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Sanctioning Dr. Shaaban Assaults US Values

By Franklin Lamb – Al-Manar – September 5, 2011

As part of its 7th set of US sanctions against Syria, which began in June, 2011, the Obama administration has targeted a messenger, a sometime spokeswoman, a positive image of Syria, someone people of all religions and cultures have easily identified with over the past several years, Dr. Bouthainia Shaaban.  The US administration acted thus for the sole purpose of pressuring the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, but has succeeded in undermining American values of freedom of expression much more.

On August 28, 2011, the US Treasury and State Departments targeted Dr. Bouthainia Shaaban, and froze any assets she might have in the US.

According to State Department spokesman, Victoria Nuland, who two US Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers speculate may view Dr. Shaaban as a rival of sorts given their job descriptions, and Dr. Shaaban’s stellar performances during meeting with US officials both in the US and Syria, the explanation for blacklisting a Syrian nationalist and media advisor remains:  “She (Dr. Shaaban) has served as the public mouthpiece for the repression of the regime.”

No US official to date has stepped forward to defend the sanctions against Dr. Shaaban with any more substantive or detailed complaint or supporting evidence.

Theodore Kattouf, former US ambassador to Syria was reportedly astonished to see Dr. Shaaban’s name on the latest sanctions list and he expressed on television his regret for such a bad decision. Former Ambassador Kattouf explained that sanctioning Dr.Shaaban was a serious mistake because Dr. Shaaban is well known of her positive and constructive attitudes and positions against wars and injustices and bloodshed.

True, Dr. Shaaban, among several others, is a trusted advisor to the Syrian administration.  She presumably offers counsel and insights; perhaps much like Theodore Sorenson did for President John Kennedy, and Bill Moyers for Lyndon Johnson. But she is not and has never been a decision maker.  Presumably her advice is considered, but who knows to what degree. Which advisor is also a key decision maker?

Surely the Obama administration knows well that when any person occupies a position as media advisor or even press secretary, he/she speaks for and explains the policy of the administration he’s working for. To sanction them violates American notions and values of freedom of expression and immunity from harassment for performing a vital job that benefits all by way of clear understanding and communication of a country’s position on political, social, and economic issues of the day.

Dr. Shaaban’s background is well known to recent US administrations and also much appreciated according to Washington sources.  She is known as an independent thinker, reformer, writer, University Professor (she taught in Eastern Michigan for two years and earned her PhD from Warwick University in the UK and was a Fulbrighter at Duke University (1990 – 1991) and got the prestigious McCandless professorship at Easter Michigan University for 2000. She is known for her ability and willingness to take a minority position, if her evaluation of the facts of a case or issue leads her there, and is never reluctant to speak truth to power. Her writings, many of which have appeared in the left of center Counterpunch (counterpunch.org) always advance positions against wars, violence and occupation.

The Obama administration knows that Dr. Shaaban has no account in the US, earns a modest salary, is the wife of the manager of the Syrian Establishment for Food Industry, and this ‘sanction’ is designed solely to harm her excellent reputation that she has earned during the past couple of decades. When pressed for details of her assets both the US Treasury, and State Department spokeswoman Nuland only offered: “Let’s just leave it at that.”, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Dr. Shaaban’s office avers that she has very few assets at all and certainly none in the US.

“Bouthainia connects with people” according to a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer who has met with her:  “Whether with Hamas or Saudi Princes, and both know her views on full rights for women and justice for Palestinians, and with American officials too she is effective.”

For some of these reasons the US treasury and State departments have targeted her and the Obama administration, largely it appears, out of ignorance, according to Congressional sources, said, “Ok, if you think is a good idea go ahead.”

It was not a good idea.  Attacking Mrs. Shabaan is a low blow and disgraceful by any standards and especially for one who is a very positive force helping bridge several divides between East and West.

President Obama erred in signing off on this mistake.

The White House attacked a friend of America and of all people of good will. It needlessly assaulted a symbol of the great country of Syria, the great Syrian people, their history, culture, resistance values, profound dignity, and their decency.

In so doing the Obama Administration sullied American values and doubtless does not represent American values or the will of the American people. It did undermine American values of freedom of expression and compromised American notions of fair play and American legal norms of substantial justice.

Would that President Obama will immediately reverse this ill-considered action.

– Franklin Lamb is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon.

September 6, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | 2 Comments

Japan’s ex PM feared uninhabitable Tokyo – Fukushima update

Penny For Your Thoughts | September 6, 2011

What does Kan know that would cause him to have these thoughts?

Japan’s former premier Naoto Kan feared Tokyo would be rendered uninhabitable by the Fukushima nuclear crisis, he said in an interview published on Tuesday in which he recalled the ‘spine-chilling’ thought.
He added it would have been ‘impossible’ to evacuate all of the 30 million people in the event of a mass exclusion zone encompassing Tokyo

Are these the thoughts of an irrational man?

Or are these thoughts borne out of an access to information and knowledge that the general public is not allowed to know?

One has to wonder?

And the multiple problems with Fukushima rage on.

Of course you would never know it, judging by the mainstream media.

Just like nothing is going on…

So here are a couple of the latest news stories:

Tepco to build wall off Fukushima Daiichi Plant

The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant plans to build an iron wall on the ocean side of the plant to prevent radioactive water from leaking into the sea. Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said more than 110,000 tons of highly radioactive water remains in the basements of reactor buildings at the plant.

The utility will use thousands of iron pipes to create an 800-meter-long wall surrounding the water intakes of 4 reactor facilities, NHK Japan’s website reported.

Don’t know if or how well this will work out?

Additionally there is a problem with tons of radioactive waste just piling up!

Growing piles of contaminated sewage, located hundreds of kilometers from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown, are loaded with high levels of radioactive cesium, and the government has yet to come up with a policy for the country’s latest crisis. Tons of alarmingly high levels of radioactive cesium are being reported at a sewage treatment facility in Saitama, located more than 150 miles southwest of Fukushima, site of the triple nuclear meltdown last March after a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Japan currently has more than a dozen sewage treatment plants currently faced with the same predicament and the government has yet to institute a policy in dealing with the quickly growing problem.

A Japanese delegation has headed to Chernobyl

A Japanese delegation will visit the ill-fated Chernobyl nuclear plant to study its experience in clean-up operations, speaker of Japan’s House of Representatives Takahiro Yokomichi said here.

The Japanese delegation wants to have first-hand information about the situation at the Chernobyl plant and to learn whatever lessons possible to prevent any such accidents, and to make use of Ukraine’s experience in the clean-up operations after the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant, Yokomichi said yesterday.

Interesting article from a few days ago…

Why Fukushima is worse then Chernobyl

“Japan has been slow to admit the scale of the meltdown. But now the truth is coming out.”

While it is true that Japan has been very, very slow to admit the scale of meltdown, it is highly unlikely the “truth” is now forthcoming.
The fact of the matter is the radiation from Fukushima, that virtually covers the planet, is to dam hard to hide!

September 6, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Nuclear Power | 2 Comments

The CIA and the Drones

“One Hell of a Killing Machine”

By GARETH PORTER | CounterPunch | September 6, 2011

When David Petraeus walks into the Central Intelligence Agency today, he will be taking over an organisation whose mission has changed in recent years from gathering and analysing intelligence to waging military campaigns through drone strikes in Pakistan, as well as in Yemen and Somalia.

But the transformation of the CIA did not simply follow the expansion of the drone war in Pakistan to its present level. CIA Director Michael Hayden lobbied hard for that expansion at a time when drone strikes seemed like a failed experiment.

The reason Hayden pushed for a much bigger drone war, it now appears, is that it had already created a whole bureaucracy in the anticipation of such a war.

During 2010, the CIA “drone war” in Pakistan killed as many as 1,000 people a year, compared with the roughly 2,000 a year officially estimated to have been killed by the SOF “night raids” in Afghanistan, according to a report in the Sep. 1 Washington Post.

A CIA official was quoted by the Post as saying that the CIA had become “one hell of a killing machine”, before quickly revising the phrase to “one hell of an operational tool”.

The shift in the CIA mission’s has been reflected in the spectacular growth of its Counter-terrorism Center (CTC) from 300 employees in September 2001 to about 2,000 people today – 10 percent of the agency’s entire workforce, according to the Post report.

The agency’s analytical branch, which had been previously devoted entirely to providing intelligence assessments for policymakers, has been profoundly affected.

More than one-third of the personnel in the agency’s analytical branch are now engaged wholly or primarily in providing support to CIA operations, according to senior agency officials cited by the Post. And nearly two-thirds of those are analysing data used by the CTC drone war staff to make decisions on targeting.

Some of that shift of internal staffing to support of the drone has followed the rise in the number of drone strikes in Pakistan since mid-2008, but the CIA began to lay the institutional basis for a bigger drone campaign well before that.

Crucial to understanding the role of internal dynamics in CIA decisions on the issue is the fact that the drone campaign in Pakistan started off very badly. During the four years from 2004 through 2007, the CIA carried out a total of only 12 drone strikes in Pakistan, all supposedly aimed at identifiable high-value targets of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

The George W. Bush administration’s policy on use of drones was cautious in large part because the President of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was considered such a reliable ally that the administration was reluctant to take actions that would risk destabilising his regime.

Thus relatively tight constraints were imposed on the CIA in choosing targets for drone strikes. They were only to be used against known “high-value” officials of Al-Qaeda and their affiliates in Pakistan, and the CIA had to have evidence that no civilians would be killed as a result of the strike.

Those first 12 strikes killed only three identifiable Al-Qaeda or Pakistani Taliban figures, But despite the prohibition against strikes that would incur “collateral damage”, the same strikes killed a total of 121 civilians, as revealed by a thorough analysis of news media reports.

A single strike against a madrassa on Oct. 26, 2006 that killed 80 local students accounted for two-thirds of the total of civilian casualties.

Despite that disastrous start, however, the CIA had quickly become deeply committed internally to building a major programme around the drone war. In 2005, the agency had created a career track in targeting for the drone programme for analysts in the intelligence directorate, the Post article revealed.

That decision meant that analysts who chose to specialise in targeting for CIA drone operations were promised that they could stay within that specialty and get promotions throughout their careers. Thus the agency had made far-reaching commitments to its own staff in the expectation that the drone war would grow far beyond the three strikes a year and that it would continue indefinitely.

By 2007, the agency realised that, in order to keep those commitments, it had to get the White House to change the rules by relaxing existing restrictions on drone strikes.

That’s when Hayden began lobbying President George W. Bush to dispense with the constraints limiting the targeting for drone attacks, according to the account in New York Times reporter David Sanger’s book “The Inheritance”. Hayden asked for permission to carry out strikes against houses or cars merely on the basis of behaviour that matched a “pattern of life” associated with Al-Qaeda or other groups.

In January 2008, Bush took an unidentified first step toward the loosening of the requirements that Hayden sought, but most of the restrictions on drone strikes remained in place. In the first six months of 2008, only four strikes were carried out.

In mid-2008, however, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell returned from a May 2008 trip to Pakistan determined to prove that the Pakistani military was covertly supporting Taliban insurgents – especially the Haqqani network – who were gaining momentum in Afghanistan.

A formal assessment by McConnell’s staff making that case was produced in June and sent to the White House and other top officials, according to Sanger. That forced Bush, who had been praising Musharraf as an ally against the Taliban, to do something to show that he was being tough on the Pakistani military as well as on the Afghan insurgents who enjoyed safe havens in northwest Pakistan.

Bush wanted the drone strikes to focus primarily on the Afghan Taliban targets rather than Al-Qaeda and its Pakistani Taliban allies. And according to Sanger’s account, Bush quickly removed all of the previous requirements for accurate intelligence on specific high-value targets and for assurances against civilian casualties.

Released from the original constraints on the drone programme, the CIA immediately increased the level of drone strikes in the second half of 2008 to between four and five per month on average.

As Bob Woodward’s account in “Obama Wars” of internal discussions in the early weeks of the Barack Obama White House shows, there were serious doubts from the beginning that it could actually defeat Al- Qaeda.

But Leon Panetta, Obama’s new CIA director, was firmly committed to the drone war. He continued to present it to the public as a strategy to destroy Al-Qaeda, even though he knew the CIA was now striking mainly Afghan Taliban and their allies, not Al-Qaeda.

In his first press conference on Feb. 25, 2009, Panetta, in an indirect but obvious reference to the drone strikes, said that the efforts to destabilise Al-Qaeda and destroy its leadership “have been successful”.

Under Panetta, the rate of drone strikes continued throughout 2009 at the same accelerated pace as in the second half of 2008. And in 2010 the number of strikes more than doubled from 53 in 2009 to 118.

The CIA finally had the major drone campaign it had originally anticipated.

Two years ago, Petraeus appeared to take a somewhat skeptical view of drone strikes in Pakistan. In a secret assessment as CENTCOM commander on May 27, 2009, which was leaked to the Washington Post, Petraeus warned that drone strikes were fueling anti-U.S. sentiments in Pakistan.

Now, however, Petraeus’s personal view of the drone war may no longer be relevant. The CIA’s institutional interests in continuing the drone war may have become so commanding that no director could afford to override those interests on the basis of his own analysis of how the drone strikes affect U.S. interests.

~

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in 2006.

September 6, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | 1 Comment

Israel Continues to Uproot Hundreds of Olive Trees for Construction of Separation Wall

By Mikaela Levine | Alternative Information Center | 05 September 2011

At 8 am this morning  bulldozers arrived at the olive tree fields in the Bethlehem-area village of al-Walaje. They were driven by private contractors and guarded by Israeli soldiers.

The bulldozers blocked the way for everybody, except the members of the three families who own the land. The families could be there, to witness, complain, cry, but nothing else. Dozens of olives trees were uprooted yesterday, just a month before the beginning of the olive harvest season and a week after the Israeli High Court ruled that it was essential for Israel’s security to incarcerate al-Walaje by building the Separation Wall all around it.

“In view of this situation, we believe that the harm caused by the fence’s route to the petitioners is reasonable and proportionate in comparison to the great security value that results from the fence along this route”, the Israeli judges concluded. Now, in order to build the Wall, Israeli forces must uproot hundreds of olive trees, destroying part of the past, the present and the future of the 2,400 village residents.

“They are doing huge environmental damage here”, denounced the Palestinian activist Professor Mazen Qumsiyeh. He arrived after the soldiers and saw how the pile of uprooted olive trees grew over the hours. After midday, the bulldozers kept working and, according to Qumsiyeh, they will continue to do so tomorrow, on Tuesday. Professor Qumsiyeh called for international and Palestinian activists to join them in al-Walaje tomorrow morning to pressure the soldiers to stop this crime.

The last series of uprootings began in June, two months before the aforementioned High Court ruling. At the beginning of June, Jamal Barghouti reported that Israeli soldiers invaded his land and uprooted more than 80 olive trees and some Cypress trees that have given shade to the fields surrounding the Palestinian village for over 70 years.

Every time they come, the Israeli soldiers repeat that they are going to build special gates so the Palestinian farmers can continue to work their fields. Yet Palestinians know better. Reports and personal experiences demonstrate that these gates provide only limited access and with time the farmers and owners that continue to cultivate their land on the other side of the Separation Wall are a dwindling minority.

September 6, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | 1 Comment

Israeli forces detain Hamas lawmaker

Ma’an – September 6, 2011

RAMALLAH — Israeli forces detained Hamas legislator Mohammed Abu Teir on Tuesday, army officials said.

Israeli soldiers ransacked Abu Teir’s home in Kafr Aqab, south of Ramallah, before detaining the elected official, a Ma’an correspondent reported.

An Israeli military spokesman said Abu Teir was detained on Tuesday but could not immediately comment on the reason for his arrest.

Former PA Minister of Jerusalem affairs Khalid Abu Arafa told Ma’an he was concerned about Abu Teir’s fate after Israel withdrew his Jerusalem identity card.

In December, an Israeli court expelled Abu Teir to Ramallah from his home in Jerusalem for the second time, after four months in jail for defying a previous ban.

He was previously arrested on June 30, 2010 for entering East Jerusalem after the interior ministry stripped him of his residence permit for his activity in Hamas.

Following Abu Teir’s deportation to Ramallah in December, UN officials expressed concern. Robert Serry, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said he was “worried” about the “potential precedent” that the trial set.

Abu Teir was elected to the Palestinian parliament from East Jerusalem in 2006 when Hamas won a landslide victory over the secular Fatah movement of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas.

September 6, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

Financial Times betrays Thomas Friedman

By Belén Fernández | Pulse Media | September 5, 2011

Today marks the release of yet another book by Thomas Friedman, the New York Times’ prolific foreign affairs columnist whose articles over the years have exposed such trends as the “collective madness” of Palestinians and the progress in Mexican baby namesto more NAFTA-friendly alternatives than Juan, such as Alexander and Kevin.

Friedman’s latest book, endearingly titled That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back, is coauthored by Friedman’s “intellectual soulmate”, the foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum—a longtime staple of Friedman columns and a purveyor of such predictable notions as that “The real threat to world stability is not too much American power. It is too little American power”.

Despite having admitted to an audience in Istanbul that his two previous bestsellers—The World Is Flat and Hot, Flat, and Crowded, marketed as wakeup calls concerning globalization and clean energy, respectively—really “have nothing to do with technology or environment at heart” and are instead “basically cries of the heart to get my country focused on fixing itself”, Friedman managed to advertise That Used to Be Us as “the first book I’ve really written about America” during an interview with Fox’s Don Imus earlier this year.

Slightly more surprising than Friedman’s continuing habit of self-contradiction is a recent less-than-favorable review of the new book on the website of the Financial Times, the institution that in 2005 partnered with Goldman Sachs to bestow upon Friedman the first annual £30,000 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award for The World Is Flat. Friedman responded to the honor by referring to the pair as “two such classy organizations”, before finally conceding two years after the 2008 financial crisis that Goldman Sachs is perhaps in fact “utterly selfish”.

The FT.com review notes that the phrase “that used to be us” was appropriated from a statement by Barack Obama, in which the president lamented that “it makes no sense for China to have better rail systems than us, and Singapore having better airports than us”. FT.com refrains from pointing out that Obama’s complaints in this case are themselves presumably appropriated from Friedman’s own experiences with Chinese trains and Singaporean airports, given the columnist’s de facto position as presidential adviser.

Friedman’s incestuous relationship with centers of capitalist power does not, however, prevent him from being portrayed in the FT.com review as essentially defying reality with his new book by “reinforc[ing] the illusions of [American] exceptionalism” and immunity from historical patterns, and by promoting the “idea that a third-party movement could somehow enable America to avoid the decline that eventually overtakes every great power”.

Friedman will likely remain undeterred in his eternal quest to restore US glory and global domination. However, he may desire a more creative title for his next book than, for example, That Really Used to Be Us: How America Has Fallen Even Further Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back.

He might thus consider issuing an anthology of previously published excerpts entitled Thomas Friedman Recycled—which would additionally underscore his unwavering commitment to environmentalism and the notion that reform in the Arab world can be achieved by combining a “geo-green” strategy with the neoconservative strategy of contaminating the earth with depleted uranium munitions.

My book The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work will be released by Verso on Nov. 1.

September 5, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism, Islamophobia | Leave a comment

Palmer Panel Needs Little Common Sense

By Richard Lightbown | Palestine Chronicle | September 4, 2011

The report of the UN Panel of Inquiry on the Gaza Flotilla Incident which was finally released on 2 September is an example of how dangerous a thing ‘a little learning’ can be.

Put into an ivory tower in New York far away from the scene of the crime and restricted to what information the Turkish and Israeli governments fed it, the Panel has exhibited a naïve understanding of the situation in Gaza. In a large part this was the result of the Panel’s implicit belief in the Turkel Report. This report by Israel’s commission of inquiry on the incident was the central part of the Israeli submission. While it boasts an impressive pedigree the report is actually a false witness that is intended to deceive. Despite hearing evidence on the adverse impacts of the closure from doctors who worked in Gaza the report ignored or rejected their evidence in favour of an undisclosed late submission from the military coordinator. Testimony by Israeli passengers on the Mavi Marmara of mistreatment of passengers and the honourable treatment of captured Israeli soldiers was ignored; as was testimony relating to the on-going occupation.

An explanation on the application of the Geneva Conventions to the blockade was rejected in favour of an opinion by Prof Rosenne that was written in 1946, three years before the Geneva Conventions were adopted. Testimony that all commercial sea traffic to Gaza has been prohibited since the beginning of the occupation in 1967 seems to have fallen on deaf ears or empty heads. Much of Turkel is based on written testimony, hearsay evidence and evidence from secret sources that cannot be verified.

It is also self-contradictory, as on a number of points relating to allegations of the use of firearms by passengers, which is a major theme of the report for which no dependable evidence has ever been produced. This report is a major work of misinformation yet it was accepted by the UN Panel without question.

Regrettably the Panel also exhibited its own bias towards Israel. (But after all the vice-chair Alvaro Ulribe was a major purchaser of Israeli arms while President of Columbia, and he is a recipient of the American Jewish Committee’s ‘Light Unto The Nations’ award. The conflict of interest was never explained.) When asserting that Israel has a need to defend itself by imposing the blockade the Panel made a number of references to the firing of rockets from Gaza. While these terror attacks against civilians are very real they do not occur in a vacuum. Yet the report contains no mention of the everyday shooting attacks against Palestinian farmers and fishermen, no mention of the routine bulldozing of crops and buildings and no censure of the widespread attacks on medical facilities and personnel during the war of 2008/9. In fact Gazans get very little mention in this report at all, despite being central to possibly the most important contemporary human rights struggle on the planet and an essential consideration for understanding what the struggle to defeat the blockade is all about.

In condemning flotilla organizers for indulging in a “dangerous and reckless act” the report refers to the offer to transfer all the cargos to Ashdod for onward transport to Gaza. Admittedly this was subsequently done with much fanfare for some of the goods taken from the flotilla. What is not clear is whether the prefabricated buildings and construction materials, amounting to more than half of the total cargos, was ever transferred to Gaza. What has been reported is that at least one truckload of goods was dumped in landfill in the Negev, that new computers intended for educational use in Gaza were stolen as were substantial amounts of cash intended for charitable causes, while mobility scooters were delivered without their batteries. Previous cargoes from the Spirit of Humanity and the Tali have similarly been lost. The Panel was naïve to put its faith in the goodwill of the Israeli authorities while rushing to condemn the flotilla organizers for recklessness.

It is on such unsafe assumptions and false points that the Panel’s endorsement of the legitimacy of the blockade is based. In expressing his dissenting opinion at the end of the report Mr Özdem Sanberk declared that “common sense and conscience dictate that the blockade is unlawful”. Common sense however is not always a very common commodity.

In considering the composition of the flotilla the panel is critical of the number of passengers travelling with such a humanitarian flotilla; seemingly unaware of the importance of publicity to humanitarian activity. This complaint also overlooks the importance of solidarity to the people of Gaza in their enclosure, and fails to acknowledge that many of the passengers were carrying large sums of money for charitable causes along with personal presents and good wishes for orphans and individuals. The importance of this psychological assistance should not be undervalued or belittled.

Although the authors of the report seem to be poorly informed on some matters of the raid, such as the change of course by the Mavi Marmara after the attack began (when the ship turned to go due west at full speed and might reasonably have been allowed to depart the area without capture) they are generally more accurate with their descriptions and assumptions in this section. One might reasonably ask why they did not question the fact that Israel has never released infrared footage taken at the time when the first helicopter arrived over the ship (when commandos are accused of firing on passengers from the helicopter before rappelling onto the ship), but they have at least faced up to the evidence they have seen. Thus the criticism of the level of violence used by the commandos is robust, and this is an unimportant point. Israel had been forced to gamble its public image on this report and it will not be pleased with comments such as “The loss of life and injuries resulting from the use of force by Israeli forces […] was unacceptable.” Later the report adds “There was significant mistreatment of passengers by Israeli authorities […]. This included physical mistreatment, harassment and intimidation, unjustified confiscation of belongings and the denial of timely consular assistance.” The US and Israel had tried to get the UN Human Rights Council to pull its excellent investigation in favour of the UN Panel. This report was seen as a safer option than the thorough professional body that was assembled in Geneva. In that assessment they have been correct, but even so the perpetrators have been strongly criticised. Despite this being the work of amateurs (and in places incompetent bunglers) it is not a whitewash. Israel cannot hide behind this report and it cannot proudly show it off to the world community. For that minor piece of justice we should be grateful.

For the authors of this report there is little to be pleased about. Their ultimate goal has been described as “positively affect[ing] the relationship between Turkey and Israel, as well as the overall situation in the Middle East”. This was always a difficult call. Nevertheless some amelioration of the diplomatic situation might have been hoped for. The immediate aftermath to the release of this report has seen a strong reaction in Turkey to the refusal of the Israeli Government to apologise for the deaths and injuries to Turkish citizens. Turkey will now downgrade its diplomatic and economic relations with Israel and seems intent on dramatically upgrading its support for the people of Gaza. From its declarations so far it would seem that Mr Erdoðan’s government has little time for the recommendations of the Panel that the blockade should be respected and that humanitarian missions should follow established procedures in consultation with the Government of Israel. Maybe he is right given that respect for these procedures has only seen a long term decline in conditions in Gaza. Perhaps a little more common sense from the Panel may have helped the realpolitik of confronting harsh realities in Gaza as a means to aiding prospects for peace in the region.

~

– Richard Lightbown is a writer and researcher. He has previously written reviews on the UN Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission report and the Turkel Commission Report Part 1.

September 5, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Politics behind UK hosting Israeli concert

A prominent political activist says the annual Proms concert in London has hosted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for clearly political reasons.

Press TV – September 5, 2011

In an exclusive interview with Press TV, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, a member of Beethovians for Boycotting Israel (BBI), says that Western governments and media listen to the Israel regime but ignore the Palestinian people.

Press TV: Please tell us about the event. 40 people, pro-Palestinian protesters, arrived at the Royal Albert Hall, what took place?

Wimborne-Idrissi: Organized with a lot of planning in advance by Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, BRICUP – that’s the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine – and people in the Boycott Israel Network (BIN), people arrived prepared for heightened security because, although the Prom’s organizers said that the decision to invite the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra is purely musical, it was clearly a political decision.

They sent out letters to ticket holders telling them that bags will be searched, no flags will be allowed in. They were obviously quite aware of what they’ve done.

We expected it to be harder than it actually turned out to be. We all had tickets in different parts of the hall in a number of small groups. There was about nine or ten groups, altogether, one of them very large.

This large group made the first intervention. What we did was we had prepared in advance a song adapting the tune of Beethoven’s very famous Ode to Joy. And what we sang was, “Israel and your occupation…” and we went on from there with some words which people can find online, on some of the reports.

And we sang this in a quiet moment on the first piece while unveiling a slogan reading “free Palestine”. So, on some of the reports you’ll read there’s a lot of confusion about this. But this is actually what happened.

And we kept on singing our four lines of text over and over again while the audience reacted, people snapped the letters of the slogan out of our hands, people started to push us. And, gradually, the Royal Albert Hall security staff made their way over to us. They did their job, they weren’t aggressive. They said come on you’ve made your point, please go.

Gradually, because of the pushing and the shoving, and the angry response of the audience, we made our way out and we went out still singing. And we went out and joined the public protests outside and continued singing there as well. So that was the first intervention.

Then after that, that piece was finished and the next piece began. We started again on a rather beautiful violin concerto.

Press TV: What do you think you’ve succeeded in doing? What was this boycott intended to do?

Wimborne-Idrissi: What we’ve intended to do was give Palestinians a voice.

The reason that the Palestinian Boycott National Committee (BNC) and PACBI – the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel – have called for a South African apartheid-style campaign of boycotts because nobody listens to the Palestinians, nobody listens to the victims in this struggle.

Israel has the ear of Western governments, newspaper editors, you name it…

Press TV: Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, thank you very much for that. And people can look up your protest on YouTube.

So, as with cricket, now with classical music.

September 5, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Settlers Outfitted with Military Training, Equipment Thanks to US Tax-Deductible Donations

By Mikaela Levin | Alternative Information Center | 05 September 2011

News about the Israeli military arming and training the settlers raised international and Israeli attention last week and set off alarms amongst anti-occupation activists. This reinforcement of the well-known army-settler alliance is part, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, of Operation Summer Seeds, the military name given to Israel’s preparations for “mass disorder” that Israeli authorities believe could follow UN recognition of a Palestinian state later this month. So who are these settlers in the frontline of an eventual Israeli armed reaction to possible Palestinian protests?

They are normally part of groups called Rapid Response Teams, at least one of which exists in each settlement in the occupied Palestinian territory. Some of the teams are connected to the electric fence system, so they can react immediately to a breach in the military designed perimeter of their settlement. They are supposed to withdraw when Israeli soldiers arrive at the scene.

These first-response “guards” are volunteer civilians, mostly army reservists under the command of a chief security officer, who is a public servant and the official link with the Israeli military. Though some international media portray these groups as being formed following the second Intifada, these types of militias actually go back even before 1948, with the Defense Committees of the kibbutzim and later of Israel’s small towns, villages and settlements.

In the occupied Palestinian territory most male adult settlers can carry guns and some even choose rifles, but the Rapid Response Teams are something different. They receive their M-16 rifles from the Israeli army while training and other specialized equipment comes from NGOs like Mishmeret YESHA. This nonprofit organization manufactures and distributes armored vests, ballistic helmets and special communications equipment and trains the “civil guards” and Yeshiva students in the use of arms and “counter-terrorism” tactics in improvised shooting ranges.

The only condition of Mishmeret YESHA is that it does not work with settlements or institutions that employ or include Palestinians. “There is no sense in training a rapid response team in a settlement or an institution where you have a bunch of Arabs walking around gathering information”, stated the founder, Israel Danziger, to the Jerusalem Post in 2008.

The money to finance Mishmeret YESHA’s training and equipment comes primarily from private donations. In 2004 alone, the Central Fund of Israel raised nearly US $107,000 for Mishmeret’s efforts and the Israel Independence Fund, an organization registered in New York, has Mishmeret listed amongst its most important projects.

For example, it costs $68,000 to sponsor the equipping and training of a Rapid Response Team for a whole settlement. If this is too much for the American or Israeli family budget in these times of economic crisis, they can sponsor a sole member of the team for $5,000. The list of prices goes down to $250 for a ballistic helmet.

These ‘sponsorships’ are considered as donations under American law and as such, are tax deductible – even if the money is used to buy rifle shoulder rests, a telescopic lens or infra-red binoculars. This is the case of the Nablus-area settlement of Elon Moreh and its nonprofit organization Friends of Elon Moreh, based in Passaic Park, New Jersey. According to its webpage: “Aside from the basic army equipment, the team needs special equipment which can help them in emergency situations”. The team, as a picture shows, is composed of 20 young adults, all religious, dressed in military-green and blue, armed with M-16, radios and armored vests.

This experience was considered so successful by the settlers and their American donors that they decided to export it to the forests of upstate New York. Kitat Konenut is devoted to prepare Jewish communities in the US for an eventual “anti-Semitic outbreak”. As the Jerusalem Post published three years ago, the organization charges $400 for a ten day training in the Catskills woodlands, on the property of a Jewish supporter. Some of the instructors are Israeli military veterans, who teach the young Americans to be ready for all kinds of threats, from a knife fight to “urban warfare”.

There is no other documented case in the United States of a foreign civilian armed force being equipped and trained publicly by American society through “donations”, which on top of everything benefit from tax deductions. And it is even rarer that in this age of the War on Terror and home-grown terrorism, the American authorities allow their citizens to openly train in urban warfare tactics. Yet additional proof of the special American-Israeli relationship.

September 5, 2011 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | 4 Comments

Obama Orders Sweeping Sanctions and Regime Change in Syria Without Congress

Activist Post | September 5, 2011

Once again President Obama has used the authority vested in him in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act to impose sweeping sanctions against a sovereign nation without Congressional approval.

On August 18th, 2011, Obama signed Executive Order 13582: Blocking Property of the Government of Syria and Prohibiting Certain Transactions With Respect to Syria, which authorizes the seizure of all Syrian-owned property and interests in property in the United States. It also bans exports of U.S. services to Syria, the import of petroleum from Syria, and any new investment in Syria or those who support them.

The following actions are now prohibited:

(a) new investment in Syria by a United States person, wherever located;

(b) the exportation, re-exportation, sale, or supply, directly or indirectly, from the United States, or by a United States person, wherever located, of any services to Syria;

(c) the importation into the United States of petroleum or petroleum products of Syrian origin;

(d) any transaction or dealing by a United States person, wherever located, including purchasing, selling, transporting, swapping, brokering, approving, financing, facilitating, or guaranteeing, in or related to petroleum or petroleum products of Syrian origin; and

(e) any approval, financing, facilitation, or guarantee by a United States person, wherever located, of a transaction by a foreign person where the transaction by that foreign person would be prohibited by this section if performed by a United States person or within the United States.

The sweeping unilateral sanctions also permit the President to seize property without notice of those who sponsor or provide material assistance to Syria. In the case that such a person should have Constitutional protections, Obama declared “there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination” because of his powers during a national emergency.

At the time of the signing, the White House called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside,” indicating an official policy of regime change in Syria.

This action follows Executive Order 13572 from April called Blocking Property of Certain Persons With Respect to Human Rights Abuses in Syria which gave Obama the broad power to seize assets of Syrians suspected of being complicit in human rights abuses.

Previously, President Obama bypassed Congress when he imposed sanctions and seized property from the Libyan government by Executive Order 13566 in February of this year. Less than a month later, the United States and NATO began policing the no-fly zone in Libya, also without debate in the Congress.  Now the U.S. and NATO are engaged in a civil war in Libya where billions are being spent, again without Congressional approval or oversight.

These new sanctions, along with recent EU sanctions, combined with calls for regime change in Syria, seem to be following the same pattern as the Libya invasion. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that if Syrian President al-Assad resists, he will be forced out one way or the other. It’s also apparent that Obama believes he needn’t consult Congress or abide by the Constitution about these matters because of powers vested in him under national and international emergency. If the pattern is any indication, America may be headed for another undeclared war.

September 5, 2011 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Climategate Inquiry described as “willfully obtuse” while Berkeley Earth begins all new paleo-climate study

Climategate ‘hide the decline’ explained by Berkeley professor Richard A. Muller

Comment by climatologist Dr. Judith Curry http://bit.ly/fhKca7

Visit the blog of a man who uncovered ‘hide the decline’ as first and filled FOIA requests, Steve McIntyre. We wouldn’t know about this without him, credit where credit is due: http://climateaudit.org/

Link to the whole presentation http://bit.ly/7WGU02.

Link to the study “Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature” (BEST) Muller is leading http://www.berkeleyearth.org/

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Current critique by Steve McIntyre:

David Holland, the professional engineer who submitted the FOI which prompted Phil Jones to initiate what can only be described as a conspiracy to destroy documents related to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, has repeatedly asked:

why did Jones take such a large professional risk by asking other scientists to destroy documents?

A correlative question for the other scientists (Briffa, Mann, Wahl, Ammann) is why they agreed to co-operate with Jones in this bizarre enterprise. These questions are not just Holland’s. They are important questions that deserve an answer.

But despite multiple so-called “inquiries”, Holland’s questions about Jones’ email deletion “enterprise” remain unanswered. Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that, as far as the inquiries are concerned, they remained unasked. Instead of unravelling the conduct of Jones and his Team, the “inquiries” have been wilfully obtuse, both refusing to ask the salient questions and determining the matter on empirical findings that were either blatantly untrue or unsupported by the evidence that they collected.

In the UK, Muir Russell was commissioned by the University of East Anglia to inquire about the emails, but didn’t even ask Jones whether he deleted the emails. Muir Russell “explained” to the Parliamentary Committee that, if he had done so, he would have been asking Jones to admit misconduct. That a panel commissioned to inquire about misconduct should refuse to grasp the nettle of actually inquiring about misconduct is unfortunately all too typical of these sorry events. Muir Russell’s subsequent report then contained findings on email deletion that were blatantly untrue and known to be untrue to hundreds, if not thousands, of readers who’ve followed these events. In particular, even though Jones’ email initiating the deletion enterprise was marked re “FOIA” and was a direct response to Holland’s FOIA request, Muir Russell obtusely reported that there was no pending FOI request at the time of Jones’ deletion email. This sort of willful obtuseness and/or incompetence was one of a number of factors that resulted in the Muir Russell “inquiry” exacerbating, rather than diminishing, the polarized attitudes in this field.

In today’s post, I’ll review the recent National Science Foundation Office of the Inspector General (NSF  OIG) report as it pertains to Jones’ document destruction enterprise, together with the Penn State Inquiry Committee that it reviews. Like Muir Russell, both the Penn State Inquiry Committee and the NSF OIG neglected to consider obvious and fundamental questions about Mann’s participation in Jones’ document destruction enterprise and arrived at empirical conclusions that were unsupported by the inadequate record that they had collected.

Although the defects in the Penn State Inquiry Committee’s handling of Mann’s participation in Jones’ email destruction enterprise are or should be obvious to any Inspector General (and had been pointed out long ago at Climate Audit), the recent report of the Inspector General condoned Penn State’s mishandling of these matters… full article

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Explanation and interpretation of “hide the decline”

Realclimate describes the issue as follows:

Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

Steve McIntyre has quite a different intepretation:

Despite relatively little centennial variability, Briffa’s reconstruction had a noticeable decline in the late 20th century, despite warmer temperatures. In these early articles [e.g. Briffa 1998], the decline was not hidden.

For most analysts, the seemingly unavoidable question at this point would be – if tree rings didn’t respond to late 20th century warmth, how would one know that they didn’t do the same thing in response to possible medieval warmth – a question that remains unaddressed years later.

September 5, 2011 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

WordPress Suspends ‘Stop NATO’ news site

Anti-war.com – September 02, 2011

WordPress suspended the Stop NATO site from posting any new material earlier today, with this announcement:

“Warning: We have a concern about some of the content on your blog. Please click here to contact us as soon as possible to resolve the issue and re-enable posting.”

Repeated efforts to contact them have produced no result.

A year ago Military Times threatened the Stop NATO e-mail list with legal action and, after contacting them and assuming the matter resolved, they got Yahoo Groups to threaten to shut down the list and even cancel my personal e-mail account.

Material on the WordPress site has been backed up, and everything posted to date is still accessible, but it’s not certain for how long.

As everyone familiar with both the site and the list know, no incitement to violence or other illegal action, no attempt to solicit money and no derogatory statement toward any demograhic group have ever appeared on either the mailing list or the news site.

The sole “crime” of which both are guilty is of being anti-war and anti-militarist.

Yours for peace,
Rick Rozoff

September 5, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | 3 Comments

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