Emergency Committee for Israel is Based at Old Committee for the Liberation of Iraq
By Philip Weiss | July 16, 2010
Remember all the folks who denied that there was any meaningful Israel agenda in the push for war with Iraq? Well here are Jim Lobe and Eli Clifton at lobelog covering the rollout of the neoconservative Emergency Committee for Israel, which has been getting so much mainstream media attention:
Some things are just too good to be true.
It seems that the new Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) is based out of the same office as the old Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), suggesting that, Yes, Virginia, the same people who led the march to war in Iraq are behind the new Emergency Committee, which, in its very brief existence to date, has attracted a lot of mostly critical attention in the blogosphere.
The link, Clifton shows, is to Randy Scheunemann, the man who schooled Sarah Palin in pro-Israel foreign policy as she was being rolled out two years ago. When will this network be exposed by the mainstream media? Before an attack on Iran, I pray.
Lisbon ‘to summon Israel envoy over Iran’
Press TV – July 14, 2010
One day after Portugal welcomed Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, Lisbon says it will summon Israel’s ambassador over a strongly-worded statement criticizing the step.
“The ambassador of Israel will be summoned,” a Portuguese foreign ministry spokesman told reporters on Wednesday.
In his statement on Tuesday, Israel’s envoy to Portugal, Ehud Gol, called Iran a “pariah regime” and urged the country against dialogue with Tehran.
“It is extraordinarily surprising and disappointing that some European countries are acting contrary to the decisions of the European institution of which they are a part,” said the statement sent to the Portuguese news agency, LUSA.
“By opening their doors to senior representatives of this pariah regime, these countries are sending a dangerously ambiguous message to Tehran,” Gol added. The remarks came ahead of a meeting between Mottaki and his Portuguese counterpart Luis Amado on Tuesday.
While in Lisbon, the top Iranian diplomat is also slated to hold talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, whose country — along with Brazil — has been urging a diplomatic end to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel, which is believed to possess nuclear weapons and has for decades rebuffed calls to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), accuses Iran of harboring a secret military nuclear program.
Tehran, Ankara and Brasilia issued a joint nuclear fuel swap declaration on May 17. Three weeks after the initiative, the UN Security Council approved a Washington-drafted sanctions resolution targeting Iran’s financial and military sectors. However, in recent weeks, the European Union has urged the resumption of nuclear negotiations between Iran and the six major world powers.
Abducted Iranian at Iran’s office in US
Press TV – July 13, 2010
Iranian academic Shahram Amiri, who was abducted by the US last year, has been escorted by American forces to Iran’s interest section in Washington.
IRIB reported on Tuesday that Amiri took refuge in Iran’s interest section in Washington, urging an “immediate return” to Iran.
The Pakistani Embassy in Washington preserves Iran’s interests in the United States, since the two countries have no diplomatic relations.
In collaboration with Saudi forces, US security forces kidnapped Amiri while he was on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in June 2009 and took him to America. Since then, two videos and one audio message featuring him have emerged.
In the first video, Amiri said that he was abducted “in a joint operation by terror and kidnap teams from the US intelligence service, CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and Saudi Arabia’s Istikhbarat” from Medina.
In the second video, he contradicted his earlier statements, saying that he was in the US of his own free will to further his education, dismissing all rumors about his defection.
However, in the latest audio message obtained by Iran’s intelligence sources, Amiri insists that he was offered $10 million to appear on CNN and announce that he had willingly defected to the US.
Holding the US accountable for Amiri’s abduction, the Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned the Swiss charge d’affaires, whose embassy represents US interests in Iran, earlier this month and handed over new documents related to the abduction of the Iranian national by the CIA.
Analysts say US intelligence officials decided to free Amiri after they failed to advance their propaganda campaign against Iran’s nuclear program via fabricating interviews with the Iranian national.
US Professors Raise Doubts About Report on South Korean Ship Sinking
Akiko Fujita | VOA | July 9, 2010
A new study by U.S. researchers raises questions about the investigation into the sinking of a South Korean navy ship. International investigators blamed a North Korean torpedo, raising tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Researchers J.J. Suh and Seung-Hun Lee say the South Korean Joint Investigation Group made a weak case when it concluded that North Korea was responsible for sinking the Cheonan.
Speaking in Tokyo Friday, the two said the investigation was riddled with inconsistencies and cast “profound doubt” on the integrity of the investigation. “The only conclusion one can draw on the basis of the evidence is that there was no outside explosion,” Suh said. “The JIG completely failed to produce evidence that backs up its claims that there was an outside explosion.”
Suh is an associate professor in international relations at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, where he runs the Korean studies program.
International investigators said in May that an external explosion caused the South Korean ship to sink last March, killing 46 sailors. The report said a North Korean-made torpedo caused the explosion.
Suh and Lee [say] the cracked portion of the bottom of the ship does not show the signs of a large shock that are usually associated with outside explosions. They add that all the ship’s internal parts remained intact and few fragments were recovered outside the ship.
“Almost all parts and fragments should’ve been recovered within about three to six meters within where the torpedo part was discovered,” Lee says, “The fact that only the propeller and the propulsion part was discovered doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Lee is a professor of physics at the University of Virginia in the United States. Lee also points to a blue mark on a fragment of the torpedo to question the validity of the study. South Korean scientists say that part of the torpedo was marked “number one” in Korean, with a blue marker.
Suh and Lee say the writing would not have survived the intense heat of an explosion. “This can not be taken as evidence. Because any Korean, North and South, can write this mark,” Suh said. “Also, it does not make sense that this blue ink mark could survive so freshly when the paint all around was all burned at the explosion.”
Both researchers say their findings do not prove that North Korea did not sink the Cheonan. But they say it is irresponsible for the South Korean government to reach its conclusions based on an inconclusive study.
They are calling for a new international investigation to re-examine the Cheonan’s sinking. They also want the United Nations Security Council to pressure the South Korean government and request an “objective and scientific” report before the council deliberates on the incident.
Octavia Nasr’s firing and what the liberal media allows
By Glenn Greenwald | July 8, 2010
CNN yesterday ended the 20-year career of Octavia Nasr, its Atlanta-based Senior Middle East News Editor, because of a now-deleted tweet she wrote on Sunday upon learning of the death of one of the Shiite world’s most beloved religious figures: “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah . . . . One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” That message spawned an intense fit of protest from Far Right outlets, Thought Crime enforcers, and other neocon precincts, and CNN quickly (and characteristically) capitulated to that pressure by firing her. The network — which has employed a former AIPAC official, Wolf Blitzer, as its primary news anchor for the last 15 years — justified its actions by claiming that Nasr’s “credibility” had been “compromised.” Within this episode lies several important lessons about media “objectivity” and how the scope of permissible views is enforced.
First, consider which viewpoints cause someone to be fired from The Liberal Media. Last month, Helen Thomas’ 60-year career as a journalist ended when she expressed the exact view about Jews which numerous public figures have expressed (with no consequence or even controversy) about Palestinians. Just weeks ago, The Washington Post accepted the “resignation” of Dave Weigel because of scorn he heaped on right-wing figures such as Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh. CNN’s Chief News Executive, Eason Jordan, was previously forced to resign after he provoked a right-wing fit of fury over comments he made about the numerous — and obviously disturbing — incidents where the U.S. military had injured or killed journalists in war zones. NBC fired Peter Arnett for criticizing the U.S. war plan on Iraqi television, which prompted accusations of Treason from the Right. MSNBC demoted and then fired its rising star Ashleigh Banfield after she criticized American media war coverage for adhering to the Fox model of glorifying U.S. wars; the same network fired its top-rated host, Phil Donahue, due to its fear of being perceived as anti-war; and its former reporter, Jessica Yellin, confessed that journalists were “under enormous pressure from corporate executives” to present the news in a pro-war and pro-Bush manner.
What each of these firing offenses have in common is that they angered and offended the neocon Right. Isn’t that a strange dynamic for the supposedly Liberal Media: the only viewpoint-based firings of journalists are ones where the journalist breaches neoconservative orthodoxy? Have there ever been any viewpoint-based firings of establishment journalists by The Liberal Media because of comments which offended liberals? None that I can recall. I foolishly thought that when George Bush’s own Press Secretary mocked the American media for being “too deferential” to the Bush administration, that would at least put a dent in that most fictitious American myth: The Liberal Media. But it didn’t; nothing does, not even the endless spate of journalist firings for deviating from right-wing dogma.
Beyond journalism, speech codes concerning the Middle East are painfully biased and one-sided. Chas Freeman was barred from a government position — despite a long and accomplished record of public service — due to AIPAC-led anger over comments deemed insufficiently devoted to Israel. Juan Cole was denied a tenured position at Yale after a vicious neocon campaign based on his allegedly anti-Israel remarks, and Norman Finklestein suffered the same fate, despite a unanimous committee recommendation for tenure, after an Alan-Dershowitz-led demonization campaign based on his blasphemous scholarship about Israel. Does anyone ever suffer career-impeding injuries of this type — the way Nasr and Thomas also just have — for expressing anti-Muslim or anti-Arab views? No. The speech prohibitions and thought crimes on the Middle East all run in one direction: to enforce “pro-Israel” orthodoxies. Does this long list of examples leave room for doubt about that fact?
* * * * *
Then there’s the Nasr case itself. Look at how our discourse is completely distorted and dumbed-down by the same stunted, cartoonish neocon orthodoxies that have also destroyed our foreign policy. In our standard political discussions, the simplistic and false notion — obviously accepted by CNN — drives the discussion: Fadlallah is an Evil Hezbollah Terrorist!!, and Nasr probably is as well given the “respect” she expressed for him during his death. Thus: CNN got caught employing an Israel-hating Terrorist-lover, and once she revealed herself, she had to be fired immediately!!!! That really is the primitive level of agitprop churned out by neocon polemicists and then dutifully ingested and embraced by CNN.
The reality, though, is completely different. Fadlallah was a revered figure to a large chunk of the world, and was quite mainstream even in parts of the West. As the AP put it today, Fadlallah was “one of Shiite Islam’s highest and most revered religious authorities with a following that stretched beyond Lebanon’s borders to Iraq, the Gulf and as far away as central Asia.” Ironically, he was the religious guide for Iraq’s Dawa Party: the party of our close ally, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who took the very unusual step of leaving Iraq to attend Fadlallah’s funeral. As ThinkProgress’ Matt Duss put it:
So here’s the neocon logic: When a reporter acknowledges the passing of a revered, if controversial figure in a way that doesn’t sufficiently convey what a completely evil terrorist neocons think that figure was — that’s unacceptable. But when the United States spends nearly a trillion dollars, loses over 4,000 of its own troops and over 100,000 Iraqis to establish a new government largely dominated by that same “terrorist’s” avowed acolytes — that’s victory.
Writing in Foreign Policy — not exactly a radical, Terrorist-loving outlet — David Kenner described how even moderate, U.S.-friendly officials such as Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri praised Fadlallah as “a voice of moderation and an advocate of unity,” and Kenner documents that even Fadlallah’s alleged ties to Hezbollah are dubious at best.
Most striking, the British Ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, heaped praise on Fadlallah far more gushing than anything Nasr said. In a piece she entitled “The Passing of Decent Men,” Ambassador Guy wrote that he was one of the people whom she enjoyed meeting most and with whom she was most impressed; that he was “a true man of religion, leaving an impact on everyone he meets, no matter what their faith”; that “Lebanon is a lesser place the day after his absence”; and that “the world needs more men like him willing to reach out across faiths.”
And Nasr herself wrote a moving explanation after the controversy over her tweet erupted, explaining that the respect she expressed for Fadlallah had nothing to do with some of his uglier views about the justifiability of civilian attacks on Israel or Holocaust disparagement, but was rather driven by his important and virtuous call for greater rights and respect for Muslim women, his desire for greater religious tolerance in Muslim nations, and the fact that he “spread what many considered a more moderate voice of Shia Islam than what was coming out of Iran.” She recounted the respect he showed her when she interviewed him 20 years ago. And she explained that “it was his commitment to Hezbollah’s original mission — resisting Israel’s occupation of Lebanon — that made him popular and respected among many Lebanese, not just people of his own sect.” By all accounts, Fadlallah became particularly radicalized in his hostility toward the U.S. when the Reagan administration — working in concert with Saudi Arabia — attempted to assassinate him with a car bomb in Beirut, missed, and slaughtered 80 innocent civilians instead.
In other words, like many people involved in protracted and religiously-motivated violent conflicts, Fadlallah was a profoundly complex figure, with some legitimate grievances, some entrenched hatreds and ugly viewpoints, and a substantial capacity for good. Nasr was expressing a very mild and restrained form of sadness and respect for someone who had just died: sentiments shared in much stronger form by hundreds of millions of people in the Muslim and even Western world. The sentiment she expressed, while infuriating neocons, is widespread and completely unnotable for large parts of the world.
What makes Nasr’s summary firing even more astonishing is that Nasr herself was an unremarkable journalist who rarely if ever provoked controversy, had no history of anti-Israel or pro-Terrorist sentiments, and blended perfectly into the American corporate media woodwork. Indeed, Middle East expert and neocon critic Nir Rosen ironically noted yesterday that — as almost happened to Michael Steele — “Octavia Nasr got fired for the one smart thing she ever said.”
This was a banal and very cautious establishment journalist who survived and advanced at Time Warner, Inc. for 20 years by adhering to all the prevailing codes.
But no matter: as we’ve seen repeatedly, in American media and political culture, Middle East orthodoxies are the most sacred and inviolable. Thus, her 2o-year loyal service is brushed to the side because of a 140-character blip of blasphemy. As the Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah put it: she “wasn’t particularly groundbreaking. That’s the point. EVEN someone usually so cautious cannot survive.” He added: “More than ever, [CNN, NPR, The New York Times] are purveyors of official, accepted opinion. Their job is to police what/who we can hear.” That’s what Nicholas Kristof meant when, writing today from Jerusalem, he observed that Israel “tolerates a far greater range of opinions than America”: it’s even more acceptable to utter blasphemy about Israel in Israel than it is in the U.S., as Octavia Nasr was but the latest to discover.
* * * * *
With the Nasr firing, here we find yet again exposed the central lie of American establishment journalism: that opinion-free “objectivity” is possible, required, and the governing rule. The exact opposite is true: very strong opinions are not only permitted but required. They just have to be the right opinions: the official, approved ones. Just look at the things that are allowed. The Washington Post lavished editorial praise on the brutal, right-wing tyrant Augusto Pinochet, and that caused no controversy. AP’s Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier got caught sending secret, supportive emails to Karl Rove, and nothing happened. Benjamin Netanyahu formally celebrates the Terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel that killed 91 civilians and nobody is stigmatized for supporting him. Erick Erickson sent around the most rancid and arguably racist tweets, only to thereafter be hired as a CNN contributor. And as Jonathan Schwarz wrote of the Nasr firing:
William Barr is on the board of directors of Time Warner, the parent company of CNN. Barr was a senior adviser in the Reagan administration, which attempted to assassinate Fadlallah, missing him and killing more than eighty bystanders.
Having someone who was part of the slaughter of 80 civilians in Lebanon on your Board is fine. And having a former AIPAC official with an obvious bias toward Israel (just watch Blitzer in this 5-minute clip if you have doubts about that) is perfectly consistent with a news network’s “credibility.” But expressing sadness over the death of an Islamic cleric beloved by much of the Muslim world is not. Whatever is driving that, it has nothing to do with “objectivity.”
All of this would be so much more tolerable if CNN would simply admit that it permits its journalists to hold and express some controversial opinions (ones in accord with official U.S. policy and orthodox viewpoints) but prohibits others (ones which the neocon Right dislikes). Instead, we are subjected to this patently false pretense of opinion-free objectivity.
The reality is that “pro-Israel” is not considered a viewpoint at all; it’s considered “objective.” That’s why there’s no expression of it too extreme to result in the sort of punishment which Nasr just suffered (preceded by so many others before her). Conversely, while Hezbollah is seen by much of the world as an important defense against Israeli aggression in Lebanon, the U.S. Government has declared it a Terrorist organization, and therefore “independent” U.S. media outlets such as CNN dutifully follow along by firing anyone who expresses any positive feelings about anyone who, in turn, has any connection to that group. That’s how tenuous and distant the thought crime can be and still end someone’s career. It’s true that much of the world sees some of Hezbollah’s actions as Terrorism; much of the world sees Israel’s that way as well. CNN requires the former view while prohibiting the latter. As usual, our brave journalistic outlets not only acquiesce to these suffocating and extremely subjective restrictions on what our political discourse allows; they lead the way in enforcing them.
The ‘Times’ finally covers settler funding in the US, but there is still much to tell
By Adam Horowitz on July 6, 2010
The New York Times has finally covered a story that has been sitting under its nose for years – the tax-exempt fund raising Israeli settlers are doing in the U.S. In an expansive article in today’s paper, three reporters combine to tell a familiar story of how nonprofit organizations are raising money in the US to help build settlements and in some cases arm settlers themselves.
I say the story has been right under the Times’s nose because so much of this story is a New York story. As we have been reporting on here for the past year and a half, the Central Fund of Israel, located in a fabric store on 36th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan just 6 blocks from the Times headquarters, has been one of the most important players in this story. The Times gives them their due, and even quotes their president Hadassah Marcus who explained, “We’re trying to build a land. . . All we’re doing is going back to our home.”
The article is huge, and the Times should be commended for running it.
Still the article obfuscates the story in some places. My biggest issue is that it totally ignores the widespread support these institutions enjoy in the Jewish community. The article says “donors to settlement charities represent a broad mix of Americans,” but then focuses on the more religious or ideological ones. As we have shown the apparent Central Fund donor list includes James Tisch, the CEO of Loews; Michael Milken, the banker/philanthropist; and Alan C. (Ace) Greenberg, the former CEO of Bear Stearns (the whole list is here). To me this is an interesting story.
And it’s not just about big names. The story says, “The settlements are a sensitive issue among American Jews themselves. Some major Jewish philanthropies, like the Jewish Federations of North America, generally do not support building activities in the West Bank.” This is not true. A reader writes us:
I know this to be untrue, first by virtue of the JFNA’s funneling American Jewish money to the Jewish Agency, which openly supports settlements. But some Federations sanction settlements directly, too: the SF Federation’s endowment fund allows donations to settler groups.
The list of the San Francisco Federation’s approved charities is here. Among the many settler organizations it includes are the American Friends of Ariel (a large settlement in the northern West Bank), American Friends of Bat Ayin Yeshiva (located in the Gush Etzion settlement block), and, not surprisingly, the Central Fund of Israel.
The Times makes it out that the American Jewish community is wringing its hands over this practice while the radicals raise the money. This is not the case. While I agree that the majority of American Jews might not support the settlements, the majority of the leadership of the American Jewish community does. The settlements have been a project of the American Jewish community as much as they have been Israel’s project. The leaders of the community need to be called to account.
IAEA’s Heinonen Pushed “Fabricated” Iran Nuclear Weapons Intel
By Gareth Porter | IPS | July 2, 2010
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WASHINGTON – Olli Heinonen, the Finnish nuclear engineer who resigned Thursday after five years as deputy director for safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was the driving force in turning that agency into a mechanism to support U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran.
Heinonen was instrumental in making a collection of intelligence documents showing a purported Iranian nuclear weapons research programme the central focus of the IAEA’s work on Iran. The result was to shift opinion among Western publics to the view that Iran had been pursuing a covert nuclear weapons programme.
But his embrace of the intelligence documents provoked a fierce political struggle within the Secretariat of the IAEA, because other officials believed the documents were fraudulent.
Heinonen took over the Safeguards Department in July 2005 – the same month that the George W. Bush administration first briefed top IAEA officials on the intelligence collection.
The documents portrayed a purported nuclear weapons research programme, originally called the “Green Salt” project, that included efforts to redesign the nosecone of the Shahab-3 missile, high explosives apparently for the purpose of triggering a nuclear weapon and designs for a uranium conversion facility. Later the IAEA referred to the purported Iranian activities simply as the “alleged studies”.
The Bush administration was pushing the IAEA to use the documents to accuse Iran of having had a covert nuclear weapons programme. The administration was determined to ensure that the IAEA Governing Board would support referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council for action on sanctions, as part of a larger strategy to force Iran to abandon its uranium enrichment programme.
Long-time IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei and other officials involved in investigating and reporting on Iran’s nuclear programme were immediately sceptical about the authenticity of the documents. According to two Israeli authors, Yossi Melman and Meir Javadanfar, several IAEA officials told them in interviews in 2005 and 2006 that senior officials of the agency believed the documents had been “fabricated by a Western intelligence organisation”.
Heinonen, on the other hand, supported the strategy of exploiting the collection of intelligence documents to put Iran on the defensive. His approach was not to claim that the documents’ authenticity had been proven but to shift the burden of proof to Iran, demanding that it provide concrete evidence that it had not carried out the activities portrayed in the documents.
From the beginning, Iran’s permanent representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, denounced the documents as fabrications. In Governing Board meetings and interviews, Soltanieh pointed to several indicators, including the absence of official stamps showing receipt of the document by a government office and the absence of any security markings.
The tensions between Heinonen and the senior officials over the intelligence documents intensified in early 2008, when Iran provided detailed documentation to the agency disproving a key premise of the intelligence documents.
Kimia Maadan, a private Iranian company, was shown in the intelligence documents as having designed a uranium conversion facility as part of the alleged military nuclear weapons research programme. Iran proved to the satisfaction of those investigating the issue, however, that Kimia Maadan had been created by Iran’s civilian atomic energy agency solely to carry out a uranium ore processing project and had gone out of business before it fulfilled the contract.
Senior IAEA officials then demanded that Heinonen distance the organisation from the documents by inserting a disclaimer in future agency reports on Iran that it could not vouch for the authenticity of the documents.
Instead Heinonen gave a “technical briefing” for IAEA member countries in February 2008 featuring a diagram on which the ore processing project and the uranium processing project were both carried out by the firm and shared the same military numbering system.
The IAEA report published just three days earlier established, however, that the ore processing project number — 5/15 — had been assigned to it not by the military but by the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran. And the date on which it was assigned was August 1999 – many months before the purported nuclear weapons programme was shown to have been organised.
Heinonen carefully avoided endorsing the documents as authentic. He even acknowledged that Iran had spotted technical errors in the one-page design for a small-scale facility for uranium conversion, and that there were indeed “technical inconsistencies” in the diagram.
He also admitted Iran had provided open source publications showing spherical firing systems similar to the one depicted in the intelligence documents on alleged tests of high explosives.
Heinonen suggested in his presentation that the agency did not yet have sufficient information to come to any firm conclusions about those documents. In the May 2008 IAEA report, however, there was no mention of any such caveats about the documents.
Instead, the report used language that was clearly intended to indicate that the agency had confidence in the intelligence documents: “The documentation presented to Iran appears to have been derived from multiple sources over different periods of time, is detailed in content and appears to be generally consistent.”
That language, on which Heinoen evidently insisted, did not represent a consensus among senior IAEA officials. One senior official suggested to IPS in September 2009 that the idea that documents came from different sources was not completely honest.
“There are intelligence-sharing networks,” said the official. It was possible that one intelligence organisation could have shared the documents with others, he explained.
“That gives us multiple sources consistent over time,” said the official.
The same official said of the collection of intelligence documents, “It’s not difficult to cook up.”
Nevertheless, Heinonen’s position had clearly prevailed. And in the final year of ElBaradei’s leadership of the agency, the Safeguards Department became an instrument for member states – especially France, Britain, Germany and Israel – to put pressure on ElBaradei to publish summaries of intelligence reports portraying Iran as actively pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.
The active pressure of the United States and its allies on behalf of the hard line toward Iran was the main source of Heinonen’s power on the issue. Those states have been feeding intelligence on alleged covert Iranian nuclear activities to the Safeguards Division for years, and Heinonen knew that ElBaradei could not afford to confront the U.S.-led coalition openly over the issue.
The Bush administration had threatened to replace ElBaradei in 2004 and had reluctantly accepted his reelection as director-general in 2005. ElBaradei was not strong enough to threaten to fire the main antagonist over the issue of alleged studies.
ElBaradei’s successor Yukio Amano is even less capable of adopting an independent position on the issues surrounding the documents. The political dynamics of the IAEA ensure that Heinonen’s successor is certain to continue the same line on the Iran nuclear issue and intelligence documents as Heinonen’s.
Greening the desert; Eritrea’s Manzanar Mangrove miracle
By Thomas C. Mountain | Online Journal | July 6, 2010
ASMARA, Eritrea — Along the nearly barren desert shoreline of the Red Sea there can be found a miracle of green forest stretching over six miles (10 kilometers), the Manzanar Mangrove Project.
Started some 15 years ago on the shoreline of Zula Bay, once home to Africa’s lost civilization of Punt, a lush, green mangrove forest has been reestablished in the middle of thousands of miles of desert and is now providing an estuary for fish and shrimp as well as food for animals. Mangrove leaves and seeds provide almost the complete nutritional needs for goats, sheep and camels, thus providing the people of the area with milk and meat, which along with fish has been their sustenance of life from time immemorial.
All of this is the work of a Japanese American, Dr. Gordon Sato who took his personal fortune obtained through his medical inventions and used it to transform formerly barren sandy silt beaches into an emerald green jungle, 20 feet high, using salt water. That’s right, salt water can be used to reforest arid coastlines. .
All it takes is a little nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer wrapped in plastic with two punctures to allow a time release of the fertilizer. Bury this about two feet under the sand and mangroves can once again grow where they used to flourish, converting a desolate, sand blown coastline into a green miracle of sea life estuary and life sustaining forest.
The lowly mangrove, so often reviled as the source of fetid, insect and disease-ridden swamps, holds the key to fighting drought, coastal desertification, coastal erosion and a host of other problems being experienced by the world’s oceans. Mangroves ordinarily only grow where there is enough nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus not present in salt water that have been brought by fresh water runoff. With the thousands of years long desertification of much of the East and West African as well as West and South Asian coastline, once thriving mangrove forests are now gone, and mangroves are only found in a few isolated spots.
But all of that is changing, though one can only wonder why with all the talk about climate change, Dr. Sato is not the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to help him spread his miracle throughout the world.
Today, with his personal fortune spent, even though he has received environmental awards from the Rolex Foundation and the Asahi Foundation, funding has dried up and Dr. Sato’s work has reached its limit.
And the reason why may be explained by the three contradictory ideas, Manzanar, mangrove and miracle. First is the name, the Manzanar Project, named after the crime against humanity committed in the USA under the signature of two of the most famous “liberals” in 20th century USA history, Franklin Roosevelt and Earl Warren. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans were victims of ethnic cleansing carried out under the orders of President Franklin Roosevelt, and the governor of California, and later chief justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, at the outbreak of WW2. Arrested, thrown in jail with all their property and possessions stolen from them and eventually imprisoned in concentrations camps, most often in the middle of some pretty nasty deserts, all done by leaders proclaimed as leading lights of liberalism in the USA. One of these camps was named Manzanar and, as a small boy, Dr. Sato found himself and his family imprisoned there, convicted of no crime yet treated as criminals, all for being guilty of having the wrong color skin.
Dr. Sato’s naming his mangrove project after such a crime is sure to anger the powers that be in the USA dominated aid agencies. On top of this mangroves and miracles are two words that are not used together, almost contradictory in concept in the minds of most in the so-called “First World.” Manzanar, mangroves and miracles, three very different concepts to say the least. You put them together inside Eritrea and you have another example of how news of another environmental breakthrough with global importance is being suppressed by those in power in the Western world, both official and non-governmental.
Stay tuned to the Online Journal for more news that the so-called free press in the West refuses to cover.
Thomas C. Mountain was, in a former life, an educator, activist and alternative medicine practitioner in the USA. Email thomascmountain at yahoo.com.
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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:
The Israel Lobby in San Francisco
By BINOY KAMPMARK | CounterPunch | July 2, 2010
‘I was the child of the survivors of the Holocaust.’ With that, Roz Rothstein of the activist group Stand With Us that hopes to transform the image of Israel on US campuses sets the moral authority before a small audience at an office on Howard Street, San Francisco. One can, she explains, disagree with Israel, but there are ‘limits’ to such doubting behavior. Exceeding those limits constitutes the gravest sort of anti-Semitism. As people devour the food and drink put on by the associates of Blumberg Capital, serious politics is being discussed. ‘We are being demonized,’ she insists. Whether she means Israel, Jews or Jews in the US is hard to tell. Presumably, no true distinction is intended.
The gathering teams with Republicans, many of them competing with each other for various posts in upcoming elections. Candidates who are going to be competing for House positions are also there including John Dennis who hopes to undermine Nancy Pelosi. The room smells of political hustling and over-eager libidos.
All are, however, there for one reason: defending Israel. Israel is besieged, the David in a sea of overly keen Goliaths. A good deal of agitprop is necessary to convince the audience, and perhaps the speakers, of this bizarre scenario. Pro-Palestinian groups are swarming across American campuses attacking Jews and pro-Israeli students alike. The UN is ‘obsessed’ with Israel and prefers, we are told, not to look at the stain of character on other states. One must be on the look out for the ‘Three Ds’ suggested by Natan Sharansky. (The speakers intone this in irritating fashion – we are in a kindergarten of ideological instruction. Remember ‘demonization’, ‘double standards’ and ‘delegitimization’, for one.)
The language merchants are busy attempting to find the right good to sell. ‘We must be out there to counter our enemies.’ Evidently, the Gaza dead, with their galvanic properties must be astonishingly good at public relations – they are, it would seem, the ignoble savages who dare speak from their status as the deceased.
The campaign being waged is yet another indication of how the Israeli lobby, so peevishly dismissed by Israeli supporters as non-existent, arises with effective force when fear is packaged and retailed in this faux salon manner. These are the first people who would insist that such a thing is anathema, only to then gather their forces and funds to effectively provide assistance to a foreign power. Young, well-groomed men listening intently will be doing service at some point with the Israeli Army, a problematic situation given mixed allegiances. The framers of the US constitution would have had something to say about that.
What is most striking in this display is the rehearsed language of doom. (We are ‘besieged’, a ‘well planned tsunami’ is being put into place, argues Rothstein.) The Palestinians do not exist except in the negative, a dark eminence with Satanic overtones. Hamas, a body once supported by Israel for Machiavellian purposes, is not a force that can or should be dealt with other than through force. Beware their Charter.
It all comes down to ‘information’. ‘They do not know the information,’ explains Dr. Michael Harris, who was a founder of San Francisco Voice for Israel before it became the San Francisco chapter for Stand With Us. So, with this in mind, a packet is distributed, bulging with fascinating ‘facts’ rendered on glossy paper. How far it will go is not something these agitprop peddlers make clear.
A brief summary of what is on show then. A booklet entitled ‘Middle East: Apartheid Today’ is designed to focus on Arab and Muslim prejudice (murderous ‘gender apartheid’ is practiced amongst the Palestinians). ‘We don’t do apartheid in the Holy Land’. South African apartheid is also singled out as spectacular, singular and totally different from Israeli policies. And besides, many want to leave Islam – they want to assimilate, to become like ‘us’.
There are pictures of hanged men from Iran reproduced in distributed booklets showing homosexuality to be a capital offence in that benighted part of the world. (Would Orthodox Jews disagree with such treatment, one wonders.) In short, the apartheid fiends, the promoters of segregation, sexually motivated crimes, honor killings and institutionalized racism, lie outside Israel’s sacred, threatened borders. Instead, focus is directed on such things as ‘Israel’s gift to the world’ on a card that speaks about its ‘Intel laptops’ and ‘mobile phone technology’ amongst other things.
On the coattails of doom is that of self-praise. No one would hate us if they knew how humanitarian we really were. An example is adduced: the hospital in Haiti, emphasized in the publication ‘Israeli Heroes in Haiti’. This gesture, it seems, rinses guilt and cheers the consciences. Far better to build hospitals in Haiti than Gaza, where a humanitarian crisis is all too real. The mantras are almost hypnotic, and said with repeated, mechanical hollowness: ‘We are the glowing light in the Middle East’. This is the Winthrop covenant of the Holy Land, Americans who have confused Israel with the ‘light on the hill’ and a puritan assertion of exceptionality, and would prefer to be there than in San Francisco. (Dare one ask?)
The questions posed by the anesthetized audience are variously comical and absurd in their businesslike approach. A political candidate for the twelfth district in San Francisco suggests a screenwriter for an appropriate film to display Israel on American campuses in a good light. Another suggests ‘feel good’ images that re-enforce notions of the genteel Jew. ‘Cuddly, yes, cuddly and warm.’ Things are getting rather slippery here, and the hold on reality, if it was ever there, is now being lost. Another suggests that Israel is ‘the canary in the coal mine.’ An announcement of thanks is made to the speakers: an anonymous donor has just penned a cheque for an undisclosed sum running into the thousands. Money for jam. This place, presumably a refuge from the coalmine, is an asylum of unreality. And one is simply happy to leave it.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and is currently in San Francisco. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
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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.
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How Ukraine Tortured and Slaughtered Donbass
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 11, 2024
Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.
On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown. … continue
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