Month: August 2008

Swans, CA
Aug 24 2008

The Project For A New American Humanitarianism
Olympian Ambitions from Darfur to Tibet and Beijing

by Michael Barker

(Swans – August 25, 2008) This essay examines the role of the Project
for a New American Humanitarianism in the ongoing human rights
offensive that is currently being waged against China. While there is
some awareness, in progressive circles, of the work of antidemocratic
think tank and neoconservative Project for a New American Century
(PNAC) the majority of the public remain in the dark about its
machinations. Another equally sinister, but highly visible group that
obtains little critical coverage — in even the alternative media —
is a coalition that might be loosely referred to as the Project for a
New American Humanitarianism (PNAH). (1) Both groups promote America’s
imperial interests, but their activities differ in critical
respects. PNAC favours military domination, or militaristic
imperialism, which has been zealously promoted by a three-part
coalition comprised of "aggressive nationalists…, Christian Zionists
of the religious Right, and Israel-centred neo-conservatives." In
contrast, the loose collection of concerned activists that coalesce
within the Project for a New American Humanitarianism help sustain
imperialism by both providing it with "moral cover, and sanctioning
the abandonment of the rule of law in the purported interest of human
rights." Ironically PNAH, like PNAC, is well supported by
neo-conservatives.

The Project for a New American Humanitarianism’s current focus on
China’s human rights abuses — in the context of the Olympics (2) —
centres around three primary issues, highlighting the Chinese
government’s ongoing involvement in the repression and murder of: 1)
Falun Gong practitioners, 2) Tibetan peace activists, and 3) the
people of Sudan. In the case of each of these three concerns a common
rallying cry of the New Humanitarians acts to equate the Chinese
government’s actions with those of Hitler’s Nazis. Thus, the vice
president of the European Parliament observes that the "Falun Gong
are to the Chinese what the Jews were to the Nazis. And that’s an
understatement." In 2002, Samdhong Rinpoche, accused China of
engaging in "a kind of cultural genocide" in Tibet; while in 2004,
Secretary Colin Powell famously noted that "genocide has been
committed in Darfur and that the Government of Sudan and the
Jingaweit bear responsibility — and that genocide may still be
occurring."

Of course, while there are other genocides that have exceeded the
scale of the Nazi Holocaust, (3) it is the Hitler example that is
regularly invoked as a powerful propaganda tool to act in the service
of so-called human rights activists. However, as Ward Churchill
observed:

Far less recognized is the fact that the ugly enterprise of Holocaust
denial has a flip side — indeed, a mirror image — which is equally
objectionable but which has been anything but marginalized by the
academy, popular media, or the public at large. This is the view
advanced by a much larger group of writers that the Nazi genocide not
only happened, but that it 1) is the only such occurrence in all of
human history and 2) that it somehow happened uniquely and exclusively
to its Jewish victims. (4)

The alleged genocide in Sudan is particularly interesting in this
regard as the main groups spearheading the persistent calls for a
humanitarian intervention overseas are the same Zionist organizations
that are busy promoting ethnic cleansing of Palestinians at
home. Likewise, Zionists have been vocal in their support of the Falun
Gong, thus Annette Lantos, the wife of "super-Zionist Congress-person"
the late Tom Lantos (Democrat, California) — who posthumously
received the misnamed National Endowment for Democracy’s 2008
Democracy Service Medal — serves on the advisory board of the Friends
of Falun Gong USA. Similarly with regard to Tibet, as Uri Avnery
points out, the difference in the mainstream media’s coverage of the
plight of Tibetans and Palestinians means that "the Palestinians are
suffering from several cruel strokes of fate," as not only are the
"great majority" of the Palestinians Muslims, but:

The people that oppress them claim for themselves the crown of
ultimate victimhood. The whole world sympathizes with the Israelis
because the Jews were the victims of the most horrific crime of the
Western world. That creates a strange situation: the oppressor is more
popular than the victim. Anyone who supports the Palestinians is
automatically suspected of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

Given that the modus operandi of the Project for a New American
Humanitarianism and PNAC are at odds, it is very significant that the
membership of both groups’ interests overlap in that they are home to
numerous key Zionists and leading neoconservatives. Consequently, this
essay seeks to explore these crossover relationships in an attempt to
document the tactics employed by the new humanitarian warriors facing
off with the Chinese government.

Falun Gong: Only Calisthenics and Meditation?

As noted in an earlier article, Heather Kavan provides an alternative
narrative concerning the Falun Gong’s apparently apolitical and
harmless nature. Kavan also demonstrated how the media coverage that
the Falun Gong have obtained in Australian and New Zealand newspapers
is surprising positive for a religious cult. However, in response to
my critique of the Falun Gong I received a polite e-mail from Caylan
Ford (who identified herself as the editor for the Falun Dafa
Information Center), who took issue with my "description of an alleged
love affair between the Western media and Falun Gong." Ford went on to
note that she had "recently coauthored a (yet-to-be-published) study
of the New York Times coverage of Falun Gong, which found strong
anti-Falun Gong biases, both quantitatively and qualitatively."
Furthermore, she pointed out that this study also "found that Falun
Gong has been grossly under-reported since the summer of 2001;
coverage dropped off immediately following a meeting between NY Times
editors and then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin." Although Ford noted
that the aforementioned study was not yet available she attached
another similar academic study published by fellow Falun Gong
practitioner, Leeshai Lemish, who has recently published a series of
articles about the Falun Gong in the New Statesman. (5) Here it is
interesting to quote Lesshai Lemish’s New Statesman article —
published on August 20, 2008 — which recounts how:

For a year Ethan Gutmann (author of Losing the New China) and I have
been travelling the world conducting interviews for his forthcoming
book [on China]. We’ve received research grants from Earheart
Foundation and Sweden’s Wallenberg family, and keep our budget low by
sleeping on floors and eating instant noodles. But we’re too
embarrassed to complain, considering the stories [of human rights
abuses] we hear morning to night.

While most readers will be unaware of the controversial background of
Lemish’s travelling companion, it turns out that Ethan Gutmann is a
former visiting fellow at Project for the New American Century, and he
presently serves as an adjunct fellow at the neoconservative
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (a group whose work is
closely tied to that formerly undertaken by PNAC). In addition,
Gutmann’s 2004 book, Losing the New China, was published by the
well-known neoconservative publisher, Encounter Books; while the
Earhart Foundation, which is supporting the production of Lemish and
Gutmann’s collaborate book project, is an infamous neoconservative
funding body. Lemish also mentions a seemingly innocuous funding
connection to Sweden’s Wallenberg family, which, as it turns out is no
ordinary family, as the even the mainstream BBC has referred to the
Wallenberg "business dynasty" as the "Royal Family of Swedish
Business." Here it is important to point out that perhaps the most
famous member of the Wallenberg dynasty is the late Raoul Wallenberg,
an individual whose life was commemorated in "prominent Hollywood
Zionist" Steven Spielberg’s movie "Schindler’s List." (6)

Regardless of differences in interpretation of the Falun Gong’s media
coverage — between scholars like Heather Kavan on the one hand, and
Falun Gong advocates like Caylan Ford and Lesshai Lemish on the other
— it is significant that Falun Gong has recruited allies amongst the
West’s power elite. (7) Thus it is intriguing to note that the
aforementioned Caylan Ford, who e-mailed me in her capacity as the
editor for the Falun Dafa Information Center, also acts as a
spokesperson for an elite-supported group known as the Friends of
Falun Gong. In addition, in 2008, Ford also acted as the news
coordinator for the Canadian edition of The Epoch Times, and as a
spokeswoman for New Tang Dynasty Television. These latter links are
significant because writing in 2005, Patsy Rahn noted that in the
preceding year, "questions [had] began to arise over whether certain
Western-based organizations, such as newspaper group The Epoch Times
and New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV), [were] actually [Falun Gong]
organizations." Rahn adds, that: "According to a report in the Far
Eastern Economic Review, prominent FLG spokespeople serve as a
director for NTDTV and on the board of The Epoch Times; both
organizations give the [Falun Gong] prominent coverage. In addition,
both organizations are staffed by volunteers, often [Falun Gong]
followers, whose main jobs are unrelated to journalism."

Recently Ford represented Friends of Falun Gong at a press conference
held at the National Press Club (on July 18, 2008) that was
co-organized by Friends of Falun Gong, the North Korea Freedom
Coalition (see note 31), the NED-funded advocate of religious freedom,
the China Aid Association (which has received annual NED grants since
2004), (8) the Christian ‘human rights’ group Open Doors USA, (9) the
Uyghur American Association (whose president, Rebiya Kadeer, talked at
a 2006 conference organized by the NED-funded Laogai Research
Foundation alongside speakers that included the president of the NED),
and the American Tibetan Alliance. Thus given Friends of Falun Gong’s
links to various important democracy manipulators the following
section of this article will provide the first critical examination of
the elite behind the US branch of Friends of Falun Gong.

Friends of Falun Gong USA describes itself as a human rights group
that was formed in November 2000 by "Americans concerned about the
persecution of Falun Gong," and which to date, has organized
"large-scale rallies in Washington D.C., lawsuits against the
architects of the persecution, and smaller, targeted projects
counteracting the Chinese government’s massive propaganda campaign."
(10) Their Web site proudly observes how once formally established,
the first person to join their board of directors was former US
Ambassador Mark Palmer, an individual who went so far as to
(over)state that the Falun Gong is "the largest nonviolent movement
since Gandhi in India." The Friends of Falun Gong USA Web site even
draws attention to the key role that Palmer has fulfilled for the US
democracy manipulating establishment, by pointing out his affiliation
to Freedom House (where he serves as vice-chair of their board) and to
the National Endowment for Democracy (where he acts as a founder, and
current board member).

Although not mentioned by Friends of Falun Gong USA, Palmer’s integral
placement in the US’s democracy manipulating establishment is further
bolstered by his affiliations to the following groups, the Council for
a Community of Democracies (vice president), the US Secretary of
State’s Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion (member), the
International Centre for Democratic Transition (board member), the
Democracy Project (advisory board), and the Center for Democracy and
Human Rights in Saudi Arabia (board member). His links to the last
group are particularly noteworthy, as its ties to elite interests are
not as demonstrable as those of the other organisations he is involved
with. This is because the founder (in 2004) and executive director of
the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, Ali Alyami,
previously acted (from 1977 to 1983) as the Director of the
educational peace program for the progressive American Friends Service
Committee in San Francisco. This link would appear incongruous, yet
since leaving the American Friends Service Committee in the early
1980s, Alyami’s work has become increasingly entwined with that
undertaken by democracy manipulating groups. This is perhaps most
evident from his service as the US representative for the Arab
Organization for Human Rights (from 1990 to 1996), a group that was
founded in 1983 by Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an individual who is presently
a board member of the Canadian equivalent of the NED, Rights and
Democracy, and whose work appears tied to the broader neoconservative
democratic agenda. (11)

Another noteworthy person serving on the seven-strong board of the
Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia is Lindsay
Mattison, who for over a quarter of a century has served as the
executive director of the US-based foreign policy group, International
Action — whose current focus is on providing humanitarian aid to
Haiti. Before joining International Action, Mattison served as
assistant to Admiral Gene R. La Rocque at the Center for Defense
Information (where he acted as president), an individual who later
went on to act as an advisor for the controversial democracy
manipulator, the Albert Einstein Institution. More importantly,
however, is the fact that Mattison presently serves on the advisory
committee of the Washington Kurdish Institute.

Other people of interest serving on the 34 person strong advisory
committee of the Washington Kurdish Institute include Mike Amitay (who
is a senior policy analyst for the Middle East, North Africa and
Central Asia at George Soros’s Open Society Policy Center, and
formerly served as the Institute’s executive director from its
founding in 1996 until 2005), Project for a New American Century
booster Morris Amitay (who is the former executive director of
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and is vice chair of the
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs), Raymond Helmick (who
serves on the executive board of the US Interreligious Committee for
Peace in the Middle East), Max Kampelman (who amongst various other
"democratic" posts has served as the vice chairman of the US Institute
of Peace), Laurie Mylroie (who is an adjunct fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute, and a former research fellow at the
AIPAC-affiliated think tank the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy), and Lionel Rosenblatt (who formerly served as the president
of Refugees International throughout the 1990s). (12) Finally, it is
interesting that Lord Eric Avebury also serves on the Washington
Kurdish Institute’s advisory committee, as his affiliation to the
Institute illustrates how closely the work of such "humanitarian"
groups is linked to progressive activists. This is because Lord
Avebury also serves as the honorary president of another group called
the Kurdish Human Rights Project, a group whose most prominent
progressive patrons are Noam Chomsky and Harold Pinter.

Returning to Friends of Falun Gong USA, other than Ambassador Palmer,
another fascinating member of their current eight person strong
advisory board is Annette Lantos who formerly worked full-time with
her late husband, the "super-Zionist" Congressman Tom Lantos (who also
formerly served on the board of overseers of the Henry
Kissinger-connected International Rescue Committee), and as executive
director of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.

Another prominent advisor of Friends of Falun Gong USA whose
background is worth exploring is former Congressman Benjamin Gilman,
owing to his links to Israel and to various groups ostensibly
promoting Tibetan human rights. Critically, Gilman served as chairman
of the House International Relations Committee from 1995 until 2002,
and is a member of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s council. (13)
Here it is poignant to briefly reflect upon the backgrounds of the
three current executives of the Holocaust Museum, Fred Zeidman (the
father of Jay Zeidman), Sara Bloomfield, and Joel Geiderman.

¢ Fred Zeidman is a member of AIPAC’s executive committee, serves
as the vice president of their associated think tank the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs, and sits on the board of the
Republican Jewish Coalition (a group that has been described as a "big
money pro-Israel lobby group linking Jewish-American neoconservatives
to the Christian Right and Israel’s Likud government").

¢ Sara Bloomfield, who is a board member of the International
Freedom Center, and who has worked with the NED-linked Iraq Memory
Foundation.

¢ Joel Geiderman is a board member of the aforementioned Republican
Jewish Coalition.

The Holocaust Museum also provides a home to other key members of the
Project for a New American Humanitarianism consortium, and their
Committee on Conscience is chaired by none other than Tom Bernstein,
the former president (now just board member) of Human Rights
First. (14)

Gilman maintains other links to key Israeli elites through serving on
the board of the Humpty Dumpty Institute, (15) because this group’s
vice chair, Michael Sonnenfeldt is the past chair of the Israel Policy
Forum — a group whose executive director, David Elcott, in turn
serves as the Director of US Interreligious Affairs for the American
Jewish Committee. (16) Likewise, the president of the Humpty Dumpty
Institute, Ralph Cwerman, formerly served as Director of Research at
Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, and as a senior aide
to Ambassador Benjamin Netanyahu; while another important board member
of the Institute is the "closet Zionist" Richard Holbrooke.

Finally, Gilman’s links to Tibetan issues derive from his being a
member of the Committee of 100 for Tibet. This organization was
founded in 1992 and aims to "bring the plight of the Tibetan people to
the attention of the U.S. public." Many of the individual members of
the Committee are linked to the democracy manipulating establishment,
so it is not surprising that the Committee’s chair, Tenzin Tethong, is
also connected to two NED-funded groups: as he is the founder of the
Tibet Fund, and serves on the advisory board of the International
Campaign for Tibet. Gilman himself is also indirectly linked to the
International Campaign for Tibet, because in 2003 he was the recipient
of their annual Light of Truth Award. (17)

The final noteworthy member of the advisory board of Friends of Falun
Gong USA is Ashok Gangadean, who is the cofounding Director of the
Global Dialogue Institute. Working alongside Gangadean at the Global
Dialogue Institute is the other cofounding Director of this
Institute, Leonard Swidler, who formerly served on the advisory board
of the American Center for Democracy — a group that was founded (in
2003) and is currently headed by the neoconservative Zionist Rachel
Ehrenfeld. Significantly, the well-known neoconservative Zionist
Daniel Pipes — who heads up the notorious right-wing Zionist think
tank the Middle East Forum — serves on the Global Dialogue Institute
board of trustees: Pipes is also accompanied on the Institute’s board
by the founder of the Middle East Forum, Albert Wood. This of course
does not mean that the Global Dialogue Institute is simply a
neoconservative Zionist project, which it is far from the truth, but
it does mean that at the very least it is unlikely that the Institute
will be able to work towards fulfilling its mission of "developing
and promoting…authentic dialogue."

Returning to Friends of Falun Gong USA advisor, Ashok Gangadean, taken
at face value, in contrast to his Global Dialogue Institute, it does
appear that his other work is geared towards promoting peaceful
cooperation by virtue of the fact that it does not include the work of
any rabid right-wing Zionists. Indeed, Gangadean recently founded a
Web-based project called ((Awakening Mind)), whose Web site notes that
((Awakening Mind)) is…

…intended to be an introduction to the global worldview and the idea
that the key to our survival as a species is the discovery of a
universal dialogue through which we can learn to understand and
communicate with one another. This universal dialogue, or Logos, is
comprised of the inherent threads of commonality which we all possess.

Although this self-descriptor sounds harmless, it is easy to see how
the search for one single "universal dialogue," if successful, would
have tragic consequences for cultural diversity. Instead we should aim
to celebrate difference, not merely tolerate it, and should strive to
understand others by recognizing our unique and multidimensional
traits along with their inherent weaknesses and strengths. This idea
has been beautifully argued by Soenke Biermann, the project
coordinator for the Australian-based Thinking Diversity — Beyond
Tolerance Project (pdf). (18)

Calls for the creation of a single "universal dialogue" appear to mesh
well with the demands of the totalizing homogenizing processes of
corporate/elite forced globalization. Moreover, attempts to create
such a one-size-fits-all dialogue are in keeping with the openly
internationalist agenda of liberal elites. Take for example, the
Rockefeller family, whose internationalist activities have been widely
critiqued by conservatives (especially ultra-conservatives), (19) but
for the most part ignored by the Left. David Rockefeller himself noted
in his recently published memoirs how some people characterize the
Rockefeller family "as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with
others around the world to build a more integrated global political
and economic structure — one world, if you will." His response: "If
that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." (20)

On top of his work with the Global Dialogue Institute and ((Awakening
Mind)), Gangadean is co-convenor of the World Commission on Global
Consciousness and Spirituality — a group that was formed in 1998 and
"brings eminent world leaders together in sustained deep dialogue to
cultivate global vision and wisdom for the new millennium." The
ambitions of the World Commission are in turn closely related to the
work undertaken by the Club of Budapest — an "informal international
association [that was formed in 1993 and is] dedicated to developing
a new way of thinking and a new ethics that will help resolve the
social, political, economic, and ecological challenges of the 21st
century." (21) All three co-chairs of the World Commission, Ervin
Laszlo, Robert Muller, and Karan Singh, (22) are members of the
latter group, with Laszlo acting as the founder and president of the
Club of Budapest. (23) In addition, Ervin Laszlo and Karan Singh are
both connected to the Indian-based project known as Auroville, which
describes itself as the "world’s first (pdf) and only internationally
recognised community [composed of approximately 1,900 adults and
children drawn from 40 different countries, including the UK, that
has been] established for research in human unity, practically
researching into humanity’s future cultural, environmental, social
and spiritual needs": Laszlo is a former member of their
international advisory council, while Singh — who is a former Indian
Ambassador to the United States, and is the international chairman at
the Temple of Understanding at the United Nations — serves as the
chair of the Auroville Foundation. This is interesting because much
like the aforementioned ((Awakening Mind)) project, the World
Commission, the Club of Budapest, and the Auroville Foundation appear
to be working to attempt to promote a form of spirituality that can
overcome all geographic and cultural divides. This work is ostensibly
carried out in the name of peace, but as mentioned earlier, such a
project appears well suited to other homogenizing globalizing
tendencies, which might explain why the Auroville Foundation receives
such strong financial support from corporate and political elites
from all over the world.

Zionists for Human Rights in Sudan (but please don’t mention
Palestine)

Writing in February 2008, James Petras notes that (what he refers to
as) the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) not only "directly
influence[s] US policy against Palestine, Iraq and Iran" but has also
"extended its campaign against ‘third parties’, countries like China
which have economic relations with Sudan (a Muslim nation with an
independent foreign policy which supports Palestinian rights)."
Moreover, Petras adds: "To an overwhelming degree, the propaganda
campaign behind the so-called ‘Darfur genocide campaign’ is the
Israeli state and its political apparatus in the U.S., namely the
ZPC." (24) Consequently, building upon earlier critical analyses, the
following section of this essay will investigate the backgrounds of
many of the New Humanitarians pushing for an intervention in Sudan.

The leading member of the Project for a New American Humanitarianism,
with regards to Sudan, is the Save Darfur Coalition. (25) Cofounded in
2004 by the aforementioned US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on
Conscience and the international development organization, American
Jewish World Service, the Coalition states that they aim to "raise
public awareness and mobilize a massive response to the atrocities in
Sudan’s western region of Darfur." It should be noted here that the
president of the American Jewish World Service, Ruth Messinger, in
addition to serving on the board of the Save Darfur Coalition, had
until recently (early 2007) served as a board member of InterAction, a
key US-based democracy manipulator. (26) Furthermore, in 2006,
Messinger ran for a seat in the World Zionist Congress on the
left-liberal "Hatikva" (Progressive Zionist Coalition) ticket. Not
surprisingly, Messinger is also linked to two other groups that are
calling for the need for a humanitarian intervention in Sudan, as she
sits on the advisory committee of Olympic Dream for Darfur, and is
listed as a supporter of the work of Investors Against Genocide (for
more on these groups see later).

The chair of the Save Darfur Coalition, Rev. Gloria White-Hammond, is
a particularly pertinent Coalition member owing to the numerous links
she maintains to related "humanitarian" groups. (27) Thus
White-Hammond is the founding co-chair of the Massachusetts Coalition
to Save Darfur, and the cofounder of My Sister’s Keeper — "a
women-led, women-focused, humanitarian action group" whose creation
was catalysed after White-Hammond was invited by Christian Solidarity
International "to travel to southern Sudan to take part in a slave
redemption mission" (in July 2001). In addition, White-Hammond serves
on the boards of both Christian Solidarity International and the
American Anti-Slavery Group, and like Messinger, White-Hammond also
sits on the advisory committee of Olympic Dream for Darfur, and is
listed as a supporter of the work of Investors Against
Genocide. Finally, White-Hammond serves as a board member of the
US-based Darfur Peace and Development Organization, where she sits
alongside Salih Mahmoud Osman (who is a director of the Sudan
Organization Against Torture, a group that received NED-funding in
2003, also "currently serves as a member of the Sudanese Parliament,"
and in 2005 received the Human Rights Defender Award from Human Rights
Watch, and in 2007 was awarded the "European Union’s top human rights
award, the Sakharov Prize"), (28) and the US talk radio host Joe
Madison (who played a key role in the launching, in 2000, of "The
Sudan Campaign, " an NED-linked campaign that arose "in response to
Secretary of State Albright’s challenge [to Charles Jacobs ] that
suffering in Sudan has not been ‘marketable’ to the American
people"). Joe Madison’s work for The Sudan Campaign is particularly
interesting because this group was initiated by Charles Jacobs of the
American Anti-Slavery Group, and John Eibner, the head of Christian
Solidarity International. (29) Notably, Jacobs, a committed Zionist,
now heads The Sudan Campaign, and is also the founder of the Committee
for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America and the David
Project, and is a member of the advisory board of the neoconservative
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies — many of whose key
principals were formerly associated with the Project for a New
American Century. Jacobs’s work can also be indirectly linked to the
Falun Gong’s cause, as New York attorney Carey R. D’Avino, who
formerly represented the Falun Gong, presently serves on the board of
American Anti-Slavery Group. (30)

The second cofounder of The Sudan Campaign, John Eibner, similarly
serves as a board member of the American Anti-Slavery Group, but also
acts as an expert for the neoconservative Zionist think tank, the
Middle East Forum, and has been the chairman and CEO of Christian
Solidarity International (USA) since 1990 — a group that describes
itself as "a Christian human rights organization for religious liberty
helping victims of religious repression, victimized children and
victims of disaster." Given the key role played by Eibner at Christian
Solidarity International, it is not surprising that this group should
play a critical role as a member of the Project for a New American
Humanitarianism.

Christian Solidarity International is also a member of the Coalition
for the Defense of Human Rights, a coalition whose other members
include the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and the Middle
East Intelligence Bulletin — a monthly publication jointly produced
by the Middle East Forum and the pro-Israel US Committee for a Free
Lebanon. The secretary-general of the Coalition for the Defense of
Human Rights, Rev. Keith Roderick, serves as Christian Solidarity
International’s representative in Washington, D.C., and presently acts
as the executive director of The Sudan Campaign. (31) It should be
pointed out that the British branch of Christian Solidarity
International, which since 1997 (when it "decided to separate from the
founding body") has been known as Christian Solidarity Worldwide, was
formerly headed by Baroness Cox of Queensbury (who now serves as a
patron of the organization). As mentioned, Baroness Cox presently
serves as a member of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of
Falun Gong in China, but, as her role at Christian Solidarity
Worldwide suggests, she has also been highly active in Sudanese
issues. Thus she serves on the board of reference of Servant’s Heart,
a group that "provides pastor training, pastoral and congregational
support to help build up the Christian church in south Sudan." (32)

The three other members of Servant’s Heart’s board of reference all
also serve on the advisory board of The Sudan Campaign, and are
Congressman Tom Tancredo, former NED board member Congressman Donald
Payne, and Senator Sam Brownback (who is also a member of the
executive committee of the neoconservative/Zionist stronghold, the
Jerusalem Summit). Critically, Baroness Cox serves alongside Senator
Brownback as a member of the Jerusalem Summit’s five person executive
committee, where they also sit alongside the infamous neoconservative
Zionist Daniel Pipes. (33) Also of interest, Daniel Pipes’s father,
Richard Pipes, serves with Baroness Cox on the advisory board of the
Andrei Sakharov Foundation, alongside Human Rights Watch president,
Robert Bernstein, and liberal philanthropist extraordinaire George
Soros amongst many others.

In 1983, Jim Jacobson launched a group known as the Christian Freedom
International as the US branch of Christian Solidarity International,
(34) however, CSI-USA eventually decided it wanted Jacobson’s group to
be independent of Christian Solidarity International (a procedure that
eventuated in 1998). Jacobson has noted that: "This step (pdf) was and
is important in that it allows CFI [Christian Freedom International]
to go to places without the permission of international treaties,
etc." One especially significant member of Christian Freedom
International’s board is the ultra-conservative Michael Farris, who
has been a member of the secretive Council for National Policy, and is
the founding president of Patrick Henry College — where he sits
alongside fellow board member, Janet Ashcroft, who is the wife of the
neoconservative former US Attorney-General John Ashcroft, who
presently teaches at Pat Robertson’s Regent University (Robertson is a
well-known Christian Zionist). Furthermore, until recently, Erik
Prince, the founder and CEO of the notorious private military
contractor Blackwater USA, serves on the board of Christian Freedom
International. This link is intriguing, because in June 2008, the
Financial Times (UK) reported that Mia Farrow, a representative for
the human rights group Dream for Darfur, had "asked Blackwater, the US
private security company active in Iraq, for help in Darfur after
becoming frustrated by the stalled deployment of a United Nations
peacekeeping force." Here it is important to recall that Rev. Gloria
White-Hammond, who is a board member of Christian Solidarity
International, serves alongside Mia Farrow on the advisory committee
of Olympic Dream for Darfur, and both are listed as supporters of
Investors Against Genocide; consequently, I now introduce these two
groups.

Olympic Dream for Darfur, which was launched in June 2007, is "an
initiative" of a group called Public Interest Projects — a project
that was established in 1983 to bring "together the work of
philanthropic institutions, nonprofit groups and other public interest
organizations who share a vision and commitment to creating a just
society." The founder of this project, Donald K. Ross, presently
serves as the chair of GreenPeace USA, and in the 1970s acted as a
consumer attorney, and then as director of Ralph Nader’s Citizen
Action Group: however, more importantly from 1985 through 1999, he
directed the activities of an important democracy manipulating liberal
foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund. (35) Jill Savitt serves as
the executive director of the Olympic Dream for Darfur, and prior to
taking up this position she was based at the aforementioned Human
Rights First, where she acted as their Director of Public
Programs. Savitt also serves as a board member of the Save Darfur
Coalition. While at Human Rights First, Savitt supervised their HOPE
for Darfur campaign, so it is not surprising that Nicky Lazar, who was
the campaign manager for this campaign, went on to become the
international director for the Olympic Dream for Darfur. (36) One
individual serving on the 13 person strong advisory committee —
alongside the aforementioned Mia Farrow, Rev. Gloria White Hammond,
and Ruth Messinger — is Gayle Smith, who "served as Special Assistant
to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the
National Security Council from 1998-2001, and as Senior Advisor to the
Administrator and Chief of Staff of the US Agency for International
Development from 1994-1998." Amongst her other various affiliations,
Smith serves as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and on
the board of the Africa-America Institute (which received NED funding
in the early 1990s), where she sits alongside key members of the power
elite, like Rosalind Kainyah (who is the Director of Public Affairs,
USA, for the mining group De Beers), and George Kirkland (who is the
vice president of the oil giant, Chevron Corporation). (37)

Investors Against Genocide is a project of the not-for-profit
Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur, and was originally publicly
launched on January 26, 2007, (International Holocaust Remembrance
Day) as the Fidelity Out of Sudan Campaign (referring to their efforts
to get the Fidelity investment firm to avoid or divest holdings of the
Chinese oil company PetroChina). The project was renamed Investors
Against Genocide in September 2008, and although they continue to work
against Fidelity, they extended their campaign to include the other
major holders of PetroChina. Their mission statement notes that they
are…

…a non-profit organization dedicated to convincing mutual fund and
other investment firms to change their investing strategy so as to
avoid complicity in genocide. In particular, we want investment firms
to avoid or divest holdings of PetroChina (Chinese), Sinopec
(Chinese), ONGC (Indian), and Petronas (Malaysian), the four major oil
companies that are partnering with the Government of Sudan and helping
to fund the genocide in Darfur.

Investors Against Genocide was cofounded by Darfur activists Eric
Cohen (who also serves on the advisory committee of Olympic Dream for
Darfur), Susan Morgan, and Bill Rosenfeld. Their Web site also
provides a list of prominent people who support their campaign, and
these include Mia Farrow, Joe Madison, Ruth Messinger, Rev. Gloria
White-Hammond, Sudan analyst Eric Reeves (for a critique of his work,
see here), Charlie Clements (who is president, Unitarian Universalist
Service Committee, and heads their Drumbeat for Darfur campaign, and
is vice-chair and secretary of EarthRights International — a group
that obtains funding from the American Jewish World Service, and
Rights and Democracy), (38) Samantha Power (whose recent book, A
Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, was awarded the
Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross Prize for the best book in
US foreign policy, and whose service as a New Humanitarian has been
outlined by Edward Herman), (39) John Prendergast (former Director for
African Affairs at the National Security Council, Clinton
administration, former executive fellow of the US Institute of Peace,
senior advisor to the International Crisis Group, and board member of
the Save Darfur Coalition), US Congressman Michael Capuano
(Democrat-Massachusetts) (who serves on the congressional advisory
board of the Humpty Dumpty Institute), and 46 other Massachusetts
legislators.

Dismantling the Project for a New American Humanitarianism

The Project for a New American Humanitarianism has sought to wage
"humanitarian" warfare on enemy states, in this case China. (40) Given
the imperialism-friendly outcomes of the dedicated activism undertaken
by the New Humanitarians it is not surprising that some important
aspects of their work intersects with neoconservatives and
Zionists. Together these groups demonize China, the rival capitalist
superpower, encouraging the view that China abuses the human rights of
Falun Gong practitioners, represses Tibetan freedom activists, and
trades with the genocidal Sudan. At the same time, the United States,
the faltering capitalist superpower, sinks to the bottom of the New
Humanitarians’ discourse on human rights, despite regularly abusing
the human rights of its own citizens (incarcerating many of them),
repressing the activities of all progressive activists who seek to
challenge US hegemonic interests, supporting genocides when it sees
fit (e.g., Indonesia and East Timor), and supporting well known ethnic
cleansers — i.e., Israel.

The connections that exist between the disparate members of the
Project for a New American Humanitarianism, neoconservatives, and
Zionists, are alarming. However, they should not be considered
evidence of a secretive conspiracy. Instead these "humanitarian"
networks should be considered akin to those that exist between the
neoconservative movement and the Israel Lobby. On this point, John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, in their seminal book, The Israel Lobby
and U.S. Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), note that:
"Many neoconservatives are connected to an overlapping set of
Washington-based think tanks, committees, and publications whose
agenda includes promoting the special relationship between the United
States and Israel." They go on to add though, that while the…

…interrelated affiliations within the neoconservative movement…may
seem to some like a shadowy conspiracy (or even a "right-wing cabal")
[it] is anything but. On the contrary, the various think tanks,
committees, foundations, and publications that have nurtured the
neoconservative movement operate much as other policy networks do. Far
from shunning publicity or engaging in hidden plots, these groups
actively court publicity for the explicit purpose of shaping public
and elite opinion and thereby moving U.S. foreign policy in the
directions they favor. The neoconservative network is both undeniably
impressive and similar to networks that have arisen in other policy
areas, such as tax reform, the environment, or immigration. (p.131)

Unfortunately, like most other foreign policy analysts, Mearsheimer
and Walt fail to document the "humanitarian" ventures of the Israel
Lobby, and so ultimately provide only a limited critique of its
activities by focusing on militarily enforced domination, rather than
on the Lobby’s ties to the Project for a New American
Humanitarianism. (41) These "humanitarian" networks are not a shadowy
conspiracy, instead, as demonstrated here, the members of the Project
for a New American Humanitarianism organize their activities openly
and publicly, and they are highly visible.

It is patently clear that concerned citizens need to divert more of
their time and resources to helping other activists discard the
rose-tinted glasses that presently obscure their vision of the
regressive nature of many of the activities of the members of the
Project for a New American Humanitarianism. This is a difficult task,
and it is made harder by the Left’s prevailing sympathy for, and
involvement in, many of the human rights campaigns that have been
waged by the groups discussed here. But as Gross reminds us in his
prescient book Friendly Fascism: "If you can’t see that you’re part of
the problems, then you’re standing in the way of attacks on them."
(42) Thus if we, the people, are to break the feel-good chains that
imperial elites have enticed many of us into embracing, in the name of
human rights, then it is necessary for us (as concerned individuals
working collectively) to document and analyse the modus operandi of
both our aggressive and "humanitarian" adversaries.

Notes

1. The name Project for a New American Humanitarianism was inspired
by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson’s work on The New Humanitarian
Crusaders. (back)

2. Despite the focus on the forthcoming Olympics little mention is
ever made of the well documented antidemocratic nature of the
Olympics, which facilitate human rights abuses all over the world. For
further details see, Brian Martin, "Ten Reasons to Oppose All Olympic
Games," Freedom, August 3, 1996. (back)

3. Ward Churchill writes in his book, A Little Matter of Genocide:
Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present, that in
preparing for the 1992 Columbus quincen-tenniary, then-director of the
National Endowment for the Humanities "Lynne Cheney, in collaboration
with the United States Senate… refuse[d] to fund any film production
which proposed to use the word ‘genocide,’ even in passing, to explain
the subsequent liquidation of America’s indigenous population."
(pp.4-5) (back)

4. Ward Churchill goes on: "In other words, no previous attempt to
obliterate an entire people – not Cortes’s butchery of an estimated
20,000 Mexicas (Aztecs) per day, ultimately putting to the sword more
than 300,000 as he set his men to systematically reducing all evidence
of their civilization to rubble; not the Spanish system of forced
labor (encomiendo) under which entire American Indian populations were
worked to death, not the transatlantic slave trade which cost millions
of African lives, depopulating vast expanses of the ‘Dark Continent’;
not the Virginia Colony’s extermination of the Powhatans during the
1620s nor the Puritans’ campaign to utterly eradicate the Pequots in
Massachusetts a decade later; not Lord Jeffrey Amherst’s 1763
instruction that his subordinates use smallpox to ‘extirpate’ the
Ottawas nor the U.S. Army’s replication of the tactic against the
Mandans in 1836; not the 1864 orders of both civil and military
authorities in Colorado for the total extermination of Cheyennes and
Arapahoes nor the actual extermination of entire aboriginal
populations in Tasmania and Newfoundland; not the 1918 Turkish
slaughter of well over a million Armenians; not the charnel houses of
Indonesia, Katanga, and Biafra in the 1960s nor those of Bangladesh
and Burundi in the 1970s; not Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge nor even
the more current horrors in East Timor, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Nothing
qualifies as being ‘truly’ genocidal except the Holocaust, or Slzoah,
as it is known in the Jewish tradition." A Little Matter of Genocide,
p.63-4. (back)

5. On his New Statesman blog, Conservative politician Brian Coleman
wrote (in July 2007) a piece titled "Falun Gong is a constant reminder
of Chinese oppression," in which he noted how the "wholesale
persecution of Falun Gong has gone largely unreported in the West."
Here it is noteworthy that Coleman is also a "member of Conservative
Friends of Israel, a group whose Parliamentary Group secretary, David
Amess, serves on the board of reference of Christian Solidarity
Worldwide (see later). The political director of Conservative Friends
of Israel, Robert Halfon, who was also a signatory of the Henry
Jackson Society’s statement of principles (international patrons of
this group include many well-known neoconservative Zionists – e.g.,
Richard Perle), and Halfon is also a board member of the Centre for
Social Justice. The latter group was formed (in 2004) by the former
British Conservative party leader, Iain Duncan Smith, and is currently
headed by Philippa Stroud, who was a former staffer at a group called
Christian Action Research and Education. The executive chair of the
latter group, Lyndon Bowring, also happens to serve on the board of
reference of Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Returning to Coleman, it
is significant to note that in October 2007 "Deputy Chairman of the
London Assembly Brian Coleman and Vice-President of the European
Parliament, Edward McMillan-Scott" (who is also a member of the
Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China, see
next) were involved in lighting the Human Rights Torch as part of a
relay that "was set up by rights groups with the mandate to show that
it is against the principles of the Olympic charter for the Games be
held in China whilst human rights abuses continue."

Leeshai S. Lemish, "Falun Gong and Media Bias: Representation of Falun
Gong-Related News in AP, Reuters, and AFP Reports," International
Association for Intercultural Communication Studies, Chinese Culture
University, Taipei, Taiwan, July 6-8, 2005. (back)

6. Significantly, "Steven Spielberg resigned as artistic adviser to
the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, in protest at China’s failure to
distance itself from genocide and human rights abuses in Darfur."

According to Raoul Wallenberg’s online biography: "Several tens of
thousands of Jews were that way saved by Wallenberg or by the
embassies of neutral countries inspired by Wallenberg’s work."
Wallenberg’s online biography goes on to note that: "One of his
helpers, future Congressman Tom Lantos, accompanied Raoul Wallenberg
to the trains, where Jews were being packed together like animals for
their journey to a certain death, and helped the Swede pull people
off." Here it is also interesting to note that the first book
published by Kati Marton (who is the wife of the "closet Zionist"
Richard Holbrooke), was a biography of Raoul Wallenberg titled
Wallenberg: Missing Hero (Random House, 1982). Marton serves on the
national advisory board of the Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the
United States alongside people like Elizabeth Moynihan (who is the
widow of the former leading neoconservative Daniel Patrick Moynihan),
Jerome Shestack (who is the founder of Human Rights First, for further
details see note 14), and Elie Wiesel (who was the founding chairman
of the US Holocaust Memorial Council in 1980, and amongst various
other "humanitarian" affiliations serves on the international council
of advisors of the International Campaign for Tibet). In a similar
vein, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, which was founded
by Baruch Tenembaum, can also be linked to the Project for a New
American Humanitarianism via their China representative, Xu Xin, who
also serves on the academic committee of the Jerusalem Summit (see
later). Finally, another related group of interest is the Raoul
Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, which can
be linked to various democracy manipulating groups by Lena
Hjelm-Wallen who serves on their board of trustees. (back)

7. In an informative radio interview conducted by KPFA Radio in
November 2006 with Samuel Luo (who runs the website
), and David Ewing (who is a co-chair
of the US China Peoples Friendship Association), Ewing suggested (at
39 min) that when relations between the US and China are problematic
there is "more official interest on the part of the US government in
groups like Falun Gong," but when diplomatic relations are less
adversarial, then the coverage that the Falun Gong’s cause receives
diminishes. Ascertaining the friendliness of political relations
between the US and China is, of course, not straight forward, as
although many members of the Project for a New American
Humanitarianism are busy highlighting China’s human rights abuses,
other US elites are simultaneously making huge profits from their
rising investments in China’s booming economy, particularly in China’s
repressive internal (in)security market (for further details, see
Naomi Klein’s excellent article "China’s All-Seeing Eye"). Indeed,
Israel would appear to be a prime exporter of such tools of repression
to China, because as Klein notes in an earlier article, many of
Israel’s "most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel’s status as a
fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of
twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom — a living example of how to enjoy
relative safety amid constant war. And the reason Israel is now
enjoying supergrowth ["with a roaring stock market and growth rates
nearing China’s"] is that those companies are busily exporting that
model to the world." (back)

8. China Aid Association is a "charter member" of Religious Liberty
Partnership, a group whose leadership team is made up from
representatives from Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Christian
Solidarity International (Switzerland), World Evangelical Alliance
Religious Liberty Commission (Finland), Open Doors International
(Holland), and Voice of the Martyrs (Canada). The China Aid
Association advisory board is home to many neoconservatives the most
significant of which is former TIME Beijing Bureau Chief, Dr. David
Aikman, who has written the biography of the Christian evangelist
Billy Graham, was a former senior fellow at the neoconservative Ethics
and Public Policy Center, and is a regular contributor to The Weekly
Standard. (back)

9. The president of Open Doors USA is Carl Moeller whose biography
boasts that he is an "authority on religious freedom issues and has
appeared on many radio and television shows, including Hannity &
Colmes, [and Pat Robertson’s ultra-conservative] Christian
Broadcasting Network." His biography notes that: "Before joining Open
Doors USA, Moeller, 45, served as a Pastor in Membership at Saddleback
Church (Lake Forest, California)." This is significant because
Saddleback Church was founded in 1980 by Pastor Rick Warren, one of
whom’s "most important role models, he says, [has] been Billy Graham."
In addition, Pastor Warren was recently recruited to serve on Tony
Blair’s Faith Foundation where he sits alongside people like
Rev. David Coffey (who serves on the board of reference of Christian
Solidarity Worldwide), Anantanand Rambachan (who is on the advisory
board of The Pluralism Project), Rabbi David Rosen (who formerly
served as the Anti Defamation League’s Director of Interfaith
Relations in Israel, and serves a principal of the American Jewish
Committee), and Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks (who is the honorary
president of United Jewish Israel Appeal). (back)

10. Another prominent example of a Falun Gong group that receives
support from various elites is provided by the Coalition to
Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China. This broad-ranging
international group was launched in 2006, and significant members of
the Coalition with "democratic" ties include:

¢ former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour, who is a member
of the Committee of 100 for Tibet, and a director of the key US-based
democracy manipulator the Council for a Community of Democracies.

¢ former President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel, who is also
a member of the Committee of 100 for Tibet, received the NED’s
Democracy Service Medal in 2007, and serves on the international
council of advisors for the NED-funded International Campaign for
Tibet (for further criticism see here).

¢ member of the British House of Lords Baroness Caroline Cox, who
also serves on the advisory board of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation
alongside individuals like George Soros and the president of Human
Rights Watch, Richard Bernstein.

¢ vice-president of the European Parliament Edward McMillan-Scott,
who founded the European Democracy Initiative in 1992, and serves as
the chairman of the European Democracy Caucus that was established in
2005.

The latter two British members of the Coalition to Investigate the
Persecution of Falun Gong in China also happen to serve as members of
the important democracy manipulating group the International Committee
for Democracy in Cuba, a group that was founded by Vaclav Havel in
2003. The Coalition’s three US members are all Republicans:
Congressmen Thaddeus McCotter (Michigan), Congressman Dana Rohrabacher
(California), and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Florida). (back)

11. In 2002, Freedom House created a Bette Bao Lord Prize for Writing
in the Cause of Freedom, whose first recipient was the Egyptian
"prodemocracy" activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim. While Ibrahim’s links to
the darker side of the democracy manipulating lobby have not played
out in the international media, one part of his life that has been
well covered in the media was his arrest in June 2000, and his
subsequent imprisonment for illegally receiving foreign funding
(European Union grants) for his democracy work at the Ibn Khaldun
Center (which he founded in 1988 in Egypt. Interestingly, the Ibn
Khaldun Center only received its first NED grant in 2005 to "establish
and maintain" a new Egyptian Democracy Support Network. Ibrahim’s 2000
arrest pricked the world’s attention, and the Bush administration went
as far as withholding a "supplemental aid package for Egypt" until he
was released from prison in August 2000. However, Ibrahim’s ties to
the democracy manipulators are longstanding, as in 1983 he founded the
Arab Organization for Human Rights, of which the IFEX member and NED
recipient the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) is a
member. This makes it less surprising that the secretary-general of
EOHR, Hafez Abu Saada, was arrested on similar charges to Ibrahim in
December 1998, and was likewise released from prison as a result of
international pressure. Ibrahim’s ties to Freedom House and the NED
hint at his neoconservative credentials, which are confirmed by his
listing on the books of Benador Associates, a well-known
neoconservative public relations agency." (back)

12. George Soros is emeritus director of Refugees International, a
group whose mission statement notes that it provides "humanitarian
assistance and protection for displaced people around the world and
works to end the conditions that create displacement." Other
"democratic" emeritus directors at Refugees International include
Trish Malloch Brown (who served as a program officer for the Soros
Foundation in Eastern Europe from 1989 to 1992, and is married to
"democratic" notable Mark Malloch Brown), Robert DeVecchi (who is a
board member of the Foundation for a Civil Society), Judy Mayotte (who
is a member of the executive committee of the International Rescue
Committee), and Frank Wisner, Jr. (who formerly worked for the US
Agency for International Development in Vietnam during the 1960s, and
is a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund — also see here).

The current president of Refugees International is Kenneth Bacon, who
prior to his appointment in 2001 had worked for seven years as
assistant secretary, public affairs, at the US Department of Defense
— Bacon also represents Refugees International on InterAction’s board
of directors, and in 2001 took over the presidency from Lionel
Rosenblatt, who had served as president of Refugees International for
ten years. Refugees International’s vice president for policy, Joel
Charny, is co-chair of InterAction’s Protection Working Group, and is
also a member of the National Committee on North Korea. The chairman
of Refugees International’s board of directors is Farooq Kathwari, who
is also a trustee of Freedom House, and has received numerous awards
including the American Jewish Committee’s National Human Relations
Award, and the Anti-Defamation League’ s Humanitarian Award. Other
interesting directors of Refugees International are Elizabeth Bagley
(who served as a senior advisor to secretary of state Madeline
Albright from 1997 to 2001, and is now a director of the core NED
grantee, the National Democratic Institute), Constance Milstein (who
is a director of the National Democratic Institute), Richard Holbrooke
(who a director of the NED, and is married to Kati Marton, who serves
on the board of Human Rights Watch and the International Rescue
Committee), and Mary Ellen Glynn (who has recently served as the
spokeswoman for Richard Holbrooke — for a longer discussion of his
antidemocratic career see here). (back)

13. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum is located on Raoul Wallenberg
Place. (back)

14. Human Rights First (formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for
Human Rights) is a non-profit international human rights organization
based in New York and Washington DC that was founded in 1977 by Jerome
Shestack. Their website notes that to maintain their independence,
they "accept no government funding," this however, has not prevented
them from taking money (albeit a small amount) from the largest arms
manufacturer in the world, Lockheed Martin. Major donors ($100,000 and
above) of their work, however, include the likes of the Ford
Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Open Society Institute
(see Annual Report 2005/2006, pdf).

Human Rights First’s founder, Jerome Shestack, has recently served as
the president of the American Bar Association (1997-8), has "chaired
the International League for Human Rights since 1981 and is currently
its honorary president," is a commissioner of the International
Commission of Jurists, and a director of the Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt Institute. In 2006, Michael Posner became the president of
Human Rights First after serving 28 years as their executive
director. Posner’s most controversial previous affiliation was to the
National Coalition for Haitian Rights (in the early 1980s) of which
Human Rights Watch’s Jocelyn McCalla is the current executive
director. Maureen Byrnes moved into Posner’s vacated position as Human
Rights First’s new executive director, having previously served at the
Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia as Director of Policy
Initiatives.

Human Rights First has held a Human Rights Awards Dinner annually
since 2001, at which they honor the work of two or three human rights
activists. This is particularly remarkable because some of these
activists have been strongly linked to the democracy manipulating
community. Thus in 2002, the two award winners were Saad Eddin Ibrahim
(whose work is closely linked to the NED, see note 11) and Sima Samar
(who is now the chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights
Commission — a group that has collaborated with USAID, is listed as a
partner organization of the International Center for Transitional
Justice, and includes the former Afghan country director for the
National Democratic Institute, Hossain Ramoz, on their board of
commissioners). In 2003, Xu Wenli was one of the recipients of the
Human Rights Award: Wenli is currently a senior fellow at the Watson
Institute, and on May 4, 2006, he spoke at a conference organized by
NED aid recipient the Laogai Research Foundation. The following year
(2004) Mehrangiz Kar received the Human Rights First Award — she
again is ‘democratically’ connected as between 2001 and 2002 she was a
Reagan-Fascell Democracy fellow at the NED, in 2002 she won the NED
Democracy Award, between 2005 and 2006 she was a fellow at the Carr
Center, and she is presently a program advisor for the Women’s
Learning Partnership. None of the other Human Rights First award
recipients appear to be obviously linked to "democratic"
organizations.

The current chair of Human Rights First’s board of directors is
William Zabel: in 2000 (at least), Zabel was a director of Human
Rights Watch and a legal advisor for the Soros Foundations, and he is
presently also a director of the Winston Founation. Other
‘democratically’ linked Human Rights First directors include Louis
Henkin, Harold Hongju Koh, M. Bernard Aidinoff, Gail Furman, Scott
Greathead (who is a founding member of Human Rights First, and a
director of the NED-funded Human Rights in China), Juliette Kayyem
(who is an advisor for Americans for Informed Democracy), Kerry
Kennedy (who is an international advisor for the International
Campaign for Tibet, and a board member of the NED-funded China
Information Center), and Philip Lacovara (who is on the national
advisory board of the right-wing Center for the Community Interest, an
organization whose founder Roger Conner went on to serves as the
executive director of Search for Common Ground between 2000 and
2004). Two Human Rights First directors without "democratic" ties are
still linked to Human Rights Watch, these are Steven Shapiro (who is
the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a member
of both Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Advisory Committee and Asia Advisory
Committee), and Robert D. Joffe (who is a member of Human Rights
Watch’s Africa Advisory Committee). Finally, "democratic" Human Rights
First’s national council members include Human Rights Watch founder
Robert L. Bernstein, Helene L. Kaplan, Abner J. Mikva (who is a member
of the senior advisory committee of the National Democratic
Institute), and two HRW Americas Advisory Committee members Bruce Rabb
and Rose Styron. (back)

15. The Humpty Dumpty Institute was created in 1998 and their website
states that it "forges innovative public-private partnerships to find
creative solutions to difficult humanitarian problems" — which it
does by working closely with various departments of the US government.
(back)

16. The Israel Policy Forum was formed in 1993 and is a "non-profit
organization whose mission is to promote the Middle East peace process
in order to strengthen Israeli security and further US foreign policy
interests in the region." (back)

17. Benjamin Gilman was formerly a trustee of the Meridian
International Center — a nonprofit that was founded in 1960, and as
their website notes, is "dedicated to advancing international
understanding through public diplomacy and global engagement". Major
financial supporters of the Meridian International Center’s work
include Lockheed Martin, ExxonMobil, and General Motors. (back)

18. Soenke Biermann, "Found in Translation: Differences, Tolerance
and Enriching Diversity," Refereed paper presented to Activating Human
Rights and Peace: Universal Responsibility, Byron Bay, Australia, July
1-4, 2008. (Conference proceedings will be published online on
December 15, 2008.) (back)

19. Emanuel M. Josephson, Rockefeller, ‘Internationalist’: The Man
Who Misrules the World (Chedney Press, 1952); Griffin, G. Edward, The
Fearful Master: A Second Look at the United Nations (Western Islands,
1964). (back)

20. David Rockefeller, Memoirs (New York: Random House, 2002),
p. 405. (back)

21. According to their website: "The idea of the Club of Budapest was
developed in 1978 in a discussion between Aurelio Peccei, founder and
first president of the Club of Rome, and Ervin Laszlo, systems
philosopher and also member of the Club of Rome at that time."
Honorary members of the Club of Budapest include the Dalai Lama,
Vaclav Havel and Elie Wiesel. (back)

22. Significant members of the World Commission include Desmund Tutu,
Robert A.F. Thurman and Rodrigo Carazo Odio: all three of whom serve
as members of the Committee of 100 for Tibet, and on the international
council of advisors for the NED-funded International Campaign for
Tibet. (Desmund Tutu also acts as a member of Human Rights Watch’s
Arms Advisory Committee.) Two other World Commission members who are
linked to the Tibetan cause are Betty Williams (who is a member of the
Committee of 100 for Tibet), and The Dalai Lama. (back)

23. Earlier this year, the BBC provided a sensationalist extremely
limited critique of Auroville which only focused on the links between
child abuse and Auroville (see related BBC article). (back)

24. Petras points out that the Conference of the Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations "has focused on the Darfur ‘genocide’
because by doing so it favors the brutal separatists in southern
Sudan, armed and advised by Israel, as a means of depriving
pro-Palestinian Sudan of a large oil rich region in the south of the
country. The Darfur campaign deliberately and systematically excludes
any mention of the Israeli Supreme Court’s approval of Israel’s food
and fuel blockade and deliberate prevention of the movement of medical
personnel in Gaza and the West Bank, its approval of Israel’s practice
of torture (‘forceful interrogations’), armed assaults on the vital
infrastructure and civilian population centers of Gaza." (back)

25. United Jewish Communities is an organizational member of the Save
Darfur Coalition, and a member of IsraAID — which was founded in 2001
and describes itself as a "coordinating body of Israeli and Jewish
NGOs (non governmental organizations) and other interested parties
based in Israel that are active in development and relief work and
concerned about global issues (‘Tikkun Olam’)." In 2002, Henry
Elkaslasi, the head of The Humanitarian Fund of the Kibbutz Movement,
became chair of IsraAID. Elkaslasi presently also serves as the
co-chair of the Israeli Coalition for the Refugees of Darfur and Sudan
(also known as Israel for Darfur). Israel for Darfur is listed as a
campaign of the blogging group, Darfur Awareness, which in turn is a
project of a group called Mideast Youth. This latter group was founded
by Esra’a Al Shafei — who also cofounded the Middle East Interfaith
Blogger Network — and in June 2007, she received an award from
free-market Atlas Economic Research Foundation for her Mideast Youth
project. (back)

26. According to their website, InterAction, which was formed in
1984, is the "largest alliance of US-based international development
and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations." In 2005, their total
annual revenue was just over $5.4 million, of which a sizable amount
($1.4 million) came from the US government, and an array of liberal
foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Ford
Foundation. Former presidents of InterAction include Julia Taft, 1992
to 1997 (who is a former NED director, and former director of the
Office for US Disaster Assistance at USAID), Jim Moody, 1998 to 2000
(who now serves as a director of Relief International, and serves on
the advisory board for the NED-funded National Iranian American
Council), and Mary McClymont, 2001 to 2005 (who previously had worked
for 12 years with the Ford Foundation, and is now a director of both
Global Rights, and Physicians for Human Rights). In 2005, Mary
McClymont was replaced by InterAction’s first ever foreign-born
president, Mohammad Akhter, who also serves as the executive director
of the American Public Health Association. In February 2006, with no
irony apparently intended, Dr. Akhter observed that: "The United
States expresses its greatness in a variety of ways, but perhaps none
is more important than the humanitarian and development assistance we
provide overseas." (back)

27. Other notable ‘humanitarian’ board members of the Save Darfur
Coalition include Jill Savitt (who is the director of the Olympic
Dream for Darfur), John Prendergast (who was the former Director for
African Affairs at the National Security Council for the Clinton
administration), and James Zogby (who is the founder and president of
the Arab American Institute, is a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations, serves on the Human Rights Watch Middle East Advisory
Committee, acts as an advisor for Americans for Informed Democracy,
and serves on the national advisory council of the US Interreligious
Committee for Peace in the Middle East). Incidentally, given the Save
Darfur Coalition’s links to the elite-friendly Human Rights Watch
through James Zogby, it is noteworthy that an international human
rights group called Crisis Action (which has offices in Berlin,
Brussels, London and Paris) coordinates the Globe for Darfur
coalition. This is interesting because Crisis Action — which has
obtained support from the Save Darfur Coalition — works in
partnership with many New Humanitarian NGOs, and is headed by
individuals who represent, or have represented, groups which include
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the International Crisis
Group, and Oxfam International. (back)

28. The winner of the 2006 Sakharov Prize was Alexander Milinkevich,
the Belarussian opposition leader; while the 2005 winners were Ladies
in White (a "pro-democracy group in Cuba"), the key democracy
manipulator, Reporters Without Borders, and Hauwa Ibrahim (a Nigerian
human rights attorney). (back)

29. In addition to Christian Solidarity International and the
American Anti-Slavery Group, other members of The Sudan Campaign
coalition included the American Jewish Committee (DC Branch), and the
NED-funded Sudan Human Rights Organization (Cairo) amongst
others. Members of the Campaigns advisory board included Freedom House
representative Nina Shea, three Republicans: Senator Sam Brownback
(Kansas) who serves on the board of reference of Servant’s Heart, and
is presidium of the Jerusalem Summit; Tom Tancredo (Colorado) who also
serves on the board of reference of Servant’s Heart; and Frank Wolf
(Virginia) who is a director of Bread for the World; and three
Democrat Congressman: Gregory Meeks (New York) who is a board member
of the NED, and serves on the Congressional advisory board of the
Humpty Dumpty Institute; Eleanor Holmes Norton (District of Columbia)
who is a former board member of the Rockefeller Foundation; and Donald
Payne (New Jersey) who serves on the board of reference of Servant’s
Heart, is a former NED board member, a board member of Bread for the
World, serves on the Congressional advisory board of the Humpty Dumpty
Institute, and is co-chairman of the Alexis de Tocqueville
Institution. (back)

30. Another significant board member of the American Anti-Slavery
Group is Jesse Sage, who formerly served for seven years as associate
director of the Group before joining the neoconservative American
Islamic Congress (a group whose work is closely linked to that of the
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies). Sage’s background provides
an indicative representation of the close ties that are maintained
between progressive groups and the democracy manipulating community,
as he also acts as the treasurer of the Human and Civil Rights
Organizations of America, a group that has provided funding to the
progressive media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, three
NED-funded groups (Human Rights in China, the International Campaign
for Tibet, and the Center for Victims of Torture), and various
pro-Israel group’s like the Anti-Defamation League, the International
Fellowship of Christians and Jews, the Jewish Fund for Justice, and
the New Israel Fund. (back)

31. Rev. Roderick also serves on the advisory board of the American
Council for Kosovo, and is a member of the North Korea Freedom
Coalition. The latter group was formed in 2003, and their executive
committee is chaired by Christian Solidarity International board
member, Suzanne Scholte. Thus it appears that Korea is certainly
considered to be a major target for the New Humanitarian
community. Fittingly Scholte is also president of the Defense Forum
Foundation (whose board of directors include former NED board member
and Project for a New American Century signatory, Fred Ikle), and she
serves as the treasurer of the US Committee for Human Rights in North
Korea (whose board is home to many Project for a New American Century
signatories, and the NED’s president, while the Committee itself is
headed by Debra Liang-Fenton, who formerly directed the US Institute
of Peace’s Human Rights Implementation initiative, and has been a
project officer of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at
the NED). For further background on the democracy manipulating
community’s interest in North Korea, see Stephen Gowans,
"Understanding North Korea," What’s Left, March 3, 2007. (back)

32. In 2003, Baroness Cox founded the British-based Humanitarian Aid
Relief Trust, whose board of trustees includes Anthony Peel (who is
also a trustee of Christian Solidarity Worldwide), and Nicholas Mellor
(who is the co-founder of Medical Emergency Relief International,
whose board of trustees is chaired by Lord Jay of Ewelme, an
individual who "was Tony Blair’s personal representative to the G8
Summits in 2005 and 2006"). Baroness Cox also formerly served as a
trustee of Medical Emergency Relief International. (back)

33. For a critical review of the First Jerusalem Summit (held from
October 12-14, 2003), see Syed Shahabuddin, "A New World Order in the
Making: An Alliance of Israeli Zionists, Americans, Neo-Cons and World
Jewry", The Milli Gazette, September 2004. Also see, Habib Siddiqui,
"Jerusalem Summit: What Are The Neocons Cooking?," Media Monitors
Network, October 29, 2005. (back)

34. Jim Jacobson launched Christian Freedom International (CFI) after
visiting Burma, on the prompting of Ambassador Faith Whittlesey, who
had asked Jim to "spearhead a program to assist persecuted
Christians." (pdf) (Whittlesey currently serves as a board member of
CFI.) Jacobson’s biography notes that before creating CFI he "served
as a policy analyst in the Reagan White House, a political appointee
in the George Herbert Walker Bush administration"; it also notes that,
"At the invitation of First Lady Laura Bush, Mr. Jacobson participated
in The Dialogue on Burma, a roundtable discussion conducted during the
September 2006 U.N. General Assembly that allowed activists and
government officials to speak openly about the severe humanitarian
crisis that has plagued Burma for decades." For further details on the
democracy manipulating communities interests in Burma, see Michael
Barker, "People Power or Political Puppetry?", The Fanonite, January
16, 2008. (back)

35. For a detailed critique of the influence of liberal philanthropy
on the evolution of the environmental movement, see Michael Barker,
"The Liberal Foundations of Environmentalism: Revisiting the
Rockefeller-Ford Connection," Capitalism Nature Socialism, 19, 2,
15-42. (Part of the article is also summarized here.) (back)

36. Nicky Lazar was also a producer on Michael Moore’s two most
recent films "SICKO" and "Fahrenheit 9/11." (back)

37. The president of the Africa-America Institute, Mora McLean,
formerly served as deputy director for Africa and Middle East programs
at the Ford Foundation, and is a former board member of the NED’s
sister organization, the US Institute of Peace. (back)

38. The co-founder and executive director of EarthRights
International, Ka Hsaw Wa, is a member of the Karen ethnic nationality
of Burma, and since 1995 EarthRights have "worked in Burma to monitor
the impacts of the military regime’s policies and activities on local
populations and ecosystems." Two notable members of EarthRights
eight-person strong board of directors include Kumi Naidoo (who is the
secretary-general and CEO of CIVICUS: the World Alliance for Citizen
Participation), and Rebecca Rockefeller (who is a trustee of the
Rockefeller Family Fund). (back)

39. Samantha Power is a board member of the International Rescue
Committee, and the PNAC-linked US Committee for Human Rights in North
Korea (see note 31). (back)

Gross also highlight that "the operating rules of modern capitalist
empire require ascending rhetoric about economic and social
development, human rights, and the self-effacing role of transnational
corporations in the promotion of progress and prosperity. The more
lies are told, the more important it becomes for the liars to justify
themselves by deep moral commitments to high-sounding objectives that
mask the pursuit of money and power. The more a country like the
United States imports its prosperity from the rest of the world, the
more its leaders must dedicate themselves to the sacred ideal of
exporting abundance, technology, and civilization to everyone
else. The further this myth may be from reality, the more significant
it becomes — and the greater the need for academic notables to
document its validity by bold assertion and self-styled statistical
demonstration." p.5, p.205. (back)

40. An early example of this phenomenon is provided by Richard Brown
(1980) who described how liberal philanthropists (like the Rockefeller
Foundation) and other missionaries under the guise of promoting
medical technologies overseas "wrapped imperialism in cloaks of
humanitarianism." He points out that such "humanitarians" certainly
did not lack humanitarian feeling: "Rather, their humanitarianism was
shaped by their ethnocentrism, their class interests, and their
support for the imperialist objectives of their own country." Brown
thus suggests that: "By the time their humanitarianism was expressed
in programs, it was so intertwined with the interests of American
capitalism as to be indistinguishable." However, he is correct to
recognize, like Mearsheimer and Walt, that such humanitarian "programs
were the result not of dark conspiracies, but of simple recognition
and articulation of the [ir proponents]… class interests."
E. Richard Brown, "Rockefeller Medicine in China: Professionalism and
Imperialism" in Robert F. Arnove (Ed.) Philanthropy and Cultural
Imperialism: The Foundation at Home and Abroad (Indiana University
Press, 1981), p.139.

Similarly Edward Berman noted how liberal philanthropists exporting
western eductional systems to Africa have long portrayed themselves as
"disinterested humanitarians" by "emphasi[zing] on the provision of
acommodity which ostensibly has no political overtones and which is in
great demand." However, as Berman demonstrated, "there was little
humanitarianism in these foundation attempts to develop educational
systems in Africa, despite the proclivities of random foundation
personnel in this direction. Education was perceived as the opening
wedge ensuring an American presence in those African nations
considered of strategic and economic importance to the governing and
business elite of the United States." Edward H. Berman, "The
Foundations Role in American Foreign Policy: The Case of Africa, post
1945," in Robert F. Arnove (Ed.) Philanthropy and Cultural
Imperialism: The Foundation at Home and Abroad (Indiana University
Press, 1981), p. 225. (back)

41. With regard to charitable activities and their relation to the
Israel Lobby, Mearsheimer and Walt note that "private donations to
charities in most foreign countries are not tax deductible, but many
private donations to Israel are, due to a special clause in the
U.S.-Israel income tax treaty." (p.29) In addition, they add, "because
Israeli charities operate beyond the reach of U.S. tax authorities,
donations from Jewish and Christian evangelical organizations are hard
to monitor once they are transferred to Israel. In practice,
therefore, the U.S. government cannot easily determine the extent to
which tax-exempt private donations are being diverted for unauthorized
purposes." p.30 (back)

42. Gross also highlight that "the operating rules of modern
capitalist empire require ascending rhetoric about economic and social
development, human rights, and the self-effacing role of transnational
corporations in the promotion of progress and prosperity. The more
lies are told, the more important it becomes for the liars to justify
themselves by deep moral commitments to high-sounding objectives that
mask the pursuit of money and power. The more a country like the
United States imports its prosperity from the rest of the world, the
more its leaders must dedicate themselves to the sacred ideal of
exporting abundance, technology, and civilization to everyone
else. The further this myth may be from reality, the more significant
it becomes — and the greater the need for academic notables to
document its validity by bold assertion and self-styled statistical
demonstration." p.5, p.205. (back)

04.html

Los Angeles Times, CA
Aug 24 2008

Medals per capita goes to the Bahamas
12:40 PM, August 24, 2008

Just as England once lived under the Tudor, China once lived under the
Ming and the American League East once lived under the Torre, we
earthlings live under a dynasty these days.

It’s a benevolent dynasty, the Bahamas dynasty — they do let us come
visit their islands and serve us drinks with tiny umbrellas sticking
out of them — until it comes to the quadrennial test known as the
Olympics, when they fluster the rest of us again.

The rest of the world tried everything we could to overthrow the
Athens 2004 kings and queens in the crucial, vital-to-life, telltale
Medals Per Capita ranking. We sent our Australia, runner-up in Athens
with its population of just 20,600,856 and its vast collection of
studs and studesses. We proposed Armenia, wrestling and weightlifting
with the best from a population shy of three million.

We offered Slovenia, No. 5 in Athens, and we sent in Jamaica, No. 6 in
Athens with its bolting Bolt and other track prowess, and we tried New
Zealand, hearty archipelago, and as it concluded we even summoned
Iceland with its 304,367 population and its gaudy handball
team. Mongolia, a nation with cold weather and disagreeable soil,
showed it mettle with two early medals and then, on Sunday, two boxing
medals, from Serdanka Purevdorj (silver) and Badar-Uugan Enkhbat
(gold). That made four for 3 million hardy people and made an
impression.

We had Cuba (No. 3 from Athens), Estonia (No. 4 from Athens) and our
fibrous Norwegians and Danes, and we had our horde of other frolicsome
former Soviet republics like Belarus and Latvia.

Heck, we had both Trinidad and Tobago, in one entry.

We just couldn’t get to the Mozart Bahamas MPC score of 153,725 — or
one medal for every 153,725 Bahamians — forged by medals in the
triple jump and the men’s 4-x-400-meter relay. We couldn’t stave off
the three-peat, what with some connoisseurs of long division having
figured the Bahamas the Medals Per Capita winner in Sydney 2000 as
well.

The ancient, decrepit, tyrannical, misguided, superpower-tilted Medals
Table claimed either China or the United States won the Olympics,
depending on who does the miscounting, but we recognize arithmetical
propaganda when we see it.

We know that while 110 medals or 100 medals can disappear into the
United States or China with their tactically unwise populations, there
are so many medals per person in Australia that it’s practically a
fashion accessory, that 47 medals for 60 million Britons constitutes a
seismic paradigm shift given Great Britain’s recent sporting history,
and that two medals in the wee Bahamas doth an empire make.

There’s not even suspense lingering in the possible case of the
Netherlands Antilles before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Dogged
in its pursuit of the MPC top five — and that’s understandable — the
Netherlands Antilles hopes to overturn the disqualification of
200-meter runner Churandy Martina for stepping on the line thrice,
claiming the disqualification didn’t come in proper disqualification
time.

If you can imagine a more sonorous court case, have at it, but not
even the Netherlands Antilles with its 225,369 sun-kissed citizens
could trump our mighty Bahamian royal ruler.

Two weeks of gruel and melodrama, and it’s the same quotient story:
the Bahamas. At least you could say that in this particular defeat we
learned a valuable life lesson.

Always look out for the triple jump.

Medals Per Capita minutiae from Sunday’s final day:

— The United States 40th out of 70 countries in Athens with 103
medals and an MPC rating of 2,844,928, wound up 46th out of 87 with a
better rating of 2,762,042. It really does supply hope for the future,
just imagining how a gutty little overmatched MPC country might
continued to make slight strides, like maybe if it goes rummaging
around that pool in Baltimore for another giant fish-boy.

— Jamaica went from five medals and No. 6 in Athens to 11 medals and
No. 2 in Beijing, while Cuba went from 27 and No. 3 to 24 and No. 8,
while Trinidad & Tobago logged in at No. 11, which all goes to show
that if you seek victory — just as with the former Soviet republics
— you don’t want to go messin’ around down there in those
islands. Sure, they look all sanguine and relaxing and everything, but
that’s just part of the lull.

— The mainstream media continues to laud China for its forge to the
fore in the Olympics, and while that’s part of being a good guest, it
also chronically overlooks an MPC rating of 68. While that’s not bad
and surely the best ranking in history for any country with
1,330,044,605 people, it’s certainly a far cry from 1985 Bears or 1927
Yankees entries like the Bahamas or Jamaica or Iceland, and the praise
just comes as another sad reminder of the suppression of free speech.

The top 25:

1. Bahamas (2) – 153,725

2. Jamaica (11) – 254,939

3. Iceland (1) – 304,367

4. Slovenia (5) – 401,542

5. Australia (46) – 447,844

6. New Zealand (9) – 463,717

7. Norway (10) – 464,445

8. Cuba (24) – 475,998

9. Armenia (6) – 494,764

10. Belarus (19) – 509,777

11. Trinidad & Tobago (2) – 523,683

12. Estonia (2) – 653,802

13. Lithuania (5) – 713,041

14. Bahrain (1) – 718,306

15. Latvia (3) – 748,474

16. Mongolia (4) – 749,020

17. Georgia (6) – 771,806

18. Denmark (7) – 783,531

19. Slovakia (6) – 874,124

20. Croatia (5) – 898,284

21. Hungary (10) – 993,091

22. The Netherlands (16) – 1,040,332

23. Azerbaijan (7) – 1,168,245

24. Kazakhstan (12) – 1,180,041

25. Switzerland (6) – 1,263,586

Selected others from 87 nations with medals:

26. Mauritius (1) – 1,274,189

27. Great Britain (47) – 1,296,678

29. Ireland (3) – 1,385,373

31. South Korea (31) – 1,588,156

32. France (40) – 1,601,444

33. Ukraine (27) – 1,701,640

36. Canada (18) – 1,845,149

37. Russia (72) – 1,954,195

38. Germany (41) – 2,009,013

39. Italy (28) – 2,076,618

40. Spain (18) – 2,247,282

43. Kenya (14) – 2,710,988

46. United States (110) – 2,762,042

57. Japan (25) – 5,091,536

61. Togo (1) – 5,858,673

67. Brazil (15) – 12,793,906

68. China (100) – 13,300,446

86. Vietnam (1) – 86,116,559

87. India (3) – 382,665,299

— Chuck Culpepper

The Bahamas team of Andretti Bain, Michael Mathieu, Andrae Williams
and Christopher Brown pose with their silver medals after the men’s
4x400m relay at the National stadium as part of the 2008 Beijing
Olympic Games. Photo by Fabrice Coffrini /AFP / Getty Images

log/2008/08/just-as-england.html

International Herald Tribune, France
Aug 24 2008

The Caucasus moment

By Vartan Oskanian
Published: August 24, 2008
YEREVAN, Armenia:

Although we could see the clouds gathering, the recent Georgia-Russia
confrontation shook us all. No one had allowed themselves to believe
that mixed messages and complicated agendas would come to such a head,
causing so much devastation, loss of life and geopolitical chaos.

The South Ossetia conflict should not be viewed solely through the
larger prism of Georgia-Russia relations. This is an ethnic conflict,
after all, and one of several in the Caucasus. It is a warning to the
international community: If pipeline safety is a concern now, then
imagine the very real dangers that an Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict
over Nagorno Karabakh would create.

Therefore, in order to seriously tackle the more difficult conflicts
throughout this region, the comparatively more straightforward
security and stability issues must be resolved first – and quickly.

Conflicts in the region would be viewed in a wholly different, more
reassuring and tolerant context if there were a binding and strong
security pact that assured non-use of force.

These conflicts are not frozen. In the absence of a security pact,
there is an arms build up that is in itself destabilizing, distorting
national budgets and hampering the normal development of civil
society.

Yet in the Caucasus, our countries and peoples have lived under a
common umbrella far more than we have been divided. Today, we share a
common vision of European integration, a vision that is greater and
more enduring than issues that divide us. It is in the broader context
of European integration that our issues should be resolved.

Although integration with Europe is not controversial, NATO expansion
is. Never in history has a grand coalition formed to defeat a
particular enemy survived after the task was completed. Not after the
Napoleonic wars, not after World War I and not after World War II.

After the West’s Cold War victory, two things happened. NATO tried to
reinvent itself by directing its attention and resources to other
regions and addressing other problems. Containing Russia was not a
declared intention. And NATO created the Euro Atlantic Partnership
Council, which invited all Eastern Bloc and former Soviet republics to
participate.

This was visionary and potentially sustainable. After all, the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of
Europe extended their efficacy in that way by including the remnants
of the USSR. Not only did they remain relevant and viable, they
contributed immeasurably to our own growth and development.

But NATO also planned to continue and even expand in the same form,
even after its stated goal had long been met. Given the changed
security environment and Russia’s great security sensitivities, this
was, it appears, a strategic mistake.

Georgia’s eagerness to get into NATO is understandable. But the
security benefits to Georgia that NATO membership would bring would be
offset by the creation of a dividing line in the Caucasus, and its
attendant security challenges.

Perhaps this is the Caucasus moment: A historic opportunity, in the
context of a new regional security pact, for Brussels, Washington and
Moscow to meet with Tbilisi, Yerevan and Baku and create a nonaligned
Caucasus, free of security memberships and adversarial alliances. Such
positive, engaged, inclusive neutrality will be possible and
beneficial all around.

This would be in the best interest of this highly combustible
region. A U.S.-Russia confrontation at the Georgia-Russia level will
make life very difficult, not just for us here in Armenia but also for
Azerbaijan and Turkey.

It is in the context of these existential security issues that we must
view the recent Turkish proposal for a Caucasus Stability and
Cooperation Platform.

The idea of such a pact was floated already in 1999. The concept found
favor because there were fresh memories of the use of force in our
region, and the urgency of security arrangements was
evident. Opposition to Russian interests was not yet deep and there
were no tensions through proxies. But even during such a honeymoon,
the idea didn’t become reality.

Today, force has been used again, and perhaps for that reason, the
idea has resurfaced. But today, with the threat of a renewed Cold-War
mentality, divisive lines may be drawn through these mountains and all
regional relations will become unimaginably complicated. That is,
where there still are relations.

Turkey’s proposal is therefore interesting and the urgency is not lost
on anyone. But the concept must be developed right and implemented
well. But we’ve been down this road before in this part of the world,
where good intentions were sidetracked by the very political problems
they were meant to resolve.

The Black Sea Economic Cooperation pact, for example, was created
precisely for the purpose of bringing together those who otherwise
shared no common forum for economic cooperation and the resolution of
problems. But it’s effectiveness has been limited because Turkey
lacked the commitment to use the forum as a way to relate with a
country like Armenia, with whom its borders are closed.

The proposal today, in this new tense environment, must be more
serious and sustained. It must marginalize no one. Security issues are
intertwined, and they ought to be addressed in a stability pact with a
comprehensive, strong security component.

During his visit to Baku last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan discussed the Turkish plan and publicly made reference
to Armenia’s inclusion. It is also a fortuitous coincidence that
President Abdullah Gul of Turkey has been invited by President Serzh
Sargsian of Armenia to watch the Turkey-Armenia FIFA World Cup
qualifying match on Sept. 6 together.

This offers an opportunity for these two neighbors to discuss common
security challenges and pave the way for a region of peace.

Vartan Oskanian was foreign minister of Armenia from 1998 to April
2008. He is the founder of the Civilitas Foundation in Yerevan, which
addresses foreign policy, democracy and development issues in the
Caucasus.

/24/opinion/edoskanian.php

The Militant, NY
Aug 24 2008

How Lenin fought to defend Georgia’s self-determination

The Pathfinder book Lenin’s Final Fight contains valuable documentary
material on the place of Georgia and the national question in the
battle by V.I. Lenin to defend the communist course of the October
1917 Russian Revolution against challenges raised by a narrow,
nationalist, petty-bourgeois layer that arose in the Soviet Union led
by Joseph Stalin.
Printed below is an excerpt from a review of Lenin’s Final Fight that
appeared in the June 5, 1995, Militant.

BY MARTÃ?N KOPPEL

Readers will find it hard to put down this book as they follow Lenin’s
struggle week by week, sometimes day by day, taking up political
issues that remain vitally relevant today. Lenin discusses questions
including the need to forge a union of workers and peasants republics,
to defend the rights of oppressed nationalities and combat Great
Russian chauvinism, and to strengthen the alliance between the working
class and the peasantry. He takes up the New Economic Policy and its
place in the world struggle for socialism, and defends the state
monopoly of foreign trade.

These questions, as the book’s introduction notes, `deal with the most
decisive piece of unfinished business in front of those who produce
the wealth of the world and make possible culture: they deal with the
worldwide struggle, opened by the Bolshevik-led revolution nearly
eighty years ago, to replace the dictatorship of a tiny minority of
exploiting capitalists families with the dictatorship of the
proletariat,’ that is, a workers state.

The revolutionary government that came to power in October 1917 was
based on councils of workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ delegates
called soviets, the Russian word for council.

It mobilized peasants to expropriate the big landlords’ estates and
distribute the nationalized land to be worked by the tillers. It freed
oppressed peoples who had been under the tsarist boot of Russian
oppression from Ukraine to Mongolia, and guaranteed their right to
national self-determination’the first government in the world to do
so.

The Bolshevik leadership organized workers to expropriate capitalist
property in industry, banking, and wholesale trade, and established a
state monopoly of foreign trade.

Georgian republic
In September 1922, just a few months before the stroke that finally
debilitated him, Lenin launched a political fight around the question
of the Georgian republic and of the voluntary union of Soviet
republics.

In a letter to the party’s Political Bureau and addressed to Bolshevik
leader Lev Kamenev, Lenin criticizes the proposal by Joseph Stalin,
the CP’s general secretary, to incorporate five independent Soviet
republics’Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia, Georgia, and Ukraine’into
the Russian Federation as `autonomous republics.’ The book reprints
the text of Stalin’s initial plan.

Lenin proposes a completely different approach: that Russia join with
the other republics `on an equal basis into a new union, a new
federation, the Union of the Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia.’

This stance was crucial, given the strong proindependence sentiments
of working people in Georgia and other Soviet republics in the
Caucasus because of Russian tsarist domination in the past. The
Georgian Communist Party had rejected Stalin’s `autonomization’ plan
and favored remaining independent as part of a Soviet federation.

Lenin’s Final Fight documents how Lenin waged a political debate to
win other members of the Bolshevik leadership to a proletarian
internationalist stance on this question. This fight was based on one
of the major conquests of the October 1917 revolution: the right of
oppressed peoples to national self-determination.

`War to the death’
Through the efforts of Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders, the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics was founded as a federation of equals at
the end of 1922. But Lenin felt compelled to `declare war to the death
on dominant nation chauvinism,’ as he put it in an October 6 memo to
the party’s Political Bureau.

In a series of notes addressed in December 1922 to the upcoming 12th
party congress, Lenin makes some of his sharpest and most concise
statements on the national question. Referring to the argument by some
Russian Communist leaders that a single government is needed to rule
over all the Soviet republics, he states, `Where did that assurance
come from? Did it not come from that same Russian apparatus which we
took over from tsarism and slightly anointed with Soviet oil?’

Affirmative action
He adds that without a conscious approach of preferential treatment
toward the historically oppressed nations’an affirmative action
policy’all talk of a voluntary federation `will be a mere scrap of
paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that
really Russian man, the Great Russian chauvinist, in substance a
rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is.’

Lenin condemns Stalin for his `spite against the notorious
`nationalist socialism.” Stalin had accused the Central Committee of
the Georgian Communist Party of `nationalist deviations,’ saying these
should be `burned out with a red-hot iron.’

Lenin’s concern about Great Russian chauvinism was
well-founded. Stalin and Grigory Ordzhonikidze, another Central
Committee member, resorted to strong-arm tactics to try to ram through
their policies on the national question. In protest, the Georgian CC
resigned. The conflict flared up in late November when Ordzhonikidze
struck one of the dissident Georgian communists during a verbal
confrontation. This fact came to light through an investigation by a
Political Bureau-appointed commission, headed by Russian CC member
Feliks Dzerzhinsky.

Over the final months of 1922, Lenin’s doubts about the conduct of
Stalin and his allies around the Georgian question mounted. Lenin
organized three of his personal secretaries to carry out a separate
investigation in February and March 1923 to verify the Dzerzhinsky
commission’s account. They reported to Lenin that Dzerzhinsky had
basically whitewashed the abusive policies of Ordzhonikidze and
Stalin.

This report’kept secret by Moscow until the collapse of the Stalinist
apparatus in the former USSR in 1991’appears in this volume for the
first time in any language.

3453.html

Boston Globe, MA
Aug 24 2008

Building bridges

By Yvonne Abraham
Globe Columnist / August 24, 2008

The Anti-Defamation League could use somebody like Lenny Zakim about now.

The late, legendary activist made the ADL’s New England office into a
civil-rights powerhouse. In his 20 years there, Zakim, who died in
1999, pioneered Jewish-Catholic and Jewish-black alliances, bringing
his immense powers of persuasion to fight gender and race
discrimination battles, too.

But the past year has gutted Zakim’s ADL. The organization has been
needlessly mired in a controversy with the Armenian community over the
unwillingness of the national ADL to characterize as genocide the
Ottoman Turkish massacre of as many as 1.5 million Armenians from 1915
to 1923.

Armenian activists persuaded Watertown to pull out of the ADL’s No
Place for Hate Program, arguing that the organization was refusing to
call the massacres genocide because of Israel’s desire to maintain
good relations with Turkey. Twelve other Massachusetts cities and
towns have also abandoned the hate-crime prevention program.

The controversy has alienated not just Armenians, but also members of
the Jewish community who once saw the regional ADL as a beacon.

"There are many of us who are not only reluctant but unwilling to
include them in our efforts any more," says Rabbi Howard Jaffe of
Temple Isaiah in Lexington.

A few days ago, the ADL named a new regional director, Derrek
Shulman. In addition to fractured relations with local communities,
Shulman will inherit the rift between the local chapter and the ADL’s
national chief, Abe Foxman.

Last year, Foxman fired regional director Andrew Tarsy for insisting
that the national ADL acknowledge that the massacres constituted
genocide.

Foxman, under immense pressure, issued a statement last August calling
the "consequences of" the massacres "tantamount to genocide" and
reinstated Tarsy.

It was a cynical half-measure, carefully worded to leave open the key
possibility that Ottoman Turks did not intend to wipe out the
Armenians. His mealy-mouthed concession didn’t even come close to
satisfying his critics, particularly because the national ADL has also
lobbied against a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian
genocide.

Tarsy resigned after it became clear the national chief was unwilling
to go further.

Many in the community are rightly incensed at what they see as the
hypocrisy of a Jewish organization failing to recognize genocide for
political reasons.

"By taking a morally bankrupt position, they have rendered the voice
of the ADL hollow," says Jaffe, the rabbi from Lexington.

Understandably, Shulman won’t comment on this till he starts his new
job in October. But in the interim, the standoff has gotten more
complicated.

On Friday, a statement by Foxman appeared on the regional ADL’s
website saying the ADL is being "demonized" even though "we have
referred to those massacres and atrocities as genocide." Perhaps
Foxman thinks no one will recall how he hedged the "acknowledgement"
he finally coughed up last year?

But Armenian activists haven’t let up. They are trying to convince
Mashpee to follow other cities and towns out of the No Place for Hate
program. And they’re urging Blue Cross-Blue Shield, which supports the
program, to pull its funding.

They reacted to Foxman’s latest statement with caution yesterday.

"We first want to see how this is going to manifest itself before we
embrace this," said Anthony Barsamian, public affairs chairman for the
Armenian Assembly of America, a Washington advocacy group.

Zakim, so good at building bridges that they named one for him, was
known not just for saying what was right, but for backing up his words
with action.

If Shulman is going to honor that legacy, he’s going to have to move
Foxman beyond a statement buried on a website. He has his work cut out
for him.

08/08/24/building_bridges/

The Olympian, WA
Aug 24 2008

Which country is winning? That depends on how you count the medals

By Vahe Gregorian |
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Published August 24, 2008

Comment (1) BEIJING ‘ At the halfway point of the Beijing Olympics,
discerning the winner was a simple matter. It was, of course,
Slovenia, which overtook Armenia courtesy of Primoz Kozmuz’s gold
medal in the hammer throw.

Should you scoff at the relevance of that Los Angeles Times-generated
report based on medals per capita, there’s always the European Union
approach of classifying Olympic competition by economic blocks. By
coincidence, The Guardian reports, this methodology crowns the EU
champion of the Beijing Olympics.

And then there’s the `Alternative Olympic Games Medal Tally’ touted by
Australian economist Bill Mitchell. He told The Associated Press that
the clear winner is, naturally, North Korea … at least based on his
funky formula incorporating a nation’s relative wealth.

If you torture the numbers long enough, the saying goes, you can get
them to confess to anything.

So is the winner of the Olympics the nation that claims the most gold
medals (China, with 49), or the one with the most overall (the United
States, 108 with two more guaranteed in men’s basketball and men’s
water polo)?

Could it be both? Or even neither?

`There is no official way ‘ there has never been an official medal
count,’ said David Wallechinsky, author of `The Complete Book of the
Summer Olympics’ and one of the foremost historians of the Games. `So
all of this is artificial.’

The fascination with medal counts, not to mention distinguishing
between golds and overall totals, really didn’t begin until after
World War II.

`During the Cold War, it was a big deal,’ he said. `It was like a
surrogate war going on.’

Even so, it wasn’t until either the 1988 Seoul Games or perhaps
Barcelona in 1992, Wallechinsky said, that the International Olympic
Committee grudgingly posted medal counts for the press.

`The IOC really resisted it,’ he said. `Until then it was something we
all did on paper on the side.’

Today, it’s hard to find a medal table on the modern equivalent, the
IOC website. But reflecting the times in several ways, the tab for
medal counts is front and center on nbcolympics.com, a popular
website.

As of the end of competition Saturday, its standings led with the
United States and its 108 medals overall, followed by China second
with 97. Below it is a poll asking, `Which matters more?’ Gold medals
won (or) total medals won?

Most of the rest of the world ‘ other than those calculating by per
capita or economic formulas, that is ‘ renders its standings in order
of gold medals won. But while NBC’s stance seems to reflect a
U.S.-centric point of view, and Wallechinsky joked that it might be
done differently if Americans were winning the gold but not the
overall, the USOC says it long has measured its Olympic production
more by its breadth.

While USOC chairman Peter Ueberroth says Team USA is as `fascinated’
with golds as anybody and suggests there is room for improvement,
colleague Jim Scherr said he considers the performance in Beijing one
of the most `successful engagements’ in an Olympics ever.

Not that the USOC is claiming Beijing as an exclusive victory for the
U.S.

`It’s a matter of what the tradition and expectations are as a
country. There’s not a right way or a wrong way. They’re just
different,’ said Darryl Seibel, chief communications officer for the
USOC. `You’re seeing two countries succeed at a high level in their
respective areas of emphasis.

`China emphasizes gold medal production, and they’re succeeding. We
emphasize total medal production, and we’re leading the total overall
medal count.’

Seibel called that a `reflection of what we value and measure as a
society,’ and China has taken that tack toward gold medals over the
last generation since it won its first in the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

Shortly after being granted the Olympics in 2001, China invested
itself in Project 119 ‘ a strategy to go after more gold medals among
the 119 available in track and field, rowing, swimming, canoe/kayak
and sailing.

As it happened, China won only four golds in those categories. Most of
its gold rush came through gymnastics (11 including trampoline),
weightlifting (eight) and diving (seven).

American gold, though, was even more centralized. Of its 33, swimming
claimed 12 ‘ with Michael Phelps nabbing eight ‘ and track has seven
in a year that will be remembered for being its first-ever Olympics
without a gold in any of the six sprint events. No other American
sport won more than two.

But even as they seemingly conceded the gold count, Scherr and Seibel
each noted that the sheer number of Americans who won gold medals was
much higher given the number of teams and relays involved.

`Some countries are just not in the business of investing
significantly in a medal that is two weeks in the making here,’ Seibel
said, adding, `That matters in our country (but) it’s a slower path.’

China’s only team golds were in rowing (women’s quadruple skulls) and
men’s team and women’s team gymnastics.

Not even counting the convoluted permutations of swimmers and track
runners involved in relays, or the men who could win the basketball
championship game, 54 individual Americans won gold in six team events
(men’s volleyball, women’s basketball, women’s soccer, men’s and
women’s beach volleyball and rowing women’s eight).

A reflection of the USOC emphasis could be seen and heard Saturday at
the Bird’s Nest, after the men’s 1,600-meter relay team won gold.

`That shows you they care about representing America,’ track coach
Bubba Thornton said. `They wanted to end it with a good dose of good
ol’ American apple pie.’

It’s not likely the Chinese care any less about representing their
country, of course. And in the end, the difference in views and
results might be seen as merely the difference between, say,
loganberries found in the States and … longan berries, a popular
Chinese fruit.

And who’s to say either is more definitive than per capita or economic
indicators?

`There are different ways of looking at it,’ Wallechinsky said, `and
those are not invalid.’

Schenectady Gazette, NY
Aug 24 2008

Op-ed column: The media got it wrong: Russia did not invade Georgia,
it’s the other way around

Sunday, August 24, 2008
Edwin D. Reilly Jr.

Being on vacation, I had told my editor that I wouldn’t have a new
piece for this Sunday, but something happened that changed my
mind. Whether home or away, libraries are my favorite haunt, so, while
waiting for a table at the nearby Captain’s Table, Jean and I sat on a
bench in front of the Chatham library on Cape Cod.

Sitting near us a woman on another bench and a young man on the
library steps were each typing furiously on their laptops. Could they
be within range of Wi-Fi, I wondered? So I asked the young man if he
was picking up a signal from the (closed!) library. `Why, yes,’ he
said, `this is the best time to do so, given that there is no one
inside with whom I have to share bandwidth and thus reduce response
time.’

I became conscience-stricken by such rampant assiduousness, and since
our rented cottage was a hot spot, I went back to my own laptop after
dinner, determined to tell you how the mainstream press has, by and
large, gotten the Russian battle with South Ossetia all wrong.

The impression that most Associated Press stories conveyed, and some
even in The New York Times, has been that Russia invaded part of
Georgia. But it is closer to the truth that the opposite is true. This
finally sank into my cranium when I read a column in, of all places,
the Cape Cod Times of Aug. 18, the day of this epiphany. The author,
Gwynne Dyer, an international columnist from London, wrote: `Russia
didn’t threaten Georgia; it responded to a surprise attack on South
Ossetia, a territory where there were Russian [and Georgian]
peacekeeping troops by international agreement. It has not occupied
Georgia’s capital, nor has it overthrown the government (though the
Georgians may do that themselves when they realize what a fool [their
President, Mikhail] Saakashvili has been).’

Yes, the Russians overreacted, drove deep into Georgian territory well
beyond South Ossetia, killed many people, and have started to withdraw
back into South Ossetia. But that’s as far as they will go. Fully 70
percent of the greatly depleted population of that `province,’ or
whatever it is, hold Russian citizenship and very much want to become,
like North Ossetia (to its north, obviously) one of the units of the
Russian Federation.

Now, with our forces so bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is
nothing that the United States can do about this. It is certainly not
going to start a third world war, hot or cold, over it. President Bush
may or may not realize this, but surely both presidential candidates
do. But they have no recourse except to posture, saying of the
Russians, in effect, `There they go again.’

Sen. Obama suggests that the matter be referred to the U.N. Security
Council, forgetting (?) that in that venue, Russia has veto
power. Even worse, Sen. McCain, whose documented forgetfulness is that
Afghanistan lies between Iraq and Pakistan and hence the latter two
have no common border, blusters like the Great Oz behind a
curtain. And the voters are sure to look behind it.

As of 20 years ago, South Ossetia had 65,000 native Ossetians, 29,000
people who considered themselves Georgians, and practically no
`Russians.’ By now, many of each have fled the area, and most of those
left consider themselves Russian. Despite this fact, and despite the
fact that his army has been obliterated, President Mikhail Saakashvili
has vowed that `Georgia will never give up a square kilometer of its
territory.’ Essentially, it already has.

Geographic locale
But before we venture further, just what and where is this foreign
Georgia and the rebellious South Ossetia contained therein? Wikipedia
to the rescue.

The country of Georgia lies to the south of the Russian Federation
(Russia), from which it is separated by a natural boundary formed by
the Caucasus mountain range. It is a transcontinental country,
partially in Eastern Europe and partially in Southwest Asia. It is
bordered to the east by Azerbaijan, to the west by the Black Sea, to
the south by Armenia, and to the southwest by Turkey. Georgia’s area,
about 27,000 square miles, lies between that of our states of South
Carolina and West Virginia, both breakaway federal entities of our
own, the latter because it took the Union side in our Civil
War. Georgia’s population of 4.6 million is comparable to that of our
Alabama and is about half of our own Georgia.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia had a brief period of
independence as a Democratic Republic from 1918 until the Red Army’s
invasion of 1921. Georgia became part of the USSR in 1922 and did not
regain its independence until 1991, when the Soviet Union
dissolved. Georgia is currently a representative democracy and is a
member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the World
Trade Organization. To the consternation of Russia, the country seeks
to join NATO and, in the longer term, admission to the European Union.

The map of the country of Georgia looks much like a crocodile, but its
tail to the northwest and its right hind leg are, respectively, the
self-proclaimed independent republics of Abkhazia and Adjara, but no
other country other than Georgia ‘ certainly not Russia, which has
designs on the former ‘ has recognized them. Historically, there have
been dust-ups over the status of both, but they were nothing compared
to the currently raging battle over the status of South Ossetia.

South Ossetia is a region in the extreme north of Georgia, just over
the border from the Russian federal republic (oblast) of North
Ossetia. It declared itself to be the independent `Republic of South
Ossetia’ early in the 1990s. The capital of South Ossetia is
Tskhinvali, even though South Ossetia lies within the Georgian region
called Shida Kartli, whose capital is Gori.

Not recognized
The claimed independence has not been diplomatically recognized by any
member of the United Nations, which continues to regard South Ossetia
as part of Georgia. Until the armed conflict of this month, Georgia
had retained control over parts of the region’s eastern and southern
districts where it created, in April 2007, the Provisional
Administrative Entity of South Ossetia.

Barack Obama has promised me (and at least a million others) that he
will send us e-mail (or one of those hated text messages) that tell us
of his vice presidential choice. You may know who that is by the time
you read this. For his sake, I hope it is Sen. Joe Biden, the only
politician left in Washington who makes sense when he speaks of
foreign affairs. As to domestic affairs, we’ve had our fill of those.

Edwin D. Reilly Jr. lives in Niskayuna and is a regular contributor to
the Sunday Opinion section.

g/24/0824_reillyjr/

Schenectady Gazette, NY
Aug 24 2008

Levon Aronian rallies to win in Sochi, Russia

By Jack Peters, International Master
August 24, 2008

Position No. 6017: Black to play and win. From the game Ivan
Cheparinov-Vugar Gashimov, Sochi 2008.

Solution to Position No. 6016: White wins with 1 Nd6!, threatening 2
Ndf7+. Both 1 . . . Qxd6 2 Nf7+ and 1 . . . cxd6 2 Nxc6+ Kd7 3 Nxb8+
cost Black his Queen.

Grandmaster Levon Aronian of Armenia came from behind to win the first
prize of 30,000 Euros (about $44,700) in the second Grand Prix
tournament in Sochi, Russia. With three wins and a draw in his final
four games, Aronian scored 8 1/2 -4 1/2 , edging Teimour Radjabov of
Azerbaijan, who finished second at 8-5.

The only undefeated player, Wang Yue of China, tied with former
U.S. champion Gata Kamsky for third place at 7 1/2 -5 1/2 . Kamsky’s
only loss came when he fell into time pressure and botched a winning
position.

Russian star Peter Svidler transformed a poor result into a
respectable tie for fifth place at 7-6 by winning his last three
games. On the other hand, early leaders Ivan Cheparinov of Bulgaria
and Vugar Gashimov of Azerbaijan suffered the opposite
fate. Cheparinov plummeted with three losses and a draw in his last
four games, while Gashimov, "+2" after 10 rounds, lost twice in his
last three games.

The World Chess Federation plans to award 300,000 Euros to the top 10
scorers in the six-tournament Grand Prix. Wang Yue, who shared first
place in the May tournament in Baku, Azerbaijan, now leads the series.

World Junior

The most prestigious age-group tournament, the World Junior
Championship, brought 109 players, ages 20 or younger, to Gaziantep,
Turkey. The field included 24 grandmasters. The surprising winner was
19th seed GM Abhijeet Gupta, 18, of India, who scored 10-3. He
overcame two losses by winning his final five games.

The silver medal went to 15-year-old GM Parimarjan Negi of India at 9
1/2 -3 1/2 . Five players finished at 9-4, with International Master
Arik Braun, 20, of Germany receiving the bronze medal on tiebreak
over, among others, Hou Yifan, the 14-year-old Chinese girl who is
already the world’s fourth-highest rated female.woman.

American representative Tyler Hughes, 17, of Colorado finished with
6-7.

Dronavalli Harika, 17, of India led the 68-player World Junior Girls
Championship with 10 1/2 -2 1/2 . Four players tied for second place
at 9-4. Tatev Abrahamyan, 20, of Glendale tied for 14th place with 7
1/2 -5 1/2 .

Local news

The Southern California Open, the state championship open to everyone,
will be held next weekend at the Pasadena Hilton, 168 S. Los Robles
Ave. in Pasadena. Details of the tournament and side events are posted
at scchess.com.

The invitational state championship concludes today in Century
City. Favorites IM Andranik Matikozyan and IM Enrico Sevillano led the
first weekend with scores of 3-1. See scchess.com for the finish.

The San Diego County Championship, held Aug. 9-10 at the San Diego
Chess Club, attracted 80 players, an excellent turnout. Grandmaster
Melikset Khachiyan scored 4 1/2 – 1/2 to win the tournament, while
Peter Graves tied for second place and earned the title of county
champion.

Michael Yee, a 13-year-old expert, won the Summer Swiss at the West
Valley Chess Club. Ed Isler and Robert Abrosini won other sections of
the 60-player tournament. The club runs tournaments continuously on
Thursday evenings in the Jewish Community Center, 22622 Vanowen St. in
West Hills. Contact Jerry Yee at (818) 915-5572 or at
[email protected] for information.

Today’s games

IM Alvaro Blanco Fernandez (Mexico)-IM Enrico Sevillano (U.S.A.),
U.S. Open, Dallas 2008: 1 Nf3 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 g3 d5 4 d4 dxc4 A common
position in the Catalan Opening. 5 Bg2 Bb4+ 6 Bd2 Be7 7 Qc2 a6 8 Qxc4
b5 9 Qc2 Bb7 10 0-0 White has the edge. He should fight for control of
e4 or c5. Be4 11 Qc1 0-0 12 a3 Black would not mind 12 Nc3 Bb7. Nc6 13
e3 If 13 Nc3? Nxd4 14 Nxd4 Bxg2 15 Nxe6 fxe6 16 Kxg2 c5, Black
controls more of the center. Bd6 14 Bc3 Another promising line begins
14 Nc3 Bd3 15 Rd1 Web only: (threatening 16 Ne1) Na5 16 Nxb5. White
gets adequate compensation from 16 . . . Nb3 17 Qc3 Nxa1 18 Nxd6 Be2
19 Nb7! Qb8 20 Rxa1 or 16 . . . axb5 17 Bxa5 Be2 18 Ne5! Bxd1 19 Nc6
Qd7 20 Qxd1. a5 15 Rd1 Qe8 16 Be1?! Meek. White must have feared 16
Nbd2 Bd5 17 Qc2 b4, but 18 e4 bxc3 19 bxc3 is fine for him. Ne7 17
Nbd2 Bd5 18 Bf1?! More timidity, ceding e4. White could keep equality
with 18 Ng5. Qb8! To meet 19 Qc2 by 19 . . . Qb7. 19 Ne5 c5 20 e4
Welcoming 20 . . . Nxe4? 21 Nxe4 Bxe4 22 Nd7. Bb7 Leaving White’s
center very shaky. 21 Bxb5 The defensive 21 Nef3 cxd4 22 Nxd4 is
uncomfortable too. Black can take the initiative with 22 . . . Rc8 23
Qb1 b4. cxd4 22 Nd7? He should settle for 22 Nec4 e5 23 Qc2. Nxd7 23
Bxd7 Ng6 24 f4?! His last hope is 24 Nc4! Ne5! 25 Nxe5 Bxe5 26
Qc2. Rd8 25 Ba4 Nxf4! Turning a maneuvering game into a ferocious
attack. 26 gxf4 Bxf4 27 Qc5 After 27 Qc2 Bxh2+ 28 Kg2 Qe5 29 Qd3 Bf4,
Black will soon obtain five passed pawns for the piece. And 27 Bg3
loses quickly to 27 . . . Bxg3 28 hxg3 Qxg3+ 29 Kf1 f5. Be3+! 28 Kg2
Qf4 29 Qh5 White cannot reinforce e4 by 29 Bc6 Rac8 or 29 Bc2 d3. Bxd2
30 Rxd2 Qxe4+ 31 Kf1 Or 31 Kh3 Qe3+ 32 Kh4 d3, intending 33
. . . Rd4+. Qh1+ 32 Ke2 Qg2+ 33 Bf2 As 33 Kd3 gets mated by 33
. . . Qe4+ 34 Kc4 d3+ 35 Kb3 Bd5+. d3+ 34 Rxd3 Rxd3, White Resigns.

Richard Rapport (Hungary)-IM Sandor Farago (Hungary), Budapest 2008: 1
d4 d5 2 c4 c6 3 Nc3 Nf6 4 cxd5 cxd5 5 Bf4 The Exchange variation, a
safe but not harmless treatment of the Slav Defense. Nc6 6 Nf3 e6
Theory also deals with the symmetrical 6 . . . Bf5 7 e3 e6 8 Bb5. 7 e3
Bb4?! The Bishop belongs at d6 or e7. 8 Bd3 White can afford to ignore
the pin. Qa5 9 0-0 Bxc3 Black might as well grab a pawn. After 9
. . . 0-0 10 Nb5! a6, White reaches a winning endgame by 11 Bc7! b6 12
a3! axb5 13 axb4 Qxa1 14 Qxa1 Rxa1 15 Rxa1 Nxb4 16 Bxb5. 10 bxc3 Qxc3
11 Bd6 Now Black will have to struggle to castle. Qa5 12 Ne5 Qd8 13
Ba3 Bd7 The natural 13 . . . Ne7 14 Qc2 0-0 does not solve Black’s
problem, as 14 Rfc1 Bd7 15 Nxd7 Qxd7 16 Qc7 recovers material. Even
the improvement 13 . . . Ne7 14 Qc2 Bd7 is not completely satisfactory
because of 15 Rab1 Rc8 16 Qe2 Bc6 17 Nxc6 bxc6 18 Rb7 Rc7 19 Rfb1 0-0
20 Qb2 Re8 21 Rxc7 Qxc7 22 Qb7, picking off the a-pawn. 14 Rb1 Qc7 No
better is 14 . . . b6 15 Nxd7 Nxd7. White would mobilize his entire
army with 16 Qa4 Ne7 17 Rfc1, when 17 . . . 0-0? drops a piece to 18
Bxe7 Qxe7 19 Rc7 Rfd8 20 Bb5. 15 Qb3 Rb8 16 Rfc1 Black is lost. His
first worry is 17 Nxc6 Bxc6 18 Rxc6! Qxc6 19 Bb5. a6 17 f4 All right,
but White could win immediately with 17 Nxc6 Bxc6 18 Rxc6! Qxc6 19 Rc1
Qd7 20 Bxa6. A possible finish is 20 . . . Qd8 21 Bb5+ Nd7 22 Qb4 Ra8
23 Rc7! Rxa3 24 Bxd7+. Ng8 18 Nxc6 Bxc6 19 Rxc6! Opportunity knocks
twice. Qxc6 20 Qb4 Kd8 If 20 . . . Kd7, then 21 Rc1 a5 22 Qb2 traps
Black’s Queen. Or, if 20 . . . Rc8, then 21 Qf8+ Kd7 22 Rxb7+!
foresees 22 . . . Qxb7 23 Qxf7+ Kc6 24 Qxe6+ Kc7 25 Qd6 mate. 21 Qf8+
Kc7 Useless is 21 . . . Qe8 22 Qd6+. 22 Qxf7+ Kd8 23 Qf8+ Kc7 24
Qxg7+, Black Resigns. The winner is 12.

ess24-2008aug24,0,5238293.story

Green Left Weekly, Australia
Aug 24 2008

Nationalism, revolution and war in the Caucasus

Tony Iltis
23 August 2008

Since the European Union-brokered ceasefire brought the shooting war
between Georgia and Russia to an end on August 12, there has been a
war of words between Russia and the West.

One point of contention is the withdrawal of Russian troops from
Georgia-proper (that is, Georgia excluding the de facto independent
territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia), in particular the towns of
Gori, Zugdidi and Senaki and the port of Poti.

The war began with Georgia’s August 7 attack on the territory of South
Ossetia. Russia responded with a military assault that first drove
Georgian troops out of South Ossetia, then continued to advance within
Georgia-proper.

Russia agreed to withdraw when it signed the ceasefire and has since
indicated that it is doing so ‘ but slowly, and not before
systematically destroying Georgia’s military capacity.

A bigger difference, based on competing interpretations of what is and
isn’t Georgian territory, is Russia’s stated intention to maintain a
beefed-up peacekeeping presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Western leaders have stressed recognition of Georgia’s official
borders, which includes the breakaway territories. US President George
Bush stated on August 16 that `Georgia’s borders should command the
same respect as every other nation’s. There’s no room for debate on
this matter.’

Not Georgian

What this ignores is not only that most of South Ossetia and Abkhazia
have been outside Georgia’s control since the early 1990s, but that
the Abkhazians and Ossetians (who are both distinct non-Georgian
nationalities) have shown in repeated referendums, as well as in the
wars that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, that they
have no desire to be under Georgian rule.

While the Western media and politicians have portrayed the current war
as Russian `great power’ aggression against its much smaller
neighbour, this ignores the fact that war was started by Georgia’s
August 7 blitzkrieg that levelled South Ossetia’s capital Tskhinvali.

Anywhere between `dozens’ and 1500 civilians were killed, depending on
the source, and 30-40,000 refugees (half the population) fled across
the border to North Ossetia-Alania, a republic within the Russian
Federation.

Since coming to power with Western support in 2003, Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvilli has allied his country closely to the West.

However, since Georgia provoked the current war with Russia, it became
clear that the West was not keen to get involved in a war with
nuclear-armed Russia in support of its ally’s territorial ambitions.

Despite military assistance from the US and Israel, the Georgian army
collapsed in disarray before the Russian advance. Russian and South
Ossetian forces have been able to seize significant quantities of
abandoned US and Israeli military hardware.

On August 21, there were thousands-strong protests in Tskhinvali and
the Abkhazian capital Sukhumi demanding Russian recognition of
independence of the territories.

The recognition of Kosova’s independence from Serbia (under Western
supervision) has created a precedent in international law. Russia has
refused to recognise Kosovan independence but has indicated that it
could change this position in exchange for Western recognition of
independence for Abkhazia and South Ossetia (under Russian
supervision).

Nationalism

The conflicting nationalisms in the Caucasus is a result of the
colonisation of the highly diverse region by the Russian empire,
beginning in the 18th century.

This was followed by the promise of national liberation and equality
between peoples by the 1917 Russian Revolution. This promise was
betrayed when the revolution degenerated into bureaucratic
dictatorship under Joseph Stalin.

National movements subsequently played an important role in the
restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s.

Full control by the Russian empire of the Caucasus by 1864 was
accompanied by ethnic cleansing of Muslims, which included about half
the Abkhaz population.

After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks recognised the rights of all
peoples to self-determination. While the various nationalities of the
North Caucasus (including Ossetians, Chechens, Ingushetians and the
myriad of Dagestani ethnicities) formed the pro-Bolshevik Mountain
Soviet Republic (MSR), Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan became
anti-Bolshevik independent states propped up by British troops.

Between 1918 and 1921, what started as tax revolts by South Ossetians
against the Georgian regime developed into full scale warfare, with
the South Ossetians seeking to be united with their North Ossetian
compatriots in the MSR, which from 1919 was an autonomous part of the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).

Georgian reprisals against the revolt took 18,000 lives. Keen to
dislodge the British, the Red Army came to the aid of the Ossetians,
the Abkhaz and a revolt by Georgian Bolsheviks. A Georgian Soviet
Republic was established.

Similar processes established Soviet rule in Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Painfully aware of the resentment towards Russians in the nations
colonised by the Tsarist empire, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin
stressed equality between nations.

In 1922, he clashed with Stalin, then commissar of nationalities, who
despite being Georgian displayed, in Lenin’s words, `all the
characteristics of a Great Russian bully’ in his attempts to pressure
the Georgian Bolsheviks into accepting absorption of their country
into the RSFSR.

Stalin lost that fight and in 1922 Georgia, Abkhazia, Armenia and
Azerbaijan became equal members of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics.

North Ossetia became an autonomous republic within the RSFSR while
South Ossetia became an autonomous district of Georgia.

Counter-revolution

However, following Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin led a
counter-revolution whereby a bureaucratic caste took power and undid
many of the progressive gains of the revolution.

While national equality remained in form, its content was gutted. In
1931, Abkhazia was made an autonomous republic within Georgia and
Georgian replaced Abkhaz as the official language.

The transmigration of Russians, Armenians and Georgians into Abkhazia
was accelerated under Stalin.

In the 1940s, having officially revived Russian nationalism in
response to Nazi invasion, Stalin increased arbitrary acts of national
oppression. In the Caucasus this included deporting the entire Chechen
and Ingushetian population to Central Asia.

Following Stalin’s death in 1953, the extremes of Stalin’s
dictatorship were tempered, including the nationalities
policy. Deported nationalities were allowed to return to their
homelands and the suppression of Abkhaz culture ended.

However, while repression decreased, the main lines of bureaucratic
dictatorship remained.

For Ossetians in the post-Stalin Soviet Union, the boundary between
North Ossetia (part of the RSFSR) and South Ossetia (part of Georgia)
became purely administrative, of no more significance than that
between two Australian states.

On the one hand, in both territories the Ossetian language was used in
government, education and the media. On the other hand, as with the
rest of the USSR, in neither territory did people actually have a say
in choosing their government, or the right to oppose it.

As the Soviet Union began to unravel in the 1980s, nationalism came to
the fore as local bureaucratic elites sought to ensure their power in
the post-Soviet order.

By 1988 war had broken out between Armenia and Azerbaijan, despite
both being constituent republics of the USSR. The restoration of
capitalism in the Soviet Union in 1991 was accompanied by its
dissolution into constituent republics.

In Georgia, following unsuccessful attempts by Moscow to repress the
nationalist tide, dissident and former political prisoner Zviad
Gamsakhurdia was elected president in 1990.

While to Georgians, Gamsakhurdia’s slogan of `Georgia for the
Georgians’ and his appeals to historical mythology of ancient Georgian
kings, represented freedom from Russia, to the Abkhaz and Ossetians it
represented a threat to their national rights.

For the Ossetians, the dissolution of the USSR also meant the border
between North and South Ossetia became an international frontier.

War and `autonomy’

In November 1989, South Ossetia voted to be merged with North Ossetia
within the RSFSR, although this was vetoed by the Georgian Soviet
government.

A march on Tskhinvali by Gamsakhurdia’s nationalists led to clashes
and the intervention of Soviet troops. In 1990, South Ossetia tried to
declare itself a constituent republic of the USSR.

Georgia, now under Gamsakhurdia’s presidency, responded by abolishing
South Ossetia’s autonomy. By January 1991, before the USSR had
dissolved, the dispute escalated into warfare between Georgian and
Ossetian militias.

This war, which ended in 1992, cost hundreds of lives and created tens
of thousands of refugees.

By this time Gamsakhurdia had been overthrown in a military coup and
newly independent Georgia was degenerating into civil war. The peace
agreement allowed for de facto independence and a peace keeping force
involving Georgian, North and South Ossetian and Russian troops.

Gamsakhurdia’s successor, Eduard Shevardnadze, who had been the
Stalinist head of Soviet Georgia in the 1970s, had reinvented himself
as a democratic reformer and then again as a moderate nationalist when
the military junta that overthrew Gamsakhurdia offered him the
presidency.

While Shevardnadze ended the war in South Ossetia, he started another
by invading Abkhazia, which had declared its independence to pre-empt
abolition of its autonomous status.

This war ended in Georgian defeat, after the Abkhazians received help
from a multi-ethnic North Caucasian volunteer force, the Confederation
of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, who were accused of ethnic
cleansing.

Hundreds of thousands of Georgians fled Abkhazia, leaving the Abkhaz
as a demographic majority for the first time since the 19th century.

The 1993 peace agreement left it, like South Ossetia, legally part of
Georgia but with a de facto independence guaranteed by Russia.

The US helped bring the ultra-nationalist Saakashvilli to power in
2003 with the aim of using him to pressure Russia.

However, Saakashvilli’s nationalist adventurism, backed by US and
Israeli military aid, has resulted in handing Russia an opportunity to
militarily crush Georgia and humiliate its Western allies.

In the brutal history of colonialism, competing nationalism, war and
ethnic cleansing that has marked the Caucasus, the example of the
early stages of the Russian Revolution stands out as offering a way
forward.

The Bolshevik policy of granting national self-determination and
seeking to ensure equality between peoples’, in contrast to the
manipulation and violence used by various powerful interests that have
dominated the region, is the only way of ensuring lasting peace.

Houston Chronicle, TX
Aug 24 2008

Give Russia respect it’s due

Viewed through Moscow’s eyes, the West’s response to Georgia looks
hypocritical. Remember Kosovo? Russia does

By GALE STOKES Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Western political leaders have reacted with outrage attoward the
Russian incursion into Georgia. But there is another way of looking at
the situation, especially if we compare Western policies toward Kosovo
and Russian actions in Georgia.

>From the Russian point of view, Europe and the United States first
militarily attacked Russia’s ally Serbia on behalf of breakaway
Kosovo, and then helped the Kosovars obtain their current state of
independence. ButAnd yet, when Russia intervenes in South Ossetia to
establish that breakaway region’s independence from Western oriented
Georgia, the United States and Europe react with shock and anger. In
Russian eyes, the position of the United States seems to be that
intervention is OK when we do it, but not when you do it.

The tensions surrounding these events are greatly increased by
America’s recent agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland to
place missile monitoring radars in those countries. Despite
protestations by the United States that its intentions are purely
defensive, one only needs to consider what any American government’s
reaction would be to the placement of Russian radars in Mexico to
defend against a rogue Latin American state in order to grasp why the
installations make the Russians nervous.

During the decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United
States did not take Russia seriously. Even today, we continue to
chastise the Russians for human rights abuses, for "misusing" their
oil and gas resources for political purposes and for obstructing our
wishes in various international venues.

What did we expect? That a great country with an educated work force
just starting to feel its economic oats would be content to play
second fiddle forever? It was just a matter of time before the
Russians reappeared as a strong state on the international scene. They
have now arrived, and it is in everyone’s interest if we begin to deal
with them like the great power they are.

Indeed, European stability demands a stable relationship between
Russia and the West. Punishing Russia for its incursion into South
Ossetia by dropping it from G-8, for example, would only undermine
stability.

There is a reasonable solution to the situation, however. Both
Ossetians and Abkhazians, just like Kosovars, see no other solution to
their political desires than independence, as they have shown in
repeated (if flawed) referenda and elections. Ossetians constitute
about two-thirds of the population of that region, with most of the
rest being Russians. Abkhazians make up about the same proportion of
Abkhazia, with most of the rest being Georgians. In other words, if
the ethnic principle works in Kosovo (as it seems to have worked in
France, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, etc.) why not in these regions?

In fact, one of the primary threads of European history since 1850 has
been the redrawing of state borders along ethnic lines. Georgia’s
position on the matter is much like Serbia’s on Kosovo ‘ Georgians do
not want to live in these areas, which are not particularly viable
economically, but the government of Georgia cannot conceive of "giving
up" territory, despite its inability to exercise its rule there. But
just as stability will come to the Balkans as the Kosovo settlement
becomes increasingly integrated into European structures, so the
independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia would help with the
stabilization process in the Caucasus.

Such an outcome would not end ethnic strife there. Azeris and
Armenians have been talking lately under Russian auspices, but
relations remain fraught. And there is always the question of
Chechnya. But agreement on South Ossetia and Abkhazia would be a step
in the right direction.

What are the outlines of a solution? However it might be presented in
diplomatic language, it is basically this: the West accepts the
independence of the two regions including Russian "peacekeepers"; and
the Russians accept the independence of Kosovo, including a NATO and
EULEX (European Rule of Law Mission) presence. The two entities enter
the United Nations and Russia stops vetoing the Kosovo solution in the
Security Council.

The beneficiaries? Improved US/EU-Russian relations, increased
stability in the Balkans and the Caucasus, and a resolution that the
majority populations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia appear to want.

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