The Forces Behind the Attempted Coup in Brazil
By Mark Weisbrot | The Hill | April 5, 2016
If you are following the news of political turmoil in Brazil, it may be difficult to get a grasp of what is really going on. This often happens when there is an attempted coup in the Western Hemisphere, and especially when the U.S. government has an interest in the outcome. Usually the information about that interest, and often Washington’s role, is the first casualty of the conflict. (Twenty-first century examples include Paraguay in 2012, Haiti in 2011 and 2004, Honduras in 2009, Ecuador in 2010 and Venezuela in 2002.)
First, there is no doubt that this is a coup in progress. It is an attempt by Brazil’s traditional elite — which includes, as one of the most important players, most of the major media — to reverse the outcome of Brazil’s 2014 presidential elections. Exhibit A is the grounds on which they hope to impeach President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT by its Portuguese initials). It has nothing to do with corruption, or any serious offense.
The charge is that the government used borrowed money in 2014 to maintain the appearance that the primary budget surplus was within its target. But this is something that other presidents had done, and is hardly a serious offense. A comparison: When the Republicans in the U.S. Congress threatened to shut down the government over the debt ceiling in 2013, the Obama administration used a number of accounting tricks to extend the deadline, and there was little controversy over this.
The charges against Lula are also dubious, even if they turn out to be true. Most importantly, the accusers have not shown any connection to the big “Lava Jato” (car wash) corruption scandal — or any other corruption. Lula is accused of owning some beachfront property, which he denies owning, that was renovated by a Brazilian construction company; and of receiving money from various corporations for speeches. Most importantly, however, these are things that took place after he left the presidency. Although Bernie Sanders has rightly made an issue of Hillary Clinton’s receipt of millions of dollars from corporations for speeches, it is not illegal in the U.S. — or Brazil.
The main judge investigating these cases, Sergio Moro, had to apologize to the Supreme Court for leaking to the press wiretapped conversations between Lula and Dilma, as well as between Lula and his attorney, and between his wife and their children. The detention of Lula for questioning, with advance leaks to the media and involving 200 police despite the fact that Lula had always voluntarily submitted to questioning, also left no doubt as to the political nature of the investigation.
If Moro had any evidence linking Dilma or Lula to actual corruption, it is likely that some of it would have been released by now, given that he has leaked personal and private wiretapped conversations just to embarrass them. Brazil’s anti-democratic, corrupt elite is trying to take the country back to its pre-democratic past, when the electorate could not interfere with their choice of leaders.
Unfortunately, that is not all that long ago: The dictatorship that lasted until 1985 was installed in a 1964 U.S.-backed coup, to which the current efforts bear some resemblance. About the U.S. role today: It is no secret that Washington would like to get rid of all of the left governments in the region. In President Obama’s trip to Argentina last week, and other public statements from U.S. officials, they made it clear how happy they were to welcome the new right-wing government there. They also reversed their policy, implemented against the prior, left government, of blocking loans to Argentina from international lenders like the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank.
Of the coups mentioned above, evidence of the U.S. role is documented beyond a reasonable doubt in all of them except Ecuador, where there is no hard evidence. But since there has almost never been a coup in this hemisphere against a left government without some U.S. involvement, it is no wonder that many Ecuadoreans believe the U.S. was (and remains) involved there, too. And such speculation is not unreasonable in Brazil, where Washington intervened in 2005 in support of a legislative effort aimed at undermining the Workers’ Party government.
The massive spying on Brazil —and especially Petrobras — that Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald revealed in 2013, also points in this direction. It could be a coincidence that all this information about Petrobras was gathered by the U.S. government just prior to the scandals at the state-controlled oil company; or perhaps Washington shared some information with its allies in the Brazilian opposition. And there is no doubt that, like President Mauricio Macri in Argentina, the biggest players in this coup attempt — people like former presidential candidates José Serra and Aécio Neves — are U.S. government allies. Of course the PT government would not be in so much trouble today, even with the media leading the charge, if the economy – which shrank by an estimated 3.8 percent last year — were in better shape.
And that, unfortunately, is due mainly to their own mistakes; beginning at the end of 2010, they embarked on a series of spending cuts, interest rate increases, and other measures that stalled the economy, followed by even harsher austerity in 2015 that caused a deep recession with no end in sight. Unemployment has risen from a record low of 4.3 percent in December 2014 to 8.2 percent today. This didn’t have to happen; with more than $360 billion in foreign currency reserves, Brazil is not constrained by the balance of payments, and therefore could recover with expansionary macroeconomic policies.
Dilma and Lula are on the ropes and up against some powerful enemies, but it would be premature to count them out. They have faced tougher battles; unlike their adversaries and the big media companies that supported the dictatorship, they were imprisoned during its rule. If they can survive the current coup attempt, they will have a chance to fix the economy and return to their legacy — which is, after all, one of considerable economic and social progress.
Attempts to impeach Brazil president illegal: Attorney general
Press TV – April 5, 2016
Brazil’s attorney general has slammed impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff as illegal, saying such a bid is nothing more than an attempted coup d’état.
Jose Eduardo Cardozo, the government’s main legal advisor, defended Rousseff before the impeachment committee of Brazil’s lower house of Congress, dismissing the allegations leveled against the embattled president.
Opposition lawmakers, who are seeking to remove Rousseff, accuse her of taking out unauthorized government loans to hide a growing budget deficit.
Cardozo told the 65-member committee that such claims, even if true, could not be dealt with as an impeachment case, saying the “process was compromised from the start and as such it is invalid.”
“As such, impeaching her would be a coup, a violation of the constitution, an affront to the rule of law, without any need to resort to bayonets,” he added.
The hearing was the final plea by Rousseff’s administration against the impeachment. The committee will likely issue its recommendation this week.
If the impeachment passes the lower house, the president would be suspended for up to six months while facing trial in the Senate. Meantime, Vice President Michel Temer would replace her as acting president.
Rousseff, however, vowed that she would stand firm and would not bow to the pressure to bring her down. Her predecessor and ally Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has also pledged to support Rousseff.
The impeachment process began last December after lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha accepted the opposition request for such a move.
Cardozo said Cunha’s decision was motivated by his desire for political revenge against Rousseff, his bitter political rival.
The political crisis has brought Brazil to the brink of economic collapse as it is entangled in a deep recession and corruption allegations.
With the Rio de Janeiro Olympics just four months away, the Latin American country has been the scene of counter rallies in and against the government over the last few weeks, some of which even turned violent.
In the latest of such rallies, anti-government protesters took to the streets on Monday, denouncing the officials for not having decided over the impeachment bid.
A ‘Silent Coup’ for Brazil?
By Ted Snider | Consortium News | March 30, 2016
Brazil keeps its coups quiet (or at least quieter than many other Latin American countries). During the Cold War, there was much more attention to overt military regime changes often backed by the CIA, such as the overthrow of Guatemala’s Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, the ouster of Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973 and even Argentina’s “dirty war” coup in 1976, than to Brazil’s 1964 coup that removed President João Goulart from power.
Noam Chomsky has called Goulart’s government “mildly social democratic.” Its replacement was a brutal military dictatorship.
In more modern times, Latin American coups have shed their image of overt military takeovers or covert CIA actions. Rather than tanks in the streets and grim-looking generals rounding up political opponents – today’s coups are more like the “color revolutions” used in Eastern Europe and the Mideast in which leftist, socialist or perceived anti-American governments were targeted with “soft power” tactics, such as economic dislocation, sophisticated propaganda, and political disorder often financed by “pro-democracy” non-governmental organizations (or NGOs).
This strategy began to take shape in the latter days of the Cold War as the CIA program of arming Nicaraguan Contra rebels gave way to a U.S. economic strategy of driving Sandinista-led Nicaragua into abject poverty, combined with a political strategy of spending on election-related NGOs by the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, setting the stage for the Sandinistas’ political defeat in 1990.
During the Obama administration, this strategy of non-violent “regime change” in Latin America has gained increasing favor, as with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decisive support for the 2009 ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya who had pursued a moderately progressive domestic policy that threatened the interests of the Central American nation’s traditional oligarchy and foreign investors.
Unlike the earlier military-style coups, the “silent coups” never take off their masks and reveal themselves as coups. They are coups disguised as domestic popular uprisings which are blamed on the misrule of the targeted government. Indeed, the U.S. mainstream media will go to great lengths to deny that these coups are even coups.
The new coups are cloaked in one of two disguises. In the first, a rightist minority that lost at the polls will allege “fraud” and move its message to the streets as an expression of “democracy”; in the second type, the minority cloaks its power grab behind the legal or constitutional workings of the legislature or the courts, such as was the case in ousting President Zelaya in Honduras in 2009.
Both strategies usually deploy accusations of corruption or dictatorial intent against the sitting government, charges that are trumpeted by rightist-owned news outlets and U.S.-funded NGOs that portray themselves as “promoting democracy,” seeking “good government” or defending “human rights.” Brazil today is showing signs of both strategies.
Brazil’s Boom
First, some background: In 2002, the Workers’ Party’s (PT) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva came to power with 61.3 percent of the vote. Four years later, he was returned to power with a still overwhelming 60.83 percent. Lula da Silva’s presidency was marked by extraordinary growth in Brazil’s economy and by landmark social reforms and domestic infrastructure investments.
In 2010, at the end of Lula da Silva’s presidency, the BBC provided a typical account of his successes: “Number-crunchers say rising incomes have catapulted more than 29 million Brazilians into the middle class during the eight-year presidency of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former trade unionist elected in 2002. Some of these people are beneficiaries of government handouts and others of a steadily improving education system. Brazilians are staying in school longer, which secures them higher wages, which drives consumption, which in turn fuels a booming domestic economy.”
However, in Brazil, a two-term president must sit out a full term before running again. So, in 2010, Dilma Rousseff ran as Lula da Silva’s chosen successor. She won a majority 56.05 percent of the vote. When, in 2014, Rousseff won re-election with 52 percent of the vote, the right-wing opposition Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) went into a panic.
This panic was not just because democracy was failing as a method for advancing right-wing goals, nor was the panic just over the fourth consecutive victory by the more left-wing PT. The panic became desperation when it became clear that, after the PT had succeeded in holding onto power while Lula da Silva was constitutionally sidelined, he was likely returning as the PT’s presidential candidate in 2018.
After all, Lula da Silva left office with an 80 percent approval rating. Democracy, it seemed, might never work for the PSDB. So, the “silent coup” playbook was opened. As the prescribed first play, the opposition refused to accept the 2014 electoral results despite never proffering a credible complaint. The second move was taking to the streets.
A well-organized and well-funded minority whose numbers were too small to prevail at the polls can still create lots of noise and disruption in the streets, manufacturing the appearance of a powerful democratic movement. Plus, these protests received sympathetic coverage from the corporate media of both Brazil and the United States.
The next step was to cite corruption and begin the process for a constitutional coup in the form of impeachment proceedings against President Rousseff. Corruption, of course, is a reliable weapon in this arsenal because there is always some corruption in government which can be exaggerated or ignored as political interests dictate.
Allegations of corruption also can be useful in dirtying up popular politicians by making them appear to be only interested in lining their pockets, a particularly effective line of attack against leaders who appear to be working to benefit the people. Meanwhile, the corruption of U.S.-favored politicians who are lining their own pockets much more egregiously is often ignored by the same media and NGOs.
Removing Leaders
In recent years, this type of “constitutional” coup was used in Honduras to get rid of democratically elected President Zelaya. He was whisked out of Honduras through a kidnapping at gunpoint that was dressed up as a constitutional obligation mandated by a court after Zelaya announced a plebiscite to determine whether Hondurans wanted to draft a new constitution.
The hostile political establishment in Honduras falsely translated his announcement into an unconstitutional intention to seek reelection, i.e., the abuse-of-power ruse. The ability to stand for a second term would be considered in the constitutional discussions, but was never announced as an intention by Zelaya.
Nevertheless, the Supreme Court declared the President’s plebiscite unconstitutional and the military kidnapped Zelaya. The Supreme Court charged Zelaya with treason and declared a new president: a coup in constitutional disguise, one that was condemned by many Latin American nations but was embraced by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
This coup pattern reoccurred in Paraguay when right-wing Frederico Franco took the presidency from democratically elected, left-leaning Fernando Lugo in what has been called a parliamentary coup. As in Honduras, the coup was made to look like a constitutional transition. In the Paraguay case, the right-wing opposition opportunistically capitalized on a skirmish over disputed land that left at least 11 people dead to unfairly blame the deaths on President Lugo. It then impeached him after giving him only 24 hours to prepare his defense and only two hours to deliver it.
Brazil is manifesting what could be the third example of this sort of coup in Latin America during the Obama administration.
Operation Lava Jato began in Brazil in March of 2014 as a judicial and police investigation into government corruption. Lava Jato is usually translated as “Car Wash” but, apparently, is better captured as “speed laundering” with the connotation of corruption and money laundering.
Operation Lava Jato began as the uncovering of political bribery and misuse of money, revolving around Brazil’s massive oil company Petrobras. The dirt – or political influence-buying – that needed washing stuck to all major political parties in a corrupt system, according to Alfredo Saad Filho, Professor of Political Economy at the SAOS University of London.
But Brazil’s political Right hijacked the investigation and turned a legitimate judicial investigation into a political coup attempt.
According to Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, although Operation Lava Jato “involves the leaders of various parties, the fact is that Operation Lava Jato – and its media accomplices – have shown to be majorly inclined towards implicating the leaders of PT (the Workers’ Party), with the by now unmistakable purpose of bringing about the political assassination of President Dilma Rousseff and former President Lula da Silva.”
De Sousa Santos called the political repurposing of the judicial investigation “glaringly” and “crassly selective,” and he indicts the entire operation in its refitted form as “blatantly illegal and unconstitutional.” Alfredo Saad Filho said the goal is to “inflict maximum damage” on the PT “while shielding other parties.”
Neutralizing Lula
The ultimate goal of the coup in democratic disguise is to neutralize Lula da Silva. Criminal charges — which Filho describes as “stretched” — have been brought against Lula da Silva. On March 4, he was detained for questioning. President Rousseff then appointed Lula da Silva as her Chief of Staff, a move which the opposition represented as an attempt to use ministerial status to protect him from prosecution by any body other than the Supreme Court.
But Filho says this representation is based on an illegally recorded and illegally released conversation between Rousseff and Lula da Silva. The conversation, Filho says, was then “misinterpreted” to allow it to be “presented as ‘proof’ of a conspiracy to protect Lula.” De Sousa Santos added that “President Dilma Rousseff’s cabinet has decided to include Lula da Silva among its ministers. It is its right to do so and no institution, least of all the judiciary, has the power to prevent it.”
No “presidential crime warranting an impeachment has emerged,” according to Filho.
As in Honduras and Paraguay, an opposition that despairs of its ability to remove the elected government through democratic instruments has turned to undemocratic means that it hopes to disguise as judicial and constitutional. In the case of Brazil, Professor de Sousa Santos calls this coup in democratic disguise a “political-judicial coup.”
In both Honduras and Paraguay, the U.S. government, though publicly insisting that it wasn’t involved, privately knew the machinations were coups. Less than a month after the Honduran coup, the White House, State Department and many others were in receipt of a frank cable from the U.S. embassy in Honduras calling the coup a coup.
Entitled “Open and Shut: the Case of the Honduran Coup,” the embassy said, “There is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup.” The cable added, “none of the . . . arguments [of the coup defenders] has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution.”
As for Paraguay, U.S. embassy cables said Lugo’s political opposition had as its goal to “Capitalize on any Lugo missteps” and “impeach Lugo and assure their own political supremacy.” The cable noted that to achieve their goal, they are willing to “legally” impeach Lugo “even if on spurious grounds.”
Professor de Sousa Santos said U.S. imperialism has returned to its Latin American “backyard” in the form of NGO development projects, “organizations whose gestures in defense of democracy are just a front for covert, aggressive attacks and provocations directed at progressive governments.”
He said the U.S. goal is “replacing progressive governments with conservative governments while maintaining the democratic façade.” He claimed that Brazil is awash in financing from American sources, including “CIA-related organizations.” (The National Endowment for Democracy was created in 1983, in part to do somewhat openly what the CIA had previously done covertly, i.e., finance political movements that bent to Washington’s will.)
History will tell whether Brazil’s silent coup will succeed. History may also reveal what the U.S. government’s knowledge and involvement may be.
Israeli settler appointed as Consul General in New York after being rejected in Brazil
Palestinian Information Center – March 28, 2016
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Monday morning the former head of Yesha settlement council Danny Dayan as Israel’s Consul General in New York after he failed to nominate him as an ambassador to Brazil.
In appointing Dayan, Netanyahu withdrew Dayan’s apportionment as Israel’s ambassador to Brazil after the Brazilian government refused to accept him due to his former role as a settler leader. Asked to comment, Dayan told Army Radio that he was not influenced by Brazil’s refusal. “There was no alternative but New York.”
Dayan was earlier nominated to be Israeli ambassador to Brazil, but Brazil strongly refused his appointment due to his ties to Israeli illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Dayan headed the Yesha Council of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank between 2007 and 2013.
Langley’s Latest Themed Revolution: the Yellow Duck Revolution in Brazil
BY Wayne MADSEN | Strategic Culture Foundation | 24.03.2016
The latest themed revolution concocted by the Central Intelligence Agency’s «soft power» agents in the Brazilian federal and state legislatures, corporate media, and courts and prosecutors’ offices – all spurred on with the financial help of George Soros’s nongovernmental organizations – is the «Yellow Duck Revolution».
Large inflatable yellow ducks – said to represent the economic «quackery» of President Dilma Rousseff and her Workers’ Party government – have appeared at US-financed street demonstrations in Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo. The main coordinators of these protests are found in Brazil’s largest corporate federations and corporate-owned media conglomerates and all of them have links to domestic non-profit organizations like Vem Pra Rua (To the Street) – a typical Soros appellation – and Free Brazil Movement, in turn funded by the usual suspects of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), US Agency for International Development (USAID), and Soros’s Open Society Institute.
After trying to mount an electoral defeat of Brazil’s progressive leftist president, Dilma Rousseff, through a combination of presidential candidate assassination (the aerial assassination of Eduardo Campos in 2014 to pave the way to the presidency for the Wall Street-owned Green candidate Marina Silva, Campos’s vice presidential running mate), «rent-a-mob» street demonstrations, and corporate media propaganda, the Langley spooks are now trying to run Rousseff from office through a «Made in America» impeachment process. Aware that Rousseff’s progressive predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has been targeted by Brazilian prosecutors on the CIA’s payroll, for arrest and prosecution for bribery, she appointed him to her government with ministerial rank and prosecutorial immunity. Lula only became a target because he signaled his desire to run for the presidency after Rousseff’s term ends in 2019.
The Workers’ Party correctly points out that the legislative impeachment maneuvers against Rousseff and the judicial operations against both Rousseff and Lula emanate from Washington. The same «color of law» but CIA-advanced operations were directed against presidents Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, and Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. In the cases of Lugo and Zelaya, the operations were successful and both leaders were removed from power by CIA-backed rightist forces.
Street protests against Rousseff have, since they began in 2014, taken on the typical Soros themed revolution construct. As with the disastrous Soros-inspired and CIA-nurtured Arab Spring protests in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia and Euromaidan protest in Ukraine, the Vem Pra Rua movement and the associated Free Brazil Movement are basically nothing more than politically-motivated capitalist campaigns relying on Facebook, Twitter, and pro-insurrection television and radio networks, newspapers, and websites.
In addition to the inflatable yellow ducks, street protests have been marked by quickly-manufactured inflatable dolls of Lula in black and white prison garb and a placard cartoon drawing of Rousseff with a red diagonal «No» sign drawn through it. Street protest devices, which also include green and yellow banners and clothing, are telltale signs of significant amounts of money backing the psychological warfare gimmickry.
Brazilian prosecutors on Langley’s payroll arrested the popular Lula after staging a massive police raid on his house. Police also arrested the former First Lady of Brazil, Lula’s wife Marisa Leticia. Lula said he felt that he was kidnapped by the police. In 2009, Honduran troops actually kidnapped President Manuel Zelaya in the middle of the night and detained him in a military cell prior to expelling him from the country. That operation, like the one against Lula and Rousseff, was backed not only by the CIA and NSA, but by the US Southern Command in Miami. The Honduran coup was also backed by the Supreme Court of Honduras. To prevent a further political arrest of her predecessor, Rousseff made Lula her chief of staff, a cabinet position that affords Lula some protection from continuing prosecutorial harassment and legal proceedings by the federal court.
On March 16, Judge Sergio Moro, who is in charge of Operation «Lava-jato» («Car wash»), the two-year investigation of Petrobras and the alleged bribery involving Rousseff and Lula, released two taped intercepts of phone calls between the president and former president. The bugged phone conversation involved Rousseff’s plans to appoint Lula as her chief of staff, a Cabinet rank, as a way to afford him some protection from the CIA’s judicial-backed coup operation now in play. Rousseff previously served as Lula’s chief of staff. Classified National Security Agency documents leaked by whistleblower Ed Snowden illustrate how the NSA has spied on Rousseff’s office and mobile phones. President Obama claimed he ordered an end to such spying on world leaders friendly to the United States. Obama’s statement was false.
Judge Sergio Moro’s name appears in one of the leaked State Department cables. On October 30, 2009, the US embassy in Brasilia reported that Moro attended an embassy-sponsored conference in Rio de Janeiro held from October 4-9. Titled «Illicit Financial Crimes», the conference appears have been an avenue for the CIA and other US intelligence agencies to train Brazilian federal and state law enforcement, as well as other Latin American police officials from Argentina, Paraguay, Panama, and Uruguay, in procedures to mount bogus criminal prosecutions of Latin American leaders considered unfriendly to the United States. The State Department cable from Brasilia states: «Moro… discussed the 15 most common issues he sees in money laundering cases in the Brazilian Courts».
One item that was not on the agenda for the US embassy seminar was the NSA’s covert spying on the communications of Rousseff, Lula, and the state-owned Brazilian oil company Petrobras. In a technique known as prosecutorial «parallel construction», US prosecutors given access to illegally-intercepted communications, have initiated prosecution of American citizens based on the selective use of warrantless intercepts. If such tactics can be used in the United States, they can certainly be used against leaders like Rousseff, Lula, and others. The Operation Car wash intercepts of the Rousseff-Lula phone conversations that were released by Judge Moro to the media may have originated with NSA and its XKEYSCORE database of intercepts of Brazilian government and corporate communications conducted through bugging operations codenamed KATEEL, POCOMOKE, and SILVERZEPHYR.
In what could be called the «Obama Doctrine», the CIA has changed its game plan in overthrowing legitimate governments by using ostensibly «legal» means. Rather than rely on junta generals and tanks in the street to enforce its will, the CIA has, instead, employed prosecutors, judges, opposition party leaders, newspaper editors, and website administrators, as well as mobs using gimmicks – everything from inflatable yellow ducks, paper mâché puppets, and freshly silk screen-printed t-shirts, flags, and banners – as themed revolution facilitators.
As shown by the leaked State Department cables, the CIA has identified a number of agents of influence it can rely on for providing intelligence on both Rousseff and Lula. These sources have included the senior leadership of the Workers’ Party; officials of Petrobras eager to see their company sold off to the highest-bidding foreign vultures; Brazilian Central Bank executives; and Brazilian military intelligence officers who were originally trained by US intelligence and military agencies.
In addition to BRICS member Brazil, other BRICS nations have also seen the US increasing its efforts to organize themed revolutions. South Africa is on the target list, as are Russia and China.
Drunk on Hate and Mad at the World
Israel’s Diplomatic Wars of Aggression
By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | January 29, 2016
Israel these days seems to be increasingly at odds with a good portion of the rest of the world. In just the past few months it has quarreled with:
- Spain over arrest warrants issued for Netanyahu and six other Israeli officials for the 2010 attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla;
- Sweden over comments by its foreign minister who has called for an investigation into extrajudicial executions of Palestinians;
- college campus student groups supporting the BDS movement;
- academic associations who have issued calls for academic boycotts of Israeli universities;
- Brazil over its refusal to recognize an Israeli ambassador who hails from the right-wing Israeli settler movement;
- The EU over labeling of products from Israeli settlements.
- The UN over Ban Ki-moon’s recent criticism of the settlements
And really, if truth be known, Israel is probably not too happy just now with Italy either, which recently received Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on a state visit, resulting in a number of agreements between the two countries’ energy sectors as well as cooperation on a future high-speed rail project. Naor Gilon, the Israeli ambassador to Italy, complained that Rouhani was being treated like “the king of the world.”
Zvi Zameret accuses Wallström of ‘ignorance and arrogance’,
and suggests she might meet a violent end
War with Sweden
All in all, Gilon’s comments would have to be viewed as rather tame, however–at least by comparison. For some of the statements issuing from Israelis now, particularly those aimed at Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström, are positively chilling in their level of malice expressed, and frankly it might behoove the Swedish official to consider hiring a bodyguard at this point, if she hasn’t already done so.
As I noted in an article five days ago, Wallström is now regarded in Israel as “public enemy number 1” (the Jerusalem Post’s words, not mine) because of remarks she has made critical of Israel, including a recent call for an investigation into extrajudicial killings of Palestinians.
Now it seems there may be those in Israel hankering for the foreign minister’s blood–literally. If you haven’t read my article, Swedish Media Target Country’s Foreign Minister Following Her Remarks on Israel, I suggest you do so as it will place what follows into greater perspective. One day after posting that article, I became aware of two other articles, one by blogger Richard Silverstein and the other by Jonathan Ofir and posted at Mondoweiss, both of which discuss what appears to have been a scarcely veiled threat on Wallström’s life by a former Israeli official.
The comment was made by Zvi Zameret, a former official in the Israeli Ministry of Education, in an op-ed piece he wrote for an Israeli newspaper owned by Nevada casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. In the article, Zameret waxes lyrical on the 1948 assassination of Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte, and then goes on to suggest that Wallström might meet a similar fate. Here is a bit from Silverstein’s commentary on the matter:
Zvi Zameret, the former director for instruction for the Israeli education ministry has written an op-ed in Makor Rishon, Sheldon Adelson’s pro-settler newspaper, praising the 1948 assassination of UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte by Yitzhak Shamir’s Lehi gang. Zameret accuses Bernadotte of being an anti-Semite and claims that his views originated in a Swedish society that was suffused with this perspective. He claims that ridding the world of the Swedish Count was necessary to protect Israel’s new existence.
He wends his way through a long historical discourse involving material already well-known related to Bernadotte’s proposals, which were rejected by Arabs and Jews alike. Then he brings us up to the present day by alleging that remarks of the current Swedish Foreign Minister, Margot Wallstrom, demanding that Israel be held accountable for the 160 Palestinians killed over the past two months in the latest Intifada, stem from the same well of Swedish anti-Semitism.
Silverstein says Zameret “hints that Wallström herself should share a similar fate to Bernadotte” and then gives us a direct quote from his article as per its English translation:
“What do the things I have mentioned attest about Bernadotte? [They indicate] covert anti-Semitism, ignorance and arrogance, collaboration with senior elements in Israel [Hebrew University President Judah Magnes] and interests that play a decisive role. Has anything changed in the Swedish DNA in the decades following Bernadotte’s death? Nothing has changed.
The Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallstrom, in the covert anti-Semitism which characterizes her, along with her ignorance and arrogance, and anticipation of the interests of her future Muslim voters–she too is attempting to battle against the basic foundation of the State of Israel. I am certain that her intentions will be defeated, just as were those of the disreputable Count Bernadotte.
Count Folke Bernadotte
Bernadotte was assassinated by Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang, the same Jewish terrorist group that carried out the Deir Yassin massacre. Zameret’s glorification of his murder doesn’t seem entirely lucid or rational–during World War II Bernadotte negotiated the release of 31,000 prisoners from German concentration camps, including a large number of Jews. After the war, he became the UN Security Council’s unanimous choice, in a vote on May 20, 1948, to try and mediate a settlement in the Palestine-Israeli conflict.
His murder took place September 17, 1948, carried out by a four-man team of assassins. The Stern Gang had been around since 1940. Its stated goal was to terminate the British mandate in Palestine and set up a “new totalitarian Hebrew republic,” and one of its members, Yithak Shamir, ended up becoming an Israeli prime minister. It was Shamir, in fact, who ordered Bernadotte’s assassination. The man who actually pulled the trigger, Yehoshau Cohen, later became a close confidante of David Ben Gurion and was never charged in the case.
Margot Wallström
In October of 2014, shortly after Wallström took over as foreign minister, Sweden became one of the first Western countries to recognize Palestinian statehood. Wallström called it “an important step that confirms the Palestinians’ right to self-determination” and added that “We hope that this will show the way for others.”
In November of last year, shortly after the Paris terror attacks, Wallström suggested that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians could be helping to fuel terrorism. She followed that up with a comment in December about Israeli “extrajudicial executions,” and this month called for an investigation of Israel.
“Whether Zameret advocates Wallstrom’s demise explicitly or implicitly is hardly important,” comments Silverstein. “Even if you accept the argument that he isn’t explicit, clearly the reason Bernadotte failed in his mission is that Jewish terrorists assassinated him. When you say you wish her intentions to be defeated just as his were, the line between murder and political defeat becomes exceedingly murky.”
Boycott Sweden! say Israeli Mayors
But of course it isn’t just Zameret. Lots of people in Israel despise Wallström and have “vociferously attacked her contentious words,” as an article here puts it. And this apparently applies to a good many Israeli officials. The same article goes on to give us the low-down on a “boycott movement” launched by 15 Israeli mayors and aimed at Sweden. The mayors were planning to attend a conference in the Scandinavian country in March, but recently announced they have cancelled, while former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has also called for a boycott of Ikea.
War With Spain
In November of last year, a Spanish judge issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and six other officials in connection with Israel’s 2010 raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, a violent episode in international waters which resulted in the deaths of 10 people.
The warrants were issued by Judge Jose de la Mata, and in effect meant that should any of the seven officials set foot on Spanish soil they would be subject to arrest.
“Spain is just the latest member of the international community to accuse Israel of war crimes and pursue Israeli officials over the affair,” the Jerusalem Post reported at the time. And that is indeed correct. Both South Africa and Turkey had previously issued similar warrants.
Predictably, the Israeli government expressed hostility and outrage.
“We consider it to be a provocation,” said an Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson. “We are working with the Spanish authorities to get it cancelled. We hope it will be over soon.”
What do you suppose the words “working with Spanish authorities” might imply? Did it include issuing threats? Whatever it was, it took only two months to accomplish. The arrest warrants were in fact cancelled, according to a report published January 13 by the Adelson-owned Israel Hayom newspaper.
War with Brazil
Brazil, on the other hand, seems to be showing a little more resilience. According to a report here, “Israel and Brazil remain at loggerheads five months after Brazil refused to recognize Israel’s appointment of a right-wing settler as its next envoy to the South American country.”
“Settlers are Zionist agents that the world cannot accept, they steal others’ land, they are an insult to Brazil, to the government, and to millions of Brazilians with roots in the Arab world,” said Brazilian parliament member Carlos Maron.
Maron isn’t alone. A group of 40 retired Brazilian diplomats signed a statement against the appointment of Dani Dayan, who lives in the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Shomron, in the Occupied West Bank. Dayan is an advocate of the settler movement and has made no secret of his views, having widely published articles in the mainstream media, including the New York Times.
“We consider it unacceptable that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has publicly announced the name of the person he intended to appoint as his country’s new Ambassador to Brazil before submitting it, in accordance to the norm, to our Government,” said the diplomats. The announcement of Dayan’s appointment was reportedly posted initially on Twitter rather than being communicated directly to the Brazilian government.
The statement continues:
This rupture with a diplomatic practice seems to have been on purpose, an attempt to establish facts, since the appointed, Dani Dayan, between 2007 and 2013, was the President of the Yesha Council, responsible for the settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal by the international community, and has already declared himself contrary to the creation of the Palestinian State, which counts on the support of the Brazilian Government and was already recognized by over 70% of the UN member States.
Reportedly a group of 200 Brazilian academics have also endorsed a boycott of Israel. Netanyahu has refused to withdraw Dayan’s nomination or to appoint someone more acceptable to the Brazilians. If the Brazilian government stands its ground, it will mean a de facto end to diplomatic relations between the two countries.
War with the EU
On January 18, the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council reaffirmed requirements that export products from the Israeli settlements be labeled as such. More or less as with Sweden, Spain, and Brazil, the EU’s action has prompted cries of Israeli outrage. Netanyahu pronounced his unwillingness to “accept the fact that the EU labels the side being attacked by terror,” while ‘Justice’ Minister Ayelet Shaked called the EU measure “anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.”
Likewise, opposition party leader Isaac Herzog (supposedly a liberal) compared it to the “Zionism equals Racism” resolution passed by the UN in 1974, while Yair Lapid, another opposition party member, denounced the EU for “capitulating to the worse elements of jihad.”
War Against the BDS Movement
In summer of 2015, ‘Justice’ minister Shaked announced she was preparing lawsuits against BDS activists. The announcement was reported at the time by the Times of Israel in a story which also mentions that Shaked has expanded one of the departments within her ministry in order to “push ahead with the program as soon as possible.”
Ministry officials believe that legal circumstances present the option of suing activists for damaging Israeli trade, and for discrimination and racism, based upon laws as they currently exist in various countries, the report said.
So far as I’m aware, no lawsuits have been filed against individual activists, however Naftali Bennett, leader of the Jewish Home Party, seems to be generally in support of the idea of striking back in some manner at the BDS movement.
“Let it be clear to any company or organization that’s considering boycotting us: We will hit back. We will attack our attackers. We will boycott our boycotters,” Bennett said.
“The boycott weapon is a double-edged sword,” he added. “If you’re thinking of boycotting Israel, keep in mind that there are tens of millions of Israel supporters around the world — Jews and non-Jews — with considerable buying power and boycott power. Whoever boycotts Israel will be boycotted. Whoever hits Israel, will be hit back. We will no longer remain silent.”
Bennett’s comments about the “tens of millions of Israel supporters around the world” are perhaps salient. Also last summer, Adelson hosted an anti-BDS summit in Las Vegas with the aim of establishing and funding “successful strategies for countering the wave of anti-Israel activity on college campuses.” Held at the billionaire’s Venetian hotel on the Vegas strip, the conference was attended by a number of wealthy Jews, including Haim Saban.
“The key decision reached at the conference was that there would be a concerted effort to curtail BDS,” reported the Jerusalem Post.
Though Netanyahu did not attend, a letter from him was read aloud to the conference participants. “De-legitimization of Israel must be fought, and you are on the front lines. It’s not about this or that Israeli policy. It’s about our right to exist here as a free people,” the letter stated.
Reportedly the Israeli government intends to allocate NIS 100 million, or roughly $25.2 million, to the anti-BDS effort.
War Against Academic Associations
At a business meeting held in November, members of the American Anthropological Association voted overwhelmingly (88.4 percent) in favor of a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. A similar measure was passed that same month by the National Women’s Studies Association Executive Committee. These aren’t the first boycott actions taken by academic organizations in the US. The American Studies Association, The Association for Asian American Studies, and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association have all passed academic boycott measures against Israel. And this is just in the US.
Measures have also been passed by academic organizations in Brazil, South Africa, Canada, the UK, and, of course, in Palestine, and probably elsewhere. And perhaps most recently a group of 71 British doctors have called upon the World Medical Association to expel the Israeli Medical Association. The physicians have accused Israeli doctors of “medical torture” on Palestinian patients and want to see a ban on joint projects with Israeli universities.
On January 20, the Science and Technology Committee of the Israeli Knesset held a meeting to discuss the issue (H/T Helvena). A press release on the discussion which took place can be found here on the Knessett’s website. One of those who gave input at the meeting was Peretz Lavie, president of Technion, or the Israeli Institute of Technology.
“We have no complaints against the global academic leadership; our problem is the campuses,” Lavie said. “Initially it was insignificant campuses, but it quickly spread to leading campuses in the United States.”
When Lavie says he has “no complaints against the global academic leadership” he is probably referring to the Association of American Universities, which on January 14, in response to the vote by the Anthropological Association, re-issued an earlier statement in opposition to academic boycotts. The AAU is an organization whose leadership consists of the presidents and chancellors of the 60 universities (in both the US and Canada) that are its members. Membership is by invitation only. The group’s statement opposing boycotts was initially released in 2013 in response to the boycott actions taken by the American Studies and Native American and Indigenous Studies associations.
The group’s re-release of that canned statement from more than two years ago was described by the Jerusalem Post as “a blow to the BDS movement.”
“Students who are exposed to this activity will be the next generation’s senators, and therein lies the great danger in the long term,” Lavie went on in his testimony before the Science and Technology Committee.
“In its report, the American Anthropological Association referred to us as universities of apartheid and decided to conduct a survey on whether the Israeli academia should be boycotted. We have to reach all 12,000 members of the Association. It is a symptom, and if we do not act now, it will spread. There must be one entity that will concentrate all the efforts related to this issue,” he added.
Another person who gave testimony was Ze’ev Feldman of the Israel Medical Association. It was Feldman who informed the committee of the recent statement by the 71 British doctors.
”The sword of the boycott is being raised on the Israeli scientific-medical community,” he said.
Ariel University Chancellor Yigal-Cohen Orgad asserted that Israel has “a real problem with governments, including western governments that encourage boycotts,” while Professor Zvi Ziegler warned, “We are unable to stop anyone with our meager resources.”
Several committee members are also quoted, including Chairman Uri Maklev:
“There is no doubt that the academic boycott phenomenon is expanding and is connected to the financial and consumer boycotts on Israel. Economic and commercial boycotts are associated with politics, but an academic boycott by educated and moderate people has a very strong effect.”
But rather than calling for an end to the settlements, most of the committee members seemed to be of the opinion that the Israeli government needed to devote more resources to fighting the boycott movement. The one exception to this was Arab Knesset member Basel Ghattas:
The world considers the settlements to be illegitimate. You can think differently from the entire world, it is your right, but it is also the world’s right to take measures in order to force you to establish two states.
War with the UN
On October 1, 2015, Netanyahu gave a speech before the United Nations General Assembly that was marked by a 45-second segment during which he paused and projected hostile glares out at those present:
On January 26, 2016, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon broke the UN’s “deafening silence” and, in a rare display of courage, issued a scathing criticism of Israel’s settlement policies.
Progress towards peace requires a freeze of Israel’s settlement enterprise.
Continued settlement activities are an affront to the Palestinian people and to the international community. They rightly raise fundamental questions about Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution.
I am deeply troubled by reports today that the Israeli Government has approved plans for over 150 new homes in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
This is combined with its announcement last week declaring 370 acres in the West Bank, south of Jericho, as so-called “state land”. These provocative acts are bound to increase the growth of settler populations, further heighten tensions and undermine any prospects for a political road ahead.
The inevitable furious response came quickly, with Netanyahu excoriating the UN chief for helping to “stoke terror.”
“There is no justification for terrorism,” he said. “The Palestinian terrorists don’t want to build a state; they want to destroy a state, and they say that proudly. They want to murder Jews everywhere and they state that proudly. They don’t murder for peace and they don’t murder for human rights.”
He went on to assert that the UN has “lost its neutrality and its moral force, and these statements by the Secretary-General do nothing to improve its situation.”
It seems Israel is now at war with the UN as well.
A Lack of Imagination?
Perhaps most striking in all this is the Israeli lack of imagination–or at least that is one way of looking at it. Nowhere in his hostile comments aimed at his various enemies on the global stage does Netanyahu give the slightest indication of having once thought about halting the settlements and pulling back to Israel’s internationally recognized pre-1967 borders. Ditto with the other Israeli officials quoted above, with the lone exception of the Arab Knessett member. It is almost as if the idea has never even occurred to them.
If that is the case, one could perhaps ascribe all of this to a lack of imagination. Certainly at this point, after 68 years of oppression, it probably does indeed require considerable imagination to conceive of how the two peoples could live at peace. But of course it wasn’t always so. And had Israel, starting in 1967, respected the people of the West Bank, and above all else respected their space rather than crowding them in with settlements and walls and soldiers, a peaceful resolution to the conflict probably could have and would have been achieved by this time.
Yet even now, it isn’t too late. Though it would be politically difficult, Israel could dismantle its settlements (anything is possible when the national will is present) and pull back to the pre-1967 borders–basically the terms of the Arab Peace Initiative proposed back in 2002. If necessary, and it probably would be for a lengthy period of time, UN peacekeeping troops could be deployed along the border.
But Israel’s response to the Arab Peace Initiative was to call it a “non-starter,” and that seems to be its position today as well. And not only is there little prospect of dismantling of presently-existing settlements, but we see even a refusal to halt the construction of new ones. All of which would suggest that Ban Ki-moon is correct and that the settlement enterprise raises “fundamental questions about Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution.”
Or in other words, Israel has no intentions of making peace.
Certainly it’s possible that things could change, and that a new slate of leaders could arise in Israel with the imagination necessary to see the wisdom of complying with international norms of conduct. And that is what its more liberal Jewish supporters in America seem to be hoping for. But failing this, Israel’s wars with the rest of the world are likely to grow in stridency and ferociousness, and at some point could expand from the realms of diplomacy and/or covert operations fully outright into the military arena.
200 Brazilian academics pledge support for academic boycott of Israel
MEMO | January 21, 2016
It has taken just three days for 200 Brazilian academics to sign a letter in support for the academic boycott of Israeli institutions, in protest against Israel’s ongoing policies of occupation and discrimination. Professor and former UN rapporteur Paulo Sergio Pinheiro and physician and pharmacologist B. Boris Vargaftig are among the signatories.
In a statement released today the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PACBI) “salute” their solidarity: “Through these campaigns Brazilians continue to demonstrate that solidarity with the oppressed is the most politically and morally sound contribution to the struggle to end oppression.”
According to PACBI Brazilian movements, individuals and unions have long been committed to isolating Israeli academic institutions as part of the struggle against the Israeli settler colonial and apartheid regime.
Netanyahu to downgrade diplomatic representation in Brazil
MEMO | January 14, 2016
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday decided to downgrade diplomatic representation in Brazil over the latter’s refusal to approve settler leader Dani Dayan as Israeli ambassador, local media reported.
The Jerusalem Post newspaper reported Netanyahu saying: “If Brazil won’t approve former settler leader Dani Dayan as its ambassador, Israel won’t offer another diplomat.”
The Israeli PM’s decision came one week after reports surfaced that Netanyahu would withdraw Dayan’s name as an ambassador to Brazil and give him another diplomatic position in the US.
Arabic news website Arab48.com reported officials from the Israeli foreign ministry accusing Brazil of a “personal boycott” of Dayan; however, a group of 40 retired Brazilian diplomats signed a statement against the appointment of Dayan.
Dayan has previously said: “To be an ambassador or not, it is not the question for me, but if this was not, will 700,000 Israeli [settlers] be banned from working in embassies?”
He added: “As it has objecting to the labelling of Israeli products, Israel must object to the labelling of people.”
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On Herd Mentality
By Jeb Smith | April 14, 2026
I no longer trust “we the people,” because of the powers influencing them. Media and government schooling form their general ideas on reality and governance. Therefore, it’s not a case of the voter choosing the politicians. Instead, the system is conditioning and conforming the voter to the authorities’ desires.
In democracies, the people are kept occupied working and paying taxes, too busy to acquire information outside the approved sources. You will find they know and care far more about the next iPhone than political philosophy. Of those who hold some interest, 95% just toe the party line, holding the same opinion as the primary media source they listen to. They lack both the desire and time to expand their horizons.
Media’s purpose is to conform people’s thought to a preferred goal, which is why Republican and Democratic voters both firmly hold their parties’ general stances, reciting the same talking points. The people do not originate ideas; their thoughts are fed to them by the media so they can consume, digest, and parrot back whatever they are served. When it comes to politics, we rarely think for ourselves. We are told what to think.
Watch PBS, MSNBC and read your local newspaper for six months, and you will receive a particular view and understanding of the world. Then listen to The Mike Church Show, The Blaze, and The Daily Wire, and you will get not just another perspective but a whole different world of facts and events. The world people believe they live in can be entirely different depending on their news sources.
We enjoy seeing the enemy humiliated, which describes why those engulfed in politics love their preferred media sources; they keep returning for more like a drug addict. Networks ensure their “experts” align with the worldview they and their audience desire. The people who watch PBS, BBC, and so forth expect a specific perspective to be presented. Fox News watchers demand the same. In doing this, we both encourage and assure we are misled.
In their book Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, professors Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels argue, based on substantial research, that voters do not decide the party platform and agenda. Instead, the parties control the “ideologies” of the voters. When the party the voter identifies with changes its position, the individuals also change theirs. They discovered the individual would quickly adopt the views of their group; they will ignore or change their own opinions over time to fit in with the collective they identify with. Achen and Bartels wrote “group memberships largely drove policy views, not vice versa.” … continue
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