Iraq's Post-1950 History Revisited: Part 6

(See parts 1-5 below)

Most people in the United States would like to see the nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 private contractors who are still occupying Iraqi soil (in support of special U.S. corporate interests) to finally be withdrawn from Iraq by Easter 2009. But the Democratic Obama regime is still not willing to immediately bring U.S. troops and private contractors in Iraq back home; and the Obama regime apparently plans to leave between 30,000 and 50,000 U.S. occupation troops stationed in Iraq as "military advisors" until January 1, 2012.

Yet if the Obama Administration officials responsible for authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces in Iraq--like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--had known more about Iraq's post-1950 history, perhaps U.S. troops and private contractors would not still be spending another Easter in Iraq in 2009?

In the aftermath of the unsuccessful Ba'th-supported 1959 Mosul Revolt, Iraqi communist activists organized large demonstrations which called for the Qasim regime to: "Crush the plotters; Purge the army and the administration; Arm the people; Withdraw from the Baghdad Pact without further delay; Take preventive diplomatic and punitive measures against countries which participate in plotting aggression against our country!"

On March 24, 1959, the Qasim government responded to the large demos by withdrawing from the Baghdad Pact that had formally aligned Iraq militarily in the Cold War Era with the UK imperialist government; and the 400 British Royal Air Force troops who were still in the country were finally withdrawn from Iraq on May 31, 1959. Two thousand anti-Qasim officials were also purged from Iraqi government offices and Iraqi military officer posts. In addition, the Soviet Union also agreed to give a generous loan of $137 million to the Qasim government on March 16, 1959, which was to be spent within seven years on industrial, communications, transportation and agricultural development and infrastructure projects.

In the United States, the Republican Eisenhower Administration was apparently upset about the post-July 1958 direction of Iraq's internal politics and apparently first began to pursue a U.S. foreign policy of "regime change" in Iraq. As William Blum recalled in his 2000 book Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower:

"A secret plan for a joint U.S.-Turkish invasion of the country was drafted by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the 1958 coup. Reportedly, only Soviet threats to intercede on Iraq's side forced Washington to hold back. But in 1960, the United States began to fund the Kurdish guerrillas in Iraq who were fighting for a measure of autonomy and the CIA undertook an assassination attempt against Qasim, which was unsuccessful. The Iraqi leader made himself even more of a marked man when, in that same year, he began to help create the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC], which challenged the stranglehold Western oil companies had on the marketing of Arab oil; and in 1962 he created a national oil company to exploit the nation's oil."

(end of part 6)

Iraq's Post-1950 History Revisited: Part 5

(See parts 1-4 below)

Most people in the United States would like to see the nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 private contractors who are still occupying Iraqi soil (in support of special U.S. corporate interests) to finally be withdrawn from Iraq by Easter 2009. But the Democratic Obama regime is still not willing to immediately bring U.S. troops and private contractors in Iraq back home; and the Obama regime apparently plans to leave between 30,000 and 50,000 U.S. occupation troops stationed in Iraq as "military advisors" until January 1, 2012.

Yet if the Obama Administration officials responsible for authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces in Iraq--like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--had known more about Iraq's post-1950 history, perhaps U.S. troops and private contractors would not still be spending another Easter in Iraq in
2009?

On February 23, 1959, a Ba'th-supported plot in Mosul to overthrow the Qasim regime was discovered by Qasim's Iraqi communist activist supporters in that city.

The 180,000 Iraqis who lived in Mosul in March 1959 were much more anti-communist than the Iraqis who lived in Baghdad. In Mosul, the Ba'th Party had 150 full members, 600 Ba'th supporters and ties to anti-communist and anti-Qasim Iraqi military officers. But only 400 people in Mosul were members of the Iraq Communist Party in early March 1959--although the People's Resistance Force group in Mosul which supported the Qasim regime contained 7,000 members.

To protest the Ba'th-supported plot, the Iraqi communist activist-led Peace Partisans then mobilized 250,000 people, many from Baghdad, to demonstrate in support of the Qasim regime in Mosul on March 6, 1959. But the following day, Ba'thist activists burnt down the leftist bookshops and the Ali al-Khajju coffeehouse in Mosul. The Ali al-Khajju coffeehouse was the Mosul coffeehouse where local Iraqi communist activists hung out in the late 1950s.

The next day, at dawn on March 8, 1959, anti-Qasim Iraqi military officers in Mosul arrested 60 local Iraqi communist activists. Then, at 7 a.m., these Iraqi Army Fifth Brigade military officers broadcast a call to revolt against the Qasim regime over the Mosul radio station.

Qasim loyalists within the military and the Qasim regime's Iraqi communist supporters, however, were able to prevent this Ba'th-supported Iraqi military revolt in Mosul from succeeding in March 1959. But during this unsuccessful Ba'th-supported 1959 Mosul revolt, at least 110 Iraqis were killed and 300 Iraqis were wounded. Of the 110 Iraqis killed, 48 were Ba'th Party activists or allies and 30 were Iraq Communist Party activists. (end of part 5)

Iraq's Post-1950 History Revisited: Part 4

(See parts 1-3 below)

Most people in the United States would like to see the nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 private contractors who are still occupying Iraqi soil (in support of special U.S. corporate interests) to finally be withdrawn from Iraq by Easter 2009. But the Democratic Obama regime is still not willing to immediately bring U.S. troops and private contractors in Iraq back home. Yet if the Obama Administration officials responsible for authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces in Iraq--like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--had known more about Iraq's post-1950 history, perhaps U.S. troops and private contractors would not still be spending another Easter in Iraq in 2009?

In the months following the Qasim coup, considered the July 1958 Revolution in Iraqi history, the anti-communist Ba'th Party was still not seen as that politically influential within Iraqi society. Although it possessed 300 active members, 1200 organizational partisans, 2,000 organized supporters and 10,000 unorganized supporters by 1958, "its forces of attraction hardly compared with that of its Communist rivals," according to Hanna Batatu's book, The Old Social Classes and The Revolutionary Movements of Iraq.

When 500,000 Iraqi protesters demonstrated on the streets of Baghdad on August 7, 1958 in support of Iraq's new revolutionary government, "the Communists far outdistanced the other elements, at least in their organizational resources, and the direct leadership was manifest in their hands," according to Batatu's book.

By mid-1959, the membership of the Iraq Communist Party exceeded 25,000. And Iraq Communist Party influence in the 40,000 member League for Defense of Women's Rights, the 84,000 Iraqi Democratic Youth Federation and the 275,000 member General Federation of Trade Unions was also strong by mid-1959.

An agrarian reform was soon proclaimed by Qasim's regime on September 30, 1958 that set maximum limits on the amount of land that the 2,800 feudal Iraqi landlords, who previously controlled 56% of all Iraqi private land, could possess. The Qasim regime also reduced rents on rooms by 20%, reduced rents on homes by 15 to 20%, brought down the price of bread, and reduced the Iraqi workday to 8 hours.

Initially, Qasim relied on Iraqi communist activists' support for his government, because they appeared to be the only organized political force in Iraqi society capable of countering any anti-Qasim political forces in Iraq and within the Iraqi military. On August 21, 1958, Iraqi communist activists established a People's Resistance Force of 11,000 young men and women in Baghdad to support the Qasim regime. The head of the Qasim regime's intelligence service in late 1958 was also a member of the Iraq Communist Party. In addition, the General Union of Iraqi Students initially elected an Iraqi communist activist to lead it during Qasim's regime.

Despite the democratic economic reforms he instituted and the political support his regime received from Iraqi communist activists, however, Qasim, himself, was just an anti-imperialist nationalist and not a communist. Initially, Qasim's deputy prime minister was an anti-communist colonel named Abdel Salem Aref, who was an admirer of Egyptian leader Nasser and pro-Ba'thist in his politics in 1958. By late September 1958, however, Aref had resigned his post--since Aref's support for the unification, not federation, of Iraq with Nasser's United Arab Republic was not shared by Qasim.

An unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Qasim was then allegedly made by Aref when he and Qasim met with others in an October 12, 1958 meeting. In response, Qasim's police arrested Aref on November 4, 1958 and closed down the Ba'th Party's newspaper on November 7, 1958. (end of part 4)

Who Rules NYU? NYU's Bank Leumi USA Connection

Besides sitting on the AIG Retirement Services corporate board in recent years, New York University [NYU] Trustee Lester Pollack has also sat between Conference of President of Major Jewish Organizations(lobbying group)Executive Vice-Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein and former Tel Aviv University President Itamar Rabinovich on the board of directors of Bank Leumi USA. In addition, an NYU College of Business & Public Administration Dean Emeritus, NYU Professor of Economics Abraham Gitlow, has also been an honorary director of Bank Leumi USA in recent years.

According to the Bank Leumi USA’s web site, “Bank Leumi USA is the largest subsidiary of the Leumi Group, Israel’s leading banking group, founded in 1902, with assets exceeding $86 billion” and “The Leumi Group serves clients around the world through more than 300 branches and offices...”

Among the other corporations or institutions on whose boards members of the NYU board of trustees have sat in recent years are: Bank of New York Mellon Corporation; Colgate Palmolive, Apollo Management; General Motors Asset Management; Temple Emanuel; Warburg Pincus; New York City Ballet; General Electric; Schering Plough; Paramount; CNA Financial; Comcast; Loew’s; Coca Cola; Washington Post Company/Newsweek; Seagram’s; Blackrock; PNC Financial Services; Home Depot; Center for Strategic and International Studies; The New York Stock Exchange; New School University; the New York City Police Foundation; and Human Rights Watch.

Who Ruled NYU In 1994?

Like New York University [NYU] in 1994, the University of California at the time of the Berkeley Student Revolt was controlled by super-rich folks whose special interests conflicted with the class interests of most Village Voice readers. As The Beginning: Berkeley, 1964 recalled:

“In the 1964-65 school year…the 24 members of the University of California’s Board of Regents had various connections with larger interests in the state and the nation. The board chairman was president of the largest chain of department stores in the West. Other members included the chairman of the Bank of America, the chairman of the nation’s largest gold-mining corporation, a vice-president of Lockheed…active in the California Manufacturer’s Association, the board chairman of two oil companies, the president of one of California’s largest food-processing concerns, a past chairman of the Republican State Central Committee…the wives of two of the state’s leading newspaper publishers, a past president of the state bar association…two corporation lawyers, and a former advertising executive. Members of the Board of Regents either headed or served on the boards of directors of 38 major corporations in the state and the nation…”

Similarly, among the corporations and institutions which were owned or directed by members of NYU’s Board of Trustees in the early 1990s were the Village Voice, Nation magazine, the New York Observer, the New York Daily News, CBS, Capital Cities Communication/ABC, Time Warner/Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Atlantic Monthly, Mobil Oil, Texaco, Getty Oil, Amerada Hess, Union Carbide, Chemical Bank, Bank Leumi Trust, NYNEX, Metropolitan Life Insurance, Borden, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Automatic Data Processing, Rockwell International, Paramount Communications, the New York Stock Exchange, Lazard Freres, Bear Stearns, Loew’s/Lorillard Tobacco, R.H. Macy’s, Hartz Mountain, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of NY and the NY Public Library.

(Downtown 9/21/94)

NYU's Real Estate Investments: Worth $1 Billion In 1990s?

For a “nonprofit” tax-exempt institution, NYU sure owned a lot of Downtown Manhattan real estate during the 1990s. As Skyscraper Dreams: The Great Real Estate Dynasties Of New York by Tom Shactman observed in 1991:

“By the late 1960s, New York University’s endowment had dwindled and its student base had declined to the point where the possibility existed that the school would have to declare bankruptcy…On the real estaters’ advice, the university aggressively began to buy property, especially in the vicinity of the campus…By the late 1980s, New York University had become…(like Columbia University) the owner of more than a billion dollars worth of Manhattan real estate.”

NYU was barely in need of charity in the early 1990s. After the 1970s, NYU expanded rapidly into the neighborhoods that surrounded its Washington Square campus. And in 1990, NYU’s annual budget exceeded $1 billion per year and NYU then owned $522 million worth of U.S. corporate stock—despite being characterized as a “nonprofit” institution. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, NYU also raised more money from Big Business than it had in any previous period in its pre-1990 history.

In 1990 the offices of the NYU administration were located on the 12th floor of its Bobst Library at 70 Washington Square South and NYU’s president at that time was John Brademas, a former congressional representative from South Bend, Indiana. In October 1976, according to Current Biography, former NYU President Brademas “acknowledged that he had accepted about $5,000 in campaign funds in 1970, 1972 and 1974 from Park Tong Sun, the Washington party fixture under federal investigation for influence peddling” in the “Koreagate Affair.” But in 1981, Brademas was still named NYU President.

During the 1980s, former NYU President Brademas was chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of New York and a director of the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Stock Exchange, Scholastic Inc., Loew’s Corp. and RCA/NBC. In 1990 Brademas finally announced his intention to retire as NYU President by March, 1992; and the current NYU President is a guy named John Sexton, whose annual compensation during the 2006-2007 academic year was nearly $1.3 million.

In the early 1990s, the chairman of NYU Board of Trustees was the former board chairman of CBS who sold CBS Records to SONY—Laurence Tisch.

In 1990, security guards on the Bobst Library’s main floor were under orders to question reporters before allowing them to go up to the 12th floor NYU administration offices.

According to NYU’s press officer in 1990, Bill Osborne, in 1990 NYU had “no plans for further expansion” in the East Village and did not plan to construct or purchase any new buildings there in the 1990s. Osborne added, however, that this didn’t “mean that 20 years from now” NYU would not decide to expand its campus deeper into the Lower East Side.

A late 1980s pamphlet that was still being distributed at NYU’s Information Center in Shimkin Hall at 50 West Fourth Street in 1990 stated in an “Architect’s Description” of NYU’s 33 Third Avenue dormitory:

“New York University has embraced an extraordinary opportunity to expand its building program at its main campus in New York City’s Washington Square area. The acquisition of two major building sites on Third Avenue continues the eastward growth of the University, with its urban campus extending from Sixth Avenue to the East River.

“Prior to the acquisition of these properties, the `gateway’ to New York University’s campus had been Washington Square and the famed Washington Arch. The major building program proposed for Third Avenue will introduce a new gateway marking the eastern entrance to the main New York University community. The site at Third Avenue and Stuyvesant (Ninth) Street marks an entry to both the East Village and Greenwich Village…”

Much of NYU’s 1980s campus expansion was financed by an NYU trustee in the 1990s and a former owner of the Village Voice named Leonard Stern. Between 1980 and 1985, Stern, a billionaire, funneled millions of dollars to NYU, including a $3 million donation to renovate an NYU dormitory at 79-80 Washington Square East that was renamed “Leonard Stern Hall.” In September, 1988, Stern also announced his plan to funnel more than $25 million to NYU to strengthen its schools of business. Coincidentally, NYU’s under-graduate and graduate business schools were both named after Billionaire Leonard Stern in 1990; and the New York Times noted in its April 2, 1989 issue that $30 million of NYU’s drive to raise $100 million in the late 1980s for the upgrading of its business schools had come from former Village Voice owner Stern.

As an NYU trustee in the 1980s, Stern played more than a passive role on NYU’s Board of Trustees. In its July 15, 1985 issue, Business Week reported that Stern “regularly” spent “one day a week on his work as a trustee” of NYU. It also observed that Stern “became intensely involved” in the designing of Leonard Stern Hall, “particularly that of the dining room.” According to former NYU President Brademas, Stern took the architect to cafes all over town to say, “What do you think about this, what about that?”

If you walked around the Village and the Lower East Side in 1990, you might have noticed that the number of dormitories, apartment buildings and hotel buildings with big NYU flags sticking out over the street increased dramatically in the 1980s at the same time the number of homeless single men in the neighborhood increased. Although former New York City Mayor Ed Koch—an NYU Law School graduate—used to claim that no money existed to construct apartments for homeless people in New York City, NYU boasted in its “33 Third Avenue” pamphlet that:

“New York University has made an extraordinary commitment to the creation of an expanded residential campus at Washington Square. The centerpiece of this effort has been the construction of four new residence halls housing more than 2,000 undergraduates and graduate students. With the opening of these new facilities, the number of students able to live on campus has increased by 48 percent to over 6,400.”

The Spring 1990 issue of NYU Alumni News also reported that between 1981 and 1990, undergraduate housing at NYU increased by 150 percent.

Some builders of luxury apartment buildings in Manhattan agreed in the 1980s to reserve some housing space in their newly constructed buildings for low-income tenants. Yet in the 1980s, “nonprofit” NYU, ironically, apparently wasn’t willing to let any homeless men share any of its newly-constructed residential campus space.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 9/12/90 and 1/29/97)

"Non-Profit" NYU Paid Its President $1,291,000 In 2007

The tax-exempt New York University [NYU] in Manhattan claims to be a “non-profit” institution. Yet according to its Form 990 financial filing for the year beginning September 1, 2006 and ending August 31, 2007, NYU earned over $31 million in dividends and interest from the over $998 million in stocks and bonds which NYU then owned. And the “non-profit” NYU board of trustees paid NYU’s current president—a former Federal Reserve Bank of New York board member named John Sexton--an annual salary of $1,291,525 in 2007. In addition, NYU’s board of trustees apparently also paid former NYU President L. Jay Oliva an annual salary of $375,000 and former NYU President John Brademas an annual salary of $250,000 in 2007.

In 2007, “non-profit” NYU also paid its then-Chair for Academic Priorities, Richard Foley, an annual salary of $553,587. In addition, NYU paid then-NYU Executive Vice-President Michael Alfano, then- NYU Provost David McLaughlin and then-NYU Senior Vice-President for Health Robert Berne each annual salaries of $499,550.

NYU’s then-Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Cheryl Mills, was also paid an annual salary of $478,866 by NYU in 2007, while NYU’s then-Senior Vice-President for Development, Debra Lamorte, was paid an annual salary of $450,000. In addition, NYU paid then-NYU Senior Vice-President for University International Strategies Jeanne Marie Smith an annual salary of $408,084 and then-NYU Senior Vice-President for Finance & Budget Martin Dorph an annual salary of $342,935 in 2007. And then-NYU Senior Vice-President for University Relations Lynne Brown was paid an annual salary of $316,975 in that same year by ‘non-profit’ NYU.

At least five NYU professors also apparently were paid annual salaries that exceeded $1.4 million in 2007 by the tax-exempt, “non-profit” university. NYU Professor James Grifo was paid an annual salary of $2,362,270, while NYU Professor Stephen Colvin was paid an annual salary of $2,200,090 in 2007. That same year, NYU Professor Alan Berkeley was paid an annual salary of $1,599,507, while NYU Professor Joseph Zuckerman was paid an annual salary of $1,528,477. And NYU Associate Professor Nichole Noye was also paid an annual salary of $1,448,515 by NYU in 2007.

Although tax-exempt NYU claims to be a “non-profit” institution, between September 1, 2007 and August 31, 2007 NYU’s annual revenues of $2,912,112,322 exceeded NYU’s annual expenses of $2,693,188,158 by over $218 million.