RIP: Rep Tom Lantos
Izzy_
Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received
an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last
three decades of his life as a member of Congress," Lantos said upon
announcing his retirement last month. "I will never be able to express
fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."
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Calif. Rep. Tom Lantos dies
WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom Lantos, who as a teenager twice escaped from a
Nazi-run forced labor camp in Hungary and became the only Holocaust
survivor to win a seat in Congress, has died. He was 80.
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Spokeswoman Lynne Weil said Lantos, a Californian, died early Monday at
the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in suburban Maryland. He was surrounded
by his wife, Annette, two daughters, and many of his 18 grandchildren and
two great-grandchildren.
Annette Lantos said in a statement that her husband's life was "defined by
courage, optimism, and unwavering dedication to his principles and to his
family."
Lantos, a Democrat who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
disclosed last month that he had been diagnosed with cancer of the
esophagus. He said at the time that he would serve out his 14th term but
would not seek re-election in his Northern California district, which
takes in the southwest portion of San Francisco and suburbs to the south
including Lantos' home of San Mateo.
White House press secretary Dana Perino announced the news of Lantos'
death to reporters at a morning briefing and flags were lowered to
half-mast at the White House and U.S. Capitol.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "Tom Lantos was a true American
hero. He was the embodiment of what it meant to have one's freedom denied
and then to find it and to insist that America stand for spreading freedom
and prosperity to others."
Speaking to reporters at the State Department, she said, "He was also a
dear, dear friend and I am personally quite devastated by his loss."
The timing of Lantos' diagnosis was a particular blow because he had
assumed his committee chairmanship just a year earlier, when Democrats
retook control of Congress. He said then that in a sense his whole life
had been a preparation for the job — and it was.
Lantos, who referred to himself as "an American by choice," was born to
Jewish parents in Budapest, Hungary, and was 16 when Adolf Hitler occupied
Hungary in 1944. He survived by escaping from the labor camp and coming
under the protection of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who used
his official status and visa-issuing powers to save thousands of Hungarian
Jews.
Lantos' mother and much of his family perished in the Holocaust.
That background gave Lantos a moral authority unique in Congress and he
used it repeatedly to speak out on foreign policy issues, sometimes
courting controversy. He was a strong supporter of Israel and a lead
advocate for the 2002 congressional resolution authorizing the Iraq war,
though he would come to be a strong critic of the Bush administration's
strategy there. In 2006 Lantos was one of five members of Congress
arrested in a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy over the genocide in
Darfur.
He joined the Bush administration in strong support of Israel and was a
lead advocate for the 2002 congressional resolution authorizing the Iraq
invasion, though he would become a strong critic of President Bush's
handling of the war.
"Tom Lantos was a leader and a friend to all those around the world who
fought for democracy and human rights," said Ronald S. Lauder, president
of the World Jewish Congress. "His hand guided every landmark in our
recent history, from the fight against Nazi tyranny during the Holocaust
to the championing of Soviet Jewry. His voice was never silent until
today."
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Lantos offered "a particular voice
that understood what had happened in this world back in the 30s and 40s."
"We should make sure we learn from that and teach our children so it never
happens again, and where it is happening around the world do something to
stop it," Bloomberg said. "It's our obligation, I've always thought, and
Tom really, I think, did understand that."
Lantos was a frequent visitor to Hungary, meeting with political leaders
and holding recurrent news conferences which were widely covered in the
Hungarian press. He was widely recognized there for his calls for the
respect of the human rights of the millions of ethnic Hungarians living in
neighboring countries, especially Romania and Slovakia, whose cultural
identity was a common target of those countries' communist regimes.
"Although we had differing views in various political issues, we clearly
understand that we have lost a true friend of Hungary," Fidesz, the main
center-right opposition party, said in a statement. "Tom Lantos
contributed greatly to the understanding and support in the United States
for the Hungarians living beyond our borders and their ongoing struggle to
maintain their identity."
The governing Socialist Party also paid tribute to Lantos.
"With his life, Tom Lantos proved that democracy, freedom and humanity are
able to defeat dictatorship and inhumanity," the Socialists said in a
statement.
Lantos, who was elected to the House in 1980, founded the Congressional
Human Rights Caucus in 1983. In early 2004 he led the first congressional
delegation to Libya in more than 30 years, meeting personally with Moammar
Gadhafi and urging the Bush administration to show "good faith" to the
North African leader in his pledge to abandon his nuclear weapons
programs. Later that year, President Bush lifted sanctions against Libya.
In October 2007, as Foreign Affairs chairman, Lantos defied administration
opposition by moving through his committee a measure that would have
recognized the World War I-era killings of Armenians as a genocide,
something strongly opposed by Turkey. The bill has not passed the House.
Tall and dignified, Lantos never lost the accent of his native Hungary,
but his courtly demeanor belied the cutting comments he would make in
committee if the testimony he heard was not to his liking.
"Morally, you are pygmies," he berated top executives of Yahoo Inc. at a
hearing he called in November 2007 as they defended their company's
involvement in the jailing of a Chinese journalist.
"This is about as believable as Elvis being seen in a K-Mart," was his
retort to a witness testifying before a subcommittee he headed in 1989
that led a congressional investigation of Reagan-era scandals at the
Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Lantos was elected to Congress after spending three decades teaching
economics at San Francisco State University, working as a business
consultant and serving as a foreign policy commentator on television. He
challenged GOP incumbent Rep. Bill Royer in 1980 after other Democrats
passed up the chance to run, and won narrowly, with 46 percent of the
vote. He subsequently won re-election by comfortable margins.
"It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the
Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received
an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last
three decades of his life as a member of Congress," Lantos said upon
announcing his retirement last month. "I will never be able to express
fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."
Lantos came to the United States in 1947 after being awarded a scholarship
to study at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1950 he married
Annette, his childhood sweetheart, with whom he'd managed to reunite after
the war. The couple moved to the San Francisco Bay area so Lantos could
pursue a doctorate in economics at the University of California, Berkeley.
The first major bill Lantos passed in Congress was to give honorary
American citizenship to Wallenberg, whom he called "the central figure in
my life." But Lantos sometimes shied away from talking about his
experiences in the war. When he joined a lawsuit in 1984 to seek
Wallenberg's release from the Soviet Union — Wallenberg was captured and
imprisoned by Soviet troops after World War II — Lantos told The
Associated Press that he "didn't want to dwell on the details" of the
dangers he faced from the Nazis.
Lantos joined the Hungarian Underground after the Nazi occupation but was
captured and sent to a forced labor camp 40 miles north of Budapest,
according to the biography on his congressional Web site. He was beaten
severely when he tried to escape, but feeling he had nothing to lose he
made another attempt. This time he made it back to Budapest and to one of
the safehouses that Wallenberg had established.
Lantos credited Wallenberg's protection, his own Aryan appearance — blond
hair, blue eyes — and a good measure of luck with helping him survive the
war. But he said that at the time he didn't think he had much of a chance
of staying alive.
"I was sixteen, but I was very old," he said in an interview for "The Last
Days," the 1999 book accompanying the Steven Spielberg documentary of the
same name that focused on the experience of Hungarian-American survivors.
"The bloodbath, the cruelty, the death that I saw, so many times around me
during those few months between March of 1944 and January of 1945 made me
a very old young man."
"My life today, given my background, is something I cannot believe
possible," he went on to say.
Lantos and his wife had two daughters, Annette and Katrina, who between
them produced 18 grandchildren. According to Lantos, his daughters were
following through on a promise to produce a very large family because his
and his wife's families had perished in the Holocaust.
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JD
> "It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the
> Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received
> an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last
> three decades of his life as a member of Congress," Lantos said upon
> announcing his retirement last month. "I will never be able to express
> fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Calif. Rep. Tom Lantos dies
RIP congressman.
JD
skep...@aol.com
> > "It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the
> > Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received
> > an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last
> > three decades of his life as a member of Congress," Lantos said upon
> > announcing his retirement last month. "I will never be able to express
> > fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."
If only I could defile his grave...
CounterPunch
February 15, 2003
The Lies of Tom Lantos
The Bela Lugosi of the House
By WAYNE MADSEN
He is a fake, a phony and a complete fraud. He constantly stresses his
victimhood: first as a Holocaust survivor in Nazi-run Hungary and then
as a refugee when the Communists took power. He fancies himself as the
leading human rights specialist on Capitol Hill. In fact, this odious
so-called Democrat is a master of deception and propaganda and a
wallower in corrupt campaign money.
Meet California Congressman Tom Lantos. The Gollum-like Lantos has
launched his latest string of invectives at France, Germany, and
Belgium. He said "the failure of these three states to honor their
commitments is beneath contempt" and that he is "particularly
disgusted by the blind intransigence and utter ingratitude" of
America's three NATO allies.
Lantos, who represents California's 12th District (San Mateo), has a
history of just plain lying and intimidating others in order to push
his sordid agenda.
He once told Clinton White House security chief Craig Livingstone, who
was testifying before a House committee on the so-called "Travelgate"
matter, that he should think about committing suicide. Lantos, who
sounds a lot like Bela Lugosi, told the beleaguered aide, "At least
Admiral Boorda had the decency to commit suicide," a reprehensible
reference to the tragic suicide of the Chief of Naval Operations.
And who can forget the last time Lantos shilled for a Bush war on
Iraq? On October 10, 1990, Lantos, who laughably chaired the
Congressional Human Rights Caucus, held a meeting during which a 15-
year-old Kuwaiti girl who only went by the name Nayirah told a sobbing
hearing room that as a volunteer for a Kuwait hospital she personally
witnessed Iraqi soldiers yank new born babies from their incubators,
steal the incubators, and leave the infants on the cold floors to die.
Lantos, it turns out, was in on a little scam he cooked up with
Citizens for a Free Kuwait and an entity Lantos chaired called the
Congressional Human Rights Foundation. In fact, both organizations
were rump entities set up by the public relations firm Hill and
Knowlton, the same company that is now shilling for the Saudis to fend
off all criticism of Osama bin Laden's true paymasters.
Lantos, the consummate prevaricator, said that poor Nayirah's last
name had to be kept confidential or otherwise her family in Kuwait
might face reprisals from Iraqi occupiers. Nice try, but soon it was
revealed that Nayirah's actual last name was Al Sabah and that she was
the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States. But the
disinformation soon caught on. George H. W. Bush traveled around the
country condemning the Brute of Baghdad for throwing newborn babies on
to the floors of Kuwaiti hospitals. Support for Bush's war skyrocketed
as a result.
Now, as another President Bush hones his plans to control Iraq through
pro-consul and fellow Texan, General Tommy Franks, Lantos is bleating
forth more disinformation about the "treacherous" French, Germans, and
Belgians for not jumping into Bush's lap in the same manner as
Britain's Tony Blair and Australia's John Howard.
Lantos' venomous brand of politics has earned him scorn from many of
his House colleagues, especially those in the Congressional Black
Caucus. Always quick to accuse those who don't stand with Israel of
being anti-Semitic, Lantos is intolerant of African-American members
who have accused the international diamond industry of responsibility
for a large share of Africa's bloody civil wars and torment. Lantos
has, in some cases, made no secret of his disdain for people of color
who dare question his competency to lord over human rights issues from
his Capitol Hill perch. The relationship between Lantos and Hill and
Knowlton, the agents of past brutal dictatorships in Indonesia and
Turkey, makes Lantos's congressional monopoly on human rights advocacy
an outrageous fraud.
In 1992, high tech entrepreneur Glenn Tenney challenged Lantos in the
Democratic primary. Although Lantos is well-known for his arrogance in
Washington, Tenney and his supporters pointed out that this
haughtiness extended to the constituents of the 12th District as well.
But Lantos, who is propped up partly with the infusion of campaign
funds from mob-controlled unions at San Francisco International
Airport, remained invulnerable to the challenge.
Although Lantos's biography says he is the only Holocaust survivor to
have ever served in Congress, it glosses over the fact that his wife,
also a Holocaust survivor, and two daughters left the Jewish faith and
are practicing Mormons. And it is also a well-known fact that the
Latter Day Saints Church remains a prime backer of the Republican
Party and George W. Bush. Nonetheless, Lantos was quick to hurl his
hackneyed anti-Semitism charges at his two last challengers,
Republican Michael Moloney, who favored cutting off all U.S. aid to
Israel and Libertarian Maad Abu Ghazalah, a Palestinian refugee from
the West Bank, who called for a more even-handed American foreign
policy in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
As eloquent Democrats like West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd and
Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold call into question Bush's Iraq
adventure and his creeping totalitarianism at home, Lantos, to coin a
phrase, remains, as always, "beneath contempt."
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and
columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth.
Madsen can be reached at: WMads...@aol.com
"Wagging the Dog": The Great Incubator Scam of 1990
A Joint U.S./Kuwaiti Production
Revolutionary Worker #944, February 15, 1998
As the U.S. gears up for a military assault against Iraq, government
officials are working overtime to sell the people on the pretext for a
war. Saddam Hussein, they scream, is a "madman" and a "threat to the
world" who must be stopped by overwhelming military force.
In this situation, it is useful to look back on the lies that paved
the way for the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq in 1991. Military
briefers, Capitol Hill politicians, think tank "experts" and major
media reporters worked together like a U.S.-style Ministry of
Information to accuse Iraq of multiple atrocities and crimes. Many of
these widely publicized stories turned out to be lies. But facts which
came to light later to reveal the truth were simply not considered
"important news."
One of the most sensational stories of supposed Iraqi atrocities was
the report that Iraqi troops who marched into Kuwait in August 1990
had taken 312 babies out of incubators at a Kuwait City hospital and
left them on the floor to die. This story was a key piece in the
campaign to paint Iraq as totally evil--and to portray the U.S. war
against Iraq as a mission to "rescue" Kuwait and "restore democracy."
But, as John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton recount in their book Toxic
Sludge Is Good for You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations
Industry (Common Courage Press, 1995), the incubator story was a
complete hoax. It was cooked up by a public relations firm hired by
the reactionary oil kingdom of Kuwait.
In the current movie Wag the Dog, White House operatives work with a
Hollywood producer to "stage" a whole phony war using doctored video
footage and other devices in order to divert attention from a
Presidential sex scandal. Some reviewers have described the premise of
the movie as "implausible." But director Berry Levinson cited the
Kuwaiti incubator scam as one of the real-life events that inspired
the movie.
The incubator story was part of a pro-Kuwait campaign handled by Hill
& Knowlton (H&K), then the largest PR firm in the world. H&K had close
inside connections to the highest levels of government, both
Republican and Democrat. Its Washington office was run by Craig
Fuller, a close friend and political advisor of President Bush. Robert
Gray, chairman of H&K/USA, was a leading figure in Ronald Reagan's two
presidential campaigns. Lauri Fitz-Pegado, the head of H&K's Kuwait
campaign, had worked for Ron Brown, who became the Secretary of
Commerce in the Clinton administration. H&K senior vice president
Thomas Ross was a Pentagon spokesman during the Carter
administration.
H&K had plenty of experience dressing up brutal pro-U.S. regimes like
the rulers of Kuwait. Their other clients included Indonesia and
Turkey.
As Stauber and Rampton point out, "Every big media event needs what
journalists and flacks alike refer to as `the hook.' An ideal hook
becomes the central element of a story that makes it newsworthy,
evokes a strong emotional response, and sticks in the memory. In the
case of the Gulf War, the `hook' was invented by Hill & Knowlton."
On October 10, 1990 California Democrat Tom Lantos and Illinois
Republican John Porter held a hearing that appeared to be an official
congressional proceeding. In reality, this was a Hill & Knowlton PR
event. The hearing was held by a group of politicians calling
themselves the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, headed up by Lantos
and Porter. These two politicians also co-chaired the Human Rights
Foundation, which had office space in H&K's Washington, D.C.
headquarters.
The highlight of the October 10 "hearing" was the testimony of a 15-
year-old Kuwaiti, known only by her first name of Nayirah. The Human
Rights Caucus said her last name was being kept hidden due to fears of
Iraqi reprisals against her family. Sobbing, she claimed that she
witnessed first-hand the Iraqi soldiers yanking babies out of
incubators at the al-Adden hospital.
This testimony was used to sway public opinion--at a time when there
were large demonstrations around the country against the U.S. war
moves and polls by major news organizations indicated strong
opposition to the taking of military action against Iraq. During the
period from October 10 to the start of the air war, the "babies taken
from incubators" story was repeated many times by the newspapers, TV
and radio. It was raised at the UN Security Council. President Bush
told the story in a speech in January 1991, shortly before he launched
the bombings on Iraq.
But, as Stauber and Rampton point out, "Hill & Knowlton and
Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of
the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-
Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the U.S., who sat listening in the
hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal
that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what
even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false
testimony."
By the time the truth came out, the U.S. had brought massive
destruction to Iraq with weeks of bombing and killed 200,000 Iraqis.
According to Stauber and Rampton, "Following the war, human rights
investigators attempted to confirm Nayirah's story and could find no
witnesses or other evidence to support it. Amnesty International,
which had fallen for the story, was forced to issue an embarrassing
retraction. Nayirah herself was unavailable for comment."
*****
Whenever Hitler was about to launch a new war of aggression, he would
accuse his opponents of atrocities that never happened. These lies
would be repeated over and over again by official spokesmen and the
press. The Nazi government would then launch a pre-planned attack.
This Hitler technique is called the "Big Lie."
U.S. war-makers used this same technique as part of preparations for
the 1991 war against Iraq. And seven years later, the "Big Lie"
machine is going full speed once again.
Arkansan_Raider
background.
RIP, Mr. Lantos.
---Jeff
Professor
ignore the garbage posted by Septic the golfing anarchist.