Kola Temperature Reconstruction Shows Solar Correlation – Refutes The Hockey Stick
By P. Gosselin | August 7, 2010
Last week I wrote about a Russian-German temperature reconstruction from 1600 to 2000 derived from tree rings from the Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia . The paper appeared in the journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, Vol. 41, No. 4, 2009, pp. 460–468, by Kononov, Friedrich and Boettger.
In response, German media outlets all hollered “RAPIDLY RISING ARCTIC TEMPERATURES!”, focusing solely on one statement that temperatures have been rising since 1990.
It’s a classic example of how a scientific study comes up with Result A, but the public ends up understanding Result Z, all thanks to sloppy and incompetent communication that exists between the two.
The press release here provides the following Kola temperature reconstruction graph for summertime temperatures:
Kola Peninsula tree-ring temperature reconstruction. Source: Stephan Boehme/UFZ
Here it’s plain to see that the temperature reconstruction shows that Arctic temperatures in the Kola Peninsula have been rising since about 1670. This corresponds exceptionally well with Loehle’s 2007 reconstruction using 18 non-tree-ring proxies for the last 2000 years shown as follows:
Both graphics show the Little Ice Age from 1650 to 1750, at which point a warming event ensues. Then it was generally flat from 1750 to about 1920, and then followed by another rise that took place until 1950. Then Kola tree-ring proxies show a cooling up to 1990. Since 1990 warming has occurred again, but it’s a warming that is completely within the natural range of variation.
The Kola reconstruction (1) agreed with an earlier reconstruction (2) done in the area, see map below. What’s more, the Kola reconstruction (1) was compared with tree-ring reconstructions from other Arctic regions: Swedish Lapland (3), Yamal (4), and Taimyr (5).
Proxy locations used for Kola comparison. Source: Journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, Vol. 41, No. 4, 2009, pp. 460–468
The result of the comparison:
The reconstructed summer temperatures of the last four centuries from Lapland and the Kola and Taimyr Peninsulas are similar in that all three data series display a temperature peak in the middle of the twentieth century, followed by a cooling of one or two degrees.
Only the Yamal reconstruction differed completely, resembling the shape of a hockey stick with the blade beginning at 1900. The hockey stick is becoming an artifact of activism.
Except for the Yamal reconstruction, all tree-ring and non-tree ring reconstructions appear to agree, and so indicate no correlation between temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration.
So what could be driving temperatures then? The authors compared the tree-ring based reconstructions with historical records of sunspots (Lean et al, 1995; Lean, 2000), and say:
We found that over the whole investigated period fluctuations of summer air temperature reconstructed for the Khibiny Mountains in the central part of the Kola Peninsula have a good consistency (r >0.50) with changes of solar radiation (Fig. 10), especially for the low-frequency signal.
In the paper’s conclusion we read:
The broad similarity between this temperature construction and solar radiation indicates that solar activity is an important driver of centennial to multi-decadal trends in summer temperatures of the Kola Peninsula.
So why did all media reports holler “RAPID TEMPERATURE INCREASE IN THE ARCTIC”. Call it complete communication incompetence by the media players between science and the public.
The Kola reconstructions show no link to atmospheric CO2 concentrations. It all started with a solid scientific paper, and but then was distorted (purposely?) by a vague press release that culminated in alarmist media headlines.
Let’s call that press release incompetence-gate.
Gross Media Negligence
By SAUL LANDAU and NELSON P. VALDES | August 7, 2010
“The average Washington correspondent is content to write what he is spoon-fed by the government’s press officers.”
— I. F. Stone, 1953.
“When the government lies, must the press fib?”
— I. F. Stone, May 3, 1961
The government routinely lies and misleads. The mass media rarely checks government statements for facts or contradictions especially when the “good” guy (USA) attacks a “bad” guy (Cuba).
On July 14, for example, we reported Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Jews to support Alan Gross’ “humanitarian effort” to help the Jewish community improve communication technology.
Gross, arrested in Cuba last December, worked for a company paid by AID (part of the State Department), but used a tourist visa for five consecutive visits to disguise his intention: distribute forbidden satellite phones to government opponents. Several Jewish organizations already provide their Cuban brethren with modern communication technology. Most media failed to report that fact, which would have raised another obvious question: why did Gross distribute expensive satellite technology to a well-supplied community?
Jewish leaders in Havana interviewed by non-Cuban Juan Tamayo of the Miami Herald don’t remember meeting Alan Gross. Perhaps only dissident Jews got his goodies, those who don’t associate with the mainstream Jewish community! Ironically, as Hillary defended Gross’ technology-sharing mission, U.S. Homeland Security seized computers bound for Cuba from U.S. religious groups also claiming desires to upgrade communication technology for non-Jewish religious groups. Did some U.S. government official choose Jews (the “chosen” people) to receive high-tech equipment? Mainstream journalists didn’t catch this obvious contradiction. Indeed, the media routinely fails to check official government assertions. Sometimes they feast on their own failures to check, as when scandal erupted over the recent Shirley Sherrod firing by Agriculture Secretary Vilsack followed by “oops, we didn’t check, but can now squeeze this story for weeks.”
How about squeezing facts and applying them to reporting foreign policy? Reporters might recall Congress passed laws from the 1990s authorizing the “promotion of democracy” in Cuba (meaning overthrow Cuba’s government).
Radio Marti promoted the U.S. way of life, then TV Marti, albeit Cubans have yet to watch it (Cuba jams its signal). The Gross case represents a digital equivalent: Satellite phones, computers, Facebook and Twitter to undermine Cuba’s government.
Media often ignores context (history), especially when high U.S. officials present good (us) v. evil (them) scenarios. In the 1980s, Iran’s theocratic government, now Washington’s maximum enemy and Israel’s nemesis, (Teheran’s nuclear enrichment program could lead to weapons-making) received U.S. missiles from high Reagan officials (the Iran-Contra scandal).
In 2002, Saddam Hussein invited UN Weapons Inspectors to return to prove Iraq had no WMD. The Bush White House sneered, claiming Saddam had evicted the same inspectors in 1998. The major media like White House stenographers reported this “fact.” Four years earlier the very same media organs had correctly reported: the UN had prudently withdrawn the inspectors after President Clinton announced plans to launch missile strikes against Iraq. The effect of the report as fact and the false Bush narrative reinforced the “evil Saddam” image (convenient for mobilizing support for the invasion of Iraq).
Similarly, in July, Hillary lectured Vietnam on its human right failures. There was no mention in the major media of how U.S. armed forces (U.S. military advisers first entered Vietnam in 1950 and the war ended in 1975) had killed several million Vietnamese civilians, many in carpet bombings, which deprived them of all human rights. The media also ignored the fact that Washington does not turn Vietnamese — or Chinese — human rights abuses into pretexts to impose embargoes and travel bans, as it does with Cuba. OK, consistency is the product of small minds!
U.S. officials condemn North Korea for its alleged sinking of South Korea’s ship, Cheonan, in March as if Pyongyang occupied a uniquely sinister place in the list of human rights’ abusers. Did no reporter read Bruce Cummings’ recent book revealing that U.S. forces killed millions of civilians in the Korean War? (The Korean War: A History, Modern Library, 2010)
U.S. “news” media apparently accept as unwritten law that a powerful empire can waive standards for itself that it applies to “lesser” nations, like Cuba. Declassified documents from the early 1960s onward show the CIA supervising 3,000 plus attacks against Cuba, including dozens of assassination attempts. Yet, State has placed Cuba on its terrorist list.
Evidence? Washington has not accused Havana of directing terrorist acts against U.S. targets. Paradoxically, in 1984 Cuban UN diplomat Nestor Garcia told Secret Service officials details of an assassination plot against President Reagan. As a result of the information, Garcia said, the FBI arrested some men, thanked Cuba for its help and “continued business as usual.”
Empires scoff at double standards. So what? U.S. leaders act on the first three words of the old Christian dictum: “Do unto others,” and haven’t absorbed Mark Twain’s wisdom. “There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Twain didn’t say “obedient neighbor!”
Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. Nelson Valdés is Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico.
Weekly Standard Falsely Claims Iran Is Starting Proxy War With Israel
It’s nothing unusual for the flagship neocon rag, the Weekly Standard, to try to start wars in the Middle East. But Gabriel Schoenfeld’s post today on the magazine’s blog was irresponsible even by the Standard’s… well, standards.
Schoenfeld, a fellow at the neocon Hudson Institute, fabricates the details of incidents at the southern and northern edges of Israel in order to connect the attacks to the Islamic Republic.
In his post, ominously titled “Are the Winds of War Blowing?,” Schoenfeld wonders aloud, “Are the ayatollahs preparing preemptive action of their own, taking the battle to the borders of the Zionist enemy?”
Just how are the Iranians attacking the borders of Israel? Through their proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, of course. As evidence of this menacing military campaign, Schoenfeld cites three encounters over the past week:
On July 30, after a prolonged interval without such attacks, Hamas lobbed a Grad rocket into a residential area in the Israeli city of Ashkelon.
On August 2, another Grad was fired from the Sinai Peninsula toward the Israeli resort city of Eilat; it landed in the neighboring Jordanian city of Aqaba, where it killed a taxi driver and wounded five people.
On August 3, Hezbollah initiated a gun battle against Israeli soldiers operating within Israel next to its border fence, killing an Israeli officer.
No links are provided for the first two incidents, so let me clarify a few things: A rocket from Gaza did indeed land in Ashkelon last week, but Hamas did not launch or “lob” it. Even Haaretz reported that:
The Israeli military believes that Hamas was not responsible for the [rocket] attack and that the Islamist organization which controls the Gaza Strip is not interested in escalating tensions in the area, Army Radio reported.
In the second incident, of the rocket apparently fired from the Sinai, Haaretz reports that, “No group has yet taken responsibility for the attack.” Egypt, for its part, only blamed “Palestinian factions,” initially denying that the rockets had come from the Sinai at all, and failing to specify a group. (Hamas is an offshoot of the Egyptian-founded Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Egypt, so presumably the authorities would have little problem blaming the group if they suspected their involvement.)
For the third incident, Schoenfeld does provide a link. But if he bothered to read through the BBC article he chose, he would see that the clash on Israel’s northern border was with the Lebanese Army, not the Shia militia, Hezbollah, as Schoenfeld breathlessly states by claiming “Hezbollah initiated a gun battle against Israeli soldiers.”
Yes, both Hezbollah and Hamas are supported by the Islamic Republic as part of a far-reaching PR campaign by Iran to increase its regional clout (which is only aided by the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict). But this does not, by default, mean that Iran is behind every clash in the region.
While the origins of the first two attacks remain in the dark, Schoenfeld is ready to proclaim Hamas the culprits with zero evidence. On the third score, he simply doesn’t know what’s going on or fabricates the events to blame another Iranian proxy.
All this winds up with him, perhaps in a case of projection, suggesting that Iran is starting a war with Israel, no doubt aiming to rile up U.S.-based support for taking Israel’s side in said war.
And this from a guy who wrote a piece last month for the Wall Street Journal titled “Avoiding Another Intelligence Failure on Iran.”
Before making his fact-free claims, however, Schoenfeld writes, “As Iran makes its way into the endgame of its nuclear-bomb making program, it may be growing more worried about the prospect of a preemptive Israeli strike.” Leaving aside his evidence-free assertions about the advancement of Iran’s nuclear program, Schoenfeld does cite here the more likely scenario, with Israel cast as the aggressor.
NYT: Pervasive surveillance is a serious threat — in China
By Glenn Greenwald| August 3, 2010
Yesterday, I wrote about the proliferation of the private online surveillance industry, how it furnishes ever more thorough and invasive information to the U.S. Government about citizens’ online activities, and why that destruction of privacy is so dangerous My Salon colleague, Dan Gillmor, yesterday detailed just how comprehensive are the online surveillance capabilities which enable all of this. Today, The New York Times confronts the same problem of privacy destruction at the hands of a pervasive Surveillance State . . . in China. In a perfectly interesting article, Michael Wines describes how the Chinese Government has placed surveillance cameras covering virtually every public space in two of its more “restive” provinces, which last year saw deadly fighting between ethnic minorities and the Government. He describes the dangers as follows:
Much of the proliferation is driven by the same rationales as in Western nations: police forces stretched thin, rising crime, mushrooming traffic jams and the bureaucratic overkill that attends any mention of terrorism.
But China also has another overriding concern — controlling social order and monitoring dissent. And some human rights advocates say they fear that the melding of ever improving digital technologies and the absence of legal restraints on surveillance raise the specter of genuinely Orwellian control over society. . . .
Officials say the cameras leverage the latest technology to battle crime and terrorism Guangdong provincial officials told Chinese news services last year that their new cameras had deterred more than 18,000 street crimes even before the one million cameras had been fully deployed. In Kunming, in south-central China, crime dropped 10 percent after the police installed new cameras, the city’s deputy police chief told a security forum last spring.
That said — and some Western skeptics dispute claims of the cameras’ crime-fighting success — China’s video surveillance clearly has a darker side. . . . The longer-term concern . . . is that video surveillance will become a pervasive tool for controlling not only China’s comparative handful of dissidents, but the masses of people who ordinarily would not run afoul of the state.
So government surveillance “clearly has a darker side” and could become “a pervasive tool for controlling not only dissidents, but the masses of people who ordinarily would not run afoul of the state”? You don’t say. Thank God we don’t live in a place like China where that happens, but instead in the U.S., where surveillance is only motivated by a desire to stop Terrorism and other crimes.
It’s certainly true that China deploys surveillance cameras far more aggressively, at least in these two provinces, than the U.S. does. But the level of other types of at least equally invasive surveillance by the U.S. Government — including warrantless monitoring of telephone and Internet communications records, as well as Internet browsing activities — is approaching the level of absoluteness. As the ACLU’s privacy expert Chris Calabrese told me yesterday: “if the Government can monitor your Internet searches and store your broswing history, the list of websites you visit, that’s close to being able to read your mind.” And, of course, the 2008 FISA Amendments Act dramatically expanded the Government’s ability to read the content of Americans’ emails and eavesdrop on their calls without warrants.
It isn’t as though the U.S. has no history of severe surveillance abuses by the Government against its citizens. The opposite is true. It’s not really hyperbole to say that every decade of the last century has seen such abuses, with a fairly unbroken trend toward more ever-invasive measures, including many in the last decade. The only episode that imposed some mild restraints — the mid-1970s reforms brought about by the Church Committee’s exposure of decades of severe abuses — has been drowned by the post-9/11 explosion of the Surveillance State. And then there was that instantly forgotten Washington Post series from a couple weeks ago documenting how our Surveillance State is so vast and secretive that nobody even knows what it does, let alone restrains it.
But anyway: let’s fret about the dark side of China’s surveillance activities. It’s always bizarre how eager we are to focus on the threatening acts of other countries’ Governments and how finely attuned we’re willing to be to the likelihood for abuse — over there — while blissfully averting our eyes from similar threats from our own Government and remaining happily faithful that our own government officials would never do such things no matter how many times they do.
Wikileaks, causes for concern
By Maximillian Forte | August 2, 2010
Not much new support for the anti-war movement
When it comes to uncovering the brutality of American military and covert operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is in fact not much that is new in these records, and not much that will compete with the revelations made in the established media that have had a very high profile. Wikileaks seems to be depending now on individuals to privately sift through thousands of records, and then to presumably publish their findings outside of newspapers, months from now, about events that happened perhaps years ago. This is great for historians, and not so great for anti-war activists who deal in the immediate, in the present. There is little here to compete with revelations of American mass killings of civilians, and disregard for human rights, as revealed by the very regime of Hamid Karzai, or by intrepid reporters such as Jerome Starkey and Michael Hastings. Whatever is found will often not have as much impact as the Rolling Stone article about General Stanley McChrystal, and his own admissions about the failures of the Marjah offensive, and of the dark side of the war that would turn off most Americans if they knew more. They can know more, but with considerable labour, and on their own, and that seems to be expecting a lot of citizens…
New support for fighting the Taleban
Julian Assange assumed his intentions were good enough that they could control the narrative that would be constructed around these records. He may learn differently. Assange told Der Spiegel that he enjoys “crushing bastards,” and he later told CNN’s Larry King that by “bastards” he meant U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The problem is that the news media have already made the question of who is a “bastard” more complicated and ambiguous, for showing the atrocities which the reports allege have been committed by the Taleban. The Guardian was first, speaking of the Taleban’s use of “improvised explosive devices” (IEDs): “the IED…not only strikes foreign troops on ground patrols and in road convoys, it is also an indiscriminate terror weapon killing and injuring thousands of civilians…. Taliban fighters appear to have been prepared to blow up large numbers of people in order to assassinate a single target, such as a high-ranking government official or police chief,” and the article says the reports show that the Taleban are responsible for the majority of civilians killed in Afghanistan. We might suspect that some elements of American public opinion will use this kind of information to renew the call for crushing the Taleban, the only group that patriotic Americans would ever call “bastards,” as if fighting the Taleban was an end in itself, one worthy of so much American blood and treasure.
Support for expanding the war to Pakistan and Iran
Is there a straight, logical line from these records to greater popular support for the anti-war movement? Clearly, there is not. Indeed, some of the first newspaper reports dedicated themselves to showing that Pakistan’s intelligence services and military cannot be counted upon as a good partner for the U.S. For some, that will mean pushing to have more American covert forces in Pakistan, thus further widening and Americanizing the war, the same way as happened in Vietnam and the region around it. Personally, the big shock for me was this article in The Guardian: “Afghanistan war logs: Iran’s covert operations in Afghanistan.” According to the article, “Iran is engaged in an extensive covert campaign to arm, finance, train and equip Taliban insurgents, Afghan warlords allied to al-Qaida and suicide bombers fighting to eject British and western forces from Afghanistan.” A connection between Iran and Al Qaeda? Was it not the suggestion of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda that was used by the Bush administration to successfully capture American public support for the Iraq invasion? And now that the U.S. and the European Union have escalated sanctions against Iran to a point beyond which the next steps can only lead to war, do these records not serve to provide a service to pro-war propagandists? As I write this, the very pro-war Fox News has fixed its attention on this very aspect of the Wikileaks records.
The incomplete and fragmentary nature of the records
In my own research with these records, involving the use of American social scientists in units known as Human Terrain Teams, I have come to some important realizations. These records are only some of the records that we might have had. They are incomplete and fragmentary. Can anyone believe that the records Wikileaks obtained, almost 110,000 of them, are all the records produced by the U.S. military in a period covering six years of war? If not, then what was left out? Why were these records released, and not others? How can we make any credible claim based on these records, without knowing what has been kept from our view? What if what we do not have would somehow modify or reshape what we now claim to know?
The records are not the same as “the truth”
These are records written by combatants on one side in a war. They are written by elements of the American military, with a military audience in mind, and to suit the purposes of that military. That many of the records are based on hearsay, rumours, and unsubstantiated allegations that would not survive review at higher levels of military intelligence, is also the case. The records lack context and often lack depth: short, terse bursts of information. Information is not the same thing as meaning, nor is it understanding. It is just data, and data is dead until an analyst gives it life by adding value. The worst thing that could happen would be to have great masses of people insisting that something is true because it was reported in these records. To add depth and context, one has to cross check these records, examine other records, interview the key participants, understand the larger aims and narratives. The people writing these reports are neither infallible nor objective. If few people understand this, we could end up with arguments that seem to be factually muscular, and yet are intellectually malnourished.
The lack of ethical concern, and an inadequate review process
Julian Assange of Wikileaks has now repeatedly asserted what he told Der Spiegel in an interview: that the source of the leaked records went through his “own harm-minimization process” (we do not know what that process was, nor the identity of the source). Assange added: “We understand the importance of protecting confidential sources, and we understand why it is important to protect certain US and ISAF sources.” Suddenly, the person who declared he enjoyed crushing the bastards, is very concerned about their protection, but he says little about protecting the identities of the many Afghan sources who are named and whose locations are revealed in the records. Assange says, “we identified cases where there may be a reasonable chance of harm occurring to the innocent. Those records were identified and edited accordingly.” However, I have seen absolutely no evidence to support his claim. First of all, when someone edits an original document, you must indicate in that document something like this: “name deleted,” or “section deleted” or simply black out the text to show that portions are being kept from view. I have seen none of that. Second, the names of Afghan informants have been retained and are in full public view. This subjects them to the possibility of being executed by the Taleban, and it will be thanks to Wikileaks.
Assange has told TIME that, “Our groups—the New York Times, Der Spiegel, the Guardian and WikiLeaks — covered about 2,000 reports in detail.” That is only 2,000 of the total of almost 92,000 that were released. By his own admission, only a small fraction of the records were reviewed in detail. And who is involved in that review process? Does it include military and intelligence specialists? Does it include any of the people who were actually there, in the situations described in the records? Does it include the Afghans who were named? Does it include any Afghans at all? Assange, who has never been to Afghanistan, nor served in the military, would not have the experience and sensitivity to understand what constitutes harmful information, outside of the local context. What if the same is true of those who were responsible for the small scale review that occurred? I understand the need to protect the identity of one’s sources—indeed, that is my argument here—but not the need to protect the identities of those who supposedly assisted Wikileaks in its review process. Name them, tell us their qualifications, let us hear from them.
Why are the news media not even asking these questions?
Dependence on the mainstream news media
There has also been a lack of credibility from Assange on the issue of why Wikileaks chose to suddenly depend on the mainstream news media for the release of the records—or at least he has failed to explain the obvious in a clear manner. When Wikileaks released the now famous video footage from the viewpoint of an Apache helicopter, firing on and killing civilians in Iraq, “Collateral Murder,” it was done independent of the established media. On YouTube alone, that video has been seen in excess of 7 million times. It does not seem that Wikileaks failed to gain notice and interest, and the news media still reported on its release. So why is it that the mainstream news media, so faulted by Assange for failing to do their job in covering the reality of the Afghan war, are now the primary intermediaries for this release?
The answer would seem simple: these written records are numerous and written in a specialized language, requiring journalistic expertise to make stories out of them. A video can be viewed by anyone and immediately apprehended. Or so one would think. There is nothing straightforward about visual imagery, and it can be hotly contested.
Crowd sourcing: an ideal with little substance?
Having first chosen mainstream news media for the release of the first stories based on the records, Wikileaks now turns to the wider public, sourcing opinion and analysis from the “crowd.” If Wikileaks had real faith in that process, it could have better appreciated and understood the wide range of expertise in the worldwide community of bloggers, and understood that the power to gain traction from a story can come just as much from below, as from above. Presumably Wikileaks understood this, and even cherishes this principle, which is what makes its choice of dependence on the news media strange. The crowd is not homogeneous. The crowd, just like with mainstream news media, contains sensitive specialists, and miserable propagandists. There is no escaping this. When one goes crowd sourcing, one must expect a lot of opinion that is based on poor understanding, inadequate training, selective reading, wishful thinking, and a deliberate desire to distort what the records say in order to suit certain political ends. The results will certainly be mixed, and these records will settle very little in our continuing public debates. But we should always expect surprises…including nasty ones.
Maximilian C. Forte is a professor in anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He writes at Zero Anthropology. He can be reached at max.forte@openanthropology.org
Bomb Iran?
Neocon Nutballs Ramp Up Campaign
By GARETH PORTER | July 30, 2010
Reuel Marc Gerecht’s screed in the Weekly Standard seeking to justify an Israeli bombing attack on Iran coincides with the opening of the new Israel lobby campaign marked by the introduction of House resolution 1553 expressing full support for such an Israeli attack.
What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.
That has long been the Israeli strategy for Iran, because Israel cannot fight a war with Iran without full U.S. involvement. Israel needs to know that the United States will finish the war that Israel wants to start.
Gerecht openly expresses the hope that any Iranian response to the Israeli attack would trigger full-scale U.S. war against Iran. “If Khamenei has a death-wish, he’ll let the Revolutionary Guards mine the strait, the entrance to the Persian Gulf,” writes Gerecht. “It might be the only thing that would push President Obama to strike Iran militarily….”
Gerecht suggests that the same logic would apply to any Iranian “terrorism against the United States after an Israeli strike,” by which he really means any attack on a U.S. target in the Middle East. Gerecht writes that Obama might be “obliged” to threaten major retaliation “immediately after an Israeli surprise attack.”
That’s the key sentence in this very long Gerecht argument. Obama is not going to be “obliged” to join an Israeli aggression against Iran unless he feels that domestic political pressures to do so are too strong to resist. That’s why the Israelis are determined to line up a strong majority in Congress and public opinion for war to foreclose Obama’s options.
In the absence of confidence that Obama would be ready to come into the war fully behind Israel, there cannot be an Israeli strike.
Gerecht’s argument for war relies on a fanciful scenario of Iran doling out nuclear weapons to Islamic extremists all over the Middle East. But the real concern of the Israelis and their lobbyists, as Gerecht’s past writing has explicitly stated, is to destroy Iran’s Islamic regime in a paroxysm of U.S. military violence.
Gerecht first revealed this Israeli-neocon fantasy as early as 2000, before the Iranian nuclear program was even taken seriously, in an essay written for a book published by the Project for a New American Century. Gerecht argued that, if Iran could be caught in a “terrorist act,” the U.S. Navy should “retaliate with fury”. The purpose of such a military response, he wrote, should be to “strike with truly devastating effect against the ruling mullahs and the repressive institutions that maintain them.”
And lest anyone fail to understand what he meant by that, Gerecht was more explicit: “That is, no cruise missiles at midnight to minimize the body count. The clerics will almost certainly strike back unless Washington uses overwhelming, paralyzing force.”
In 2006-07, the Israeli war party had reason to believed that it could hijack U.S. policy long enough to get the war it wanted, because it had placed one of its most militant agents, David Wurmser, in a strategic position to influence that policy.
We now know that Wurmser, formerly a close adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu and during that period Vice President Dick Cheney’s main adviser on the Middle East, urged a policy of overwhelming U.S. military force against Iran. After leaving the administration in 2007, Wurmser revealed that he had advocated a U.S. war on Iran, not to set back the nuclear program but to achieve regime change.
“Only if what we do is placed in the framework of a fundamental assault on the survival of the regime will it have a pick-up among ordinary Iranians,” Wurmser told The Telegraph. The U.S. attack was not to be limited to nuclear targets but was to be quite thorough and massively destructive. “If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot. Don’t shoot a bear if you’re not going to kill it.”
Of course, that kind of war could not be launched out of the blue. It would have required a casus belli to justify a limited initial attack that would then allow a rapid escalation of U.S. military force. In 2007, Cheney acted on Wurmser’s advice and tried to get Bush to provoke a war with Iran over Iraq, but it was foiled by the Pentagon.
As Wurmser was beginning to whisper that advice in Cheney’s ear in 2006, Gerecht was making the same argument in The Weekly Standard:
“Bombing the nuclear facilities once would mean we were declaring war on the clerical regime. We shouldn’t have any illusions about that. We could not stand idly by and watch the mullahs build other sites. If the ruling mullahs were to go forward with rebuilding what they’d lost–and it would be surprising to discover the clerical regime knuckling after an initial bombing run–we’d have to strike until they stopped. And if we had any doubt about where their new facilities were (and it’s a good bet the clerical regime would try to bury new sites deep under heavily populated areas), and we were reasonably suspicious they were building again, we’d have to consider, at a minimum, using special-operations forces to penetrate suspected sites.”
The idea of waging a U.S. war of destruction against Iran is obvious lunacy, which is why U.S. military leaders have strongly resisted it both during the Bush and Obama administrations. But Gerecht makes it clear that Israel believes it can use its control of Congress to pound Obama into submission. Democrats in Congress, he boasts, “are mentally in a different galaxy than they were under President Bush.” Even though Israel has increasingly been regarded around the world as a rogue state after its Gaza atrocities and the commando killings of unarmed civilians on board the Mavi Marmara, its grip on the U.S. Congress appears as strong as ever.
Moreover, polling data for 2010 show that a majority of Americans have already been manipulated into supporting war against Iran – in large part because more than two-thirds of those polled have gotten the impression that Iran already has nuclear weapons. The Israelis are apparently hoping to exploit that advantage. “If the Israelis bomb now, American public opinion will probably be with them,” writes Gerecht. “Perhaps decisively so.”
Netanyahu must be feeling good about the prospects for pressuring Barack Obama to join an Israeli war of aggression against Iran. It was Netanyahu, after all, who declared in 2001, “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in 2006.
The Sinking of the Cheonan and Its Political Uses
By GREGORY ELICH | July 28, 2010
Much has been written about the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan, and the evidence is widely regarded as clearly pointing to North Korean culpability. In the Western press, the case has generally been presented as solid and the evidence irrefutable. The tragedy is seen as one more example of North Korean perfidy. Yet, doubts persist.
Following the sinking of the corvette Cheonan on March 26, the government of South Korea established the Joint Military-Civilian Investigation Group (JIG) to investigate and determine the cause of the sinking. Two months later, on May 20, the group completed its report and issued a press release outlining its conclusions. In its press release, the JIG firmly announced, “The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine. There is no other plausible explanation.”
The JIG concluded that the Cheonan was sunk by a “shockwave and bubble effect” from an explosion set off by a homing torpedo, which caused “significant upward bending” of the center keel. A bubble jet effect is created when an explosion takes place underwater and creates a dramatic change in pressure, resulting in the formation of a strong column of water that strikes its target with great power. In addition to the upward bending of the stern and bow sections at the point of severance, the JIG found “water pressure and bubble effects” on the bottom of the hull, and the ship’s wires had been cut with no sign of heat.
Furthermore, survivors reported “that they heard a near-simultaneous explosion once or twice,” water splashed on the face of a sailor at the port-side, and a sentry stationed on the shore observed a “pillar of white flash” rising about 100 meters for two to three seconds. No fragmentation or burn injuries were found on the bodies of the sailors who were killed, and seismic waves were detected at eleven stations. (1)
All of this evidence is consistent with the JIG’s conclusion that a shockwave and bubble jet effect from a exploding torpedo was the cause of Cheonan’s sinking. (2) As further damning evidence, components of a torpedo were brought up by a two fishing trawlers in the proximity of the site of the sinking. The components appeared to match that of a diagram the South Korean military had in its possession of the North Korean CHT-02D torpedo. Inside the propulsion system of the torpedo were written with blue magic marker ink the Hangul characters for “1 beon” (number 1 ). This was similar to a North Korean training torpedo that the South Korean Navy had obtained seven years before, in which there was written “4 ho” (unit 4). According to one expert on North Korea, “North Korea does not frequently use the term beon.” (3) However, it cannot be said that infrequent usage rules out the possibility.
The evidence appeared inarguable, yet from the first it was apparent that there was a troubling lack of transparency in the JIG’s approach, typified by the secrecy surrounding the investigation. The report itself remains concealed, and the public is expected to accept on faith that the JIG’s conclusions and brief explanations are backed by the evidence.
Various alternative causes of the sinking were briefly addressed by the South Korean Ministry of Defense. (4) The possibility of a floating contact mine was rightly dismissed due to the lack of signs of a contact explosion. However, most modern non-contact mines rely on creating a shockwave and bubble jet effect to sink ships. In general, the Ministry of Defense considers the possibility of a sea mine having caused the explosion as “unlikely,” given the maritime conditions and fast currents in the shallow waters around Baengnyeong Island where the Cheonan sank. Moored mines are rarely used in deeper waters, where currents and swells are stronger than they are closer to shore. According to Retired Rear Admiral Chris Bennet of the South African Navy, “Their major use is therefore limited almost exclusively to coastal or territorial waters.” (5) In other words, it is in areas such as around Baengnyeong Island where moored mines are best suited. But the South Korean Navy’s “detailed search” of the seabed failed to locate the anchor that a moored mine would have needed. No details were given to indicate the extent of the search beyond that one phrase.
Bottom mines rest on the seabed and are ideally suited for deployment in shallow waters, but the JIG dismissed the possibility of such a mine striking the Cheonan because it “cannot split a ship when detonated at a depth of 47 meters.” That was the depth of water at the location where the torpedo components were retrieved. However, when it sank, the Cheonan had been sailing in waters that were no deeper than 30 to 40 meters. (6) According to the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, “bottom mines tend to work in relatively shallow water (less than 164 feet).” That translates into just under 50 meters, well within the range necessary to have struck the Cheonan. (7) However, the JIG calculates the distance of the explosion as just three meters from the Cheonan’s gas turbine engine. (8) If the JIG’s calculation of the explosion distance is correct, then that would preclude the possibility of a bottom mine.
There is another type of mine, one which the JIG did not address in its summary of findings. That is the rising mine, which is similar to a bottom mine in that it sits on the seabed. Where it differs is that it contains an acoustic sensor, and when a ship approaches, the mine is programmed to float upwards and explode at a set distance beneath the hull. In essence, the result would be the same as a non-contact torpedo, creating a bubble jet effect. In shallow water, such mines tend not to be moored, hence there would be no anchor. (9) There is also the torpedo mine, which when detecting an approaching ship, opens up and fires a torpedo at its target. (10) This possibility, too, was not mentioned in the JIG’s summary.
The centerpiece of the case against North Korea is without doubt the torpedo fragments retrieved by trawlers. At the JIG press conference announcing the results of its investigation, a diagram said to be that of the CHT-02D was displayed. It was not until over one month later, after critics had pointed to discrepancies between the diagram and the torpedo fragments, that the JIG admitted that it had shown a diagram of the wrong torpedo, the PT-97W. This was said to have been caused by a “mix-up by a staff member while preparing for the presentation.” (11) That such a mistake could be made is indicative of a careless attitude concerning evidence.
This was not the only point of confusion. One day before the JIG’s final results were announced, a Korean government official was quoted as saying that investigators had determined that North Korea sank the Cheonan with a Chinese-made torpedo, as Chinese characters were written on the torpedo fragments collected from the site. It was said that the torpedo was thought to be a YU-3G, the type North Korea had imported from China more than twenty years ago. (12) One day later, nothing more was said of the matter, and now it was claimed that the torpedo fragments originated from a CHT-02D, with a Korean word written in blue ink. It is true that at one time Hanja (Chinese) characters were incorporated into general usage in Korea, but that practice has long since passed, and not since 1949 have they been used in North Korea. (13) Because the JIG’s report remains shrouded in secrecy, it is impossible to know whether or not Chinese characters were truly found on torpedo fragments. If so, that would be at variance with a report that U.S. intelligence had traced the propulsion system on the found torpedo to its manufacture two years ago at a North Korean factory. (14)
It should also be mentioned that the information South Korea had on the CHT-02D was obtained from an export catalogue, as the weapon is among those that North Korea sells abroad. In other words, the torpedo apparently has buyers, and therefore the source of manufacture does not automatically correspond to ownership. So, was the torpedo a Chinese-made YU-3G or a North Korean-made CHT-02D? Or perhaps something else altogether? It is a CHT-02D, the JIG now asserts, without addressing the discrepancy in its claims.
Traces of RDX, a high explosive chemical commonly used in torpedoes and mines, were found on the Choenan’s smokestack, stern, and in sand taken from the seabed. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young dismissed speculation that the RDX was residue from naval drills that had been conducted in the past in the area. Although one South Korean government source claimed that RDX is not used in mines, this was contradicted by the Defense Minister (15). Indeed, RDX has been used in naval mines since the Second World War. (16)
While the presence of RDX would be consistent with a torpedo attack, it cannot on its own be considered as proof of that. Consider that when Canadian authorities intercepted the Princess Easwary as it was transporting illegal immigrants, swabs taken from the ship showed traces of RDX. No torpedo or mine had struck the Princess Easwary. Its past history of gun-running meant that the mere presence of explosives had been enough to leave a residue. (17) The Cheonan, as a military vessel, routinely carried explosives and engaged in naval exercises. Among the Cheonan’s armaments were six Mark 46 torpedoes, two Otobreda 76 mm guns, two 40 mm Bofors guns, and twelve Mark 9 depth charges. (18) Both torpedoes and depth charges utilize RDX, and the bursting charge of projectiles fired by Bofors contain RDX. (19) Certainly, explosions from test-fired depth charges would have spread RDX around rather liberally.
It is a striking anomaly that none of the 58 surviving sailors of the Cheonan witnessed a rising pillar of water, without which it is difficult to imagine that a bubble jet effect explosion could have taken place. (20) Perhaps all of those on deck perished during the incident. That might account for this oddity, although it does seem unlikely, given that most of the casualties were said to be of those who were below deck. There is, of course, the shore-based witness, but one would feel more comfortable with his veracity were it backed by other witnesses. Indeed, the Korean organization People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy reports that survivors who spoke at the JIG press conference said they saw no pillar of water. They included port-side lookouts, who would have been hard-pressed to miss such a significant sight. (21)
The recovery of torpedo fragments in the vicinity of Cheonan’s sinking appears persuasive. It is a strong point in support of the South Korean government’s argument. Yet, it is not such an unusual event for torpedoes and components of torpedoes to be found underwater. All sorts of things get dumped at sea, including, it seems, dangerous weaponry. A live torpedo was inadvertently pulled up in a fishing net more than two years ago off the British coast, as was one off the coast of Rhode Island in 1985. (22) In a survey covering the period of March 2002 through February 2003, the British Royal Navy reported that “at least 15 items of explosives ordinance or their components had been recovered in the nets of fishing vessels operating in coastal waters around the British Isles.” Among the ordinance recovered were “torpedo components.” It was also noted that some items had been “dispersed from their original dumping or loss positions by water movements.” Oceanographic factors “can lead to quite substantial movements of large munitions.” In the 15-year period ending in 2000, German fisherman reported to officials in Lower Saxony having found a total of more than 11 tons of munitions, while Dutch fisherman net an average of ten explosives per year. (23) The torpedo recovered by South Korea may have been associated with the sinking of Cheonan, but it could also have been dumped at sea, or test fired during military exercises at some point in the past.
It should also be noted that the Cheonan was sunk in disputed waters. After the Korean War, the U.S. unilaterally drew the Yellow Sea border between the two Koreas with a line that curved sharply northward to North Korea’s disadvantage, rather than in a straight line, as existed with the East Sea border and which would have been common practice. (24) The area has been the site of periodic naval clashes between the two Koreas, and it is not unusual for North Korean vessels to cross over this line that it does not recognize.
The JIG did conduct a simulation to demonstrate how a bubble jet effect would have impacted a ship’s hull. It is an indication of the predetermined approach the JIG adopted that the simulation was not completed until after its report was finished and results were announced. Although a bubble jet effect is capable of severing a ship in two, the JIG’s simulation failed to do more than deform and cause a small break in the hull. (25)
Two Korean-American physicists, Seung-Hun Lee and J.J. Suh, are of the opinion that a bubble jet would have resulted in the hull being deformed in a concave shape at the point of severance, rather than the sharply angular shape seen in the Cheonan. This suggested to them that the pattern is “more consistent with a collision with a hard object.” (26)
What tied the recovered torpedo fragments to the sinking of the Cheonan was not only its proximity to the site of the sinking, but also a chemical analysis of adhered substances on both the torpedo and the Cheonan’s hull that were shown to be identical. (27) The physicists managed to obtain a copy of one section of the JIG’s secret report, in which it was stated that the compounds were a result of an explosion. These compounds were indeed the same on both the torpedo and the ship, the physicists concluded, but the data were not consistent with the conclusion that they had formed during an explosion. The samples, they asserted, “have nothing to do with any explosion, but are most likely aluminum that has rusted after exposure to moisture or water for a long time.” Korean-Canadian geologist Panseok Yang determined that the spectroscopic analysis of the compounds reported by the JIG closely matched that of gibbsite, a mineral formed under intense weathering conditions, and often found in clay deposits. (28)
When a South Korean congresswoman asked the JIG to release its samples, only two out of the three were made available. The JIG claimed that they had used up all of the third sample, yet the spectroscopic and X-ray analyses done are non-destructive. Seung-Hun Lee and Panseok Yang observed that either the JIG had completely mishandled the samples or they were intentionally hiding them. (29)
The South Korean Ministry of Defense rejected their conclusions, pointing out that the physicists’ laboratory tests did not fully replicate conditions during an explosion, and were thus invalid. (30) The physicists argued that their results were “consistent with previous scientific studies.” In their experiments they had scaled down both the weight of the explosive and the weight of the water in a metal container to retain the proportion equivalent to that of a torpedo. Full access to the JIG’s data and objective analysis would do much to bring us closer to the truth, whichever direction it leads, but Seung-Hun Lee finds that the JIG’s report contains “several serious self-contradicting aspects and their interpretations have serious flaws, to say the least.” (31)
The propulsion unit of the torpedo was severely corroded, an apparent result of the coat of paint having been burnt away by the heat of the explosion. It seems odd that the “number 1” written in Korean by a blue magic marker would survive intact. The boiling point for ink is less than half that of paint, so it would be more vulnerable to loss. (32) One cannot be sure that the handwriting was not added later by South Korean military officials for enhanced dramatic effect when presenting their evidence.
In the opinion of Seung-Hun Lee, “The government is lying when they said this was found underwater. I think this is something that was pulled out of a warehouse of old materials to show to the press.” (33)
It seems that the JIG’s investigation was something of a rush job, intended to be completed in time to give a boost to the South Korean ruling party in local elections. Among the members of the JIG were a small number of representatives from the opposition Democratic Party, one of whom, Shin Sang-cheol, felt disappointed that members of the team were not given briefing materials or basic information such as the navigation course record and other data. What struck Shin was that the investigation began with the premise that there had been a torpedo attack, and during his time on the team no effort was made to examine other possibilities. (34)
With the South Korean military’s mind made up before it began, little effort needed to be wasted on analysis. According to one anonymous South Korean military source, “If you leave out the time spent moving the torpedo, removing water and dust, and writing a report, the whole examination [of the torpedo components] only lasted about three days. The government has invited distrust by being excessively greedy.” In that span of time, the JIG was not able to even determine how long the torpedo had been corroding underwater. (35)
Shin Sang-cheol was quickly booted out of the JIG for not singing the same tune as the military authorities. With years of experience as a ship navigator and as a shipbuilding inspector at various Korean shipyards, he was not entirely without expertise. He sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, in which he included maritime maps of the waters around Baengnyeong Island. These, he pointed out, are marked by shallow waters and rock fields. It was his contention that the Cheonan had run aground, backed out, and then collided with some object. Among the indications Shin cited as evidence were deep scratches on the hull and propeller blades bent forward; that is, toward the direction of the point where the ship split in two, rather than away from it. Perhaps not surprisingly, Shin is being sued for libel by the South Korean military. (36)
Shin’s theory, however, does not seem particularly more convincing than that of the South Korean military. The JIG ruled out the possibility of running aground as the ship’s sonar remained undamaged. Shin counters, correctly, that a hull can run aground at one point while another is unaffected. But it could be that the ship’s propellers were damaged when the stern hit bottom after the Cheonan split in two. Or indeed, the damage to them may have resulted from some previous incident. It is far from certain that Shin’s theory accounts for what actually happened to the Cheonan. The JIG’s summary points out that there are no signs of collision on the Cheonan, and the hull damage does appear more consistent with that of an external explosion than of a collision. But the possibility of a collision did merit consideration. Actually, what is perplexing is that none of the various explanations that have been put forward quite seem to fit the totality of evidence.
One’s already low level of confidence in the South Korean military’s sincerity was undermined when it was revealed that it had deliberately fudged initial reports on the sinking of the Cheonan. The Naval Operations Command reported that the sinking occurred at 9:15 PM (which was later corrected to 9:22 PM) and that there was the sound of an explosion. The Joint Chiefs, however, altered the time to 9:45 PM and omitted mention of an explosion in order to cover up their slow responsiveness. Then the Ministry of Defense botched the release of thermal observation device recordings by using those from thirteen minutes after the sinking, while ignoring recordings taken from just three minutes afterward. Furthermore, when a South Korean vessel in the vicinity of the Cheonan reported that it had fired at an unidentified object, it was instructed by the Fleet to report the object as “a flock of birds.” It was also eventually revealed that the on-duty Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was drunk that night, and only arrived at command control headquarters at 10:42 PM, where he managed to stay awake at a meeting for ten minutes before falling asleep. (37)
That high-ranking military officers would so causally lie and distort facts during a moment of crisis does not encourage confidence in their reliability to objectively analyze data and come to a considered conclusion in the investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan. Certainly not when political pressure to reach a predetermined conclusion would have been so intense. Interestingly, the investigators who probed into the military’s mishandling of its initial response to the sinking of the Cheonan revealed only a portion of the problems they had found. Information which they considered militarily sensitive was excluded. (38) That would seem to imply that additional distortions or misrepresentations had taken place.
The South Korean military believes that it was a North Korean Yono (Salmon) class midget submarine that fired a torpedo at Cheonan. Of limited range, midget submarines must be ferried and launched by larger submarines. They can operate in shallow waters, unlike their larger counterparts. Even so, the waters around the sinking were too shallow even for a midget submarine, so it is thought that it had to have been operating from much farther away, in deeper waters. South Korea did track the departure of a Yono-class submarine and its mother ship from a North Korean port days before the sinking of Cheonan, as well as their return to base days after the incident. For the JIG, that constituted direct evidence of North Korean responsibility, although logically speaking, this is not in fact direct causal proof any more than a man would be proven guilty of murder simply because he was away from his home at the moment the murder took place. The most that could be said of the submarine tracking is that it is suggestive of a possible connection.
Oddly, the Cheonan’s sonar failed to detect anything unusual, but a South Korean military source pointed out that the ship’s sonar “is an old model with a limited range, so there’s a strong possibility that it failed to detect the torpedo which was launched from far away.” (39) That may be true, but one must add that sooner or later a torpedo fired from long-range distance would approach closely enough to be detected. Kim Jong-dae, editor-in-chief of D&D, a defense journal, observes, “A submarine is supposed to be difficult to detect militarily, but most torpedoes can be detected. It is doubtful they would have been completely unable to detect the launch.” (40)
No one would call the JIG’s investigation a model of transparency. It was led by South Korea, who chose the nations that would participate: the U.S., Great Britain, Australia and Sweden. On the Multinational Combined Intelligence Task Force, Canada replaced Sweden. Aside from Sweden, what all of these nations share is a uniformly hostile attitude towards North Korea. Sweden, according to CBS News, was “a reluctant partner in blaming the North Koreans.” (41)
Unquestionably, the South Korean government is sincere in its belief that a North Korean submarine fired a torpedo at the Cheonan. But in one sense that is the problem. So convinced was the JIG, that the team had a set of blinders on during the investigation, so that only one outcome was possible. And nothing would seem amiss if, whether knowingly or blindly, evidence was fudged or ignored to strengthen that case, as that would not change the overall facts as the team perceived it.
The report itself remains secret, and all requests for it to be made public have been rejected. A copy did go to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who pronounced the evidence against North Korea “overwhelming.” If the evidence is truly so convincing, it would only help South Korea’s case for it to be made publicly known. Or could it be the case that the evidence falls short of Clinton’s assessment? South Korean legislators have not seen the report, nor have they been given access to even partial information of relevance. Assemblyman Choi Moon-soon of the opposition Democratic Party comments, “We asked for very basic information – interviews with surviving sailors, communication records, the reason the ship was out there.” But no information was forthcoming from the government. (42)
North Korea vehemently denies the accusations being made against it. As the accused, North Korea is an interested party. It feels it has the right to see the evidence supporting the charges. North Korea asked on two occasions to send its own inspection team to operate under the joint control of both South and North Korea in order to conduct an investigation, but their requests were turned down by the South Korean government. North Korea sent a similar suggestion to the United Nations, only to be rebuffed by the United States, who indicated that the case against North Korea was already proven. Instead, the U.S. pushed hard for the strongest language in a UN Security Council statement, and attempted to browbeat China into going along. China, though, held firm in the interests of peace, ensuring that a more moderate UN statement resulted. With the U.S. and South Korea committed to taking a hard line, even North Korea’s proposal to reopen talks on denuclearization was snubbed.
China, which has received a modicum of information from South Korea, remains unconvinced. “I have to say the majority of Chinese policymakers and academics feel that the Cheonan report does not hold water,” remarks international studies scholar Zhu Feng. (43)
In order to bolster its case, South Korea agreed to allow a team of Russian naval military experts to visit and analyze the evidence. For the first time, there would be an objective assessment of evidence. There was good cooperation during the visit, and then the Russians returned home where they spent several weeks in analyzing the data. Russia, however, was in a delicate position when it came to publicizing its determinations. Openly backing Seoul would only encourage attempts by the U.S. to ratchet up tensions in the region, whereas dissenting from the JIG’s conclusion could strain relations with South Korea, an important trading partner. So it was not surprising when it was announced that Russia would not publicize its own report.
There have been, however, various leaks and comments made to the media which give a fair indication of the Russian team’s evaluation of the evidence, clearly regarded as inconclusive. Russia did supply its report to the U.S. and China, but not to the South Koreans, apparently in a bid to avoid antagonizing them. But it did not take long for South Korea to be apprised of the results, no doubt by the U.S. Whereupon the Russian ambassador was called to the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he received a heated reception.
According to a South Korean diplomatic source, “The Russian investigation team’s primary interest was in whether North Korea, which had been unable to produce its own torpedoes until 1995, suddenly was able to attack the Cheonan with a state-of-the-art bubble jet torpedo.” It has been pointed out that this technology is possessed only by a small number of countries, and the weapon has been successfully used only in test firings on stationary targets. The Russian team came to the conclusion that the recovered torpedo did not sink the Cheonan, nor indeed had any bubble jet torpedo done so. As that was the primary focus of their investigation, they did not offer a concrete cause, other than to suggest various proposed scenarios, such as a mine explosion after maneuvering problems. (44)
If a North Korean source speaking on condition of anonymity in Hanoi is to be believed, Russia informed North Korean officials that it did not trust the results of the JIG investigation. “The Russian delegation said if the truth is revealed, then South Korea and the United States could be caught in an awkward position,” an apparent reference to the manipulation of evidence. (45)
Yet there was still much that the Russian team was unable to determine. It sent requests for further information, but so far South Korea has failed to respond. “We still have some questions regarding the results of this work to which we have not received clear answers,” Naval Commander Vladimir Vysotsky said. Whether or not answers would be supplied, he added, “doesn’t depend on us.” (46)
It is interesting to compare the U.S. response to Cheonan’s sinking with its reaction to the Israeli attack on a ship bringing aid to the Gaza Strip, in which unarmed civilians were shot dead by soldiers storming the boat. Whereas in the case of the Cheonan, culpability remains uncertain and evidence is contradictory, there was no ambiguity about the Israeli action. It was an unprovoked attack on a ship operating in international waters. There was no question as to who attacked the ship. In response to that incident, U.S. officials worked behind the scenes to prevent the UN Security Council from giving the go-ahead for an investigation into the attack. U.S. officials argued that instead Israel should investigate its own action. U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff saved his harsh criticism for those who had been delivering aid, calling their effort “neither appropriate nor responsible.” (47) Punishment for Israel is swift in coming. The proposed U.S. 2011 budget calls for $3 billion in aid to be provided to Israel. (48)
Contrast that with U.S. plans for North Korea. That nation may be right when it claims that it had nothing to do with the Cheonan’s fate. But who needs an ironclad case when there are geopolitical goals to be achieved? The U.S. and South Korea launched large-scale joint military exercises in the East Sea, including the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, and for the first time U.S. F-22 stealth fighters flew in Korean airspace. The war games were clearly intended to be intimidating.
There are plans afoot for the possible deployment of an advanced airborne communications network on the Korean Peninsula, which would enable U.S. troops to overcome the limitations of communication in the mountainous terrain prevalent in North Korea. (49) Also on the U.S. drawing board is an expansion of psychological warfare against North Korea, including the use of internet technology, leaflets and radio broadcasts. (50)
More importantly, as political commentator Stephen Gowans puts it in a nice turn of phrase, “The United States has announced that it is adding a new tranche to the Himalaya of sanctions it has built up since 1950 against North Korea.” (51) The U.S. State Department and Department of Treasury plan to expand the list of businesses and organizations subject to sanctions, and to freeze bank accounts, work with various foreign governments to stop North Korean trading companies from doing business on the allegation that they are involved in illegal operations, impose travel restrictions, and implement a host of other measures. (52) Approximately 100 bank accounts linked to North Korea are to be frozen. “The U.S. has continued to consult the banks and will likely induce them to quietly close the accounts,” a diplomatic source revealed. (53)
The assertion that the accounts are linked to illegal operations is reminiscent of similar efforts by the George W. Bush Administration, when North Korean accounts engaged in legitimate business were closed and banks throughout the world were threatened with harsh financial consequences if they continued to allow North Korea to conduct normal international financial operations. All that was done under the unproven (and in some cases clearly dis-proven) contention that the accounts were connected with illegal activities. The intent was to dry up North Korea’s access to foreign currency, and thus its ability to import essential items such as food, spare parts and machinery.
Indeed, even before June the U.S already began freezing North Korean accounts held in foreign banks around the world. According to an unnamed diplomatic source, “The moves should be interpreted as a part of new sanctions on the North to hold it responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan.” U.S. diplomat Robert Einhorn plans to visit a number of countries in an attempt to pressure them to enforce sanctions against North Korea. (54) It is not difficult to imagine the effect on the people of North Korea. Already existing sanctions have caused a shortage of raw materials, says Korean economic analyst Cho Boo Hyung, which has led to reduced output. And a decrease in food production will trigger negative economic growth. Cho feels that sanctions could produce another famine in North Korea, comparable to that of the 1990s. (55)
President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea has also seized the opportunity presented by Cheonan’s sinking to further his goals. As a long-time opponent of the Sunshine Policy of his two predecessors, Lee never hid his ambition to dismantle all of the progress that had been made in recent years with relations between the two Koreas. No sooner had Lee taken office than he announced that he had no intention of observing the agreement signed by former President Roh Moo-hyun that set up a joint fishing area in the disputed waters at the Northern Limit Line, and which included measures to discourage military clashes there. Several economic agreements that had been reached were put on hold.
Once the JIG had announced the results of its investigation, Lee outlined a new policy with his northern neighbor. “From this moment,” he said, “no North Korean ship will be allowed to make passage through any of the shipping lanes in the waters under our control, which has been allowed by the Inter-Korean Agreement on Maritime Transportation.” In addition, “Trade and exchanges between the Republic of Korea and North Korea will also be suspended.” Relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated to their lowest point since the period of military dictatorships in South Korea, and U.S. sanctions will only exacerbate tensions.
Did a North Korean submarine fire a torpedo at the Cheonan? I do not know. It would have been foolhardy for the North Korean government to order such a strike. It had nothing to gain, and absolutely everything to lose by such an act. It may be that a rogue commander ordered the attack as revenge for an incident near Daecheong Island the previous November, when South Korean ships chased a North Korean patrol boat, firing on it and sending it up in flames, thereby causing the deaths of several sailors. That attack, incidentally, failed to elicit any concern whatsoever from the same U.S. officials who so sternly pontificate on the unacceptability of allowing the sinking of Cheonan to go unpunished.
It appears to me that the most likely cause of Cheonan’s sad fate was having had the ill fortune to inadvertently sail into the path of a rising sea mine. Given the fast-moving currents in those waters, it may be that over time a rising mine had gradually migrated from where it had been initially deposited, so that its position was unexpected. That is just speculation, of course, and other possibilities exist. A broad-based international investigation needs to take place, and its results made fully public. The 46 sailors who lost their lives when the Cheonan sank deserve the truth, whatever it may be. As do the peoples of both Koreas, whose future is intertwined in so many ways. But geopolitical considerations guarantee that no such international probe will take place. Tensions are likely to remain high as long as President Lee remains in office. No conceivable change in U.S. administrations will bring about an improvement in the security environment on the Korean Peninsula, but the 2012 election in South Korea might. That is something to hope for.
Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Korea Truth Commission. He is the author of the book Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit.
NOTES
(1) “Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS ‘Cheonan’,” Ministry of National Defense, Republic of Korea, May 20, 2010.
(2) The video at this site illustrates the impact of a bubble jet effect explosion on ships:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oUNt47G-08
(3) “Questions Raised Following Cheonan Announcement,” Hankyoreh (Seoul), May 21, 2010.
(4) “Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS ‘Cheonan’,” Ministry of National Defense, Republic of Korea, May 20, 2010. Much later, a video, photographs, diagrams and further details were appended to the May 20 press release.
(5) Chris Bennet, “Mine Warfare at Sea,” African Security Review, Vol. 7, No. 5, 1998.
(6) “How Did N. Korea Sink the Cheonan?”, Chosun Ilbo (Seoul), May 22, 2010.
(7) “Strait of Hormuz: Assessing Threats to Energy Security in the Persian Gulf,” The Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law.
(8) “Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS ‘Cheonan’,” Ministry of National Defense, Republic of Korea, May 20, 2010.
(9) http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-068.htm
(10) http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3811379.html
(11) “Cheonan Investigators Presented Wrong Torpedo Diagram,” Chosun Ilbo (Seoul), June 30, 2010. Kim Deok-hyun, “Investigators Admit Using Wrong Blueprint to Show N. Korean Torpedo That Attacked Cheonan,” Yonhap (Seoul), June 29, 2010.
(12) “N. Korea Used Chinese-Made Torpedo in Attack on S. Korean Ship: Source,” Yonhap (Seoul), May 19, 2010.
(13) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja
(14) “U.S. Pinpoints Where Torpedo that Sank the Cheonan was Made,” Chosun Ilbo, July 23, 2010. “NK Torpedo Produced in Gaecheon 2 Years Ago: Sankei,” Korea Times, July 22, 2010.
(15) Chang Jae-soon, “Defense Chief Confirms Explosive Chemical Found in Sunken Ship,” Yonhap (Seoul), May 10, 2010. “Torpedo Explosive Detected in Sunken Ship: Official,” Yonhap, May 7, 2010.
(16) http://www.answers.com/topic/explosive-material Jung Sung-ki, “Defense Chief Confirms Explosive Residue Found on Sunken Ship,” Korea Times, May 10, 2010.
(17) Walter Jayawardhana, “Canadian Authorities Tell Immigration and Refugee Board that LTTE Ship Contained Traces of High Explosives Like RDX,” LankaWeb, November 25, 2009.
“Canadian Officials Find Three More Traces of Explosives on Tamil Ship,” Colombo Times, November 24, 2009.
(18) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_(PCC-772)
(19) http://www.answers.com/topic/explosive-material http://www.wwiiequipment.com/
http://www.janes.com/articles/Janes-Ammunition-Handbook/
(20) Jung Sung-ki, “Investigators Point to Air Bubble,” Korea Times, April 25, 2010.
(21) Junghye Kwak, Huisun Kim, Taeho Lee, “The PSPD’s Stance on the Naval Vessel Cheonan Sinking,” People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy Issue Report IR-20100601, Seoul.
(22) “Navy Detonates Torpedo Caught in Fishing Nets,” Defence News, January 29, 2008.
“Navy Detonates Torpedo Caught in Fishing Nets,” UPI, December 18, 1985.
(23) J. Beddington and A.J. Freng, “Munitions Dumped at Sea: A Literature Review,” Imperial College London, June 2005.
(24) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Limit_Line
(25) Seunghun Lee, J.J. Suh, “Rush to Judgment: Inconsistencies in South Korea’s Cheonan Report,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 12, 2010.
(26) Seunghun Lee, J.J. Suh, “Rush to Judgment: Inconsistencies in South Korea’s Cheonan Report,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 12, 2010.
(27) “Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS ‘Cheonan‘,” Ministry of National Defense, Republic of Korea, May 20, 2010. Specifically mentioned in the detailed section appended to the May 20 press release.
(287) Seunghun Lee, J.J. Suh, “Rush to Judgment: Inconsistencies in South Korea’s Cheonan Report,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 12, 2010.
Seung-Hun Lee, “Comments on the Section ‘Adsorbed Material Analysis’ of the Cheonan Report Made by the South Korean Civil and Military Joint Investigative Group (CIV-MIL JIG),”
http://arxiv.org/vc/arxiv/papers/1006/1006.0680v2.pdf
Seung-Hun Lee, Panseok Yang, “Were the ‘Critical Evidence’ Presented in the South Korean Official Cheonan Report Fabricated?”
(29) Seung-Hun Lee, Panseok Yang, “Were the ‘Critical Evidence’ Presented in the South Korean Official Cheonan Report Fabricated?“,
(30) Shin Joo Hyun, “Ministry of Defense Responds to Cheonan Claims,” Daily NK, June 23, 2010.
(31) Seung-Hun Lee, “Comments on the Section ‘Adsorbed Material Analysis’ of the Cheonan Report Made by the South Korean Civil and Military Joint Investigative Group (CIV-MIL JIG),”
(32) Seunghun Lee, J.J. Suh, “Rush to Judgment: Inconsistencies in South Korea’s Cheonan Report,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 12, 2010.
(33) Barbara Demick, “Doubts Surface on North Korea’s Role in Ship Sinking,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2010
(34) Junghye Kwak, Huisun Kim, Taeho Lee, “The PSPD’s Stance on the Naval Vessel Cheonan Sinking,” People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy Issue Report IR-20100601, Seoul.
(35) Lee Yong-inn, “Questions Linger 100 Days after the Cheonan Sinking,” Hankyoreh (Seoul), July 3, 2010.
(36) S.C. Shin, “Letter to Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State for PCC-722 Cheonan,” May 26, 2010.For a clear view of the Cheonan’s propellers.
(37) “Cheonan Probe Says Military Made Grave Errors,” Dong-A Ilbo (Seoul), June 11, 2010.
“Uncovering the Truth About the Cheonan,” Hankyoreh (Seoul), June 11, 2010. “Wide-Ranging Incompetence and Cover-ups Took Place Night of Cheonan Sinking, Audit Reveals,”
Hankyoreh (Seoul), June 11, 2010.
(38) Ser Myo-ja, “Military Found Inept, Lying in Responding to Cheonan,” JoongAng Ilbo (Seoul), June 11, 2010.
(39) “How Did N. Korea Sink the Cheonan?”, Chosun Ilbo (Seoul), May 22, 2010.
(40) “Questions Raised Following Cheonan Announcement,” Hankyoreh (Seoul), May 11, 2010.
(41) “South Korea to Unveil Evidence of North Sinking Navy Ship,” CBS News, May 19, 2010.
(42) Barbara Demick, “Doubts Surface on North Korea’s Role in Ship Sinking,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2010.
(43) Sunny Lee, “China Has Different View on Cheonan,” Korea Times (Seoul), July 18, 2010.
(44) Lee Yeong-in, “Government Protests Russia’s Conflicting Cheonan Finding,” Hankyoreh (Seoul), July 10, 2010.
(45) Yoo Jee-ho, “N. Korea Warns ‘Physical Response’ Against South – U.S. Military Drills,” Yonhap (Seoul), July 23, 2010.
(46) “Russian Specialists Have Questions on S. Korean Corvette’s Sinking – Navy Commander,” Interfax (Moscow), July 24, 2010.
“Russian Experts Unable to Give Answers on Cheonan Sinking – Navy Commander,” RIA Novosti (Moscow), July 24, 2010.
(47) Colum Lynch and Debbi Wilgoren, “U.N. Calls for Impartial Probe of Israeli Raid,” Washington Post, June 1, 2010.
(48) Danielle Kurtzleben, “Despite Rift, Israel Gets More U.S. Aid Than Iraq,” U.S. and World News Report, July 6, 2010.
(49) Jung Sung-ki, “US to Deploy Airborne Network in South Korea,” Korea Times (Seoul), July 2, 2010.
(50) Michael Sheridan, “Clinton to Wage Digital War on Kim for Sinking Ship,” Sunday Times (London), May 23, 2010.
(51) Stephen Gowans, “The Real Story on North Korea and its Healthcare,” What’s Left, July 21, 2010.
(52) “U.S. to Impose Sanctions on N. Korea in 2 Weeks,” Chosun Ilbo (Seoul), July 23, 2010.
(53) “US to Freeze 100 N. Korean Bank Accounts,” Dong-A Ilbo (Seoul), July 23, 2010.
(54) Kang Chan-ho and Ser Myo-ja, “U.S. Froze North Korean Bank Accounts Since June,” JoongAng Ilbo (Seoul), July 23, 2010.
(55) Steve Herman, “Sanctions Expected to Harm North Korean Economy,” Voice of America, July 23, 2010.
War against Iran more likely — thanks to Wikileaks
By Paul Woodward on July 28, 2010
If the release of the Pentagon Papers epitomized the value of government leaks as a means of speaking truth to power, Wikileaks at this point can claim no such distinction.
As if to underline the extent to which the Afghan war logs are making the fog of war more, not less, dense, Katrina vanden Heuvel says: “more than a few commentators — including Daniel Ellsberg himself — have called [the war logs] a 21st-century Pentagon Papers.”
She may understandably have been misled by a headline in The Guardian that read: “Daniel Ellsberg describes Afghan war logs as on a par with ‘Pentagon Papers’.” However, “These documents are not the Pentagon Papers — we still await their equivalent for Afghanistan,” is what Ellsberg unambiguously told the Financial Times.
While Wikileak’s founder, Julian Assange, is no doubt sincere in his hope that these intelligence revelations will expose the futility of war, the fact is, because intelligence is not intelligent it can very easily be used to serve a host of diverging political agendas.
If opponents of the war in Afghanistan now feel better armed, so do proponents of an expanding war in Pakistan. Likewise, those pushing for military action against Iran will welcome a new supply of ammunition served by Wikileaks.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported:
Cooperation among Iran, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremist groups is more extensive than previously known to the public, according to details buried in the tens of thousands of military intelligence documents released by an independent group Sunday.
U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said some of the most explosive information contained in the WikiLeaks documents detail Iran’s alleged ties to the Taliban and al Qaeda, and the facilitating role Tehran may have played in providing arms from sources as varied as North Korea and Algeria.
The officials have for years received reports of Iran smuggling arms to the Taliban. The WikiLeaks documents, however, appear to give new evidence of direct contacts between Iranian officials and the Taliban’s and al Qaeda’s senior leadership. It also outlines Iran’s alleged role in brokering arms deals between North Korea and Pakistan-based militants, particularly militant leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and al Qaeda.
Here we see one of the most bizarre twists in the story: US government sources now using the leaked documents to buttress the current anti-Iran narrative and in the process acting as though the intelligence reports are providing information that hadn’t been accessible inside government until they were leaked!
At the very same time, the State Department’s leading expert on Iran, John Limbert — a genuine source of intelligence and “the most qualified person on the Iran team at State in the three decades I have lived in the United States,” according to Haleh Esfandiari, head of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars — is about to resign.
At Foreign Policy, Barbara Slavin writes:
[I]t’s hard not to view Limbert’s departure as a turning point and yet another missed opportunity in U.S.-Iran relations. A number of players with more skeptical views about the prospect of rapprochement with Tehran — such as White House aide Dennis Ross and nonproliferation experts like Robert Einhorn and Gary Samore — appear to be driving U.S. policy now, and the president himself blames the Iranian government for failing to respond to his outreach.
What could please the attack-Iran lobby more than to see the departure of the most skilled American proponent of engagement and at the same time to be served a prize piece of propaganda by an outfit aligned with the anti-war movement?!
WIKILEAKS/WIKIPEDIA: TRUTH serving LIES (with CIA/MOSSAD oversight)
By Kev Boyle | 27 July 2010
So Wikileaks has exposed the truth about the Afghan/Pakistan war? 91,000 leaked documents expose the fact that war is a nasty, two-faced, dishonorable business with even (shock horror) covert operations set up to assassinate leaders of the enemy.
What is getting most attention, however, is the allegation that the ISI (the Pakistani Secret Service) is secretly backing the Taliban and other documents demanding that the Pakistani government turn decisively against the militants, creating a justification for US operations inside Pakistan and a possible pretext for full-on invasion of the country.
A few months ago we were reading that the US were funding the Taliban. There are many other stories of this kind from people like Webster Tarpley and Wayne Madsen.
WHISTLEBLOWING?
All this ‘whistleblowing’ does little other than serve the interests of the US possibly expanding their war. No establishment figure is seriously compromised by these ‘leaks’, nor is policy undermined in any new way. The war is wicked? The people who care already know that and this ‘new’ information makes little difference to that perception one way or the other.
Why do the ‘leaks’ contain no embarrassing whistleblowing? Why is there no exposition of the betrayal felt by many soldiers and their officers who know the war(s) have got nothing to do with protecting America or the UK? (I have spoken to one British army officer who is acutely aware of the betrayal of his troops and of wider British interests and is waiting for [and working towards] the same revolution as myself. Meeting this man was the most encouraging moment of the last six months for me.)
Wikileaks made its name with this footage.
Again, innocent people get murdered by coalition troops. Evil… embarrassing… but tell us something we didn’t know.
We know that the powers-that-be are determined to control both sides of every argument. They lead the opposition against themselves. That’s why “Stop The War” will not even MENTION 9/11 Truth and exclude from the ranks of their leadership anyone who wants to raise reasonable questions about the events of 9/11.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is ‘annoyed’ by 9/11 truth. That there IN ITSELF makes him, to any sensible person, a placeman of the security services.
This, like the StopTheWar position, is called a ‘limited hangout’. There is no end of this kind of maneuvering out there as in, for example, Chomsky’s indefatigable support of Israel (“America” is the problem, not the international bankers who own it nor the Jewish Lobby who control it…. criticism most definitely never goes THERE. These are simply NOT issues).
LIMITED HANGOUT
‘Limited hangout’ is making a pretense at protest in order to disable genuine protest.
IT IS USING TRUTH TO SERVE LIES.
It is the Hegelian dialectic in action.
Many good people are led down futile paths when they trust and follow these people.
Even the name for the operation, ‘Wikileaks’, tells a story.
Here we see one CIA/Mossad operation supporting another. We are supposed to see ‘Wiki’ and think ‘truth’ as in that honourable internet encyclopedia ‘Wikipedia'(……whose ‘Mossad’ entry, by the way, does NOT include their famous motto, “By way of deception thou shalt make war”). There is a lifetime of work for somebody exposing the spinning and obfuscation in support of establishment narratives on this lousy site.
For a more detailed look at the ‘Wikileaks’ operation see here.
LATE NEWS
Uh-O. Lookee here… Wikileaks ‘reveal’ that Bin Laden was being tracked through Pakistan:
“In August 2006, a US intelligence report placed Bin Laden at a meeting in Quetta, over the border in Pakistan.
It said he and others – including the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar – were organising suicide attacks in Afghanistan.”
So there it is. That evil fiend, Bin Laden, is not dead (as most people who follow the information believe). He is alive and well and organising Al Qaeda, or is it the Taliban, to carry out suicide bombings against our boys in Afghanistan.
Well, now we know.
Don’t we?
Pakistan spy agency denies backing Afghan Taliban
The Inter-Services Intelligence agency is accused repeatedly in the leaked Afghan war logs of supporting the insurgency
Saeed Shah | The Guardian | 26 July 2010
Pakistan’s spy agency today dismissed as “unsubstantiated raw intelligence” claims in the leaked war logs that it was supporting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
The Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) is accused repeatedly in the logs by coalition commanders of directing insurgent attacks or planning operations, though there is little evidence to substantiate many of the most sensational allegations.
An ISI official said:
“In the intelligence world, preliminary and final reports are two different things. Only once something is collaborated from multiple sources does it become a credible piece of information.
“The majority of these [documents] are preliminary reports, and they are mostly from Afghan intelligence, so you can imagine their credibility.”
Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief who is extensively cited in the documents as meeting and aiding the Taliban, reacted furiously, calling the material “a pack of lies, a fairly tale”.
He denied having any contact with the Taliban, though he was happy to voice his moral support for them. “They are targeting Pakistan. I’m just the whipping boy,” said Gul, who led the agency from 1987 to 1989.
“If a 74-year-old sitting in a small house in Rawalpindi is instrumental in defeating the world’s biggest power, I don’t mind if they say that. But it will put to shame American posterity.”
Gul, who lives close to the military headquarters at Rawalpindi, offered to fly to the UK to answer the allegations, as long as it was done in public (“no Guantanamo”). But he added that he had been banned from the UK since November 2000. Though Gul retired from the military back in 1991, he is frequently accused of remaining active, along with other former intelligence officers, in a “shadow ISI”.
“This is akin to Saddam Hussein having the bomb in the closet and Colin Powell telling the world about it,” Gul added, referring to the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq put by the former US secretary of state.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry in Islamabad called the leaks “far-fetched and skewed”. Spokesman Abdul Basitsaid: “Pakistan’s constructive and positive role in Afghanistan cannot be blighted by such self-serving and baseless reports.”
Analysts say Eritrea is Not Supporting al-Shabab
By Michael Onyiego | VOA | July 21, 2010
The International Crisis Group has dismissed alleged links between Eritrea and Somali insurgent group al-Shabab following calls from an United States lawmaker to designate the country a state sponsor of terrorism.
In a letter sent Tuesday, U.S. Congressman Ed Royce advised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to add Eritrea to the country’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
The letter was sent following a July 11 terrorist attack in Kampala, Uganda that killed at least 76 people, including one American. Somali Islamist group al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for the bombings.
The group, which is loosely affiliated with al-Qaida, explained the attack was in retaliation for Ugandan Peacekeeping troops in Somalia supporting the U.N.-backed government.
Royce, the lead Republican on the Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, said Eritrea’s support of al-Shabab was “well documented,” and urged Secretary Clinton to take action before the group begins targeting the United States.
There is evidence Eritrea has provided support to Somali insurgents in the past, but the Director of the International Crisis Group in Nairobi, E.J. Hogendoorn, says that support was aimed at groups fighting Ethiopian forces. Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1991 after a 30-year civil war and the two nations have maintained a tense peace since.
According to Hogendoorn, that support was not aimed at terrorism or given to al-Shabab fighters.
“There is very little evidence to suggest that Eritrea has, or is currently, supporting al-Shabab. In the past Eritrea has supported certain insurgencies in Somalia in an effort to continue its proxy war with Ethiopia. The evidence we have seen so far suggests that support for Hizbul Islam, rather than al-Shabab. While we are concerned about the activities of Hizbul Islam, there is no evidence to suggest that Hizbul Islam supports terrorist acts against neighboring states,” said Hogendoorn.
Hizbul Islam, like al-Shabab, is battling Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government to create an Islamic State on the Horn of Africa. But Hizbul Islam controls relatively little territory in Somalia and is considered a much less significant threat than the al-Shabab forces.
And, according to Hogendoorn, evidence suggests that Eritrea withdrew its support of the group in 2009.
While al-Shabab has made threats against the United States in the past, the analyst also told VOA the group posed a much greater threat to the security and stability of east Africa than to the interests of the United States.
Congressman Royce previously voiced concern about Eritrea’s terrorist connections in 2009. The representative introduced an amendment affirming that the country’s support of Somali insurgents posed a direct threat to the U.S., which was voted down in the U.S. Congress.
If added, Eritrea would be subject to a variety of sanctions including diplomatic isolation, economic restrictions and weapons embargoes. The country would become the fifth state to receive the designation, joining Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria on the list.
Disarmament for Some
Countdown to Zero: Co-opting the Anti-Nuclear Movement
By DARWIN BOND-GRAHAM | July 22, 2010
No medium of propaganda is as powerful and effective as film. Think of the classics, the most notorious efforts to to sway the public with the electrifying and collective passion of cinema: racial apartheid was justified in the US with Birth of a Nation. The Soviets glorified their revolution with the Battleship Potemkin. Then there was Triumph of the Will.
A typical propaganda film tugs at emotions and invokes fears. It invokes dark threats to “the people,” and it offers up solutions extolling state and corporate power. Unlike a political documentary it will not criticize the state or corporation. Instead it will celebrate great men as our leaders and saviors. Distinct from a run-of-the-mill political documentary, a propaganda film butchers the complexity and contradictions that permeate politics and real life, presenting things in simplistic moral terms. Functionally, propaganda is mobilized to secure popular support for a primary, often hidden agenda that is not apparent in the film’s narrative. Propaganda is a tool used by elites to secure the consent of the masses, and channel their anxieties.
Now hitting theaters is one of the most dangerous propaganda films produced in decades. Countdown to Zero “traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present state of global affairs.” A promotional blurb on the film’s web site claims that it “makes a compelling case for worldwide nuclear disarmament, an issue more topical than ever with the Obama administration working to revive this goal today.”
Before I go any further in explaining Countdown as a propaganda film I should note that all propaganda need not be the product of a secretive and manipulative council of elites behind some curtain. Instead, the many contributors to Countdown and its promotional efforts have different motivations and intentions. What makes this film a coherent piece of propaganda is its medium, style, and likely effects on the US political climate. There are powerful actors who will use it for nefarious ends.
On its surface Countdown to Zero is about nuclear disarmament, but deeper down the film is making a very specific case that isn’t about disarmament at all. Its political function will prove to be quite different. Countdown is joining a suite of political campaigns and other propagandistic efforts, the point of which is to build support for increased US spending on nuclear weapons, as well as a more belligerent foreign policy, based around islamophobic depictions of “terrorists” and “rogue states.” Countdown is likely to be used by hawks to drum up support for military action against Iran, North Korea, and other states that would dare to transgress the current near-monopoly that a handful of states have on the bomb.
To understand how this is possible, one has to break through the simplistic and moralizing presentation of issues in the film and its promotional materials, and explore the complex political situation into which it is being launched.
The first and most important thing to understand is that the Obama administration does not have a disarmament agenda. Because the entire moral thrust of the film rests on this notion, it’s important to dispel it right off the bat. Obama and his military advisers have made their nuclear ambitions abundantly clear on multiple occasions.
The administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in no significant way changed the nuclear force structure or use doctrines. The NPR makes it abundantly clear that US national security is founded on the nuclear “deterrent,” and that no one in government will seek to reduce the role of nukes in the foreseeable future.
The recently negotiated New START treaty does not significantly cut the US and Russian arsenals. In fact the treaty language secures an allowance for US “missile defense” programs as well as the “prompt global strike” weapons system while consolidating the US stockpile and reaffirming existing strategic agreements with Russia that are about balance. As noted by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the irony here is that the Senate’s possible ratification of New START is premised on the Obama administration’s pledge to fund US nuclear weapons programs upwards of $180 billion over the next ten years, something even George W. Bush could not accomplish. The down payment for the next fiscal year includes a $624 million surge in nuke spending, for a total of $7.01 billion. The administration foresees spending more than $1 billion each year to refurbish and upgrade existing warheads and bombs. To support New START requires accepting these huge infrastructural and programmatic investments in nuclear weapons, far into the future.
To put it more simply, the debate in Washington revolves around two camps fighting over how large an increase in nuclear weapons spending there will be. At this point in time all agree on expending billions more. All agree upon building a new plutonium pit factory, a new uranium processing facility, a new components factory, and five other major capital projects in the nuclear weapons complex to extend the US nuclear enterprise half a decade or more into the future. Most agree on procuring a new class of nuclear equipped submarines. Most agree on new ballistic missiles. Everyone seems to be fine with upgrading warheads and bombs.
Some conservatives are uncomfortable with the cosmetic cuts to the stockpile that will be made under the auspices of New START. Senate Republicans have circled their wagons to demand greater funding increases in consideration of ratification, and given all of the agreements they have with the Democrats and the Obama administration over expanding the weapons complex, they are actually correct. In order to carry out this bi-partisan nuclear arms buildup, quite a bit more than a $1 billion per year boost (at its peak) will be needed for the NNSA’s budget, especially as inflation eats into the real value of future year budgets.
Determining the future of the US nuclear weapons complex is a tricky balancing act for the foreign policy elite because it is embedded in a larger set of much more important goals. The over-riding goal of foreign policy for the United States, with respect to nuclear weapons, is to maintain control of nuclear weapons and materials. Forget lofty ideas like disarmament. Lofty moral oughts only matter with respect to the realpolitik of geo-strategy (and this is where Countdown comes in, as we shall see)…
Nuclear weapons are problematic today because they remain a necessary means of overpowering other nations and intimidating foes, but they have also become a liability as other states threaten to go nuclear in order to restore balance to a unipolar world. American hypocrisy is seen as a major weakness for the maintenance of American power by liberal imperialists like Obama, even if disarmament is an idealistic and counterproductive pipe dream. Conservatives like Senator Jon Kyl would rather just avoid soft power altogether and stick to a hard-nosed defense policy.
This is why US policy with respect to Iran seems so disjointed and paralyzed: Iran’s influence and power is growing, it possesses immense energy resources, and straddles a region of geo-strategic importance. For US elites, Iran must be controlled at all cost. A nuclear Iran would make this much, much more difficult. Regime change is the goal, just like in Iraq. Nonproliferation as an end in itself seems to offer the most justifiable reason for using force and “rebuilding” nations (remember that it was the reason given for the 2004 invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq). But with its Bush-era reputation of seeking new nukes, liberals fear that United States can hardly coerce or attack Iran in the name of nonproliferation. As the world’s preeminent nuclear power with no interest in disarming it would be bald hypocrisy. But then again the US will not disarm, for this would be anathema to the needs and goals of the foreign policy elite. What to do?
Into this mix arrives Countdown to Zero and similarly crafted propaganda pieces. Countdown’s major achievement is repackaging the strategy of anti-nuclear nuclearism into a sexy and thrilling propaganda film full of special effects and heart pulsing music. It will invoke fear of nuclear weapons to justify aggression, war, and the extension of US control over much of the rest of the world.
While the film’s title and a lot of the fanfare surrounding it emphasizes the “zero” message of disarmament, Countdown is actually an alarmist portrayal of dark skinned men, muslims, “terrorists” and other racial or ethnic boogeymen who we are told, over the span of 90 minutes, are seeking nuclear weapons to use against the American people. A related theme in the film is the demonization of Iran and North Korea which are portrayed as dangerous rogue states with ties to terrorist organizations, and who must be controlled, against whom military action may be warranted – or else. Or else what?
One of the main “experts” in Countdown to Zero, Joseph Cirincione frames the take home message at the outset by invoking a very post-9-11 Bush administration theme:
“That day changed our sense of security and how we view the world. We learned how vulnerable we are to the destructive acts of a determined few. Just think how worse it would have been if the terrorist had nuclear weapons.”
Cirincione is not just any expert. He is the doyen of the Democratic Party’s NGO apparatus that shapes nuclear weapons policy through foundation funding of grassroots groups and elite policy shops. Cirincione is president of the Ploughshares Fund.
In spite of its name, Ploughshares’ mission these days actually involves beating ploughs into swords.
Throughout the 1990s, but especially during the George W. Bush years, Ploughshares and circle of foundations called the Peace and Security Funders Group increasingly narrowed the range of acceptable anti-nuclear activism, while simultaneously ghettoizing the field so that the work of various NGOs became less and less applicable to social justice and economic development issues, and increasingly focused on abstract global problems and hypotheticals, such as the existence and possible use of nuclear weapons. In the process discussions of the injustices of the global political economy and how nuclear weapons fit into it were silenced. Anti-nuclear activism became increasingly specialized, boring, and disconnected from issues that affect people’s everyday lives. Arms control eclipsed abolition as the rallying cry. Those NGOs that obeyed the consolidation period survived with funding and access to media, so long as they kissed the ring.
Ploughshares was at the center of it all. Today the Fund’s priorities are shaped by its board of directors made up of Democratic Party donors, other foundation executives, and liberal academics. The Fund’s advisers include men like George Shultz, the former Bechtel president who served as Reagan’s Secretary of State, and former Defense Secretaries William Cohen and William Perry. The latter is actually a board member of the for-profit corporations that manage the nation’s two nuclear weapons labs, Los Alamos and Livermore. You figure it out.
Ploughshares’ adviser and propagandist Jeff Skoll is president of Participant Media, one of the production companies behind Countdown to Zero. The film’s Co-producer, the World Security Institute (a major recipient of Ploughshares Fund dollars), tapped its Global Zero project membership to narrate the film through dozens of interviews with the likes of elder statesmen, and NGO executives like Cirincione who are very friendly to the Obama administration’s nuclear buildup.
Participant Media is a full service propaganda shop for liberal campaigns, producing both documentaries and dramas. In addition to the benchmark documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Participant is responsible for some very excellent and thoughtful films like Syriana, Food, Inc., and The Cove. And this is where complexity comes in. Some of the producers and voices featured in Countdown to Zero have wonderful intentions, and all of them are probably genuinely concerned with, and fear, the possible day that nuclear weapons might be used, whether by a state or by a criminal group. Herein also is the propagandistic danger of Countdown to Zero.
Albert Camus once wrote that “the evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.” Backed with a lot of foundation money, the producers of Countdown to Zero have paid organizers across the US to do considerable outreach for the film, whipping up interest on Facebook and other social media and generally co-opting the energies and intentions of many anti-nuclear activists. Countdown premiers July 23 and will be shown in theaters across the US. Many screenings are being organized by activists whose intentions are unimpeachable, if naive.
What audiences are going to learn from Countdown to Zero is that nuclear weapons are a threat today because the bad guys might get a hold of them. They’ll learn that al-Qaeda is seeking nuclear weapons, that it is their sworn duty; That highly enriched uranium is easy to smuggle; That “we are on the verge of a nuclear 9-11”; That tens of thousands of pounds of uranium are stored under virtually no security around the globe. In other words they’ll learn that dark scary men, muslims, “terrorists” and anarchists are trying to kill them with nuclear weapons, and that nations like Iran and North Korea will gladly assist them. Their feelings of revulsion for nuclear weapons will be stimulated and channeled against these dark enemies of civilization.
What they’ll learn about US nuclear weapons and policy, if it is discussed in any real and honest depth at all, is that better control and management is needed, a slightly smaller arsenal is desirable. But mostly they’ll learn to just trust our leaders, and that everything will turn out alright so long as the proper authorities are in power. Joseph Cirincione will eagerly explain to audiences that George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn are hard at work to “secure” our nuclear weapons. It all sounds great, but the “four horsemen,” as they have come to be known, are actually among the biggest lobbyists for the surge in nuclear weapons spending and the construction of a new US nuclear weapons complex.
In a promotional video attached to the START ratification effort Cirincione urges viewers to “join this patriotic consensus” toward zero. In a recent op-ed he has urged Senate ratification of New START writing, “The statesmanship demonstrated by the Consensus members today could help break the partisan blockade in the Senate and restore America’s leadership on this urgent security challenge.” The capital C Consensus he’s referring to is a newly formed NGO, created to translate the groundswell of public response they expect from propaganda efforts like Countdown to Zero, into sharp policy programs for government, including aggressive military action against would-be nuclear states, much of it in the name of nonproliferation. The Consensus for American Security is one manifestation of the platform that many foreign policy elites hope will solve the contradiction in current US nuclear policy. The mission statement of the Consensus includes, “strengthening and modernizing America’s nuclear security,” because it “is a vital element of protecting the United States and its allies.”
Ploughshares put up the money for The Consensus for American Security… an organization dedicated to strengthening and modernizing America’s nuclear security. Modernizing is not an arbitrary word. In the current policy debate over the future of the US nuclear weapons complex and stockpile, modernization means a very specific thing. It means approving the Obama administration’s program to build a pit factory, uranium processing facility, components plant and other billion dollar capital projects for the weapons complex. It also means modernizing warheads and bombs by rebuilding them and designing new features. And it means acquiring new, very expensive platforms like subs, bombers, and missiles.
Members of the Ploughshares Consensus include a predictable list of centrist retired military brass and statesmen, most of whom occupy revolving door positions on other foundation and NGO boards like Ploughshares, and more than a few of whom have links to the military industrial complex: George Shulz, Samuel Berger, Vice Admiral Lee Gunn, and physicist Sidney Drell, all of them strong supporters of US nuclear weapons programs, and American empire.
The Consensus’ second mission appears to involve stoking Islamophobia. A special project of the Consensus, the American Security Project (ASP), is a well-funded think tank churning out reports about “al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” and “Are We Winning? Measuring Progress in the Struggle Against al Qaeda and Associate Movements.” ASP’s homepage features a photograph of “terrorists” in black masks hauling an American nuclear warhead (a W-76 or W-88 it appears) on a bamboo rickshaw over a wooden bridge toward a waiting van in some distant jungle.
Countdown to Zero is one component of a larger and coherent foundation campaign to stoke up public fears about nuclear weapons for the purpose of extending a near-monopoly on nuclear weapons, and legitimating a more aggressive foreign policy aimed at regime change in Iran and elsewhere. The consensus behind those who funded and produced the film has little to do with disarmament, and a lot to do with stabilizing the American empire [consolidating the dominance of the elite elements of the Western establishment].
Darwin Bond-Graham is a sociologist who splits his time between New Orleans, Albuquerque, and Navarro, CA. He can be reached at: darwin@riseup.net
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“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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