Results of Nationwide Government Cell Phone Tracking Records Request Show Frequent Violations of Americans’ Privacy Rights
By Catherine Crump, ACLU Staff Attorney | March 31, 2012
The ACLU has just released the results of our affiliates’ public records requests to hundreds of police departments around the country asking them about their cell phone tracking policies.
What we have learned is disturbing. Many of the approximately 200 law enforcement agencies that responded said they track cell phones without a warrant. As The New York Times reports, this invasive form of surveillance often happens without any court oversight at all.
A small number of agencies, such as in North Las Vegas and Wichita, said they do obtain warrants based on probable cause before tracking. Others, such as the Kentucky State Police, said they use varying legal standards, such as a warrant or a less-strict subpoena. The result is unclear or inconsistent legal standards from town to town that frequently fall short of probable cause.
The government should have to get a warrant before tracking cell phones. That is what is necessary to protect Americans’ privacy, and it is also what is required under the Constitution.
The fact that some law enforcement agencies do get warrants shows that a probable cause requirement is a completely reasonable and workable policy, allowing police to protect both public safety and privacy.
Last August, in an unprecedented effort to penetrate the secrecy around the policies, 35 ACLU affiliates around the country filed over 380 requests under states’ freedom of information laws. The ACLU asked state and local law enforcement agencies about their policies, procedures and practices for tracking cell phones. An in-depth summary of what we found, with links to documents, is here.
The responses varied widely, and many agencies did not respond at all. The documents included statements of policy, memos, police requests to cell phone companies (sometimes in the form of a subpoena or warrant), and invoices and manuals from cell phone companies explaining their procedures and prices for turning over location data. There’s a map with links to the documents and requests state-by-state here.
The documents provide an eye-opening view of police surveillance of Americans. In Wilson County, N.C., police obtain cell phone tracking data where it is “relevant and material” to an ongoing investigation – a standard much lower than probable cause. Police in Lincoln, Neb., without demonstrating probable cause, obtain even GPS location data, which is more precise than cell tower location information. In Tucson, Ariz., police sometimes obtain cell phones numbers for all of the phones at a particular location at a certain time (this practice is known as a “tower dump”).
The U.S. Supreme Court in January held in U.S. v. Jones that prolonged location tracking is a search under the Fourth Amendment, but the effects of that ruling on law enforcement have yet to be seen.
The ACLU supports bipartisan legislation currently pending in both the House of Representatives and the Senate that would address this problem called the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act. It would require law enforcement officers to obtain a warrant to access location information from cell phones or GPS devices. It would also mandate that private telecommunications companies obtain their customers’ consent before collecting location data. At least 11 state legislatures are also considering bills related to location tracking.Technology is evolving quickly, and often to the detriment of privacy. How much privacy Americans enjoy is a choice that ultimately is ours as a society to make.
Tell Congress: Support the GPS Act!
Act Now
Related articles
- Even After Supreme Court GPS Decision, Feds Still Want Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- EFF Backs Judge Calling for Warrant in Cell Phone Tracking Case (eff.org)
- Your cell phone is a government issued tracking device (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Double Speak from Benjamin Netanyahu
By Philip Giraldi | The Passionate Attachment | March 28, 2012
The New York Times’ Isabel Kershner reporting from Jerusalem on March 20th described Israeli government rage at a comment made by the European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton relating to the killing of three Jewish children in Toulouse France on the previous day. Ashton decried the killing but then tied it in to equally unfortunate deaths of children in other places, including Gaza. Her comment caused Netanyahu to explode, saying he was “infuriated” by the “comparison between a deliberate massacre of children and the defensive, surgical actions” of the Israeli Defense Forces hitting “…terrorists who use children as a human shield.” Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman quickly joined in, saying that Ashton should instead be thinking about the “children of southern Israel who live in constant fear of rocket attacks from Gaza.”
Where to begin? Israel’s surgical attacks have killed thousands of Gazans, including many children, and the stories about children as human shields comes from – you guessed it – Israeli government sources. The Goldstone report uncovered no evidence that there had been any use of civilians by Hamas militants. Israel has deliberately attacked schools and refugee camps, with little regard for who ends up dying. In its most recent bombings of Gaza, Israel has killed 26 Palestinians, including two children. No Israelis were injured when the Palestinians responded with homemade rockets. In 2011, 105 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, at least 37 of whom were undeniably civilians. This was up from 68 killed in 2010.
In Operation Cast Lead in January 2009, the Israelis killed at least 1,100 Palestinians, using phosphorous shells and other weapons considered to be forbidden under international law. Ten Israeli soldiers died as well as 3 civilians, a Palestinian-to-Israeli rate of mortality approaching 100 to one.
The fact that Netanyahu and Lieberman can be taken seriously and reported in the New York Times when they rant about how humane the Israeli Army is demonstrates that there is an operating assumption in the media that the American public can believe just about anything when it comes to Israel. It recalls the foppish French “philosopher” Bernard Henri-Levy’s assertion that the Israeli Army is the world’s most moral. After years of being subjected to intense propaganda, maybe it’s true that the public in Europe and America have been completely brainwashed when it comes to Israel’s bad behavior.
Related articles
- Gaza: Boy Dies of Wounds Sustained on Monday; Jet Fighters Bomb Gaza City (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Baroness Ashton and Jewish Sensitivities (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- No pretense of an excuse for continued Israeli attacks on Gaza (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Israel using Gaza as testing field for weapons: Meshaal (alethonews.wordpress.com)
UNDER THE THREAT OF WAR, IRANIANS AFFIRM THEIR SUPPORT FOR THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | The Race for Iran | March 18, 2012
Iranians vote in Teheran
As we have discussed in multiple posts, major Western media outlets brought an agenda-driven and intellectually sloppy approach to their coverage of the Islamic Republic’s 2009 presidential election. From their coverage of the Islamic Republic’s recent parliamentary elections, it would seem that there has not been much of a learning curve.
One all-too-typical example is The New York Times’ main “analytic” piece about the parliamentary elections, see here; the article, entitled “Elections in Iran Favors Ayatollah’s Allies, Dealing Blow to President and his Office,” was filed by Neil Macfarquhar from Beirut. This specimen of bad journalism cites a former reformist parliamentary now living in the United States, an editor for the opposition Rooz online, and the Washington commentator Karim Sadjadpour (who favors the Islamic Republic’s overthrow), to assert that the elections were carefully stage managed (by Ayatollah Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, working on behalf of his father) as part of an ever increasing dictatorship to abolish the presidency and turn the Islamic Republic into a parliamentary-based, prime ministerial system. One can find these themes in many other Western media stories about the elections.
To re-introduce a note of terrestrial reality into international discussion of Iran’s parliamentary elections, we asked our colleague, Seyed Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran, to offer his observations. We are pleased to present Mohammad’s article below.
**********
UNDER THE THREAT OF WAR, IRANIANS AFFIRM THEIR SUPPORT FOR THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC
By Seyed Mohammad Marandi
Most of the Western so-called reporting on the Islamic Republic’s recent parliamentary election displayed very limited direct knowledge about Iran and often, as its authors’ acknowledged, derived its their information primarily from Western-backed opponents of the Islamic Republic. As long as this goes on, Western countries will continue to miscalculate about the Islamic Republic’s internal politics and foreign policy—and then be left wondering, again and again, why they always get things wrong.
Five points of fact illustrate the shortcomings in this approach to “understanding” Iranian politics. First of all, contrary to unsubstantiated “green” propaganda intended to damage the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei’s son Mojtaba is not an important political figure. Claims of this sort that are recycled in the Western media have little effect inside Iran. Regardless of what they think about his policies and beliefs, Ayatollah Khamenei is recognized even by his opponents (like Ataollah Mohajerani) as super clean. Moreover, people recognize that, if Mojtaba had such an important role, he would be seen regularly involved in politics and high-level decision-making processes and institutions. He isn’t.
Second, changing the structure of government by removing the presidency would require a change in the Constitution, a process that has little to do with this year’s parliamentary elections. It would require a referendum—not a decree from Parliament. The current parliament has had somewhat poor relations with the incumbent President; if the parliament to be formed out of this year’s elections also turns out to be critical of the President, this will neither be new nor have anything to do with changing the Constitution. And, in any case, Ayatollah Khamenei never spoke about any imminent change in the Constitution. A few months ago, in a question-and-answer session with students and academics, he said in response to a question that there could be changes in the constitution in the distant future if it were concluded that a different governmental structure would work more effectively. He then gave the example of the current presidential system.
It is also inaccurate to suggest that eliminating the presidency would make the elected branches of government weaker. If Iran were to have a prime minister it would make the parliament even more powerful. Either way, it would have no effect on the combined scope of authority of the executive and legislative branches.
Third, the turnout was very high in the recent parliamentary election, around 65 percent. In fact, the turnout in Iran was much higher than in analogous off-year congressional elections in the United States (for example, turnout was just under 38 percent in the 2010 American congressional elections), and higher even than in U.S. presidential elections (turnout was just under 57 percent in the last American presidential election, in 2008).
The decisions of former Presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani to participate, along with other reformists like Majeed Ansari, Seyed Mehdi Emam Jamarani, Kazam Mousavi Bojnourdi, and Ayatollah Khomeini’s grandson Hassan Khomeini, reflect this. If turnout had been low, why would they vote and increase the “legitimacy” of the voting process and of the election results? (This assumes, of course, that they are opposed to the current political order as implied by much of the Western media, for which there is no evidence and which I don’t agree.) If turnout had been low, why would they want to be seen standing apart from the majority who did not vote?
In fact, they knew that turnout was going to be high; they also recognized that such high turnout shows that the public trusts the voting process, that people feel their votes count, and that they are deeply committed to the Islamic Republic. By casting their ballots these reformist leaders have stated that they accept the accuracy, validity, and legitimacy of the voting process and that they have no link to the “greens.” If they believed the results were unreliable, why would they vote, thereby strengthening a “corrupt” system? Instead, they have effectively stated that they do not accept claims that the 2009 presidential election or any previous presidential election was fraudulent, even though the voting process has not changed. Merely through their participation, they have given the voting process a clear vote of confidence.
Other major reformists who campaigned to win seats had different calculations. People like Mostafa Kavakebian (who lost), Mohammad Reza Khabaz (who lost), Masoud Pezeshkian (who won), and Mohammad Reza Tabesh (who won) wanted a high turnout from the very start. While they are Reformists, they wanted a display of unity and strength among Iranians against what is widely seen in Iran as Western acts of war against ordinary Iranians through embargos and sanctions. Indeed, there is evidence from polls and follow-up panels that the publication on election day in Iran of President Barack Obama’s interview, in which he proclaimed “I don’t bluff” in the context of a military attack on the Islamic Republic, may have driven up turnout, at least in Tehran, among those who might otherwise have stayed home.
Fourth, the fact that Ahmadinejad’s sister participated and lost (by a small margin), that many independents won seats, that reformist candidates stood for seats, and that there were numerous “principlist” coalitions taking part in the elections (e.g., Jebheye Motahed, Jebheye Paydari, Jebheye Eestadegi, Sedaye Edalat, each with a different list of candidates) and that many independents won seats shows that the elections were meaningful. There was a broad choice of candidates and the counting process is trusted and reliable.
Fifth, I do not know who will be the next speaker of parliament. But, contrary to uninformed Western speculation, Ayatollah Khamenei never involves himself in such issues. If, as many Western analysts and reporters claim, the Leader is out to have a subordinated parliament under the speakership of Gholam Haddad-Adel, then based on this logic he would have told Ali Larijani four years ago not to stand against then-parliament speaker Haddad-Adel and, as Mr. Larijani is an ally of the Leader, he would have acceded. In fact, the reason why the majority of parliamentarians voted to make Mr. Larijani their speaker four years ago was their perception that he would be more critical of President Ahmadinejad. If, as Western pundits now commonly assert, the Leader wants to weaken Ahmadinejad, he should support Mr. Larijani’s continuation as speaker. The logic underlying such speculation is clearly flawed—in no small part because it is based on information produced in the imaginary world of Western-based and funded greens and anti-government commentators.
Despite sanctions and other forms of international pressure, the Islamic Republic has the strong support of the public. In contrast to many countries allied to the West, it has meaningful elections that include candidates with very different political views. In my view, there is no doubt that the Islamic Republic is here to stay and that it will outlast the dying dictatorial regimes on the other side of the Persian Gulf.
Jodi Rudoren, Another Member of the Family: Meet the New York Times’ New Israel-Palestine News Chief
Past & Present NY Times Jerusalem Bureau Chiefs: Jodi Rudoren, Ethan Bronner, Steven Erlanger, Thomas Friedman
By ALISON WEIR | CounterPunch | February 21, 2012
Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun Magazine, is known for his frequent condemnations of Israeli violence against Palestinians. He is labeled “pro-Palestinian” for such statements and is regularly attacked by pro-Israel zealots who charge that he is disloyal to the Jewish state.
Yet, in reality, Lerner frequently speaks of his devotion to Israel and states that his actions are taken in considerable part to protect it.
A while ago Lerner explained the difference in his feelings about Israelis compared to his feelings about Palestinians. “[T]here is a difference in my emotional and spiritual connection to these two sides,” Lerner said.
“On the one side is my family; on the other side are decent human beings. I want to support human beings all over the planet but I have a special connection to my family.”
This statement comes to mind when one considers the New York Times bureau chiefs who cover Israel-Palestine.
The most recent person to be chosen for this powerful post at arguably the most influential newspaper in the United States is Jodi Rudoren. She takes the place of Ethan Bronner, who was preceded by Steven Erlanger, who was preceded by James Bennet, who was preceded by Deborah Sontag. All, according to an Israeli report, are Jewish.
Most Americans — particularly those who would object to only white reporters covering racial issues or only male reporters covering gender issues — are reluctant to discuss the potential bias in such a profoundly un-diverse system, having been conditioned to fear that such discussion would be “anti-Semitic” or would open the commentator to this extremely damaging accusation.
In Israel, however, it is considered appropriate to discuss the Jewish roots of American politicians and journalists since Israel was created specifically to be “the Jewish state,” Jews have elevated status in it, and the vast majority of Israeli land is officially owned by “world Jewry” (although some individuals have publicly opted out).
An article on the Jerusalem Post website, a major Israeli newspaper, focuses on this aspect. The article, “Judaism at the New York Times”, reports that “all New York Times’ bureau chiefs for at least the last fifteen years have been Jewish.”
The article’s author, Ashley Rindsberg, notes that “the Times doesn’t consistently send Russian Americans to its Moscow bureau… or Mexican Americans to lead its Mexico City bureau…” and asks, “Why does the New York Times consistently send Jewish journalists to head their central office in the Jewish State?”
Rindsberg, who like many conservative Israelis considers the Times’ reporting anti-Israel, provides a somewhat convoluted answer. The Times’ Jewish owners, Rindsberg posits, are uncomfortable with their Jewish identity. Therefore, he claims, they “would just as soon as not have reporters who could be identified for their Jewishness. And to prove it, they send Jews to the Jewish State to report in a most un-Jewish way.”
The Times’ history of pro-Israel coverage
Despite Rindsberg’s view of the Times, analysis shows its coverage to be consistently pro-Israel. A 2005 study found that the Times reported on Israeli deaths at rates up to seven times greater than its reports on Palestinian deaths, even though Palestinian deaths occurred first and in far greater numbers.
A 2007 study of the Times’ coverage of various international reports on human rights violations by Israelis and by Palestinians found that the Times covered reports condemning Israeli human rights violations at a rate only one-twentieth the rate that it covered reports condemning Palestinian human rights violations. The investigation found that during the study period there had been 76 reports by humanitarian agencies condemning Israel for abuses and four condemning Palestinians for abuses. The Times carried two stories on each side.
In its early years the Times specifically avoided assigning Jewish reporters to cover Israel out of concern that such journalists would have an inherent conflict of interest. This policy was reversed in 1979 after Abe Rosenthal became the paper’s executive editor and explicitly decided to choose Jewish journalists for the position.
While his first attempt failed (he had thought his choice, David Shipler, was Jewish), the Columbia Journalism Review reports that most of the journalists who succeeded Shipler, beginning with Thomas Friedman, have been of Jewish ethnicity. The article notes that “for a century [the Times] has served, in effect, as the hometown paper of American Jewry.”
Former NY Times executive editor Max Frankel, who was an editor at the Times from 1972 through 2000, admitted in his memoirs: “I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert … Fortified by my knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of our Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognized, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.”
An article by star reporter and author Grace Halsell describes her firsthand experience with pro-Israel bias at the Times in the early 1980s.
Halsell had written books about the plight of Native Americans, African Americans, and undocumented Mexican workers. She was a great favorite of New York Times matriarch Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, whose father had acquired the Times in 1896, whose husband and then son had run it next, and whose grandson is now in charge.
When Halsell next wrote a powerful book describing the Palestinian plight, she incurred Mrs. Suzberger’s displeasure and was quickly dropped by the Times. Halsell writes: “I had little concept that from being buoyed so high I could be dropped so suddenly when I discovered—from her point of view—the ‘wrong’ underdog.”
In her article Halsell quotes a revealing statement by an Israeli journalist following Israel’s 1996 shelling of a U.N. base in Lebanon that killed more than 100 civilians sheltering in it: “We believe with absolute certitude that right now, with the White House in our hands, the Senate in our hands and The New York Times in our hands, the lives of others do not count the same way as our own.”
Since 1984 New York Times bureau chiefs have lived in a house that was acquired for the Times by then Jerusalem Bureau Chief Thomas Friedman (now the Times’ lead foreign policy columnist). The building originally belonged to a Palestinian family forced out in Israel’s 1947-49 founding war. Israel afterward prevented the family from returning and reclaiming their home. Therefore, Times’ bureau chiefs are in the strange position of living in a home that was stolen from Palestinians (acquiring property by violent conquest is illegal in today’s world).
Recent Situation: Bronner, Kershner, & Khader Adnan
Rudoren’s predecessor as Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, has a son who enlisted in the Israeli military. When this conflict with impartiality was exposed, even the Times’ own ombudsman suggested that journalistic ethics required that Bronner be moved to a different beat. Yet, Times then-editor Bill Keller insisted that this gave Bronner “special sophistication” and kept him in his position.
Bronner’s colleague at the bureau has been Isabel Kershner, who will apparently be staying on. J.J. Goldberg, editor of the Forward, writes: “Isabel Kershner immigrated to Israel from her native England as a young woman and spent a couple of decades in Israeli journalism and Jewish education before joining the Times a few years ago. By now she’s thoroughly Israeli (and, for full disclosure, a friend).”
While pro-Israel Zealots vehemently attack Bronner and Kershner when they cover Palestinian victimization, the truth is that they overlook a great many instances. For example, a 33-year-old Palestinian father of two young girls (another child is on the way) was on a hunger strike that lasted for 66 days. He was was near death when he reportedly decided to end it on Feb 21.
The young man, Khader Adnan, was protesting his imprisonment by Israel – he was never charged with a crime – and the beatings and humiliations he endured from Israeli interrogators. There was an extended international campaign about him that grew even more urgent when doctors began warning after 45 days that he was at risk of death. Eventually, there was so much pressure world wide (including by UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk and EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton) that Israel announced it would release Adnan at the end of his “sentence.”
Yet, Bronner and Kershner – and Times columnists who frequently bemoan the alleged lack of a Palestinian Gandhi – did not publish a single story on Adnan until the 66th (and last) day of his hunger strike – after the Washington Post had finally carried a report two days before. The Times’ headline was the very bland, “Hearing for Palestinian on Hunger Strike Is Set.
While Adnan’s is the longest Palestinian hunger strike on record, through the years there have been hundreds of hunger strikes by multitudes of Palestinians in Israeli prisons; the Times almost never reports on them. It’s revealing to compare their numerous stories on the Israeli tank gunner captured by Palestinians, Gilad Shalit, to the sparsity of their reporting on Adnan and others.
Overall, the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel seem largely to have been invisible to Times’ reporters. While there have been gruesome reports of their torture for decades, there is little indication that Bronner or Kershner have investigated this or made much, if any, effort to visit Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Who is Jodi Rudoren?
Now that Bronner’s four-year term has come to an end (he says he initiated the transfer himself and was not pushed out over conflict of interest), it is not clear what went into new editor Jill Abramson’s decision to choose Rudoren for this powerful position.
A cum laude graduate from Yale, Rudoren’s journalistic experience appears to be limited to domestic subjects. Most recently she had been head of the Times’ Education bureau. She speaks what she calls “functional Hebrew” but no Arabic. It’s unknown how much time, if any, she has spent in Israel, whether she has family there, or whether she has family members in the Israeli military.
When Rudoren received a tweet by Palestinian-American author Ali Abunimah, who noted that she would be moving into stolen Palestinian property, she responded: “Hey there. Would love to chat sometime. About things other than the house. My friend Kareem Fahim [a New York Times associate] says good things.”
This friendly but somewhat flip response to a serious subject has caused Israel zealots to attack her. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg somewhat hysterically equated Abunimah, an author known for his intellectual analysis, with Israeli Jewish supremacists known for their violence.
Goldberg suggested that Rudoren should have “twinned” her tweet to Abunimah by reaching out to Kahanists — a group listed by both Israel and the U.S. as terrorists. Goldberg should be pleased to learn that Rudoren said she had done just that, telling the Jerusalem Post, “One of the people I followed before reaching out to Abunimah was David Ha’ivri.”
Ha’ivri is an extremist settler rabbi who was involved with Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane’s Kach terror group, celebrated the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when he had begun to make peace with Palestinians, and was convicted some years ago for desecrating a mosque.
Abunimah, on the other hand, has written a book called “One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse,” in which he describes how Israelis and Palestinians can live together in peace.
Rudoren’s knowledge of Hebrew may have been bolstered by her summertime attendance at Camp Yavneh, a Jewish camp in New Hampshire that has an Israeli flag at the top of its website and boasts of its “strong Israeli programming.” It features a six-weeks “summer in Israel” program, though it’s unknown whether Rudoren attended this.
The camp website states that the current boys’ head counselor “grew up in Gush Etzion, Israel, and has served as a Lieutenant Commander in the Israeli Army in charge of 150 soldiers in the Givatti Brigade.” Another counselor is a resident of the Israeli settlement of Efrat, which, like all Israeli settlements, is built on confiscated Palestinian land and is illegal under international law.
Despite an upbringing that appears to have included considerable immersion in Zionist mythology, indications are that Rudoren may be working to widen her view. She raves about a book by Peter Beinart called “The Crisis of Zionism” and retweeted a message by blogger Sami Kishawi. It’s interesting to note that the Times’ only other female Jerusalem bureau chief, Deborah Sontag, often provided exemplary coverage; her term seems to have ended early.
Tweeting like a J-Street official?
Jeffrey Goldberg – who moved to Israel, became an Israeli citizen, joined the Israeli army, and worked as a prison guard at one of Israel’s most brutal prisons – assures readers that Rudoren is still within the pro-Israel fold, commenting, “I don’t know Rudoren… I do know her sister, from synagogue, mainly, and I don’t think Jodi is some sort of anti-Israel activist…”
Goldberg is concerned, however, that she is tweeting “as if she’s a J Street official.” For Goldberg this veers dangerously toward anti-Israelism.
In reality, however, J Street is a pro-Israel organization whose positions are dictated by what is good for Israel. Its founder has just published a book entitled “A New Voice for Israel.” If Goldberg’s assessment of Rudoren is accurate, then it appears that once again the Times has a person at the helm of its reporting on Israelis and Palestinians for whom Israelis are “family.” Quite possibly, literally.
Rudoren may be intending to cover the region accurately and with fairness. To do so, however, it appears that she will need to overcome enormous ingrained bias, relentless and vitriolic objections of the organized pro-Israel community (quite likely including friends and family), and pressure by many powerful Times advertisers and colleagues.
On top of this, unless she chooses a different lifestyle than her predecessors’, she will be living in Israel, her children will go to Israeli schools, and her home will be one of the thousands confiscated from Palestinians who are now living and suffering largely out of sight, their daily humiliations and victimization for the most part invisible.
These winds may be so strong that even when Rudoren believes she has stood upright against them, an outside view may show her tilted far over in the Israeli direction, her reporting on Israel-Palestine, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, covering the gamut from A to C.
Let us hope that this doesn’t occur.
Let us hope Rudoren understands that good reporting does not equate a false narrative with a factual one; that she will not be, in Abunimah’s words, yet “another New York Times reporter for whom Palestinians are just bit players in someone else’s drama.”
Let us hope she understands that living in stolen property is not a good base from which to report honestly; that “balance” achieved by under-reporting Palestinian suffering while exaggerating that of Israelis is not balance, it is distortion. Let us hope, most of all, that she does not view some human beings as more important than others, but instead views all, regardless of their religion or ethnicity, as family.
~
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and president of the Council for the National Interest. She can be reached at contact@ifamericanslknew.org.
Bombing Iran: A Real Headache for Israel
By Steve Rendall – FAIR – 02/21/2012
Bombing Iran could be a real strain for Israel, reports Elisabeth Bumiller in the New York Times (“Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israeli Jets,” 2/19/12). No one’s sure they can pull it off, what with the logistics involved:
Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously–and use at least 100 planes.
Everyone apparently agrees on the task in front of Israel, as Bumiller puts it: “Given that Israel would want to strike Iran’s four major nuclear sites….” Killing Iranians and spreading radioactive material over their countryside isn’t an issue for the Times, where Iran seems to exist only as an obstacle to Israeli strategic interests.
But, Bumiller reports, the job could exceed Israel’s offensive capabilities, raising the question of whether the U.S. might be “sucked into finishing the job.” A job she’s not altogether unexcited about:
Should the United States get involved–or decide to strike on its own–military analysts said that the Pentagon had the ability to launch big strikes with bombers, stealth aircraft and cruise missiles, followed up by drones that could carry out damage assessments to help direct further strikes. Unlike Israel, the United States has plenty of refueling capability. Bombers could fly from Al Udeid air base in Qatar, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean or bases in Britain and the United States.
Perhaps the most telling line in Bumiller’s cold, skewed accounting of the potential risks of an attack on Iran is in her peculiar notion of what would constitute a state of war:
Iran could also strike back with missiles that could hit Israel, opening a new war in the Middle East, though some Israeli officials have argued that the consequences would be worse if Iran were to gain a nuclear weapon.
War would ensue the instant Iran responded to being bombed? This is not only bizarre wording, it ignores the low-intensity war that has been waged against Iran over the past few years, including explosions at nuclear facilities, the assassination of its scientists and the arming of insurgent groups in Iran’s border areas.
NYT: Okinawans’ ‘True Views’ Aren’t What They Say
By Peter Hart | FAIR | February 15, 2012
That a majority of people living on the island of Okinawa want the U.S. Marines gone seems a well-established fact. A plan to build a new airfield on a different part of the island in the town of Henoko is even more unpopular. One recent poll found 84 percent opposition to the new base.
And yet the New York Times tells readers today that it knows better. The headline alone over the piece by Martin Fackler tells you that those polls–not to mention the massive demonstrations against the base–shouldn’t be believed: “Amid Image of Ire Toward U.S. Bases, Okinawans’ True Views Vary.”
Unsurprisingly, the “true views” are apparently supportive of U.S. bases. As Fackler puts it, just “wander up Henoko’s narrow streets, and the villagers will tell you a different story.” The Times explains that if you “look more deeply and a nuanced picture emerges,” one that apparently supports the base and the U.S. military presence.
What of the polls that overwhelmingly say otherwise? The Times gets around to citing one of those 80 percent polls, only to turn around and say: “But look across Okinawa’s divided political spectrum and the depth of that opposition varies.”
Why put so much effort into trying to tell readers that the facts are not what they seem? It’s frankly hard to understand this one. But it can’t be said that this is a new problem for the Times–as FAIR pointed out (11/29/10):
A New York Times piece (11/29/10) on the re-election of Okinawa’s governor, who opposes the U.S. military base there, treated the views of the island’s residents as an annoyance–describing their resistance variously as a “wrench,” a “thorn” and a “headache.” The paper seemed to share the stance of the Japanese national government, which described the re-election as “one manifestation of public opinion”–and perhaps elections are not so important a manifestation, if they give the wrong results.
Pentagon Budgets and Fuzzy Math
By Peter Hart – FAIR – 01/27/2012
By the tone of some of the media coverage, you might have thought Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a plan to slash military spending yesterday. On the front page of USA Today (1/27/12), under the headline “Panetta Backs Far Leaner Military,” readers learn in the first paragraph:
The Pentagon’s new plan to cut Defense spending means a reduction of 100,000 troops, the retiring of ships and planes and closing of bases–moves that the Defense secretary said would not compromise security.
The piece quotes critics of the cuts like Sen. Joe Lieberman and an analyst at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. And the article talks about the most commonly cited figure of $487 billion in cuts over 10 years. As economist Dean Baker writes about such coverage–“Military Budget Cuts: Denominator Please”–there is no way people can assess the significance of what sounds like a lot of money if they don’t know how much the Pentagon is planning to spend over the same 1o-year period–roughly $8 trillion.
The PBS NewsHour did little to clarify the issue. The broadcast began with Jeffrey Brown announcing, “The Pentagon today outlined almost half a trillion dollars in budget cuts that would shrink the size of the U.S. military by trimming ground forces, retiring ships and planes, and delaying some new weapons.” PBS aired clips from Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich denouncing the budget cuts, and then interviewed a Pentagon official.
Even coverage of the Pentagon’s new “austerity” that managed to include some helpful context didn’t make things very clear. “The Pentagon took the first major step toward shrinking its budget after a decade of war” was how a New York Times story by Elisabeth Bumiller (1/27/12) begins. In the fourth paragraph, readers found this:
Even though the Defense Department has been called on to find $259 billion in cuts in the next five years–and $487 billion over the decade–its base budget (not counting the costs of Afghanistan or other wars) will rise to $567 billion by 2017. But when adjusted for inflation, the increases are small enough that they will amount to a slight cut of 1.6 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget over the next five years.
So the “first major step” in cutting the military budget… isn’t really a cut?
A Washington Post piece by Craig Whitlock (1/27/12) had a more accurate lead–“The Pentagon budget will shrink slightly next year”– but later tries to make a 1 percent cut sound more significant: “While the difference may sound small, it represents a new era of austerity for the Defense Department.”
To make matters even more confusing, the Post points out later that
Although the defense budget will decline next year, to $525 billion from this year’s $531 billion, under Obama’s current projections it will inch upward in constant dollars between 1 percent and 2 percent annually thereafter.
Kudos to Nancy Yousef of McClatchy for writing a piece (1/26/12) that took a different tack. Under the headline “Defense Budget Plan Doesn’t Cut as Deeply as Pentagon Says,” Yousef led with this:
Pentagon officials on Thursday announced the outlines of what they called a pared-down defense budget, but their request would increase baseline spending beyond the projected end of the war in Afghanistan, even as they plan to reduce ground forces.
To Yousef, the Pentagon was ” employing a definition of the term ‘reduction’ that may be popular in Washington but is unconventional anywhere else.”
And activist/writer David Swanson pointed out that the first question at Panetta’s briefing got right at this question of whether the cuts are really cut. From the transcript:
Mr. Secretary, you talked a little bit on this, but over the next 10 years, do you see any other year than this year where the actual spending will go down from year to year? And just to the American public more broadly, how do you sort of explain what appears to be contradictory, as you talk about, repeatedly, this $500 billion in cuts in a Defense Department budget that is actually going to be increasing over time?
Panetta’s answer:
Yeah, I think the simplest way to say this is that under the budget that was submitted in the past, we had a projected growth level for the Defense budget. And that growth would’ve provided for almost $500 billion in growth. And we had obviously dedicated that to a number of plans and projects that we would have. That’s gotta be cut, and that’s a real cut in terms of what our projected growth would be.
See the new release from the Institute for Public Accuracy for more of the context largely missing from the Pentagon budget coverage.
Related articles
- Humans Lose, Robots Win in New Defense Budget (wired.com)
Biofuel Delusions
Thomas Freidman’s Folly
By ROBERT BRYCE | December 31, 2010
Debunking the tsunami of hype about biofuels doesn’t require much. A standard calculator will do. Alas, Thomas Friedman can’t be bothered to do the handful of simple calculations that prove the futility of the biofuels madness.
In a recent piece, the New York Times columnist and best-selling author praised the Navy and Marines for, as he put it “building a strategy for ‘out-greening’ Al Qaeda, ‘out-greening’ the Taliban and ‘out-greening’ the world’s petro-dictators.”
Hmm. I’ve never heard of Taliban fighters using tanks or F-15s. And if Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda operatives are worrying about the size of their carbon footprints, that revelation might eclipse the latest news about Lady Gaga – at least for a few hours.
Nevertheless, Friedman reports that the military is planning to “run its ships on nuclear energy, biofuels and hybrid engines, and fly its jets with bio-fuels.” Friedman goes on to say that the brass at the Pentagon is only pursuing “third generation” biofuels made from algae and non-food sources. But here’s the reality: the commercial viability of advanced biofuels is a lot like the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy: lots of people believe in it but no one ever sees it.
To be sure, the logisticians at the Pentagon know that the US military’s profligate use of oil on the battlefield is a strategic liability. And while it’s obvious that the Defense Department could – given its nearly $700 billion in annual spending — make significant contributions in the development of new energy technologies, those advances are unlikely to happen on the biofuels front.
For decades, various pundits have been proclaiming that biofuels will displace our need for oil. Back in 1976, energy analyst Amory Lovins, a darling of the Green/Left, wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs in which he said that there are “exciting developments in the conversion of agricultural, forestry and urban wastes to methanol and other liquid and gaseous fuels.” He went on, saying that those fuels “now offer practical, economically interesting technologies sufficient to run an efficient U.S. transport sector.”
Today, 34 years after Lovins said that biofuels “now offer” the ability to run the transport sector, biofuels remain little more than a sinkhole for taxpayer dollars. According to the Congressional Budget Office, producing enough corn ethanol to match the energy contained in a single gallon of conventional gasoline costs taxpayers $1.78. Even with those subsidies, which total about $7 billion per year, corn ethanol still only provides about 3 percent of America’s oil needs. And by mandating the consumption of ethanol, Congress has created an industry that now gobbles up about one-third of America’s corn crop.
Those numbers are germane to Friedman’s claim that biofuels will be an essential part of the DOD’s new “green” future. The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist lauded the Navy for its experiments with jet fuel derived from camellina, a plant in the mustard family. In April, the Navy flew an F-18 using a mixture of conventional jet fuel and camellina-based fuel. The cost of that biofuel: about $67.50 per gallon.
The fundamental problem with using plants to make liquid motor fuel isn’t want-to, it’s physics. We pump oil out of the earth because of its high energy density. That is it contains lots of stored chemical energy by both weight and volume. Camellina, like switchgrass, and nearly every other plant-based feedstock now being considered for “advanced” biofuel production, has low energy density. Thus, in order to produce a significant quantity of liquid fuels that have high energy density – such as jet fuel, diesel, or gasoline — from those plants, you need Bunyanesque quantities of the stuff.
Friedman would have understood that had he done a bit of math on soybean-based biodiesel. The US produces about 3.2 billion bushels of soybeans per year and each bushel can be processed into about 1.5 gallons of biodiesel. Thus, if it made sense to do so, we could convert all US soybean production into diesel with total output of about 4.8 billion gallons.
How much fuel is that? By Pentagon standards, it’s not much. In 2008, the DOD consumed 132.5 million barrels of oil products, or about 5.5 billion gallons. Put another way, even if the US decided to convert all of its soybean production into motor fuel, doing so would only provide about 87 percent of the Pentagon’s total oil needs.
Tim Searchinger, a research scholar at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School who has written extensively about the problems with biofuels, says that biofuels don’t make much sense because it “takes a huge amount of land to produce a modest amount of energy.” The key issue, says Searchinger, is scale. He points out that even if we used “every piece of wood on the planet, every piece of grass eaten by livestock, and all food crops, that much biomass could only provide about 30 percent of the world’s total energy needs.”
Some crops can provide a relatively good feedstock for biofuels. For instance, Brazil utilizes sugar cane to produce ethanol. (Brazil is the world’s second-largest ethanol producer, behind the US.) But even if the US military commandeered all of Brazil’s ethanol production — which totaled 6.5 billion gallons in 2008 – that volume of energy still wouldn’t be enough to keep the Pentagon’s planes, trucks, and tanks moving. Recall that ethanol contains just two-thirds of the heat energy of gasoline. Therefore Brazil’s 6.5 billion gallons of ethanol is equal to 4.3 billion gallons of refined oil product, far less than the US military’s consumption of 5.5 billion gallons per year.
Going beyond Brazil, biomass-based fuels may be worthwhile on tropical islands, like Hawaii, that have lots of rainfall and plenty of arable land. Furthermore, fuels derived from photosynthetic algae might – repeat, might – someday become commercial.
Friedman ended his column by saying that “we might really get a green revolution in the military.” Sure, that’s a possibility. But before Friedman writes another article about the promise of biofuels he should invest in a calculator.
NY Times full-page ad demonstrates who is pushing for war against Iran
Also, the organizers say they’re actuated by fears of climate change, but why the Netanyahu quote and the emphasis on missiles?
And the NYTimes is still on message, Global Warming, Peak Oil and the War on Terror all seem to merge to support Zionism:
Letters to the International Herald Tribune – How to Fight Climate Change – NYTimes.com
The only way to effectively address climate change is for our leaders to make it an issue of national security: Emphasize the link between consumption of fossil fuels, especially foreign oil, and the rise of international terrorism. Once that link is clearly established, people will be willing to make an effort: The home-front will contribute to fighting against terrorism, which threatens every one of us. People will understand that there is no way to put a value on the lives of any of the nearly 3,000 people who perished in the Sept. 11 attacks, and that any effort is worth making to prevent recurrence of such a tragedy.
Update:
The Israel Lobby’s War on America’s Middle East Oil Dependence
By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | October 26, 2012
See also:
US Jewish leaders push Obama to act on Iran
Jerusalem Post, September 10, 2009
Related efforts toward energy independence and war on Iran
- Obama uses Weekly Address to lobby for Israeli firm BrightSource (alethonews)
- Noam Chomsky: The Fate of Humanity Is at Stake — Why Are Romney and Obama Too Cowardly to Talk About What Really Matters? (alternet.org)
- Iran Underground Nuclear Plant Almost Finished, NY Times Says – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
- Earth Day in Israel: Apartheid Showing Through the Greenwash (alethonews)
Featured Video
Col Doug Macgregor: US Strategy in Iran NEVER ADMIT DEFEAT
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Fact File : Civilian Internment 1939 – 1945
BBC – Compiled in 2003
Internment of civilian nationals belonging to opposing sides was carried out in varying degrees by all belligerent powers in World War Two. It was also the fate of those servicemen who found themselves in a neutral country.
At the outbreak of war there were around 80,000 potential enemy aliens in Britain who, it was feared, could be spies, or willing to assist Britain’s enemies in the event of an invasion. All Germans and Austrians over the age of 16 were called before special tribunals and were divided into one of three groups… continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- US strikes vessel in Caribbean killing three, death toll reaches 180
- NATO’s Baltic Operation Aims to Curb Russian Cargo Traffic
- France’s New Nuclear Strategy to Weaken Security in Europe – Russian Foreign Ministry
- Col Doug Macgregor: US Strategy in Iran NEVER ADMIT DEFEAT
- IRNA denies 2nd round of negotiations: reports
- Israel attacks three nations for alleged backing of Iran
- Ex-intel officer questions Israeli strategy in Lebanon as losses mount
- Netanyahu’s ‘total victory’ to total flop
- REPORT: United States Now Global Outlier Ignoring Vaccine Injured as UK Inquiry Acknowledges Harms
- The Gratitude of the Captured
- If Americans Knew
- Israeli soldier takes sledgehammer to Jesus statue in Lebanon – Daily Update
- Israel employs ‘Gaza tactics’ in Lebanon, destroying 1,000 homes per day – Daily Update
- Israel relegates another population to life in tents – Daily Update
- Senate again fails to block weapons to Israel
- Think the Iran war is a disaster? Blame these DC think tanks first.
- Number of Palestinian Prisoners Rises By 83% Since October 2023
- With multiple “ceasefires” in place, Israel keeps on killing in Gaza and Lebanon – Daily Update
- Mearsheimer: Israel Owns Trump
- Mark Levin and Jonathan Pollard Push for Nuking Iran
- TCN: America Enables Israel’s Crimes
- No Tricks Zone
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
Aletho News 