On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave fortress halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in the world, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor.
These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcohol, snort cocaine, and live with pink-haired strippers, managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn’t handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot descending 270 degree corskscrew turn to come exactly level with the ground, hitting the Pentagon in the budget analyst office where DoD staffers were working on the mystery of the 2.3 trillion dollars that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had announced “missing” from the Pentagon’s coffers in a press conference the day before, on September 10, 2001.
The DIA destroyed 2.5 TB of data on Able Danger, but that’s OK because it probably wasn’t important.
The SEC destroyed their records on the investigation into the insider trading before the attacks, but that’s OK because destroying the records of the largest investigation in SEC history is just part of routine record keeping.
NIST has classified the data that they used for their model of WTC7′s collapse, but that’s OK because knowing how they made their model of that collapse would “jeopardize public safety“.
The FBI has argued that all material related to their investigation of 9/11 should be kept secret from the public, but that’s OK because the FBI probably has nothing to hide.
This man never existed, nor is anything he had to say worthy of your attention, and if you say otherwise you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist and deserve to be shunned by all of humanity. Likewise him, him, him, and her. (and her and her and him).
Osama Bin Laden lived in a cave fortress in the hills of Afghanistan, but somehow got away. Then he was hiding out in Tora Bora but somehow got away. Then he lived in Abottabad for years, taunting the most comprehensive intelligence dragnet employing the most sophisticated technology in the history of the world for 10 years, releasing video after video with complete impunity (and getting younger and younger as he did so), before finally being found in a daring SEAL team raid which wasn’t recorded on video, in which he didn’t resist or use his wife as a human shield, and in which these crack special forces operatives panicked and killed this unarmed man, supposedly the best source of intelligence about those dastardly terrorists on the planet. Then they dumped his body in the ocean before telling anyone about it. Then a couple dozen of that team’s members died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
If you have any questions about this story…you are a batshit, paranoid, tinfoil, dog-abusing baby-hater and will be reviled by everyone. If you love your country and/or freedom, happiness, rainbows, rock and roll, puppy dogs, apple pie and your grandma, you will never ever express doubts about any part of this story to anyone. Ever.
In defence of freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of expression and freedom to access information
Some want us to believe that:
“Ignorance Is Strength”,
“Restricting the boundaries of discussion expands Knowledge”,
“Crucifying intellectuals is Progressive”
“Shunning people for their thoughts and opinions is Revolutionary”
“Thinking independently is very Dangerous”
“Reading many sources affects the protocols of Health and Safety”
“Framing the Debate is Good… very very good”,
“Gagging is strategically crucial for gaining Wisdom”
“Suppressing of Information helps to uncover the Truth”
“Revising Historical narratives is a Crime, and should be Punished by Law”
“Following the Evidence is a Conspiracy Theory”
“Investigating a Crime is not Helpful, it’s a Distraction”
“Crying against Racism and Supremacy is anti-Semitism”
“Exposing the power-elite is Racist”
“Thought Terrorism leads to Truth and Justice” (somehow, eventually) !
And of course, “no mater what, the Earth is still Flat, flat as a thin crispy pancake”
All you have to do is to Believe!
Otherwise face the consequences of your “blasphemy and wickedness”, be prepared for the burning of your reputation at the stake of their Omniscience, and be prepared for the crucifying of your character at the altar of their omnipotence and self-righteousness.
Iran’s nuclear chief has questioned the impartiality of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its silence towards the deployment of hundreds of nuclear warheads in Europe.
“The agency claims to be impartial, but is it really impartial? If it is then why does it keep silent on the deployment of hundreds of nuclear warheads on European soil and some occupied countries and not [even] submit a report to international organizations like the UN? Head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) Fereydoun Abbasi queried on Monday.
Abbasi made the remarks at the IAEA’s General Conference in Vienna.
The Iranian official demanded answers to questions such as why the agency is silent on the missing nuclear material in the US and who is in possession of the said nuclear material.
He went on to caution that the health of US and international community is in danger.
Earlier this month the US Government Audit Office (GAO) reported that the government is unable to account for the whereabouts of 16,000 kg of weapons-grade nuclear material.
The material in question was distributed to 27 countries over several decades.
“The selective approaches of the IAEA, particularly towards developing countries, and by showing diversion in their activities, have so far paved the way for the imposition of economic sanctions and military attacks against these countries,” Abbasi added.
The United States, Israel and their allies accuse Iran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program.
As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran maintains that it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
50 million hectares of land, an area twice the size of the UK, have been acquired by foreign companies or governments in Africa over the last few years. From Brazil to China to Saudi Arabia, demand is widespread and this trend was recently continued in South Sudan. With almost 10% of the country already in foreign hands, a report by The Oakland Institute (OI) published details of its largest and potentially most divisive land deal to date, the 2008 agreement between Nile Trading and Development and the Mukaya Payam Cooperative.
Good intentions? – A question of perspective
How prominently did the needs of the local community feature in this deal? Think Africa Press spoke to two experts, Anuradha Mittal, founder of the Oakland Institute, an American think tank specialising in the exposure of land grabs, and Howard Douglas, head of Kinyeti Development, partners with Nile Trading and Development, to uncover the ramifications of this deal. Ms. Mittal is an expert on trade, development, human rights and agriculture and the author of numerous books on the subject. In 2008, Nation magazine named her ‘Most Valuable Progressive Thinker’ of the year. Howard Douglas is a former US ambassador and US Coordinator for Refugee affairs. He has worked extensively with the US government and with the Episcopalian Church in post conflict countries.
Earlier this year, The Oakland Institute reproduced a copy of the lease agreement along with a report identifying the worrying aspects of the deal. Both sides attest that the needs of the community are a priority. Mr.Douglas dismissed the report as “a piece of trash”, accusing the OI and NGOs of scandal-seeking and headline grabbing. Ms.Mittal was equally scathing, branding Mr.Douglas a “thief”.
The agreement in question is for a 49-year lease of 600,000 hectares of land with a possibility of another 400,000 hectares and full rights to exploit all natural resources of the land. The OI report draws attention to the astonishingly low price paid for the lease of the land; 75,000 Sudanese pounds ($25,000) which works out to $16 a hectare. Mr.Douglas argued that this figure was not the price paid for the land but a fee levied by the government. The figure in the lease is indeed attributed to a “land charge” and he asserts that the agreed price was for Nile Trading and Development to organise and finance the development of the land in return for a percentage of the profits. This would involve spending high, unspecified sums on infrastructure such as roads and schools for the community. However, this promise is not stipulated in the lease agreement and has failed to materialise in the past three years. The document published by OI provides no legal imperative for Nile Trading and Development to give anything back to the community in terms of infrastructure.
The report also points to another worrying aspect of this deal. It draws attention to the claims made by Sudan’s Agency of Independent Media that the Mukaya Payam Cooperative is a “fictitious cooperative” comprised of, “a group of influential natives from Mukaya Payam and the neighbouring payams…The influential natives leased out the land behind the backs of the entire community.” Ms.Mittal identifies the Cooperative as three individuals living in Juba who are totally disconnected from the people of Mukaya Payam. She affirms that, “the people did not even know about the deal until the OI report came out this year.” This is an allegation that Mr.Douglas vehemently denies. If true, then it would mean that land which has been used by the same communities for generations has been given away without their consent and the compensation they are supposed to receive for this put in the hands of an elusive entity. It would not then be surprising that the people are, as Ms.Mittal claims, “very very angry”.
The Mukaya Payam Cooperative is an elusive entity with only one name attached to it, the lease agreement being signed by Magistrate James Yosia Ramdalla, the Paramount Chief of the Cooperative. Although four other “payams” (communities) were involved in the deal, there is only one signature on the lease.
According to the terms of the agreement, “any profits generated by Nile Trading and Development in respect of the leased land shall initially and through 2012 be divided 60% to the company and 40% to the Mukaya Payam Cooperative.” Whether the cooperative, whoever they may be, will distribute the rents amongst the other payams and how they will do so is uncertain. Mr.Douglas claims that, “the intention was that every man, woman and child who was associated with the Mukaya Payam would be the beneficiaries of the agreement.” He claims that they intend to set up a Mukaya Payam Trust to administer the funds to the community members. However, intentions are not legally binding and there are no stipulations in the lease agreement concerning distribution of funds.
What remains unclear is how NTD plans to develop this land. Mr.Douglas claims that large scale agriculture is the long-term goal. He speaks of creating “agricultural cooperatives” with schools, clinics and facilities to produce enough food for export, giving farmers a disposable income and political security. This vision is one which, according to Ms. Mittal, is to be taken with a pinch of salt. She points to the fact that nothing in the lease agreement indicates that agriculture is on NTD’s agenda. The real detail in the document is afforded to exploration rights.
Plans for the future
Investment in South Sudan ought to be seen as a great opportunity. These companies should provide jobs and contribute to the development of the country. According to Jonathan Brooks of the OECD, an estimated $18 billion a year needs to be invested in agriculture in order for the world to be able to feed itself by 2050. Developing all available land is a necessary step for the world to take and Africa will not be able to meet this level of investment on its own.
Ms. Mittal makes it clear that OI is pro-investment in South Sudan. However, she adds that, “to assume that foreign investors coming in will lead to better job security or food security is a myth”. She claims that unscrupulous investors are jumping on the bandwagon of agricultural investment, to disguise an attempt to control resources. She points to the fact that there is no legal framework in place in South Sudan to protect the people leaving them with only, “the empty words and empty promises of these investors”.
It is important to look beyond the disagreement on both sides. As Ms. Mittal says, “in regard to Mr. Douglas and his lease in South Sudan it is really not about his word against OI’s word. It is about his word against the word of the community and more important their own documents such as the contract; they speak the truth.”
Some representatives of the community have spoken. A petition signed on the 23 July this year has been handed to the state governor in Juba. It states that, “we the chiefs, elders, religious leaders and the youth of Mukaya Payam, unanimously, with strong terms condemn, disavow and deny the land lease agreement reached on 11 March 2008 between the two parties.” The petition states that the lease agreement was reached without the knowledge of the community and that it is illegal. It is signed by seven chiefs, a reverend, two elders and two others. The President of South Sudan, H.E Salva Kiir, has subsequently given his support to the community stating, “you are the government and you have the powers”. The government must act quickly and decisively to produce stringent guidelines for investors in order to ensure that the rights of its people are protected. If done correctly, foreign investment could flourish. However, until those rights are guaranteed in law, land deals remain dangerous territory.
Ankara – In September, 2010, the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Council issued a report on the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara. It concluded that the blockade of the Gaza Strip was unlawful; that the blockade constituted collective punishment of the civilian population of Gaza; that the interception of the Mavi Marmara ‘cannot be justified even under Article 51 [self defence] of the UN Charter’; that the attack involved violations of human rights law and international humanitarian law, and that the flotilla posed no threat to Israeli security.
Out of the Secretary-General’s office has now come a report that turns all these earlier findings upside down. Ban Ki Moon’s Panel of Inquiry finds that the naval blockade was imposed ‘as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law’. This is extraordinary, first of all, seeing that the Panel of Inquiry had already conceded that ‘the panel is not a court’ and was not asked to determine legal issues ‘or to adjudicate on liability’.
On the question of legality, no-one on the panel spoke with authority on maritime law or the laws of war. Geoffrey Palmer, the chairman of the panel (of four) is a professor of international environmental law. He has no known experience of the Middle East and the background which might help him understand why Israel feels itself entitled to attack ships on the high seas, the Mavi Marmara being not the first or the only one. Alvaro Uribe, the vice-chair and a strong supporter of Israel, is a former president of Colombia. His tenure in office was marked by widespread abuse of human rights, including torture and murder. Both he and Palmer were chosen to sit on the panel from a list of names approved by Israel.
The report goes on to say that ‘whether what occurred here was legally defensible is important but in diplomatic terms is not dispositive of what has become an important irritant not only in the relationship between two important nations but also in the Middle East generally’. Nine Turks (one a Turkish American) were shot dead on the Mavi Marmara. Most of them were shot at close range in what the Human Rights Council report described as summary executions. More plainly they might be more accurately described as murders. Furkan Dogan, a young man of 19, was shot from behind, and apparently finished off at point blank range by being shot in the face as he lay wounded on the deck. A video circulating on the internet showed an Israeli soldier standing over someone lying on the deck – apparently Furkan Dogan – and kicking him repeatedly before aiming a gun at his face. To reduce all of this to an ‘irritant’ spoiling relations between Israel and Turkey and the smooth flow of international relations is surely offensive, insensitive and grossly insulting to the families of the dead.
The Panel of Inquiry, while describing the violence as ‘disproportionate’, avoided the issue of culpability at the command or individual level. It noted that ‘no satisfactory explanation has been provided to the panel by Israel for any of the nine deaths’. The panel apparently did not feel itself obliged to come up with explanations of its own. While emphasizing the need to find solutions ‘that will allow Israel, Turkey and the international community ‘to put the incident behind them’, it clearly did not regard the allocation of responsibility as the best way to reach this point. As Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has observed, the attack on the Mavi Marmara was ‘grounds for war’. If any of the actors acted recklessly it was Israel; if any acted with restraint it was Turkey and in asking for an apology Turkey was staking out a minimal position. By refusing to issue an apology, Israel has allowed no one to put the ‘incident’ behind them.
While running through the findings of the Turkish commission of inquiry and Israel’s Turkel committee – a whitewash of the entire Israeli operation from start to finish – the panel made no independent attempt to reconcile the contradictions between the two reports or come up with its own conclusions about what actually happened. All of its findings flowed on logically from its judgment that the blockade was legal and that the Israelis were justified in enforcing it. Thus the passengers had no right to defend themselves against armed attack. Thus the Israelis did have the right to subdue them even if the level of force they used was ‘disproportionate’. Evidence placed before the Human Rights Council suggests that the Israelis had already shot two passengers dead from helicopters before the boarding party landed on the upper deck of the Mavi Marmara. The panel offered no opinion on this crucial point. The attack took place on the high seas, 72 miles from land and 64 nautical miles from the blockade zone. The panel concluded that the boarding of the Mavi Marmara so far from the blockade zone was ‘excessive and unreasonable’ but had nothing to say about its possible illegality even within the context of the laws of war and naval blockades.
Without producing any evidence the panel implied that some of the Mavi Marmara passengers may have been carrying guns. It also casts doubts on the motives of the flotilla organisers and suggested that had they been more concerned with getting aid to the Palestinians rather than provoking a confrontation with Israel and drawing attention to themselves, in its view, the ship could have docked at Ashdod so that the aid could have been taken to Gaza by land. In other words, the aid should have been placed in the hands of the blockading power for it to decide what should be sent to Gaza and what should be withheld.
The panel claimed that Israel’s effective control over the Gaza Strip ended when disengagement ‘was completed’ in 2005. Here the Panel of Inquiry admitted that it was relying on a decision of the Supreme Court of Israel. It made no independent judgment of its own. In fact, although Israel withdrew from Gaza, it has never disengaged. The territory has been fenced off and is blockaded on land and from the air and sea. Its population lives under the constant threat of Israeli military attack from sea, land and air. The onslaught of 2008-9 took the lives of 1400 people, most of them civilians. Massive destruction was caused to civilian and government infrastructure. Israel tightly controls the flow of goods into Gaza through the land gates and has repeatedly bombed the tunnels through which Gazans have been able to obtain the necessities of life from Egypt. Taking the view that Gaza and Israel ‘are both distinct political and territorial entities’, the panel said the conflict between the Hamas government and Israel should be treated as an international one. In fact, Gaza, historically, culturally and politically, is an inseparable part of the territory of Palestine. The conflict is not between the Hamas government and Israel but between the Palestinian people and Israel. It does not have the ‘trappings of an international armed conflict’ because Palestine is not a state and has no army, navy or air force. Whether in Gaza or the West Bank the Palestinians have virtually no means of defending themselves against Israeli assaults.
The Panel declared that the naval blockade would only be illegal if its imposition was to starve or collectively punish the civilian population of Gaza. Attempting to split the naval blockade from the land blockade, the panel says that ‘there is no evidence before the Panel that would permit a finding confirming the allegations that Israel had either of those intentions [starvation and collective punishment] or that the naval blockade was imposed in retaliation for the takeover [sic.] of Hamas in Gaza or otherwise. On the contrary, it is evident that Israel had a military objective’. In fact, again, the two Israeli blockades (along with control of air space) constitute an integrated strategy designed to impose Israeli control over everything going into Gaza, arms, food, medicine and so on, as well as anything going out, including fishing boats. The land blockade was imposed immediately after the election of the Hamas government in January, 2006. The naval blockade was a logical extension of this policy, and cannot be separated from it. The dominant view internationally is that the blockade of Gaza, with no division being made between the land blockade and the sea blockade, violates international law in several respects.
The panel claimed that Israel has faced and is facing a threat to its security from militant groups within Gaza. Of course, this is true even if the threat is minimal compared to the threat Israel poses to the security of Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza. The panel argues that Israel has the right to self defence against armed attack from outside its territory. As Israel is the only state in the world which has never defined its borders, and as the territory falling within the 1949 armistice lines includes more than 20 per cent of Palestine set aside for the Arab state in the partition resolution of 1947, but seized by Zionist militias in 1948, what constitutes Israeli territory remains an interesting but unresolved point. Furthermore, most Gazans are refugees (or the children of refugees) from somewhere else in Palestine. They were driven into Gaza during the ethnic cleansing of 1948. Not far from the fence penning them in, settlements have been built on their land and the ruins of their villages. Their right of return to the place of their birth has been affirmed in numerous UN resolutions specific to Palestine as well as conventions dealing with universal human rights. Israel has never complied with any of these resolutions. Yet it is Israel and not its victims to which Ban Ki Moon’s panel grants the right of self-defence.
Turkey has rejected this biased report out of hand. It has sent the Israeli ambassador home and will now ask the International Court of Justice to issue a legal opinion on the blockade of Gaza and thus the attack on the Mavi Marmara. If Israel is now friendless in the region it only has itself to blame. Protected by the US from ever having to face up to the consequences of its actions, it is now waking up to the cold light of a new day.
~
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.
Shamai Leibowitz, an FBI Hebrew translator, was arrested in May 2010 for revealing restricted information consisting of five reports classified “secret” to an unidentified blogger. He confessed—explaining that he had been trying to reveal illegal activity—repented, and was sentenced to a minimum term of 20 months in prison. He has now been released. There was considerable speculation over what Leibowitz, a left-wing, Israel-born dual national, had actually revealed. A New York newspaper claimed that the information had gone to a “pro-Palestinian Arab group.”
In reality, Leibowitz, who had top-secret clearance, was working as the translator for an undercover FBI counterintelligence team operating out of Calverton, Maryland. The FBI was tapping into all the telephone lines and cell phone numbers associated with diplomats and intelligence officers working out of the Israeli Embassy in Washington and the United Nations in New York. The Israelis practiced good communications security when they were on their phones speaking English, but they were reportedly extremely reckless when speaking Hebrew because they believed that they could not be understood. The FBI compiled a thick dossier on Israeli diplomats and spies and was able to establish linkages to a number of other targets of interest. Analyzing the Hebrew recordings, Leibowitz identified a number of hidden relationships with U.S. government officials and the media, as well as advocacy groups like AIPAC and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
What the FBI uncovered was a massive and highly focused campaign referred to by the Israelis as “perception management,” but which the CIA would refer to as a covert action. Much of the activity was illegal or incompatible with the role of foreign diplomats in the United States, which is why Leibowitz took action after his supervisors refused to proceed with prosecution. The focus was on Iran, with Israeli officials intent on preparing the American public for war against the mullahs. They were spreading disinformation on Iran’s nuclear program, promoting international sanctions, and trying to obtain Washington’s support for an ultimatum on the nuclear program as a final diplomatic gesture that would be turned down by Iran, leading to war with the U.S. playing the lead role. The Israeli Embassy’s activities consisted of drafting articles and editorials that were placed with an accommodating media, paying journalists to write pieces making the same points, and working closely with groups like WINEP and AIPAC to present policymakers with a coordinated list of arguments for war. At least one congressman from Indiana was approached directly by Israeli intelligence and agreed to host an anti-Iran conference as well as to introduce legislation tightening Iran sanctions. The recorded telephone conversation between an Israeli intelligence officer and Rep. Jane Harman in April 2009, in which she agreed to intervene on behalf of accused AIPAC spies Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman in exchange for chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, was also part of the special FBI counterintelligence operation.
Leibowitz’s concern that the illegal activity would not be prosecuted by the Justice Department proved correct. No Israeli or American named in the extensive FBI investigative dossier has been in any way punished.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
Excerpts from: Gilmour, David. Lebanon, The Fractured Country. New York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc. 1983, pages 174-176
“The following morning, at 11:30 a.m. on Friday 17 September, General Drori ordered the militiamen to stop their operation, but after a further meeting with Phalangist officers the Israelis agreed to let them remain in the camps until the following day. Hobeika was also given permission to use two battalions of fresh troops and in the afternoon another force of militiamen entered the camps where they began a new round of killing. The Israeli commander in Beirut, General Yaron, has since admitted that, in spite of the fact that Israeli officers had known for several hours that the massacres were taking place, the Phalangists were allowed to call up reinforcements and remain in the camps for a further thirty-six hours. The militiamen rampaged around Sabra and Shatila until Saturday morning killing indiscriminately: nurses were raped by the killer gangs and then shot, children were scalped, patients from two hospitals were dragged from their beds and knifed to death. The Phalangists left most of their victims where they killed them, in their homes or in the streets, but some of them borrowed Israeli bulldozers and tried to cover up their deeds by shovelling corpses into mass graves. Because some of the victims were taken away and never seen again, and because it was decided not to open up some of the graves, it will never be known how many people were butchered. But perhaps as many as 2,000 people were killed and not even Sharon can pretend that these were the ‘terrorists’ he was allegedly looking for.”
…
“On the morning of 18 September, Morris Draper, another of President Reagan’s envoys dispatched to Beirut, sent a message to Sharon alleging Israeli responsibility: ‘You must stop the massacres. They are obscene. I have an officer in the camp counting the bodies. You ought to be ashamed. They situation is rotten and terrible. They are killing children. You are in absolute control of the area, and therefore responsible for that area.’ But the responsibility was greater than Draper suggested. On 15 September Israeli troops had surrounded Sabra and Shatila. They were never more than 300 yards away from the camps and sometimes as close as 50 yards. Moreover, Israeli soldiers were on the roof of the Kuwait embassy nearby and could see what was happening in both camps. There is a mass of evidence to show that the Israelis knew that a massacre was in progress by Thursday evening but did nothing to stop it until Saturday morning.” …
“There is further evidence which indicates the extent of Israel’s complicity in the massacre. The discovery in one of the camps of an Israeli sergeant’s identity tag does not prove that he actually took part in the killing but it is significant that the Israeli army did not allow him to appear before the Israeli Commission of Enquiry. More importantly, the Israelis were prepared to assist their Phalangist allies in a number of different ways: they lent bulldozers so that the killers could bury some of the dead; they fired flares throughout the night of 16 September–at a rate of two a minute according to one Israeli soldier — so that the killers could see what they were doing; worst of all, they prevented civilians from fleeing and forced those who tried back into the camps.”
The UN Palmer Report, which largely exonerated Israel for murdering nine unarmed Turkish civilians in international waters on May 31, 2010, seemed in some ways like the last straw. Prior to its publication, the camel’s back had already mostly broken, and a collapse in Turkish-Israeli ties was looming.
Turkey’s sin was seeking an apology for the killing of its citizens – on their way to deliver essential, life-saving supplies to malnourished and besieged Palestinians in Gaza – at the hand of Israeli army commandos.
If the civilians had been Israelis, and the commandos part of a Turkish force, all hell would have broken loose. Israel and the US would have declared Turkey a pariah state. Turkey, however, merely demanded an apology, and it was affronted further for doing so.
Of course, this is not the first time that Israel deliberately provoked and tested Turkish patience. Israel has attempted to infiltrate Turkey’s own political spaces by supporting its regional opponents and arming various rebel groups with the aim of destabilizing Turkey.
Instead of acknowledging the country’s rising significance and accommodating to the rules of the ‘new Middle East’ political game, Israel resorted to intimidation and insults. It repeatedly placed Turkey – a thriving democracy and a proud regional power of 80 million – in a very sensitive standing.
However, the anti-Turkish attitude in Israel was not an outcome of the Mavi Marmara incident last year. “The height of humiliation” is how an Israeli newspaper described a scene in which Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon summoned Turkish ambassador, Ahmet Oguz, last January to humiliate him before Israeli media. Oguz was reprimanded over a fictional Turkish TV show that was critical of Israel. To ensure that the point has been successfully made, Ayalon “urged journalists to make clear that the ambassador was seated on a low sofa, while the Israeli officials were in much higher chairs,” according to the BBC (January 13, 2010). Ayalon noted that is “there is only one flag here” – the Israeli flag – and “we are not smiling”.
How did Turkey respond? A statement issued by the foreign ministry ‘invited’ their counterparts in “Israeli foreign ministry to respect the rules of diplomatic courtesy.” Hardly outrageous. The gist of the Turkish message that followed the murder of the Turkish humanitarian activists a few months later was not much different. It basically asked for an apology.
Turkey was shunned for the seemingly unreasonable demand. An unnamed senior Israeli official explained the Israeli logic to Ynet news on September 2, following Turkey’s decision to downgrade ties with Israel. “Turkey is an important country in the Middle East, but an apology is a very strategic precedent for Israel in this region,” he said. That is true, Israel’s diplomacy is predicated on unfair trade, violent storming of humanitarian boats, subservient activities, espionage and much more. Indeed, an apology for the murder of Turkish’s civilians would be a precedent.
Even after the recent publishing of Palmer Report – a contradictory and obvious attempt at exonerating the Israeli army while implicating Turkish humanitarian activists – Turkey acted responsibly. But it also acted with the poise and dignity that is expected of a democratic country expressing the wishes of the vast majority of its people. It downgraded military, trade and other ties with Israel. Why should Turkey share military intelligence with a country that murders Turks, humiliates its diplomats and refuses to apologize?
Still, from Israel’s point of view, Turkey has crossed all the limits of acceptable behavior. “Turkish warships will escort any Turkish aid vessels to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” said Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in an interview with Al Jazeera (as quoted in the Guardian, September 8). At the same time, Turkish diplomacy continued to offer a window of opportunity to detain further escalation. “Our embassy in Israel is open, and the Israeli embassy in Ankara is open. The relations would return to the old days if Israel apologizes and accepts to pay compensation,” said Huseyin Celik, Deputy Chairman of the ruling Justice and Development party (according to the Guardian, September 8.)
Since an apology is a ‘precedent’, Israel responded in the only way it knows how. An accusatory campaign was launched against Turkey with outlandish insinuations and direct threats.
“This is part of the Islamization spreading there, and we must recognize it,” said the senior official to Ynet. The leading Israeli news source also published a column by one Ron Ben-Yishai, calling the Turkish Prime Minister a “short-tempered thug.” In ‘Turkey no great power,’ Yishai accused the country of failing on most fronts. “Turkey under Erdogan’s leadership is neither a reliable ally nor a credible rival,” he charged.
These views are hardly marginal, and were matched by specific threats by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. “We’ll exact a price from Erdogan that will prove to him that messing with Israel doesn’t pay off,” Lieberman reportedly said. More specifically, he “urge(d) all Israeli military veterans to refrain from traveling to Turkey and facilitate cooperation with the Armenians — Turkey’s historic rivals.” He said he also plans to meet with the Turkish rebel group PKK to “cooperate with them and boost them in every possible area,” according to UPI, September 9.
Per this logic, demanding an apology for murder equals a thuggish act, while stirring regional instability and admitting to supporting armed militias is an acceptable diplomatic maneuver.
Turkey had no other option but to escalate before an obstinate ‘ally.’ And considering the latter’s existing isolation in the region – and the growing anti-Israeli sentiment in Egypt and elsewhere – it is likely that Israel, not Turkey, will lose out in this political tussle.
Even the US, Israel’s ‘unconditional’ ally, seems to recognize the dangerous game being played by Israel and its rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Recently revealed comments made by then US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates indicate that Americans are simply fed up with supporting Israel’s ‘dangerous’ policies, while ‘receive(ing) nothing in return’ (Bloomberg, September 5).
It is these very dangerous policies that guide Israel’s brewing conflict with Turkey amid complete lack of political wisdom in Tel Aviv. But if extreme militancy was not enough to intimidate or weaken the resolve of a tiny and besieged place like Gaza, why should it work against a great and rising power like Turkey?
Rational thinking in Netanyahu’s government might also be an acceptable precedent.
~
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), available on Amazon.com.
The American people are told, again and again, that 9/11 “changed everything.” Is this really true?
The answer is both yes, and no.
Yes, because 9/11 prompted policies of regime change, preemptive strike, and humanitarian intervention, which, in turn, triggered the wars and military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and Libya. At home, it provided justification for the institution of the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, outsourcing of torture, restriction of personal/civil liberties and the ballooning of the Pentagon budget.
And no, because the militaristic policies and security measures that were thus put into effect in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks had been in the making for nearly a dozen years before the attacks took place.
There is overwhelming evidence that the US policies of preemptive strike and regime change started not with the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001 but with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Beneficiaries of war dividends, that is, the military-industrial-security complex, were alarmed by the demise of the Soviet Union, by the end of the “communist threat” as the ready-made justifier of continued escalation of the Pentagon budget, and by the demands for “peace dividends.” “What we were afraid of was people who would say . . . ‘Let’s bring all of the troops home, and let’s abandon our position in Europe,’” acknowledged Paul D. Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense under President Bush Sr. “It’s hard to imagine just how uncertain the world looked after the end of the Cold War.”
Not surprisingly, in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, and in the face of widespread demands for “peace dividends,” the powerful interests vested in the military-security capital moved swiftly to fend off such demands by successfully inventing all kinds of “new threats to the national interests of the United States.” Instead of the Soviet Union, the “menace of rogue states, global terrorism, and militant Islam” would have to do as new enemies. Having thus effectively substituted “new sources of threat” for the “communist threat” of the Cold War era, powerful beneficiaries of military spending (working through the Pentagon and a number of militaristic think tanks like the Project for the New American Century, Center for Security Policy, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and National Institute for Public Policy) managed not only to maintain but, in fact, expand the Pentagon budget beyond the Cold War years.
The 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, global terrorism, and US military aggressions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere in the Muslim-Arab world can be better understood against this background: the systemic or internal dynamics of the military-industrial-security complex as an existentially-driven juggernaut to war and militarism that, in the aftermath of the Cold War era, needed all kinds of enemies and boogiemen in order to justify its continued usurpation of the lion’s share of the public finance, or the US treasury.
Major post-Cold War US military strategies such as regime change were formulated not after the 9/11 attacks, or under President Bush Jr., but under President Bush Sr., that is, soon after the demise of the Soviet Union. The early 1990s Pentagon architects of those strategies included the then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, Paul D. Wolfowitz, then Undersecretary of Defense, Zalmay Khalilzad, then a Wolfowitz aide, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, then principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Strategy and Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Most of what the Pentagon team crafted in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War was published as a government document under Cheney’s name as America’s “Defense Strategy for the 1990s”—the document also came to be known as Defense Planning Guidance.
Almost all of the Pentagon’s post-Cold War aggressive military strategies such as preemptive strike, expansion of NATO, regime change, nation building, or humanitarian intervention can be traced back to the notorious Defense Planning Guidance of the early 1990s. As James Mann (of the Center for Strategic & International Studies) put it, “What the Pentagon officials had succeeded in doing, within months of the Soviet collapse, was to lay out the intellectual blueprint for a new world dominated—then, now and in the future—by U.S. military power.”
Although President Clinton did not officially embrace Cheney’s Defense Planning Guidance, he did not disclaim it either. And while he slightly slowed down the growth in the pentagon budget, he too had his own share of military operations abroad—in Somalia, Iraq, Haiti, and various provinces of the former Yugoslavia. The Federation of American Scientists has recorded a list of US foreign military engagements in the 1990s which shows that in the first decade after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, that is, under Presidents Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton, the United States engaged in 134 such operations. Here is a sample: Operation Eagle Eye (Kosovo), Operation Determined Effort (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Operation Quick Lift (Croatia), Operation Nomad Vigil (Albania), Operation Desert Thunder (Iraq), Operation Seva Verde (Columbia), Operation Constant Vigil (Bolivia), Operation Fundamental Response (Venezuela), Operation Infinite Reach (Sudan/Afghanistan), Operation Safe Border (Peru/Ecuador), Operation United Shield (Somalia), Operation Safe Haven/Safe Passage (Cuba), Operation Sea Signal (Haiti), Operation Safe Harbor (Haiti), Operation Desert Storm (Southwest Asia), and many more.
With the accession of George W. Bush to the presidency, all the Pentagon contributors to the notorious 1992 Defense Planning Guidance also returned to positions of power in the government. Cheney of course became Vice President, Powell became Secretary of State, Wolfowitz moved into the number two position at the Pentagon, as Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy, and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, became the Vice President’s chief of staff and national security adviser.
Although George W. Bush’s administration thus arrived in the White House with plans of “regime change” in the Arab-Muslim world, it could not carry out those plans without a pretext. The 9/11 attacks (regardless of who planned and carried them out) provided the needed pretext. The evidence thus clearly shows that, contrary to the claims of many critics, including some distinguished figures like Noam Chomsky, 9/11 served more as an excuse, or boogieman, than a “trap” laid by Osama bin Laden in order to bleed and disgrace the United States by prompting it to wage war and military aggression against the Arab-Muslim world.
The administration wasted no time manipulating the public’s fear of further terrorist attacks to rally support for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. As the administration was preparing for the invasion of Iraq in early 2003, it also dusted off the Pentagon’s 1992 Defense Planning Guidance and promoted it as the “Bush Doctrine” for the new, post-9/11 world. The post-9/11 version of Defense Planning Guidance retains—indeed, strengthens—all the major elements of the 1992 version, although at times it uses slightly modified terminology.
That the U.S. military response to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and its response to the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001 were basically the same should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the dynamics and profit imperatives of the business of war: continued increase of the Pentagon budget and continued expansion of the sales markets for the war industry. The pretexts or tactics for pursuing higher war dividends may change (from the “threat of communism” to the “threat of rogue states, or global terrorism, or militant Islam”) but the objective or strategy remains the same—permanent war and, consequently, continuous escalation of the Pentagon budget and higher profits for the interests vested in military/security capital.
The Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners’ and Detainees’ Affairs in Gaza has revealed that the Israeli authorities are continuing to detain 20 elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Seventeen of the MPs are being held under so-called Administrative Detention without charge or any other legitimate reason.
The ministry’s media director Riad Al Ashqar said that the number of detained MPs fell to 20 after the release of Hassan Youssef. The others still in Israeli detention include 17 representing the Change and Reform Bloc, 2 are from Fatah and 1 is from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. All ten of Hebron’s MPs are in Israeli prisons, the latest of whom to be detained being Mohamed Motlek Abu Jeheisha.
According to Mr Al Ashqar, most of the parliamentarians are being detained for the second time in two years. The Israelis, he said, had to use the Administrative Detention process because they have no charges to file against them. The MPs, he added, are in detention solely to keep them out of the political arena, and when one period of detention lapse, it is renewed immediately.
The ministry considers the detentions to be “kidnapping” and a “political crime, a blow to democracy”, as well as a violation of basic international conventions and charters. The detention of their politicians also constitutes aggression against legitimate Palestinian institutions and symbols, and a violation of political immunity, said Mr Al Ashqar, who noted that the treaties signed by the Israelis allow for the establishment of an elected Palestinian parliament, with parliamentary immunity granted for its members. “As usual,” he said, “the Zionist state doesn’t respect its legal commitments and the treaties to which it is a signatory.”
Since 2006, Israel has kidnapped more than two-thirds of the Palestinian Legislative Council’s members and issued harsh sentences against them; most served their sentences and were released, before being kidnapped again.
Among the many shameful and cowardly things that President Barack Obama has and has not done, few can rival his complete unwillingness to express outrage at the Israeli military’s murder of a young American teen executed at close range during the Israeli Defense (sic) Force assault on the Turkish-flagged aid ship the Mavi Marmara in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea back on May 31, 2010.
Furkan Dogan, born in the US to Turkish parents, both legal residents of the U.S., and educated in the US, was a volunteer on the Mavi Marmara, the flag ship in a six boat aid flotilla that tried to sail with humanitarian aid from Turkey to the Israeli prison colony known as Gaza only to be stormed and captured and pirated to Israel.
When IDF forces boarded the ship from helicopters and speed boats they shot and killed nine people, one of them young Dogan.
When the assault occurred, there was no protest from the White House, even though an American citizen had been killed. (There was little reporting on the murder either in the U.S. corporate media, which consistently referred to him as Turkish-American–a designation usually reserved for immigrants–despite his being native born in the U.S.).
Nor was there any protest from the White House when the Turkish Council of Forensic Medicine reported a month later that the autopsy conducted on Dogan showed that, like most of the other eight IDF victims, he had been shot in the back and in the back of the head, as well as in the face — hardly the kind of killing that would have resulted had he and the others — as the Israeli government claimed, been “attacking” the IDF boarders. (In fact a smuggled video shows two IDF officers brutally kicking a person identified by the filmer as Dogan while he is lying on the deck of the ship, and then shooting him repeatedly with their weapons, which my colleague Linn Washington says appear to be pump-action Remington 870 shotguns — a deadly gun popular around the world and among police for “riot control” actions. The weapon is part of the IDF arsenal.)
A UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who investigated the IDF assault on the Mavi Marmara concluded that Dogan, far from “assaulting” IDF forces, had been trying to video-tape their slaughter of others when he was attacked and slain.
As for President Obama, who is forever echoing his predecessor George W. Bush about his important job of “protecting Americans”?
Furkan Dogan, American teen murdered by Israeli troops, ignored by President Obama and the US government
Far from expressing outrage at the murder of a US youth, he and his State Department, as I disclosed in an article in ThisCantBeHappening! on Sept. 27, 2010, hid news about the forensic evidence of Dogan’s execution after it was provided by Turkey, first to the U.S Embassy in Ankara, and then to the White House directly.
Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States, says it sent the autopsy report to the US via the US Embassy in Turkey, as soon as it was completed, assuming the US would want to prosecute Israel for his death. Instead, the Obama administration and the US Justice Department sat and continue to sit on the information, saying nothing. A request by ThisCantBeHappening for information from the Justice Department about the autopsy elicited only a brief “We have no comment for you,” from DOJ spokesman Dean Boyd.
Now the president has been roundly condemned for his callous disregard for the brutal slaughter of one of his country’s own young citizens by no less than the prime minister of Turkey, one of America’s NATO allies. Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan reported on September 10 that in a recent meeting with the U.S. president, he told Obama that Turkish medical examiners had determined that the nine victims had been hit by a total of 35 bullets, most fired at close range and — as we know from the reports — from the back. He later told reporters, “I asked President Obama whether the reason he showed no interest in one of his nationals being killed was because [the victim] was [ethnically] Turkish – he didn’t reply.”
No U.S. corporate media reporters have ventured to ask Obama about this shocking silence. Nor was Erdogan’s account mentioned in the mainstream media — even in the New York Times, where on Sept. 12, reporter David D. Kirkpatrick actually wrote a report on Erdogan’s new assertiveness in which he mentioned the Turkish PM’s “faulting” of the U.S. for failing to demand an apology from Israel “for the killing of its citizens” in the May 31, 2010 raid.
Failing to mention at such a point that Erdogan had leveled an even more explosive charge directly against the president himself is simply journalist malpractice on Kirkpatrick’s and the Times’ part. (Compare the Times and other US media outlets’ coverage of the plight of two captured U.S. hikers in Iranian captivity, who have not been killed or even treated badly by U.S. prison standards, to the non-coverrage of Dogan’s murder.)
Where does the account of Erdogan’s comment to President Obama appear? In the Jewish Daily Forward, a publication printed in New York City, which had an article titled “Rift Between Israel and Turkey Puts White House on the Spot.”
Of course, this would not be the first time that a U.S. president had failed to condemn a brutal murder of an American by Israel. President Johnson famously covered up Israel’s monstrous attack on the U.S. Navy spy ship Liberty during the 1967 Six-Day War–an unprovoked attack on a vessel of its key ally, which killed 34 U.S. sailors and injured another 170.
But this murder of Dogan, while minor in size compared to the attack on the Liberty, is in another way perhaps worse, as it was an attack on a peaceful ship in international waters and involves the murder of an unarmed young man who was doing nothing but trying to document an ongoing atrocity.
For President Obama to maintain his silence in this case is not just a shameful act — it is a message to the rest of the world that where Middle East issues are concerned, he and the rest of the U.S. government are completely in the control of the right-wing Israeli government and of its zionist backers in the U.S., even to the point of being willing to alienate the entire 75 million people of Turkey.
The president’s shame is only matched by the equally shameful behavior of the U.S. corporate media, which have likewise blacked out this Israeli atrocity against an innocent young American.
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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