"Sometimes an intended epithet can be turned to good advantage...In the sole surviving issue of the Decatur, Texas Times one finds the way Populists not only accepted the label 'calamity howler' but insisted that they had ample reason to howl and would continue to howl until their objectives had been attained." --- THE POPULIST MIND, edited by Norman Pollack

EDITOR\PUBLISHER: A.V Krebs
E-MAIL: avkrebs@comcast.net
TO RECEIVE: Send name and address to avkrebs@comcast.net

 A HOLIDAY PRAYER FOR PEACE

"What God is saying means peace                
for his people, for his friends,                
if only they renounce their folly;                
for those that fear him, his saving help is near,                
and the glory will then live in our country.                
Love and Loyalty now meet,                
Righteousness and Peace now embrace;                
Loyalty reaches up from earth                
And Righteousness leans down from heaven.                
Yahweh himself bestows happiness                
As our soil gives it harvest,                
Righteousness always preceding him.              
And Peace following his footsteps. "               
            --- Psalm 85, 8-13

 OVERVIEW:

* U.S DEATHS IN IRAQ COULD TOP SEPTEMBER 11 TOLL ON CHRISTMAS DAY 
By Editor&Publisher Staff
* BREAKING THE PRESS BLACKOUT: SUICIDE RATES UP AMONG IRAQ SOLDIERS    
By Editor&Publisher Staff
* BUSH CAN'T KICK HABIT OF MILITARY MIGHT
By Robert Scheer
* COST OF WARS RISES 
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
* NEW DEFENSE SECRETARY'S BUSINESS TIES RAISE CONCERNS  
By Walter F. Roche Jr.
* "CONVERT OR DIE" GAME DIVIDES CHRISTIANS   
By Ilene Lelchuk
* ASK KISSINGER ABOUT PINOCHET'S REGIME   
By Amy Goodman
* "PALESTINE: PEACE NOT APARTHEID:" CARTER'S APARTHEID CHARGE RINGS TRUE
By Saree Makdisi
* NAGASAKI BOMBING LABELLED A CRIME  
By Chris Hogg


U.S DEATHS IN IRAQ COULD TOP SEPTEMBER 11 TOLL ON CHRISTMAS DAY
By Editor & Publisher Staff
December 21, 2006

Three more U.S. servicemen have died in Iraq, the U.S. military said Thursday, putting December on track to be among the deadliest months of the year. The new total since the U.S. invasion in 2003 --- at least 2,959 --- is now just 14 shy of the commonly accepted total of deaths in the U.S. from the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

At the current rate this month, the September 11 figure could be eclipsed just before or on Christmas Day.

The U.S. military said in a statement today that a Marine assigned to 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division died Thursday in Anbar. A soldier assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7 died on Tuesday, the statement added.

A roadside bomb killed an American soldier Wednesday and wounded three others south of Baghdad, the military said. The soldiers were in a convoy escorting servicemen to base.

Thirty-two journalists have been killed in Iraq this year, the high for any country in recent years.

An estimated 100,000 to more than half a million Iraqis have perished since the war began.

 
BREAKING THE PRESS BLACKOUT: SUICIDE RATES UP AMONG IRAQ SOLDIERS
By Editor&Publisher Staff
December 20, 2006

The press rarely carries accounts of U.S. suicides in Iraq. Military personnel who do not die in combat are usually put in one category, covering "non-hostile" death, which includes vehicles, illness, friendly fire and other causes. The press rarely finds out about suicides. But suicides among U.S. Army soldiers in Iraq doubled last year over the previous year, U.S. Army medical experts have now announced.

Twenty-two U.S. soldiers in Iraq took their lives in 2005, a rate of 19.9 per 100,000 soldiers, just over the rate in 2003 (the year of the U.S. invasion). In 2004, the rate had slid to 10.5 per 100,000, which the military said was due to efforts at prevention.

The figures do not include members of other U.S. military services in Iraq such as the Marine Corps.

Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army's surgeon general, said at a press conference, "We think that the numbers are so rare to begin with that it's very hard to make any kind of interpretation. We have not made a connection between the stress on the force and some massive or even significant increase in suicides."

A survey of the morale and mental health of U.S. soldiers in Iraq in late 2005 found 13.6 percent of the soldiers reporting symptoms of acute stress and another 16.5 percent describing a combination of depression, anxiety and acute stress. These numbers, about 30% total, were also up from 2004.

Other findings in the report:

* Troops involved in training Iraqi security forces reported higher morale than those serving on combat teams, partly because they felt their work was part of the solution in Iraq.

* The number of those who felt that seeking help was a "sign of weakness" declined from 35% to 28%.

* Troops sent a second time to Iraq reported greater stress rates than first-timers. Some 12% serving their initial deployment reported acute stress, compared to 18.4 percent of those serving a repeat deployment.

 
BUSH CAN'T KICK HABIT OF MILITARY MIGHT
By Robert Scheer         
Creators Syndicate Inc.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Here we go again: A new secretary of defense and yet another call for ending the war in Iraq by escalating it. What are they smoking in the Bush White House?

Even as government statistics now show marijuana is America's No. 1 cash crop, it is important to remember that militarism is the most dangerous drug threatening our sanity. Yet even formerly sober folks --- first Colin Powell and now new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates --- get a contact high from cozying up to the walking hallucinogen that is our president.

Succumbing to the Bush fantasy that freedom is fertilized by firepower, a vision that has mucked up Iraq beyond recognition, Gates told CBS that "as the president has made clear, we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility, and endanger Americans for generations to come."

This from a man who recently made sense during his confirmation hearings, when he told members of Congress that we are not winning this war, despite having committed, proportionally, as many troops as we did in Vietnam. But now, as a rising chorus of obsessed hawks calls for a "surge" in U.S. troop deployment in Iraq ---- a call echoed even by some prominent Democrats --- Gates endorses the staying-the-course strategy for compounding the Iraq failure rejected by the voters.

A member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) who had apparently supported its unanimous findings that the military strategy was bankrupt is suddenly blinded by Bush's Iraq victory myopia.

In a sign of just how out there Bush is on Iraq, the Washington Post reported Tuesday that the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff are in "unanimous disagreement" with "White House officials aggressively promoting the concept ... . [T]he Joint Chiefs think the White House, after a month of talks, still does not have a defined mission [in Iraq]."

All this despite the fact that the ISG report correctly underscored that the real failures in the Mideast have clearly been political, not military. The accurate subtext of the report is that the continued U.S. military presence in Iraq is the key source of chaos in the region --- inflaming religious fanaticism from Beirut to Baghdad and leaving the United States dependent on the tyrants in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to now bail us out.

So, with Bush rejecting the sage advice of a commission headed by his father's secretary of state to cut our losses, is there any hope the Democrats who now control Congress will stop playing the role of enabler to these war junkies? After all, it was the Democratic congressional leadership that provided Bush with bipartisan cover for his irrational "anti-terrorism" invasion of a country that had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Some, like John Kerry, now recognize that folly, and even Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, in her appearance on NBC's "Today" show Monday, finally expressed her regrets for supporting the war and opposed a "surge" in U.S. troops for Iraq.

But other Democrats continue to play the dangerous game of supporting Bush's escalation. Particularly alarming were the remarks on Sunday of incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid endorsing a buildup as long as it aims at getting the troops home by 2008: "If the commanders on the ground said this is just for a short period of time, we'll go along with that."

Reid's strategy is as obvious as it is opportunistic: This is a Republican war, goes the thinking, and the Dems will give them all the rope they need to hang themselves in '08. This seems a deeply cynical position, when you consider that the Pentagon just announced that attacks on American and Iraqi targets are at their highest levels, with a 22% leap from just this summer. The difference between taking a position and positioning oneself is what determines leadership; if the Dems fail to provide real leadership on ending this war, they will deservedly lose the next election.

The convenient lie behind all of this is that U.S. military occupation is the indispensable agent of Mideast enlightenment. No, we have become the enablers of Iraqi madness, be it in the form of torture or the ascendancy of religious tyranny in Iraq where daily life has been reduced to an unmitigated horror.

Yet, like a junkie who needs one more hit to get his life in order, Bush is hooked on the drug of military might. If the Democrats continue to feed his dangerous habit they will only help Bush visit greater mayhem upon Iraq while undermining the core values of our own country.

 
COST OF WARS RISES
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg      
New York Times
December 20, 2006

Government spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will exceed the Bush administration's original estimate of $110 billion for the 2007 fiscal year, and is likely to top $120 billion, White House officials said.

That would set a record for annual wartime spending under President Bush.

In an interview, the White House budget director, Rob Portman, said his original $110 billion estimate would "end up being low." Congress has already approved $70 billion in emergency spending for the war, and Mr. Portman's office is preparing an additional emergency request.

Mr. Portman said he did not know what the final figure would be, but a senior administration official said it was "highly unlikely" that total wartime spending for 2007 would fall below the record $120 billion spent in 2006.

 
NEW DEFENSE SECRETARY'S BUSINESS TIES RAISE CONCERNS
By Walter F. Roche Jr.     
Los Angeles Times
December 2, 2006

In the 14 years since he left government, former CIA director Robert M. Gates has jetted cross-country to advise 10 different companies, assessing issues as varied as Saudi oil drilling, mutual fund performance and restaurant sales at Romano's Macaroni Grill.

"I first sought him out because I considered him to be of exceptional good judgment and intelligence," said Rodney B. Mitchell, president of the Mitchell Group, a Houston investment firm that used Gates as a senior advisor. Impressed with Gates' recent performance as president of Texas A&M University, Mitchell believed Gates offered "pragmatism" to a firm that aims "to exploit the rapidly changing dynamics of world energy markets."

But as Gates awaits Senate confirmation as President Bush's secretary of Defense, ethics watchdogs worry about the revolving door between government and private business that allowed Gates to align himself with defense contractors, investment houses and a global drilling company involved with Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton Co.

Companies with which Gates has been affiliated have secured hefty no-bid Pentagon contracts, and "you have to wonder if these companies will continue to get around bidding requirements once Gates is secretary," said Alex Knott, political director of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based watchdog group.

Common Cause, another nonprofit watchdog, believes Gates should take steps now to insulate himself, including placing his stock holdings ‹ some of which he acquired in return for board service ‹ in a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest with companies seeking federal work.

The Bush administration has been dogged by allegations that past corporate affiliations of administration officials led to favored treatment in federal contract awards. Much of the criticism has focused on Cheney's relationship with Houston oil services giant Halliburton, which has secured $1.5 billion in no-bid contracts for reconstruction in Iraq. Cheney was the firm's chief executive and retained Halliburton stock when he became vice president.

The Senate Armed Services Committee required outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to divest himself of defense-related stocks to avoid conflicts. But it allowed him to keep holdings worth as much as $25 million in Gilead Sciences Inc., a California company that developed a drug used to treat bird flu.

Gilead, for which Rumsfeld served as board chairman, has seen its stock prices soar with sales to the Pentagon and other government customers. Rumsfeld, who through the Pentagon has denied any conflict, reported $5 million in Gilead capital gains in 2005.

In preparation for hearings set to begin next week, the armed services panel has asked Gates to complete a standard questionnaire about his corporate affiliations and stock holdings. Gates, in a 1994 opinion piece, compared the process of Senate confirmation to a "root canal," warning prospective public officials to prepare for scrutiny of every aspect of their personal finances and corporate relationships.

Financial disclosure forms filed in recent years with the Texas Ethics Commission show that Gates juggled various corporate relationships with his job as Texas A&M president. The university last year paid him $525,000 in salary, and he nearly doubled his income through outside directorships, Securities and Exchange Commission documents show.

Gates' personal holdings have grown substantially since he left government, when he had no more than $165,000 in savings and retirement accounts. Now, he has $1.1 million in holdings with Fidelity Investments, as well as stock holdings in some of the companies where he has served as director.

Gates' relationships with defense companies date to 1993, soon after he left government after 27 years in intelligence work. He joined the board of SAIC, which is a contractor for the Pentagon, CIA and other federal agencies. Gates' brief tenure came as the company weathered a Justice Department investigation into defense contract irregularities that it eventually settled for $2.5 million.

Gates later served on the advisory board for VoteHere, an electronic voting machine firm tied to SAIC, and on the boards of defense contractors TRW, now part of Northrop Grumann Corp., and the Massachusetts-based Charles Stark Draper Laboratory.

Gates' knowledge of international issues won him a place on the board of Houston-based Parker Drilling Co., a global firm with 3,000 employees and operations in 10 countries. Gates earned $52,000 last year from the company, which values his "unique background and experience," spokeswoman Rose Bratton said. A Parker proxy statement reports that Gates owns 12,000 shares --- worth more than $115,000 at Friday's stock price --- with rights to acquire 60,000 more.

Parker reports that Halliburton is a "significant customer," often leasing equipment for international projects. Parker has partnered with Halliburton in a major drilling project in southern Mexico and in smaller efforts, such as a rig worker training program in Russia.

Gates' largest source of outside income last year, at $373,000, was from Boston-based Fidelity Investments, one of the world's largest investment houses. Gates' Fidelity holdings are described as deferred compensation, according to his disclosures.

Gates said recently that he would resign from Fidelity's board, on which he has served for nine years. Elected last year as chairman of the board's independent directors, Gates and his group oversee 345 mutual funds, including ones featuring U.S. defense and energy stocks.

He commuted from Texas for 11 board meetings a year, once noting that he had missed only one meeting because of a conflict with a college event. Gates' Fidelity salary was set by the independent directors.

Independent directors are charged with protecting the interests of individual investors, but, Fidelity spokesman Vin Loporchio said, the directors "are not involved in stock selection."

Gates also is on the board of Ohio-based NACCO Industries Inc., which has a mining division and manufactures forklift trucks and household appliances. Gates holds at least 1,000 shares of NACCO stock, according to his disclosures, worth about $149,000 Friday.

Gates reports other fees as a board member of Brinker International, a food service company with 1,400 family-style restaurants, including Chili's and Macaroni Grill.

Times researcher Janet Lundblad and staff writers Tom Petruno in Los Angeles and Julian Barnes in Washington contributed to this report.

 
"CONVERT OR DIE" GAME DIVIDES CHRISTIANS
By Ilene Lelchuk     
San Francisco Chronicle
December 12, 2006

Liberal and progressive Christian groups say a new computer game in which players must either convert or kill non-Christians is the wrong gift to give this holiday season and that Wal-Mart, a major video game retailer, should yank it off its shelves.

The Campaign to Defend the Constitution and the Christian Alliance for Progress, two online political groups, plan to demand today that Wal-Mart dump Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a PC game inspired by a series of Christian novels that are hugely popular, especially with teens.

The series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins is based on their interpretation of the Bible's Book of Revelation and takes place after the Rapture, when Jesus has taken his people to heaven and left nonbelievers behind to face the Antichrist.

Left Behind Games' president, Jeffrey Frichner, says the game actually is pacifist because players lose "spirit points" every time they gun down nonbelievers rather than convert them. They can earn spirit points again by having their character pray.

"You are fighting a defensive battle in the game," Frichner, whose previous company produced Bible software, said of combatting the Antichrist. "You are a sort of a freedom fighter."

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the retailer has no plans to pull Left Behind: Eternal Forces from any of the 200 of Wal-Mart's 3,800 stores that offer the game, including just seven in California. The nearest are in Chico and Redding.

"We look at the community to see where it will sell," said Tara Raddohl. "We have customers who are buying it and really haven't received a lot of complaints about it from our customers at this time."

Clark Stevens, co-director of the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, said the game is not peaceful or diplomatic.

"It's an incredibly violent video game," said Stevens. "Sure, there is no blood. (The dead just fade off the screen.) But you are mowing down your enemy with a gun. It pushes a message of religious intolerance. You can either play for the 'good side' by trying to convert nonbelievers to your side or join the Antichrist."

The Rev. Tim Simpson, a Jacksonville, Florida, Presbyterian minister and president of the Christian Alliance for Progress, added: "So, under the Christmas tree this year for little Johnny is this allegedly Christian video game teaching Johnny to hate and kill?"

Both groups formed in 2005 to protest what their 130,000 or so members feel is the growing political influence and hypocrisy of the religious right.

In Left Behind, set in perfectly apocalyptic New York City, the Antichrist is personified by fictional Romanian Nicolae Carpathia, secretary-general of the United Nations and a People magazine "Sexiest Man Alive."

Players can choose to join the Antichrist's team, but of course they can never win on Carpathia's side. The enemy team includes fictional rock stars and folks with Muslim-sounding names, while the righteous include gospel singers, missionaries, healers and medics. Every character comes with a life story.

When asked about the Arab and Muslim-sounding names, Frichner said the game does not endorse prejudice. But "Muslims are not believers in Jesus Christ" --- and thus can't be on Christ's side in the game.

"That is so obvious," he said.

Left Behind is a real-time strategy and adventure game. Players don't role-play like in Grand Theft Auto --- it's more like the board game Risk than Clue.

Frichner said more than 10,000 retailers --- including Sam's Club, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, GameStop, EB Games and various Christian stores --- offer the game. He said sales are terrific, though he wouldn't reveal figures.

Protesters are targeting Wal-Mart, where the game retails for $39.96, because it is one of the biggest video game sellers in the United States.

More than 60 million copies of books in the series have sold since the first volume came out in 1996.

Jeff Gerstmann, senior editor at Gamespot.com, an online publication, said the game sn't popular. The game itself, which Gamespot rated 3.4 out of a possible ten, has lots of glitches.

"And it's kind of crazy," Gerstmann said. "One of the evil characters is a rock musician. ... If you get too close to him your spirit is lowered."

But Plugged In, a publication of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, gave the game a "thumbs-up." The reviewer called it "the kind of game that Mom and Dad can actually play with Junior --- and use to raise some interesting questions along the way."

Frichner said that is precisely his company's ultimate goal in offering the game: to bring parents and kids together to talk about the Bible. He said most teens are playing video games, so it was natural to turn the books into one.

His business partner, Troy Lyndon, created Madden Football, one of the top-selling sports video games. Left Behind Games Inc. is based in Murrieta (Riverside County).

 
ASK KISSINGER ABOUT PINOCHET'S REGIME
By Amy Goodman     
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
December 14, 2006

As the world marked International Human Rights Day, one of the century's most notorious dictators, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, died under house arrest in Chile at the age of 91. His 17-year reign left a deep scar on Chilean society. Yet Pinochet's legacy includes an ironic upside: His regime and the U.S. support for it galvanized the modern-day international human rights movement.

On September 11, 2001, as the planes hit the towers of the World Trade Center, on our daily broadcast of "Democracy Now!," we were looking at the connection between terrorism and September 11, 1973. It was on that day that the democratically elected government of Chilean President Salvador Allende was overthrown in a violent coup, and the forces of Pinochet rose to power. The coup was supported by the U.S. government. Henry Kissinger, national security adviser and U.S. secretary of state, summed up the policy this way:

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

As Pinochet seized power, first among the dead was the president himself, Allende. Then there were the thousands rounded up. Among them was Victor Jara, the legendary Chilean folk singer. Jara was beaten, tortured, then executed. His body was dumped on a Santiago street and found by his wife in the morgue.

Charles Horman was a U.S. journalist working in Chile. He, too, disappeared in those days following the coup. His body was found buried in a cement wall. His story was immortalized in the Academy Award-winning Constantin Costa-Gavras film "Missing." His widow, Joyce Horman, sued not only Pinochet for the death of her husband but also Kissinger and others at the U.S. State Department.

Pinochet's reign of terrorism extended beyond Chile's borders. On September 21, 1976, the former foreign minister of Chile, Orlando Letelier, and his American colleague, Ronni Moffit, died in a car bombing, not in Chile, but on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C.

Then there was Chile's current president, Michelle Bachelet. Her father was a general under Allende and opposed the coup. He was arrested and died of a heart attack in prison. She and her mother were detained and tortured at the notorious Villa Grimaldi, a secret torture site in Santiago.

Bachelet and her mother survived and went into exile. Her return to Chile and eventual election as president on the Socialist ticket has brought Chilean politics and history full circle. In October 2006, she returned to Villa Grimaldi. In November, Pinochet was placed under house arrest and charged with the kidnap and murder of prisoners there.

This was not the first time Pinochet was arrested. In 1998, while on a medical visit in London, he was put under house arrest after Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon issued a warrant for his arrest for the torture and murder of Spanish nationals. After 18 months, Britain finally allowed Pinochet to return to Chile for health reasons, avoiding extradition to Spain.

Pinochet's death allows him to escape conviction. Kissinger, whose support for the Pinochet regime is increasingly well documented, is still alive and still of interest to those seeking justice. Kissinger has been sought for questioning by Judge Garzon and by French Judge Roger Le Loire, both investigating the death and disappearance of their citizens in Chile. While Kissinger is frequently questioned by the media in this country, he is almost never asked about his own record. Instead, he is treated like royalty.

Questions remain about the brutal regime of Pinochet. Kissinger likely holds many answers. If we are to have a uniform standard of justice, then answers need to be demanded of the genuine terrorism experts such as Henry Kissinger.

AMY GOODMAN hosts the radio news program "Democracy Now!" Distributed by King Features Syndicate.

 
"PALESTINE: PEACE NOT APARTHEID:" CARTER'S APARTHEID CHARGE RINGS TRUE
By Saree Makdisi     
San Francisco Chronicle
December 20, 2006

Former President Jimmy Carter has come under sustained attack for having dared to use the term "apartheid" to describe Israel's policies in the West Bank. However, not one of Carter's critics has offered a convincing argument to justify the vehemence of the outcry, much less to refute his central claim that Israel bestows rights on Jewish residents settling illegally on Palestinian land, while denying the same rights to the indigenous Palestinians. Little wonder, for they are attempting to defy reality itself.

Israel maintains two separate road networks in the West Bank: one for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers, and one for Palestinian natives. Is that not apartheid?

Palestinians are not allowed to drive their own cars in much of the West Bank; their public transportation is frequently interrupted or blocked altogether by a grid of Israeli army checkpoints --- but Jewish settlers come and go freely in their own cars, without even pausing at the roadblocks that hold up the natives. Is that not apartheid?

A system of closures and curfews has strangled the Palestinian economy in the West Bank --- but none of its provisions apply to the Jewish settlements there. Is that not apartheid?

Whole sectors of the West Bank, classified as "closed military areas" by the Israeli army, are off limits to Palestinians, including Palestinians who own land there --- but foreigners to whom Israel's Law of Return applies (that is, anyone Jewish, from anywhere in the world) can access them without hindrance. Is that not apartheid?

Persons of Palestinian origin are routinely barred from entering or residing in the West Bank --- but Israeli and non-Israeli Jews can come and go, and even live on, occupied Palestinian territory. Is that not apartheid?

Israel maintains two sets of rules and regulations in the West Bank: one for Jews, one for non-Jews. The only thing wrong with using the word "apartheid" to describe such a repugnant system is that the South African version of institutionalized discrimination was never as elaborate as its Israeli counterpart --- nor did it have such a vocal chorus of defenders among otherwise liberal Americans.

The glaring error in Carter's book, however, is his insistence that the term "apartheid" does not apply to Israel itself, where, he says, Jewish and non-Jewish citizens are given the same treatment under the law. That is simply not true.

Israeli law affords differences in privileges for Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of the state --- in matters of access to land, family unification and acquisition of citizenship. Israel's amended nationality law, for example, prevents Palestinian citizens of Israel who are married to Palestinians from the occupied territories from living together in Israel.

A similar law, passed at the peak of apartheid in South Africa, was overturned by that country's supreme court as a violation of the right to a family. Israel's high court upheld its law just this year.

Israel loudly proclaims itself to be the state of the Jewish people, rather than the state of its actual citizens (one-fifth of whom are Palestinian Arabs). In fact, in registering citizens, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior assigns them a whole range of nationalities other than "Israeli." In the official registry, the nationality line for a Jewish citizen of Israel reads "Jew."

For a Palestinian citizen, the same line reads "Arab." When this glaring inequity was protested all the way to Israel's high court, the justices upheld it: "There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people." Obviously this leaves non-Jewish citizens of Israel in, at best, a somewhat ambiguous situation.

Little wonder, then, that a solid majority of Israeli Jews regard their Arab fellow-citizens as what they call "a demographic threat," which many --- including the deputy prime minister --- would like to see eliminated altogether. What is all this, if not racism?

Many of the very individuals and institutions that are so vociferously denouncing President Jimmy Carter would not for one moment tolerate such glaring injustice in the United States. Why do they condone the naked racism that Israel practices? Why do they heap criticism on our former president for speaking his conscience about such a truly unconscionable system of ethnic segregation?

Perhaps it is because they themselves are all too aware that they are defending the indefensible; because they are all too aware that the emperor they keep trying to cover up really has no clothes. There is a limit to how long such a cover up can go on. And the main lesson of Carter's book is that we have finally reached that limit.

SAREE MAKDISI is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA and a frequent commentator on Middle East issues.

 
NAGASAKI BOMBING LABELLED A CRIME
By Chris Hogg      
BBC News
December 18, 2006

One of Japan's most senior politicians has said the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 was impermissible from a humanitarian point of view.

Shoichi Nakagawa, the policy chief of the governing party, said that the use of atomic weapons was a crime.

Mr Nakagawa has attracted controversy recently, calling for a debate on whether Japan should have nuclear arms. He raised the possibility that North Koreans might try to attack Japan with their own nuclear weapons.

Speaking in Nagasaki over the weekend, Mr Nakagawa --- a right-winger --- said that atomic bombings were a crime. The American decision to drop the atomic bomb was truly impermissible on humanitarian grounds, he said. He repeated the comments on Monday, telling Reuters news agency: "By dropping two atomic bombs, many people, including ordinary citizens, were killed... I believe that such an act can be called a crime."

After the nuclear attacks in 1945, the Japanese wartime government condemned the bombings as crimes against international law. But later on the authorities gave up any idea of pursuing the issue of criminality. Today the phrase the government more often uses to describe the attack is "regrettable".

Mr Nakagawa appears to be going further, saying they were impermissible on humanitarian grounds.