Dehumanising metaphors in war on terror
By Iqbal Jassat
In the light of fresh debates centered on Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly within the United States whose armed forces are deeply entrenched in the military conquest of the region under the guise of the ‘war on terror’, many fraudulent theories are advanced to justify hostilities against largely unarmed and defenseless populations.
The same can be said about the Horn of Africa and the US-sponsored war of aggression against Somalia.
One of the concepts used to perpetrate these military adventures is that of ‘failed states’. The argument used is that the all-knowing West has to ‘remake the world’ in order to pave the way for democracy to flourish.
Millions of people have been displaced as a consequence of these military adventures while the American presidential candidates bicker over their potential moves in this game of chess, which is what the terrible results of the Bush administration’s war games have seemingly reduced these tragedies to.
This cesspool of greed by captains of multinational corporations alongside the insatiable hunger of the West’s military industrial complex is ignored or at best glossed over by their media institutions. This explains the phenomena of ‘embedded journalism’, increasingly contributing to securing public approval for illegitimate conduct by America and many of its allies.
Metaphorically speaking then, ‘failed states’ invite invasions and occupations. And those resisting such aggression in defense of their precious lives and properties can be eliminated through bombing campaigns – after all, the prevalent wisdom propagated by their spin doctors who have sprung up all over the world as ‘terror experts’, is that resistance is terrorism.
The war of metaphors has become an indispensable tool in the armoury of perpetrators, for it allows perverted language to conceal the human faces of victims.
Only the equally repugnant process of curtailing civil liberties matches the process of dehumanisation. Hand-in-hand these methodical operations have resulted in a breed of lexicons, which are used to hide gross human rights violations:
- Renditions;
- Guantanamo;
- Secret evidence;
- Targeted killings;
- Collateral damage;
- Precision bombings;
- Remaking the world.
As the Bush term nears its end, it remains clear that the ‘war on terror’ – though discredited and acknowledged as illegitimate – will be pursued under the watch of either Obama or McCain. Neither of them has given any clue that they are aware of the nightmare of Bush’s legacy from which people are struggling to awake.
Indeed the latest account of the devastation caused in Somalia by Ethiopian forces under American orders reveals the extent of mindless destruction characterizing the dehumanization of the so-called ‘war on terror’. A report by Human Rights Watch records the terrible ordeal suffered by Somalis as a direct result of misguided policies emanating from the Pentagon.
No matter how the architects of this ill-conceived warfare package their propaganda, it is clear that in the court of public opinion their efforts to strip the human dimension will not succeed.
Iqbal Jassat
Chairman: Media Review Network
Mrn exclusive new convoy to break Gaza siege on the 6th of october
By Tahir Sema
“A ticking time bomb about to explode in Egypt’s face”
At exactly 11am on the 6th of October a new aid convoy of determined Egyptian delegates and activists from all over Egypt will attempt to break the Gaza siege. They are expected to enter through the Rafah crossing via Egypt in the southern Gaza Strip.
This attempt to break the siege in Gaza is organized by legislative Council member Jamal Al Khoudari, in partnership with the Egyptian Medical Union.
Media Review Network (MRN) an advocacy group based in Pretoria has reliably learnt that the convoy consists of more than 20 buses and 60 cars at this early stage. They intend to stay where ever the authorities stop them; they have with them moveable toilets and tents.
The convoy’s sole purpose is to provide medical assistance for the more than 1.5 million Palestinians faced with a lack of medical provisions and starvation. They also hope to encourage the authorities to reopen the Rafah border crossing permanently.
The Muslim Brotherhood, an opposition political party says “the siege is a ticking time bomb that would explode in Egypt’s face.”
The MRN expresses its admiration for and solidarity with the Egyptian delegates and activists that have embarked on this mission to break the siege on Gaza.
The Rafah border crossing is currently sealed off. No Egyptian is allowed to cross into Palestine through this crossing and vice versa. However, Israelis are allowed to use this border post freely. Dr. Firoz Osman Secretary-General of Media Review Network, says “It is a perversion of justice to allow the Zionist occupiers and persecutors of the Palestinians to tour Egyptian resorts & provide cheap fuel to Israel, and deny basic humanitarian aid, food and medicines to a besieged, starving 1,5 million imprisoned Palestinians. This persecution of the Palestinians by the Egyptian Government is unethical and immoral by any standards. The Egyptian Government is deeply mistaken if they think that this type of provocation will produce security for the Zionist state.” Dr Osman added that “the Egyptian convoy deserves widespread support as it emanates from the ground in opposition to a tyrannical Egyptian regime in cahoots with the Zionist Israeli entity imposing the unprecedented policy of starvation on innocent people.”
Dr. Rizq Abdel Fattah of the Medical Union says that the date 6 October is significant because it is the anniversary of the “historic victory of Egypt over the Zionist state of Israel.” He added that “The Egyptian army was able to break free from the Zionist’s grip of the past and now they hope that the same spirit of resistance will prevail so that on the 6th of October 2008 the siege on the people of Gaza will also be broken.”
According to the organizers this is certainly not the last attempt to break the siege. The organizers are currently working with international groups who would attempt breaking the siege via sea.
The International Middle East Media Centre reports that in August 2008, two boats of the Free Gaza Movement, set sail from Cyprus, arrived at Gaza port carrying 44 international human rights activists in a bid to break the siege.
Plans to send two other boats to Gaza had to be shelved for the time being due to unforeseen circumstances. It is hoped that this mission will be accomplished sooner rather than later.
** For further comment or interviews contact
Tahir Sema: +27 82 940 3403 (Media Review Network – South Africa)
Muhammed Yassen (Activist accompanying the delegation): 0020102869848 (Egypt)
Dr Hazim Farouk (Member of the Egyptian Parliament): 0020105231629 (Egypt)
Read More »Mrn exclusive new convoy to break Gaza siege on the 6th of october
James petras zionism militarism and the decline ofUSempire
By Book Review – Clarity Press, Atlanta
ISRAEL: Good for America?
Criticizing and exposing the powerful public role of American Zionism in shaping US policy in the Middle East is the biggest taboo in US politics. Politicians, academics, journalists, prelates and ordinary American citizens who publicly voice their dissent are targeted for political purges, denied academic tenure, and access to the mass media and scurrilously labeled as anti-Semites by the Zionist power configuration.
Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power by James Petras challenges the claims of Zionist apologists who argue that the Israel power configuration is just another lobby by empirically examining several major US policies. The case studies demonstrate conclusively that today issues of war and peace, trade and investment agreements by US, European, and Asian oil companies and banks in the Middle East, and multi-billion dollar arms sales are all subject to ZPC scrutiny and veto.
The new broad definition of what affects Israel includes Lobby backing for Bush’s shredding of Constitutional restraints on his war powers. It is not merely regional expansion which interests Israel but economic and military aid and sales namely who determines what military goods the US can sell to Arab states as well as what high end military technology the US should provide to the world’s fourth biggest arms merchant, Israel (an arms export competitor) the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the US Congress has blocked trade and sales to Saudi Arabia, despite the backing of the US oil and military-industrial sectors. Thanks to its influence in the mass media, the ZPC effectively delayed, degraded and then marginalized a long-awaited report by16 US national intelligence agencies on Iran’s non-military nuclear program in favor of dubious bellicose claims issued by the state of Israel.
Building on Petras highly successful earlier works on the subject. The Power of Israel in the United States (2006, 4th printing) and Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (2007, 2nd printing), with foreign language editions appearing in Japanese (hardcover), Spanish, Arabic, German, Indonesian and Italian Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power examines how domestic Zion-Con forces can make a drumbeat for a US war on Iran even possible, given the current overstretch of US forces and public disgust and distaste for the war in Iraq.
While it has been widely (and incorrectly) argued that the US war on Iraq was for Big Oil, only Zion-Con demands and Israeli interests can explain the current US moves against Iran�threats, infiltrations, naval blockades, US Treasury-imposed sanctions on the entire Iranian financial sector including threats to global finance for any linkages policies which are contrary to the interests of Big Oil, US corporations, and the weakened US military. Petras empirically demonstrates that while the interests of the US do not in fact coincide with those of Israel, the effective power of the pro-Zionist Lobby gives Israel the capacity to replace the US agenda with its own.
He analyzes the ongoing Zion-Con confrontation with the only significant domestic counterforce that might protect the US from the Zion-Con push to war not the moribund peace movement, not the obsequious Congress, Executive, nor the AIPAC-fawning presidential candidates but, paradoxically, the US military, which is fighting back through its National Intelligence Estimate, and ongoing resignations and public warnings by top military brass. That the military’s success is far from assured in this confrontation with domestic Zionist elements acting on behalf of a foreign power is little short of astounding.
Israel’s military industries (which are central to its economy), the political leverage of the settler parties, religious fundamentalists and security apparatus, and the Israeli state’s dependence on multi-billion dollar handouts from the US treasury and wealthy Jewish militarist donors, mean that Israel is internally structurally incapable of accommodating normal peaceful relations with its neighbors. The rigid structural parameters of Israeli politics are transmitted via the Zionist Power Configuration into the basic contradictory reality in US-Israeli relations: a tiny isolated, militarized, settler-controlled state blocking economic transactions of a globalized imperial economy by forcing it into disastrous military adventures and economic decline, with calamitous results for the world at large.
As a result, over time the ZPC in the United States has steadily broadened its definition of the areas of interest for Israel, and thus the issues on which it will intervene. During the 1940s to ’50s, the main focus of the Lobby was to secure US diplomatic support for Israel�s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Its focus extended to Israel’s wars with Egypt and Syria in the 1960s and 1970s; to Lebanon and Iraq during the 1980s and 1990s; and to Iraq and Iran during the current decade, where Zionist interests now threaten what the IAEA’s Al-Baradei has termed a conflagration.
At a time when our national economy is in deep crisis, the Israel Lobby is pushing for a new military confrontation and war with Iran, oblivious to its catastrophic consequences for the American people. Major pro-Israel officials and politicians in Homeland Security, the National Security Council, the Congress and the White House are passing more police-state legislation to control and silence the growing majority opposition to the expansion of wars in the Middle East promoted by the Israel Lobby.
This book establishes why coming to grips with the impact of Israel and the Israel Lobby on US policy is so essential to bringing peace to the Middle East, restoring public freedoms in our country and taking back our right to decide not only US foreign policy, but our domestic policy as well, in the interests of the vast majority of the American people.
Clarity Press: Publisher on Global Issues, Human Rights, Social Justice and Ethnic Relations
Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power can be ordered from Clarity Press, Inc., Ste. 469, 3277 Roswell Rd. NE, Atlanta, GA. 30305.
Read More »James petras zionism militarism and the decline ofUSempire