Pranab Kanti Basu

The Myth

There is a wonderful sentiment warming the hearts of global intelligentsia. It is the glorious feeling that we have attained the age of the empire without an emperor, that it is truly the age of globalisation where empire does not imply the exercise of the sovereignty of one state over another. With the triumph of globalised capital the whole world has accepted the economic, moral and ethical supremacy of a homogeneous world order based prominently on individualism and the ethics of the market. The days of fighting the imperialist centre and its camp followers are over. So the proper strategy of the down and out should be to accept the empire and seek to end the discriminatory practices of empire operating to their disadvantage. The workers, for example, who are confined by various laws and regulations within the bounds of a nation state, should demand global citizenship.

This feeling of international fraternity persists among the intellectuals in spite of the genocide being perpetrated by the defenders of the faith, in spite of terrible racial and religious killings all around the world. This faith is understandable. The global intellectuals, the diaspora or the semi diasporic elements have never been so globally mobile before – the third world intellectuals peddling their differences from the first world and the first world intellectuals peddling their sympathy and patronage are having it good like never before. Perhaps another reason for their rhapsodies about the world order is that with the ascendancy of global capital there has been a homogenisation of ruling cultures like never before. This in turn has led to the homogenisation of curriculum across nations, particularly in the field of higher education. This has opened up the accessibility of the global educator’s market – with the attendant magical amounts of forex earnings for the savvy intellectuals.

The Reality

Just a little cautious look at what is happening around shows up the claims of a global order for what it is – a part of the ideological apparatus of global capital. The various versions of this vision reinforce the feeling of inevitability of the order of global capital that has percolated all the capillaries of our existence. Let us note in passing that one of the co-authors of the book that really sold this idea globally (becoming a global best seller in the process) has long been an icon of anti-capitalist militancy and radicalism in many circles (Negri and Hardt, 2000). This is not to ridicule the integrity of the man, but to highlight the fact that the leftists have also quietly conceded the inevitability of the triumph of global capital and hence of the need to think of strategies of coexistence and compromise rather than of counter hegemonic practice and confrontation.

The focus of this article is on thinking counter hegemonic practices/strategies and also simultaneously thinking of the reasons for the failure of the Marxist parties to think of alternatives.

The Theory

Marx’s story of the rise of capitalism belongs to the pantheon of modernist teleological constructs of history. At the end of the route we are left with two fundamental contending classes – the working class and the capitalist class. So either we sign off and say ‘this is the end of history’, or we construct a vision of the future based on the aspirations of the constructed working class. The problem with the revolutionary vision of the future society (i.e. the latter vision) is that it can only grow out of the capitalist order. Apart from the fact that this entails the espousal of the cause of imposing capitalist development in less developed areas (which is the crux of the problem relating to seizure of agricultural land for the capitalists by the leftist state government in West Bengal) this vision is necessarily based on the acceptance of the self centred modernity of the capitalist order out of which, only, it can grow through a process of dialectical supercession. Hence it necessarily denigrates community and locality, which, to my mind, must be the fundamental pillars of any future society that can overcome the horrors of the current era of global capitalist domination.

This is not any original idea (even if one has the audacity of subscribing to the notion of originality in this post modern age). Revolutionaries like Mao, Gramsci, and nearer home Shankar Guha Neogi have propounded this. Clearly their communitarian and locality based visions conflicted with the ‘pure’ Marxist vision. But they never spelt out their theoretical differences with the Marxist vision of counter hegemonic practice. Perhaps, among other reasons, the need for maintaining class solidarity by leaving the iconic value of Marx undisturbed was an important reason. India also has a rich tradition of rural communitarians like Gandhi and Tagore. I do believe that we should seriously evaluate Gandhi’s vision of Swaraj and Tagore’s vision of Swadesh andSamabay. Their seminal contributions raise two problems, which require independent evaluation not possible within the span of this enquiry. Gandhi’s blindness to the social inequity in the caste system is a fundamental lacuna of his thought that has to be properly evaluated, digging out the limitations that it causes in other areas of his vision. Besides, both Gandhi and Tagore’s silence or utopian thought about the relation of the community to the state has to be properly problematised. Though we recognise the significance of the views of the rural communitarians, our entry point is Marx’s discussion of capitalism, particularly of primitive capital accumulation (PCA).

Globalisation, Primitive Capital Accumulation and Marxism

I had suggested elsewhere (Basu, 2007) that globalisation can be analytically viewed as the era when rent extraction, inevitably relying on PCA, has become the predominant means of extraction of surplus by large capital, which is global. I had suggested that global capital not only extracts rent through acquisition of property rights over land and other natural resources, but it also extracts rent on the basis of acquisition of sole rights to knowledge and markets, and through the imposition of immobility on labour. All these it manages through various international laws and regulations. One could club all these uses of the discriminatory powers derived from the same legal framework that is deemed by the faithful to be non-discriminatory, and so impersonal, under the common theoretical rubric of PCA without violence to the fundamental theoretical propositions of Marx.

This homogeneous treatment of various aspects of surplus extraction by global capital is important because it revalues the role of the state, which had been totally stripped of significance by the myth of empire without emperor. The state is necessary for creating and enforcing the system of laws and regulations that are proper to the extraction of surplus by these means. A hierarchy of states, with the north-south division intact, is also necessary to cook up and impose worldwide the discriminatory systems of property rights and immobilities that are constantly evolving to suit the needs of global capital in the changing social and technological environment. At the same time this homogeneous treatment reduces the significance of space, of territory, and of communities based on these localities. I will here attempt to deconstruct an elementary aspect of PCA – use value – and in the process to explore the specificity of spaces. This will reiterate some of the aspects of the counter hegemonic practices that I had mentioned in my earlier paper and also give it some more depth.

Capital is the agency of transformation of direct heterogeneous social relations between humans into homogeneous relations mediated through commodity exchange. But at the core of the homogenisation/alienation lies the process of commoditisation. Failure to give proper thought to the process of commoditisation closes many counter hegemonic options that are of particular value particularly in the age of globalisation. Though this is not a necessary assumption, the process of PCA as narrated in Capital starts from the petty production economic. This comes through clearly in the course of the discussions on the relation between use value and exchange value. There is a very interesting discussion of this issue by Spivak (Spivak, 1987). There she comments that Marx does not apparently realise that the category of use value, which he treats as an originary, natural category, is actually shot through with the unnaturalness of exchange values. This of course conforms to the general tenure of the postmodern critique, whish firmly refuses to admit any pure or natural, precultural category. To us this critique is not important as a species of postmodern themes. Its importance lies in the fact that it indicates, though it does not elaborate, the possibility of locating a lacuna of alienation in the category of use value as it is explicated in Capital, rather than limiting the analytical/rhetorical force of alienation to the category of exchange value.

Let us elaborate this position with a textual example. Consider the discussion on the commodity circuits. Before the intervention of money we have the circuit C-C.  Let us assume that before exchange takes place the owners of C-C are, respectively, X and Y. As the discussion in Capital (Marx, 1954) goes, to X the first C is exchange value while the second is use value. Conversely to Y the first C is use value while the last C is exchange value. The implication that is of fundamental importance is that use value is understood as purely personal or subjective. It has not the burden of cultural or social values. In fact the standard critique of neoclassical theory used to harp on the fact that while the classical economists explained prices in terms of the material, socially determined cost factors, the neoclassical theorists explained prices purely in terms of subjective ahistorical utility. (Dobb, 1973). The question of social determination of use values has sometimes crept in as an eclectic criticism but in a purely negative sense: it has been pointed out, and quite correctly, that utility is not a matter of individual preferences but is managed through propaganda for the benefit of capitalist sales. Our concern is with the positive or unmanageable sense of depending on some common non-individualistic ground. The intervention of capital in this narrative of the circuits of commodities follows only after the introduction of money. Let us briefly trace the sequence.

From C-C we go to C-M-C. Money enters as a repository of exchange value, but only as a vanishing moment. But money does not simply drop out of the circuit. So someone holds it purely as a repository of exchange value. But why should anyone want to hold exchange value? That is C-M-C leads to C-M-C-M…. So we have both C-M-C and M-C-M. What is the objective of the second type of circuit? See when X gives up a ‘C’ to get another ‘C’, the act is understandable because what one gives up is qualitatively different from what one acquires. But what about the circuit M-C-M? The ‘M’ at the beginning and the ‘M’ at the end are not qualitatively different. So what is the point of this exchange? The answer that Marx provides is that the two Ms are quantitatively different and hence the exchange. So we have the motive of accumulation. M-C-M to M-C-M‘. And M‘>M. But how does that happen in a world where all commodities sell at their values? Where does the excess come from? This brings in capitalist class process with labour power commodity. This is the only part of the inputs purchased by the capitalist that adds more value to the produced goods than its own value. Value of a commodity is the abstract labour required for the production of that commodity. The inputs like raw materials, fuel etc. have already been produced. So an invariant quantity of abstract or undifferentiated labour has already been embodied in them, which they add to the value of the commodity in whose production they are used. Live or direct labour that is employed, on the other hand, adds more value in the course of its consumption in the process of production than what is required for its own reproduction. In plain terms this means that if a worker works for 8 hours in the factory than the commodities that the worker requires for sustaining this effort require less than 8 hours of labour for their production. This is surplus value, which sources the quantitative addition that leads to M‘ being more than M. so the circuit is represented a M-C-C‘-M‘. C is the value of the inputs purchased including labour power, M is its monetary value, C‘ is the expanded value including surplus value, M‘ is the monetary value of C‘. The intervention of money capital, the birth of the labour power commodity leading to the genesis of surplus value that is appropriated as profit (M‘-M), generates another level of alienation. Let us see the difference in the two levels of differentiation and their implication for our vision of possible counter hegemonic strategies.

The two stages of alienation, as I see it (and which is also implicit in the deconstruction of the category of use value by Spivak) are, first, the stage of commoditisation of product and, second, the stage of alienation of labour power as commodity. Commoditisation necessarily involves the insertion of the category of subjective use value. In plain language this means that commodity exchange implies and is implied by release of production from social or community control on what should be produced and on the distribution of social production. It is only then that the product can appear as a use value to the buyer as an individual. So, in the initial commodity circuit that we have discussed the first ‘C’ is a use value to Y, not to X; and the second ‘C’ is a use value to X but not to Y. This is the birth of individuality as opposed to community, which must inevitably, i.e. logically lead to the capitalist mode of production. This would be inconceivable in a social system in which both X and Y are mutually concerned about each other because of a certain social bindings. In this sense Spivak deconstructs the category of use value to show that it too is shot through and through with the guilt of exchange value.

The second stage of alienation has received a lot of attention in Marxist literature. The labourer who has lost possession of all alienable means of production (i.e. all means of production that can be taken away from the labouring person without causing loss of life) is left with the possession of the only inalienable means of production – the power to labour, which is reproduced with each reproduction of the life force of the worker. The labourer is forced to sell labour power for a livelihood. Unlike other commodities the seller of this commodity has to enter the work place to supply labour power as required by the owner of the factory – the capitalist. So the buyer of labour power commands and the seller obeys. This robs the labourer of the means of realising selfhood in work, which is the differentia of human labour. So the labourer is alienated from his labour.

In my previous treatment of PCA, to which I have already referred, I had not looked critically at the first moment of capital formation, viz. the process of commoditisation. The violation of the community is an essential moment in the development of the capitalist mode of production. Its significance is blurred if one concentrates only on the second moment of PCA, which is highlighted in Capital. Once we appreciate the significance of the destruction of community modes of existence for the development of capital a possible counter hegemonic strategy suggests itself. Thinking, producing, living in a community mode can evolve an effective opposition to global capital. This also points to a specificity of space that becomes blurred when one extends the theoretical scope of PCA to understand the entirety of rent extraction by global capital. Space is the field in which the locality is embedded. We are not going into the question of how far it is possible to treat spaces just as geographical territories.

How Things Hang Together

One can try to see how the events that are currently of great concern to all ‘liberal and/or left’ thinking individuals fit into the scheme of analysis that we have outlined. We will try to build upon that analysis to show that the oppositional forces have to be much more discriminatory in their approach to both the question of who are the friends as well as to the question of what should be a meaningful oppositional strategy. Let us specifically concentrate on what has become the focal point of protest against global capital in India – the seizure of agricultural and forest land for alternate use. This would include all kinds of alternative uses like land for building large dams, SEZs, ‘chemical hubs’, for realty business and so on.

There are two major issues that come through in what the protestors are saying: that compensation has not been properly evaluated and that those who will lose their land have not been taken into confidence. This, of course, apart from widespread indignation at the reign of terror that has been unleashed on unwilling refugees and protestors by the ruling parties, their henchmen, and the police in the states where such acquisition has met with resistance. The latter can be understood from a purely bourgeois liberal position also. That is, taking account of bourgeois forgetfulness. The story of dispossession of agricultural and forest dependent communities from land is nothing new. This phase of PCA is well documented in Capital. In fact the more intelligent supporters of the left front government’s policy of land acquisition are delivering learned lectures where they point out the fact that the process of dispossession and consequent impoverishment of the labouring people stretched over a period of more than one and a half centuries in England (and look where England is today!). But once this was completed such obvious state coercion was to be limited to the periphery of capitalist development. So the bourgeois liberal could afford to forget the gory past of capital’s ‘original’ homeland and be critical of the violation of bourgeois rights and legal procedures in the course of land acquisition in India. Violation of the bourgeois legal rights enshrined in law and codes of justice, particularly by the state and those in power, have to be strongly resisted both because they violate the innate right to life and livelihood and also because in the absence of such ‘democratic rights’ it becomes more difficult to organise for an alternative. But though this resistance is of utmost importance, this cannot constitute any counter hegemonic strategy, per se. That is precisely the reason why political parties that subscribe to the strategy of development under the aegis of global capital find no difficulty in joining such protests in regions where they are not in power. Observe for example the CPIM in Orissa or Haryana, as well as the TMC in West Bengal.

From the long-term perspective the questions of ‘proper’ evaluation of compensation and of participation of the possessors of land in the process of reallocation of land to other uses require serious theoretical consideration if any sustained resistance is to evolve. It is in this context that the images of two moments of alienation become important.

It is worthwhile to remember, as I have pointed out earlier, that the process of PCA is not primitive in the sense of prior in time to capitalist accumulation (Basu, 2007). It is always intertwined with capital’s expansion. Capital has to find ways and means of affecting PCA in newer pastures to maintain its capability to expand. For example, it is currently engaged in searching routes to PCA in fields like knowledge, information and even in areas that until recently used to be considered processes that are part and parcel of life process like cultural activities and even the games that people play. Recall that the process of PCA in any new field will involve the two moments of commoditisation and subordination to capital.

The first moment of PCA, viz. commoditisation is also the first moment of alienation in the sense of severance of community linkages. This provides the key to understanding the controversy over what constitutes ‘proper compensation’. When use values are not just subjective but conditioned by community norms, the concept of propriety of compensation itself comes to be questioned. It is not simply a question of calculation (of the proper compensation) but a question of whether and under what circumstances it is ‘proper’ to transfer a resource from one activity to another. This leads to a question that is important from the point of view of governance. This also questions the claim of unquestioned dominance of a single, defined ethics in this Age of Empire. From the community’s perspective, the answer to the question of whether land can at all be reduced to an exchange value (which is always homogeneous, so comparable with other use values) erasing its common use value, can only be sought through a mode of decision making that allows direct participation of the community.

To appreciate the analytical scope of this twist to the concept of PCA let us go to a field far removed from land acquisition. At the time when a furious debate was raging regarding the various issues raised by the Uruguay round of negations of GATT, the Head of the department of mathematics of a leading US university (I have forgotten the name) made a very perceptive comment to the effect that if the proposed patent regime was implemented then the individual scientist would be richer but science would be poorer. In our scheme the reference is to the first alienation in the process of PCA. At this moment knowledge ceases to remain a common property and becomes private property. As common property the use value of knowledge is determined by the ‘needs’ of the community. These needs would include, apart from the requirement of solving the problems emanating from production, the intellectual pleasure of the pursuit of knowledge. Once knowledge becomes a private property it is simply exchange value to the individual who develops it. It is use value to the one who buys it. But what is this use value? Presumably a firm will pay for the patent rights to this knowledge. The firm invests in this acquisition only because it speculates that this is a profitable venture. So use value and exchange value become strangely inseparable, vindicating an inaugural insight of Spivak. Before the enforcement of patent rights knowledge communication and development were linked to, among other things, the common human urge to ‘know’. The easy dissemination of knowledge is a condition for the fulfilment of this urge in society at large. At the same time common participation in the development of knowledge would itself restrain the development of knowledge along lines that are harmful to humanity. At the next stage of PCA, which the professor did not elaborate, the wherewithal to develop this private property – knowledge – would be concentrated in the hands of capital. At this moment the individual scientist would be a paid employee, with no rights to his/her inventions.

Before we go on to outline what could be the elements of a counter hegemonic strategy in this context let us try to deal with an of the obvious fallacy of our analysis. Knowledge pursuit that is not ordered by the rules of private property could be differently constrained but could similarly constrict the knowledge horizons of society. This is what the history of science in the West teaches us. We are not talking of such a common property rights to knowledge. So the community that we are talking of is itself an object of struggle, an ideal. Then are we not violating the tenets of the position from which we gained our initial theoretical insight – postmodernism? We plead guilty. Postmodernism can provide the tools for debunking a theory but it cannot provide a basis for counter hegemonic practice. To this manner of argumentation there is no hierarchy. Difference and mutual constitutivity is all. So we have to move out of its constraints – vulgarise it so to say. So the kind of commonality that lies at the base of our concept of common property in knowledge is one without hierarchy and so without power discrimination. This leads directly to the question of counter hegemonic strategy. The development of knowledge and the construction of this knowledge community must proceed simultaneously. Counter hegemonic practice will consist of this simultaneous struggle. It could consist of subversive strategies, but more importantly it will consist of the development of new technologies, of rules of knowledge dissemination that further community rights in knowledge. There are already attempts by concerned seekers to form communities where knowledge and information can be exchanged without the mediation of commodities. We can similarly imagine other communities that will circumvent the commodity nexus in say the field of games, art, etc. These communities will not initially be interlinked. One could be part of a knowledge community and at the same time belong to the capital-commodity order that runs the spectacle called games.

Fundamentally in all spheres one must try to revitalise the community content of use value at the cost of the subjective, individual use values. There must be a simultaneous effort to construct a community within which this sense can be nurtured. There are various examples of efforts in this direction. The ongoing experiments with the Shramajibi haspataals are a step in this direction. These efforts have a lot in common with the attempts of many rural communitarians like Tagore in the pre-independence period. The essence of Tagore’s teachings in this regard was that the most pernicious effect of the coming of the British was that the population became dependent on the benevolence of the state like never before. Before the British invasion Indian rural community was unique in its autonomy from central authority. They managed their productive, social and legal problems on their own. The British changed all that and made the people on the state to tackle their every problem. So the principle requirement for the rejuvenation of the country was to begin its economic revival without the assistance of the state. For this a dedicated cooperative movement (Samabay) had to be built and sustained.

The attitude to the state, what could be the principles of law and property appropriate to such orders, all these and many related questions will have to be solved in the course of the movement to revive or create these cooperatives. There will of course be unavoidable clashes with state power. But the difference with what is taught as an axiom by Marxist parties that have not been subjugated by the ruling commodity culture is clear. The movement must not be organised with the sole objective of capturing state power – rather the objective must be one of construction of state power from the grass root, struggle to construct alternate modes of common property and their utilisation.

Signing off

These are very tentative suggestions so the question of reaching a conclusion does not arise. The principle objective of this piece was to search for the theoretical building blocks that can be used for construction of a counter hegemonic strategy. I believe that unless we can clarify our theoretical perspectives movements like those that are resisting the government’s efforts to grab land are likely to be misappropriated. And I am not talking of conscious subversive take over – that is a simple fact that can be effectively handled. I am talking of an unconscious derailment of such movements faced with the absence of a destination.

References

Basu, 2007. Basu, P.K. “Political Economy of Land Grab”. Economic and Political Weekly, April 7-13, 2007.

Dobb, 1973. Dobb, M. Theories of Value and Distribution since Adam Smith. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1973.

Marx, 1954. Marx, K. Capital Vol. I. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1954. reprint, 1974.

Negri and Hardt, 2000. Negri, A. and M. Hardt. Empire. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2000.

Spivak, 1987. Spivak, G. “Speculations on reading Marx after Reading Derrida”. In Post Structuralism and the Question of History. Ed. Attridge, Derrick, et. al. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987.

An interview with Coni Ledesma, International Spokesperson of Makibaka, Filipino Revolutionary Women’s Association

E. San Juan, Jr.

May 14, election day in the Philippines, may signal a historic turning-point in its political devolution since the February 1986 “people power” revolt overthrew the U.S.-backed Marcos dictatorship. The prospect is grim. Either the country declines into unprecedented barbarism – so far, international monitors (Amnesty International, World Council of Churches, UN investigators) have documented thousands of victims of extra-judicial killings, forcible “disappearances,” torture and massacres exceeding those committed by Marcos – or President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is impeached by a majority of elected representatives for treason, violation of the Constitution, corruption, etc. This may temporarily stop the “impunity” for State-affiliated criminals. This legal route of redress of grievances is by no means a revolution; it can be aptly described as an in-house purging of decay and rot. Either way, this ritualized election of local officials and Congresspeople will prove a veritable test-case for the country’s neocolonial, oligarchic institutions and the status quo of class inequality that have been, in one way or another, fostered by the United States, its former colonizer, for over a century now.

Elections in the Philippines, designed by the U.S. colonial government, began as a way of preserving the power of the moneyed, privileged elite within a monopolized party system offered as an alternative to armed resistance by Filipinos. Since formal independence in 1946, the elite bloc of landlords, compradors and bureaucrat-capitalists has partitioned power among their ranks, with personalities overshadowing any ideological differences, if any. Any progressive, radical challenge to elite hegemony, such as that posed by Claro Recto and Lorenzo Tanada in the fifties, or by the progressive party-list today (among them, BAYAN MUNA, ANAKPAWIS, GABRIELA, KABATAAN, MIGRANTE), has been stigmatized as “communist” or “terrorist.”  Just as in many “third world” dependent societies characterized by flagrant class conflict, electoral democracy in the Philippines has been distinguished by large-scale bribery of voters, corruption of officials, systematic violence-this time with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the national police engaged in campaigning for the incumbent administration. The question of legitimacy or accountability is thus decided by the old formula of  “guns, goons and gold.”

Fraud as Spectacle and Testimony

In a recent commentary, the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, a think-tank based at the University of the Philippines, concludes that “fraud is an endemic disease that has been institutionalized by a political system-the government, executive and legislative structures, political parties-that remains dominated by political dynasties” (Issue Analysis, No. 7, May 2007). A week ago, a group of retired military and police officers revealed a devious plan of Arroyo’s adviser, General Hermogenes Esperon, AFP Chief, to hijack 14 million votes in 4 regions and 12 provinces to insure the victory of Arroyo’s team.

It is instructive to cite here a recent Social Weather Station survey of citizens’ attitudes to the coming elections. The survey found that 40% of Filipinos expect the government will cheat, while 69% believe that the votes will be stolen by the Arroyo regime through “flying voters,” coercion and other means used during Arroyo’s election in 2004 in which the officials of the State’s Commission on Elections (COMELEC) manipulated the counting of votes in Arroyo’s favor. Arroyo unwittingly admitted her fraudulent tenure in the widely publicized “Hello Garci” phone expose.

During the Cold War, the Philippines was touted as a “showcase” of U.S.-style democracy in Asia. Elected politicians toed Washington’s “free world” party line. With the help of the CIA and the Pentagon-supervised and -trained AFP, a surrogate army of U.S. finance capital, the puppet president Ramon Magsaysay defeated the Communist-led Huk uprising in the fifties. Today the Philippines is hailed as the second “battlefront” in George W. Bush’s “global war on terror.” The U.S. State Department has labeled the 38-year-old insurgent New People’s Army (led by the Communist Party of the Philippines) as a “terrorist” organization, along with the CIA-built and AFP-coddled Abu Sayyaf bandit-group. While the country in the fifties was barely recovering from the enormous devastation of World War II, today, the economy is in shambles: 80% of 87 million Filipinos are struggling to survive on $2 a day, below decent living standards, while 46 million Filipinos do not even meet their 100% dietary energy requirement (IBON Media Release, 4 April 2007).

Scourge of the Nation

Just like her predecessors, Arroyo has sacrificed the Filipino people’s welfare by implementing neoliberal globalization policies (privatization, deregulation) imposed by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization. The result is a humanitarian disaster. Filipino economist Alejandro Lichauco has documented unprecedented mass hunger throughout the country in his book Hunger, Corruption and Betrayal(Manila, 2005). Three thousand Filipinos leave every day to join 10 million Filipinos working in hundreds of countries around the world, remitting $12 billion to keep the economy afloat-indubitable proof that the Philippines has plunged from relative prosperity in the fifties to the wretched “basket-case” of Asia in this new millennium of global capitalism.

Meanwhile, the elite desperately clings to power by consumerist propaganda and violence. So ruthless is the carnage in the “killing fields” of the Philippines that it has alarmed some U.S. lawmakers, among them Senator Barbara Boxer and recently Congresswomen Ellen Tauscher (Inquirer.net, April 26, 2007) who urged Arroyo to prevent more murders of left-wing political activists by “prosecuting those responsible for the crimes.” The US Senate Foreign Relations committee is inquiring into the link of U.S. foreign aid with Arroyo’s brutal counterinsurgency program that has caused such unconscionable massive atrocities.

Last March, UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston, who (at the end of his February visit) accused the government’s counterinsurgency scheme of encouraging or facilitating the killings, presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council a copy of the secret AFP “Order of Battle” document which converts soldiers as combatants in a “political war” against civilians. Arroyo and the military were not just in a “state of denial.” They were and are deeply involved in vilification of anyone critical of the Arroyo regime and complicit in the summary executions of those they label as “enemies of the state.” The party-list group BAYAN MUNA and allied organizations like BAYAN, for example, have been targeted as “communist fronts” by Arroyo’s Cabinet Oversight Committee on Internal Security. At present, 130 members of BAYAN MUNA (approximately 356 activists from various civic organizations) have succumbed to extra-judicial murder, abduction, arbitrary arrest, harassment and torture by State terrorist agents and paramilitary death-squads.

Mapping the “Killing Fields”

Dr. Carol P. Araullo, chairperson of BAYAN, has called the plan of extra-judicial killings, abductions, and torture a scarcely concealed “state policy” (see “Streetwise,” Business World 9-10, 16-17 March 2007). Last April, Human Rights Now, a Japanese human rights organization, concluded its fact-finding mission with the appeal to Arroyo “to immediately stop the policy of targeting civilization organizations and individual activists,” and to respect its obligation to follow the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights which the government has ratified. It will lobby the Japanese government to suspend all loan agreements “until it recognizes the human rights situation and accountability mechanism have clearly improved” (Press Statement, 21 April 2007).  This was reinforced by the prestigious InterParliamentary Union’s statement denouncing the arrest of Rep. Crispin Beltran and the harassment of the “Batasan 6” party-list representatives.

Earlier, on March 25, the Permanent People’s Tribunal handed down a verdict of “guilty” against Arroyo and Bush for “crimes against humanity.” Based on substantial evidence, testimonies, etc., the killings, torture and forced disappearances “fall under the responsibility of the Philippine government and are by no means justified in terms of necessary measures against terrorism.” Not only is the AFP involved in “the majority of the scenarios of human rights violations,” but it functions as “a central component and instrument of the policy of the ‘war on terror’ declared jointly by the Philippine and U.S. governments” that is being used to justify the political killings and impunity of both governments. Filipino Senator Jamby Madrigal, who testified at the People’s Tribunal against the Arroyo-Bush partnership’s ecological havoc, opined that Arroyo’s de facto “martial rule” has already turned the Philippines into a virtual “killing field.”

Encountering  Coni Ledesma

During that historic March session of the People’s Tribunal at The Hague, Netherlands, I was fortunate in meeting again Ms. Coni Ledesma, a member of the Negotiating Panel of the National Democratic Front-Philippines (NDFP) in peace talks with the government of the Republic of the Philippines. My first meeting with Coni took place over twenty years ago, in Rome, Italy, which I visited after I had chaired and participated in an international cultural symposium in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, in 1981. At The Hague, Coni was as vibrant as ever, knowledgeable and generous, open-minded particularly in relation with diasporic intellectuals from the “belly of the beast” like the present expatriate. I decided then that it would be a useful and rare opportunity to conduct this dialogue with an exemplary personality on themes and issues of general interest to a global audience.

To give a framework to this interview, I recapitulate the main events in Coni’s political history. Coni traces her politicization in the 1970s during the mass demonstrations in the Philippines against the Marcos regime which was then collaborating with the United States in the imperialist war in Indo-China. After some legal political seminars and activities, she went underground and became one of the founders of the Christians for National Liberation, a significant formation of church people that initiated a pathbreaking Filipino version of the “theology of liberation.” In August 1972, she was captured and detained for a year until she was released with the help of the Catholic bishops and the National Council of Churches (as Frank Cimatu reports in KASAMA, April-June 1998). She continued working with sugar workers in Negros, at which time (September 1973) she met her future husband Luis Jalandoni, who is now chair of the NDFP Negotiating Panel.

Aside from her role in the NDFP, Coni is also the international spokesperson of MAKIBAKA, an underground revolutionary organization of women, which has spearheaded the fight for women’s rights and collective well-being in the Philippines. MAKIBAKA, for the record, is not a feminist (in the Western academic construal of the term) but a nationalist women’s group concerned with women’s liberation in a neocolonial “third world” setting, allied with the NDFP. It has roots in the complex debates on “the woman question” in the sixties and seventies (see my book Filipina Insurgency, Giraffe Books, 1999) and in the militant participation of numerous women combatants in the revolution such as Maria Lorena Barros, Cherith Dayrit, Judy Taguiwalo, and Vicvic Justiniani, to cite only a few names.

In my view, Coni’s role in the national-democratic struggle has been immense and substantial, her experience a rich and dynamic reservoir of wisdom for use by solidarity groups everywhere. Thus I feel that her insight into what’s going on may afford us a perspective not available from other sources. My encounter with Coni at The Hague, at a time and place that fused the urgency of the crisis in the human-rights situation in the Philippines with the combative elan of the witnesses at the People’s Tribunal, the impasse of the anti-war efforts here in the metropolitan wasteland, and, above all, the realization that this wild and savage May election may be the pivotal turning-point in our national political life, has prompted this interview (conducted via the Internet from April 23 to May 8.)

E. San Juan (ESJ): The May election is crucial for Arroyo’s survival.  What is your reading of the situation today, before the elections on May 14?  What is your prediction should massive cheating be exposed and the public becomes infuriated?

Coni Ledesma (CL): Although the May election is not a presidential election, it is crucial for the survival of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.  She has survived two impeachment charges initiated in the House of Representatives, because she was able to buy the votes of the majority of the Congressmen, or because they were administration Congressmen and so voted against the impeachment.

If the opposition is to get at least one third of the seats of the lower house and a majority in the Senate, Congress could bring corruption and other charges against Arroyo and this could lead to her impeachment. She needs to ensure her hold on power and preserve the rotten and bankrupt system especially because she wants to conceal her crimes against the people.

She is already taking drastic steps to ensure the victory of administration candidates by using the Commission on Elections, the military and buying votes.  Although the law prohibits the AFP from electioneering, there are reports that General Esperon sent a radio message to all  personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to rig the results of the elections and ensure a 12-0 victory for the administration’s senatorial candidates.  AFP personnel are supporting and setting up campaign posters for the party list of General Jovito Palparan (also known as “the Butcher of Mindoro”).  AFP elements attacked the residence of religious leader, Eddie Villanueva, because of his anti-GMA stand (one of his sons is running for mayor in one of the cities of Mindoro, and another son heads the party-list Cibac).  Former President Corazon Aquino recently discovered that her telephone is being bugged.  And most recently, Makati Mayor Jojo Binay, who is also the president of the opposition party, United Opposition, was ordered suspended and was ordered to vacate City Hall. Supporters of Binay filled the City Hall, making it impossible for the police to send him out.  Binay is running for reelection and is expected to win against the Malacanang candidate, Lito Lapid.

It is expected that there will be “dagdag-bawas” (add-subtract) during the counting of the votes.  This means, adding votes for the administration candidates and taking away votes from the opposition.  This was the method used to make Arroyo “win” the presidency in 2004.

The increase in extra-judicial killing and enforced disappearance, especially of leaders and members of progressive political parties and organizations, is also a desperate and futile attempt of the Arroyo government to scare and disenfranchise these parties and organizations.

What would happen if the massive cheating is exposed and the public becomes infuriated?   The public is already infuriated.  Arroyo’s popularity rating is very low.  She is considered an illegitimate president because of massive cheating used to get her elected.  A possible reason why she still hasn’t been ousted is because of the question of who will take her place as president.  The logical constitutional succession would be the current Vice President, Noli de Castro.  But the large majority does not think he is qualified to be president.

Yet, an incident could ignite the people’s anger so much that it can lead to mass actions which can lead to Arroyo’s ouster.  This was the case with Ferdinand Marcos, and later, with Joseph Estrada.

ESJ: Should Arroyo’s group win and dominate the Batasan, do you agree with some observer’s opinion that Arroyo will implement the anti-terrorism law and suppress BAYAN and other opposition groups, including the party-list political formations – in other words, heighten de facto martial rule?

CL: Even without the anti-terrorism law, Arroyo is already trying to disqualify progressive party-lists like Bayan Muna, Anak Pawis and Gabriela Women’s Party.   But the passing and implementation of the anti-terrorism law is important not only as an instrument to help Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo stay in power, but also to preserve the interests of US imperialism.  The US “war on terrorism” is actually a war against national liberation movements, anti-imperialist forces and against those who pose a threat to US interests.

But the Filipino people are challenging the law and continuing to fight for their democratic rights. They are holding mass actions, protests, and moving to have the law declared unconstitutional.

ESJ: What is your forecast of the next year or two of Arroyo’s presidency, assuming she will win a majority in the Congress?  If she doesn’t, will impeachment unseat her?

CL: If Arroyo stays as president until 2010, and if her current dependence on the military continues, and if she will continue to enjoy the backing of the US, the gross violations of human rights will continue and even worsen.  She will implement the anti-terrorism law, or as it is euphemistically called “Human Security Act of 2007.” She will continue with the implementation of Operation Bantay Laya II (Operation Freedom Watch II).

Bantay Laya II is a continuation of the failed Bantay Laya I, a military campaign to crush the revolutionary movement, carried out in 2002-2006.   Bantay Laya II is aimed at wiping out the revolutionary movement in five years.  It is more vicious than Bantay Laya I, especially in its attacks against unarmed civilians and political activists living in the cities and towns. Death squads who kill or forcibly “disappear” anyone who opposes the regime is part of Bantay Laya II.

At the same time, Arroyo is faced with many problems which she has neither will nor capacity to solve.  She could be impeached if the opposition takes the majority in both houses of Congress. She is isolated and unpopular. The AFP is wracked by deep divisions within its ranks due to corruption and complicity in criminal activities. The economy is in chronic crisis.  It is being held afloat by massive borrowing and through the remittances of overseas Filipinos.  Meanwhile, the mass movement continues to grow.  A people’s movement could oust her.

ESJ: The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Second Session on the Philippines pronounced a verdict of guilty on the US- Arroyo collusion.  Please assess for now the impact of this historic conference.

CL: The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal is a court of international opinion and independent from any State authority.  The importance and strength of its decisions rest on the moral weight of the causes and arguments to which they give credibility and their recognition in the UN Commission on Human Rights. The jurors are persons prominent in their respective fields of work.  The PPT itself has prestige within the United Nations and among NGOs.

The Second Session on the Philippines was held on March 21-25, 2007, in The Hague, the Netherlands.  It was held shortly after the Melo Commission and UN Special Rapporteur for Extra-judicial Executions, Philip Alston, came out with their respective reports finding the military responsible for the torture, extra judicial killings and disappearances of hundreds of leaders and members of progressive people’s organizations.

The Tribunal judged the governments of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and of George Walker Bush, accountable ” for crimes against humanity, with all the consequences for the persons who are responsible for them.”  It also stated that “such violations must be stopped immediately.”  The Tribunal connected the human rights violations with the interests of the United States. It gave a more comprehensive and deeper analysis of the Philippine situation.

The appeal, indictment and verdict can be used as guides in studying the situation in the Philippines.  They are also important documents for solidarity groups and organizations in planning activities and campaigns for the Philippines.  The Tribunal denounces as unacceptable the inclusion of the Philippine government in the UN Human Rights Council. A campaign should be launched to call for the removal of the Philippines from the Council.

ESJ: Please give a brief survey of the European attitude to Arroyo’s bloody human rights record.

CL: With the increase in gross violations of human rights, more and more European governments and inter-governmental bodies have spoken out to condemn and call a stop to these violations.  In a forum in Oslo, Norway, a representative of the Norwegian government expressed concern about the human rights violations in the Philippines. No official of a European country has voiced such a concern in the past.

During the ASEM meeting in Helsinki, on September 10-11, 2007, the President of Finland, Tarja Halonen, raised the issue of political killings during Arroyo’s official call on her.  The Finnish Foreign Minister later said, “We also want to see an end to the political killings which still form a harsh reality of that country”.  Shortly after that, when Arroyo visited Belgium, European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso reminded Arroyo that the political killings in the Philippines were a matter of concern to the European Commission.

The European Commission’s chief envoy to the Philippines, Ambassador Alistair MacDonald, expressed shock over the human rights abuses that have become a daily occurrence in the country.

The European Parliament, in a plenary meeting in Strasbourg, passed a resolution expressing “grave concern at the increasing number of political killings that have occurred in recent years in the Philippines”, and urged “the Philippine authorities to make the necessary investigations in a timely, thorough and transparent manner and to bring those responsible to justice.”   The Inter Parliamentary Union has expressed concern about the continuing repression of six members of the Philippine Congress, Congressmen Satur Ocampo, Crispin Beltran, Liza Maza, Joel Virador, Rafael Mariano, and Teddy Casino and called for the release from detention of Crispin Beltran.

After conducting its own fact-finding mission on the human rights situation in the Philippines, the World Council of Churches issued a statement on September 2006 condemning the extra-judicial executions and called an end to the killings. An international fact-finding mission of lawyers (from the groups, Lawyers for Lawyers, Lawyers Without Borders, and International Association of Democratic Lawyers) went to the Philippines last June 2006 to specifically investigate the killings of lawyers and judges.   After the disappearance of Jonas Burgos, in late April 2007, the Amnesty International campaign coordinator said the Philippines’ image has become that of ” a land of lawlessness.”

ESJ: What role have Filipino migrants in Europe and elsewhere performed and accomplished in the task of confronting the political killings and massive corruption of the Arroyo regime?  Are there new signs of political mobilization on their part?

CL: Filipino migrants in different parts of the globe have formed human rights organizations and have set up forums and other public events to inform the people of the host country about the situation. They are participating in the different actions because their families back home are affected by the policy of killings by the Arroyo government and the military. During forums held, they share the experience of their families and friends who have become victims of human rights violations.

And now, after the Tribunal, Filipino organizations are holding forums and symposia to talk about the verdict of the Tribunal and call for more actions against ongoing human rights violations in the Philippines.

ESJ: Finally, what is your assessment of the gains of the national democratic movement so far, and what are the problems it faces in the future?

CL: In the Philippines, we have the legal national democratic movement composed of legal and open people’s organizations.  And we have the 17 allied organizations of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the millions of the revolutionary masses they lead, undertaking national democratic revolution through people’s war.

Both the legal and the underground revolutionary movements accept the analysis that the root causes of the problems in Philippine society are US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.  They also accept that a change in the present system is necessary.  Both aspire for a society where the Philippines will be free from US domination, where the feudal mode of production and values are replaced with genuine land reform, and peasants will be given land of their own to till. Where the natural wealth of the Philippines will be owned and managed by Filipinos.  Where there will be national industrialization. And bureaucrat capitalism will be replaced with a government free of corruption, where the vast majority of Filipinos (workers, peasants, fisherfolk and petty bourgeoisie) will be adequately represented.  A system where there will be real democracy.

The Arroyo regime calls the legal people’s organizations “front” organizations of the CPP and the NDFP. They are not front organizations of the CPP and the NDFP. These legal organizations subscribe to and are guided by their own constitutions, organizational principles, and programs.

The national democratic organizations comprise the legal mass movement which has been the most consistent in the anti-imperialist and democratic legal struggle in the country.  It has a strong mass movement.  It has members in parliament.  It is creative in using all forms of struggle to push for reforms and fight against the ongoing exploitation and oppression in the country.  It organizes and mobilizes hundreds of thousands in different organizations and is deeply rooted among the Filipino people.

Of the substantial gains and achievements of the national democratic movement since the 1960s, I will only mention the following: One significant achievement of the national democratic movement has been its politicalization of the Filipino people as a whole.  There is now a greater awareness of US imperialism’s hold on Philippine political, economic and cultural life than there was twenty or thirty years ago.  For example, the broad mass movement was instrumental for the Senate voting the bases out of the Philippines in 1991.

The national democratic movement played a most crucial role in ousting two presidents, Marcos and Estrada, and by doing so has weakened the neocolonial system.

Major achievements have also been the two major Rectification Movements of the Communist Party of the Philippines.  The first rectification movement was in the 1960’s.  It repudiated the errors of the Partido Kommunista ng Pilipinas and led to the re-establishment of the Communist Party in 1968.  The Second Great Rectification Movement was in 1992. The Central Committee took a strong position to analyze the major errors in the ideological, political and organizational line of the Communist Party and correct them.  The rectification movement of the CPP influenced other national democratic organizations to look into their work and to undertake major corrections.  The growth and vigor of the national democratic movement today is the result of this rectification movement.

The NDFP, the CPP and the New People’s Army organize mainly in the countryside.  Organs of political power and revolutionary organizations of women, youth and peasants are continually being established and strengthened.  Mass campaigns such as health, education and economic programs that benefit hundreds of thousands of women, youth, peasants, settlers, and indigenous peoples are taking place in over 120 guerrilla fronts throughout the country.  Implementation of the minimum program of agrarian reform such as lowering of land rent, increase of farm wages and farm gate prices, lessening of usury and establishment of cooperatives, is benefiting the peasant masses. One of the gains of the national democratic movement has been the growth in political awareness and participation in the struggle of women.  Women in their numbers have joined national democratic organizations.  They have been elected to positions of responsibility and are among the most militant in defending their rights.

MAKIBAKA (Makabayang Kilusan ng Kababaihan/Patriotic Movement of Women), a revolutionary women’s organization and a member of the NDFP, draws its membership from peasant, worker and women of petty bourgeoisie in the cities.  Many MAKIBAKA members have joined the NPA and have shown excellence in the field.  Many have given up their lives in the struggle.

What problems will the national democratic movement face in the future?  Because of the crisis of the present system, the national democratic movement can expect more repression from the reactionary state.  And so, the national democratic forces have to be prepared for this.

E. San Juan, Jr. works with the Philippine Forum, New York City, and the Philippines Cultural Studies Center in Connecticut. He was recently Fulbright professor of American Studies at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium; visiting professor of cultural studies at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan; and fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center, Bellagio, Italy. His recent books are Filipinos Everywhere (IBON), In the Wake of Terror (Lexington Books), and U.S. Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines(Palgrave Macmillan).

James Petras 

Introduction

Never in recent history has US Middle East policy been subject to such a barrage of conflicting pressures from erstwhile allies, clients as well as adversaries. The points of contention involve fundamental issues of war and peace, foremost of which are divergent responses to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the US-Iranian confrontation, the US occupation of Iraq as well as the US-Ethiopian proxy invasion and occupation of Somalia.

The major contenders for influence in the making of US policy in the Middle East include the ‘war party’ led by the Zionist power configuration and its followers in Congress and its allies among the civilian militarists in the White House led by Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Rice, National Security Adviser for Middle East Affairs Elliot Abrams, along with an army of scribes in the major print media. On the other side are a small minority of Congress-people, ex-officials linked to Big Oil, a divided Peace Movement, Arab Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and a number of European countries on specific sets of issues.

To date the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) has consistently lined up its Congressional and White House backers and steamrollered domestic opposition in securing unconditional US backing for Israel’s position in the Middle East. One of the latest examples of the Zionist Power Configuration’s political and media influence is illustrated by their dismissal or omission of a major document on human and civil rights in Israel issued by the United Nation’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (published March 9, 2007). The study compiled by two-dozen experts offered 19 recommendations for Israel to comply with in 25 areas of racial discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel. Israel rejected the report, the ZPC automatically followed suit, as did Washington.

Nevertheless there are signs (weak to be sure) that the visible and invisible power of the ZPC is being subject to critical public scrutiny and even ‘put on trial’ among US clients. The Council of Gulf Cooperation composed of Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrein and the United Arab Emirates are the world’s biggest oil suppliers (over 40%), made up of conservative, pro-US regimes, housing US military bases, linked to the largest US oil and financial houses and the biggest purchasers of military hardware from the US military-industrial complex. They met in late March 2007, and called for the US to engage Iran diplomatically and not militarily or with economic sanctions. Israel took a diametrically opposing view pushing for tighter sanctions and a military confrontation.  Automatically the ZPC echoed the Israeli Party line (Daily Alert, March 26-30, 2007). Congress and Bush ignored Big Oil, the military-industrial complex, its Arab clients and followed the Zionist line: they escalated sanctions, increased commando operations, added to the war-ships off the coast of Iran and offered to send fighter-planes into Iran after British sailors, engaged in espionage, were captured (Blair, for once, rejected the war provocation). Once again the ZPC out-muscled Big Oil and the military-industrial complex in dictating US Middle-East policy.

Equally important, the US foremost Arab ‘allies’ in the Middle East have promulgated a series of proposals and policy options, which are directly opposed to the ZPC-Israeli agenda. Saudi Arabia’s proposal approved by the Arab League offering Israel recognition and normal relations in exchange for abiding by UN resolutions and returning territory seized in 1967 is one example. These Arab initiatives have elicited a positive response in many governments in the European Union and Turkey, adding to the forces arraigned against the ZPC-Israeli direction for US Middle East policy. Defectors from the Israeli lobby’s cause have been especially noticeable from among conservatives, including Robert Novack (“US War in Iraq – The Sharon War”, Haaretz, April 4, 2007).

New Directions for US Policy: Moderate Arab Agenda?

The primary pre-occupation of the moderate Arab regimes of the Persian Gulf is securing political stability, avoiding disruptive regional and internal conflicts and consolidating a favorable business climate for the dynamic development projects they have undertaken. The US military invasion, occupation and prolonged violent imperial war in Iraq have been a source of instability and internal conflict in the region. Israel’s repeated military assaults and violent seizures of Palestinian land, its invasion of Lebanon and threats against Iran and, most important, their political vehicle – the ZPC’s capacity to ensure US backing – has created an environment of permanent ‘high tension’. The growing incompatibility between the conservative-business oriented goals of the moderate Arab states and the ‘radical militarist’ destabilizing policies of Washington and Tel Aviv has forced a widening breach between the long-time allies and clients. With large trade surpluses, enormous liquidity in dollars and Euros, the Arab East is intent on building economic empires both in the region and throughout the globe. For that they need, above all, a secure ‘home base’, the headquarters and operating base to sustain the global financial, commercial and real estate networks.

The recent meeting of Arab state in Riyadh, convoked by the Saudis, served as a platform for outlining a program for Middle East stability and the ending of violent destabilizing activities. Both in their formal proposals and informal pronouncements the conservative leaders put forth an agenda to re-direct US Middle East policy away from the ZPC-Israel line of military confrontation and toward diplomatic negotiations, elite reconciliation and the strengthening of regional economic stability. Within this conservative regional framework and the high priority given to economic stability, the ‘new facts’ on the ground (namely the critical position toward the US and the peace offer to Israel) become key markers in defining Middle East politics.

‘New Facts’ and the New Middle East Realities

The old clichés lobbed by liberal critics of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia are highly misleading and fail to capture the new economic and political dynamics of the region. The liberal and Zionist images of reactionary sheiks engaged in conspicuous consumption, luxuriating in their backward and stagnant economies, living exclusively on ‘rents’ accruing from the gushing oil wells and dependent on US military protection, has largely been superseded. All the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia are heavily engaged in long-term, large-scale economic diversification projects, creating new business, financial, commercial and real estate markets, based on local capital and, in some cases, major overseas investment banks. Major joint industrial ventures in energy, refineries, and chemical plants between Saudi Arabia and China and India have been consummated. Multi-billionaire ‘princes’ are major investors and part owners of global networks of financial enterprises, hotels, ports and other large-scale infrastructure and construction sectors.

Energy wealth from gas and petroleum is the point of departure for the new ruling elites, reinventing themselves as regional if not global players. While still retaining many of the ‘external traditional religious forms’ (opposition to usury), vast armies of local financiers have in fact invented financial instruments that pay de facto returns equivalent to interest. Given the growing global and regional economic interests of these conservative elites they have everything to lose by following US-Israeli destructive-colonial-militarist policies in the region.

Economic diversification and dynamic internal development has created a new bourgeoisie in the Gulf linked to European and Asian capital (state and private), increasingly politically independent from the US and less dependent on ‘external’ military power. These new economic facts provide clues to the new ‘political facts’ on the ground, including Saudi Arabia’s low key, but forthright, critique of the US occupation of Iraq and demands for troop withdrawal. The Gulf States backing for the Saudi initiated “Mecca Agreements” leading to the PLO-Hamas unity government, explicitly went against the White House-Israeli-Zionist policy of isolating Hamas as did the explicit rejection by Saudi Arabia and the Emirates of US and Israeli war preparations against Iran. They have rejected Washington’s and Israeli-Zionist’s policy of refusing to meet with Iran, by holding separate top level meetings and discussions. The Arab League’s offer – authored and authorized by Saudi Arabia – to Israel of peace and recognition in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from the 1967 regions of occupied Palestine has exposed Israel’s pretexts for continued colonization and annexation of Palestinian land and US subordination to the Zionist Power Configuration.

The new economic and political facts in the Middle East pit an increasingly militarized US foreign policy elite, heavily influenced by the Zionist Power Configuration, against an increasingly marketized Arab Gulf elite.  Israel’s military-industries, 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 right-wing militarist Jewish donors means that Israel is structurally incapable of coming to any peace for land agreement. The re-settlement of a half-million armed fanatical Jewish settlers into pre-1967 Israel, the peaceful re-conversion of Israel’s military industries and maintaining support from overseas Zionist plutocrats without the rhetoric of ‘existential military threats’ is beyond the boundaries of the Israeli political class as it is currently constituted. The deep integration and subordination of the Zionist Power Configuration to the Israeli power structure result in the demands of Israel’s settler-military-industrial complex getting transmitted into the US Congress and Executive and eventually into policy.

In so far as this is the case, the ZPC is responsible for the rigidities of US Middle East policy expressed in its fixation on permanent warfare, and its blindness to the yawning gap between market-driven Arab states and US-Israeli militarism. ZPC accounts for the unchanging, unconditional support for an anachronistic colonial regime in a time of growing global market relations. The paralysis of US policy is the result of the power of a modern 21st century extraordinarily wealthy and entrepreneurial lobby (24% of Forbes 400 richest are Jews) acting on behalf of fundamentalist Judaic territorial claims going back to a period almost 2500 years ago. The notion of ‘combined and uneven development’ certainly applies to Israel’s biggest overseas financiers.

The rigid structural parameters of Israeli politics are transmitted via the ZPC into the basic contradictory reality in US-Israeli relations: The rigid structural politics of a tiny ‘isolated, militarized, settler-controlled’ state blocking economic transactions of a globalized imperial economy by forcing it into disastrous military adventures.

Zionist Power and the Democratic Congressional Majority

Contrary to many war critics, especially those daring enough to attack the pro-war, neo-conservative and Zionist lobby, the US invasion of Iraq has not been a ‘disaster’, a ‘debacle’ or a ‘defeat’. The corollary of this argument that the ‘Iraq disaster’ has led to a ‘rout’ of the Zioncons from the Bush Administration is also open to question.

The principle goal of the ZPC was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the destruction of the Iraqi state (especially its military and intelligence apparatus) and the societal infrastructure in order to eliminate a key backer of the Palestinian resistance to Israeli ethnic cleansing, a staunch backer of secular Arab nationalism in the Middle East and a strong challenger to Israel’s attempt to assert hegemony in the region. The Zioncon-orchestrated war succeeded in each and every one of Israel’s strategic objectives: the Palestinian resistance lost a powerful financial and political backer. The Middle East opposition to Israel was reduced largely to clerical Muslim states and movements. The stage was set for a new sequence of wars with Israeli adversaries, including Hezbollah, Syria and, most important, Iran. As a consequence of the US destruction of the Iraqi state, Israel had a free hand in invading and devastating Palestine, especially Gaza, complete its ghetto-wall isolating Palestinian towns and villages from their markets and everyday activities, and extending its colonial settlements. US Zioncons in the Administration were able to scuttle any serious peace negotiations, using their scripted ‘war against terror’ as a pretext. The departure of some of the Zioncons from the Administration in the aftermath of the US military occupation of Iraq was a result of having successfully served Israeli strategic interests through a massive commitment of US economic and military resources. But as the Israel-serving war turned into an unpopular, prolonged and costly war for the United States, public and highly placed critics, investigators and military figures began to point their finger at the key role of the Zionist officials in the Government as the prime movers of the ‘disastrous’ war, the Zioncons ‘resigned’ from office. This short-circuited any wide-reaching and serious investigation into the interface between the US Zioncon war architects and the Israeli Foreign Office and its military command.

Out of their successful ‘war with Iraq’ operation the Zioncons suffered a few collateral losses. Irving ‘Scooter’ Libby, Chief of Vice President Cheney’s military planning office, was convicted on peripheral perjury charges, which did not directly implicate the Zioncon network’s role in the run-up and follow-through on the war. One major and one secondary AIPAC leaders were indicted for spying for Israel. The two indicted spies did not in any way materially or politically weaken AIPAC’s powerful hold over the US Congress or White House. They continued to receive unconditional support from the US Congressional leaders of both parties, as well as the Vice President and Secretary of State who gave keynote addresses at the AIPAC’s annual conventions in 2006 and 2007.

The fact that the ZPC considers the Iraq war a ‘done deal’ in enhancing Israel’s Middle East position and has now moved onto realizing Israel’s next strategic objective, the destruction of Iran, has caused a visible rift with key officials in the White House who are still stuck in a losing war in Iraq.

Vice President Cheney, speaking at the AIPAC annual convention in 2007, directly challenged AIPAC leaders who seemed to be abandoning support for the Administration’s Iraq war and pressing for more aggressive economic sanctions and the war option strategy toward Iran. The Zioncons seek to maximize support for their new phony ‘existential’ war against Iran among Jewish liberals who have turned against the Iraq war, thus leaving Cheney and Bush holding the US body bags.  At the AIPAC convention, Cheney, no neophyte to backstabbing intrigues, offered to escalate US threats against Iran if the Zionists maintained their support for the Bush-Cheney-Rice war in Iraq. While Israeli Prime Minister Olmert formally reiterated the importance of the US continuing its occupation of Iraq for Israeli ‘security’, in practice all his ministers attending every major Zionist conference have emphasized to their US acolytes the Iranian threat and the need to eliminate the Iranian regime, its nuclear power plants and state structures. Despite the fact that the US is bleeding white from the open wounds of the current war in Iraq, despite the fact that over three quarters of the US population is fed up with US involvement in Middle Eastern wars, this has not prevented or, even more important, weakened the ZPC effort to set the US on a course toward new wars with the whole hearted support of the majoritarian Democratic Party leadership.

With an eye toward campaign financial contributions, every single Democratic and Republican presidential candidate has pledged to unconditionally support Israeli interests, specific pledges to the ZPC-AIPAC included.

The Pro-Israel Lobby and  Bush: War Powers and the Capitulation of the Democrats

The key factor in the Democrats’ withdrawal of constraints of Bush’s management of the occupation of Iraq was the Jewish Lobby.  According to the Associated Press (March 13, 2007): “Conservative Democrats, as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel, had argued for the change in strategy…” As the Congressional Quarterly noted: “Hawkish pro-Israel lawmakers are pushing to strike a provision slated for the war spending bill that would require the President to seek Congressional approval before launching any military force in Iran.”

The Iran-related proposal stemmed from a desire by some leading Democratic politicians to ensure that Bush did not launch an attack without going to Congress for approval, a measure approved by the vast majority of Democratic rank and file. But during the week of March 5-10, the Zionist elite both in Congress and in the Lobby banged heads in a series of closed door sessions and literally forced the ‘leading Democrats’ to recant and capitulate. Echoing the Olmert line, one of several Zionist mouthpieces in Congress overtly spoke against constitutional and legislative restraints on President Bush because of its ‘effect’ on Israel. Representative Shelley Berkley said in an interview, “there is widespread fear in Israel about Iran which…has expressed unremitting hostility about the Jewish State.” Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emmanuel, who works closely with AIPAC, ‘predicted’, “It would take away perhaps the most important negotiating tool that the US has when it comes to Iran,”(Associated Press March 13, 2007). He succeeded in excluding the amendment in the Supplemental War Budget Allocation, although it was initially favored by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Representative John Murtha, Chair of the Defense Appropriation Committee.

A smirking Vice President Cheney pointed out the hypocrisy of the pro-Israel liberal Democratic Congresspeople and liberal Zionists who opposed Bush on Iraq and were pressing a pro-war policy on Iran. “It is simply not consistent for anyone (including pro-Israel liberals! JP) to demand aggressive action against the menace posed by the Iranian regime while at the same time acquiescing in a retreat from Iraq that would leave our worst enemies dramatically emboldened and Israel’s best friend, the United States, dangerously weakened,” (AP March 13, 2007). Once again the interests of Israel took precedence over the voting preferences of the Democratic electorate. Once more the power of Congressman Rahm Emmanuel and his fellow ‘conservative’ pro-Zionist congressional colleagues overpowered the  ‘conscience’ of other leading Democrats.  Once again AIPAC freed Bush from any Constitutional and Congressional constraints to launch a military attack on Iran. Once again Israel’s bellicose policy dictates were effectively transmitted and implemented in the US Congress. The Democrats abandoned the war authority provision of the Constitution. Israel once again demonstrated that it is the supreme arbiter of US Middle East war policy through its representatives in the US Congress. (No wonder Buchanan and others call the Congress ‘Israeli-occupied territory’).

Bush got AIPAC backing for his arbitrary war powers; Israel retained a President who is a willing accomplice to its war aims in the Middle East.

Israel-AIPAC-US Middle East Wars

The role of Israel in mobilizing the Zionist Lobby in favor of Bush’s broad war powers was evident in Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s forceful speech to the annual AIPAC conference in Washington in March 2007. According to the Israeli daily, Haaretz (March 12, 2007) Livni “warned the US not to show weakness in Iraq.” She went on to emphasize the importance of exercising violence and power… “in a region where impressions are important, countries must be careful not to demonstrate weakness and surrender to extremists.” This is another way of stating the familiar Israeli canard that ‘Arabs only understand force’, a well-worn colonial-racist justification for widespread and continued repression of subjugated Arab people.

Livni instructed the thousands of cheering AIPAC loyalists and hundreds of US Congressional followers at the convention of the Iranian threat and incited them to escalate their attacks on Teheran: “Iran was at the forefront of extremist threats to Israel, the Greater Middle East and the world in general because of its nuclear ambitions. To address extremism is to address Iran, she said urging tougher UN sanctions over its nuclear program,” (Haaretz March 12, 2007). Livni’s closing words touched all the agit-prop code words that fire-up the zealotry of the AIPAC leaders, followers and US Congresspeople. Iran, she stated, “is a regime which denies the Holocaust while threatening the world with a new one. To those states who know the threat but still hesitate because of narrow economic and political interests, let me say this: History will remember!”

Livni’s speech served several purposes. It laid down the ‘line’ to pro-Israel loyalists in the US to continue supporting Bush-Cheney’s policy on the Iraq war, independently of the sentiments of most American Jewish voters. It strengthened the hand of the Lobby and its US Congressional followers by forcing House liberals, Jews and Gentiles, to retract their American voter-mandated constraints on Bush’s war powers. Thirdly it laid out the high priority agenda and campaign for its Zionist followers to pursue with regard to Iran. Finally it ended any breach between Cheney-Bush and the Lobby over prioritizing a ‘new’ war against Iran over the ‘old’ unpopular war in Iraq by tying them together.

The Israeli Foreign Minister’s direct intervention in the internal politics of the US, its blatant support for the Bush-Cheney war, and attack on the US public’s anti-war sentiments, is reminiscent of the worst diplomatic intrusions by the US in the banana republics of Central America. Not a single Congress member dared to point this out, let alone oppose Israeli interference in US politics for fear of retaliation by the aroused mass of ‘Israel Firsters’. Not a single ‘leftist’ or ‘progressive’ commentator noted that Livni’s attempt to universalize Israel’s hostility to Iran was nothing but a demagogic ploy.  Extensive opinion surveys in Europe found absolute majorities rating Israel the most threatening and ‘negative’ country in the world, exceeding Iran, North Korea and Syria. The fact that Iran is a welcome participant in the World Congress of Islamic Countries representing over 500 million people is a slight omission in Livni’s rhetorical excesses. These lapses are no cause for worry in the Israeli Foreign Office, because it is not the propagation of deliberate and verifiable falsehoods which is a problem, but the power of lies to arouse to action its US agents and to discourage any possible US critics. By sounding off on the ‘Holocaust’ and its corollary, ‘History will remember’, Israel was guaranteed the blind fanatical adherence of the ZPC to its bellicose war policies and the silence and capitulation of its ineffective Jewish liberal anti-war doubters. The Jewish-based ‘AIPAC Alternative’, especially the ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’, spends as much time denying the power of the pro-Israel Lobby as criticizing US policy (Nation April 23, 2007 on AIPAC Alternative).

In an ironic and perverse twist of the pro-Israel, anti-war slogan, ‘No War for Oil’, Livni demanded ‘No Peace for Oil’. Livni’s warning to those “states who know the threat but still hesitate because of narrow economic or political interests”, is a clear reference to the United States. More specifically it is aimed at politicians who might look toward peaceful negotiations with Iran, or accept the Saudi peace plan in order to safeguard US oil interests, rather than sacrificing these interests to serve Israel’s political and military supremacy in the Middle East. Livni is clearly directing its ‘Israel Firsters’ in the US to trump the Oil Appeasers, to browbeat any politicians who raise US market concerns over Israeli and Zionist war demands.

While Livni’s perception of the danger to Israel emanates from the peaceful-diplomatic approach of ‘narrow (sic) economic or political interests’ (to the even narrower Israeli concern for land grabs in Palestine and Lebanon), what passes as a US peace movement joins in chorus by blaming the oil industry for US Middle Eastern wars. There is a convenient coincidence of Israeli hawks and US doves in denouncing Big Oil, which is not such a coincidence if we remember that what passes for the US peace movement is inordinately influenced by prominent left Zionists, who combine criticism of ‘Bush’s war’ with exclusion of any mention of Israel or criticism of the war mongering Zionist lobby. Before, during and after the AIPAC conference in Washington several thousand of its zealots blitzed the offices of Congress members and Senators. More than half the Congress members and practically every Senator were browbeaten in over 500 meetings in favor of Israel’s war agenda against Iran.

In late March the Arab League led by Saudi Arabia proposed a comprehensive peace plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The proposal offered Arab recognition, trade and diplomatic relations, an end of the state of belligerency and economic sanctions, in exchange for Israel abiding by United Nations resolutions and withdrawing from all Palestinian lands seized during and after the 1967 war. The Israeli Prime Minister flatly refused to accept the Saudi proposal arguing that it was only the ‘basis of negotiations’. The ZPC immediately echoed the Israeli party line, calling into question the form and substance of the proposal as well as attacking the Arab regimes. On March 29, 2007 alone, the organ of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations published four major propaganda pieces attacking the peace proposal and backed Israel’s rejection. The Lobby ensured that the US Congress and executive either supported the Israeli position or refused to back the Saudi plan. Once again, AIPAC’s 150 full time lobbyists ran circles around pro-Arab US oil multinationals.

House Majority Leader as Israel’s Messenger

Democratic House Majority leader Nance Pelosi’s visit to Syria stirred a hostile response from the White House and accolades from liberals and progressives. Bush objected to Pelosi for interfering with his foreign policy powers and ‘non-negotiation’ position vis a vis Syria. Liberals hailed Pelosi’s visit as opening new vistas for ‘diplomacy’ rather than saber rattling. Both failed to recognize that Pelosi’s main substantive task was to serve as a proxy and messenger for the Israeli state. During her visit to Israel, prior to going to Syria, the Israeli regime instructed Pelosi to pressure Syria to end support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. The Israeli prime minister told his messenger, Pelosi, to relay to the Syrians that breaking ties and isolating itself from its only allies were the conditions for Israel opening negotiations. This was despite the fact that up to Pelosi’s visit to Syria, AIPAC and the entire Zionist political machine had vilified any Congress member who even mentioned visiting Syria. However when Israel gave the word that Pelosi was running Israeli messages to Syria, the Lobby did not object. The party line from Tel Aviv had shifted and the Israeli Fifth column automatically shifted its line, and not one of its ‘functionaries’ raised a peep. There were far more overseas Communist dissenters when Stalin abruptly changed the party line than there are Zionist defectors under similar circumstances.

The almost comical back flips and ideological contortions which the ‘Israel Firsters’ (IF) engage in to conform to the zigzags of their Israeli handlers are evident in their treatment of the Arab Gulf states. For the longest time the IF did everything possible to discredit them, referring to them as decrepit, absolutist states, and debunked the State Department’s characterization of them as ‘Arab Moderates’. More recently when Olmert referred to the same states as ‘moderate’ largely because they engage in covert trade with Israel through third parties, and criticized Iran, the Lobby revised its line and spoke favorable of them. Then when the Saudis brokered the Hamas-PLO unity government, Israel attacked the role of Saudi Arabia as backing the terrorist Hamas and the Zionist propaganda machine followed suit labeling the Saudis as financiers of Hamas terrorism. The blind servility of the Israel Lobby to a ‘foreign power’ would simply be a matter for the Justice Department if it didn’t have such a profound impact on US Middle East policy, where every Israeli change in policy is automatically reflected in US policy.

The Israel First Lobby Blocks Big US Arms Sale

With the US trade deficit exceeding $500 billion dollars, one of its few competitive export sectors is its arms industry, which is number one in world arms sales, followed by Israel. The Bush Administration’s planned arms sale to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies has been blocked by Israeli action through its Zionist Lobby (NY Times, April 5, 2007). The Administration officials twice scheduled and canceled briefings for members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because of AIPAC’s influence over the Committee and the likelihood that the arms deal would be rejected. As a result the Administration is hoping that Israel will call off its Lobby attack dogs in exchange for a 20% increase in US military aid and grants to Israel – upping the total of military aid from $2.4 billion dollars to $3 billion annually. Secretary of Defense Gates, who was unable to shake the Lobby’s influence over Congress, had to fly to Israel to plead with Israel to allow the sales to go through in exchange for receiving advanced US military technology.

US grants to Israel of advanced military research, design and technology has increased Israel’s competitive position in the world’s military high-tech market and increased its share at the expense of the US, as seen in its recent $1.5 billion dollar military sales to India. In brief, the Israel Lobby runs circles around the US military-industrial complex in terms of influencing the US Congress, blocking lucrative deals and advancing Israel’s sales in the world market.

Democratic Party Candidates Truckle to the Lobby

Major Democratic Party Presidential hopefuls have made an extraordinary effort to secure the Lobby’s approval: All back Bush’s ‘military option’ toward Iran; all support the annual $2.4 billion dollar foreign aid package to Israel, despite Israel’s $25,000 per capita income and booming high tech industry. Speaking before the National Jewish Democratic Council, New York Senator Hillary Clinton called on the US to confront Iran militarily (Jerusalem Post, April 26, 2007). Taking advantage of the fawning behavior of all the candidates, the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, promoted a panel of Israeli ‘experts’ to evaluate US Presidential candidates on the basis of their servility to Israeli interests. This, in turn, led Senator Obama to send his latest, most crass and bellicose pronouncements regarding Iran to the Israeli panel (see Robert Kagan, ‘Obama the Interventionist’, Washington Post April 29, 2007). Nonetheless, it is Hillary Clinton who leads the pack in securing Jewish campaign financing. The Lobby’s high regard for Clinton is not merely because of her total and complete identification with Israel – as stated as the March 2007 AIPAC Convention – but by the family’s notorious track record. Former CIA Director, George Tenet, in his latest book At the Center of the Storm, devotes an entire chapter to then President Bill Clinton’s proposal to free American-Israeli master-spy, Jonathan Pollard from federal prison. Under prodding from Israel’s far right-wing President Benyamin Netanyahu, his National Security Advisor, the Zionlib Sandy Berger, Zioncon envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross and a substantial sector of the Lobby, Clinton proposed to release the convicted spy Pollard. According to his book, Tenet told Clinton that he would resign because he would lose all his moral capital with the entire intelligence apparatus that would argue that an American traitor was being rewarded. More likely, the entire military and intelligence community was outraged that Clinton would follow the policies laid out by the Israeli spymasters and their US lobbyists over American national security concerns.

Clinton later broke precedent in granting a pardon to a fugitive criminal, the billionaire swindler Marc Rich, now a citizen of Israel and close friend of the Lobby and Israeli leaders. Hillary Clinton has demonstrated that she and Bill not only speak, but also act, for the primacy of Israeli interests even when it involves going against the entire US security community and its legal system. That sordid history must count a lot in securing guarantees that the Clintons are bona fide 100% Israel camp followers, something none of the other candidates can boast.

In early May, the Bush Administration proposed an 8-month timetable of steps meant to bolster prospects for peace between Israel and Palestine. The proposal simply asked Israel to allow Palestinians normal but urgent bus and truck travel between Gaza and the West Bank in exchange for Palestinians curbing the homemade cross border rocket firings. As was predictable, the Israelis objected to even the slightest breach in the oppressive ghettoization of the Palestinians (Daily Alert May 2, 2007). Israeli leaders rejected a time-table because it prevented them from procrastinating: Israeli military officers opposed any loosening of their stranglehold on Gaza for “security reasons” (Daily Alert May 8, 2007). They maintained that Hamas might increase its influence in the West Bank through persuasion. Once the Israeli military rejected the Bush initiative, the Zionist Power Configuration went to work. The Democrats, including all their leading Presidential candidates and Congressional leaders, refused to back Bush’s anemic effort to open the Gaza ghetto. The mass media followed suit. The pro-Israel lobby buried the entire proposal before it even entered into public debate.

The Lobby Versus Federal Prosecutors: The AIPAC Spy Trial

On August 4, 2005 two AIPAC leaders and a Pentagon analyst, Larry Franklin were indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with spying for Israel. The indictment lists numerous acts of espionage dating back to 1999 in which the two AIPAC leaders acted as conduits for classified information flowing from Washington to Tel Aviv. Franklin has confessed and cooperated with the FBI in recording his meeting with Rosen and Weissman regarding the passing of high security White House document related to US policy on Iran to Israeli Embassy agents. Faced with overwhelming evidence AIPAC ‘fired’ Rosen and Weiss, stopped paying for their legal expenses and initially denied any responsibility for the pair. Subsequently however AIPAC and numerous satellite and auxiliary organizations decided to turn the spy trial into a campaign over ‘free speech’. Accordingly the liberal and conservative members of the pro-Israel lobby succeeded in rounding up a ‘Who’s Who’ of otherwise leftist journalists, progressive news broadcasters and academics in defense of Rosen and Weissman. Speaking in defense of the two AIPAC functionaries, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Dorothy Rabinowitz argued in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal that handing high security government documents to Israeli Embassy security agents are “activities that go on every day in Washington and that are clearly protected under the First Amendment” (Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2007). As the trial date approaches, major pro-Israel organizations, billionaire Hollywood producers and most, if not all, of the Jewish press in the US have taken the defense of Rosen and Weissman (The American “Dreyfuss Trial’). Except for a few internet bloggers, not a single political party, social or political movement has dared to criticize acts of handing over classified documents to Israel or to raise eyebrows over the equation of ‘free speech’ with spying for a foreign power. Because of the pervasive pressure of the Lobby, the Federal Judge T.S. Ellis has made several procedural rulings weakening the case of the prosecution. Once again the Zionist Power Configuration seems to have successfully out-muscled US institutions, in this case Federal prosecutors and the FBI.

AIPAC and Israel: Strategic Informant in the White House

The spy trial of two top officials of AIPAC, who admitted to handing over strategic documents to Israeli diplomats, (and who have been defended on the basis of ‘free speech’ by a host of American progressive left Zionists) has turned up further evidence of their deep penetration of the highest echelons of the White House. In the preliminary hearings of the spy trial, defense attorney Abby Lowell, in an attempt to exonerate the Zionist spy suspects, announced that the accused received ‘explosive’ and even more volatile information from then National Security Adviser Condeleeza Rice (Jewish Telegraph Agency, April 10, 2007). There is little doubt that the Rice’s transmission of confidential security information to AIPAC was also handed over to the Israeli embassy and its undercover Mossad agents operating in Washington.

The Lobby spy network extends beyond confessed Pentagon spy, Laurence Franklin, who handed confidential documents to the accused AIPAC officials. According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency quoting Attorney Abby Lowell, “Rice had not merely been Rosen’s interlocutor but had leaked information identical to and at times more sensitive than examples cited in the indictment.” In addition Lowell said the information Rice provided was more volatile than the information described in the indictment. Lowell claimed that ‘three other current and former Middle East policy officials, in addition to Rice” were providing information to the AIPAC accused Israeli spies.

The Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC): Cultural Repression at the Service of Israel

Racist rabble-rousing against Muslims runs rife among zealous Zionists inside the US Government and outside among mainstream pro-Israel organizations with no apparent reprimands. The Conference of Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations (CPMJO) backed co-thinker and Israeli-US dual citizen Michael Chertoff’s (head of the Department of Homeland Security) efforts to curtail Muslim visits to the US, including British citizens, of what the New York Times (May 2, 2007) diplomatically refers to as of “Pakistani origin”. In a follow up lead article in the CPMJO news bulletin The Daily Alert (May 9, 2007) they featured a xenophobic article by Josh Meyer and Erika Hayasaki titled, “Six Foreign-born ‘Radical Islamists’ Charged in Plot to Strike Fort Dix Army Base.” When pro-Israel zealots in high government positions engage in blatant racist witch-hunts against Muslims and respectable mainstream Zionist umbrella organizations publish inflammatory, xenophobic rhetoric, no Congress members or Justice Department officials call for public hearings or inquiries.

The power of ZPC far exceeds the political lobbying of AIPAC. It extends to every realm of US cultural and intellectual life. The frenzied vitriolic nation-wide mass media personal assaults on former President Jimmy Carter for authoring a critical book documenting Israel’s apartheid system is one example of the extensive web of Zionist propagandists. Many are situated in major academic and media institutions and share a common set of hardened doctrinaire beliefs in Israel’s infallibility. The same malicious treatment was dished out to Harvard Professor Mersheimer and University of Chicago Professor Walt for writing a critical article on the US Zionist lobby. Apart from the wave of ideological screeds condemning the essay and slandering the authors with the usual banalities (‘anti-Semites’), several wealthy Jewish ‘philanthropists’ forced the Harvard corporation to dissociate itself from the essay on its Kennedy School website. The same Zionist octopodian reach was manifested in the canceling of a meeting discussing Israel, which included New York University Professor Tony Judt, a rather mild critic of the Jewish state and its Lobby. Most pernicious, and in some ways even more demonstrative of the brazen repressive cultural role of the Zionist Power Configuration is their power to prevent a play which is based on the writings of the murdered American human rights worker Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in April 2003. In New York, Miami and Toronto, publicly scheduled performances of My Name is Rachel Corrie were forced to cancel because of financial threats by local Jewish ‘philanthropists’ and ‘patrons of the arts’. The seriousness of these blatant acts of political and cultural censorship reveals the ZPC’s profound and open hostility to the best examples of US humanitarian solidarity and embrace the worst kinds of Israeli violence. Not a single leftist or progressive critic dared to raise the issue of American Zionist complicity in this egregious ‘hate crime’ committed by a foreign power against an American human rights worker. No other group can successfully back the cold-blooded killers of an American citizen with impunity, anonymity and continue to retain credentials as ‘patrons of the arts and culture’. To this day, 40 years after the fact, the same pro-Israel crowd defends or excuses Israel’s deliberate military attack on the unarmed US naval surveillance ship the USS Liberty in international waters, killing and wounding about 150 US sailors. This gang of ‘Israel Firsters’ is honored in their communities here in the United States, welcome to high office and secure in their affluent surroundings.

Highly qualified candidates with outstanding résumés are denied academic and professional appointments or threatened with loss of tenure or expulsion for the mere reason of criticizing Israel. The cases of Professor Juan Cole’s appointment at Yale and Professor Norman Finkelstein at De Paul University are the most notorious cases. The world-renowned Palestinian American scholar, Edward Said was persecuted and slandered up to his recent death by the attack hounds of the Lobby.

The theoretical and practical point is that the ZPC includes hundreds of local organizations and tens of thousands of individuals who take local initiatives in defending Israeli policy, its image and interests by trampling on the Constitutional and academic freedom of other Americans.

For every play which is banned, producer chastised and theater put in the red, thousands of other cultural workers and institutions are intimidated. They internalize the repressive codes imposed by the Zionists and self-censor. They submit to ZPC dictates of what can and cannot be performed, what is or is not offensive to ‘Jewish sensibilities’, that exquisitely stated euphemism for Zionist power.

Manifestations of Zionist cultural authoritarianism is found at the local level and is closely linked with national campaigns to monopolize the entire discussion of US Middle East policy, and in particular, to exclude any criticism of Israel and the powerful role of the Zionist Lobby. That monopoly is most evident in any systematic study of the op-ed pages of the big circulation print media and the panels of ‘experts’ included in the major broadcast media. The role of the pro-Israel repressive cultural-ideological hydra especially finds expression among the great majority of ‘progressive’ critics. ‘Marxist’ ideologues and ‘peace’ advocates deliberately and totally ignore the ZPC’s influence in Congress, the Executive and in cultural life. Instead they repeatedly criticize Bush, Cheney, the Republicans and Democrats without mentioning their prime movers among the hundreds of thousands of Zionist zealots and thousands of prime political donors. It is no wonder that the Zionist power configuration has greater power than any other lobby in Washington – they are the only power group which has no opposition, no organized group willing to name them, let alone challenge and fight their stranglehold over Congress. Worse still, some of the most influential critics of the war in Iraq provide ideological cover by denying the ZPC’s dominant role and deflecting attention to either non-existent war-makers (Big Oil) or to secondary political actors, who carry out Lobby initiatives.

Re-arming Clients: Washington and the ZPC’s War Machine Rolls On

The political-military setbacks inflicted on US-Israeli policy in the Middle East in 2006-2007 has not led to any moves toward serious diplomacy or negotiations. On the contrary the lessons drawn by Washington and Tel Aviv is to escalate the militarization of client groups and prepare for destructive civil and ethnic wars.

In response to the failure of the US-backed Israeli attack on Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah, Washington has been engaged in a large-scale rearming of right-wing Christian, Druze and Sunni militias in Beirut and throughout North-Central Lebanon (Guardian, April 11, 2007). The purpose is to provoke an armed conflict with Hezbollah which will force it to move its resistance fighters northward and weaken its defense of the Southern Lebanese border. A US-Israeli induced ‘civil war’ will, it is presumed, divide the Lebanese army and weaken any auxiliary role it might play in defending the country from Israeli cross border attacks or invasions. Given the widespread violence, resulting from a conflict, Israeli aircraft, now engaged in daily over-flights and reconnaissance would be free to bomb and destroy any and all reconstruction and Hezbollah defenses.

Israeli-backed American arming of a Palestinian military force led by longtime CIA collaborator, Mohammed Dahlen, working with ‘President’ Abbas, is advancing rapidly with the training of hundreds of officers in Jordan, pre-selected for political loyalty by Israeli and US officials. A heavily-armed force of 12,000 US-paid Palestinian mercenaries is being prepared to oust Hamas from power, destroy its police and defense forces and hunt down its leaders and intimidate its electoral supporters.

The Zionist lobby succeeded in inserting an extraordinary clause in Bush’s military aid to the Abbas faction in the Palestinian government. The lobby secured Israeli as well as US political screening of all Palestinian trainees before they are allowed to travel to Jordan for the US-funded training. In defense of the Jewish state’s right to oversee the administration of US military aid, the Lobby argued that the clause was necessary because of Israeli ‘fears’ – in other words – Israeli interests in retaining Palestine as a colony policed by Israeli screened Palestinian mercenaries (Adam Entous, Reuters News Service quoted in the Daily Alert, March 29, 2007.)

A Palestine destroyed by US-Israeli induced ‘civil strife’ will be in no position to negotiate any peace agreement that returns Israel to its pre-1967 borders. The idea is to establish a pro-US Palestinian-run police state within the territorial limits dictated by Israel.

The third area of militarization involves Northern Iraq where the US and Israel have financed the Kurdish military build-up. They politically support Kurdish separatists who for all intents and purposes operate as an independent state. According to Laura Rozen’s article, “Kurdistan: Covert Back Channels”, published in Mother Jones, April 12, 2007, the US and Israel support a willing Kurdish client in the plot to break up Iraq, impoverish Baghdad as its capital and set up Irbil as their capital. In June 2004, US top official Paul Bremer ‘transferred $1.4 billion US dollars from Iraq’s oil for food funds to the Kurds. Israeli ‘counter-terrorist’ training given to Kurdish security forces is used by Kurdish death squads under US direction in Northern Iraq and elsewhere. Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker (June 2004), stated that Israeli-trained Kurdish commandos infiltrate Iran and Syria. According to Rozen, the Mossad station chief Eliezer Geizi Tsafrir in Irbil, the ‘capital’ of Iraqi Kurdistan, set up a Kurdish intelligence service for the war-lord Mustafa Barzani. He is better known as the ‘rent-a-Kurd’ mercenary leader, who has served the US CIA, the former Shah of Iran and whoever else could pay him. The Kurds provide the bulk of what General David Petraeus has called ‘reliable Iraqi troops’ collaborating with the US colonial occupation forces. They have been active in infiltrating Iraqi resistance groups and fomenting ethnic-religious strife. They are responsible for the massive forced eviction of Iraqi Arabs, Turkomen and Assyrian Christians from Kirkuk and other multi-ethnic towns and cities in the north and repopulating them with Kurds. The Kurdish leaders in Northern Iraq have provided bases and arms for pro-US armed groups operating in Iran, Syria and Turkey, although the latter is without formal US approval. The Kurds serve as commandos and guides for US Special Forces engaged in assassination missions in Iran. The Kurds based in Northern Iraq are instructed to incite ‘separatist’ regional movements in Iran. With strong backing from the US, the Kurds have seized control of the rich oil wells in Kirkuk and surrounding areas, have signed oil contracts with European and US oil companies, de facto privatizing Iraqi public enterprises. The Kurds play a vital role in the US-Israeli strategy of breaking up Iraq into a multiplicity of mini-client entities divided by sectarian ethnic-religious identities with no influence in the region and incapable of ousting long-term US military bases in the country.

In the Horn of Africa, the US has armed and directed the Ethiopian client regime to restore the totally discredited ‘Transitional Regime’ to power in Mogadishu, killing over one thousand Somali civilians and displacing over 300,000 civilians during April-May 2007. The Ethiopian mercenary armed forces caused over $1.5 billion dollars in destruction with the advice of US Special Forces officers and Israeli counter-insurgency advisers. Once again, US policy is directed at destroying an Islamic country as much as it is defeating a potential political adversary – the Islamic Court Councils. Certainly the policy of relying on the military might of a hated Ethiopian dictator to invade and occupy Somalia has no possibility of creating a viable client regime. Washington’s quick resort to military escalation follows recent defeats and is preparatory to its forthcoming large-scale air war supplemented by mercenary ground attacks against Iran. This is where the ZPC comes into play as key policy makers and propagandists.

While one can debate whether the latest wave of US military escalation is the ‘dying gasp’ of a desperate empire, an irrational miscalculation by civilian militarists pursuing a military victory to bolster flagging domestic support or a continuation of long-standing imperial policies in the region, the fact remains that the principle domestic backer of the re-escalation strategy is the ZPC. No other organized political-economic forceconsistently supports all US military efforts in each of the zones of conflict. No other group backs US military action in countries where there is little or no oil. No other group totally ignores the ‘overstretch’ of the US military – the over-extension of US military forces in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa at the expense of providing military defense of other strategic imperial regions. Only the ZPC, of all theoretically possible influential ‘interest groups’ has put all countries – Islamic or secular – critical of Israel on the US’s military hit-list. Only the ZPC has orchestrated legislation to bar US financial institutions, pension funds and major oil and gas companies from lucrative investments in Arab and Persian markets. Not a single oil company has favored or benefited from the restrictive legislation on Iran authored by AIPAC, sponsored by Zionist Congressman Tom Lantos and approved by a Congress dominated by the Zionist ‘lobbies’ – the alphabet soup of organizations – whose prime reason for existence is to promote Israeli state power. Every big oil company in Europe and Asia opposes the US confrontational posture to Iran. As the Financial Times states, “Europe’s oil majors have plans to invest billions (in Iran) but US sanctions mean they are reluctant to go ahead.” (Financial Times May 10, 2007 p.2)

The self-styled ‘alternative’ Jewish lobbies, which claim to speak for liberal Jews critical of Israel, maintain that AIPAC is merely ‘one of many factors’ influencing US policy, in a  ‘complex mosaic of changing circumstances’. Using the argument of  ‘complexities’ and packaging the ZPC with ‘numerous groups’ they downplay or eliminate the essential role of the pro-Israel forces and join their mainstream brethren in smearing as ‘anti-Semite’ writers who put the ZPC at the center of their analysis of US policy toward Arab and Muslim countries. The liberal Zionists have a disastrous impact on the peace movement, by deflecting its attention away from a prime mover of US military policy and thus giving the ZPC an uncontested and open terrain for continuing their dominance of US Middle East policy. The liberal Jewish lobby willfully ignores Israeli geopolitical interests, Israeli reliance on military rather than diplomatic measures, its pursuit of ethnic cleansing and the ZPC influence on US policy, in terms of the methods and strategies that Washington should pursue. They deliberately and continuously ignore the opposition of all the major oil companies to US sanctions against Iran.

Conclusion

From 9/11 to the present, the pro-Israel power configuration has broadened its definition of ‘the areas of interest for Israel’, and thus the issues on which it will intervene, thus narrowing the parameters for discussion and policymaking in the US. By defining the limits of action that the US President and Congress can take on issues relating to Israel, the ZPC now influences US policies toward the entire Middle East. Today issues of war and peace, trade and investment agreements by US, European and Asian oil companies and banks in the Middle East, multi-billion dollar arms sales to Saudi Arabia are subject to ZPC scrutiny and veto. The new ‘broad definition’ of what effects Israel includes Lobby backing for Bush’s shredding of Constitutional restraints on his war powers. According to Zionist ideologues unleashing presidential authoritarianism at the service of Israeli extremism is no vice.

The Lobby’s concept of what ‘relates to Israel’ – its guiding light for intervening in US politics – has been stretched, along with Israel’s expanding interests. During the 1940’s to 50’s, the main focus of the Lobby was to secure US diplomatic support for Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The Lobby’s focus on areas of ‘interest to Israel’ extended to Israel’s wars with Egypt and Syria in the 1960’s and 1970’s; to Lebanon and Iraq during the 1980’s and 1990’s; and to Iraq and Iran during the current decade. The extension of the Lobby’s intervention in US Middle East politics mirrors Israel’s growing regional aspirations. But according to both Israel and its bucket carriers in the Lobby, 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 second biggest arms merchant – Israel (which is also the US’s biggest arms export competitor).

What ‘relates to Israel’ involves the Lobby in intervening and determining the US votes in the United Nations, what pressures it will exert on the European Union in the Security Council, and how the White House should react to peace proposals from its clients in the Gulf states. As Jeff Blankfort correctly points out: every US President starting with Richard Nixon has attempted to pressure Israel to withdraw from land it occupied in 1967. And except for Jimmy Carter forcing Israel out of Sinai, Israel has successfully pressured the Israeli Lobby to mobilize the US Congress to end these presidential efforts. Today the ‘Israel Firsters’ do not have to ‘mobilize the Democratic Congress’ – they are automatically programmed to work for Israel, as is the US President. As former Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once said: “We tell him (Bush) what to do, and he does it.”

The score card for the ZPC under the Bush Presidency and the Democratic Congressional majority is 10 for the Israel Lobby to 0 (zero) for the American People. These ’10 Points’ are:

1. No limits on the Presidential war agenda toward Iran.
2. No end of sanctions against Palestine
3. No arms sales to Saudi Arabia without Israeli approval.
4. No withdrawal from Iraq.
5. No land for peace agreement to end Israeli colonization of Palestine
6. No end of US escalation of troops in Iraq
7. No end to the power of the Lobby in making US Middle East policy
8. No end to Israeli spying on the US (its even called ‘free speech)
9. No end to the censoring of US cultural and intellectual work critical of Israel and to uncontested harassment of Muslims
10. Undisputed Judge and Jury of the beauty contest of US Presidential candidates.
11. No end to the Peace Movement’s silence and cover-up of the Lobby’s power over US Middle East policy.

James Petras‘ latest book is The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press: Atlanta, 2006).  His forthcoming book, Rulers and Ruled (Bankers, Zionists and Militants) is being published by Clarity Press, Atlanta.