[WCUSP] Fwd: 1.AIPAC Demands "Action" on Iran 2.Zionism-Cultural Connection-USA 3.Poverty Gap in US Has Widened under Bush

[Odile Hugonot Haber]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Karen deslierres <karendes at umich.edu>
Date: Feb 28, 2007 12:31 PM
Subject: 1.AIPAC Demands "Action" on Iran 2.Zionism-Cultural
Connection-USA 3.Poverty Gap in US Has Widened under Bush
To: Karen deslierres <karendes at umich.edu>





February 24 / 25, 2007



AIPAC Demands "Action" on Iran

"An American Strike on Iran is Essential for Our Existence"

By GARY LEUPP

Former CIA counterterrorism specialist Philip Giraldi, comparing the
propaganda campaign against Iran to that which preceded the war on
Iraq, has recently declared, "It is absolutely parallel. They're using
the same dance steps-demonize the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy,
keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux." He's only
one of many in his field (including Vincent Cannistraro, Ray McGovern,
and Larry C. Johnson) doing their best to expose the Bush-Cheney
neocon disinformation campaign according to which Iran is planning to
produce nukes in order to commit genocide, while abetting terrorists
in Iraq who are killing American troops.

Their efforts, and those of many others, are producing results. The
mainstream corporate press is far more skeptical about administration
claims pertaining to Iran than they ever were towards the equally
specious claims made about Iraq on the eve of the 2003 invasion. The
American people are now inclined to distrust claims made by nameless
officials about Quds Force-provisioned IEDs and EFPs, etc., supposedly
smuggled by "meddling" Iranians into Iraq. Unfortunately the Congress
dominated by Democrats elected in a popular expression of antiwar
sentiment has not taken a firm stance against an attack on Iran based
on lies. Maybe given the nature of the power structure it simply
can't.

Giraldi matter-of-factly sums up the unfortunate politics of situation.

"The recent formation of the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus
should. . . .be noted as well as AIPAC's highlighting of the threat
from Iran at its 2006 convention in Washington, an event that featured
Vice President Dick Cheney as keynote speaker. More recently, Senator
Hillary Clinton addressed an AIPAC gathering in New York City. Neither
was shy about threatening Iran. AIPAC's formulation that the option of
force 'must remain on the table' when dealing with Iran has been
repeated like a mantra by numerous politicians and government
officials, not too surprisingly as AIPAC writes the briefings and
position papers that many Congressmen unfortunately rely on."

In other words, the American Israel Political Action Committee is the
main political force urging---indeed, demanding---U.S. action. That's
the AIPAC already under scrutiny for receiving classified information
about Iran from Lawrence Franklin, former Defense Department
subordinate of Douglas Feith. (That's the neocon Feith who supervised
the Office of Special Plans---headed by Abram Shulsky, the neocon
specialist on Leo Strauss who currently heads up the Iran Directorate
at the Pentagon---that shamelessly cherry-picked intelligence to
support the Iraq attack. That's the Franklin who worked in the OSP,
and was sentenced last month to 13 years in prison. Feith has not been
indicted on any charge and continues to insist in defiance of reason
and even a Pentagon internal investigation finding it "inappropriate"
that his office's disinformation project was "good government." Small
wonder Gen. Tommy Franks, formerly head of the U.S. Central Command,
famously called Feith "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the
earth." Congressional investigations are just now getting underway
into Feith's role in facilitating the invasion of Iraq.)

That's the AIPAC embarrassed by the indictment of its policy director
Steven Rosen and senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman for illegally
conspiring to pass on classified national security information to
Israel. Despite the already intimate ties between Israeli and U.S.
intelligence (documented by Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski among others)
it seems the Israelis felt obliged to spy on the Pentagon to learn
just how inclined the Americans were to oblige them by attacking Iran.

Now, as Israeli calls for a U.S. attack on Iran become more shrill by
the day, AIPAC recognizes that the American people profoundly distrust
Vice President Cheney and the nest of neocon liars he has sheltered.
The Bush-Cheney war machine has been pretty well exposed, and that
must worry the warmongers within the group. Israeli Defense Force
chief artillery officer Gen. Oded Tira has griped that "President Bush
lacks the political power to attack Iran," adding that since "an
American strike in Iran is essential for [Israel's] existence, we must
help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is
conducting itself foolishly) and US newspaper editors. We need to do
this in order to turn the Iran issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated
to the Iraq failure." Tira urges the Lobby to turn to "potential
presidential candidates. . . so that they support immediate action by
Bush against Iran," while Uri Lubrani, senior advisor to Defense
Minister Amir Peretz, tells the Jewish Agency's Board of Governors
that the US "does not understand the threat and has not done enough,"
and therefore "must be shaken awake."

Many Americans would find such statements deeply offensive in their
arrogance and condescension. President Bush has indeed been weakened
by the "Iraq failure" Tira acknowledges, arising from a war that the
Lobby once endorsed with enormous enthusiasm. (As Gen. Wesley Clark
put it way back in August 2002, "Those who favor this attack now will
tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam
Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid at some
point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against
Israel." Recall that that weapon was imaginary.) So now, the Israeli
war advocates aver, the U.S. president needs to be helped to do the
right thing and attack Iran by lobbyists who will use their power to
force the fools in the Democratic Party, especially presidential
candidates. Because Americans don't understand and have to be shaken
out of their current skeptical mode.

By who? By AIPAC, of course! The confidence expressed by these
gentlemen (in the second most powerful political action committee in
the country) is quite extraordinary. But alas, maybe it's warranted.
Giraldi dispassionately concludes:

"Knowing that to cross the Lobby is perilous, Congressmen from both
parties squirm and become uneasy when pressured by AIPAC to 'protect
Israel,' even if it means yet another unwinnable war for the United
States. The neocons know full well that if a war with Iran were to be
started either inadvertently or by design, few within America's
political system would be brave enough to stand up in opposition."

One should ask these spineless politicians how they suppose the people
will remember their votes and positions within weeks of the "immediate
action" Tira and his allies in the Bush administration (most notably
Condi Rice's deputy Elliott Abrams, the most powerful neocon remaining
in the team) are demanding. Will they not be blamed for the total
collapse of cooperation between the U.S. occupation and Iraq's Shiite
majority, the fall of the current client regime dominated by Iranian
allies, the intensification of Shiite militia attacks on U.S. forces,
the broadening of the current two-front war to enflame all of
Southwest Asia?

One should ask those squirming manipulators blissfully ignorant of the
Islamic world---clueless about the difference between Arabs and
Persians or Sunnis and Shiites, coached almost entirely by State
Department Zionists who don't bother to conceal their
Islamophobia---to recognize that American Jewry is not generally
pro-neocon nor united in support of an Iran attack. Indeed many
American Jews are alarmed at Israeli/AIPAC efforts to push the U.S.
into another crusader war on a Muslim nation. (A lot of them are in
New York. Hillary might consult with them rather than suppose that her
ticket to the presidency is the support of the Cheney-friendly Lobby.
But I wouldn't hold my breath on that.)

One should ask the Lobbyists as well as the government of Israel that
they think they serve (as well as the people of Israel, honestly
divided in their opinions) how the security of the Jewish State will
be abetted by a generalized war between Israel's great patron and the
entire Muslim world.

When one plays this Islamophobic game of exploiting ignorance, fear,
hatred and bigotry; when one conflates al-Qaeda with Iraq with Hamas
with Hizbollah with Iran knowing that most Americans know little about
the details and will be inclined to side (for now) with Israel against
Muslims in general; when one lies (as the neocons do with such
arrogance, supposing they will escape any consequences of the lies
down the road)---then one invites a backlash. We live in a racist
culture that easily slides into religious bigotry. Why use that
culture (not so dissimilar to the German culture of the 1930s) so
shamelessly---against Arabs and other Muslim peoples of the Middle
East? One's disinformation with its murderous results in the Muslim
world might just produce the ignorant conclusion that could sweep
Middle America down the road: "The Jews made us do it." That's what
the red-necks including a whole lot of today's brain-dead Christian
Zionist fundamentalists will say as soon as everything goes wrong in
the Middle East, Jesus doesn't come back and is nowhere in sight, and
the three U.S. troops killed per day becomes six or ten for no good
goddamned reason.

"They have the money, they control the media and the politicians. They
made us attack Iran and now look what's happening." That's what the
ignorant who can one day cry "Nuke 'em all!" referring to Muslims, and
the next day swear "Fucking Christ-killers" will say. Is the Lobby's
paranoia about Iran's uranium enrichment so severe as to risk that
kind of assessment, that kind of blowback bigotry?

We are perhaps arriving at a critical point in the history of the
powerful Lobby, including its capacity to intimidate honest,
critically reasoning people who do not embrace its fears, prejudices
and preoccupations. It's under unprecedented scrutiny following the
carefully argued paper by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, "The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" and Jimmy Carter's book
Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid both published last year, to which
it's reacted with its wonted technique of character assassination. The
political power of the Lobby would appear to be reaching its zenith;
and while it used its hand subtly in the build-up for war on Iraq, it
now uses it in crude, bullying fashion. Israeli officials weren't
publicly calling for the simple-minded Christian-Zionist Bush to
"smite" Iraq to defend Israel in 2003, but now they're nervously
demanding that Bush destroy Iran's nuclear facilities to prevent a
"genocide" worse that that accomplished by Hitler! Their boldness
betrays a confidence that they can indeed continue to shape American
political discourse about the Middle East (to the exclusion of any
audible Arab or Muslim voice) and that to challenge them is indeed
"perilous."

"Attack Iran! NOW! Or support GENOCIDE! and side with the new HITLER!
Destroy Iran's nuclear facilities! NOW! Or reveal your
thinly-disguised ANTI-SEMITISM!"

That's the hyper-message calculated to stimulate an assault, to which
the calm counterterrorism analyst Giraldi draws our attention. One
could respond to the message with a polite, firm, principled refusal:

No thanks this time, AIPAC. You're just not credible. Can't do it for
you. My constituents aren't into more war, and they think this whole
Iran thing's a lot of hype. I can't support nuking Iran, and frankly,
I don't see how you can either. I don't think you speak for all or
even most American Jews, and you can't scare me this time by
accusations of anti-Semitism. I can't have an attack on Iran my
conscience, sorry. I'd rather be defeated in the next election. Keep
your money; I just can't do what you ask.

Will the Congress targeted by the Lobby be able to say that? If it
doesn't, all the belated, posturing moves to limit Bush's power,
withdraw troops and end the imperialist war in Iraq will mean nothing.
An attack on Iran will unleash the gates of hell. The attackers will
argue that a new situation makes all prewar debate irrelevant (or even
if encouraging doubt about the "existential" cause, downright
treasonous). The fascistic proclivities of the administration will
blossom immediately. The legal basis has been laid for the repression
of the dissent an Iran attack will naturally inspire. Prison camps,
suspension of habeas corpus. The proponents of the war are comfortable
with these things, and the waters have already been tested.

O nation miserable,
 With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd,
 When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again?

Can the American people allow this unelected unpopular administration,
headed by a manifestly stupid sadistic fool, to continue to provoke
international contempt and fear, while planning more carnage?

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct
Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and
Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women,
1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless
chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial
Crusades.

He can be reached at: gleupp at granite.tufts.edu
�February 24 / 25, 2007

The Cultural Connection

Zionism and the United States

By LARRY PORTIS

Not long ago, I met Eyal Naveh, an Israeli historian, who explains
that the United States has been the "model" for the Israeli state and
society. He claims that the US was first a model for the Zionist
pioneers, then for the founders of the state of Israel. Like the US,
Israel was to be an entirely new country created in a savage, untamed
land peopled only by savages. Like the US, Israel would be unique in
its democratic institutions, its multicultural society and its
modernity. Israel would also, like the US, apply the most advanced
technology in the resolution of existential problems and towards the
achievement of a high standard of living.

I agree with Naveh that the US influence over the Zionist enterprise
is important. What is less understood is how Israel has become a model
for the US. Recently the work of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt has
raised the question of how Israel, through the Zionist lobby in the
US, has perhaps come to exercise a virtually direct control over US
policy in the Middle East. This is an important debate in which
others, such as Noam Chomsky and Bill and Kathleen Christison have
made important contributions. In this debate, in my opinion, the
cultural connections between Zionism and the United States should not
be minimized.

Because the state of Israel was created in part under the inspiration
of the US � the frontier society forged in North America � images of
the US have come to constitute an essential element of the vision that
many Americans have of Israel and Palestine. In great part, the US
understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves an image of
the US itself, an image first projected onto the Zionist settlements,
and then onto the state of Israel. This is a process of "image
transfer" which began long before the recognition of the state of
Israel in 1948 and the substitution of US authority in the region for
that of Great Britain.

The US presence, or involvement, in Israeli and Palestinian affairs
was prepared long in advance of any concern for the "peace process".
This US involvement has been not only the initiative of individual
presidents-whatever their motivations-but an emotional commitment
generated by a sense of identification. Identification between the
American experience and the Zionist-Israeli experience was prepared by
the refraction of a certain image of the United States through the
prism of Zionist propaganda and colonization in Palestine. In the
history of the United States in relation to Israel, this refracted
image is both the means and the end (the objective) in the process of
ideological formation.

How did the historical experience of the United States help shape the
image of Palestine? How did the "New Jerusalem" contribute to a change
in the vision of the "old Jerusalem"?

A first connection is between an understanding of the Jewish Diaspora
and the Protestant-puritan Diaspora of the seventeenth century.
Despite deep currents of anti-Semitism, the parallel between John
Winthrop leading the brave Puritans to the Promised Land and Moses
leading the children of Israel back to the Holy Land has been
regularly exploited in (what is today) the United States. For example,
Thomas Jefferson suggested that the official seal of the United States
could depict the "Children of Israel" following a pillar light sent by
God.

The associations envisioned by Jefferson are eloquent: the notion of a
chosen people-the Elect-to whom providence has assigned a spiritual
mission linked to the conquest of a particular land. All this provides
the basis for an affinity that is, in fact, more than elective-it is
divine. More specifically, both chosen peoples were, ultimately,
"people without a land" called upon to colonize "a land without a
people".

When we speak of the colonizers, of America and Palestine, it is
logical to forget the indigenous inhabitants of both places, for it
was the land that was colonized--not the people living on it. The
importance of the American Indians and the Palestinians comes from the
fact that they have figured as obstacles to the fulfillment of the
missions in question. Both groups have, in different ways, been
characterized as lower forms of civilization slowing the march of
progress. Both peoples have been described as savage and cruel.

This image, at its worst racist and genocidal, at its best
paternalistic, is well documented as it concerns Native Americans. As
regards non-Jewish Palestinians, there is less documentation and more
controversy. The rise of cultural prejudice and even racism concerning
the non-Christian and Jewish populations of the Middle and Near East
is not a popular subject in the West. The ideas presented in, for
example, Edward Sa�d's Orientalism, or in Martin Bernal's Black
Athena, are in no way flattering to Western culture or to Western
people in general.

The history of this negative form of "Orientalism" is being written
today. I, for one, have attempted to elucidate how an already
prejudiced perception of Palestinians was sharpened in the 1920s by
Zionist spokespersons. Over a period of several years, religious
designations, or territorial designations, ceased to be used in
reference to non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine. By the mid-1920s,
only two parties in conflict were referred to-the "Jews" and the
"Arabs". A concurrent tendency existed to refer to both groups as
"races". I call this the "racializing of ethnicity". Although the
vogue of racializing social terminology was abandoned (in most
informed circles) after the outbreak of World War II, the cultural
prejudices have persisted.

The development of a more exclusionary terminology used to designate
the undesirable populations is certainly one characteristic of
colonization. In order to preserve their own dignity, the colonizers
are morally constrained to denigrate the human obstacles to the
accomplishment of their project. Comparison of the two colonial
experiences reveals how one borrowed from another, and vice-versa.

The history of the British colonies in North America, and then the
history of the United States throughout the nineteenth century is that
of continuous colonization. The religious and economic motives typical
of the seventeenth century continued to inspire settlers until the
"closing" of the Frontier in the 1890s. What appear as the real
novelty of the nineteenth century were the various utopian experiments
in communal living. Hundreds of socialistic communities were
established throughout the United States during the nineteenth
century. To our day, such initiatives continue as part of the social
and cultural landscape.

The Zionist settlements in Palestine combined all these same
motivations. Not only were the Zionist colonies of different types,
they sometimes-as in the case of the Kibbutzim-united in themselves
religious Puritanism and secular socialistic modernity. This was a
phenomenon appealing to United-Statesians reared on frontier myths,
such as the idea of cultural-spiritual regeneration through a
confrontation with adversity and violence.

 The "closing" of the US frontier in the early 1890s, accompanied by
the rapid development of a mythologized literature and cinema
concerning the Western hero, certainly facilitated support for the
Zionist project. The idea of pioneers struggling to establish
themselves in a hostile environment was romantic, and familiar.

Related to the settlement of frontiers by hardy pioneers, another
affinity between Americans is the development and application of new
agricultural techniques. "Making the desert bloom" was a powerful
slogan and image for both emergent national cultures. US botanical
technology, such as new plant varieties, insecticides, and chemical
fertilizers, contributed to the success of Jewish settlements in
Palestine. Going from the Great American Desert to Palestine was more
than a symbolic transfer of images. In addition, in both cases, it
involved a denial of the agricultural achievements of the indigenous
inhabitants.

Another affinity between the creations of the American and Israeli
"nations" is the demographic importance of immigration. Both
populations are considered the product of disparate "waves" of new
immigrants and their assimilation into a "New World" culture including
a new language seen as deriving from those existing (although
"American" cannot be said to be as innovative as modern "Hebrew"). The
interconnection of American and Zionist immigration has meant the
projection of an image of the United States onto the Zionist project.
This projection has been assisted by 1) the idea of immigration as the
means of recomposing or regenerating a population and, 2) the fact
that so many Jews from Russia, Poland and elsewhere immigrated to the
United States. Jewish immigrants in the US were prone to support
emigration to Palestine. (In the latter half of the twentieth century,
a significant number of their descendants immigrated to Israel.)

Other factors in the development of support for Zionism in the United
States include a Christian education tending to reinforce revulsion
for the "loss" of the Holy Land to Islam. The Christian Crusades of
the Middle Ages tended to be particularly celebrated in the US towards
the end of the nineteenth century.

Anti-Semitism also encouraged acceptance of the Zionist project in
Palestine. Those who resented their presence viewed favorably the
transfer of Jews to a relatively desolate part of the world. This
factor intensified after World War II when the Jewish refugees became
an embarrassment to Western governments, even though anti-Semitism was
declining.

Such are some of the cultural affinities and conditions that have
contributed to the orientation of US policies relative to the
Israel-Palestine conflict. In some significant ways, US nationalism is
linked to, or seen as having affinities with Jewish nationalism as
represented first by the Zionist movement and then by the Israeli
state. It is why Israel is not seen in the United States as an alien
culture in the Middle East, but rather as an extension of American
historical experience. It is perhaps in this cultural-ontological
sense that Israel is the "51st state" (and not primarily because of
the extensive economic, financial and military ties).

For all of these reasons, the rhetoric of nationalism in the
Israel-Palestine conflict tends to reinforce established cultural
values, values stemming from American historical experience. It is
also why, in the United States, many people find it difficult to take
seriously Palestinian claims, just as they could not take seriously
the claims of the "Indian Nations". The similarities, in any case, are
striking. One century later, the Palestinian resistance to
colonization and ethnic cleansing is being dealt with in much the same
ways as that of the Indians: forced evacuation, concentration in
"reservations" (which could be called "Bantustans" or "autonomous
territories"), periodic massacre and racist humiliations.

Consider, in the above light, how differently Israeli and Palestinian
leadership must be perceived. On the one hand, there have been Israeli
leaders like Golda Meir and Benjamin Netanyahu, Americans or
American-educated, speaking faultless "American". On the other hand,
the Palestinian leaders most often have an alien aspect; not to speak
of the late Yassir Arafat, with his colorful headdress and his strange
uniform of dubious origin. The cultivated descendants of brave
Western-like pioneers make a singular contrast with the Palestinians.

The analogies and metaphors are there, underlying a US policy
conceiving of "peace" mostly in terms of acquiescence or accommodation
to the image and interests of the United States projected onto the
Israeli state, an Israeli state considered by US policy makers to be a
model for the Middle East in general.

For these US policymakers, it is not only a question of propagandistic
manipulation, of the conscious deception of the public. The metaphors
and analogies founded upon the special affinities between the US and
the state of Israel are rather rooted in the social and cultural
histories of both their societies and politics. If hypocrisy and bad
faith are integral to political behavior, in the service of collective
interests as much as in the service of individual designs, it is to be
expected that such self-deception should be pronounced in, on the one
hand, the critical, early phases of nation-state-making and, on the
other hand, during the construction of an imperial presence in the
Middle East.

Larry Portis is a professor of American studies at the University of
Montpellier, France and a founding member of Americans for Peace and
Justice in Montpellier. He can be contacted at
larry.portis at univ-montp3.fr
Published on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 by the Independent / UK
Poverty Gap in US Has Widened under Bush
by Andrew Gumbel

�

The number of Americans living in severe poverty has expanded
dramatically under the Bush administration, with nearly 16 million
people now living on an individual income of less than $5,000 (�2,500)
a year or a family income of less than $10,000, according to an
analysis of 2005 official census data.

The analysis, by the McClatchy group of newspapers, showed that the
number of people living in extreme poverty had grown by 26 per cent
since 2000. Poverty as a whole has worsened, too, but the number of
severe poor is growing 56 per cent faster than the overall segment of
the population characterised as poor - about 37 million people in all
according to the census data. That represents more than 10 per cent of
the US population, which recently surpassed the 300 million mark.

The widening of the income gap between haves and have-nots is nothing
new in America - it has been going on steadily since the late 1970s.
What is new, though, is the rapid increase in numbers at the bottom of
the socio-economic pile. The numbers of severely poor have increased
faster than any other segment of the population.

"That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began,"
one of the McClatchy study's co-authors, Steven Woolf of Virginia
Commonwealth University, said. "We're not seeing as much moderate
poverty as a proportion of the population. What we're seeing is a
dramatic growth of severe poverty."

The causes of the problem are no mystery to sociologists and political
scientists. The share of national income going to corporate profits
has far outstripped the share going to wages and salaries.
Manufacturing jobs with benefits and union protection have vanished
and been supplanted by low-wage, low-security service-sector work. The
richest fifth of US households enjoys more than 50 per cent of the
national income, while the poorest fifth gets by on an estimated 3.5
per cent.

The average after-tax income of the top 1 per cent is 63 times larger
than the average for the bottom 20 per cent - both because the rich
have grown richer and also because the poor have grown poorer; about
19 per cent poorer since the late 1970s. The middle class, too, has
been squeezed ever tighter. Every income group except for the top 20
per cent has lost ground in the past 30 years, regardless of whether
the economy has boomed or tanked.

These figures are rarely discussed in political forums in America in
part because the economy has, in large part, ceased to be regarded as
a political issue - John Edwards' "two Americas" theme in his
presidential campaign being a rare exception - and because the
right-wing think-tanks that have sprouted and thrived since the Reagan
administration have done a good job of minimising the importance of
the trends.

They have argued, in fact, that the poverty statistics are misleading
because of the mobility of US society. A small number of left-wing
think-tanks, such as the Economic Policy Institute, meanwhile, argue
that the census figures are almost certainly lower than the real
picture because many people living in extreme poverty do not answer
census questionnaires.

United States poverty league: States with the most people in severe poverty

California 1.9m

Texas 1.6m

New York 1.2m

Florida 943,670

Illinois 681,786

Ohio 657,415

Pennsylvania 618,229

Michigan 576,428

Georgia 562,014

North Carolina 523,511

Source: US Census Bureau