideological story. Nothing is more dangerous for the preserving of unquestioning faith than dubious -contemporary?- miracles and fetishs as the Pope and his specialized crew might teach. It is always notoriously adviseable not to play or open these sorts of boxes! Studying them in a desinterested scientific way is more than enough - in fact the only acceptable attitude. Apulée is always a revealing master in this sorts of things.)

Dear Madam,

Dear Sir,

Between November 22 and 24 of this year, a "Bible and Archeology Fest" will be held in Toronto. Notice that it is not a "Peoples of the Book and Archeology Fest" or a "Middle East and civilization Fest" or any other non-tendentious appellation, but the Bible and Archeology Fest: In the present circumstances, the title itself is calculated and amounts to insult and injury. It is fraught with a reductionist intent, to say the least. The truth is that the right-wing Zionist lobby is even more powerful in Canada than in the USA, in spite of the fact that the absurdly (and unconstitutionally) overrepresented Canadian-Jewish population is but an very minute percentage of the overall population. And nowhere is this state of affair more painfully glaring than in Canadian universities. Issues of archeology have been fraught with politics ever since the Israeli State was unilaterally proclaimed. The matter became worse as time passed. It is now common knowledge that, far more than in any other modern country, archeology is anything but neutral in Israel. This unscientific bias is also present in many pro-Israel university departments all over the Western world. Today, at a time when various Biblical institutes and organizations (plain Zionist or Christian Zionist organizations) have hazardously "recreated" the supposedly antic utensils used for biblically prescribed cult and when these same organizations dared trying to lay the "first stone" of the Jewish temple immediately after Sharon sacrilegious provocation at Haram-al-Sharif, it is clear that what we are too often witnessing is an unashamed ideological and religious archeological war. The University of Toronto in particular has never shied away from lending its assistance to its worst Zionist academics, staffs and governors. Hence, they participated in the continuous victimization and culpabilization of innocent Christians even when these Christians where among the most dedicated resistants to Fascism and Nazism.This Zionist suicidal policy went as far as spitting on deported Christians', agnostics' and atheists' tombs in Auschwitz where all crosses had to be taken away in a planned instrumentalisation of the Holocaust at the same time as the memory of communist fighters was blatantly dirtied and their ideal characterized as a "cancer" by the likes of Sharon and Obadiah Yossef! Who among these pathological and perennial victims and their pampered offsprings can remembers that, after all, these same communists opened the doors of the Auschwitz concentration camp, at a great human cost for themselves and their comrades, while the USA was still ignoring H. Morgenthau pleas and cashing on its "cash and carry policy", soon to be replaced by a great reluctance to open a second front in Europe? The overrepresentation of these suicidal zealots among Canadian and world academics certainly does not help to reestablish the truth. They are too busy acculturing themselves with second hand millenarian theocratic and fascistic dreams! Other Canadians are not of much help either. In fact, because of their generalized servility and obfuscated cultural horizon, Canadian academics are squandering what would otherwise be magnificent material and working conditions. For many of these "congealed conservatives minds", the obscurantist but conscious manipulations of present day right-wing Zionists are understandably intellectually awesome! As you might guess, light depletion might have some role in this sheepish behaviour too. To give just one example, these conceited academics could have rendered a real service to both Israelis, Canadians and other peoples of the world by exposing the collusion of Israel's secret services with every known fascist regime since its birth as an independent state. And among these regimes you will find the US dictatorial and murderous puppets in Latin-America familiar to Kissinger and the apartheid regime in then overtly racist South Africa which helped Israel develop and test its numerous weapons of mass destruction, including its nuclear weapons. Canadians often fancy that the Golden age of their foreign policy was Leaster Person's invention of "peacekeeping". As any Egyptians who saw with their own bewildered eyes the Queen's Own Rifles landing in Cairo in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis with their usual British uniforms well know, this is but a sad and mystifying mythology. Old Mike had one worry and one worry only: How to save its two colonial masters, the UK and the US, from their willingness to come to loggerheads over the Middle East's resources with an interested USSR lurking over their shoulders! But then Canada is a country where the US could unilaterally decide to shoot the first shot of the Cold War (the Gouzenko pseudo-affair) without the prior knowledge of the RCMP or the Canadian government, indeed with their initial embarrassment (1), who were then forced to follow Washington's lead in the new propaganda war. Some people have no history and are said to be happy. Other have a sad history, epitomized by Durham and Bond Head and are only happy when smoking pot or smelling roses! (see Trudeau's cronies in the Senate and elsewhere). Past history cannot always predict future policies. However, it can hardly be ignored, especially since Canadian material and neocolonial conditions do precede Canadian political consciousness. Arab and Muslim countries should therefore be well advised not to ignore the work of this "Biblical Fest" and should instruct their own scholars to be ready to eventually correct what is been said there from a strictly scientific and disinterested point of view. The list of invited participants should also be scrutinized and eventually publicized.

Another reason why you should not take the coming "Fest" lightly is well expressed albeit unconsciously in a recent article which states : "The contemporary resonance of this dispute became glaringly apparent during the Camp David peace talks of 2000, when Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat repeatedly asserted that there never had been a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, site of Solomon's First Temple and Herod's magnificent Second Temple. Israeli negotiators were stunned.

The problem now, Dr. Shanks says, is that Israel ceded control of the Temple Mount to the Waqf, an Islamic religious authority, in 1967. "It does seem there're attempting to Musulmize the site, and eliminate any reference to its Judaic past"." (see " the Bible tells us so - or does it?", in the Globe and Mail, September 28, 2002, p F 6)

I do not know much about "Doctor"' Shanks's academic credentials. However, knowing the usual hiring practices in Canadian universities and the quality of the teaching corps when I was a student who could fortunately benefit from the lavish acquisition policies of Canadian libraries in the seventies, the type of offensive ignorance expressed in this quotation is not surprising. For one thing, even the war criminals Sharon and Peres know (and have come to bitterly deplore) that general Dayan refused to take control of Haram al-Sharif-Temple Mount when he militarily entered East Jerusalem. Besides, is there any objective need to mention UN resolutions dating to 1947 when dealing with this sorts of a-cultured minds? Let us simply state that one cannot cede what does not (rightfully) belong to himself. Were this "Doctor" Shanks, together with all the Sharon and Peres of the world, dare to argue in favour of a supposed absolute right of "original owners", or even of "First Nations" for that matter, that he soon would find himself deep troubles. The problem is not merely that such a ludicrous principle would destabilize all existing states and created the basis for an international war of all against all. The real problem starts with the necessary information (not to speak of the necessary scholarship) one is supposed to acquire before he utters deeply held believes. Or else what would distinguish a reasoned argument from a brutish (sharonesque) opinion? Have "Doctor" Shanks and his kind ever heard of Gilgamesh? Does ancient Mesopotamian history ever trigger some interest for even older cultural layers which could bring them, at least, up to the Neolithic age and to archeoastronomy, if we only take into account the period for which we possess some important cultural and archeological testimonies? Perhaps even the multiple cultural, historical and religious strata in the Bible itself do, indeed, escape the good "doctor's mind". But it gets even worse. Apparently, the numerous crackpots made in the Netanyahu's and his Likud supporters' mold, are not alone in dreaming themselves to be modern biblical King David. "Doctor" Shanks seems inexplicably prompt to take solace in any ancient reference to anything called "david" or "Israel", as witness by his alleged use of pharaoh Menapteh boasts since the pharaoh is obviously referring to a people whose "seed is no more"! The good doctor is a pitiful ally. More importantly, he obviously chose to ignore the fact that the land was already occupied when Moses was allegedly stopped at Mount Nebo (does "Doctor" Shanks ever wondered why Moses was able to see the promised land but not humanly enter it?). Why does he and his likes choose to ignore the more than symbolic (pre-Alexandrian?) genetic ascendancy of mythical King David? Why do these ignoramus by ideological choice choose to ignore Solomon's calculated murder of Israel's High Priest and his subsequent construction of the temple to better assert his kingship and his usurped royal and religious authority? Is "Doctor" Shanks among these crazed scientists who like many Zionist Jews in the USA are desperately turning to genetic manipulation and fake sciences to either find or recreate a convenient High Priest lineage? But, like Sharon, some people would not shy away from dirtying what they pretend to revere since, in reality, the object of their reverence is usurped authority and the Golden Calf and certainly not any respectful idea of spirituality or of god or, better still, of the worth of human kind as a species. Clearly "Doctor" Shanks and his ilks are just dangerous exclusivists who knowingly or unknowingly (given their idiosyncratic intellectual and theoretical practices and habits) foster useless dissentions, useless clashes of religions and of civilizations which, in the end, have never brought much permanent benefits to his own kind and their dupes. Had "Doctor" Shanks read the story of Gilgamesh with an objective eye, he would have had a better understanding of the valuable insights one finds, say, in the theory of concordance of Joachim of Fiore, in Marx and in Levy-Strauss, to cite just a few glaring instances of honest and disinterested scholarship and of a "human will to really comprehend" human history without "convenient" falsifications! Surely, as I have written before, Islam needs an "aggiornamento" and would have much to gain from an hermeneutics based on the primordial axiom expressed by the Koran's luminous phrase "There should be no constraints in religion". However, Judaism needs are more pressing: It need to radically shed a dangerous, suicidal tendency to exclusivist fascism fraught with only too obvious racist underlying but deeply held believes which always seem to assert collective and political expressions.

Another reason why you should not take this Torontonian meeting lightly resides in what was once called the "philosophers' plot" by old ancestors of present day Zionists trying to manipulate culture in order to weaken antic empires and to lay the ground for the legitimization of Jewish claims to Palestine and thus to engineer a return. Of course, a return which was to be crowned with the reconstruction of the Jewish temple. In reality, the said "philosophers' plot" functioned in reverse and I intellectually challenge anyone to prove the opposite, in the particular instance mentioned here. You would have guessed it but the consciously destructive, "deconstructionist", "methodology" which had some currency some times ago is not really new. The best example of it can be found in the plagiarized (Judaic) Sybillins Oracles ( see PseudTpigraphes de l'Ancien Testament, in éd. La Pléiade). Already then, the exclusivist, arrogant, pretensions were repeatedly expressed without ever the slightest hint that these early "doctors" ever owed anything to the cultures they then graced by their worthy presence. The problem is not that Ideas would be said to emerge in a vacuum as is the case with some pre-Hellenic idealistic sages. Only that they literally fall from the sky ( often via some form of schizophrenia, as Abraham, Moses and few others could testify). And, of course, the Sybils of the ancient time could not count on Mossad's free access to Echelon and other similar Western spying agencies or to electronic programs like Carnivore or even to the straight plagiarisms of uninformed searchers' private e-mails! However, the pretension to be the sole "elected people" transpires at every turn of every phrases and this pretension clearly marks the Judaic Sibylline Oracles as one of the first consciously manufactured novlang endeavour. The US lobby has not invented much as you could have guessed! True, the Oracles' authors are a peculiar group born in the Diaspora and forced to live among the imperial states which impeded their return to their promised land. Their despair makes them somewhat hysterical and increases their racist and theocratic tendencies. In different historical circumstances, the same estrangement from a lost promised land is known to have lead to more egalitarian messianisms (see for example Ernst Block. Or, better still, Karl Marx, since it is indeed always a folly to pretend to skip straight class analysis even and especially when writing about religions). It would be somewhat hazardous, although not totally unfounded, to state that the former theocratic racist manipulations have not served the Jewish communities well, whereas the later more egalitarian tendency contributed to profound historical mutations which ultimately served all mankind, at least in parts of the Western and socialist worlds. The "election" of the few can only mean the "enslavement" of the multitude and no pseudo-master/slave Zionist "dialectic", where the slaves are conceived as happily worshiping the "elected people" and his High Priests, will ever be able to turn the historical clocks to such a regressive and repugnant state without courting an unthinkable disaster. I generally do not believe in what I have called elsewhere a "truncated dialectical process". Not only do I recognize the right of individual Jews (and of any other individual, for that matter) to privately hold the religious beliefs he wishes. My own understanding of history and of human dignity leads me to believe that the necessary consolidation of human conscience, which is displayed by what the French knowingly called "libre arbitre", cannot be imposed from the outside. Laïcité, the end result of Ernst Block's narration for example, is not only a particular collective phase of human history. In order for laicité to bring forth all of its civilizing effects, it needs to be constantly renewed in the mind and heart of each conscious human being. This is exactly why tolerance and laic public education are both the starting and end points of a secular cultural and political system thought by and for a free citizenship and not by supposed high priests or theocratic kings fit for a subservient elected people and even more subservient "gentiles".

The principles of modern archeology, subsumed under the concept of anastylose, have been presented long time ago by the great archeologist and scholar J.P. Lauer. They are based on common sense and on the outmost cultural and scientific respect for the object under investigation and for the researchers of future generations who might either be better armed than us to understand the past or who might otherwise benefit from different insights. These universal principles do no more support the destruction of Haram al-Sharif site in order to built an usurpated temple said to "blind the view" than they would support fanatic new-born Druidic fools in their willingness to destroy Chartres' cathedral in order to resurrect an poorly know yet idealized past. Concerning the present tendentious debate over the fate of Jerusalem, modern disciplines, including archeology and international law among them, are quite clear: First there should be no constraints in religion which implies the establishment of a neutral umpire (once the califate, now the secular states) especially in a land claimed by three closely related monotheist religions descending from the same ancient roots. Second, no solution which would contradict resolutions 242 and 338 could be accepted without violating the spirit of all three religions involved and without leading to an all-out war of religions in which Israelis would quickly be outnumbered, especially in the over-extended colonial frontiers defining a Greater Israel.Third, an Israeli willingness to retreat behind the June 1967 borders, including in East Jerusalem, would immediately create such a relief and such goodwill among Palestinians and Arabs and generally in the entire world that a negotiated joint sovereignty over the Western Wall would easily become thinkable. Even a mandatory consultation process over the maintenance of the archeological strata of various epochs could probably be reached in accordance with Lauer's principles. For the true believer of all three monotheist religions this would indeed substitute the true temple of human consciousness to a fake temple made of stones, the ultimate idolatry. The Middle East, including Israel, could then freely concentrate on the necessary collective secular reforms which alone can guarantee the free development of individual consciences. What is more, Israel would then come to value the rich heritage of the Diaspora, the same heritage which helped propel secular reforms in Europe and which Althusser so profoundly and rightly admired in Spinoza, among others, instead of schizophrenically trying to negate it in the name of a reductionist and fascistic exclusivist theocratic suicidal folly.

As we can see people like "Doctor" Shanks are all too willing to miss the point. Whether they talk about archeology or the temples or even the Arch, they are always too ready to substitute the clerical symbols manifest in the external recipients with the inner ecclesial (in the literal sense of the word) content. They and their political masters do so at their own risk, since history tells us that sooner or latter the law dramatically irrupts over their superficial heads.

What is needed at this particular historical juncture is more fraternal and disinterested knowledge, not an armed version of a theocratic, fascistic state mythology. Let us hope that "Doctor" Shanks's biased beliefs will be in the minority during the forthcoming Biblical Fest. Some of us believe that there is no other true temple but human conscience itself; at the very least, all of us should concede that no real and worthy temple can ever be built on premeditated mass murder and collective enslavement. Unless one wants total war.

To conclude allow me to recall one of Jean Malaurie's non-assuming yet authentic and profound contribution to ethnohistory. Malaurie has humbly shared - one can say "was naturally led to share" -the daily lot of the the people he has studied like an equal. He was therefore naturally willing to learn from his hosts in the process. In his chapter "le tabou du phoque" (in Hummocks, Terre Humaine, Plon, v.1, 1999) the Utkuhikhalingmiuts give him the material for an exemplary human story. Faced with terribly harsh living conditions a somewhat isolated people proud of its cultural specificity is led by "wise" and "inspired" shamans to modify their previous eating habits and taboos. The community is thus able to survive and prosper. Much later, the same people faced with dramatic and permanent material mutations remains orthodoxically loyal to its new taboos and is therefore unable to adapt in the same authentic spirit as before. Its cherished culture starts declining and prolonged poverty does the rest. Complete extinction lurks at the corner. The Utkuhikhalingmiuts who could easily claim a longer, uninterrupted lineage than the most right-wing theocratic Zionists, are teaching us a lesson in human dignity and authenticity and in human historical processes which none of us should disregard. Especially when dealing with cultural and religious taboos.

Yours very truly,

Paul De Marco, ex-professor of international relations.

Monday September 30, 2002

1) Gouzenko's shameless offspring should be amicably told that her father, although through no entire fault of his own, has already cost Canada's independence quite enough. Nothing more can decently be added. But she could ask the Authorities of the United Sates of America why they did choose to use this helping small deciphering felon clerk at that particular time, when Canadian diplomacy had not yet made an Escott M. Reid one of its high-level "mandarins", in spite of his intempestive notes from Moscow in the absence of his superiors.

xxx

ECONOMIC SOLIPSISM

According to the Globe and Mail (August 28, 2002, p B10) Mr. Jeremy Siegel is at it again! Apparently he believes that ""Historically, nothing comes close to stocks returns"(...) The decline in stock returns relative to bonds is the result of the recent bear market. Even so, a U.S. dollar invested in stocks in 1801 would be worth $481,524; $1,029 if invested in government bonds; $303 if invested in T-Bills; and 7 cents if held in inflation-eroded cash during the past 200 years. And if invested in gold bullion, he quipped, "that dollar would be worth $1.09."". One thing is certain: Mr. Siegel easily competes with the various Merton, Black, Derman and Scholes of this sorry world when it comes to sloppiness with the initial premises and the initial structural constraints of future economic trends. It is not merely the fact that "?n the long term we are all dead" as Keynes used to say. What is at play here is a fundamental logical flaw deriving from wishful thinking and ideological blindness. Aside from the newly born United States of America, few governments did ever resort to bankruptcy: Thus government bonds are the safest financial instruments one can have and are priced accordingly. The opposite is true for individual stocks. In the long run, especially in a capitalist society, enterprises come and go although Mr. Siegel happily fails to notice the mortality rate among them or even their meteoric rise and fall provoked, among other things, by speculative bubbles and fads. He therefore keeps adding things up indiscriminately. General historical averages and individual performances are two different things even if you entrust your portfolio to an average housewife! For instance, many people have bought overvalued Nortel stocks in Canada and we all know that this company, which barely survives by firing its employees, does not have the domestic market to support its redundant existence much longer. Were Mr. Siegel to include Nortel in his calculus, he would immediately face the following question: How much should the present stock market procure to a Nortel dupe for him to recoup the losses he was forced to take since the bubble finally did burst? Then again, given the chronological structure of the process of wealth accumulation during an average lifetime, many such dupes will have to recoup their benefits posthumously, although they could rapidly spare themselves the expense of Mr. Siegel's next book? Perhaps, provided Mr. Siegel keeps at it a bit longer, he could go for a vacuous Nobel Prize in Economics: The only thing he needs to do is to apply some probability calculus to this mortality rate. He will then be able to devise a new and improved and simple questionnaire asking prospective clients how much real risks they are willing to take in the short, middle and long run. He could then sell the hilarious package to avid brokering houses!

There is one instance, though, where Mr. Siegel would be right: Track the majors indexes and stay absolutely put in the very long run!. That is Mr. Siegel's market analysis would be right if he abolishes the market! I would probably go for it. It is however high time to shift the emphasis from the stock market to the real economy and to the real purchasing power of American and world citizens.

With this sort of mediatic, post-1980s economists, it is a small wonder that the U.S. economy is the least efficient economy in the world. It continuously wastes around one third of the total world wealth in order to accumulate all sorts of structural deficits and to keep its two lower population deciles in relative poverty in spite of an increasingly longer working week. Of course, in such structural circumstances, an unjust war of aggression would be an obvious diversion. It might not solve the underlying problems but it surely will pass the buck on to others and mask the sad fact that the emperor, indeed, wears no cloths

Paul De Marco, ex-professor of international relations (International Political Economy)

August 28,2002.

xxx

FOR PEACE:

Open letter to the US citizens and to all the democratic citizens of the world.

Not withstanding all kind of desinformation to the contrary, the present Bush Administration has already decided to attack Iraq. The only remaining questions are when will the aggression start and from where will it be launched. A military base is already constructed in Qatar in order to protect a devious Saudi petromonarchy from well-founded accusations of active complicity with US aggressions despite the public rhetoric. Numerous American troupes have already been deployed in the region and contacts have been established with Iraqi opposition groups including some subservient Iraqi Kurds. At first glance, Mr. William S. Ritter's proposition advocating the prompt return of the UN inspectors in Iraq, without the Butler crew, which is notoriously known to have spied on behalf of the CIA, seems to be a nice proposal. In fact, if it were accepted, it would amount to the establishment of a permanent Judeo-fascist* and imperialist protectorate over Iraq. Meanwhile no one even dares to raise the issue of the great danger posed to the word by the real weapons of mass destruction possessed by the present day fascist and colonialist Israeli State. These lethal Israeli weapons include more than 100 nuclear warheads. In any case, the Bush Administration has already rejected Mr. Ritter's proposal. Yet, were it to change its mind what would this mean? It would mean that Iraq has two choices. One option is to willingly become a protectorate of Judeo-fascist and imperialist forces and continue to be headed by a circumscribed Saddam Hussein whom the CIA would still try to dispose of in any way it could. The second choice would be a all-out war to bring about a "regime change" inside Iraq, turning it into a lame US-Israeli protectorate thus opening the way to implement similar "regime changes" elsewhere in the world, starting with Iran. The warmongers offering such "choices" really want war. Given that Saddam Hussein and his regime's dignitaries have to choose between a dangerous "box" where Judeo-fascists and imperialist forces fancy they could keep them for the rest of their lives or a "war tribunal", The Hague style, where paragons of Good such as Sharon, Peres, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld et al. would dictate the law and the punishment bestowed on them, the conclusion seems inescapable: They, indeed, shall have all-out war.

The American public should be alerted: This will not be an easy expedition. It is not an aggression that could masquerade as a moral necessity. In fact, when it will start and bodies are counted, the American people will soon understand that their real national interests do not dictate that the USA unnecessarily alienates over one billion Muslims spanning the whole planet. The American people will soon understand that such a "war of civilisation" only serves to mischievously sacrifice their true national interests in order to allow Israel to rebuild an illegitimate Solomon's temple over the ashes of the Third Islamic Holy Place, Harem al-Sharif. Some American Christians may very well fancy themselves to be more Zionists than some Zionist Jews because of their uneducated understanding of biblical history and hermeneutics, yet this foolish project cannot succeed. Were it to succeed in the short term, it would necessarily lead to a permanent and nasty war fuelled on all sides by religious blindness and fanaticism.

American citizens should also ponder the following proposition: given that scientific knowledge once acquired cannot be simply erased from the minds of an entire population, do they really think that they could contain the Muslim peoples, heirs to one of the world greatest civilisation, for eternity? For nothing else but eternity will do. And this lunatic endeavour would be accomplished in order to serve the interests of a few Judeo-fascists who dream to destroy democracy and the secular State, as we know them and substitute them both with a theocratic fascism bent on replacing democratic laws by the archaic revival of the Leviticus? How many American Christians would willingly submit their entire society to the regressive and often-inhumane practices derived from a moral code born out of a pastoral society thousand of years ago? This moral code might very well have represented a social and ethical progress when it first was instituted. But is has long since been superseded by a better understanding of the dignity and equality of all human beings and their intimate relations with their conscience or, as some would have it, with spirituality. Democratic declarations of rights might have partially derived from these earlier (religious) codes yet they no longer can be subsumed under them. They represent a higher democratic and ethical achievement. How much different from the Hammurabi Code and the Sharia do American Christians think the Leviticus really is? Furthermore, it is a respected tenet of democracy that what might be feasible on a personal level often proves devastating if forced onto the political and social levels. Perhaps American Christians should stop listening to their interested preachers and do some reading of their own, in the text: It never hurts. They could then ask themselves whether they prefer to have their public (as opposed to their private) lives ruled by the Hammurabi Code, the Leviticus, the Sharia or the American Constitution and its worthy Amendments! A theocratic, Judeo-fascist and imperialistic aggression against Iraq might be worthy of some present day right wing Israelis, it is not worthy of the American people and of their secular democracy. In fact, an aggression against Iraq does represent a direct aggression against the most cherished American values even though the mass media and their present day owners are doing a splendid job to obfuscate such an obvious truth.

In so far as there is an armament problem in the Middle East, the only way to solve it while at the same time furthering regional peace and stability would be to entice Iraq to actively participate in a regional control of armament treaty. This regional accord would apply to all the regional players including Israel. Such a treaty would provide for negotiated and intrusive inspections among all the signatories. For the first ten years of the implementation of such a regional treaty, the signatories would accept the dangerous fiction that Israel does not possess nuclear weapons. Instead, these nuclear weapons would be stored in one or two facilities that would be supervised by joint American-Israeli teams. After this ten years delay, unless an agreement is reached with the other Middle-East partners, a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency would join this American-Israeli team; it would, however, possess special powers to enforce the secure maintenance of these obsolete weapons. The preliminary conference leading to the negotiation of this regional control of armament treaty should be called immediately. An Israeli refusal to participate would lead to the automatic severance of all economic and military aid. An Iraqi agreement to participate would in turn lead to the complete lifting of all sanctions and to a negotiated return of the UN inspectors whose mandate would be automatically suspended after one year if no significant progress were accomplished at the control of armament table. Hopefully these UN inspectors would soon be replaced by regional inspectors in the framework of the control of armament treaty discussed here. The immediate opening of such a conference with the strong backing of the USA and of the other members of the UN Security Council would also provoke a salutary change of mind among Israeli citizens and among their democratically elected representatives. The clear cut international disowning of the worst theocratic and Judeo-fascist practices would quickly lead to a just settlement of the Palestinian issue and other issues related to Israel odious disregard for international laws and in particular for the UN Resolutions 242 and 338.

I have already said that a misguided theocratic and imperialistic aggression against Iraq would not be an easy adventure. Here are some fundamental reasons why. The present US policy, manipulated, as it is by Judeo-fascist considerations foreign to American interests, is guilty of what I have to call "diplomatic stupidity". It offers utter destruction to an aggrieved regime and to an aggrieved population without providing for a single decent escape route. The lunatic project to reconstruct the Jewish temple is the sole reason for such a diplomatic stupidity: There is no other conceivable reason despite all the demagogy churned out by the warmongers. You can therefore be sure that, if it were forced to do so, the Iraqi regime will defend itself with the outmost courage and ferocity. Contrary to the US, who is now mistakenly believing that its most recent military successes can cheaply be duplicated everywhere in the world, it has learned the lessons of its military defeat during Desert Storm. The American overconfident believes are based on a very silly delusion. Any lay person can clearly see that the relatively easy walk in Afghanistan was due to the fact that the US, the Saudis, the Pakistanis and probably Osama bin Laden himself had obviously done everything in their power beforehand to disarm the poor and misled fighters of al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden, as you might recall, was a CIA and Saudi agent who did not hesitate to meet with CIA representatives in a Gulf hospital just before the invasion of Afghanistan started. Thus, not one single shoulder-held Stinger missile or any other type of ground to air shoulder-held missile was available to these trapped "blowbacks". Yet we all know the devastating effect of these small and relatively cheap weapons upon the Soviet invasion army. Saddam Hussein by using techniques such as mobile Maginot lines can force a long protracted war. Air bombing alone will not destroy the regime and in any case would need to last for a few months before it starts hurting. In these few precious months the theocratic Judeo-fascist and imperialist forces will have lost the war and much much more. The only thing Saddam Hussein has to do to insure that this secular prophecy will come to pass is to rapidly proliferate some small and efficient weapons such as shoulder-held ground to air missiles. He then will likely back this direct military initiative with the proliferation of military knowledge (say ballistic and explosive know-how) and with a good dose of information about the duplicity of the Saudis and, in general, the duplicity of all the other Gulf petromonarchies. If the Iraqi leader is as cunning as Judeo-fascists make him out to be, he will have already put into place the logistic necessary to proliferate. Places such as the tribal zone at the Afghan/Pakistan border will have received special attention. And other places too, including the Philippines and Indonesia and possibly some African countries such as Sudan and Somalia. With the equivalent of a few hundreds Stinger missiles and a good demonstration of the high plausibility of bin Laden duplicity, Saddam Hussein can both gain foot soldiers, win his war and destroy the arrogance of both Israel and the USA. And he can accomplish this feat in no other place than in Afghanistan, a fitting "ruse of history". The other guerrilla theatres will only serve to keep the USA generals infatuated with the theory of the "use of overwhelming power" on their "intellectual" tiptoes. Except, of course, for the immediate regional Iraqi proxies. Given some strong guerrilla actions, these proxies can very well induce the best Israeli "minds" to quickly return to healthier conceptions instead of dangerously following the racist and theocratic nightmarish adventure imagined by the self-elected Judeo-fascists who pretend to continue with the physical pastoralisation of the secular Iraqi State and of any Arab and Muslim State which might dare oppose the destruction of Haram al-Sharif. For instance, such healthier conceptions are embodied in the concept of a democratic "gathering Tent" in lieu of an usurped temple; or in the utter respect for modern archaeological principles when dealing with old monuments; or in the creation of a joint sovereignty over an Urban Community of Jerusalem once Jerusalem East will have been returned to the Palestinians. Indeed if the Israeli Judeo-fascists persist in their occupation of lands which do not belong to them, these proxy forces can quickly make live unliveable for them. If the Sharon of this word raise the antes, with the right small but appropriate weapons they themselves will raise them sevenfold for them until they retreat beyond the June 1967 borders. Right now these Judeo-fascists and their American neophyte imitators are getting the wrong impression simply because the Palestinians are kept utterly disarmed. This misperception is reinforced because other forces such as might be found in Lebanon have not yet decided that the moment has arrived to open the northern front. Nevertheless, all would be well advised to remember that what can be delivered inaccurately with Scud missiles can more accurately be delivered by smaller weapons such as the well-named katiushka!

As for the Iraqi Kurds, they have no real desire to become proxies of Judeo-fascist forces and will therefore be offered a large autonomy inside a federal and modern Iraq. However, were they to be forced into another rebellion against their own interests, they would again have signed their own fate. This is because, in strict military terms, they would preventively become the first large-scale victims of such a Judeo-fascist aggression; and unfortunately, in the present regional context, they would neither be welcomed in Turkish Kurdistan nor in Iranian Kurdistan. If they really value their national rights they soon will send the Judeo-fascist and imperialist warmongers to hell. As far as Iran is concerned, it already knows that it is next on the infamous "list". Iranians will therefore most likely adopt a neutral and friendly attitude towards Iraq. At the same time they will probably start to proliferate on their own to insure that, in case of an Iraqi defeat, the Judeo-fascist and imperialist forces would be so tied down in other places and in particular in Afghanistan that they would shiver at the mere thought of attacking Iran.

Furthermore one should keep in mind the domestic vulnerability of many Arab and Muslim States. In the eventuality of a war against Iraq the lower and middle ranks of their armies and intelligence's services might well come to the conclusion that the survival of their countries resides in a military coup similar to the coup which helped modernise Portugal in the seventies but with an Arabic spin. This is most likely at a time when disarmed Palestinians are massacred daily with the active complicity of a biased international community. In other words, in order to avoid long and murderous civil and religious wars for the sole sake of Israel and the USA, these officers might very well decide to imitate the great Gamal Abdul Nasser. Instead of a permanent fratricidal struggle they might then opt for secular and modern States which would cut all ties with both Israel and the USA and seek their salvation in the creation of an Arabic and Muslim Common Market looking to Asia for its investments and for its export markets. At this stage, even the pro-Israeli camarilla unfortunately still powerful inside the Russian Foreign ministry will be in great peril since no one has really forgotten the active role it played when it backed the infamous fifth colonne which helped destroy the USSR and which would have continued to destroy the Russian Federation in order to sell the Gaspian and Asian oil to Unocal and others foreign interests. The rulers of the Kremlin would then finally understand that the fate - if not the Manifest destiny - of their Federation remains to be a true multinational state and preferably an Eurasian one.

To sum up: This war against Iraq has the potential to turn into many Vietnams in one single shot. And once mayhem starts who could guaranty the invulnerability of Jews in the USA and of American citizens all over the world? I think it would be disingenuous to answer Tom Ridge and his silly and liberticide Homeland Security Agency since, up until now, it mainly seemed to have fought against the deleterious effects of its own machinations and desinformation! But remember, the main message coming from the US Revolution and Constitution is that if a man is worth a shekel then every other man is worth as much. This message has, I believe, universal value. When pushed to the brink those who were thought to be among the lasts soon give concrete testimony that they, in fact, were always among the really deserving firsts.

Should I hope that my analysis be wrong or at least too pessimistic? History will soon tell. Meanwhile, I strongly believe that no stone should be left unturned in order to avoid an imperialist war which can only be desired by accomplished scoundrels, blind fools or both.

Truly Yours,

Paul De Marco, ex-professor of International Relations.

Monday, August 19, 2002

* on the concept of "exclusivist ideologies" see "le lit du néo-fascisme", in the Fascisme et nazisme section of the web site http://lacommune1871.tripod.com

xxx

RAFAH AND GUERNICA: BARBARITY WITH AN ISRAELI FACE

WHAT I WOULD SAY TO ALL PERSONS OF GOOD WILL, INCLUDING AMERICAN

CITIZENS IF I THOUGHT I HAD A CHANGE TO BE HEARD

(Unpublished) Letter to the Editor

When Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia, the courageous Haitian ambassador representing the first Black independent Republic in history warned the other members of the Society of Nations that their cowardly inaction would cost them dearly in the future. What Sharon is perpetrating now against the Palestinian people is similar to the crimes committed by the fascist occupying forces in Ethiopia. The Destruction of Rafah is similar to the fascist destruction of Guernica. Condoning such Israeli actions would amount to stabbing democracy and humanism in the back, yet again.

Judeo-Fascism showed its ugly nature many time before. As we all know, Sharon's military prowess culminated in the massacres of Sabra and Shatila. Lately, Sharon did not hesitate to show the world his theocratic fascistic intolerance through his pretension to tell Christians, Jews and Moslems and others alike when and where to attend religious services even during Christmas and other holy days. Now he is showing the world again that he will not shy away from beastly attacks on unarmed civilians. We should ask ourselves : How does the rape of the city of Rafah differ from the fascist aggression against Guernica? According to the UNRWA more than 54 houses were demolished throwing 520 persons to the street, 300 children among them. Other sources put the toll even higher. Concurrently Israeli bulldozers attacked Gaza international airport while Israeli missiles hit a fishing port.

Why such insane and gratuitous barbarity?

Simply because Sharon and his government are a criminal bunch of the lowest fascists and criminal provocateurs that ever existed. Whatever the excuses and the propaganda used, their aim is crystal clear: doing away with the legitimate and democratically elected Palestinian National Authority in order to annex the Palestinian remaining territories and create a Greater Israel with Jerusalem as the capital where Solomon's temple would be rebuilt on the ashes of Al Aqsa Mosque.

Arafat had just demonstrated considerable courage and wisdom by calling for a ceasefire. On that basis the American envoy A. Zinni was due to the region to restart the peace process. For the present Israeli fascists the possibility to restart the peace process had to be preventively destroyed. The means to achieve this end? One more provocation. This time it was the illegal boarding and arrest of the boat Karine-A, in international waters. The timing was calculated for maximum effect as were the explanatory chaplets of lies accusing President Arafat in an attempt to still delegitimize him. The Israeli fascists knew they could count on U.S. complicity: In fact, Mr. Powell knows very well that Sharon's version of the facts is contradicted by the Lloyd's List declarations, both on January 7 and January 9, 2002, which make it clear that the identity of the actual owner of the boat is not ascertained due to the fact that it was selling under a Tonga's flag; he also understands the timing of this cowardly provocation. In fact, wrongly thinking that it might help the peace process instead of playing into the self-contented classes acritical prime-time voyeurism, Mr. Powell agreed to point to the Palestinian authority while taking care to exonerate President Arafat himself. More importantly, Sharon knew that his provocation would cause some sort of reaction from Palestinian freedom fighters giving him the timely pretext he needed to humiliate Zinni and with him the entire International Community.

Whatever one may think of the Palestinian reaction, it was obviously measured: it was aimed at the soldiers of an occupying force. As such, while it has perhaps blindly fallen in Sharon's trap, it is not against the natural right people have to resist occupation. This, then, was the pretext for the barbaric actions on Rafah, Gaza and elsewhere.

Mr. Powell is dead wrong when he defends this brutal aggression as "defensive actions". He knows it is not! But there is more. He and the Administration he belongs to are encouraging the entire Israeli people to dishonor themselves by accepting the murderous actions of their present fascist government.

The U.S. Administration as well as all the International Community should pause to reflect on the meaning of justice and barbarity. In fact, if you were to search for a parallel to the present Israeli method , you would have to look directly, not at the known fascist regimes but at the German Nazi practice of collectively and blindly punishing a civilian population which had nothing to do directly with the attacks by the Resistance fighters on the German occupation army. This method is the usual hallmark of beastly obscurantism and barbarity. The UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross have belatedly started to understand what is at stake here when they both declared that collective punishment is forbidden and contrary to the Geneva Conventions. The U.S. should immediately follow on their steps or risk dishonoring itself.

This should be taken seriously. If the U.S. ever hopes to have any legitimacy in its war against terrorism can it be seen to trample on basic principles of justice and human conduct by backing the now common Israeli practice of barbarous fascistic collective punishment? In the end, American citizens and the citizens of the whole world will not tolerate it. Unless, the U.S immediately acts to condemn these beastly acts and provocations, it will bear a huge responsibility in the ensuing unavoidable rebirth of anti-Semitism on a wide scale. The U.S. Administration should take its clue from the Israeli Peace groups and from the Nobel Prize winner President Arafat, not from war criminal Sharon.

A few weeks ago, President Bush had demanded from President Arafat a clear condemnation of terrorism. In a courageous and intelligent speech, President Arafat, a true national leader and a statesman of proven stature, did immediately deliver. Not only did he unequivocally condemn terrorism and suicide bombings, he also invited his Israeli counterparts to return to the negotiating table. As a true Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Arafat knows that there is no security in the region except through a just and negotiated peace. At the risk of igniting a Palestinian civil war, which is exactly what the war criminal Sharon desperately seeks, he is already doing everything he possibly can in spite of continued provocations and unilateral inflammatory actions from the Israeli warmongers' camp. Nevertheless, slavishly repeating the Israeli line, we now hear President Bush demanding from President Arafat actions instead of words. Meanwhile, with the full knowledge of the U.S. Administration, the Sharon administration is aggressively undermining President Arafat's courageous efforts by methodically destroying his ability to act in a meaningful way through its systematic destruction of the remaining administrative and police infrastructures left in the hands of the Palestinian Authority. Does President Bush and his unidimentional political advisers really believe that, notwithstanding the current hasty 'war'' on terrorism, continuing Israeli provocations carried out with the implicit American blessing would be enough to extinguish President Arafat's rights and the rights of the Palestinian people as recognized by international laws and by a multitude of U.N. Resolutions adopted with U.S. approval?

If President Bush were truly worthy to be the President of a country which, in spite of unnecessary and dangerous anti-libertarian laws, still claims to be a great democracy, he would immediately insure that President Arafat gets all the possible means he needs to implement his stated policy with every chance of success. Including freedom of movement. This could be done in two ways. Either the U.S. Administration immediately and unequivocally asks the Israeli side to unconditionally withdraw from the autonomous Palestinian zones and immediately stop their provocations or the U.S. can send its Special Forces, with or without UN support, to liberate and pacify the Occupied Territories. Unless it does one of these two straightforward things, President Bush will appear as the puppet vice-president of the war criminal Sharon who, in turn, will appear to be acting as the only true self-appointed American President dictating his will to second rate, subjugated American minds. Being soft with the war criminal and provocateur Sharon will neither help the peace process, nor will it help the Israeli people. Israelis, in their vast majority would probably favor peace and coexistence with all their neighbors if they could get rid of the theocratic Zionists who reject Rabin's memory for the same reasons that they reject President Arafat's offer of a "Peace of the Braves". Sharon might have been elected but so were the political branches of the Hamas and other Palestinian political forces. Sharon might declare that President Arafat is ''irrelevant'', yet we all know that President Arafat contributions will by far outlast his own. Sharon's wishful thinking should be proven wrong. The rightful task of outsiders should be to help both camps away from the extremist roads irremediably leading towards the precipice. By fairly sustaining the peace process instead of predictably backing Sharon's every pretensions, President Bush could change the whole dynamic in the region. Without undue interference in the domestic affairs of either Israel or Palestine, by just being fair and impartial to both parties, President Bush could single-handedly accomplish the ''psychological revolution'' which Prime Minister Rabin launched as a prerequisite for mutual compromises and peace.

Tit-for-tat vicious circles do not date from yesterday and we all know that the stronger party always has the false illusion to dominate this murderous process. Yet, it is not worthy of the President of the United State to embark upon a policy which leaves him and his Palestinian interlocutors wide open to the unavoidable manipulation of violence by both the Israeli and Palestinian extremists. If President Bush remains sheepishly hostage to Sharon's ''politique du pire'', he will have only himself to blame for not having extended an helpful hand. If he still insist on blaming President Arafat, he will be remembered in history as a miserable little manipulated bully who can only pick up fights with the weaker parties - and that, for the sole benefit of others!

President Bush is said to be a truly religious man. One can only respect a person with strong, private ethical rules of conduct. At the same time, he is the President of a secular democratic country. The history of his own nation teaches him that there cannot be any real civilized and democratic life without a clear separation of Church and State, both thriving to excel in their respective domain. Genuine tolerance among the different people and communities composing a great nation rests on the punctilious respect of this secular principle. What is required from believers and non-believers alike is a qualitative respect for other people's perspective rather than a quantitative, materialistic conformity with transient worldly fads.

Were Israel to really want peace, it would recognize that under all known international laws and conventions the occupation and settlement of occupied territories do constitute unforgivable war crimes. A return to pre-1967 borders would automatically achieve peace and security for Israel and the whole region. The present birth of a theocratic Judeo-Fascism, the real and only stumbling block on the road to peace, is predicated on the demented willingness of the present Israeli government and its growing supporters to destroy the Third Muslim Holy Site in Jerusalem in order to rebuilt a new Jewish temple where illegitimate new High Priests would consequently and willingly desecrate an arbitrarily designated Holy of Holies. A minimal respect for historical and religious truth tells us that under these circumstances what would thus be built would truly be the temple of the new Golden Calf! Sharon and his mouthpieces in the U.S. Administration are betting that they can enlist American overwhelming fire power to directly destroy any Arab or Muslim challenge of this positively crazy and sacrilegious objective. After the still unproved but convenient pretext of the Taliban, Iraq, Iran Syria, Somalia, Sudan are designated as targets to be destroyed just to make Palestinian East Jerusalem, where the temple would be rebuilt, part and parcel of Israel. But as surely as the Golf war gave birth to al-Qaeda, the uncalled for chain aggressions against some 50 or 60 countries said to be necessary to dispose of the al-Qaeda and related networks will only compound the problem: like the mythical Hydra, for one severed head many more will rise in its staid. Having failed to address the known root causes of the original, relatively benign problem, the U.S. and the world will inherit world scale pandemonium. All along, American elite will sanctimoniously preach to us that this is a war against terrorism, not a war of civilization, but to no avail. This folly must be stopped before it is too late.

Jews can privately believe to be the elected people if they chose to do so. They can also try, privately, to be worthy of their own believes. There is little harm in individual or private idiosyncrasies as long as they remain part of the private sphere of activity. But these privately held believes should have no political significance whatsoever unless one wants to shamelessly state that Jews form a ''superior'', ''elected'' race, an unmistakably fascist claim which Jews should be the first to take with the outmost precaution. One might individually feel a special divine calling and act on this feeling: yet, his freedom to do so stops right where the freedoms of others start. Concretely speaking, Israelis are entitled to an unhindered access to the Western Wall. Through negotiations with the Palestinians, they could even trade their unlawful occupation of East Jerusalem for an internationally recognized sovereignty over the Western Wall itself. That being said, nothing, not even a fascistic theocratic interpretation of Jewish history would authorize the permanent and unilateral occupation of any territory militarily occupied after June 1967, East Jerusalem included.

The world did not start with any single temple. The relatively recent, fascistic and theocratic Jewish narrative does not subsume everything that is worth remembering in human history or even in Jewish history proper. This history is, in fact, far richer than a Rabbi Josip could phantom. And it often shines with universal values and principles. Modern ethnology and modern science attest to that plain, undisputed truth. It is common place to see churches built over the ruins of old temples and old temples built over the ruins of older religious and/or astronomical observation sites. Whatever the case may be, no one is or should be allowed to mistake a container such as the Arch of the Covenant for the content that is the Tables of the Laws which, as legend would have it, were broken over the heads of previous Jewish fetishists. Neither the Torah nor the Koran nor any other religious text should be allowed to substitute the Hammurabi code, or some version of it, for the human spiritual conquests embodied in the Universal Declaration of Rights and the U.N. Charter. President Bush may not have visited the truly beautiful Chartres Cathedral. It is perfectly aligned and consequently its famed ''vitraux'' (stain glass windows) constantly play various symphonies of lights according to the time of day and the season of the year. It was, of course, built on top of an old druidic temple. Supposing that, through a very partial understanding of positive discrimination policies and incestuous letters of recommendation, a minute minority of Americans of Celtic descent were to gain access to the various alleys of power in numbers far exceeding their demographic weight in the general population, would it be able to persuade President Bush to bomb the secular British and French forces just to rebuilt a useless druidic temple over the ashes of the Cathedral of Chartres? Would it not be better to built specialized libraries and research centers to better comprehend this past civilization and better assess its contributions to human history as a whole? As demonstrated by the present wisdom of the majority of Muslims, authentically religious people all over the world, together with their secular brothers, sisters and fellow citizens should rapidly remind all the dangerous zealots out there that there does not exist a more destructive fallacy in human affairs than the bigoted attitude which is always prone to confuse the message with the medium. Even in unidimentional societies.

To give the lie to the mischievous advisers who always chose war and devastation against the best interests of the American people and of the human race alike, President Bush should immediately and generously do all he can to see to it that President Arafat be given all the disinterested help he needs to succeed in his efforts to achieve a ceasefire and a lasting and just peace. It would be a precious and memorable Presidential gift to the Israeli people first and foremost. But also to the Palestinians and to the whole world.

Paul De Marco, ex-professor of international relations.

Sunday, January 13, 2002

XXX

DO NOT SPOIL YOUR VICTORY

(To Northern Alliance leaders)

Dear Sir,

Together with my compliments for the quick victories of the Northern Alliance, I would like to submit the following remarks to your attention. You may find them worthy of your attention, even though time does not allow for a more elaborate and elegant exposition.

a) Always keep in mind your primary objective i.e. freeing Afghanistan of any foreign interference, in whatever shape or form, in order to finally establish its complete political and military independence premised on the recognition of the strict neutrality of the country by all its neighbors and by the whole international community. Make of the new Afghanistan the Switzerland of Central Asia. (In time, even Pakistan will find it possible to gracefully accept this solution). No foreign troupes whatsoever should be allowed to remain in Afghanistan unless they are invited in under a very conventional U.N. mandate, that is, a mandate which the host country can revoke at any time and which would spell out the mission in the clearest possible terms.

b) Do not spoil your victories by useless butcheries of so-called "foreigners'' or "Arabs". The hypocritical persons (Rumsfeld to name only one) who now encourage you to kill will later come back at you with second hand stories of the Holocaust, backed by their own "kangaroo courts". Remember, the punctilious respect of the laws of war remains the best way to complete the good deeds that led to your worthwhile victories. Myself, I would take the identities and fingerprints of the "Taliban foreigners" and I would extradite them back to their countries of origin. Then, these countries would have to finally take their own responsibilities e.g. Saudi Arabia. No prisoners should be transferred to the U.S. or English troops: let them preventively take their own (in their training camps, for example).

c) I have already expressed in a different letter ( E-mailed 09/10/2001) my understanding of Islamic culture as one of the main cultures produced by mankind. Specifically, an advanced form of a secular State guarantying the highest quality of Islamic and other religious teachings dispensed in the country should rapidly be installed. The rest would naturally follow. A federal regime would, of course, be helpful in accommodating various groups', "clans' " or "tribes' " particular sensibilities. This is in the interest of every one in Afghanistan. Otherwise, what you will likely witness soon is the hijacking, by hypocritical Western groups who were conspicuously silent up to now, of single, highly irritating issues like the "burqa" in order to later possess the necessary latitude to portray the elements in the Northern Alliance they do not like as "reactionary" or even as "terrorists". It is therefore important for the Northern Alliance to immediately take the higher moral ground and state, without any ambiguity, its absolute resolution not to take lessons from the Western States unless they themselves show the example: that is, instead of lecturing Islamic peoples, they should tell their Jewish and other councilors and their Israeli friends that all Muslims and all honest peoples the world over feel terribly betrayed by the shameful treatment inflicted on the Palestinians and will feel this way until Israel and its partial American and Occidental allies finally decide to fully respect international laws and to unconditionally withdraw their criminal occupying troops behind the June 1967 frontiers.

d) Judeo-fascists elements in Israel and in the USA have devised this "war against terrorism" as the only possible way to both silence the opposition at home and to forge a convenient pretext to use overwhelming force against any Arab or Muslim State which would likely oppose the formation of a Palestinian Bantustan or which would oppose the reconstruction of the Jewish temple on the ashes of al Aqsa. After the reactionary bin Laden, and always without any real proofs which could stand up in court, the Wolfowitz of this world are poised to bomb Iraq, Iran, Syria etc... The Northern Alliance should therefore use its present international legitimacy to deligitimize these potential Judeo-fascist and imperial aggressions. Neither the Northern Alliance nor anyone else in Afghanistan should condone such a true war of civilizations.

e) The Northern Alliance should express very clearly its solidarity with the democratic elements inside the Western countries who now face the rebirth of fascistic laws under the guise of a fake "war" against terrorism. Its is not only that terrorism is not properly defined under the new laws, making it impossible to distinguish between legitimate dissenters or even freedom fighters and terrorists. Rather, the problem lies with the establishment of a permanent police State, that is a State which wages war without declaring war (that is, without being accountable to Parliament and to the International Community and without any obligation to eventually declare the end of such a war) when the simple use of existing Criminal Codes would largely suffice. There was a time when many Western leaders were happily shaking hands with Hitler and Mussolini, especially in the US, the UK, and in Canada. They all dreamed of the efficiency with which a corporatist, rightist State could defeat their class enemies. Nowadays, they shake Sharon's hand and feed him and his ilk some 6 billion dollars of aid every year (some $ 3 billion each for the USA and the EU) and they all gulp and slavishly mimic the anti-terror advices generously conferred by Israeli hawks and war criminals. Soon, Western democracy will be transformed into a Palestine-analog where dissidents will have to play the role the Palestinian people is playing today. Then, and only then, will the rightist, fascistic elements inside Israel and outside the Zionist State feel happy: they, the victims turned butchers, will have succeeded in transforming everyone else in their own image. This should not come to pass. Democracy has nothing to learn from present day Israel. Nor does it have much to learn from a U.S. which institutes military courts to deal with criminal code offenses.

f) Finally, as you develop your middle and long term reconstruction plans, never forget that, nowadays, economic growth is increasingly an Asian not an Occidental phenomenon. A declining US and little, pauperized England can only survive trough military "Great Games" aimed at the domination of other people's resources. Even presently vassallized countries like Italy, France and Germany hesitate between this imperialistic course and an alternative model of development which would posit the development of domestic wealth as their "New Frontier" (e.g. the 35-hour week and the rebuilding of a strong social State). Do not tie yourselves up with declining Western forces only intent on playing their "Great games" on your back and the backs of your neighbors with whom you not only share a rich history but, above all, the possibility of a prosperous, independent future.

Sincerely Yours,

Paul De Marco, ex-professor of International Relations

November 22, 2001

AMERICAN ANGELS OF DEATH AT MASAR-E-SHARIF

The law should be the same for all of us. No none is or should pretend to be above the law lest we give up our cherished civil liberties. Because of its specific context, the slaughter of the war prisoners at Masar-e-Sharif is a crime far worse than the crime committed by American troops at Mylai during the Vietnam war. It does not bode very well either for a serious struggle against terrorism or for the future of a free and honourable Afghanistan unless the known instincts of the perennial "Quiet Americans" are solidly restrained by democratic thoughts and practices.

Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld may have escaped the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Yet, this dramatic event does not give him or any other American leader the human or legal right to incite to the cold-blooded massacre of war prisoners as has happened in Masar-e-Sharif. According to the mass media, President Bush, Vice-President Cheney , Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and many others recently relished in public in their self-appointed role of Angels of Death in their yet unsubstantiated and undeclared "war" against "terrorism".(1) Their public speeches and attitudes have created a nefarious context, a sort of sickness of the mind and the soul, in which the murder of prisoners of war has not only become possible but is repeatedly encouraged by the leaders of the admittedly greatest military power on earth. Unless we choose to live under a dictatorship, armed with military tribunals lavishing death penalties in the greatest secrecy, these shameful appeals to murder, reminiscent of a Mussolini, should be condemned in the most unambiguous and strenuous forms.

According to the media, a CIA agent was present when the alleged and probably provoked mutiny by the war captives and so-called Taliban foreigners unfolded in Masar-e-Sharif in the absence of General Dostum who was heading for Kunduz to help avoid the possibility of a similar bloodbath. A U.S. member of the special forces reportedly called the American bombers. The following air attack resulted in the slaughter of several hundreds war prisoners (around 600 men according to some sources). President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in front of U.S. troops, are all unambiguously on public record while calling for their fascistic "take no prisoners" policy and while asserting their in-human "preference" for dead Taliban and dead al-Qaida members. They are at the top of the command chain. Others, including Northern Alliance soldiers, are left with no real choice but to obey or face grave consequences at the hands of a set of murderers armed with newly instituted military tribunals which can act in secrecy without any public or parliamentarian accountability. Some notorious allies, including the British sycophants of Antony Blair, took the same sanguine view of their self-elected murderous role in the world. No democrat, no progressive person, no respectful organisation should condone such cold-blooded incitement to murder. The eradication of political opponents while in jail is more odious still than the targeting of civilian infrastructures and the killing of civilians. No stone should be left unturned until all the light is made on this revolting human and military "tragédie annoncée". Every effort should be made to ascertain the identity of the slaughtered war prisoners and to insure that this ugly military conduct which flies in the face of all known human and international laws, including the Geneva Conventions, should be brought to justice. The USA might find it politic to avoid signing on to the International Penal Court, yet other legal avenues do exist. The families of the victims should therefore receive every conceivable support to see to it that justice be done, in their names, in our name and in the name of the democratic, humanistic principles we stand for.

Democratic institutions and organizations should rapidly take note of the anti-libertarian laws now passed by the U.S., Canada, Britain and Germany among others. The struggle against terrorism is but a convenient pretext for President Bush as well as for the war criminal Sharon. Even with a sunset clause, no law which unreasonably contradicts the Universal Declaration of Rights or the UN Charter should be accepted. Instead of an acceptable definition of terrorism as opposed to legitimate struggle for self-determination, the USA has given us an arbitrary and open-ended list of organizations and countries which it dislikes! Furthermore, no solid proof has yet been brought forth to demonstrate that a greater international coordination, compatible with existing Criminal Codes, would not be enough to deal with alleged terrorists. As we all know, due to the American fondness for fiscal paradises, it still takes less than one second to electronically transfer millions of dollars worth of laundered money while it takes more than three years, on average, for European judges to retrace one single criminal transaction. The al-Qaida blowbacks' mischiefs should properly be the object of international arrest warrants rather than of an undeclared "war" unless, of course, the present anti-terrorism war is used as a pretext to impose dictatorial laws on all of us, legitimate dissidents or ordinary citizens alike. We have all been told by the Jewish right, mainly from Israel and the U.S. but increasingly and openly from many other countries as well, that we should all imitate the anti-terrorist methods long developed by Israel. According to these colonialist and imperialist new High Priests, we should willingly relinquish our civil liberties in exchange for an illusory "security", in a context where they themselves have fed and continue to feed the root causes leading to insecurity and terrorism in the first place. The American right immediately understood how such a "model" (complete with torture under "medical" supervision, targeted assassinations of political opponents, occupation and colonization of other people's lands and permanent disregard for the UN and for international laws) could serve its imperial and hegemonic purposes. Allowing for the bad conscience of some bourgeois elements in the West, elements who were not very active to say the least during the Resistance, the American right correctly assumed that it could easily be defended on the grounds of secondhand stories of the Holocaust and on the grounds of a red hot chauvinism such as the one which "naturally" followed September 11 but is still fueled with the same manipulating technics forged during the McCarthyist witch hunts. This, in spite of the fact that these ideologically tainted stories constitute a grave insult to history and a stain over the 6 millions Jewish victims as they constitute a stain and an insult against the many millions upon millions of Partisans and soldiers who died in their fight against Nazism and Fascism. The problem simply is that present day Israel is not and cannot be a model for democratic regimes. It is still a sick country composed mainly of past victims presently led by kindred victims transformed into unabashed butchers and war criminals. Prime Minister Rabin rightly said at the start of the Oslo process that it needed a "psychological revolution" to shade away the consequences of the damaging propaganda it had unleashed upon itself. Israel is a country which still need to be helped in order to fully recover its normality. True anti-Semitism these days takes the form of sheepish silence while the Israeli Judeo-Fascist right leads the whole Middle East and possibly the whole world towards a great catastrophe due to its pretence to occupy the remaining Palestinian Territories including East Jerusalem. Surely, the Taliban are notoriously bad; yet the Saudis, protected as they are by the unwanted presence of American troops, are as bad in their willingness to confuse the spirit of the Sharia with the letter of the Hammurabi Code. Surely, the Taliban are notoriously bad; yet, Rabbi Josip et al. who, with the help of the self-proclaimed assassin Sharon and the legitimization of the fake Nobel Prize Peres, are poised to take possession of all the Holy Sites (and not only the Western Wall) in Jerusalem to eventually rebuild an usurped Solomon temple on the ashes of the Al Aqsa Mosque, are much worse. And unfortunately, they are not just "blowbacks": through a mutilating repudiation of the long history of the Jewish people in favour of a new fanatical reading of scriptures and cabalistic truncated texts, they are sui generis. And dangerously so. In other words, external, friendly, disinterested help should come from the outside, in the form of neutral international laws, first and foremost in the form of the U.N. Resolutions 242, 338 and (with some financial help from the rest of the world) Resolution 194.

Unless we have the courage to speak out and to act, the Sharon, Wolfowitz, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and many others will not only trample on our honour with their odious dictatorial policies and cold-blooded incitements to commit war crimes, they will succeed in transforming the majority of us in Palestinian-analogs in newly occupied "democracies". A resounding NO should be our collective answer. We should not wait until the frightening and criminal advices of the likes of Perle, Wolfowitz and many others to attack Iraq, Iran, Syria as well as Libya, Sudan, Somalia and others materialize. As you know, these trusted advisers will not embarrass themselves with any burden of proof since their authoritative accusation is thought to suffice. As President Bush explained today, corroborated collusion with terrorism is not necessary since he intends to incriminate and attack any country which merely seeks to obtain or develop loosely defined "weapons of mass destruction" despite the sad fact that his own Administration steadfastly refused to sign any of the already negotiated international treaties aimed at controlling these dangerous weapons and despite the firm intention of his Administration not to renew the ABM Treaty even though this will necessarily feed a useless, onerous and dangerous new arm race. What they so smartly cooked up is a ready recipe to legitimize any war of aggression at will while silencing the international community. The cold-blooded massacre of the prisoners of war in Masar-e-Sharif should be a wakening call, a call for legal action and for outspoken democratic opposition.

It has been said many times: "Il n'y a pas de pire crime que le silence des "justes" (There is no worse crime than the silence of the "righteous").

Sincerely Yours,

Paul De Marco, ex-professor of International Relations.

November 26, 2001.

1) Although we would like to be able to characterize these statements as utterly un-American, the following samples are typical of the nefarious context created by this fake "war" against terrorism which, in reality, is intended to mask hard underlying hegemonic motivations.

G.W.Bush, who freely practised in Texas, publicly announced that bin Laden and his acolytes are "wanted dead or alive".

Dick Cheney said, among other civilized things, that he would be "happy to accept Mr. bin Laden's head on a plater"

Donald Rumsfeld has become quite voluble these days. Among other civilized things of his own typical coinage, he stated for the benefits of special-forces troops and their families at Fort Bragg, N.C.: "Well, the President's policy is dead or alive (...) And, you know, I have my preference" alluding to numerous statements he had made concerning his preference for bringing death to the Taliban, especially the foreigners, instead of bringing them all to justice.

The "democratic" leaders are immediately followed by the usual parrots: for example, Alasdair Palmer with characteristic zeal, allegedly wrote in the London's Daly Telegraph "Bin Laden is in love with death, so let the West oblige him". He did not specify which West he identifies with. In a more simplistic but revealing manner, Ian Hunter explained the real motivations and reasoning underlying the apparent criminal foolishness. Bringing bin Laden to trial could prove highly embarrassing. He then went on to say, knowingly distorting the obvious fact that no real, non-circumstantial proofs were ever published against bin Laden concerning the Sept 11, events: "And why bother? One purpose of a criminal tribunal is to determine if the accused did it. In his public utterances since Sept. 11, bin Laden has all but admitted his guilt. To put him on trial would give him a world platform for anti-Semitic ravings; even more important, it would give hostages to fortune." Indeed! Who created and nurtured this Golem? Though he cannot be complimented for his sense of justice, Mr. Hunter could be thanked for saying it as it is with his chosen masters.

Note that normally a person is not accused or punished before being proven guilty. But, apparently, all these nice, civilized, old-fashion principles are now being revised by the self-appointed new High Priests and their large retinue of obedient soldiers and associated suckers. (Sources: the Globe & Mail, November 22 and 23 and 26, 2001)

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I have tried to explain my position in the following texts: a) Camp David II: la paix à portée de la main b) Le lit du néo-fascisme: la multiconfessionnalité et les valeurs néo-libérales contre la laïcité et l'égalité citoyenne. c) Annexe: aux racines du nazisme.d) Camp David II: la paix à portée de la main.(see in this same site in the section Fascism, Racism ans Exclusivism)

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