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L-3 and Garret supplying equipment for Gaza checkpoint

By Tom Anderson and Therezia Cooper | Corporate Watch | June 20, 2014

The Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing is the only crossing for people who want to go directly from Gaza into the 1948 borders of Israel. People wishing to cross must apply for a permit and only a small number of permits are granted. Privileged people such as foreign journalists (who are not overly critical of Israel), NGO workers, business people and politicians are often granted permits. Other people have to go through the Rafah crossing from southern Gaza into Egypt.

The Beit Hanoun crossing is subject to frequent closures by the Israeli authorities. The terminal has been closed since the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank on 12 June. This closure amounts to an act of collective punishment against everyone in Gaza by the Israeli state.

The crossing is also the only way for hundreds of sick patients to obtain treatment. Israeli military attacks have destroyed vital services in Gaza, while the Israeli siege has prevented life saving equipment from reaching services in the Strip. See Corporate Watch’s recent briefing, Besieging health services in Gaza: a profitable business, to find out more about the effects of the siege on health in Gaza.

Corporate Watch did not apply for permission to cross through the Beit Hanoun crossing as we didn’t think that it would be granted. However, we did ask an NGO worker who was crossing to take a look at the equipment used in the terminal. The NGO worker, who wished to remain anonymous told us: “Coming from Israel, you first go through a private Israeli security firm check where your permit number is confirmed so that you can enter the terminal, then in the terminal you go through another Israeli security ‘border patrol’ check. Once through that you go on a long walk to the Palestinian Authority checkpoint where you’re registered, then you get into a taxi and drive just a minute to the Hamas checkpoint where another permit by the local government is checked. That’s the process for getting into Gaza.”

He told us “I saw the machine’s makes: ProVision on the full body scans, Garret on the metal detectors.”

Garrett are a security equipment supplier. In 2013 Corporate Watch reported that Garrett scanning equipment was being used by the police in the occupied West Bank. Garrett equipment is used by HM Court ‘Service’ in the UK. In our view, BDS campaigners should pressure HMCS to end its contract with Garrett because of its supply of security equipment used to enforce the unlawful siege of Gaza.

The PROVision scanners are manufactured by L-3. L-3 is a provider of military and security products and services. According to Who Profits it supplied body scanners to the Beit Hanoun terminal via Hashmira Israel, a security company owned by British-Danish company G4S.

June 20, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Debunking the “War is Good for the Economy” Myth

By James Corbett | BoilingFrogsPost | June 18, 2014

The idea that the Great Depression was finally brought to an end by the onset of WWII has been a staple of history textbooks, documentaries and various war propaganda for decades. This myth continues to be perpetuated to the present day.

The idea that war is good for the economy is, needless to say, a fallacious argument which itself is based on incorrect economic data.

The idea that the economic activity surrounding militarization represents a net economic gain is called the “broken window fallacy.” This fallacy was named and identified by French economist Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay, “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen,” in which he imagines the case of a shopkeeper whose careless son breaks a pane of glass in his shop window. In Bastiat’s example, ‘that which is seen’ is that the glazier comes, performs the task of fixing the window, and receives six francs for his effort. Onlookers to the scene believe that the economy has actually been bolstered by this act of destruction, since six francs have been spent into it that otherwise would not have been.

But Bastiat notes that what is important is not what is seen, but what is not seen: “It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.”

Similarly, production for war is the broken window fallacy writ large. Economic “gains” produced by government spending on munitions and vehicle manufacture and supplying and equipping the troops are not gains at all; money has merely been diverted to the pockets of the defense contractors via the political cronies in their back pocket.

So why is this important? Because sadly, this myth is being played on by the warmongering class to once again push the idea that war is good and even necessary for economic progress. This time it is not just manufacture of supplies or munitions that are being touted, but war’s ability to justify government spending on investment. No matter how unlikely the threat, or whether it is indeed completely made up, this warped thinking holds that such lies and exaggerations are the answer to our current economic problems.

Sadly, it is not just intellectual deficients like making this case. In a new op-ed in the New York Times, Tyler Cowen of George Mason University argues that technological advances from nuclear research to rocketry to internet and robotics have all been spurred by defense spending, and thus war or threats of war are necessary to continue the advance of civilization.

Why these technologies are ends in themselves, or more valuable than the tens of millions of lives lost in the previous “great wars” is a question left unexamined. Perhaps more to the point, Cowen never addresses why such advances could not take place in the absence of war or without the motivation of advancing the methods of killing as their impetus.

What is most fundamentally upsetting about the mindset that justifies carnage in the name of “economic gain” is that economic gain is usually measured in abstract concepts like GDP growth or increasing equities markets that have no or even negative correlation with the livelihood of the poorest members of society. Income actually shrank by 0.7% for 99% of Americans during the supposed “recovery” of 2009-2011. For the top 1%, income grew 11.5%. This is the type of “help” that massive government spending on bank bailouts and other stimulus measures invariably creates. In times of war, the situation is even more perverse: money is created as debt owed to the banks, backed up by the average working taxpayer, to pay politically-connected defense contractors to create bombs to kill poor brown people on the other side of the planet. This is called economic progress.

Taken to its logical conclusion, there is only one more effective way of solving the problem of poverty. After all, if we are willing to believe the lie that sacrificing lives is good for the economy, why not go that one step further…

June 20, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | 2 Comments

Netanyahu: We expect Abbas to dissolve unity government

Ma’an – 20/06/2014

285939_345x230BETHLEHEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he expected the Palestinian national unity of government to dissolve and the the Israeli government was moving closer to finding three Israeli youths missing for the last week.

The comments, which came during a press conference in the southern West Bank city of Hebron that has been besieged by Israeli forces since the kidnapping, signal renewed pressure on the Palestinian Authority to end a unity deal agreed on between Fatah and Hamas in late April.

“I expect (Palestinian) president (Mahmoud) Abbas to dissolve the union with this murderous terror organisation. I think that’s important for our common future,” he said.

Netanyahu also reasserted that Hamas kidnapped the three young men, even though the Israeli government has yet to provide any evidence of the accusation.

“They were kidnapped by Hamas, we had no doubt of that. It’s absolutely certain,” he said, adding that the public needed to have “patience” as the Israeli forces continued their search.

Over 300 Palestinians have been arrested and more than 800 houses searched in the last week as Israeli forces have carried out a wide-ranging search across the West Bank in pursuit of the the youths.

Israeli forces have also raided charities and all organizations related to Hamas in anyway in the West Bank, arresting former and current Palestinian members of parliament and many others in what some have begun to view as an excuse to round up Hamas members.

June 20, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | 1 Comment

Russia brings WTO complaint over ‘illegal’ US sanctions – Medvedev

RT | June 20, 2014

Moscow intends to present a complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO) claiming ‘politically motivated’ US sanctions that target local companies are hurting Russian external trade and violate WTO rules, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday.

“Unilateral politically motivated sanctions are illegal from the point of view of classic international legislation, they do not meet public order requirements as they ignore WTO’s statute mechanism of constraint,” the Prime Minister told an audience at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum.

In their latest round of sanctions, the US has tried to target Russia’s economy by forbidding business with certain organisations, as well as asset freezes on individuals believed to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Such sanctions violate WTO rules, including the most favored nation status, as they show discrimination to service providers and suppliers from another country and violate restrictions of the second article of the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services,” Medvedev said.

Europe, though hesitantly, has followed the US sanction march and produced its own Russian business blacklist.

Bilateral net trade between the two former Cold War enemies is relatively small – at $38 billion in 2013, but Russia is more worried about continuing good trade relations with Europe, which amounted to $330 billion last year.

Medvedev said the US sanctions will affect Russia’s external trade, adding he understood that challenging the sanctions at the WTO “will be difficult because the US has both doctrinal and practical authority in the organization.”

Russia, the world’s sixth largest economy, became the 156th member of the WTO in August 2012, the last of the G20 nations to join.

The 159 member WTO group account for 97 percent of global trade.

June 20, 2014 Posted by | Economics | , , , | 2 Comments

Syria’s Press Conference the United Nations Doesn’t Want You To See

Global Research News | June 20, 2014

Yesterday at 11am, the Syrian Mission to the United Nations convened a press conference featuring people from the US who observed the recent elections.

Five minutes into the opening comments of Syrian Ambassador Bashar Al-Jaafari, the UN webcast cut off. The thousands of journalists, political analysts, and others who view UN webcasts each day from all over the world were denied the ability to watch the press conference, and hear what was said.

This is not the first time this has happened when Bashar Jaafari is speaking. This occurred on June 7th earlier this year, and on numerous occasions throughout 2013. Reporters at Inner City Press reported that this is not accidental, but was ordered by Michele DuBach, Acting Deputy Director-News & Media Operations.

This comes in the context of other UN harassment of Syria. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has met with Ahmad Jarba, a leader of violent insurgent groups in Syria, but has refused to meet with Bashar Jaafari. Though Syria pays over $1 million to the UN each year, it is not being treated as an equal member state.

Watch the important, UN Press Conference about Syria, that someone obviously doesn’t want you, or anyone else, to see:

June 20, 2014 Posted by | Video, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Americans’ confidence in TV news at record low: Survey

Press TV – June 20, 2014

PUBLIC FAITH IN TV NEWSA new survey shows the American people’s confidence in TV news is at a record low.

Of all the Americans surveyed, only 18 percent expressed either a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in US television news, a Gallup poll found.

“Now I am going to read you a list of institutions in American society. Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in each one–a great deal, quite a lot, some or very little?” the Gallup survey asked the participants. One of the institutions listed is “television news.”

Gallup has been asking the same question every year since 1993.

The latest poll was conducted June 5-8. Only 10 percent said they had “a great deal” of confidence in TV news and 8 percent said they had “quite a lot” of confidence.

The second lowest results were in 2012, when 21 percent said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in television news. In 2013, the percentage of people who trusted US TV news was a bit higher — 23 percent.

Some 46 percent of Americans said they had confidence in TV news in 1993, the first year Gallup started asking Americans’ opinion on this topic.

Gallup interviewed a random sample of 1,027 adults in all 50 states and the District of Columbia for the survey. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.

June 20, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 1 Comment

US fired depleted uranium rounds in civilian areas during 2003 Iraq campaign – report

RT | June 20, 2014

US-led forces in Iraq used depleted uranium weapons in civilian-populated areas during the 2003 military campaign, according to a new Dutch NGO study that also exposes a lack of adequate cleanup efforts by the invading troops.

For the first time the location of several sites where the invaders fired some 10,000 depleted uranium rounds were released by the Dutch Defense Ministry, and published in a study by Dutch peace group PAX.

Most of the DU rounds fired by the US-led coalition were in heavily populated areas, the group says. Samawah, Nasiriyah and Basrah are just some urban areas where ammunition was deployed – with around 1,500 anti-armor rounds fired directly at Saddam Hussein’s infantry forces.

The GPS coordinates of DU rounds were initially handed over to the Dutch Defense Ministry because the Netherlands was worried about the potential contamination of its own troops in the country. The ministry later shared the information with PAX under a freedom of information law.

Most of the firing locations remain unknown, as more than 300,000 DU rounds are believed to have been fired by US-led coalition.

Inside the body, DU’s hazards are its chemical toxicity and radioactivity. DU primarily emits alpha radiation, although beta and gamma are also emitted from uranium’s decay products. Inside the body, alpha radiation can disrupt cellular process and damage DNA, which can lead to an increased risk of developing different types of cancer, depending on which organ is exposed. DU is also a heavy metal and therefore chemically toxic.

The NGO says that the health risks of more than 440,000 kg of DU fired by Western forces remains unclear, as “neither coalition forces nor the Iraqi government have supported health research into civilian DU exposure.”

“Coalition forces were aware of the potential health and environmental impact of DU munitions, yet refrained from undertaking the necessary clean-up of DU outside their own bases,” a summary of the report reads.

Wim Zwijnenburg, the author of the report, said the US Air Force knew of the consequences of using DU ammunition.

“The use of DU against these targets questions the adherence of coalition forces to their own principles and guidelines. They should be held accountable for the consequences,” Zwijnenburg said, citing a 1975 memo from the Air Force Office of the Judge Advocate that restricted the use of such ammunition.

“Use of this munition solely against personnel is prohibited if alternative weapons are available,” the memo said, because of “unnecessary suffering and poison.”

According to an earlier PAX report, more than 300 sites in Iraq are currently contaminated with depleted uranium and it would cost at least $30 million to clean up.

Related:

Depleted uranium used by US forces blamed for birth defects and cancer in Iraq

June 20, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Mideast crises West bid to protect Israel interests: Jaafari

Press TV – June 19, 2014

Syria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Bashar Ja’afari says the current tumult in the Middle East, including the crisis in his country, is a scheme by the West to safeguard Israel’s interests, Press TV reports.

“This is a geopolitical plan that is not only targeting Syria exclusively, although Syria is very important for either the success or failure of this plan, but it is targeting the whole area,” said Ja’afari Wednesday in an exclusive interview with Press TV in New York.

He said the main goal of the Western plot “is to secure for a long time the interests of Israel and preventing the establishment of Palestinian state in Palestine.”

“So they need to open up a new front, a kind of deviation, from the focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian question to another focus which might be a war between Muslims and Muslims,” he added.

He further underlined that the West intends to incite divisions among Muslims under the false notion of a Sunni-Shia conflict to provoke wars between Muslim countries in the region.

The Syrian envoy went on to reiterate that the huge participation of Syrian voters in the country’s presidential election served as big “NO” message to foreign interference in their country’s internal affairs.

“Our message would be a friendly message… [that] we want to have friends and we want to have normal, bilateral relationship with everybody. We do not interfere into the American domestic affairs. Please don’t interfere into our own domestic affairs.”

According to official figures, President Bashar al-Assad won nearly 90 percent of the votes cast in Syria’s presidential race. Syria’s Supreme Constitutional Court announced that over 73 percent of the 15.8 million eligible voters had taken part in the election.

June 20, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Riot control drone armed with paintballs and pepper spray hits market

RT | June 19, 2014

With drones designed to contain ‘unruly crowds’ and ‘violent protests’, a South African company is bringing riot control to a whole new high-tech level. The unmanned aerial system is able to shoot pepper spray and non-lethal paintballs to mark offenders.

Desert Wolf, based in Pretoria, has begun selling its Skunk Riot Control Copter, a drone it says “is designed to control unruly crowds without endangering the lives of the protestors or the security staff.”

The UAS has four high-capacity gun barrels, capable of shooting up to 4,000 paintballs, pepper spray balls and solid plastic balls at rates of up to 80 balls per second. The company notes that the frequency should usually be between one and 20 balls per second, and that the high frequency of 80 “will only be used in an extreme ‘Life threatening situation’.”

Skunk CAD design (courtesy Desert Wolf)

Skunk CAD design (courtesy Desert Wolf)

The paintballs can be used to “mark” people in the crowd. “The operator has full control over each marker. He can select the RED paint marker and mark the protester who carries dangerous weapons, he can select the BLUE marker to mark the vandalising protestors,” the Desert Wolf website said.

The Skunk Copter can also employ strobe lights, “blinding lasers” and on-board speakers to send verbal warnings to a crowd, though New Zealand’s 3News notes that the Geneva Convention prohibits the use of loudspeakers and laser pointers in combat. The UAS also uses a thermal camera with night-vision capabilities and two full-HD video cameras to record events as they unfold. The eight powerful electric motors with 16-inch propellers allow the drone to lift up to 45 kilograms (99 pounds).

“Our aim is to assist in preventing another Marikana, we were there and it should never happen again,” the Desert Wolf website said. Marikana was a wildcat miners’ strike at a South African platinum mine in 2012, where 44 people were killed in the violent protests. According to autopsy reports, many of the deaths occurred when strikers were fleeing police.

The company sold 25 drones to a mining company after it unveiled the Skunk at the IFSEC security exhibition outside Johannesburg in May.

“We cannot disclose the customer, but I am allowed to say it will be used by an international mining house,” Desert Wolf’s managing director Hennie Kieser told BBC News. “We are also busy with a number of other customers who want to finalise their orders. Some [are] mines in South Africa, some security companies in South Africa and outside South Africa, some police units outside South Africa and a number of other industrial customers.”

The International Trade Union Confederation, which supports workers’ rights, told the BBC it was horrified by the new technology.

“This is a deeply disturbing and repugnant development and we are convinced that any reasonable government will move quickly to stop the deployment of advanced battlefield technology on workers or indeed the public involved in legitimate protests and demonstrations,” International Trade Union Confederation spokesman Tim Noonan said.

“We will be taking this up as a matter of urgency with the unions in the mining sector globally,” he added.

The International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) campaign group is also speaking out against the use of the Shark Copter and similar technology, such as the CUPID drone that employs an 80,000-volt taser dart.

Noel Sharkey, chair of the ICRAC, told the BBC he is concerned that the deployment of such drones risks “creeping authoritarianism and the suppression of protest.”

“The use of remote-controlled drones to police or attack civilian individuals or groups with violent force is an offense against human dignity and a threat to democratic sovereignty,” Mark Gubrud, a physicist with the ICRAC, told 3News. “It is also a potential precursor to scenarios in which the robots would operate fully autonomously, choosing their own targets outside of human control.”

“These weapons cannot be sufficiently well controlled to avoid causing serious injury, especially to eyes,” Gubrud told CNet. “Many existing ‘non-lethal’ crowd-control weapons can and often do kill.”

The first batch of drones, which cost about 500,000 South African Rand ($46,000) apiece, will be deployed to South African mines later in June, according to the Verge. Strikes against three of the country’s top three platinum producers have been going on for the last five months, though a wage deal between the mining companies and unions is imminent, Reuters reported on Friday.

June 20, 2014 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , , | 1 Comment

The ‘Colonizer’ Entity Elected to Committee on “Decolonization”!

Al-Manar | June 20, 2014

The Zionist entity was elected as vice-chair of the UN Special Committee on Decolonization, in a new human rights farce.

The committee deals with matters related to the Palestinian cause, like probing the Israeli occupation to Palestine, following the international resolutions on this cause and investigating the Israeli violations to the international law and human rights.

Mordechai Amihai, the Zionist entity’s former consul-general in Turkey, is to represent the Western European and Others Group in the 69th session of the UN General Assembly in September on the Fourth Special Political and Decolonization Committee.

Amihai was elected on Wednesday afternoon with 74 votes from UN member states.

Sixty-eight countries abstained from the vote, and 15 votes were declared invalid.

The minimum number of votes needed was 39, with Britain, the US and Canada showing strong backing for the colonizer entity.

The Arab Group of UN member states voiced opposition to the move. Qatar, speaking on behalf of the Arab states, described Israel as a “State that violated the United Nations Charter and international law.”

The Arab country said Israel’s “track record was rife with murder and its occupation had lasted more than 66 years, Israel was not qualified to preside over questions pertaining to Palestinian refugees, peacekeeping and the investigation of its own illegal practices.”

June 20, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | 1 Comment