STL = Sandbag the Lebanese
Just as Israel Intended
By RANNIE AMIRI | CounterPunch | November 5, 2010
“Thanks to Hariri’s killing, Israel was able to launch more than one project in Lebanon.”
– Major-General Amos Yadlin, former head of Israeli Military Intelligence, 27 October 2010
“I call on all Lebanese, citizens and politicians alike, to boycott [the Special Tribunal for Lebanon] and end all cooperation with its investigators … Everything they obtain reaches the Israelis. It’s enough.”
– Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, 28 October 2010
You cannot blame Israeli intelligence officials like Amos Yadlin for being unable to contain their glee. After pulling off an operation whose blame will fall at the feet of a hated enemy, it is hard not to.
Imagine their delight too when a U.N.-sanctioned body has been so successfully co-opted as a result that it could lead to the collapse of Lebanon’s government.
Such is the case with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL)—the U.N-backed court established to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of the Feb. 14, 2005 assassination of the late Lebanese premier and billionaire Rafiq al-Hariri.
Reports indicate that the tribunal’s upcoming report will indict high-ranking Hezbollah figures in the murder. The STL’s investigation and the question of its financial support—Lebanon funds nearly half its budget—has dramatically increased tension between the country’s two major political coalitions: the Hezbollah-led, opposition March 8 alliance and the United States and Saudi-backed ruling March 14 alliance headed by the late prime minster’s son, Saad al-Hariri.
Hassan Nasrallah’s recent call for Lebanon to boycott the STL came on the heels of a visit by two (male) STL investigators and their translator to a private obstetrics/gynecology clinic in the Shia-dominated, southern Beirut suburb known as the Dahiyeh. They were apparently seeking the mobile telephone numbers of a dozen patients known to be the wives and daughters of Hezbollah officials.
The investigators did not get far. Once their presence was known, they were quickly surrounded by a torrent of angry neighborhood [residents] and driven out under a barrage of insults. The phone records they so coveted were not to be had.
Over the past two years, Lebanese authorities have uncovered multiple Israeli espionage rings operating in the country, leading to the arrest of more than 100 agents working on behalf of the Mossad. A number of them were employed in the telecommunications sector, specifically Alfa, one of country’s two mobile service providers.
As news outlets have reported, the STL is expected to rely heavily on telecom data in issuing their indictments. Despite clear signs they have been compromised by Israeli intelligence, the STL persists in collecting the tainted data, just as they tried to do at the Dahiyeh clinic.
According to the Lebanese daily As-Safir, Alfa was successfully penetrated in the July 2006 war, allowing Israel to target individuals and infrastructure in a conflict which killed 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians.
Yadlin: “We reformulated a large number of Israeli Mossad cells in Lebanon and created tens of new cells to serve Israel … The most important thing for us was to control the telecoms network in Lebanon, something which benefited us even more than we expected” (Al-Manar).
In an August 2010 press conference, Nasrallah made public video footage intercepted from Israeli reconnaissance planes. The aerial clips were of West Beirut’s coastline, the Feb. 14 route of Hariri’s motorcade, and the assassination site.
“We have definite information on the aerial movements of the Israeli enemy the day Hariri was murdered. Hours before he was murdered, an Israeli drone was surveying the Sidon-Beirut-Jounieh coastline as warplanes were flying over Beirut” Nasrallah said.
Statements made by Ahmad Nasrallah (no relation to Hassan), a known Israeli agent arrested in 1996, were also disclosed. At the direction of his Israeli handlers, he admitted to falsely telling Hariri that Hezbollah was planning an assassination attempt. Doing so allowed Ahmad Nasrallah to influence the path Hariri’s motorcade would take.
Israeli collaborators in Lebanon also confessed to having surveilled March 14 leaders, including (vehemently anti-Hezbollah) Lebanese Forces head Samir Geagea. Why? “This is the answer for the people asking why March 14 members were the ones who were assassinated. The answer is that Israel wants the blame to fall on Syria and Hezbollah” Nasrallah replied.
The evidence presented at the press conference was compelling but admittedly circumstantial. However, when assessed in light of Israel’s espionage networks in Lebanon—especially those operating in the sphere of telecommunications—and the matter of false witnesses (“witnesses” who initially fingered Syria for Hariri’s killing but whose testimony was later recanted once determined to have been fabricated), there is little doubt the STL investigators’ time would be better spent exploring Israeli complicity in the crime than rummaging around a women’s health clinic in the Dahiyeh.
Yadlin: “These [spies] succeeded in many assassination operations against our enemies in Lebanon. They also made great achievements in besieging Hezbollah and obliging the Syrian army to withdraw from Lebanon.”
Because it has ignored both Israel’s political and military incentives to incriminate Hezbollah (and corroborative spy testimony and video evidence), the STL and its chief prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, are doing a great injustice to Lebanese who want to see Hariri’s killers brought to justice. Instead, they appear intent on sandbagging the truth and the stability of Lebanon … just as Israel intended.
You cannot blame Israeli intelligence officials for being unable to contain their glee.
Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator.
Most Yemenis See al-Qaeda Presence as ‘Myth’
History of Fake Attacks Cement Belief Saleh Govt Using AQAP as Excuse
By Jason Ditz | Antiwar.com | November 03, 2010
“The truth is there is no al-Qaeda.” Such a comment rarely finds currency in a nation’s popular consciousness but in Yemen, home to what the CIA calls the most dangerous of al-Qaeda’s many affiliates (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP), it is all too common.
For some AQAP is just a cynical excuse for the Saleh government to get increased foreign military aid from the US and others. Other Yemenis, particularly in the south, see it as an excuse to attack separatist groups that have nothing to do with international terrorism.
It isn’t naivete on the part of Yemenis, however, but a natural function of the Yemeni government’s constant use of “al-Qaeda” as a justification for attacks on separatist-linked civilians, and as a catch-all for the many different groups that have bones to pick with the Saleh regime.
Indeed AQAP appears responsible for precious little of the internal violence in Yemen, and the group’s focus on overseas targets makes it difficult to sell the idea of them being something for the Yemeni military to focus on. What few attacks they have claimed were usually clear retaliation for the government offensive, raising the inevitable question of whether the Saleh regime is simply hitting a hornet’s nest over and over and claiming a “threat” when it gets stung.
AUSSIE HERO, TRADES UNIONIST, EXPOSES 9/11 COVER-UP
Listen to an overbearing gatekeeper, Jon Faine, attempt to rubbish the genuine concerns of Australian Trades Union President, Kevin Bracken, in an attempt to stifle any debate about the many anomalies in the official 9/11 story.
Story and Video by Anthony Lawson and John Bursill — Veterans Today — October 27, 2010
JOURNALIST TONY LAWSON’S VIDEO
To many, the name Kevin Bracken is a new one as regards 9/11 Truth. The reality is that Kevin has been a champion of the 9/11 Truth cause since 2006 by disseminating information throughout the Victorian Union Movement and the Maritime Workers Union of Australia. He has distributed DVD’s, shown films and shared information regularly with his associates and the people of Melbourne and he achieved motions calling for a new investigation from both the Victorian Trades Hall Council where he is the President and the Victorian branch of the Maritime Union of Australia of which he heads as Secretary. Kevin has also attended numerous conferences on 9/11 and has been the facilitator of such in Melbourne, Australia. Over the years Kevin and I have developed a close working relationship, both striving for the truth 9/11 to come out to bring end to the wars and to get our rights back that have been eroded since 9/11!
This is the motion passed on the 28th of March of 2008 at the VTHC:
“This meeting of the VTHC Executive Council calls for a thorough, independent inquiry into the tragic terrorist attacks of September 11. The events of that day have been used to start pre-emptive wars ‘that will not end in our lifetime.’ They have been used to attack civil liberties and legal principles that have been the cornerstone of civilized communities. There is an urgent need to reassess the way we view the world after September 11 and we call for a proper investigation into the events of that day.”
On the 20th of October 2010 Kevin was asked to ring into ABC 774 Mornings with John Faine, although Faine disputes this. This was following an email that was sent to Faine by Kevin questioning 9/11 in the context of Australia’s ongoing support of the Afghanistan occupation. After the recent Australian election it was demanded by the Australian Greens in a “balance of power” deal that the Australian involvement in the Afghan War be debated in Parliament in it’s first sitting. This debate had been going on this week and it was the first time any such debate had happened since 9/11, which is simply outrageous.
This interview by Faine was possibly the most biased ever heard in Australia on radio broadcast by the taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Son of Miriam Faine quoted as saying:
“The day Australia has a Chinese Australian Governor General I would feel more confident of my freedom to live as a Jewish Australian”
Bracken’s questioning the 9/11 events included a torrent of ad hominem slurs and an absolute refusal to discuss any evidence that the events were anything but what we have been told by our governments. A reasonable explanation of what happened, with attached audio, can be found here. The story titled “Trades Hall president Kevin Bracken Stands by his 9/11 Conspiracy” has been reported all around the world and included a poll asking if Kevin’s questions about 9/11 were “reasonable”, which started off running at around 50/50 but has continued to move in his favour. At the time of this writing the poll results are 75% in favour of Bracken.
Kevin has received literally thousands of thank yous from around the world for his brave stance for 9/11 Truth! Standing his ground even after having been directly verbally bashed by the Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, who said he was “stupid and wrong”, and having seen his own leadership comrades buckle at the knees in the face of unfounded ridicule. Rather than running for cover Kevin, with his chin in the air, has reiterated his position, defying any to debate him on the issue! As usual, all media “presstitutes” have refused, as there is obviously “no debate to have”. It seems that the vast majority of the public disagree and would like to see such a debate but none of the so called “journalists” dare to tread such a path.
Interesting to note that John Faine is now complaining that the ABC has been swamped by 9/11 activists and it may take the ABC many weeks to deal with the massive amount of complaints and comments they have received. Many of these I know to be formal as I have received many courtesy copies of the complaints to the ABC accusing them of breaching their charter and broadcast policy.
The battle for 9/11 Truth is far from over and as long as the fools in power maintain their policy of occupation of Afghanistan they will remain exposed and at risk of criminal prosecution due to the lies of 9/11. Lets hope it comes soon or they realize and stop the bloodshed.
Broder and Israel’s Goldilocks war against Iran
By Paul Woodward | War in Context | November 1, 2010
What kind of institutional entity do the hacks in Washington constitute such that they can have a “dean”?
When David Broder is referred to as the dean of the Washington press corps, I guess it’s just a complimentary way of saying the old guy. But Broder’s nine years younger than Helen Thomas. How come she never rose to the same stature? Is baldness a requirement?
In spite of his institutional stature, Broder’s mental capacities have in recent years come into question and his op-ed in the Washington Post on Sunday provides yet another occasion to wonder what is going on inside this man’s brain as he pushes for war against Iran.
War and peace influence the economy.
Look back at FDR and the Great Depression. What finally resolved that economic crisis? World War II.
Here is where Obama is likely to prevail. With strong Republican support in Congress for challenging Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear power, he can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs. This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve.
I am not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected. But the nation will rally around Obama because Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century. If he can confront this threat and contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.
So another war is going to rescue the economy? But just a minute — if war’s such an excellent economic tonic, how come we aren’t already in great shape? A decade of war just hasn’t been quite enough?
It’s easy to mock Broder’s prescription and even to wonder whether he’s lost his grip on reality, but maybe he’s not quite as crazy as he sounds. Read more carefully, this is not actually a call for war — it is a call for the continuously escalating threat of war.
This is indeed the most likely “lesson” that some have drawn from the experience of Iraq: that the best kind of war is the one that has yet to be fought. A war that can be budgeted for, equipped for, and around which politicians can construct their postures of strength, resolution and righteousness. The context is one in which we have been encouraged to think that war is normal. War is in fact so normal that Washington pundits can now present it as a useful economic tool.
Washington’s lead comes from Israel, which has less interest in starting a war with Iran than in promoting the idea that war might be just over the horizon — a kind of Goldilocks war, not too far away and not too close, but just close enough. In this delicately modulated threat of mayhem, Iran itself remains politically and economically boxed in, while issues which merit more urgent attention — namely the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict — can be shunted to one side.
Two countries so heavily invested in manufacturing the means for engaging in war, actually have less interest in wars being fought than in a war-footing constantly being maintained. The problem is, a war posture can only be maintained for so long and momentum only be built up so much before a turning point is reached: war either then becomes inevitable or a real alternative has to be pursued.
Only through the hubris which metastasizes inside the brains of those trapped inside the Washington bubble, can anyone fail to see that the process of backing Iran into a corner risks the United States becoming trapped by the narrow logic of its own strategy. War is not normal. It is a failure of imagination.
Israeli Propaganda Blames UNRWA For “Refugee Problem”
By James M. Wall | Wall Writings | October 25, 2010
The headline on a Miami Herald column began, “Time to Start Planning….”.
A Florida newspaper with that headline? Surely, this story will be about finding a place to retire.
Not so fast. “Time to Start Planning . . .” had something else in mind. It was time to plan for RESETTLEMENT.
That sounded rather ominous. Had Sarah Palin’s Death Panels become Resettlement Camps for Florida Old Folks living with the alligators deep in an Everglades swamp?
Turns out this column by Kenneth Bandler, Communications Director for the American Jewish Committee, is not about Florida retirement homes. It is part of AJC’s mandate to support Israel with its own version of reality.
Bandler’s column gives UNRWA–the United Nations Relief and Works Agency–instructions on what it must do next: Start planning for the resettlement of Palestinian refugees. He writes:
With Israeli-Palestinian talks aiming for a permanent peace agreement in a year, shouldn’t UNRWA — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — start planning to evolve from a refugee support agency to one devoted to resettlement? After all, the final status talks will need to resolve refugees along with borders, security, water and other issues to end the conflict.
Bandler is not alone in attacking UNRWA in the pages of a major American newspaper. Two writers for the Philadelphia Daily News have been reading from the same script as Bandler.
Rex Brynen comments on the Daily News column on his personal blog, PRRN:
In an opinion piece today in the Philadelphia Daily News, Nicole Brackman and Asaf Romirowsky assert that illegal Israeli settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territories (or, as they prefer to term it, “construction in Israeli towns in the West Bank”) isn’t the real obstacle to peace in the Middle East. No, the real obstacle is the refugee issue, which in turn is kept artificially alive by UNRWA.
The Daily News column begins:
UNRWA is the primary bureaucratic culprit responsible for prolonging and exacerbating the Palestinian refugee issue.
The Canadian government has announced that Canada would defund UNRWA following a report commissioned by the European Parliament documenting that Hamas terrorists have been chosen by the UNRWA labor union to actually administer its facilities, thereby becoming the first Western nation to begin withdrawing support for the agency.
The US would do well to follow that example and use our tax dollars to promote independent Palestinian organizations and private-sector growth.
If the current Palestinian leadership is truly concerned about changing the status of Palestinian society, it should work to remove all the obstacles that are preventing change and democratization. UNRWA – while on its face a progressive nongovernmental organization that provides needed services – is in fact itself obstructing progress in the peace negotiations.
UNRWA benefits as long as the refugee crisis can’t be solved.
Geisweiller writes about the Canadian government and UNRWA, from a different perspective than the pro-Israeli version of the same story in the Daily News. Here is Geisweiller:
When the Conservative Canadian government announced it would no longer fund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in January, the caretaker agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendents, many deplored how far we’ve strayed from the Canada of Lester B. Pearson, prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner—Canada the peacekeeping nation, the globally respected middle power.
Organizations critical of Israel, or supportive of Palestinian rights, such as the Canadian Arab Federation, the Christian group Kairos, the Parliament’s Rights and Democracy, and UNRWA, have all felt the sting of an unabashedly pro-Israel Canadian government.
Kenneth Bandler’s Miami Herald column on UNRWA includes some harsh criticism of the agency’s “exclusivity” and, of course, the usual distortion of Israel’s “innocence” in the creation of the refugee “problem”. Here is Bandler:
UNRWA is the only international refugee agency dedicated to exclusively benefit one population group, the Palestinians. All other refugees worldwide are covered by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which not only provides sustenance but, importantly, also strives to resettle them, to ensure that their refugee status is not a permanent condition.
Originally envisaged as a temporary agency, UNRWA’s mandate, which does not call for resettlement, has been regularly renewed. UNRWA’s original roll of 700,000 refugees grew to include children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, some 4.7 million Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
The agency’s staff, some 27,000, is four times the size of the UNHCR workforce, deployed in every other conflict where refugees need help.
Sadly, this human tragedy was preventable. Arab leaders squandered the first opportunity to establish an independent Palestinian state by rejecting the 1947 U.N. plan to divide British Mandatory territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean to create two states, one Jewish, the other Arab.
The 1948 war Arab nations launched to snuff out the fledgling Jewish state produced the refugees.
I don’t have first hand experience with the two UN agencies, but I do know that in his version of “preventable” history Bandler is well outside the version of that history which is available in the writings of many Jewish scholars.
It was a war started by those fearsome Arab nations that “produced the refugees”? This propaganda line is not new. It first arrived on US movie screens in 1945.
A March of Time episode, released in the US after the end of World War II, adopted the Zionist propaganda term in its title, the “Palestine Problem”. The documentary was first shown in American movie theaters in September, 1945. Talk about your long-range planning.
Since I had recently met Karen Abuzayd, I turned to her for a response to Bandler’s smug and false conclusion that UNRWA, not Israel, is the obstacle to Middle East peace.
As Commissioner-General of UNRWA, based in Gaza from 2005 through 2010, she knows the refugee situation from the inside. She also knows her UN agencies.
She served as the UN Undersecretary-General, as well as Commissioner-General, of UNRWA until her retirement, and return to the United States, in 2010.
Before moving to Gaza, Abuzayd worked with UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) for 19 years, in Sudan, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Geneva, Bosnia and Washington.
This is part of the response she gave me to the Bandler column. I include it here, with her permission:
His column is so full of inaccuracies and nonsensical propaganda, that I’m not sure where to start. These are very old and very tired (and repeatedly refuted) arguments. The AJC knows very well what they are doing in injecting refuted arguments into the discourse yet again.The comparisons between UNHCR and UNRWA are particularly egregious and wrong on several counts.
Settlement is a very small part (few thousand a year) of UNHCR;s mandate. Settlement is the least favored option only for the most vulnerable. All descendants of all refugees remain refugees until a political solution is found to their plight. The UNRWA staff that Bandler describes as ‘four times’ (actually more than that) of UNHCR’s, are the Palestinian teachers, nurses, doctors, social workers, sanitation workers, etc. who offer education and health services.
UNRWA, in fact, has only 130 or so international staff, compared to UNHCR’s 1,500 or so (I’m not up to date on the latter number), but I assume it has grown since I worked for UNHCR, since their budget has trebled.
As you point out in your note to me, the peace process has not concluded, so the parameters of voluntary choice for Palestine refugees have not been determined, though it should be their right to make the choice given to other refugees, that of return, integration in their countries of asylum or resettlement in a third country.
Too bad the Miami Herald did not ask Karen Abuzayd to provide a different reading on the role of the UN agencies who have done such valuable work with Palestinians.
An uninformed public is an easily duped public.
If the American media were not such an integral part of the Israeli propaganda machine, it would have reported on Karen Abuzayd’s speech, “Jerusalem City of Dispossession”, delivered in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, on international Human Rights Day, 2009.
Had this UNRWA leader, an American woman born in Ohio, given her final speech in any other major world city on any topic other than the Palestinians, it would have been an important American news story. The full text of her speech may be found by clicking here. Early in her speech, she said:
It is fitting that on my last official visit to Jerusalem as UNRWA Commissioner General, and on International Human Rights Day, I should come to the Sheikh Jarrah, where the failure of the international community to fulfill the promise of the Universal Declaration is so acutely felt and where the pain and ugliness of dispossession and occupation are so tragically in evidence.
I have said before that “Palestine” is a metaphor for dispossession and that dispossession, along with displacement, is a key feature of the Palestinian experience, indeed of Palestinian identity.
This derives not only from the initial dispossession and displacement of the Palestine refugees in 1948, but more from the fact that 61 years later they and their descendants remain in forced exile, struggling to maintain their very presence on the remnants of their homeland.
The picture of Karen Abuzayd was taken as she delivered her final lecture in Jerusalem.
A Tainted Tribunal: Israel’s Other War on Lebanon
The assassination of Hariri served the interests only of the US and Israel
By Jeremy Salt – Palestine Chronicle – October 30, 2010
The extraordinary scenes this week at a gynaecological and obsetrics clinic in the southern suburbs of Beirut have again cast light on the work of the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), set up to investigate the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. STL investigators went to Dr Inam Charara’s clinic with a demand to be given access to the files of patients dating back to 2003. More specifically, they wanted the addresses and phone numbers of 17 patients. The presence of STL investigators in her clinic disturbed women waiting for appointments. Other women arrived from other clinics in the building and a fracas broke out. Eventually the investigators were driven off, but not before a computer, a briefcase, mobile phones and notebooks had been snatched from them. The episode raises fresh questions about the role of the STL. The southern suburbs are predominantly Shi’a and many of the patients in Dr Charara’s clinic are the wives, daughters and mothers of Hizbullah officials. What the STL hoped to find remains known only to itself.
The demand for information from medical records would cut across the principle of doctor-patient confidentiality in any country and would never be allowed in the US or any EU country, if allowed at all, except on the basis of a successful application to a court. In Lebanon it was not even made by a government agency but by an extra-territorial organisation which arrived with nothing other than the authority of the UN. The demand was further outrageous in the context of a conservative Muslim culture. Muslim men will not even allow their women to see male doctors. Most Muslim women would only want to be seen by a female doctor and this invasion by men of a gynaecological clinic was extraordinarily intrusive and insensitive.
In an address made immediately after these events, Hasan Nasrallah called for a complete boycott of the STL. He said that it had sought and been given access to the data base of all students (Lebanese and foreign) at private universities in Lebanon from 2003-2006, but left open the question of whether student records at public universities had also been given to the STL. He said it had sought the fingerprint and passport details relating to all Lebanese nationals but because of a dispute between government officials had succeeded in getting the data of only 893 people. The STL had also sought all telecommunications records, including sms messages, as well as DNA records held by government agencies, topographical surveys covering the entire country and even lists of electricity subscribers. Nasrallah said there was no sector in Lebanon the STL had not penetrated. He claimed, furthermore, that all material being gathered by the STL had been passed on to western intelligence agencies and Israel. On the basis of the known transmission to Israel of information gathered by the UN arms inspection teams sent to Iraq in the 1990s, there is no reason to doubt the possibility that what he is saying is true.
Lebanon has again become the focal point of a region-global power struggle. On one side is the unusual combination of Syria and Saudi Arabia, trying to preserve stability between Sunni, Shia and Christians and on the other is Israel and the US, which are doing their best to destroy Hizbullah through the destabilisation of Lebanon. The indictment of Hizbullah members is the chief weapon in their arsenal.
Questions about the role of the STL – what some see as its true role as opposed to its declared role – have been asked since the beginning. The report of the first prosecutor, Detlev Mehlis, was a hatchet job, a grotesque parody of a proper investigation. There was not even an attempt to look at all possible suspects, which would naturally have had to include the US and Israel. He went straight for Syria. His ‘evidence’ was mostly based on speculation and loose connections. Where his report had some appearance of solidity was in records of mobile phone calls made by those alleged to have been involved in the assassination of Hariri. On this basis, four senior Lebanese security and intelligence officials were prosecuted and jailed for four years, only to be released the moment they were transferred from the custody of the Lebanese government to the custody of the STL because the evidence did not stand up. It was at this point that the STL turned its attention to Hizbullah.
It has now turned out that the STL was either duped by false witnesses or chose to use them against Syria. It has also turned out that Israel, by the time Hariri was assassinated, had penetrated the networks of Lebanon’s two main telecommunications providers and actually had its own agents inside these organisations. This penetration not only allowed Israel to monitor all mobile phone calls in Lebanon but to fabricate them, and on this basis all communications evidence collected by the STL would have to be regarded as tainted. Furthermore, Hizbullah recently produced intercepts of Israeli aerial surveillance showing that Hariri had been tracked as he travelled between his homes in West Beirut and the mountains and the parliament building right up to the day he was killed. This surveillance included his movement along the coastal road where he drove into the trap set for him. Nasrallah has also claimed that an Israeli AWACs plane was circling over West Beirut at the time of the assassination and that an Israeli agent, who later fled the country, was actually at the scene when the bomb went off.
The STL’s claims to credibility and impartiality have clearly been undermined – lethally undermined as many would say – by its reliance on false witnesses and evidence from a subverted communications system. Yet it has not dealt with these issues. Neither has it dealt with the clear proof that Israel was monitoring Hariri’s movements across West Beirut up to the day he died, and indeed the claim that it had an agent at the scene of the bombing. Ignoring all this, it has gone straight for Hizbullah, in the full knowledge that the issuing of indictments has the potential to tear the country apart. Whether the evidence is again based on false witnesses won’t matter, because by the time the truth is established the damage will have been done.
Senior US officials, including Hillary Clinton, have made numerous visits to Lebanon in recent months. Of course they are cooking up something. They want Hizbullah’s head on a platter as soon as possible. Any Lebanese who thinks they have Lebanon’s best interests at heart is a fool. Unable to destroy Hizbullah in battle, the Israeli-US strategy now is to destroy it from within, even if the cost, which, of course, they would not have to pay, is a return to turmoil in Lebanon. Its chief assault weapon is the STL, which, by refusing to deal with issues that call into question its credibility, has only heightened the perception that, willingly or otherwise, it is a tool of US policy. The assassination of Hariri was a master stroke which served the interests only of the US and Israel. Even if the identity of the people who killed him, or the state which planned his killing, still remains unknown, that much at least can be said to be true.
– Jeremy Salt is associate professor in Middle Eastern History and Politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. Previously, he taught at Bosporus University in Istanbul and the University of Melbourne in the Departments of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science. Professor Salt has written many articles on Middle East issues, particularly Palestine, and was a journalist for The Age newspaper when he lived in Melbourne.
Iran: US behind Wikileaks revelations
Press TV – October 25, 2010
Mohammad-Javad Larijani
A senior Iranian diplomat says recent revelations by whistleblower website Wikileaks are Washington’s ploy to cover up human rights violations by the US.
In the largest-ever revelation of secret US military documents, Wikileaks released nearly 400,000 classified reports about the US-led war in Iraq.
The leaked documents, which cover the period between January 1, 2004, and January 1, 2010, have shed light on a myriad of crimes and offences committed in Iraq over the past few years, including assassinations, murders, torture and rape.
“It seems that these [revelations] are made upon the order of the US,” Secretary-General of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights Mohammad-Javad Larijani said on Monday at the summit for reviewing the human rights situation in the US.
“The message of Wikileaks documents is that the Iraqi people have been tortured by Iraq’s security forces, and the only wrongdoing of Americans is that they witnessed the incidents and remained silent,” IRNA quoted Larijani as saying.
“This is while the US had the main role in these incidents and is the defendant,” the Iranian diplomat added.
Larijani said unfortunately the Internet, which was supposed to provide all people with vast information, is being used for publishing anti-information in the world.
The head of Iran’s human rights council stressed that the US and certain Western countries take advantage of human rights violations and that “it is necessary to prevent and resist these political abuses.”
The new Wikileaks documents comprise the second such release from the controversial website, which accused the United States of “war crimes” after earlier releasing some 92,000 similar secret military files detailing operations in Afghanistan.
These documents charge the United States Defense Department with instructing American troops to ignore reports recounting torture; they also suggest “hundreds” of civilians have been killed at US military checkpoints since the beginning of the war.
Refusing to discus the Wikikeaks disclosures, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton merely condemned the leak of any document “putting Americans at risk.”
“We should condemn in the most clear terms the disclosure of any information by individuals and or organizations which puts the lives of United States and its partners’ service members and civilians at risk,” she said.
‘AJC’ A PROPAGANDA MACHINE AT WORK
David Harris, as Executive Director of the AJC (American Jewish Committee), has been the organization’s leading spokesman. In short, he has been their chief propagandist in America for Israel.
By Paul Balles – My Catbird Seat – October 25, 2010
A few days ago, Robert Elman, President of the American-Jewish Committee (AJC), published a letter praising David Harris, executive director of the AJC.
The AJC (American-Jewish Committee), boasts that it has worked since 1906 to safeguard Jewish life and to protect the dignity of all people.
In that motto alone, the thinking reader must see a dichotomy, a contradiction that casts doubt on what the organization represents.
If the AJC (American-Jewish Committee) has worked to “safeguard Jewish life”, it cannot honestly claim to protect the dignity of all people in the same breath, under which lays its treatment of Palestinians.
David Harris, as Executive Director of the AJC, has been the organization’s leading spokesman. In short, he has been their chief propagandist in America for Israel.
A closer look at Elman’s letter reveals how Harris and the AJC have used their propaganda machine to brainwash America.
In praising Harris for his 20 years of service as AJC Executive Director, Elman says:
“No single professional has epitomized AJC’s values, vision, activism, humanitarianism and achievement more than David Harris. David has been hailed as one of the Jewish people’s foremost advocates and most distinguished and eloquent spokesmen.”
Elman adds, “Looking to the future, David will continue to advocate for the issues most important to the Jewish people…”
Here are the mythical issues Elman attributes to Harris. Each has an element of propaganda in it:
Supporting a democratic Israel in its quest for peace and security.
Israel’s claims to be democratic are belied by its treatment of the Israeli Arabs as lesser members of an apartheid state.
Its so-called “quest for peace and security” has been proven to be nothing more than sound-bites for peace and military hardware for security.
Speaking out against Iran’s mission to build nuclear weapons.
This is an outright lie similar to the lie about Iraq having WMDs aimed at Israel. There’s not a shred of proof that Iran’s nuclear development involves weapons.
Building mutual respect between different religious and ethnic groups, leading to a more tolerant world.
Instead of working toward mutual respect, Israel has done everything possible to breed animosity.
Moving America towards energy independence — critical for both our national security and our environment.
In other words, cut American dependence on foreign oil, thereby diminishing positive relationships with Arab oil-producing countries.
Seeking a world in which all people are afforded human rights, human dignity and human freedom.
Before anyone can believe this Goebbels type rubbish, Israel will have to vastly upgrade its relationships with the Palestinians.
Three themes run through most Zionist propaganda:
- 1. Brainwash the public into believing that Arabs are devils and all Moslems are extremist bombers.
Professor Jack Shaheen’s in-depth studies of American films thoroughly establish how Arabs have been consistently vilified in that medium for a century.
- 2. Convince the public to believe it’s a hate crime to criticise Israel, while propagating guilt for the holocaust.
Criticism of Israel in America is a guaranteed route to castigation as anti-Semitic at best and unemployment, like Helen Thomas’s, at worst.
- 3. Instil fear in Jews and their supporters that others are out to destroy Israel and Jews. “Israel is surrounded by enemies,” writes Steven Rosen. If true, why?
This theme ignores Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. More importantly, it overlooks the fact that Israel thrives on keeping Syria and Lebanon as antagonists and Iran as a threat. The propaganda device maintains unrestrained American support.
AJC (American-Jewish Committee), propaganda does more harm than good. Israel needs healthy criticism from Jews in America and around the world.
Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He’s a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.
The ‘Torture’ Hypocrisy of the New York Times
By Scott Horton | Harpers | July 1, 2010
Has the newspaper of record adopted a double standard for torture techniques—using the “t”-word when the techniques are applied by other nations, but using more evasive characterizations when agents of the United States government are in the spotlight? That question has now been authoritatively settled, and the answer is a resounding “yes.”
A new study by Harvard’s Kennedy School (PDF) looks systematically at how American print media characterized the use of waterboarding in incidents reported from 1903 (the famous case of Major Glenn, coming out of the Philippines) to the present day. Here’s the crux of their conclusions:
Examining the four newspapers with the highest daily circulation in the country, we found a significant and sudden shift in how newspapers characterized waterboarding. From the early 1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By contrast, from 2002‐2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture. The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture. In addition, the newspapers are much more likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is the perpetrator. In The New York Times, 85.8% of articles (28 of 33) that dealt with a country other than the United States using waterboarding called it torture or implied it was torture while only 7.69% (16 of 208) did so when the United States was responsible. The Los Angeles Times characterized the practice as torture in 91.3% of articles (21 of 23) when another country was the violator, but in only 11.4% of articles (9 of 79) when the United States was the perpetrator.
The way newspapers characterize practices like waterboarding has an immediate impact on the attitudes adopted by their readers. Accepting the language suggested by the Bush Administration (“enhanced interrogation techniques”) helped build public acceptance for the application of torture techniques. Victor Klemperer, in his masterful study of the manipulation of language in Germany from the thirties to the end of World War II, called such phrases “little doses of arsenic: they are consumed without being noticed; they seem at first to have no effect, but after a while, indeed, the effect is there.”
In his impressive attempt to catalogue these “doses of arsenic,” Klemperer awards pride of place to the words used by the state to describe prisoners, prison camps, and the treatments to which they were subjected. Indeed, one of the phrases developed in this era is still with us today. In special circumstances and usually only with the permission of higher authorities, interrogators were permitted to use a set of highly coercive techniques on prisoners, including hypothermia and stress positions. These techniques were called verschärfte Vernehmung: “enhanced interrogation.”
But as George Orwell pointed out in his essay “Politics and the English Language,” the process of language manipulation was hardly reserved to the Axis powers during the war. He wrote two novels that focused instead on the same sort of word games that Klemperer documented, drawing on the Soviet Union as an example. And he was convinced that the same malicious force was at work in the English language:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them… if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
So waterboarding in the hands of the Japanese, the Khmer Rouge, East Germans, Brazilians, and Argentinians is “torture,” the American newspapers tell us, but indistinguishable techniques when used with the authority of the American government are simply “enhanced interrogation techniques,” that “critics” “refer to as torture.” This is unalloyed hypocrisy. And it has social and political consequences far beyond the nuanced semantics that fill the columns of the public editor. It is shaping a darker, more brutal society—one prepared to accept torture as a legitimate tool in the hands of the state.
© The Harper’s Magazine Foundation
More bogus claims burried in wikileaks ‘Iraq war logs’
IslamTimes | October 23, 2010:
‘The documents seem to paint a picture that very much favours official U.S. positions on the Iraq war. For example, the American media, which has a well documented history of shilling for the U.S. government highlighted two stories that it supposedly extrapolated from these documents. The first was the fact that the majority of civilian casualties in the Iraq war were caused by Iraqis. This directly contradicts a comprehensive study conducted by John Hopkins University in 2004. It found that “coalition” forces killed over 600,000 Iraqis, the majority of them killed in airstrikes. The leaked documents conveniently contradict this information.
The second major story emanating from the “leaks” is that Iran was actively destabilizing Iraq by funding militants who were assassinating Iraqi officials. One AFP story even highlights the accusation that Iran tried to launch a poison gas attack on the “green zone,” an area where Iraqi and American officials are based. Another factor that makes this “leak” highly suspect is that the Times, a newspaper that played a leading role in validating the illegal invasion of Iraq and is well known for its pro Zionist policy, was one of “few” media outlets that was given “early” access to these “leaked” documents. This meant that the Times was able to weave a narrative around the leaked documents that was then picked up by all the major networks.
The fact that the supposedly damaging leaks are in fact bolstering American accusations against Iran while minimizing American complicity in Iraqi deaths leads some to believe that the leaks are in fact engineered by the Pentagon to either discredit Wikileaks, or are in conjunction with Wikileaks which is a U.S. government outfit.’
Comment by a.h.k:
This builds on the ‘Afghan war diaries’, where wikileaks, and whoever really owns them, accuses Iran of aiding the taliban and other insurgent groups in the country.
Judith Miller’s Lies About Ahmadinejad in Lebanon
Beiruit – The run-up to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Lebanon called forth a barrage of comment from neoconservative circles. Unlike the savvy campaign for war in Iraq, however, they now tend to make straightforward claims that are self-evidently at odds with reality.
In other words, they’re not even telling very good lies any more.
A case in point was Iraq War propagandist Judith Miller’s Fox News article, whose central complaint seems to be that Ahmadinejad’s trip came at the behest of a single party, the Shia party/militia Hezbollah, rather than in response to an official invitation from the Lebanese government; “Who Invited You?” her headline indignantly blared.
Two problems undermined this approach. The first was that then-Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh quite publicly relayed just such an invitation to Ahmadinejad from his Lebanese counterpart, Michel Sleiman, in July 2008. The other was that Sleiman travelled to the Islamic Republic in November of that same year, making a reciprocal visit by Ahmadinejad what should have been a foregone conclusion.
That likelihood was placed in considerable doubt by the U.S. government’s having presumed the right to draw up Lebanon’s diplomatic schedule. While Miller rightly reported that Washington viewed the visit as “provocative,” she neglected to mention that heavy American pressure was applied on Beirut to cancel the visit. The U.S. demand was made in the name of Lebanese sovereignty (yes, really), which is rather ironic coming from a country that has supplied the tools for Israel’s occupation and violation of Lebanese territory, airspace and maritime boundaries for decades.
Undaunted by the untruths at the core of her position, Miller proceeds to expand on it. She asserts that other than the Iran’s close allies, Hezbollah, “Lebanon’s other political leaders … undoubtedly don’t share the love” for Ahmadinejad. Another falsehood: by any genuinely democratic standard, Lebanon’s most important political leaders do share that love. The parties that represent Lebanon’s largest sectarian community – its Shia population — are Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s Hezbollah and Speaker Nabih Berri’s AMAL, both of which enthusiastically welcomed Ahmadinejad. In addition, the Christian politician with the strongest bloc in Parliament, former Army Commander Michel Aoun, also supported the visit. Together, these parties and their allies received well over 50 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections.
Next we are treated to a brazen description of Ahmadinejad as “the man whose country is indirectly responsible for having killed [current Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s] father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.” Until the recent thaw between the top suspect — Syria — and the Hariri family’s benefactors in the Saudi royal family, no serious analyst even mentioned Hezbollah as a possible participant in the 2005 assassination. Now, in the absence of charges or hard public evidence, we are to presume Hezbollah’s guilt – and, by association, Iran’s – as established fact.
We are then told that the Hariri killing “sparked massive protests throughout Lebanon. This so-called ‘Cedar Revolution’ succeeded in forcing Syria, Iran’s neighbor and main Sunni Muslim ally, to withdraw the 14,000 ‘peace-keeping’ forces it had been keeping in Lebanon since the end of that country’s bloody civil war in 1990.” A few more problems. There were huge demonstrations (both for and against Syria), but all of the protests of any notable size took place in Beirut. Also, the term “Cedar Revolution” was coined by someone at the U.S. State Department. Would someone please tell American journalists to stop using it? In addition, unless someone has radically altered the map of the region (again), Syria and Iran do not share a border — they are neighbors in the same way that Iran and Lebanon are. And one more thing: Syria sent about 25,000 troops into Lebanon in 1976 — not 1990 – at the request of the latter’s president and with an Arab League mandate to foster stability amid the raging civil war.
Next, Hariri the younger is dismissed as “turning out to be anything but his father’s son.” In support, Miller trots out an Israeli journalist, Smadar Perry, to belittle Saad for having met with “Nasrallah (his father’s executioner)” and the “mastermind,” Syrian President Bashar Assad. Neither the American nor the Israeli, apparently, knows anything about the late Rafik Hariri, who made a career out of seeking and reaching accommodations with and among all the powerbrokers – both foreign and domestic, including, for years, the Syrians – in Lebanon’s cramped and chaotic political arena.
At this point we are apprised of the role of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which is supposed to look into the assassination. It is described, however, as a “UN panel,” which it is not: instead, the STL is a hybrid court whose judges will include Lebanese jurists and whose legality under the UN Charter is highly debatable owing to several factors — not least its having been created without the acquiescence of Lebanon’s Parliament.
Then another unabashedly pro-Israeli source — a report from the AIPAC-formed Washington Institute for Near East Policy — is put forth to assert that Ahmadinejad’s trip is intended to apply pressure on Saad Hariri “and his Lebanese and Western allies” to cancel Lebanon’s support for the court, “which Lebanon has been financing.” Actually, Lebanon is responsible for just 49% of the bill – and not a few Lebanese question the value of the investment because the court is widely viewed as a political tool of the pro-Western camp.
Next we are treated to a quote attributed to Nasrallah by yet another rabidly pro-Israeli actor, MEMRI, which tries to smear the cleric by tying him to a favorite American bogeyman, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Not very artful, and even less relevant given that the date of its alleged provenance was more than two decades ago.
Then Miller hauls out a fellow neoconservative journalist, Lee Smith, who is used to a) make the point that Hezbollah’s real targets are Israeli and Arab public opinion; b) dredge up the familiar lie that Ahmadinejad has threatened to ‘wipe Israel off the map’; and c) reduce Nasrallah (leader of Hezbollah since 1992) to a “creation” of Ahmadinejad.
Finally, near the end of this avalanche of error, another point from Lee Smith is then applied which almost (however inadvertently) recovers the whole article: “By continuing to fight to liberate Jerusalem,” he is quoted as telling us, Tehran has “picked up the banner of Arab nationalism [sic] that the Sunni Arab regimes had tossed by the wayside. Here was another reason for the Arab masses to despise their cruel and now obviously cowardly rulers – and admire a Shia and Persian power they might otherwise fear and detest.” Some of those Arab regimes never took up the banner of Arab nationalism in the first place, and Iran’s emphasis is on Islamic solidarity, but the point is the same – by all but the most warped definitions of international law, at least half of Jerusalem is an occupied city, a fact which plenty of Arabs and other Muslims regard as unacceptable.
Here, then, is the real reason why America and Israel fret over the likes of Ahmadinejad: their policy has always been to divide and control (Arab vs. Persian, Sunni vs. Shia, oil producer vs. consumer, monarchist vs. republican, etc.) and anyone who even speaks about uniting these elements – regardless of how unsuccessful he is likely to be – threatens to expose the glaring weakness at the heart of their position.
Marc J. Sirois is an independent analyst based in Beirut, where he was managing editor of The Daily Star newspaper from 2000-2003 and 2006-2009.
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From the Archives
“Evidence-based medicine has been hijacked:” A confession from John Ioannidis
Retraction Watch – March 16, 2016
John Ioannidis is perhaps best known for a 2005 paper “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” One of the most highly cited researchers in the world, Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford, has built a career in the field of meta-research. Earlier this month, he published a heartfelt and provocative essay in the the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology titled “Evidence-Based Medicine Has Been Hijacked: A Report to David Sackett.” In it, he carries on a conversation begun in 2004 with Sackett, who died last May and was widely considered the father of evidence-based medicine. We asked Ioannidis to expand on his comments in the essay, including why he believes he is a “failure.” … continue
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