Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Two more leftwing activists summoned to a meeting with Israel’s General Security Service

Promised Land |  December 13th, 2010

Two Israeli activists that take part in protests in the West Bank have been summoned to informal investigations by Israel’s General Security Service, the Shabak (formally Shin Beit). According to the two, they received phone calls inviting them for what was described as “a talk” with a GSS investigator named Rona.

A few months ago, Yonatan Shapira, a former IDF pilot, was summoned for such a meeting in Tel Aviv with a female investigator calling herself Rona. According to an account Shapira published, the “talk” turned out to be a political interrogation, in which Shapira was asked about his participation in demonstrations in the West Bank and other activities, but was not accused of any illegal actions.

Last week, an activist in Anarchists against the Wall, a leftwing group whose members take part in unarmed demonstrations in the West Bank, was invited to a similar meeting in a police station on Dizengof Street, Tel Aviv. According to his account, he was told by “Rona” that his actions are known and are not considered illegal by the GSS. However, he was warned that “if they do turn illegal, we [the GSS] will be there.”

Today, another Anarchists against the Wall activist received a phone call from “Rona” inviting him to talk to her. The activist asked if this would be a formal interrogation, and if so, said he would like to be summoned by an official subpoena, in writing. According to the activist, “Rona” answered that this was not the case, and the conversation ended.

December 14, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Palestine Campaigners Claim BDS Success as Edinburgh Council Rejects Veolia

13 December 2010 | Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

A pro-Palestinian pressure group claimed success last week after Edinburgh Council rejected an attempt by a controversial firm to take over a range of public services in the city.

The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) had argued that Veolia should be excluded from Council contracts because of the company’s involvement in Israel’s Occupation of Palestine.

Veolia had been shortlisted to take over environmental services contracts, including refuse collection and street cleaning, but a Council report published Friday indicated that the firm is no longer being considered. This latest blow for Veolia comes on top of similar multi-billion pound losses around the world, and is likely to add to the pressure on the firm to cease providing waste and transport services to Israel’s illegal settlements in Palestine, including the construction of a tramway that the United Nations Human Rights Council deems, “in clear violation of international law”.  The line is set to link Israel with some of its illegal settlements.

Council leaders also heard from leading law firm, Hickman & Rose, who warned that employing the French multinational could expose the local authority to “legal action for failing to take on board their obligation to recognise and comply with their duties and responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions and international law.”

Green Councilor Maggie Chapman, who had campaigned for Veolia’s exclusion, was pleased the Council had moved in line with other local authorities such as Swansea and Dublin who had already chosen to distance themselves from the multinational. “It is not enough for us to use warm words in support of the Palestinian people; we have to act on our convictions. Veolia props up the illegal Occupation by Israel of the Palestinian Territories, and the Council should have no part in such despicable activities.”

The Labour group had also argued for a boycott of the company during the Council’s August meeting. A motion proposed by Councilor Angela Blacklock stated, “Veolia provides services to illegal settlements in Occupied Palestinian land and is therefore complicit in grave breaches of international and human rights law committed by the state of Israel”.

Unison activist, Marlyn Tweedie, is campaigning against the Council’s Alternative Business Model (ABM) plans to privatise public services generally, but said she was pleased about the rejection of Veolia’s bid specifically. “It’s bad enough that the Council intends to privatise essential public services, but it would have really rubbed salt in our wounds if Veolia had won the bid.”

SPSC Chair, Mick Napier, said the decision was “a victory for human rights”. He continued, “We have a duty to stand with the Palestinians and against the Israeli Occupation. Any company that helps maintain that illegal Occupation should not be surprised when local authorities chose to avoid them.”

December 14, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Tears of Gaza

whereisthejustice1 | July 27, 2011

Scandinavian documentary about Gaza available for showing in US:

From the website:

FILM SUMMARY

In a rough style, by way of unique footage, the brutal consequences of modern wars are exposed. The film also depicts the ability of women and children to handle their everyday life after a dramatic war experience. Many of them live in tents or in ruins without walls or roofs. They are all in need of money, food, water and electricity. Others have lost family members, or are left with seriously injured children. Can war solve conflicts or create peace? The film follows three children through the war and the period after the ceasefire.

OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION

Disturbing, powerful and emotionally devastating, Tears of Gaza is less a conventional documentary than a record – presented with minimal gloss – of the 2008 to 2009 bombing of Gaza by the Israeli military. Photographed by several Palestinian cameramen both during and after the offensive, this powerful film by director Vibeke Løkkeberg focuses on the impact of the attacks on the civilian population.

The film shuttles between the actual bombings and the aftermath on the streets and in the hospitals. The footage of the bombs landing is indelible and horrifying, but it is on par with much of the explicit imagery on hand. White phosphorous bombs rain over families and children, leaving bodies too charred to be identified. The footage here is extremely graphic and includes children’s bodies being pulled from ruins. Recounting the horrors she has witnessed, one young girl collapses and sinks out of the frame.

Years of economic embargo have left the area deprived of resources and have strained an already impoverished infrastructure. The wounded are carried to hospital for lack of ambulances, and an absence of fire trucks leaves home owners to put out fires on their own. What’s immediately apparent is that decades of military activity have made the population angry, nihilistic and vengeful. As one young boy says, “Even if they give us the world, we will not forget.” Løkkeberg contrasts these scenes with footage of bachelor parties, weddings and visits to the beach – social activities that epitomize daily life in Gaza during more peaceful times.

Tears of Gaza makes no overriding speeches or analyses. The situation leading up to the incursion is never mentioned. While this strategy may antagonize some, it’s a useful method for highlighting the effects of the violence on the civilian population. Similar events certainly occurred in Dresden, Tokyo, Baghdad and Sarajevo, but of course Gaza isn’t those places. Tears of Gaza demands that we examine the costs of war on a civilian populace. The result is horrifying, gut-wrenching and unforgettable.

More:

In a rough style, by way of unique footage, the brutal consequences of modern wars are exposed. The film also depicts the ability of women and children to handle their everyday life after a dramatic war experience. Many of them live in tents or in ruins without walls or roofs. They are all in need of money, food, water and electricity. Others have lost family members, or are left with seriously injured children. Can war solve conflicts or create peace? The film follows three children through the war and the period after the ceasefire.

http://www.nfi.no/english/norwegianfi…

The director, Vibeke Løkkeberg, about the film

Witnessing the maiming and killing of children in a war, without being able to do anything about it, is a great challenge.
 The short glimpses of children’s faces displayed on my TV set, after they had lived through the war, was my motivation for making Tears of Gaza. A protest against all wars grew inside me. Wars are senseless, destructive, unworthy of mankind. Wars are never a solution to bilateral problems in the long run.
In my films, I have always been concerned with the fate of the victims.
 In the Gaza-Israel conflict, there are presumably two victimized parties.
A responsibility which both the USA and Europe will have to shoulder.
 My hope is that this film will arouse the same feelings of protest among the audiences, and that it will bring inspiration to continue the seemingly endless struggle against poverty, suffering and war.
 In the film, I quote a father who sits with his phosphorous injured child: 
”What God do these people believe in, who can do this against children? And how can I gather the strength to forgive?”
This film has been a year in the making, and it’s a pleasure to let its world premiere take place in Toronto.
I started my career as a documentary filmmaker. From the 1970’s on, I made feature films.
In this film, I have chosen to make use of the implements of fiction, and the cinema theatre as venue. In contrast to TV, the cinema theatre provides the opportunity of absorption.
 My hope is that this emotional approach will spur protest, and the desire to contribute to making a better world.
There are major obstructions inherent in the presentation. The cinema theatres constitute a fantastic arena for communication which to a great extent has been taken over by the entertainment industry. – Vibeke Løkkeberg

Vibeke Løkkeberg (b. 1945) has become one of Norway’s most well-known personalities and leading feminist artists; as actor, director, screenwriter and author. She has directed five features and written five novels. She has starred in her own films as well as films by Pål Løkkeberg.

http://tabibqulob.blogspot.com/2010/1…

http://www.facebook.com/GazasTarer?v=…

December 14, 2010 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Who is Behind Wikileaks?

By Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research | December 13, 2010

“World bankers, by pulling a few simple levers that control the flow of money, can make or break entire economies. By controlling press releases of economic strategies that shape national trends, the power elite are able to not only tighten their stranglehold on this nation’s economic structure, but can extend that control world wide. Those possessing such power would logically want to remain in the background, invisible to the average citizen.” (Aldus Huxley)

Wikleaks is upheld as a breakthrough in the battle against media disinformation and the lies of the US government.

Unquestionably, the released documents constitute an important and valuable data bank. The documents have been used by critical researchers since the outset of the Wikileaks project. Wikileaks earlier revelations have focussed on US war crimes in Afghanistan (July 2010) as well as issues pertaining to civil liberties and the “militarization of the Homeland” (see Tom Burghardt, Militarizing the “Homeland” in Response to the Economic and Political Crisis, Global Research, October 11, 2008)

In October 2010, WikiLeaks was reported to have released some 400,000 classified Iraq war documents, covering events from 2004 to 2009 (Tom Burghardt, The WikiLeaks Release: U.S. Complicity and Cover-Up of Iraq Torture Exposed, Global Research, October 24, 2010). These revelations contained in the Wikileaks Iraq War Logs provide “further evidence of the Pentagon’s role in the systematic torture of Iraqi citizens by the U.S.-installed post-Saddam regime.” (Ibid)

Progressive organizations have praised the Wikileaks endeavor. Our own website, Global Research, has provided extensive coverage of the Wikileaks project.

The leaks are heralded as an immeasurable victory against corporate media censorship.

But there is more than meets the eye.

Even prior to the launching of the project, the mainstream media had contacted Wikileaks.

There are also reports from published email exchanges that Wikileaks had entered into negotiations with several corporate foundations for funding. (Wikileaks Leak email exchanges, January 2007).

The linchpin of WikiLeaks’s financial network is Germany’s Wau Holland Foundation. … “We’re registered as a library in Australia, we’re registered as a foundation in France, we’re registered as a newspaper in Sweden,” Mr. Assange said. WikiLeaks has two tax-exempt charitable organizations in the U.S., known as 501C3s, that “act as a front” for the website, he said. He declined to give their names, saying they could “lose some of their grant money because of political sensitivities.”

Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks gets about half its money from modest donations processed by its website, and the other half from “personal contacts,” including “people with some millions who approach us….” (WikiLeaks Keeps Funding Secret, WSJ.com, August 23, 2010)

At the outset in early 2007, Wikileaks acknowledged that the project had been “founded by Chinese dissidents, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa…. [Its advisory board]  includes representatives from expat Russian and Tibetan refugee communities, reporters, a former US intelligence analyst and cryptographers.” (Wikileaks Leak email exchanges, January 2007).

Wikileaks formulated its mandate on its website as follows: “[Wikileaks will be] an un-censorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations,” CBC News – Website wants to take whistle-blowing online, January 11, 2007, emphasis added).

This mandate was confirmed by Julian Assange in a June 2010 interview in The New Yorker:

“Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal illegal or immoral behavior in their own governments and corporations. (quoted in  WikiLeaks and Julian Paul Assange : The New Yorker, June 7, 2010, emphasis added)

Assange also intimated that “exposing secrets” “could potentially bring down many administrations that rely on concealing reality—including the US administration.” (Ibid)

From the outset, Wikileaks’ geopolitical focus on “oppressive regimes” in Eurasia and the Middle East was “appealing” to America’s elites, i.e. it seemingly matched stated US foreign policy objectives. Moreover, the composition of the Wikileaks team (which included Chinese dissidents), not to mention the methodology of “exposing secrets” of foreign governments, were in tune with the practices of US covert operations geared towards triggering “regime change” and fostering “color revolutions” in different parts of the World.

The Role of the Corporate Media: The Central Role of the New York Times

Wikileaks is not a typical alternative media initiative. The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel are directly involved in the editing and selection of leaked documents. The London Economist has also played an important role.

While the project and its editor Julian Assange reveal a commitment and concern for truth in media, the recent Wikileaks releases of embassy cables have been carefully “redacted” by the mainstream media in liaison with the US government. (See Interview with David E. Sanger, Fresh Air, PBS, December 8, 2010)

This collaboration between Wikileaks and selected mainstream media is not fortuitous; it was part of an agreement between several major US and European newspapers and Wikileaks’ editor Julian Assange.

The important question is who controls and oversees the selection, distribution and editing of released documents to the broader public?

What US foreign policy objectives are being served through this redacting process?

Is Wikileaks part of an awakening of public opinion, of a battle against the lies and fabrications which appear daily in the print media and on network TV?

If so, how can this battle against media disinformation be waged with the participation and collaboration of the corporate architects of media disinformation?

Wikileaks has enlisted the architects of media disinformation to fight media disinformation: An incongruous and self-defeating procedure.

America’s corporate media and more specifically The New York Times are an integral part of the economic establishment, with links to Wall Street, the Washington think tanks and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Moreover, the US corporate media has developed a longstanding relationship to the US intelligence apparatus, going back to “Operation Mocking Bird”, an initiative of the CIA’s Office of Special Projects (OSP), established in the early 1950s.

Even before the Wikileaks project got off the ground, the mainstream media was implicated. A role was defined and agreed upon for the corporate media not only in the release, but also in the selection and editing of the leaks. In a bitter irony, the “professional media”, to use Julian Assange’s words in an interview with The Economist, have been partners in the Wikileaks project from the outset.

Moreover, key journalists with links to the US foreign policy-national security intelligence establishment have worked closely with Wikileaks, in the distribution and dissemination of the leaked documents.

In a bitter irony, Wikileaks partner The New York Times, which has consistently promoted media disinformation is now being accused of conspiracy. For what? For revealing the truth? Or for manipulating the truth? In the words of Senator Joseph L. Lieberman:

“I certainly believe that WikiLleaks has violated the Espionage Act, but then what about the news organizations — including The Times — that accepted it and distributed it?” Mr. Lieberman said, adding: “To me, The New York Times has committed at least an act of bad citizenship, and whether they have committed a crime, I think that bears a very intensive inquiry by the Justice Department.” (WikiLeaks Prosecution Studied by Justice Department – NYTimes.com, December 7, 2010)

This “redacting” role of The New York Times is candidly acknowledged by David E Sanger, Chief Washington correspondent of the NYT:

“[W]e went through [the cables] so carefully to try to redact material that we thought could be damaging to individuals or undercut ongoing operations. And we even took the very unusual step of showing the 100 cables or so that we were writing from to the U.S. government and asking them if they had additional redactions to suggest.” (See PBS Interview; The Redacting and Selection of Wikileaks documents by the Corporate Media, PBS interview on “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross: December 8, 2010, emphasis added).

Yet Sanger also says later in the interview:

“It is the responsibility of American journalism, back to the founding of this country, to get out and try to grapple with the hardest issues of the day and to do it independently of the government.” (ibid)

“Do it independently of the government” while at the same time “asking them [the US government] if they had additional redactions to suggest”?

David  E. Sanger cannot be described as a model independent journalist. He is member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Aspen Institute’s Strategy Group which regroups the likes of Madeleine K. Albright, Condoleeza Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former CIA head John Deutch, the president of the World Bank, Robert. B. Zoellick and Philip Zelikow, former executive director of the 9/11 Commission, among other prominent establishment figures. (See also F. William Engdahl, Wikileaks: A Big Dangerous US Government Con Job,  Global Research, December 10, 2010).

Time Magazine’s Richard Stengel (November 30, 2010) and The New Yorker’s Raffi Khatchadurian. (WikiLeaks and Julian Paul Assange : The New Yorker, June 11, 2007)

Historically, The New York Times has served the interests of the Rockefeller family in the context of a longstanding relationship. The current New York Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, son of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger and grandson of Arthur Hays Sulzberger who served as a Trustee for the Rockefeller Foundation. Ethan Bronner, deputy foreign editor of The New York Times as well as Thomas Friedman among others are also members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). (Membership Roster – Council on Foreign Relations)

In turn, the Rockefellers have an important stake as shareholders of several US corporate media.

The Embassy and State Department Cables

It should come as no surprise that David E. Sanger and his colleagues at the NYT centered their attention on a highly “selective” dissemination of the Wikileaks cables, focussing on areas which would support US foreign policy interests: Iran’s nuclear program, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s support of Al Qaeda, China’s relations with North Korea, etc. These releases were then used as source material in NYT articles and commentary.

The Embassy and State Department cables released by Wikileaks were redacted and filtered. They were used for propaganda purposes. They do not constitute a complete and continuous set of memoranda.

From a selected list of cables, the leaks are being used to justify a foreign policy agenda. A case in point is Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, which is the object of numerous State Department memos, as well as Saudi Arabia’s support of Islamic terrorism.

Iran’s Nuclear Program

The leaked cables are used to feed the disinformation campaign concerning Iran’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. While the leaked cables are heralded as “evidence” that Iran constitutes a threat, the lies and fabrications of the corporate media concerning Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program are not mentioned, nor is there any mention of them in the leaked cables.

The leaks, once they are funnelled into the corporate news chain, edited and redacted by the New York Times, indelibly serve the broader interests of US foreign policy, including US-NATO-Israel war preparations directed against Iran.

With regard to “leaked intelligence” and the coverage of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, David E. Sanger has played a crucial role. In November 2005, The New York Times published a report co-authored by David E. Sanger and William J. Broad entitled “Relying on Computer, U.S. Seeks to Prove Iran’s Nuclear Aims”.

The article refers to mysterious documents on a stolen Iranian laptop computer which included  “a series of drawings of a missile re-entry vehicle” which allegedly could accommodate an Iranian produced nuclear weapon:

“In mid-July, senior American intelligence officials called the leaders of the international atomic inspection agency to the top of a skyscraper overlooking the Danube in Vienna and unveiled the contents of what they said was a stolen Iranian laptop computer.

The Americans flashed on a screen and spread over a conference table selections from more than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments, saying they showed a long effort to design a nuclear warhead, according to a half-dozen European and American participants in the meeting.

The documents, the Americans acknowledged from the start, do not prove that Iran has an atomic bomb. They presented them as the strongest evidence yet that, despite Iran’s insistence that its nuclear program is peaceful, the country is trying to develop a compact warhead to fit atop its Shahab missile, which can reach Israel and other countries in the Middle East.”(William J. Broad and David E. Sanger Relying on Computer, U.S. Seeks to Prove Iran’s Nuclear Aims – New York Times, November 13, 2005, emphasis added)

These “secret documents” were subsequently submitted by the US State Department to the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA, with a view to demonstrating that Iran was developing a nuclear weapons program. They were also used as a pretext to enforce the economic sanctions regime directed against Iran, adopted by the UN Security Council.

While their authenticity has been questioned, a recent article by investigative reporter Gareth Porter confirms unequivocally that the mysterious laptop documents are fake. (See Gareth Porter, Exclusive Report: Evidence of Iran Nuclear Weapons Program May Be Fraudulent, Global Research, November 18, 2010).

The drawings contained in the documents leaked by William J. Broad and David E. Sanger do not pertain to the Shahab missile but to an obsolete North Korean missile system which was decommissioned by Iran in the mid-1990s. The drawings presented by US State Department officials pertained to the “Wrong Missile Warhead”:

In July 2005, … Robert Joseph, US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, made a formal presentation on the purported Iranian nuclear weapons program documents to the agency’s leading officials in Vienna. Joseph flashed excerpts from the documents on the screen, giving special attention to the series of technical drawings or “schematics” showing 18 different ways of fitting an unidentified payload into the re-entry vehicle or “warhead” of Iran’s medium-range ballistic missile, the Shahab-3. When IAEA analysts were allowed to study the documents, however, they discovered that those schematics were based on a re-entry vehicle that the analysts knew had already been abandoned by the Iranian military in favor of a new, improved design. The warhead shown in the schematics had the familiar “dunce cap” shape of the original North Korean No Dong missile, which Iran had acquired in the mid-1990s. … The laptop documents had depicted the wrong re-entry vehicle being redesigned. … (Gareth Porter, op cit, emphasis added)

David E, Sanger, who worked diligently with Wikileaks under the banner of truth and transparency was also instrumental in the New York Times “leak” of what Gareth Porter describes as fake intelligence. (Ibid)

While this issue of fake intelligence received virtually no media coverage, it invalidates outright Washington’s assertions regarding Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons. It also questions the legitimacy of the UN Security Council Sancions regime directed against Iran.

Moreover, in a bitter irony, the selective redacting of the Wikileaks embassy cables by the NYT has usefully served not only to dismiss the central issue of fake intelligence but also to reinforce, through media disinformation, Washington’s claim that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. A case in point is a November 2010 article co-authored by David E. Sanger, which quotes the Wikileaks cables as a source:

“Iran obtained 19 of the missiles from North Korea, according to a [Wikileaks] cable dated Feb. 24 of this year…. (WikiLeaks Archive — Iran Armed by North Korea – NYTimes.com, November 28, 2010).

These missiles are said to have the “capacity to strike at capitals in Western Europe or easily reach Moscow, and American officials warned that their advanced propulsion could speed Iran’s development of intercontinental ballistic missiles.” (Ibid, emphasis added).

Wikileaks, Iran and the Arab World

The released wikileaks cables have also being used to create divisions between Iran on the one hand and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States on the other:

“After WikiLeaks claimed that certain Arab states are concerned about Iran’s nuclear program and have urged the U.S. to take [military] action to contain Iran, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took advantage of the issue and said that the released cables showed U.S. concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear program are shared by the international community.” Tehran Times : WikiLeaks promoting Iranophobia, December 5, 2010)

The Western media has jumped on this opportunity and has quoted the State Department memoranda released by Wikleaks with a view to upholding Iran as a threat to global security as well as fostering divisions between Iran and the Arab world.

“The Global War on Terrorism”

The leaks quoted by the Western media reveal the support of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia to several Islamic terrorist organizations, a fact which is known and amply documented.

What the reports fail to mention, however, which is crucial in an understanding of the “Global War on Terrorism”, is that US intelligence historically has channelled its support to terrorist organizations via Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. (See Michel Chossudovsky, America’s “War on Terrorism”, Global Research, Montreal, 2005). These are US sponsored covert intelligence operations using Saudi and Pakistani intelligence as intermediaries.

In this regard, the use of the Wikleaks documents by the media tends to sustain the illusion that the CIA has nothing to do with the terror network and that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are “providing the lion’s share of funding” to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, among others, when in fact this financing is undertaken in liaison and consultation with their US intelligence counterparts:

“The information came to light in the latest round of documents released Sunday by Wikileaks. In their communiques to the State Department, U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states describe a situation in which wealthy private donors, often openly, lavishly support the same groups against whom Saudi Arabia claims to be fighting.” ( Wikileaks: Saudis, Gulf States Big Funders of Terror Groups – Defense/Middle East – Israel News – Israel National News)

Similarly, with regard to Pakistan:

The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of news organizations, make it clear that underneath public reassurances lie deep clashes [between the U.S. and Pakistan] over strategic goals on issues like Pakistan’s support for the Afghan Taliban and tolerance of Al Qaeda,…” (Wary Dance With Pakistan in Nuclear World, The New York Times December 1, 2010)

Reports of this nature serve to provide legitimacy to US drone attacks against alleged terrorist targets inside Pakistan.

The corporate media’s use and interpretation of the Wikileaks cables serves to uphold two related myths:

1) Iran has nuclear weapons program and constitutes a threat to global security.
2) Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are state sponsors of Al Qaeda. They are financing Islamic terrorist organizations which are intent upon attacking the US and its NATO allies.

The CIA and the Corporate Media

The CIA’s relationship to the US media is amply documented. The New York Times continues to entertain a close relationship not only with US intelligence, but also with the Pentagon and more recently with the Department of Homeland Security.

“Operation Mocking Bird” was an initiative of the CIA’s Office of Special Projects (OSP), established in the early 1950s. Its objective was to exert influence on both the US as well as the foreign media. From the 1950s, members of the US media were routinely enlisted by the CIA.

The inner workings of the CIA’s relationship to the US media are described in Carl Bernstein’s 1977 article in Rolling Stone entitled The CIA and the Media:

“[M]ore than 400 American journalists who [had] secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. [1950-1977]Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. … Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners,… Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work….;

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune. (The CIA and the Media by Carl Bernstein)

Bernstein suggests, in this regard, that “the CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress” (Ibid).

In recent years, the CIA’s relationship to the media has become increasingly complex and sophisticated. We are dealing with a mammoth propaganda network involving a number of agencies of government.

Media disinformation has become institutionalized. The lies and fabrications have become increasingly blatant when compared to the 1970s. The US media has become the mouthpiece of US foreign policy. Disinformation is routinely “planted” by CIA operatives in the newsroom of major dailies, magazines and TV channels: “A relatively few well-connected correspondents provide the scoops, that get the coverage in the relatively few mainstream news sources, where the parameters of debate are set and the “official reality” is consecrated for the bottom feeders in the news chain.”(Chaim Kupferberg, The Propaganda Preparation of 9/11, Global Research, September 19, 2002).

Since 2001, the US media has assumed a new role in sustaining the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) and camouflaging US sponsored war crimes. In the wake of 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld created the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), or “Office of Disinformation” as it was labeled by its critics: “The Department of Defense said they needed to do this, and they were going to actually plant stories that were false in foreign countries — as an effort to influence public opinion across the world.'” (Interview with Steve Adubato, Fox News, 26 December 2002, see also Michel Chossudovsky, War Propaganda, Global Research, January 3, 2003).

Today’s corporate media is an instrument of war propaganda, which begs the question:  why would the NYT all of a sudden promote transparency and truth in media, by assisting Wikileaks in “spreading the word”; and that people around the World would not pause for one moment and question the basis of this incongruous relationship.

On the surface, nothing proves that Wikileaks is a CIA covert operation. However, given the corporate media’s cohesive and structured relationship to US intelligence, not to mention the links of individual journalists to the military-national security establishment, the issue of a CIA sponsored PsyOp must necessarily be addressed.

Wikileaks Social and Corporate Entourage

Wikileaks and The Economist have also entered into what seems to be a contradictory relationship. Wikileaks founder and editor Julian Assange was granted in 2008 The Economist’s New Media Award.

The Economist has a close relationship to Britain’s financial elites. It is an establishment news outlet, which has, on balance, supported Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war. It bears the stamp of the Rothschild family. Sir Evelyn Robert Adrian de Rothschild was chairman of The Economist from 1972 to 1989. His wife Lynn Forester de Rothschild currently sits on The Economist’s board. The Rothschild family also has a sizeable shareholder interest in The Economist.

The broader question is why would Julian Assange receive the support from Britain’s foremost establishment news outfit which has consistently been involved in media disinformation?

Are we not dealing with a case of “manufactured dissent”, whereby the process of supporting and rewarding Wikileaks for its endeavors, becomes a means of controlling and manipulating the Wikileaks project, while at the same time embedding it into the mainstream media.

It is also worth mentioning another important link. Julian Assange’s lawyer Mark Stephens of Finers Stephens Innocent (FSI), a major London elite law firm, happens to be the legal adviser to the Rothschild Waddesdon Trust. While this in itself does prove anything, it should nonetheless be examined in the broader context of Wikileaks’ social and corporate entourage: the NYT, the CFR, The Economist, Time Magazine, Forbes, Finers Stephens Innocent (FSI), etc.

Manufacturing Dissent

Wikileaks has the essential features of a process of “manufactured dissent”. It seeks to expose government lies. It has released important information on US war crimes. But once the project becomes embedded in the mould of mainstream journalism, it is used as an instrument of media disinformation:

“It is in the interest of the corporate elites to accept dissent and protest as a feature of the system inasmuch as they do not threaten the established social order. The purpose is not to repress dissent, but, on the contrary, to shape and mould the protest movement, to set the outer limits of dissent. To maintain their legitimacy, the economic elites favor limited and controlled forms of opposition…  To be effective, however, the process of “manufacturing dissent” must be carefully regulated and monitored by those who are the object of the protest movement ” (See Michel Chossudovsky,  “Manufacturing Dissent”: the Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites, September 2010)

What this examination of the Wikileaks project also suggests is that the mechanics of New World Order propaganda, particularly with regard to its military agenda, has become increasingly sophisticated.

It no longer relies on the outright suppression of the facts regarding US-NATO war crimes. Nor does it require that the reputation of government officials at the highest levels, including the Secretary of State, be protected. New World Order politicians are in a sense “disposable”. They can be replaced. What must be protected and sustained are the interests of the economic elites, which control the political apparatus from behind the scenes.

In the case of Wikileaks, the facts are contained in a data bank; many of those facts, particularly those pertaining to foreign governments serve US foreign policy interests. Other facts tend, on the other hand to discredit the US administration. With regard to financial information, the release of data pertaining to a particular bank instigated via Wikileaks by a rival financial institution, could potentially be used to trigger the collapse or bankrutpcy of the targeted financial institution.

All the Wiki-facts are selectively redacted, they are then “analyzed” and interpreted by a media which serves the economic elites.

While the numerous pieces of information contained in the Wikileaks data bank are accessible, the broader public will not normally take the trouble to consult and scan through the Wikileaks data bank. The public will read the redacted selections and interpretations presented in major news outlets.

A partial and biased picture is presented. The redacted version is accepted by public opinion because it is based on what is heralded as a “reliable source”, when in fact what is presented in the pages of major newspapers and on network TV is a carefully crafted and convoluted distortion of the truth.

Limited forms of critical debate and “transparency” are tolerated while also enforcing broad public acceptance of the basic premises of US foreign policy, including its “Global War on Terrorism”. With regard to a large segment of the US antiwar movement, this strategy seems to have succeeded: “We are against war but we support the ‘war on terrorism'”.

What this means is that truth in media can only be reached by dismantling the propaganda apparatus, –i.e. breaking the legitimacy of the corporate media which sustains the broad interests of the economic elites as well America’s global military design.

In turn, we must ensure that the campaign against Wikileaks in the U.S., using the 1917 Espionage Act, will not be utilized as a means to wage a campaign to control the internet. In this regard, we should also stand firm in preventing the prosecution of Julian Assange in the US.

December 14, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | 20 Comments

Police Demolish Seven Homes In Lod

By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – December 14, 2010

The Israeli Police demolished on Tuesday seven Palestinian homes in Lod city after forcing the residents out. The police claimed the structures were built without obtaining the needed construction permits.

Seventy residents were rendered homeless and are currently living in tents. The demolished homes belong to members of Abu Eid family.

The furniture and belongings of the families were taken by the police to a location still unknown to the residents.

The residents demanded that authorities delay demolishing their homes so they can pursue legal action, but the so-called “The Lands Of Israel” Authority rejected their request, and claimed that the land was rented out to the family in 1950, and that the contract had expired.

Local sources reported that the Police prevented local residents from entering the area, and that one of the soldiers cocked this Kalashnikov rifle telling the locals that he is there “to perform his duty”.

“I can only deal with you using this!” the soldier said while pointing his rifle at the residents.

His provocation led to clashes between the soldiers and dozens of residents, no injuries were reported.

The Popular Committee in the area held a meeting with the locals and decided to install tents to temporarily house the residents.

Furthermore, the Committee prepared plans to rebuild the demolished structures.

December 13, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | 1 Comment

Obama’s Show Trials

Why prosecute a terrorism suspect if life imprisonment is the only possible outcome?

Jacob Sullum from the January 2011 issue of Reason

In October a federal judge threw out a key witness against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the former Guantanamo inmate who is accused of participating in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The witness, who was identified through Ghailani’s coerced statements, was supposed to testify that he sold the defendant the TNT used to blow up the embassy in Tanzania. But U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan concluded that the testimony was too closely tied to information the CIA had obtained from Ghailani while holding him at a secret prison where he says he was tortured.

Conservatives who think terrorism suspects should never receive civilian trials said the exclusion of this testimony showed they were right. So did civil libertarians who argue that the federal courts are perfectly capable of handling terrorism cases. But whether or not the system is working, Kaplan’s ruling suggested it is ultimately irrelevant.

“It is appropriate to emphasize,” Kaplan wrote, “that Ghailani remains subject to trial on the pending indictment, that he faces the possibility of life imprisonment if convicted, and that his status as an ‘enemy combatant’ probably would permit his detention as something akin to a prisoner of war until hostilities between the United States and Al Qaeda and the Taliban end even if he were found not guilty in this case.” Barring a formal surrender by Al Qaeda, these “hostilities” will continue indefinitely, so detention for their duration amounts to a life sentence—the same punishment Ghailani is apt to receive if he is found guilty.

If Ghailani is convicted, in other words, he will be imprisoned for life, and the same thing will happen if he is acquitted. Even with the benefit of the Fifth Amendment’s ban on coerced self-incrimination and the exclusionary rule, Ghailani has zero chance of regaining his freedom. So what exactly is the point of the trial?

In a New York Times op-ed piece published after Kaplan’s ruling, Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith, an assistant attorney general during the Bush administration, noted that “trials are perceived to be more legitimate than detention.” But Goldsmith, who favors military detention of suspected terrorists, added that “a conviction in a trial publicly guaranteed not to result in the defendant’s release will not be seen as a beacon of legitimacy.”

Asked whether Ghailani will be returned to military custody if his trial does not turn out the way the government wants, Attorney General Eric Holder dodged the question, saying, “We intend to proceed with this trial.” Holder’s coyness was not really necessary, because the administration already has publicly stated that it reserves the right to detain terrorism suspects who are acquitted.

“If you have the authority under the laws of war to detain someone,” Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson told the Senate Armed Services Committee in July 2009, “it is true irrespective of what happens on the prosecution side.…If there’s an acquittal…we would have the ability to detain him.”

One reason for nevertheless going through the motions of a trial, Goldsmith suggested, is the possibility of capital punishment. But the Justice Department is not seeking the death penalty in Ghailani’s case, and in any event President Barack Obama claims he can kill suspected terrorists without permission from a court.

Under his policy of “targeted killings,” Obama can authorize the summary execution of anyone he unilaterally identifies as a member or accomplice of Al Qaeda, including American citizens. Since this administration, like the last one, views the entire world as a battlefield in the war on terrorism, that means enemies of the state can be killed anywhere at any time—except, presumably, if they have been taken into custody and are being prosecuted in federal court.

Which suggests a third option for Ghailani, in addition to life imprisonment upon conviction and indefinite detention upon acquittal. The government could simply let him go—and then kill him.

Senior Editor Jacob Sullum (jsullum@reason.com) is a nationally syndicated columnist.

December 13, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

AGAINST CRITICISM

By Paul Balles | Intifada – Palestine | 13 December 2010

“Arrogance diminishes wisdom” – Arabic proverb

Joseph A. Klein

Last month, Joseph A Klein wrote an article for the Canada Free Press criticising the Obama administration for joining the UN Human Rights Council. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/29644

The Council had met and found fault with a number of human rights violations by America. For this, Klein verbally bashed the Council. Klein is author of the book Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom.”

Having “studied the United Nations for many years” Klein says he “watched it degenerate into an anti-Western echo chamber that does more harm than good.”

The point of Klein’s writing is that the UN is wrong because of its criticism of the US and Israel.

The US and Israel share two shameful traits: both abhor criticism, and both divert attention from their own faults when criticised by levelling the same criticism at others.

“In my new book, Lethal Engagement,” says Klein, “I focus on the perfect storm revolving around the increasing Islamicization of key UN bodies – particularly the ones that produce influential international norms.”

In short, criticise Israel for any of its misdeeds–destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure, imprisoning thousands of Palestinians, starving and slaughtering Gazans–and Klein will shift to an unrelated issue.

Klein complains that “Obama wants to engage with our enemies like Iran and Syria while coming down hard on one of our closest allies, Israel.”

Thus, Klein (and others) will criticize Obama, but to find fault with America or Israelis is to be dubbed unpatriotic, Islamic extremist, or anti-Semitic.

While most people’s ire is aroused by criticism from outsiders (aliens, expats, foreigners) there are often good reasons for outsiders to be critical.

Attorney, commentator and author of How Would a Patriot Act, Glenn Greenwald pointed to several understandable reasons for external criticism in his books and articles.

“We systematically torture Muslims and then cover it up and protect our torturers while preaching accountability and the rule of law; we condemn deprivations of due process while maintaining and expanding lawless prison systems for Muslims…”

That being factually accurate, it’s understandable why those who have suffered under our double standards denigrate their abusers.

Greenwald notes how our critics react predictably to our hypocrisy: “We demand adherence to U.N. dictates and international law while blocking investigations into U.N. reports of war crimes and possible ‘crimes against humanity’ by our allies;…”

If that weren’t enough, Greenwald reminds us that “we righteously oppose aggression while invading and simultaneously occupying numerous countries, while threatening to attack still more, and arming countries like Israel to the teeth to wage still other attacks….”

Americans think that any criticism of America is unjustified, primarily because much of the evidence fails to make it to the media and because they rebel at criticism.

To resist criticism and denigrate honest critics is a sign of impending downfall from the pollution of conceit.

English actress Ellen Terry appropriately observed that “conceit is an insuperable obstacle to all progress.”

To return to Joseph A. Klein’s gripe, he bemoaned the members of the Human Rights Council including, “among its own proud roster of members, such countries as China, Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia.”

Then, to shift the focus from American abuses, Klein groaned that “These serial human rights abusers exploit the UPR process to heap praise on each other and whitewash their own abysmal records, while scoring propaganda points against Western democracies for falling short of perfection.”

In making that comment, he just did what he complained that members of the Human Rights Council do. Heaping praise on America, he attempts to score propaganda points by denigrating others.

Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years.

December 13, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, War Crimes | 1 Comment

Individuals who profit exceedingly well for “non-profit” organizations

Kenny’s Side Show | December 13, 2010

Haaretz reports on How much do U.S. Jewish leaders make? It is taken from the Jewish Daily Forward’s article that focuses not on some of the excessive salaries but on the disparity between the positions and pay of men and women. Without looking into each and every one, I take it they all are ‘classified’ as non-profits, charities, religious and educational organizations.

The entire chart is here but let’s look at one of them, the Anti-Defamation League and their ‘leader’ Abe Foxman.

Photobucket

Over a half a mil a year is a lot of profit for Foxman for his anti-truth hate speech. The ADL is classified as a not-for-profit organization recognized as tax-exempt under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3). What does the IRS say are the requirements?

To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates. source

In general, no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation (commonly known as lobbying). A 501(c)(3) organization may engage in some lobbying, but too much lobbying activity risks loss of tax-exempt status.

An organization will be regarded as attempting to influence legislation if it contacts, or urges the public to contact, members or employees of a legislative body for the purpose of proposing, supporting, or opposing legislation, or if the organization advocates the adoption or rejection of legislation. source

“Some lobbying but not too much?” Who defines that? As a current example, is this the ADL advocating adoption of legislation in disregard to IRS rules?

We urge the Senate to do its part and to pass the DREAM Act without delay.”

It sure seems as if they are advocating legislation to me. I guess the ADL gets around the rules by just saying yeah we’re lobbying, but not too much. No one in Congress or the IRS is going to call them out on it anyway.

AIPAC is a 501C4 non-profit and they pay their top dog very well for the job of seeing to it that we give Israel billions of dollars each year and fight their wars for them. Something’s very wrong when a nest of spies is classified as a non-profit.

The IRmep Center for Policy and Law Enforcement has filed a 1,389 page complaint demanding that AIPAC’s tax exempt status be retroactively revoked.

They have the details, a rock solid case, but don’t hold your breath on that one.

So check out the chart. If we had the time we could go on and on about most of them. These are not the soup kitchens and charitable groups we tend to think of non-profits as being but propagandists, Israel firsters and agenda driven profiteers. Some could be even be called thieves, sanctioned by the IRS.

December 13, 2010 Posted by | Wars for Israel | 1 Comment

Rescuing Zionism at Palestinian expense

By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 13 December 2010



Hillary Clinton speaks at the Saban Forum Gala Dinner in Washington, DC, 10 December. (US State Department)

Standing in front of a huge banner of an Israeli flag merging into the American Stars and Stripes last Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave yet another set-piece speech laying out how US “engagement” would help bring peace in our time.

Speaking at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center in Washington, DC with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and key Israel lobby figures looking on — including Salam Fayyad, the puppet “prime minister” of the US- and Israeli-backed Palestinian Authority — Clinton asserted that “a Palestinian state achieved through negotiations is inevitable” (“Remarks at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy Seventh Annual Forum,” 10 December 2010).

What Clinton laid out in diagnosis and prescriptions, however, ensures that a Palestinian state is anything but inevitable. It is vanishingly unlikely.

Clinton’s much-anticipated intervention followed the Obama administration’s latest capitulation to Israel on settlement construction in the West Bank. After almost two years of attempting to bribe Israel into “restraining” the expansion of its Jewish-only colonies on occupied, stolen land, and its violent Judaization of Jerusalem, the administration concluded that it could do nothing. Of course one thing the Obama administration never tried was real pressure using as leverage the billions in annual no-strings aid the fiscally-bankrupt United States provides to Israel.

Returning to a theme she first took up in her last major speech to the Israel lobby, at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (better known as AIPAC) in March, Clinton warned that the status quo is unsustainable:

“I know that improvements in security and growing prosperity have convinced some that this conflict can be waited out or largely ignored. This view is wrong and it is dangerous. The long-term population trends that result from the occupation are endangering the Zionist vision of a Jewish and democratic state in the historic homeland of the Jewish people. Israelis should not have to choose between preserving both elements of their dream. But that day is approaching.”

This is a polite way of putting it. Prominent Hebrew University demographer and Palestinian-birthrate-watcher Sergio DellaPergola recently told The Jerusalem Post that Jews already constitute just under 50 percent of the population in historic Palestine — Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip combined (“Jews now a minority between the River and the Sea,” 26 November 2010).

So while demographically, historic Palestine is no longer “Jewish” it has also never been a democracy, certainly not for its indigenous Palestinians. The Jewish majority within Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries — the basis for the claim that Israel is a “Jewish democracy” — was engineered through the most undemocratic means possible: the deliberate, carefully-planned ethnic cleansing of 90 percent of the Palestinians in that area between 1947-1950 and subsequent efforts to cover up the crime.

And, for the past 43 years — or more than two thirds of Israel’s existence — millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, occupied since 1967, have lived under brutal Israeli military tyranny with no control over their own lives, land and resources. This has not changed despite the ongoing and lavishly-funded fantasy of Salam Fayyad’s “state-building” initiative of recent years — in reality a repressive US-managed police state apparatus to crush any form of resistance.

Clinton made it clear that preserving this unjust situation — rescuing Zionism — remains the priority of US policy. For there can be no “Jewish democracy” without the liquidation of Palestinian rights, particularly of refugees and Palestinian citizens of Israel.

On refugees, all Clinton had to say was, “This is a difficult and emotional issue, but there must be a just and permanent solution that meets the needs of both sides.”

She did not spell out what those “needs” are. For Israel it is clear that the “need” is to continue to deny the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to lands from which they are excluded solely on the racist grounds that they are not Jews. Israel clearly “needs” this so it can continue to subordinate the rights of indigenous Palestinians to the ethnic privileges of Israeli Jews.

The needs of Palestinian refugees are that their rights be respected, especially the right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to return home — should they choose to do so — and for restitution and compensation. These basic human rights are recognized specifically and repeatedly in international law in the case of Palestinians.

These two sets of “needs” are irreconcilable. One can only stand on one side of the question: either one is for Israel’s “right” to remain a racist state, or one is for universal rights and international law and treating all human beings as equals regardless of their religion or ethnicity.

These are exactly the same rights that the United States and the European Union actively supported in Bosnia, in the 1995 US-brokered Dayton Agreement. Under the agreement more than half a million refugees have returned home, in a country with a total population of just 3.5 million, to areas dominated politically and demographically by antagonistic ethnic authorities. In Bosnia, the preference of ethnonational groups to live in areas cleansed of those they consider undesirable was not allowed to trump the actual rights of individual refugees. Nor should it in Palestine.

Perhaps because Clinton knows that the US position on refugees is wrong, immoral and illegal, she does not dare spell out the implications of her words in such clear terms. It is up to Israel, the ethnic cleanser and bully, and a subservient and neutered Palestinian “leadership” to “agree” on what their “needs” are — amid radical power imbalance that guarantees (or so the United States calculates and hopes) that the result will come down in Israel’s favor.

Don’t be fooled either by Clinton’s sophistry on settlements: “The position of the United States on settlements has not changed and will not change. Like every American administration for decades, we do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity. We believe their continued expansion is corrosive not only to peace efforts and two-state solution, but to Israel’s future itself.”

In international law, all of Israel’s settlements beyond the line of 4 June 1967 are illegal. The United Nations Security Council, for example, determined that “all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel’s policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention …” (UN Security Council Resolution 465 (1980)).

That resolution, like so many others, called “upon the Government and people of Israel to rescind those measures, to dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction and planning” of new ones.

The current US position, contrary to international law, questions only the “legitimacy” — not even the legality — of “continued” settlement activity. The US only asserts that there is a problem with new settlements. The Obama administration has endorsed former President George W. Bush’s 2004 written promise to Israel that the US will recognize Israeli sovereignty over virtually all settlements that have already been built since 1967.

Could there be a clearer inducement than this for Israel to continue to establish “facts on the ground”? Whatever lip service Clinton paid to opposing settlements, it is clear, based on the performance of the Obama administration to date, that for Israel there will be no negative consequences, and only rewards.

Nor did Clinton have any word of comfort for 1.4 million Palestinian (second-class) citizens of Israel who face a raft of new racist laws, policies and declarations by Israeli leaders and state-funded rabbis, dozens of whom recently issued a religious ruling calling for Jews to boycott any other Jew who sells or rents a home to a non-Jew. For the United States it is as if these Palestinians — who face increasing threats of expulsion by prominent Israeli politicians — simply don’t exist.

So what is left of Obama’s vaunted peace process “engagement”? For sure all the things that suit Israel: an “unwavering,” unconditional commitment to supply Israel with more of the weapons that have been so promiscuously used to commit war crimes in Lebanon, Gaza and across the West Bank; acquiescence to continued settlement construction; more sanctions and pressure on Iran — an Israel lobby priority; continued boycott of Hamas, siege of Gaza and support for the West Bank police state; calls on the Arab states to normalize ties with Israel; and of course putting Israel’s desire to remain a racist ethnocracy before the universal rights of human beings.

And the US prescription now is more of the same: urging Palestinians to “negotiate” with an Israel from which the US superpower itself could extract nothing, precisely because of unconditional American support!

For the discredited Palestinian Authority “leadership” which rushed to Washington as soon as Clinton beckoned, the secretary of state had these instructions: “To demonstrate their commitment to peace, Israeli and Palestinian leaders should stop trying to assign blame for the next failure, and focus instead on what they need to do to make these efforts succeed.” She warned Palestinians specifically, in reference to efforts to get more states to recognize Palestine: “Unilateral efforts at the United Nations are not helpful and undermine trust.” Recently, Brazil and Argentina joined more than a hundred countries that recognize the nonexistent “State of Palestine” declared by the Palestine Liberation Organization in November 1988.

In other words, Palestinians must continue to take it on the chin as Israel does what it pleases with American support. Only Palestinians intent on committing national suicide could go along with such a charade. Those who support genuine peace for Palestinians and Israeli Jews, based on universal rights, equality, restitution and the decolonization of the relationship between the populations, must escalate the real peace process: boycott, divestment and sanctions to force Israel to respect Palestinian rights and obey international law.

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

December 13, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | 3 Comments

Sex, Lies, Iran, Israel and WikiLeaks

alawson911 | December 12, 2010

WikiLeaks has given the mainstream media yet another opportunity to vilify Iran. A typical headline, from the New York Times was: “Around the world distress over Iran.” And, ironically, it is true, but not in the way the headline writer meant. Around the world there is distress over Iran, distress at the way it is being cast in the role of the Evil Doer, when all but the most ignorant observers realise that it is nuclear-armed Apartheid Israel that is the real threat to world peace, not Iran.

With thanks to: 7hevo1d for the amazing graphics
Debbie Menon: http://mycatbirdseat.com/
James Linton: http://crimesofzion.blogspot.com/
for their research contributions

December 13, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | 10 Comments

Israel’s War on Children

1,500 Arrested in a Year

By JONATHAN COOK | CounterPunch | December 13, 2010

Israeli police have been criticised over their treatment of hundreds of Palestinian children, some as young as seven, arrested and interrogated on suspicion of stone-throwing in East Jerusalem.

In the past year, criminal investigations have been opened against more than 1,200 Palestinian minors in Jerusalem on stone-throwing charges, according to police statistics gathered by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). That was nearly twice the number of children arrested last year in the much larger Palestinian territory of the West Bank.

Most of the arrests have occurred in the Silwan district, close to Jerusalem’s Old City, where 350 extremist Jewish settlers have set up several heavily guarded illegal enclaves among 50,000 Palestinian residents.

Late last month, in a sign of growing anger at the arrests, a large crowd in Silwan was reported to have prevented police from arresting Adam Rishek, a seven-year-old accused of stone-throwing. His parents later filed a complaint claiming he had been beaten by the officers.

Tensions between residents and settlers have been rising steadily since the Jerusalem municipality unveiled a plan in February to demolish dozens of Palestinian homes in the Bustan neighbourhood to expand a Biblically-themed archeological park run by Elad, a settler organisation.

The plan is currently on hold following US pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

Fakhri Abu Diab, a local community leader, warned that the regular clashes between Silwan’s youths and the settlers, termed a “stone intifada” by some, could trigger a full-blown Palestinian uprising.

“Our children are being sacrificed for the sake of the settlers’ goal to take over our community,” he said.

In a recent report, entitled Unsafe Space, ACRI concluded that, in the purge on stone-throwing, the police were riding roughshod over children’s legal rights and leaving many minors with profound emotional traumas.

Testimonies collected by the rights groups reveal a pattern of children being arrested in late-night raids, handcuffed and interrogated for hours without either a parent or lawyer being present. In many cases, the children have reported physical violence or threats.

Last month 60 Israeli childcare and legal experts, including Yehudit Karp, a former deputy attorney-general, wrote to Mr Netanyahu condemning the police behaviour.

“Particularly troubling,” they wrote, “are testimonies of children under the age of 12, the minimal age set by the law for criminal liability, who were taken in for questioning, and who were not spared rough and abusive interrogation.”

Unlike in the West Bank, which is governed by military law, children in East Jerusalem suspected of stone-throwing are supposed to be dealt with according to Israeli criminal law.

Israel annexed East Jerusalem following the Six-Day war of 1967, in violation of international law, and its 250,000 Palestinian inhabitants are treated as permanent Israeli residents.

Minors, defined as anyone under 18, should be questioned by specially trained officers and only during daylight hours. The children must be able to consult with a lawyer and a parent should be present.

Ronit Sela, a spokeswoman for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), said her organisation had been “shocked” at the large number of children arrested in East Jerusalem in recent months, often by units of undercover policemen.

“We have heard many testimonies from children who describe terrifying experiences of violence during both their arrest and their later interrogation.”

Muslim, 10, lives in the Bustan neighbourhood and in a house that Israeli authorities have ordered demolished. His case was included in the ACRI report, and in an interview he said he had been arrested four times this year, even though he was under the age of criminal responsibility. On the last occasion, in October, he was grabbed from the street by three plain-clothes policemen who jumped out a van.

“One of the men grabbed me from behind and started choking me. The second grabbed my shirt and tore it from the back, and the third twisted my hands behind my back and tied them with plastic cords. ‘Who threw stones?’ one of them asked me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. He started hitting me on the head and I shouted in pain.”

Muslim was taken into custody and released six hours later. A local doctor reported that the boy had bleeding wounds to his knees and swelling on several parts of his body.

Muslim’s father, who has two sons in prison, said the boy was waking with nightmares and could no longer concentrate on his school studies. “He has been devastated by this.”

Ms Sela said arrests had risen sharply in Silwan since September, when a private security guard at a settler compound shot dead a Palestinian man, Samer Sirhan, and injured two others.

Clashes between the settlers and Silwan youths came to prominence in October when David Beeri, director of settler organisation Elad, was shown on camera driving into two boys as they threw stones at his car.

One, Amran Mansour, 12, who was thrown over the bonnet of Mr Beeri’s car, was arrested shortly afterwards in a late-night raid on his family’s home.

Also in October, nine rightwing Israeli MPs complained after stones were thrown at their minibus as they paid a solidarity visit to Beit Yonatan, a large settler-controlled house in Silwan. Israel’s courts have ordered that the house be demolished, but Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, has refused to enforce the order.

In the wake of the attack, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, the public security minister, warned: “We will stop the stone-throwing through the use of covert and overt force, and bring back quiet.”

Last month police announced that house arrests would be used against children more regularly and financial penalties of up to $1,400 would be imposed on parents.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, reported the case of “A.S.”, a 12-year-old taken for interrogation following an arrest at 3am.

“I sat on my knees facing the wall. Every time I moved, a man in civilian clothes hit me with his hand on my neck … The man asked me to prostrate myself on the floor and ask his forgiveness, but I refused and told him that I do not bow to anyone but Allah. All the while, I felt intense pain in my feet and legs. I felt intense fear and I started shaking.”

In a statement B’Tselem said: “It is hard to believe that the security forces would have acted similarly against Jewish minors.”

Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, denied that the police had violated the children’s rights. He added: “It is the responsibility of parents to stop this criminal behaviour by their children.”

Jawad Siyam, a local community activist in Silwan, said the goal of the arrests and the increased settler activity was to “make life unbearable and push us out of the area”.

The 60 experts who wrote to Mr Netanyahu warned that the children’s abuse led to “post-traumatic stress disorders, such as nightmares, insomnia, bed-wetting, and constant fear of policemen and soldiers”. They also noted that children under extended house arrest were being denied the right to schooling.

Last year the United Nations Committee Against Torture expressed “deep concern” at Israel’s treatment of Palestinian minors, saying Israel was breaking the UN Convention on the Rights of Children, which it has signed.

Over the past 12 months, Defence for Children International has provided the UN with details of more than 100 children who claim they were physically or psychologically abused while in military custody.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His website is www.jkcook.net.

December 13, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | 2 Comments