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The US’ choreographed “outrage” at Israel

Stephen Maher, The Electronic Intifada, 23 March 2010
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the AIPAC conference in Washington, DC, 22 March 2010. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP)

The speeches at AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group, on Monday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Netanyahu’s subsequent meeting with US President Barack Obama are widely seen as drawing to a close what Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren called the “most severe crisis in US-Israel relations” in decades. This rapprochement comes on the heels of a series of seemingly angry statements top members of the Obama Administration released, after Israel announced construction of 1,600 new illegal housing units in occupied East Jerusalem while US Vice President Joe Biden was in the country.

In fact, the basis for the Obama Administration’s criticisms of the settlement announcement — as well as the significance of the crisis itself — has been widely misconstrued by both supporters and critics of Israel. AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) were “shocked and stunned” that Biden and Clinton called the Israeli announcement “insulting.” AIPAC urged the administration to “take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish state” and “move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel.” Meanwhile, the ADL mused, “One can only wonder how far the US is prepared go in distancing itself from Israel.”

Voices more critical of Israel, such as Richard Dreyfuss of The Nation, suggested that “this is not just the reaction to an insulting announcement during the visit of Vice President Biden,” but rather “the Obama Administration is beginning to realize that Israeli intransigence … is a major obstacle to US policy in the region.” Dreyfuss predicted that this “might turn into the most significant confrontation between the United States and Israel” since the 1956 Suez War.

Contrary to both of these positions, the Obama Administration merely reacted to a diplomatic affront it was dealt by the Israeli government. Israel’s announcement came on the same day that Biden had arrived in the country to proudly confirm the US’ “absolute, total and unvarnished” commitment to its ally, and commence indirect talks with the Palestinians. Following the announcement, protests and violent clashes broke out in Jerusalem and elsewhere throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Responding to this pressure, the Arab League threatened to cancel its endorsement of the indirect negotiations, with Secretary Amr Moussa even announcing that the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had decided not to participate in the talks. As the endorsement was the only political cover Abbas had to re-enter negotiations, the US administration took careful notice of these events as pressure on Abbas to abandon talks from within the territories mounted. With the Arab world outraged and Biden humiliated due to the degree of US complicity that the timing of the announcement revealed, the Obama Administration was forced to react.

Clinton said the timing of the announcement was “insulting,” while top aide David Axelrod called it an “affront” that “seemed calculated” to undermine the peace talks. The Obama Administration hopes that this PR display will allow the US to fortify its farcical claim to be an “honest broker” in the peace process, provide Abbas the political cover to re-enter negotiations, and send a message to the Israeli government that American leaders are to be treated with respect. As CNN reported, Netanyahu has now set up a team to investigate why the settlement construction announcement was made during Biden’s visit.

Netanyahu may well have been telling the truth when he claimed to be “surprised” by the public criticisms by the US government. The day before, one day after US envoy George Mitchell arrived to broker newly-announced “proximity talks,” the State Department explicitly approved Israel’s construction of 112 new apartments in an illegal settlement outside Bethlehem. The assent came despite Netanyahu’s declaration of a “moratorium” on settlement building, which he has insisted cannot include such illegal construction in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, a position the US has accepted.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has also chastised Israel for its “provocative actions,” including record-high rates of stripping Palestinians from Jerusalem their residency rights and infringements on Palestinian religious sites that are clearly designed to incite a Palestinian response or otherwise make it impossible for Abbas to return to the negotiating table. Yet even when the administration was at its most critical of Israel, following Obama’s speech in Cairo last year, Israel was reassured that the actions taken by the US would be “largely symbolic.” Indeed, Obama unconditionally re-authorized the loan guarantees program and massive US aid — conservatively estimated at $7 million per day — has continued without threat of reduction.

Obviously, the Obama Administration is hardly concerned about Israeli violations of international law, previous agreements it has signed, or the human rights of the Palestinians. The implication throughout is that had the announcement come a week before Biden visited (or even a day before, as the Bethlehem announcement did) there would have been no problem. Indeed, just one week later, after the Israeli government announced construction on an additional 426 East Jerusalem settlement homes, Clinton “bolstered her support for the Jewish state,” according to The Washington Post. The Israeli army then opened fire on peaceful protestors in Gaza twice in two days, and carried out air strikes on targets in Gaza, while Clinton issued another statement saying that the steps offered by the Israeli government to resolve the dispute were “useful and productive.”

The escalating repression continued Sunday, when the Israeli army shot and killed four Palestinian youths in 24 hours in the West Bank, two aged 18 and two 16. Simultaneously, Netanyahu issued a statement proclaiming that Israel would never cease building illegally in East Jerusalem as Ban Ki-moon arrived in Israel. Clearly, recent condemnations of these projects as “illegal” by Ban and the European Union did not stop Obama from welcoming Netanyahu to Washington on Monday with a private meeting, nor Clinton from proudly sharing the stage with him at the AIPAC conference to reaffirm the US commitment to support Israel’s rejection of the international consensus for resolving the conflict. Though she did say the settlements “undermine mutual trust,” she did not acknowledge their illegality and mostly stressed the threat that US support for them poses to its “credibility” as an “honest broker,” thus urging Israel to refrain from such flagrantly provocative behavior while reinforcing that the US-Israel relationship is “rock solid.”

The US hopes that this pretended outrage will lend its role as “honest broker” enough credibility to keep the “peace process” moving, itself merely a PR facade that shields Israeli crimes from public scrutiny. If it does not, the US will undoubtedly pay little mind to the harsh words spoken this week and do as it has done before: blame the Palestinians for its failure and support Israeli repression.

Stephen Maher is an MA candidate at American University School of International Service who has lived in the West Bank, and is currently writing his masters’ thesis, “The New Nakba: Oslo and the End of Palestine,” on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

March 24, 2010 Posted by | Deception | Leave a comment

In defense of the UC, Irvine 11

By Gilad Isaacs on March 23, 2010

The fate of the eleven students arrested for heckling Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., during a speech on U.S.-Israel relations given on February 8th at the University of California Irvine (UCI), continues to hang in the balance as calls for either harsh action or clemency continue. The students face possible suspension or expulsion. Chancellor Michael Drake justifies such a response by arguing that the heckling students undermined freedom of speech, which is “among the most fundamental, and among the most cherished of the bedrock values our nation is built upon” .

Political heckling has a long and somewhat illustrious history; sometimes a duel of wit and sometimes an expression of outrage. It has ranged from the polite and silent (e.g. when a group of woman protesters unfurled a banner in the American House Chamber during Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 State of the Union address which read: “President Wilson: What Will You Do For Woman Suffrage?” ) to the messy (e.g. when eggs were thrown at British Prime Minister Harold Wilson – he replied that at least people “can afford eggs to throw under Labour”) to the obscene (e.g. a Labour lawmaker accused Margaret Thatcher of acting “with the sensitivity of a sex-starved boa-constrictor.” ). Most prominent politicians have been heckled at one time or another: Reagan for his favourable policies towards apartheid South Africa; Johnson for his stance on Vietnam; Nixon was heckled at a high school (he told the authorities: “OK boys, throw him out” – his lecture had been about free speech ); George Bush was heckled on Iraq; Clinton for NAFTA, the list goes on. Most recently Tony Blair was called a liar and murderer during the Iraq Inquiry ; President Obama has been aggressively heckled by anti-abortion activists on a number of occasions, and who can forget Republican Representative Joe Wilson who yelled “you lie!” at President Obama during a speech on health care?

Israel itself is not a stranger to heckling. Disruptions in the Knesset (Parliament) became so bad that in 2001 Ethics Committee chairwoman Colette Avital circulated a list of 68 insults she wanted banned, including: blood-drinker, boor, fascist, filth, eye-gouger, Jew-hater, Nazi, Philistine, terrorist, traitor and… poodle. In America heckling of Israeli leaders has happened before, most notably President Olmert was heckled at the University of Chicago last year.

So what is there to be said about the heckling of Michael Oren and the reaction by the University authorities?

Heckling is not the most polite or subtle of political tactics and this instance was marked by clear anger. Salam Al Marayati argues that we should understand the roots of the students’ frustrations in light of systematic discrimination against Muslim students on UCI campus. This has allegedly included surveillance of the students by the FBI and the denial of the opportunity to host Palestinian speakers. Beyond this we need to understand that activism against the Israeli occupation and human rights abuses committed by Israel is met by the full force of the American pro-Israel lobby. Even when such activism is not resisted directly it often meets entrenched resistance from both conservatives and liberals. The ugliness of the occupation, the frustration of students who oppose it and a subtle climate of Islamophobia present on some American campuses is bound to produce frustration and anger.

The issue of course runs deeper. Without digressing into a lengthy philosophical consideration of free speech, we must ask whether the heckling was itself an expression of free speech or whether such heckling violated Oren’s right to speak? The answer is yes to both, but there is an important difference. Oren was not speaking as a private individual but as the official representative of Israel. Israel is currently engaged in an illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories and has committed gross human rights violations as defined by international law. Oren represents these policies. The question then becomes whether or not a platform should be given to the representative of a government engaged in criminal activity. These students decided that it should not be and such a decision has many precedents. Speeches by representatives of oppressive regimes around the world have been opposed throughout recent history, Apartheid South Africa being a notable example.

What of the response by the authorities? The university has the right to remove the disruptive students from the hall in which the lecture was being given and in fact the students went cooperatively and peacefully. Arrest, suspension and/or expulsion seems heavy handed, unjust and hypocritical. When the President of the United States can be called a liar during an address, in Congress, to the entire country and the Representative in questions eats humble pie, apologizes, accepts a reprimand and maintains his seat, then it seems grossly disproportionate that these students were arrested and may face expulsion. Not unrelated to their fate is the fact that the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has called for a boycott in donations and enrollment at UCI .

The argument made against the students, that they denied Oren the right of free speech, is equally hypocritical. Israel systematically denies free speech to Palestinians who, for example, cannot even hold a simple press conference in East Jerusalem protesting Israeli abuses without the very real risk of arrest. To claim the right of free speech whilst withholding it from others is logically inconsistent and morally bankrupt.

Heckling is not my first choose of political protest. Civil disobedience of any sort is a tactic of last resort. However, we must ask two questions. Was this a display of anger that could find no other more polite expression on UCI campus? And more importantly: should those who struggle for human rights in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories use whatever peaceful means available to deny a platform to official representatives of the Israeli government and her policies?

To see the video and read Al Marayati’s article go here.

To sign a petition calling for the dropping of all charges go here:

Gilad Isaacs is a South African student studying at NYU: “I’ve been politically active for the last 10 years first with a leftist Jewish youth organisation Habonim Dror and then on South African issues. I have worked for the Treatment Action Campaign, a grassroots organisation campaigning for access to medication for HIV+ persons and quality health care treatment for all. I was a founder (and past convener) of the Social Justice Coalition a group focused on safety and security and defending the rule of law. I’ve been active in anti-occupation work for sometime and participated in founding Open Shuhada Street. I consider myself a non-Zionist and actively oppose the gross human rights violations committed in Israel/Palestine.”

March 24, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties | Leave a comment

Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS | March 24, 2010

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-Semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell off-shoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relics from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”

The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies’ role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.

The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. The UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.

As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the off-shoring of U.S. GDP. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe off-shoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.

Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”

For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.” My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the off-shoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.

For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American corporate [establishment] does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.

These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called “entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.

With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

March 24, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Research suggests BBC Arabic coverage not objective

Ma’an – 23/03/2010

Ramallah – A researcher at Birzeit University submitted findings Saturday outlining what she found to be un-objective coverage around “the question of Palestine” on BBC Arabic’s broadcast news.

The study, focusing on the daily news program World News This Evening’s broadcasts between 8 November and 8 December 2008, found external political motivations swayed coverage of Palestine only weeks before Israel launched its Operation Cast Lead on 26 December 2008.

Masters student Buthayna Hamdan, who pioneered the study, explained that she measured the objectivity of the reports by BBC’s own standards, and basic precepts of news coverage.

Benchmarks for measurement included: Omission of facts, clear differentiation of facts and opinions, and avoiding prioritization of accounts.

The research found that the news coverage employed Israeli terminology, describing the military as “defense forces” when its actions were offensive, labeling locations with Israeli place names like the illegal settlement Har Homa, built on appropriated land known as Jabal Abu Ghnaim.

Because the settlement and the expropriation of land is illegal under international law, the study argued, the area where the settlement is located should retain its Arabic name.

Not once in the month of broadcasts on BBC Arabic did newscasters say the word “occupation” in relation to Israel or Palestine, the study said. It also noted the use of the term “military arsenal” to describe home made projectiles fired toward Israel by militant factions in Gaza.

During the study period, the research found 25 news events in Palestine, including the death, injury and detention of Palestinians including children, that went unreported by the news program. The same period saw the full coverage of every home made projectile launched from Gaza into Israeli territory, a total of 14.

The report found the coverage of projectile launches “exaggerated,” given all 14 incidents resulted in no deaths or injuries.

Following the analysis, and citing works by British journalist Robert Fisk, the report suggested that BBC Arabic’s news coverage was influenced by an Israeli lobby, and a mass supply of Israeli government-produced news and information. The study cited the publication of several opinion articles by Israeli consular staff in London, but no corresponding articles from Palestinian sources.

To prove the point, the study compared the suggested bias in reporting on Israel and Palestine to the case of alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Citing studies on the station’s coverage, the study noted research found the station was shown to be independent in its coverage, despite the fact that its government was preparing to go to war in Iraq when the coverage was aired.

The study concluded that the presence of an Israeli lobby, and its absence in the coverage on Iraq, was the single largest factor in the discrepancy of coverage.

To substantiate the arguement, the study cited BBC Director-General Mark Thompson’s relationship with former Israeli Prime Minister Airel Sharon, relating the relationship to Thompson’s decision not to air an appeal for humanitarian aid to Gaza paid for by several international agencies.

Buthayna Hamdan, a student in International Studies, presented her research to a thesis committee on Saturday. Her committee included Dr Samih Shabib from the Department of Culture, Dr George Jaqaman from the Department of Culture and director of the Muwatin Foundation (Citizen Foundation), and Dr Samir Awad, from the Department of International Relations and director of the university’s Center for Development Studies.

The committee passed the research and awarded Hamdan her Master of Arts. In their comments, the committee applauded the research as a “remarkable contribution to the field of media research.”

March 23, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Assassinating Hamas won’t work

Israel’s policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders is misguided – it should be talking to them instead

Arik Diamant and David Zonsheine | guardian.co.uk | 22 March 2010

As the dust settles on the publicity storm triggered by the Dubai assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a deep feeling of disappointment has descended on the Israeli-Palestinian peace camp. What started as an important public discourse with a potential for real change eventually missed the essential point of the affair.

The international debate over the assassination of Hamas member al-Mabhouh, allegedly carried out by the Mossad, concentrated more on the illegal use of foreign passports than on the illegal taking of a human life. Most critics of the operation seem to ignore the fact that sending trained assassins to a foreign country to strangle a man in his bed is not just a diplomatic incident or a violation of international law, it’s cold-blooded murder. Has the world become accustomed to Israel’s violations of human rights to the point of acceptance?

Extrajudicial killing of unwanted rivals is a “tool” frequently used by Israel, both in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and abroad. Strangled in their beds, bombed from the air, ambushed in their cars or shot down by snipers, hundreds of “unwanted” Palestinians have died at the hands of the IDF and the secret service, leaving a long trail of blood and grief. Beyond the targets themselves, hundreds of innocent bystanders have died in these operations. The typical profile of the assassination target varies from active terrorist to political leader. The typical profile of the innocent bystander is not an issue for the Israeli security services.

Israel, which frequently accuses its enemies of leading a culture of killing, is a dedicated follower of this fashion. Security officials would have us believe that these killings have actually saved the lives of hundreds of Israelis by preventing terrorist attacks. This argument ignores the aftershock of vengeance that inevitably follows each of these operations, costing many more lives. A critical analysis of this policy shows that in the long run these operations have contributed nothing at all to Israel’s security.

The broader picture is that 42 years of living under Israeli occupation has created no shortage of Palestinian men and women willing to kill and die for their people’s independence. For every fighter killed two are born. Strategically speaking, these assassinations are futile at best.

Beyond the tactical and strategic side of this practice lies a darker reality. By killing their leaders, Israel is sending a clear message of rejection and contempt to the Palestinians. Israel is saying, and has been saying for decades: we do not negotiate. Israel’s assassination policy should be understood as a complement to its politics; its refusal to arrive at a compromise with its neighbours is the real story behind the extrajudicial killings.

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who allegedly authorised the Dubai assassination, was also responsible for another Mossad fiasco. In 1997 he ordered the assassination of the Hamas operative Khaled Mashaal in Jordan. The operation failed. Today Mashaal is head of the Hamas politburo and, according to some, a pragmatist. There’s a lesson to be learned from this: yesterday’s terrorist may be tomorrow’s political partner.

Perhaps the most effective way to deal with Hamas is to bargain with its leaders rather than to assassinate them. If the barbaric culture of killing is abandoned and replaced with a truthful attempt to reach an agreement with our neighbours, perhaps today’s threats can become tomorrow’s hopes.

March 22, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

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

By Hilary Parker | March 22, 2010

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

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

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

In results published online March 18 by the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, the researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute reported on two experiments investigating the link between the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and obesity.

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

The second experiment — the first long-term study of the effects of high-fructose corn syrup consumption on obesity in lab animals — monitored weight gain, body fat and triglyceride levels in rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup over a period of six months. Compared to animals eating only rat chow, rats on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup showed characteristic signs of a dangerous condition known in humans as the metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, significant increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition, especially visceral fat around the belly. Male rats in particular ballooned in size: Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet. In humans, this would be equivalent to a 200-pound man gaining 96 pounds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The research was supported by the U.S. Public Health Service.

###

 Aletho News reported on this issue January 5, 2010:

The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story

March 22, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Policing thought in America: Why can’t we discuss the events of 9/11?

By Jim Fetzer | Online Journal | March 22, 2010

The brain trust that calls itself “The Huffington Post” has disgraced itself and shown the “progressive left” is a cowardly fraud by removing a column guest written by Jesse Ventura about 9/11.

The official explanation from no less than Arianna Huffington, presumably, is “Editor’s Note: The Huffington Post’s editorial policy, laid out in our blogger guidelines, prohibits the promotion and promulgation of conspiracy theories — including those about 9/11. As such, we have removed this post.” Maybe no one explained to these worthies that if any one were to write about 9/11, they would be writing about a conspiracy theory, since the government’s own “official account” is only the most outrageous. And, as Jesse’s new book, AMERICAN CONSPIRACIES (2009) elucidates, there have been many throughout our history.

Conspiracies are as American as apple pie. All they require are two or more individuals acting together to bring about an illegal end. When a couple of guys knock off a 7/11, they are engaged in a conspiracy, even if they are subsequently charged with armed robbery instead. Most America conspiracies are economic, like Enron, WorldCom, and Halliburton. Bernie Madoff comes to mind, since he can’t possibly have done it alone. Since the “official account” maintains that 19 Islamic fundamentalists hijacked four commercial carriers, outfoxed the most sophisticated air defense system in the world, and perpetrated these atrocities under the control of a guy in a cave in Afghanistan, it is a conspiracy theory, too.

Apparently that subject is taboo at The Huffington Post. But if that is the case, then many important events are not going to be covered there. Conspiracies to murder political leaders are far older than the assassination of Julius Caesar and include attempts on the lives of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Truman. Four of those involved in the Lincoln conspiracy were hanged from the same gallows at the same time. Consider the range of events that could not be understood absent conspiracies as David Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., listed them in his chapter, “The Silence of the Historians,” MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), page 402:

Foreign Targets/Assassination Conspiracies (20th Century): Franz Ferdinand / Rajiv Gandhi / Louis Mountbatten / Czar Nicholas II / Adolf Hitler / Rafael Trujillo / Salvadore Allende / Charles DeGaulle / Benigo Aquino / Anwar Sadat / Luis Colosio / Leon Trotsky / Ngo Dinh Diem / Rene Schnneideer / Nhu / Jacobo Arbenz / Grigorli Rasputin / Fidel Mohammed Mossadegh / Castro / Pancho Villa / Ngo Dihn Patrice Lumumba / Pope John Paul II / Saddam Hussein / Manuel Noriega.

Egad! What would Shakespeare have had to write about but for plots against the kings and queens of England? And in the US (20th Century), the list would be extended to include John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Watergate, Abscam, Iran-Contra, Senator Paul Wellstone, Cpl. Pat Tillman, and many others as well, if you consider the evidence. So if the American press is not even willing to investigate conspiracies, we are going to be unable to begin to understand our own history, including the stories that appear on virtually every page of The New York Times, as I documented in “Thinking about ‘Conspiracy Theories’: 9/11 and JFK,” accessible via Google and published in my book, THE 9/11 CONSPIRACY: THE SCAMMING OF AMERICA (2007). What would history be without them?

The Huffington Post is not the only prominent offender. Even amazon.com has refused to carry the DVD of a conference on “The Science and Politics of 9/11: What’s Controversial, What’s Not,” that I organized in Madison, Wisconsin, 5-7 August 2007. It runs 14-½ hours and includes presentations and discussion about many aspects of 9/11. A publisher tired to market it on amazon.com and found it was suppressed:

Dear Jim

Bad news.

I tried to put it up on Amazon, but the thought controllers have blocked it.

Possible Matches on http://www.amazon.com
ASIN: 1615774629
Product Name: The Science and Politics of 9/11: What’s Controversial. What’s Not.
Binding: DVD
DVD Region Code: 0
EAN: 9781615774623

Sorry, this product is ineligible for Amazon Marketplace selling at this time.

The product you attempted to create a page for is currently suppressed so that it will not appear on our Web site. Because of this, it is ineligible for Amazon Marketplace selling. Products are suppressed in the Amazon.com catalog for numerous reasons. For example, Amazon prohibits the sale of illegal and offensive products. (For more information, please review a complete list of prohibited content.) In addition, products may be suppressed at the explicit request of artists or manufacturers.

As a former Marine Corps officer and retired professor of philosophy, I am at a loss as to what has become of this once-great country of ours. Are we so afraid of the examination of what our government has told us about “the pivotal event of the 21st century” that even progressive publications like The Huffington Post and presumably impartial business operations like amazon.com refuse to publish a column by the former governor of Minnesota or to carry the DVD of a meeting of experts on different aspects of the case? What is there to be afraid of, unless the official account is a house of cards that will collapse if it is critically scrutinized?

And that indeed appears to be the case. According to the “official account” of the destruction of the Twin Towers, the planes hit the buildings, the resulting fires weakened the steel, and a pancake collapse of one floor upon another ensued. But that description is not remotely consistent with the gross observable photo evidence. The buildings appear to be tuning into millions of cubic yards of fine dust:

“Revealing new aerial photos of 9/11 attack released”
James Fetzer, VoltaireNet, 18 February 2010

“New 9/11 Photos Released”
James Fetzer, 10 February 2010

Does this look remotely like a “pancake collapse” to you? A set of 9/11 photos were recently released which, when they are temporally sequenced, provide a glimpse of what was actually going on, which was no “pancake collapse.” Every American deserves to see that the “official account” cannot even accommodate the gross appearance of the Twin Towers as they were destroyed even below ground level.

No one knows exactly how this was done, It appears to have required a highly sophisticated combination of conventional and unconventional means. Once you understand that the sequence of events these photos display cannot have been the result of a “pancake collapse,” that there was no “collapse” at all as these two 500,000-ton buildings were converted into very fine dust, but that some complex form of a demolition under control was taking place and you begin to grasp why not even The Huffington Post or amazon.com can allow you the least glimpse of what actually happened on 9/11. It was indeed “the scamming of America” and the reasons appear to have had nothing to do with Islam or “Arab hijackers.”

James H. Fetzer, McKnight Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota, Duluth; Founder, Scholars for 9/11 Truth; Editor, Assassination Science; and Co-Editor, Assassination Research, maintains a blog on 9/11 and other “false flag” attacks.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

March 22, 2010 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

US ‘Victory’ in Settlements Row Short-Lived

Netanyahu Vows to Continue East Jerusalem Construction

By Jason Ditz | March 21, 2010

Last week’s declaration of victory in the ongoing Israel row by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appears to have been a short-lived win, and media claims that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “bowed” to US demands appear to be premature.

In his most recent public comments, Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated that he would like to see the “indirect talks” with the Palestinian Authority resume, but that he absolutely would not ever agree to restrict construction in occupied East Jerusalem, the issue upon which the talks have stalled.

With Netanyahu on his way to the US for AIPAC’s policy conference, and expected to focus his visit on pressing President Obama for more advanced weapons with which to attack Iran, it was widely expected that the Netanyahu government would try to defuse the tensions over the East Jerusalem move, which US officials considered a public insult.

And indeed the tensions do seem to be dying down, though the only thing resembling a concession made by the Netanyahu government was to implement a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy wherein the Israeli government would continue to expand settlements in East Jerusalem with impunity but would stop publicizing them at inopportune times.

But even if US-Israeli relations return quickly to normalcy, there appears to be no rapprochement forthcoming with the PA. This may serve as a recipe for the Obama Administration to default back to chastising the Palestinians for “refusing” negotiations (just two weeks after they agreed to those negotiations, only to see them torpedoed by the most recent construction), but it seems unlikely that it will restart the peace talks.

March 22, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

A little secret about Obama’s transparency

The current administration, challenged by the president to be the most open, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than Bush did.

By Andrew Malcolm | Los Angeles Times | March 21, 2010

The Democratic administration of Barack Obama, who denounced his predecessor, George W. Bush, as the most secretive in history, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than the Republican did.

Transparency and openness were so important to the new president that on his first full day in office, he dispatched a much-publicized memo saying: “All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”

One of the exemptions allowed to deny Freedom of Information requests has been used by the Obama administration 70,779 times in its first year; the same exemption was used 47,395 times in Bush’s final budget year.

An Associated Press examination of 17 major agencies’ handling of FOIA requests found denials 466,872 times, an increase of nearly 50% from the 2008 fiscal year under Bush.

As Ed Morrissey notes on the blog Hot Air, during a time of war and terrorist threats, any government can justify not releasing some sensitive information. And true, Obama had previously been a legislator, not an executive.

But why make such a big campaign deal over a previous administration’s secrecy when you’re going to end up being even more secretive?

On March 16 to mark annual Sunshine Week, designed to promote openness in government, Obama applauded himself by issuing a statement:

“As Sunshine Week begins, I want to applaud everyone who has worked to increase transparency in government and recommit my administration to be the most open and transparent ever.”

However, a new study out March 15 by George Washington University’s National Security Archive finds less than one-third of the 90 federal agencies that process such FOIA requests have made significant changes in their procedures since Obama’s 2009 memo.

So, a day later, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel sent out yet another memo. Since the agencies ignored the memo from the president, they’ll all snap to when the staffer’s note arrives, don’t you think?

Top of the Ticket, The Times’ blog on national politics ( http://www.latimes.com/ ticket), is a blend of commentary, analysis and news. This is a selection from the last week.

Copyright 2010 Los Angeles Times

March 22, 2010 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Israel: Arab family denied right to rent home

Jonathan Cook | The National | March 21, 2010

NEVATIM, ISRAEL // The Zakai and Tarabin families should be a picture of happy coexistence across the ethnic divide, a model for others to emulate in Israel.

But Natalie and Weisman Zakai say the past three years – since the Jewish couple offered to rent their home to Bedouin friends, Ahmed and Khalas Tarabin – have been a living hell.

“I have always loved Israel,” said Mrs Zakai, 43. “But to see the depth of the racism of our neighbours has made me question why we live in this country.”

Three of the couple’s six dogs have been mysteriously poisoned; Mrs Zakai’s car has been sprayed with the words “Arab lover” and the windows smashed; her three children in school are regularly taunted and bullied by other pupils; and a collection of vintage cars in the family’s yard has been set on fire in what police say was an arson attack.

To add to these indignities, the Zakais have spent three years and thousands of dollars battling through the courts against the elected officials of their community of Nevatim, in Israel’s southern Negev desert, who have said they are determined to keep the Tarabins from moving in.

Last week the Zakais’ legal struggle looked like it had run out of steam. The supreme court told the two families the Tarabins should submit to a vetting committee of local officials to assess their suitability – a requirement that has never been made before by the Negev community in the case of a family seeking to rent a home.

“The decision of the committee is a foregone conclusion,” Mr Tarabin said.

Chances for Jews and Arabs to live together – outside of a handful of cities – are all but impossible because Israel’s rural communities are strictly segregated, said Alaa Mahajneh, a lawyer representing the Zakais.

Israel has nationalised 93 per cent of the country’s territory, confining most of its 1.3 million Arab citizens, one-fifth of the population, to 120 or so communities that existed at the time of the state’s creation in 1948.

Meanwhile, more than 700 rural communities, including Nevatim, have remained exclusively Jewish by requiring that anyone who wants to buy a home applies to local vetting committees, which have been used to weed out Arab applicants.

But Mr Mahajneh, from the Adalah legal centre for the Arab minority, noted that legal sanction for such segregation was supposed to have ended a decade ago, when the supreme court backed an Arab couple, the Kaadans, who had been barred by a committee from the community of Katzir in northern Israel.

Although the Kaadans were eventually allowed to move into Katzir, the case has had little wider effect.

In fact, Mr Mahajneh said, the decision in the Zakais’ case suggests “we’re going backwards”. The Kaadans won the right to buy a home in a Jewish community, whereas the Tarabin family were seeking only a short-term rental of the Zakais’ home.

The Zakais said they had been told by the officials of Nevatim, a community of 650 Jews a few kilometres from the city of Beersheva, that it would not be a problem to rent out their home.

Mrs Zakai brought the Tarabins’ ID cards to the community’s offices for routine paperwork. “When I handed in the IDs, the staff looked at the card and said, ‘But they’re Muslims’.” Later, according to Mrs Zakai, the council head, Avraham Orr, rang to say the Arabs would be accepted in Nevatim “over my dead body”.

Several weeks later, Mrs Zakai said, two threatening men came to their door and warned them off renting to Arabs. Soon afterwards 36 cars belonging to Mr Zakai, who has a used car business, were set on fire.

Then behind the Zakais’ back, Nevatim went to a local magistrate’s court to get an order preventing them from renting their home. The couple have been battling the decision ever since.

Mr Mahajneh said the Tarabins had accommodated a series of “extraordinary conditions” imposed by Nevatim on the rental agreement, including certificates of good conduct from the police, a commitment to leave after a year, and limited access to the house’s extensive grounds.

But still Nevatim officials were dissatisfied, insisting in addition that the Tarabins submit to questioning by a vetting committee to assess their suitability. Although 40 other homes in Nevatim are rented, Mr Mahajneh said testimonies from past members of the vetting committee showed that this was the first time such a demand had been made.

“It is true that anyone buying a property in Nevatim is supposed to be vetted by the committee, but there is no reference in the community’s bylaws to this condition for renters,” Mr Mahajneh said.

In 2008, a district court judge in Beersheva overruled Nevatim’s new condition, arguing that the vetting requirement would be “unreasonable and not objective”. The supreme court judges, however, sided with Nevatim in their concluding statements on March 10.

Mrs Zakai said they had offered to rent their home to the Tarabins after the Bedouin couple’s home burnt down in their village in early 2007, killing one of their 10 children. The Tarabins have been living with relatives ever since, unable to afford a new home and keen to move away from the site of the tragedy.

Mr Tarabin, 54, said: “I want Khalas to rest and heal and this place would have been perfect for her. The house has large grounds and we could have kept to ourselves. No one in Nevatim needs to have anything to do with us if they don’t want.”

A Nevatim resident who spoke anonymously to the Haaretz newspaper last week suggested reasons for the community’s opposition: “If tomorrow the entire Tarabin tribe wants to live here and we don’t agree, what will people say? The problem will start after the first one comes because then dozens more families will want to move here.”

The close friendship forged between the Zakais and Tarabins is rare in Israel. The privileged status of Jews legally and economically, communal segregation and the hostility provoked by a larger national conflict between Israel and the Palestinians ensure that Jewish and Arab citizens usually remain at arm’s length.

But Mr Zakai, 53, whose parents emigrated from Iraq and who speaks fluent Arabic, befriended Mr Tarabin in the late 1960s when they were teenagers in Beersheva. Later they served together in the Israeli army as mechanical engineers.

Mrs Zakai said: “If Jews were being denied the right to live somewhere, it would be a scandal, but because our friends are Arabs no one cares.”

Avraham Orr, the Nevatim council head, denied that he was opposing the Tarabins’ admission because they are Arab. “There are rules,” he said. “Every family that wants to buy or rent a property must first go through the committee.”

Fearful of the implications of the Kaadan ruling, Jewish communities in the Galilee unveiled a new approach to barring Arab applicants last year. They introduced bylaws amounting to loyalty oaths that require applicants to pledge to support “Zionism, Jewish heritage and settlement of the land”.

March 21, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Leave a comment

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