Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Israeli Army fires on Palestinians planting olive trees

International Solidarity Movement | April 10, 2011

Bullets and tear gas were fired upon Palestinians and internationals whilst they planted olive trees on the land legally owned by the village of Iraq Burin yesterday.

The popular committee asked for a group of internationals to assist them in planting olive trees on the village land which is close to an army out post and the illegal Israeli settlement of Bracha. The trees were successfully planted even under the aggressive presence of the Israeli Army.

As the trees where being planted one army jeep came close and was a looming presence as local people took the chance to go further into the land to pick “akoub” (a plant used for cooking.)

After some 20 minutes, another jeep turned up, and the heavily armed soldiers started moving towards the people. One of the soldiers was seen aiming his gun directly at one of the boys.

When one boy, who in a symbolic act of resistance, threw a stone towards the soldiers in the far distance, they responded by firing shots and tear gas directly at the people, who had to run and duck to avoid being hit. More shots where fired at the youth but it is not clear if they were live or rubber coated steel bullets. However, what was clear was the completely disproportionate use of weapons and force on people partaking in a peaceful act of planting trees.

Despite the dangerous aggression of the Israeli army all 50 olive trees were planted on the hillside and three in the local cemetery – one for each of the boys that were killed in the village in the last year. On 19th March 2010, 16-year-old Muhammed Qadus, together with his cousin Asaud Qadus were shot and killed by the Israeli Army during a peaceful demonstration. On the 27th January this year, 19-year-old Oday Maher Hamza Qadous was shot dead by a settler on the hilltop just outside the village.

April 10, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Students Shutdown Carleton Board of Governors

saiacarleton on April 8, 2011

On 29 March 2011, students at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, shut down the scheduled Board of Governors (BoG) meeting after the body refused to consider a motion calling for divestment of pension stock from four companies implicated in Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

The direct action was led by Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA), and received the support and participation of 25 allied campus student groups, as well as faculty, staff and community members.

For more information on SAIA, please see: http://carleton.saia.ca

For more information on the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, please see: http://bdsmovement.net

Voiceover for this video was provided by the Five O’Clock Train, a radio program on CHUO 89.1 FM (Ottawa) hosted by Denis Rancourt. The full interview with SAIA members is provided here: http://trainradio.blogspot.com/2011/03/students-against-israeli-apartheid.html

Special thanks to Sigur Ros (http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/sigur-ros/id73720797) and David Rovics (http://itunes.apple.com/ca/artist/david-rovics/id15370164) for the music.

Special thanks as well to the Active Stills collective (ActiveStills.org) for photography from Palestine.

April 9, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Trials of Globalization: And We All Melt Down

This Can’t Be Happening* – 04/09/2011

We are now on the brink of the mother of all meltdowns in more ways than one.

Last weekend, The Times quoted Alan Hansen, a nuclear engineer and executive vice president of Areva NC, a unit of Areva, a French group that supplied reactor fuel to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plan, who spoke before a private gathering at Stanford University. “Clearly,” he summarized, “we’re witnessing one of the greatest disasters in modern time.” What the on-going release of cancer-causing radioactive fragments means in terms of human health and the environment is only beginning to come to light.

It’s certainly not my expertise. What I do know is that, on top of the terrible calamities brought on by the tsunami and the scary portents of the radiation spewing into the air, the ocean, and into the ground surrounding Fukushima and beyond, we are facing an economic juggernaut that is likely to shatter the world’s fragile recovery. You don’t take out the world’s third biggest economy – until recently, the second — with no impact, despite the recent assurance by that reliable sage Timothy Geithner that the crisis in Japan would not hinder the U.S. recovery. (Meanwhile, Tim’s banking buddies are busy reviewing their clients’ exposure.)

Up until the last few days, media and stock market pundits continue to drool over the prospect of some $310 billion worth of new business anticipated to rebuild earthquake and tsunami-ravaged Japan. Newsweek featured an article by Bill Emmott, a former editor of The Economist, stating:

“Typically, if economic effects are measured simply by gross domestic product, natural disasters cause a short-term loss in output, thanks to the destruction of offices and factories and the disruption to transport links, but after just a few months they actually act like an economic stimulus package.”

Needless to say, these are far from typical times, and this is no typical disaster. Faced with the loss of a critical supply partner, many companies around the world are confronting a quite different reality. Japan is suffering huge shortages as production capacity shrivels and logistical issues mount–particularly in the are of transportation. The Financial Times reports that Japanese manufacturing activity plummeted to a two-year low in March, according to the Markit/JMMA purchasing managers’ index, which hit its worst low since its inception in 2001.

We’re not just talking about the now infamous Japan-made five components that go into the iPad 2 or the wafer material needed to manufacture semiconductor chips or the metallic paint needed to produce shiny red and black cars. I can attest that companies of all sizes find themselves in the same pickle, with normally efficient Japanese production and transportation chains hobbled by power interruptions, radiation fears, earthquake damage, and severe after-shocks. These days, many global shipping lines won’t even dock at Japan’s busiest ports, Tokyo and Yokohama, for fear of radioactive contamination. And that’s not just being paranoid. If their hulls pick up any radioactivity, they could be barred later from other ports, for example in the U.S.

Meanwhile, we’re scrambling here in the US. I can tell you first-hand, it’s not so easy to just trip over to Europe or China, and duplicate parts and processes proprietary to the secretive and justifiably possessive Japanese. It will take at least some months or more for global factories, big and small, that rely on their goods and expertise for even a small fraction of their processes to retool.

March’s U.S. employment numbers may look good to some, but wait until the impact of this economic tsunami starts to hit. Already, automakers as far afield as Louisiana, Mexico and Belgium are facing temporary shutdowns due to lack of parts. What happens when government treasuries already drained by the global banking industry have only empty hands to show the long-term and newly unemployed?

Worse, we face the specter of growing inflation as goods grow scarcer and the costs of developing alternative supply chains start to kick in. Semiconductor chip prices, which affect the price of everything from cars to iPods, already rose in March as a direct result of earthquake-induced scarcities, according to iSuppli Market Research. Compounding the problem, China is already resorting to price controls in a futile bid to quell its soaring inflation and, equally contrived, the U.S. Fed continues to pump cash and dump it into our non-performing banks.

Oh, and what about that big payday when we all get to rebuild the land of the rising sun? This goes way beyond scorched earth, people. Even if that private gathering of nuclear wonks at Stanford was wrong, and the environmental and health impacts in northern Japan prove to be negligible, there is still the question of how they are going to muster the moohlah for a vast reconstruction project. That’s on top of sharing the insurance burden of Fukushima with Tepco, the utility that owns the plant.

Newsweek’s Emmott is sanguine on this score: “Insurance pays for some of it, government spending and private investment the rest.” Already, the Japanese central bank offered a loan program worth $11.7 billion to financial institutions in the disaster area. But, bear in mind that the Japanese government has the highest debt of any developed country, running 200% of GDP.

Of course, Emmott has an answer for this too, suggesting the Japanese simply “borrow more” (sure ‘nuff) and impose a “special reconstruction tax”, assuming that the “Japanese people will be entirely prepared to make sacrifices and share the burdens”. Go tell that to the angry hoards gathering daily outside Tepco headquarters.

It’s possible the government will have to start cashing out their U.S. T-bills, which is a whole other story, since Japan and China have financed our government’s profligate ways for the past decade or so. One thing for sure is that foreign governments are not likely to rush into Japan with huge coffers of cash any time soon. The U.S. and European taxpayers are in no mood to spring for someone else’s Marshall Plan. And given their wretched history, China would be an unlikely savior for Japan, although strange things do happen.

To be fair, Emmott did get one thing right when he asserted, “The first, and most fundamental, lesson from other natural disasters is that the economy is the least important thing to worry about.” Under the circumstances, it’s not all that comforting a thought.

~

*The anonymous author is a journalist and businesswoman who lives in the Philadelphia area, who contributes occasionally to This Can’t Be Happening.

April 9, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Nuclear Power | Leave a comment

Powerful Aftershock Rocks Japan

By Stephen Lendman | April 9, 2011

Measuring 7.1 (one or more other reports said 7.4), rocked northeast Japan, causing more damage and disruption to a devastated area. It cut electricity to four million homes, disrupted power at two nuclear facilities, and according to Kyodo News:

“Radioactive water spilled from pools holding spent nuclear fuel rods at the Onagawa power plant in Miyagi Prefecture,” according to Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA).

For up to 80 minutes, power was lost at Onagawa and the Higashidori nuclear facility. “A small amount of contaminated water spilled on the floor (inside) all three (Onagawa) reactors….In all, water spilled or leaked at eight sections of the plant,” also run by Tokyo Electric (TEPCO). In addition, blowout panels designed to control pressure were damaged in reactor number three’s turbine building, TEPCO saying a complete damage assessment was ongoing.

Moreover, a Rokkasho village (Aomori Prefecture) spent nuclear fuel disposal facility also lost power temporarily. The extent of nuclear facility damage is unknown, except for sketchy and unreliable official reports.

As always, they say damage, new or earlier, poses no dangers. Already, in fact, Fukushima caused potentially apocalyptic ones, covered up to conceal their gravity, extending far beyond Japan and the Pacific rim.

Other reports also downplay them, including from The New York Times and Al Jazeera, often indistinguishable from and as unreliable as BBC, headlining (on April 8) “Japan quake causes radioactive spill,” saying:

“A powerful earthquake in northeast Japan rocked a nuclear plant, causing a small amount of radioactive water to spill, but the operator said there was no immediate danger,” case closed.

On April 8, New York Times writers Hiroko Tabuchi and Andrew Pollack were just as deceptive, headlining, “Millions Without Power After Japan Aftershock,” saying:

TEPCO said “it had found no new damage (and no) increase in radiation levels” at any plant affected. Instead of explaining the situation’s gravity, the report merely said concerns “remain high.”

On the Progressive Radio News Hour’s April 7 broadcast, nuclear expert Karl Grossman discussed worrisome issues raised by his mentor, nuclear physicist Dr. Richard E. Webb, the world expert on nuclear plant explosions. In his work, writings and 1976 book titled, “The Accident Hazards of Nuclear Power Plants,” he explained the dangers, saying in his introduction:

“Nuclear power plants present a hazard to the health and safety of the public because they are subject to accident, such as an explosion, in which harmful substances called radioactivity could be released to the atmosphere as dust and expose a large population to lethal or injurious radiation.”

His main conclusion was that “the full accident hazard of each type nuclear power reactor has not been scientifically established, even for the most likely of serious accidents.”

Specifically, “the theory underlying the industry’s safety calculations has not been experimentally verified, nor are the necessary experiments planned….This shortcoming is one of the two chief concerns of this book.”

“The other, and more important, concern is that there are accident possibilities not considered for licensing which are more severe than the design basis accidents and that these have not even been theoretically investigated for the course they each could take….”

In other words, reactor containment systems aren’t designed for the worst potential accidents. As a result, each operating reactor anywhere “appears to have an enormous potential for public disaster.”

Thirty-five years later, little has changed. Many American reactors are as vulnerable as Fukushima’s, and no plans are in place to handle worst case scenarios, too potentially catastrophic to imagine but are very real, likely, and sooner or later, inevitable as long as nuclear plants keep operating.

Webb estimated the “theoretical magnitude of the worst consequences of the worst conceivable reactor accident,” a disturbing consideration but important. Moreover, he said it’s not as unlikely as might appear, given America’s passion with nuclear roulette – a ticking time bomb technology, accidents waiting to happen.

Widespread fallout depends on rainfall, he explained. Without it, contamination is better contained. Nonetheless, his worst possible accident scenario is as follows:

(1) a lethal radiation cloud a mile wide, extending 75 miles;

(2) evacuation or severely restrictive living conditions for an area the size of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio combined (120,000 square miles), lasting a year or longer; and

(3) severe long-term agricultural restrictions because of strontium 90 fallout over a land mass the size of half the land east of the Mississippi River (500,000 square miles), lasting one or more years, with dairy farming prohibited “for a very long time” over a 150,000 square mile area.

Other considerations involve genetic damage and LMFBR (Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor) accident consequences, especially for plutonium, the most toxic substance known by far. A millionth of a gram ingested can kill.

In addition, “the maximum distance downwind from a reactor accident” related to the above estimates is about 1,500 – 2,000 miles. “Hence, a nuclear reactor accident can affect distant communities as well as those nearby.”

Moreover, the above estimates aren’t maximum ones, as weather conditions can raise them. As a result, disaster levels depend on the amount of released radioactivity into the atmosphere “in the form of a very fine, light dust (particles one micron diameter in size) so that it can disperse over a wide area before fallout.”

Also, the higher the fuel temperature, the stronger the explosion and greater fractional radioactivity release in the form of a finer dust. Contingency plans don’t take these factors into consideration or the effects on food, water and human health.

On April 4, the web site eyreinternational.com quoted Webb’s analysis of a spent fuel rod accident, what occurred disastrously at Fukushima, saying:

“160,000 square miles (is) rendered uninhabitable (the size of California) by Cesium-137 alone; 338,000 acres of land ruined agriculturally because of Strontium-90 fallout; 200,000 square miles ruined by plutonium contamination alone – a lung cancer dust hazard.”

The site says after making these calculations, Webb concluded that radiation is much more harmful than he assumed, believing that within 48 hours of a major reactor accident, 30 – 100 million people potentially could be harmed by radioactive atmospheric, water and soil contamination. In other words, the most dire scenario is too frightening to imagine. Possibly it’s now unfolding in Japan, what the fullness of time will reveal.

~

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

April 9, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Nuclear Power | Leave a comment

Strike paralyzes Kashmir amid tensions

Press TV – April 9, 2011

The people of Indian-administered Kashmir have gone on a complete shutdown strike in response to the killing of a Muslim cleric in the Himalayan valley.

The strike paralyzed much of the region as most shops, businesses, schools and offices in Srinagar and other major towns were closed on Saturday, a Press TV correspondent reported.

The strikes are in protest at the killing of Muslim cleric Moulavi Shoukat Ahmad Shah on Friday. He was killed and several others were injured in a powerful explosion outside a mosque in Srinagar.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. However, a Pakistan-based Kashmir group has blamed it on “Indian agencies.”

The prominent leader was a well-known supporter of the separatist movement, which wants independence from India.

The region’s influential separatist politicians have described the killing as an “attack on the Kashmiri freedom movement.”

“It’s nothing but a conspiracy to deprive us of our religious and political leaders,” said a Muslim cleric and an influential moderate separatist Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.

“The killing has broken our back. We will expose those responsible,” said Yaseen Malik, head of the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front.

Kashmiri protesters chanted anti-Indian slogans and threw stones during clashes with Indian troops in several towns across the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley over the past 24 hours. This comes as there have been almost daily demonstrations against Indian rule in the region since June 2010, when security forces killed a teenage protester.

Since then violent street protests and crackdowns have left more than 110 people dead.

Kashmir lies at the heart of more than 60 years of hostility between India and Pakistan. Both countries claim the region in full but have partial control over it.

Political analysts say the frequent street protests of the past two years are giving new life to the Kashmir liberation struggle.

New Delhi has been repeatedly criticized for resorting to force rather than finding a diplomatic solution to the dispute.

The conflict in Kashmir has left tens of thousands of people dead over the past two decades.

April 9, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Report: All major Israeli wineries use grapes from occupied territory

Who Profits from the Occupation | March 2011

Despite being part of the Zionist colonization project as early as the mid-nineteenth century, the Israeli wine industry as we know it today is a fairly new development and was only established in the 1980’s. Currently, the Israeli wine industry comprises six large wineries (Carmel, Barkan, Golan Heights, Teperberg 1870, Binyamina and Tishbi) and dozens of medium and small wineries, totaling over 150 wineries, and about 12,000 acres of vineyards.

This report provides detailed information about these wine producers and their connection to the settlement wine industry. Additionally, it includes a survey of almost all of the settlement wineries in the Golan Heights and in the West Bank.

While the wine industry is known for being very meticulous in providing information about the origin of grapes that are used in the production of wine, there are several methods which are used in the Israeli wine industry to conceal information concerning the use of grapes from settler vineyards in occupied territory. Investigating the connections of the Israeli wine industry to settler vineyards, we found that while grapes from the Golan Heights are used quite openly, the wineries that use grapes from West Bank vineyards most often use a myriad of methods to conceal their origins.

Our report describes some of these methods, from those used by government export agencies to those used by individual exporters. For instance, the Israeli export institution redraws the map of the wine regions of Israeli wine in a way that deliberately blurs the distinctions between areas inside the State of Israel and areas of occupied territory. Israeli manufacturers of wine conceal information concerning the exact location of the vineyards from which they receive the grapes, by using vague descriptions, by not providing full disclosure of the location of vineyards or by detailing vineyards in the West Bank only in their publications in Hebrew.

This report also provides a comprehensive portrayal of the incentives of the Israeli wine industry to cultivate grapes and to develop wineries in occupied territory. Our report has found that in addition to the benefits that all commercial activities in settlements enjoy, including readily accessible land, tax benefits and other financial incentives provided by the Israeli government, the wine industry in the West Bank enjoys particular benefits and support from several government offices.

For instance, Israelis who cultivate vineyards on occupied territory are allocated subsidized water quotas; they receive funds from the Ministry of Agriculture for planting and building agricultural facilities, from the Ministry of Defense for paving roads and for fencing in the plots and from the Ministry of Tourism for turning the vineyards and wineries into tourist attractions.

Developing vineyards and wineries provide additional advantages for settlers in the West Bank. Due to a combination of legal and physical conditions, the planting of vineyards is a relatively easy and highly accessible means for taking over Palestinian land. Additionally, settlers both in the West Bank and in the Golan Heights have found that the wine industry can be used in order to develop tourism to the settlements, for local and international visitors alike. Tourist attractions do not only serve as an additional source of income for the settlements, but, more importantly, they operate to normalize and promote the entire settlement enterprise.

The full report is available at: http://www.whoprofits.org/articlefiles/WhoProfits-IsraeliWines.pdf

April 9, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Sadr vows to fight US overstay

Press TV – April 9, 2011

Iraq’s influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has warned that resistance against US forces will increase if the occupiers fail to leave by their deadline at the end of 2011.

In a statement read at an anti-US demonstration in Baghdad on Saturday, Sadr said that Iraqis will “escalate military resistance” to the US occupation after the deadline, Reuters reported.

Some Iraqis held signs reading, “Occupiers Out” and “No to America,” while others burned US, Israeli and British flags.

“They, the Iraqi government, agreed with the occupiers that they would leave within months from this homeland, according to an unfair agreement that we did not and will never accept,” spokesman Salah al-Ubaidi read to tens of thousands of supporters.

“We wait for one thing, their full withdrawal from Iraq, and [the departure of] their last soldier and base from these holy and great lands,” he added.

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed between Baghdad and Washington in 2008 mandates the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq by the end of 2011.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said Washington will keep its nearly fifty-thousand troops in Iraq if Baghdad asks for additional help. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, however, has rejected the offer.

Sadr, well-known for his anti-US stance, along with his political bloc has vehemently opposed the signing of the SOFA with the US, which extends the presence of US troops in Iraq.

Initially the pact was expected to be put to a nationwide vote. However, the Iraqi government, under US pressure, decided against the referendum.

April 9, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

2 dead, 18 injured in Cairo’s protest

Press TV – April 9, 2011

At least two people have been killed and 18 others injured as thousands of Egyptians are calling for trial of ousted President Hosni Mubarak clashed with security forces in Cairo’s’ Liberation Square.

On Saturday, security forces faced off with Egyptian protesters, who converged onto the iconic square to ask for the immediate prosecution of Mubarak and his henchmen, AFP reported.

The protest turned violent as anti-riot police fired into the air, the report added.

The angry crowd on Saturday promised to remain relentless in the pursuit of their demands, including the social reforms and the prosecutions of former regime figures.

They also want the Egyptian army to hand over power to a civilian government as part of the promised reforms.

The protests come weeks after Mubarak handed over power to Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which is headed by Defense Minister Gen. Mohammed Tantawi.

Activists demand the release of political prisoners, the lifting of a 30-year-old state of emergency and the disbandment of the military court.

The emergency law, in place since former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated and Mubarak assumed power, allows authorities unfettered power to arrest people without charge and ban protests.

April 9, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Over 500 activists detained in Bahrain

Press TV – April 8, 2011

The Bahraini Center for Human Rights (BCHR) has announced that the number of detained opposition activists in the Persian Gulf state has exceeded 500.

According to BCHR, 17 women are also among the detainees and 18 other activists are reportedly missing, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Since the beginning of the uprising in Bahrain dozens of anti-government protesters have been killed and many others have gone missing. The bodies of the missing are frequently found days after.

The head of BCHR, Nabeel Rajab, says now one in every 1,000 Bahraini is in detention for political reasons.

Witnesses say regime forces are conducting house to house searches to detain opposition activists.

Six opposition leaders have also been arrested and the Manama government has so far refused to provide any information on their fate.

The opposition leaders, five Shia and one Sunni, were rounded up on March 17.

Among the opposition leaders is Hassan Mushaima, the head of the Haq party, who returned to Bahrain from Britain in mid-February after Manama dropped charges against him.

His family members say Saudi troops were among Bahraini forces taking part in the arrest operation.

Reports coming from Bahrain suggest that regime forces backed by Saudi troops have intensified their crackdown on opposition figures and anti-government protesters.

April 8, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

The Theory That’s Killing America’s Economy—and Why It’s Wrong

By Ian Fletcher | April 8, 2011

I wrote in a previous article how America’s disastrous embrace of free trade is ultimately based on a false theory of how the global economy works: the so-called Theory of Comparative Advantage. This is what economists, from the government on down, believe in. This matters.

But I didn’t explain why the theory is wrong—which it is. Understanding its flaws is the price of admission to serious criticism of free trade, so it’s well worth getting a grasp on them. Economic theory can be a tough chew, but it’s worth the effort, if only to gain the intellectual confidence not to be intimidated by the so-called experts.  So… let’s take a look at some of that machinery behind the wizard’s curtain, shall we?

The theory’s flaws,  which are fairly well known to economists but mostly ignored, consist of a number of dubious assumptions upon which the theory depends. To wit:

Dubious Assumption #1: Trade is sustainable.

The problem here is that the theory of comparative advantage pays no attention to the long term.  So it can quite easily recommend a trade policy that gives us the highest possible living standard in the short run—but by way of selling off our country out from under us.
This is what happens when a nation runs a trade deficit, which necessarily means that it’s either sinking into debt to foreigners or selling off its existing assets to them.

The theory of comparative advantage is blind to this problem because it treats people’s time horizons as a given.  So if a nation wants a short-term consumption binge followed by long-term decline, the theory says “OK, no problem. You wanted it, you got it, what’s not to like?”

A saner theory of trade (and of economics generally) would advise people that it’s not a good idea to engage in decadent binges, regardless of how good it feels right now.  It would recommend protectionist restraints on imports to force trade into balance, not free trade.

–Dubious Assumption #2: There are no externalities.

An externality is a missing price tag. More precisely, it is the economists’ term for when the price of a product does not reflect its true economic cost or value.

The classic negative externality is environmental damage, which reduces the value of natural resources without raising the price of the product that harmed them. The classic positive externality is technological spillover, where one company’s inventing a product enables others to copy or build upon it, generating wealth that the original company can’t capture.

If prices are wrong due to positive or negative externalities, free trade will produce suboptimal results.

For example, goods from a nation with lax pollution standards will be too cheap. So its trading partners will import too much of them. And the exporting nation will export too much of them, overconcentrating its economy in industries that are not really as profitable as they seem, due to ignoring pollution damage.

Positive externalities are also a problem. If an industry generates technological spillovers for the rest of the economy, then free trade can let that industry be wiped out by foreign competition because the economy ignored its hidden value. Some industries spawn new technologies, fertilize improvements in other industries, and drive economy-wide technological advance; losing these industries means losing all the industries that would have flowed from them in the future.

Dubious Assumption #3: Productive resources move easily between industries.

As noted in my original article, the theory of comparative advantage is about switching productive resources from less-valuable to more-valuable uses.  It’s about putting our economy to its own best use.

But this assumes that the productive resources used to produce one product can switch to producing another. Because if they can’t, then imports won’t push our economy into industries better suited to its comparative advantage. Imports will just kill off our existing industries and leave nothing in their place.

When workers, for example, can’t move between industries—usually because they don’t have the right skills or don’t live in the right place—shifts in an economy’s comparative advantage won’t move them into a more appropriate industry, but into unemployment.

In the United States, because of our relatively low minimum wage and hire-and-fire labor laws, this problem tends to take the form of underemployment, rather than unemployment per se. So $28 an hour ex-autoworkers go work at the video rental store for eight dollars an hour.

The same goes for other inflexible factors of production, like real estate.  That’s why the shuttered factory rivals the unemployment line as a visual image of trade problems.

Dubious Assumption #4: Trade does not raise income inequality.

Even if free trade expands the economy overall (dubious), it can tilt the distribution of income so much that ordinary people see little or none of the gains.

For example, suppose that opening up a nation to freer trade means that it starts exporting more airplanes and importing more clothes than before.  Because the nation gets to expand an industry better suited to its comparative advantage and contract one less suited, it becomes more productive and its GDP goes up.

So far, so good.

Here’s the rub: suppose that a million dollars’ worth of clothes production requires one white-collar worker and nine blue-collar workers, while a million dollars of airplane production requires three white-collar workers and seven blue-collar workers. So for every million dollars’ change in what gets produced, there is a demand for two more white-collar workers and two fewer blue-collar workers. Because demand for white-collar workers goes up and demand for blue-collar workers goes down, the wages of white-collar workers go up and those of blue-collar workers go down.

But most workers are blue-collar workers—so free trade has lowered wages for most workers in the economy!

This is not a trivial problem: Dani Rodrik of Harvard estimates that freeing up trade reshuffles five dollars of income between different groups of people domestically for every one dollar of net gain it brings to the economy as a whole.

Dubious Assumption #5: Capital is not internationally mobile.

The theory of comparative advantage is about the best uses to which America can put its productive resources, what economists call “factors of production.” We have certain cards in hand, so to speak, the other players have certain cards, and the theory tells us the best way to play the hand we’ve been dealt. Or more precisely, it tells us to let the free market play our hand for us, so market forces can drive all our factors to their best uses in our economy.

Unfortunately, this relies upon the impossibility of these same market forces driving these factors right out of our economy. If that happens, all bets are off about driving these factors to their most productive use in our economy. Their most productive use may well be in another country, and if they are internationally mobile, then free trade will cause them to migrate there.

This will benefit the world economy as a whole, and the nation they migrate to, but it will not necessarily benefit us.

This problem applies to all factors of production, but the crux of the problem is capital. Capital mobility replaces comparative advantage, which applies when capital is forced to choose between alternative uses within a single national economy, with absolute advantage. And absolute advantage contains no guarantees whatsoever about the results being good for both trading partners.

Capital immobility doesn’t have to be absolute, but it has to be significant and as it melts away, trade shifts from a guarantee of win-win relations to a possibility of win-lose relations.

David Ricardo, the British economist who invented the theory of comparative advantage in 1817, actually knew about this problem perfectly well, and wrote about it in his book on the subject. So there’s no excuse for modern economists to ignore it.

Dubious Assumption #6: Short-term efficiency causes long-term growth.

The theory of comparative advantage is what economists call “static” analysis. That is, it looks at the facts of a single instant in time and determines the best response to those facts at that instant. But it says nothing about how today’s facts may change tomorrow. More importantly, it says nothing about how one might cause them to change in one’s favor.

So even if the theory of comparative advantage tells us our best move today, given our productivities in various industries, it doesn’t tell us the best way to raise those productivities tomorrow. That, however, is the essence of economic growth, and in the long run much more important than squeezing every last drop of advantage from the productivities we have today.  Economic growth is ultimately less about using one’s factors of production than about transforming them—into more productive factors tomorrow.

The theory of comparative advantage is not so much wrong about long-term growth as simply silent.

Analogously, it is a valid application of personal comparative advantage for someone with secretarial skills to work as a secretary and someone with banking skills to work as a banker. In the short run, it is efficient for them both, as it results in both being better paid than if they tried to swap roles. (They would both be fired for inability to do their jobs and earn zero.) But the path to personal success doesn’t consist in being the best possible secretary forever; it consists in upgrading one’s skills to better-paid occupations, like banker. And there is very little about being the best possible secretary that tells one how to do this.

Dubious Assumption #7: Trade does not induce adverse productivity growth abroad.

When we trade with a foreign nation, this will generally build up that nation’s industries, i.e. raise its productivity in them. Now it would be nice to assume that this productivity growth in our trading partners can only make them ever more efficient at supplying the things we want, and we will just get ever cheaper foreign goods in exchange for our own exports, right?

Wrong. Consider our present trade with China. Despite all the problems this trade causes us, we do get compensation in the form of some very cheap goods, thanks mainly to China’s very cheap labor. The same goes for other poor countries we import from. But labor is cheap in poor countries because it has poor alternative employment opportunities. What if these opportunities improve? Then this labor may cease to be so cheap, and our supply of cheap goods may dry up.

This is actually what happened in Japan from the 1960s to the 1980s, as Japan’s economy transitioned from primitive to sophisticated manufacturing and the cheap merchandise readers over 40 will remember (the same things stamped “Made in China” today) disappeared from America’s stores. Did this reduce the pressure of cheap Japanese labor on American workers? It did. But it also deprived us of some very cheap goods we used to get.

And it’s not like Japan stopped pressing us, either, as it moved upmarket and started competing in more sophisticated industries.

Oops!

When Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson— author of the best-selling economics textbook in history—reminded economists of this problem in a (quite accessible) 2004 article, he drew scandalized gasps from one end of the discipline to the other. But nobody was able to explain why he was wrong.

They still haven’t.

I don’t expect most readers to get all the above analysis the first time through.  But I do hope that everyone who’s read this far now understands that there is no good reason—regardless of what most economists say—to assume that free trade is necessarily best.  The economic logic of those who say it is, is riddled with enough holes to sink a container ship.

April 8, 2011 Posted by | Economics | Leave a comment

Israeli army strikes Gaza after school bus hit – Deconstructed

Associated Press Deconstructed | April 8, 2011

First, let’s look at what has happened in Gaza in the past week:

Following is how AP reported on this. This story is on hundreds of newspaper websites around the country:

Israeli army strikes Gaza after school bus hit

By MATTI FRIEDMAN

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli aircraft and ground forces struck Gaza on Friday, killing two Hamas gunmen and three civilians

No mention in either the headline or the lead paragraph that Israeli forces killed a total of 14 people in the past 24 hours, including a mother, her young daughter (injured another of her children), and an elderly man, and that they injured dozens of others.

in a surge of fighting sparked by a Palestinian rocket attack on an Israeli school bus the day before.

No mention that this rocket attack was sparked by Israeli forces killing five Gazans in the preceding few days.

Just over two years after rocket fire from Gaza triggered

Israel had already broken the cease fire three times, killing seven Palestinian, which is what triggered the rock fire.

a devastating Israeli military offensive in the territory,

which killed approximately 1400 Palestinians, at least 773 of them civilians – hundreds of them children.

Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers seemed on the brink of another round of intense violence.

AP still chooses not to mention the five Palestinians in Gaza that Israeli forces had killed in preceding days.

In Thursday’s attack, Gaza militants hit an Israeli school bus near the border with a guided anti-tank missile, injuring the driver and badly wounding a 16-year-old boy. Most of the schoolchildren on the bus got off shortly before the attack.

By Friday morning, Israel’s ongoing retaliation

AP calls the Israeli action retaliation (for two injured, one with minor injuries) but fails to calls that the rocket attack retaliation (for the killing of five people).

had killed 10 Gazans – five militants, a policeman and four civilians – and wounded 45. The dead Friday included three civilians killed by Israeli tank fire and two militants killed in an air strike, both near the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.

Still no mention of the mother and children.

Hamas, which had largely held its fire since Israel’s last major offensive, claimed responsibility for the bus attack.

Had the bus been full, broader Israeli retaliation would have been all but inevitable and the region – already destabilized by the popular revolts sweeping the Arab world – could have been drawn into another war.

It’s odd to put such speculation in a news article, especially when AP left out so many newsworthy facts.

It is unclear if Hamas was trying to provoke a new conflagration, if it was not fully in control of all of its fighters, or if it believes Israel would pull back before invading Gaza again.

Again, it’s odd to put such speculation and commentary in a news article, especially when AP left out so many newsworthy facts.

Israel was condemned internationally after the last incursion.

“Incursion” is an odd word for the massive invasion by Israeli forces that was condemned in detailed reports issued by numerous highly respected international organizations.

Hamas said the rocket attack was in retaliation for the killing of three fighters in an airstrike earlier in the week. At around midnight Thursday, with Gaza rocked by explosions, the organization announced a cease-fire.

This was actually announced earlier and included all sectors of the Gazan resistance. The announcement about this also spoke of the 21-year-old killed on Tuesday, whom AP never mentions in the report.

But the Israeli strikes continued, hitting Hamas facilities and smuggling tunnels.

And many other facilities. AP also fails to mention that the tunnels are a response to Israel’s suffocating siege of Gaza, noted by groups such as Christian Aid.

Electricity lines and transformers were damaged, causing power blackouts in some parts of the territory, according to Jamal Dardsawi, a spokesman for Gaza’s Electric Distribution Company.

While AP speculated about what would have happened if the nearly empty Israeli bus had been full, there is no mention here about what electricity blackouts are actually doing to Gazan patients on respirators, in hospital operating rooms, etc.

In Israel, studies at some schools near Gaza were canceled Friday because of concerns for the students’ safety.

No mention of schools in Gaza, whose students have been injured, one killed, and parents killed and injured.

Palestinian militants launched nine mortars and rockets into Israel, causing damage to at least one building, the military said. Israeli casualties have been kept low thanks to reinforced rooms and early warning systems.

and the fact that the Israeli military, thanks to Americans’ $8 million per day to Israel, is the fourth or fifth most powerful military in the world.

Matan Vilnai, the Israeli Cabinet minister in charge of the home front, told Army Radio that Israel was acting to deter attacks. “We are acting as we see fit so that this type of fire will not continue, and so that the people behind the fire will regret it,” Vilnai said.

Israel’s education minister, Gideon Saar, said in a briefing with reporters that any civilian casualties in Gaza were unintentional and that Israel did not target “anyone except the terrorists.”

AP fails to report that numerous international investigations have found evidence indicating that Israel has often targeted civilians.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday condemned the bus attack and expressed concern over civilian casualties in Israel’s strikes. He called for “de-escalation and calm to prevent any further bloodshed.”

Thousands of rockets from Gaza have hit Israeli towns and cities since 2001.

AP fails to mention that these have killed a total of approximately 20 Israelis. AP also fails to mention that during the same period Israeli forces have killed thousands of Gazans, including numerous children.

Israel’s attempts to stop the rockets have included military incursions and covert operations abroad aimed at disrupting Hamas’ efforts to procure arms.

AP again gives the Israeli narrative. It fails to report that Israeli military incursions and covert operations preceded Gazan rockets.

In February, a Palestinian engineer was seized from a sleeper train in Ukraine and showed up several days later in Israel,

The normal way to report this would be to state that Israel kidnapped a Palestinian engineer in the Ukraine.

where he has been charged with masterminding Hamas’ rocket program.

Once again, AP emphasizes Israeli claims without including countering claims.

Last year a Hamas operative was assassinated in Dubai, and Israeli agents are widely assumed to have been responsible. Israel identified the man as a Hamas agent responsible for obtaining weaponry from Iran.

Again, we get the Israeli narrative, and only the Israeli narrative.

This week, Sudan accused Israel of being behind an explosion that killed two in Port Sudan. The blast was thought to be linked to arms smuggling to Gaza. Israel would not comment.

AP doesn’t bother supplying any information about the two human beings in Port Sudan who were just killed.

——

Ibrahim Barzak contributed reporting from Gaza City, Gaza Strip.

Yet, the story was written and edited in Israel by Matti Friedman, a journalist who may have family ties to the Israeli military.

#

In case anyone is curious about what occurred before this period, March had seen increased Israeli hostilities, including tightening the siege and a gradual escalation of Israeli  military attacks that killed at least 11 Palestinians and injured over 40.

April 8, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Corrie lawsuit challenging Israeli impunity

Nora Barrows-Friedman, The Electronic Intifada, 8 April 2011

Several Israeli soldiers testified at the witness stand in the Haifa district court earlier this week, as trial hearings continued in the case of Corrie vs. the State of Israel. As the trial drags on, years after Rachel Corrie’s killing, Israel’s impunity is being challenged and carefully cross-examined.

Eight years ago last month, 23-year-old American solidarity activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an armored US-made Caterpillar D9 bulldozer in Rafah, at the southern edge of the occupied Gaza Strip.

Wearing a fluorescent orange vest and wielding a bullhorn, Corrie attempted to defend the demolition of a Palestinian family’s home by the Israeli military along the Philadelphi corridor, a wide swath of land in Rafah at the border with Egypt in which hundreds of homes were demolished from 2002-2004, according to field reports from Human Rights Watch.

After years of legal proceedings, Rachel Corrie’s parents, Cindy and Craig, were able to bring soldiers who were on duty that day in Rafah into the Haifa district court. Hearings began in March 2010 and continued in September, November and earlier this week.

The Corries are suing the Israeli military for one dollar in damages, but, more significantly, are charging those responsible with the wrongful death of their daughter and criminal negligence.

Eyewitness testimony from fellow International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activists, supported by photographic evidence, shows that Rachel was crushed underneath the massive blade of a bulldozer and died shortly afterwards. The Israeli military and its defense team argues that Rachel’s death was an accident, that the bulldozer driver didn’t see her and that it was not the blade that killed her but perhaps a pile of rubble that was dropped on her body by the bulldozer as it was razing the land.

Saturated throughout the soldiers’ testimonies is the unwavering argument that all Palestinians in that area were considered armed and a danger to the military unit, and that the military orders had a strict shoot-to-kill policy as they demolished homes. They infer that because this was a closed military zone, Rachel and the other activists with the ISM put themselves at risk and therefore the soldiers and their commanders cannot be responsible for her killing.

But what fails to be addressed by the judge is how and why the soldiers and their armored bulldozers were there in the first place. The soldiers driving the bulldozers and their commanders operated from orders to destroy houses along the Philadelphi corridor — the name Israel gives to the strip of land it has used as a buffer zone– starting in 2002 and continuing throughout the next two years, displacing thousands of residents. Human Rights Watch reported that after the homes were demolished, a steel wall was constructed along the Philadelphi corridor (“Razing Rafah,” 17 October 2004). The demolition of Palestinian homes is a violation of Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that “Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons … is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.”

Israel, which is a signatory to the convention, contends that the law “does not apply to its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” according to a detailed report by Amnesty International (“Document – Israel and the Occupied Territories: Under the rubble: House demolition and destruction of land and property,” 17 May 2004).

Amnesty International adds “Whether it justifies such action on grounds of ‘military/security needs’ or whether such action is imposed as a form of collective punishment, or whether carried out in enforcement of planning regulations such large-scale forced evictions are inconsistent with the realization of the right to adequate housing. The obligation of the state under international law is that it must refrain from forced evictions.”

The occupying forces had been willingly engaged in layered violations of international law — violations that Rachel Corrie and her fellow activists attempted to confront and remediate.

S.R., a unit commander in the Israeli army who gave his testimony on Wednesday and was obscured by screens so the Corries could not see his face, stated that “none of the houses [in the area being razed] had anyone living inside … They were all being used as positions for terror activities.”

This blanket statement is untrue; the home that Rachel died trying to protect was inhabited by the Nasrallah family. Neither Dr. Samir Nasrallah, a pharmacist, nor his family members living in the home, were ever charged by the Israeli military with “terror activities.” Dr. Nasrallah was obviously never a threat to the Israeli military or its government, as Israel even allowed him to travel to the United States on a speaking tour with the Corries — something that would never be allowed for any Palestinian accused of being linked with such activities.

When I attended a round of hearings last September, another military training leader brazenly stated to the courtroom that “during war, there are no civilians.” Craig Corrie told me then that this admission was a shock to the family and to their supporters in the courtroom, but not a surprise given the attitude of the Israeli military since its inception.

This was not a war in Gaza; this was — and still is — an aggressive, lethal and unequal military occupation meted out against Gaza’s 1.5 million residents.

Human Rights Watch states that more than 2,500 homes were destroyed in Gaza from 2000-2004, as the Israeli military implemented its so-called “buffer zone” policies after the breakout of the second intifada. The buffer zone is a 300-meter-wide militarized no-go area near the boundary with Israel which has since taken 35 percent of Gaza’s total agricultural land — and the lives of more than 100 Palestinians who have been shot and killed since March 2010.

Attending this week’s hearing were members of the Corrie family, activists, journalists and legal observers from the the US embassy, the National Lawyers Guild, Human Rights Watch, Al-Haq, Avocats Sans Frontieres, Amnesty International, Yesh Din and other Palestinian, Israeli and international human and civil rights organizations.

In a press release, Zaha Hassan of the National Lawyers Guild stated that “[i]t has been eight years now and Rachel’s family and all of us who are attending the trial in support have been waiting for an answer to the question of why the unit commander ordered the bulldozer driver to move forward directly over the location where Rachel stood yelling into a blow-horn” (“National Lawyers Guild Free Palestine Subcommittee to Observe Resumption of Trial Brought by Family of Slain Peace Activist Rachel Corrie,” 4 April 2011).

Hassan added: “Justice demands that these questions be answered and that those responsible for her death be held to account.”

The judge, Oded Gershon, admitted proudly in court on Wednesday that he had been a military judge earlier in his career. It remains to be seen whether his potential proclivity toward defense of military policies will influence the final decision in the Corrie case, but the entire process sets an incredibly important precedent.

Israeli soldiers responsible for the demolition of homes and the killing of Palestinians and internationals are now being brought inside courtrooms. Military mandates are being meticulously scrutinized. Cracks in the solidified Israeli military system of impunity are starting to appear, and the Corries are determined to widen those cracks so that other bereaved families can seek justice, too.

The next round of hearings begins on 22 May, and the courtroom will once again be packed. For the Corries, and the family members of countless Palestinians awaiting true justice from the occupier state since 1948, the legal process may be tedious and excruciating but it is vital. And long overdue.

~

Nora Barrows-Friedman is an award-winning independent journalist, writing for The Electronic Intifada, Inter Press Service, Al-Jazeera, Truthout and other outlets. She regularly reports from Palestine.

For summaries of the hearings, and for more information, visit the Rachel Corrie Foundation website at rachelcorriefoundation.org.

April 8, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »