Stephen Lendman

[More photos: History Place] Though much about his background and public service warrants criticism, he also deserves praise rarely given properly, this article offering some and the writer's personal reflections on his commencement address to my June 14, 1956 graduating class, a message not heard now by US leaders - erudite, incisive and timely. More on it below.

Some Background

Had an assassin not taken his life, his health surely would have, some around him saying "from a medical standpoint, (he) was a mess." Indeed so, having been hospitalized more than three dozen times in his life and given last rites on three occasions.

At age 2 years, 9 months, he nearly died of scarlet fever. He contracted measles, whooping cough and chicken pox the same year, and as a child, was susceptible to upper respiratory infections and bronchitis. In 1935, he suffered jaundice, had a history of sports-related injuries because of his weak physique, and his mother remembered him as "a very, very sick little boy." In the 1930s, he began taking steroids for colitis, later developing complications, including a duodenal ulcer, back pain, digestive trouble, and underactive adrenal glands known as Addison's disease.

He had a host of other problems as well, including a bout of malaria as a naval officer in the Pacific. At age 43, the 1960 presidential campaign exhausted him because he overdid it for a man of his health and stamina. In 1947, his Addisonism was diagnosed, at the time told he had one year to live, and was given his last rites shortly afterward. Yet as senator and president, his health problems were hidden, an observer calling it "one of the most cleverly laid smoke screens ever put down around a politician('s)" physical well-being.

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Asif Haroon Raja
Opinion Maker

Kashmir is the oldest and most intractable disputes in the world; older than Gaza. Forcible occupation of two-third Kashmir by Indian forces in 1947 against the wishes of Kashmiris impelled freedom fighters and Pak troops to get Kashmir freed from its stranglehold. When India saw that it was on the verge of losing the battle, it sought intervention of United Nations. United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution of 21 April 1948 clearly states that the question of accession of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) to India or Pakistan should be decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite. Subsequent UNSC Resolutions reiterated the same stand. United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) Resolutions of 3 August 1948 and 5 January 1949 reinforced UNSC Resolutions. However, despite Nehru’s repeated pledges that right of self determination will be given to the people of Kashmir, Indian leaders have mulishly held on to their uncompromising stance that Kashmir is an integral part of India. In defiance of UN Resolutions, they sing this song ad nauseam ignoring the fact that Kashmir is an internationally recognized disputed territory and Kashmiris hate them and long to join Pakistan. They get highly disturbed when Pakistan or any other country reminds them of this hard reality. They are fuming ever since China has started treating Indian officials serving in disputed territory accordingly.

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Felicity Arbuthnot
Uruknet

"Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war." (Tony Blair, speech as newly elected Prime Minister, 1997.)

August is seemingly Spotlight on Illegal Invasion month. President Obama has made his Mission-Lost-Cause speech about US., Iraq fantasy "withdrawal" - leaving behind 50,000 troops, perhaps 50,000 mercenaries, and some have suggested 100,000 "advisors."

In context:

"Last month, the Congressional Research Service reported that the Department of Defense workforce has 19 percent more contractors (207,600) than uniformed personnel ... in Iraq and Afghanistan, making these wars ... the most outsourced and privatized in US history. Worse, the oversight of contractors will rest with other contractors. As has been the case in Afghanistan, contractors will be sought to provide "operations-center monitoring of private security contractors (PSCs) as well as PSC inspection and accountability services."(1)

Tony "I would do it again" Blair, announced, on 16th August, he is to give his entire £4.6 million advance on his book: "My Journey", to the Royal British Legion, for support of British soldiers in need. As the ungracious calls for his "journey" to be to the Hague get louder - with some suggesting a far less civilized ordeal - it seems timely to assess British "achievements" in Iraq.

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Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Intifada Voice of Palestine

The funeral of Iman al-Hams. Her father takes farewell with her.

An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday.

The soldier, who has only been identified as "Captain R", was charged with relatively minor offences for the killing of Iman al-Hams who was shot 17 times as she ventured near an Israeli army post near Rafah refugee camp in Gaza a year ago.

The manner of Iman's killing, and the revelation of a tape recording in which the captain is warned that she was just a child who was "scared to death", made the shooting one of the most controversial since the Palestinian intifada erupted five years ago even though hundreds of other children have also died.

After the verdict, Iman's father, Samir al-Hams, said the army never intended to hold the soldier accountable.

"They did not charge him with Iman's murder, only with small offences, and now they say he is innocent of those even though he shot my daughter so many times," he said. "This was the cold-blooded murder of a girl. The soldier murdered her once and the court has murdered her again. What is the message? They are telling their soldiers to kill Palestinian children."

The military court cleared the soldier of illegal use of his weapon, conduct unbecoming an officer and perverting the course of justice by asking soldiers under his command to alter their accounts of the incident.

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John Pilger
New Statesman

Loud noises from Washington about a US pull-out from Iraq are a poor disguise for America’s determination to keep waging war. And the same sort of spin is at work here in Britain

Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the First World War, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book Propaganda, published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the "intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society", and that the manipulators "constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country". Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism "public relations".

The American tobacco industry hired Bernays to convince women that they should smoke in public. By associating smoking with women's liberation, he made cigarettes "torches of freedom". In 1954, he conjured a communist menace in Guatemala as an excuse for overthrowing the democratically elected government, whose social reforms were threatening the United Fruit Company's monopoly of the banana trade. He called it a "liberation".

Bernays was no rabid right-winger. He was an elitist liberal who believed that "engineering public consent" was for the greater good. This could be achieved by the creation of "false realities" which then became "news events". Here are examples of how it is done these days.

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Gilad Atzmon

Millions of ballot papers have been sent out yesterday to those eligible to vote in the Labour leadership election. Symbolically enough, this happened the day Tony Blair, the British PM who launched the criminal war in Iraq, published his controversial memoirs.

I am not holding my breath for the Labour party to make the right decision. Clearly, the same party failed to curtail Blair’s militant enthusiasm, even when it was plainly clear that the argument for the Iraq war was grounded in a dodgy dossier.

Considering the scale of the atrocities we are all complicit in thanks to the Labour government, it is my duty to remind the Labour party members who their leading candidate is, what he stands for and what interests he may serve.

Labour Party members should consider the role allegedly played by its leaders and leading candidate David Miliband in what has come to be known as "extraordinary rendition": knowingly allowing terror suspects to be transferred through British airspace, in order for them to be tortured in third countries and to allow British agents to gather information from suspects treated in this way. Miliband also attempted to block public disclosure of intelligence information related to torture allegations in the case of former Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed.

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