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Unrest continues in Shu’fat; overnight raids, youth detained

09/02/2010

Jerusalem – Ma’an – Confrontations erupted between school children and border guards at the Shu’fat military checkpoint on Tuesday, leading to the detention of a 15-year-old and the injury of a soldier, witnesses said.

The clash followed a series of overnight raids where border guards handed out dozens of notices for residents to turn themselves in for questioning at Israeli intelligence compounds in Jerusalem. The raids came directly on the heels of an arrest campaign targeting dozens of Palestinian residents of the camp.

The teen detained in the most recent clashes was identified as Ahmad Jamil Abu Hamda, who was on his way to school when the clashes erupted.

Locals said soldiers used tear gas to disburse the crowds.

The secretary of Fatah in the camp, Khader Ad-Dibs, said that raids continued until 5am, and that more than a hundred soldiers guarded the entrances of the camp.

Ad-Dibs noted that some of the men and women detained Monday had already been transfered to the military court where their sentences were extended, and others who were released said they had been severely beaten.

February 9, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Ethnic Cleansing Escalation in Jerusalem

Aletho News | February 8, 2010

Israeli occupation forces manning a military checkpoint at the Shu’fat refugee camp in Jerusalem set off protests Saturday due to the humiliating conditions inflicted on Palestinians on a daily basis. The residents, whom were displaced from their homes across Jerusalem, have been denied access to the city by the apartheid wall as well as various military checkpoints.

There have also been recent protests against home demolitions in the area. Palestine Information Center reports:

In the city’s Sheikh Jarrah suburb, an armed Israeli settler wearing military uniform pointed his rifle at Palestinian lady Refqa Al-Kurd, 85, in a bid to frighten her and force her out of what is remained of her house after the settlers occupied most of it.

Refqa Al-Kurd, aged 85, after assault

The incident prompted clashes between the Palestinian neighbors, who rushed for the help of the elderly woman, and the settlers.

Another Israeli settler in the same suburb dropped a big stone at Palestinian teenager Murad Ateyyah, 14, prompting angry Palestinian citizens to intervene and clash with the settlers before the Israeli occupation police arrived and broke up the clashes.

Palestinian Jerusalemites asserted that attacks by Israeli settlers against them increased rapidly with the aim to force them out of the city.

Tensions were raised further by army raids on private residences in the Anata camp early on Monday. Packs of soldiers ransacked homes at daybreak in surrounding villages abducting residents for torture interrogations. House to house searches without search warrants resulted in the seizure of one homemade rifle.

File photo

Ma’an reports that over 60 Palestinians were seized in the raids. Young Palestinians confronted the intruding forces by throwing stones. Journalists that attempted to record the clashes were fired upon with tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades. Eyewitnesses also report the use of live ammunition. Several journalists were injured.

Occupation forces then attacked the local clinic and detained the doctors working there, preventing them from attending to the injured. The camp is now under military control, curfew has been imposed.

February 8, 2010 Posted by | Author: Atheo, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

No, the Australian drought was not man-made

Another IPCC scare falls apart

By Andrew Bolt | Herald Sun | February 08, 2010

Melbourne University alarmist David Karoly once claimed a rise in the Murray Darling Basin’s temperatures was “likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human acitivity” and:

This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd grabbed the scare and exploited it:

BRENDAN Nelson was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming…

In parliament yesterday, Kevin Rudd attacked Dr Nelson, accusing him of ignoring scientific facts.

“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”

But the latest evidence indicates that Rudd and Karoly were wrong. In fact, there’s no evidence in the Murray Darling drought of man-made warming, says a new study in Geophysical Research Letters:

Previous studies of the recent drought in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) have noted that low rainfall totals have been accompanied by anomalously high air temperatures. Subsequent studies have interpreted an identified trend in the residual time-series of non-rainfall related temperature variability as a signal of anthropogenic change, further speculating that increased air temperature has exacerbated the drought through increasing evapotranspiration rates. In this study, we explore an alternative explanation of the recent increases in air temperature. This study demonstrates that significant misunderstanding of known processes of land surface – atmosphere interactions has led to the incorrect attribution of the causes of the anomalous temperatures, as well as significant misunderstanding of their impact on evaporation within the Murray-Darling Basin…

However, to accept the correlation [between temperature and rainfall] as the sole basis for the attribution of cause to human emissions is to implicitly assume that the correlation represents an entirely correct model of the sole driver of maximum air temperature. This is clearly not the case.

What’s causing the evaporation and temperatures is not (man-made) warming. It’s kind of the other way around: more sunshine, through lack of cloud cover, and lack of rain and therefore evaporation is causing higher temperatures.

February 8, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Israeli forces detain wife of mayor in Ramallah

08/02/2010

Jerusalem – Ma’an – Israeli forces detained Muntaha Tawil, wife of Al-Bireh Mayor Jamal Tawil, on Monday, after searching their home in Ramallah.

“Heavily armed soldiers and large numbers of military vehicles raided the mayor’s home on Monday early morning breaking the doors and damaging the house’ interior before they detained Muntaha Tawil, the mayor’s wife,” an Al-Birreh Municipal Council statement said.

Mayor Tawil said his wife’s detention would not hinder his ability to provide his constituents with the services they need, adding that Israel often attempts to exert pressure on mayors of Palestinian villages through detentions, forced home searches and summons orders.

Tawil is the mother of four and her husband has been detained several time by Israeli forces. Mayor Tawil previously served 13 years in an Israeli prison.

An Israeli military spokesman said that Muntaha Tawil was detained overnight by Israeli forces operating in Ramallah because of her involvement in activities “in the Hamas terrorist organization.”

###

Editor’s note:

Muntaha Tawil is one of the most active women working in the prisoners’ solidarity movement.

February 8, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

Berlusconi, Israel, and The Big Brother

Alternative Information Center | February 8, 2010

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi shares affections with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

After the three-day visit of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to Israel and a short visit to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a judgement is due. Berlusconi came with a large Italian ministry delegation (Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti, Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, Public Works Minister Altero Matteoli and Health Minister Ferrucio Fazio) for the first Israeli-Italian joint cabinet meeting. It was the second joint-cabinet meeting for the Israeli government, after the joint German-Israeli session which was held in 2008. The same announcements and topics dominate speeches and actions of the Italian and Israeli politicians these days.

Holocaust, EU and the Big Brother

Berlusconi started his visit to Israel at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. And the reference to the Holocaust pervaded the entire visit. The day before coming to Israel, Berlusconi delivered a written interview published in Haaretz on 31 January. In answer to the first question about the close relationship between his government and Israel (in a certain way new for the Italian political tradition), Berlusconi made reference to the Holocaust: “The visit I made to Auschwitz made a deep impression on me. I told myself there that it was impossible not to be Israeli.” But the most relevant nuance in Berlusconi’s words is that he presented a link between Israeli “struggle for freedom,” the process of European construction and the Holocaust. The result of that equation is that “Israel is part of Europe. It belongs to the West.” In his speech in front of the Knesset on 3 February, Berlusconi continued that “as both Pope John Paul II and Rabbi Eliyahu Tuaf said, Italy is like a ‘big brother’ to Israel, a bond which originates in the friendship and fraternity and common fate.”

In the present period when freedom of speech has become a sensitive issue in Italy with Berlusconi’s continuous attacks against journalists and when Israel restricts the possibilities for foreign journalists to enter, work and live in Israel and Palestinian Territories, the reference to Italy as a Big Brother of Israel reminds one more of the Orwellian 1984 scenario, rather than the particular “brotherhood” between Israelis and Italians.

Iran and the Economy

Iran was a top agenda topic during this visit. In his parallel between the current situation and the age of totalitarianism, Berlusconi stigmatized the Iranian president Ahmadinejad: “We must watch out,” because “we’ve already had one such madman in history,” clearly referring to Adolf Hitler. On 1 February, during the official dinner, talking about the Iranian regime, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu stated that “humanity today is facing one of its most difficult challenges since World War II” and he added that “I must tell you, Silvio, my dear friend, you have a clear vision, you have determination and you have the courage of a genuine leader.”

In the Iranian chapter in the agenda of international relations, a large part is occupied by the economic issue. Meeting the Italian Prime Minister, the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman asked Berlusconi on Tuesday to increase pressure on Russia to drop their opposition to economic sanctions against Teheran. Berlusconi’s personal story and career is strictly linked with business and he used that in every context: in the same Haaretz interview, he proudly declared that “for my entire life, first as an entrepreneur and later as prime minister, I have had a love of freedom.” He also proposed “the beautiful town of Arice as a location for future peace talks.” And to please the “little brother,” Berlusconi stated that from 2006, Italy has reduced trade with Iran. But Italy remains the largest European trading partner of Iran, more than 1,000 companies are involved in the Islamic Republic and prominent enterprises like Fiat, Eni and Ansaldo have offices and factories in Iran.

The Arab World

Except for Iran, during this three-day visit, the Arab world was the great absent in the political speeches and references. Even if Berlusconi states that “Italy today is an essential stop, sometimes the first, that Middle Eastern leaders make in Europe,” and that Italy is “involved in a lasting and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian question,” the marginality of the Palestinian cause and reality during this visit is clear to everybody.

Before his meeting with the Palestinian President Abu Mazen, the Italian Prime Minister denied the validity of the Goldstone report, because, according to him, Operation Cast Lead against Gaza last year was a “justified firing on Hamas’ rockets.” As the most important Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, noted, the adjective “justified” is not present in the written version of the speech spread in the Italian government website. This means that the Prime Minister voluntarily added this adjective at the eleventh hour. Moreover, during the press conference with Abu Mazen in Bethlehem, in answer to a question of what kind of feeling the Separation Wall in Bethlehem provoked in him, he replied that he didn’t see the Wall because he was too busy reading his notes.

Kissinger of Arcore

In one of the most important left-wing Italian newspapers, Il Manifesto, on 2 February, there appeared an article written by Zvi Schuldiner, professor of Political Science in the Israeli Sapir College, ironically defining Berlusconi as the “Kissinger of Arcore” (from the name of the village near Milan where Berlusconi lives). The reference to the American Secretary of State during the Nixon era is not casual: Berlusconi himself, in answer to the Haaretz correspondent’s questions, quoted Kissinger to draw a future scenario of war or peace in the Middle East: “Henry Kissinger used to say that there could never be war in the Middle East without Egypt, but no peace was possible without Syria.” However, behind these sentences, Israel knows that, despite his words and declaration, Berlusconi is one of the world’s most controversial men, morally, financially and politically. After this visit, in the next weeks and months the meaning of “brotherhood” between the Italian and Israeli governments will be revealed.

February 8, 2010 Posted by | Wars for Israel | 2 Comments

Time for an American Intifada?

By Jeff Gates | February 7, 2010

During the 1960 Christmas season, Americans flocked to the theaters to see Exodus, a 3-1/2 hour epic film featuring handsome freedom fighters and a riveting romance amidst the heroic triumph of Jewish Destiny over Arab Evil Doers. Set against a Yuletide backdrop of Biblical prophecy, moviegoers marveled as exiled Jews returned to their fabled promised land, a staple of popular culture to which Americans are first exposed as children in “Sunday school.”

Many moviegoers failed to realize that Exodus was not fact but fiction. Even now, few Americans realize the storyline was adapted for the screen from a 1958 novel by Leon Uris. The biggest bestseller since Gone with the Wind-a novel set during the Civil War of the 1860s-the filmadaptation was directed by Hollywood icon Otto Preminger. The blockbuster’s stars included a young Paul Newman with his leading lady a blond Eva Marie Saint.

The cast included character actor Lee J. Cobb and Peter Lawford, married to Pat Kennedy, a sister of John F. Kennedy who was elected president the same year. By then, Lawford was a famous member of pop culture’s high profile “Rat Pack” that included singer Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Joey Bishop. Italian crooner Sal Mineo, then a teen heartthrob, received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of a Jewish émigré.

An Oscar should have been awarded to Israel and its supporters for portraying this extremist enclave as a legitimate nation-state when, in reality, its founding traces to an alluring storyline. Forty-five years after the release of Exodus, American naiveté was again targeted by Jewish storytellers to induce the U.S. to war in the Middle East-only this time for real.

Then as now, Americans are easily swayed by sympathetic portrayals of an enclave granted nation-state recognition by President Harry Truman, a Christian-Zionist. The Missouri Democrat had famously read the Bible cover-to-cover five times by age 15. Truman was a True Believer in the same way that fundamentalist Christians believe-truly believe-that their Messiah will not return until the “Israelites” recover their ancestral home.

Preying on similar beliefs, Republican George W. Bush, another Christian-Zionist president, was induced with phony intelligence to wage war in Iraq. The false intelligence was traceable to Israelis, pro-Israelis or assets developed for that purpose. That invasion had long been a priority goal of those who believe-truly believe-in their right to an expansionist Greater Israel.

Yet as Shlomo Sand chronicles in The Invention of the Jewish People (2009), the historical evidence is scant either for an exile or an “exodus.” As with the movie, the return of a “Jewish People” to a Jewish homeland is “a conscious ideological composition” meant “to claim a higher cultural lineage” than what can be supported by the facts.
In lieu of the novel-writing skills of Leon Uris, the Zionist narrative featured Biblical archeologists such as William F. Albright who, in the 1920s, traveled to the Holy Land to excavate artifacts that would, as Sand puts it: “reaffirm the Old Testament and thereby the New.”

By interpreting his finds in Christian-Zionist terms, Albright and his colleagues not only unearthed Biblical “facts” that shaped the Sunday school curriculum, they also helped pre-stage the perceived legitimacy of a Jewish people returning from exile to a Jewish homeland. As Sand points out, if there was no exodus, how can there be a return? If there is no “Jewish People,” how can there be a homeland?

Yet these widely held beliefs remain the premise underlying Israel’s expansionist agenda and its rationale for heaping six decades of abuse on Palestinians who have lived there for centuries.

Political Expedience or Biblical Prophecy?

White House counsel Clark Clifford cautioned Truman that his reelection was unlikely absent the funding that Jewish-Americans-with Israel’s recognition-were eager to provide. In early May 1948, General George C. Marshall, Truman’s Secretary of State, argued vigorously against recognition. Strong objections were also heard from the diplomatic corps, the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Marshall, the top-ranked U.S. military officer in WWII, was outraged that Clifford put domestic political expedience ahead of U.S. foreign policy interests. Marshall told Truman that he would vote against him if he extended sovereign status to an enclave of Zionist terrorists, religious fanatics and what Albert Einstein and Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt called “Jewish fascists.” Marshall insisted that State Department personnel never again speak to Clifford.

In March 1948, a Joint Chiefs paper titled “Force Requirements for Palestine” predicted the “Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the U.S.] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives.” Those objectives included an expansionist agenda for Greater Israel that envisioned the taking of Arab land, ensuring armed clashes in which the U.S. was destined to become embroiled.

The Joint Chiefs listed Zionist objectives as:

– Initial Jewish sovereignty over a portion of Palestine,
– Acceptance by the great powers of the right to unlimited immigration,
– The extension of Jewish sovereignty over all of Palestine,
– The expansion of “Eretz (Greater) Israel” into Transjordan and portions of Lebanon and Syria, and
– The establishment of Jewish military and economic hegemony over the entire Middle East.

Akin to the fictional portrayal in Exodus, those Zionists lobbying Truman assured him they would remain within the initial boundaries. We now know that was a lie. They also promised that the Zionist state would not become what it quickly became: a theocratic and racist enclave-albeit widely marketed by pro-Israeli media as the “only democracy in the Middle East.”

To remove all doubt as to the extremist goals of the Zionist project, the Joint Chiefs assessment added ominously:

“All stages of this program are equally sacred to the fanatical concepts of the Jewish leaders. The program is openly admitted by some leaders, and has been privately admitted to United States officials by responsible leaders of the presently dominant Jewish group–the Jewish Agency.”

Deceit from the Outset

A beguiling combination of Hollywood fiction, manipulated beliefs and outright lies remain at the core of this entangled alliance and the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship.” The deceit deployed to advance the hegemonic goals of the Zionist project remains obscured by an undisclosed media bias reinforced by a widespread pro-Israeli influence in popular culture. As with the 1960 film, the ongoing manipulation of thought and emotion lies at the core of this duplicity a half-century later.

In The Persuasion Explosion (1985), author Art Stevens reports that Exodus was a public relations ploy launched by Edward Gottlieb who sought a novelist to improve Israel’s image in the U.S. The name Uris originates with Yerushalmi, meaning “man of Jerusalem.” The film rights to Exodus were sold in advance of the book’s publication. Translated into dozens of languages, this masterpiece of mental and emotional manipulation quickly became a global phenomenon as its created favorable impressions of Israel.

The rewards are real for those who offer aid and comfort to this trans-generational deceit. When Truman’s campaign train traversed the nation as part of a 1948 whistle-stop tour, grateful Jewish nationalists refueled his campaign coffers with a reported $400,000 in cash ($3.6 million in 2010 dollars). Those funds helped transform his anticipated loss into a victory with support from pro-Israeli editorial boards that-after recognition-boosted Truman’s sagging popularity.

The Creation of Reliable Assets

Clark Clifford was rewarded with his career goal when he emerged as a top-paid Washington lawyer. After proving himself a pliable personality, he remained a reliable asset. During the G.H.W. Bush presidency, his combination of political prominence and perceived credibility provided cover for a massive bank fraud involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International aided by Roger Altman, his Ashkenazi law partner.

In 2009, Hollywood released an action thriller (The International) starring Clive Owen and a similar storyline involving the International Bank of Business and Credit. Neither Clifford nor Altman had experience in banking when their law firm enabled what prosecutors charged was a global criminal operation.

Media reports described the BCCI scheme as the largest bank fraud in history. This $20 billion transnational operation even featured the requisite Hollywood component: Clifford’s protégé was married to Lynda Carter, the star of Wonder Woman, a 1970s fantasy-adventure television series.

The real fantasy in this long-running geopolitical fraud lies in why U.S. lawmakers continue to befriend and defend a “nation” that has for so long-and so consistently-deceived and betrayed its most loyal ally. As a badly miscast Eva Marie Saint asked in her most memorable line in Exodus: “When will it ever end?”

The greatest wonder will be if, based on facts confirming the depth and duration of this duplicity, those lawmakers urging continued support for Israel are not charged with treason. [See: “How the Israel Lobby Took Control of U.S. Foreign Policy”]

To restore its national security, the U.S. must shake off its entangled alliance with this extremist enclave. “Shaking off” is the literal translation of “intifada.” Those who know the true facts behind this trans-generational deception are quickly reaching the conclusion that the recognition of this enclave as a legitimate state was key to this ongoing fraud. Others may be waiting for the movie, American Intifada.

Source



February 7, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | 1 Comment

The media’s tall tales over Iraq

Ann Clwyd’s false claims that Saddam used a people shredder was as dangerous a justification for war as Blair’s dodgy dossier

By Brendan O’Neill | guardian.co.uk | 4 February 2010

Why did Ann Clwyd get such an easy ride during her appearance at the Chilcot inquiry this week, from both m’luds and the media? Clwyd is at least as complicit as her former boss Tony Blair in the dissemination of tall tales designed to justify the attack on Iraq.

Clwyd is Labour MP for Cynon Valley and head of Indict, a group that campaigned for many years for the arrest and punishment of Saddam Hussein and his cronies under international law. On the eve of the Iraq War – 18 March 2003 to be precise – Clwyd wrote an article for the Times in which she claimed that Saddam had a people-shredding machine.

Apparently the Ba’athists would dump their opponents into a machine “designed for shredding plastic”, and later put their minced remains into “plastic bags” so they could eventually be used as “fish food”.

It gets worse: apparently these unfortunate men were put into the shredder feet first so that they could briefly behold their own mutilation before death.

Not surprisingly, Clwyd’s shocking claims spread around the world like a virus. The then prime minister of Australia, John Howard, talked of Saddam’s “human-shredding machine” in a speech justifying his decision to send troops to Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz, the Bush administration’s hawkish deputy defence secretary, expressed his admiration for Clwyd’s article and a link to it was posted on the US state department’s website. Numerous pro-war journalists repeated Clwyd’s claims.

There was only one problem: there was no strong evidence, and there still isn’t, that Saddam had anything like a people-shredding machine.

When I investigated this story for the Spectator and the Guardian in early 2004, I found no convincing evidence that such a medieval-sounding contraption ever existed.

It seems Clwyd based her story on the uncorroborated claims of one individual from northern Iraq. Neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch, in their numerous investigations into human rights abuses in Iraq, had ever heard anyone talk of a human-shredding machine.

Worst of all for Clwyd, I interviewed one of the Iraqi doctors whose grisly job was to examine the bodies of executed prisoners at Abu Ghraib, where the shredder was allegedly based, and he said no prisoner was ever killed by being shredded. And for the record, he really hated the Ba’athist regime.

It’s worth remembering the role that Clwyd’s claims played back in mid-March 2003. There was widespread opposition to the war, as evidenced by the million-strong march in Hyde Park in February 2003.

People were already asking questions about the “dodgy dossier” and Blair’s claims about WMD. The story of the shredder seemed designed to jolt us all out of our stupidity and convince us to back the government’s war against evil. As the headline on Clwyd’s article in the Times put it: “See men shredded, then say you don’t back war.”

The shredder story was used in a last-ditch effort to change people’s minds. As Trevor Kavanagh at the Sun rather wishfully argued: “British resistance to war changed when we learned how sadist Saddam … fed dissidents feet first into industrial shredders.” If Blair’s dodgy dossier was cynically used to drum up support in the run-up to the invasion, then Clwyd’s shredder story was cynically used to batter the last bit of war-scepticism out of the British public.

And yet Clwyd has not been subjected to anything like the same level of media criticism as Blair has been. This points to a problem with the way we remember the Iraq war. In the mythical version of events that is being promoted by the media off the back of the Chilcot inquiry, Blair, and his evil sidekick Alastair Campbell, single-handedly duped the cabinet, parliament, the media and some of the public into supporting the war.

The truth is that it wasn’t only Blair who was spreading tall tales, and much of the media wasn’t nearly as critical as it should have been of the Bush/Blair drive to war. Clwyd’s appearance at the Chilcot inquiry was an opportunity to remind ourselves that Blair was not a superhuman warper of rational-mindedness and that the Iraq-related hysteria spread far beyond his coterie of advisers. Unfortunately, we’ve wasted this opportunity.

February 7, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Former IPCC Chairman says UN panel is losing credibility

Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor | The Sunday Times | February 7, 2010

A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.

Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.

The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.

This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.

The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report.

This report is the IPCC’s most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers. Its lead authors include Pachauri himself.

In it he wrote: “By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%. Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised.” The same claims have since been cited in speeches to world leaders by Pachauri and Ban.

Speaking at the 2008 global climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Pachauri said: “In some countries of Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50% by 2020.” In a speech last July, Ban said: “Yields from rain-fed agriculture could fall by half in some African countries over the next 10 years.”

Speaking this weekend, Field said: “I was not an author on the Synthesis Report but on reading it I cannot find support for the statement about African crop yield declines.”

Watson said such claims should be based on hard evidence. “Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change. I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report,” he said.

The claims in the Synthesis Report go back to the IPCC’s report on the global impacts of climate change. It warns that all Africa faces a long-term threat from farmland turning to desert and then says of north Africa, “additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000-20 period, and reductions in crop growth period (Agoumi, 2003)”.

“Agoumi” refers to a 2003 policy paper written for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a Canadian think tank. The paper was not peer-reviewed.

Its author was Professor Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan climate expert who looked at the potential impacts of climate change on Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. His report refers to the risk of “deficient yields from rain-based agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000–20 period”.

These claims refer to other reports prepared by civil servants in each of the three countries as submissions to the UN. These do not appear to have been peer-reviewed either.

The IPCC is also facing criticism over its reports on how sea level rise might affect Holland. Dutch ministers have demanded that it correct a claim that more than half of the Netherlands lies below sea level when, in reality, it is about a quarter.

The errors seem likely to bring about change at the IPCC. Field said: “The IPCC needs to investigate a more sophisticated approach for dealing with emerging errors.”

February 7, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?

The “Coca Cola conspiracy” and the obesity epidemic

Written by Atheo | Aletho News | February 7, 2010

In the late 1960’s the US, through conventional hybridization techniques, succeeded in creating new types of corn, dramatically increasing yield per acre by reducing the space required per plant as well as increasing the number of ears per stalk. This development was seen as a phenomenal opportunity for the nation with the world’s greatest capacity of corn production. All that was needed was a way to increase demand for corn. Although shifting the Western diet to grits was not likely, there were other options.

Corn fed hogs and Chicken would now become less expensive to produce in confined animal feeding operations which would later proliferate. But due to the inherent inefficiency of converting grain calories into animal calories the development of processed foods that use corn itself and not animal products would be far more profitable than selling pork or chicken.

Corn syrup and corn syrup solids had seen their uses multiply under the post WWII “better living through chemistry” paradigm. Now they would also be much cheaper to produce. In 1973, Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, altered US farm policy to permanently subsidize the increased production of corn, opening a new era in which corn-based processed foods would become far cheaper than their rivals. The convenience and fast food industries were poised to take off. Soft drinks that cost pennies to produce could be marketed at fantastic profit. Corn derivatives would find their way into virtually every processed food.

In the video below, Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the physical damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) are the cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin.

The processed foods industry knew that their products would cause an epidemic of obesity among their customers, but they also realized that their bottom line would grow exponentially. The FDA and USDA provided all the cover needed and then some by pointing the finger in the wrong direction. Saturated fat was demonized as a health hazard despite the fact that it had been a major part of traditional diets for the entirety of recorded history among most European cultures.

Subsequently, while Americans reduced the percentage of calories from fats in their diets to 30% from 40%, rates of obesity and cardio-vascular disease steadily increased.

The “low-fat” foods fad was a complete fraud. Convincing consumers to choose “lite” products allowed producers to substitute high fructose corn syrup for the relatively expensive saturated fat content in their products. The industrial trans-fats which were combined with the corn syrup turned out to actually increase the risk of cardio-vascular disease when compared to the consumption of saturated fats. These developments would have enormous implications for public health not just in the US but worldwide over the ensuing decades. The damage would eventually become too great to conceal.

In April 2009 Harvard School of Public Health issued a press release revealing the following research results:

Strong evidence developed at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and elsewhere shows that sugary drinks are an important contributor to the epidemic rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes in the United States. Faced with these growing public health threats, experts from the Department of Nutrition at HSPH believe beverage manufacturers, government, schools, work sites and homes must take action to help Americans choose healthier drinks. They propose that manufacturers create a class of reduced-calorie beverages that have no more than 1 gram of sugar per ounce-about 70 percent less sugar than a typical soft drink-and that are free of non-caloric sweeteners. They also propose that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) require beverage manufacturers to put calorie information for the entire bottle-not just for a single serving-on the front of drink labels. […]

Americans consume sugary beverages in staggering amounts. On a typical day, four out of five children and two out of three adults drink sugar-sweetened beverages. Teen boys drink more than a quart of sugary drinks, on average, every day. A 12-ounce can of soda or juice typically has 10-12 teaspoons of sugar and 150 or more calories; the popular 20-ounce bottle size now prevalent on store shelves and in vending machines carries nearly 17 teaspoons of sugar and 250 calories. According to research at HSPH and elsewhere, sugared beverages are the leading source of added sugar in the diet of young Americans. If a person drank one can of a sugary beverage every day for a year and didn’t cut back on calories elsewhere, the result could be a weight gain of up to 15 pounds.

Consuming sugary drinks may have other harmful health outcomes: The latest research from HSPH published in the April issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, followed the health of 90,000 women over two decades and found that women who drank more than two servings of sugary beverages each day had a nearly 40 percent higher risk of heart disease than women who rarely drank sugary beverages.

They make the following recommendations:

Individuals: Choose beverages with few or no calories; water is best. Call manufacturers’ customer service numbers and ask them to make sugar-reduced drinks.

Food shoppers: Purchase less juice and cross the soda off your home shopping list. Skip the “fruit drinks” too, since these are basically flavored sugar-water.

Schools and workplaces: Offer several healthy beverage choices and smaller serving sizes. Also make sure water is freely available.

Government: The FDA should require companies to list the number of calories per bottle or can-not per serving-on the front of beverage containers.

In January of 2010 the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition released the following abstract of a newly completed study which finds no link between saturated fat intake and heart disease:

  • Background: A reduction in dietary saturated fat has generally been thought to improve cardiovascular health.
  • Objective: The objective of this meta-analysis was to summarize the evidence related to the association of dietary saturated fat with risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, and cardiovascular disease (CVD; CHD inclusive of stroke) in prospective epidemiologic studies.
  • Design: Twenty-one studies identified by searching MEDLINE and EMBASE databases and secondary referencing qualified for inclusion in this study. A random-effects model was used to derive composite relative risk estimates for CHD, stroke, and CVD.
  • Results: During 5–23 y of follow-up of 347,747 subjects,11,006 developed CHD or stroke. Intake of saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk of CHD, stroke, or CVD.The pooled relative risk estimates that compared extreme quantiles of saturated fat intake were 1.07 (95% CI: 0.96, 1.19; P = 0.22)for CHD, 0.81 (95% CI: 0.62, 1.05; P = 0.11) for stroke, and1.00 (95% CI: 0.89, 1.11; P = 0.95) for CVD. Consideration of age, sex, and study quality did not change the results.
  • Conclusions: A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD. More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat.

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Update:

Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain

By Hilary Parker | News at Princeton | March 22, 2010

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.

“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”

In results published online Feb. 26 by the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, the researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute reported on two experiments investigating the link between the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and obesity.

The first study showed that male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas.

The second experiment — the first long-term study of the effects of high-fructose corn syrup consumption on obesity in lab animals — monitored weight gain, body fat and triglyceride levels in rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup over a period of six months. Compared to animals eating only rat chow, rats on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup showed characteristic signs of a dangerous condition known in humans as the metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, significant increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition, especially visceral fat around the belly. Male rats in particular ballooned in size: Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet.

“These rats aren’t just getting fat; they’re demonstrating characteristics of obesity, including substantial increases in abdominal fat and circulating triglycerides,” said Princeton graduate student Miriam Bocarsly. “In humans, these same characteristics are known risk factors for high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer and diabetes.” In addition to Hoebel and Bocarsly, the research team included Princeton undergraduate Elyse Powell and visiting research associate Nicole Avena, who was affiliated with Rockefeller University during the study and is now on the faculty at the University of Florida. The Princeton researchers note that they do not know yet why high-fructose corn syrup fed to rats in their study generated more triglycerides, and more body fat that resulted in obesity.

High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose are both compounds that contain the simple sugars fructose and glucose, but there at least two clear differences between them. First, sucrose is composed of equal amounts of the two simple sugars — it is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose — but the typical high-fructose corn syrup used in this study features a slightly imbalanced ratio, containing 55 percent fructose and 42 percent glucose. Larger sugar molecules called higher saccharides make up the remaining 3 percent of the sweetener. Second, as a result of the manufacturing process for high-fructose corn syrup, the fructose molecules in the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized.

This creates a fascinating puzzle. The rats in the Princeton study became obese by drinking high-fructose corn syrup, but not by drinking sucrose. The critical differences in appetite, metabolism and gene expression that underlie this phenomenon are yet to be discovered, but may relate to the fact that excess fructose is being metabolized to produce fat, while glucose is largely being processed for energy or stored as a carbohydrate, called glycogen, in the liver and muscles.

In the 40 years since the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup as a cost-effective sweetener in the American diet, rates of obesity in the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1970, around 15 percent of the U.S. population met the definition for obesity; today, roughly one-third of the American adults are considered obese, the CDC reported. High-fructose corn syrup is found in a wide range of foods and beverages, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise. On average, Americans consume 60 pounds of the sweetener per person every year.

“Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic,” Avena said.

The new research complements previous work led by Hoebel and Avena demonstrating that sucrose can be addictive, having effects on the brain similar to some drugs of abuse.

In the future, the team intends to explore how the animals respond to the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in conjunction with a high-fat diet — the equivalent of a typical fast-food meal containing a hamburger, fries and soda — and whether excessive high-fructose corn syrup consumption contributes to the diseases associated with obesity. Another step will be to study how fructose affects brain function in the control of appetite.

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Update #2:

The Brutally Honest Coca-Cola Commercial You’ll Never See On Television

By Arjun Walia | Collective Evolution | September 17, 2013

Coca-Cola plans to run its very first ad defending aspartame and the safety of artificial sweeteners. This move comes as a result of a dramatic drop in diet cola sales within the past year. This is great news as it goes to show how much of an impact we can really make by raising awareness about the health effects of aspartame. More people around the world are making better choices and you can read more about that and the dangers associated with the Coke here.

I came across this video and thought it would be appropriate to share in light of Coca-Cola’s recent move to bring awareness to and “join together” in fighting obesity. This comes before their more recent ad campaign to defend artificial sweeteners like aspartame. It’s the brutally honest Coca-Cola commercial you’ll never see on television. This is a voiced over version of the original Coke commercial which you can see here.

Update #3:

FDA Bans Trans Fats

Bloomberg | June 16, 2015

Artificial trans fat will be removed from the U.S. food supply over the next three years under a ruling by regulators that the products pose health risks that contribute to heart disease.

There’s no longer a scientific consensus that partially hydrogenated oils, the main source of trans fat, are generally recognized as safe, according to a final decision released Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration. The oils are used for frying and in baked goods as well as in confections.

Food companies will be able to petition the FDA to gain approval of specific uses of partially hydrogenated oils if they have data proving the use isn’t harmful. Companies will have until June 2018 to comply with the FDA’s determination, either by removing trans fat or gaining a waiver. The FDA said it hasn’t seen any data to prove that even low levels of partially hydrogenated oils are safe. … Full article

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Also by Atheo:

January 9, 2012

Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA

November 13, 2011

US forces to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria

September 19, 2011

Bush regime retread, Philip Zelikow, appointed to Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board

March 8, 2011

Investment bankers salivate over North Africa

January 2, 2011

Top Israel Lobby Senator Proposes Permanent US Air Bases For Afghanistan

October 10, 2010

A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance

July 5, 2010

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

February 25, 2010

Look out for the nuclear bomb coming with your electric bill

January 5, 2010 – Updated February 16, 2010:

Biodiesel flickers out leaving investors burned

December 26, 2009

Mining the soil: Biomass, the unsustainable energy source

December 19, 2009

Carbonphobia, the real environmental threat

December 4, 2009

There’s more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

May 9, 2009

Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby

February 6, 2010 Posted by | Author: Atheo, Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , , | 29 Comments

AP misquoted UN Sec’y Gen’l as praising Israel

By Philip Weiss | February 6, 2010 | Excerpt

Last night the New York Times printed an AP story about the United Nations’ followup to the Goldstone report, titled “UN Chief Praises Israel Probe of Its Gaza Actions.”

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in a 72-page report Thursday night to the General Assembly that ”Israel followed up on every allegation.”

It turns out the Secretary-General never said that. Israel said it.

In today’s briefing at the UN, the UN made the point that Ban Ki-moon said no such thing. It explained that the 72-page report was mostly Israel’s report. It included just three pages from the Sec’y Gen’l.

The Spokesperson noted that in the document submitted by the Secretary-General to the General Assembly on the Goldstone report, only the first three pages are written by the Secretary-General and the Secretariat.

The remainder of the document consists of annexes containing information provided, respectively, by the Government of Israel, the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine and the Permanent Mission of Switzerland.

Confused? Here is the 72-page UN report released yesterday. The Secy Gen’l’s judgment at the start is noncommital:

It is my sincere hope that General Assembly resolution 64/10 has served to encourage investigations by the Government of Israel and the Palestinian side that are independent, credible and in conformity with international standards. I note from the materials received that the processes initiated by the Government of Israel and the Government of Switzerland are ongoing… As such, no determination can be made on the implementation of the resolution by the parties concerned.

The long Israeli response follows (and is not clearly identified). In paragraph 185, Israel pats itself on the back:

Because Israel followed up on every allegation, regardless of whether the source was neutral, hostile, or friendly, it launched investigations into 150 separate incidents, including 36 criminal investigations opened thus far.

AP seems to have revised its coverage. But as Mark Twain said, a lie goes around the world in the time it takes the truth to tie its shoes.

This discovery was published at reddit, which says that the mistake demonstrates pro-Israel bias in the press.

Source

February 6, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

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