Who Got Bailout Money So Far?

By Reuters

November 13, 2008  --- The Treasury Department's $700 billion bailout plan, also known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), is one of the main U.S. tools to address the financial crisis.

The Treasury Department on October 14 set aside $250 billion of the program to buy senior preferred shares and warrants in banks, thrifts and other financial institutions. Half that money was allocated to nine big banks, the Treasury Department has said. Another $38 billion has since been earmarked for regional or small banks, according to statements from individual banks.

On Monday, the department announced its single-biggest TARP investment -- $40 billion in American International Group -- which the government said would not come from the $250 billion bank capital program.

The TARP has so far committed the following funding:

AIG $40 billion

JPMorgan $25 billion

Citigroup $25 billion

Wells Fargo $25 billion

Bank of America $15 billion

Merrill Lynch $10 billion

Goldman Sachs $10 billion

Morgan Stanley $10 billion

PNC Financial Services $7.7 billion

Bank of New York Mellon $3 billion

State Street Corp $2 billion

Capital One Financial $3.55 billion

Fifth Third Bancorp $3.45 billion

Regions Financial $3.5 billion

SunTrust Banks $3.5 billion

BB&T Corp $3.1 billion

KeyCorp $2.5 billion

Comerica $2.25 billion

Marshall & Ilsley Corp $1.7 billion

Northern Trust Corp $1.5 billion

Huntington Bancshares $1.4 billion

Zions Bancorp $1.4 billion

First Horizon National $866 million

City National Corp $395 million

Valley National Bancorp $330 million

UCBH Holdings Inc $298 million

Umpqua Holdings Corp $214 million

Washington Federal $200 million

First Niagara Financial $186 million

HF Financial Corp $25 million

Bank of Commerce $17 million

TOTAL: $203.08 billion

INSURANCE COMPANIES

In addition to the TARP program's $40 billion capital injection into AIG, the Federal Reserve is providing the company with up to $112.5 billion in separate loans and funds for asset purchases. Aid to the huge insurance company came after counterparties and rating downgrades forced AIG to post large amounts of collateral for its credit derivatives positions.

Some other insurers are interested in cash infusions, but must own a thrift or bank in order to qualify under the terms of Treasury's current capital injection program.

BANKS, LENDERS

The TARP program set a November 14 deadline for smaller banks to apply for capital injection funds remaining in the pool of $250 billion. The deadline will be extended for non-publicly traded banks.

The government's preferred shares will pay dividends of 5 percent annually for the first five years and 9 percent after that until the institution repurchases them. Participating banks must comply with Treasury restrictions on executive compensation, which limit tax deductibility of senior executive pay to $500,000. They require bonuses to be "clawed back" if earnings statements or gains are later proven to be materially inaccurate and prohibit "golden parachute" payments to senior executives.

OTHER COMPANIES

Struggling automakers General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler LLC have requested tens of billions of dollars in Treasury aid under TARP. However, the Bush administration says the TARP program was designed by Congress to help the financial service sector, not the auto industry.

REMAINING TARP MONEY

The remaining $350 billion in TARP funding can be accessed only after the White House formally notifies Congress. U.S. House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank has said that if the initial banks participating in the program do not use the money for lending, Congress could block authorization of the final funding.

© 2008 Reuters.

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A BONE IN AMERICA'S THROAT

Jeff Halper

Even before the voting began, Israeli politicians and pundits were asking: Will an Obama Administration be good for Israel? "Be good for Israel" is our code for "Will the US allow us to keep our settlements and continue to support our efforts to prevent negotiations with the Palestinians from ever bearing fruit?" For Americans the question should be: Will the Obama Administration understand that without addressing Palestinian needs it will not be able to disentangle itself from its broader Middle Eastern imbroglios, rejoin the community of nations and rescue its economy?

The Israel-Palestine conflict should be of central concern to Americans, near the top of the new Administration's agenda. It may not be the bloodiest conflict in the world – its minor when compared to Iraq – but it is emblematic to Muslims and to peoples the world over of American hostility and belligerence. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not merely a localized one between two squabbling tribes. It lies at the epicenter of global instability. Go where you may in the world and you will encounter the same phenomenon: a sense that the suffering of the Palestinians represents all that is wrong in an American-dominated world.

As Obama comes into office, he will encounter a global reality very different from that of eight years before: a multilateral one in which a weakened and isolated US must find its place. He will discover that much of America's isolation comes from the view that the Occupation of the Palestinian territories is, in fact, an American-Israeli Occupation. If restoring a weakened American economy depends on repairing relations with the rest of the world, he will learn that without resolving the Israeli-Palestine conflict he will not create those conditions in which the US will be accepted once more into the wider global community.

To be more specific, the Israel-Palestine conflict directly affects Americans in at least five ways: 

·        It isolates the US from major global markets, forcing it to embark on aggressive measures to secure markets rather than peaceful accommodation;

·        It thereby diverts the American economy into non-productive production (tanks not roads), making it dependent upon deficit spending which only increases dependency upon foreign financing while diverting resources into the military rather than into education, health and investment;

·        Support for the Israeli military costs US taxpayers more than $3 billion annually at a time of deepening recession and crumbling national infrastructure;

·        It leads to an American involvement in the world that is mainly military, thus begetting hostility and resistance which produce the threats to security Americans so greatly fear; and

·        It ends up threatening American civil liberties by encouraging such legislation as the Patriot Act and by introducing Israeli "counterinsurgency" tactics and weaponry developed in the West Bank and Gaza into American police forces.

For many peoples of the world, the Palestinians represent the plight of the majority. They are the tiny grains of sand resisting what most Americans and privileged people of the West do not see. They are a people who are denied the most fundamental right: to a state of their own, even on the 22% of historic Palestine that Israel has occupied since 1967. For the majority of humanity that lives in economic and political conditions unimaginable in the West, the suffering caused by Israel's occupation – impoverishment and a total denial of freedom that can only be sustained by total American support – is emblematic of their own continued suffering. Israel's oppression of the Palestinians with the active backing of the US shows demonstrably the existence of a global system of Western domination that prevents others from achieving their own dreams of political and economic well-being.

Like a bone in the throat, the issue of Israel's occupation can be neither ignored nor by-passed. To make things even more difficult, it is doubtful if a two-state solution is still possible, since Israeli settlement activity has largely eliminated that option. Whatever the eventual solution, if this most destabilizing of conflicts is not addressed, the US – even under Obama – will remain mired in conflicts with Muslim peoples and reviled by peoples seeking genuine freedom. Neither the US nor Israel will find the security they claim they seek. We live in a global reality, not a Pax Americana. The logic of the Bush Administration has run its course. No longer can the US throw its weight around in a War Against Terror. No longer can its involvement be purely military. The new logic that will accompany Obama into office can be summarized in one word: accommodation. And the US will not get to first base until it achieves accommodation with the Muslim world, which means ending the Israeli Occupation. What happens to the Palestinians takes on a global significance. Clearing the bone in the throat – that is, ending the Israeli Occupation and allowing the Palestinians a state and a future of their own – should be a top priority of the next American administration. Indeed, America's attempt to restore its standing in the world depends on it. In the global reality in which we live, the fate of Americans and Palestinians, it turns out, are closely intertwined.

(Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He can be reached at <jeff@icahd.org>.)

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions is based in Jerusalem and has chapters in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Please visit our websites:
www.icahd.org
www.icahduk.org
www.icahdusa.org

__________________________

Beware of the Obama hype. What 'change' in America really means

JOHN PILGER

12 Nov 2008 In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger writes that the lauding of Barack Obama has a history and that 'historical moments' ought to be less about their symbolism and accompanying histrionics than what they really mean. The question is: what is Obama's true relation to unchanging American myths about the imposition of its notorious power?<7i> My first visit to Texas was in 1968, on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of president John F Kennedy in Dallas. I drove south, following the line of telegraph poles to the small town of Midlothian, where I met Penn Jones Jr, editor of the Midlothian Mirror. Except for his drawl and fine boots, everything about Penn was the antithesis of the Texas stereotype. Having exposed the racists of the John Birch Society, his printing press had been repeatedly firebombed. Week after week, he painstakingly assembled evidence that all but demolished the official version of Kennedy's murder. This was journalism as it had been before corporate journalism was invented, before the first schools of journalism were set up and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around those whose "professionalism" and "objectivity" carried an unspoken obligation to ensure that news and opinion were in tune with an establishment consensus, regardless of the truth. Journalists such as Penn Jones, independent of vested power, indefatigable and principled, often reflect ordinary American attitudes, which have seldom conformed to the stereotypes promoted by the corporate media on both sides of the Atlantic. Read American Dreams: Lost and Found by the masterly Studs Terkel, who died the other day, or scan the surveys that unerringly attribute enlightened views to a majority who believe that "government should care for those who cannot care for themselves" and are prepared to pay higher taxes for universal health care, who support nuclear disarmament and want their troops out of other people's countries. Returning to Texas, I am struck again by those so unlike the redneck stereotype, in spite of the burden of a form of brainwashing placed on most Americans from a tender age: that theirs is the most superior society in the history of the world, and all means are justified, including the spilling of copious blood, in maintaining that superiority. That is the subtext of Barack Obama's "oratory". He says he wants to build up US military power; and he threatens to ignite a new war in Pakistan, killing yet more brown-skinned people. That will bring tears, too. Unlike those on election night, these other tears will be unseen in Chicago and London. This is not to doubt the sincerity of much of the response to Obama's election, which happened not because of the unction that has passed for news reporting from America since 4 November (e.g. "liberal Americans smiled and the world smiled with them") but for the same reasons that millions of angry emails were sent to the White House and Congress when the "bailout" of Wall Street was revealed, and because most Americans are fed up with war. Two years ago, this anti-war vote installed a Democratic majority in Congress, only to watch the Democrats hand over more money to George W Bush to continue his blood fest. For his part, the "anti-war" Obama never said the illegal invasion of Iraq was wrong, merely that it was a "mistake". Thereafter, he voted in to give Bush what he wanted. Yes, Obama's election is historic, a symbol of great change to many. But it is equally true that the American elite has grown adept at using the black middle and management class. The courageous Martin Luther King recognised this when he linked the human rights of black Americans with the human rights of the Vietnamese, then being slaughtered by a liberal Democratic administration. And he was shot. In striking contrast, a young black major serving in Vietnam, Colin Powell, was used to "investigate" and whitewash the infamous My Lai massacre. As Bush's secretary of state, Powell was often described as a "liberal" and was considered ideal to lie to the United Nations about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Condaleezza Rice, lauded as a successful black woman, has worked assiduously to deny the Palestinians justice. Obama's first two crucial appointments represent a denial of the wishes of his supporters on the principal issues on which they voted. The vice-president-elect, Joe Biden, is a proud warmaker and Zionist. Rahm Emanuel, who is to be the all-important White House chief of staff, is a fervent "neoliberal" devoted to the doctrine that led to the present economic collapse and impoverishment of millions. He is also an "Israel-first" Zionist who served in the Israeli army and opposes meaningful justice for the Palestinians - an injustice that is at the root of Muslim people's loathing of the United States and the spawning of jihadism. No serious scrutiny of this is permitted within the histrionics of Obamamania, just as no serious scrutiny of the betrayal of the majority of black South Africans was permitted within the "Mandela moment". This is especially marked in Britain, where America's divine right to "lead" is important to elite British interests. The once respected Observer newspaper, which supported Bush's war in Iraq, echoing his fabricated evidence, now announces, without evidence, that "America has restored the world's faith in its ideals". These "ideals", which Obama will swear to uphold, have overseen, since 1945, the destruction of 50 governments, including democracies, and 30 popular liberation movements, causing the deaths of countless men, women and children. None of this was uttered during the election campaign. Had it been allowed, there might even have been recognition that liberalism as a narrow, supremely arrogant, war-making ideology is destroying liberalism as a reality. Prior to Blair's criminal warmaking, ideology was denied by him and his media mystics. "Blair can be a beacon to the world," declared the Guardian in 1997. "[He is] turning leadership into an art form." Today, merely insert "Obama". As for historic moments, there is another that has gone unreported but is well under way - liberal democracy's shift towards a corporate dictatorship, managed by people regardless of ethnicity, with the media as its clichéd façade. "True democracy," wrote Penn Jones Jr, the Texas truth-teller, "is constant vigilance: not thinking the way you're meant to think and keeping your eyes wide open at all times.

:: Article nr. 48723 sent on 13-nov-2008 11:23 ECT

The Promised Land?

Obama, Emanuel and Israel

By JOHN V. WHITBECK

November 07, 2008 "Counterpunch" -- -- In the first major appointment of his administration, President-elect Barack Obama has named as his chief of staff Congressman Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran whose father, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was a member of Menachem Begin's Irgun forces during the Nakba and named his son after "a Lehi combatant who was killed" -- i.e., a member of Yitzhak Shamir's terrorist Stern Gang, responsible for, in addition to other atrocities against Palestinians, the more famous bombing of the King David Hotel and assassination of the UN peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte.

In rapid response to this news, the editorial in the next day's Arab News (Jeddah) was entitled "Don't pin much hope on Obama -- Emanuel is his chief of staff and that sends a message". This editorial referred to the Irgun as a "terror organization" (a judgment call) and concluded: "Far from challenging Israel, the new team may turn out to be as pro-Israel as the one it is replacing."

That was always likely. Obama repeatedly pledged unconditional allegiance to Israel during his campaign, most memorably in an address to the AIPAC national convention which Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery characterized as "a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning", and America's electing a black president has always been more easily imagined than any American president's declaring his country's independence from Israeli domination.

Still, one of the greatest advantages for the United States in electing Barack Hussein Obama was the prospect that the world's billion-plus Muslims, who now view the United States with almost universal loathing and hatred, would be dazzled by the new president's eloquence, life story, skin color and middle name, would think again with open minds and would give America a chance to redeem itself in their eyes and hearts -- not incidently, drastically shortening the long lines of aspiring jihadis eager to sacrifice their lives while striking a blow against the evil empire.

The profound loathing and hatred of the Muslim world toward the United States, which has always had its roots for America's unconditional support for the injustices inflicted and still being inflicted on the Palestinians, can fairly be considered the core of the primary foreign policy and "national security" problems confronting the United States in recent years. Why would Obama, a man of unquested brilliance, have chosen to send such a contemptuous message to the Muslim world with his first major appointment? Why would he wish to disabuse the Muslim world of its hopes (however modest) and slap it across the face at the ealiest opportunity?

A further contemptuous message is widely rumored to be forthcoming -- the naming as "Special Envoy for Middle East Peace" of Dennis Ross, the notorious Israel-Firster who, throughout the 12 years of the Bush the First and Clinton administrations, ensured that American policy toward the Palestinians did not deviate one millimeter from Israeli policy and that no progress toward peace could be made and who has since headed the AIPAC spin-off "think tank", the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Neverthess, since it is almost always constructive to seek a silver lining in the darkest clouds, a silver lining can be found and cited. For decades, the Palestinian leadership has been "waiting for Godot" -- waiting for the U.S. Government to finally do the right thing (if only in its own obvious self-interest) and to force Israel to comply with international law and UN Resolutions and permit them to have a decent mini-state on a tiny portion of the land that once was theirs.

This was never a realistic hope. It has not happened, and it will never happen. So it may well be salutary not to waste eight more days (let alone eight more years) playing along and playing the fool while more Palestinian lands are confiscated and more Jewish colonies and Jews-only bypass roads are built on them, clinging to the delusion that the charming Mr. Obama, admirable though he may be in so many other respects, will eventually (if only in a second term, when he no longer has to worry about reelection) see the light and do the right thing. It is long overdue for the Palestinians themselves to seize the initiative, to reset the agenda and to declare a new "only game in town".

Furthermore, in February, Israel will elect a new Knesset. Bibi Netanyahu, who, most polls and coalition-building calculations suggest, is most likely to emerge as the next prime minister, has one (if only one) great virtue. He is absolutely honest in not professing any desire (however insincere) to see the creation of any Palestinian "state" (whether decent or less-than-a-Bantustan in nature) or to engage in any talks (even never-ending and fraudulent ones) ostensibly about that possibility. His return to power would definitively slam the door on the illusion of a "two-state solution" somewhere over an ever-receding horizon.

This would constitute a blessing and a liberation for Palestinian minds and Palestinian aspirations. Their leadership(s) could then return, after a long, costly and painful diversion, to fundamental principles, to pursuing the goal of a democratic, nonracist and nonsectarian state in all of Israel/Palestine with equal rights for all who live there.

This just goal could and should be pursued by strictly nonviolent means. If the goal is to convince a determined and powerful settler-colonial movement which wishes to seize your land, settle it and keep it (eventually cleansing it of you and your fellow natives) that it should cease, desist and leave, nonviolent forms of resistance are suicidal. If, however, the goal were to be to obtain the full rights of citizenship in a democratic, nonracist state (as was the case in the American civil rights movement and the South African anti-apartheid movement), then nonviolence would be the only viable approach. Violence would be totally inappropriate and counterproductive. The morally impeccable approach would also be the tactically effective approach. The high road would be the only road.

No American president -- least of all Barack Obama -- could easily support racism and apartheid and oppose democracy and equal rights, particularly if democracy and equal rights were being pursued by nonviolent means. No one anywhere could easily do so. The writing would be on the wall, and the clock would be running out on the tired game of using a perpetual "peace process" as an excuse to delay decisions (while building more "facts on the ground") forever.

Democracy and equal rights would not come quickly or easily. Forty years passed between when, on the night before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King cried out that he had been to the mountain top and had seen the promised land and when Barack Obama was elected as president of the United States. (The Bible suggests a similar waiting period in the wilderness for Moses.) Forty-six years passed between the installation of a formal apartheid regime in South Africa and the election of Nelson Mandela as president of a fully democratic and nonracist "rainbow nation".

While it may be be hoped that the transformation would be significantly quicker in Israel/Palestine, it is clear that many who already qualify as "senior citizens" will not live to see the promised land. However, if the promised land of a democratic state with equal rights for all is correctly and clearly perceived and persistently and peacefully pursued, there is ample reason for confidence that Israel/Palestine will one day experience the tearful exaltation of a "Mandela Moment" or an "Obama Moment", restoring hope in the moral potential both of a nation and of mankind, and that the Jews, Muslims and Christians who live there will finally reach their promised land.

John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of "The World According to Whitbeck".

Sweatshop-Free Clothing Resources

Information

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• Fair Trade Federation - http://www.fairtradefederation.org/
• LabourNet UK - http://www.labournet.net./
• International Labor Rights Fund - 202/347-4100, http://www.laborrights.org/
• Sweat Free Communities - 207/262-7277, http://www.sweatfree.org/
• UNITE HERE - 202/393-4373, http://www.unitehere.org/
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MANDATING INDIGENOUS HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

By June Terpstra, Ph.D. 

Monday, 08 October 2007

Introduction   On yet another USA manufactured "holiday" where schools close to honor the savage conquistador, Christopher Columbus, who ushered into history the holocaust of approximately 11 million native north American "Indians" I propose a mandate for indigenous holocaust education, K-12.  Like the new federal legislation introduced in congress to mandate education of the Jewish holocaust, I also propose we replace not only senior citizens arts and crafts but pre-school arts and crafts with education workshops developed to examine the denial of Indian genocide and removal; the denial of African Diaspora genocide and slavery, past and present; and, the genocide of Arabs and Muslims occurring in Palestine today.     Currently being reviewed by committees in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, the Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust Education Assistance Act - if passed - would provide select organizations nationwide with competitive grants to be used to develop Holocaust curriculum guides as well as training for teachers. . (http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=97)    Never Forget   A common expression of white men and women in the USA regarding their barbaric history towards Africans and Native Americans is for "them to just get over it"!  The sloganeering of remembering history in order to avoid extermination, removal, kidnapping, enslaving, lynching does not apply to non-Jews.  Yet the history of Europe's program of extermination of the Jews is now introduced in the US Congress to be mandated education in public schools with an official curriculum written and sponsored by Jewish historians.  Mandated education on all holocausts only seems fair and right in the "democratic, truth loving land of equality". Everyone should know the history of the mass murders and removals of Native Americans and the countless Africans killed through the middle passage and their slavery and savage treatment by the Euro-Americans.  The truth about all genocides should be mandated education for everyone everywhere.    My students in colleges and universities in the USA typically do not know the history of the indigenous people of North America.  They believe a lie told to them in the mandated public education programs that Columbus "discovered" America!  They never heard of the Arawak, the Taino, the Algonquin, the Huron, or any of the tribes of the First Nation People.  They are horrified to read the first source documents, the letters of Columbus, the letters of Bartolomeo Las Casas wherein the descriptions of the genocide, torture and terrorism of the natives is described.    For example, upon Columbus' invasion, the Arawaks, regrettably, greeted the savage Europeans, bringing them food, water, and gifts.  Columbus wrote in his log: "As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts...They... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." (http://www.newhumanist.com/md2.html) When Bartolomme Las Casa  arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, he writes, "how "two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; the soldiers took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys...they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could turn for help...there were 60,000 people living on this island including the Indians; from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it...." (Source: Bartoleme de Las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies, 1542)   Most of my college students know nothing about the terrorism that led to extermination and removal of the American Indians. They are unaware of the conservative estimates that the indigenous population of the United States prior to European contact was greater than 12 million. Four centuries later, the count was reduced by 95% to 237 thousand. Students in the USA are provided with a cursory history of Euro-American genocide and slavery of African people but not to any extent that includes the hundreds of Hollywood films, after-school specials, or school projects that prioritize the Jewish holocaust. Millions of black Americans were killed during the trans-Atlantic slave trade and during their servitude. They were systematically tortured, killed and enslaved. Forty thousand slaves were transported each year to the occupied territories called colonies. These were blatant and overt acts of terrorism for political gain. Yet African Americans are consistently told to "get over" their history of slavery and genocide at the hands of Euro-Americans.    Patents on Holocaust    Who holds a patent on holocaust histories?  Tragically, the genocides of history are a condemnation of human beings capabilities of human goodness, mercy and decency towards each other.  Moreover, the victor's insanity extends to a mythical patent on the very words of holocaust and genocide, terrorism and barbarism.  Those who write the definitions, histories, make the movies, and develop the propaganda claim intellectual property rights to even the words and stories as they codify their stories and erase the stories of their victims.    Those who dare to use the word, "holocaust" when speaking of the genocides and the wars of terrorism against the First People of North, Central and South America; the natives of Africa in the past; and the Iraqi and Palestinians presently are accused of "anti-Semitism.   Jobs are lost, tenured denied, and rendition and prison if they are a Semitic Arab.  Thus, even the history of the Arab people as Semites has been erased and now only applies only to the Jews. He who writes the rules, rules.    Who benefits?     The conquerors, the imperialists, the state terrorists of today are US, UK and Israel.  Therein resides the majority of 4% of the class who own the biggest weapons of mass destruction, the most nukes, and the control of the media and who directly benefit from which peoples stories are mandated and those whose stories are erased and denied.  Today, it is the stories of the genocide and holocausts of the Iraqi and Palestinian people being erased in the corporate media of the USA.  When the stories are told, they, like the indigenous peoples of Africa and North America, are painted as savages and terrorists deserving of a program of extermination.  After all, if one does the crime of resistance by fighting the imperialists, one will do the time.  Their story will be erased if not mandated by their advocates and lobbyists.  Without a mandated history they are invisible, they do not exist.  No Hollywood films for indigenous oppressed people unless it includes a white hero who tells their story and comes to rescue them in the super power's super hero fairy tale.   Sankofa and Rights to Return   I teach the concept of Sankofa in my classes on Race and Ethnic Relations.  Sankofa is derived from the Akan people of West Africa. Sankofa literally translated means "it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot."  The word Sankofa is used today across the pan-African world to promote the idea that African people must go back to their roots in order to move forward.  Whether oppressed or oppressor, all people must go back to their roots in order to change domination paradigm.  The term Right of Return refers to the principle in international lawthat members of an ethnic or national group have a right to their lands whether through immigration and naturalization into the country that they, the destination country, or both consider to be that group's homeland independent of prior personal citizenship in that country. This belief is sometimes reflected in special consideration in a country's immigration laws (called "repatriation") which facilitates or encourages the reunion of a Diaspora or dispersed ethnic population.   When will the land be returned to the indigenous of North, Central and South America, Africa, and the Middle East?  When will they have a right to have what was theirs, returned?   NEVER REMEMBERED   History repeats itself in horrifying patterns mirroring past tragedies.  During the Cold War the imperialists of the USA sponsored covert terrorism that killed millions of people. These wars were called WWIII by CIA officials. Today, the same rabid greed that fueled the Europeans of the past fuels the US, UK and Israeli imperialists today as they conduct genocidal programs similar to those of their Europeans ancestors.  Replete with walls, Jim Crow separation of latrines in Iraq, no voting or land rights for Arabs, puppet regimes, and the killing of over a million men, women, and children in Iraq and Palestine, recently including a little girl with backpack at a checkpoint in Gaza, the terrorism of the super power goes unchecked and unabated.   As the greedy imperialists veto healthcare for children in the USA they simultaneously give the orders to rendition, torture and terrify Arabs and Muslims all over the world.  They enslave the poor with IMF debt while giving them "equal opportunities" to work in their sweatshops, oil fields, diamond, copper and gold mines.  Clearly, they do not remember their genocidal history and need the Red, Black, and Brown indigenous peoples mandated education curriculum before millions more people are erased in their latest extermination program.   Alan Ronkin, deputy director of the Jewish Community Relations Council says that teaching about the Holocaust is "critical to shape the next generation...Holocaust education not only teaches about the past but it also uses the lessons of the past to help shape students' decisions to become future leaders [who fight] against racism, bigotry and anti-Semitism." . (http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=97)  I agree, lets teach all the holocausts of history including Native American, African, and the genocide of the Arabs of Palestine and Iraq) I remember a song taught to me in elementary school whose words said, "Red and yellow, black and white, we are precious in his sight"... a more truthful version would be "red, and yellow, black and brown, no matter where they'll mow you down".  Perhaps a true history of holocausts will benefit all humanity and not just the victors, their lobbyists, advocates and scribes.

  

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Barbarism

Dr. June C. Terpstra and Professor Husayn Al-Kurdi