Ken Silverstein has a very interesting piece in Salon magazine on the lobbyists for Georgia who “wine and dine eager Washington journalists in a campaign to undo Obama’s ‘reset’ on Russia.” Silverstein, a contributing editor for Harper’s magazine, explains how Randy Scheunemann’s Orion Strategies creates a media echo chamber on Georgia and Russia:
Essentially it works like this: Tbilisi’s lobbyists generate contacts and information that they feed to sympathetic journalists. Orion frequently arranges interviews with Georgian officials and, not infrequently, stories centering on their charges magically appear soon afterward. Orion has wined and dined some reporters on its tab or picked up their travel expenses. There’s certainly nothing illegal about that but it’s worth noting that lobbyists are barred from maintaining these sorts of relationships with members of Congress because it so clearly presents, as we say in Washington, at least the appearance of impropriety.
Orion is friendly to and works with government officials and politicians who its reporter friends regularly cite (especially [John] McCain). Orion also works very closely with experts and organizations cited by these reporters, like the Foreign Policy Initiative, whose board of directors includes William Kristol, Robert Kagan and other neocons from the PNAC and the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
The journalists pick up on and spread each other’s work and [Orion’s Michael] Goldfarb, naturally, hawks their stories at his Twitter feed. Just last week, he called a new [Eli] Lake story a “must read.” The piece at the Newsweek/Daily Beast, featured an exclusive interview with Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, who alleged that the bombing at the U.S. Embassy was “ordered at the most senior levels of the Russian government.” He was quoted as saying that Putin “is crazy about planning the individual details of special operations … I cannot imagine somebody touching a topic as sensitive as Georgia is for Russia, especially for Putin, without Putin having firsthand knowledge or command of it.”
Orion helps create a collective media reality that policymakers have to respond to. Other foreign governments also play this game, as do liberal and conservative interest groups, but rarely as well or so brazenly.
Silverstein notes that when Eli Lake alleged on the front page of the Washington Times on July 22 that a bomb blast near the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, the previous September had been “traced to a plot run by a Russian military intelligence officer, according to an investigation by the Georgian Interior Ministry,” Senators Mark Kirk, Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman and John McCain — the latter duo he aptly dubs “Senators Echo and Echo” — sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanding intelligence briefings on the incident. As observers of the Israel lobby know only too well, the famous five are among AIPAC’s most reliable mouthpieces on Capitol Hill.
Among Orion’s other friends in the media, Silverstein names the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, formerly of Commentary magazine; the Weekly Standard’s Daniel Halper and Matthew Continetti; James Kirchick, an assistant editor at the New Republic; and Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin. Like Orion’s friendly senators, these pro-Georgian journalists are also well known for their staunch pro-Israeli views. While Silverstein doesn’t mention this, he does note that Rubin’s attendance at this year’s Herzliya Conference was paid for by the Emergency Committee for Israel with which Kristol and Goldfarb are associated.
To his credit, Silverstein admits that he “found it unpleasant to write this story” because he knows and likes some of the people involved. Moreover, he acknowledges that Orion also represents an organisation affiliated with George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, which funds some of his current research — “though not this article.” Silverstein doesn’t say anything, however, about the key role that Soros’s “philanthropy” played in fomenting the “Rose Revolution” that brought the billionaire financier’s not-so-democratic protégé to power. Or about how Saakashvili’s subsequent provocations of Moscow are hardly unconnected to Soros’s and the neocons’ grievance against Putin over his opposition to the looting of Russia by the predominantly Jewish oligarchs, some of whom have since fled to Israel.
Syrian opposition leader Abdul Halim Khaddam at his home in Paris
The rise in anti-government protests and mounting political tension in Syria brings to mind the question about who is behind these deadly incidents.
A probe into the root causes of the latest events in Syria shows that the revolt is mainly supported by Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The revolt began in the city of Daraa, 120 kilometers south of the capital Damascus and near the border with Jordan.
Daraa is the birthplace of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, which has close ties to the people in the Syrian city.
Undoubtedly, the Syrians, like other nations in the region, have some legitimate demands which have prompted the government to plan fundamental reforms. However, the protests have come with unjustifiable violence by some suspicious elements.
Similar protests were seen in 1982 against the government of late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad in the cities of Hama and Daraa.
Hafez al-Assad — the late father of current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — was president between 1970 and 2000 and was considered one of the powerful leaders in the Arab world.
Former Jordan King Hussein, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the then Saudi King Khalid incited Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood against Syria, when Hafez al-Assad backed Iran during the eight-year Iraqi-imposed war on Iran in the 1980s.
The fighting, which took place from 1982 to 1984, left more than 30,000 people dead, but the late Syrian president finally managed to end the crisis.
Saudi Arabia and Jordan continued their attempts to cause unrest in Syria after the death of Hafez al-Assad and his succession by his son.
Saudi Arabia, which often bows to US and Israel’s policies in the region, tried to destabilize Bashar al-Assad’s government by undermining his rule.
To this end, Saudi Arabia paid 30 million dollars to former vice president Abdul Halim Khaddam to quit Assad’s government.
Khaddam sought asylum in France in 2005 with the aid of Saudi Arabia and began to plot against the Syrian government with the exiled leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Khaddam, who is a relative of Saudi King Abdullah and former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, used his great wealth to form a political group with the aim of toppling Bashar al-Assad.
The triangle of Khaddam-Abdullah-Hariri is well-known in the region as their wives are sisters.
Khaddam’s entire family enjoys Saudi citizenship and the value investment by his sons, Jamal and Jihad, in Saudi Arabia is estimated at more than USD 3 billion.
Therefore, with the start of popular protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain, the Saudi regime saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between Tehran, Damascus and Beirut axis.
Due to the direct influence of the Saudi Wahhabis on Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, the people of the cities of Daraa and Homs, following Saudi incitement and using popular demands as an excuse began resorting to violence.
It is reported that the United States, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia formed joint operational headquarters in the Saudi Embassy in Belgium to direct the riots in southern Syria. Abdul Halim Khaddam, who held the highest political, executive and information posts in the Syrian government for more than 30 years, is said to have been transferred from Paris to Belgium to direct the unrest.
The reason for this was that based on French law, political asylum seekers cannot work against their countries of origin in France and therefore Khaddam was transferred to Brussels to guide the riots.
Jordan equipped the Muslim Brotherhood in the two cities with logistical facilities and personal weapons.
Although, Bashar al-Assad promised implementation of fundamental changes and reforms after the bloody riot in the country, the Brotherhood continued to incite protesters against him.
The Syrian state television recently broadcast footage of armed activity in the border city of Daraa by a guerilla group, which opened fire on the people and government forces. It is said that the group, which is affiliated to Salafi movements, obtained its weapons from Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Because Syria’s ruling party is from the Alevi tribes associated with the Shias, the Brotherhood, due to its anti-Shia ideas, has tried for three decades to topple the Alevi establishment of the country.
Hence, the recent riots in Syria are not just rooted in popular demands but harbor a tribal aspect and Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the US are directing the unrest for their future purposes.
In the eyes of these three, the removal of Syria’s Alevi government would cause the Tehran-Damascus-Beirut axis to collapse and would be followed by the gradual weakening and elimination of Lebanon’s resistance.
Therefore suadi and US efforts to topple Assad’s government are taking place with the aim of eliminating the last anti-Zionism resistance front.
This is while, considering the Syrian government’s experience in resolving difficult crises, it is unlikely that Saudi Arabia and Jordan will succeed in weakening or toppling the Syrian ruling system.
Gilad Atzmon captures the essence of his book, The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics, on the first page of his foreword. The book is about the conundrums of Jewish identity—what is it; why is it special, if it is in fact special; why do the rest of us so often celebrate it; what does the fixation on it mean for Israel and for its neighbors? He wastes no time getting to the core of the issue—which is the politics these identity issues create. On page 1, he cites his own very rightwing grandfather, who he says knew perfectly well that “tribalism can never live in peace with humanism and universalism.” His grandfather was an unapologetic tribal Jewish nationalist, as were virtually all of the early Zionists in Israel, and none of them had any truck with humanism or universalist notions of coexistence with Arabs or Jewish-Palestinian equality in Palestine.
It is Zionism’s tribal exclusivism that has killed Palestinian aspirations to freedom and a national identity. And it is the widespread liberal Jewish—and Western—failure from the beginning to recognize the realities of Zionism that has silenced the Palestinian voice for 60-plus years and prevented any just resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. As a self-defined Jewish state, Israel is by definition non-democratic and tribal and, whether innocently or not, its supporters have been perpetuating its exclusivist, anti-universalist mandate since the days, well before 1948, when Zionists conceived the notion of dispossessing and dispersing the Palestinians so that Jews could have exclusive access to Palestine, and then carried through with this massive injustice.
Atzmon—a born-and-bred Israeli, now an expatriate, a citizen of the UK, and a renowned jazz musician—describes his own journey from tribalism to universalism by describing how his emerging devotion to jazz and his connection to music lovers gradually superseded his Jewish nationalism. It was because of his love of music, he realized, which linked him to people “concerned with beauty and spirit rather than land, mammon and occupation” that he ceased being a Zionist nationalist. “It was probably then and there,” he says, “that I left Chosen-ness behind to become an ordinary human being.”
He was still a teenager. Only later, after military service and more years of music, did Atzmon learn the facts of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and come to understand something about the Palestinians and what Zionism meant for them. After a struggle to understand the “elusive Oriental sound” of Arab music, he learned finally to listen. “[I]t is listening,” he writes, “that stands at the core of deep comprehension. Ethical behaviour comes into play when the eyes are shut and the echoes of conscience can form a tune within one’s soul. To empathise is to accept the primacy of the ear.”
Atzmon’s statement about having left chosenness behind and becoming an ordinary (and empathetic) human being speaks volumes not just about his own awakening, but about the very essence of Zionism—and also the continued ignorance of most of the Western world about Zionism’s fundamental objectives. Few Israelis and few Israeli supporters anywhere in the world focus on or have any real understanding that Zionism is an ideology whose basic value is promoting the superiority of Jews and Jewishness and that it is thus irreconcilable with universalist concepts of human rights, equality, and democracy. Zionism has from the beginning elevated Jewishness above all as “the fundamental characteristic of one’s being,” as Atzmon says, and as the basis for its national claims. Atzmon cites Chaim Weizmann and other early Zionist leaders who pronounced that Jewishness is a “primary quality”: “there are no English, French, German or American Jews,” Weizmann said, “but only Jews living in England, France, Germany or America.”
There was never any expectation among the early Zionists that Jews in Palestine would have to accommodate Palestine’s native population. Thus does Zionism have no concern or sense of remorse for having imposed a Jewish state on a land that was until 1948 home to a Palestinian Arab people. And thus has the world come to accept that Jewish ascendancy in this land that was formerly non-Jewish is the natural order of things. In the wake of the Holocaust and the perception that Jews needed a refuge from persecution, the displacement of Palestine’s natural inhabitants came to be seen—and is still seen—as entirely acceptable. The human, humanitarian consequences of this philosophy for Palestinians have long since been forgotten, and the world ignores that this injustice in the name of Jewish chosenness was Zionism’s goal from the start.
Atzmon sets out his argument by clearly defining the ways in which Jews self-identify. He puts forth three categories: those who follow Judaism as a religious and ethical belief system; those who regard themselves primarily as human beings who happen to be of Jewish origin, for whom Jewishness is secondary; and those who turn the two identifiers, human being and Jew, around and, a la Chaim Weizmann, place their Jewishness above all other traits. Those in this third category feel a loyalty to and solidarity with the tribe over any other identity.
Atzmon has no argument with those in the first two categories. It is the third category and what he sees as “the Jewish ideological inclination toward sameness” that raise his ire. Noting that early Zionism rejected the Diaspora and tried to gather the exiles into Israel, he says that with the rise of the right since 1967 and the glorification of the Israeli settler who is reclaiming “Greater Israel,” there has been a bonding between Eretz Yisrael, the so-called whole land of Israel, and the Diaspora that has united most of world Jewry behind Zionism and has had the effect of uniting Jews against the world, setting them “apart from their surrounding social reality.” Jews have again become members of a separate tribe.
It is the secular Jewish Zionists who profess universalist values while existing in solidarity with the Jewish tribe—who seem to straddle the second and third categories but give far too much primacy to their Jewishness to fit easily into the category of “ordinary human being”—who particularly irk Atzmon. It is these people, Atzmon believes, who by continuing to identify primarily as Jews, even when professing to be anti-Zionist, actually enable worldwide Zionism to maintain its power and its role as the voice of world Jewry. They actually embody, he contends, a continuum between hardcore rightwing Zionism and Jewish anti-Zionism, ultimately totally undermining the impact and significance of their anti-Zionism.
To illustrate his case, he cites the example of a Jewish couple in London profiled in a local Jewish paper, who are described as socialists who belong to no synagogue, do not believe in God, and are “antagonistic towards Zionism.” Yet they “feel passionately” about Jewish history, have strong Jewish connections in their social lives, helped form a specifically Jewish socialist organization, love Hebrew and Yiddish culture, hold a Seder at Passover, and have circumcised and bar mitzvahed their sons. They “want to remain Jewish,” according to the article, and “prove that there is a way of being Jewish that doesn’t involve saying prayers to a God you don’t believe in.” They clearly want acceptance inside the Jewish community, whose preservation is vitally important to them; they are concerned to prevent Jewish assimilation. (This couple identifies their Jewishness as ethnic. Atzmon—along with Israeli historian Shlomo Sand whose 2009 book The Invention of the Jewish People argued that Jews are not a unique nation, only a religion—challenge the existence of a Jewish ethnicity, on strong historical and evidentiary grounds.)
Atzmon’s point is that, whether the identification is secular and ethnic or religious, the need to identify primarily as Jewish is tribal and anti-universalist and essentially negates any pretense of anti-Zionism. “Why don’t they just ‘get on’ with their ‘socialist agenda’ and join the human family as ordinary people?” he wonders. Many people around the world have left their faith and ceased believing in God, but they exist in multi-cultural, multi-faith societies and do not insist on being identified first as Catholics, Hindus, or Muslims or on socializing primarily with their own co-religionists or on forming organizations exclusive to their ethnicity or religious preference. His objection is to Jews who profess to be anti-Zionist but form what he calls “ethnocentric, separatist, peace-loving” organizations of Jews: Jews for Peace, Jews for Justice in Palestine, “Jews for this and Jews for that.” This kind of “exclusive, ethnocentric Jewish discourse” is not something one sees from Germans or Aryans or Caucasians, he points out wryly.
Whether or not they realize that they are actually pushing Zionism, Atzmon says, they ultimately carry out a Zionist agenda by being so tribally focused. The result continues to be—as Atzmon himself and many other non-tribal anti-Zionists have sadly discovered—that those who criticize Zionism for its fundamental objectives and for what it has done to the Palestinian nation are frequently vilified as anti-Semitic. Solidarity with Jews tends to create—even in Jewish anti-Zionists, whom he calls “Jewish ethnic campaigners”—solidarity against anyone identified, however baselessly, as an enemy of the Jews. In this loose, emotional world of tribal loyalty, because Israel is “the Jewish state,” critics of Zionism can easily be made out to be “enemies of the Jewish people.”
There is much more in this rich book. Although it is not a scholarly book, it is deeply thoughtful and thought-provoking. It is impossible to capture all its nuances without reading it carefully, and perhaps more than once. Atzmon describes how Zionism has accrued its global political and financial power. He also discusses at length, and quite perceptively, the role of the Holocaust in unifying Jews throughout the world, in inducing a “dialectic of fear” that governs the Jewish political and ideological mindset, and in leading to a trauma that he terms “Pre-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, in which stress and emotional terror result from fear of an imaginary episode, such as a supposed attack by Iran, that might occur in an imaginary future—something in this case that grows out of the real horror of the Holocaust but that is manipulated to unite Jews and becomes a part of Jewish identity.
It goes without saying that this book will be extremely controversial, indeed already has become controversial. But the truth often is. The tribal anti-Zionists whose principal concern is “what’s good for the Jews” have attacked Atzmon—generally not for what he says in the book but for what they claim he said in past writings (all of which claims are refuted precisely by this book). But Atzmon’s analysis is exactly on point, and it cannot be dismissed simply because the mirror it holds up to Zionists and “Jewish ethnic campaigners” is undoubtedly uncomfortable for them to look at.
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KATHLEEN CHRISTISON is a former CIA political analyst and the author of several books on the Palestinian situation, including Palestine in Pieces, co-authored with her late husband Bill Christison. She can be reached at kb.christison@earthlink.net.
Van Buren Board of Education near Findlay, Ohio is holding ‘A Night to Honor Israel’ at its High School on October 27th. The sponsor of the event is nothing other than Christians United for Israel (CUFI). This is an odd thing. A Night of Honoring Israel for what? Honoring someone, or a group, should be reserved for those whose work and contributions help positively impact the quality of life for others and enhance the image of their country. Not Israel!
That said, there are however several noted and noble Israelis that are worthy of honor for their efforts end the occupation and help bring peace to the region. Here is my short list: Jeff Halper, Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Rami Elhanan and Uri Avnery.
The first thing I did after reading about this so-called “Honor Night,” was draft a letter and send it to the School Superintendent and to all Board of Education members urging them to pull the plug on this unpatriotic and anti-Muslim hate group.
This event is in direct violation of the board policy 9700 on special interest groups which states that:
“All materials or activities proposed by outside political sources for student or staff use or participation shall be reviewed by the Superintendent on the basis of their educational contribution to part or all of the school program, benefit to students, and no such approval shall have the primary purpose of advancing the special interest of the proposing group.”
If the primary purpose isn’t for fundraising (they are charging $15 per adult/$10 per student), then what educational benefit does this event provide?
Secondly, honoring a foreign nation that engages in spying, stealing America’s top [secrets], and murder its citizen is a betrayal in itself, and a shameless act to say the least. Van Buren School district should honor instead the victims of the USS Liberty, a US Navy intelligence ship that was suddenly and brutally attacked in international waters on June 8, 1967 by the air and naval forces of Israel. Thirty-four Americans were killed in the attack and another 174 were wounded.
Why would CUFI honor the foreign country that killed Rachel Corrie? This group does not know her. Rachel was a 23-year old American peace activist from Olympia, Washington, who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer on March 16, 2003, while undertaking nonviolent direct action to protect a Palestinian family from demolition.
CUFI is also honoring the same foreign nation that murdered the 19 year-old American peace activist, Furkan Dogan. Eight other Turkish citizens were also killed on Gaza bound aid Flotilla. Hey, John Hagee, founder of CUFI, a foreign navy boarded an unarmed ship flying the flag of a NATO member in international waters! Where were you hiding on Memorial Day of 2010?
Speaking of pastor John Heage, this man has repeatedly argued that the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West. According to this “man of God,” CUFI is a lobby intended, he says, to be a Christian version of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC.) In other words, CUFI is acting as an unregistered foreign agent group, better yet, a mouthpiece for the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
A quick check into the CUFI website, I ran into a link from a 2006 NPR interview should suffice… it’s tempting to write this guy off as a nut job, but he has hundreds of thousands of followers and this is the kind of indoctrination that will be coming to a public school if it’s not canceled (see here). It’s about 25 minutes long, but it’s really necessary to listen to all of it for someone that’s rather new to this theology to understand how deadly this venomous hate speech is. He also says in this interview that “Israel gave up Jordan” …and they’re considering letting him pass out “educational” material??!?
Beginning at the 14:00 minute mark, Hagee (founder of CUFI) says that Muslims have a mandate in the Qur’an that they must kill Christians and Jews. He also compares Islamic nations to Hitler and Imperial Japan.
I also fail to understand the logic in renting the school to an extremist organization that is notorious for its anti-Muslim and anti-Arab views. I mean, if a public school is nothing more than a facility and a meeting place, regardless to what it is, then would they rent out schools to show adult movies on the weekend?
I don’t believe Van Buren School District would be thrilled, or even allow any other speaker, to spew similar anti-Christian, or anti-Jewish rhetoric, at any of its schools. Muslims and Islam should not be fair game.
Truth is, Israel is wolf in a sheep’s clothing yet CUFI will depict it as an innocent lamb during their scheduled event. CUFI is among several groups that are behind most of the anti-Muslim hysteria that swept across our country. They create fear and hate mongering against ALL Muslims and other minority groups.
Let’s set the record straight: Muslims respect and revere Jesus [peace be upon him]. They consider him one of the greatest of God’s messengers to mankind. The Quran confirms his virgin birth and a chapter of the Quran is entitled “Mariam” (Mary). Muslims also believe he was born miraculously, by the command of God, the same command that had brought Adam, [pbuh] into being with neither a father nor a mother.
Neither this group, nor their invited guests, will tell you that the name of Jesus Christ, [pbuh], is mentioned 33 times in the Holy Quran, whereas the Prophet Mohammad’s name is mentioned only 5 times. That is called respect! What this group and their guest are promoting is hate, fear, and deception.
Every red-blooded American should take a stand against bigotry and fear mongering against Muslims by helping to pull the plug on this event or any other event in the future that defames, degrades, or insults any ethnic or religious group in America.
Every one in America is entitled to free speech, even if it is bigoted. However, doing it on school grounds will give the impression, that the School District endorses and promotes hate speech. School facilities, that are supported by taxpayers, should not be used as a platform, to defame and bash Islam, or any other faith. Such was the recent decision of the School Board when a Columbus-area high school canceled the appearance of an anti-Muslim Tea Party speaker.
Make no mistake about it, CUFI does not speak for Muslims, Jews or God-fearing Christians that I know.
Democratic change has been demanded across the Middle East. But was what seems like a spontaneous revolution actually a strategically planned event, fabricated by ‘revolution consultants’ long in advance?
Revolution consultants are the worst nightmare of every regime. Srdja Popovic was a founder of the organisation ‘Otpor’, a revolution training school. It was instrumental in the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s and has now inspired a new generation of activists. Political commentators like William Engdahl are convinced Otpor is being financed by the USA. “The people from Otpor gave us a book in which they described all their strategies”, says Ezzedine Zaatour of the Tunisian uprising. That book was written by an American, Gene Sharp, and is now considered the “revolution guide book”, being used by opposition movements worldwide.
Over 100 top scientists and economists have written to the European Commission calling for indirect land use change (ILUC) to be accounted for in EU biofuels policy making.
The letter, seen by EurActiv, argues that assigning biofuels a zero or “carbon neutral” emissions value – as the EU has done – “is clearly not supported by the [best available] science”.
Because of “flawed” accounting conventions, “the European Union’s target for renewable energy in transport may fail to deliver genuine carbon savings in the real world,” the scientists argue.
“It could end up as merely an exercise on paper that promotes widespread deforestation and higher food prices.”
The letter’s signatories include: Daniel Kammen, the World Bank’s chief technical specialist for renewable energy; Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel Memorial Prize winner and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University; Thomas Lovejoy, chair of the Heinz Centre for Biodiversity, and several professors.
Since 2008, EU member states have been obliged to raise the share of biofuels in the energy mix to 10% by 2020.
But recent reports by the European Environment Agency and four other EU agencies have questioned whether meeting the EU’s target would cut any CO2 emissions at all. This is because the method chosen allegedly double counts the carbon absorbed by the biofuels during their growth, and omits to count their exhaust pipe CO2 emissions.
The scientists’ letter cites peer-reviewed research over several years, some commissioned by the European Commission, which show that displaced human activity caused by converting forests and grasslands to biofuels production can result in “substantial” CO2 emissions.
“All the studies of land use change indicate that the emissions related to biofuels expansion are significant and can be quite large,” the letter says.
ILUC debate
Minutes from a recent EU executive meeting, dated 13 July and seen by EurActiv, said that targeting feedstock-based fuels such as biodiesel would be “the most effective solution to address ILUC, and would create the right incentives in favour of the development of second and third generation biofuels.”
Second generation biofuels made from ‘woody’ material such as tree bark and leaves do not compete with food production, and so have less ILUC impact. They are also more effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, although they are costly.
But because of “scientific uncertainties,” the Commissioners decided to introduce a contested ‘threshold’ measurement of CO2 savings until 2018 that would not penalise individual biofuels emissions.
Some sources have suggested that there may have been a trade off between the EU’s energy and climate departments, involving the application of sustainable criteria to both biofuels and heavily polluting fuels such as Canada’s tar sands.
In a further sign of the biofuels debate heating up, European bioethanol producers have also sent a letter to the EU’s energy and climate action Commissioners, seen by EurActiv, calling for Brussels to introduce ILUC factors that distinguish between “good and bad biofuel pathways”.
“The modelling of future ILUC effects lacks enough robustness to be a suitable basis for policy,” their letter says.
Alleged EU bias
Such positions are fiercely contested by biodiesel producers. The European Biodiesel Board is releasing two land use change studies today (7 October), which argue that ILUC is “not scientifically proven” and that one recent study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) for the EU was biased.
“The indirect land use modelling undertaken by IFPRI has a large number of problems, and the result is that the ILUC emissions are greatly overestimated,” said one of the EBB report’s authors, Don O’Connor, of the S&T business consultancy.
“The econometric correlation between cropland expansion and for example, deforestation has not been shown to be statistically significant,” added two Kiel University professors, who co-wrote the other EBB study.
Attempting to draw a line under the debate, the accountancy firm Ernst and Young suggested a method to incentivise green biofuels production. In a report released on 5 October, E&Y argued that indirect land use change could be mitigated by incentives that encouraged sustainable practices in biofuels production.
“Producers may be willing to adopt further sustainability requirements for biofuels, but only if the financial value gained by doing so outweighed the costs of adopting the requirements,” Andrew Britton, a senior manager in Ernst and Young’s Climate Change and Sustainability Services practice said.
A contributor to the report’s launch, Utrecht University Professor, André Faaij, a convening lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) added that this sort of “proactive strategy” would be better than an introduction of ILUC factors
“Bioenergy options can provide a key lever for sustainable development of the agricultural sector and rural economies instead of causing conflict with food supplies and land,” he said.
EU Biofuels monies
As the debate over land use change intensified, the European Investment Bank announced €500 million of loans for climate mitigation projects in Brazil on 5 October, including biogas and biomass-fired heat and power plants.
The specific projects that will be funded “still need to be identified,” an EIB spokesperson said.
The EU itself has previously contributed monies to co-finance biofuels investment projects in the developing world – such as domestic Jatropha farming in Tanzania and Kenya – from the €200 million available under the second Energy Facility.
Positions
Raffaello Garofalo, Secretary General of the European Biodiesel Board, argued that imposing ILUC standards for biofuels in Europe risked favouring imported biodiesel that have lower environmental standards.
“one of the paradoxical aspects of hypothetical ILUC legislative penalties against EU biodiesel would be that imported biodiesel from palm oil (produced not in Europe but in countries where deforestation exists) would become probably the easiest and cheapest source for biodiesel production, if not the only one in practice allowed. If this risks becoming the result of European norms on ILUC [which were] conceived to guarantee environmental sustainability, clearly there is something wrong with the way in which ILUC and European legislative options on ILUC are thought [through]”.
But, from the other side of the debate, Dr Gernot Pehnelt, the director of the independent research and consulting institute GlobEcon recently wrote a report contending that the default values ascribed by the EU to palm oil were wrong.
“Our results show that the realistic GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions potential of palm biodiesel is between 37% and 44% for transportation fuel, compared to the 19% referenced in the Annex of the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive,” he said. If methane capture in the oil mill had been included, palm oil would exceed the EU’s 35% greenhouse gas (GHG) savings threshold for biofuels, and so in his view “the current default palm oil values unfairly discriminate against imported biofuels in favour of domestically produced biofuels.”
US State Department tool Radwan Ziadeh today called for a war on Syria. Speaking on Aljazeera’s prime-time, evening newscast “daily harvest”, Washington’s favorite Syrian “human rights activist” did not actually utter the word “war”, but that word is rarely used even by the powers that wage the war. Instead he opted for the agreed upon euphemism of “international protection.”
He went on to explain “international protection” would be justified under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Like the minute fraction of Arabs (they are always a minute fraction) that previously supported Western wars on Iraq and Libya, Ziadeh and a handful of like-minded friends are quick to cite Chapter 7 as a “legal basis” for their self-serving collaboration and a fig leaf for their treason. This is not the first time Ziadeh has expressed his support for a potential war on Syria, but he’s never been as clear as he was today.
Short of the American military invasion and occupation of Syria which Ziadeh is hoping for, at which time he can fly into Damascus on a US Air Force C-17 like Ahmad Chalabi arrived in Iraq, he is unlikely to ever return to the country where he would certainly be arrested and put on trial for treason regardless if the current regime remains in power or not. Ziadeh, who has appeared before anti-Syrian, Zionist groups, has also expressed his willingness, in the event he becomes part of a Western-installed regime in Damascus, to recognize the Zionist entity and continues his silence on Israel’s occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights.
Ankara – As insurrection in Syria lurches towards civil war, the brakes need to be put on the propaganda pouring through the western mainstream media and accepted uncritically by many who should know better. So here is a matrix of positions from which to argue about what is going on in this critical Middle Eastern country:
1. Syria has been a mukhabarat (intelligence) state since the redoubtable Abd al Hamid al Serraj ran the intelligence services as the deuxieme bureau in the 1950s. The authoritarian state which developed from the time Hafez al Assad took power in 1970 has crushed all dissent ruthlessly. On occasion it has either been him or them. The ubiquitous presence of the mukhabarat is an unpleasant fact of Syrian life but as Syria is a central target for assassination and subversion by Israel and western intelligence agencies, as it has repeatedly come under military attack, as it has had a large chunk of its territories occupied and as its enemies are forever looking for opportunities to bring it down, it can hardly be said that the mukhabarat is not needed.
2. There is no doubt that the bulk of people demonstrating in Syria want peaceful transition to a democratic form of government. Neither is there any doubt that armed groups operating from behind the screen of the demonstrations have no interest in reform. They want to destroy the government.
3. There have been very big demonstrations of support for the government. There is anger at the violence of the armed gangs and anger at external interference and exploitation of the situation by outside governments and the media. In the eyes of many Syrians, their country is again the target of an international conspiracy.
4. Whatever the truth of the accusations made against the security forces, the armed groups have killed hundreds of police, soldiers and civilians, in total probably close to 1000 at this stage. The civilian dead include university professors, doctors and even, very recently, the son of the Grand Mufti of the Republic. The armed gangs have massacred, ambushed, assassinated, attacked government buildings and sabotaged railway lines.
5. Bashar al Assad has a strong base of personal popularity. Although he sits on top of the system it is misleading to call him a dictator. The system itself is the true dictator. Deeply rooted power in Syria – entrenched over five decades – lies in the military and intelligence establishment, and to a lesser degree in the party structure. These are the true sources of resistance to change. The demonstrations were Bashar’s opportunity to pass on the message, which he did, that the system had to change.
6. In the face of large scale demonstrations earlier this year the government did finally come up with a reform program. This was rejected out of hand by the opposition. No attempt was even made to test the bona fides of the government.
7. The claim that armed opposition to the government has begun only recently is a complete lie. The killings of soldiers, police and civilians, often in the most brutal circumstances, has been going on virtually since the beginning.
8. The armed groups are well armed and well organised. Large shipments of weapons have been smuggled into Syria from Lebanon and Turkey. They include pump action shotguns, machine guns, Kalashnikovs,RPG launchers, Israeli-made hand grenades and numerous other explosives. It is not clear who is providing these weapons but someone is, and someone is paying for them. Interrogation of captured members of armed gangs points in the direction of Saad al Hariri’s Future Movement. Hariri is a front man for the US and Saudi Arabia, with influence spreading well beyond Lebanon.
9. Armed opposition to the regime largely seems to be sponsored by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. In 1982 the government ruthlessly crushed an uprising initiated by the Brotherhood in Hama. Many thousands died and part of the city was destroyed. The Brotherhood has two prime objectives: the destruction of the Baathist government and the destruction of the secular state in favor of an Islamic system. It is almost palpably thirsting for revenge.
10. The armed groups have strong support from outside apart from what is already known or indicated. Exiled former Syrian Vice President and Foreign Minister, Abd ul Halim Khaddam, who lives in Paris, has been campaigning for years to bring down the Assad government. He is funded by both the EU and the US. Other exiled activists include Burhan Ghalioun, backed by Qatar as the leader of the ‘national council’ set up in Istanbul. Ghalioun, like Abd ul Halim Khaddam, lives in Paris and like him also, lobbies against the Assad government in Europe and in Washington. Together with Muhammad Riyad al Shaqfa, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, he is receptive to outside ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Syria on the Libyan model (others are against it). The promotion of the exiles as an alternative government is reminiscent of the way the US used exiled Iraqis (the so-called Iraqi National Congress) ahead of the invasion of Iraq.
11. The reporting by the western media of the situations in Libya and Syria has been appalling. NATO intervention in Libya has been the cause of massive destruction and thousands of deaths. The war, following the invasion of Iraq, is yet another major international crime committed by the governments of the US, Britain and France. The city of Sirte has been bombarded day and night for two weeks without the western media paying any attention to the heavy destruction and loss of life that must have followed. The western media has made no attempt to check reports coming out of Sirte of the bombing of civilian building and the killing of hundreds of people. The only reason can be that the ugly truth could well derail the whole NATO operation.
12. In Syria the same media has followed the same pattern of misreporting and disinformation. It has ignored or skated over the evidence of widespread killings by armed gangs. It has invited its audience to disbelieve the claims of government and believe the claims of rebels, often made in the name of human rights organisations based in Europe or the US. Numerous outright lies have been told, as they were told in Libya and as they were told ahead of the attack on Iraq. Some at least have been exposed. People said to have been killed by state security forces have turned up alive. The brothers of Zainab al Husni claimed she has been kidnapped by security forces, murdered and her body dismembered. This lurid account, spread by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyya amongst other outlets, was totally false. She is still alive although now, of course, the propaganda tack is to claim that this is not really her but a double. Al Jazeera, the Guardian and the BBC have distinguished themselves by their blind support of anything that discredits the Syrian government. The same line is being followed by the mainstream media in the US. Al Jazeera, in particular, having distinguished itself with its reporting of the Egyptian revolution, has lost all credibility as an independent Arab world news channel.
13. In seeking to destroy the Syrian government the Muslim Brotherhood has a goal in common with the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose paranoia about Shia Islam reached fever pitch with the uprising in Bahrain. Wikileaks revealed how impatient it was for the US to attack Iran. A substitute target is the destruction of the strategic relationship between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah. The US and the Saudis may want to destroy the Alawi-dominated Baathist regime in Damascus for slightly different reasons, but the important thing is that they do want to destroy it.
14. The US is doing its utmost to drive Syria into a corner. It is giving financial support to exiled leaders of the opposition. It has tried (and so far failed thanks to Russian and Chinese opposition) to introduce an extensive program of sanctions through the UN Security Council. No doubt it will try again and depending on how the situation develops, it may try, with British and French support, to bring on a no-fly zone resolution opening the door to foreign attack. The situation is fluid and no doubt all sorts of contingency plans are being developed. The White House and the State Department are issuing hectoring statements every other day. Openly provoking the Syrian government, the US ambassador, accompanied by the French ambassador, travelled to Hama before Friday prayers. Against everything that is known about their past record of interference in Middle Eastern countries, it is inconceivable that the US and Israel, along with France and Britain, would not be involved in this uprising beyond what is already known.
15. While concentrating on the violence of the Syrian regime, the US, European governments (especially Britain) have totally ignored the violence directed against it. Their own infinitely greater violence, of course, in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places, doesn’t even come into the picture. Turkey has joined their campaign against Syria with relish, going even further than they have in confronting the Syrian regime. In the space of a few months Turkey’s ‘zero problem’ regional policy has been upended in the most inchoate manner. Turkey eventually lent its support to the NATO attack on Libya, after initially holding back. It has antagonised Iran by its policy on Syria and by agreeing, despite strong domestic opposition, to host a US radar missile ‘defence’ installation clearly directed against Iran. The Americans say its data will be shared with Israel, which has refused to apologise for the attack on the Mavi Marmara, plunging Israeli-Turkish relations into near crisis. So from ‘zero problems’, Turkey now has a regional policy full of problems with Israel, Syria and Iran.
16. While some members of the Syrian opposition have spoken against foreign intervention, the ‘Free Syrian Army’ has said that its aim is to have a no-fly zone declared over northern Syria. A no-fly zone would have to be enforced, and we have seen how this led in Libya to massive infrastructural destruction, the killing of thousands of people and the opening of the door to a new period of western domination.
17. If the Syrian government is brought down, every last Baathist and Alawi will be hunted down. In a government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood the status of minorities and women would be driven backwards.
18. Through the Syria Accountability Act, and through sanctions which the EU has imposed, the US has been trying to destroy the Syrian government for twenty years. The dismantling of unified Arab states along ethno-religious lines has been an Israel aim for decades. Where Israel goes, the US naturally follows. The fruits of this policy can be seen in Iraq, where an independent state in all but name has been created for the Kurds and where the constitution, written by the US, separates Iraq’s people into Kurds, Sunni, Shia and Christian, destroying the binding logic of Arab nationalism. Iraq has not known a moment’s peace since the British entered Baghdad in 1917. In Syria ethno-religious divisions (Sunni Muslim Arab, Sunni Muslim Kurd, Druze, Alawi and various Christian sects) render it vulnerable in the same way to the promotion of sectarian discord and eventual disintegration as the unified Arab state the French tried to prevent coming into existence in the 1920s.
19. The destruction of the Baathist government would be a strategic victory of unsurpassed value to the US and Israel. The central arch in the strategic relationship between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah will have been destroyed, leaving Hizbullah geographically isolated, with a hostile Sunni Muslim government next door, and leaving Hizbullah and Iran more exposed to a military attack by the US and Israel. Fortuitously or otherwise, the ‘Arab spring’ as it has developed in Syria has placed in their hands a lever by which they may be able to achieve their goal.
20. It is not necessarily the case that a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt or Syria would be hostile to US interests. Wanting to be seen as a respectable member of the international community and another good example of ‘moderate’ Islam, it is likely and certainly possible that an Egyptian government dominated by the Brotherhood would agree to maintain the peace treaty with Israel for as long as it can (i.e. until another large scale attack by Israel on Gaza or Lebanon makes it absolutely unsustainable).
21. A Syrian government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood would be close to Saudi Arabia and hostile to Iran, Hizbullah and the Shia of Iraq, especially those associated with Muqtada al Sadr. It would pay lip service to the Palestine cause and the liberation of the Golan Heights but its practical policies would be unlikely to be any different from the government it is seeking to destroy.
22. The Syrian people are entitled to demand democracy and to be given it, but in this way and at this cost? Even now, an end to the killing and negotiations on political reform is surely the way forward, not violence which threatens to tear the country apart. Unfortunately, violence and not a negotiated settlement is what too many people inside Syria want and what too many governments watching and waiting for their opportunity also want. No Syrian can ultimately gain from this, whatever they presently think. Their country is being driven towards a sectarian civil war, perhaps foreign intervention and certainly chaos on an even greater scale than we are now seeing. There will be no quick recovery if the state collapses or can be brought down. Like Iraq, and probably like Libya, looking at the present situation, Syria would enter a period of bloody turmoil that could last for years. Like Iraq, again, it would be completely knocked out of the ring as a state capable of standing up for Arab interests, which means, of course, standing up to the US and Israel.
23. Ultimately, whose interests does anyone think this outcome would serve?
~
Jeremy Salt is associate professor in Middle Eastern History and Politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. Previously, he taught at Bosporus University in Istanbul and the University of Melbourne in the Departments of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science. Professor Salt has written many articles on Middle East issues, particularly Palestine, and was a journalist for The Age newspaper when he lived in Melbourne.
For the second year in a row, the Obama administration has waived financial penalties for countries that enslave children and turn them into soldiers, ensuring that tens of millions of U.S. tax dollars will continue to be used by those who support the brutish practice.
In a Tuesday meeting described by Foreign Policy magazine, White House officials explained that the waivers for the Child Soldiers Protection Act of 2008 were handed out again this year because many of the offending countries did not have enough time to comply with its requirements. Others, they said, were exempt from the law because they were incorporated just recently.
The law was intended to prevent any military aid from going to support the use of child soldiers, yet in South Sudan, over $100 million in military aid will go to support the new nation’s military, which has a long history of conscripting children. […]
Other countries exempted from the laws include Chad, which the administration said has taken dramatic steps toward eliminating the practice, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which was given a partial waiver that will still allow their soldiers to be trained by the U.S. military — despite the continued presence of child soldiers.
The Child Soldiers Protection Act was a former cause célèbre for Vice President Joe Biden, in his prior role as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was part of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.
The White House and State Department maintain that they are working with these nations to ensure the practice of enslaving children into the military will eventually cease. … Full article
Saudi Arabia and the Western states have kept silent for decades regarding the occupation of two Saudi western islands by the Israeli regime.
Israeli forces reportedly occupied Saudi Arabia’s Tiran and Sanafir Islands in 1967.
The two islands are located at the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, leading to the Red Sea.
Tiran Island, which has an area of about 80 square kilometers, is located at the inflow of the Straits of Tiran. Sanafir Island, with an area of 33 square kilometers, also lies to the east of Tiran.
The two islands were given to the former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser for logistics use in the Six Day War of 1967 against Israeli forces.
However, the islands have been occupied by Tel Aviv since Egypt’s defeat.
The Straits of Tiran, which has remained under the control of Tel Aviv, has strategic significance since it serves as Israel’s only direct access to the Red Sea.
Regional observers say while Saudi Arabia has maintained a total silence on its own Israeli-occupied islands, it vigorously pursues baseless claims by the United Arab Emirates against three tiny Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf.
For the imperial war on Libya Qatar provided the propaganda via Al Jazeerah, it provided the crucial Arab League request for a “no-fly zone”, its Special Force troops –like the Egyptians, French, British and Bulgarian- trained the rebels. Quatar took care of the oil the rebels wanted to sell and gave them money, it also provided lots of arms, Belgian FN assault rifles and Milan anti-tank missiles, to the rebels and its air-force took part in the bombing of the country.
Now it wants a say in what happens next in the “new” Libya.
But here it gets funny. “Western” imperialists do not like other imperialists, especially not darker skin Muslim imperialists in funny garbs, to do as they do.
Which brings us to this rather comical Guardian piece:
The tiny Arab emirate of Qatar, a leading supporter of the revolution in Libya, has been accused by western diplomats of interfering in the country’s sovereignty.The claims come amid growing concern among Libyans in the National Transitional Council (NTC) and western officials that Qatar, which supplied arms to Libyan revolutionaries, is pursuing its own postwar agenda at the cost of wider efforts to bring political stability to the country.
…
A senior diplomat said: “There is a question now about what foreign players like Qatar are doing in Libya – whether it is being helpful and respectful of Libyan sovereignty. “Qatar is not being respectful, and there is a feeling that it is riding roughshod over the issue of the country’s sovereignty.”
One might think this is satire fresh out of The Onion. How could anyone dare to interfere in Libya’s sovereignity? That is just unthinkable.
But that “senior diplomat”, after having broken the UN resolutions on Libya in several issues, after having ignored the sovereignty of Libya and after bombing the Libyan people, seems serious in this.
All foreign powers with an interest in Libya, among which are the US, Britain and France, have had their own agendas. However, the source said: “There is a feeling that Qatar has been providing money and support to certain individuals.”
But that is exactly what the other countries have done as well. The National Transitional Council is filled with expats from Washington, London and Paris, financed by the various secret services of those countries.
The guy Qatar is accused of supporting is no other than Abdelhakim Belhadj, former CIA prisoner freed from jail by Saif al-Islam Gaddhafi, who, with a large gang of experienced folks from his Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is currently the military commander of Tripoli.
At the centre of concerns are allegations that, rather than supporting the NTC, Qatar has chosen to back favoured key figures with financial and other resources. Most prominent among these would be the Islamist head of Tripoli’s military council, Abdul-Aziz Belhaj.
The CIA abducted and tortured Belhaj and then provided him to Gaddhafi who kept him in jail for some years before he got freed. How come those “western” countries would object to this guy now? Is someone afraid of revenge?
Of particular concern over the last month has been how Qatar has chosen to throw its weight behind a group of Libyan individuals including Sheikh Ali Salabi, a Libyan cleric who resides in Doha and has close relations with Belhaj.There has been the growing friction between Salabi and the NTC’s interim prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril. Salabi has appeared on television to suggest Jibril is a “tyrant in waiting”.
Salabi may have that right.
He is by the way the senior cleric that brokered between the senior LIFG leadership including Bejhaj and Gaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, for their release from prison. I would not be astonished to learn that Salabi is still in contact with Seif al Islam Gaddhafi.
On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Reggane region. According to official statistics, 17 nuclear tests were carried out in total over the next 6 years. The area remains affected, and local scientists say that radioactive contamination has caused genetic mutations and irreversibly changed the region.
There are no official statistics on the number of victims. The only figures can be found in the records kept by the French representative of the local church, which lists 42,000 victims of nuclear tests. Three years ago, the French Ministry of Defense issued a statement, putting the number at 27,000 people. The victims include French soldiers as well as local Algerians who lived in the surrounding areas. … continue
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18. Through the Syria Accountability Act, and through sanctions which the EU has imposed, the US has been trying to destroy the Syrian government for twenty years. The dismantling of unified Arab states along ethno-religious lines has been an Israel aim for decades. Where Israel goes, the US naturally follows. The fruits of this policy can be seen in Iraq, where an independent state in all but name has been created for the Kurds and where the constitution, written by the US, separates Iraq’s people into Kurds, Sunni, Shia and Christian, destroying the binding logic of Arab nationalism. Iraq has not known a moment’s peace since the British entered Baghdad in 1917. In Syria ethno-religious divisions (Sunni Muslim Arab, Sunni Muslim Kurd, Druze, Alawi and various Christian sects) render it vulnerable in the same way to the promotion of sectarian discord and eventual disintegration as the unified Arab state the French tried to prevent coming into existence in the 1920s.
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