Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Iranian reporter forced out of France

Press TV – Mar 26, 2011

Iranian journalist Kamran Najafzadeh

An Iranian journalist has been forced to leave France due to restrictions imposed on him by the French government over his so-called “controversial” reports.

“After 18-month of journalistic activities, in a joint meeting of the French Interior and Foreign Ministry they came to the conclusion that ‘the IRIBNews reporter has crossed red lines and has stirred hatred in French public opinion,’” Kamran Najafzadeh said upon his arrival in Tehran on Saturday.

Commenting on restrictions imposed on him by the French administration, Najafzadeh said, “They told me you cannot go to the Elysee Palace… then they told me you are not allowed to go to the French parliament,” Fars News Agency reported.

“If I return to France, I will once again reports on the Louvre Museum and I will ask how they (the French) acquired these antiques? I will once again report on the Eurodif nuclear plant which 10 percent of its stocks belong to Iran and I will ask where Iran’s share is?”

Tehran holds a 10 percent stake in the Eurodif nuclear plant, which makes it entitled to some of the plant’s output. France’s largest provider of nuclear equipment and services AREVA, however, announced in 2009 that it had not delivered any enriched uranium to Iran.

March 26, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Judge Cites Privacy Concerns in Rejecting Google Books Settlement

By Nicole Ozer | ACLU | March 23, 2011

What you read says a lot about what you think and believe. That’s why the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Samuelson Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, filed an objection to the proposed Google Book Search settlement on behalf of authors and readers concerned about inadequate privacy safeguards in the book service. Now a federal court has rejected that proposed settlement. In today’s court opinion, the judge wrote that “[t]he privacy concerns [with Google Book Search] are real.”

We urged the court to reject the proposed settlement unless Google took several important steps to protect user privacy:

  • Promise to protect book records from disclosure by complying with demands for information only when those demands are embodied in a search warrant or civil court order and by informing users whose records are sought as soon as legally permissible.
  • Limit tracking of users who choose to browse, read, and search books anonymously, including allowing users to use the service without registering or providing any personal information.
  • Provide user control over reading and purchasing data, including the ability to maintain privacy settings for “bookcases” and to transfer a digital book to another user without a permanent record.
  • Be transparent about the information that the service collects and maintains about users and when and why that information has been disclosed to any third party.

As we pointed out in Digital Books: A New Chapter for Reader Privacy, our recent issue paper, digital book services are growing in popularity. These services may collect detailed information about readers and the books they browse, the pages they read, and even the notes they write in the “margins.” The time is now to retain and strengthen reader privacy in the digital age and ensure that sensitive browsing and reading history does not improperly end up in the hands of the government or third parties.

To address this challenge, we are working with EFF to introduce landmark digital book privacy legislation in California. (Stay tuned!) But we need companies like Google to support these efforts — and to ensure that their digital book products protect reader privacy.

As the court noted today, Google has an opportunity to incorporate additional privacy protections into its Book Search product. Please let Google know that you demand strong reader privacy protections for the digital age by signing our petition today.

Learn more about privacy: Subscribe to our newsletter

March 24, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Israeli occupation authority decides to change curriculum in Arab schools

Palestine Information Center – 18/03/2011

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Al-Maqdese for Society Development (MSD) oganization warned that the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) took significant steps ”to take control over Arab schools and supervise the educational curriculum” in occupied Jerusalem schools.

It said the move was aimed at “Judaizing and Israelizing” the holy city of Jerusalem.

The education department in Israel’s Jerusalem municipality has recently begun implementing a new decision stating that all schools that receive allowances from it must exclusively purchase books published by the municipality, MSD reported on Thursday.

It “means that the national Palestinian curriculum currently used will be cancelled and replaced with Israeli ones, which erases the Palestinian and Arab identity from the minds of students,” MSD said.

”The decision enables Israeli authorities to supervise programs and funding, control the activities and intervene in the affairs of Arab schools in east Jerusalem,” it added.

MSD said the decision would affect at least 60 percent of Arab schools in Jerusalem.

MSD receives donations from the European union, the UN and other European rights organizations.

March 19, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Dept of Education opens investigation into anti-Semitism at UC Santa Cruz following events protesting the occupation

By Adam Horowitz | Mondoweiss | March 17, 2011

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights will investigate charges of anti-Semitism at the University of California at Santa Cruz based on a complaint that the university ignored concerns that criticism of Israel was “creating a hostile climate for Jewish people on the campus.”

You can read a letter from the Dept. of Ed announcing the investigation here.  The move is the first such investigation since the Department announced last October that they were expanding federal anti-bullying guidelines to include religious groups with “shared ethnic characteristics.” Previously, the relevant civil rights statute, Title VI, did not explicitly cover religion. This was a move applauded by Israel supporters, such as the Zionist Organization of America, who saw it as a way to criminalize activism critical of Israel on campus.

The lecturer who brought the complaint is Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, who teaches Hebrew at the school. You can read Rossman-Benjamin’s complaint to the Education Department here. Among the events she sites as examples of anti-Semitism on campus was a screening of the film Occupation 101 and another event called “Understanding Gaza.” This event featured speakers from Jewish Voice for Peace which she characterizes as “an extreme and disreputable fringe of American Jewry.” The Chronicle quotes her letter:

The anti-Israel discourse and behavior in classrooms and at departmentally and college-sponsored events at [Santa Cruz] is tantamount to institutional discrimination against Jewish students, which has resulted in their intellectual and emotional harassment and intimidation, and has adversely affected their educational experience at the university.

Reading over the complaint, it’s hard to believe that anyone took it very seriously. Rossman-Benjamin’s ulterior motive of silencing criticism of Israel is obvious, and she has even written openly about it. In a piece titled “Anti-Zionism and the Abuse of Academic Freedom” that she wrote for Dore Gold’s neocon thinktank the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Rossman-Benjamin laments:

The foregoing analysis has amply demonstrated that anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic discourse has found academic legitimacy on at least one major university campus and is allowed to flourish because faculty and administrators are unwilling to address, or even acknowledge, these abuses of academic freedom.

To answer how this case has found support at the highest levels of government it helps to look at who is helping push it forward, and how the Department of Education’s new policy was created in the first place.

The case is being heavily supported by an organization called Institute for Jewish and Community Research (IJCR) a San Francisco-based organization which is “devoted to creating a safe, secure, and growing Jewish community.” A large part of that work is focused on documenting and exposing “anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism.” This project is headed up by Kenneth L. Marcus, who incidently served as the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights from 2002 to 2004, and was the Staff Director at the United States Commission on Civil Rights during the Bush Administration. In fact, Marcus helped lay the groundwork for the new Dept of Education bullying policy with a 2004 policy letter that advocated for the change.

Although Marcus must have been responsible for a wide array of civil rights concerns during his time in government, it seems there is one issue close to his heart. Here is a list of his publications as listed on his wikipedia page:

  • “The Second Mutation: Israel and Political Anti-Semitism”, inFocus Spring 2008 • Vol. II: No. 1
  • “Anti-Zionism as Racism: Campus Anti-Semitism and the Civil Rights Act of 1964”, February 2007 issue of the William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal (pp. 837-891, published by the students of the William and Mary Law School)
  • “The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism on American College Campuses”, Current Psychology, Vol. 26, Nos. 3 & 4, 2007
  • “The Most Important Right We Think We Have But Don’t: Freedom from Religious Discrimination in Education”. Nevada Law Journal, Vol. 7, p. 171, 2006
  • “Jurisprudence of the New Anti-Semitism”, Wake Forest Law Review, Vol. 44, 2009.

His IJCR also mentions his new book Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America. Seems to be a bit of a one trick pony. Predictably, Marcus is celebrating the government’s decision and sees wide ranging ramification for the Rossman-Benjamin’s complaint. A IJCR press release quotes him as saying:

This case is extremely significant for four reasons. First, it is opened just as International Apartheid Week activities are being held around the world and illustrates the potential ramifications of extremist protest activities. Second, it follows right on the heels of a federal lawsuit alleging similar problems at the University of California Berkeley just a few days before and may illustrate a broad trend. Third, it is only the second major systemic anti-Semitism case that OCR has opened and may have important precedential value. Fourth, it is the first major case to follow OCR’s new campus anti-Semitism policy and may demonstrate whether OCR means what it says about its commitment to addressing hate and bias in federally funded higher education programs.

It’s hard to believe the complaint will be held up, but I also would never have thought it would go this far in the first place. Guess it helps to have friends in high places.

March 17, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Humanitarian Pays With Life for Feeding the Children of Iraq

By Katherine Hughes | t r u t h o u t | March 13, 2011

February 26, 2011, marks the eighth anniversary of the imprisonment of Dr. Rafil Dhafir. Dhafir continues to pay the price for feeding the children of Iraq during the US- and UK-sponsored UN sanctions against that country.

According to the United Nations’ own statistics, every month throughout the 1990’s, 6,000 children under the age of five in Iraq were dying from lack of food and access to simple medicines. Three senior UN officials resigned because of what they considered a “genocidal” policy of sanctions against Iraq. Dhafir’s charity, Help the Needy (HTN), openly sent food and medicines to starving civilians in Iraq during the brutal embargo.

Seven government agencies investigated Dhafir and HTN for many years. They intercepted his mail, email, faxes and telephone calls; bugged his office and hotel rooms; went through his trash; and conducted physical surveillance. They were unable to find any evidence of links to terrorism, and no charges of terrorism were ever brought against Dhafir. Yet he and other HTN associates were subjected to high-profile arrests in the early morning of February 26, 2003, just weeks before the US invasion of Iraq. Simultaneous to the arrests, between the hours of 6 AM and 10 AM, law enforcement agents interrogated 150 predominantly Muslim families because they had donated to HTN. On that day, former attorney general John Ashcroft announced that “funders of terrorism have been arrested.”

In light of the demonization of Muslims in the US in the post-9/11 period and the fact that the government was hinting at terrorism connections without bringing any charges, I felt compelled to attend all of Dhafir’s 14-week trial; I did not know Dhafir before attending. I have had a passion for protecting civil liberties since I was 14 years old, when I saw a documentary film about the Allies going into Bergen-Belsen. For 38 years, I have been a voracious reader of firsthand accounts of what happened in Germany in the 1930’s. I always knew that should anything like that happen in my lifetime, I wanted no part of it.

Dhafir was born in Iraq in 1948. He completed medical school before immigrating to the US in 1972 and has been a US citizen for more than 30 years. As an oncologist in an underserved community, Dhafir treated many of his patients for free, paying for expensive chemotherapy out of his own pocket. He is regarded as a pillar of the Central New York Muslim community and a well-known national and international figure. Although charged with white-collar crimes, Dhafir was held without bail for 19 months before trial, which greatly impeded his ability to prepare his defense.

The trial’s proceedings showed Dhafir to be a devout, compassionate man who was highly esteemed by all of his associates; the chilling message his conviction sent to the Muslim community cannot be overstated. Dhafir was convicted on 59 counts of white-collar crime (the government had made a mistake in one of the counts, and the jury was not allowed to deliberate on it) and is currently serving 22 years for a crime he was never convicted of in a court of law: money laundering to help terrorist organizations. Dhafir is imprisoned in a special Communications Management Unit (CMU) that houses almost exclusively Muslim and/or Arab prisoners.

Before attending Dhafir’s trial, I spent my entire life secure in the knowledge that my civil rights would always be respected. I no longer believe this to be true.

Iraq Under Sanctions and Dhafir’s Humanitarian Response

Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 1, 1990; US sanctions against Iraq were put in place the next day. On January 17, 1991, the first bombs of the Gulf War were dropped on Baghdad.

Before the war, the people of Iraq had a standard of living in some ways comparable to that of many Western countries. Although it was a brutal dictatorship, the government provided universal health care and education, including college, for all of its citizens. There was very little illiteracy, and the education and health systems were the best in the region. The sanctions changed all that.

Several government witnesses of Iraqi descent broke down on the stand when they began to talk about the effects of the sanctions on their families. Each time this happened, the prosecution immediately interrupted the testimony. In fact, throughout Dhafir’s trial, the government did its utmost to prevent any discussion of the conditions in Iraq under the sanctions. When the defense attempted to question Susan Hutner of the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) about the Oil for Food program, the court ruled the line of questioning irrelevant. Government employees, including Hutner, testified to having no knowledge of the effects of the sanctions. As the government attorney addressing the situation in Iraq, Hutner helped draft the initial legal documentation to implement the sanctions and then worked on them for 12 years.

During the Gulf War, more bombs were dropped on Iraq in a six-week period than were dropped in the whole of World War II; the country was devastated. In total, these bombs were at least six times more powerful than two atomic bombs. Many types of bombs were used, including ones containing depleted uranium (DU), the waste matter from nuclear plants; hundreds of tons of DU ammunition now lie scattered throughout Iraq. The DU dust has entered the food chain through the soil and the water. As a result, many diseases formerly unseen in Iraq are now prevalent there. Many pregnant women delivered babies as early as six months, and many babies were born with terrible deformities. Cancer rates increased dramatically. These effects have been compounded by the current war.

All major bridges and communication systems were bombed, making communications both inside and outside the country extremely difficult. The water purification system was bombed and the UN never allowed it to be repaired; as a result, 15 years’ worth of raw sewage piled up in the streets and resulted in widespread disease and death, particularly among the young and the very old. Hospitals and schools were not spared.

As a result of the bombings and sanctions, the health and education systems in Iraq, once the best in the region, became the worst.

The United States led the effort to place restrictive sanctions on Iraq. When Madeleine Albright, then-US ambassador to the United Nations, was asked in a CBS interview if the deaths of half a million children were a price worth paying to punish Hussein, she infamously replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.” When adults and children over the age of five are included, the number of civilians killed as a direct result of the sanctions rises to between 1.5 and 2 million.

Independent journalism is important. Click here to get Truthout stories sent to your email.

It was in direct response to this humanitarian catastrophe that Dhafir founded HTN. For 13 years, he worked tirelessly to help publicize the plight of the Iraqi people and to raise funds to help them. According to the government, Dhafir donated $1.4 million of his own money over the years. As an oncologist, he was also concerned about Iraq’s skyrocketing cancer rates and the role of DU.

Government Duplicity

From the outset of Dhafir’s case, the government was duplicitous. Using unfair tactics and innuendo and aided by a compliant media, the government transformed Dhafir’s community image from that of a compassionate humanitarian into one of a crook and supporter of terrorism.

Just before the start of Dhafir’s trial in October 2004, Michael Powell of The Washington Post wrote: “There is a shadow-boxing quality to the terror allegations lodged against Dhafir. In August [2004], Gov. George E. Pataki (R) described Dhafir’s as a ‘money laundering case to help terrorist organizations … conduct horrible acts.’ Prosecutors hinted at national security reasons for holding Dhafir without bail. But no evidence was offered to support the allegations.”

Pataki’s description of Dhafir was perfectly timed to reach potential jurors. While national and state figures tarred Dhafir with the terrorist brush, then-district attorney Glenn Suddaby (now a federal judge) and local prosecutors maintained that Dhafir was nothing more than a common thief. The prosecution even successfully petitioned the presiding judge to exclude any mention of terrorism from the proceedings. This meant that throughout the trial, the prosecution could hint at more serious (terrorism) charges, but the defense was prohibited from addressing these inflammatory innuendos head-on. The government’s “shadow-boxing” gave a surreal feel to the proceedings; what was happening in the courtroom was not what the trial was really about.

The first indictment against Dhafir contained 14 charges related only to the Iraq sanctions. Later, when Dhafir refused to accept a plea agreement, the government piled on more charges, and he eventually faced a 60-count indictment that included violating federal regulations related to economic sanctions imposed against Iraq, money laundering, mail and wire fraud, tax evasion, visa fraud – all related to running the charity – and Medicare fraud.

Medicare charges usually involve fictitious patients and made-up illnesses; none of these factors were present in Dhafir’s case. The government never contested that patients received care and chemotherapy. Its argument for all 25 counts was that, because Dhafir was sometimes not present in his office when patients were treated, the Medicare claim forms were filled out incorrectly, and he was thus not due any reimbursement for treatment or for the expensive chemotherapy his office had administered.

Mrs. Dhafir’s cross-examination by the defense also took on a shadow-boxing quality. Mrs. Dhafir was Dr. Dhafir’s bookkeeper, and took a plea deal by pleading guilty to one count of lying to a government agent; she had told a government agent that her husband had been present in his medical office on a day that he had not been. On the stand, she answered questions about the intricacies of Medicare reimbursement and identified office staff signatures on Medicare reimbursement forms. While she testified, a large screen opposite the jury featured an excerpt from the Medicare handbook, which said that in the event of a billing error, “a refund would be requested.”

This was the backdrop as Mrs. Dhafir described the mayhem at her house on the day of her husband’s arrest. (She was not arrested on that day and did not face any charge until later.) Her husband left for work at his usual time, 6:30 AM. After he left, the doorbell rang. Before Mrs. Dhafir could answer the door, five FBI agents broke it down. Finding her on the other side, they held guns to her head. Helicopters and local media hovered over the house as 85 government agents visited the house throughout the day. Mrs. Dhafir spent the day in her nightclothes and was not allowed to shut the door when she went to the bathroom.

Jennifer Van Bergen, author of “The Twilight of Democracy,” wrote a two-part article on Dhafir’s case entitled “New American Law: The Case of Dr. Dhafir” and “New American Law: Legal Strategies and Precedents in the Dhafir Case.” In these and other writings, Van Bergen warns about the danger of civil liberties being undermined when the government uses parallel legal tracks that were never intended to be mixed. She notes that, as happened in Dhafir’s case, conspiracy laws and money-laundering laws used “creatively” with the PATRIOT Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) can be used to construct a vastly distorted picture.

“Collateral Damage: How the War on Terror Hurts Charities, Foundations, and the People They Serve,” a July 2008 report by OMB Watch, a nonprofit watchdog organization that monitors the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), describes the difficult terrain that Muslim charities must navigate:

“Since 2001, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Justice Department have incrementally expanded their interpretation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and what is considered prohibited ‘material support’ of, or ‘otherwise associat[ing] with,’ designated terrorist organizations or individuals. Originally understood to be direct transfers of funds or goods, ‘material support’ is now interpreted to include legitimate charitable aid that may ‘otherwise cultivate support’ for a designated organization. Furthermore, ‘other-wise associated with’ can include indirect or past relationships, even when there is no claim that the relationship included aiding terrorists or participating in terrorist plots or conspiracies.”

Inconsistencies in the government’s position were a startling feature of Dhafir’s case from its inception and suggested two possibilities: either one hand of the government didn’t know what the other was doing, or the government was deliberately aiming to deceive. The fact that the district attorney and local prosecutors claimed Dhafir’s conviction as a successful prosecution in the “war on terror” suggests that the government’s duplicity was a strategy from the outset. Mrs. Dhafir is now listed on the government’s list of successful terrorism prosecutions along with her husband and other HTN associates, including Dhafir’s personal accountant, an older man from a small town in upstate New York who was also subject to a high-profile arrest.

According to the OMB Watch report, “The incremental expansion of what is prohibited activity, coupled with the vague standards defining alleged terrorist associations, makes it increasingly difficult for charities and foundations to predict what constitutes illegal behavior. Consequently, the US nonprofit community operates in fear of what may spark OFAC to use its power to shut them down.”

Dr. Dhafir’s case sets a legal precedent and means that others who provide humanitarian and medical assistance to those in need could end up like him: put away for the rest of their lives.

March 15, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

‘Corporate mafia grab Twitter, Facebook’

Press TV – March 13, 2011

The existing social networks on the internet can no longer be reliable platforms for organizing anti-government uprisings, because corporate cartels are beginning to own them, a political analyst says.

“You cannot rely on Facebook and Twitter …. [because] those avenues and weapons have already been corrupted by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan,” David DeGraw from AmpedStatus.com told Press TV.

Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are among the gigantic corporations, infamous for their corrupt records across the world.

Corrupt global cartels are beginning to seize the ownership of such networks on the internet to neutralize their “amazing” effects in organizing the ongoing anti-government uprisings across the world, he said.

“Goldman Sachs has just caught a deal with Facebook to be its major shareholder and JP Morgan is moving to be a shareholder of Twitter,” DeGraw mentioned.

This is while the popular uprisings against the dictatorial regimes are in fact uprisings against the current global economic system, in which the IMF gives such corrupt corporations a free rein over the regimes and economies in those countries, he added.

DeGraw argued, “We need platforms that cannot be gained and corrupted by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as Facebook and Twitter are being right now.”

In the past two months, anti-government revolts have been spreading across the Arab world. The popular uprisings have mostly been organized via internet social networks.

Last month in Tunisia, nationwide outrage at the government’s suppressive policies sparked a massive revolution that ended the 23-year rule of its despotic president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and forced him to flee to Saudi Arabia.

On February 11, a millions-strong nationwide revolution in Egypt, which started on January 25, ended the three-decade rule of US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Other anti-government uprisings have taken place in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan and Oman, as more Arab countries are expected to stage similar popular revolts.

March 13, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

In Egypt, a New Guard

By Stephen Gowans | What’s Left | March 11, 2011

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, known to Egyptians as “Mubarak’s poodle,” may be calling the shots in Cairo as head of the country’s military-led government, but the man who sits at his right hand side is the Pentagon’s poodle, and he’s likely to continue to play a key role in Egypt even after a civilian government succeeds the current military one.

Lt. General Sami Hafez Enan, “a favorite of the American military,” according to Elisabeth Bumiller’s piece in today’s New York Times, is second-in-command to Tantawi, the man reviled in Egypt for being a toady to the deposed president Hosni Mubarak.

Bumiller says Enan—who “remains in close contact with Pentagon officials by phone” and is “a crucial link for the United States”–is considered Tantawi’s likely successor as head of Egypt’s armed forces.

And since the military plays a dominant role in Egypt, Enan is likely to continue to exercise considerable influence, a point Bumiller agrees with. “No one disputes,” she observes, “that General Enan will play a central role in Egypt’s future government, more likely behind the scenes, where the country’s powerful and traditionally secretive armed forces are more comfortable.”

Washington showers $1.3 billion in military aid upon Egypt annually, which the Egyptian military uses to buy “American-made arms and equipment – typically F-16 fighter jets and M1A1 Abrams tanks.” None of the money ever leaves the United States. Instead, Enan and other senior Egyptian military officials present their wish list to the Pentagon, which then transfers US taxpayer dollars into the accounts of US arms merchants, who then deliver the goods.

It’s like an annual gift to General Dynamics. And Egypt. Courtesy of the US taxpayer.

Ever since Egypt agreed to become a prop of US imperialism in north Africa and western Asia—and to allow Israel to run roughshod over Arabs in Palestine and Lebanon–Washington has transferred $35 billion of US taxpayer money to the accounts of US arms manufacturers, on behalf of Egypt’s armed forces.

Bumiller reports that the reforms of General Enan and the military government “have so far been mostly cosmetic.”

Cosmetic is an apt description. Egypt’s revolution has amounted to little more that changing the faces of the state. Mubarak is out, because the people demanded it, and now so too is Mubarak’s old prime minister, also at the behest of the people. But Mubarakism—US domination of Egypt through a local military elite – remains.

This won’t change even if and when the current military government is succeeded by an elected, civilian, one.

What would happen if a future government decided to pursue policies at odds with US foreign policy preferences, especially in connection with Israel? Since a break with Washington on key foreign policy positions would likely disrupt the flow of equipment and training to the Egyptian armed forces, the probable outcome is that the government would lose the confidence of the military, and the military would take over to set Egypt back on the prescribed US foreign policy path. Knowing this, a civilian government is unlikely to step outside the boundaries its military’s benefactor is prepared to tolerate.

And just how independent of the White House and State Department will a future civilian government be? Already, officials in Washington are “discussing setting aside new funds to bolster the rise of secular political parties.” Sure, Egyptians are free to elect anyone they want, but modern elections are major marketing campaigns. Without strong financial backing, you haven’t a chance. How fitting, then, for the continuation of Mubarakism that Washington’s democracy promoters will be furnishing “acceptable” politicians and political parties with money, strategic advice, polling, and whatever other support they need to prevail over alternatives judged to be incompatible with “US interests”, but which, may, on the other hand, represent the interests of the mass of Egyptians.

Westerners would never tolerate foreign powers backing the West’s political parties, even if it was done in the name of promoting democracy. Strange that so many Westerners think it fine for their own governments to meddle in other countries’ elections –and fall for the deception that the imperialist practice of exerting influence abroad by buying foreign politicians is really a laudable exercise in democracy promotion. If foreign governments meddling in our elections means an outside power is trying to gain advantage at our expense, doesn’t Washington’s setting aside new funds to meddle in Egypt’s elections mean Washington is trying to gain advantage at Egyptians’ expense?

Or are Washington’s and the EU’s motives somehow purer? Given their records —both past and present—of backing Mubarak, other dictatorships, and absolute monarchies, to protect Western “interests,” this can hardly be true.

How then–with Egypt’s armed forces being a virtual extension of the Pentagon and Washington’s democracy promoters preparing to boost funding to pro-US political parties–are we to believe that the Egyptian rebellion will bring about anything more than a cosmetic face-lift of Mubarakism?

A real revolution requires more than replacing Mubarak with Tantawi, Tantawi with Enan, and Enan with a civilian government that needs to keep Enan–and the Pentagon officials he’s in close contact with–happy. A revolution is not a changing of the guard.

March 11, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Press TV crew attacked in Bahrain

Press TV – March 11, 2011

Forces loyal to the Bahraini regime have attacked a Press TV crew, filming anti-government demonstrations near the royal palace in the capital, Manama.

The assailants, who were armed with machetes and clubs, took the Press TV crew’s equipment.

“We were following an anti-government protest rally towards the royal palace that suddenly a group of about 300-400 pro-government thugs surrounded us,” Press TV’s correspondent in Manama Johnny Miller said.

Last week the Bahraini government blocked access to Press TV’s website from the country.

The violence came as tens of thousands of anti-government protesters are heading towards the royal palace, demanding political reforms.

Bahraini authorities had earlier warned against demonstrations near the palace, saying they would deal with the issue as a national security threat.

According to Press TV’s correspondent, since hundreds of pro-government forces have also gathered near the royal place more confrontations are expected.

March 11, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Alliance for Youth Movements: The State Dept.’s New Vehicle for Regime Change

21st Century Statecraft: State Dept. and Google vs. Iran and other “evil” regimes

H/T Maidhc Ó Cathail

AYM – Saudi Arabia ‘Day of Rage’, March 11, 2011

March 9, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

US Gov’t Attorneys: Providing Detailed Charges to Those on Terror Lists ‘Extremely Burdensome’

Activist Post | March 9, 2011

Defense lawyers for organizations on the U.S. government’s “terror list” are frustrated fighting the designation, and seizure of assets in many cases, because the government claims it is too tedious to give an explanation of the charges. “It would be extremely burdensome to give a list of charges,” said the government’s attorney, Douglas Letter, the Associated Press reported today:

Attorneys for the U.S. government told a federal appeals court Wednesday that informing each person and organization listed as a global terrorist of the reasons they are so designated would be too much work.

They made the argument in a case involving the government’s seizure of assets belonging to the U.S. chapter of Al Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc., a Saudi Arabia-based charity. The case is being heard by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Al Haramain attorney David Cole said outside court that representatives of Al Haramain were left in the dark after the organization was put on the global terrorist list. They continued to fight the designation without knowing what was driving it.

Cole said he and other attorneys could have provided a much more effective defense for the organization if they knew the reasons for the charges.

Organizations that are arbitrarily placed on the terror list who have their assets frozen are finding the burden of proof to be on them.  Yet, they don’t even know what they are supposed to prove given the lack of detailed charges.

In a previous case, U.S. Judge, Gary Karr, ruled that freezing the assets of organizations suspected of terrorist ties has been done without due process by the Treasury Department.  However, he also ruled that the “Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control needed only a reasonable belief that the charity was a component of a larger organization that funds terrorism” to take action.

This erosion of due process and reversal of burden of proof, along with Obama’s recent Executive Order to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely, are troubling signs for the “Land of the Free.”

March 9, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia | Leave a comment

Libya and the Return of Humanitarian Imperialism

By JEAN BRICMONT | CounterPunch | March 8, 2011

The whole gang is back: The parties of the European Left (grouping the  “moderate” European communist parties), the “Green” José Bové, now allied with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who has never seen a US-NATO war he didn’t like, various Trotkyist groups and of course Bernard-Henry Lévy and Bernard Kouchner, all calling for some sort of “humanitarian intervention” in Libya or accusing the Latin American left, whose positions  are far more sensible, of acting as “useful idiots” for the “Libyan tyrant.”

Twelve years later, it is Kosovo all over again. Hundred of thousands of Iraqis dead, NATO stranded in an impossible position in Afghanistan, and they have learned nothing! The Kosovo war was made to stop a nonexistent genocide, the Afghan war to protect women (go and check their situation now), and the Iraq war to protect the Kurds. When will they understand that all wars claim to have humanitarian justifications? Even Hitler was “protecting minorities” in Czechoslovakia and Poland.

On the other hand, Robert Gates warns that any future secretary of state who advises a US president to send troops into Asia or Africa “must have his head examined”. Admiral McMullen similarly advises caution. The great paradox of our time is that the headquarters of the peace movement are to be found in the Pentagon and the State Department, while the pro-war party is a coalition of neo-conservatives and liberal interventionists of various stripes, including leftist humanitarian warriors, as well as some Greens, feminists or repentant communists.

So, now, everybody has to cut down his or her consumption because of global warming, but NATO wars are recyclable and imperialism has become part of sustainable development.

Of course the US will go or not go to war for reasons that are quite independent of the advice offered by the pro-war left. Oil is not likely to be a major factor in their decision, because any future Libyan government will have to sell oil and Libya is not big enough to significantly weigh on the price of oil. Of course, turmoil in Libya leads to speculation that itself affects prices, but that is a different matter. Zionists are probably of two minds about Libya: they hate Qaddafi, and would like to see him ousted, like Saddam, in the most humiliating manner, but they are not sure they will like his opposition (and, from the little we know about it, they won’t).

The main pro-war argument is that if things go quickly and easily, it will rehabilitate NATO and humanitarian intervention, whose image has been tarnished by Iraq and Afghanistan. A new Grenada or, at most, a new Kosovo, is exactly what is needed. Another motivation for intervention is to better control the rebels, by coming to “save” them on their march to victory. But that is unlikely to work: Karzai in Afghanistan, the Kosovar nationalists, the Shiites in Iraq and of course Israel, are perfectly happy to get American help, when needed, but after that, to pretty much pursue their own agenda. And a full-fledged military occupation of Libya after its “liberation” is unlikely to be sustainable, which of course makes intervention less attractive from a US point of view.

On the other hand, if things turn badly, it will probably be the beginning of the end of the American empire, hence the caution of people who are actually in charge of it and not merely writing articles in Le Monde or ranting against dictators in front of cameras.

It is difficult for ordinary citizens to know exactly what is going on in Libya, because Western media have thoroughly discredited themselves in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine, and alternative sources are not always reliable either. That of course does not prevent the pro-war left from being absolutely convinced of the truth of the worst reports about Qaddafi, just as they were twelve years ago about Milosevic.

The negative role of the International Criminal Court is again apparent, here, as was that of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in the case of Kosovo. One of the reasons why there was relatively little bloodshed in Tunisia and Egypt is that there was a possible exit for Ben Ali and Mubarak. But “international justice” wants to make sure that no such exit is possible for Qaddafi, and probably for people close to him, hence inciting them to fight to the bitter end.

If “another world is possible”, as the European Left keeps on saying, then another West should be possible and the European Left should start working on that. The recent meeting of the Bolivarian Alliance could serve as an example: the Latin American left wants peace and they want to avoid US intervention, because they know that they are in the sights of the US and that their process of social transformation requires above all peace and national sovereignty. Hence, they suggest sending an international delegation, possibly led by Jimmy Carter (hardly a stooge of Qaddafi), in order to start a negotiation process between the government and the rebels. Spain has expressed interest in the idea, which is of course rejected by Sarkozy. This proposition may sound utopian, but it might not be so if it were supported by the full weight of the United Nations. That would be the way to fulfill its mission, but it is now made impossible by US and Western influence. However, it is not impossible that now, or in some future crisis, a non-interventionist coalition of nations, including Russia, China, Latin America and maybe others, may work together to build credible alternatives to Western interventionism.

Unlike the Latin American left, the pathetic European version has lost all sense of what it means to do politics. It does not try to propose concrete solutions to problems, and is only able to take moral stances, in particular denouncing dictators and human rights violations in grandiloquent tones. The social democratic left follows the right with at best a few years delay and has no ideas of its own. The “radical” left often manages both to denounce Western governments in every possible way and to demand that those same governments intervene militarily around the globe to defend democracy. Their lack of political reflection makes them highly vulnerable to disinformation campaigns and to becoming passive cheerleaders of US-NATO wars.

That left has no coherent program and would not know what to do even if a god put them into power. Instead of “supporting” Chavez and the Venezuelan Revolution, a meaningless claim some love to repeat, they should humbly learn from them and, first of all, relearn what it means to do politics.

~

Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium and is  a member of the Brussels Tribunal. His book, Humanitarian  Imperialism, is published by Monthly Review Press. He can  be reached at Jean.Bricmont@uclouvain.be.

March 8, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Blackmailing dissent: you’re either with Obama or you’re with the Tea Party

By Luciana Bohne | Intrepid Report | March 8, 2011

The Manichean heresy in early Christianity (Augustine had been a youthful adherent) divided the world into an earthly battleground of spiritual warfare between Satan and God, who shared power equally over the fate of humanity.

An example of late-Manichean thinking was typified by President Bush’s paranoically inane rallying call to choose between the terrorists and his governing clique in the aftermath of the massacre of civilians on 9/11, perpetrated by an ideological group spawned by the West’s secret services in the 1980s.

Because the United States has only two parties, both championing business interests, Manichaean thinking is second nature to the American electorate. You’re either with educated, enlightened humanitarian Democrats or you’re with the fascistic, racist Republicans, from the liberal point of view. Conversely, from the conservative point of view, you’re either with tradition, custom, and the tested way as a Republican or you’re with the bleeding-hearted, budget-wasting, morally lax, socialist Democrats.

This either/or proposition obviates the need for thought and makes voting a matter of choosing between good and evil. More sophisticated Americans resign themselves to voting for the lesser of two evils—which, in the end, is voting for evil. Thus, American elections have become an exercise in political neurosis. For example, in historically racially scarred America, the blackness of a presidential candidate was an irresistible lure to liberals, suffering from an irritable—and in their view—undeserved sense of guilt and shame. Conversely, the candidate’s blackness served to release the vilest resentments of misled know-nothings who gravitate to the more vermin-infested folds of the increasingly moldy conservative party, rabid with the success of a one-sided, bi-partisan, 30-year-long class war

It doesn’t take genius to figure out who benefits from Manichaeism in America—the business interests. They very cleverly support and fund now the Republican candidate, now the Democrat. Makes no difference to them whether a candidate is a Democrat or a Republican so long as he (or the much-awaited she) transfers the public wealth into private hands, depresses taxes on the wealthy, slashes social services, gives grotesque subsidies and handouts to banks and corporations, and carries out the seizure of markets, cheap labor, and resources abroad through domino-effect imperialist wars that transform America into the economic equivalent of whichever third-world country the elite are militarily devastating.

The promotion of Obama to the presidency of the United States by the financial aristocracy, let’s be honest, was a stroke of genius. Just as Clinton, a poor boy from Arkansas, was launched to wage war on the poor, so Obama, an eager and willing black American with the conveniently or inconveniently Muslim-sounding name, depending on one’s allegiance to identity politics, was installed to continue the imperial wars against the blackish populations of the world, while, of course, sustaining the pauperization of working Americans, black and white, at home, which Clinton, in the manner of Reagan, had done so much to secure.

Now you see why, in my liberal circles, thinking like mine sounds like the ravings of a tea-partier. If you have nothing to fall back on but a Manichean thinking equipment, where do you place a view that dissents from either the Republican or the Democrat cookie-cutter model of neatly dividing the lumpy, malformed dough of American politics into “us” and “them”? Where but against the wall? Garden-variety liberal Democrats I know have taken to calling themselves “progressives,” which leaves me no room from which to argue for ending the wars; demanding respect for international and national law in the matter of torture, rendition, and the closing down of Guantanamo; protesting against the extension of Bush’s tax law, giving breaks to the rich that devastate our communities; pointing out that there is a connection between the war on American workers and the wars abroad that consume masses of public wealth for the greed of the military-industrial-financial complex?

Divided they stand, Democrats and Republicans, united by forces they refuse to identify in the pursuit of self-destruction within the unfolding disaster that is America’s future. What can one do but resign oneself to being called names? It’s the only power either constituency has at present.

March 8, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »