Paying Now for the Next Three Mile Island
By HARVEY WASSERMAN | March 29, 2010
As radiation poured from 3 Mile Island 31 years ago this week, utility executives rested easy.
They knew that no matter how many people their errant nuke killed, and no matter how much property it destroyed, they would not be held liable.
Today this same class of executives demands untold taxpayer billions to build still more TMIs. No matter how many meltdowns they cause, and how much havoc they visit down on the public, they still believe they’re above the law.
Fueled with more than $600 million public relations slush money, they demand a risk-free “renaissance” financed by you and yours.
AS IF!
In 1980 I reported from central Pennsylvania on the dead and dying one year after. Dozens of interviews documented a horrifying range of radiation-related diseases including cancer, leukemia, birth defects, still births, malformations, sterility, heart attacks, strokes, emphysema, skin lesions, hair loss, a metallic taste and much more. As reported by the Baltimore News-American among others, such ailments also ripped through the animal population.
To this day no one knows how much radiation was released at the 1979 TMI accident, where it went or whom it harmed. The official line that “no one was killed” is arguably the biggest lie ever told in US industrial history. It is to public health what the promise of power “too cheap to meter” was to public finance.
It parallels Soviet lies about the 1986 catastrophe at Chernobyl, whose health effects continue to skyrocket. A devastating summary report issued by the New York Academy of Sciences (Yablokov, Nesterenko & Nesterenko: Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People & the Environment) says at least 980,000 people are likely to die from the fallout.
That would be a small fraction of the casualties had 9/11 terrorists dived into the two reactors at New York’s Indian Point instead of hitting the World Trade Center.
In a time of deep financial stress, it also counts that the TMI accident turned a $900 million asset into a $2 billion liability in a matter of minutes. Chernobyl has cost Belarus and Ukraine at least $500 billion and counting. And the price tag on a major meltdown anywhere in the US is virtually beyond calculation.
Thus those who think a flood of new nukes will flow unimpeded into the American pocketbook haven’t been paying attention:
1) Four northeastern nukes—in Vermont, New Jersey and the two at Indian Point— are under intense public pressure to shut within the next two years. Numerous other elderly reactors are likely to go down long before any new nukes could come on line.
2) French President Sarkozy is demanding that world financial institutions buy a bevy of new French-built reactors. But huge delays and cost-overruns at French projects in Finland and France itself have made the investment community wary to say the least, thus prompting his foot-stomping.
3) Documents leaked from inside France’s national utility EDF indicate cost-cutting has made the new French reactor design exceedingly prone to explosion, further unsettling potential investors.
4) The future of new US reactor construction hinges on massive loan guarantees and handouts. The public number is $54 billion, but the Nuclear Information & Resource Service says the real bill could top a trillion.
5) In the polarized, cost-conscious wake of the health care bill, and the apparent demise of cap and trade as a centerpiece of climate legislation, the idea of such huge sums flowing to a deeply polarizing energy source has become increasingly problematic. Without a clear trade-off for fossil/nuclear giveaways, and with stiffening resistance from the rightist National Taxpayers Union, Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation, the nuke bonanza is anything but certain. The technology may now, in fact, be “too expensive to matter.”
6) An attempt by Entergy to shift six reactors into an asset-free corporate shell has been nixed by New York authorities, leaving liability for Vermont Yankee, Indian Point and other northeastern nukes in limbo.
7) As elderly nukes stumble toward oblivion, various funds allegedly set aside for decommissioning may be significantly under-funded, deeply exacerbating the financial battles that now encircle the industry.
8) As a lame duck, George W. Bush signed agreements apparently obligating the feds to assume responsibility for enough radioactive waste to fill two of the cancelled Yucca Mountain waste dumps. The complete lack of even one such facility means the potential taxpayer bill is beyond meaningful calculation.
9) Above all the exemption from liability for a major accident—first perpetrated by a pro-nuke Congress in 1957—remains the largest potential cost to us all. Renewed by Bush in 2005, some believe the statute is clearly unconstitutional.
To this day the families of those harmed by radiation at Three Mile Island have been denied the right to make their case in federal court.
But now the shoe is on the other foot.
Desperate for cash, the nuclear industry wants us all to pay hundreds of billions for the joy of living downwind from still more 3 Mile Islands for which they intend to assume NO liability.
They want our money AND our lives.
From central Pennsylvania after 31 years, the message is clear: Just Say NO!
Israel unveils “green” strategy to defeat enemies
Plan to make oil redundant in a decade
By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth | 30 March 2010
Uzi Landau, the national infrastructures minister, outlined a vision of a world without oil this week to Israel’s most loyal supporters in Washington as he searched for wealthy American-Jewish investors and White House support for the strategy.
His message was: “The West is addicted to oil, and so is bound by states that support terrorism… Whoever wants to fight radical Islam and terrorist organizations should know that by purchasing gasoline, he’s giving terrorists increased motivation.”
Analysts say the plan’s chief goals are to cripple the large oil-producing Gulf states, particularly Iran, which is seen as Israel’s main rival in the region, and resistance groups that oppose Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian land.
“Israel hopes that by repackaging the ‘war on terror’ in this way it can gain sympathy in the West and deflect increasing expectations that it make concessions to solve the conflict with the Palestinians,” said Avner de Shalit, a politics professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Thousands of delegates at last week’s annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US, heard Mr Landau describe the Israeli strategy as the best way to win the “war on terror”.
The conference was also attended by many senior US politicians, including administration officials such as Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state.
Without Arab money from oil, Mr Landau argued, Iran would fade as a regional power and “terror groups” like Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon would cease to exist. Instead, Israel could serve as an alternative “powerhouse” in the Middle East for environmentally friendly energy sources.
Both Israel and the US are determined to isolate Iran, which they claim is trying to develop a nuclear warhead to rival Israel’s own large nuclear arsenal. The White House is seeking to impose stiff sanctions, whereas Israel is believed to favour a military strike.
Israel failed to crush Hamas and Hizbullah, two resistance groups that are backed by Iran, during attacks on Gaza last year and on Lebanon in 2006.
In the session – entitled “Breaking the habit: Can US-Israel cooperation reduce our oil dependence?” – Mr Landau appealed to the US to join Israel in eradicating oil dependency as a way to defeat terror.
As he left Israel for the conference, he told local reporters he would try to persuade his audience that “by taking away its primary source of funding, we can defeat terrorism without firing a single bullet”.
Mr Landau is known to be acting on the direct instructions of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who announced back in October a “national project” to end the world’s reliance on oil within a decade.
At the same time Mr Netanyahu gave responsibility to the National Economic Council, a think-tank inside his office, to develop “breakthrough” inventions that would eradicate the world’s need for oil and coal-based electricity.
“Dependence on fossil fuels strengthens the dark regimes that encourage instability and fund terror with their petrodollars,” Mr Netanyahu told the cabinet as he unveiled the plan.
Gideon Bromberg, head of the Israeli green group Friends of the Earth, said Israel had a very poor record on environmental issues, but that he welcomed Mr Netanyahu’s belated interest “even if it is for the wrong reasons”.
“He is an opportunist and recognizes that oil brings power,” said Mr Bromberg. “If you can find an alternative to it, you make yourself more powerful and make your enemies weaker.”
Haaretz has reported that Mr Netanyahu also hopes that new green technologies will allow Israel to strengthen its ties with China, which the government believes is the rising global power and less interested in the Palestinians and Israel’s occupation than the US and Europe.
Although Israel has developed new solar energy and water technologies, Mr Netanyahu is reported to want a revolution in fuels used in transport, which accounts for a large proportion of oil use. Israeli companies are already involved in researching battery technologies for cars.
There are strong indications that Israel’s green technologies drive is related to plans developed by US neo-conservative groups in the build-up to the attack on Iraq. Mr Netanyahu is known to have maintained close ties to neo-conservatives in the US.
Some of these groups lobbied the previous administration of George W. Bush to invade Iraq so that its oil fields could be privatized and the international markets flooded with oil.
According to the reasoning of officials at one influential think-tank, the Heritage Foundation in Washington, privatization would drive down oil prices, break up the Saudi-backed OPEC oil cartel, and drain money away from “terror groups” and radical Islamic education.
Some neo-cons regarded this policy as particularly beneficial to Israel, because it would starve Hamas and Hizbullah of funds and take the pressure off Tel Aviv to end the occupation.
In practice, however, the occupation of Iraq did not help Israel. Funding to Hizbullah and Hamas instead appears to be provided by Iran.
The influence of neo-conservative think-tanks on Mr Landau has been indicated in recent weeks by the decision to share the stage with leading neo-conservatives such as James Woolsey, a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency.
At a debate on ending global oil dependency at Israel’s annual “national security” convention in Herzliya in February, attended by most of the Israeli cabinet, Mr Woolsey urged the destruction of OPEC, claiming that Saudi Arabia controlled 90 per cent of Islamic education.
He said that when people filled up their cars “you are helping to finance the people who finance hatred, incitement and terror”.
That view was echoed by other participants.
In December the United Nations criticized Israel for its poor record on using renewable energy sources. It ranked bottom for using solar sources to generate electricity, behind countries such as Senegal, Eritrea and Mexico, as well as Western countries with only a few hours of sunlight.
A government watchdog, Israel’s state comptroller, issued a report the same month arguing that Israel had not taken even basic measures to address climate change.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is http://www.jkcook.net.
Obama Declares Afghan War ‘Absolutely Essential’
Insists America Will Never Abandon Conflict
By Jason Ditz | March 28, 2010
Underscoring his administration’s commitment to continue the already eight and a half year long occupation of Afghanistan, President Barack Obama made a surprise visit today and delivered a speech declaring the war ‘absolutely essential.’
Citing 9/11, President Obama insisted that continuing the conflict makes all Americans safer, and assured the troops that “everyone” knows the importance of the continued occupation of the landlocked nation.
He also threw water on the notion that the war might come to an end any time soon, saying “the United States of America does not quit once we start on something.” He reiterated his confidence that the US would ultimately prevail.
But despite pledging to give the troops a clear mission and a clear goal, and insisting that they would “get the job done,” he didn’t make it at all clear what exactly this job was. His only hint at any mission beyond endless conflict was a reference to al-Qaeda in the region, though administration officials have repeatedly conceded that there are virtually no al-Qaeda members left in Afghanistan, and have not been in some time. Yet momentum and a sufficiently hawkish administration suggests the conflict will continue to find enemies wherever it can and continue indefinitely.
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Top Scientist Assesses Climate Change Emails
Mar 28, 2010 John O’Sullivan
Dr. John P. Costella examined 1079 leaked emails and 72 other documents from the computers of the UK’s Climatic Reseach Unit to reveal ‘shocking misconduct and fraud.’
Dr. Costella’s study has been widely accepted by all sides of the global warming debate as a faultless assessment. Climategate publicly began on November 19, 2009 allegedly pointing to a conspiracy to fraudulently bolster greenhouse gas theory. The British mainstream media, more than any other nation, have widely reported on the scandal.
The Australian physicist documents, step by step, flawed scientific procedure, over-arching concerns with personal and professional interests and how an elite of climatologists discussed immorally securing ‘research’ funding and evading tax payments. The emails cover correspondence between international climatologists over a 13-year period up to November 2009.
Does the evidence point to climate crimes?
Yes, as reported in The Times of London ‘University tried to mislead MPs on climate change e-mails’ (February 27, 2010) referring to the decision of the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Only the statute of limitations thwarted criminal charges on breaches of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), while further issues of serious fraud are yet to be decided. Examples of specific quotations most often referred to from those leaked emails include evidence supportive of:
(1.) Manipulation of evidence:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” [Jones: CRU email 942777075.txt, Nov. 16 1999]
(2.) Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.” [Trenberth: CRU email 1255352257.txt, October 12, 2009]
(3.) Intentional conspiracy to destroy evidence:
“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.” [Jones: CRU email1212073451.txt May 29, 2008]
(4.) Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):
“I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago.” [Briffa: CRU email 938018124.txt (Sep. 22, 1999)]
“I do find the dismissal of the Medieval Warm Period as a meaningful global event to be grossly premature and probably wrong.” [Cook: CRU email 988831541.txt (May 2, 2001)]
(5.) Suppression of dissent from the peer review process:
“ I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.” [Jones: CRU email 1047388489.txt March 11, 2003]
Who Has Been Implicated in the Global Warming Scandal?
A clique of climate scientists central to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are implicated: Professor Phil Jones, ‘lead conspirator’ in the United Kingdom; Professor Michael Mann, the ‘lead conspirator’ in the United States; Tom Wigley, older ‘conspirator’ who becomes increasingly worried about the unfolding scandal; Keith Briffa, an older conspirator whose ‘blunders lead the others to all but abandon him.’
Also included are Ben Santer, a ‘dangerously arrogant and naive young conspirator’ in the U.S. as well as other conspirators of varying degrees of complicity and integrity.
What Fallout Has Occurred Since the Climategate Scandal Broke?
Dr. Costella concluded that the “climate science” community was a façade and that “their vitriolic rebuffs of sensible arguments of mathematics, statistics, and indeed scientific common sense were not the product of scientific rigor at all, but merely self-protection at any cost.”
There has been worldwide condemnation for the unethical conduct of the discredited researchers. In the United States a raft of civil lawsuits opposing federal policy based on the alleged fraudulent results of these researchers has ensued. Climate sceptics have called for a moratorium on implementation of any further expensive ecological policies until the courts resolve the matter.
The IPCC has admitted errors have been made after subsequent revelations known as Glaciergate, Amazongate, Australiagate, Africate, Inquirygate, etc.
England’s Five Year Climate Forecast Cycle
By Steven Goddard | March 28, 2010
(UK Pic Photo: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response)
England, Scotland and Wales completely covered in snow, January, 2010
In my last article, I discussed the current theory that global warming is going to turn England into a tropical paradise. And ten years ago we were told by The Met Office that “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.” But five years ago the theory was that global warming will turn England into a frozen wasteland.
THE Gulf Stream currents that give Britain its mild climate have weakened dramatically, offering the first firm scientific evidence of a slowdown that threatens the country with temperatures as cold as Canada’s.
The Atlantic Ocean “conveyor belt” that carries warm water north from the tropics has weakened by 30 per cent in 12 years, scientists have discovered. The findings, from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, give the strongest indication yet that Europe’s central heating system is breaking down under the impact of global warming.
Scientists have long predicted that melting ice caps could disrupt the currents that keep Britain at least 5C (40F) warmer than it should be, but the new research suggests that this is already under way. It points to a cooling of 1C over the next decade or two, and an even deeper freeze could follow if the Gulf Stream system were to shut down altogether.
The British Isles lie on the same latitude as Labrador on the East Coast of Canada, and are protected from a similarly icy climate by the Atlantic conveyor belt, which carries a million billion watts of heat. Although oceanographers still think it unlikely that the currents will stop completely, this could reduce average temperatures by between 4C and 6C in as little as 20 years, far outweighing any increase predicted as a result of global warming.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article598464.ece
What the scientists were saying is that the melting Arctic is going to flood the North Atlantic with cold fresh water, and will slow down the Gulf Stream. The BBC explained it like this :
Global Warming will cause the Greenland ice cap to melt which, when combined with increased rainfall at high latitudes, will potentially disrupt the THC by adding freshwater and decreasing sea water salinity in the North Atlantic…. Winters would be much colder than now “along the lines of the winter of 1962-1963″ suggests Jenkins, with summers being cooler and shorter. This would have many social implications including (not surprisingly!) transport and agriculture. 3-4°C may not sound much, but the average air temperature difference between the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ when vineyards thrived in southern England and the ‘Little Ice Age’ when the River Thames regularly froze over was only 1-2°C.
Sun photo : English cars buried in global warming
The Guardian explained it like this:
“Based on climate simulations we think that UK winters would be around 5-10C colder on average if the Gulf Stream shut down,” says Michael Vellinga, of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. For those who can remember back that far, this would make the average UK winter feel more like 1963, when February temperatures hovered around -5 C.
So here is the climate cycle timeline:
- 2000 – Snowfalls are a thing of the past in Britain
- 2005 – Britain to turn into a frozen wasteland
- 2010 – Britain to become a tropical paradise like Portugal
Climate science in England shows a statistically significant cycle, alternating between tropical forecasts and ice age forecasts every five years.
‘Dennis Ross more sensitive to Netanyahu than US interests’ (Surprised?)
By Philip Weiss on March 28, 2010
My post last night on Dennis Ross [copied below] was right on time. Laura Rozen at politico reports that Ross is at the center of a battle within the Obama administration about how nice to be to Israel. The piece includes a frank statement of confused loyalty:
“He [Ross] seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu’s coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” one U.S. official told POLITICO Saturday. “And he doesn’t seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this Administration.”
Let me repeat myself. This guy is the living embodiment of the Israel lobby. He was till recently chairman of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, which opposes intermarriage, among other charming and important campaigns. Aaron David Miller said that the U.S. too often acted as “Israel’s lawyer” at Camp David; and that meant Ross. Dan Kurtzer’s book, Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace, said that the US team lacked diversity and cross-cultural expertise– again, ethnocentric Ross. Kurtzer and co-author Scott Lasensky write: “’The perception always was that Dennis [Ross] started from the Israeli bottom line,’ said a prominent Arab negotiator, ‘that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the Arabs.’” No wonder Kurtzer lamented “the deference that some policymakers pay to Israeli domestic political concerns. Israel plays an outsized role in U.S. politics and diplomacy…”
The lobby; and Ross denied the existence of the lobby when it was under attack, because it was his own power base.
Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech last week was so shocking that it has rung in a new era for the lobby. Basically: the F.U. period, overplaying its hand in plain sight of the American people. The (in)ability of an American administration to free itself of Ross is a real test of the perseverance of the lobby in our politics.
More on Ross: this was in the original RSS feed on the Politico piece but is not in the published version:
Ross, the U.S. official continued, “starts from the premise that U.S. and Israeli interests overlap by something close to 100 percent. And if we diverge, then, he says, the Arabs increase their demands unreasonably. Since we can’t have demanding Arabs, therefore we must rush to close gaps with the Israelis, no matter what the cost to our broader credibility.”
This is the old neocon delusion, in order to support their loyalty to Israel’s interests: there is no difference between our interests and Israel’s. A preposterous assertion, for any two states.
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Dennis Ross opposed a tenet of the new Obama Middle East policy
By Philip Weiss on March 27, 2010
Dennis Ross personifies the Israel lobby. That gives him his power, that’s why Obama has him in his administration. Putting Ross in a policy job–the Iran portfolio–makes the lobby happy. And Obama has to keep the lobby happy.
It would be a sign of real independence if Obama could lose this guy whom Bush I and Clinton couldn’t lose either. Here Matt Berkman reminds us that Dennis Ross wrote a book with David Makovsky just a year or so back in which he argued vehemently against an idea that is becoming a tenet of the Obama doctrine in the Middle East: linkage, the (plain as the nose on your face) idea that the Israel/Palestine conflict is linked to America’s fortunes in the Middle East.
So Ross is against a key principle of the Obama administration! And he works for him… Go figure! Berkman:
“Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East” devoted a chapter to debunking the “myth” that Israel’s violent occupation of Palestinian land foments challenges for U.S. foreign policy in the region.
“Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East, one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away,” Ross and Makovsky wrote. “This is the argument of ‘linkage.’”
Makovsky, a frequent commentator on U.S.-Israel relations who never fails to recapitulate this argument, launched into it earlier this month during testimony for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “There are no strict linkages between the Palestinian and Iranian issues,” he said. “Regardless of progress on peace, Iran will seek a nuclear weapon. Moreover, senior Arab security officials say privately that they do not see progress on peace as decisive in influencing Arab efforts to halt Iran in any way.”
Of course, formulated in this way, the “linkage” thesis is an easily refutable straw man. No reasonable observer of the Middle East believes that “all other Middle East conflicts” will “melt away” if the U.S. succeeds in brokering a peace agreement. Nor has anyone ever contended that resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict would “decisively” impact U.S. policy vis-à-vis Iran, or that Iran would immediately abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons should the long-suffering Palestinians achieve national self-determination.
But by concocting and then launching an assault on spurious iterations of the “linkage” idea, hawkish Zionists like Ross and Makovsky are attempting to inoculate Israel’s settlement and occupation policies from any criticism that might implicate them in the degeneration of regional security dynamics.
So Ross was against settlement evacuation too? Maybe Obama should blow him off for dinner, or can him.
Germany to extend nuclear plant phase-out by 28 years
Press TV – March 28, 2010
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government is pushing to extend the lifespan of some of the country’s nuclear power plants to 60 years, amid opposition.
The new plans come a week after an agreement between the environment and finance ministries, backed by the government, to add 20 more years to a previous compromise which had established that all of the countries’ nuclear power plants be shut down by 2022.
The opposition has slammed the move, arguing that this would endanger the safety of citizens as well as slowing down the progress in the filed of renewable energy sources.
In an interview published last Friday in the Munich-based daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said a 28-year extension of the previous phase-out plans could have the last nuclear power plant go off the grid in 2050.
Roettgen stressed that the government was just at the stage of considering all its options, with evaluators now discussing scenarios of extending the phase-out by four, 12, 20 and 28 years.
The paper criticized the government for treating the power plants like old bicycles, stressing that unlike a bike, nuclear facilities could not be patched up and reused for an unlimited amount of time.
This is while a 2002 Atomic Energy Act, currently in force, outlines a total phase-out by the next twelve years and bans the extension of the residual life of reactors, which have already produced an amount of electricity equivalent to 32 years of operation.
Nuclear power production is highly unpopular in Germany, where leaks at nuclear waste dumps and accidents at aging power plants have led to several controversies in the past years.
Many experts believe the aging nuclear power plants can not endure 60 years of operation, stressing that such a decision would be extremely dangerous.
Israeli Army Invades Khan Younis, Leaders Weigh Resumption Of Assassinations
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – March 28, 2010
Ma’an images
Several armored military vehicles carried out a limited invasion into Khan Youni, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, on Sunday morning. The latest attack comes amidst talks of a likely resumption of assassinations in the coastal region. Israeli Finance Minister called for “reoccupying” Gaza and “eliminating Hamas”.
Eyewitnesses reported that several armored vehicles and military bulldozers advanced 500 meters into the area, and that military bulldozers started uprooting trees and farmlands while the army opened fire in different directions. Military bulldozers uprooted olive and almond trees in Um Al Mahed and Abu T’eima areas, in Khan Younis.
The invaded area is where Friday clashes took place; one resident was killed and thirteen others were wounded. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and three were wounded. The latest developments came as Israel’s military and political leaders are weighing the possibility of a massive attack against the Gaza Strip in addition to weighing the possibility of resuming Israel’s illegal assassinations policies.
Israeli paper, Maariv, reported Sunday that Israel’s military leadership believes that Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza benefited from the cease fire that followed “Operation Cast Lead” offensive against the Gaza Strip a year ago January. The paper added that this cease fire gave the resistance a chance to attack the Israeli army along the border with Gaza, such as the Friday attack that led to the death of three soldiers.
A number of military leaders said that the known policy of bombarding tunnels and “weapons storage facilities is not affective anymore and does not curb further attacks”.
Senior Israeli military leaders stated that the current situation requires the resumption of the assassination policy. They are calling for assassinations targeting certain political and military leaders of Palestinian factions in Gaza, especially prominent figures.
The Israeli army believes that after the Friday attack and the killing of the soldiers, several leaders in Gaza went underground fearing Israel’s retaliation.
The army estimates that those leaders would resume their activities in the future, therefore “the army must prepare plans to assassinate them”, and should also bombard certain areas believed to be used by the resistance. This includes tunnels, resistance training centers and areas believed to be weapons storage facilities, in addition to bombing the homes of political and military leaders of Hamas and other factions.
Israeli Finance Minister, Yuval Steinitz, called for “reoccupying Gaza” and to totally eliminate the authority of Hamas in the coastal region. He said that reoccupying Gaza and eliminating Hamas, the ruling “power” on Gaza, are among the main scenarios that Israel might elect should other options fade.
Steinitz slammed what he called “the U.S. pressure on Israel”, and claimed that Israel conducted acts of “good will” towards the Palestinians by “giving them the chance to improve their economy” and by “freezing settlement activities”.
US casualties double in Afghanistan
Press TV – March 28, 2010
The number of US troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first quarter of 2010 compared with the same period last year.
According to Pentagon figures, some 77 American service members have been killed so far in 2010, the Associated Press reported on Saturday. This is while, the figure stood at 41 in the same period a year ago.
US officials have warned that casualties are likely to rise even further. “We must steel ourselves, no matter how successful we are on any given day, for harder days yet to come,” Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a month ago.
A rise in the number of the wounded also shows the Taliban remain a formidable opponent. According to the data, the Americans are facing an increase of almost 350 percent in the wounded soldiers.
The number of American troops in Afghanistan rose from 32,000 at the beginning of last year to 68,000 at the end of the year, an increase of more than 110 percent.
US missiles kill four in NW Pakistan
Press TV – March 27, 2010
Four people have been killed in the latest US drone attack on local tribesmen in Pakistan’s northwestern area near the border with Afghanistan.
A US drone fired two missiles into the compounds belonging to what Washington calls suspected militant hideouts in the suburbs of Mir Ali, a town in North Waziristan.
The missiles targeted “two compounds owned by local tribesmen,” AFP quoted a local security official who spoke on condition of anonymity as saying.
“We have confirmation of four people killed and more than five injured,” said another Pakistani security official. The identities of the victims were not immediately revealed.
The United States has been conducting drone attacks in tribal areas within the Pakistani borders despite protests from Islamabad. The strikes have significantly hiked since US President Barack Obama took office last year. Washington says the drone attacks target militant hideouts in Pakistan, but the soaring number of civilian causalities inflicted during the strikes has given raise to strong anti-US sentiments across Pakistan.
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The inaccessibility of the regions makes it very difficult to get independent confirmation of the casualty figures provided by officials and the identity of those killed. Civilian casualties are rarely, if ever, mentioned in army accounts of the fighting.
Palestinian Political Prisoners
By Stephen Lendman | March 27, 2010
The numbers vary but range at any time from over 7,000 to 12,000 or more. In April 2008, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel cited 11,000, including 345 children and 98 women. Over 1,000 suffered from chronic or other diseases. Around 150 were seriously ill from heart disease, cancer, and other diseases, and 195 or more Palestinians died or were killed in prison since 1967.
As of January 2009, Adalah said about “22,500 individuals were imprisoned or detained in Israeli prisons; around 70% (or 15,750 are) Arabs.” Included are 9,735 Palestinians, nearly 80% classified as “security.” Of these, 570 were administrative detainees, uncharged by order of an administrative official, not a judge.
Another 20 were so-called “unlawful combatants” under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law (UCL), saying they’re not entitled to POW status under international law because they either took part in hostilities against Israel (directly or indirectly) or belong to a force carrying them out. No proof is needed, only “a reasonable basis for believing” the designation is accurate, and under UCL, detentions can be permanent, without trial or judicial fairness.
According to the Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association, since 1967, “over 650,000 have been detained by Israel,” about 20% of the total Occupied Territory (OPT) population and 40% of the male population. Most are held in Palestine, but many thousands in Israeli civil and military prisons, in violation of numerous Fourth Geneva provisions, including Article 49 stating:
“….forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons (including prisoners) from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
This applies to OPT prisoners, most of whom are political victims of militarized oppression, or in other words, guilty of being Palestinian. In addition, Fourth Geneva states protected persons shall be detained in the occupied territory and, if convicted, serve there sentences therein.
OPT arrests and detentions come under about 1,500 military regulations for the West Bank and over 1,400 for Gaza. The IDF commander issues orders, but new ones aren’t revealed until implemented because they’re issued any time for any reason, often arbitrarily and capriciously.
Israeli prisons and military detention facilities are mainly located within Israel’s 1948 borders. They include five interrogation centers, six detention/holding facilities, three military detention camps, and about 20 prisons where OPT Palestinians are held.
A secret Facility 1391 at an unknown location is notorious for using severe torture. Gilboa Prison, north of the West Bank, is also believed to administer extreme treatment.
“The location of prisons within Israel and the transfer of detainees to locations within the occupying power’s territory are illegal under international law and constitute a war crime.”
On June 7, 1967, Military proclamation No. 1 justified them “in the interests of security and public order,” weasel words meaning anything. Since then, over 2,900 orders were issued, gravely harming Palestinians’ welfare. “These orders serve as justification every time the Israeli authorities arrest a Palestinian….”
They can be held for extended periods, interrogations lasting up to six months, during which time torture, abuse and other degrading treatment is commonplace, against the great majority in custody.
After interrogation, Palestinians can be detained administratively without charge or tried in military courts where “military orders take precedence over Israeli and international law.”
Under Military Order 1530, months may elapse between being charged and trial. The entire process is structured to deny due process and judicial fairness, unlike for most Jews in civil courts.
Activists, protesters and human rights defenders are especially at risk. In July 2008, Israeli authorities, by military order, closed the Nafha Society for the Defense of Prisoners and Human Rights. It’s one of several organizations representing Palestinian detainees in Israeli courts and advocates for them in prisons and detention centers.
Currently, Israeli security forces, politicians and extremist groups are targeting human rights groups in response to their support for the Goldstone Commission report. Among those affected are:
— B’Tselem
— Adalah
— Breaking the Silence
— the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI)
— Yesh Din
— the Centre for the Defence of the Individual
— the Public Committee Against Torture in Israeli (PACTI)
— the Israel Religious Action Centre
— Physicians for Human Rights – Israel
— Rabbis for Human Rights, and
— the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) that condemned the practice in a February 8 press release stating:
PCHR “condemns the continued persecution of international human rights defenders in the West Bank….and the deportation of international activists from the country.”
On February 7, PCHR learned that Israeli security forces entered Ramallah and al-Bireh, storming an al-Bireh apartment building and arresting Spanish journalist Ariadna Jove Marti and Australian student Bridgette Chappell. They were taken to Ofer Prison pending their deportation, citing expired visas as pretext. The two women are International Solidarity Movement activists known, according to an IDF spokesman, “for being involved in illegal riots that obstruct Israeli security operations.”
Other activists were also arrested, Israel now issuing tourist visas only to 150 selected NGOs operating in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including Oxfam, Save the Children, and Doctors Without Borders. However, they’ll be excluded from Area C under Israeli control, comprising 60% of the West Bank, thus hampering their work and imposing additional hardships on Palestinians.
PCHR condemned the action and recommends that international civil society and human rights organizations, bar associations, and international solidarity groups continue exposing suspected Israeli war criminals and pressuring their governments to prosecute them according to provisions of international law.
The extremist Netanyahu government won’t tolerate criticism or censure for its expansionist West Bank plans, including making all Jerusalem exclusively Jewish.
His cabinet introduced a Knesset bill prohibiting organizations from receiving funding from foreign political institutions unless registered with the Registrar of Political Parties.
They must then provide details about all “foreign political entity” donations, the source, amount, purpose, commitment made for its use, and more, as a way to harass and make the process more cumbersome.
The bill’s supposed purpose is to:
“increase the transparency and to correct lacunas (empty spaces or missing parts) in the law regarding the funding of political activity in Israel by foreign political entities (where such activity is defined as being) aimed at influencing public opinion in Israel or one of the branches of government in Israel regarding any element of Israel’s domestic or foreign policy.”
In fact, it’s to stifle free expression, dissent and activism, the way police states do it, how Israel always treats Palestinians, now increasingly toward outspoken Jews and international human rights organizations as well.
Conditions in Israeli Prisons
Israel willfully and systematically violates international humanitarian law, including Common Article 3 applying to the four Geneva Conventions, requiring:
“humane treatment for all persons in enemy hands, specifically prohibit(ing) murder, mutilation, torture, cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment (and) unfair trial(s).”
Fourth Geneva’s Article 4 calls “protected persons” those held by parties to a conflict or occupation “of which they are not nationals.” They must “be treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention.” They’re entitled to full Fourth Geneva rights. Prisoners of war under Third Geneva have the same rights and those under Common Article 3.
Israel willfully denies them. Under the 1971 Israeli Prison Ordinance, no provision defines prisoner rights. It only provides binding rules for the Interior Minister who can interpret them freely by administrative decree. For example, it’s legal to intern 20 inmates in a cell as small as five meters long, four meters wide and three meters high, including an open lavatory, and they can be confined there up to 23 hours daily.
An April 2009 PCHR press release said thousands of Palestinians “continue to suffer in Israeli jails” under horrific conditions, including:
— severe overcrowding;
— poor ventilation and sanitation;
— no change of clothes or adequate clothing;
— sleeping on wooden planks with thin mattresses, some infested with vermin; blankets are often torn, filthy and inadequate; hot water is rare and soap is rationed;
— at the Negev Ketziot military detention camp, threadbare tents are used, exposing detainees to extreme weather conditions; in summer, vermin, insects, scorpions, parasites, rats, and other reptiles are a major problem;
— Megiddo and Ofer also use tents; in addition, Ofer uses oil-soiled hangers;
— for some, isolation in tiny, poorly ventilated solitary confinement with no visitation rights or contact with counsel or other prisoners;
— no access to personal cleanliness and hygiene; toilet facilities are restricted, forcing prisoners to urinate in bottles in their cells;
— inadequate food in terms of quality, quantity, and dietary requirements;
— poor medical care, including lack of specialized personnel, mental health treatment, and denial of needed medicines and equipment; as a result, many suffer ill health; doctors are also pressured to deny proper treatment, some later admitting it;
— extreme psychological pressure to break detainees’ will;
— widespread use of torture, abuse, cruel and degrading treatment;
— women and children are treated the same as men;
— NGOs like Physicians for Human Rights – Israel and the ICRC are deterred from aiding detainees;
— denied or hindered access to family members and counsel;
— imposed conditions link visits:
“with the overall security situation, requiring that prisoners must not be security prisoners and that persons applying for visits must not have a security record, requiring that visitors be first-degree relatives and that brothers or sons applying for visits must be under the age of 18.”
Treatment of Gazans Arrested During and After Operation Cast Lead
On January 28, 2009, a complaint to Israel’s Military Judge Advocate General, Brigadier General Avichai Mandelblit, by seven Israeli human rights organizations, cited degrading and appalling conditions in which detainees, including minors, were held.
Before transfer to the Israel Prison Service, they were held for many hours or days in pits dug in the ground, handcuffed and blindfolded, under extreme weather conditions. No sanitation was provided and limited amounts of food. Some, in fact, were held in combat areas, in violation of international law prohibiting their exposure to danger.
After removal from pits, some were held overnight in a truck, handcuffed, with one blanket for two people in winter. Others were kept for extended periods in the rain with little food or water. Incidents of extreme violence and humiliation were also reported that continued after prison transfers.
Legal Department Director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PACTI), Bana Shoughry-Badarne, said:
“Israel’s indifference to its moral and legal obligations to detainees is particularly objectionable in view of the fact” that the IDF completely ignored “the basic rights of the detainees and captives” under international law, violations committed against every detainee held.
Since July 2007, Gazan families have been denied access to their relatives in Israeli prisons. Non-Israeli Palestinian lawyers can’t represent them in military courts. Travel restrictions impede all lawyers. Meetings with their clients aren’t confidential, and most prisoners have no access to an attorney.
In 2006, B’Tselem issued a report titled, “Barred from Contact: Violation of the Right to Visit Palestinians Held in Israeli Prisons,” citing obstacles families face to visit their relatives. They include difficulties obtaining required permits and “grueling journeys” of up to 24 hours, the result of long distances through numerous checkpoints plus delays.
This “arbitrary and disproportionate policy not only infringes the right to family visits, it also results in violation of other rights and principles of international humanitarian and human rights law, as well as domestic Israeli law.”
In January 2010, Adalah addressed the same issue stating:
On December 9, 2009, “Israel’s Supreme Court (HCJ) decided that the state has no obligation to allow family visits for Gazans detained in Israel.” Writer Grietje Baars, a UK lawyer, said the HCJ rejected petitions by detainees, their relatives and Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, claiming that “Israel’s rights as a sovereign state” lets it deny “foreigners” entry in violation of international law – a clear act of persecution.
Under Article 7(g) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (HCJ), crimes against humanity include:
“Persecution (meaning) the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law by reason of the identity of the group or collectivity.”
In a previous decision, the HCJ held that:
“It is a firmly established precept that the human rights to which a person is entitled simply by being human remain even when he is detained or imprisoned, and the fact that he is incarcerated cannot serve to deprive him of any right.”
Denying them defies that ruling, and the fact that hundreds of Gazan detainees in Israel are held indefinitely without trial, are in virtual isolation, and can only send their families occasional messages through ICRC representatives.
Petitioners call banning visits “collective punishment” under Fourth Geneva’s Article 33 stating:
“No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties….are prohibited.”
Doing so (along with torture and other forms of abuse) aims to break their spirit to get them to cooperate or confess to crimes they didn’t commit.
Baars concluded:
“Aside from the right to have their rights hououred and protected, and to live their lives in dignity and freedom, the Gazans and the Palestinians in general, have the right to an effective judicial remedy. Without domestic enforcement of international law, the onus is on the international community to fulfill these rights and uphold the rule of law, internationally, for the benefit of all.”
The international community’s failure to comply with international law lets Israel violate its provisions freely. Unless changed, Israel’s lawlessness will continue unchecked, a no longer to be tolerated grim prospect.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
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With apparently fabricated nuclear documents, Netanyahu pushed the US towards war with Iran
By Gareth Porter | The Grayzone | April 29, 2020
President Donald Trump scrapped the nuclear deal with Iran and continued to risk war with Iran based on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim to have proven definitively that Iran was determined to manufacture nuclear weapons. Netanyahu not only spun Trump but much of the corporate media as well, duping them with the public unveiling of what he claimed was the entire secret Iranian “nuclear archive.”
In early April 2018, Netanyahu briefed Trump privately on the supposed Iranian nuclear archive and secured his promise to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That April 30, Netanyahu took the briefing to the public in a characteristically dramatic live performance in which he claimed Israel’s Mossad intelligence services had stolen Iran’s entire nuclear archive from Tehran. “You may well know that Iran’s leaders repeatedly deny ever pursuing nuclear weapons…” Netanyahu declared. “Well, tonight, I’m here to tell you one thing: Iran lied. Big time.”
However, an investigation of the supposed Iranian nuclear documents by The Grayzone reveals them to be the product of an Israeli disinformation operation that helped trigger the most serious threat of war since the conflict with Iran began nearly four decades ago. This investigation found multiple indications that the story of Mossad’s heist of 50,000 pages of secret nuclear files from Tehran was very likely an elaborate fiction and that the documents were fabricated by the Mossad itself. … continue
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