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The Lavon Affair: When Israel firebombed U.S. Installations to make it appear attacks were by ‘Muslim extremists,’ and how the US media cover it up

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs – Richard H. Curtiss

Both before and since Nasser’s time, concerns of hard-line Israeli leaders have focused not on the radical Arabs, but rather on moderate Arab leaders who maintain ties to the West. Obviously, if the West ever reached an agreement with the Arabs at the expense of further Israeli territorial ambitions, it would be with such moderate Arabs.

Efforts by the Eisenhower administration to cultivate the charismatic Egyptian colonel [Gamal Abdel Nasser], had been detected by Israeli intelligence operatives, who also were concerned about Nasser’s negotiations with the British for withdrawal of their forces from Egypt’s Suez Canal zone, scheduled for July 1954.

In their 1979 book, The Untold History of Israel, Israeli journalists Jacques Derogy and Hesi Carmel relate that in 1954 Israel’s army intelligence section conceived a plan to attack British personnel seconded to King Hussein’s government in Jordan. The purpose was to sour relations between Britain and Jordan as well as between both Jordan and Britain on the one hand and Egypt, which would be blamed for such attacks.

Shortly afterward, the same Israeli army intelligence organization activated two networks of Egyptian Jews first established in 1948. These young people had been recruited in Egypt, secretly trained in Israel, and then sent back to their homes in Cairo and Alexandria to await orders to carry out acts of sabotage in case of war between Egypt and Israel.

Now the networks were to explode small incendiary bombs in American installations in Egypt, presumably to set off a chain of mutual recriminations to spoil the budding Eisenhower-Nasser courtship. After completing their sabotage of American installations, the same networks next were to bomb public places in Cairo and Alexandria, actions that Nasser would attribute to the Muslim Brotherhood, which supported the deposed General Naguib, and thus create a climate of Egyptian instability during the British-Egyptian Canal Zone negotiations.

An Israeli spymaster posing as a German businessman was sent to Cairo to set the plan in motion. On July 14, 1954, while French-influenced Egyptians celebrated Bastille Day as a symbol of the overthrow of monarchies both in France and in Egypt, incendiary devices exploded in U.S. Information Service libraries and consular offices open to the public in both Cairo and Alexandria.

Although the resulting small fires caused minor property damage, there were no casualties and none of the U.S. government buildings targeted were destroyed. The sabotage of U.S. installations alerted Egyptian police, however. They assigned special patrols to crowded public places in both cities.

Nine days later, on July 23, during Egyptian commemoration of the second anniversary of its revolution, members of the Israeli sabotage network took firebombs to the Cairo railway station and to movie theaters in Cairo and Alexandria.

As one of the young Egyptian Jews, Philippe Nathanson, stood in front of an Alexandria theater, the incendiary device he was carrying ignited prematurely. After bystanders beat out the fire in his clothing, a policeman took him into custody for questioning about the fire that witnesses said had begun in his pocket.

Within days 11 persons were in custody. They included all members of both the Cairo and Alexandria sabotage networks and an additional Israeli spy who was not a part of either network. Only the Israeli spymaster who had set the plain in motion escaped, leading members of competing Israeli intelligence services to question for years afterward why the plan’s instigator had been able to slip out of Egypt, but another Israeli agent, whose identity was known to the instigator, was caught.

Extinguishing Hopes of Moderation

Although the sabotage plan misfired, literally, it succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its Israeli planners in extinguishing all hopes of moderation—not in Egypt but in Israel. The arrested provocateurs were brought to trial in Cairo on Dec. 11, 1954. Among them was an Egyptian Jewish girl, Victorine Ninio, who had to be assisted into the courtroom after she reportedly twice tried to commit suicide while under Egyptian interrogation. The unaffiliated spy, Max Bennett, had been more successful in avoiding interrogation. The Egyptian press reported he had killed himself with a rusty nail pried from his cell door.

As the trial opened, the Israeli press reported emotionally the details of what it assumed to be a show trial on baseless charges intended to terrorize remnants of Egypt’s once large Jewish community. Assuming the same thing, British and French political leaders begged Nasser in vain to halt the proceedings.

Seemingly most indignant of all was the first moderate prime minister in Israel’s brief history, Moshe Sharett. According to Israeli journalists Derogy and Carmel, Sharett’s indignation was not feigned. This, they maintain, was because when his Egyptian Jewish agents were exposed, the Israeli army intelligence chief, Col. Benjamin Gibli, carefully covered his own tracks.

Although there were others in the chain of command who knew the truth, Gibli’s immediate superior, Gen. Moshe Dayan, seems to have assisted Gibli in assuring that blame for the operation would fall on Dayan’s own direct superior, Defense Minister Pinchas Lavon. Lavon, like Sharett, according to the Israeli journalists, may have known little or nothing about the plan to drive a wedge between Egypt and the West by torching U.S. government facilities in Cairo and Alexandria.

In any case, on Dec. 12, 1954, the second day of the Cairo trial, Sharett angrily denounced “these calumnies designed to strike at the Jews of Egypt.” Later, when death sentences were handed down against some of the conspirators, Sharett vowed, “We will not negotiate in the shadow of the gallows.”

At that moment, the separate Eisenhower, Ben-Gurion and Sharett efforts to establish indirect contacts leading to Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations all began to unravel. Egyptians, angry at the seeming hypocrisy of the Israeli prime minister’s scathing denials of actions that clearly had originated with the Israeli government, began breaking off contacts.

By Jan. 20, 1955, two of the conspirators had been hanged in Egypt and hopes among moderates for an Israeli-Egyptian rapprochement died with them. Blamed by Sharett’s political rival, Ben-Gurion, for the botched plot, Lavon resigned on Feb. 7 and was replaced as defense minister by Ben-Gurion later in the month.

Ben-Gurion immediately initiated drastic military actions against Egypt. These included a massive Israeli incursion into the Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip, and the assassination by letter bomb of an Egyptian officer the Israelis said was directing guerrilla raids into Israel from Gaza.

Shaken by the Gaza raid, which he had been powerless to stop, Nasser turned to the U.S. with a request for $27 million in arms. Mindful of a 1950 agreement with Britain and France to maintain an arms balance between Israel and the Arabs, and confident that Egypt was short of funds, the U.S. informed Nasser that he would have to pay cash for the arms.

“Our attitude may, with the advantage of hindsight, appear to have been unrealistic,” Eisenhower wrote later. It was.

The Soviet Union offered Nasser arms for Egyptian cotton instead of cash. Nasser, however, was not eager to loosen ties with the West.

Then, in September 1955, shortly before elections which brought Ben-Gurion back into the prime ministership, Israeli troops raided another Egyptian outpost. This time Nasser accepted Soviet-brokered Czechoslovak arms on barter terms. This set off a punitive move by the United States, which questioned Nasser’s ability, with his cotton and rice crops mortgaged, to repay loans he was seeking from the World Bank to build what became the Aswan High Dam.

The Soviets in turn offered to finance the dam, while the Israelis began pressing their major supplier, France, and the U.S. for arms to offset those being supplied to Egypt. Seeing things were getting out of hand, the U.S. again tried to initiate secret contacts.

This time President Eisenhower’s emissary was his close friend, former Secretary of the Navy Robert Anderson, who shuttled via various European countries between Nasser and Ben-Gurion. Nasser insisted that a personal meeting was unthinkable in the current bitter political climate. Ben-Gurion insisted that only in a face-to-face meeting could he reveal the full extent of the concessions Israel was prepared to deliver.

By February 1956 the Anderson mission had failed, the Egyptians were receiving their Soviet-brokered arms, and Israel, after its arms request was refused by the U.S., was receiving secret deliveries of French aircraft, tanks and munitions.

There followed the withdrawal by U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, largely as a result of Israeli lobbying in Congress, of U.S. funding for the Aswan High Dam. Nasser, in turn, nationalized the British- and French-owned Suez Canal.

That triggered the buildup toward the Oct. 29, 1956 Israeli-French-British attack, only days before the U.S. national election, on Egypt and the Suez Canal. That in turn was followed by Eisenhower’s successful demands that Britain and France abandon their attempt to take back the Canal by military force, and that Israel withdraw from the Egyptian territory it had seized. It was the first and only attempt to link U.S. aid to Israel to a peace settlement until 35 years later in 1991, when the administration of President George Bush tied U.S. loan guarantees sought by Israel to a freeze on Israeli settlements in occupied territories.

The 1954 Israeli plot and coverup that set in motion events leading up to the 1956 Suez War became known as the “Haessek Habish” (Ugly Affair) to Israeli journalists, who have written thousands of words about the coverup, but very little to reveal that the original “security mishap” for which so many Israeli officials sought to evade responsibility had been a sabotage attempt against U.S. diplomatic and cultural offices in Egypt.

Even worse has been the obfuscation in the mainstream American press. Because the affair lingered on for a decade as a running sore in Israeli political life, it could not be ignored. As it took on a life of its own, U.S. and British journalists began calling it the “Lavon Affair.”

Forged Documents and Perjured Testimony

The reason was that Ben-Gurion had hounded Defense Minister Pinchas Lavon from office on the basis of what later were revealed to be forged documents and perjured testimony. Among Ben-Gurion political protegés subsequently implicated in the manufacture of the false evidence were Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, both of whom later became fixtures of Israeli Labor Coalition governments.

Lavon, however, eventually was rehabilitated. His by then embittered and irascible persecutor, David Ben-Gurion, twice had to leave public office, the last time in 1964, because of the Lavon Affair. Four years later, four surviving Egyptian Jewish provocateurs, including Victorine Ninio and the luckless Nathanson, were released to Israel by Egypt as part of the general exchange of prisoners which took place after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Their arrival in Israel received low-key coverage in the Israeli press and virtually none in the U.S., reflecting the shameful dereliction of the mainstream American media coverage of the story from the beginning. Years after the event, The New York Times finally described in its back pages the real nature of the sabotage operation.

Generally, however, U.S. newspapers continued describing “the Lavon Affair” as a series of internal Israeli government investigations of a highly classified, unspecified “security mishap.” To this day, few American journalists know, or will admit to knowing, about this first detected instigation by the Israel Defense Forces and intelligence agencies of anti-American incidents in preparation for an attack by Israel on its Arab neighbors.

This report was adapted from Chapter Six of A Changing Image: American Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute by Richard H. Curtiss, which is available from the AET Book Club. Mr. Curtiss, executive editor of the Washington Report, was an officer of the U.S. Information Agency at the time of the Israeli firebombing of its libraries in Cairo and Alexandria.

July 6, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

The deceptive rhetoric of “Invest for Peace”

By Charlotte Silver, The Electronic Intifada, 6 July 2010

The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is gaining significant momentum cross the United States and Europe, including at US campuses. In response, opposition to the movement is devising new ways to divert attention from efforts to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law and flagrant abuses of Palestinian human rights.

At Stanford University, the school I graduated from last year, the Stanford Israel Alliance has created a counter-divestment campaign called “Invest For Peace.” Cloaked in the language of good intentions, Invest For Peace suggests that their campaign will work to uplift Palestinian society and economy by raising money to invest in micro-finance organizations in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Their mission states that in contrast to divestment, Invest For Peace makes positive contributions that “move beyond counterproductive rhetoric.” Invest For Peace calls for campus unity by suggesting it aspires to the same goal as the divestment movements, but by different means. This campaign muddies the issue by conflating the goals of campus unity and advancing justice, not to mention aligning itself with the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The goal of divestment is to expose Israel’s oppressive policies and bring pressure to bear on Israel to end them. Stanford’s Invest For Peace campaign utterly denies Israel’s integral role in the debilitation of the Palestinian economy and therefore can have no credibility as a force to ameliorate the conflict. It ignores the fact that Israel has systematically and deliberately devastated Palestinian civil and economic society through its decades of usurpation of resources and military occupation.

The similarity in rhetoric between Invest for Peace and the Netanyahu government is conspicuous. Last year, Netanyahu called for an “economic peace” with the Palestinians, as opposed to a peace based on negotiations, rights and justice. In spite of his talk of improving the standard of living among Palestinians, Netanyahu has continued and expanded Israel’s policy of building settlements on Palestinian land in violation of international law while the siege of Gaza enters its 36th month. Netanyahu’s talk of an “economic peace” is empty rhetoric designed to disguise nefarious policies.

Moreover, investing in micro-finance organizations while demanding continued unquestioned US aid to Israel and its military is like dropping a quarter in someone’s tin cup after you’ve chopped off her hands. When Israel disconnects Palestinian orange groves from their water supplies, uproots its olive trees and cuts Gaza off from any potential trade, it commits intentional acts of destruction to the Palestinian economy. Invest For Peace speaks of the deterioration of the Palestinian economy as though it were a natural disaster, without specific and man-made origins, designed to ensure Palestinian economic dependency and penury.

In her book Failing Peace and other works, Harvard’s Sara Roy chronicles the deterioration of the Palestinian economy as it relates directly to Israel’s occupation and control of trade and borders. Roy identifies Israel’s imposition of closure policies as well as its division of Palestinian land as the principle culprits of the rapidly declining Palestinian economy. She states that “The result is de-development — a process I define as the deliberate, systematic and progressive dismemberment of an indigenous economy by a dominant one, where economic — and by extension — societal-potential is not only distorted but denied.”

Roy is not alone in her assessment. The World Bank has indicted Israel’s system of checkpoints, roadblocks, and obstructions to Palestinian movement as the chief source of the decaying economic life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In a 2007 report entitled “Movement and Access Restrictions in the West Bank,” the World Bank called for an overhaul in Israel’s treatment of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, prescribing “a fundamental reassessment of closure practices, a restoration of the presumption of movement, and review of Israeli control of the population registry and other means of dictating the residency of Palestinians” (“West Bank Restrictions,” [PDF]).

Considering the brutality of Israeli policies and the clear effects they have on the Palestinian economy, it is hard to take seriously the Invest For Peace campaign’s assertion that it is seeking to take “effective action” to remediate poverty in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. In an op-ed published by the Stanford Daily, Stanford student and member of the Stanford Israel Alliance and Invest For Peace, Yishai Kabaker argued that “In my experience with divestment when applied to this conflict, damage is wrought, but nothing positive comes of it.” He added: “In the past, divestment campaigns helped combat apartheid in South Africa and genocide in Darfur. However, the divestment campaign against Israel is a crass bludgeon, which reduces an incredibly complex situation to euphemisms and demonizations” (“We Choose to Invest,” 4 May 2010). Yet, the dissolution of Israel’s policies is precisely the “positive” outcome that divestment campaigns intend to achieve.

Historically, Israel-allied groups have inhibited Palestinian solidarity groups from gaining prominence on college campuses across the country. But that time is ending. The astonishing mobilization and collaboration that divestment efforts at schools like UC Berkeley, Hampshire College and Evergreen State College are generating reflect the broad support for divestment and the success that it will eventually achieve. Public opinion is catching up to the radical reality of Israeli policies in Palestine. The train for BDS has left the station, and you’re not going to catch it if you’re running in the opposite direction.

Charlotte Silver, a litigation assistant at the American Civil Liberties Union, can be reached at charlottesilver A T gmail D O T com.

July 6, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

France probes US submarine link to fishing boat sinking

BBC | July 2, 2010

An investigation into claims that a US nuclear submarine accidentally sank a French fishing boat in 2004, killing five sailors, is to be reopened.

A French appeals court appointed two magistrates to relaunch a probe into the loss of the Bugaled Breizh off the Cornish coast in January 2004.

In particular, they have been asked to try and identify what US submarines were in the vicinity at the time.

The sinking happened a day before Nato military exercises began in the area.

Submarine expert Dominiques Salles said in May the sinking could have been caused by a US nuclear attack submarine.

He suggested the sub may have been spying on a top secret consignment of military grade plutonium, shipped from the French port of Cherbourg to Japan on board a British nuclear transport vessel.

An inquiry in 2008 concluded a nuclear submarine snagging the boat’s trawl was the “highly probable cause” of the sinking, but the judges recommended the investigation be wound up, with no guilty party traced.

Mr Salles’ findings were submitted in a report that had been commissioned by appeal judges in Rennes last November.

The 72ft (23m) Bugaled Breizh, which means “child of Brittany” in Breton, was based at the small port of Loctudy.

July 6, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | Leave a comment

No UK ban on refueling Iran planes

Press TV – July 6, 2010

No ban has been imposed on refueling Iranian planes in British airports, an informed source in Iran Air’s Britain and Ireland office says.

“No limitation has been placed on the refueling of Iranian passenger planes in Britain so far. The Iranian flights to London are being conducted regularly and on a daily basis and Iran National Airlines Company conducts three direct flights to Tehran and one direct flight to Shiraz (from London) each week,” the informed source told IRNA on Monday.

“No unusual behavior by the companies providing fuel for Iranian planes has been observed so far. Iran Air Lines Company, however, is fully ready to encounter any likely limitations in this regard,” the source added.

The remarks came in reaction to some media reports indicating that the airports in the Untied Arab Emirates (UAE), Germany and Britain have refused to refuel Iranian planes following the ratification of unilateral US sanctions against Iran.

The Emirati and German airport officials, however, dismissed the reports on Monday, saying they continue refueling Iranian planes with no limitations.

“The countries, which are keen to counter the Islamic Republic, have spared no efforts over the past 30 years to impede Iran’s air transportation. Following the Islamic Revolution, we have been constantly entangled by limitations and setbacks, but fortunately these hampering efforts have been to no avail as the enemies had expected,” the source continued.

According to some media reports, the United States has violated international laws by exerting pressure on some companies in Germany, Kuwait and the UAE so that they would not provide Iranian passenger planes with fuel.

July 6, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Undercover ‘agent provocateurs’ assault man at Montreal protest

Police “agent provocateurs” attempt to infiltrate family-friendly march in Montreal

CLAC| 3 July 2010

Montreal: A man arrested at Thursday’s march against police repression around the G20 Summit has come forward to reveal that he was assaulted by undercover “agents provocateurs” when he attempted to film them.

While 1,000 Montrealers, including many parents with young children, marched to denounce the abusive police treatment of G20 protestors, Montreal police apparently attempted to introduce agent provocateurs into the march. The provocateurs were spotted trying to enter the march on Sherbrooke Street, but were forced out by attentive march organizers.

“They were big guys, looking like thugs. In fact, they looked very much like the police provocateurs who were caught on video carrying rocks at the protest against the Security and Prosperity Partnership in Montebello, Quebec in August 2007,” stated Scott Weinstein, who decided to bicycle over to film the group when informed of their presence.

When he caught up to them, the provocateurs were walking one block east of the march, on St-Dominique, parallel to most of the children and babies who tended to be near the end of the march.

“The police had no business playing these games and threatening violence, especially when so many children were present,” explained Weinstein, a health care worker and photographer. “Their strategy is totally unacceptable.”

The group quickly surrounded Weinstein, grabbed him and attempted to take his camera from him. He refused to let go. They dragged Weinstein to the sidewalk and kneed him until he could no longer hold onto the camera. “I knew they wanted to erase the evidence, especially since I didn’t hide I was filming them. I made sure not to touch them, instead I tried to protect myself in a fetal position and screamed for help.”

Janet Cleveland, a psychologist, was leaving the march and returning home when she heard screams. “I saw 5 or 6 burly young guys dressed in black forming a tight circle around someone, holding his hands behind his back and pushing his face to the pavement while he screamed for help. It was scary – my first thought was that they might be skinheads beating somebody up. There was no way to tell the difference. But they told me that they were police and that I should stay away.”

Cleveland stayed to watch as Weinstein was forced into a police car and then alerted Quebec Solidaire MPP Amir Khadir, who also attended the march. Khadir intervened with the police immediately after the arrest to denounce the arbitrary, abusive and illegal character of Weinstein’s arrest.

“Quebec citizens expect the police to respect the democratic rights of people who demonstrate”, stated Khadir. “Dissent and opposition are not only permitted in this country, but must also be protected and celebrated. I am particularly proud of people like Scott who protest peacefully to denounce the abuse and violence of police repression in Toronto. It is unacceptable that Montreal police use the same tricks that led to the excesses of the security agencies in Toronto,” he stated.

Three police ethics commission reports in April 2010 found that filming the police is legal.

Weinstein was released the same evening but faces bogus charges of assault with a weapon. According to a police spokesperson, his bicycle was the weapon. However, as events revealed, Weinstein’s real “weapon” was his camera: when police returned it to him, all video and photo material had been erased.

Luckily for Weinstein, a bystander caught the incident on camera and posted it to youtube. Weinstein is trying to get in touch with this person:

For further information, contact:
– Scott Weinstein: (514) 289-9989
– Spokesperson for CLAC 2010: (438) 838 8498

Police Ethics Commission Rulings on Filming Police:

http://jugements.qc.ca/php/decision.php?liste=45617947&doc=21265E5E3D3C4EEDAF5B8F50023F3B6EBA1C510F427BB898105BC397EFC213D4&page=1

http://jugements.qc.ca/php/decision.php?liste=45617947&doc=53DE6CB364020E72678196DA1926A95A187D499C9EADAEA4594622F24D46B82B&page=1

http://jugements.qc.ca/php/decision.php?liste=45617956&doc=F63319E4EFDB8CFFBC5B891A6C73B29C5C138DFDD090E6FBDFC994F9E67BF84B

July 3, 2010 Posted by | Aletho News, Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Waxman Malarkey 4: Impact Zone Ireland

July 1, 2010 by Willis Eschenbach

In part 4 of this series, I take a look at the Waxman Markey claims about the Emerald Isle, Impact Zone Ireland. My previous analyses of the same site were Waxman Malarkey: Impact Zone US Northeast, Australia, and Alaska.

Having run short of other scares, the W/M folks want to convince us that Ireland is facing a simultaneous drought and flood … it’s the alarmist’s dream, the universal disaster:

Figure 1. Our future according to Waxman-Markey

How does that work?

Here’s their claim:

THE MISTY ISLAND DRIES OUT

Irish citizens have access to 5 times as much fresh water as the average European. High measures of annual rainfall and low evaporation rates have left a legacy of short coastal streams on peat covered hills and a maze of bogs and lakes along flood-prone inland rivers. However, this legacy may be broken as climate change could yield too much water in some places at some times and too little of it in other places at the same time. Scientists predict that by 2050 winter rainfall will increase by 12 percent and summer rainfall will decline by the same percentage.

…

Most of the current primary crops in Ireland are already showing evidence of decline. The potato in particular is highly dependant on adequate water supply so it may cease being a commercially viable crop. It is difficult to comprehend that the potato, a part of the landscape so intertwined in Ireland’s culture and history, may not feature strongly in its future.

With hotter, drier summers reducing the summer water supply in inland areas, water accessibility, which currently isn’t necessary for the majority of Irish farming, may necessitate the development of new irrigation systems, which will compete with industrial and residential water demands.

Let me take these claims one at a time. First:

Irish citizens have access to 5 times as much fresh water as the average European.

The citation to this is a site called “Irish Climate”. I do not find any support for the “5 times as much fresh water” claim there … or anywhere. But then “Irish Climate” is a strange site, chock full of unverified claims and alarmist scenarios. In addition, their advertising scheme is to drop ads for things like “Online Slots” into the text at random. I was particularly taken with this one:

So yeah, too bad that things could maybe kinda change in Ireland…it’s not like in Africa, where they had it sooooo good until global warming and then BAM! Online Slots! Suddenly people were poor and starving and sick and illiterate and slaving under corrupt and brutal gangs posing as governments and religions. All since, like, 2006 or so, when the media and corporate and political world started using hip words like ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ to prove that Things Were Being Done.

I never knew online slot machines could cause so much damage. (I disabled the link in that quotation from the site, to prevent further child deaths). But I digress …

I find no scientific support for the “5 times” claim. Actually, I was surprised when I looked into the famous Irish rain to find that the island only gets about about 1.1 metres (46″) of rain per year. So are they saying that Europeans are only getting a fifth of that (230 mm, or 9″) of rain per year? No way. So what do they mean? The world wonders.

In any case, my investigation of the Irish rain leads me to their second claim, that:

However, this legacy may be broken as climate change could yield too much water in some places at some times and too little of it in other places at the same time. Scientists predict that by 2050 winter rainfall will increase by 12 percent and summer rainfall will decline by the same percentage.

“Scientists predict”? I doubt it. Ireland is a postage stamp sized country, there’s no climate model in the world that claims accuracy at that small a scale. And climate models do very poorly at predicting rainfall in any case. So let’s look at some data. Figure 2 shows two different rainfall datasets, once again from the marvelous KNMI site.

Figure 2. Historical Irish rainfall for summer (March-August) and winter (September-February) for the area bounded by 50°-55°N, 5°-10°W.

As you can see, there is no trend in Irish rainfall, either in the summer or the winter. So once again their claims are nothing but alarmists crying wolf.

Next, let’s look at their claim that:

Most of the current primary crops in Ireland are already showing evidence of decline. The potato in particular is highly dependant on adequate water supply so it may cease being a commercially viable crop. It is difficult to comprehend that the potato, a part of the landscape so intertwined in Ireland’s culture and history, may not feature strongly in its future.

The site for investigating claims like this one is marvelous UN FAOSTAT site.  It contains every agricultural statistic imaginable. It shows that 90% of Ireland’s crop production (by tonnage) is in five crops – barley, oats, wheat, potatoes, and sugar beets. Here is the production of those crops since 1961, the start of the FAO database:

Figure 3. Production of the five main Irish crops. The sugar beet data ends in 2005, with the other datasets going to 2008.

So is potato production dropping as they claim? Most definitely … but not because of any change in the rainfall. It has been dropping since the start of the record. Why? Because farmers plant what they can make the most money on for the least effort and risk. Farmers aren’t fools.

Note also that the total production of the five main crops has not changed in half a century. This shows that, rather than Irish production decreasing because of any change in climate, all that is happening is the farmers are shifting from one crop to another.

There is another way to see if the changes in food production are climate related. This is to look at the yields of the crops. “Yield” is the amount of the foodstuff which is produced per hectare. Figure 4 shows the change in yields over a half century:

Figure 4. Crop yields for the main Irish crops

If changes in the climate were affecting the crops, we would see a reduction in the yields. Instead of seeing that, we see that the yield of every one of the crops has been increasing over the period. So whatever has been convincing the Irish farmers to change their mix of crops, it hasn’t been the climate.

Finally, further down on the page, the Waxman Markey site makes the following claim:

The Irish landscape faces many pressures from global warming that will result in visual changes to vegetation and land use. Losses of habitat vital to many species of flora and fauna and the stability of the landscape itself will change due to greater weather extremes.   Arable land in particular regions of the country will continue to grow fields of wheat, barley, and corn as climate changes. In other regions, however, with the emergence of warmer and dryer summers, brown fields of grass during the summer months will become much more common.

The curlew, a beloved Irish bird known for its distinct cry, is endangered by climate change.

But even a rabid AGW carbon control site like the Conservation Volunteers of Northern Ireland doesn’t believe that. They say (emphasis mine):

Threats to the Curlew

There has been a rapid decline in the population of breeding curlew in Northern Ireland over the last 25 years. The most recent survey in 1999 suggested that breeding pairs have declined by 58% since 1988. This rapid decline has been reflected in other parts of the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

The decline of the curlew is linked to the loss of their wetland habitat mainly through more intense agricultural practices, drainage of wetland areas and overgrazing by livestock. It is thought that curlews are now more vulnerable to predation and this is having a further impact on their population. As the birds nest on the ground, they are vulnerable to recent increases in predators such as foxes and crows. The poor survival rate of young birds is known to be a key factor in the decline of curlew.

In Northern Ireland, the curlew is a legitimate quarry species during the open season, although it is thought that the numbers shot are very small. It is fully protected elsewhere in the UK.

Summary: The claimed future changes in Irish rainfall have no scientific validity. The changes in potato production are unconnected to the climate. Agricultural production is not declining. The drop in numbers of the curlew is due to drainage of wetlands. And once again, the Waxman site contains nothing but malarkey.

July 3, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

‘Israel prisoner swap proposal deceiving’

Press TV – July 2, 2010

Hamas has rejected a prisoner swap proposal by the Israeli premier as deceitful, saying the movement wants the release of all the prisoners it has named in exchange for a captured Israeli soldier.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a live address on Thursday said that Tel Aviv was willing to release 1,000 prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit.

Shalit was arrested by Palestinian fighters in a cross border operation in June 2006, after he had infiltrated into Palestinian territory.

Netanyahu said he has agreed to the German mediation, which called for the release of 1,000 prisoners in exchange for Shalit, adding that he was “ready for immediate implementation.”

The hawkish prime minister said, however, that Israel would not meet any demand from Hamas, which has disclosed the list of 1,000 prisoners it wants released.

Netanyahu said he would not agree to the release of some 450 high-profile prisoners because they “will greatly strengthen Hamas’s leadership.”

Hamas, in response, said it was important as to who would be released and not how many. “Netanyahu is trying to delude Israeli public opinion and deceive the people,” said Ayman Taha, a senior Hamas spokesman.

In the past negotiations, Taha said, Israel had rejected most of those named by Hamas it wants released.

July 2, 2010 Posted by | Deception | Leave a comment

Waxman Malarkey 3: Impact Zone Alaska

June 30, 2010 by Willis Eschenbach

Once again, I return to that endless font of misinformation, the Waxman Markey website. In this case, I look at their claims about Alaska. This one will be short and sweet. Their claim is that Alaska is roasting, as in the picture below:

Figure 1. The dessert known as “flaming baked Alaska”. Ice cream covered with meringue, doused with brandy, and set on fire. Sweet.

The Waxman Markey website page on Alaska  says:

Over the past 50 years, Alaska has warmed by 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit, much more than anywhere in the lower 48 states.  This dramatic temperature change is causing the landscape of Alaska to change faster than anywhere else in the United States, threatening infrastructure, wildlife, and Native Alaskan culture.

I fear that these numbers must be from the well-known Government Misinformation Agency.

Figure 2 shows the real numbers:

Figure 2. Alaskan temperatures, as the average of all first-order stations in the state.

There are a few things we can see here. First, Fig. 1 clearly shows the dependence of Alaska temperatures on the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The PDO is a long-term shift in Pacific sea surface temperatures. The PDO has a warm phase and a cool phase, as shown in Figure 3. It shifts from one phase to the other every thirty years or so.

Figure 3. Cool (positive) and warm (negative) phases of the PDO. IMAGE SOURCE

The PDO shifted to the cool phase in the late 1940s. It went back to the warm phase in 1976-77. And recently, it has gone back to the cool phase. This is clearly visible in the Alaska temperatures. As much as Waxman Markey wants to blame the shift in Alaskan temperatures on “global warming”, the science says otherwise. The changes are due to the shifts in the PDO.

Second, their claim that Alaska has “warmed by 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit” is not true. The largest trend to 2009 in the Alaska temperatures is 1954-2009, which is 3.24 degrees.

I also note that they are using a very different period from the one they used in their claims about the US Northeast, where they used the trend from “the 1970′s”. Obviously, they are picking their time period to exaggerate their claims …

The main point here is that because the PDO gives Alaska warm periods and cool periods, it is meaningless to use any trend starting from a cool period and ending in a warm period, or vice versa. Yes, you can get a positive trend from anywhere on the left half of the graph to anywhere on the right side of the graph … but that doesn’t tell us anything about what’s happening.

Short and sweet.

July 1, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Doubts Grow In Whistle-blower “Suicide”

By Alex Newman | New American | 30 June 2010

New revelations in the suspicious “suicide” death of whistle-blower Dr. David Kelly point even more strongly to the possibility of murder and a subsequent cover-up, according to an explosive investigation by the British newspaper Daily Mail.

David Kelly served as a United Nations weapons-of-mass-destruction inspector in Iraq and as a scientist for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense. He was widely considered the world’s foremost expert in chemical and biological weapons, even serving as a proof reader on the British government’s intelligence report about Iraqi WMDs. He disagreed with some of the claims and told his superiors, but was ignored.

Seven years ago, a strange saga began when Kelly sparked a massive scandal. He leaked details of the government’s WMD lies — used to justify invading Iraq — to various journalists. His identity was eventually revealed as the source, and Parliament called him to testify for an investigation it was conducting into the explosive allegations. Then, before he could reveal even more devastating secrets, he turned up dead.

The government, led by Prime Minister Tony Blair, immediately quashed the regular coroner’s inquest — a legal requirement in cases like this. Instead, it set up a much weaker “inquiry,” headed by Lord Hutton, into the untimely death.

But as soon as the “investigation” concluded that Kelly’s demise was a “suicide” caused by a self-inflicted knife wound, the media began picking the story apart, pointing out inconsistencies and asking tough questions that still have not been answered satisfactorily — if they were addressed at all. The inquiry has been labeled a “whitewash” and a “cover-up” by numerous media outlets, investigators, doctors, and researchers.

The two paramedics who were at the scene of Kelly’s body went public with their belief that a severed artery was not the cause of death, as the official report had claimed. “I just think it is incredibly unlikely that he died from the wrist wound we saw,” paramedic Vanessa Hunt told the British press. “There just wasn’t a lot of blood. When someone cuts an artery, whether accidentally or intentionally, the blood pumps everywhere.” The other paramedic offered a similar analysis.

A team of concerned scientists and doctors also banded together to form the “Kelly Investigation Group.” They, too, believed there were serious deficiencies in the inquiry, saying the official conclusion was “highly improbable.”

“Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life-threatening blood loss,” three members of the group, all medical specialists, wrote in a letter to the Guardian newspaper calling for the inquest to be re-opened. “To have died from haemorrhage [sic], Dr Kelly would have had to lose about five pints of blood — it is unlikely that he would have lost more than a pint.”

The team also noted that the alleged amount of pain pills Kelly was said to have ingested would not have contributed to his death. Only a part of one tablet was actually found in his stomach.

Adding more doubt to the official story, documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request showed there were no finger prints on the knife Kelly supposedly used to kill himself.

“Someone who wanted to kill themselves wouldn’t go to the lengths of wiping the knife clean of fingerprints,” said British Minister of Parliament and current Transportation Secretary Norman Baker, who wrote a book about Kelly claiming he was killed because he might reveal more about the lies used in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. “It is just very suspicious. It is one of the things that makes me think Dr. Kelly was murdered. The case should be re-opened.”

A police spokesperson acknowledged the lack of fingerprints, but said it  “does not change the official explanation.”

Suspicions in the case grew even more after it was revealed earlier this year that documents in the official investigation had been secretly classified by the British government for an astonishing 70 years, an unprecedented move that fanned the flames of skepticism. All medical, scientific, and photographic records were totally sealed by Lord Hutton, including the post mortem.

“This inexplicable secrecy can excite only suspicion that the authorities have something very bad indeed to hide,” noted Melanie Phillips in a report for the Daily Mail. “I myself have met people familiar with the shadowy world in which Dr Kelly moved who are certain he was murdered.” Another Daily Mail article reported that the legal basis for the gag order “has baffled experts accustomed to such matters.”

Researchers have raised countless problems with the “official” story — too many to go over in detail in one article. But some of the new information collected by the Daily Mail in a more recent article entitled “Dr David Kelly: The damning new evidence that points to a cover-up by Tony Blair’s government” is worth recounting.

“Our new revelations include the ambiguous nature of the wording on Dr Kelly’s death certificate; the existence of an anonymous letter which says his colleagues were warned to stay away from his funeral; and an extraordinary claim that the wallpaper at Dr Kelly’s home was stripped by police in the hours after he was reported missing – but before his body was found,” the paper reported, noting that its “rigorous and thorough investigation” had “turned up evidence which raises still more disturbing questions.”

The death certificate, only recently obtained, used peculiar wording in the box meant for entering the place of death. Instead of naming it, the certificate said Kelly was “found dead” at Harrowdown Hill. Experts say the wording alone is enough to open another investigation, especially since there are numerous other irregularities involving the location of Kelly’s body (like heat-sensing helicopters that, based on the official story, should have found the body when flying over).

The death certificate also states that a coroner’s inquest was performed. But it wasn’t. It also lacks a doctor’s or coroner’s signature, something all death certificates in the U.K. are required to have.

“This death certificate is evidence of a failure properly to examine the cause of Dr Kelly’s death. It is evidence of a pre-judgment of the issue. In a coroner’s inquest the cause of death would not be registered until the whole inquiry had been completed. As we see here, the cause of death was registered before the Hutton Inquiry had finished,” said former coroner and law expert Dr. Michael Powers QC, who aims to have a thorough investigation conducted.

“This is remarkable,” he told the paper. “To my mind it is evidence that the inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death was window-dressing because the conclusion had already been determined.”

On top of the Hutton Inquiry’s many obvious shortcomings, a letter received last month by one of the doctors involved in the Kelly Investigation Group claims Kelly’s colleagues were warned not to attend his funeral. Kelly’s widow also said police came to the house and tore off wallpaper, possibly searching for listening devices, shortly after Kelly was reported missing, but prior to the discovery of his body. Authorities refuse to comment on the allegation.

The doctors investigating the suspicious death said “concern about Dr Kelly’s death will continue to deepen until a full coroner’s inquest is heard,” the Daily Mail reported, adding that if such an inquest is performed, Tony Blair might well be expected to testify about why he “went to such lengths to avoid the normal, rigorous and respected course of this country’s law.”

Concluding, the paper noted that Blair’s reputation, as well as the reputation of the British legal system, will continue to suffer until a proper investigation is conducted, which “is the only way the whole truth about the Kelly affair, however uncomfortable, will emerge.”

Now, after all these years, there are hints that the truth may finally come out. The new British Attorney General announced earlier this month that he is considering re-opening the investigation. Meanwhile, the new Justice Secretary is reportedly contemplating releasing some of the records in the case that currently remain classified. Whether it will happen has been a matter of intense speculation in the British press, but if these crucial questions are ever to be resolved, a proper investigation is a must.

July 1, 2010 Posted by | Deception | Leave a comment

Waxman-Malarkey: Impact Zone US Northeast

By Willis Eschenbach | June 29, 2010

In the US House of Representatives, there is something curiously yclept the “Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming” despite the lack of connection between the energy independence and warming. They have a very professionally done website, filled with some of the most outrageous misrepresentations imaginable. It is designed to promote the “Waxman-Markey” cap and trade carbon tax bill by means of the historically tried and tested “Big Lie” method, viz:

All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true within itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

I’m going to take the website’s misrepresentations one at a time, as time permits. The first one is from a page entitled “Impact Zone – U.S. New England“, which contains this lovely photograph designed to tug at the heartstrings:

Figure 1. Photo of maple trees in New England, professionally chosen for maximum emotional impact.

The accompanying text says (emphasis mine):

Global Warming in New England: Slushier Slopes and Faded Foliage

Life and economic activity across New England is marked by the seasons – maple sugaring in the spring, trips to the beach in the summer, the riot of color of the fall foliage, and the swoosh of skis and skates in the winter. This familiar cycle is already changing in noticeable ways.

Changing seasons

Since the 1970′s average winter temperatures have risen more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit in the Northeast region. If the current rate of heat-trapping emissions continues, by 2070 summers in Boston will feel like those of South Carolina today. By the end of the century, temperatures could rise up to 14 degrees Fahrenheit in the region. Cities across New England, which historically experience only one or two days per year above 100 degrees each summer, could average 20 such days per summer, while more southern cities such as Hartford could average nearly 30 days.

The character of the seasons will change significantly. Spring could arrive three weeks earlier, with summer lengthening by about three weeks, autumn becoming warmer and drier, and winter becoming shorter and milder.

So what’s wrong with that?

Well, once we note the conjectures (marked by the weasel words in bold), we see that most of it is nothing but unfounded, un-cited alarmist claims about imaginary future calamities. They have presented only one claim of fact – that winter temperatures in the Northeast Region have risen by more than 4°F.

Now, the USHCN has the data for all of the states, as well as by region. The Northeast Region is the data that starts with “101″ in the first column. Figure 2 shows the temperature record for the four seasons, as well as the annual average temperature, for the Northeast Region:

Figure 2. Annual and seasonal temperatures, US Northeast Region. Photo shows winter surf in New England. PHOTO SOURCE.

As you can see, there has not been much of a change over the last 115 years in any of the seasons. The trend for all of the datasets is not significantly different from zero (winter p=0.06, spring p=0.15, summer p=0.34, fall p=0.68, annual p=0.06).

And more to the point, the winter trend over the last 40 years (1970-2009) is only 2.7°F, not the “more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit” claimed by their website. Such a swing is not surprising in a dataset such as the winter temperatures, which shows a 10 °F swing in one year, from 2001 to 2002.

But wait … there’s more. Because of the short length (40 years) and high variability of the 1970-2009 winter temperatures, the 1970-2009 trend is not significantly different from zero either (p = 0.12, a ways from significant).

SUMMARY: Their web page contains two misrepresentations of fact about US Northeast winters, two implied misrepresentations, and a big lie:

Misrepresentation of fact 1: the 1970-2009 winter temperatures have not “risen more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit”, they have risen 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. There is no rise of more than 4 °F in the winter temperature record, no matter where you start.

Misrepresentation of fact 2: the 1970-2009 winter trend is not statistically significant, so we cannot reject the null hypothesis that there is no trend at all, much less a claimed 4 °F trend.

Implied misrepresentation 1: The US Northeast winters are not warming. Over the full period of record (1895-2009), there is no statistically significant trend in the winter record.

Implied misrepresentation 2: The seasonal temperatures in the US Northeast are not warming. Over the full period of record (1895-2009), there is no statistically significant trend in the overall record for any season.

THE BIG LIE: When you look at the full record for the US Northeast, there is no statistically significant trend anywhere. Neither spring, summer, winter, fall, nor the full annual average temperatures have any statistically significant trend for the period of the study, 1895-2009. And remember, this is measured by ground stations that contain spurious UHI warming, and there still is no warming trend.

The big lie is that the US Northeast is warming. The best records that we have say that it is not.

I will examine more of the malarkey from their web site as time permits, although the statements are so obviously untrue that it’s hardly sporting. It’s like shooting fish, not in a barrel, but in a bucket …

See also:

Waxman Malarkey 2: Impact Zone Australia

July 1, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

BP Penalized for False Reporting on Tribal Lands

US Department of the Interior – 06/30/2010

The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM) announced that BP America Inc. has been assessed a civil penalty of $5.2 million for submitting “false, inaccurate, or misleading” reports for energy production that occurred on Southern Ute Indian Tribal lands in southwestern Colorado. The civil penalty announced today is not related to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“It is simply unacceptable for companies to repeatedly misreport production, particularly when it interferes with the auditing process,” said BOEM Director Michael R. Bromwich. “We are committed to collecting every dollar due from energy production that occurs on Federal and American Indian lands, and accurate reporting is crucial to that effort.”

Bromwich praised the work of Southern Ute Tribal auditors who initially discovered the errors during an audit and which the Tribe first brought to BP’s attention August 2, 2007. The Tribe’s audit was conducted as part of a cooperative agreement with BOEM’s Minerals Revenue Management program (MRM). The Tribe was instrumental in documenting the ongoing errors.

Bromwich’s sentiments were shared by Southern Ute Tribal Chairman Matthew J. Box. “The Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the MRM have had a highly successful 25-year-long audit relationship,” Box said. “Over the years, this relationship has yielded significant benefits for the Tribal membership. One of the more important aspects of the audit program is to encourage oil and gas companies to accurately report the Tribe’s royalties to the MRM.” Box added, “I appreciate the MRM’s recognition of its trust responsibility to the Tribe by assessing civil penalties when other means have failed to attain correct and accurate reporting.”

The Southern Ute Tribal auditors and MRM found that BP reported incorrect royalty rates and prices for royalty purposes, and reported well production on leases other than those to which the production is attributable.

After receiving audit issue letters and an order, the company agreed with the auditors’ concerns and repeatedly promised to correct the problems, which they attributed to errors in their automated files.

As part of its investigation, MRM and Tribal auditors examined later production reports to determine if BP had resolved the issues, as it had agreed. Bromwich said the same reporting errors were found in the later reviews, “leading us to conclude that BP’s continued submission of erroneous reports was knowing or willful.”

Bromwich said the total civil penalty is $5,189,800 through May 15, 2010. The company may challenge the civil penalty assessment through a Department of Interior hearing procedure.

June 30, 2010 Posted by | Deception | Leave a comment

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