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Antarctic sea ice peaks at third highest in the satellite record

July 3, 2010 by Anthony Watts

While everyone seems to be watching the Arctic extent with intense interest, it’s bipolar twin continues to make enough ice to keep the global sea ice balance near normal. These images from Cryosphere today provide the details. You won’t see any mention of this in the media. Google News returns no stories about Antarctic Sea Ice Extent.

Here’s the graph, see for yourself.

Here’s global sea ice:

July 4, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Dithering is the last refuge of the apologist

By Pamela Olson on July 1, 2010

A few weeks ago, I came across an opinion article in the New York Times called “Chosen, but Not Special” by Michael Chabon. It didn’t lie outright, like Charles Krauthammer blithely stating that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza or IDF spokesmen claiming activists on the Mavi Marmara had ties to Al Qaeda.

What Michael Chabon was doing was much more subtle. Realizing he had no way of rationally or legally defending Israel’s violent takeover of unarmed civilian ships in the dead of night in international waters, the utterly preventable killing of nine civilians, and the kidnapping of hundreds more activists and theft of their ships and belongings, he instead resorted to the last refuge of the apologist: Dithering.

If you haven’t read the article, here’s the gist: Jews are very clever, but only anti-Semites believe Jews are so clever that they don’t make mistakes now and then. Israel was a little blockheaded when it came to this whole flotilla thing, but that’s OK, nobody’s perfect.

He says nothing about the need for an independent international investigation, much less any censure of Israel for its ‘blockheadedness.’ The victims of Israel’s behavior—the besieged people of Gaza, the families of the Turks killed and wounded, the thousands of Palestinians rotting in Israeli jails on political or fabricated charges—merit not a mention, apparently unworthy of the subterranean stream of pity he has for the lone Israeli combatant held by Palestinians or even of his condescending pity for the Turkish victims (whom he churlishly calls “the wasted dead with their cargo of lumber and delusions”).

Chabon’s self-involved dithering is one of many methods of taking the spotlight off Israel’s actions and responsibilities when the truth begins to cut too close to home. Another is the old stand-by, changing the subject to China’s repression of Tibet or Saudi Arabia’s repression of women and accusing of anti-Semitism anyone who dares ‘single out’ Israel when other people are doing bad things, too.

As Desmond Tutu said, “Divestment from apartheid South Africa was certainly no less justified because there was repression elsewhere on the African continent.” If global citizens can band together to right a wrong, it’s a positive thing, even if they can’t simultaneously right every other wrong in the world, too. No car thief has ever, as far as I know, been acquitted after saying, “But other people steal cars and get away with it all the time!”

We can ignore Israel’s crimes, which we are complicit in, and talk about the crimes of others instead. But this would make us dictionary-definition hypocrites.

Other apologists insist things are too complicated for anyone without a PhD in Middle Eastern studies to work out for herself, so we should remain ‘neutral.’ On the face of it, this sounds reasonable. It’s a sign of evolved rationality not to act too quickly, to learn as much as you can before taking a leap. This conflict is anything but simple, and our media paints a dim and largely one-sided picture that most Americans can’t make much sense of.

Still, it has never been easier to find ample evidence of Israeli violations of international law that cannot be explained or justified on security grounds, and to see that Israel is virtually never held accountable by any impartial legal system. Which means that being ‘neutral’ in this case is a bit like being ‘neutral’ during Jim Crow days. Under the system at the time, the courts and the media were anything but neutral, and white people were virtually guaranteed of getting away with discriminating against or even killing black people, no matter the circumstances.

The siege of Gaza, for example, is an act of collective punishment, which is manifestly illegal and, as many Israeli analysts have pointed out, only strengthens Hamas. Judge Goldstone’s report on Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza in early 2009 that killed 1,400 people, including over 300 children, is available on the world wide web. The International Court of Justice ruled the route of Israel’s Wall built on Palestinian land illegal in 2004, yet Israel continues to build wherever it pleases. Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem are constantly threatened with demolition while Jewish settlements nearby go up at breakneck speed in an open attempt to ‘Judaize’ the occupied eastern half of the city.

In the southern Hebron hills, the settlers’ chickens are allowed more water and electricity than the Palestinians living in the area. Students are denied the right to study where they please, Gazan cancer patients can’t access life-saving treatment, and a father of three with an American wife was recently shot and killed under deeply suspicious circumstances by Israeli police in East Jerusalem, so far with no repercussions. Overall, Israel’s theft and violence have only increased as the Second Intifada wound down and Israeli body counts dwindled almost to nothing.

These were just a few outrages that came to mind first, with thousands more crowding behind them in plain sight. Ignorance is no longer a valid excuse for inaction.

No amount of dithering can mask the fact that Israel illegally boarded civilian boats in international waters on May 31, killed nine people, and kidnapped 600 more in waters where they had no jurisdiction. No amount of whataboutery can hide the fact that Israel engages in ethnic cleansing when it tears down Palestinian neighborhoods to build Jewish ones. No amount of ‘easing the blockade of Gaza’ can gloss over the fact that Israel’s control over an entire civilian population—the occupation itself—is intolerable. Even the West Bank, which for strategic reasons Israel has been treating better than Gaza, knows everything can crumble in a second at the whim of Israel.

Nicholas Kristof put it plainly in the New York Times: “The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is widely acknowledged to be unsustainable and costly to the country’s image. But one more blunt truth must be acknowledged: the occupation is morally repugnant.”

In the face of these bare truths, it’s natural for supporters of Israel’s government to resort to dithering, changing the subject, or fatuously claiming ‘neutrality’ while our country arms Israel, provides it with preferential trade relations, and protects it from international law. These are the only defenses they have left.

It’s our job not to let them get away with it. Silence, in this case, is complicity. As we speak, on our watch, good people are dying and millions more are living without basic freedoms. Doing nothing effectively supports the status quo of allowing Israel’s government to operate with impunity in our name.

If you have a chance, however small, to boycott or divest from companies that profit from the occupation or events that effectively whitewash the occupation, take it. It’s already having an effect, and it’s one of the few effective non-violent ways to make the occupation more costly to Israel than ending the occupation, as long as American and European governments apply no sanctions and enforce no laws.

Next time Israel guns down civilians, bombs a UN compound, or destroys a Palestinian neighborhood, don’t be shy about demanding swift action, impartial international investigations, and accountability. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s ‘too complicated’ for a mere mortal like you to know enough to follow your conscience on the anti-Apartheid struggle of our generation.

Pamela Olson doubts she can convince the unconvinced with one short article. To that end, she is writing a book called Fast Times in Palestine, which seeks to relieve the burden (and excuse) of ignorance in a way that is comprehensive, enjoyable, and universally-accessible.

July 2, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

The terrorist-naming game

By Paul Woodward on June 28, 2010

On September 11, 2001, George Bush changed the way Americans look at the world and the success with which he accomplished this feat is evident in the fact that his perspective largely remains unchallenged — even among many of his most outspoken critics. Bush’s simplistic for-us-or-against-us formula was transparently emotive yet utterly effective.

For almost a decade, Americans have been told to look at the world through the lens of “terrorism” and while differences of opinion exist about whether the lens has too wide or narrow an angle or about the extent to which it brings things into focus, those of us who say the lens is so deeply flawed that it should be scrapped, remain in a minority.

The Obama administration may now refrain from using the term itself, preferring instead “violent extremists,” but the change is merely cosmetic (as are so many other “changes” in the seamless continuity between the Bush- and post-Bush eras).

A couple of days ago Philip Weiss drew attention to the fact that when former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni described her parents as “freedom fighters,” Deborah Solomon, her interviewer in the New York Times, echoed Livni’s sentiment by saying that the fight for Israel’s independence took place in “a more romantic era.”

As Weiss notes, Livni’s parents belonged to the Irgun, the Zionist group which blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946, killing 91 and injuring 46.

The first public account of what had happened that day was accidentally released in advance of the bombing.

In By Blood and Fire, Thurston Clark writes:

“Jewish terrorists have just blown up the King David Hotel!” This short message was received by the London Bureau of United Press International (UPI) shortly after noon, Palestine time. It was signed by a UPI stringer in Palestine who was also a secret member of the Irgun. The stringer had learned about Operation Chick but did not know it had been postponed for an hour. Hoping to scoop his colleagues, he had filed a report minutes before 11.00. A British censor had routinely stamped his cable without reading it.

The UPI London Bureau chief thought the message too terse. There were not enough details. He decided against putting it on the agency’s wire for radio and press until receiving further confirmation that the hotel had been destroyed.

Despite the efforts of Irgun leaders to restrict knowledge of the target and timing of Operation Chick, there were numerous other leaks. Leaders in both the Haganah and Stern Gang knew about the operation. Friends warned friends. The King David had an extraordinary number of last-minute room cancellations. In the Secretariat [the King David’s south wing that housed the headquarters of the British government in Palestine], more than the usual number of Jewish typists and clerks called in sick.

The next day the British prime minister, Clement Attlee referred to the bombing as an “insane act of terrorism” while a few days later the US president, Harry Truman, wrote “the inhuman crime committed… calls for the strongest action against terrorism…”

That was 64 years ago. From the sheltered perch of the New York Times, that’s apparently far enough back in history that it can now be referred to as a “romantic era.”

It’s hardly surprising then that many observers with an interest in justice for Palestinians take offense at the New York Times’ complicity in papering over the reality of Jewish terrorism. Yet here’s the irony: the effort to promote an unbiased use of the term “terrorism” simply plays into the hands of the Israelis.

The word has only one purpose: to forestall consideration of the political motivation for acts of violence. Invoke the word with the utmost gravity and then you can use your moral indignation and outrage to smother intelligent analysis. Terrorists do what they do because they are in the terrorism business — it’s in their blood.

So, when Tzipi Livni calls her parents freedom fighters, I have no problem with that — she is alluding to what they believed they were fighting for rather than the methods they employed. Moreover, by calling people who planted bombs and blew up civilians in the pursuit of their political goals, “freedom fighters,” Livni makes it clear that she understands that “terrorism” is a subjective term employed for an effect.

When Ehud Barak a few years ago acknowledged that had he been raised a Palestinian he too would have joined one of the so-called terrorist organizations, he was not describing an extraordinary epiphany he had gone through in recognizing the plight of the Palestinians. He was merely being candid about parallels between groups such as the Irgun and Hamas — parallels that many Israelis see but less often voice.

The big issue is not whether the methods employed by Zionist groups such as the Irgun could be justified but whether the political goals these groups were fighting for were legitimate. Zionism would not have acquired more legitimacy if it had simply found non-violent means through which it could accomplish its goal of driving much of the non-Jewish population out of Palestine.

We live in an era in which “terrorism” — as a phenomenon to be opposed — has become the primary bulwark through which Zionism defends itself from scrutiny. Keep on playing the terrorist-naming game and the Zionists win.

June 28, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Leader of Death Squads Wins Colombian Election

A “Role Model” for Latin America

By Prof. James Petras | Global Research | June 27, 2010

Juan Manuel Santos, notorious Defense Minister in the regime of outgoing President Alvaro Uribe and closely identified with high crimes against humanity “won” the recent Presidential elections in Colombia, June 2010. The major electronic and print media CNN, FOX News, Washington Post, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the once liberal Financial Times (FT) hailed Santos election, as a great victory for democracy. According to the FT, “Colombia not Venezuela is (the) best model for Latin America” (FT 6/23/2010 p. 8). Citing Santos “overwhelming” margin – he garnered 69% of the vote, the FT claimed he won a “strong mandate” (FT 6/22/2010). In what has to be one of the most flagrant cover-ups in recent history, the media accounts exclude the most egregious facts about the elections and the profoundly authoritarian policies pursued by Santos over the past decade.

The Elections: Guns, Elites and Terror

Elections are a process (not merely an event) in which prior political conditions determine the outcome. During the previous eight years of outgoing President Uribe’s and Defense Minister Santos’ rule, over 2 million, mostly rural poor, were forcibly uprooted and driven from their homes and land and displaced across frontiers into neighboring countries, or to urban slums. The Uribe-Santos regime relied on both the military and the 30,000 member paramilitary death squads to kill and terrorize entire population centers, deemed “sympathetic” to the armed insurgency, affecting several million urban and rural poor. Over 20,000 people were killed, many, according to the major Colombian human rights group, falsely labeled “guerrillas”. Santos as Defense Minister was directly implicated by the Courts in what was called “false positives”. The military randomly rounded up scores of poor urban youth, shot them and claimed a resounding victory over the FARC guerrillas.

Several of the most important captured paramilitary death squad leaders testified that over 60 of the congress people backing Uribe – Santos were on their payroll and they “ensured” votes from regions under their control. Faced with damaging testimony, Uribe-Santos double-crossed their narco-death squad comrades and “extradited” them to the U.S. where the judicial process excluded evidence linking them to the mass killings at the behest of Uribe-Santos.

Over two thousand trade unionists, human rights activists, journalists and congress- people critical of Uribe-Santos were murdered by death squad hit-men serving the regime. The world’s major trade union confederations have sent missions and published reports condemning Colombia as the most dangerous country for workers’ representatives.

In other words all the social sectors with social and political grievances against the regime were terrorized, many of their local opinion leaders, killed, displaced or driven into exile … undermining the possibility of sustained independent socio-political organization.

Pervasive state terror led to few local leaders surviving, undermining the electorate’s capacity to exercise a free and independent organization.

On election day, the regime mobilized over 350,000 military and police officials, many involved in the decade long repression, to “oversee” the elections and to remind the voters of the force behind the “official candidate” (La Jornada 5/30/2010).

The electoral outcome was far from the “mandate” of the Colombian people as claimed by the mass media. The ‘winner’ was the “abstentionists” with 56% of the electorate, the position advocated by the FARC. Now clearly the majority of the abstentionist vote did not reflect support or sympathy for the FARC; rather it reflected disaffection with the regime’s violent repression, massive dispossession of millions and its total failure to deal with the under and unemployment affecting 40% of the economically active population.

In fact Santos received 30% of the vote of the electorate, hardly a mandate. If we examine the social-ecological background of the voters, it is clearly a mandate from the elite. The highest levels of abstention were among several distinct groups. Among the shanty towns and rural areas suffering from repression and neglect, abstention rose to over 80%. In contrast, in the middle and upper class sectors of the major cities, over 60% voted for the candidate of the regime. Uribe-Santos tried to explain away the massive abstention by citing the weather (rain) and the World Cup soccer matches .However the low turnout took place throughout the country, in both dry and inclement weather. And the games did not occupy the entire day of voting. The mass media systematically ignored the horrendous crimes under Defense Minister Santos, his indictment in the “false positive” murders, his long term large scale association with the death squads and with the Uribe regimes promotion of narco- trafficking. They ignored his support for de-regulating the financial system, resulting in the defrauding of hundreds of thousands of Colombian small investors.

Comparing Colombia to Venezuela

Yet the Financial Times (6/23/2010) favorably compares Colombia under Uribe-Santos against Venezuela under Chavez, “Crackers about Caracas? Latin American should be bonkers about Bogota instead”. According to the FT Venezuela under Chavez is said to be unsafe, authoritarian and economically in decline. The editors of the FT, echoing the rest of the media, claim Colombia is a prosperous democracy, with a system of checks and balances; with safe and peaceful neighborhoods … except when the neighborhoods of the poor protest unemployment or the rural villagers march against land grabs by the landlord funded gunmen. The FT fails to mention the resurgence of paramilitary gangs terrorizing the Colombian countryside, (La Jornada 5/28/2010) but instead they focus on street crime in Caracas.

The Venezuelan government, contrary to the US media, promotes community based social movements which would be targets of military raids in Bogota.

The only “paramilitary” groups in Venezuela are cross-overs from Colombia, pursued and punished by the Venezuelan National Guard. In Venezuela trade unions participate in the management of major industrial plants, unlike Colombia where they are murdered including workers in the major Coca Cola,coal, oil and banana industries.

Behind the media lies and falsifications abut Colombia’s election and its political leaders are several basic considerations.

– Uribe-Santos are fervent free market advocates, eagerly pursing a free trade agreement held up in the US Congress because of their killing fields.

– Uribe-Santos are unconditional clients of the Pentagon, receiving $6 billion in aid and handing over 7 military bases, under US jurisdiction to threaten Venezuela, Ecuador and any other country the Obama regime deems a hostile to US domination.

– Uribe-Santos recognized the Honduras regime, product of a US backed military coup in mid 2009 – contrary to the rest of Latin America.

The fact that the mass-media have so enthusiastically embraced a regime with the worst human rights record since the fall of the military dictators of the 1970’s – 1980’s (La Jornada 6/17/2010) is indicative of the right turn under the Obama Wall Street regime.

According to the White House and media, death squad democracies like Colombia now qualify as “role models” for Latin America. The problem is that neither the vast majority of Latin America citizens, nor most of the democratic parties in the region are buying: they prefer democracies without death squads, foreign military bases and narco-dealing Presidents. At present, the White House’s three leading allies in the region, Colombia, Peru and Mexico produce and sell 80% of the cocaine in the region. Will this appear in the media’s salutations to newly elected presidents?

June 27, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Shalit, for example

By Uri Avnery | June 26, 2010 | Excerpt

[Gilad] Shalit has become a living symbol – a symbol of Israeli reality, of the inability of our leaders to make decisions, of their moral and political cowardice, of their inability to analyze a situation and draw conclusions.

If there had been an opportunity to free Shalit through military action, the Israeli government would have seized it eagerly.

So much is obvious, because the Israeli public always prefers solving a problem by force than doing anything that might be interpreted as weakness. The rescue of the hostages at Entebbe in 1976 is considered one of the most glorious exploits in the history of Israel, even though there was only a hair’s breadth between success and failure. It was a gamble with the lives of the 105 hostages and the soldiers, and it was successful.

In other cases, though, the gamble did not succeed. Not in Munich in 1972, when they gambled with the lives of the athletes, and lost. Not in Ma’alot in 1974, when they gambled with the lives of the schoolchildren, and lost. Not in the attempt to free the captured soldier Nachschon Wachsman in 1994, when they gambled with his life, and lost.

If there had been any chance of freeing Shalit by force, they would have risked his life, and probably lost. Fortunately for him, there has been no such chance. So far.

Actually, this is quite remarkable. Our security services have hundreds of secret collaborators in the Gaza Strip, in addition to high tech surveillance. Yet it seems that no reliable information about Shalit’s whereabouts has been obtained.

How has Hamas succeeded in this? Among other measures, by not allowing any contact with the captive – no meetings with the Red Cross or foreign dignitaries, just two short videos, almost no letters. They simply cannot be pressured. They refuse all requests of this nature.

This problem could possibly be overcome if our government had been ready to give assurances that no attempt would be made to free him by force, in return for a Hamas undertaking to let him meet with the Red Cross. To be credible, such an undertaking would probably need a guarantee by a third party, perhaps the US.

Absent such an arrangement, all the sanctimonious speeches by foreign statesmen about “letting the Red Cross meet with the soldier” are just so many empty words.

No less hypocritical are the demands of foreign personalities to “free the kidnapped soldier.”

Such demands are music to the Israeli ear, but completely disregard the fact that the subject has to be an exchange of prisoners.

Shalit is alive and breathing, a young man whose fate arouses strong human emotions. But so are the Palestinian prisoners. They are alive and breathing, and their fate, too, arouses strong human emotions. They include young people, whose lives are being wasted in prison. They include political leaders, who are being punished for simply belonging to one or another organization. They include people who, in Israeli parlance, “have blood on their hands,” and who, in Palestinian parlance, are national heroes who have sacrificed their own freedom for their people’s liberation.

The price demanded by Hamas may seem exorbitant – a thousand for one. But Israel has already paid such a price for other prisoners in the past, and that has become the standard ratio. Hamas could not accept less without losing face.

The 1,000 Palestinian prisoners have families – fathers, mothers, husbands, wives and children, brothers and sisters. Exactly like Gilad Shalit. They, too, cry out, demand, exert pressure. Hamas cannot ignore them.

The whole affair is shocking evidence of the inability of our government – both the previous and the present one – to take decisions and even to think logically.

Hamas already fixed the price four years ago, according to past precedents. Their demand has not changed since then… Full article

June 26, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | Leave a comment

Right-wing self-delusion

By Glenn Greenwald | June 23, 2010

National Review‘s Jay Nordlinger cites a truly repellent (and false) comment made this week by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to Defense Secretary Robert Gates: “A million and a half people are living in Gaza, but only one of them is really in need of humanitarian aid,” Barak said.  Nordlinger points out that Barak was referring to Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held hostage for years by Hamas, which refuses to permit the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to him.  After observing that neither “the Cuban dictatorship or Chinese dictatorship permit the Red Cross to see prisoners,” Nordlinger then claims — with the needy victimization that typifies the Right — that “there’d be mass demonstrations in [Shalit’s] behalf all over Europe, and on American streets, too” if “Shalit were other than Israeli.”  In other words, Nordlinger believes that the Western World would never tolerate the denial of ICRC access to detainees except when the detainee is Israeli.

I’m asking this literally:  is Nordlinger ignorant of the fact that the United States of America denied ICRC access to non-Israeli prisoners for years during the prior administration?

The US has admitted for the first time that it has not given the Red Cross access to all detainees in its custody.

The state department’s top legal adviser, John Bellinger, made the admission but gave no details about where such prisoners were held. . . . He stated that the group International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had access to “absolutely everybody” at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which holds suspects detained during the US war on terror. When asked by journalists if the organisation had access to everybody held in similar circumstances elsewhere, he said: “No”.

That happened because, among other reasons, the U.S. maintained a network of CIA secret prisons — black sites — where detainees were barred from any and all contact with the outside world for months and even years, including international monitoring groups such as the ICRC.  Maybe Nordlinger has heard of someone named Dana Priest, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for revealing, in The Washington Post, the existence of those secret American prisons:

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA’s internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.

As Priest wrote, these detainees — never charged, let alone convicted, of any crime — “exist in complete isolation from the outside world.  Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being.”  Even once those black sites were revealed by Priest, the Bush administration explicitly rejected the ICRC’s request for access to those detainees (the ICRC was also long denied access to prisons in Iraq run by the Iraqi Government during the U.S. occupation).  And the BBC reported in April of this year that the U.S. continues to maintain a secret prison at Bagram where prisoners are apparently abused and denied ICRC access.  Could someone point me to the “mass demonstrations” that took place in Europe and the U.S. over any of these American secret prisons?

This raises an important and under-appreciated point.  Many Americans defend the U.S.’s conduct not because they support it, but because they’re completely unaware of what those actions actually are.  Many of the people who support what they call the “enhanced interrogation” program really believe they’re defending three instances of waterboarding rather than scores of detainee deaths, because they literally don’t know it happened.  And here you have Nordlinger — a Senior Editor of National Review — claiming that denial of access to the ICRC is the hallmark of brutal tyrannies (it is), and arguing that a country could only get away with it if they do it to an Israeli, making clear that he is completely ignorant of the fact that his own Government did this for years (without, needless to say, prompting a peep of protest from his magazine), and reportedly continues to do it.  That the U.S. did this systematically just doesn’t exist in his brain; he really believes it’s something only China, Cuba and Hamas do.  They really do live in their own universe and just block out whatever facts they dislike while inventing the ones that make them feel good.

UPDATE:   Just to convey a sense for how much National Review polemicists care about detainees being denied ICRC access (when it’s the U.S. doing the denying):  the only mention found in NR‘s archives of Dana Priest’s revelation that the U.S. was maintaining a network of secret prisons with no ICRC monitoring was this one by Byron York, in which he suggested that, based on the Plame precedent, the persons responsible for the disclosure — but not the ones denying the ICRC access to detainees — should be prosecuted.  So it’s not really a surprise that Nordlinger managed to remain completely ignorant of what the U.S. did for all those years, since his “political magazine” barely even mentioned it.

June 24, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Sudanese Officials: Cyprus ‘arms ship’ allegation is “absurd”, contains mining explosives

Al-Manar TV – 24/06/2010

Sudanese officials on Wednesday dismisses allegations saying that the Arab country import arms on a ship intercepted in Cyprus as an “absurd”, saying that the explosives on board were for gold mining firm.

“Sudan has been importing explosives since the early 1990s to work this gold mine, and has never had any problems in the past. It’s the first time this has happened. It’s absurd,” Abdelbaqi al-Gilani, Sudan’s minister responsible for mining said.
“The ship is carrying some explosives for civil work … for quarry face blasting and mining, it has nothing to do with the military,” al-Giliani added.

On Tuesday, Cyprus said it it placed the “Santiago” anchored off the southern city of Limassol under police guard with a suspected military cargo that would contravene a 2004 UN embargo on arms sales and deliveries to Sudan. Cypriot officials examined the vessel after US authorities alerted them that it was carrying a large amount of explosives bound for Sudan.

“The ship is under guard and there are materials that are considered banned, this means either military material or explosives,” Commerce Minister Antonis Paschalides told state radio. “There is definitely military equipment which comes under a ban,” he added without elaborating.

The Sudanese mine at Hassay, 450 kilometers northeast of the capital Khartoum, is Sudan’s first — and only — gold mine.
The Ariab group working the mine is 51 percent Sudanese government owned, while 40 percent of the shares are held by holding group Cominor, created by Canada’s La Mancha and France’s Areva.

An Ariab official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, confirmed that there were explosives on board the Santiago for the firm. “There are 251 tons of explosives which are for us. I hope they get here quickly, as we need them to be able to continue operation,” the official said. “I don’t know if there is anything else on board the boat, but these explosives are definitely for us.”

June 24, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Friedman: Middle Easterners are scheming, except Israel

By Philip Weiss on June 20, 2010

Orientalism, the globalist variety: Notice how Tom Friedman, now in Istanbul, goes from describing as insane a conspiracy theory that on its face is plausible– the shocking possibility that the enemy of Israel’s new enemy is Israel’s friend– to mounting his own (mildly interesting) theory of why Erdogan used the flotilla as a radical raid on Israel.

Moreover, Erdogan has evolved from just railing against Israel’s attacks on Hamas in Gaza to spouting conspiracy theories — like the insane notion that Israel is backing the P.K.K. terrorists — as a way of consolidating his political base among conservative Muslims in Turkey and abroad…

Only two weeks before the Gaza flotilla incident, a leading poll showed Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P., trailing his main opposition — the secularist Republican People’s Party — for the first time since the A.K.P. came to office in 2002. That is surely one reason Erdogan openly took sides with one of the most radical forces in the region, Hamas — to re-energize his political base. But did he overplay his hand?

I never forget that Friedman also dismissed as insane and conspiratorial the theory that American Zionists had anything to do with the decision to invade Iraq. Then a year or two later he essentially conceded the point to Haaretz (not his large American audience).

June 20, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Why Lithium Can’t Save Afghanistan

There will never be a “Saudi Arabia of lithium” anywhere

By Michael Reilly | Discovery News | June 15, 2010

Following the news Monday that geologists have found a mother lode of minerals in Afghanistan — reports argued deposits of iron, copper, gold and other goodies could collectively be worth close to $1 trillion — it’s worth asking a few extra questions.

In particular, there’s been an unusually strong focus on the lithium portion of the find. A key ingredient in high-tech batteries for laptops, smart phones, electric cars and the like, its been heralded as the future cornerstone of the world’s energy infrastructure.

But is lithium really going to save Afghanistan, as many media outlets seem to think? Nope, not even close.

In the words of Brian Jaskula, a lithium commodity expert with the United States Geological Survey, “We’ll be extracting lithium from the ocean before we’ll be extracting it from Afghanistan.” (Jaskula was not involved with the Afghanistan work.)

Extracting lithium from the ocean is a real thing, but it’s expensive. Instead, most lithium we use starts off dissolved in super-salty water underneath several feet of hard salt pan in Chile’s Salar de Atacama, one of the largest lithium producing regions on the planet. Argentina and Australia are also big producers of lithium.

Drilling for brines and then evaporating them in the arid desert air is the cheapest way to get the element, and it’s by far the most common. After that comes mining lithium-bearing minerals right out of granites. Until recently, sucking the element out of seawater, where it occurs in concentrations of just a few parts per million, was purely theoretical. But forecasts calling for steadily increasing prices have led South Korean interests to start building a factory to do just that.

According to Jaskula, South Korea’s decision is more than just a gamble on the market. “They want a steady supply of lithium, and they don’t want to have to rely on hostile countries for their supply, even if they have to pay a little more to get it,” he said.

Of course, no one anticipated the Pentagon’s recent announcement about Afghanistan; Jaskula was referring to Bolivia, whose Salar de Uyuni region contains vast stores of lithium. But the country has very little infrastructure for setting up a mining operation, not to mention a history of political unrest.

“And Afghanistan is a century behind Bolivia,” in terms of infrastructure, Jaskula said.

Then there’s the whole business of calling Afghanistan the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.” Turns out that’s not right either, for a number of reasons. […]

Even if the country does turn out to have vast stores of lithium, it will be almost certainly useless. There will never be a “Saudi Arabia of lithium” anywhere, according to Jaskula.

For one thing, the term “lithium batteries” is somewhat misleading. Lithium is a crucial ingredient, but it makes up just a tiny fraction — maybe 2-3 percent — of the weight and cost of the batteries. For another, lithium prices nosedived in 2009, and are expected to drop again this year (PDF; lithium currently goes for about $5,000 per ton). Why? Mostly because of the economic downturn, producers have piles of lithium they can’t get rid of.

Even if demand recovers, electric cars take off, and all of our wildest dreams about lithium-based battery technology come true, Jaskula said current suppliers would have no trouble meeting our needs through the next ten years.

What’s more, the lithium in batteries is recyclable. It’s just not profitable to do it now. Common wisdom among industry experts is that as prices rise, recycling programs will blossom. By 2030, the need for virgin lithium will cease to exist, replaced by a self-sustaining lithium loop… Full article

Copyright © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC.

June 19, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

‘Democracy’ Means the U.S. and Israel Approve

By Alex Kane on June 16, 2010

Thomas Friedman sure knows how to flip reality on its head. In his New York Times op-ed column today, Friedman hops on the bandwagon of bashing Turkey for “joining the Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran resistance front against Israel.”

Friedman accuses Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan of no longer promoting democracy and instead being more focused on “praising Hamas instead of the more responsible Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which is actually building the foundations of a Palestinian state.” Friedman says of Erdogan:

I’d love to see him be the most popular leader on the Arab street, but not by being more radical than the Arab radicals and by catering to Hamas, but by being more of a democracy advocate than the undemocratic Arab leaders and mediating in a balanced way between all Palestinians and Israel. That is not where Erdogan is at, though, and it’s troubling.

Siding with the Palestinian Authority against Hamas would be a peculiar way of advocating for democracy in the Middle East, though.  History lesson time:  In the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Hamas categorically defeated Fatah in what former President Jimmy Carter called “free and fair” elections.  The U.S., EU and Israel rejected those results, and after Fatah’s U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Hamas in Gaza failed, an “emergency government” composed of members of Fatah was installed.  This “emergency government,” still in place to this day in the West Bank, was not democratically elected and consolidated its power illegally.

In Friedman’s alternate universe, the Turkish prime minister is not advocating for democracy because…he supports the democratically elected government in Palestine that Israel has been trying to overthrow by way of “economic warfare” instead of the unelected government approved by the United States.

June 17, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

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