Notes From A Small Island

Big Tough America - The Railroading of Omar Khadr

2010-11-06T08:57:00.001+08:00

The Railroading of Omar Khadr

By Becky Akers – Campaign for Liberty – 11/03/10

This time, it’s not just liberty’s lovers excoriating Our Rulers: their persecution of so-called “child-soldier” Omar Khadr has infuriated many international elites, albeit for the wrong reasons.
Omar Khadr is a Canadian citizen whose family travelled back and forth between there, Afghanistan and Pakistan throughout his boyhood. Omar’s late father may actually be among the world’s very few genuine terrorists, as opposed to those the Feds manufacture to substantiate their silly war: he was a friend and financier to Osama himself.

In 2002, Mr. Khadr agreed when an associate asked if Omar could travel with him as a translator. Tragically, this adventure put Omar in the wrong place — a “compound with . . . a mud wall surrounding a homestead with buildings and animal pens” outside a small Afghan village — at the wrong time: just as American troops attacked. Their excuse? The handful of men — sorry, militants — the Americans had spied inside with their AK-47s in view refused “our boys’” order to surrender.
The ensuing battle turned Omar the Translator into Omar the Terrorist whom the Feds allege to have murdered — not simply killed — an American sergeant. Reports disagree about exactly what happened during that skirmish eight years ago, but no one disputes that “our boys” initiated things.
What are we doing in Afghanistan? Why are we invading this sovereign country, let alone its citizens’ farms? What gives Americans wearing funny hats and bulky clothes the right to pester villagers on their own turf, let alone disarm them? Oh, of course: might makes right. Well, guys, listen up: you’re already in the wrong here. You were wrong the day you headed to the recruiter’s office and signed up to kill people; you’re still wrong no matter how many Afghanis shoot back when you trespass.
Eventually, at least 100 American troops surrounded the farm while F-18 Hornets flew to their rescue and “dropped two 500-pound bombs” on the place. Yet “our” butchers still failed to massacre everyone inside: 15-year-old Omar and a badly wounded man survived the lop-sided battle.
Some of the hundred troops secured the farm after this glorious victory, while others covered them by tossing grenades. Those reconnoitering the devastation discovered the wounded man “moving” — writhing? — near an AK-47, so one of them finished him off.
Shrapnel had hit Omar’s eyes during the fight and permanently blinded the left one. The troops found him “sitting up facing away from [them] leaning against brush.” One shot him twice in the back.
That’s according to the shooter himself. The Pentagon suppressed this admission until 2008, when it “inadvertently released” it. No wonder Our Rulers “covered [the report] up“: it contradicts the less-damning “official” account in which Omar “pack[s] a pistol in the rubble of a suspected al Qaeda compound” and hurls a grenade despite the shrapnel in his eyes. That’s why they shot him — in the chest, mind you, not the back.
Despite the “friendly” grenades falling around the troops, the Feds insist the one that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer at this point came from Omar. If so, he’s a boy of remarkable resources, as wearers of contact lenses can attest. When an errant speck finds it way between plastic and eye, the excruciating pain pretty much disables the victim: you can think of nothing else, not even self-defense or survival. Imagine the agony should shrapnel sharp enough to blind you embed itself. Now imagine you’re also 15 and have just survived Armageddon. Are you up for lobbing grenades?
But even if Omar did throw it, since when is self-defense a crime? OK, let’s rephrase that since the anti-Second Amendment wackos have indeed made it so. Since when is firing back at attacking armies a crime? As the New York Times notes, “Usually in war, battlefield killing is not prosecuted. But the United States contended that Mr. Khadr lacked battlefield immunity because he wore no uniform, among other requirements of the laws of war.” Yo, kiddies: if you’re ever caught in the Amerikan Empire’s crossfire, cadge a uniform before defending yourselves.
And so the same sociopaths who dismiss waterboarding as a “dunk in water,” who contend that torture is perfectly Constitutional if the intent is to elicit information rather than to punish, who pretend that 9/11 resulted because Moslems “hate our freedoms” rather than as predictable payback for a century of meddling in other countries’ business — these same sociopaths accused Omar of murder. Then they imprisoned him at Guantanamo Bay.
Meanwhile, they withheld medical treatment (after initial triage and surgery) as well as sunglasses to protect his injured eyes, refused him all contact with his family except for a couple of phone calls, “locked [him] in solitary confinement for more than two years with no relief from the overhead fluorescent lights,” short-shackled his hands and feet to the floor for hours, beat him, ridiculed him, threatened him with dogs, with gang-rape, and with transfer to nations where torture is a blood-sport.
Like Gitmo’s other inmates, Omar endured years there before the Feds bothered charging him. That directly violates the Constitution: its Sixth Amendment orders government to give “the accused” — all accused, without regard to their politically invented and convenient status of “enemy combatant” — a “speedy and public trial.” Ah, the Feds might protest with a crafty smile, but the phrase “the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed” indicates that the Sixth pertains solely to citizens. If so, then the amendment also implies that the government may arrest and imprison only on American soil.
Beginning in 2004, Our Rulers embarked on a series of military tribunals, legal memos, and motions to convict Omar, to justify their abuse of him without the hassles of that “speedy and public trial.” Ever notice that the more illegal, unconscionable, and inhumane police states become, the greater their appetite for legality, rules, and procedures? But our poor, prevaricating politicians hit snag after snag, including the universal outcry against the military tribunals as patent charades.
Then, in 2010, “after working for a year to redeem the international reputation of military commissions, Obama administration officials [were] alarmed by the first case to go to trial under revamped rules: the prosecution of a former child soldier whom an American interrogator implicitly threatened with gang rape.” Yeah, that does tend to undermine a kangaroo court’s credibility. And so Our Rulers indulged in “a complex flurry of negotiations” to save face, not justice. Last week, we saw the fruits of their corruption when Omar, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, agreed to the Feds’ lies against him.
The government suborned him as it has so many other defendants with a plea deal: “Look, we both know we’re lying, that you’re innocent of what we allege, but save us the trouble of ‘proving’ you guilty, and we’ll steal fewer years from your life.” In this case, no more than an additional 8 years beyond the 8 Omar has already languished in Gitmo, rather than the rest of his life.
Thus did the Feds finally succeed in coercing Omar to lie. He pled guilty “to committing murder in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war, providing material support to terrorism, conspiracy, and spying.” (Spying? When he’s been incarcerated since he was 15? What exactly are they smoking over there at the Pentagon?) Dennis Edney is a Canadian lawyer representing Omar; he said his client has “‘not much choice’ but to plead guilty to avoid a trial because, he claimed, the proceeding at [Gitmo] would be ‘unfair.’ ‘That’s not my comment; it’s the comment of former military prosecutors,’ he said in reference to two who resigned from the military commission prosecution office in recent years.” Not surprisingly, Mr. Edney added, “There is no justice here.”
Instead, there’s a boy horrifically wounded while defending himself from invaders whom the Feds have imprisoned sans a conviction for eight years despite the Constitution’s insistence on habeas corpus. They’ve tortured him the while, again despite the Constitution. He finally caves to the government’s bribery and confesses to “crimes” that aren’t and that he almost surely didn’t commit. Can the Feds possibly add to their mockery here of all that’s just and decent?
Yes! No evil is too difficult for our subhuman Feds! After Omar’s “confession,” they wasted more of our taxes on the travesty of a “sentencing hearing”: “in all military commissions” the Department of Unlimited War to Extend the Amerikan Empire—sorry, Defense explained, “a panel of military officers known as ‘members” determines the sentence,” — now there’s a model of objectivity– “regardless of whether the plea was guilty or not guilty.” . . .the defense and prosecution will each . . . present evidence and argument to the members to aid them in determining a sentence.”
As if to prove the world’s suspicions of this sham, Our Rulers’ “evidence” included the widow of the sergeant Omar supposedly slew and a “forensic psychiatrist” (sic for “witch doctor”) who read Omar’s mind and assured the “members” that Omar must remain in prison because he seethes with plots against the West. Ahem: can we blame him?
The Widow Speer provided the heart-wrenching spectacle Americans now accept in lieu of justice from courts dispensing “fairness.” She described the “harrowing” horror of telling her daughter, then not even four years old, of her father’s death. She read letters from the girl and her 8-year-old brother that discuss growing up without their dad. The lady herself praised her husband as a “good man.” And she regurgitated the “official” story on Omar despite the conflicting testimony a notoriously deceitful Pentagon stifled and the likelihood of “friendly fire” as her husband’s killer: she denounced Omar as a “murderer” and someone “so unworthy” to have ended Sgt. Speer’s life.
Some will say she’s entitled because she’s lost her husband. But the widow also has $102 million at stake: several years ago, she and the American soldier who claims he shot Omar in the chest filed a lawsuit against Omar’s father, the late financier (apparently, the American genius for making money never sleeps, even among the grieving). Need I add they won? And so “the [Khadr] family’s assets, which are of unknown value, have been frozen by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control [yes, our taxes actually fund such a monstrosity as part of the Treasury Department].” While awaiting the thaw, those hoping to get rich quick toe the line though an innocent man rots in prison.
Mrs. Speer also made much of Omar’s “choice,” by which she meant he could have left the farm at the beginning of the skirmish, as did several women and children. But can’t we say the same of her husband? Sgt. Speer enlisted 9 years before his death, when he was 19; he had plenty of time to reconsider his utterly immoral, inherently dangerous career. Ditto for Mrs. Speer, who could have pleaded against his re-enlisting. And if she “supported” his wickedness, well, widowhood is part of what she’s advocating, not only for herself but for all the women whose husbands died that day.
Just as tainted a witness is the “forensic psychiatrist.” Dr. Michael Welner despises Moslems, according to an article he published in 2005: he compared them to a drug addict “living next door” while condemning their “Islamo-chaos.” As if his own bias weren’t sufficiently rabid, Welner’s statement against Omar relied heavily on the opinions of a Danish psychologist. Nicolai Sennels believes that being “raised in a Muslim environment — with Muslim parents and traditions — includes the risk of developing certain antisocial patterns” and that “the Muslim concept of honor transforms especially their men into fragile glass-like personalities that need to protect themselves by scaring their surroundings with their aggressive attitude.” For the Feds to pay this bigot to babble about Omar is akin to soliciting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s assessment of Anne Frank.
Yet Welner apparently convinced Omar’s jury of military officers that he’s “highly dangerous.” On November 1, they sentenced him to 40 more years in prison (his plea-deal reduces that to 8).
Look closely, and alongside Omar as a victim of the Feds’ atrocities you’ll see our battered, bloodied, dying Constitution.

This essay is taken from Aletho News (the photo is from Google of the triage of Omar Khadr after the 'battle'.

CIA Not Very Intelligent

2010-11-01T17:23:00.001+08:00

The suicide bomber who killed eight people inside a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan a few weeksago was a Jordanian doctor recruited by Jordanian intelligence, a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a foreign government official confirmed Monday.

The bombing killed seven CIA employees - four officers and three contracted security guards - and a Jordanian intelligence officer, Ali bin Zaid, according to a second former U.S. intelligence official. Ali bin Ziad introduced the good doctor to the gulled CIA officers, and that was that. He wasn't even frisked as he entered FOB Chapman.

They said the bomber was Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year old doctor from Zarqa, Jordan.

(If you remember, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda scourge of Iraq, came from the same town and country). It is an Army barracks town, with some grim industry, and the usual industrial blight.

For more information see: The Black Iris of Jordan /

The Prez is Coming to Town!

2010-10-31T08:12:00.002+08:00

Obama is going to India. With 40 aircraft and 6 armoured cars. Mrs Obama also insisted their two kids should come along as well.

Prepare for a holiday snap of Mr and Mrs Prez standing in front of the Taj Mahal with their entire White House and 'security' staff around them.

This is going to be a quiet, unassuming visit.

More Silly Hats

2010-10-29T18:57:00.003+08:00

These guys are not only wearing Al Capone fedoras, and a ridiculous kippah, but the man in the middle is wearing a daft turban (and an over-frogged jacket).

The man in question, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, was recently quoted:
"Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel...In Israel, death has no dominion over them... With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money... Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat."

What could be more offencively Israeli-exclusive than this raving lunatic?

I'd bet 100:1 that you, dear reader, are a goy (not Jewish). In which case this nonsense applies to you.

POTUS Afraid of a Hat

2010-10-29T11:14:00.012+08:00

The President of the United States of America, probably the most powerful nation-state on earth, has cancelled a visit to the Sikh Golden Temple at Amritsar, for fear that photos taken of him wearing an obligatory simple head covering are construed by ignorant Americans as proving he really is a Muslim

He had no problem wearing a ridiculous kippah when he visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem, in deference to Israeli religious customs.

Who are this man's advisors?

Note: He is standing right next to the low wall that separates male from female worshippers at the wall. This is, presumably, to show that he is a liberal anti-sexist.

Chicken Ham - Sensation!

2010-10-07T10:46:00.015+08:00

I don't know if you've ever eaten petto d'oca, smoked goose breast; it is seriously delicious and good, and puts mere pork ham in the shade. I used to make a trip to a special shop to buy it every time I visited Italy.

So I decided to try a different version; smoked chicken. I bought a plump one, de-boned and quartered it, (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzmjtTUQS6g & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFjFtMA-TJE&feature=related) then soaked it in a strong brine for 4 hours.
Don't worry too much about the strength of the brine; but make sure it's strong; throw in a lot of salt (and I mean a lot; handfuls) then add a bit more. The salt will, by osmosis, suck out the chicken fluids (and the little nasties that live in them, and kill them(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFjFtMA-TJE&feature=related off).

The next process is a 'dry rub'. You can make the recommended mixture of:

2 tablespoons onion powder
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 tablespoon paprika
2 teaspoons dried parsley
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon crushed oregano
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon powdered cayenne pepper

Or else you can do a marinade of the whole lot in whatever herbs you have to hand, throwing in a few wild cards (star anise, soy sauce, etc) as you go along. Marinate overnight.

Get the smoker smoking, and lay the chicken pieces on the smoking tray. You might want to give the chicken thighs a good smack (or a slash to the bone) with a meat cleaver first, to flatten them out and make sure they cook in the middle joint. (It wouldn't do any harm to do the same to the chicken breasts).

When they've finished smoking, after about a minimum of 4 hours, they'll be sensational. Still warm, they're good; re-heated they're good, and cold, they are fresh and juicy, and make the best CLT (chicken, lettuce and tomato) sandwich you've ever tasted, and way better than a BLT.

Update: 06/10/10 For the next lot, I marinated (dry-rubbed) the pieces in whatever I could find, but I made the mistake of putting olive oil into the mix, making the final result very shiny and oily. But I also put all of the chicken bits into the smoker, and enjoyed nibbling those extra bits (neck, backbone, rib cage, cast-off fat and skin) as much as the main course.

Crabs That Made It Out Of Water - Osong; Mud Lobster

2010-09-27T14:48:00.006+08:00

This weird inhabitant of our mangroves and creeksides is an Osong or Mud Lobster; Thalassina anomala.

It builds large mounds of mud around its burrows, and this is all I've ever seen of it, so I've stolen the rest of the information from Wikipedia.

T. anomala is a lobster-like animal which grows up to 30 centimetres (12 in) long, but is more typically 6–20 cm (2.4–7.9 in) long. Its colour ranges from pale to dark brown and brownish green. The carapace is tall and ovoid, extends over less than one third of the animal's length, and projects forward into a short rostrum. The tail is long and thin, and, like many burrowing decapods, the uropods are reduced in form, and do not form a functional tail fan with the telson.[4] Various rows of setae on the legs and gills are used to prevent sediment from reaching the gills and for expelling any which does reach them. T. anomala also makes use of "respiratory reversal" to keep the gills free of dirt.

T. anomala lives in burrows up to 2 m (6.6 ft) deep, and is active at night. Its burrowing fulfils an important rôle in the mangrove ecosystem bringing organic matter up from deep sediments. The animal's output forms large volcano-like mounds which can reach heights of 3 m (10 ft) and are vital to many other species such as Odontomachus malignus (an ant), Episesarma singaporense (a crab), Wolffogebia phuketensis (another mud shrimp), Idioctis littoralis (a spider), Acrochordus granulatus (a snake), Excoecaria agallocha (a mangrove) and termites. The burrowing activity can cause T. anomala to be seen as a pest where it weakens the bunding that surrounds prawn farms or fish farms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassina - please refer to for links.

This is obviously a fascinating creature, supporting a cast of other animals and plants, so it deserves study. I suffer from insomnia (but I'm not sure I could rouse myself after waking at 4am to set off tramping through mangroves). Still, I always wanted to be a nature observer like Fabre so maybe this is my chance, and I should accept the challenge.

Crabs That Made It Out Of Water

2010-09-27T08:47:00.011+08:00

Besides Birgus latro, we have several quite different land crabs around here. They're true crabs that have taken to living on land, or at least halfway between land and sea.

They have all managed the transition between water and air breathing, although often in quite different ways. These are fairly momentous evolutionary steps for mere crustaceans.

Kayabang (Cardisoma hirtipes) live back in the coastal coconut groves, digging large holes, that, like earthworm casts, help circulate and aerate the soil.

Once a month, at full moon, hundreds of kayabang come out of the coconuts, and head straight to the beach to have a mass sexual orgy, mate and lay their eggs. They march purposefully in an almost straight line, often through the town, or any houses in their path.

At one full moon, a kayabang came straight through a group of us drinking outside Lourdes' Food House, only to be trapped by Big Marty's foot. He told me it made a good part of his breakfast.

The local people go to the beach at full moon with flaming torches made from dried coconut leaves, and pick them up by the dozen.

Their claws are roughly equal size, but still just as vicious, and they are fiercely defencive.

This is one who came through the house, and finally ended up stoutly defending my dish rack.

Kayangjan (Cardisoma carnifex) live near creeks and mangroves, and don't have the same mass mating system.

One claw is much bigger than the other. The right hand claw is usually the bigger. This is similar to humans, whose right hand is usually the stronger.

Because of their bright colours, they are known as rainbow or harlequin crabs in other areas, and are very common all over the Pacific.

Andreas the Asshole - Again

2010-09-23T13:52:00.002+08:00

My wonderful next door neighbour has done it again - first he stole the copy from my website and pretended he'd written it himself. Now he's copied a map that I spent a lot of time making (from naval charts, etc). So I'm going to sue him. Not that it will do much good - his wife (Elizabeth) is closely related to the Surigao City legal mafia.

I try to get people to avoid Patrick's On The Beach, because they will certainly be screwed. Firstly, he charges extra VAT (that is not paid to anybody), and the Service Charges go to him; not to his staff.

If I attempt to swim from the public beach in front of his place, he harasses me; I cannot use the public right of way which leads from my place to the beach, since he fenced it off.

He is still running his orphanage scam, but he is now into direct pimping:
'Many Visitors have come to Siargao and to Patrick’s on Cloud9 and found their life time partner. One of the greatest positive points of filipina-pinay, is the fact that in the Philippines, your age difference is usually NOT a problem! In fact, to most ladies in the Philippines, and to their families, the belief and hope is that if you are an older gentleman, that you are much less likely to be a "playboy", and also that you will take much better care of your fiancée. The oldest guest we had was 75 years old and he found his 21 year old sweet heart on Siargao Island.

The Filipina girls or Filipina women are world known for there stunning beauty. Filipinas are not only beautiful women but a delight to be around because of the famous Filipina disposition and personality. Many of our visitors who have married these Filipina beauties, swear they make the best wives in the world, not only beautiful, but loyal, loving and faithful past death. Andreas the owner of Patrick’s on Cloud9 is married to Elizabeth one of those beautiful Siargao Ladies. You will sense their wonderful and harmonious marriage when you visit Patrick’s on Cloud9.

Smoked Eel

2010-09-23T07:32:00.002+08:00

You might not think that this is a very appetising looking fish. I can assure you it is, and very much sought after.

This English site sells roughly 100gm portions of vacuum packed smoked eel for £6.45 (that's P450/$10/100gm, or P4500/$100 per kilo)

Viktor (phone (+63 920 287 2450) sells exactly the same self-smoked stuff without all the fancy packaging for P401/$7/kilo. It's the same species as American or European eels (or at least one of the two - you have to count their vertebrae to tell the difference, so good luck to you).

The eels come from the small river that leads up from the mangrove swamps at Pilar, to Maasin in the middle of the island, and they are caught there when they migrate upstream to breed; with fish baskets, and then thumped on the head with a bolo, as you can see.

Eels are becoming very rare in Europe, because of pollution of the major rivers, which is why they are expensive. These local ones are a lot cheaper, but still as delicious.

RIP Herbert

2010-09-22T13:18:00.001+08:00

Herbert died last night, just before his scheduled release into the wild (well, my garden). I don't know why he expired so suddenly; I fed him on coconuts, and he seemed very active. There are plenty enough coconuts in my garden to have sustained him.

These crabs never go through a seafood stage; they graduate to a wholly terrestrial lifestyle after only a month's infancy in the sea. The young ones are very common indeed; they are virtually every terrestrial hermit crab you might come across here, and they all have a characteristic large left claw, which closes off their shelter shell..

Piglet Feast

2010-09-22T11:04:00.001+08:00

My piglets are now 6 weeks old, so I am going to sacrifice 2 of them as lechon de leche - genuine suckling pigs, and invite a few friends to try them.

Filipinos call anything grill/roasted a Lechon (even a chicken - Litson Manok) so this is just a personal gesture against misunderstood Spanish words.

We're having smoked chicken and various strange pickles as well. Will tell you how they go.

I will be making a stunning pork pate with the heads and feet, plus the livers and hearts. It will be sealed with a mixture of butter and pork fat, and will probably last me a couple of years lke the last one.

Crowd 9

2010-09-21T10:58:00.001+08:00

Cloud 9 - The best surf break in the Philippines is not doing very much in this photo, which is why there are so many aspiring surfers trying their stuff.

Too many.

When the break is really pumping, and the rollers are coming in huge from some passing typhoon, none but the brave and foolhardy will even try to surf it.

Very Junior Coconut Crab

2010-09-21T02:23:00.002+08:00

This is a fairly junior Coconut Crab (Birgus latro), a crab almost completely land-adapted, except for about a month in the sea in its extreme youth.

This particular one has been visiting my house regularly over the past few years, but I didn't recognise its species.

This very crab has woken me up at night by scrabbling up my book-cases, and falling off.

It has been using the very same Fox Shell (Pleuroploca trapezium) for all this time, but it's getting a bit battered, mainly because I got fed up with it, and used to kick it into the middle distance every time it turned up on my front doorstep.

These, to the right, are part of a harvest of shell-bearing crabs from my garden, collected by my neighbour's little boy. You can probably recognise the fox shell shown above at the top centre. I can't be sure, because I didn't recognise them at the time, but I would bet that most of them are Birgus latro wannabes.

In which case, most of them have very little chance of ever making it to monster size. There are simply not enough large shells on land, or washed up to the top of the beach, to give them ways to grow.

Probably many of these shells will be used over and over again, in a crab's vain hopes of growing up. There is a lot of competition for new houses. Many are called but few are chosen.

Some may well turn into monster terror crabs, if they get a lot more chances, but I think most will have run out of large shells to inhabit in the meantime.

Because of the offshore reef in GL we get very few wavy storms within the lagoon, so very few larger shells get washed up. Most that do end up on land have been harvested by local fishermen. Certain of those, like baler shells, helmet shells, and conchs, are plenty large enough, but have strangely shaped apertures that can't accomodate a crab comfortably. They like a circular aperture that they can easily plug with their major claw and one leg.

About the only local shell that a large Birgus latro can use is a Triton, but these are becoming very rare. If one is seen walking around, the crab is casually sacrificed so the shell can be sold.

Tatos the Terror Crab

2010-09-05T13:58:00.000+08:00

Tatos is the local name, but we know it better as Coconut or Robber Crab (Birgus latro). It is reputed to be able to rip apart a whole coconut with its formidable claws; (they are very strong indeed, and the only way to get them to let go, is to tickle its belly, I'm told).

Its only real enemy here is human; this one was the first I've seen in 12 years on this island, and my first thought was to eat it.
This was brought to me a few days ago, and the next day, another smaller one.

This is a juvenile; its tail has not yet acquired its armour, and its two claws are not yet 'straight'. It betrays its youth, which was spent as a hermit crab, in a shell.

At first I kept them in an improvised cage made from two thicknessess of coiled chicken wire with a closure of a single thickness over each end. Hearing a noise later in the evening, I found the big crab halfway out of a hole it had cut in one end of the cage, so I up-ended the cage, and put a pastry board and a couple of heavy books on top of the hole.

That night at about 1:30am, hearing a scraping noise in one corner of the bedroom, I saw the big crab trying to climb the bedroom wall. I got it off the wall with the help of my large cooking spoon, and it faced me off about a foot away, so I whacked it on the head with my spoon. It ran, with astonishing speed, backwards under my bed. No way was I going to crawl under there in the dark, so it stayed there until 7:30 the next morning, when I'd accumulated enough courage to tackle it. (Or rather, I'd told Ron to pick it up).

And here's Uncle Dick breathlessly explaining the Coconut Crab.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2_YYQrYTAg&NR=1

Checkpoint: 6

2010-09-04T02:44:00.000+08:00

Checkpoint 5

2010-09-03T02:33:00.000+08:00

Checkpoint: 4

2010-09-02T02:21:00.001+08:00

Checkpoint 3

2010-09-01T01:12:00.001+08:00

Checkpoint 2

2010-08-31T01:09:00.001+08:00

Here is Part 2:

Checkpoint: 1

2010-08-30T02:57:00.000+08:00

This week, I'm going to be featuring the reality of life in Occupied Palestine, beyond the 'Green Line':

Punishment for performance in front of "mixed audience."

2010-08-30T01:28:00.001+08:00

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
27/08/2010

A singer who performed in front of a “mixed audience” of men and women was lashed 39 times to make him “repent,” after a ruling by a self-described rabbinic court on Wednesday.

Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak, founder of the Shofar organization aimed at bringing Jews “back to religion” (hazara betshuva), has made it his recent mission to fight against musical performances for both men and women.

His “judicial panel,” with Rabbi Ben Zion Mutsafi and another member, sentenced Erez Yechiel to 39 lashes in order to “rid him of his sins.”

In a video clip of the court posted on the Shofar Web site, Ben Zion said that those who make others sin (mahtiei rabim), such as artists who make men and women attend performances or dance together, have no place in the world to come.

He displayed a leather strip he said was made by his father from ass and bull skin, with which Yechiel was to have been whipped.

Yechiel, who said, “I accept upon myself the lashing for my sins,” was ordered to stand by a wooden poll {sic} with his head facing north (“from whence the evil inclination comes”), his hands tied with a azure-colored rope (“a symbol of mercy”), and served his “sentence.”

Reconciliation With Taliban is ‘Ultimate Goal’ - Petraeus:

2010-08-27T02:49:00.000+08:00

This is very nearly the 'Saigon moment' in Afghanistan

by Jason Ditz, August 25, 2010

Speaking today to Fox News, US Commander in Afghanistan Gen. David Petraeus insisted that the “ultimate goal” of the nearly nine year long war is to enable the “reconciliation”of the Karzai government with the Taliban.

And while such talks have actually taken place (mostly with official US ambivalence), Gen. Petraeus says the war must continue until it “creates conditions” for a more favorable reconciliation.

According to Petraeus, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has laid out a number of “redline” demands, including that they accept the constitution and disarm, and that the war will have to continue until the insurgency meets those demands.

The Taliban has demands of their own, of course, and has repeatedly said that they would only accept a reconciliation deal if the international troops were to leave Afghanistan. In both cases the demands appear unlikely to be met.

Of course the failure of the peace talks so far has not happened in a vacuum, and earlier this week officials with the Pakistani government confirmed that they had sabotaged a previous peace deal involving Taliban moderates by arresting them en masse. Pakistani officials say they were worried that the deal was happening “behind their backs” and that the deal would hand Afghanistan over to pro-India interests

A People That Shall Dwell Alone - Israel-Palestine: A Condensed View

2010-08-26T13:56:00.001+08:00

A People That Shall Dwell Alone – Israel’s Attack On The Gaza Flotilla

August 25, 2010 posted by Niall Bradley · 14 Comments

By Joe Quinn, Editor of SOTT.net http://www.sott.net/
Originally published in the July-August 2010 issue of The Dot Connector Magazine.
Spyros Fragias/SOTT.net

At approximately 4am on May 31st 2010, a group of vessels attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza were attacked by the Israeli navy in international waters off the coast of the occupied Palestinian territories. Nine civilians aboard the largest vessel, the Mavi Marmara, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers and dozens more were wounded. The Israeli government claimed it was exercising its right to self defence. Flotilla members, and much of the international community, saw it as an act of piracy and murder on the high seas that has exposed deep flaws in the Israeli mentality and further alienated it from the rest of the world.

The group of eight ships, known as the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, was a project of the Free Gaza Movement, a group of human rights activists from 37 countries. The ships carried over 700 people including journalists and dignitaries from the US to Malaysia and from Norway to South Africa. The stated goal of the Free Gaza Movement is to raise international awareness about “the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip” and pressure the international community to “review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation.” The movement’s board of advisors includes former and serving British, Irish and American politicians and distinguished academics, among others.

To fully understand the motivation of Gaza aid groups such as the Free Gaza movement, we must first take a brief look at the history of the occupied Palestinian territories and the state of Israel. Bear with me then as I try to condense, as objectively as possible, ninety years of history in a few short paragraphs.Since the late 1800′s the idea of a Jewish homeland in the area of Palestine had been put forward by Zionist pioneers such as Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizman. The Zionist claim to a Jewish homeland in Palestine is based on passages within the Torah where the land of Israel is promised to the Jews by God – the legalities of basing a claim on a religious text of dubious origin notwithstanding. In 1896 Herzl visited then ruler of the Ottoman Empire Sultan Abdulhamid II to ask for Palestine as a Jewish homeland. The Sultan refused. Not to be outdone, Weizman and Herzl continued to lobby for the creation of Jewish state in Palestine in the following years, rejecting all other offers (such as land in Uganda or Madagascar).

In 1917, perhaps foreseeing the imminent demise of the Ottoman Empire (in 1918) a protracted period of political pressure from the immensely wealthy Jewish/English banker (and close friend of Weizman Walter Rothschild (the 2nd Baron Rothschild) saw the British government issue a formal statement of policy supporting the creation of a Jewish homeland in the area of modern-day Palestine. The famous Balfour declaration was signed by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour and declared that the British government “views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”

With the break-up of the Ottoman Empire (as a result of the first World War) in 1922, control of the area of Palestine fell to the British who were tasked with dividing up the area, supposedly in accordance with the rights and claims of the local population but taking into consideration their aforementioned promise to the Zionists. The Zionist leadership encouraged successive waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine over the following 25 years, (the biggest of which was during the period before and after WWII). Throughout this period, Jewish settlers had formed themselves into paramilitary (and decidedly terrorist) groups to fight against both the native Arab population of Palestine, who were attempting to defend their rights and homeland and against the British military who the settlers increasingly saw as an obstacle to the creation of an official Jewish state. In 1947, 250,000 indigenous Palestinians were expelled by force from their homes and one year later the state of Israel was declared. The following day, the armies of five Arab countries – Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq – attacked Israel, launching the 1948 Arab – Israeli War. After a year of fighting, a ceasefire was declared and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were established. Jordan annexed what became known as the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip. According to UN estimates, 711,000 Arabs, or about 80% of the initial Arab population of the area that became Israel, were expelled or fled the country due to Israeli aggression.

Palestinians are prisoners in their own land

In 1967, Egypt announced a partial blockade of Israel’s access to the Red Sea. Israel saw these actions as a casus belli for a pre-emptive strike that launched the Six-Day War, in which Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 1993, the Oslo Accords, which gave the Palestinian National Authority the right to self-govern parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, were signed in Washington DC in the presence of Palestinian Liberation Organisation Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with US President Bill Clinton playing the part of match maker.

Since 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been forced to flee their homes with many still living in exile in Lebanon and Jordan. The majority however have been forced to live either as second class citizens in Israel or under an increasingly oppressive occupation in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Since 1993 the Israeli government has progressively built hundreds of illegal Jewish settlements in the West bank and Gaza. Israeli settlers regularly attack Palestinians and set fire to their fields and crops. To protect these settlements the Israeli government has built and almost completed a wall around the entire West Bank. Due to the route of the wall, many Palestinian villages are completely surrounded.

In 2005 the Israeli government withdrew from Gaza in what at the time was touted as a peace initiative. The reality however is that Gaza is still entirely controlled by Israel and has been turned into the world’s largest open-air prison for its 1.5 million civilian population. An Israeli security fence completely surrounds Gaza on three sides (with the sea on the fourth) with Israel controlling the two civilian entry and exit gates. Palestinians are routinely forced to wait for hours at these gates and run a high risk of being abused by Israeli soldiers and/or turned away. In addition there is a one kilometre buffer zone (called a ‘kill zone’) along the fence which is guarded by remote-controlled machine gun turrets at regular intervals.

Connected via fibre optics to a remote operator station and a command-and-control center, each machine gun-mounted station serves as a type of robotic sniper, capable of enforcing a nearly 1,500-meter-deep no-go zone.

According to the Israeli military the turrets “empower the observers with precision attack lethality and dramatically increase their ability to close kill chains, engaging targets immediately as they are exposed. In addition to the use of direct fire machine guns, observers can also employ precision guided missiles, such as optically and laser guided missiles and weapons.”

The operators of these ‘robo-guns’ are mostly young female Israeli conscripts sitting in front of a screen in a room miles away in Israel watching the Gaza border through the turret’s high-tech camera lens. If they see anyone moving through the “kill zone” towards the fence with Israel, they are authorised to shoot. Many unwary Palestinian civilians have been summarily executed in this way.

The Siege Of Gaza

An Israeli 'robo-machine gun' on the Gaza security fence

For the past four years, the Israeli government has maintained an economic blockade by land sea and air of the Gaza strip. The blockade is illegal under international law because Israel is not officially at war with Palestine. Indeed, as the occupying power, Israel has a duty under international law to ensure the welfare of Gaza’s inhabitants, including their rights to health, education, food and adequate housing. Since its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza in January 2009, which constituted collective punishment of the civilian population and left 1,400 Palestinian civilians dead (including 400 children) and over 5,000 wounded, Israel has prevented all building supplies from entering the strip and has intentionally reduced the population to a state of abject destitution as a matter of state policy.

Six thousand Gazan homes were destroyed in the 2009 bombing and thousands of Gaza families now live a cave-man-like existence in the rubble of their former homes and are forced to scavenge for wood to build fires to cook food in the most rudimentary metal pots. Many basic food stuffs are also prohibited by Israel. The decision over which foods to allow and which to prohibit is apparently made arbitrarily with items like coriander, canned fruit, fresh meat and seeds and nuts denied, while aniseed, cinnamon, frozen fruit and chickpeas are allowed. Permitted items however arrive in tiny quantities that fall far below the amount needed to feed the entire population. The policy behind the blockade was summed up by Dov Weisglass, an adviser to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in 2006when he said: “It’s like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won’t die”.

Medical supplies are seriously restricted to Gaza’s hospitals. Many patients suffering from kidney failure for example are routinely told they will die because the necessary equipment and medicines are on the forbidden list. Since the Israeli air forced bombed Gaza’s power plants in 2006, Israel has prevented fuel to run the plants from entering Gaza. As a result, hospitals must deal with power black-outs for 8-12 hours per day. Palestinians suffering from severe life-threatening illnesses that cannot be treated in Gaza hospitals are regularly denied entry into Israel. In his report into the 2009 ‘Operation Cast Lead’ bombing of Gaza, distinguished South African Jewish judge Richard Goldstone exposed the Israeli claim that it was acting in self-defence: “while the Israeli government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercises of its right to self-defence, the [UN] mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.”

Many areas of the 25 mile-long coast are no longer usable by Gazans because authorities are forced to pump tens of thousands of cubic meters of raw sewage into the sea every day because Israel forbids the entry of water sanitation equipment. Fisherrmen are routinely shot at by the Israeli navy for the merest infraction of the three mile maritime boundary limit.

90% of Gaza’s water contains high levels of nitrates and chlorides and is officially undrinkable, many however are forced to drink it or die of thirst. 85% of the 1.5 million people in Gaza are dependent on handouts of food from the UN. Rice, sugar oil, lentils and flour in meagre emergency rations are handed out by the UN and are designed to keep a person healthy for at most 2 months in an emergency humanitarian crisis scenario. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees or ‘UNWRA’ has been struggling to feed 800,000 Palestinian refugees in this way for 4 years.

Between the end of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in January 2009 until June 2010 the IDF killed 47 Palestinians, including 26 civilians, seven of them children; 12 civilians were killed by Israeli snipers in the Gaza ‘kill zones’, gunned down in cold blood; five others died when tunnels between Gaza and Egypt (which are used to smuggle food) were bombed.

In July 2008 a 23-strong human-rights team of prominent South Africans, which included former government ministers supreme court justices, academics and trade union leaders visited the occupied Palestinian territories. Their findings were unequivocal:

“The daily indignity to which the Palestinian population is subjected far outstrips the apartheid regime [of South Africa]. And the effectiveness with which the bureaucracy implements the repressive measures far exceed that of the apartheid regime.”

It was in this context that the Freedom Flotilla set sail in late May 2010 to deliver tons of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.

The Mavi Marmara, a 300ft Turkish-built merchant vessel, carried by far the largest number of human rights activists – almost 600 in all. The ship’s cargo comprised hundreds of tons of aid including building materials, wheel chairs and medical supplies. The crew and passengers of all the flotilla vessels were fully aware of the danger they faced. In late 2008 a smaller 67ft pleasure boat, the Dignity, was rammed in international waters and almost sunk by the Israeli navy as it attempted to make its way to Gaza to deliver aid. Onboard were Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire and Green Party US Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney, along with several members of the European Parliament.

Before the flotilla set sail from Greece, the Israeli government declared that none of the ships would be allowed to enter Gazan waters because of concerns that there may be weapons on board. Flotilla organizers however went to great lengths to ensure that the cargo of the Mavi Marmara (and all flotilla boats) were thoroughly checked and vetted by customs officials in Greece and Turkey prior to their departure. The coalition also hired an independent security firm to search the ships and certify that no weapons were on board. The Turkish government, a member-state of the NATO alliance, confirmed that no passengers had ties to extremist groups. These precautionary steps were deliberately taken to prevent Israeli officials from claiming that the Freedom Flotilla posed a ‘security risk’. Israel however, ignored these details and continued to insist that its military would “use all means” to prevent the Flotilla from reaching Gaza’s shore, and that it had a “right to defend itself”.

What happened when the Mavi Marmara and the other vessels arrived within 65 miles of the Gaza coast has been well-documented.

Well-aware that Israel refuses to allow most aid into Gaza, the captain of the Mavi Marmara rejected the suggestion by the Israeli navy that he proceed to the Israeli port of Ashdod and insisted that his destination was Gaza. At this point, the Israeli navy implemented their plan to commandeer the vessel by force. Realising that the Israeli navy was intent on illegally boarding and commandeering the ships in international waters under cover of darkness, some passengers on board the Mavi Marmara sought to arm themselves as best they could in order to defend themselves against the expected and well-known excesses of Israeli soldiers. Using angle grinders that were on board they cut up pieces of the ship’s railing to use as make-shift weapons. Many eyewitness, including Israeli-Arab member of the Israeli parliament Haneen Zoubi who was on board, testified that before a single soldier had set foot on deck, live rounds were fired at the ship and at least two passengers were shot in the head. Zoubi also said that IDF soldiers refused her request that they offer medical aid to several wounded activists who died shortly afterwards. A few passengers appear to have had sling shots and it is possible that others armed themselves with knives from the ship’s kitchen in response to live fire from Israeli boats and Helicopters.

Espen Goffen, a 38-year-old activist from Norway who sailed aboard the Mavi Marmara, said the Israeli commandos on board “started off with some kind of paintball bullets with glass in them that left terrible soft tissue wounds. Then rubber-coated steel bullets were used and then live ammunition. Unable to gain access to the ship via speed boats that had pulled along side, Israeli soldiers began to descend on ropes from two helicopters that appeared overhead. Some passengers, enraged by the murder of at least two passengers and assuming the Israeli intent was to kill, attempted to repel the descending commandos. Video evidence testifies to this fact.

Two hours after the beginning of the attack, 9 passengers lay dead. Provisional post mortems on the dead revealed that they were all shot at close range, 5 had bullet wounds to the head, at least one was shot in the back of the head and two others were shot in the back. Dr Haluk Ince, chair of Turkey’s council of forensic medicine, said: “Approximately 20cm away was the closest. In only one case was there only one entrance wound. The other eight have multiple entrance wounds. [The man killed by a single shot] was shot just in the middle of the forehead with a distant shot.” The oldest victim was 60-year-old Ibrahim Bilgen, a Turkish politician, engineer and activist who was married with six children. He had been shot once in the right temple, once in the right side of his chest, once in the back and once in the hip. The youngest was 19-year-old Furkan Dogan, an American citizen, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back.

More detailed post-mortems released on the 29th June 2010 revealed that all but one of the dead had been shot from above and at close range. In the case of Turkish victim Cetin Topcuoglu, the first bullet entered his head and exited his neck and the second passed through his right shoulder, through his torso and destroyed his liver. The post-mortem evidence adds considerable weight to the claim that not only did the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara involve a pre-planned use of lethal force, but that soldiers summarily executed passengers and several people were shot from helicopters. Bizarrely, the autopsy of 61-year-old victim Ibrahim Bilgen revealed a tiny bag containing pellets that was found still intact in his brain. The final official Turkish forensic report stated that all bodies had been washed with alcohol [by Israelis] before being brought to Turkey making it impossible to reach a definite conclusion on the ranges of most shots.

There were no deaths on the other Flotilla boats, however Israeli soldiers used stun grenades, tasers and tear gas and severely beat several passengers.

In the days after the attack, Israel was widely condemned for the murders. The Turkish government recalled its ambassador to Israel and cancelled planned joint military Israeli exercises and called for an independent UN inquiry. The Israeli government however continued to claim its soldiers were acting in self-defence and rejected an independent inquiry. Large sections of Israeli society displayed righteous indignation at any criticism of the Israeli action. Official parades celebrating the heroism of the commandos who stormed the ship were held along with demonstrations by schoolchildren giving their unequivocal support for the government against “the new wave of anti-Semitism”. Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak claimed that the intent of the flotilla was not to deliver aid to Gaza but to “humiliate Israel”. However, given the illegal nature of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, there is no way for anyone to independently deliver aid to Gaza without at the same time humiliating Israel and exposing its inhuman treatment of Palestinians.

The Israeli government has worked hard to delegitimise any Palestinian right to their own nation and identity. It is clear that the Israeli blockade of Gaza has little to do with security concerns and everything to do with preventing the emergence of a viable Palestinian state Central to this goal is the continued portrayal of any Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation as ‘terrorism’ when, in reality, resistance (including armed) to an occupying power is a fundamental right laid down in the article four of the third Geneva Convention. According to humanitarian law however, in order to lawfully use force in a conflict, a person must first be designated a lawful ‘combatant’. To be a lawful combatant, a person must belong to an ‘armed resistance group’ and that group must belong to a ‘party’ to the conflict. It is in this fact that we find one of the chief reasons why Israel will never willingly allow the creation of a Palestinian state. As long as Palestine does not have official state status, any Palestinian resistance group cannot claim to be a party in the conflict and must remain a simple independent resistance group, or a ‘terrorist group’ in modern Orwellian parlance.

All Israeli leaders have known that the day that Palestine is officially recognised as an independent state, is the day that Israel will no longer be able to bulldoze Palestinian homes or bomb Palestinian neighbourhoods in the name of fighting terrorism.

The continued deligitimisation of Palestine as a nation then was the main motivation behind the Israeli attack on the Gaza Flotilla. If the Flotilla had succeeded in reaching Gaza, it would not only have established a precedent for future flotillas, but would have sent a clear message to the world that Gaza and Palestine is a sovereign entity, independent of Israeli rule.

By continuing to behave illegally and immorally towards the Palestinian people, and by continuing to thumb its nose at international law and public opinion, Israel places itself and its people in a very precarious position within the international community. Jews have been programmed for centuries by their religious leaders to believe that they are a chosen people. In response to international condemnation following the flotilla attack, the Rabbinical Council of Judea and Samaria issued a statement asserting that the legitimacy of the Jewish people “is not derived from the nations of the world and their poisonous traditions, but rather from the Torah, which teaches us that [Israel] ‘is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations’”. The flotilla attack “places us at the beginning of the Gog and Magog process where the world is against us, but which ends with the third and final redemption” the statement said.

It would be easy to dismiss this as the archaic rhetoric of a few Rabbis that have no influence on Israeli government or military policy if it were not for the fact that religion clearly plays a central role in the life of Jews from all segments of Israeli society and among the Jewish diaspora. In December 2009 for example, the Israel Defense Force’s chief rabbi told recruits that soldiers who “show mercy” toward the enemy in wartime will be “damned.” Brig. Gen. Avichai Rontzki also told the students that religious individuals made better combat troops. Rontzki referred to Maimonides’ discourse on the laws of war which quotes a passage from the Book of Jeremiah stating: “Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord with a slack hand, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.”

As a result of centuries of religious indoctrination and decades of government propaganda, Jews in Israel (and elsewhere) appear unable to accept or understand a fundamental truth – that the land that is now Israel was forcibly taken from Palestinians and that a promise by a mythical deity cannot over-rule the basic human rights of millions. As a result of this cognitive dissonance, many Jews react with indignation when Palestinians reject what Jews believe to be very generous offers to donate perhaps one tenth of the former land of Palestine for a Palestinian homeland, a ‘homeland’ which would amount to small prison enclaves surrounded by the Israeli military. It is for this reason that neither Hamas nor a single Palestinian will recognise Israel’s right to exist in it’s current configuration. Nelson Mandela and most Western democracies also refused to recognise the South African apartheid regime’s right to exist.

Israel today is a nation and society marked by a paranoid personality disorder writ large. For most Jews, Israel must always ‘walk alone’ because Jews are specially chosen by god. In a supreme act of personal disempowerment, they have given up any say in their own future or the future of their nation by submitting to the dictates of a religious text of dubious origin that simultaneously glorifies and condemns them. The cry of ‘anti-Semitism’ serves to buffer Israel and the Jews from all criticism because criticism of Israel or the Jews is understood as simply the fulfilment of biblical prophecy that the world will turn against the Jews and Israel. It is hard to think of a better example of pathological thinking or a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is just this type of pathological thinking that has led Israel to justify it’s inhuman treatment of the Palestinians as ‘self-defence’ and more recently to excuse it’s murderous attack on the Gaza flotilla. The Jews of Israel would do well to wake up to the fact that, in continuing to show such distain and disregard for human life and world opinion, their political leaders are not only in flagrant violation of international law, but have forgotten the original reason for the creation of a Jewish homeland – to safeguard the future of the Jewish people. Israel’s future as a viable state for Jews and others is intrinsically tied to the Palestinians and the defence of their rights to life and liberty. With each Palestinian that dies as a result of Israeli policy in Palestine, with each new Israeli settlement that is built on Palestinian land, the future of Israel as a viable state is further compromised and the security of the Jewish people jeopardized.

Albert Einstein: Plagiarist and Fraud ?

2010-08-26T10:37:00.002+08:00

Ian Moseley – Altermedia August 17, 2010

Albert Einstein is today revered as “the Father of Modern Science”. His wrinkled face and wild hair has become a symbol for scientific genius and “his” famous E = mc^2 equation is repeatedly used as the symbol for something scientific and intellectual. And yet there has for years been mounting evidence that this “Father of Modern Science” was nothing but a con man, lying about his ideas and achievements, and stealing the work and the research of others.

The most glaring evidence against Einstein concerns “his” most famous equation. One website notes “The equation E=mc^2, which has been forever linked to Einstein & his Theory of Relativity was not originally published by Einstein. According to Umberto Bartocci, a professor at the University of Perugia and a historian of mathematics, this famous equation was first published by Olinto De Pretto …two years prior to Einstein’s publishing of the equation. In 1903 De Pretto published his equation in the scientific magazine Atte and in 1904 it was republished by the Royal Science Institute of Veneto. Einstein’s research was not published until 1905… Einstein was well versed in Italian and even lived in Northern Italy for a brief time.”
It is unheard of to pass over the original inventor of an equation and to give credit to someone, who claims to have derived it AFTER the equation and its derivation have been published. The equation “E=mc^2″ should be called the “De Pretto Equation” not the “Einstein Equation.”

This raises the question: “What sort of man was Einstein?” Is there evidence that he may have been prone to unethical behavior? One website reports “Einstein… was still far from the ideal husband. A year before they married, Maric gave birth to a daughter, Lieserl, while Einstein was away. The child’s fate is unknown – she is presumed to have been given up for adoption, perhaps under pressure from Einstein, who is thought to have never seen his first born. After the marriage, Mileva bore two sons but the family was not to stay together. Einstein began an affair with his cousin Elsa Lowenthal while on a trip to Berlin in 1912, leaving Mileva and his family two years later. Einstein and Mileva finally divorced in 1919, but not until after Einstein sent his wife a list of ‘conditions’ under which he was willing to remain married. The list included such autocratic demands as ‘You are neither to expect intimacy nor to reproach me in any way’. After the divorce, he saw little of his sons. The elder, Hans Albert, later reflected ‘Probably the only project he ever gave up on was me.’ The younger, Eduard, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and died in an asylum. Einstein married Elsa soon after the divorce, but a few years later began an affair with Betty Neumann, the niece of a friend… Accusations of plagiarism aren’t limited to Mileva – it’s also been claimed that Einstein stole the work of a host of other physicists. One question which may remain moot is quite how much Einstein drew from the work of Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincare in formulating the theory of special relativity. Elements of Einstein’s 1905 paper paralleled parts of a 1904 paper by Lorentz and a contemporary paper by Poincare. Although Einstein read earlier papers by the two, he claimed not to have seen these later works before writing the 1905 paper. One apparently damning fact is that the 1905 paper on special relativity had no references, suggesting that Einstein was consciously hiding his tracks.”

One source notes “David Hilbert submitted an article containing the correct field equations for general relativity five days before Einstein.” Another source notes “Einstein presented his paper on November 25, 1915 in Berlin and Hilbert had presented his paper on November 20 in Göttingen. On November 18, Hilbert received a letter from Einstein thanking him for sending him a draft of the treatise Hilbert was to deliver on the 20th. So, in fact, Hilbert had sent a copy of his work at least two weeks in advance to Einstein before either of the two men delivered their lectures, but Einstein did not send Hilbert an advance copy of his.” Apparently Hilbert’s work was soon to become “Einstein’s work.”

The historic record is readily available and the truth is known to many scientists and historians, even if they are afraid to say anything. The idea that light had a finite speed was proven by Michelson and Morley decades before Einstein. Hendrik Lorentz determined the equations showing relativistic time and length contractions which become significant as the speed of light is approached. These gentlemen along with David Hilbert and Olinto De Pretto have been airbrushed out of the picture so that Einstein could be given the credit for what they had done.

Einstein appeared to latch onto his first wife, a much more talented student three years his senior, to compensate for his own limited abilities. Another website notes: “…in 1927, H. Thirring wrote, ‘H. Poincare had already completely solved the problem of time several years before the appearance of Einstein’s first work (1905). . . .’ Sir Edmund Whittaker in his detailed survey, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, Volume II, (1953), included a chapter entitled ‘The Relativity Theory of Poincare and Lorentz’. Whittaker thoroughly documented the development of the theory, documenting the authentic history, and demonstrated through reference to primary sources that Einstein held no priority for the vast majority of the theory. Einstein offered no counter-argument to Whittaker’s famous book. . .”

Einstein was a minor contributor at best and in any case an intellectual thief and pretentious braggart. Einstein was still alive when Whitaker’s book was published and he said NOTHING about it. No libel suit, no refutation, no public comment at all.

Einstein was the first great fraudster and idea-thief in modern science. His theft of Olinto De Pretto’s equation E = mc^2 gave him considerable scientific credibility which he built a career on. De Pretto was not a career physicist and spent his life as an industrialist, passing away in 1921. De Pretto had published his equation twice before Einstein and was no doubt amazed that someone could claim credit for his work. Einstein used and eventually discarded his first wife, Mileva, who was a much more brilliant student than Einstein and is suspected of writing much of Einstein’s early work. (She may have been reluctant to expose Einstein since he was still the father of her children.) David Hilbert’s work on the equations for Special Relativity was submitted for publication before Einstein and was sent to Einstein as correspondence. Einstein claimed credit for the equations which Hilbert derived. (David Hilbert passed away in 1943.)

Some university professors have stolen work from their graduate students and it would be interesting to see if any of Einstein’s students complained of such thievery. A plagiarist seldom stops plagiarizing especially when he keeps getting away with it. Complaints against Einstein however seem to disappear down the Orwellian memory hole. Einstein is clearly a sacred cow to many. A few have even used the word “heresy” to describe serious well-documented criticism and charges of plagiarism against Einstein. The truth eventually wins out and Einstein will someday be best known as a great fraud instead of a great physicist

http://us.altermedia.info/news-of-interest-to-white-people/albert-einstein-plagiarist-and-fraud-2_7593.html#more-7593

Olinto De Pretto (1857–1921) was an Italian industrialist and physicist from Schio, Vicenza.

Israel Penetrating Lebanese Institutions

2010-08-26T05:42:00.001+08:00

WMR has learned from its Lebanese intelligence sources that the Lebanese government is coming to realize that Israeli intelligence penetration of all political groups in the country is worse than originally believed.

Israel’s Mossad, once content on penetrating the Christian and Druze parties in the country, has now thoroughly infiltrated the top echelons of Sunni and Shi’a parties, as well. Recently, Lebanon charged retired General Fayez Karam, a senior member of retired General Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, which is allied with Hezbollah, with spying for Mossad.

Among the political parties penetrated by Israeli intelligence is the Future Movement of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the son of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated by a car bomb in Beirut in 2005. The UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is expected very soon to charge Lebanon’s Hezbollah with the assassination. However, Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah recently announced the group had video evidence from Israeli drones that showed the Israeli Defense Force was tracking Hariri before his assassination.

The STL’s chief prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare of Canada, requested the evidence from Hezbollah. However, WMR has learned that Bellemare is suspected by Lebanese intelligence of having close previous contacts with agents of both the CIA and Mossad. WMR previously reported that Bellemare is suspected to have allowed and introduced into evidence against Hezbollah in the Hariri assassination, doctored cell phone intercepts pointing the “smoking gun” at Hezbollah. It is feared that Bellemare might give Hezbollah’s evidence to Mossad for the Israelis to determine the source of the leak of classified videos.

Mossad is also reported to be grooming a successor to the Lebanese Shi’a political leader Nabih Berri, currently the speaker of the Lebanese parliament. The Mossad operation is being actively supported behind the scenes by Saudi Arabia, a country that is fast becoming one of Israel’s most “open secret” allies in the Middle East.

According to WMR’s sources in Lebanon, one network that Israel and the United States can rely on to support the UN after the expected indictment of Hezbollah for Hariri’s assassination is a Sunni network in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. It includes a member of the same family as Ziad al-Jarrah, one of the alleged United flight 93 hijackers on September 11, 2001.

Lebanese intelligence has linked the Ziad al-Jarrah, who hailed from the Bekaa Valley, to a Saudi-supported Salafist network that includes “Al-Qaeda” associates that will be used to target Shi’as throughout Lebanon in the wake of the Bellemare charges against Hezbollah. Lebanese intelligence discovered that members of this same Mossad-supported Salafist/Al Qaeda network also targeted top Shi’a leaders in Iraq. WMR has learned that Ziad al-Jarrah was used by the Mossad, the CIA, and Saudi intelligence as a “patsy” in the 9/11 conspiracy, just as similar “patsies” are being used in Iraq and elsewhere to help keep the myth of “Al Qaeda” and Osama bin Laden alive.

The same Salafist/Al Qaeda network in Lebanon, while still in an embryonic stage, was used by Mossad and the CIA to spy on Palestinian groups in Lebanon during the 1980s and 90s, as well as on Syria during its occupation of Lebanon.

The Israeli espionage network also extends to Syria. Lebanese sources report that former Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam, who accused Syrian President Bashar al Assad of ordering Rafik Harir’s assassination, is tactically backed by Israel and the United States. Khaddam, who heads the exiled National Salvation Front (NSF), is seeking to overthrow Assad. The NSF not only receives support from Israeli and U.S. intelligence but also from the French and German intelligence. The NSF maintains offices in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and Washington, DC and it is suspected of working behind the scenes with Bellemare to bring chargss against Hezbollah for the Hariri assassination. However, previous attempts to have Assad and pro-Syrian Lebanese generals indicted for the assassination fell through due to lack of any credible evidence.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. He has written for several renowned papers and blogs.

Wayne Madsen is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research

What I learned from Jared Diamond - Stephen M. Walt

2010-08-26T04:55:00.002+08:00

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Wednesday, August 25, 2010 - 12:38 PM Share

Earlier this summer I mentioned that I was reading Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and I promised to sum up the insights that I had gleaned from it. The book is well-worth reading -- if not quite on a par with his earlier Guns, Germs, and Steel -- and you'll learn an enormous amount about a diverse set of past societies and the range of scientific knowledge (geology, botany, forensic archaeology, etc.) that is enabling us to understand why they prospered and/or declined.

The core of the book is a series of detailed case studies of societies that collapsed and disappeared because they were unable to adapt to demanding and/or deteriorating environmental, economic, or political conditions. He examines the fate of the Easter Islanders, the Mayans, the Anasazi of the Pacific Southwest, the Norse colonies in Western Greenland (among others), and contrasts them with other societies (e.g., the New Guinea highlanders) who managed to develop enduring modes of life in demanding circumstances. He also considers modern phenomenon such as the Rwandan genocide and China and Australia's environmental problems in light of these earlier examples.

I read the book because I am working on a project exploring why states (and groups and individuals) often find it difficult to "cut their losses" and abandon policies that are clearly not working. This topic is a subset of the larger (and to me, endlessly fascinating) question of why smart and well-educated people can nonetheless make disastrous (and with hindsight, obviously boneheaded) decisions. Diamond's work is also potentially relevant to the perennial debate on American decline: Is it occurring, is it inevitable, and how should we respond?

So what lessons does Diamond draw from his case studies, and what insights might we glean for the conduct of foreign policy? Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me as I finished the book.

First, he argues that sometimes societies fail to anticipate an emerging problem because they lack adequate knowledge or prior experience with the phenomenon at hand. Primitive societies may not have recognized the danger of soil depletion, for example, because they lacked an adequate understanding of basic soil chemistry. A society may also fail to spot trouble if the main problem it is facing recurs only infrequently, because the knowledge of how to detect or deal with the problem may have been forgotten. As he emphasizes, this is especially problematic for primitive societies that lack written records, but historical amnesia can also occur even in highly literate societies like our own.

By analogy, one could argue that some recent failures in U.S. foreign policy were of this sort. Hardly anybody anticipated that U.S. support for the anti-Soviet mujaheddin in Afghanistan would eventually lead to the formation of virulent anti-American terrorist groups, in part because the U.S. leaders didn't know very much about that part of the world and because public discourse about U.S. policy in the Middle East is filled with gaping holes. Similarly, the people who led us into Iraq in 2003 were remarkably ignorant about the history and basic character of Iraqi society (as well as the actual nature of Saddam's regime). To make matters worse, the U.S. military had forgotten many of the lessons of Vietnam and had to try to relearn them all over again, with only partial success.

Second, societies may fail to detect a growing problem if their leaders are too far removed from the source of the trouble. Diamond refers to this as the problem of "distant managers," and it may explain why U.S. policymakers often make decisions that seem foolish in hindsight. As I've noted here before, one problem facing U.S. foreign policymakers is the sheer number and scope of the problems they are trying to address, which inevitably forces them to rely on reports from distant subordinates and to address issues that they cannot be expected to understand very well. Barack Obama doesn't get to spend the next few years learning Pashto and immersing himself in the details of Afghan history and culture; instead, he has to make decisions based on what he is being told by people on the ground (who may or may not know more than he does). Unfortunately, the latter have obvious reasons to tell an upbeat story, if only to make their own efforts look good. If things are going badly, therefore, the people at the top back in Washington may be the last to know.

Third, serious problems may go undetected when a long-term negative trend is masked by large short-term fluctuations. Climate change is the classic illustration here: there are lots of short-term fluctuations in atmospheric temperature (daily, seasonally, annually and over eons), which allows climate change skeptics to seize upon any unusual cold snap as "evidence" that greenhouse gases are of no concern.

Similarly, it's easy to find short-term signs of American primacy that may be masking adverse long-term trends. Optimists can point to U.S. military predominance and the fact that the American economy is still the world's largest, or to the number of patents and Nobel Prizes that U.S. scientists continue to win. But just as the British empire reached its greatest territorial expanse after World War I (when its actual power was decidedly on the wane) these positive features may be largely a product of past investments (and good fortune) and focusing on them could lead us to miss the eroding foundations of American power.

A fourth source of foolish decisions is the well-known tendency for individuals to act in ways that in their own selfish interest but not in the interest of the society as a whole. The "tragedy of the commons" is a classic illustration of this problem, but one sees the same basic dynamic whenever a narrow interest group's preferences are allowed to trump the broader national interest. Tariffs to protect particular industries, or foreign policies designed to appease a particular domestic constituency are obvious cases in point.

Ironically, these problems may be especially acute in today's market-oriented democracies. We like to think that open societies foster a well-functioning "marketplace of ideas," and that the clash of different views will weed out foolish notions and ensure that problems get identified and addressed in a timely fashion. Sometimes that's probably true, but when well-funded special interests can readily pollute the national mind, intellectual market failure is the more likely result. After all, it is often easier and cheaper to invent self-serving lies and distortions than it is to ferret out the truth, and there are plenty of people (and organizations) for whom truth-telling is anathema and self-serving political propaganda is the norm. When professional falsifiers are more numerous, better-funded, and louder than truth-tellers, society will get dumber over time and will end up repeating the same blunders.

Fifth, even when a state or society recognizes that it is in trouble, Diamond identifies a number of pathologies that make it harder for them to adapt and survive. Political divisions may make it impossible to take timely action even when everyone realizes that something ought to be done (think gridlock in Congress), and key leaders may be prone to either "groupthink" or various forms of psychological denial. And the bad news here is that no one has ever devised an effective and universally reliable antidote to these problems.

Moreover, if a group's identity is based on certain cherished values or beliefs, it may be hard to abandon them even when survival is at stake. Diamond suggests that the Norse colonies in Greenland may have disappeared because the Norse were unwilling abandon certain traditional practices and imitate the local Inuits (e.g., by adopting seal hunting via kayaks), and it is easy to think of contemporary analogues to this sort of cultural rigidity. Military organizations often find it hard to abandon familiar doctrines and procedures, and states that are strongly committed to particular territorial objectives often find it nearly impossible to rethink these commitments. Look how long it took the French to leave Algeria, or consider the attachment to Kosovo that is central to Serbian nationalist thinking, and how it led them into a costly (and probably unnecessary) war in 1999.

To sum up (in Diamond's words):

Human societies and smaller groups make disastrous decisions for a whole sequence of reasons: failure to anticipate a problem, failure to perceive it once it has arisen, failure to attempt to solve it after it has been perceived, and failure to succeed in attempts to solve it."

That last point is worth highlighting too. Even when states do figure out that they're in trouble and get serious about trying to address the problem, they may still fail because a ready and affordable fix is not available. Given their remarkably fortunate history, Americans tend to think that any problem can be fixed if we just try hard enough. That was never true in the past and it isn't true today, and the real challenge remains learning how to distinguish between those situations where extra effort is likely to pay off and those where cutting one's losses makes a lot more sense.

Bread

2010-08-25T18:12:00.001+08:00

I've started out making my own bread (Or rather, Tata does the basic mixing, and I finish it off)

Bread is one of my very basic foods, and I haven't yet got it quite right, but I'm getting there slowly. It's as much a question of cosmetics as anything else.

I can get a beautiful semi baguette (like this one) or a total collapsed mess, and I don't understand yet why the same starter dough produces such different results

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back Into the Water

2010-08-25T12:58:00.001+08:00

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Note to Gaza Flotilla activists: you may be able to buy your IDF impounded laptop on Ebay if you're lucky.

Ynet has a lengthy expose in Hebrew here about the arrest of Israeli soldiers for trafficking in stolen laptops – with the high possibility that the laptops came from one of the ships of the Gaza Flotilla. If true, then "the most moral army of the world" will soon be prosecuting soldiers for stealing laptops from human rights activists. Of course, nothing new here; if you can steal from Gazans, you should be able to steal credit cards and laptops from folks who are coming to help the Gazans.

You can read a short version in Haaretz here.

Pity the poor folks in the IDF Spokesperson's office. After running around telling foreign journalists that Eden Abergil's Facebook posting was disgusting and atypical (a view not, apparently, shared by the majority of Israelis, or at least those who answer polls, in the Jerusalem Post), they now have to deal with this.

It's not easy advocating for the IDF nowadays.

Update: Captain Renault of the IDF once again reacts: "I'm shocked, shocked to find gambling going on in this establishment!" Read about it here

Update: Now the supporters and detractors of Eden Abergil are running neck-in-neck in the Jerusalem Post poll. Great going, hasbaraniks! (In fairness, the poll is open to readers outside of Israel, so presumably there are still leftwing readers outside of Israel disgusted by Edn Abergil's Facebook page.)

Islamophobia as the New Antisemitism

2010-08-25T12:57:00.002+08:00

Magnes Zionist
Thursday, August 19, 2010

Daniel Luban has written a timely and well-researched article in Tablet on what he calls, the "New Antisemitism," the anti-Islamic bigotry that is on the rise in the United States. Using the term "New Antisemitism" to describe this bigotry is much more appropriate than using it to describe anti-Zionism or anti-Israelism; the latter often have nothing to do with anti-Semitism, and when they do, it is with the old anti-Semitism. While it is true that the term "anti-Semitism" originally arose in Germany as an explanatory euphemism for anti-Judaism, the exclusion of an "alien semitic and oriental religion" goes quite nicely with current Islamophobia, although, of course, there are important and fundamental differences. (For both similarities and differences see Luban's article.)

It is a sign of the Jews making it in America that, with Islamophobia on the rise, many Jews now feel comfortable about joining their erstwhile enemies, the nativist (old) anti-Semitic bigots, in common cause against the newcomer religion. Add to this the Jewish antipathy towards Islam because of Arab attitudes towards Israel and Zionism (Jews tend to forget that prominent Arab anti-Zionists were Christian), plus the human propensity for bigotry and tribalism, and that pretty much explains Jewish Islamophobia – except that, I hasten to add, there is very real Arab and Islamic anti-Semitism out there in the world, again mostly because of Israel and Zionism. Still, it is the task of religious leaders to fight the very natural tendency of their flock to degenerate into bashing the other. I would like to think that most Jews will join the real Americans who reject all forms of religious bigotry – not merely because it politically correct to do so, or because it is our American duty, but because it is a core value.

Why, then, are so many Jews hemming and hawing about the Cordoba Center? Take it from me – it's all about Israel. When Jews, and I mean here liberal Jews, are open to religious dialogue with Christians and Muslims, they have no difficulty in respecting difference. But when it comes to Israel, they demand that the other side accept the Zionist narrative, or, at the very least, be open to accepting it. A reform rabbi in today's American may have good friends who are Christian. But how many anti-Zionist friends will she have? And given that most Muslim clerics are anti-Zionist, the Jews' insistence on their acceptance of Zionism is a bar to tolerance and real dialogue.

Let me take as an example of this insistence on Zionism a recent op-ed by Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin . Rabbi Salkin begins by commending his friends and colleagues for standing up to the anti-Islam hysteria. But he then explains why Jews are "permitted to worry" about the "man behind the mosque," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Actually, Rabbi Salkin never refers to him as "Imam Rauf" but prefers to call him, rather discourteously,"Rauf". But perhaps it is understandable that Rabbi Salkin omits the religious title because in his long piece he does not write a single word about Imam Rauf's religious doctrines, his interpretation of Islam, his views of other religions such as Judaism, or his writings on spirituality. Rabbi Salkin does not say why Imam Rauf has been called by Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee (the pre-eminent Jewish figure in ecumenical relations world-wide and the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland), "an important voice of moderation." Rather, Rabbi Salkin only discusses what Imam Rauf writes about Israel and Zionism, and makes this the litmus test of his acceptability for Jews.

And what is Imam Rauf criticized for? For "simply repeating the Palestinian narrative and saying that the Muslim world is a restricted neighborhood into which a Jewish sovereign nation-state need not apply." The Imam writes that "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is viewed in the Muslim world as being sustained by America." (One wonders whether Rabbi Salkin would have difficulty conducting a dialogue with General David Petraeus, who said something similar.)

In short, the Imam is criticized by Rabbi Salkin for not finding any room in his worldview for the Zionist narrative. He is criticized for not accepting Zionism!

I would rejoice in hearing, from his lips, an affirmation of the right of the Jewish state to exist, even in what he believes to be his Middle Eastern 'hood.

Rabbi Salkin's wish that Muslim clerics accept the Zionist claims to Israel is on a par with the traditional Christian's wish that the Jews accept the divinity of Jesus. To demand, or even wish of the other side to accept your narrative (especially when that narrative is highly controversial, and detrimental to the other side), and to make that wish a precondition for acceptance, is to place us back in the Middle Ages. If Jews can respect and tolerate Christians, and liberals can respect and tolerate conservatives, then Zionists should be able to respect and tolerate anti-Zionists, especially Muslim and Arab anti-Zionists. Not necessarily to agree with them, of course, but to respect and tolerate them. And, in any event, it is the duty of religious leaders not to make the existence of those differences a barrier to further cooperation and search for understanding – against the orthodox bigots of the world, both religious and secular.

I am sure that there are many stands taken by the orthodox rabbinate (such as the validity of reform conversions) that may make a liberal rabbi uncomfortable. But would Rabbi Salkin write an op-ed saying why reform Jews are "permitted to worry" when an orthodox rabbi comes to town?

On one point I will agree with Rabbi Salkin. The Imam is wrong in repeating the myth of the rosiness of Jewish life under Islam, a myth that incidentally was embraced by Jewish orientalists in the nineteenth century. But the Imam is right to say that the growth and success of political Zionism was most responsible for the deteriorating relations between Jews and Arabs (and Muslims, most of whom are not Arab). And the Imam is also right to say that many Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians, even with their dhimmi status (attenuated often in the modern era) were more acculturated in their surroundings, and felt more at home there, than, say, many Jews of Eastern Europe.

In any event, one does not look to rabbis or imams for historical accuracy. And Lord help us if we look to them for political analysis. Some of us continue to look to them for ethical and spiritual guidance, despite recurring disappointment in that department.

Do Jews have to "worry" about the thought of Imam Rauf? Maybe because I live in Israel, and because I see how some orthodox rabbis, both modern and ultra-, are able to relate to Muslim clerics who are not Zionists, I don't share the fears that an American rabbi like Rabbi Salkin has. I also see other orthodox rabbis writing things in the name of Judaism more worrisome for Jews than anything that Imam Rauf has ever written.

It would be better for Rabbi Salkin simply to agree to disagree with Imam Rauf about Zionism – and not make Imam Rauf's support of the Palestinian narrative any more a cause to worry than his support of the Islamic narrative. And, when he reads the Imam's book on Islam, he should not be sensitive only to what he has to say about Israel and Palestine.

Surely someone who urges Jews to "put God on the guest list" at their bar/bat mitzvah would not exclude a priori from his spiritual fellowship opponents of the Zionist enterprise, whether they be Jews or non-Jews.

Start Out Yet Again

2010-08-25T03:28:00.001+08:00

I'm starting out yet again on my 'Paradise Island' blog; about life in a small tropical paradise.

It's a great place, but with one major problem; Food.

Filipino cooking is terrible. It is almost worse than Nigerian food.

So the next few posts will be about what you can do with simple Filipino ingredients

First they came for the Muslims; then they came for the Roma…

2010-08-24T19:55:00.003+08:00

One would have thought it was too soon for France to forget its Vichy past.

After destroying their homes and giving them $383, France is flying 700 Roma people to Romania and Bulgaria. The government has been dismantling Roma settlements, saying they were havens for illegal trafficking, child exploitation, begging and prostitution. But Romania’s foreign minister says he’s worried France’s action is creating xenophobia. Al Jazeera’s Estelle Youssouffa looks at the man leading the French drive for security and public order.

Could the U.S. mission in Afghanistan fall apart simply because of bad translation?

2010-08-24T17:29:00.004+08:00

BY NEIL SHEA
AUGUST 23, 2010

The effect of bad translators on the Afghan mission is difficult to estimate -- but I believe that it's vast. Terps have a different stake from the Americans in the outcome of the war, and by definition they're working with people who can't understand half the things they say, meaning that there's no accountability if they're translating an English message into something totally different. I once asked the lieutenant colonel in charge of the Korengal Valley how many messages he thought were lost this way. I wagered that at least 40 percent of his troops' words were not getting through to Afghans. He thought it was more like 50 percent. At the time, January 2010, his soldiers were literally delivering U.S. President Barack Obama's new strategic message to Afghans. I watched them announce that the United States would soon begin withdrawal and that Afghans needed to take responsibility for their own future. If half that message were lost in translation, which half would you want it to be?
In another Restrepo scene, Captain Kearney tries to explain to a group of Korengali elders that he is not like the captain who preceded him; that he, Kearney, will do things differently, kill fewer civilians, and bring wealth and jobs and progress. He says he wants a "clean slate." That Christmas list of opportunities may or may not have been important to the Korengalis; that's a story for another time. But how did "clean slate" translate to men who remember insults for decades, in a land where grudges weave through generations? What did the terp actually say to the elders?

Whatever he told them, Kearney never won his fresh start. Before dialogue could be reset, the killing intensified, covering the slate again with blood, as Restrepo shows. American troops withdrew from the Korengal valley this spring.

Last December, I went on many foot patrols in the valleys along the Korengal as Americans traveled village to village bringing pieces of Obama's message. One day, high on a mountainside, I listened to a young lieutenant explain to a toothless elder that he needed to take a stand against the Taliban.

"You are a citizen of Afghanistan," the lieutenant said. "This nation is your responsibility." He was tense, already expecting a Taliban attack. Another lieutenant chimed in: "You need to form something like, you know, a neighborhood watch."

The terp looked at both officers, then said something to the old man, who merely stared at them. Later I asked the terp if he knew what the word "nation" meant.

"It's, it's ..." Then he shrugged and smiled and gave up. Maybe he just couldn't define it. I'm sure he had no idea what the words "neighborhood watch" meant.

I imagined this scene replicating like a virus through the countryside, through the hundreds of small units operating in the mountains, on the plains. Occasionally I asked the soldiers how they believed their messages would ever take hold. The standard answer was that it was all about "repetition, repetition, repetition." Say it enough times and the Afghans will get it. That might work. But if no one understands the words, the Americans will simply be bludgeoning the Afghans with noise.

US Pulls Protection From Pakistan Floods - Shades of Katrina!

2010-08-24T16:39:00.002+08:00

US diverts floodwater on town to protect airbase in Pakistan, refuses use for relief operations
by The Asian Human Rights Commission

PAKISTAN: Minister tasked with saving US airbase at the cost of the displacement of thousands

The presence of Pakistan army personnel speaks to the fact that the breach of Jamali bypass was intentional and ordered from above.

It has been reported earlier that the US Air Force has denied the relief agencies use of the Shahbaz airbase for the distribution of aid and assistance. Soldiers of the Pakistan army, a federal minister and the administration of Sindh province are blamed for the incident involving Shahbaz Airbase at Jacobabad district in Sindh province in which it has been reported that flood waters were diverted in order to save the airbase. The diversion of the floodwaters is blamed for inundating hundreds of houses and the displacement of 800,000 people. According to the media reports, the Federal Minister of Sports along with soldiers from the army and a contingent of officials from the Sindh provincial government breached the Jamali Bypass in Jafferabad district of Balochistan province during the night between August 13 and 14 to divert the water entering the airbase which has remained in US Air Force hands since the war on terror started in 2001.

Mr. Ejaz Jakhrani, the Minister of Sports, while explaining the situation to the media said that if the water was not diverted the Shahbaz Airbase would have been inundated. Mr. Jakhrani himself was present along with the district coordination officer of the Jacobabad district, district police officer and other officials when the breach was made. It is reported in the media that Mr. Jakhrani was assigned to protect the air base by officials at the Pakistan army’s headquarter as he was elected from Jacobabad district.

A former prime minister, Mr. Mir Zafar Ullah Khan Jamali said that in order to save Shahbaz Air Base, Jamali bypass was demolished and the town of Dera Allahyar was drowned. Mr. Jamali said that if the airbase was so important, then what priority might be given to the citizens. He blamed minister Jakhrani, DPO and DCO Jacobabad for deliberately diverting the course of the floodwaters towards Balochistan.

In the meantime, during the discussion in the standing committee of the Senate the federal secretary of health has revealed that health relief operations are not possible in the flood-affected areas of Jacobabad because the airbase is under the control of the US Air Force. The coordinator of the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Centre, Dr Jahanzeb Aurakzai, told the committee that foreign health teams could not start relief operations in remote areas because there are no airstrips close to several areas, including Jacobabad.

The electronic media has also reported that since 2001 the government of Pakistan, during the regime of general Musharraf, turned over Shahbaz Airport to US forces fighting against terrorism on a lease so it the responsibility of the government and the Pakistan armed forces to protect the agreement done in favour of US forces. The discussions in the media have also pointed out that the presence of army soldiers during the breach of Jamali bypass is a clear indication that the Pakistan army has been ordered to save the airbase from the floodwaters.

In the end, after the seven days of controversy surrounding the air base, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) said that the Shahbaz Airbase was under the complete operational control of the PAF and brushed aside reports that floodwaters had been diverted to save the base. Air Vice Marshal, Mr. Abdul Quddus, hurriedly arranged a visit of journalists to Shahbaz Airbase and asked them as to whether they could see any Americans? He told journalists that there are no drones and no Americans; seeing, he said, is believing!

However, there was no reasonable answer to the question raised that when almost the whole of Jacobabad district of Sindh and its adjoining district of Jafferabad of Balochistan province were under floodwaters why the airbase was not affected. This could only be due to the intentional breach of the Jamali bypass. The media was also very critical of the arrangement of the visit to Shahbaz airbase at a time when much more attention is needed to focus all efforts for the relief of the affected people. The visit by the journalists has been seen as a scripted stage play as when journalists were present a C130 cargo plane landed with 200 tons of relief goods which the people of that particular affected area badly needed. Such a plane has not been seen landing there in recent times so this was too much of a coincidence.

The federal minister and former prime minister have not retracted their statements that the floodwater was intentionally diverted to Dera Allahyar, Balochistan to save the air base.

There is rough estimation by the media about the displacement of 800,000 people by the divergence of the waters to the poorer areas. Over 150,000 people have been evacuated from Dera Allahyar and other areas. 350,000 people of Jafferabad district have been shifted to Dera Murad Jamali, Sibi and Quetta, parts of Balochistan, and over 300,000 people had earlier moved to Dera Murad Jamali and Sibi from the Sindh province particularly from Jacobabad.

There can be no doubt that the presence of the Pakistan army personnel at the breach of Jamali bypass indicates the fact that this was an intentional breach. This must be investigated along in order to ascertain who gave the orders. Those giving the orders must be prosecuted. The government of Pakistan must also probe the allegations of deliberate breaches; not only in the incident involving Shahbaz airbase but also those reported earlier where the agricultural lands belonging to senior ministers was protected from the floodwaters also by intentional breaches.

It is a gross contradiction that the United States of America is now one of the biggest donors of relief to Pakistan and it is therefore unacceptable that they are allegedly refusing permission to use Shahbaz airbase for the distribution of that relief.

NB: Also see this earlier AHRC statement asking the US government to allow the airbase to be used for relief operations.

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/20-Aug-2010/Who-really-controls-Shahbaz-Air-Base

Light For Another Monday

2010-08-23T16:08:00.000+08:00

A man and his ever-nagging wife went on vacation to Jerusalem.
While they were there, the wife passed away. The undertaker told the husband, "You can have her shipped home for $5,000, or you can bury her here, in the Holy Land , for $150."
The man thought about it and told him he would just have her shipped home.
The undertaker asked, "Why would you spend $5,000 to ship your wife home, when it would be wonderful to be buried here and you would spend only $150?"
The man replied, "Long ago a man died here, was buried here, and three days later he rose from the dead. I just can't take that chance".
http://www.flintstories.com/short_funny_stories/anecdotes.php?npage=71

Last of the Combat Troops Leaving Iraq? – Only in your Dreams

2010-08-21T15:13:00.001+08:00

Attention 101
Bill Noxid

Watching MSNBC’s coverage of ‘the last combat troops leaving Iraq’ for 3 hours reminded of a few brutal realities that still plague this country and this planet. The first being just how far this country remains from any semblance of reality. It’s the kind of delusional denial that truly can only be believed when witnessed from within. As Keith Olbermann was describing the cinematic quality of the “Strykers driving into your living room,” I could really think of only one thing – The aftermath of a 7.5 year all out United States operation to decimate a people and their society.

There’s no way to comprehend the scope and facets of this operation, because you would need a Pentagon for that. From the first day after initial conquest when the money disappeared from the banks and their record of civilization was decimated by the looting of their museums, it was like any other colonial conquest in history, except every excruciating moment of this one was on television. The following 7.5 years of the assimilation of a country went as diagrammed.

From control (denial) of power, water, and even seed monopolization, to toxic contamination of the gene pool and re-education ‘schools,’ to monopolization of natural resources, to fostering drug addictions and self-perpetuating violence, etc., what took a hundred years to do to Native Americans was accomplished in under a decade. Quite an example of lessons learned from hundreds of years of colonization.

And in the name of all that is Holy, please do not delude yourself into believing this war is over. 50,000 troops will remain, an ‘unknowable’ number of contractors / mercenaries, and an embassy that makes the Vatican look like the summer home will remain. Certainly, the colonization of Iraq was one of the fastest and most efficient in history. It also needs to be the last.

So there are no delusions of the reality we have left for the Iraqi people, please watch the short videos below. Then, while you’re sitting with your family watching the MSM pundits debate whether the war was ‘worth it’ or not, think about how long you could survive the kind of ‘Freedom’ we have heaped on the Iraqis. Face the reality, and forget the cinema.

1.5M Iraqi War Widows: http://ow.ly/2rBGR
The poisoning of Iraq: http://ow.ly/2rBJv
Iraq – Unknown Illness Spreads: http://ow.ly/2rF0K
Iraq – Another little girl’s house gone: http://ow.ly/2rEYX
Still no electricity in Baghdad: http://ow.ly/2rBJM

Bill Noxid http://billnoxid.wordpress.com/ Twitter http://twitter.com/attentionalert
Buzzflash: http://ow.ly/2sqih
Infowars: http://ow.ly/2slJ2
Prison Planet: http://ow.ly/2sqnc
South Lebanon: http://ow.ly/2sqx4
Information Clearing House: http://ow.ly/2sqHV
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RT @buzzflash Last of the Combat Troops Leaving Iraq? – Only in your Dreams: Bill Noxid http://ow.ly/2s7Kb #P2 #P2b @MSNBC 1 day ago

FOX creates the ignorant, @MSNBC & @CNN poll them, and you're surprised half the sheeple think he's from Mars? #P2 #P2b 1 day ago

These aren't polls, they are advertising focus groups. How do you 'journalists' not know this? #P2 #P2b @MSNBC @Park51 1 day ago

These 'polls' don't gauge reality. They gauge how many people believe misinformation. #P2 #P2b @MSNBC @Park51 1 day ago

The Community Center isn't an insult to 9/11 victims. This controversy is an insult to intelligence. #P2 #P2b @MSNBC @Park51 1 day ago

Stop flashing those polls of the ignorant like they matter. New York community voted IN FAVOR. #P2 #P2b @MSNBC @Park51 1 day ago

Last of the Combat Troops Leaving Iraq? - Only in your Dreams: Bill Noxid http://ow.ly/2rOTk @chucktodd @savannahguthrie #Iraq 1 day ago

Hamas must rebrand and take the wind out of Israel's and America's sails

2010-08-21T12:42:00.004+08:00

Stuart Littlewood*
Sabbah Report
http://www.sabbah.biz/

In the five years since I became interested in the Palestinians, only two things of positive note have happened in the occupied territories.

The Palestinians held full and fair elections in 2006 to establish themselves as a democracy – and much good it did them.

And in Gaza these amazing people have resolutely survived a vicious land and sea blockade imposed by Israel and aided and abetted by the Western powers as soon as those elections put Hamas into government. They have resisted almost daily air strikes and armed intrusions for four years and courageously withstood the cowardly Israeli blitzkrieg of 20 months ago.
And during all that time they have endured unending barbarity and betrayal, which would have brought a lesser nation to its knees. They have come through.

I often wonder if the British could have clung on through the London blitz, which my family lived under, if they’d had nothing to fight with and nowhere to run and, in addition, they’d had to contend with Nazi tanks in the streets, thousands of checkpoints, Nazi rifle butts smashing down their front doors, and the foul stench of Nazi stormtroopers in their jackboots ransacking their homes and dragging off family members.

Palestinians have been put through that sort of mangle for decades. Death and misery still stalk their daily lives thanks to piss-poor Palestinian leadership and the international community’s moral bankruptcy.

When Palestinians elected Hamas, sore losers Fatah set out to cause maximum trouble. The relentless pressures of occupation and bribery succeed in causing internal divisions and self-destruction. When an attempted coup was beaten off there were claims that Hamas “seized control” when it simply acted to enforce its legitimate authority.

With Palestine’s internal squabbles continuing – even now – Yasser Arafat would be spinning under his mausoleum slab if he could see the depths to which his party has sunk
Meanwhile, Israel’s propaganda machine, unchallenged, churns out the lies that Western politicians and Western media feed on and broadcast in order to sustain the racist entity.

“Impossible to reach agreement with Israel”

Khalid Amayreh, writing in Desert Peace, describes how the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas is being pressed yet again by Washington to resume “seemingly futile” peace talks, .&
while two of Fatah’s veteran heavyweights speak out against any more concessions to the Obama administration.

Ahmed Qurei, a one-time aide to Arafat and a former prime minister of the PA, argued that, in view of Israel’s refusal to give up the spoils of the 1967 war, it was pointless to keep talking just for the sake of it. Nineteen years of talks had achieved nothing. “It seems utterly impossible to reach an agreement with Israel. Therefore, the Palestinian people must seek alternatives… Israel is not willing to end its occupation and allow for the creation of a viable Palestinian state.”

He didn’t say what the “alternatives” might be, which is a little unhelpful.

At the same time Nabil Amr, former Palestine Liberation Organization ambassador in Cairo, condemned the Abbas leadership as “vacillating, inconsistent, and unable to withstand external pressure”. He also had harsh words for “the mantra of American pressure”, which was designed to push the Palestinian people into submission or capitulation. “There are those among us who are trying to portray American pressure as if it were expedient to our interests,” said Amr. Actually, Obama is no friend. He has become a coercer, even a bully, while Netanyahu is given a free hand to dictate the rules of the game.

OK, so not all Fatah people are useless.

But there’s a gaping hole at the heart of the Palestinian Authority’s battered credibility – quite apart from a sickening lack of integrity. It’s their failure to understand that the war of words, if conducted effectively, is more important than the war of bullets. Israeli spin doctor Mark Regev and his team of lie-mongers would be easy meat for a Palestinian media outfit that was properly trained, alert and reasonably well resourced.

Alas, the Palestinian Authority refuses to gear up to meet the challenge. So the Israelis run rings round their victim – though not as much as they used to. The Zionist regime’s “crapaganda” effort has been significantly blunted not by the Palestinian Authority, which remains paralytic, but the actions of student groups and other pro-Palestinian activists around the world, who are beginning to put the Israelis in their place.

It is hugely disappointing to friends and supporters that Ramallah’s hot-shots have failed to put a coherent message across, supposing they actually had one. When I was writing my book (in 2006) I tried several times through London and Ramallah to arrange a meeting with Fatah bosses. They wouldn’t even give me the time of day. They simply didn’t care about communicating with the outside world. So I joined the growing multitude who wrote them off as a waste of space. Their antics since then have confirmed my assessment.

It is vitally important for Palestinian embassies in London and other key capitals to become a ready source of newsworthy material, and to proactively set the news agenda with spokespeople speaking clear and faultless English. Until this happens it will not be possible to engage the interest of mainstream media, and Palestinians will continue to lose the propaganda battle even though truth and justice are on their side.

Yes, we all know the British media are biased. But editors say they receive press releases from the London embassy “once in a blue moon”, while the Israelis take the initiative on the news front and fall over backwards to make a reporter’s life easy.

“We are not trained like the Israelis,” I heard one senior PA man say. Exactly. That’s the problem. The PA was offered media skills training some four years ago and turned it down. There may be murky reasons. It has been suggested that the PA, in its game of “footsie” with the US, was made to promise not to embarrass Israel publicly. This has given rise to suspicions that Palestinian ambassadors around the world are gagged by the regime in Ramallah and prevented from crossing swords with their blood-thirsty opponents. Why else would headquarters have left its London office, in particular, so woefully lacking in the skills and resources needed to make a proper impact at this important time?

I don’t believe they are batting for Palestine at all. But that’s just a personal opinion.

The wreckage of Gaza, the great suffering and the day-to-day air-strikes against its civilians – these ongoing crimes are allowed to be lost in the smoke and mirrors of Netanyahu’s scheme to divert attention towards Iran.

Netanyahu briefs Western journalists on his outrageous programme of conquest, implying that Palestinians must accept settlements declared illegal under international law and insisting that Israeli “sovereignty” over Jerusalem cannot be questioned. The PA’s media experts – if they had any – could make mincemeat of Israel’s preposterous claims and reframe the occupation in a way that told the world the truth.

“A house divided cannot stand”

Ordinary working people from countries far away, who put their hands in their own pockets and bravely drove with Free-Gaza convoys or sailed with mercy-mission ships, have done far more for the Palestinian cause than the internationally-funded, natty-suited poseurs who have no democratic mandate but strut the international stage achieving – well, achieving what?

Fatah have done themselves (and others) irreparable damage. They have shot their bolt. How will they command respect in the foreseeable future?

Meanwhile, it is four-and-a-half years since the fateful day Hamas was elected to power. They may have been surprised and unprepared then, but there is no excuse for squandering such a heaven-sent opportunity now. If, as the Islamic resistance movement has said before, it is prepared to accept the reality of Israel behind the internationally-recognized pre-1967 borders, its much criticized Charter no longer has a place in Hamas diplomacy. Why hasn’t it been consigned to the wastepaper basket of Palestinian history and replaced with something more constructive?

Hamas must do (within chosen limits, of course) whatever it takes to abolish its sinister image and make the rest of the world feel comfortable. It must erase its ‘terrorist’ reputation, whether justified or not.

It must remove obstacles to cooperation. It must take the wind out of Israel’s and America’s sails. In short, it must reinvent itself as a matter of urgency.

It must re-brand, open the door and make itself more approachable.

This wouldn’t be difficult. Hamas’s government team are well educated and competent. They have been tested like no other. Some are described as hardliners but they are not generally seen as Islamic extremists, and I heard no serious complaints from the Christian community when I was there. There is every reason to believe that the tradition of getting along together is still cherished despite the best efforts of “Christian” warmongers of the West to drive a wedge between Muslim and Christian.

It seems to me that if Western politicians can enthusiastically hobnob with rabid Zionists, ignore their war crimes and persistent lawlessness, and even wave the Israeli flag for them back in London and Washington, they should find it perfectly agreeable to sit down with not-so-rabid Islamists.

But how do we get to that point?

Two years ago a Palestine strategy group produced a report called “Regaining the Initiative – Palestinian Strategic Options to End Israeli Occupation” (PDF). Besides reminding Palestinians what their strategic objectives should be, it urged them “to seize their destiny in their own hands” by refusing to enter into peace negotiations unless the international community dealt first with issues relating to national self-determination, liberation from occupation, individual and collective rights, and enforcement of international law.

Only when these priorities were met could peacemaking and state-building begin.

First things first, right?

Secondly it spelled out the need for national unity. “A house divided against itself cannot stand… Palestinian strategic action is impossible if the Palestinian nation is unable to speak with one voice or to act with one will.”

Right again. Well-wishers like me shake their heads in disbelief at the ongoing disunity.

The report, which was funded by the EU, concluded by saying:

What Palestinians must be prepared to undertake is nothing less than a final and conclusive strategic battle with Israel… The main conclusion of the strategic review conducted by the Palestine Strategy Study Group is that Palestinians have more strategic cards than they think – and Israel has fewer.

If that’s the case, the authors might consider turning their report into a fully-fledged action plan taking into account what has happened in the last two years and what might happen next if the paralysis continues, and making it a working document for the international community as well as the PA and Hamas to study.

Perhaps they have already done so.

But whoever rules in Palestine will never win any battles with Israel or the US without a proper media set-up and an effective communications strategy.

Obama's pledge to close down Guantanamo is 'not even close'

2010-08-21T11:09:00.001+08:00

By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Thursday, 19 August 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/

Barack Obama's pledge to shut down Guantanamo Bay will not be honoured until at least a year after the President's self-imposed deadline – and may not be completed in his first administration.

The man in charge of the seven prison camps at the US naval base in Cuba is yet to receive direct orders to begin the transfer of prisoners so he can close the detention facilities.

In his first media interview since taking up the post three months ago, Admiral Jeffrey Harbeson said that even if President Obama implemented his order today it would take him six months to complete the job, a year after the January 2010 deadline imposed by the President when he signed the executive order in 2009.

The stalled timetable reflects growing opposition from the US public, and Congress, to the transfer of prisoners to the US mainland. Plans to move the bulk of the 176 detainees to a specially built maximum security prison close to Chicago have run into fierce local and national opposition, while Congress has also blocked the allocation of more money to build new facilities.

Criminal trials for the Guantanamo detainees accused of crimes linked to the September 11 attacks have also ground to a halt over arguments about what process the suspects should face. There is also little international enthusiasm for a settlement involving the transfer of the bulk of the remaining detainees, from 30 different countries, to new locations around the world.

Admiral Harbeson, the 10th commander of the camps since they were opened in January 2002, told The Independent that as a "ball-park figure" it would take his Guard Force six months to close Guantanamo. Asked if he had received an instruction to implement President Obama's order, he replied: "No."

On the closure operation he added: "Any movement of the detainees that we do will mean there are a lot of folks who go with them to ensure safety and security – [that means] medical personnel, regular security and interpreters. That's the tail...."

He continued: "Once you do that, [and] the detainees are safely transported to different locations, then you come back to the infrastructure and the security aspect and the personnel who are here, turning off the lights, turning off the power..."

The camps themselves are protected by a court order which means that after Guantanamo is closed the infrastructure must be maintained as evidence in ongoing legal action being brought by detainees against the US government.

Admiral Harbeson, who took up his year-long post in June, also admitted that the CIA has dramatically scaled down its interrogation operations at Guantanamo Bay and now only interviews al-Qa'ida and Taliban suspects who volunteer to speak to its agents.

The US intelligence-gathering operation is now restricted to monitoring the mail sent in and out of the camps, but the Admiral insists there is still intelligence to be gleaned from the detainees. "These individuals were picked up on the battlefield and belong to various organisations, so they still communicate through mail and phone calls," he says.

Despite this, living conditions in the camps have greatly improved since the detainees were held in the cages of Camp X-Ray in the early months of 2002, Admiral Harbeson added.

The international focus on Guantanamo remains fixed on President Obama's promise to close the camps. In October last year Admiral Harbeson's predecessor, Admiral Tom Copeman, said that he could close down Guantanamo by January this year. He added that a "substantial number" of the then 223 detainees were "still hoping" they would be repatriated to their respective home countries.

But his replacement says the closure of the base is not his chief concern and that he doesn't necessarily want to be remembered as the man who closed Guantanamo.

While politicians on Capitol Hill worry about how to put the Guantanamo genie back in the bottle, Admiral Harbeson said his focus is the detainees, the majority of whom have been held for eight years without charge or trial. "My mission is to make sure that those individuals are treated humanely, [that we are] legal and transparent in everything we do and that they are held in common with article three of the US Constitution [which governs the judiciary]."

America Cannot Go to War for Israel

2010-08-21T09:41:00.001+08:00

Ahmed Moor Huffington Post August 18, 2010

The mongrel dogs of war are foaming at the bit. For years they've cowered in their damp trenches, bristling in the heat. But they're back now. They've gathered their sagging flesh and cast their milky, crusty eyes at Iran. The mongrel dogs of war are planning another war.

The Zionists Benjamin Netanyahu, Jeffrey Goldberg and George Will want young American men and women to attack Iran on behalf of Israel. These are the same men who wanted young American men to attack Iraq. But Iran is not Iraq, and many thousands of Americans will die in the next war. This will not be a cakewalk or a slam dunk. And no enwreathed children will greet Americans in the streets with lily-white flower petals.

There are thousands of Americans stranded in Iraq and Afghanistan, two states that share long and porous borders with Iran. It's foolish to think that if America attacks Iran, those American troops will emerge from the carnage unscathed. Iran is in no position to engage America in a conventional war, but that doesn't mean that it can't spill much American blood.

Mahan Abedin -- a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government -- explains what a Zionist-propelled American war on Iran may entail:

The range of predictable responses available to the IRGC high command include dramatic hit and run attacks against military and commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf, the use of mid-range ballistic missiles against American bases in the region and Israel and a direct assault on American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. All these options are likely to be used within 48 hours of the start of hostilities...

What is less predictable is the response of the IRGC Qods Force, which is likely to be at the forefront of the Pasdaran's counter-attack. One possible response by the Qods force is spectacular terrorist-style attacks against American intelligence bases and assets throughout the region. The IRGC Qods Force is believed to have identified every key component of the American intelligence apparatus in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan...

The IRGC navy will also play a key asymmetrical role in the conflict by organising maritime suicide bombings on an industrial scale. By manning its fleet of speedboats with suicide bombers and ramming them into American warships and even neutral commercial shipping, the Pasdaran will hope to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly 40 percent of world crude oil supplies pass...

The combination of these asymmetrical forms of warfare with more conventional style missile and even ground force attacks on American bases in the region will likely result in thousands of American military casualties in the space of a few weeks. The IRGC has both the will and wherewithal to inflict a level of casualties on American armed forces not seen since the Second World War...

Benjamin Netanyahu is a dangerously delusional man. His mind is encumbered by a fixation on the holocaust and Hitler. He zealously reanimates Hitler at every opportunity, thrusting him onto real world objects. Hiter is among us, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is his present day incarnation, or worse. That's how the Israeli Prime Minister can say the following, to an audience suffering from the same affliction:

"Hitler went out on a world campaign first, and then tried to get nuclear weapons. Iran is trying to get nuclear arms first. Therefore from that perspective, it is much more dangerous."

This is Benjamin Netanyahu's opportunity to kill Hitler.

It's a truism that old men declare wars, and young men die in them. George Will will never die in a war. And while Jeffrey Goldberg was a corporal in the Israeli army, he's too old to enlist in the American army now (although he appears to be a reservist in the Israeli army). Despite that, all Americans will feel the sting of war. Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed to the dismal economic reality in America today. A war on Iran will bankrupt the country.

America must not attack Iran; it also has an obligation to forestall an Israeli attack. The UK's Sunday Times reported that the Israelis may use nuclear weapons against Iran. This will be the first time nuclear weapons have been used since 1945. The wars on Lebanon and Gaza in 2006 and 2008, respectively, and the flotilla murders demonstrate the irrationality of the Israeli leadership. The Israelis must be disarmed before they strike Iran with nuclear weapons. The hypocrisy has gone on for long enough.

We have a responsibility to stop this hysterical march to war. Iran does not pose any threat to America. The men pushing this war lied to us about Iraq, and they're lying now about Iran. The warmongers and profiteers must be forced back into their kennels. They must be discredited and shamed. America cannot fight another war built on lies. America cannot afford another war for Israel.

Don't fall for the direct-talk hype: The 'peace process' is still going nowhere

2010-08-21T09:22:00.000+08:00

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Friday, August 20, 2010 - 1:36 PM

If you think today's announcement that the Israelis and Palestinians are going to resume "direct talks" is a significant breakthrough, you haven't been paying attention for the past two decades (at least). I wish I could be more optimistic about this latest development, but I see little evidence that a meaningful deal is in the offing.

Why do I say this? Three reasons.

1. There is no sign that the Palestinians are willing to accept less than a viable, territorially contiguous state in the West Bank (and eventually, Gaza), including a capital in East Jerusalem and some sort of political formula (i.e., fig-leaf) on the refugee issue. By the way, this outcome supposedly what the Clinton and Bush adminstrations favored, and what Obama supposedly supports as well.

2. There is no sign that Israel's government is willing to accept anything more than a symbolic Palestinian "state" consisting of a set of disconnected Bantustans, with Israel in full control of the borders, air space, water supplies, electromagnetic spectrum. etc. Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear that this is what he means by a "two-state solution," and he has repeatedly declared that Israel intends to keep all of Jerusalem and maybe a long-term military presence in the Jordan River valley. There are now roughly 500,000 Israeli Jews living outside the 1967 borders, and it is hard to imagine any Israeli government evacuating a significant fraction of them. Even if Netanyahu wanted to be more forthcoming, his coalition wouldn't let him make any meaningful concessions. And while the talks drag on, the illegal settlements will continue to expand.

3. There is no sign that the U.S. government is willing to put meaningful pressure on Israel. We're clearly willing to twist Mahmoud Abbas' arm to the breaking point (which is why he's agreed to talks, even as Israel continues to nibble away at the territory of the future Palestinian state), but Obama and his Middle East team have long since abandoned any pretense of bringing even modest pressure to bear on Netanyahu. Absent that, why should anyone expect Bibi to change his position?

So don't fall for the hype that this announcement constitutes some sort of meaningful advance in the "peace process." George Mitchell and his team probably believe they are getting somewhere, but they are either deluding themselves, trying to fool us, or trying to hoodwink other Arab states into believing that Obama meant what he said in Cairo. At this point, I rather doubt that anyone is buying, and the only thing that will convince onlookers that U.S. policy has changed will be tangible results. Another round of inconclusive "talks" will just reinforce the growing perception that the United States cannot deliver.

The one item in all this that does give me pause is the accompanying statement by the Middle East Quartet (the United States, Russia, the EU and the U.N.), which appears at first glance to have some modest teeth in it. Among other things, it calls explicitly for "a settlement, negotiated between the parties, that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors." It also says these talks can be completed within one year. Sounds promising, but the Quartet has issued similar proclamations before (notably the 2003 "Roadmap"), and these efforts led precisely nowhere. So maybe there's a ray of hope in there somewhere, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Meanwhile, both Democrats and Republicans here in the United States will continue to make pious statements about their commitment to a two-state solution, even as it fades further and further into the realm of impossibility. Barring a miracle, we will eventually have to recognize that "two-states for two peoples" has become a pipe-dream. At that point, U.S. leaders will face a very awkward choice: they can support a democratic Israel where Jews and Arabs have equal political rights (i.e., a one-state democracy similar to the United States, where discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity is taboo), or they can support an apartheid state whose basic institutions are fundamentally at odds with core American values.

Equally important, an apartheid Israel will face growing international censure, and as both former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak have warned, such an outcome would place Israel's own long-term future in doubt. If that happens, all those staunch "friends of Israel" who have hamstrung U.S. diplomacy for decades can explain to their grandchildren how they let that happen.

As for the Obama administration itself, I have only one comment. If you think I'm being too gloomy, then do the world a favor and prove me wrong. If you do, I'll be the first to admit it.

What We Can Learn: An Excerpt from Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?

2010-08-20T09:14:00.001+08:00

How Europe builds better products for better lives.
By Thomas Geoghegan

It's no accident that the social democracies—Sweden, France and Germany, who kept on paying high wages—now have more industry than the United States or the
Americans may believe the United States is set up for the middle class, and Europe is set up for the bourgeois. Or let’s put it this way: America is a great place to buy kitty litter at Wal-Mart and relatively cheap gas. But it is not designed for me, a professional without a lot of money. That’s who Europe is for: people like me.

OK, as a union-side lawyer, Europe’s really set up for people like my clients, or those who used to be my clients before the unions in America collapsed. Let’s put my own self-interest aside: Where would my clients, who are not poor, who make $30,000 to $50,000 a year and yet keep coming up short, maybe by $100, $200 a month, really be better off?

That’s easy: Europe. I can answer that as their lawyer, the way a doctor could answer about their health. The bottom two-thirds of America would be better off in Europe. I mean the people who have not had a raise (an hourly raise in real dollars) in maybe 40 years, and who do not even have a 401(k), nothing but Social Security, and either have no health insurance or pay deductibles of $2,000 or more. Sure, they’d be better off in Europe. When unemployed, they’d certainly be better off in Europe. Over there, even single men can get on welfare. And in much of Europe, contrary to what we hear, unemployment is much lower than over here.

One of the ways Europe is set up for the bourgeois — including, perhaps, many readers of this magazine — is the very fact that it is also set up for people who make $50,000 or below. Since it’s set up for these people too, the bourgeois — me, maybe you — get the political cover to have it set up for them. What the people-in-the-unions get, people-from-the-good-schools also get. (And indeed, in Europe people-in-the-unions are often people-from-the-good-schools.) They get the six weeks of vacation each year and the pension like a golden parachute. And the higher up we are in terms of income, the more valuable these things are. In America, they don’t tell us: Social democracy, or socialism, or whatever Europe has, pays off biggest for people in the upper middle class, those just below the top.

Take Zurich and Chicago. One looks good and the other, broken down. If America has such a famously high GDP per capita and Chicago is one of America’s crown jewels, maybe there is something wrong with using GDP per capita as an index of social well-being. It’s not that the numbers “lie” in any crude way, but past a certain point, maybe these numbers mislead us as to where we’re better off. For to look at the numbers, who would guess that Zurich looks gloriously like Zurich all over, and that Chicago looks glorious in Lincoln Park, dumpy west of Pulaski Avenue, and gulag-like by 26th and California? But forget the look of the place. It’s also the way of life.

The numbers say, on paper, I have a better way of life in Chicago. But are these numbers right? It may be that, past a certain level, an increase in GDP per capita pushes my living standard down. I don’t mean this in a spiritual sense — I mean it in a cold, neutral, out-of-pocket sense. Example: If I make more by working longer, I might subcontract out more of my life and incur other “costs,” like losing a trip to Zurich, which may be of far more value than the extra income. Or another example: If I get a raise, I might be worse off. I might widen the gap in income with others around me. Who cares? Well, by doing this, I might be spreading poverty, which, like everything, is relative. I might make my public space more of a hellhole than before.

People at the libertarian Cato Institute love to scoff: “Oh, our poor in America are so well off in GDP per capita.” Go ahead. Argue. I’ll let you win. But I dare the Cato types, when the argument is over, to go outside and walk around some Chicago neighborhoods.

In other words, the further ahead we get, the more our standard of living drops. Let’s say, as a European, I work 1,500 hours a year. Now, let’s put me at 1,800 or even 2,300 hours, like many Americans. While I’ve moved to higher GDP per capita, I don’t have:
• Six weeks off.
• A perfect cup of coffee to sip at some place other than the office.
• A city to inhale like a bank of violets.
In 2005, the real hourly wage for production workers in America was approximately 8 percent lower than it was in 1973, while our national output (productivity) per hour is 55 percent higher. So it’s dubious whether most Americans have gained even a penny in purchasing power since 1989. And even skewed by all this U.S-type inequality, we understate what Europeans at the “middling” level are able to get for free, i.e., publicly provided goods like education, healthcare, cities like banks of violets. Even apart from the grotesque U.S. social inequality, the net purchasing power disparity after we toss in the public goods is not so great.

Or maybe I mean this: Europe has a kind of invisible GDP, which we don’t know how to count. The ambitious European who might want to work 2,300 hours may be the luckiest to escape his or her fate under the U.S. model. When that person has 700 more hours a year, to learn an extra language, to go to Sri Lanka, or just to read, it’s that high achiever who may be best off under the European model.

It’s no accident that the social democracies — Sweden, France and Germany, who kept on paying high wages — now have more industry than the United States or the UK. During the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, the Anglo-Americans, the neoliberals, The Economist crowd, and the press generally, would taunt the social democrats in Europe: “You’d better break the unions.” That’s the way to save your industry.

Indeed, that’s what the United States and the UK did: They smashed the unions, in the belief that they had to compete on cost. The result? They quickly ended up wrecking their industrial base. But Germany, Sweden and France ignored the advice of the Anglo-Americans, the Financial Times elite, the banking industry: Contrary to what they were told to do, they did not wreck their unions.

And it was the high labor cost that pushed those countries into making higher “value-added” things. Where is Germany competitive? It’s in high-end, precision machinery, made by people with the highest skills. It’s in engineering services. People look at Germany and say, “What about the German unemployment?” But no one in the United States ever says, “What about the German labor shortages?”

Even in 2008, precisely because of “globalization,” Germany had a serious shortage of people able to fill high-skill, high-paying jobs, especially engineers. In the United States, engineers complain they can’t find work; many of them just end up in sales. In the union-free, lower-cost United States, we don’t create the kind of jobs engineers can do. Germany’s problem? It has too many such jobs. It’s our whole globalization thesis turned upside down.

That leads to a seeming paradox: Higher labor costs can make a country more, not less, competitive. In many ways, the United States and the UK got out of manufacturing because their labor costs were too low. I have spent my life watching plants close in Milwaukee and Waukegan, where skilled labor was paid $26 an hour, only to reopen in Georgia and North Carolina, where it was paid $8 an hour. While still fighting over severance two years later, we get the news: The company is bankrupt. The products it makes so cheaply are now crap.

The German model

In the United States, our elite, scoffing, says that there is just not enough labor-market flexibility in a country like Germany to allow it to adapt to globalization as we do. But it’s precisely because of our flexibility that we can’t compete. What the laws manage to do in Germany is to keep people together and to hold onto their skills in groups. Co-determination and works councils — in other words, worker control — keep people in groups, rubbing elbows with each other, and all this rubbing of elbows helps build up human capital

Indeed, for some economists this is now a fashionable idea. Think of all the buzz about the “knowledge” economy, which, in the world of academic economists, is an inquiry into how knowledge drives economic growth. David Warsh in his 2006 book, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations, introduces us to economists trying to untangle the connections between the kind of knowledge that comes from groups and economic growth.

German worker control contributes to a group interaction that over time not only builds up but also protects a certain amount of human capital, especially in engineering and quality control. This kind of knowledge is not just individual but group knowledge. It’s the kind of group knowledge that our efficient, “flexible” labor markets so readily break up and disperse. It’s our flexible labor markets that make it so hard for the United States and the UK to compete. We spend vastly more on basic research than the Germans do — U.S. companies are unrivaled. We spend far more on higher education. But with our flexible labor markets, we’re unable to capitalize on this research and education. Sometimes we try the Japanese model of work, but we never try the German, because we don’t want to cede any real control to workers. Supposedly it’s a great mystery why Germans keep investing in manufacturing and even prospering, despite the claims that the German education system is broken (OK, it needs help) and they aren’t spending enough on research (OK, they aren’t). But they’re doing something right. What is distinctive about Germany is the privileged position the worker has within the firm.

And we must look to that privileged position of the worker to explain how our own middle-class way of life can survive. Putting more money into education is a waste of effort. Putting more money into basic research is a waste of effort. We already spend enough. In fact, we have every factor of production going for us: We have more land, more labor, more capital and higher levels of formal education. But with our flexible labor markets, we cannot develop the human capital or knowledge needed to wean ourselves away from turning out crap. In global competition, the United States has almost every comparative advantage over Germany, but the one great comparative advantage Germany still has over us is that it is a social democracy. Yes, I admit Germany has its problems. But we’re losing our middle class, and our problems are even worse.

The real knowledge economy

The strangest thing I saw this year is a YouTube video, with a hip-hop soundtrack, about a lot of German kids on strike. These were IG Metall apprentices, and they weren’t like the kids in the cafés. (IG Metall is the largest metal workers’ union in Germany.) Instead they wore black, gray and white car coats and were from obscure little German towns, but all of them were marching, at night, both boys and girls, striking against the big global companies for not delivering on jobs. At about the same time as the strike, IG Metall held a rock concert with Bob Geldof, which drew 50,000 people, mostly kids. Here’s a shocking thing to a U.S. labor lawyer like me: In 2008, youth membership in IG Metall — kids under 27 who voluntarily pay union dues — climbed yet again, this time by 6 percent. At last count, IG Metall had more than 200,000 of these kids! As someone who ran for Congress and found out why campaign staffs think it a waste of time to bother with young people, I find that stunning. Even the Financial Times, which always writes off labor, has had to admit that in Germany, unions are resurging among kids who are highly skilled.

Why are kids in Germany paying dues, voluntarily?

I think it’s an American who can best explain why. It’s not Marx but John Dewey whose picture should be in the lobby of the Willy Brandt Haus, the headquarters of the Social Democratic Party. It’s Dewey who believed that schools should not just teach practical skills but explain why kids have to be political, to be citizens and yes, to get into labor movements to protect the skills they are acquiring. One can say that union membership is a “tradition” in certain industries. But that’s just an opaque way of saying that the kids get politicized both at home and at school as they go through the Dual Track — Germany’s specialized, apprenticeship vocational schools

The answer to the problems of our country is education, but not the kind we’re pursuing, i.e., jamming more kids into college or even teaching practical skills; instead, it’s teaching them how, politically, to cut themselves a better deal. As long as that’s going on, it’s impossible to write off the European or, more specifically, the German model.

Just as the answer to the problems of democracy is usually more democracy, so the answer to the problems of a social democracy is usually more social democracy.

This essay was adapted from Thomas Geoghegan’s new book, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life (The New Press).

Feeding At The Pentagon Trough

2010-08-19T06:51:00.003+08:00

To see what Dr Davidson Is talking about, see this chart:
By Dr. Lawrence Davidson

When Americans think about the state of their economy, what they are doing is reflecting on their personal economic conditions. For most citizens, the economy is their pocketbooks and not the state of the nation’s purse. This is part of what can be called “natural localism,” the fact that almost everyone concentrates their attention first and foremost on their local environment. Americans are particularly prone to such myopia due to the emphasis given to “me first” individualism by their culture. Unfortunately, this orientation has proven increasingly harmful for America’s national economy. The federal politicians are as “me first” as their constituents and so no one seems to be able to manage the nation’s money according to national needs. A good examination of this was put forth by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on August 11, 2010.

With the ghost of Dwight Eisenhower hovering in the background, Reich noted that the U.S. now appears hopelessly devoted to maintaining the economic activities of the military-industrial complex regardless of need, efficiency, or cost. Why so? Because, he tells us, almost four million Americans are directly employed by either the military or military related companies and corporations. This makes the military-industrial complex, “America’s biggest–and only major–job’s program.” It also makes the entire set up politically inviolable. The distortions that result are labeled “nuts” by Reich. Here are some examples of them:

1. Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to reduce spending on private contractors by one third. The top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, “Buck” McKeon, protested that this may well “weaken the nation’s defense.” Of course, it is nonsense to accuse the Defense Secretary of weakening national defense, so what is it that Congressman McKeon is trying to say? As Reich explains, reducing spending on contractors corresponds directly to the lose of jobs in any number of states. Loss of jobs means loss of votes for incumbents, and that weakens McKeon among others.

2. Mr. Gates wants to close the Joint Force Command in Norfolk, Virginia. It is superfluous and thus an unnecessary expense. Virginia’s Democratic Senator Jim Webb, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, declared this “would be a step backward.” Of course, it is nonsense to imply that Robert Gates wants to undermine national security by “stepping backward.” So what is Senator Webb trying to say? As Reich explains, he is saying that the Joint Force Command employs 6,324 people as well as 3300 private subcontractors. If Webb went along with putting all those people out of work he would probably lose his own job as well.

3. What happens when you have a gigantic cargo jet that you no longer need? That is another of Mr. Gates’s dilemmas. The C-17 is passe. Alas, it also keeps 34,000 people working at Boeing and its subcontractors in no less than 40 states. The Senate thinks it is a good idea to order ten new ones at a cost of $250 million apiece.

4. Then there is the F-25 “Strike Fighter jet.” Each one is to come with a duplicate engine it does not need. This costs us all $2.9 billion. The Defense Secretary says this is not logical. Well, that depends on whether you live in Indiana or Ohio. There you will find media advertisements funded by General Electric (the engine maker) sporting GE workers in “Support Our Troops” T-shirts complaining that the government wants to deny these two states of 4,000 engine related jobs. The House of Representatives has recently seen fit to support duplicate engines.

The New York Times has described the situation this way, “There has been a feeding frenzy at the Pentagon budget trough since the 9/11 attacks. Pretty much anything the military chiefs and industry lobbyists pitched, Congress approved–no matter the cost and no matter if the weapons programs were over budget, underperforming or no longer needed in the post-cold-war world.”

In total the U.S. spends close to a trillion dollars a year on “national defense” and “national security” related items. There is so much redundancy, inefficiency, and sheer fluff in all of this that Reich concludes that “national security is a cover for job security.” One could probably cut the entire array of defense related expenditures by one quarter to one third and never lose a beat of one’s security related heart. That would be a quarter to a third of a trillion dollars that might be spent on schools, mass transit, health care, parks, sewers and water systems, alternative energy, job training and retraining, low cost housing, the arts, fixing potholes, ad infinitum. In other words, funding all the things that help make up a vibrant civilization. But the advocates for such things, even the paid one’s in Washington, seem not to be able to compete. In March 2005, 750 scientists at the National Institutes of Health lamented that money for basic research into infectious diseases was going instead into “bio-terror research.” Things have not improved since then. But how many of us really care? Not the vast majority of those employed by the military-industrial complex. Locked into their “me first” localism, they can proclaim that they have theirs, and the rest of us can go to…..the unemployment lines.

What all this means, in the simplest of terms, is that in the United States there is no such thing as national interest. The nation appears to be nothing beyond the total of its pork barrel sub parts. And the most powerful of these are military related. If the U.S. is something more than these parts, Congress should have identified that “thing” by now and honored it. There is no evidence that this has happened. Of course, national interest does exist in rhetorical terms. We hear it all the time. The phrase is always trotted out when you want to justify some demand in a way that leaves opponents open to the charge of being unpatriotic.

In addition, this all means that the largest spending operations in the federal government are carried on in a fashion that no competent household manager would tolerate for a minute. The General Accounting Office, which knows what is going on and often tries to expose the corruption of it all, is utterly incapable of changing the general way business is carried out. So the next time you hear a politician complain about the deficit, ask him or her about the bloated defense budget and watch them beat a hasty retreat. The next time you hear a legislator, federal, state or local, throw up their hands and say that there is just no money for public education, etc., ask them about those venal defense contractors. Chances are they will stutter and shuffle and smile like a ninny, or perhaps join you in your outrage.

But actually, the number of Americans who pay attention to all this, who think about the bigger picture, are in the minority. Most of us are ignorant of the complexities of national politics and content as long as our own taxes do not go up. Even the unemployed are docile, unorganized and feeling helpless. Someday, the way we do business might cause our economic house of cards to fall in a way that sparks a truly massive political backlash. Perhaps we have seen intimations of that future in the multiple financial crises of the past decade. However, that time has not come. And, the New York Times notwithstanding, the hemorrhage of monies through the open arteries of the Senate and House Armed Services committees has yet to reach mass consciousness.

Civilization ought to mean something more than how many duplicate engines come with an F-25. Yet, what happens when we can no longer tell the difference between the pap of special interest propaganda and the quality of our lives? “Perhaps civilization is approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time.” That was a suggestion made by the philosopher George Santayana in 1922. A prescient observation for our own day, despite the looming threat of global warming.

Lawrence Davidson
Department of History
West Chester University
West Chester, Pa 19383
USA

Loss of Innocence - Disney on Hitler - An Old Banned Walt Disney Cartoon I Found on the Net. Antinazi Propaganda.

2010-08-18T19:29:00.006+08:00

Much as this is overdone, I wouldn't like to suggest any contemporary parallels at all - yet - RP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASW3UCc17AI&feature=player_embedded

Loss of Innocence an Exhibition of Art by the Children of Gaza

2010-08-18T18:03:00.000+08:00

Israeli soldiers and border guards alongside blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian detainees — some of them dead.

2010-08-18T16:50:00.001+08:00

BETHLEHEM — An Israeli human rights group has released pictures of Israeli soldiers and border guards alongside blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian detainees — some of them dead.

Breaking the Silence set up a group on Facebook entitled “the norm denied by Avi Benayahu,” an Israeli military spokesman who described the recent release of photographs by an ex-soldier next to detainees as exceptional.

“The new campaign came into being in the wake of the publication of Eden Abergil’s photos, in order to show the prevalence of this phenomenon among IDF ranks,” Breaking the Silence said in a statement to the Israeli news site Ynet.

“The photographs that had been published are merely the tip of the iceberg. Many people possess thousands of photos, but only a small part is being published … we turned Eden into a scapegoat, while the norm is what needs to be targeted.”

The original photos prompted a harsh reaction from the Palestinian Authority. “This shows the mentality of the occupier, to be proud of humiliating Palestinians. There is nothing in the world that can justify [this] humiliation that is part of the Israeli occupation practices on [a] daily basis,” the PA’s Government Media Center said in a statement.

“Occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting. It should end and Palestinian rights and dignity be respected. We call upon all human rights defenders to make all efforts to end the Israeli occupation and close this dark era for humanity,” the statement added.

Abergil posted the photos in her Facebook album “Army…best time of my life:)” in early August. The series of images, since removed from her page, displayed Abergil posing with blindfolded and handcuffed detainees who were apparently seized during a recent army raid in the occupied West Bank.

Facebook scandal escalates as group posts new photos - Breaking the Silence

2010-08-18T16:43:00.000+08:00

Published yesterday (updated) 18/08/2010 08:48 BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- An Israeli human rights group has released pictures of Israeli soldiers and border guards alongside blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian detainees -- some of them dead.

Breaking the Silence set up a group on Facebook entitled "the norm denied by Avi Benayahu," an Israeli military spokesman who described the recent release of photographs by an ex-soldier next to detainees as exceptional.

"The new campaign came into being in the wake of the publication of Eden Abergil's photos, in order to show the prevalence of this phenomenon among IDF ranks," Breaking the Silence said in a statement to the Israeli news site Ynet.

"The photographs that had been published are merely the tip of the iceberg. Many people possess thousands of photos, but only a small part is being published … we turned Eden into a scapegoat, while the norm is what needs to be targeted."

The original photos prompted a harsh reaction from the Palestinian Authority. "This shows the mentality of the occupier, to be proud of humiliating Palestinians. There is nothing in the world that can justify [this] humiliation that is part of the Israeli occupation practices on [a] daily basis," the PA's Government Media Center said in a statement.

"Occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting. It should end and Palestinian rights and dignity be respected. We call upon all human rights defenders to make all efforts to end the Israeli occupation and close this dark era for humanity," the statement added.

Abergil posted the photos in her Facebook album "Army...best time of my life:)" in early August. The series of images, since removed from her page, displayed Abergil posing with blindfolded and handcuffed detainees who were apparently seized during a recent army raid in the occupied West Bank.

How do you Solve a Problem like Syria?

2010-08-18T15:38:00.001+08:00

If it is a problem, that is. If it's just an unfriendly neighbour of Israel, then why does it concern the US - RP

As Russia prepares to deliver fuel for Iran’s nuclear reactors, it is worth casting a reviewer’s eye over the potential for further conflict in the Middle East. In one corner we have the Zionist state of Israel and its somewhat reluctant – although faithful-ally, the United States. In the other corner we have Iran, Lebanon and Syria and their various proxies.

In a memorandum sent to the US President, Barack Obama, former intelligence specialists warned him of Israel’s likely pre-emptive strike on Iran, not for the commonly stated “threat”‘ of it developing nuclear weapons but to initiate regime change to remove one of Israel’s most prolific critics, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. This memo was released after skirmishes broke out between the Israeli Defence Forces and the Lebanese army on the border between the two states; political analysts suggest that it is not a question of if a strike will happen but a matter of when, unless Obama steps in and pulls Israel back into line.

Looked at from the Israeli side, it can make a strike on Iran more effective by removing Syria from the equation. Not, of course, through conventional military means or the use of Israel’s own nuclear arsenal; the Israelis are far more sophisticated than that. Israel would simply neutralise Syria by appeasement, completing the peace talks brokered by its once close friend in the region, Turkey, before Israel doomed the relationship with its invasion of Gaza and the assault on the Freedom Flotilla.

At the moment, if Israel was to strike Iran today Syria would have no choice but to come to Tehran’s aid and support its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah in the ensuing conflict. However, commentators in Israel regard with optimism recent talks in Lebanon between Syria’s President Bashar Assad, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and the host Prime Minister Saad Hariri, in which Syria’s political hegemony over the region was established, pushing Iran aside and, in the process, probably weakening Hezbollah’s political base in Israel’s northern neighbour.

One commentator in the Jerusalem Post suggested that if Israel were to take advantage of the momentum arising from this meeting and initiate talks with Assad who has in the past claimed to want peace talks with Israel Syria could be out of the strike-on-Iran equation. A peace deal between Syria and Israel would see Syria turning its back on Tehran, which will in turn neutralise or weaken any potential retaliation from Lebanon and Hezbollah.

There is, of course, a price to pay for such a deal; Israel would have to relinquish any claim to the strategically important Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967. Peace with Syria would remove the justification for the occupation, namely “legitimate security concerns”. A deal with Israel would also lead to Syria normalising its relations with the US, a step Damascus would be only too happy to take for the benefit of its own strategic interests. A pact with Syria creating a new Israel-Syria-US axis would thus clear the field for the Jewish state to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear reactors, as it did against Iraq in 1981, without overt US support. If Russia is waiting to offer more than material support for Iran, this could provoke a stand-off between the old Cold War foes, Washington and Moscow. The stakes are high and Israel’s actions have the potential for far-reaching consequences.

One thing stands in Israel’s way, though, and that is its founding ideology’s greed for more territory. Zionism is an expansionist creed and Israel’s leaders have always been reluctant to give up land for peace; even after the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 Israel maintained the occupation by controlling Gaza’s land, air and sea borders. Analysts suggest that this may be Israel’s weak point which will make it impossible to do any deal with Syria. In turn, this may be what the government in Tehran is relying on to keep the Israeli wolves at bay. If so, it’s a slender hope. Israel doesn’t always do things the logical way. When it feels threatened, it has a tendency to hit out; woe betide anyone standing in the way, friend or foe. For that reason alone, it is not only Iran which must be vigilant, but also any state in the region considering peace deals with the Zionist state. So how do you solve a problem like Syria?

So the Over-Medalled General IC Afghanistan is Deluded

2010-08-18T12:17:00.005+08:00

'Osama Probably Buried in Pak Mountains' - Petraeus - Musharraf: bin Laden likely dead i Dec 2001

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) --Pakistan's president says he thinks Osama bin Laden is most likely dead because the suspected terrorist has been unable to get treatment for his kidney disease.
"I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a ... kidney patient," Gen. Pervez Musharraf said on Friday in an
interview with CNN.

Musharraf said Pakistan knew bin Laden took two dialysis machines into Afghanistan. "One was specifically for his own personal use," he said.

"I don't know if he has been getting all that treatment in
Afghanistan now. And the photographs that have been shown
of him on television show him extremely weak. ... I would
give the first priority that he is dead and the second priority
that he is alive somewhere in Afghanistan

AP Article, 11/29/09, By CALVIN WOODWARD
"On or about Dec. 16, 2001, bin Laden and bodyguards 'walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal area,' where he is still believed to be based, the report says."

Press Trust Of India
Washington, August 16, 2010First Published: 08:40 IST(16/8/2010)

A top US General has said Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is probably hiding in the remote mountainous regions of Pakistan, even though no one known where he actually is. "I think he remains an iconic figure, and I think capturing or killing Osama bin Laden is still a very, very important task for all of those who are engaged in counter terrorism around the world," General David Petraeus Commander of US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan told NBC television's "Meet the Press" when asked about the Al Qaeda leader's whereabouts.
The top American General said, "I don't think anyone knows where Osama bin Laden is. The fact that it took him four weeks to get a congratulatory message out, or a message of condolence in, say, in the course of the last year or so when we've seen these, indicates, literally, how far buried he is probably in the very, very most remote and mountainous regions".

In the interview, that was recorded in Kabul on Friday and aired in the US on Sunday, Petraeus said that there is unlikely to be any possibility of peace talks with Mullah Omar – the Taliban leader.

"But (there is) every possibility, that there can be low and mid-level reintegration and, indeed, some fracturing of the senior leadership that could be really defined as reconciliation," he said in response to a question.

Petraeus said US is not facing some kind of a monolithic Taliban enemy in the region, but it is a syndicate of terrorist outfits.

"What we face is not some kind of monolithic Taliban enemy. In fact, it's more like a syndicate, is the term that we often use for the enemy that faces our troopers and our Afghan counterparts; and the Afghan civilians," he said.

"But what we face generally, of course, is, again, in the southern part of the country, this is the Taliban, the Afghan Taliban. Then, as you work your way up into the eastern part, you start to get the Haqqani network linked to the Taliban.

Again, it has a symbiotic relationship with them.

But it is not subservient, one to the other," he said.

The "Banality of Evil" and Israel's Destruction of al-Araqib

2010-08-18T09:55:00.005+08:00

ba·nal·i·ty (b-nl-t, b-)
NOUN: pl. ba·nal·i·ties
The condition or quality of being banal; triviality: The banality of the speaker's remarks put the audience to sleep.
Something that is trite, obvious, or predictable; a commonplace: Television commercials are full of banalities.

Joseph Dana writing from al-Araqib, Live from Palestine, 10 August 2010

Israeli police along with demolition crews raid the village of al-Araqib early this morning. (Joseph Dana)

In the early hours of 10 August, Israeli forces destroyed -- for the third time -- the Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the northern Negev desert. Israel had first destroyed the village on 27 July as EI reported, and each time the villagers have attempted to rebuild.

Joseph Dana witnessed the latest destruction.

We arrived in the darkness. The horizon was blurred from the desert night sky and all that could be seen was ruin. Piles of concrete, steel reinforcing bars and wood in places where the village once sat. In this maze of construction material there were small makeshift living spaces, barely suitable for the harsh desert climate. Simple tent structures consisting of four wood shafts and a black tarp was the only remains of this village.

We, Israeli and international activists, were invited to sit in these tents through the night and sip coffee in the cool desert night with the villagers. They told us about their livelihood now that the village is constantly facing demolition. Some talked about their military service in the Israeli army and their disbelief that the country they served could behave in such a way as to destroy their entire village. Others expressed hope that at least some Israelis understood the grave nature of their government and were standing arm in arm with them.

As the night closed and the light began to change, the first sounds of the demolition crew could be heard far off in the distance. Before we had time to blink, 200 fully clad police officers were on microphones telling us to leave and that any violence would be met with harsher violence. As soon as the voices on the microphones stopped, the bulldozers began to work. The place we had been sitting and having coffee through the night was leveled before our groggy, disbelieving eyes. We barely had time to register the fact that the village was being leveled, as the police began pushing us away from the living structures with extreme force.

The demolition crew worked efficiently and without pause. Every structure that served some form of life in the village was leveled and all the building materials from it were trucked away. As we were pushed further from the village, a couple of activists tried to sit inside or in front of the tents. This was met with violence by the police as people were thrown to the ground like rag dolls. At one point in the chaos, a professor of medieval history at Tel Aviv University was grabbed by a police officer, who quickly wrenched his hand behind his back. The professor was held like this for a number of minutes and then arrested. It is still unclear under what terms.

Finally, the police confined us to a hilltop and had us look over the village as it was destroyed. The water canisters, which are needed because Israel refuses to give the villagers water pipes, were broken and then placed on flat bed trucks to be carted away.

The image of massive bulldozers flanked by heavily armed riot police destroying makeshift Bedouin living structures is something that no one would be able to forget. As soon as the forces left, the villagers began rebuilding what little they have left. Every week, their resources shrink and yet they rebuild. They have no choice.

All of the police officers and members of the demolition crew this morning were simply following orders.

It was another day for them and due to the Israeli cultural understanding of the Bedouins and Palestinians as "nearly people," they will probably not lose a wink of sleep this evening. However, the complete destruction of the village of al-Araqib is yet another powerful example of the Israeli banality of evil.

Joseph Dana, a writer and filmmaker living in Jerusalem, is active in direct action groups such as Taayush and the Anarchists Against the Wall. His website is josephdana.com.

Eden Abergil, The Product Of A Blindfolded Society - "the most beautiful time" of her life

2010-08-18T09:36:00.008+08:00

On 08.16.10, By Max Blumenthal
Is there anything shocking about the Facebook photos showing the Israeli female soldier Eden Abergil posing in mocking positions next to bound and blindfolded Palestinian men? While her conduct was abominable, I did not find it especially distinct from the documented behavior of Israeli soldiers and Border Police in the Occupied Territories.

Below is a photo I took in Hebron in June before soldiers demanded that I stop shooting (I will release video from Hebron as soon as I get the chance). Scenes like these can be witnessed on any given day in the West Bank. Not only do they show the dehumanization that the Palestinian Morlocks are subjected to on an hourly basis, they depict the world where Abergil spent what she called “the most beautiful time of [her] life.” It is easy to see how young Israelis (or anyone) would be sapped of their humanity in such an environment.

In July, I waited inside the cafeteria of Israel’s Guantanamo-like Ofer Prison after watching Ibrahim Amira, a leader of the Ni’ilin popular committee, be sentenced by a kangaroo court to six months in prison for the trumped-up charge of “incitement” (he was accused of paying kids to throw rocks at the Israeli soldiers who invade their village at least every week, as if they needed encouragement). While I stood at the counter to order a coffee, I watched four female jailers gather around a laptop to check their Facebook pages. I wondered what their status updates looked like. If they wrote anything relating to their work, would their Facebook pages look different than Abergil’s? Of course not. Just take a trip to Eyal Niv’s blog and look at some of the photos other young Israelis are posting.

I took this photo in Hebron in June before soldiers ordered me to stop shooting. A Palestinian man was being near the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron.

You don’t have to go to the West Bank or into an Israeli prison to recognize that Abergil is a typical product of Israel’s comprehensively militarized society. Just watch the documentary, “To See When I’m Smiling.” In the film, which tells the soul-crushing stories of four young women conscripted into the Israeli Army, one of the characters recounts posing for a photo beside a dead Palestinian man who had an erection. She was smiling from ear to ear in the photo. However, at the end of the film, when she is compelled to look at the picture for the first time in two years, she does not recognize the monster who bears her image. Her contorted facial expression seems to ask, “Who was I?”

“To See When I’m Smiling” was produced by Breaking The Silence, a human rights group formed by ex-Israeli soldiers who collect testimonies from their peers. Incidentally, Breaking The Silence has published a 132-page booklet of testimonies by female soldiers (PDF here) who participated in acts at least as hideous as those depicted on Abergil’s Facebook page.

Here is Testimony 63, by a female sergeant from the Nahal Unit who served in Mevo Dotan:

I recall once, this was after we moved to Mevo Dotan, to the base there, some Palestinian was sitting on a chair and I passed by several times. Once I thought: Okay, why is he sitting here for an hour? I feel like spitting at him, at this Arab. And they tell me: Go one, spit at him. I don’t recall whether anyone did this before I did, but I remember spitting at him and feeling really, like at first I felt, wow, good for me, I just spat at some terrorist, that’s how I’d call them. And then I recall that afterwards I felt some thing here was not right.

Why?
Not too human. I mean, it sounds cool and all, but no, it’s not right.
You thought about later, or during the act?
Later. At the time you felt real cool.
Even when everyone was watching, you felt real cool.
Yes, and then sometimes you get to thinking, especially say on Holocaust Memorial Day, suddenly you’re thinking, hey, these thing were done to us, it’s a human being after all. Eventually as things turned out he was no terrorist anyway, it was a kid who’d hung around too long near the base, so he was caught or something.
A child?
An adolescent.
Slaps?
Yes.
Blindfolded and all?
Yes. I think that at some point no one even stood watch over him.

The female sergeant recalled the Holocaust when she reflected on her actions. If you are raised in a Jewish home, it is difficult not to see the ravages of the occupation in the light of the Holocaust, regardless of whether you know that the Israeli army’s violence bears little comparison to the exterminationism of the Nazis. Just as when I watched “To See When I’m Smiling,” Abergil’s photos made me think of Costa Gavras’ haunting Holocaust film, “Music Box.” If you have seen it, you will understand my reference. If not, rent it.

I also thought of the first stanza of “Vision,” a poem by the Palestinian writer Muhammad al-Qaisi. The poem reminded me not only of the Abergil’s public unmasking, but also of the many Israelis who told me about their experiences in the army as though they were describing some morally debased person they had never met:

I see the faces change their complexion
peel off their outer skin
I see the faces divested
of makeup and masks
and I see an empty stage
the spectators denying their own images
in the third act.

The Illusion of a ‘Limited War’ Against Iran - Who Forgot the Pasdaran?

2010-08-18T09:11:00.003+08:00

By Mahan Abedin
Guest editorial for Informed Comment

August 12, 2010 - The frank admission by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and America’s highest ranking officer, that the U.S. has plans to attack Iran to prevent that country from acquiring nuclear weapons, is being treated with the utmost seriousness in political, intelligence and military circles in Tehran.

This is the first time that a high-ranking U.S. official has spoken about the existence of military plans to prevent the Islamic Republic from crossing the nuclear threshold. There is considerable evidence that Mullen’s frank statement, coupled with the Obama Administration’s increasingly hostile and dismissive attitude towards Iran, and reinforced by the fourth round of United Nations sanctions imposed in June (followed by even harsher unilateral sanctions imposed by both the European Union and the United States), has radically altered the Tehran regime’s strategic calculations on the possibility of a military confrontation with the United States.

Hitherto the conventional wisdom amongst strategic policy makers in the Islamic Republic was that the U.S. would adhere to the ‘no war no peace’ policy, irrespective of the bellicose rhetoric of American leaders and officials. The policy of ‘no war no peace’ has characterized Iranian-American relations since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in February 1979.

The basic premise of this policy is that at different stages Iran and America edge towards war or peace – depending on the prevailing strategic scenario in the region – but never quite actually achieve either. The result is that most of the time the two states are somewhere in the middle conducting a Cold War, in which leaders and officials from both sides trade insults and engage in ideological and political grandstanding, but stop well short of the point where further escalation of tensions might trigger a hot war.

For the past thirty-one years this policy has benefited most of the key stakeholders, including hardline political factions in both countries, the regional Arab states, Turkey, Pakistan and Israel. All have benefited from this Iranian-American Cold War, insofar as the paucity of diplomatic and political relations between Iran and America has continuously opened up a wide range of strategic, political and economic benefits. By the same token, these stake holders would have much to lose if Iran and America actually engaged in real fighting. While this argument has manifold shortcomings, nonetheless it does capture a large part of the reality of Iranian-American relations since 1979. In any case it is what key Iranian strategic policy makers have believed all along. Until now that is.

Despite the fact that a few days before Mullen’s statement, the supreme commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC—Sepah-e-Pasdaran in Persian), Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Jafari, dismissed U.S. threats, claiming that America “would not dare to attack Iran”, other IRGC leaders have in recent months continuously warned of the immediate and long-term fallout of any military confrontation. The head of the IRGC’s political-ideological unit recently warned of “dire” threats to regional security in the event of an American military attack. Meanwhile Ahmad Vahidi, Iran’s defence minister and a former commander of the IRGC’s elite Qods Force (responsible for special foreign operations), has pledged a “robust” response to any American military aggression against Iran.

It has been clear for months that the mood of IRGC commanders has been changing and Mullen’s statement appears to lend credence to the strategic calculations of the Revolutionary Guard commanders. This development is of the utmost significance, since in the event of an Iranian-American military confrontation, the IRGC is expected to be at the forefront of containing the American assault and retaliating with military measures of its own.

In fact, in the event of a military confrontation Iranian leaders are likely to relieve the regular Iranian military from fighting, so as to keep them out of harm’s way and maintain the integrity and fighting strength of the regular armed forces. There is another reason for this decision and that has to do with the depleted capabilities of the national military; in the past thirty years the national armed forces have insidiously lost power and prestige to the IRGC. It is worth noting that Iran is the only country in the world that operates two completely independent military commands; one centred on the regular armed forces, and the other on the IRGC, which operates its own ground forces, navy and air force, as well as a myriad of intelligence and security services. Moreover, the IRGC controls all of Iran’s strategic military assets, including mid-range ballistic missile capability.

It has become fashionable to paint the IRGC as an economic conglomerate more interested in making money than fighting for the values of the Islamic Revolution. Much of the reporting on IRGC economic activity is inaccurate and disingenuous and is indicative of the faux-naif style of analysis often employed by Western journalists and analysts.

The truth is that whilst the IRGC has a sizeable economic wing centred on the Khatam ol-Anbia complex (Qarargah-e Khatam ol-Anbia), its economic and financial activities are kept strictly separate from its fighting units. In any case, the IRGC is foremost an ideological army that is totally and unequivocally committed to the survival of the Islamic Revolution, and the political-religious system that emerged from that revolution. Even former reformist president (and now opposition leader) Mohammad Khatami referred to the IRGC as the “most ideological armed force in the world.”

American political and military leaders would be mistaken if they believed they could get away with a “limited” military strike on Iran, designed to destroy that country’s nuclear infrastructure. Any military strike on Iran by the United States will be interpreted by Iran’s rulers, and their IRGC enforcers, as a direct assault on the integrity and the very existence of the Islamic Republic. From a strategic point of view, IRGC commanders will interpret any American strike as the beginning of an existential conflict, and will respond appropriately.

A top priority for the IRGC high command is to respond so harshly and decisively so as to deter the Americans from a second set of strikes at a future point. The idea here is to avoid what happened to Iraq in the period 1991-2003, when the former Baathist regime was so weakened by sanctions and repeated small-scale military attacks that it quickly collapsed in the face of American and British invading armies.

The range of predictable responses available to the IRGC high command include dramatic hit and run attacks against military and commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf, the use of mid-range ballistic missiles against American bases in the region and Israel and a direct assault on American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. All these options are likely to be used within 48 hours of the start of hostilities.

What is less predictable is the response of the IRGC Qods Force, which is likely to be at the forefront of the Pasdaran’s counter-attack. One possible response by the Qods force is spectacular terrorist-style attacks against American intelligence bases and assets throughout the region. The IRGC Qods Force is believed to have identified every key component of the American intelligence apparatus in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are likely to put this information to good use, especially since the Qods Force suspects that the CIA had a hand in last October’s Jundullah-organised suicide bombing targeting IRGC commanders in Iran’s volatile Sistan va Baluchistan province.

The IRGC navy will also play a key asymmetrical role in the conflict by organising maritime suicide bombings on an industrial scale. By manning its fleet of speedboats with suicide bombers and ramming them into American warships and even neutral commercial shipping, the Pasdaran will hope to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly 40 percent of world crude oil supplies pass.

The combination of these asymmetrical forms of warfare with more conventional style missile and even ground force attacks on American bases in the region will likely result in thousands of American military casualties in the space of a few weeks. The IRGC has both the will and wherewithal to inflict a level of casualties on American armed forces not seen since the Second World War.

Even if the United States manages to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and much of the country’s military assets, the IRGC can still claim victory by claiming to have given the Americans a bloody nose and producing an outcome not dissimilar from the Israeli-Hezbollah military engagement in the summer of 2006.

The political effect of this will likely be even more explosive than the actual fighting. Not only will it awaken the sleeping giant of Iranian nationalism, thus aligning the broad mass of the people with the regime, it will also shore up Iran’s image in the region and prove once and for all that the Islamic Republic is prepared to fight to the death to uphold its principles. Suddenly Iran’s allies in the region – particularly non-state actors like Hezbollah and Hamas – would stand ten feet tall.

Ironically U.S. military aggression will likely accelerate the actualisation of the very scenario that American political and military leaders insist they are determined to prevent, i.e. a nuclear armed Iran. Even if we accept the contentious proposition that Iran’s nuclear programme has a military dimension, the immediate reaction of Iran’s rulers to military aggression would be to start a crash programme to produce a nuclear weapon, as a means of deterring future aggression.

Contrary to what Mike Mullen and other American military commanders appear to believe, a military attack on Iran really is the very worst option. Its consequences for Iran, the region and the United States are dangerously unpredictable, to the extent that any decision to attack would be nothing less than stunningly reckless and quite possibly the worst strategic mistake in American military history. Responsible actors in the international system should exert the maximum effort to avoid an Iranian-American War.
Mahan Abedin is a Middle East analyst.

Why America is going to regret the Cordoba House controversy

2010-08-18T08:53:00.003+08:00

Stephen M. Walt Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Apart from a brief post praising New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's forthright stance on the Muslim community center controversy, I haven't said much about this issue. I had naively assumed that Bloomberg's eloquent remarks defending the project -- and reaffirming the indispensable principle of religious freedom -- would pretty much end the controversy, but I underestimated willingness of various right-wing politicians to exploit our worst xenophobic instincts, and some key Democrats' congenital inability to fight for the principles in which they claim to believe. Silly me.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out what is going on here: All you really need to do is look at how the critics of the community center project keep describing it. In their rhetoric it is always the "Mosque at Ground Zero," a label that conjures up mental images of a soaring minaret on the site of the 9/11 attacks. Never mind that the building in question isn't primarily a mosque (it's a community center that will house an array of activities, including a gym, pool, auditorium, and oh yes, a prayer room). Never mind that it isn't at "Ground Zero": it's two blocks away and will not even be visible from the site. (And exactly why does it matter if it was?) You know that someone is engaged in demagoguery when they keep using demonstrably false but alarmist phrases over and over again.

What I don't understand is why critics of this project don't realize where this form of intolerance can lead. As a host of commentators have already noted, critics of the project are in effect holding American Muslims -- and in this particular case, a moderate Muslim cleric who has been a noted advocate of inter-faith tolerance -- responsible for a heinous act that they did not commit and that they have repeatedly condemned. It is view of surpassing ignorance, and precisely the same sort of prejudice that was once practiced against Catholics, against Jews, and against any number of other religious minorities. Virtually all religious traditions have committed violent and unseemly acts in recent memory, and we would not hold Protestants, Catholics, or Jews responsible for the heinous acts of a few of their adherents.

And don't these critics realize that religious intolerance is a monster that, once unleashed, may be impossible to control? If you can rally the mob against any religious minority now, then you may make it easier for someone else to rally a different mob against you should the balance of political power change at some point down the road.

Critics of the proposal are aware that their views contradict the principle of religious tolerance on which the United States was founded, so they have fallen back on the idea that building the community center here is "insensitive" to the families who lost loved ones back in 2001.

(Presumably it's not "insensitive" that the same neighborhood contains strip clubs, bars, and all sorts of less-than sacred institutions). And notice the sleight-of-hand here: first, demogogues raise an uproar about a "Mosque at Ground Zero," thereby generating a lot of public outcry, and then defend this bigotry by saying that they're just trying to be "sensitive" to the objections they have helped to stir up.

But what if Newt Gingrich, Rick Lazio, Sarah Palin, and all the other people trying to exploit this matter had praised it from the start for what it was: a genuine and well-intentioned effort to combat the ignorance and hatred that had led to 9/11 in the first place?

I personally find the whole idea of a "Supreme Being" unconvincing, and I don't quite get why some many people continue to cling to a set of myths and fables dating from antiquity.

But that's just my view, and someone else's religious convictions are their business provided they don't impose them on me. The Founding Fathers wisely understood that trying to impose religious orthodoxy on the new republic was a recipe for endless strife. Although it has hardly been observed with perfect fidelity over the years, that core principle has served the country remarkably well for over two centuries.

The principle of religious tolerance is not a piece of clothing that one can don or doff at will, or as the political winds shift. Indeed, it is most essential not when we are dealing with groups whose beliefs are close to our own and therefore familiar; the whole idea of "religious tolerance" is about accepting communities of faith that are different from our own and that might strike us at first as alien or off-putting. Tolerance doesn't mean a thing if we apply it only to people who are already just like us.

The latest example of tortured reasoning on this subject was New York Times columnist Ross Douthat's column a couple of days ago. Douthat explained the controversy as a struggle between "two Americas": one of them based on the liberal principle of tolerance and the other based on the defense of a certain understanding of "Anglo-Protestant" culture.

In addition to glossing over the latter's dark underbelly (slavery, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholic prejudice, etc.), Douthat's main error was to view these two aspects of American society as of equal moral value. In his view, it's legitimate to object to the community center because we have to respect the feeling of those Americans (including Douthat himself, one assumes) who believe that the United States is at its heart an "Anglo-Protestant/Catholic/Judeo-Christian" nation.

Even if one accepts this simplistic dichotomy, what Douthat fails to realize is that the history of the United States is the story of the gradual triumph of the first America over the second. The United States may have been founded (more-or-less) by a group of "Anglo-Protestants," and defenders of that culture often fought rear-guard actions against newcomers whose practices were different (Jews, Catholics, Japanese, Chinese, etc.). But the founding principle of religious tolerance gradually overcame the various Anglo-Protestant prejudices, which allowed other groups to assimilate and thrive, to the great benefit of the country as a whole. The two America's are not morally equivalent, and we should all be grateful that when those two Americas have come into conflict, it is the second America that has steadily given way to a broader vision of a free and open democracy.

The final disappointment, of course, has been the response of some prominent Democrats, despite the salutary example that Mayor Bloomberg set for them. President Obama gave a powerful defense of his own last week, and then promptly diluted his initial statement with some ill-advised waffling. (Obama's desire to find common ground is sometimes admirable, but someone needs to remind him that when one side is right and the other is wrong, moving towards the middle is movement in the wrong direction.)

Even more disappointing was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's cowardly dissembling, in which he simultaneously claimed to support religious freedom but said he thought the community center should nonetheless be moved somewhere else. I know Reid is in a tough re-election fight, but wouldn't it be nice if someone like Reid would put a core political principle ahead of his own career prospects? Heck, if people learned that Reid actually had some backbone and was willing to fight for what he believed in, they might actually be more inclined to vote for him.

And finally, let's not lose sight of the foreign policy implications. It's hardly headline news to observe that the United States has an abysmal image in the Arab and Muslim world (for a variety of reasons), but the xenophobic and cynical posturing of the community center's opponents is a free gift to extremists who are eager to portray the United States as inherently hostile to the entire Islamic tradition. The controversy itself has probably taken a toll already; if the critics win, then we should hardly be surprised if moderates elsewhere begin to have even more doubts about America's ability to live up to the principles that we like to boast about to others.

'Ground Zero Mosque' - So What?

2010-08-17T10:41:00.003+08:00

Prayer hall or provocation?
By Gregg Carlstrom

The site of the planned mosque and Islamic community centre in lower Manhattan [AFP]

Barack Obama, the US president, spoke forcefully on Friday night in support of the proposed mosque and Islamic community centre near the site of the former World Trade Centre in New York that was destroyed in the September 11 attacks.

The project is popularly called the "Ground Zero mosque", perhaps a slight misnomer on two counts.

It will not be located at Ground Zero, but rather at 45-47 Park Place, two city blocks (200 metres) north of the World Trade Centre site. The buildings currently at that location were damaged during the September 11 attacks.

Nor is it only a mosque: Planners will spend up to $100 million to build an Islamic community centre called Cordoba House, which will house a mosque, an auditorium, a swimming pool and a bookstore.

Public opinion cuts sharply against the project. Dozens of politicians have condemned it, and opinion polls show it is unpopular, with a majority of Americans opposed to its construction.

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, delivered a stirring defence of the project last week, appealing to the city's long tradition of religious diversity.

"The simple fact is that this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship," Bloomberg said.

The project has been attacked on three grounds. One of them is simply anti-Muslim bigotry based on smears and false claims, like conservative columnist Andrew McCarthy's assertion in National Review that the mosque is part of a "civilisational jihad" against the West.

A second criticism is the location, which some Americans say is insensitive to the victims of the attacks. David Paterson, the governor of New York, offered to find land for the community centre elsewhere in the city.

The site of the planned centre was most recently a department store [Google Earth]Critics say it would be inappropriate to build a mosque on the "hallowed ground" of Ground Zero.

Yet there is already a mosque two blocks north of the Cordoba House site, Masjid Manhattan, which has been open since 1970.

As several commentators have pointed out, there is also a strip club - New York Dolls - just one block north of the mosque site. No one has complained about that profaning of the sacred.

And the building will not displace any important historical landmark: The planned community centre on Park Place was most recently a Burlington Coat Factory, a national chain of discount department stores.

National polls find strong opposition to the project: A Rasmussen poll conducted in July found 54 per cent of Americans oppose it, with just 20 per cent in favour.

Interestingly, support for the project is stronger among those who will actually live near it.

In the borough of Manhattan - where the mosque will be located - 46 per cent support the community centre, with just 36 per cent opposed.

The imam behind the mosque has been accused by critics of radicalism, despite his years-long affiliation with the US government.

Feisal Abdul Rauf is scheduled to travel to Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates later this year on a public diplomacy trip sponsored by the US state department. It will be his second such trip to the Gulf; the first was organised in 2007, by the Bush administration.

Abdul Rauf will travel to the Gulf this year on a state department-sponsored trip [AFP]Abdul Rauf visited Egypt in January as part of an exchange programme run by the state department. He has also advised the FBI.

Yet he has still been accused of holding radical views. Two Republican members of the US house of representatives - Peter King, from New York, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, from Florida - sent a letter to the US state department accusing Abdul Rauf of radicalism.

"Abdul Rauf has cast blame for 9/11 on the US, and even refuses to call Hamas what it is, a foreign terrorist organisation," they wrote. "This radical is a terrible choice to be one of the faces of our country overseas."

Abdul Rauf's Hamas comments came in a June radio interview: He did not endorse the group, but declined to label it a "terrorist organisation". "The issue of terrorism is a very complex question," he said.

(King, incidentally, has a decades-long history of support for the Irish Republican Army, which is officially branded a terrorist organisation by the government of the United Kingdom.)

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Abdul Rauf told CBS's 60 Minutes programme that "terrorism has no place in Islam", but suggested that US policies have encouraged groups like al-Qaeda.

"I wouldn't say the United States deserved what happened on 9/11, but the United States' policies were an accessory to the crime that happened," Abdul Rauf said.

That is hardly a fringe opinion in the United States: The chairman and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, the US government panel that investigated the attacks, wrote in a 2007 Washington Post op-ed that US foreign policy has contributed to a "rising tide of radicalisation and rage in the Muslim world".

Obama gave strong backing to the community centre and mosque on Friday [AFP]Bloomberg was asked about Abdul Rauf's views, and declined to criticise him.

"My job is not to vet clergy in this city," Bloomberg said. "Everyone has a right to their opinions. You don't have to worship there... [this country] is not built around only those religions or clergy people that we agree with. It's built around freedom."

The mosque cleared the final obstacle to construction last week when New York's preservation board voted not to extend historic status to the building at 45-47 Park Place. That designation would have made it impossible to continue the construction.

"As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country," Obama said during his iftar speech. "That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan."

Omar Khadr - Juror Removed From Trial For Saying Gitmo Should Be Closed

2010-08-16T10:38:00.004+08:00

RAW STORY President Barack Obama has said repeatedly that he wants to see the Guantanamo prison camp shut down. But holding that opinion is apparently enough to disqualify you from jury duty at the Gitmo military tribunals.

A US Army lieutenant colonel who told the military tribunal he believes the prison camp for suspected terrorists should be shuttered has been removed from the jury in the trial of Omar Khadr.

The Associated Press reports that prosecutors in Khadr's trial used their one allotted juror dismissal to excuse the unnamed officer.

In reporting on the removal, the UK's Independent states that the move "has only added to the perception of prejudice" within the military tribunal system set up to try Gitmo inmates.
The Independent also suggests that the tribunal has no problem with other forms of potential conflict of interest among jurors:

Among the seven jurors remaining on the panel are officers who have lost close friends or colleagues fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. One had a friend killed in the 11 September attacks on the Pentagon.

It also emerged that many of the officers had volunteered to take part in the proceedings. During questioning of the 15 potential panellists all but one told the court they either believed Guantanamo Bay should stay open or did not hold an opinion on the subject.

The Independent reports that "none" of the jurors "thought the US had used torture to extract confessions." That would contradict testimony that interrogators threatened to gang-rape Khadr to death if he refused to cooperate. The judge in the case has allowed statements made under that threat to be used in the tribunal.

In that context, "the lieutenant colonel, who said he agreed with his Commander-in-Chief on the policy of Guantanamo and torture, presented a lone voice of international consensus."

AFP reports that the prosecution had pointed questions for potential jurors:

Prosecutor Jeff Groharing then posed questions to the potential jurors, highlighting the legal controversies at the center of the Khadr case: "Does anyone consider it unfair to use statements the accused made?" he asked them.

"Does anyone find it inappropriate to try somebody eight years after the facts?" he went on. "Do you think it's inappropriate to try a juvenile for a serious crime?"

Khadr's trial is believed to be the first modern-era prosecution of a child soldier. Khadr was 15 years old when he was captured by US forces in Afghanistan during a firefight that killed Khadr's father. Khadr is accused of tossing the grenade that killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

But Khadr's lawyers have said previously they have evidence Khadr couldn't have thrown the grenade. They point to photos showing Khadr lying buried under shrapnel when the fatal grenade hit Sgt. Speer.

Khadr, a Canadian, is the last citizen of a Western country left in Guantanamo. Other Western countries, including the UK and Australia, have repatriated their Gitmo inmates. Khadr's military tribunal, which opened this week, was delayed for a month after his lawyer collapsed during proceedings on Thursday.

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Explaining Murder: Israeli Hasbara in Full Swing

2010-08-16T06:18:00.003+08:00

August 14, 2010 by Richard Lightbown

The hasbara industry is in full swing at the moment as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government pulls out all the stops to create a smokescreen to cover its crimes. Leading from the front Mr Netanyahu sat in front of the Turkel Commission for four hours on Monday, although anyone hoping to hear anything of interest would have been disappointed. Mr Netanyahu only spoke in front of the public for ninety minutes of that time during which he regaled the committee with complaints about Hamas, Sderot and Gilad Shalit. He told the committee that Israel had a right to search for weapons on board the flotilla. (Israel has since announced that it found no weapons for Hamas. Did nine people really have to die so that Israel could confirm the certification the flotilla already had?) He further told them that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza as a result of the blockade it was just a ‘bogus rationale […] to break the blockade’. So there we are. The International Committee of the Red Cross was lying on 14 June when it said:

“The closure therefore constitutes a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel’s obligation under international humanitarian law.”

Or when in 2008 the same august institution said 70% of the Gazan population suffers from food insecurity.

That Judge Turkel allowed him to drone on in this way bodes ill for the end result. As though nine dead (and it could yet turn to eleven), fifty-five injured and the rest of the 700 people abducted, abused, humiliated and subjected to cruel and sadistic behaviour was not important enough for the committee to concentrate on.

But that as always is the name of the game. Only Israeli victimhood is of any consequence. Nine Israeli hoods got a legal beating. That’s important. Nothing else matters. So we’ve had Prof Ruth Lapidoth prostituting herself on 12 July by cherry picking the San Remo Manual to make it all seem right. She told us Gaza is a state because the Israel Supreme Court said so. Does she recognize no higher authority on international law? The was no mention of course that San Remo takes six articles to explain that any maritime attack should be solely against military targets for the purpose of gaining a military advantage. That precautions must be taken to ensure that civilians are not harmed. That merchant vessels are civilian objects. That vessels engaged in humanitarian missions are exempt from attack. Article 102 states absolutely, that a blockade is prohibited if the damage to the civilian population is excessive in relation to the military advantage of the blockade. Article 103 allows the right of passage, subject to search (but not murder) if the civilian population is inadequately provided with food and other objects essential for its survival. Article 119 declares that a neutral merchant vessel may be diverted ‘with its consent’. Article 124 encourages certification (exactly as the flotilla had done) to avoid the necessity for visit and search. None of this gets a mention in the professor’s assessment. Mr Netanyahu behaves as though it does not exist.

President Obama of course is in on the scam too. Refusing to condemn Israel on 31 May until he knew the facts, he is now doing his best to see that they are not revealed. Thus the UN Human Rights Commission’s Fact Finding Mission is now deemed surplus to requirements. Never mind that it is chaired by a judge who served on the International Criminal Court, or that it includes the former Chief Prosecutor of the UN backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, who has extensive experience on human rights, war crimes and terrorism. This is a committee eminently qualified to investigate the facts so it is being sidelined and told it is irrelevant by Susan Rice, who was speaking as though she owned the United Nations. Just for the record China and Russia voted for this commission, France and Britain abstained, and the other permanent member of the Security Council, without a veto at the UNHRC, could only vote against. The late Charles Wheeler, a redoubtable BBC journalist, once observed that American presidents get worse and worse. Sadly we don’t seem to have reached the nadir yet.

So what is the invertebrate in the White House trying to palm us off with instead? A committee chaired by a law professor who was prime minister of New Zealand for thirteen months, and representative to the International Whaling Commission. Alongside him will be a man whose period of rule in Columbia was strongly criticised for its abuses of human rights, democracy and the rule of law; and whose main arms supplier was the state of Israel. This Panel will receive reports from Israel and Turkey. But it will not be able to subpoena witnesses (and Mr Netanyahu has made it clear that it will not be able to subpoena anyone from the IDF). Neither will it venture out of New York (to go to Iskenderun for example to look over the three Turkish ships that have been released).

So we must hope that Sir Geoffrey Palmer is his own man, and that he is a man of courage and imagination. We must hope that he is a man able to appreciate that it was not self defence to shoot Cevdet Kiliclar through the forehead from a helicopter before a single Israeli had even started to descend from a helicopter or disembark from a zodiac. (Mr Kiliclar was taking a photograph at the time of his assassination.) Let us hope that Sir Geoffrey will ask for proof of the Israeli allegation that their commandos were shot at, and that he will wonder why the infra red footage from the helicopters have not picked up the flashes from the passenger’s guns. Come to that why have we seen so little of the enormous amount of footage that Israel stole from press and passengers on the flotilla?

But even the Israeli film footage provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can be quite revealing. Take a look at the arms cache that Israel made such a fuss about. I have counted the following:

• about 16 kitchen knives,

• three pocket knives,

• fifteen pickaxe handles,

• about twenty lengths of metal bar,

• two ring spanners,

• one pipe wrench,

• four small hammers,

• two sledge hammers,

• four fire axes,

• one paint roller handle,

• ten disc-cutter discs,

• two round files in handles,

• a short length of cord and

• two kaffiyehs.

(There was no blood on any of these ‘weapons’.) This is hardly the equipment prepared by a well-organized terrorist cell that had readied itself to face one of the elite units in the Israel Defence Forces.

Also take a close look at the Israeli infrared film taken from the sea towards the Mavi Marmara. The film unfortunately starts after Mr Kiliclar has been shot dead and other passengers have also been injured and maybe killed. Look close and you can see the pistols being thrown over the side after the commandos are disarmed. Look closely too at the last frame of the infrared footage. There at the side of the ship is a commando with a pistol raised ready to fire. Mostly likely this is a Glock pistol with a magazine holding 17 rounds which can be fired as fast as the trigger can be pulled. Now do you understand why the film stops there? The next sequence shows a small bottle of mace-like self-defence spray, and then a small folding saw with a single 5cm long blade. Yet look behind this primitive weaponry and there inside the door to the bridge lounges a commando with what looks like a submachine gun.

The Israeli military said it would do whatever was necessary to stop the flotilla. When it got to the Mavi Marmara the commandos first tried to board at the stern from zodiacs. They were unable to do this principally because of the fire hoses trained on them, although there were a lot of things like plates and tomatoes thrown at them too. In fact they never did board the ship from this point until after the bridge had been taken and the ship surrendered. The next move, almost certainly with the full authority of Admiral Marom, was to fire live ammunition onto the upper decks from more than one of the four helicopters, and this was probably sniper fire to begin with. Only then did the commandos start to fasten rope onto the deck. But even then the defence did not crumble and the first rope was tied up by the defenders and then abandoned so that the commandos only used one rope and were picked off as they came down. It looks pretty brutal on the film (which is why we are allowed to see it). But if they did not disable those commandos quickly the men on that upper deck were going to get shot, and shortly afterwards this is exactly what happened. However it was a close thing. Perhaps if they had tied up both ropes they may have prevented the landing. And then what: what was Israel’s next line of attack, bearing in mind that they had warships and submarines in the near vicinity? If the boarding had failed would the IDF have sunk the ship? One thing is for sure, that would have took a lot of ingenuity for Mr Netanyahu and Prof Lapidoth to explain. It would have needed a lot of excuses from Mr Obama too.

Israel Razes Israeli-Arab Village For the Third Time

2010-08-15T07:06:00.008+08:00

This exposes Israel's racism in its full glory. These are Israeli Arab citizens who happen to live in a large desert. Israel wants that space to dump the 50,000 settlers (10% of the total) they may have to move in the event of a 'peace settlement' - RP

Go to individual article if the video doesn't work.
In Democracy's Wasteland, Israel Razes a Bedouin Village...Again
"The Negev affords me the pleasure of watching a wasteland develop into the most fruitful portion of Israel by a totally Jewish act of creation." --David Ben Gurion, Memoirs

In the middle of the night on August 10, residents of the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib sent a panicked text message to Israeli activists in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Israeli police helicopters were buzzing overhead, surveying the scene ahead of what was likely to be a new round of demolitions. Three activists staying in the village had been nabbed during a night raid. Having already witnessed the razing of their homes twice in the past two weeks, the residents of Al-Arakib expected the third round of demolitions to arrive tonight, on the eve of Ramadan. During Ramadan, when the villagers fast all day, the police and Israeli Land Adminstration reasoned they would be too weakened to rebuild -- it was prime time for destruction.

I arrived in Al-Arakib at 3 AM with a handful of Jerusalem-based activists. A local couple hauled out mattresses and blankets and poured us small cups of coffee. "I've had enough of sleeping," the man grumbled as he reclined next to his wife. He seemed grateful to have company. I laid down and stared at the desert sky, listening to the man describe in a lulled tone the experience of watching his neighbors' homes crumple under the teeth of bulldozers again and again. As he trailed off, I heard a low droning sound in the distance. Were they here already? I looked around at the others. No one to register the slightest sign of concern. Finally, I slipped into a light slumber.

Two hours later I was torn from my sleep. "They're here!" someone shouted in Hebrew. I leapt from my mattress and scrambled up a dune until I reached the center of the village. A phalanx of one hundred riot cops were already there, bristling with assault weapons and centurion shields. Flanked by bulldozers, they quickly ringed the activists and journalists, who numbered about two dozen, and began forcibly pushing them away from the site of the demolitions. Their intention seemed to be to prevent any brave souls from standing between the bulldozers and the homes they sought to destroy. Dispatched by a faceless network of clerks and engineers in air-conditioned offices to do the dirty work of the state, the police performed their duty with cold efficiency.

As the bulldozers trundled around the village, tearing tarps from plywood pylons, crushing tin roofs, and dragging the shattered structures into hulking piles, the villagers watched with resignation. Seated on her bed in the naked desert, a girl wiped a few tears from her eyes, grimacing at the sight before her. On a nearby hill, a man quizzed his daughter on surahs from the Quran before sending her to collect mattresses from beneath the dusty waste of what used to be their sleeping quarters. An old woman stood impassively while a flock of birds perched on the collapsed remains of her house. Dispossession and homelessness have become nearly mundane in Al-Arakib.

The villagers remain devoted to the nomadic Bedouin tradition. (Why else would they resist with such tenacity the Israeli government's plan to resettle them in one of the Indian reservation-style "development communities" the state has created for them?) However, they have established a permanent presence in the areas around their village that pre-dates the foundation of Israel. Al-Arakib's cemetery, for example, contains the graves dating back to the end of the 19th century. Yet the Bedouins' historical claim to the Negev has not convinced the state that they deserve legal recognition. Nor have their attempts to demonstrate their loyalty by serving as front-line combat soldiers in the Israeli Army. In the eyes of the state, the Arabs of the Negev are at best quasi-human.

In 1953, the first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion (original name: David Gryn) moved to Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev. A self-described messianist who rejected the existence of God while simultaneously describing the Torah as his political guidebook, Ben Gurion saw the Negev as a blank slate for realizing his revolutionary fever dreams. In his memoirs, he fantasized about evacuating Tel Aviv and settling five million Jews in small settlements throughout the Negev. Just as he disdained the cosmopolitan spirit of Tel Aviv's urbanists, Ben Gurion was disgusted by the sight of the open desert, describing it as "a criminal waste." In the place of sand dunes, he imagined a Jewish replica of Northern Europe.

"When I look out of my window and see a tree standing [in the Negev]," Ben Gurion wrote, "that tree gives me a greater sense of beauty and personal delight than all the vast forests I have seen in Switzerland or Scandinavia... Not only because I helped to grow them but because they constitute a gift of man to Nature, and a gift of the Jews to the cradle of their culture."

Influenced by the ethnocentric Ashkenazi outlook of Labor Zionism, Ben Gurion wrote with deep contempt for non-European cultures. He denigrated the Jews who had immigrated to Israel from Arab countries as "savage" and as "a primitive community" that reveres pimps and thieves. But he at least acknowledged their existence in Israeli life. In his writings about the Negev, Ben Gurion did not once mention the presence of the tens of thousands of Arab Beduoins whose villages abutted his kibbutz. To him, their culture was void; they lived in a "wasteland." They were obstacles to his utopian vision, not human beings.

Today the Israeli government remains committed to fulfilling Ben Gurion's fantasies even though the Israeli public has completely turned its back on the Negev. "It seems that the fantasies grow stronger especially when the Jews do not move to live in the desert," the Israeli blogger Eyal Niv wrote. "The more the Jews back away from the desert, the more their leaders toughen the force, frequency, and cruelty of the expulsion of its other residents."

In the areas in and around Al-Arakib, just 5 km north of the city of Beersheva, the Jewish National Fund is in the process of planting the "Ambassador Forest." The forest will cover the land inhabited for over 100 years by the residents of Al-Arakib and prevent them from ever returning. The "Blueprint Negev" plan of the Jewish National Fund, an organization that claims to be acting "on behalf of Jewish people everywhere," can only be realized through harsh military force, the razing of villages, and ultimately, ethnic cleansing. The meting out of these practices against citizens of Israel should raise serious questions about the country's claim to uphold democratic values.

After the Israeli Police completed their third demolition of Al-Arakib, the villagers collected the remains of their homes and, with the assistance of a few Jewish Israeli activists, began rebuilding again. With no recourse from the state or its courts, they have no other option but to start over from scratch. And they have nowhere else to go.
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During the dawn on 10 August, just one day before the beginning of Ramadan, Al Arakib was once again demolished by Israeli forces. The damage was carried out by a team of approximately 100 to 200 police in full riot gear and were supported by a water cannon to disperse the crowd if necessary, mounted police and a bulldozer. While the police force may have been reduced, the State’s intention to displace the Bedouin from their ancestral lands was still clear.

Many residents had remained in their village and began rebuilding their homes following the second demolition. They had been living in temporary shelters and tents, however, these were destroyed along with dozens of small trees which had been replanted. Building materials were also removed to deter the residents from rebuilding. Further, the road to the village was seriously damaged to impede access and the unofficial sign was removed. Water trucks and tanks were removed and are still being held in an unknown location.

Four out of the seven residents who were arrested during the previous demolitions have been released under the condition that they do not return to Al Arakib. This condition was lifted on Sunday. Yesterday, however, the judge decide not to allow three of the residents to return to the village, among them the leader of the village, Sheik Sayach Al-Turi. The villagers have filed an appeal will be heard on Sunday before the Be’er-Sheva District Court.
DesertPeace

Major IDF Manuevers in Northern Israel Threaten Lebanon, Syria, Iran

2010-08-14T14:07:00.015+08:00

Richard Silverstein
August 10th, 2010

TV news video of armor moved to northern Israel during military manuevers
Israel has decided to rattle sabers after losing one of its senior officers in the tree-trimming incident on the Lebanese border. In a story that was removed from the IDF website, it published an article about the maneuvers, reporting that the army is engaged in a major exercise all the way from the central Beit Shean region to the far north, with troops and armor rolling down Highway 71.

Haaretz is also reporting a related escalation by Israel regarding armored vehicles sent to Shebaa Farms, one of the most highly disputed pieces of territory outside Jerusalem. The Lebanese army was placed on high alert as a result.

A word of explanation before I cite Debka, a source I view as having no credibility whatsoever. Since I don’t have access yet to the original Maariv story and Debka seems to be recapitulating it, I’m going to quote Debka. It will likely be the only time I will ever do so here:

Monday night, the Israeli military unusually warned citizens and motorists they would have to put up with heavy military traffic on the northern highways leading from the center of the country to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, Upper Galilee and the Golan – in particular Route 71 linking Afulah and Bet Shean, and Routes 90 and 92 which circle the lake and reach the Galilee Panhandle. They were advised to avoid the roads leading up to the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese borders.

Nana has video of a TV news report showing the armor being ferried north. The video makes clear that one of the tactical presumptions of the exercise is that Israel’s Arab population will rise up in opposition. It is typical of the assumptions of Israeli Jews that their fellow Palestinian citizens will exhibit more hostility than they ever do. And this plays nicely into the current level of paranoia within Israel toward the Arab minority as ginned up by the Shin Bet and other state organs.

The IDF exercise is certainly related to the border incident, and the follow-up threat by the U.S. Congress that it would cut federal funding of the Lebanese military. Today, Iran followed up on the U.S. threat by committing to fill any financial gap caused by our pull-out.

In my post about the tree-trimming incident, I warned that this could impact Israel-Iran relations, which themselves are a tinder-box. If you add Syria to the mix and the possibility of regional war, this is a place to which neither Israel nor the U.S. can want to go. The fact that the Israel lobby sycophants in Congress decided they had to rattle their sabers indicates that they are near-sighted eedjuts who can’t see beyond a millimeter in front of their faces as far as the policy implications of their braggadocio.

If this were the Knesset or the Israeli government, I would say such provocation might be deliberate since many in Israel WANT a war with Iran. But I don’t believe most of Congress (with the exception of the Ledeenites & other neocons there) want to provoke such a war. So they are merely ignorant fools, but not deliberate war provocateurs. But if there is an attack none of this will matter. Wars can just as easily be started inadvertently as deliberately.

According to an Israeli source who claims to have inside information about this operation (and which I could not independently verify), we should watch to see whether all this equipment returns to its home base or is maintained in border staging areas. If it remains on the border, then we should begin to wonder to what possible use such equipment could be put in the event of an Israeli attack on a neighboring country.

To Obama and everyone else who has half a brain in their head (including a few in Israel I hope), I say: “Stand down.” Get the troops back in the barracks. Send the tanks home. Stop rattling sabers. If not, I will point out that most specialists in the subject believe that Nasser never intended to provoke the 1967 War. Yet his bellicose rhetoric played a role in bringing on hostilities (though of course the Israelis attacked first). There must not be military hostilities now under these circumstances.

Chances are Israel wishes to threaten the Lebanese. Haaretz reports that the IDF has already threatened to assassinate the Lebanese commander who ordered the sniper fire which killed the Israeli officer on the border. These manuevers are a follow-up to that. They also serve to remind the Syrians that Israel can do plenty of damage to them. And there can never be a downside in Israeli domestic politics from issuing menacing threats aimed at Iran. So the Highway 71 military exercise is a sort of Israeli Trifecta. Mass the troops and hopefully throw the fear of God into your three most potent neighbor/enemies.

US State Department to Do Its Own Thing

2010-08-13T19:52:00.005+08:00

By Warren P. Strobel
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Can diplomats field their own army? The State Department is laying plans to do precisely that in Iraq, in an unprecedented experiment that U.S. officials and some nervous lawmakers say could be risky.

In little more than a year, State Department contractors in Iraq could be driving armored vehicles, flying aircraft, operating surveillance systems, even retrieving casualties if there are violent incidents and disposing of unexploded ordnance.

Under the terms of a 2008 status of forces agreement, all U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, but they'll leave behind a sizable American civilian presence, including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the world, and five consulate-like "Enduring Presence Posts" in the Iraqi hinterlands.

Iraq remains a battle zone, and the American diplomats and other civilian government employees will need security. The U.S. military will be gone. Iraq's army and police, despite billions of dollars and years of American training, aren't yet capable of doing the job.

The State Department, better known for negotiating treaties and delivering diplomatic notes, will have to fend for itself in what remains an active danger zone.

Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, flew to Washington this week for a conference with the State Department on how to transition Iraq from soldiers to diplomats.

He and Ambassador Christopher Hill "have built a joint plan to do this transition," Odierno said. "So we are now going to go through this (plan) and brief them on it and tell what they have to do to support this transition."

Odierno said that one of the chief responsibilities of the remaining U.S. troops in Iraq is to help facilitate that transfer.

The arrangement is "one more step in the blurring of the lines between military activities and State Department or diplomatic activities," said Richard Fontaine of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington research center. "This is no longer (just) the foreign service officer standing in the canape line, and the military out in the field."

"The State Department is trying to become increasingly expeditionary," he said.

With public attention riveted on the war in Afghanistan, the coming transition of the U.S. mission in Iraq has gotten relatively little notice by the news media. American troops are pulling out of the country at an accelerating rate to meet President Barack Obama's interim ceiling of 50,000 noncombat troops remaining in Iraq by the end of next month.

The stakes, however, could be enormous. The Obama administration has promised Iraqis that the United States won't abandon their country when American troops leave. If it can't keep that promise, U.S. influence in the unstable region could dissipate, despite a seven-year war that's cost more than $700 billion and the lives of at least 4,400 U.S. troops.

Already, however, the State Department's requests to the Pentagon for Black Hawk helicopters; 50 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles; fuel trucks; high-tech surveillance systems; and other military gear has encountered flak on Capitol Hill.

Contractors are to operate most of the equipment, and past controversies that involved Pentagon and State Department contractors, including the company formerly known as Blackwater, have left some lawmakers leery.

"The fact that we're transitioning from one poorly managed contracting effort to another part of the federal government that has not excelled at this function either is not particularly comforting," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

"It's one thing" for contractors to be "peeling potatoes" and driving trucks, McCaskill told McClatchy. "It's another thing for them to be deploying MRAPs and Black Hawk helicopters."

"I know there's a lot of bad choices here," the senator said, adding that she'd choose using the U.S. military to protect diplomats in Iraq. "That's a resource issue."

A report July 12 by the bipartisan legislative Commission on Wartime Contracting said that the number of State Department security contractors would more than double, from 2,700 to between 6,000 and 7,000, under current plans.

In contrast to that estimate, however, Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy told McClatchy this week that the total number of U.S. civilians and contract personnel in Iraq after December 2011 would be only 4,000 to 5,000.

"Particularly troubling," the bipartisan commission's report said, "is the fact that the State Department has not persuaded congressional appropriators of the need for significant new resources to perform its mission in Iraq."

"We have to make the case to them. We hope that people recognize the importance of follow-through here," a senior administration official said, alluding to the long-term U.S. commitment to Iraq. Walking away from that "would be a terrible mistake," the official said. He spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk for the record.

State Department and White House officials, while acknowledging the peculiarity of having a large civilian U.S. government presence in a war zone without American troops on the ground, said that the transition — already under way, in some cases _would go smoothly.

Planning began in spring 2009, and the transition is being shepherded by teams in Washington and Baghdad that confer in weekly video teleconferences.

"This is a major endeavor, and it is without precedent, I believe," said Kennedy, the department's top management official, who's seen 37 years of management challenges.

"We've defined what we have to do. And now we have to define where we're going to do it and how we're going to do it," he said in an interview.

The State Department also will have to provide for its own basics, such as food, water and laundry, perhaps through existing Pentagon logistics contract known by the acronym LOGCAP.

Kennedy and other officials noted that the department has experience operating aircraft in war zones, through a long-standing, Florida-based aviation wing that's conducted counter-narcotics missions in Colombia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

In the interview, Kennedy defended the decision to use contractors to operate military assets. The State Department doesn't have enough Diplomatic Security agents to do the job, and it makes little sense to undertake a mammoth hiring effort for a temporary need, he said.

"This is the kind of surge activity that it seems very, very logical to use contractors for," he said.

Critics say it would be more logical for the military to leave several thousand troops behind to protect government officials and property.

However, that would require renegotiating the U.S.-Iraqi status of forces agreement, a sensitive step. There's "no thought of that right now," the senior administration official said.

Lebanon Doubts Nasrallah’s ‘Proof’

2010-08-13T17:46:00.004+08:00

Comment: In all truth, I expected a lot more from Nasrallah; undated aerial photos of the St Georges Hotel and harbour are just not enough. There have been Israeli overflights of Beirut since the 1970s, when I lived there. RP

Lebanon doubts Nasrallah’s ‘proof’ Joshua Hersh, Foreign Correspondent

Last Updated: August 11. 2010

People watch Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speaking via video link during a press conference, on the assassination of Rafik Hariri in Beirut.
For weeks, the Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has claimed that Israel was behind the 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, but the evidence he supplied in a nationally televised news conference this week failed to entirely persuade the Lebanese public and politicians.
Most Lebanese were in agreement, however, that his two-hour, multi-media presentation on Monday evening was certain to spark heated debate.
“I don’t think it changes much,” said Oussama Safa, an analyst with the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies. “Nothing convincing, too general. Although I do think it probably will generate some discussion.”
In his presentation, Mr Nasrallah sought to allay suspicions that Hizbollah was involved in the killing of Hariri, who was blown up by a massive remote controlled bomb while travelling in his motorcade along Beirut’s corniche. A UN special tribunal in The Hague is prosecuting those responsible for the attack and is expected to hand down indictments in the case within months.
In advance of the highly anticipated news conference, Mr Nasrallah had promised to provide “material evidence” demonstrating that Israel had carried out the killing and on Monday, he aired videos he said were intercepted from Israeli drones and showed that Israeli intelligence agents were tracking the routes regularly taken by Hariri’s motorcade.
“Israel has the capability to carry out these types of operations, such as Hariri’s assassination, and Israel’s history is full of assassination operations against high-ranking figures and leaders,” Mr Nasrallah said.
He also described, with great precision, previous instances in which he said Hizbollah “traitors” had been caught trying to create dissension between the party and Mr Hariri on behalf of Israel.
Gen Michel Aoun, leader of the Hizbollah-aligned Free Patriotic Movement, said Mr Nasrallah’s speech contained more than enough new material to justify further inquiry by the tribunal.
“There is valuable evidence and it is worth taking it into consideration,” Gen Aoun told Hizbollah’s al Manar television yesterday
The loudest voices in Lebanon, however, were those who proclaimed that without more substantive proof, Mr Nasrallah’s speech would do little to alter the political calculus.
“If the international tribunal had evidence on ex-premier Rafik Hariri’s killers, then it could continue its operations without taking into consideration what Sayyed Nasrallah has said,” Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel told al Jazeera.
Samir Franjieh, a senior leader in the anti-Hizbollah March 14 movement, called the presentation unpersuasive for him, but said it may have been directed at a different audience.
“It doesn’t change how I felt yesterday and the reaction around me was that what [Mr Nasrallah] said was not really credible,” Mr Franjieh said. “What he tried to do was to convince his own people about what happened.”
Some followers of Mr Nasrallah worried that his speech had not done enough to sway doubters.
“I expected more evidence from Sayyed Hassan last night,” said one supporter, Hassan Jaber, 43, a barber in West Beirut.
“The material he showed is surely important, but not enough to silence Hizbollah’s opponents in Lebanon. I was waiting to hear phone call recordings, or pictures of the people who worked on the bomb, or even stronger evidence. But he promised there is more to show, so let’s wait and see”, Mr Jaber said.
Another supporter, a journalist who lives in Beirut’s southern suburbs, agreed, saying that while the faith and loyalty of Mr Nasrallah’s followers was assured, the challenge was persuading others.
“You don’t have to think of the people in this community,” said the man, who agreed to be quoted only on condition of anonymity. “You have to think of the people on the other side.”
One politician close to Hizbollah, who asked not to be named, called the evidence compelling, but acknowledged that in the run-up to Mr Nasrallah’s presentation, Hizbollah may have raised expectations too high.
“In that sense maybe [the evidence] was not enough,” the politician said. “Maybe the expectations were too high. Because they made lots of people expect that it was really conclusive.”
But Ibrahim Mousawi, a spokesman for Hizbollah, rejected this criticism, saying, “Those who are talking about ‘smoking guns,’ they are introducing this idea themselves.”
“It’s not like [Mr Nasrallah] is practicing magic,” Mr Mousawi said. “When he announced that he was going to hold this press conference, he said he was going to bring implications that would be usable to accuse Israel, and they can open horizons for the investigations. He didn’t in the first place promise that he’s going to give irrefutable evidence that Israel did this.”

Aisha - The Girl Who Tried To Get Away

2010-08-13T13:27:00.007+08:00

Comment: There couldn't be a more blatant propaganda photo. Such mutilations are common in provincial Afghanistan, and have been since long before the Taliban were created. But this girl is was very pretty. She was extremely lucky to get away from her abusive 'home' and find refuge. In many countries (not only Muslim ones) she would have deserved, and got, an honour killing RP
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The maimed face of 18-year-old Aisha, her nose and ears cut off as punishment by her Afghan husband for fleeing his home, made the cover of Time magazine last week and changed the debate over the country's military involvement in Afghanistan. Hitting stands just as a growing chorus of pundits and lawmakers had begun to question the costs, the goals and the point of the country's longest war ever, the gut-punch cover image, beneath a stunningly blunt coverline conspicuously missing a question mark — "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan" — and accompanying story by Aryn Baker, the magazine's Afghan/Pakistan bureau chief, gave a boost to supporters of America's continued military involvement in the country..............

..............And what about Aisha, a new war emblem? While it's long been evident that women have suffered unimaginable horrors under customs practiced in Afghanistan, Aisha's brutal mutilation occurred in 2009, almost eight years into the American invasion.

Meanwhile, in a story light on specifics, there remains some question as to whether the unnamed Afghan judge who ordered Aisha's mutilation qualifies as a "Taliban commander" in any formal sense. And if Aisha's is the face of the notoriously cruel Taliban justice system, the Taliban aren't taking credit. A Taliban press release on August 7 condemned the maiming as "unislamic" and denied that the case was handled by any of its roving judges — to whom many Afghans are now turning, distrustful of Karzai officials.

In the long run, the NATO-backed president, Hamid Karzai, may not be the friend Aisha and other persecuted Afghan women so desperately need. Last August he signed the Shia Personal Status Law, allowing men to starve wives who withhold sex and to punish those who walk outdoors without permission. Under this law — passed by a parliament that is 25 percent female as mandated by the new Afghan consitution — Aisha's decision to leave home would have been considered a crime.
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Read more: http://jezebel.com/
In fact, Aisha's abuse and mutilation took place last year, with U.S. troops' presence in the country and alongside Afghan women's significant progress on certain fronts. Women For Women in Afghanistan has some more details on her tragic background:

She was sold at the age of 10 by her father to a married man, a Talib. He kept her in the stable with the animals until she was 12 (when she got her first menstrual period). At the age of 12 he married her. From the day that she arrived in his house, she was beaten regularly by this man and his family. Sometimes she was beaten so badly that she couldn't get up for days. Six months ago before she came to us, she was beaten so badly by her husband that she thought that she was going to die. She ran away and went to the neighbor's house. The neighbor took to her to the police.

Such stories are obscene, not at all uncommon, and need to be told. But there is an elision here between these women's oppression and what the U.S. military presence can and should do about it, which in turn simplifies the complexities of the debate and turns it into, "Well, do you want to help Aisha or not?"

While Aryn Baker's story features the voices of many Afghan women who worry that the likely compromise with the Taliban vis a vis a possible U.S. exit will curtail their new freedoms, it doesn't actually forcefully make the case that American military presence is the only solution to their problems. (That's probably because Baker is a reporter, not a commentator, and it's the job of headline writers to grab readers at almost any cost.)

There are, however, conflicting signals about how seriously committed U.S. officials are, in the context of an exist plan, to pushing back at the resurgence of the Taliban as it affects women in the country. One anonymous diplomat tells Baker, "You have to be realistic. We are not going to be sending troops and spending money forever. There will have to be a compromise, and sacrifices will have to be made." On the other hand, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told reporters that women's rights are a "red line" that won't be crossed: "I don't think there is such a political solution, one that would be a lasting, sustainable one, that would turn the clock back on women," she said, after relative quiet on the issue last year.

What would turning the clock back mean exactly? This is something the story actually does describe in detail:

During Taliban times, women's voices were banned from the radio, and TV was forbidden, but last month a female anchor interviewed a former Taliban leader on a national broadcast.

Under the Taliban, Robina Muqimyar Jalalai, one of Afghanistan's first two female Olympic athletes, spent her girlhood locked behind the walls of her family compound. Now she is running for parliament and wants a sports ministry created, which she hopes to lead. "We have women boxers and women footballers," she says. "I go running in the stadium where the Taliban used to play football with women's heads."

There is also a 25 percent quota for women in Parliament, although that hasn't always helped protect women's rights, as seen in the case of a bill that "authorized husbands in Shi‘ite families to withhold money and food from wives who refuse to provide sex, limited inheritance and custody of children in the case of divorce and denied women freedom of movement without permission from their families." (That's partly because some of the female parliamentarians are "proxies for conservative men who boosted them into power," according to one of their colleagues.)

Children Are Just Israel’s Latest Victims

2010-08-13T07:20:00.002+08:00

11. Aug, 2010
Mya Guarnieri – guardian.co.uk,

Israel’s plan to deport the children of foreign workers is yet another reminder of the state’s ongoing inhumanity

Michelle is the 14-year-old daughter of undocumented migrant labourers from the Philippines. In fluent Hebrew, she sums up the inhumanity of Israel’s plans to deport the children of foreign workers. “It’s like they’re taking sheep and packing them,” she says.

While Michelle will probably be naturalised, Israel is set to expel scores of minors, along with their families, to their parents’ country of origin. The criteria that determine who will get residency are rigid and arbitrary. Because of tight age restrictions and an even smaller window to get one’s paperwork turned in (parents will have just three weeks to submit documents that might be impossible to obtain) many children will be left out in the cold.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday night to rally against the deportations. The scene was heart rending. Little girls sat on a ledge, swinging their feet, holding a poster that read: “Don’t deport us.” A young boy gripped a sign with the message: “We are all Israeli children.”

Noa Kaufman, an activist with Israeli Children, a grassroots movement founded specifically to advocate for the kids facing deportation, said that all must be allowed to stay. She remarked that the expulsion would not only damage the families of migrant workers, it would be harmful to Israel, as well, making the country “so white and so ugly”.

It’s a thinly veiled accusation of ethnic cleansing – something activists have shied away from during the year-long battle over the issue.

The struggle began last summer when Israel first announced its plans to deport 1,200 Israeli-born children – a number that will probably be reduced by the recommendations of a governmental committee. The move, part of a broader crackdown on Israel’s approximately 250,000 undocumented migrant labourers, will be a reversal of the state’s long-held policy against deporting minors. The public was outraged. Massive protests delayed the expulsion until the end of the school year.

While the children were born to non-Jewish parents, they are unequivocally Israeli. They go to local schools, speak fluent Hebrew and celebrate both national and religious holidays. Their homes often include Shabbat candles, hanukiyot, and kippot, as parents accommodate their assimilated children. Immersed in the culture, the kids profess a love for Israel, a country they embrace as their own.

But Israel, a state of immigrants that has no immigration law besides the Jewish right of return, would prefer to expel them.

Israel began bringing foreign workers into the country in the late 1980s, during the first intifada, to replace Palestinian day labourers. Now the state says it wants to reduce its dependency on migrant labourers. But in 2009 – the same year that the government announced its intention to deport the children – the state issued a record number of visas for more to come.

Perhaps interior minister Eli Yishai was being more honest about the government’s motives when, speaking to the Israeli daily Haaretz, he called the 1,200 children a “demographic threat … liable to damage the state’s Jewish identity”. And Yishai showed his true colours when he remarked that migrant workers bring “a profusion of diseases” to Israel.

State policies are similarly racist, revealing a blatant disregard for foreign workers’ humanity. Migrant labourers who fall in love and marry can be stripped of their legal status. Women who bear children must choose between keeping their baby or their visa. If a mother won’t ship her newborn child home, she and her child become “illegal” and, now, subject to deportation.

The policies might be shocking but they aren’t surprising. What can be expected of a state that builds settlements at the expense of peace? What can be expected of a government that subjects 1.5m Gazans to collective punishment?

The connection between the plight of the children and the Palestinian struggle was apparent on Saturday night. Some of the Israeli demonstrators were wearing T-shirts reading: “Free Sheikh Jarrah“. Chants common to protests against the separation barrier were used, substituting girosh (deportation) for kibush (occupation).

The scene was a reminder that a state “so white and so ugly” was established long ago – the children are just the latest victims.

Source: The Guardian.co.uk

Why Is Canadian Child Soldier Omar Khadr Being Tried by a Military Court?

2010-08-12T20:09:00.004+08:00

Maher Arar - Human rights advocate
Posted: August 11, 2010

Ironic Note: Maher Arar's own experience has been put forward as an example of the United States government policy of "extraordinary rendition".
Arar was detained during a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunis. He was held in solitary confinement in the United States for nearly two weeks, questioned, and denied meaningful access to a lawyer. The US government suspected him of being a member of Al Qaeda and deported him, not to Canada, his current home, but to his native Syria, even though its government is known to use torture. He was detained in Syria for almost a year, during which time he was tortured....until his release to Canada.

Was Omar Khadr captured in Manhattan trying to blow up a civilian or a government installation? Of course not. We all know his story by now. Canadian Omar Khadr was captured in a battlefield in Afghanistan that was illegally invaded by the US army. He was 15 years old at the time. He is the perfect example of a child soldier. But the US army and the Department of Defence had another opinion, they charged Khadr with a never-heard-of-type-of-charge called "murder in violation of the laws of war." So if the alleged crime was done on Afghan soil, why didn't the US officials put Khadr on trial in Afghanistan? Why did they wait for almost 7 years to send him to a kangaroo court? Whoever has read the story in detail perfectly knows that there is contradictory evidence whether Khadr is the one who threw the hand grenade that killed the US medic.

However, many pieces of evidence point to all kinds of abuses Omar Khadr underwent throughout his detention like sleep deprivation and the threat of gang rape. Aren't these abuses enough to redeem his "sin"? Aren't seven years spent between the notorious Bagram and Guantanamo prisons enough? In the Canadian justice system a year spent in a detention center (which is considered a 5-star hotel compared to the prison in Guantanamo) is counted as two. How much should judges count each year that he spent at Guantanamo?

Once captured, did the US army apply the rules of engagement? Why did the US government refuse to afford him the rights normally afforded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention?

What kind of justice is this? Did the world go crazy or what? If we Canadians do not care about Omar Khadr, shouldn't we care about our future and the future of our kids? One thing is sure: Khadr's legacy will haunt us for generations to come.

Have you had a chance recently to read the media coverage about his case? In their attempt to stay "neutral," journalists end up writing a dry story with no emotions whatsoever. How can journalists stay neutral anymore? Aren't they offended by the arrogance shown by the US government?

The final question is: Why is Omar Khadr being tried by a military court if the government is certain he was the one who threw the grenade? Don't they have trust in civilian courts? I think we all know the answer: these military courts are made to convict. After all, the government, as is usually the case, is throwing multiple charges at him in the hope that one of them sticks.

This farce trial is already showing us its ugly face: his military judge has just ruled that Khadr's confession can be used in trial.

Palestinian Boys Wait Two Years For Justice

2010-08-11T05:46:00.001+08:00

After two years, a case against Palestinian teenagers accused of throwing stones was overturned when the military prosecution backed out. The suspects pleaded innocent all along, saying they'd been in school
By Amira Hass

Eight Palestinian teenagers were tried in the court of military judge Lt. Col. Menashe Vahnish on November 11, 2008. Referring to a soldier from the Kfir Brigade, Vahnish said, "at this stage, there is no reason to cast any doubt on the witness." According to his police testimony, on October 30, 2008 the soldier, T.M., and some of his comrades apprehended stone-throwing Palestinian 16-year-olds on a road that runs between the al-Aroub refugee camp south of Bethlehem and an agricultural school across the way.

Vahnish also saw no reason to doubt the accounts given by two other soldiers from the Kfir Brigade company, L.G. and G.D., whose statements to the Etzion police formed the basis of indictments submitted by the army prosecutor against the Palestinians. Under the indictment, the eight teenagers hurled rocks "from a distance of about 20 meters at Israeli cars traveling on Route 60, with the intention of harming the vehicles or their passengers."

Following their apprehension, the judge ordered that the teenagers, all of whom are students at the al-Aroub agricultural school, remain in custody until the end of their trial. Extending remands (i.e., keeping suspects in jail until the end of legal proceedings ) is almost always a default option favored by the Israeli military court in the West Bank, whose sole defendants are Palestinians. When detainees are suspected of minor offenses (such as stone throwing or demonstrating ), and especially when they are minors, the length of time they are held in custody often exceeds the maximum possible prison term. Therefore, defendants often feel pressured to reach a deal with the prosecution and plead guilty, even when they are not or when the evidence is weak. But this time, the pressure evidently did not work.

In their police accounts, the soldiers stated that they chased the stone throwers and caught those who did not manage to escape to the school grounds. The pupils, on the other hand, claimed they had been inside their classrooms and that some of them were even taking exams, when three regular army jeeps and one large ("Ze'ev" ) jeep suddenly burst onto the school compound. According to the Palestinian witnesses, the vehicles tore down a fence and then soldiers leapt out and whisked about 20 students out of their classrooms.

Vahnish gave little credence to arguments made by defense attorneys Mahmoud Hassan and Nasser Nubani. Their case depended largely on what they described as a clear photograph from October 30, taken by a pupil, showing a group of 20 students sitting on a low stone fence, without handcuffs or blindfolds, in the schoolyard. The eight defendants were selected out of this group of 20, claimed Hassan, from the Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association.

Hassan submitted an appeal, and the eight teenage defendants spent another nine days behind bars before judge Lt. Col. Yoram Haniel, from the military appeals court, decided to release them on bail.

"Basically," Haniel stated, "the army prosecutor is basing his position on statements made by three soldiers who were responsible for the arrests under appeal. Unfortunately, the soldiers have not detailed what occurred, nor have they provided a detailed description of how they managed to bring all of the appellants to court."

The appeals judge ordered each youth to provide, in cash, NIS 7,500 as bail. For all eight of the defendants, whose parents were already hard-pressed to cover their journey to the military appeals court session in Ofer, this was an impossibly exorbitant sum. But the Ramallah-based NPO Addameer managed, in this particular case, to obtain a loan from the Palestinian Authority treasury and post their bail. Five days after Haniel handed down his decision, the teenagers were released; they had been in custody for 27 days.

After the suspects were released, Hassan told Haaretz, the army prosecutor began the typical routine of pressuring him to sign a deal. Hassan relates how the prosecutor's representatives told him, "We want to end this matter quickly. We will demand only a fine and a suspended sentence. It's a shame to waste the court's time, and your own time. What else could you want, [the eight defendants] are released and you're wasting time over nothing."

Hassan rejected the offer, saying his clients should not be branded with a criminal record for the rest of their lives for a crime they did not commit.

Between 15 and 18 sessions on the case were then held at the military court in Ofer. The soldiers were questioned about their statements to the police, and more photographs were submitted.

On the day of the arrests, the soldier G.D., for instance - who had served in the Kfir Brigade Haruv company for 15 months - told the police: "Today, over the course of patrol activity, we received a report that there was stone throwing in the region of al-Aroub. I arrived on the scene with a back-up squad... We immediately identified the group of stone throwers, located 30 meters away. Its members were hurling stones at Route 60. In our vehicle, we proceeded to chase the stone throwers at a moderate speed; when we were a few meters away from them, they began to flee in the direction of the school. At that point, we got out of the army vehicle and started to chase them on foot. We were able to detain some of the stone throwers, while others managed to escape into the school."

Along with the police questioner, this soldier entered the Etzion station yard where he pointed to three of the detainees, including Nasser Badran Jaber, "who was wearing a black jacket, blue jeans and had light brown hair." The police officer asked the soldier if he was certain that those he had identified had in fact thrown stones. "Doubly sure," G.D. responded. The policeman then asked whether the soldier had kept the suspects in his sight from the time they had thrown the stones until their apprehension. G.D. said that he had.

On January 28, 2010, G.D. left his base in the Jordan Valley to testify in the Ofer courtroom. Hassan asked him: "Is it true that, along with the rest of the force on the scene, you entered the schoolyard?" G.D. replied: "I never went in. I stayed with the detainees." Hassan: "So you stayed in the army vehicle?" G.D.: "Yes." Hassan: "So, who entered the yard?" G.D.: "I don't know anything about soldiers going in." Hassan: "You said that you caught somebody on the road, not in the schoolyard. Can you tell me who, among the defendants, this was?" G.D.: "No, I can't recall." Hassan: "I'm telling you that you have made false statements right now, because all of the defendants were detained in the school, not on the road. What do you have to say about this?" G.D.: "I am testifying about what I remember, and that's what happened. I recall that there were three [suspects] with me in the vehicle. I recall that they were involved in stone throwing; perhaps I did not see them throw stones, but they were in the group that fled." The exchange between Hassan and G.D. continued:

Q. When you reached the road, you saw people throwing stones. That was beyond the road, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. Did any cars pass by at this time?

A. I imagine so, because this is the main road.

Q. But you yourself did not see a car pass by, or the suspects throwing any rocks at it?

A. I did not see a car hit by a stone. I don't entirely recall whether there was stone throwing at this time.

Q. You received a report that people were throwing stones, and you arrived a short time after the rocks were hurled. But you didn't see any stone throwing yourself?

A. I saw rocks being thrown in the direction of the road, and the moment we arrived [the throwers] fled.

Q. So if you saw stones being thrown, did you also see where they landed?

A. That's a very specific question. This occurred a long time ago.

The teenagers continued to plead innocent. In July 2010, after the defense attorney announced his intention to bring schoolteachers in as witnesses, the military prosecution asked to rescind its indictment. The military judge had no choice but to declare, on July 12, that the indictment had been overturned.

Nasser Jaber, from Hebron, told Haaretz this week that he and the other suspects were held for a day before being brought to a cell at the Etzion police department. Over the course of this day, he said, they were insulted, slapped and kicked.

"We were handcuffed and blindfolded, and the soldiers threw us like garbage bags to the floor of the jeep," he related. "They kicked us during the car trip. Then they tossed us, face down, like garbage bags, from the jeep to the ground; some of us were injured."

During the remand hearing, "all of the defendants sobbed, except Nasser," Jaber's mother related. Some of them fell ill while in custody. Two dropped out of school as a result of the emotional strains and steep financial costs connected to the detention and trial. All refused to sign a plea bargain.

Along with the eight defendants, there was another detainee involved in the case - a young man about four years older than the other suspects. He denied all charges during the police interrogation and the court remand hearing.

In a prior case, when he was 14, he had been convicted on a stone-throwing charge and a shooting charge, which left him with a conditional arrest sentence of 30 months. That is why Haniel ordered him to remain in custody until the end of the court proceedings.

On May 4, 2009 he decided that his wisest course was to plead guilty of throwing stones on the date in question. The day he reversed his plea, he was released. The judge announced that they had worked out a plea bargain, according to which the man's sentence was equivalent to the number of days he had been held in custody; he was also fined NIS 500. He had been convicted on the basis of testimony from the same soldiers whose testimonies could not sustain the charge sheets of the eight teenagers. His friends spent one month in jail, while he lost six months there.

He lost but the court gained: The judge in his case, Lt. Col. Shmuel Kedar, seemed satisfied with the plea bargain. "The sides justified the arrangement by pointing to the defendant's past record, his admission of guilt and saving the court's time," he said.

The IDF spokesman released the following statement in reply: "It bears mention that there is no court determination that the soldiers lied in their accounts, and the agreement to overturn the indictment has no implication with regard to the reliability of the soldiers' testimony... Perjury in military trials is a serious offense, and appropriate legal measures are taken in response to it. Decisions concerning detention are reached in a professional, direct manner, according to appropriate standards and rules accepted in Israel's legal system. The prolongation of legal processes for one reason or another can justify the release of detainees, for this reason only and in appropriate cases."

Little Bit of Background on 'Innocent' Jewish Terrorist

2010-08-11T05:35:00.002+08:00

Friday, July 16th, 2010
Richard Silverstein

Jewish Terrorist, Charged With Multiple Palestinian Murders, ‘Outs’ Chief of Shin Bet’s Jewish Terror Department
Jewish rightist site claims this is Avi Arieli, chief of Shin Bet's Jewish department

The Israeli police have arrested an alleged key Jewish settler terrorist, Chaim Pearlman, charging him with involvement in multiple murders and woundings of Palestinians going back as far as 12 years. As part of Pearlman’s counter-campaign to impugn the Shin Bet, he released transcripts of 20 hours of conversations with an agent of the Shin Bet’s Jewish terror section. He and his supporters have also outed the chief of the unit in a post at the pro-settler site, HaYamin, claiming he is Avigdor (Avi) Arieli and lives in the settlement of Kfar Adumim.

Haaretz reported in May, 2010 that two women and their 11 children from the far-right Kahanist settlement of Yizhar, were detained when they demonstrated outside the agent’s home in the settlement. I simply find it unbelievable that people would place their own children in such a situation and exploit them in such a way.

HaYamin also posted the image below of another Shin Bet agent whose nickname was Dada, and who Pearlman claims attempted to entrap him as reported in this Haaretz article.

An Israeli source reports that an Avigdor Arieli works in the prime minister’s office (of which the Shin Bet is a part) and joined a delegation of security officials who attended a 2007 NATO meeting. While I don’t profess to be an expert on how the Shin Bet and Mossad parse their relationship, I find it odd that a senior Shin Bet agent would attend a NATO conference. That would seem to be the bailiwick of the Mossad. But perhaps things are looser in Israel than in the U.S. intelligence community, where I think it would be doubtful an FBI agent would attend such a conference unless it directly related to a U.S. domestic security issue.

Pearlman’s transcripts are riveting and reveal Dada to be a overbearing, almost transparent provocateur, which is confirmed by the fact that Pearlman transcribed so many of their conversations likely suspecting his interlocutor was an agent. Among the main thread that the Israeli media has focussed on is Dada’s solicitation to assassinate Sheikh Ra’ad Salah, one of the leading Israeli Palestinian Islamists:

HaYamin also accuses this man it calls 'Dada' of being a Shin Bet agent

In the recordings released Thursday, the alleged agent can be heard saying that only an “extreme move” could change public opinion, citing the assassination of Sheik Ra’ad Salah as one such extreme move.

“I could do it,” the agent can be heard saying, referring to the proposed killing of the Islamic Movement leader, saying that Salah’s security would prevent him from succeeding, adding that if he were Pearlman he would commit the assassination.

“It’s not about hitting him [Salah] and getting in trouble. It’s about coming over, hitting him, and see you later, like that guy in Bar Noar” the alleged Shin Bet agent can be heard saying, referring to the killing of a counselor and a teenager at a Tel Aviv gay center last year.

The agent continues to explain how he would carry out Salah’s assassination, saying Pearlman would have to “use another person for that”…

“You don’t really want to do it,” Pearlman can be heard as saying, with the alleged Shin Bet agent replying: “Says who? Says you? What are you relying on? Can you check me? Come check me, I’m ready.”

When Pearlman asked if the alleged Shin Bet agent understood the ramifications of such an act, and if he would be willing to take responsibility for it, the agent said: “sure, why not.”

“How long will the noise continue? Will it lead to war? Won’t there be war without it happening?” the agent can be heard asking, adding that “war has casualties.”

“Listen I don’t have a problem [inaudible] someone who takes a life once and gets that feeling…. I would never do it to a Jew. It would be hard,” the alleged Shin Bet agent said, adding, “but I wouldn’t have a problem with one of those.”

After again discussing the risks such an action would entail, Pearlman can be heard asking if the alleged agent even knew where Salah lived, with the agent answering: “somewhere in the North, in one of the villages in the North.

“Look, it shouldn’t be much of a problem. The car passes. You shoot a burst. Chances are the driver will get killed,” the agent added, saying that Pearlman would have to either “finish him with one burst, or a few split ones.”

The alleged agent continues his description of the potential assassination, saying that it would not be the kind of operation where one would “come in close.”

“You need to be as far away as you can in this kind of situation. Or put a bomb in the car. That’s the classic one. Nothing’s left, everything goes everywhere,” the agent added, saying Salah would then “go to all hell.”

Clearly, Pearlman is accusing the Shin Bet of entrapment. He goes so far as to claim that he was a Shin Bet agent, which the agency confirms, though it claims this was for a short period in 2002. Pearlman will of course attempt to claim that any acts for which he is charged were carried out with the connivance of the intelligence agency.

There will be those on the left who will take Shin Bet literally and believe it wanted Pearlman to assassinate Salah. Though I do not necessarily believe this, I’m nevertheless concerned by having an agent plant ideas in a violent terrorist’s mind upon which he might act. It would be in the nature of the Shin Bet to believe they could stop him before he acted. But what’s to stop a nutcase like Pearlman from escaping their surveillance and carrying out the murder? They’re essentially activating a Golem and expecting they can control him. But remember the fate of the actual Golem, who ran amok and had to be killed by his creator, Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague. It’s the height of hubris for the Shin Bet to plant the seeds of murder in Pearlman’s mind.

In fact, the Shin Bet did something very similar in 1994, supplying rifles to two Israeli brothers knowing they planned to use them to murder a Palestinian. They came very close to succeeding thanks to the weapons supplied to them. And the victim recently received a paltry settlement from the State for his trouble. In fact, I believe the Shin Bet cared as little about the fate of the victim in this case as it does about Sheikh Salah. What would it matter to them if Pearlman had taken up the gun and actually succeeded in killing him? It would only matter in the sense of a possible embarrassment about being implicated in the incident.

I also wonder how the Shin Bet would deal with a potential Palestinian terrorist and whether they would go so far as to suggest targets and offer arms to carry out attacks. I don’t know the answer, but I would imagine they would treat a Palestinian differently out of deference to their Jewish targets.

Returning to Pearlman, his attorney is Adi Keidar, who works for the far-right terror legal defense organization, Honenu. They also represent Yigal Amir and lobby intensively for the legal pardon of convicted settler murderers.

As part of its coverage of this story, Haaretz published an eye-opening story explaining why the Shin Bet fails so miserably in tracking, preventing, and prosecuting Jewish terror:

When compared to the terrorist attacks carried out by Palestinians…the percentage of Jewish terrorist cases that have been solved is far from being impressive. The rate at which cases are solved is also different. More often than not years pass before any arrest is made.

…To a great extent it boils down to resources. The main role of the Shin Bet security service is to foil terrorism aimed against Israelis

Chief among the reasons I would note is a failure of will. The Shin Bet’s views are so close to those of the settlers that they may not even want to stop them. And even if they do, they show an amazing unwillingness to prosecute them fully. Finally, those who are convicted and sent to jail almost invariably receive presidential pardons: an expectation Palestinian terrorists somehow never realize.

It’s also interesting to note that Judge Leah Lev-On, hearing Pearlman’s case, was asked by the Shin Bet to place a gag order on the proceedings. Astonishingly, she agreed but limited it–allowing publication of Pearlman’s name. This threw the security agency into turmoil. In fact, once she allowed publication of the accused’s name the Shin Bet was forced to seek removal of the entire gag in order to reply to Pearlman’s accusations against it. Israeli judges almost never reject such applications. They certainly never do in the cases of Israeli Palestinians accused of security threats. They also did not in the case of Anat Kamm. Either there was something in this particular judge that made her unwilling to be an accomplice to the Shin Bet; or perhaps she felt a certain affinity for Jewish suspects which few Israeli judges would feel for Arab suspects. Whatever her reasoning, she shocked the secret police out of their pants. They almost never lose on these motions and they likely did not expect to have to defend themselves and explain their behavior in such a public setting and so quickly after the accused terrorist’s arrest.

'Not Enough Evidence to Convict Suspected Jewish Terrorist Pearlman'

2010-08-11T05:30:00.003+08:00

Court demands that police conclude in two days investigation of Chaim Pearlman, suspected of having killed four Palestinians.

By Chaim Levinson
A Petah Tikva judge on Monday refused a police request to extend by eight days the remand of Chaim Pearlman, a settler suspected of having murdered four Palestinians and wounded several more, on the grounds that "I haven't seen any substantial evidence that could serve to convict Pearlman."

Chaim Pearlman in court Wednesday.

Pearlman, a 29-year-old resident of Givat Washington and father of three, was arrested on suspicion of having committed a string of stabbings in the 1990s. Weapons charges have also been filed against him.

Judge Nachum Sternlicht of the Petah Tikva Magistrate's Court extended the suspect's remand by only two days, saying that "Most of the planned investigation can be carried out today and tomorrow. In fact I don't understand why they haven't been down until now."

Sternlicht went on to say that though the suspicions against Pearlman were serious, they were no more than suspicions and that the time Pearlman has already spent in custody should be kept in mind. Pearlman was arrested nearly a month ago.

Pearlman's associates said at his previous remand extension hearing that "no progress has been made in the investigation since the arrest. The Shin Bet security service is insisting on holding him for no reason."

Where Are You Taking Papa?

2010-08-10T10:48:00.002+08:00

Israeli Police Claim Video of Crying Palestinian Boy Was StagedBy ROBERT MACKEY
Israel’s border police force insisted in a statement on Thursday that video of a 5-year-old Palestinian boy reacting with dismay to the arrest of his father this week in the West Bank, which has been broadcast internationally, was staged.

The video, embedded below, was shot near Hebron on Monday as the boy, Khaled Jaber, watched Israeli officers detain his father for illegally tapping into water pipes meant to serve Israeli settlers and soldiers to irrigate his family’s crops.

While the Jaber family told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the boy’s grief was spontaneous, the border police said, “the family chose to make cynical use of a 5-year-old boy” who had been “well instructed and directed.”

The official statement added:

Instead of the family acting responsibly toward a child and removing him from the situation, they chose to make cheap anti-Israel propaganda, whose sole purpose is to present us in a negative light around the world. As is seen in the pictures, and in order to remove any doubt, the authorities on site acted lawfully against the unacceptable phenomenon of water theft.

Some Israelis and their supporters have suggested for years that video that might attract sympathy for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation is routinely staged and dismissed such scenes as “Pallywood” productions.

The police said the arrests were made “for disturbing the peace and attacking police” officers during “enforcement activities against water thieves in the southern Hebron Hills.”

After visiting the same area of the West Bank this week, the Israeli journalist and blogger Noam Sheizaf wrote:

It was a very hot day — the last weeks have been the hottest we knew this year — and a local Palestinian farmer told us of his water problem. Israel has constructed water pipes in the area, but they only serve the army and the settlers. The Palestinians are forced to drive to the closest town and buy their water in tanks over there. They end up paying 10 times the price I pay in Tel Aviv. And the farmers in South Mount Hebron are the poorest of the Palestinian population. They live in tents, some even in caves. They used to have water holes in which they stored rain waters, but access to their fields and to many of the holes in them is denied by the army and the settlers.

With no other option, some farmers were forced to use unauthorized connections to the Israeli water system, running just a few meters from their tents. The Israeli media is calling this “stealing water.”

Mr. Sheizaf also pointed to a recent article on the Israeli site Ynet News, headlined “Palestinians Stealing Water in West Bank,” about efforts to protect Israeli water pipes running through occupied Palestinian territory. Last month, Yigal Klein, a leader of one settlement, told Ynet:

The Palestinians are connecting to the pipes with trucks or via an illegal system of pipes, and we don’t have water in the morning. Children want to wash their faces before they go to school, and the faucets are empty. Even a cup of coffee becomes a rare commodity.

You Think We're Going? Think Again. Disney Drive is Humming.

2010-08-09T21:27:00.002+08:00

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — Anyone who thinks the United States is really going to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011 needs to come to this giant air base an hour away from Kabul. There’s construction everywhere. It’s exactly what you wouldn’t expect from a transient presence.

Step off a C-17 cargo plane, as I did very early Friday morning, and you see a flight line packed with planes. When I was last here two years ago, helicopters crowded the runways and fixed-wing aircraft were –- well, if not rare, still a notable sight. Today you’ve got C-17s, Predators, F-16s, F-15s, MC-12 passenger planes … I didn’t see any of the C-130 cargo craft, but they’re here somewhere.

More notable than the overstuffed runways is the over-driven road. Disney Drive, the main thoroughfare that rings the eight-square-mile base, used to feature pedestrians with reflective sashes over their PT uniforms carrying Styrofoam boxes of leftovers out of the mess halls. And those guys are still there.

But now the western part of Disney is a two-lane parking lot of Humvees, flamboyant cargo big-rigs from Pakistan known as jingle trucks, yellow DHL shipping vans, contractor vehicles and mud-caked flatbeds. If the Navy could figure out a way to bring a littoral-combat ship to a landlocked country, it would idle on Disney.

Expect to wait an eternity if you want to pull out onto the road. Cross the street at your own risk.

Then there are all the new facilities. West Disney has a fresh coat of cement –- something that’s easy to come by, now that the Turkish firm Yukcel manufactures cement right inside Bagram’s walls.

There on the flightline: the skeletons of new hangars. New towers with particleboard for terraces. A skyline of cranes. The omnipresent plastic banner on a girder-and-cement seedling advertising a new project built by cut-rate labor paid by Inglett and Stubbs International.

I haven’t been able to learn yet how much it all cost, but Bagram is starting to feel like a dynamic exurb before the housing bubble burst. There was actually a traffic jam this afternoon on the southern side of the base, owing to construction-imposed bottlenecks, something I didn’t think possible in late summer 2008.

Perhaps the most conspicuous change of all: fresh concrete T-walls fortifying the northern and southern faces of the base. Insurgents have launched a number of futile attacks on the base recently, mostly inaccurate small-arms fire and the odd rocket-propelled grenade. They’ve mostly irritated their targets instead of killing them.

But a definite legacy is the abundance of huge barriers at the most-obvious access points to Bagram. Much of the eastern wing remains surrounded by chicken fencing topped with barbed wire, but the more sensitive points of entry are now hardened.

So, apparently, are the sentiments of local Afghans nearby. Troops here told me of shepherd boys scowling their way around Bagram’s outskirts, slingshotting off the occasional rock in hopes of braining an American. Again, something else I wouldn’t have believed two years ago.

By next year, the detention facility that’s spirited away on a far corner of Bagram is supposed to revert to Afghan control. And maybe someday the Afghan National Army will inherit the entire base.

But two years ago there were about 18,000 troops and contractors living here. Now that figure is north of 30,000, all for a logistics hub and command post that the United States didn’t ever imagine possessing before 9/11.

In 2011, the U.S. military probably won’t be thinking about turning over the keys to a new, huge base. It’ll be thinking about how it can finish up the construction contracts it signed months ago -– if not some it’s yet to ink.

Another Day in the Life of.....Israel

2010-08-09T06:47:00.003+08:00

Gaza's Lone Power Plant Shuts Down
Palestinian authorities in Gaza have shut down the territory's only power plant after running out of fuel in the middle of a heatwave.
Engineers in Gaza warn the blackout could last days without emergency fuel shipments.
Fuel for the plant comes from the rival Palestinian government in the West Bank, which accused officials in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip of failing to make scheduled payments.
The Reuters news agency said Saturday that the power outage was affecting hospitals and water wells. It also said the blackout cut power to the territory's sewage treatment plant, which was allowing waste to spill into the Mediterranean. As a result, Gazans hoping to get relief from the heat were banned from swimming in the sea.
The Gaza power plant supplies the territory with about one-third of its electricity. The rest comes from Israel and Egypt.

Suspected Torturer Gets Key Police Job in Jerusalem
A police officer known as “Major George” [whose real name is Doron Zahavi], accused of torturing Arab prisoners in his previous role as chief interrogator in a secret military jail has been appointed to oversee relations with Jerusalem’s Palestinian population, it has emerged.
The decision has been greeted with stunned disbelief from human rights groups, who say unresolved allegations against Major George that he brutally abused Arab prisoners for many years should disqualify him from such a sensitive post.

Israel rattles saber in south Lebanon
BEIRUT: Israel continued to conduct mock air raids in the skies over Lebanon on Friday as the world awaited the findings of a United Nations investigation into the clash that killed four people along the Blue Line.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said that while results from a preliminary probe into Tuesday’s shootout between Lebanese and Israeli Army troops had been collected, its investigation was yet to ascertain which side was responsible for the pair’s bloodiest clash since 2006.

Israeli army confirms firing at Lebanese fishing boat
The Israeli army confirmed Sunday that a naval vessel opened fire at a Lebanese fishing boat over the weekend, Israeli media reported.
On Saturday, the Lebanese army issued a statement saying an Israeli gunboat “fired several bursts toward Lebanese territorial waters” off Lebanon’s southern coast at 4a.m..

Wiesenthal Center opposes NYC mosque, supports museum on Palestinian graveyard
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a human rights organization devoted to fighting anti-Semitism, has been accused of hypocrisy for joining the ADL in opposing the Ground Zero mosque, while funding the construction of a "Museum of Tolerance" on top of Palestinian grave sites.

Ongoing Shalala humiliation extends to Florida
You might think that former [US] Secretary of Health & Human Services (HHS) Donna Shalala would be furious after being detained at Tel Aviv airport for the sole infraction of being an Arab-American.
On the contrary, back in Miami she defended the Israeli policy of ethnic profiling -- followed by humiliation applied to such security threats as post-60 year old former cabinet officials and university presidents.
So I checked with my friend who knows the scene at the University of Florida. "Are you crazy? If Shalala hinted at criticizing Israel, millions of dollars the university is counting on would dry up instantly. She can't say a word or the university will have to put all its expansion plans on a shelf forever, not to mention the scholarships that will disappear."

Official: Israel lowers water supply to Nablus villages
A Nablus village's local council has accused Israeli authorities of cutting several villages' water supply by 50 percent, as the global heatwave continues.
Rujeib council head Ahmad Dweikat said the water pumped to his village had been lowered from 5,000 cubic meters to 2,500 cubic meters without prior notice three weeks ago
[Do you think the nearby Jewish settlements are getting the same treatment? RP]

What collapsing empire looks like
As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay.
[Meanwhile $3billion per year to Israel is 'No Problem' - RP]

Masked settlers attack international peace activists in Hebron
Al-Buwayra, HEBRON - This morning, in a second day of violence in the village of Al-Buwayra, near Hebron, two international peace activists were attacked by three Israeli settlers wearing black masks.
Both were left seriously injured and have been hospitalized following the unprovoked attack.

Yet another weekend in Israel.

Human Shields

2010-08-05T18:59:00.018+08:00

I don't know about you, but I think that using co-opted local civilians to shield you when you are walking about fully-armed, helmeted and body-armoured, then using a local teenager in a T-shirt to walk in front to protect you, is plain cowardice.

This photo and the video below both show blatant examples of Israeli soldiers using human shields in occupied Hebron in 2007.

Israel Plans to Deport 400 Children of Migrant Workers

2010-08-05T07:20:00.032+08:00

Further signs of overt Israeli racism. Israel went to great lengths to encourage the immigration of a million Russians (many of whom were not Jews, nor spoke Hebrew, but were all white), and last year, gave work permits to 120,000 foreign workers. - RP
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LA Times - Reporting from Jerusalem
Israel moved Sunday to deport the offspring of hundreds of migrant workers, mostly small children who were born in Israel, speak Hebrew and have never seen their parents' native countries.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the new policy was intended to stem a flood of illegal immigrants, whose children receive state-funded education and healthcare benefits, and to defend Israel's Jewish identity.

"On the one hand, this problem is a humanitarian problem," Netanyahu said during a meeting Sunday of the Cabinet, which had debated the move for nearly a year. "We all feel and understand the hearts of children. But on the other hand, there are Zionist considerations and ensuring the Jewish character of the state of Israel."

"We don't want to create an incentive for the inflow of hundreds of thousands of illegal migrant workers," he said.

Critics, including some government officials, said the decision would punish children by sending them to impoverished or insecure nations that their parents had left in search of better lives in Israel.

The new policy is aimed at children of foreign workers who arrived legally and then started families. Under Israeli law, the children are not automatically granted residency status.

About 400 children and their parents are expected to leave Israel over the next month. An additional 800 children may qualify to stay and receive residency status if they meet certain requirements such as having lived for the last five years in Israel and attended grade school.

Child advocates acknowledged Israel's need to formulate a policy toward migrant workers but said rules should apply to future generations.

"We're talking about children here," said Rotem Ilan, chairwoman of Israeli Children, an advocacy group for migrant workers' families. "They are the children of people who came to Israel legally to work. We brought these people here to plow our fields, build our houses and take care of our grandparents. And with people come families."

She added: "It's the deportation of children that threatens Israel's Jewish character. The obligation to act with kindness and compassion to foreigners is the most frequently repeated commandment in the Torah."

Sunday's Cabinet decision underscored Israel's ongoing struggle to cope with the estimated 250,000 to 400,000 foreign workers on its soil. About half arrived illegally or have lapsed permits.

Chinese construction workers, Philippine elder-care aides, Thai farmers and others began arriving in the 1990s. They replaced Palestinians as Israel's main source of cheap labor after the West Bank uprisings, which made it more difficult for Palestinians to work in Israel.

Israel has yet to formulate a clear policy on dealing with the foreign workers, including how and when such people can obtain residency or citizenship.

Some critics have called for Israel to expel all the foreign workers, whom they blame for rising crime and strained government resources. But last year Israel issued about 120,000 new permits to foreign workers who fill low-skilled jobs.

To stem the flow of illegal immigrants, Israel recently said it planned to construct a wall along its border with Egypt. The government also has cracked down on employers hiring illegal workers, set up a special immigration law-enforcement unit and offered $3,000 payments to foreign workers with children who agree to leave.

Defamation - The Movie

2010-08-03T10:27:00.004+08:00

Except for a very brief moment at the start of Defamation, a smart, mordant, and incisive documentary which examines the tendency of forces within contemporary Judaism to exploit the Holocaust for political ends, we never see the man behind the camera, Israeli Jew Yoav Shamir. One imagines, however, that this fellow had his poker face honed to perfection, because he was able to pull off a terrifically effective undercover job.

Clearly no fan of the Anti-Defamation League and like organizations, Shamir during the making of this movie managed to sell himself as a sympathizer, and somehow won the confidence of Abraham Foxman and other high-level figures within the ADL, who in turn seemed totally unaware that they were ultimately going to receive a cinematic drubbing at his hands. Indeed, one even almost sympathizes with Foxman and Co. for opening themselves up to the soft-spoken filmmaker from Tel Aviv with such touching, open-hearted naiveté; they must have figured that Shamir’s Jewish background and professed interest in exploring “anti-Semitism” must have meant that he could be trusted not to break from the party line.
That is, one is tempted to sympathize, until one is reminded of Abe’s ardent obnoxiousness and brazen chutzpah in brandishing the “anti-Semite” slur like a sharpened, poisoned machete, and holding it over the heads of others to threaten and bully them into submission.
In a particularly galling moment, we witness a meeting between Foxman and a government delegation in Ukraine, who want to know how to get along better with Jews in the Western world. During this meeting (which Shamir, incredibly, was allowed to film), Foxman high-handedly lectures the delegation that people of their country have no right to use the word “holocaust” to describe the killing of up to five million of its people by Stalin by deliberate starvation in the 1930s. “You need to be sensitive… be careful that it (the Ukrainian famine/mass murder) not be played as ‘your genocide,’ because that would be counter-productive,” the ADL-leader intones, like a principal sternly admonishing naughty pupils. And of course, the members of the delegation solemnly nod and snivelingly agree, knowing that their interests are served by pleasing the likes of Foxman and his ilk, however outrageously out of line their demands might be. None of them thinks to ask why the murder of millions of Jews matters more than that of millions of Ukraine nationals. One hopes the reasonable question at least crosses their minds.

Following the meeting, Shamir asks Foxman why, if anti-Semitism is so potent a force in the world today, people care so much about pleasing the ADL and its sister organizations. Dishonest Abe then shows his flair at sophistry: it’s anti-Semitic in itself, he maintains, to even think that the Jews are so powerful as to be feared, so the fact that people like this pitiful delegation of yes-men are so eager to do his bidding just shows how anti-Semitic the world has become! Once more, Shamir dryly acknowledges this “logic,” letting its absurdity speak for itself.

Shamir also speaks candidly to Harvey and Suzanne Prince, an elderly Jewish couple who are members of the Los Angeles division of the ADL and close confidants of Foxman. Shamir asks Mrs. Prince if she thinks it’s useful to bring up transgressions from long ago — say, the commission of early twentieth-century pogroms by Eastern Europeans, or the lurid atrocities of Krystallnacht by Germans in Nazi Germany, in order to create guilt in one’s potential enemies, and thus obtain a tactical advantage over them. She enthusiastically agrees with the proposition, calling such a strategy “the American Jewish way,” and adding, “Absolutely — we need to play on that guilt.”

A moment later, her husband notes acerbically that she certainly never seems to forget anything he ever did wrong in the past, and things grow a bit tense between the long-married couple. Clearly, according to Mr. Prince, a self-described “moderate,” there ought to be limits to the practice of guilt-mongering for profit, though it is unclear where those limits lie and if the travails of a “whipped” Jewish husband might also hold analogously true for gentile nations henpecked by the ADL: if, that is, there is a point where it’s just not decent to bring up the past to induce guilt and subservience in one’s interlocutors. Must the descendants of a nation that allowed anti-Jewish outrages long ago be scolded forever into the future, like an embittered, vengeful fishwife who never forgives or forgets her husband’s transgressions, and who cold never conceive that she might not be a picnic to live with either?

There are many more eye-opening moments spent among the ADL-ers, including a deliciously uncomfortable moment where Shamir asks to hear about the so-called rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, and the tabulator of these statistics is hard put to find any allegation that doesn’t sound absurdly trivial. Then there are the interviews Shamir conducts with others: a generally amiable group of young Black men in Brooklyn who complain that the police actually favor Jews over African-Americans, as well as the humorously droll statements of various Jews across the world, including Shamir’s own outspoken grandmother (“Jews love money. Jews are crooks!”) and famously combative, tenure-denied and currently unemployed college professor Norman Finklestein, each of whom contemptuously mocks those engaged in Jewish ethnic hustling in unsparing language that makes the careful, restrained verbiage of Israel Lobby author (and non-Jew) Walter Mearsheimer seem relatively tame by comparison.

But the most powerful segment of the film involves a group of Israeli teenagers who are flown to Auschwitz on a field trip. The kids are familiar adolescent characters: rowdy, rambunctious, immature, emotional, prone to gossip and mischief, at times sweetly wide-eyed in their innocence. They are both annoying and likable simultaneously, as teenagers can be. In any case, this group is in no mood to have their consciousness raised during their exciting trip together: much to the consternation of their adult chaperones, they just want to have fun. Over the course of the trip, however, these kids are repeatedly bludgeoned with the message: You are Jews and the world hates you; you must in turn hate and fear the world if you hope to survive! Their faces are pushed into the gruesome tales of the events that took place in the notorious camp, and at night their handlers tell them stories of how the present-day country of Poland is still rife with neo-Nazi violence. A harmless comment to some members of the group uttered by an old Polish man is interpreted as viciously anti-Semitic; Shamir tries to correct their misconception, but to no avail; they have been instructed how to perceive reality, and won’t be dissuaded.

The kids, being hedonistic at heart, do manage to put up some resistance to the relentless stream of emotionally compelling propaganda being pumped into their ears, but they can only hold out for so long. Near the end of the trip, a lovely young Jewess breaks down and tells Shamir that it has finally happened: she has learned to “hate” her enemies; the implication is clear that she has come to view the Palestinians and Arabs as cut from the same cloth as the Nazis. This scene has a viscerally searing quality, similar in feel to Orwell’s account of his hero Winston Smith succumbing to the horrific manipulations of the Ministry of Love and learning to embrace the pernicious ruling ideology of Oceania. The corruption of innocence portrayed here is simply breathtaking, and heartbreaking to behold.

And this is what truly sets Defamation apart from the average documentary: its delicate sense of poignancy. Shamir’s argument seems to be that indulging in paranoid delusion about the coming of a new Holocaust simply isn’t a good way for Jews, or anyone, to live. Hating those one takes to be one’s enemies and constantly fearing the worst from them may in fact be a self-fulfilling prophecy, bringing out the worst in everyone, oneself and one’s enemies alike. If Jews want to thrive and inspire good will from others, Shamir appears to be saying, they should eschew such a spurious mindset, and not dwell so much on bad things that were done to them in the past.

One wonders if Defamation will have any tangible influence on any of its target audience. But even if his work doesn’t significantly affect Jewish-Palestinian, or Jewish-Gentile relations, Yoav Shamir deserves praise for his courage in crafting such a provocative and fearlessly taboo-shattering, yet highly compassionate document on this most sensitive of contemporary topics.

Source: Occidental Observer

The back-of-the-envelope history of the Anti-Defamation League

2010-08-03T08:08:00.003+08:00

Mondoweiss - Jeffrey Blankfort on July 31, 2010 ·

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was formed by B'nai B'rith in 1913 to be the leading Jewish defense agency in the wake of the conviction of Leo Frank, an officer of the National Pencil Co. of Atlanta,Georgia,, for the murder of 13 year old Mary Phagan, a shop floor worker at the pencil factory. It was a verdict that many believed to be a miscarriage of justice, which was compounded by Frank being kidnapped from prison two years later and lynched, the only American Jew known to have suffered that fate.

By 1937, the Anti-Defamation League had embarked on another occupation, keeping files and spying on what it considered to be communist or pro-communist organizations and individuals. In that year, a 1947 Congressional hearing revealed, it had begun providing information on the recently formed National Lawyers Guild and on individuals applying for government jobs to the original House Committee on Un-American Activities chaired by the notorious racist and anti-semite, Rep. Martin Dies, which came to be referred to simply as the Dies Committee.
In the anti-communist witch hunts conducted at the beginning of the Cold War, the ADL assisted and acted as a go-between for both the Congressional committees and members or former members of the CPUSA who chose to inform on their former comrades and friends, including, in at least one instance, family members.

While the ADL’s public face was that of an organization determined to rid the country of neo-Nazis and skinheads, its raison d’etre in the absence of any serious threats of anti-semitism, was not defense of Jews, per se, but defense of Israel and the intimidation and public humiliation of its critics. While that invariably gained the ADL headlines, what was hidden from the public was of equal importance. The ADL, by the late 1980s had begun one of the largest private spying operations in the United States, a fact that was discovered by the San Francisco police in 1992 when it raided the ADL office after discovering that it had been working with a rogue SF cop, Tom Gerard, who had been providing the organization with personal non-public information about a host of American citizens, but, in particular, those supporting the Palestinian cause and opposing South African apartheid.

It turned out that this cop was partnering with a San Francisco weight lifter, Roy Bullock, who had infiltrated the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and a number of other organizations and had in his files the names of over 10,000 individuals and over 600 organizations, most of which were kept in what Bullock labeled as Pinko files. Bullock and Gerard were also being paid by South African intelligence officials to provide them with the same information on anti-apartheid activism that they had been collecting for the ADL.

Bullock had been identified as the ADL’s “main fact finder” by the late Irwin Suall, who headed the group’s intelligence apparatus, but depositions taken at the time revealed there were similar spying operations being conducted by the ADL across the United States. Despite the ADL having promised to cease trying to illegally obtain information on its enemies at the time in exchange for not being prosecuted, there is no evidence that it has. Rather it has strengthened its ties with police across the country through its LEARN program (Law Enforcement Agency Resource Network) in which it trains police in dealing with “extremist groups” and “hate crimes.”

The ADL has become identified with the antics and pronouncements of its long-time national director, Abe Foxman, who has made a name for himself by taking on anyone he considers guilty of anti-Semitism, which means criticizing Israel or the abuse of Jewish power. In the past this has included Marlon Brando, Mel Gibson, and most recently Oliver Stone. Jews are not immune, as Tony Judt found out in 2006 when Foxman interceded with the Polish Consulate in New York to prevent the British Jewish writer from giving a talk in the building’s meeting room on “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.”

Now, Foxman is in the headlines once again, trying to prevent an Islamic center, one that would be open to everyone, from being constructed adjacent to the site of the World Trade Center bombing. This would appear to be a clear violation of the mission statement of the organization, part of which states that its “purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.” For Foxman, apparently, that mission no longer includes Muslims

Endgame in Afghanistan

2010-08-03T07:04:00.000+08:00

Resolution Green-Lighting Israeli Strikes on Iran Introduced by House Republicans

2010-08-02T20:37:00.001+08:00

Republicans in the House of Representatives have introduced a measure that would green-light an Israeli bombing campaign against Iran. The resolution, H.Res. 1553 (in full below), provides explicit support for military strikes against Iran, stating that Congress supports Israel's use of "all means necessary" against Iran "including the use of military force". US military leaders have warned that strikes could be catastrophic to US national security interests and could engulf the Middle East in a "calamitous" regional war.

Nearly a third of House Republicans have signed onto the resolution, which has been publicly discussed and circulated by its lead sponsor, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), for months. The National Iranian American Council is leading calls to oppose the measure, urging those concerned to demand that House Republican Leader John Boehner denounce the resolution.

The introduction of the measure coincides with a pattern of renewed calls for military strikes that have escalated since President Obama signed "crippling" Congressional Iran sanctions into law. Neoconservatives who were instrumental in orchestrating the Iraq War, such as Bill Kristol, and Reuel Marc Gerecht, have led the stepped up calls for military action.

Hawkish former Bush Administration official John Bolton recently laid out the game plan to prod Israel into attacking Iran, arguing that outsiders can "create broad support" for a strike by framing it as an issue of Israel's right to self defense. Supporters for military strikes, Bolton says, should "defend the specific tactic of pre-emptive attacks" against Iran. He urges that Congress can "make it clear" that it supports such strikes and that "having visible congressional support in place at the outset will reassure the Israeli government, which is legitimately concerned about Mr. Obama's likely negative reaction to such an attack."

In spite of enthusiasm from the neocons, top US military leaders have warned of the many dangers of military strikes against Iran. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has argued, "Another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need. In fact, I believe it would be disastrous on a number of levels." Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has expressed his own serious reservations about an attack, stating, "Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be incredibly destabilizing. Attacking them would also create the same kind of outcome. In an area that's so unstable right now, we just don't need more of that." General David Petraeus has warned that a strike on Iran would be utilized by the Iranian government to unite it's otherwise divided populace.

Simulations have been conducted over the past year to assess the outcome of a preemptive military strike against Iran. One such simulation, by the Brookings Institution's Saban Center, found that strikes would draw the US into the conflict that would engulf the region into war, and would enable Iran to use the attacks as an opportunity to unite the Iranian people and dismantle its opposition. The simulation also found that the strikes could not destroy Iran's nuclear program but merely set it back a few years.

An Oxford Research Group report released recently reinforced those findings and also warned that an Israeli attack would be disastrous and would be unlikely to stop Iran's nuclear program. Instead, the report concluded attacks could convince Iran to withdraw from the international Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and to aggressively seek to develop nuclear weapons.

Iranian activists have urged that even raising the specter of war undercuts the opposition in Iran. "The mere fact that Obama didn't make military threats made the Green Movement possible," noted Akbar Ganji. "A military attack would destroy all of that."

Israel Youth Brigade Helps in Village Destruction

2010-08-02T20:11:00.043+08:00

There's one clear precedent to what is happening in Israel right now. It's becoming a carbon copy of Herr Hitler's emerging Nazi state, including the co-option of the country's youth into a super-patriotic, militaristic and mindless mob, particularly careless of it's own country's minority citizens, as illustrated by this incident.
Meanwhile, we stand by, watch it happen, and pour billions of dollars into helping the 'shitty little Levantine state' achieve what the Allies spent World War trying to eliminate forever - RP
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Max Blumenthal

AL-ARAKIB, ISRAEL — On July 26, Israeli police demolished 45 buildings in the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib, razing the entire village to the ground to make way for a Jewish National Fund forest.
The destruction was part of a larger project to force the Bedouin community of the Negev away from their ancestral lands and into seven Indian reservation-style communities the Israeli government has constructed for them. The land will then be open for Jewish settlers, including young couples in the army and those who may someday be evacuated from the West Bank after a peace treaty is signed. For now, the Israeli government intends to uproot as many villages as possible and erase them from the map by establishing “facts on the ground” in the form of JNF forests. (Video of of al-Arakib’s demolition here).

One of the most troubling aspects of the destruction of al-Arakib was a report by CNN that the hundreds of Israeli riot police who stormed the village were accompanied by “busloads of cheering civilians.”

Who were these civilians and why didn’t CNN or any outlet investigate further?

I traveled to al-Arakib yesterday with a delegation from Ta’ayush, an Israeli group that promotes a joint Arab-Jewish struggle against the occupation. The activists spent the day preparing games and activities for the village’s traumatized children, helping the villagers replace their uprooted olive groves, and assisting in the reconstruction of their demolished homes.

In a massive makeshift tent where many of al-Arakib’s residents now sleep, I interviewed village leaders about the identity of the cheering civilians. Each one confirmed the presence of the civilians, describing how they celebrated the demolitions. As I compiled details, the story grew increasingly horrific. After interviewing more than a half dozen elders of the village, I was able to finally identify the civilians in question. What I discovered was more disturbing than I had imagined.

Arab Negev News publisher Ata Abu Madyam supplied me with a series of photos he took of the civilians in action. They depicted Israeli high school students who appeared to have volunteered as members of the Israeli police civilian guard (I am working on identifying some participants by name). Prior to the demolitions, the student volunteers were sent into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and belongings. A number of villagers including Madyam told me the volunteers smashed windows and mirrors in their homes and defaced family photographs with crude drawings.

Israeli police youth volunteers pick through the belongings an al-Arakib family

Then they lounged around on the furniture of al-Arakib residents in plain sight of the owners. Finally, according to Matyam, the volunteers celebrated while bulldozers destroyed the homes.
“What we learned from the summer camp of destruction,” Madyam remarked, “is that Israeli youth are not being educated on democracy, they are being raised on racism.” (The cover of the latest issue of Madyam’s Arab Negev News features a photo of Palestinians being expelled to Jordan in 1948 juxtaposed with a photo of a family fleeing al-Arakib last week. The headline reads, “Nakba 2010.”)

The Israeli civilian guard, which incorporates 70,000 citizens including youth as young as 15 (about 15% of Israeli police volunteers are teenagers), is one of many programs designed to incorporate Israeli children into the state’s military apparatus.

Moments before the destruction of the Bedouin village of al-Arakib, Israeli high school age police volunteers lounge on furniture taken from a family's home. [The following photos are by Ata Abu Madyam of Arab Negev News

It is not hard to imagine what lessons the high school students who participated in the leveling of al-Arakib took from their experience, nor is it especially difficult to predict what sort of citizens they will become once they reach adulthood. Not only are they being indoctrinated to swear blind allegiance to the military, they are learning to treat the Arab outclass as less than human.

The volunteers’ behavior toward Bedouins, who are citizens of Israel and serve loyally in Israeli army combat units despite widespread racism, was strikingly reminiscent of the behavior of settler youth in Hebron who pelt Palestinian shopkeepers in the old city with eggs, rocks and human waste. If there is a distinction between the two cases, it is that the Hebron settlers act as vigilantes while the teenagers of Israeli civilian guard vandalize Arab property as agents of the state.

The spectacle of Israeli youth helping destroy al-Arakib helps explain why 56% of Jewish Israeli high school students do not believe Arabs should be allowed to serve in the Knesset – why the next generation wants apartheid. Indeed, the widespread indoctrination of Israeli youth by the military apparatus is a central factor in Israel’s authoritarian trend. It would be difficult for any adolescent boy to escape from an experience like al-Arakib, where adults in heroic warrior garb encourage him to participate in and gloat over acts of massive destruction, without even a trace of democratic values.

As for the present condition of Israeli democracy, it is essential to consider the way in which the state pits its own citizens against one another, enlisting the Jewish majority as conquerers while targeting the Arab others as, in the words of Zionist founding father Chaim Weizmann, “obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.”

Historically, only failing states have encouraged such corrosive dynamics to take hold. That is why the scenes from al-Arakib, from the demolished homes to the uprooted gardens to the grinning teens who joined the mayhem, can be viewed as much more than the destruction of a village. They are snapshots of the phenomenon that is laying Israeli society as a whole to waste.