Just 2% of pledges paid for rebuilding Gaza
MEMO | December 20, 2014
Palestinian and international officials have revealed that only 2 per cent of the pledges made by donor states to rebuild the Gaza Strip have actually been paid. The pledges were made in a donor conference in Egypt two months ago. A total of $5.4 billion was pledged for the reconstruction of the beleaguered territory after it was destroyed during Israel’s latest war against the civilians of Gaza during the summer. Of the major donors, Qatar pledged $1 billion, Saudi Arabia $500 million and the EU $780 million.
It was expected that half of these pledges would have been spent on rebuilding houses and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and the remainder would boost the Palestinian Authority’s budget. According to UN officials, just $100 million has been handed over from donors.
“We received funds and pledges worth about $100 million for shelters and house renovation,” said Robert Turner, the Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza. “This money will run out in December in the middle of a harsh winter.” The shortfall, he added, is $620 million.
Palestinian Housing Minister Mofeed Al-Hasayneh said that the Arab states did not pay anything from their pledges for this month. The Europeans, however, have paid “a few millions”.
UN General Assembly votes for Israel to compensate Lebanon for 2006 oil spill
Al-Akhbar | December 20, 2014
Israel was asked by the UN General Assembly on Friday to compensate Lebanon for $856.4 million in oil spill damages it caused during the July 2006 war.
The non-binding vote, which passed 170-6 with three abstentions, asks Israel to offer “prompt and adequate compensation” to Lebanon and other countries affected by the oil spill’s pollution.
While General Assembly votes are non-binding, they reflect broader international opinion without the possibility of veto by world powers like in the Security Council.
The resolution indicated that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “expressed grave concern at the lack of any acknowledgment on the part of the government of Israel of its responsibilities vis-a-vis reparations and compensation” for the oil spill.
Lebanon’s permanent representative to the UN Nawaf Salam hailed the resolution, the Lebanese National News Agency reported.
“Lebanon considers this to be a major progress,” Salam said. “This resolution also paves the way for further compensation into other areas of damage (health, ecosystem services as habitat, potential groundwater contamination, and marine diversity), that were not considered in the current calculated amount.”
“Furthermore, its adoption asserts the will of the overwhelming majority of the international community to hold countries responsible for their internationally wrongful acts,” he added.
“We affirm that Lebanon will continue to mobilize all resources and resort to all legal means to see that this resolution is fully implemented, and that the specified compensation is paid promptly.”
In a statement, Israel condemned the resolution as “[serving] no purpose other than to contribute to institutionalizing an anti-Israel agenda at the UN,” Israeli media reported.
The oil spill was caused by Israel’s air force when it bombed oil tanks near a coastal Lebanese power plant during its fierce month-long war with Hezbollah resistance fighters.
The attack flooded the Mediterranean coastline with 15,000 tons of oil, according to the United Nations.
The adopted resolution cited $856.4 million (700 million euros) in damages caused by the oil spill, accounting for inflation of a October 2007 estimate by the United Nations Secretary General that reported the spill caused $729 million in damage.
Lebanon bore the brunt of the spill, but the Syrian coast and other Mediterranean countries have suffered as well, the UN said.
The oil slick made by the spill “has had serious implications for livelihoods and the economy of Lebanon,” the resolution said.
The UN asked Lebanon to continue clean-up efforts and the international community to increase funding for its environmental restoration.
The US, Australia, Canada and Israel were among the six states that voted against the UN text.
(AFP, Al-Akhbar)
Israeli Role in Syrian Conflict Brought Into the Open
By Nicola Nasser | The Peoples Voice | December 18, 2014
Overtly, the Israeli superpower of the Middle East has been keen to posture as having no role whatsoever in the four-year old devastating conflict in Syria, where all major regional and international powers are politically and militarily deeply involved and settling scores by Syrian blood.
In his geopolitical weekly analysis, entitled “The Islamic State Reshapes the Middle East,” on November 25 Stratfor’s George Friedman raised eyebrows when he reviewed the effects which the terrorist group had on all regional powers, but seemed unaware of the existence of the Israeli regional superpower.
It was an instructive omission that says a lot about the no more discreet role Israel is playing to maintain what the Israeli commentator Amos Harel described as the “stable instability” in Syria and the region, from the Israeli perspective of course.
Friedman in fact was reflecting a similar official omission by the US administration. When President Barak Obama appealed for a “broad international coalition” to fight the Islamic State (IS), Israel — the strongest military power in the region and the well – positioned logistically to fight it — was not asked to join. The Obama administration explained later that Israel’s contribution would reflect negatively on the Arab partners in the coalition.
“Highlighting Israel’s contributions could be problematic in terms of complicating efforts to enlist Muslim allies” in the coalition, said Michael Eisenstadt, a senior fellow at AIPAC’s arm, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Covertly however Israel is a key player in prolonging the depleting war on Syria and the major beneficiary of neutralizing the military of the only immediate Arab neighbor that has so far eluded yielding to the terms dictated by the U.S. – backed Israeli regional force majeure for making peace with the Hebrew state.
Several recent developments however have brought the Israeli role into the open.
First the latest bombing of Syrian targets near the Damascus international civilian airport on December 7 was the seventh major unprovoked air strike of its kind since 2011 and the fifth in the past 18 months on Syrian defenses. Syrian Scientific research centers, missile depots, air defense sites, radar and electronic monitoring stations and the Republican Guards were targeted by Israel.
Facilitating the Israeli mission and complementing it, the terrorist organizations operating in the country tried several times to hit the same targets. They succeeded in killing several military pilots and experts whom Israeli intelligence services would have paid dearly to hunt down.
Foreign Policy on last June 14 quoted a report by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki – moon as saying that the “battle – hardened Syrian rebels … once in Israel, they receive medical treatment in a field clinic before being sent back to Syria,” describing the arrangement as a “gentleman’s agreement.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in February this year visited this “military field hospital” and shook hands with some of the more than 1000 rebels treated in Israeli hospitals, according to Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).
Foreign Policy quoted also Ehud Yaari, an Israeli fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as saying that Israel was supplying the rebel – controlled Syrian villages with medicines, heaters, and other humanitarian supplies. The assistance, he said, has benefited civilians and “insurgents.” Yaari ignored the reports about the Israeli intelligence services to those “insurgents.”
Israel facilitates war on UNDOF
Second, the latest quarterly report by the UN Disengagement Force (UNDOF) to the UN Security Council (UNSC) on December 1 confirmed what eight previous similar reports had stated about the “interaction … across the (Syrian – Israeli) ceasefire line” between the IOF and the “armed members of the (Syrian) opposition,” in the words of Ki-moon’s report to the Council on December 4.
Third, Ki-moon in his report confirmed that the UNDOF “was forced to relocate its troops” to the Israeli side of the ceasefire line, leaving the Syrian side a safe haven zone for the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, which the UNSC had designated a “terrorist group.”
UNDOF’s commander Lieutenant General Iqbal Singh Singha told the UNSC on October 9 that his troops were “under fire, been abducted, hijacked, had weapons snatched and offices vandalized.” Australia was the latest among the troop contributing countries to pull out its forces from UNDOF.
UNDOF and the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) operate in the buffer zone of about 80 km long and between 0.5 to 10 km wide, forming an area of 235 km². The zone borders the Lebanon Blue Line to the north and forms a border of less than 1 km with Jordan to the south. It straddles the Purple Line which separates the Israeli – occupied Golan Heights from Syria. The west Israeli side of this line is known as “Alpha”, and the east Syrian side as “Bravo.”
Speaking at the U.S. military base Fort Dix on Monday, President Obama warned those who “threaten America” that they “will have no safe haven,” but that is exactly what Israel is providing them.
Israeli “interaction” has practically helped the UNDOF “to relocate” from Bravo to Alpha and to hand Bravo as a safe haven over to an al-Nusra Front – led coalition of terrorist groups.
Al-Nusra Front is officially the al – Qaeda affiliate in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Committee on Foreign relations on this December 9 that his administration considers the IS to be a branch of al – Qaeda operating under a different name. Both terrorist groups were one under the name of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and only recently separated. Whoever accommodates either one is in fact courting the other.
“The 1,200-strong UN force is now mostly huddled inside Camp Ziouani, a drab base just inside the Israeli – controlled side of the Golan Heights. Its patrols along the de facto border have all but ceased,” the Associated Press reported on last September 18.
Israeli air force and artillery intervened several times to protect the al-Nusra Front’s “safe haven” against fire power from Syria, which is still committed to its ceasefire agreement of 1974 with Israel. Last September for example, Israel shot down a Syrian fighter jet that was bombing the Front’s positions, only three weeks after shooting down a Syrian drone over the area.
Israel is not violating the Syrian sovereignty only, but violating also the UN – sponsored ceasefire agreement and the UNSC anti-terror resolutions. More important, Israel is in fact undermining the UNDOF mandate on the Israeli – occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
This situation could only be interpreted as an Israeli premeditated war by proxy on the UN presence on the Golan Heights.
“Israel is the most interested in having (UN) peacekeepers evacuated from the occupied Golan so as to be left without international monitoring,” Syria’s permanent envoy to the UN, Bashar al- Jaafari, told reporters on September 17.
The UNSC seems helpless or uninterested in defending the UNDOF mandate on the Golan against Israeli violations, which risk the collapse of the 1974 ceasefire arrangements.
Syrian Foreign Ministry was on record to condemn these violations as a “declaration of war,” asserting that Syria reserves its right to retaliate “at the right moment and the right place.” Obviously a regional outbreak is at stake here without the UN presence as a buffer.
Upgrading unanimously Israel’s status from a “major non – NATO ally” to a “major strategic partner” of the United States by the U.S. Congress on December 3 could explain the UNSC inaction.
The undeclared understanding between the Syrian government and the U.S. – led coalition against the self – declared “Islamic State” (IS) not to target the latter’s forces seems to have left this mission to Israel who could not join the coalition publicly for subjective as well as objective reasons.
The AP on September 18 did not hesitate to announce that the “collapse of UN peacekeeping mission on Golan Heights marks new era on Israel – Syria front.” Aron Heller, the writer of the AP report, quoted the former Israeli military liaison officer with UNDOF, Stephane Cohen, as saying: “Their mandate is just not relevant anymore.” Heller concluded that this situation “endangers” the “status quo,” which indeed has become a status quo ante.
Israeli strategic gains
The emerging fait accompli seems very convenient to Israel, creating positive strategic benefits for the Hebrew state and arming it with a pretext not to withdraw the IOF from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Palestinian territories.
In an analysis paper published by The Saban Center at Brookings in November 2012, Itamar Rabinovich wrote that, “Clearly, the uncertainty in Syria has put the question of the Golan Heights on hold indefinitely. It may be a long time until Israel can readdress the prospect of giving the Golan back to Damascus.”
Moreover, according to Rabinovich, “the Syrian conflict has the potential to bring the damaged Israeli – Turkish relationship closer to normalcy … they can find common ground in seeking to foster a stable post – Assad government in Syria.”
The hostile Turkish insistence on toppling the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, the concentration of the IS and other rebel forces in the north of the country and in central, eastern and southern Syria are diverting the potential and focus of the Syrian Arab Army northward and inward, away from the western front with the Israeli occupying power on the Golan Heights.
The protracted war on the Syrian government is depleting its army in manpower and materially. Rebuilding the Syrian army and the devastated Syrian infrastructure will preoccupy the country for a long time to come and defuse any military threat to Israel for an extended time span.
On the Palestinian front, the rise of the IS has made fighting it the top U.S. priority in the Middle East, which led Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to several U.S. administrations on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, to warn in Foreign Policy early in September that the rise of the IS would pose “a serious setback to Palestinian hopes of statehood.”
The expected fallback internally of the post – war Syria would “hopefully” relieve Israel of the Syrian historical support for the Palestinian anti – Israeli occupation movements, at least temporarily.
Netanyahu on Sunday opened a cabinet meeting by explicitly using the IS as a pretext to evade the prerequisites of making peace. Israel “stands … as a solitary island against the waves of Islamic extremism washing over the entire Middle East,” he said, adding: “To force upon us” a timeframe for a withdrawal from the Israeli – occupied Palestinian territories, as proposed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the UN Security Council, “will bring the radical Islamic elements to the suburbs of Tel Aviv and to the heart of Jerusalem. We will not allow this.”
Israel is also capitalising on the war on the IS to misleadingly portray it as identical with the Palestinian “Islamic” resistance movements because of their Islamic credentials. “When it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas,” Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly on September 29.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories (nassernicola@ymail.com).
Illegal Financial Dealings Rob $1 Trillion from Poorer Nations
teleSUR | December 16, 2014
Global illicit financial flows (IFF), including crime, corruption and tax evasion, hit a historic high of US$991.2 billion dollars in 2012 alone – most of which was funneled out of developing and middle income economies, according to a new report released on Monday.
The new study by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a United States-based watchdog that exposes financial corruption, reported that this number is a drastic increase from 2003, when illicit financial flows (IFF) totaled US$297.4 billion.
That means IFF increased an average of 9.4 percent (adjusted for inflation) a year – growing twice as fast as global GDP, said GFI President Raymond Baker.
Illicit funds from shady business, corruption and tax evasion have also been growing at an alarming rate in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), at 24.2 and 13.2 percent respectively – more than double the global growth rate.
The report shows that developing countries lose more money through IFF than they gain from aid and foreign direct investment (FDI) combined.
“As this report demonstrates, illicit financial flows are the most damaging economic problem plaguing the world’s developing and emerging economies,” said Baker
In the time period between 2003 and 2012, the last year that data was available, developing countries lost about US$6.6 trillion dollars due to illicit transactions – what could have been invested in local business, healthcare, education or infrastructure, said one of the report’s authors Joseph Spanjers.
“It is simply impossible to achieve sustainable global development unless world leaders agree to address this issue head-on,” he added.
Sub-Saharan Africa saw some of the biggest losses as IFF comprised 5.5 percent of the country’s GDP.
China, Russia, Mexico, India and Malaysia saw the largest outflow of illicit funds in 2012.
The GFI study showed that trade misinvoicing – the overpricing of imports and the underpricing of exports – was the most common method to move money around illegally, accounting for 77 percent of illicit transactions.
“Suppose you live in Cameroon,” says Baker, “and want to get money out. As an importer, you ask your supplier abroad to increase the price by 20 percent and invoice you for 120 percent. When you pay that extra 20 percent is put into an account for you.”
To tackle the problem, GFI called for the United Nations to include specific targets to halve all trade-related illicit flows by 2030, as the international body prepares to discuss new Sustainable Development Goals to replace the Millenium Development Goals next year.
New ISIS “scare video” reveals Ottawa’s unprecedented hubris
By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | December 9, 2014
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Canada’s puppet politicians have so little faith in the public’s ability to think critically or discern reality that they are now marketing the most ridiculous harebrained nonsense to further hoodwink an already woefully ignorant Canadian populace.
Despite the fact that Stephen Harper announced Canada’s participation in the fraudulent anti-ISIS (or “Islamic State”) coalition in Iraq many weeks in advance of any ISIS-inspired threat or attack in Canada, the professional script-readers in Ottawa are asserting that the existence of such threats is a de facto justification for this country’s involvement in the campaign.
Can Ottawa’s unprecedented hubris get any more depraved?
What’s more, the Canadian media is frenzied over the emergence of a new ISIS video featuring a Canadian citizen, John Maguire, who allegedly converted to Islam and traveled to Syria to join the ISIS insurgency in 2013. In the comical video, Maguire is seen sporting a foreboding Islamic beard and battle get-up as he calls for attacks on Canadian soil in retaliation for Ottawa’s participation in the US-led bombing offensive allegedly aimed at combatting the militant group.
“Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney says Canadian officials revoked the passport of John Maguire, an Ottawa-area man who joined ISIS in Syria and who is calling for Muslims to carry out lone-wolf attacks in Canada,” reported the CBC in a Dec. 8 article.
Was this video “threat” crafted in the propaganda caverns of the Harper regime? Or was it shot and filmed in a Mossad studio in Tel Aviv?
Skeptics are speculating that the new video is just another Hollywood deception designed to legitimize a morally bankrupt and irrational foreign policy. In a Dec. 10 article discussing the Maguire video, the Toronto Star mentions that it was procured by SITE Intelligence Group, a US-based intelligence-gathering organization. SITE’s founder and chief, Rita Katz, is an Israeli citizen whose father was executed in 1968 in Iraq as a spy for Israel during the Six Day War. Katz’s group has acted as little more than a propaganda outlet for Israel’s Mossad, routinely disseminating menacing videos depicting Arabs and Muslims as Captain Hook-style villains.
Even if the new video is genuine and the man in it is not some paid actor on the payroll of an intelligence service, it serves as nothing more than a painful reminder that Stephen Harper is a deadly miscreant whose every move is motivated by envious malice and an intent to eradicate anything good associated with the country he claims to represent.
Just as the US regime intermittently released al-Qaeda videos at opportune times after 9/11 to frighten their people into submission, the neocon-infested administration in Ottawa is mimicking the tactics of its ideological kinfolk in Washington. The mysterious shooting on Parliament Hill in October was Canada’s media-made 9/11-style spectacle, and the subsequent hyping of “jihadi” videos is undoubtedly part of a coordinated public relations campaign to “win over” the masses to Harper’s belligerent war agenda in the Middle East.
Irrespective of the verity that ISIS is a manufactured creation of the US-Israeli imperium and that its actions are wholly in sync with US-Israeli objectives in the region, it must be pointed out that even if an entity like ISIS was a grassroots organization acting on its own accord it is still much less of a menace to the world than its duplicitous shadow sponsors in Washington and Tel Aviv.
Whatever evil ISIS may represent, Israel and the US are substantially worse and markedly more dangerous and devastating in the reach and breadth of their crimes against millions of innocent people. Many awakened American college students attending Harvard University echoed this sentiment in a recent “Campus Reform” video posted to YouTube. It is American imperialism (and by extension Israeli imperialism) that is the culprit behind much of the unrest and turmoil in the Middle East, the students opined. It is America, not ISIS, which is the “bigger threat” to world peace, they said.
The Harvard students’ contention that the US government represents a greater peril than ISIS is confirmed by the facts. According to former CIA officer John Stockwell, the CIA has directly and indirectly caused the deaths of more than six million people by way of proxy wars, coups, assassinations and terrorist attacks. “In the 1980s, I coined the phrase the ‘Third World War’ because in my research I realized that we [the US] were not attacking the Soviet Union [or other big powers], we were [consistently] attacking people in the Third World,” Stockwell explained in a lecture on the CIA’s “secret wars” across the globe. Critics of US imperialism such as William Blum and Noam Chomsky have documented US military occupations, both overt and covert, in more than 50 countries, resulting in tens of millions of deaths since the end of World War II. In his magnum opus on US imperialism entitled Rogue State, William Blum documents the sordid details of America’s imperial interventions on every continent on earth. Blum’s research proves that the US has engineered the overthrow of dozens of foreign governments (installing brutal dictatorships in their stead) and has sponsored terrorists and death squads to do its bidding against “unfriendly” regimes.
Israel’s killing and maiming of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese and other Arabs in the mid-east since its creation in 1948 has yet to be matched by the likes of ISIS and affiliated groups. In addition to its direct victims, Israel is also to blame for much of America’s bloodletting in the region, principally the war in Iraq whose “American” masterminds in both propaganda and policy-making were by and large Jewish-Zionist dual-citizens with passionate links to the regime in Tel Aviv.
One cannot argue with these humbling truths. No matter how you look at it, the gruesome atrocities of the “Islamic State” pales in comparison to the genocidal conduct of that group’s clandestine backers in Washington and Tel Aviv.
Copyright 2014 Brandon Martinez
5 not-so-peaceful Obama actions since nabbing Nobel Prize
RT | December 10, 2014
Five years on from President Barack Obama scooping a Nobel Peace Prize, and the White House has taken anything but a Zen approach to foreign policy under his watch. Here are the top 5 not-so-peaceful moves the laureate has made in the past half-decade.
1. Afghan Surge
Obama didn’t start the war gin Afghanistan, but he certainly took a page from his predecessors playbook in trying to finish it. He recognized his precarious position at prize time.
“But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the commander-in-chief of a nation in the midst of two wars,” he said after accepting the Nobel Prize in Oslo, Norway, on December 9, 2009.
While he said the war in Iraq was “winding down,” things in Afghanistan were just starting to heat up. A week before accepting the prize, Obama announced he was sending 33,000 more troops to Afghanistan as part of his “surge policy,” intended to beat back the Taliban and train Afghan security forces to take the country into their own hands. The following years would become the deadliest for both US troops and Afghan civilians. Again, it wasn’t Obama’s war. But then came…
2. Military strikes in Libya
Following UN Resolution 1973 on March 17, 2011, which called for “an immediate ceasefire” in Libya and authorized the international community to set up a no-fly zone to protect civilians, Obama, along with his NATO allies, would soon launch military strikes to turn the tide of the 2011 Civil War in the North African state. NATO conducted 9,700 strike sorties and dropped over 7,700 precision bombs. A Human Rights Watch report would go on to detail eight incidents where at least 72 Libyan civilians died as a result of the aerial campaign.
But the real damage to overthrowing the Gaddafi regime came in the ensuing years, with the country descending into a civil war between Islamist forces and the weak post-revolutionary government. In August, Obama admitted his Libyan policy was a failure, but not because he chose to intervene militarily. Rather, he says the problem was that America and its European partners did not “come in full force” to take Gaddafi out. Although his then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to rejoice in his death, wryly noting “We came, we saw, he died.”
3. Drone Wars in Yemen, Pakistan
Since the US first started targeting Yemeni militants in 2002, Obama has launched all but one of the 15 airstrikes and 101 drone strikes in the country. According to the web portal New America.net, which has meticulously complied data on the strikes, up to 1,073 people have been killed in the strikes. An estimated 81-87 of those killed were civilians, while the identity of another 31-50 remains unknown. But Yemen was just one prong in Obama’s so-called Drone War, though, as we shall see, it was the site of a game-changing incident.
Unlike in Yemen, drone strikes in Pakistan were in favor long before Obama came to power. A report conducted by Stanford and New York Universities’ Law schools found that between 2,562 and 3,325 people were killed by drone strikes in Pakistan between June 2004 and mid-September 2012. Anywhere between 474 and 881 of those were civilians, and 176 were children. While Obama didn’t start the Pakistani drone war, he aggressively expanded it.
Between 2004 and 2007, only 10 drone strikes were launched in Pakistan. The following year saw 36 such strikes, and 54 were launched in 2009.
But 2010 would be the deadliest year by far, with 122 strikes launched and 849 people killed. He would go on to authorize 73 and 46 strikes in 2011 and 2012 respectively.
Following widespread opposition at home and abroad, in May 2013, Obama promised a new era of transparency to protect civilians, saying control of the program would be transferred from the CIA to the Pentagon. But…
4. Obama has a secret kill list
In February 2013, the Obama administration’s internal legal justification for assassinating US citizens abroad came to light for the first time. According to the Justice Department document, the White House has the legal authority to kill Americans who are “senior operational leaders,” of Al-Qaeda or “an associated force” even if they are not actively engaged in any active plot to attack the US.
In September 2011, a US drone strike in Yemen killed two American citizens: Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. The following month, a drone strike killed al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, who was born in Colorado.
The concept of the US president exercising the right to kill US citizens without the benefit of a trial has resonated throughout American culture.
In the comic-book-inspired film ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’, the issue of targeted killings and “kill lists” features prominently in the plot.
5. Redrawing red lines
President Barack Obama drew a red line around Syria’s use of chemical weapons, pushing the international community to punish Damascus with military strikes following the August 21 Ghouta Attack.
After the UK balked at airstrikes, Moscow and Washington took the diplomatic route, resulting in a historic deal that has seen Damascus abandon its chemical weapons stockpiles.
But US-led airstrikes on Syria were only postponed. On August 8, 2014, the United States started bombing so-called Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq to protect embattled Kurds. The following month, the US would launch airstrikes against IS militants in Syria as well. Of all the US military interventions in recent years, the battle against the IS has been met with widespread approval. Still, Syria was the seventh country Obama has bombed in six years.
Quite a feat for a Nobel Peace Prize-winner.
UK building firm linked to Qatari human rights violations
RT | December 9, 2014
One of Britain’s largest construction firms has been linked to severely sub-standard working conditions for migrants in Qatar. Over 1,000 foreign workers perished in the Gulf state between 2012 and 2013, a government report shows.
The petro-rich Gulf state is investing over £200 billion in a construction frenzy in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup. Following a recent investigation into the matter, BBC Newsnight concluded that the building binge is benefitting many in the state – but not migrant workers.
Amid recent bribery allegations, Qatar’s World Cup plans have been tainted by a more unsettling reality than corruption alone. Hundreds of foreign workers hired to construct skyscrapers and stadiums in preparation for the global tournament have died in the Gulf state.
A report sponsored by the Qatari government found that migrants perished at building sites littered throughout Qatar. Most of them hailed from South Asia, many of them Nepalese. Swathes died from cardiac arrest, accidents, or falls in the workplace. Others took their own lives.
Amid mounting concern over the welfare of migrant workers in Qatar, questions have emerged regarding the obligations and responsibilities of global construction firms that win contracts in the country.
Following an in-depth probe into the conditions that foreign construction workers face there, BBC Newsnight uncovered damning testimonies about migrant workers’ poor pay, housing, and safety conditions.
Some of the workers forced to endure these conditions were employed by sub-contractors, which were in turn hired by Carillion – one of the UK’s most profitable construction companies.
Debt bondage
Imran, a 32-year-old Bangladeshi worker whose safety pass and helmet bore the distinctive Carillion logo, told Newsnight that he deeply regrets his decision to come to Qatar.
Although a recruitment agent promised him 1,500 Qatari riyal (£263) a month, he is left with a mere 650 (£114) Qatari riyal once his expenses for food and medical treatment are factored in. He must then allocate half of that meagre sum to the recruitment agency that sourced the position for him.
“I am supporting elderly parents, my wife and a child,” he told the BBC. “I can’t send them the money they need…I don’t want to stay here but I can’t leave. The company have my passport.”
Describing a typical day, Imran said he wakes at 4 a.m., arrives at work at approximately 6 a.m., and continues to work for a further 11 hours. Reflecting on his accommodation, the Bangladeshi worker said it is overcrowded and ill-equipped.
“My room there isn’t fit for humans – six of us share and there’s no place even to sit and eat.”
Carillion told the BBC that it uses 50 different sub-contractors in the Gulf state, and that the firm employing Imran provides workers for one of those firms.
Reflecting on the unsavory nature of the 32-year-old’s allegations, the company said it is “deeply concerned and surprised” and will conduct “an immediate review of these claims to establish the position and take appropriate action.”
The migrant workers’ camps are located between 10-20 miles from the center of Doha. The BBC reported that workers were sat on the floor eating at one particular camp, which is used by a sub-contractor that supplies labor to Carillion.
Complaints of delayed wages, poor pay, and sub-standard working conditions are rife. Echoing Imran, one worker claims the sub-contractor he works for has the men’s passports, and that the workers are unable to access them.
However, a spokesperson for Carillion told the BBC that “health and safety is at the very heart of our business, and practice on site follows standards that we apply in the UK.”
He added that the firm “must abide by Qatari labor law in respect of wages, living conditions and employment rights,” and emphasized the company expects sub-contractors to “comply with Qatari law which prevents employers withholding workers’ passports.”
Drastic reform required
The Qatari report which documents the deaths of migrant workers in the Gulf state calls for serious reform of the nation’s policy for dealing with migrant employees.
Human rights campaigners have denounced the measures currently in place as being similar to indentured servitude – a historical form of debt bondage common to 18th century North America.
Ray Jureidini, a leading professor of ethics and migration, has been employed by the Qatari government to offer recommendations for the reform of the state’s labor laws.
He told the BBC that the country’s legislation requires an urgent overhaul, and warned that corruption and bribery by recruitment firms must be addressed.
Jureidini said that global construction firms profiting from Qatar’s pre-World Cup building boom also have a duty to take a proactive stance with respect to workers’ conditions.
“They don’t ask about the men supplied to them,” he told the BBC.
“They feel they don’t need to ask how the workers were recruited, whether they were trafficked, or whether they are caught in debt bondage or being exploited.”
Jureidini suggested that a “corporate veil” allows global firms to evade accountability for the fate of migrant workers, because the men are not officially documented in their company accounts.
Ready-to-fire nuclear weapons pose ‘accidental launch’ risk – former defense chiefs
RT | December 8, 2014
Cross-border action to lower the risks posed by an intentional or accidental nuclear attack is “insufficient,” international military, political and diplomatic officials have warned.
Ready-to-use nuclear arms leave states vulnerable to accidental nuclear strikes, while insecurely stored stockpiles could potentially be targeted and stolen by terrorists, the European Leadership Network said.
In a letter written in the run up to the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, UK signatories collectively called upon states across the globe to eradicate nuclear arms.
Former home secretary Charles Clarke, former chief of defense staff, Lord Richards and former defense secretaries Lord Browne and Lord King joined other signatories in urging states across the globe to “redouble efforts to work toward a world without nuclear weapons.”
The risks posed by nuclear weapons and current global dynamics that could prompt their deployment are underestimated and poorly understood by world leaders, the signatories warned.
In a post-Cold War era, a proliferation of nuclear arms across the globe that are ready to fire at any moment, greatly amplifies the chance of an accident, they added.
This scenario leaves world leaders who face an imminent threat of attack an insufficient period to liaise with one another and act prudently, the signatories stressed.
Former US general, James Cartwright. (Image from wikipedia.org)
Other high profile figures who supported the call included retired US general James Cartwright, former French prime minister Michel Rocard, former vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and delegates from Russia, China and India.
The warning comes in the wake of reports that Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) had stolen uranium compounds from Mosul University in Iraq earlier this year.
Writing to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on July 8, Iraqi UN Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim said 88 pounds of uranium used for scientific research at the university had been looted.
Two days later, however, a spokesperson for the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the material was “low grade” and “would not present a significant safety, security or nuclear proliferation risk.”
The Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons began on Monday, and is due to come to a close on Tuesday evening.
The conference follows recent talks between Iran and six western governments. Although the group failed to negotiate a satisfactory deal on Iran’s nuclear program, the talks have been extended for a further seven months.
There are currently thought to be approximately 16,300 nuclear weapons in nine different states across the world.
Global negotiators are concerned that Iranian authorities are using the state’s nuclear development program as a covert means of developing arms, and have imposed sanctions on the Middle Eastern state.
But the Iranian government denies this, and argues the state is only interested in developing peaceful nuclear projects such as the production of power.
Commenting on the recent round of nuclear talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said “considerable progress” had been made despite the fact no final agreement was reached. He added he expected the “basic principles” of a final agreement to surface within three or four months.
Reflecting on the negotiations, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond agreed “significant progress” had been achieved.
In late November, it emerged Iran had reduced its stockpile of low-enriched uranium gas to comply with the terms of an interim nuclear agreement signed with six world powers in 2013.
As talks are set to continue next month, Tehran’s access to $700 million per month by way of sanctions relief remains intact.
Earlier this month, the UN General Assembly passed an Arab-introduced resolution calling on Israel not to develop, produce or possess nuclear arms. The resolution also criticized the Israeli administration for not being part of the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
Read more: UN urges Israel to renounce nuclear arms, join non-proliferation treaty
Israeli official: Strategic cooperation with Riyadh is growing
Director of Institute for Policy and Strategy, and Chair of Atlantic Forum of Israel Prof. Uzi Arad
MEMO | December 8, 2014
Strategic and security cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel is growing at an unprecedented rate, Israel’s former National Security Adviser Uzi Arad said.
During his participation at the Energy 2015 Conference, Arad said that Israel takes advantage of Saudi Arabia’s role as a counterweight in the face of Iran which makes it play a central and effective role in Israel’s strategic plans.
Arad warned of the consequences of betting on the survival of an allied regime in Egypt, pointing out that Egypt is going through a very sensitive stage and things could turn upside down at any moment.
With regards to Jordan, Arad said: “About Jordan, we cross our fingers. No one knows what will happen there in five years. One must hope that things there will be stable. Who says the wave sweeping Iraq and Syria will not arrive to Jordan?”
Arad said the Palestinian Authority currently represents a partner for Israel in the face of many challenges.
Israel will not tolerate Iran turning into a state with nuclear capabilities, he stressed, pointing out that if the world and regional powers accept this, Israel will turn to the military option. He said: “For a long time now, there have been plans in Mossad about a situation in which another country around us has nuclear weapons. Such discussions begun in the 80s. Responses were prepared in advance. If you see a new submarine enter the port of Haifa, it does not take a genius to figure out what it signifies.”
Commenting on the relationship with Turkey, Arad said the most important research centre in Israel said the reality and the future of these relations do not bode well.
Israel is facing growing international isolation which, he warned, will affect the Israeli military and the country’s economic interests.
Arad noted that Israel benefits from the EU funded research projects, pointing out that they have strengthened the position of Israel as a great technological power.
He warned that the upcoming early elections in Israel will only contribute to the decline in Israel’s status.
Israel tightens economic stranglehold on 1948 Palestinians
By Zouheir Andraos | Al-Akhbar | December 8, 2014
Occupied Haifa – As Israel increases its economic stranglehold on 1948 Palestinians, its racist policies extended to banning them from raising chickens and growing potatoes. This was after the closure of clothes workshops, which were transferred to Jordan, and other similar actions.
As the economic persecution against Palestinians continues, the Israeli Agriculture Ministry recently decided to prevent 1948 Palestinians from raising chickens and thus producing eggs, claiming this department as an exclusive right for Jews in cooperative villages (moshav). Eggs produced by Palestinian establishments disappeared from the market in a matter of days and were replaced by Israeli eggs produced at moshavs (Israeli agricultural settlements) built on the ruins of Palestinian villages destroyed in the Nakba, or the Catastrophe.
Authorities in Tel Aviv also issued a decree banning “Arabs” from growing potatoes, succumbing to the pressure of Israeli potato farmers. The authorities had discovered that growing potatoes is cheap and was an important source of income for Palestinians. These two steps are further proof of the extent of the occupation’s institutional racism.
Palestine is famous for having fertile land, rich in all sorts of plants used by Palestinians as food (such as thyme and mallow), but which are not known or eaten by Jews. This led the Israeli government to instruct its so-called environmental protection authority to prosecute “plant thieves.” It officially announced those plants as “protected species and those who pick them shall be sent to court.”
Environmental protection authorities started fining Palestinians who pick “protected plants.” In the meantime, Jewish traders, who just discovered the importance of such plants for Palestinians, began requesting necessary licenses from the Israeli Agriculture Ministry to grow them and sell them in Arab markets. Palestinians in the interior became a target of a lucrative and popular “Israeli” trade.
In the same context, occupation authorities found another channel to increase the economic stranglehold on Palestinians, with Dubek cigarettes company (the only Israeli cigarette company) announcing it would stop buying tobacco from Arab farmers. Tobacco is one of the main cash crops for Palestinians, especially in the Galilee, inside what is known as the green line. Thus, Israel would have destroyed one of the most important Arab crops in Palestine, and began importing tobacco from its Turkish ally.
Persisting in its economic war and in collaboration with Jordan, Israel recently shut down the small sewing and knitting factories in Galilee, the Triangle, and Negev, the main source of income for many Palestinian families. The occupation authorities plan to relocate them to Jordan, under the pretext of cheap labor. However, the move was rumored to be an attempt to prop up the fragile Jordanian economy, in addition to the occupation’s determination to cut off sources of income for 1948 Palestinians.
The economic stranglehold policies adopted by Israel resulted in the unemployment of one third of the workforce in Negev and Umm al-Fahm. It widened the gap between Palestinian and Israeli unemployment, with a 25 percent unemployment rate for Palestinians and 6.5 percent for Israelis. The same statistics indicated that half of Palestinian children in the 1948 territories currently live below the poverty line.
UN adopts resolution urging Israel to join NPT
Press TV – December 2, 2014
The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly adopted an Arab-backed resolution urging Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The assembly approved of the resolution in a 161-5 vote, with 18 countries abstaining, on Tuesday.
The United States and Canada were among the countries that opposed the resolution.
The resolution urges the Tel Aviv regime to join the NPT and put its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
The resolution, which is backed by 18 Arab countries, also expresses deep concern over Israel’s nuclear capabilities.
The Tel Aviv regime, which is widely believed to be the only possessor of nuclear arms in the Middle East, reportedly maintains between 200 and 400 atomic warheads.
Furthermore, Israel has never allowed any inspection of its nuclear facilities and continues to defy international calls to join the NPT.
Hans Blix, the former head of the IAEA, said in an exclusive interview with Press TV that he is convinced Israel possesses nuclear weapons.
He demanded that Israel join the NPT, saying Tel Aviv’s refusal to sign international nuclear treaties and its deliberate ambiguity policy with regards to its nuclear program are because of support from Washington.
A released report in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists also confirms that Israel possesses at least 80 operative nuclear warheads and has enough material to produce up to 190 more.
Nuclear weapon proliferation experts Robert Norris and Hans Kristensen estimate in the report that Israel halted its production of nuclear warheads back in 2004 “once it reached around 80 munitions.”
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The toxic legacy of nuclear weapons testing serves as a stark warning of the danger these weapons pose
By Scott Ritter | RT | March 11, 2021
Millions of people suffer and die from the effects of radiation exposure from decades of nuclear weapons testing. Their experience should give serious pause to those who continue to embrace the viability of a nuclear deterrent. … continue
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