Antony Loewenstein Antony Loewenstein

NOVANEWS

Throwing money to defend occupation should send Israel totally broke

Posted: 14 Feb 2012

Hello Israel, you have a major issue:

Israel is dispossessing Palestinians in east Jerusalem and the West Bank as well as its Arab minority with a “strategy of Judaisation,” a United Nations representative charged on Sunday.
Presenting her preliminary findings after a tour of Israel and the Palestinian territories this month, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, said she had seen a pattern of discrimination.
“From the Galilee and the Negev to east Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Israeli authorities promote a territorial development model that excludes, discriminates against and displaces minorities, particularly affecting Palestinian communities, side by side with the accelerated development of predominantly Jewish settlements,” she said.
“As a whole, it is clear that Israeli policies and practices for the Palestinian population in east Jerusalem and the West Bank violate international human rights and humanitarian law,” she added.

As American writer Peter Beinart writes in his new book, The Crisis of Zionismpreviewed in the New York Timesyesterday:

Israel does not have a public relations problem; it has a policy problem. You can’t sell occupation in a postcolonial age.

Murdoch thuggery in America; his paper calls for war against Iran

Posted: 14 Feb 2012

This is how Rupert and friends roll (via the New York Post editorial). Because Murdoch’s support for the Iraq war hasn’t already caused enough mayhem:

How’s this for astonishing: NBC News is reporting that Israeli spies have been involved in the assassinations of five Iranian nuclear scientists.
So far, not so bad. We’d say the engineers basically needed killing.
But here’s the astonishing part: The source for the story apparently is theObama administration— albeit through anonymous leaks.
The network claims that Israel used members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK), a dissident group the United States classified as a terrorist group in 1998, to ice the engineers.
An Iranian spokesman told NBC the Mossad has been flying MeK members to Israel for training and sending them back home to carry out assassinations, which began in 2007.
The allegations are nothing new.
Whatisnew is that “senior US officials” are said to have confirmed the gory details.
One must wonder why.
We understand that the Obama administration’s ties with Israel are strained — at best — and that the State Department has a particular allergy to the Jewish state.
But Iran’s nuclear program is about much more than Israel alone.
A nuclear-armed Iran would pose a near-existential threat to US allies in the region — meaning a nuclear-arms race among its Arab neighbors would be inevitable.
And, of course, the lion’s share of the world’s oil passes through the Persian Gulf.
So who cares whether the MeK is a designated terror group? (Britain and the European Union already removed it from their lists, and there is pressure on America to do the same.)
And isn’t Iran itself the leading exporter of terrorism in the world?
Let’s be frank: Were the MeK to play the critical role in derailing an Iranian bomb, it would be far more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than a certain president of the United States we could mention.
So why is the administration making such details public?
President Obama did Israel no favors when he pressured it to join his love-peace-and-harmony nuclear summit in 2010, undermining a basic pillar of Israel’s security — its undisclosed nuclear program.
And his administration has done far worse damage now, which may make it much harder for Israel to operate in Iran.
Trouble is, Israel won’t suffer the consequences alone. Everyone will.
America included.

Photos from stunning yet troubled Papua New Guinea

Posted: 14 Feb 2012

I’ve just spent three weeks in Papua New Guinea investigating disaster capitalism for a new book (out 2013), as well as filming a documentary.
Here are my photos of BougainvilleMadang and Port Moresby/Papa Lea-Lea.
It was a wild trip and revealed deep complicity of Western and Chinese corporations in the exploitation of the nation. Sadly, it was ground zero for vulture capitalism.

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