Climate alarmism in Britain: “…the poll figures are going through the floor.”
Excerpts from the New York Times:
Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL | May 25, 2010
LONDON — Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium here to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?
Nowhere has this shift in public opinion been more striking than in Britain, where climate change was until this year such a popular priority that in 2008 Parliament enshrined targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly exaggerated.
A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier.
And London’s Science Museum recently announced that a permanent exhibit scheduled to open later this year would be called the Climate Science Gallery — not the Climate Change Gallery as had previously been planned.
“Before, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this climate change problem is just dreadful,’ ” said Jillian Leddra, 50, a musician who was shopping in London on a recent lunch hour. “But now I have my doubts, and I’m wondering if it’s been overhyped.”
Perhaps sensing that climate is now a political nonstarter, David Cameron, Britain’s new Conservative prime minister, was “strangely muted” on the issue in a recent pre-election debate, as The Daily Telegraph put it, though it had previously been one of his passions.
And a poll in January of the personal priorities of 141 Conservative Party candidates deemed capable of victory in the recent election found that “reducing Britain’s carbon footprint” was the least important of the 19 issues presented to them.
…
“Legitimacy has shifted to the side of the climate skeptics, and that is a big, big problem,” Ben Stewart, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said at the meeting of environmentalists here. “This is happening in the context of overwhelming scientific agreement that climate change is real and a threat. But the poll figures are going through the floor.”
The lack of fervor about climate change is also true of the United States, where action on climate and emissions reduction is still very much a work in progress, and concern about global warming was never as strong as in Europe. A March Gallup poll found that 48 percent of Americans believed that the seriousness of global warming was “generally exaggerated,” up from 41 percent a year ago… Read the complete story here
On Being the Wrong Size
By Willis Eschenbach | May 23, 2010
This topic is a particular peeve of mine, so I hope I will be forgiven if I wax wroth.
There is a most marvelous piece of technology called the GRACE satellites, which stands for the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. It is composed of two satellites flying in formation. Measuring the distance between the two satellites to the nearest micron (a hundredth of the width of a hair) allows us to calculate the weight of things on the earth very accurately.
One of the things that the GRACE satellites have allowed us to calculate is the ice loss from the Greenland Ice Cap. There is a new article about the Greenland results called Weighing Greenland.
Figure 1. The two GRACE satellites flying in tandem, and constantly measuring the distance between them.
So, what’s not to like about the article?
Well, the article opens by saying:
Scott Luthcke weighs Greenland — every 10 days. And the island has been losing weight, an average of 183 gigatons (or 200 cubic kilometers) — in ice — annually during the past six years. That’s one third the volume of water in Lake Erie every year. Greenland’s shrinking ice sheet offers some of the most powerful evidence of global warming.
Now, that sounds pretty scary, it’s losing a third of the volume of Lake Erie every year. Can’t have that.
But what does that volume, a third of Lake Erie, really mean? We could also say that it’s 80 million Olympic swimming pools, or 400 times the volume of Sydney Harbor, or about the same volume as the known world oil reserves. Or we could say the ice loss is 550 times the weight of all humans on the Earth, or the weight of 31,000 Great Pyramids … but we’re getting no closer to understanding what that ice loss means.
To understand what it means, there is only one thing to which we should compare the ice loss, and that is the ice volume of the Greenland Ice Cap itself. So how many cubic kilometres of ice are sitting up there on Greenland?
My favorite reference for these kinds of questions is the Physics Factbook, because rather than give just one number, they give a variety of answers from different authors. In this case I went to the page on Polar Ice Caps. It gives the following answers:
Spaulding & Markowitz, Heath Earth Science. Heath, 1994: 195. says less than 5.1 million cubic kilometres (often written as “km^3″).
“Greenland.” World Book Encyclopedia. Chicago: World Book, 1999: 325 says 2.8 million km^3.
Satellite Image Atlas of Glaciers of the World. US Geological Survey (USGS) says 2.6 million km^3.
Schultz, Gwen. Ice Age Lost. 1974. 232, 75. also says 2.6 million km^3.
Denmark/Greenland. Greenland Tourism. Danish Tourist Board says less than 5.5 million km^3.
Which of these should we choose? Well, the two larger figures both say “less than”, so they are upper limits. The Physics Factbook says “From my research, I have found different values for the volume of the polar ice caps. … For Greenland, it is approximately 3,000,000 km^3.” Of course, we would have to say that there is an error in that figure, likely on the order of ± 0.4 million km^3 or so.
So now we have something to which we can compare our one-third of Lake Erie or 400 Sidney Harbors or 550 times the weight of the global population. And when we do so, we find that the annual loss is around 200 km^3 lost annually out of some 3,000,000 km^3 total. This means that Greenland is losing about 0.007% of its total mass every year … seven thousandths of one percent lost annually, be still, my beating heart …
And if that terrifying rate of loss continues unabated, of course, it will all be gone in a mere 15,000 years.
That’s my pet peeve, that numbers are being presented in the most frightening way possible. The loss of 200 km^3 of ice per year is not “some of the most powerful evidence of global warming”, that’s hyperbole. It is a trivial change in a huge block of ice.
And what about the errors in the measurements? We know that the error in the Greenland Ice Cap is on the order of 0.4 million km^3. How about the error in the GRACE measurements? This reference indicates that there is about a ± 10% error in the GRACE Greenland estimates. How does that affect our numbers?
Well, if we take the small estimate of ice cap volume, and the large estimate of loss, we get 220 km^3 lost annually / 2,600,000 km^3 total. This is an annual loss of 0.008%, and a time to total loss of 12,000 years.
Going the other way, we get 180 km^3 lost annually / 3,400,000 km^3 total. This is an annual loss of 0.005%, and a time to total loss of 19,000 years.
It is always important to include the errors in the calculation, to see if they make a significant difference in the result. In this case they happen to not make much difference, but each case is different.
That’s what angrifies my blood mightily, meaningless numbers with no errors presented for maximum shock value. Looking at the real measure, we find that Greenland is losing around 0.005% — 0.008% of its ice annually, and if that rate continues, since this is May 23rd, 2010, the Greenland Ice Cap will disappear entirely somewhere between the year 14010 and the year 21010 … on May 23rd …
So the next time you read something that breathlessly says …
“If this activity in northwest Greenland continues and really accelerates some of the major glaciers in the area — like the Humboldt Glacier and the Peterman Glacier — Greenland’s total ice loss could easily be increased by an additional 50 to 100 cubic kilometers (12 to 24 cubic miles) within a few years”
… you can say “Well, if it does increase by the larger estimate of 100 cubic km per year, and that’s a big if since the scientists are just guessing, that would increase the loss from 0.007% per year to around 0.010% per year, meaning that the Greenland Ice Cap would only last until May 23rd, 12010.”
Finally, the original article that got my blood boiling finishes as follows:
The good news for Luthcke is that a separate team using an entirely different method has come up with measurements of Greenland’s melting ice that, he says, are almost identical to his GRACE data. The bad news, of course, is that both sets of measurements make it all the more certain that Greenland’s ice is melting faster than anyone expected.
Oh, please, spare me. As the article points out, we’ve only been measuring Greenland ice using the GRACE satellites for six years now. How could anyone have “expected” anything? What, were they expecting a loss of 0.003% or something? And how is a Greenland ice loss of seven thousandths of one percent per year “bad news”? Grrrr …
I’ll stop here, as I can feel my blood pressure rising again. And as this is a family blog, I don’t want to revert to being the un-reformed cowboy I was in my youth, because if I did I’d start needlessly but imaginatively and loudly speculating on the ancestry, personal habits, and sexual malpractices of the author of said article … instead, I’m going to go drink a Corona beer and reflect on the strange vagaries of human beings, who always seem to want to read “bad news”.
Lies and Forgeries on Iran´s Nuclear Program
by Toles
By Yusuf Fernandez | Al-Manar TV* | May 14, 2010
Nowadays, everyone knows that the US invaded and occupied Iraq through lies, which were echoed by US mass media. These media projected lies as corroborated facts. A large part of this information, including the discredited claim that Iraq wanted to acquire uranium from Niger, came from Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, two pro-Israeli neocons. With the White House’s support, they created the so-called Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon in 2001 in order to collect and spread disinformation and lies that could be used to “justify” the invasion of Iraq. After the invasion, the Office was disbanded. Admitted spy for Israel Larry Franlkin worked at the OSP.
Now, history is repeating. The US has accused Iran, without any evidence, of deviating from peaceful goals in its nuclear program. Any progress in Tehran´s program is denounced as a new effort in this sense. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not found any proof of a nuclear military program in Iran.
The US authorities have not refrained from using fake documents in its anti-Iran campaign. They were accused of presenting fabricated papers to French courts in order to support their demand for extradition of Majid Kakavand, an Iranian engineer who was detained in France in March 2009 at the request of the US authorities, which demanded his extradition for allegedly breaching the US embargo against Iran.
Recently, he was acquitted of all charges brought against him in France and vowed to take legal action against US authorities. “Given that I have spent fourteen months in jail on false charges, it is my legal right to sue US authorities as soon as possible,” said Kakavand, who arrived in Tehran, IRNA reported. Kakavand´s advocate Diane Francois said that some of the documents included e-mail copies with attachments that did not have corresponding dates concluding that the documents were falsified, reported Expatica.com on March 31.
Iran, for its part, had demanded Kakavand´s immediate release. On March 16, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said: “The innocence of (Majid) Kakavand is evident and we urge France not to be trapped in American propaganda and release him.”
US propaganda has also spread rumors about an alleged Iranian plan to build ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States in five years. However, Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi has rejected the reports. The intention behind these allegations is clear: to persuade the US public that the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has never attacked another country – except when it was invaded by Saddam Hussein´s army in the 1980-88 war, is a “threat” to the US.
While the US and Western countries have reacted with suspicion to Iran’s development of new deterrent missiles, Tehran has made it clear that its missile capabilities only serve defensive purposes against a possible attack. Actually, the US stance is completely hypocritical. It threatens Iran with a military attack and at the same time it considers any Iranian military development as a “threat”.
Washington and its allies are trying to boost their campaign for sanctions in the international media. In this framework, the British daily ‘Times’ published on December 14, 2009 a story that claimed that Iranian scientists had conducted experiments into neutron sources aimed at producing the trigger for a nuclear bomb. The report was based on an undated two-page document in Farsi (Persian) that according to unnamed “foreign intelligence agencies” would have been written in early 2007. The Times did not mention the source of the document, but it quoted “an Asian intelligence source” – a term some media outlets use for Israeli intelligence officials.
The document was intended to be used as a possible pretext for war. International Institute for Strategic Studies analyst Mark Fitzpatrick told The Times: “The most shattering conclusion is that, if this was an effort that began in 2007, it could be a casus belli. If Iran is working on weapons, it means there is no diplomatic solution.” The story of the alleged Iranian document provoked a new round of expressions of US and European support for tougher sanctions against Iran.
The article had all the signs of a fabricated story designed to generate public concern about Iran´s nuclear program. It also sought to undermine a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) issued by US intelligence agencies in late 2007 that concluded that Iran had put an end to any military nuclear program in 2007. The 2007 NIE was harshly criticized in the US and Israel by those promoting tougher measures, including military attacks, against Iran.
Tehran dismissed the claims as “baseless”. Like other reports provided to the IAEA by Western intelligence services that supposedly revealed Iran’s weapons documents, there were lots of doubts about the authenticity of this one. It is noteworthy to point out that that key documents used by the Bush government to justify its invasion of Iraq in March 2003 -involving Baghdad´s alleged acquisition of uranium in Niger- were proven to be forgeries.
Soon, the hallmarks of a forgery could be seen. Analyst Gareth Porter exposed three of them in an article published by IPS and other outlets with the title of “New Revelations Tear Holes in Nuclear Trigger Story”:
First of all, a columnist for the Times acknowledged that the document published by the newspaper was not a photocopy of the original document but an expurgated and retyped version of the original. A translation of a second document also published by the Times contradicted the claim by the newspaper itself that the “nuclear trigger” document had been written within an organization run by an Iranian military scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Secondly, George Maschke, whose specialty is Near Eastern languages and culture, pointed out: “This allegedly Iranian document was composed on a computer that evidently lacked Persian (Farsi)- the Iranian national language- resources. It is readily apparent that the document was composed using Arabic and not Persian letters. For example the Arabic letter corresponding to the English “y” is ي
In Persian, however, the dots are always omitted when the letter appears at the end of the word.”
Thirdly, the subject of the document would be highly classified under any state’s security system. Yet there is no confidentiality marking on the document, as can be seen from the photograph of the original published by the Times.
Iran insisted that Fakhrizadeh had procured the technologies in question for nonmilitary uses by various components of the Imam Hussein University, where he was a lecturer.
IPS also quoted [former] Central Intelligence Agency official Philip Giraldi, who said that US intelligence judges the “nuclear trigger” document to be a forgery. The IPS story also pointed out that the document lacked both security markings and identification of either the issuing organization or the recipient. Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told Gareth Porter that intelligence sources had pointed out that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources did not rule out a British role in the fabrication either.
Porter indicated that The Times “is part of a Murdoch publishing empire that includes the Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post. All Murdoch-owned news media report on Iran with an aggressively pro-Israeli slant.” “The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government,” Giraldi said.
Porter concludes his report claiming that “after reviewing documentation submitted by Iran and verifying some of its assertions by inspection on the spot, the IAEA concluded in its February 22, 2008, report that Iran’s explanation for Fakhrizadeh´s role in obtaining the items had been truthful after all.”
Another stage of the anti-Iranian campaign started last year after Tehran announced the existence of the Qom enrichment plant, situated within a mountain, which would assure continuation of enrichment if the Natanz Enrichment Plant were attacked. Washington immediately claimed that Iran had been working in the plant for several years and it was an evidence of a covert military nuclear program. Obama called the second enrichment facility “a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the non-proliferation regime”, saying Iran had broken “rules that all nations must follow”.
In November and after IAEA inspectors had visited the Qom site, former Director General Mohamed ElBaradei commented that they had found “nothing to be worried about” and that the facility was indeed a backup to the Natanz plant as Iran had maintained. “It is a hole in a mountain,” ElBaradei said.
Some Western media have also reproduced the fabricated story about an alleged Iraqi attempt to acquire uranium in Niger -which was used before the invasion of Iraq by then US Vice President Dick Cheney to justify the war- but changing this time some of the players: Iran instead of Iraq and Zimbabwe instead of Niger. On April 25, a report published in the British daily Daily Telegraph claimed that a deal had been reached between Iran and Zimbabwe. According to the agreement, Zimbabwe would allow Iran to mine Zimbabwean uranium reserves in exchange of the African country´s access to Iranian oil.
The report said that the agreement was sealed secretly last month during a visit to Tehran by a close aide to Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe. Britain and other Western powers have passed sanctions against Zimbabwe and have showed their support for a regime change in this country.
Industry and Commerce Minister Welshman Ncube rejected the report, saying there was no evidence suggesting that Zimbabwe had such deposits. “It is not true. No such agreement was signed,” said Ncube.
The story was published some days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad paid an official visit to Zimbabwe last week. During his visit, he met his counterpart Robert Mugabe, attended the official opening of Zimbabwe’s International Trade Fair and signed a number of trade and cooperation agreements in the areas of banking, finance and insurance. The Iranian president told reporters before his departure that the visit came as part of his government´s plan to consolidate ties with African countries.
*Additional editing by Aletho News
NPR report on West Bank expulsion order turns horror into a he-said/she-said debating point
By Susie Kneedler on May 12, 2010
Lourdes Garcia-Navarro and NPR have at last reported on the month-old Israeli “military order” that allows the IDF to deport any Palestinian inhabitant of the West Bank it defines as an “infiltrator,” simply for lacking the paperwork that the Israeli government itself refuses to issue. Garcia-Navarro details the suffering of the Palestinian people more fully than any recent NPR reporter, but her “report” perfectly embodies the failure of “she said–she said journalism,” in which oppression becomes merely a matter of perspective.
Garcia-Navarro does document the horrific fear that Israeli government policies inflict on one woman and her family. We hear the anguish in Palestinian Umm Qusay’s voice beneath the translation; and the broadcast closes with a line deleted from the online article: “Qusay says the wider implications don’t matter to her. After waiting ten years to join her husband and children, she just wants to stay here.”
But Garcia-Navarro allows an Israeli military spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, to assure us that, “The amendments to this law actually help the Palestininans or the other illegal residents that are here.” We hear Leibovich declare in sunny tones that, “There is a committee of judges which is reviewing the material and deciding whether to begin with the process of repatriation or not” [Leibovich’s emphasis]. Garcia-Navarro does not challenge the fairness of Israeli judges, let alone that of military courts, to Palestinian plaintiffs or defendants.
The “wider” ramifications may not matter to Qusay in her desperation to care for her children, but they determine whether listeners are informed or given only the false equivalence of those cliched “competing narratives.” Even Garcia-Navarro’s description of Qusay’s husband as merely a “resident”—not a native –of the West Bank minimizes how Israel wrongs the family.
Where is the research that would sort out rival claims, the obligation of a journalist to check facts? Four whole weeks have dragged on between what Garcia-Navarro calls the “new Israeli army order” and today’s story –plenty of time for investigation. Lourdes Garcia-Navarro should read the Geneva Conventions, the Oslo Accords, and other agreements to verify that, “the new military order contravenes international law and previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.” She could ascertain roughly how many people are marooned in hiding. She might look into the harm to “civil society.” Instead, she leaves all questions open.
In sum, nowhere does Garcia-Navarro grapple with the terrible inhumanity of a regime that has kept other people stateless for 60 years, depriving them not just of civil but human rights. A military occupation that arbitrarily defines the legitimate owners of a land as “infiltrators” is unspeakable. Why is “our” U.S. government paying for the illegal expulsions?
Stephen Zunes and the Zionist Tinderbox
“[A]nti Zionism may be a ‘fool’s anti-imperialism,’ where Jewish nationalism itself is erroneously seen as the problem rather than the alliance its leaders have made with exploitative Western interests.” – Stephen Zunes, 2006.1
By Michael Barker | Pulse Media | May 12, 2010
Who is Stephen Zunes? Well according to his web-site, he is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, who in 2002 won recognition from the Peace and Justice Studies Association as Peace Scholar of the Year. Although Zunes describes himself as a committed peace loving, anti-imperialist activist, by reviewing just one of his books this article will demonstrate that in actual fact his scholarly actions belie such intent. The book in question is Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Zed Books, 2003), a popular text that received glowing accolades from Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Richard Falk, and Saul Landau (amongst others). This essay will illustrate how Zunes’ proclivity for defending Zionism ultimately leads hims to promote a “fool’s anti-imperialism.”
That is not to say that Zunes is uncritical of U.S. foreign policy, far from it, just that his work serves as a smokescreen for understanding the real drivers of U.S. foreign policy vis-a-vis the Middle East.
For example, on the antagonist relationship between U.S. elite interests and human rights, he recognizes that:
- Human rights violations by foreign governments and their lack of democratic institutions generally get the most attention in the United States when a given administration has called attention to them in order to mobilize domestic and international opinion against a regime the U.S. government opposes. (p.10)
However, Zunes continues, “since at least the 1970s” U.S. administrations — or should we say regimes — have “to some degree” been forced to respond to “public and Congressional pressure regarding the lack of democracy and human rights in allied countries.” Typical responses often “constitute little more than lip service and damage control,” but significantly, “the very region that receives the largest amount of American arms and aid has been notably absent from the public debate: the Middle East.” Indeed, with regard the U.S.’s special commitment to Israel, U.S. aid “has generally increased as the government’s repression in the occupied territories has worsened.”2 Moreover, Zunes points out, this relationship…
- … is unlike any other in the world, or indeed, like any in history. In sheer volume, it is the most generous foreign aid program ever between two countries, totaling over $100 billion. No country has ever received as much Congressionally mandated aid as has Israel. What is perhaps even more unusual is that Israel, like its benefactor, is an advanced, industrialized, technologically sophisticated country, as well as a major arms exporter. (p.109)
So how might we come to understand the existence of this enduring toxic relationship? Well according to Zunes, such aid actually runs counter to the best interests — that is, “legitimate defence needs” — of both Israel and the United States. Therefore, as neither State profits from this situation U.S.-based arms manufacturers must be largely to blame, as he says, they are the people who profit most from this insecurity. To support this point Zunes draws upon the words of Matti Peled, the late Israeli major general (and Knesset member), who in the early 1990s “argued that he and other Israeli military leaders saw the [$1.8 billion Israeli military] aid package as little more than a U.S. government subsidy for American arms manufacturers.”3
Zunes does not seriously consider the possibility that an alternative explanation for this state of affairs is that neither the U.S. nor Israel are intent on pursuing peace in the Middle East. Indeed it seems fairly obvious that Israel has no interest in promoting what Zunes considers to be its “legitimate defence needs,” as leading Zionist elites are quite happy escalating tension in the region to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This might explain why “it appears that the priority of both the executive branch and Congress in recent decades has not been Israeli security, but maintaining the flow of American arms exports.”4 Yet, Zunes is convinced that the root of the problem lies not with Zionism but with the arms manufacturers, thus he writes:
- Much attention has been given to the clout of pro-Israel Politcal Action Committee (PACs) and their alleged role in convincing members of Congress to support these taxpayer-funded arms transfers to Israel. However, contributions by PACs affiliated with military contractors far surpass the pro-Israel PACs. For example, during the 1999-2000 election cycle, just slightly over $2 million in campaign contributions came from the pro-Israel PACs, while PACs affiliated with the arms industry came close to $5 million.5
This gross underestimation of the power of the Israel lobby is almost identical to Noam Chomsky’s arguments which have already been thoroughly rebutted elsewhere. Thus it is fitting that Zunes, like Chomsky, plays the oil card, and says that the “primary reason” why the U.S. supports Israel is because of their need to control oil supplies, which is facilitated by Israel’s ability to prevent “victories by radical nationalist movements” in the Middle East.6 As before, this is an erroneous, unsupported statement that has been convincingly debunked.
Either way if one follows Zunes’ assertion that aid to Israel threatens their national security, “should U.S. policy,” Zunes asks, “then, really be considered ‘pro-Israel?’” He argues not: such aid is counterproductive, as it endangers Israel by encouraging militaristic elements within Israel’s ruling class.7 This inelegant mislogic is used to bolster his case that U.S. support for Israel must be predominantly driven by arms manufacturers and big oil; no need for hard evidence though.
Now that Zunes has cajoled his readers into accepting his fallacious arguments, he provides other “evidence” to help understand what “motivates the strong American bias against the Palestinians.” Thus in addition to the military and oil lobbies, Zunes identifies four other contributing factors to explain this bias: these are (1) a mixture of sentimental attachment combined with guilt (driven by the history of Western anti-Semitism), “friendships with Jewish Americans who identify strongly with Israel, and fear of inadvertently encouraging anti-Semitism,” (2) the rising power of the Christian Right in the United States, which interprets the Israeli-Palestine conflict as “simply a continuation of the Biblical battles between the Israelites and the Philistines,” (3) the “failure of progressive movements in the United States,” and (4) the Israel lobby. No doubt the first three points are all relevant to some degree, but their contemporary significance have all been amplified, and in some cases driven, by the far-reaching influence of the Israel lobby.8
On point four however — that is, the Israel lobby — Zunes suggests that caution must be heeded, because Jews are generally peaceful and only make up a small percentage of the U.S. population (“less than 4 percent”): moreover, “[m]any of the most outspoken members of Congress supportive of Israel’s occupation policies are from states or districts with very small Jewish populations.”9 Yet here Zunes’ argument is nonsensical (again), as the number of active Zionists is insignificant, as ultimately it is the power they exert, not their numbers, that matters most. Furthermore, no one is arguing that all Jews are Zionists, indeed it is only the small but extremely influential Jewish population residing in the American ruling class — along with their non-Jewish Zionist recruits — who give the Israel lobby its tremendous clout. Here as an example of the influence of the Israel lobby we might look to Stephen Green’s book, Taking Sides, America’s Secret Relations with Militant Israel (William Morrow, 1984), which Jeffrey Blankfort observes …
- … was the first examination of State Department archives concerning US-Israel relations. Since the Eisenhower administration, wrote Green in 1984, “Israel, and friends of Israel in America, have determined the broad outlines of US policy in the region. It has been left to American Presidents to implement that policy, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and to deal with the tactical issues.”
Although Blankfort admits that this is a “slight exaggeration, perhaps,” it is ironic that Zunes refers to Green’s book to support his contention that Israel helps U.S. foreign policy elites, not vice versa.10 But irrespective of contrary evidence, Zunes asks that we put aside our critical faculties because “the strength of the lobby is often greatly exaggerated.”11 Furthermore, to ensure his readers are less likely to believe that the Israel lobby has a significant impact on guiding U.S. foreign policy, Zunes caricatures proponents of this point of view as belonging to the radical Right. No mention is made of Leftists who have long warned of the power of the lobby, like Edward Herman, Alexander Cockburn, and Jeffrey Blankfort; instead, Zunes points to anti-Semitic conservatives, like the politician Patrick Buchanan.12 Lest we forget, oil is the “primary issue.” Thus following Zunes’ example of using Zionists to back his unconvincing case for the overwhelming power of the U.S. arms industry, we could just as easily cite such Zionist sources to undermine his oil argument. For example, in the early 1980s, Morris Amitay, the former executive director of AIPAC, said: “We rarely see them [oil corporations] lobbying on foreign policy issues… In a sense, we have the field to ourselves.”
As this essay has demonstrated, being a progressive scholar does not necessarily guarantee that your analyses will effectively challenge the status quo. Thus while Zunes self-identifies as an anti-imperialist activist, he is a liberal Zionist at heart, and he is certainly not comfortable with advocating the type of systemic social change that we need to eradicate capitalism: by way of a contrast even the moderate civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, recognized that “the evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and the evils of racism” (King’s words). This explains why Zunes counsels U.S. citizens that “bringing about a more enlightened foreign policy is necessary for national security.”13
Instead of problematising the obvious contradictions between democracy and capitalism, Zunes suggests that the United States political system is simply being misused. He writes that “there is a growing sense that the Bush Administration is cynically manipulating the country’s genuine need for security for the sake of its rigid ideological constructs and its wealthy financial supporters.”14 Unbeknown to Zunes, cynical manipulation is nothing new, it is simply part and parcel of the misnomer that is capitalist democracy. Such shallow thinking necessarily leads Zunes to observe that one of the key problems of America’s counter-terrorism policies is that they confront “the symptoms rather than the cause.” But this will always be the case under capitalism: one would hardly expect the ruling class to attempt to address the root cause of injustice — that is for us to do. A capitalist elite would have lost its marbles if it ever traced universal exploitation back to capitalism itself.
Finally, it is critical to recognize that Zunes’ failure to differentiate between polyarchy (or low-intensity democracy) and more popular understandings of democracy, enables him to suggest with no sense of irony that “worldwide trends [have been] toward democracy and greater individual freedom throughout the world”. Furthermore, he is naïve enough to believe that the popularity of the United States “can be restored, but only if the United States shifts its policies to become more consistent with support for human rights, international law, sustainable economic development and demilitarization.” What Zunes fails to recognize is that the U.S. is already the foremost promoter of human rights — along with Israel — but only a neutered, low-intensity form of rights better known as humanitarian imperialism (see “The Project for A New American Humanitarianism”). Zunes, however, closes his eyes to such suggestions, which he refers to as “conspiracy theories,” and instead argues that what the world needs is just a more benign form of capitalism. “Foreign aid,” he writes, “should be directed toward poorer countries and in support of grassroots development initiatives and away from support for the wealthier countries and/or corrupt and autocratic governments.”15 But here he misses the point, the real solution is not capitalist foreign aid, the real solution is grassroots organizing unhindered by the manipulative funding regimes of U.S. foreign policy elites. This is why Zunes, like capitalism and Zionism, fails to provide the radical theory necessary to eradicate both capitalism and Zionism.
Michael Barker is an independent researcher who is currently based in the UK. His web site is http://michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com. The author submitted this piece to PULSE.
– Notes –
- Stephen Zunes, “Defending Israel While Challenging its Policies,” in Alan Dershowitz (ed.) What Israel Means to Me (John Wiley & Sons, 2006), p.359. Zunes’ contribution to this book by the notorious Alan Dershowitz speaks volumes of the manner by which Zunes is willing to lend his anti-imperial writings to support Zionism. This is similar in many respects to Zunes’ service as the chair (since 2006) of the academic advisory board of the misnamed International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, and his willingness to help run a “Middle East Orientation Course” for the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School (Hurlburt Field, March 15-16, 2007) — a fact advertised nonchalantly on his current CV (pdf).
- Zunes, Tinderbox, p.13. For example, in October 2000, “after a series of scathing human rights reports from reputable non-governmental organizations criticizing Israeli actions, Congress approved a foreign aid allocation of $2.82 billion to Israel, which critics charged was essentially rewarding the government for its repression.” (p.26) The reputable groups referred to here include Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.Likewise on May 2, 2002, the U.S. Senate, in a 94-2 vote, passed a resolution which referred to “the Israeli assault on Palestinian towns and refugee camps as ‘necessary steps to provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas.’” Such actions are obviously interpreted by “observers in the Arab and Islamic world as an act of racism”; indeed, “the majority of liberal Democrats — most of whom were on record in support of human rights in Guatemala, East Timor, Colombia, Tibet, and elsewhere — had decided, in a situation where the victims of human rights abuses were Arabs, to instead throw their support to the perpetrator of the human rights abuses. In fact, one of the two sponsors of the House resolution was California Democrat Tom Lantos, who is the long-time chairman of the Human Rights Caucus.” (p.30) Although not mentioned by Zunes, the late Tom Lantos, “the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress,” was a well known Zionist.
- Zunes, Tinderbox, p.40
- Zunes, Tinderbox, p.40 Zunes later adds: “The irony of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf is that is has little strategic justification given the costs.” He continues, that their policies “actually endangers the security of both the United States and its Gulf allies.” Yet to Zunes this imperialist foreign policy should be deemed some sort of mistake, “a kind of foreign policy by catharis rather than based on any rational strategic calculation.” (p.104) If only Zunes would read such foreign policy blueprints like those of the Project for a New American Century, it would become apparent that U.S. foreign policy is based on very rational criteria, but of course not criteria that is in the rational best interests of either the U.S. or global populous. Zunes observes that: “The worst single terrorist atrocities in the Middle East in recent decades were committed by Christians: the Phalangists, a Lebanese Maronie militia, were responsible for the massacres of thousands of Palestinians at the Tal al-Zataar refugee camp in June 1976 and the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in September 1982.” (p.171) Later Zunes fills in more details on the background of this group, writing: “The ‘Muslim’ side of the Lebanese civil war in the mid-1970s was actually a largely secular grouping known as the Lebanese National Movement (LNM)… Seeking to block the LNM’s demands for constitutional reform to create a more representative political system that would likely enact policies less sympathetic with the West, the United States clandestinely supported the Phalangist militia, a neo-fascist grouping based in the country’s Maronite Christian community.” (p.184) On a related matter, “the most serious single terrorist bombing against a civilian target in Middle East history was the March 1985 blast in a suburban Beirut neigbourhood that killed 80 people and wounded 200 others.” As Zunes relates, this attack “was ordered by CIA director William Casey and approved by President Reagan as part of an unsuccessful effort to assassinate an anti-American Lebanese cleric.” (p.200)
- Zunes, Tinderbox, p.41. Zunes reference for this point is wwww.politicalmoneyline.com On the previous page of his book to support the same point he refers to Alan Kronstadt et al, Hostile Takeover: How the Aerospace Industries Association Gain Control of American Foreign Policy and Doubl e Arms Transfers to Dictators (Project on Demilitarization and Democracy, 1995).
- Zunes, Tinderbox, p.161. Zunes say that this policeman service is supplemented by Israel’s role in allowing “battlefield testing of American arms,” in exporting homegrown munitions to U.S. allies, and in funneling U.S. arms to groups “too unpopular in the United States for openly granting direct military assistance”. (p.161)
- Zunes, Tinderbox, p.154. “The rise of the rightist Likud Bloc in Israel and the right-ward drift in the Labor Party since 1967 is in large part due to this large-scale American support. Rightist Israeli political leaders such as Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Benyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon would certainly have existed without U.S. backing, but they would have likely been part of a small right-wing minority in the Knesset and would have never become prime ministers.” Zunes, Tinderbox, p.155.
- Zunes, Tinderbox, pp.157-8. With respect to the peace movement, Zunes writes: “For many years, most mainstream peace and human rights groups avoided the issue, not wanting to alienate many of their Jewish and other liberal constituents supportive of the Israeli government.” (p.158)
- Zunes, Tinderbox, p.158, p.159.
- Zunes, Tinderbox, p.162 (footnote 110)
- Zunes, Tinderbox, p.159. “For an elaboration of this argument,” Zunes points us to his article, “The Roots of the U.S.-Israeli Relationship,” New Political Science, Nos 21-22, Spring-Summer 1992. He also points to A.F.K. Organski’s, The $36 Billion Bargain: Strategy and Politics in U.S. Assistance to Israel (Columbia University Press, 1990).
- Zunes adds that: “In a classic case of exactly this type of anti-Semitic scapegoating, members of Congress and their aides will claim — always off the record — that they or their boss has to take pro-militarist and anti-human rights positions towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of the need for Jewish campaign contributions. Similarly, as a means of diverting Arab criticism from U.S. policy makers, American diplomats routinely tell representatives of Arab governments that wealth Jews essentially dictate U.S. Middle East policy. The senior President Bush made it clear that such scapegoating is acceptable when — during the debate on the proposed $10 billion loan guarantees to Israel in 1992 — he claimed that he was just ‘one lonely little guy’ standing up to ‘a thousand lobbyists’ swarming on Capitol Hill.” (p.164)
- Zunes, Tinderbox, p.217.
- Zunes, Tinderbox, p.221. Ironically, the majority of the U.S. governments “wealth financial supporters” happen to be Jewish.
- Zunes, Tinderbox, p.14, p.225, p.226. Zunes later adds that: “There is nothing inherently wrong with the United States or other countries supporting democratic opposition movement against autocratic regimes”; although he counsels that in the case of Iraq this would be counterproductive owing to the United States’ damaged credibility in the region. However, he adds that before the United States can work in such a manner it must first “encourage greater freedom in countries it considers it allies, such as Saudi Arabia”. (p.229)
Pakistan denies Taliban link to Times Square bomb suspect
Investigators dismiss US claims that Faisal Shahzad was working under direction of Pakistani Taliban
Saeed Shah | guardian.co.uk | 11 May 2010
Pakistani investigators have found no evidence to support American claims that the failed Times Square bomber was working under the direction of the Pakistani Taliban, the Guardian has learned.
Senior officials in Washington – including the attorney general, Eric Holder, and John Brennan, the White House’s special adviser on counterterrorism – have said that the suspected bomber, Faisal Shahzad, conspired with militants in Pakistan, but a Pakistani security official with knowledge of the investigation said: “No Taliban link has come to the fore.”
The interrogation of Muhammad Rehan, a friend of Shahzad who was arrested last week outside a radical mosque in Karachi, has not yielded a link to the Pakistani Taliban or any other militant group. Rehan, a member of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad extremist group, remains the only suspected link found between 30-year-old Shahzad and the militant underworld in Pakistan.
Officials in Islamabad are perplexed and angry at statements from Washington about Shahzad’s links with the Pakistani Taliban, believing that the US is exploiting the issue to apply pressure for new military offensives in Pakistan’s tribal border area with Afghanistan, in the north Waziristan region.
“We have not found any involvement of Rehan [in the New York attempted bombing]. He didn’t introduce Faisal Shahzad to the Pakistani Taliban,” said the security official.
“There are no roots to this case, so how can we trace something back?”
An FBI team which flew into Pakistan after the arrest of Shahzad was allowed to question Rehan on Sunday. More than a dozen other suspects taken into custody in Karachi have been released, but the investigation is continuing, so new leads could yet emerge.
Rehan’s arrest as he left prayers at the Karachi mosque was seized on by the international press as evidence of Shahzad’s involvement with Pakistani militant groups. It emerged that Rehan and Shahzad had last year taken a 1,000-mile road trip from Karachi to Peshawar, on the edge of Pakistan’s tribal area, raising further suspicions.
However, Pakistani investigators have found that Rehan was not a very active member of JEM, a violent group primarily against India and with no history of global activities. He knew Shahzad because he is related to Shahzad’s wife… Full article
Taiwan sinking: Subsidence or Global Warming Induced Sea Level Rise?
By Anthony Watts on May 10, 2010
This news story about Taiwan has been making the rounds with the usual alarming news outlets. My view is clearly on subsidence, caused by poor land use practice. See below the Continue Reading line for the easily found reasons.
Excerpts: from AFP via Yahoo News
Rising sea levels threaten Taiwan
TUNGSHIH, Taiwan (AFP) – When worshippers built a temple for the goddess Matsu in south Taiwan 300 years ago, they chose a spot they thought would be at a safe remove from the ocean. They did not count on global warming.
Now, as the island faces rising sea levels, the Tungshih township is forced to set up a new temple nearby, elevated by three metres (10 feet) compared with the original site.
“Right now, the temple is flooded pretty much every year,” said Tsai Chu-wu, the temple’s chief secretary, explaining why the 63-million-dollar project is necessary.
“Once the new temple is completed, we should be able to avoid floods and the threat of the rising sea, at least for many, many years,” he said.
The temple of Matsu, ironically often described as the Goddess of the Sea, is only one example of how global warming is slowly, almost imperceptibly piling pressure on Taiwan.
…
And unlike the temple, none of these crucial economic establishments can possibly be lifted, leaving them exposed to the elements.
“If the sea levels keep rising, part of Taiwan’s low-lying western part could be submerged,” said Wang Chung-ho, an earth scientist at Taiwan’s top academic body Academia Sinica.
…
Still, environmentalists consider the risk too high to ignore, and they point out that it is compounded by the overpumping of groundwater both for traditional agriculture and for fish farming.
This has caused the groundwater level to fall and land to subside below sea level in some coastal areas, experts warn.
The greatest extent of seawater encroachment has been estimated to be as far as 8.5 kilometres inland with an affected area of about 104 square kilometres (40 square miles) in southern Taiwan’s Pingtung county, according to a study co-written by Wang.
Once low-lying areas are routinely invaded by sea water, it is very hard to turn back the tide, analysts warned.
…
In its 2007 assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations said that due to the global warming, the world’s sea level is projected to rise by up to 0.59 metres before the end of this century.
However, Wang was more pessimistic, citing recent findings that greenhouse gas emissions are growing faster than previously believed.
Read the rest of the story here: AFP via Yahoo News
###
And where is Pingtung County in Taiwain?
But that is not where the Matsu temple that is the focus of the story is, it is a misdirection. Read on.
Now consider this news story about a hi-speed rail system in Taiwan from China Daily that says:
Safety concerns were raised after according to the Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp. (THSRC) figures revealed that at its worst, the land at one site along the stretch in Yunlin County has sunk 55 centimeters over the past seven years.
Over-pumping of underground water for irrigation has been blamed for the subsidence, and the Water Resources Agency (WRA) has identified 1,115 wells in the area that need to be sealed to stop the sinking.
Seems pretty clear that subsidence is happening quickly in that county. Here’s a paper studying the Yuanlin area, Changhua County. PDF here. Note the mention of Yunlin County, save that for later.
Using Radar Interferometry to Observe Land Subsidence in Yuanlin area, Changhua County, Taiwan
Abstract: The behavior of land subsidence in Yuanlin area, Changhua County, Taiwan has been monitored by the two-pass method of Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) during the period from 1995 to 2002. Our interferometric result has shown that the subsidence behavior is unusual right before and after the Chi-Chi earthquake. Two-month before the earthquake, the pre-seismic differential interferogram detects a substantial increase in land subsidence with a prominent U-shaped pattern of groundwater level change. Two days after the devastating earthquake, our one-month image-pair shows a five-fold increase in land subsidence and an apparent shift of subsidence center. In this study, we suggest mechanisms that contribute to land subsidence in pre-seismic, co-seismic and post-seismic. We tend to believe that the circular/elongated pattern shown in our interferograms are caused by a point-source deformation. Besides, strain also plays a very important role in accelerating land subsidence shown in the post-seismic differential interferogram. It causes a very sudden, step-like surge in groundwater. The shaking of the earthquake as well as the increase of groundwater trigger the occurrence of soil liquefaction, in return, accelerating land subsidence. We propose there are two center of land subsidence right after the Chi-Chi earthquake though only one subsidence center can be observed in our differential interferogram.
Here’s what the Taipei Times shows happening as a result of land subsidence:
Land subsidence causes damage to a house in Tungan village, Kaohsiung County. PHOTO: HSU PAI-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
Here’s an interesting passage from the Geography Department at NTU titled The Hazards of Taiwan:
The fish-farming industry in western and northeastern Taiwan requires several times more ground water than is needed for irrigation. This kind of over-pumping of ground water results in serious land subsidence or sinking in the coastal areas. According to a recent survey, an area of up to 1,097 square kilometers suffers from subsidence: this is 3% of the island’s total land area and 9% of its flat area. This problem obviously needs an immediate and effective solution.
So even though there is plentiful evidence that local land use abuse resulting in subsidence is the primary cause of seawater incursions, the reporter, Benjamin Yeh, chooses instead to make “global warming” the primary culprit.
His paragraph says it all:
The temple of Matsu, ironically often described as the Goddess of the Sea, is only one example of how global warming is slowly, almost imperceptibly piling pressure on Taiwan.
Religion and global warming, a match made in heaven.
From this Taiwan Government Report on Water Resources we find this paragraph, red emphasis mine:
Land Subsidence
Lured by profits, many farmers in the coastal areas of Yunlin, Changhua, Pingtung, Chiayi, and Ilan have expanded into aquaculture. Aquaculturalists have dug 170,000 illegal wells and pumped excessive amounts of groundwater, because it is cheap and stable in temperature. In addition to being used in aquaculture, groundwater is also pumped for industrial, residential, and standard agricultural uses. Recent data shows that while 5.94 billion cubic meters of groundwater is being pumped annually, only four billion cubic meters is being replaced. This deficit has caused land in many areas to subside, especially along the southwestern coast and on the Ilan Plain. Overall, almost 865 square kilometers of Taiwan’s plains, or a full 8 percent, tend to subside. The most serious subsidence has occurred around Chiatung in Pingtung County, where sites have sunk by as much as 3.06 meters. The average rate of subsidence in the coastal areas is between five and 15 centimeters each year.
The Temple of Matsu is in Yunlin County which is located on this map:
Another study on groundwater and subsidence from the Department of Geomatics, National Cheng Kung University says:
For example, the overall amount of subsidence in Yunlin area in the past 30 years reaches about 2 meters, and the total affected area of subsidence is about 516 km2. Land subsidence has increased the vulnerability in this area, and a large portion of which lies below the mean sea level.
When badly flawed articles like this one from AFP appear, blaming global warming for flooding clearly caused by land subsidence as a result of poor land use practice, we need to complain loudly to editors.
See also:
Quartet ex-envoy’s investment helps Israel greenwash settlements
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 6 May 2010
 |
| Better Place’s Tel Aviv headquarters. |
Former World Bank president and Middle East Quartet envoy James D. Wolfensohn is an investor in an Israeli company that is developing transport infrastructure for Jewish-only settlements built in the occupied West Bank in violation of international law, an investigation by The Electronic Intifada reveals.
Wolfensohn provided some of the start-up capital for Better Place, a company founded by Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi. The company owns and operates Better Place Israel (BPI), a division which is establishing a system of charging stations for electric vehicles throughout Israel and for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.
The company has been a poster child for efforts to greenwash Israel — presenting it as a haven for environmental technologies — yet it has close ties to Israel’s military and political establishments and its principal officers express an explicitly anti-Muslim and anti-Arab agenda.
BPI’s chief executive officer is former general Moshe Kaplinsky, who commanded Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank during the second Palestinian intifada, a period of massive, well-documented violations of Palestinian human rights. Kaplinsky was also deputy chief of staff of Israel’s army during its 2006 war on Lebanon when Amnesty International and other human rights groups charged that Israel committed numerous war crimes including widespread use of cluster bombs in residential areas.
Better Place’s goal is to bring fully-electric vehicles and the infrastructure to support them to the mass market — starting with Israel. It also has pilot projects as far afield as Denmark, Canada, California, Australia and Japan.
Specially-built electric cars, due to be available to the public in Israel next year, are manufactured by French-Japanese conglomerate Renault-Nissan under an agreement with Better Place. Better Place had also recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Chinese car manufacturer Chery to jointly develop electric car technology for the Chinese market.
“What we do to make it convenient is we set [a] massive number of charge spots across an entire country or entire region,” Agassi explained to the BBC World Service’s One Planet program in January 2009. “And we set up battery exchange systems so that wherever you drive you don’t need to sit and wait for your battery to charge, you can just swap it and keep on going.”
Building infrastructure in the occupied West Bank
Before BPI sells its first car in Israel it is establishing a network of thousands of charging spots on the country’s entire road system including settler roads and in settlements in the West Bank.
One of the largest investors in BPI is billionaire Idan Ofer, owner of Dor-Alon energy group, Israel’s largest oil refiner. Dor-Alon has signed an agreement to install Better Place charging and battery exchange spots throughout its network of gas stations.
Israel’s Hebrew-language financial publication Globes reported on 3 February that “According to estimates, the deployment [of charging stations] will stress the more extensive and popular refueling locations of Dor-Alon, which enjoys a dominance on primary transportation routes, such as its four stations on the Cross Israel road (Highway 6) and the stations on Highway 443 and the Coastal Highway.”
Highway 443, significantly, is a road used by thousands of Israeli commuters daily. Half of the road’s approximately 30-kilometer length runs through the occupied West Bank. Israel has banned Palestinians whose land and villages the road traverses from accessing it, reserving it effectively for Jews only. Prior to Israel’s seizure of the road, it had been a main artery for Palestinian traffic south of Ramallah (“Route 443 — West Bank road for Israelis only,” B’Tselem).
The Electronic Intifada (EI) independently confirmed BPI’s expansion into the West Bank when it sent an undercover reporter to visit the company’s headquarters situated in a massive renovated fuel storage tank in northern Tel Aviv.
During the tour, the EI reporter, along with other visitors, was shown an IMAX-style video presentation which explained that each customer who buys a BPI electric vehicle will also have a charging spot installed at their home — a short post with an outlet that connects to the car via a nozzle-type input, and wirelessly links to the BPI communications network.
When the EI reporter asked a BPI spokesperson if these charging stations could be installed inside settlements in the West Bank, the spokesperson said that they would be installed “anywhere … that you want to live.” On a map shown during the video presentation, charging stations were shown in areas in the Jordan Valley and along major routes going east from Jerusalem — indicating that BPI has already installed charging stations inside the West Bank, and plans to install many more.
Wolfensohn an early booster of Better Place
James Wolfensohn’s investment firm, Wolfensohn & Co., is listed on BPI’s website along with Australia-based firm Macquarie Capital and US-based investment bank Morgan Stanley, among others as investors. Macquarie invests in and operates transport infrastructure all over the world, including the Chicago Skyway toll bridge, the Indiana Toll Road and the M6 Toll motorway in the UK.
Contacted by EI, Wolfensohn & Co. declined to disclose the size of its stake or provide any other comment for this story. Yet as one of the first investors it may have been influential in helping BPI attract additional capital.
BPI recently secured a $350 million equity investment from international bank HSBC, expanding the company’s estimated worth to $1.25 billion.
“Israel is a perfect test tube” for the electric car, Wolfensohn was quoted as saying in the February 2008 issue of Israel High-Tech & Investment Report. “It needs to be tested, and [BPI founder Shai] Agassi is to be commended for testing it and the Israeli government for trying it out.”
While operating as a private company — with its head office nominally in California — Better Place has been dependent on Israeli government support from the start. Initially, Agassi wrote a concept paper for the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders initiative. Agassi shopped it to various world leaders but found no takers, he told the BBC’s One Planet. “Then President [Shimon] Peres of Israel picked up on it,” Agassi recalled. “But the challenge to me was don’t ask us to do it. If you think it’s such a great business, go do it yourself. And that’s how it became a company instead of a government agency.” More recently Agassi told CNN, “I would not be doing this today were it not for [Peres]” (“Shai Agassi: One man’s mission to turn all cars electric,” CNN, 19 April 2010).
Wolfensohn’s investment in and personal endorsement of an Israeli company that is helping to build and solidify the infrastructure of occupation is surprising. Until 2006, Wolfensohn served as envoy for the Quartet, the ad hoc, self-appointed committee of representatives of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the UN Secretary-General that has monopolized the so-called “peace process.” Wolfensohn was tasked with assisting Palestinian economic development in the Gaza Strip after Israel removed its settlers in 2005 and moved its occupation forces from the interior to the perimeter of the besieged territory that imprisons 1.5 million Palestinians, mostly refugees.
Wolfensohn resigned in frustration after the Quartet decided to boycott, and freeze aid to, the Palestinian Authority after Hamas won the January 2006 election. “It would surprise me if one could win by getting all the kids out of school or starving the Palestinians,” Wolfensohn said in a parting shot aimed at Israeli and Quartet policies (“West ‘has to prevent collapse’ of Palestinian Authority,” Financial Times, 3 May 2006).
Wolfensohn had previously been highly critical of severe movement restrictions on Palestinians between and within the occupied territories — such as those along Highway 443 — that have devastated the Palestinian economy. Wolfensohn was succeeded as Quartet envoy by Tony Blair.
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| Former Israeli army general Moshe Kaplinsky in Better Place’s promotional video. |
Islamophobia under the guise of environmentalism
BPI’s promotional video claimed that the funding of “extreme and unstable regimes … that fund organizations not positive for humanity” is one of the major reasons the firm is interested in getting Israelis out of their gas-guzzling cars and into fully-electric vehicles. Both Israeli President Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are shown extolling the virtues of BPI’s mission, with Netanyahu commenting that this is a part of a “changing world order … shaking off our dependence on oil.”
The canard that proceeds from the gasoline that motorists around the world pump into their cars directly funds terrorism has become popular with liberal environmentalists in recent years. While implicitly racist toward Arabs and Muslims, BPI has made such prejudiced and inflammatory claims an explicit part of its business model.
CEO Moshe Kaplinsky told the BBC’s One Planet, “I was a general in the IDF [Israeli army] and I understand where the money from the oil is going and what it cause to our society in the Western side of the globe [sic].”
When asked why he was an early booster of Better Place, Israeli President Peres told Wired magazine, “I thought that the greatest problem of our time was oil. Oil on one hand is polluting the land, and on the other hand it’s financing terror” (“Drive: Shai Agassi’s Audacious Plan to Put Electric Cars on the Road,” 18 August 2008).
Rebranding Israel
Following the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US, Israeli companies selling “security” and “anti-terrorist” expertise became an engine of the country’s exports. In the age of US President Barack Obama, and concern about climate change, there has been a concerted effort to soften Israel’s image, especially in the wake of the UN-commissioned Goldstone report into Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
Better Place has become a flagship for this strategy — the Reut Institute’s Gidi Grinstein, for example, used images of the Better Place logo in his notorious powerpoint presentation at the Herzliya conference, on efforts to rebrand Israel as Earth-friendly while urging its intelligence agencies to “sabotage” and “attack” the growing global Palestine solidarity movement.
The success of Better Place in raising money from Wolfensohn & Co. and other international firms, as well as the positive publicity the company has received, serve as warnings that Palestinians and the growing global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement must be ever more vigilant against Israel’s efforts to disguise its illegal and brutal colonization and apartheid behind a green mask.
Photos by The Electronic Intifada.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
Peoples’ Destinies at the Mercy of False Reports
By Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban | May 3, 2010
The rumors spread by Israeli president Shimon Peres in his statement to Mossad-linked media outlets about a Syrian role in providing Hezbollah with Scud missiles and the official American reaction to these rumors bring to mind the spectacle of Colin Powell, who served under both war makers, Bush senior and Bush junior, in the UN Security Council in 2003. He held a small glass container and claimed in front of the whole world that biological weapons the size of that container would endanger the lives of millions, that there was no doubt that Iraq was deceiving international inspectors and that the United States’ patience with Iraq was over.
I recall Security Council meetings in February 2003, when the then French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin made his famous speech in defense of extending the mandate of international inspectors. When former international U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix asked for six more months to complete inspections and provide the final findings to the Security Council. He gave evidence that Iraq was cooperating fully in facilitating inspections and affirmed that the mission was capable of completing its work in six months.
I remember how a number of European foreign ministers said, without the slightest sense of responsibility, that the system was no longer acceptable, even for days, that Saddam has been deceiving them for over twelve years and that the international community should put an end to that deception. I was in the Security Council hall hosting those historic meetings, looking at their faces and knowing that they were absolutely certain that they were mouthing lies and that they were using legitimate fear of nuclear weapons as a pretext to launch war on Iraq, destroy it and return it to the Middle Ages, as James Baker told Iraqi Foreign Minister Tareq Aziz in January 1991.
Here we are, more than seven years after those Security Council meetings, and after a devastating war in which Bush and his clique of neo-conservatives were responsible for killing over a million unarmed civilians in Iraq. Now that Powell has left the public stage and became capable of telling the truth about what he knew and believed then, he acknowledges that what he told the Security Council was not true. Some people see in this ‘a virtue’ indicating the greatness of democracy instead of bringing to account those responsible for fabricating those lies.
Now, days after Shimon Peres unleashed his lie, one of his ministers hastened to repeat Baker’s threats about Israeli attacks to destroy Syria’s bridges, roads, power generation plants and “returning it to the stone age”. The media also caught the lie and promoted it during the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington two weeks ago. The statement is a stark lie, and merits derision rather than a response. Scud missiles are tens of meters long; and every missile needs a huge truck to carry it. Moreover, a small country like Lebanon in whose airspace reconnaissance drones fly on a daily basis, cannot hide them. Moreover, technical experts know that launching a Scud needs time and effort and collective work which is not compatible with the type of battles in which Hezbollah engages in its defense of Lebanon against Israeli attacks.
The mere circulation of this lie raises doubts about its objectives. Without bothering to ask Israel to provide any evidence of its allegations, Assistant Secretary of State Geffrey Feltman said it would be an “incendiary, provocative action” if it turned out to be true; and that the United States has a “full range of tools” available to make Syria reverse any delivery of ballistic missiles to Hezbollah.
Two American representatives put forward a draft resolution to tighten sanctions against Syria. Representatives Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and Mark Kirk, R-Il, known for their extreme hostility to Arabs, said in a statement that providing Hezbollah with these missiles “destabilizes the Middle East and is an existential threat to Israel and the independence of Lebanon”.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S expressed deep concern about reports of certain missiles being transferred to Syria and the possibility of then transferring them to Hezbollah. She saw in sending an ambassador to Syria “a tool that we believe can give us extra leverage, added insight, analysis, information with respect to Syria’s actions and intentions”. She pointed out Washington’s “long list of areas that we have discussed with the Syrians, and we intend to continue pushing our concerns” which include hosting Palestinian radicals and feeding the violence in Iraq. The statements of Clinton, Feltman and the two representatives are parrot repetitions of statements made by Netanyahu and other Israeli extremists about Syria without bothering about the possibility that these lies will be blown off in the future.
It is clear that the Scud lie and the parrot statements came to cover for the failure of the Obama administration to face the intransigent Netanyahu government which rejected all American calls to stop settlement or move towards just and comprehensive peace. At this particular time the Scud lie was fabricated in order to divert attention from the truth which has become abundantly clear: Israel is the only obstacle to peace in the Middle East. It also came to undermine the positive developments achieved in the Syrian American relations under the Obama administration. Sine Obama became president, and whenever he made a real and sincere effort to improve relations with the Muslim world through normalizing relations with Syria and defending justice in Palestine, the Israelis come out with a story either of ‘allowing terrorists to enter Iraq’ or ‘feeding Palestinian extremism’ or arming Hezbollah, in order to put an end to any real development of these relations.
The world realizes now that Israel is the enemy of peace in the Middle East. It promotes barbaric wars against the Arabs and prevents achieving any stability in the relations between the United States and the Arab and Muslim worlds. Extremist Israelis and their allies in the United States invent lies which lead to war and human suffering. They are responsible for tarnishing the image of the United States, shedding the blood of its soldiers and wasting its money on wars against the Muslim world. They are responsible for harming both the American people and the peoples of our region by promoting such naked lies.
Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban is the Presidential Advisor for Political and Media Affairs with the Rank of Minister in Syria. She has been a writer and professor at Damascus University since 1985. Before assuming her current ministerial position, Dr. Shaaban occupied the post of Director of the Press Office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Syria. She received her PhD in English Literature from Warwick University in the UK in 1982 and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an advisor in 1988. Since then, she has represented Syria as a spokeswoman on the international level. In 2005, Dr. Shaaban was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in the same year, was presented with the ‘Most Distinguished Woman in a Governmental Position Award’ by the Arab League. Dr. Shaaban has published four books, and contributed to numerous others.
Al-Qaeda Terror Tape Proven Fraudulent Once Again
Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet | May 3, 2010
The announcement by New York authorities that there is no evidence to support an apparent claim of responsibility for Saturday’s attempted car bombing by a Pakistani based Taliban group underscores once again how Pentagon front groups are releasing fake and misleading “Al-Qaeda videotapes” in crass PR stunts to justify the expansion of the “war on terror” under Obama.
As soon as Fox News reported that “the Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the bomb plot,” we smelled a rat, especially as the so-called video claiming complicity was released by the Pentagon front group SITE, founded by the daughter of an Israeli Mossad spy.
“A text in gold letters on a black background at the start of the video congratulates Muslims for the “jaw-breaking blow to Satan’s USA.” As the speaker recites the message, images of the slain militants referred to flash across the screen. English subtitles are provided at the bottom of the screen,” stated the report.
“If you were a real terrorist group who wanted to appear fearsome and mighty, would you really release a statement claiming responsibility for an “attack” that amounted to little more than a car full of fireworks that killed nobody, injured nobody, and was an abject failure?” we asked on Sunday. “This claim of responsibility holds about as much credibility as if Barney the Purple Dinosaur had made a video saying he did it.”
Indeed, the original Fox News story has now been significantly watered down after New York police, as well as Mayor Bloomberg, publicly dismissed foreign complicity in the botched bombing.
“Although a Taliban bomb maker has claimed on the Internet… we have no evidence to support this claim,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
“There is no evidence that this is tied in with Al-Qaeda or any other big terrorist organization,” Bloomberg told reporters at a press conference held in Times Square.
How were we able to predict that the credibility of the videotape would soon crumble? Because for the last four years we have documented how groups like SITE and the closely affiliated IntelCenter have been caught red-handed releasing old, re-hashed, and even outright fraudulent “terrorist confession tapes” and claiming them to be both genuine and new.
SITE is nothing more than a contractor for the U.S. government, receiving some $500,000 a year annually from Uncle Sam, the majority of which is paid for by U.S. taxpayers. The group was founded by Rita Katz, the daughter of an executed Israeli spy. Katz has worked closely with the Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Homeland Security.
SITE’s website content was found to be largely copied from the U.S. State Department. “SITE’s “Terrorism Library, on cursory investigation, looks to be a straight data scrape from the U.S. Department of State’s Patterns of Global Terrorism – 2003, Appendix B,” notes SourceWatch.
Everything about SITE indicates that it is nothing more than a dummy organization being used by the military-industrial complex to release staged Al-Qaeda videotapes as part of the ongoing propaganda offensive to justify the brutal, pointless and manufactured war on terror.
SITE miraculously were able to obtain the highly suspicious September 2007 Bin Laden video tape before it was released by the so-called Al-Qaeda group who had made it. A month before the release of this tape, SITE’s sister organization IntelCenter was caught adding its logo to a tape at the same time as Al-Qaeda’s so-called media arm As-Sahab added its logo, proving the two organizations were one and the same.
SITE has been positively endorsed by Blackwater USA, the infamous military contractor co-founded by former Navy Seal Erik Prince that was found to have been involved in several massacres of innocent Iraqi civilians.
SITE’s continued existence relies on fleecing the American taxpayer by way of contracts with the U.S. government and constantly invoking and hyping the hugely exaggerated threat of alleged Al-Qaeda groups in the Middle East.
Having been caught once again releasing a suspicious video in which Middle Eastern terrorists claim responsibility for something that investigators say they had no involvement in, Americans really need to start asking hard questions about why their tax dollars are being thrown at such a dubious outfit, not to mention how investigations into acts of terror are being confused and hampered by frivolous claims of responsibility that turn out to be baseless.
The fact that the corporate media still treats such videotapes with presumed authenticity, despite the fact that they have been proven fraudulent on almost every occasion, tells you everything you need to know about the role of the establishment press in propping up the mirage of the war on terror.
Of course, now that foreign involvement has been dismissed, it’s almost guaranteed that the amateurish botched bombing attempt in Times Square will now be blamed on “homegrown extremists” and used to increase the purge of any and all dissent against big government, bolstering efforts to censor and silence passionate but peaceful criticism on talk radio and the Internet, a move being heartily cheered by liberals who cried foul when they were called traitors for criticizing the invasion of Iraq under Bush.
National Public Radio’s Pro-Israeli Bias
By Stephen Lendman | April 29, 2010
Since established in 1970, NPR ignored its public trust in favor of privilege, corporatism, militarism, imperial wars, and Israel’s vilest crimes, including collective punishment, illegal occupation, targeted killings, land theft, dispossession, home demolitions, crop destruction, mass incarcerations, torture, violence, and the 2008 – 09 Gaza war inflicting mass deaths, permanent injuries, vast devastation, and human misery against defenseless civilians, imprisoned under siege since June 2007, and afflicted by a dire humanitarian crisis as a result – exacerbated by conflict and intermittent attacks, issues NPR ignores or understates.
It’s notorious for its biased, shoddy reporting, pseudo-journalism, creeping commercialism, distracting non-news, and deceiving listeners that it is public, non-profit, and impartial. Savvy media consumers know better and tune them out for delivering the same slanted coverage found on major networks and in broadsheets like The New York Times, Washington Post, and others – grossly favoring power, and when it comes to Israel, its interests matter. Palestinian ones don’t, so news is carefully filtered to distort facts, and report lies that when repeated enough become truths.
In its May/June 2004 issue, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) asked “How Public Is Public Radio?” in examining its guest list choices – on all issues (including Israel), mostly government officials, corporate think tank representatives, professionals representing their interests, and other elite sources, the public comprising a tiny 7%.
“For a public radio service intended to provide an independent alternative to corporate-owned and commercially driven mainstream media,” it said, “NPR is surprisingly reliant on mainstream” sources, the public nearly entirely shut out, and when included they’re largely nameless “people in the street,” quoted in one-sentence sound bites with no impact.
In December 2001, FAIR’s Seth Ackerman discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “Illusion of Balance” along with a companion November/December 2001 “Study of NPR’s Coverage of Deaths in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”
It found an 81% likelihood that an Israeli death would be reported compared to 34% for a Palestinian. Among under age 18 Palestinians, only 20% were reported compared to 89% of Israelis, FAIR concluding that “being a minor makes your death more newsworthy to NPR if you are Israeli, but less” so, or not at all, if Palestinian.
The imbalance is far greater today with few if any Israeli deaths, many Palestinian ones, but few ever reported and when done, it’s dismissive, brief, and/or falsified as to the cause.
FAIR October – February 2002 Action Alerts “repeatedly criticized NPR for describing periods when only Palestinians were being killed… as times of ‘relative calm (or) comparative quiet,’ ” yet barely concealing outrage about Israeli deaths, only caused in response to unreported IDF or settler-initiated violence.
Mainstream US media, including NPR, suppress stories like the London Guardian Rory McMarthy’s on April 17, 2009 headlined, “Teargas canister shot kills Palestinian demonstrator,” saying “Bassem Abu Rahmeh is (the) 18th person to die since 2004 during demonstrations against (the) West Bank(‘s)” Separation Wall.
Before being killed, Abu Rahmed begged Israeli soldiers not to shoot lest they kill an Israeli, his last words in Hebrew being: “Officer, officer, officer, listen, you killed an Israeli, wait a moment, wait a moment!” Instead, a high-velocity gas canister hit him in the chest and killed him.
“The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident,” of course, meaning whitewash, cover-up, and exonerating soldiers to commit repeated atrocities and get away with it – but try finding that explained on NPR or any mainstream US news service where Palestinian suffering is a non-story.
On April 6, 2007, Felice Pace’s CounterPunch article discussed NPR’s Weekend Edition, Saturday saying host Scott Simon “managed to do yet another NPR (Middle East) News interview (March 31)….in which he completely ignores the central influence of the Palestinian People’s plight,” affecting the entire region, contributing to its instability.
From 1990 – 2009, Linda Gradstein was NPR’s Israel correspondent, at the same time accepting pro-Israeli organization honoraria, the Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah and Nigel Parry reported on February 19, 2002 in their article headlined, “Special report: NPR’s Linda Gradstein takes cash payments from pro-Israeli groups.”
Despite a clear conflict of interest, professional ethics, and NPR policy, she worked as a paid Israeli propagandist, EI writers concluding:
“for some reason or other, Gradstein (was) effectively exempt from NPR’s own regulations. These revelations only broaden existing concerns about the integrity of NPR’s Middle East reporting and honesty of Linda Gradstein… the sad truth is that (she) rarely (met the minimum) standards,” nor do other NPR reporters covering foreign or domestic policies. They like other major media reporters are paid liars.
NPR Misinformation on East Jerusalem
Jews claim all Jerusalem as Israel’s historic capital, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring, during a May 22, 2009 Jerusalem Day ceremony (commemorating the city’s 1967 reunification), that:
“United Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided.”
For Muslims, it’s Islam’s third holiest site, containing the 35-acre Noble Sanctuary (al-Haram al-Sharif), including the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as its capital, yet Israel is dispossessing them one settlement expansion and home demolition at a time, world leaders turning a blind eye, letting it happen, despite disingenuous opposition rhetoric often quoted in mainstream reports, including NPR.
On March 26, Mondoweiss.net published Henry Norr’s article headlined, “When it comes to E. Jerusalem, ‘NPR’ misleads and misinforms,” offering examples from 22 recent broadcasts.
NPR calls the city “Israel’s capital,” its “undivided (or) unified capital,” with a historic claim to it all. In contrast, Occupied East Jerusalem is dismissed as “disputed territory,” its final status “only (to) be determined through negotiations” that may or may not occur, but given how previous ones were structured it won’t matter.
In three accounts, NRP quoted Netanyahu saying “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago,” despite Judaic roots dating only from around 1,800 BC, the Old Testament calling Abraham the first Hebrew for refusing to worship the period’s common idols, and organized Judaism dates from Moses around 1,500 BC.
One “Talk of the Nation” report featured an Israeli analyst saying East Jerusalem settlement construction will continue because the entire city is “the heart and soul of the Jewish people.” Analyst James Fallows told listeners that Israelis consider East Jerusalem settlements “necessary for their survival.”
Other reports described expropriated areas as idyllic “neighborhood(s),” hilltop “communit(ies),” pious Jews there “focus(ing) on their religious studies and pay(ing) little attention to the outside world.” Their large families require settlement expansions to accommodate them, so Palestinians have to go, no matter that they and their ancestors lived there for centuries.
Yet Israelis say East Jerusalem’s 250,000 Palestinians have no historic claim to the city they “want” for their “future state” and “aspire” to be their capital – mindless that it already is and that no government, including America, recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital or has an embassy there.
The November 1947 UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181) designated Jerusalem an international city under a UN Trusteeship Council, still binding today. The 1949 UN Resolution 273 gave Israel UN membership conditional on its implementing Resolutions 181 and 194 (December 1948) granting Palestinians their universally accepted “Right of Return – topics NPR never explains.
Though rarely discussed or reported, world governments and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) consider East Jerusalem occupied. Even the ICRC says so, calling Israeli actions there “illegal” under international law, specifically the 1907 Hague Regulations and Fourth Geneva’s Article 49 stating:
“Individual or mass transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of the motive.” Neither shall “The Occupying Power….deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
In addition, numerous UN resolutions established “no legal validity” for occupied land acquisitions or settlement building. When violations occur, no nation may recognize or support them or the responsible state.
Further, the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples condemned “colonialism in all its forms and manifestations,” including settlements deemed to be illegal.
International laws are clear and unequivocal. NPR never reports or explains that:
— all Israeli settlements are illegal;
— growing numbers of Jews oppose them;
— many support the global BDS movement (boycott, sanctions, and divestment);
— more now leave Israel than arrive; and
— Palestinians are systematically persecuted, terrorized, and denied rights afforded solely to Jews, and are being dispossessed of property they owned and did “most of the building (on for) over the last 1,500 years.”
Their voices are virtually shut out. Instead, feature interviews are presented like “All Things Considered” host Robert Siegel’s with Israel’s US ambassador Michael Oren, saying:
“….Jerusalem is sovereign Israeli territory, and it has the same status as Tel Aviv. And just as Israelis have a right to build anywhere in Tel Aviv, they have a right to build anywhere in the city of Jerusalem.”
Or another with Martin Indyk (former US Israeli ambassador and Netanyahu brother-in-law) hyping Iran as an “existential threat” when last September Reuters quoted Defense Minister Ehud Barak saying “Iran does not constitute an existential threat to Israel….Israel is strong. I don’t see anyone who could pose an existential threat,” though he called Iran a challenge to the whole world without being more specific.
NPR pro-Israeli propaganda persists in deference to the Israeli Lobby and its funding sources, much of it corporate, from special interest foundations, and wealthy donors strongly supportive of Israel as are virtually every member of Congress and all administrations, Republican and Democrat.
No matter, according to a FAIR May 17, 2005 Action Alert headlined, “CPB (the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) Turns to NPR as Latest ‘Bias’ Target.” It quoted a May 16 New York Times report about the CPB considering “a study on whether NPR’s Middle East coverage was more favorable to Arabs than to Israelis – further evidence that the agency intends to police public media for content it deems too ‘liberal.’ ”
Past FAIR analyses clearly exposed NPR’s pro-Israeli coverage – recently more extreme, making it impossible for listeners to know truths NPR suppresses, much like The New York Times and the rest of America’s print and broadcast media, in contrast to Haaretz writers Amira Hass and Gideon Levy who tell it heroically to Israeli and world readers.
A Final Comment
Among its 25 top 2005 censored stories, Project Censored’s No. 11 pick headlined, “The Media Can Legally Lie,” a CMW Report, Spring 2003 by Liane Casten titled, “Court Ruled that Media Can Legally lie.” It covered a unanimous February 2003 Florida Court of Appeals decision for Fox News, saying no rule prohibits distorting or falsifying news.
It pertained to 1996 Jane Akre/Steve Wilson Fox affiliate WTVT, Tampa reports on bovine growth hormone (BGH) dangers, Monsanto’s hazardous to human health genetically engineered milk additive. At first, the station loved them, but headquarters Fox executives and their attorneys wanted the reporters to admit falsifying evidence and produce bogus reports on BGH safety.
They refused, threatened to inform the FCC, were fired, and sued – a district court jury deciding on their behalf, awarding Acre alone $425,000 in damages. Fox appealed and won, the Appellate Court saying Acre wasn’t protected under Florida’s whistleblower statute, it loosely interpreted to mean employers must violate an adopted “law, rule, or regulation.” Fox simply followed “policy” entitling its stations to lie – whether on product safety or falsifying facts about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
NPR and other US major media operations take full advantage, keeping their listeners and readers in the dark and uninformed, while Palestinians are systematically persecuted, out of sight and mind, except for people concerned enough to learn the truth and tell it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
Hezbollah slams US over arms claims
Press TV – April 28, 2010
Hezbollah has sharply rejected US allegations about the Lebanese movement’s missiles, vowing to continue armed resistance against Israeli aggression.
Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah in an article published on Wednesday scoffed at recent comments by US Defense Minister Robert Gates that Hezbollah’s arms exceeded those held by many states in the world, saying Hezbollah’s arms did not compare to the “armament” and “crimes” of the United States and its ally Israel.
The Lebanese official recalled “the level of armament of the United States, which it used in its crimes against peoples around the world, from Hiroshima to the more than 100,000 killed in Iraq and the tens of thousands killed in Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan,” the Arabic-language newspaper As-Safir quoted him on Wednesday.
“There is a difference between arms which only serve invasions, occupations and aggressions, such as those of the United States and its ally Israel … and the arms of a resistance which defends, protects, and liberates,” he said.
“Our choice was and remains to secure all the arms of resistance that we can,” he added.
In a joint news conference with Israeli Defense Minster Ehud Barak in Washington, Gates on Tuesday accused Syria and Iran of arming Hezbollah with increasingly sophisticated rockets and missiles.
Gates’ claims came amid tensions in the Middle East intensified by Israel’s earlier accusations against Syria of providing Scud ballistic missiles for Hezbollah.
Israel views Hezbollah a major enemy, especially after the summer conflict of 2006 where the resistance forces repelled a 33-day Israeli offensive on southern Lebanon.
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Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.
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