Articles

Saudi Arabia: Reflections of Love
June 10, 2011
Saudi Arabia
NOVANEWS   Yesterday the love of my life would have been 55 years of age.  When we were both in Pakistan ...Read more
Towards a World War III Scenario. New E-Book by Global Research Publishers
June 10, 2011
Politics
NOVANEWS By Michel Chossudovsky Global Research The following is a preview from the preface of a newly released E-book by Global Research ...Read more
Does Palestinian Left Hand Know What Right Hand is Doing?
June 10, 2011
Palestine Affairs
NOVANEWS   Muddle and mixed messages while waiting for a Call to Action The PA/PNA/PLO’s “enlightened road map to peace”. ...Read more
Afghanistan: Why Civilians are Killed
June 10, 2011
Pakistan & Kashmir
NOVANEWS   The killing of civilians is not “accidental” Their deadly military mission to ‘save the people from terrorist fundamentalists’, ...Read more
Confederation Not Empire!
June 10, 2011
USA
NOVANEWS   Our Entire Purpose Must Be to Prevent Tyranny, Either Over Us or by Us Over Others by J.B. ...Read more
Chicago Cyberwar: USS Liberty vs. Red Dragon
June 10, 2011
USA
NOVANEWS   by Captain Eric H. May,  Iconoclast Intelligence The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was piracy, The Star and ...Read more
Cancer is a Business NOT a Disease
June 10, 2011
Health
NOVANEWS   American People Being Duped by Cancer Business   YouTube - Veterans Today - by Tom Valentine Cut Poison Burn ...Read more
Phil Giraldi Spills Beans on IsraHell Espionage in America
June 10, 2011
Campaigns
NOVANEWS   Phillip Giraldi “Over 125 investigations into Israeli Espionage in America… stopped due to political pressure.”…FBI Counter Intel Officer ...Read more
Dorothy Online Newsletter
June 10, 2011
Middle East
Dear Friends, The first and final items of the 8 below raised my ire! About a week ago I sent ...Read more
A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter
June 10, 2011
Middle East
And we thought Gaza was isolated US and West pushed dodgy election in Haiti An interview on Palestine, boycott, Jews, ...Read more
Israel's PR victory shames news broadcasters
June 9, 2011
ZIO-NAZI
NOVANEWS Our latest analysis of news bulletins reveals how Israel continues to spin images of Greg Philo The Guardian, 31 ...Read more
BBC's complaints procedure faces calls for overhaul
June 9, 2011
United Kingdom
NOVANEWS   With the corporation's finances facing the squeeze, the pressure is on for quicker resolutions Ben Dowell The Guardian, ...Read more

Saudi Arabia: Reflections of Love

NOVANEWS



 

Yesterday the love of my life would have been 55 years of age.  When we were both in Pakistan he shared that the first birthday party he had was the surprise party I had given for him.  Little did he know that when we went on what was to be a “simple and quiet” getaway to Lahore from Islamabad in 2001 was in actuality a carefully orchestrated event.  Yes, I wanted to see and share the exotic closing of the Wagah border between India and Pakistan at sundown with him.

That much was openly shared with him.  What he did not know was that I had organized a private and intimate birthday party for him and had the cooperation of one of his best friends. What he had thought was an excess tendency on my part to pack too large of a bag for a short trip was really a bag full of laughter, love and surprises for him!  Since I would be moving on from Islamabad to my next diplomatic posting in New Delhi, I wanted to make sure that he would not forget about me with some special gifts and memories.

He did the driving when we went to and from the Wagah border. Driving in Riyadh is a challenge but imagine Lahore, Pakistan where one drives on the “opposite” side of a crowded roadway meant for no more than 2 cars side-by-side but somehow 5 cars, “tuck tucks”, scooters and bicycles all managed to line up in a horizontal row.  He was instructed by me to take a rest in his room while I saw to making dinner reservations.  While he rested I made sure that a private dining room had been arranged, set up with festive ambience, the cake was made to perfection, wrapped presents arranged and his friend had arrived.

At the appointed time I collected him from his room advising him it was time for our dinner reservation.  The expression on his face when the door to the private dining was opened and as the lights were turned on he saw his best friend, other guests and packages was priceless.  I saw my love blush and I never knew until then that an Arab could blush!

He was so surprised and overwhelmed.  It was especially touching when he and his Saudi friend hugged and kissed each other with raw emotion.  That was when he told me and all present that it was his first birthday party. It was not his last.  From that point on we celebrated his birthday each year…until 2010 when he was taken Home.

I miss you, Abdullah.  You are now where you are forever young.  God Bless You.

Towards a World War III Scenario. New E-Book by Global Research Publishers

NOVANEWS

By Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research

The following is a preview from the preface of a newly released E-book by Global Research Publishers
“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” by Michel Chossudovsky

E-Book Series No. 1.0
Global Research Publishers
Montreal, 2011
ISBN 978-0-9737147-3-9
Order your pdf of this important new book from Global Research here
Introductory offer: $5.00 (plus $1.50 processing fee. Sent directly to your email!)

 
The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.
Coinciding with the onset of the nuclear crisis in Japan, a new regional war theater has opened up in North Africa, under the disguise of a UN sponsored “humanitarian operation” with the mandate to “protect civilian lives”.
These two seemingly unrelated events are of crucial importance in understanding both the nuclear issue as well as the ongoing US-NATO sponsored war, which has now extended its grip into Libya. The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”. Its potential repercussions, which are yet to be fully assessed, are far more serious than the Chernobyl disaster, as acknowledged by several scientists.
 
 
The crisis in Japan has also brought into the open the unspoken relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear war. Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap. In Japan at the height of the disaster, “the nuclear industry and government agencies [were] scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan’s civilian nuclear power plants”.[1] The media consensus is that the crisis at Fukushima’s five nuclear power plants has been contained. The realties are otherwise.
The Japanese government has been obliged to acknowledge that “the severity rating of its nuclear crisis … matches that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster”. Moreover, the dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:
“Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer”.[2]
A New War Theater in North Africa
The War on Libya was launched within days of the Fukushima disaster. As we go to press, a dangerous process of military escalation is ongoing. NATO warplanes are hitting civilian targets in Libya including residential areas and government buildings in violation of international law.
The war on Libya is an integral part of the broader military agenda in the Middle East and Central Asia which until recently consisted of three distinct areas of conflict : Afghanistan and Pakistan (the AfPak War), Iraq, Palestine. A fourth war theater has opened up in North Africa, which raises the issue of escalation over a vast geographical area. These four war theaters are interrelated. They are part of a broader region of conflict, which extends from North Africa and the Middle East, engulfing a large part of the Mediterranean basin, to China’s Western frontier with Afghanistan, and Northern Pakistan.
How does the war on Libya relate to this broader US-NATO military agenda?
Is a World War III scenario unfolding?
Is the use of nuclear weapons contemplated in North Africa?
With regard to nuclear doctrine, the concept of a US sponsored pre-emptive nuclear attack applies to a number of countries or “rogue states” including Libya. An all out war against the Qadhafi regime has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 20 years, Moreover, Libya was the first country to be tagged for a preemptive attack using tactical nuclear weapons.[3] The Clinton administration’s plan to nuke Libya had been announced in no uncertain terms in a 1996 Department of Defense press briefing:
“[The] Air Force would use the B61-11 [nuclear weapon] against Libya’s alleged underground chemical weapons plant at Tarhunah if the President decided that the plant had to be destroyed. ‘We could not take [Tarhunah] out of commission using strictly conventional weapons,’ Smith told the Associated Press. The B61-11 ‘would be the nuclear weapon of choice,’ he [Assistant Secretary of Defense Harold P. Smith] told Jane Defence Weekly.[4]
Clinton’s Defense Secretary William Perry had confirmed in a statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “the U.S. retained the option of using nuclear weapons against countries [e.g. Libya] armed with chemical and biological weapons.”[5] The Department of Defense’s objective was to fast track the “testing” of the B61-11 nuclear bomb on an actual country and that country was Libya: “Even before the B61 came on line, Libya was identified as a potential target”.[6]
While the 1996 plan to bomb Libya using tactical nuclear weapons was subsequently shelved, Libya was not removed from the “black list”: “The Qadhafi regime” remains to this date a target country for a pre-emptive (“defensive”) nuclear attack. As revealed by William Arkin in early 2002, “The Bush administration, in a secret policy review… [had] ordered the Pentagon to draft contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, naming not only Russia and the “axis of evil” Iraq, Iran, and North Korea but also China, Libya and Syria.[7]
Operation Odyssey Dawn. Nuclear Weapons against Libya? How Real is the Threat?
Has the project to nuke Libya been definitively shelved or is Libya still being contemplated as a potential target for a nuclear attack? (This preface serves as an update on the potential dangers of a nuclear war against a defenseless non-nuclear State). The air campaign directed against Libya commenced on March 19, 2011. America deployed its Bat-shaped B-2 Spirit Stealth bombers operating out of the Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. Described as “deadly and effective”, the B-2 was used as an instrument of “humanitarian warfare”.
Barely two weeks after the commencement of the war, the Pentagon announced the testing of the B61-11 nuclear bomb using the same B-2 Stealth bombers which had been deployed to Libya at the very outset of Operation Odyssey Dawn. The B-2 Spirit Stealth bomber is the US Air Force’s chosen “carrier” for the delivery of the B61-11 nuclear bomb. These timely tests pertained to the installed equipment, functionality and weapon’s components of the B61-11 nuclear bomb. The tests were conducted by the B-2 bombers operating out of the same Air Force base, from which the B-2 bombing raid on Libya were conducted.[8]
Is the timing of these tests in any way related to the chronology of the Libya bombing campaign?
The U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command was in charge of both the JTA tests of the B61-11 as well as the deployment of three B-2 Spirit Stealth bombers to Libya on March 19 under operation Odyssey Dawn. Both the deployment of the B-2s to the Libya war theater as well as the tests of the equipment of the B61-11 (using the B-2 bomber for delivery) were coordinated out of Whiteman Air Force base.
America’s Long War: The Global Military Agenda
The US has embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity. The first two chapters of this E-book focus on the “Cult of Death and Destruction” underlying this global military agenda. US-NATO weapons of mass destruction are portrayed as instruments of peace. Mini-nukes are said to be “harmless to the surrounding civilian population”. Pre-emptive nuclear war is portrayed as a “humanitarian undertaking”. Nuclear war has become a multibillion dollar undertaking, which fills the pockets of US defense contractors. What is at stake is the outright “privatization of nuclear war”.
US nuclear doctrine is intimately related to “America’s War on Terrorism” and the alleged threat of Al Qaeda, which in a bitter irony is considered as an upcoming nuclear power. Under the Obama administration, Islamic terrorists are said to be preparing to attack US cities. Proliferation is tacitly equated with “nuclear terrorism”. Obama’s nuclear doctrine puts particular emphasis on “nuclear terrorism” and on the alleged plans by Al Qaeda to develop and use nuclear weapons.
Chapter III focusses on America’s Holy Crusade and the Battle for Oil. The “Global War on Terrorism” requires going after the terrorists, using advanced weapons systems. US foreign policy upholds a pre-emptive religious-like crusade against evil, which serves to obscure the real objectives of military action. In the inner consciousness of Americans, the attacks of September 11, 2001 justify acts of war and conquest against evil-doers. The Global War on Terrorism is presented as a “clash of civilizations”, a war between competing values and religions, when in reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and economic objectives. The lies behind 9/11 are known and documented.
The American people’s acceptance of this crusade against evil is not based on any rational understanding or analysis of the facts. “The American inquisition” purports to extend Washington’s sphere of influence. Military intervention is justified as part of an international campaign against “Islamic terrorists”. Its ultimate intention, which is never mentioned in press reports, is territorial conquest and control over strategic resources. Ironically, under the Global War on Terrorism, these plans of conquest are instrumented by covertly supporting Islamic paramilitary armies, which are then used to destabilize non-compliant governments and impose Western standards of “governance” and “democracy”.
World War III Scenario
The contours of a World War III scenario are discussed in Chapter IV. The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the World simultaneously. Militarization at the global level is instrumented through the US military’s Unified Command structure: the entire planet is divided up into geographic Combatant Commands under the control of the Pentagon. According to (former) NATO Commander General Wesley Clark, the Pentagon’s military road-map consists of a sequence of war theaters: “[The] five-year campaign plan [includes]… a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.”
Chapter V focusses on war preparations pertaining to Iran, including the launching of a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Islamic Republic. While Iran remains on the Pentagon’s drawing board, a fundamental shift in the sequencing of military operations has occurred. The US-NATO-Israel alliance realizes that Iran has significant capabilities to respond and retaliate. With the onset of the US-NATO led war in North Africa, Washington and its allies have chosen to wage war on countries with lesser military capabilities. This factor in itself has been crucial in the decision by the US and its allies to put “the Iran operation” on hold, while launching a “humanitarian war” on Libya.
How to Reverse the Tide of War
Chapter VI focusses on antiwar actions directed against this diabolical military agenda. Central to an understanding of war, is the media campaign which grants it legitimacy in the eyes of public opinion. A good versus evil dichotomy prevails. The perpetrators of war are presented as the victims. Public opinion is misled: “We must fight against evil in all its forms as a means to preserving the Western way of life.” Breaking the “big lie” which upholds war as a humanitarian undertaking, means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force. This profit-driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.
The holding of mass demonstrations and antiwar protests is not enough. What is required is the development of a broad and well organized grassroots antiwar network, across the land, nationally and internationally, which challenges the structures of power and authority. People must mobilize not only against the military agenda, the authority of the state and its officials must also be challenged. This war can be prevented if people forcefully confront their governments, pressure their elected representatives, organize at the local level in towns, villages and municipalities, spread the word, inform their fellow citizens as to the implications of a nuclear war, initiate debate and discussion within the armed forces.
The object of this E-Book is to forcefully reverse the tide of war, challenge the war criminals in high office and the powerful corporate lobby groups which support them.
Break the American Inquisition.
Undermine the US-NATO-Israel military crusade.
Close down the weapons factories and the military bases.
Members of the armed forces should disobey orders and refuse to participate in a criminal war.
Bring home the troops.

Notes
1. See Yoichi Shimatsu, Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant? Global Research, April 12, 2011
2. Helen Caldicott, Fukushima: Nuclear Apologists Play Shoot the Messenger on Radiation, The Age, April 26, 2011

3. See Michel Chossudovsky, America’s Planned Nuclear Attack on Libya, Global Research, March 25, 2011.

4. Federation of American Scientists, The Nuclear Information Project: the B61-11

5. Ibid, See also Greg Mello, The Birth Of a New Bomb; Shades of Dr. Strangelove! Will We Learn to Love the B61-11? The Washington Post, June 1, 1997

6. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – September/ October 1997, p. 27. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, America’s Planned Nuclear Attack on Libya, Global Research, March 25, 2001

7. See William Arkin, “Thinking the Unthinkable”, Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2002.
8. In late March or early April (prior to April 4), the B-2 Spirit Stealth bomber from the 509th Bomber Wing operating out of Whiteman Air Force Base, was used in the so-called “Joint Test Assembly” (JTA) of the B61 Mod 11 nuclear bomb.

The announcement of these tests was made public on April 4; the precise date of the tests was not revealed, but one can reasonably assume that it was in the days prior to the April 4 press release by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA. Press Release, NNSA Conducts Successful B61-11 JTA Flight Test, April 4, 2011. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Dangerous Crossroads: Is America Considering the Use of Nuclear Weapons against Libya? Global Research, April 7, 2011

Does Palestinian Left Hand Know What Right Hand is Doing?

NOVANEWS

 

Muddle and mixed messages while waiting for a Call to Action


The PA/PNA/PLO’s “enlightened road map to peace”. Is the PA/PNA/PLO going wholeheartedly for UN recognition or is it determined to scupper its people’s hopes by entertaining more “peace talks”?


by Stuart Littlewood


There are hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of dedicated pro-Palestinian activists out there waiting… straining at the leash…hoping for a call from the Palestinian leadership to mobilize, get stuck in, set the mood and pave the way for the make-or-break bid for UN recognition and statehood in September.

They long to hear a coherent theme, a gutsy strategy and a strong, persuasive message that puts across the Palestinian case in terms that cannot be argued with. But the big day is only three months away and “the silly season”, as the media call it, is nearly upon us. It’ll need sharp thinking and superhuman effort to make enough noise to get the world’s attention.

THE LAST REFUGE!

And the Palestinian Authority is off to an unpromising start with the depressing newshttp://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=393760 that “a statehood push at the United Nations will not advance the Palestinians’ cause”, according to President Mahmoud Abbas. The initiative, he is reported as saying, will be compromised by the fact that the Palestinians first have to seek support from the Security Council before going to the General Assembly.

The most that can be hoped for is “a non-binding affirmation of previous resolutions saying the Palestinians have the right to a state”. The Palestinian leadership is only going ahead with its plan to approach the UN “in order to save face among the Palestinian people”, said the report.

According to Ma’an News a member of the negotiating team denied the report saying some of the world’s most important international lawyers are backing the initiative and the Palestinians are hopeful they will succeed.

The PLO’s negotiators have made a career of bolloxing up negotiations for years. So who exactly are the “negotiating team”? It’s time we knew their faces and background.

And here’s more silliness: The Palestinian Authority (PA), the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)… what’s with all these names saying different things? Those of us in the world outside should only have to listen to ONE authority otherwise we’ll lose patience. Which one is it going to be?

Surely not the PLO. This organization has strong paramilitary overtones, being Arafat’s old outfit. How clever is it to bring to the negotiating table or to the UN a name like that at a time like this? Yet it has a Negotiations Affairs Department which in turn has a Public Relations unit. A fat lot of good either of them are. Do they seriously intend heading up this statehood move?

Now is the time to dump all unwanted baggage. Like Abbas. He may be the Americans’ and Israelis’ pet dinosaur but it won’t help in this situation and has never helped the Palestinian cause in any event. There is surely considerable talent among the ‘Palestinian Forum’, which has been quietly pulling things together behind the scenes. It was left to Robert Fisk http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/revealed-the-untold-story-of-the-deal-that-shocked-the-middle-east-2293879.html to bring us news of their work while Abbas’s useless PLO and worthless PR units kept us in the dark.

And I thought chief negotiator Saeb Erakat resigned following the scandal of the “Palestinian Papers”, which revealed the shameful behaviour of the Palestinian team in their pathetic peace talks with the Israelis. But no, he’s still there issuing press releases. His seems to be the only voice and he continues to have a high profile role. Erakat is reported to be in Washington talking with US officials about reviving the peace process.

Adding to the confusion and showing the world that he can face two ways at once, Abbas was reported welcoming a scheme by French foreign minister Alain Juppe to arrange a conference in Paris in July where the discredited “peace talks” could be resumed. Juppe says Abbas “responded favorably”.

Palestinian prime minister Fayyad also welcomed the idea, we’re told. Nothing is more likely to kick their application for UN recognition and statehood into the long grass than resumption of dragged-out, lopsided “negotiations” with an illegal occupier who’s determined to make the occupation permanent

And why is Juppe doing this? If he is so concerned about Middle East peace why doesn’t he concentrate on ensuring that in September the UN recognizes Palestine as an independent state on pre-1967 borders?  A just and proper peace will flow from that.

The PA/PNA/PLO’s “enlightened road map to peace”

Yesterday I received a press release from the Palestinian embassy in London which said: “The Palestinian Leadership has… concluded that endless negotiations with Israel have not led to a just solution to the conflict… The Palestinian Leadership’s decision to pursue a September United Nations recognition of a Palestinian State on the 1967 lines comes as a result of the deadlock in the peace process.  This legitimate move has been welcomed by many countries that have recognised the Palestinian Leadership’s strenuous efforts to secure a negotiated settlement and that recognise the Palestinian People’s right to self determination and statehood.”

The document quoted the Palestinian Ambassador, Professor Manuel Hassassian, as saying: “The foundations upon which Palestinians seek the establishment of a homeland are based upon peace, prosperity, freedom and security, against which Israel justifies its brutal occupation. Home demolitions, family evictions, revoking ID cards, the illegal occupation over Palestinian land, the re-mapping of Jerusalem, stalling peace talks and defying International Law are tactics employed by Israel to stall the establishment of a viable Palestinian state…”

Professor Hassassian calls on the International Community to “seize the  moment” and support recognition of a Palestinian state in September. “This is the enlightened road map to peace,” he says.

Is it the Call to Action? Who knows? It isn’t enough to email a press release. You have to follow up and make sure key publications broadcast it. And I cannot find it on the embassy’s website, so there’s no link.

For activists it contains no action plan, no briefing material, no “killer” statistics for activists to arm themselves with, no “lines to take” against stooges of the US-Israel axis, no contact details of articulate and media-savvy spokespeople on hand at a moment’s notice… Nothing to support a campaign.

Maybe information packs are on the way.

And why spoil it with words that grovel, like “Palestinians seek to establish a homeland”? That’s the language used by Zionist bribers and manipulators after World War One when trying to wheedle their way into Palestine. Palestinians already have a homeland, for God’s sake! They just want it back.

Professor Hassassian is the PA/PNA/PLO’s mouthpiece here in the UK. Presumably he is told to stick to Ramallah’s script. According to Ramallah, then, the foundations for establishing a homeland are “peace, prosperity, freedom and security”. But the real purpose of the application, surely, are to end the brutal occupation, secure the return of stolen lands and natural resources, restore refugees to their homes if they wish, and become an independent self-determining state. There can be no peace, prosperity, freedom and security until these things are achieved.

The Palestinians’ demands are based squarely on international law and numerous UN resolutions, which are waiting to be implemented. Not least, they are enshrined in human rights legislation and the principles of the UN Charter.

The question is, will senior member-states respect these solemn principles when the crunch comes in September? Or will they show the world how lawless, grasping and corrupted they have become?

One of the strongest cards in the Palestinian hand is the realization that there never has been and never could be any meaningful negotiation with Israel in present circumstances. No-one can reasonably be expected to “negotiate” with a gun to their head. Furthermore the Israeli prime minister has refused to talk with a Palestinian government that includes certain democratically elected elements. Clearly the only way forward is an application to the UN.

So what are we to make of the mixed messages at this eleventh hour? Does the Palestinian left hand know what the right hand is doing? Is the PA/PNA/PLO going wholeheartedly for UN recognition or is it determined to scupper its people’s hopes by entertaining more “peace talks”?

If I were a Palestinian I’d be tearing my hair out.

Afghanistan: Why Civilians are Killed

NOVANEWS

 

The killing of civilians is not “accidental”

Their deadly military mission to ‘save the people from terrorist fundamentalists’, a self-serving self-deception, is, in fact, a ladder up the military-political hierarchy. Each step up depends on waging a ‘just war’ to a successful conclusion.

by Prof. James Petras

Introduction:

The recent rash of civilian killings by NATO forces in occupied Afghanistan raises several basic questions:  Why do US – NATO air and ground forces kill so many civilians, so persistently, over such long stretches of time, in regions throughout the country?  Why have the number of civilians killed, increased in the course of the conflict?  Why do NATO-US airplanes continue to bomb civilian housing and village gatherings and ground troops indiscriminately assault homes and workshops?  Why are the pleas of NATO collaborator President Karzai to desist in home bombings go unheeded?  Finally, knowing that the killing of civilians, entire families including children, mothers and the elderly alienates the local population and breeds widespread and profound hostility, why do the NATO-US military refuse to alter their tactics and strategy?

(Photo: REUTERS/Abdul Malik Watanyar) VISUALS COVERAGE OF SCENES OF DEATH AND INJURY An Afghan man holds the bodies of two children who were killed after an air strike in Helmand province May 29, 2011. An air strike called in by NATO-led troops in southern Afghanistan killed 12 children and two women, Afghan officials said on Sunday, one of the worst civilian death tolls by foreign forces in months.

Explanations and Excuses for Civilian Killings:

Apologists for the NATO killings of civilians are as abundant as their explanations are lacking in substance.  Pentagon spokespeople speak of “accidents”, “errors of war”, “collateral damage”; media pundits blame the guerrilla fighters for engaging in warfare in areas populated by civilians; neo-conservative academics and their “think tank” colleagues blame Islamic fundamentalism for converting villagers to their cause and “forcing” NATO to kill civilians in order to create martyrs and to use their deaths as a recruiting device.

These patently superficial explanations raise more questions than answers, or in some cases, inadvertently refute the justification for the entire war.  The “error of war” argument begs a more basic question:  what kind of war is NATO-US engaged in that constantly finds the guerrillas ‘melting’ into the population, while the occupation breaks down doors and perceives each and every household as a possible sanctuary, or outpost of the resistance?  What kind of military relies on high altitude fighter planes and pilotless planes directed from distant command posts to attack population centers, in which commerce, farming and household economies engage the population?  Clearly only an army of occupation, an imperial army, is willing to repeatedly sacrifice a multitude of civilians to kill a single or a few suspected combatants.  Only a military operating in a hostile civilian environment is going to assume that lodged behind every door of every home there is an “enemy”; that every family is sheltering a combatant; that it is better to “go in shooting” then to risk a bullet in the gut.  ‘Accidents of war’ do not ‘just happen’ for an entire decade, covering an entire country.  The killing of civilians is a result of a war of imperial conquest against an entire people who resist the occupation in whatever form is appropriate to their circumstance. The pilots and ground troops recognize that they are a hostile alien force, whose presence is commanded from above by Generals and politicians dealing with abstract schemes of ‘terrorists-linked to Al Qaeda’ that have no relation to the dense web of personal bonds of solidarity between resistance fighters and civilians on the ground in Afghanistan.

Working from these abstract categories, the strategists label extended family compounds as ‘hideouts’; family gatherings as ‘terrorist meetings’; trade caravans as ‘guerilla smugglers’.  The conflicting interests of the imperial politicians, generals, strategists and military officers on the one hand and the civilian population and resistance form an immense gap. The greater the number of civilian/combatants killed the faster the career advances for imperial officers –eager for promotions and prized pensions.  “Success”, according to the imperial world view is measured internationally by the number of client rulers; nationally by the number of flags pinned to the war maps denoting ‘secure cities’; and locally by the body counts of massacred families.

On the ground, among the millions in intimate family and clan circles, where sorrow and anger co-exist, resistance in all of its manifold forms unfolds:  Sacred vows and the profane pledges to ‘fight on’ grow out of the millions of daily humiliations affecting young and old, wives and husbands, in homes, markets, roads and by-ways.  The hostile stare of a mother sheltering an infant from soldiers breaking into a bedroom is as telling as the crackle of gunfire of a sniper hidden in a mountain crevice.

A People’s War:  Not a War on Terror

The killing of civilians is not “accidental”. The fundamental reason that so many civilians are killed, everyday, in every region for over a decade, is because the civilians and the combatants are indistinguishable.  The image of the Afghan combatants as some kind of footloose professional bomb throwing terrorist is completely off the mark. Most Afghan fighters have families, cultivate farmland and tend herds; they raise families and attend mosque; they are ‘part-time civilians’ and part-time fighters.  Only in the schematic minds of the “great strategists of war” in the Pentagon and NATO headquarters do such distinctions exist.  Their deadly military mission to ‘save the people from terrorist fundamentalists’, a self-serving self-deception, is, in fact, a ladder up the military-political hierarchy. Each step up depends on waging a ‘just war’ to a successful conclusion.

The civilian-combatants are a mass popular phenomenon. How else can we explain their capacity to sustainarmed resistance for over a decade, indeed, advancing with the passing of time? How can we explain their military success against the armed forces and advisers from 40 countries, including the US, Europe and a clutch of Afro-Asian-Latin American mercenaries?  How can we explain the growing resistance despite suffering from military occupation, backed by the most advanced technological instruments of war?  How can we explain the ebb of popular support for the war in the ‘Conqueror’s country and the growing number of recruits for the Resistance?  The combatants have the loyalty of the Afghan people; they do not have to spend billions to buy the spurious ‘loyalties’ of mercenaries who can and have at any moment ‘turned their guns the other way’.

Weddings are bombed because combatants attend weddings – along with hundreds of relatives and friends. Villages are bombed because peasants cultivate crops, which contribute to the resistance.  Civilian shelters become military sanctuaries.  Afghanistan is polarized:  the US military versus a people in arms.  Faced with this reality, the real policy of NATO-Pentagon is to rule or/and ruin.  Each bomb killing dozens of civilians in search of one sharpshooter deepens the isolation and discredit of the puppet ruler. “President” Karzai has seen his mission of building a ‘civilian base’ to reconstruct the country utterly discredited. His impotent complaints to NATO to cease bombing civilian targets fall on deaf ears; because the NATO command knows very well that ‘the civilians’ are the ‘deep resistance’ – the vast reserve of support for the combatants; their eyes and ears far excel all the electronic intelligence devices of the Occupier.  Just as Karzai cannot convince the civilians to turn against the combatants so he cannot convince the imperial armies to stop bombing civilian homes and gatherings.

Washington knows that with each withdrawal (or retreat), the terrain, the towns and villages are occupied by resistance fighters who emerge from everywhere.  The best that the US-NATO politicians can negotiate is a safe orderly departure.  The best that they can hope is that their local collaborators do not defect or flee abroad prematurely turning over billions of dollars in military ordinance to the resistance.  The best the collaborators can hope is that they will secure an exit route, a visa, an overseas account and a comfortable second home abroad.  What is absolutely clear is that the US, NATO and its collaborators will have no role to play in the newly independent Afghanistan.

Read more by the author

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles. His latest book is War Crimes in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Column in America. More posts by the Author »

NOTE: JAMES PETRAS MOST RECENT BOOK IS “THE ARAB REVOLT AND THE IMPERIALIST COUNTERATTACK”(CLEAR DAY BOOKS –A SUBSIDIARY OF CLARITY BOOKS :ATLANTA GA) FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO ORDER

On December 8 2010 The Club of Mexican Journalists awarded James Petras  its prestigiousINTERNATIONAL JOURNALISM PRIZE for outstanding Research and Analysis of World News.  He was cited for the depth and breadth of his publications as well as his fearlessness in challenging established powers.

“Dr. James Petras is one of the greatest personalities of critical intellect of our time. His numerous books, which have been translated into many languages, and his opinion articles which are invariably defined by their rigor and decisive data, widely documented and placed within their social context, have turned this thinker into one of the most lucid and coherent minds of recent times. Naturally, this has earned Dr. Petras the resentment of those who feel affected by his tireless efforts. Nevertheless, countless readers all over the world seek the words of this thinker to defend themselves from propaganda that intends to make us sympathize with the single-minded thinking of neoliberalism.”

Confederation Not Empire!

NOVANEWS

 

Our Entire Purpose Must Be to Prevent Tyranny, Either Over Us or by Us Over Others

by J.B. Campbell

America has been a tyranny since the charter granted by Congress and President Washington to the First Bank of the United States in 1791, following the adoption of the US Constitution in 1789. This central bank was privately owned by the owners of the Bank of England, the Rothschilds and their European associates.

The private central bank needed a strong central government to borrow from it. Government debt to the private bank would be paid by the people in taxes. The dirty secret of private central banks is that they charge interest on loans created out of thin air. Today, all banks do this. Banking is the racket di tutti rackets. The scam of scams.

The Federalist Party headed by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and others crafted the new contract between the states and the people. Considering that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was convened to modify the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union between the States but abandoned the Articles in secret and then foisted an entirely different form of government upon the people, we can say that there was an element of fraud in our basic law from the beginning.

It was done in secret because the Federalists wanted to “avoid controversy” while overthrowing the old government. This is the same method that the CIA uses today. The Federalists pretended that they wanted a means for the new government to borrow money to pay off war debt. The truth was that the Rothschild group wanted to be the creditors – the owners of the debt. The Federalists were their stooges.

The US Constitution has been amended seventeen times since the first ten amendments were added in 1791, so nothing is carved in stone. Those first ten, known as the Bill of Rights, were added to protect us from the imperial nature of the Constitution and have now been essentially nullified by legislation and executive orders and Supreme Court decisions.

Executive orders and presidential decision directives and other extraordinary decrees are of course issued by the president. Under the Articles of Confederation there was no such thing as a president or a supreme court. There was only the Congress, which decided things in committees for eight peaceful years.

The main beef of the Federalists was that the Articles did not authorize borrowing by the federal government or a federal tax on the people to pay principle and interest to the bankers. As noted above, only two years after the Federalists got their federal government which supposedly reserved to Congress the control and regulation of the currency, George Washington granted to the Rothschild machine a private monopoly on not only the currency but also the debt of the United States. The fact that this made no sense also made it virtually impossible for the people to understand the scope of the fraud that had been committed by the Federalists and their banker-bosses. The Bank of the United States, the first one and the second one, were private companies!

Again, the Articles of Confederation did not allow such a thing.

Very few Americans understood what had happened. One who did, though, was Andrew Jackson. He destroyed the second private central bank in 1833 and created enough awareness of its fraudulent nature that it did not reappear for 80 years.

But reappear it did, with a vengeance. 1913 was the most radical year in US history, one that completely undid whatever we think was declared in 1776. 1913 gave us Woodrow Wilson, the protégé of Edward Mandel House. 1913 gave us the 16th Amendment, the Federal Reserve and the 17th Amendment.

The history of the United States is a history of lies, force and fraud. 1913 was the Year of the Fraud. Few people realize what happened with the addition of the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution. It destroyed it.

The 17th Amendment provided for the election of US senators. Before 1913, senators were sent to Washington by the state legislatures. Two men from each state were appointed by that state to represent the state’s interest. Representatives, or congressmen, were elected by the people to represent their interests (supposedly). The US Constitution was theoretically a contract between the states and the people, the states being represented in the upper chamber, the Senate, and the people in the lower chamber, the House of Representatives. If both chambers are elected, then the states are no longer represented and the contract is broken.

All states had the same vote (two per state) whereas the people were represented based on population. Under the Articles, states sent from two to seven delegates to the Congress. But the Constitution required two separate sections of the Congress. This would be its undoing in 1913. If Senators and Representatives are all elected, it’s a sham. And that’s what we have had for ninety-eight years.

The 17th Amendment rendered the very basis of the federal government null and void! So, we have actually not been under the Constitution since 1913. We might as well scrap it. Abraham Lincoln showed that it could not survive the first tyrant who ignored it, which happened in 1861.  The tyrant was supplied by the Constitution!   The tyrannical Republicans made a total mockery of it with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments added at gunpoint immediately following the War of Northern Aggression, when the defeated Southern states were under federal occupation.

Size matters. The United States is too damn big. It is about to get a lot bigger, now that the North American Union is taking shape. The NAU, in case you didn’t know it, will be Canada, America and Mexico with no borders between them. We first heard about it during the GW Bush regime. Barack Obama said it wouldn’t happen with him as president but he lied. It’s happening.

So obviously that means we can forget about scrapping what’s left of the US Constitution. That will be done for us by Barack Obama and the Council on Foreign Relations, the architect of the North American Union. We ourselves shall have to scrap the NAU’s constitution, which will probably resemble that of the old Soviet Union. And we shall have to replace it with something such as the old Articles of Confederation. In other words, we’ll need to dismantle the North American Union and configure ourselves back into 48 autonomous states with certain agreements on commerce and extradition for major crimes, such as treason. Every person, for example, who contributed to the North American Union will be tried for treason, the only true national crime.

Alaska and Hawaii, made states under fraud and duress, will become just as independent as each of the forty-eight actual states.

We won’t be needing a president or a supreme court. They were not provided in the Articles. Now, this is no more radical than what the Council on Foreign Relations is preparing for us. The North American Union will make our lives very unpleasant. An American Confederation would do the opposite.

The main purpose, the legitimate function, of the Congress would be to provide a plentiful and stabilized national currency with no borrowing allowed by the state governments or by the Congress. There will be no need for borrowing or the payment of interest because the Congress will pay off the national debt currently and legitimately owed with the new currency. Contrived debt to the Wall Street speculators will be repudiated and the malefactors prosecuted. Legitimate creditors, if there be any such, will be repaid without interest in the new currency or not at all. Profiteering at public expense will not be allowed.

The Federal Reserve System will of course be shut down more quickly than Andrew Jackson shut down the 2nd Bank of the United States. The twelve Federal Reserve mausoleums can be converted to museums of financial knowledge, as institutions of higher learning about the single most important aspect of our economic lives: debt-free currency. Students of all ages will be exposed to the miracle of carefully issued fiat currency and to the fraud of gold, silver and interest payments to private companies.

Usury (interest) will be outlawed and counterfeiting made punishable by death. Congress would have a legitimate monopoly on the creation of money and the regulation thereof. As Bill Still tells us, it makes no difference what the money is, just that its issuance is controlled by Congress for price stability and prosperity. Taxes will be unnecessary and extraordinary expenses paid by excises on foreign goods only until American industry is rebuilt. Income taxes today are only used to pay the interest to the private bankers who have made fraudulent loans to government.

Aggressive war must be outlawed. The military industry must be shut down and the merchants of death punished for war crimes.

It must be remembered that the Federalists clamored for a privately-owned central bank from which government could borrow and repay with interest. The innate inability to repay privately-generated debt means that control of government policy by the lenders is inevitable.

Some people want to believe that the Constitution was based on the laws of the Iroquois nation, as if this lends some mystical connection with a more honorable people than the venal and deceptive Federalists. The fact is that the Federalist schemers who gave us the Constitution were Freemasons who based the new document on Masonic lodge rules of order and governing, according to Henry C. Clausen, Sovereign Grand Commander of the 33rd Degree, in his 1976 book, Masons Who Shaped Our Nation.

The US Constitution is a dead letter. It is technically dead due to the self-destructive 17th Amendment. It has been dead in spirit since 1861. It is going to be replaced with a bogus document demanding our allegiance to the North American Union despite President Obama’s promise that he would not do this to us. This travesty must be renounced and a general effort made to hold a convention to replace the Constitution with a slightly modified Articles of Confederation, a contract with more durable guarantees based on two hundred twenty-four years of experience with the US Constitution.

Our experience has been the lurching from one cycle of destruction to the next, with ruinous deflation designed to rob us of our hard-earned savings and property. The Constitution did not prevent this – it made it possible.

We must have a contract that prohibits the formation of a central government, because the only people who need a central government are central bankers.

The reader is urged to examine the Articles of Confederation which are available online.

Chicago Cyberwar: USS Liberty vs. Red Dragon

NOVANEWS

 

by Captain Eric H. May,  Iconoclast Intelligence

The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was piracy, The Star and Bones pirate flag says it all,

LIBERTY DAY, 2011 — Wednesday was the 44th anniversary of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, which killed 34 crewmen and wounded 171 on June 8, 1967.

Earlier that day Liberty’s crew had waved at Israeli flybys, never suspecting that the pilots meant to sink the ship and shoot the survivors. During the attack LBJ ordered efforts to reach the embattled ship to stand down, and the life-and-death struggle continued to rage until a Russian ship broadcast the situation to the world.

The USS Liberty, the US Navy and the USA had suffered a most ignominious day: attacked by allies, Judased by Johnson, saved by Soviets.

Pro-Israel Admiral John McCain, father of pro-Israel Senator John McCain, led the cover-up. The captain of the Liberty received the Medal of Honor for keeping quiet. The crew was split up and threatened into silence, according to the Chicago Tribune 2007 special report,The Strike on the USS Liberty.

We should commemorate Liberty Day as a companion to Independence Day. The Fourth of July recalls heroic revolution against tyranny, while the Eighth of June recalls bitter submission to tyranny. The Fourth is for joyous celebration; the Eighth for somber reflection. I don’t think George Washington would object to the idea. In hisfarewell address he cautioned that faction was dangerous because:

“It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.” — 1796

“You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.” — Rahm Emanuel

The USS Liberty shows that in 1967 the Jewish Nation and the most powerful Jews in America conspired with Washington to send the Liberty to Egypt. They aimed to blame its destruction on the Egyptians, against whom they had just launched the Six-Day War. They meant to summon America into a Mideast war as agoyim golem (gentile zombie). With the USS Liberty, they tried to get everything that they would later get only after 9/11.

The dark truth is that the same foreign and domestic enemies of 1967 are even more dominant in contemporary America, according to LA Times Jewish columnist Joel Stein in his frank and factual How Jewish is Hollywood?

Liberty Day is outright ominous in Chicago, where Israeli Army veteran Rahm Emanuel, proud to be feared as a gangster, became the city’s first Jewish mayor last month.

He made Garry McCarthy, Giuliani’s right hand on 9/11, Chicago’s police chief. He made Jewish crony Michael Masters Cook County Homeland Security Director. He conducted terror training at the 88-story Aon Center on May 17, the day after his inauguration. Shortly afterwards he cancelled Chicago’s Independence Day celebration. Finally, today he began the three-day Red Dragon mass death exercises.

Rahm the Bomb circles Chicago the same way other Israelis circled the Liberty 44 years ago.

Cancer is a Business NOT a Disease

NOVANEWS

 

American People Being Duped by Cancer Business

 

YouTube – Veterans Today –

by Tom Valentine

Cut Poison Burn is a searing film that illuminates the grim truth about America’s so-called War on Cancer. This thought-provoking documentary takes on the forces that have conspired to thwart meaningful advances in cancer research and treatment over the past century.

These forces include the federal government (in its effort to label and persecute innovators as quacks), drug companies eager to suppress alternative treatments and powerful industry organizations that place profit over human lives. The story centers on the Navarros, a family struggling to keep their young son alive.

The war between the Navarro Family and the FDA is perhaps this country’s greatest evidence as to why there should be medical freedom. As the personal meets the political, we see how the FDA holds a vise-like grip on treatment options. Heart-wrenching and informative, the film ultimately expresses hope that we can create a new paradigm of prevention, medical freedom and acceptance of highly-tailored therapies to usher in a more enlightened era.

Over 12 years, 150 hours of footage and interviews with top oncologists, researchers, policy-makers, homeopaths and patients carry the story and reveal that we are on the brink of disaster and in desperate need of reform.

Phil Giraldi Spills Beans on IsraHell Espionage in America

NOVANEWS

 

Phillip Giraldi

“Over 125 investigations into Israeli Espionage in America… stopped due to political pressure.”…FBI Counter Intel Officer John Cole

by  Jim W. Dean

Phil Giraldi stepped out today to do his country a great service and save some honor for the American counter intelligence community.

He put the spotlight  on America’s greatest national security scandal, the decades old investment that Israeli Intelligence has made in attacking its so called America ally by stealing everything it can get it’s hands on.

But there is a second darker side to this first betrayal, and that is their corruption of our own political, Justice and State Department organs to literally act as protectors for them.

As a group they have betrayed the American people, and all those involved should receive long prison sentences for high treason.

Why would they do this you ask?  The reasons are many.  If you wanted to get Congressman Weiner you could supply him a stable of ‘talk dirty to me girls’ to liven up his boring daytime job. Others may want political donations, or government job career enhancement so they can be put in better and better positions where they can provide more important information.  The communists used this tactic in the Roosevelt administration.

And then there are those who are thinking about their second careers.  Many American spies for Israeli, especially government officials, prefer the ever popular deferred compensation program.  Once they have left government service, say like after tweeting some porn around, they want a soft landing in a nice high paid think tank job.

Instead of whip cream on their ice cream sundae they can ask for some Israeli or American defense contractor directorships, or they can even continue spying for Israel by lobbying their former Congressional buddies for classified info which will guarantee them a good slot down the road.

Have any of you ever heard of a top American government official warn Americans to be on the look out for Israeli espionage here, or familiarizing them with the most used recruiting tactics?  No, you haven’t. They are not allowed to do that, thus making a mockery of their oaths of office.

Israeli Spy Meets American Traitor

It is a great tragedy and irony that Anthony Weiner’s Congressional career will be over soon, when the safest crime in America these days is spying for Israel, especially if you are in the Congress, Pentagon or the Whitehouse.

Our sources tell us that FBI counter Intel agents are ordered not to open espionage investigation cases on high government officials because they simply will not prosecute them.

The Israelis are ahead of the curve. They were smart enough to know that there would be loyal American government security people would attempt from time to time to break up some of the top penetration networks. They made sure that these investigations would go nowhere.

That’s right folks, foreign terrorists don’t have the juice to block their prosecutions but an enemy force right here called Israel that we financially subsidize does.  And still they demand that our own people on the public payroll assist them.  I think the word the use of it is ‘hutzpah’!

To them….you are chumps…both to the Israelis and those selling you out to them.  Brother Giraldi will fill you in on more of the details. After his long CIA career he has never been tagged as a conspiracy theorist, and he is well respected in the Intel community.

And when you contact your Congresscritter, be sure to ask him why he or she has never made an inquiry as to why no major Israeli Intel network has EVER been broken up in America.  Ask them if part of the problem might be that Congress has been neutralized through campaign bribery and the rest of us have been left as sitting ducks while they all laugh on their way to the bank.

Department of Justice – For Whom?

To be a chump, or to not be one…that is the question. The bad guys have already placed their bets. We sense a whiff of change coming in the air. The Intel community is ready and waiting to come forward to put a trainload of people in jail. The only thing holding the process up is that there is literally no place to go for prosecution.  Nowhere…that the fix is not already in.

We are going to have to build some kind of new, independent prosecution structure,  answerable only and directly to the public. Our government itself has already been compromised for decades. They will never investigate themselves.  Those I have interviewed are generally just apathetic about it, because it has been going on for so long.

And when a lot of our young aspiring counter intel people learn that our political system protects Israeli espionage here, they leave government service in disgust, as have many of our best FBI people. It’s a national disgrace.

They sold your country out from under you folks.  And to get it back, they will need to be hunted down and removed…all of them who have worked with the Israelis. The numbers are huge and the names involved are big.  So its not going to be pretty.  And if you haven’t figured it out already, they have tons of money, their own private intelligence resources, and they are not going out quietly. They have bet you will be the losers…and to date they have been correct.

Paying Off Israel’s Military Bills…June 8, 2011

Presentation by  Phil Giraldi at the Council for National Interest Press Briefing

“Questioning Military Aid to Israel”

Pentagon Confirms Massive Israeli Espionage

“The Israeli government is actively engaged in military and industrial espionage in the United States.” That was the conclusion of a Pentagon administrative judge in 2006. One very good reason why Israel should not receive billions of dollars in military assistance annually is its espionage against the United States.

Israel, a Socialist country where government and business work hand in hand, has obtained significant advantage by systematically stealing American technology with both military and civilian applications.

US-developed technology is then reverse engineered and used by the Israelis to support their own exports with considerably reduced research and development costs, giving them a huge advantage against foreign competitors.

By Way of Deception

Sometimes, when the technology is military in nature and winds up in the hands of a US adversary, the consequences can be serious. Israel has sold advanced weapons systems to China that incorporated technology developed by American companies—including the Python-3 air-to-air missile and the Delilah cruise missile.

There is evidence that Tel Aviv has also stolen Patriot missile avionics to incorporate into its own Arrow system and that it used US technology obtained in its Lavi fighter development program—which was funded by the US taxpayer to the tune of $1.5 billion—to help the Bejing government develop their own J-10 fighter.

The reality of Israeli spying is indisputable. Israel always features prominently in the annual FBI report called “Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage.” The 2005 report, for example, states:

“Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States. These collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel’s sizable armaments industry.”

It adds that Israel recruits spies, uses electronic methods, and carries out computer intrusion to gain the information. The 2005 report concluded that the thefts eroded US military advantage, enabling foreign powers to obtain expensive technologies that had taken years to develop.

Why Won’t They Warn Us About How Much the Israelis are Spying?

A 1996 Defense Investigative Service report noted that Israel has great success stealing technology by exploiting the numerous co-production projects that it has with the Pentagon. “Placing Israeli nationals in key industries … is a technique utilized with great success.”A General Accounting Office (GAO) examination of espionage directed against American defense and security industries, also undertaken in 1996, described how Israeli citizens residing in the US had stolen sensitive technology to manufacture artillery gun tubes, obtained classified plans for a reconnaissance system, and passed sensitive aerospace designs to unauthorized users.

An Israeli company was caught monitoring a Department of Defense telecommunications system to obtain classified information, while other Israeli entities targeted avionics, missile telemetry, aircraft communications, software systems, and advanced materials and coatings used in missile re-entry. The GAO concluded that Israel “conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally.”

In June 2006, a Pentagon administrative judge overruled an appeal by an Israeli who had been denied a security clearance, stating,

“The Israeli government is actively engaged in military and industrial espionage in the United States. An Israeli citizen working in the US who has access to proprietary information is likely to be a target of such espionage.”

Ex-FBI John Cole

More recently, FBI counter intelligence officer John Cole has reported how many cases of Israeli espionage are dropped under orders from the Justice Department. He provides a “conservative estimate” of 125 worthwhile investigations into Israeli espionage involving both American citizens and Israelis that were stopped due to political pressure from above.Two stories that have been reported in the Israeli media but are strangely absent from the news on this side of the Atlantic demonstrate exactly what is going on and what is at stake. The first report confirms Tel Aviv’s efforts to obtain US technology are ongoing.

Stewart David Nozette, a US government scientist who was arrested in an October 2009 FBI sting operation after offering to spy for Israel, has been waiting in jail to go to trial on espionage charges.

New documents in the case were presented in the Federal court in Washington last year. The documents confirm that Nozette was a paid consultant for Israeli Aerospace Industries and it is believed that he passed to them classified material in return for an estimated $225,000 in “consulting” fees.

Examination of his computer by the FBI revealed that he was planning a “penetration of NASA” the US space agency and that he was also trying to crack into other scientists’ computers to obtain additional classified material.

Israeli Spy – Stewart Nozette

Other documents demonstrate that he was cooperating with two Israeli scientists who were administrators with Israeli Aerospace Industries, Yossi Weiss and Yossi Fishman.Nozette made several trips to Israel without reporting them, which he was required to do because of his high security clearance. The FBI reportedly also has incriminating letters and other documents that were obtained from his computer.

The second story relates to the pending sale of twenty F-35 fighter planes to Israel. The F-35 is one of the most advanced fighter planes in the world.

The $130 million planes would be purchased with US military assistance money, which means they would effectively be a gift from the US taxpayer. But Israel is balking at the sale reportedly because it wants to install some of its own local content in the aircraft.

The Pentagon has already made some concessions but is disinclined to grant approval for all the changes because to do so would require giving the Israelis full access to the plane’s advanced avionics and computer systems. Israel also wants to independently maintain the aircraft, which would also require access to all systems.

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

It would be nice to think that the Pentagon wants to keep the maintenance in American hands to preserve jobs during these tough economic times, but the Defense Department has never cared about US workers before when the issue is Israel.The real reason for the standoff is that Lockheed-Martin and the Pentagon both know that Israel will steal whatever it can if it gains access. It would then use the technology to market its own products at a price below that of US defense contractors.

The result would be a triple whammy for Uncle Sam: the expensive planes are given to Israel free, the technology is then stolen, and future sales vanish as our Israeli friends market their knock down versions of weapons systems reliant on the stolen technology.

I agree with Congressman Ron Paul when he says “We cannot afford to have ‘business as usual’ when we are bankrupt.” The US-Israel military aid entanglement—what we give, sell, and especially what is stolen—is unaffordable and unjustifiable.


YouTube – Veterans Today –


YouTube – Veterans Today –

 

 

Dorothy Online Newsletter


Dear Friends,

The first and final items of the 8 below raised my ire!

About a week ago I sent you a video of a terrific performance of a terrific song “Freedom for Palestine.”  If you missed it, you can hear and see the performance by clicking the link to item 1.  Turns out that there is now a controversy over the song, with one person calling it propaganda.  Of course the fact that this person is from Fox explains why he would say that.  But the song is as much propaganda as the Beatles ‘Give Peace a Chance’ is.  It became the theme song for ending the Vietnam war, and the ‘Freedom for Palestine’ clip could well become the theme song for ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine.  If you have any doubts that it is not propaganda then check out Today in Palestine (link in item 2), and after the weekly report from PCHR (item 3).  The present ‘Today in Palestine’ has in addition to information a number of videos that you undoubtedly will want to see.  But don’t neglect the summaries, especially of the first part.  I promised you that today would be mainly about what is actually happening here, and items 2 and 3 give you much of that information

As for item 8, it requires work on your part.  Jennifer Rubin blogs in the Washington Post.  Her blog, “Right Turn,” is justly named, as she  quite obviously and intentionally supports right-wing causes. The present one that she supports is a resolution to oppose Israel returning to the 1967 line.  Please read it and respond.  Flood her blog with rejections of the resolution.  If you are an American citizen, write to your congress persons to oppose it.  To respond to Rubin, use the link.

The title to item 4 “Young, frustrated and in Gaza” is what the piece is about.

Item 5 reports that the Jerusalem municipal planning committee has approved construction of the revised plans for the Museum of Tolerance to be constructed on the site of a Muslim cemetery.  Some tolerance!

Items 6 and 7 contain just the titles and introductory statement.  They furnish all you need to know what the issue is.  If you want more, use the links.  Item 6 informs us that Israeli forces are still searching for the perpetrators of the Mosque destruction several days ago.  My guess is that they will search till the end of time without finding the culprits. So it goes with colonists and the military and police who defend them.

Item 7 is Gideon Levy’s post for today—comparing how the Israeli media report what Syria is doing vs reports on what Israeli forces do when they kill unarmed Syrians.

And then there is 8!  Please do comment.  Tell her what you think.  You are likely to get back a nasty remark (I did when I commented once), but never mind.  She should learn that there are hosts of people who disagree with her.

Thanks.

Dorothy

—————

1. The Guardian,

June 09, 2011

View from Jerusalem with Harriet Sherwood

Palestine campaign song generates controversy ahead of release

Coldplay removes link to video after 7,000 comments as Glenn Beck describes ‘Freedom For Palestine’ as evil propaganda

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/view-from-jerusalem-with-harriet-sherwood/2011/jun/09/palestinian-territories-gaza

A campaign song, to be released early next month, called Freedom For Palestine, is already kicking up a row.

It’s a compilation number, along the lines of Feed The World or Free Nelson Mandela, and its artists include Dave Randall of Faithless, Maxi Jazz and the Durban Gospel Choir. Images from the West Bank and Gaza, along with the separation barrier, are featured in the video.

Its lyrics refer to catastrophes, refugees, crimes against humanity, prison camps, occupation, human rights and justice. “We are the people and this is our time, stand up, sing out for Palestine,” goes the refrain.

Coldplay initially linked to the video from the band’s Facebook page, prompting around 7,000 responses, both for and against. Earlier this week, the band removed the link (see update below).

The US media host Glenn Beck drew attention to the song on his Fox show, describing it as “evil” and “pure propaganda”. Referring to the song’s lyrics, he said: “Before you know it, ‘Israeli occupation’ will be standard fare. Everyone will just see it as they’re just occupying that land. That is a lie.”

If the song makes it into the UK charts, it is likely to cause a dilemma for the BBC. The corporation ran into controversy last month for masking out the words “free Palestine” from a number recorded by Mic Righteous. It did it in order “to ensure impartiality was maintained”, it said. On another recent occasion, the word “Palestine” was excised from a BBC script.

I have no idea whether this campaign song will sink or soar. But the controversy building around it even before release is an indication of what could be yet to come.

1.42pm update: I’ve just had an email from Frank Barat at OneWorld who tells me:

“Coldplay did not remove link from its Facebook page. Facebook removed the link because thousands of people (and computer generated posts) reported it as abusive.”

My apologies to Coldplay for misrepresenting them.

=====================

2.  Today in Palestine Wednesday, June 8, 2011

http://www.theheadlines.org/11/08-06-11.shtml

============================

3.PCHR,

June 09, 2011

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights  LTD(non-profit)

www.pchrgaza.org

___________________________________________________________________

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)

A Palestinian civilian was wounded in the Gaza Strip

·           A Palestinian child was wounded in an attack launched jointly by IOF and Israeli settlers.

·               IOF used force to disperse peaceful demonstrations commemorating the Palestinian Naksa.[1]

–        Twenty six demonstrators, including 11 children and a woman, were wounded near Qalandya checkpoint, north of Jerusalem.

·               IOF continued to use force against peaceful protests in the West Bank.

–        Two Palestinians, including a journalist, were wounded.

·               IOF conducted 38 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

–        IOF arrested 14 Palestinian civilians, including 2 children.

–        The arrested Palestinians include two PLC members.

·               IOF continued settlement activities and Israeli settlers continued their attacks in the West Bank.

–        Israeli settlers set fire to wheat farms in Qalqilya.

–        Israeli settlers damaged 20 grape trees and set fire to a wheat farm in Beit Ummar village, north of Hebron.

·               Israel has continued to impose a total siege on the Gaza Strip and tightened the siege on the West Bank.

–        IOF held a PCHR fieldworker for several hours in the north of Hebron.

–        IOF held a PCHR fieldworker at a military checkpoint in the north of the West Bank and questioned him about PCHR’s annual report.

=============

Summary

Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law in the OPT continued during the reporting period (02 – 08 June 2011):

Shooting:

During the reporting period, IOF wounded 30 Palestinian civilians, including 12 children and a woman, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.  Twenty nine of them were wounded in the West Bank and the thirtieth was wounded in the Gaza Strip, and the majority of them were wounded in peaceful demonstrations.

In the West Bank, On 02 June 2011, a Palestinian child from Fraata village, northeast of Qalqilya, was wounded when a group of settlers from “Havat Gilad” settlement raided Palestinian lands in Fraata village and set fire to lands planted with wheat and stoned Palestinian farmers.  The settlers then called IOF who rushed to the scene to provide protection to settlers.  IOF started firing tear gas canisters and rubber-coated metal bullets at Palestinians.  Asaad al-Tawil, 16, was hit as a result by a tear gas canister to his left eye.

IOF used excessive force to disperse peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to Israeli settlement activities and the construction of the annexation wall in the West Bank.  As a result, Khaled Sabarneh, 42, reporter of the Iranian TV, was wounded by a tear gas canister in the right leg, and Mousa Ahmed Mohammed Abdul Karim, 45, sustained shrapnel wounds to the head.

On 05 June 2001, Palestinians organized a peaceful demonstration on the occasion of the 44th anniversary of the occupation of the rest of the Palestinian territories by the Israeli occupation, calling for putting an end to the occupation. IOF used excessive force to disperse this demonstration.  As a result, 26 Palestinians, including 11 children and a woman, were wounded.  Paramedics who were in the scene told a PCHR fieldworker that only five of the wounded were transferred to Palestine Medical Compound in Ramallah for treatment while the others were treated on the spot and refused to give their names to the paramedics.

In addition, dozens of Palestinian civilians and international human rights defenders suffered from tear gas inhalation and bruises as they were beaten by IOF in peaceful demonstrations in the West Bank.

In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian civilian was wounded on 07 June 2011 when IOF positioning on observation towers at the border near Beit Hanoun “Erez” crossing, in the far north of the Gaza Strip, opened intensive fire at a group of Palestinian and international demonstrators who were nearly 300 meters from the border fence to the north of the Agricultural School of al-Azhar University, north of Beit Hanoun.

Incursions:

During the reporting period, IOF conducted at least 38 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, during which they arrested 14 Palestinian civilians, including 2 children.

The arrested Palestinians included two members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) of the Hamas Change and Reform Bloc who are Abdul Rahman Fehmi Abdul Rahman Zidan, 51, from Deir al-Ghsoun village in the north of Tulkarm and Ahmed Ali Ahmed al-Haj Ali, 73, from Ein Beit al-Maa refugee camp, west of Nablus.  Also Hussam Mahmoud Abdul Rahman Khader, 48, former PLC member of the Fatah parliamentary bloc from Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus, and Dr. Ghassan Nayef Talab Thougan, 54, an academic and a leader of Hamas, were among those who were arrested by IOF.

Israeli Settlers’ Attacks on Palestinian Civilians and Property:

Israeli settlers living in the OPT in violation of the international humanitarian law have continued to commit systematic crimes against Palestinian civilians and Palestinian property with protection provided by IOF who ignore conducting investigations into complaints submitted by Palestinian civilians against settlers.

On 02 June 2011, a group of settlers from “Havat Gilad” settlement raided Palestinian lands in Fraata village, northeast of Qalqilya, and set fire in lands planted with wheat and stoned Palestinian farmers.  Farmers and some Palestinians from the village who rushed to help the attacked farmers tried to drive the settlers away, but the settlers called IOF who rushed to the scene to provide protection to settlers.  IOF started firing tear gas canisters and rubber-coated metal bullets at Palestinians and beat them.  As a result, a Palestinian child was wounded and another civilian sustained wounds in his left leg as IOF pushed him to the ground.  Another 3 Palestinians sustained wounds when they were attacked by Israeli settlers.

On 06 June 2011, Israeli settlers from “Karmei Tzur” settlement established on Palestinian lands in “Khellet al-Kutleh”, south of Beit Ummar village and north of Halhoul town in Hebron, sprayed incinerating chemicals at 20 grape trees owned by Ali Ayad Issa Awad, 45.  The grape trees were damaged as a result.

On 07 June 2011, Israeli settlers set fire in a wheat farm to the north of Hebron also owned by Ali Ayad Issa Awad.  The fire damaged 2 dunums[2] and a half of the farm which measures 3 dunums.

Also on 07 June 2011, dozens of Israeli settlers chased a number of Palestinian shepherds from “Um al-Kheir” village, southeast of Yatta in the south of Hebron, and prevented them from watering and grazing their sheep. IOF also held Belal Mohammed al-Hathalin from from “Um al-Kheir” village for allegedly “taking his sheep to a military zone.”

Restrictions on Movement:

Israel has continued to impose a tightened siege on the OPT and has imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.

The full report is available online at:

http://www.pchrgaza.org/portal/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7495:weekly-report-on-israeli-human-rights-violations-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory-02-08-june-2011&catid=84:weekly-2009&Itemid=183

—————————————-

Public Document

For further information please visit our website (http://www.pchrgaza.org) or contact PCHR’s office in Gaza City, Gaza Strip by email (pchr@pchrgaza.org) or telephone (+972 (0)8 2824776 – 2825893).

*Office Hours are between 08:00 – 16:00 hours (05:00 GMT – 13:00 GMT) Sun – Thurs.

——————————————————————————–

[1] The beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territory.

[2] One dunum is equal to 1,000 square meters.

=================================

4.  BBC,

June 9, 2011

Young, frustrated and in Gaza

As Arab Spring lengthens into Arab Summer, Newsnight’s Tim Whewell travels to Gaza – one of the most enclosed societies on earth – to find out what freedoms and changes revolutions elsewhere in the Middle East have brought to young Palestinians there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/9508060.stm

In the front room of a house in the tightly-packed concrete slum that is Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, they are learning to dance.

A group of young teenage girls are stepping high in the air, hands on hips, as they practice the debka. Traditionally, it was performed by boys and girls together. But since the Islamist movement Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, mixed dancing has been stopped.

“ The ridiculous game between Hamas and Fatah has ruined every Palestinian life ”

Osama Shomer

“I feel sad and depressed that I can’t have freedom in my own country,” says Roba Salibi, the university student who teaches the debka in her spare time. “The government puts pressure and does not allow us to do what we love.”

Even to criticise Hamas so publicly is daring in Gaza.

But Roba has gone much further. She is one of a group of students who organised an unprecedented independent demonstration in March, calling on the movement to end its bitter, sometimes murderous feud with the rival secular faction, Fatah, and concentrate instead on a united struggle for Palestinian rights.

“We said we were sick of political games and we want to be part of a society more tolerant and open to new ideas,” says Roba’s friend Osama Shomer. “The ridiculous game between Hamas and Fatah has ruined every Palestinian life.”

In December, Osama was among the authors of a deliberately provocative Facebook manifesto that cursed all the forces they felt were imprisoning Gazan youth.

Fighting uniformity

“That was the reason for the frustration,” says another member of the group, Ruwan Abu Shahla. “No-one cared what we felt, what we had to offer, what we could be.”

It was a passionate cry for both political and social freedom. Ruwan is one of only 15 or so female students, of a total of 9,000 at Gaza’s al-Azhar University, who do not wear the hijab head-covering.

“The faction which is controlling us is trying to make every person be the same thing. A girl like me not putting on hijab is not acceptable.”

“You used to look around to see if someone is listening, so we used to stay silent, not even to think,” adds her colleague, Abu Yazan.

He was called in for questioning by Hamas after the publication of the manifesto.

During the March demonstration, many protestors were beaten by police. But three months on, the atmosphere in Gaza has changed, if only slightly.

“We made mistakes,” says Hamas’ deputy foreign minister Ghazi Hamad, referring to some of the Islamic restrictions imposed by his movement – an admission he would have been unlikely to make before this year’s youth activism.

‘Quarrelling’

More importantly, pressure from the street helped lead to the reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah signed in Cairo in May, though mediation by the new Egyptian government and the current political weakness of both Palestinian factions, played a more important role.

“ Abu Mazen is committed to his regime, and we are committed to ours ”

Mahmoud Zahar, Hamas

Overnight, the pact brought new colour to the streets of Gaza. The yellow flag of Fatah – banned for the past four years – reappeared above rooftops alongside the green of Hamas.

But that has been virtually the only change.

The promised new joint government of technocrats which is supposed to govern both Gaza and the West Bank until elections next year, has still not materialised.

The parties are quarrelling over candidates for key posts.

Even if they do agree a brief interim administration, that will probably be the limit of their unity.

Mahmoud Zahar, the most senior Hamas leader in Gaza, is unequivocal.

“Abu Mazen (the Palestinian president and Fatah leader) is committed to his regime, and we are committed to ours,” he tells me.

Zahar says Hamas will not consider itself bound by any progress Abu Mazen, also known as Mahmoud Abbas, may make in talks with Israel.

More surprisingly, he is critical of Abbas’ plan to seek recognition of Palestinian independence at the United Nations in September – a move Fatah hoped would be strengthened by the unity deal.

One of the few things the factions have agreed on – to the frustration of the young people who pressed for a deal – was to limit the size of protests in Gaza on 5 June, the anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War, in order to avoid provoking Israeli forces.

Only a few dozen activists turned out to march towards the border, instead of the hoped-for hundreds or thousands.

Symbolically, they baked flat Palestinian bread and danced the debka – this time boys only – within range of Israeli guns.

But Abu Yazan, one of the organisers, did not hide his disappointment.

“Palestinians do want to come out,” he said, “but they are afraid of the political factions, they are afraid of the Israelis. Everyone’s working against us.”

His group’s slogan: ‘Gaza Youth Breaks Out’, is still no more than a dream.

Watch Tim Whewell’s film from Gaza on Newsnight on Thursday 9 June 2011 at 2230 on BBC Two and then afterwards on the BBC iPlayer and Newsnight website.

Story from BBC NEWS:

=========================

5.  Haaretz ,

June 09, 2011


Jerusalem approves revised plan for contested Museum of Tolerance site

The controversial project by the Simon Wiesenthal Center is located on a medieval Muslim cemetery, which opponents say defeats the museum’s goal of building tolerance.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/jerusalem-approves-revised-plan-for-contested-museum-of-tolerance-site-1.366683

By Nir Hasson

Tags: Jerusalem

After a two-year delay the Jerusalem municipal planning committee approved on Monday the plan to build the Museum of Tolerance in the city center.

The controversial project by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, based on a similar museum in Los Angeles, is located on a medieval Muslim cemetery. During the construction work, as Haaretz reported, hundreds of ancient skeletons were evacuated from the area.

The substantial changes made in the original plan of the museum have rekindled objections to the project, whose opponents demand the new plan be submitted for reapproval.

The original plan was designed by the renowned architect Frank Gehry. But the Simon Wiesenthal Center halted the project due to the 2008 economic crisis. The center subsequently held a competition for a new design which was won by Tel Aviv based Chyutin Architects, who came up with a very different structure on a much lower budget.

In order to prevent further delays, the Weisenthal Center did not submit the new plan for approval; instead it merely asked the city for building permits and for changes in the original plan.

The new building will have three floors and two additional underground ones, compared to the five floors above ground in Gehry’s design. An archaeological garden, with a Roman aqueduct discovered at the digs on the site, will be built in the museum center.

The museum is expected to change the entire area. “The square is designed with an archaeological garden and a depressed amphitheater serving as a link between the urban street and the museum structure,” the entrepreneurs wrote in the request for a building permit.

“The museum structure is designed as a linear chunk, part of which is submerged in the ground and facing the archaeological garden, and another part floating above the surrounding street level,” they wrote.

Opponents say there is a need for a debate on the entire plan and the museum in general. Municipal opposition head Yosef Alalu, of the Meretz faction, says the original building was approved because it was designed by Gehry and it would not be fair to take advantage of that to construct another building on such a sensitive site.

“The Museum of Tolerance should have been a model of understanding and coexistence among all religions. It should have sent a message of tolerance and patience to all populations. But building it on the site of a Muslim cemetery defeats that goal,” says Alalu.

To this day, he says, the museum’s content is not clear because Yad Vashem – the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority insisted the museum refrain from dealing with the Holocaust. Presumably, political and religious pressures will prevent the museum from dealing with gay rights or Jewish-Arab relations, says Alalu.

The Muslim Council, an organization that manages cemeteries and holy sites, also objects to the museum plan. The council said in a letter to the city that the new plan consists of a “considerable divergence” from the original plan and ought not to be approved.

The Wiesenthal Center said in a statement “the approved plan is for building a tolerance museum on a certain site with certain functions. No change has occured in this purpose and site and there is no need or point in presenting a new plan. The design changes are not a matter for a planning procedure but for a permit procedure and will be managed in keeping with the decisions of the authorized planning institutions – Jerusalem’s local and regional committees.”

==========================

6.  Haaretz,

June 09, 2011


Israeli forces still searching for suspects behind West Bank mosque attack

Perpetrators sprayed ‘Price Tag – Alei Ayin’ outside mosque entrance in arson attack Tuesday, indicating intention to avenge recent building demolition in unauthorized West Bank outpost Alei Ayin.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israeli-forces-still-searching-for-suspects-behind-west-bank-mosque-attack-1.366680

By Barak Ravid, Amos Harel and Chaim Levinson

Tags: IDF Israel police Israel settlers Palestinians

======================

7.  Haaretz Thursday, June 09, 2011

Latest update 02:19 09.06.11

Syrian slaughter and Israeli restraint

We see Bashar Assad’s regime slaughtering dozens of unarmed Syrian demonstrators every day, and say he is ‘slaughtering his own people.’ But when the Israel Defense Forces killed 23 unarmed Syrian demonstrators in one day, we boasted that the IDF ‘acted with restraint.’

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/syrian-slaughter-and-israeli-restraint-1.366703

By Gideon Levy

=====================

8.  The Washington Post

Posted:06/09/2011

The Hatch-Lieberman resolution: Pushing back on Obama on Israel

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/the-hatch-lieberman-resolution-pushing-back-on-obama-on-israel/2011/03/29/AGARuJNH_blog.html

By Jennifer Rubin

Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) have introduced a resolution that reads:

Declaring that it is the policy of the United States to support and facilitate Israel in maintaining defensible borders and that it is contrary to United States policy and national security to have the borders of Israel return to the armistice lines that existed on June 4, 1967.

Whereas, throughout its short history, Israel, a liberal democratic ally of the United States, has been repeatedly attacked by authoritarian regimes and terrorist organizations that denied its right to exist;

Whereas the United States Government remains steadfastly committed to the security of Israel, especially its ability to maintain secure, recognized, and defensible borders; Whereas the United States Government is resolutely bound to its policy of preserving and strengthening the capability of Israel to deter enemies and defend itself against any threat;

Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 242

(1967) recognized Israel’s ‘‘right to live in peace within

secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or

acts of force’’;

Whereas the United States has long recognized that a return to the 1967 lines would create a strategic military vulnerability for Israel and greatly impede its sovereign right to defend its borders; and

Whereas Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu correctly stated on May 20, 2011, that the 1967 lines were not ‘‘boundaries of peace. They are the boundaries of repeated war’’: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That, (1) it is the policy of the United States to support and facilitate Israel in creating and maintaining secure, recognized, and defensible borders; and (2) it is contrary to United States policy and our national security to have the borders of Israel return to the armistice lines that existed on June 4, 9 1967.

President Obama’s spinners will certainly argue this is unnecessary and point that he called for 1967 borders with “land swaps.” But the point of the resolution is clear: The United States has a long bipartisan position on the primacy of defensible borders and that the U.S. role is to “facilitate” Israel’s security, not undermine its bargaining position.

Moreover, if this is the Obama position, why have no Democratic senators signed on? And if it’s precisely what Obama meant to say, why not signal his approval? Unless, of course, Obama is playing a double game — signaling to the Palestinians one position and voicing platitudes to quiet critics at home.

By Jennifer Rubin  |  11:35 AM ET, 06/09/2011

A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

And we thought Gaza was isolated

Posted: 09 Jun 2011

On the surreal world of North Korea:

Even at seven-thirty on a Wednesday night, the restaurant is packed to overflowing. A few minutes after being seated, a waitress glides up to the table bearing glasses and frosted bottles of Tiger beer; in a few swift motions, glasses are filled and small dishes of Korean appetisers materialize, including kimchi, Korea’s iconic spicy pickled cabbage. The young woman — her name is Kim Gyong-Hwa — wears a fluorescent pink chima jogoiri, the bell-shaped Korean national dress, with her name printed on a small tag in the colours of the North Korean flag. She is one of a dozen or so waitresses living and working at Pyongyang Restaurant in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, part of a continent-wide chain of restaurants that channels hard currency back to the North Korean regime.
For the predominantly South Korean clientele, waitresses like Gyong-Hwa are as much of a draw as the menu, which boasts such northern specialties as Pyongyang cold noodle and dangogi (“sweet meat” — a euphemism for dog). In the flood-lit restaurant hall, the young women perform a nightly song and dance routine as panoramas of North Korean capital Pyongyang slide past on a karaoke screen. On this particular night, the crowd clapped and cheered as Gyong-Hwa joined her colleagues in a rendition of Abba’s “Dancing Queen,” complete with electric guitar, bass, and accordion. One young woman brought a revolutionary zeal to bear on her drum kit, stopping the show with a series of thundering solos — a performance more than worthy of Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il.
The 22-year-old Gyong-Hwa, originally from Pyongyang, says she is six months into a three-year work placement in Cambodia. But she will likely see little of the country in which she works, and will return to her homeland with little knowledge of it. Like all North Koreans working abroad, she and her fellow waitresses live highly regimented lives. When asked if she had seen the famous temples of Angkor or been sight-seeing around the capital, she giggled nervously and shook her head. Where does she live? She motioned upwards, indicating the living quarters upstairs from the restaurant, before shuffling off to replenish our half-empty glasses.
Pyongyang Restaurant is one of possibly hundreds of North Korean restaurants that were set up across Asia to raise hard currency after the DPRK’s economy took a nose-dive in the mid-1990s. The lives of the women who are sent abroad to work in these establishments are secretive and encapsulate a problem facing the North Korean regime: how to bring in more foreign earnings without allowing their citizens to be “contaminated” by foreign ideas. In mid-February, as a popular uprising broke out in Libya, around 200 North Korean construction workers there were prevented from returning to their homeland. The reason, according to the Yonhap news agency, was to block news of the Arab uprisings from reaching the isolated state.

US and West pushed dodgy election in Haiti

Posted: 09 Jun 2011

 
Wikileaks has the story, again:

The United States, the European Union and the United Nations decided to support Haiti’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections despite believing that the country’s electoral body, “almost certainly in conjunction with President Preval,” had “emasculated the opposition” by unwisely and unjustly excluding the country’s largest party, according to a secret US Embassy cable.
The cable was obtained by WikilLeaks and made available to the Haitian newspaper Haïti Liberté, which is collaborating with The Nation on a series of reports on US and UN policy toward the country.
At a December 1, 2009, meeting, a group of international election donors, including ambassadors from Brazil, Canada, Spain and the United States, concluded that “the international community has too much invested in Haiti’s democracy to walk away from the upcoming elections, despite its imperfections,” in the words of the EU representative, according to US Ambassador Kenneth Merten’s December 2009 cable.
Haiti’s electoral body, the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), banned the Fanmi Lavalas (FL) from participating in the polls on a technicality. The FL is the party of then-exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was overthrown on February 29, 2004, and flown to Africa as part of a coup d’état that was supported by France, Canada, and the United States.
This history made Canadian Ambassador Gilles Rivard worry at the December donor meeting that “support for the elections as they now stand would be interpreted by many in Haiti as support for Preval and the CEP’s decision against Lavalas.” He said that the CEP had reneged on a pledge to “reconsider their exclusion of Lavalas.”
“If this is the kind of partnership we have with the CEP going into the elections, what kind of transparency can we expect from them as the process unfolds?” Rivard asked.
Despite the Lavalas exclusion, the European Union and Canada proposed that donors “help level the playing field”—they could, for instance, “purchase radio air time for opposition politicians to plug their candidacies.” They were presumably referring to “opposition candidates” who would come from parties other than the FL.

An interview on Palestine, boycott, Jews, Zionism, Australia and blindness

Posted: 09 Jun 2011

My following interview, conducted by Sarah Irving, appears in the Electronic Intifada:

Antony Loewenstein (“antonyloewenstein.com) is a writer and journalist based in Sydney, Australia and a founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices. His first book, My Israel Question, was an Australian best-seller and was short-listed for the 2007 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award; an updated third edition was published in 2009. His second book, The Blogging Revolution, about the Internet in repressive regimes, was released in 2008 and an updated second edition will be out later this year.
Loewenstein has written widely about the recent furor over the vote by Marrickville Council in Sydney to observe a full boycott, divestment & sanctions (BDS) strategy on Israeli products. After vitriolic attacks in the Australian press, especially Murdoch-owned newspapers such as The Australian, and hostile statements by federal and state-level politicians, a second council vote rescinded the BDS motion, while affirming the council’s support for the aims of the BDS movement. The Green Party mayor of Marrickville, Fiona Byrne, who had backed BDS, lost the ensuing state election to Australian Labor Party candidate Carmel Tebbutt, although she did achieve a large swing to the Greens.
In articles for Australian publications such as New Matilda and Crikey, Loewenstein has accused the mainstream press of “misrepresentations and outright falsehoods” in its reporting of the Marrickville affair, noting that “there have been dozens of articles in the Australian recently calling the Greens ‘extremists,’ implying the party is anti-Semitic, claiming BDS is akin to genocide, extensively quoting the Labor and Liberal parties (who unsurprisingly both condemn BDS) and the Zionist lobby (who again oppose it)” (“Where are the Arab voices in Aussie BDS debate?,” 15 April 2011).
Sarah Irving interviewed Antony Loewenstein for The Electronic Intifada.
Sarah Irving: One of the odd things about the Marrickville episode is that there was very little media coverage of the actual decision by the council to observe the BDS call. The press storm suddenly erupted about six weeks later, when the campaign for the New South Wales state elections really kicked off. Although the focus was on the boycott of Israel, was this really an Australian political issue?
Antony Loewenstein: I think that analysis is probably pretty true. When the BDS motion was announced in December it almost went unnoticed. I think what changed was three things. First, a state election was coming in March. Second, the Green Party in Australia in the last nine months or so has gone from being an important third player to very important third player.
They partly assist in the federal balance of power — there are independents as well — and there was, predictably, from the Australian Labor Party, the [right-wing] Liberal Party and from the Murdoch press, a sense that the Greens need to be “cut down to size.” A federal Labor minister, Anthony Albanese, got involved, saying that the Greens were being extreme and so on. His wife, Carmel Tebbutt, was running against Fiona Byrne, the Green mayor of Marrickville, for the state legislature. Albanese didn’t mention this rather important detail when the press covered the issue, that his wife was running, which almost smacks of dishonesty, and the fact that the Murdoch press didn’t mention it either shows how dishonest they are.
So it was almost like there was a federal intervention in the debate and it was seen as a perfect way to try and divide and conquer the Greens. You had senior federal ministers, Kevin Rudd, the former prime minister and now foreign minister, and Barry O’Farrell, then the state opposition leader and now Liberal state premier, former Prime Minister Bob Hawke — this litany of hacks who had spent most of their professional lives demonizing Arabs and who were now asked to speak on the Arab-Palestinian question. Arabs and Palestinians were largely ignored.
I suppose it was seen as a potentially effective way to divide and conquer the Greens and to show anybody who seriously thought about speaking up for Palestinians that this is what happens to you. You will be punished and attacked and defamed and often given no right of reply. That’s the message, and a lot of people I’ve spoken to in the last few months who might once have spoken out now won’t, or didn’t, because they’ve been scared off. That includes trade unions who supported BDS. Many of the unions in the country last year came out in support of BDS — it was partial BDS, more often the settlement boycott, but it’s a start. There were attempts to get them to say something, to speak out in support of Marrickville Council. But there was deadly silence. Not least, in my guess, because of their connections to the Labor Party.
Sarah Irving: Was the rabid reaction to the Marrickville boycott vote by much of the mainstream press, whether Rupert Murdoch-owned or not, in keeping with their usual stance on Israel and the Palestinians?
Antony Loewenstein: The Murdoch press is obviously known in Britain and America — it’s not confined to Australia — for being pretty antagonistic towards Arabs and Muslims. It’s very much signed up to the whole “War on Terror” rhetoric and all which that means. The “War on Terror” has been wonderful for the Murdoch empire’s business, as we’ve seen most recently with Bin Laden’s death.
We also have a situation in Australia which is not unique to us, where the vast majority of politicians and an awful lot of journalists and editors are sent on trips by the Zionist lobby to Israel. They go there semi-regularly, they spend five or six days there, they will spend maybe five minutes in Ramallah [in the occupied West Bank] if they’re lucky. But most of their time will be in Israel hearing about the great threat from the Arabs, the Iranian threat, peace is a long way off — blah blah blah.
They’ll then come back and talk about a two-state solution and the glories of peace. It reflects badly on the hundreds of journalists and editors who’ve been flown to Israel by the lobby and who have not said, “can I do my own thing?”
The idea of simply having your hand held like that is incomprehensible to me. You are a sycophant. They are often people who have critical faculties on other issues, but they go to Israel and they are almost guaranteed to be publishing propaganda when they return. The last trip went late last year, about ten people went, including some good journalists from the Sydney Morning Herald, and before they went I said on my website that we can guarantee one thing: when they get back, they’ll be talking about Iran, [that] Iran’s a threat. And that’s what they wrote. They admit that “sure, there’s an issue with Palestine, but Iran is the problem.” It’s almost like there is an unspoken obligation to your host for having wined and dined you for a week.
So most of the media has “form” in one way or another. I wouldn’t say that the reaction to Marrickville was more extreme than usual but I would say that there was little or no context about why BDS is not an idea put forward by neo-Nazis, which is the impression you’d have got by reading the press, and that it has growing support. But the latter is in some ways the Achilles’ heel — that the boycott is getting international support, which is exactly why there was this attempt to crush it here. The people who follow this issue know what’s happening in parts of Europe and Britain and even some parts of the US. This was a perfect opportunity, so they thought, to crush it here before it really took off. A local Sydney council was a perfect way to do it, and the fact that there was a Green mayor, even better.
SI: The extreme press response is being widely seen amongst Australian activists as having been a tactic to scare other public bodies, such as universities or councils, away from considering BDS policies. Has it worked for the moment?
AL: Put it this way: those unions which signed up last year have not rescinded their BDS motions. But they haven’t said much about it publicly either. I did notice, though, that the Maritime Union of Australia put out a statement supporting partial BDS, which is the first one I’ve seen for a while. Essentially it was saying that “Palestine’s got a problem, we support BDS, bring it on.” It didn’t mention Marrickville specifically. And while the Maritime Union is not one of the top unions in the country it does have a sizable membership. The other unions have been conspicuous by their silence, and I think that’s probably because they want to remain a bit quiet because of the Australian Labor Party, which goes to show how morally bankrupt the ALP has become.
SI: Was the mainstream press and political reaction to the Marrickville vote part of a wider systemic attitude towards BDS in Australia?
AL: Yes. I don’t necessarily see it as part of a coordinated campaign against BDS. By that I mean I don’t think there was a meeting in a room between the Israel lobby, the Murdoch press and and Labor Party. They don’t even need to do that. It doesn’t need to happen that way.
There’s a sense that the Palestine debate in Australia is one that’s largely about excluding the voice of Palestinians. There are recent exceptions, not least because of a handful of pro-Palestinian groups who’ve been pro-active in lobbying the mainstream media to get some representation. But there is an ingrained racism in the corporate press in Australia. Very few non-Anglo figures appear in the papers or on TV regularly. You hear very few Arab voices in general; it’s not just about Palestinians. I think there is a deliberate exclusion. As in many countries, the media is largely run by old white men.
In some ways what happened in the Arab revolutions should have given them, you would think, unique opportunities to have people speaking in their own voice from Tunisia and Libya. There have been Tunisians and dissident Libyans and Egyptians in our media, but largely it is still white journalists going to country X to write about it. When was the last time the Australian media had a major Egyptian, Libyan or Tunisian activist or nongovernmental organization writing in our papers, in their words? It’s happened, but very rarely.
The Palestinian issue is very similar. The idea of even suggesting that journalists should include Arab voices within the Marrickville story barely occurred. Sure it was about local politics as well, but the idea that you’d write about Palestine and not even think, “Gee, what does an Arab think?” It’s almost like the worst example of what happens in the New York Post or on FOX — and it wasn’t all in the Murdoch media, I might add.
The Palestinian question here is also about US foreign policy and Australian policy, which is that we are essentially a client state of the US and proud of being so. The Australian government talks about being independent but is quite the opposite. Australia has framed its world-view around receiving protection from America. There’s an unspoken idea that if we get invaded by Indonesia or China or some other other “Asian” country, who’s gonna protect us? America, allegedly.
So in order to stay in line with US policy, the Palestinian question here seems to be based around deliberately ignoring what Israel is doing in Palestine. So when you have pro-BDS types, whether Palestinians or Jews, saying BDS is necessary because of how Israel behaves, because there is a lack of legality, because there is impunity for occupation crimes, a lot of people in the media often say “that’s just ridiculous.” They’ll come out with the usual lines about Israel being a democracy. There is a line of ignoring what occupation means; it’s barely used as a word. It’s a “territorial dispute” and we’re engaged in a “peace process” and Abbas is “talking to the Americans” and so on.
SI: Even in the left-of-center, “alternative” media — online publications such as New Matilda and Crikey — there was only some coverage of Marrickville, BDS and the press response, and much of it was coming from you, Antony. Would they have covered the story if you hadn’t pitched it to them?
AL: There’s really a couple of issues here. Within many activist groups it seems like there’s an element of either naivete or of defeatism — they think “well they wouldn’t publish this anyway, so why bother?”
I’m not saying everyone thinks like that, but I’m not the only person who could be writing about this. I’m not Arab or Palestinian. Obviously I’m Jewish and I’m engaged because of that issue, feeling that “my people” are committing crimes in “my name,” which is a pretty awful feeling. But I do know a number of cases where Palestinians tried to get in those publications and didn’t succeed. I don’t know about the facts behind that. I can’t speak for those publications. I also think that even in some “alternative” publications here there is a degree of wariness about the issue. It’s seen as two rabid sides and that we need some “moderation.”
I would also like some other Jewish voices, younger Jewish voices, to be speaking out. There are some, but so few. You don’t hear in Australia, as you do in the UK and America, those Jewish dissident voices. I think it reflects badly on how unimportant real human rights are for the majority of Jewish people in Australia. Some of them might campaign about refugees or indigenous issues, which are important, but for me the real test of someone’s conscience is how they deal with issues that are close to home. I’m not saying that other issues don’t matter, but it’s how you deal with an issue which affects you, which is close to your family. That’s the real test of someone’s personality and sadly the majority of Jews here are failing by ignoring the issue, or campaigning against it, or staying silent. It’s disappointing and frustrating.
Sarah Irving is a freelance writer. She worked with the International Solidarity Movement in the occupied West Bank in 2001-02 and with Olive Co-op, promoting fair trade Palestinian products and solidarity visits, in 2004-06. Her first book,Gaza: Beneath the Bombs, co-authored with Sharyn Lock, was published in January 2010. Her new edition of the Bradt Guide to Palestine is out in November 2011, and her biography of Leila Khaled in spring 2012.
Antony Loewenstein’s website can be found at antonyloewenstein.com.

Israel's PR victory shames news broadcasters

NOVANEWS

Our latest analysis of news bulletins reveals how Israel continues to spin images of

Smoke billows from the Gaza Strip following Israeli air strikes in December 2008

Smoke billows from the Gaza Strip following Israeli air strikes in December 2008. Photograph: Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images

The propaganda battle over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has reached a new level of intensity. In 2004 the Glasgow University Media Group published a major study on TV coverage of the Second Intifada and its impact on public understanding. We analysed about 200 programmes and questioned more than 800 people. Our conclusion: reporting was dominated by Israeli accounts. Since then we have been contacted by many journalists, especially from the BBC, and told of the intense pressures they are under that limit criticism of Israel. They asked us to raise the issue in public because they can’t. They speak of “waiting in fear for the phone call from the Israelis” (meaning the embassy or higher), of the BBC’s Jerusalem bureau having been “leant on by the Americans”, of being “guilty of self-censorship” and of “urgently needing an external arbiter”. Yet the public response of the BBC is to avoid reporting our latest findings. Those in control have the power to say what is not going to be the news.
For their part, the Israelis have increased their PR effort. The Arab spring has put demands for democracy and freedom at the heart of Middle East politics, and new technology has created more problems for the spin doctors. The most graphic images of war can now be brought immediately into public view, including the deaths of women and children. When Israel planned its attack on Gaza in December 2008, it developed a new National Information Directorate, and the supply of possible material was limited by stopping reporters from entering Gaza during the fighting. In 2010, when Israel attacked the Gaza aid flotilla, it issued edited footage with its own captions about what was supposed to have happened. This highly contested account was nonetheless largely swallowed by TV news programmes. A UN-sponsored report, which later refuted the account, was barely covered.
These new public relations were designed to co-ordinate specific messages across all information sources, repeated by every Israeli speaker. Each time a grim visual image appeared, the Israeli explanation would be alongside it. In the US, messages were exhaustively analysed by The Israel Project, a US-based group that, according to Shimon Peres, “has given Israel new tools in the battle to win the hearts and minds of the world”. In a document of more than 100 pages (labelled “not for publication or distribution”) an enormous range of possible statements about Israel was sorted into categories of “words that work” and “words that will turn listeners off”. There are strictures about what should be said and how to say it: avoid religion, Israeli messages should focus on security and peace, make sure you distinguish between the Palestinian people and Hamas (even though Hamas was elected). There is a remarkable likeness between these and the content of TV news headlines. Many journalists bought the message. Hamas was being attacked, and somehow not the Palestinians: “The bombardment continues on Hamas targets” (BBC1, 31 December 2008); “The offensive against Hamas enters its second week” (BBC1, 3 January 2009).
There were terrible images of Palestinian casualties but the message from Israel was relentless. Its attack was a necessary “response” to the firing of rockets by Palestinians. It was the Palestinian action that had started the trouble. In a new project, we have analysed more than 4,000 lines of text from the main UK news bulletins of the attack, but there was no coverage in these of the killing by the Israelis of more than 1,000 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, in the three years before it. In the TV news coverage, Israeli statements on the causes of action overwhelmed those of the Palestinians by more than three to one. Palestinian statements tended to be only that they would seek revenge on Israel. The underlying reasons for the conflict were absent, such as being driven from their homes and land when Israel was created.
Journalists tended to stay on the firmest ground in reporting, such as the images of “innocent victims”, and there was little said about why Palestinians were fighting Israel. We interviewed audience groups and found the gaps in their knowledge closely paralleled absences in the news. A majority believed Palestinians broke the ceasefire that existed before the December attack and did not know Israel had attacked Gaza during it, in November 2008, killing six Palestinians. Members of the public expressed sorrow for the plight of Palestinians but, because of the Israeli message so firmly carried by TV, they thought the Palestinians had somehow brought it on themselves. As one put it: “When I saw the pictures of the dead children it was dreadful, I was in tears but it didn’t make me feel that the Palestinians and Hamas were right … I think the Palestinians haven’t taken the chance to work towards a peaceful solution. Hamas called an end to the last ceasefire.” This participant was surprised to hear Hamas was reported to have said it would have stopped the rockets if Israel had agreed to lift its economic siege. The source was Ephraim Halevy, former head of the Mossad intelligence service.
Images of suffering do not now in themselves affect how audiences see the validity of actions in war. People see the images as tragic, but judgments as to who is right and wrong are now firmly in the hands of the spin doctors.
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BBC's complaints procedure faces calls for overhaul

NOVANEWS

 

With the corporation’s finances facing the squeeze, the pressure is on for quicker resolutions

Jeremy Bowen

Disputed territory … two reports by the BBC’s Middle East correspondent, Jeremy Bowen, have been the subject of complains which took 22 months and 16 months to resolve. Photograph: BBC

It is the £700,000 bill the BBC would like to keep quiet – the amount of money the BBC Trust has spent on lawyers defending its journalism. And one issue, above all, rears its head in the trust’s legal battles: the BBC’s reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, believed to have given rise to the single largest legal expense incurred.
Senior journalists grumble that the constant stream of complaints and legal challenges ties up staff in mounting a defence, often of individual news items or even single quotes; while at the same time complainants are frustrated by the slowness with which complaints are resolved.
No wonder, then, that Lord Patten, new chairman of the BBC Trust, wants to simplify the corporation’s complaints procedure. It “can and should be improved” to make it “quicker, simpler and more transparent”,he told the House of Lords communications committee.

Impartiality

For some senior BBC news managers such a review is overdue: the current system is unwieldy, expensive and congested, with a profusion of complaints accusing the BBC of failing in its duty of impartiality in reporting on the Middle East.
The costs of handling such objections are particularly galling for BBC staff, given the urgent need for retrenchment in all areas of spending as the corporation faces a 20% budget cut in real terms over the next four years.
A freedom of information request by MediaGuardian shows that, excluding the cost of employing its own in-house lawyer, the BBC Trust (which can consider appeals on complaints rejected by the executive board) spent £691,717 on “advice from external legal advisers regarding editorial and related appeals” between January 2007 (when it replaced the board of governors) and the end of March 2011.
Neither the trust nor the BBC could provide accurate information on the number of complaints received by the executive board’s editorial complaints unit (ECU) and the trust’s editorial standards committee over these years. Both said the volume varies from year to year.
In handling complaints about coverage of Israel, say sources, the BBC is required to hire expensive legal advisers to deal with often lengthy and complicated objections from both sides of the debate.
These disputes include the long battle, begun by the late Steven Sugar, to force the BBC to publish the 2004 Balen report on its Middle East coverage. For the moment at least, a House of Lords ruling means the report will still not be made public. The BBC has disclosed thatthis four-year period of legal wrangling alone cost it £227,364.
Jeremy Bowen’s 2007 BBC online article on the 1967 Arab/Israeli warand a 2008 dispatch for Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent also proved costly, according to BBC sources, in terms of manpower used and fees paid to external advisers (the BBC Trust says the amount spent on handling the two complaints is “unavailable” as it does “not monitor costs in this way”).
Both reports attracted complaints, with objections focusing on a variety of issues including Bowen’s reference in the online article to “Zionism’s innate instinct to push out the frontier”. Protests about this piece ran into the hundreds, according to sources.
Bowen’s From Our Own Correspondent report, on the Jewish settlement of Har Homa, drew objections that he unfairly portrayed settlers as despoiling land which his programme implied (wrongly, many objectors felt) actually belonged to Palestinians. One complaint about the online article took 22 months to resolve and the complaint about the radio broadcast took 16 months.
Barrister Jonathan Turner was one of many to complain about Bowen’s online article to the executive board, which rejected the objections. Following a final appeal from Turner and one other person to the trust, a panel chaired by former ITV director of programmes David Liddiment ruled that Bowen had breached certain accuracy and impartiality guidelines.
This verdict particularly incensed Jonathan Dimbleby, the host of Any Questions and chairman of Index on Censorship. In a 2009 article for Index on Censorship’s website, Dimbleby rushed to defend Bowen, whose hard-won reputation, he claimed, had been “sullied” . This article is now the subject of an outstanding complaint to the trust from Turner.
Turner quips that “any money spent on lawyers could be better spent”, but says that he doesn’t believe the £691,717 spent on legal advice by the trust is “particularly large compared with the overall expenditure of the BBC, or with the salaries and benefits of quite a large number of its staff”.
Heavily tilted
“I do recall that they told me that when the editorial standards committee of the BBC Trust considered my complaints in relation to Jeremy Bowen,” he adds, “the meeting was attended by the BBC Trust’s lawyer, the BBC Executive’s lawyer and external counsel, which seems a bit OTT.
“I was not allowed to attend or be represented. This does underline the point that the system for considering complaints is heavily tilted against complainants. Basically the BBC deploys the massive resources which it can, in order to make it as difficult as possible for complaints, however meritorious, to succeed, particularly in relation to anti-Israel bias.”
Since Dimbleby’s Index on Censorship article, Turner admits to writing to some panellists on Any Questions seeking to “correct” the statements made by the presenter and to warn them “to be on their guard against him making misinformed comments about this particular subject”. Brushing off the suggestion that he is biased, Dimbleby replies “life’s too short” when asked if he’s worried about the trust’s verdict on the complaint.
On the record, the BBC insists that “impartial, high-quality journalism is at the heart of what we do” and “we have a duty under the charter to consider complaints on appeal”.
But the flow of complaints on issues such as Israel looks set to continue at the present level; and a complaint about a 2008 Panorama programme on Primark – which was assessed by the ECU and is now being considered by the trust, with costs understood to be substantial – shows other topics can also eat up time and money.
“The stakes in terms of feelings – and balance sheets – remain too high in some cases,” acknowledges a BBC source – while the official BBC line hints at a willingness to accept reforms: “We are open to ways to improve this process.”
Patten is clearly keen to do something about this. Senior news managers have already raised the issue with the trust and its new chairman and hope to simplify a system that one source says is “overcomplicated” and “open to abuse”. Patten’s “rapid” review of the current governance system will be ready before the next parliamentary recess, he has confirmed.
But, for many, the introduction of new procedures – and the hiring of more BBC trustees with knowledge of journalism at the sharp end, who can make decisions without the need for expensive lawyers – cannot happen quickly enough.