Past & Present NY Times Jerusalem Bureau Chiefs: Jodi Rudoren, Ethan Bronner, Steven Erlanger, Thomas Friedman
Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun Magazine, is known for his frequent condemnations of Israeli violence against Palestinians. He is labeled “pro-Palestinian” for such statements and is regularly attacked by pro-Israel zealots who charge that he is disloyal to the Jewish state.
Yet, in reality, Lerner frequently speaks of his devotion to Israel and states that his actions are taken in considerable part to protect it.
A while ago Lerner explained the difference in his feelings about Israelis compared to his feelings about Palestinians. “[T]here is a difference in my emotional and spiritual connection to these two sides,” Lerner said.
“On the one side is my family; on the other side are decent human beings. I want to support human beings all over the planet but I have a special connection to my family.”
This statement comes to mind when one considers the New York Times bureau chiefs who cover Israel-Palestine.
The most recent person to be chosen for this powerful post at arguably the most influential newspaper in the United States is Jodi Rudoren. She takes the place of Ethan Bronner, who was preceded by Steven Erlanger, who was preceded by James Bennet, who was preceded by Deborah Sontag. All, according to an Israeli report, are Jewish.
Most Americans — particularly those who would object to only white reporters covering racial issues or only male reporters covering gender issues — are reluctant to discuss the potential bias in such a profoundly un-diverse system, having been conditioned to fear that such discussion would be “anti-Semitic” or would open the commentator to this extremely damaging accusation.
In Israel, however, it is considered appropriate to discuss the Jewish roots of American politicians and journalists since Israel was created specifically to be “the Jewish state,” Jews have elevated status in it, and the vast majority of Israeli land is officially owned by “world Jewry” (although some individuals have publicly opted out).
An article on the Jerusalem Post website, a major Israeli newspaper, focuses on this aspect. The article, “Judaism at the New York Times”, reports that “all New York Times’ bureau chiefs for at least the last fifteen years have been Jewish.”
The article’s author, Ashley Rindsberg, notes that “the Times doesn’t consistently send Russian Americans to its Moscow bureau… or Mexican Americans to lead its Mexico City bureau…” and asks, “Why does the New York Times consistently send Jewish journalists to head their central office in the Jewish State?”
Rindsberg, who like many conservative Israelis considers the Times’ reporting anti-Israel, provides a somewhat convoluted answer. The Times’ Jewish owners, Rindsberg posits, are uncomfortable with their Jewish identity. Therefore, he claims, they “would just as soon as not have reporters who could be identified for their Jewishness. And to prove it, they send Jews to the Jewish State to report in a most un-Jewish way.”
The Times’ history of pro-Israel coverage
Despite Rindsberg’s view of the Times, analysis shows its coverage to be consistently pro-Israel. A 2005 study found that the Times reported on Israeli deaths at rates up to seven times greater than its reports on Palestinian deaths, even though Palestinian deaths occurred first and in far greater numbers.
A 2007 study of the Times’ coverage of various international reports on human rights violations by Israelis and by Palestinians found that the Times covered reports condemning Israeli human rights violations at a rate only one-twentieth the rate that it covered reports condemning Palestinian human rights violations. The investigation found that during the study period there had been 76 reports by humanitarian agencies condemning Israel for abuses and four condemning Palestinians for abuses. The Times carried two stories on each side.
In its early years the Times specifically avoided assigning Jewish reporters to cover Israel out of concern that such journalists would have an inherent conflict of interest. This policy was reversed in 1979 after Abe Rosenthal became the paper’s executive editor and explicitly decided to choose Jewish journalists for the position.
While his first attempt failed (he had thought his choice, David Shipler, was Jewish), the Columbia Journalism Review reports that most of the journalists who succeeded Shipler, beginning with Thomas Friedman, have been of Jewish ethnicity. The article notes that “for a century [the Times] has served, in effect, as the hometown paper of American Jewry.”
Former NY Times executive editor Max Frankel, who was an editor at the Times from 1972 through 2000, admitted in his memoirs: “I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert … Fortified by my knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of our Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognized, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.”
An article by star reporter and author Grace Halsell describes her firsthand experience with pro-Israel bias at the Times in the early 1980s.
Halsell had written books about the plight of Native Americans, African Americans, and undocumented Mexican workers. She was a great favorite of New York Times matriarch Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, whose father had acquired the Times in 1896, whose husband and then son had run it next, and whose grandson is now in charge.
When Halsell next wrote a powerful book describing the Palestinian plight, she incurred Mrs. Suzberger’s displeasure and was quickly dropped by the Times. Halsell writes: “I had little concept that from being buoyed so high I could be dropped so suddenly when I discovered—from her point of view—the ‘wrong’ underdog.”
In her article Halsell quotes a revealing statement by an Israeli journalist following Israel’s 1996 shelling of a U.N. base in Lebanon that killed more than 100 civilians sheltering in it: “We believe with absolute certitude that right now, with the White House in our hands, the Senate in our hands and The New York Times in our hands, the lives of others do not count the same way as our own.”
Since 1984 New York Times bureau chiefs have lived in a house that was acquired for the Times by then Jerusalem Bureau Chief Thomas Friedman (now the Times’ lead foreign policy columnist). The building originally belonged to a Palestinian family forced out in Israel’s 1947-49 founding war. Israel afterward prevented the family from returning and reclaiming their home. Therefore, Times’ bureau chiefs are in the strange position of living in a home that was stolen from Palestinians (acquiring property by violent conquest is illegal in today’s world).
Recent Situation: Bronner, Kershner, & Khader Adnan
Rudoren’s predecessor as Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, has a son who enlisted in the Israeli military. When this conflict with impartiality was exposed, even the Times’ own ombudsman suggested that journalistic ethics required that Bronner be moved to a different beat. Yet, Times then-editor Bill Keller insisted that this gave Bronner “special sophistication” and kept him in his position.
Bronner’s colleague at the bureau has been Isabel Kershner, who will apparently be staying on. J.J. Goldberg, editor of the Forward, writes: “Isabel Kershner immigrated to Israel from her native England as a young woman and spent a couple of decades in Israeli journalism and Jewish education before joining the Times a few years ago. By now she’s thoroughly Israeli (and, for full disclosure, a friend).”
While pro-Israel Zealots vehemently attack Bronner and Kershner when they cover Palestinian victimization, the truth is that they overlook a great many instances. For example, a 33-year-old Palestinian father of two young girls (another child is on the way) was on a hunger strike that lasted for 66 days. He was was near death when he reportedly decided to end it on Feb 21.
The young man, Khader Adnan, was protesting his imprisonment by Israel – he was never charged with a crime – and the beatings and humiliations he endured from Israeli interrogators. There was an extended international campaign about him that grew even more urgent when doctors began warning after 45 days that he was at risk of death. Eventually, there was so much pressure world wide (including by UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk and EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton) that Israel announced it would release Adnan at the end of his “sentence.”
Yet, Bronner and Kershner – and Times columnists who frequently bemoan the alleged lack of a Palestinian Gandhi – did not publish a single story on Adnan until the 66th (and last) day of his hunger strike – after the Washington Post had finally carried a report two days before. The Times’ headline was the very bland, “Hearing for Palestinian on Hunger Strike Is Set.
While Adnan’s is the longest Palestinian hunger strike on record, through the years there have been hundreds of hunger strikes by multitudes of Palestinians in Israeli prisons; the Times almost never reports on them. It’s revealing to compare their numerous stories on the Israeli tank gunner captured by Palestinians, Gilad Shalit, to the sparsity of their reporting on Adnan and others.
Overall, the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel seem largely to have been invisible to Times’ reporters. While there have been gruesome reports of their torture for decades, there is little indication that Bronner or Kershner have investigated this or made much, if any, effort to visit Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Who is Jodi Rudoren?
Now that Bronner’s four-year term has come to an end (he says he initiated the transfer himself and was not pushed out over conflict of interest), it is not clear what went into new editor Jill Abramson’s decision to choose Rudoren for this powerful position.
A cum laude graduate from Yale, Rudoren’s journalistic experience appears to be limited to domestic subjects. Most recently she had been head of the Times’ Education bureau. She speaks what she calls “functional Hebrew” but no Arabic. It’s unknown how much time, if any, she has spent in Israel, whether she has family there, or whether she has family members in the Israeli military.
When Rudoren received a tweet by Palestinian-American author Ali Abunimah, who noted that she would be moving into stolen Palestinian property, she responded: “Hey there. Would love to chat sometime. About things other than the house. My friend Kareem Fahim [a New York Times associate] says good things.”
This friendly but somewhat flip response to a serious subject has caused Israel zealots to attack her. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg somewhat hysterically equated Abunimah, an author known for his intellectual analysis, with Israeli Jewish supremacists known for their violence.
Goldberg suggested that Rudoren should have “twinned” her tweet to Abunimah by reaching out to Kahanists — a group listed by both Israel and the U.S. as terrorists. Goldberg should be pleased to learn that Rudoren said she had done just that, telling the Jerusalem Post, “One of the people I followed before reaching out to Abunimah was David Ha’ivri.”
Ha’ivri is an extremist settler rabbi who was involved with Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane’s Kach terror group, celebrated the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when he had begun to make peace with Palestinians, and was convicted some years ago for desecrating a mosque.
Abunimah, on the other hand, has written a book called “One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse,” in which he describes how Israelis and Palestinians can live together in peace.
Rudoren’s knowledge of Hebrew may have been bolstered by her summertime attendance at Camp Yavneh, a Jewish camp in New Hampshire that has an Israeli flag at the top of its website and boasts of its “strong Israeli programming.” It features a six-weeks “summer in Israel” program, though it’s unknown whether Rudoren attended this.
The camp website states that the current boys’ head counselor “grew up in Gush Etzion, Israel, and has served as a Lieutenant Commander in the Israeli Army in charge of 150 soldiers in the Givatti Brigade.” Another counselor is a resident of the Israeli settlement of Efrat, which, like all Israeli settlements, is built on confiscated Palestinian land and is illegal under international law.
Despite an upbringing that appears to have included considerable immersion in Zionist mythology, indications are that Rudoren may be working to widen her view. She raves about a book by Peter Beinart called “The Crisis of Zionism” and retweeted a message by blogger Sami Kishawi. It’s interesting to note that the Times’ only other female Jerusalem bureau chief, Deborah Sontag, often provided exemplary coverage; her term seems to have ended early.
Tweeting like a J-Street official?
Jeffrey Goldberg – who moved to Israel, became an Israeli citizen, joined the Israeli army, and worked as a prison guard at one of Israel’s most brutal prisons – assures readers that Rudoren is still within the pro-Israel fold, commenting, “I don’t know Rudoren… I do know her sister, from synagogue, mainly, and I don’t think Jodi is some sort of anti-Israel activist…”
Goldberg is concerned, however, that she is tweeting “as if she’s a J Street official.” For Goldberg this veers dangerously toward anti-Israelism.
In reality, however, J Street is a pro-Israel organization whose positions are dictated by what is good for Israel. Its founder has just published a book entitled “A New Voice for Israel.” If Goldberg’s assessment of Rudoren is accurate, then it appears that once again the Times has a person at the helm of its reporting on Israelis and Palestinians for whom Israelis are “family.” Quite possibly, literally.
Rudoren may be intending to cover the region accurately and with fairness. To do so, however, it appears that she will need to overcome enormous ingrained bias, relentless and vitriolic objections of the organized pro-Israel community (quite likely including friends and family), and pressure by many powerful Times advertisers and colleagues.
On top of this, unless she chooses a different lifestyle than her predecessors’, she will be living in Israel, her children will go to Israeli schools, and her home will be one of the thousands confiscated from Palestinians who are now living and suffering largely out of sight, their daily humiliations and victimization for the most part invisible.
These winds may be so strong that even when Rudoren believes she has stood upright against them, an outside view may show her tilted far over in the Israeli direction, her reporting on Israel-Palestine, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, covering the gamut from A to C.
Let us hope that this doesn’t occur.
Let us hope Rudoren understands that good reporting does not equate a false narrative with a factual one; that she will not be, in Abunimah’s words, yet “another New York Times reporter for whom Palestinians are just bit players in someone else’s drama.”
Let us hope she understands that living in stolen property is not a good base from which to report honestly; that “balance” achieved by under-reporting Palestinian suffering while exaggerating that of Israelis is not balance, it is distortion. Let us hope, most of all, that she does not view some human beings as more important than others, but instead views all, regardless of their religion or ethnicity, as family.
~
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and president of the Council for the National Interest. She can be reached at contact@ifamericanslknew.org.
February 22, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Ethan Bronner, Israel, Michael Lerner, New York Times |
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A surreptitious WINEP project is pushing cataclysmic regime change in Syria
On February 10, subscribers to Fikra Forum’s mailing list received a bilingual (English and Arabic) letter from director David Pollock informing them:
In reaction to last week’s exclusive Fikra Forum report, Inside the Syrian Army by Ilhan Tanir, contributor Josef Olmert and I present analysis on how the U.S. and the international community should support the FSA [Free Syrian Army].
Five days later, Fikra Forum subscribers received another email with the subject title, “Leading Syrian Activist Calls for International Intervention.” In his introductory note, Pollock explained:
As the international community struggles to halt the Syrian regime’s brutal assault on its people, Fikra Forum would like to share our newest piece by Radwan Ziadeh, an official with the Syrian National Council and executive director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies. Ziadeh calls for intervention, urging the international community to form a coalition that legitimizes the SNC as the unified representative of the Syrian opposition and acknowledges the council’s plan for the future of Syria.
At the bottom of both Fikra Forum emails was the following address:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy | 1828 L STREET NW | SUITE 1050 | WASHINGTON | DC | 20036 | US
However, if one were to visit the Fikra Forum website, one might get the impression that the “online community that aims to generate ideas to support Arab democrats in their struggle with authoritarians and extremists” was trying to hide its association with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the think tank created by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to “do AIPAC’s work but appear independent.” In its remarkably vague “About Us” section, the only clue to its affiliation with “the think tank AIPAC built” is this acknowledgement:
Fikra Forum is grateful to the Nathan and Esther K. Wagner Family Foundation for their contribution to the launch of Fikra Forum in the memory of Steven Croft, who during his life believed passionately in the power of ideas to transform lives.
Steven Croft’s February 20, 2009 Death Notice in the Chicago Tribune tells us a little more about those passionate beliefs:
He was also philanthropically involved in local, national and international organizations including the Arthritis Foundation, AIPAC, Israel Bonds and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Notwithstanding the apparent overlap, WINEP also appears to be coy about its relationship with Fikra Forum. Despite the fact that David Pollock is the Kaufman fellow at The Washington Institute, “focusing on the political dynamics of Middle Eastern countries,” there appears to be no mention there of the “unique online community” he directs “with the goal of generating ideas to produce a brighter future for Arab democrats.”
By an amazing coincidence, WINEP has its own “Fikra” (Arabic for “Idea”), which it describes as “a multiyear program of research, publication, and network-building designed to generate policy ideas for promoting positive change and countering the spread of extremism in the Middle East.” According to the Israel lobby-created think tank, its Project Fikra is:
A bold effort to counter the spread of extremism in the Middle East, the program seeks to inject creativity and new thinking into America’s engagement with youths, media, educators, and other key actors struggling for openness and tolerance in Arab and Muslim societies.
Among “the talents of Washington Institute scholars and associates” that Project Fikra brings together is David Pollock, whom it describes as “an expert on Middle Eastern public opinion and polling who worked as a leader on regional democratization and women’s rights.”
Apart from Pollock, a substantial number of Fikra Forum contributors are current or former WINEP fellows, including Ahmed Ali, Jon Alterman, Hassan Barari, Soner Cagaptay, J. Scott Carpenter, Steven Cook, Andrew Engel, Daniel Green, Dina Guirguis, Simon Henderson, David Makovsky, Joshua Muravchik, Magnus Norell, Michael Rubin, Robert Satloff, David Schenker, Michael Singh, Andrew Tabler, Eric Trager, and Margaret Weiss.
The rest of the contributors are from other pro-Israel think tanks, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the American Enterprise Institute; Soros-funded groups such as Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and the Center for American Progress; various “democracy-promotion” organizations led by the National Endowment for Democracy and its affiliates; and an abundance of pro-democracy activists, bloggers and journalists they “helped nurture,” fomenting the wave of uprisings known as the “Arab Spring.”
While Pollock and many of the other Fikra contributors work for Israel’s U.S. lobby, perhaps the most interesting contributor to an online forum supposedly dedicated to Arab democracy is the aforementioned Josef Olmert. Although his Fikra Forum profile does acknowledge that the Israeli analyst was a director of the Government Press Office and advisor to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and later served as policy advisor to former Defense Minister Moshe Arens, it emphasizes his role as a “peace negotiator.” Fikra Forum readers are not informed, however, that Dr. Olmert is the brother of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or that both of their parents belonged to the terrorist Irgun organization.
Although Josef Olmert predicted elsewhere a “chaotic transition” in which “the violence that will unfold in Syria will dwarf everything that we have witnessed until now,” he assures Fikra Forum readers that “all support that could enable the FSA to continue and intensify its operations, alongside the continuing popular resistance, will help shorten the days of the dictatorship and save the lives of many innocent Syrians.”
Maidhc Ó Cathail has written extensively on Israel’s push for regime change in Syria.
February 21, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Hassan Barari, Israel, Syria, Washington Institute for Near East Policy |
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“Responsibility to Protect” as Imperial Tool
By JEAN BRICMONT | February 20, 2012
The events in Syria, after those in Libya last year, are accompanied by calls for a military intervention, in order to “protect civilians”, claiming that it is our right or our duty to do so. And, just as last year, some of the loudest voices in favor of intervention are heard on the left or among the Greens, who have totally swallowed the concept of “humanitarian intervention”. In fact, the rare voices staunchly opposed to such interventions are often associated with the right, either Ron Paul in the US or the National Front in France. The policy the left should support is non-intervention.
The main target of the humanitarian interventionists is the concept of national sovereignty, on which the current international law is based, and which they stigmatize as allowing dictators to kill their own people at will. The impression is sometimes given that national sovereignty is nothing but a protection for dictators whose only desire is to kill their own people.
But in fact, the primary justification of national sovereignty is precisely to provide at least a partial protection of weak states against strong ones. A state that is strong enough can do whatever it chooses without worrying about intervention from outside. Nobody expects Bangladesh to interfere in the internal affairs of the United States. Nobody is going to bomb the United States to force it to modify its immigration or monetary policies because of the human consequences of such policies on other countries. Humanitarian intervention goes only one way, from the powerful to the weak.
The very starting point of the United Nations was to save humankind from “the scourge of war”, with reference to the two World Wars. This was to be done precisely by strict respect for national sovereignty, in order to prevent Great Powers from intervening militarily against weaker ones, regardless of the pretext. The protection of national sovereignty in international law was based on recognition of the fact that internal conflicts in weak countries can be exploited by strong ones, as was shown by Germany’s interventions in Czechoslovakia and Poland, ostensibly “in defense of oppressed minorities”. That led to World War II.
Then came decolonization. Following World War II, dozens of newly independent countries freed themselves from the colonial yoke. The last thing they wanted was to see former colonial powers openly interfering in their internal affairs (even though such interference has often persisted in more or less veiled forms, notably in African countries). This aversion to foreign interference explains why the “right” of humanitarian intervention has been universally rejected by the countries of the South, for example at the South Summit in Havana in April 2000. Meeting in Kuala Lumpur in February 2003, shortly before the US attack on Iraq, “The Heads of State or Government reiterated the rejection by the Non-Aligned Movement of the so-called ‘right’ of humanitarian intervention, which has no basis either in United Nations Charter or in international law” and “also observed similarities between the new expression ‘responsibility to protect’ and ‘humanitarian intervention’ and requested the Co-ordinating Bureau to carefully study and consider the expression ‘the responsibility to protect’ and its implications on the basis of the principles of non-interference and non-intervention as well as the respect for territorial integrity and national sovereignty of States.”
The main failure of the United Nations has not been that it did not stop dictators from murdering their own people, but that it failed to prevent powerful countries from violating the principles of international law: the United States in Indochina and Iraq, South Africa in Angola and Mozambique, Israel in its neighboring countries, Indonesia in East Timor, not to speak of all the coups, threats, embargoes, unilateral sanctions, bought elections, etc. Many millions of people lost their lives because of such repeated violation of international law and of the principle of national sovereignty.
In a post-World War II history that includes the Indochina wars, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, of Panama, even of tiny Grenada, as well as the bombing of Yugoslavia, Libya and various other countries, it is scarcely credible to maintain that it is international law and respect for national sovereignty that prevent the United States from stopping genocide. If the US had had the means and the desire to intervene in Rwanda, it would have done so and no international law would have prevented that. And if a “new norm” is introduced, such as the right of humanitarian intervention or the responsibility to protect, within the context of the current relationship of political and military forces, it will not save anyone anywhere, unless the United States sees fit to intervene, from its own perspective.
US interference in the internal affairs of other states is multi-faceted but constant and repeatedly violates the spirit and often the letter of the UN Charter. Despite claims to act on behalf of principles such as freedom and democracy, US intervention has repeatedly had disastrous consequences: not only the millions of deaths caused by direct and indirect wars, but also the lost opportunities, the “killing of hope” for hundreds of millions of people who might have benefited from progressive social policies initiated by leaders such as Arbenz in Guatemala, Goulart in Brazil, Allende in Chile, Lumumba in the Congo, Mossadegh in Iran, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, or President Chavez in Venezuela, who have been systematically subverted, overthrown or killed with full Western support.
But that is not all. Every aggressive action led by the United States creates a reaction. Deployment of an anti-missile shield produces more missiles, not less. Bombing civilians – whether deliberately or by so-called “collateral damage” – produces more armed resistance, not less. Trying to overthrow or subvert governments produces more internal repression, not less. Encouraging secessionist minorities by giving them the often false impression that the sole Superpower will come to their rescue in case they are repressed, leads to more violence, hatred and death, not less. Surrounding a country with military bases produces more defense spending by that country, not less, and the possession of nuclear weapons by Israel encourages other states of the Middle East to acquire such weapons. If the West hesitates to attack Syria or Iran, it is because these countries are stronger and have more reliable allies than Yugoslavia or Libya. If the West complains about the recent Russian and Chinese vetoes about Syria, it has only to blame itself: indeed, this is the result of the blatant abuse by Nato of Resolution 1973, in order to effect regime change in Libya, which the resolution did not authorize. So, the message sent by our interventionist policy to “dictators” is: be better armed, make less concessions and build better alliances.
Moreover, the humanitarian disasters in Eastern Congo, which are probably the largest in recent decades, are mainly due to foreign interventions (mostly from Rwanda, a US ally), not to a lack of them. To take a most extreme case, which is a favorite example of horrors cited by advocates of the humanitarian interventions, it is most unlikely that the Khmer Rouge would ever have taken power in Cambodia without the massive “secret” US bombing followed by US-engineered regime change that left that unfortunate country totally disrupted and destabilized.
Another problem with the “right of humanitarian intervention” is that it fails to suggest any principle to replace national sovereignty. When NATO exercised its own self-proclaimed right to intervene in Kosovo, where diplomatic efforts were far from having been exhausted, it was praised by the Western media. When Russia exercised what it regarded as its own responsibility to protect in South Ossetia, it was uniformly condemned in the same Western media. When Vietnam intervened in Cambodia, to put an end to the Khmer Rouge, or India intervened to free Bangladesh from Pakistan, their actions were also harshly condemned in the United States. So, either every country with the means to do so acquires the right to intervene whenever a humanitarian reason can be invoked as a justification, and we are back to the war of all against all, or only an all-powerful state, namely the United States (and its allies) are allowed to do so, and we are back to a form of dictatorship in international affairs.
It is often replied that the interventions are not to be carried out by one state, but by the “international community”. But the concept of “international community” is used primarily by the United States and its allies to designate themselves and whoever agrees with them at the time. It has grown into a concept that both rivals the United Nations (the “international community” claims to be more “democratic” than many UN member states) and tends to take it over in many ways.
In reality, there is no such thing as a genuine international community. NATO’s intervention in Kosovo was not approved by Russia and Russian intervention in South Ossetia was condemned by the West. There would have been no Security Council approval for either intervention. The African Union has rejected the indictment by the International Criminal Court of the President of Sudan. Any system of international justice or police, whether it is the responsibility to protect or the International Criminal Court, would need to be based on a relationship of equality and a climate of trust. Today, there is no equality and no trust, between West and East, between North and South, largely as a result of the record of US policies. For some version of the responsibility to protect to be consensually functional in the future, we need first to build a relationship of equality and trust.
The Libyan adventure has illustrated another reality conveniently overlooked by the supporters of humanitarian intervention, namely that without the huge US military machine, the sort of safe no-casualty (on our side) intervention which can hope to gain public support is not possible. The Western countries are not willing to risk sacrificing too many lives of their troops, and waging a purely aerial war requires an enormous amount of high technology equipment. Those who support such interventions are supporting, whether they realize it or not, the continued existence of the US military machine, with its bloated budgets and its weight on the national debt. The European Greens and Social Democrats who support the war in Libya should have the honesty to tell their constituents that they need to accept massive cuts in public spending on pensions, unemployment, health care and education, in order to bring such social expenses down to an American level and use the hundreds of billions of euros thus saved to build a military machine that will be able to intervene whenever and wherever there is a humanitarian crisis.
If it is true that the 21st century needs a new United Nations, it does not need one that legitimizes such interventions by novel arguments, such as responsibility to protect, but one that gives at least moral support to those who try to construct a world less dominated by a single military superpower. The United Nations needs to pursue its efforts to achieve its founding purpose before setting a new, supposedly humanitarian priority, which may in reality be used by the Great Powers to justify their own future wars by undermining the principle of national sovereignty.
The left should support an active peace policy through international cooperation, disarmament, and non-intervention of states in the internal affairs of others. We could use our overblown military budgets to implement a form of global Keynesianism: instead of demanding “balanced budgets” in the developing world, we should use the resources wasted on our military to finance massive investments in education, health care and development. If this sounds utopian, it is not more so than the belief that a stable world will emerge from the way our current “war on terror” is being carried out.
Moreover, the left should strive towards strict respect for international law on the part of Western powers, implementing the UN resolutions concerning Israel, dismantling the worldwide US empire of bases as well as NATO, ceasing all threats concerning the unilateral use of force, stopping all interference in the internal affairs of other States, in particular all operations of “democracy promotion”, “color” revolutions, and the exploitation of the politics of minorities. This necessary respect for national sovereignty means that the ultimate sovereign of each nation state is the people of that state, whose right to replace unjust governments cannot be taken over by supposedly benevolent outsiders.
It will be objected that such a policy would allow dictators to “murder their own people”, the current slogan justifying intervention. But if non-intervention may allow such terrible things to happen, history shows that military intervention frequently has the same result, when cornered leaders and their followers turn their wrath on the “traitors” supporting foreign intervention. On the other hand, non- intervention spares domestic oppositions from being regarded as fifth columns of the Western powers – an inevitable result of our interventionist policies. Actively seeking peaceful solutions would allow a reduction of military expenditures, arms sales (including to dictators who may use them to “murder their own people”) and use of resources to improve social standards.
Coming to the present situation, one must acknowledge that the West has been supporting Arab dictators for a variety of reasons, ranging from oil to Israel, in order to control that region, and that this policy is slowly collapsing. But the lesson to draw is not to rush into yet another war, in Syria, as we did in Libya, claiming this time to be on the right side, defending the people against dictators, but to recognize that it is high time for us to stop assuming that we must control the Arab world. At the dawn of the 20th century, most of the world was under European control. Eventually, the West will lose control over that part of the world, as it lost it in East Asia and is losing it in Latin America. How the West will adapt itself to its decline is the crucial political question of our time; answering it is unlikely to be either easy or pleasant.
JEAN BRICMONT teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont@uclouvain.be
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February 20, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Iraq, Libya, Responsibility to protect, Syria, United Nations, United Nations Charter, United States |
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On February 17, subscribers to the mailing list of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) received a message entitled “Want to Know What’s Going On in Syria?” inviting them to a special conference call briefing from Farid Ghadry, co-founder of The Reform Party of Syria. The invitation from the hawkish Israel lobby think tank — whose half-accurate motto is “Securing America, Strengthening Israel” — to the February 22 briefing reads:
In October of 2001, Mr. Ghadry, along with several Syrian-Americans, formed the Reform Party of Syria. A constitution was written and a constructive and comprehensive program has been put in place to bring regime change to Syria. Today, the party is enjoying the tacit support from many organizations and people in the U.S. administration and think tanks in Washington.
Mr. Ghadry and the other co-founders of RPS are hoping to return to Syria one day to rebuild the country on the basis of principles of real economic and political reforms that will usher democracy, prosperity, freedom of expression, and human rights in addition to lasting peace with open borders with all of Syria’s neighboring countries.
Not mentioned but well-understood by the men from JINSA is that the well-connected Syrian “reformer” has been groomed to facilitate that unlikely democratic utopia by leading Iraq war architect Richard Perle, a prominent member of JINSA’s advisory board until a few weeks ago. But as the Prince of Darkness’s biographer wrote in a 2007 Los Angeles Times article:
Unfortunately for Perle, Ghadry is seen in many quarters as a front man for Israel. Not only is he a dues-paying member of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful Israeli lobby in Washington, but a recent column on his Web site, titled “Why I Admire Israel,” seems to play right into the hands of those who believe the Bush administration’s obsession with regime change in the Middle East is really all about protecting Israel. Did Perle, the savviest of Washington power players, believe that Ghadry’s tub-thumping for Tel Aviv would make him more popular in Syria?
“No,” Perle replied. “I don’t. But he’s his own man. I don’t always understand what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.”
So, in his quest for idealistic dissidents to do in the Middle East what the Walesas and Havels achieved in Eastern Europe, Perle and his acolytes have tapped the discredited Ahmad Chalabi for Iraq, the suspect Amir Abbas Fakhravar for Iran and the allegiance-challenged Fahrid Ghadry for Syria. They’re just not making heroes like they used to.
Perhaps Farid Ghadry’s pro-Israel image problem is why there appears to be no mention of his conference call briefing on the JINSA website. There is, however, one rather revealing reference to Perle’s Syrian Chalabi. In its Events & Programs section, under “New York Cabinet Meetings 2009, 2010 & 2011,” there is the following brief entry:
“The Role of Syria in the Middle East: Friend of Iran, Host to Hamas, and Patron of Hizbullah” – Farid Ghadry, President, Reform Party of Syria
To put all this into the broader context of the supposedly Israel-threatening “Arab Spring” — which the LA Times reference to Perle’s “quest for idealistic dissidents to do in the Middle East what the Walesas and Havels achieved in Eastern Europe” seems to prefigure — a seminal event, which I have previously written about, was held almost five years ago that brought together Israel partisans concerned with “rolling back Syria” among other regional rivals and their native collaborators:
Under the direction of Natan Sharansky, the former Israeli minister who resigned his cabinet seat in 2005 in protest over Ariel Sharon’s Gaza disengagement plan, the [Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies] held a “Democracy and Security” conference in Prague in 2007. It brought together Israeli officials; their American neoconservative sympathizers with their favourite Middle Eastern dissidents in tow — most notably, Richard Perle’s Israel-admiring Syrian protégé Farid Ghadry; and the newly-installed Eastern European democrats swept to power in the wake of a wave of neocon-backed “color revolutions,” the latter group presumably serving to inspire the Arab and Iranian participants to emulate them.
So, if you want to know what’s going on in JINSA’s road to regime change in Damascus, please RSVP to jcolbert@jinsa.org or call 202-667-3900, Ext. 224.
Maidhc Ó Cathail has written extensively on Israel’s push for regime change in Syria.
February 19, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Farid Ghadry, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Reform Party of Syria, Richard Perle, Syria |
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In his latest article, “Hardhitting, Dissenting Journalism — Without the Hardhitting, Dissenting Part,” Arthur Silber writes:
“In a recent essay, I mentioned Matt Taibbi as one of the examples of a phenomenon I call “The Obedient Dissenter,” and said I would be examining that phenomenon in further detail soon. This isn’t that lengthier analysis, but more in the nature of a sneak preview.
Taibbi posted this entry yesterday: “Another March to War?” His remarks deal with the major media’s warmongering about Iran and the distortions they rely upon. All true, and all old news to those who’ve been awake however briefly in recent years. Note what he drops into the middle of his discussion:
I’m not defending Achmedinejad, I think he’s nuts and a monstrous dick and I definitely don’t think he should be allowed to have nuclear weapons…
He shouldn’t be allowed to have nuclear weapons? Ahmadinejad is going to stock all those terrible nuclear weapons in his very own personal Closet of Worldwide Destruction? And then, some night when he’s had a few too many drinks or because he’s pissed off about not getting his favorite dessert, he’s going to haul out a missile and hurl it at some unsuspecting country? And he shouldn’t be allowed to have these weapons? Who’s going to enforce that prohibition, Taibbi — you and what military? Oh, that’s right: that would be the United States military.
In this manner, Taibbi reduces the most consequential matters of international relations to questions of personality — thus throwing open the door to all the gutter language used by every warmongering propagandist, all the talk of Ahmadinejad being the “new Hitler,” the embodiment of evil and so on. Taibbi even helpfully includes his entirely unsupported and extraordinarily dangerous opinion that Ahmadinejad is “nuts.” Way to fight the power, Taibbi!
Thus does Taibbi accept all the assumptions and premises of those he says he is criticizing. Thus does he concede the battle before the first shot is fired.”
The global 9/11 truth and justice movement has been saying this for a decade. What the brainwashed Left calls “dissent” is a big joke. They blindly accept the official government narrative of the biggest event of our lifetime – an event that launched a world war in the Middle East, and transferred trillions of dollars from funding for science, health care, infrastructure, and education to the banking-military-industrial-congressional complex.
The 9/11 Lie destroyed the American economy and the American Constitution. But both the brainwashed Left and Right are hanging onto the lie as if their very lives depended on it being true.
As Silber says, the delusional and stupid Left has conceded “the battle before the first shot is fired.” They should just get out of the way and let the real dissidents take care of business.
And if you try to educate these clueless “critics of U.S. foreign policy” about the 9/11 attacks and false flag terrorism in general they call you a nut and a conspiracy theorist. Very liberal-minded.
February 18, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Matt Taibbi |
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During his 13-year-long presidency Hugo Chavez had to deal with five US ambassadors and numerous charge d’affaires. The history of relations between them and the Venezuelan leader shows how successfully one can oppose a policy of blackmail, conspiracy, overturns and ‘orange revolutions’.
The very first ambassador- John Maisto- arrived in Venezuela in 1997. His credentials were accepted by elderly Rafael Caldera, the last president of the corrupt Fourth Republic, which by that time had fully exhausted its potential. Venezuela was then preparing for presidential elections, and the U.S. propaganda was targeting Chavez’s candidacy.
Maisto’s career is worth paying attention to. He assisted the C.I.A in secret operations against Che Guevara in Bolivia. He worked in policy departments of the US embassies in Colombia, Costa Rica, and in the Philippines, which means that he was involved in intelligence operations. Maisto is believed to have stood behind the bloodless revolution that eventually overturned the Marcos government [of the Philippines 1965-1986]. Maisto led the policy department of the US embassy in Panama and took part in preparing the U.S. military intervention, which resulted in the arrest of President Manuel Noriega. Maisto also worked in Nicaragua, where he arrived in the early 1990s to help in ‘dismantling’ the leftist Sandinista regime following the victory of a pro-American candidate.
Maisto was repeatedly heard describing Chavez as an insurgent leader who supported left-wing parties and sympathized with the Castro brothers. On his advice, in the beginning of 1998 the US Department of State denied Chavez a US visa. This was a clear signal that Washington would support Chavez’s rival Henrique Salas Römer, a politician loyal to the traditions of the Fourth Republic. However, Chavez won the elections with more than 56% of the vote, and Maisto had to urgently bridge the gap. Chavez was no longer denied entry to the US. Preparations started for his meeting with Bill Clinton. Although the US State Department insisted that Chavez should first visit Washington, the Venezuelan leader said that before going to the US he would meet Fidel first.
It is worth mentioning that Maisto had to interpret a new political situation in Venezuela as “not radically opposing the US interests”, saying that Chavez was ensuring stability in his country, including stable hydrocarbon supplies, without infringing upon the US property. Maisto added that although Chavez was not very cooperative towards the US, he still could quite be tolerated as Venezuela’s leader. Agents of the CIA, DIA and DEA were embedded in Chavez’s circles, not to mention fifth-column activists in the country’s ministries of defense and of foreign affairs. The ambassador predicted that Chavez wouldn’t stay in office longer than 1.5-2 years. Now we see that he was mistaken.
Maisto left Venezuela in August of 2000, and was replaced by diplomat Donna Hrinak. Before being appointed as ambassador to Caracas, Hrinak had served as a US ambassador to the Dominican Republic and Bolivia (prior to Evo Morales’s presidency), and was used to talking to Latin American presidents in a bossy tone. When Chavez condemned the US bombing of Afghanistan, which led to numerous civilian deaths, Hrinak asked him if she could meet him in person. She came to the meeting, bearing in mind instructions from the State Department, and demanded that Chavez not be as critical towards the US as he had been. Chavez interrupted her: “You are talking to the head of state. Regarding your position, you are not behaving in a proper fashion, please, leave the room now”. Some sources say that Chavez, however, let Hrinak read the message from Washington till the end. In January 2002 Hrinak left Venezuela and was sent to Brazil to prevent Luiz da Silva from establishing too close ties with Chavez. The Brazilian leader turned to be a tough nut to crack: he listened attentively to US instructions but did it his own way.
Until March 2002, the US embassy in Caracas had been run by a charge d’affaires. Meanwhile, the Bush administration sanctioned a coup d’état, relying on three Venezuelan high-ranking army officials, who had been trained in the US. The conspiracy involved many counterintelligence agents (DIM, DISP, and others). Pro-US media launched non-stop propaganda against the ‘Castro-Communist regime’ and its followers. Non-governmental organizations (NGO) that emerged under Maisto, brought many intellectuals, students and oil workers together. Middle-class women also took active part in protests against ‘Cubanization’ of their country. Certainly, old bourgeois parties and the Catholic church did not stay aside.
A month before the coup a new US ambassador, Charles Shapiro, arrived in Venezuela. Known at home for his experience in dealing with coups, Shapiro was praised for his work as a military attaché in Chile while preparing the toppling of Salvador Allende. Shapiro also stood out during a ‘dirty war’ with guerrilla units in Salvador and Nicaragua in 1980s. Washington relied on this highly experienced person in dealing with ‘the Chavez issue’. On April 11, 2002, indeed, Shapiro reported the toppling of Chavez. The ambassador’s moment of glory did not last long as Chavez returned to his presidential palace in the wake of pubic protests, supported by patriotic members of the military. A week later Shapiro asked for a meeting with Chavez. When the two met, Shapiro told the Venezuelan leader about the plot to assassinate him. Chavez asked: “What exactly do you know about the plot? Who stands behind it, tell me the names”. Shapiro shrugged his shoulders: “The instructions I received contain no information of this kind.”
A few years later Chavez told journalists about his talk with Shapiro, describing the latter a ‘real clown but not an ambassador’: “Given the CIA, the FBI and other intelligence services, they say they have no further information on the issue. Meanwhile, we know, and we are not alone in our knowing, that there is a camp in Miami where Venezuelan terrorists are being trained. The US administration has not done anything to arrest them. Moreover, Washington assists them.” Chavez said that Shapiro’s visit was organized to shield US involvement with April protests, and distract attention from the US ambassador’s applause for Pedro Carmona, one of key plotters”. A really devastating failure for the CIA was that its Venezuelan agents did not have the nerve to get rid of the Bolivarian leader. After that Shapiro was no longer a person whom Chavez and his supporters could trust.
The ambassador thus had to pretend that he was just a mediator between the government and the opposition. Behind-the-scenes, Shapiro supported financial assistance to the opposition via the CIA and NGOs. More and more Zionist supporters were engaged in anti-government activities. Shapiro used mass media to send threatening signals to Chavez, trying to persuade him that the situation in Venezuela would be getting even worse unless his (Shapiro’s) recommendations were heeded. Chavez, for his part, more than once said that Shapiro could become persona non grata in Venezuela. In 2004 Shapiro’s term in office expired and he left the country.
The next US ambassador to Venezuela was William Brownfield. He began his diplomatic career in 1979 as a vice consul in Maracaibo, Venezuela’s oil capital. Traditionally, all posts in that consulate were occupied by CIA agents or intelligence officers. Brownfield participated in working out the so-called Plan Colombia, and also supervised the Cuba-related policies in the Department of State. Three months passed before Brownfield was approved as the new US ambassador in Venezuela: tensions between the Bolivarian government and the opposition remained, and Chavez decided to keep the new US diplomat away from Venezuela for a while.
Brownfield’s credentials were accepted by Chavez at Miraflores Palace on October 15. First, the ambassador tried to leave a good impression on him and emphasized the need to improve US-Venezuela relations at least on some levels and lay the basis for further cooperation. Very soon, however, Brownfield’s policy changed, and he spent much time talking to opposition members and NGO activists. He paid several visits to Venezuela’s Zulia state, openly demonstrating his solidarity with local pro-separatism politicians. He criticized practically everything Chavez did: the purchase of Russian arms, oil cooperation with Cuba, expanded partnership with Iran, contribution to Latin American integration and the creation of the mechanism of regional security without the US membership.
In response, official Caracas paid absolutely no attention to the new US envoy. Brownfield’s mission ended in the middle of 2007. This is how one of Venezuela’s analysts commented on Brownfield’s work: “Defeated, he is leaving. He failed to implement Washington’s plans of making the opposition stronger and Chavez weaker. On the contrary, while Brownfield stayed in Venezuela, Chavez saw his approval rating going up to 73%… Brownfield simply turned into a vulgar immoral instigator. His only success was giving dollars to opposition ‘puppets’.
Brownfield wished his successor Patrick Duddy all the best at his post. Describing Duddy as a ”very smart, intellectual man, who knows Latin America very well”, Brownfield said: ”Probably, he will manage to achieve the goals I’ve failed to approach.” Duddy continued his predecessor’s course, though in a more careful way: his intelligence background helped him. There was not a single reason to reproach him for anything, although Venezuelan counterintelligence received reports that the US embassy was preparing a ‘surprise’ for the 2008 presidential elections. In August of 2008, in a gesture of solidarity with Bolivia, Chavez said that Duddy must leave Venezuela within 72 hours. The US ambassador to La Paz Philip Goldberg was a key figure in organizing opposition rallies and instigating separatism. He was implementing US plans to overthrow Evo Morales.
Duddy returned to Caracas nine months later. His further stay in Venezuela was not in any way remarkable, except the WikiLeaks reports dealing with the embassy’s financial ties to pro-opposition mass media. Journalists addressed Duddy asking him for money allegedly to fight the Chavez regime. Duddy was not happy with the situation because the results were very poor despite huge spending.
Larry Palmer was expected to become the next US ambassador to Venezuela. During discussions in Congress, Palmer spoke about ”low morale of the Venezuelan army”, ”links between the Chavez government and FARC rebels”. After Palmer’s statements were leaked to the media, thus bringing a new chill in the relations between the two countries. Chavez did not accept Palmer as the new US envoy to Venezuela.
Currently, the US interests in Caracas are represented by charge d’affaires James Derham. He used to work in Guatemala, Mexico, Brazil, in Kosovo – as part of The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and also in Cuba as part of the US Interests Section in Havana. By the way, Derham was already a retired diplomat, resting in his private house in Williamsburg, Virginia, not far from the CIA headquarters in Langley, when he was appointed to a new post. Perhaps, in Washington they believe that pensioner Derham will be more successful than plotters shielded by the State Department.
February 18, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | Charles Shapiro, Chavez, Donna Hrinak, Hugo Chávez, United States, Venezuela, William Brownfield |
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Israel’s use of national parks to expropriate Palestinian land and prevent development in East Jerusalem is the subject of Bimkom’s latest, January, report.
Bimkom, a group of Israeli planners and architects advocating for planning rights, has studied the state’s strategy of making “green” settlements as a more convenient alternative to building its controversial Jewish-only housing enclaves alongside Palestinian communities in occupied East Jerusalem.
Designating urban space as a national park is not only easier but cheaper too, the state having no obligation to compensate owners.
The Jerusalem municipality leaves the creation of these parks to the National Planning Authority (in the Ministry of Interior), Bimkom noted, which deals more with the protection of nature and heritage than the rights of Jerusalem’s residents.
By passing authority over to the NPA, the municipality can absolve itself of responsibility for the people it professes to serve, the report argued.
The report came in the wake of a new national park set to appear on Mount Scopus, using land privately owned by residents of Issawiya and A-Tur, neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem.
The plan, currently under public review, was initially thought up by the Israel Nature and Park Authority, a body of the Ministry for Environment.
More recently it has been championed by the Jerusalem Development Authority – a government body helping the municipality with development projects – which was given 40 million NIS in 2005 to develop green spaces around the Old City of Jerusalem.
As a result of the state’s categorical neglect of Palestinians in Jerusalem, Bimkom began working with A-Tur and Issawiya residents years ago to devise development plans.
The national park will cover the neighbourhoods’ remaining available land, making Bimkom’s project impossible.
Locals, with the help of Bimkom and other rights groups, are raising legal objections to the plan, amid efforts to bring the public’s attention to their plight.
The case forwarded by the municipality is based on the site’s purported archaeological significance.
Municipal representatives pointed to “antiquities, caves … and burial sites from the era of the Second Temple,” Ha’aretz reported last month.
This argument has been rubbished by Bimkom, who argue what is really at play is Israel’s control over land, usually achieved by stunting Palestinian development.
Avraham Shaked – member of the Interior Ministry’s Jerusalem District Committee as an environmental advocate – agrees the prospective park is part of a more sinister political agenda.
“This process is definitely a political process,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “If it’s possible to develop the area for the good of the public it’s a positive thing. But this is not important as a nature reserve.”
The INPA – the management of which is dominated by several prominent settlers – denies doggedly that it is political. The group is “only concerned about preserving nature in the areas under its control,” a spokesperson told Ha’aretz.
“The declaration of the area [as a park] safeguards the last segment of the Judean Desert that begins on the Mount Scopus slope, and its importance stems from its view onto the desert, heritage landmarks and desert vegetation.”
While the state is forbidden from working on the site until the period for public comment is over, the INPA has forged ahead regardless.
Bulldozers have begun work on private land, moving a large mound of earth to create an effective wall which blocks a path to agricultural land. The municipality insists this measure was designed to prevent the area from being used as an illegal dumping ground, stopping the passage of trucks that would dump rubbish.
While residents remain unconvinced, the state’s response to their objection to this breach has been characteristically repressive and disproportionately severe.
On the morning of Monday, 6 February, border police arrived on the private land of Issawiya and A-Tur residents to continue preparatory work on the park.
When locals, along with Israeli supporters, gathered to protest the construction work, police arrested six people, five Jewish Israelis and one Palestinian.
The disparity between the management of space for West Jerusalemites compared to their counterparts in the east is stark, with national parks notably absent from the west.
“The Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are crowded and they suffer from extreme neglect and shortage of public infrastructure,” Bimkom architect, Efrat Bar-Cohen, said in a statement.
“The residents are in desperate need of space by which they can improve their quality of life, even if slightly.”
The building of the park will have ramifications beyond the strangling of Issawiya and A-Tur residents.
It will stretch into the E1 area of the West Bank, which represents an important reserve of space for Palestinian development, creating a string of Jewish Israeli-only settlement between the Old City and Ma’ale Adumim settlement.
Elad Kandl is director of the Old City projects at the Jerusalem Development Authority, whose website describes their work as rehabilitating and conserving the Old City.
He expressed succinctly Israel’s aim of curbing Palestinian development in Jerusalem. “When you make it a national park,” he told The Jerusalem Post in reference to open space, “you keep the status quo.”
February 18, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Environmentalism, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Bimkom, East Jerusalem, Israeli-occupied territories, Jerusalem, Old City |
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has once again proven that the only thing Americans need fear, is their own government, with the latest “terror attack” foiled being one entirely of their own design.
USA Today reports that a suspect had been arrested by the FBI who was “en route to the U.S. Capitol allegedly to detonate a suicide bomb.” While initial reports portrayed the incident as a narrowly averted terrorist attack, CBS would report that a “high ranking source told CBS News the man was “never a real threat.”” The explosives the would-be bomber carried were provided to him by the FBI during what they described as a “lengthy and extensive operation.” The only contact the suspect had with “Al Qaeda” was with FBI officials posing as associates of the elusive, omnipresent, bearded terror conglomerate. The FBI, much like their MI5 counterparts in England, have a propensity for recruiting likely candidates from mosques they covertly run.
This is but the latest in a string of national terror plots carried out from start to finish by the FBI, who has made a business of approaching likely candidates and grooming them to carry out terror attacks. In September 2011, another FBI terror operation targeting the Capitol was “foiled,” involving a patsy who believed he was to take part in an assault that would involve multiple gunmen and even a drone bomber provided to him by the FBI.
And perhaps the most dubious of all, was the December 2010 Portland “Christmas Tree Bomber,” who was also approached by the FBI, provided demolition training, including a demonstration with live explosives performed in a Lincoln County park, and a van within which the patsy believed his handlers had provided him a bomb. The van with the inert device was parked next to a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony where the patsy attempted to detonate it remotely before being arrested by FBI agents.
It would later turn out that Portland had heroically withdrawn from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, (JTTF), with the operation then being carried out behind Portland Mayor Sam Adam’s back only for its conclusion to humiliatingly catch the mayor off guard. The city of Portland would eventually rejoin the JTTF after the fallout from the FBI’s own terror plot.
The FBI is carrying out what is essentially a campaign of entrapment fueling what alternative news outlet Media Monarchy appropriately calls “terronoia.” And while it is true that these incidents are being used to foment a climate of fear to justify the ongoing “War on Terror,” there is a more sinister implication readers must be aware of.
In 1993 the FBI was carrying out an identical “sting operation” in New York City. The target was the World Trade Center, the weapon of choice would be a bomb-laden van, that like the above mentioned attacks, was supposed to contain an inert device. Helping the FBI was an Egyptian informant, Emad Salem, who over the course of the investigation grew suspicious of the federal agents and began recording his phone conversations with them.
From these recordings released by the New York Times, it turns out that the FBI switched out the inert device for real explosives at the last moment resulting in an attack that killed 6 and injured over a thousand. Despite this evidence, the 1993 bombing is still to this day attributed to “terrorists” with the FBI’s involvement muted if ever mentioned.
The implications are of course, with the FBI’s current nationwide stable of patsies being trained, directed, and provided material support to carry out attacks which the FBI then “foils,” is that at any given moment, any one of these operations can be switched “live” just as in 1993. The resulting carnage can then be used to manipulate public opinion just as it was in 1993, 2001, on 7/7 in London, and in Madrid, Spain in 2004.
The risk rises exponentially now with Israel being confirmed to be training, arming, and directing US State Department-listed terrorist organization, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, also known as Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK). The US has also played an extensive role in supporting MEK which is currently carrying out a campaign of terror inside of Iran.
This is part of a plot by the US indicated in its own policy papers, openly conspiring to provoke war with Iran. This is best encapsulated in this often cited quote from US policy think-tank, Brookings Institution:
“…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.) ”
-Brookings Institution’s 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” report, pages 84-85.
The same report would go on to say:
“In a similar vein, any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.”
-Brookings Institution’s 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” report, page 52.
Clearly those in the West intent on striking Iran realize both the difficulty of obtaining a plausible justification, and the lack of support they have globally to carry out an attack even if they manage to find a suitable pretext. Brookings would continue throughout their report enumerating methods of provoking Iran, including conspiring to fund opposition groups to overthrow the Iranian government, crippling Iran’s economy, and funding US State Department-listed terrorist organizations (MEK) to carry deadly attacks within Iran itself. Despite these overt acts of war, and even considering an option to unilaterally conduct limited airstrikes against Iranian targets, Brookings noted there was still the strong possibility Iran would not allow itself to be sufficiently provoked:
“It would not be inevitable that Iran would lash out violently in response to an American air campaign, but no American president should blithely assume that it would not.”
The report continues:
“However, because many Iranian leaders would likely be looking to emerge from the fighting in as advantageous a strategic position as possible, and because they would likely calculate that playing the victim would be their best route to that goal, they might well refrain from such retaliatory missile attacks.”
-Brookings Institution’s 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” report, page 95.
With this in mind, and with the 1993 World Trade Center attack as a historical precedent, it is almost a certainty that the West and Mossad are carrying out the current global wave of bombings now being blamed on Iran. This includes two failed bombings in India and Georgia, and a more recent incident in Bangkok, Thailand.
Law enforcement officers across America may be witnessing the FBI conducting through their JTTF what they believe to be a “sting operation” that may end up being the next major terrorist attack on US soil – and the pretext for certain war with Iran.
The fears of Portland Mayor Sam Adams were well founded, and it took an act of terror to strong-arm him and the people of Portland into capitulating to the federal JTTF program. Local law enforcement, for the safety of themselves and the people they are charged to serve and protect, would be wise to keep an eye on the FBI – apparently the most likely source from which terror plots both “foiled” and “successful” are hatched.
February 18, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | alqaeda, FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force |
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In an escalating move with the United States, Egypt on Saturday announced it would go ahead with a trial of foreign NGO activists, including nineteen Americans.
A court set February 26 as a date for the trial of 43 suspects — who also include Serbs, Norwegians, Germans, Egyptians, Palestinians and Jordanians — in a crackdown on NGOs accused of receiving illegal foreign aid, state media announced. Officials had previously said 44 suspects would face trial.
The defendants are charged with “establishing unlicensed chapters of international organizations and accepting foreign funding to finance these groups in a manner that breached the Egyptian state’s sovereignty,” official MENA news agency reported.
Several of the American suspects have sought refuge in their embassy in Cairo as Washington hinted that the crackdown could harm its longstanding ties with the Egyptian government.
Earlier, the US said it would cut off the aid to the country, in a clear sign of protesting the Egyptian act against the activists.
In response, Muslim Brotherhood which emerged in the lead of the parliamentary elections, threatened on Friday to review the 1979 peace deal between Cairo and Tel Aviv if Washington cut the aid to the country.
February 18, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception | Al-Manar, Egypt, Non-governmental organization, United States |
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In a 2006 Harper’s article entitled “Academics for Hire,” Ken Silverstein noted the influence of major oil companies on S. Frederick Starr, the head of Johns Hopkins University’s Central Asia Caucasus Institute (CACI). In passing, Silverstein mentioned another influential academic:
Harvard’s program is led by Brenda Shaffer, who is so eager to back regimes in the region that she makes Starr look like a dissident. A 2001 brief she wrote, “U.S. Policy toward the Caspian Region: Recommendations for the Bush Administration,” commended Bush for “intensified U.S. activity in the region, and the recognition of the importance of the area to the pursuit of U.S. national interests.” Shaffer has also called on Congress to overturn Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, which was passed in 1992 and bars direct aid to the Azeri government. The law has not yet been repealed, but the Bush Administration has been waiving it since 2002, as a payoff for Azeri support in the “war on terrorism.”
Shaffer and Starr have plenty of equally compromised companions, so Caspian watchers beware: the next time you see or hear an “independent” American expert talking about how the region’s rulers are implementing bold reforms, check the expert’s credentials to see just how independent he or she truly is.
If Harper’s had done a little more checking themselves, however, they might find that it’s not only Big Oil that’s skewing U.S. policy:
Shaffer received her Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University and has worked for a number of years as a researcher and policy analyst for the Government of Israel.
February 18, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Freedom Support Act, Ken Silverstein, Tel Aviv University |
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That a majority of people living on the island of Okinawa want the U.S. Marines gone seems a well-established fact. A plan to build a new airfield on a different part of the island in the town of Henoko is even more unpopular. One recent poll found 84 percent opposition to the new base.
And yet the New York Times tells readers today that it knows better. The headline alone over the piece by Martin Fackler tells you that those polls–not to mention the massive demonstrations against the base–shouldn’t be believed: “Amid Image of Ire Toward U.S. Bases, Okinawans’ True Views Vary.”
Unsurprisingly, the “true views” are apparently supportive of U.S. bases. As Fackler puts it, just “wander up Henoko’s narrow streets, and the villagers will tell you a different story.” The Times explains that if you “look more deeply and a nuanced picture emerges,” one that apparently supports the base and the U.S. military presence.
What of the polls that overwhelmingly say otherwise? The Times gets around to citing one of those 80 percent polls, only to turn around and say: “But look across Okinawa’s divided political spectrum and the depth of that opposition varies.”
Why put so much effort into trying to tell readers that the facts are not what they seem? It’s frankly hard to understand this one. But it can’t be said that this is a new problem for the Times–as FAIR pointed out (11/29/10):
A New York Times piece (11/29/10) on the re-election of Okinawa’s governor, who opposes the U.S. military base there, treated the views of the island’s residents as an annoyance–describing their resistance variously as a “wrench,” a “thorn” and a “headache.” The paper seemed to share the stance of the Japanese national government, which described the re-election as “one manifestation of public opinion”–and perhaps elections are not so important a manifestation, if they give the wrong results.
February 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, New York Times, Okinawa |
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The largest imperial offensive since the Iraq invasion of March, 2003, is in full swing, under the banner of “humanitarian” intervention – Barack Obama’s fiendishly clever upgrade of George Bush’s “dumb” wars. Having failed to obtain a Libyan-style United Nations Security Council fig leaf for a “humanitarian” military strike against Syria, the United States shifts effortlessly to a global campaign “outside the U.N. system” to expand its NATO/Persian Gulf royalty/Jihadi coalition. Next stop: Tunisia, where Washington’s allies will assemble on February 24 to sharpen their knives as “Friends of Syria.” The U.S. State Department has mobilized to shape the “Friends” membership and their “mandate” – which is warlord-speak for refining an ad hoc alliance for the piratical assault on Syria’s sovereignty.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are swigging the ale with their fellow buccaneers. These “human rights” warriors, headquartered in the bellies of empires past and present, their chests shiny with medals of propagandistic service to superpower aggression in Libya, contribute “left” legitimacy to the imperial project. London-based Amnesty International held a global “day of action” to rail against Syria for “crimes against humanity” and to accuse Russia and China of using their Security Council vetoes to “betray” the Syrian people – echoing the war hysteria out of Washington, Paris, London and the royal pigsties of Riyadh and Doha. New York-based Human Rights Watch denounced Moscow and Beijing’s actions as “incendiary” – as if it were not the empire and its allies who were setting the Middle East and Africa on fire, arming and financing jihadis – including hundreds of veteran Libyan Salafists now operating in Syria.
Under Obama’s “intelligent” (as opposed to “dumb”) imperial tutelage, colonial genocidaires like France now propose creation of “humanitarian corridors” inside Syria “to allow NGOs to reach the zones where there are scandalous massacres.” NATO flatly rejected such a corridor in Libya when sub-Saharan Africans and black Libyans were being massacred by militias armed and financed by the same “Friends” that now besiege Syria.
Turkey claims it has rejected, for now, the idea of setting up humanitarian “buffer zones” along its border with Syria – inside Syrian territory – while giving arms, training and sanctuary to Syrian military deserters. In reality, it is Syrian Army troop and armor concentrations on the border that have thwarted the establishment of such a “buffer” – a bald euphemism for creating a “liberated zone” that must be “protected” by NATO or some agglomeration of U.S.-backed forces.
NATO, which bombed Libya non-stop for six months, inflicting tens of thousands of casualties while refusing to count a single body, wants desperately to identify some sliver of Syrian soil on which to plant the “humanitarian” flag of intervention. They are transparently searching for a Benghazi, to justify a replay of the Libyan operation – the transparent fact that prompted the Russian and Chinese vetoes.
Faced with the certainty of superpower-backed attack under the guise of “protecting” civilians in “liberated” territory, Syria cannot afford to cede even one neighborhood of a single city – not one block! – or of any rural or border enclave, to armed rebels and foreign jihadis. That road leads directly to loss of sovereignty and possible dissection of Syria – which western pundits are already calling a “hodge-podge” nation that could be a “failed state.” Certainly, the French and British are experts at carving up other people’s territories, having drawn the national boundaries of the region after World War One. It is an understatement to say that Israel would be pleased.
With the Syrian military’s apparent successes in securing most of Homs and other centers of rebellion, the armed opposition has stepped up its terror tactics – a campaign noted with great alarm by the Arab League’s own Observer Mission to Syria, leading Saudi Arabia and Qatar to suppress the Mission’s report. Instead, the Gulf States are pressing the Arab League to openly “provide all kinds of political and material support” to the opposition, meaning arms and, undoubtedly, more Salafist fighters. Aleppo, Syria’s main commercial and industrial city, which had seen virtually no unrest, was struck by two deadly car bombs last week – signature work of the al-Qaida affiliate in neighboring Iraq.
The various “Friends of Syria,” all nestled in the U.S./NATO/Saudi/Qatar cocoon, now openly speak of all-out civil war in Syria – by which they mean stepped up armed conflict financed and directed by themselves – as the preferred alternative to the protracted struggle that the regime appears to be winning. There is one caveat: no “Western boots on the ground in any form,” as phrased by British Foreign Secretary William Hague. It is the Libya formula, and might as well have come straight from Barack Obama’s mouth.
Syria is fighting for its national existence against an umbrella of forces mobilized by the United States and NATO. Of the 6,000 or so people that have died in the past 11 months, about a third have been Syrian soldiers and police – statistical proof positive that this is an armed assault on the state. There is no question of massive foreign involvement, or that the aim of U.S. policy is regime change, as stated repeatedly by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (“Assad must go,” she told reporters in Bulgaria).
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have chosen sides in the Washington-backed belligerency – the side of Empire. As groups most often associated with (what passes for) the Left in their headquarters countries, they are invaluable allies of the current imperial offensive. They have many fellow travelers in (again, what passes for) anti-war circles in the colonizing and neo-colonizing nations. The French “Left” lifted hardly a finger while a million Algerians died in the struggle for independence, and have not proved effective allies of formerly colonized people in the 50 years, since. Among the European imperial powers, only Portugal’s so-called Carnation Revolution of 1974, a coup by young officers, resulted in substantial relief for the subjects of empire: the withdrawal of troops from Portugal’s African colonies.
The U.S. anti-war movement lost its mass character as soon as the threat of a draft was removed, in the early Seventies, while the United States continued to bomb Vietnam (and test new and exotic weapons on its people) until the fall of Saigon, in 1975. All that many U.S. lefties seemed to want was to get the Republicans off their backs, in 2008, and to Hell with the rest of the world. Democrat Barack Obama has cranked the imperial war machine back into high gear, with scarcely a peep from the “Left.”
There was great ambivalence – the most polite word I can muster – among purported leftists in the United States and Europe to NATO’s bombardment and subjugation of Libya. Here we are again, in the face of existential imperial threats to Syria and Iran, as leftists temporize about human rights while the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” blazes new warpaths.
There is no such thing as an anti-war activist who is not an anti-imperialist. And the only job of an anti-imperialist in the belly of the beast is to disarm the beast. Absent that, s/he is useless to humanity.
As we used to say: You are part of the solution – or you are part of the problem. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are part of the problem.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
February 16, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Amnesty International, Libya, NATO, Syria |
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Rudoren’s predecessor as Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, has a son who enlisted in the Israeli military. When this conflict with impartiality was exposed, even the Times’ own ombudsman suggested that journalistic ethics required that Bronner be moved to a different beat. Yet, Times then-editor Bill Keller insisted that this gave Bronner “special sophistication” and kept him in his position.
Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
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