Author: David Bloom

“BIONOIA” Part 3

The Mystery of Plum Island: Nazis, Ticks and Weapons of Mass Infection

by Mark Sanborne

In Part 2 of this series, which ran in our February issue, journalist and researcher Mark Sanborne looked back at how the US, which now hypes the threat of “bio-terrorism” to justify gutting the Biological Weapons Convention, has actually spearheaded the development of biological weapons—and their use against civilian populations. In this new installment, Sanborne explores the possibility that unusual outbreaks of exotic diseases within the United States have been linked to the Pentagon’s bio-warfare experiments—including some overseen by former Nazis. The closing installments will explore the survival of the secretive Cold War biowar apparatus in both the US and Russia, and its links to the new wave of biological threats.

If covert elements of the U.S. government have indeed been bombarding Cuba for over four decades with diseases aimed primarily at animals and crops, as discussed in Part 2 of this series, where might such bioagents have been developed? One likely suspect is Plum Island, the site where, during the early years of the Cold War, germs and viruses that could be used to wipe out Soviet livestock were cultivated.

Located less than two miles off the North Fork of Long Island and only six miles from Connecticut, the 840-acre Plum Island Animal Disease Center was established after World War II. Initially run by the Army, the facility was put under nominal control of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the 1950s.

The PIADC was dubbed “the safest lab in the world” and tasked with studying diseases that could threaten the nation’s livestock—which it did, effectively. But from the beginning Plum Island also played a key role in the U.S. biowarfare program and shared close ties with Fort Detrick, MD, the Army’s biowar HQ.

This long-suspected nexus was confirmed in Cold War records declassified in 1993. According to the documents, when calling for a major biowarfare test in the early 1950s, the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated: “Steps should be taken to make certain adequate facilities are available, including those at Fort Detrick, Dugway Proving Ground [Utah], Fort Terry [Plum Island] and an island testing area.” (“Plum Island’s shadowy past: Once-secret documents reveal lab’s mission was germ warfare,” Newsday, Nov. 21, 1993.)

“In many cases there were only maybe five people who knew what was going on in weapons research [at Plum Island]. People in one lab didn’t know what happened in the next lab, and they didn’t ask,” said Norman Covert, the aptly named base historian at Fort Detrick.

AGAIN WITH THE NAZIS?

And just to make it officially nefarious: it turns out Plum Island has Nazi connections. Former U.S. Justice Department prosecutor and Nazi-hunter John Loftus wrote his 1982 book The Belarus Secret: “Even more disturbing are the records of the Nazi germ warfare scientists who came to America. They experimented with poison ticks dropped from planes to spread rare diseases. I have received some information suggesting that the U.S. tested some of these poison ticks on the Plum Island artillery range off the coast of Connecticut during the early 1950s… Most of the germ warfare records have been shredded, but there is a top secret U.S. document confirming that ‘clandestine attacks on crops and animals’ took place at this time.”

More recently, other details emerged in Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory by Long Island lawyer Michael Christopher Carroll, who spent six years researching the topic. His explosive book actually prompted a lengthy article in the New York Times (“Heaping More Dirt on Plum Island,” Feb. 15, 2004). Though meant as a debunking—aside from Carroll, all seven people interviewed were critics or skeptics—in the Times’ perverse tradition, a lot of interesting information was revealed to its mainstream readers. But not all of the establishment took the party line: Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo endorsed the book as “brilliant” and a “carefully researched, chilling expose of potential catastrophe.”

Most of the controversy centered around Carroll’s informed speculation that Plum Island may have been the source of a series of epidemics over the decades: outbreaks of Dutch duck plague that almost wiped out Long Island’s duck industry in the 1960s, the insidious appearance and spread of Lyme disease in the 1970s and 1980s, a mystery infection that killed most of the Long Island Sound’s lobsters in 1999, and in the same year the arrival of West Nile virus in the New York metropolitan area, which claimed a number of lives and prompted authorities to repeatedly spray the city with malathion. Allaying potential public fears over such verboten ideas was a main reason the Times devoted so many inches of newsprint to damage control; the article mentioned the Nazi angle only in passing.

It turns out that the spiritual godfather of Plum Island was one Dr. Erich Traub, a Nazi scientist with a fascinating history, according to Carroll’s well-documented account. He spent the pre-war years in a scientific fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute in Princeton, N.J., studying bacteriology and virology, while still finding time to hang out at Camp Sigfried, headquarters of the American Nazi movement in Yaphank, Long Island, 30 miles west of Plum Island. He then took his laboratory skills back to Germany where he eventually became chief of Insel Riems, the Nazi’s secret biological warfare lab located on an island in the Baltic, supervising the testing of germ and viral sprays over occupied Russia, targeting cattle and reindeer, while reporting directly to Heinrich Himmler.

After the war Traub worked briefly for the Soviets before escaping into the embrace of Operation Paperclip, Washington’s covert employment program for useful Nazi scientists. As Werner von Braun was to rockets, Traub was to germs: He promptly went to work for the Naval Medical Research Institute and gave operational advice to the CIA and the biowarriors at Fort Detrick. Indeed, his detailed description of his work at Insel Riems probably helped inspire the selection of Plum Island by the Army: both the German and U.S. facilities were situated on islands where the prevailing winds blew (mostly) out to sea.

VECTOR ANALYSIS

Despite his exceedingly questionable history, Dr. Traub in fact was twice asked to be director of Plum Island, including by the USDA. He declined, but was known to have paid at least several official visits there. He may very well have been one of the Nazi scientists cited by Loftus who supervised the dropping of infected ticks from planes. Which brings us to the question of vectors.

In the context of biowarfare and infectious disease generally, a vector is an organism or agent that carries pathogens from one host to another. To attack an enemy’s agriculture system, such intermediary vectors aren’t always needed: It’s often enough to covertly disperse a pathogen directly on part of a crop and allow the infection to spread from plant to plant, as anti-Castro agents apparently did in Cuba on a number of occasions. (The versatile U.S. attack reportedly has also employed molds, fungi, insect infestations, and other minute pests targeted at specific crops—all of which, of course, had to be grown and tested somewhere first.)

However, it’s not quite so simple to attack animal and human populations, which are not stationary targets. Effective aerial delivery of agents like anthrax or rabbit fever can be affected by wind and weather, and is more likely to be detected as a deliberate attack. (Though if it’s sprayed on an army of protestors on the Washington Mall, a possibility discussed in Part 1 —well, that’s apparently another story.)

On the other hand, employing such vectors as mosquitoes, fleas, lice, and ticks to transmit diseases to targeted populations, while much slower in effect, can spread a greater variety of infections much more widely while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability for the attacker. Thus we should not be surprised that the fruits of Nazi and Imperial Japanese research and development in this ugly field ended up in eager U.S. hands after the war.

RETURN TO CUBA

Which bring us to this: Carroll cites an internal 1978 USDA document titled “African Swine Fever” obtained from an investigation by former Long Island congressman Thomas Downey. It notes that in research at Plum Island 1975 and 1976, “the adult stages of Abylomma americanum and Abylomma cajunense were found to be incapable of harboring and transmitting African swine fever virus.” Translated, that means scientists had tested the Lone Star tick and the Cayenne tick as effective vectors for African swine flu and found them wanting.

A vector is generally thought to be a one-way affair. But while this particular vector test failed, it also seems to point, paradoxically, in two directions at once. One is back, once again, to Cuba. Note that Plum Island’s research on suitable vectors for African swine fever took place midway between unusual outbreaks of that disease in Cuba, in 1971 and 1979-80, as discussed in Part 2. (And recall that its appearance in Cuba was a first in the Western hemisphere.)

Perhaps the U.S. scientists were innocuously testing potential vectors that could spread the exotic flu to America’s pork industry. Or perhaps—considering Plum Island’s longstanding connections to Fort Detrick—the tests were actually designed to find a new vector to transmit the virus once again to Cuba, which coincidentally did suffer another outbreak a few years later. In any event, whatever vector infected Cuba’s pigs with African swine fever in 1971 and 1979, it’s safe to say it wasn’t the Lone Star or Cayenne ticks.

But is that the end of the infected tick story? Unfortunately, no. Because the failed Plum Island vector test also points in another possible direction, right back into the heart of what our political-warrior class now likes to call the Homeland. And rather than riding off ineffectually into the sunset, the Lone Star tick has gone on to a key supporting role in yet another biomystery.

THE PANDEMIC THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME

In 1975, a strange disease broke out in Old Lyme, Connecticut, just 10 miles across Long Island Sound from Plum Island. Often initially characterized by a red rash and swollen joints, it afflicted an original cluster of 50 victims, many of them children, who were at first misdiagnosed as having juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

It turns out that “Lyme disease”—as it came to be called as cases mounted and spread in the years that followed—is a devious, multi-systemic, inflammatory syndrome that mimics other illnesses by encompassing a range of afflictions, including chronic and crippling pain and fatigue that untreated can spread to organs and the central nervous system, causing depression, palsy, memory loss, psychosis, and even encephalitis and death.

Such severe outcomes might surprise many Americans, most of whom have heard of Lyme disease but because of the current lack of media attention probably think it’s no big deal—unless they know someone who suffers from it. Well guess what? With a quarter century behind the outbreak, Lyme is now the most common vector-borne infection in the United States, and the most common tick-born illness in the world. Yes, you heard that right.

After spreading out from “ground zero” in the Long Island Sound area, as of mid-April 2006, a total of 267,779 domestic cases of Lyme in 49 states had been reported to the federal Centers for Disease Control. Some experts estimate that, due to Lyme’s confusing multiple manifestations, at most only one in 10 cases are recognized and reported to the CDC, so that the total number of victims could be more than 2.68 million. On top of that, a study predicts a one-third increase in the number of cases per year in the U.S. over the 10-year period from 2002 to 2012.

A TICK WITH A HISTORY

So what’s going on? Where did this weird bug—which, leaving aside its suspicious proximity to Plum Island, seemed to emerge from nowhere—supposedly come from? Its history is intriguing. In 1982, National Institutes of Health researcher Dr. Willy Burgdorfer isolated and identified spirochetes (a form of bacteria) of the genus Borrelia from the gut of infected Ixodes scapularis (commonly known as deer ticks) as the etiological agent of Lyme disease. It was dubbed Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), and the good doctor ruefully said of his discovery: “It’s a helluva bug, and I’m sorry my name is on it!”

However, while Burgdorfer was the first to isolate the insidious spirochete (which animal studies suggest in some cases can worm its way deep inside tendons, muscle, the heart and the brain inside a week), earlier incarnations of the disease had been studied in Europe since the late 19th century. By the 1930s, it was known to cause neurological and psychiatric problems and the tiny Ixodes tick was suggested as a vector. By mid-century doctors were using new antibiotic treatments with some success.

But while the disease caused by the Bb bacteria was known in Europe, it did not appear to constitute a major health problem. It was even less of an issue on the other side of the Atlantic: Although Bb and related bacterial strains are thought to have long been present in North America, the only official case reported in the U.S. before the Connecticut outbreak occurred in Wisconsin in 1970, when a hunter became infected from a tick bite.

So what changed in the 1970s to kick-start what has since become a pandemic, both here and in Europe? (Though the P-word is never used in reference to Lyme, as opposed to bird flu, which is still only a potential pandemic.) Or are we to believe that Bb has been infecting people all along but somehow it just wasn’t being noticed? A similar argument has been advanced by apologists for the medical-industrial complex who maintain that the recent explosion of autism was simply the result of better detection and recognition of the condition, rather than being largely caused by mercury-laced vaccines, as many now suspect.

THE INVADERS

Dr. Alan G. Barbour, who worked closely with Burgdorfer in the identification of Bb, co-wrote an article with Durland Fish in 1993 that made an interesting case for how the modern outbreak of Lyme disease may have occurred. They suggested that Bb infections were a fact of life in early American history that went largely unnoticed amid the harshness of frontier life:

“The generally benign nature [!] of acute B. burgdorferi infection relative to the debilitating and fatal effects of diseases plaguing North Americans through the 19th century may have contributed to its obscurity until a cluster of cases of childhood arthritis first brought it to wider attention on this continent. The ecological changes in the northeastern and midwestern United States during this century are responsible for the recent emergence of Lyme disease as a public health problem.”

They argue that mass deforestation of the Northeast due to the clearing of land for agriculture and settlement in the 19th and early 20th century resulted in a collapse of white-tailed deer populations, the primary carriers of the I. scapularis tick, and hence the tick itself became too scarce to infect people with Bb. The authors further theorize that Long Island served as a refuge for relict populations of deer in the area. Then, as land-use patterns changed in the latter half of the 20th century, woodlands and forests recovered in the Northeast, along with deer and deer ticks:

“The invasion by I. scapularis of the increasingly reforested mainland from island refuges initiated the current epidemic of Lyme disease in the Northeast … There is evidence that several independent mainland invasions [mainly from Long Island] by I. scapularis took place, resulting in early Lyme disease foci in central New Jersey, mainland Westchester County, N.Y., southeastern Connecticut, and eastern Massachusetts.”

So science seems clear on the fact that Long Island was the source of the modern outbreak of Lyme disease, but the devil is in the details. The key problem with Barbour and Fish’s scenario is that it treats pre-1975 Long Island like some kind of lost world, an offshore wilderness Eden where remnant deer lived free of human interaction. In fact, the island’s deer population, concentrated in eastern Suffolk County, has long lived close by people, many of whom were certainly exposed to deer tick bites over the years. So why were there no reports of the disease on Long Island in the decades before the outbreak in Connecticut? And why, in the wake of that outbreak across the Sound, did Suffolk County—home of Plum Island—quickly develop one of the highest rates of Lyme disease in the country?

This writer grew up in western Suffolk County in the 1960s and ’70s, and spent plenty of time exploring the woods, and was bitten by plenty of ticks. But they were the types of tick you can easily see and feel crawling on your skin, and thus usually could be picked off before they began engorging themselves in earnest on one’s blood. Fortunately, there were no deer or deer ticks in my neck of the woods. So it came as quite a shock to learn in the late ’70s of the sudden existence, just a few dozen miles to the east, of infected ticks that were almost invisible—literally the size of a pinhead—and had the ability to make an unlucky hiker’s life into a living hell. Our tiny friend I. Scapularis is indeed the perfect covert agent: it does its dirty work quickly and disappears before you know it’s there, usually leaving behind a telltale rash and a very questionable prognosis.

WOUND, DON’T KILL

Okay, enough beating around the real and metaphorical bushes. Is there any actual evidence that Lyme disease could be the outcome of biological warfare research at Plum Island that, either accidentally or otherwise, escaped into the outside world? In fact, the evidence seems quite suggestive, especially when compared to the shaky logic of the official story.

Some might ask: Why would biowarriors be interested in studying a disease agent like Borrelia burgdorferi that incapacitates but rarely kills its victims? Actually, for all the attention focused on deadly pathogens like anthrax, plague, and rabbit fever, the biowar establishments of various powers have also long been interested in agents that can slowly stricken and debilitate a civilian population.

The logic is brutally simple: just as a wounded soldier puts more logistical strain on an army than a dead one does, gradually sickening a population places greater economic and social stress on a society than simply killing a limited number of people with a more direct and virulent attack. If the disease agent can be transmitted via a “natural” vector like ticks or mosquitoes, providing plausible deniability, and can confuse medical authorities by presenting a broad array of symptoms that mimic other conditions (Bb, like its more famous relative syphilis, has been called the “Great Imitator”), then so much the better.

Imperial Japan’s infamous Unit 731 biowar outfit, discussed in Part 2, reportedly conducted experiments with the Borelia genus, the results of which likely fell into U.S. hands after the war. However, there is no documentary evidence that indicates Plum Island researchers ever worked with Bb —after all, it is primarily a disease of humans, not animals. On the other hand, if the bacteria were being secretly studied (or worse, “weaponized”) at the lab and introduced to ticks for vector tests, there are any number of ways tick-borne Bb could have escaped to the mainland: from deer—which are able to swim to and from the island—to birds, or even an inadvertently infected lab worker. (Assuming, of course, it wasn’t released on purpose as part of some sinister test.)

Since the Lyme outbreak, scientists claim to have documented the presence of Bb in I. scapularis museum specimens collected in the late 1940s from Shelter Island and other parts of Long Island close by Plum Island. This is presumed to be evidence that the spirochete was pre-existing in the area and was not “engineered” in a lab in the 1970s. But note that the period the tick specimens were collected is suspiciously close to the time when Nazi scientists may have “experimented with poison ticks dropped from planes to spread rare diseases” at Plum Island.

GIVING NATURE A HAND

The question then arises: Are the unusual characteristics of Bb solely the result of natural evolutionary processes, or were they helped along by the hand of man? Speaking more generally, here’s what Col. Oliver Fellowes, a founding father of Plum Island who was transferred from Fort Detrick in 1952, had to say: “We were always looking for a way to camouflage a strain so that it would be so difficult to detect and identify that, by the time the enemy had done so, the disease would have done the damage.” (Unit 731 by Peter Williams and David Wallace, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1989.)

Wait, it gets better. On July 1, 1969, Dr. Donald MacArthur, director of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, testified before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. He had this exchange with Rep. Robert Sikes of Florida:

DR. MACARTHUR: There are two things about the biological agent field I would like to mention. One is the possibility of technology surprise. Molecular biology is a field that is advancing very rapidly and eminent biologists believe that within a period of five to 10 years it would be possible to produce a synthetic biological agent, an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired.

REP. SIKES: Are we doing any work in that field?

DR. MACARTHUR: We are not.

REP. SIKES: Why not? Lack of money or lack of interest?

DR. MACARTHUR: Certainly not lack of interest.

MacArthur’s chilling testimony can be seen as the Rosetta Stone of bionoia, and will be discussed in greater detail in a later installment. But we don’t need it for confirmation that something like Lyme disease can be considered a biological warfare agent—we have it straight from the source, namely the U.S. government. On Nov. 15, 2005, the Associated Press reported:

“A new research lab for bioterrorism opened Monday at the University of Texas at San Antonio. The $10.6 million Margaret Batts Tobin Laboratory Building will provide a 22,000-square-foot facility to study such diseases as anthrax, tularemia, cholera, lyme disease, desert valley fever and other parasitic and fungal diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified these diseases as potential bioterrorism agents.”

That, it would seem, makes it official. Among those who took note of this matter-of-fact admission was Dr. Virginia Sherr, who, in a letter to the editor published Nov. 22, 2005 in the online edition of the Lancet medical journal, wrote:

“[The] concern is the overriding significance of an invisibilized but nonetheless serious infection caused by an extraordinarily complex neurotropic spirochete. Its pandemic is approaching severity that was experienced throughout the world in the Spanish Flu of 1918. The causative spirochete is, of course, less immediately fatal than was the virus of that epidemic, but it is deadly, nonetheless, to the human brain. The fact that the causative spirochete, B. burgdorferi, is being studied as an agent of biowarfare in the USA adds impetus to a need for quick education of most of the world’s academic physicians as to what has been sensed at the clinical level for a long time: we are dealing here with a formidable ‘smart stealth’ type of bacteria that is hard to eradicate—one that does extreme damage to psyche and soma if not treated aggressively over the long term when missed in the first days following inoculation by the vector… Organized Medicine has mostly ignored or deserted the field of neuro-Lyme’s currently immense proportions, internationally.”

THE REVENGE OF TEXAS

Whither Plum Island? According an Aug. 28, 2005, story in Newsday, “Plum Island’s Future Up In The Air,” the federal government plans to replace the existing facility on the island with a more secure one or relocate to a higher-security level research lab elsewhere by 2011. “The Plum Island facility was built in the 1950s and is nearing the end of its life cycle,” according to the Deptartment of Homeland Security. Glad to hear those guys are on the case.

Ah, but what about the Lone Star tick and its failed vector test back in 1975? Aside from that curious coincidence with Cuba, the documented research also appears to have something to say about events much closer to home. It demonstrates that Plum Island researchers were infecting Abylomma americanum with various bioagents to see if they could be successfully vectored to other species. (In this case pigs, but swine are often used as stand-ins for humans in medical experiments.)

That is a matter of some interest because, while the I. Scapularis deer tick is the major vector for Lyme disease in the Northeast, the Lone Star tick has also been found to be a carrier of spirochetes. There is some debate about whether A. americanum can transmit Bb to humans. Researchers say the tick carries a slightly different bacteria that they’ve dubbed Borrelia lonestari, which may or may not cause a “new” Lyme-related ailment called Masters disease, identified in 1991 in Missouri.

The fact that two different ticks carry their own versions of an unusual spirochete bio-agent is suspicious enough—designer bugs, perhaps? (Check out this unintentional smoking gun in Barbour and Fish’s article: “The presence of spirochetes similar to B. burgdorferi in A. americanum in areas where competent vectors are absent is inexplicable.”) But here’s the real kicker: The Lone Star is a warm-weather tick that is prevalent in the Southeast and until recently was mostly unknown in the colder Northeast. Now it has reached as far north as—you guessed it—Long Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut. (Though perhaps the word should not be “reached” but “released.”)

A. americanum now makes up 5% of the overall tick population in the region, though there are greater concentrations in some areas than others. (Researchers combing the woods in New Jersey have found 2,000 to 3,000 Lone Star ticks within one hour.) When did these little devils start being noticed up here in large numbers? Yup: In the wake of the outbreak of Lyme disease—though there are reports that the initial invaders may have “arrived” as far back as the 1950s, just as things were getting underway at Plum Island.

And yes, Abylomma americanum, as it’s nickname suggests, has a special association with the Lone Star State. Another import from Texas that the rest of the country probably could have done without.

RESOURCES:

Lyme Disease Foundation
http://www.lyme.org/

“The Biological and Social Phenomenon of Lyme Disease,” Barbour and Fish, Association for the Advancement of Science, June 1993
http://info.med.yale.edu/eph/vectorbio/fish/BarbourFish.pdf

Dr. Donald MacArthur, Congressional testimony, July 1, 1969
http://panindigan.tripod.com/aidsdodhear.html

See also:

“Bionoia,” Pt. 2, WW4 REPORT #118

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue Reading“BIONOIA” Part 3 

Issue #. 120. April 2006

Electronic Journal & Daily Weblog HOUZAN MAHMOUD INTERVIEW: The Iraqi Freedom Congress and the Civil Resistance by Bill Weinberg BLAMING “THE LOBBY” AIPAC Takes the Hit for US Imperialism by Joseph Massad NAGORNO-KARABAKH: Stalin’s Shadow Looms Over Trans-Caucasus Pipeline by… Read moreIssue #. 120. April 2006

BRAZIL: MASSIVE LAND OCCUPATIONS

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

RIO GRANDE DO SUL: MST SEIZES ESTATE

On Feb. 28, more than 2,000 members of Brazil’s Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) from 14 encampments in the state of Rio Grande do Sul began occupying the Fazenda Guerra, a large estate in Coqueiros do Sul municipality. It was the largest single land occupation since the late 1990s. According to Ana Hanauer, of the MST’s coordinating body in Rio Grande do Sul, the occupying families are using wooden construction materials to build permanent housing and an educational facility on the site, turning the property into an MST settlement, instead of the more typical encampment of temporary plastic-covered tent-like structures. The MST is demanding the immediate settlement of the 2,500 families still living in such temporary encampments in Brazil’s southernmost state. Some of these families have spent seven years living in the encampments; only 220 families have been able to move into settlements over the past three years in Rio Grande do Sul. Most of the families who participated in the Feb. 28 occupation were forcibly displaced by Military Police on Feb. 23 from an encampment on the side of Highway RS-406, in Nanoi.

“The federal government doesn’t meet the goals of the National Plan for Agrarian Reform, and the state government treats the land question as a police affair, forcing us to live on the sides of the highway. Our only other option is to occupy unproductive lands and report to society that Agrarian Reform is stopped in our state. It is not a priority for [President Luis Inacio] Lula [da Silva of the leftist Workers Party, PT] or for our governor, [Germano] Rigotto [of the centrist Party of the Democratic Movement of Brazil, PMDB]. There is more than enough land for settlements,” said Edenir Vassoler of the MST’s coordinating body for the state.

Fazenda Guerra is one of the largest latifundios in Rio Grande do Sul, with 7,000 hectares in the municipalities of Coqueiros do Sul, Carazinho and Pontao. The owner of the property, Felix Tubino Guerra, has a history of unpaid debts and violations of labor laws. The area is large enough to settle roughly 350 families. This is the third time the MST has occupied the estate. (Friends of the MST, Feb. 28)

In the northeastern state of Pernambuco, the MST reported that 15 landless rural workers were “detained and tortured” during a police operation to evict 200 campesinos from an estate they were occupying in Cabrobo, one of 19 estates occupied by MST members in Pernambuco since Mar. 5. The MST says that over the coming weeks, some 120,000 campesinos will occupy large landed estates in 23 of Brazil’s 26 states and in the federal district of Brasilia. (La Jornada, Mexico, March 9 from DPA, Reuters)

WOMEN OCCUPY PULP PLANTATION

On March 8, International Wome’s Day, nearly 2,000 Brazilian women affiliated with the international peasant movement Via Campesina occupied the Barba Negra estate, a eucalyptus plantation owned by the wood pulp company Aracruz Celulosa in Barra do Ribeiro, Rio Grande do Sul state, to draw attention to the environmental damage caused by the pulp industry. The protesters occupied the Aracruz site for about 40 minutes, and reportedly destroyed some five million out of a total 30 million plants there which were part of a company research project. Following the incident, the company announced it would reconsider its plan to invest $1.2 billion in the construction of a new facility in Rio Grande do Sul. (Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales, March 8; Manifesto Text, March 8; La Jornada, March 9; Inter Press Service, March 8)

“Where the green desert advances, biodiversity is destroyed, the soil deteriorates, the rivers dry up, not to mention the tremendous pollution generated by the cellulose factories that contaminate the air and water and threaten human health,” the women wrote in a Via Campesina manifesto. The women were also protesting in solidarity with indigenous people whose lands were taken by Aracruz Celulosa in a violent police eviction in January of this year in Espirito Santo state. Police used the company’s machinery to carry out the expulsion.

Aracruz Celulosa has more than 250,000 hectares of land, 50,000 of them in Rio Grande do Sul. Its factories produce 2.4 million tons of bleached cellulose per year. Aracruz Celulosa has received $2 billion reais (more than $917 million) in public money from the Brazilian government over the past three years, yet the cellulose business only generates one job for each 185 hectares planted, while small-scale agriculture generates one job per hectare. “We don’t understand how a government that wants to end hunger sponsors the green desert instead of investigating in agrarian reform and campesino agriculture,” says the women’s manifesto. The women also pointed out the destructive impact of the cellulose industry on water: each eucalyptus consumes as much as 30 liters of water a day. (Minga, March 8; Manifesto text, March 8)

After ending their action on Aracruz land, the demonstrators went in buses back to Porto Alegre, the state capital, where they joined an International Women’s Day march. Roughly 3,500 women marched to the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, where the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was holding its International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development March 7-10. The protesters managed to get past the closed gates and the 20 police agents guarding the university to stage a demonstration in the parking lot. (LJ, March 9; IPS, March 8; Minga, March 8)

After half an hour of negotiations, a committee of 50 women was allowed into the main auditorium where the FAO conference was taking place. They entered chanting “Agrarian Reform, Urgent and Necessary” and “Women, United, Will Never Be Defeated,” then read their manifesto to the delegates. The manifesto was supported by the Movement of Campesina Women (MMC), the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), the Movement of Small Farmers (MPA), the Movement of Dam-Affected People (MAB), the Rural Youth Pastoral (PJR) and the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT). (Minga, manifesto, March 8) Grassroots campesino groups and other social movements also sponsored their own parallel Land, Territory and Dignity Forum in Porto Alegre Mar. 6-9. (IPS, March 10. MST website)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 12

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Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html

See also WW4 REPORT #117
http://www.ww3report.com/node/1438

See our last update on land struggles in Brazil:
/node/1450

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingBRAZIL: MASSIVE LAND OCCUPATIONS 

COLOMBIA: TRADE PACT CONCLUDED, RIGHT SWEEPS ELECTIONS

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

On Feb. 27 Colombia and the US concluded a trade pact after two years of negotiations. Peru signed a similar accord in December, and the US is seeking an agreement with Ecuador. The US hopes to consolidate the three accords into an Andean Free Trade Agreement (known as the TLC, for “free trade treaty” in Spanish) before the end of the year, when current agreements end. But there are doubts about how quickly the administration of US president George W. Bush can get required approval from its own Congress for the package.

The pact with Colombia is the most significant trade agreement the US has worked out with a Latin American country since the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which included Canada and Mexico. Colombia’s annual economic output is more than $100 billion, and trade between Colombia and the US was $14.3 billion last year. But the US–which has repeatedly failed to advance its plan for a hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)–had problems negotiating even with the pro-US government of right-wing president Alvaro Uribe Velez. Three members of Colombia’s “intellectual property rights” negotiating team quit last year over what they called US intransigence. (NYT, Feb. 28)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 5

FAR RIGHT SWEEPS CONGRESS

Right-wing supporters of President Alvaro Uribe Velez swept Colombia’s March 12 legislative elections, winning 72 of the 100 seats in the Senate and at least 57% of the 167 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Abstention was nearly 60%. Center-left sectors united in the Alternative Democratic Pole won 11 seats in the Senate and now form the fifth largest force in the legislature. Presidential elections are scheduled for May 28. (Inter Press Service, AFP, March 13)

More than half the votes cast for the two Senate seats reserved for indigenous candidates were left blank, so those elections may be repeated. (IPS, March 13) Nasa indigenous leaders blamed a badly designed ballot for the confusing results; they say that the elections should not be repeated, and that the two candidates of the Indigenous Social Alliance–Jesus Enrique Pinacue and Eulalia Yagari–won the vote and should be able to take their senate seats. (Asociacion de Cabildos Nasa, March 16)

A new organization, Daughters and Sons for Memory and Against Impunity, had on March 9 publicly called on Colombians to vote against 13 candidates linked to right-wing paramilitary groups. Six of those 13 candidates did win their seats. Among those who didn’t was retired general Rito Alejo del Rio, accused of responsibility for massacres in 1997. Ivan Cepeda of Daughters and Sons for Memory and Against Impunity said that for now, “there are 17 or 18 legislators that come from highly doubtful forces” linked to paramilitary groups.

Authorities did not report any major incidents during the voting but “29 violent acts” were recorded. Blackouts took place along the Atlantic coast and in Cauca department, and in Arauca, an attack on an aqueduct left the town of Saravena without drinking water. The attack was blamed on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). (IPS, March 13)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 19

MURDER IN CIMITARRA VALLEY

The Campesino Association of the Cimitarra River Valley (ACVC) has reported a recent increase in paramilitary murders, threats and other activities in the Cimitarra Valley of Colombia’s Magdalena Medio region, where the departments of Bolivar, Santander and Antioquia intersect.

On Feb. 18, presumed paramilitaries murdered Guido Romero, vice president of the Communal Action Board in the rural community of La Victoria in Cantagallo municipality in the south of Bolivar department. The paramilitaries, said to be from the urban center of Cantagallo, came to La Victoria asking for Romero. The detained him and took him to the community’s soccer field, where they murdered him in front of other community members. Romero’s murder came two days after he met with ACVC leaders to plan a series of community actions. (Corporacion Regional para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos-CREDHOS, Feb. 22 via Colombia Indymedia; ACVC, Feb. 23)

At a subsequent meeting in Cantagallo, a paramilitary member from Barrancabermeja in Santander department announced that the legalized paramilitary groups known as Convivir must be reestablished in the town. On Feb. 22, in nearby San Pablo, a “demobilized” paramilitary commander called a meeting where he announced that the Convivir groups would be reestablished, and that the community must finance them. The Convivir “security cooperatives” were first established in neighboring Antioquia department by then-governor Alvaro Uribe Velez, now president of Colombia seeking a second term in elections in May. (ACVC, Feb. 23; CREDHOS, Feb. 24)

On Feb. 22, the body of Robinson Alberto Gonzalez was found with five bullet wounds–two in the head–between the rural communities of Campo Bijao and Cano Tigre, at a site known as Cano Panela, in the northeastern area of Antioquia, near the borders with Bolivar and Santander departments. Gonzalez worked as a traveling vendor; he had disappeared on Feb. 6 between the rural communities of Puerto Nuevo Ite and Dosquebradas in Remedios municipality.

No one has claimed responsibility for murdering Gonzalez. The Calibio Battalion of the army’s 14th Brigade operates in the area, and is said to collaborate with rightwing paramilitary groups which supposedly demobilized in Remedios several weeks ago. Leftist rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) are also active in the area. (ACVC, Feb. 23)

Jose Gustavo Castaneda disappeared on Feb. 15 between the Estrella farm and Puerto Nuevo Ite; as of Feb. 22 he remained missing. On Feb. 13 campesino Albeiro Meza was disappeared in Cantagallo municipality. He remained missing as of Feb. 16. Julio Cesar Aparicio Diaz, a member of the Communal Action Board in Puerto Matilde, was detained in Campo Bijao, Remedios municipality, by six hooded armed men dressed in camouflage. He was tortured for two hours and threatened with death. He was reportedly released, but his whereabouts were unknown as of Feb. 16. (ACVC, Feb. 16)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 5

On March 23, the ACVC said it had determined that guerrillas from the FARC were responsible for the Feb. 18 murder of Romero. The mayor of Cantagallo and the regional newspaper Vanguardia Liberal, based in Bucaramanga, had maintained all along that the FARC’s 24th Front was responsible. The ACVC said it “deplores and rejects this murder and demands that the FARC observe the principle of…not turning civilian residents into targets.” Since the murder, several families have been displaced from La Victoria. (ACVC, March 23 via Prensa Rural)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 26

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Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html

See also WW4 REPORT #119
http://www.ww3report.com/node/1661

See our last update on Colombia’s shift to the hard right:
/node/1771

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCOLOMBIA: TRADE PACT CONCLUDED, RIGHT SWEEPS ELECTIONS 

ECUADOR: PROTESTS PARALYZE COUNTRY

from Weekly News Update on the Americas


OIL STRIKE IN AMAZON

The Ecuadoran government decreed a state of emergency in the Amazon provinces of Napo, Orellana and Sucumbios on March 8, two days into a strike that shut down oil production in the region. The 4,000 striking workers were employed by subcontractors to provide maintenance, security, transport, clean-up and construction for the state oil company Petroecuador. The workers are owed three months worth of salaries by the subcontractors, who have themselves not been paid by Petroecuador since last September. On March 7, the workers shut down six major oil facilities in the region; the same day, army soldiers used tear gas bombs to eject the strikers from several oil company sites. The workers released three of the sites on March 11 and ended the strike on March 12 after the government promised to arrange payment of the debts and to release three arrested strike leaders. The state of emergency was to be lifted gradually beginning on March 13. (Agencia Pulsar, March 8; AP, March 8, 12; El Comercio, Quito, March 11)

Workers and other social sectors blocked roads on March 8 in several areas of Ecuador to protest the government’s negotiations with the US over the Andean Free Trade Treaty, press for a wage increase and demand that the government cancel its contract with the US oil company Occidental Petroleum (Oxy). Mesias Tatamuez, leader of the Unitary Workers Front (FUT), called the strike “a warning message,” and said that if the government doesn’t attend to the protesters’ demands, more extreme actions will be taken. (Agencia Pulsar, March 8)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 12

INDIGENOUS PROTEST TRADE PACT

Early on March 13, indigenous Ecuadorans began a national mobilization against the Andean Free Trade Treaty (known in Spanish as the TLC), which the Ecuadoran government has said it intends to sign with the US, Colombia and Peru. The mobilization is also demanding that the government cancel its contract with Oxy, that Ecuador not participate in the US-led “Plan Colombia,” and that a National Constituent Assembly be called to write a new constitution. The mobilization was organized by the indigenous organizations Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and the Confederation of the Peoples of Kichua Nationality of Ecuador (Ecuarunari). In a joint March 13 communique announcing the start of the mobilization, the two groups called the TLC “a mortal weapon for the economy of millions of indigenous people, campesinos and small businesspeople.”

“Now 50 of every 100 indigenous children suffer from chronic malnutrition–that is, hunger–and with the TLC, which will affect the production of foods from our fields, there will be millions of children and adolescents who together with their parents will suffer hunger and will have to migrate to the big cities or to other countries,” said the communique.

March 13 began with actions in at least 14 of Ecuador’s 22 provinces and in the capital, Quito. In Carchi, some 1,500 people shut down traffic on the road leading from Tulcan to Quito. Protesters also blocked roads in Imbabura, Pichincha, Cotopaxi, Tungurahua, Canar, Loja and Zamora. In Canar, access roads to nearly every town were blocked, and 3,000 indigenous Kanari people blocked traffic in the village of Suscal along a road to the coast. Ten busloads of protesters left from Imbabura to join protests in Quito. In Latacunga, Cotopaxi, some 2,000 people took part in a protest march. In Bolivar, protesters marched and seized the governor’s offices. In Azuay, thousands marched in the city of Cuenca, and a roadway was blocked in Giron. Police repression against protesters was reported in Ayora, Pichincha. In Esmeraldas, some 200 people marched in the provincial capital. From the eastern provinces of Pastaza and Morona Santiago, some 500 people reached Banos de Ambato on a march toward Quito. In Quito, some 100 members of Campesino Social Security seized the cathedral. (CONAIE/Ecuarunari Communique, March 13)

On March 14, the second day of the mobilization, protesters who arrived that day from Imbabura joined local Quito residents in marching past the US embassy to the cathedral. Police attacked the marchers in the area around the provincial council, and at the theater plaza. Protesters continued to block roads in Carchi, Imbabura, Pichincha, Tungurahua, Bolivar and Chimborazo. Some 10,000 people marched in Latacunga, capital of Cotopaxi province; hundreds of people also marched in Salcedo, another city in Cotopaxi, before blocking a nearby highway. In Suscal, Canar, police unleashed repression on protesters–mainly women and children–and arrested several protest leaders. Despite the attacks, protesters in Suscal continued to block the road leading to Guayaquil. The march from the Amazon region continued, with 600 people reaching the city of Ambato from Zalazaza. (CONAIE/Ecuarunari Communique, March 14)

In a March 15 communique signed by CONAIE president Luis Macas, CONAIE condemned the repression faced by protesters. “At a time when the Ecuadoran government and army are incapable of defending the country from incursions by the Colombian armed forces, and they have rather turned into security guards for the oil corporations, they have sharpened their weapons against their own people, causing numerous wounded, disappeared and persecutions against peaceful, democratic and united mobilizations,” said CONAIE.

CONAIE reported that in a meeting that morning with Governance under-secretary Felipe Vega, its leaders had protested the violation of human rights and questioned the government’s lack of transparency and democracy in the TLC negotiations, and delays in the cancellation of the Oxy contract. CONAIE leaders told Vega that the mobilization would continue until the TLC negotiations are suspended, the government publishes everything it has negotiated up to now, the Oxy contract is cancelled as requested by the state prosecutor’s office, and a Constituent Assembly is convened. (CONAIE communique, March 15)

By March 15, the protests were starting to affect the economy, disrupting deliveries of corn, potatoes and milk in the central provinces where traffic was blocked, and preventing flower exporters from transporting their shipments. (Al Jazeera, March 16) In a televised speech on March 15, Ecuadoran president Alfredo Palacio criticized the protests and called on Ecuadorans to “close ranks to protect democracy.” Earlier in the day, Interior Minister Alfredo Castillo resigned after publicly stating that the protesters “are right” to demand that the TLC negotiations be “much clearer.” (El Barlovento, Mexico, March 15)

On March 17, Oxy proposed an accord with the Ecuadoran government in which the company would provide oil assistance and funds for social projects, would give up legal claims and would renegotiate its contracts in exchange for the cancellation of legal proceedings threatening its current contract. It was not clear whether the government had responded to the offer. (Reuters, March 17) Ecuarunari president Humberto Cholango responded by warning Ecuadorans that Oxy was attempting to evade the legal proceedings with the offer of $293 million in funding for public works. (Ecuarunari/CONAIE communique, March 18)

On March 18, the indigenous mobilization continued into a sixth day, with roads blocked in at least seven provinces, mainly in the central Andean region, the north and the Amazon. In Riobamba, capital of Chimborazo, wire services reported that some 4,000 people demonstrated before holding an assembly to plan subsequent actions. (CONAIE and Ecuarunari reported that 10,000 people from the surrounding areas attempted to enter Riobamba, and 5,000 eventually made it past police to the city’s central square.) In other provinces, indigenous organizations also called assemblies to plan actions for the coming week, as the Ecuadoran government prepares to hold its final round of TLC negotiations in Washington on March 23. (ANSA, March 18; Cadena Global/DPA, March 18; Ecuarunari/CONAIE communique, March 18) The provinces of Tungurahua, Cotopaxi and Pastaza reportedly ended their strikes between March 16 and 17 after the government assigned more funds for public works they were demanding. (Cadena Global/DPA, March 18)

In a March 18 communique, Ecuarunari and CONAIE reported that their respective presidents, Cholango and Macas, along with provincial protest leaders, had been threatened with arrest if they did not end the mobilization. They also reported more repression: the march from the Amazon provinces to Quito was detained for more than three hours in the area of Chasqui, though marchers finally broke through police lines to continue their trek; protester Alberto Cabascango lost his left eye in the area of Cajas, between Imbabura and Pichincha provinces; and protesters Rosa Cristina Ulcuango from Cayambe and Olga Alimana from Chimborazo were hospitalized after being injured by police and army troops.

The worst repression continued to be in the community of Suscal, in Canar province, where on March 18 army and police forces attacked a march of some 500 people along the road leading to the coast, beating, dragging and kicking the participants, including many women, children and elderly people. Many people were injured, including two pregnant women who had to be taken to the health center in Suscal for emergency treatment. The military and police patrols then continued their assault on the community by violently invading homes, destroying doors and windows, firing tear gas bombs, threatening people at gunpoint and carrying out mass arrests. (Ecuarunari/CONAIE communique, March 18)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 19


PROTESTS SUSPENDED—FOR NOW

On March 21, thousands of indigenous people from around the country arrived in Quito and blocked main highways with their protests. Police used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators; some protesters threw rocks at police. About 30 people were seriously injured and 100 were arrested. Another 300 people, including a number of minors, suffered asphyxia from police tear gas. (El Barlovento, March 21) CONAIE leader Luis Macas and the alternative news source Altercom reported that police were boarding buses headed for Quito and detaining anyone who looked indigenous or looked like a protester. (Adital, March 21; EB, March 21)

Late on March 21, Ppresident Palacio responded to the protests by decreeing a state of emergency in the provinces of Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Canar and Imbabura and in the districts of Tabacundo and Cayambe in Pichincha province. Under the state of emergency, constitutional rights are suspended. (EB, March 22) Thousands of police and soldiers were deployed on March 22 to clear blocked highways. (AP, March 22)

On Mar. 23, the uprising began to lose some strength in the Andean region, but more than 3,000 indigenous people from around the country marched in Quito, with the support of students and other sectors. Police used tear gas to disperse university and high school students marching through the center of Quito, and clashes between demonstrators and police left dozens of people injured. In the northern city of Otavalo, indigenous people defied the state of emergency and blocked several roads. (La Jornada, Mexico, March 24; Adital, March 23)

CONAIE suggested a dialogue with the government, mediated by the Catholic Church, but the government refused. “The ball is in CONAIE’s court,” said Minister of Government (Interior) Felipe Vega. “They should stop this action now, and five minutes later they will converse with President Alfredo Palacio.” Palacio had said hours earlier that he would dialogue with the indigenous groups if they ended the mobilization.

Later on March 23, CONAIE announced that the mobilization would be temporarily suspended. CONAIE was to meet March 31 in the Andean city of Riobamba to “redefine actions” in the continuing struggle against the TLC, and for the cancellation of the government’s contract with Oxy.

“We’re going to withdraw, but the uprising will resume after the assembly in Riobamba, if by then the government doesn’t commit to at least convene a people’s referendum to decide about the TLC,” said CONAIE vice president Santiago de la Cruz. The government will maintain the state of emergency until the country is “totally pacified,” said Communication Secretary Enrique Proano. (LJ, March 24) Proano said some protests were continuing in Otavalo on the night of March 23. By March 24, indigenous protesters had dismantled most of the road blockades.

The Ecuadoran and US governments began their 14th round of TLC negotiations in Washington on March 23. (AFP , March 24)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 26

——

Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html

See also WW4 REPORT #119
http://www.ww3report.com/node/1670

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingECUADOR: PROTESTS PARALYZE COUNTRY 

BLAMING “THE LOBBY”

AIPAC Takes the Hit for US Imperialism

by Joseph Massad

In the last 25 years, many Palestinians and other Arabs, in the United States and in the Arab world, have been so awed by the power of the US pro-Israel lobby that any study, book, or journalistic article that exposes the inner workings, the substantial influence, and the financial and political power of this lobby have been greeted with ecstatic sighs of relief that Americans finally can see the “truth” and the “error” of their ways.

The underlying argument has been simple and has been told time and again by Washington’s regime allies in the Arab world, pro-US liberal and Arab intellectuals, conservative and liberal US intellectuals and former politicians, and even leftist Arab and American activists who support Palestinian rights: namely, that absent the pro- Israel lobby, America would at worst no longer contribute to the oppression of Arabs and Palestinians and at best it would be the Arabs’ and the Palestinians’ best ally and friend. What makes this argument persuasive and effective to Arabs? Indeed, why are its claims constantly brandished by Washington’s Arab friends to Arab and American audiences as a persuasive argument? I contend that the attraction of this argument is that it exonerates the United States’ government from all the responsibility and guilt that it deserves for its policies in the Arab world and gives false hope to many Arabs and Palestinians who wish America would be on their side instead of on the side of their enemies.

Let me start with the premise of this argument, namely its effect of shifting the blame for US policies from the United States onto Israel and its US lobby. According to this logic, it is not the United States that should be held directly responsible for all its imperial policies in the Arab world and the Middle East at large since World War II, rather it is Israel and its lobby who have pushed it to launch policies that are detrimental to its own national interest and are only beneficial to Israel. Establishing and supporting Arab and other Middle East dictatorships, arming and training their militaries, setting up their secret police apparatuses and training them in effective torture methods and counter-insurgency to be used against their own citizens should be blamed, according to the logic of these studies, on Israel and its US lobby. Blocking all international and UN support for Palestinian rights, arming and financing Israel in its war against a civilian population, protecting Israel from the wrath of the international community should also be blamed not on the United States, the studies insist, but on Israel and its lobby.

Additionally, and in line with this logic, controlling Arab economies and finances, dominating key investments in the Middle East, and imposing structural adjustment policies by the IMF and the World Bank which impoverish the Arab peoples should also be blamed on Israel, and not the United States. Finally, starving and then invading Iraq, threatening to invade Syria, raiding and then sanctioning Libya and Iran, besieging the Palestinians and their leaders, must also be blamed on the Israeli lobby and not the US government. Indeed, over the years, many pro-US Arab dictators let it leak officially and unofficially that their US diplomat friends have told them time and again how much they and “America” support the Arab world and the Palestinians were it not for the influence of the pro- Israel lobby (sometimes identified by the American diplomats in more explicit “ethnic” terms).

While many of the studies of the pro-Israel lobby are sound and full of awe-inspiring well- documented details about the formidable power commanded by groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its allies, the problem with most of them is what remains unarticulated. For example, when and in what context has the United States government ever supported national liberation in the Third World? The record of the United States is one of being the implacable enemy of all Third World national liberation groups. Why then the US would support national liberation in the Arab world absent the pro-Israel lobby is something these studies never explain.

The United States has had a consistent policy since World War II of fighting all regimes across the Third World who insist on controlling their national resources, whether it be land, oil, or minerals. This extends from Iran in 1953 to Guatemala in 1954 to the rest of Latin America all the way to present-day Venezuela. Africa has fared much worse in the last four decades, as have many countries in Asia. Why the would United States would support regimes in the Arab world who would nationalize natural resources and stop their pillage by American capital absent the pro-Israel lobby?

Finally, the United States government has opposed and overthrown, or tried to overthrow, any regime that seeks real and tangible independence in the Third World, and is especially galled by those regimes that pursue such policies through democratic elections. The overthrow of regimes from Arbenz to Goulart to Mossadegh and Allende and the ongoing attempts to overthrow Chavez are prominent examples, as are the overthrow Sukarno’s and Nkrumah’s nationalist regimes. The terror unleashed on populations who challenged US-installed regimes from El Salvador to Zaire to Chile and Indonesia, resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands, if not millions by repressive police and militaries trained for these important tasks by the US. This is aside from direct US invasions of South East Asian and Central American countries that killed untold millions for decades. Why would the US and its repressive agencies stop invading Arab countries, or stop supporting the repressive police forces of dictatorial Arab regimes, and why would the US stop setting up shadow governments inside its embassies in Arab capitals to run these countries’ affairs if the pro-Israel lobby did not exist? This is never broached by these studies, let alone explained.

The arguments put forth by these studies would be more convincing if the Israel lobby was forcing the United States government to pursue policies in the Middle East that are inconsistent with its global policies elsewhere. This, however, is far from what happens. While US policies in the Middle East may often be an exaggerated form of its repressive and anti-democratic policies elsewhere in the world, they are not inconsistent with them. One could make the case that the strength of the pro-Israel lobby is what accounts for this exaggeration, but even this contention is not entirely persuasive. One could argue that it is in fact the very centrality of Israel to US strategy in the Middle East that accounts, in part, for the strength of the pro-Israel lobby and not the other way around. Indeed, many of the recent studies highlight the role of pro-Likud members of the Bush administration (or even of the Clinton administration) as evidence of the lobby’s awesome power—when, it could be easily argued that it is these American politicians who had pushed Likud and Labour into more intransigence in the 1990s and are pushing them towards more conquest now that they are at the helm of the US government.

This is not to say that the leaders of the pro-Israel lobby do not regularly brag about their crucial influence on US policy in Congress and the White House. That they have done so regularly since the late 1970s. But the lobby is powerful in the United States because its major claims are about advancing US interests and its support for Israel is contextualized in its support for the overall US strategy in the Middle East. The pro-Israel lobby plays the same role that the China lobby played in the 1950s and the Cuba lobby still plays to this day. The fact that it is more powerful than any other foreign lobby on Capitol Hill testifies to the importance of Israel in US strategy and not to some fantastical power that the lobby commands independent of and extraneous to the US “national interest.”

Some would argue that even though Israel attempts to overlap its interests with those of the US, that its lobby is misleading American policy-makers and shifting their position from one of objective assessment of what is truly in America’s best interest. The argument runs as follows: US support for Israel causes groups who oppose Israel to hate the US and target it for attacks. It also costs the US friendly media coverage in the Arab world, affects its investment potential in Arab countries, and loses it important allies in the region, or at least weakens existing alliances. But none of this is true. The United States has been able to be Israel’s biggest backer and financier, its staunchest defender and weapons-supplier while maintaining strategic alliances with most if not all Arab dictatorships, including the Palestinian Authority under both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

Moreover, US companies and American investments have the largest presence across the Arab world, most prominently but not exclusively in the oil sector. Also, even without the pathetic and ineffective efforts at US propaganda in the guise of the television station Al-Hurra, or Radio Sawa and the now-defunct Hi magazine, not to mention US-paid journalists and newspapers in Iraq and elsewhere, a whole army of Arabic newspapers and state-television stations, not to mention myriad satellite television stations, all celebrate the US and its culture, broadcast American programs, and attempt to sell the US point of view as effectively as possible, encumbered only by the limitations that actual US policies in the region place on common sense. Even the offending Al-Jazeera has bent over backwards to accommodate the US point of view, but is constantly undercut by actual US policies in the region. Al-Jazeera, under tremendous pressure and threats of bombing from the United States, has nonetheless stopped referring to the US occupation forces in Iraq as “occupation forces” and now refers to them as “coalition forces.” Moreover, since when has the US sought to win a popularity contest among the peoples of the world? Arabs no more hate or love the United States than do Latin Americans, Africans, Asians, or even and especially Europeans.

Finally we come to the financial argument, namely that the US gives an inordinate amount of money to Israel—an exorbitant cost that is out of proportion to what the US gets in return. In fact, the United States spends much more on its military bases in the Arab world, not to mention on those in Europe or Asia, than it does on Israel. Israel has indeed been very effective in rendering services to its US master for a good price, whether in channeling arms to Central American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, helping pariah regimes like Taiwan and apartheid South Africa in the same period, supporting pro-US (including Fascist) groups inside the Arab world to undermine nationalist Arab regimes from Lebanon to Iraq to Sudan, coming to the aid of conservative pro-US Arab regimes when threatened (as it did for Jordan in 1970), and attacking Arab nationalist regimes outright—as it did in 1967 with Egypt and Syria and in 1981 with Iraq, when it destroyed that country’s nuclear reactor. While the US had been able to overthrow Sukarno and Nkrumah in bloody coups, Nasser remained entrenched until Israel effectively neutralized him in the 1967 war. It is thanks to this major service that the United States increased its support to Israel exponentially. Moreover, Israel neutralized the PLO in 1982—no small service to many Arab regimes and their US patron who could not fully control the organization until then.

None of the American military bases on which many more billions are spent can claim such a stellar record. Critics argue that when the US had to intervene in the Gulf, it could not rely on Israel for the job because including it in such a coalition would embarrass Arab allies; hence the uselessness of Israel as a strategic ally. But the US also could not rely on its military bases to launch the invasions on their own and had to ship in its army. American bases in the Gulf did provide important and needed support, but so did Israel.

AIPAC is indeed powerful insofar as it pushes for policies that accord with US interests and that are resonant with the reigning US imperial ideology. The power of the pro-Israel lobby is not based solely on its organizational skills or ideological uniformity. In no small measure, anti-Semitic attitudes in Congress play a role in belief in the lobby’s (and its enemies’) exaggerated claims about its actual power, resulting in lawmakers toeing the line. One could argue it does not matter whether the lobby has real or imagined power—for as long as Congress and policy-makers believe it does, it will remain effective and powerful. I, of course, concede this point.

What, then, would have been different in US policy in the Middle East absent Israel and its powerful lobby? The answer in short is: the details and intensity but not the direction, content, or impact of such policies. Is the pro-Israel lobby extremely powerful in the United States? As someone who has been facing the full brunt of their power for the last three years through their formidable influence on my own university and their attempts to get me fired, I answer with a resounding yes. Are they primarily responsible for US policies towards the Palestinians and the Arab world? Absolutely not. The United States is opposed in the Arab world as elsewhere because it has pursued and continues to pursue policies that are inimical to the interests of most people in these countries and are only beneficial to its own interests and to the minority regimes in the region that serve those interests (including Israel). Absent these policies—and not the pro-Israel lobby which supports them—the United States could expect a change in its standing among Arabs. Short of that, the United States will have to continue its policies in the region that have wreaked, and continue to wreak, havoc on the majority of Arabs and not expect that the Arab people will like it in return.

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Joseph Massad is associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University. His recent book The Persistence of the Palestinian Question was published by Routledge.

This story first appeared in Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt,
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/787/op35.htm

See also:

“Arab scholar: ‘Jewish lobby’ scapegoat for imperial interests,” WW4 REPORT, March 25
/node/1774

Pappe refutes Chomsky on Israel Lobby
/node/1826

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingBLAMING “THE LOBBY”