George Salzman

Southern Poverty Law Center, Heidi Beirich, Kevin B. MacDonald, critical thoughts I

George Salzman — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:18:00 -0700

By George Salzman

This posting and the follow-up, 'critical thoughts II', are based on a paper nearly three years old.[1] I think the issues involved are at least as important now as they were then. A recent article by Israel Shamir brought them to attention again. He wrote critically, for the first time so far as I know, of one of the views of Kevin B. MacDonald, a man whose integrity and courage Shamir respects.[2] Shamir's paper, The Poverty of Racialist Thought, begins with a topical news item,

Racial theorist Prof Kevin MacDonald has written a piece about film director Roman Polansky's recent arrest: http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-Polanski.html#KM. As you might expect, KMD has discovered that Polansky is not condemned by Hollywood because he is a Jew, and Jews protect their own. They also like Polansky because his films and his actions have undermined the Whites' morals and values. Life is simple for Prof MacDonald.

Shamir, no plodding academic, knows how to grab someone's interest. And he loves to argue. Kevin B. MacDonald is an academic, but by no means a plodding one. According to a Wikipedia entry,[3] "Kevin B. MacDonald, (born January 24, 1944) is a professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, best known for his use of evolutionary psychology to inform his study of Judaism as being a 'group evolutionary strategy'." [He claims that Jewish genetic traits], "including higher-than-average verbal intelligence and ethnocentricism, have ... evolved to enhance the ability of Jews to out-compete non-Jews for resources while undermining the power and self-confidence of the white majorities in Europe and America."

As you can easily imagine, among the bulk of ordinary Americans, practically all non-Jewish, who are being badly hurt by the collapse of the true American economy, many among them see it largely as the handiwork of "the Jews". And there can be no doubt that the influence of "Jewish money" on the entire political process in the U.S. is completely inordinate compared to the tiny percentage of Americans who are identifiably Jewish. One hardly needs to be a right-wing fanatic, a nativist, a hater of Jews to see the disastrous results of the U.S.-Israeli drive for conquest and empire. Whether it is a matter of the dog wagging the tail (the U.S. controlling Israel) as those aligned with Noam Chomsky maintain, or the tail wagging the dog (Israel controlling the U.S.) as James Petras argues, is of little concern for most people. And as Univ of Chicago Professor of History Peter Novick, himself an American Jew, says, speaking of American Jewry in the 1980s and 1990s, [4]

American Jews were by far the wealthiest, best-educated, most influential, in every way most successful group in American society — a group that, compared to most other identifiable minority groups, suffered no measurable discrimination and no disadvantages on account of that minority status.

You don't have to be a professor at an elite American university to share that opinion — Yeah, the Jews got it good. Too good! That's my opinion also, except that I would say, "Too good for their own good!" I think it is a widely shared perception that American Jews as a group are materially among the more privileged Americans. Naturally those Americans whose resources for living are being pillaged are outraged to be victimized, and if they think "the Jews" have a big hand in it, they will be filled with hatred. If you think I am mistaken you might try listening to the weekly internet radio program from Columbus, Ohio that Susie Purtee hosts, The Patriot Dames Radio Show. After she first contacted me, we corresponded intermittently prior to her live interview of me on 20 August 2009. Susie is an unpretentious midwesterner who has lived all of her sixty-two years in Columbus.[5] From my perspective she seems to be woefully brainwashed into believing that the United States was founded for the highest human purposes and preserved that pristine commitment until 1968 when drugs, miniskirts, Woodstock (that was in '69) and promiscuity became dominant and everything went to hell. In spite of her conservatism, she seems to be sincerely interested in providing a platform where a variety of views can be presented.

Internment of German Americans during World War II

One of the things I'd never have known about if not for Susie's program is the punishing mistreatment of innocent civilians of German origin during World War II, simply on the basis of their ethnicity and their classification as "enemy aliens", similar to the internment of civilians of Japanese ethnicity. Eberhard Fuhr was the guest Susie interviewed on Nov 22, 2009. He, along with his two brothers, one younger and one older, and his parents were arrested in 1942, when he was 17. He had grown up in Cincinnati, where he went to elementary and high school until F.B.I. agents came to his school and arrested him there. His parents and younger brother were interned in Texas for five years. Eberhard stressed that their treatment was not unique; about 15 thousand other so-called "aliens" of German ethnicity shared similar mistreatment.[6]

Sympathy and compassion for "white aliens", like Germans — that's good. None for "Indians", "Blacks" or "Latino aliens" — why not?

On Susie's program, and in my substantial written and telephone interactions with her she comes across as being very friendly on a personal level, but at the same time harboring harsh abstract opinions. For example, she wrote me on 17 Aug 2009, "I just read your paper on Voters.[7] I can see where we disagree and it should make for an interesting interview ... I will raise more questions that concern your idealism, communism, atheism and anarchy than other guests I have had ... I believe in the 'you earn it' system. I do not believe those that do not deserve housing, education or food should have it without working for it ... The 'us' versus 'them' has been around since the Industrial Age, heck, perhaps long before and it has to do with politics and rank. You think it has to do with ethnicity? I thought you said ethnicity was the problem." The emotional thrust of Susie's program is towards generating sympathy for "white Germans", which her interview with Eberhard Fuhr did quite effectively. That's fine. An innocent young man should not be mistreated, and in a decent world he would not be.

Another experience I had was associated with Susie's program on 2009-10-08, when she interviewed Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR). Susie generously gave me an opportunity to question Mark on the air during the second half-hour. The entire exchange is recorded.[8] The next day I received an e-mail from someone unknown to me, which read:

Subject: Do you know who Mark Weber is?
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 18:26:35 -0400
http://www.holocaust-history.org/questions/ihr.shtml
Get a clue. At the moment, I'm uncertain about this uninvited interjection and the followup comments. Susie gave it short shrift, writing
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:39:50 +0000
I am not replying to this ... guy. He seems like a big-time trouble maker.
— and, a few minutes later she added —
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:47:38 +0000
Personally, I would say do not reply ... Spam this guy and forget about him. He sounds creepy.
— Susie may be a lot more internet streetwise than I am —

Mark Weber came across in the interview as a well informed, alert person. Whether he is, as the unknown interjector subsequently claimed, a Jew-hating Nazi, I am unable to either verify or deny. But that he is intelligent and thoughtful is clearly not in doubt. And that his criticisms of "the Jews" find resonant acceptance among a swath of virulent Jew-haters is beyond question. They flock to him, it appears, even more than to Kevin B. MacDonald. The shortcoming of both Mark Weber and Kevin MacDonald is encapsulated in the title of Israel Shamir's essay, "The Poverty of Racialist Thought". Shamir insightfully says, "As you might expect, KMD [Kevin MacDonald] has discovered that Polansky is not condemned by Hollywood because he is a Jew, and Jews protect their own. They also like Polansky because his films and his actions have undermined the Whites' morals and values. Life is simple for Prof MacDonald." In precisely the same way, 'Life is simple' for Mark Weber. Both men accept the 'simple but false' notion that ethnic social behavioral differences between identifiable groups of people are ultimately tied, through evolution, to differing genetic makeup.

It ain't the genes, it's the culture that causes different social behavior

Shamir speakes of the poverty of 'racialist' thought. The term 'racialist' was, I suppose, introduced to distinguish it from racist, which signifies contempt, etc. for people of other 'races'. Racialist supposedly signifies differences between 'us' and 'them', but without implying contempt for 'them'. To me the supposed distinction is a can of worms. Just for the hell of it I looked up racialism in my ancient dictionary. The entry there [9] supports my belief that the supposed distinction between racist and racialist reflects a misguided contemporary passion for 'politically correct' language. Shamir, I think correctly, does not see Kevin B. MacDonald as a hater of Jews. The difference, whether real and substantive or illusory, between whether MacDonald is a racist or a racialist is of no interest to Heidi Beirich, who directs the Southern Poverty Law Center's so-called Intelligence Report. She is a smear artist ready to label anyone who is critical of the Zionist attack on the Palestinians an anti-Semite, as she has characterized MacDonald and me.

There ought to be no doubt about the importance of the ideology that purports to explain social behavior of so-called ethnic groups. The two ideologies in question are:

1. Genetic determination. The social behavior of an ethnic group is determined by the genetic makeup of the group. It has evolved over time with the genetic structure, and is therefore an invariable characteristic of the group.

2. Cultural determination. The social behavior of an ethnic group is determined by the culture of the group as it evolved historically, is not genetically determined, and is therefore a variable characteristic of the group.

An iconic example of belief in the ideology of purely genetic determination is Adolph Hitler, who regarded Jews as without question belonging to a different "race", a sub-human group. At the opposite extreme, I have for years held the fort in favor of the ideology of purely cultural determination. There's no way to 'prove' that either ideology is necessarily correct, i.e. is a true representation of this aspect of reality. Logically either view can be assumed correct, and a world view formulated that is consistent with that premise. Nevertheless I believe I have constructed a solid, convincing argument to show that the concept of ethnicity based on genetics as a means for separating human beings into distinct groups is essentially vacuous in so far as significant social behavior is determined.[10]

In the camp of believers in purely genetic determination are, with Hitler, apparently a fair number of the people attracted to Susie Purtee's "The Patriot Dames Radio Show". People with such beliefs are prone to think that the only real solution to what they see as "the world's problems" is to exterminate the "racially distinct" sub-human group. For Hitler and Susie's "crazies" that means "the Jews". On her 22 Oct 2009 program when she interviewed Eberhard Fuhr, one of the listeners who identifies himself as Michael (Mike) Bailey posted incessantly on the message board crude statements: Kill the Jews, and similar demands. Another participant on the message exchange board, who uses the nom de guerre 'jewologist', makes comments of similar eloquence. Along with the "kill the Jews" group another fanatical group that wants to (and does) kill members of an identifiable ethnic group is made up of Zionist settlers in the occupied areas of Palestine, aided by a host of Jewish (and non-Jewish) Zionists who provide the murderers with immunity. Here of course it is the Palestinians who are targeted for slaughter.

Distinct from the rabid killers and would-be killers are individuals who do not advocate direct physical violence, but whose intellectual work lends support to the genetic determination ideology. Kevin B. MacDonald is a leading theoretician in this group.[11] There are other intellectual specialists such as Alan Hart, the British journalist and ardent pro-Palestinian activist, whose belief is that Jews are the Western intellectual elite, Palestinians the Middle-East intellectual elite, and that these intellectual heights are at least partly evolved genetically. Despite his utterly humanitarian orientation, I think it is important to dispel such notions of genetic evolution of "superior" intelligence, as I have tried to argue persuasively in the paper linked to in endnote [10]. In critical thoughts II, the sequel to this note, I will consider some of the reasons why I think Kevin MacDonald is fundamentally in error, and why the error is potentially dangerous.

-------------------------

NOTES

[1] The original version, which is titled "Some critical correspondence about the Southern Poverty Law Center", is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/S2/2007-12-18.rtf.

[2] Israel Shamir's recent paper that reawakened my interest in Kevin MacDonald and Heidi Beirich's role in the Southern Poverty Law Center, is at http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Poverty.htm.

[3] Wikipedia entry for Prof. Kevin B. MacDonald http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_B._MacDonald.

[4] Prof. Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, Houghton Mifflin (1999), p.9.

[5] The Patriot Dames Radio Show, hosted by Susie Purtee on the internet at http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=20064&cmd=tc. An account of my motivation to participate in the program is in the article at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-30.htm.

[6] Internment of German American civilian "aliens" in the U.S. during World War II. The recorded interview of Eberhard Fuhr by Susie Purtee (Episode 60 on her program) is at
http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=20064&pageNumber=2&pageSize=15.

[7] The paper on Voters refers to the essay, "How many voters does it take to change a light bulb? None. Because voters can't change anything" at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-07.htm.

[8] Mark Weber is the director of the Institute for Historical Review. Its site is at http://www.ihr.org. Susie's interview of Mark is mainly in the first half of the program, available at http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-20064/TS-266797.mp3. Following the break Susie invited me to question Mark, and a somewhat extended interchange ensued among the three of us.

[9] Racialist. The Funk & Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary, Text Edition, published by Harcourt, Brace & World (1963) has the entry: racialism n. Racism. — racialist n.

[10] On the basic humanity of all people. The most recent effort to argue this position is in the essay "Changing History, 1" at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-09-05.htm.

[11] Kevin B. MacDonald, an academic intellectual who's unafraid to say what he believes is true. His most recent posting, titled "Review of Thomas Wheatland's The Frankfurt School in Exile, Part I: Authoritarianism and the Family", was posted at http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/articles/MacDonald-WheatlandI.html. It's on the website of The Occidental Observer, which he edits. It is well worth a careful reading. Much of what MacDonald asserts is in my opinion undoubtedly correct. He writes scathingly of the Frankfort School and the group of Jewish intellectuals in New York who actively promoted the ideology of the Frankfort School. One of them, Erich Fromm, gets special scorn in MacDonald's review where he says, "Ah yes, Erich Fromm — ever the dedicated, impartial empirical scientist. Since such findings have never been confirmed by the research of actual psychologists — indeed, they would be laughed at as the height of ridiculousness, one would think that Wheatland would at least suggest that perhaps Fromm was reading his a priori theories into the interview results — a common enough practice among psychoanalysts."

I believe the most significant part of MacDonald's article (for Jewish Americans) is his exposure of the widely pervasive refusal of that ethnic group to recognize its own role in the generation of anti-Semitism among non-Jewish Americans. Susie Purtee wrote me on 2009-09-13 "Back in 1998 while attending college . . . I ... read Dark . . . I wrote in the critique of Dark that it was a depressing story of a son's hate for his father for not getting the family out of Germany in time. I also wrote, Why don't the Jews figure out what it is they do that ticks other people off?" (emphasis added) I think Susie got it exactly right.

That perceptive question, if suitably generalized, can open a world of understanding. The generalization, which applies universally, is Why don't the privileged people figure out what it is they do that ticks other people off? The "ticking off" of the poor people, the pillaged, who develop hatreds towards their pillagers, is inevitable once they understand what is happening, and why.

--------------------------

This page is also at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-10-31.htm

The Privileged and the Pillaged:
Changing History, 2

George Salzman — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:13:00 -0700

by George Salzman

Taking oneself seriously is a hell of an impediment to having fun, supposedly necessary for one's mental health. I believe it is important. At the very least one needs some diversion. So I thought I'd try some light reading. As it happens, Nancy was a student of literature at Swarthmore College. Her ancient copy of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's Don Quixote de la Mancha was at hand, a bit of classical literary culture for a change of pace, I thought. At the beginning I thoroughly enjoyed the absurdities Cervantes dreamt up to satisfy Don Quixote's lust for righteous adventures. Could it be that I too, in my passion for 'straightening out the world' am but one more possessed fool devoted to tilting with windmills? Of course I don't believe that for a minute. No possessed fool sees himself or herself in the caricature that may ring true for objective outside observers.

It happened that Israel Shamir came into my life a few months ago, and with him came some light heartedness. I've joked about him, both to him and some mutual friends, claiming I know what's ‘wrong’ with him: he's just having too much fun doing what he's doing. Since I became 'entangled' with this charming but Oh! so ideologically difficult-to-pin-down artist of the written word, and a body of his uncritical admirers who gasp in admiration at his every pronouncement, mistaking art and audacity for raw truth, in fact my life too has been enlivened with fun. Is he an anti-Semite, as some friends have cautioned me? I doubt it, but I don't care. I don't think he is a Jew-hater (the common but arguable meaning of the term anti-Semite), but that he wants to think of himself not as the Russian Jew of his upbringing but as the Eastern Orthodox Catholic to which he converted. When he chooses, Shamir can be as immune to rationality as was the Don Quixote of Cervantes' imagination. But he can also be wonderfully, shockingly rational. Incidentally, I got fed up with all the violence and mayhem of Don Quixote and quit in Chapter XXI at page 231, leaving not quite 3/4 of the volume unread. Enough is enough.

Once you accept Shamir on his own terms and are willing to read him critically it can be both stimulating and fun. What you can be confident of is that you won't always get the unvarnished truth from him. For example, a note he wrote to John Spritzler and me:

Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:29:19 +0200 reads (in its entirety):

Hi John and George, you write:

The earlier Bolshevik suppression of workers at Kronstadt was a crime.

[he then comments] Incidentally, Stalin was AGAINST the raid of Kronstadt, Trotsky insisted and had his will enforced.

----------

In an addendum later that day Israel wrote us:

Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:11:43 +0200

PS re Kronstadt see Trotsky's letter to Lev Sedov dated 19.11.1937

These notes were in support of Shamir's contention that Trotsky was worse than Stalin, for whom Shamir has quite high regard. Elsewhere he said our view of Stalin resulted from our living in the U.S. and accepting his demonization, but that Russians love Stalin. Neither John Spritzler nor I, nor Dave Stratman (a collaborator with John of the Boston-based New Democracy website[1]) found Israel's contention that Stalin had opposed the Bolshevik attack on the Kronstadt Naval Base at all credible. Dave's refutation is reproduced just below. Shamir offered only a weak, easily challenged letter from Trotsky to his son Lev Sedov to support his assertion.

Stratman's incisive challenge to Shamir's claim

From: Dave Stratman <newdem@aol.com>

Sent: 10/1/2009 9:07:21 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time

Hi, Israel--

In reference to the claim that "Stalin was AGAINST the raid of Kronstadt, Trotsky insisted and had his will enforced." I understand that you later supported this claim by referring to a letter (in Russian) from Trotsky to his son in 1937.

I am in no position to check this reference; if it exists, though, I doubt its value. Surely such a sensational bit of information, were it true, would have found its way into at least some of the many texts that trace the course of the Kronstadt revolt of March, 1921, Trotsky and Lenin's role in suppressing it, and the Tenth Party Congress which was in progress at the time, which Stalin as well as Trotsky and Lenin addressed.

Neither Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, perhaps the most likely author to offer evidence of such a surprising bit of information, nor Paul Avrich, in his painstaking and thorough treatment of the uprising in Kronstadt, 1921, say anything of any position, taken either in public or in private, by Stalin for moderation regarding Kronstadt, nor does Victor Serge -- who supported the suppression and also supported Trostky -- in Memoirs of a Revolutionary. E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution: 1917-1923, also keeps mum about this tantalizing claim.

Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921, writes, "The Bolsheviks denounced the men of Kronstadt as counterrevolutionary mutineers led by a White general ... Such was the turmoil [in the USSR] at the time that leniency towards the insurgents of Kronstadt was certain to be taken as a sign of weakness and to make matters worse." (pp. 511-12)

Given the context and given Stalin's character, it frankly strains credulity to imagine that Stalin favored forbearance towards the Kronstadt revolt. The claim seems to me more an attempt to rehabilitate Stalin's image than an honest contribution to our historical understanding.

Shamir's healthy disdain for academic plodding -- maybe I ought to shrug off my total addiction to truth

Not really, of course. I line up solidly with Stratman and Spritzler in believing that Stalin surely did not publicly oppose the attack on Kronstadt. But is it important enough to get into a 'knock-down drag-out argument, as though our personal worth somehow depends on 'winning' the argument? I don't think so. [This posting is still incomplete. I got lost trying to be upbeat when my mood was mostly depressed. I was kept awake nights — "those fucking Israelis" -- how to stop the ongoing atrocities. Another Don Quixote? Another fool?]

----------------------

NOTES

[1] New Democracy World website in Boston. This upbeat site by Dave G. Stratman and John Spritzler makes the case, as its banner says, that We CAN Change The World. It's at http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/.

----------------

This page is also at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-10-13.htm

John Ross, a feet-on-the-ground struggler for human rights and decency

George Salzman — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 08:24:00 -0700

John Ross

by George Salzman

Building circles of trust and communication

In a small community, if the social environment is a healthy one, it may be that practically everyone knows everybody else. That was the situation I observed in San Pedro, Cántaros when I visited during three days in September 2008 with Jonathan Treat and his class from the School for International Training.[1] We were hosted by what amounted to little more than an extended family, with a total population of, I would guess, probably not more than about thirty to fifty. Under those conditions, close familiarity was natural. I believe that ideally the degree of familiarity in indigenous communities in Oaxaca that are self-governing under the practice of 'uses and customs' is similar, though of course many of them don't come close to the ideal. In order to build community, mere geographical closeness is not enough.

Prominent on my list of 'truth tellers'

It's always heartening to find another person who I can feel confident says only what he or she truly believes. Here's a partial list of my 'truth tellers', arranged in no particular order. Alan Hart, William Blum, Mazin Qumsiyeh, John Pilger, Naomi Klein, James Herod, John Spritzler, Gordon Arnaut, James Petras, Immanuel Wallerstein, Jeffrey Blankfort, Manuel Garcia Jr., John Ross, Norman G. Finkelstein, Dahr Jamail, Mohammed Omer, Joe Bageant, Robert Fisk, Khalid Amyreh, Al Giordano, and of course others, many others. Today's note is intended to specifically introduce John Ross to those who may not be familiar with his work. [This posting is still incomplete. I wrote John for some info, but he must be too busy with his frequent, richly informed commentaries on Mexico to humor this old gringo buddy. Watch for John on the Counterpunch website.]

---------------

NOTES

[1] Early correspondance. See note [1] at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-05N.htm

This page is also at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-09-12.htm

Changing History, 1

George Salzman — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:20:00 -0700

Originally posted March 18, 2006, slight revision for today's posting

by George Salzman

Of course one can’t change what has happened in the past. One can only wish it had been different. What’s done is done. But for the present and the future, we do have choices. This paper is the start of an effort to discover how we, the entire human species, can maximize our chances for robust humane survival here on the earth.[1]

I know that many people, who like to think of themselves as “realists”, will dismiss my ideas as “mere utopian dreams”. Yet many of them don’t hesitate to acknowledge that they think the world is headed towards catastrophe, that their own children and grandchildren will inherit at most a dismally ravaged biosphere, one in which the human species might be threatened with a degree of decimation not so different from the near extinction of many other species in this era of massive global capitalism through which we now are living.

Consider a new human being

Does this new creature enter the world from its mother’s womb with any preconceptions as to its identity? Nature stamps it only with an instinctual drive to begin breathing and to fasten its tiny toothless gums to a breast, a breast it initially does not know is its mother’s, and to suckle, as do all newborn mammals. Totally ignorant, a finger touched to its lips elicits an effort to suck the finger. So the miracle of a new human life begins with the first breaths and the initial nursing and the warmth and closeness to its mother’s body. It knows not of religion, nationality, ethnicity, race, pride, patriotism, shame, sex, greed, love, hatred, killing, and so on. Totally innocent. That's how each of us began our rocky journey through life.

The notion that anyone is born cursed with “original sin” or is genetically programmed, as a homo sapiens, to be an “evil” person, to carry out a whole range of socially damaging actions, to lie, cheat, steal, destroy, murder, and so on, is patently absurd. But if that is true, as I’m sure it is, then there must be a rational explanation why our species, and uniquely ours, has arrived at a stage where we are destroying our global home, many of the other life forms that share this planet, and quite possibly ourselves as well. If we can understand how that came about, and what is driving humankind along the current deadly course, then we will be able to try to change those conditions, surely external to our genetic makeup, and thereby alter the course of history, steering it instead towards humane survival.

The assumption that people are not born “bad”, are not inherently evil, is a fundamental article of faith for anarchists. But because the “evidence” all around us clearly and continually shows that many people do bad things, we are constantly challenged by the argument that these bad actions are done as a consequence of “human nature.” The idea that our behavior, particularly when it is bad, is “in our genes” has a long and dishonorable history. A recent reincarnation of this “theory” has been promoted by credentialed scientists like zooligist Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, whose popular book The Selfish Gene says on its jacket, “We animals exist for their [the genes] preservation and are nothing more than their throwaway survival machines. The world of the selfish gene is one of savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit.” Rape, for example, is seen simply as the drive of genes to replicate themselves. Better just accept it as part of “human nature.”

From an anarchist’s perspective, by contrast, the “bad” things people do are a result of cultural influences that permeate our lives and influence every aspect of our awareness, all our thoughts and actions. It is our cultural conditioning that teaches a young person, his (or her) national, ethnic, religious, gender, etc. identity. For example, in most cases the nation-state steps in immediately at birth to affix nationality to a newborn infant, and may later claim the right to force this individual to kill “enemies” defined by the state and its corporate bed-partners. I don't believe anyone is a “born killer”. Killing must be learned. People must be conditioned, taught to kill if that is a role to which they are to be assigned. Every army is acutely aware of the indoctrination needed to make its members reliable killers. No newborn infant enters the world programmed for such a killer role. By simply looking at a tiny infant the absurdity of such a hypothesis is made evident. Killing is at one extremity of the “bad” things people do.

In an earlier essay I considered a lesser “bad” action, lying. I tried to show the absurdity of the notion that anyone is a “born liar” [2] with the following argument:

“Why do people lie?

“You've probably heard it said, about someone who apparently lies effortlessly, that so-and-so is a “born liar”, as though it was a particular genetic attribute rather than something that had to be learned. Of course that’s not so. No one is born a liar. Clearly, from the very beginning of its life an infant is embarked on a miraculous search for understanding — everything — a search to comprehend the world of which it rapidly gains consciousness. Long before it can verbalize, long before it can decipher the sounds of speech, it discovers, much to the pleasure of adults, that it can smile and that its smile invariably elicits smiles in return, and human warmth. And it learns to cry. You have only to watch a small baby held by a parent or other familiar person if its eyes suddenly discover you in its field of view. With its eyes rivetted upon you, the intense, unabashed scrutiny to which you are subjected is one of total curiosity, a focused effort to understand you. The child tries to fit you into its perception of the universe. Clearly, at this stage, a small child is nothing if not totally open, totally honest.

“At a later stage of childhood, each of us learned that people say things that are untrue, and we learned that we could sometimes benefit, for example by avoiding punishment, if we denied the truth. The motivation to lie is always the same, to gain some perceived benefit.”

Saying the obvious

In discussing lying and killing, it’s clear that I am unable, in strictly logical terms, to provide a “proof”, that is, a “proof” in the rigorous sense in which a mathematician would judge a theorem to be proved. Nevertheless, it seems to me indisputably clear that the argument is also obviously correct.

Consider first the act of lying. One might try to argue that lying is actually programmed into the human genetic makeup, but of course such a supposedly intrinsic feature of our makeup cannot be expressed before a person has acquired the ability to speak. Someone arguing this position could point to the drive for carnal sex, which, although evidently a result of our genetic makeup, is not expressed until a person’s development stage reaches the point of producing the essential hormones. However, this “development stage” argument which would claim that lying is a genetic trait, can be countered, I think decisively, by the well-established fact that adults in different cultures behave differently in this regard. It is thoroughly documented, in the history of the conquest of the Indians of North America in the United States, that an Indian’s verbal pledge was a guarantee of his future behavior, in glaring contrast to that of the white conquerors, who lied endlessly to achieve their goals. The only way to counter this clear difference between these so-called “different races” that I can think of would be to say, Whites are genetic liars, Indians are not. But that argument flops immediately because so-called “full-blooded” Indians in the U.S. now lie as much as Whites.

Now consider the act of killing. Specifically, think of a newborn boy who first saw the light of day eighteen years ago in Israel, a son of Jewish parents. It would be ridiculous to imagine that he knew anything at birth about his “identity”, his forthcoming ritual circumcision which would mark him indelibly as Jewish (or Muslim), or that he would be called upon to serve in the Israeli military to enforce imposed curfews in the occupied territories, in some cases killing Arab schoolchildren for crossing the street to get to their school, children acting in resistance by violating the curfew. Nor, of course, did he know he would come to despise Arabs, to regard them as less than human, and to feel no compassion for them, no remorse as he lined up the cross-hairs of his sniper-scope and squeezed the trigger. One might try to argue that although as a newborn he was totally innocent of all such ideas, he was actually programmed by his “Jewish genes” to develop into a killer of Palestinians. But this “development stage” argument is as ludicrous for killing as it is for lying. And in fact it ought to be particularly repugnant to those of us who identify (or are identified) as Jews, because it was promoted as a core justification of the Nazis’ attempt to exterminate all the Jews, i.e. the idea that Jews were despicable and dangerous because we are Jews, a genetic group that deserved to be got rid of.

One could examine all the other categories of socially destructive behavior, from those that border on being innocuous, like telling “harmless” lies, to the most terrible, like causing mass murder, and show that in each of them cultural influences are the factors of overwhelming importance. Biologists are of course fully aware that we are not products solely of our genes. Although it’s true that the human genotype determines our fundamental constitution in terms of our hereditary characteristics, each of us has as well a particular phenotype, which describes our personal manifest characteristics, including
anatomical and psychological traits [3] that result from both our heredity and environment. The total environment consists of both physical and cultural parts.

Why insist on saying the obvious?

You might wonder why, in the last few paragraphs, I’ve insisted on things that a moment’s thought shows must doubtlessly be true. Sometimes, and with some issues, we need to insist on actively knowing the truth. This is such a time and such an issue. The cliche “It’s human nature” is used endlessly to supposedly explain bad things that people do as the results of the human genome, and we need to nail down the fact that this is false. The true source of such behavior lies not in our genes but overwhelmingly in our cultural conditioning. Once this truth is acknowledged, the implications are enormous. To begin with,

Consider Adolph Hitler

Born in 1889 in a small Austrian town near the city of Linz, Hitler’s [4] father, Alois Hitler, died at age 65, when Adolph was a few months shy of 14. Almost five years later, when he was 18, his mother Klara, then 47, died of cancer. According to the cited article, “She was held in love and affection by Hitler, her Jewish doctor, Eduard Bloch, later recalled: ‘I have never witnessed a closer attachment.’” Soon after his mother’s death he moved to Vienna, living there for the first two years (1908-1910) on his orphan’s pension and his work as an illustrator. His pension ended in 1910. Although by then he had inherited some money from an aunt,[4] he lived, according to his autobiographical account in Mein Kampf,[5] in poor circumstances another three years in Vienna, until in 1913 he moved to Munich. I believe, from my admittedly limited knowledge, that from his birth through his 18th year there is no evidence that he held notable or particularly strong anti-Semitic (meaning anti-Jewish) views, though according to his own account he was aware of and shared a generalized, but not yet virulant dislike of Jews as early as his 14th year.[6] The cited article states:

It was in Vienna that Hitler began developing into an active anti-Semite, a passion that was to rule his life and was the key to all his subsequent actions. Anti-Semitism was deeply ingrained in the south German Catholic culture in which Hitler was raised. Vienna had a large Jewish community, including many Orthodox Jews from eastern Europe. Hitler later recorded his disgust on encountering Viennese Jews.

In Vienna anti-Semitism had developed from its religious origins into a political doctrine, promoted by publicists such as Lanz von Liebenfels, whose pamphlets Hitler read, and politicians like Karl Lueger, the Mayor of Vienna, or Georg Ritter von Schönerer, who contributes the racial aspect of anti-Semitism. From them Hitler acquired the belief in the superiority of the "Aryan race" which formed the basis of his political views. Hitler came to believe that the Jews were the natural enemies of the "Aryans," and were also in some way responsible for his poverty and his failure to achieve the success he believed he deserved.

The author(s) of this account, unfortunately not attributed, is(are) in substantial agreement here with the view expressed by the prominent Jewish Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery [7] almost two years ago, namely that the European roots of anti-Semitism (meaning hatred not of all Semitic peoples but of Jews) lay in religious struggles for power. After Mel Gibson’s blockbuster film “the Passion of the Christ” was warmly applauded by a close aide of Yasser Arafat in the Palestinian Authority, Avnery wrote a critical open letter to Arafat, his respected friend, which read in part,

Why this description [of the despicable behavior of Jews in Christ’s crucifixion in the four gospels]? Simple: when the text was written, the Christians were already trying to convert the Roman world to their creed. It was convenient for them, therefore, to blame the Jews and exonerate the Romans, reversing the realities of the times. The Jews then, like the Palestinians now, were an occupied people, and the Romans were the occupiers. Crucifixion was a usual Roman punishment, a kind of "targeted elimination" of that time (but after a trial).

The writers of the gospels were bursting with hatred of the Jews. That is not surprising, either. They were Jews themselves, as were Jesus and all the people around him. But they belonged to a dissident sect, which was considered by the Jewish establishment in Jerusalem as heretical. The Christian Jews were cruelly persecuted. As usual in such fratricidal struggles, this one, too, aroused burning hatred. This hatred found its expression in the description of the crucifixion.

The Gospel According to Matthew (Chapter 27) puts it this way: "Pilate said to them (the Jewish crowd assembled in front of his office): 'What then shall I do with Jesus, who is called Christ?' They all said to him: 'Let him be crucified!' Then the governor said: 'Why, what has he done?' But they cried all the more, saying: 'Let him be crucified!' When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying: 'I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it!' And all the people answered and said: 'His blood be on us and on our children'."

Avnery objected to the film in part because, by representing the biblical tale as though it were historical fact, it could further contribute to anti-Semitism. He is a staunch opponent of the Israeli government’s conquest and destruction of Palestinian society, and does not shy away from telling the truth as he perceives it, a good and honest man. I believe it’s true that every adult would, after even slight consideration, readily acknowledge the impact of cultural factors on his/her life. The media are of major importance in determining the cultural climate, and consequently vigorous efforts by governments and corporate and other interests to control the media are widely prevalent.

A current example of media control

One of the people exterminated by Hitler’s Third Reich was a young German Jewish girl, Anne Frank.[8] It is unimaginable, anywhere in America or Israel, that a play about her short, tragic life, less than 16 years long, could not be presented, and that is as it ought to be. It is a true and painful bit of history that the world ought to know.

Rachel Corrie, an American woman of 23, was exterminated on March 16, 2003 by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza while standing in front of a doctor’s house that the Israeli Army was about to demolish.[9] A play, “My Name is Rachel Corrie”, “had been tentatively scheduled to start performances at the New York Theater Workshop in the East Village on March 22. But yesterday [February 27, 2006, just 23 days before the scheduled opening], James C. Nicola, the artistic director of the workshop, said he had decided to postpone the show after polling local Jewish religious and community leaders as to their feelings about the work.” [10] The Guardian, UK reported him saying, in announcing his suggested “postponement until next year”, “what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas, we had a very edgy situation. We found that our plan to present a work of art would be seen as us taking a stand in a political conflict, that we didn't want to take.” What would be the reaction of the New York Jewish community if a production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” were similarly “postponed” with some flimsy excuse? Imagine the great creator of Guernica refraining from having his masterpiece displayed lest this work of art be seen as his taking a stand in a political conflict.

The role and importance of the media in shaping consciousness is really beyond dispute. That was as true when Hitler was in Vienna as it is in all areas of the world where developed media exist, which means just about everywhere. I'll return to Hitler in a moment, but first want to mention that six days after the New York Times account of February 28 quoted above, this same supposed “newspaper of record” published a profoundly dishonest piece by Edward Rothstein in an attempt to prevent the undeserved and extravagantly polished reputation of the government of Israel from being tarnished.[11]

Back to Hitler’s Vienna of 1908-1913

As I indicated earlier, my current belief is that up until age 18, shortly after what must have been for him the painful death from cancer of his mother, when he moved to Vienna, Hitler was not possessed by hatred of Jews, not in the way that I am possessed by the urgency of trying to “save the world.” The article I quoted says, “It was in Vienna that Hitler began developing into an active anti-Semite”, allowing for the possibility that he already had, as his own statements confirm, a “passive” dislike of Jews. He may even have had some hatred of Jews, though he maintains that’s not so. Many people have unexpressed hatreds, and there’s no reason to believe Hitler, before age 18, did not hate Jews “in general”, although there seems not to be much evidence. Did he hate his mother’s Jewish physician, Eduard Bloch, quoted earlier from the same article, who spoke so strongly of Hitler’s love for his mother? I don’t know. Nor are questions like these of particular significance, although to some psychiatrists and historians they provide grist for endless speculation.

It’s not critical to my argument whether Hitler became anti-Semitic, or how strongly he felt hatred towards Jews before arriving at Vienna. Because what I maintain seems obviously indisputable: when he was born in the little Austrian town of Braunau-am-Inn close to the German border, he was just as innocent, just as ignorant of the world as each of us was at his or her moment of birth. There was nothing in his genes to make him develop into a mass murderer. What he became was the result, almost overwhelmingly, of the cultural environment in which he lived, as is true of each of us.

First photograph of Adolph Hitler, from a book about the Second World War, published by Reader's Digest in Spanish, in 1992 in Mexico.[12]

It would be a fatal mistake, fatal for the human species, if our understanding of history is provided only, or primarily by historiography that attributes major events — the Second World War, the Judeocide carried out by the Nazi’s Third Reich, the Napoleonic Wars, the European conquest of the Americas, and so on -- largely to the actions of individuals in positions of power. An example of such dangerously inadequate “explanations” is in the article I cited, which says of Hitler, “He was the principal instigator of the Holocaust and World War II.”. The danger lies in the belief such pseudo-analysis promotes that history is “made” by the so-called “leaders”. For example, it is quite commonly believed that Hitler was largely responsible for both World War II and the Nazi Judeocide. Two horrific historical events instigated principally by one “leader”, a “bad” man now reviled by many millions who attribute these horrors to him.

It’s an easy leap from this inadequate historical understanding to the belief that Hitler acted as he did because it was “in his blood”, as they used to say, or in contemporary terms, “in his genes”, and to then generalize to the often heard proclamation, “It’s human nature”, i.e. it wasn’t just Hitler, it’s our entire species that is genetically “bad”, with its dismal implication: there’s nothing we can do about it, no way to change it. The danger is precisely that if too many people believe this, then our species will continue along the present disastrous path, destroying the entire biosphere and decimating the human population.

It’s crucially important, if we are to have any hope of ending the Armegeddon currently in progress, that we

1. Understand that the human race is not genetically flawed, and hence the socially destructive things we do are not programmed within our genotype,

2. Understand the complex of cultural factors that make up our psychological environment and which mold our individual patterns of behavior as well as our collective efforts to mold the physical environment in which we live, and

3. Undertake to change the currently dominant and destructive culture so as to allow for humane survival within a healthy, ecologically stable biosphere.

Why did Hitler do “unbelievably bad” things?

You might wonder why I am concentrating on Hitler, as though I am obsessed with him. Could it be because I am afflicted, as I was recently told by Jack Rosen, Chairman of the American Jewish Congress, with abysmal “self hatred”? [13] Hardly. That was simply a stock defensive reaction, either by Rosen himself or someone employed in his office, to a biting attack I made on him and other die-hard self-designated “defenders of the State of Israel” as it continues its ruthless, cowardly conquest of the Palestinians. The reasons for focussing on Hitler are straightforward. He played a key role in both the Nazi Holocaust and in initiating the Second World War, during which he was the absolute ruler in Germany, that is, the person whose word carried the force of law. As such there is no doubt that he is, in the judgement of many many millions of people, one of the greatest war criminals and perpetrators of crimes against humanity of all time.

I am one of the many many millions of people who believe that is true, with no qualifications. I make no brief on Hitler’s behalf. The important question to answer is: How was it possible for an ordinary sane, rational person, which I believe Hitler was, to behave in such a horrible, unforgiveably brutal manner? Those of you who prefer to think of him as, for example, a “madman, an evil raving idiot” and object to my characterizing him as sane and rational are gravely mistaken in ignoring the vast complex of historically developed cultural factors that determined the fateful path from innocent child to heartless adult directing monstrous deeds. My point of course is that these same cultural factors still permeate and dominate most of the world today, and unless we recognize them for what they are and eliminate them we are doomed to continue on our tragic path. Let me be more specific.

An attempt to list the cultural factors that make up the deadly ideology pervading most of the world will result in a lengthy and incomplete list. Nevertheless, here’s a first stab at it, in no particular order.

1. The belief that people are inherently “bad” and must therefore be controlled – by a force external to themselves, of course – to behave in socially non-destructive ways.

2. The belief that people are naturally “lazy”, that it’s bad to be “lazy”, and that they must therefore be forced to work.

3. The belief that “there will always be Indians and Chiefs”, i.e. it’s just “natural” that some people will give orders and other people will obey.

4. The belief that those who are wise and powerful have a moral obligation to force their will upon the less informed and submissive mass of people. [14] This is of course not by any means universally held, but is the dominant view in most powerful hierarchies, for example, in the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

5. The belief that nationalism and patriotism are virtues which should be strongly promoted.

6. The belief that nation-states are legitimate institutions for achieving the well-being of the people who live in their geographic areas, or at least of their citizens.

7. The belief that people of different ethnicities, religions, nationalities, or histories (e.g. “indigenous” vs. “latecomers”) are really different “kinds of people”, and are not “brothers (and sisters) under the skin”.

8. The belief that political systems based on “representative government”, such as so-called representative democracies, are legitimate structures for serving the well-being of the vast majority of the population.

9. The belief that capitalism is the best form of organization for nations and for the entire global society, best in terms of providing for the maximum possible well-being of the most people.

10. The belief that war can be an honorable activity, and that “just wars” are possible.

11. The belief that the world is too large and too complex to be organized on a basis of local autonomous communities based on direct democracy, communities that work towards maximum self-sufficiency and sustainability, and that huge, centralized governments cannot be replaced by a different functional system.

12. The beliefs that giant corporations are more efficient, more productive, and more beneficial to the general society than small enterprises, and that they “deserve” to enjoy the protection of governments as though they were “persons” pursuing, as people have a natural right to do, their lives, liberties and “happiness”, the corporaate pursuit of “happiness” being of course the pursuit of profits.

13. The beliefs that money, which is used for “measured exchange”, i.e. for the function of markets, and that the role of markets, i.e. “buying and selling”, provides the best means for arranging an economy, and that the idea of “mutual aid”, as advocated, for example, by Peter Kropotkin in his classic treatise [15] is contrary to “human nature” and therefore an impossibility.

14. The belief that competition in all activities is desirable, naturally leading to some being “winners” and others being “losers”, which is how it should be.

15. The belief that physical labor should be avoided as much as possible, and that the physical exercise needed to maintain health is more appropriately obtained by sports and/or “exercise machines”
in gymnasiums established for that purpose or private “rowing machines” and other such mechanical apparatus.

16. The belief that science and technology can be used to solve social problems, e.g. that nuclear energy can replace dwindling fossile fuel reserves.

17. The belief that the most powerful machines are the most desirable, and that speed is almost always a worthwhile goal to aim for, whether in travel, reading, manufacturing, and so on.

Taken together, the entire ideology that prevails in most of today’s world, of which the beliefs above are part, determines how we conceive of ourselves and how we relate to other human beings and to the rest of the animal and plant species and to the physical substructure of the world, beneath the biosphere, and also the atmosphere, oceans, mountains, rivers, etc. — the “whole ball of wax”.

The ideology that governed Hitler’s behavior

In the next part of this essay I will explore Hitler’s change, within the course of his years in Vienna from age 18 to 23, from which he emerged obsessed with the belief that “the Jews” played an inordinately important, even controlling, role in the degradation of Austrian society as he experienced it and responded to it with fierce anger, determined to struggle against it.

NOTES

[1] I include the phrase “here on the earth” because I regard proposals to set up colonies of humans on other heavenly bodies as utterly insane. Our species will live or perish in the one home we have ever known, and we damn well better try to preserve it.

[2] That essay, “Mutual Aid and Mutual Trust”, is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Grass/Infra/Infra-5.htm.

[3] For simple definitions of genotype and phenotype, see e.g. Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, 2000.

[4] A brief, really thumbnail size biography of Adolph Hitler which appears to me carefully and reliably written is at http://www.geocities.com/religionencyclo/hitler.html. I’ve drawn a few facts I used about his life from this source. The dates I found (here and elsewhere) were: for Hitler, April 20, 1889-April 30, 1945; for his father, June 7, 1837-January 3, 1903; for his mother, August 12, 1860-December 21, 1907.

[5] Mein Kampf, translation of the First German Edition by Ralph Manheim, Houghton Miflflin, Boston, 1972. Hitler wrote the first version of Volume One of his 2-volume manifesto in 1924 while imprisoned in the Landsberg am Lech fortress after the failed “Beer Hall Putsch” in Munich on November 9, 1923.

[6] In Mein Kampf, p.51, Hitler wrote, “Not until my fourteenth or fifteenth year did I begin to come across the word ‘Jew,’ with any frequency, partly in connection with political discussions. This filled me with a mild distaste, and I could not rid myself of an unpleasant feeling that always came over me whenever religious quarrels occurred in my presence.”

[7] The full text of Avnery’s open letter to Arafat, in which he states that the roots of European anti-Semitism lay in religious struggles for power, is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/Salz/2004-04-08.htm.

[8] Anne Frank was born June 12, 1929. She died in the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, officially from typhus. I consider her to have been exterminated by the Nazis. Information from http://www.usa-people-search.com/content-anne-frank.aspx. The link to the souce for the above information about Anne Frank became inopertive, as Helen Stevens wrote me. She kindly suggested the link to the site now given here, which I much appreciate. G.S., 2009-09-04.

[9] Rachel Corrie was born April 10, 1979. Her death March 16, 2003, although labelled an accident by the Israeli military, was no such thing. I consider her to have been exterminated by the Israeli Nazis.

[10] My Name is Rachel Corrie. The initial quote is from a New York Times article of Feb 28, 2006 at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/theater/newsandfeatures/28thea.html. Other accounts are in an article in The Guardian, UK of February 28 at http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1719691,00.html, a Los Angeles Times article of March 1 at http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-viner1mar01,1,2229722.story?coll=la-news-comment and an Electric Intifada article of March 2 at http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4521.shtml.

[11] Edward Rothstein’s New York Times article attempting “damage control”, “Connections Too Hot to Handle, Too Hot to Not Handle”, appeared at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/theater/newsandfeatures/06conn.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print. An excellent analysis of his attempted censorship of the play is in Counterpunch, by Walter A. Davis, titled “The Play’s the Thing”, at http://www.counterpunch.com/davis03062006.html. Davis’ article, which appeared the same day as Rothstein’s attempted hatchet job, promised a second article with a review of the play itself and a response to Rothstein. The Rothstein article is also available at: http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2006-03-05B4.htm, a little over half way through the file. I wrote a critique of Rothstein’s article, in my posting at: http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2006-03-07B5.htm.

[12] Tiempo de Guerra: História Ilustrada de la Secunda Guerra Mundial (Time of War: Illustrated History of the Second World War). The photograph of Hitler as a very young infant is on page 15. The book is essentially a glorification of war, promoting the ideology typical of the Reader’s Digest Corporation’s publications.

[13] My exchange with Jack Rosen, in which I scathingly took him apart for his attempt to delegitimize the electoral victory of Hamas in Palestine, is posted on my blog at http://pwgd.org/gs/?p=5.

[14] On the obligation of the knowledgeable and powerful to compel “right behavior”, Upton Sinclair, in explaining why he chose as the title for his 1923 book, The Goose Step: A Study of American Education, wrote,

We spent some thirty billions of treasure, and a hundred thousand young lives, to put down the German autocracy; being told, and devoutly believing, that we were thereby banishing from the earth a certain evil thing known as Kultur. It was not merely a physical thing, the drilling of a whole population for the aggrandizement of a military caste; it was a spiritual thing, a regimen of autocratic dogmatism. The best expression of it upon which I have come in my readings is that of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Prussian philosopher and apostle of Nationalism; I quote two sentences, from a long discourse: "To compel men to a state of right, to put them under the yoke of right by force, is not only the right but the sacred duty of every man who has the knowledge and the power. . . . . He is the master, armed with compulsion and appointed by God." I ask you to read those sentences over, to bear them in mind as you follow chapter after chapter of this book; see if I am not right in my contention that what we did, when we thought we were banishing the Goose-step from the world, was to bring it to our own land, and put ourselves under its sway – our thinking, and, more dreadful yet, the teaching of our younger generation. (emphasis added –G.S.)

[This quote is on my website in the rather extensive posting at
http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/SfHS/1995-01-19.htm].

[15] Petr Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. Originally published in 1902, Kropotkin’s Preface to the 1914 Edition begins,

When the present war began [the First World War], involving nearly all Europe in a terrible struggle, and this struggle assumed, in those parts of Belgium and France which were invaded by the Germans, a never yet known character of wholesale destruction of life among the non-combatants and pillage of the means of subsistence of the civil population, “struggle for existence” became a favourite explanation with those who tried to find an excuse for these horrors.

------------------------------

This page is also at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-09-05.htm

Alan Hart, a new friend and ally on the need to ‘sacrifice’[0]

George Salzman — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:31:00 -0700

Alan and Nicole Hart with Yasser Arafat at his headquarters in Tunis, 1985, some time after publication of Hart's first book, Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker?

by George Salzman

Alan Hart's focus is pretty much the same as mine, though his scope is much broader. His impact is, as it deserves to be, far greater. I wrote him a month ago:

Oaxaca, Mexico, Wednesday 5 August 2009

Dear Mr. Hart,

I just finished the first volume of your Zionism: The real enemy of the Jews yesterday and, in the early hours of this morning, unable to sleep, I reread your Appeal to the American People. You are a wonderfully courageous human being to undertake your mammoth project. I am a relative latecomer to this most crucial struggle of our era. Please add me to your mailing list if you maintain one. It is through Clarity Press that I learned about your book.

Your head-on effort to demolish the still-prevailing but faltering ideological mask of Zionism is absolutely in the right direction. You don't, in my opinion, go deeply enough in challenging ideology. You seem to believe that if the American people were well enough informed they could make the government change its course. That would indeed be great, a manifestation that representative democracy is not fatally flawed. In brief, I love you but you're not radical enough. We need to challenge the entire dominant global ideology and the prevailing system of values it encompasses.

In one of my essays I say,

Much to my surprise and delight, despite the incredible level of committed activity that his website makes clear he's involved in, the next morning I found a long and thoughtful response to my late night note, which began,

Subject: More radical?
 Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 11:17:45 +0100

Dear George (please, I'm Alan),

Many thanks for your very kind comments after reading Volume One of the American edition of Zionism, The Real Enemy of the Jews.  

I think I might be more radical than you imagine ...  

I hate all labels and isms with the exception of humanism. I've never belonged to any political party or group and I've only voted twice in my entire life (on both occasions Liberal for the sake of putting two fingers up to the others). As I sometimes say on public platforms, I don't give a damn about being British. I'm a citizen of the world. Period. My vision, like yours, is for a realisation of "The Brotherhood of Man" (bollocks to being politically correct and saying humankind).

 As I also say on public platforms, I believe the real struggle on Planet Earth is (should be) not between Right and Left (does the Left still exist in North America and Western Europe?) or even rich and poor. It's between, on the one side, leaders, governments and the powerful vested interests which pull their strings, and, on the other side, the citizens of nations. If and when I get around to writing a book about my own life and global learning experiences, I'm going to say that modern life is a de-humanizing process and that the prime task of each and everyone of us is to claim back our humanity.

 Democracy? As I also say and write, it doesn't exist anywhere on earth and in some important respects least of all in America ... [To see the rest of this note, go to [1] in http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-05N.htm ]

Subject: We are 'brothers under the skin'
Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:29:08 -0500

Dear Alan,

Thank you for writing back and welcoming my interest. I assure you that I need your work (and hence you) more than you need what I am capable of doing. Almost surely you are far more radical than I realized when I wrote, much to my delight. We are, as my good friend Joe Bageant wrote me a few years ago when he discovered my website, 'brothers under the skin'. This will be only a brief note because I want to return to your website and continue watching the videos with your interviews. It was midnight when I got through the first few minutes of your first interview with Pappe and I was exhausted. The correct link to my essay, Looking for a way towards civilization -- I, is http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/s/2008-07-27.htm. Sorry I had it wrong.
 I am, as I said, a latecomer to this ideological struggle, having learned about Zionism only a few years ago ... [To see the rest of this note, go to [1] in http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-05N.htm].

The most striking aspect of this exchange is the fact that in the course of two days, August 5th and 6th, Alan and I established a high level of mutual trust without ever having seen one another face to face or even spoken by telephone, trust based primarily on e-mail. Naturally it required substantial effort, but that's true of any relationship in formation. Of course, I had read his book and spent a little time on his website, but I believe Alan read little of mine except my e-mails. Initially I learned of him only because Clarity Press advertised his book about Zionism, which stimulated me to order and read it at once. During the month now elapsed since that first contact we have shared some of our dreams, e.g. Alan would like to see a regular newspaper, perhaps being published weekly initially, available globally in a host of languages, which presented the news people need if we are to understand the social reality in order to act intelligently in order to change it so as to better the lives of all peoples who now suffer from the effects of the 'advanced' capitalist generated gulf between the impoverished majority and the privileged.

My enthusiasm for being in working contact with Alan stems from my view of him as, first of all a totally compassionate person, a well-informed intellectual (I think everyone is intellectual, i.e. every human being thinks, whether so labelled or not), and a person driven to act -- not only to understand, one who still has hope of effecting social changes. He is indeed, as he said at once, more radical than I had imagined! I highly recommend his book. Here he is chairing a panel discussion he had organized in London a few years ago.

Panel discussion, "Why anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism" at the Islam Channel, London, 15 June 2006. Panel members, left to right, Palestinian scholar Ghada Karmi, Rabbi Ahron Cohen, panel chairman Alan Hart, Univ. of Haifa historian Ilan Pappe [2], and Hajo Meyer, board member of Another Jewish Voice, which is part of the European Jewish Alliance for a Just Peace. Photo by Johnny Paul [3]

Building circles of trust and communication

The world today, as we all know, is one of lying and deceit throughout the public domain. [4] This condition makes it extremely difficult to know what is actually going on. It serves the interests of the elites who are better able to maniplate the population at large. Governments and mega-corporations employ the services of 'public relations' and 'legal' firms for the express purpose of generating disinformation campaigns -- supposedly within the limits allowed by law -- to confuse and mislead the general public.

In opposition to the wealth of deliberately generated ignorance and misinformation stands the uniquely human trait, the natural desire to understand, to comprehend the world. We are, not just in name but in fact, the species homo sapiens. [5] Historically, every available mode of communicating information (and of course misinformation) was seized upon as soon as it became available. Both by those who wanted to maintain their control over society and those who were struggling to gain their freedom to thrive, in opposition to the ruling power structure. Now, with the development of high speed communication technology, epitomized by the global internet, we are seeing another example of the same contest between the dominant and the dominated. Information is a key component of our lives.

Because of the ease with which enormous quantities of information and disinformation can be (and are being) disseminated over the internet, the question of distinguishing truth from falsehoods takes on a possibly new urgency. For me it's a particular problem because I'm a very slow reader and my memory is not so great. That's why I'm hopeful of getting help in doping out contemporary reality from a small circle of people who are intellectually astute, well informed, and who share my humanitarian concerns. John Spritzler characterized such a group as a 'Circle of Trust'.

The Circle of Trust that I've been trying to initiate is the most recent of my attempts at systematic communication using the internet.

Prior to this effort I set up  

1. Websites I and II of an anarchist physicist, [6], and  

2. a weblog that is a 'mirror' site of the above Website II [7].  

3. On the homepages of Websites I and II of an anarchist physicist I had written: Additional earlier materials are on 1. a weblog "For Better lives for our children's grandchildren", at http://pwgd.org/gs/, where you are welcome to post appropriate items. However the link is inoperative as of 2009-09-07. [8]  
4. I set up a listserv Notes of an anarchist physicist [noaap] with open archives, at https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/noaap. [9]

5. I set up a listserv Oaxaca pro-Palestinians group [oppg] with open archives, at https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/oppg. [10]

As is evident, I felt compelled to try to communicate with many other people. In addition to the above initiatives, I maintained a substantial e-mail correspondence. Eventually -- within the past few months -- I decided to try to concentrate on a smaller group than the thousand-odd subscribers to my Notes of an anarchist physicist list. For this purpose I use five categories that I chose arbitrarily: 1 Anarchy and Theory; 2 Ecology and Food; 3 General, Varied foci; 4 Oaxaca and Mexico; 5 Paestine-Israel focus. These categories, totaling 129 individual addresses as of 15 August 2009, make up my 'small group list'. And more selective still is my 'circle of trust' list with 38 people as of 2009-08-31.

I hope to avoid making people 'sick and tired' of being flooded with stuff from me. Lately I've received only a few requests to be removed from my [noaap] list and none from either the 'small list' (129) or the 'circle of trust' (38). That's encouraging, though I realize that sometimes people get annoyed, but not enough to bother asking to be removed. At any rate, my urge to reach out remains, and I'm ready to modify what I try doing.

Prominent on my list of ‘truth tellers’

It's always heartening to find another person who I can feel confident says only what he or she truly believes. Here's a partial list of my 'truth tellers', arranged in no particular order. Alan Hart, William Blum, Mazin Qumsiyeh, John Pilger, Naomi Klein, James Herod, John Spritzler, Gordon Arnaut, James Petras, Immanuel Wallerstein, Jeffrey Blankfort, Manuel Garcia Jr., John Ross, Norman G. Finkelstein, Dahr Jamail, Mohammed Omer, Joe Bageant, Robert Fisk, Khalid Amyreh, Al Giordano, and of course others, many others. Today's note is intended to specifically introduce Alan Hart to those who are, as I was until recently, not familiar with his work.

NOTES

[0] 'sacrifice'. Alan Hart as an ally on the need to 'sacrifice' in the essay's title arose right after I sent him my essay "Another dimension — indigenous! Seeking a true civilization" and he responded enthusiastically to the entire piece, in which I took up the issue of privileged people's behavior and its social consequences. In that essay, at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-09-03.htm I wrote, "Finally, I've got to tackle the hardest obstacle, trying to convince [privileged] friends to think hard about some of the things they enjoy, the social consequences of those pleaures, and whether perhaps they ought to consider giving some of them up."

[1] Early correspondance. See note [1] at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-05N.htm

[2] Ilan Pappe. See note [2] at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-05N.htm

[3] Panel discussion, "Why anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism". See note [3] at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-05N.htm

[4] Lying and deceipt in the public domain. In an essay, Changing History, 1, I acknowledge "Of course one can't change what has happened in the past. One can only wish it had been different. What's done is done." I then continue, "But for the present and the future, we do have choices. This paper is the start of an effort to discover how we, the entire human species, can maximize our chances for robust humane survival here on the earth." This essay makes as strong a case as I can for the value of continuing our efforts to change the course of history. It is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-09-05.htm.

[5] homo sapiens. My old (1963) Funk and Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary, published by Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, defines it: The scientific name for the only surviving species of the genus Homo; modern man. And indicates its Latin derivation: homo man + sapiens wise.

[6] Websites I and II of an anarchist physicist. These are, respectively, at  http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/, and  http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/s/00.htm

[7] weblog as a 'mirror' site of Website II of an anarchist physicist, at  http://www.georgesalzman.org/

[8] The weblog "For Better lives for our children's grandchildren". The first item was 1. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Evo Morales, Indigenism and Identity Politics, posted 15 Feb 2006. The blog was very active for at least some months, perhaps for more than a year, with postings by a few other contributors besides me. I am trying to have access restored. As of 9 September 2009 I do not know why it was made inaccessible.

[9] Notes of an anarchist physicist [noaap]. This listserve, begun with an initial posting on 28 November 2007, currently goes to about 1,200 e-mail addresses. I use it to let this group know about new postings on my website and of other announcements that seem timely. My goal is to post to it more or less monthly -- not more than twice a month, in order not to inundate subscribers with e-mail.

[10] Oaxaca pro-Palestinians group [oppg]. This listserve, begun with an initial posting on 1 February 2008, was intended to be bilingual (Spanish and English), aimed at mobilizing support among the sympathetic population here for the struggle by Palestinians. This listserv has been inactive since 5 July 2008.

--------------------------

This page is also at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-05.htm

Randolph S. Selig, Esq.-‘smart-ass’ NY City Jewish lawyer. Specialty -- lying for Zionism

George Salzman — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:20:00 -0700

by George Salzman 2009-08-18

Friends (and enemies -- those who deliberately lie for bad purposes),

Unknown to me initially, after my posting of 5 June 2009, "Straight talk with Israel Shamir" [1] came to New York City Jewish lawyer Randolph Selig's attention, he forwarded it on 6 June to Michael Santomauro [2], who is the editor of the Reporters Notebook website. The following day Santomauro forwarded Selig's message with its gratuitous lies to me without comment: [3]

---------- Forwarded message ----------

 From: Randolph Selig  Date: Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 10:33 PM  Subject: Re: Straight talk with Israel Shamir  To: ReporterNotebook

There is no "George Salzman" listed in UMass-Boston's faculty and staff directory.  But then, the name "Israel Shamir" is itself fictitious.

Don't you feel foolish, taken in, suckered?

Lawyer Selig, who I immediately challenged, has not revealed to me how my 5 June posting came to him or how the assignment to defame Shamir and me was given him. Of course I was furious to get the forwarded item from Michael Santomauro -- that bastard Selig denying my exictence -- and I immediately wrote Selig, on 7 June, asserting angrily that his communication was clearly both stupid and false. This chutzpah-impregnated ignoramus blustered back that same day. Here are the two exchanged notes between Selig and me.

Subject: Re: Fwd: Straight talk with Israel Shamir  Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2009 03:56:21 -0500  To: Randolph Selig nungman36@gmail.com  CC: Michael Santomauro reporternotebook@gmail.com, Israel Shamir adam@israelshamir.net, John Spritzler spritzler@comcast.net, Fredrick Toben fredricktoben@y7mail.com

Oaxaca, Mexico, Sunday 7 June 2009

Dear Randolph Selig,  
Before you rush around crowing about your brilliant investigative abilities to Michael Santomauro and whoever else gets the mail at Reporter Notebook, you should, regarding your statement of my non-existence on the UMass-Boston faculty, take a look at the bottom of the page with URL: http://www.physics.umb.edu/faculty.htm, where you will find

Faculty -- Retired John Shane, Associate Professor, 617-287-6050, S-3-105, John.Shane at umb dot edu
George Salzman, Professor Emeritus, 617-287-6050, S-3-105, George.Salzman at umb dot edu

Your communication, highlighted in color below [it's above here], is clearly both stupid and false. The internet is a great place for propagating lies, not as good as the so-called mainstream media but still very good.

There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that you have bought into nonsense with your assertion that Shamir is fictitious. Another self-anointed smart-ass New York Jew. Why are you so ready to lie? Would you do anything to prevent criticism of the Zionist project, no matter how much you have to debase yourself? For your information, I'm a real flesh and blood 83-year old World War II U.S. Army Corps of Engineers veteran. I grew up, first in Queens County, NYC, at 2220 Lincoln Place; the Marguerite Arms apartment building; and 82 Empire Boulevard, all three in Far Rockaway, and then, when the Great Depression forced us to move, in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn at 68 St. Pauls Place. My Army Serial Number is 42070654. Imagine that, I come from the same area that that fucking Jewish lawyer Alan Dershowitz does, so eager to destroy Norman G. Finkelstein for telling the truth. The social conditioning of lawyers is disgraceful -- dedicating oneself to winning an argument, the truth be damned. So, tell me who you are, if you've got the balls.

Sincerely angry that you doubt my authenticity, obviously without having bothered to read anything that I've written over the years, much of it posted on my website. So, what kind of shyster lawyer are you?

George

------------------------------

[I included, just after the above, the rest of the Forwarded message from Mr Santomauro.]

Subject: Re: Fwd: Straight talk with Israel Shamir  Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 13:12:56 -0400  From: Randolph Selig nungman36@gmail.com

Smartass or no, better a real Jew than a fake one. I am a resident of Queens County, a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and a former prosecutor. That is all the information I find it appropriate to share.  

Every bit of biographical information given by this "Israel Shamir", beginning with his name, is a fiction. NONE of it can be trusted. This person or group of people has certainly used the internet to spread lies.  
I on the other hand pointed out that there is no "George Salzman" on the current faculty at UMass-Boston, and that is true. O, pardon me for not searching through every department until the name "George Salzman" turned up!  

Norman Finkelstein has written a valuable exposé on the Holocaust racket -- a slim volume which I bought for $.99 and sent on to some relatives who were being conned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. However, Marxist Finkelstein's views on the subject of Israel are distorted by disappointment at Israel's failure to become a Communist country.  

His obsessive view of Israel as a mere tool of American imperialism forms a bizarre mirror-image to the accusation that it is Israel that tells the United States what to do -- a charge so often repeated by the Holocaust deniers and other assorted racists and reactionaries.  

On that subject, were you in the ETO [European Theatre of Operations] during World War II? Did you go overseas at all? Do you agree that the Holocaust is just a construct of the Jewish Lobby? Or perhaps you feel, as so many admirers of "Israel Shamir" do, that the United States was wrong to enter World War II on the side of the Allies.

Whatever you're smoking down there in Oaxaca, I'd like a ton of it!

------------------------------

Randolph Selig's response is what one expects from a dishonest aggressive lawyer. The first question one would want to have answered is: Why did Selig 'alert' Michael Santomauro reporternotebook@gmail.com about my posting on Israel Shamir, and send false, unsubstantiated information? What was his motivation? It's noteworthy that on this key question Selig is silent. Nevertheless, I think it's possible to dope it out with a little background information. Most evident is his desire to discredit Israel Shamir. Shamir has been one of the most forceful, effective voices coming from the 'Jewish Camp' -- although he has renounced his Jewish ethnicity -- speaking for a single state in which Palestinians will have absolutely equal status as Jews enjoy. That of course is anathema to the Israeli Zionists and their foreign supporters, principally in the English-speaking Jewish American, Canadian, British, South African, Australian and New Zealand populations.

A second significant background fact is that Michel Santomauro is the Editorial Director of Theses and Dissertations Press (TADP). This group is energetically represented as engaged in promoting Holocaust Denial, although TADP represents itself as a scholarly effort. Santomauro writes in his 7 June 2009 e-mail, "Founded in 2000 the publishing company TADP is at the center of a worldwide network of scholars and activists who are working -- often at great personal sacrifice -- to separate historical fact from propaganda fiction. The founder of TADP is Germar Rudolf. Who is currently serving prison time for his published works and will be released on July 4, 2009. He will no longer be associated with Holocaust studies upon his release.

"As the new director of TADP.org, I wish to express my outrage that the Holocaust, unlike any other historical event, is not subject to critical examination. Furthermore I deplore the fact that many so-called democratic states have laws that criminalize an examination and understanding of the Holocaust. It is my position that the veracity of Holocaust assertions should be determined in the marketplace of scholarly discourse and not in our legislatures bodies and courthouses."

I believe it likely that Selig, eager to discredit Israel Shamir and, to a lesser extent me, sent his misinformation to Santomauro in the hope that because of Shamir's and my open and extremely critical views of the actions of the Zionist Nazis against the Palestinians, the TADP would perhaps disseminate our criticisms along with its own literature and thereby lead uncritical Israel-firsters to dismiss us, along with TADP, as belonging to the Holocaust Denier madhouse. If this was not Selig's motivation, it is up to him to give a convincing explanation. I doubt there is one. Probably he is simply unscrupulous and, like that disgusting lawyer Roy Cohn (Jewish) and his equally disgusting boss senator Joseph McCarthy (Catholic), deserves to have his shit-flinging ignored just as Welch, the Army's chief legal counsel in the dramatic 1954 Army-McCarthy Senate hearings cut off McCarthy with his famous angry query, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

In his 7 June note, Selig states, "Every bit of biographical information given by this "Israel Shamir", beginning with his name, is a fiction. NONE of it can be trusted", but he offers not a scintilla of evidence to substantiate this damning accusation. Though he has now given up his suggestion that I might be fictional, even in his clumsy backhanded admission he tries to put himself in a better light by boasting, untruthfully, "I on the other hand pointed out that there is no "George Salzman" on the current faculty at UMass-Boston, and that is true." In fact, his initial statement was "There is no "George Salzman" listed in UMass-Boston's faculty and staff directory", a statement that is untrue. By slipping in the adjective 'current' he tries to fuzz up the record by altering his original untrue statement into one that he thought he could pass off as truthful. On this attempted sleight of hand Selig gets a grade of F, not only because it was dishonest to slip in the adjective 'current' but also because in fact an emeritus professor is a faculty member, which is why I am listed on the page titled

College of Science and Mathematics
University of Massachusetts Boston
The Department of Physics
in the category Faculty -- Retired. Unlike Israel Shamir, who's totally open and honest, Randolph Steven Selig is just another slippery lawyer, like McCarthy's Roy Cohn.

Selig, an authentic schlemiel, in an apparent effort to divert me from the lack of substance thus far in his response, plays the chameleon with a few words of praise for one of my heroes, saying "Norman Finkelstein has written a valuable exposé on the Holocaust racket", and refers to "some relatives who were being conned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center". So much confetti to suggest that maybe, after all, Selig is politically OK by my lights. But he then jumps into the Joseph McCarthy-Roy Cohn anti-Communist boat with his assertion, "However, Marxist Finkelstein's views on the subject of Israel are distorted by disappointment at Israel's failure to become a Communist country.

"His obsessive view of Israel as a mere tool of American imperialism forms a bizarre mirror-image to the accusation that it is Israel that tells the United States what to do--a charge so often repeated by the Holocaust deniers and other assorted racists and reactionaries." Oh, is he critical of 'racists and reactionaries'? But not of the State of Israel? I think his knowledge of Norman Finkelstein's comprehension of the the world too uninformed for him to judge Finkelstein to be an obsessed Marxist with a distorted view of Israel. In brief, Selig's ignorance is matched only by his smug arrogance, a man modelled after the infamous junior senator from Wisconsin. But one who hasn't managed to make a splash in the world.

And finally, as the clever prosecuting attorney he would like to think he once was, in a complete non-sequitur, he launches a series of leading questions, pretending that they flow naturally from his comments on Finkelstein, writing, "On that subject, were you in the ETO [European Theatre of Operations] during World War II? Did you go overseas at all? Do you agree that the Holocaust is just a construct of the Jewish Lobby? Or perhaps you feel, as so many admirers of "Israel Shamir" do, that the United States was wrong to enter World War II on the side of the Allies." Selig provides evidence that, as my friend Manuel Garcia Jr. affirmed from his experience, assholes come with all ethnicities. Mr. Selig is part of the Jewish contribution to this category. If he is really interested in knowing the answers to his questions, he can find them on my website, which consists of two parts:

Website I of an anarchist physicist (en español) at
http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/ and
Website II of an anarchist physicist at
http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/s/00.htm

Unlike the secretive Mr. Selig, about whom I have limited information, my site, like that of Israel Shamir, is wide open with facts about my life. Selig's cryptic first paragraph in his note to me is pathetically guarded: "Smartass or no, better a real Jew than a fake one. I am a resident of Queens County, a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and a former prosecutor. That is all the information I find it appropriate to share." This is a man who is afraid of the daylight. Why does he feel the need to hide? Aside from these scraps of information the website
http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/11415-ny-randolph-selig-933131.html  adds a bit:  
Randolph Steven Selig  Address registered with New York State bar  8510 120th St  Kew Gardens, NY 11415  917-482-4788  Street map of area at: [Click here to view Selig's residence.]  Licenses: 31 years since Randolph Steven Selig was first licensed to practice law in NY.  License status -- Currently registered  Year acquired -- 1978  Last updated by Avvo -- 09/19/2008
 We have not found any instances of professional misconduct for this lawyer.

I have no reason to question any of this, including the final sentence. Lying is of course not considered professional misconduct by lawyers, but standard practice, an integral part of their indoctrination in the profession.  

So there we have it. Selig doesn't contest my categorizing him 'a smartass'. He thinks he's 'a real Jew', and by inference that Shamir and I are fakes, which to him means that he's 'better', more authentic. He lives in Queens County (one of the five boroughs that make up New York City), graduated from that highly regarded public NYC high school in the Bronx (another borough of NYC), and was once a prosecutor. More than that he's not prepared to divulge.  

In my view, Selig ought to consider being proud of his status as a human being, a fact of paramount importance, rather than seeking self-respect in being what he calls 'a real Jew'. I know it's presumptuous to 'judge' Selig, knowing but little about him, but from what I've gleaned I am inclined to think he is what I call a 'bad' person, but not an 'evil' person. Bad because his lying serves to destroy the mutual trust necessary for a healthy society. But not evil because he is not doing it deliberately to hurt other people for his own private gain.

 A few final remarks. If you haven't read Israel Shamir's essay, Carter and the Swarm, treat yourself to an insightful examination of the mode of attack against any significant critic of the Zionist State. He writes,

After Carter spoke, he was immediately counter-attacked by organised Jewry -- you couldn't miss it! In my native Siberia, in its short and furious summer, you can watch a swarm of gnats attack a horse, each small bloodsucker eager for his piece of the action. After a while, the blinded and infuriated animal rushes headlong in a mad sprint and soon finds its death in the bottomless moors. The Jews developed the same style of attack. It is never a single voice arguing the case, but always a mass attack from the left and the right, from below and above, until the attacked one is beaten and broken and crawls away in disgrace.

Each attacker is as tiny and irrelevant as a single gnat, but as a swarm they are formidable. Observe them separately: Dershowitz, an advocate of torture and of hostage killing, an apprehended plagiarist who never was elected to any position of authority and commands no respect, demands to debate the president. It is indeed beyond chutzpah; but Dershowitz is supported by other Jews in prime positions and his ridiculous demand is seconded by both university and media until this thieving nonentity gets equal time on a TV channel to present "his case". Another gnat is a Deborah Lipstadt, a nonentity brought forth by the Washington Post. Plenty of others are even smaller than these two . . . [http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Eng9.htm]

A brilliant observation in two small paragraphs. No wonder the Jewish gnats can't stand Shamir. Randolph Steven Selig is one of the "even smaller" gnats.

Now a bit of self reflection. If you're a normal person who nevertheless has had the patience and interest to read all the way to here, you might be wondering why I am so obsessed with lying. Especially because it is something we all, or nearly all of us, frequently do. Why do I make such a big deal of it? The rational reason I've already given -- it destroys the mutual trust needed to build a healthy society. But I think there may also be a psychological reason.

I seem to be driven by a great desire to understand society at as profound a level as is within my reach. It's a big challenge for me. Someone like for example Immanuel Wallerstein writes his remarkable analyses twice monthly with an evident detailed grasp of both contemporary day-to-day events and an enormous reservoir of historical knowledge at his fingertips. Of course I'm envious of his gifts of factual knowledge, excellent memory and evident instant recall that enables him to comprehend so much. If I were endowed with the same capabilities it might not matter to me personally if someone lied to me because I would be able to detect it immediately and simply ignore the liar. But the fact is that I'm not so endowed, with the result that I can be deceived. If I later discover the deception I am then resentful, feeling that I have been made a fool of. The crude sneer of Mr. Selig at Mr. Santomauro with which I started this open letter, Don't you feel foolish, taken in, suckered?, carries plenty of bite. It is a blow at ones self-esteem. Perhaps it is my low self-esteem regarding my abilities vis-a-vis all the people I so much admire, like Wallerstein, that makes me so fanatic about not being lied to. At any rate, if I seem abnormal in this respect, maybe that is the explanation.

 Third and final comment. What value, if any, is there in spending so much effort on Mr. Selig, someone for whom I have little regard? It's basically the same question I put to myself about the Jewish-Palestinian conflict. I know that Jews and Palestinians together make up only a numerically insignificant fraction of humanity. And the atrocities that the Israeli Zionist Nazis are perpetrating against the Palestinians pale in numerical comparison to those against other peoples in the present time and previously. Why not focus on the 'big' problems instead of the 'gnat-size' ones? The transcontinental neoliberal assault of global capitalism throughout South America and Mexico screams the urgency for humanity to end capitalism.

Looking in some detail at a 'small' problem can be valuable if it casts light on a 'large' problem. I think Mr. Selig's actions give insight to the social damage that comes from the assumption that ethnicity is a determinant of social behavior. I claimed earlier that "there's a need to give up 'being Jewish', by which I mean the pervasive ideology . . . that we Jews are special, a particularly gifted ethnic group . . . that [a] smart Jewish boy doesn't have to work with his hands. This cultivated elite attitude, that manual work is suitable only for intellectually inferior people, exists of course among all privileged groups . . . In my view, not only Jewish ethnicity ought to be considered illegitimate, but all ethnicities . . ." [5 Fifth note, from me to Shamir, in http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-06-05.htm]. Shamir, who adopts a broader, more inclusive definition of ethnicity, disagrees with me here. To me it seems that the arrogance, hubris and absence of humility, combined with profound ignorance that characterize Selig's behavior is unfortunately fairly typical among many American Jews, possibly the majority. To the extent that U.S. foreign policy is influenced by people of this group, I believe the result is one of social harm, particularly of course to the Palestinians, but more generally to all peoples.

--15 June 2009 George

P.S. It's now 16 June and there are more letters. I'll include them in a continuation, Straight talk 3, with Shamir and others.

------------------------------

NOTES

[1] Straight talk with Israel Shamir, the beginning of our dialogue, is at
http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-06-05.htm. This was the start of an exciting dialogue with Israel Adam Shamir and other correspondents, which concentrated on the ideological basis of the dominant global value system that rules our lives. The dialogue is still ongoing. The series continues with

Straight talk 2, with Shamir and others  http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-06-15.htm,

Straight talk 3, overcoming being Jewish, no joke  http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-06-26.htm,

Straight talk 4, overcoming ethnicity, no joke. It can serve deadly ends  http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-07-12.htm,

Straight talk 5, being truly human. [How many voters does it take to change a light bulb? None. Because voters can't change anything]  http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-07.htm,

More straight talk, Alan Hart's "Open Letter to Prime Minister Blair: Doing a Northern Ireland in the Middle East". Alan actively joins the dialogue.  http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-15.htm, and

More blunt talk, "Randolph S. Selig, Esq.-'smart-ass' NY City Jewish lawyer. Specialty -- lying for Zionism"  http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-18.htm. Another essay is in preparation, tentatively titled "Another dimension — indigenous! Seeking a true civilization".

[2] Michael Santomauro <reporternotebook@gmail.com>. The Reporters Notebook website is at http://www.reportersnotebook.com/.

[3] Randolph Selig exchange. As of 18 August 2009 Selig has not responded to my 15 June 2009 posting. It's just over two months since he last opened his lying mouth to me. My guess is that when I smoked him out by posting some data on him, including even his residential address and a link to a picture of the house he lives in, his bravdo vanished, like that of burying beetles who prefer scurrying about in darkness. Here's the same data conveniently at the end of the article, so one doesn't need to scroll through the lengthy text to locate it.
http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/11415-ny-randolph-selig-933131.html  
Randolph Steven Selig  Address registered with New York State bar  8510 120th St  Kew Gardens, NY 11415  917-482-4788  Street map of area at: [click on link to view Selig's residence] http://maps.google.com/maps?q=8510+120th+St%2C+Kew+Gardens%2C+ NY+11415+(Randolph+Steven+Selig)  Licenses: 31 years since Randolph Steven Selig was first licensed to practice law in NY.  License status -- Currently registered  Year acquired -- 1978  Last updated by Avvo -- 09/19/2008  We have not found any instances of professional misconduct for this lawyer.

------------------------------

 This page is also at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-18.htm

Open Letter to Prime Minister Blair: Doing a Northern Ireland in the Middle East

George Salzman — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 22:14:00 -0700

The original of this letter is on Alan Hart's website at http://www.alanhart.net/ open-letter-to-pm-blair-doing-a-northern-ireland-in-the-middle-east/, by Alan Hart, 11 May 2007.  Contact information for Alan Hart [1].

The opening page of Hart's site is at http://www.alanhart.net/. A remarkably rich assembly of work on the global impact of Zionism by an unusually outspoken British Gentile committed to telling it like it is. Well worth visiting and watching the world-class interviews, each about a half hour -- really one-on-one conversations -- that Hart has posted along with a great deal of his written material. The importance of his work is also attested by the vigorous efforts of the Zionist network to prevent publication of his book and to defame him.[2]

-- George Salzman

----------------------------------------

Dear Prime Minister Blair,

"Giving the impossible a go" in Israel-Palestine

I write to you with the warning words of Yehoshafat Harkabi reverberating in my mind. (He was, before your time, Israel's longest serving and most enlightened Director of Military Intelligence. I'll get to his warning words in due course).

After you cease to be burdened by the constraints of high political office, you could secure for yourself a place in history as the leader above all others (in all of human history) if you could do for the Middle East what you've done for Northern Ireland.

You didn't start the peace process in Northern Ireland (on the British side John Major did that after the Provisional IRA bombed London and demonstrated that it could bring the UK's economy to its knees); but you did push that peace process to a successful conclusion. And I think nobody else could have done it.

So yes, the Middle East needs you, but to do what, actually?

There is not a Middle East peace process to be managed to a successful conclusion. So this time you would have to start a process. And to do that I think, if I may say so, that you need to be much better informed than you are about why, really, a solution to the "Palestine problem" has remained, and seems set to remain, beyond the reach of politics and diplomacy. (I put Palestine problem in quotes because although it's a convenient label, the problem is really a Jewish one, not an Arab one).

In my view there are four keys to understanding.

The first is knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Zionism and why they are total opposites. Judaism is the religion of Jews and, like Christianity and Islam, it has at its core a set of ethical principles and moral values. Zionism is not only a secular, colonialist ideology, it makes a mockery of, and has contempt for, the ethical principles and moral values of Judaism. Which is why those most often described as "ultra orthodox" religious Jews say, and I believe they are right, that Zionism is destroying Judaism. (I wonder if you know, dear T[ony] B[lair], that the return of Jews to the land of biblical Israel by the efforts of man -- one possible but woefully inadequate definition of Zionism -- was proscribed by Judaism?)

For your education under this heading, the book I recommend is A Threat From Within, A CENTURY OF JEWISH OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM. Its author is Yakov M. Rabkin, a Jewish Canadian who is Professor of History at the University of Montreal. Some months ago in London I put an explicit question to Yakov for inclusion in a DVD. The question was: "Could it be said that the Jews of the world now have a choice to make -- either to reaffirm their commitment to Judaism and renounce Zionism, or to reaffirm, or affirm, their commitment to Zionism and renounce Judaism?" He answered with one word. "Yes!"

The second key to understanding is the fact that Israel was created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing. For your education under this heading, the book I recommend is the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Its author is Dr. Ilan Pappe, Israel's leading "New" or "Revisionist" historian. For new or revisionist read honest. (Various Israeli agencies ? you'll know the ones I mean ? have made it impossible for Ilan to work in Israel, and he is shortly coming to take up a post at Exeter University, this despite the best efforts of the Zionised Board of Deputies of British Jews to block his appointment).

In other words, the Zionist state of Israel was founded on a massive injustice (not to mention war crime) to another people. If peace is to have a chance, a last chance, it follows that the wrong done to the Palestinians by Zionism has got to be righted on terms acceptable to the Palestinians.

Because of the pragmatic and courageous leadership of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinians (almost all of them) have long been prepared to settle for a genuine two-state solution, one that requires an end to Israel's occupation of land grabbed in the 1967 war, with Jerusalem, preferably as an open city, the capital of two states.

In passing I'll add that there is no mystery about Hamas's real position. If tomorrow Israel said and meant that it was ready to negotiate a full and final peace on the basis of a genuine two-state solution, Hamas's leaders would say, "Let's do the business". And they would say that and mean it because they are not stupid. They know they would have no choice because a genuine two-state solution is still what the vast majority of Palestinians are prepared to settle for. (But for how much longer is a good question).

In passing I'll also say that the issue of the Palestinian right of return is not the obstacle to peace Zionism asserts it to be. In good faith negotiations for a full and final peace based on a genuine two-state solution, Israel would discover that Palestinian pragmatism could and would be applied even to the right of return. As Arafat and his senior leadership colleagues told me many years ago, the right of return would have to be confined to the Palestinian mini-state; which would mean that probably not more than 100,000 Palestinians would be able to exercise their right to return. The rest would have to settle for financial compensation and a Palestinian passport.

The problem for any Palestinian leadership is that it cannot say so in public until and unless it can assure its people that in return for their unthinkable concessions to the reality of Israel's existence, Israel's occupation of land taken in 1967 will be ended to make the space for a viable Palestinian mini state.

In reality the Palestinian right of return would be a perfectly manageable matter if Zionism was interested in good faith negotiations for a genuine two-state solution. The truth is that it's not.

That's my Gentile assessment based on more than three decades of engagement with the conflict, including my time as an ITN [Independent Television Network (British-based)] and BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] Panorama correspondent who enjoyed, uniquely, intimate access to the two greatest opposites in all of human history -- Golda Meir, Mother Israel, and Yasser Arafat, Father Palestine. But it's also the view of, for example, Gideon Levy, the conscience of Israeli journalism. The headline over a recent article of his in Ha-aretz was ISRAEL DOESN'T WANT PEACE. And that's because Zionism sees everything in terms of "them or us". The Zionist mind cannot conceive a "them and us" scenario.

The third key to understanding is in this fact. Since its unilateral declaration of statehood in 1948, Israel's existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab military force or, to put it another way, the prospect of Israeli Jews being "driven in the sea" was never a real one. Zionism's assertion to the contrary -- the myth upon which the first and still existing draft of Judeo-Christian history is constructed -- was the cover which allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most, Western Europe and North America, with presenting its aggression as self-defence; and itself as the victim when, actually, it was and is the oppressor.

* You might want to challenge my statement that Israel's declaration of existence was "unilateral". If you do, you'll say that Israel was given its birth certificate and thus its legitimacy by a UN Partition Resolution. Leaving aside the fact that the UN had no right to give away Palestine or even a part of it, the essence of the truth is that the Partition Plan resolution of the UN General Assembly was only a proposal. (Which, as it happened, secured the minimum necessary support only because the vote was rigged). The proposal did not go to the Security Council for a policy decision because President Truman knew that, if approved, it could only be implemented by force -- because of the totality of Arab and other Muslim opposition to it; and he was not prepared to use force. So the Partition Plan proposal was vitiated, became invalid. And the question of what the hell to do about Palestine was taken back to the General Assembly for more discussion. The option favoured and proposed by the US was temporary UN Trusteeship. It was while the General Assembly was debating what do that Israel unilaterally declared itself to be in existence -- actually in defiance of the will of the organised international community, including the Truman administration.

* The truth of the time was that the Zionist state had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist unless -- Unless it was recognised and legitimized by those who were dispossessed of their land and their rights during its creation. In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved. And that legitimacy was the only thing the Zionists could not take from the Palestinians by force.

The fourth key to understanding is in this fact. It was Israel not the Arabs which spurned opportunity after opportunity to make peace. (As researched by Professor Avi Shlaim for his truth-telling book, The Iron Wall, the record of de-classified documentation is crystal clear on the matter of who wanted an end to conflict and who didn't).

Israel's often repeated claim that it had "no partner for peace", and the assertion that it has lived in danger of annihilation, are the main planks of one of the biggest and most successful propaganda lies in all of human history. Chutzpah, one might say, at its most brilliant and terrifying best.

If you really want to "give the impossible a go" in the Middle East, what should you actually do (apart from some reading to improve your understanding of who must do what and why for peace)?

In my opinion there is a political reality to be faced. It is that no American president will even think of confronting Zionism unless he (or she) knows that he would be doing so with the understanding and support of a majority of Jewish Americans. And that's where I believe the key to peace (or not) is -- in the hands of Jewish Americans. Only they, I believe, with the assistance of the Jews of Europe, have the influence needed to call and hold Zionism to account, in order to give politics for peace their very last chance, be it the peace of a two or one state solution. (I wonder if you know, dear T[ony] B[lair], that prior to the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust almost all informed and thoughtful Jews everywhere were opposed to Zionism's colonial enterprise?)

I also believe that the Jews of the world have a powerful self-interest in using their influence. And that self-interest is explained by the title of my two-volume book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews.

I insisted on that title because it reflects in seven words two related truths for our time. The first is that the sleeping giant of classical anti-Semitism has been re-awakened in the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian world. The second is that a prime cause of the re-awakening is the Zionist state's behaviour.

To give that observation some context, I'll now quote Harkabi's warning words. They are taken (with my emphasis added) from his seminal book, Israel's Fateful Hour, published in English in 1988.

* "Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world."

It's my view that after the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, and because of it, the giant most likely would have gone back to sleep, remained asleep and, in all probability, would have died in its sleep ? IF Zionism had not been allowed by the major powers, first Britain, then America, to have its way, as Balfour put it, "right or wrong".

What, really, is the basis for believing that anti-Semitism is seriously on the rise? The increase in the desecration of synagogues and Jewish graves (and the like), verbal abuse and assaults on Jews is a pointer. But there is something far more sinister. It's what a growing number of Gentiles, middle to upper class people in particular, are thinking and now beginning to say behind closed doors and at dinner parties. What do they say? "These fucking Jews!" And it's grown, this antipathy, in response to Israel's arrogance of power and the correct perception of Israel as the oppressor. And the more it becomes apparent that Israel is the obstacle to peace on any terms most Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims can accept, the more this antipathy will grow, with the real danger that it will break out, become unsuppressed, and manifest itself as violent anti-Semitism.

As things are, and look like going, Holocaust II, shorthand for another great turning against Jews, is a possibility in a foreseeable future if Zionism continues to have its way.

At this point I have to say that I empathise completely with the unspeakable but real fear of very many if not all the Jews of the world -- the fear that it, another great turning against Jews, could happen again. I am also aware that it's because of this fear that very many Jews, if only sub-consciously, have a vision of Israel as their refuge of last resort. And that's a main reason (not the only reason) why, to date, most of the Jews of the world have remained silent on the matter of the Zionist state's behaviour. They are frightened of saying or doing anything that could compromise their insurance policy (or lay them open to a Zionist charge of endangering Israel's future).

It follows, or so it seems to the Gentile me, that it's unreasonable to expect the Jews of the world in substantial numbers to play their necessary part in calling Zionism to account unless and until they receive the maximum possible in the way of reassurance about their well being and security in the many lands of the mainly Gentile world of which they are citizens. Put another way, they have to be convinced that they don't need the Zionist state of Israel as an insurance policy. And that's why I call in my book for a NEW COVENANT, not between the Jews and their God, but between the Jews and the Gentiles.

If it is the case that the key to peace (or not) is in the hands of the Jews of the world and Jewish Americans especially, it follows, surely, that the prerequisite for getting a real peace process going is eliminating the danger of the monster of anti-Semitism going on the rampage again. How can that be done?

My short answer is this. The Gentiles of the Western nations among whom most of the world's Jews live must be informed and educated about the difference between Judaism and Zionism, and thus why it is wrong to blame all Jews for the crimes (yes crimes) of the hardcore Zionist few.

* It is a fact that Arabs and other Muslims have always known the difference between Judaism and Zionism. And it can be said that throughout much of their history, Arabs and other Muslims were the best protectors of Jews. It was Zionism's colonial enterprise that poisoned the relationship, but not to the point at which most Arabs and other Muslims blame all Jews for Zionism's crimes.

In other words, what peace in the Middle East needs most of all, as a prelude to, and a pre-requisite for, political action, is open, informed and honest debate about the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of what used to be called the Arab-Israeli conflict. Put another way, the answer to the question of who has to do what and why for justice and peace must be determined by reference to the truth of history.

It was to assist the process of informed and honest debate, the first ever, that I devoted more than five years of my life to researching and writing Zionism, The Real Enemy of the Jews.

I think citizen Blair will have a choice to make when he is no longer burdened by the constraints of high office and can afford to offend powerful vested interests for the sake doing what is "right".

He can either continue his subscription to Zionism's myths of history, in which case he'll be without the credibility needed to "give the impossible a go" in the Middle East; or he could take the lead (in association with former President Carter?) in setting a new agenda for debate about who must do what and why for peace, in which case he could play a major and perhaps decisive role in making it, peace, happen.

Terrifying though the present situation is, I agree with you that now is not the time to abandon hope. And I'll close this letter to you with my statement that brings Volume Two (recently published) of my book to its conclusion.

If the Jews of the world can summon up the will and the courage to make common cause with the forces of reason in Israel before it is too late for us all, a very great prize awaits them. By demonstrating that right can triumph over might, and that there is a place for morality in politics, they WOULD become the light unto nations. It is a prize available to no other people on earth because of the uniqueness of the suffering of the Jewish people. Perhaps that is the real point of the idea of the Jews as Chosen People? Chosen to endure unique suffering and, having endured it, to show the rest of us that creating a better and more just world is not a mission impossible.

Sincerely and with best wishes,  
Alan Hart

PS. I am sending you a hard copy of this letter by snail mail.[3]

-----------------------------------------------

NOTES

[1] Contact information. For a variety of reasons Hart does not receive unmediated e-mails. In order to write him, prepare your message, in text only, go to the website http://www.alanhart.net/contact-alan-hart/, enter the required information, paste in the text message, and hit the Send button at the lower left of the page.

Hart's open letter to Blair, although written 11 May 2007, is still valuable for his perspective and analysis of the thus-far unending conquest of the Palestinians, a perspective that I believe is in the main justified by the factual history.

[2] Alan Hart, a man with a mission. He's been devoting himself to the resolution of the world's major catastrophes for about forty years. Never attended a university to 'complete his credentialed so-called education'. At age seventeen went to Nigeria. Opinionated? Of course, as anyone who's alive to the reality of most people's lives and prospects would be if s/he had an ounce of compassion. Perhaps the most immediately accessible introduction to this rare individual is to watch a few of the one-on-one interviews -- really conversations -- posted on his website, which so far include, besides his introduction, a dozen talks:

Part 1 - Alan Hart Introduction  Part 2 - Professor Ilan Pappe I  Part 3 - Professor Ilan Pappe II  Part 4 - Abd Albari Atwan  Part 5 - Reverend Dr. Stephen Robert Sizer  Part 6 - John Pilger  Part 7 - Dr Jennifer Louise Tonge  Part 8 - Riah Sbu-el-Assal  Part 9 - Norman Finkelstein  Part 10 - Ghada Karmi  Part 11 - Steven Rose  Part 12 - Alastair Crooke  Part 13 - Lord Bhiku Prekh

[3] Pro forma response note to Hart from the Prime Minister's office.

* The reply from Downing Street said the PM was pleased that I felt able to write to him (!); that he had asked for "careful note" to be made of my remarks; and that a copy of my letter was being sent to the Foreign Office.

-----------------------------------

The location of this open letter on my site, and my address, are http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-15.htm

How many voters does it take to change a light bulb? None. Because voters can't change anything.

George Salzman — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:40:00 -0700

The values we live by -- and die from

by George Salzman

We 'westerners' have much to learn from the world's intellectual treasure trove of indigenous cultures. Although I couldn't refrain from titling this note with the anarchists' scornful little 'joke' about the social impotence of all the faithful ballot-casters who doggedly cling to the liberal myth that voting and representative democracy are not to be questioned, the truth is that this note is really "Straight talk 5, being truly human", a continuation of the discussion/debate associated with Israel Shamir. But that title wouldn't grab anybody. It's just not sexy enough.

The fact is that we human beings are fucking up the world with the incredible speed that our technological skill makes possible. It is insanity of the highest order -- a mass collective insanity based on the most destructive system of values that ever governed humanity. Almost two years ago I lamented, "[T]hese are difficult days. Everywhere the forces of fascism seem to be in ascendancy. Yet I know the world is full of good people who, like me, abhor the wanton destruction of so much that is wonderful about our species. How can it be, we must ask, that humanity has evolved a set of institutions that is ripping apart the very biosphere on which all life depends? And destroying hundreds of millions -- even billions -- of people's lives. I think we must somehow manage to get together, to understand deeply enough what the trouble is, and to figure out what to do in order to turn history around. And then, above all, we must act! Because time is running out."[2]

Time is running out -- time to do the basic thinking and acting we need to do. The ceaseless flood of catastrophes is seizing all the attention of those of us engaged in the larger social struggles. We are being turned into so-called 'news junkies', not only by the still-dominant mass media but by the new and burgeoning independent popular media. Right now, for example, one of the potentially most important developments is the striking self-mobilization of the bulk of Honduran people seeking to defeat with non-violent opposition the anti-democratic military coup supported by the privileged sectors of society. My very close friend Jonathan Treat has two inspiring reports on the coup opposition, both in the Narco News Bulletin:

1. The Closing of the Southern Highway from Tegucigalpa: An Eye Witness Report--The Emphasis in the Honduran Blockades Is on Nonviolent Strategy and Tactics, 18 July;

2. Housesitting in Honduras--Voices from Catacamas, Hometown of Honduran President, Manuel "Mel" Zelaya, 22 July.

These reports, and the many recent articles in Narco News by Al Giordano on the popular opposition to the coup in Honduras provide a tonic of hopefulness -- precisely contradicting the dismal mass media projections. I think there is no doubt that one of the major responsibilities the ruling class owners assign their mass media is to demolish our hopes that we can do anything effective to make the world better. They want us to believe we are impotent and that they have all the power to control events. Cultivating and maintaining our ignorance is essential for their continued control. The mass media continue the process begun by the compulsory schooling that was imposed on us when we were small children, the process John Taylor Gatto calls Dumbing Us Down.[3] The "leadership role" of the privileged classes in promoting mass ignorance is also a favorite target of my good friend Joe Bageant, a part-time escapee from the U. S. of A. whose down-to-earth writing, I'm glad to say, is attracting many readers.[4]

Overcoming my own ignorance

That's where I should start -- by trying to overcome my own ignorance. This is neither false modesty nor a false admission of inadequacy. Each of us is of course limited in the range of skills we possess and the areas of knowledge we encompass. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. No two individuals are identical in all respects, even so-called identical twins, who invariably develop personalities that differ from one another. Despite the multitude of differences among us, each person is a human being whose individuality ought to be respected. Each of us can contribute to the well-being of the social group in which (s)he lives. One of the features I think we ought to emulate, a feature I've seen in some indigenous groups here in Oaxaca but not in 'western' cultures is the acceptance of people largely 'as they are', free of commercialized homogenizing pressures so prevalent in the U.S.

Two exemplary small indigenous Oaxaca communities

As examples of living indigenous groups from whose values I think we westerners could learn, I'll tell a bit about two rural communities I visited. Cerro Tepezcuintle is a Mazateca village about 80 miles north of Oaxaca City as the crow flies, north of the Sierra Norte range, close to the state of Veracruz. Santiago Tilantongo is a Mixteca village some 40-odd miles west of the City in the Mixteca Alta area. Each is hours away by driving. Aside from their different mother tongues they are in regions that differ profoundly from each other in topography, weather patterns, soil and rainfall. Cerro Tepezcuintle is in lowlands where water is plentiful, I would say in surplus. By contrast, in Santiago Tilantongo, every drop of water is precious. Naturally the availability of water influences the way the groups adapt their ways of living.

Cerro Tepezcuintle, where water is plentiful

In 2002 I went with two practical on-the-ground ecologists to several communities in northern Oaxaca. On April 19-20 we were in the village of Cerro Tepezcuintle, population 780. The town official chosen by the community's general assembly to direct community agricultural practices, Eusebio Salvador Celestino, gave us a tour of communal lands. "Here all the children work", he remarked as we approached a field where his sister, a niece and a nephew were harvesting, shucking and bagging well-dried criollo (native) corn, the bags of ears to be carried to the dwelling area. It seemed quite evident that the children had no sense that their labor was being 'exploited'. In fact they were enjoying their activity, as though they were playing. Perhaps we 'westerners' might ask how it is possible for a little girl to be happy without a Barbie Doll (with or without accessories). This kind of culture encourages people to be humble in the sense of not having 'puffed up' opinions of themselves, and at the same time to be dignified even if they are living very modestly in terms of income and material possessions.

Shucking corn in Cerro Tepezcuintle, Oaxaca 20 April 2002, photo by G.S.

Eusebio's comment about the children working was straightforward, neither apologetic nor defensive. It simply affirmed an obvious fact about the life of his community. Its survival would not be possible without the active efforts of everyone. That is probably true in most of the world's money-poor indigenous communities. Cerro Tepezcuintle is in the County of San Miguel Soyaltepec, a county that the Mexican government classifies as marginalized. The National Institute of Statistical and Geographical Information, INEGI, uses three degrees of marginalization among its classification levels, but individual towns are not classified. I don't know which level Tepezcuintle is in, though it is clearly a marginalized community.

Youngsters in Cerro Tepezcuintle carrying things home from the field.
19 April 2002, photo by G.S

The day before seeing Eusebio's niece and nephew harvesting corn I saw a group of Tepezcuintle youngsters returning home from the field in the late afternoon. Immediately after snapping this picture I showed it to them on the camera's tiny monitor. On seeing the image of themselves they erupted in a burst of joyous laughter. They quickly and eagerly put down their loads and assembled for a posed picture. From work to play in a moment! And then, when they couldn't cajole me into taking more pictures of them, they picked up their loads and continued homeward. The physical and mental health of the children seemed excellent. This might at first seem surprising in a community governmentally-designated as marginalized. I asked Albar Ríos Sánchez, one of the two people with whom I visited Tepezcuintle, about it. Albar responded that the community produced about 90 per cent of its food on its own land by its own physical efforts and the use of animals. Albar is a trained practical ecologist who ititiated and leads an agro-ecological consultation group CONSERVA.[5] His specialization is in integrated forest use. He had been working with Tepezcuintle for a number of years to recuperate its forests' diversified timber and various valuable rare indigenous plant species. A CONSERVA ornithologist Ramiro Aragón and I were visiting Tepezcuintle for the first time. Both Albar and Ramiro are graduates of the Agricultural Technical Institute of Oaxaca (ITAO) in Oaxaca City.

The same group, eager to pose for picture after picture.
19 April 2002, photo by G.S.

Compared to people who are materially richer, the people of Cerro Tepezcuintle lead a more rigorous and, in my opinion a physically healthier life. The surefire indicator of poor health is always the state of the children. I saw no infants or little boys or girls with bloated bellies, nor any children who looked fat or evidently undernourished. Interestingly, the general census in 2000 showed that of the 780 inhabitants, 738 were without health insurance. I don't know how they deal with emergency medical needs. I had hoped to make a second visit with a pediatric surgeon who is a friend so that he could see whether the children's health was indeed as good as it seemed to me. That return visit unfortunately never happened.

Santiago Tilantongo, where water is scarce

In September 2008 I visited this small community during three days. The extended family that hosted us is working to reclaim land that was fertile and forested until the Spanish invasion half a millenium ago deforested the hills, which led to erosion of perhaps three to five meters of topsoil with the accompanying loss of ground water beneath the remaining barren rocky clay surface.[6] A stirring account of the decade-long learning experience this community offered an American couple still living and working there (Kathy and Phil Dahl-Bredine) is in the book referred to in Note [6], well worth reading. Here I will mention only one striking fact about Tilantongo, having to do with its available water.

Each of these two indigenous communities, the Mazatecas of Cerro Tepezcuintle and the Mixtecas of Santiago Tilantongo, is engaged in an inspired effort to live in harmony with the natural environment of their locale. They use their natural human intelligence and the accumulated knowledge of their communities to shape their social behavior. One of the most dramatic revelations to me, as a privileged westerner, came from a quote in Phil Dahl-Bredine's book about Santiago Tilantongo, "We don't have much water. But we don't need much because we don't have a sewer system", said Jesús León.[7] The very idea of living without a sewer system simply never crossed my mind as a viable mode of life. I'm quite confident that practically all the people I correspond with would be equally uncomfortable with the idea. Could it be, for example, that we should all give serious consideration to living without flush toilets?

Water, ethnicity, privilege, entitlement

If we accept, as Israel Shamir maintains, that the ethnicity of a group is in part determined by its natural environment, which does of course influence aspects of its social behavior, then the difference in availablility of fresh water in Tepezcuintle and Tilantongo would, by itself, have been enough to make them ethnically distinct even if, which is not the case, in all other respects -- language, genetic makeup, marriage customs, religion, etc. -- they had been indistinguishable. To me that seems to be stretching the notion of ethnicity, perhaps somewhat unreasonably, but it would be insignificant if not for the use of perceived ethnic differences to generate hostility between two such groups. Until now Shamir has not acknowledged that the (mis)use of ethnic differences between groups to foster a mentality of 'us' versus 'them' has been a destructive practice made possible by the notion of ethnicity. The Ottoman Turks misused it against the Armenian minority, the German Nazis against the Jews, the Zionist Jews against the Palestinians, and all colonial regimes against the subject peoples.

Water is of course absolutely required for our lives, drinkable water that we may safely consume, and water in which to wash ourselves and essential items. But the Mixtecas of Santiago Tilantongo show that using clean water to flush toilets is absolutely unnecessary, and that such toilets are themselves superfluous. Nevertheless, people in the privileged classes are as a rule culturally conditioned (I would say malconditioned) to prefer them. At first you might think, What does it matter? If someone prefers a flush toilet (and a daily hot shower, what harm does it do? However, a consequence of such cultural values is that the privileged sectors of a society may commandeer water for their own use, inflicting harm on other people. Several examples: 1) The Quabbin Reservoir in western Massachusetts, about 62 miles west of Boston, is that city's principal source of water. Four towns were destroyed to make this engineering project possible.[8] The political power concentrated in Boston prevailed over that of the local people, and dispossessed (a euphemism for stole it from) them; 2) Throughout the area controlled by the Zionist state, as we know, Palestinians are being deprived of their naturally available water by the Israelis, who are commandeering (another euphemism for stealing) it; 3) And in India, to give one other example, the giant project of damming the Narmada Valley has, I recall seeing in an article by Arundhati Roy, made of the order of fifty million people, the poorest of the poor of course, destitute as their homes, fields and villages were permanently submerged.[9]

In each of the three cases mentioned a rich and powerful sector of a society acted to take away from a poor and weak sector its access to a natural resource. In each case, and I think this is always the same, those in power and their servants seek to justify the obvious harm done to other people by asserting that the action taken is or was necessary 'for the greater good'. Always, so far as I can see, it amounts to an attempt to rationalize wealthy and/or powerful groups stealing from relatively poor and/or weak groups, i.e. to give a cloak of legitimacy to class or national or tribal warfare. My belief, as an anarchist communist, is that the destructive, terrible results of such behavior are not a result of humans being a genetically defective species but of an evolved system of values that is implacably destructive. As mature rational people, we can understand the historical process that led to this impasse, and challenge and change the accepted system of values.

Getting started

The challenge to begin making the needed changes is immediate. Starting with myself, I am one of the world's minority of privileged people. Specifically, in the year 2008 my gross income was a bit over $80,000.[10] In large part because of a fairly stable income near that level, my life is much more comfortable and secure than those of the great majority of the world's population. Of course I want to continue living without fear of being hungry or homeless or unable to afford medical care. Everyone wants to live without such anxieties, but the brutal fact is that in today's world only the sufficiently privileged enjoy such security, and in order to maintain it we must rely on oppressive force of governments to prevent poor people from seizing a larger share of the social wealth. Whether we like it or not, we are among the immediate material beneficiaries of the forces that maintain our privileged status. In the earlier essay to which [10] above refers, I headed one section Fascism can be comfortable – for us, we privileged people.[11] The idea that our gains come at the cost of other people's forced deprivation is offensive to those of us who want to believe we are enlightened and of liberal humanitarian persuasion. Many of my friends with whom I've tried to discuss the connection between massive global impoverishment and their own lifestyles either refuse to consider it or maintain that with better social arrangements everyone could enjoy the same benefits that are now available only to privileged people. I believe that is not true, although with better social practices some improvements could be managed, even within the present system, but not the major changes my friends claim. I think that argument is simply an attempted rationalization to allow them to indulge their greed without feeling a sense of guilt.

I have tried over the years to find ways to withdraw even the tacit support that my participation provides the dominant, oppressive system. A brief sketch of some of my efforts and thoughts is in a piece I wrote in January 1997 for the RESIST newsletter, here. The main idea has been to redirect as much wealth as possible away from the U.S. government and corporate system, and to use that wealth for building a popular truly grassroots infrastructure. To reduce the amount of federal tax to the Internal Revenue Service I contribute, mainly to tax-exempt groups, year in and year out. For example, for 2008 I was able to take as my total charitable deductions $37,462.76. My federal tax was $4,373.00. If enough of us were to think seriously about what we might do with the resources over which we have legal control, as I have been trying to do, and then act, I think we could have a significant impact.

On the need to 'sacrifice'

This is the most difficult part of my 'pitch' to get people to take seriously. The psychological barrier to relinquishing a pleasurable activity is simply enormous. Even when that activity is clearly harmful to other people. My impression is that the overwhelming majority of privileged people are conditioned to believe that they are entitled to all the privileges they enjoy, and they don't really 'give a shit' about the world's suffering majority. They are, it seems to me, totally self-centered, models of the opposition that exists to building a world of communality as Cerro Tepezcuintle and Santiago Tilantongo are seeking to achieve. My dismal view of the majority of well-to-do people was just reinforced by the reaction of all the moneyed classes to the coup d'etat in Honduras. In despair, I joked with my friend Jonathan Treat who had just returned from reporting in Tegucigalpa (the capital) and Catacamas (the president's home city), "The only solution is to kill all privileged people." As though I had abandoned my belief in militant non-violent struggle. The truth, I believe, is that they must be dispossessed of their disproportionate wealth. The coup was their response to president Manuel "Mel" Zelaya's modest attempts to ease, ever so slightly, the excessive burdens of the poor majority with, e.g. an increase in the legal minimum pay for workers. "Nothing doing", said the rich, and unleashed military repression to protect the profit margins of banana and pineapple barons, the sector that thrives on the exploited labor of 'the others'.

Alan Hart, a new friend and ally On the need to 'sacrifice' [12]

Alan Hart's focus is pretty much the same as mine, though his scope is much broader. His impact is, as it deserves to be, far greater. I wrote him,

Oaxaca, Mexico, Wednesday 5 August 2009

Dear Mr. Hart,

I just finished the first volume of your Zionism yesterday and, in the early hours of this morning, unable to sleep, I reread your Appeal to the American People. You are a wonderfully courageous human being to undertake your mammoth project. I am a relative latecomer to this most crucial struggle of our era. Please add me to your mailing list if you maintain one. It is through Clarity Press that I learned about your book.

In one of my essays I say,

I would begin then by rejecting the part of the value system that makes food a commodity to be bought and sold. Access to adequate basic nutrition should be a human right, taken for granted. Opposition to such a radical change would be instantaneous and enormous from all sectors of the food industry and the allied commercial interests. The end of much competitive marketing would mean a loss of media advertising income, of which the food industry is a major source. The gulf between what is morally and ethically acceptable — that no child starve — and the capitalist economic system — which guarantees massive starvation — is clearly unbridgeable. We should not fool ourselves that within the current system, ruled by the profit motive and the entire ideology that goes with it, impoverished and starving people will not inevitably result.

The human tragedy we are witnessing is of course much broader than just threatening Jews with anti-Semitism. Humanity no more needs Jews than it needs any particular ethnic group (even Brits) in order to continue. Our ideology must (i.e. should) focus on the essential unity of our species. I see that as basic. Not 'us' vs. 'them', no 'others' but all humans as 'one'. The paragraph above is from "Looking for a way towards civilization – I" at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/s/2008-07-27.htm.

Very sincerely, with much appreciation for your mammoth efforts

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: More radical?
From: Alan Hart alan_hart_esq@btinternet.com
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 11:17:45 +0100

Dear George (please, I'm Alan),

Many thanks for your very kind comments after reading Volume One of the American edition of Zionism, The Real Enemy of the Jews. I think I might be more radical than you imagine . . .

He is indeed more radical than I had imagined! I highly recommend his book. Another truth teller added to my list, along with William Blum, Mazin Qumsiyeh, John Pilger, Naomi Klein, James Herod, John Spritzler, Gordon Arnaut, James Petras, Immanuel Wallerstein, Jeffrey Blankfort, Manuel Garcia Jr., John Ross, Norman G. Finkelstein, Dahr Jamail, Mohammed Omer, Joe Bageant, Robert Fisk, Khalid Amyreh, Al Giordano, and of course others, many others.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTES

[1] On changing light bulbs. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, by David Graeber, Prickly Paradigm Press, LLC (2004), p.77.

[2] Difficult days. The earlier note, titled "Difficult days, gotta keep going", is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/S2/2007-09-21.htm. It has links to three articles, each on the Israeli-arranged massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon in 1982. The three websites, one American, one on the Palestinian struggle, and the third a Latin American site, have been useful sources of information for me.

[3] Dumbing Us Down: The hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling, by John Taylor Gatto, New Society Publishers, 1992.

[4] Joe Bageant's essays, in elegant PDF format, are in the Cold Type online monthly magazine at http://www.coldtype.net/, a work of intelligence, love and social conscience by Tony and Julia Sutton. Joe also has his own site at http://www.joebageant.com/ where he posts a lot of the letters people write him and his replies.

[5] The CONSERVA group of ecologists. The members of this organization are technical professionals in Mexican agriculture committed to the social development of rural and urban populations. Their work is to stimulate and strengthen local iniciatives that promote sustainable use of natural resources, a strategy for achieving conservation of nature and social and economic benefits.

[6] Topsoil loss in Santiago Tilantongo. The five meter figure is a United Nations estimate reported in The Other Game: Lessons from how life is played in Mexican villages, by Phil Dahl-Bredine & Stephen Hicken, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY (2008), p.25, as an average figure for soil loss since the Spanish conquest. The three meter figure I remember hearing during my visit to the community.

[7] Sewer system statement and implications. The Other Game, pp.63-65. Phil Dahl-Bredine was also shocked to hear Jesús León's statement, but concluded that it made sense. Phil wrote:

Various times I have heard indigenous people express the thought that having an outhouse or a dirt floor has nothing to do with being "poor." "Poverty," they would say, "is not having land to plant our crops, not having schools for our children, not having access to medical care. Yet they want to convince us that we are poor and pitiable because we have customs and ways of life that have served for millenia but are not like that of urban people. Many of the ways we do things are better for our life here, more practical, and represent a knowledge that has been shown to work by our ancestors."

When I listen to the hard-headed logic of Jesús about flush toilets, for instance, I see that this is far from an attempt to romanticize poverty or traditional ways. It is a stubborn insistence upon basing our concepts of "progress" and a "good life" on careful analysis of basic problems and their solutions, on what we want out of life and what will most likely get us to what we truly want life to be. By this logic, valuing tried traditional ways and choosing simple, accessible technologies over technologies we in the United States might see as essential is not romanticizing.

Obviously Phil's experience living and working here in Oaxaca has been eye-opening. I highly recommend the book.

[8] The Massachusetts government website at http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/central/quabbin.htm says "Quabbin Reservoir is one of the largest man-made public water supplies in the United States. Created in the 1930s by the construction of two huge earthen dams ... [its] water covers 39 square miles, is 18 miles long ... When full [it] holds 412 billion gallons of water ... In order to flood the vast area ... the entire population of four towns had to be relocated. Hundreds of homes, businesses, a state highway, a railroad line, and 34 cemeteries were also moved or dismantled. Over 6,000 graves ..."

[9] The Narmada River Valley. One of Arundhati Roy's articles is at http://www.narmada.org/gcg/gcg.html.

[10] Gross income details for 2008 are given in Note [7] of my essay, "Looking for a way towards civilization – II", at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/s/2008-08-05.htm

[11] On privileged people being comfortable with fascism. The idea came to me as a result of my experience in Oaxaca during and after the period of intense repression. Friends thought that Nancy and I would likely be in danger because we were quite openly sympathetic to the popular struggle, and one urgently warned that we had better get out of Oaxaca. But my sense of the situation was that as white gringo Americans, obviously well along in years, we were unlikely to be troubled. Thus far that has been more or less realized. I think the fact that our feeble efforts posed no threat to the power structure was significant. Clearly, privileged class status alone is not enough to safeguard someone who is effective and on the 'wrong' side of the barricades, in opposition to the violent oppressors.

[12] Alan Hart, ally On the need to 'sacrifice'. Hart is quoted as having said, " . . . India has a potentially huge middle class but more than 750 million people still live below the poverty line. It still accounts for 40 percent of the world's poor," the former BBC presenter said. "The leaders of the Western world have to tell their people that we cannot go on living beyond our means. The days of good old materialism are over and people have to take smaller slices of the global cake. Though capitalism is the only way to create wealth, it has been badly managed," Hart said. (emphasis added)

Of course I don't agree with the last quoted sentence, but that just indicates that Hart and I have some disagreements left to iron out. For the full article, see http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/british-journalist-on-mission-to-redistribute-indias-wealth_100122746.html.

--------------------------------

This page is also at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-08-07.htm

Straight talk 4, overcoming ethnicity, no joke. It can serve deadly ends

George Salzman — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:01:00 -0700

by George Salzman

Adolph Hitler was fixated on ethnicity. STOP! Before you read this essay, please see what my trusted friend Gordon Arnaut said, urging me not to post it. He wrote in part,

Subject: Re: Preliminary (NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION) draft of Straight talk 4, overcoming ethnicity, no joke. It's deadly!
From: gordon arnaut
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:56:47 -0700 (PDT)

... I have to tell you, as a friend ... I think you are going too far. I don't think you can compare Zionists to Nazis. I hope to god you don't post this permanently because the pro-Israel camp will use it to discredit you as an anti-semite or a loony. You are simply giving them ammunition.

While there is no doubt an element of racism in Israeli society, and even the body politic -- unfortunately -- there can be no comparison to the deeds of Israel and the deeds of Nazi Germany. Neither in scale of the horrors committed, nor in the intent of the policy, which in the case of the Nazis was to literally wipe out an entire ethnic group. Not just one actually -- the Serbs were also targeted for extermination by the Nazi Croats, for example, who managed to exterminate more than one million of them.

As awful and outrageous as Israeli actions are, they are actually very close to what the white South Africans were doing with Apartheid. Sure this is bad, but it is not the degree of "bad" that Nazism was. In order to be taken seriously we must distinguish between degrees of evil. Gordon's thoughtful, reasoned warning against publishing my essay continues click here.

Hitler addressing the Reichstag on 30 May 1935. William Blum called my attention to this speech and provided the URL [1] where the photo and the complete text are available.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before proceeding, I want to acknowledge that I think Gordon's fears that I will be misunderstood by partisans in the Israel-Palestine conflict may well be justified. My hope is that people will recognize that I am not attacking Jewish ethnicity per se but rather the use of the very concept of ethnicity to separate groups of people into 'ourselves' and 'others', which can then serve, as it frequently does, as a basis for generating mutual antagonisms of each group towards the other. I agree with much of Gordon's statement, but there are some points where we disagree markedly. For example, he asserts, "The Jews deserve to be in Palestine also, that is a fact." I do not think that is a fact. I believe no one has a right to seize other peoples' territory and drive them out or kill them. Israel is striving to expel the entire Palestinian population -- using as much force, including murder -- as it dares as part of the 'incentives' to get them to leave.

My reason for sticking to my original focus is that I think the issue of Israel's attack on Gaza is very much alive. The sense of global outrage is palpable, and growing. It's true of course that the scale of Israeli atrocities pales in comparison to that of the original Nazis, that of the Spanish Conquistadores in Latin America, the French in Haiti, the British in North America, and etc., but to me the murder of even a single person is intolerable. We ought to strive for a global society -- a true civilization -- in which murder has no role, and in which war, always involving mass murder, is regarded as totally illegitimate, a barbaric activity of ages past. Am I a dreamer? Of course, but hopefully a dreamer with my feet on the ground.[2]

It's easy today to find many people who fall into two disjoint, mutually antagonistic camps: one which dismisses Hitler as simply a madman, not to be considered seriously, a group that of course includes the Zionist camp; and the other camp which believes Hitler was unfortunately thwarted in his effort to rid Europe of the truly evil Jewish drive for world domination, a group that of course includes virulent anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers.

The mutual hatred of these two extremist groups for one another is based fundamentally on their false conviction that the social behavior of the 'other' group is abominable because of its ethnicity, as though ethnicity is determined by genetics. Individual members of these two groups may be very well informed in many respects, specialists in cultural fields -- arts, literature, music -- trained in sciences and mathematics to think with logic and precision. But, if they fail to think critically about the meaning of ethnicity, they contribute to the great danger of wars, murder, and genocide by accepting as true that 'the other' is different in an ineradicable way. This supposedly immutable difference is then the logical prerequisite for downgrading the target group, eventually to a status of 'less than human'. The ruling German Nazis of the Third Reich and the dominant Israeli Zionists are two examples in which governing groups and their supporters went to considerable lengths to try (and the Israelis of course are still trying) to disguise with outpourings of 'legalities' their genocidal designs. Decent and aware Germans then and decent and aware Jews now have not been deceived.

The Third Reich and Zionist Israel are not at all unique in dehumanizing a particular target population for political reasons. Every government in every war devalues the humanity of its 'enemies' of the moment: the U.S. in Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, Guatemala, Panama, El Salvador, Mexico, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. -- Italy the Abyssinians, and so on. And many people, good and decent people, are deceived into supporting 'their' governments which are doing terrible things.

Israel Shamir, a man worth disagreeing with

In my first paper on Shamir [3] I said, "A few weeks ago I'd never heard of Israel Shamir. Somehow or other his name came up ..." The reason it 'came up', I was reminded the other day, was that my close friend Gordon Arnaut and Debbie Menon began to correspond, and at some point Debbie CC'd me, as one of the people with whom Gordon was in fairly close touch. I checked out one of her articles, "Americans victimized, by those who manage the system" and saw that we agreed on a good deal.[4] We then added one another to our mailing lists, but have not otherwise corresponded. Debbie's mailings invariably refer, and very favorably, to Israel Shamir. So I checked him out on Google, wrote him a note, and we were off and running. Soon it became evident that we disagreed on a good deal, which made the exchange very interesting.

I've intended to continue pursuing our differing views on whether ethnicity is a 'good' or 'bad' concept. My discussion above shows why I think it is 'bad'. But it's only fair to Shamir to note that his more inclusive understanding of ethnicity takes in the entire natural mileau -- the forests, wildlife, geography, river systems, plants, weather conditions, and so on -- in which a particular group of humans live. All these factors influence the mode of life of the inhabitants. This aspect of what Shamir includes in ethnicity is of course not 'bad'. It consists of the totality of the natural environment for a human group living there. It's not 'good' or 'bad'. It simply is. This part of reality should not be confused with the social reality that either evolves within or is imposed upon a group of people, determining, by free choice or by coercion resectively, the group's behaior. That social reality, which differs from one human group to another, is what I have in mind by the term ethnicity. Let me turn to a specific example of its harmfulness.

Debbie Menon, who first made me aware of Shamir, is one of his admirers. Each of the messages she sends to her list subscribers ends with a quote she uses as 'her signature', namely "I have compassion for Jews, and for Tutsis, and for nobility - but I do care more about the majorities they collectively disposessed." - Israel Shamir. Like Shamir and me, Debbie isn't shy about saying where she stands. So far so good. But her message on 22 June disturbed me. She started with a quote from a friend who had written: "Debbie, You are right about people like Chomsky, and the self-defeating attitude of Arab-Americans. Backing perpetual haters & losers won't get them very far. And in fact, most Vietnam-era vets like me (and all of the USS Liberty people, for example) totally loathe the likes of Chomsky -- Back then, he backed the guys we were fighting & who killed our friends, and instinctively the best way to make all of us back the Zionists would be to know that Chomsky & company backed the Palestinians. And you can pass that on to him for me, if you wish." After that paragraph, Debbie noted, (Bingo!)[5]

My focus here is very narrow. I don't want to attack or defend any of the named individuals or Debbie's friend. My contention is simply that Debbie's friend, by accepting as legitimate the separation into Americans and 'others' (i.e. the deadly notion that populations of different ethnicity are really different), implicitly defines Vietnamese, "the guys we were fighting & who killed our friends" as his enemies. He allows the U.S. government to define, as I had done during World War II, a group of people, unknown to him individually, as his enemies, suitable to be killed. And Debbie shows with her (Bingo!) that she agrees with him. Shamir would argue that they aren't 'personal' enemies but ethnic enemies. My response is that when you pull the trigger the bullet doesn't ask whether your target is a personal enemy or an ethnic group enemy. On this point, Israel, I'm convinced that you're dead wrong in your attempted distinction between ones 'personal ethnic identity' and ones 'group ethnic identity'.

Each of you is well enough informed to realize that the Israeli Zionists are the aggressors, without a shred of justification for their murderous efforts to conquer Palestine, and that the Palestinians are fully justified in trying to protect their lives and their possibility to live in their homeland in dignity and peace. It's abundantly clear to each of you, and to me (and to Chomsky I'm sure) that the moral responsibility of a decent compassionate human being, in the face of the ongoing tragedy in Palestine, is to support in every way the struggle of the Palestinians, in direct opposition to the imperial aims of the United States and Israel. There's no rational reason why any of us, including of course Debbie's Viet Nam Veteran friend, ought to have supported the imperial aims of the United States during it brutal assault on the Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian peoples.

The 'Shamir-inspired' correspondence and discussion continues

26 (continued) Note numbered 26 (continued), about one of my all-time favorite cartoonists, Garry Trudeau, whose 31 May 2009 strip the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) immeditely objected to. Here's the 'offensive' cartoon:

As it happens, I read in the Boston Globe of 2009-06-30 an article datelined NEW YORK - Despite his claims of contrition, Bernard L. Madoff was sentenced yesterday to 150 years in prison for a crime a federal judge called an act of "extraordinary evil." It's at http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/06/30/citing_8216extraordinary_evil8217_judge_gives_madoff_150_years_in_prison/. The article says in part, "Whether he stole $13 billion or $65 billion - [no source of hard data given for these numbers]- Madoff took hundreds of millions to finance his own life of luxury, Chin [the federal judge who sentenced him] said, and paid friends and those who raised money for him billions more."

The anger expressed towards Bernard Madoff does seem to confirm Reverend Sloan's closing comment about money lenders: "They do seem to set people off, don't they?"

Two days later the ADL had reacted, as reported in the following, which is at: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/syndicates/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003978833:

Anti-Defamation League Accuses Garry Trudeau of 'Maligning Judaism'

By E&P [Editor & Publisher] Staff

Published: June 02, 2009 3:58 PM ET

NEW YORK The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Monday released the text of a letter it sent to cartoonist Garry Trudeau over his May 31, 2009 "Doonesbury" strip. Several of the comic's characters, including Sam and Rev. Sloan, are discussing Jesus Christ, and how the one time Christ "really only snaps once" in the Bible was "with the moneylenders." Which, apparently, was enough to spur the ADL into action. The letter follows:

Dear Mr. Trudeau:

We agree with the numerous people who are contacting us that Sunday's Doonesbury misquotes the Bible, maligns Judaism, and promotes a Christian heresy, all within eight panels. It reinforces age-old stereotypes about Judaism that have been the cause of much suffering and pain over the centuries, and which have been rejected by a variety of Christian denominations over the last decades.

Jesus' concern in the Gospels is with money-changers, not money-lenders. The money-changers converted the coins of the Roman Empire into the currency accepted by the Jerusalem Temple, as money-changers today convert dollars into Euros. To speak of money-lenders harkens back the stereotype of Shylock, when Jews were forced by Christians to engage in usury.  

Christian teaching is clear: the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament. Doonesbury's Reverend Sloan is guilty of promoting anti-Jewish stereotypes and biblical illiteracy. He owes both Jews and Christians an apology.

 Founded in 1913, the Anti-Defamation League bills itself as the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.  

On Tuesday, the Rabbi David Saperstein of the Union for Reform Judaism weighed in on the comments section of Trudeau's site. "To be clear, I write as a fan," he states. "The strip, we hope and assume unwittingly, perpetuated centuries of anti-Semitic canards about Biblical-era moneylenders -- who were almost uniformly Jewish -- as the enemies of Jesus and the villains of the New Testament. As you know, similar caricatures have been used throughout the years to incite hate against the Jewish community and have cultivated and perpetuated offensive stereotypes."  

Others have weighed in as well. Check out the comments thus far, here [http://doonesbury.com/strip/blowback/index.html].  E&P Staff (syndicates@editorandpublisher.com.)

The ADL, headed by Abraham Foxman, is perhaps the lead Jewish organization in efforts to impose censorship preventing open public discussion of the policies and actions of the Jewish State of Israel. The Univ of California at Santa Barbara was coerced by the ADL to investigate improper conduct by Sociology Prof William Robinson during the Israeli attack on Gaza, when he provided his students with information about those events. An account is in my posting at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-05-12.htm.

On 27 June, almost a half year after the attack against Robinson began, I got an e-mail that began

From: Mary-Jo Nadeau maryjo.nadeau@gmail.com  Date: Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 6:21 AM  Subject: F4P NEWS: Victory!

University of California terminates case against Professor William I. Robinson; charges of "anti-semitism" unfounded  To see the full message with this report, go to http://sb4af.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/breaking-news-ucsb-terminates-case-against-professor/  

I wrote a congratulatory note the same day, saying in part,  

The attack on Robinson was triggered by his reaction to the Israeli assault on Gaza ... It appears to me from what I have seen on the website of the group of undergraduate and graduate students' Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB (CDAF-UCSB) that the two students were manipulated by the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to file complaints against Robinson ... [A] glance at their complaints is enough to show the absence of any substantive grounds for their actions.

Additional evidence of the unsavory subterfuge employed by the ADL is in a recent posting on the CDAF-UCSB site headlined, "BREAKING NEWS: UC-Santa Barbara faculty member goes public about ADL pressure, May 2, 2009. History professor attended meeting where Abraham Foxman pushed UCSB to act against sociology professor." Imagine Foxman, as dishonest as the ADL which he heads, using tax-exempt money of this 501-C3 coercion group to fly from Washington D.C. to Santa Barbara to pressure UCSB in a supposedly secret meeting to censor Robinson. No shortage of chutzpah there. This is an attack against the campus from an outside pressure group, and it appears that there is vigorous opposition to the UCSB administration's initial weak-kneed acquiescence to the ADL demand to investigate Robinson. Of course it is unacceptable that the Foxman outfit and his Israel-first cohort are able to harass Robinson, but if they are strongly repulsed it can serve to strengthen adherence to academic freedom at UCSB and elsewhere ... (emphasis in this paragraph added)

 I hope the CDAF-UCSB and its allies will continue in forcefully pressing for full repudiation by the university administration of its improper actions, beginning with a complete apology to Prof. Robinson.

Furthermore, I think it would be completely appropriate for the university to bring suit against the ADL to be reimbursed for all the damages caused by ADL's illegal actions, including slander, and to challenge the (501-C3) tax-exempt status of ADL, in light of its illegal, clearly political activities. (this paragraph emphasized here)

A second piece of good news came in an e-mail the next day, 28 June. This has to do with censorship at the Univ of Ottawa, in Canada. Although it does not bear overt evidence of ADL involvement, I would not be at all surprised to learn that ADL and a similar Canadian organization are working together.

From: Claude Lamontagne claude.cde@gmail.com  Date: Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 3:25 PM

Provincial offences prosecutor drops charges against cuffed and arrested professor

OTTAWA, June 29, 2009 -- The provincial offences prosecutor investigated for five months and dropped all charges against former University of Ottawa physics professor Denis Rancourt on the second court appearance Thursday.  

The media reported in January that Rancourt was handcuffed, arrested, and charged for trespassing while attending a no-grades extracurricular course he hosted weekly on the university campus, while still a full and tenured professor at the school.  

Rancourt said: "The University of Ottawa knowingly gave the Ottawa Police incorrect information that I had no right on campus. The police then lied to apply a false charge of trespassing." "This is how our institutions of higher learning and that stand for civil protection treat free expression," he continued.  
Physics student Marc Kelly was also arrested at the same January event, while giving a talk as the week's invited speaker, and he was retained in jail for the night and released without charge, as was reported by A-Channel News.  

YouTube videos of the arrests have been seen by thousands of viewers.

27 Note numbered 27 from Israel Shamir to me, written in response to an early draft of this posting.
Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 01:32:30 +0200  To: George Salzman george.salzman@umb.edu, Gordon Arnaut goarnaut@yahoo.com, Debbie Menon debbie.menon@yahoo.com, Noam Chomsky chomsky@mit.edu, William Blum bblum6@aol.com

Dear George, thank you for sharing your thoughts. Surely I disagree with some of your positions, and with some positions of other participants, with all respect due.  

(1) I think that Noam Chomsky was right when he supported the Vietnamese. The US went all the way to a far-away land and tried to keep it, and it was duly beaten. Rarely one meets today a Vietnam vet who still thinks it was a just war for the Americans. It was indeed an unjust war, as the US war against Mexico that was condemned by Thoreau or the US war in Philippines condemned by Mark Twain. There is no connection to ethnicity whatsoever - at least for Americans. Thoreau and Twain were as American as apple pie, so it is a mistake to connect or counterpoise anti-war stand with nationalism. Nationalism is often anti-war, and an American nationalist Charles Lindbergh - very much an anti-war hero - is an example. Buchanan - an American nationalist - is a more recent example of strong anti-war stand. David Duke (and I am aware of the opprobrium connected with his name) is surely a nationalist and an anti-war campaigner. On the other hand, non-nationalist, rather liberal America carried out too many wars in this century.  

(2) Your own life denies your theses, George. You refer to the indigenous population in Mexico and support their struggle. But their enemies want to de-ethnisize them, and likewise in Palestine, the enemies of Palestinians want to de-ethnisize them, to turn them into "avak adam", "human dust" in Ben Gurion words.  

(3) Enmity is not forever, even when dressed in nationalist or racist terms. People say so from time to time, at war, but they rarely mean it. Indeed, Iliya Ehrenburg called to kill every German, and there were Germans who wished to kill Jews, or Russians, but that was at war. Eventually, after the war, Germans and Russians, and Germans and the West made peace and now are in perfect relations.  

(4) Punch line: people fight for interests, not for their ethnic or religious identity. These identities are extremely valuable part of their personae. If you want to de-ethnicize people, and wean them away from their faith, you actually want to kill them more finally, more thoroughly than with an A-bomb.

(5) Re remark of Wiliam Bloom [should be Blum]. This is not an unfrequent name, and I could not google it to get my backbearings. However, every second Jewish nationalist in Israel and in America compared Obama with Hitler after his Cairo speech. So, while it could be warning against deception, but it could be also a classic Jewish ethnic activism.  Regards, Israel Adam Shamir

My comments. Oaxaca, Thursday 2 July 2009

Dear Israel, In some ways I envy, and admire your agility and imagination, in comparison to which I feel slow and plodding. But I also have the sense that your speed and striking ability to encompass a lot of information enables you to glide over ideas that run counter to your impulses, without giving them the thought they may deserve. Consider for example your point (3) above. You state that enmity is not forever, claiming that people at war express it from time to time, but rarely mean it. After the war, you say, they eventually regain "perfect relations" with one another. Why do you not ask what motivates them to kill one another, even though, according to you, they rarely hate their designated 'enemies'? I think that's a fair question. We ought to understand the psychological state of someone who is in the act of committing murder -- of willfully destroying the life of another human being -- as for example in hand-to-hand combat.

I'm sure that psychological questions interest you -- your enthusiasm for Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, which I read twice in a futile effort to untangle and understand -- shows that you are not disinterested in psychology. And yet killing in war seems to evade your critical scrutiny. Your escape hatch from facing this question -- your 'punch line' as you call it -- is simply to declare, in (4), that "people fight for interests, not for their ethnic or religious identity." But that's hardly adequate, attributing an act of paramount violence to their neutral-sounding 'interests'. What 'interests' do you have in mind? Do you think a husbsbandman -- a man who humbly tills the soil, or a cobbler who repairs boots or a man who weaves cloth or builds wooden implements to gain his and his family's livelihood sets about killing other men in order to preserve his 'interests' in capitalism, or the banking system, or the monopolization of seed varieties by Monsanto and other transnational giant robbers, etc.? No, of course you don't think that. I believe you would have to admit, if you thought about it, that he goes off to murder because he has been psychologically manipulated, propagandized to believe, even if not very deeply, that the 'interests' of the ruling class are also his interests, 'his' national interests. In fact he is fooled into fighting against his own personal well being, his own real interests. It is not 'his' nation in whose military he serves, but a 'nation', so-called, an illegitimate social organization that belongs to the super weathy. He is persuaded to fight under the banner of this institution - this nation-state - that deprives him of his humanity.

You have 'glided over' the all-important distinction I made between two very different aspects of ethnicity. I'm happy to accept your understanding of ethnicity to mean the totality of habitual, customary activities, values -- everything that impacts the behavior of a group of people living in a particular geographical locale. As I acknowledged earlier in this essay, your inclusive understanding of ethnicity encompasses the total natural environment -- the forests, wildlife, geography, river systems, plants, weather conditions, and so on -- in which a particular group of humans live. All these factors influence the mode of life of the inhabitants. This aspect of ethnicity, the totality of the natural environment for a human group living in a particular locale is neither 'good' nor 'bad'. It simply is. The other aspect of ethnicity, the one I insist is frequently used for 'bad' purposes, is the social structure which governs and can (as it often does) enforce the ideological belief that 'our ethnic group' is irrevocably different than 'their ethnic group', i.e. that the us/them dichotomy is not artificial but real and permanent, as rigidly frozen as our human genetic makeup which differentiates us, for example, from baboons.

My ethnicity

Before disclosing some personal details I'd like to remark that a few people have asked for personal anonymity, three of them for fear of retaliation by pro-Zionists in their communities. There may be others who have chosen to stay out of the discussion because they too feel vulnerable. We need to recognize that not only do people feel vulnerable but not infrequently their feelings are justified. They are vulnerable. Feeling vunerable is not 'just' a personal problem. Its social impact is to hinder the formation of groups that can engage in open, honest discussion of important issues. As a widepread impediment to dissemination of the truth, as is the Zionist effort to censor criticism of the Israeli state's policies, it can contribute substantial harm. A good society would be one in which no one is vulnerable. That must be part of our utopian goal. I'll leave discussion of that for another time. The reason Shamir and I can correspond comfortably in spite of our considerable disagreements is precisely because neither one of us feels vulnerable.

My father Joseph, third of five brothers (no sisters), was born on 3 May 1901 in Taganrog, a Russian seaport on the north shore at the eastern end of the Sea of Azov. His father was a well-to-do exporter, principally of fish and caviar to Moscow. Despite the restrictions on Jews entering the gymnasium (secondary school) my grandfather, through lavish gifts, was able to register all five sons as students. My father loved sailing vessels. He had (or had the use of) one during his youth. During the Russian Revolution he was in the Tsar's army, which was routed by the Bolsheviks and evacuated on Allied ships headed for the Mediterranean. His father, also in the military I think, contracted Typhus fever and died at home. My father jumped ship at Constantinople, spent about a year there and managed to get passage to New York. His life in America contrasted sharply with his dreams, in which his birth into an upper class family by rights entitled him to an aristocratic life. He struggled, especially during the great depression, from which he emerged as a self-employed supplier of clean linens to restaurants and food caterers. He drove the small truck on his route to each customer, delivered clean tablecloths, napkins, towels, aprons, etc. in exchange for bags of soiled items, which he took to a laundry.

Scrupulous to a fault, during World War II when he applied for gasoline rations to operate his tuck, he calculated his exact route as he did his regular circuit. If one of his customers ran out of supplies early and telephoned for more tablecloths or whatever ahead of the regular delivery, there was the question, Is there enough gasoline? Far too honest to ever be a successful businessman, he substituted labor for the shrewdness and readiness to 'cheat a little' and 'cut corners' that he lacked.

Though long an American citizen, he enjoyed his Russian identity, preferring to be seen as Russian rather than Jewish. My mother, born Jessie Liss in the Bronx on 18 August 1899 to an immigrant Jewish couple from the so-called Pale (eastern Poland or western Russia) did not share my father's social pretensions, although her parents did for some years become quite wealthy through business and real estate ventures before losing most of it to 'smarter business people'. The oldest of nine siblings, four of whom died before reaching adulthood, she contracted spinal meningitis at an early age, from which, contrary to physicians' certainty that it would be fatal, she recovered, but with permanent paralysis of the left side of her face, a terrible psychological burden she carried the rest of her long life (died 13 Feb 1995). She grew up monolingual, although she understood Yiddish, the traditional language of her parents, uncles and aunts. To my father, whose family spoke Russian, Yiddish was foreign, I remember that he occasionally scoffed at its sound.

To both parents I owed probably the greatest gift a child can get from adults, unshakeable respect for the youngster as a full human being, from the youngest age on. I never felt that I had to earn their respect. The self-respect nurtured in me by their respect for my personhood remained unbroken through the many years of academic striving in intensely competitive, psychologically destructive environments in which I was far less gifted than many of my fellow students, and later than my colleagues. I'm quite sure those formative very early years were the basis for my never having felt that my personhood was vulnerable. This is not to say I was not punished, but I did not fear physical punishment by either parent. To the best of my memory my father never struck me, and my mother only very rarely slapped me, in moments of extreme exasperation. It's evident to me that their treatment of me was not something they thought a good deal about. I'm sure they didn't read books on child psychology or on rearing children to guide them. They were not to any degree what I would call intellectuals.

Childhood and ethnicity

Ethnicity, understood as encompassing the behavior, habits and ideology that characterize a particular group of people living in a specific geographical region, includes the way that childhood is experienced. My parents were of course products of their own ethnicities. They may well have been influenced by fears of possible pregnancy problems due to my mother's early severe illness and partial paralysis. They must have been overjoyed when she had a normal pregnancy and the birth of an apparently healthy child. No doubt these factors influenced their behavior towards me. It's apparent that early childhood can vary markedly from one ethnic group to another. I lived with my wife and two young daughters in Geneva, Switzerland for a year (1958-59) and in Rome, Italy one year (1961-62). Our older child attended a neighborhood public school in Geneva at age 4, and in Rome at age 7. The custom in Geneva was for each child to bring a snack (bread and chocolate) for dix heures, the 10am break when the children also went into the playground to relax from classroom discipline. I remember Amy being fearful that she would be hit by one of the boys during this unsupervised or lightly supervised period.

From what I saw three years later in Rome, it seems to me the children there were, generally speaking, not nearly as aggressive towards one another as in Geneva, and not infrequently exhibited warmth and gentleness towards younger, more vulnerable youngsters. Here in Oaxaca the behavior of even quite young children towards their infant siblings, particularly noticeable among poor and indigenous families, is to me quite heartwarming to see. They behave with the care and tenderness of parents towards their tiny brothers and sisters. It is also evident that they are expected to fulfill that role. Probably in many instances the caregiving children are overburdened by their responsibilities, but that is a different matter. If I were to attempt a generalization it would be that indigenous cultures, which tend to incorporate the entire population into the daily activities needed to sustain the group, do not formalize work and play, nor arrange to separate these activities as do so-called modern societies. I've seen, in small Oaxacan communities remote from Oaxaca City, indigenous peoples who indeed work hard at physical labor but at the same time interspersing that activity with 'just having fun'.

Even here in the city, which is fairly urbanized, the penetration of the cult of 'productivity', as symbolized by the F. W. Taylor time-and-motion studies that excited the admiration of Henry Ford, have not made noticeable impact on the way most people work. I go walking just about every day, often encountering one or another work crew busy shoveling gravel, cement, debris, or whatever. If I stop to observe and ask a question or make a comment, no one hesitates to interrupt his work and talk, no one is impatient with me, eager to return to his shoveling. It's very much ingrained in the culture. There may be a boss, a jefe overseeing the job, but he too is relaxed. Quite different than in the U.S. Surely the ideas in a note I came upon, "The Science of Shoveling", would be foreign to them. The note, in http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/scientific/, reads "In [his] study of the 'science of shoveling', Taylor ran time studies to determine that the optimal weight that a worker should lift in a shovel was 21 pounds. Since there is a wide range of densities of materials, the shovel should be sized so that it would hold 21 pounds of the substance being shoveled. The firm provided the workers with optimal shovels. The result was a three to four fold increase in productivity and workers were rewarded with pay increases. Prior to scientific management, workers used their own shovels and rarely had the optimal one for the job."

The entire tempo of life here contrasts sharply with the interminable frenetic activity of 'productivity-driven' American workplaces. Naturally people indulge themselves by 'slowing down', and, I believe, end up enjoying their lives more than most American workers. When we came to Oaxaca, in September 1999, we rented an apartment in a small complex of units owned by a Oaxacan woman. Her companion, call him Federico, did much of the maintenance and repair work, in some of which the landlady also participated. A friendly person, Federico and I would often talk after he finished his immediate task, sometimes over a beer that I offered him. I recall him once saying to me, Nuestros mexicanos somos chingados pero felices. We Mexicans are fucked but happy. I think there was a lot of truth in that short declaration. He understood that Mexicans were not well treated by the global powers (mostly by the Colossus of the North), but they were making the most of their lives, within the existing constraints.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

28 A brief exchange numbered 28 initiated by an e-mail from Israel Shamir with a new essay in defense of Barack Obama.

Subject: Obama Lynching Party, By Israel Shamir  Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2009 16:38:58 +0200  To: Ken Freeland diogenesquest@gmail.com, shamireaders@yahoogroups.com, balandin@013.net  CC: Maria Poumier maria.poumier@wanadoo.fr, Marcel charbonnier marcel.charbonnier@industrie.gouv.fr, George Salzman george.salzman@umb.edu

http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Lynch.htm  

Obama Lynching Party  

By Israel Shamir  

The honeymoon President Barack Obama has enjoyed with the media since his inauguration was abruptly over -- after the Cairo Speech. After his promise of peace with the Islamic world, in no time this savior of America, the man who said Yes, We Can became increasingly lonely and besieged by an unlikely coalition of Zionists, the loony left and right-wing racists.

Barack Obama has become the bane of Israeli Jews, wrote the Jewish Forward's Nathan Jeffai. Only 6% of Jewish Israelis consider his views pro-Israel, while over 50% see him as pro-Palestinian and about 30% consider him neutral. This President is lethal for both Israel and the free world, exclaimed the starry-eyed British Zionist columnist, Melanie Phillips. Obama, she said, is destroying "the security not just of Israel but the world through his reckless appeasement of Iran". He "has actively undercut the Iranian democrats ... Obama has decided America will 'live with' a nuclear Iran. Which leaves Israel hung out to dry". There are hundreds, nay, thousands of such pieces, relentlessly attacking the President for trying to stop Israel's abuse of Palestine. They turn the man who received some 80% of the Jewish vote into a black monster craving for Jewish blood.  

The Israel Lobby's hatred of the president became a new secret taboo never to be spoken of, just silently acknowledged -- like the Israel Lobby's drive for the Iraq war and for a bombing of Iran ...

Subject: [Fwd: Obama Lynching Party, By Israel Shamir]
Date: Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:21:46 -0500
To: William Blum bblum6@aol.com

Hi Bill,

This piece just came in from Israel Shamir. He refers specifically to you, in a critical vein. I'm still immersed in my essay [this one]. For me Shamir presents quite a challenge. Many of the things he says are evidently correct, but I have trouble with his basic assumptions. For example, the use of violence is something he seems quite comfortable with.

I had forgotten about the 4th of July. Thanks for reminding me. This morning Nancy and I went to vote for a local man who's running to be a federal deputy. A way of rejecting the whole party system. I was going to write in APPO [Popular Assembly of the People of Oacaxa] on my ballot until the man from the mountains who comes into Oaxaca City each Friday to sell his organic shade-grown coffee came by day before yesterday and suggested to Nancy this local candidate as an alternative way to reject the system. Some anarchist, casting a ballot.

Subject: Re: [shamireaders] Obama Lynching Party, By Israel Shamir
From: John Spritzler spritzler@comcast.net
Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2009 13:20:23 -0400

To: balandin@013.net, shamireaders@yahoogroups.com, Ken Freeland diogenesquest@gmail.com, shamireaders-owner@yahoogroups.com
CC: George Salzman george.salzman@umb.edu, Marcel charbonnier marcel.charbonnier@industrie.gouv.fr, Maria Poumier maria.poumier@wanadoo.fr

Dear Israel,  

If President Obama were on the side of ordinary people instead of the American plutocracy, then at the very minimum, notwithstanding all of the limits to his power in a world of the possible as opposed to the ideal, he would tell the American people the truth about Israel--that it is based on ethnic cleansing, which is morally wrong, that the Palestinians' grievance against Israel is that it denies them their right to return to their homes and villages and to live as the equals of Jews under the law, that most Palestinians do not object to Jews living as their legal equals in Palestine, and that if the Israeli government stopped denying basic human rights (like the right of return and the right to be equal under the law) to Palestinians then the conflict would end in a heartbeat and any organization that continued to advocate ethnic violence would see whatever support it had vanish. President Obama refuses to speak the truth on this issue, which shows that he is on the side of the American plutocracy, who support Israel in order to foment ethnic conflict and make people easier for them and their fellow ruling elites to control.

It is understandable why one would grasp for reasons to have hope that Obama, unlike every previous American president since WWII, will side with ordinary people against Zionism. Wishful thinking is a natural human trait. But it can be deadly. If one does not accurately distinguish friend from foe, one is doomed to defeat. Please reconsider your estimate of Obama as a friend.

Sincerely,  
John

Subject: Re: [Fwd: Obama Lynching Party, By Israel Shamir]
From: BBlum6@aol.com
Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2009 14:45:44 EDT

George,  

Thanks for sending me this.  

<<This piece just came in from Israel Shamir. He refers specifically to you, in a critical vein.>>  
His criticisms are ... incorrect and miss my points by ... a large margin ... Normally I'd write and point out his errors but he's so offbase about me it would take too much time and effort.

From: George Salzman george.salzman@umb.edu
Date: Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:43:45 -0500
To: John Spritzler spritzler@comcast.net
CC: balandin@013.net, readers shamireaders@yahoogroups.com, Ken Freeland diogenesquest@gmail.com, shamireaders-owner@yahoogroups.com, Marcel charbonnier marcel.charbonnier@industrie.gouv.fr, Maria Poumier maria.poumier@wanadoo.fr

Hi John,

There is a point Shamir makes that you didn't address, which I believe is critically important, namely the effectiveness of the media, which in the U.S. is very decidedly influenced by people of Jewish ethnicity (as they see themselves) and inordinate wealth, to shape public perceptions. On the other hand he does not in my opinion give enough weight to the institutionalized structures, which he does acknowledge, and persists in hoping that Obama will be able, little by little, to alter the course of this Titanic nation-state. In this regard I think William Blum's perception is far closer to reality. I am still working on my response to Shamir's e-mail that he wrote in response to an early draft version of this essay ... The part with Shamir's comments and my response so far is here.

27 Note numbered 27 from Israel Shamir to me, written in response to an early draft of this posting.  Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 01:32:30 +0200

Subject: Re: [shamireaders] Obama Lynching Party, By Israel Shamir
From: John Spritzler spritzler@comcast.net
Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2009 15:47:18 -0400
To: George Salzman george.salzman@umb.edu
CC: Maria Poumier maria.poumier@wanadoo.fr, Marcel charbonnier marcel.charbonnier@industrie.gouv.fr, shamireaders-owner@yahoogroups.com, Ken Freeland diogenesquest@gmail.com, readers shamireaders@yahoogroups.com, balandin@013.net

Hi George,

What is the connection between the effectiveness of the Jewish-influenced media and the conclusion I drew about Obama--that his failure to tell Americans the truth about Zionism shows he is on the side of the plutocracy?  

Is your point (I'm guessing now) that Obama cannot tell Americans the truth because the media wouldn't broadcast his weekly speeches or press conferences if he did? If that is your point I will have something to say about it, but let me find out first if it is.

-- John

Subject: Re: [shamireaders] Obama Lynching Party, By Israel Shamir
From: George Salzman george.salzman@umb.edu
Date: Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:08:10 -0500
To: John Spritzler spritzler@comcast.net
CC: Maria Poumier maria.poumier@wanadoo.fr, Marcel charbonnier marcel.charbonnier@industrie.gouv.fr, shamireaders-owner@yahoogroups.com, Ken Freeland diogenesquest@gmail.com, readers shamireaders@yahoogroups.com, balandin@013.net, William Blum bblum6@aol.com

OK John,

My real point is that you and Shamir were talking past one another. You said nothing about the power of the mass media to shape and control public opinion, and he gave inadequate consideration to the major role that U.S. imperialism plays in Obama's actions. I'm afraid that he is mistaken in focussing so much on Obama as a savior figure, in the same way that the committed Zionist Two-Stater Uri Avnery does. No American is going to save Israel from itself, from the disaster it is creating. I personally believe, as you do, that Obama is "on the side of the plutocracy". If he were not and wished to, he could initiate a series of FDR-style fireside chats in which, unlike Roosevelt, he could speak truthfully to the American people (and the world) and of course the media would broadcast it. I think Shamir's comments about William Blum are glib, revealing very little understanding of Blum's solid record. I hope that clarifies my view somewhat.

John's response:

Hi George, OK here too; that clarifies things. Thanks.

--John

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gordon Arnaut's caution continued

I think we should not concentrate overly on the Palestine question. There is lots more going on in the world right now. Look at the coup in Honduras, for example, where the leftist and progressive president was removed by the military and business elites -- only for the reason that he was seeking to follow in the path of Chavez, Morales and Correa and deliver some long overdue social justice to the impoverished people, many of whom are aboriginals.

The big question is whether our saintly Barack Obama green-lighted this coup? As the US has done with every other coup against progressive and democratically elected leaders in the Western hemisphere. I feel just as bad -- if not worse -- for the people of Honduras and the rest of the millions of dispossessed indigenous peoples of Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and throughout Latin America as I do about the Palestinian plight. There are many more humans suffering right in our back yard, we do not have to go to Palestine.

George, I think you should let the Palestinian question rest for a while and turn your considerable energies and compassion to such other matters. I am only saying this as a friend because I know how vexed you are by the injustice that is being committed in Palestine. You feel helpless, as do I, and everyone else, so you become angrier and angrier.

Let us not forget that it was not so long ago that being Jewish meant being herded up like cattle and led off to slaughter. Even Zionism, which we now think of in a very negative way, started as a simple longing for a long-lost homeland for European Jews who had suffered centuries of abuse. The Jews deserve to be in Palestine also, that is a fact.

What needs to happen is either a one-state solution, which was actually an option for which a number of UN member states voted back in 1947, including most of the non-aligned states. Or a two-state solution, based on the UN-recognized borders of pre-1967, along with refugee right of return.

The only thing that is preventing either of these from happening is the US, not Israel. If the US wanted to do this it would happen tomorrow, so why harp on about Israel and Jews? It makes no sense. The fact of the matter is that the US evil empire has created Israel as a garrison outpost for its own colonialist program. This frontier mentality is also what has infected the Jewish population there and is feeding the racism. If you still want to read George's essay, click here.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTES

[1] William Blum, a guardian against deception. Blum's determined effort to not believe politician's pronouncements simply because he wishes they were true extends to the Obama regime. With Obama's pronouncements as background, Blum calls our attention to a speech Adolph Hitler gave at a time when Germany was reeling in the aftermath of World War I, and then pointedly asks, "How many people in the world, including numerous highly educated Germans, reading or hearing that speech in 1935, doubted that Adolf Hitler was a sincere man of peace and an inspiring, visionary leader?" The entire speech is at: http://comicism.tripod.com/350521.html. See also The speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, which is an English translation of representative passages of Hitler's speeches, arranged under subjects and edited by Norman H. Baynes, first published in 1942.

[2] On dreamers. David Graeber's Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004, begins with a bit of Peter Kropotkin from his famous 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica article, and then a short funny quote from Jonothon Feldman in Indigenous Planning Times, who declared: "Basically, if you're not a utopianist, you're a schmuck". A cute quip, but unfortunately it does not imply that a utopianist is not a schmuck.

[3] Straight talk with Israel Shamir, at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-06-05.htm.

[4] Americans victimized, by those who manage the system. Debbie's article is at http://www.payvand.com/news/08/nov/1247.html.

[5] Debbie Menon's e-mail of 2009-06-22. The first part of her message, responding to her friend, with her comments indicated in boldface red, follows:  

Subject: Hi! ALL  From: Debbie Menon  Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:06:48 +1000  To: debbiemenon@gmail.com

A friend writes to me:  

Debbie, You are right about people like Chomsky, and the self-defeating attitude of Arab-Americans. Backing perpetual haters & losers won't get them very far. And in fact, most Vietnam-era vets like me (and all of the USS Liberty people, for example) totally loathe the likes of Chomsky -- Back then, he backed the guys we were fighting & who killed our friends, and instinctively the best way to make all of us back the Zionists would be to know that Chomsky & company backed the Palestinians. And you can pass that on to him for me, if you wish. (Bingo!)

But, for the rest, I think you are wrong, and letting your own good intentions & hopes drive your analysis, (Score: 10) principally because you are not "inside" the American political culture. (Um-m-m, perhaps) For instance, AIPAC and company preferred Obama to Clinton, because Clinton (through her husband & her own position) had an independent and very strong political base, and Obama did not. She might have been less likely to do a Cairo speech than Obama, BUT if she did, Netanyahu would have thought ten times before hemming & hawing about his response.

No previous president has had an Emanuel as his chief of staff. Remember what I wrote you six months ago about that. The only thing worse would have been for Obama to have asked Netanyahu to have moved into the Oval Office, or given him an office in Jerusalem. Obama and his Administration don't want anything. Obama would like to see an end to this cycle of wars so he can get on with the real business of salvaging the US economy and thus his re-election, but his Administration has even more Jews than Bush's did, because the Democratic party is the voting home of 80% or more of American Jews.

And last, you CANNOT have a Palestinian state when the more populous part is a besieged, impoverished ghetto and the larger part has a half-million Jewish settlers, a wall, the IDF, and no economy. Call a jackass a lion, and guess what? It is still going to be dinner to the first lion that comes down the trail. Ditto for a Palestinian -- either there is one state, majority-rule, or that jackass has a better chance than some bullshit Palestinian state would have. That is reality, and wishful thinking won't change it -- although I wish it could.

You know, as a pragmatist, I gain a lot of respect for my friend as I read this stuff. We may not agree on every detail, but in his overall perception of the situation and the people involved in it, he is placing his shots close to where I see the bullseye!

But, YOU do not need his or my opinions or advice if you learn to figure it out for yourself. Get rid of, or leave your own biases, hopes, dreams and fears outside the lab when you come in here to study, and you discover, see the purity and science of clear study and thinking. It is lesson number one, in intellectual freedom thinking 101.

All comments and criticisms are welcome. george.salzman@umb.edu

To subscribe to my listserv, Notes of an anarchist physicist (noaap)  preferably write me, including your first and last names, please, or send a blank e-mail to noaap-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.
* * *
Return to the latest postings page of website II
Return to the home page of website II

Last update of this page: 13 July 2009

this page is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-07-12.htm

Straight talk 3, overcoming being Jewish, no joke

George Salzman — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:57:00 -0700

by George Salzman

Yet another truth-teller. James Petras is one of the most prolific, straightforward analysts I'm aware of. His sharp, critical, widely informed mind and his unwillingness to say gently what he thinks should be screamed makes him particularly useful to me, even when I don't totally agree with him. His range is truly global, and although I can't read everything he publishes -- there's just too much for me -- I rely heavily on his work.

James Petras
Photo: Reseau Voltaire

--------------------------------------------------------

Overcoming being Jewish, it's no joke.

A recent e-mail jokes about Obama in a way that I think shows ethnic racism as an unconscious characteristic of the Jewish subculture. It was forwarded to me after several previous forwardings, one of which carried the note:

Maybe not for posting - but for some fun.

Here's the 'joke', offered to a selected group for some 'insider' fun.

THIS SCHVARTZE AIN'T NO DUMB GOY

President Obama told Prime Minister Netanyahu that the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank(1) must stop expanding. Prime Minister Netanyahu offered to dismantle the illegal settler outposts instead.

"Yo, Netanyahu, dis settlement shit must stop."

"With all due respect, Your Blackness, how about if I just dismantle the outposts instead?"

"Yo, Jewboy, I ain't no dumb goy like W. You could spin him like a dreidel. I'm from the hood, yid. I mean bidness."

Netanyahu winced. This was worse than Clinton. Not only is Obama smart, he is serious.

"What about 'natural growth'?"

"What about 'dismantle'?"

"I can't do that for domestic political reasons. Can we talk about Iran?"

"Sure, I'll tell you about Iran. I whipped McCain's butt 365 electoral votes to 173. You lost to Livni but were able to cobble together a coalition of Israeli Rush Limbaughs. Unless you get with the program, dude, I will keep breaking these fragile coalition governments until I get one that knows how to say 'two-state solution.' Can you say that?"

"T ... t ... t ..." Netanyahu could not say it.

"I didn't think so. I suggest you go home and practice. Next time you come here, why dontcha bring a map of Israel with borders. That would be interesting."

"Oy vay," thought Netanyahu. "Our worst nightmare: an American president with chutzpah."

"Now we can take a photo-op and pretend that I am beholden to the Likudniks. But, as Michelle and I tell Malia and Sasha, I want you to do your homework. Only DeGaulle could liberate Algeria. Only Nixon could go to China. Perhaps Netanyahu can liberate Palestine and earn a respected place in history. The alternative, of course, is to end up on the trash heap of forgotten Israeli prime ministers who fiddled while Palestine burned. Wait. Let me adjust my yarmulke."

Smiling broadly and shaking hands, the two world leaders pretended that all was sweetness and light. As the Israeli Prime Minister departed, President Obama imparted one more piece of advice.

"Yo, Netanyahu, one more thing. The tail does not wag the dog."

(1) Israeli settlements in the West Bank are in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which says in part "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." Article 85 of Protocol I additional to the Geneva Conventions states in part "In addition to the grave breaches defined in the preceding paragraphs and in the Conventions, the following shall be regarded as grave breaches of this Protocol, when committed willfully and in violation of the Conventions or the Protocol:

(a) the transfer by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory, in violation of Article 49 of the Forth Convention." The State of Israel is a signatory of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

--------------------------------------------------------

What's wrong with joking? It's fun, isn't it?

Of course joking can be fun. But there are jokes and jokes. In my opinion the best jokes are those that don't hurt other people's feelings by 'making fun' of them. The worst jokes are those that directly demean other folks. Instead of saying straightforwardly the criticism one has in mind, either respectfuly or manifesting no respect, a cowardly evasion is to clothe ones nagative criticism in the garb of being 'just a joke'. The coward if challenged can then say: Okay, maybe you didn't think it was funny, but I was only joking. Such 'joking' is also used in trying to 'win' an argument. For example, the over-popularized oh-so-clever quip of Abba Eban, "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" has been much quoted as though it was a substantive argument for dismissing peremptorily all actions of what that great stateman considered Israel's enemies.[1] A clever quip, yes, but empty of content, except that, because it was in reality the Zionist state that avoided like a plague any action that might lead to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, Eban's quip turned the truth on its head. Even as a quipster -- never mind as a humane being -- he was appropriately dwarfed by Jack Benny, a Sunday night radio favorite of mine a 'few' years ago.[2] If you Google Abba Eban and Jack Benny, there are about 175,000 'hits' for Eban and 1,870,000 for Benny. Benny the 'good' Jew outranks Eban the 'evil' Jew (My definition of an 'evil' person is in Straight talk 2, with Shamir and others, Endnote numbered 11), by a bit over 10 to 1, and that's without taking account of all the propagandistic entries surely put in by Zionists. Incidentally, Google shows about 247,000 hits for George Salzman, and you can be pretty damn sure the Zionists aren't boosting my count.

My recollection of the Jack Benny show was confirmed by the lengthy, fascinating Wikipedia article about him. His program's humor was consistently primarily based on jokes about him, jokes that were inoffensive to anyone else. It was Benny laughing at his own supposed foibles and the audience laughing with him. I think of the Marx Brothers fims and of Charlie Chaplin. Again, the humor is mainly based on the peculiarities of unreal people, with perhaps the latter's The Great Dictator a rare exception.

There's nothing unique about Jewish people having undeserved pride in their particular ethnicity. A couple with whom I became friends some years after my year in Italy said to me, as a 'joke', which I'm pretty sure they believed expressed the truth, "There are two kinds of people, those who are Italian and those who wish they were." I laughed with them at what I saw as harmless nonsense. On another occasion an e-mail from Uri Avnery, who has a fine sense of humor, included a joke about Rumanians, if I remember correctly. I wrote Avnery, telling him that it struck me as offensive, on a par with the all too common stupid 'dumb Polish jokes'. On that occasion, unlike other times when I had written him notes of well-deserved thanks for his work, he made no response.

--------------------------------------------------------

Why Jews?

In one word, Gaza. Those three weeks (27 Dec 2008-19 Jan 2009 [3]) of unadulterated savagery, of preplanned shock and awe, meticulously manufactured terror, gripped the world's eyes and hearts with living technicolor. Here in the State of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, a determined struggle continues against the same imperialist forces that target indigenous peoples in the Middle East and around the globe. The ongoing devastation of poorer peoples' lives, many of them indigenous peoples, fuels the furnaces of resistance everywhere. Naturally then, in Latin America there's little love of the Zionist project among the millions who identify themselves as part of the global effort to turn the world around.

A march in Oaxaca in solidarity with Palestinians, Sunday 11 Jan 2009. A group of perhaps 150 to 200 walked about a mile and a half from the Fountain at the University Medical Center to the American Consulate Office, with banners, bullhorns, leaflets to hand out and paste on walls along the route, and penty of spray cans for the inevitable graffiti. Here with their banner are three members of the ever-present young and vociferous anarchist-punk brigade. Their manta says

Stop The Militarization
No More Assassinations
Let Palestine Live Free
Resistance
circled A = anarchists//I think circled E = libertarians Stop The War
Punk(s) Libertarian(s)
War Is Terrorism

--------------------------------------------------------

Yes, the world's anger at the State of Israel and at the United States is growing and is totally justified. It's a welcome healthy sign that the internet in the hands of millions of ordinary people is beginning to win the struggle to make the truth be known.

Now comes a critical part of this discussion. I'll begin it by reporting an e-mail I received -- only the second one -- that speaks negatively about Israel Shamir. Incidentally, I've had no response at all from Randolph Steven Selig, the New York City Lawyer who claimed that Shamir doesn't exist, and at first doubted that I was a real person. Since the last item in http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-06-15.htm, which was about Selig, I numbered 12, I'll assign this item number 13.

13 Note numbered 13, from an academic in the Washington D.C. area who wishes to be unidentified, to avoid being involved in fruitless exchanges.
Subject: Re: [noaap] Straight talk 2, with Israel Shamir and others
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:30:05 -0400

George: I love almost all of the work you send along, and have been involved in the Palestinian cause for over 20 years. But you have been taken in by Israel Shamir. He is an anti-semite, and quite probably crazy. There is a lot of debate - rather pointless in my view - among long-time activists in Palestine and around the world about whether he is a plant or just not well, but no one who is serious and who has been doing this work for a long time will have anything to do with him. There is really no question that much of what he has done is straight-out anti-semitic.

I'm just passing this on, and promise you that it is well understood in the movement, with no intention of getting into a long debate. I know from sad experience that such things can be both endless and unpleasant, but it is easy to find documentation of the problems with him, from unimpeachably anti-zionist sources.

I (G.S.) telephoned the person who wrote the above, and am certain he is both serious about the issues and convinced that Shamir does not warrant a hearing. I explained to him that my own view of the predominant Jewish subculture that I've known as an insider for many years is so negative that I might also, to some people, be taken for an anti-Semite.

--------------------------------------------------------

14 Note numbered 14, item from Israel Shamir on the USS Liberty coverup.
2009-06-05 Oscar for Obama, by Israel Shamir

A warning shot across the bow was fired a few days ago, when a survivor of Israeli 1967 attack on the USS Liberty was awarded a Silver Star for valour, as we have reported. The mainstream US media (mainly Jewish-owned and edited) intentionally omitted this news, as Google search of "silver star Halbardier" shows. A careful reader could find it on a US military info site and that was it. The average American reader or TV viewer was deprived of this news, though oh boy, was it newsworthy: after forty two years of denial, the US top brass admitted that its best ally Israel intentionally and knowingly attacked their intelligence ship with torpedoes and strafing aircraft, killing and wounding two thirds of the crew, while president Lyndon B. Johnson covered up the massacre and let it be.

This media silence was as important as the news: it served as a warning that the administration has to act in agreement with media lords; otherwise its deeds will never reach the American people. Despite his blog and informal contacts with hundreds of thousands Americans, Obama has no means to speak effectively to his citizens but via the media. And right-wing media can be cruel enemy, as this piece from NYPost attests. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/message/1368

Comment by G.S.: It's surely true that the mainly Jewish-owned and edited mainstream media essentially censored this news, but as for the web, Google gave lots of sites. Thus to say it could be found "on a US military site" -- clearly referring to the internet -- "and that was it" is misleading.

--------------------------------------------------------

15 Note numbered 15, from Israel Shamir in Jaffa to me.
Subject: Re: I'll never catch up with you, Open letter to Israel Shamir
From: Israel Shamir
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 00:15:30 +0300
To: George Salzman

Dear George,

Thank you for spreading the word. I was touched by your story. How old are you (I am 62)? Why did you choose Mexico to live?

I certainly know about Muhammad Omer, and I remember how he was mistreated at the border. Please pass him my best regards.

Thank you for the tip about the abiders -- that was nice! My attitude to roots was formed by two long sojourns: in Japan and in Palestine. Both lands are home to deeply rooted folk. And Simone Weil (On Roots, wonderful book with foreword by T S Eliot) helped me to formulate it. Like her, I dislike Descartes and everything Cartesian, so everyone is mad one's own way.

Out of your list of things you do not like, I do not agree about religion - I am a church-going guy; I think this is most wonderful thing, and to ban religion is like banning love and sex.

Sexism and racism are too broad offences often misapplied, in my view.

Greed is certainly much worse, but people tolerate it, for some reason.

Racism is a label often applied to native people who object being swamped by invaders, be it Londoners buying houses in Wales, Parisians flocking Bretagne, or American workers being squeezed by immigrants out of their working places. I differentiate between defensive and offensive attitudes: people may defend their way of life and their communities even if it appears racist. I am for community, and I believe it a collective's right to limit the individual's rights.

Sexism makes very little sense, and I always thought it is an invention of feminists. Being for tradition, I think their case is overstated. Israel is full of feminists and gays of all genders: they demand to let them into fighting units, express their patriotism on the right, and on the left they do sexploitation of Palestinian youths. In Tel Aviv, some 30% are supposed to be gay: the highest per cent in the world, they say. And it goes perfectly well with Zionist practices.

How do you view Obama?

Regards, Israel Adam Shamir

--------------------------------------------------------

16 Note numbered 16, from John Spritzler in Boston to Israel Shamir in Jaffa.
Subject: Re: [shamireaders] Straight talk with Israel Shamir
From: John Spritzler
Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 18:42:49 -0400
To: shamireaders-owner@yahoogroups.com

Dear Israel,

This [http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-06-05.htm] is a very illuminating dialog between you and George. It raises and deals with some very important questions that affect our work in opposing Zionism and all our other efforts as well: the meaning and role of nationalism, ethnicity and competition.

First, some thoughts on nationalism and ethnicity.

Those of us who try to change the world and make it better necessarily must make decisions about who, with respect to intergroup (as opposed to interpersonal relations, to use Israel's distinction), is friend and who is foe. Deciding somebody is foe doesn't preclude trying to persuade them to be a friend (that's the interpersonal), but it does mean opposing them in a manner appropriate to the situation, which might mean verbally denouncing their ideas but could also entail shooting them in self defense.

As I see it there are at least five basic ways to decide if somebody is friend or foe:

#1. Consider a person friend or foe according to that person's behavior with respect to making relations among people more equal and democratic and mutually supportive on the one hand, or more unequal and undemocratic and mutually antagonistic on the other hand; ignore the person's ethnicity, nationality etc. Note that behavior in this respect may be different from personal beliefs. The most important example of this is a soldier in an army who behaves as ordered, which may strengthen the power of people whose values he actually disagrees with.

#2. Consider a person friend or foe according to that person's personal beliefs with respect to the values mentioned above; ignore the person's ethnicity, nationality etc.

#3. Identify onself with a particular ethnicity or nationality, and then consider a person friend or foe according to the national or ethnic group that person identifies with, using the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend and the friend of my enemy is my foe.

#4. Consider those of one's own socio-economic class as friends, those of any class that has conflicting economic interests with one's own class as foes, and those of other classes as friend or foe according to the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend and the friend of my enemy is my foe.

#5. When it comes to using force ("violence") treat everybody as a friend. Against foes (by whatever criterion), only use moral persuasion (including tactics based on the strategy of moral persuasion, such as demonstrating the strength of one's convictions by willingly allowing oneself to be beaten or imprisoned for committing civil disobedience).

I go with #1. I think this approach is the only way to prevail in the long term and make a better world, because it unites all who act in ways that promote that better world against all who actively oppose it. In my writing I have used the word "nationalism" to refer to any belief that leads people away from using the #1 approach to defining friend and foe, by making a person's national or ethnic identity the determining factor rather than their actual behavior. In that sense, I have argued that nationalism is always wrong.

#2 is similar to #1 except that it is hard to implement when the other person is a soldier who has very good personal beliefs but is following orders to shoot oneself. I also believe that when soldiers who personally oppose oppression are in an oppressor's army and are shot at by those they are oppressing, it tends to make them think harder about what is happening, to gain clarity about what the two sides really are about, and in many cases to stop fighting on the wrong side, as GIs in Vietnam did in huge numbers and in many different ways, causing the U.S. ruling class to conclude that it could no longer rely on American soldiers to fight the war.

Some people (including some Marxists) go with #4, which is hard to implement when one fairly large number of workers opposes another fairly large number of workers, as often happens during wars. To deal with this problem, some people (including some Marxists) fall back on going with #3, identifying with, say, "people of color" or "the third world" or "indigenous peoples" etc.

The "non-violence" folks go with #5. To me this seems morally wrong because it means, for example, telling the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt and the workers of Spain in the Spanish Civil War that they were morally inferior (as Gandhi put it) for having violently fought Hitler's or Franco's fascist army in defense of people's lives and wellbeing. I think force is sometimes necessary. A major source of confusion in this regard is that some people fail to distinguish between violence in self-defense against violent and oppressive combatants versus violence against unarmed non-combatants (which is not self-defense.) They express their perfectly reasonable opposition to the latter by opposing "violence" in general. In my opinion they should oppose wrongful violence without opposing rightful violence in self-defense.

I'm not sure, but George may go with #2, while tipping his hat to #1.

Israel, am I correct that you go with #3 (but what ethnic group do you identify with?) while tipping your hat to #1?

I hope we have more discussion about the pros and cons of these approaches to deciding who is friend or foe.

Regarding competition. I think we need to distinguish between two very different things that are both, confusingly, called "competition." On the one hand there is the competition between two, say, gladiators or dogs or corporations in a fight to the death in which the goal of each is to kill or destroy or at least humiliate the other. On the other hand there is the "competition" between two friends who enjoy each other's company by playing a game of chess, or tennis or scrabble, or, as happened during the Christmas Truce in World War I, two soccer teams, one of British soldiers and the other of German soldiers, who "competed" against each other in "no man's land" instead of following the generals' orders to shoot each other. I think we want a world without the former kind of competition, but I have nothing against (and actually enjoy) the latter kind.
--John

--------------------------------------------------------

17 Note numbered 17, from John Spritzler at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston to me.
Subject: Re: [noaap] Straight talk with Israel Shamir
From: John Spritzler
Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 09:31:12 -0400
To: George Salzman

Dear George,

I read your exchange of 7 or so letters with Israel Shamir and found them fascinating. I have known Israel for many years now and we are "online friends"; he occasionally forwards my articles to his readers and I wrote a blurb for his latest book. I have, like you, admired Israel's brilliance and honesty and outspokenness and at the same time realized that he and I disagreed about nationalism/ethnicity. But I never engaged with Israel on the question to tease out the subtleties the way you did so well in your email exchanges with him, which I found very clarifying (of his, as well as your, views.)

So what's the problem with helicopters? They grab sick/injured people and get them to the hospital faster than anything else, don't they? I work in the medical area (Longwood) and helicopters are always landing on hospital rooftops with people needing emergency care. Is that wrong?

Some day we should discuss violence too. Were the Spanish workers wrong in using violence against Franco's forces?

All the best, --John

--------------------------------------------------------

18 Note numbered 18, from John Spritzler at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston to Israel Shamir, Cc'd to me.

Subject: Re: [shamireaders] Straight talk with Israel Shamir
From: Israel Shamir
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 11:02:02 +0300
To: John Spritzler
CC: George Salzman

Dear John,

I agree with you regarding competition: we would like to have the second sort and less of first sort. However, competition for resources does exist. One may dislike it, one may hope that in a better organised world this competition would be creative, not destructive; but probably we should be aware that there are some real reasons for competition. Consider the Trojan War: Paris and Menelaus, the Greeks and the Trojans compete for Helen.

As for your first point, it is a mistake to consider nationality or ethnicity as being totally separated from class issue. Fanon wrote: if you are black, you are poor and oppressed, if you are white, you are rich. (It is not so literally: there are many rich blacks, many rich Palestinians, many poor whites or Jews.) But it makes sense to consider this point, too.

Consider Hutu-Tutsi conflict: Tutsi were haves, Hutu were havenots. A Hutu with three cows would be reclassified as a Tutsi. In such a way, the revolt against Tutsi was a class-based revolt, though it was presented as another holocaust. I have compassion for Jews, and for Tutsis, and for nobility - but I do care more about the majorities they collectively disposessed.

Consider RAF [Red Army Faction] of Baader-Meinhof: they considered themselves a guerilla force of the Third World acting in the First World. In other words, we may chose whom to support. Being born a German (or Jew) does not mean you have to fight for German (or Jewish) privilege.

To conclude, these things are not all that simple.

Regards, Israel Adam Shamir

--------------------------------------------------------

19 Note numbered 19, from John Spritzler at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston to Israel Shamir, Cc'd to me.

Subject: Re: [shamireaders] Straight talk with Israel Shamir
From: John Spritzler spritzler@comcast.net
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 09:01:15 -0400
To: Adam Israel Shamir adam@israelshamir.net
CC: George Salzman george.salzman@umb.edu

Dear Israel,

Competition for resources:

I'm not sure what the masses thought about Paris's and Menelaus's fight over Helen, so let's take an example of resource competition a bit closer to our own time and look at it. In my home state of California (I was the first Spritzler born there -- in Los Angeles) there is a big competition between the north and south of the state over the water resources of the north. Presently, the dense population in the south (living in an area much of which would be a dessert if it had only its own water) consumes much of the north's water, which would otherwise be available for agriculture in the less densly populated north. One might imagine that the reason so much of the north's water is diverted to the south is because at some time in the past a battle (like the Trojan war?) took place between the people of the north and south over the water resource, and the people of the south won the war and captured the water spoils of resource war/competition. But that isn't how it happened. The people of the south do not celebrate their victory over the north. In fact, almost all of the people of the south are not even aware that their water comes from the north. The decision to divert the water was made prior to or during the early post WWII years by the ruling elites of California, a combination of Big Agriculture in the north and various Big Land Developers of the south, i.e. people who were, or who wanted to get, rich and who thought the world should be very unequal. When the Big Land Developers got the water they wanted, they used it to attract millions of people (like my parents) to migrate (from places like NYC and Philadelphia, where my parents were from) to "Beautiful Southern California." A friend of my sister's, who lives in southern California, is actually trying to make a living by selling gizmos that will enable southern Californians to use less water so that more can be returned to the north; she'll probably have lots of customers because ordinary people care about sharing resources in a manner they think is fair and equitable. Likewise, in Palestine where the Zionists hog an unfair share of the water for Jews, I venture to guess that most ordinary Palestinians would vote (if they had a chance) for the water being shared equally among all who live in Palestine, as opposed to hogging the water for non-Jewish Palestinians only. And I think most ordinary Jews in Israel would, unlike the religiously fanatical settlers, vote for sharing the water equally too if they were mentally freed from the paranoia induced in them by the Zionist leaders. My point is that even in the context of competition over resources, people fall into one of two categories: those who try to make the world more equal and those who try to make it more unequal, and it makes sense to treat the former as friends and the latter as foes.

Nationality/ethnicity and class overlapping:

I did not know that about the Hutu and Tutsi -- interesting! I am reading and learning a bit about the history of how Jews came to be a distinct class of people who dealt with money and trade but never were peasants. So, yes, I agree that national/ethnic categories can sometimes overlap with socio-economic categories, with the overlap being maybe not 100% but very substantial. And yes, people often use national/ethnic categories to determine who is friend or foe precisely because a person's ethnicity is highly associated with their class, and because it is easier to know a person's ethnicity than to know their class, and because lower class people of an ethnic group may side with (or be perceived by outsiders to side with) the upper class people of their own ethnicty. The question is, should we say that what is true ought to remain true? Or should we try to change it? I support a kind of class war, let's call it "values-class" war, a war betweeen the people who try to shape the world by the values of equality and democracy and solidarity against the people who try to do the opposite. There is a lot of overlap between "values class" and socio-economic class, but it is not 100%. There is also some overlap between "values class" and race in the United States, because blacks are more predominantly working class than whites. But people are far more likely to win the values-class war if they explicitly wage that precise war, than if they try to wage that war by using class or race to determine friend or foe. By using a person's values/behavior rather than their race or class to decide if they are friend or foe, it is possible to unite with good people of the "wrong" race or class and, equally important, it is far easier to prevent bad people of the "right" race or class from misleading the movement or struggle (as they always try to do.) Would you not agree? Isn't this the conclusion that follows from your statement, that I agree with, where you wrote, "...we may chose whom to support. Being born a German (or Jew) does not mean you have to fight for German (or Jewish) privilege." Doesn't this support my #1 criterion for friend or foe?

All the best, --John

--------------------------------------------------------

20 Note numbered 20, to me from Marek Glogoczowski in ?
Subject: A Straight talk with Israel (Adm) Shamir
From: Marek Glogoczowski mglogo@poczta.fm
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 11:50:38 +0200
To: George Salzman george.salzman@umb.edu

With my compliments of a former graduate student of geophysics at UC Berkeley. Below is a copy of my short, converging with your ideas, letter to Peter Myers (a retired computer programmer, who began his univwersity training in a catholic seminar in Australia).

Marek Glogoczowski
http://www.marek.glogoczowski.zaprasza.net
lub/or/ou http://www.zaprasza.net/mglogo

From: Marek Glogoczowski mglogo@poczta.fm
To: peter.myers@mailstar.net
Cc: Ken Freeland diogenesquest@gmail.com, jones-usa jones@culturewars.com, Israel Shamir shamir@home.se
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 3:06 PM
Subject: Re: Defunct Communist East Europe... &... Rising New Third World Empire

Dear Peter,

Thanks for dispatching wider of the lengthy paper "The crusade for a Christian military" by Jeff Sharlet, the author of "The Family" (2008) book*.

This "Jesus kills Mohamed" article one of my (personally unknown ) correspondent "Shiva Shankar" commented yesterday as folow:

Looks like it is apocalypse NOW!

As my "philo-communist" opinions are considered, I developped them just few months after my arrival to USA, in late summer of 1969 (thus at my age of 27), in order to complete my Ph.D. in geophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. I already worked as teaching assistant in physics and geophysics in Kraków (1965-1967), and than in Copenhagen (1968/69), and I already travelled extensively (by autostop, for in "communist" Poland dollars were hardly attainable) in Western Europe during summer of 1967 -- climbing Alps, Pyrenees and even the volcano Etna on Sicily. Until my arrival to USA I considered the Capitalism, as I saw it in western Europe, to be o.k., but arrvial to US was for me such a shock, that soon I understood why the Communist Revoulution of 1917 was necessary. (A dozen years ago, my German-Swiss female friend from ski-alpinism excursions in Alps, which with her Black American husband has come to live in USA, after spending, as an agricultural engineer, few years in Botswana, Africa, have written to her friend in Geneva "USA is the Third World with Technology!")

So it was not only mine specific "enchantment with the Beacon of Nations". When finally, rougly 20 years ago, I learned that to the forgotten at present, Soviet Revolution heavily contributed Russian Jews, which come to USA at the beginning of 20-th century, I understood why they did it: for them, as for me half a century later, USA was making an impression of a country of horrors, which inhabitants were (are) completely enslaved by God Mammon. One of these revolutionary Russian Jews, Illya Ehrenburg wrote in mid-1920-ies a book "The Trust DE" (Destruction of Europe), a "futurist" novel, in which he describes the plot of a criminal banker corporation with headquarters in New York, called "The Trust" and led by Mr. Boot (!). This "Trust" organizes the Destruction of Europe, playing one nation against another, Frenchmen are lead at theat time by a Judenrat, naive Soviet Bolsheviks are destroyed by Poles, in a critical moment the center of the DE plot is situated in my native Kraków, and of course populations of Europe are gassed, as it was already practiced during 1WW. Please compare the summary of this futurist novel from 1925 (which publication of course was forbidden in USSR), with "The Family"* of Jeff Sharlet from 2008 -- This remark I am dedicating especially to my friend Michael Jones, the author of "The Revolutionary Jew and His Impact on World History" from 2007; the Russian copy of Ehrenburg's "Trust DE" novel I received from an another friend of mine -- and of Michael Jones -- Israel Shamir.

But let's come back to your question, why I am not anti-German, nor anti-Russian, as Poles are supposed to be, and why I still "promote" collective farming, despite that in Poland practically all agriculture, as well as the majority of industry, become aggresively privatized at the beginning of 1990, during the so-called "hyper-bourgeois" revolution here?

The answer is simple. It comes from my personal experiences. Collective farming 'brings people together', as I witnessed working, in an international student team, during the 'vendages' (wein grape harvest) in Champagne, France in October 1967; in Denmark in 1968/69 I learned that their agricultural cooperatives have an excellent economic results; similar results had huge cooperatives in nearby, much more than Poland "communized" Czechoslovakia (where collective mega-farms still persists). An in "hatred by EU Judenrat" Bielorussia of today, kolchozes are still operant, there are no abandonned agricultural fields, and this manner of production is assuring the food independence of this "maverick" European -- ni EU ni RF -- enclave of forgotten socialism. (My grandparents had a small mountain farm in Zakopane until mid 1960-es -- 2 ha, sufficient to feed a horse and two cows. When at the beginning of 1950-ies the "stalinist" order has come that all small farmers of Podhale region have to join cooperatives, my loving money grandmother was really unhappy to "divorce" herself with her beloved possesssions. But in 1956 programme of collectivization of Polish agriculture was abandonned, and ten years later my oncles had to give our family fields to relatives, for no one has stayed at the farm, to which my grandmother was so zealously attached. Both Michael J. and Israel Sh. visited me in 2007 in the wooden house which has remained from these heroic times. See the photograph in attachment.

With my best greetings for the Land of Kangaroos,

Marek

* From the back cover of Sharlet's "The Family", 2008:

"They are the Family -- fundamentalism's avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the new chosen, congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a "leadership led by God," to be won not by force but through "quiet diplomacy." Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have written from inside its walls.

The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power -- not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the Far Right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a "family" that thrives to this day. In public, they host prayer breakfasts; in private they preach a gospel of "biblical capitalism," military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao, the Family's leader declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."

Sharlet's discoveries dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the Cold War, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. The question Sharlet believes we must ask is not "What do fundamentalists want?" but "What have they already done?"
*

----- Original Message -----

From:
To: Marek Glogoczowski mglogo@poczta.fm
Sent: Saturday, May 30, 2009 12:11 PM
Subject: Communist East Europe

Marek,

The other day, I came across an email you had written about farm ownership in Communist East Europe.

You seem to be pro-Russian. This (I thought) is unusual for Poles -- they usually dislike (and fear) both the Germans and the Russians.

Peter

Sprzedajesz auto? Dodaj ogloszenie za DARMO!
Sprawdz >>> http://link.interia.pl/f21b7
Subject: [Fwd: A Straight talk with Israel (Adam) Shamir]
From: George Salzman george.salzman@umb.edu
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:46:38 -0500
To: Marek Glogoczowski mglogo@poczta.fm
Oaxaca, Mexico, Wednesday 17 June 2009

Dear Marek Glogoczowski,

Thank you for sending me a copy of your letter to Peter Myers. I was interested to learn of your experiences and the development of your political thinking. My posting a day earlier, http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-06-05.htm "Straight talk with Israel Shamir"was probably your impetus for writing me. Since then I posted a second piece, "Straight talk 2, with Shamir and others", which is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-06-15.htm. There has been a lot of interest in that material. I am going to put together a followup with more correspondence, and would like to include your comments to Peter Meyers so that other interested people can benefit from them. I hope that's OK.

Sincerely, and with good wishes,

George

--------------------------------------------------------

21 Note numbered 21, to me from Ken Freeland in Houston, Texas

Subject: kudos
From: Ken Freeland diogenesquest@gmail.com
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:50:43 -0500

Greetings George,

I just want to thank you personally for your recently published correspendence and analysis re: Selig. As a moderator of ShamirReaders listserve, I have reposted it there. I hope you are a subscriber or soon will be. It is the work of people like yourself that best protects us all against the emergence of any real antisemitism, an ever present danger given the evident Zionist control of US media and US foreign policy. I pray that God gives you the courage to continue your invaluable work.

Peace,

Ken Freeland

--------------------------------------------------------

22 Note numbered 22, to me from Anthony Joseph Geha Yuja in Florence, Italy.
Subject: Zionist censorship at Colleges and Universities
From: Anthony Joseph GehaYuja joseph.anthony.yuja@alice.it
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:05:03 +0200

Dear Prof. Salzman,

I was pleased to discover your name and read some of your eloquent articles, including your recent exchange with Randolph Selig and the above, through Israel Shamir whom I had the privilege and pleasure to know personally when he visited Florence with his wife a few years ago.

It is reassuring and encouraging to know that there are more and more distinguished and brave academics like yourself, Norman Finkelstein etc... who, although systematically ignored by the mainsteam media, are willing, even at great personal cost, to speak truth to power particularly against this suffocating new ideology called zionism made not only of jews, but also of so called christians and fundamentalist moslems or the Pharisees of this predatory New World Order based on greed and deceit.

Hopefully truth and justice will prevail and eventually will bring genuine peace in the "Unholy" Lands and for mankind .

All the best.

--------------------------------------------------------

23 Note numbered 23, from a close and trusted friend in whom I have complete confidence. I have permission to distribute these comments, but not to identify the individual because of close friendships he/she has with Christian Zionists that might be damaged, friendships with "good folks, but [who are] simply misguided."
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:58:02 -0700 (PDT)

. . . Christian Zionism ... is something I know a little about.

I was raised Seventh-Day Adventist, including attending their schools and colleges -- until, as an adult I decided I had enough of that nonsense.

This denomination is typical of the Christian Zionists -- in fact they hold the Sabbath to be Saturday, like the Jews. Like other fundamentalist Christians they hold to a literal interpretation of the bible and believe that the establishment of the nation of Israel is a precursor to the second coming of Christ.

What really makes me sick is that they espouse the notion of "God Bless America," (and the West generally). Often you will hear the pastor saying how lucky we are to live in a "free" country and we have it so good, while in many other parts of the world, there is no freedom of religion and things are bad.

This type of indoctrination creates an "us" versus "them" mentality. Also they are aggressively evangelistic -- which means they go all around the world trying to convert people, especially simple societies, such as tribal peoples, the very poor, and the most marginalized peoples -- read vulnerable -- in general.

Often you will hear the pastor praying for our Western political leaders, to give them wisdom, to "guide" them, etc. This shows how political the system is. (As if god is going to work through the worst of the worst scumbags on earth, responsible for all of the human misery and suffering on this poor earth).

The general political leaning is strongly conservative-republican. Another aspect is material prosperity, which is not worshipped openly, but is a strong undercurrent. (Even though the teachings of Christ and even the Old Testament openly condemn -- rightly, in my opinion -- the lust for material wealth.)

All in all it is sickening. The bible itself has interesting philosophical value, in my opinion, but the fundamentalist Christians have molded their own perverted message from it . . .

Here are a couple of links on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scofield_Reference_Bible
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh-day_Adventist_Church

--------------------------------------------------------

24 Note numbered 24 from Jeffrey Blankfort in Mendocino County, California
Subject: Re: [noaap] Straight talk 2, with Israel Shamir and others
From: Jeffrey Blankfort jablankfort@earthlink.net
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:05:34 -0700 (GMT-07:00)

Hello, George,

Glad to see your posts now and then. Of course, Shamir does exist. I met him several years ago when he was in San Francisco and he is no more of a Swede than I am, and for sure he does provoke.

I have a problem with Robert Jensen who tells Muslims that they should never use the word, "Jew," or "Jewish" under any circumstances, and denies, like Chomsky, the power of the lobby. He used to be on my mailing list when I had one and he and I both spoke at a conference in Houston a few years back which was mainly attended by members of the city's Muslim community. After he had made his comments to the mostly Muslim audience in one of the workshops about never letting the word Jew cross their lips, he also responded to a question from the floor about the lobby by denying its importance.

Since I was a fellow guest at the event I didn't challenge him openly, but after the event I quietly asked him if he was willing to debate me on the subject of the lobby. It was no surprise that he declined but his reason left me speechless. "I really don't know enough about it," is what he said. I was too polite to ask him "Then what the devil are you doing denying its power," but in retrospect I should have. When I returned to San Francisco and sent out my first mailing, he sent back a request to remove him from my mailing list. So I don't bother with him or those who are in denial any more, that is those who should know better and pose as experts.

Best,

Jeff

Subject: Good to touch base
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:15:19 -0500

Hi Jeff,

I actually don't know Jensen except from what Gordon Arnault wrote and from reading that one article of his. It's all in my post today. It strikes me that he wants to focus on what he sees as THE fundamental problem -- capitalism, and regards the stuff about ethnicities as basically diversionary. I can understand that view, which is not all that far from mine. Still, I would not take it on myself to lecture Muslims on words they shouldn't use. Obviously I'm not hesitant to use Jew and Jewish and Zionist. So far Jensen hasn't written me anything. So I can't say what his attitude is now, a few years after you and he spoke in Houston together. I think it's good to cut people a little slack. I recall criticizing you for making judgements about Chomsky's motives. I've changed somewhat since then, as my note of 2009-06-07 shows. It's attached. Then, two days later; Bill sent out criticism of Obama, also attached. I don't know if my plaint about the 'heavies' not weighing in in the down and dirty fighting with the diehard Israel-firsters had any impact. I hope so. And of course my opening up on Randolph Selig is, I hope, an example for others. We should out them mercilessly. So, even though I don't post often these days, I'm working hard for an 83-year old, and sleeping a good deal. I hope you're well. Best,

George

-----------------------------------------------

25 Note numbered 25 from a friend who wishes to be unidentified in order to avoid further harrassment. He lives in a medium size community in south central Oregon. He has visited me in Oaxaca.
Subject: Re: [noaap] Straight talk with Israel Shamir

Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:42:07 -0700 (PDT)

George,

I was delighted to read your exchange with Shamir. I hope it continues and gets spread far and wide. Especially helpful is taking note of the progress that has been made -- the difference between what was shocking to read just eight years ago and is much more common knowledge or acceptable now. So the firewall protecting Zionism is weakening. Yet I sometimes still despair to see that even as the understanding of the situation spreads, the possibility of doing anything about it seems if anything more remote. The idea that widespread understanding of the situation would lead to it being corrected, seems like an illusion at the moment, because understanding is spreading rapidly, yet the power being wielded outside of our field of vision seems as solid as ever.

In my town automatic and near universal acceptance of Zionism seems a fait accompli. Folks here consider themselves enlightened and progressive, yet when anyone does muster the courage to make even a meek attempt to question the status quo of American-Israeli activities, they are punished unmercifully, especially by ordinary people who really don't seem to understand the situation at all, yet feel a zealous commitment.

I have to believe that truth and justice will eventually prevail, and resolve to continue to do my part. It helps to see what you are doing and the trusted friends you find in your work.

Hi xxxx,

I'd like to include your note in my next posting, probably to be titled something like "Straight talk 3, about Shamir and others". Interestingly, I got a number of favorable reactions -- none of course from Randolph Selig, that disgusting New York City Jewish lawyer -- and so far only one cautionary letter telling me I've been taken in by Shamir . . .

I think your experience is valuable for people to know about. Would it be OK for me to make it public? The critical thing to have in mind, I believe, is that many American Jews are so totally brainwashed by years of almost completely uncontested propaganda that they honestly believe, for example, that Israel was really defending itself by its assault on Gaza. I'm not able to advise you with regard to how I dealt with my brother, which has been quite unsuccessful. He's glued to his position, believing that he is a kindly, liberal Jew. He's not an unkind person, but his position with regard to the Palestinians, or more generally 'the Arabs' is that everything is their fault. Like the German Nazis' attitude towards the European Jews.

Actually the few million Jews and the few million Palestinians are but a minuscule part of the world's peoples, and my interest is in tackling the really large problems, of which this is but one manifestation . . . Please keep me informed how things go. Take care.
All the best, George

Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:13:58 -0700 (PDT)

Hey George. I'm pleased you found my note worthy.

I totally feel justified in what I said about local acceptance and defense of Zionism. A Peace House director moved here to take the job a few years ago from another Oregon town . . . and was shocked by the difference as regards community acceptance, or not, of any criticism of Israel.

I hesitate to buck this community solidarity. As you may remember I was summarily fired (2002) from a job at the locally based community Radio network, for unexplained reasons. The firing followed quickly a local Zionist learning I worked there. He . . . [and] I had discussed . . . the Palestinian problem . . . [he] found my views unacceptable. I've become convinced he orchestrated the phone calls to the (also Zionist) station master, and years later when I said to him "You got me fired" He replied "That was a long time ago."

The same station master has steadfastly resisted community efforts to have "Democracy NOW" and "Alternative Radio" air on . . . [the local] Public Radio . . . network that originates [here]. Both of those programs often give air time to critics of Israeli policies and American Mid-East policy. Of course this has never been acknowledged as the reason for keeping them off [the local Public Radio network] But I suspect the station master . . . who . . . was once my friend . . . won't allow such programming because of the occasional reporting critical of Israel.

This is some of the evidence I see of [the community's] blind pro-Israel bias.

I have suffered much grief and little reward over the years from any questioning of Israeli policies or US backing, so you will understand I don't relish the thought of having my words critical of Zionism broadcast here. It's not that I want to hide these beliefs, it's frankly the fear of punishment of the kind I have already suffered plenty with no perceptible positive results. I am not into ineffectual martyrdom and haven't enjoyed being shunned or treated suspiciously in my community.

You can believe what you want [here]. Just don't speak out. Of course this kind of unwillingness and fear of speaking out has helped bring the situation to where it is today!

--------------------------------------------------------

26 Note numbered 26, about the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and one of my all-time favorite cartoonists, Garry Trudeau. I used to be as faithful to Garry Trudeau when I got the old Boston Globe (old meaning before the New York Times bought it) as I was to the Katz n' Jammer Kids 75 or so years ago. Aside from the ludicrous demand for apologies that Abraham Foxman, the head of ADL (Anti-Defamation League) directed to Garry Trudeau following one of Garry's cartoons, there are a few more points I will take up in the subsequent note in this series. In particular, it was Debbie Menon debbie.menon@yahoo.com who first made me aware of Israel Shamir, and I want to discuss their common use of ethnicity, and show how it leads to erroneous political judgements. [4]

--------------------------------------------------------

NOTES

[1] Abba Eban. Google turns up about 175,000 items for Abba Eban. See http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&tab=lw&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&q=Abba+Eban&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10&fp=leBsIIJAIN0.

[2] Jack Benny. Google turns up about 1,870,000 items for Jack Benny. I was fascinated to learn much more about Benny than I ever knew. See http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&tab=lw&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&q=jack+benny&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10&fp=leBsIIJAIN0

[3] The initial aerial bombardment, which started on Saturday, 27 Dec 2008, and the subsequent ground invasion begun one week later, on Saturday 3 January 2009 19:39 GMT, were planned months ahead of time to fit into the period just prior to Obama's inaguration, when American politicians (and world attention) would be very much focussed on events in Washington. The Israeli assault ended on Jan 19th and Obama's inaguration was on Jan 20th. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/03/middleeast-israelandthepalestinians for the invasion start. 19:39 GMT is six hours later than Central Daylight Savings time in the U.S. and Mexico.

[4] Garry Trudeau und die Katz n' Jammer Kids. Trudeau's cartoon is at http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20090531. The ADL complaint is at http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/syndicates/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003978833. Some comments by readers are at http://doonesbury.com/strip/blowback/index.html (11 comments, from 5/31/09 to 6/3/09, including Foxman's).

A Yahoo site athttp://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081203083358AANnECp starts with: Has Anybody Ever Heard of Katz N' Jammer Kids Comics? One response, "Ja, vas ist it you vant to know?" I was pleased to read, "The Katzenjammer Kids featured the adventures of Hans and Fritz, twins and fellow warriors in the battle against any form of authority." No wonder I liked them, and that was years before I knew the word 'anarchism'.

---------------------------------------------------

All comments and criticisms are welcome. Email George Salzman.

To subscribe to my listserv, Notes of an anarchist physicist (noaap) preferably write me, including your first and last names, please, or send a blank e-mail to noaap-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.

* * *

This page is also at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/t/2009-06-26.htm

George Salzman

Southern Poverty Law Center, Heidi Beirich, Kevin B. MacDonald, critical thoughts I

The Privileged and the Pillaged:Changing History, 2

John Ross, a feet-on-the-ground struggler for human rights and decency

Changing History, 1

Alan Hart, a new friend and ally on the need to ‘sacrifice’[0]

Randolph S. Selig, Esq.-‘smart-ass’ NY City Jewish lawyer. Specialty -- lying for Zionism

Open Letter to Prime Minister Blair: Doing a Northern Ireland in the Middle East

How many voters does it take to change a light bulb? None. Because voters can't change anything.

Straight talk 4, overcoming ethnicity, no joke. It can serve deadly ends

Straight talk 3, overcoming being Jewish, no joke

The Privileged and the Pillaged:
Changing History, 2