Jewish Peer Attacks Violinist for Israel Apartheid Remark
Anthony Lawson · August 26, 2013
World-renowned violinist Nigel Kennedy has been attacked by Baroness Deech, of Cumnor, for something that he said at a BBC Proms concert, featuring the Palestinian Strings, a group of talented young musicians aged between twelve and twenty-three.
REFERENCES:
Nigel Kennedy plays Spring from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons at the 2013 BBC Proms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDXBnS…
انظرو كيف تعامل النساء-Women in Palestine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aveeY…
Dispatches: Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby Video – Channel 4 UK – Broadcast November 16, 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E70Bw…
Gresham College The Universities: Under Regulation – Baroness Ruth Deech
Published on Apr 24, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sYzVl…
August 26, 2013 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Baroness Deech, Baroness Ruth Deech, BBC, Israel, Nigel Kennedy, Proms | Leave a comment
US Uses Past Crimes to Legalize Future Ones
By Diana Johnstone | Ron Paul Institute | August 26, 2013
The liberal warhawks are groping around for a pretext they can call “legal” for waging war against Syria, and have come up with the 1999 “Kosovo war”.
This is not surprising insofar as a primary purpose of that US/NATO 78-day bombing spree was always to set a precedent for more such wars. The pretext of “saving the Kosovars” from an imaginary “genocide” was as false as the “weapons of mass destruction” pretext for war against Iraq, but the fakery has been much more successful with the general public. Therefore Kosovo retains its usefulness in the propaganda arsenal.
On August 24, the New York Times reported that President Obama’s national security aides are “studying the NATO air war in Kosovo as a possible blueprint for acting without a mandate from the United Nations.” (By the way, the “air war” was not “in Kosovo”, but struck the whole of what was then Yugoslavia, mostly destroying Serbia’s civilian infrastructure and also spreading destruction in Montenegro.)
On Friday, Obama admitted that going in and attacking another country “without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence” raised questions in terms of international law.
According to the New York Times, “Kosovo is an obvious precedent for Mr. Obama because, as in Syria, civilians were killed and Russia had longstanding ties to the government authorities accused of the abuses. In 1999, President Bill Clinton used the endorsement of NATO and the rationale of protecting a vulnerable population to justify 78 days of airstrikes.”
“It’s a step too far to say we’re drawing up legal justifications for an action, given that the president hasn’t made a decision,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations. “But Kosovo, of course, is a precedent of something that is perhaps similar.”
Ivo H. Daalder, a former United States ambassador to NATO, suggests that the administration could argue that the use of chemical weapons in Syria amounts to a grave humanitarian emergency, just as the Clinton administration argued in 1999 that “a grave humanitarian emergency” presented the “international community” with “the responsibility to act”.
This amounts to creative legality worthy of the planet’s number one Rogue State.
An Illegal War as Precedent for More War
The US/NATO war against Yugoslavia, which used unilateral force to break up a sovereign state, detaching the historic Serbian province of Kosovo and transforming it into a US satellite, was clearly in violation of international law.
In May 2000, the distinguished British authority on international law, Sir Ian Brownlie (1936-2010), presented a 16,000-word Memorandum, evaluating the war’s legal status for the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs of the British Parliament.
Brownlie recalled that key provisions of the United Nations Charter state quite clearly that “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
Brownlie added that the alleged right to use force for humanitarian purposes was not compatible with the UN Charter.
During the past decade, the Western powers have invented and promoted a theoretical “right to protect” (R2P) in an effort to get around the UN Charter in order to clear the way for wars whose final purpose is regime change. The use of R2P to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya gave the game away, ensuring Russian and Chinese opposition for any further such manoeuvre in the UN Security Council.
Concerning the Kosovo war, in his Memorandum Professor Brownlie reached the following major conclusions:
– The primary justification for the bombing of Yugoslavia was always the imposition of the NATO plans for the future of Kosovo. It was in this context that the bombing campaign was planned in August 1998.
– The threats of massive air strikes were made in the same context and were first made public in October 1998. Neither the purpose of the planned air strikes nor their implementation related to events on the ground in Kosovo in March 1999.
– The cause of the air strikes was quite simple: given that Yugoslavia had not given in to threats, the threats had to be carried out.
– The legal basis of the action, as presented by the United Kingdom and other NATO States, was at no stage adequately articulated.
– Humanitarian intervention, the justification belatedly advanced by the NATO States, has no place either in the United Nations Charter or in customary international law.
– If the view had been held that the Permanent Members of the Security Council would recognise the need for humanitarian action, then no doubt a resolution would have been sought.
– The intentions of the United States and the United Kingdom included the removal of the Government of Yugoslavia. It is impossible to reconcile such purposes with humanitarian intervention.
– The claim to be acting on humanitarian grounds appears difficult to reconcile with the disproportionate amount of violence involved in the use of heavy ordnance and missiles. The weapons had extensive blast effects and the missiles had an incendiary element. A high proportion of targets were in towns and cities. Many of the victims were women and children. After seven weeks of the bombing at least 1,200 civilians had been killed and 4,500 injured.
– In spite of the references to the need for a peaceful solution to be found in Security Council Resolutions, the public statements of Mrs Albright, Mr Cook, Mr Holbrooke, and others, and the reiterated threats of massive air strikes, make it very clear that no ordinary diplomacy was envisaged.
The “Kosovo treatment”
As a final synopsis, Brownlie wrote a prophetic note on future use of “the Kosovo treatment”:
“The writer has contacts with a great number of diplomats and lawyers of different nationalities. The reaction to the NATO bombing campaign outside Europe and North America has been generally hostile. Most States have problems of separatism and could, on a selective basis, be the objects of Western ‘crisis management’. The selection of crises for the ‘Kosovo’ treatment will depend upon the geopolitical and collateral agenda. It is on this basis, and not a humanitarian agenda, that Yugoslavia is marked out for fragmentation on a racial basis, whilst Russia and Indonesia are not.”
He added: “Forcible intervention to serve humanitarian objectives is a claim which is only open to powerful States to make against the less powerful. The fate of Yugoslavia will have caused considerable damage to the cause of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”
The Brownlie Memorandum to the British Parliament is the most thorough assessment of the legal status of the Kosovo War. It is quite remarkable that the liberal warhawks around Obama talk of using that war as a “legal precedent” for a new war against Syria.
This amounts to saying that a crime committed once becomes a “precedent” to justify the crime being committed the next time.
How Many Times Can You Fool Most of the People?
If understood correctly, the Kosovo war was indeed a precedent that should act as a warning signal.
How many times can the United States use a false alarm to start an aggressive war? Non-existent “genocide” in Kosovo and Libya, non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and now what looks to much of the world like a “false flag” chemical weapons attack in Syria.
The United States habitually announces the presence of a desired casus belli, dismissing demands for concrete evidence.
In Kosovo, the United States obtained withdrawal of international observers who could have testified whether or not there was evidence of “genocide” of Kosovars. The accusations escalated during the war, and when, afterwards, no evidence of such mass murder was found, the matter was forgotten.
In Iraq, there was never any proof of WMD, but the US went ahead and invaded.
In Libya, the pretext for war was a misquoted statement of Gaddafi threatening a “massacre of civilians” in Benghazi. This was exposed as a fake, but again, NATO bombed, the regime was toppled, and the pretext falls into oblivion.
Sunday, just as the Syrian government announced readiness to allow international inspectors to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use, the White House responded, “too late!”
A senior Obama administration official demanding anonymity (one can reasonably guess the official was Obama’s hawkish National Security Advisor Susan Rice) issued a statement claiming that there was “very little doubt” that President Bashar al-Assad’s military forces had used chemical weapons against civilians and that a promise to allow United Nations inspectors access to the site was “too late to be credible.”
In the world beyond the beltway, there is a great deal of doubt – especially about the credibility of the United States government when it comes to finding pretexts to go to war. Moreover, setting “chemical weapons” as a “red line” obliging the US to go to war is totally arbitrary. There are many ways of killing people in a civil war. Selecting one as a trigger for US intervention serves primarily to give rebels an excellent reason to carry out a “false flag” operation that will bring NATO into the war they are losing.
Who really wants or needs US intervention? The American people? What good will it do them to get involved in yet another endless Middle East war?
But who has influence on Obama? The American people? Or is it rather “our staunchest ally”, who is most concerned about rearranging the Middle East neighborhood?
“This situation must not be allowed to continue,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, expressing remarkable concern for Syrian civilians “who were so brutally attacked by weapons of mass destruction.”
“The most dangerous regimes in the world must not be allowed to possess the most dangerous weapons in the world,” Netanyahu added.
Incidentally, polls have been taken showing that for much of the world, the most dangerous regime in the world is Israel, which is allowed to possess the most dangerous weapons – nuclear weapons. But there is no chance that Israel will ever get “the Kosovo treatment”.
DIANA JOHNSTONE is the author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions. She can be reached at diana.josto@yahoo.fr
Related article
August 26, 2013 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Kosovo, NATO, New York Times, Syria, United Nations Charter, United States, Yugoslavia | Leave a comment
US cannot afford to wait for UN to attack Syria: Officials
Press TV – August 26, 2013
Rep. Eliot Engel (NY)*, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has said “this is time for us” to launch cruise missile strikes on Syria, and that the US government cannot afford to wait for the United Nations.
“The world is a better place when the United States takes leadership; this is time for us to do this. I hope we’ll do it soon,” the American lawmaker said on Fox News Sunday.
A growing number of Republicans and Democrats in Congress are urging the administration of President Barack Obama to approve military action against Syria after reports of a deadly chemical attack in the suburbs of Damascus emerged last week.
Engel said that the United States had to respond quickly and could not afford to wait for the United Nations.
“We could even destroy the Syrian Air Force if we wanted to… We have to move and we have to move quickly.”
Other senior US officials have also indicated that instead of seeking a UN approval for military action, Washington could work with its partners such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or the Arab League.
“We’ll consult with the UN. They’re an important avenue. But they’re not the only avenue,” a senior administration official said.
The Syrian government has allowed UN inspectors to visit a site that allegedly came under chemical attack on Wednesday. Obama administration officials, however, have dismissed as too late the Syrian offer.
Although there is still no evidence to blame the chemical attack on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a senior administration official said there was “very little doubt” that Damascus was behind the attack.
“Based on the reported number of victims, reported symptoms of those who were killed or injured, witness accounts and other facts gathered by open sources, the US intelligence community, and international partners, there is very little doubt at this point that a chemical weapon was used by the Syrian regime against civilians in this incident,” the unnamed official said in a written statement on Sunday, as reported by the New York Times.
The Syrian government and the army categorically denied any role in Wednesday’s chemical attack which killed hundreds of people. Russia, a key ally of Syria, insists that the attack was “clearly provocative in nature,” and that it was staged by foreign-backed militant groups to incriminate the Assad government.
In recent days, the Pentagon has moved more warships into place in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and American war planners have updated strike targets that include government and military installations inside Syria, officials said.
President Obama met with his national security advisers at the White House over the weekend to discuss “a range of options” for Syria, but officials said late Sunday that the president had yet to decide how to proceed.
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel reiterated Sunday that the Pentagon had prepared “options for all contingencies” is ready to use force if the president gives the green-light.
Meanwhile, the US top military leader is in Jordan to discuss possible strikes on neighboring Syria.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey was set to meet with his Jordanian counterpart and other regional defense chiefs during his visit.
“The exchange is designed to increase the collective understanding of the impact of regional conflicts on nations, foster ongoing dialogue and improve security relationships,” Defense Department spokeswoman Lt. Col. Cathy Wilkinson said.
Obama said last year that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would “cross a red line,” provoking a military response.
~~~
* Eliot Engel:
During my time in Congress, I have traveled to Israel many times, including the recent trip with President Obama, and I remain committed to the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel. Not only are the U.S. and Israel close strategic allies in the dangerous Middle East, but we have a great deal in common. We are democracies and nations of immigrants from all corners of the globe. We are proud to embrace the highest ideals in our laws and policies, while generating an extraordinary caliber of science and culture, benefiting not only our two countries, but the entire world.
I firmly believe that we must stand with our ally, Israel, as it faces a variety of threats and challenges. Today, the most serious danger Israel must confront emanates from Iran. It is simply unacceptable that a country with a history of supporting terrorism and calling for the destruction of Israel could have a nuclear weapon. The Obama Administration has led the international community in imposing crippling sanctions on Teheran, and this process must continue in Congress and around the world until the Iranian regime reverses its nuclear program. While we must not take any actions off the table when it comes to the Iranian nuclear program, we must continue to show the mullah-led regime that continuing its program to build nuclear weapons will only lead to greater isolation.
Further, I am deeply concerned by the dangers of terrorism from Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel should not have to live under the constant menace that thousands of unguided rockets could again rain down on the Jewish state. That is why I was the lead Democratic sponsor of a resolution condemning Hamas rocket attacks on Israel and why I have strongly supported American assistance to Israel to expand the effective Iron Dome and other missile defense systems.
Finally, I have long advocated a tougher policy toward Syria. As the author of the Syria Accountability Act, which imposed sanctions on Syria in 2003, I believe we must stand up against the Assad regime’s massacres of its own people. I believe that the time has come for the international community to impose serious sanctions on Syria and to begin supporting the opposition Free Syrian Army. I am aware that this strategy has risks and we must take concerns about widening the conflict seriously. But, today, the Iranians and Russians are openly supporting Assad’s massacre squads. The victims deserve a chance to fight back. Moreover, the collapse of Bashar’s government in Damascus would be a body blow to Iran and to Hezbollah, which gets its largess from Teheran through Syria. Syria has supported terror for too long. I think we need to stand against repression and support the rebels.
Congressman Eliot Engel serves as the Democratic co-chair for the Israel Allies Caucus.
Rep. Engel serves on numerous committees, notably the Foreign Affairs Committee and is the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, as well as serving on the Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia, and the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment. In addition he serves as Vice Chair of the Democratic Task Force on Homeland Security.
Iraq War
In 2002, Engel joined the two Senators from New York, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, and almost 300 members of the United States House of Representatives in voting for the resolution granting President Bush the authority to use force in Iraq.[56]
International affairs
Engel is a supporter of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Energy
In 2005, Engel introduced with Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) the Fuel Choices for American Security Act (H.R. 4409), later modified and reintroduced in 2007 as the DRIVE Act (H.R. 670) – the Dependence Reduction through Innovation in Vehicles and Energy Act – with more than 80 bi-partisan co-sponsors. It was designed to promote America’s national security and economic stability by reducing dependence on foreign oil through the use of clean alternative fuels and advanced vehicle technologies. It also called for increased tire efficiency – to increase a vehicle’s gas miles.[24]
Many provisions of the DRIVE Act were included in the Energy Independence and Security Act, which was signed into law on December 19, 2007, and became Public Law No. 110-140. This law mandates increased fuel efficiency standards from 25 miles per gallon to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The law also requires improved energy efficiency standards for appliances, lighting and buildings, and the development of American-grown biofuels like cellulosic ethanol, biodiesel and biobutanol.
On July 22, 2008, Engel introduced with Congressmen Kingston, Steve Israel (D-NY) and Bob Inglis (R-SC) the Open Fuel Standards Act.[25] This bill requires 50 percent of new cars sold in the United States by 2012 (and 80 percent of new cars sold by 2015) to be flexible-fuel vehicles capable of running on any combination of ethanol, methanol or gasoline. Flex fuel vehicles cost about $100 more than the same vehicle in a gasoline-only version. This bill was resubmitted in the 111th United States Congress by Rep. Engel, Inglis, Israel and Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD). It was re-introduced in the 112th Congress with Rep. John Shimkus as the lead Republican. It will likely be re-introduced in the 113th Congress.
Controversies
Engel was criticized[67] for choosing to attend a July 2008 event hosted by the controversial pastor John Hagee, who has suggested that God sent Adolf Hitler to bring the Jews to Israel.[68]
August 26, 2013 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Eliot Engel, Syria, United States | Leave a comment
Glenn Greenwald’s Mirror vs. Bill Maher’s Blind Spot
By JP Sottile | News Vandal | May 16, 2013
Bill Maher is a funny guy.
But he’s not very reflective.
That’s because, quite ironically, he’s fallen into the War on Terror trap—the comfortable and comforting stereotype of angry Muslims as irrational ideologues armed with religious hair-triggers and little else.
Like so many of the so-called “Left” in America, Maher has basically accepted the key notion that a whole population of like-minded people have decided to kill Americans because of an irrational religious belief system.
Maher’s go-to example of the Muslim world’s “unique” religious insanity is the way Muslims seem to go ballistic whenever “The Prophet” is offended—in cartoons, bad movies or by American soldiers burning Korans.
It’s not that it hasn’t happened. It has. Muslim outrage over real or perceived sleights to The Prophet and Islam—which forbids graven imagery of God and, in some cases, Mohammed—is no laughing matter.
But isn’t it interesting that the supposedly “Liberal” Obama Administration is currently fending off scandal-hungry Republicans because they tried to pawn off a “terrorist” attack on a paramilitary target (the Benghazi “diplomatic facility” also housed a “CIA annex”) as little more than a predictably frenzied Muslim response to an offensive movie?
That’s where Maher picked it up on an episode of “Real Time” when the topic strayed from GOP efforts to hang Benghazi on the Democrats to Maher’s relentless drumbeat about the inherent nuttiness of Muslims. Bill even entertained the possibility that it is better to keep dictatorships in control of Muslims because, like the Arab Spring in Egypt, when you let them have some freedom, they naturally become a mob of theocratic loonies. In other words, their kooky religion means Muslim masses cannot be trusted to govern themselves.
Unfortunately for Maher, he had Glenn Greenwald—America’s leading voice of reason and roving moral conscience—sitting across the table from him. Not coincidentally, Greenwald lives in Brazil and writes for a British paper, but those aspects of his pseudo-exiled status haven’t stopped him from holding a sharply-focused mirror up to America’s darker side, or from reaching a growing audience of disillusioned Americans.
And when it came time to hold up a mirror to Maher’s jingoistic and oddly unreflective take on Egypt, Greenwald did not disappoint:
Maher’s dismissive take on the consequences of American imperialism is not only puzzling, but it is also a bit alarming. If this is the view of a high-profile “Liberal” regarding America’s ongoing assault on key Muslim countries and its proxy wars around the globe, the future of the “Left” looks pretty bleak.
Really, hasn’t that been the story of the Obama years thus far?
Like the Cold War before it, the Neo-Con’s War on Terror has been transformed by Obama into a normalized fact of American politics that both sides must heed, lest they forgo their status as “patriotic Americans.”
And Bill is nothing if not patriotic. The way we know he’s true-blue? He’s got the one thing necessary to be a real, post-9/11 “patriot” actor—a blind spot.
To accept the drone war and the black hole of Gitmo and a policy of extrajudicial assassinations and all those convenient tropes about Muslim “radicalization,” one must remain blind to the implicit and, more shockingly, to the explicit causes of Muslim furor against—and let’s be honest here—the highly militarized American empire dominating their lives.
That blind spot keeps the culpability out and the easy assumptions in. How else can one square their beloved American “values” with actual American actions that kill so many innocents—men, women and children—in far-off lands?
When Greenwald countered Maher’s arguments with obvious comparables of religious extremism—Lt. Gen. Boykin’s “Our god is bigger” rationale for destroying Iraq and radical Judaism’s role in extending a religiously-based homeland in the Occupied Territories—Bill’s bizarre response was to attack Greenwald’s “silly liberal view that all religions are alike because it makes you feel good.”
Really, Bill? Are you the same crusader for rationality who made “Religulous?”
Did you forget about George the Younger’s claim that his decisions, particularly about going to war, were answerable to a “higher father?”
Or the imposition of Evangelical teachings at the Air Force Academy?
Or the way “God” and “faith” are now litmus tests all politicians must pass if they have any chance of being elected?
How about the odd alliance between Christian Zionists and Israeli advocates of a greater Israel, both of which rely on “holy books”—the New and Old Testaments, respectively—to establish their God’s role as a metaphysical real estate agent?
In Maher’s case, the blind spot is almost comical. An avowed, proud and exceedingly loud atheist, it is amazing that he is unwilling or unable to see the role religion played and still does play in America’s imperial ideology. Like many of the right-wingers he likes to razz, he’s blotting out Christianity’s role in the genocide of the American Indians, the missionary impulse toward “Little Brown Brothers” in Asia or the way propaganda about “Godless Communism” was the centerpiece of Cold War jingoism for the better part of the “American Century.”
But the most glaring example of Bill’s blind spot was the segment that immediately followed his tense exchange with Greenwald. It was a recurring gag titled “The Search for America’s Craziest Congressman,” this time featuring Rep. Paul “Evolution is a lie from the pit of Hell” Broun (R-GA) and Rep. Michelle “The Muslim Brotherhood controls our foreign policy” Bachmann (R-MN). Two incredibly religiously fundamentalist Christians harboring an array of strange views, Maher even termed them as a “danger to democracy.”
Next he brought out Zachary Quinto, an openly gay actor currently making a name for himself as the rebooted Mr. Spock. Defying all logic, Maher started the discussion on newly-out-of-the-closet NBA center Jason Collins, referencing the critique of Collins’ gayness by ESPN commentator Chris Broussard. Maher lampooned Broussard for opening his commentary with “As a Christian,” which Bill pointed out means he’s a moron, and then he admonished those who “…use the Bible as a cudgel against the Gay.”
But the irony didn’t end there.
Maher moved the discussion to the NRA and gun rights, picking up his consistent theme about Americans loving guns and being violent. He predictably attacked the “fantasy” held by many “right-wing” gun owners that they may need them to rise up against tyranny here in America.
Huh. Crazy ideologues just looking for a reason to revolt. Go figure.
Then came the coup de grâce.
In his “New Rules” segment, Bill got some good laughs about the Christian heavy metal singer who tried to have his wife killed by a hired assassin. The joke turned on the fact that the Bible does, in fact, offer a variety of valid reasons to kill one’s wife and nearly two dozen verses that expressly support it.
Had Bill looked in the mirror after delivering that punchline, he’d have seen that the joke was suddenly and irreversibly on him.
August 25, 2013 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Bill Maher, Glenn Greenwald, Old Testament, United States | Leave a comment
Israel’s propagandists shoot themselves in the foot as they shoot off their mouths
By Greg Felton | September 30, 2009
If you have ever visited a blog or on-line discussion group on the Middle East you have doubtless had the misfortune to run into them.
They are known by the language they use: depraved sexual insults, bile, bigotry, threats, disinformation and character assassination. That’s right: I’m talking about “hasbarats,” Zionist trolls who infect the Internet with hasbara, pro-Israel propaganda. Of course, mainstream media hasbarats have been around for decades, as have “hasbaratchiks,” fifth-columns in foreign governments who subvert national policies to serve Israel. The Internet, though, is the latest, some might say the greatest, propaganda playground, and Israel cannot cope with factual, passionate, well-documented stories that expose its war crimes and unrepentant criminality.
If you’ve come across a hasbarat, on-line or otherwise, you have learned that no amount of reasoned argument or intellectual maturity has any effect. That’s because hasbarats don’t care if they come across as ignorant, obnoxious, nasty or inane. All that matters for them is sabotaging criticism of Israel and support for Muslims. They’re like anti-intellectual stink bombs: designed to cause maximum discomfort but have little if any real power.
This deliberate proliferation of on-line hasbarats raises two points. The first concerns why anyone would spend hours a day to prostitute themselves for Israel. Money, of course. Ilan Shturman, deputy director of the Israeli foreign ministry’s hasbara department (!), told an Israeli business newspaper in July that US$150,000 had been allocated for the first stage of a campaign to seed the Internet with hasbarats:
“Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the hasbara department of the Israeli foreign ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the foreign ministry developed.”
The second point is why Israel felt it had to resort to intellectual fraud on an international scale. The Internet has shown that Israel is a failed oppressor state that commits crimes against humanity as a matter of policy. The last straw for many was “Operation Cast Lead,” an act of such unspeakable unapologetic sadism that allusions to Nazi Germany are entirely appropriate.
Every day, it seems, the mythic foundations of Israel’s legitimacy—the holocaust, Jewish victimhood, Jewish “people,” Israeli “democracy,” “evil” Muslims—are exposed for all to see.
In January, Amir Gissin, Israel’s consul-general in Toronto, sent out a hasbara recruitment letter, which read in part: “If you are frustrated or concerned with the portrayal of Israel in Canadian News and with biased [!] depictions, your voice can be heard. Now, think that you’re not alone 10,000 voices like yours can respond every day: praise, protest, inform, correct on leading Canadian news websites, in real time, effectively.”
The weakness with this tactic, as you probably figured out, is that hasbarats will inevitably shout and whine themselves into irrelevance. Eventually, intelligent people will tune out the Zionist boilerplate, the anti-Muslim smears, and the interminable drone about the holocaust. Already, the once-dreaded epithet “anti-Semite” has lost all significance, as if it ever had any, and the person who hurled it is more likely to be mocked than feared.
Two recent events demonstrate the growing desperation and ineptitude of Israel’s propaganda industry. Today, we look at an example of “positive hasbara.”
Toronto International Film Festival
A major tactic of hasbarats is to project the illusion that Israel is a normal Western democracy, thereby taking focus away from Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. Also, countries that buy into the deceit will be unwilling to criticize Israel for fear of calling into question their role in covering up zionist war crimes.
This tactic was tried at the recent Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) as Tel Aviv was spotlighted in a City-to-City program with Toronto. The ostensible purpose was to use an apolitical, cultural event to obscure the tyranny that Tel Aviv represents, but more than 1,000 filmmakers and performers, weren’t fooled. They put their names to The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation, an open letter to the TIFF that protested the co-optation of the festival by the Israeli propaganda machine.
The protest accomplished precisely what the hasbarats tried to prevent. “Rather than talking about Israel’s rich cinematic culture, the buzz this week in Toronto has centered on the one thing Israeli officials had sought to avoid: the conflict with the Palestinians,” reported the Jewish Telegraph Agency.
The hasbara campaign to ‘re-brand’ Israel during the Toronto International Film Festival failed miserably. So much attention was paid to the protest that it overshadowed the political objectives of Israel’s propaganda machine.
Another major defeat for Israel came courtesy of Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert. After offering a knee-jerk condemnation of the City-to-City protests, he reversed himself the next day:
“I wasn’t prepared with enough facts about the events leading up to the Festival’s decision to showcase Tel Aviv in the City-to-City section. I [initially] thought of it as an innocent goodwill gesture, but now realize it was part of a deliberate plan to ‘re-brand’ Israel in Toronto, as a pilot for a larger such program. The Festival should never have agreed to be used like this. It was naïve for the plan’s supporters to believe it would have the effect they hoped for.”
Speaking of naïve, how about Ron Huldai, mayor of Tel Aviv! Whether out of overconfidence or stupidity, he publicly admitted the underlying hasbara in an interview with the JTA:
“While the City to City program was initiated by the festival, the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs was involved as part of its Brand Israel media and advertising campaign, which was launched last year.”
Quite obviously, Israel would have been better off if the hasbarats had not tried to manipulate the festival. Even the predictable pro-Israel counter-protest merely added to the protest’s notoriety and detracted from the cultural propaganda. Moreover the standard claim that the protest was an attack on Israel and artistic freedom was demonstrably false. If anything, the protest highlighted Israel’s active suppression of Palestinian culture. According to the authors of the Toronto Declaration:
“Many Palestinian artists and filmmakers, denied freedom of movement by Israel’s Occupation and pass system, are de facto boycotted, unable to communicate with their communities or travel freely. The double standard is mind-boggling and, slowly, these are the issues we are helping to put under a spotlight.”
Finally, it is important to note that the Declaration’s authors succeeded without any media help. They had no money to place ads, and no newspaper would publish their open letter. On the other hand, hasbarats had the full support (read: “obedience”) of Canada’s national media, and lost.
If a modest, unfunded, popular protest can effectively defeat an orchestrated propaganda campaign, what does that say about Israel’s ability to pose as a legitimate, democratic state? Even though hasbarats get their disinformation out with relative ease, it is not clear that it’s generally accepted.
Related article
August 24, 2013 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Middle East, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Israel), Toronto, Toronto International Film Festival | Leave a comment
Creating Chilling Effects On Speech Is A Feature, Not A Bug, Of The Surveillance State
By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | August 23, 2013
We’ve discussed a few times how the pervasive surveillance efforts of the NSA and others have tremendous chilling effects on how people communicate and how they act. We’ve discussed how this is a “cost” to the program that not many, especially those who are backing these programs, seem interested in measuring or even thinking about. Of course, implicit in our assumption is that these “costs” are things that are negatives of the program. Others would point out that for those in power, that’s not so much a cost as a benefit. It’s not a bug or an unintended consequence, but a feature. Chilling speech and clamping down on communications? Why that’s a good thing for those in power.
Josh Levy, from Free Press, has a great guest post over at Boing Boing where he discusses how the NSA’s surveillance regime is a huge attack on free speech, and how this is both inevitable, and for some, the intent of the program:
The chilling of free speech isn’t just a consequence of surveillance. It’s also a motive. We adopt the art of self-censorship, closing down blogs, watching what we say on Facebook, forgoing “private” email for fear that any errant word may come back to haunt us in one, five or fifteen 15 years. “The mind’s tendency to still feel observed when alone… can be inhibiting,” writes Janna Malamud Smith. Indeed.
Peggy Noonan, describing a conversation with longtime civil liberties advocate Nat Hentoff, writes that “the inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship.”
Hentoff stressed that privacy invasions of this magnitude are “attempts to try to change who we are as Americans.” In fact, they are attempts to define who we are as human beings.
Meanwhile, over at the Atlantic, Bruce Schneier has a post discussing the detainment of David Miranda, where he comes to similar conclusions, that these authoritarian police states clearly have no practical benefit, except to enable a powerful government to show off its power to invade your lives:
This leaves one last possible explanation — those in power were angry and impulsively acted on that anger. They’re lashing out: sending a message and demonstrating that they’re not to be messed with — that the normal rules of polite conduct don’t apply to people who screw with them. That’s probably the scariest explanation of all. Both the U.S. and U.K. intelligence apparatuses have enormous money and power, and they have already demonstrated that they are willing to ignore their own laws. Once they start wielding that power unthinkingly, it could get really bad for everyone.
Of course, Schneier sees some upside to this in the long run — which is that such blatantly ridiculous activity seems to only embolden others to push back on this trampling of our rights. Hopefully, that pushback works, because the alternative is horrifying to those who believe in a free and open society.
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- Nat Hentoff on the NSA and Privacy (cato.org)
August 24, 2013 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Bruce Schneier, Free Press, Janna Malamud Smith, Nat Hentoff, National Security Agency, Peggy Noonan, Surveillance, United States | Leave a comment
Chiquita Playing the Victim Card in Latest Legal Battle
By Kevin Edmonds | The Other Side of Paradise | August 22, 2013
In 2007, Chiquita Brands International admitted to making payments to an array of Colombian paramilitary and guerilla groups over the past ten years in exchange for a paltry fine of $25 million. One group in particular, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) or the AUC was designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2001 – and one of the primary recipients of the payments. Claiming no wrongdoing Chiquita argued that it was being extorted and that it had never received “any actual security services or actual security equipment in exchange for the payments.”
At the time of the initial sentencing Assistant Attorney General Kenneth L. Wainstein remarked, in a seemingly straightforward manner, that “Like any criminal enterprise, a terrorist organization needs a funding stream to support its operations. For several years, the AUC terrorist group found one in the payments they demanded from Chiquita Brands International. Thanks to Chiquita’s cooperation and this prosecution, that funding stream is now dry and corporations are on notice that they cannot make protection payments to terrorists.”
It now appears that things are not as simple as Assistant Attorney General Wainstein initially thought. In April, Chiquita Brands International filed a reverse Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to stop the public release of thousands of documents handed over to the Security and Exchange Commission. The documents are said to outline in detail Chiquita’s illegal payments to terrorist organizations such as the AUC.
Despite the clear and existing evidence that Chiquita had engaged in criminal activity, Chiquita is arguing that under Exception 7(B) of the Freedom of Information Act, mandatory disclosure provisions do not apply to “records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes . . . to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information . . . would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication.”
In an effort to portray the multinational corporation as the real victim in this case Chiquita’s lawyer, James Garland, argued that the disclosure of the documents “will make them available to the general public, including members of the press and individuals and organizations that seek to distort the facts surrounding the payments that Banadex (a subsidiary of Chiquita) made to the AUC under threat of force. Past experience with release of Chiquita’s documents has demonstrated that media campaigns based on gross mischaracterizations of released documents are certain to occur in an effort to entrench misconceptions of relevant facts in the minds of fact finders integral to the fairness of the proceedings.”
Furthermore, Garland has engaged in a campaign alleging that the National Security Archive is not an independent research organization, but instead is seeking to assist lawyers involved in a class action lawsuit against Chiquita in Colombia, on behalf of the victims of paramilitaries, in addition to an ongoing criminal investigation of former Chiquita employees in Colombia. The fact that the National Security Archive would not have found evidence of criminal wrongdoing if it had never happened in the first place seems lost on Garland.
However, this illogical line of argument is not baseless – as in 1997 Chiquita managed to overturn a brilliant investigation by the Cincinnati Enquirer on the basis of the “illegitimate” gathering of evidence. The investigation uncovered that Chiquita was engaging in widespread murder, bribery, arms trafficking, and knowingly poisoning the environment throughout Latin America, but the charges were thrown out. The newspaper was sued and the journalists had their careers cut short.
In 2007, ten years after the Cincinnati Enquirer investigation, the first batch of over five thousand documents, known as the “Chiquita Papers” were published and made available to the public by the National Security Archive. The documents were released by the Justice Department and the FBI in response to the National Security Archive’s Freedom of Information requests.
Michael Evans, Director of the Colombia Project at the National Security Archives remarked on the importance of the documents, stating that “This may well be the most important collection of records ever assembled on corporate ties to terrorism. This was a massive, years-long investigation that involved multiple federal agencies and resulted in the one of the first convictions of a major US company of financing a terrorist group.”
Despite Chiquita’s posturing, the most likely reason they are demanding that the additional documents be suppressed is because it would provide further the evidence of criminal wrongdoing in Colombia. Based on the first batch of documents, Evans highlighted that “we found very strong indications that Chiquita did, in some cases, receive something in return for their illicit payments – that there was a quid pro quo with both guerrilla and paramilitary groups. The evidence we found directly contradicted the U.S. Attorney’s finding, stated in the sentencing memorandum, that the company had never received “any actual security services or actual security equipment in exchange for the payments. For instance, a legal memo written by one of Chiquita’s lawyers said that the general manager of Chiquita operations in Turbó, Colombia, had told him “that the Guerrilla Groups are used to supply security personnel at the various farms.” It’s right there in a Chiquita legal memo written on Chiquita letterhead.”
Upon closer examination of the Chiquita Papers, it became clear that the Attorney General failed to read or truly understand evidence contained in the documents, with Evans adding that “Another document that we published in 2011 shows that Chiquita also paid right-wing paramilitary forces for security services. The March 2000 memo, again, written on Chiquita letterhead and based on a conversation with one of the managers in Colombia, says that a group known to be a front for paramilitary terrorists was formed to disguise “the real purpose of providing security” and that the “money [was] for info[rmation] on guerrilla movements.” The company manager also suggested that they “should continue making the payments,” because the company would not “get the same level of support from the military.”
It will be telling how much information is released to the public, as Chiquita Brands International has some friends in very high places. During the 2007 investigation in which Chiquita was fined $25 million, the company was represented by current Attorney General Eric Holder.
In effect, the current reverse Freedom of Information lawsuit amounts to Chiquita asking the United States District Court for the District of Colombia to hide documents which can potentially reveal the corporation’s involvement in criminal activities which have resulted in the death and assault of thousands of Colombians. The fact that the U.S. Department of Justice produced such a small penalty despite the evidence of criminal wrongdoing in 2007 should be disconcerting to all interested in human rights, as it is further evidence of the abuses of corporate political power.
Kevin Edmonds is a NACLA blogger focusing on the Caribbean. Edmonds is a former NACLA research associate and a current PhD student at the University of Toronto, where he is studying the impact of neoliberalism on the St. Lucian banana trade. Follow him on twitter @kevin_edmonds.
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August 24, 2013 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | AUC, Chiquita, Chiquita Brands International, Cincinnati Enquirer, Colombia, Human rights, Kenneth L. Wainstein, National Security Archive, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia | Leave a comment
The Terrifying World of Electronic Monitoring
By JAMES KILGORE | August 23, 2013
I spend a considerable part of my life doing research and writing about electronic monitors-those black plastic ankle bracelets best known for landing on the legs of a number of the rich and notorious-Martha Stewart, Paris Hilton, Michael Vick, and Charley Sheen, just to name a few. I hear stories about house arrest and the absurd sets of obstacles authorities put in peoples’ way as they try to wend their way back into life post-incarceration while being tracked by the latest technology.
I reflect a lot about little computer chips and spying and what some lawyers call the deprivation of liberty by technological means. In essence, electronic monitoring is about tracking and marking. The GPS technology that is trending in electronic monitors tracks people’s every movement with the purpose of marking them for punishment if they deviate from the program (or at least if the technology reports that they have deviated from the program.)
Though everyone keeps telling me that at least being on a monitor is better than being in prison, (which I agree with, having done both) I keep telling them they are missing the point. The point is that we need to have some control over this technology, some clear rules, guidelines and ideas about what it should and should not be allowed to do, that while it may be applied to those “guilty” of a crime today, we don’t actually know who is next.
Edward Snowden’s revelations have awakened people to this sort of reality since NSA surveillance is all about tracking and marking. Only the NSA is monitoring everyone-tracking and marking, though none of us are exactly sure who is being marked, why they are being marked or what the consequences of that marking will be. We are leaving the whole process to the security and technology experts to decide. They will determine what patterns of telecommunications amount to a threat or a violation warranting action by the authorities.
None of this comes as a big shock to me since I have seen how with the advance of GPS, people on parole who are minding their own business trying to do what normal people do-shop, get their laundry done, play with their child in the park, are constantly presented with the record of their movements. If they stop at an address that is not on the approved list, if they go to a store that is not on the approved list they run the risk of being violated and either kept under lockdown (24 hour a day house arrest) or sent back to prison.
Not long ago I heard the story of a man who stopped for nine minutes at a house a block away from where he lived to ask about some things the owner was selling. Those nine minutes got sent to the parole office via his GPS tracker and he got a few days of lockdown in response. The neighbor’s address was not on the approved list.
And then there are the dozen cases in Wisconsin unveiled by journalist Mario Koran where the GPS device falsely reported people as out of the house when they were at home. Aaron Hicks served 51 days in jail for what he claims was one of those false violations. You can’t argue with the facts. As one man on monitoring who chose to remain anonymous because he’s still on parole told me, “we are the guinea pigs.”
But this mark and track process hit a new low last week with the release of Gregory Johnsen’s Atlantic magazine story about an eight year old Yemeni boy named Barq al-Kulaybi. Once an impoverished street child in the village of Baty-al-Ahmar, al-Kulaybi had been taken in by an apparently kind man named Adnan al-Qadhi. Unbeknownst to the little boy, Yemeni authorities (and likely the CIA) suspected al-Qadhi of having links with Al Qaeda. In a bizarre translated video, al-Kulaybi told the story of how last year his biological father, a member of the Yemeni Republican Guard, and some fellow security personnel persuaded him to plant a computer chip on al-Qadhi. Given precise instructions on how to activate the chip, the boy explained how he dropped it into the man’s coat pocket when al-Qadhi was out of the room. The boy had kicked off a track and mark process with a tragic ending. On November 7, 2012 a US drone strike killed al-Qadhi. Subsequently, Al Qaeda kidnapped the boy and his father and produced the video mentioned above. According to a Johnsen interview on Democracy Now, Al-Qaeda has apparently executed the boy’s father. Tracking and marking can be a deadly business.
The story of Barq al-Kulaybi is disturbing on many levels. The use of an eight year old boy as an operative in this instance qualifies as one of the low points even in the murky amoral world of surveillance. But the real problem is that like with the NSA monitors and with the parole agents who put people on lockdown at their own discretion, there is no process of accountability, not even any transparent guidelines of operation. The technology experts (read: boys with toys) are in the driver’s seat and following a map that no one else can see, much less read. I wish the case of Barq al-Kulaybi would give people pause, would at least occasion a few sighs of distress before we think about how small these chips are going to be in the future, all the new “apps” they will have, who will control them and whose pocket they may end up in. Who is next to be tracked and marked? By the way, have you switched off your cellphone?
James Kilgore is a research scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). He writes on issues of mass incarceration with a focus on electronic monitoring and labor. He is also the author of three novels, all of which he drafted during his six and a half years in prison, 2002-09. He can be contacted at waazn1@gmail.com
August 23, 2013 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | James Kilgore, United States, Yemen | Leave a comment
Terms and Conditions May Apply
August 18, 2013
This is an important and frightening film, about how Google, Amzaon, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkdin – and IMDb? – harvest our personal information and onsell it to the highest bidder, or to the government. How we don’t read that wodge of text in capitals comprising “Terms and conditions” before we click “Accept” – nobody could, it would take a month per year for everything we sign. But even when that text is brief and written in plain English, it gives those corporations unprecedented power over our personal information – including the right to change the rules without telling us, to increase their power without limit and without asking again, and to keep it forever, even after we have “deleted” it.
August 23, 2013 Posted by aletho | Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | Facebook, Flickr, Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter | Leave a comment
DOJ wants Bush, senior cabinet members exempt from Iraq War trial
RT | August 22, 2013
The United States Department of Justice has requested that former President George W. Bush and the highest figures in his administration receive full exemption from being tried for the Iraq War, which the DoJ says was in line with international law.
Apart from Bush, the names listed in the paper the DoJ filed on Tuesday are former Vice President Richard Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, retired four-star General Colin Powell, former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice and former Deputy Secretary of Defense and President of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz.
Sundus Saleh, an Iraqi single mother of three who became a refugee, filed a complaint in March in the San Francisco federal court, claiming that the war in her country can be judged as a ‘crime of aggression’, according to the same legal standards that the Nuremberg Tribunal used for convicting Nazi war criminals of World War II.
Saleh is the lead plaintiff in this class action lawsuit.
The reason for the decision is connected with the ‘Westfall Act’ certification. The 1988 law gives the Attorney General the power to personally decide whether the United States is actually a defendant in the case. This in turn allows the granting of absolute immunity to politicians for actions carried out while in the government’s employ.
Inder Comar of Comar Law has agreed to take the case. The San-Francisco-based firm normally specializes in support to private companies, particularly those in the tech industry. Comar met with Saleh at her home in Jordan to discuss the case.
Chief counsel Comar wrote on the War Is a Crime website explaining that, “The DoJ claims that in planning and waging the Iraq War, ex-President Bush and key members of his Administration were acting within the legitimate scope of their employment and are thus immune from suit.”
The lawsuit filed by Saleh says that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz orchestrated the Iraq War in 1998 as part of their involvement with the ‘Project for the New American Century’, a Washington DC-based non-profit organization that pushed for the overthrow of Iraq’s former leader, Saddam Hussein.
Salleh then alleges that the tragedy of September 11, 2001, was pitched to other members of the Bush cabinet as the perfect excuse to scare the American public into supporting the war in Iraq. The lawsuit also claims that the United States failed to obtain United Nations approval for the invasion, making it an illegal and aggressive act of war.
According to Corey Hill, who is a member and outreach coordinator for Global Exchange, an international human rights organization, Comar Law is invoking something called the Alien Tort Statute, which is a 1789 law that permits a foreign national to sue the US federal court for injuries “committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” Hill explained this in his article for YES! Magazine, for which he also writes.
All the defendants in the case have been summoned to appear in accordance with the usual legal proceedings. The trial is expected to start in early 2014.
There are, however, several problems that could arise with the allegations. As Paul Stephen, who teaches law at the University of Virginia and is former international law consultant for the Department of State told YES! Magazine, that it would be difficult to sue a government employee for acting “under the scope of employment” in this case, because of the modified nature of the Westfall Act, giving officials more scope for action.
The second problem may arise from the fact that their actions did not take place on US soil, making it difficult to validate the accusation.
And lastly, “courts aren’t open to ruling on matters of a political nature”, Hill said in reference to a doctrine in US Constitutional Law that separates clear-cut court cases with those better left to the legislative and executive branches of the government. This doctrine then means that the invasion of Iraq is a political case – not a legal one.
“If the expectation is that a federal court will declare that the invasion, although duly authorized by Congress, violated international law and thus violates U.S. law, I would respond that we walked up and down that hill with respect to Vietnam… No federal court ever has recognized such a claim,” Hill explained.
But Comar is optimistic in so far that in order for the Westfall Act to work in this case, the US government would have to prove that the act of preparing the invasion through a non-profit organization took place within office. But since that was not the case, the law cannot be invoked here. He further explained to Hill that separating a political matter from a purely legal one will also not be easy for the US government, as it may often be a very blurry line. Comar expanded on this position to the ‘War Is a Crime’ website.
“The good news is that while we were disappointed with the certification, we were prepared for it,” he said. “We do not see how a Westfall Act certification is appropriate given that Ms. Saleh alleges that the conduct at issue began prior to these defendants even entering into office. I think the Nuremberg prosecutors, particularly American Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson, would be surprised to learn that planning a war of aggression at a private non-profit, misleading a fearful public, and foregoing proper legal authorization somehow constitute lawful employment duties for the American president and his or her cabinet.”
August 22, 2013 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Iraq, Law, USA, War | Leave a comment
How Rotella Reported Another Dubious Iranian Bomb Plot
By Gareth Porter | LobeLog | August 20, 2013
Introduction by Jim Lobe
While the terrible events in Egypt have delayed my plans to reply to ProPublica’s response to my critique of Sebastian Rotella’s report on the alleged build-up of Iran’s terrorist infrastructure in the Americas, Gareth Porter has written the following essay on a 2009 article by Rotella for the Los Angeles Times about an alleged bomb plot to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2008. It offers a very good illustration of some of the problems raised in my original critique of Rotella’s most recent work, notably the virtually exclusive reliance on sources that are clearly hostile to Iran with an interest in depicting it in the most negative light possible. But you be the judge.
It happened in Baku, transforming the capital of Azerbaijan into a battleground in a global shadow war.
Police intercepted a fleeing car and captured two suspected Hezbollah militants from Lebanon. The car contained explosives, binoculars, cameras, pistols with silencers and reconnaissance photos. Raiding alleged safe houses, police foiled what authorities say was a plot to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic that borders Iran.
Thus begins the only detailed English-language press account of an alleged Iranian terror plot in Azerbaijan in 2008: a May 2009 article, written with a Paris dateline, by Sebastian Rotella for the Los Angeles Times.
But despite the sense of immediacy conveyed by his lede, Rotella’s sources for his account were not Azerbaijanis. Rather, the sources Rotella quoted on the details of the alleged plot, the investigation and apprehension of the suspects consisted of an unnamed “Israeli security official”, and Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the author of a constant stream of articles, op-eds, and Congressional testimony reflecting the Israeli government’s interest in promoting the perception of a growing Iranian terrorist threat around the world.[1]
It was Levitt who described the alleged plot in Baku to Rotella as having been “in the advanced stages” when it was supposedly broken up by Azerbaijani security forces, an assertion echoed by the anonymous Israeli security official cited in the article:
”[Iran] had reached the stage where they had a network in place to do an operation,” said an Israeli security official, who requested anonymity for safety reasons. “We are seeing it all over the world. They are working very hard at it.”
So readers of the LA Times received a version of the plot that was filtered primarily, if not exclusively, through an Israeli lens.[2] Relying on Israeli officials and a close ally at a pro-Israel US think tank for a story on an alleged Iranian bomb plot against an Israeli Embassy is bound to produce a predictable story line where the accuracy can hardly be assumed at face value. Indeed, in this case, there were and remain many reasons for skepticism.
Yet, three years later, in a July 2012 article for ProPublica, he referred to the plot as though it was established fact.
Had Rotella sought an independent source in Azerbaijan, he would have learned, for example, that such alleged plots had been a virtual perennial in Baku for years. That is what a leading scholar of Azerbaijan’s external relations, Anar Valiyev, told me in an interview last November. “It’s always the same plot year after year,” said Valiyev, Dean of the School of International Affairs of the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy in Baku.
In fact, security officials in Azerbaijan had claimed the existence of a similar plot in October 2007 and January 2012 and only two months later, authorities arrested Azerbaijani suspects in two different allegedly Iranian-initiated plots to carry out terrorist actions against Western embassies, the Israeli Embassy and/or Jewish targets. In early 2013, prison sentences were announced in yet another alleged terrorist plot to attack the Eurovision song contest in Baku in 2012. Valiyev told me that those detained by Azerbaijani security officials are always charged with wanting to kill Israeli or US officials and subsequently tried for plots to overthrow the government, which carries the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
In a 2007 article in Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Focus, Valiyev observed that plots, assassination and coup-attempts were “thwarted” with regularity in Azerbaijan. “Periodically the government finds a scapegoat,” he wrote, to justify attacks on domestic critics, including “Wahabbis”, followers of Kurdish-Sunni scholar Said Nursi and/or Shiite radicals. Valiyev suggested that security officials might be “trying to show that radical Islamists could come to power… should the incumbent government lose the election.”
The Azerbaijani government and its security forces are not known for their devotion to the rule of law. The current president, Ilham Aliyev, is the son of Azerbaijan’s first president, Heydar Aliyev, who, in turn, was the head of the Soviet KGB before Azerbaijan’s independence. According to Jim Lobe, who visited Baku last year, dissidents regard the first Aliyev’s tenure as relatively liberal compared that of his son. A 2009 State Department cable described Ilham Aliyev as a “mafia-like” figure, likening him to a combination of Michael and Sonny Corleone in the “The Godfather”.
Valiyev observed that virtually nothing about the alleged plot made sense, beginning with the targets. According to Rotella’s story, the alleged Hezbollah operatives and their Azerbaijani confederates had planned to set off three or four car bombs at the Israeli Embassy simultaneously, using explosives they “intended to accumulate” in addition to the “hundreds of pounds of explosives” they had allegedly already acquired from “Iranian spies.”
But the Israeli Embassy is located in the seven-story Hyatt Tower office complex along with other foreign embassies, and no automobiles are allowed to park in close proximity to the complex, according to Valiyev. So the alleged plotters would have needed a prodigious amount of explosives to accomplish such a plan.
For example, the bomb that destroyed the eight-story US Air Force barracks at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 was estimated at 23,000 pounds of explosives detonated less than 100 feet away from the building. Valiyev told me that it is “practically impossible to find such components in Azerbaijan” because “Even a few kilograms of explosives would be tracked down by the ministry of national security.”
In his article, Rotella also referred — though only in passing — to the prosecutor’s charge that the alleged conspirators were planning to attack a Russian radar installation at Gabala (sometimes spelled Qabala) in northern Azerbaijan. But that part of the plot was also highly suspect, according to Valiyev. No reason was ever given for such a target, and it would have made no sense for either Hezbollah’s or Iran’s interests.
Built in 1984, the Gabala radar station was leased to the Russians until 2012, and 900 troops from the Russian Space Forces were stationed there. An attack on the station by Hezbollah or its supposed proxies in Azerbaijan would have represented a major provocation against Russia by Iran and Hezbollah, and was therefore hard to believe, as Valiyev pointed out in a July 2009 report for the Jamestown Foundation. Valiyev said it was far more plausible that the alleged plotters were simply carrying out surveillance on the station which, according to some reports, was being considered for possible integration into a regional US missile defense system.
Rotella failed to mention yet another aspect of the prosecution’s case that should arouse additional skepticism. The indictment included the charge that the leader of the alleged terrorist cell plotting these attacks was working simultaneously for Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. Even though it has been long been discredited, the idea of an Iran-al-Qaeda collaboration on terrorism has been a favorite Israeli theme for some time and one that continues to be propagated by Levitt.
Rotella’s account of how the suspects were apprehended also appears implausible. In May 2008, when the bombings were supposedly still weeks away, according to his story, the suspects realized they were under surveillance and tried to flee.
But instead of hiding or destroying incriminating evidence of their terrorist plot — such as the reconnaissance photos, the explosives, the cameras and the pistols with silencers — as might be expected under those circumstances, the two suspects allegedly packed all that equipment in their car and fled toward the border with Iran, whereupon they were intercepted, according to the official line reported by Rotella.
Somehow, despite the surveillance, according to anonymous “anti-terrorist officials” cited by Rotella, “a number of Lebanese, Iranian and Azerbaijani suspects escaped by car into Iran.” Only those with the incriminating evidence — including, most implausibly, hundreds of pounds of explosives — in their car were caught, according to the account given to Rotella.
Even Rotella’s description of the two Lebanese suspects, Ali Karaki and Ali Najem Aladine, as a veteran Hezbollah external operations officer and an explosives expert, respectively, should not be taken at face value, according to Valiyev. It is more likely, he said, that the two were simply spies working for Iranian intelligence.
Even the US Embassy report on the trial of the suspects suggested it also had doubts about the alleged plot. “In early October after a closed trial,” the reporting cable said, “an Azerbaijani court sentenced a group of alleged terrorists arrested the previous Spring and supposedly connected to Lebanese Hezbollah plot to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Baku AND the Qabala radar station in northern Azerbaijan” (emphasis in the original). It added, “In a public statement the state prosecutor repeated earlier claims that the entire plot was an operation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”
Yet another striking anomaly about the alleged plot was the fact that nothing was published about it for an entire year. No explanation for the silence was ever made public. This silence is all the more significant because during 2009 and 2010, the Israeli government either publicly alleged or leaked stories of Iranian or Hezbollah plots in Turkey and Jordan about which the host country authorities either did not comment on or offered a different explanation. But despite the extremely close relationship between Azebaijani and Israeli intelligence services (confirmed by this US Embassy cable), neither the Israeli media nor foreign journalists were tipped off to the plot until the Israelis leaked the story to Rotella a year later.[3]
The complete absence of any leak by the Israelis for an entire year about an alleged Iranian plot to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Baku casts some circumstantial doubt on whether such a plot had indeed been uncovered in 2008, as claimed in the article.
Despite the multiple anomalies surrounding this story — the complete lack of any publicly available corroborating evidence; the well-established penchant for the Aliyev government for using such alleged plots to justify rounding up domestic critics; the US Embassy’s apparent skepticism, his failure to consult independent sources; and the 2009 publication by the Jamestown Foundation of Valiyev’s own critique of the “official” version of the case — Rotella has shown no interest in clarifying what actually happened. In fact, as noted above, he referred to the plot again in a July 2012 article for ProPublica as if there was not the slightest doubt with regard to its actual occurrence, identifying it, as he did in the original article, as an attempted retaliation for the assassination of a senior Hezbollah operative three months before:
Conflict with Israel intensified in February 2008 after a car bomb in the heart of Damascus killed Imad Mughniyah, a notorious Hezbollah military leader and ally of Iranian intelligence. Iranian Hezbollah publicly accused Israel and vowed revenge.
Within weeks, a plot was under way against the Israeli Embassy in Azerbaijan. Police broke up the cell in May 2008. The suspects included Azeri accomplices, a senior Hezbollah field operative and a Hezbollah explosives expert. Police also arrested two Iranian spies, but they were released within weeks because of pressure from Tehran, Western anti-terror officials say.[4] The other suspects were convicted.
As narrowly sourced as it was, Rotella’s original 2009 story thus helped make a dubious tale of a bomb plot in Baku part of the media narrative. More recently, he continued that pattern by promoting the unsubstantiated charge by Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman and various pro-Israel groups and right-wing members of Congress, such as Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, that Iran poses a growing terrorist threat to the US in the Americas. While Jim has helped deconstruct that story line, I have recently marshaled evidence showing that Nisman’s charges about alleged Iranian involvement in the 1994 AMIA bombing and the 2007 JFK airport plot were tendentious and highly questionable.
[1] In one illustration of Rotella’s and Levitt’s long-time symbiosis, Levitt cited Rotella’s account of the alleged Baku plot as his main source about the incident in a 2013 article on alleged Hezbollah terrorism published by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC).
[2] Rotella referred twice to “anti-terrorism officials” as sources for describing the surveillance of the alleged perpetrators that preceded their arrest and past work for Hezbollah. Of course, the phrase “anti-terrorism officials” does not exclude the possibility that they, too, were Israeli.)
[3] The first time the alleged plot’s details appeared in the Anglophone Israeli press was when Haaretz published a several hundred-word piece based virtually exclusively on Rotella’s account with the added detail, citing “Israeli sources,” that the “plotters also planned to kidnap the Israeli ambassador in Baku…”
[4] This account, incidentally, was the first to report the arrest in the case of “two Iranian spies”, another anomaly that may be explained by a flurry of media reports in 2010 that it was the two Lebanese who were released as part of a larger prisoner exchange that also included an Azerbaijani nuclear scientist arrested as a spy by Iran.
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August 22, 2013 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Azerbaijan, Gareth Porter, Iran, Jim Lobe, Los Angeles Times, ProPublica | Leave a comment
Syria chemical mayhem: Another Israeli false-flag?
By Kevin Barrett | Press TV | August 22, 2013
On Wednesday – just hours after the massacre of hundreds of Syrians with chemical weapons – Israeli Minister of Military Affairs Moshe Yaalon claimed he knew who did it: The Syrian government.
Other world leaders, including US President Barack Obama, did not rush to judgment. Instead, they called for a United Nations investigation. Many experts, including the BBC’s Frank Gardner, former UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus, and Swedish chemical weapons expert, Ake Sellstrom, ridiculed or cast doubt on the notion that Syrian President Assad would launch a chemical attack at the exact moment weapons inspectors arrived in Syria. The Russian Foreign Ministry came right out and called the chemical attack “a provocation planned in advance.”
But planned by whom?
To answer that question, we must ask: How could Israel immediately know who was behind the Syrian chemical attack?
Israeli leaders have amazing powers of clairvoyance. Whenever a huge, history-steering terror attack happens, the Israelis immediately know who did it. Before the dust settles, they stand up and tell the world exactly what it all means – and provide the script for the way they want the world to react.
Christopher Bollyn reminds us: “Within minutes of the airplane crashes on 9/11, Ehud Barak (the founder and master of the Israeli military’s covert operation force, the Sayeret Matkal) was in the London studio of the BBC World ready to provide a plausible (and political) explanation to the world. Barak, the real mastermind of 9/11, was the first person to call for a ‘War on Terror’ – and US intervention in Afghanistan and the Middle East.”
Like Ehud Barak minutes after 9/11, Moshe Yaalon stood up just hours after the Syrian chemical weapons tragedy and provided an apparently pre-scripted narrative.
Fox News transmitted the Israeli script:
“‘In Syria, the regime has used chemical weapons and it’s not the first time,’ (Minister of Military Affairs) Yaalon told Israeli defense correspondents. ‘It’s a life and death struggle between a regime based on the Alawite minority and a disparate opposition composed of Sunni Muslims, some Muslim Brotherhood members, others linked to al-Qaeda. We don’t see any end to the fighting – even the fall of (President Bashar) al-Assad won’t bring it to a halt, there will a bloody settling of accounts over a long period,’ the minister added. ‘We could see the implosion of Syria with the Alawites controlling the western part – the coastal region and a corridor to Damascus – and the Kurds and Sunnis controlling the east and north.'”
Yaalon’s tirade is not an analysis. It is a program of action. It is what the Israelis want to happen.
First, the Israelis want the world to swallow the unlikely notion that the Syrian government is crazy enough to launch a massive chemical weapons strike at the exact moment weapons inspectors are entering the country. They want the world to believe that the Assad government would risk all of the huge gains it has made in recent months by launching a poison gas attack designed to provoke massive Western intervention against it.
The Israelis want the world to see the conflict as an intractable, endless struggle between Sunni and Alawite Muslims. The Israelis “don’t see any end to the fighting” meaning they do not want the fighting to end – in fact, they will do whatever it takes to keep the fighting going, including launching false-flag attacks like the recent chemical weapons massacre. Israel’s goal, as Yaalon admits, is the destruction of Syria: “We could see the implosion of Syria with the Alawites controlling the western part – the coastal region and a corridor to Damascus – and the Kurds and Sunnis controlling the east and north.”
The destruction of Syria would be the culmination of a decades-long Israeli project: The Oded Yinon plan for the Balkanization of the Middle East. Since at least the 1970s, Israeli strategists have planned to smash neighboring Middle Eastern countries into tiny ethnic and sectarian Bantustans.
The Oded Yinon plan to break up the Middle East became Netanyahu’s 1996 “Clean Break” plan. To achieve the destruction of Israel’s neighbors, Netanyahu’s neocons – led by Richard Perle, the self-styled “Prince of Darkness” – schemed to trick the US into doing Israel’s dirty work. In September 2000, Perle, Wolfowitz, and the other Zionists at Project for a New American Century (PNAC) called for a “new Pearl Harbor.” Their goal: A long-term US war against Israel’s enemies. One year later, on September 11th, 2001, their New Pearl Harbor became a reality.
The Israelis and their American proxies have already smashed Iraq, Libya, and Sudan into pieces. Now they are targeting Syria and Egypt – two countries whose land they plan to steal to create a “Greater Israel” stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Shortly before the false-flag chemical attack against Syria, the Israelis orchestrated a fascist coup d’état in Egypt. General al-Sisi, an Israeli pawn throughout his career, spent the days before and during the coup on the phone with his Israeli handlers.
As in Syria, the Israeli goal in Egypt is to “not see any end to the fighting.” That is why the Israelis have convinced al-Sisi and the Zionist-controlled Egyptian deep state to release criminal ex-dictator, Hosni Mubarak. The move is calculated to outrage the Egyptian masses, and to accelerate the ongoing slaughter of thousands by the al-Sisi regime.
The people of Syria and Egypt must stop falling for Israel’s tricks.
And the world must recognize that all of the biggest and most spectacular “terror attacks” attributed to Israel’s Arab and Muslim enemies – from the Lavon Affair, to the USS Liberty massacre, to the Achille Lauro and Entebbe hijacking incidents, to the bombings of Jewish targets in London and Buenos Aires, to 9/11 and its follow-up operations in Bali, Madrid, London, Mumbai and elsewhere – have been Israeli-sponsored false-flag operations.
Moshe Yaalon’s clumsy attempt to steer the world’s reaction to the Syrian chemical weapons massacre suggests that the attack was yet another Israeli false-flag operation.
August 22, 2013 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Ehud Barak, Israel, Middle East, Syria, Zionism | Leave a comment
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From the Archives
Examples of hate speech by Israel against Palestine
1. “There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies, not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.” Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001
2. “The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more”…. Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time – August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2000
3. ” [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
4. “The Palestinians” would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
5. “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
6. “How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.
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