By Stephen Lendman | April 29, 2010
Since established in 1970, NPR ignored its public trust in favor of privilege, corporatism, militarism, imperial wars, and Israel’s vilest crimes, including collective punishment, illegal occupation, targeted killings, land theft, dispossession, home demolitions, crop destruction, mass incarcerations, torture, violence, and the 2008 – 09 Gaza war inflicting mass deaths, permanent injuries, vast devastation, and human misery against defenseless civilians, imprisoned under siege since June 2007, and afflicted by a dire humanitarian crisis as a result – exacerbated by conflict and intermittent attacks, issues NPR ignores or understates.
It’s notorious for its biased, shoddy reporting, pseudo-journalism, creeping commercialism, distracting non-news, and deceiving listeners that it is public, non-profit, and impartial. Savvy media consumers know better and tune them out for delivering the same slanted coverage found on major networks and in broadsheets like The New York Times, Washington Post, and others – grossly favoring power, and when it comes to Israel, its interests matter. Palestinian ones don’t, so news is carefully filtered to distort facts, and report lies that when repeated enough become truths.
In its May/June 2004 issue, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) asked “How Public Is Public Radio?” in examining its guest list choices – on all issues (including Israel), mostly government officials, corporate think tank representatives, professionals representing their interests, and other elite sources, the public comprising a tiny 7%.
“For a public radio service intended to provide an independent alternative to corporate-owned and commercially driven mainstream media,” it said, “NPR is surprisingly reliant on mainstream” sources, the public nearly entirely shut out, and when included they’re largely nameless “people in the street,” quoted in one-sentence sound bites with no impact.
In December 2001, FAIR’s Seth Ackerman discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “Illusion of Balance” along with a companion November/December 2001 “Study of NPR’s Coverage of Deaths in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”
It found an 81% likelihood that an Israeli death would be reported compared to 34% for a Palestinian. Among under age 18 Palestinians, only 20% were reported compared to 89% of Israelis, FAIR concluding that “being a minor makes your death more newsworthy to NPR if you are Israeli, but less” so, or not at all, if Palestinian.
The imbalance is far greater today with few if any Israeli deaths, many Palestinian ones, but few ever reported and when done, it’s dismissive, brief, and/or falsified as to the cause.
FAIR October – February 2002 Action Alerts “repeatedly criticized NPR for describing periods when only Palestinians were being killed… as times of ‘relative calm (or) comparative quiet,’ ” yet barely concealing outrage about Israeli deaths, only caused in response to unreported IDF or settler-initiated violence.
Mainstream US media, including NPR, suppress stories like the London Guardian Rory McMarthy’s on April 17, 2009 headlined, “Teargas canister shot kills Palestinian demonstrator,” saying “Bassem Abu Rahmeh is (the) 18th person to die since 2004 during demonstrations against (the) West Bank(‘s)” Separation Wall.
Before being killed, Abu Rahmed begged Israeli soldiers not to shoot lest they kill an Israeli, his last words in Hebrew being: “Officer, officer, officer, listen, you killed an Israeli, wait a moment, wait a moment!” Instead, a high-velocity gas canister hit him in the chest and killed him.
“The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident,” of course, meaning whitewash, cover-up, and exonerating soldiers to commit repeated atrocities and get away with it – but try finding that explained on NPR or any mainstream US news service where Palestinian suffering is a non-story.
On April 6, 2007, Felice Pace’s CounterPunch article discussed NPR’s Weekend Edition, Saturday saying host Scott Simon “managed to do yet another NPR (Middle East) News interview (March 31)….in which he completely ignores the central influence of the Palestinian People’s plight,” affecting the entire region, contributing to its instability.
From 1990 – 2009, Linda Gradstein was NPR’s Israel correspondent, at the same time accepting pro-Israeli organization honoraria, the Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah and Nigel Parry reported on February 19, 2002 in their article headlined, “Special report: NPR’s Linda Gradstein takes cash payments from pro-Israeli groups.”
Despite a clear conflict of interest, professional ethics, and NPR policy, she worked as a paid Israeli propagandist, EI writers concluding:
“for some reason or other, Gradstein (was) effectively exempt from NPR’s own regulations. These revelations only broaden existing concerns about the integrity of NPR’s Middle East reporting and honesty of Linda Gradstein… the sad truth is that (she) rarely (met the minimum) standards,” nor do other NPR reporters covering foreign or domestic policies. They like other major media reporters are paid liars.
NPR Misinformation on East Jerusalem
Jews claim all Jerusalem as Israel’s historic capital, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring, during a May 22, 2009 Jerusalem Day ceremony (commemorating the city’s 1967 reunification), that:
“United Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided.”
For Muslims, it’s Islam’s third holiest site, containing the 35-acre Noble Sanctuary (al-Haram al-Sharif), including the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as its capital, yet Israel is dispossessing them one settlement expansion and home demolition at a time, world leaders turning a blind eye, letting it happen, despite disingenuous opposition rhetoric often quoted in mainstream reports, including NPR.
On March 26, Mondoweiss.net published Henry Norr’s article headlined, “When it comes to E. Jerusalem, ‘NPR’ misleads and misinforms,” offering examples from 22 recent broadcasts.
NPR calls the city “Israel’s capital,” its “undivided (or) unified capital,” with a historic claim to it all. In contrast, Occupied East Jerusalem is dismissed as “disputed territory,” its final status “only (to) be determined through negotiations” that may or may not occur, but given how previous ones were structured it won’t matter.
In three accounts, NRP quoted Netanyahu saying “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago,” despite Judaic roots dating only from around 1,800 BC, the Old Testament calling Abraham the first Hebrew for refusing to worship the period’s common idols, and organized Judaism dates from Moses around 1,500 BC.
One “Talk of the Nation” report featured an Israeli analyst saying East Jerusalem settlement construction will continue because the entire city is “the heart and soul of the Jewish people.” Analyst James Fallows told listeners that Israelis consider East Jerusalem settlements “necessary for their survival.”
Other reports described expropriated areas as idyllic “neighborhood(s),” hilltop “communit(ies),” pious Jews there “focus(ing) on their religious studies and pay(ing) little attention to the outside world.” Their large families require settlement expansions to accommodate them, so Palestinians have to go, no matter that they and their ancestors lived there for centuries.
Yet Israelis say East Jerusalem’s 250,000 Palestinians have no historic claim to the city they “want” for their “future state” and “aspire” to be their capital – mindless that it already is and that no government, including America, recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital or has an embassy there.
The November 1947 UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181) designated Jerusalem an international city under a UN Trusteeship Council, still binding today. The 1949 UN Resolution 273 gave Israel UN membership conditional on its implementing Resolutions 181 and 194 (December 1948) granting Palestinians their universally accepted “Right of Return – topics NPR never explains.
Though rarely discussed or reported, world governments and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) consider East Jerusalem occupied. Even the ICRC says so, calling Israeli actions there “illegal” under international law, specifically the 1907 Hague Regulations and Fourth Geneva’s Article 49 stating:
“Individual or mass transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of the motive.” Neither shall “The Occupying Power….deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
In addition, numerous UN resolutions established “no legal validity” for occupied land acquisitions or settlement building. When violations occur, no nation may recognize or support them or the responsible state.
Further, the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples condemned “colonialism in all its forms and manifestations,” including settlements deemed to be illegal.
International laws are clear and unequivocal. NPR never reports or explains that:
— all Israeli settlements are illegal;
— growing numbers of Jews oppose them;
— many support the global BDS movement (boycott, sanctions, and divestment);
— more now leave Israel than arrive; and
— Palestinians are systematically persecuted, terrorized, and denied rights afforded solely to Jews, and are being dispossessed of property they owned and did “most of the building (on for) over the last 1,500 years.”
Their voices are virtually shut out. Instead, feature interviews are presented like “All Things Considered” host Robert Siegel’s with Israel’s US ambassador Michael Oren, saying:
“….Jerusalem is sovereign Israeli territory, and it has the same status as Tel Aviv. And just as Israelis have a right to build anywhere in Tel Aviv, they have a right to build anywhere in the city of Jerusalem.”
Or another with Martin Indyk (former US Israeli ambassador and Netanyahu brother-in-law) hyping Iran as an “existential threat” when last September Reuters quoted Defense Minister Ehud Barak saying “Iran does not constitute an existential threat to Israel….Israel is strong. I don’t see anyone who could pose an existential threat,” though he called Iran a challenge to the whole world without being more specific.
NPR pro-Israeli propaganda persists in deference to the Israeli Lobby and its funding sources, much of it corporate, from special interest foundations, and wealthy donors strongly supportive of Israel as are virtually every member of Congress and all administrations, Republican and Democrat.
No matter, according to a FAIR May 17, 2005 Action Alert headlined, “CPB (the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) Turns to NPR as Latest ‘Bias’ Target.” It quoted a May 16 New York Times report about the CPB considering “a study on whether NPR’s Middle East coverage was more favorable to Arabs than to Israelis – further evidence that the agency intends to police public media for content it deems too ‘liberal.’ ”
Past FAIR analyses clearly exposed NPR’s pro-Israeli coverage – recently more extreme, making it impossible for listeners to know truths NPR suppresses, much like The New York Times and the rest of America’s print and broadcast media, in contrast to Haaretz writers Amira Hass and Gideon Levy who tell it heroically to Israeli and world readers.
A Final Comment
Among its 25 top 2005 censored stories, Project Censored’s No. 11 pick headlined, “The Media Can Legally Lie,” a CMW Report, Spring 2003 by Liane Casten titled, “Court Ruled that Media Can Legally lie.” It covered a unanimous February 2003 Florida Court of Appeals decision for Fox News, saying no rule prohibits distorting or falsifying news.
It pertained to 1996 Jane Akre/Steve Wilson Fox affiliate WTVT, Tampa reports on bovine growth hormone (BGH) dangers, Monsanto’s hazardous to human health genetically engineered milk additive. At first, the station loved them, but headquarters Fox executives and their attorneys wanted the reporters to admit falsifying evidence and produce bogus reports on BGH safety.
They refused, threatened to inform the FCC, were fired, and sued – a district court jury deciding on their behalf, awarding Acre alone $425,000 in damages. Fox appealed and won, the Appellate Court saying Acre wasn’t protected under Florida’s whistleblower statute, it loosely interpreted to mean employers must violate an adopted “law, rule, or regulation.” Fox simply followed “policy” entitling its stations to lie – whether on product safety or falsifying facts about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
NPR and other US major media operations take full advantage, keeping their listeners and readers in the dark and uninformed, while Palestinians are systematically persecuted, out of sight and mind, except for people concerned enough to learn the truth and tell it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
By Catrina Stewart | The Independent | 28 April 2010
Israeli officers held responsible for the deaths of four Palestinians in the West Bank received only minor reprimands after an internal investigation concluded that the deaths could have been avoided.
Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel’s military chief, admitted that the incidents last month “could have ended differently” and could have “avoided causing harm to civilians”.
The two fatal shooting incidents, just 24 hours apart, marked the most serious escalation of tensions in the occupied West Bank in months, and threatened to destroy the fragile calm that has persisted there in recent years.
In one case, Israeli soldiers fired on Palestinian protesters, killing two. In a second incident, a soldier killed two Palestinians who he claimed had tried to attack him. Mr Ashkenazi reprimanded two senior officers – a colonel and a lieutenant colonel – and removed a squad commander from his post, a military statement said. The soldiers who fired the lethal rounds appeared to escape censure.
Israeli human rights organisations denounced the military investigation, claiming that it failed to hold the soldiers accountable for their actions and upheld the army’s culture of impunity.
“It is extremely rare for the Israeli security forces to be held accountable in cases where they have killed or injured Palestinian civilians,” said Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem, an Israeli NGO.
She said that the army should open criminal investigations into both cases rather than conduct “internal operational debriefs” that skirt the legal issues regarding the soldiers’ actions. “There are credible allegations, these must be investigated,” she said.
On 20 March, Israeli forces faced Palestinian protesters in the village of Iraq Burin as they tried to prevent clashes with extremist Jewish settlers from nearby Bracha. In the ensuing skirmish, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinian teenagers, Mohammed Qadus and Osaid Qadus.
The military statement said Israeli forces had been authorised to use rubber bullets against the Palestinians, but, as reported by The Independent, medics who examined the body insisted that live ammunition had been used, and produced X-rays that appeared to show a conventional bullet lodged in the skull of Osaid Qadus.
The Israeli army said a Military Police investigation into the claims that live rounds were used was still ongoing. The army “could not verify the autopsy and could therefore not confirm that the rioters were in fact hit by live rounds,” the statement said.
In Awarta a day later, an Israeli soldier fired on two Palestinians who approached a checkpoint and started “acting suspiciously,” according to the statement. The first apparently tried to attack the soldier with a bottle, prompting the soldier to shoot him. The second then allegedly wielded a “sharp object” and was also shot dead.
The soldier fired seven bullets into Mohammed Qawariq and at least three into Saleh Qawariq, according to Palestinian doctors. “While the soldier, believing his life was at risk, acted subjectively, the Chief of the General Staff holds the officers responsible for training their soldiers to act in difficult operational situations,” the military said.
Relatives of the deceased denied that they tried to attack the soldier and said they were only metal workers looking for scrap.
By Ali Jawad | April 26, 2010
In the self-sensationalising world of modern media, some truths are better witnessed than told. Over the past fortnight, major media outlets have converged on Syria’s alleged delivery of scud missiles to the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah. By examining how the story first came to limelight, as well as the manner in which media sources have uncritically covered the story, one can begin to notice the vastly degenerated state of today’s media and its deeply polarising effects.
On 11th April, Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai Al-Aam broke the ‘scud missiles’ story. Relying solely on American sources, the author Husain Abdul-Husain claimed that both western and Israeli intelligence had uncovered the training of Hezbollah resistance fighters in Syria in the use of scud and surface-to-air missiles. This, we are told, occurred some time during last summer. Subsequent to the alleged discovery, the article adds, Israel threatened Syria through official Turkish and Qatari channels warning against the transfer of either of the two armaments to Hezbollah.
Western coverage of the story has been an unquestioned regurgitation of the original claims made in the Al-Rai Al-Aam article. Further signified by an overriding infatuation with Israel’s security, political commentators have even sought to draw parallels between Saddam and the alleged Syrian scud missiles delivery. Amidst the suffocating miasma of yellow journalism redolent in western reporting, the parallel was not lost on Lebanese prime minister. Speaking to a group of Lebanese citizens in Rome, Saad Hariri noted: “All this is similar to what was said previously about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that were never found.”
Quite expectedly, not one mainstream media outlet dared make any mention of America’s pledge of roughly $3billion per annum in military aid to Israel. One does not require speculative reports published on Al-Rai Al-Aam to verify the above, nor does one require any superior intelligence to discern that the annual US ritual of rearming Israel constitutes an “equilibrium-breaking” military development. What is required, however, is the impossible: for leading western commentators to witness developments, even fleetingly, through the eyes of other than Israel.
And thus, one can produce a hefty list of ignored ‘strategic balance altering’ developments. The Obama administration’s decision in January of this year, for instance, to double US arms-stockpiles in Israel to a total sum of $800 million worth, which are to be used by the Zionist state in times of “emergency”, certainly fits the description of military “game-changers”.
All this is not surprising. As a rule of thumb, the media’s self-assumed monopoly of reserving big and frightening words like ‘WMDs’ for those classified as adversaries is to be assumed without need for explicit mention. Language in this sense is a tool to distort, not to explain; an instrument to erect separating walls, rather than build bridges of dialogue.
Notwithstanding issues of accuracy in the original article, a telling omission from western reporting was a clear failure to question the timing behind Syria’s alleged transfer of the scuds. Had leading media outlets adhered to even a diminished standard of objectivity, they would have no doubt stumbled upon Israeli provocations such as foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman’s impudent words directed at President Assad. In early February of this year, the harebrained right-wing zealot threatened Syria with regime change in a show of brazen chutzpah, which is in fact symbolic of how Israel views and applies itself in the regional context.
The brouhaha over Syria’s alleged transfer of scud missiles is designed to serve as one big smokescreen. It is now an open secret that Hezbollah is capable of striking Tel Aviv, and much further south. In mid-February of this year the resistance movement’s secretary-general, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, stated in very explicit terms that should Israel bomb the Dahiye suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah would respond with strikes on Tel Aviv; blow for blow. Virtually the whole of Israel is within striking range of Hezbollah, just as every inch of the entire Middle East and afar into Europe is within range of Israel’s missiles – including, I should add, its nuclear arsenal.
The principle motives behind arousing whipped up media-frenzy over the scud missiles issue are multi-fold, but have little to do with so-called “equilibrium-breaking” weapons in the hands of the Lebanese resistance.
Both Israel and the US are seeking to detach Syria from the resistance-bloc constituted primarily of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. Since the Clean Break strategy authored in 1996, Syria has been referred to as the lynchpin connecting Israel’s foes. Over the past year, US and Israeli experts have elevated the handling of the Syrian file to top-level priority within the Middle Eastern context.
On the precipice of Robert Ford’s confirmation as US ambassador to Syria, the emergence of the scud missiles allegations should be read as an instance of political arm wrangling. Admittedly, on this issue the Arab Center (alternatively referred to as the moderate-bloc) and Israel both share an interest in slowing down the rapprochement between Washington and Damascus, albeit for different reasons. Through the negative focus that has resulted from the alleged delivery of scud missiles, the US-Israeli axis aims to send a clear message to Damascus that its relationship with Hezbollah is a strategic liability. The thawing of ties between the west and Syria could in the future quite as easily regress due to its links to the resistance.
Secondly, Israel misses no chance to wave before the world the ubiquitous ‘S’ word in order to mask its repulsive settler-colonial project. By continually depicting itself as a nation terminally under threat, the Zionist state has sought to gain legitimacy and skewed sympathy.
In trail of Israel’s ever-rapacious “security” appetite, western commentators have overlooked gross violations of human rights and indeed war crimes. In this vein, Israel passed a military order on 13th April, which legalizes the deportation of thousands of Palestinians from their West Bank homes. Instead of highlighting the woes of a displaced nation – time and again – inflicted by a racist settler-colonial project, western journalists have instead zoomed in on an alleged scud missile delivery. Note, the word is alleged. As if to say, the Zionist state’s daily ethnic cleansing in Al-Quds of its Palestinian population is of no importance when placed against an alleged scud-missile delivery.
To fair-minded individuals, the media’s handling of the scud missiles story is representative of a hereditary bias in western reporting of the Middle East. The notion of double standards no longer captures the sheer immensity of this overriding prejudice. It would seem politics in the western hemisphere is all about recycling misnomer clichés, advancing age-old power-politics paradigms and bringing to bear its own sacred cows on the field of global politics.
Ali Jawad is a political activist and member of the AhlulBayt Islamic Mission (AIM).
Social movements denounce World Bank strategy on land grabbing
GRAIN | 22 April 2010
On 26 April 2010, the World Bank is opening a major two-day conference on land at its headquarters in Washington DC. Seated at the table will be governments, donor agencies, researchers, CEOs and non-government organisations. The main topic of discussion? How to harness the fresh wads of cash being put on the table to build agribusiness operations on huge areas of farmland in developing countries, especially in Africa. The Bank calls these farm acquisitions “agricultural investment”. Social movements call them “land grabbing”.
At the meeting, the Bank will release a long-awaited study on this new land grabbing trend. Apart from assessing how many hectares are being bought and sold where, why and through whom, the Bank will present its solution to the risks and concerns raised by foreign investors — from George Soros to Libya’s sovereign wealth fund to China’s telecoms giant ZTE — taking control of overseas farmland to produce food for export: a set of “principles” for all players to follow. The FAO, UNCTAD and IFAD have agreed to support the Bank in advocating these “principles”.
La Vía Campesina, FIAN, Land Research Action Network and GRAIN have produced a joint statement outlining how the Bank’s initiative will only serve to facilitate land grabbing and why it must be stopped. Over 100 other social organisations and movements have formally associated themselves with the statement as co-sponsors. Today and in the coming days, many groups will be speaking out against the current land grabbing trend and explaining how the real solution to feeding our world lies in supporting community-based family farming for local and regional markets — not industrial farming for global agribusiness.
We invite all interested groups and individuals to join forces with us and speak out from your own experience.
The LVC-FIAN-LRAN-GRAIN statement, together with the list of co-sponsors, is available in Arabic, English, French and Spanish at:
http://www.grain.org/o/?id=102.
If you wish to register your own support for the statement you can post a comment at:
http://farmlandgrab.org/12200
or send an email to info@farmlandgrab.org and we will post it for you.
Simultaneous media events and actions are taking place in Washington DC and many other towns and cities across the world. For information on the Washington DC events or how to talk to activists from the affected countries, please contact Kathy Ozer of the National Family Farm Coalition for La Via Campesina (mobile: +1-202-421-4544, email: kozer@nffc.net) or Devlin Kuyek at GRAIN (mobile: +1-514-571-7702, email: devlin@grain.org).
Media reports and further inputs and actions from different groups joining this movement will be collated online at:
http://farmlandgrab.org.
Further references
– The World Bank’s land conference webpage is:
http://go.worldbank.org/67YHA6L0K0.
The conference papers are being posted online at:
http://go.worldbank.org/IN4QDO1U10
– La Via Campesina is the international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers with 148 members in 69 countries:
http://www.viacampesina.org.
– FIAN (FoodFirst Information and Action Network) is an international human rights organisation with members and sections in 50 countries to advocate for the realisation of the right to food:
http://www.fian.org.
– LRAN (Land Research Action Network) is a network of researchers and social movements committed to the promotion of individuals’ and communities’ right to land:
http://www.landaction.org.
– GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems: http:// http://www.grain.org and
http://farmlandgrab.org.
Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada, 22 April 2010
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Nesher cement found at a construction site in occupied East Jerusalem, June 2009. (Clean Hands Project) |
By participating in the touring Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition, the French transnational company Veolia Environnement is attempting to spin its image that has been tarnished by the exposure of its involvement in the Israeli occupation.
The UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign used the occasion of the exhibition, featured at London’s Natural History Museum and in BBC Wildlife Magazine, to remind the public of Veolia’s participation in a segregated transportation project and the building of infrastructure to service Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. The exhibition at the Natural History Museum was met with a “Dump Veolia” demonstration on 10 April and further protests are anticipated as the exhibition will travel to other UK cities and Ireland, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the US.
Veolia Transport, a subsidiary of Veolia Environnement, is involved in the construction and operation of a light rail system undertaken by the City Pass Consortium that links West Jerusalem to the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The company also operates regular bus services to the illegal settlements, including Beit Horon and Givat Zeev, along road 443, on which Palestinians are banned from traveling. Through its involvement in these projects, Veolia is directly implicated in maintaining illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and plays a role in Israel’s attempt to make its annexation of Palestinian East Jerusalem irreversible.
Veolia claims that the contract to operate the light rail does not set any access restrictions on any population or passengers, and has expressed its commitment to operate the Jerusalem light rail on “a clear, non-discriminatory policy based on free access for all parts of the population.” However, statements by City Pass Consortium spokesperson Ammon Elian show that the project will entrench the status quo situation of segregation. He told a Belgian researcher without a trace of irony: “If Palestinians would want to make use of the light rail, both groups will not meet on the train, because of their different life patterns.” Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the territory annexed by Israel after its occupation in 1967, receive starkly inferior municipal services and are subjected to the revocation of residency rights and home demolitions.
Meanwhile, Veolia Transport continues to operate the segregated bus service 322 from Tel Aviv to Ashdod. At the terminal for bus 322 in Tel Aviv, small posters promise eternal damnation for those who do not observe the rules of halacha, or Jewish religious law. On 8 April chairman of the municipal council in Tel Aviv Yael Dayan told the Swiss newspaper Le Temps that bus service 322 is a “kosher” bus route, meaning that gender segregation is practiced with the agreement of the authorities. Women enter through the rear of the vehicle and the men from the front. They cannot touch each other or sit next to one another. In some buses, a thick blanket is hung in the middle of the bus between the two sexes. “It’s the return of the Middle Ages,” Dayan told Le Temps. Veolia Transport confirmed in a phone call with Who Profits from the Occupation? that bus 322 is segregated.
In addition to providing transport services to the settlements, Veolia is also involved in waste collection and dumping in the occupied West Bank. TMM Integrated Recycling Services, a subsidiary of Veolia, owns the Tovlan landfill near Jericho in the Jordan Valley. Veolia has leased the Palestinian-owned land from the Israeli civil military administration, according to British electronic magazine Corporate Watch. The magazine interviewed a worker who monitored the cars entering the landfill from 2002 until 2009 and who stated that until two years ago, Tovlan received some waste collections from Nablus. According to the worker, the waste dumped at Tovlan landfill comes primarily from the numerous illegal settlements in the Jordan Valley (“Veolia’s dirty business: The Tovlan landfill,” 29 January 2010).
Meanwhile, in 2009 Corporate Watch photographed Veolia garbage trucks picking up waste in Massua settlement, and in March 2010 a picture was taken of a Veolia vehicle picking up rubbish from Tomer settlement.
Veolia’s involvement in the occupation does not end there. The company has won a contract with Nesher cement factory to build and operate a large facility for sorting and transforming waste into a source of energy in Hiriya near Tel Aviv. The website of Who Profits from the Occupation? — an Israeli group that monitors corporations’ involvement in Israel’s occupation — states that 85 percent of all cement in Israel is sold by Nesher Cement and the use of Nesher products has been documented in construction sites in West Bank settlements and in the construction of the light rail project in Jerusalem.
Despite the photo exhibition designed to promote Veolia’s image, the corporation’s involvement in the occupation is not lost on solidarity activists. Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign spokesperson Freda Hughes announced at a 30 March demonstration that the group will this year highlight the role of Veolia in entrenching Israeli apartheid. The city council of Dublin is under pressure not to enter or renew contracts with Veolia, and activists protested in front of the city hall on 12 April.
Meanwhile, in the UK, the Green Party in Croydon is calling the city council to ditch Veolia because of its involvement in the breaching of Palestinians’ human rights. Veolia is responsible for waste and recycling collections in Croydon.
Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate based in Switzerland.
By Kevin Barrett | April 21, 2010
[Note: I will be interviewing Thomas Dalton, author of Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides this Saturday, April 24th, 5-6 pm Central, on AmericanFreedomRadio (to be archived here for free on-demand listening). I am still looking for a mainstream Holocaust expert to refute him during the second hour. Over the past few months I have invited Deborah Lipstadt, Michael Shermer, John Zimmerman–the three most prominent critics of the “Holocaust deniers” — as well as many dozens of professors from several of the leading Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Jewish Studies programs. While I have received a few cordial refusals, notably from Shermer and Lipstadt, the vast majority of the academic “experts” have refused to respond…as has anti-revisionist blogger Muehlenkamp. I will be publishing my email to these experts in a later blog. Meanwhile, I am worrying about how to fill the second hour of the show. If you know any Holocaust experts who dare to defend the conventional wisdom, please have them contact me: kbarrett*AT*merr.com. Otherwise I will just have to keep Dalton on for the second hour to respond to callers, many of whom, I hope, will critique his interpretations. Anyway…as a free speech absolutist and a card-carrying non-coward, I am disgusted by the fear that surrounds this topic–not to mention the criminal sanctions. Below is my letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel offering to turn myself in for beginning to doubt the standard six-million-Jewish-victim figure.]
Dear Andrea Merkel,
I read in the news that your German government has fined Bishop Richard Williamson 10,000 Euros for “partial Holocaust denial.” According to reports, the 10,000 Euros fine reflects Williamson’s public statement that he believes that “200,000 to 300,000 Jews died in Nazi concentration camps” rather than the widely touted figure of six million.
According to the dw-world.de report, you stated that the pope must “‘clarify unambiguously that there can be no denying’ that the Nazis killed six million Jews.” So I am writing to tell you that as a Muslim and a nonbeliever in both papal infallibility and Zionist historiography, I am not going to endorse the six million figure even if the Pope threatens me with hellfire and damnation. After reading three books on the issue–Lipstadt’s Denying the Holocaust, Shermer’s Denying History, and Dalton’s Debating the Holocaust–I am now prepared to state that I find pre-eminent Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg’s estimate of 5.1 million Jewish Holocaust victims a more reasonable estimate.
Since it is against the law in Germany to state ones belief that fewer than six million Jews died in the Holocaust, Hilberg and I are apparently partners in crime. The question is, precisely what penalties should Hilberg and I face? Since Bishop Williamson was fined 10,000 euros for underestimating the six-million-Holocaust by 5.75 million people, that means that underestimating the six-million-Holocaust by roughly one million, as Hilberg and I do, should be penalized by a fine of $1,739.13 Euros. Please let me know where I should go to turn myself in — the nearest German consulate is in Chicago — and whether you would like that in the form of cash, check, or credit card. Or should I just send it straight to Israel and bypass the middleman? (Hilberg, fortunately for him, passed away a couple of years ago, and will thus never have to feel the fiscal jackboot of German justice.)
But seriously, Ms. Merkel, you may ask why I side with Hilberg’s estimate of 5.1 Holocaust deaths rather than the well-known figure of six million. My answer is that Thomas Dalton, in his book Debating the Holocaust, presents evidence that the figure of six million European Jewish victims threatened with destruction repeatedly occurs long before anyone could possibly have known the real figure. For example, the February 23rd, 1938 New York Times describes six million European Jews as “slowly dying of starvation, all hope gone.” Yet at that time the Holocaust, much less its precise body count, was still several years away. A few decades earlier, the May 7, 1920 New York Times cited “Jewish war sufferers in Central and Eastern Europe, where six millions face horrifying conditions of famine, disease and death…”
These two cases are not isolated instances. All told, Dalton cites seven such references to the six million Jews threatened/killed figure during World War II but before accurate body counts were possible; two such references from the 1930s; eight from the period during and after World War I; five between 1900 and 1914; and even four from the 19th century, the first occurring in 1869! He also states that when the official death toll at Auschwitz was revised downward from 4 million to 1.1 million in 1989, the official consensus held that the previously-believed-in 2.9 million Holocaust victims who suddenly turned out never to have existed were all non-Jewish Poles, thus preserving the apparently magical six million Jewish victims figure…while the anti-revisionist Shermer, as I recall, claims that the overall Holocaust total didn’t change, despite the sudden evaporation of 2.9 million previously assumed death camp victims, because about that number could be added to the previously-accepted figures for victims killed on the Eastern front, mainly by firing squads. Either way, it seems very strange that the well-known six million figure (and the less-known 11 million figure that includes non-Jewish victims) could survive the sudden disappearance of almost three million previously-assumed deaths.
The arguments cited above, along with others too lengthy to elaborate here, suggest that the magic figure of six million is some sort of tribal shibboleth, rather than an empirically-verified, historically-accurate body count. Hilberg’s estimate of 5.1 million Jewish Holocaust deaths thus seems far more probable.
Honestly, Ms. Merkel, I do not understand why the six-million-Holocaust, if it is really a well-verified historical fact, needs to be protected by criminal prosecutions, fines, prison sentences, ad-hominem vilification, the destruction of careers and reputations, and all the other trappings of the Orwellian police state. Some African-Americans and Native Americans argue that their holocausts involved up to one hundred million deaths, while other historians claim that the real figures are only a small fraction of that…and yet I have never heard of anybody being fined, imprisoned, or driven out of polite society for the all-too-common “crime” of “underestimating” these holocausts by millions or even tens of millions. Why should underestimations of the Jewish body count from the Nazi Holocaust be treated differently? Isn’t this a case of racist double-standards, in which the “inferior races” (Native Americans and Africans) are neglected, while superior “white” Jewish suffering is lionized? And isn’t it the case that if denying the Palestinian holocaust, the Nakba, were criminalized, virtually the entire population of the USA, Europe, and Israel would have to be prosecuted?
Truth does not need the support of criminal sanctions, Ms. Merkel. By prosecuting Holocaust revisionists for thoughtcrime, you are announcing that you believe they are right. That makes you a Holocaust revisionist yourself. Please turn yourself in to your nearest Gestapo Thoughtcrime unit immediately. Who knows, maybe you’ll end up sharing a cell with me and the ghost of Raul Hilberg.
By Nahida | April 20, 2010
Zionists occupiers… Heed my call
Like most people, I do believe in dialogue and civilized coexistence, like most people I long to live in dignity and freedom in my homeland, like most people I yearn for peace and justice for every human, like most people I like to foster loving and trusting relationships with all decent individuals; however, our problem with the Zionist occupiers is not about hate and distrust as they like to believe, it’s not about security as you constantly declare, nor is it about dialogue or lack of it thereof!
Our problem with you is not confined to the many aspects of your occupation, human right abuses, checkpoints, walls, collective punishment and assassinations.
The origin of our problem is as profound as a the roots of a fig tree, buried deep and covered up with piles of dishonesty and deceit, yet its fruits has the pungent taste of supremacy, arrogance, racism, dehumanization, theft, and war crimes, and no amount of fig tree leaves could conceal or beautify.
So, to unearth the core of the problem and spell the truth-out loud and clear, I am going to direct my words towards the Zionists of all shades and affiliations.
Furthermore, I am going to be to honest and blunt here; as the catastrophic situation that they have created does not stomach glossing over any longer
Zionist occupiers:
I must warn you; that what I am going to say is not going to be very pleasant, it will taste as bitter as the chilling years of your occupation, as cold as the barren roots of our uprooted olive trees, and as sour as the dry lips of dying babies at your military checkpoints.
My words will be parched, choking and hard to swallow; it will be as rigid and impervious as the cement of your apartheid wall
My words will smell of tear gas and burning flesh of infants while cuddled in their mothers’ arms after an air raid
My words will be burning hot like a bullet penetrating the head of a little boy as he picked a stone to throw at his oppressor
My words will be sizzling with blazing fire like the one ton bomb dropped from afar at a neighbourhood of sleeping women and children
My words will be gushing causing excruciating pain and discomfort because it stems from the depth of my wounded, distressed and agonised soul that was tormented by your people for the entirety of my existence.
So Zionist occupiers heed my words;
Our problem with you is not a “conflict” between two warring parties, who are similarly wrong and equally guilty as you shamelessly often describe… NO… NO… NO
The problem is one of aggression, oppression, colonization, theft, and occupation on your side, and one of being oppressed, exploited, and occupied on our side.
It’s one is of a crime of theft of a whole country and the ethnic cleansing of a whole nation by your people on the one hand and a displaced and dominated population on the other
It’s one of a CRIMINAL THIEF and a DISPOSSESSED VICTIM
To equate the two is nothing but an act of deception and a manifestation of moral bankruptcy.
A whole lot of your people came from ALL over the world, stole our homeland, dispossessed and expelled us, took over our homes and farms, destroyed our villages and history, occupied our country, oppressed those who stayed behind, killed and maimed who dared to demand their rights or attempted to assert their humanity, demonized and subjugated us to a racist, bigoted and ruthless set of laws that don’t apply to yourselves; then you come with chilling cold-heartedness and assert that both parties are equally guilty!!
Which planet are you living on?
By what principles do you abide?
What ethics do you follow?
Have you ever questioned the morality of your actions as multinationals who gave themselves the liberty to come to our homeland -which I am denied the right to live in- take it over by violence and bloodshed, then settle there on the ruins of the villages you’ve annihilated, dwelling in the homes of some dispossessed Palestinians, for no other justifications than the dominance of your Jewishness and the fact that we are not Jews?
Does that not smell of rotten racism, arrogance and supremacy to your clogged-up conscience?
The only crime that our people committed is that they existed on the land of their ancestors which you proclaimed as a God given-right to Jews only.
Your people have destroyed our culture, denied our existence as human beings, treated us for four generation with sheer cruelty, ruthlessness and contempt, and subjugated us to inconceivable savagery and humiliation, and denied us even the right to defend ourselves on our stolen Palestine under the pretext of “terrorism”
On top of all that your people have lied and lied, until they believed their own lies, you managed to brainwash yourselves with packs of cover-ups and masks of reality until truth became so blur and obscured, so much so that most of your people refuse even to acknowledge their own crimes of theft of a whole country and disposition of a whole nation
You stole the land of our ancestors and forefathers under the claim that some few thousands years back in history, some people who followed your religion have lived there, and apparently secured a contract with God affirming the eternal ownership of this land
How dare you give yourselves these abhorrent privileges of taking over someone’s home and homeland just because you belong to a particular faith?
How does an American Jew, a Russian Jew, an African Jew, a Japanese Jew, an Indian Jew or a German Jew have anything to do with the Land of Palestine?
If you think we are some kind of brainless retarded human beings who lack your “intelligence”, “emotions” and “morality” and who would just disregard what happened to them sixty years ago, and who would be happy to live as your inferiors in their own homeland; you better think again
We are sick and tired of witnessing your crimes for decades on end
We are sick and tired of your deception, false claims and the pretence of innocence and victim-hood
We are sick and tired of your orchestrated peace processes and leading-no-where road-maps
What is needed at this stage is not dialogue and reconciliation, what is most urgently needed is to STOP ALL your incessant ugly racism, supremacy, aggression and assault, to put a halt to your crimes, and to take a serious look in the mirror as a whole “population” and see what monsters have you become!
You need to address within your immoral and utterly sick society the obscene injustices you’ve inflected upon us
You need to deal with the hideous, corrupt, aggressive, militarized and wicked society that you have become
Before worrying about the hate and distrust that engulfs you, you ought to be worrying about the crimes of your own people and the injustices they have committed -and still committing- and how to facilitate for justice to run its course, and how to restore back the rights of millions that you have violated.
That requires an inner reflection of you as a whole people, it requires an honest and sincere look within yourselves, serious questioning of the “history” that you were taught, a bursting of the bubble that you are living in, it requires that you stop all your acts of aggression, theft of land, humiliation, murder, and destruction of our community, and above all, it requires that you step down from the high ground that you placed yourselves on, and be prepared to GIVE UP ALL the privileges that you have bestowed upon yourselves by the “virtue” of your Jewishness!
It also requires restoring our rights back including the right of return of all refugees, AND the compensation to ALL those who suffered from your Frankenstein creation of the racist Zionist entity… more
A collection of my writings of prose, poems and dialogues with my friends
Al-Manar TV – 20/04/2010
President Barack Obama said Monday on the 62nd declaration of the Zionist entity on the Palestinian land that the United States shares an “unbreakable bond” with Israel and he was confident the relationship “will only be strengthened” into the future.
Despite tensions between Obama and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US leader stressed that he looks “forward to continuing our efforts with Israel to achieve comprehensive peace and security in the region, including a two-state solution.”
Obama said in a statement released by the White House that “we once again honor the extraordinary achievements of the people of Israel, and their deep and abiding friendship with the American people.”
On Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States “will not waver in protecting Israel’s security and promoting Israel’s future,” while noting while the Jewish state is “confronting some of the greatest challenges in its history, but its promise and potential have never been greater.”
Clinton also pointed out that in 1948 it took President Harry Truman just 11 minutes to recognize the state of Israel. “And ever since, the United States has stood with you in solidarity.”
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.”
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.
Minister: Obama Fine With Israel’s ‘Nuclear Ambiguity’
By Jason Ditz | April 14, 2010
As with previous discussions of the possibility, Israeli officials today reacted negatively to yesterday’s comment by President Obama in support of seeing Israel join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“There is no room to pressure Israel to join,” insisted Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who added that it was unreasonable to ask Israel to join so long as Iran, a signatory to the NPT remains a “threat.”
But exactly how serious Obama’s comments even were is unclear. The president went out of his way to avoid the issue during the summit, and only mentioned that position when pressed. Moreover the US vigorously opposed an IAEA measure urging Israel to join the NPT late last year.
In fact according to Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, the Obama Administration has never asked them to change their policy of “nuclear ambiguity,” whereby Israel refuses to admit to its massive nuclear arsenal and refuses to join any group which would subject them to any sort of oversight.
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.
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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