How Rich is Congress? By Money Choice

Congressional wealth is reported annually, and even though they have access to the same investments as the American public, they are far wealthier. How does the wealth of House and Senate representatives compare to their constituents’ wealth?

 
Source: MoneyChoice.org

How Rich is Congress?

Congressional wealth is reported annually, and even though they have access to the same investments as the American public, they are far wealthier. How does the wealth of House and Senate representatives compare to their constituents’ wealth?

Michael McCaul (R-Texas)
Average Net Worth: $500,624,461
Outside Income: $0
Investments/Liabilities:
496 assets
Valued from $306,437,919 to $694,811,003
1 liability
Totaling: $500,001 to $1,000,000

Darrell Issa (R-California)
Average Net Worth: $480,325,019
Outside Income: $0
Investments/Liabilities:
42 assets
Valued from $315,550,042 to $845,100,001
2 liabilities
Totaling: $100,000,002 to $100,000,002

John Kerry (D-Massachusetts)
Average Net Worth: $235,976,804
Outside Income: $0
Investments/Liabilities
446 assets
Valued from $230,468,566 to $320,215,146
84 Liabilities
Totaling: $32,580,084 to $46,300,020

Mark Warner (D-Virginia)
Average Net Worth: $228,129,609
Outside Income: $0
Investments/Liabilities:
223 assets
Valued from $86,024,219 to $370,235,000
0 liabilities

Jared Polis (D-Colorado)
Average Net Worth: $214,946,679
Outside Income: $0
Investments/Liabilities:
322 assets
Valued from $94,065,361 to $349,328,000
3 liabilities
Totaling: $2,500,003 to $11,000,000

Top 5 Least Wealthy

John K. Delaney (D-Maryland)
Average Net Worth: $139,025,569
Outside Income: 3 totaling $1,070,524
Investments/Liabilities:
121 assets
Valued from $51,886,140 to $232,165,000
1 liability
Totaling $1,000,001 to $5,000,000

Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia)
Average Net Worth: $102,706,012
Outside Income: $0
Investments/Liabilities:
20 assets
Valued from $89,082,022 to $148,330,005
2 liabilities
Totaling $6,000,002 to $26,000,001

Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut)
Average Net Worth: $100,190,174
Outside Income: 1 totaling $47,080
Investments/Liabilities:
195 assets
Valued from: $79,606,299 to $120,774,049
1 liability
Totaling $500,001 to $1,000,000

Vernon Buchanan (R-Florida)
Average Net Worth: $95,327,629
Outside Income: $0
Investments/Liabilities:
171 assets
Valued from $63,172,276 to $279,833,000
19 liabilities
Totaling $26,750,019 to $131,600,000

Nancy Pelosi (D-California)
Average Net Worth: $94,162,532
Outside Income: $0
Investments/Liabilities:
71 assets
Valued from $39,276,073 to $187,299,000
11 liabilities
Totaling $12,850,011 to $61,750,000

Most Popular Congressional Investments

General Electric®
Republican investors: 45
Minimum investment: $1,799,117
Democrat investors: 37
Minimum Investment: $1,250,949
Procter & Gamble®
Republican investors: 35
Minimum investment: $8,675,556
Democrat investors: 32
Minimum Investment: $937,006
Microsoft® Corporation
Republican investors: 33
Minimum investment: $1,262,882
Democrat investors: 31
Minimum Investment: $3,239,051
Bank of America®
Republican investors: 33
Minimum investment: $269,019
Democrat investors:
Minimum Investment: $1,840,199
Exxon Mobile®
Republican investors: 38
Minimum investment: $4,493,909
Democrat investors: 17
Minimum Investment: $1,878,452

Does Party Influence Wealth or Investment Decisions?

Wealth:
Three Democrats and two Republicans are on the wealthiest list.
Four Democrats and one Republican are on the least wealthy list.
Party affiliation has little bearing on overall wealth.

Investments:
Republicans tend to invest more in oil.
Democrats tend to invest more in technology and banking.
Party affiliation affects investment types, but not overall investments.

Median Constituent Salaries:

United States: $50,502
Texas: $49,392
California: $57,287
Massachusetts: $62,859
Virginia: $61,882
Colorado: $55,387
Maryland: $70,004
West Virginia: $38,482
Connecticut: $65,753
Florida: $44,299

The annual salary for most members of Congress is $174,000. Leaders, such as the House Speaker, make considerably more.

Constituent net worth:

In the Northeast, median net worth $91,025 in 2011

In the Midwest, median net worth $81,049

In the South, median net worth $60,700

The West $59,431

8 Shocking Ways America Leads the World

The New American Exceptionalism: Number one in obesity, guns, prisoners, anxiety, and more...

By Lynn Stuart Parramore 

People uninterested in change and progress tend to cling to the jingoistic fantasy that America is an exceptional country. Often this implies that the U.S. is somehow superior to other nations. Some, like the neocons, have taken the idea of exceptionalism to mean that America should be above the law and that other countries should be remade in our image. Others, like conservative evangelicals, believe that America's supposed exceptionalism is God's will.

In recent decades, America has indeed pulled ahead of the global pack in a number of areas. But they aren’t necessarily things to go waving the flag over. If we can't address the following trends, we'll end up snuffing out the things that truly have made the country great, like opportunities for mobility and a decent social safety net.

1. Most expensive place to have a baby. In the U.S., having a baby is going to cost you, big-time, before you even get that bundle of joy home. The New York Times reports that on average, a hospital delivery costs $9,775 — and make that $15,041 if you’re having a Cesarean. No other first-world country on earth expects new parents to shell out that kind of money just for the privilege of procreating.

You might think insurance would help. You’d be wrong. A staggering 62 percent of private plans come with zilch in the way of maternity coverage. Mothers-to-be are dragged through what the Times calls “an extended shopping trip though the American healthcare bazaar” where they try to figure out the cost of things like ultrasounds and blood tests. Pricing is often opaque and widely variable, and it’s common for mothers to receive treatments they don’t necessarily need. Even when insurance does cover maternity care, between the deductibles and co-insurance fees, women can expect to shell out thousands in out-of-pocket expenses: an average of $3,400.

Do American mothers get some kind of unusual care for all that dough? Nope. They receive the same services moms receive in other first-world countries; they just pay for them individually and at higher rates.

2. Obesity. The U.S. has been ranked as the most obese country in the world, though a recent report by the U.N. says that Mexico is pulling ahead of us. Not surprisingly, obesity is considered a national health crisis and contributes to an estimated 100,000 to 400,000 deaths in the U.S. per year. In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 35.7 percent of American adults are obese, and 17 percent of American children. More than two-thirdsof American adults are either overweight or obese.

Americans are ballooning for a number of reasons, including our fondness for fried food, sugary drinks, cheap, pre-packaged foods, processed meats, our sedentary lifestyle, particularly television-watching, too little sleep, and a lack of exercise. Obesity is associated with diabetes, heart disease, complications in pregnancy, strokes, liver disease —the list goes on and on. The obesity epidemic is also responsible for increased healthcare use and expenditures. Kentucky is the most obese state, and Colorado is the least obese.

Researchers predict that the cost of obesity in the U.S. is likely to reach $344 billion by 2018.

3. Anxiety disorders. Americans are freaking out. Researchers have looked at the prevalence of various types of mental illness around the globe and found that the U.S. is the world champion in anxiety. According to the 2009 results of the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Survey, 19 percent of Americans were found to experience a clinical anxiety disorder over a given 12-month period. The National Institutes of Health puts the number at 18 percent of adults, which means that at least 40 million Americans are suffering.

Researchers have found that anxiety disorders, which include several varieties such as generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder,take a tremendous toll on the population. Often, anxiety disorders are associated with other ailments such as chronic pain and they tend to limit the sufferer’s participation in daily activities. The disorders are more prevalent in women, and only a third of sufferers receive treatment specifically addressed at anxiety.

The Anxiety and Depression Association of America finds that people suffering from anxiety disorders are up to five times more likely to go to the doctor in general and six times more likely to be hospitalized for psychiatric disorders than others.

4. Small arms ownership. The Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva ranks the U.S. number one in both the total number of civilian firearms and in per capita ownership of small firearms, beating out recent war zones like Yemen, Serbia and Iraq.

In fact, we may even have more guns in the U.S. than we have people: The rate of private gun ownership in the U.S. was tabulated at 101.05 firearms per 100 individuals in one study. According to a recent report on CNN, Americans own as many as one-third of the guns in the entire world. Research also shows that while the number of households with guns has declined, current gun owners are stockpiling more guns. Part of this concentration seems to stem from the fact that guns are primarily marketed to people who already own guns.

A related statistic: In the U.S., the gun-related murder rate is the second highest in the developed world. Only Mexico, where the ongoing drug war expands the number, has us beat.

5. Most people behind bars. Incarceration rates in the U.S. blow right past the likes of Russia, Cuba, Iran or China. According to the International Center for Prison Studies, the U.S. locks up 716 out of every 100,000 people. Norway, in contrast, only puts 71 out of 100,000 in the clink. Japan jails 54 and Iceland locks up only 47 out of 100,000.

The latest stats show that the total prison population of the U.S., including pre-trial detainees and remand prisoners, is 2,239,751. These people are behind bars at 4,575 different facilities. The estimated capacity of our prisons, by the way, is only 2,134,000. In 2010, there were an estimated 70,792 juveniles locked away.

Racism is rife in the prison system, with blacks and Hispanics disproportionately represented. Inhumane conditions abound, from poor care for those suffering from serious diseases like HIV/AIDS to the torture of solitary confinement to rape to abuse of the mentally ill.  Debtor’s prisons are thought to be a relic of the 19th century, but starting in 2011, in the U.S. you can find yourself imprisoned for debt in several states, including Florida. High rates of imprisonment seem to derive from a number of factors, including long sentences, the incarceration of non-violent offenders (20 percent of the prison population is made up of drug offenders) and the privatization trend, in which private corporations rely on “growth” models to increase their profits.

6. Energy use per person. The U.S. is the global leader in the amount of energy use per person. We get top billing in electricity consumption, we’re miles ahead of everybody in oil consumption, and when it comes to coal consumption, we’re number two, right behind China.  

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that Americans account for nearly 19 percent of Planet Earth’s total primary energy consumption, which comes from petroleum, natural gas, coal, nuclear, and renewable energy. About one-quarter of primary energy consumed in the U.S. in 2011 was supplied from natural gas, made cheap through fracking.

Factors contributing to high use include the cost of heating and cooling increasingly large homes, electricity requirements for home electronics, the high amount of energy required to produce consumer goods in the industrial sector, and transportation usage.

U.S. energy consumption almost tripled from 1950 to 2007, driven by population growth and increased standards of living, and then dipped in 2009 due to the Great Recession. The U.S. is predicted to experience a slight decline in energy use in the coming years, but world energy demand is on pace to double by 2050.

7. Health expenditures.  The U.S. devotes more of its economy to health than any other country, 17.6 percent of GDP in 2010, and the trend is slanted upward. We spend more in every category of healthcare, especially in administration costs, due to the existence of thousands of different insurance companies.

Yet the Commonwealth Fund ranked the U.S. dead last in healthcare quality among similar countries, while noting that U.S. care is the most expensive. A coronary bypass in the U.S., for example, costs 50 percent more than it would cost you in Canada, Australia and France, and twice as much as you’d pay in Germany.

Despite all the money sloshing around, the U.S. has fewer physicians per person than most other OECD countries, fewer hospital beds, and a lower life expectancy at birth, according to a recent PBS report. The same report stated that the U.S. spent $8,233 on health per person in 2010. The next highest spenders, Norway, the Netherlands and Switzerland spent at least $3,000 less per person.

8. Cocaine use. When it comes to cocaine use, we’ve got a tie with Spain. In both countries, according to the 2008 World Drug Report released by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, three percent of adults and teens say they’ve given it a try.

Between 2006 and 2010, cocaine use is reported to have declined significantly in the U.S., but demand has by no means disappeared: about 2 million Americans are regular users (crack users account for about 700,000 of these). Colombia was once the major supplier of cocaine to Americans, but it has now fallen behind Bolivia and Peru, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Cocaine is the second most popular drug behind pot, but unlike marijuana, it is associated with high rates of death, particularly due to cardiac arrest.

Interesting factoid: Cocaine has a nasty link to industrial capitalism. It first became popular with laborers as a way of increasing productivity, and employers often supplied the drug.

Lynn Parramore is an AlterNet senior editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of 'Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture.' She received her Ph.d in English and Cultural Theory from NYU, where she has taught essay writing and semiotics. She is the Director of AlterNet's New Economic Dialogue Project. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.

Manning: A Conviction of Love in Action By Norman Solomon

The Moral Verdict on Bradley 

The sun rose with a moral verdict on Bradley Manning well before the military judge could proclaim his guilt. The human verdict would necessarily clash with the proclamation from the judicial bench.

In lockstep with administrators of the nation’s war services, judgment day arrived on Tuesday to exact official retribution. After unforgiveable actions, the defendant’s culpability weighed heavy.

“Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house,” another defendant, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, wrote about another action that resulted in a federal trial, 45 years earlier, scarcely a dozen miles from the Fort Meade courtroom where Bradley Manning faced prosecution for his own fracture of good order.

“We could not, so help us God, do otherwise,” wrote Berrigan, one of the nine people who, one day in May 1968 while the Vietnam War raged on, removed several hundred files from a U.S. draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, and burned them with napalm in the parking lot. “For we are sick at heart…”

On the surface, many differences protrude between those nine draft-files-burning radical Catholics and Bradley Manning. But I wonder. Ten souls saw cruelties of war and could no longer just watch.

“I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy,” Manning wrote in an online chat. Minutes later he added: “I think I’ve been traumatized too much by reality, to care about consequences of shattering the fantasy.” And he also wrote: “I want people to see the truth … regardless of who they are … because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”

Those words came seven weeks after the world was able to watch the “Collateral Murder” video that Manning had provided to WikiLeaks. And those words came just days before military police arrived to arrest him on May 29, 2010.

Since then, huge numbers of people around the world have come to see Bradley Manning as personification of moral courage. During the last several months I’ve read thousands of moving comments online at ManningNobel.org, posted by signers of the petition urging that he receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The comments are often stunning with heartfelt intensity of wounded idealism, anger and hope.

No verdict handed down by the military judge can change the moral verdict that has emerged from people all over the world, reciprocating what Bradley Manning expressed online a few days before his arrest: “I can’t separate myself from others.” And: “I feel connected to everybody … like they were distant family.”

The problem for the U.S. government was not that Bradley Manning felt that way. The problem came when he acted that way. Caring was one thing. Acting on the caring, with empathy propelling solidarity, was another.

Days ago, in closing argument, the prosecutor at Fort Meade thundered: “He was not a whistleblower, he was a traitor.”

But a “traitor” to what? To the United States … only if the United States is to be a warfare state, where we “cannot make informed decisions as a public.” Only if we obey orders to separate ourselves from the humanity of others. Only if authoritative, numbing myths are to trump empathy and hide painful truth.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

Bradley Manning Cleared of 'Aiding the Enemy' but Guilty of Most Other Charges

• Manning convicted of multiple Espionage Act violations
• Acquitted of most serious 'aiding the enemy' charge
• Army private faces maximum jail sentence of 130 years

By Ed Pilkington at Fort Meade 
Bradley Manning, the source of the massive WikiLeaks trove of secret disclosures, faces a possible maximum sentence of more than 130 years in military jail after he was convicted of most charges on which he stood trial.

Colonel Denise Lind, the military judge presiding over the court martial of the US soldier, delivered her verdict in curt and pointed language. "Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty," she repeated over and over, as the reality of a prolonged prison sentence for Manning – on top of the three years he has already spent in detention – dawned.

The one ray of light in an otherwise bleak outcome for Manning was that he was found not guilty of the single most serious charge against him – that he knowingly "aided the enemy", in practice al-Qaida, by disclosing information to the WikiLeaks website that in turn made it accessible to all users including enemy groups.

Lind's decision to avoid setting a precedent by applying the swingeing "aiding the enemy" charge to an official leaker will invoke a sigh of relief from news organisations and civil liberties groups who had feared a guilty verdict would send a chill across public interest journalism.

The judge also found Manning not guilty of having leaked an encrypted copy of a video of a US air strike in the Farah province of Aghanistan in which many civilians died. Manning's defence team had argued vociferously that he was not the source of this video, though the soldier did admit to later disclosure of an unencrypted version of the video and related documents.

Lind also accepted Manning's version of several of the key dates in the WikiLeaks disclosures, and took some of the edge from other less serious charges. But the overriding toughness of the verdict remains: the soldier was found guilty in their entirety of 17 out of the 22 counts against him, and of an amended version of four others.

Manning was also found guilty of "wrongfully and wantonly" causing to be published on the internet intelligence belonging to the US, "having knowledge that intelligence published on the internet is accesible to the enemy". That guilty ruling could still have widest ramifications for news organisations working on investigations relating to US national security.

Once the counts are added up, the prospects for the Manning are bleak. Barring reduction of sentence for mitigation, which becomes the subject of another mini-trial dedicated to sentencing that starts tomorrow, Manning will face a substantial chunk of his adult life in military custody.

He has already spent 1,157 days in detention since his arrest in May 2010 – most recently in Fort Leavenworth in Kansas – which will be deducted from his eventual sentence.

A further 112 days will be taken off the sentence as part of a pre-trial ruling in which Lind compensated him for the excessively harsh treatment he endured at the Quantico marine base in Virginia between July 2010 and April 2011. He was kept on suicide watch for long stretches despite expert opinion from military psychiatrists who deemed him to be at low risk of self-harm, and at one point was forced to strip naked at night in conditions that the UN denounced as a form of torture.

Lind has indicated that she will go straight into the sentencing phase of the trial, in which both defence and prosecution lawyers will call new witnesses. This is being seen as the critical stage of the trial for Manning's defence: the soldier admitted months ago to being the source of the WikiLeaks disclosures, and much of the defence strategy has been focused on attempting to reduce his sentence through mitigation.

With that in mind, the soldier's main counsel, David Coombs, is likely to present evidence during the sentencing phase that Manning was in a fragile emotional state at the time he began leaking and was struggling with issues over his sexuality. In pre-trial hearings, the defence has argued that despite his at times erratic behaviour, the accused was offered very little support or counselling from his superiors at Forward Operating Base Hammer outside Baghdad.

The outcome will now be pored over by government agencies, lawyers, journalists and civil liberties groups for its implications for whistleblowing, investigative reporting and the guarding of state secrets in the digital age. By passing to WikiLeaks more than 700,000 documents, Manning became the first mass digital leaker in history, opening a whole new chapter in the age-old tug-of-war between government secrecy and the public's right to information in a democracy.

Among those who will also be closely analysing the verdict are Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who has disclosed the existence of secret government dragnets of the phone records of millions of Americans, who has indicated that the treatment of Manning was one reason for his decision to seek asylum in another country rather than face similar aggressive prosecution in America. The British government will also be dissecting the courtroom results after the Guardian disclosed that Manning is a joint British American citizen.

Another party that will be intimately engaged with the verdict is WikiLeaks, and its founder, Julian Assange. They have been the subject of a secret grand jury investigation in Virginia that has been looking into whether to prosecute them for their role in the Manning disclosures.

WikiLeaks and Assange were mentioned repeatedly during the trial by the US government which tried to prove that the anti-secrecy organisation had directly steered Manning in his leaking activities, an allegation strongly denied by the accused. Prosecutors drew heavily on still classified web conversations between Manning and an individual going by the name of "Press Association", whom the government alleges was Assange.

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited

That Most Charming of Couples: Nationalism and Hypocrisy By William Blum

It’s not easy being a flag-waving American nationalist. In addition to having to deal with the usual disillusion, anger, and scorn from around the world incited by Washington’s endless bombings and endless wars, the nationalist is assaulted by whistle blowers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, who have disclosed a steady stream of human-rights and civil-liberties scandals, atrocities, embarrassing lies, and embarrassing truths. Believers in “American exceptionalism” and “noble intentions” have been hard pressed to keep the rhetorical flag waving by the dawn’s early light and the twilight’s last gleaming.

That may explain the Washington Post story (July 20) headlined “U.S. asylum-seekers unhappy in Russia”, about Edward Snowden and his plan to perhaps seek asylum in Moscow. The article recounted the allegedly miserable times experienced in the Soviet Union by American expatriates and defectors like Lee Harvey Oswald, the two NSA employees of 1960 – William Martin and Bernon Mitchell – and several others. The Post’s propaganda equation apparently is: Dissatisfaction with life in Russia by an American equals a point in favor of the United States: “misplaced hopes of a glorious life in the worker’s paradise” … Oswald “was given work in an electronics factory in dreary Minsk, where the bright future eluded him” … reads the Post’s Cold War-clichéd rendition. Not much for anyone to get terribly excited about, but a defensive American nationalist is hard pressed these days to find much better.

At the same time TeamUSA scores points by publicizing present-day Russian violations of human rights and civil liberties, just as if the Cold War were still raging. “We call on the Russian government to cease its campaign of pressure against individuals and groups seeking to expose corruption, and to ensure that the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of all of its citizens, including the freedoms of speech and assembly, are protected and respected,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. 1

“Campaign of pressure against individuals and groups seeking to expose corruption” … hmmm … Did someone say “Edward Snowden”? Is round-the-clock surveillance of the citizenry not an example of corruption? Does the White House have no sense of shame? Or embarrassment? At all?

I long for a modern version of the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954 at which Carney – or much better, Barack Obama himself – is spewing one lie and one sickening defense of his imperialist destruction after another. And the committee counsel (in the famous words of Joseph Welch) is finally moved to declare: “Sir, you’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” The Congressional gallery burst into applause and this incident is widely marked as the beginning of the end of the McCarthy sickness.

US politicians and media personalities have criticized Snowden for fleeing abroad to release the classified documents he possessed. Why didn’t he remain in the US to defend his actions and face his punishment like a real man? they ask. Yes, the young man should have voluntarily subjected himself to solitary confinement, other tortures, life in prison, and possible execution if he wished to be taken seriously. Quel coward!

Why didn’t Snowden air his concerns through the proper NSA channels rather than leaking the documents, as a respectable whistleblower would do? This is the question James Bamford, generally regarded as America’s leading writer on the NSA, endeavored to answer, as follows:

I’ve interviewed many NSA whistleblowers, and the common denominator is that they felt ignored when attempting to bring illegal or unethical operations to the attention of higher-ranking officials. For example, William Binney and several other senior NSA staffers protested the agency’s domestic collection programs up the chain of command, and even attempted to bring the operations to the attention of the attorney general, but they were ignored. Only then did Binney speak publicly to me for an article in Wired magazine. In a Q&A on the Guardian Web Snowden cited Binney as an example of “how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they’ll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.”

And even when whistleblowers bring their concerns to the news media, the NSA usually denies that the activity is taking place. The agency denied Binney’s charges that it was obtaining all consumer metadata from Verizon and had access to virtually all Internet traffic. It was only when Snowden leaked the documents revealing the phone-log program and showing how PRISM works that the agency was forced to come clean. 2

“Every country in the world that is engaged in international affairs and national security undertakes lots of activities to protect its national security,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said recently. “All I know is that it is not unusual for lots of nations.” 3

Well, Mr. K, anti-semitism is not unusual; it can be found in every country. Why, then, does the world so strongly condemn Nazi Germany? Obviously, it’s a matter of degree, is it not? The magnitude of the US invasion of privacy puts it into a league all by itself.

Kerry goes out of his way to downplay the significance of what Snowden revealed. He’d have the world believe that it’s all just routine stuff amongst nations … “Move along, nothing to see here.” Yet the man is almost maniacal about punishing Snowden. On July 12, just hours after Venezuela agreed to provide Snowden with political asylum, Kerry personally called Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua and reportedly threatened to ground any Venezuelan aircraft in America’s or any NATO country’s airspace if there is the slightest suspicion that Snowden is using the flight to get to Caracas. Closing all NATO member countries’ airspace to Venezuelan flights means avoiding 26 countries in Europe and two in North America. Under this scenario, Snowden would have to fly across the Pacific from Russia’s Far East instead of crossing the Atlantic.

The Secretary of State also promised to intensify the ongoing process of revoking US entry visas to Venezuelan officials and businessmen associated with the deceased President Hugo Chávez. Washington will also begin prosecuting prominent Venezuelan politicians on allegations of drug trafficking, money laundering and other criminal actions and Kerry specifically mentioned some names in his conversation with the Venezuelan Foreign Minister.

Kerry added that Washington is well aware of Venezuela’s dependence on the US when it comes to refined oil products. Despite being one of the world’s largest oil producers, Venezuela requires more petrol and oil products than it can produce, buying well over a million barrels of refined oil products from the United States every month. Kerry bluntly warned that fuel supplies would be halted if President Maduro continues to reach out to the fugitive NSA contractor. 4

Wow. Heavy. Unlimited power in the hands of psychopaths. My own country truly scares me.

And what country brags about its alleged freedoms more than the United States? And its alleged democracy? Its alleged civil rights and human rights? Its alleged “exceptionalism”? Its alleged everything? Given that, why should not the United States be held to the very highest of standards?

American hypocrisy in its foreign policy is manifested on a routine, virtually continual, basis. Here is President Obama speaking recently in South Africa about Nelson Mandela: “The struggle here against apartheid, for freedom; [Mandela’s] moral courage; this country’s historic transition to a free and democratic nation has been a personal inspiration to me. It has been an inspiration to the world – and it continues to be.” 5

How touching. But no mention – never any mention by any American leader – that the United States was directly responsible for sending Nelson Mandela to prison for 28 years. 6

And demanding Snowden’s extradition while, according to the Russian Interior Ministry, “Law agencies asked the US on many occasions to extradite wanted criminals through Interpol channels, but those requests were neither met nor even responded to.” Amongst the individuals requested are militant Islamic insurgents from Chechnya, given asylum in the United States. 7

Ecuador has had a similar experience with the US in asking for the extradition of several individuals accused of involvement in a coup attempt against President Rafael Correa. The most blatant example of this double standard is that of Luis Posada Carriles who masterminded the blowing up of a Cuban airline in 1976, killing 73 civilians. He has lived as a free man in Florida for many years even though his extradition has been requested by Venezuela. He’s but one of hundreds of anti-Castro and other Latin American terrorists who’ve been given haven in the United States over the years despite their being wanted in their home countries.

American officials can spout “American exceptionalism” every other day and commit crimes against humanity on intervening days. Year after year, decade after decade. But I think we can derive some satisfaction, and perhaps even hope, in that US foreign policy officials, as morally damaged as they must be, are not all so stupid that they don’t know they’re swimming in a sea of hypocrisy. Presented here are two examples:

In 2004 it was reported that “The State Department plans to delay the release of a human rights report that was due out today, partly because of sensitivities over the prison abuse scandal in Iraq, U.S. officials said. One official … said the release of the report, which describes actions taken by the U.S. government to encourage respect for human rights by other nations, could ‘make us look hypocritical’.” 8

And an example from 2007: Chester Crocker, a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion, and formerly Assistant Secretary of State, noted that “we have to be able to cope with the argument that the U.S. is inconsistent and hypocritical in its promotion of democracy around the world. That may be true.” 9

In these cases the government officials appear to be somewhat self-conscious about the prevailing hypocrisy. Other foreign policy notables seem to be rather proud.

Robert Kagan, author and long-time intellectual architect of an interventionism that seeks to impose a neo-conservative agenda upon the world, by any means necessary, has declared that the United States must refuse to abide by certain international conventions, like the international criminal court and the Kyoto accord on global warming. The US, he says, “must support arms control, but not always for itself. It must live by a double standard.” 10

And then we have Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat who was an advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair during the Iraq war. Cooper wrote:

The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. 11

His expression, “every state for itself”, can be better understood as any state not willing to accede to the agenda of the American Empire and the school bully’s best friend in London.

So there we have it. The double standard is in. The Golden Rule of “do unto others as you would have others do unto you” is out.

The imperial mafia, and their court intellectuals like Kagan and Cooper, have a difficult time selling their world vision on the basis of legal, moral, ethical or fairness standards. Thus it is that they simply decide that they’re not bound by such standards.
Hating America

Here is Alan Dershowitz, prominent American lawyer, jurist, political commentator and fervent Zionist and supporter of the empire, speaking about journalist Glenn Greenwald and the latter’s involvement with Edward Snowden: “Look, Greenwald’s a total phony. He is anti-American, he loves tyrannical regimes, and he did this because he hates America. This had nothing to do with publicizing information. He never would’ve written this article if they had published material about one of his favorite countries.” 12

“Anti-American” … “hates America” … What do they mean, those expressions that are an integral part of American political history? Greenwald hates baseball and hot dogs? … Hates American films and music? … Hates all the buildings in the United States? Every law? … No, like most “anti-Americans”, Glenn Greenwald hates American foreign policy. He hates all the horrors and all the lies used to cover up all the horrors. So which Americans is he anti?

Dershowitz undoubtedly thinks that Snowden is anti-American as well. But listen to the young man being interviewed:

“America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing.”

The interviewer is Glenn Greenwald. 13

Is there any other “democratic” country in the world which regularly, or even occasionally, employs such terminology? Anti-German? Anti-British? Anti-Mexican? It may be that only a totalitarian mentality can conceive of and use the term “anti-American”.

“God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.” – John LeCarré, London Times, January 15, 2003
 

Notes

1. White House Press Briefing, July 18, 2013
2. Washington Post, June 23, 2013  
3. Reuters news agency, July 2, 2013  
4. RT television (Russia Today), July 19, 2013, citing a Spanish ABC media outlet  
5. White House press release, June 29, 2013  
6. William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, chapter 23  
7. Reuters, July 22, 2013  
8. Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2004  
9. Washington Post, April 17, 2007  
10. Hoover Institute, Stanford University, Policy Review, June 1, 2002
11. The Observer (UK), April 7, 2002  
12. “Piers Morgan Live”, CNN, June 24, 2013
13. Video of Glen Greenwald interviewing Edward Snowden (at 2:05 mark)  

http://williamblum.org/aer/read/119

Ho Chi Minh and the Declaration of Independence

Video

Ho Chi Minh, took inspiration from the U.S. Declaration of Independence when he drafted the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence. Archimedes Patti from the U.S. Office of Strategic Intelligence (OSS) relied upon Viet Minh intelligence and logistics to track and to disrupt Japanese activities in Vietnam. Once the Japanese surrendered, Patti was invited by Ho Chi Minh to attend and comment upon the Vietnamese Declarations of Independence.

Excerpts from 1981 Interview by Martin Smith (WGBH) with former Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Major Archimedes Patti, who during World War Two provided support to the Vietnamese Resistance (Viet Minh) under the command of Ho Chi Minh fighting the Japanese occupation.

The complete 1981 interview by Martin Smith with Archimedes Patti here - http://is.gd/lYontc 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIJfV2cTUHc&feature=player_embedded

The Illusion of Israeli/Palestinian Peace for Our Time By Stephen Lendman

Talks take place in Washington. Doing so alone assures betrayal and failure. It's certain. America one-sidedly favors Israel. It's duplicitous. It's no honest broker. It never was. It's not now. 

No legitimate Palestinian leader would permit Washington's involvement. Collaborators betray their people by doing so.

Talks began Monday night. They did so informally. A State Department statement said the following:

"Today, Secretary Kerry spoke with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and personally extended an invitation to send senior negotiating teams to Washington to formally resume direct final status negotiations." 

"Initial meetings are planned for the evening of Monday July 29 and Tuesday July 30, 2013."

"The Israelis will be represented by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Yitzhak Molcho, and the Palestinians will be represented by Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat and Mohammad Shtayyeh." 

"As Secretary Kerry announced on July 19 in Amman, Jordan, the Israelis and Palestinians had reached agreement on the basis for resuming direct final status negotiations." 

"The meetings in Washington will mark the beginning of these talks." 

"They will serve as an opportunity to develop a procedural workplan for how the parties can proceed with the negotiations in the coming months."

"In his invitation, the Secretary again commended the courage shown by Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas."

"The Secretary said, 'Both leaders have demonstrated a willingness to make difficult decisions that have been instrumental in getting to this point. We are grateful for their leadership.' "

"The United States and the parties are looking forward to beginning these substantive discussions and in moving forward toward a final status agreement."

Fact check

Longstanding unresolved final status issues are off the table. Claiming otherwise is duplicitous. 

They include ending occupation, self-determination, settlements, borders, diaspora Palestinians right of return, borders, air, water and resource rights, and East Jerusalem as Palestine's exclusive capital.

Oslo left these and other major issues unresolved. It did so for later final status talks. Palestinians are still waiting. They're denied. They're cheated. They're betrayed. They're on their own.

Previous articles explained what journalist Henry Siegman once called "the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history."

Talks were stillborn from inception. Gideon Levy said "There has never been an Israeli peace camp. Let's call the child by its real name: The Israeli peace camp is still an unborn baby."

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon claims Jews have "an unassailable right (to) settle anywhere, particularly here, (in) the land of the Bible."

The peace process is a useful fiction. It "sear(s) deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people."

Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said he wanted talks dragged out for a decade. Doing so lets Israel vastly expand settlements. He omitted saying on stolen Palestinian land.

Current Prime Minister Netanyahu calls talks "a waste of time." He and US officials conspire against Palestinians. Peace remains elusive. Israel and Washington spurn it.

Palestinians have no say. Talks began in the mid-1970s. The so-called peace process is little more than a slogan. It stalls for time.

Decades passed. Palestine remains occupied. Israel controls over 60% of the West Bank. 

It does so through expanding settlements, outposts, closed military zones, tourist sites, commercial areas, no-go ones, increasing East Jerusalem encroachment, Israel's apartheid wall, Jews only roads, and numerous checkpoints and barriers.

Palestinians are increasingly isolated. They're ghettoized. They're in separated cantons. They're on least valued land. Israel controls borders, air and water rights, as well as all resource rich areas.

Longstanding Israeli intransigence severely compromises Palestinian rights. Israel's a lawless land-grabber. Land laws facilitate ethnic cleaning. 

Jews get exclusive rights. Palestinians have none. Israeli laws and Land Administration prohibit Arabs from buying, leasing or using land exclusively reserved for Jews.

Yasser Arafat (1929 - 2004) once said: "Israel has always confiscated land from Arabs and dispossessed them of their property. The land always goes from Arabs to the Jews."

Israel Shahak (1933 - 2001) addressed the Jewish State, saying:

It includes occupied territory Israel controls. "The real situation in Israel is really very simple: Israel is not an 'Israeli' state, or a state of its citizens but it is a 'Jewish state.' " 

"More than 90% of the inhabited areas of the State of Israel are under the rule of the Jewish National Fund regulations, under which non-Jews cannot rent or buy a house or flat, open a business, in short cannot live." 

"This land is called in Hebrew 'the land' saved. The land which belongs to non-Jews is called unsaved not national, and by buying or confiscating it from a non-Jew by a Jew, the land is supposed to be 'saved.' "

There's more. The Israel Land Authority (ILA) severely restricts Palestinian development. It does so through regional councils. They control Arab areas. 

They enforce rigid residential, agricultural, and industrial use zoning restrictions. They prohibit unlicensed construction. 

They ban it on agricultural land. They stipulate where Jews and Arabs may live. They afford rights exclusively to Jews. They deny Palestinians room to expand.

They confiscate occupied "public land" for exclusive Jewish use. They declare national priority areas off-limits to Palestinians.

They delay, restrict, and/or prohibit developing Arab communities. They deny Palestinians representation on national planning committees.

Forced evictions, dispossessions, and home demolitions facilitate more Jews-only development.

Palestinians are denied. They're severely compromised. It's been this way for 46 years. Peace talks are fake. They're a charade. They're like they've always been. They facilitate same old, same old.

They reflect futility, failure and betrayal. They change nothing. This time's no different. Pretense pretends otherwise. Don't expect media scoundrels to explain.

New York Times editors one-sidedly support Israel. It's longstanding Times policy. On July 25, they headlined"Inching Forward in the Mdeast," saying:

Kerry "used six trips to the region to pursue a sensible strategy to nudge the two sides to the table."

Duplicitous Arab League leaders gave him and Palestinian collaborators cover to do so.

"The international community has promised the Palestinians a $4 billion economic package."

Kerry's economic plan is crony capitalism writ large. It benefits private Western/Israeli investment. 

It spurns Palestinian rights. It continues neoliberal harshness. Kerry wants more of the same. Don't expect Times editors to explain.

They claim Israel will release dozens of long-held Palestinian prisoners. They'll do so in good faith. Mercy isn't in Israel's vocabulary.

Palestinians are ruthlessly treated. Thousands languish unjustly in Israel's gulag. Released prisoners are harassed, monitored and rearrested.

On the one hand, Times editors said "No good can come if Israel evolves from a Jewish majority state to an Arab majority state"

On the other, they suggested "the long sought dream of a Palestinian state (can't be) left to die."

They omitted what's most important. Israel won't permit viable Palestinian self-determination. Two states once were possible. No longer. Israel controls too much land. It steals more daily.

Conflict resolution depends on ending Israel's occupation. It means one state for all its people at peace with equal rights. It requires everyone be treated equitably, justly and fairly. 

Nothing else works. Current conditions aren't sustainable. Israel wants permanent occupation. Palestinians deserve sovereign freedom.

Democratic legitimacy requires one nation for all its people. It does so irrespective of race, religion, ethnicity, or other differentiating factors. 

It requires mandating equal rights, observing international law principles, and ending decades of occupation, colonization and apartheid.

It requires treating Arabs and Jews equally. It means establishing binding statutes. It requires enforcing them. It's about commitment for the right thing.

Don't expect media scoundrels to explain. On June 23, Haaretz editors fell woefully short. They headlined "On the way to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating tent," saying:

"Netanyahu's support for a two-state solution hasn't been so resolute since his (2009) Bar-Ilan speech in 2009."

Obama's "moves in the first five months of his second and last term, including the appointments of Kerry and Rice, show (he's) striving to bring about an Israeli-Palestinian agreement."

A "historic agreement with the Palestinians is a paramount goal for Israel and certainly for its prime minister."

Haaretz editors know better. Their editorial reflects illusions, not reality.

Netanyahu abhors peace. He spurns Palestinian rights. He brags about "put(ting) an end to the Oslo Accords." 

He says "America is a thing you can move very easily." His Bar-Ilan speech gave impossible conditions. They included:
 

• demilitarization;

• border, air space, and East Jerusalem under Israeli control;

 

• Palestinians recognizing Israel as the "state of the Jewish people;" and

 

• no right of return.

In May 2011, Netanyahu addressed a joint congressional session. He reiterated his views on Palestinian self-determination. He refused to accept pre-1967 borders. 

He said Israel would retain and expand large settlements in and around East Jerusalem. Doing so cuts the West Bank in half.

He added that Israel will maintain "a longterm (Jordan Valley) military presence." Doing so controls Palestine's most fertile land. It controls all entry and exit points.

During Netanyahu's two terms as prime minister, he accelerated settlement construction. It continues unabated. He wants "facts on the ground" established. Doing so prevents Palestinian self-determination. 

In January 2013, Israel's Peace Now said Netanyahu's policies "disclose a clear intention to use settlements to systematically undermine and render impossible a realistic, viable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

He rejects what Palestinians deserve. He supports militarized occupation harshness. He demands continued apartheid. He spurns peaceful conflict resolution. So does Washington.

Palestinians have no peace partner. They never did. They don't now. Peace for our time is fake. It's illusory. It's a distant dream. Don't expect media scoundrels to explain.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html - Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. - http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour 

Balkanization of Key Mideast States Arabs, Beware the "Small States" Option By Sharmine Narwani

At the heart of all politics lies cold, hard opportunism. New circumstances, changed alliances and unexpected events will always conspire to alter one’s calculations to benefit a core agenda.

In the Middle East today, those calculations are being adjusted with a frequency unseen for decades.

In Egypt and Syria, for instance, popular sentiment is genuinely divided on where alliances and interests lie. Half of Egyptians seem convinced that deposed President Mohammed Mursi is the resident US-Israeli stooge, while the other half believe it is Egypt's military that is carrying out those foreign agendas.

In Syria the same can be said for Syrians conflicted on whether President Bashar al-Assad or the external-based Syrian National Council (SNC) most benefits Israeli and American hegemonic interests in the region.

But Egyptians and Syrians, who point alternating fingers at Islamists or the state as being tools of imperialism, have this wrong: Empire is opportunistic. It has ways to benefit from both.

There is another vastly more destructive scenario being missed while Arabs busy themselves with conspiracies and speculative minutiae: A third option far more damaging to all.

Balkanization of Key Mideast States

At a June 19 event at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger touched upon an alarming new refrain in western discourse on Mideast outcomes; a third strategy, if all else fails, of redrawn borders along sectarian, ethnic, tribal or national lines that will shrink the political/military reach of key Arab states and enable the west to reassert its rapidly-diminishing control over the region. Says Kissinger about two such nations:

“There are three possible outcomes (in Syria). An Assad victory. A Sunni victory. Or an outcome in which the various nationalities agree to co-exist together but in more or less autonomous regions, so that they can’t oppress each other. That’s the outcome I would prefer to see. But that’s not the popular view…First of all, Syria is not a historic state. It was created in its present shape in 1920, and it was given that shape in order to facilitate the control of the country by France, which happened to be after UN mandate…The neighboring country Iraq was also given an odd shape, that was to facilitate control by England. And the shape of both of the countries was designed to make it hard for either of them to dominate the region.”

While Kissinger frankly acknowledges his preferred option of “autonomous regions,” most western government statements actually pretend their interest lies in preventing territorial splits. Don’t be fooled. This is narrative-building and scene-setting all the same. Repeat something enough – i.e., the idea that these countries could be carved up – and audiences will not remember whether you like it or not. They will retain the message that these states can be divided.

It is the same with sectarian discourse. Western governments are always warning against the escalation of a Sunni-Shia divide. Yet they are knee-deep in deliberately fueling Shia-Sunni conflicts throughout the region, particularly in states where Iran enjoys significant influence (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq) or may begin to gain some (Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen).

“Seeding” Sectarianism to Break Up States

If ever a conspiracy had legs, this one is it. Stirring Iranian-Arab and Sunni-Shiite strife to its advantage has been a major US policy objective since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Wikileaks helped shed light on some of Washington’s machinations just as Arab uprisings started to hit our TV screens.

A 2006 State Department cable that bemoans Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s strengthened position in Syria outlines actionable plans to sow discord within the state, with the goal of disrupting Syrian ties with Iran. The theme? “Exploiting” all “vulnerabilities”:

“PLAY ON SUNNI FEARS OF IRANIAN INFLUENCE: There are fears in Syria that the Iranians are active in both Shia proselytizing and conversion of, mostly poor, Sunnis. Though often exaggerated, such fears reflect an element of the Sunni community in Syria that is increasingly upset by and focused on the spread of Iranian influence in their country through activities ranging from mosque construction to business. Both the local Egyptian and Saudi missions here, (as well as prominent Syrian Sunni religious leaders), are giving increasing attention to the matter and we should coordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention on the issue.”

Makes one question whether similar accusations about the “spread of Shiism” in Egypt held any truth whatsoever, other than to sow anti-Shia and anti-Iran sentiment in a country until this month led by the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.

A 2009 cable from the US Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia continues this theme. Mohammad
 Naji al-Shaif, a tribal leader with close personal ties to then-Yemeni President Ali Abdallah 
Saleh and his inner circle says that key figures "are privately very skeptical of Saleh's
 claims regarding Iranian assistance for the Houthi rebels":

Shaif told
 EconOff on December 14 that (Saudi Government's Special Office for
 Yemen Affairs) committee members privately shared his view that Saleh was providing false or exaggerated
 information on Iranian assistance to the Houthis in order to
 enlist direct Saudi involvement and regionalize the conflict. Shaif said that one committee member told him that "we know
 Saleh is lying about Iran, but there's nothing we can do 
about it now."

That didn't stop Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lying through her teeth to a Senate Committee a few short years later: "We know that they - the Iranians are very much involved in the opposition movements in Yemen."

US embassy cables from Manama, Bahrain in 2008 continue in the same vein:

“Bahraini government officials sometimes privately tell U.S. official visitors that some Shi’a oppositionists are backed by Iran. Each time this claim is raised, we ask the GOB to share its evidence. To date, we have seen no convincing evidence of Iranian weapons or government money here since at least the mid-1990s… In post’s assessment, if the GOB had convincing evidence of more recent Iranian subversion, it would quickly share it with us.”

Yet as Bahraini rulers continue to violently repress peaceful protest in the Shia-majority state two years into that country’s popular uprising, their convenient public bogeyman mirrors that of Washington: Iranian interference.

Washington was extremely quick to activate anti-Shia and anti-Iran narratives as the Arab uprisings kicked off. Barely three months into 2011, the US military ran a secret exercise to fine-tune a “storyline” that perpetuates differences between Arabs and Iranian, Sunni and Shia.

Here are some of the premises and questions included in CENTCOM’s Arabs versus Iranians exercise. (Note: The exercise refers to Iranians as “Persians.”)

Premise: “The Arab-Persian dynamic is a divide. History, religion, language and culture simply pose too many obstacles to overcome.”

Premise: “A general Arab inferiority complex relative to Persians means that many Arabs are fearful of Persian expansion and hegemony throughout the Middle East. In their minds, the Persian Empire has never gone away and it is more self-sufficient than most Arab states.”

Premise: “Barring a “clash of civilizations” – i.e., a modern crusades, Islam vs Judeo-Christians, warfare between the West/Israel vs Arabs/Persians – there does not appear to be a scenario where Arabs and Persians will join forces against the US/West.”

Question: “Is it appropriate to frame the discussion as Arab-Persian or is Sunni-Shia a more appropriate framework?”

Question: “Assuming a schism, what could unite Arabs and Persians, even temporarily?”

These narratives assume two things: that the division between Iranians and Arabs is a fact and that the greater unity of the two groups in the wake of the Arab uprisings is a potential threat to U.S. interests. Hence the worried question:What could unite them, even temporarily?

“Small States” Weaken Arabs

As manufactured conflict increases in the region, options too diminish. Because of the strategic importance of the Middle East and its vital oil and gas reserves…because of the desire to maintain stability in key states that safeguard US interests like Israel, Jordan, NATO-member Turkey, Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf…open-ended conflict in multiple states is, simply put, undesirable.

Over the course of the Syrian conflict – and certainly in the past year when Assad’s departure looked less likely – the West, through media and “pundit” intermediaries, has often floated the idea of dividing the state into several smaller parts along sectarian and ethnic lines. While framed as a means to “prevent further conflict,” this idea actually follows the American experiment of Iraqi federalism that effectively sought to carve Iraq into three distinct Sunni, Shia and Kurdish zones.

Forget that you cannot find five non-Kurdish Syrians or Iraqis of credible national renown who would back the idea of fragmenting their nation. This is distinctly a Washington vision. Or rather, a western one, with Israeli fingerprintsall over it.

Israel’s vision of “Small States”

In 1982, as Israel warmed up its operation to invade multi-sect Lebanon, Israeli foreign ministry strategician Oded Yinon inked a master plan to redraw the Mideast into small warring cantons that would never again be able to threaten the Jewish state’s regional primacy:

“Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi'ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan.”

“Egypt is divided and torn apart into many foci of authority. If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join the downfall and dissolution of Egypt. The vision of a Christian Coptic State in Upper Egypt alongside a number of weak states with very localized power and without a centralized government as to date, is the key to a historical development which was only set back by the peace agreement but which seems inevitable in the long run.”

“Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.”

“There is no chance that Jordan will continue to exist in its present structure for a long time, and Israel's policy, both in war and in peace, ought to be directed at the liquidation of Jordan under the present regime and the transfer of power to the Palestinian majority.”

Beware the Artificial Break-up of States

As opposed to western narratives about Arab “revolutions” heralding the arrival of “freedom and democracy,” the Russians took a more cautious view of events.

As early as February 2011, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that revolutions across the Arab world could see fanatics coming to power, leading to “fires for years and the spread of extremism in the future." The breaking up of states in the aftermath of these events, he says, is a distinct possibility:

“The situation is tough. We could be talking about the disintegration of large, densely-populated states, talking about them breaking up into little pieces.”

The Russians were right. The Americans - dangerously wrong.

The Mideast will one day need to make region-wide border corrections, but to be successful, it must do so entirely within an indigenously determined process. The battles heating up in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere are a manifestation of a larger fight between two “blocs” that seek entirely different regional outcomes – one of these being the borders of a new Middle East.

The first group, a US-led bloc aggressive in its pursuit of maintaining regional hegemony any which way, is using fiction and carefully-spun divisive narratives to sway populations into accepting “cause” for new western-backed borders. These borders will divide nations along sectarian, ethnic and tribal lines to ensure ongoing conflict between the newly minted states, and "redirecting" them from the vastly bigger imperial threat. A unified Mideast, after all, would naturally turn against the universally reviled Empire, with Israel’s borders being the first on the chopping board. And in this climate, western-fomented border revisions will be dramatically more chaotic than Sykes-Picotever was.

The second bloc (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia, China and a smattering of independent groups/states) which opposes western-Israeli hegemony does not have the means or ability to impose border solutions except in their own direct geographical base, which looks increasingly like a line drawn from Lebanon to Iraq (and not accidentally, where most of the chaos is currently channeled). Theirs is a defensive strategy, based largely on unwinding divisive plots, minimizing strife and warding off foreign-backed insurgencies, through military means if necessary.

In this bloc's view, Sykes Picot will be undone, but within an organic process of border corrections based on regional consensus and rational considerations. In truth, this bloc is focused less on redrawn borders than it is on dousing the fires that seek to create the harmful divides.

Arabs and Muslims need to start becoming keenly aware of this “small state” third option, else they will fall into the dangerous trap of being distracted by detail while larger games carve up their nations and plunge them into perpetual conflict.

Sharmine Narwani is a commentary writer and political analyst covering the Middle East, and a Senior Associate at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. She has a Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in both journalism and Mideast studies. Follow Sharmine on twitter@snarwani.

This article was originally published at Al-Akhbar English