Parliamentary democracy is a tricky thing. Prime ministers come and go as alliances shift and majorities change. As this week’s uproar in Lebanon proved, it is a reality outgoing Prime Minister Saad Hariri has yet to grasp.
Lebanon’s sectarian political structure adds a twist of complexity to the country’s governance: the prime minister must be a Sunni, the president a Maronite and the speaker of parliament a Shia. Additionally, cabinet and parliamentary seats must be evenly divided between Christian and Muslim and represent all the nation’s confessional groups, in fixed proportion.
So when 11 opposition ministers withdrew from Hariri’s cabinet on Jan. 12 in wake of his refusal to candidly address the politicized indictments expected from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, it brought down his government.
Shortly thereafter, Druze and Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt declared, “I hereby … confirm my party’s position by the side of Syria and the Resistance [Hezbollah].”
Jumblatt was dubbed kingmaker because the 11 seats under his (now-disbanded) Democratic Gathering would decide which political bloc controls parliament. Although he was once squarely allied with the March 14 coalition led by Hariri’s Future Movement, in a typical change of position, he distanced himself from them in 2009 and functioned as an independent. After Hariri scuttled the Saudi-Syrian initiative and his administration collapsed, Jumblatt placed his eggs in the basket of the March 8 opposition led by Hezbollah, Amal and Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement.
Of 128 seats in Lebanon’s Chamber of Deputies, a prime ministerial candidate needs the support of at least 65 legislators. March 8 had 57 and March 14, 60 and the Democratic Gathering 11. With the defection of Jumblatt and seven party MPs, March 14 lost the majority they once claimed in the June 2009 elections.
Having stated they would no longer back a Hariri premiership (Aoun said that reappointing Hariri would be “tantamount to consenting to domestic corruption”), March 8 nominated Tripoli MP, former prime minister and billionaire telecom tycoon, Najib Miqati.
A moderate and centrist holding good relations with all sects, Miqati branded himself the “alternative consensus candidate” and went out of his way to extend an olive-branch to Hariri:
“I extend my hand to everyone without exception … I say to Prime Minister Saad Hariri, let us all work together for the sake of Lebanon.”
In a televised address Sunday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah likewise struck a conciliatory tone:
“We want the new prime minister to form a national unity government in which everyone participates. We don’t want a cabinet that excludes any party … We respect everyone’s right to representation. All claims that Hezbollah has plans to install an Iranian or Shia government is distortion, misleading and outright false.”
The response?
“The Future Movement announces its refusal to participate in a government headed by a candidate named by the opposition.”
After March 8 had secured a total of 68 seats, President Michel Suleiman named Miqati prime minister on Tuesday and asked him to form a government.
It was a peaceful exercise in parliamentary democracy that Hariri, March 14 and their United States patrons thoroughly rejected.
“As for the coup that Hezbollah is carrying out, it is an attempt to put the office of prime minister under the control of waliyatul faqih [rule of the clerics],” said Hariri loyalist Mustafa Alloush in Tripoli, who told Sunnis to reject “Persian tutelage.”
Mirroring the specious claim of Israel, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, March 14 issued a statement saying that Hezbollah would make Lebanon an “Iranian base.” Samir Geagea, head of the extremist Lebanese Forces in the March 14 alliance, said Hezbollah would “turn Lebanon into Gaza.”
In stark contrast to last week’s silent show of strength when Hezbollah men appeared on Beirut’s streets clad in black T-shirts (which Hariri supporters nonetheless described as “hooliganism”), the supposed March 14 moderates called for a “Day of Rage.”
It was nothing more than blatant sectarian incitement.
Tripoli—Lebanon’s northern, Sunni-dominated port city that is a hotbed of Salafi extremism—became the epicenter of violence. Protestors burned tires, fired weapons, torched a van belonging to Al-Jazeera television network and attacked other reporters covering the unrest (who had to be rescued by the Lebanese Army after the rioters had surrounded them). They ransacked the offices of another Tripoli MP backing Miqati and carried banners with sectarian slogans such as “the blood of Sunnis is boiling,” “Iran’s project will not go through Tripoli,” and “Miqati, the Shiite dog.”
In Beirut, they blocked streets as well as the north-south roads connecting the capital to Tripoli and Sidon. Highways to Syria through the Beka’a valley were likewise cut. By Tuesday’s end, 45 people had been wounded, 35 of them Lebanese Army soldiers.
March 14 had successfully unleashed a tide of ugly sectarianism that rocked the country.
“Tripoli has said its word” was Hariri’s reply to the street thuggary he instigated.
Highlightening American’s duplicity in its treat to cut off aid to Lebanon after March 8 nominated the prime minister, Nasrallah commented:
“ … had the situation been reversed with the other camp’s candidate being appointed as prime minister and with opposition supporters heading to the streets, we would have heard condemnations from Washington and Western capitals … Why do you respect that [March 14] majority and not this one?”
If Hariri is the victim of anything, it is the transient nature of power in a democratic system. Anything but the statesman, he instead threw a nationwide temper-tantrum.
Lebanon’s June 2009 legislative elections brought the March 14 coalition to power, thanks only to Lebanon’s sectarian distribution of seats. They unambiguously lost the popular vote, however, which March 8 handily won. One-and-a-half-years later, the people’s mandate has been realized.
Addendum: Miqati held two days of consultations with parliamentary blocs and former prime ministers. His meeting with Hariri lasted no more than three minutes. According to a late AFP report, the Future Movement and the rest of March 14 will boycott the new administration.
Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator.
January 29, 2011
Posted by aletho |
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Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Occupied Palestine, is under fire for writing what is obviously true about the U.S. government and the media. Calls for his firing abound from the usual suspects.
Such commitments to truth as Falk possesses can pose problems for prospective careerists, but the 80-year-old human rights activist and scholar likely doesn’t care all that much about resulting slander.
In fact, Falk wrote: the “media … [is] unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events [of 9/11].” And that author David Ray Griffin is of a caliber of “other devoted scholars of high integrity.”
That’s it. Why is the Lobby and its supporters so enraged by Falk’s rather banal comments?
The truth will set you free. How about the editorial boards of The Nation and The Progressive where Falk has long served? When will the statements of support come out? Falk’s story is an excellent candidate for The Progressive editor Matthew Rothschild’s exellent McCarthyism Watch. [To contact Matt Rothschild about Richard Falk.]
Falk’s lifetime commitment to the truth puts him beyond the reach of McCarthyite slanderers and cowards who see Falk and other human rights activists and truth-tellers as betraying the cause—that is, America and Israel right or wrong and don’t make waves. Liars cannot erase a lifetime with one lie. It’s been tried with Helen Thomas and it failed.
So what’s the hubbub that has U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, demanding that Falk step down from his UN position and saying, “In my view, Mr. Falk’s latest commentary [a paragraph on the media and 9/11] is so noxious that it should finally be plain to all that he should no longer continue in his position on behalf of the U.N.”? (Reuters, Charbonneau)
Falk’s Blog January 11, 2011 Commentary [Full text posted below]
Turns out Falk has the temerity to suggest that the mainstream media refused to accept “well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the [9/11] events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials.” (Reuters, Charbonneau)
We thought this was axiomatic. But the American Jewish Committee and various crusaders for truth in the U.S. Congress want Falk fired.
The 9/11 Commission member and staff is composed of the sort of insiders Washington elites wanted on the blue-ribbon committee to prevent accountability and disclosure to the American people 0f what their government knew and when its many agencies knew it.
Remember when George W. Bush made his over-the-top appointment of Henry Kissinger to the 9/11 commission in late November 2002. (CounterPunch, December 17, 2002; Leon) Even then those—like the 9/11 victims’ families—who doubted the would-be chair Kissinger’s commitment to investigate the truth of the events leading up to 9/11 were smeared as conspiracy theorists and un-American radicals.
Kissinger’s appointment as chair was withdrawn as too obvious a choice for a cover-up. And Kissinger gave away the store on the Lou Dobbs Moneyline show (CNN, December 16, 2002) in a laugh-a-minute interview excerpted below. Said Kissinger:
I hope that everybody has his partisanship out of his system now. And that people remember that this [9/11] was an event that was totally unexpected to the American public; that it came from a direction that nobody had ever thought of. And that it was the first attack on the continental United States … . (Dobbs quickly interrupts)
As for Falk, here is his commentary crime:
The arguments swirling around the 9/11 attacks are emblematic of these issues [of secrecy in government]. What fuels suspicions of conspiracy is the reluctance to address the sort of awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations that David Ray Griffin (and other devoted scholars of high integrity) have been documenting in book after book ever since his authoritative The New Pearl Harbor in 2004 (updated in 2008). What may be more distressing than the apparent cover up is the eerie silence of the mainstream media, unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials. Is this silence a manifestation of fear or co-option, or part of an equally disturbing filter of self-censorship? Whatever it is, the result is the withering away of a participatory citizenry and the erosion of legitimate constitutional government. The forms persist, but the content is missing.
Did we miss something? What’s the problem here?
Of course, the official 9/11 version of events is a lie.
As the great journalist I.F. Stone once wrote: “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.”
Falk knows this truism about governments; most everyone does. He dare speaks this truth? Thank you, Richard Falk.
Regarding David Ray Griffin, I am going to make a point to read:
Interrogating the Arizona Killings from a Safe Distance
by Richard Falk, Jan. 11, 2011
I spent a year in Sweden a few years after the assassination of Olaf Palmein 1986, the controversial former prime minister of the country who at the time of his death was serving as a member of the Swedish cabinet. He was assassinated while walking with his wife back to their apartment in the historic part of the city after attending a nearby movie. It was a shocking event in a Sweden that had prided itself on moderateness in politics and the avoidance of involvement in the wars of the twentieth century. A local drifter, with a history of alcoholism, was charged and convicted of the crime, but many doubts persisted, including on the part of Ms. Palme who analogized her situation to that of Coretta King who never believed the official version of her martyred husband’s death.
I had a particular interest in this national traumatic event as my reason for being in Sweden was a result of an invitation to be the Olaf Palme Professor, a rotating academic post given each year to a foreign scholar, established by the Swedish Parliamentas a memorial to their former leader. (after the Social Democratic Party lost political control in Sweden this professorship was promptly defunded, partly because Palme was unloved by conservatives and partly because of a neoliberal dislike for public support of such activities)
In the course of my year traveling around Sweden I often asked those whom I met what was their view of the assassination, and what I discovered was that the responses told me more about them than it did about the public event. Some thought it was a dissident faction in the Swedish security forces long angered by Palme’s neutralist policies, some believed it was resentment caused by Palme’s alleged engineering of Swedish arms sales to both sides in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, some believed it was the CIAin revenge for Palme’s neutralism during the Cold War, some believed it could have criminals in the pay of business tycoons tired of paying high taxes needed to maintain the Swedish maximalist version of a welfare state, and there were other theories as well. What was common to all of these explanations was the lack of evidence that might connect the dots. What people believed happened flowed from their worldview rather than the facts of the event—a distrust of the state, especially its secret operations, or a strong conviction that special interests hidden from view were behind prominent public events of this character.
In a way, this process of reflection is natural, even inevitable, but it leads to faulty conclusions. We tend to process information against the background of our general worldview and understanding, and we do this all the time as an efficient way of coping with the complexity of the world combined with our lack of time or inclination to reach conclusions by independent investigation. The problem arises when we confuse this means of interpreting our experience with an effort to provide an explanation of a contested public event. There are, to be sure, conspiracies that promote unacknowledged goals, and enjoy the benefit of government protection. We don’t require WikiLeaks to remind us not to trust governments, even our own, and others that seem in most respects to be democratic and law-abiding. And we also by now should know that governments (ab)use their authority to treat awkward knowledge as a matter of state secrets, and criminalize those who are brave enough to believe that the citizenry needs to know the crimes that their government is committing with their trust and their tax dollars.
The arguments swirling around the 9/11 attacks are emblematic of these issues. What fuels suspicions of conspiracy is the reluctance to address the sort of awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations that David Ray Griffin(and other devoted scholars of high integrity) have been documenting in book after book ever since his authoritative The New Pearl Harbor in 2004 (updated in 2008). What may be more distressing than the apparent cover up is the eerie silence of the mainstream media, unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials. Is this silence a manifestation of fear or cooption, or part of an equally disturbing filter of self-censorship? Whatever it is, the result is the withering away of a participatory citizenry and the erosion of legitimate constitutional government. The forms persist, but the content is missing.
This brings me to the Arizona shootings, victimizing both persons apparently targeted for their political views and random people who happened to be there for one reason or another, innocently paying their respects to a congresswoman meeting constituents outside a Tucson supermarket. As with the Palme assassination, the most insistent immediate responses come from the opposite ends of the political spectrum, both proceeding on presuppositions rather than awaiting evidence.
On one side are those who say that right-wing hate speech and affection for guns were clearly responsible, while Tea Party ultra-conservatives and their friends reaffirm their rights of free speech, denying that there is any connection between denouncing their adversaries in the political process and the violent acts of a deranged individual seemingly acting on his own. If we want to be responsible in our assessments, we must restrain our political predispositions, and get the evidence. Let us remember that what seems most disturbing about the 9/11 controversy is the widespread aversion by government and media to the evidence that suggests, at the very least, the need for an independent investigation that proceeds with no holds barred.
Such an investigation would contrast with the official ‘9/11 Commission’ that proceeded with most holds barred. What has been already disturbing about the Arizona incident are these rival rushes to judgment without bothering with evidence. Such public irresponsibility polarizes political discourse, making conversation and serious debate irrelevant.
There is one more issue raised, with typical candor and innocence, by the filmmaker, Michael Moore. If a Muslim group has published a list of twenty political leaders in this country, and put crosshairs of a gun behind their pictures, is there any doubt that the Arizona events would be treated as the work of a terrorist,, and the group that had pre-identified such targets would be immediately outlawed as a terrorist organization. Many of us, myself included, fervently hoped, upon hearing the news of the shootings, that the perpetrator of this violence was neither a Muslim nor a Hispanic, especially an illegal immigrant. Why? Because we justly feared the kind of horrifying backlash that would have been probably generated by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, and their legion of allies. Now that the apparent perpetrator is a young white American, the talk from the hate mongers, again without bothering with evidence, is of mental disorder and sociopathology. This is faith-based pre-Enlightenment ‘knowledge.’
What must we learn from all of this? Don’t connect dots without evidence. Don’t turn away as soon as the words ‘conspiracy theory’ are uttered, especially if the evidence does point away from what the power-wielders want us to believe. Don’t link individual wrongdoing, however horrific, to wider religious and ethnic identities. We will perish as a species if we don’t learn soon to live together better on our beautiful, globalizing, and imperiled planet.
Update: The level of McCarthyite hysteria directed at Richard Falk is astonishing. ”UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s office condemned Richard Falk, a retired Princeton professor and a member of the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, for questioning in a recent blog posting” the official version about the 9/11 terror attacks. … The secretary-general’s spokesman, Vijay Nambiar, wrote that Falk’s remarks were “an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who died in the attack.” (Horn, Jerusalem Post)
January 27, 2011
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular |
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Today, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt announced their decision to join the mass protest in the country tomorrow. This is huge. The MB is far and away the largest force in Egypt’s opposition. It has pursued a determinedly nonviolent path for nearly 30 years now– though that has not prevented the Mubarak regime from engaging in a sustained campaign of often horrendously abusive repression against its leaders and many of its cadres. The MB’s leaders have responded to the repression by sticking to a political course that is very conservative and non-confrontational. Often, in recent years, they have been criticized by members of other movements or even younger members of their own for not joining in or giving any support to the various waves of street protests or labor activity that have erupted around the country.
But now, they are joining in. This could very well mean the end of the Mubarak regime. Which has, of course, been the central pillar of the US-Israeli imperium in the region ever since the 1979 signing of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty.
I do not rule out the possibility that Mubarak and his people may try to cut a last-minute deal with the MB, in a last attempt to avoid the humiliating fate of his Tunisian friend, former Pres. Z. ben Ali. Or, that the MB’s leaders may be open to such a deal. Actually, I think the MB would be more open to discussing such a deal than Mubarak would be, to offering it. After all, for the guy who has been Pharaoh of all the Egyptians for 30 years now, and whose family and hangers-on have all profited very nicely thank-you from their control of the country’s economy, the idea of cutting a deal with these stern and powerful contenders for power must seem very threatening. Perhaps just flying to Saudi Arabia or Morocco while sending his son to watch over the bank accounts in Zurich would seem more attractive for an old guy now certainly ready to enjoy his “retirement”?
He and his American advisers probably have a few other ideas and/or tricks up their sleeves.
For now, the word from Washington seems– realistically– to be one of trying to urge Mubarak’s security forces not to use live fire against the protesters. That is certainly very welcome.
I imagine that Mubarak, the Americans, and maybe even the Israelis have networks inside Egyptian society that they might be tempted to activate, to act as agents provocateurs and undertake those kinds of acts that might, in the view of some, “justify” an escalation in the use of force by the Amn al-Merkezi riot police– or even, the intervention of the army.
It is not entirely clear, though, that in a situation of massive unrest, the regime could rely on the army.
Also, the acts of agents provocateurs can only really be successful in a situation where the opposition is ill-organized and/or lacks discipline. If the MB does bring its heft onto the streets tomorrow, they will bring correspondingly massive amounts of organization and discipline.
* * *
What changes might we see if an MB-dominated or heavily MB-influenced government emerges in Cairo? Would such a government “immediately” revoke the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979– a step that has been part of the MB’s political program, ever since the program was first promulgated? Not necessarily. But the Cairo government’s policy on all (other) matters Palestinian would be very different from today. No longer would it merely act as the cat’s-paw of Israel and Washington in repressing Gaza, supporting a broad range of activities to undercut and destroy Hamas, and staying quite silent internationally on Israel’s many gross transgressions in the OPTs.
But (gasp!) such a deviation from the US-Israeli line might result– almost certainly would result– in the US Congress cutting off the $2.3 billion $1.55 billion in aid that it sends to Egypt every year! Big deal. The vast majority of that aid never benefitted real Egyptians. Instead, it went to prop up the very same security forces whose main purpose has been to oppress them.
* * *
By the way, the MB in Jordan is also calling for its supporters to participate in the popular protests there, after Friday prayers tomorrow. And Mahmoud Abbas is on the ropes. Good luck, Israel’s “peace partners” in the region, eh?
* * *
I do not expect the US-Israeli imperium that has held sway over the whole of the Mashreq (Arab east) region– with the exception of Syria– for the past 40 years to disappear quickly, easily, or without putting up a fight. But after watching the region fairly closely for all these years I find the hollowness of the imperium now that it is being challenged to be quite notable.
There is an important confluence of events right now:
* The US’s so-called “peace process”, that has been the cover and excuse for all sorts of misdeeds for most of the past 40 years, has now been revealed as consisting, over the past 15-plus years, only of a US attempt to support Israel in all its ventures, including its colonial aggrandizement and its systematic use of repression in the OPTs, and its recourse to periodic wars of aggression against its neighbors. Ever since the killing of Rabin in 1995 (and perhaps before then) there has been no peace in the peace “process.” That has been made clear for all to see.* The degree of over-reach of the US military both within the Middle East and in Afghanistan has been made clear for all to see, both in the region and beyond it. As I (but woefully few other Americans) argued forcefully back in 2002 and early 2003, Pres. Bush’s decision to wilfully and quite unjustifiedly invade Iraq was a “bridge too far” for the country. It brought about a situation in which our country is now financially in a deep, deep hole; in which the credibility of US commitments to international law or values such as respect for national independence and the “consent of the governed” were speedily revealed as hollow; and even the ability of the US “model” to bring about fair and accountable governance was shown to be nonexistent… All this, at the cost of the enormous hardships and cruelty visited upon the Iraqi people.
* And then, finally, there is the “new” media. As I have remarked numerous times before, the development of border-crossing means of direct communication and the inability of the imperial governors to completely monopolize the discourse nationally or internationally means that the 21st century is very different from the heyday of imperialism back in the 19th century.
* * *
I think this also needs underlining: the degree to which today, in 2011, the United States is incapable of offering any kind of an attractive “model” to the peoples of the Arab world. For a long time, prior to 1970, the U.S. did offer such a model. It presented itself as– and was widely seen in the region as– anti-colonialist, a supporter of national liberation movements, generous, good at solving the problems of socio-economic development, the author of good ideas on tricky issues of political accountability and good governance, an upholder of human rights, etc.
No longer. (See “Iraq”, above.)
* * *
Another, albeit minor, aspect of the imperium’s current hollowness is the absence from the scene of the third significant Arab pillar of it: Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s diplomacy has always had an episodic, slightly elusive quality. But at some stages it has played a significant role: in supporting the US war against the Soviets in Afghanistan; in brokering the Taef Agreement for Lebanon in 1989; in spearheading the Arab Peace Peace Plan offer to Israel, of 2002…
Well, that last one got speedily broken off at the knees by the imperium, didn’t it?
And now, where are the Saudis? Can the monarch not be persuaded to intervene (somehow!) and deploy some of his billions to try to “save” the Mubarak or Hashemite regimes?
No, for a number of reasons. First, since the king and crown prince have both suddenly run up against the limits of medical and organ-replacement technology, the princes are all in the middle of their own succession struggle. Second, quite a lot of them– probably, the majority– are so alienated from Washington by its clear Zionist tilt over recent years that they would not be inclined to help even if there were no succession struggle to attend to. Third– what plan is it they would be supposed to be supporting, anyway?? There is no discernible plan.
* * *
What happens to Israel if the “shield” that Mubarak, the Jordanian king, and Mahmoud Abbas have all provided to it for so long suddenly disappears?
That is a big question. It is very, very far from being the only big question– or even, the biggest of the many questions that are out there.
After all, the US’s sway over most of the Middle East until now has been a huge factor contributing to the US’s worldwide political position. Because of this, the rapid retraction of US power from the Middle East that we will be seeing over the coming two years will certainly have ramifications for US power at the global level.
I shall engage here in three seconds of sympathy for Pres. Obama. I mean, how unfair is it that he gets to be the president who has to preside over a retraction of US power spurred to a large degree by the decision his predecessor made in 2002-03 to launch a war that Obama himself clearly opposed at that time?
On the other hand, Obama did not have to continue and indeed intensify the clear pro-Zionist partisanship that GWB (and before him, Clinton) had manifested– which is what he did. That was a choice Obama made. He could have made different– and much, much wiser– choices on the core issues regarding the Palestine Question. He could have reframed the issue from the beginning as one of fairness, decency, human rights, and international law– and he could have spoken seriously and directly to the American people, using the unique “bully pulpit” that the presidency provides, about the need for our country to pursue a policy based on these important values. But no. He chose not to do that. Instead, he simply caved to the very short-term, myopic, Rahm Emanuel/Dennis Ross view that he needed above all to appease the always insatiable attack dogs (both Jewish and Christian) of pro-Israeli activism within this country.
So that pro-Zionist partisanship is now majorly helping to drag our country down. So be it. Let all Americans know and understand what is happening, and what gross follies (if not, crimes) have been committed by our leaders in the region, in our name.
* * *
There will be major change in the Middle East. Though the US-Israeli imperium may find a way to survive in the region beyond tomorrow, there is no way it can survive in its present form beyond the end of 2012.
And you know what? That will be a good thing for the vast majority of Americans and our country as a whole. After the imperium is brought to an end, it will be a whole lot easier for Americans to have good relations with both Israelis and the peoples of the Arab world– and they, with us– than it has been for the past 15 years. Ending the imperium is not a recipe for any kind of “clash of civilizations”. It is, rather, an essential prerequisite for being able to build a decent relationship based on fairness, mutual respect, and shared commitment to the values that all of us hold dear.
January 27, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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An American employee of the US consulate in the Pakistani city of Lahore has shot dead two people who were on a motorcycle, authorities said.
“The American national told us he was driving his vehicle and stopped at a traffic signal. He saw motorcycle riders and one pulled out a pistol. The man told us he then pulled out his pistol and fired in self-defense,” Lahore police chief, Aslam Tarin, told AFP.
“A double murder case has been registered against the American,” Rana Sanaullah, Punjab provincial law minister, told reporters. “It is clearly written in the case that the American shot dead two young men.”
The US embassy in Pakistan has confirmed that the American man involved is a consular worker.
Another Pakistani man was also killed shortly after the incident when a car from the US consulate in Lahore hit two pedestrians at the scene of the shooting.
The fatal crash resulted in a separate crime being placed against an employee of the consulate.
Scores of people took to the streets after the incidents in protest, setting tires on fire at the scene, blocking escape by the Americans.
In order to squelch potential tensions between the two countries, US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters, “There’s a Pakistan investigation [and] we will cooperate fully; we’ll work as hard as we can to explain that to the Pakistani people.”
Police are continuing their investigation while the American is held in custody.
January 27, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular |
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It has long been known that following Hamas’ victory in Palestinian Authority legislative elections in January 2006, Israel and its allies, particularly the United States, worked to undermine the Hamas-led government. Their aim was to restore the authority of the Fatah movement led by Mahmoud Abbas, which had controlled the PA since it was created in 1994 after the Oslo accords were signed the previous year.
In February 2007, after months of clashes between their supporters, Fatah and Hamas agreed to form a “national unity government” headed by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Enraged by this, the US government hatched a plot, along with Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, to engage Hamas militarily in Gaza. But the plot failed and in June 2007 Hamas turned the tables and overran Dahlan’s US-supported militias.
Until now, the most comprehensive and essential account of these events was contained in David Rose’s April 2008 Vanity Fair article, “The Gaza Bombshell.”
An initial reading of the Palestine Papers supports Rose’s account and provides details of hitherto unknown secret, high-level “Quadripartite” meetings among Israeli, American, Egyptian and Palestinian officials whose explicit goal appears to have been to undermine the national unity government. The essential point here is that part of the PA — loyal to Mahmoud Abbas and backed by the US — was actively plotting with Israel and its allies against the legitimately-constituted unity government.
Two documents in the Palestine Papers contain minutes of these meetings. The first is dated 11 March 2007 and titled “Quadripartite Meeting of the Gaza Security Committee.”
The Palestinians in attendance were Dahlan, Jamal Quaeid, Rashid Abu Shbak, Basil Jaber and one more whose name has been redacted by Al Jazeera. The American team was headed by US Army Lt. General Keith Dayton, the Israeli team by General Amos Gilad and the Egyptian team by one General Sharif.
This first meeting was intended to establish the “quadirpartite forum” and lay down “rules of engagement.” Firstly it was agreed that only Gaza would be discussed, not the West Bank.
Secrecy was to be the top priority. According to the rules of engagement, “All parties made very clear that nothing discussed in the meeting should be shared with anyone outside the forum. All parties made clear that any leakages would greatly hurt the forum and all those participating. All parties made clear that any leakages would immediately result in the cessation of the use of this forum and the projects being aborted. Also not to be shared is the fact that the forum exists, nor should who is attending the meetings be leaked. The press will not be involved.”
The minutes also note that “The forum is backed by the highest political echelons of each government represented.” In terms of substance, the record notes that “The implications of the national unity government were discussed by all parties in general terms.”
The Israeli team then presented their “perception of the security situation in Gaza, focusing on Hamas activities.” The Israelis, according to the minutes, “highlighted the use of tunnels for all purposes including storage and meeting areas, the import/smuggling of advanced weaponry.” The Israeli team alleged that Hamas fighters were being trained in Iran and that Hamas was attempting to “emulate the Hizballah model, which in turn is based on the Iranian model.” The Israelis asserted that “The main strategic goal of Hamas is to take over the PA then the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization]. Most Palestinians do not adhere to this Hamas ideology.”
Referring to these and other Israeli positions, the minutes note that “The Palestinians agreed that this may be part of the analysis” — an indication of complete agreement that Hamas was the common enemy.
The second “Quadripartite Security Meeting,” held on 3 April 2007, focused on the political situation and stopping the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. Lt. General Dayton observed that “The purpose of these efforts is to prevent Hamas from using the NUG [National Unity Government] as a means of gaining more powers and building up more arms.”
He also advised the Palestinians: “If you can keep Hamas from overwhelming the PLO forces, and keep Fatah together, until Hamas is no longer an attractive option — you prevent it from winning militarily until the next elections.” Dayton clearly saw his role as preparing Fatah for military confrontation with Hamas.
During a discussion of Egypt’s role, Israeli General Amos Gilad had high praise for Egypt’s repressive state security services. “I always believed in the abilities of the Egyptian Intelligence service [GIS],” he said. “It keeps order and security among 70 millions — 20 millions in one city — this is a great achievement, for which you deserve a medal. It is the best asset for the middle east.”
The Palestinian team gave a PowerPoint presentation of its plans to destroy the Gaza tunnels which included suggestions to destroy Palestinian homes near the border wall — as Israel had previously done. At one point Dayton asked Palestinian officer Rashid Abu Shbak “When Israel tells you about a tunnel, what do you do?” Abu Shbak replied, “In the past there was a good level of cooperation. But recently it is inadequate. Despite that, we deal seriously with every information they give us.”
Overall, many documents among the Palestine Papers indicate a deep “security” relationship — even codependency — between Israel, the occupying power, and the Palestinian Authority, supposedly representing the occupied. The “Quadripartite” forum sheds new light on the joint effort to overthrow the Hamas-led national unity government.
Yet there also appear to be notable gaps in the Palestine Papers. Hamas routed the US-backed PA forces in Gaza between 7-14 June 2007. The minutes and documents immediately before, during and after that period are curiously silent about the momentous events in Gaza. It is difficult to believe that the Hamas takeover would not have been the primary concern of all the actors so this absence suggests that whoever leaked the documents to Al Jazeera has been careful to hold back some material.
There do not appear to be any other records of the Quadripartite Forum. Is this because the meetings ceased or because no more minutes were leaked? Is it because amid the disarray Dahlan and Abu Shbak fled from Gaza to the West Bank and were discredited?
As revealing as the Palestine Papers are, clearly there is still much we don’t know. But one thing is certain: the divide and rule tactics used by outside powers, and the willingness of some Palestinians to go along with them, have been debilitating to the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse
January 27, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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America has never met an Arab despot it couldn’t coddle. Before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Reagan and Bush had a nice working relationship with Saddam Hussein. In fact, when the Iraqi dictator invaded Iran, they went so far as to supply him with chemical weapons and intelligence. After ‘liberating’ Kuwait, the powers that be in Washington had no qualms about re-installing the Emir as the absolute ruler of his people.
Ben Ali counted on the enthusiastic support of Washington until the Tunisian people revolted and ran him out of town. The Tunisian dictator took refuge in Saudi Arabia – another one of those ‘moderate’ Arab oil plantations that Washington showers with affection.
In his recent State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama declared that “the United States stands with the people of Tunisia and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.” He should have qualified that by noting that exceptions would be made for Egyptians. A day earlier, Hillary Rodham Clinton was reassuring Mubarak’s regime that it would continue to support the Egyptian government in its confrontation with pro-democracy demonstrators. The way Hillary sees things – “Egypt’s government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the needs of Egyptians.” I suppose those needs couldn’t possibly include democracy. After thirty years of dictatorship, Mubarak is feeding Egyptians subsidized bread. What more could they possibly ask for?
To be fair, America is not the only Western country that romances Middle Eastern despots. Three days before Ben Ali’s police state apparatus crumbled, France offered the Tunisian mafia chief assistance in putting down the uprising. So don’t just blame Washington; even the folks who invented liberty and egalitarianism don’t want the Arabs to be free.
Let it never be said that the gurus at the State Department and the National Security Council are inconsistent. The Washington foreign policy establishment cringes at the thought of Arabs lining up at ballot boxes. They’ve seen where that leads. Free elections in Algeria, Gaza, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq have all resulted in victories for the dreaded Islamic parties.
Mindful of that, the neo-con wizards had a plan worked out to circumvent any democratic hassles after the ‘liberation’ of Iraq. To avoid the risks of free elections, they set up the Iraqi Governing Council as an interim government. All twenty-five members of the council were appointed by Paul Bremer, the newly crowned emperor of Baghdad. Many of his appointees were Iraqi exiles like the infamous Ahmed Chalabi, the man groomed to be Iraq’s velvet-gloved dictator. When queried about the democracy promised by the American invaders, Bremer was dismissive. He famously said “elections that are held too early can be destructive.”
Even after the events in Tunisia, it’s unlikely that we will see any changes in America’s hostility towards political reform in the Middle East. Take Hillary at her word. The United States will continue to support the despotic regimes in the Middle East. It’s not just a matter of habit or perceived strategic and economic interests. It goes much deeper than that. There is a political culture that is deeply entrenched in the State Department, The national security apparatus, the Washington think tanks and the media. Simply put; Washington’s political establishment despises Muslims in general and Arabs in particular and they distrust their electoral choices.
When it comes to the Middle East, Washington is a Stalinist echo chamber where anti-Arab rhetoric has its rewards. Part of the reason is that the State Department and Congress are Israeli occupied territories. Regardless of who occupies the White House, one has to pass a Likudnik loyalty test to land a job as doorman at Foggy Bottom.
Just take a look at the resume of Jeffrey Feltman, the American diplomat dispatched to Tunis to sort things out. He’s a protégé of Martin Indyk, the Israeli lobbyist who was recruited directly from AIPAC to serve as American ambassador to Israel but never failed to perform his duties as an Israeli envoy to the State Department. On any policy issue pertaining to the Middle East, Israeli lobby operatives have the last word.
It’s no secret that committed Likudniks like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith were the driving force behind America’s trillion dollar misadventure in Iraq or that the same dark forces are braying for a confrontation with Iran. They even consider Turkey a mortal threat. American blood and treasure are of no consequence to these committed and disciplined Zionist ideologues. They march to the beat of an Israeli drum and as long as they remain entrenched in the State Department and the National Security Council, the essential acid test for American Foreign policy will be “Is it good for Israel?”
So take a moment and ponder what all the pundits and wizards in Washington have not lamented about the Tunisian revolt. Saddam could have very easily gone that way of Ben Ali. At the time of the invasion and due to the effectiveness of the no-fly zones, the Iraqi dictator’s security forces barely held sway over a third of the country and Saddam was so insecure about the sentiments of his people that he couldn’t risk sleeping in the same bed for two nights running. American and British planes bombed Iraq at will. I’m not only certain that Bush and Blair knew that Saddam had no WMDs; I’ve asserted before that if they really thought he had them, they wouldn’t have risked an invasion.
For all practical measures, Saddam was the mayor of Baghdad – a defanged delusional tiger who spent his last days in power penning love stories. Saddam was contained by brutal sanctions and the United States had already made contacts with Iraqi generals who agreed to stand down and offer no resistance. When he finally realized the end was near, Saddam used back channels and offered every conceivable concession to avoid an American invasion. Of course, after taking control of the country, the neo-cons stabbed the generals in the back and disbanded the army because of their obsession with de-Ba’athication. Absent American military intervention, Iraqis might very well have managed to remove their despotic leader and resurrect a secular republic. It wouldn’t have been perfect but it would certainly not have turned into a failed theocratic state in Iran’s sphere of influence.
At the cost of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties, 4,500 American fatalities, two million refugees that include half of Iraq’s pre-war Christian population and a trillion dollars borrowed from the Chinese, George Bush rolled out the red carpet for Iranian allied sectarian parties. Why? Because his advisers – Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith – thought it would be good for Israel. The outcomes in Iraq obviously didn’t match the Likudniks’ wet dreams but had they removed their ideological blinders, the war party might have been more sober in doing their risk assessments and spared Americans a disastrous foreign policy fiasco and the enduring enmity of tens of millions of people in the Middle East and beyond.
So there should be no confusion about Hillary’s stand on Mubarak as opposed to Obama’s latent support of the Tunisian revolutionaries. The inconsistencies are in perfect harmony with the Israeli lobby’s traditional hostility towards the Arab people. It is a hostility that has very little to do with America’s national interests and everything to do with the Likudnik architects of America’s foreign policy in the region.
Make no mistake, the Arabs will soon reach the mountain top and taste the sweet wine of liberty but it will be not thanks to Hillary, Obama or the Israeli Lobby.
January 26, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel |
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As Palestinians bicker over who has sold out and who should step down following the release of the Palestine Papers, another separate but still relevant thought occurred to me the other day as I was crossing the infamous Qalandiya checkpoint on my way home. If there is one constant thread in this insane situation where accusations and conspiracy theories run wild it is that the Israelis have already cemented a system of segregation in place regardless of what scandalous reports or documents are leaked to the public. For Israel, whether the Palestinian leadership is shamed before its people or not is of no concern. For Israel, the Palestinians are right where it wants them.
I’m wondering how many people actually contemplate the many divisions Israel has categorized us under. In the occupied territories, there are the “purebred” Palestinians – those who carry green ID cards and passports (I use this term loosely), who are, for all practical purposes, at the bottom of the food chain. That is, if we exclude the truly unlucky souls isolated in the Gaza Strip. West Bankers must cross Israeli checkpoints even to go from one Palestinian city to the next; they must obtain visas for just about any country they wish to travel to save Jordan and Malaysia. They cannot enter Jerusalem or Israel without an Israeli permit and, if they are unlucky enough to live close to a Jewish settlement, to a bypass road, a military outpost or the separation wall – all Israeli presences in the West Bank – then they are under constant threat of land confiscation or home demolitions.
At Qalandiya checkpoint, for those few West Bankers who do have an Israeli permit to cross into Jerusalem, the line to cross is always long. For one, West Bankers are only allowed to cross from three of the 11 or so checkpoints around Jerusalem and must always do so on foot. This brings us to Class B of Israel’s categorization, the Jerusalemites.
Carrying blue ID cards, these are the Palestinians who were included in the national consensus after the 1967 War and after Israel unilaterally annexed occupied east Jerusalem. One rung up from the West Bankers in terms of travel restrictions, Palestinian Jerusalemites must also get down at Qalandiya checkpoint and walk through if they are traveling by public transportation. There are exceptions though for Jerusalemites. Mothers with small children and the elderly are allowed to stay on the bus (West Bankers don’t enjoy this luxury). And if they have a car, they can also drive through the inspection (if they have a good hour or so to waste waiting for their turn). Still, Jerusalemites, who have permanent residency in the city but not citizenship, can travel between their city and Ramallah without a permit. They can also travel abroad through Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, another luxury denied to West Bankers, who are forced to cross the Allenby Bridge to Jordan.
Jerusalemites can cross the bridge as well. But again, Israel has made a distinction between them and West Bankers at the crossing too. There are separate entrances for those with West Bank IDs and those with Jerusalem IDs, which makes it a bit tricky when, like myself, one parent is a West Banker while the children are Jerusalemites.
There are even more categories Israel has corralled us into, like Palestinians who live inside of Israel. Israel likes to call them “Israeli-Arabs” a term I reject and resent. These are Palestinians who were somehow able to resist expulsion, massacre and fleeing during the 1948 War and remained after the State of Israel was established. They are Palestinians first, Arabs second. Unlike those who live in the West Bank, their very identity is being challenged on a daily basis with attempts by Israel’s establishment to either annihilate it altogether or at least neutralize it and mesh it into an innocuous version of one more minority living in the Jewish state.
In any case, let’s not forget another category Israel created and enforced upon us with a vengeance, that of Palestinian refugees. This category, perhaps the most painful, has been an open wound for all Palestinians since the creation of the problem after the 1948 war. Although over 60 years have passed since then and refugees have made their homes (however bleak) in camps throughout the Arab world or elsewhere, most will still stubbornly hold on to this classification when asked. Not because they are so pleased with being called refugees but the relinquishing of the title means the relinquishing of the right to return, which they are not willing to do.
It is almost amazing that such a small nation – in all, the Palestinians everywhere comprise approximately 10 million people – could be dissected and divided into so many groups. But again, Israel knows what it’s doing. Enforcing a different set of rules for each category is one method to conquer and divide – it is much easier to oppress sub-groups than one united and cohesive people.
And here lies the crux. Palestinians themselves must not be sucked into this evil scheme. If anything is to be learned from the now infamous Palestine Papers it is that Israel is succeeding brilliantly in its grand plan of turning us against ourselves. We see no rebuttal from Israeli leaders to the information from the leaked documents. They don’t care. They are happy with the status quo. And, unlike us, they are united and unrelenting in their Zionist dream of a Jewish state for the Jewish people. We can actually learn quite a bit from them.
Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.
January 26, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular |
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Israel often claims it has no partner for peace. (Omar Rashidi/MaanImages)
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For more than a decade, since the collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000, the mantra of Israeli politics has been the same: “There is no Palestinian partner for peace.”
This week, the first of hundreds of leaked confidential Palestinian documents confirmed the suspicions of a growing number of observers that the rejectionists in the peace process are to be found on the Israeli, not Palestinian, side.
Some of the most revealing papers, jointly released by AlJazeera television and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, date from 2008, a relatively hopeful period in recent negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
At the time, Ehud Olmert was Israel’s prime minister and had publicly committed himself to pursuing an agreement on Palestinian statehood. He was backed by the United States administration of George W. Bush, which had revived the peace process in late 2007 by hosting the Annapolis conference.
In those favorable circumstances, the papers show, Israel spurned a set of major concessions the Palestinian negotiating team offered over the following months on the most sensitive issues in the talks.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, has tried unconvincingly to deny the documents’ veracity, but has not been helped by the failure of Israeli officials to come to his aid.
According to the documents, the most significant Palestinian compromise — or “sell-out,” as many Palestinians are calling it — was on Jerusalem.
During a series of meetings over the summer of 2008, Palestinian negotiators agreed to Israel’s annexation of large swaths of East Jerusalem, including all but one of the city’s Jewish settlements and parts of the Old City itself.
It is difficult to imagine how the resulting patchwork of Palestinian enclaves in East Jerusalem, surrounded by Jewish settlements, could ever have functioned as the capital of the new state of Palestine.
At the earlier Camp David talks, according to official Israeli documents leaked to the Haaretz daily in 2008, Israel had proposed something very similar in Jerusalem: Palestinian control over what were then termed territorial “bubbles.”
In the later talks, the Palestinians also showed a willingness to renounce their claim to exclusive sovereignty over the Old City’s flashpoint of the Haram al-Sharif, the sacred compound that includes the al-Aqsa mosque and is flanked by the Western Wall. An international committee overseeing the area was proposed instead.
This was probably the biggest concession of all — control of the Haram was the issue that “blew up” the Camp David talks, according to an Israeli official who was present.
Saeb Erekat, the PLO’s chief negotiator, is quoted promising Israel “the biggest Yerushalayim in history” — using the Hebrew word for Jerusalem — as his team effectively surrendered Palestinian rights enshrined in international law.
The concessions did not end there, however. The Palestinians agreed to land swaps to accommodate 70 percent of the half a million Jewish settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and to forgo the rights of all but a few thousand Palestinian refugees.
The Palestinian state was also to be demilitarized. In one of the papers recording negotiations in May 2008, Erekat asks Israel’s negotiators: “Short of your jet fighters in my sky and your army on my territory, can I choose where I secure external defense?” The Israeli answer was an emphatic “No.”
Interestingly, the Palestinian negotiators are said to have agreed to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state” — a concession Israel now claims is one of the main stumbling blocks to a deal.
Israel was also insistent that Palestinians accept a land swap that would transfer a small area of Israel into the new Palestinian state along with as many as a fifth of Israel’s 1.4 million Palestinian citizens. This demand echoes a controversial “population transfer” long proposed by Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister.
The Palestine Papers, as they are being called, demand a serious re-evaluation of two lingering — and erroneous — assumptions made by many Western observers about the peace process.
The first relates to the United States’ self-proclaimed role as honest broker. What shines through the documents is the reluctance of US officials to put reciprocal pressure on Israeli negotiators, even as the Palestinian team make major concessions on core issues. Israel’s “demands” are always treated as paramount.
The second is the assumption that peace talks have fallen into abeyance chiefly because of the election nearly two years ago of a right-wing Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu. He has drawn international criticism for refusing to pay more than lip-service to Palestinian statehood.
The Americans’ goal — at least in the early stages of Netanyahu’s premiership — was to strong-arm him into bringing into his coalition Tzipi Livni, leader of the centrist opposition party Kadima. She is still widely regarded as the most credible Israeli advocate for peace.
However, Livni, who was previously Olmert’s foreign minister, emerges in the leaked papers as an inflexible negotiator, dismissive of the huge concessions being made by the Palestinians. At a key moment, she turns down the Palestinians’ offer, after saying: “I really appreciate it.”
The sticking point for Livni was a handful of West Bank settlements the Palestinian negotiators refused to cede to Israel. The Palestinians have long complained that the two most significant — Maale Adumim, outside Jerusalem, and Ariel, near the Palestinian city of Nablus — would effectively cut the West Bank into three cantons, undermining any hopes of territorial contiguity.
Livni’s insistence on holding on to these settlements — after all the Palestinian compromises — suggests that there is no Israeli leader either prepared or able to reach a peace deal — unless, that is, the Palestinians cave in to almost every Israeli demand and abandon their ambitions for statehood.
One of the Palestine Papers quotes an exasperated Erekat asking a US diplomat last year: “What more can I give?”
The man with the answer may be Lieberman, who unveiled his own map of Palestinian statehood this week. It conceded a provisional state on less than half of the West Bank.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
January 25, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular |
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Pinyon and juniper trees, demonized by ranchers, miners and water mining entities, are being eyed by Chinese “biomass” companies with the backing of politicians.
Pinyon Juniper Forest, Nevada. Photo – Katie Fite
Recently the Nevada Pinyon-Juniper Partnership, aided by USDA, set up a conference to discuss pinyon and juniper trees. At the conference were several players in government and business who have an interest in the removal of pinyon and juniper trees in the Great Basin. Bob Abbey, the director of the BLM, attended the meeting.
Most people don’t think of the Great Basin when they think of old growth forests but the pinyon-juniper forests there are ancient forests with several hundred year old trees that provide important habitats and food for many species of birds like pinyon jays, Clark’s nutcrackers, black throated gray warblers, small mammals, nesting raptors. The charismatic seed-caching Clark’s nutcracker faces catastrophic food shortages in the Rockies due to whitebark pine die-off. It relies on large-seeded pines – and the pinyon pine has a superb large seed that was also vital to supporting Native American cultures in the Great Basin.
The refuge provided by these trees are probably the only reason that central Nevada has any elk at all. They are one of the important components that keep the entire Great Basin Ecosystem together because they retain snow later into the year due to their shade and absorb CO2. Their destruction would promote global warming and desertification by making the area hotter and drier.
The history of animosity towards pinyon juniper trees is a long one. As with sagebrush, for many years ranchers have been getting BLM and FS to use our tax dollars to fund removal of p-j forests to promote livestock forage. They recruited the College of Agriculture at the University of Nevada, Reno, to concoct biased science to justify p-j killing projects. Test projects were initiated, but not evaluated, where p-j forests were chained, cut down or burned, that often resulted in unforeseen (to some) effects such as cheatgrass invasion. A false comparison was concocted where researchers claimed that p-j forests should have an open understory like seen in ponderosa pine forests which are subject to frequent repeated fires. Generally p-j forests are subject to small, spotty fires or major stand replacing fires.
By conveniently ignoring the fact that the p-j forests were heavily utilized during the mining days of the 19th century for fueling smelters, ranchers try to promote the false assertion that p-j are “encroaching” into areas where they previously didn’t grow when, in actuality, they are recolonizing areas where they were cut down. Proposals to destroy p-j forests by dragging huge chains between two tractors were made but they were shot down in court by Western Watersheds Project in 2002 so the proponents of p-j thinning have gone back to the drawing board.
Now it is being claimed that p-j are responsible for reductions in sage grouse populations because sage grouse avoid areas with tall structures or trees used by avian predators for perches to prey on them. This has been a very convenient argument because it distracts away from the fact that a century and a half of overgrazing has brought devastating changes in the form of weeds, sagebrush destruction, soil erosion, increased fire frequency, and other habitat degradation to the lower elevation areas that sage grouse depend on. While the ranchers squeeze the lower elevation habitat they are putting pressure on the agencies to kill p-j on higher elevation habitat under the guise of sage grouse “habitat restoration”.
On top of this pressure from the ranchers, foreign mining companies, who have bought up ranches and gained control of a number of grazing allotments, eye the p-j with disdain because the trees are in the way of expansion of existing and new mines. If the trees are cut down under another guise then it is easier to argue that they should be allowed to expand their operations. Another proponent of p-j thinning in Nevada is the water mining Southern Nevada Water Authority who has also bought up ranches and gained control of a number of grazing allotments. They eye the p-j with disdain because they transpire precious water that they want to mine and pipe to water Las Vegas.
Now a new player enters the p-j matrix. With the support of Senator Harry Reid, county commissioners, and ranchers, A-Power, a Chinese company, is pushing to use the p-j for “biomass” to fuel power generating facilities. Nothing could be more unsustainable than using ancient forests of the Great Basin for biomass.
Interestingly, a Chinese windmill assembly plant near Las Vegas is controlled by an entity named RePower that also has curried favor with Reid.
In an effort to move forward with landscape level p-j destruction projects a number of groups are formulating a plan for a 2 million acre “demonstration project” where they would thin the forests using money from the sales of public lands under the authority of the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act or other federal funds that are supposed to be used for sage grouse restoration. This money would then be funneled through the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition which is a non-profit with a history of funding research which supports vegetation killing under the guise of “habitat restoration”. This would be done to reduce federal contracting requirements. As recently as 2008, current BLM director Bob Abbey was a “trustee” of the ENLC.
Great Basin pine nuts are prized, limited harvest occurs, and the value of nut production would far exceed the value of beef that could be produced by the destroyed land.
January 25, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Timeless or most popular | BLM, Bureau of Land Management, Great Basin, Harry Reid, Nevada, Pinyon pine, Southern Nevada Water Authority |
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There have been many critical examinations of New York Times articles on this website, and I’ve had my share of such posts to the point where it has gotten tiresome. But there is literally an endless supply of material. A particularly irksome error appears in today’s paper, in an article by Isabel Kershner on the shocking (!) finding of the Turkel Commission that Israel acted legally in killing nine passengers on the Mavi Marmara. While the Times article is worthy of more in-depth analysis, there is one whopper that stands out above all others:
Israel imposed its maritime blockade on Gaza in January 2009 during its military offensive against Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza. The commission justified the blockade on security grounds, citing a need ‘to prevent weapons, terrorists and money from entering the Gaza Strip, and the need to prevent the departure of terrorists.’
Note how the first sentence is presented as objective fact, that the blockade was imposed in January 2009 during Israel’s attack, thereby supporting the Commission’s claim in the second sentence that the purposes of the blockade were solely military. Anyone paying minimal attention to the Gaza siege knows full well that Israel had been punishing the entire civilian population by severely curtailing the availability of basic goods since at least 2006, including by land or sea. Prior to 2009, there had been several attempts to bring in such civilian goods by sea, with mixed success; some ships were allowed to pass and others were stopped, or even rammed by the Israeli Navy, like the Dignity in late December, 2008.. Where did Kershner get her starting date for the naval blockade? From the Turkel Commission Report itself, which stated in par. 5 of its Summary:
After the Hamas terrorist organization seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, the Government adopted various measures. On January 3, 2009, during Operation ‘Cast Lead,’ Israel imposed a naval blockade on the coastline of the Gaza Strip. . . the Government of Israel imposed the naval blockade on the Gaza Strip for military-security reasons, which mainly concerned the need to prevent weapons, terrorists, and money from entering the Gaza Strip, and the need to prevent the departure of terrorists and additional threats from the Gaza Strip by sea. The naval blockade was not imposed in order to restrict the transfer of humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip or to disrupt the commercial relations of the Gaza Strip. . . .
The naval blockade was imposed on January 3, 2009? What was it called before that date? What transformed an existing “blockade” of land and sea into some other type of “naval blockade” or vice versa? How could Kershner buy the nonsense that the naval blockade was implemented as late as January, 2009, with the goal of keeping weapons out of Gaza? This is not a trivial mistake, but a truly profound one. Israel’s long-standing policy of deliberately restricting a civilian population’s access to food, water, medicines, fuel, books and toys is generally viewed by all but the most cold-hearted as sadistic and cruel, not to mention illegal. There is a vast difference in public perception between keeping out arms and keeping out such basic necessities. In the wake of the Mavi Marmara murders, there was a thoroughly dishonest but reasonably successful campaign to re-cast the blockade as one that was designed to keep out military supplies only. It’s no surprise that the Turkel Commission continued in this effort, but how could Kershner forget what had been a continuing news story for three years before Cast Lead? Of course, if Kershner’s amnesia could have been cured had she glanced at the Ha’aretz article on the Turkel Commission, which accurately records: “The Turkel Commission also determined that Israel’s three-and-a-half year blockade of the Gaza Strip does not break international law.”
This is the way lies become history. This is why so many believe that there were thousands of rockets launched from Lebanon against Israel in 1982 and again in 2000-2006, prompting the two “wars”; that Arafat initiated the Second Intifada of terrorism to win with violence what he failed to win through negotiations; that Israel’s siege of Gaza was to keep out weapons. Every time these factoids are repeated in the newspaper of record and similar MSM outlets, they become more ingrained in the collective memory. Even if Kershner did not deliberately lie, she was inexcusably lazy and careless in simply repeating a critical misrepresentation by the Turkel Commission, rather than accurately reporting an undisputed fact.
January 25, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes |
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