Last October, Iran was falsely charged with a fake terror plot that didn’t pass the smell test. At best, it resembled a bad film script too implausible to believe.
Tehran was bogusly blamed for plotting to kill Saudi Arabia’s US ambassador. According to spurious accusations, an Iranian/American used car salesman and Mexican drug cartel hired assassin were involved.
You can’t make this stuff up, but major media scoundrels headlined it for days. They regurgitated a scheme too implausible to believe.
Official lies substituted for proof. They’re repeated to incite fear and justify retaliatory measures with public support. They include belligerence if ordered.
Unasked always is cui bono. Clearly, Iran’s only harmed by alleged terrorist attacks against America, NATO partners, Israel, or their allies. In contrast, Washington and Tel Aviv benefit greatly. As a result, new charges follow old ones.
On February 13, The New York Times headlined, “Israel Blames Iran for Attacks in India and Georgia,” saying:
On Monday, “(b)ombers targeted Israel embassy workers in” both countries’ capitals. New Delhi witnesses said a motorcyclist attached a bomb to an Israeli diplomat’s car, injuring his wife.”
An alleged Georgia plot was foiled. Conveniently, an Israeli Tbilisi embassy employee spotted a “strange object” in full view attached to its envoy’s car. If something real was planned, it would have been placed underneath out of sight. Even an amateur knows that.
“If actually carried out by Iran (implying they were), the attacks would be another indication that the leadership in Tehran was willing to reach beyond its borders against its enemies and expand its attacks to civilians.”
Bronner repeated the canard about Iran plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, adding:
“….Israel has said that Iran has planned to attack its citizens in various countries, but that those plots were stopped.”
Major media scoundrels are so used to suppressing truth and full disclosure, they wouldn’t recognize it if it jumped up and bit them in the nose.
For years, Israel manufactured bogus threats against its overseas based officials and other citizens. America does the same thing. Duplicitously pointing fingers the wrong way conceals their own crimes. They’re numerous, frequent, and horrific.
In contrast, Iran threatens no other country and hasn’t attacked one in over 200 years. Israeli/Washington terrorist charges are spurious. They’re made to stoke fear and justify ‘retaliatory’ measures.
Iran painstakingly avoids provocations. Despite clear evidence of Mossad’s involvement in killing its nuclear scientists and other destabilizing actions, Tehran refrained from retaliating.
Blaming Iran for the New Delhi and Tbilisi incidents is entirely spurious. Yet major media scoundrels headline it. So did Netanyahu calling Iran and Hezbollah “the world’s greatest exporter(s) of terror.”
“In the last few months, we have witnessed several attempts to target Israeli citizens and Jews in a series of countries, such as Azerbaijan and Thailand. In all of these cases were able to thwart these attacks in cooperation with local forces.”
Of course, doing so suggests Israeli involvement. Conveniently, alleged terror plots were foiled in the nick of time. Be suspicious. Be very suspicious.
At issue, of course, is blaming Iran, Syria, and other Israeli targets. It’s an old stunt used often by Israel and America. Both countries specialize in false flag attacks. They’re also behind alleged foiled terror plots.
Netanyahu added:
“The Israeli government and its security services will continue, with local security, to act against the international terror which Iran produces.”
In fact, Israel and Washington are the world’s leading state terror exponents. Incidents are conveniently blamed on others. It doesn’t wash.
Though evidence so far can’t prove it, Mossad, not Iran, was likely responsible for the latest ones. The tactic chosen replicated one of its favorites. It was classic Israeli state terrorism.
Mossad and Shin Bet (Israel’s Security Agency) have long, odious terrorist histories.
Blaming victims, lawlessness, violence, crimes of war and against humanity, collective punishment, intimidation, attacking unarmed civilians, and overall brutality are Israeli specialties.
Combined, they define a rogue state, defiant of international law principles. It pursues its own interests ruthlessly and extrajudicially, anywhere in the world.
Israel began honing its skills during the Mandatory Palestine period. At the time, Jewish terrorist groups targeted Jews, Brits and Arabs. Involved were paramilitary Hagana members, Irgun headed by future prime minister Menachem Begin, and Lehi (also called the Stern Gang) led by another future prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir. They were rogue killers before entering politics.
Today the tradition continues under new management. Little wonder Israel’s history is so bloodstained. It involves individual and mass killings. Alleged Arab terrorists are blamed. Current favorites include Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Palestinian resistance groups.
Mossad specializes in various type car bombs. Assassinating former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was classic Israeli state terror.
On February 14, 2005, compelling visual and audio evidence revealed real time intercepted Israeli aerial surveillance footage of routes Hariri used on the day he was killed. Israel was clearly involved.
Syria initially was blamed. Assad denied responsibility. Hezbollah was later falsely named and indicted. It was typical Mossad targeting though no one at the time knew for sure. The powerful car bomb ripped a 30 foot crater in the street, injuring over 100 besides those killed.
No evidence proved Hezbollah’s involvement. Moreover, it had nothing to gain but plenty to lose. […]
Neither the India or Georgia incident caused deaths. That alone is suspicious. If Israel or other professional assassins want someone dead, bet on it. If targets escape unscathed or with minor wounds, smell a rat. The odor from New Delhi and Tbilisi is telling.
India Responds
India’s Foreign Minister SM Krishna announced an investigation. Protection for Israeli embassy staff was added. India’s Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said the attack was committed by a “very well-trained person.”
Tali Yehoshua-Koren, wife of Israel’s defense attache was slightly wounded. After hospital treatment to remove shrapnel, she was released. Her husband said she’s recovering nicely.
The incident occurred one day after the fourth anniversary of Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyah’s assassination. He was falsely linked to terror attacks on American and Israeli targets.
In 2008, a Damascus car bomb claimed him. Israel was blamed at the time. It was typical Mossad terror. Israel, of course, denied it. In the 1970s, Mughniyah was a student brigade organizer. He aided Arafat and other senior PLO officials in Lebanon. He was falsely accused of masterminding the 1983 US Embassy Beirut attack, as well as truck bombing French and US marine barracks in Lebanon.
Without evidence, he and Hezbollah’s rap sheet include the 1983 US Lebanon embassy and marine barracks bombings, highjackings, hostage taking, rocket attacks against Israel, suicide bombings, and more. He and Hezbollah denied them, saying they only respond defensively when attacked against militants, not civilians.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accuses America and Israel of making false terrorist charges for political, not legitimate, reasons. At issue is its resistance to imperial aggression.
Argentinean officials also bogusly charged Mughniyeh in connection with the 1992 Israeli Buenos Aires embassy bombing. It killed 29 and wounded another 242 civilians.
In 1999, its authorities issued an arrest warrant for this attack and the 1994 AMIA (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) Buenos Aires bombing. It killed 85 and injured hundreds. Argentina has Latin America’s largest Jewish population. It numbers around 200,000.
Once named, it’s easy to pile on more accusations. Mughniyeh faced many, including the 1996 Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers bombing and a 2006 border incident Israel used to wage aggressive war on Lebanon.
A Final Comment
When it rains, it pours. On February 14, Haaretz headlined, “Suspected Iranian national maimed by own bomb in Bangkok,” saying:
“A man thought to be Iranian was seriously wounded in Bangkok on Tuesday when a bomb he was (allegedly) carrying exploded and blew one of his legs off, police and a government spokeswoman said.”
Be suspicious. If a professional assassin wanted someone dead, he or she would wouldn’t be wounded in the process.
The report added that “Shortly before, there had been an explosion in a house the man was renting” in central Bangkok. Both incidents smell, especially by pointing fingers at Iran with no corroborating evidence. Yet Haaretz headlined it without questioning charges that appear baseless.
Israel and Washington are spoiling for a fight. What better way to justify one than by state-sponsored false flags blamed on intended targets.
It’s the oldest trick in the book with a long sordid history. Be suspicious whenever headlines feature incidents without evidence. It suggests none exists and those blamed are innocent. Believe it!
NATO will spend US$3.9 billion on five US-built drones over 20 years in an effort to fill the gap exposed in the Libyan air war, an official said on Wednesday.
Allies will pay at least $1 billion to acquire the Global Hawk drones from Northrop Grumman, a price that includes ground support stations, image analysis technology, and training for operators.
Operating the drones, which will be based at the NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily, will cost the alliance another $2.5 billion over the next two decades, the official told AFP on the condition of anonymity.
“Libya showed the importance of having such a capability,” the official said.
While European air forces carried out the bulk of bombing missions in Libya last year, they relied heavily on drones provided by the United States to identify and hit targets during the campaign.
NATO defense ministers finally agreed on the Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) after two decades of wrangling over its funding.
The drones are being purchased by 13 NATO nations: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the United States.
The aircraft will then be available to all 28 allies who will contribute to the cost of operating them. France and Britain will mostly contribute by providing their own surveillance aircraft to the program.
US drones have consistently been criticized by international rights groups, who have said their use violates international law.
The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has tracked the increased use of drones by the Obama administration in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and other countries.
The legality of using drones has never been tested in a US court.
Based on a fable from the Old Testament Book of Esther, the Jewish holiday of Purim celebrates the slaughter of 750,000 Persians and the hanging of Persian Prime Minister Hamam and his ten sons.
Purim is perhaps the only religious holiday that celebrates death, destruction, and pagan decadence. It is more akin to Halloween than Christmas–where rowdy party animals dress like Gene Simmons from Kiss, drink like Charles Bukowski, and wander through town looking for trouble like soccer hooligans whose team just won (or lost) an important match.
This year, Purim will be celebrated from sunset, March 7 until nightfall, March 8.
Over the last twenty years, some of the most egregious war crimes and massacres committed by—or on behalf of—the Israelis have occurred during this holiday. It begs to wonder what they’ll be up to this Purim? […]
Here is a short (but by no means exhaustive) list of some of the more notorious bloody events that transpired while Purim was being celebrated:
Bombing of Libya—March 19, 2011—US and British forces launch “Operation Odyssey Dawn,” firing more than 115 Tomahawk cruise missiles on Libyan targets near Benghazi. The seven-month military assault ultimately resulted in the almost complete annihilation of Libya, the brutal assassination of Muammar Gaddafi, and the deaths of as many as 30,000 people.
Iraq War—March 17, 2003—Then-President George W. Bush issues a 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein and his sons to either leave Iraq or brace for invasion. An air strike on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad came two days later. The resulting attack led to a bloody eight-year war that “officially” ended last year—but is still going on—with no end in sight!
Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre—February 25, 1994—Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein, a member of the far-right Israeli Kach, opened fire on unarmed Palestinian Muslims praying at the Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron. In addition to the 29 killed and 125 injured at the scene, 19 more Palestinians were killed by the Israeli Defense Forces following riots and protests that erupted throughout the West Bank.
The Highway of Death—February 28, 1991— Under a white flag of surrender, Iraqi troops were making their way back from Kuwait to Iraq when they came under attack by U.S. military ground and air units. Somewhere between 50,000 to 150,000 were slaughtered on what was later referred to as “The Highway of Death.” According to investigative journalist and author Sherman H. Skolnick, “U.S. Military bulldozers were ordered by Bush to bury these slaughtered surrendering Iraqi troops, some of them still alive, in mass, unmarked graves in the desert.”
BETHLEHEM – Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday condemned violence used by Israel against photojournalists covering demonstrations against Israel’s West Bank barrier.
Reporters Without Borders “deplores the total impunity enjoyed by the soldiers responsible for these abuses,” the Paris-based press freedom watchdog said in a statement.
The statement referred to incidents in January and February in which soldiers injured photojournalists in Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, and in Kufr Qaddoum, near Qalqiliya, and others sites in the occupied West Bank.
“Reporters Without Borders has on many occasions asked the Israeli army to undertake independent and impartial investigations into such incidents in order to identify and punish those responsible,” RSF said.
“Even when the army does carry out an investigation, it seldom reaches any real conclusions.”
Lt.-Col. Avital Leibovich, an army spokeswoman, responded to the complaints by saying that one of the incidents occurred while forces were acting against a “violent and illegal demonstration.”
She stressed that at least one of the complaints was not appropriate because of the dangers present in the West Bank, adding, “Sometimes the media are caught in the eye of the storm.”
The group called the response “a stonewalling exercise.”
“Reporters Without Borders is outraged at this insulting and totally inadequate response from the Israeli Defense Forces, which continually protect the army at the expense of freedom of information.”
On Monday, heavily-guarded Israeli forces demolished a Palestinian community center and a children’s playground in occupied East Jerusalem. The center was the only public space and playground for the Palestinian residents of the Wadi Hilweh area of Silwan, a neighborhood of East Jerusalem adjacent to the Old City. The Israel Nature and Parks Authority executed the demolition with British-manufactured JCB machinery.
Video screenshot shows the Israeli police force protecting the JCB machine that demolished a Palestinian community center and a playground in Silwan on 13 February
The Israeli demolition of Palestinian property in occupied East Jerusalem that is not justified by military necessity is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Conventions. Moreover, by demolishing the only playground in Wadi Hilweh, Israel denies Palestinian children their right to play.
Article 31 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child enshrines the right “to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.” By ratifying the Convention in 1991, Israel is obligated to obey the directives of the Convention.
On 24 November 2011, JCB machines were seen in action demolishing two homes, a mosque and a barn in Umm Fagarah. The village is located in the South Hebron Hills in the occupied West Bank. On 20 June 2011, JCB machines were úsed to destroy the village of Bir al-Eid in the South Hebron Hills.
“We must hit, hit and hit them incessantly – not by means of large-scale war. Suddenly someone disappears there, someone is found dead here and somewhere else someone is found stabbed to death in a European nightclub.” – Ariel Sharon
Monday. February 13. 3.54 pm. A bomb explodes in the car of an Israeli diplomat. Three people, including the defence attaché’s wife Tal Yehoshua, are grievously injured.
30 minutes later, embassy officials are examining the remains of the vehicle in an area that has been cordoned off by the police.
Within three hours, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses the Hizbullah and Iran: “Iran, which stands behind these attacks, is the largest exporter of terror in the world. The Israeli government and its security forces will continue to work together with local security services against these terrorist actions.”
He is pre-empting the inquiry, and the media is already talking about “Hizbullah in Delhi” and “Israel targeted in India”. We are calling ourselves a soft state when our own hardliners and security forces have been killing citizens inside the country.
The question is not whether global terror is being fought on Indian soil but how much of it is being arranged here. If it is legitimate to ask about the role of local handlers, then why has there been no concern about the incident of a planned vengeance by Israelis?
Cut to a report a few days ago when there was palpable revenge. The couple, Shneor Zalman and Yaffa Shenoi, arrived in India on a multiple-entry visa in March 2010. After the visa expired, they went back and returned within a month. What was their purpose that they paid a “disproportionately high rent” of Rs. 50,000 a month for a house in Fort Kochi, Kerala? A senior official was quoted in a report saying: “Central intelligence got an alert about a covert operation being carried out by suspected Israeli agents after the 26/11 Mumbai terror strike in which south Mumbai’s Chabad House came under attack and six Jews, including a Rabbi and his pregnant wife, were killed. We have traced the couple’s financial transactions. They will be questioned before they are deported. Preliminary investigations suggest some Israelis are camping in various parts of the country.”
This comes from official sources and all that they think of is deporting the couple. There has been complete silence from the usually active dispensers of opinion, too.
Let us return to the scene of Monday’s crime. The Indian and international media have gone ballistic about it without a shred of evidence. If the argument is that the Indian prime minister’s house is in the vicinity and reveals lapses in our security, then why is no one apprehensive about our situation? It raises questions beyond safety measures. Why are we falling in line with Israeli rules? What is the American effort in this proxy war? It is not Hizbullah that is fighting in India, but Israel.
With the top leaders’ comments, Israel is not only holding India to ransom but also trying to play its victim-aggressor game here. A bomb that went off simultaneously in Georgia was defused, for it does not resonate well with the anti-Arab/Iran narrative. One is not condoning any such attacks, but this most certainly does not look like a war against Israel, a state that has got its armour in place. Mossad is as pervasive as the CIA.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, “It just shows that Israel and its citizens face terror inside and outside of Israel. We deal with it every day. We know how to identify exactly who is responsible for the attack and who carried it out. We will not allow this to affect our agenda.”
Has anyone questioned the agenda? The identification process assumes reprisal.
Blindly accepting the Israeli version of domestic links with groups will obviously lead to the blanket indictment of ‘jihadi’ organisations, many of them imagined entities of the right-wing parties. Is it not possible that some Hindutva terror groups now openly asserting themselves and held culpable for such activities could be used for Israel’s covert operations? Israel does not have suicide missions, but it understands the masochism paradigm only too well.
***
The revenge space is never empty. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written:
“The primitive sense of the just…starts from the notion that a human life…is a vulnerable thing, a thing that can be invaded, wounded, violated by another’s act in many ways. For this penetration, the only remedy that seems appropriate is a counter invasion, equally deliberate, equally grave. And to right the balance truly, the retribution must be exactly, strictly proportional to the original encroachment. It differs from the original act only in the sequence of time and in the fact that it is response rather than original act – a fact frequently obscured if there is a long sequence of acts and counteracts.”
We need to look at a few examples to emphasise our vulnerability.
Members of the orthodox Jewish Chabad India Trust have moved out of Nariman House and are residing in an unknown location due to security reasons. Soon after the Mumbai attacks, six members of a group called Zaka (acronym for Zihuy Korbanot Ason – Disaster Victim Identification) arrived in the city to collect and arrange the body parts and blood of Jews so that they could be returned to family members and were afforded a dignified burial according to Jewish law. The police investigations were not completed.
More recently, Israeli national Nurit Toker was booked by the Mumbai police under the Arms Act, 1959, for carrying two live cartridges in her backpack while travelling from Mumbai to Kathmandu. In her petition she mentioned that she had completed her compulsory three-year training in the Israeli army and these were her personal ammunition, compatible with the M-16 assault rifle acquired during her military training. She had not carried the rifle, though. Sec. 3 clearly states “there is no requirement of use or intention to use the arm or ammunition” to pursue the case. Yet, the Israel Consulate intervened to say that the accused had accidentally left bullets in her bag.
This is not the first such instance. In 2006, Noa Haviv had cleared customs at Mumbai airport as well as the security agencies of Israeli airline El Al at Tel Aviv and arrived with 16 bullets and a magazine in her check-in baggage. The Israeli consul general had stated then: “We have every reason to believe that it was an innocent mistake. She had borrowed this suitcase from her brother, who is a licensed weapons holder. She was not aware of the bullets inside when she packed her bags.” Amazingly, only the airline filed a case and not the Airports Authority of India or the security agencies of the government.
In a country that arrests whole families on mere “tip offs”, this leniency is alarming. Worse, all 171 passengers on the El Al flight had walked out of the green channel and cleared customs in 15 minutes. Why this express service? Even Indians returning from a holiday take longer. The customs official at the time had said, “…this was a flight coming from Israel, where security measures are stringent.”
Are we to depend on another state’s security assurances? Israel is not above suspicion. No country is.
***
The attack on the embassy staff took place in India. We cannot allow investigations to be outsourced. Hillary Clinton offered US assistance to probe into “these cowardly acts” because the “scourge of terrorism is an affront to the entire international community”.
In an editorial, The Pioneer uses this incident for its grand-standing: “Governments around the world are mindful of such occasions when Israelis, both diplomats and civilians, are likely be targeted; sadly, the Government of India chooses to ignore them, busy as the Home Minister is defending himself in a corruption case while intelligence agencies are pre-occupied with snooping on the Congress’s political opponents and conducting ‘surveys’ in election-bound States”. It adds, with alacrity, that at least the people should be agitated “if not the Government whose Ministers are at the moment unabashedly pandering to Muslim extremism in Uttar Pradesh”.
Are we to be on our toes for Israel? Why did the papers not write editorials when suspicious activities of Israelis were noticed by these intelligence agencies? Why suppress those?
As expected, Pakistan and its Inter Services Intelligence are used as an example. There has been no proof. Israel is using Indian susceptibility with regard to relationship with Pakistan. There is indeed an insurgency problem and the recent history of the Mumbai attacks. The fact that the Jewish Chabad House was one of the targets makes it appear as a legitimate connection. But Pakistan has closer ties with Saudi Arabia and is inimical to Iran, which is the current bone stuck in the throats of the western powers and Israel.
There are cursory references to the four Iranian nuclear scientists who were killed in the last two years. Instead, the bomb blast is being touted as revenge for the death of Hizbullah’s military chief Imad Mughniyeh in a car explosion. What is so important about the fourth death anniversary? Do also note that he was killed in Syria, so Israel has a virtual buffet meal at its disposal to point fingers at.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said. “Israel perpetrated the terror actions to launch psychological warfare against Iran.”
There are sniggers, but Israel has every reason to perpetuate such mind-numbing ideas, if not actions. In 1948, Menachem Begin’s unit slaughtered the inhabitants of Deir Yassin. In 1953, Ariel Sharon led the slaughter of the inhabitants of Qibya, and in 1982 arranged for their allies to butcher around 2,000 in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. He had declared, “We must hit, hit and hit them incessantly – not by means of large-scale war. Suddenly someone disappears there, someone is found dead here and somewhere else someone is found stabbed to death in a European nightclub.”
The history if Israel is as damning as it is damaged. It has flouted every rule and yet got the benefit of protection.
India is most certainly not a soft power that some of our own commentators are shamelessly projecting it as. It is a bit obsessed and still suffers from a colonial hangover. It has created its cocoon of goodwill based on the flimsy delusion of being a developed nation where hybrid progress is sustained in a greenhouse. In that, it is not too different from some of the wealthy Arab states that are only concerned about how they sell their oil and for how much. Just as they have their pecking order, India maintains a stoical distance from the larger pool of South Asian countries by virtue of its “close relations” with those who matter.
Self-preservation is the goal of any society, but when it becomes opportunistic it is difficult to demarcate the lines of control and of control freaks. By a process of natural selection that imbues it as a ‘doctrinaire liberal’ society, India is being co-opted in an unholy war
Syrian President Bashar Assad set Wednesday February 26 as the date for a referendum on the draft Constitution.
The proposed constitution does away with Article 8 of the old charter which declared the Baath Party, in power since 1963, as the “leader of the state and society.”
Earlier on Sunday, a committee tasked with drafting the new constitution, handed a copy of the draft to the Syrian president.
“The Committee’s members stressed their determination… to prepare an integrated formula of a constitution that guarantees the dignity of the Syrian citizen and secures his basic rights”, the agency added.
“When the new constitution is approved, Syria will have passed the most important stage of laying down the constitutional and legal structure through the reforms and laws that have already been issued to take the country to a new era in cooperation with the full spectrum of the Syrian people to achieve what we all aspire for in terms of developing our country to draw a brilliant future for next generations”, the agency quoted Assad as saying during a meeting with committee members.
In January, Assad said a new constitution was being drawn up by a committee set up in October to replace the current one. At the time, he said it could be put to a popular vote as early as March.
For its part, Russia welcomed the move, saying the new constitution is seen as a step forward.
“We certainly believe a new constitution to end one-party rule in Syria is a step forward. It is a welcome idea and we hope the constitution will be adopted,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in The Hague.
Lavrov was speaking after talks with his Dutch counterpart Uri Rosenthal during a two-day visit to the Netherlands.
The first to discover that teachers make perfect scapegoats was George W. Bush. When he ran for president for the first time twelve years ago, Bush had a problem. He wanted lower taxes to be his rallying cry, but while taxes in Texas, the state where he was governor, were indeed low, the schools in Texas were notoriously bad.
The numbers are no better today: Texas ranks 47th in the county in literacy, 49th in verbal SAT scores and 46th in math scores. To blind the public to the evidence of what low taxes do, Bush produced evidence of a miracle: When it comes to education money is not what matters, he declared; what matters is holding teachers accountable. In Houston, Bush told voters, the superintendent of schools held teachers accountable, and as a result Houston saw a dramatic improvement in school quality, particularly when measured by high school graduation rates. So convincing was the miracle that as soon as he took office Congress agreed to pass the Bush tax cuts and the No Child Left Behind law.
Eight years later the “Texas miracle” was exposed. It turned out that the numbers had been cooked: Instead of the 1.5% drop-out rate that Houston had reported, the actual rate was somewhere between 25 and 50 percent. And in order to boost test results children who were considered weak in even just one subject were prevented from entering the 10th grade, the year in which the tests were administered. But by then the truth no longer mattered because the ideas that taxes are not needed to run a democratic government and that teachers, not budgets, are responsible for the failure of schools had invaded the body politic.
When Bush ran for office the rate of unemployment was low and there was a surplus in the government coffers, rather than a deficit. Today the economic situation is dire and most Americans believe that inequality is the biggest problem that the country faces. Occupy Wall Street blames the 1% — but the 1% and their elected officials have found someone else to blame: Bad teachers are back.
A new study just out from economists at Harvard and Columbia would seem to offer the proof. The study does not claim that the measurement of teachers will produce better students–this was Bush’s claim and it has already been exposed–but instead that the measurement of teachers will make students richer as adults.
President Obama echoed themes from the study when in his State of the Union Address, instead of acknowledging Occupy Wall Street, he stuck it to teachers: ”A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance,” he said. “Give them [schools] the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones…and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.”
Unlike the Texas miracle, the Harvard-Columbia revelations are not based on fraudulent numbers. But what is deeply problematic is the spin that the authors give to their findings. The study examined the incomes of adults who, as children in the 4th through the 8th grades, had teachers of different “Value Added” scores, with Value Added defined as improvement in the scores of students on standardized tests. The study claims that the individuals who had excellent teachers as children have higher incomes as adults; we will examine the validity of this claim below. But first we must ask what these higher incomes mean. When they were children, these individuals were poor. What the H-C authors fail to mention is that even when they had excellent teachers as children and therefore have higher incomes as adults, these individuals, despite their higher incomes, remain poor.
The devil is in the details: the average wage and salary of a 28 year old in the H-C study who had an excellent teacher was $20,509 in 2010 dollars, $182 higher than the average annual pay of all 28 year olds in the study. How does this compare to the average salary and wage of a 28 year old in this country? The authors excluded from their study people whose income was higher than $100,000. As we shall see, this exclusion is problematic; but to do the comparison we must do the same. The average salary and wage in 2010 of a 28 year old who earned less than $100,000 a year was $29,041, 42% higher than the income of a 28 year old in the H-C who had an excellent teacher. In other words, even if we accept the numbers that the authors of the H-C study choose to spin, having an excellent teacher cannot pull people out of poverty.
The exclusion of people with high incomes involved some 4,000 individuals, or 1.2% of the sample. The authors justify it by claiming that such people are outliers. But what if it turned out those high income earners had “bad” teachers? Including them in the study would have completely changed the results. Excluding a large number of the best performers from a study about the effect of teaching seems strange.
There’s more. While the H-C study found a statistically significant, if meaningless, relationship between the “value added” of teachers and incomes at age 28, the authors did not find a statistically significant result at age 30. Why? In the study the authors explain this by the small number of 30 year olds in their sample. In their interviews with the media and in public presentations the authors do not mention this result at all. Yet the number of 30 year olds in their sample is 61,639, and these are all students who went to school in the same city. Is this a small sample? To gain an appreciation for the size of the sample consider the fact that in order to estimate the unemployment rate that it publishes every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics relies on a national survey of 60,000 households with an average of 1.95 adults in each. Surely if 120,000 peoples are a good size sample to study a labor force of 150 million people spread all over the country, a sample of 61,639 is a good size sample to study a population of fewer than 5 million elementary school students who all come from the same school system. By any measure the sample size is not only adequate, it is fantastically huge, and the result is not statistically significant.
But the statistically insignificant results for 30 year olds may have been inconvenient for the authors for another reason. An increase of $128 a year is small by any standard, so the authors resorted to estimating a lifetime increase in earnings due to this increase. To do that they assumed that the percentage increase in income, 0.9 of one percent, which they estimated for age 28, holds for each year of a person’s working life. And perhaps this is why the authors chose to ignore the results for the 30 year olds. All that their findings permit them to claim truthfully is that an excellent teacher increases average annual income by $128 at age 28, and that this effect disappears at age 30. But then there would have been nothing to report.
Doesn’t teacher quality matter? Not when it comes to explaining the deliberate assault on the wages of workers by executives with the support of most of our elected officials. A federal law permits states to pass the doublespeak Right to Work law. Boeing, a major recipient of government largess, has just moved production from Washington State to South Carolina because, according to Governor Nikki Haley, “We are fighting the unions every step of the way. We are a strong Right to Work state and going to stay that way.” The Supreme Court has recently ruled that executives can use shareholders’ money to their heart’s desire to influence elections. Executive pay remains totally out of control and totally unregulated. Government workers have lost the right to bargain collectively in several states. These are the laws that must be changed if we are to fight poverty. Does the president really believe that teachers can change all these laws by themselves when he says that “a great teacher can offer an escape from poverty?”
The attack on “bad teachers” is a dishonest diversion, and nothing more than a reincarnation of the Texas Miracle. The problem is the power of the 1%; the solution is to pass it to the 99%.
Moshe Adler teaches economics at Columbia University and at the Harry Van Arsdale Center for Labor Studies at Empire State College. He is the author of Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science That Makes Life Dismal (The New Press, 2010), which is available in paperback and as an e-book.
The Argentine Confederation of Transport Workers warns of boycotting British ships reaching Argentina as the UK refuses Argentina’s call for negotiations over the sovereignty of Malvinas (Falklands).
“We have resolved to boycott any ship with the British flag, or with the lying and invented flag of the Falklands, or with any flag of convenience which the British pirates use,” the union said in a statement.
Earlier, in response to Britain “militarizing” the South Atlantic by sending a nuclear-armed destroyer to the area and the dispatch of an heir to throne, the Duke of Cambridge, to the region, Argentina raised the possibility of shutting the only air route to the islands which passes through Argentina’s airspace.
Seeking to resolve the issue through diplomacy and urging the UK to stop waging war over the islands’ sovereignty, Argentinean Foreign Minister Hector Timerman submitted an official complaint to the United Nations Security Council against Britain’s repeated military threats.
However, Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations Mark Lyall Grant warned Argentina that the UK would “robustly” defend Malvinas Islands if necessary, claiming the British government would hold talks with Buenos Aires on any issue except the islands’ sovereignty.
In December the South American trading bloc Mercosur including Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, decided to deny entry to vessels carrying the Falklands’ flag from their ports. Later, the Chilean government also expressed its solidarity with Mercosur members.
New Delhi: In spite of sanctions by the US and the European Union and Israel linking Tehran to the attack on an Israeli embassy car here, India is set to step up its energy and business ties with Iran, with a commerce ministry team going there shortly to explore new opportunities. […]
Not just oil, India is also stepping up the refurbishing of the Chabahar Port in Iran and a strategic railway link that will offer it direct access to Afghanistan and the energy-rich Central Asia. […]
India is uneasy at Israeli accusations about Iran’s hand in the Monday bombing that targeted an Israeli embassy car, badly injuring the wife of the Israeli defence attache. India, the sources said, does not want to be drawn into a diplomatic war of words between Tehran and Tel Aviv. Iran has rubbished Israeli charges as “empty lies”.
But with Israel launching a diplomatic offensive and the American Jewish Congress (AJC) asking India to scale down its engagement with Iran, New Delhi could come under renewed pressure from the West to cut off ties with what the Americans say is a rogue regime.
India has launched a probe into the terror attack. “The probe is on,” is all Indian officials would say.
Ajai Sahni, a terrorism expert, said it was very unlikely that the attack would ever be traced to the Iranian state. But he agreed that India could be under extra pressure as Israel may leverage the incident to portray Iran as a rogue regime.
The American Jewish Congress has told Indian ambassador to the US Nirupama Rao that it was “deeply troubled” by India’s efforts to intensify trade relations with Iran “at the very moment when the US and fellow democracies are applying new economic pressures” on Tehran. […]
Last week, as the European Union asked India to broker talks with Tehran over its atomic programme, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pitched for a resolution of the issue by giving “maximum scope” to diplomacy. – Full article
No deaths, just long sought after provocations; a geopolitical gambit executed with the proficiency of Mossad.
“…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.) ”
-US foreign policy makers in the Fortune 500 funded Brookings Institution’s 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” report, pages 84-85.
~
“U.S. officials said they have seen no intelligence to indicate that Iran is actively plotting attacks on U.S. soil. But Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said the thwarted plot “shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”
The warning about Iran’s more aggressive stance was included in written testimony that Clapper submitted to Congress on Tuesday as part of the intelligence community’s annual assessment of the nation’s most serious security threats.”
“We predict that the threat on our sites around the world will increase … on both our guarded sites and ‘soft’ sites,” read the memo, with soft sites interpreted to mean potential targets such as synagogues and other Jewish community buildings. The letter was circulated by the head of security for Israel’s Consul General for the Mid-Atlantic States, ABC News said.”
Quite clearly, there is a premeditated conspiracy working ceaselessly to provoke Iran into a war it neither wants nor will benefit from in any conceivable way, and upon failing to provoke Iran, provocations will be manufactured in their stead, as seen in the recently botched “plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador on US soil,” later revealed to be a US sting operation involving DEA agents and a duped, entrapped patsy.
Now Israel is blaming two attacks on their own embassies, one in New Delhi, India and another failed attack in Tbilisi, Georgia, squarely on Iran. There were only minor injuries reported in the New Delhi attack which was carried out in a similar manner to those targeting Iranian scientists in Iran – attacks now admittedly the work of Israeli Mossad agents and US-funded, armed, trained, and harbored Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) terrorists.
Iran clearly has nothing to gain by bombing Israeli targets abroad, especially in nations like India where such an act would not only give the West the provocation it is on record trying to “goad” out of Tehran for years, but also one that would unsettle relations with India which would directly effect the conflict in Afghanistan festering on Iran’s eastern border.
Conversely, a non-lethal attack on Israeli targets gives the Wall Street-London-Tel Aviv corporate-financier elite the exact provocation they have been fishing for on record since at least 2009. Reuters reports, “a bomb wrecked a car carrying the wife of the Israeli Defence attache as she was going to pick up her children from school.” All the emotional plot points exist to manipulate public opinion against Iran, and behind a Western attack that has so far been perpetually stalled by a world increasingly irate over the West’s global warmongering.
The degree to which this likely stunt will be successful in serving as a pretext for war (or at least further escalation) for an axis that has been waging a campaign of terror against Iran for years remains to be seen. This Wall Street-London-Tel Aviv axis has openly admitted they seek to provoke war with an unwilling adversary, and all three are experts at manufacturing provocations for otherwise unjustifiable acts of aggression.
Iran is an aggressive though not reckless nation – so says the US policy think-tank Brookings Institution in their own “Which Path to Persia?” report. Iran does not lack an accurate understanding of global public opinion, evident in their English news service, PressTV. Should Iran choose to finally strike out against the West for their blatant and consistent acts of war, they would most likely do so with global public opinion in mind – likely excluding the possibility of targeting a mother on her way to pick up her children from school.
As in any crime, big or small, the first and most pressing question to answer is, “cui bono” or, “to whose benefit?” An axis of Western powers desperately seeking a pretext for a war they’ve tried to start for years? Or a nation desperately trying to avoid war, weathering constant and overt acts of aggression directed at their economy, infrastructure, civilians, military leaders, and politicians, only to end up bombing an Israeli mother on her way to pick up her children from school? With this in mind, and with Iran squarely denying any responsibility for the attacks, the burden of proof lies entirely on Israel.
HEBRON – Israeli forces demolished 22 buildings in a Palestinian village south of Hebron on Monday, displacing 120 villagers, residents told Ma’an.
Twenty Israeli military vehicles accompanied bulldozers to raze the 16 domestic tents and six animal shelters in Khirbet al-Rahwa, they said.
Villager Salim Salem al-Tal told Ma’an forces also demolished a well that was the village’s only water source. Soldiers did not give the villagers any time to remove their possessions from their homes, he said.
Rateb al-Jabareen, whose home was demolished, said that the soldiers told them they would have to leave the village. Israel hopes to expand the neighboring Jewish-only settlement Tene Omerem by pushing them from their village, he added.
He vowed the villagers would remain despite repeated demolitions.
Hebron governor Kamel Hemaid said Israeli authorities were systematically destroying Palestinian homes in order to expand Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank.
He appealed for international intervention to halt the demolitions.
The number of Palestinians displaced by demolitions doubled in 2011 compared to 2010, according to UN figures.
By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | October 16, 2107
In 1973 Irving Kristol, the godfather of the Neoconservative movement, made a stunning statement which is still relevant to understanding the Israeli influence in US foreign policy. Kristol said:
“Senator McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel… Jews don’t like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States…
“American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”
Read the statement again very carefully. A big military budget, said Kristol, is only good for Israel, not America or much of the Western World. In other words, precious American soldiers who go to the Middle East to fight so-called terrorism are just working for Israel, not for America.
So, whenever the Neocons use words such as “democracy” or “freedom,” they are essentially conning decent Americans to support Israel’s perpetual wars. … continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News
Aletho News 