Funding and Denouncing Israeli Occupation: Hypocritical EU Must Make a Stand
By Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle | March 12 2013
More bad news emerged from Israel in recent weeks. Indeed, good news is seldom associated with Israel and its military occupation and institutionalized discrimination and mistreatment of Palestinians.
But now even those international organizations that are often supportive of Israel’s militancy seem to be joining the consensus that Tel Aviv is on an irrevocably perilous course.
Few international law experts would defend Israel’s fervent settlement-building on occupied Palestinian land.
Yet the Western powers, led by the United States, have brought little pressure to bear on Israel to cease its illegal activities.
In fact, without US and European funding it would have been nearly impossible for Israel to build settlements and transfer over half a million Israelis over the years to live on stolen Palestinian land, in violation of numerous international laws including the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Worse still, trade with European and other countries sustained these illegal settlements, allowing them to flourish at the expense of Palestinians who have suffered massive ethnic cleansing campaigns since 1967.
But at last EU diplomats in east Jerusalem and the West Bank are speaking out in unequivocal terms.
In a report released at the end of last month, the diplomats declared that “settlement construction remains the biggest single threat to the two-state solution. It is systematic, deliberate and provocative.”
The report called on EU states “not to support … research, education and technological co-operation” with settlements and to “discourage” investing in Israeli companies that operate in the occupied territories.
Expectedly, the report is non-binding. And even if such recommendations are considered, Israel and its EU friends and lobbyists are likely to find loopholes that would deprive any EU action of substance and vigor.
Without civil society action focused on turning up the heat on European governments, especially die-hard supporters of Israel such as the British government, business with Israel is most likely to carry on as usual.
Not only is Israel flouting international law but the supposed guardians of international law are the very ones that are empowering Israel in carrying out its illegal acts, disempowering and bankrupting Palestinians.
Last January an Oxfam report said that the Palestinian economy, which is currently in utter disarray, could generate urgently needed income – $1.5 billion to be exact – if Israel eased its restrictions in the Jordan Valley alone.
But without suitable access to their own land and to water sources, Palestinians in the valley continue to struggle while the settlers are thriving.
Although the US government is well known to have done everything in its power to defend Israel at any cost and ensure Israel’s superiority and military edge over all of its neighbors, the EU has falsely acquired a more balanced reputation. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In a recent report the Palestinian rights group al-Haq emphasized that trading in produce grown in settlements had “directly contributed to the growth and viability of settlements by providing an essential source of revenue that allows them to thrive.”
The reported value of total EU trade with illegal Israeli settlements amounts to approximately $300 million a year. This may appear small compared with the $39bn of total trade between the EU and Israel reported in 2011, for example, but it does mean that “the EU has some room for leverage given it is Israel’s largest trade partner, and it receives some 20 per cent of total Israeli exports,” as pointed out by Dalia Hatuqa writing for al-Monitor.
The fact is that Europe is ultimately taking part in the subjugation of the Palestinians by funding Israel’s illegal occupation and its massively growing settler population. And no amount of diplomatic “recommendations” or newspeak can alter that fact.
But settlement growth cannot be considered in a vacuum. It makes no sense to talk about boycotting settlements while supporting the main organs that ordered or sanctioned the illegal settlements in the first place.
So differentiating between products made in Israel or those made in the settlements is absurd at best.
The settlers are not self-sustaining autonomous outposts. They are considered part and parcel of the so-called Israel proper.
In the eyes of the Israeli government there is little distinction between settlers from Ma’ale Adumim or residents of Tel Aviv.
Yigal Palmore of the Israeli Foreign Ministry responded to the EU report in withering terms.
“A diplomat’s mission is to build bridges and bring people together, not to foster confrontation. The EU consuls have clearly failed in their mission,” he said.
Nothing is random in Israeli planning. As is already the case in various parts of the occupied territories, Palestinians are becoming an unwanted presence on their own land.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s has decided to develop more settlements in an area known as E1, which is set to cut off east Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.
There is unlikely to be a turning back from the construction plans, which include the building of 3,000 settler homes in the land corridor near Jerusalem.
Israel is unrelenting and seems to have no regard for international law. It is emboldened in its actions by the weakness of its neighbors, the unhindered backing of its friends, and the gutlessness of its critics, who all too often are consumed in intellectual tussles over the boundaries of language and proper ways to frame the discourse.
None of this wrangling is of any concern to Israel, which is merely winning time to achieve its own harrowingly ugly version of apartheid.
For those who still feel uneasy with this provocative term, consider the latest Israeli transport ministry’s initiative. It has designated bus line No 210, which shuttles cheap Palestinian laborers to and from the West Bank, to be “Palestinian only.”
Of course this is not an isolated policy but a continuation of a dreadful track record.
Bad news from Israel is likely to continue.
Almost every day there is a new disturbing development in Israeli practices against Palestinians.
All too often this is merely met with feeble international criticism without any substantial action.
Civil society organizations and groups must tell their governments that enough is enough.
While Israel should be held responsible for its own behavior, the EU and other countries should not finance the occupation while decrying the settlements. This hypocrisy can no longer be tolerated.
– Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is: My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press).
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Venezuelan Opposition Channel Globovision to be Sold after Elections
By Tamara Pearson | Venezuelanalysis | March 12th 2013
Merida – Globovision, an opposition news television station, announced yesterday that it has accepted a buyout offer, to be carried out after the 14 April presidential elections.
Various Globovision spokespeople attributed the sale to supposed operational and profitability issues, on which they blamed the Venezuelan government.
According to Globovision’s majority owner, Guillermo Zuloaga, the group buying the channel is headed by Juan Domingo Cordero, who also runs an insurance company, Vitalicia. According to El Nacional, Cordero has also been on the executive boards of the stock exchange, another insurance company, and a small bank.
“We are economically unviable, because our revenues no longer cover our cash needs… we are politically unfeasible, because we are in a totally polarised country and against a powerful government that wants to see us fail,” Zuloaga said in a statement.
Further, the host of Globovision’s program ‘Alo Ciudadano’ – a program that aimed to counter Chavez’s Sunday show ‘Alo Presidente’, Leopoldo Castillo, discussed the sale yesterday. He claimed the reasons for it include requiring technology, being judicially unviable, the priority of “saving the workers” and “many difficult years, it has become more and more difficult to satisfy the needs … of the personnel of Globovision”.
So far, the English language private press has reported the news of the sale as an issue of “press freedom”, with Associated Press referring to the government’s so called “campaign to financially strangle the broadcaster through regulatory pressure… the announcement… is a crushing blow to press freedom”.
Jose Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch, also said the news was part of a “disturbing trend… the government of Venezuela has created an environment in which journalists weigh the consequences of what they say for fear of suffering reprisals”. Human Rights Watch has consistently attacked the Bolivarian government, misrepresented its human rights situation, and declined to criticise the 2002 short lived coup against then president Hugo Chavez.
However Zuloaga’s own statement says, “Since we began [20 years ago] we have had problems with the government, which is natural for an information channel. With the last government of Rafael Caldera… they didn’t want to give us access to official sources”.
He then mentions the “attacks getting stronger” under the current government, and that last year, he decided to “do everything in our power…to make sure the opposition won the [presidential] elections in October…but the opposition lost”.
Private press are reporting that the buyer, Cordero, is “friendly” with some government officials, but so far has offered no concrete examples or proof of this, only citing anonymous “sources”.
According to Entorno Inteligente, Cordero has promised to improve the quality of news, and maintain the channel’s audience and workers. Zuloaga says in his statement that he has known Cordero “for years” and “he is a successful man in the financial world”.
Globovision’s public broadcast licence is up for renewal in 2 years. The Zuloaga family owns 80% of Globovision, but Zuloaga has been living overseas since 2010 when courts put out an arrest warrant for him for conspiracy and general usury over irregularities in his car dealership.
Journalists for the Truth respond
“The announced sale of Globovision is the strongest proof of the upcoming defeat of the candidate for the bourgeoisie [and the opposition], Henrique Capriles, in the 14 April [presidential] elections,” said Marco Hernandez, president of the Venezuelan NGO, Journalists for the Truth.
He asserted that the timing of the announcement was convenient, arguing that “its false that the channel is economically nonviable… it’s enough to look at their publicity income… with net earnings of BsF 11 million (US $1.75 million) … and Globovision’s workers have the highest salaries in the field and they have the best technology in Venezuela”.
“What’s happening is the owners of [Globovision] are only thinking about their own interests as capitalists… not in the journalists who they use like cannon fodder… they take for granted that Capriles will lose… and knowing that their licence doesn’t deserve renewing… they are selling their channel because it doesn’t have any value without the concession granted to them by the state,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez pointed out that Zuloaga is a “fugitive” and that in his statement he had admitted he was an “enemy of the government” and therefore his channel wasn’t “an independent news channel” as it claimed to be.
“The truth is that it is a propaganda trench for the Venezuelan and international oligarchy opposed to the changes promoted by Chavez, something that is provable by analysing their programming,” Hernandez said.
“Their programming is so extreme and manipulative of the truth that it has been the object of innumerable denunciations by Consumer Organisations (OUU), and the opening of eight administrative proceedings against it, and a sanction by [public communication body] Conatel,” Hernandez added.
Last June Globovision paid a fine of Bs 9.3 million (US $1.5 million), eight months after the fine was first emitted by Contatel. The station only paid the fine after the Supreme Court ordered an embargo on part of its assets, to force compliance.
Conatel issued the fine after determining that Globovision had broken articles 27 and 29 of the Law of Social Responsibility in Radio and Television during its coverage of the Rodeo prison hostage situation in June 2011. The station played interviews of distraught prison mothers 269 times over four days and added the sound of gunfire to the reports.
In the End, Awful Journalism
By Chris Carlson | Venezuelanalysis | March 12th 2013
On the occasion of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s death last week, much of the international media responded in typical fashion, by painting the Chavez administration much as they painted it when Chavez was alive—as an autocratic regime led by a foolish tyrant who mismanaged the country and squandered its oil wealth.
They showed little mercy for the larger-than-life leader, so beloved by the majority in his country, and by millions around the world, giving the impression that Hugo Chavez got almost everything wrong, and did virtually nothing right.
Many of the criticisms have an element of truth to them, as many problems persist in Venezuela. And the press made sure to highlight these problems as evidence of Chavez’s failure, making it sound as if any sensible leader or government in Chavez’s position could have resolved them. But what showed through more than anything in these anti-Chavez tirades was a very revealing, almost embarrassing, misunderstanding of Venezuela’s principal economic and social issues.
“It’s a pity no one took 20 minutes to explain macroeconomics to him,” writes Rory Carroll in an op-ed in the New York Times that claims Chavez was “an awful manager” who destroyed Venezuela. Carroll slams Chavez for everything from failing to fix up the presidential palace, to spending too much on education and health, to not investing enough in infrastructure.
As The Guardian’s correspondent in Venezuela since 2006, Carroll apparently had seen enough to conclude that Chavez had “left Venezuela a ruin”. Yet one wonders if he ever managed to talk to the millions of Venezuelans—those who packed the streets to mourn the president’s death last week—who feel the country has been forever transformed.
For literally days on end, non-stop, all day and all night, people filed through the building where Chavez’s body was displayed to pay their final respects. A line stretched for miles outside, as people waited several days, eating and sleeping in the line, just to see their president one last time. This immense outpouring of emotion is very hard to square with the image Carroll gives us.
It might be an exaggeration to say Chavez transformed the country—though many things were deeply changed—but one doesn’t have to be an expert to know that Venezuela’s problems are more complicated than one man and his personality quirks.
The Economist tells us that Chavez was a “narcissist” who was “reckless” with his country’s economy and who “squandered an extraordinary opportunity”. We are told Chavez could have used the country’s oil wealth to “equip [Venezuela] with world-class infrastructure and to provide the best education and health services money can buy”. But due to mismanagement, “the economy became ever more dependent on oil”. Carroll echoes this, blaming Chavez for a “withering” private sector, and decaying infrastructure.
But apparently these self-proclaimed experts have never taken even the most cursory look at Venezuelan history. Had they done so, they would know that since Venezuela’s oil wealth was first discovered nearly a century ago, no government has ever been able to do what they claim should have been accomplished by the Chavez government.
Past governments have invested the country’s oil wealth in infrastructure, industry, and development projects—though never as much as Chavez—yet not one of them managed to break dependence on oil, diversify the economy, create a flourishing private sector, or build adequate health and education services. Was it because they were all reckless narcissists? Or do these problems perhaps have an explanation that goes deeper than the president’s personal style?
Of course, the truth is much more complex than what the Chavez haters would like to admit. It is true that Chavez did not provide solutions to many of Venezuela’s problems, and that some problems even got worse, but contrary to the media claims, he probably did better than any previous government in Venezuelan history.
One gets the opposite impression from much of the international media. Take a look at the following paragraph from last week’s article in the The Economist:
Behind the propaganda, the Bolivarian revolution was a corrupt, mismanaged affair. The economy became ever more dependent on oil and imports. State takeovers of farms cut agricultural output. Controls of prices and foreign exchange could not prevent persistent inflation and engendered shortages of staple goods. Infrastructure crumbled: most of the country has suffered frequent power cuts for years. Hospitals rotted: even many of the missions languished. Crime soared: Caracas is one of the world’s most violent capitals. Venezuela has become a conduit for the drug trade, with the involvement of segments of the security forces.
Amazingly, almost every sentence in the paragraph is false. Agricultural output did not drop, but rather grew by 2 to 3 percent per year, and grain production, which was the government’s major focus, grew by 140 percent. Inflation was considerably lower under Chavez than the previous two governments. Food shortages and power cuts were caused by the explosion in consumption among the poor, not a fall in production.
Both electricity production and food production have increased to all time highs. Thousands of new health clinics have been built around the country. However, it is true that many hospitals remain inadequate, that crime has soared, and that Venezuela is still a conduit for the drug trade, as it shares a large border with Colombia.
The claims of increased oil dependence are also not borne out by the facts. It is true that oil as a percentage of total exports has increased, but this is largely due to the fact that oil prices have increased nearly ten-fold since Chavez came to power, making it inevitable that their value in relation to total exports would also increase.
The critics say Chavez squandered the country’s oil wealth, which he could have used to transform it into a modern state. Indeed, the oil boom left Venezuela awash in oil money, a situation that Chavez’s policies had a hand in creating, as he united OPEC and increased royalties and taxes on the oil sector, giving the state vastly more funds to work with. If only this “awful manager” knew how to administer the funds, critics say, Venezuela could have been well on its way to becoming a modern, developed nation.
But this is shortsighted. Nations do not develop on the basis of resource wealth or commodity booms. A country cannot spend its way into the first world. Rather, economic development is about systematic growth in productivity, innovation, and technical change, activities that typically fall on the shoulders of the private sector. In the developed world, it is largely the private sector that invests surpluses into new technologies and improvements in the productive process, something that does not occur in Venezuela in a systematic fashion.
Of course, critics and opponents of Chavez argue that this is also the fault of the government, that it is Chavez’s fault for not creating the right environment for private investment, and that with the “right” policies the private sector would decide to invest in the country and would produce the kind of economic development that will benefit all sectors of society. Apparently no Venezuelan government in history has been able to figure out what those “right” policies are.
But this ideology defeats itself with its own logic, for private investors in market economies don’t invest in productivity because they feel like it, or because the conditions are just as they like. They do so because they have to in order to match the competition, to survive in the market, and to avoid going out of business. In modern market economies, producers invest in improving productivity because they are compelled to do so by the market, not because they decide they want to.
The fact that much of the private sector in Venezuela has seldom been compelled to do the same only demonstrates that this economy does not function like the model market economy that these theories are based on.
Huge swaths of the nation’s agricultural land have long been dominated by large estates—the infamous latifundios—that feel very little pressure to improve productivity, and graze cattle on the nation’s best land. The commercial and industrial sectors have long been dominated by highly diversified conglomerates—the so-called grupos económicos—that control key sectors of the economy, and are rarely threatened by competition.
In other words, it goes against these critics’ whole line of reasoning to point out that what really determines whether a country is rich or poor is not commodity booms or resource wealth, but rather has to do with productivity growth—something that has seldom been a priority for much of Venezuela’s private sector.
It’s a pity that no one took 20 minutes to explain this to Rory Carroll, The Economist and others who blame all of Venezuela’s problems on Hugo Chavez, for he did more than any president in history to try to change the unproductive logic of the private sector.
More than 3.6 million hectares of unproductive land were expropriated and redistributed to over 170,000 small producers—far more than the entire 40 years of pre-Chavez land reform. Major sectors of the economy were nationalized, and state companies expanded, in an attempt to improve production, raise investment, and remove bottlenecks. Massive investments were made in agriculture and industry—far more than under previous governments—in an attempt to spur their growth.
Many of these attempts were failures. The growing state sector often allowed for inefficiency and corruption. Chavez’s solutions to the country’s economic and social issues were not always the correct ones.
But the point is that Venezuela’s problems are quite complex and defy easy answers. Previous governments with previous oil booms also failed to resolve the country’s major problems, and did much less to help the poor, something that does not seem to interest those who want to blame everything on Chavez.
Instead of seeking to gain a better understanding of the country’s problems—to understand why they have been so intractable throughout the country’s history—the major media have preferred to vilify and condemn one man; a man who, right or wrong, spent his life trying to solve the problems that plague his country, and was undeniably dedicated to helping the poor; a man who constantly reminded his country’s poor majority that they mattered, that they were not inferior to anyone, and that they should feel proud of their national heritage. That doesn’t sound like a narcissist to me.
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Obama Administration Stonewalls Inquiry into Radioactive Weapon Use in Iraq
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | March 09, 2013
Efforts to determine the health and environmental risks of depleted uranium (DU) weaponry in Iraq have been hampered by the Obama administration. DU, which makes shell and bullet casings harder and more capable of piercing armor, can contaminate the environment and contribute to health problems, including cancer and birth defects.
The Dutch peace group IKV Pax Christi complained in a new report that “Coalition Forces” (read: the United States) have refused to provide information on when and where invading forces fired DU weaponry.
Due to a “lack of transparency” by the U.S., “there is an absence of crucial information on firing coordinates, the quantities and types of DU munitions used; data gaps relating to the efforts undertaken to clean up contaminated sites and material are hindering efforts to assess risks and implement remediation work,” the report reads.
There are reportedly more than 300 sites in Iraq that were contaminated by DU weapons, many of them located in populated areas.
It is estimated that 400 tons of DU ammunition were fired in Iraq, mostly by American units, during the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion. Although the United States continues to use depleted uranium munitions, the report notes that “over the last couple of years the US Army has invested in research into replacing DU rounds in the A-10 with tungsten alloy based munitions, as well as non-DU 105 and 120mm munitions for the M1A2 Abrams tank, referring in their rationale for this move to DU’s potential environmental impact.”
To Learn More:
In a State of Uncertainty: Impact and Implications of the Use of Depleted Uranium in Iraq (IKV Pax Christi) (pdf)
Yemen Rejects Earlier Report on Detaining Iranian Ship Carrying Weapons
YemenOnline – 9/3/2013
The Yemeni interior ministry said in its official website that the claim about the seizure of an Iranian ship carrying weapons in Yemeni waters “was not real”.
The ministry apologized for its earlier report released on its official website about the confiscation of the ship, and described it as an “unintentional mistake”, the daily added.
The Yemeni interior ministry’s website had earlier reported that a foreign ship, named Jeihan 2, was confiscated while unloading weapons to a fishing boat near the country’s coasts.
The Yemeni Interior Ministry’s Public Relations Director, Mohamed Al-Qaedi, mentioned “confusion in decoding certain information” as the underlying cause of the mistake.
Iranian officials have categorically denied accusations about arms shipment to Yemen as baseless, reiterating that Tehran respects regional stability and security as well as the regional countries’ sovereignty.
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Massimo Calabresi’s ‘Path To War’
By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | March 5, 2013
On February 28, TIME reporter Massimo Calabresi published a lengthy piece on the Iranian nuclear program and the Obama Administration’s attitude toward it, notably reflecting the same, tired mainstream myopia and uncritically accepted false choice over the Iranian nuclear program. Calabresi quotes Netanyahu cipher Dennis Ross, who served as Obama’s senior Middle East adviser, as saying, “There was a debate within the Administration over prevention vs. containment.”
Never, in the course of Calabresi’s report, is there a question that Iran is actively seeking nuclear weapons (or, at least, “capability”), despite the fact that no evidence exists to support this assumption. No one quoted in the article ever suggests Iran is anything but intransigent, its intentions are obviously assumed to be nefarious. It comes as no surprise then that TIME would title the piece, “The Path to War: Inside Barack Obama’s Struggle to Stop an Iranian Nuke.”
Calabresi, whose access to senior officials appears to rely on his fealty to government talking points and never questioning American benevolence, claims that Obama “has worked hard to avoid war” with Iran before praising the president’s efforts “to slow or derail the Iranian program through a combination of diplomacy, sanctions and covert action.” One wonders how the United States would classify having its economy deliberately targeted and being the victim of collective punishment, cyberattacks, industrial sabotage, surveillance, espionage, and lethal operations conducted by foreign-backed terrorist organizations. The word “war” certainly comes to mind.
Nevertheless, Calabresi credits Obama for “pushing the timeline for war back at least 12 months,” despite his ominous determination that “eventually time will run out,” leaving Obama to “soon face the hardest decision of his presidency.”
While there is nothing new revealed in Calabresi’s report, he readily repeats a number of disingenuous claims and some outright falsehoods right off the bat which set the tone for what follows.
He writes that, throughout 2009, “Obama had been delivering on his dovish campaign pledge to reach out to the regime in Tehran.” Calabresi explains,
He beamed in a conciliatory greeting to the entire country on the Persian New Year and had offered unconditional talks. In Cairo that June, he offered to let Iran keep a peaceful nuclear program. But Iran’s leaders rebuffed Obama’s efforts, and in the fall of 2009 the Obama Administration revealed that Iran was building a secret uranium-enrichment plant deep in a hillside outside the holy city of Qum.
The misinformation and mythology contained in these mere three sentences is staggering.
What Calabresi leaves out of his glowing assessment of Obama’s noble outreach to Iran is that just nine days before delivering his much-touted March 2009 Nowruz message to Iranians and their government in which he declared that his commitment to diplomacy and “pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community” would “not be advanced by threats,” Obama had already announced the extension of economic sanctions on Iran in place since 1995. It has also been reported that the earliest versions of the Stuxnet computer virus were deployed in June 2009, less than three months after Obama supposedly extended an open hand.
Furthermore, Calabresi oddly believes that the President of the United States of America is somehow responsible for doling out nuclear programs to those nations he deems worthy of such an honor. This is not actually true. Iran’s program is not, under any circumstances, subject to the beneficence, generosity, or magnanimity of any other state, government or world body. Its right “to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination” is “inalienable” and enshrined in international law by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The idea that Obama is in a position to “offer” Iran anything in this regard is not only patronizing, it is pure imperial arrogance.
In his Cairo speech, President Obama declared,
No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons. And that’s why I strongly reaffirmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons. And any nation — including Iran — should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That commitment is at the core of the treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it. And I’m hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal.
What both Obama and Calabresi apparently don’t know – or willfully ignore – is that Iran has never been found to have breached its NPT obligations as such a violation could only occur if Iran began “to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons.”
Obama’s own intelligence and military agencies have consistently concluded that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. On February 3, 2013, outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta begrudgingly reaffirmed this assessment on Meet The Press in response to ignorant leading questions from Chuck Todd. “What I’ve said, and I will say today,” Panetta told Todd, “is that the intelligence we have is they have not made the decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear weapon. They’re developing and enriching uranium. They continue to do that.”
After Todd curiously wondered why Iran would possibly be enriching uranium, Panetta explained, “I think– I think the– it’s a clear indication they say they’re doing it in order to develop their own energy source,” adding his own factually incorrect opinion, “I think it is suspect that they continue to – to enrich uranium because that is dangerous, and that violates international laws.”
Still, Todd pressed harder. “And you do believe they’re probably pursuing a weapon, but you don’t– the intelligence doesn’t know what… ,” he said before Panetta cut him off. “I– no, I can’t tell you because– I can’t tell you they’re in fact pursuing a weapon because that’s not what intelligence says we– we– we’re– they’re doing right now,” Panetta said.
The third sentence in Calabresi’s litany is perhaps the most absurd. First, Iran hardly had a chance to “rebuff” any American diplomacy since there never was any to begin with that didn’t consist of intimidation, ultimatums, threats and take-it-or-leave-it demands, hardly the stuff of honest (let alone “conciliatory”) negotiation.
Moreover, the enrichment facility outside Qom was not “revealed” by the Obama Administration, but rather by Iran itself on September 21, 2009, days before the sensationalist press conference held by Obama, Nicholas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, on September 25, 2009. At that time, IAEA spokesman Marc Vidricaire had already told reporters, “I can confirm that on 21 September, Iran informed the IAEA in a letter that a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction in the country.”
Obama even acknowledged this, noting, “Earlier this week, the Iranian government presented a letter to the IAEA that made reference to a new enrichment facility.” He omitted, however, the inconvenient fact that Iran was well within its legal obligations as it had announced the facility to the IAEA far in advance of the 180 days before becoming operational as required by Iran’s Safeguards Agreement. At the time, the facility was still under construction and did not actually begin uranium enrichment until early January 2012, a full 840 days after it had been officially declared.
As journalist Gareth Porter has noted, IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei later recounted that “Robert Einhorn, the State Department’s special advisor for nonproliferation and arms control, had informed him on Sep. 24 about U.S. intelligence on the Fordow site – three days after the Iranian letter had been received.” When ElBaradei “demanded to know why he had not been told before the Iranian letter… Einhorn responded that the United States ‘had not been sure of the nature of the facility’, ElBaradei wrote.”
ElBaradei subsequently described the facility at Fordow as “a hole in a mountain” and “nothing to be worried about.” Since then, the IAEA has consistently confirmed that “all nuclear material in the facility remains under the Agency’s containment and surveillance.”
Calabresi also claims that Obama “made bolstering the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty a top priority,” in spite of Obama’s clear refusal to advocate and encourage a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in the Middle East even though every single country in the region, save Israel, supports its establishment.
The voice of Dennis Ross (or is it Netanyahu?) is prevalent throughout the article and it is clear he is the primary source for most of Calabresi’s information. The piece is premised upon the notion that the Iran-U.S.-Israel stand-off is in its “final stages,” thereby presenting a situation that demands tough choices by Obama. This is straight out of the Ross (or is it Netanyahu?) playbook.
In December 2012, Ross told The Times of Israel that 2013 would be a critical year for Washington and Tehran. “I think there’s the stomach in this administration, and this president, that if diplomacy fails [to deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons] — to use force,” Ross said at a gala dinner for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), an AIPAC-spawned D.C. think tank, that was held in his (and convicted criminal Elliott Abrams‘) honor.
Such a statement is nothing new for Ross. At a WINEP event in January 2012, he said that “the Iranians should never think that there’s a reluctance [on the part of Obama] to use the force.” Ross has long advocated a policy of economic warfare against Iran while pretending to conduct negotiations, all for the purpose of making what he believes is an inevitable military confrontation more palatable and justifiable to the American public.
When determining the risks and consequences of American military attack on Iran, Calabresi warns that such an act “would likely mean the deaths of American service members–and civilians too,” as well as precipitating a spike in oil prices and having a negative effect on the United State’s “reputation.” He also points out that an attack “could mean the devastation of [Iran’s] nuclear program and much of its armed forces, plus unimaginable costs to its economy.”
Never once does Calabresi mention the lives (or deaths) of Iranian civilians in his calculus, even though such an assault would potentially kill tens of thousands of Iranians (at minimum). Such is the level of concern for Iran’s population in both government policy and mainstream reporting.
Calabresi’s article is yet another example of how facts about Iran and its nuclear program are routinely dismissed, ignored or misrepresented in our current discourse. Such irresponsible journalism has misinformed and terrified the American public into believing that Iran poses a looming threat that must be dealt with through force, threat or coercion, an impression that bares little resemblance to the truth.
Unfortunately, the path to war – all too present under our feet these days – continues to be paved by people like Massimo Calabresi.
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The BBC’s ‘Bogeyman’ Narrative on Hugo Chavez
News Unspun | March 7, 2013
The BBC maintained a strong a record of misleading reporting throughout the presidency of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died on Tuesday, following a two year battle with cancer. Yet today’s article by Jon Kelly, ‘Hugo Chavez and the era of anti-American bogeymen,’ takes a particularly spiteful slant on the issue of what is presented as ‘Anti-Americanism’ in Chavez’s stance toward US foreign policy.
The premise of Kelly’s analysis is that Hugo Chavez is simply the latest in a long list of ‘bogeymen’, identified by ‘anti-American’ sentiment. To illustrate the ideological company that Kelly suggests Chavez kept, his image appears on the same panel as murderous despots and terrorists such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Osama bin Laden. This may have been normal practice for news organisations such as Fox News, but for the BBC it must be noted that this is a move particularly devoid of integrity, perhaps a new low.
Kelly writes that Chavez was by turns ‘portrayed as a six-times elected champion of the people or a constitution-fiddling demagogue’, implying that the polarisation of commentary concerning Chavez’s presidency makes it difficult to perceive where the truth lies. Perhaps if Kelly had indulged in the journalistic habit of presenting the bare facts, it might help to dispel such confusion. It is factually accurate to acknowledge that Hugo Chavez was democratically elected six times, also that his base of support was amongst the poor, the vast majority of Venezuelans. The ambiguous claim of ‘constitution-fiddling’ is in line with the speculative approach the BBC has consistently leaned towards in reporting on Venezuelan politics, relying on the hyperbole of the opposition, yet lacking in facts (in a similar vein, the link to the BBC video on Hugo Chavez’s life on the BBC website has been updated and is now titled ‘Life of people’s hero and villain’).
In discussing US-Venezuelan relations, Kelly does not mention probably the most seminal event of the last fourteen years: the US-backed coup in 2002. As an interesting aside, straight after the death of Hugo Chavez, in the BBC ‘look back’ at his life, the coup was also omitted by James Robbins, who instead described events as ‘a general strike’ when ‘Chavez was briefly pushed from office’.
Kelly creates a ‘spectrum’ of ‘bogeymen’ with ‘anti-American’ tendencies: socialism to secular Arab nationalism to Islamic fundamentalism. The article ties together the homogenously applied label ‘anti-American’ and the term ‘bogeymen’ to somehow equate the two: if you don’t like the behaviour of the US this mode of reasoning renders you no less than a bogeyman, an object of fear and a threat. Kelly comments that where Hugo Chavez belonged on this spectrum was hotly debated. He presents as indisputable the claim that Chavez should be viewed as a ‘bogeyman’; it is only where he sits in relation to other bogeymen that is up for debate.
The article notes that Chavez ‘floridly lambasted “imperial” American policies’, the word ‘imperial’ placed in double quotes, and the notion that the most powerful country in the world with 900 military bases in 130 countries might have imperialist tendencies portrayed as ludicrous. In fact, the BBC never refer to US imperialism without quotation marks; imperialism is a word for history books it seems, today’s western militaries simply invade countries for the greater good. Those who think the US is an imperial power are simply ‘anti-American’ goes the gist of this article.
Anti-American
The term anti-American is one applied to negate critical positions on the policies of the US. Noam Chomsky has commented on the term ‘anti-American’ that it ‘is an interesting expression, because the accusation of being anti-nation is used typically in totalitarian societies, for example, the former Soviet Union accused dissidents of being anti-Soviet. But try “anti-Italian” or “anti-Belgian,” people in Milan or Brussels would laugh’.
By this tendency to apply one label to a range of political viewpoints, Hugo Chavez joins the ranks of the ‘most prominent critics’ of US power have recently ‘exited the spotlight’. The implication here is clear: Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Kim Jong-il have been prominent critics of the US, and if anyone happens to disagree with the US, they are in the same boat. All who do not ‘agree’ with the United States, including disagreement with any and all elements of US foreign policy, are designated to one ideological grouping. Naomi Klein discusses how this approach was taken by critics of anti-corporate protesters following September 11, 2001, who ‘attempt to make ideological links between anti-corporate protesters and religious fundamentalists like bin Laden, as British secretary of State for international development Clare Short did in November 2001. “Since September 11, we haven’t heard from the protesters,” she observed. “I’m sure they are reflecting on what their demands were because their demands turned out to be very similar to those of Bin Laden’s network.”’
The attempt to place a range of political positions in one or another camp (‘us’ or ‘theirs’) works to deter dissent. ‘To engage in dissent in this climate [following September 11] was unpatriotic’, as Klein writes. ‘The new battle lines have been drawn, crude as they are: to criticize the U.S. government is to be on the side of the terrorists, to stand in the way of market-driven globalization is to further the terrorists’ evil goals’.
This is precisely the position propagated by the Bush administration at the launch of the ‘war on terror’, ‘the binarism that Bush proposes’, as Judith Butler described, ‘in which only two positions are possible – “Either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists”’. Liberally applying the label ‘anti-American bogeyman’ on the basis of a divergence of position with US policy, as Kelly does, is consistent with this position of binarism.
The BBC claims to take an impartial stance on international issues, yet this article propagates a worldview in black and white terms. In this presentation of political positions as a choice between only two options, that of the US and the political ideology of free market are presented or that of the despotic and terroristic bogeyman.
It is important that the events which have taken place in Venezuela, and throughout Latin America, over the past decade, the development of peaceful, democratic alternatives to the policies of neoliberalism, are not airbrushed from the historical record. The standards of living have improved for millions of people following a process that has had popular, democratic support, yet the international perception of the changes in Venezuela are at risk of being written off as simply the actions of another ‘anti-American’ ‘bogeyman’ due to the media’s relentless negative treatment of the Venezuelan government.
Fukushima’s Nuclear Casualties
By JOSEPH J. MANGANO | CounterPunch | March 7, 2013
Exactly two years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, perhaps the most crucial issue to be addressed is how many people were harmed by radioactive emissions.
The full tally won’t be known for years, after many scientific studies. But some have rushed to judgment, proclaiming exposures were so small that there will be virtually no harm from Fukushima fallout.
This knee-jerk reaction after a meltdown is nothing new. Nearly 12 years after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, there were no journal articles examining changes in local cancer rates. But 31 articles in publications like the Journal of Trauma and Stress and Psychosomatic Medicine had already explored psychological consequences.
Eventually, the first articles on cancer cases showed that in the five years after the accident, there was a whopping 64% increase in the cancer cases within 10 miles of Three Mile Island. But the writers, from Columbia University, concluded radiation could not account for this rise, suggesting stress be considered instead. While this was later contested by researchers from the University of North Carolina, many officials still subscribe to the slogan “nobody died at Three Mile Island.”
In 1986, after the Chernobyl catastrophe, officials in the Soviet Union and elsewhere raced to play damage control. The Soviet government admitted 31 rescue workers had died soon after absorbing huge radiation doses extinguishing the fire and trying to bury the red-hot reactor. For years, 31 was often cited as the “total” deaths from Chernobyl. Journal articles on disease and death rates near Chernobyl were slow and limited. The first articles were on rising numbers of local children with thyroid cancer – a very rare condition.
Finally, 20 years after the meltdown, a conference of the World Health Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, and other groups admitted to 9,000 cancers worldwide from Chernobyl. But this was a tiny fraction of what others were finding. A 2009 New York Academy of Sciences book estimated 985,000 deaths (and rising) worldwide from Chernobyl fallout. The team, led by Alexey Yablokov, examined 5,000 articles and reports, most in Slavic language never before available to researchers.
Fukushima was next. While estimates of releases remain variable and inexact, nobody disputes that Fukushima was the worst or second-worst meltdown in history. But predictably, nuclear proponents raced to assure the public that little or no harm would ensue.
First to cover up and minimize damage was the Japanese government and nuclear industry. John Boice of Vanderbilt University went a step further, declaring “there is no opportunity to conduct epidemiologic studies that have any chance of detecting excess cancer risk. The doses are just too low.” At a public hearing in Alabama in December, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission official Victor McCree stated “there was no significant exposure to radiation from the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.” Just days ago, a World Health Organization report concluded there would be no measurable increase in cancer rates from Fukushima – other than a very slight rise in exposed children living closest to the site.
Others have made estimates of the eventual toll from Fukushima. Welsh physicist Christopher Busby projects 417,000 additional cancers just within 125 miles of the plant. American engineer Arnold Gundersen calculates that the meltdown will cause 1 million cancer deaths.
Internist-toxicologist Janette Sherman and I are determined to make public any data on changes in health, as quickly as possible. In the December 2011 International Journal of Health Services, we documented a “bump” in U.S. deaths in the 3-4 months after Fukushima, especially among infants – the same “bump” after Chernobyl. Our recent study in the Open Journal of Pediatrics showed rising numbers of infants born with an under-active thyroid gland – which is highly sensitive to radiation – on the West Coast, where Fukushima fallout was greatest.
It is crucial that researchers don’t wait years before analyzing and presenting data, even though the amount of available information is still modest. To remain silent while allowing the “no harm” mantra to spread would repeat the experiences after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and allow perpetration of the myth that meltdowns are harmless. Researchers must be vigilant in pursuing an understanding of what Fukushima did to people – so that all-too-common meltdown will be a thing of the past.
Joseph J. Mangano MPH MBA is Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.
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