Drone ‘Debate’ Breaks Out at Washington Post
By Peter Hart | FAIR | April 25, 2011
Readers of the Washington Post can see this headline in today’s edition (4/25/11) about the U.S. drone airstrikes:
Debates Underway on Combat Drones
But there is no actual debate in the article. Reporter Walter Pincus cites a British military study that calls the use of missile-firing drones “a genuine revolution in military affairs,” adding that the “use of unmanned aircraft prevents the potential loss of aircrew lives and is thus in itself morally justified.”
Pincus goes on to explain:
At a Washington conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) last week, the issue of drones was also widely discussed.
That ‘wide discussion’ would seem to have involved drone proponents from the CIA and the military. Those quoted by the Post were:
–“Lt. Col. Bruce Black, program manager for the Air Force Predator and Reaper aircraft.”
–“former CIA director Michael V. Hayden,” who explained that drone pilots “can call up computer maps that show the potential effects of each weapon.” Hayden explained that teams can ask for an attack’s likely impact on the ground– which is apparently called “the bug splat.”
–“Retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, former Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance,” who apparently talked about “potential problems with public perceptions.”
–“Col. Dean Bushey, deputy director of the Air Force Joint Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center,” who explained that drone pilots train like conventional pilots.
There are plenty of questions to ask about a government policy of assassination by remote control drone aircraft– including whether or not this is even legal. The Post’s “debate” would seem to exclude anyone who doesn’t think this is a sound policy.
Freedom of Information Act Reveals Files Suggesting FDR’s Role in Pearl Harbor
Alexis Bonari | Activist Post | April 22, 2011
September 11th is hardly the first “day of infamy” to undergo public scrutiny and accusations of government conspiracy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the phrase on December 7th after the Japanese “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The attack, according to author and WWII Navy veteran, Robert B. Stinnett, however, had been no surprise at all for Roosevelt.
It was only at the author’s insistent calls on the Freedom of Information Act that the U.S. Navy at last released formerly hidden evidence that led Stinnett to conclude: FDR knew and had the power to avert disaster on December 7th.
Interview with Stinnett
The government’s claims that Japan’s codes had yet to be broken in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor have been met with questions and skepticism since 1945’s September issue of Life magazine. Stinnett himself, in an interview featured on The Independent Institute’s website, says that he believed the article to be an anti-Roosevelt tract at the time. After reading At Dawn We Slept
The likes of Gore Vidal and John Toland, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of Infamy
Because the American public still ached from the appalling death toll of the First World War (and because FDR had already promised his people, “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars”), FDR focused most of his energy on coming up with a reason for the nation to change its mind. In November 1941, all US military commanders received the order: “The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.” That would explain why, according to Lynne Olson’s research published in Citizens of London, Churchill and Governor John G. Winant practically danced at the news in December that America would be joining the European campaign, forgetting that over 2,000 Americans were already dead.
Cracking the Code
According to Stinnett’s research, the US Navy had in fact cracked Japanese naval codes and even intercepted eighty-three messages from Admiral Yamamoto to his warships. A message from November 25 read:
…the task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow.
Even Thomas Dewey, Roosevelt’s competitor in the 1944 presidential elections, had heard whispers of FDR’s role in arranging the massacre. Although Dewey planned speeches to charge FDR with foreknowledge of the attack, General George Marshall (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) convinced Dewey that he would risk American security in doing so, since Japan’s navy had yet to realize their codes had been cracked. Dewey kept his silence, and nearly everyone else has since, too—until Stinnett.
Day of Deceit has received much criticism (predictably) from conventional historians and readers as well as notable acclaim from revisionists. Still others disapprove of Stinnett’s ubiquitous tone that suggests throughout the book that FDR had no choice but to arrange for the deaths of over 2,000 Americans at Pearl Harbor. Stinnet most notably fails to mention FDR’s refusal to meet Prime Minister Konoye for peace talks in late 1941.
Stinnett seems to have broken ground, but it is still only the surface.
Libya and Gaza: Double Standards in Conflict Reporting at The New York Times
By Ed Moloney | The Broken Elbow | April 20, 2011
Excerpts:
Hats off to The New York Times for being one of the first, if not the first, to report last Friday that Col. Gaddafi’s forces in Libya have been firing cluster bombs into residential neighborhoods of Misurata, the sole city in western Libya still in rebel hands, thereby escalating the possibility of major civilian carnage.
Deployment of the weapon, along with ground-to-ground rockets, represents a significant intensification in the two-month old crisis in Libya sparked by the so-called Arab Spring of democratic rebellions that have surged through the Middle East.
The Libyan uprising, however, is the only one of these insurrections that has seen direct Western military involvement and it was the apparent threat to civilian life of the sort reported this weekend by the NYTimes and other media outlets that brought that about. Following an allegedly bloodcurdling threat from Gaddafi in early March to exact revenge against the citizens of Benghazi, the eastern city that has been the epicenter of the revolt, the United Nations Security Council authorised the use of force to protect civilians.
Justifying US involvement in the NATO-led bombing campaign against Gaddafi’s forces that followed, President Barack Obama said: “If we waited one more day, Benghazi . . . could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.’’
Gaddafi’s use of cluster bombs clearly increases the danger to Libya’s civilian population. The munitions, which contain many smaller, shrapnel-packed bomblets are designed to shower wide areas with deadly explosives. On the battlefield they can cut down scores of soldiers at a time but in heavily populated urban neighborhoods the weapon can kill and maim on a massive scale. As The NYTimes put it, describing the deployment of the weapon along with rockets:
Both of these so-called indiscriminate weapons, which strike areas with a dense succession of high-explosive munitions, by their nature cannot be fired precisely. When fired into populated areas, they place civilians at grave risk.
The dangers were evident beside one of the impact craters on Friday (in Misurata), where eight people had been killed while standing in a bread-line. Where a crowd had assembled for food, bits of human flesh had been blasted against a cinder-block wall.
The NYTimes’ report came just as other media outlets, such as The Boston Globe, were beginning to offer a platform to more skeptical analyses of the rationale for war in Libya. These pointed out that not only did Gaddafi not threaten a civilian massacre in Benghazi – this claim was made instead by rebels – he had offered an amnesty to those who threw their weapons away and even offered rebels an escape route to Egypt. The use of cluster bombs, however, tilts the balance the other way, strengthening the view that Gaddafi is prepared to kill his own people in order to survive. […]
So how did The New York Times cover the deployment of white phosphorous by the IDF in Gaza? Again by way of contrast, the best way to start answering that question is perhaps to look at how one its European rivals covered the same story. The paper in question is The Times of London. […]
The Times can sometimes rise majestically to the occasion. Its coverage of Israel’s deployment of white phosphorous was one such instance. The paper’s first story appeared on January 5th [2009] under the headline ‘Israel rains fire on Gaza with phosphorous shells’ and two days later, on January 8th, followed that up with a story about the horrifying injuries caused by WP, while noting that the IDF’s official denials that the weapon was in use and identifying the shells as being of US origin: “There is also evidence that the rounds have injured Palestinian civilians, causing severe burns. The use of white phosphorous against civilians is prohibited under international law”. Another story on January 12th provided more detailed evidence of widespread civilian casualties caused by the weapon.
On January 15th, The Times reported that the UNWRA complex in Gaza had been hit by white phosphorous shells and that the UN General Secretary, Ban Ki-Moon had protested to the Israeli government (a counter claim by Israeli PM, Ehud Olmert that his forces had been forced to reply to Hamas attacks was not supported by Goldstone). It continued in terms that left little doubt the paper believed the Israelis to be liars: “The Israeli military has denied using white phosphorous shells in the Gaza offensive, although an investigation by The Times has revealed that dozens of Palestinians in Gaza have sustained serious injuries from the substance, which burns at extremely high temperatures.”
So how did The New York Times compare to its British equivalent? I did a search of the paper’s website and archive and trawled Lexis-Nexis for references in the paper to white phosphorous during Operation Cast Lead. In total there were just five reports and with the exception of the last article, filed after the Israelis had withdrawn from Gaza, the NYT’s references to WP were perfunctory, repeated IDF and Israeli government explanations for its use and made little if any mention of the death and injury caused to Gazan civilians.
The first was a story on January 11th by Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem bureau chief for the NYT since March 2008. Although the subject had been well reported by The Times of London and other European newspapers up to a week beforehand, Bronner devoted just one sentence to WP in a report that led with Israel’s warnings to Gaza residents about a planned escalation of its incursion. Although Bronner also reported signs of growing international criticism of Israeli tactics and the dangers posed to Gazan civilians, the reference to WP was a meager one that carried echoes of the IDF’s line on its use. He wrote: “Human rights groups are also concerned about the Israeli use of white phosphorous, which creates smoke on a battlefield, at low altitudes or crowded areas, because it can burn like a kind of napalm.”
The second report came on January 16th, five days later and dealt with the shelling of the UNWRA complex. The article dwelt on Israeli doubts about the UN’s neutrality and complaints about its “institutional bias”, carried the IDF claim that its shelling was in response to Hamas fire and devoted just two paragraphs in a 1600 word article to the use of White Phosphorus.
Bylined Isabel Kershner, the story had this to say about the weapon:
Citing agency representatives who were present during the attack, Mr Gunness (a UNWRA spokesman) said three white phosphorous shells had hit the compound, causing fires that raged for hours, an allegation to which the Israeli military did not respond.
White phosphorous is a standard, legal weapon in armies, long used as a way to light up an area or to create a thick white smoke to obscure troop movements. While using it against civilians, or in an area where many civilians are likely to be affected, can be a violation of international law, Israel has denied using the substance improperly. On Wednesday, Hamas fired a phosphorous mortar shell into Israel, but no-one was hurt.
On January 22nd, the day after Israel withdrew from Gaza, The New York Times carried two pieces on WP, one by Ethan Bronner and Alan Cowell which reported that Israel had established a military investigation “to look into the issue” of alleged misuse of WP following allegations reported in what an IDF spokesman called “the foreign press”. It was the first admission by the paper that Israel’s use of white phosphorous had angered and incensed international opinion.
A second piece, solely by Ethan Bronner, finally put a human face to the consequences of white phosphorous use and reported on the ordeal of the Abu Halima family. Five members of the family, four children and their father, had perished in a WP attack over two weeks earlier and the incident had been widely reported, both in The Times of London and other European outlets, but it was only now that The New York Times was giving the story any coverage.
Bronner quoted Sabah Abu Halima, the surviving widow, at length and also doctors who had treated survivors and had seen the horrific injuries up close. One doctor said that in a few cases the damage done by WP was so acute that “seemingly limited burns led to the patients’ deaths.” Sabah Abu Halima’s grief was so profound, she said she wanted to see Israel’s foreign minister and president “burn like my children burned”.
It was a good piece of reporting that well reflected the horrors visited upon Palestinian civilians by Israeli white phosphorous. But it came far too late, like the horse that bolted the stable. It also smacked of catch up by the Gray Lady, as if someone in the New York HQ had realized that the paper really ought to say something about the matter given the level of international concern over Israel’s behavior in Gaza. But by this stage the horse had galloped several fields away.
It could be said in the paper’s defense that The New York Times was hampered, as was all the media, by Israeli government restrictions on media access to the Gaza war zone. Reporters like Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner couldn’t actually report from the ground, could not see the evidence or lack thereof for themselves and couldn’t get to speak to victims like Sabah Abu Halima, much less look into her eyes as she voiced her allegations. All their reports, bar the second Bronner piece on January 22nd, carried the Jerusalem dateline. Only when the IDF had evacuated could Ethan Bronner get into Gaza to speak to Palestinians.
That all sounds reasonable except for one thing. Like the NYT, The Times of London’s reports were all datelined Jersualem and for its detailed coverage of events on the ground in Gaza the paper seemingly relied on local stringers. And it managed to report in considerable detail both the use of WP and the devastating injuries being caused. So what about The New York Times? Did the paper have someone on the ground in Gaza and if so, why didn’t its coverage match its English counterpart?
Well yes, the paper did have someone on the ground in Gaza. Her name was Taghreed El-Khodary, a Palestinian journalist and she was the paper’s local correspondent, able to go places and speak to people inaccessible to Bronner and Kershner. On January 19th, 2009, she featured in a lengthy readers’ Q&A session reported in the Lede blog on the NYT website where she was asked about evidence that she had seen about the use of WP. She replied, inter alia: “I could find evidence of the use of white phosphorus bombs……As a result, we wrote about the use of the phosphorus. Israel used white phosphorus in densely populated areas.”
Ms El-Khodary may well have written about white phosphorous but if so, her reports about its use, the evidence she had found and her assertion that the weapon was used in “densely populated areas” never appeared in her paper, at least no edition available in any archive that I could search.
In all of this, it may entirely be a coincidence that the NYT’s Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner has what many would see as a major conflict of interest. He is married to an Israeli citizen and his son is a soldier in the Israeli army. Philip Weiss in his Mondoweiss blog reported on The New York Times response when Bronner’s background became known: “When it broke the news last year, Electronic Intifada said that it was a conflict of interest; and the newspaper’s public editor concurred; he said that Bronner should be reassigned to some other beat. The Times’ executive editor, Bill Keller, has kept Bronner in Jerusalem, presumably hoping that the issue dies down and no one says anything about it.” (Taghreed El-Khodary resigned when the NYT refused to reassign Bronner and spoke of her “disappointment” at the paper’s decision). The NYT’s other Jerusalem-based correspondent Isabel Kershner is an Israeli citizen.
Perhaps it is unfair to suggest that such considerations would or could affect how a journalist covers a particular story or how a newspaper should regard his or her stories. But put it this way. If CJ Chivers was a Libyan citizen, or was married to one, and had a son who was fighting for the rebels in Benghazi and all this was known to the world, would The New York Times have been just as quick to publish his story about Gaddafi’s use of cluster bombs, just as confident that it could weather the inevitable controversy?
Why Is Gaddafi Being Demonized?
By Anonymous African Woman* / Dissident Voice / April 21st, 2011
It was [Mouammar] Gaddafi’s Libya that offered all of Africa its first revolution in modern times – connecting the entire continent by telephone, television, radio broadcasting and several other technological applications such as telemedicine and distance teaching. And thanks to the WMAX radio bridge, a low cost connection was made available across the continent, including in rural areas.
It began in 1992, when 45 African nations established RASCOM (Regional African Satellite Communication Organization) so that Africa would have its own satellite and slash communication costs in the continent. This was a time when phone calls to and from Africa were the most expensive in the world because of the annual US$500 million fee pocketed by Europe for the use of its satellites like Intelsat for phone conversations, including those within the same country.
An African satellite only cost a onetime payment of US$400 million and the continent no longer had to pay a US$500 million annual lease. Which banker wouldn’t finance such a project? But the problem remained – how can slaves, seeking to free themselves from their master’s exploitation ask the master’s help to achieve that freedom? Not surprisingly, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the USA, Europe only made vague promises for 14 years. Gaddafi put an end to these futile pleas to the western ‘benefactors’ with their exorbitant interest rates. The Libyan guide put US$300 million on the table; the African Development Bank added US$50 million more and the West African Development Bank a further US$27 million – and that’s how Africa got its first communications satellite on 26 December 2007.
China and Russia followed suit and shared their technology and helped launch satellites for South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria and a second African satellite was launched in July 2010. The first totally indigenously built satellite and manufactured on African soil, in Algeria, is set for 2020. This satellite is aimed at competing with the best in the world, but at ten times less the cost, a real challenge.
This is how a symbolic gesture of a mere US$300 million changed the life of an entire continent. Gaddafi’s Libya cost the West, not just depriving it of US$500 million per year but the billions of dollars in debt and interest that the initial loan would generate for years to come and in an exponential manner, thereby helping maintain an occult system in order to plunder the continent.
African Monetary Fund, African Central Bank, African Investment Bank
The US$30 billion frozen by Mr Obama belongs to the Libyan Central Bank and had been earmarked as the Libyan contribution to three key projects which would add the finishing touches to the African federation – the African Investment Bank in Syrte, Libya, the establishment in 2011 of the African Monetary Fund to be based in Yaounde with a US$42 billion capital fund and the Abuja-based African Central Bank in Nigeria which when it starts printing African money will ring the death knell for the CFA franc through which Paris has been able to maintain its hold on some African countries for the last fifty years. It is easy to understand the French wrath against Gaddafi.
The African Monetary Fund is expected to totally supplant the African activities of the International Monetary Fund which, with only US$25 billion, was able to bring an entire continent to its knees and make it swallow questionable privatisation like forcing African countries to move from public to private monopolies. No surprise then that on 16-17 December 2010, the Africans unanimously rejected attempts by Western countries to join the African Monetary Fund, saying it was open only to African nations.
It is increasingly obvious that after Libya, the western coalition will go after Algeria, because apart from its huge energy resources, the country has cash reserves of around €150 billion. This is what lures the countries that are bombing Libya and they all have one thing in common – they are practically bankrupt. The USA alone, has a staggering debt of $US14,000 billion, France, Great Britain and Italy each have a US$2,000 billion public deficit compared to less than US$400 billion in public debt for 46 African countries combined.
Inciting spurious wars in Africa in the hope that this will revitalise their economies which are sinking ever more into the doldrums will ultimately hasten the western decline which actually began in 1884 during the notorious Berlin Conference. As the American economist Adam Smith predicted in 1865 when he publicly backed Abraham Lincoln for the abolition of slavery, ‘the economy of any country which relies on the slavery of blacks is destined to descend into hell the day those countries awaken’.
Regional Unity as an Obstacle to the Creation of a United States of Africa
To destabilise and destroy the African union which was veering dangerously (for the West) towards a United States of Africa under the guiding hand of Gaddafi, the European Union first tried, unsuccessfully, to create the Union for the Mediterranean (UPM). North Africa somehow had to be cut off from the rest of Africa, using the old tired racist clichés of the 18th and 19th centuries ,which claimed that Africans of Arab origin were more evolved and civilised than the rest of the continent. This failed because Gaddafi refused to buy into it. He soon understood what game was being played when only a handful of African countries were invited to join the Mediterranean grouping without informing the African Union but inviting all 27 members of the European Union.
Without the driving force behind the African Federation, the UPM failed even before it began, still-born with Sarkozy as president and Mubarak as vice president. The French foreign minister, Alain Juppe is now attempting to re-launch the idea, banking no doubt on the fall of Gaddafi.
What African leaders fail to understand is that as long as the European Union continues to finance the African Union, the status quo will remain, because of no real independence. This is why the European Union has encouraged and financed regional groupings in Africa.
It is obvious that the West African Economic Community (ECOWAS), which has an embassy in Brussels and depends for the bulk of its funding on the European Union, is a vociferous opponent to the African federation. That’s why Lincoln fought in the US war of secession because the moment a group of countries come together in a regional political organisation, it weakens the main group. That is what Europe wanted and the Africans have never understood the game plan, creating a plethora of regional groupings, COMESA, UDEAC, SADC, and the Great Maghreb which never saw the light of day thanks to Gaddafi who understood what was happening.
Gaddafi, the African Who Cleansed the Continent from the Humiliation of Apartheid
For most Africans, Gaddafi is a generous man, a humanist, known for his unselfish support for the struggle against the racist regime in South Africa. If he had been an egotist, he wouldn’t have risked the wrath of the West to help the ANC both militarily and financially in the fight against apartheid. This was why Mandela, soon after his release from 27 years in jail, decided to break the UN embargo and travel to Libya on 23 October 1997. For five long years, no plane could touch down in Libya because of the embargo. One needed to take a plane to the Tunisian city of Jerba and continue by road for five hours to reach Ben Gardane, cross the border and continue on a desert road for three hours before reaching Tripoli. The other solution was to go through Malta, and take a night ferry on ill-maintained boats to the Libyan coast. A hellish journey for a whole people, simply to punish one man.
Mandela didn’t mince his words when the former US president Bill Clinton said the visit was an ‘unwelcome’ one – ‘No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do’. He added – ‘Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi, they are advising us to be ungrateful and forget our friends of the past.’
Indeed, the West still considered the South African racists to be their brothers who needed to be protected. That’s why the members of the ANC, including Nelson Mandela, were considered to be dangerous terrorists. It was only on 2 July 2008, that the US Congress finally voted a law to remove the name of Nelson Mandela and his ANC comrades from their black list, not because they realised how stupid that list was but because they wanted to mark Mandela’s 90th birthday. If the West was truly sorry for its past support for Mandela’s enemies and really sincere when they name streets and places after him, how can they continue to wage war against someone who helped Mandela and his people to be victorious, Gaddafi?
Are Those Who Want to Export Democracy Themselves Democrats?
And what if Gaddafi’s Libya were more democratic than the USA, France, Britain and other countries waging war to export democracy to Libya? On 19 March 2003, President George Bush began bombing Iraq under the pretext of bringing democracy. On 19 March 2011, exactly eight years later to the day, it was the French president’s turn to rain down bombs over Libya, once again claiming it was to bring democracy. Nobel peace prize-winner and US President Obama says unleashing cruise missiles from submarines is to oust the dictator and introduce democracy.
The question that anyone with even minimum intelligence cannot help asking is the following: Are countries like France, England, the USA, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Poland who defend their right to bomb Libya on the strength of their self proclaimed democratic status really democratic? If yes, are they more democratic than Gaddafi’s Libya? The answer in fact is a resounding NO, for the plain and simple reason that democracy doesn’t exist. This isn’t a personal opinion, but a quote from someone whose native town Geneva, hosts the bulk of UN institutions. The quote is from Jean Jacques Rousseau, born in Geneva in 1712 and who writes in chapter four of the third book of the famous Social Contract that ‘there never was a true democracy and there never will be.’
Rousseau sets out the following four conditions for a country to be labelled a democracy and according to these Gaddafi’s Libya is far more democratic than the USA, France and the others claiming to export democracy:
1. The State: The bigger a country, the less democratic it can be. According to Rousseau, the state has to be extremely small so that people can come together and know each other. Before asking people to vote, one must ensure that everybody knows everyone else, otherwise voting will be an act without any democratic basis, a simulacrum of democracy to elect a dictator.
The Libyan state is based on a system of tribal allegiances, which by definition group people together in small entities. The democratic spirit is much more present in a tribe, a village than in a big country, simply because people know each other, share a common life rhythm which involves a kind of self-regulation or even self-censorship in that the reactions and counter reactions of other members impacts on the group.
From this perspective, it would appear that Libya fits Rousseau’s conditions better than the USA, France and Great Britain, all highly urbanised societies where most neighbours don’t even say hello to each other and therefore don’t know each other even if they have lived side by side for twenty years. These countries leapfrogged into the next stage – ‘the vote’ – which has been cleverly sanctified to obfuscate the fact that voting on the future of the country is useless if the voter doesn’t know the other citizens. This has been pushed to ridiculous limits with voting rights being given to people living abroad. Communicating with and amongst each other is a precondition for any democratic debate before an election.
2. Simplicity in customs and behavioural patterns are also essential if one is to avoid spending the bulk of the time debating legal and judicial procedures in order to deal with the multitude of conflicts of interest inevitable in a large and complex society. Western countries define themselves as civilised nations with a more complex social structure whereas Libya is described as a primitive country with a simple set of customs. This aspect too indicates that Libya responds better to Rousseau’s democratic criteria than all those trying to give lessons in democracy. Conflicts in complex societies are most often won by those with more power, which is why the rich manage to avoid prison because they can afford to hire top lawyers and instead arrange for state repression to be directed against someone one who stole a banana in a supermarket rather than a financial criminal who ruined a bank. In the city of New York for example where 75 per cent of the population is white, 80 per cent of management posts are occupied by whites who make up only 20 per cent of incarcerated people.
3. Equality in status and wealth: A look at the Forbes 2010 list shows who the richest people in each of the countries currently bombing Libya are and the difference between them and those who earn the lowest salaries in those nations; a similar exercise on Libya will reveal that in terms of wealth distribution, Libya has much more to teach than those fighting it now, and not the contrary. So here too, using Rousseau’s criteria, Libya is more democratic than the nations pompously pretending to bring democracy. In the USA, 5 per cent of the population owns 60 per cent of the national wealth, making it the most unequal and unbalanced society in the world.
4. No luxuries: according to Rousseau there can’t be any luxury if there is to be democracy. Luxury, he says, makes wealth a necessity which then becomes a virtue in itself, it, and not the welfare of the people becomes the goal to be reached at all cost, ‘Luxury corrupts both the rich and the poor, the one through possession and the other through envy; it makes the nation soft and prey to vanity; it distances people from the State and enslaves them, making them a slave to opinion.’
Is there more luxury in France than in Libya? The reports on employees committing suicide because of stressful working conditions even in public or semi-public companies, all in the name of maximising profit for a minority and keeping them in luxury, happen in the West, not in Libya.
The American sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote in 1956 that American democracy was a ‘dictatorship of the elite’. According to Mills, the USA is not a democracy because it is money that talks during elections and not the people. The results of each election are the expression of the voice of money and not the voice of the people. After Bush senior and Bush junior, they are already talking about a younger Bush for the 2012 Republican primaries. Moreover, as Max Weber pointed out, since political power is dependent on the bureaucracy, the US has 43 million bureaucrats and military personnel who effectively rule the country but without being elected and are not accountable to the people for their actions. One person (a rich one) is elected, but the real power lies with the caste of the wealthy who then get nominated to be ambassadors, generals, etc.
How many people in these self-proclaimed democracies know that Peru’s constitution prohibits an outgoing president from seeking a second consecutive mandate? How many know that in Guatemala, not only can an outgoing president not seek re-election to the same post, no one from that person’s family can aspire to the top job either? Or that Rwanda is the only country in the world that has 56 per cent female parliamentarians? How many people know that in the 2007 CIA index, four of the world’s best-governed countries are African? That the top prize goes to Equatorial Guinea whose public debt represents only 1.14 per cent of GDP?
Rousseau maintains that civil wars, revolts and rebellions are the ingredients of the beginning of democracy. Because democracy is not an end, but a permanent process of the reaffirmation of the natural rights of human beings which in countries all over the world (without exception) are trampled upon by a handful of men and women who have hijacked the power of the people to perpetuate their supremacy. There are here and there groups of people who have usurped the term ‘democracy’ – instead of it being an ideal towards which one strives it has become a label to be appropriated or a slogan which is used by people who can shout louder than others. If a country is calm, like France or the USA, that is to say without any rebellions, it only means, from Rousseau’s perspective, that the dictatorial system is sufficiently repressive to pre-empt any revolt.
It wouldn’t be a bad thing if the Libyans revolted. What is bad is to affirm that people stoically accept a system that represses them all over the world without reacting. And Rousseau concludes: ‘Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium – translation – If gods were people, they would govern themselves democratically. Such a perfect government is not applicable to human beings.’ To claim that one is killing Libyans for their own good is a hoax.
What Lessons for Africa?
After 500 years of a profoundly unequal relationship with the West, it is clear that we don’t have the same criteria of what is good and bad. We have deeply divergent interests. How can one not deplore the ‘yes’ votes from three sub-Saharan countries (Nigeria, South Africa and Gabon) for resolution 1973 that inaugurated the latest form of colonisation baptised ‘the protection of peoples’, which legitimises the racist theories that have informed Europeans since the 18th century and according to which North Africa has nothing to do with sub-Saharan Africa, that North Africa is more evolved, cultivated and civilised than the rest of Africa?
It is as if Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Algeria were not part of Africa, Even the United Nations seems to ignore the role of the African Union in the affairs of member states. The aim is to isolate sub Saharan African countries to better isolate and control them. Indeed, Algeria (US$16 billion) and Libya (US$10 billion ) together contribute 62 per cent of the US$42 billion which constitute the capital of the African Monetary Fund (AMF). The biggest and most populous country in sub Saharan Africa, Nigeria, followed by South Africa are far behind with only 3 billion dollars each.
It is disconcerting to say the least that for the first time in the history of the United Nations, war has been declared against a people without having explored the slightest possibility of a peaceful solution to the crisis. Does Africa really belong anymore to this organisation? Nigeria and South Africa are prepared to vote ‘Yes’ to everything the West asks because they naively believe the vague promises of a permanent seat at the Security Council with similar veto rights. They both forget that France has no power to offer anything. If it did, Mitterand would have long done the needful for Helmut Kohl’s Germany.
A reform of the United Nations is not on the agenda. The only way to make a point is to use the Chinese method – all 50 African nations should quit the United Nations and only return if their longstanding demand is finally met, a seat for the entire African federation or nothing. This non-violent method is the only weapon of justice available to the poor and weak that we are. We should simply quit the United Nations because this organisation, by its very structure and hierarchy, is at the service of the most powerful.
We should leave the United Nations to register our rejection of a worldview based on the annihilation of those who are weaker. They are free to continue as before but at least we will not be party to it and say we agree when we were never asked for our opinion. And even when we expressed our point of view, like we did on Saturday 19 March in Nouakchott, when we opposed the military action, our opinion was simply ignored and the bombs started falling on the African people.
Today’s events are reminiscent of what happened with China in the past. Today, one recognises the Ouattara government, the rebel government in Libya, like one did at the end of the Second World War with China. The so-called international community chose Taiwan to be the sole representative of the Chinese people instead of Mao’s China. It took 26 years when on 25 October 1971, for the UN to pass resolution 2758 which all Africans should read to put an end to human folly. China was admitted and on its terms – it refused to be a member if it didn’t have a veto right. When the demand was met and the resolution tabled, it still took a year for the Chinese foreign minister to respond in writing to the UN Secretary General on 29 September 1972, a letter which didn’t say yes or thank you but spelt out guarantees required for China’s dignity to be respected.
What does Africa hope to achieve from the United Nations without playing hard ball? We saw how in Cote d’Ivoire a UN bureaucrat considers himself to be above the constitution of the country. We entered this organisation by agreeing to be slaves and to believe that we will be invited to dine at the same table and eat from plates we ourselves washed is not just credulous, it is stupid.
When the African Union endorsed Ouattara’s victory and glossed over contrary reports from its own electoral observers simply to please our former masters, how can we expect to be respected? When South African president Zuma declares that Ouattara hasn’t won the elections and then says the exact opposite during a trip to Paris, one is entitled to question the credibility of these leaders who claim to represent and speak on behalf of a billion Africans.
Africa’s strength and real freedom will only come if it can take properly thought out actions and assume the consequences. Dignity and respect come with a price tag. Are we prepared to pay it? Otherwise, our place is in the kitchen and in the toilets in order to make others comfortable.
* Anonymous African Woman is from East Africa. She is not Libyan.
Lebanese President Slams WikiLeaks: Says Leaks Aimed at Sowing Division
By Jason Ditz | Anti-war.com | April 17, 2011
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman issued a statement today condemning WikiLeaks and accusing the group of trying to sow division between him and the Hezbollah political bloc. He insisted the leaks were all lies.
The WikiLeaks-published State Department cables claim, among other things, that former Prime Minister Saad Hariri backed Suleiman’s presidency primarily to embarrass Hezbollah and harm Michel Aoun. One cable reports the US opposing Suleiman, believing him to be a “Syrian Agent.”
The most damaging claim, however, was that Suleiman had said in 2007 that Hezbollah was only backing him to keep him from the presidency. Suleiman became president in May of 2008.
Suleiman’s statement also warned the media against publishing stories based on the WikiLeaks cables, saying that the cables “lacked credibility.” WikiLeaks has released about 7,000 cables out of the 251,287 that it has in its possession.
Who Shot the Nine Soldiers in Banyas? Not Syrian Security Forces
By Joshua Landis | Syria Comment | April 13th, 2011
A number of news reports by AFP, the Guardian, and other news agencies and outlets are suggesting that Syrian security forces were responsible for shooting nine Syrian soldiers, who were killed in Banyas on Sunday. Some versions insist that they were shot for refusing orders to shoot at demonstrators.
Considerable evidence suggests this is not true and that western journalists are passing on bad information.
* Testimony of colonel `Uday Ahmad. My wife spoke this morning to one witness who denied the story. He is colonel `Uday Ahmad, brother-in-law of Lt. Col. Yasir Qash`ur, who was shot and killed in Banyas with eight other Syrian soldiers on Sunday April 10, 2011. Uday Ahmad was sitting in the back seat of the truck which Yasir was driving when he was shot dead on the highway outside Banyas. Uday said that shooting was coming from two directions. One was from the roof of a building facing the highway and another from people hiding behind the cement median of the highway. They jumped up and shot into the two trucks carrying Syrian troops, killing 9. Col. Uday survived. Here is video of the shooting shown on Syrian TV sent by my brother-in-law, Firas, who lives in Latakia.
* Video of one soldier purportedly confessing to being shot in the back by security forces and linked to by the Guardian has been completely misconstrued. The Guardian irresponsibly repeats a false interpretation of the video provided by an informant.
- This is what the Guardian writes: “Footage on YouTube shows an injured soldier saying he was shot in the back by security forces.”
The video does not “support” the story that the Guardian says it does. The soldier denies that he was ordered to fire on people. Instead, he says he was on his way to Banyas to enforce security. He does not say that he was shot at by government agents or soldiers. In fact he denies it. The interviewer tries to put words in his mouth but the soldier clearly denies the story that the interviewer is trying to make him confess to. In the video, the wounded soldier is surrounded by people who are trying to get him to say that he was shot by a military officer. The soldier says clearly, “They [our superiors] told us, ‘Shoot at them IF they shoot at you.’”
The interviewer tried to get the wounded soldier to say that he had refused orders to shoot at the people when he asked : “When you did not shoot at us what happened?” But the soldier doesn’t understand the question because he has just said that he was not given orders to shoot at the people. The soldier replies, “Nothing, the shooting started from all directions”. The interviewer repeats his question in another way by asking, “Why were you shooting at us, we are Muslims?” The soldier answers him, “I am Muslim too.” The interviewer asks, “So why were you going to shoot at us?” The soldier replies, “We did not shoot at people. They shot at us at the bridge.”
* Alix Van Buren, a veteran reporter for la Repubblica, Italy’s leading newspaper, is in Damascus and sends the following report about the possible role of armed Khaddam agitators in Banyas.
Josh, the picture is extremely confusing and it is often impossible to confirm data on the web. The absence of most foreign media here in Syria adds to that murky picture. What I can contribute about the question of “foreign meddling” is the following. These are direct quotes from leading and respected opposition members:
Sunday two of ex-Vice President Khaddam’s men were arrested in Banyas. A human rights activist confirmed that they were sowing trouble by distributing money and weapons. I don’t know what to make of the confessions of the three guys shown on Syrian tv today. However, several Syrian dissidents believe in the presence and the role of “infiltrators”. Michel Kilo, though he accepts that possibility, cautioned that the issue of “infiltrators and conspiracies” should not be exploited as an obstacle in the quick transition towards democracy.
Haytham al-Maleh was the most explicit in pointing to the meddling of Khaddam people in and around Banias. He also mentioned the “loose dogs” loyal to Rifa’t al-Assad. According to him they are active particularly along the coast between Tartous and Latakya. Here is a link to my interview with al-Maleh in La Repubblica.
The veteran blogger Ahmed Abu ElKheir, unfortunately now in prison for the second time in less than a month, and not yet released, has links to Banyas. The first, peaceful demonstration of Saturday morning was also sparked by the request for his release. In his Facebook profile, before being arrested, he too lashed out against Khaddam. Several commentators from that area agreed with him, cursing Khaddam for meddling “with the blood of the innocents”.
Finally, what do you make of the remarks by Haytham al-Manna from Paris to Al Jazeera?
There is much buzz about that over here, although, the Western media doesn’t seem to have picked upon it yet. See the text in Arabic from Al Watan. Manna basically says that he was approached by a group of men, including a Syrian businessman holding a foreign passport, who asked him to facilitate the distribution of money and weapons to the young demonstrators. There is a vague reference to a person in the group, linked to a “major Arab Gulf country”. Al-Manna is from Dera’a, and if what he said is confirmed, his origin adds significance to the context. He reportedly issued a warning to the people in Dera’a not to accept offers of money or weapons from anyone.
I am trying to get confirmation of the above directly from him.
Also see my interview with Suhair al-Atassi
Post script to the previous note sent by Alix Van Buren:
I finally got through to Haytham Manna in Paris. He confirmed the story of Al Watan, adding a few details: he spoke about three groups having contacted him to provide money and weapons to the rebels in Syria. First, a Syrian businessman (the story reported by Al Jazeera); secondly, he was contacted by “several pro-American Syrian opposers” to put it in his words. (he referred to more than one individual); thirdly, he mentioned approaches of the same kind by “Syrians in Lebanon who are loyal to a Lebanese party which is against Syria”. Well, he probably means Hariri. But that is MY OWN ASSUMPTION, as he flatly refused to name names, for he said he does not want to get into “les contrastes libano-libanaises”. But when I pronounced that name asking him to fully express his thought, he did not contradict me. He did also refer to other nationalities “meddling” in the Syrian rebellion. He stated that the “Intifadat Karama”, the Intifada of Dignity, is a “purely Syrian affair” and that no one, “neither Jordanians, nor Lebanese, nor Saudis” should interfere. “It is a matter that Syrians must resolve among themselves”.
He also was extremely firm in saying that anyone providing money and weapons to the Syrian rebels, is “pushing them to commit suicide”, as “the confrontation with the Security apparatus cannot be won through armed clashes. Both the firepower and the sheer numbers of the military plus the security (which he puts at 2,5 millions in total) would crush them”, he says. In his opinion, “the young can prevail only through non-violence. He agrees that there are people close to Khaddam and Rifa’t along the coast, but he believes “they are very few – in the dozens” – and that the two exiled Syrians “don’t really have a political base of support”. The people who do create trouble and receive money for doing so, according to him, are simple “misérables”, “destitute individuals who will do so in exchange for money”.
All of the above is part of the current discourse among the Syrian opposition.
* A three-page document purporting to be a “top secret” Mukhabarat memo, giving instruction to intelligence forces that “it is acceptable to shoot some of the security agents or army officers in order to further deceive the enemy” has been published on the web and republished by all4Syria. A copy was sent to me with a translation by a journalist with a leading magazine for my thoughts. It has blood splattered on it and is clearly a fake. What army, after all, would survive even days if its top officers were publishing orders to shoot its own officers? Not a good morale booster for the troops.
AFP and other news agencies have quoted opposition members from Banyas insisting that the nine officers and soldiers of the Syrian army shot by government forces in Banyas. They also claim that “shadowy agents” opening fire on the people are agents of the regime.
“Banias is surrounded by tanks. No one can get in or out. It is like a prison,” said Yasser, a shopkeeper. “Security forces were responsible for killing soldiers in Banias because they had refused to attack the city,” he added – an account that differed sharply from the official version.
The official Sana news agency had said nine soldiers, including two officers, had been killed on Monday when their patrol was ambushed outside the town.
The army has encircled Banias since Monday, when shadowy agents of the regime opened fire on residents, particularly in front of mosques, killing four people and wounding 17….
Syrian soldiers shot for refusing to fire on protesters.
Katherine Marsh – a pseudonym – in Damascus
guardian, Tuesday 12 April 2011
Witnesses claim soldiers who disobeyed orders in Banias were shot by security services as crackdown on protests intensifies.
Syrian soldiers have been shot by security forces after refusing to fire on protesters, witnesses said, as a crackdown on anti-government demonstrations intensified.
Witnesses told al-Jazeera and the BBC that some soldiers had refused to shoot after the army moved into Banias in the wake of intense protests on Friday.
Human rights monitors named Mourad Hejjo, a conscript from Madaya village, as one of those shot by security snipers. “His family and town are saying he refused to shoot at his people,” said Wassim Tarif, a local human rights monitor.
Footage on YouTube shows an injured soldier saying he was shot in the back by security forces, while another video shows the funeral of Muhammad Awad Qunbar, who sources said was killed for refusing to fire on protesters. Signs of defections will be worrying to Syria’s regime. State media reported a different version of events, claiming nine soldiers had been killed in an ambush by an armed group in Banias.
Activists said not all soldiers reported dead or injured were shot after refusing to fire. “We are investigating reports that some people have personal weapons and used them in self-defence,” said Tarif….
NYT Demands Libyan War Escalation
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | April 8, 2011
Neocon editors who increasingly dominate the New York Times want President Barack Obama to deploy A-10 and AC-130 aircraft for close-combat attacks against Libyan government forces in urban areas.
Rather than give serious thought to peace feelers that have come from members of Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s inner circle, including his son Saif, the Times’ editors – like other key figures in the U.S. mainstream news media – see violent regime change as the only acceptable outcome for Libya.
Thus, the Friday editorial urging the use of the A-10s and AC-130s to attack Gaddafi’s urban strongholds and mow down his loyalist forces.
“Unlike the highflying supersonic French and British jets now carrying the main burden of the air war, these American planes can fly slow enough and low enough to let them see and target Colonel Qaddafi’s weapons without unduly endangering nearby populations,” the Times editors wrote.
“European jet fighters can certainly destroy military targets on desert roads and sparsely populated areas. But no other country has aircraft comparable to America’s A-10, which is known as the Warthog, designed to attack tanks and other armored vehicles, or to the AC-130 ground-attack gunship, which is ideally suited for carefully sorting out targets in populated areas.
“In a war where rebel ground forces are struggling to train and organize themselves, and foreign ground forces are out of the question, these specialized American planes provide a unique and needed asset. Mr. Obama should make them available to NATO commanders now.”
The Times’ belligerent rhetoric about Libya and its one-sided coverage of the conflict recall the behavior of the Times, the Washington Post and other leading U.S. news outlets during the run-up to war with Iraq in 2002-03, except then they were cheering on President George W. Bush whereas now they are hectoring President Obama to do more.
Last month, as the crisis in Libya was heating up, the Times and the Post criticized Obama for not intervening in the conflict sooner although he acted immediately after the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution permitting use of military force to protect Libyan civilians.
The tough-guy posture of the Times’ and Post’s editors was that Obama should have behaved more like Bush in ignoring the niceties of international law and just take out the “bad guy,” in this case Libya’s Gaddafi rather than Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Warriors of the Mainstream Media.”]
The neoconning of the New York Times may lag slightly behind the pace at the Post, but the phenomenon seems to be gaining momentum under editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal and executive editor Bill Keller.
In typical neocon fashion, there was virtually no accountability for any of the pro-war editors when they fell for U.S. government war propaganda before the Iraq War, a gullibility that contributed to the deaths of untold thousands of innocent people and the expenditure of some $1 trillion.
Keller, for instance, openly sided with Bush’s plans to invade Iraq, swallowed all the pro-war lies, even boasted about the influential journalists on the war bandwagon with him, and – after the false WMD claims and other lies were exposed – still was appointed to the newspaper’s top editorial job.
Having experienced no adverse consequences for his behavior regarding Iraq – indeed having been richly rewarded for it – Keller has continued on as a neocon advocate for new U.S. confrontations with Iran and now Libya, letting his biases spill into the news columns. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Through the US Media’s Lens Darkly.”]
In such a macho U.S. media environment, it seems that trying to understand an adversary’s point of view, objectively evaluating facts or – god forbid – countenancing peace talks are for sissies.
Instead, it’s much easier – and safer, career-wise – to write bellicose editorials demanding that young Americans at the controls of a “Warthog” attack aircraft unleash the plane’s fearsome firepower and slaughter some young Libyans on a city street below.
Israeli army strikes Gaza after school bus hit – Deconstructed
Associated Press Deconstructed | April 8, 2011
First, let’s look at what has happened in Gaza in the past week:
- On Friday, April 1, Israeli forces assassinated a 24-year-old member of a Palestinian resistance group in Gaza.
- On Saturday, April 2, the Israeli air force assassinated three members of the group.
- On Tuesday, April 5, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian in northern Gaza, reportedly unarmed and not part of any resistance groups.
- On Wednesday, April 6, at dawn Israeli forces bombarded Gaza in three air strikes, injuring four people, including two women (one of them pregnant) and a child.
- On Wednesday afternoon hundreds of children in Gaza participated in a march asking the international community to protect them against ongoing Israeli raids and attacks.
- On Wednesday night the Israeli Air Force bombarded several areas of Gaza, causing extensive damage; at least one resident was injured.
- On Thursday morning, April 7, the resistance group that had suffered four assassinations fired mortars at a nearby Israeli town, which injured two people on an almost empty school bus, the bus driver and the one student (16) who hadn’t already been dropped off.
- Thursday at noon Israeli forces bombarded Gaza, killing five people and injuring over 40.
- Thusday evening Palestinian resistance forces all agreed to a ceasefire to try to prevent the violence from increasing.
- Israel ignored this and continued its air strikes against Gaza, killing still more Gazans.
- In all, Israeli forces killed 14 people within 24 hours and injured dozens.
- Among those killed were a mother, her young daughter, and an elderly man.
Following is how AP reported on this. This story is on hundreds of newspaper websites around the country:
Israeli army strikes Gaza after school bus hit
By MATTI FRIEDMAN
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli aircraft and ground forces struck Gaza on Friday, killing two Hamas gunmen and three civilians
No mention in either the headline or the lead paragraph that Israeli forces killed a total of 14 people in the past 24 hours, including a mother, her young daughter (injured another of her children), and an elderly man, and that they injured dozens of others.
in a surge of fighting sparked by a Palestinian rocket attack on an Israeli school bus the day before.
No mention that this rocket attack was sparked by Israeli forces killing five Gazans in the preceding few days.
Just over two years after rocket fire from Gaza triggered
Israel had already broken the cease fire three times, killing seven Palestinian, which is what triggered the rock fire.
a devastating Israeli military offensive in the territory,
which killed approximately 1400 Palestinians, at least 773 of them civilians – hundreds of them children.
Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers seemed on the brink of another round of intense violence.
AP still chooses not to mention the five Palestinians in Gaza that Israeli forces had killed in preceding days.
In Thursday’s attack, Gaza militants hit an Israeli school bus near the border with a guided anti-tank missile, injuring the driver and badly wounding a 16-year-old boy. Most of the schoolchildren on the bus got off shortly before the attack.
By Friday morning, Israel’s ongoing retaliation
AP calls the Israeli action retaliation (for two injured, one with minor injuries) but fails to calls that the rocket attack retaliation (for the killing of five people).
had killed 10 Gazans – five militants, a policeman and four civilians – and wounded 45. The dead Friday included three civilians killed by Israeli tank fire and two militants killed in an air strike, both near the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.
Still no mention of the mother and children.
Hamas, which had largely held its fire since Israel’s last major offensive, claimed responsibility for the bus attack.
Had the bus been full, broader Israeli retaliation would have been all but inevitable and the region – already destabilized by the popular revolts sweeping the Arab world – could have been drawn into another war.
It’s odd to put such speculation in a news article, especially when AP left out so many newsworthy facts.
It is unclear if Hamas was trying to provoke a new conflagration, if it was not fully in control of all of its fighters, or if it believes Israel would pull back before invading Gaza again.
Again, it’s odd to put such speculation and commentary in a news article, especially when AP left out so many newsworthy facts.
Israel was condemned internationally after the last incursion.
“Incursion” is an odd word for the massive invasion by Israeli forces that was condemned in detailed reports issued by numerous highly respected international organizations.
Hamas said the rocket attack was in retaliation for the killing of three fighters in an airstrike earlier in the week. At around midnight Thursday, with Gaza rocked by explosions, the organization announced a cease-fire.
This was actually announced earlier and included all sectors of the Gazan resistance. The announcement about this also spoke of the 21-year-old killed on Tuesday, whom AP never mentions in the report.
But the Israeli strikes continued, hitting Hamas facilities and smuggling tunnels.
And many other facilities. AP also fails to mention that the tunnels are a response to Israel’s suffocating siege of Gaza, noted by groups such as Christian Aid.
Electricity lines and transformers were damaged, causing power blackouts in some parts of the territory, according to Jamal Dardsawi, a spokesman for Gaza’s Electric Distribution Company.
While AP speculated about what would have happened if the nearly empty Israeli bus had been full, there is no mention here about what electricity blackouts are actually doing to Gazan patients on respirators, in hospital operating rooms, etc.
In Israel, studies at some schools near Gaza were canceled Friday because of concerns for the students’ safety.
No mention of schools in Gaza, whose students have been injured, one killed, and parents killed and injured.
Palestinian militants launched nine mortars and rockets into Israel, causing damage to at least one building, the military said. Israeli casualties have been kept low thanks to reinforced rooms and early warning systems.
and the fact that the Israeli military, thanks to Americans’ $8 million per day to Israel, is the fourth or fifth most powerful military in the world.
Matan Vilnai, the Israeli Cabinet minister in charge of the home front, told Army Radio that Israel was acting to deter attacks. “We are acting as we see fit so that this type of fire will not continue, and so that the people behind the fire will regret it,” Vilnai said.
Israel’s education minister, Gideon Saar, said in a briefing with reporters that any civilian casualties in Gaza were unintentional and that Israel did not target “anyone except the terrorists.”
AP fails to report that numerous international investigations have found evidence indicating that Israel has often targeted civilians.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday condemned the bus attack and expressed concern over civilian casualties in Israel’s strikes. He called for “de-escalation and calm to prevent any further bloodshed.”
Thousands of rockets from Gaza have hit Israeli towns and cities since 2001.
AP fails to mention that these have killed a total of approximately 20 Israelis. AP also fails to mention that during the same period Israeli forces have killed thousands of Gazans, including numerous children.
Israel’s attempts to stop the rockets have included military incursions and covert operations abroad aimed at disrupting Hamas’ efforts to procure arms.
AP again gives the Israeli narrative. It fails to report that Israeli military incursions and covert operations preceded Gazan rockets.
In February, a Palestinian engineer was seized from a sleeper train in Ukraine and showed up several days later in Israel,
The normal way to report this would be to state that Israel kidnapped a Palestinian engineer in the Ukraine.
where he has been charged with masterminding Hamas’ rocket program.
Once again, AP emphasizes Israeli claims without including countering claims.
Last year a Hamas operative was assassinated in Dubai, and Israeli agents are widely assumed to have been responsible. Israel identified the man as a Hamas agent responsible for obtaining weaponry from Iran.
Again, we get the Israeli narrative, and only the Israeli narrative.
This week, Sudan accused Israel of being behind an explosion that killed two in Port Sudan. The blast was thought to be linked to arms smuggling to Gaza. Israel would not comment.
AP doesn’t bother supplying any information about the two human beings in Port Sudan who were just killed.
——
Ibrahim Barzak contributed reporting from Gaza City, Gaza Strip.
Yet, the story was written and edited in Israel by Matti Friedman, a journalist who may have family ties to the Israeli military.
#
In case anyone is curious about what occurred before this period, March had seen increased Israeli hostilities, including tightening the siege and a gradual escalation of Israeli military attacks that killed at least 11 Palestinians and injured over 40.
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After all I am a Proper Zionist Jew
October 27, 2009 | Gilad Atzmon
I am a Holocaust survivor
Yes, I am a survivor, for I have managed to survive all the scary accounts of the Holocaust: the one about the soap (1), the one about the lamp shades, the one about the camps, the mass shooting, the one about the gas (2) and the one about the death march (3). I just managed to survive them all.
In spite of all these fear inflicting stories, that were purposely installed in my soul since I opened my eyes for the first time, I have become a functional and even a successful human being. I somehow survived the horror against all odds. I even manage to love my neighbour. In spite of all the fearful, traumatic indoctrination I miraculously managed to master my cheering alto saxophone rather than the sobbing violin. … continue
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