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Canada: Israel’s new defender

Muted support for Palestine, funding cuts for Arab groups, now a ban on the phrase ‘Israeli apartheid’: what’s going on in Canada?

By Jesse Rosenfeld | guardian.co.uk | 17 June 2010

At a time when many countries are becoming more critical of Israel’s policies, Canada seems to be moving in the opposite direction. A general reluctance to engage in open debate about the Palestinian issue is exacerbated by pro-Israel groups’ efforts to shut down discussion and the federal government’s unprecedented penchant for defending Israeli actions.

Since the beginning of 2010, the federal government has systematically cut funding to Arab-Canadian organisations and to UN relief works in Gaza. In March, the Ontario provincial legislature issued a unanimous condemnation of Israeli Apartheid Week, while the federal government considered introducing a similar motion.

However, self-censorship reached new heights last month when Toronto’s Pride Committee – which organises one of the world’s largest gay pride celebrations – announced it would be banning use of the term “Israeli apartheid” at the festivities.

Pride week in Toronto is a loud and highly visible public event, with a long tradition of activists linking their own campaigns for sexual rights to other struggles for liberation and social justice; however, this year the organisers caved in to pressure from pro-Israel groups and Toronto city council.

The main effect of the decision is to bar one group in particular – Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) – who have marched in the parade since 2008.

The reason given is that the phrase “Israeli apartheid” violates Toronto’s anti-discrimination policy. But when asked, neither Pride Toronto nor Giorgio Mammoliti – the Toronto city councillor mainly involved – could explain in detail what was discriminatory about describing Israel’s privileging of its Jewish citizens over others as a form or racism and apartheid.

“It’s absolutely bizarre the way they are trying to use the language around diversity and inclusiveness to exclude people,” QuAIA activist Tim McCaskell told me. “It was so 1984.”

Accompanying the onset of a Canadian McCarthyism dressed up as anti-discrimination, the mainstream left in Canada has been unwilling to take a clear political and moral stance on Palestine. Instead it has sought the approach of least resistance, trying to appease rather than take a stand against the silencing of Palestinian voices in Canada and Israel.

Writing in NOW Magazine, a progressive Toronto weekly newspaper, news editor Ellie Kirzner contended that Palestinians and their supporters should simply drop the term “apartheid”. “It’s a vulnerability the movement doesn’t need,” she wrote.

McCaskell, on the other hand, says QuAIA is bringing the fight against Israeli apartheid to pride because that is what Palestinian LGBT organisations have requested, and because Israel tries to present itself as queer-tolerant in an attempt to distract from its ill-treatment of Palestinians.

The two Palestinian LGBT groups, Aswat and al-Qaws (both based in Israel), issued a joint statement saying: “Pride parades started as political marches, and we firmly believe that solidarity should be with human rights first and foremost.” They continued:

We believe that as queers, one of the most disadvantaged and oppressed minorities in human societies, we should protest against all forms of oppression and struggle together to promote the rights of minorities and oppressed groups. As Palestinian queers, our struggle relates to social injustices caused by the discrimination that is deeply rooted in Israel’s policies and practices against the Palestinian people, straight and gay alike …
Over the past decades, Pride parades around the world have been a platform for queers, not only to increase public awareness for [LGBT] rights, but also a platform to promote and defend causes like the feminist struggle, and the fight to end apartheid in South Africa.

Trying to smother this debate in relation to Israel at Toronto pride could easily backfire, according to Ayala Shani, a queer activist with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. She points out that banning a term will only multiply its use and adds: “We are expecting to see ‘Israeli apartheid’ written and spoken all over pride parades around the world, including a parade in Tel Aviv.”

However, with the Canadian mainstream left dodging defence of Palestinians and the country at large continuing its polite silence on the Middle East, Toronto’s establishment may be taking more pride in silencing discussion of Israeli apartheid than even Tel Aviv.

June 17, 2010 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

After killing Ziad al-Jilani, Israel now seeks to question his American widow

Where is Congress?

By Philip Weiss on June 15, 2010

widow

Marian Houk reports that the Israelis searched the al-Jilani house in recent days, following the killing at a checkpoint Friday night of Ziad al-Jilani, a 40-year-old Palestinian father of three. And regarding his widow, an American, Moira al-Jilani (who is shown above right with her late husband and their youngest daughter, Yameen):

Israeli police investigators Monday summoned for questioning the widow and three young daughters of the Palestinian man killed last Friday by Israeli Border Police at a “flying checkpoint” they had set up in Wadi Joz.

Frightened and distraught, the bereaved family instead went to the American Consulate in East Jerusalem, where they were told they must cooperate with the investigation — but advised to do it with legal assistance.

Another friend tells us that Moira’s laptop has been confiscated.

June 15, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Eutelsat to take al-Aqsa TV off air

Press TV – June 15, 2010

France’s broadcasting watchdog has ordered the world’s third biggest satellite provider, Eutelsat, to take Palestinian channel al-Aqsa TV off the air.

Deputy Head of the channel Mohammed Thuraya told AFP on Tuesday that French broadcasts would cease within 48 hours by the order of the country’s Conseil Supérieur de ‘Audiovisuel (CSA).

“We were told that the reason behind the decision to stop broadcasting al-Aqsa was ‘incitement to hatred,’ without any explanation,” the official said.

“This is the unfair result of pressure from the Zionist lobby on the American administration, which in turn pressured France and Eutelsat,” he added.

Thuraya criticized the decision for having no legal or moral justification, adding that the move would lead to the loss of 70 percent of the channel’s viewers.

According to the channel’s official, a request for an extra day to consult lawyers and rights groups in order to appeal the decision was turned down.

The decision follows al-Aqsa’s in-depth coverage of Israel’s May 31 attack on the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla aid convoy. During the assault Israeli commandos killed 20 people travelling aboard the ships to break the Gaza siege.

The Gaza-based channel, which was launched in 2006, has offices in Gaza, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, and has around 400 employees.

The channel gives a behind-the-scene look at the hardship suffered by the impoverished people of Gaza under the crippling Israeli blockade of the coastal strip. It also provided a non-stop coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza in December 2008, which destroyed all the channel’s studios but failed to take it off the air.

June 15, 2010 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Going After the Wrong People

From Julian Assange to Helen Thomas

By DAVE LINDORFF | June 14, 2010

What does it say about the the American government, its president, and its military today, that the the largest military/intelligence organization in the history of mankind has launched a global manhunt for Julian Assange, head of the Wikileaks organization? And what does it say about corporate American journalists that they attack the only real journalist in the White House press corps, when she alone has shown the guts to speak truth?

The Hunt for Julian Assange

Consider first the case of Wikileaks founder Assange, whom Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, warns is in danger, if found, of being snuffed by the Pentagon’s search teams. First of all, let’s be clear here: he is “guilty” of no crime, but only of doing what American journalists should have done long ago: exposing the crimes of the US government. His Wikileaks famously leaked the military video showing that the crew of a helicopter gunship in Iraq in 2007 had shot up and killed a group of innocent Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters journalists, and laughed and mocked the victims as they were slaughtered. Now the same whistleblower website threatens to release hundreds of thousands of State Department cables that, among other things, reportedly include embarrassing comments by US officials about foreign leaders.

How is it, mainstream journalists ought to be asking but aren’t, that the Pentagon can unleash its vast intelligence resources to hunt down the Australian-born Assange, but cannot bring itself to devote those same resources and commitment to hunting down Osama Bin Laden, the man they claim is behind not only the attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon itself, but also the resistance to US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?

I’m not sure which is the bigger scandal here: the Pentagon’s grotesque misallocation of resources, or the media’s unwillingness to point it out.

There is no indication or claim by the government that Wikileaks has paid anyone anything to reveal US secrets–in fact the government claims it isn’t even interested in arresting Asange, just in “trying to convince him” not to release those cables. (Sure. I believe that like I believe the government wants fair hearings at its secret military tribunals in Guantanamo.) The secrets he has disclosed have been volunteered to Wikileaks by government and military whistleblowers, one of whom, Army intelligence specialist Bradley Manning, is now under arrest in Kuwait, a US client state where there are no protections against torture. Note that even what Manning did should not be considered a crime in any just, open society. He didn’t endanger US security as claimed; rather, he revealed a possible crime–the killing of civilians by US forces–that the government itself was covering up and refusing to investigate. (He says he tried to pursue justice within the military chain of command and was ignored, which is why he turned to Wikileaks.)

In any event, one thing is obvious. The Obama administration is becoming downright Nixonian in its efforts to silence internal dissent, and this time, what is left of a mainstream corporate media no longer have any interest in standing up to this kind of incipient fascism.

It remains to the likes of brave souls like Assange and to the independent and alternative media journalists who stand with him, to resist. Here’s hoping Assange keeps safe and well hidden, and that he and his Wikileaks compatriots continue to expose the ugly secrets of the American Empire.

The Attack on Helen Thomas

And then we have the sorry case of veteran senior White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who was just kneecapped by her own colleagues.

The truth is that when Thomas was ambushed by David Nesenoff, the Zionist rabbi with the camera, and asked for her opinion “about Israel,” she said nothing wrong. Her reply, in which she said the people occupying Palestine should “get out” and “go home,” was clearly a reference not to Israel, but to the Palestinian occupied territories, and that makes a world of difference.

Note that Rabbi Nesenoff’s question was, “Any comments about Israel?” and Thomas’s response was, “Tell them (Israel) to get out of Palestine.” She’s referring to Israel getting out of Palestinian territory. How do we know this? Because subsequently, she says, “Remember, these people are occupied and it’s their land.”

The people of Israel–Israelis and Israeli Palestinians–are clearly not “occupied.” Israel is many things, but it is not an occupied country. Who is occupied? The people of Gaza and the West Bank. So what Thomas is doing here is what most people do, including even many Israelis, which is referring to the Palestinian occupied territories by the shorthand of the term “Palestine.” (I do this myself all the time in discussions of the issue.) It’s true that some hard-core anti-Zionists refer to the whole of Israel and Palestine as “occupied Palestine,” just as some hard-core Zionists refer to the whole of the occupied territoris as Eretz Israel or Greater Israel– in the same way that some Native Americans refer to all of America as stolen land–but there has never been any evidence that Thomas is in that camp.

And once this is understood, what Thomas says could not be construed by any honest person as being anti-semitic. She is saying they (Israel, or Israelis living in the Palestinian territories) should “go home,”, and she is saying those “occupiers” should “go home” to “Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else.”

In fact, that’s quite a valid opinion (and one that I and even many Israelis who are sick of living in a perpetual state of war share). Many of the settlers who have been stealing Palestinian land under the protection of a brutal Israeli Defense Force and with the encouragement of a hard-line Zionist government, in fact do hail from outside Israel. They are immigrants from Brooklyn and other parts of the US, from Russia, and from other European countries, and Israel has actually been encouraging them to immigrate to Israel and then settle in the occupied territories. They have no legal or moral right to be in the occupied territories, and their presence there is intended by the Israeli government to create “facts on the ground” that make a Palestinian state impossible and any peace settlement with Palestinians impossible.

Thomas was clearly not referring to Israel as an “occupied territory.” She is an experienced reporter on international affairs and knows that such a definition of the Israeli state would make no sense to anyone but the most irredentist Arabist. Moreover, a woman who has Jewish friends and colleagues, she is well aware that many Israeli Jews are native to the Middle East, and even trace their ancestry to the pre-Israel Palestine, while many more are second, third or fourth-generation natives of the nation founded in 1948. As such they have as much right to be stay where they are and to call it home as do the whites living in South Africa on stolen Africans’ land, or white Americans living today on stolen Indian land. Thomas was certainly not saying that those people should “go back” to countries like Poland or America, where they never lived, though that’s what her critics are claiming.

And Thomas is absolutely correct in saying that the Israeli Jews living in those territories must “go back” to wherever they came from, if there is ever to be peace in the Middle East. Look, I know a Palestinian green card holder in the US. He told me how when he was a child, his home was stolen by Israelis and is now occupied by an Israeli settler family. He says his father kept the deed to his stolen home framed on the wall. Now, here in the US, following his father’s death, he has the deed hung prominently on his own wall, and he says his oldest son will someday have that same deed framed on his wall. As long as this kind of injustice survives–an injustice no different from the Nazi thefts of Jewish property, which Jewish families today, here and in Israel, are still trying to win compensation for from German and Austrian governments–how can there be any peace in Israel and Palestine?

Clearly such a view falls outside the narrow band of acceptable discourse that is permitted in our corporate media, and it certainly is not a position taken by any but a handful of our national politicians, in thrall as they all seem to be to the Zionist lobby and the money doled out by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Thomas’s “colleagues” in the White House press corps, who have been so quick to drum out an 89-year-old woman from their club (and Zionists like Bush-era White House flak Ari Fleischer), should be ashamed of themselves. They know she is no anti-semite, and know she was doing what they all do from time to time: using the term Palestine in a shorthand way to refer to the occupied territories. The haste with which they exiled her from their fraternity has nothing to do with their feigned outrage, and everything to do with her feisty insistence on doing what they should all have been doing but haven’t done for years: actually ask challenging, embarrassing questions about domestic and international policy of the president and the his press secretary.

Ashamed too, should be those on the left who have defended Thomas so half-heartedly, saying she should be “forgiven,” but predicating their lame defense by saying she was “stupid” or “clumsy” or “wrong” to have made what they claim was a “hurtful” or even “bigoted” statement.

Thomas should never have apologized for her statement. She should have stuck to it.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist at www.thiscantbehappening.net.

June 14, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Recasting the Gaza blockade as a humanitarian project

By David Samel on June 11, 2010

Israel’s efforts to control the narrative of the flotilla raid that left at least nine dead and dozens wounded have come under increasing scrutiny, with more and more contradictory evidence coming to light. Less attention has been focused on Israel’s equally ambitious campaign to recast the nature of the blockade itself.

Anyone paying even slight attention over the past few years knows that Israel implemented the policy to deprive a million and a half civilians of adequate supplies of the necessities of life, such as food, water, medicine, cooking fuel, clothing, even children’s toys. The Israelis have been allowing in enough goods that they calculate are necessary to keep people from dying of starvation. The Israelis consider anything in excess to be “luxuries” that must be kept from the Gazans until they overthrow Hamas, recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State, free Gilad Shalit, or whatever is the cause du jour. Since the object of the siege was to compel a change of leadership, it had to be rigorous enough to cause severe pain to a large majority of the civilian population; mere inconvenience or annoyance would not do. Gazans had to experience real hardship and struggle for the Israeli policy to have even a remote chance of success. (It recalls Ariel Sharon’s phrase “moderate physical pressure” used to describe garden-variety torture, as if “moderate” suffering could persuade unwilling victims to reveal secrets.)

For years, Israel made no secret of its motives. Dov Weissglas, top aide to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, famously said: “It’s like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won’t die.” In February, 2009, Senator John Kerry learned that many truckloads of pasta were denied entry because only rice, not pasta, fit the Israeli definition of humanitarian aid. Apparently, the Israelis were at least temporarily shamed into reversing this position. As recently as March, 2010, it was announced that Israel would allow in the first shipment of clothes and shoes in more than two years.

All that has changed, however, in recent weeks, as Israel and its supporters began to recast the siege as designed to prevent the importation of weapons to be used against Israeli civilians. Of course, Israel always had a policy of interdicting such arms importations. Had it merely continued that policy, there would have been virtually no controversy and no attempts to break the siege. Inspect the pasta truck and let it through.

The true (and undisputed) nature of Israel’s cruelty toward Gaza presented a potential public relations nightmare for Israel.

With unprecedented world attention drawn to the flotilla even before the lethal attack on its passengers, Israel naturally preferred to defend its position by creating an alternative reality. Rather than continue to admit that it was defending its “right” to keep purely civilian goods out of Gaza, the blockade was misrepresented as the only means to prevent the bad guys from importing weapons to be used against Israeli citizens.

Look how prominent Israelis and their supporters have changed the discourse. From the chief himself: “Mr. Netanyahu argues that the naval blockade is essential to prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza by Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction. But, he said Sunday: ‘We have no desire to make things difficult for the civilian population in Gaza. We would like for goods that are neither war matériel nor contraband to enter Gaza.’” This from the head of the government that has openly “desired to make things difficult for the civilian population in Gaza” by preventing the entry of “goods that are neither war matériel nor contraband.”

For sheer chutzpah, this is hard to beat. But that hasn’t stopped others from trying.

On June 3, the New York Times published two op-eds on the flotilla covering the gamut of opinion from A to B. Ambassador Michael Oren, who has expertly assumed the job requirement of designated liar, wrote: “There is little doubt as to the real purpose of the Mavi Marmara’s voyage — not to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, but to create a provocation that would put international pressure on Israel to drop the Gaza embargo, and thus allow the flow of seaborne military supplies to Hamas. Just as Hamas gunmen hide behind civilians in Gaza, so, too, do their sponsors cower behind shipments of seemingly innocent aid.”

And Daniel Gordis of Israel’s Shalem Center, chimed in: “Life in Gaza is unquestionably oppressive; no one in his right mind would choose to live there. But there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza; if anyone goes without food, shelter or medicine, that is by the choice of the Hamas government, which puts garnering international sympathy above taking care of its citizens. Israel has readily agreed to send into Gaza all the food and humanitarian supplies on the boats after they had been inspected for weapons.”

Then there is the comment submitted by the comically named Anti-Defamation League in response to a Huffington Post article by Josh Ruebner that compared Leon Klinghoffer to Furkan Dogan, the 19-year old Turkish-American killed on the flotilla. The ADL defamed Dogan as a terrorist, and added the following: “Israel is blockading Gaza because Hamas seeks weapons to attack Israel to fulfill its stated goal to eliminate the Jewish state. Israel stops weapons from going into Gaza; it allows basic necessities to go through after inspection. There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Of course, one can always rely on the creativity of Alan Dershowitz to present the most imaginatively dishonest version of the events: “Israel responded to the rockets by declaring a blockade, the purpose of which was to assure that no rockets, or other material that could be used for making war against Israeli civilians, was permitted into Gaza. Israel allowed humanitarian aid through its checkpoints. Egypt as well participated in the blockade. There was never a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, merely a shortage of certain goods that would end if the rocket attacks ended.”

Wait a minute, Alan. If the purpose of the blockade was to assure that no offensive military material entered Gaza, how did that result in a shortage of certain (civilian) goods?

Which brings us to the curious use of the word “humanitarian.” In Israeli parlance, the meager scraps allowed the Gazans, theoretically enough to sustain life, are described as “humanitarian aid,” thereby allowing the Israelis to impose collective punishment on a civilian population yet still perversely claim the mantle of being “humanitarian.” If Gazans are not actually dying of starvation, and show no signs of extended bellies, there is no “humanitarian crisis” because Israel has ensured that “humanitarian supplies” enter the area. The Israeli siege of Gaza, which has at times prevented toys, clothing, and pasta from importation, has become a “humanitarian” effort to provide necessities to a people victimized by their own oppressive rulers, who would prefer that they starve to embarrass the Israelis as a means for acquiring weapons.

“Humanitarian” has become confused with “human experimentation,” which is precisely what the Israelis have been conducting in a grotesque effort to determine just how many calories are needed to keep a population alive.

Did this public relations effort really fool anyone?

Of course. Those who want to be fooled. Those who believed Israeli claims in December 2008 that an aid ship had deliberately rammed Israel’s naval vessel rather than the other way around. Those who believe that Israel has the right to sadistically deprive Gaza civilians of everyday goods, while screaming about Elvis Costello cancelling his Israel gig and other monstrous deprivations resulting from the BDS movement.

How does one make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? I have no idea, but if you are interested, I suggest you contact the Israeli public relations machine. Piece of cake for them.

June 12, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Wikileaks Founder Hunted by Pentagon

“We’d like to know where he is; we’d like his cooperation in this,” one U.S. official said of Assange.

By Philip Shenon | The Daily Beast | June 10, 2010

Pentagon investigators are trying to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security, government officials tell The Daily Beast.

The officials acknowledge that even if they found the website founder, Julian Assange, it is not clear what they could do to block publication of the cables on Wikileaks, which is nominally based on a server in Sweden and bills itself as a champion of whistleblowers.

American officials said Pentagon investigators are convinced that Assange is in possession of at least some classified State Department cables leaked by a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist, Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland, who is now in custody in Kuwait.

And given the contents of the cables, the feds have good reason to be concerned.

As The Daily Beast reported June 8, Manning, while posted in Iraq, apparently had special access to cables prepared by diplomats and State Department officials throughout the Middle East, regarding the workings of Arab governments and their leaders, according to an American diplomat.

The cables, which date back over several years, went out over interagency computer networks available to the Army and contained information related to American diplomatic and intelligence efforts in the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, the diplomat said.

American officials would not discuss the methods being used to find Assange, nor would they say if they had information to suggest where he is now. “We’d like to know where he is; we’d like his cooperation in this,” one U.S. official said of Assange.

Assange, who first gained notoriety as a computer hacker, is as secretive as his website and has no permanent home.

He was scheduled to speak Friday in Las Vegas at an International Reporters and Editors conference. But the group’s executive director, Mark Horvit, tells The Daily Beast that Assange canceled the appearance—he was on a panel to discuss anonymous sources—within the last several days as a result of unspecificed “security concerns.” Horvit said he communicated with Assange through email and did not know where he might be.

Last week, Assange was scheduled to join famed Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg for a talk at New York’s Personal Democracy Forum. Assange appeared via Skype from Australia instead, saying lawyers recommended he not return to the United States.


Julian Assange, in April 2010, discussing confidential sources in the digital age

Assange was in the United States as recently as several weeks ago, when he gave press interviews to promote the website’s release of an explosive 2007 video of an American helicopter attack in Baghdad that left 12 people dead, including two employees of the news agency Reuters.

Wikileaks has not replied directly to email messages from The Daily Beast.

However, in cryptic messages he sent this week via Twitter, Wikileaks referred to an earlier Daily Beast article on the investigation of Manning and said that it “looks like we’re about to be attacked by everything the U.S. has.”

In an earlier post, the site said that allegations that “we have been sent 260,000 classified U.S. embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect.”

This morning, a new Wikileaks tweet went out: “Any signs of unacceptable behavior by the Pentagon or its agents towards this press will be viewed dimly.”

Pentagon investigators say that particular post may have been an effort by Wikileaks to throw them—and news organizations—off the track as the site prepared the library of State Department cables for release, officials said.

“It looks like they’re playing some sort of semantic games,” one American official said of Wikileaks. “They may not have 260,000 cables, but they’ve probably got enough cables to make trouble.”

• Philip Shenon: The State Dept.’s Worst NightmareIn another cryptic Twitter message, the site said that while the State Department might be alarmed about the prospect of the release of classified cables, “we have not been contacted.”

American officials were unwilling to say what would happen if Assange is tracked down, although they suggested they would have many more legal options available to them if he were still somewhere in the United States.

Manning has reportedly admitted that he downloaded 260,000 diplomatic cables and provided them to Wikileaks. In Internet chat logs first revealed by Wired magazine, Manning also took credit for leaking the 2007 video to the website.

“Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available,” Manning wrote of the diplomatic cables, according to Wired.

Wikileaks has not confirmed that Manning is a source of any information posted on the site. “We do not know if Mr. Manning is our source, but the U.S. military is claiming he is, so we will defend him,” Wikileaks said in another Twitter message.

Manning was turned in to the Pentagon by a former computer hacker based in California, Adrian Lamo, after Manning approached Lamo for counsel. Manning is believed to have contacted Lamo after reading a recent profile of him in Wired.

In the chat log revealed by Wired, Manning bragged to Lamo about having downloaded a huge library of State Department cables, as well as the 2007 video of the helicopter attack, and having provided the material to Wikileaks.

Manning took credit for having leaked a classified diplomatic cable that has already appeared on the site—a memo prepared by the United States embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland, that described a meeting there between American and Icelandic officials over that country’s banking meltdown.

The January 2010 memo may have been of special interest to Wikileaks given the site’s close ties to Iceland, where Assange has based himself at times and where he worked with local lawmakers to draft free-speech laws that give broad freedom to journalists to protect their sources.

A profile this week in The New Yorker magazine depicted Assange feverishly at work with Icelandic colleagues in Reykjavik in March as he organized the release of the 2007 video of the helicopter attack. The edited video was given the title Collateral Murder, and its release infuriated officials at the Defense Department.

With its network of whistleblowers, Wikileaks has published documents and videos on its site that have outraged other foreign governments. To protect the site from attack by intelligence agencies, Assange has placed Wikileaks on several Internet servers, making it all but impossible for any government to shut down the site entirely.

Philip Shenon, a former investigative reporter at The New York Times, is the author of The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.

• Daniel Ellsberg: ‘Assange Is In Danger’

June 11, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Man shot dead at East Jerusalem checkpoint

Ma’an – 11/06/2010

Jerusalem – A Palestinian man from Jerusalem was shot and killed by Israeli border guards on Friday, after he reportedly failed to stop at a checkpoint in the Wadi Joz neighborhood.

Witnesses said he was in serious condition as he was taken to hospital, with Israeli news sites reporting that the man died en route to hospital.

Officials identified the man as 38 year old Ziad Al-Julani, and later confirmed he was killed in the incident.

Following the shooting, clashes erupted in the area, with Palestinian residents angered at what they said was a day of oppression and violence enforced by Israeli soldiers. Two women, a man, a senior citizen and a child in a nearby car were said to have been injured in the shouting that erupted after the shooting, with Israeli forces using rubber-coated bullets against the crowd. The four were transferred the Al-Maqasid Hospital for treatment.

Israeli forces sealed off the area as clashes continued.

An Israeli border guard spokesman said Al-Julani drove his car at two border guards manning a checkpoint, installed as part of heavy security deployed throughout the city to restrict Palestinian movement following Friday prayers, and was shot in his vehicle. The spokesman said the two soldiers were lightly injured by the driver.

June 11, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Google accused of criminal intent over StreetView data

BBC | June 9, 2010

Google is “almost certain” to face prosecution for collecting data from unsecured wi-fi networks, according to Privacy International (PI).

The search giant has been under scrutiny for collecting wi-fi data as part of its StreetView project.

Google has released an independent audit of the rogue code, which it has claimed was included in the StreetView software by mistake.

But PI is convinced the audit proves “criminal intent”.

“The independent audit of the Google system shows that the system used for the wi-fi collection intentionally separated out unencrypted content (payload data) of communications and systematically wrote this data to hard drives. This is equivalent to placing a hard tap and a digital recorder onto a phone wire without consent or authorisation,” said PI in a statement.

This would put Google at odds with the interception laws of the 30 countries that the system was used in, it added.

Scotland Yard

“The Germans are almost certain to prosecute. Because there was intent, they have no choice but to prosecute,” said Simon Davies, head of PI.

In the UK the ICO has said it is reviewing the audit but that for the time being it had no plans to pursue the matter.

PI however does intend to take the case to the police.

“I don’t see any alternative but for us to go to Scotland Yard,” said Mr Davies.

The revelation that Google had collected such data led the German Information Commissioner to demand it handed over a hard-disk so it could examine exactly what it had collected.

It has not yet received the data and has extended the original deadline for it to be handed over.

The Australian police have also been ordered to investigate Google for possible breach of privacy.

‘Systematic failure’

According to Google, the code which allowed data to be collected was part of an experimental wi-fi project undertaken by an unnamed engineer to improve location-based services and was never intended to be incorporated in the software for StreetView.

“As we have said before, this was a mistake. The report today confirms that Google did indeed collect and store payload data from unencrypted wi-fi networks, but not from networks that were encrypted. We are continuing to work with the relevant authorities to respond to their questions and concerns,” said a Google spokesman.

“This was a failure of communication between and within teams,” he added.

But PI disputes this explanation.

“The idea that this was a work of a lone engineer doesn’t add up. This is complex code and it must have been given a budget and been overseen. Google has asserted that all its projects are rigorously checked,” said Mr Davies.

“It goes to the heart of a systematic failure of management and of duty of care,” he added.

June 10, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

BBC sabotaging Press TV broadcasts

Press TV – 09 June 2010

The British Broadcasting Corporation is showering Afghan cable networks with lucrative deals to cut their broadcast of Iran’s English-language news channel, Press TV.

The Press TV bureau in Kabul was informed on Wednesday that “a number of BBC employees have recently contacted the cable networks’ union in Herat to persuade them into breaking contract with Press TV and blocking all satellite transmission of its programs.”

“The BBC reportedly offered to triple the union’s pay once it agrees to strip Press TV of its broadcasting rights in Herat,” the bureau added.

The move has drawn sharp criticism from media figures in Iran, who believe it is in line with US efforts to limit Press TV activities in Afghanistan, which is grappling with an all-out humanitarian crisis since the US-led invasion in 2001.

Last year, US military forces confiscated technical equipment of Press TV’s Afghanistan bureau, only days before Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a visit to the country.

Local reports revealed that Press TV has started to emerge as a popular news source among the people and even journalists in Afghanistan.

According to the reports, Afghan officials and ordinary citizens have welcomed Press TV as an alternative, more credible news source, ever since it became available on cable in Kabul and various provinces.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, meanwhile, recently told a private gathering that he tunes into Press TV’s news reports as he finds them to be more reliable and enlightening than other English language news sources.

June 9, 2010 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Knesset Revokes Privileges Of MK Zo’by Over Flotilla

By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – June 07, 2010

The Israeli Knesset house committee decided to revoke three key parliamentarian privileges of MK Zo’by for being part of the Freedom Flotilla that was carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The decision was passed by a majority of seven to one, with MK Ilan Gilon of Meretz opposing.

One is the privilege to exit the country, second is bearing diplomatic passport, while the third privilege is the right to have the Knesset cover litigation fees of an MK if she is put on trial.

Likud member of Knesset Yariv Levin, slammed the National Democratic Assembly and its member Mk Hanin Zo’by, and stated that she refuses to pledge allegiance to Israel.

Levin quoted Zo’by as stating that she spoke of Israel’s nuclear power and that she said there should be a country that has a parallel power to Israel in the Middle East.

Levin also stated that Zo’by told reporters in Turkey that she refuses to be Israeli, and that she is a Palestinian despite being a member of the Knesset.

He added that she told the Qatar-based Al Jazeera that fundamentalist Israeli parties refuse to recognize the Arabs in the country as the indigenous people, and that she criticized Israel for politically prosecuting Arab intellectuals and officials such as Dr. Azmi Bishara, who challenges Zionism and presents the difference between democracy and Zionism.

Leven also said that Zo’by and several other Arab officials visited Libya and met its president Moammar Qaddafi despite the fact that Israel regards Libya as an enemy state.

While the Knesset session is being held, and the debate is heating up, dozens of fundamentalists started their protest in front of the Knesset demanding Israel to expel Zo’by to Gaza or ant Arab country.

In an interview with Israeli Army Radio before the session, Levin said that Zo’by “betrayed Israel” and must be prosecuted as a traitor.

He said that Zo’by crossed all red lines, adding that “those who sail to Hamas, support terrorism”.

But Attorney Eyal Yinon, the legal advisor of the Knesset, objected to revoking privileges of Zo’by, and that legitimacy to be a Knesset member cannot be revoked due to participation in the Freedom Flotilla.

Yinon added that this debate is about “misuse of rights”, Israeli Ynet News reported, “and not on the status of Knesset members”.

Furthermore, Attorney Ran Nizri, the senior assistant of Israel’s Attorney General, stated that visiting Libya is not prohibited as the country is not on Israel’s list of countries that Israelis are not allowed to visit.

MK Zo’by told the Ynet that Levin is trying to delegitimize her participation in the Freedom Flotilla, and is also trying to delegitimize to Balad Political Party she represents.

She added that the session started with an atmosphere of hostility and hatred, and that this hostility and the committee in charge if the session is not only threatening her, but also attacking Arab members of the Knesset.

June 7, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Israel censors news on deadly Flotilla raid

Mel Frykberg, The Electronic Intifada, 4 June 2010
Freedom Flotilla activists being marched away from a bus at the Ben Gurion International airport. (Mel Frykberg/IPS)


TEL AVIV (IPS) – Attempts by media to interview some of the hundreds of Freedom Flotilla members, who were being deported from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, Wednesday, were thwarted by Israeli authorities.

“No you will not be able to talk to them or interview them,” Shahar Ariel, a deputy-spokesman from Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs told IPS as TV crews and journalists jammed one of the airport’s sidewalks and filmed the dramatic departure.

Foreign media, and some Israeli journalists, have accused Israeli authorities of censoring news and interfering with journalists trying to interview the Freedom Flotilla activists who were trying to deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip when they were attacked by Israeli commandos.

Israeli journalists from the left-leaning daily Haaretz have complained of extreme difficulty in contacting the top brass in political and military echelons willing to give interviews and comment on the debacle.

Furthermore, the Israeli military had imposed a blackout on the names and nationalities of the activists on board the Freedom Flotilla and refused to reveal in which hospitals the wounded were receiving treatment.

Some of the details leaked out, but journalists were forbidden from talking to the wounded in the hospitals with Israeli soldiers stationed in hospital corridors to enforce the blackout.

Reporters Without Borders (RWB) reported that at least 60 of the approximately 700 passengers on board the Freedom Flotilla were journalists and slammed the treatment of the media.

“We point out that the journalists were there to do their job, which was to cover what happened. They should not be confused with the activists,” RWB said.

Some of the reporters on board the boats were assaulted and their equipment confiscated or destroyed. They were amongst the last to be released by the Israeli authorities.

“We tried to race ahead of the commandos so that we could send out pictures of the dead and wounded to the international media,” Huwaida Arraf, the Free Gaza Movement’s chairwoman, told IPS. “But our satellite phones had stopped functioning. The Israelis had scrambled the signals to prevent us communicating with the outside world.”

“It was clear from the beginning that Israel was trying to control the media coverage of the event to present its version of events to the world.”

“As soon as the commandos boarded they confiscated our mobiles, recording and video devices and then started filming instead,” Arraf told IPS.

One of the two Australian journalists on board, from The Sydney Morning Herald, Kate Geraghty, was tazered (with an electric baton). Paul McGeough, her colleague, said that the naval commandos’ pursuit of the boats had felt like “being hunted by hyenas at night.”

The two were denied consular access or legal representation. They had originally wanted to fight their deportation order but their lawyer was denied timely access. When an Israeli court eventually agreed to an urgent hearing it appeared too late as their plane was due to leave.

IPS asked Ariel why the Australian journalists had been denied consular access and legal representation and why so many of the activists had suddenly decided not to fight their deportation after initially vowing to do so.

“We want them out of the country as soon as possible. This is a normal situation, at this point in time, for them not to have consular and legal access as they as they are still under investigation,” Ariel told IPS.

The abuse and beatings of activists apparently happened on boats where no resistance had been offered to the raiding commandos, unlike on the Mavi Marmara where some activists tried to fight back with crude kitchen instruments, resulting in a still disputed number of them dead.

The Israelis had claimed there were firearms on board, but withdrew the allegations after being unable to offer proof.

Arraf disputed the accusations, saying that not only had the boats been thoroughly checked by security at the various ports of departure but the Flotilla organizers had hired independent security experts to verify that the boats were weapons-free.

In a separate incident on Wednesday IPS witnessed two very frightened activists who had arrived at the airport on buses and had been forcibly removed, being cuffed and frog-marched out of the departure terminal towards a minivan.

According to an Israeli police spokesman they had acted in a “provocative” manner.

When this correspondent took pictures of the event, she was verbally abused and physically intimidated by one of the security police escorting the Freedom Flotilla detainees before his colleagues pulled him back.

The police then blocked the entrance of the minibus with their bodies so that other reporters arriving on the scene were unable to take further pictures.

Following the incident reporters were physically prevented by security guards from entering the departure terminal.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and member of Israel’s Knesset (parliament), who was on board one of the six Flotilla boats, was provided with bodyguards after another member tried to physically attack her, forcing other legislators to intervene.

Haaretz reported that Hanin Zoabi, the Palestinian MK, had during a parliamentary discussion, described the Israel navy’s bloody raid on a Turkish-flagged ship as a “pirate military operation.”

She had demanded that ministers explain why the soldiers had been ordered to confiscate reporters’ cameras and why the government had refused to allow the media to publish pictures of the people who were killed on board the ship.

June 5, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

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