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Why chuckles greeted Hillary’s Gulf tour

By Rami G. Khouri | February 17, 2010

American secretaries of state have been coming to the Middle East to create all sorts of complex alliances against Iran for most of my recent happy life, but every time this show passes through our region I learn again the meaning of the phrase “lack of credibility.” Hillary Clinton is the latest to undertake this mission, and like her predecessors her comments are often difficult to take seriously.

We are told that her trip to the region has two main aims: to strengthen Arab resolve to join the United States and others in imposing harsh new sanctions to stop Iran’s nuclear development program; and to harness Arab support for resumed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. In both of these critical diplomatic initiatives the US has taken the lead and achieved zero results. Either the actors involved – Arabs, Israelis, Iranians – are all chronically, even chromosomally, dysfunctional (for which there is some evidence) or the US is particularly inept when assuming leadership.

The weakness in both cases, I suspect, has to do with the US trying to define diplomatic outcomes that suit its own strategic objectives and political biases (especially pro-Israel domestic sentiments). So Washington pushes, pulls, cajoles and threatens all the players with various diplomatic instruments, except the one that will work most efficiently in both the Iranian and Arab-Israeli cases: serious negotiations with the principal parties, based on applying the letter of the law, and responding equally to the rights, concerns and demands of all sides.

Two Clinton statements during her Gulf trip this week were particularly revealing of why Washington continues to fail in its missions in our region. The first was her expression of concern that Iran is turning into a military dictatorship: “We see that the government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the Parliament, is being supplanted, and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship,” Clinton said.

Half a century of American foreign policy flatly contradicts this sentiment (which is why Clinton heard soft chuckles and a few muffled guffaws as she spoke). The US has adored military dictatorships in the Arab world, and has long supported states dominated by the shadowy world of intelligence services. This became even more obvious after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when Washington intensified cooperation with Arab intelligence services in the fight against Al-Qaeda and other terror groups.

Washington’s closest allies in the Middle East are military and police states where men with guns rule, and where citizens are confined to shopping, buying cellular telephones, and watching soap operas on satellite television. Countries like Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Libya, as well as the entire Gulf region and other states are devoted first and foremost to maintaining domestic order and regime incumbency through efficient, multiple security agencies, for which they earn American friendship and cooperation. When citizens in these and other countries agitate for more democratic and human rights, the US is peculiarly inactive and quiet.

If Iran is indeed becoming a military dictatorship, this probably qualifies it for American hugs and aid rather than sanctions and threats. Clinton badly needs some more credible talking points than opposing military dictatorships. (Extra credit question for hard-core foreign policy analysts: Why is it that when Turkey slipped out of military rule into civilian democratic governance, it became more critical of the US and Israel?)

The second intriguing statement during Clinton’s Gulf visit was about Iran’s neighbors having three options for dealing with the “threat” from Iran: “They can just give in to the threat; or they can seek their own capabilities, including nuclear; or they ally themselves with a country like the United States that is willing to help defend them. I think the third is by far the preferable option.”

This sounds reasonable, but it is not an accurate description of the actual options that the Arab Gulf states have. It is mostly a description of how American and Israeli strategic concerns and slightly hysterical biases are projected onto the Gulf states’ worldviews. These states in fact have a fourth option, which is to negotiate seriously a modus vivendi with Iran that removes the “threat” from their perceptions of Iran by affirming the core rights and strategic needs of both sides, thus removing mutual threat perceptions.

This is exactly the same option the US used when it negotiated détente and the Helsinki Accords with the Soviet Union (and whose results ultimately brought about the collapse of Communism). Why the US does not use the same sensible approach to the perceived threat from Iran is hard to explain. Perhaps two reasons explain it: Washington would have to deal with Iran (and other defiant Middle Easterners) through negotiations rather than haughty neo-colonialism; and, Israel would have to submit to nuclear inspections and end its aggressive behavior.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice-weekly by THE DAILY STAR.

February 18, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Some Straight Thinking About Iran

By Philip Giraldi | February 18, 2010

The Annual Threat Assessment overview was released by the office of the Director of National Intelligence on February 2nd.  A forty-seven page unclassified version includes a page and a half on Iran’s proliferation threat.  It raises legitimate concerns about Iran’s doubling of its number of operating centrifuges (while conceding that as many as half might not be working) and regarding what it describes as the secret nuclear facility near Qom.  Apart from that, it supports the conclusions of the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program and had not made the political decision to start it up again.

One would think it would be good news that the Iranian nuclear program has not really advanced since 2007, but something strange is happening.  The Obama Administration has intensified pressure on Iran with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denouncing what she sees as the Iranian government’s increased militarization.  The mainstream media, meanwhile, has not reported the conclusions of the Annual Threat Assessment while there has been instead considerable commentary about how Iran is moving closer to having a nuclear weapon together with calls for harsh sanctions.  The Washington Times and Newsweek are also reporting that the US intelligence community will soon finish a second NIE on Iran that will revise the conclusions of the December 2007 document.  If their information is correct, the forthcoming NIE will emphasize that Iran is moving towards the point where it will have all the technical requirements in place to put together a nuclear weapon if the country’s political leadership decides to proceed.  This is a spin that is somewhat different than the Annual Threat Assessment, which is presumably written by the same analysts using the same information.  Admittedly, as the political go-ahead might never be given, all the intelligence really suggests is that Iran could soon join a large number of other countries that have the technical capability to make a nuclear weapon.  Of those countries there are some – mostly in Europe — that clearly have no interest in nuclear weapons development while others could move rapidly into a weapon program if their circumstances seem to demand it.  Iran is far from unique.  Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia all have the technological resources to develop nuclear weapons on an expedited basis if they found themselves threatened.

So the Annual Threat Assessment and the possibly forthcoming NIE would really only confirm the 2007 NIE’s judgment that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, does not appear to have an in-place weapons program, and is still several years away from having a nuclear device even if the political decision is made to proceed.  If there is a new NIE it will not really change anything, but there is clearly a political agenda playing out that is driving the process.  One might even suggest that the timing is somewhat reminiscent of the infamous 2002 “slam dunk” Iraq NIE that falsely made the case for war by hyping phony evidence of weapons of mass destruction.  In this case, the conclusions are not as important as the report’s appearance at a crucial time when negotiations between Tehran and the West have broken down and Washington is pushing hard to pressure Iran.  The surfacing of a new assessment that is already being spun to heighten the threat will inevitably increase concerns about a possible Iranian weapons program and provide ammunition to those who are seeking a more assertive US policy.  By its very existence, the new NIE will also provide a measure of credibility for the Obama administration, which has relentlessly been making the case that Iran is intent on acquiring a nuclear weapon, a conclusion that is not supported by the available intelligence.

That the drive to punish Iran has been supported in Congress and the media is perhaps no coincidence, suggesting that the effort is being coordinated by those who want war.  At the end of January, by an overwhelming voice vote, the US Senate joined the House of Representatives in passing a resolution demanding sanctions on Iran’s energy imports.  A joint resolution that will go to President Obama is currently being crafted and is expected soon.  The resolution could well give Obama the political cover he needs to advocate even more draconian measures against Iran and its rulers.  From the Iranian viewpoint, it is pretty much a declaration of war.

Why is Iran the target of so much rage even though it has not threatened the United States or any vital American interest?  Influence over Congress and the media from Israel and its friends is surely a large part of the answer.  How else can one explain the different treatment afforded Iran and North Korea given Pyongyang’s open development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles?  Unlike North Korea, Iran continues to be a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its nuclear sites are inspected by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.  Iran is a developing country with a small economy and tiny defense budget and it has not invaded a neighbor since the eighteenth century.  It does not even have the resources to refine its own oil for home consumption and must import the gasoline it uses.  If the proposed Congressional sanctions are fully implemented the country’s economy will grind to a halt, but the damage does not stop there.  Iran deals with many European and Asian companies in its energy industry, all of which would be sanctioned by the US if they do not break off relations.  They might not like that and might well take commensurate steps against the United States.  Ultimately, the United States Navy might have to enforce the sanctions.  What would happen when a Chinese or Russian ship is stopped on the high seas?  Did the US Congress really think about what it was doing and what the consequences of sanctions might be?

And the irony is that the United States has a problem with Iran that has largely been manufactured in Washington and in Tel Aviv.  Even though Tehran does not actually threaten the US, Washington has been supporting terrorists and separatists who have killed hundreds of people inside Iran.  Israel, which has its own secret nuclear arsenal, claims to be threatened if Iran develops even the ability to concentrate its uranium referred to as “mastering the enrichment cycle,” a point of view that has also been adopted by Washington.  The White House has made repeated threats that the military option for dealing with Tehran is “on the table” while Israel has been even more explicit in its threats to attack.  Meanwhile, the US mainstream media is united in its desire to come to grips with the Mullahs.

It is no wonder that Iran feels threatened, because it is.  To be sure, Iran is no role model for good governance but a desire to deal with the country fairly and realistically is not an endorsement of the regime in power.  Iran is engaged diplomatically and through surrogates in the entire Persian Gulf region and central Asia, supporting its friends and seeking to undermine its enemies.  But that does not make it different than any of its neighbors and the United States, all of which play the same game.  The bottom line is that the US has been interfering in Iran since 1978 and even before if one goes back to the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadeq by the CIA in 1953.  The interference has accomplished nothing and has only created a poisonous relationship that Barack Obama has done little to improve.  Indeed, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s harsh rhetoric suggests that when it comes to Iran the Democrats are more hardline than George W. Bush.

Imagine for a moment what might happen if Washington were to adopt a serious foreign policy based on the US national interest.  That would mean strict non-interventionism in troubled regions like the Middle East where the US has everything to lose and little to gain.  It would be the real change promised by Obama if Washington were to admit that it is not threatened by Tehran and were to declare that it will not interfere in Iran’s politics. It could further announce that it no longer has a military option on the table, and that it will not permit Israeli overflight of Iraq to attack Iran.  Iran’s leaders just might decide that they don’t really need their own “option on the table” which has been the threat that they might seek to develop a nuclear weapon.  And an Iran that feels more secure might well be willing to take some risks itself to defuse tension with its neighbors and Washington.  In 2003 Iran offered to negotiate all outstanding differences with the United States, an offer that was turned down by the Bush White House.

So the big question about Iran is not whether or not it has the knowledge and resources to build an atom bomb.  It does or will soon.  The real issue is whether the United States is actually threatened by that knowledge and what should be done in terms of positive policies to discourage an expanded nuclear program.  The United States should first of all recognize that, as the world’s only superpower, it controls the playing field.  It is up to Washington to take the first steps to defuse the crisis that is building by offering Tehran the security guarantees that might undercut the influence of those in its government who seek a nuclear weapon deterrent.  Punishing Iran is no solution.  It will not work, closes the door to diplomacy, and will only make the worst case scenario that much more likely.  Opening the door to a rapprochement by eliminating the threatening language coming out of Washington and creating incentives for cooperation is a far better course of action.

Source

February 18, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | 1 Comment

Report omits cancer chemical in Marines’ water

Press TV – February 18, 2010

The level of a cancer-causing chemical found in tap water at a military base in North Carolina was intentionally not reported, an AP review finds.

An environmental contractor deliberately did not report the level of the dangerously high levels of benzene at Camp Lejeune for a federal health review.

Benzene has been traced to massive leaks from fuel tanks at the base, according to recently disclosed studies.

For years, Marines who served at Camp Lejeune on the North Carolina coast have blamed their families’ cancers and other ailments on tap water tainted by dry cleaning solvents, and many accuse the military of covering it up.

A July 1984 report said benzene was found 380 parts per billion in the water supply. In 1991 another contractor warned the Navy of the health hazards posed by such levels of benzene.

By 1992 a third contractor, the Michael Baker Corp., released a draft report on the feasibility of fixing the overall problem. The citing of the 1984 level of 380 parts per billion changed to 38 parts per billion.

One sample from a series of tests conducted from June 2007 to August 2009 registered 3,490 parts per billion, according to a report from a fourth contractor.

Kyla Bennett, who spent 10 years as an enforcement officer for the Environmental Protection Agency before becoming an ecologist and environmental attorney, reviewed the different reports and said it was difficult to conclude innocent mistakes were made in the Baker Corp. documents.

“It is weird that it went from 380 to 38 and then it disappeared entirely,” she said. “It does support the contention that they did do it deliberately.”

David Higie, a spokesman for Baker Corp., declined to discuss the company’s reports or why its employees might have revised the benzene levels. He has referred questions to the military.

Source

February 18, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism, Militarism | 1 Comment

Obama’s atomic blunder

By Harvey Wasserman | Online Journal | February 18, 2010

As Vermont seethes with radioactive contamination and the Democratic Party crumbles, Barack Obama has plunged into the atomic abyss.

In the face of fierce green opposition and withering scorn from both liberal and conservative budget hawks, Obama has done what George W. Bush could not — pledge billions of taxpayer dollars for a relapse of the 20th century’s most expensive technological failure.

Obama has announced some $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for two new reactors planned for Georgia. Their Westinghouse AP-1000 designs have been rejected by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as being unable to withstand natural cataclysms like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.

The Vogtle site was to originally host four reactors at a total cost of $600 million; it wound up with two at $9 billion.

The Southern Company which wants to build these two new reactors has cut at least one deal with Japanese financiers set to cash in on American taxpayer largess. The interest rate on the federal guarantees remains bitterly contested. The funding is being debated between at least five government agencies, and may well be tested in the courts. It’s not clear whether union labor will be required and what impact that might have on construction costs.

The Congressional Budget Office and other analysts warn the likely failure rate for government-backed reactor construction loans could be in excess of 50 percent. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu has admitted he was unaware of the CBO’s report when he signed on to the Georgia guarantees.

Over the past several years the estimated price tag for proposed new reactors has jumped from $2-3 billion each in some cases to more than $12 billion today. The chair of the NRC currently estimates it at $10 billion, well before a single construction license has been issued, which will take at least a year.

Energy experts at the Rocky Mountain Institute and elsewhere estimate that a dollar invested in increased efficiency could save as much as seven times as much energy than one invested in nuclear plants can produce, while producing 10 times as many permanent jobs.

Georgia has been targeted largely because its regulators have demanded ratepayers put up the cash for the reactors as they’re being built. Florida and Georgia are among a small handful of states taxing electric consumers for projects that cannot come on line for many years, and that may never deliver a single electron of electricity.

Two Florida Public Service commissioners, recently appointed by Republican Governor Charlie Crist (now a candidate for the US Senate), helped reject over a billion dollars in rate hikes demanded by Florida Power & Light and Progress Energy, both of which want to build double-reactors at ratepayer expense. The utilities now say they’ll postpone the projects proposed for Turkey Point and Levy County.

In 2005, the Bush administration set aside some $18.5 billion for reactor loan guarantees, but the Department of Energy has been unable to administer them. Obama wants an additional $36 billion to bring the fund up to $54.5 billion. Proposed projects in South Carolina, Maryland and Texas appear to be next in line.

But the NRC has raised serious questions about Toshiba-owned Westinghouse’s AP-1000 slated for Georgia’s Vogtle site, as well as for South Carolina and Turkey Point. The French-made EPR design proposed for Maryland has been challenged by regulators in Finland, France and Great Britain. In Texas, a $4 billion price jump has sparked a political upheaval in San Antonio and elsewhere, throwing the future of that project in doubt.

Taxpayers are also on the hook for potential future accidents from these new reactors. In 1957, the industry promised Congress and the country that nuclear technology would quickly advance to the point that private insurers would take on the liability for any future disaster, which could by all serious estimates run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Only $11 billion has been set aside to cover the cost of such a catastrophe. But now the industry says it will not build even this next generation of plants without taxpayers underwriting liability for future accidents. Thus the “temporary” program could ultimately stretch out to a full century or more.

In the interim, Obama has all but killed Nevada’s proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. He has appointed a commission of nuclear advocates to “investigate” the future of high-level reactor waste. But after 53 years, the industry is further from a solution than ever.

Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has reported that at least 27 of America’s 104 licensed reactors are now leaking radioactive tritium. The worst case may be Entergy’s Vermont Yankee, near the state’s southeastern border with New Hampshire and Massachusetts. High levels of contamination have been found in test wells around the reactor, and experts believe the Connecticut River is at serious risk.

A furious statewide grassroots campaign aims to shut the plant, whose license expires in 2012. A binding agreement between Entergy and the state gives the legislature the power to deny an extension. US Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VY) has demanded the plant close. The legislature may vote on it in a matter of days.

Obama has now driven a deep wedge between himself and the core of the environmental movement, which remains fiercely anti-nuclear. While reactor advocates paint the technology green, the opposition has been joined by fiscal conservatives like the National Taxpayer Institute, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

Reactor backers hailing a “renaissance” in atomic energy studiously ignore France’s catastrophic Olkiluoto project, now $3 billion over budget and three years behind schedule. Parallel problems have crippled another project at Flamanville, France, and are virtually certain to surface in the US.

The reactor industry has spent untold millions lobbying for this first round of loan guarantees. There’s no doubt it will seek far more in the coming months. Having failed to secure private American financing, the question will be: In a tight economy, how much public money will Congress throw at this obsolete technology?

The potential flow of taxpayer guarantees to Georgia means nuclear opponents now have a tangible target. Also guaranteed is ferocious grassroots opposition to financing, licensing and construction of this and all other new reactor proposals, as well as to continued operation of leaky rust bucket reactors like Vermont Yankee.

The “atomic renaissance” is still a very long way from going tangibly critical.

Source

February 18, 2010 Posted by | Nuclear Power | 3 Comments

Poland tightens military alliance with Israel

Ewa Jasiewicz, The Electronic Intifada, 17 February 2010

The Polish army’s announcement that it will buy seven Aerostar Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from Israel’s Aeronautics earlier this month was heralded as a step forward for Poland’s “stabilization” mission in Afghanistan. The UAV, or drone, has long been a key tool in the military arsenals of both the United States and Israel. The US leads the export market, followed by Israel, which as of last year was the planet’s third-biggest arms exporter, arming regimes around the world to the tune of $6.75 billion in 2009

The drone is more than simply a flying camera; it is killing machine in itself. American-made “Predator” and “Reaper” drones are currently used above Afghanistan and Pakistan and carry a payload of 200 kilograms — the weight of three adult men. In January 2010 alone, Predators killed 123 innocent civilians in Pakistan. During this period only two missiles hit their intended targets, in the extrajudicial killings of three al-Qaeda leaders.

Israel’s “Hermes 450” drone was used extensively during the invasion of Gaza last winter, dubbed “Operation Cast Lead” by the Israeli military. Like its American counterparts, the Hermes can also fire missiles, including the “Spike” missile which weighs up to 150 kilograms. Despite being defined as a “battlefield reconnaissance” weapon, drone-launched missiles were the biggest single cause of death during the 23-day invasion. According to Palestinian human rights organization Al Mezan, 519 persons — more than a third of the total casualties — were killed by UAVs. The next closest were 473 Palestinians killed by Israeli warplanes, including American-made F-16s.

The majority of Palestinians killed during the invasion were civilians. Palestinian medics reported a preponderance of civilian deaths by drones — families like the Berbakhs in Rafah who lost five members or the Abed Rabbo family’s six members who were killed by UAV-launched missiles. During the fighting it was common to find the mangled bodies of unarmed men cut down in the streets at night — victims of Israel’s UAV-enforced “aerial curfew.”

Poland’s military has embarked on a “Polonization of Israeli technology” drive, coupling Israeli weapons-manufacturing technology with Polish manpower and raw materials. Poland’s Bumar Group has a 10-year offset deal worth $400 million with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to produce Spike missiles for drones and helicopter gunships. Under the deal, Rafael must accept Polish components in its own weapons.

The Spike missiles are currently produced at the ZM Mesko factory in southern Poland. During the Second World War Mesko was occupied by German forces and both Jewish Polish and Polish slave-workers manufactured ammunition for the Third Reich. According to the Israeli Embassy’s Defense Attache here, the venture at Mesko represents the most successful example of the Polonization of Israeli technology. He told this writer, “Now, 60 years after the Holocaust, this company is providing Israeli technologies with Polish manpower for the benefit of the whole world.” The residents of Afghanistan, Palestine and West Papua wouldn’t agree.

The current round of UAVs being sold to Poland are unarmed but will be used to guide F-16 bombing missions in Afghanistan. Poland, with 2,600 troops occupying the country is one of the US’s top ten biggest recipients of Foreign Military funding. Following the completion of a $3.8 billion contract for delivery of 42 F-16s in 2003, the US Air Force has been training Polish pilots how to use the new planes. According to Colonel Timothy Burke, Chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation at the US Embassy in Warsaw, “The pilots should be qualified in the next few years. Once training has been completed, they will be using the F-16s for aerial missions” armed with laser-guided, GPS-enabled “smart-weapons.”

The first Polish S-70i Blackhawk helicopter is also ready to roll this year. It is the product of a trilateral geopolitical military alliance comprised of Israel’s Elbit Systems, the US’s United Technology Corporation and Poland’s PZL Mielec. This alliance is expected to deepen in the coming years.

Israel has also given regular strategic and technical advice to the Polish military command. According to the Polish Ministry of Defense, between 1995 and 2009 there were more than 200 activities including mutual trainings of military units, exchange of expertise, courses, seminars and symposiums organized by the Polish-Israeli Working Group. The working group is comprised of officials from the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs of both countries.

Last autumn, Poland’s Chief of Staff Gen. Franciszek Gagor participated in a training session with Israeli defense specialists on lessons learned from “Cast Lead” and “how to deal with the headlines.” According to the Israeli government, “Information warfare is one of the most developed issues of the past two decades. We have built a structure in the Israeli Defense Forces which includes information warfare. Coping with media challenges is one of our biggest issues.”

The Polish Ministry of Defense’s Vision of the Armed Forces 2030 Plan has a similar structure including “Information Forces” to police enemy media. According to the plan, “The enemy shall use a broad range of mass media in order to support its actions. By diffusing images displaying inhumane aspects of military operations, suffering of the civilian population, including children and persons advanced in years, the enemy shall try to preserve perception of the intervention forces as occupying troops which do not respect human rights. Based on the ideology or religion, it will instill fear, feed hatred and strive for mobilization of the local and international public opinion against military forces and states fulfilling mandate of international organizations.”

By equating the broadcast of the horrific realities of war and particularly its effects on a civilian population with “propaganda” and de facto enemy activity, this policy risks censoring and criminalizing investigative journalism and respect for human rights and international law. We journalists and human rights activists could be the enemy. And if we step out of line, the “Information Forces” could whip us into shape as “The units shall be intended for offensive and defensive actions carried out in order to get information predominance over the enemy and to achieve expected military [political] results of the conducted operation.”

As modern warfare takes on an ever more aerial, alienated and indiscriminate approach to “the enemy,” governments are forcing us to keep our distance. Whether it is soldiers in bunkers guiding UAVs with joysticks or keeping the men, women and children being bombed by our militaries out of our sight through media gagging orders, it is ever more urgent that this distance be closed and those in charge of military policy be held accountable for their devastating results.

Ewa Jasiewicz is a co-Editor of Le Monde Diplomatique Polish Edition where a version of this article was originally published.

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February 17, 2010 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | 1 Comment

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment

A book review

By Dr. Rosalie Bertell | Global Research | February 12, 2010

This new publication of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (Volume 1181), by Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko, and Alexey Nesterenko, is the elucidation many of us have been waiting for since the 1986 disaster at the failed nuclear reactor in Ukraine.  Until now we have read about the published reports of limited spotty investigations by western scientists who undertook projects in the affected territories. Even the prestigious IAEA, WHO and UNSCEAR reports have been based on about 300 such western research papers, leaving out the findings of some 30,000 scientific papers prepared by scientists working and living in the stricken territories and suffering the everyday problems of residual contamination with nuclear debris and a contaminated food supply.

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment is wrtitten by Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenk and Alexey Nesterenko.  The senior author, Alexey Yablokov was head of the Russian Academy of Science under Gobachev – since then he receives no support.  Vassily Nesterenko, head of the Ukrainian Nuclear establishment at the time of the accident, flew over the burning reactor and took the only measurements.  In August 2009, he died as a result of radiation damage, but earlier, with help from Andrei Sakarov, was able to establish BELRAD to help children of the area.

The three scientists who assembled the information in the book from more than 5000 published articles and research findings, mostly available only within the former Soviet Union or Eastern block countries and not accessible in the West, are prestigious scientists who present objective facts clearly nuanced with little or no polemics. They were not encumbered by a desire to promote or excessively blame a failed technology.

The book was expertly translated into readable English by Janette Sherman, Medical Toxicologist and Adjunct Professor in the Environmental Institute at Western Michigan University.

Professor Dr. of Biology, Dimitro Grodzinsky, Chair of the Department of Biology of the Ukraine National Academy of Sciences, and member of the National Commission wrote the Forward to the book. His statement relative to Western reporting of the accident is illuminating:

“For a long time I have thought that the time has come to put an end to the opposition between technocracy advocates and those who support objective scientific efforts to estimate the negative risks for people exposed to the Chernobyl fallout. The basis for believing that these risks are not minor is very convincing.”

The government of the former Soviet Union previously classified many documents now accessible to the authors. For example, we now know that the number of people hospitalized for acute radiation sickness was more than a hundred times larger than the number recently quoted by the IAEA, WHO and UNSCEAR.  Unmentioned by the technocrats were the problems of “hot particles” of burning uranium that caused nasopharyngeal problems, and the radioactive fallout that resulted in general deterioration of the health of children, wide spread blood and lymph system diseases, reproductive loss, premature and small infant births, chromosomal mutations, congenital and developmental abnormalities, multiple endocrine diseases, mental disorders and cancer.

The authors systematically explain the secrecy conditions imposed by the government, the failure of technocrats to collect data on the number and distribution of all of the radionuclides of major concern, and the restrictions placed on physicians against calling any medical findings radiation related unless the patient had been a certified “acute radiation sickness” patient during the disaster, thus assuring that only 1% of injuries would be so reported.

This book is a “must read” for all of those bureaucrats currently promoting nuclear power as the only “solution” for climate change. Those who seek information on the disaster only from the official documentation provided by the IAEA, WHO and UNSCEAR need to broaden their reading to include the reality check from those scientists who have access to local findings and are simply telling the truth, with no hidden propaganda agenda.

I was impressed by the simple message of the cover of this volume, which shows a number of felled logs with clearly distinguishable colors of wood: before and after Chernobyl. The reader will find that the environment, living plants and animals all suffered ill effects from this experience, as did the human population. It should be a sobering read for all those who have believed the fiction that “low doses of radiation are harmless”, or that a severe nuclear accident is easily contained within the human environment.

Below is the New York Academy of Sciences site for the book. Unfortunately, its selling price is now about $150, which may limit its distribution.

http://www.nyas.org/Publications/Annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1

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February 17, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Nuclear Power | Leave a comment

The Savvy Mr. Blankfein

By Dean Baker | Center for Economic and Policy Research | February 15, 2010

Last week, when President Obama was asked about the $9 million dollar bonus for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, he described Mr. Blankfein as a savvy businessman, adding that Americans don’t begrudge people being rewarded for success. While Obama later qualified his comment about Mr. Blankfein and his fellow bank executives, it’s worth examining more closely some of the ways in which Blankfein and the Goldman gang were “savvy.”

Perhaps the Goldman gang’s best claim to savvy was in buying up hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgages and packaging them into mortgage-backed securities, and more complex derivative instruments, and selling them all over the world. Mr. Blankfein and Goldman earned tens of billions of dollars on these deals.

The great trick was that many of the loans put into these securities were issued fraudulently, with the banks filling in phony information so that borrowers could get loans that they would not be able to repay. But this was not Goldman’s concern. They made money on the packaging and the selling of the securities. Goldman did not care that the loans in their bundles might not be kosher.

In fact, Goldman actually recognized that many of these loans would go bad. So they went to the insurance giant AIG and got them to issue credit default swaps against many of the securities it had created. In effect they were betting that their own securities were garbage. Now that is savvy. (It says something else about the highly paid executives at AIG.)

Goldman doesn’t just confine its savvy to the U.S. economy; it shares it with the rest of the world as well. According to the New York Times, it worked closely with the Greek government over the last decade to help it conceal its budget deficit. The trick was to construct complex financial arrangements that appeared on the books as “swaps,” even though they were in fact loans. Greece was adding billions of dollars to its debt, and thanks to the ingenuity of the Goldman crew, no one knew about it until now.

But Goldman’s greatest triumph was to get the government to come to its rescue when the financial sector was melting down in the fall of 2008 as the housing bubble that they had helped to fuel began to collapse. Treasury Secretary and former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson rushed to Congress and demanded $700 billion for the banks, no questions asked. He dragged along Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke for support, along with Tim Geithner, then the important head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and now President Obama’s Treasury Secretary.

Using exaggerations and half-truths, this triumvirate convinced Congress that we would have a second Great Depression if it didn’t cough up the money immediately with no conditions. At that point Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and most of the other major banks were staring at bankruptcy. While this cascade of bank failures would have been bad news for the economy, there was no plausible scenario in which it would have led to a second Great Depression.

There was also no reason that Congress could not have put conditions on its money. For example, Congress could have dictated that as a condition of getting the money that bankers would get the same sort of paychecks as other workers, that they would get out of highly speculative activity, that the largest banks would be downsized and that the principle would be written down on bad mortgages. At that point, Congress could have told the bank honchos that they had to run around Wall Street naked with their underpants on their head. The bankers had no choice; their banks would crash and burn without government support.

But the savvy Mr. Blankfein and the other bankers got the money no questions asked. In fact, Goldman even got the government to pick up the bankrupt AIG’s debts. Thanks to the government’s intervention, Goldman got paid every penny on its bets with AIG. This came to $13 billion, enough money to pay for 4 million kid-years of health care under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

No one should doubt that Mr. Blankfein is a very savvy banker. Without his ingenuity Goldman Sachs would likely be out of business, its component divisions being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Instead it is making record profits and paying out record bonuses.

But unlike the successful ballplayers to whom President Obama compared Mr. Blankfein, Goldman’s success is inherently parasitic. It comes at the expense of taxpayers and the productive economy. Goldman and the other Wall Street banks are successful in the same way as the savvy Bernie Madoff was successful. It seems that President Obama must still decide whether he stands with the Wall Street banks or whether he stands with the workers and businesses who actually produce wealth.

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

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February 17, 2010 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

British MP Demands Israel Explain Role in Hamas Killing

Al-Manar | February 17, 2010

A senior British lawmaker called Wednesday for Israel’s ambassador to London to be summoned to the Foreign Office to explain how fake British passports were linked to the killers of a top Hamas figure.

Menzies Campbell, a member of the foreign affairs committee of the House of Commons, said answers were needed over “speculation” about the involvement of Israel’s Mossad secret service in the killing in Dubai last month.

“If the Israeli government was party to behavior of this kind, it would be a serious violation of trust between nations,” said Campbell, a former leader of Britain’s third biggest party, the Liberal Democrats.

“If legitimate British passport holders were put at risk it would be a disgrace… Given the current speculation, the Israeli government has some explaining to do and the ambassador should be summoned to the Foreign Office to do so in double-quick time.”

Another British lawmaker, Hugo Swire of the main opposition Conservatives, also demanded a “full investigation”. “These allegations against the Israeli government need to be answered… I have no evidence one way or another. I have read all the allegations and the denials. It is an easy allegation to make,” he said.
“This is not something that can just be swept under the carpet because of the bad feeling it is going to create in the Arab world. You cannot conduct foreign policy at this extremely sensitive time by this sort of illegal behavior,” he added.

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February 17, 2010 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | 6 Comments

Chilling memories of US mass murder

By Linda S. Heard | Online Journal | February 17, 2010

February 13 marked 19 years since the US bombing of Baghdad’s two-storey Al Amiriya bomb shelter when 480 civilians were literally incinerated by two American 2,000 pound laser-guided “smart bombs,” designed to penetrate multiple layers of concrete. Most of the victims were Iraqi, but there were also a number of Syrians, Jordanians, Palestinians and Egyptians who were consumed by the blasts.

It was 4:30 in the morning on February 13, 1991, when the pilots of two stealth bombers released their deadly cargo. Until then, the women, children and elderly inside had felt they were safe in the purpose-built facility designed to protect against nuclear attack — and equipped with bunk beds, televisions, bathrooms, kitchens and a clinic. Their spirits were high after celebrating Eid Al Fitr the previous evening, but some were worried about fathers, brothers and husbands who had remained in their homes to ensure that there was enough room in the shelter for their loved ones.

In the event, their own lives were tragically cut short. Those sheltering on the upper floor were burnt to death; in some instances their silhouettes — carbonised by high temperatures — were eerily seared onto the walls, including that of a woman clutching onto her baby. Most of those in the lower hall were killed by boiling water that gushed from the shelter’s two enormous water tanks following the impact of the bombs.

Only 14 survived, but they could hardly be considered the lucky ones since the majority sustained terrible injuries from the blasts. Rescuers who rushed to the scene were frustrated by a lack of electricity to power their equipment and a thick steel door that was so hot it was glowing. All they could do was listen to the screams and the cries of the dying.

The US government initially claimed that it had received intelligence reports that the bunker was not a civilian shelter, but one of Saddam Hussain’s military command centres.

However, the US Department of Defence later admitted that they knew the facility had previously been used for civil defence purposes. No evidence that the site had been used by the military was ever found, but that didn’t deter the White House from accusing Saddam of using “select civilians” as a cover for the facility’s true mission. Like many other US accusations this turned out to be untrue.

Today, Al Amiriya shelter stands as a monument to the dead; its walls adorned with photographs of victims, commemoratory brass plaques, prayers and flowers. Visitors who must steel their emotions before entering often emerge traumatised. Writing about the experience Na’eem Jeenah relates: “A feeling of revulsion and disgust towards these creatures we call human beings and for the ease with which we allow ourselves to become less than human.”

Ebrahim Alloush says anyone with “one-tenth of a heart and one percent of a conscience will shake with rage and anguish as they try to hold back the tears.”

Outside Iraq and the Middle East, the story of Al Amiriya was soon forgotten as the world celebrated St Valentine’s Day just hours after the attack. Now, a young Moroccan-born French filmmaker based in Dubai is determined to keep alive the memories of those who died such a terrible death.

Fervent hope

For her first short film, Faces of Wrath, that focused on the horrors in Gaza, Siham Jouhari received an award from Al Jazeera’s fifth International Documentary Film Festival 2009 in the category ‘New Horizon.’ It is her fervent hope that her second — and much more ambitious — film, Al Amiraya: The Shelter, will be completed in time to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Al Amiriya tragedy.

The script is a simple, uncomplicated yet poignant account of real people who lost those they cared for most, such as Abu Ali and his wife Saoussan who were robbed of their four children. It also recounts the story of a taxi driver Yousuf who lost his entire family, save one son, and Ahmad, a young man in love, whose burns were so severe that he had to be sent abroad for treatment, but who never stops searching for his beautiful childhood sweetheart Bouchra.

We will never know what extraordinary accomplishments these ordinary people could have achieved had they been allowed to continue with their lives, but they deserve to be acknowledged and remembered — firstly, as a reminder to mankind to never again sink to such depths and, secondly, to honour their memories and the memories of all the innocent victims of Iraq.

For some, Al Amiraya: the Shelter may be hard to watch, but its essence is one of hope and courage. Those of us who are appalled at the callous way big powers write-off innocent deaths as “collateral damage” can only wish Jouhari well with her respectful and loving mission to ensure that there’s one American valentine signed in blood that we must never ever forget.

Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.

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February 17, 2010 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , , | 3 Comments

Israel’s new strategy: “sabotage” and “attack” the global justice movement

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 16 February 2010

An extraordinary series of articles, reports and presentations by Israel’s influential Reut Institute has identified the global movement for justice, equality and peace as an “existential threat” to Israel and called on the Israeli government to direct substantial resources to “attack” and possibly engage in criminal “sabotage” of this movement in what Reut believes are its various international “hubs” in London, Madrid, Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

The Reut Institute’s analyses hold that Israel’s traditional strategic doctrine — which views threats to the state’s existence in primarily military terms, to be met with a military response — is badly out of date. Rather, what Israel faces today is a combined threat from a “Resistance Network” and a “Delegitimization Network.”

The Resistance Network is comprised of political and armed groups such as Hamas and Hizballah who “rel[y] on military means to sabotage every move directed at affecting separation between Israel and the Palestinians or securing a two-state solution” (The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall, Reut Institute, 14 February 2010).

Furthermore, the “Resistance Network” allegedly aims to cause Israel’s political “implosion” — a la South Africa, East Germany or the Soviet Union — rather than bring about military defeat through direct confrontation on the battlefield.

The “Delegitimization Network” — which Reut Institute president and former Israeli government advisor Gidi Grinstein provocatively claims is in an “unholy alliance” with the Resistance Network — is made up of the broad, decentralized and informal movement of peace and justice, human rights, and BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) activists all over the world. Its manifestations include protests against Israeli officials visiting universities, Israeli Apartheid Week, faith-based and trade union-based activism, and “lawfare” — the use of universal jurisdiction to bring legal accountability for alleged Israeli war criminals. The Reut Institute even cited my speech to the student conference on BDS held at Hampshire College last November as a guide to how the “delegitimization” strategy supposedly works (“Eroding Israel’s Legitimacy in the International Arena,” Reut Institute, 28 January 2010).

The combined “attack” from “resisters” and “delegitimizers,” Reut says, “possesses strategic significance, and may develop into a comprehensive existential threat within a few years.” It further warns that a “harbinger of such a threat would be the collapse of the two-state solution as an agreed framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the coalescence behind a ‘one-state solution’ as a new alternative framework.”

At a basic level, Reut’s analysis represents an advance over the most primitive and hitherto dominant layers of Israeli strategic thinking; it reflects an understanding, as I put it in my speech at Hampshire, that “Zionism simply cannot bomb, kidnap, assassinate, expel, demolish, settle and lie its way to legitimacy and acceptance.”

But underlying the Reut Institute’s analysis is a complete inability to disentangle cause and effect. It seems to assume that the dramatic erosion in Israel’s international standing since its wars on Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009 is a result of the prowess of the “delegitimization network” to which it imputes wholly nefarious, devious and unwholesome goals — effectively the “destruction of Israel.”

It blames “delegitimizers” and “resisters” for frustrating the two-state solution but ignores Israel’s relentless and ongoing settlement-building drive — supported by virtually every state organ — calculated and intended to make Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank impossible.

It never considers for a moment that the mounting criticism of Israel’s actions might be justified, or that the growing ranks of people ready to commit their time and efforts to opposing Israel’s actions are motivated by genuine outrage and a desire to see justice, equality and an end to bloodshed. In other words, Israel is delegitimizing itself.

Reut does not recommend to the Israeli cabinet — which recently held a special session to hear a presentation of the think tank’s findings — that Israel should actually change its behavior toward Palestinians and Lebanese. It misses the point that apartheid South Africa also once faced a global “delegitimization network” but that this has now completely disappeared. South Africa, however, still exists. Once the cause motivating the movement disappeared — the rank injustice of formal apartheid — people packed up their signs and their BDS campaigns and went home.

Instead, Reut recommends to the Israeli government an aggressive and possibly criminal counter-offensive. A powerpoint presentation Grinstein made to the recent Herzliya Conference on Israeli national security actually calls on Israel’s “intelligence agencies to focus” on the named and unnamed “hubs” of the “delegitimization network” and to engage in “attacking catalysts” of this network. In its “The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall” document, Reut recommends that “Israel should sabotage network catalysts.”

The use of the word “sabotage” is particularly striking and should draw the attention of governments, law enforcement agencies and university officials concerned about the safety and welfare of their students and citizens. The only definition of “sabotage” in United States law deems it to be an act of war on a par with treason, when carried out against the United States. In addition, in common usage, the American Heritage Dictionary defines sabotage as “Treacherous action to defeat or hinder a cause or an endeavor; deliberate subversion.” It is difficult to think of a legitimate use of this term in a political or advocacy context.

At the very least, Reut seems to be calling for Israel’s spy agencies to engage in covert activity to interfere with the exercise of legal free speech, association and advocacy rights in the United States, Canada and European Union countries, and possibly to cause harm to individuals and organizations. These warnings of Israel’s possible intent — especially in light of its long history of criminal activity on foreign soil — should not be taken lightly.

The Reut Institute, based in Tel Aviv, raises a significant amount of tax-exempt funds in the United States through a nonprofit arm called American Friends of the Reut Institute (AFRI). According to its public filings, AFRI sent almost $2 million to the Reut Institute in 2006 and 2007.

In addition to a state-sponsored international “sabotage” campaign, Reut also recommends a “soft” policy. This specifically involves better hasbara or state propaganda to greenwash Israel as a high-tech haven for environmental technologies and high culture — what it terms “Brand Israel.”

Other elements include “maintain[ing] thousands of personal relationships with political, cultural, media and security-related elites and influentials” around the world, and “harnessing Jewish and Israeli diaspora communities” even more tightly to its cause. It even emphasizes that Israel should use “international aid” to boost its image (its perfunctory foray into earthquake-devastated Haiti was an example of this tactic).

What ties together all these strategies is that they are aimed at frustrating, delaying and distracting attention from the fundamental issue: that Israel — despite its claims to be a liberal and democratic state — is an ultranationalist ethnocracy that relies on the violent suppression of the most fundamental rights of millions of Palestinians, soon to be a demographic majority, to maintain the status quo. There is no “game changer” in Reut’s new strategy.

Reut is apparently unaware even of the irony of trying to reform “Brand Israel” as something cuddly, while at the same time publicly recommending that Israel’s notorious spies “sabotage” peace groups on foreign soil.

But there are two lessons we must heed: Reut’s analysis vindicates the effectiveness of the BDS strategy, and as Israeli elites increasingly fear for the long-term prospects of the Zionist project they are likely to be more ruthless, unscrupulous and desperate than ever.

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

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February 16, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

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