Supremacism, Social Darwinism

Jews are eight times over-represented in UK parliament

At that rate Muslims would have 200 seats

By Stuart Littlewood | 21 May 2010

“Proportional Representation” is a big buzz-word in the UK these days. It implies fairer voting and fairer government. It is claimed to give minorities a better chance of being heard and therefore, they say, it should be incorporated into the “new politics” our shiny new coalition government has promised us.

But one minority group needs no help in that direction.

The Jewish Chronicle has published a list of Jewish MPs in Britain’s parliament. It names 24 – Conservatives 12, Labour 10 and Liberal Democrats two.

I thought it was more. But let us for the sake of argument accept the Jewish Chronicle’s figures.

The Jewish population in the UK is 280,000 or 0.46 per cent. There are 650 seats in the House of Commons so, as a proportion, Jewish entitlement is only three seats.

With 24 seats they are eight times over-represented. Which means, of course, that other groups must be under-represented, including Muslims.

The UK’s Muslim population is 2.4 million or 3.93 per cent. Their proportional entitlement is 25 seats but they have only eight – a serious shortfall. If Muslims were over-represented to the same extent as the Jews (i.e. eight times) they’d have 200 seats.

All hell would break loose.

Yes sir, in the name of fairness there’s plenty of work here for proportional representation. Bring it on!

Meanwhile two Jews – the Miliband brothers – are battling for the leadership of the beaten Labour Party. Ed Miliband (former energy secretary) is 40 and David Miliband (former foreign secretary) 44, both far too young to lead this country, especially when neither has achieved anything worthwhile in the real world outside politics.

It’s a reflection of the generally poor calibre of MP talent when such people, although academically gifted, can rise to the top. And indulging the young has had disastrous results. Think of Blair and the cult of arrogant youth he brought onto the political scene. Men of 40, especially politicians, think they know everything. They know nothing, as David Miliband (who backed the Iraq war) demonstrated in his blundering approach to the Middle East in Gordon Brown’s government.

Jewish over-representation is only part of our problem. An even bigger worry is the huge number of non-Jew Zionists that have stealthily infiltrated every level of political and institutional life. They swell the pro-Israel lobby to such a phenomenal extent that it accounts for an enormous 80 per cent of the Conservative Party, which is now in power with the Liberal Democrats in tow as their junior coalition partner.

Too many pro-Israel MPs speak and act as if they would rather wave the Israeli flag than the Union Jack. These “Israel-firsters” refuse to condemn the illegal occupation, the racist policies and the war crimes. As Israel’s interest often clashes with Britain’s, their defence of the indefensible inevitably raises questions about loyalty, a deadly serious issue given the number of Zionists in public life.

And still we are cursed with the cult of youth. Cameron, 43, had no significant achievement under his belt but was able to manoeuvre himself, with the help of Jewish backers, into Britain’s prime minister slot. He is also a self-declared Zionist and voted for the war in Iraq, so how can he be trusted?

William Hague, who has been a member of Conservative Friends of Israel since he was 15, is the new foreign secretary. Alistair Burt, an officer of the Parliamentary group of Conservative Friends of Israel, has been appointed Foreign Office minister for the Middle East, and David Lidington is now the Foreign Office minister for Europe. He has spoken of being a “staunch defender” of the State of Israel. So the stooges are safely installed and activated.

Nick Clegg, Cameron’s Liberal Democrat coalition partner, is also 43. He at least had a useful career before becoming an MP, as did his right-hand man Vince Cable, a person of more mature years and far greater stature than the two coalition leaders put together.

In their “programme for government” our new coalition has precious little to say about the stolen Holy Land except “We will push for peace in the Middle East, with a secure and universally recognized Israel living alongside a sovereign and viable Palestinian state”. Note it’s a secure Israel and only a viable Palestinian state, not the other way round or even equal status. And there’s no mention of action to end the Gaza blockade which Clegg called for in the Guardian last December.

So, stooging for Israel has made the transition from Labour to the Conservative-led coalition with seamless smoothness. It is business as usual between Britain and the rogue state’s amoral thugs, as Sir Gerald Kaufman calls them.

Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.

May 20, 2010 Posted by aletho | Supremacism, Social Darwinism | 2 Comments

The Vicious Circle of Debt and Depression

It is a Class War

By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH | May 15, 2010

Never before has so much debt been imposed on so many people by so few financial operatives—operatives who work from Wall Street, the largest casino in history, and a handful of its junior counterparts around the world, especially Europe.

External sovereign debt, as well as occasional default on such debt, is not unprecedented [1]. What is rather unique in the case of the current global sovereign debt is that it is largely private debt billed as public debt; that is, debt that was accumulated by financial speculators and, then, offloaded onto governments to be paid by taxpayers as national debt. Having thus bailed out the insolvent banksters, many governments have now become insolvent or nearly insolvent themselves, and are asking the public to skimp on their bread and butter in order to service the debt that is not their responsibility.

After transferring trillions of dollars of bad debt or toxic assets from the books of financial speculators to those of governments, global financial moguls, their representatives in the State apparatus and corporate media are now blaming social spending (in effect, the people) as responsible for debt and deficit!

President Obama’s recent motto of “fiscal responsibility” and his frequent grumbles about “out of control government spending” are reflections of this insidious strategy of blaming victims for the crimes of perpetrators. They also reflect the fact that the powerful financial interests that received trillions of taxpayers’ dollars, which saved them from bankruptcy, are now dictating debt-collecting strategies through which governments can recoup those dollars from taxpayers. In effect, governments and multilateral institutions such as the IMF are acting as bailiffs or tax collectors on behalf of banksters and other financial wizards.

Not only is this unfair (it is, indeed, tantamount to robbery, and therefore criminal), it is also recessionary as it can increase unemployment and undermine economic growth. It is reminiscent of President Herbert Hoover’s notorious economic policy of cutting spending during a recession, a contractionary fiscal policy that is bound to worsen the recession. It is, indeed, a recipe for a vicious circle of debt and depression: as spending is cut to pay debt, the economy and (therefore) tax revenues will shrink, which would then increase debt and deficit, and call for more spending cuts!

Spending on national infrastructure, both physical (such as roads and schools) and social infrastructure (such as health and education) is key to the long-term socioeconomic developments. Cutting public spending to pay for the sins of Wall Street gamblers is bound to undermine the long-term health of a society in terms of productivity enhancement and sustained growth.

But the powerful financial interests and their debt collectors seem to be more interested in collecting debt claims than investing in economic recovery, job creation or long-term socioeconomic development. Like most debt-collecting agencies, the IMF and the states serving as banksters’ bailiffs through their austerity programs may shed a few crocodile tears in sympathy with the victims’ of their belt-tightening policies; but, again like any other debt-collecting agents, they seem to be saying: “sorry for the loss of your job or your house, but debt must be collected—regardless”!

A most outrageous aspect of the debt burden that is placed on the taxpayers’ shoulders since 2008 is that most of the underlying debt claims are fictitious and illegitimate: they are largely due to manipulated asset price bubbles, dubious or illegal financial speculations, and scandalous conversion of financial gamblers’ losses into public liability.

As noted earlier, onerous austerity measures to force the public to pay the largely fraudulent external debt is not new. Benignly calling such oppressive measures “Structural Adjustment Programs,” the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have for decades imposed them on many less developed countries to collect debt on behalf of international financial titans.

To “help” the indebted nations craft debt-servicing arrangements with external creditors, the IMF imposed severe conditions on the way they managed their economies—just as it is now imposing (in collaboration with the European and American bankers) those austerity policies on the debtor nations in Europe. The primary purpose of such restrictive conditions is to divert or transfer national resources from domestic use to external creditors. These include not only belt-tightening measures to cut social spending and/or raise taxes, but also selling-off public enterprises, national industries, and future tax revenues.

Calling such fire-sale privatization deals “briberization,” the ex-World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz revealed (in an interview with the renowned investigative reporter Greg Palast) how finance ministers and other bureaucratic authorities in the debtor countries often carried out the Bank’s demand to sell off their electricity, water, transportation and communication companies in return for some apparently irresistible sweetener. “You could see their eyes widen” at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billions off the sale price of national assets [2].

The IMF/World Bank/WTO “structural adjustment programs” also include neoliberal policies of “capital-market liberalization.” In theory, capital market deregulation is supposed to lead to the inflow and investment of foreign capital, thereby bringing about industrialization, job creation and economic expansion. In practice, however, financial liberalization often leads to more capital outflow (or capital flight) than inflow. To the extent that there is an inflow of capital it is not so much productive or industrial capital as it is unproductive or speculative capital (also known as “hot money”): massive amounts of capital that is constantly in transit across international borders in pursuit of real estate, currency, or interest rate speculation.

To attract foreign capital to the relatively vulnerable markets of debtor nations, the IMF frequently recommends drastic increases in interest rate. Higher interest rates are, however, both anti-developmental and detrimental to the goal of debt servicing. Higher interest rates tend to destroy property values, divert financial resources away from productive investment, and increase the burden of debt servicing.

For example, in the Philippines, which in 1980 adopted the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Program, “Interest payments as a percentage of total government expenditures went from 7 percent in 1980 to 28 percent in 1994. Capital expenditures, on the other hand, plunged from 26 percent to 16 percent.” By contrast, “the Philippines’ Southeast Asian neighbors ignored the IMF’s prescriptions. They limited debt servicing while ramping up government capital expenditures in support of growth. Not surprisingly, they grew by 6 to 10 percent from 1985 to 1995. . .while the Philippines barely grew and gained the reputation of a depressed market that repelled investors” [3].

A major condition of the IMF/World Bank/WTO’s “restructuring program” is trade liberalization. Free trade has always been the bible of the economically strong, self-righteously preached to the weak. It enables the strong to use their market power for economic gains, thereby perpetuating an international division of labor in which the technologically advanced countries would specialize in the production and export of high-tech, high-value added products while less developed countries would be condemned to the supply of less- or un-processed products. It is not surprising, then, that such a lop-sided policy of trade liberalization is sometimes called “free trade imperialism.”

Taking advantage of the so-called Third World debt crisis, the IMF, World Bank and WTO imposed free trade and other “adjustment programs” on 70 developing countries in the course of the 1980s and 1990s. “Because of this trade liberalization,” points out Walden Bello, member of the Philippines House of Representatives and president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, “gains in economic growth and poverty reduction posted by developing countries in the 1960s and 1970s had disappeared by the 1980s and 1990s. In practically all structurally adjusted countries, trade liberalization wiped out huge swathes of industry, and countries enjoying a surplus in agricultural trade became deficit countries.” Bello further points out, “The number of poor increased in Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe, the Arab states, and sub-Saharan Africa.” By contrast, in China and East Asia, where the neoliberal free trade and other Structural Adjustment Programs were rejected, significant economic development and considerable poverty reduction took place [3].

The attitude of the international financial parasites and their collection agencies such as the IMF regarding the disastrous consequences of their “restructuring” conditions is instructive.

An IMF official was quoted as acknowledging that the Fund’s austerity packages have often led to debt-collection without economic growth. But he added: “the Fund is a firefighter not a carpenter, and you cannot expect the firefighter to rebuild the house as well as put out the fire.” Obviously, what the “firefighter” tries to save from burning are external debt claims, not the economies or livelihoods of the indebted.

Another component of the IMF/World Bank’s “adjustment program” to service external debt is called elimination of “price distortions,” or establishment of “market-based pricing.” These are fancy, obfuscationist terms for raising prices on essential needs such as food, water and utilities. They also include elimination of subsidies on healthcare, education, transportation, housing, and the like; as well as curtailment of wages and benefits for the working class. In essence, these are roundabout ways of taxing the poor to pay the rich, the creditors.

Where such belt-tightening measures have made living conditions for the people intolerable, they have triggered what has come to be known as “the IMF riots.” The IMF riots are “painfully predictable. When a nation is, ‘down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,’ as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots. . . ” [2]. Other examples of the IMF riots include the Bolivian riots over the rise in water prices and the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices. As the IMF/World Bank riots create an insecure or uncertain economic environment, they often lead to a vicious circle of capital flight, deindustrialization, unemployment, and socio-economic disintegration.

Only when the riots have tended to lead to revolutions, the parasitic mega banks and their debt-collecting bailiffs, the IMF and/or the World Bank, have been forced to accept less onerous debt-servicing conditions, or even debt repudiation. The Argentine people deserve credit for having set a good example of this kind of debt restructuring.

In late 2001 and early 2002, they took to the streets to protest the escalated austerity measures imposed on them at the behest of the IMF and the World Bank. “Political demonstrations and the looting of grocery stores quickly spread across the country. . . . The government declared a state of siege, but police often stood by and watched the looting ‘with their hands behind their backs.’ There was little the government could do. Within a day after the demonstrations began, principal economic minister Domingo Cavallo had resigned; a few days later, President Fernando de la Rua stepped down. . . . In the wake of the resignations, a hastily assembled interim government immediately defaulted on $155 billion of Argentina’s foreign debt, the largest debt default in history” [4].

Argentina also freed its currency (peso) from the US dollar (it had been pegged to dollar in 1991). After defaulting on its external debt and dropping its currency peg to the dollar, Argentina has enjoyed a most robust economic growth in the world. Debt re-structuring a la Argentina, that is, debt repudiation, is what today’s debt-strapped nations in Europe and elsewhere need to do to free themselves from the shackles of debt peonage.

Having subjected many nations in the less-developed countries of the South to their notorious austerity measures, international knights of finance are now busy applying those impoverishing measures to the more developed countries of the North, especially those of Europe. For example, the Greek government has in recent months announced a series of wage and benefit cuts for public workers, a three-year freeze on pensions and a second increase this year in sales taxes, as well as in the price of fuel, alcohol and tobacco in return for a bailout plan promised by the IMF and the European Central Bank.

Debt collectors’ austerity requirements in a number of East European countries (such as Latvia and Lithuania) have been even more draconian. Thomas Landon Jr. of The New York Times recently reported that, threatened with bankruptcy, “Lithuania cut public spending by 30 percent — including slashing public sector wages 20 to 30 percent and reducing pensions by as much as 11 percent. . . . And the government didn’t stop there. It raised taxes on a wide variety of goods, like pharmaceutical products and alcohol. Corporate taxes rose to 20 percent, from 15 percent. The value-added tax rose to 21 percent, from 18 percent” (April 1, 2010).

As these oppressive measures led to the transfer of nine percent of gross domestic product (euphemistically called “national savings”) from domestic needs to debt collectors, they also further aggravated the economic crisis: “Unemployment jumped to a high of 14 percent, from single digits — and an already wobbly economy shrank 15 percent last year” [Ibid.].

In Latvia, another victim of the predatory global finance, the recessionary consequences of creditor-imposed austerity measures have been even more devastating: “Latvia has experienced the worst two-year economic downturn on record, losing more than 25% of GDP. It is projected to shrink further during the first half of this year. . . . With 22% unemployment . . . and cuts to education funding that will cause long-term damage, the social costs of this trajectory are also high” [5].

While the debt crises of the weaker European economies such as Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal and Ireland have reached critical stages of sustainability, the relatively stronger economies of Germany, France, and UK are also in danger of debt and deficit crises. Indeed, according to a recent IMF estimate, even in the more advanced economies of Europe the debt-to-GDP ratio will soon rise to an average of 100% [6].

Of course, the United States is also burdened by a mountain of debt that is fast approaching the size of its gross domestic product (of nearly $13.5 trillion). A major difference between the United States and other indebted nations is that the US is not as much at the mercy of its creditors or the IMF as are other debtor nations. Therefore, it can reasonably be argued that, on the basis of national or public interests, it could embark on an expansive fiscal policy, that is, a more aggressive stimulus package, that would take advantage of the power of “government as the employer of last resort,” more or less as FDR did, thereby creating jobs, incomes and economic growth. This would also add to government’s tax collection and reduce its debt and deficit.

Judging by the record, as well the budgetary projections, of the Obama administration and the lobby-infested Congress, however, such an expansionary fiscal policy seems very unlikely. Not only has the bulk of the government’s anti-recession assistance been devoted to the rescue of the Wall Street gamblers, but also the relatively small stimulus spending has largely been funneled into the pockets of the private/financial sector—through wasteful and ineffectual programs such as “cash for clunkers,” tax credit for new homebuyers, tax incentives for employers to hire, and the like. This stands in sharp contrast to what FDR did in the earlier years of the Great Depression: creating jobs and incomes directly and immediately by the government itself.

Not only is the administration’s feeble stimulus package soon coming to an end, but the government also recently imposed a three-year spending freeze on all public outlays except for military spending and the so-called entitlements. As their tax revenues, along with their traditional shares of federal assistance, are dwindling many states (especially California, Florida, New York, Arizona, Nevada and New Jersey) are facing serious financial difficulties. And as they curtail or shut down essential services at the libraries, museums, parks, schools, art centers, and hospitals, and give pink slips to their employees, the recessionary conditions are bound to exacerbate.

The wrenching economic hardship in the debt-ridden countries is not so much due to insufficient or lack of resources as it is the result of the lopsided and cruel distribution of those resources. It is increasingly becoming clear that the working majority around the world face a common enemy: an unproductive financial oligarchy that, like parasites, sucks the economic blood out of the working people, simply by trading and/or betting on claims of ownership.

Rectification of this unsavory situation poses stark alternatives: either the powerful financial interests, using the state power, succeed in collecting their debt claims by impoverishing the public; or the public will get tired of the vicious cycle of debt and depression, and will rise in protest—akin to the “IMF riots” in Argentina—to repudiate the largely fictitious and illegitimate debt. This is of course a class war. The real question is when the working people and other victims of the unjust debt burden will grasp the gravity of this challenge, and rise to the critical task of breaking free from the shackles of debt and depression.

While repudiation may cleanse the current toxic debt off the economies of the indebted societies, it would not prevent its recurrence in the future. To fend off such recurrences, it is also necessary to nationalize the banks and other financial intermediaries. It only stands to reason that national savings be placed under democratically controlled public management – not unelected, profit-driven private banks.

Ismael Hossein-zadeh, author of the recently published The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), teaches economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.

Notes.

[1] For a comprehensive account of the history of sovereign debt crises and/or defaults see, for example, Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.

[2] Greg Palast, “The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold,” gregpalast.com, October 10, 2001.

[3] Walden Bello, “The Poverty Trip – Is Corruption the Cause,” Counter Punch, April 30 – May 2, 2010.

[4] Arthur McEwan, “Economic Debacle in Argentina—The IMF Strikes Again,” Dollars & Sense, March-April 2002.

[5] Mark Weisbrot, “Baltic Countries Show What Greece May Look Forward to If It Follows EC/IMF Advice,” The Guardian Unlimited, April 28, 2010.

[6] Nouriel Roubini, “The Debt Death Trap,” Project Syndicate, April 16, 2010.

May 15, 2010 Posted by aletho | Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Leave a comment

Russia Warns US against Unilateral Iran Sanctions

Al-Manar TV – May 13, 2010

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the United States and other Western nations on Thursday against imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, Interfax news agency reported Thursday.

Countries facing Security Council sanctions “cannot under any circumstances be the subject of one-sided sanctions imposed by one or other government bypassing the Security Council”, Lavrov was quoted as saying by Interfax. “The position of the United States today does not display understanding of this absolutely clear truth.”

Russia is in talks with the United States and other UN Security Council members on a fourth round of sanctions. Moscow has indicated it could support broader sanctions but has stressed they must not harm the Iranian people. Russia’s position suggests that its may not agree to new tougher sanction on Iran at the UNSC.

Lavrov, speaking to deputies from Russia’s upper house of parliament, said the United States tended not to see international law as having pre-eminence over national laws. “We are now confronted with this problem during discussion of a new UN Security Council resolution on Iran.”

Permanent Security Council member China has joined Russia in opposing Washington’s plans to impose tough, wide-ranging sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Lavrov’s warning came just before the arrival in Russia on Thursday of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, a non-permanent member of the Security Council that is also opposed to further sanctions against Iran. Lula was expected to meet senior Russian officials on Friday to discuss how to revive a stalled nuclear fuel swap deal meant to minimize the risk of Tehran using enrichment for military purposes. Lula will travel on to Iran on Sunday.

May 13, 2010 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Wars for Israel | 1 Comment

Elena Kagan and the Supreme Court: A Barnyard Smell in Chicago, Harvard and Washington

By James Petras | May 13, 2010

President Obama has nominated Elena Kagan for Justice of the United States Supreme Court on the basis of an academic publication record, which might give her a fighting chance for tenure at a first rate correspondence law school in the Texas Panhandle.

A review of her published scholarship after almost two decades in and out of academia turns up four law review articles, two brief pieces and several book reviews and in memoriam. There is nothing even remotely resembling a major legal text or research publication.

Her lack-luster academic publication record is only surpassed by her total lack of any practical experience as a judge: zero years in adjudication, unless one accepts the line of her exuberant advocates, who point to Kagan’s superb ability in adjudicating among the squabbling faculty at Harvard Law School when she served as Dean. No doubt Kagan had been very busy as the greatest fundraising Law School Dean in Harvard’s history ($400 million), which may account for the fact that she never found time to write a single academic article during her nine year tenure (2001-2009).

The criteria for her appointment to the Supreme Court have little to do with academic performance as it is understood today in all major universities. Nor does her total inexperience as a judicial advocate compensate for academic mediocrity.

The evidence points to a purely political appointment based, in part, on social networks and certainly not on her lack of affinity for the agenda of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Kagan’s approval of indefinite detention of suspects squares with the extremist restrictions on constitutional freedoms first articulated during the Bush Administration and subsequently upheld by President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder. It is no coincidence that Kagan appointed a notorious Bush torture advocate, the genial Jack Goldsmith, to the Harvard Law faculty.

Elena Kagan’s appointment certainly was not based on “diversity”. She will be the third Jew on the Supreme Court and, together with the six Roman Catholics, will decide the most critical cases with far-reaching and profound impact on citizens’ rights and protections. For the first time in US history the nation’s largest demographic group, the Protestants (of any hue or gender), will have no representative on the Court, thereby excluding the descendents, like retiring Justice Stevens, of the brilliant, strongly secular judicial heritage that formulated the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and its amendments.

Kagan’s nomination to the US Supreme Court is not exceptional if we consider many of Bush and now Obama’s choices of advisers and officials in top policymaking posts. Many of these officials combined their diplomas from Ivy League universities with their absolutely disastrous performances in public office, which no amount of mass media puff pieces could obscure. These Ivy League mediocrities include the foreign policy advocates for the destructive and unending wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan and the leading economic advisers and officials responsible for the current financial debacles. The names are familiar enough: Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Levey, Greenspan, Axelrod, Emmanuel, Indyk, Ross, Summers, Rubin, et al: Prestigious credentials with mediocre, or worse, performances. What is the basis of their rise? What explains their ascent to the most influential positions in the US power structure?

One hypothesis is nepotism . . . of a certain kind. Elena Kagan got tenure at the august halls of the University of Chicago in 1995 on the basis of one substantive article and one brief piece, neither outstanding. With this underwhelming record of legal scholarship, she became visiting professorship at the Harvard Law School, published only two more articles (one in Harvard Law Review) and received tenure. Prima facie evidence strongly suggests that Kagan’s ties to the staunchly Zionist faculty at both Chicago and Harvard Law Schools (and not her intellectual prowess) account for her meteoric promotions to tenure, deanship and now the US Supreme Court, over the heads of hundreds of other highly qualified candidates with far superior academic publication records and broader practical judicial experience.

The public utterances and political writings of innumerable Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, Yale, John Hopkins professors, whether it be on the speculative economy, Israel’s Middle East wars, preventative detention, broad presidential powers and constitutional freedoms are marked by a singular mediocrity, mendacity and an excess of hot air reeking of the barnyard.

If you do not qualify on the basis of excellent scholarship or broad-based practical experience, your ethnic tribesmen will wax ecstatic over you as a “wonder colleague”, a “superb teacher”, a “brilliant consensus builder” and a “world champion fund raiser”. In other words, if you have the right ethnic connections and political ambitions, they can adjust the criteria for tenure at the University of Chicago, the deanship at Harvard Law School and a lifetime appointment to the US Supreme Court.

Elena Kagan joins a long list of key Obama appointees who have long-standing ties to the pro-Israel power configuration. Like Barack Obama, Elena Kagan started her legal apprenticeship with the Chicago Judge Abner Mitva, an ardent Zionist, who hailed the newly elected President Obama as “America’s first Jewish President”, probably his soundest judgment.

The issue of the composition of the US Supreme Court is increasingly crucial for all Americans, who are horrified by Israel’s devastation of Gaza, its threats to launch a nuclear attack on Iran and its Fifth Column’s efforts to drag us into a third war in ten years. With the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations pressing the compliant US Congress to declare “anti-Zionism” as a form of “anti-Semitism” and “opposition to Israel’s policies” as amounting to “support for terrorism”, thus criminalizing Americans critical of Israel, another active pro-Zionist advocate on the Court will provide a legal cover for the advance of Zionist-dictated authoritarianism over the American people.

Yes, Kagan would be another woman on the Supreme Court. Yes, she would probably adjudicate conflicts among the judges and strengthen Obama’s police powers. And yes, she would likely favor your indefinite detention if you support the right of Palestinians to struggle (“terrorism”) against the Israeli occupation . . . especially if you defend America against Israel’s Fifth Column.

But remember when you apply for Ivy League law school appointment or a top judicial post and your CV lacks the requisite publications or work experience, just ask Judge Abner Mikva or Larry Summers or Rahm Emmanuel for a recommendation. With such support you will shoot ahead of the competition. . . because you have the right ethnic connections.

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles.

May 13, 2010 Posted by aletho | Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Wars for Israel | 1 Comment

NPR report on West Bank expulsion order turns horror into a he-said/she-said debating point

By Susie Kneedler on May 12, 2010

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro and NPR have at last reported on the month-old Israeli “military order” that allows the IDF to deport any Palestinian inhabitant of the West Bank it defines as an “infiltrator,” simply for lacking the paperwork that the Israeli government itself refuses to issue. Garcia-Navarro details the suffering of the Palestinian people more fully than any recent NPR reporter, but her “report” perfectly embodies the failure of “she said–she said journalism,” in which oppression becomes merely a matter of perspective.

Garcia-Navarro does document the horrific fear that Israeli government policies inflict on one woman and her family. We hear the anguish in Palestinian Umm Qusay’s voice beneath the translation; and the broadcast closes with a line deleted from the online article: “Qusay says the wider implications don’t matter to her. After waiting ten years to join her husband and children, she just wants to stay here.”

But Garcia-Navarro allows an Israeli military spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, to assure us that, “The amendments to this law actually help the Palestininans or the other illegal residents that are here.” We hear Leibovich declare in sunny tones that, “There is a committee of judges which is reviewing the material and deciding whether to begin with the process of repatriation or not” [Leibovich’s emphasis]. Garcia-Navarro does not challenge the fairness of Israeli judges, let alone that of military courts, to Palestinian plaintiffs or defendants.

The “wider” ramifications may not matter to Qusay in her desperation to care for her children, but they determine whether listeners are informed or given only the false equivalence of those cliched “competing narratives.” Even Garcia-Navarro’s description of Qusay’s husband as merely a “resident”—not a native –of the West Bank minimizes how Israel wrongs the family.

Where is the research that would sort out rival claims, the obligation of a journalist to check facts? Four whole weeks have dragged on between what Garcia-Navarro calls the “new Israeli army order” and today’s story –plenty of time for investigation. Lourdes Garcia-Navarro should read the Geneva Conventions, the Oslo Accords, and other agreements to verify that, “the new military order contravenes international law and previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.” She could ascertain roughly how many people are marooned in hiding. She might look into the harm to “civil society.” Instead, she leaves all questions open.

In sum, nowhere does Garcia-Navarro grapple with the terrible inhumanity of a regime that has kept other people stateless for 60 years, depriving them not just of civil but human rights. A military occupation that arbitrarily defines the legitimate owners of a land as “infiltrators” is unspeakable. Why is “our” U.S. government paying for the illegal expulsions?

May 12, 2010 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Leave a comment

Stephen Zunes and the Zionist Tinderbox

“[A]nti Zionism may be a ‘fool’s anti-imperialism,’ where Jewish nationalism itself is erroneously seen as the problem rather than the alliance its leaders have made with exploitative Western interests.” – Stephen Zunes, 2006.1

By Michael Barker | Pulse Media | May 12, 2010

Who is Stephen Zunes? Well according to his web-site, he is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, who in 2002 won recognition from the Peace and Justice Studies Association as Peace Scholar of the Year. Although Zunes describes himself as a committed peace loving, anti-imperialist activist, by reviewing just one of his books this article will demonstrate that in actual fact his scholarly actions belie such intent. The book in question is Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Zed Books, 2003), a popular text that received glowing accolades from Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Richard Falk, and Saul Landau (amongst others). This essay will illustrate how Zunes’ proclivity for defending Zionism ultimately leads hims to promote a “fool’s anti-imperialism.”

That is not to say that Zunes is uncritical of U.S. foreign policy, far from it, just that his work serves as a smokescreen for understanding the real drivers of U.S. foreign policy vis-a-vis the Middle East.

For example, on the antagonist relationship between U.S. elite interests and human rights, he recognizes that:

Human rights violations by foreign governments and their lack of democratic institutions generally get the most attention in the United States when a given administration has called attention to them in order to mobilize domestic and international opinion against a regime the U.S. government opposes. (p.10)

However, Zunes continues, “since at least the 1970s” U.S. administrations — or should we say regimes — have “to some degree” been forced to respond to “public and Congressional pressure regarding the lack of democracy and human rights in allied countries.” Typical responses often “constitute little more than lip service and damage control,” but significantly, “the very region that receives the largest amount of American arms and aid has been notably absent from the public debate: the Middle East.” Indeed, with regard the U.S.’s special commitment to Israel, U.S. aid “has generally increased as the government’s repression in the occupied territories has worsened.”² Moreover, Zunes points out, this relationship…

… is unlike any other in the world, or indeed, like any in history. In sheer volume, it is the most generous foreign aid program ever between two countries, totaling over $100 billion. No country has ever received as much Congressionally mandated aid as has Israel. What is perhaps even more unusual is that Israel, like its benefactor, is an advanced, industrialized, technologically sophisticated country, as well as a major arms exporter. (p.109)

So how might we come to understand the existence of this enduring toxic relationship? Well according to Zunes, such aid actually runs counter to the best interests — that is, “legitimate defence needs” — of both Israel and the United States. Therefore, as neither State profits from this situation U.S.-based arms manufacturers must be largely to blame, as he says, they are the people who profit most from this insecurity. To support this point Zunes draws upon the words of Matti Peled, the late Israeli major general (and Knesset member), who in the early 1990s “argued that he and other Israeli military leaders saw the [$1.8 billion Israeli military] aid package as little more than a U.S. government subsidy for American arms manufacturers.”³

Zunes does not seriously consider the possibility that an alternative explanation for this state of affairs is that neither the U.S. nor Israel are intent on pursuing peace in the Middle East. Indeed it seems fairly obvious that Israel has no interest in promoting what Zunes considers to be its “legitimate defence needs,” as leading Zionist elites are quite happy escalating tension in the region to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This might explain why “it appears that the priority of both the executive branch and Congress in recent decades has not been Israeli security, but maintaining the flow of American arms exports.”⁴ Yet, Zunes is convinced that the root of the problem lies not with Zionism but with the arms manufacturers, thus he writes:

⁵

This gross underestimation of the power of the Israel lobby is almost identical to Noam Chomsky’s arguments which have already been thoroughly rebutted elsewhere. Thus it is fitting that Zunes, like Chomsky, plays the oil card, and says that the “primary reason” why the U.S. supports Israel is because of their need to control oil supplies, which is facilitated by Israel’s ability to prevent “victories by radical nationalist movements” in the Middle East.⁶As before, this is an erroneous, unsupported statement that has been convincingly debunked.

Either way if one follows Zunes’ assertion that aid to Israel threatens their national security, “should U.S. policy,” Zunes asks, “then, really be considered ‘pro-Israel?’” He argues not: such aid is counterproductive, as it endangers Israel by encouraging militaristic elements within Israel’s ruling class.⁷ This inelegant mislogic is used to bolster his case that U.S. support for Israel must be predominantly driven by arms manufacturers and big oil; no need for hard evidence though.

Now that Zunes has cajoled his readers into accepting his fallacious arguments, he provides other “evidence” to help understand what “motivates the strong American bias against the Palestinians.” Thus in addition to the military and oil lobbies, Zunes identifies four other contributing factors to explain this bias: these are (1) a mixture of sentimental attachment combined with guilt (driven by the history of Western anti-Semitism), “friendships with Jewish Americans who identify strongly with Israel, and fear of inadvertently encouraging anti-Semitism,” (2) the rising power of the Christian Right in the United States, which interprets the Israeli-Palestine conflict as “simply a continuation of the Biblical battles between the Israelites and the Philistines,” (3) the “failure of progressive movements in the United States,” and (4) the Israel lobby.No doubt the first three points are all relevant to some degree, but their contemporary significance have all been amplified, and in some cases driven, by the far-reaching influence of the Israel lobby.⁸

On point four however — that is, the Israel lobby — Zunes suggests that caution must be heeded, because Jews are generally peaceful and only make up a small percentage of the U.S. population (“less than 4 percent”): moreover, “[m]any of the most outspoken members of Congress supportive of Israel’s occupation policies are from states or districts with very small Jewish populations.”⁹ Yet here Zunes’ argument is nonsensical (again), as the number of active Zionists is insignificant, as ultimately it is the power they exert, not their numbers, that matters most. Furthermore, no one is arguing that all Jews are Zionists, indeed it is only the small but extremely influential Jewish population residing in the American ruling class — along with their non-Jewish Zionist recruits — who give the Israel lobby its tremendous clout. Here as an example of the influence of the Israel lobby we might look to Stephen Green’s book, Taking Sides, America’s Secret Relations with Militant Israel (William Morrow, 1984), which Jeffrey Blankfort observes …

… was the first examination of State Department archives concerning US-Israel relations. Since the Eisenhower administration, wrote Green in 1984, “Israel, and friends of Israel in America, have determined the broad outlines of US policy in the region. It has been left to American Presidents to implement that policy, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and to deal with the tactical issues.”

Although Blankfort admits that this is a “slight exaggeration, perhaps,” it is ironic that Zunes refers to Green’s book to support his contention that Israel helps U.S. foreign policy elites, not vice versa.¹⁰ But irrespective of contrary evidence, Zunes asks that we put aside our critical faculties because “the strength of the lobby is often greatly exaggerated.”¹¹ Furthermore, to ensure his readers are less likely to believe that the Israel lobby has a significant impact on guiding U.S. foreign policy, Zunes caricatures proponents of this point of view as belonging to the radical Right. No mention is made of Leftists who have long warned of the power of the lobby, like Edward Herman, Alexander Cockburn, and Jeffrey Blankfort; instead, Zunes points to anti-Semitic conservatives, like the politician Patrick Buchanan.¹² Lest we forget, oil is the “primary issue.” Thus following Zunes’ example of using Zionists to back his unconvincing case for the overwhelming power of the U.S. arms industry, we could just as easily cite such Zionist sources to undermine his oil argument. For example, in the early 1980s, Morris Amitay, the former executive director of AIPAC, said: “We rarely see them [oil corporations] lobbying on foreign policy issues… In a sense, we have the field to ourselves.”

As this essay has demonstrated, being a progressive scholar does not necessarily guarantee that your analyses will effectively challenge the status quo. Thus while Zunes self-identifies as an anti-imperialist activist, he is a liberal Zionist at heart, and he is certainly not comfortable with advocating the type of systemic social change that we need to eradicate capitalism: by way of a contrast even the moderate civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, recognized that “the evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and the evils of racism” (King’s words). This explains why Zunes counsels U.S. citizens that “bringing about a more enlightened foreign policy is necessary for national security.”¹³

Instead of problematising the obvious contradictions between democracy and capitalism, Zunes suggests that the United States political system is simply being misused. He writes that “there is a growing sense that the Bush Administration is cynically manipulating the country’s genuine need for security for the sake of its rigid ideological constructs and its wealthy financial supporters.”¹⁴ Unbeknown to Zunes, cynical manipulation is nothing new, it is simply part and parcel of the misnomer that is capitalist democracy. Such shallow thinking necessarily leads Zunes to observe that one of the key problems of America’s counter-terrorism policies is that they confront “the symptoms rather than the cause.” But this will always be the case under capitalism: one would hardly expect the ruling class to attempt to address the root cause of injustice — that is for us to do. A capitalist elite would have lost its marbles if it ever traced universal exploitation back to capitalism itself.

Finally, it is critical to recognize that Zunes’ failure to differentiate between polyarchy (or low-intensity democracy) and more popular understandings of democracy, enables him to suggest with no sense of irony that “worldwide trends [have been] toward democracy and greater individual freedom throughout the world”.Furthermore, he is naïve enough to believe that the popularity of the United States “can be restored, but only if the United States shifts its policies to become more consistent with support for human rights, international law, sustainable economic development and demilitarization.”What Zunes fails to recognize is that the U.S. is already the foremost promoter of human rights — along with Israel — but only a neutered, low-intensity form of rights better known as humanitarian imperialism (see “The Project for A New American Humanitarianism”). Zunes, however, closes his eyes to such suggestions, which he refers to as “conspiracy theories,” and instead argues that what the world needs is just a more benign form of capitalism. “Foreign aid,” he writes, “should be directed toward poorer countries and in support of grassroots development initiatives and away from support for the wealthier countries and/or corrupt and autocratic governments.”¹⁵ But here he misses the point, the real solution is not capitalist foreign aid, the real solution is grassroots organizing unhindered by the manipulative funding regimes of U.S. foreign policy elites. This is why Zunes, like capitalism and Zionism, fails to provide the radical theory necessary to eradicate both capitalism and Zionism.

Michael Barker is an independent researcher who is currently based in the UK. His web site is http://michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com. The author submitted this piece to PULSE.

– Notes –

Stephen Zunes, “Defending Israel While Challenging its Policies,” in Alan Dershowitz (ed.) What Israel Means to Me (John Wiley & Sons, 2006), p.359. Zunes’ contribution to this book by the notorious Alan Dershowitz speaks volumes of the manner by which Zunes is willing to lend his anti-imperial writings to support Zionism. This is similar in many respects to Zunes’ service as the chair (since 2006) of the academic advisory board of the misnamed International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, and his willingness to help run a “Middle East Orientation Course” for the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School (Hurlburt Field, March 15-16, 2007) — a fact advertised nonchalantly on his current CV (pdf).
Zunes, Tinderbox, p.13. For example, in October 2000, “after a series of scathing human rights reports from reputable non-governmental organizations criticizing Israeli actions, Congress approved a foreign aid allocation of $2.82 billion to Israel, which critics charged was essentially rewarding the government for its repression.” (p.26) The reputable groups referred to here include Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.Likewise on May 2, 2002, the U.S. Senate, in a 94-2 vote, passed a resolution which referred to “the Israeli assault on Palestinian towns and refugee camps as ‘necessary steps to provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas.’” Such actions are obviously interpreted by “observers in the Arab and Islamic world as an act of racism”; indeed, “the majority of liberal Democrats — most of whom were on record in support of human rights in Guatemala, East Timor, Colombia, Tibet, and elsewhere — had decided, in a situation where the victims of human rights abuses were Arabs, to instead throw their support to the perpetrator of the human rights abuses. In fact, one of the two sponsors of the House resolution was California Democrat Tom Lantos, who is the long-time chairman of the Human Rights Caucus.” (p.30) Although not mentioned by Zunes, the late Tom Lantos, “the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress,” was a well known Zionist.
Zunes, Tinderbox, p.40
Zunes, Tinderbox, p.40 Zunes later adds: “The irony of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf is that is has little strategic justification given the costs.” He continues, that their policies “actually endangers the security of both the United States and its Gulf allies.” Yet to Zunes this imperialist foreign policy should be deemed some sort of mistake, “a kind of foreign policy by catharis rather than based on any rational strategic calculation.” (p.104) If only Zunes would read such foreign policy blueprints like those of the Project for a New American Century, it would become apparent that U.S. foreign policy is based on very rational criteria, but of course not criteria that is in the rational best interests of either the U.S. or global populous. Zunes observes that: “The worst single terrorist atrocities in the Middle East in recent decades were committed by Christians: the Phalangists, a Lebanese Maronie militia, were responsible for the massacres of thousands of Palestinians at the Tal al-Zataar refugee camp in June 1976 and the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in September 1982.” (p.171) Later Zunes fills in more details on the background of this group, writing: “The ‘Muslim’ side of the Lebanese civil war in the mid-1970s was actually a largely secular grouping known as the Lebanese National Movement (LNM)… Seeking to block the LNM’s demands for constitutional reform to create a more representative political system that would likely enact policies less sympathetic with the West, the United States clandestinely supported the Phalangist militia, a neo-fascist grouping based in the country’s Maronite Christian community.” (p.184) On a related matter, “the most serious single terrorist bombing against a civilian target in Middle East history was the March 1985 blast in a suburban Beirut neigbourhood that killed 80 people and wounded 200 others.” As Zunes relates, this attack “was ordered by CIA director William Casey and approved by President Reagan as part of an unsuccessful effort to assassinate an anti-American Lebanese cleric.” (p.200)
Zunes, Tinderbox, p.41. Zunes reference for this point is wwww.politicalmoneyline.com On the previous page of his book to support the same point he refers to Alan Kronstadt et al, Hostile Takeover: How the Aerospace Industries Association Gain Control of American Foreign Policy and Doubl e Arms Transfers to Dictators (Project on Demilitarization and Democracy, 1995).
Zunes, Tinderbox, p.161. Zunes say that this policeman service is supplemented by Israel’s role in allowing “battlefield testing of American arms,” in exporting homegrown munitions to U.S. allies, and in funneling U.S. arms to groups “too unpopular in the United States for openly granting direct military assistance”. (p.161)
Zunes, Tinderbox, p.154. “The rise of the rightist Likud Bloc in Israel and the right-ward drift in the Labor Party since 1967 is in large part due to this large-scale American support. Rightist Israeli political leaders such as Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Benyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon would certainly have existed without U.S. backing, but they would have likely been part of a small right-wing minority in the Knesset and would have never become prime ministers.” Zunes, Tinderbox, p.155.
Zunes, Tinderbox, pp.157-8. With respect to the peace movement, Zunes writes: “For many years, most mainstream peace and human rights groups avoided the issue, not wanting to alienate many of their Jewish and other liberal constituents supportive of the Israeli government.” (p.158)
Zunes, Tinderbox, p.158, p.159.
Zunes, Tinderbox, p.162 (footnote 110)
Zunes, Tinderbox, p.159. “For an elaboration of this argument,” Zunes points us to his article, “The Roots of the U.S.-Israeli Relationship,” New Political Science, Nos 21-22, Spring-Summer 1992. He also points to A.F.K. Organski’s, The $36 Billion Bargain: Strategy and Politics in U.S. Assistance to Israel (Columbia University Press, 1990).
Zunes adds that: “In a classic case of exactly this type of anti-Semitic scapegoating, members of Congress and their aides will claim — always off the record — that they or their boss has to take pro-militarist and anti-human rights positions towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of the need for Jewish campaign contributions. Similarly, as a means of diverting Arab criticism from U.S. policy makers, American diplomats routinely tell representatives of Arab governments that wealth Jews essentially dictate U.S. Middle East policy. The senior President Bush made it clear that such scapegoating is acceptable when — during the debate on the proposed $10 billion loan guarantees to Israel in 1992 — he claimed that he was just ‘one lonely little guy’ standing up to ‘a thousand lobbyists’ swarming on Capitol Hill.” (p.164)
Zunes, Tinderbox, p.217.
Zunes, Tinderbox, p.221. Ironically, the majority of the U.S. governments “wealth financial supporters” happen to be Jewish.
Zunes, Tinderbox, p.14, p.225, p.226. Zunes later adds that: “There is nothing inherently wrong with the United States or other countries supporting democratic opposition movement against autocratic regimes”; although he counsels that in the case of Iraq this would be counterproductive owing to the United States’ damaged credibility in the region. However, he adds that before the United States can work in such a manner it must first “encourage greater freedom in countries it considers it allies, such as Saudi Arabia”. (p.229)

May 12, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | 1 Comment

Bending the Rules for Israel

By NADIA HIJAB | May 11, 2010

Israel’s inexorable accession to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development country club — is set to be confirmed this month barring last-minute hitches. Although several OECD members have doubts about Israel’s qualifications both on technical grounds and lack of shared values, no state has dared publicly oppose.

Instead, public opposition has been left to a loose and unusual network of Palestinian and Jewish organizations that have been hard at work lobbying European countries, Turkey, the United States, and other members. It has also provided a rare point for common action between Palestinian official and civil society organizations.

The “technical issues” that worried the OECD include corruption, particularly in the arms industry; intellectual property rights, particularly in the drugs industry; and the occupation.

More specifically about the occupation, Israel included data covering its illegal settlements and annexed territories in its economic report, according to a leaked OECD document cited by 18 Irish parliamentarians who called on their government to oppose Israel’s membership. The OECD has apparently resolved this issue by inserting a disclaimer. It will use Israeli data without prejudice to the status of the occupied territories, as Avi Shlaim and Simon Mohun wrote in their Guardian comment calling for OECD conditions on Israeli membership.

However, prominent legal experts have raised serious problems regarding state obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention if OECD member states pursue this planned course of action. And this may still throw up a last-minute hurdle.

Besides, as Israeli economist Shir Hever of the Alternative Information Center has pointed out, the data give an unrealistic picture of Israel’s standard of living because settlers receive more services than Israeli citizens within the Green Line. He also notes that were the Palestinians under occupation to be included Israel “would have to be refused accession because of the enormous disparities in wealth.”

Most seriously, from a human rights perspective, the OECD has completely ignored its own Road Map for Israel’s accession, which states that Israel has to demonstrate a commitment to pluralist democracy based on the rule of law. Indeed, only a democracy can join the OECD. A 17-point memo to the OECD by the worldwide Palestinian coalition BNC (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee) listed the many ways in which Israel does not uphold the rule of law at home or abroad.

As if on cue, Israel has just provided a compelling illustration by arresting one of its most respected citizens – Ameer Makhoul – and depriving him of due process. The indefatigable Makhoul heads Ittijah, the coalition of 64 major civil society organizations representing the Palestinian citizens of Israel. He was seized at 3 am and separated from his wife and two daughters as the police ransacked their home.

In formalizing Makhoul’s detention, Israel’s security forces ordered him deprived of an attorney for at least two days. Israel recently prohibited Makhoul from travel for two months. In an article he had just written about the ban — published by Electronic Intifada on the day of his arrest — Makhoul pointed out that the accusations against him are based on “secret evidence that I am not allowed to see.” In yet another suspension of democratic norms, Israel imposed a blanket media gag on the arrest — a bizarre move since the news spread round the world in minutes, and a Facebook page was established within hours.

The OECD hopes to influence Israeli behavior from within the organization, according to groups lobbying against accession. Who knows? Maybe the OECD will have better luck than the United Nations. Israel pledged to let Palestinian refugees return home when it become a UN member state. Sixty-two years on, we’re still waiting…

Outrageous though it is, OECD member states are swayed more by economic than political arguments. Indeed, the OECD has praised Israel for liquidating the welfare state, privatizing government assets and undermining workers’ negotiating power.

“It’s like a trade agreement so it’s not used to lobbying based on human rights,” explained Miri Weingarten, who heads the London-based JNews, a platform for news and comment by anti-occupation Jewish groups. Anti-occupation — and in some cases — anti-Zionist groups opposing Israeli actions have flowered in Europe since the Israeli attack on Gaza in December 2008. Several have joined in the European Jews for a Just Peace network, which has led the effort against OECD membership for Israel until it upholds the law.

The determined, multifaceted outreach to member capitals in Europe, Asia and the United States had chalked up previous successes. For example, the European Union’s planned upgrade of relations with Israel was put on hold in the wake of Israel’s Gaza attack. Intensive lobbying by several churches and non-government organizations — including three Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem, HaMoked and Physicians for Human Rights — has helped prevent it from being acted on since.

Despite the OECD setback, parliamentarians and civil society are now mobilized in their demand that governments use economic measures to hold their peers accountable. As Ameer Makhoul wrote just before his arrest, “Injustice unites us; we are all together in this struggle.”

Nadia Hijab is a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies.

May 11, 2010 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Leave a comment

University of California execs say they’ll only divest from occupation if US gov’t finds genocide

By Jeff Blankfort and Phil Weiss on May 11, 2010

Yesterday Phil Weiss wrote that Elena Kagan’s nomination calls on American Jews to recognize our prominence in the elite of American society. Here’s some more evidence. According to wikipedia, Marc Yudof, an educator who is president of the University of California, is Jewish and has sterling Zionist credentials:

In 1993, he and his wife, Judy, were the co-recipients of the Jewish National Fund Tree of Life Award. Judy Yudof became the first female international president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism in 2002

The Jewish National Fund was the chief means of taking former Palestinian lands and making them Jewish in Israel and Palestine.

Sherry Lansing is vice chair of the University of California Board of Regents. The big movie executive, she is also Jewish. We don’t know if she is a Zionist.

But yesterday, responding to Blankfort’s email, Yudof sent back a statement signed by himself, Lansing and Russell Gould, who is chair of the board of regents, slamming the divestment-from-the-occupation campaign by students at two schools in the system:

…In 2005, the Regents stated that a policy of divestment from a foreign government shall be adopted by the University only when the United States government declares that a foreign regime is committing acts of genocide. It was also noted at the time that divestment is a serious decision that should be rarely pursued.

We share The Regents’ belief that divestment needs to be undertaken with caution. We firmly believe that if there is to be any discussion of divestment from a business or country, it must be robust and fair-minded. We must take great care that no one organization or country is held to a different standard than any other. In the current resolutions voted on by the UC student organizations, the State of Israel and companies doing business with Israel have been the sole focus. This isolation of Israel among all countries of the world greatly disturbs us and is of grave concern to members of the Jewish community.

We fully support the Board of Regents in its policy to divest from a foreign government or companies doing business with a foreign government only when the United States government declares that a foreign regime is committing acts of genocide. The U.S. has not made any declaration regarding the State of Israel and, therefore, we will not bring a recommendation before the Board to divest from companies doing business with the State of Israel.

Note the concern for the Jewish community. Note the deference to the US government (we thought college was supposed to teach you to think for yourself!). Note that if such a line had been held in the ’80s, no one would have divested from Apartheid South Africa.

May 11, 2010 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | 3 Comments

The World Bank in the hot seat

Against the grain | 4 May 2010

A curious thing happened last week. A lot of people were under the impression that the World Bank was going to release its long-awaited study on global land grabs at its annual land conference in Washington DC on 26 April 2010. This is what GRAIN was told. It’s what many journalists were told. And it’s what those involved in producing the study expected. But it didn’t happen.

Instead, the Bank gave another powerpoint presentation summarising what the study will show, reiterated its proposed seven principles for “socially responsible” land grabs and unveiled its new business-to-business website – a kind of internet dating service to match up corporate land grabbers and government land givers.

This is not the first time that this study has been delayed. Indeed, ever since the Bank started compiling the data for it, tight political reins have been put on any public sharing of the results. They initially said the report would be out in December 2009. Then it was supposed to be March 2010. Then, we were assured, it would be released at the land conference last week. We do know that all of the research and analysis was completed long ago. So what’s holding the Bank back?

Bad news

The partial glimpse of the study presented in Washington last week sheds some light on an answer. The Bank initially wanted to do a comprehensive study of 30 countries, the hot spots for the land grabs. But it had to cut back severely on its expectations because, as it admits, the governments would not provide them with information. The corporations wouldn’t talk either, we were told by people writing the country chapters. This in itself is a powerful statement that says volumes about the hush-hush nature of these deals. If the World Bank can’t get access to the information, who can?

The Bank decided instead to base its study on the projects that have been reported by the media and captured on the farmlandgrab.org website. The Bank identified nearly 400 projects in 80 countries in this way, nearly one quarter (22%) of which are already being implemented. The study thus makes it plain that the global land grab is very real and moving along faster and further than many have assumed (See box for a basic glimpse of what the study is expected to say.)

BOX: What the World Bank study is expected to say

[NB: GRAIN has not seen the World Bank’s report. The following is drawn simply from publicly available documents, plus some verification from World Bank staff and consultants.]

The World Bank study focuses on large-scale farmland acquisitions of the last few years – what we all call land grabbing. While it largely confirms many things we already know, people have been awaiting the release of this report because the Bank was supposed to get access to more information than anyone else up to now. After all, most of these deals are shrouded in secrecy and controversy, and attract accusations of neocolonialism, even genocide.

The Bank inventorised 389 land deals in 80 countries. The bulk (37%) of the so-called investment projects are meant to produce food (crops and livestock), while biofuels come in second place (35%). Unsurprisingly, Africa is the target of half the land grab projects, followed by Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

In terms of countries being approached for their land, the Bank reveals that, in Africa, Sudan comes in first place, followed by Ghana and Madagascar. In Asia–Pacific, Indonesia ranks first, followed by the Philippines and Australia. In Latin America, Brazil is the favoured destination, then Argentina and Paraguay. In terms of country of origin of the land grabbers, China and the UK tie in the top slot, followed by Saudi Arabia.

Finally, the Bank did statistical analysis of what draws land grabbers to certain countries rather than others – the “probability” factors. Three are particularly noteworthy: land availability, low mechanisation and weak land governance. This means that investors will prioritise places where: (a) it is relatively easy to get control over people’s land; (b) large-scale holdings are possible; and (c) bringing in machinery will yield quick productivity gains.

The Bank’s most significant findings, however, are about the impacts of these projects on local communities. Its overwhelming conclusion, shared at the land conference last week, is that these projects are not providing benefits to local communities. Environmental impact assessments are rarely carried out, and people are routinely booted off their land, without consultation or compensation. The Bank even revealed that investors are deliberately targeting areas where there is “weak land governance”.

It is hard to see how, given these damning findings, the Bank could come up with anything positive to say about this new wave of foreign investment in farmland; this probably explains its reluctance to release the report. The Bank, after all, embarked on the study “to provide guidance to Bank clients (in government and the private sector) and partners who may be faced with or interested in large scale land acquisition so as to enable them to maximize the long-term benefits from such investments.” 1 And, while its study waits in limbo, the Bank is becoming more and more committed to making the land grabs happen. European investors, for instance, say that they will be using the Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency to provide them with political risk insurance for their farmland deals. Should anything backfire, “You’ll have the World Bank on your side,” says Gary Vaughan-Smith of London-based SilverStreet Capital LLP, which recently launched a US$300-million fund to invest in farmland in Africa. “They’re going to have enormous clout if there are any difficulties.” 2

Not winning anyone over

The problem for the Bank and the other land grab promoters, however, is that hardly anyone is fooled by talk of “win–win” guidelines or codes or principles to make it all work for everyone’s benefit. No matter how hard they try, they can’t shake the “land grab” label or stigma off these transactions.

“Here’s what I’m sure of”, weighs in Howard Buffet, son of Warren Buffet, in an Oakland Institute report released in time for the Bank’s conference last week. “These deals will make the rich richer and the poor poorer, creating clear winners who benefit while the losers are denied their livelihoods.” 3

If the Bank and its friends at partner UN agencies hoped that last week’s events in Washington would finally give them some control over the land grab discussion, they were mistaken. More than 100 groups from more than 100 countries crashed their party by releasing a common declaration a few days before, which denounced their “seven principles” for socially responsible land grabbing. They didn’t beat about the bush. As they see it, on the ground, this land grab is nothing but a massive transfer of lands from small food producers to foreign corporations, from sustainable farms to industrial plantations, and these groups were making it crystal clear that they are committed to throwing this trend into reverse. Against this, the Bank’s “win–win”, or responsible investment initiative, looks hollower than ever.

May 8, 2010 Posted by aletho | Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Leave a comment

Defying appeal from Gaza students, Atwood set to accept Israeli prize

By Kristin Srzemski, The Electronic Intifada, 8 May 2010

Author Margaret Atwood

On Sunday, Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood will accept the Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University and her portion of the $1 million payout that goes with it. Meanwhile, a mere 40 miles away, students in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip will stilll be struggling to find the ways and means to continue their educations.

Atwood will be accepting her prize despite a worldwide call — initiated by the Palestinian Students Campaign for a Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel (PSACBI) — for her to turn down the award. The Canadian author, whose work often reflects issues of colonization, feminism, structures of political power and oppression, will be sharing the literary prize with Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, whose novels question the brutalities of colonial rule and post-colonial dispossession. Ghosh was also asked to turn down the prize, which he has declined to do.

Being an artist of conscience has been one of Atwood’s hallmark characteristics throughout her career. She supported the South African anti-Apartheid movement and, according to filmmaker John Greyson, was the first public figure to speak out in support of gay rights after police arrested 300 men in Toronto in 1981. The late Palestinian scholar Edward Said named her as an “oppositional intellectual.” That’s why her acceptance of the Dan David Prize is fraught with ironies, not least of which is the requirement that she donate 10 percent of the prize money back to support graduate students at Tel Aviv University, while Gaza’s students — just a short drive away — are enclosed in an open-air prison, unable to complete their studies.

“We have no fuel supply in Gaza for student transportation,” Ayah Abubasheer of PSCABI wrote in an email on 21 April. “There are no basic supplies or stationery for students in Gaza. Basic materials such as pens, pencils, sharpeners, erasers and so on are not available. And, books? There are no books, research resources or any of the like in Gaza. Israel bombed the Islamic University’s labs and student residences during the [winter 2008-09 attacks on Gaza].”

PSCABI is the student arm of the Palestinian Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel. Both groups belong to the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, started in Palestine in 2005. The group is comprised of students representing all Palestinian universities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and has alliances with Palestinian student groups at Israeli universities, Abubasheer said. This coalition of activists wrote an open letter to Atwood on 4 April, asking her to turn down the prize. The letter went “viral” and was soon posted on websites and blogs across the Internet. It also spawned other letters and action alerts, all with the aim of persuading Atwood to stand in solidarity with Gaza’s students.

Atwood admitted via email she was aware of the open letter, but said she did not receive it personally. She did not respond to the students in Gaza, but she did reply to Antoine Raffoul, a Palestinian architect living in London who is the founder of the organization 1948: Lest We Forget.

Cultural boycotts equal censorship, Atwood said. In addition, the Dan David Prize is a cultural event, funded by an individual, she said. “To boycott a discussion of literature such as the one proposed would be to take the view that literature is always and only some kind of tool of the nation that produces it — a view I strongly reject.”

Atwood also said via email that she is the international vice president of the literary organization PEN, which advocates for writers who are persecuted or imprisoned because of their work. As such, she is not allowed to participate in cultural boycotts, she said.

Dan David and Tel Aviv University

Dan David, 80, was born and raised in communist Romania. He joined the Zionist youth movement and helped organize aliyah or Zionist emigration to Israel, according to a 13 November 2007 article published by the Israeli daily Haaretz. David, who made his fortune in instant photo booths, used $100 million of his own money to found the Dan David Foundation, which administers the Dan David Prize. He also sits on the Board of Governors of Tel Aviv University (TAU), which is at the center of Israel’s military-industrial complex.

Today, some 64 research projects in defense or national security are being funded by Israeli and US defense agencies on the TAU campus. “TAU is playing a major role in enhancing Israel’s security capabilities and military edge,” reads the introduction to an article entitled “Lifting the Veil of Secrecy” in the Tel Aviv University Review, Winter 2008/09 issue.

“‘People are just not aware of how important university research is in general, and how much TAU contributes to Israel’s security in particular,’ says TAU President Zvi Galil in the article.

One project currently underway explores how to turn birds into weapons because they are relatively “unobtrusive,” especially when compared to the much larger unmanned drones, according to the article.

Antoine Raffoul said that the Dan David Prize cannot be divorced from Israel. “Its institutions, whether cultural, educational, industrial, scientific, judicial, agricultural or military, are part and parcel of the political institution of the state … working hand in hand to enforce the policies of an illegal occupation of Palestinian land,” he said.

TAU was built upon the remains of a Palestinian village depopulated and destroyed by Zionist forces in 1948. “By accepting the prize at Tel Aviv University, you will be indirectly giving a slight and inadvertent nod to Israel’s policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide. This university has refused to commemorate the destroyed Palestinian village on which it was built. That village is called Sheikh Muwanis, and it no longer exists as a result of Israel’s confiscation. Its people have been expelled,” the Gaza students wrote in their open letter.

Upholding the rights and voices of the persecuted

During an acceptance speech for the American PEN Literary Service Award in New York City in April, Atwood said oppressors share a commonality. “They wish to silence the human voice, or all human voices that do not sing their songs. They wish to indulge their sense of power, which is best done by grinding underfoot those who cannot retaliate.”

Gaza’s students are disappointed with Atwood’s decision to accept the Dan David Prize, Abubasheer said. “We are deeply wounded by her decision. Students here have been asking about the sincerity of her novels and wonder whether she will reconsider her decision to stand on the wrong side of history”

In the end, for Atwood, at least, it comes down to whether or not a cultural boycott is equivalent to censorship. But as filmmaker Cathy Gulkin said in an article posted on the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel’s website on 6 May, the two issues are distinct. Gulkin said that censorship is wielded by a force with the power to prevent a work from being presented, while a boycott asks artists to withdraw their work voluntarily. She participated in a boycott of the Tel Aviv International Film Festival last winter.

“Palestinian civil society has no power or will to silence or censor. They can only appeal to people of conscience … to support them in their struggle to achieve their human rights,” Gulkin wrote in her call to boycott last winter.

The Palestinian students and Raffoul point to a number of artists and authors, including Naomi Klein, Carlos Santana, Bono, Snoop Dog and Sting, who have heeded Palestinian civil society’s call for the boycott of Israel.

Raffoul even pointed to actor Marlon Brando, who rejected his Academy Award in 1973 to protest the US government’s treatment of Native Americans or the Beatles rejecting knighthoods in England.

“I sympathize with the very bad conditions the people of Gaza are living through due to the blockade, the military actions, and the Egyptian and Israeli walls,” Atwood wrote in her email to Raffoul.

“We are not asking for sympathy!” Abubasheer said. “We want solidarity. … You are either with justice or with injustice. There is no neutral zone.”

Abubasheer added: “Thus, we all have an individual moral responsibility to boycott. Boycott is inclusive and it brings people together, fighting for peace through justice and accountability, from the youngest to the oldest, from the four quarters of the world, anyone can boycott. After the wiping out of entire families in broad daylight, what else do some public intellectuals need to see in order to make a bold move?”

Raffoul contends that today no one — especially important cultural figures such as Atwood — can exist in a vacuum. “You can’t hide behind the cloak of literature,” he said. “We don’t live in a shell anymore. You cannot claim to be a humanitarian in any state and then … fly into a zone called Israel [that is] killing people and dehumanizing innocent people.”

Atwood said she plans to “observe” what she sees in Palestine and then write about it. She suggested this reporter hold off on writing this article until then.

But Abubasheer would not be comforted by this promise. Quoting Archbishop Desmond Tutu, she said: “If you choose to be neutral in situations of injustice, then you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

She added: “The position taken by Ms. Atwood … is clear in the light of this statement.”

Kristin Szremski is an award-winning journalist with more than 20 years in newspapers. She began her career in Warsaw, Poland, working on an English-language newspaper with members of the Solidarnosc (Solidarity) union. Her work has appeared nationally and internationally. Szremski is currently a freelance journalist living outside Chicago.

May 8, 2010 Posted by aletho | Solidarity and Activism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Leave a comment

Secret Erik Prince/Blackwater Tape Exposed

By Jeremy Scahill | Rebel Reports | May 3, 2010

Erik Prince, the reclusive owner of the Blackwater empire, rarely gives public speeches and when he does he attempts to ban journalists from attending and forbids recording or videotaping of his remarks. On May 5, that is exactly what Prince is trying to do when he speaks at DeVos Fieldhouse as the keynote speaker for the “Tulip Time Festival” in his hometown of Holland, Michigan. He told the event’s organizers no news reporting could be done on his speech and they consented to the ban. Journalists and media associations in Michigan are protesting this attempt to bar reporting on his remarks.

Despite Prince’s attempts to shield his speeches from public scrutiny, The Nation magazine has obtained an audio recording of a recent, private speech delivered by Prince to a friendly audience. The speech, which Prince attempted to keep from public consumption, provides a stunning glimpse into his views and future plans and reveals details of previously undisclosed activities of Blackwater. The people of the United States have a right to media coverage of events featuring the owner of a company that generates 90% of its revenue from the United States government.

In the speech, Prince proposed that the US government deploy armed private contractors to fight “terrorists” in Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia, specifically to target Iranian influence. He expressed disdain for the Geneva Convention and described Blackwater’s secretive operations at four Forward Operating Bases he controls in Afghanistan. He called those fighting the US in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan “barbarians” who “crawled out of the sewer.” Prince also revealed details of a July 2009 operation he claims Blackwater forces coordinated in Afghanistan to take down a narcotrafficking facility, saying that Blackwater “call[ed] in multiple air strikes,” blowing up the facility. Prince boasted that his forces had carried out the “largest hashish bust in counter-narcotics history.” He characterized the work of some NATO countries’ forces in Afghanistan as ineffectual, suggesting that some coalition nations “should just pack it in and go home.” Prince spoke of Blackwater working in Pakistan, which appears to contradict the official, public Blackwater and US government line that Blackwater is not in Pakistan.

Prince also claimed that a Blackwater operative took down the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W Bush in Baghdad and criticized the Secret Service for being “flat-footed.” He bragged that Blackwater forces “beat the Louisiana National Guard to the scene” during Katrina and claimed that lawsuits, “tens of millions of dollars in lawyer bills” and political attacks prevented him from deploying a humanitarian ship that could have responded to the earthquake in Haiti or the tsunami that hit Indonesia.

Several times during the speech, Prince appeared to demean Afghans his company is training in Afghanistan, saying Blackwater had to teach them “Intro to Toilet Use” and to do jumping jacks. At the same time, he bragged that US generals told him the Afghans Blackwater trains “are the most effective fighting force in Afghanistan.” Prince also revealed that he is writing a book, scheduled to be released this fall.

The speech was delivered January 14 at the University of Michigan in front of an audience of entrepreneurs, ROTC commanders and cadets, businesspeople and military veterans. The speech was titled “Overcoming Adversity: Leadership at the Tip of the Spear” and was sponsored by the Young Presidents’ Association (YPO), a business networking association primarily made up of corporate executives. “Ripped from the headlines and described by Vanity Fair magazine, as a Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier and Spy, Erik Prince brings all that and more to our exclusive YPO speaking engagement,” read the event’s program, also obtained by The Nation. It proclaimed that Prince’s speech was an “amazing don’t miss opportunity from a man who has ‘been there and done that’ with a group of Cadets and Midshipmen who are months away from serving on the ‘tip of the spear.’” Here are some of the highlights from Erik Prince’s speech:

Send the Mercs into Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria

Prince painted a global picture in which Iran is “at the absolute dead center… of badness.” The Iranians, he said, “want that nuke so that it is again a Persian Gulf and they very much have an attitude of when Darius ran most of the Middle East back in 1000 BC. That’s very much what the Iranians are after.” [NOTE: Darius of Persia actually ruled from 522 BC–486 BC]. Iran, Prince charged, has a “master plan to stir up and organize a Shia revolt through the whole region.” Prince proposed that armed private soldiers from companies like Blackwater be deployed in countries throughout the region to target Iranian influence, specifically in Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia. “The Iranians have a very sinister hand in these places,” Prince said. “You’re not going to solve it by putting a lot of uniformed soldiers in all these countries. It’s way too politically sensitive. The private sector can operate there with a very, very small, very light footprint.” In addition to concerns of political expediency, Prince suggested that using private contractors to conduct such operations would be cost-effective. “The overall defense budget is going to have to be cut and they’re going to look for ways, they’re going to have to have ways to become more efficient,” he said. “And there’s a lot of ways that the private sector can operate with a much smaller, much lighter footprint.”

Prince also proposed using private armed contractors in the oil-rich African nation of Nigeria. Prince said that guerilla groups in the country are dramatically slowing oil production and extraction and stealing oil. “There’s more than a half million barrels a day stolen there, which is stolen and organized by very large criminal syndicates. There’s even some evidence it’s going to fund terrorist organizations,” Prince alleged. “These guerilla groups attack the pipeline, attack the pump house to knock it offline, which makes the pressure of the pipeline go soft. they cut that pipeline and they weld in their own patch with their own valves and they back a barge up into it. Ten thousand barrels at a time, take that oil, drive that 10,000 barrels out to sea and at $80 a barrel, that’s $800,000. That’s not a bad take for organized crime.” Prince made no mention of the nonviolent indigenous opposition to oil extraction and pollution, nor did he mention the notorious human rights abuses connected to multinational oil corporations in Nigeria that have sparked much of the resistance.

Blackwater and the Geneva Convention

Prince scornfully dismissed the debate on whether armed individuals working for Blackwater could be classified as “unlawful combatants” who are ineligible for protection under the Geneva Convention. “You know, people ask me that all the time, ‘Aren’t you concerned that you folks aren’t covered under the Geneva Convention in [operating] in the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan? And I say, ‘Absolutely not,’ because these people, they crawled out of the sewer and they have a 1200 AD mentality. They’re barbarians. They don’t know where Geneva is, let alone that there was a convention there.”

It is significant that Prince mentioned his company operating in Pakistan given that Blackwater, the US government and the Pakistan government have all denied Blackwater works in Pakistan.

Taking Down the Iraqi Shoe Thrower for the ‘Flat-Footed’ Secret Service

Prince noted several high-profile attacks on world leaders in the past year, specifically a woman pushing the Pope at Christmas mass and the attack on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, saying there has been a pattern of “some pretty questionable security lately.” He then proceeded to describe the feats of his Blackwater forces in protecting dignitaries and diplomats, claiming that one of his men took down the Iraqi journalist, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at President Bush in Baghdad in December 2008. Prince referred to al-Zaidi as the “shoe bomber:”

“A little known fact, you know when the shoe bomber in Iraq was throwing his shoes at President Bush, in December 08, we provided diplomatic security, but we had no responsibility for the president’s security—that’s always the Secret Service that does that. We happened to have a guy in the back of the room and he saw that first shoe go and he drew his weapon, got a sight picture, saw that it was only a shoe, he re-holstered, went forward and took that guy down while the Secret Service was still standing there flat-footed. I have a picture of that—I’m publishing a book, so watch for that later this fall—in which you’ll see all the reporters looking, there’s my guy taking the shoe thrower down. He didn’t shoot him, he just tackled him, even though the guy was committing assault and battery on the president of the United States. I asked a friend of mine who used to run the Secret Service if they had a written report of that and he said the debrief was so bad they did not put it in writing.”

While the Secret Service was widely criticized at the time for its apparent inaction during the incident, video of the event clearly showed another Iraqi journalist, not security guards, initially pulling al-Zaidi to the floor. Almost instantly thereafter, al-Zaidi was swarmed by a gang of various, unidentified security agents.

Blackwater’s ‘Forward Operating Bases

Prince went into detail about his company’s operations in Afghanistan. Blackwater has been in the country since at least April 2002, when the company was hired by the CIA on a covert contract to provide the Agency with security. Since then, Blackwater has won hundreds of millions of dollars in security, counter-narcotics and training contracts for the State Department, Defense Department and the CIA. The company protects US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and other senior US officials, guards CIA personnel and trains the Afghan border police. “We built four bases and we staffed them and we run them,” Prince said, referring to them as Forward Operating Bases (FOBs). He described them as being in the north, south, east and west of Afghanistan. “Spin Boldak in the south, which is the major drug trans-shipment area, in the east at a place called FOB Lonestar, which is right at the foothills of Tora Bora mountain. In fact if you ski off Tora Bora mountain, you can ski down to our firebase,” Prince said, adding that Blackwater also has a base near Herat and another location. FOB Lonestar is approximately 15 miles from the Pakistan border. “Who else has built a [Forward Operating Base] along the main infiltration route for the Taliban and the last known location for Osama bin Laden?” Prince said earlier this year.

Blackwater’s War on Drugs

Prince described a Narcotics Interdiction Unit Blackwater started in Afghanistan five years ago that remains active. “It is about a 200 person strike force to go after the big narcotics traffickers, the big cache sites,” Prince said. “That unit’s had great success. They’ve taken more than $3.5 billion worth of heroin out of circulation. We’re not going after the farmers, but we’re going after the traffickers.” He described an operation in July 2009 where Blackwater forces actually called in NATO air strikes on a target during a mission:

“A year ago, July, they did the largest hashish bust in counter-narcotics history, down in the south-east. They went down, they hit five targets that our intel guys put together and they wound up with about 12,000 pounds of heroin. While they were down there, they said, ‘You know, these other three sites look good, we should go check them out.’ Sure enough they did and they found a cache—262,000 kilograms of hash, which equates to more than a billion dollars street value. And it was an industrialized hash operation, it was much of the hash crop in Helmand province. It was palletized, they’d dug ditches out in the desert, covered it with tarps and the bags of powder were big bags with a brand name on it for the hash brand, palletized, ready to go into containers down to Karachi [Pakistan] and then out to Europe or elsewhere in the world. That raid alone took about $60 million out of the Taliban’s coffers. So, those were good days. When the guys found it, they didn’t have enough ammo, enough explosives, to blow it, they couldn’t burn it all, so they had to call in multiple air strikes. Of course, you know, each of the NATO countries that came and did the air strikes took credit for finding and destroying the cache.”

December 30, 2009 CIA Bombing in Khost

Prince also addressed the deadly suicide bombing on December 30 at the CIA station at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. Eight CIA personnel, including two Blackwater operatives, were killed in the bombing, which was carried out by a Jordanian double-agent. Prince was asked by an audience member about the “failure” to prevent that attack. The questioner did not mention that Blackwater was responsible for the security of the CIA officials that day, nor did Prince discuss Blackwater’s role that day. Here is what Prince said:

“You know what? It is a tragedy that those guys were killed but if you put it in perspective, the CIA has lost extremely few people since 9/11. We’ve lost two or three in Afghanistan, before that two or three in Iraq and, I believe, one guy in Somalia—a landmine. So when you compare what Bill Donovan and the OSS did to the Germans and the Japanese, the Italians during World War II—and they lost hundreds and hundreds of people doing very difficult, very dangerous work—it is a tragedy when you lose people, but it is a cost of doing that work. It is essential, you’ve got to take risks. In that case, they had what appeared to be a very hot asset who had very relevant, very actionable intelligence and he turned out to be a bad guy… That’s what the intelligence business is, you can’t be assured success all the time. You’ve got to be willing to take risks. Those are calculated risks but sometimes it goes badly. I hope the Agency doesn’t draw back and say, ‘Oh, we have to retrench and not do that anymore,’ all the rest. No. We need you to double down, go after them harder. That is a cost of doing business. They are there to kill us.”

Prince to Some NATO Countries in Afghanistan: ‘Go Home’

Prince spoke disparagingly of some unnamed NATO countries with troops in Afghanistan, saying they do not have the will for the fight. “Some of them do and a lot of them don’t,” he said. “It is such a patchwork of different international commitments as to what some can do and what some can’t. A lot of them should just pack it in and go home.” Canada, however, received praise from Prince. “The Canadians have lost per capita more than America has in Afghanistan. They are fighting and they are doing it and so if you see a Canadian thank them for that. The politicians at home take heavies for doing that,” Prince said. He did not mention the fact that his company was hired by the Canadian government to train its forces.

Prince also described how his private air force (which he recently sold) bailed out a US military unit in trouble in Afghanistan. According to Prince, the unit was fighting the Taliban and was running out of ammo and needed an emergency re-supply. “Because of, probably some procedure written by a lawyer back in Washington, the Air Force was not permitted to drop in an uncertified drop zone… even to the unit that was running out of ammo,” Prince said. “So they called and asked if our guys would do it and, of course, they said, ‘Yes.’ And the cool part of the story is the Army guys put their DZ mark in the drop zone, a big orange panel, on the hood of their hummer and our guys put the first bundle on the hood of that hummer. We don’t always get that close, but that time a little too close.”

Blackwater: Teaching Afghans to Use Toilets

Prince said his forces train 1300 Afghans every six weeks and described his pride in attending “graduations” of Blackwater-trained Afghans, saying that in six weeks they radically transform the trainees. “You take these officers, these Afghans and it’s the first time in their life they’ve ever been part of something that’s first class, that works. The instructors know what they’re talking about, they’re fed, the water works, there’s ammunition for their guns. Everything works,” Prince said. “The first few days of training, we have to do ‘Intro to Toilet Use’ because a lot of these guys have never even seen a flushed toilet before.” Prince boasted: “We manage to take folks with a tribal mentality and, just like the Marine Corps does more effectively than anyone else, they take kids from disparate lifestyles across the United States and you throw them into Paris Island and you make them Marines. We try that same mentality there by pushing these guys very hard and, it’s funny, I wish I had video to show you of the hilarious jumping jacks. If you take someone that’s 25 years old and they’ve never done a jumping jack in their life—some of the convoluted motions they do it’s comical. But the transformation from day one to the end of that program, they’re very proud and they’re very capable.” Prince said that when he was in Afghanistan late last year, “I met with a bunch of generals and they said the Afghans that we train are the most effective fighting force in Afghanistan.”

Prince also discussed the Afghan women he says work with Blackwater. “Some of the women we’ve had, it’s amazing,” Prince said. “They come in in the morning and they have the burqa on and they transition to their cammies (camouflage uniforms) and I think they enjoy the baton work,” he said, adding, “They’ve been hand-cuffing a little too much on the men.”

Hurricane Katrina and Humanitarian Mercenaries

Erik Prince spoke at length about Blackwater’s deployment in 2005 in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, bragging that his forces “rescued 128 people, sent thousands of meals in there and it worked.” Prince boasted of his company’s rapid response, saying, “We surged 145 guys in 36 hours from our facility five states away and we beat the Louisiana National Guard to the scene.” What Prince failed to mention was that at the time of the disaster, at least 35% of the Louisiana National Guard was deployed in Iraq. One National Guard soldier in New Orleans at the time spoke to Reuters, saying, “They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and Afghanistan than here… We are doing the best we can with the resources we have, but almost all of our guys are in Iraq.” Much of the National Guard’s equipment was in Iraq at the time, including high water vehicles, Humvees, refuelers and generators.

Prince also said that he had a plan to create a massive humanitarian vessel that, with the generous support of major corporations, could have responded to natural disasters, such as earthquakes and tsunamis across the globe. “I thought, man, the military has perfected how to move men and equipment into combat, why can’t we do that for the humanitarian side?” Prince said. The ship Prince wanted to use for these missions was an 800 foot container vessel capable of shipping “1700 containers, which would have lined up six and a half miles of humanitarian assistance with another 250 vehicles” onboard. “We could have gotten almost all those boxes donated. It would have been boxes that would have had generator sets from Caterpillar, grain from ADM [Archer Daniels Midland], anti-biotics from pharmaceutical companies, all the stuff you need to do massive humanitarian assistance,” Prince said, adding that it “would have had turnkey fuel support, food, surgical, portable surgical hospitals, beds cots, blankets, all the above.” Prince says he was going to do the work for free, “on spec,” but “instead we got attacked politically and ended up paying tens of millions of dollars in lawyer bills the last few years. It’s an unfortunate misuse of resources because a boat like that sure would have been handy for the Haitian people right now.”

Outing Erik Prince

Prince also addressed what he described as his outing as a CIA asset working on sensitive US government programs. He has previously blamed Congressional Democrats and the news media for naming him as working on the US assassination program. The US intelligence apparatus “depends heavily on Americans that are not employed by the government to facilitate greater success and access for the intelligence community,” Prince said. “It’s unprecedented to have people outed by name, especially ones that were running highly classified programs. And as much as the left got animated about Valerie Plame, outing people by name for other very very sensitive programs was unprecedented and definitely threw me under the bus.”

May 4, 2010 Posted by aletho | Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Leave a comment

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Lies are Unbekoming | January 25, 2026

The waiting room is clean. The receptionist is polite. The forms ask reasonable questions. Nothing in the physical environment suggests danger. The magazines are current. The hand sanitizer dispenser works. Someone has chosen calming colors for the walls.

A pregnant woman sits in a chair designed for her comfort. She has been told to be here. Not ordered—no one orders. Recommended. Strongly recommended. Everyone does this. Her mother did this. Her friends did this. The women in her prenatal group compare notes about their appointments the way they compare notes about nursery furniture. Which provider did you choose? What tests have you had? The questions assume the answers. The answers assume the questions.

She will be offered things today. Offered is the word used. The offers will come with information sheets that list risks and benefits in tabular form. She will sign consent documents. Everything will be voluntary in the legal sense. No one will hold her down. No one will threaten her. She will choose, and her choices will feel like choices, and she will leave feeling she has done the responsible thing.

What she will not feel is the weight of what has been arranged before she arrived. … continue

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Iran’s Ambassador to the UN Mohammad Khazaei

By Stuart Littlewood | 21 May 2010

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