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Venezuela, Eni Invest $18 Billion to Pump, Refine Oil

By Steven Bodzin

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) — Eni SpA, Italy’s biggest oil company, and Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the South American country’s state-owned oil company, agreed to develop almost $18 billion worth of projects to pump and refine oil in Venezuela.

The companies’ joint venture will start producing crude in the Orinoco Belt in central Venezuela, Oil and Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said today on state television, at a ceremony attended by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Eni Chief Executive Officer Paolo Scaroni.

The venture expects to pump 240,000 barrels a day after spending $8.3 billion to develop the Junin 5 block, Ramirez said. First oil will be pumped in 2013, Eni said today on its Web site. It will reach full production in 2016, Scaroni said.

“That gigantic oil reserve — it could not be exploited by Venezuela alone,” Chavez said, referring to the roughly 235 billion barrels of reserves in the Orinoco Belt. “Foreign investment is absolutely necessary.”

Rome-based Eni is seeking oil projects abroad to maintain output. Venezuela, to make up for declining production in its aging Lake Maracaibo fields, is inviting foreign companies to become minority partners in the Orinoco.

Eni also plans to build a $9.3 billion, 350,000 barrel-a- day refinery to convert crude oil from the existing Petromonagas project in the Orinoco into higher-value products, Ramirez said.

Eni will pay a $646 million signing fee, the company said on its Web site. It will pay $300 million when the development joint venture is formed and the remainder will be paid later.

International Arbitration

Eni will hold 40 percent of the venture. PDVSA, as the state company is known, will own the rest.

Eni was granted access to the Orinoco after dropping an international arbitration case against Venezuela in 2008 over an oil field nationalization.

U.S. oil companies Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips continue to pursue arbitration against Venezuela for seizing operations of Orinoco Belt projects that began in the 1990s.

Venezuela expects to complete joint venture agreements with Chinese and Russian companies “soon” and to complete bidding for three projects in the Carabobo blocks, Ramirez said.

Eni also signed a memorandum of understanding to build a 1- gigawatt power plant to be powered by natural gas from the Delta Caribe Oriental offshore fields, Ramirez said, without giving a potential price tag.

To contact the reporter on this story: Steven Bodzin in Caracas at sbodzin@bloomberg.net.

January 27, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | Leave a comment

Livni, Barak ‘Wanted for War Crimes’ in Poland

Al Manar

27/01/2010 Israeli leaders are still wanted in Europe, but not in a positive way: Knesset members visiting Poland for ceremonies marking International Holocaust Day were surprised to see ads against Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni in the city of Krakow on Tuesday evening.

Posters hung not far from the Israeli lawmakers’ hotel read in English, “Wanted for war crimes,” offering the public an award of 10,000 euro in exchange for information on Barak or Livni’s expected arrival in Europe. The ads included a website address for people interested in providing information on the Israeli officials.

Several members of the Israeli delegation – including MKs Israel Hasson, Yohanan Plesner and Rachel Adatto of the Kadima party and Uri Orbach of Habayit Hayehudi – spotted the posters on a number of bulletin boards across the Polish city. The four sought to tear the ads, but decided to let security officials look into the matter.

“There is no doubt this was carried out in response to our visit,” said one of the MKs, who are attending an event organized by the European Friends of Israel (EFI) organization, together with 150 parliament members from all over the continent.

“After 65 years, we once again realize that being right is not enough,” said MK Hasson. “We must remember this ahead of the next challenges, like Holocaust deniers, Holocaust cursers and different kinds of anti-Semites.”

The MKs informed security elements about the ads. MK Plesner said he would update the Knesset officer, but the security officials estimated that the posters were a local provocation which has taken place in other countries across the world. Knesset officials said a complaint would be filed with the Polish authorities.

Incide

January 27, 2010 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | 1 Comment

Sentence Geithner To Prison For Lying To We The American People

John Mica slams Treasury Secretary’s “lame excuses” during fiery hearing

Geithner Told To Quit After E Mails Reveal Involvement In AIG Cover up 270110top2

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s denial that he played any role in the AIG cover-up is contradicted by emails which confirm that Geithner and the New York Federal Reserve were both intimately involved in keeping details about payments to banks including Goldman Sachs from the public.

Geithner told lawmakers today that he had no involvement in withholding information about the bailout of AIG, much to the chagrin of House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Darrell Issa, who wasn’t buying it for a second.

“He has asserted complete ignorance of the Fed’s efforts to cover up the bailout details,” said Issa, R-Calif. “Many Americans, including members of this Committee, have a hard time believing that Secretary Geithner entered an absolute cone of silence on the day that his nomination was announced.”

Russia Today report on Geithnergate – AIG attempted to hide bailout documents

John Mica of Florida went further, calling for Geithner to quit as a result of the scandal.

“Why shouldn’t we ask for your resignation?” Mica asked Geithner. “We’re not getting the whole story, we’re getting the blame story. You’re either incompetent on the job or you knew what was taking place and you tried to conceal it, and I think that’s grounds for your review.”

Mica characterized Geithner’s denials as “lame excuses” as the Treasury Secretary became visibly angry.

In November and December 2008, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, headed up by Geithner, instructed the bailed out AIG to hide from the public details regarding payments the insurance giant made to banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA.

Using Fed secured taxpayer bailout money, AIG paid several banks 100 percent of the face value of credit-default swaps, as other financial institutions were negotiating deep discounts for the unregulated paper assets that do not have to be backed by cash.

The decision to pay the banks in full may have cost AIG, and therefore taxpayers, at least $13 billion over the odds.

The “backdoor bailout” of the banks, as it has been dubbed was exposed in March 2009 after the SEC challenged AIG’s filing, however, e-mails obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, reignited the situation after they conclusively exposed a collusion between AIG and the Fed to deceive the public.

The e-mails between company and regulator show that The New York Fed crossed out reference to the payments and that AIG also omitted the details when the Securities and Exchange Commission filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008.

The emails, the content of which are highlighted in this Bloomberg News article, also show that the Fed wanted numerous other details about the AIG bailout withheld or delayed from public oversight.

“It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information,” said Issa, adding that taxpayers “deserve full and complete disclosure under our nation’s securities laws, not the withholding of politically inconvenient information.”

Geithner’s denial that he, even as President of the New York Fed, had no involvement with the AIG case is contradicted by fresh revelations this week in a new report issued by Issa that show Geithner was “at a minimum, engaged personally in reviewing what information about the AIG bailout would be revealed to Congress and the public.”

On November 6, 2008 Geithner received an email from Sarah Dahlgren, the FRBNY’s lead staff member in AIG’s operations, seeking Geithner’s approval for a proposed statement regarding AIG’s upcoming equity capital raise. The fact that Geithner’s approval had to be obtained merely for putting out statements concerning AIG clearly indicates that he was deeply involved in the matter.

On November 13, Geithner was sent a report on AIG’s restructuring that would be sent to Congress. Sophia Allison, a staff member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, asked that Geithner point out any information that he believed should not be “publicly disclosed”.

In addition, records of who Geithner met with during his tenure as President of the FRBNY “show that he was regularly engaged with top AIG officials and the FRBNY officials directly responsible for AIG’s disclosures to the SEC. Geithner’s schedule shows that he had at least six formal meetings with top FRBNY staff members about AIG-related issues between November 4, 2008, and November 21, 2008.”

Watch the clip from today’s hearings where Mica demands Geithner’s resignation.

January 27, 2010 Posted by | Corruption, Economics | 2 Comments

Reappointing Bernanke: We Won’t Get Tarped Again

Dean Baker | The Guardian Unlimited |  January 25, 2010

The Senate’s decision on approving Ben Bernanke for a second term as chair of the Federal Reserve Board is coming down to the wire and the Wall Street crew is once again pulling out all the stops. To get the 60 votes they need for Senate approval they are reaching into the treasure chest of tall tales they used to push through the TARP. They are once again telling the American people that the world will end if we don’t do exactly what they want.

The main story they are pushing is that if Bernanke is not approved then the markets will panic and send the economy tumbling. Both parts of this story deserve some serious skepticism. First, there undoubtedly will be some uncertainty in the financial markets if Bernanke is not reappointed. Markets like continuity. A new Fed chair means a break in continuity. Therefore, we can expect to see some decline in the stock market, probably about the same as we get when there is a worse-than-expected jobs report.

However, focusing on day-to-day movements in the stock market is no way to make economic policy. For practical purposes, the daily movements in the market have no impact on the economy. Furthermore, there is no way to move the economy away from its current Wall Street bubble-driven growth path to one built on a productive economy without at least some temporary decline in stock prices.

Such a decline is inevitable if for no other reason than the fact that Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and the rest account for a substantial portion of the value of the stock market. If we can never do anything that even temporarily hurts stock prices then we can forget about ever reining in Wall Street.

Interestingly, the bond market, which is far more important for the economy than the stock market, has been rallying in recent days as Bernanke’s nomination faces increasing difficulty. Bernanke’s troubles may not be the cause of this rally, but they have not prevented the 10-year Treasury rate from falling considerably.

It is also worth pointing out that one supposed source of bad news – a declining dollar – would actually benefit the economy. The country has a huge trade deficit because the dollar is over-valued. If the dollar were to decline as a result of Bernanke not being reappointed, it would give a boost to our exports and cause domestically manufactured products to displace imports.

Bernanke’s troubles don’t seem to be depressing the dollar at the moment, but if the Wall Street fear mongers and their allies push this line, we should realize that they are once again spouting nonsense. A lower-valued dollar is good news for the economy.

To briefly summarize the case against Bernanke, at the top of the list is the fact that his failures at the Fed (both as chairman since 2006 and as a governor since 2002) brought the economy to the brink of a second Great Depression (Bernanke’s assessment, not mine). Anyone else who had failed so completely at his or her job would be fired in a minute.

Only in Washington and on Wall Street could such a disastrous record be rewarded with another term in office.

Second, the focus of his bailout was to return Wall Street to health while leaving the rest of the country reeling. Bernanke rightly tapped the Fed’s virtually unlimited resources to keep the financial system from collapsing; however, he gave out money to the banks at below market interest rates with no strings whatsoever.

They were able to use this money to restore themselves to health, but were not required to do anything about compensation practices, risky trading or helping homeowners facing foreclosure. Nor were their shareholders and bondholders required to incur any losses. In effect, Bernanke gave a huge gift from the taxpayers to the Wall Street boys who were responsible for the crisis in the first place.

Finally, he misled Congress to help get the TARP passed back in October of 2008. He told Congress that commercial paper was shutting down, which meant that even healthy companies would not be able to borrow the money needed to meet their payroll and to pay other bills. This would have quickly led to an economic collapse.

Bernanke did not tell Congress that he was planning to set up a special lending facility to directly buy commercial paper. He announced this facility the weekend after Congress approved TARP. It is not the Fed chairman’s job to deceive Congress. Nor is it his job to bail out Wall Street at the expense of the rest of the country. And, it is his job to prevent the growth of dangerous bubbles. That’s three really big strikes.

Bernanke should be sent out to enjoy his TIME “Person of the Year” status in retirement.

To get through this nonsense we just have the repeat the great mantra: It’s the economy stupid.

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy. He also has a blog on the American Prospect, “Beat the Press,” where he discusses the media’s coverage of economic issues.
See article on original website

January 27, 2010 Posted by | Economics | Leave a comment

“Israel” plans to repatriate ‘lost Jewish tribe’ in India

By Jonathan Cook | January 27, 2010

Nazareth // The Israeli government is reported to have quietly approved the fast-track immigration of 7,000 members of a supposedly “lost Jewish” tribe, known as the Bnei Menashe, currently living in a remote area of India.

Under the plan, the “lost Jews” would be brought to Israel over the next two years by right-wing and religious organisations who, critics are concerned, will seek to place them in West Bank settlements in a bid to foil Israel’s partial agreement to a temporary freeze of settlement growth.

A previous attempt to bring the Bnei Menashe to Israel was halted in 2003 by Avraham Poraz, the interior minister at the time, after it became clear that most of the 1,500 who had arrived were being sent to extremist settlements, including in the Gaza Strip and next to Hebron, the large Palestinian city in the West Bank.

Dror Etkes, who monitors settlement growth for Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, said there were strong grounds for suspecting that some of the new Bnei Menashe would end up in the settlements, too.

“There is a mutual interest being exploited here,” he said. “The Bnei Menashe get help to make aliyah [immigration] while the settlements get lots of new arrivals to bolster their numbers, including in settlements close to Palestinian areas where most Israelis would not want to venture.”

The government’s decision, leaked this month to Ynet, Israel’s biggest news website, was made possible by a ruling in 2005 by Shlomo Amar, one of Israel’s two chief rabbis, that the Bnei Menashe are one of 10 lost Jewish tribes, supposedly exiled from the Middle East 2,700 years ago.

He ordered a team of rabbis to go to north-east India to begin preparing Bnei Menashe who identified themselves as Jews for conversion to the strictest stream of Judaism, Orthodoxy, so they would qualify to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return.

The Bnei Menashe belong to an ethnic group called the Shinlung, who number more than one million and live mainly in the states of Manipur and Mizoram, close to the border with Myanmar. They were converted from animism to Christianity by British missionaries a century ago, but a small number claim to have kept an ancient connection to Judaism.

DNA samples taken from the Bnei Menashe have failed so far to establish any common ancestry to Jews.

The immigration of the Bnei Menashe following Mr Amar’s ruling was quickly halted after the foreign minstry expressed concerns that it was causing a diplomatic falling out with India, which has laws against missionary activity.

Ophir Pines-Paz, the interior minister in 2005, who opposed what he called the “clandestine” arrival of the Bnei Menashe, said in an interview last week: “I was against a policy that sends [Jewish] immigrants to the settlements. I hope that could not be the case today with a settlement freeze in place. I want to believe that is the case.”

However, the Bnei Menashe have won two powerful right-wing sponsors: Shavei Israel, led by Michael Freund, a former assistant to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister; and a religious group known as the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which draws on wide support from evangelical Christians in the United States.

Mr Freund began lobbying for the immigration of the Bnei Menashe to Israel while he was an adviser to Mr Netanyahu during his previous premiership, in the late 1990s. Mr Freund is believed to have used his connections in the current government to push the group’s case again.

Arik Puder, a spokesman for Shavei Israel, refused to comment, saying the organisation had decided to keep “a low profile” on the decision to bring the Bnei Menashe to Israel. It is believed that Shavei Israel is concerned that the government may come under pressure to reverse its decision if there is too much public scrutiny.

According to Ynet, Israel is planning to avoid diplomatic complications with India by sending groups of Bnei Menashe to Nepal for a fast-track conversion.

The brand of Judaism the Bnei Menashe have been exposed to during their “Jewish education” in special camps in India was indicated by Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, who has worked closely with the tribe since the early 1980s. He said he believed in the biblical prophecy of a coming apocalypse – one shared by “End of Days” evangelical Christians – in which “all the world is against Israel” in a battle to be decided in Jerusalem.

“I believe we are very close to the time when the Messiah will arrive and we must prepare by making sure that all the Jews are in the Land of Israel. There are more than six million among the lost tribes and they must be brought to Israel as a matter of urgency.”

Shimon Gangte, 33, who was helped by Mr Avichail to come to Israel 13 years ago, is among 500 Bnei Menashe living in Kiryat Arba, an extremist settlement whose armed inhabitants regularly clash with Palestinians in neighbouring Hebron. He said: “It is important that the 10 tribes are brought here because the time of the Messiah is near.”

Mr Gangte added that the Bnei Menashe were attracted to the West Bank because life was cheaper in the settlements than in Israel and the settlers “give us help finding housing, jobs and schools for our children”.

Mr Etkes of Yesh Din said “past experience” fed suspicions that the Bnei Menashe would be encouraged to settle deep in the West Bank, adding that the so-called settlement freeze, insisted on by the United States as a prelude to renewed peace talks, was having little effect on the ground.

“There is no freeze because it is being violated all the time. The settlers had lots of time to prepare for the freeze and spent the four to five months before it in a frenzy of construction activity.”

Shavei Israel lobbies for other groups of Jews to be brought to Israel, including communities in Spain, Portugal, Italy, South America, Russia, Poland and China.

Israeli peace groups were outraged in 2002 when Shavei Israel placed a group of 100 Peruvian immigrants, whose ancestors converted to Judaism 50 years ago, in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the West Bank.

source

January 27, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | 3 Comments

Rule by the Rich

By Paul Craig Roberts | January 27, 2010

The election of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate by Democratic voters in Massachusetts sends President Obama a message. Voters perceive that Obama’s administration has morphed into a Bush-Cheney government. Obama has reneged on every promise he made, from ending wars, to closing Gitmo, to providing health care for Americans, to curtailing the domestic police state, to putting the interests of dispossessed Americans ahead of the interests of the rich banksters who robbed Americans of their homes and pensions.

But what can Obama do other then spout more rhetoric?

The Democrats were destroyed as an independent party by jobs offshoring and so-called free trade agreements such as NAFTA. The effect of “globalism” has been to destroy the industrial and manufacturing unions, thus leaving the Democrats without a power base and source of funding.

Obama and the Democrats cannot be an opposition party, because Democrats are as dependent as Republicans on corporate interest groups for campaign funding.

The Democrats have to support war and the police state if they want funding from the military/security complex. They have to make the health care bill into a subsidy for private insurance if they want funding from the insurance companies. They have to abandon the American people for the rich banksters if they want funding from the financial lobby.

Now that the five Republicans on the Supreme Court have overturned decades of U.S. law and given corporations the ability to buy every American election, Democrats and Republicans can be nothing but pawns for a plutocracy.

Most Americans are hard pressed, but the corporations have only begun to milk them.

Wars are too profitable for the armaments industry to ever end. High unemployment is now a permanent state in the U.S., thus coercing job seekers into military service.

The security industry profits from the police state and regards civil liberties as a hindrance to profits. By announcing that he intends to continue the Bush policy of indefinite detention, a violation of the Constitution and U.S. legal procedures, Obama has granted the Democratic Party’s consent to the Republicans’ destruction of habeas corpus, the main bastion of individual liberty.

Jobs offshoring is too profitable for U.S. corporations for Obama to be able to save American jobs and restart the broken economy.

Americans are being squeezed out of health care not only by the loss of job benefits, but also by corporate takeover of medical practice from physicians. Today medical doctors are wage slaves of corporate health providers that leverage doctors by turning them into supervisors of physician assistants, lower paid people without medical degrees who perform the services that doctors once provided. As neither doctor nor physician assistant has any independence, there is no one to represent the patient’s care against the profits of the corporation.

Even environmental concerns are being used to create “cap and trade” rights to buy and sell the ability to pollute. Wall Street is licking its lips over a new source of leveraged derivative instruments.

The American public cannot even get reliable information about their plight as the “mainstream media” has been concentrated into a few corporate hands that do not permit independent reporting. The media is as dependent on corporate money as are politicians.

How can President Obama restart an economy that has been moved offshore? Millions of manufacturing jobs are gone, as are millions of jobs for college graduates, such as software engineering, Information Technology–indeed, any intellectual skill the product of which can be conveyed via the Internet. Even those intellectual skill jobs that do remain in the U.S. are filled increasingly by foreigners brought in on work visas.

The wipe out of blue collar and middle class job growth has stopped the growth of American incomes except, of course, those of the super rich. For a decade American consumers substituted increased personal indebtedness for income growth. In order to maintain and to increase their consumption, Americans consumed their assets, such as their home equity. Americans reached their maximum debt load just as the real estate bubble burst and just as the banksters highly-leveraged, toxic financial instruments brought down the stock market and the values of Americans’ pensions.

The enormous damage done to the U.S. economy by jobs offshoring, work visas, and financial deregulation cannot be offset by government stimulus plans, which expand the debt burdens that are crushing Americans. The federal government’s massive budget deficits and the Federal Reserve’s easy monetary policy are setting the stage for an inflationary depression to follow a deflationary depression.

The Federal Reserve chairman says not to worry about inflation, because the Fed can take the money back out of the economy. But can the Fed take the money out without contracting the economy?

The Federal Reserve says not to worry about financing the federal budget deficit. Banksters are buying the Treasury bonds with the proceeds from their sales of their toxic derivatives to the Fed.

So what is happening to the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet? And when will the Fed have no recourse but to print new money in order to finance the federal deficit?

How long can the dollar retain its reserve currency role in such circumstances, and how does the U.S. pay for its imports when this role is lost?

Don’t look to Washington for answers to these questions.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is the author of How the Economy was Lost, just published by CounterPunch / AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Source

January 27, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Obama detention policy “un-American”

JAG Officer: Indefinite Detention ‘Defies Common Sense’

By William Fisher

NEW YORK, Jan 25 (IPS) – U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to detain 47 of the just-under 200 remaining prisoners at Guantánamo without trial indefinitely is drawing scorn from legal experts and human rights advocates, who charge that the government simply does not have enough evidence to convict the detainees it says cannot be tried but are “too dangerous to release.”

David Frakt is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps Reserve, associate professor and director of the Criminal Law Practice Center at Western State University College of Law in Fullerton, California.

He is a former lead counsel for the Office of Military Commissions Defence, who successfully represented Mohammed Jawad before the military commissions and won his release in habeas corpus litigation in 2009.

Frakt told IPS, “The administration’s suggestion that they can’t try 47 detainees, not because they don’t have evidence of criminal wrongdoing, but because a criminal trial would necessarily involve disclosure of classified information, defies common sense.”

He gave three reasons.

“First, both under the Military Commissions Act of 2009 and under the Classified Information Protection Act (CIPA), in use in federal courts, there are elaborate mechanisms in place to protect classified information,” Frakt said.

“Second, given that the remaining detainees at Guantanamo have been held, on average, for over seven years, the likelihood that there is an ongoing need to protect classified sources and methods in such cases is remote.”

“Finally, it is hard to believe that there would be any greater risk of revealing important classified information than in the 9/11 trial, yet the administration is pressing forward with this and several other cases against high-value detainees who were kept in secret CIA ghost prisons and subjected to still classified methods of interrogation,” he noted.

He said that “The administration has acknowledged the right of all detainees to petition for habeas corpus in federal court. Why does the administration seem to believe classified information could be adequately protected in federal habeas litigation, but not in a criminal trial? It seems far more likely that there is simply inadequate admissible non-coerced evidence of criminality,” Frakt said.

Other legal scholars have weighed in with similar views. For example, Brian J. Foley, visiting associate professor at the Boston University School of Law, told IPS, “Many of the executive’s claims about danger and terrorism have been shown to be incorrect over the years.”

“Last week’s incident where an plane bound from New York to Kentucky was diverted for an emergency landing in Philadelphia because passengers freaked out when they saw a Jewish teenager engaging in an Orthodox prayer ritual, and the recent hours-long shutdown of Kennedy airport because a man from earthquake-ravaged Haiti mistakenly opened an emergency door in a terminal, show that our officials are over-reacting and cowardly,” he said.

“The executive’s claim that these people are ‘too difficult to prosecute’ really means that the executive knows that the only evidence it has is weak or was obtained by coercion and is therefore very likely false,” Foley said.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), always a major player in the Guantanamo detention issue, called the Obama policy “un-American.”

Jonathan Hafetz, a senior ACLU lawyer, told IPS, “By committing to hold suspected criminals indefinitely without charge, the Obama has embraced one of the most lawless and un-American policies of the Bush administration, one that turns the most fundamental principles of the Constitution on their head.”

“The notion that the government can simply hold those it believes “dangerous”, without putting them on trial, will ultimately serve neither our liberty nor our security,” he said.

And Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defence Committee, asked, “How is this any better than Guantanamo itself and the spur such approaches give to al Qaeda?”

He told IPS, “No legal system worthy of the name can possibly imprison people indefinitely on the shameful argument that they are, in the absence of evidence and a fair trial, ‘too dangerous to release’.”

He called the move a “significant calcification of the lawless Bush approach of holding (often tortured) detainees indefinitely – effectively, perhaps for life – until the conclusion of some endless ‘war on terror’,” but said it is “actually undermining vital cooperation from European and Muslim allies, support for the rule of law itself and our country’s national standing and historical legacy.”

In a statement, Amnesty International USA, said, “There’s been talk about people who can’t be tried but who are too dangerous to release. This is absurd. People must either be charged with a crime and given a fair trial, or be released. End of story. That’s the way it works. Either there’s evidence against you or there isn’t.”

And Virginia Sloan, president of the widely respected Constitution Project, said, “Even if the Obama administration continues to work to close Guantánamo, by pursuing a policy of indefinite detention without charge, the damaging policies that embody the prison will continue, as will the negative effects to American values, the rule of law, and our nation’s reputation abroad.” She urged opposition to the use of military commissions… Full article

January 27, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Chavez writes off Haiti’s oil debt to Venezuela

Irish Sun | 26th January, 2010

Caracas (IANS/EFE) President Hugo Chavez has announced that he will write off the undisclosed sum Haiti owes Venezuela for oil as part of a regional bloc’s plans to help the impoverished Caribbean nation after the devastating Jan 12 earthquake.

‘Haiti has no debt with Venezuela, just the opposite: Venezuela has a historical debt with that nation, with that people for whom we feel not pity but rather admiration, and we share their faith, their hope,’ Chavez said after the extraordinary meeting of foreign ministers of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, or ALBA.

He also announced that ALBA has decided on a comprehensive plan that includes an immediate donation of $20 million to Haiti’s health sector, and a fund that, Chavez said, will be at least $100 million ‘for starters’.

Oil-rich Venezuela is the economic heart of ALBA, which also includes Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Haiti is among several countries that send observers to ALBA meetings.

Chavez said one part of ALBA assistance to Haiti would consist of fuel distribution via ‘mobile service stations’ set to be up and running within a few weeks.

The ALBA plan of aid for Haiti includes support for such sectors as agriculture, production, food imports and distribution, and immigration amnesty for Haitians living illegally in the bloc’s member-states.

Cuba and Venezuela sent assistance and aid workers to Haiti within days of the magnitude-7.0 temblor that left over 100,000 dead and 1.5 million people homeless.

January 27, 2010 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | 10 Comments

Danish pension funds divest from Israeli companies

27/01/2010

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Two Danish pension funds announced on Tuesday their decision to divest from two Israeli companies implicated in the construction of Israel’s illegal wall and settlements inside the West Bank, a statement issued by the Stop the Wall Campaign said.

Danske Bank, the biggest financial group in Denmark, has excluded Elbit Systems and Africa Israel from its investment portfolio because of their involvement in providing equipment for the wall and in settlement construction.

Thomas H. Kjaergaard, responsible for socially responsible investment in the Danish Bank Group commented: “We handle clients’ interests, and we do not want to put customers’ money in companies that violate international standards.”

PKA Ltd., one of the largest funds administrating workers’ pension funds in Denmark, announced it would no longer consider investments in Elbit Systems, and US companies Megal Security Systems and Detection Systems.” All three are supplying equipment for the Wall. PKA has sold shares in Elbit worth almost one million dollars,” Stop the Wall wrote.

“The ICJ [International Court of Justice, the Hague] stated that the barrier only serves military purposes and violates Palestinian human rights. Therefore we have looked at whether companies produce custom-designed products to the wall and thus has a particular involvement in repressive activities. We cannot rule out the inclusion of other companies in our blacklist for their role in this area,” said Michael Nellemann, investment director of PKA, in the statement.

January 27, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Obama Administration Orders World Bank To Keep Third World In Poverty

More starvation and death guaranteed by blocking poorer countries from building coal-fired power plants

Obama Administration Orders World Bank To Keep Third World In Poverty 260110top

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
January 26, 2010

Under the provably fraudulent and completely corrupted justification of fighting global warming, the Obama administration has ordered the World Bank to keep “developing” countries underdeveloped by blocking them from building coal-fired power plants, ensuring that poorer countries remain in poverty as a result of energy demands not being met.

Even amidst the explosive revelations of the United Nations IPCC issuing reports on the Himalayan Glaciers and the Amazon rainforest littered with incorrect data, the U.S. government has “Stepped up pressure on the World Bank not to fund coal-fired power plants in developing countries,” reports the Times of India.

The order was made by U.S. Executive Director of the World Bank Whitney Debevoise, who represents the United States in considering all loans, investments, country assistance strategies, budgets, audits and business plans of the World Bank Group entities.

By preventing poor nations from becoming self-sufficient in blocking them from producing their own energy, the Obama administration is ensuring that millions more will die from starvation and lack of access to hospitals and medical treatment.

Not only does strangling the energy supply to poorer countries prevent adequate food distribution and lead to more starvation, but hospitals and health clinics in the third world are barely even able to operate as a result of the World Bank and other global bodies ordering them to be dependent on renewable energy supplies that are totally insufficient.

A prime example appeared in the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, which highlighted how a Kenyan health clinic could not operate a medical refrigerator as well as the lights at the same time because the facility was restricted to just two solar panels.

“There’s somebody keen to kill the African dream. And the African dream is to develop,” said author and economist James Shikwati. “I don’t see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry … We are being told, ‘Don’t touch your resources. Don’t touch your oil. Don’t touch your coal.’ That is suicide.”

The program labels the idea of restricting the world’s poorest people to alternative energy sources as “the most morally repugnant aspect of the global warming campaign.”

As we have previously highlighted, the implementation of policies arising out of fraudulent fearmongering and biased studies on global warming is already devastating the third world, with a doubling in food prices causing mass starvation and death.

Poor people around the world, “Are being killed in large numbers by starvation as a result of (climate change) policy,” climate skeptic Lord Monckton told the Alex Jones Show last month, due to huge areas of agricultural land being turned over to the growth of biofuels.

“Take Haiti where they live on mud pie with real mud costing 3 cents each….that’s what they’re living or rather what they’re dying on,” said Monckton, relating how when he gave a speech on this subject, a lady in the front row burst into tears and told him, “I’ve just come back from Haiti – now because of the doubling in world food prices, they can’t even afford the price of a mud pie and they’re dying of starvation all over the place.”

As a National Geographic Report confirmed, “With food prices rising, Haiti’s poorest can’t afford even a daily plate of rice, and some must take desperate measures to fill their bellies,” by “eating mud,” partly as a consequence of “increasing global demand for biofuels.”

In April 2008, World Bank President Robert Zoellick admitted that biofuels were a “significant contributor” to soaring food prices that have led to riots in countries such as Haiti, Egypt, the Philippines, and even Italy.

“We estimate that a doubling of food prices over the last three years could potentially push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty,” he stated.

Even if we are to accept that fact that overpopulation will be a continuing problem in the third world, the very means by which poorer countries would naturally lower their birth rates, by being allowed to develop their infrastructure, is being blocked by global institutions who craft policies designed to keep the third world in squalor and poverty.

This goes to the very heart of what the real agenda behind the global warming movement really is – a Malthusian drive to keep the slaves oppressed and prevent the most desperate people on the planet from pulling themselves out of destitution and despair.

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January 26, 2010 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | 5 Comments

Goldstone found that Israel’s collective punishment policy in Lebanon served as a model for Gaza

By Adam Horowitz | January 26, 2010

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The aftermath of Israel’s ‘Dahiya doctrine’ in Beirut, 2006

As Israel prepares its response to the Goldstone Report, several articles indicate that its primary objective is to discredit the contention that it carried out, in the words of Ethan Bronner, “an official plan to terrorize the Palestinian population.” Today Haaretz reports that Israel’s response to the UN will seek to “reject most of the fundamental claims of the Goldstone report: it intentionally waged a punitive campaign against a civilian population, including the destruction of infrastructure.”

This promises to be one of the most contentious debates over the report in the coming months, and as part of our effort to post portions of the Goldstone Report there are several relevant portions we want to share. The excerpt below outlines Israel’s possible strategy and intention for the Gaza attack based on prior history and statements from Israeli military and political leaders. Because Israel refused to participate with the inquiry there was no way to interview them directly about this.

The following passage is found of pages 250-258 of the report. I have removed the footnotes from the text, but you can find them in the original.

Objectives and Strategy of Israel’s Military Operations in Gaza

This chapter addresses the objectives and the strategy underlying the Israeli military operations in Gaza.

A. Planning

The question of whether incidents involving the Israeli armed forces that occurred between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009 are likely to be the result of error, the activities of rogue elements or a deliberate policy or planning depends on a number of factors, including the degree and level of planning involved, the degree of discretion field commanders have in operations, the technical sophistication and specification of weaponry, and the degree of control commanders have over their subordinates.

The Government of Israel has refused to cooperate with the Mission. The Mission has therefore been unable to interview high-level members of the Israeli armed forces. It has, nevertheless, reviewed a significant amount of commentary and conducted a number of interviews on planning and discipline, including with persons who have been connected with the planning of Israeli military operations in the recent past. The Mission has also analysed the views expressed by Israeli officials in official statements, official activities and articles, and considered comments by former senior soldiers and politicians.

1. The context

Before considering the issue of planning there is an important issue that has to be borne in mind about the context of Israeli operations in Gaza. The land mass of Gaza covers 360 square kilometres of land. Israel had a physical presence on the ground for almost 40 years with a significant military force until 2005. Israel’s extensive and intimate knowledge of the realities of Gaza present a considerable advantage in terms of planning military operations. The Mission has seen grid maps in possession of the Israeli armed forces, for example, that show the identification by number of blocks of houses throughout Gaza City.

In addition to such detailed background knowledge, it is also clear that the Israeli armed forces were able to access the telephone networks to contact a significant number of users in the course of their operations.

Since the departure of its ground forces from Gaza in 2005, Israel has maintained almost total control over land access and total control over air and sea access. This has also included the ability to maintain a monitoring capacity in Gaza, by a variety of surveillance and electronic means, including UAVs. In short, Israel’s intelligence gathering capacity in Gaza since its ground forces withdrew has remained extremely effective.

2. Legal input and training of soldiers on legal standards

The Israeli Government has set out the legal training and supervision relevant to the planning, execution and investigation of military operations. The Mission also met Col. (Ret.) Daniel Reisner, who was the head of the International Legal Department of the Military Advocate General’s Office of the Israeli Defense Forces from 1995 until 2004. In an interview with the Mission he explained how the principles and contents of international humanitarian law were instilled into officers. He explained the four-tiered training system, reflecting elements similar to those presented by the Government, which seeks to ensure knowledge of the relevant legal obligations for compliance in the field. Firstly, during training all soldiers and officers receive basic courses on relevant legal matters. The more senior the ranks, the more training is required “so that it becomes ingrained”. Secondly, before a significant or new operation, legal advice will be given. Col. Reisner indicated that he understood from talking with colleagues still in active service that detailed consultations had taken place with legal advisers in the planning of the December-January military operations. He was not in a position to say what that advice had been. Thirdly, there would be real-time legal support to commanders and decision makers at headquarters, command and division levels (but not at regiment levels or below). The fourth stage is that of investigation and prosecution wherever necessary.

The same framework explained by Col. Reisner appears to be repeated in similar detail in a presentation of the Office of the Legal Adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

3. The means at the disposal of the Israeli armed forces

The Israeli armed forces are, in technological terms, among the most advanced in the world. Not only do they possess the most advanced hardware in many respects, they are also a market leader in the production of some of the most advanced pieces of technology available, including UAVs. They have a very significant capacity for precision strikes by a variety of methods, including aerial and ground launches. Moreover, some new targeting systems may have been employed in Gaza.

Taking into account all of the foregoing factors, the Mission, therefore, concludes that Israel had the means necessary to plan the December-January military operations in detail. Given both the means at Israel’s disposal and the apparent degree of training, including training in international humanitarian law, and legal advice received, the Mission considers it highly unlikely that actions were taken, at least in the aerial phase of the operations, that had not been the subject of planning and deliberation. In relation to the land-air phase, ground commanders would have had some discretion to decide on the specific tactics used to attack or respond to attacks. The same degree of planning and premeditation would therefore not be present. However, the Mission deduces from a review of many elements, including some soldiers’ statements at seminars in Tel Aviv and to Breaking the Silence, that what occurred on the ground reflected guidance that had been provided to soldiers in training and briefing exercises.

The Mission notes that it has found only one example where the Israeli authorities have acknowledged that an error had occurred. This was in relation to the deaths of 22 members of the al-Daya family in Zeytoun. The Government of Israel explained that its armed forces had intended to strike the house next door, but that errors were made in the planning of the operation. The Mission expresses elsewhere its concerns about this explanation (see chap. XI). However, since it appears to be the only incident that has elicited an admission of error by the Israeli authorities, the Mission takes the view that the Government of Israel does not consider the other strikes brought to its attention to be the result of similar or other errors.

In relation to air strikes, the Mission notes the statement issued in Hebrew posted on the website of the Israeli armed forces on 23 March 2009:

Official data gathered by the Air Force concluded that 99 per cent of the firing that was carried out hit targets accurately. It also concluded that over 80 per cent of the bombs and missiles used by the Air Force are defined as accurate and their use reduces innocent casualties significantly…

The Mission understands this to mean that in over 80 per cent of its attacks the Air Force deployed weapons considered to be accurate by definition – what are known colloquially as precision weapons as a result of guidance technology. In the other 20 per cent of attacks, therefore, it apparently used unguided bombs. According to the Israeli armed forces, the fact that these 20 per cent were unguided did not diminish their accuracy in hitting their targets, but may have caused greater damage than those caused by precision or “accurate” weapons.

These represent extremely important findings by the Israeli Air Force. It means that what was struck was meant to be struck. It should also be borne in mind that the beginning of the ground phase of the operation on 3 January did not mean the end of the use of the Israeli Air Force. The statement indicates:

During the days prior to the operation “Cast Lead”, every brigade was provided with an escorting UAV squadron that would participate in action with it during the operation. Teams from the squadrons arrived at the armour and infantry corps, personally met the soldiers they were about to join and assisted in planning the infantry manoeuvres. The UAV squadrons had representatives in the command headquarters and officers in locations of actual combat who assisted in communication between the UAVs – operated by only two people, who are in Israeli territory – and the forces on the ground. The assistance of UAVs sometimes reached a ratio of one UAV to a regiment and, during extreme cases, even one UAV to a team.

Taking into account the ability to plan, the means to execute plans with the most developed technology available, the indication that almost no errors occurred and the determination by investigating authorities thus far that no violations occurred, the Mission finds that the incident and patterns of events that are considered in this report have resulted from deliberate planning and policy decisions throughout the chain of command, down to the standard operating procedures and instructions given to the troops on the ground.

B. The development of strategic objectives in Israeli military thinking

Israel’s operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory have had certain consistent features. In particular, the destruction of buildings, including houses, has been a recurrent tactical theme. The specific means Israel has adopted to meet its military objectives in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and in Lebanon have repeatedly been censured by the United Nations Security Council, especially its attacks on houses. The military operations from 27 December to 18 January did not occur in a vacuum, either in terms of proximate causes in relation to the Hamas/Israeli dynamics or in relation to the development of Israeli military thinking about how best to describe the nature of its military objectives.

A review of the available information reveals that, while many of the tactics remain the same, the reframing of the strategic goals has resulted in a qualitative shift from relatively focused operations to massive and deliberate destruction.

dahiyacomparison
A comparison of the Dahiya neighborhood before and after Israel attacks in 2006. (Photos: Gorillas Guides)

In its operations in southern Lebanon in 2006, there emerged from Israeli military thinking a concept known as the Dahiya doctrine, as a result of the approach taken to the Beirut neighbourhood of that name. Major General Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli Northern Command chief, expressed the premise of the doctrine:

What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. […] We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. […] This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.

After the war in southern Lebanon in 2006, a number of senior former military figures appeared to develop the thinking that underlay the strategy set out by Gen. Eiskenot. In particular Major General (Ret.) Giora Eiland has argued that, in the event of another war with Hizbullah, the target must not be the defeat of Hizbullah but “the elimination of the Lebanese military, the destruction of the national infrastructure and intense suffering among the population… Serious damage to the Republic of Lebanon, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence Hizbollah’s behaviour more than anything else”.

These thoughts, published in October 2008 were preceded by one month by the reflections of Col. (Ret.) Gabriel Siboni:

With an outbreak of hostilities, the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy’s actions and the threat it poses. Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes. The strike must be carried out as quickly as possible, and must prioritize damaging assets over seeking out each and every launcher. Punishment must be aimed at decision makers and the power elite… In Lebanon, attacks should both aim at Hizbollah’s military capabilities and should target economic interests and the centres of civilian power that support the organization. Moreover, the closer the relationship between Hezbollah and the Lebanese Government, the more the elements of the Lebanese State infrastructure should be targeted. Such a response will create a lasting memory among …Lebanese decision makers, thereby increasing Israeli deterrence and reducing the likelihood of hostilities against Israel for an extended period. At the same time, it will force Syria, Hizbollah, and Lebanon to commit to lengthy and resource-intensive reconstruction programmes…

This approach is applicable to the Gaza Strip as well. There, the IDF will be required to strike hard at Hamas and to refrain from the cat and mouse games of searching for Qassam rocket launchers. The IDF should not be expected to stop the rocket and missile fire against the Israeli home front through attacks on the launchers themselves, but by means of imposing a ceasefire on the enemy.

General Eisenkot used the language quoted above while he was in active service in a senior command position and clarified that this was not a theoretical idea but an approved plan.

Major General Eiland, though retired, was a man of considerable seniority. Colonel Siboni, while less senior than the other two, was nonetheless an experienced officer writing on his field of expertise in a publication regarded as serious.

The Mission does not have to consider whether Israeli military officials were directly influenced by these writings. It is able to conclude from a review of the facts on the ground that it witnessed for itself that what is prescribed as the best strategy appears to have been precisely what was put into practice.

C. Official Israeli statements on the objectives of the military operations in Gaza

The Mission is aware of the official statements on the goals of the military operations:

The Operation was limited to what the IDF believed necessary to accomplish its objectives: to stop the bombardment of Israeli civilians by destroying and damaging the mortar and rocket launching apparatus and its supporting infrastructure, and to improve the safety and security of Southern Israel and its residents by reducing the ability of Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza to carry out future attacks.

The Israeli Government states that this expression of its objectives is no broader than those expressed by NATO in 1998 during its campaign in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The Mission makes no comment on the legality or otherwise of NATO actions there.

D. The strategy to achieve the objectives

The issue that is of special concern to the Mission is the conceptualization of the “supporting infrastructure”. The notion is indicated quite clearly in General Eisenkot’s statements in 2006 and reinforced by the reflections cited by non-serving but well-informed military thinkers.

On 6 January 2009, during the military operations in Gaza, Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai stated: “It [should be] possible to destroy Gaza, so they will understand not to mess with us”. He added that “it is a great opportunity to demolish thousands of houses of all the terrorists, so they will think twice before they launch rockets”. “I hope the operation will come to an end with great achievements and with the complete destruction of terrorism and Hamas. In my opinion, they should be razed to the ground, so thousands of houses, tunnels and industries will be demolished”. He added that “residents of the South are strengthening us, so the operation will continue until a total destruction of Hamas [is achieved]”.

On 2 February 2009, after the end of the military operations, Eli Yishai went on: “Even if the rockets fall in an open air or to the sea, we should hit their infrastructure, and destroy 100 homes for every rocket fired.”

On 13 January 2009, Israel’s Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, was quoted as saying:

We have proven to Hamas that we have changed the equation. Israel is not a country upon which you fire missiles and it does not respond. It is a country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild – and this is a good thing.

It is in the context of comments such as these that the massive destruction of businesses, agricultural land, chicken farms and residential houses has to be understood. In particular, the Mission notes the large-scale destruction that occurred in the days leading up to the end of the operations. During the withdrawal phase it appears that possibly thousands of homes were destroyed. The Mission has referred elsewhere in this report to the “day after” doctrine, as explained in the testimonies of Israeli soldiers, which can fit in with the general approach of massively disproportionate destruction without much difficulty.

The concept of what constituted the supporting infrastructure has to be understood not only in the context of the military operations of December and January, but in the tightening of the restrictions of access to goods and people into and out of Gaza, especially since Hamas took power. The Mission does not accept that these restrictions can be characterized as primarily an attempt to limit the flow of materials to armed groups. The expected impact, and the Mission believes primary purpose, was to bring about a situation in which the civilian population would find life so intolerable that they would leave (if that were possible) or turn Hamas out of office, as well as to collectively punish the civilian population.

The Israeli Government has stated:

While Hamas operates ministries and is in charge of a variety of administrative and traditionally governmental functions in the Gaza Strip, it still remains a terrorist organization. Many of the ostensibly civilian elements of its regime are in reality active components of its terrorist and military efforts. Indeed, Hamas does not separate its civilian and military activities in the manner in which a legitimate government might. Instead, Hamas uses apparatuses under its control, including quasi-governmental institutions, to promote its terrorist activity.

The framing of the military objectives Israel sought to strike is thus very wide indeed. There is, in particular, a lack of clarity about the concept of promoting “terrorist activity”: since Israel claims there is no real division between civilian and military activities and it considers Hamas to be a terrorist organization, it would appear that anyone who supports Hamas in any way may be considered as promoting its terrorist activity. Hamas was the clear winner of the latest elections in Gaza. It is not far-fetched for the Mission to consider that Israel regards very large sections of the Gazan civilian population as part of the “supporting infrastructure”.

The indiscriminate and disproportionate impact of the restrictions on the movement of goods and people indicates that, from as early as some point in 2007, Israel had already determined its view about what constitutes attacking the supporting infrastructure, and it appears to encompass effectively the population of Gaza.

A statement of objectives that explicitly admits the intentional targeting of civilian objects as part of the Israeli strategy is attributed to the Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Dan Harel.

While the Israeli military operations in Gaza were under way, Maj. Gen. Harel was reported as saying, in a meeting with local authorities in southern Israel:

This operation is different from previous ones. We have set a high goal which we are aiming for. We are hitting not only terrorists and launchers, but also the whole Hamas government and all its wings. […] We are hitting government buildings, production factories, security wings and more. We are demanding governmental responsibility from Hamas and are not making distinctions between the various wings. After this operation there will not be one Hamas building left standing in Gaza, and we plan to change the rules of the game.

E. Conclusions

The Israeli military conception of what was necessary in a future war with Hamas seems to have been developed from at least the time of the 2006 conflict in southern Lebanon. It finds its origin in a military doctrine that views disproportionate destruction and creating maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve military and political goals.

Through its overly broad framing of the “supporting infrastructure”, the Israeli armed forces have sought to construct a scope for their activities that, in the Mission’s view, was designed to have inevitably dire consequences for the non-combatants in Gaza.

Statements by political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza leave little doubt that disproportionate destruction and violence against civilians were part of a deliberate policy.

To the extent to which statements such as that of Mr. Yishai on 2 February 2009 indicate that the destruction of civilian objects, homes in that case, would be justified as a response to rocket attacks (“destroy 100 homes for every rocket fired”), the Mission is of the view that reprisals against civilians in armed hostilities are contrary to international humanitarian law. Even if such actions could be considered a lawful reprisal, they do not meet the stringent conditions imposed, in particular they are disproportionate, and violate fundamental human rights and obligations of a humanitarian character. One party’s targeting of civilians or civilian areas can never justify the opposing party’s targeting of civilians and civilian objects, such as homes, public and religious buildings, or schools.

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Destroyed school and mosque in Rafah, Gaza, 12 January 2009. Photo taken from UNRWA refugee shelter. (Photo: Pieter Stockmans)

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January 26, 2010 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | 1 Comment

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