“A study of the struggle waged by the English working class reveals that, in order to oppose their workers, the employers either bring in workers from abroad or else transfer manufacture to countries where there is a cheap labor force. Given this state of affairs, if the working class wishes to continue its struggle with some chance of success, the national organisations must become international.”
–Karl Marx
To borrow a metaphor from the medical sciences, an effective cure requires a sound diagnosis. Yet, in the face of the current plague of unemployment the Keynesian economists issue all kinds of passionate prescriptions to remedy the problem of joblessness without paying necessary attention to its root causes.
According to these economists, the origins of the ongoing high rates of unemployment (and of the underlying economic crisis in general) can be traced back to Ronald Reagan: his election to the presidency in 1980 and the subsequent rise of Neoliberalism brought forth an economic doctrine that has gradually led to the reversal of the Keynesian demand-management strategies of economic stimulation. So, for most Keynesian/liberal economists and politicians, Reagan is the pivotal figure and 1980 is the watershed year:
“Before 1980, economic policy was designed to achieve full employment, and the economy was characterized by a system in which wages grew with productivity. This configuration created a virtuous circle of growth. Rising wages meant robust aggregate demand, which contributed to full employment. Full employment in turn provided an incentive to invest, which raised productivity, thereby supporting higher wages.
“After 1980, with the advent of the new [Neoliberal] growth model, the commitment to full employment was abandoned as inflationary, with the result that the link between productivity growth and wages was severed. In place of wage growth as the engine of demand growth, the new model substituted borrowing and asset price inflation. Adherents of the neo-liberal orthodoxy made controlling inflation their primary policy concern, and set about attacking unions, the minimum wage, and other worker protections” [1].
While this account of US economic policies and developments of the past several decades is shared by most Keynesians and other critics of Neoliberalism, it suffers from a number of weaknesses.
First, the claim that the abandonment of Keynesian policies in favor of Neoliberal ones began with the 1980 arrival of Ronald Reagan in the White House is factually false. Indisputable evidence shows that the date on the Keynesian prescriptions of economic stimulation expired at least a dozen years earlier. Keynesian policies of economic expansion through demand management had run out of steam (i.e., reached their systemic limits) by the late 1960s and early 1970s; they did not come to a sudden, screeching halt the moment Reagan sat at the helm.
The questioning and the gradual abandonment of the Keynesian strategies took place not simply because of purely ideological proclivities or personal preferences of Ronald Reagan and other “right-wing” Republicans, as many Keynesians argue, but because of actual structural changes in economic or market conditions, both nationally and internationally. As discussed in my previous essay on this subject [2], Keynesian-type policies were pursued in response to the Great Depression and in the immediate aftermath of WW II as long as political forces and economic conditions of the time rendered those policies effective, or profitable. Those favorable conditions included nearly unlimited demand for US manufactures, both at home and abroad, and the lack of competition for both US capital and labor, which allowed US workers to demand decent wages and benefits while at the same time enjoying higher rates of employment.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, both US capital and labor were no longer unrivaled in global markets. Furthermore, during the long cycle of the immediate post-war expansion US producers had invested so much in fixed/constant capital, or capacity building, that by the late 1960s their profit rates had begun to decline as the capital-labor ratio and other “sunk costs” of their operations had become too high. More than anything else, it was these profound changes in the actual conditions of production that precipitated the gradual rejection of the Keynesian economics.
Second, not only is the Keynesians’ narrative of the actual developments that led to the demise of Keynesian policies and the rise of Neoliberalism inaccurate, but also their theory or explanation of the ongoing problem of unemployment (and of the economic crisis in general) is woefully deficient. By blaming the unemployment on Neoliberalism, or “Neoliberal capitalism,” as some Keynesians argue [3], instead of capitalism per se, proponents of Keynesian economics tend to lose sight of the structural or systemic causes of unemployment: the secular and/or systemic tendency of capitalist production to constantly replace labor with machine, and to thereby create a sizable pool of the unemployed, or a “reserve army of labor,” as Karl Marx put it. This means, of course, the higher the degree of industrialization and automation, the higher the potential of the reserve army of labor to expand. Marx described this tendency of capitalism to constantly create high levels of unemployment (or low levels of wages) as an essential condition for profitable production in the following words:
“The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth… the greater is the industrial army…. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labor army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus population… This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation. Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many circumstances” [4].
The fundamental laws of demand and supply of labor under capitalism are therefore heavily influenced, Marx argued, by the market’s ability to regularly produce a reserve army of labor, or a “surplus population.” The reserve army of labor, whose size is determined largely by the imperatives of capitalist profitability, is therefore as important to capitalist production as is the active (or actually employed) army of labor. Just as the regular and timely adjustment of the level of water behind a dam is crucial to a smooth or stable use of water, so is an “appropriate” size of a pool of the unemployed critical to the profitability of capitalist production. “The industrial reserve army,” Marx wrote,
“during periods of stagnation … weighs down the active army of workers; during the period of over-production and feverish activity, it puts a curb on their pretensions. The relative surplus population is therefore the background against which the law of the demand and supply of labour does its work. It confines the field of action of this law to the limits absolutely convenient to capital’s drive to exploit and dominate the workers” [5].
It is clear that the Marxian theory of the reserve army of labor, which shows how unemployment arises and why it is necessary to capitalism, provides a much better understanding of the current plague of unemployment than the Keynesian view, which blames it on “Neoliberal” capitalism—and which is essentially tantamount to explaining something by itself.
In the era of globalization of production and employment, the reserve army of labor has drastically expanded beyond national borders. According to a recent report by the International Labor Organization (ILO), between 1980 and 2007 the global labor force rose from 1.9 billion to 3.1 billion, a growth rate of 63 percent. Historical transition to capitalism in many less-developed parts of the world, which has led to the so-called de-peasantization, or proletarianization and urbanization, especially in countries such as China and India, is obviously a major source of the enlargement of the worldwide labor force, and its availability to global capital. The ILO report further shows that, worldwide, the ratio of the active (or employed) to reserve (or unemployed) army of labor is less than 50%, that is, more than half of the global labor force is unemployed [6].
It is this huge and readily available pool of the unemployed, along with the ease of production anywhere in the world—not some abstract or evil intentions of “right-wing Republicans and wicked Neoliberals,” as Keynesians argue—that has forced the working class, especially in the US and other advanced capitalist countries, into submission: going along with the brutal austerity schemes of wage and benefit cuts, of layoffs and union busting, of part-time and contingency employment, and the like. Ruthless Neoliberal policies of the past several decades, by both Republican and Democratic parties, are more a product of the structural changes in the global capitalist production than their cause. This is not to say that economic policies do not matter; but that such policies should not be attributed simply to capricious decision, malicious intentions or conspiratorial schemes.
It might be argued: “who cares what caused the unemployment? The fact is that it is a huge problem for millions; and why not simply replicate the Keynesian-type stimulus policies that were adopted in the immediate aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II?” Indeed, this seems to be the view of most of the Keynesian economists and liberal policy makers.
While prima facie this sounds like a reasonable suggestion, it suffers from the problem of issuing useless or ineffectual prescriptions based on inaccurate or flawed diagnoses. Not surprising, repeated Keynesian calls of the recent years for embarking on Keynesian-type stimulus packages in order to help end the recession and alleviate unemployment continue to sound hollow. For, under the changed conditions of production from national to global level, and in the absence of overwhelming political pressure from workers and other grassroots, there are simply no refills for Dr. Keynes’s prescriptions, which were issued on a national (not international or global) level, and under radically different socio-economic conditions—the solution now needs to be global.
Theoretically, the Keynesian strategy of a “virtuous circle” of high employment, high wages and economic growth is rather simple: massive government spending in the face of a serious economic downturn would raise employment and wages, inject a strong purchasing power into the economy and create a strong demand, which would then spur producers to expand and hire, thereby further raising employment, wages, demand, supply. . . . Many well-known Keynesians (such as Paul Krugman, Dean Baker, Thomas Palley, Robert Reich, and Randall Wray, for example) have in recent years repeatedly put forth this strategy of economic stimulation—only to see them fall on deaf ears.
Why?
While in theory (and on the face of it), the “virtuous circle” proposition is a relatively simple and fairly reasonable strategy, it suffers from a number of problems. To begin with, it seems to assume that employers and their government policy makers are genuinely interested in bringing about full employment, but somehow do not know how to achieve this objective. Full employment production, however, may not necessarily be the ideal, or profit-maximizing, level of production; which means it may not be a real objective of employers. As explained above, a sizable pool of the unemployed is as essential to capitalist profitability as is the number of workers needed to be actually employed. In its drive to keep the labor cost as low as possible, by keeping the working class as docile as possible, capitalism tends to prefer high unemployment and low wages to low unemployment and high wages. This explains why, for example, in reaction to the ongoing high levels of unemployment in the United States, the Obama administration (and the US government in general) has been making a lot of hollow, echoing noise about “jobs programs” without seriously embarking on a genuine plan of job creation a la FDR.
Secondly, the Keynesian argument that a “virtuous circle” of high employment, high wages, strong demand and economic growth is relatively easily achievable only if it were not due to the opposition of employers, or “bad” policies of Neoliberalism, seems to be based on the assumption that employers/producers are oblivious to their own self-interest. In other words, the argument presumes that it is not in the interests of employers to drive the wages too low as this would be tantamount to undermining consumer demand for what they produce. If only they were mindful of the benefits of the proverbial “Ford wages” to their sales, the argument goes, could they help both themselves and their workers, and bring about economic growth and prosperity for all. The well-known liberal professor (and former Labor Secretary under President Clinton) Robert Reich’s view on this issue is typical of the Keynesian argument:
“For most of the last century, the basic bargain at the heart of the American economy was that employers paid their workers enough to buy what American employers were selling. . . . That basic bargain created a virtuous cycle of higher living standards, more jobs, and better wages. . . . The basic bargain is over. . . . Corporate profits are up right now largely because pay is down and companies aren’t hiring. But this is a losing game even for corporations over the long term. Without enough American consumers, their profitable days are numbered. After all, there’s a limit to how much profit they can get out of cutting American payrolls. . . .” [7].
There are two major problems with this argument. The first problem is that it assumes (implicitly) that US producers depend on domestic workers not only for employment but also for sale of their products—as if it were a closed economy. In reality, however, US producers are increasingly becoming less and less dependent on domestic labor for either employment or sales as they steadily expand their export/sales markets abroad. Transnational capital’s consumer and labor markets are now spread across the globe. As Professor Alan Nasser recently pointed out (in a CounterPunch article), “On both the supply [employment] side and the demand side, the US worker/consumer is perceived as incrementally inessential” [8].
President Obama and his top economic advisers have been specially keen, indeed aggressive, on expanding US export markets to make up for the loss of domestic purchasing power. For example, in a speech (on his National Export Initiative) to the annual conference of the Import-Export Bank (March 11, 2010) the president pointed out: “The world’s fastest-growing markets are outside our borders. We need to compete for those customers because other nations are competing for them.” Mr. Obama’s chairman of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, Jeffrey Immelt, likewise states: “Today we go to Brazil, we go to China, we go to India, because that’s where the customers are” [9].
The second problem with Professor Reich’s (and his Keynesian co-thinkers’) argument of “high wages as the engines of virtuous cycles” of growth and expansion is that wages and benefits are micro- or enterprise-level categories that are decided on by individual employers and corporate managers, not by some macro or national level planners (as in a centrally-planned economy) of aggregate demand. In other words, individual producers (large or small) view wages and benefits first, and foremost, as a major cost of production that needs to be minimized as much as possible; and only secondarily, if ever, as part of the national aggregate demand that may (in roundabout ways) contribute to the sale of their products. This is another example of how Marx’s theory of capitalist exploitation and wage-determination (as a subsistence-based historical category) is superior to the Keynesian view that, in a manner of wishful thinking, hopes that producers would be wise and generous enough to pay “sufficient” wages in order to sell their products!
Keynesian economists passionately talk about “virtuous cycles” of high employment, high wages and high growth as if there are no limits to such expanding, upward spiraling cycle. It is well established, however, both theoretically and empirically, that such virtuous cycles are bound to be temporary because as they expand they also sow the seeds of contraction. A discussion of economic cycles and the underlying theories of capitalist crisis is beyond the purview of this essay. Suffice it to point out that, contrary to the arguments of Keynesian economists, an expanding cycle of accumulation and high levels of employment may not necessarily be accompanied by rising wages. If it does, it would be temporary because, sooner or later, the rising wages would cut into profitability imperatives, which would then trigger the employers’ reaction to curtail wages and benefits—by either curtailing or outsourcing production and/or employment.
This means that not only may growth and expansion not be precipitates or accompanied by high wages, as Keynesian economists claim, but (on the contrary) by low wages, or low cost of labor. More often than not, capitalism flourishes on the poverty, compliance and, therefore, low cost of labor. Marx characterized capitalism’s ability to create a big pool of the unemployed, or “relative surplus population,” in order to create a largely poor and meek working class as “immiseration” of the labor force, a built-in mechanism that is essential to the “general law” of capitalist accumulation:
“In proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse.… The law which always holds the relative surplus population in equilibrium with the extent and energy of accumulation rivets the worker to capital more firmly than the wedges of Hephaestus held Prometheus to the rock. It makes an accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth. Accumulation at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalization and moral degradation at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital” [10].
A major flaw of the Keynesian reform or restructuring package is that it consists of a set of populist proposals that are devoid of politics, that is, of political mechanisms that would be necessary to carry them out. They rest largely on the hope that, in an independent or disinterested fashion, the state can control and manage capitalism in the interest of all. This is, however, no more than wishful thinking, since in reality it is the powerful capitalist interests that elect and control the government, not the other way around.
In response to criticisms of this kind, Keynesians are quick to invoke the experience of the “golden years” (1948-1968) of the US economy in support of their arguments. It is true that during that long cycle of expansion high employment, high wages, high demand and high growth reinforced each other in the fashion of a virtuous cycle. But the constellation or convergence of a set of propitious socioeconomic conditions (political pressure from workers and other grassroots, fear of revolution and radical change, unrivaled US labor and capital, unlimited demand for US goods and service, both on a national and international levels, and more) that precipitated and nurtured that long cycle of expansion were unique historical circumstances of the time. Empirical observations or conjunctural developments under certain/specific circumstances ought not to be facilely extrapolated, generalized, and elevated to the level of a general theory, or a universal/timeless pattern of actual developments. Such an intellectual exercise would be tantamount to empiricism through and through—not scientific or realistic inquiry into a theoretical understanding of the actual socioeconomic developments of the day.
To sum up, the Marxian theory of unemployment, based on his theory of the reserve army of labor, provides a much better explanation of the protracted high levels of unemployment than the Keynesian view that attributes the plague of unemployment to the “misguided” or “bad” policies of Neoliberalism. Likewise, the Marxian theory of subsistence or near-poverty wages, also based on his theory of the reserve army of labor, provides a more satisfactory understanding of how or why such poverty levels of wages, as well as a generalized or nationwide predominance of misery, can go hand-in-hand with “healthy” or high levels of corporate profits than the Keynesian perceptions, which view a high level of wages as a necessary condition for a “virtuous” or expansionary economic cycle. Perhaps more importantly, the Marxian view that meaningful, lasting economic safety-net programs can be carried out only through overwhelming pressure from the masses—and only on a coordinated global level—provides a more logical and promising solution to the problem of economic hardship for the overwhelming majority of the world population than the neat, purely intellectual, and apolitical Keynesian stimulus packages on a national level, which are based on the hope or illusion that the government can control and manage capitalism “in the interest of all.” No matter how long or loud or passionately our good-hearted Keynesians beg for jobs and other New Deal-type reform programs, their pleas for the implementation of such programs are bound to be ignored by the government of big business. Only by mobilizing the masses of workers and other grassroots and fighting, instead of begging, for an equitable share of what is truly the product of their labor, the wealth of nations, can the working majority achieve economic security and human dignity.
References
[1] Thomas I. Palley, “America’s Exhausted Paradigm,” http://newamerica.net/files/Thomas_Palley_America%27s_Exhausted_Paradigm.pdf
[2] Ismael Hossein-zadeh, “Keynesian Myths and Illusions,” http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/04/keynesian-myths-and-illusions/
[3] David M. Kotz, “The Financial and Economic Crisis of 2008: A Systemic Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism,” Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 41, No. 3 (2009), pp. 305-317.
[4] Capital, Vol. 1 (Moscow, no date), pp. 592-93.
[5] Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), P. 792.
[6] International Labor Organization (ILO), The Global Employment Challenge (Geneva, 2008); as cited in “The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism” (by John Bellamy Foster, Robert W. McChesney and R. Jamil Jonna): http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27549
[7] Robert Reich, “Restore the Basic Bargain” (November 28, 2011): http://robertreich.org/post/13469691304
[8] Alan Nasser, “The Political Economy of Redistribution: Outsourcing Jobs, Offshoring Markets,” http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/02/outsourcing-jobs-offshoring-markets/
[9] As cited by Alan Nasser, Ibid.
[10] Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), p. 799.
~
Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. He is the author of The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave – Macmillan 2007) and the Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press.
December 17, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular |
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Speaking to a full lecture hall Friday, John Cerone, the director of the New England School of Law’s Center for International Law and Policy, gave an insider’s view of how an evolving US policy toward international criminal courts provides context to the development of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).
The talk at the American University of Beirut was the first in a series of lectures held by Al-Akhbar’s Research Unit, in collaboration with the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs. Cerone’s lecture was titled “The Politics of International Justice.”
“The STL fit within a lot of the policy priorities for the US,” said Cerone, who served as special adviser for the first US delegation to the UN Human Rights Council in 2009.
From the Bush administration’s blatant attempts to thwart international justice during its war on Iraq to the Obama administration’s policy of “principled engagement,” US interaction with international courts reflects a blend of foreign policy goals and historical precedents. The US engagement with the STL was no different.
In comparison with other international hybrid tribunals, the STL possesses, “the narrowest scope we’ve seen,” Cerone said.
The STL’s jurisdiction is limited to investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and related crimes.
“If everyone agrees it’s a crime, having selective justice is problematic, but it doesn’t undermine the legitimacy of that prosecution,” Cerone said. “I’d rather have some prosecution than no prosecution.”
Joumana Nahas, an author and lawyer who attended the lecture, described the STL as “a tribunal to end impunity in Lebanon.”
Others in attendance were less optimistic. One attendee asked, “Was this not a court established to try only one crime?” Several also asked how Israel is not being tried for crimes against humanity in the 2006 July War or in its devastating strikes on Gaza. Cerone provided insight into this query in a 2007 essay.
Cerone wrote that, in 2005, a UN official involved in STL negotiations said that jurisdictional limitations on the tribunal “were included at the behest of the United States to ensure that the Tribunal could not take jurisdiction over the conduct of Israeli forces during the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah/Lebanon.”
“The key issue for me is the fairness of the trial,” said Cerone. “The discomfort comes from the STL’s ad hoc nature. Why are we creating tribunals to prosecute criminals here and not there?”
Though it is subject to controversy, the UN’s International Criminal Court (ICC) is the world’s premier justice mechanism. Established in 1998 with the Rome Statute, the US was hesitant to sign the statute from the beginning.Though the US did eventually sign the treaty, it has failed to ratify it over the years.
“The US was concerned that rules of international criminal law contained in the statute might constrain its ability to project its power,” said Cerone.
December 17, 2011
Posted by aletho |
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The BBC reported today that PM David Cameron has said that the UK is a Christian country “and we should not be afraid to say so”.
In a speech in Oxford on the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, the prime minister called for a revival of traditional Christian values to counter Britain’s “moral collapse”.
“We are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so, Cameron told the audience at Christ Church.
However, Cameron failed to explain the bizarre fact that 80% of his Tory MPs are actually Conservative Friends of Israel (CFOI). Cameron also failed to explain why a ‘Christian country’ abolishes its precious universal jurisdiction law just to appease the Jewish lobby. Cameron also should open our eyes and explain to us why exactly a Christian country followed orders from a Jewish Lobby group and arrested Sheikh Raed Salah.
If we are a Christian country, why did we launch a criminal war based on a ‘dossier’ that was compiled in Tel Aviv? Also, is the fact that Lord Levy was chief fundraiser for the Labour Government a mere coincidence?
If we are a Christian country, as Cameron suggests, someone had better explain to us all how is it, that we have succumbed to ‘eye for an eye’ political doctrine instead of self search for compassion and empathy in the spirit of Christ.
I can only suggest to Cameron that before preaching to us, he himself had better reflect on his own words, he should contemplate over this country’s traditional Christian values and counter his own Government’s ‘moral collapse’.
December 17, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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An Israeli soldier arrests a 12-year-old Palestinian youth (Severinelaville/Flickr)
TEL AVIV — In the wake of increased violence between the Israeli army and fighters in the Gaza Strip, Israeli threats of a second large-scale attack on the occupied Palestinian territory raise pressing questions of international humanitarian law:
How can civilians be better protected during urban warfare? And does IHL need to be amended given the increasingly blurred line between civilians and combatants, especially in places like Gaza?
Israeli military officials argue that many humanitarian rules are ill-suited to fighting militants in the densely populated Gaza Strip and say the current reality there makes a revision of IHL necessary.
“International law is not the embodiment of morality,” Israeli philosopher Asa Kasher, who wrote an early version of the army’s code of conduct, said at a recent conference in Tel Aviv, aimed at finding answers to some of the challenges urban warfare poses to military practices in the field. “We need different rules that apply to our army facing terrorists in densely populated areas.”
This position is strongly disputed by the International Committee of the Red Cross, charged with monitoring the compliance of warring parties with IHL. It says the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war also apply to asymmetric conflicts in urban settings.
With Israeli military officials saying an attack similar to the 23-day Operation Cast Lead, which killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians in 2008-9, is inevitable, the question is increasingly relevant.
“There is no doubt that fighting in Gaza will come, probably earlier than we think. And each time it will be more difficult,” Dan Harel, former IDF deputy chief of staff, said during the conference.
His remarks coincided with a recent flare-up in violence in Gaza, as Israeli air strikes killed at least one civilian and wounded several others in early December, while militants in Gaza fired several rockets into Israeli territory.
What defines ‘direct participation’?
While international law prohibits the targeting of civilians, Harel defended Israel’s past military ventures in Gaza, pointing to the challenges posed by fighting in dense urban areas.
“How can we differentiate between groups of civilians and combatants on a packed street, especially when combatants don’t wear uniforms? How do we avoid killing civilians in urban areas, when Hamas militants hide among them?” he asked during the conference, hosted by the Institute for National Security Studies.
Hamas, the group that rules the Gaza Strip, has denied accusations that it has used civilians as human shields; and the report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes, found no evidence of civilians being forced by Hamas to remain in areas under attack.
Knut Dörmann, head of the ICRC legal division in Geneva, said any use of so-called “human shields” would be a war crime under IHL. But voluntary human shields can only be considered direct participants in warfare “if they pose a physical obstacle to a military operation,” he said.
This notion, he acknowledged, is subject to continuous debate. Neither the Geneva Conventions nor their Additional Protocols provide a clear definition of what represents direct participation in armed hostilities. But according to the ICRC’s interpretation of IHL, direct participation involves an act likely to inflict harm or affect military operations; there must be a direct causal link between the act and the harm likely to result; and the act must be specifically designed to directly cause the harm in support of a party to the conflict and to the detriment of another.
Civilians lose the right to protection against direct attack for the duration of each specific act that amounts to direct participation in hostilities, and in case of doubt as to whether they are combatants, must be presumed to be protected against direct attack until their status can be determined, the ICRC said.
Complex application of IHL
But the application of IHL in the context of the conflict between Israel and Gaza is highly complex because it does not fall easily into defined categories of international and non-international armed conflict.
Despite an absence of Israeli troops on the ground, the ICRC considers Gaza an occupied territory because Israel has retained a considerable degree of control over it, including over its territorial waters, airspace and land borders. Still, Israel’s obligations under IHL in Gaza are very limited, because it does not have any permanent presence inside the Gaza Strip.
“There is a nexus between the scope of Israel’s control and its legal responsibilities — where there is control, there is responsibility,” Tel Aviv-based ICRC legal adviser Eitan Diamond said. For instance, running the education system of the population may be the occupier’s obligation, but because Israel does not have any permanent presence in Gaza, it is not able and therefore not required to do so. Still, Israel has to ensure that the population’s basic needs, such as food, water and medical supplies, are met.
But the situation is complicated still further. Any occupation invokes the category of international armed conflict, and yet this occupation is a result of a historical armed conflict between Israel and Egypt, which no longer exists. Hamas is not a party to that armed conflict, but rather a new conflict that would normally be considered a non-international armed conflict. But because of the ongoing occupation, the rules on international armed conflict continue to apply.
PoWs
However, Palestinian militants captured by Israel are not considered prisoners of war — entitled to special protection — because they are not state actors.
“But this doesn’t leave them in a legal vacuum,” Diamond said, because they still qualify for protection under the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians.
As Article 4 of that convention states: “Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.”
“While there are some who dispute that Gaza is occupied, the West Bank is undisputedly occupied territory,” Diamond explained, “and since the West Bank and Gaza Strip are recognized to be one territorial unit, Gazans held by Israel are clearly persons in the hands of an Occupying Power.”
Though Palestinian militants can legally be the target of attack while participating in hostilities, they should be protected as civilians when captured because the threat they pose is neutralized by detention.
“The fact that they participate in hostilities is significant only during hostilities,” Diamond said. Once they are detained, they are entitled to all the protections laid out in the Fourth Geneva Convention, including humane treatment, contact with family, and assistance from the ICRC.
‘Transnational asymmetric warfare’
Furthermore, even when a militant is identified as a legitimate target, other factors must be considered.
“You can’t just proceed with the killing” in all cases, Dörmann told the conference in Tel Aviv. Following the principle of proportionality, the potential loss of life would have to be weighed against a concrete and direct military advantage, especially in densely populated areas like Gaza, where military targets are often in the midst of residential areas.
This does not sit well with the Israeli philosopher Kasher, who has been explicitly frank about his contempt of current IHL. He, like some others at the conference, questioned why Israel should have more responsibilities towards what he perceived as the “enemy’s civilians” than towards its own soldiers.
“IHL only cares about civilians, not about soldiers, and this is immoral,” Kasher said.
For the former chief of Israeli military intelligence Amos Yadlin, the ethical norms of IHL do not fit Israel’s operations in Gaza.
“If we need moral rules,” Yadlin said, “we have to adapt them to Israeli circumstances. Commanders are facing too many dilemmas when taking decisions on the ground.”
All the more reason, Dörmann said, that commanders must know the legal rules thoroughly in order to apply them in the field. “Every soldier’s knowledge of IHL is essential.”
Israel is a party to the Geneva Conventions, but has not ratified the protocols for the protection of victims of armed conflict. However, it is widely accepted that these rules are customary international law, and therefore applicable in all conflicts.
A joint research project by the INSS and Tel Aviv University is currently investigating how IHL might be amended, a very difficult move given that a separate international treaty would be necessary. “We try to make international law suitable for the fight against what we call transnational asymmetric warfare”, Yehuda Ben Meir, principal research fellow at the INSS, explained.
‘Some reflection must begin’
However, the ICRC’s Dörmann said such a step would be dangerous. Instead of adapting laws to asymmetric warfare, existing regulations should be reinforced and strengthened, he said.
“Otherwise we will find ourselves in a downward spiral of disrespect for IHL.”
Making the rules more suitable for regular armies would only force militants to change their tactics, which would in turn result in another undercut of IHL by the state army, he warned.
In preparation for upcoming challenges, the ICRC strongly recommended that the Israeli army learn from its past experiences in Operation Cast Lead, which saw 1,387 Palestinians killed, around half of whom did not take part in hostilities.
Civilians could be better protected through effective warning ahead of an attack, he said.
He also raised concerns over the use of specific weapons in residential areas, like white phosphorus, used by Israel during the ground phase of the operation. Originally used as a smoke screen to hide movement, white phosphorus is increasingly used as an offensive weapon, because it can cause serious burns or even death.
“Some reflection must begin over the use of artillery and mortars in populated areas, and especially the use of white phosphorus,” Dörmann said.
Promoting a concept he called “courageous restraint”, Stanley McChrystal offered these words of advice to Israelis at the conference, based on his experience as the former commander of US forces in Afghanistan.
“Limiting fire power might put soldiers more at risk. That is a correct argument,” he told the conference in Tel Aviv. “But it was necessary to protect civilians on a long term … [and] because the perception of our conduct among the people in Afghanistan became so important.”
For Israel, perception also plays a big role during conflict in the Gaza Strip, the ICRC’s Diamond said.
“This conflict wages on well beyond the battlefield, with each party investing considerable effort in a struggle for legitimacy. If you are seen to violate the rules, you can’t maintain legitimacy.”
December 16, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes |
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Liberals in Congress and in the general public have allowed their blind devotion to Obama obscure their understanding of the dramatic parallels between this administration and the previous one. Obama’s high-minded idealistic rhetoric (which Bush also engaged in, it should be pointed out) may sound great to establishment liberals, but it masks the same contempt for the rule of law that was displayed so often in the Bush imperial presidency. Now, Obama’s contempt for the Constitution is on display for all to see, although many will not like what they see.
Nowhere is this contempt for the highest laws of the land clearer than in Obama’s complete refusal to protect basic due process rights for alleged terrorists and detainees in the “War on Terror.” Case in point: Obama’s commitment to illegally detain American citizens under the name of fighting terrorism (more on this in a bit).
Before getting into Obama’s most recent attacks on the Constitution, I should note that they are part of a larger historical pattern of contempt for basic civil liberties. Count among Obama’s previous transgressions:
1. The decision to refrain from prosecuting the Bush administration for its many violations of the law, including the NSA wiretaps scandal, the Guantanamo-enemy combatant fiasco, the systematic lying about the reasons for war in Iraq, and the willful skirting of the Geneva Conventions as seen in the Abu Ghraib scandal, among other deceptions;
2. The decision to continue using rendition, where terrorist suspects would be sent to third world dictatorships to be interrogated, coupled with the absurd promise that these governments would no longer torture detainees (as they did under Bush), because the new interrogations were in service of the noble and selfless Obama, unlike Bush, who was a bad, bad man; and
3. Obama’s expanded “War on Terror” as seen in the Afghan surge, which would have been protested endlessly if it occurred under the Bush administration.
The Los Angeles Times’ reporting in early 2009 perfectly symbolized the naiveté of liberal aspirations for the president, as the paper reported on Obama’s tortured promise (no pun intended) that the CIA would continue to use rendition, but that foreign interrogators simply wouldn’t torture anymore. Such a promise was outlandish on the face of it, since the whole point behind rendition is to outsource torture to allied governments which are better able to hide their use of torture in interrogations (this was the lesson learned at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram, where U.S. interrogators were eventually implicated in coercive interrogations and torture).
As the LA Times optimistically reported at the time of Obama’s inauguration: “The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba… Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism… for taking suspected terrorists off the street.” The LA Times continued: “Obama created a task force to reexamine renditions to make sure that they ‘do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture,’ or otherwise circumvent human rights laws and treaties. The CIA has long maintained that it does not turn prisoners over to other countries without first obtaining assurances that the detainees will not be mistreated.” Such naiveté was no doubt embraced by Obama supporters who wanted to believe that Obama could never engage in the kind of torture of detainees that so regularly characterized the actions of the Bush administration.
Now Obama appears to be ready to strengthen his contempt for the rule of law via his expansion of the enemy combatant system, while slyly refusing to refer to those detained as “enemy combatants.” Much was made of Obama’s initial attempts (in 2009) to shut down Guantanamo and send detainees there to U.S. civilian courts, where they would be granted basic due process rights. That plan was shut down by Democrats in Congress, which have long displayed their basic distaste for basic Constitutional and other legal protections for “terrorist suspects.” Obama kowtowed to Congressional criminality in 2009, and is set to do it again this year. As the New York Times recently reported, Obama has now abandoned his promise to veto the “military authorization bill” being considered in Congress, which threatens to extend denial of due process to American citizens who are suspected of terrorist activities. Let me repeat that in case you missed it: Obama has now gone on record as openly supportive of denying American citizens (not only non-citizens) basic due process rights such as the right to trial, trial by peers, and right to legal representation.
As the New York Times reports: “The administration had threatened to veto versions of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 passed by the House and the Senate, arguing that provisions would open the door for the military to perform policing functions inside the United States…But the bill includes a narrower provision, drafted by the Senate, authorizing the government to detain, without trial, suspected members of Al Qaeda or its allies — or those who ‘substantially supported’ them — bolstering the authorization it enacted a decade ago against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks…Another section would require officials to hold noncitizens suspected of being Qaeda operatives in military custody.”
Of course, the traditionally slavish U.S. media spared Americans the worst details of the new legislation. The Guardian reports that the new law potentially “allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.” Neither of these details was acknowledged in the New York Times’ report on the National Defense Authorization Act, to the delight of the Obama administration.
It’s truly tragic and sad that this “debate” over circumvention of basic rights granted in the Constitution has to be replayed yet again in the United States. The Bush administration was rightly condemned for its complete contempt for the Constitution, but American liberals seem content to ignore these same transgressions when engaged in by Democrats.
For the record, there is nothing remotely controversial about the conclusion that denying citizens and non-citizens alike basic due process rights in civilian courts is illegal under national and international law. As the Supreme Court ruled in the 2004 case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, military tribunals for terrorist suspects clearly violate basic protections granted under the Geneva Conventions, which require that suspects be tried in “regularly constituted courts.” A regularly constituted court is widely understood to be the equivalent of a civilian court, conferring within it basic protections to confront accusers, benefit from a trial of one’s peers, and to be protected against hearsay, majority (rather than unanimous voting), and to confidential attorney-client privileges. All of these protections are circumvented in military tribunals, which afford a far lower level of basic protections to the accused. Such due process protections carry the force of domestic law, in light of the fact that the Geneva Conventions are U.S. ratified foreign treaties, and are protected under the Constitution’s “supremacy clause,” which places foreign treaties on par with national laws and the Constitution itself as the highest form of law in the land. The Supreme Court also found that the Geneva Conventions protections for non-citizens (to have access to a trial in a civilian court) were protected via the Uniform Military Code of Justice, which also incorporates basic Geneva Conventions protections.
The outlawing of the “enemy combatant” designation and the indefinite detainment of non-citizens was also reinforced in the Supreme Court’s 2004 Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld decision, which declared the Bush administration’s detainment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo to be illegal and unconstitutional. The Constitution states explicitly in the 6th Amendment that: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury… and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” Critics will no doubt point out that the 6th Amendment refers to basic protections granted to those who are charged with crimes allegedly committed within (rather than outside) the United States. This criticism is irrelevant, however, with regard to the new legislation being considered in Congress, which is set to apply to American citizens and their (alleged) illegal activities committed on U.S. soil. Furthermore, the Constitution does not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens in the case of alleged crimes and due process rights, as addressed in the Fifth Amendment, which explicitly states that “no person [rather than no citizen]… shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This provision essentially makes illegal and unconstitutional any attempts by presidents or congress to deny basic due process to citizens and non-citizens.
Obama’s lawless infringements on basic Constitutional principles are (fortunately) opposed by a strong majority of Americans, who still maintain a commitment to the rule of law. Polling on the denial of due process is in short supply, but what little evidence exists suggests strong rejection of the circumvention of the Constitution. A 2006 poll published by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, for example, uncovers the following findings:
– 73 percent of Americans believe terrorism “suspects should have the right to request and receive a hearing.”
– 66 percent think that the “home government and families [of detainees] should be informed of their capture and location.”
– 73 percent feel that detainees “treatment should be monitored by the Red Cross or another international organization” to ensure that they are treated humanely
– 75 percent (contrary to Obama’s reliance on rendition and torture) feel that detainees “should not be tortured,” while 57 percent think that detainees “should not be threatened with torture.”
– 63 percent agree that “the rules for treating someone who is being detained because they are suspected of terrorist activities should be the same for citizens and non-citizens.”
– 57 percent feel “the United States should not permit U.S. military and intelligence agencies to secretly send terrorism suspects to other countries that are known to use torture.”
– 78 percent believe that it would be “somewhat” or “very likely” that these suspects “were tortured even if officials [as Obama has done today] say they would not be.”
American majority sentiment is very clearly opposed to the Obama administration’s continuation of the illegal attacks on the Constitution and basic due process rights. We have an opportunity today to send a message to our members of Congress that denial of due process is unacceptable regardless of the party of the president. Simply because Congress decides to initiate illegal acts doesn’t mean that they are any less unconstitutional. Political elites may have no interest in this basic lesson, but that doesn’t mean that Americans have to accept such draconian, authoritarian arguments. I strongly urge all those committed to the rule of law to contact their legislators in the House and Senate and urge them strongly to vote no against the authorization of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.
To look up your members of Congress, see the following links:
For the House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
For the Senate: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
~
Anthony DiMaggio is the author of numerous books, including most recently The Rise of the Tea Party, and other works such as Crashing the Tea Party (2011); When Media Goes to War (2010); and Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008). He has taught American politics and International Relations in Political Science at a number of colleges and universities, and can be reached at: adimag2@uic.edu
December 16, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular |
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By SAUL LANDAU and NELSON P. VALDES | December 16, 2011
“Los niños nacen para ser felices.”
– José Martí
On November 19, 2011 NPR broadcast “Children Of Cuba Remember: Their Flight To America.” Reporter Greg Allen claimed the 1960-62 journey from Cuba to the United States of 14,000 plus Cuban children “was made possible because of a deal a priest in the Miami diocese [Father Bryan Walsh] … worked out with the US State Department. The agreement allowed him to sign visa waivers for children 16 or under.” Allen then interviewed several right-of-center Cuban Americans to offer “objective” perspective on the facts surrounding Operation Peter Pan.
Curiously, Allen omitted the CIA from his report, although ample evidence shows the Agency in the early 1960s conspired with the Church to spirit kids out of Cuba.
Once inside the nurturing borders of the greatest country in the world “Pedro Pan kids have done well,” Allen concluded, without explaining what “well” means. Now adult Pedro Pan kids remain “firmly opposed to any normalization of relations with the Castro regime, the regime that was responsible for breaking up their families and forcing them from their homeland.”
NPR staff might have discovered a more complex and sinister story – had they looked. The CIA refuses to release Peter Pan documents, but abundant testimony shows the Agency forging documents and spreading lies, with Father Walsh and the regional Catholic hierarchy. Their goal: separate elite children from parents (a Cuban brain drain) and generate political instability.
One Operation Peter Pan conspirator, Antonio Veciana, now living in Miami, told us how Maurice Bishop (aka CIA official David Atlee Phillips) recruited him in 1960 “to wage psychological war — to destabilize the government.” Veciana described how the Agency forged a law to make affluent Cubans believe the revolutionary government planned to usurp parental control. Bishop’s agents in Cuba spread this rumor, backed by a forged simulation of the supposed law, to members of the professional and propertied classes. The forgery “declared that parents would lose control of their kids to the state.”
Veciana recounted how “CIA agents claimed they’d stolen the document from the Cuban government.” This false document “created tremendous panic.” On October 26, 1960, CIA-controlled Swan island radio station, south of Cuba, broadcast breaking “news.” Cuba’s government, the radio asserted, planned to remove children from parents so as to indoctrinate them. Radio Swan reported another lie: the Cuban underground had obtained a copy of the forthcoming “law.”
Minimal research would have revealed that Leopoldina and Ramón Grau Alsina, niece and nephew of former Cuban President Ramón Grau San Martín, had confessed to Cuban security officials after being arrested in 1965 to having printed the false law in Havana, circulated it clandestinely and then lied to parents.
Article 3 of the apocryphal document stated: “When this law comes into effect, the custody of persons under 20 years of age will be exercised by the state via persons or organizations to which this power has been delegated.” Priests and CIA agents both recruited kids and persuaded parents to “trust us. The US government will care for them.”
The clergy circulated the phony document among their Cuban upper middle-class flock. Catholic school officials feared Castro’s rapidly expanding public instruction program would undermine their virtual educational monopoly among moneyed sectors.
In March 1960, President Eisenhower ordered the CIA to overthrow the Cuban government. Agency plotters designed Peter Pan to run alongside political propaganda and economic strangulation policies. These parallel tracks would weaken Castro’s government while US trainers prepared a Cuban-exile invasion force, which, in turn, would coordinate with CIA-backed urban terrorists and guerrillas.
Operation Peter Pan (recall the Disney film?) used Cuban kids and parents to further their goal: overthrowing the revolutionary government. NPR’s claim of “no evidence” of CIA involvement would have dissolved had they asked Veciana or questioned why the CIA still refuses to release its 1500 plus documents on that Operation — while de-classifying archives on the Bay of Pigs and the 1962 Missile Crisis?
Writer Alvaro Fernandez’ father Angel Fernandez Varela, recruited by the CIA in Havana, taught at the Jesuit run Colegio Belen. Before he died in Miami, wrote Alvaro, Angel told his family “he had been one of those responsible for drafting the false law that gave rise to the hysteria.”
NPR’s report doesn’t ask: who obtained the kids’ visas, airplane tickets and contacts abroad and why did KLM and Pan American Airlines issue Peter Pan kids free tickets?
Nor does NPR Allen follow up. The US government didn’t maintain contact between parents and children, nor grant visas to most of the parents that remained in Cuba. The UN High Commissioner tried to reunite parents and children, but Washington didn’t back him.
Veciana helped facilitate this dirty trick, but later mused: “Afterward I wondered: was this the right thing to do? Because we did create panic about the government, but we also separated lots of kids from their parents.”
In fact, Cuba has won accolades for its treatment of children. “In Cuba, there are no children on the streets, no children out of school, no children without access to health services or culture, and there are no unprotected children without opportunities for development,” said Jose Juan Ortiz, UNICEF representative in Cuba.
Paradoxically, the CIA attributed its own objective to the Cuban government: separating children from their parents. Maybe, if NPR staff thought ironically they would’ve done a more accurate report on Operation Peter Pan.
~
Saul Landau’s WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP — available on dvd from cinemalibrestore@gmail.com. Counterpunch published his BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.
Nelson Valdes came to Florida in Operation Peter Pan and is Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico.
Source
December 16, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | CIA, Cuba, NPR, Operation Peter Pan, Politics of Cuba, Saul Landau |
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Three sisters, moments before a home demolition in Al Aqaba, in the West Bank (photo: flickr/frecklebaum)
Surrounded by two training military camps, in Area C, Al Aqaba’s population has gone from 1000 in 1967, the beginning of the Israeli military occupation of West Bank, to the current 300.
Al Aqaba is part of Tubas district, in the northeastern area of the West Bank, near the entrance of the Jordan Valley. A fertile land, rich with water resources, its geography attracted the attention of the Israeli Army which has used the area for military training of all kinds. Sami Sadiq, head of the Al Aqaba local council, explains, “Al Aqaba is surrounded by two military camps, used for the training of ground forces, tanks and air force. After the 1967 war, the village area was declared a closed military zone for ‘security reasons.’ Since that moment, they started building three training camps that host thousands of soldiers every year. They come here for one or two months and then they are sent to their respective units.”
“From 1971 to the present,” Sadiq adds, “the soldiers killed 13 Palestinians and injured at least 50.”
Sadiq is among them, having taken three bullets to his back. One is too close to his heart to be extracted. He has spent the past 38 years in a wheelchair. But, still, he continues to protest against the occupation.
After a petition was submitted by the residents of Al Aqaba in 2003, one of the three camps was closed: it was located exactly in the entrance of the village, making life impossible because of dangerous trainings and movement restrictions. But the two other bases remain and, Sadiq says, “The hills around Al Aqaba are a closed military zone. The aim of the Israeli Civil Administration is to declare the village a closed military zone, in order to force all the inhabitants to leave their own houses.
According to the Israeli law civilians are strictly forbidden from accessing closed military zones.
“The Israelis’ goal is obvious,” Sadiq says. “This land is very fertile and rich in water resources. They want to empty the area of its original Palestinian inhabitants and colonize it, confiscating the land and water.”
A “quiet transfer” is already happening, through demolitions, land confiscations, and the denial of basic services, such as running water.
“In Al Aqaba the water system doesn’t exist,” Sadiq says. “It has never been authorized by the [Israeli] Civil Administration, which has total control of the area: the village is forced to buy water tanks and to fill the wells. And the connection to the electricity network was allowed just three years ago. Before we were using a generator.”
“The oldest house in Al Aqaba dates back to 1930 [18 years before the state of Israel was established],” Sadiq continues. “Nevertheless, Israeli authorities accuse every single family of the village of building their homes illegally. So, they carry out demolitions. This year they destroyed Salam Street twice, in April and in September.”
95% of the buildings in the village are under demolition order. Among them the health center, the kindergarten and the mosque. A petition to the Israeli Supreme Court, submitted in 2004 by Al Aqaba residents in order to cancel the orders, was rejected on the 7 of April 2008. The lawyer for the village, Tusja-Cohen, asked a team of experts to come up with a new plan, to make the buildings “legal” under Israeli law and to obtain the required permits for the owners.
But the Court didn’t accept this petition and authorized the demolitions. The last ones date back on 15th of September: the Army destroyed two kilometers of the only road connecting the village to the Jordan Valley and demolished two houses along Salam Street. In addition, there are the land confiscations: “Thousands of dunams were confiscated by Israel in order to build the three military camps,” Sadiq explains. “During the trainings, the soldiers destroy olive trees and agricultural lands. It seems to be war [training]: once they simulated the fall of a plane.”
According to Sadiq, soldiers sometimes use houses and streets inside the village for military training, “Dozens of soldiers enter suddenly and exercise as though they are preparing for war in the middle of a city, between narrow roads. Over the years, this has caused Palestinian residents [to leave].”
House demolitions, land confiscations, lack of services, and accidental deaths due to military training have effectively depopulated Al Aqaba as many families have moved to Tubas and Nablus.
December 14, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular |
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The Hassan family was only allowed to come back to their house in 2010. For five years, after the Israelis built the separation wall right through one of the walls of their home, they were forbidden to enter. They waged a long legal battle to show that the property was theirs. They won and today eight members of the family live in the three-storey house.
Israel’s separation wall running through the Hassan family home (photo: Gustav Winters)
But they still can’t access their own roof– Israeli forces constructed a surveillance tower on Hassan’s roof and visit it at least once a week.
An Israeli military post on top of the Hassan family home (photo Gustav Winters)
While the Hassan family offers an extreme example, the wall has affected, to some extent, all of the 4,000 Palestinians that live in the village of Nazlat ‘Isa, which is 15 kilometers northeast of Tulkarem.
The space between the barrier and the houses in Nazlat ‘Isa is very narrow. In some parts, only two people fit. The village’s main road ends, abruptly, at the eight-meter-high concrete wall. From 2002 to 2005, the Israelis used an electronic fence to divide the village from other parts of the West Bank. The fence was inside the Green Line. But when the Israeli authorities began building the wall, they retreated back to the Green Line, a rare case in the West Bank.
The separation barrier runs close to this house (photo: Gustav Winters)
The building of the wall disrupted commerce, cultural life and family ties. And it also trapped seven families with West Bank IDs on the Israeli side of the Green Line.
From 1949 when the Green Line was drawn as part of the armistice agreements signed by Israel and her neighbors, to 2002 when the fence was erected, Palestinians moved freely from Nazlat ‘Isa and neighboring Baqa al-Sharquia to the big city of Baqa- al Gharbiyye, which is located in Israeli territory. Although they had green West Bank IDs, they could move with their families to the other side. When the Israeli authorities made the decision to enclose the Palestinian Occupied Territories and the fence was built, seven families from Nazlat ‘Isa were living in Baqa al-Gharbiyye.
Today, they can’t apply for citizenship, like the rest of their neighbors, or even residency, like Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
In 1948, Nazlat ‘Issa lost 10,000 of its 12,400 dunams of land. They lost another 824 dunams for the construction of the separation wall. Prior to 1948, 97 percent of the villagers were farmers. Today, in the wake of the destruction of the local market and factories due to the construction of the separation barrier, 97 percent of those villagers are unemployed.
The neighboring village of Baqa al-Sharquia suffered the same fate. Around 2,000 dunams were confiscated for the building of the wall and 2,500 olive trees were uprooted and taken to the Israeli side for replanting. This larger village was even more connected to its Israeli sister city, Baqa al-Gharbiyye. Their only connection nowadays is through the Israeli controlled gates.
The separation wall separates not just Palestinians from Israelis but Palestinians from Palestinians (photo: Gustav Winters)
This area provides a clear example of how one of the main objectives of the wall is to separate Palestinians from Palestinians, disrupt their commercial centers and their family ties.
While its West Bank sister villages were enclosed by the wall, checkpoints, and gates, Baqa al-Gharbiyye, a completely Palestinian community, grew throughout the last six decades from a village to a city. Projections show that in less than ten years, the city will have 38,000 inhabitants, which will make it one of the major Palestinian cities in Israel.
December 14, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular |
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Spanish High Court Hears Evidence From Journalist Keith Harmon Snow
On November 29th investigative journalist and genocide expert Keith Harmon Snow testified before Spain’s Highest Court (Audencia Nacional) to support the indictments against 40 Rwandan officials for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity during the western-backed invasions of Rwanda and Congo/Zaire by Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) and Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni’s Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF).
In 2005, the relatives of nine Spanish nationals killed in Rwanda and the Congo in 1994, 1996, 1997 and 2000, filed a lawsuit against the government of Rwanda resulting in the issuing of Interpol international arrest warrants for 40 Rwandan officials of Kagame’s régime.
On 6 February 2008, the Spanish Investigative Judge Andreu Merelles issued an indictment charging 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan military officials with serious crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a period of 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, against the civilian population, and primarily against members of the Hutu ethnic group.
While the investigations were initially based on complaints from families of nine Spaniards who were killed, harmed or disappeared during the period at issue, the indictment was subsequently expanded to include crimes committed against Rwandan and Congolese victims, based on the universal jurisdiction doctrine. The indictment rules out the prosecution of Paul Kagame, arguing that he may not be prosecuted as long as he holds the position of President of Rwanda.
According to Spanish lawyer Jordi Palou Loverdos:
Spain’s Audencia Nacional was only met by silence when it duly and formally asked the U.N. to hand over the evidence of these crimes perpetrated against people in 1996 and 1997 or the evidence of the pillaging of valuable mineral resources conducted in these same years or earlier. The international media which had access to the UN report have made public the fact that the UN High Commissioner responsible for the report keeps- separately from the latter- a confidential data bank containing evidence that implicates individual Rwandan and Ugandan military officials.
In spite of threats and intimidation from agents linked to Western governments and from the United Nations, the Spanish High Court authorities are continuing to hear evidence against the Ugandan and Rwandan proxy forces of the United States in Africa.
Keith Harmon Snow has been researching the real facts of the tragedy known to the world as the “Rwandan genocide” (put in quotes?) since 1994, and has, along with many other experts, evidence to prove that the United States, Britain and Israel were responsible for the training, financing and covert military and logistic support of Kagame and Museveni’s forces.
On 6 April 1994, the UPDF/RPA proxy forces assassinated the Rwandan and Burundian presidents (Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira), their military chiefs of staff, and the French pilots of the plane they were flying on, thus provoking and participating in the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Hutus and Tutsis in one of the most violent civil wars in modern history.
Snow also presented detailed evidence of the war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity committed by Kagame and Museveni’s proxy forces, after they invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996, again backed by the Pentagon, Israel and NATO allies. The Congo/Zaire invasion was commanded by generals Paul Kagame and James Kabarebe, and they involved an officer attached to Kabarebe named Hyppolite Kanambe — alias Joseph Kabila, the strongman in Congo today.
The ongoing Rwandan occupation and plunder of eastern Congo has resulted in the deaths of some ten million people, making this the worst war since the Second World War. The Central African holocaust has been largely ignored by the global mass media corporations who are calling for “humanitarian intervention” in Syria, much as they did to justify invading Libya, by the same countries responsible for supporting mass carnage in Africa.
In spite of orders from Laurent Désire Kabila (Congo’s interim president of 1998-2001), to disengage from the Congo, the RPA and UPDF re-invaded the Congo in 1998, resulting in the Second Congolese War. Although the war is said to have ended in 2001, mass killing of the populations in the mineral rich Kivu provinces of Eastern Congo, under the leadership of these US-backed dictators, has continued to this day.
Contrary to its stated “peacekeeping” mission, the United Nations Observers Mission for the Congo (MONUC) and its follow on dependent, Monusco, has been deployed in the Congo since 2000 and has been involved in sexual violence and contraband activities. MONUC has provided cover for the Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundi forces, USAID, the Pentagon’s new Africa Command (AFRICOM), and scores of Western mining corporations who are plundering the Eastern Congo.
Snow gave detailed testimony to the Audencia Nacional of the American, British, Belgian, German, Israeli and Australian mining corporations who have profited from the Pentagon’s holocaust in the Congo. Banro Corporation, Barrick Gold and many companies run by the Blattner dynasty have profited astronomically from the pillaging of the Congolese people’s resources, as domestic warlords and Western elites enrich themselves while the local people starve.
Snow alleges that these corporations have direct links to the criminal networks run by Paul Kagame, who are plundering the Kivu provinces of the Eastern Congo and massacring the Hutu Rwandan refugees there.
Though the majority of victims have been from the populations of Rwandan Hutus, Rwandan Tutsis and Twa have also been targeted, both in Congo and Rwanda, and many Congolese ethnic groups have been targeted in the Congo. The Kagame regime is determined to eliminate all possible opposition to its rule and to occupy and annex eastern Congo to create a “Republic of the Volcanoes” controlled by Rwanda and populated with satellite US military bases.
Snow told the Spanish court that details collected by the UN Panel of Experts report of 2001 to 2010, detailing the illegal occupation, plunder and war crimes in the Congo, have been watered down by special interest groups linked to Western governments, thus shielding Western corporations and governments from scrutiny by the International Criminal Court and the Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda.
Trained in the notorious Fort Levenworth, Kansas (USA) and advised by former British prime minister Tony Blair, Paul Kagame is without question one of the most evil dictators in modern history. The scale and intensity of his atrocities dwarf those of Pinochet, Suharto and Somoza combined.
In spite of expertise gained on the ground throughout Central Africa spanning 20 years, expert testimony to the US House of Representatives in 2001, extensive work as genocide consultant to the United Nations and numerous meticulously documented reports, Keith Harmon Snow’s work continues to be ignored by the corporate media and many outlets who claim to be ‘progressive’ and ‘independent’ .
According to Snow:
U.S.-based groups fronted by the intelligence and defense establishment and pretending to be ‘grass roots non-government organizations’ — such as the ENOUGH project, Raise Hope for Congo, Resolve, STAND and Save Darfur — have co-opted the grass roots movement and are whitewashing the issues and controlling the media, academic and public spaces to prevent the true grass roots voices for Central Africa from being heard and to prevent the deeper issues from being understood.
In preparation for a documentary film to be released next year on the African holocaust, Keith Harmon Snow has just completed a series of interviews with distinguished scholars, investigative journalists and lawyers from France, Spain, Germany, Camaroun and Rwanda. The film, as yet untitled, is expected to be aired in film festivals throughout the world and will also be available online for mass viewing.
Rwanda and the Congo belong to the ninth circle of global capitalism’s Dantesque inferno. It is the circle of betrayal; betrayal of the high ideals of the United Nations to uphold the rule of law and work towards the goal of international peace and stability; betrayal of the trust ordinary citizens of the world have in media corporations to tell them what is really happening in the world, so that leaders and potentates can be held to account.
Uncovering the truth about the role of Western imperialism in the violence that has beset Central Africa since the fall of the USSR to the present day, is of vital importance, as the obscene and racist myth of an African genocide America “failed to prevent” constitutes the mendacious and insane basis for the Orwellian “responsibility to protect” doctrine.
Western governments and their pro-Kagame lobbies in the mainstream media are quick to smear as ‘genocide deniers’ those who challenge the lies and distortions of the official genocide narrative of the current Rwandan régime by exposing the inconvenient and politically incorrect facts. In the case of Rwanda and the Congo, it should now be abundantly clear who those genocide-deniers are.
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Gearóid Ó Colmáin was born in Cork, Ireland, and is currently based in Paris. He is a former bilingual columnist with Metro Eireann. His interests include geopolitcs, globalisation, philosophy and the arts. He is a member of SISA, the Italian-based ecology and education syndicate.
December 14, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes |
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For approximately five months, the residents of Kufr Qaddoum have united to demonstrate against the illegal Israeli settlement of Kedumim and the Israeli military’s closure of their village’s main road. Kufr Qaddoum, a West Bank village so old that, according to legend, Abraham was circumcised there with an axe, has since 1976 been plagued by Kedumim, a 3,000-inhabitant Israeli settlement that now surrounds the village on five hilltops. Kufr Qaddoum’s main road, which passes through Kedumim to link the village to Nablus, was closed by the Israeli military in 2003.
“The people of Kufr Qaddoum used this road long before the settlements came,” said Murad Shttaiwa, spokesman for the demonstrators. “Before 2003, we could drive through the settlement with no problems. Between 2004 and 2005, after the road was closed to cars, we walked through the settlement with no problems.”
In 2005, the road became closed to foot traffic as well. Before the new, indirect route to Nablus was constructed in 2008, “we used to walk and drive down unpaved dirt roads around Kedumim, but the settlers would still throw stones at cars and people,” Shttaiwa explained. “We would not react to it … for three years, we used to travel on a road made for animals.”
Now that Kufr Qaddoum’s main road is closed to villagers, a 13-kilometer straight journey to Nablus has turned into a 26-kilometer detour through a busy West Bank artery. “Three people have actually died trying to get through the main road,” Shttaiwa said, “because they were ill in ambulances, and the soldiers wouldn’t let the ambulance through.”
Taking the closures to court
When the road was first closed in 2003, villagers organized a single demonstration. “It was very peaceful,” Shttaiwa said. “The people left work and came, took their cars to where the barrier is [on the road], and then just sat and talked. We spoke with the soldiers and the soldiers stated to us that the road will eventually be opened.”
When the soldiers’ promise failed to materialize, however, villagers took the issue to court in 2004. After five years of waiting, in November 2010 Kufr Qaddoum finally received a positive response from the Israeli court system, authorizing its Palestinian villagers to use the road again. At that time, however, the Israeli military groundlessly claimed that the road is “unsuitable” and “unsafe” for human traffic. After all legal appeals failed, villagers decided to organize weekly demonstrations in July 2011.
Since then, Kufr Qaddoum has consistently held one of the most tight-knit, well-organized and well-attended Palestinian-led demonstrations against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank.
Hundreds of villagers, united with international activists and flanked by gas-masked media teams, walk down the main road towards Kedumim week after week, demanding the right to movement. “I’m very happy that a lot of people from the village are coming out for the demonstrations,” said Shttaiwa. “Even during Ramadan we thought people would fall back from protesting, but they still came out in numbers. Even during harvesting, they did not fall back, they still came out in numbers — after the harvest, they would put away their equipment and come out for the demonstrations.”
Funeral for the occupation
At the front line of the demonstration, villagers often stage a telling spectacle. A week before Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority’s president, gave a speech to the UN in September, villagers held a mock funeral for the occupation on 16 September, carrying a coffin draped with an Israeli flag.
A video of the demonstration, produced by the International Solidarity Movement, shows villagers setting the coffin ablaze moments before a phalanx of Israeli soldiers opened fire with tear gas (“Kafr Qaddoum September 16 2011,” 16 September 2011).
Later in September, villagers burnt an effigy of Benjamin Netanyahu after holding a mock trial condemning the Israeli prime minister for war crimes (“Kufr Qaddoum demands access,” International Solidarity Movement, 30 September 2011).
Demonstrations in Kufr Qaddoum have been accompanied by everything from a donkey painted with an Israeli flag to a live band from the Netherlands.
As demonstrations show no signs of losing steam, the Israeli military has escalated its attacks on Kufr Qaddoum. A recent report by the Palestinian news agency WAFA indicated that 12 persons — including five Palestinian children — were attacked with heavy tear gas and stun grenades during a weekly demonstration (“Israeli soldiers suppress Kufr Qaddoum weekly anti-settlements march,” 4 November 2011).
“Even though the demonstrations and the barriers are 500 meters away” from the village, explained Shttaiwa, “the soldiers will get closer and closer … [on 11 November], the soldiers got so close they were right outside my house, and the tear gas got inside the house, so my two-year-old son smelled it, and came up to me and said ‘Daddy, my eyes hurt!’”
Aggression gets worse
The military enters the village, in Shttaiwa’s words, because “the protests are getting stronger and stronger, and they want to stop the protests, so they are becoming more violent and more aggressive.” The Israeli military is also conducting frequent night raids into the village. Four days before a protest on 21 October, the army entered the village at night and arrested nine people (“Permission to enter their own lands: Kufr Qaddoum rampaged again by military,” International Solidarity Movement, 21 October 2011).
Though protests focus on the closure of their main road, the villagers of Kufr Qaddoum resist an occupation which touches on all aspects of their lives. More than half of the village’s land, approximately 11,800 dunams (one dunam equals 1,000 square meters), is situated in Area C of the West Bank — an area under the full administration of the Israeli army. Under the carve-up of the West Bank made by the 1993 Oslo accords, Area C includes all Israeli settlements and most of the Jordan Valley.
That means villagers need permission to access their own land from the Israeli District Coordinating Office. Olive harvesters, therefore, are unable to prepare their trees for the harvest throughout the year, and are only given a few days to complete the harvest itself.
Eyal Ha-Leuveni, a researcher with Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, told The Electronic Intifada that it is “very difficult” for Palestinians who own land around the Kedumim settlement to go through the permit process. “First you have to prove your ownership of the land, and this depends on your family history — if one family member was involved in a crime, likely no family member will get a permit,” Ha-Leuveni said. “The permit process can take years, and in the meantime you get a temporary permit, which is very insecure.”
In addition, Palestinian farmlands in Area C are often stolen by settlers. In March 2008, a legal battle, waged by lawyers from Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din on behalf of Kufr Qaddoum residents, helped expose the method of land takeover characteristic of Kedumim and other settlements across the West Bank (“Court case reveals how settlers illegally grab West Bank lands,” Haaretz, 17 March 2008).
Kedumim’s local council members would map the “abandoned lands” around the settlements, even if they were outside the council’s jurisdiction, with the aim of taking them over. The council would “allocate” the lands to settlers, who would sign an official form stating that they have no ownership claim; and that the council is entitled to evict them whenever it sees fit, in return for compensating them solely for their investment in cultivating the land.
Kedumim’s former security chief, Michael Bar-Neder, testified that the land “allocation” was followed by an effort to expand the settlement. Bar-Neder said that once the settlers seized the lands, an application would be made to the military commander to declare them as owned by the State of Israel, since under an Israeli “law” covering the West Bank, anyone who does not cultivate his land for three years forfeits ownership of it (“Court case reveals how settlers illegally grab West Bank lands,” Haaretz, 17 March 2008).
It is important to emphasize that Israel’s “laws” regarding the West Bank lack any legitimacy as all Israeli settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. In violation of international law, Israel has seized West Bank land, in the words of Ha-Leuveni, “first by military orders, then by state land, then by private acquisition.”
The area where Kedumim now sits, said Ha-Leuveni, “is land that was first taken by military orders, where the army claimed the land was needed for military needs. Israel abandoned this justification in the 1980s, but it did not return any of this land to Palestinian owners.”
In a process that accelerated throughout the 1980s, West Bank land transferred from military to state ownership. “All the policy of declaring state land,” added Ha-Nuevi, “is an Israeli invention. There are large parts of the ‘state land’ of Qedumim that were owned or at least cultivated by Palestinians before Israel called it state land.”
According to a July 2010 report on Kedumim by B’Tselem, “construction of approximately 59 [Kedumim] units deviated from the ‘state lands’ allotted to the settlement; two permanent structures and 12 caravans were erected on private Palestinian land; and a new neighborhood, comprising some 30 caravans, was built west of the settlement, deviating from the allotted ‘state land.’” (“By Hook and By Crook: Israeli Settlement Policy in the West Bank,” B’Tselem, July 2010).
In addition, Israel plans to erect a wall between Kedumim and Kufr Qaddoum, which, according to a 2005 report by The Economist, would grab another 5,000 dunams more than the 5,000 Kufr Qaddoum has already lost (“Life in the armpits of Palestine,” 7 April 2005).
Shttaiwa estimated that Kufr Qaddoum has already lost 58 percent of its land to Kedumim, and will lose 80 percent upon completion of the wall. Contrary to the Kedumim security officer’s statement, quoted in The Economist, that “not one centimeter of Qedumim is built on land known for sure to be private,” a 2009 B’Tselem map details that much of Qedumim is built entirely on privately-owned Palestinian land (“Private Palestinian land in the built-up and municipal area of Kedumim,” B’Tselem, 2009).
Illegal appropriation of Kufr Qaddoum land to the settlement
This process of illegal appropriation has plagued Kufr Qaddoum since the establishment of Kedumim in 1976. “Every year the settlement has expanded,” Shttaiwa told The Electronic Intifada. “Since the settlement came it has been expanding, as well as stealing more and more land. Over the years they have also attacked people harvesting their olives, thrown stones at them, and stolen their olives. It has gotten worse in recent years.”
Settler violence, Shttaiwa explained, increased after the first intifada, in which Kufr Qaddoum played a minimal role. “At the beginning we had no problems … [but] now these settlers are known to be pretty violent,” he said. “In the first intifada they killed a male from here and injured another one as well. After the second intifada, they began attacking olive trees.”
Two years ago, settlers spray-painted “This is Israel” and other graffiti upon the burial stones of a Kufr Qaddoum cemetery.
In testimony given to B’Tselem last year, farmer ‘Abd a-Latif ‘Obeid said that over the years, Kedumim settlers have intentionally sabotaged his olive harvest, dumped burning refuse onto his land, and stolen more than fifty dunams to build greenhouses and a park (“Testimony: Israel seizes land and hampers access for farmers near the Kedumim settlement,” B’Tselem, 21 June 2010).
“We’ve been suffering from this situation since 1984,” he states in the report. “All the land seizures, the settler attacks, and the need to coordinate entry are aimed at expanding the Kedumim settlement, which already has a large amount of land, and at taking, little by little, the rest of our land. They force us to neglect our land so it will be easier for them to annex it to the settlement.”
In addition, Kufr Qaddoum suffers from the socio-economic effects of occupation. A 2007 report by the Jerusalem-based Land Research Center estimates that, since 2002, 75 percent of Kufr Qaddoum’s residents became unemployed after construction of Israel’s wall in the West Bank and closure of Kufr Qaddoum’s main road shut out many possibilities for income generation in Israel and Nablus (“Closing of Israeli roads in Kafr Qaddum village,” Land Research Center, 7 February 2007).
Now, almost half of Kufr Qaddoum’s residents depend on foreign aid for living, and emigration has reached a record high of 10-15 percent of the total population.
“Everyone is affected”
The demonstrations in Kufr Qaddoum are a long-overdue response to the suffering the village has endured for decades. The whole village comes out to demonstrate — college students who are tired of paying 20 shekels ($5) a day to get to take an extended detour to school in Nablus; farmers who are tired of living in fear, tired of seeing their olive trees burnt, their land stolen, their livelihoods ruined; villagers who demand the right to move freely down a road that is their own.
“In Kufr Qaddoum and throughout Palestine,” Shttaiwa explained, “we do not have demonstrations for the sake of the demonstration itself. None of us likes to be dead, or likes to smell tear gas, or likes to damage his house. We only want our rights. We always say to the Israeli army, ‘give us our rights and we will not go for demonstrations. Leave our land and we will not go to demonstrations.’ That is our message in Palestine.”
Ben Lorber is an activist with the International Solidarity Movement in Nablus. He is also a journalist with the Alternative Information Center in Bethlehem. He blogs at freepaly.wordpress.com.
December 13, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular |
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Maryanne Godboldo, a mother in Michigan, noticed that pills prescribed by her daughter’s doctor were making her condition worse, not better. So Mrs. Godboldo stopped giving them to her. That’s when the trouble began. When Child Protective Services (CPS) bureaucrats became aware that the girl was not receiving her prescribed medication, they decided the child should be taken away from her mother’s custody on grounds of medical neglect. When Ms. Godboldo refused to surrender her daughter to the state, CPS enlisted the help of a police SWAT team! On March 24 of this year a 12 hour standoff ensued and young Ariana was taken into custody. The drug involved was Risperdal, a neuroleptic antipsychotic medication with numerous known side effects. Ms. Godboldo had decided on a more holistic approach for her daughter. She is still engaged in a costly legal battle with the state over Ariana’s treatment and custody.
This is one example of how government’s increasing proclivity to medicate children with questionable psychiatric drugs violates the rights of parents. Just recently, the Government Accountability Office released a report on the astonishingly high rate of prescriptions for psychotropic drugs for children in the foster care system. It is absolutely astounding that nearly 40% of kids in foster care are on psychotropic drugs, some of them taking up to 5 different pills at a time. Some of these children are under one year of age – too young to safely take over the counter cold medication!
To fight this dangerous trend I reintroduced the Parental Consent Act of 2011, HR 2769, which prohibits federal funds from being used to establish or implement any universal or mandatory mental health or psychiatric screening program. The previous administration pushed hard for this type of federal intrusion into the medical decisions of families through its wildly misnamed “New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.” Everyone interested in parental rights and true health freedom must fight to make sure the commission’s findings and dubious psychiatric science are never used as justification to force mental health screening on American kids at school without their parents’ consent.
There has been a persistent lobbying effort, funded by pharmaceutical companies, to increase the number of these prescriptions to even more children. A universal screening program is the stated goal of these lobbyists. I would not be at all surprised to see the recent attention to the issue of schoolyard bullying used as a tool towards these ends.
Imagine the potential ramifications of a universal, mandatory psychiatric health screening program in a public school, considering how some bureaucrats are wont to behave! The diagnostic criteria for many mental illnesses remain vague and subjective. Therefore it is all too easy for a bureaucrat in a white coat to label a child with some sort of psychiatric syndrome simply because they were having a bad day, or behaving as a typical rambunctious child. That label could follow them around the rest of their school career and come with a number of prescriptions attached, which the state, as in the Godboldo case, may try to force the parents to administer, whether they want to or not.
I plan to continue the fight to ban federal funding of any universal screening program that imposes mental healthcare screening on children without express informed consent from parents.
December 12, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular |
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There’s a phenomenon that I have at times witnessed which continues to shock me though it should not: individual Jews exploiting the fears and insecurities of other Jews in order to garner their support for an agenda that they otherwise would not be so supportive of.
Such is the case with a recent Ha’aretz report by Barak Ravid. Ravid warns his readers that
An intensive delegitimization campaign is taking place in cities across the United States—on university campuses, at malls and in front of Israel consulates.
Well sure, we’ve heard about it before. That’s the thing they call the BDS, right? But wait:
The campaign is not aimed at the settlement enterprise, or against the occupation and the humiliation of millions of Palestinians at checkpoints, but rather the campaign is against the very existence of the State of Israel, and promoting a boycott of anything that might even smell Israeli.
One example is the story of “Park Slope Food Co-op,” a Jewish supermarket located in Brooklyn, situated in one of the most “Jewish” areas in the United States. Every week, hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists assemble near the entrance, where one can purchase Israeli goods, and call for a general boycott of the store.
Truly frightening, especially since it’s so untrue. How shall we parse this?
1. The Park Slope Food Co-op is not a “Jewish supermarket.” It is a food cooperative open to everyone who joins as a working member. It is not explicitly marketed toward Jews, and there is nothing distinctly Jewish about it (as some of the Christmas-themed products currently on the shelves will attest to).
2. “Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists” do not “assemble near the entrance” every week. Ravid is possibly referring to the one or two people who leaflet outside the Co-op every now and then.
3. Moreover these leafleters are not “call[ing] for a general boycott of the store” but instead calling for a member referendum on whether the Co-op should honor the Palestinian BDS call.
4. The Hebrew version of Ravid’s article reports the same thing but includes this additional lie:
…where one can purchase Israeli goods such as Bamba, Milky, and hummus…
I have never seen Bamba or Milky at the Co-op, and hummus is not an “Israeli good.”
So how did Ravid come up with this story? Most likely he coordinated with Yuli Edelstein, the Israeli Minister of “Information,” whom Ravid quotes in the same article. Edelstein and his entourage visited the Park Slope Food Co-op last week, along with StandWithUs regional coordinator Avi Posnick, who has been tasked with taking down the Co-op.
Richard Silverstein has the scoop on that story on his blog. (Disclosure: I assisted Richard with the story.)
Finally, Ravid claims that the BDS campaign has nothing to do with supporting human rights and equality for Palestinians. Instead, it is motivated by hatred for Israel and is “promoting a boycott of anything that might even smell Israeli.” Since his sole example turns out to be a complete fabrication, we can dismiss this argument as well.
But we should note how often this type of argument is made, and we should understand the racist assumption behind this thinking. The assumption is that those who fight for Palestinian human rights are disingenuous because Palestinians aren’t human beings and aren’t worth fighting for. Thus the only possible motivation for criticizing Israel for its treatment of Palestinians is hatred of Jews.
Both Ha’aretz and Barak Ravid owe the literate world an apology.
December 12, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular |
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