Supremacism, Social Darwinism

Afghan interpreters ‘abandoned’ after being wounded

Afghan interpreters serving on the frontline with British troops have accused the Ministry of Defence of abandoning them when they are badly wounded and denying them the care they were promised.

By Ben Farmer in Kabul | 18 Apr 2010

One interpreter maimed in a bomb blast said he was denied essential plastic surgery because he was not British. Another said he was abandoned in a coma in an Afghan hospital, then left with medical bills. Both said the MoD had promised them desk jobs when they recovered, but they remained unemployed. Ten of their fellow interpreters in Helmand province resigned in protest at their treatment, they said.

The Ministry of Defence in London disputed their claims, but they were backed by two other interpreters interviewed by the Daily Telegraph.

Nato-led forces are reliant on civilian interpreters to translate conversations into Dari and Pashtu when they interact with local people or Afghan forces.

The Ministry of Defence employs 450 Afghans as interpreters. Fourteen have been killed and 27 wounded in the past four years.

Shafiullah Hotak, 23, signed up for the £400-a-month interpreters’ position in early 2007, translating for British troops including the Royal Marines and 2 Para, helping them mentor Afghan soldiers in Helmand.

But 20 months into his job, he was badly wounded when a Taliban home-made bomb went off in Gereshk district.

Mr Hotak said British recruiters had never explicitly discussed medical care, but had assured his that he would be “well looked after”.

“They said: ‘We will take care of you guys, don’t worry about anything’.”

Another interpreter said they had been verbally told they would get the same treatment as the British troops. But in the Aug 2008 attack, he lost large amounts of muscle from his left arm in the explosion. After five days of emergency treatment at Camp Bastion, he said he was told he could not have plastic surgery because of a lack of surgeons.

“They gave me emergency surgery and after that they told me you need to go home and do your treatment yourself. Because I wasn’t British, they didn’t take me to Birmingham with the other wounded.

“When the British told me that, I was in a bed, I couldn’t even move myself.” He was eventually given plastic surgery by US forces in Bagram airbase, north of Kabul, but has lost much use of his left arm. He could not continue his frontline job, was not given the promised office job and was eventually fired, he claimed.

Another interpreter who received severe facial injuries after being caught in a separate blast declined to be named, fearing he would be blacklisted from working with international forces.

After treatment in Camp Bastion, he was transferred unconscious to an Afghan hospital and his family were only contacted a week later when doctors found a phone number in his pocket. He said he had been left with £1,200 of outpatient medical bills and also not given the desk job he was promised.

Farid, a 22-year-old colleague who resigned after seeing what had happened to Mr Hotak, said: “When we were working with the British, they were our friends. When we were injured, they didn’t care about us.”

Wounded interpreters working for American forces have also complained of poor care, claiming insurance companies can take months to pay their medical bills. The private company supplying interpreters for American forces last year admitted it had at one point a backlog of more than 170 insurance claims from wounded staff.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said Afghan civilian employees were given a “high standard of medical treatment”.

She said: “While it is not appropriate to comment on the medical records of an individual, we have investigated and can find no evidence that the standards of care were breached in the case you highlight.

“Follow up checks are carried out and further medical care is offered if necessary. There is no evidence to suggest that these processes were not followed in Mr Hotak’s case.”

She added: “We are not aware of any instances where an individual has been denied work due to having spoken with the press or where medical treatment procedures have not been followed.”

April 19, 2010 Posted by aletho | Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Leave a comment

Dr. Strangelove, Made in Israel

By Philip Giraldi | April 15, 2010

One would expect the Air Force’s top civilian adviser to be someone who has spent some time in the US military or who has a very particular educational or skills set that brings something special to what is, after all, a very senior and sensitive position. Not so. Dr. Lani Kass, who is the senior Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force General Norton A. Schwartz, was born, raised, and educated in Israel and then served in that country’s military where she reached the rank of major. She has a PhD in Russian studies but advises Air Force Generals on Cyberwarfare, terrorism, and the Middle East. And Kass appears to have close and continuing ties to her country of birth, frequently spicing her public statements with comments about life in Israel while parroting simplistic views of the nature of the Islamic threat that might have been scripted in Tel Aviv’s Foreign Ministry.

Kass’ official Air Force bio, which has been expunged from the Pentagon website possibly due to less than flattering commentary regarding her appointment, indicates that since January 2006 she has been “the principal adviser on policy and strategy and formulates, develops, implements, and communicates the policies, programs and goals of the Air Force.” Another official bio adds that she “…conducts numerous complex, high priority special assignments involving research and fact-finding to develop analyses, position and issue papers, and generate new initiatives based on a variety of strategic subjects of critical importance to the Joint Staff and/or the Joint Force.” There have also been suggestions that Kass has recently become an informal adviser to Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Middle Eastern policy.

Dr. Lani Kass is married to Norman Kass, a former Pentagon Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and resides in McLean, Virginia. She has been naturalized as a US citizen and is presumably a dual national who now holds both American and Israeli passports. Her three children were all born in Israel. While it is perhaps not unusual for American citizens to volunteer with the Israel Defense Forces as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel did in 1991, it would have to be considered unprecedented for a senior Israeli military officer to obtain a high level position at the Pentagon. In fact, it is hard to imagine that anyone carrying out a security background investigation would approve such a transition under any circumstances, suggesting the possibility that Kass’s ascent to high office might have been aided or even godfathered by friends in key positions who were able to override or circumvent normal procedures.

Dr. Kass’s full first name is Ilana and her maiden name is Dimant. She has a 1971 BA in political-science and Russian area studies, summa cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a 1976 joint PhD from the Kaplan School of the Hebrew University and Columbia University in international affairs. She apparently met her husband Norman at Columbia. Both she and her husband are fluent in Russian and Hebrew. After completing her PhD, she served in the Israeli Air Force, achieving the rank of major. For those who are unfamiliar with the military, the rank of major is a senior rank that normally would be awarded to a career officer.

Between 1979 and 1981, Kass worked at the Russian research Center of Booz Allen and Hamilton. Between 1985 and 2005 she held the position of Professor of Military Strategy and Operations of the National War College. In 1992 Dr. Kass obtained a senior position at the Pentagon as Special Assistant to the Director, Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate (J5). Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense at the time. She returned to the Pentagon under Secretary William Cohen and stayed on during 2000 – 2001 as Senior Policy Adviser and Special Assistant for Strategic Initiatives to the Director, Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate (J5) under Donald Rumsfeld.

In early November 2006, US Air Force officials formed the Air Force Cyberspace Command that had the “authority to launch wars in cyberspace.” The command was reported to be “largely the brainchild of Dr. Lani Kass, director of the Air Force Cyberspace Task Force.”

Dr. Kass’ position and access inevitably raise a number of questions. Her appointment is somewhat unseemly, which even the Air Force appeared to recognize when it removed her bio from the website. Surely there must be qualified Americans who would be both delighted and proud to serve their country in the position she holds. Surely someone in Washington must see the security implications of a former foreign military officer holding a high level post in the Pentagon with full access to classified information. To challenge Dr. Kass’s position is not to question her academic credentials and intelligence or even her ability or integrity, but it is not unreasonable to ask why the Pentagon would appoint to a sensitive position someone who was born, raised, and served at a senior level with the armed forces in a foreign country.

And it is also not unreasonable to stop and consider whether Kass might well be an agent working for the Israeli government, which aggressively spies against the United States. She left Israel and began her journey through the US defense department in 1981, when Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was still active. Israeli intelligence certainly was then and is now capable of what is referred to in intelligence jargon as a seeding operation in which “a mole” is placed in an innocuous position and expected to rise higher, eventually obtaining access to top secret information and even sometimes winding up in a position in which it is possible to direct policy as a so-called agent of influence. Kass started her ascent by working on Russia for beltway bandit Booz Allen Hamilton, quite likely for completely innocent reasons but also possibly because it was a non-threatening way to ease her entry into the world of government contractors.

In seeking to discover how she wound up where she is now it is fair to ask how exactly she obtained the positions that she has held with the Pentagon and who sponsored her through the bureaucracy. How did she manage to obtain a clearance in spite of the obvious red flags in her background? In light of legitimate security concerns, has she been polygraphed, what questions about her relationship with her former country were asked, and what were her answers? Was any deception indicated? Has she been re-polygraphed recently? This is not intended as harassment or as any accusation against Kass but rather to determine if she has been subject to normal and appropriate security measures. CIA officers are, for example, required to undergo polygraph exams every five years and the questions concentrate on possible unreported relationships with foreign governments.

Critics note that while Kass is genuinely an expert on Russia, she has little background to qualify her as an authority on the currently fashionable Cyberwarfare, where she has somehow turned herself into a major spokesman through mastery of the necessary buzzwords and talking points. Nor does she have any genuine expertise on the Middle East or on terrorism to share with Mullen and others, apart from her own Israeli perspective. Her access to the highest levels of the Air Force also raises the questions of just what is she advising and what does she know? Does she support an air war against Iran, for example, and is she actively promoting that option? Does she know how the Obama Administration will react if Tel Aviv tries to stage a unilateral attack on Iran? Such information would be pure gold for the Israeli government.

There are indications that Dr. Kass is a major player in shaping US security policy. She has been described as a “key participant” in the development of the national strategy for combating terrorism, as well as the national military strategic plan for the Global War on Terrorism. In September 2007, The Times of London reported that she was a leading participant in “Project CHECKMATE, a “highly confidential strategic planning group tasked with ‘fighting the next war’ as tensions rise with Iran” that was “quietly established” by the US Air Force in June 2007 as a “successor to the group that planned the 1991 Gulf War’s air campaign.”

Also per The Times, CHECKMATE “consists of 20-30 top air force officers and defense and cyberspace experts with ready access to the White House, the CIA and other intelligence agencies.” Its director Brigadier-General Lawrence A. Stutzriem and Kass reported directly to General Michael Moseley, at the time chief of staff of the Air Force. The Times cited Defense sources saying, “detailed contingency planning for a possible attack on Iran has been carried out for more than two years.” Regarding Iran operations, Kass was quoted as saying “We can defeat Iran, but are Americans willing to pay the price?”

Dr. Kass is not directly linked to any neoconservative groups but appears to be a kindred spirit, possessing a Manichean world view. Her comment cited above about defeating Iran has a dismissive tone to it, as if she is not identifying as an American herself. And she is also reported to have said “Remember what Israelis tell their children when they cry: ‘Don’t cry — you want to be a paratrooper don’t you?’” Some other public utterances are also revealing, suggesting that if General Schwartz and Admiral Mullen are actually listening to her it is no surprise that some US defense and security policies are largely based on simplistic bumper sticker analysis. In a speech at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho on July 9, 2007, she said radical Muslims hate the western world because Europe took their dominant political position away and they want it back. To support her claim she produced a map taken from an obscure Jihadi website showing the entire world depicted as the “United States of Islam,” in which everyone will have to follow Sharia Muslim law. Kass likes to use the map as a prop in many of her public appearances. In her speech she explained that Muslims hate western culture and want to dominate the world, adding that because radical Islam has a “culture of death” all those who do not submit to Islam must die, an assertion so absurd that one suspects her political analysis derives from the Free Republic website. She also compared all Americans to sheep and sheepdogs. The former keep their heads down hoping that someone else will be eaten by wolves a.k.a. terrorists while the latter fight back. Kass sees herself as a sheepdog. For her Air Force audience she concluded that the long war against the Islamists will end “when they learn to love their children more than they hate us,” a comment originally attributed to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

Kass’s powerpoint demonstration “A Warfighting Domain,” dated September 26, 2006, is equally scary, and more than a little Strangelovean in its language and appeal. It includes the map of the United States of Islam and defines the “mission” as “to fly and fight in the Air, Space, and Cyberspace.” She boasts “as Airmen we are the nation’s premier multi-dimensional maneuver force, with the agility, reach, speed, stealth, payload, precision, and persistence to deliver global effects at the speed of sound and the speed of light.” Her objective? To “foster a force of 21st century warriors, capable of delivering the full spectrum of kinetic and non-kinetic, lethal and non-lethal effects in the Air, Space, and Cyber domains.”

Dr. Kass the Kremlinologist might have been a dab hand at interpreting the Nomenklatura standing on top of Lenin’s tomb but her embrace of Cyberwar and her comments relating both to terrorism and the state of the Middle East make one wonder how she has ascended to her lofty perch…and equally why she should remain there. Legitimate security concerns about her possible conflicted loyalty and her intentions should have blunted her trajectory long ago. But on the other hand, the global war on terror is so much of a joke that it perhaps needs someone like Dr. Kass to symbolize its absurdity and to launch the US Air Force on a vital new mission replete with lethal warrior-airmen delivering “global effects” at the speed of light. At an estimated cost of $100 billion, one might add. Captain Kirk? Are you ready to beam me up? Things are getting kind of strange down here.

April 15, 2010 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Wars for Israel | 3 Comments

Lula’s Legacy: The Two Brazils

By James Petras | 04.14.2010

President Lula Da Silva announces the purchase of $4.4 billion dollars in new warplanes the same day that mudslides in Rio de Janeiro bury over 230 people living in precarious shanty slums neglected by the government housing authorities .While there is a total absence of a drainage system in the favelas, Lula spent billions on roads and ports for exporters but nothing for resident slum safety. Brazil is widely included as a newly emerging world power, along with China, Russia and India, the so called BRIC countries, and yet nearly forty percent of its population, lives on or below the poverty line, at or below the minimum wage of $200 dollars a month for a family of four.

Brazil’s attraction for many of its financial promoters is found in the size of its population of 210 million, the effective consumer market of over 100 million, and its agro-mineral resources: Brazil is one of the world’s biggest exporters of chicken, beef, soya, iron ore, cotton and ethanol.

Two other factors have recommended the Lula regime to both the right and left. The Right is pleased with Brazil’s stock market, financial sector and foreign owned banks (over 50%) which have gained and transferred over 150 billion in profits to overseas investors over the past 8 years of Lula’s rule. The ‘Left’ is enthusiastic about Lula’s independent foreign policy: his opposition to the US boycott of Cuba and exclusion from the Organization of American States; his economic relations with Iran despite pressure from Washington; his refusal to condemn Venezuelan President Chavez; and the fact that China has replaced the US as Brazil’s foremost trading partner as of 2010. Moreover, many defenders and apologists for Lula cite his “poverty program” which provides a $40 a month subsidy to 10 million destitute families , which has reduced poverty. The Lula Left forget the fact that the regime has failed to provide meaningful employment with adequate pay for the poverty subsidy recipients and has broken promises to carry out an agrarian reform for the 20 million landless rural workers. In other words, Lula’s supporters cite the regime’s policy of diversifying markets for Brazilian agro-mineral exporters and his multi-billion dollar electoral patronage subsidies to the poor as evidence of Lula’s “progressive” credentials.

Two other elements enter into the positive image of Lula: his working class, trade union origins and his continued high popularity ratings (according to recent polls over 60%). The “working class” background is over 20 years past: Lula has not worked in a factory for over 25 years.He has been a middle class political functionary of his party since the mid 1980’s. Moreover, Lula’s working class origins have no relevance to his current political and social commitments and appointments, which are tied to big business strategists and neo-liberal central bankers and economic ministers. What needs to be acknowledged is that Lula is a master at the politics of conservative populism: Lula excels in creating an emotional bond with the poor, through his face to face encounters and mass media imagery as “a man of the people”, even as he upholds a social hierarchy with the greatest inequalities in South America. No conservative neo-liberal leader in the US or EU can combine the façade of “populism” and the content of neo-liberal orthodoxy with the same success.

Myths and Reality of a Brazil as an “Emerging World Power”

Given the enduring mass poverty and social inequalities in land and wealth no perceptive observer can claim that Brazil’s new status as an emerging world power is due to Lula’s social policies. The entire basis for projecting Brazil onto the world stage is based on its economic performance. A brief but close examination of the empirical realties, raises profound doubts about Brazil’s performance and Lula’s claims of achieving the status of a world power. Between 2003-2009 Brazil’s GDP grew by a mere 3.4% and only 2% percapita, below the average for Latin America by at least 1%. If we compare Brazil’s performance in relation to the other BRIC countries, especially China and India, Brazil’s GDP grew at less than 40% of their rate of growth. Locating Brazil in the same league as China and India seems to be highly misleading. Moreover, while most of the growth of the other newly emerging powers is based on diversified industrial exports (China) and high tech information services (India), Brazil still depends on the dynamic expansion of agro-mineral exports.

Growth and stagnation characterized Lula’s eight years in office, depending on prices and demand for agro-mineral commodities. During the years of the commodity boom (2004 – 2008) Brazil grew by 4.5%; during the downturn in commodity prices (2003 and 2009) Brazil stagnated at less than 1%. In other words, Lula’s “free market policies” had less to do with Brazils’ economic performance than world market demand for commodities. Despite Lula’s claims that Brazil would avoid the impact of the world crises of 2008 -2010 because it was “delinked” from the imperial centers, in fact beginning in October 2008 and continuing through to January of 2010 Brazil entered into a recession with zero growth in 2009. Its recovery in 2010 is largely the result of the revival and explosion in commodity demand, led by China, and the sharp rise in prices of key export commodities such as iron ore which has doubled in price since the beginning of 2010.

Brazil’s economic performance under Lula appears favorable only in comparison to the disastrous results achieved under the previous ultra neo-liberal Cardoso regime which grew at a snail’s pace of less than 3%. What is most significant, however, is the strategic socio-economic and political continuities between the Cardoso and Lula regimes. Cardoso devastated the public sector, by privatizing and denationalizing, at ridiculously low prices, the most lucrative enterprises. The most glaring example was the sell off of one of the richest iron mines in the world Vale del Doce for less than a billion dollars, a firm which is now valued at over $20 billion dollars and with yearly profits exceeding $3 billion dollars. Lula has retained and even expanded Cardoso’s most dubious privatizations – including the banks, mines, oil and telecommunication companies which were acquired at below market prices.

Even before his first election victory in 2002 Lula signed an orthodox International Monetary Fund Agreement to retain a 4% budget surplus, to pursue an orthodox fiscal policy restraining social spending reducing public pensions and holding down wages. Lula was more successful than Cardoso in enforcing these orthodox monetary policies because of his influence over the major trade union confederation (CUT) leaders, who he co-opted via appointments to the Labor Ministry. In other words, Lula harnessed populist rhetoric to fiscal conservatism, symbolic labor appointments with economic policy czars with long-standing ties to major financial centers.

Lula received the enthusiastic endorsement of all the major financial newspapers for his switch from advocate of working class social reforms to staunch ally of the BOVESPA (Brazilian stock exchange). His policies of accumulating over $200 billion in foreign reserves, of prioritizing the paying down foreign debts instead of increasing social spending for education health and housing affecting 100 million Brazilians, won lasting praise among all orthodox economic experts. The “stability” of the economy was bought at the expense of the instability in the lives of the working class and the rural poor. Unemployment under Lula never went below 10%; the ‘informal sector’ remained at over 30%; four million rural families remained landless; the Amazon rain forest annually lost over 2 million hectareas per year, encouraged by Lula’s push to promote agro-business exports. Indian territorial reserves were violated, land was occupied, scores were killed, while federal and state agencies focused on prosecuting rural movements occupying uncultivated latifundios owned by business speculators. Lula’s policy of financing agro-business exporters was successful – cultivated lands expanded, revenues increased geometrically and wealth grew – for the owners, investors and stock owners. But at a tremendous cost: over 2 million rural workers were forced to migrate to slums and marginal employment, becoming easy recruits for the drug gangs which control the favelas of Rio and Sao Paolo. Millions of family farmers were forced to borrow at high interest rates and to compete with subsidized food imports, driving hundreds of thousands into bankruptcy and making Brazil a food deficit country.

Lula, during and immediately after his election, solemnly promised the powerful 350,000 member Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) that he would carry out an agrarian reform settling 100,000 families a year with housing, credits and technical assistance. During his eight years in office, Lula broke his pledge every year, settling less than 40,000 families while under-financing the new and established co-operatives driving over one-third into bankruptcy. The MST in turn because of its “critical support” of Lula, lost the political initiative even as it continued its policy of occupying farms to secure land reform. After a brief period of tolerance, the government turned the military police against the Movement, arresting its leaders and criminalizing its activities. After a major corruption scandal affecting Lula’s top advisers and leaders in Parliament (2005 – 2006), he turned to the traditional rightist parties and established politicians including ex-President Sarney to promote his neo-liberal economic agenda. Lula’s new coalition with the traditional right was based on a common program of promoting big agricultural interests and guaranteeing their security against the land occupation strategy of the agrarian reformers in the MST. The result was an increasing concentration of landownership (1% of landholders own over 50% of the fertile lands) and an increasing number of movement leaders and activists awaiting trials and serving time in jail.

Lula’s legacy is essentially an “economically sound and stable market for investors” according to all orthodox economic experts. Brazil was rewarded by being awarded the site for the forthcoming Olympics. But given the severity of poverty and the dynamic growth of drug trafficking and armed organized gangs, Lula’s projections of nearly 50,000 soldiers to protect the spectators reveals the underside of his dream of an emerging world power.

Lula’s Political Legacy

Lula’s political legacy is on display in this year’s presidential elections, in which he must step down after two terms in office. In contrast to the past, there is now in place a modified two party system in which a variety of smaller groups coalesce around Lula’s Workers Party (PT) and Jose Serra’s Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). Neither party is what its label proclaims: over 80% of the delegates at the PT nominating convention were professionals, lawyers, functionaries and business people with a sprinkling of trade union bureaucrats and co-opted “movement” officials. There is nothing “socialist” about the party of Cardoso which privatized the jewels of the economy. The competition of the two parties is over who best represents the agro-mineral, banking and industrial elite of Sao Paolo and as a corollary who will receive the bulk of their financial contributions. Lula was eminently successful in securing tens of millions of dollars in contributions from the economic elite for his services on their behalf. In fact most of the really wealthy contribute to both major parties. Lula’s legacy is that he has de-radicalized Brazilian politics, leading to a consensus over the centrality of free markets, free trade and state promoted big business as the bases of economic policy. Beyond that Lula has enshrined the principle of poverty subsidies in place of social structural changes as the centerpiece of social policy.

Brazil: The Presidential Election 2010

The best analysis of the forthcoming Brazilian presidential elections (October 3) is found in the response of the stock market, credit agencies and investors: they envision no major changes on the horizon, continued support for orthodox fiscal policies, greater state promotion of private national and foreign investment and most important, social stability. The so-called “Workers” Party under Lula’s unchallenged authoritarian control, nominated Dilma Rousseff, his former ‘chief of staff’ as their candidate. The opposition rightwing PSDB nominated Sao Paulo State Governor Jose Serra, a former leftist who once contributed an essay to a book I edited back in 1972, titled “Dependence or Revolution”. One of the political ironies is that over the past two decades former Marxists, trade union leaders, even guerrilla activists have played a leadership and vanguard role in steering Brazil toward deeper integration into the world market, replacing socialist internationalism by embracing capitalist globalization.

To the extent that differences exist between Rousseff and Serra they revolve around issues of foreign policy, the role of public-private enterprise associations and the size and scope of public sector spending. Rousseff, promises to continue Lula’s promotion of billion dollar trade and investment agreements with all countries including Iran, Venezuela and Bolivia, regardless of US opposition. Serra, who is ideologically closer to Washington’s agenda, may reduce or limit these economic ties to accommodate the Obama regime. In other words, the Workers Party is a party with a greater commitment to independent market based global expansion than Serra’s more dogmatic ideologically influenced foreign economic policy. Officials in Washington have informed me that, the Obama regime will adopt a public posture of ‘neutrality’, since both candidates have affirmed friendly ties with Washington. Unofficially, I was told (off the record) that the Obama Administration prefers Serra because he is likely to side with Washington’s policy against Iran and be more outspokenly critical of President Chavez. However given the large scale engagement of Sao Paolo business interests in both countries, it remains to be seen how far Serra (if he is elected) would actually go in prejudicing Brazilian investors to satisfy US military driven empire building. Rousseff is likely to promote large scale public-private joint ventures to exploit multi-billion dollar off-shore oil and gas exploitation; Serra is more likely to promote exclusively private-foreign capital ownership and exploitation. Rousseff’s election campaign will receive big financial contributions from a long list of agro-mineral corporations, traders and national industrial manufacturers and construction contractors who received lucrative government contracts and subsidies and credit. Serra will be financially favored by the multi-national banks, rightwing landowners associations and the leaders of the Sao Paolo industrial elite. The trade union confederations and social movements will back Rousseff, either because of recent favorable wage agreements or because the PT is seen as the “lesser evil”. The Chamber of Commerce and some leading business associations and middle class “civic groups” will back Serra especially in the greater Sao Paolo region. While on the surface these political and social differences between the candidates appear to give some credibility to the idea of a ‘left-right polarization’ in reality the differences disappear when we examine closely the make-up of the political parties within the coalition backing the Rousseff. Four of the five major parties are on the conservative end of the political spectrum: the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), the Brazilian Republican Party (PRB), the Democratic Labour Party (PDT) and the Republic Party(RP). If Rousseff should be elected these four rightwing coalition partners will obtain the majority of ministries, leadership position in the Congress and ensure that the Rousseff regime does not trespass the boundries of orthodox neo-liberal fiscal policies.

What remains of the Left, is a fragmented assortment of micro parties with a strong presence in public sector trade unions (teachers, health workers) and some influence among the social movements. If the various groups united they might gather a respectable vote, but because of sectarian and opportunistic practices that is unlikely. Ciro Gomes, a former member of Lula’s cabinet is a likely candidate for the Socialist Party. But that is likely a mere a pretext to negotiate electoral support in the second round in exchange for a cabinet post if Rousseff is elected. Marina Silva, Lula’s former Environment Minister is a candidate for the Green Party, a party allied with the rightwing PSDB, PMDB as well as the PT whenever it is opportune: Silva will likely trade her voters to whichever party offers her a post. The two other explicitly “Marxist” parties, the United Socialist Workers Party (PSTU) and the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), which tentatively agreed to present a common candidate have yet to resolve differences about acceptable coalition partners: the PSOL looks to the Green Party, the PSTU threatens to abandon the alliance.

Conclusion

Brazilian politics have moved a long way to the right over the past decade: the PT is now an openly pro-business party, whose fiscal policies are identical to the IMF recipes. The once militant trade confederation, the CUT, is now little more than an adjunct of the Ministry of Labor, well rewarded with economic subsidies but incapable of putting workers in the streets. Even the mass based rural landless workers (MST) which still retains its organizational autonomy feels weakened and isolated in the face of the PTs right turn. On the other hand, agro-export elites are thriving, investment bankers and overseas multi-nationals are pouring over $30 billion a year into Brazil; one of the worlds “safest emerging world powers”. Leftist leaders like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez praise Brazil’s “progressive” foreign policy even as Lula signs defense pacts with Obama for joint training and military exercises. No doubt Lula has gained greater international recognition for Brazil and will finish office with the greatest popularity ratings of any President in recent history. Yet with a cost of living comparable to that of Barcelona, over 30%, of Brazilian wage workers still receive a minimum wage of $200 dollars a month; the public school teachers in Sao Paolo receive between $436 – $505 dollars a month. One has only to visit the millions dwelling in the slums surrounding Sao Paolo, Rio and the other major cities to realize that there are two Brazils: the mass media publicized Brazil of the BRIC, the banker’s ‘emerging world power’, the Brazil of free elections and free markets, and then there is the “other Brazil” of forty million impoverished slum dwellers, twenty million landless rural workers, tens of thousands of dispossessed (Amazon) Indians, thousands of unpaid ‘slave laborers’ living in debt peonage, the millions of public school teachers, working two, three or more jobs up to 13 hours a day to earn a decent living. Lula’s presidency may have raised Brazil’s international stature and gained him the status of a ‘global statesman’ but most workers, peasants and Afro-Brazilians still work and live under Third World conditions.

April 14, 2010 Posted by aletho | Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Leave a comment

The trouble with Brazil’s much-celebrated ethanol ‘miracle’

By Tom Philpott | 13 April 2010

This is a post about Brazil’s sugarcane-ethanol “miracle,” but I can’t resist starting off with a look askance at our own corn-derived ethanol phenomenon. Has there ever been a “green” technology more ecologically discredited than corn-based ethanol?

It may yield slightly more energy than it consumes during production–but only if you grant a generous credit to distillers grains, an ethanol byproduct now busily being shoveled into Confined Animal Feeding Operations (and exported to China) as a highly dubious livestock feed. But corn ethanol’s unimpressive energy balance makes it a pathetic candidate to displace energy-rich petroleum gasoline.

Moreover, its total greenhouse gas emissions are likely titanic–a fact limply acknowledged by the EPA and then eventually retracted under industry pressure. For the love of God, the stuff is based on industrial corn–by far our biggest user of soil-degrading synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.

Yet the corn-ethanol behemoth lurches tediously along, forever demanding, and too often commanding, ever-spiralling amounts of government support and arable land. Sigh.

Too bad we’re not more like Brazil, where they’re displacing petroleum with highly efficient sugarcane-based ethanol … right? Well, no. In 2006, I co-wrote an article about what Brazil’s much-heralded cane ethanol revolution has to teach the United States. The conclusion: not much.

Now comes this blistering report from Foreign Policy magazine exposing the myth that sugarcane ethanol is some sort of environmental panacea.

Before I get to the details, I want to make the point that the biofuel-as-panacea impulse is only possible in society’s whose citizens fundamentally don’t understand agriculture. Biofuels are hailed as “renewable,” because crops can be grown on the same land year after year. But monocrops destroy soil–properly thought of as a non-renewable resource–and require lots of agrichemical poisons. Therefore, industrial-scale biofuels aren’t renewable. (Whether biofuels can work sustainably in regional niches, as part of a diverse cropping system, is a different question).

Okay, where was I? In the FP piece, author Nikolas Kozloff jumps right to the point in his lead:

While sugar cane ethanol is certainly less ecologically destructive than some other biofuels, the industry’s boosters have overlooked one key fact: You’ve got to plant sugar cane somewhere. One couldn’t pick a worse place to harvest cane than Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest. There, sugar cane crops have led to deforestation and, paradoxically, more carbon emissions.

He goes on to explain that the flattening of the Atlantic rainforest–distinct from the Amazonian one–stands as the original sin of Portugal’s colonization of Brazil. The history of several tropical crops we now take for granted–for example sugarcane and coffee–is essentially the history of razing of that vast forest (twice the size of Texas, with as much biodiversity as the Amazon forest). And this ecological crime was compounded by the use of slave labor, Kozloff reminds us. “The colonists shipped six million African slaves to Brazil to do the cutting,” he writes: surely one of the vilest episodes in human history.

Today, just 7 percent of the original Atlantic rainforest remains–and sugar producers are busily tearing into that precious remnant as ethanol production kicks up. In the last year alone, Kozloff writes, the government has had to fine two dozen companies for illegally clearing some 143,000 acres of Atlantic rainforest to plane sugarcane.

The explosion in cane-based ethanol has potentially dire implications for the Amazon rainforest, too. I shouldn’t have to note that the Amazon is one of the globe’s great climate-stabilizing assets. It’s also home to groups who have been living there for generations–making use of its resources without destroying them. Any “green” fuel that triggers Amazon deforestation and displaces people is an abomination. Even though sugarcane doesn’t do very well in wet conditions, “hundreds of thousands of acres of sugar cane have been planted in the Amazon,” Kozloff reports. Then there are also indirect effects–cane displaces other crops and pushes them into the Amazon region. Kozloff writes:

In the state of São Paulo, sugar cane has been planted on former pastureland and this has pushed cattle into Mato Grosso. Hundreds of thousands of cattle are moving into the Amazon every year as a result of displacement by ethanol in the state of São Paulo alone, say environmentalists. This migration is becoming all the more likely since one can purchase 800 hectares of land in the Amazon for the price of just one hectare in São Paulo. Additionally, some soy plantations in the center of the country have been turned over to ethanol production, prompting concern among environmentalists that this will lead soy producers to move into the Amazon. And local observers say that sugar cane plantations are already pushing soy farmers and ranchers into the rainforest.

Then there’s the problem of nitrogen fertilizer. As in, sugar requires plenty of it.

The Brazilian ethanol industry uses more than 240,000 tons of nitrogen fertilizer per year [TP note: compared to about 1.9 million tons for corn-based ethanol] at a cost of about $150 million. At a public senate hearing in Brasilia called to discuss climate change, experts expressed concern that nitrogen fertilizers used in conjunction with sugar cane production yielded nitrous oxide. What’s more, when you cut cane by hand you’ve got to set controlled fires in the fields to smoke out razorsharp leaves, nasty snakes, and tarantulas. In the middle of the night, plantations look like a war zone as burning fields light up the sky and the wind blows billowing smoke clouds far and wide. Not only do the burnings pollute the air with soot, causing a number of illnesses, but they also release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and nitrous oxide.

Finally, in keeping with the historical tradition of sugarcane production, working/living conditions in sugar fields are brutal.

Today the Brazilian sugar cane industry is centered in the state of São Paulo — drive just an hour out of the city and you can see sugar cane fields stretching for hundreds of miles. Palmares Paulista is a rural agricultural town 230 miles from São Paulo. Behind rusty gates lies a squalid red-brick tenement building. Inside, weary migrant workers breathe the stale air and try to prepare themselves as best they can for the long day ahead. The cortadores de cana, or sugar cane workers, are crammed into tiny cubicles filled with rickety bunk beds and unpacked bags. They hail from the poverty-stricken, drought-plagued northeast and earn paltry wages.

What the FP piece teaches us is that unchecked expansion of Brazil’s sugarcane ethanol industry will likely lead to ecological disaster. Cane-based ethanol is no panacea. It may be “better” than it’s corn-based cousin–but that doesn’t make it an ecologically robust product. Pulling down trade barriers and allowing cheap Brazilian ethanol to flood the U.S. market–which same U.S. free-trade advocates are calling for–is no panacea, either.

I will be mocked for my lack of hard-headed realism for saying it, but here is a reality check: the royal road to a climate-stable and energy secure-future lies not in a mad search for “renewable” alternatives to gasoline. Rather, it lies in the direction of conservation and mass-transit alternatives to cars.

April 14, 2010 Posted by aletho | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | 1 Comment

America’s Loose Nukes in Israel

By Grant Smith | April 14, 2010

Israel decided this week to send Minister for Intelligence Affairs Dan Meridor to the Nuclear Security summit. This U.S. bid to secure vulnerable nuclear stockpiles against non-state actors is both closely watched and furiously spun. Israel avoided exposing Prime Minister Netanyahu to embarrassing scrutiny of Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons arsenal. For this reason, trumpets the New York Times, Israel sent a lower-level delegation. But Israel has long responded defiantly to threats of robust U.S. oversight. A long-running investigation into how weapons-grade uranium went missing from Pennsylvania illustrates why America has been incapable of securing its own nuclear materials and know-how from insider threats. The future of that uranium may determine the success or failure of the Obama administration’s non-proliferation effort.

Steve Levin was a member of the underground Haganah – a precursor to the Israel Defense Forces – and fought during Israel’s 1948 war under Meir Amit, who later became head of Israeli intelligence. Levin was a close friend of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel. In the mid-1940s while leading the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion launched a massive clandestine conventional arms financing, theft, and smuggling network [.pdf] in the United States diverting to Palestine small arms, heavy machine guns, munitions-making equipment, aircraft, ships, and tanks destined for American scrap yards after World War II.

On the nuclear front, Levin financed the purchase of the Apollo Steel Company facility in Pennsylvania for $450,000. Founder and President Dr. Zalman M. Shapiro, a genius inventor and head of a local Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) chapter, incorporated the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) at Apollo in 1956. Levin capitalized NUMEC through a stock offering in 1957 and business took off – propelled by the critical knowledge of highly talented scientists. NUMEC co-founder Dr. Leonard P. Pepkowitz previously worked on the clandestine Manhattan Project in 1944 producing America’s first atomic bombs. Pepkowitz later led analytical chemistry research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. NUMEC regularly received large quantities of highly enriched uranium and plutonium from industry giants Westinghouse and the U.S. Navy for reprocessing into nuclear submarine fuel and other specialty uses. Shapiro was meticulous in his stewardship of the company’s financial resources, carefully shopping around for banks willing to accommodate the complex demands of the fast growing NUMEC.

In the early 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began documenting suspicious lapses in NUMEC’s security, inexplicably lax record-keeping, and the ongoing presence of large numbers of Israelis at the plant. In 1962 the AEC considered suspending “classified weapons work” at NUMEC. In 1965 an AEC audit found that NUMEC could no longer account for 220 pounds of highly enriched uranium. In 1966 the FBI opened an investigation – code-named Project DIVERT – and began monitoring NUMEC’s management and Israeli visitors. On Sept. 10, 1968, four Israelis visited NUMEC to “discuss thermoelectric devices with Shapiro,” according to correspondence seeking official AEC consent for the visit from NUMEC’s security manager. Among the approved visitors was Rafi Eitan. After Eitan’s visit, 587 pounds of highly enriched uranium was classified as missing.

Former Deputy of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology Carl Duckett said the agency came to the conclusion by 1968 that “NUMEC material had been diverted by the Israelis and used in fabricating weapons.” An eyewitness gave testimony to the FBI about one late evening in 1965 when he encountered several NUMEC employees loading a flatbed truck with nuclear materials. It was unusual that material was shipping so late at night. Moreover, these particular employees (names were censored from the 2,654 pages of FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act) “never loaded trucks themselves.” The eyewitness was “sure this was high-enriched uranium products due to size and shape of the container and the labeling.” An armed guard ordered the witness away; he was later threatened to never reveal what he had seen on the loading dock.

The FBI, CIA, Congress, the GAO, and the AEC spent fruitless decades investigating the diversion. The FBI insisted on nuclear forensics to determine whether radioactivity in soil samples collected outside Dimona in Israel had any telltale NUMEC signature. But not until U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard was arrested spying for Israel in 1985 was Rafi Eitan’s importance fully understood. In 1986 investigators discovered the Eitan who entered NUMEC in 1968 had the same birth date – 11/23/1926 – as the spy handling Pollard. According to Anthony Cordesman, “There is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] but for the nuclear material.” Eitan has since been forced out of the cold as one of Israel’s top economic espionage agents for Israel’s secretive LAKAM, involved in multiple operations against U.S. targets. The Israel lobby’s role, never deeply explored by the Pollard investigators, was perceptible in the background. An operative of a U.S.-Israel business foundation provided the Washington, D.C., safe house where documents stolen by Pollard were duplicated and secreted away to Israel.

But Pollard’s subsequent life sentence in prison is the exception to the rule – crimes for Israel (even nuclear diversion) aren’t punished by America. In a now familiar pattern, the investigation of NUMEC uranium diversion waxed and waned into the 1990s. DIVERT was soon transformed into a futile investigation into whether Zalman Shapiro had foreknowledge or personal involvement in the caper and ways officials in agencies from the State Department to the AEC thwarted warranted law enforcement and accountability for Israel. To date, all of the uranium-diversion masterminds, financiers, and beneficiaries have escaped criminal prosecution, even as U.S. taxpayers fund a nuclear waste cleanup at the (now defunct) NUMEC Apollo facility.

That the U.S. is a sieve for Israeli nuclear espionage is well documented. In 1988 the GAO determined that Department of Energy nuclear laboratories were far too open to foreign visits from “countries identified as sensitive by DOE because they are a security and/or proliferation risk, such as Pakistan and Israel.” The lessons of Eitan went unheeded. The report found that “Of 637 visitors from countries such as India, Israel, and Pakistan, the DOE required background checks for only 77.” In addition to amassing critical knowledge, other nuclear technologies known to have been diverted from the U.S. to Israel include dual-use triggering technologies, klystrons, and krytons.

It never had to be this way. In the early 1960s, just as the problems at NUMEC began, President John F. Kennedy unleashed a robust non-proliferation and law enforcement pincer maneuver. He demanded U.S. inspections of Israel’s Dimona weapons plant in order to prevent Israel from going nuclear. Kennedy simultaneously ordered Israel’s American lobby to register as foreign agents to bring their undeclared activities out into the open. But Israel and its U.S. lobby ultimately prevailed on both counts.

In formally pressing Israel to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while pushing for a settlement freeze and peace negotiations, the Obama administration is retracing JFK’s final footsteps. Israel’s lobby still has its own sovereign policy priorities. As Zalman Shapiro and lobby elites such as neoconservative gadfly Frank Gaffney gathered at ZOA events on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, pivoting the U.S. military from Iraq toward Syria and Iran was a top priority. The lobby also worked day and night to keep America’s front (and back) doors open for massive aid transfers and trade preferences, buffing up its own image by plucking operatives from the harsh clutches of law enforcement – even winning presidential pardons to erase or exalt other unfortunate historic events that called into question the U.S.-Israel “special relationship.” Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh noted that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) entire executive committee (the Conference of Presidents) favors releasing Jonathan Pollard on the grounds that “his crimes did not amount to high treason against the United States, because Israel was then and remains a close ally.” These unspoken, forced policies directly pit Israeli prerogatives against American national security, governance, and rule of law – they are often only won only through illegal means. As Israel ratchets up its own “project divert” effort to compel others to confront NPT signatory Iran (while derailing meaningful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations), the rest of the world showed true commitment to non-proliferation by sending top diplomats to America’s summit.

Israel simply sent in another spy.

This is why the U.S. must demand more than Israel’s entry into the NPT. Only by recovering all purloined nuclear materials can Obama win confidence in America’s own commitment to controlling loose nukes.

April 14, 2010 Posted by aletho | Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Wars for Israel | 4 Comments

The Major Jewish American Organizations Defend Israel’s Humiliation of America

By James Petras Ph.D. | Atlantic Free Press | April 7, 2010

“The Government of Israel has insulted the Vice President of the United States, and spat in the face of the President … they wiped the spit off their faces and smiled politely … as the saying goes: when you spit in the face of a weakling, he pretends that it is raining”

– Uri Avnery Israeli Jewish journalist 13/3/2010.

“We (Israel) possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets … most European capitals are targets of our air force … the Palestinians should all be deported. Two years ago, only 7 or 8 per cent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago, (January 2010), it was 33 percent and now according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent”.

– Martin Van Crevel Israeli, professor of military history at Hebrew University at Jerusalem and top adviser to the Israeli Armed Forces, March 2, 2010.

Introduction

When Israel announced a major new Jews-only building project of 1600 homes in occupied East Jerusalem, it was not only “spitting in the face” of visiting Vice President Biden, it was demonstrating its power to humiliate America and Americans. Netanyahu was sending a message to world: Israel backed by its billionaire-financed Presidents of the 51 Major American Jewish Organizations, leads the US by the nose. The Jewish State can make an agreement with the White House one day and revoke it the next (with characteristic arrogance), US public opinion be damned. No sooner did the Obama Administration react to this most public show of impudence with Biden privately telling the Israeli Prime Minister that, “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”, than Netanyahu openly called on the “American Jewish community” (the major Zionist organizations) to come to the defense of Israel and its claim on all of Jerusalem. And respond they did: turning the insulted victim (America) into the bully and blaming the US, not the Israeli government, for the “crisis” and for the breakdown of Israel’s agreement not to expand colonial settlements on occupied Palestinian land. As we shall describe, the entire Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the United States (with a few notable exceptions) defended Israel’s effrontery and condemned any attempt by the US government to peacefully resolve a conflict, which threatened US lives, economic interests and prestige. This just confirmed world public opinion, which sees an American electorate willing to be humiliated by this economically insignificant state.

The Bigger Issue: Beyond the Biden – Netanyahu Caper

Whatever the insults and crimes of the moment, the conflict between Israel and the US is not about Netanyahu’s hyper-arrogance or a new series of Jerusalem land grabs, or even the frothy spittle on Vice President Biden’s face. It is, in essence, about the relation between states or, better still, the relation between peoples where one group (Israeli Jews and their powerful one percent fifth column agents in the US) exacts tribute and imposes wars in its own interests on another group (the US tax payers, soldiers, workers and businessmen). It arrogates power, not merely yesterday or today, but for the last 50 years.

In a broader historic context, the public humiliation of Vice President Biden in Tel Aviv pales in comparison to the Israeli’s cold blooded sneak attack, which killed and wounded over 200 American servicemen on the USS Liberty in June 1967. An arrogant and homicidal Israel humiliated the US through this attack, confident that then-President Lyndon Johnson would not retaliate but would even silence the survivors from ever telling their story to the American people. When Netanyahu calls on the “Jewish Communities” in the US he is not referring to the majority of American Jews. He, in fact, is addressing the Zionist power configuration whose strategically-placed members designed and promoted the Iraq war policy, which has caused the deaths and mutilation of thousands of US soldiers as well as over one million Iraqi civilians. In essence, the US soldier victims of the invasion of Iraq lost their lives, limbs and sanity for the interests of the Zionist “homeland”.

It is not merely that American Zionists defend the illegal construction of another Jews-only neighborhood in the middle of Palestinian East Jerusalem; the announcement was calculated to humiliate the visiting US Vice President. It’s not just a matter of US Zionist support for Netanyahu’s sabotage of a US peace initiative; nor is it about the unconditional ZPC support for Israeli crimes as they were being denounced by the United Nations and the peoples of the world. The fundamental issue is that the ZPC in the United States is turning our country and its people into defenders of Israel’s sordid crimes, casting the American people as accomplices to ethnic cleansing and degrading our moral sensibilities before the whole world.

Today and Yesterday: Castrating America

Netanyahu’s symbolic spitting in Biden’s face was a calculated act of grave significance. It marked out Israel’s ‘will to power’ – its willingness to publicly humiliate US leaders and flaunt its power over the US before the world. Israel exposed US impotence in the Middle East and beyond. This incident has world-historic consequences for anyone who is not blind. The US is a declining power, which cannot create a secure environment for its soldiers, corporations and citizens anywhere in the Middle East or beyond. No European, Asian, Latin American or Muslim country can look at the US and its citizens without thinking, “Here is a country at the feet of Israeli leaders and at the throat of Israel’s designated ‘enemies’. It is an understatement to say that the US, as a nation and as a people, has “lost prestige”.

Israel has a long and ignoble history of sabotaging peace talks in favor of grabbing land. From its very foundation, Tel Aviv undermined peace offers through unprovoked military attacks. Israel, along with Britain and France, launched a full-scale surprise invasion of Egypt to grab the Suez Canal, after it had promised to consider Egyptian President Nasser’s proposal to negotiate. In more recent times, as soon as Arafat agreed to formally recognize Israel as a state and sign a peace agreement, Jewish tanks and jets attacked the West Bank killing hundreds and surrounding Arafat’s headquarters for months. At the same time it increased the number of the Jews-only settlements in the West Bank ten fold to accommodate over 500,000 fanatical paramilitary Jewish settlers. When the elected Hamas administration implemented a unilateral cease fire, Israel launched a major military assault, ultimately devastating Gaza and killing 1400 mostly unarmed Palestinians.

Israel’s actions, past and present, including land grabs, Jews-only apartheid roads and settlements and military invasions of Palestinian refugee camps and towns have destroyed the possibility of a negotiated peace agreement, which would compromise the Zionists’ vision of an ethnically-cleansed “Greater Israel”.

Given this spiteful history, it’s not surprising that Israel’s current apologists claim that the current land grab to build more Jews-only apartment blocks in Jerusalem is “nothing new”, that it is “part of our history”, that Jews “need the living space” and that “three thousand years of Biblical history tells us that all this land is ours” (quotes from the Daily Alert, March 15 -17, 2010, official mouthpiece of the Conference of Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations).

The humiliation of Biden was not the first time that Israel acted publicly to embarrass the Obama Administration. In his first meeting with President Obama, Prime Minister Netanyahu openly rejected any freeze in new settlements. Indeed, Israel escalated its settlement building right after Obama addressed the Muslim-Arab world in his ‘Cairo Speech’.

What is behind Netanyahu’s perverse behavior and his US supporters’ overweening arrogance? How can the US media, hundreds of Congressional Representatives and all the leading Jewish American organizations, support an extremist racist regime, which attacked and humiliated our country with impunity? How can the American Zionists side with a foreign country over issues detrimental to basic US security interests and not be viewed as traitors by other Americans?

In the first place, Netanyahu has the support of 80% of the Israeli-Jewish population as he pursues the policy of evicting the Palestinians and expanding exclusively Jewish settlements on occupied lands despite US President Obama’s ‘peace overtures’. Humiliating the visiting US Vice President on a ‘peace mission’ from Obama only increased Netanyahu’s popularity with Israelis.

Secondly, this impudent projection of Israeli power over the reputed American ‘superpower’ appeals to the self-image of the far-right religious settlers whose leaders form the backbone of the current governing coalition (especially the Shas party).

Thirdly, insulting a gentile President and Vice President would find approval among the supporters of Netanyahu’s gangster Foreign Minister, Avi Lieberman and with the tough Eastern European Hasidic youth who routinely spit on elderly Christian monks and priests in their ancient Armenian and Greek quarters of Jerusalem.

It might seem strange for Israelis, who face increasing isolation throughout the Middle East and are condemned throughout Europe for their brutal colonial crimes, to glorify their thuggish leader as he heaps contempt on their most important military ally and economic supporter, its elected leaders and its citizens. Accumulated Israeli political resentment against world condemnation for their war crimes found an emotional outlet by identifying with Netanyahu’s antics: His relentless brutality against the ‘Untermenschen’ of Palestine and his willingness to openly defy the US Administration, even as Israel extracts $3 billion dollars a year from the Americans, re-enforces their sense of superiority. It is clear that Netanyahu’s totalitarian policies have a mass popular base among Israelis and his swaggering arrogance faithfully reflects the national psyche of Israel.

Netanyahu and his ministers calculated that no matter how hard they squeeze the hapless US taxpayers, themselves caught in the a profound economic crisis, and no matter how often the Israelis threaten to provoke a wider regional war and cause more American soldier casualties, they can always count on the unconditional support of the Zionist Power Configuration in the US to promote Israel’s interest. The entire US mass media applauded the Great Humiliator and even attacked the few American public figures as they (at least temporarily) defended American dignity against Israeli insults. The major Zionist leaders all rushed to support Israel’s humiliation of the US and to denigrate its critics. An endless parade of US politicians, editorial writers, columnists, opinion-makers, “think” tankers, and TV commentators demonstrated their special loyalty to Israel against an American president who was timidly seeking a negotiated peace in the Middle East.

The recent ‘conflict’ between Israel and America over peace in the Middle East –brought on by a crude Israeli provocation – exposed far more profound issues: At the center of power in America, there is an influential group of power-brokers willing to exploit and humiliate the American people in the service of a foreign power. In the past, patriots would have called them ‘traitors’.

Netanyahu’s Hubris ‘Rebuked’

In response to the official Washington show of anger, Netanyahu issued a half-hearted “explanation”: The problem was not the policy of building new settlements in violation of their agreement with Washington; the problem was the timing of the announcement. It was a regrettable “error” by a minor functionary in the Israeli Interior Ministry who made his announcement right after US Vice President Biden had finished groveling at Netanyahu’s feet and was busy pressuring the Palestinian Authority collaborators to rejoin the ‘peace’ charade sponsored by Washington. According to the Israeli media and their US mouthpieces it was a public relations breakdown, not a matter of strategic political and military significance affecting the US in the Middle East. In other words: With Biden out of Israel and collaborator Abbas back at the ‘table’, any announcement violating the “freeze on settlements” would be merely an Israeli “internal policy” and a “continuation of past practices”.

Netanyahu Comes to Washington: Backhanders for Obama, Cheers from AIPAC

Netanyahu, fresh from spitting on Vice President Biden in Tel Aviv, administered a series of humiliating ‘back-handed’ slaps in the smiling face of President Obama, right under the glaring lights of the mass media in the US capital.

Bibi Netanyahu delivered a rabble rousing speech to over 7,000 cheering Zionists at the annual AIPAC conference in Washington, DC. He asserted Israel’s will to construct Jews-only housing throughout occupied Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, repeating Israel’s illegal claim that Jerusalem was the undivided capital of the Jewish people. He then demanded and secured a two-hour meeting with Obama, despite his arrogant insult against the US Administration. Adding further humiliation to the already weak US President, the Israeli government announced another Jews-only housing project in Arab East Jerusalem to be built on confiscated Palestinian property. This announcement, just hours before the planned Bibi-Barack meeting, carried an additional threat that the White House charade of ‘peace negotiations’ would be put off the table if the Americans protested this new round of illegal construction. Netanyahu, demonstrating his utter contempt for the White House and the America people, went straight to the Zion-colonized US Congress and secured the House Majority leader Pelosi’s ‘unconditional support…’ for Israeli expansion. And, as if to celebrate its victory and establish its own definition of ‘peace’, the Israeli military assassinated four un-armed Palestinians, two impoverished job-seekers and two young teenage protesters.

Loyalty to the Israeli masters was evident when thousands of Zionists fanatics jumped to their feet and cheered Bibi Netanyahu’s crude repudiation of the American efforts to protect its soldiers’ lives by promoting a peace initiative. Hillary Clinton’s call for a ‘peace settlement based on two states for two people’ was met with dead silence. The entire Zionist-dominated media and all the leading Jewish organizations backed an unprecedented series of humiliations directed against the elected US Administration and the American people. Netanyahu’s demagogic display of Israeli power over the US Congress and the American mass media and his crude willingness to degrade US political leaders in the nation’s capital mocks the very notion of the American people having any voice in their nation’s policies and subordinates America’s military high command over issues of war and peace in the Middle East.

For Pelosi and the Zionized Congress, the thousands of campaign shekels from the AIPAC crowd to fund their re-elections are far more crucial to their careers than the lives and limbs of thousands of US soldiers lost to an agenda of Israel and its domestic Fifth Column.

Israel’s Arrogance Prejudices US Interests

Israel’s leaders not only raised their domestic prestige by undermining the US Administration’s peace initiatives, they also managed to extract billions of dollars from the US taxpayers. The humiliation of the Obama regime derailed efforts by the Pentagon and the State Department to regain influence and credibility among the conservative Arab regimes, non-Arab Muslim nations and among hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world. This humbling of the US Administration by a sneering Netanyahu further jeopardizes the work and security of American businessmen and officials operating in the Middle East and undermines relations with their Muslim and Arab counterparts.

There will be major setbacks for the US in its efforts to gain support for its wars in the Middle East and South Asia and its propaganda campaign to discourage young Muslims from joining the anti-US resistance in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. The symbolic image of Vice President wiping away Israeli spittle during an official visit will encourage thousands of young Muslims to resist US occupation, which they view as promoting Israel’s agenda. If an economically insignificant Israeli state can defy the superpower, why can’t they? The logic is simple: The greater the Israeli land-grab, the more submissive the Obama regime, the more extended and profound the hostility of the Muslim people against the Americans, the more emboldened the armed resistance movements and the greater the number of dead and maimed American soldiers stuck in wars promoted by the Zionists.

While the losses of American soldiers in the Middle East have never figured in Tel Aviv’s policy moves, nor influenced the activities of its Fifth Colum in the USA, these losses do affect millions of American families and over 200 million American taxpayers. Even an occasional American General finds the courage to point out that Israel’s colonial dispossession of the Palestinian people has prolonged the war, tied up hundreds of thousands of US troops and undermined the capacity of the US armed forces to successfully operate on multiple fronts to promote US imperial interests.

When the head of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), General Petraeus’ team of senior officers, identified “Israeli intransigence” as “jeopardizing US standing and the lives of American solders in the region (Middle East)” in a briefing before the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on January 16, 2010, Petraeus met an onslaught of severe questioning from the ZPC. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullens received the same rebuke from the powerful Israel-Firsters. This was not the first time US military and security considerations were subsumed to Israel’s agenda. Only two years earlier in 2007, the ZPC denounced and successfully buried the annual National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) prepared by 16 US military and civilian intelligence agencies, which had concluded that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons and did not pose a major threat to the US, in favor of Israeli disinformation arguing the opposite. And the same ZPC has been taking the Obama regime to task for daring to criticize Netanyahu.

Over 300 members of the US Congress signed an extraordinary letter supporting Israel against their own Administration, pledging their commitment to “the unbreakable bond that exists between [U.S.] and the State of Israel”. Hundreds of congress men and officials joined the over 7,000 participants at the March 2010 AIPAC conference to cheer Netanyahu and witness the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton hail the leader of the Israeli settler state – who had pledged “to continue building in all of Jerusalem just as it does in Tel Aviv”.

General David Petraeus, whose senior officers had expressed his concern about Israel’s policies undermining US military interests to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullins, was no match for AIPAC. The CENTCOM commander contacted his Israeli counterpart General Gabi Ashkenazi to repudiate his own criticism of Israeli policies and, in effect, pledge his unconditional support to the Jewish state even when it jeopardizes US troops.

In January, General Petraeus correctly identified how Israeli intransigence had damaged US interests and operations in the Middle East, infuriated Arabs and ultimately increased attacks on American troops. But in March, the politically ambitious General hastened to retract his briefing before the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There are few more cravenly disloyal spectacles in US military history than this be-medaled American general prostrating himself for the Zionist lobby.

And yet, for a brief moment, a few desperate anti-Zionists leftists, looked to General Petraeus and Admiral Mullen as potential allies against Israeli-Zionist control of US policy in the Middle East. They ignored the fact that these are the commanders in charge of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and were preparing to confront Iran. Petraeus’ difference with Israel was over specific policies as they undermined the smooth operations of the US war machine in the Middle East and his ‘recantation’ before the Israelis has certainly thrown cold water of this romantic fantasy of a ‘nationalist’ US General.

The tradition of ‘civilian supremacy’ in the US ensures that the military will never confront the issue of Zionist control over the Congress and White House. Petraeus’ briefing will soon be forgotten and the General’s subsequent repudiation is an eloquent example of the grotesquely opportunistic nature of the American high military command.

When civilian leaders point out how Israel’s oppression of 5 million Palestinians jeopardizes American lives and interests in the Middle East, the Zionist power configuration deflects attention from Israel and blames the US (and its ‘permissive’ society) for having instigated the growing Islamist movement, Arab hostility and attacks. When American military leaders, strategists and intelligence officers assert that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is a leading cause of regional conflict based on their decades of field expertise, the arm-chair Generals among the Zionists re-interpret this straightforward identification of Israeli policy with attacks on American interests and troops as “another point of view”. In the meantime the ZPC rounds up the usual Congressional or White House Israel Firsters to “disown” their own military.

Israel’s narrowly conceived colonial policy, the eviction of massive numbers of Palestinians and the land grabs to construct Jews-only colonial settlements, undermines US authority in the Middle East among its allies. Israel’s brazen willingness and ability to openly bash President Obama, thoroughly discredits the contention among liberal Zionist apologists like Noam Chomsky that Imperial Washington is “in command” of Western policy in the Middle East and is acting on behalf of much broader Euro-American interests.

In a wider context, Israel’s arrogance damages attempts by US private investors to broker oil deals for multi-national corporations. Arab oil countries, which see themselves as threatened by a regional militarist power like Israel, with its colonial expansion and hegemonic ambitions, are unlikely to cooperate with America, especially when the superpower is impotent to curb Israel’s worst excesses.

Israeli Colonial Ambitions and US Strategic Interests

For Israel and its Fifth Column backers none of the US strategic concerns are as important as the Jewish state’s colonial conquests and its regional projections of power. Nor are the interests of the American people given much consideration when they come in conflict with Israeli expansionist colonial goals. The ZPC never considers or even discusses the fact that Americans have suffered major losses as a result of Israel’s relentless pursuit of military-driven power in the Middle East.

Israel’s primary goal of grabbing land and dispossessing Palestinians goes against the post-colonial ethos of the American people, who experience increased hostility overseas. The only beneficiaries of Israel’s colonial expansion are the small but powerful 51 American Jewish Zionist organizations which identify with and are loyal to the Israeli state.

Israel’s unilateral military aggression and threats against neighboring countries, including Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and its cross-border covert assassinations, most recently in Dubai, are of great importance to Israeli militarists as Israel projects power in the Middle East. The self-esteem of Israel’s militarized citizens is directly linked to their policy of aggression and assassinations without regard to national sovereignty. On the other hand, Israeli power projections have undermined the US efforts to diplomatically expand its own sphere of influence and negotiate multi-billion dollar military sales, trade and investment agreements in the Middle East. The fact that Israeli policies have jeopardized millions of jobs for American workers is an issue of no importance to the Jewish state and its affluent Israel First backers in the US.

Israel’s invasion of Lebanon forced the pro-US Hariri faction to form a coalition with the anti-imperialist Hezbollah political-military movement. Israel’s attempt to impose its will on Lebanon through its bombing campaign, torpedoed US diplomatic and political efforts to consolidate its influence with President Hariri.

Netanyahu’s successful bullying of Obama and Biden simply reinforced the ties between the pro-Western Lebanese and the anti-colonial Muslim left, in the face of Washington’s incapacity to constrain the Israeli ‘wildmen’ or resist the ‘internal rot’ eroding an independent American initiative: Better to join forces with Hezbollah, which after all fought Israel to a standstill in 2006.

Israel’s loyal accomplices in the US government have caused enormous damage to the US economy and threaten even greater loss of American lives, as Israel seeks to direct US policy toward Iran. Under the forceful and aggressive direction of Israel Firsters and the powerful Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Stuart Levey, every major US oil and gas company, bank, petroleum exploration and drilling firm and countless other business concerns have given up hundreds of billion dollars in lucrative economic trade and investment deals in the interest of Israel, which has extracted over $60 billion dollars of US taxpayer money and handouts and aid during the last decade.

Iran, which backed the US imperial attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, provided the US military with far more strategic assistance than all the Israeli advisers, ‘experts’ and contracted ‘interrogators’ in Baghdad and Iraqi ‘Kurdistan’ put together. Despite the US recognition of Iranian assistance in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran is demonized as ‘the enemy’ by Israeli agents within the US because Tehran opposes Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Israel’s Fifth Column churns out hundreds of articles a month demanding brutal economic sanctions against Iran and a pre-emptive military blitz aimed at destroying the Iranian economy and a nation of over 70 million. Every US military commander in the Middle East has acknowledged that an attack on Iran will expand the war, cut vital shipping of oil in the Persian Gulf plunging the world economy into recession, and threaten the lives of scores of thousands of American soldiers. They also are aware that the prospect of thousands of American casualties would not deter the 51 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, the AIPAC-controlled US Congress members, or the likes of Undersecretary of Treasury Stuart Levey from promoting or provoking a war with Iran. The leading Israel-First advocates for war with Iran are unconcerned with the inevitable thousands of US military casualties and the millions of American jobs lost, as they promote the expansion and supremacy of “Greater Israel” in all its arrogance and glory throughout the Middle East.

Zionist Power Configuration: How Dare You Resist Humiliation!

Is it any wonder that, when visiting American leaders are openly insulted by the racist regime of Prime Minister ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, American Zionists automatically side with Israel and condemn those who protest in defense of American dignity?

The Daily Alert, principle bulletin of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, provides a useful compilation of the articles, editorials and government documents, defending Israel against the US Administration’s efforts to seek diplomatic solutions. From March 15 – 19, 2010 the Israeli-ZPC juggernaut released a remarkable propaganda offensive, vividly underscoring the immense power of the Zionist power configuration in the US. As soon as the White House publicly rebuked Prime Minister Netanyahu for insulting Vice President Biden during his official visit to Israel, the Zionist power configuration, claiming to speak for all the “Jewish communities”, came out in defense of Israel and attacked the Obama Administration. A barrage of articles, editorials and press conferences materialized overnight, with the usual parade of zombie-like Congressional mouthpieces parroting the Zionist line and applying direct pressure on the White House. This multi-prong Zionist offensive, under Netanyahu’s direction, was successful in persuading the White House to return to its characteristic belly-crawl: Clinton, Biden and the rest of their gang retreated, reasserting the US “unconditional defense of Israel”, declaring the ‘non-existence’ of the crisis and asserting the ‘rock solid’ American relationship with Israel. The chain of command is revealing: The Israeli state orders the Zionist power configuration into action; the mass media disseminates the line; Congress marches lock-step for the Zionists and the White House retreats. Delighted with their success, Zionist propagandists roll out their own polls claiming the US public support for Israel — a public saturated with Israeli manufactured and American Zionist trumpeted propaganda. Clearly what such “polls” measure is the effectiveness of a monolithic mass media campaign.

The propaganda tactics utilized in this blitzkrieg media campaign involved placing blame on the insulted victim and attacking “the Administration for sparking a full blown crisis” (Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2010). It went on to denounce the US Administration officials for “condemning” and “pushing” Israel (Washington Post, March 15 – 19, 2010). Other publications accused President Obama of ‘playing into the hand’ of Arab extremists and “fanning the flames” ,(Fox News and Christian Science Monitor, March 18, 2010). It was the US President, who had been “hindering the peace talks” by “encouraging Palestinian intransigence”. Haaretz, Israel’s liberal newspaper, which has published articles critical of the Israeli Occupation, released a series of articles, opinion pieces and editorials by ‘experts’ and ‘military strategists’ accusing the US Administration of “orchestrating the crises” (March 14, 2010) and called for the Israeli government not to ‘grovel’ by apologizing to the US Vice President (March 15). CBS claimed that “Obama was pushing the US-Israeli alliance to the brink” (March 15). And on March 17, the Boston Globe accused Obama of “aggravating Israel’s mistake”. AIPAC methodically contacted its usual Congressional flunkeys to denounce the White House for rebuking the Israeli government.

By March 19, the Washington Post had published over a dozen diatribes calling for US acceptance of Israel’s settlement expansion. Zionist think tanks and front groups with deceptive names, like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, blamed the displaced Palestinians for sabotaging “the peace process” by protesting the accelerated Israeli land confiscation and settlements (Scripps – Howard and Fox News, March 18, 2010). Predictably, the New York Times provided a slightly liberal gloss by calling for reconciliation and an end to the crises, while never mentioning the public Israeli humiliation of Vice President Biden or considering how Israel’s latest grab of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem might endanger US lives and interests. The Times ignored General Petraeus testimony before Congress and his briefing, critical of Israeli policy, before the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while giving prominence to Netanyahu’s “peace talks” (March 18, 2010).

A few fissures have appeared in the pro-Israel monolith: David Axelrod, Obama’s chief adviser, condemned Netanyahu’s provocation as an “insult”; New York Times top columnist, Thomas Friedman, described the Israeli leaders as “drunken drivers”; and a leading US rabbi called for a building freeze in Jerusalem. These few liberal Zionist critics were overwhelmed by scores parroting ZPC ‘talking points’: Bronner and Sanger of the New York Times, Walter Mead of American (SIC) Interest and Goldberg of the New Yorker, among others.

The craven capitulation, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was inevitable. On March 16 Secretary Clinton declared that, “we have an absolute commitment to Israel’s security. We have a close unshakeable bond between the United States and Israel and between the American and Israeli people”. To prove her fealty to Israeli and Zionist interests, Clinton became featured speaker at the APAC Conference, March 21 – 26, 2010, sharing the platform with a triumphant Bibi Netanyahu.

Conclusion

Israel had to openly humiliate the US as a show of its power. Given Israel’s strategic domination of the US political system and the ZPC control over mass media and their enormous wealth, a Zionist-controlled administration, like Obama’s, would have to capitulate. Israeli and US Zionist pressure forced the American leaders to subordinate their international image and national self-respect and accept the unlimited expansion of Jews-only settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, no matter how this might undermine US standing in the region and jeopardize US troops. By ‘whipping’ the Obama Administration into line, Israel has set the stage for the launching of its top priority: Forcing a direct US military confrontation with Iran in Israel’s strategic interests. It is clear that the entire ZPC will stand with Israel as it promotes its militarist agenda against Iran, regardless of the consequences to the United States.

It has been proven beyond a doubt by the recent events, that the ZPC has the ultimate say with the Obama Administration, against the advice of top US military officials and against the basic interests of the American people. In plain English, we are a people colonized and directed by a small, extremist and militarist ‘ally’ which operates through domestic proxies, who, under any other circumstance, would be openly denounced as traitors.

Can the ZPC be defeated? They are the “most powerful lobby in Washington”, to whom Presidents, Administration officials, Generals and Congress people must submit or risk having their careers ruined and being ousted from public office. Meanwhile,outside of the United States, the international community openly despises Israel as a brutal, racist colonial state, a war criminal and chronic violator of human rights and international law. The Middle East Quartet, made up of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, has condemned Israel’s plan to build another 1,600 homes exclusively for Jewish extremist settlers in Arab East Jerusalem. The Quartet demanded “the speedy creation of a Palestinian state and the end to provocative actions”. But the ‘Quartet’ is powerless to stop Israeli plans. The Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations tell their followers that global “anti-Semitism” motivates the ‘Quartet’. The huge AIPAC “Hail Israel” Conference in Washington D.C. in late March celebrated the triumph of unfettered Israeli expansionism.

Nevertheless, some Israelis are beginning to express unease. After their initial euphoria over Netanyahu’s slap-down of Biden and face-up to Clinton, there is growing fear of Israeli being ‘weaned’ away from the American treasury and losing their unfettered access to the US latest military technology. A poll published on March 19 in Yedroth Ahronoth, one of Israel’s biggest dailies, revealed that 46% of their readers responded that the government should freeze settlement building in East Jerusalem, much to the chagrin of the US Israel Firsters, who might in other circumstances, have labeled these Jews anti-Semites.

Fissures in the Zionist monolith are beginning to appear. These would deepen if and when the American public realizes that Israel’s’ dispossession of Palestinians is raising havoc with American lives and with American interests in a vital part of the world populated by 1.5 billion Muslim. As more issues arise, the critical choice between following the lead of the ZPC in pledging unconditional allegiance to Israel and enduring its provocations and humiliations, or standing up for the dignity, basic interests and integrity of America, will have to be made. More fissures will appear and the AIPAC and other members of the ZPC will be seen for what they are: Swaggering bullies acting on behalf of a foreign power.

April 7, 2010 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Israeli police uncover organ trafficking ring in north

By Eli Ashkenazi and Jack Khoury | Haaretz | April 7, 2010

Police on Tuesday arrested six men suspected of being involved in an organ trafficking ring in northern Israel. Among the suspects are an IDF reserves brigadier-general and two lawyers.

The department for fraud and misappropriation in northern Israel has been conducting an undercover investigation which began following a complaint by a 50-year-old woman from Nazareth, who replied to an advertisement in Arabic offering 100,000 dollars for a kidney.

The woman underwent medical examinations to ensure a match, and she was then flown a country in Eastern Europe where they extracted her kidney. The woman said that when she returned to Israel, she did not receive the money promised to her. Police say they have since received similar complaints.

Police also said that during the investigation they uncovered a large, very well-organized industry of organ trafficking. The ring includes organ traffickers, agents, and lawyers.

“The ring is operating throughout Israel and not only in the north, and appeals to the public through local media and internet,” a police official said. “The organ traffickers somehow receive details about potential transplant candidates and they offer them their services,” he said.

The investigators said that the traffickers usually demand around 120,000 dollars for a kidney transplant. While the donors, the majority of which are in serious financial troubles, are taken advantage of and receive around 10,000 dollars. Some of them get even smaller sums, and some do not receive any money at all.

The donors sign a contract and fill out fraudulent affidavits claiming a family connection between the donor and the recipient – a requirement in the countries where the surgeries take place.

Afterwards, the donors undergo medical examinations where they are categorized by blood types and other medical conditions, and are then flown to countries in Eastern Europe, the Philippines, and Ecuador.

There, the donors undergo surgery to extract their kidney, and shortly afterwards return to Israel without any medical documentation, many times suffering from medical complications.

During the investigation, police found out that a number of transplant candidates were on their way abroad to undergo surgery. Police located the donors and informed them that they were victims of fraud. Some of the donors were located at Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport, right before their departure.

Investigators said that there are several more fraud victims located abroad who are due to return to Israel after they were notified that some of the traffickers were under arrest

April 7, 2010 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Leave a comment

The ‘Beita’ incident of 1988 shines lasting light on a cruel Occupation and its halfhearted coverage

By David Samel on April 6, 2010

Today marks the 22nd anniversary of just one of the innumerable tragic events in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is worth revisiting because it typifies the racism, cruelty, injustice, even insanity of the Occupation. A succession of New York Times articles captures the chronology of events and just as importantly, how those events were revealed and discussed by the newspaper of record.

The incident occurred on April 6, 1988 in and around the West Bank village of Beita. The intifada had begun several months earlier, and the death toll stood at 122 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military, which had lost a single soldier. In addition to the Palestinian fatalities, there had been untold numbers of arrests, routine torture of detainees, and broken bones deliberately inflicted by IDF troops pursuant to the openly-stated policy of the Defense Minister, the future Nobel peacemaker Yitzhak Rabin.

What landed this incident on front page of the Times was the fact that Israel had lost its first civilian, a teenage girl named Tirza Porat. In an article entitled “Israeli Girl Killed by Rocks in Melee,” John Kifner reported that Tirza had been “stoned to death by Palestinian villagers” while hiking with friends on a “holiday outing.” The body of the article revealed that two Palestinians also had been killed, but the headline left no doubt as to whose life was of more significance.

The Israeli hikers reported that their group of 18, two of whom were armed guards, had been confronted outside Beita by Palestinian youths throwing stones, and that “pandemonium broke out . . when a woman rushed out and slammed a big rock down on the head of one of the Israeli guards.” Military officials stated that Tirza’s “skull was crushed by repeated blows, apparently from stones.” According to Gen. Amram Mitzna, commander of the West Bank: ”Many stones were thrown at the children, who were also beaten. As a result, the girl was killed and two or three of the teen-age hikers were seriously injured.”

Israel, which had administered so much suffering to quell an uprising against a 21-year-old occupation, now found itself “victimized” by a tiny fraction of that suffering, and the reaction was immediate and extreme. Religious Affairs Minister Zevulun Hammer chimed in with the presumably religious viewpoint, calling on the army to ”cut off the arms of these wild men and smash the skull of the viper of death.”

The following day, Tirza’s funeral became a public spectacle. Her fellow settlers called for “revenge” and expulsion of the Arabs. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir brought lighter fluid, telling the mourners, “The heart of the entire nation is boiling” and “God will avenge her blood.” A “rabbi” added that the village of Beita “should be wiped off the face of the earth.” Minister of Justice Avraham Sharir recommended that dozens of houses be demolished and hundreds expelled upon mere suspicion of responsibility.

Israel began to dispense such justice immediately. A third Palestinian youth from Beita was killed, this time by the IDF, which explained that the boy was trying to flee, presumably from the armed soldiers who were pursuing and firing at him. The army also demolished several houses in the village.

However, the same day as the funeral, the hikers’ story began to unravel, when a bullet from an Israeli guard’s rifle was recovered from Tirza’s body. More information was available from the young Israeli hikers, who said that Israeli guards had fired some shots outside the village, and repeated that the trouble began when a woman hit one Israeli guard, a Meir Kahane follower named Roman Aldubi, with a rock. Aldubi had such a history of violence against Arabs, including shooting at them, that he had become the first Jewish citizen subject to the “emergency powers that are commonly used to control Palestinians,” according to the Times. One of the Israeli hikers confided to ABC News that the outing had a political message to the indigenous population: ”We have to show them that we are the owners of the country.”

The next day’s Times article confirmed that Tirza had indeed been killed by a stray bullet fired by Aldubi, the Israeli guard. It also turned out that the woman who hit Aldubi with the rock was the sister of the unarmed young farmer Aldubi already had slain. It was revealed that Aldubi had also shot and wounded another farmer in the stomach. The army’s response to these revelations was to demolish eight more houses in the village, bringing the total to 14.

According to the Israeli army commander, Aldubi used the young Israeli hikers as human shields. He told the children ”to form a belt, a barrier around him so that no one will reach him” and then he began shooting, killing one Palestinian and wounding another. In the melee that followed, some of the Palestinian villagers protected the Israeli youngsters from the angry mob. They disarmed the Israeli guards, but instead of using the weapons themselves, they tried to destroy them.

On April 10, four days after the incident, and after the most critical facts already were known, a Times editorial expressed uncertainty over whether Tirza had been “killed by Palestinian-hurled stones or by a bullet from the gun of an Israeli protector.” Its own reporter already had confirmed the latter. The editorial knew where to lay the blame: “both sides are accountable,” although considerably more attention was devoted to attacking the Arab side.

The following day, when responsibility for the event was quite clear, Trade Minister Ariel Sharon proposed that the entire village of Beita be evacuated and “all its houses blown up, and that more settlements be built.” Israel then expelled 12 Palestinians, including six from Beita, to southern Lebanon, and uprooted hundreds of almond and olive trees as collective punishment, teaching the villagers of Beita not to become victims of settler violence.

About one week after the incident, Prime Minister Shamir gave a speech in which he refused to accept his own military’s admission that Tirza had been killed by an Israeli bullet rather than Palestinian stoning: ”Even today, when we dwell in our own land, ‘evil-hearted and unfeeling people shoot poison arrows at our youngsters as they wander the countryside, turning it into a valley of death.”

When the dust settled, and the initial fevered emotions returned to normal, the Israeli authorities punished the guilty party. No, not Aldubi. The killer of three was judged to have suffered enough, and he was not prosecuted. But a prison sentence was handed down against the pregnant sister of the first Palestinian Aldubi killed, for hitting him in the head with a rock.

So let’s sum this all up. A group of illegal Israeli settlers take a deliberately provocative hike to an Arab village to show them who’s boss. They allow an Israeli racist hothead with a violent history to be an armed guard, and he predictably murders two Palestinians and shoots two others, and accidentally kills an Israeli girl. The Times blames both sides equally. The Israeli army kills a third Palestinian youth for “running away” and destroys 14 homes, most if not all of them after learning who was responsible for killing the Israeli. The killer of three is allowed to walk free, while the pregnant sister of one of the Palestinian victims goes to prison, and six men from the village are expelled from the country.

No less significant than these events was a follow-up article in the Times by Joel Brinkley appearing four months later about the seething villagers of Beita. In a bizarre effort to conform to the Times’ even-handed policy, Brinkley reduced the Palestinian death toll to a single fatality rather than three, neatly counterbalanced by the single Israeli death. For good measure, Brinkley added that by the time it became clear that Tirza had been shot by a fellow settler rather than stoned to death, “Israel had already taken vengeance,” blowing up 14 homes and deporting six residents to Lebanon.

Since his own paper’s articles had accurately reported both the death toll and the fact that Israel exacted this retribution even after learning the truth about Tirza’s death, it is hard to believe Brinkley’s errors were accidental. He simply rewrote history to make it more palatable to his own sensibilities. This is the type of reporting that landed Brinkley a professorship at Stanford after a 23-year career with the Times.

For more than two decades before this incident, and two more since, this is what the Occupation has meant to millions of Palestinians. They have had to endure the obscenity of a military dictatorship imposed by a foreign power with a flagrantly racist ideology that views them as sub-human for daring to be born on land coveted by another people. When they rebel, even when they’re victimized by Israeli hostility, they’re judged guilty of insubordination and subject to extreme collective punishment.

If anything, matters have gotten worse over the past 22 years. They will continue to get worse as long as one “people” insist on their right to absolute rule over another.

April 6, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | 1 Comment

Lawsuit challenges Israel’s discriminatory citizenship definition

By Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 6 April 2010

A group of Jews and Arabs are fighting in the Israeli courts to be recognized as “Israelis,” a nationality currently denied them, in a case that officials fear may threaten the country’s self-declared status as a Jewish state.

Israel refused to recognize an Israeli nationality at the country’s establishment in 1948, making an unusual distinction between “citizenship” and “nationality.” Although all Israelis qualify as “citizens of Israel,” the state is defined as belonging to the “Jewish nation,” meaning not only the 5.6 million Israeli Jews but also more than seven million Jews in the diaspora.

Critics say the special status of Jewish nationality has been a way to undermine the citizenship rights of non-Jews in Israel, especially the fifth of the population who are Arab. Some 30 laws in Israel specifically privilege Jews, including in the areas of immigration rights, naturalization, access to land and employment.

Arab leaders have also long complained that indications of “Arab” nationality on ID cards make it easy for police and government officials to target Arab citizens for harsher treatment.

The interior ministry has adopted more than 130 possible nationalities for Israeli citizens, most of them defined in religious or ethnic terms, with “Jewish” and “Arab” being the main categories.

The group’s legal case is being heard by the high court after a district judge rejected their petition two years ago, backing the state’s position that there is no Israeli nation.

The head of the campaign for Israeli nationality, Uzi Ornan, a retired linguistics professor, said: “It is absurd that Israel, which recognizes dozens of different nationalities, refuses to recognize the one nationality it is supposed to represent.”

The government opposes the case, claiming that the campaign’s real goal is to “undermine the state’s infrastructure” — a presumed reference to laws and official institutions that ensure Jewish citizens enjoy a privileged status in Israel.

Ornan, 86, said that denying a common Israeli nationality was the linchpin of state-sanctioned discrimination against the Arab population.

“There are even two laws — the Law of Return for Jews and the Citizenship Law for Arabs — that determine how you belong to the state,” he said. “What kind of democracy divides its citizens into two kinds?”

Yoel Harshefi, a lawyer supporting Ornan, said the interior ministry had resorted to creating national groups with no legal recognition outside Israel, such as “Arab” or “unknown,” to avoid recognizing an Israeli nationality.

In official documents most Israelis are classified as “Jewish” or “Arab,” but immigrants whose status as Jews is questioned by the Israeli rabbinate, including more than 300,000 arrivals from the former Soviet Union, are typically registered according to their country of origin.

“Imagine the uproar in Jewish communities in the United States, Britain or France, if the authorities there tried to classify their citizens as ‘Jewish’ or ‘Christian,'” said Ornan.

The professor, who lives close to Haifa, launched his legal action after the interior ministry refused to change his nationality to “Israeli” in 2000. An online petition declaring “I am an Israeli” has attracted several thousand signatures.

Ornan has been joined in his action by 20 other public figures, including former government minister Shulamit Aloni. Several members have been registered with unusual nationalities such as “Russian,” “Buddhist,” “Georgian” and “Burmese.”

Two Arabs are party to the case, including Adel Kadaan, who courted controversy in the 1990s by waging a lengthy legal action to be allowed to live in one of several hundred communities in Israel open only to Jews.

Uri Avnery, a peace activist and former member of the parliament, said the current nationality system gave Jews living abroad a far greater stake in Israel than its 1.3 million Arab citizens.

“The State of Israel cannot recognize an ‘Israeli’ nation because it is the state of the ‘Jewish’ nation … it belongs to the Jews of Brooklyn, Budapest and Buenos Aires, even though these consider themselves as belonging to the American, Hungarian or Argentine nations.”

International Zionist organizations representing the diaspora, such as the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency, are given in Israeli law a special, quasi-governmental role, especially in relation to immigration and control over large areas of Israeli territory for the settlement of Jews only.

Ornan said the lack of a common nationality violated Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which says the state will “uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race or sex.”

Indications of nationality on ID cards carried by Israelis made it easy for officials to discriminate against Arab citizens, he added.

The government has countered that the nationality section on ID cards was phased out from 2000 — after the interior ministry, which was run by a religious party at the time, objected to a court order requiring it to identify non-Orthodox Jews as “Jewish” on the cards.

However, Ornan said any official could instantly tell if he was looking at the card of a Jew or Arab because the date of birth on the IDs of Jews was given according to the Hebrew calendar. In addition, the ID of an Arab, unlike a Jew, included the grandfather’s name.

“Flash your ID card and whatever government clerk is sitting across from you immediately knows which ‘clan’ you belong to, and can refer you to those best suited to ‘handle your kind,'” Ornan said.

The distinction between Jewish and Arab nationalities is also shown on interior ministry records used to make important decisions about personal status issues such as marriage, divorce and death, which are dealt with on entirely sectarian terms.

Only Israelis from the same religious group, for example, are allowed to marry inside Israel — otherwise they are forced to wed abroad — and cemeteries are separated according to religious belonging.

Some of those who have joined the campaign complain that it has damaged their business interests. One Druze member, Carmel Wahaba, said he had lost the chance to establish an import-export company in France because officials there refused to accept documents stating his nationality as “Druze” rather than “Israeli.”

The group also said it hoped to expose a verbal sleight of hand that intentionally mistranslates the Hebrew term “Israeli citizenship” on the country’s passports as “Israeli nationality” in English to avoid problems with foreign border officials.

B Michael, a commentator for Yedioth Aharonoth, Israel’s most popular newspaper, has observed: “We are all Israeli nationals — but only abroad.”

The campaign, however, is likely to face an uphill struggle in the courts.

A similar legal suit brought by a Tel Aviv psychologist, George Tamrin, failed in 1970. Shimon Agranat, head of the high court at the time, ruled: “There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people. … The Jewish people is composed not only of those residing in Israel but also of diaspora Jewries.”

That view was echoed by the district court in 2008 when it heard Ornan’s case.

The judges in the high court, which held the first appeal hearing last month, indicated that they too were likely to be unsympathetic. Justice Uzi Fogelman said: “The question is whether or not the court is the right place to solve this problem.”

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel.

April 6, 2010 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, 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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