As a lame duck, Grayson, do you think you could just quack once for Corrie, Henochowicz and Dogan?
By Susie Kneedler | Mondoweiss | December 7, 2010
Yesterday Mondoweiss posted about an appeal by Florida Congressman Alan Grayson at Huffpo to hear from the grassroots so as to reinvigorate the Democratic Party. Susie Kneedler sent Grayson, who was defeated last month, a letter.
Dear Representative Grayson,
Thanks for asking for ideas. As a life-long liberal Democrat, I ask you to defend liberal values and at long last rescue the Democratic Party from its ridiculous enslavement to the extremist right-wing government of Israel and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Otherwise, people of conscience will have no choice but to turn away from the “neo-conservative Dems” to form a truly progressive alternative, for propping up reactionary aims in one area perverts all. Two years ago, newly-elected President Barack Obama had a mandate to achieve an historic realignment of the United States against wars of aggression. Instead, he betrayed every campaign pledge by pursuing (neo-conservative, Pro-Israel) Bush-Cheney military and civic repression.
Please support equal rights and equal self-determination for the people of Palestine and Israel. Please cease your inexplicable support for Israeli-government Apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel. Please introduce a resolution to stop the U.S. government’s terrible donations of billions for illegal Israeli theft of Palestinian lands and water, as well as Obama’s unconscionable offer of $3 billion in new fighter aircraft, a gift that would enable an Israeli nuclear first-strike.
Remember our U.S. Founders’ cry: “No taxation without representation!” Please work for “one person, one vote” in all Palestine and Israel, rather than the current system in which Palestinians pay taxes not only without representation, but without services, and–most cruelly–for their own imprisonment.
Please stop catering to the Israel lobby’s fetish with making the world safe for Israeli expansion through its targeting of Iran, Syria, and Lebanon–after destroying Iraq. Iran, unlike Israel, has not attacked its neighbors–or the U.S. Israel, however, has done both. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress has disgraced itself and violated its oath of office by refusing to probe Israeli-government assaults on American citizens: the U.S.S. Liberty, Rachel Corrie, Tristan Anderson, Furkan Dogan, and Emily Henochowicz–as well as on countless Palestinian civilians.
Our representatives are obliged to defend our own people rather than the crimes of an alien nation. Rep. Grayson, while you remain in Congress–yet are free from the AIPAC puppeteers–you’re uniquely able to press for Congressional hearings on Israeli-government breaches of International Law, including the findings of the Goldstone Report about Israel’s bombardment of imprisoned Gaza.
Please ensure that representatives of Israel register as a agents of a foreign government, as required by law. Please investigate the Israeli government’s repeated transgressions of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. Please urge President Obama to push for Israeli compliance with International Law, rather than vetoing resolutions that properly condemn illegal Israeli aggression and human rights’ violations. Defend Americans by making friends with the world rather than siding with the Israeli war-machine.
I tell you sadly, Rep. Grayson,–as a former admirer–that flattering yourself that you are a “person with a conscience,” while defending Israeli ethnic cleansing under a mendacious claim of “security,” is beyond hypocrisy. It is a lie.
Please stand up for peace and peace of mind for all–not just for one religio-ethnic group of a foreign country. Please do your duty to defend the United States by loving all people in all places, including Palestine. Thank you.
Sincerely, Susie Kneedler
New Religious Ruling to Forbid Rental of Homes to Arabs
By Alessandra Bajec – IMEMC & Agencies – December 07, 2010
Dozens of top Israeli rabbis have signed on to a new ruling that would call on Jews not to rent homes to Arabs, Haaretz claimed.
The religious ruling comes a few months after a call signed by a group of 18 prominent rabbis, including the chief rabbi of Safed, which urged Jews to not rent or sell property to non-Jews.
Amongst those who signed on to the new ruling are the chief rabbis of Ramat Hasharon, Ashdod, Kiryat Gat, Rishon Letzion, Carmiel, Gadera, Afula, Nahariya, Herzliya, Nahariya and Pardes Hannah, and other cities.
Most of the signatories are from Safed, a city with an increasing number of Arab students enrolled at the town’s local college. The chief rabbi of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, the most prominent one to sign the call, has been criticized in the past for his inflammatory remarks against the Arab population.
Signatories of the ruling also appealed to the religious community to support Eliyahu, who could be tried for incitement against Arabs. Minority Affairs Minister, Avishay Braverman, has asked Justice Minister, Yaakov Neeman, to begin the process of suspending Rabbi Eliyahu immediately from his post of municipal rabbi, a position paid by public funds. “Moreover, as an appointee of the state, the rabbi is obligated not to work against it. His continued incitement against the Arabs in the Galilee does not serve the needs of the state,” Braverman stated.
The rabbis’ call, initially published a few months ago and reprinted in October, demands Jewish property owners reconsider renting their apartments to Arabs believing that it would deflate the value of their houses as well as those in the neighborhood.
“Their way of life is different than that of Jews…Among [the gentiles] are those who are bitter and hateful toward us and who meddle into our lives to the point where they are a danger.” the letter says.
The rabbis’ ruling also calls on neighbors of anyone renting or selling property to Arabs encouraging them to deliver warning notices to the general public and inform the community.
The ruling reads to that effect: “The neighbors and acquaintances [of a Jew who sells or rents to an Arab] must distance themselves from the Jew, refrain from doing business with him, deny him the right to read from the Torah, and similarly [ostracize] him until he goes back on this harmful deed.”
In May, the Anti-Deflamation League condemned Rabbi Eliyahu’s controversial call against selling or renting apartments to Arabs, and required him “to reverse the discriminatory ruling, which negates Israeli law.”
The Mayor of Safed, Ilan Shohat, also criticized Eliyahu’s ruling in a press release, saying that the city “respects every student, Jewish or Arab, who has chosen to study here.”
Considered one of Judaism’s four holy cities, Safed does not have a large Arab population.
Professor Richard Falk on Universal Jurisdiction
Dr. Hanan Chehata | Middle East Monitor | 03 December 2010
The Middle East Monitor (MEMO) hosted UN Special Rapporteur Prof. Richard Falk for a series of events this week including a parliamentary briefing on the issue of Universal Jurisdiction. The following is an extract from the talk he delivered in the House of Commons:
The issue of universal jurisdiction is of special interest at this time because of the apparent effort to give assurances to Israeli leaders that they won’t be subject to a legal process if they come here (to the UK); and that of course is in reaction to the problems that the former Foreign Minister [Tzipi] Livni had when she cancelled her trip [to the UK last year].
I think it is important to realise that the whole idea of universal jurisdiction is to take account of the weakness of international institutions in upholding international criminal law. There has always been the sense that national judicial institutions reinforce the norms of international law and take account of that institutional vacuum that exists in international society; this has been a historical practice in relation to piracy and to other kinds of international crimes that were a threat to the international community as a whole. The idea of Nuremberg after World War Two was that crimes against the peace, crimes against humanity and war crimes are also offences against the whole of international society. There is an interest on the part of all states in trying to implement those norms of international criminal law. The American Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg said the law the state applied to the German survivors of World War Two will not be respected unless those who sit in judgement uphold it in relation to their own behaviour; that it was a promise to the future.
It seems to me that if a country such as Britain, which has a proud constitutional tradition, reserves the implementation of international criminal law just for those the government doesn’t like at the time – in other words if international criminal law is used for prosecuting Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic but not the friends of the government – then you discredit, in a fundamental way, the rule of law which really does depend on equals being treated equally. If that is not done then double standards become very manifest; it also has the effect of saying that geopolitics and foreign policy always trump the law. Again, that is an unfortunate way of thinking in an increasingly globalised world where the discipline of international law is very important as a way of restraining and containing foreign policy within appropriate boundaries. I’ve said often that US foreign policy would be much more successful had the Americans chosen to respect international law in the last several decades; that most of the failures of American foreign policy have correlated with deviations from international legal norms. Hence, in that sense I think a lot is at stake with this whole idea of universal jurisdiction.
Putting it now in the Israel-Palestine context, universal jurisdiction is part of the struggle against impunity for the Israeli military and the country’s political leaders. That impunity has been possible both because Israel itself doesn’t impose accountability on those who perpetrate violations of international criminal law and because the US, and to some extent European countries, have given a geopolitical insulation to Israel in relation to its responsibilities as a sovereign state.
Thus, part of the wider stage of the conflict between Israel and Palestine is a shift in tactics on the Palestinian side much more in the direction of non-violent symbolic instruments of soft power. They include this much more robust global solidarity movement that has concentrated on building a boycott and divestment campaign which has been surprisingly effective, even in the United States. It has been increasingly a matter for university campuses, for instance, even at conservative universities. Part of this issue of impunity and accountability was also raised by the UN’s Goldstone report and by the international law panel appointed after the flotilla incident of May 31st;all of these issues converge to suggest that at this time the most effective way of implementing international law is both through the activism of civil society and through national legal institutions. One of the dimensions of the flotilla incident that is interesting and worth noticing is that Israel, for the first time, abandoned the claim that it was entitled to impose a comprehensive blockade. Everything the UN tried to do had had no effect, but this flotilla incident and the outrage associated with the way in which it was attacked led the Israeli leadership to say that henceforth humanitarian goods, fuel, food and medicine would be allowed to enter Gaza without restriction. Of course, even though Israel then “eased” the blockade it hasn’t ended it and the most recent statistics show that the blockade has actually been tightened in such a way that the people of Gaza get only about 28% of the goods that they were receiving prior to the blockade. So there is still very severe pressure on the Gazan population, which is forcing them to rely on some black market economy through the tunnels and which is generally an extension of the collective punishment of a whole population; that is a violation of Article 33 of the Geneva Convention that unconditionally prohibits collective punishment as an instrument of occupation.
Following the main text of his talk Prof. Falk and the MPs discussed a number of issues in addition to universal jurisdiction, including the issue of the illegal arrest of Palestinian children.
Cutting the Deficit: Sacrificing Workers to Save the Rich
By James Petras | 11.28.2010
“There’s class warfare, all right, but its my class, the rich class that’s making war and we’re winning” – Warren Buffet
The most important and popular social and tax programs in the United States are threatened by a self-styled “Bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform”. Appointed by President Obama on February 18, 2010, co-chaired by two longstanding champions of Wall Street: ex Senator Simpson (R, WY) and former Clintonite White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. The Commission Report issued November 10 proposes to slash social security payments, reducing recipients to poverty, raise the retirement age to 69 ensuring that millions of workers will die before they can retire, or enter retirement in ill health; reduce or freeze cost of living increases through inflation indexes which understate by half the rises in food, gas, hospital and education. The Commission proposes deep cuts in Medicare, increased Medicaid co-pays and slashing $54 billion from graduate medical education. The Commission proposes to eliminate tax breaks including deductions for home mortgage interest payments while taxing employer provided medical insurance.
The same Commission Report proposes to reduce capital gains and income taxes for the rich by up to 24%.
President Obama and the Republican leadership praised the Commission and wants “to give them space to work on it”.
The so-called crisis of Social Security is a result of the Republican and Democratic governments siphoning off payments into the general fund. The forthcoming shortfall (2030) can be easily remedied by lifting the payroll tax ceiling, for the rich, taxing all earned income. Medical costs can be reduced by 50% by replacing the for profit corporate health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations with a non-profit national health system, similar to successful programs in Europe and Canada.Both Medical plans and Social Security can be easily funded by imposing a 1% sales tax On the sale of stocks and bonds.
The deficit proposals put forth by Obama’s Bipartisan Commission threaten to push the one-third of retirees who depend mainly on their social security payments into the food kitchens or destitution. The added cost and reductions in health care will increase the mortality rate among working families. The increase in retirement age will result in “work until you die”, with no time for leisure, travel or grandchildren. It is time to send a message to Washington: cut Social Security and Medicare and home interest deductions and you will visit Washington on your own time.
Wake up: Arbitrary rule is all around us
By James Laxer | Rabble | November 29, 2010
We live in a dangerous, disordered time. The flashing signs are there to warn us that, both at home and abroad, those who are at the helm of the socio-political order do not preside over outcomes that make even a modicum of sense. Arbitrariness is the order of the day.
We see this alarming reality in decisions being made close to us as well as in other parts of the world. Here are six stories, some more important than others, that convey the capricious disorder of the times in which we live.
1. In Ontario, the Special Investigations Unit that reviews complaints against police has released a report that concludes that in two specific cases during the G20 summit in Toronto last June, excessive force was used. But just when it appears that the system might work and deliver some semblance of justice, that hope is instantly dashed.
SIU director Ian Scott has concluded that the offending officers cannot be identified and, therefore, cannot be charged. In the case of one man who was arrested, and sustained a fracture below his right eye, the SIU determined that the police used excessive force. But the badge number on the man’s arrest sheet did not correspond to the assigned badge number of any Toronto police officer. Even Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair has acknowledged that up to 90 officers were not wearing their name-tags during the summit weekend. He says he will discipline the officers who chose to make themselves unidentifiable, but they are not being charged with an offence.
The only conclusion we can reasonably draw is that a large number of officers were out of control during the policing of the summit. Because the police won’t come forward to testify against their fellow officers, the cover up works. Officers who assault people on the street, even when the assaults are videoed, get away with it because follow officers won’t say a word against them. When the police act more like a gang of thugs than like professionals who uphold a set of standards, they become untrustworthy, a force that neither serves nor protects.
And what do those in charge do about this? Next to nothing.
2. A shocking video plainly shows Ottawa police officers violently subduing and strip searching a woman, in an incident that occurred two years ago.
Stacy Bonds, whose only crime was to ask police officers why they had stopped her in the first place was taken to a police station where a male officer cut off her shirt and bra. We only found out about this disgraceful incident because a judge was appalled by the behaviour of the police and ordered the public release of the video. After he watched the security camera video, Ontario Court Justice Richard Lajoie stayed charges against Bonds for assaulting police and condemned the police behavour as a “travesty” and an “indignity.”
What was the crown thinking when it went ahead with the prosecution of Stacy Bonds in this incredible case, in which she was the victim and the police were the perpetrators? In how many instances, where there is no video and no judge who blows the whistle, do prosecutors go along with brutal cops in bringing charges against wholly innocent people?
Now, we are going to get an internal investigation into this incident, an investigation that could take months. What will happen to the officers — a slap on the wrist?
3. The next issue takes us into the realm of national politics.
Why did the federal Liberal Party aid and abet the Harper government’s decision to extend Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan beyond July 2011?
Instead of holding the Conservative government to account for doing a U Turn that will keep close to one thousand Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan after the date when parliament had decided to withdraw them, the official opposition has joined forces with the party in power.
Canadians have long since concluded that the war in Afghanistan is not about a struggle for the rule of law, the rights of women, and democracy, but is being waged on behalf of a corrupt regime that is closely tied to warlords and the drug trade, a regime whose hold on power was sustained in a deeply flawed election. At least, with the passage of time, Canadians had a right to anticipate an end to a mission that has seen 153 of our soldiers killed and billions of tax dollars poured into a bottomless pit.
Now an understanding between the Conservatives and Liberals — a deal in all but name — has arbitrarily extended a mission whose architects know full well that it is military in character. Soldiers, who are posted in a theatre of war, even if they are involved in training, stand in harm’s way. The price of this mission, in blood and treasure, has already been too high as far as Canadians are concerned.
Behind closed doors, Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae have made a mockery of the Canadian parliamentary process.
4. Abroad there are stories that illustrate what happens when the people in charge are so rich that they simply have no contact with everyday human reality.
New York’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg has appointed a millionaire media executive, Cathleen P. Black, as chancellor of New York City’s public schools, the largest public school system in the United States. Black, a corporate executive and magazine publisher, has no educational experience whatsoever. Under New York State law, a candidate such as Black, who has no qualifications for the job, requires a waiver from Education Commissioner David Steiner to obtain the position. The law states that a waiver can be issued only to those “whose exceptional training and experiences are the substantial equivalent of such [educational] requirements and qualify such persons for the duties of a superintendent of schools.”
Not only does Bloomberg’s appointee lack any such “exceptional” training, she did not attend public school herself and sent her own children to private boarding schools in Connecticut.
Continuing the control of public schools by elites who have established about one hundred privately run charter schools in New York in recent years, means more opportunities for profit-making educational institutions, more years of crowded classrooms in public schools, and a future in which those at the helm have no clue about the needs of students whose families are bearing the burdens of the economic crisis.
Let’s see if Black gets the waiver.
5. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, a coalition government is in charge, led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, the descendant of a long line of financiers who intermarried with royal and aristocratic bluebloods. Cameron attended Eton and Oxford.
Surrounded by “Old Etonians” on the front bench of his government, Cameron has slashed public sector spending in the most drastic cuts in Britain in half a century. Over the next four years, the UK government will axe half a million jobs from the public payroll, while sharply reducing welfare payments and trebling the tuition fees of university students. The draconian cuts to employment in the public sector are certain to lead to a loss of private sector jobs dependent on the demand formerly generated by the spending of those whose public sector jobs are being eliminated.
In Britain, the income gap between the rich and the rest of the population is returning to levels not seen since the end of the First World War in 1918. The chief executives of companies listed on the UK’s FTSE 100 are now annually paid an average of 4.9 million pounds, an increase in one year of more than fifty per cent. That equates to two hundred times the average wage in the country.
While wage and salary earners are facing very tough times, the wealthy whose economic thinking caused the crash, are doing better than ever.
But don’t imagine that David Cameron isn’t thinking of the mass of the population. He’s declared that the day that William and Kate tie the knot at Westminster Abbey next spring will be a national holiday. The man has a heart.
6. Last week, the United States celebrated Black Friday, the day that retail companies hopefully move over to the black from the red as customers charge through the doors to get their hands on the goodies. Black Friday is now so important that the day notionally begins earlier in the week, before the turkey is served and while it is being served, and it continues all weekend long and into the following Monday.
It took decades for Americans to amass personal debts that today amount to about $12 trillion. The indebtedness of Americans as individuals and the indebtedness of the U.S. government — now about $14 trillion — were hugely important factors in triggering the economic crisis in which the world is mired.
But to save America and its economy, the debt-ridden American consumer needs to be prodded, cajoled, tempted, beseeched and implored to head for the malls to spend, spend, spend. A disproportionate amount of the goods they buy are made in China and their heroic spending efforts will drive up the nation’s trade deficit and its indebtedness.
What we are seeing is lemmings stampeding for the cliff. Call it Lemmingnomics.
These stories of arbitrary rule and of regimes in which the wealthy casually make decisions that hurt most of the population are linked. Brutal cops, governments that violate the norms of parliamentary government and leaders who enrich their own class of people at the expense of everyone else are the consequence of the shocking inequality of our age. The idea of citizenship is in retreat, democracy is declining and money is calling the shots.
Time to do something about it?
Ending Africa’s Hunger Means Listening to Farmers
By Stephen Leahy | IPS | October 16, 2010
NAGOYA, Japan – Africa is hungry – 240 million people are undernourished. Now, for the first-time, small African farmers have been properly consulted on how to solve the problem of feeding sub-Saharan Africa. Their answers appear to directly repudiate a massive international effort to launch an African Green Revolution funded in large part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Instead of new hybrid seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides, family farmers in West Africa said they want to use local seeds, avoid spending precious cash on chemicals and most importantly to direct public agricultural research to meet their needs, according to a multi-media publication released on World Food Day (Oct. 16).
“There is a clear vision from these small farmers. They are rejecting the approach of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa,” said report co-author Michel Pimbert of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a non-profit research institute based in London.
“These were true farmer-led assessment where small farmers and other food producers listened and questioned agricultural and other experts and then came up with their own recommendations,” Pimbert told IPS.
“Food and agriculture policy and research tend to ignore the values, needs, knowledge and concerns of the very people who provide the food we all eat — and often serve instead powerful commercial interests such as multinational seed and food retailing companies,” he said.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, backs the need for a fundamental shift in food and agricultural research to make it more democratic and accountable to society.
“I applaud the efforts described here to organise citizen’s juries and farmers’ assessments of agricultural research in West Africa,” writes De Schutter in a forward to the IIED publication titled “Democratising Agricultural Research for Food Sovereignty in West Africa”.
The publication includes video clips and audio files that feature the voices and concerns of food producers from across the region.
About half a billion Africans depend on small-scale farming of less than two hectares. Most of the smallholder farmers are women. There is serious concern about the direction of Africa’s public agriculture research, which is mainly funded by donor countries. Funders exert control over what type of research they fund and that almost always reflects a northern science and technology bias favouring new hybrid seeds that must be purchased every year and chemical fertilisers, said Pimbert.
To find out what smallholder farmers want African public agricultural research to do for them, independent farmer-led assessment of the current agricultural research was done in Mali. Those findings fed into two citizen/farmer juries comprised of 40 to 50 ordinary farmers and other food producers. Each jury addressed specific issues such as what kind of agricultural research smallholders want and how food and agricultural research can be more democratic.
The jurors listened to and questioned a wide range of expert witnesses from Africa and Europe. They considered the evidence presented in light of their experiences and agreed on a series of recommendations for their respective governments. Those included direct farmer involvement in setting the public research agenda and strategic priorities, research into traditional varieties and ecological farming, and the idea that such research should be funded by their own governments not outsiders as is the case presently in West Africa.
It’s a fully open and participatory process, said Pimbert, who has been involved in similar processes in India and South America. Jurors are carefully selected to reflect a broad range of localities, variety of knowledge and gender. An independent oversight panel with representatives from a number of countries such as Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger and Benin acts like election observers to make sure the entire process is fair and open.
“This has never happened in West Africa before. For that matter, ordinary farmers in Canada or the U.S. have never been asked what they want public ag research to do for them,” he said.
Farmers and “ordinary” citizens directly deciding what kind of agricultural research they want is vital for achieving food security, local livelihoods and human well being, and resilience to climate change, Pimbert said.
Following the food crisis in 2008 there is a major push for a “new green revolution” in Africa, championed by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) a $400 million effort headed by Kofi Annan, former secretary- general of the United Nations and funded by the Gates Foundation and the Rockrfeller Foundation. AGRA aims to double or quadruple the yields of smallholder farms.
“We’re are choosing to invest in what we believe will work,” said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, a member of the AGRA board and president of the Global Development Program, which is one of three focus areas for the Gates Foundation.
AGRA is putting its funding in the development of new seed varieties such as drought-tolerant maize, improving soil fertility and market access and farmer education. They are not presently funding genetically engineered crops.
“Farmers want ag research that will help them feed their families and have extra to sell in the market,” Burwell said in an interview. “Our consultants have been out there talking to farmers. We’re attempting to include the voice of farmer.”
For many, the AGRA approach is a downscaled version of U.S. and European agricultural production, with its central focus on boosting yields with hybrid seeds and fertiliser.
AGRA’s objective seems to be to make “farmers dependent on inputs, dependent on markets, instead of the farmers being in charge,” said Hans Herren, president of the Millennium Institute in Virginia. Herren was the World Food Prize winner in 1995, and is credited with implementing a biological control programme that saved the African cassava crop, averting a food crisis.
“We have seen from the example in the U.S. and EU where this dependency leads…fewer farmers, lower prices for farmers… more jobless people,” said Herren, who was co chair of International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).
The three-year IAASTD concluded the best hope for the feeding the world was with agro-ecosystems that married food production with ensuring water supplies remain clean, preserving biodiversity, and improving the livelihoods of the poor. The transformation that African agriculture needs is not more large-scale industrial farm production relying on outside inputs of fertiliser but with small farmers practising a multifunctional agro-ecosystem approach, Herren said.
“Smallholders and their authentic organisations (co-ops, small rural technical schools, and the like) have shown that strengthened agro-ecological approaches can produce adequately,” said Philip Bereano of the University of Washington in Seattle.
AGRA has failed to “consult with smallholders, listen to their advice, and follow their suggestions,” said Bereano in an email from Nagoya, Japan. Bereano is involved with a citizen’s group called AGRA Watch, which says major funders from the North are pushing an industrial agri-business development model on Africa.
Agribusiness is setting itself up as the solution to the “food problem” and many governments are listening because the 2008 food crisis shocked them, said Pimbert. “Africa has enormous quantities of land and resources…and now there is a stampede to lock those up.”
AGRA, many scientists and large NGOs believe the business approach of high-technology and public-private partnerships is the way to feed Africa, they can’t accept the smallholders’ worldview, he said. What will happen instead is that smallholders will buy the new hybrid seed, fertiliser and pesticide on credit, eventually be forced off their land to repay their debts and end up in the cities, while large corporate style farms will consolidate smallholder land.
“This is what happened to many of India’s smallholders,” Pimbert said.
Global food justice
With more than one billion people around the world considered overweight, why are so many others still starving and struggling to fill their plates?
Israel First, America’s National Security Second
By Maggie Sager | Resisting Occupation | November 23, 2010
In one of the United States Congress’ most recent displays of “Israel First” policy, 39 Representatives, all democrats, have requested that President Obama pardon Jonathan Pollard, an American convicted of spying for the State of Israel in 1987. Pollard is currently serving a life sentence for his crimes.
According to American Muslims for Palestine:
Pollard, who was a civilian research analyst with high security clearance for the U.S. Navy, had agreed to spy for Israel for 10 years in exchange for more than $500,000. According to a January 1999 article in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh, Pollard “betrayed elements of four major American intelligence systems.” Pollard caused extensive damage to U.S. intelligence and U.S. national security because of the nature of the highly sensitive documents he sold to Israel.
In many cases, Israel bartered top-secret U.S. intelligence documents it received from Pollard with the Soviet Union, in exchange for Soviet Jewish colonial emigration to historic Palestine, Hersh wrote. [1]
During sentencing the prosecutor, in compliance with an agreement in which Pollard pled guilty, asked for “only a substantial number of years in prison”; Judge Aubrey Robinson, Jr., not being obligated to follow the recommendation of the prosecutor, and after hearing a “damage-assessment memorandum” from the Secretary of Defense, imposed a life sentence. [2]
In the letter sent to President Obama, the Representatives explain that “such an exercise of the clemency power would not in any way imply doubt about [Pollard’s] guilt, nor cast any aspersions on the process by which he was convicted.”
This seems paradoxical. According these representatives, Pollard is indeed guilty of the charges against him. What’s more, they find nothing to disparage about the proceedings which resulted in his sentence. So why must Obama set him free?
Because, you see, pardoning him would correct the disparity “between the amount of time Mr. Pollard has served and the time that has been served — or not served at all — by many others who were found guilty of similar activity on behalf of nations that, like Israel, are not adversarial to us.”
It is true that Pollard is the only American serving a life sentence for spying on behalf of a neutral country (only 15% of all convicted spies are attempting to transmit information to a neutral country). However, according to a recent study which examined every espionage conviction in the United States from 1947-2001, at least 13% of all spies convicted were sentenced to life in prison, while another 22% were sentenced to between 20 and 40 years. [3] Could it perhaps be that the damage that resulted from his crimes was severe enough to render the judge’s harsh decision? For the answer, we must look at the methodology judges use to determine sentencing.
The study’s authors reveal: “Prison sentences for espionage or attempted espionage varied depending on factors such as the importance of information lost, the length of time of the spying, the venue of the trial, the then-current policies of the federal government on espionage prosecution, the context of the time (e.g. wartime or peace, chilly Cold War or detente) and the then-current relationship of the United States with the country that received the information.”
Thus, the relationship between Israel and the United States was only one component determining Pollard’s sentence. With the information at hand, namely the fact that as stated above, Israel was at the time handing Pollard’s stolen documents off to the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, and having just heard the damage-assessment memorandum by the Secretary of Defense, Judge Robinson issued his sentence. This sentence was the result of the evidence brought against Pollard as well as his own confession. He was convicted based on the severity of his crime and in the midst of one of the largest resurgences of espionage in American history (see Keeping the Nation’s Secrets by the Stilwell Commission, published in 1985).
In this way, seeking “clemency for Mr. Pollard as an act of compassion justified by the way others have been treated by our justice system” is ridiculous. While the United States is not at war with Israel, Pollard’s sentencing in relation to the severity of his crime per the Secretary of Defense’s testimony rendered him the same sentence as at least 16 other spies.
Do these Representatives offer any evidence, other than comparisons to (what must be) lesser crimes by other individuals, to justify commuting Pollard’s sentence? Do they take issue with the denials of appeal made by appellate courts in the case or the merits thereof? Do they contend that Pollard was harshly sentenced because of some prejudice harbored by the presiding judge? No. They simply think that his incarceration, which has only strengthened his ties to Israel (he became a citizen while in prison), will somehow serve as a deterrent.
Where is the logic in such a stance? In the name of security, the US government will eavesdrop on its own citizens. In the name of security, the US government will torture foreigners, holding them without charge or trial and bomb Pakistani civilians with drones. In the name of security, the US government will grope and prod passengers as they board airplanes if they refuse to be seen naked through scanners. And yet, in the same breath, elected representatives who quietly reauthorized provisions of the PATRIOT act in February 2010 would argue for the rights of a confessed, convicted spy passing intelligence secrets, and do so in the name of justice and compassion!
Do these Representatives know anything about justice at all? If they do, why do they feel compelled to stand up to perceived injustice in the name of an avowed Israeli spy and yet remain utterly mute when it comes to the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, at least 55% of whom do not have sufficient evidence against them to determine that they have committed any hostile acts against the United States, at least 40% of whom have no definitive connection with Al Qaeda and least 18% of whom have no definitive connection with Al Qaeda or Taliban? [4]
Is it because they only care about Americans? Then why haven’t any of them stepped up to defend Rachel Corrie, murdered by an IDF bulldozer as she non-violently attempted to block it from destroying a Palestinian home? Why haven’t they petitioned Obama to seek justice for Furkan Doğan, a Turkish American who was shot by the IDF at point blank range while lying on his back? Why hasn’t congress properly investigated the death of 37 American Citizens aboard the USS Liberty which was attacked by Israel in 1967?
Such a request by House democrats is an insult to our justice system, and one that should not be tolerated. The truth of the matter is that Pollard, if granted clemency, will be a benefactor of the United States’ “special relationship” with Israel, a relationship that apparently knows no bounds.
Yet this request is altogether unsurprising in light of Israel’s consistent method of portraying itself in a completely sympathetic light. Israelis are not aggressors, but victims of aggression. They are not bigoted, but victims of anti-semetism. They are not lawbreakers, but victims of the justice system.
Americans suffer every day at the hands of abstract, fleeting “threats to national security” and yet when our national security has been conclusively violated…this is what our congressmen come up with. To buy into such a subversion of moral decency is utterly treacherous.
[1] American Muslims for Palestine, 39 Congressmen advocating for release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, November 2010 (Accessed 11/23/10)
[2] Best, Jr., Richard A.; Clyde Mark, Jonathan Pollard: Background and Considerations for Presidential Clemency” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress., January 2001 (Accessed 11/23/10)
[3] PERSEREC, Espionage Against the United States by American Citizens 1947-2001, July 2002 (Accessed 11/23/10)
[4] Amnesty International, Guantanamo Bay Fact Sheet (Accessed 11/23/10)
Israel harbors fugitive wanted for war crimes in Colombia
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News – November 20, 2010
International fugitive, arms trader and death squad leader Yair Klein has arrived in Israel a free man, despite warrants for his arrest in Colombia for training the death squads of the notorious Medellin drug cartel.
Klein was captured in Russia and held in a Russian prison awaiting extradition to Colombia when Israeli authorities intervened to secure his release to Israel, where he will be harbored illegally by Israeli authorities.
The Israeli government has a history of harboring fugitives – one example is the case of US citizen Samuel Sheinbein, who brutally murdered and dismembered a man in the suburbs of Washington DC, then escaped to Israel in the late 1990s.
In Klein’s case, the evidence is substantial that he trained and assisted death squads in torture and murder techniques in Colombia. These death squads were part of the Medellin drug cartel, run by Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha.
Klein has also worked as an international arms dealer, and served a sentence in Sierra Leone in 1999 for illegally smuggling weapons to right-wing guerrilla armies. This took place in the height of a brutal war over resources in which guerrillas recruited child soldiers and engaged in systematic chopping off of limbs of victims throughout Sierra Leone.

