The word “justice” is conspicuously absent from the mouthings of Western politicians on the Middle East. It has vanished from their vocabulary and from their purpose. Instead “peace process” is endlessly trumpeted, and the lopsided dead-end “negotiations” that go with it.
“It was disappointing that they continued the building of settlements, that they wouldn’t renew the settlement freeze over the last few months. So yes it does require bold leadership from Israel and of course from Palestinians…” That’s what the UK’s foreign secretary, William Hague, said on 9 February to a BBC reporter.
Israel’s continuing crime spree “disappointing”? And “bold leadership” is now required from the Palestinians? We’re talking about crimes against international law and crimes against the United Nations Charter and crimes against humanity. What is disappointing – no, shocking – is the lack of leadership from Hague and that bunch of misfits in the White House who are obligated under the terms of various solemn treaties and international undertakings to step in and end Israel’s lawlessness.
Yes, this is the same William Hague who hangs out a welcome sign to Israeli and other war criminals by watering down the UK’s universal jurisdiction laws.
He’s well and truly stuck in the peace process time-warp and trailing a long way behind the curve. “There is a legitimate fear that the Middle East peace process will lose further momentum… Part of the fear is that uncertainty and change [sparked by Tunisia and Egypt] will complicate the process still further… Within a few years, peace may become impossible.”
He speaks as if the process is alive and kicking. Peace has been impossible for decades. It remains impossible first because Israel doesn’t want it and, second, because peace cannot be achieved without justice. And justice cannot be delivered without enforcing the law. Nevertheless, Hague prefers to bypass justice and flog the dead horse called “peace process”, which he must know won’t even leave the starting line.
The UK government is good at saying whatever is correct in international law. For example: “Although we accept de facto Israeli control of West Jerusalem, we consider East Jerusalem to be occupied territory. It is crucial that the parties involved come to an agreement whereby Jerusalem can be a shared capital of the Israeli and Palestinian States.
“Attempts by Israel to alter the character or demography of East Jerusalem are unacceptable and extremely provocative. Settlements, as well as the evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, are illegal and deeply unhelpful to efforts to bring a lasting peace to the Middle East conflict.”
Saying it is easy. The thought of actually doing something to enforce the law and rectify the situation paralyses Westminster. Instead we get: “The UK will continue to add to international calls for restraint and the avoidance of provocative actions from both sides in and around Jerusalem.” As if that’ll solve anything.
And “the government is committed to upholding accountability for breaches of international humanitarian law”. Britain has made no move over the years to bring Israel to book for its hideous crimes.
The Foreign Office preaches about how the rule of law, freedom of speech and free and fair elections are inalienable rights, and how the UK “stands ready” to support those who aspire to these things, but none of it applies to the Palestinians. Otherwise the UK would be talking to and forging trade links with their democratically elected Gaza administration.
“Due to the actions that Hamas has taken, we are not yet prepared to engage with them,” says the Foreign Office in true Dickensian Circumlocution style. “Hamas remains committed to terrorism in order to achieve its aims.”
Israel remains committed to killing and maiming with impunity, often targeting Palestinian children. It carries out air-strikes on a daily basis. Before Hague utters the word terrorism again he should look it up and understand who the terrorists are. Has he asked Hamas what its aims actually are? Isn’t resistance to illegal armed occupation perfectly permissible under international law?
Westminster’s mind is shut. “We do not have any direct contact with Hamas. The Quartet have set out clearly that Hamas must renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept previously signed agreements. Hamas must make concrete and immediate movement towards these conditions…” Do the same conditions apply to Israel? And who outside the Israel lobby recognizes Israel with undefined, ever-expanding borders, or expects Palestinians to renounce violence when repeatedly thrown out of their homes and subjected to other atrocities?
However uncomfortable some Westerners may feel about Hamas, it has the authority to speak for Palestinians. Until it is brought in from the cold there’ll be no progress.
But no progress is the real aim of this dirty game, is it not?
UN resolutions are not à la carte
Meanwhile, Mr Hague, how do you like the Likud Party’s policy that “the Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state”, and that “Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel”?
And what do you make of the Kadima Party’s claim to a national and historic right to the Land of Israel “in its entirety” and its pledge to keep Jerusalem and the settlements?
UN Resolution 181 of 1947, dealing with the partition that Israel accepted, declared that Jerusalem “shall be established as a ‘corpus separatum’ … administered by the United Nations”, and include surrounding villages and towns such as Abu Dis and Bethlehem.
Resolution 242 (1967) by the Security Council, and therefore fully binding, required withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict; freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area and a just settlement of the refugee problem.
Security Council Resolution 338 (1973) called on the parties concerned to get stuck in and immediately implement 242.
Security Council Resolution 446 (1979), besides declaring Israel’s settlements in territories occupied since 1967 illegal, called on Israel to “desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories”.
The UN has laid it down. Israel takes no notice. These are not resolutions on an à la carte menu to be cherry-picked by the Western powers and their friend Israel as the mood takes them. The world is waiting for the senior representative of the country that created the mess in the first place to show leadership, set an example and make sure these binding requirements are implemented.
And just to keep everyone’s thoughts properly focused, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights states that all peoples have the right of self-determination, and by virtue of that right they may freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. The 136 states that are party to the covenant have a duty to promote the realization of these rights and respect them.
A people may not be deprived of their natural wealth and resources or their means of subsistence. Remember this, Mr Hague, when Israel interferes with Gaza’s off-shore gas resources and the West Bank’s water. And states are also bound to recognize the right of everyone to the opportunity to earn a living by work which he freely chooses, and to take appropriate steps to safeguard this right. “Take steps” is what it says, Mr Hague. Please remember that when talking glibly about the need to lift the siege on Gaza and restore unfettered access to the outside world. Can you look Gaza’s 3,000 fishermen in the eye? Or the hard-pressed doctors desperately short of medical supplies? Or the countless thousands still homeless after the Israeli blitz two years ago?
Then there’s the threat of Israel’s weapons of mass destruction, Israel being the only state in the region not to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention either. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention.
And it’s all in the hands of psychopaths whom the our government claims as friends and allies.
February 10, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular |
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The U.S. media seems to have found a new language for the economy. There’s been talk of “solidarity” and even “class war,” and a focus on corruption and inequality like we haven’t seen in who knows how long.
The only problem? They’re talking about Egypt.
“It’s quite clear that entire domains in the economy were dominated by a few people,” a British professor of Middle Eastern Studies told the New York Times Monday. The reporter notes “Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt has long functioned as a state where wealth bought political power and political power bought great wealth.”
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald notes that such rhetoric about foreign countries serves to promote the idea that these problems exist Over There, but not over here. But Greenwald’s readers and GRITtv viewers know better.
Just one example, in case you’ve forgotten: Massey Energy is the union-busting company that owned the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that exploded in April, killing 29 people. As local reporters had complained for years, Massey’s CEO Don Blankenship had more or less purchased the state’s government with a consistent flow of campaign ad dollars.
And as if that wasn’t enough, the Brennan Center for Justice singled out Massey, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for its spending on judicial elections—where Blankenship spent millions to remove a state Supreme Court justice who had ruled against his company and replace him with another, with whose help the same court reversed a $50 million anti-Massey judgment.
An economy dominated a few? Great wealth buying great political influence?
It’s fine to explain why the Egyptian people are in the streets. But don’t pretend corruption’s a word that only exists in Arabic.
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org
February 10, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular |
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A leaked secret memorandum from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggests the government is seeking to ensure Israeli and other foreign officials who may be pursued for war crimes can visit the Netherlands without fear of arrest or legal accountability.
The memo, which was leaked to the Dutch media television station KRO reveals that Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal sought advice on possibilities for the state to prevent prosecution of foreign government officials who visit the Netherlands (“Minister Rosenthal wil vervolging buitenlandse politici in Nederland tegen gaan,” 26 January 2011).
Rosenthal sought advice from the ministry’s legal department after Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono canceled his state visit to the Netherlands last October following imminent legal action linked to his alleged role in crimes against humanity. However, it was clear that Yudhoyono could not be prosecuted because of his diplomatic immunity as president.
Rosenthal’s request for advice on the matter may have been triggered by concerns about future visits by Israel officials. Several high-ranking Israeli officials have within the past year canceled planned visits to European countries fearing arrest in connection with allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, documented in the UN-commissioned Goldstone report.
In its memo, the Department of Legal Affairs writes that diplomatic immunity is the only guarantee against criminal prosecution. In order to get around this limitation, the memo proposes the option of a new “generic” law to protect foreign politicians from prosecution in the Netherlands.
Another option would be a short-term agreement with a state to grant immunity to a specific person for a limited period. This would carry the publicity risk that “the Netherlands protects a war criminal,” the officials who authored memo wrote.
Yet another possibility the Dutch officials consider is that the state could take over an invitation to a foreign official issued by a private party, thus providing the foreign official with a form of state protection and indicating that such a visit is important to the foreign relations of the Netherlands. Previous court cases have shown, the memo notes, that “judges are sensitive to the argument that the judiciary should exercise restraint in cases that affect foreign relations.”
This was “astonishing advice,” Menno Kamminga, Professor of international law and director of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights, told KRO television. “The Netherlands is bound by various treaties to prosecute violators of human rights; you cannot try to evade this unilaterally with a new law,” Kamminga said.
A key case that shows the relevance of the potential effect of the foreign ministry memo if its recommendations are implemented, involved legal action by a Palestinian who alleged he was tortured by Danny Ayalon, a former head of the Israeli secret service, and now deputy Israeli foreign minister.
Liesbeth Zegveld, attorney and professor in international humanitarian law, lodged a complaint to the public prosecutor when Ayalon visited the Netherlands at the invitation of the Dutch Zionist group Centre for Documentation and Information on Israel (CIDI) in May 2008.
Zegveld told Radio 1 in the Netherlands: “It was clear that Ayalon had no diplomatic immunity. The public prosecutor was interested in the case but needed to formally ask advice of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the immunity of Ayalon. Although we reminded the ministry that the time was limited, they sent their advice one day after he left the country. Indeed, the advice was that Ayalon had no immunity. That is exactly the atmosphere that breathes from the memo. It all happens behind the scenes.” The tactic of using such delays to buy time is described in the memo (“Rosenthal wil vervolging buitenlandse politici in Nederland tegengaan“, 27 January 2011).
Zegveld pointed out that under the leaked memo’s recommendations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could have given official cover to CIDI’s invitation of Ayalon by inviting him for “a cup of tea at the ministry.” Ayalon’s visit would thus have become an official visit to the Netherlands, and judges would presumably have deferred to the government in the case of any legal proceeding against him. As Zegveld explained, “This has nothing to do with immunity. It is about influencing the judiciary with means that are not available to the other party. It is contrary to the interest of preventing impunity.”
The foreign ministry memo was leaked about three months after a right-wing minority coalition government was installed with the support of the PVV (Party for Freedom) led by Islamophobic demagogue Geert Wilders. Wilders, a staunch supporter of Israel, visited the country in December and voiced support for the views of settler leaders who say Israel should should annex the occupied West Bank and that Jordan should be the Palestinian state.
The coalition negotiated an agreement with Wilders which commits the government to “invest in the relationship with the State of Israel.” In this way, Israel received exclusive treatment: it is the only country that is mentioned.
The special relationship with Israel came under the spotlight after the Israeli organization NGO Monitor began a defamation campaign against The Electronic Intifada last November. Dutch Foreign Minister Rosenthal responded immediately with a fierce attack on the Dutch donor organization ICCO for its support to the publication and has since threatened to cut government funding to ICCO and other civil society organizations that deviate from his policies toward Israel.
Articles calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions have been a particular thorn in Rosenthal’s side. He told the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant on 11 December 2010 that “We [the government] want to resist Israel bashing, we want to invest in the relationship with Israel.”
Moreover, Rosenthal’s attack on ICCO is striking because the support of the Dutch government to donor organizations is outside his area of authority. Ben Knapen, Minister of Development Cooperation and a former chief editor of the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, is responsible for funding to organizations like ICCO and has remained silent on the matter.
The leaked foreign ministry legal memo also repeatedly points out the publicity risks of offering protection to suspects of international crimes by stretching possible immunity beyond presidents of states, prime ministers and ministers of foreign affairs.
This means that despite the attacks on their independence from the Dutch government, Dutch civil society and politicians can still send a clear signal to Rosenthal: the Netherlands has to comply with its international obligations to hold alleged suspects of war crimes to account, no matter their origin or the identity of their victims.
Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate.
February 8, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes |
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EUROPE TO BECOME PLANNED ECONOMY LIKE CHINA
*Germany and France to control all wages, taxes, pensions and welfare benefits across the Eurozone under new plan unveiled in Brussels.
*Economic coordination will result in a planned economy and inefficiency, economic experts say.
*People of Europe will have no say in the transfer of control over their pensions, wages and taxes to a central authority, national leaders to decide.
A plan by Germany and France to enforce the same labour, welfare, pension and economic policies across the entire Eurozone by decree was unveiled in Brussels on Friday.
Economist Hans-Werner Sinn from Germany’s IFO said that the attempt to introduce new binding agreements on labour costs, taxes and pensions that would apply to every single citizen in every single country in the Eurozone, amounted to introducing a planned economy that will promote inefficiency.
http://diepresse.com/home/wirtschaft/international/631259/HansWerner-Sinn_EUPlaene-wie-in-einer-Planwirtschaft
The plans set out by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for the harmonization of the corporate-tax base, the abolition of indexing pay raises to inflation, and also for the linking of pension ages to demographics i.e. the pension age to be raised across the Eurozone.
Merkel and Sarkozy are pushing for an agreement in March.
They claim their push for economic convergence in the euro monetary union without a political union and without any opportunity by the people of Europe to have a say and also without any adequate basis in an EU treaty will allow economies in Europe to overcome the financial crisis and grow faster. But experts say their plan is a way of introducing through the back door the transfer union and Eurobonds benefiting banks at the expense of ordinary people .
The plan also includes a binding indicator for labour productivity and labour unit costs across Europe i.e. the amount of earnings every person working in a specific job sector is to be set centrally across Europe.
In any event labour cost units do not address the problem of enormous and growing unemployment in the Eurozone as a result of the failed policies of Merkel and Sarokzy and EU, especially in countries in the southern European zone where many jobs have been lost because they joined the Eurozone at an exchange rate that was too high and so became uncompetitive.
To regain competitiveness, the countries need to be able to devalue their currency or introduce a regional, parallel currency, experts say. However, there is no mention of devaluation in the Merkel/Sarkozy plan.
Crucial also to a buoyant economy is the demand for products. Germany, for example, was prosperous in the 1980s because people earned enough money to be able to buy German products, creating a virtuous economic circle of demand and production. Today, Germany’s domestic demand is small because real income is barely enough to cover essentials, and the new plan does nothing to change that.
In fact, Germans along with the rest of Europeans are set to have even less money if the new pact is agreed in Brussels in March with wages and pensions set to be slashed in real terms.
Scrapping the link between annual wage increases and inflation will mean that wages will fall in real terms across Europe, leaving people with even less money to spend resulting in reduced demand in the economy.
Far from boosting the economy, the measures unveiled will, in fact, accelerate Europe’s transformation into a centrally planned, labour Gulag such as in China.
It has been estimated that more people in the developing countries will have an income of 10,000 dollars a year than in Europe and the USA together in five years time, underlining just how steep the drop in the real incomes in Europe and the USA has been.
Charities have calculated that the minimum required to live in Germany is about 1000 euros a month. That means almost 80% of the Germans are now already living on or close to the minimum needed to exist.
According to Die Welt, more than 20% of Germans have less than 1,070 euros a month and another 60% of Germans earn between 1,070 to 2,350 euros a month. Only 3% earn more than 7,000 euros a month.
http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article12349505/DIW-Forscher-sehen-schwindende-Mittelschicht.html
The long-term unemployment benefit Hartz IV is 350 euros or only about 7 times more than the poorest Egyptians have to live on a month in spite of much higher costs in Germany.
The Hartz IV benefit is set to rise by only 5 euros this year on the insistence of Merkel, far below inflation, further eroding the real purchasing power and driving millions deeper into poverty.
It is not just in Germany but all across Europe that salaries have been decimated. Gone are the days not so long ago when professions such as young teachers for example earned 30 times more than their average cost of accommodation in major cities. In Greece, for example, the average pension is just 600 euros.
The next logical step for Merkel and Sarkozy is to float plans to send millions of Europeans to live in barracks and work in factories or roads with a bowl of soup and bread until they are 90 or drop dead as in the 1930s after a similar engineered financial crisis.
I can’t see the people of Europe allowing a centralised bureaucracy set up by governments in Berlin and Paris to cut their pensions and wages in order to give yet more to the banks and corporations – not after these same governments aided the banks in an engineered financial crisis that wrecked economies, and plunged nations into debt.
Merkel has said that the rest of Europe has to keep up with the “best”. Implying the low wage, slave labour concentration camp that Germany has become, with its corrupt financial sector, corrupt corporations caught bribing its own and foreign politicians (Siemens in Greece) is in some way to be emulated.
I suspect Europeans will not share that view.
Not the Irish for sure. Even tame politicians and newspapers like Enda Kenny and the Irish Times are comparing the brutal take-over of the Irish economy by the German and EU bankers via an enforced 85 billion euro loan with the armed conflicts of Leningrad and the Easter Rising.
How much longer will the people of Europe put up with this?
After helping the banks wreck the European economy in front of everyone’s eyes and pushing toxic vaccines on their populations, Merkel and Sarkozy pair up in a flagrant bid to steal pensions (etc) instead of presenting a serious plan.
How dare they?
February 7, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular |
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What’s it like spending two years doing thankless work that, in the end, is going to be ignored by the very people who asked for your services? The members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission have just found out. Their 662 page report is sinking rapidly into oblivion in official Washington, and is now destined to be of interest only to historians. This was fully predictable. The Commission was given a charter by Congress to tell us who, what, when, and where about the financial crisis, but they were not allowed to explain why. To understand why this crisis occurred would be stepping on way too many powerful toes in Washington, and for this reason the Commission was told not to make any policy recommendations to Congress that would help prevent such a crisis from occurring again.
Though toothless and hobbled by Congress, the Commission has issued a remarkable report, at least by Washington standards. The report reads like the work of an investigative reporter, filled with interesting anecdotes selected from hundreds of hours of interviews with financial experts and market participants. The chapters are organized chronologically from the start of the housing boom to its collapse. Hardly anybody comes out of this report looking good, but of the many people who have reason to hang their head in shame, none appear quite as damaged as Alan Greenspan. He and the Federal Reserve are fingered by the Commission for failure to regulate the banks and other players in the housing market.
The outcome of “Fed Lite”
The central bank operated a regulatory regime called “Fed Lite”, providing little regulatory oversight for the banks, and no oversight for the shadow banking system that blew up under the weight of excessive debt and sparse capital. Fed Lite was founded on Alan Greenspan’s near-religious belief that the markets always weed out inefficient players and excesses, and the Fed’s job therefore is to stay out of the way of the banks they are supposed to regulate. Greenspan later admitted to the Commission that he might have been a bit wrong about the wonderful self-correcting mechanism of the markets. He also admitted that he was out of his depth whenever the staff came to talk to him about technical matters like mortgages, the housing markets, derivatives such as CDOs, and so on.
This was the man who was dubbed “The Maestro” by Bob Woodward, but apparently nearly twenty years of hands-on experience running the central bank was not enough to educate him sufficiently to understand the housing market, much less detect a bubble in the making. Why was someone like him given such a position of power? The Commission is unable to explain this to us, and to do so would require going much further back in time than the housing bubble – in fact back to the 1950s, when Alan Greenspan sat at the side of Ayn Rand, as an Apostle of Selfishness and a prized member of her cult of Objectivists.
Greenspan Shrugged
In his professional life Alan Greenspan has never talked about his days with Ayn Rand, and curiously no one in Washington has bothered to ask him publicly about how much of her philosophy he believes. As Fed Chairman, if Greenspan was a maestro of anything, it was playing Washington politics, and he was always wise enough never to tip his hand on policy matters until he had to. By the time the Fed was ready to implement Fed Lite, the mood in Washington had already shifted in favor of the Republican campaign to reduce government regulation wherever possible. This meant not only allowing market operators to function unfettered, it meant giving the wolves access to the henhouse. Insurance and oil industry executives were allowed in to Congressional staff meetings to help write laws governing their industries. Bankers were appointed to top positions at the Treasury and the Fed. As far as Wall Street was concerned, the traditional balance between Greed and Fear was upended: Fear was banished and Greed was allowed to run rampant once bankers were given access to unlimited taxpayer money in the form of bailouts.
All of this was quite congenial to Alan Greenspan, the inventor of the “Greenspan put” – which was a phrase created by the market to characterize the promise by the Fed that any serious losses in the market could always be “put back” to the government. Time and again Greenspan oversaw one bank bailout after another, and then expanded the franchise to the hedge fund industry when he bailed out LTCM in 1998. By the time he retired from the Fed, the financial industry had become so large that the Greenspan put had become institutionalized, and is now referred to as the Bernanke put. The job of Chairman of the Federal Reserve apparently carries with it the promise to forever protect the markets from their mistakes.
Only the “Worthy” Succeed
This must be quite satisfying to Ayn Rand followers. In their mythology, only Worthy Individuals are allowed to succeed in life, by taking what they want from others, and fighting off the little people and bothersome bureaucrats who obstruct them because they are envious of anyone who succeeds. Alan Greenspan must view himself and the eminent people he associates with as the Worthy few, entitled to their wealth and position of power. As a Republican, Greenspan has had no problems with the evolution of his party into the protector of the privileged few – the Lucky Duckies who control nearly 90% of the wealth in America, and feel entitled to raid the Treasury whenever they need to cover up for their mistakes.
This is the problem the Commission has had in doing its work. It is operating in a political and social environment in Washington that for decades has glorified greed and selfishness, and so accepted are these qualities that an alternative universe where government helps the average person rather than just the wealthy person is simply too hard for people in Washington to imagine. The best the Commission can do is say “Alan Greenspan should have done this, and he shouldn’t have done that.” It cannot say that there is something deeply corrupting in the way politicians of both parties think and act in Washington.
That is also why this Commission is so very different from the Pecora Commission of the 1930s, which took as its job the exposure of corruption and fraud at the very highest levels of business and government. The evidence of corruption and fraud in the housing bubble and during the credit crisis is mounting every day, but no one of responsibility or power has been called to account. The Commission has apparently identified a few low level functionaries for the attention of the Justice Department, but it is unlikely that someone like Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide is ever going to wind up in court on fraud charges. There is no moral outrage in Washington anymore, because there is simply no telling whose head would not fall under the guillotine if the true extent of fraud and corruption were revealed.
“Greed is Good”
The American people don’t have much moral outrage either. For the longest time they bought into the Greed is Good philosophy as long as the stock market was going up, and the housing bubble was in the ascendant. Once both of these financial props collapsed, misery spread everywhere, but it wasn’t the misery experienced by our grandfathers, who lost all their wealth in the 1930s when the banks collapsed completely. Most Americans are holding on to some of their wealth, and 80% of them have full time jobs, even if the work is stressful and the benefits are disappearing. Unemployment checks are being extended for another year, payroll taxes are scheduled to be cut in 2011, and Ben Bernanke has spent over half a trillion dollars generating another stock market bubble. The wealthy are spending money, which helps the retail sales numbers look good, and the Fed assures us that inflation is not a problem, because the Fed excludes the price of food and energy in its calculations of inflation.
Of what use, then, is a Commission that explains why things really happen the way they do? No one wants to hear it – not the Congress, not the White House, not Republicans, Democrats, nor independents. No one wants to hear that the American Dream – which use to say that anyone could succeed in America with hard work – has been polluted by a wholly different American Dream, which now says you can succeed with the right connections and you can take what you want without any consequences. We have brought the philosophy of Selfishness to its logical conclusion, which has left us with a society of individuals who are isolated from each other, who have been stripped of any sense of community, and who have been taught to expect that government will be of no help to you unless your are in a position of privilege and power.
What America really needs is a Commission of Truth, that would outline how Selfishness became triumphant, how it has devastated our country, and what we as a community and as a nation must do about this. A Commission of Truth, however, needs to have an audience willing to listen to the truth, and such an audience does not exist in America. At least not yet – not until Americans have experienced the full, bitter fruits that a lifetime of Selfishness can produce.
February 3, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular |
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Israel has told its diplomats in the United States, Europe and elsewhere to encourage their host nations to support the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israeli daily Haaretz reported Monday.
The newspaper said Israel’s foreign ministry told its diplomats to stress that it is in “the interest of the West” and of “the entire Middle East to maintain the stability of the regime in Egypt.” “We must therefore curb public criticism against President Hosni Mubarak,” the message sent at the end of last week said, according to Haaretz.
The newspaper said the message was sent to Israeli diplomats in at least a dozen embassies in the United States, Canada, China, Russia and several European countries.
A foreign ministry spokesman and a spokesman for the prime minister’s office questioned by AFP both refused to confirm or deny that such instructions had been issued.
Israel has so far kept a low profile on the upheaval rocking Egypt, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying on Sunday he had instructed ministers not to speak publicly about the situation. He himself has said little more than that he watching developments closely.
But a senior Israeli official quoted by Haaretz suggested Israel was unhappy with the public comments made so far by US and European officials in response to the growing Egyptian crisis. The United States and Europe have yet to call for Mubarak to step down, but they have called for a transition to democracy and warned him to allow peaceful protests to continue.
February 1, 2011
Posted by aletho |
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America’s Moral Crisis
By DAVID ROSEN | January 28, 2011
The Great Recession of 2007-2009 was more than a financial and political crisis. At root, it was a moral crisis.
Bernie Madoff and a handful of other racketeers were prosecuted, but all those actively or passively involved in the financial scam were not exposed, let alone legally dealt with.
The harm inflicted on the American people by the venal practices of those who orchestrated, implemented and/or facilitated the Great Recession is incalculable. Millions of peoples’ lives were turned upside-down, if not destroyed; America’s long-term future put in doubt.
Those morally culpable for the crisis involved many more than those who masterminded the vast plunder and got away with it. Truly, one can expect little in terms of moral leadership from the conspirators hidden in their Wall Street corner offices. A new car, an expensive bottle of wine or a couple of zeros on their paychecks is all that is needed to assuage the qualms they might have felt about the immoral if not illegal practices they consciously engaged in.
The Great Recession’s true moral crisis goes deeper, involving all those down the chain of greed that unites the system of plunder. This chain links the CEO of a major hedge fund or bank to the lowest mortgage broker or loan officer. It reaches out to still others, including credit rating agencies, government regulators and the self-serving financial media. It involves all those who knew and not only did nothing but joined in to get their own.
This shared greed is a distinguishing expression of America’s new moral order. It is rooted in a return to the all-American morality of Social Darwinism that ruled during the late-19th and early-20th centuries, a period that Mark Twain disparagingly called the Gilded Age.
Gilded Age values were rationalized in a simple dictum: I’ll get mine; screw the next guy. It’s the morality of the huckster, those who know how to artfully con the uninformed, get-rich-quick schmuck; in America, as the 21st century version of the old adage proclaims, a schmuck is born everyday.
Social Darwinism defined morality during American capitalism’s first stage of global ascendancy. The question haunting America today is whether it defines today’s deepening crisis and thus the nation’s historical eclipse.
* * *
Social Darwinism was a late-19th century belief system that applied Darwin’s theory of natural selection to human existence. It was especially popular among the American and British elite because it placed them, the white Christian male, at the top of evolutionary scale.
The first rule in this misreading of Darwin’s theory was a self-serving moral assumption: Humans occupy the highest rung in the evolution of animal life. Some went further, arguing that consciousness separated humans from animals and, thus, from natural life itself. Once this fundamental break with Darwin’s belief in nature’s interconnected integrity was made, humans could easily further legitimize fragmenting themselves into still more hierarchical structures, whether based on age, gender, race, geography, belief, class, sexual orientation or whatever.
Proponents of Social Darwinism, particularly Herbert Spencer, popularized concepts like “the struggle for existence” and “the survival of the fittest.” This belief system took different forms in different countries, sometimes with horrendous consequences. In Germany, the biologist Ernst Haeckel divided humankind into races with “Aryans” at the top and Jews and Africans at the bottom.
In the U.S., notions of racial identity were augmented by concepts of personal purity and global conquest. Teddy Roosevelt was the prime representative of this all-American belief system, turning it into a national policy. Proponents of Social Darwinism championed a moral belief system based on three interrelated principals. First, self-hood was represented by the rugged individualist, the masculine warrior who achieves his full human realization on the battlefield of laissez-faire capitalism. Second, to function at its most optimal, this social system required “social purity” of sexual repression and a eugenics-breeding program. Finally, this new American value system assumed that the globe was a terrain of conquest; it embraced an international, imperialist outlook proudly called manifest destiny, the “white man’s burden.”
These principals fashioned a moral outlook that linked the truth of one’s conduct to the social position one occupied. If one was rich, socially prominent and white one could get away with almost anything. Thus, the “crimes” of the rich and the poor were both legally and morally different. For Social Darwinists, morality was based on class privilege.
No one was more a proponent of Social Darwinism then John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Standard Oil trust and America’s grandest robber baron and Christian philanthropist. He argued that his efforts were the result of “a survival of the fittest, … the working out of a law of nature and a law of God.”
Rockefeller, and others who shared his belief system, engaged in a great intellectual trick. They artfully suppressed the fundamental contradiction between Christian theology and scientific rationality. They collapsed Darwin’s theory, grounded in empirical observation, into Christian doctrine, a faith in Adam and Eve.
This rationalization of religion and science, of God and Darwin, facilitated the rationalization of still other intellectual and political practices. Rockefeller and many of the other titans of American capitalism of his generation felt no moral discomfort over the murderous suppression of strikes in Ludlow or military interventions in Cuba and the Philippines.
* * *
The Great Recession ushered in the immoral morality of a new, 21st Social Darwinism.
This immorality is legitimized by the growing income inequality. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson analyze this phenomenon in their compelling book, “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.” The popping of the housing bubble was the result of not simply a financial crisis, but the victory of a decades-long political campaign waged by the rich against the rest of us. The authors make clear that the Great Recession was a great diversionary smokescreen so that the financial sector and the rich could seize increased control of the nation’s wealth.
One remarkable dimension of this new Social Darwin morality is the widespread willingness to suspend disbelief. This is a lesson to be drawn from the series of crises that U.S. has faced over the last decade.
The attacks of 9/11 ‘by foreign terrorists’ took place because the U.S. intelligence services failed to connect the dots.
The Iraq invasion was undertaken due to false claims of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
New Orleans’ suffering was due to nature run wild, not the failures of the U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers.
Global market forces caused the financial crisis of 2007-2009.
The Gulf Oil Spill of 2010 was an accident and BP was an inadvertent casualty of a fluke occurrence.
The Tucson shooting was the act of a psychopath; the shooter’s target was chosen arbitrarily, with no voices whispering in his ear.
Except for the Tucson shootings, no actual person/s has been held accountable. Sure, Jared Loughner, like Bernie Madoff, got busted, but each is the exception that proves the rule: No one is responsible for national crises; forces beyond human control determine events. Like 9/11, Katrina, the Iraq war, the Recession and the Gulf spill, unknown forces conspired and no one can be held accountable.
Today’s new Social Darwinist morality is one additional knife in the heart of the remarkable half-century of American egalitarianism that defined the 1930s through ’70s. From the Depression and World War II period through the post-WW II consumer revolution and the revolutions of the 1960s-70s, America struggled to fulfill its democratic ethos. It was an era in which America shared a deep moral vision, one expressed by John Steinbeck in “The Grapes of Wrath” and many other creative works.
The last three decades have witnessed the systematic erosion of this spirit of egalitarianism and the re-imposition of class tyranny. Like a dictatorship or police state, class rule requires the complicity of a world of enablers. This complicity is the true moral order that characterizes today’s America.
Preachers, politicians and pundits may prattle on about the nation’s virtues, but anyone screwed daily by the system of greed knows firsthand America’s new immoral morality. How they deal with it as social life continues to erode remains the unanswered question.
David Rosen is the author of “Sex Scandals America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming” (Key, 2009). He can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com.
Source
January 29, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Charles Darwin, Darwin, Darwinism, Great Recession, Herbert Spencer, John D. Rockefeller, Social Darwinism |
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An American employee of the US consulate in the Pakistani city of Lahore has shot dead two people who were on a motorcycle, authorities said.
“The American national told us he was driving his vehicle and stopped at a traffic signal. He saw motorcycle riders and one pulled out a pistol. The man told us he then pulled out his pistol and fired in self-defense,” Lahore police chief, Aslam Tarin, told AFP.
“A double murder case has been registered against the American,” Rana Sanaullah, Punjab provincial law minister, told reporters. “It is clearly written in the case that the American shot dead two young men.”
The US embassy in Pakistan has confirmed that the American man involved is a consular worker.
Another Pakistani man was also killed shortly after the incident when a car from the US consulate in Lahore hit two pedestrians at the scene of the shooting.
The fatal crash resulted in a separate crime being placed against an employee of the consulate.
Scores of people took to the streets after the incidents in protest, setting tires on fire at the scene, blocking escape by the Americans.
In order to squelch potential tensions between the two countries, US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters, “There’s a Pakistan investigation [and] we will cooperate fully; we’ll work as hard as we can to explain that to the Pakistani people.”
Police are continuing their investigation while the American is held in custody.
January 27, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular |
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In recent months, seven South American nations have recognized Palestine “as a free, independent and sovereign state.”
Last week, following similar statements by representatives of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chile, the Foreign Ministry of Guyana declared that its decision to recognize Palestine was based on “Guyana’s long-standing and unwavering solidarity with, and commitment to, the just and legitimate aspirations of the people of Palestine for the exercise of their right to self-determination and to achieve a homeland of their own, independent, free, prosperous and at peace.” Paraguay and Peru are expected to recognize a Palestinian state in coming weeks.
During his first official visit to Palestine a few days ago, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reaffirmed Moscow’s commitment to an independent Palestinian state. “We have supported the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital since the last century, and we still support it,” Medvedev said, speaking in the West Bank town of Jericho.
In response to these recent developments, Ha’aretz reports that “a British Foreign Office minister said Thursday that only direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations can achieve peace, adding that the U.K would not recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state.” Parliamentary Under Secretary of State Alistair Burt, while in Jordan today, said that London could not “recognize a state that does not have a capital, and doesn’t have borders.”
The irony here is striking considering Israel has no internationally recognized capital and no internationally recognized borders.
When Israel unilaterally declared independence in mid-1948, a temporary capital was set up in Tel Aviv. The April 3, 1949 armistice agreement signed between Israel and Jordan on established geographical demarcation lines which divided Jerusalem into sectors each under Israel and Jordan control with a no-man’s-land between them. On December 9, 1949, the United Nations General Assembly upheld this demarcation status. Nevertheless, in defiance of the international community, Israel soon announced that Jerusalem was its official capital. Neither the United States nor Britain, along with the majority of the rest of the world, accepted this transfer and, to this day, do not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
In 1980, 13 years after Israel claimed to “annex” the whole of occupied Jerusalem into Israeli territory, the Israeli government passed the so-called “Jerusalem Law” which held that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel” and that “Jerusalem is the seat of the President of the State, the Knesset, the Government and the Supreme Court.”
Following this pronouncement, a number of governments, including France and Germany, issued statements condemning the measure and, in response, the government of the Netherlands moved its Consulate General from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution (UNSC Res. 478), for which the U.K. voted in favor, stating that “the enactment of the ‘basic law’ by Israel constitutes a violation of international law.” The resolution also denied acceptance of Israel’s decision and called upon all UN member states “hat have established diplomatic missions at Jerusalem to withdraw such mission from the Holy City.”
To this day, the United Kingdom does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, maintains that Israel has no sovereignty over Jerusalem, and retains its Embassy in Tel Aviv. In fact, there are currently no international embassies in Jerusalem (though, interestingly, both Bolivia and Paraguay have their embassies in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion).
Furthermore, Israel, in its eternal effort to expand its territory through illegal annexation, colonization, military conquest, and land theft, has no recognized borders. In 1937, over a decade before becoming Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion stated that a Jewish state could first be established in part of Palestine in order to set the stage for further expansion. “We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today,” he said, “but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.” The next year, he declared, “[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state – we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel.”
Even now, more than 70 years later, Israel’s current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, refuses to talk about establishing internationally recognized borders for the state of Israel.
Similarly, responding to his country’s recent recognition of Palestine, Gabriel Zaliasnik, president of Chile’s Jewish community, claimed he was “satisfied” with the wording of the proclamation because it did not refer to borders. “Israelis and Palestinians will eventually define all the core issues like borders,” he said. “For the Jewish people, Jerusalem and borders of the state of Israel can not be provided to third parties.”
The British government even withheld formal, de jure recognition of the state of Israel for nearly two years after its creation. On April 27, 1950, the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord William Henderson, legally recognized Israel in spite of the undetermined status of Jerusalem and the temporary nature of Israel’s borders, which are mentioned specifically in the statement of recognition.
Nevertheless, all these years later, despite having neither a capital nor borders, the British government still recognizes Israel as a sovereign, free, and independent state. In a blatant case of double standards, it now refuses to do so with regard to Palestine.
It appears that the shameful and duplicitous legacy of the Balfour Declaration has yet to let go its grip on the British Foreign Office.
January 21, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular |
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Haaretz reported yesterday that Israeli citizen Aleksander Cvetkovic, 42, is suspected of participating in the murder of at least 1,000 Bosnian Muslims at the Branjevo farm near the city of Zvornik.
Cvetkovic, 42, was arrested at the request of the Bosnia-Herzegovina government. He is suspected of participating in the murder of between 1,000 and 1,200 Bosnian Muslims at the Branjevo farm near the city of Zvornik. This was one of a series of mass murders over a 10-day period of the Bosnian War that are collectively known as the Srebrenica Massacre. In 2006, Cvetkovic immigrated to Israel with his Jewish wife and received citizenship.
Cvetkovic’s defense lawyer Vadim Shub said yesterday that Israel has never extradited citizens on charges of genocide, “and we do not think this is a proper place to begin.”
Shub obviously plucked the right string. He knows that the Israeli society is riddled with war criminals and mass murderers. Shimon Peres, Tzipi Livini, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak amongst many others, have far more blood on their hands than suspect Cvetkovic.
In remarks to Israel’s Army Radio, Shub insightfully suggested that extraditing Cvetkovic could set a precedent for the prosecution abroad, of numerous Israeli officials and military personnel.
The extradition request exposes a shockingly detailed description of some devastating murderous enthusiasm:
On July 16, 1995, the unit’s commander summoned eight soldiers, including Cvetkovic, and ordered them to the city of Pilica, where they were to take part in the execution of Bosnian Muslim prisoners held in a local school. Cvetkovic and the other soldiers were then taken to the Branjevo farm, where they waited for the prisoners to arrive.
The prisoners were brought to the farm on buses, some of them handcuffed and blindfolded. They were then taken off the buses in groups of ten and led a short distance away, where the soldiers lined them up and shot them with automatic weapons, including both machine guns and pistols.
After each initial barrage, the soldiers would walk among the victims, locate wounded survivors and finish them off. The Bosnian request asserts that at one point, Cvetkovic offered to use an M-84 machine gun to accelerate the killing. According to estimates by soldiers who took part in the killing, and by a few people who survived by pretending to be dead, the massacre went on for 10 hours.
It would be very interesting to examine the integrity of the so-called Israeli and Jewish Nazi-hunters behind the notorious ‘Operation Last Chance.’ Cvetkovic’s case may verify whether Israelis oppose genocide in general, or just crimes against Jews.
January 20, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Supremacism, Social Darwinism, War Crimes |
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Since its very inception in 1946, the United Nations Security Council demonstrated that it cannot be trusted as a podium of justice for the world countries, specially the oppressed and defenseless nations which eye the assistance and patronage of the powerful and economically influential nations for tackling their political predicaments and crises, and showed that it merely pursues the interests of its small bloc of five permanent members and undemocratically discriminates against a multitude of countries who don’t have a say in the policies which directly affects them.
United Nations Security Council is said to be one of the principal organs within the operative system of the United Nations and is “allegedly” charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. The authorities possessed by UNSC are the establishment of peacekeeping missions, imposition of international sanctions and authorization of military actions whenever necessary.
UNSC has five permanent members: China, Russia, Britain, France and the United States. What’s the reason? Why should the UNSC have permanent members which cannot be removed from power and must wield an unyielding and resolute authority to make decision over the international affairs? The answer is simple: these five countries are the victorious powers of the Second World War. Their victory in a war which took place and was concluded more than half a century ago minimally accounts for the eternality and endlessness of the power which they possess.
UNSC has also 10 non-permanent members which are elected on a rotating basis and through the vote of the members of United Nations General Assembly.
According to the Article 27 of the UN Charter, a draft resolution on non-procedural matters is adopted if nine or more of the fifteen members of the UNSC vote for the resolution, provided that none of the permanent members veto it.
What is the veto power? The answer is simple. It’s a discriminatory and biased privilege given to five countries to dictate their own will to some 200 countries as they wish. If a draft resolution, put forward by one of the fifteen members of the UNSC, is vetoed by any of the five permanent members, its adoption will be precluded. Veto power, seen by many as the most unfair and inequitable law of the world which enables a powerful and authoritative minority to determine the fate of an indispensable and subjugated majority, is unquestionably an insult to the insight and perception of the international community.
The permanent members of the UNSC are free to exercise their right of veto whenever they wish to, and nobody can question the legitimacy or justifiability of this approach. Several international organizations, lawyers and lawmakers, journalists, politicians and even statesmen have put forward alternatives to the right of veto wielded by the Big 5, but all of their efforts have been in vain, as the United Nations Security Council has showed the least flexibility with regards to the reformation of its autocratic and undemocratic structure.
Interestingly, all of the permanent members of the UNSC are the countries which we’ve long got used to hearing their claims of being the pioneers of democracy and freedom; nevertheless, in the very approach which they’ve implemented over the past fifty years and the manner of their interaction with the other countries of the world, one can hardly trace the footsteps of democratic and civilized behavior.
Unfortunately, the United Nations Security Council has become an instrument for the five superpowers to further their political will in the arena of international politics and alter the political equations according to their interests. They put forward a draft resolution whenever their interests are jeopardized and pressure the rest of members to vote for it, and veto the resolutions in which the interests of their allies are endangered.
Since its establishment up to now, the UNSC has adopted 1966 resolutions. Now the question lies: how many of these resolutions have become operative and come into effect? How many of these resolutions have been fair, lawful and defendable? Whose interests are met through these resolutions? Is the will of five nations more valuable or worthy than the will of 200 countries who don’t have access to UNSC?
Let’s bring up some examples. UNSC’s treatment with Iran is a notable and clear example of discrimination and prejudice exercised by the Security Council against an independent nation which wants to stride on its own path towards self-sufficiency and progress, free from the pressure of bullying powers. Since 2006 UNSC has adopted seven resolutions against Iran’s civilian nuclear activity and imposed four rounds of sanctions against the country for what it claims to be “Iran’s failure to halt its uranium enrichment program”. The imposition of four rounds of sanctions against an independent country which tries to achieve a scientific breakthrough is an ironic drama. All of the reports published by the International Atomic Energy Agency attest to the legality and rightfulness of Iran’s nuclear program. There has been not a single paper of evidence signifying that Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons. All the international community knows about Iran’s nuclear program is that Iran enriches uranium, and enriched uranium, to some certain extents, might be used to fuel a nuclear bomb! At the same time, the international community is well aware of the fact that the regime of Israel possesses 170 to 200 nuclear warheads, and this is a figure which is confirmed by the Federation of American Scientists, an organization within the country which is the staunchest ally of Israel. So why did the UNSC, being headed by the Big 5, impose four rounds of crippling sanctions and pass seven resolutions against Iran instead of condemning Israel and imposing sanctions on it?
Ironically, 118 members of the Non-Aligned Movement and 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Conference unconditionally backed Iran’s peaceful nuclear program; however, the country should face financial sanctions because 5 countries like this way. Is it fair, not? Five is bigger than 118!
World superpowers don’t tolerate the emergence of a new political and scientific power. Iran is an inspiring example for the developing world and should be obstructed at any rate, so the UNSC can effectively function as an impediment on the way of Iran and any country such as Iran which looks for improvement and progress.
However, UNSC’s treatment with Iran was a simple example of the discriminatory approach of this unfair and unjust organization with the world nations. Hundreds of unfair and unjust resolutions have been passed against the oppressed nations of the world, from the Latin America to Africa, adding to the pains and problems of these impoverished nations.
UNSC needs a drastic reformation. The veto power should be dissolved as soon as possible. There should be a permanent seat for the representative of the Islamic world with more than 1.5 billion population. The power to authorize sanctions or military expeditions should be handed over to the UN General Assembly rather than the Security Council. The members of UNSC should be held accountable for the decisions which they make. Their responsiveness to the international community should be built up. The impunity of UNSC members should be abolished. They should not be able to make any decision which they want and get away with it. It’s only with the implementation of such reforms that we can be hopeful for a successful future for the UNSC; otherwise, this organization will forever remain an organization of injustice and bias.
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– Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist
January 20, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes |
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Gabrielle Giffords, Tom Hurndall and Palestinian Children
There is something particularly horrifying when someone is shot in the head. Perhaps it’s the gruesome image, the destruction of the brain, the clear intent to kill. The recent shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is made even more nightmarish by the location of her devastating injury.
Those of us who focus on Israel-Palestine are acutely aware of this horror.
Several years ago, I was researching the cause of death of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces during the first months of the Second Intifadah, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. As I counted up the numbers, I was chilled to discover that the single most frequent cause of death in those beginning months was “gunfire to the head.”
In the past 10 years Israeli forces have killed at least 255 Palestinian minors by fire to the head, and the number may actually be greater, since in many instances the specific bodily location of the lethal trauma is unlisted. In addition, this statistic does not include the many more Palestinian youngsters shot in the head by Israeli soldiers who survived, in one form or another.
Below is a small sampling of those who died. (The term IDF stands for “Israeli Defense Forces,” although these forces are, in reality, an occupation army and are almost always deployed offensively; the incidents below took place on Palestinian territory):
Sami, 12, died of head wounds from IDF gunfire during a demonstration. Abdul, 9, was killed by IDF gunfire to his head during a funeral. Ala, 14, died of head wounds from IDF gunfire while on the terrace of his home one hour after injuring an Israeli soldier with a stone. Omar, 11, died of head wounds from IDF gunfire during a demonstration. Diya, 3 months, was killed, along with her older brother, by Israeli settler gunfire to her head and back. Bara, 10, was killed by IDF gunfire to his head while near his home. Ayman, 15, was killed by IDF tank fire to his head while farming. Khalil, 11, was killed by IDF tank fire to his head while playing with a friend. Rami, 13, was killed by IDF helicopter fire to his head while playing in front of his house. Yaser, 11, died of head wounds from an IDF rubber-coated bullet fired at close range during a demonstration…/1/
Imagine if these names were Bobby… Michael… Susan… Melissa… Jimmy…
and that the foreign troops killing them were invading Arizona, Connecticut, Ohio…
I remember seeing one little brain-dead boy when I was in Gaza in February of 2001; long before any rockets had been fired out of this already assaulted enclave. It’s not a sight you forget, regardless of the name or nationality.
A 2009 article in the UK Telegraph entitled “Bullets in the brain, shrapnel in the spine: the terrible injuries suffered by children of Gaza,” investigated a situation in which doctors at a hospital near Gaza were “almost overwhelmed by the number of Palestinian children needing treatment for bullet wounds to their heads.”/2/
The article began: “On just one day last week staff at the El-Arish hospital in Sinai were called to perform sophisticated CAT brain scans on a nine-year-old, two 10-year-olds and a 14-year-old – each of whom had a bullet still lodged in their brain, after coming under fire during the Israeli ground assault on Gaza.”
Asked about the nature of these shootings, a physician replied:
“I can’t precisely decide whether these children are being shot at as a target, but in some cases the bullet comes from the front of the head and goes towards the back, so I think the gun has been directly pointed at the child.”
Israeli soldiers in a group called “Breaking the Silence” have provided chilling testimonies about Israeli military culture; the titles alone tell a great deal. Following are a few:
“The battalion commander ordered us to shoot anyone trying to remove the bodies”, “The commander of the navy commandos put the muzzle of the rifle into the man’s mouth”, “They told us to shoot at anybody moving in the street”, “You can do whatever you feel like, nobody is going to question it.”/3/
Another person shot in the head by Israeli forces was 21-year-old Tom Hurndall. The anniversary of his death is this week. Hurndall, a student and photographer, had wanted to “make a difference” with his life. In 2003 he went to Gaza to join the nonviolence movement against Israeli aggression and to photograph what he saw. /4/
On April 11th he was nearby when a group of children who had been playing suddenly came under Israeli rifle fire. Most of the children fled, but three, aged four to seven, froze with fear. Hurndall dashed over, rushed one small boy to safety and returned for two little girls. Just as he was reaching to lift one up, an Israeli sniper shot him in the head.
Despite the urgency of his injury, Israeli officials delayed his transport to specialized medical care for over two and a half hours. A British television crew in the area filmed a powerful on-the-scene report that was aired on England’s Channel 4 /5/ but has never, to my knowledge, been shown on American television. Tom remained in a vegetative state for nine months, finally dying on Jan. 13t, 2004.
From the end of 2002 to the spring of 2003, Israeli forces killed four internationals and shot another in the face. One of the dead was a UN official, Iain Hook. As with Hurndall, Israeli forces retarded efforts to provide critical medical care. /6/ Another was filmmaker James Miller, who had been waving a white flag. He was shot in the throat. /7/
Two recent non-Palestinian victims shot in the head, in this case by high velocity tear gas canisters, are 37-year-old Tristan Anderson /8/ and 21-year-old Emily Henochowicz. /9/ Both have survived, Emily without an eye and Tristan in a wheelchair. Part of his right frontal lobe has been removed, he is partially paralyzed, blind in one eye, and it is unclear to what degree his cognitive abilities will return. After shooting him at close range, Israeli forces twice delayed his ambulance to a hospital.
It is difficult to know how many of the 45,000 Palestinian men, women, and children killed or injured by Israeli forces since September 29, 2000 /10/ have been shot in the head. Quite likely the number is staggering. Former Yale professor and author Mazin Qumsiyeh describes one:
[Mohammed] was 12 years old when Israeli soldiers shot him in the head with a rubber coated steel bullet, fragmenting his skull and damaging part of his brain. Ten years later, Israeli army officers severely beat and tortured him. He got married… the young couple received a blessing in the form of a donation of a very small plot of land from their uncle and they built a humble one room house… they lived in this house for 3 years…Then the Israeli army demolished the home saying that it was built without permit (Israel gave no permits for any houses in the village since the occupation began in 1967.) The family rebuilt the house but Israeli threats forced them to not live in it (Israel wants also some NIS 20,000 for the cost of destroying the home and wants to levy other fines on the family.) So the young family came to live in a small dwelling underground… /11/
A Dec. 23rd news story by the International Middle East Middle Center mentions another:
“After being brought to the hospital, 22-year old Salamah Abu Hashish succumbed to his wounds. He had been shot in the back by Israeli troops stationed at the border. Another of the victims was a 14-year old boy who was critically injured when he was shot in the head while collecting rubble near where Abu Hashish was tending his sheep.” /12/
The stories go on and on.
Gabrielle Giffords
Ironically, the American Congresswoman recently so tragically shot in the head has been extremely close to the Israel lobby, which has played a critical role in enabling the tragedies sketched above. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) works year after year to ensure that the approximately $7-8 million per day of American tax to Israel /13/ keeps flowing regardless of how many civilians its troops kill. /14/
Giffords has been known as “a safe pro-Israel vote in the House” /15/ and could be counted on to support AIPAC’s various initiatives to shield Israel from negative consequences for its ruthless and illegal use of American weaponry. /16/
She called a 2001 visit to Israel a turning point in her life (Israeli forces killed 103 children that year, 31 of them shot in the head) and wrote in 2006 (a year in which Israeli forces killed 665 Palestinians, 139 of them children, and Palestinians killed 23 Israelis, two of them children) that “the United States must do everything possible to secure Israel’s long-term security.” /17/ Palestinian victims – killed first and in far greater numbers – seem to have been invisible to her. /18/
Giffords, of course, wasn’t the only victim of the Tucson shooting; 14 were injured and six were killed. It is deeply saddening to read about the dead and to imagine the unending grief for their survivors. /19/ It is particularly difficult to view the sweet, smiling picture of nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green, knowing that her bright life is no longer before her.
It is equally tragic to read of nine-year-old Akaber, killed by Israeli gunfire to her head while riding in her uncle’s car to get medical stitches removed, and of the 29 other nine-year-olds killed by Israeli forces in the past decade, eight of them by Israeli gunfire to the head.
It is too late for Akabar, Diya, Mohammed, Tom, and the multitude of others. But there is hope that Gabrielle Giffords is going to survive. Let us pray that she recovers fully, that she is able to return to Congress, and that she then works to prevent others – including Palestinians – from being shot in the head.
We have better uses for our money than to fund atrocities.
Alison Weir is President of the Council for the National Interest and Executive Director of If Americans Knew, which has produced posters and cards for people to disseminate in commemoration of the seventh anniversary of Tom Hurndall’s killing (http://ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/hurndall-articles.html ) and about Palestinian children, (which contain a picture of the Gaza boy she saw). (http://ifamericansknew.org/about_us/opcard.html) She can be reached at alisonweir@ifamericansknew.org.
Notes and Citations
1. Remember These Children http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2000.html; Since Sept 29, 2000 Israeli forces have killed at least 1,452 Palestinian children; Palestinians have killed 124 Israeli children. Every single one of these deaths is a tragedy. 91 Palestinian children were killed before any Israeli children were killed. http://ifamericansknew.org/stats/children.html
2. “Bullets in the brain, shrapnel in the spine: the terrible injuries suffered by children of Gaza,” The Telegraph, Jan. 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/;
Related: “Doctor Decries Israeli Attacks,” video of CBS news report, Jan. 5, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev6ojm62qwA
3. “The Darkness to Expel! Israeli soldiers’ book ‘Breaking the Silence’ describes ‘routine’ oppression,” The Missing Headlines, Uri Avnery, Dec. 27, 2010 http://www.israel-palestinenews.org/
4. Section with articles on Tom Hurndall, If Americans Knew website http://ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/hurndall-articles.html
5. “Dispatches: The Killing Zone,” Sandra Jordan and Rodrigo Vasquez, UK Channel 4, May 19, 2003 http://ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/kzone.html
6. “Israel’s killing of British citizen Iain Hook, UNRWA’s Project Manager in Jenin
Caoimhe Butterly as told to Annie Higgins writing from Jenin Refugee Camp,” Live from Palestine, 22 November 2002 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article906.shtml
7. “Film-maker’s death ‘was murder’,” BBC News, April 4, 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/4876176.stm
8. “Facts about Tristan” http://justicefortristan.org/
9. “EXCLUSIVE…Emily Henochowicz Speaks Out: Art Student Who Lost Her Eye After Being Shot by Israeli Tear Gas Canister in West Bank Protest Discusses Her Life, Her Art, and Why She Plans to Return,” Democracy Now, Aug 5, 2010 http://www.democracynow.org
10. If Americans Knew website, from B’Tselem and Remember These Children http://ifamericansknew.org/
11. “The Story of a Palestinian Shot in the Head with a Rubber-Coated Steel Bullet by Israeli Occupation Soldiers,” Mazin Qumsiyeh, Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, September 20, 2010 http://www.aljazeerah.info/
12. “Shepherd killed; 3 injured in Northern Gaza,” IMEMC, Dec. 23, 2010 http://www.imemc.org/article/60257
13. “U.S. Military Aid and the Israel/Palestine Conflict,” If Americans Knew, from Congressional Research Service reports http://ifamericansknew.org/stats/usaid.html ;
“$3.4b in US military aid delayed: US military aid to Israel in 2011 is due to be largest amount Israel has ever received,” Globes Israel’s Business Arena, December 26, 2010 http://www.globes.co.il/
14. “The Israel Lobby,” London Review of Books, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, March 23, 2006 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby
15. “Gabrielle Giffords Shot in the Head,” The Forward, Jan 8, 2011 http://forward.com/articles/134547/
16. “Israel Violates Law on U.S. Weapons in Mideast,” IPS, Jan 17, 2006 http://ipsnews.net/
17. AIPAC Facebook post, Jan. 9, 2011, 3:35 pm http://www.facebook.com/aipac
“A Tribe of Candidates Leads Drive To Retake House for Democrats,” The Forward, Sept. 22, 2006: “…Several candidates who spoke with the Forward did say that they would be strong advocates for Israel in Congress. This is ‘an opportunity to send someone to Congress who’s going to work for Israel,’ Giffords told the Forward…” http://www.forward.com/articles/4693/
18. B’Tselem – Israeli Information Center for Human Rights http://www.btselem.org/
If Americans Knew http://ifamericansknew.org/
19. “Thumbnail sketches of those shot in Arizona,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 11, 2011 http://www.ajc.com/
January 14, 2011
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