Clinton changes tune on timing of Iran sanctions
Press TV – March 2, 2010
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says it could take several months to impose new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. She made the remarks on Monday while speaking to reporters traveling with her on a tour of South America.
Pundits say she changed her position on sanctions because of reluctance among some other members of the UN Security Council.
Last week, Clinton told the US Senate that the UN Security Council would endorse sanctions in the next 30 to 60 days. But on Monday she stressed that Washington is working “expeditiously and thoroughly” to convince UN Security Council members to impose new sanctions on Iran.
“We are moving expeditiously and thoroughly in the Security Council. I can’t give you an exact date, but I would assume sometime in the next several months,” she said before landing in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires.
Clinton said she would probably discuss the Iranian issue during talks with the presidents of Argentina and Brazil.
Last week, Clinton acknowledged that some key countries like China are opposed to new Iran sanctions.
Both China and Russia are calling for further negotiations to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is being implemented to meet the country’s growing demand for energy.
The New York Times veers neocon
Robert Parry | consortiumnews.com | March 1, 2010
Many American progressives don’t want to recognize how bad the U.S. mainstream news media has become. It’s easier to praise a few exceptions to the rule and to hope that some pendulum will swing than to undertake the challenging task of building a new and honest media infrastructure.
But the hard reality is that the U.S. news media is getting worse, with now both premier national newspapers – the New York Times and the Washington Post – decidedly sliding into the neocon camp, where the likes of the Wall Street Journal have long resided.
For the Post, this may already be an old story, given its enthusiastic cheerleading for the Iraq War. The Times, however, was a somewhat different story. Yes, it did let Judith Miller and other staff writers promote the fictions about Iraq’s WMD, but it hadn’t sunk to the depths of the Post.
That is now changing as the Times – behind executive editor Bill Keller and editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal – tosses aside all pretense of objectivity in the cause of seeking “regime change” in Iran, today’s top priority for the neoconservatives.
At Consortiumnews.com, we have noted this trend for some months, not only in the New York Times opinion section but in its news columns where Iran’s alleged interest in acquiring a nuclear weapon is trumpeted incessantly (despite its denial of such a desire), while rogue nuclear states in the region (such as Israel, Pakistan and India) are given a pass. [See, for example, “US Media Replays Iraq Fiasco in Iran.”]
This Sunday, the Times’ bias was on display again in the lead editorial entitled, “New Think and Old Weapons,” which purported to examine the state of nuclear weapons in the world.
Fitting with the Times’ deepening neocon tendencies, Iran’s nuclear weapons (even though they don’t exist) were a major topic, while the rogue nuclear states of Israel, Pakistan and India (which have refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) weren’t mentioned.
So, you had formulations like this: “Iran, North Korea and others have seemingly unquenchable nuclear appetites” and the need to “bolster American credibility … to rein in Iran, North Korea and other proliferators.” In all, there were four such references to North Korea and Iran, but no specific references to Israel, Pakistan and India.
The Times also observed that China was “the only major nuclear power adding to its arsenal [which] is estimated to have 100 to 200 warheads.” There was no mention of Israel, which is believed to possess one of the most sophisticated nuclear arsenals in the world, totaling some 200 or more devices.
Ironically, the Times editorial also cited problems of “hypocrisy and double standards” and noted that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was “battered.”
The Times did not seem at all embarrassed by its own hypocrisy and double standards. Nor did it bother to note that one of the key reasons this “bedrock” treaty is in trouble is that non-signatories – like Israel, Pakistan and India – have built nukes, often with a wink and a nod from Washington.
As neocon propagandists pursue their goal of riling up the American public against some new foreign threat, that effort requires highlighting certain facts (and even fictions). But the propagandists equally must make sure that many inconvenient truths are conveniently forgotten. Otherwise the alleged threat might not seem all that unusual or threatening.
So, in the world of neocon propaganda, Iran – a treaty signatory that has no nuclear weapons and insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes – must be endlessly badgered, but Israel – an undeclared rogue nuclear state with a vast arsenal – must be shielded from similar criticism and pressure.
That the New York Times has now embraced these neocon biases, almost with the ardor of the Washington Post, is a serious development for the U.S. news media and for the nation.
© 2010 Consortium News
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.
Obama may retain Bush’s nuclear policy
Press TV – March 1, 2010
US President Barack Obama has reportedly rejected proposals to exclude pre-emptive atomic strikes from the country’s new nuclear strategy.
Obama is making his final decisions on America’s new nuclear strategy, called the ‘Nuclear Posture Review’, which is expected to permanently downsize the US nuclear arsenal.
But fears are growing that the president might follow in his predecessor Gorge W. Bush’s tracks.
Citing unnamed senior presidential aides, the daily New York Times said on Monday that the administration has rejected proposals that the United States declare it would resort to nuclear arms only once targeted by such weapons.
This would mean Obama, who has been extremely cautious in distancing himself from the former administration’s policies, may now leave open the possibility for the United States to use nuclear weapons in response to a chemical or biological attack, even against a nation that may not possess a nuclear arsenal at all, the paper noted.
The new document is supposed to commit the United States to developing no new nuclear weapons, including the nuclear bunker-busters advocated by the Bush administration.
This is while Obama has authorized billions of dollars more to be spent on updating America’s weapons laboratories.
According to Times article, the US has been bringing up with its European allies the question of whether to withdraw its Europe-based tactical nuclear weapons.
On Monday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was to present Obama with several options in line with a shift in US military strategy towards the use of broader missile systems, mostly arrayed within striking distance of the Persian Gulf states.
Obama’s recently published Quadrennial Defense Review also includes support for a new class of non-nuclear missiles, namely “Prompt Global Strike,” which enable the United States to hit a target anywhere in less than an hour, the Times said.
‘NYT’ Op-Ed congratulates Obama for laying off Israel ’cause solving I/P won’t solve anything
By Jeffrey Blankfort | February 28, 2010
Has the NY Times response to the complaints about Ethan Bronner led it to be even more forceful in pushing its pro-Israel agenda including getting the US to attack Iran? Apparently so. In today’s op-eds, they’ve imported the thoughts of a British Jewish professor, Efraim Karsh, (another Bernard Lewis, and a Nakba denier) who uses his abbreviated paternalistic version of Islamic history to conclude that the Arabs countries will not object to the US attacking Iran. And, in passing, he welcomes Washington’s less “imperious” attempts at bringing Israel to the bargaining table:
So, if the Muslim bloc is just as fractious as any other group of seemingly aligned nations, what does it mean for United States policy in the Islamic world?
For one, it should give us more impetus to take a harder line with Iran. Just as the Muslim governments couldn’t muster the minimum sense of commonality for holding an all-Islamic sports tournament, so they would be unlikely to rush to Iran’s aid in the event of sanctions, or even a military strike.
Beyond the customary lip service about Western imperialism and “Crusaderism,” most other Muslim countries would be quietly relieved to see the extremist regime checked. It’s worth noting that the two dominant Arab states, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have been at the forefront of recent international efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
As for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the idea that bringing peace between the two parties will bring about a flowering of cooperation in the region and take away one of Al Qaeda’s primary gripes against the West totally misreads history and present-day politics. Muslim states threaten Israel’s existence not so much out of concern for the Palestinians, but rather as part of a holy war to prevent the loss of a part of the House of Islam.
In these circumstances, one can only welcome the latest changes in the Obama administration’s Middle Eastern policy, which combine a tougher stance on Iran’s nuclear subterfuge with a less imperious approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
IRAN HAS BEEN CAPABLE OF HAVING A ‘NUCLEAR WEAPON WITHIN SIX MONTHS’ FOR YEARS NOW – BUT, LIKE ‘TOMORROW’, IT NEVER COMES.
By Damian Lataan | February 28, 2010
Other periods of time have been mentioned over the three decades since the Iranian people kicked out the Shah as to how long it would take the Iranians to build a nuclear weapon, but six months seems to a very popular nominal figure. Never mind, of course, that there has not been a skerrick of evidence to even suggest that the Iranians are doing anything more than building nuclear reactors for generating electricity or creating medical isotopes for medical purposes. But that hasn’t stopped the propagandists who seem to insist that Iran is still only six months away from having a nuclear weapon.
If I started the list of claims that Iran would have a weapon within six months from back in 1980 when the Shah went, you’d still be reading it in, well… six months time! So, I’ll cut short the list and start it off with some of the earlier claims of this century.
Back in August 2003, the LA Times reported that Iran could have a ‘nuclear weapon in six months’. More than two years later in September 2005, Israel claimed Iran would have ‘nuclear weapon in six months’. Then, nearly three years later in June 2008 we were told again that Iran would have a ‘nuclear weapon in six months’. A year later, in July 2009, Ha’aretz reported that ‘Germany believes Iran could have a nuclear bomb in six months’.
Now, in the very latest statement dated 23 February 2010, made by so-called ‘Iran weapons expert’, David Albright, Iran, in his expert opinion, is now only… wait for it; six months away from having a nuclear weapon. This is the very same David Albright that was telling us more than a year ago in February 2009; “In as quickly as a few months, Iran would be able to have enough weapons-grade uranium for nuclear weapons”. It’s also the very same David Albright who told the CBS ’60 Minutes’ show way, way back in January 1999 that Saddam Hussein was “within a few months to a year of having a nuclear weapon”.
Albright? Not very! He’s the original boy that cried ‘Wolf!’ Unfortunately, the media will continue to echo his and similar cries and there will be those that believe them. Eventually the West, led by Israel and the US, will attack Iran based on these lies, but the worst of it is; hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of dead later, the rest of world will go along with it without a murmur.
Mainstream Media Questions Inaccuracies in 9/11 Story
The Washington Times publishes story questioning official account.
By Tim King* | Salem-News.com | February 24, 2010
The mainstream press is showing interest in a taboo, however glaring subject; the inconsistencies in the Bush White House 9/11 account.
As The Washington Post reports today, “A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center.”
The problems with the official federal stories are endless and according to some of the world’s top minds, the suggested account is impossible[1].
When we first began to write about these seemingly pressing questions, our Web Designer Matt Lintz caught the U.S. Air Force attempting to hack into Salem-News.com[2].
One person who has never let the matter fade away is Richard Gage. He’s a San Francisco architect and founder of the nonprofit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
Gage told The Washington Times, “In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially, exploded outwards.”
The federal government wants you to believe that fires brought the buildings to the ground, yet in all recorded history, no fire has ever toppled a skyscraper. They burn to the framework but they don’t fall down.
Even if it was possible, the World Trade Towers were the least likely candidates. The steel core design of these buildings would not have come down, even if the building collapsed.
Even when you get past that, perhaps finding ways to justify the impossible “official” circumstances, how on earth could any logical explanation account for Building 7?
This is curious, I would suggest that half of all living Americans still don’t realize that a third building also came down that day, and it wasn’t hit by an airplane. But it did contain a lot of records that certain members of the financial industry didn’t miss. Then there are the billions of dollars in missing gold evacuated just before Building 7 pancaked to the ground.
The words of Gage are reflected all over the nation in universities and engineering firms. The Trade Tower buildings were specifically designed to withstand the impact of a jet liner, specifically. Jet fuel is similar to diesel and it doesn’t burn very hot. Firefighters, talking on radios, talked about how the aircraft crash fire in one building were going to easily be extinguisher by a few firefighters.
One of our writers, Jeff Gates, suggested that the only country that benefited from the ensuing wars is Israel.
“For instance, a skilled game theorist could foresee that, in response to a 911-type mass murder, “the mark” (the U.S.) would deploy its military to avenge that attack. With phony intelligence fixed around a preset goal, a game theory algorithm could anticipate that those forces might well be redirected to invade Iraq-not to avenge 911 but to pursue the expansionist goals of Greater Israel[3].
Enforcing that thought, our writer Maidhc Ó Cathail wrote, “The day after 9/11, Benjamin Netanyahu let slip that the deaths of almost 3,000 Americans was ‘very good’ for Israel. In particular, the mass murder was very good for an emerging sector of the Israeli economy. In Laboratory for a Fortressed World, Naomi Klein detailed the post-9/11 “explosion of Israel’s homeland security sector.”[4]
Another Salem-News.com writer, Dr. Alan Sabrosky, wrote about the connection between 9/11 and Israel in the article, Treason, Betrayal and Deceit: The Road to 9/11 and Beyond, “Second, only two intelligence agencies had the expertise, assets, access and political protection to execute 9/11 in the air and on the ground: our CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Only one had the incentive, using the ‘who benefits’ principle: Mossad.”[5]
The answers remain tangled up. Many Americans believe questioning the government over this is unpatriotic, then they turn around and burn effigies of Obama at tea bagger parties. I say it is highly unpatriotic and even disingenuous, to not question facts about the integrity of this nation.
I won’t even start on Shanksville and the Pentagon; those stories are packed with more holes and in your face inconsistencies than there is time for in this report, but I have written about the Pentagon in particular, at great length[6].
The tragedy of September 11th 2001 is so far reaching that we could never truly describe it. The event was the reasoning to launch two very costly, ongoing wars. The very notion of Arab terrorists selecting the day that is synonymous with emergency response in the U.S. is as hard to believe as the “terrorists” passports recovered so conveniently on the sidewalks in New York that day.
The Washington Times cites how Gage, a member of the American Institute of Architects, managed to persuade more than a thousand of his peers to sign a new petition requesting a formal inquiry.
“The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction. We are therefore calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials.”
Gage says technical issues surrounding the collapse of the towers have prompted years of debate, rebuttal and ridicule.
The article cites how he is particularly disturbed by the fall of the 47-story skyscraper, Building 7. This engineer says, like the other two buildings, tower 7 fell in “pure free-fall acceleration.”
He also talked about how more than a hundred first-responders observed flashes and explosions during the fall of the towers.
Even more disturbing evidence Gage says, are “multi-ton steel sections ejected laterally 600 ft. at 60 mph”. He also talked about the “mid-air pulverization of 90,000 tons of concrete & metal decking.”
Firefighters and Trade Tower employees en mass reported explosions before the buildings came down. They also talked about building closures in the weeks preceding 9/11, and men carrying large amounts of equipment into the elevator shafts.
Most experts agree that the buildings could only have come down the way they did if they were imploded. Experts who perform this type of work, common in places like Las Vegas, at least before the nation’s economic downturn, place the main explosives in the elevator shafts, but also in many other strategic locations in a building’s structure.
If you watch the World Trade Towers fall in slow motion, it is easy to observe what appear to be a series of planned explosions, running essentially the length of each building.
Gage says evidence of “advanced explosive nano-thermitic composite material” was found in the World Trade Center dust. Of course Rudy Gulliani, mayor of New York at the time, had all of the building evidence shipped away from the state almost immediately.
There is a long list of federal investigators who say they were not allowed to do their jobs or complete the investigation. Tie this to the revelations in 9/11 Commissioner John Farmer’s book: “The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America’s Defense on 9/11″, where the author builds the inescapably convincing case that the official version is almost entirely untrue, according to our writer Gordon Duff, and you just might be lifting a corner of the dirtiest rug that ever was used to suppress truth[7].
Gage says the group’s petition at ae911truth.org is already on its way to members of Congress.
He Told The Washington Times, “Government officials will be notified that ‘Misprision of Treason,’ U.S. Code 18 (Sec. 2382), is a serious federal offense, which requires those with evidence of treason to act.”
“The implications are enormous and may have profound impact on the forthcoming Khalid Shaikh Mohammed trial.”
For me, the biggest story here is that a mainstream member of the press published this article, I am amazed and encouraged. It is hard to suggest that we have perhaps been had in the biggest and worst way possible, but honesty is the only thing that matters.
Israeli Espionage – Part 1 of 4
Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEOecRtBU7U
Israeli Espionage – Part 2 of 4
Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17SSuuZDkA
Israeli Espionage – Part 3 of 4
Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VclAeKYYvBc
Israeli Espionage – Part 4 of 4
Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVRsmodmCTE
Also, this video from CoreofCorruption.com which was released just over a year ago, details the information regarding four alleged “art students” who had free access to the Trade Towers, including construction passes, in the immediate weeks preceding 9/11:
Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA9MvV-SrCo
References:
[1] Apr-07-2006 : Huge Contradictions in Official Theories on 9/11 Crash at Pentagon – Tim King Salem-News.com
[2] Apr-16-2006: U.S. Air Force Hackers Caught in Their Tracks by Salem-News.com – Tim King Salem-News.com
[3]Oct-20-2009: How Israel Wages Game Theory Warfare – Jeff Gates Salem-News.com
[4] Jan-20-2010: The Merchants of Fear: Israel’s Profiting from Homeland Insecurity – Maidhc Ó Cathail Sabbah.biz
[5] Sep-10-2009: Treason, Betrayal and Deceit: The Road to 9/11 and Beyond – Alan Sabrosky Sabbah.biz
[6] Mar-21-2006: What Really Hit The Pentagon? – Tim King Salem-News.com
[7] Sep-11-2009: The 9/11 Commission Rejects own Report as Based on Government Lies – Gordon Duff Salem-News.com
* Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com’s Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation’s only truly independent high traffic news Website. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com
Source: Salem-news.com
Canada’s neoconservative turn
Yves Engler, The Electronic Intifada, 26 February 2010
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Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon (right) meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March 2009. (AFP) |
“An attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.”
– Peter Kent, Junior Foreign minister, 12 February 2010
In my new book Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid I argue that the trajectory of this country’s foreign policy has been clear. The culmination of six decades of one-sided support, and four years into the government of Conservative Party Prime Minister Stephen Harper: Canada is (at least diplomatically) the most pro-Israel country in the world.
Since the book went to print a couple of months ago the Conservatives have launched a more extreme phase of Israel advocacy. Groups in any way associated with the Palestinian cause have been openly attacked and Ottawa has taken a more belligerent tone towards Iran.
In the beginning of February, Ottawa delighted Israeli hawks by canceling $15 million in funding for the UN agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The money has been reallocated to Palestinian Authority judicial and security reforms in the West Bank. At the same time, Canada doubled the number of troops involved in US Lt. General Keith Dayton’s mission to train a Palestinian force to strengthen Fatah against Hamas and to serve as an arm of Israel’s occupation.
Only a few weeks earlier, Israel apologists sang Harper’s praise when his government chopped $7 million from Kairos, a Christian aid organization that had received government money for 35 years. During a visit to Israel, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Canada had “defunded organizations, most recently like Kairos, who are taking a leadership role” in campaigns to boycott Israel. Palestinian advocacy was also the reason Ottawa failed to renew its funding for Montreal-based Alternatives, an international solidarity organization, which received most of its budget from the federal government.
The Conservatives chose a different tactic with the arm’s-length government agency Rights and Democracy. Instead of cutting its budget, they stacked the board with hard-line supporters of Israel. Last week, Maclean magazine reported that “The Rights and Democracy board is now predominantly composed of people who have devoted much of their life to an unequivocal position: that no legal challenge to Israel’s human rights record is permissible, because any such challenge is part of a global harassment campaign against Israel’s right to exist.”
The new “Israel no matter what” board members hounded the organization’s president, Remy Beauregard, until he died of a heart attack after a “vitriolic” meeting a month ago. Once in charge, the new board voted to “repudiate” three $10,000 grants given to Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups (B’Tselem, Al-Haq and Al Mezan). On Wednesday, the Toronto Star reported that the “Conservative-appointed [Rights and Democracy] board secretly decided to close the agency’s Geneva office, distancing itself from a United Nations body it viewed as anti-Israeli.”
Internationally, Harper has used his pulpit as host of this year’s G8 to pave the way for a possible US-Israeli attack on Iran. “Canada will use its G8 presidency to continue to focus international attention and action on the Iranian regime,” explained the prime minister on 9 February.
While Ottawa considers Iran’s nuclear energy program a major threat, Israel’s atomic bombs have not provoked similar condemnation. The Harper government has repeatedly abstained on votes asking Israel to place its nuclear weapons program under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) controls.
A week ago Ottawa criticized China, a key trading partner of Iran, for refusing to follow Western dictates regarding the Islamic Republic. “I think China should step up to the plate and do something here,” Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said.
While they are silent on the appalling record of the pro-West monarchy in Saudi Arabia and the dictatorship in Egypt, Canadian officials regularly berate Iran. “This regime continues to blatantly ignore its international obligations, and this threatens global security,” Cannon said last week.
At times Canadian words have been even more menacing. A 17 February Toronto Star article was headlined: “Military action against Iran still on the table, Kent says.” Peter Kent, the junior foreign minister, explained that “It may soon be time to intensify the sanctions and to broaden those sanctions into other areas.” He added: “I think the realization [is] that it’s a dangerous situation that has been there for some time. It’s a matter of timing and it’s a matter of how long we can wait without taking more serious preemptive action.”
“Preemptive action” is likely a euphemism for a bombing campaign. Canadian naval vessels are already running provocative maneuvers off Iran’s coast and by stating that “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada,” Kent is trying to create the impression that Iran may attack Israel. But isn’t it Israel that possesses nuclear weapons and threatens to bomb Iran, not the other way around? Of course that would be a reality-based analysis, not something George W. Bush’s Canadian clones favor.
Yves Engler (http://yvesengler.wordpress.com/) is the author of the recently-released Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy.
Dissident Jews: Unwanted in Germany?
By Raymond Deane | Pulse Media | February 25, 2010
A European country that scapegoats a Semitic people, persecutes defenders of human rights by stripping them of employment, and denies freedom of speech to Jews: surely a description of Germany during the Third Reich?
Yes, but unfortunately also a description of Germany at the outset of the 21st century.
In the wake of German Chancellor Merkel’s craven speech to the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset) two years ago, I wrote: “a penance is being paid for Germany’s past crimes… by the Palestinians to whose plight Merkel is so indifferent…. By scapegoating the victims of its former victims, Germany is compounding its past crimes.” (Scapegoat upon Scapegoat, Electronic Intifada, 20 March 2008).
Just one year later I described the case of Hermann Dierkes, forced to resign his position as representative of Die Linke (The Left Party) on Duisburg city council after tentatively advocating a boycott of Israeli goods. I commented: “It appears that freedom of speech, supposedly one of the proudest acquisitions of post-Fascist Germany, is readily suppressed when exercised to advocate positive action against the racist, politicidal institutions and actions of the Zionist state.” (A public stoning in Germany, Electronic Intifada, March 2009).
I mentioned as something of an anomaly Thomas Assheuer’s application of the “antisemite” label to Canadian Jewish author Naomi Klein (Die Zeit, 15 January 2009) because of her support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. In the light of recent developments this seems far less anomalous.
In July 2009 the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Cross of Merit) was awarded to Felicia Langer, German-based Jewish lawyer and former Israeli citizen who has repeatedly defended Palestinians in Israel’s courts. There ensued a virulent if unsuccessful campaign by right-wing German Jews like Ralph Giordano, backed by the neo-conservative American Jewish Committee, to have this decision reversed. Langer called this “a campaign of defamation” designed to stifle criticism of Israel, and described Giordano as “motivated by… a bottomless hatred.”
In November 2009 the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe saw his projected lecture at Munich’s Pedagogical Institute cancelled by the municipality after protests from Zionist lobby groups. In an open letter to the Munich Mayor, Dr Pappe wrote that his father “was silenced in a similar way as a German Jew in the early 1930s”. Like himself, he wrote, his father and his friends were regarded as “‘humanist’ and ‘peacenik’ Jews whose voice had to be quashed and stopped.” Pappe professed himself “worried… about the state of freedom of speech and democracy in present day Germany”.
Norman Finkelstein’s lecture on Gaza scheduled for 26th February 2010 in Berlin, under the auspices of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, was attacked by the neo-conservative lobby group “Honestly Concerned”, which is German despite its English monicker. They described Finkelstein – a US Jewish academic who is the son of Holocaust survivors – as an antisemite engaged in “historical revisionism”. The Foundation promptly withdrew its support.
The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, close to Die Linke and named after a murdered anti-Zionist Jewish Marxist, stepped into the breech. However, after an outcry orchestrated by the Shalom Working Circle (BAK Shalom), a youth faction within Die Linke itself, this support was also withdrawn. Despite a rescue attempt by the leftist daily newspaper junge Welt, Finkelstein cancelled his German trip with the words: “If I come to Germany to speak before a few people in a small room it will be said that free speech was not violated in Germany. I do not want to lend credibility to this lie.” (As a footnote to this: at the time of writing, junge Welt proposes to go ahead with this event anyway; speakers mooted include the abovementioned Hermann Dierkes.)
It would be a serious mistake, however, to conclude that such defamation is exclusively the province of Zionist Jews. They are backed by a slew of small groups, so far to the left that they have ended up on the right, known as the “anti-German” movement.
An understanding of this bizarre phenomenon is essential to an understanding of the political atmosphere in which events such as these can occur. The Anti-Germans reject German nationalism. This leads them to unconditional support for Israel, seen as “representing the Jews”, the main victims of that nationalism in the 1930s and 40s. Next, they offer unconditional support to the USA as Israel’s main sponsor, and to each and every war in which the USA and NATO are implicated. They define these wars in neo-conservative terms as a battle for Western civilization against the forces of barbarism. This has led the Gruppe Morgenthau, an “anti-Nazi” group that vilifies “liberal” Israeli Jews, to call for the lifting of “anti-racist taboos”. The Anti-German newspaper Bahamas has praised Jean-Marie Le Pen of the French far right Front National for his “rational objections… to unlimited Islamisation”, and a Bahamas author – Martin Blumentritt – has described criticism of the West as “the propagation of a racial struggle against the ‘white race’”.
Thus the initial rejection of fascism leads to a new racism and thence back to a kind of fascism. The absolutism with which a rational liberal position has been turned inside out suggests that the anti-Germans couldn’t be more thoroughly German.
Disturbingly, this lunatic fringe does not only thrive on the margins. There is an influential anti-German clique within Die Linke itself, represented by, among others, the above-mentioned BAK Shalom faction, one of whose spokesmen (Benjamin Krüger) wrote that “Finkelstein is internationally popular among antisemites because, merely by describing himself as a Jew and the son of Holocaust survivors, .he is accorded credibility…”, a formulation that it is tempting to describe as antisemitic.
Ralph Giordano, in opposing the award of the Bundesverdienstkreuz to Felicia Langer, accused her of being an inspiration to those Germans “who seek to relieve the pressure of their own guilt by criticizing Israel”. In fact, of course, the exact opposite is happening: unconditional support for Israel caters to the narcissism of those Germans who need constant reassurance that their “penance” – transferred to Palestinian scapegoats – is universally applauded.
Shortly after his tour of Germany in 2002 (it was possible then!), Finkelstein mocked the “operatic courage” of his German critics and accused them of engendering antisemitism among their compatriots. The antics of the anti-Germans and their ilk whip up racial tensions that can only lead to a climate reminiscent of the 1930s. Perhaps the travails of Pappe and Finkelstein may serve ultimately as a wake-up call to activists to place Germany – the most powerful country in the European Union – high on the list of Palestine’s most deadly enemies after Israel and the USA.
Raymond Deane is a composer and activist based in Ireland and Germany
China snubs US call for harsher Iran sanctions
Press TV – February 25, 2010
Beijing once again has shrugged off Washington’s call for harsher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently said she expects the UN Security Council to impose new sanctions against Iran within the “next 30 to 60 days.”
Clinton claimed that the US administration’s overtures to Tehran have helped Washington gain greater international support for tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
Clinton said, “Iran has left the international community little choice but to impose greater costs for its provocative steps.”
However, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said that his country believes diplomatic efforts have not yet been exhausted.
“We believe there is still diplomatic room for the Iranian nuclear issue,” Qin said.
“We hope all parties concerned can put the overall interest in their mind and enhance consultation and dialogue so as to come to a peaceful solution,” he added.
Qin said China would “continue to play a constructive role” in resolving the issue.
Aside from China, Russia — another veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council — has voiced opposition to new Iran sanctions proposed by Clinton.
Tehran has repeatedly declared that the Western-backed sanctions will not force it to give up the Iranian nation’s legitimate nuclear rights.
Barak gives his marching orders
Press TV – February 23, 2010
After failing to win support in Russia for tough sanctions against Iran, Israel turns to its closest ally, the United States, for a backup plan to curb Tehran’s enrichment program.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military radio reported that Defense Minister Ehud Barak will be travelling to Washington to share his concerns over Iran’s refusal to stop its nuclear activities.
Barak will meet several US officials during his five-day tour, including US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Middle East ‘peace’ envoy George Mitchell. He is also scheduled to meet the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York.
As part of a last-ditch effort to obstruct Iran’s nuclear program, Israel has sought to send high-ranking delegations to a number of countries, particularly Russia and China, to rally support for punitive measures against the Tehran government.
In Russia, Israeli efforts have achieved little with Kremlin officials declaring that it is much too soon to consider stringent measures against Iran. This has not stopped Tel Aviv’s effort to call for international sanctions against Iran. On the contrary, it has prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go as far as demanding that the UN Security Council should be sidestepped if it cannot agree to more sanctions against Tehran.
“We must prohibit Iranian oil exports and imports to Iran of refined oil products. No other sanctions will be effective,” Netanyahu said in Jerusalem (Al-Quds) at a meeting of delegates from the Jewish Agency, an organization that encourages Jewish immigration to Israel.
Such daring rhetoric by the Tel Aviv regime comes in light of the wide belief that Israel is in possession of over 200 nuclear warheads. Additionally, Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is not a member of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Despite its refusal to join any international atomic regulatory agency, Israel has been the most vocal in calling for international sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran for its IAEA-monitored nuclear program.
“We have arrived at a point where the international community has to decide if it seriously plans to stop Iran’s nuclear program,” the Israeli premier added.
This comes as the UN nuclear watchdog released a new report on Tehran’s enrichment program, criticizing Iran for a range of issues, but verifying the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in the country at the same time.
Iran says that is a signatory of the NPT and, unlike Israel, neither believes in atomic weapons nor, as a matter of religious principle, does it intend to access such weapons of mass-destruction. Tehran has also repeatedly called for the elimination of all nuclear arms throughout the globe.
Israel: Sanctions must target Iran energy sector
Press TV – February 22, 2010
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues on his campaign for international sanctions to be imposed against Iran’s energy sector.
“We must prohibit Iranian oil exports and imports to Iran of refined oil products. No other sanctions will be effective,” Netanyahu said in Jerusalem (Al-Quds) at a meeting of delegates from the Jewish Agency, an organization that encourages Jewish immigration to Israel.
Netanyahu went so far as to say the UN Security Council should be sidestepped if it cannot agree on the move.
“We have arrived at a point where the international community has to decide if it seriously plans to stop Iran’s nuclear program,” he added.
Netanyahu’s effort to stop Iran’s nuclear program — which Tehran says is peaceful — comes while Israel is reportedly the sole possessor of nuclear arsenals in the Middle East with 200 nuclear warheads.
On a visit to Russia last week, Netanyahu insisted on the need for “biting sanctions that have the power to influence the regime, bitter sanctions that have to hit, in a convincing way, the oil industry, imports, exports and refining.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry, however, rebuffed the call and announced that Moscow is against imposing sanctions on Iran, noting that Russia has always favored a diplomatic solution with regards to Iran’s nuclear program.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow was against imposing “crippling sanctions” on Iran.
The US, Israel and some Western countries accuse Iran of seeking atomic weapons under the guise of its nuclear energy program.
Iran denies that it seeks to build an atomic bomb and says it only wants to enrich uranium for civilian purposes such as generating electricity and producing medical isotopes.
Clinton avoided nuke question – student
AFP | February 22, 2010
A SAUDI student blasted US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for skirting her question on Israel’s nuclear arsenal during a “town hall” meeting at a Jeddah college.
“I did not get a straight answer,” Mariyam Alavi said in a letter published in Arab News on her question to the top US diplomat last Tuesday. “My question was simple and direct enough,” she wrote, but Ms Clinton’s response “was very unsatisfying.”
Alavi, a 12th grader at the International Indian School in Jeddah, attended the meeting at the elite Dar al-Hekma College with six classmates. She had asked Ms Clinton about Washington’s stance on the existence of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
If the Americans “so vehemently oppose Iran’s nuclear programme,” she had asked, “then why isn’t the US asking Israel to give up their nuclear weapons?”
Ms Clinton gave a lengthy answer detailing the US case against Iran, but did not mention Israel. She did, however, say that “we want not only a world free of nuclear weapons, we want a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, including everyone.”
Alavi’s Arab News letter assailed US “hypocrisy” over the issue, reflecting a widely held sentiment in in the region.
“Clinton said that the United States, under the able leadership of President Barack Obama, was trying to repair and strengthen its ties with the Muslim world.
“It is high time she realised it couldn’t be done without answering the questions uppermost in the minds of the Middle East people.”
Alavi said she had been nervous about asking such a “politically provocative question” but was then encouraged by strong applause from the audience when she addressed Ms Clinton.
Ms Clinton had been on a three-day trip to Qatar and Saudi Arabia to discuss, among other things, how to confront Iran’s alleged programme to develop nuclear weapons.
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The great ADHD swindle
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
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