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When Zionists Loved Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

Lawrence of Cyberia | January 26, 2010

Today you can hardly utter the acronym BDS without hearing that the very idea is anti-semitic.

But in the February 1921 edition of The Atlantic Magazine, Prof. Albert T. Clay (Assyrologist at the University of Pennsylvania) described how the Zionist incomers to Palestine were imposing their politics on the pre-existing Jewish minority there, which was largely made up of religious, non-Zionist Jews.

Ironically, their tactics comprised

  1. Boycotting non-Zionist Jewish businesses;
  2. Divestment of Zionist funds from non-Zionist Jews;
  3. Sanctions such as threatening the removal of non-Zionist Jews from office, the closure of their businesses, denial of essential services to them, and their exclusion from any dealings with other Jews…

POLITICAL ZIONISM (Part IV) by Albert T. Clay

The old resident Jews of Palestine certainly have other than religious grounds for their indifference toward the efforts of the Political Zionists. Last winter the [Zionist-dominateded.] Council of Jerusalem Jews appointed a commission of representative men holding leading positions, to visit parents who were sending their children to proscribed schools, in order to secure their withdrawal. Among these schools, which included those conducted by the convents and churches, some of which have existed in Jerusalem for a long time, are the British High School for Girls, the English College for Boys, and the Jewish School for Girls. In the latter, conducted by Miss Landau, an educated English Jewess, all the teachers are Jewish; most of the teaching is in the English language. This school, which is financed by enlightened Jews of England, was denounced more severely than the others, because, not being in sympathy with the programme of the Political Zionists, Miss Landau refused to teach the Zionist curriculum. She was even informed that her school would be closed.

In a series of articles that appeared in Doar Hayom, the Hebrew daily paper, last December, it was stated that the parents who refused to comply with the requests of the Commission were to be boycotted, cast out from all intercourse with Jews, denied all share in Zionist funds, and deprived of all custom for their shops and hotels. ‘Anyone who refused, let him know that it is forbidden for him to be called by the name of Jew; and there is to be for him no portion or inheritance with his brethren.’ They were given notice that they would ‘be fought by all lawful means.’ Their names were to be put ‘upon a monument of shame, as a reproach forever, and their deeds written unto the last generation.’  If they are supported, their support will cease; if they are merchants, the finger of scorn will be pointed at them; if they are rabbis, they will be moved far from their office; they shall be put under the ban and persecuted, and all the people of the world shall know that there is no mercy in justice.’

A month later the results of this ‘warfare’ were reviewed. We were informed that some Jews had been influenced, but others—and the greater number, and those of the Orthodox, — those who fear God — having read the letters [signed by the head of its delegates and the Zionist Commission] became angry at the “audacity” of the Council of Jerusalem Jews “which mix themselves up in private affairs,” have Torn up the letter up, and that finished it.’

Then followed a long diatribe against these parents, boys, and girls, in which it was demanded that the blacklist of traitors to the people be sent to ‘those who perform circumcision, who control the cemeteries and hospitals’; that an order go forth so that’ doctors will not visit their sick, that assistance when in need, if they are on the list of the American Relief Fund, will not be given to them.’ “Men will cry to them, “Out of the way, unclean, unclean.” . . . They are in no sense Israelites.’

It is to be regretted that only these few paraphrases and quotations from the series of articles published can be presented here.

The work of the Councils Committee met with not a little success; pupils left schools, and teachers gave up their positions. Two instructors in the English College, whose fathers were rabbis, and a third, whose brother was a teacher in a Zionist school, resigned. Another refused to do so, and declared himself ready, in the interests of the Orthodox Jews, who were suffering under this tyranny, which they deplored, to give the fullest testimony to the authorities concerning this persecution. The administration, under Governor Bols, finally intervened, and at least no further public efforts to carry out their programme were made.

If, in this early stage of the development of Political Zionism, even the Palestinian Religious Jews already find themselves under such a tyranny, what will happen if these men are allowed to have full control of the government? And what kind of treatment can the Christian and the Moslem expect in their efforts to educate their children, if the Political Zionists are allowed to develop their Jewish state to such a point that they can dispense with their mandatory and tell the British to clear out? When such things happen under British administration, what will take place if the Jewish State is ever realized, and such men are in full control?…

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January 26, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Leave a comment

Google’s Deep CIA Connections

By Eric Sommer | The People’s Voice | January 26, 2010

The western media is currently full of articles on Google’s ‘threat to quit China’ over internet censorship issues, and the company’s ‘suspicion’ that the Chinese government was behind attempts to ‘break-in’ to several Google email accounts used by ‘Chinese dissidents’.

However, the media has almost completely failed to report that Google’s surface concern over ‘human rights’ in China is belied by its deep involvement with some of the worst human rights abuses on the planet:

Google is, in fact, a key participant in U.S. military and CIA intelligence operations involving torture; subversion of foreign governments; illegal wars of aggression; and military occupations of countries which have never attacked the U.S. and which have cost hundreds of thousands of lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

To begin with, as reported in the Washington Post and elsewhere, Google is the supplier of the customized core search technology for ‘Intellipedia, a highly-secured online system where 37,000 U.S. spies and related personnel share information and collaborate on their devious errands.’

Agencies such as the so-called ‘National Security Agency’ have also purchased servers using Google-supplied search technology which processes information gathered by U.S. spies operating all over the planet.

In addition, Google is linked to the U.S. spy and military systems through its Google Earth software venture. The technology behind this software was originally developed by Keyhole Inc., a company funded by Q-Tel http://www.iqt.org/ , a venture capital firm which is in turn openly funded and operated on behalf of the CIA.

Google acquired Keyhole Inc. in 2004. The same base technology is currently employed by U.S. military and intelligence systems in their quest, in their own words, for “full-spectrum dominance” of the planet.

Moreover, Googles’ connection with the CIA and its venture capital firm extends to sharing at least one key member of personnel. In 2004, the Director of Technology Assessment at In-Q-Tel, Rob Painter, moved from his old job directly serving the CIA to become ‘Senior Federal Manager’ at Google.

As Robert Steele, a former CIA case officer has put it: Google is “in bed with” the CIA.

Google’s Friends spy on millions of Internet Users

Given Google’s supposed concern with ‘break-in’s to several of its email accounts, it’s worth noting that Wired magazine recently reported that Google’s friends at In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA, are now investing in Visible Technologies, a software firm specialized in ‘monitoring social media’.

The ‘Visible’ technology can automatically examine more than a million discussions and posts on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Amazon, and so forth each day. The technology also ‘scores’ each online item, assigning it a positive, negative or mixed or neutral status, based on parameters and terms set by the technology operators. The information, thus boiled down, can then be more effectively scanned and read by human operators.

The CIA venture capitalists at In-Q-Tel say they will use the technology to monitor social media operating in other countries and give U.S. spies “early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally,” according to spokesperson Donald Tighe. There is every possibility that the technology can also be used by the U.S. intellligence operatives to spy on domestic social movements and individuals inside the U.S.

Finally, there is a curious absence from the statements emanating from Google – and from U.S. media reports – of any substantive evidence linking the Chinese government with the alledged break-in attempts to several Google email accounts. Words like ‘sophisticated’ and ‘suspicion’ have appeared in the media to suggest that the Chinese government is responsible for the break-ins. That may be so. But it is striking that the media has seemingly asked no questions as to what the evidence behind the ‘suspicions’ might be
It should be noted that the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies have a long history of rogue operations intended to discredit governments or social movements with whom they happen to disagree.

To see how far this can go, one need only recall the sordid history of disinformation, lies, and deceit used to frighten people into supporting the Iraq war.

Whether the attacks on Google email originated from the Chinese government, from the U.S. intelligence operatives, or from elsewhere, one thing is clear: A company that supplies the CIA with key intelligence technology; supplies mapping software which can be used for barbarous wars of aggression and drone attacks which kill huge numbers of innocent civilians; and which in general is deeply intertwined with the CIA and the U.S. military machines, which spy on millions, the company cannot be motivated by real concern for the human rights and lives of the people in China.

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January 26, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | 3 Comments

My family’s ongoing Nakba story

Mohammad Alsaafin writing from Doha, Qatar, Live from Palestine, 26 January 2010

Israel restricts the freedom of movement of Palestinians through the imposition of an ID system. (Anne Paq/ActiveStills.org)

One of the most traumatic effects wrought upon Palestinian society by the 1948 Nakba, or the dispossession of historic Palestine, is the physical separation it forced upon Palestinians, between those in the diaspora and the refugees, between those living in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 and those who became citizens of Israel. Yet this process is ongoing to this very day, and targets even individual families, like mine. This is our story.

My dad was born in the Gaza Strip in 1962, the son of refugees, and left to the United Kingdom along with his wife and first son (myself) in 1990 to pursue his PhD at the University of Bradford. By 2004, I had a brother and two sisters, and our entire family moved back to Palestine, this time to the town of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. My father was working as a foreign journalist licensed by the Israeli Government Press Office and we were living in our country on yearly renewable Israeli work visas.

In 2005, I was turned back by Israeli border agents at the Sheikh Hussein Bridge as I attempted to cross into Jordan to visit my aunt. The agents told me that since I was born in the Gaza Strip in 1988 I had been issued a Gaza ID by the Israeli occupation authority and was therefore not allowed to legally reside in the West Bank. Additionally, I was informed that from then on, Israel would not recognize my British passport. I was able to return to Ramallah that day, but for the next four years I risked daily arrest by Israeli troops on the way to Birzeit University, where I was studying, and for a year after that while I was working in Ramallah. This summer, I left the West Bank to find work abroad, and was told by the Israelis that I would not be allowed to return home.

Despite this reprehensible situation, the rest of the family was thankfully spared such hardship. My dad continued working relatively unhindered as he moved across what is now Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and my mother and siblings enjoyed freedom of movement across the West Bank and inside Israel. This all changed very suddenly last August when, on a routine trip to Gaza where my dad had several assignments and where he wanted to visit his ailing father, he was detained by Israeli security at the Erez checkpoint, and was harassed, stripped of his press credentials and told — as I was four years earlier — that his British passport was worthless in Israel. He was also informed that he too had an Israeli-issued Gaza ID and thus would be treated as a Gazan, deprived of the most basic freedom of choice and movement and barred from ever returning to his wife and children in Ramallah. He was sent into Gaza, where he appealed to Israeli rights organizations, and as a British citizen to the British consulate and to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, now the Quartet’s Middle East envoy, for the right to leave Gaza and see his wife and children, if only for a day. The Israeli organizations were unable to help, the consulate was unable to circumvent a wall of Israeli bureaucracy, and Tony Blair chose to ignore our letter calling for assistance. In order to save his job, my dad had to give up hope of being allowed back into the West Bank, and left Gaza through Egypt in December.

At the time that my dad was stripped of his press credentials and work visa, my mother and siblings back in Ramallah were forced to accept their own Israeli-issued ID cards. Incredibly, my mother was given a Gaza ID despite being born abroad, raised in the West Bank and still owning a copy of her original West Bank ID! She now lives in constant fear of arrest and deportation by Israeli troops; if she were to leave the West Bank she would also be banned from returning to our family and home in Ramallah.

Meanwhile my brother and sister, who were both born in the UK and are now university students, have bizarrely been issued with West Bank ID cards, even though their parents and older brother were given Gaza IDs.

As a result of all of this, our family has been torn apart. My father is finally out of Gaza, but he is unable to see his children unless they travel abroad to meet him. My mother is in the West Bank, afraid to even leave Ramallah and risk being detained and deported at an Israeli army checkpoint. She is unable to leave the West Bank while my father and I are unable to enter. We don’t know how long it will be before we can see each other again — the Israeli authorities have said that they will not change my mother’s ID.

Israel has treated my family like criminals for being Palestinians. We have been punished, displaced and deprived from each other’s company. Our extended family was torn from its land in 1948 and expelled to refugee camps. In the 1990s, Israel’s policy of closure solidified our separation, particularly from my father’s side in Gaza. Now Israel’s racist and draconian demographic policies have separated my parents, my siblings and myself, just like they separate Jerusalemites who wish to marry other Palestinians from the West Bank, or Palestinian citizens of Israel who are legally barred from marrying Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

This is one of the many faces of the ongoing Nakba today, and I urge more individuals and families who have suffered like this to speak out. The world must realize the true nature of Israeli apartheid, and the cruel separation of families is one more reason why Israel must be boycotted.

Mohammad Alsaafin is from the Palestinian village of Fallujah, ethnically cleansed by Israeli forces in 1949. He was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp and lived in the UK and US, before moving back to Palestine to study at Birzeit University.

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January 26, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israeli settlers invade At-Tuwani village

Israeli soldiers enter Palestinian homes, attack Palestinians, and throw tear gas

Christian Peacemaker Team
26 January 2010

AT-TUWANI – On Tuesday, 26 January 2010 approximately fifteen Israeli settlers from the Israeli settlement of Ma’on and the Israeli outpost of Havat Ma’on attacked Palestinians in the village of At-Tuwani. The settlers were accompanied by Israeli soldiers in three army jeeps and the settlement security agent of Ma’on. Villagers from At-Tuwani arrived, protesting the settlers coming into their village. An Israeli soldier punched a Palestinian villager, who was hospitalized for his injuries. Immediately thereafter, Israeli settlers began throwing stones at the Palestinian villagers while soldiers fired three canisters of tear gas at Palestinians.

Afterwards, the settlers drove to the entrance of At-Tuwani, and began throwing stones at passers-by on the road.

The day’s incident began at 9:20 am when three army jeeps and a pickup truck with an Israeli settler from Havat Ma’on and the settlement security guard from Ma’on drove into At-Tuwani. The settler walked throughout the village, entering Palestinian homes, accompanied by the soldiers and settlement security guard, and then remained in the village and made phone calls until other settlers arrived.

For more information, contact:
Christian Peacemaker Teams 054 253 1323

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January 26, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | 4 Comments

Obama Mulls Legality of ‘Taking Out’ US-Born Cleric

Can Obama ‘Take Out’ a Citizen Not Charged With Any Crimes?

By Jason Ditz | January 25, 2010

According to US intelligence officials, the Obama Administration has “missed” several opportunities to assassinate US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki because lawyers are still unclear on the legality of killing him.

At issue is that Awlaki, a New Mexico-born Muslim cleric, is not charged with any crimes under US law and is only speculatively linked by the Obama Administration to terrorism through secret “intelligence reports.”

As a native-born citizen of the United States, assassinating him on the basis of secret evidence which is so shaky that officials haven’t felt comfortable issuing charges against him is a legal grey area, to say the least.

But despite this legal concern, officials had no problem in backing Yemeni air strikes which attempted to assassinate Awlaki just last month. US officials said Awlaki was ‘probably’ killed in those strikes, though it later turned out he wasn’t even present at the site of the attack.

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January 26, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | 8 Comments

US Hypocrisy In The Hanging Of ‘Chemical Ali’

Joe Quinn | Sott.net | January 26, 2010

Scape goat for the continued illegal US occupation of Iraq – ‘Chemical Ali’

Saddam Hussein’s former defense Chief Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikritieh, cynically dubbed ‘Chemical Ali’ by the US government was hung yesterday by the US puppet government in Iraq. That is to say, yesterday, the US government hung a former Iraqi politician in an effort to justify its almost 7 year old invasion, occupation and wholesale destruction of Iraq and the genocidal murder of millions of Iraqi civilians.

The US government has long claimed that Saddam, and Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikritieh were responsible for the gassing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1998 as part of the Iran-Iraq war. Strong evidence however suggests that the Iranians were responsible for the attack. Even stronger evidence exists to support the argument that the US government far-surpasses any other nation in the use of chemical and biological weapons against innocent civilians.

Dr Stephen C Pelletiere was the CIA’s senior political analyst during the Iran-Iraq War. In a Late Night Live interview in 2003 with the Australian broadcaster, Phillip Adams, Pelletier stated that he and his colleagues who investigated the gassing in Halabja did not believe that Saddam Hussein committed the atrocity.

Pelletier told Adams:

“Halabja was a battle between the Iraqis and the Iranians and the Kurds were … collateral damage”. “Halabja was a tragedy of war, it was not a war crime”. Pelletier goes on to say that Iraq did not have cyanide gas, Iran did.

“I examined the case very deeply afterwards … those of us who examined the bodies concluded that most of the Kurds who died, or the ones we examined, died of cyanide poisoning” … “it is spin doctoring” … “people who die in a battle are unfortunate victims.

Pelletiere wrote on January 31, 2003 in the NY Times:

“And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

“The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds’ bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent — that is, a cyanide-based gas — which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.

“These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned.”

Even if it were true that the Iraqi government used chemical weapons to quell the opportunistic Iraqi-Kurd rebellion during the Iran-Iraq war, it is common knowledge that the Regan and Thatcher governments (among others) provided them, in full expectation that they would be used as part of their grander plan to curb Iranian influence in the Middle East.

But what surely galls the most is the fact that the American government itself has committed much worse atrocities with the use of chemical weapons. We could cite the massive napalming of villagers during the Vietnam war for but one example, but it seems more appropriate to use an example from the Iraq invasion.

During the ‘battle of Fallujah’ in 2004, the US military reduced much of the city to rubble and used chemical weapons, poison gas and white phosphorous on the civilian population, killing an estimated 6000 thousands Iraqis. Of these, the army reported that 42 were insurgents.

In his story Fallujah Refugees Tell of Life and Death in the Kill Zone published on December 3, 2004 reporter Dahr Jamail states:

Burhan Fasa’a, an Iraqi journalist who worked for the Lebanese satellite TV station, LBC and who was in Fallujah for nine days during the most intense combat, said Americans grew easily frustrated with Iraqis who could not speak English.

“Americans did not have interpreters with them,” Fasa’a said, “so they entered houses and killed people because they didn’t speak English. They entered the house where I was with 26 people, and [they] shot people because [the people] didn’t obey [the soldiers’] orders, even just because the people couldn’t understand a word of English.” He also added, “Soldiers thought the people were rejecting their orders, so they shot them. But the people just couldn’t understand them.”

A man named Khalil, who asked not to use his last name for fear of reprisals, said he had witnessed the shooting of civilians who were waving white flags while they tried to escape the city.

“I watched them roll over wounded people in the street with tanks,” said Kassem Mohammed Ahmed, a resident of Fallujah. “This happened so many times.”

Other refugees recounted similar stories. “I saw so many civilians killed there, and I saw several tanks roll over the wounded in the streets,” said Aziz Abdulla, 27 years old, who fled the fighting last November. Another resident, Abu Aziz, said he also witnessed American armored vehicles crushing people he believes were alive.

Abdul Razaq Ismail, another resident who fled Fallujah, said: “I saw dead bodies on the ground and nobody could bury them because of the American snipers. The Americans were dropping some of the bodies into the Euphrates near Fallujah.”

A man called Abu Hammad said he witnessed US troops throwing Iraqi bodies into the Euphrates River. Abu Hammed and others also said they saw Americans shooting unarmed Iraqis who waved white flags.

Believing that American and Iraqi forces were bent on killing anyone who stayed in Fallujah, Hammad said he watched people attempt to swim across the Euphrates to escape the siege. “Even then the Americans shot them with rifles from the shore,” he said. “Even if some of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their heads to show they are not fighters, they were all shot.”

White phosphorus is highly flammable and ignites on contact with oxygen. If the substance hits someone’s body, it will burn until deprived of oxygen.

Defence website Globalsecurity.org states that “phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful… These weapons are particularly nasty because white phosphorus continues to burn until it disappears… it could burn right down to the bone.”
half of Fallujah’s 120 moques were destroyed by the US military and air force. Night-time bombing raids hit a clinic inside the Sunni Muslim city, killing doctors, nurses and patients. Body parts were everywhere as god’s holy warriors dropped one tonne bombs on the already devastated city.

Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, an official at Iraq’s health ministry, said that the U.S. military used internationally banned weapons during its deadly offensive in the city of Fallujah. He said that researches, prepared by his medical team, prove that U.S. occupation forces used internationally prohibited substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals in their attacks in the war-torn city.

The health official announced his findings at a news conference in the health ministry building in Baghdad. The press conference was attended by more than 20 Iraqi and foreign media networks, including the Iraqi ash-Sharqiyah TV network, the Iraqi as-Sabah newspaper, the U.S. Washington Post and the Knight-Ridder service.

Today, doctors in Fallujah are seeing a massive rise in chronic deformities in infants

For an in depth investigation of the use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians in Fallujah by the US military see this Italian national Televsion documentary entitled ‘Fallujah – The Hidden Massacre‘

January 26, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | Leave a comment

New York Times fails to disclose Jerusalem bureau chief’s conflict of interest

Report, The Electronic Intifada, 25 January 2010

The New York Times has all but confirmed to The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the son of its Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was recently inducted into the Israeli army.

Over the weekend, EI received a tip suggesting this had been the case and wrote to Bronner to ask him to confirm or deny the information and to seek his opinion on whether, if true, he thought it would be a conflict of interest.

Susan Chira, the foreign editor of The New York Times wrote in an email to The Electronic Intifada this morning:

“Ethan Bronner referred your query to me, the foreign editor. Here is my comment: Mr. Bronner’s son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At The Times, we have found Mr. Bronner’s coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case.”

The Electronic Intifada also wrote to Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The New York Times, to confirm the information and ask for an opinion on whether this constituted a conflict of interest, but had yet to receive a response.

Bronner, as bureau chief, has primary responsibility for his paper’s reporting on all aspects of the Palestine/Israel conflict, and on the Israeli army, whose official name is the “Israel Defense Forces.”

On 23 January, Bronner published a lengthy article on Israel’s efforts to refute allegations contained in the UN-commissioned Goldstone report of war crimes and crimes against humanity during its attack on Gaza last winter (“Israel Poised to Challenge a UN Report on Gaza“).

As’ad AbuKhalil, a frequent critic of Bronner’s coverage, blogged in response that “The New York Times devoted more space to Israeli and Zionist criticisms of the Goldstone report than to the [content of the] report itself” (The Angry Arab News Service, “Ethan Bronner’s propaganda services, 25 January 2010)

Bronner’s pro-Israeli bias reporting on Israel’s attack on Gaza last year was also criticized by the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) (See “NYT and the Perils of Mideast ‘Balance’,” 4 February 2009).

The New York Times’ own “Company policy on Ethics in Journalism” acknowledges that the activities of a journalist’s family member may constitute a conflict of interest. It includes as an example, “A brother or a daughter in a high-profile job on Wall Street might produce the appearance of conflict for a business reporter or editor.” Such conflicts may on occasion require the staff member “to withdraw from certain coverage.”

After Israel’s invasion of Gaza last winter, Israeli military censors banned local media from printing the names of individual officers who participated in the attack for fear that this could assist international efforts to bring war crimes suspects to justice. This followed the publication of a number of soldiers’ personal testimonies in the Israeli press describing atrocities they had seen committed by the Israeli army in Gaza.

The Times’ treatment of Bronner sets an interesting precedent. Would the newspaper’s policy be the same if a reporter in its Jerusalem bureau had an immediate family member who faced Bronner’s son across the battlefield, as a member of a Palestinian or Lebanese resistance organization?

It would appear that despite the highly sensitive nature of Palestine/Israel coverage, and the very high personal stakes for Bronner and his son that could result from full and open coverage of the Israeli army’s abuses of Palestinians, The New York Times does not consider this situation to be a problematic case. It had not even disclosed the situation to its readers — until now.

January 25, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | 3 Comments

IPCC climate report riddled with non peer reviewed WWF papers

Aletho News | January 25, 2010

World Wildlife Fund* is renowned for being a phony green organization whose primary role is influencing environmental regulation so as to protect corporate interests. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has provided WWF grants with the aim of “Combating Global Warming”. WWF became a focal point for IPCC critics after it was revealed that the IPCC report’s erroneous assertion of Himalayan glaciers being threatened by global warming was sourced from a WWF publication.

As per the IPCC’s statement of principles, its role is ‘to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socio-economic information – IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy’. However it has now been reported that the report relied heavily on literature that, rather than being scientific or neutral, was in fact sourced from the WWF. Donna Laframboise writes:

AR4 is the shorthand name for the 2007 Nobel-winning IPCC report. When one types “WWF” into an AR4 search box dozens of references are returned.

For example, a WWF report is cited twice on this page as the only supporting proof of IPCC statements about coastal developments in Latin America. A WWF report is referenced twice by the IPCC’s Working Group II in its concluding statements. There, the IPCC depends on the WWF to define what the global average per capita “ecological footprint” is compared to the ecological footprint of central and Eastern Europe.

Elsewhere, when discussing “mudflows and avalanches” linked to melting glaciers, the oh-so-scientifically-circumspect IPCC relies on two sources to make its point – an apparently still unpublished paper delivered to a conference five years earlier (Bhadra, 2002) and a WWF document.

Similarly, the only reason the IPCC can declare that “Changes in climate are affecting many mountain glaciers, with rapid glacier retreat documented in the Himalayas, Greenland, the European Alps, the Andes Cordillera and East Africa” is because a WWF report makes this claim.

In a section on coral reefs and mangroves, a WWF report is the IPCC’s sole reason for believing that, in “the Mesoamerican reef there are up to 25 times more fish of some species on reefs close to mangrove areas than in areas where mangroves have been destroyed.”

When the IPCC advises world leaders that “climate change is very likely to produce significant impacts on selected marine fish and shellfish (Baker, 2005)” it doesn’t call attention to the fact that the sole authority on which this statement rests is a WWF workshop project report (see the “Baker” document below).

All told, an extensive list of documents created or co-authored by the WWF is cited by this Nobel-winning IPCC report:

  • Allianz and World Wildlife Fund, 2006: Climate change and the financial sector: an agenda for action, 59 pp. [Accessed 03.05.07: http://www.wwf.org.uk/ filelibrary/pdf/allianz_rep_0605.pdf]
  • Austin, G., A. Williams, G. Morris, R. Spalding-Feche, and R. Worthington, 2003: Employment potential of renewable energy in South Africa. Earthlife Africa, Johannesburg and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Denmark, November, 104 pp.
  • Baker, T., 2005: Vulnerability Assessment of the North-East Atlantic Shelf Marine Ecoregion to Climate Change, Workshop Project Report, WWF, Godalming, Surrey, 79 pp.
  • Coleman, T., O. Hoegh-Guldberg, D. Karoly, I. Lowe, T. McMichael, C.D. Mitchell, G.I. Pearman, P. Scaife and J. Reynolds, 2004: Climate Change: Solutions for Australia. Australian Climate Group, 35 pp. http://www.wwf.org.au/ publications/acg_solutions.pdf
  • Dlugolecki, A. and S. Lafeld, 2005: Climate change – agenda for action: the financial sector’s perspective. Allianz Group and WWF, Munich [may be the same document as “Allianz” above, except that one is dated 2006 and the other 2005]
  • Fritsche, U.R., K. Hünecke, A. Hermann, F. Schulze, and K. Wiegmann, 2006: Sustainability standards for bioenergy. Öko-Institut e.V., Darmstadt, WWF Germany, Frankfurt am Main, November
  • Giannakopoulos, C., M. Bindi, M. Moriondo, P. LeSager and T. Tin, 2005: Climate Change Impacts in the Mediterranean Resulting from a 2oC Global Temperature Rise. WWF report, Gland Switzerland. Accessed 01.10.2006 at http://assets.panda.org/downloads/medreportfinal8july05.pdf.
  • Hansen, L.J., J.L. Biringer and J.R. Hoffmann, 2003: Buying Time: A User’s Manual for Building Resistance and Resilience to Climate Change in Natural Systems. WWF Climate Change Program, Berlin, 246 pp.
  • http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/climate_change/our_solutions/business_industry/climate_savers/ index.cfm
  • Lechtenbohmer, S., V. Grimm, D. Mitze, S. Thomas, M. Wissner, 2005: Target 2020: Policies and measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. WWF European Policy Office, Wuppertal
  • Malcolm, J.R., C. Liu, L. Miller, T. Allnut and L. Hansen, Eds., 2002a: Habitats at Risk: Global Warming and Species Loss in Globally Significant Terrestrial Ecosystems. WWF World Wide Fund for Nature, Gland, 40 pp.
  • Rowell, A. and P.F. Moore, 2000: Global Review of Forest Fires. WWF/IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, 66 pp. http://www.iucn.org/themes/fcp/publications /files/global_review_forest_fires.pdf
  • WWF, 2004: Deforestation threatens the cradle of reef diversity. World Wide Fund for Nature, 2 December 2004. http://www.wwf.org/
  • WWF, 2004: Living Planet Report 2004. WWF- World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund), Gland, Switzerland, 44 pp.
  • WWF (World Wildlife Fund), 2005: An overview of glaciers, glacier retreat, and subsequent impacts in Nepal, India and China. World Wildlife Fund, Nepal Programme, 79 pp.
  • Zarsky, L. and K. Gallagher, 2003: Searching for the Holy Grail? Making FDI Work for Sustainable Development. Analytical Paper, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Switzerland

Yet just last week Australia’s Climate Change Minister Penny Wong had this to say about the IPCC report:

“The Fourth Assessment Report represents the international consensus on climate change science. All reports of the IPCC are subjected to extensive expert and government review.”

It seems that the WWF’s position papers (and its agenda) have become the holy writ of modern science, Nobel prize included.

*In North America, WWF stands for World Wildlife Fund. Elsewhere, it stands for World Wide Fund for Nature.

January 25, 2010 Posted by | Aletho News, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | 1 Comment

Hugo Chavez Did Not Accuse the U.S. of Causing the Haitian Earthquake

By The Anti Press | January 22, 2010

On January 19, Spanish newspaper ABC, a newspaper of record in Spain, published a story entitled “Chavez Accuses US of Causing Earthquake in Haiti.”

The story was quickly picked up by websites around the globe — most quoting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez as saying the U.S. used a new tectonic weapon to induce the Haitian earthquake.  This was, according to Chavez — “only a drill, and the final target is destroying and taking over Iran.”

Within the actual story, ABC noted that the information came from an obscure opinion post on the website of a Venezuelan state television channel, VIVE Television.  The post referenced a supposed Russian military report on American seismic weapons.

All quotes subsequently attributed to Chavez regarding Haiti and earthquake weapons were in fact direct quotes from this web posting — none of which was ever uttered by Chavez.

Spurred on by the international attention being received by its first story, ABC posted a second article on January 20 under the banner “The Secret Weapon to Cause Earthquakes” in which it cites Chavez as having blamed the US for razing Haiti.

By the time the story had run its course, it had been covered with varying degrees of accuracy by corporate news channels, foreign outlets eager to accuse the U.S. of another evil deed, and conspiracy websites happy to have their ideas officially validated.

In the end, it serves as one more reminder to those who prefer truth over ideological delusion: there are some subjects for which the myths of journalistic standards will still be displayed — stories about the government of Venezuela are not one of those subjects.

Vea en Espanol

January 25, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | 1 Comment

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