Chris Levister, New America Media
September 13, 2006,
Printed on September 29, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/41481/
If you think prison inmates only make license plates, you're behind the times.
As a child Ayana Cole dreamed of becoming a world class fashion designer. Today she is among hundreds of inmates crowded in an Oregon prison factory cranking out designer jeans. For her labor she is paid 45 cents an hour. At a chic Beverly Hills boutique some of the beaded creations carry a $350 price tag. In fact the jeans labeled "Prison Blues" -- proved so popular last year that prison factories couldn't keep up with demand.
At a San Diego private-run prison factory Donovan Thomas earns 21 cents an hour manufacturing office equipment used in some of LA's plushest office towers. In Chino Gary's prison sewn T-shirts are a fashion hit.
Hundreds of prison generated products end up attached to trendy and nationally known labels like No Fear, Lee Jeans, Trinidad Tees, and other well known U.S. companies. After deductions, many prisoners like Cole and Thomas earn about $60 for an entire month of nine-hour days. In short, hiring out prisoners has become big business. And it's booming.
At CMT Blues housed at the Maximum Security Richard J. Donovan State Correctional Facility outside San Diego, the highly prized jobs pay minimum wage. Less than half goes into the inmates' pockets. The rest is siphoned off to reimburse the state for the cost of their incarceration and to a victim restitution fund.
The California Department of Corrections and CMT Blues owner Pierre Sleiman say they are providing inmates with job skills, a work ethic and income. In addition, he says prisoners offer the ultimate in a flexible and dependable work force. "If I lay them off for a week," said Sleiman, referring to his workers, "I don't have to worry about someone else coming and saying, ‘Come work for me.' "
For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don't have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment, health or worker's comp insurance, vacation or comp time. All of their workers are full time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if prisoners refuse to work, they are moved to disciplinary housing and lose canteen privileges. Most importantly, they lose "good time" credit that reduces their sentence.
Today, there are over 2 million people incarcerated in the U.S., more than any other industrialized country. They are disproportionately African-American and Latino. The nation's prison industry now employees nearly three quarters of a million people, more than any Fortune 500 corporation, other than General Motors. Mushrooming construction has turned the industry into the main employer in scores of depressed cities and towns. A host of firms are profiting from private prisons, prison labor and services like transportation, farming and manufacturing.
Critics argue that inmate labor is both a potential human rights abuse and a threat to workers outside prison walls claiming, inmates have no bargaining power, are easily exploited and once released are frequently barred from gainful employment because of a felony conviction.
In one California lawsuit, for example, two prisoners have sued both their employer and the prison, saying they were put in solitary confinement after refusing to labor in unsafe working conditions. In a nutshell John Fleckner of Operation Prison Reform labels the growing trend "capitalist punishment -- slavery re-envisioned."
The prison industry is not a new phenomenon, writes Fleckner. He says mixing the profit motive with punishment only invites abuse reminiscent of one of the ugliest chapters in U.S. history. "Under a regime where more bodies equal more profits prisons take one big step closer to their historical ancestor, the slave pen."
In fact, prison labor has its roots in slavery. Following reconstruction, former Confederate Democrats instituted "convict leasing." Black inmates, mostly freed slaves convicted of petty theft, were rented out to do everything from picking cotton to building railroads. In Mississippi, a huge farm, resembling a slave plantation replaced convict leasing. The infamous Parchman Farm was not closed until 1972, when inmates brought suit against the abusive conditions in federal court.
Prison analysts say contract prison labor is poised to become one of America's most important growth industries. Many of these prisoners are serving time for non-violent crimes. With the use of tough-on-crime mandatory sentencing laws, the prison population is bursting at the seams. Some experts believe that the number of people locked up in the U.S. could double in the next 10 years. According to Prison Watch, the expansion of the number of prisoners will not only increase the pool of prison labor available for commercial profit, but also will help pay the costs of incarceration.
"The main goal of prison work programs is to provide "a positive outlet to help inmates productively use their time and energies. Another goal is to instill good work habits, including appropriate job behavior and time management, according to the Joint Venture Program of the California Department of Corrections. The program is responsible for contracting out convict labor to governments, businesses and non-profit organizations.
Federal law prohibits domestic commerce in prison-made goods unless inmates are paid "prevailing wages" but because the law doesn't apply to exports, prison officials routinely market to foreign customers.
In California the prisons themselves are their own best customers. The California Department of Corrections purchases about half of what the prisons make, choosing from an online Prison Industry Authority catalog.
Prisoners now manufacture everything from blue jeans, to auto parts, to electronics and furniture. Honda has paid inmates $2 an hour for doing the same work an auto worker would get paid $20 to $30 an hour to do. Konica has used prisoners to repair copiers for less than 50 cents an hour. Toys ‘R' Us once used prisoners to restock shelves, and Microsoft to pack and ship software. Clothing made in California and Oregon prisons competes so successfully with apparel made in Latin America and Asia that it is exported to other countries.
In most states prisoners receive little of the money they earn working either for state-run or private sector corrections firms such as the Corrections Corporations of America (CCA) and Wackenhut. The labor prisoners perform is often considerably cheaper than in the outside world. Case in point, Texas-based Lockhart Technologies closed its Austin plant and fired some 150 workers who constructed circuit boards because it could relocate those jobs to a Wackenhut-run prison where detainees did the work for minimum wage.
But even with the low pay and potential for abuse, the labor programs are popular with prisoners, says California Prison Watch, which monitors the state's prisons. "Prisoner idle time is less, they earn spending money, and they can pick up a skill."
Tony Matos, 45 convicted of robbing a Rialto liquor store says, "When we step through the gates and into the shop, it's another world. This is a company. This isn't prison. Guards still keep watch, the capitalists still profit -- the critics and supporters still debate. But in the end, I get a skill, a few coins and a ray of hope and dignity."
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/41481/
Friday, September 29, 2006
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Who Pays the Climate Pundits?
Pundits Who Contest Climate Change Should Tell Us Who is Paying Them
Covert lobbying, in the UK as well as the US, has severely set back efforts to combat the world's biggest problem
by George Monbiot
On the letters page of the Guardian last week, a Dr Alan Kendall attacked the Royal Society for "smearing" its opponents. The society had sent an official letter to Exxon, complaining about the oil company's "inaccurate and misleading" portrayal of the science of climate change and about its funding of lobby groups that deny global warming is taking place. The letter, Kendall argued, was an attempt to "stifle legitimate discussion".
Perhaps he is unaware of what has been happening. The campaign of dissuasion funded by Exxon and the tobacco company Philip Morris has been devastatingly effective. By insisting that man-made global warming is either a "myth" or not worth tackling, it has given the media and politicians the excuses for inaction they wanted. Partly as a result, in the US at least, these companies have helped to delay attempts to tackle the world's most important problem by a decade or more.
Should we not confront this? If, as Kendall seems to suggest, we should refrain from exposing and criticising these groups, would that not be to "stifle legitimate discussion"?
There is still much more to discover. It is unclear how much covert corporate lobbying has been taking place in the UK. But the little I have been able to find so far suggests that here, as in the US, there seems to be some overlap between Exxon and the groups it has funded and the operations of the tobacco industry.
The story begins with a body called the International Policy Network (IPN). Like many other organisations that have received money from Exxon, it describes itself as a thinktank or an independent educational charity, but a more accurate description, it seems to me, would be "lobby group". While the BBC would seldom allow someone from Bell Pottinger or Burson-Marsteller on air to discuss an issue of concern to their sponsors without revealing the sponsors' identity, the BBC has frequently allowed IPN's executive director, Julian Morris, to present IPN's case without declaring its backers. IPN has so far received $295,000 from Exxon's corporate headquarters in the US. Morris told me that he runs his US office "solely for funding purposes".
IPN argues that attempts to prevent (or mitigate) man-made climate change are a waste of money. It would be better to let it happen and adapt to its effects. The Network published a book this year arguing that "humanity has until at least 2035 to determine whether or not mitigation will also be a necessary part of our strategy to address climate change ... attempting to control it through global regulation of emissions would be counterproductive". Morris has described the government's chief scientist, Sir David King - who has campaigned for action on global warming - as "an embarrassment to himself and an embarrassment to his country".
Like many of the groups that have been funded by ExxonMobil, IPN has also received money from the cigarette industry. Morris admits it has been given £10,000 by a US tobacco company. There is also a question mark about his involvement in a funding application to another tobacco company, RJ Reynolds.
In the archives that the cigarette companies were forced to open as part of the settlement of a class action in the US, there is a document entitled Environmental Risk. It is an application to RJ Reynolds to pay for a book about "the myth of scientific risk assessment". "The principal objective of this book is to highlight the uncertainties inherent in 'scientific' estimates of risk to humans and the environment." Among the myths it would be contesting were the adverse health effects of passive smoking. The application requested £50,000 to publish the book; the editors would be "Roger Bate and Julian Morris".
Morris insists that his name was added to the document without his consent. He says he had "nothing" to do with the book. It was published in 1997 under the title What Risk?, with a foreword by the MP David Davis. It claims that passive smoking is no more dangerous than "eating 50g of mushrooms a week", and attacks "politically correct" beliefs such as "passive smoking causes lung cancer" and "mankind's emissions of carbon dioxide will result in runaway global warming". Morris is not named as its coeditor, but he is the first person thanked in the acknowledgments, for his "editorial suggestions".
The book's editor, Roger Bate, is currently a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute - which has received $1.6m from ExxonMobil - and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has received $2m. Until 2003, he was Morris's predecessor as head of IPN. When the book was written, he ran the European Science and Environment Forum (Esef), which published What Risk?. The registered owner of Esef's website is Morris. He claims he had nothing to do with Esef, and registered the name "as a favour to a friend".
The investigative group PRWatch alleges that Esef was originally called Scientists for Sound Public Policy (SSPP), and was founded by a public relations agency working for the tobacco company Philip Morris. Documents in the tobacco archives show that SSPP was the subject of a fierce turf war between the PR firms Apco and Burson Marsteller, which were vying for Philip Morris's account.
Burson Marsteller's proposal argued that "industrial resistance" to regulation is "perceived as protection of commercial self-interests". A different "countervailing voice" was required, consisting of "international opinion formers supported financially by the industry". Their role would be "educating opinion leaders, politicians and the media". The group would also seek funding from other industries. Some of those Esef recruited as "academic members" were people working for US lobby groups later funded by Exxon, who have made false claims about climate change.
Like Morris, Bate has often appeared on radio and television programmes. Interviewed by the Today programme about climate change, he argued that cutting carbon emissions has been "folly all along". Instead, we should concentrate on adapting to climate change. In 2000, he presented a film on BBC2 called Organic Food: the Modern Myth, on which Morris also appeared. Bate has not yet answered the Guardian's requests for a response.
There is no law against taking money from corporations, or against advancing arguments in the media that are in tune with theirs. Nor should there be. The problem is what appears to be a failure to declare an interest. When someone speaks on an issue of public importance, we should be allowed to see who has been paying them. This should apply to all advocates, pressure groups and thinktanks, from Greenpeace to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The BBC's producer guidelines are clear on this point. "We need to ensure that we do not get involved with campaigning programming which is politically contentious. Programmes should not embrace the agenda of a particular campaign or campaigning group ..." Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, some of us warned that campaigning groups did not always describe themselves as such. We were ignored. The BBC now seems to have woken up to the problem. But we have lost 10 years in which climate change could have been tackled.
· George Monbiot's book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning is published this week monbiot.com
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
Covert lobbying, in the UK as well as the US, has severely set back efforts to combat the world's biggest problem
by George Monbiot
On the letters page of the Guardian last week, a Dr Alan Kendall attacked the Royal Society for "smearing" its opponents. The society had sent an official letter to Exxon, complaining about the oil company's "inaccurate and misleading" portrayal of the science of climate change and about its funding of lobby groups that deny global warming is taking place. The letter, Kendall argued, was an attempt to "stifle legitimate discussion".
Perhaps he is unaware of what has been happening. The campaign of dissuasion funded by Exxon and the tobacco company Philip Morris has been devastatingly effective. By insisting that man-made global warming is either a "myth" or not worth tackling, it has given the media and politicians the excuses for inaction they wanted. Partly as a result, in the US at least, these companies have helped to delay attempts to tackle the world's most important problem by a decade or more.
Should we not confront this? If, as Kendall seems to suggest, we should refrain from exposing and criticising these groups, would that not be to "stifle legitimate discussion"?
There is still much more to discover. It is unclear how much covert corporate lobbying has been taking place in the UK. But the little I have been able to find so far suggests that here, as in the US, there seems to be some overlap between Exxon and the groups it has funded and the operations of the tobacco industry.
The story begins with a body called the International Policy Network (IPN). Like many other organisations that have received money from Exxon, it describes itself as a thinktank or an independent educational charity, but a more accurate description, it seems to me, would be "lobby group". While the BBC would seldom allow someone from Bell Pottinger or Burson-Marsteller on air to discuss an issue of concern to their sponsors without revealing the sponsors' identity, the BBC has frequently allowed IPN's executive director, Julian Morris, to present IPN's case without declaring its backers. IPN has so far received $295,000 from Exxon's corporate headquarters in the US. Morris told me that he runs his US office "solely for funding purposes".
IPN argues that attempts to prevent (or mitigate) man-made climate change are a waste of money. It would be better to let it happen and adapt to its effects. The Network published a book this year arguing that "humanity has until at least 2035 to determine whether or not mitigation will also be a necessary part of our strategy to address climate change ... attempting to control it through global regulation of emissions would be counterproductive". Morris has described the government's chief scientist, Sir David King - who has campaigned for action on global warming - as "an embarrassment to himself and an embarrassment to his country".
Like many of the groups that have been funded by ExxonMobil, IPN has also received money from the cigarette industry. Morris admits it has been given £10,000 by a US tobacco company. There is also a question mark about his involvement in a funding application to another tobacco company, RJ Reynolds.
In the archives that the cigarette companies were forced to open as part of the settlement of a class action in the US, there is a document entitled Environmental Risk. It is an application to RJ Reynolds to pay for a book about "the myth of scientific risk assessment". "The principal objective of this book is to highlight the uncertainties inherent in 'scientific' estimates of risk to humans and the environment." Among the myths it would be contesting were the adverse health effects of passive smoking. The application requested £50,000 to publish the book; the editors would be "Roger Bate and Julian Morris".
Morris insists that his name was added to the document without his consent. He says he had "nothing" to do with the book. It was published in 1997 under the title What Risk?, with a foreword by the MP David Davis. It claims that passive smoking is no more dangerous than "eating 50g of mushrooms a week", and attacks "politically correct" beliefs such as "passive smoking causes lung cancer" and "mankind's emissions of carbon dioxide will result in runaway global warming". Morris is not named as its coeditor, but he is the first person thanked in the acknowledgments, for his "editorial suggestions".
The book's editor, Roger Bate, is currently a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute - which has received $1.6m from ExxonMobil - and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has received $2m. Until 2003, he was Morris's predecessor as head of IPN. When the book was written, he ran the European Science and Environment Forum (Esef), which published What Risk?. The registered owner of Esef's website is Morris. He claims he had nothing to do with Esef, and registered the name "as a favour to a friend".
The investigative group PRWatch alleges that Esef was originally called Scientists for Sound Public Policy (SSPP), and was founded by a public relations agency working for the tobacco company Philip Morris. Documents in the tobacco archives show that SSPP was the subject of a fierce turf war between the PR firms Apco and Burson Marsteller, which were vying for Philip Morris's account.
Burson Marsteller's proposal argued that "industrial resistance" to regulation is "perceived as protection of commercial self-interests". A different "countervailing voice" was required, consisting of "international opinion formers supported financially by the industry". Their role would be "educating opinion leaders, politicians and the media". The group would also seek funding from other industries. Some of those Esef recruited as "academic members" were people working for US lobby groups later funded by Exxon, who have made false claims about climate change.
Like Morris, Bate has often appeared on radio and television programmes. Interviewed by the Today programme about climate change, he argued that cutting carbon emissions has been "folly all along". Instead, we should concentrate on adapting to climate change. In 2000, he presented a film on BBC2 called Organic Food: the Modern Myth, on which Morris also appeared. Bate has not yet answered the Guardian's requests for a response.
There is no law against taking money from corporations, or against advancing arguments in the media that are in tune with theirs. Nor should there be. The problem is what appears to be a failure to declare an interest. When someone speaks on an issue of public importance, we should be allowed to see who has been paying them. This should apply to all advocates, pressure groups and thinktanks, from Greenpeace to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The BBC's producer guidelines are clear on this point. "We need to ensure that we do not get involved with campaigning programming which is politically contentious. Programmes should not embrace the agenda of a particular campaign or campaigning group ..." Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, some of us warned that campaigning groups did not always describe themselves as such. We were ignored. The BBC now seems to have woken up to the problem. But we have lost 10 years in which climate change could have been tackled.
· George Monbiot's book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning is published this week monbiot.com
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
We should nuke Israel
| ||||
 | ||||
| | | | |
Respond To This Article Below
| We should nuke Israel | Configure | 3 Comments | ||
| Comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content. |
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Blunt Instruments: Vicious Rex
PEJ News - C. L. Cook - For Canadians concerned their country is falling into the militarist trap set by George W. Bush and his industrious friends of carnage and hopeless disaster there is no better example of the truth of this catastrophic fate than State news organ mouthpiece, Rex Murphy and his recent blitzkrieg against the legion anti-Bush administration agitators in Canada he would have "us" regard as "conspiracy mongers," and a collective "vicious instrument of defamation and hate."
Blunt Instruments:
Vicious Rex
C. L. Cook
PEJ News
September 16, 2006
What, humble subject of He the Opinionator Imperiumus, you may wonder has worked its way so far up Rex's royal rectal cavity as to make His eminence emanate so odoriferously against the majority belief that the George W. Bush wars are not what they appear, and indeed are the product of a conspiracy most foul?
Well you may wonder.
For those blessedly ignorant of Canada's answer to the collective idiocy filling the airwaves of America, Rex Murphy is employed by State propaganda organ, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, his CBC salary drawn from the monies extracted necessarily, on pain of incarceration, or worse, from the hides of the collective herd, known officially as the Canadian subjects of Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth II, Regina, Empress of the Realm, Defender of the Faith, etc., etc. His nibs' blathering may also be gleaned between the pages of Canada's "National Newspaper," The Globe and Mail.
September 11, 2006: Following years of bloody retribution, wars of aggression, and uncounted acts of wanton carnage meted out upon the heads of the peons and peasants of distant Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Lebanon, and Palestine, and Yemen, and Somalia, and the vicious assaults ladled out to the undocumented thousands taken prisoner and tortured in prisons and hidey spider-holes around the world, and after the evisceration of a thousand years of western jurisprudence, and the promise of more abuse and tyranny to come, Rex sits before his keyboard, searching his soul for an outrage, seeking a muse to aid his pen, and fuel his commentary, to be carried, via the State organ, direct to the nation.
And what, after years of wanton carnage, vicious assaults, and the dying throes of democracy does Rex hit out against? Why it's those whose minds would harbour “pernicious concoctions" that suggest: "a sitting president and his advisors would murder their own [sic] citizenry." To these vile cretins, Rex suggests they be a "calumny, as lunatic as they are contemptible."
Tyrannical Thesaurus Rex goes on, flailing his broad brush, thus: “The overarching theory is that Bush and the neo-Cons, not bin Laden, not al-Qaeda, not Mohammed Atta and his virgin-hungry suicide team, but slow-witted George and his puppet masters, that they are the real villains, that the president and his plotters murdered 3,000 of their own citizens. I do not know why we give any oxygen to these extraordinary libels. Detestation for George Bush may qualify a person for many things, but it is not a degree of metallurgy, just as anti-Americanism is not a branch of physics.”
And there you have the crux of Rex’s pointed criticism; those intended for his skewering barb: Sceptics of the official story, yes; but more specifically Rex would destroy the “anti-Americanismists.”
Like to the old gobstopper, “Anti-Semite,” serving to silence critics of kills-better-than-cancer Israel these many years, Rex would elevate America, and presumably its blasphemous “leaders,” to a religion, and its critics heretics of the lowest order: Anti-American.
But Rex, there’s something you’ve missed.
“Slow-witted George and his puppet masters” have plotted against “their own” [sic] citizens, resulting in the wrongful deaths of more than 3,000 of them. And dear Rex, those same have caused the villainous destruction of more than a quarter of a million others, mainly civilians, in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are not “extraordinary libels” Rex, these are facts. The war in Iraq, and Afghanistan, to which you repeatedly defend Canada’s murderous participation, were all formed on the basis of conspiracy theories cooked up in Washington, D.C. The story fed the people, via useful idiots like you in the press, are a proven pack of lies. Yet, you and your sick ilk spend your precious talents, and the nation’s airwaves defending those lies, and the liars, while the killing continues.
To paraphrase you, Rex, I do not know why “we” give oxygen to Rex Murphy’s lies and propaganda.
Wearing his other hat, that of columnist for the free-market Globe and Mail, today (Our Blessed Tomorrows: Saturday, September 16, ’06 A17) Murphy opines on the shootings this week in Montreal, saying: “It was a horrible business.” Thanks for that, Rex. But, there’s more; Rex goes on to say, whining about the extensive media coverage this outrage has received; “There is another reason also - a more general one - why it has occupied the front pages, a reason which, even in the gloom of this terrible event, Canadians should be mindful of. That is because acts of wanton carnage - and may it always be so - are so exceptional, literally so extraordinary, in our country.”
Again, Rex proves over-selective in his definition of “wanton acts of carnage.”
Choosing to reiterate his support of the massive defilement of humanity carried on daily in Canada’s name in Afghanistan, Murphy blesses the war-makers in Ottawa and Washington, London and Canberra, explaining that it is perhaps to bring to long-suffering Afghanistan the kind of “blessed ordinariness” of the peaceful life enjoyed in Canada, where people just don’t get mowed down randomly every day, that sustains Canada’s [sic] “Mission” there.
This past week, the Associated Press reported Canadian soldiers have killed an estimated 500 Afghanis. I don’t know where they got that number, but it is clear: Canada [sic] wantonly kills, maims, and destroys humanity every day it stays in Afghanistan. Something not seen by Rex as an aberration to the green and peaceful life enjoyed in Canada; au contraire.
In Rex-speak, the routine killing of men, women, and children over there serves humanity thusly: “[T]his ability to say “tomorrow” uninflected with the deepest reflexes of anxiety and fear, is probably what is, at core, the business of our [sic] mission in the decades-long tormented country of Afghanistan – to extend to others at least the possibility of a passage to civil tranquility.”
Yes Rex, a passage to the hereafter bought and paid for by you and me and every Canadian; a destruction of the villages wrought that the villages may live more peaceful, empty of their noisome, and ignorant inhabitants.
Were we here only to act the same.
Chris Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News and hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. You can check out the GR blog here.
[Rex's screed is reproduced in its full and gory glory below. - lex]
http://www.cbc.ca/national/rex/rex_060912.html
Conspiracy mongering is a vicious instrument
Sept. 12, 2006
For some people, any official explanation of an event is always and only a synonym for a cover-up.
For such types, reality is a labyrinth of shadows and speculation, nothing is ever as it seems.
One plus one always equals something other than two, and there is no such thing as a straight line from "A" to "B".
They live in a world of spies and schemers, of aliens who are never seen, corporate forces who manipulate whole countries, governments who plot and kill their own citizens, and where Zionists or Freemasons, the Templar Knights or Opus Dei, have been running the planet for ages.
This is the mentality that argues Roosevelt staged Pearl Harbor, that John F. Kennedy had more assassins than the entire cast and extras of "Ben Hur" - it was really crowded on that grassy knoll - and that Princess Diana was most likely done in by members of the royal family; Elizabeth II, the Buckingham Palace Soprano.
On a pop level, this is the world that finds an audience of millions for the lukewarm stew and plastic history of Dan Brown's fatuous Da Vinci Code and has tentacles that reach towards those true believers in the mystic power of New Age crystals, spirit channelling, of people who talk to trees and fully expect the bored trees to talk back to them.
On a much more sinister level, conspiracy mongering is a vicious instrument of defamation and hate.
The hideous granddaddy of all conspiracy theories is also the most durable one: the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the document that "proved" the most lasting of malicious fantasies, that the Jews run the world and seek its ruin. The Protocols are loopier than a bucket of eels on a Ferris wheel and known to be a hoax for over a century, but of malicious gullibility there is no end. 9/11 has spewed conspiracy theories almost from the moment the first plane hit the first tower. Among the earliest and the most despicable - an echo of the Protocols here - was that 4,000 Jewish employees stayed home that day. In other words, the Jews did it.
Lately, there has been a whole whirlwind of broken logic and wishful thinking, malice and misinformation trying desperately to dress up as truth.
One of my personal favourites is the claim that no planes at all were involved in 9/11, that those were missiles wrapped in holograms that slammed into the buildings. Hand me a pointy ear, Spock, someone's been watching far too much Star Trek.
The overarching theory is that Bush and the neo-Cons, not bin Laden, not al-Qaeda, not Mohammed Atta and his virgin-hungry suicide team, but slow-witted George and his puppet masters, that they are the real villains, that the president and his plotters murdered 3,000 of their own citizens.
I do not know why we give any oxygen to these extraordinary libels. Detestation for George Bush may qualify a person for many things, but it is not a degree of metallurgy, just as anti-Americanism is not a branch of physics.
These theories that suggest a sitting president and his advisors would murder their own citizenry are a calumny, as lunatic as they are contemptible. They come from the imagination of hate, the pernicious concoctions of minds allergic to reality, and are beneath the dignity of reasoning human beings. For "The National", I'm Rex Murphy.
Stay informed. Subscribe and get the best of PEJ News by email. Free.
Death and Tears in Nablus
Counterpunch~ Eliza Ernshire ~The people of Nablus are welcoming of a stranger into their streets. It is not so common for them to see foreigners there and many stop you to ask what you are doing in Nablus and how you see their city. It is a hard question to answer; you want to tell them about the beauty of the ancient stoned city and its unique geography, nestled in the valley of two imposing mountains, daring the northern slopes of one to build almost to its peak; but you can not, because this is not the feature that strikes you most noticeably as you enter the outskirts of Nablus.
www.counterpunch.org
Death and Tears in Nablus
ELIZA ERNSHIRE
Nablus
While war raged in Lebanon throughout the month of July and death was a daily occurrence in Gaza, other regions in this war-torn part of the world also experienced weeks of torment and torture at the hands of the Israeli Military.
Among these regions is Nablus. A city filled with tragedy and the knowledge of how unjust and unforgiving the occupational forces can be. Invasions, incursions and curfews are not new to the people of Nablus, nor are the sights of bleeding children and mourning families.
Many people say if you want to know the Occupation of the West Bank and what it actually entails then you must go to Nablus and spend some days wandering in the Old City and surrounding districts talking to residents, nearly every one of whom have lost members of their family in the decade-long struggle against Occupation; you need to talk to the students of An Najar University and listen to their stories of suffering and how many difficulties they must overcome if they want to continue their education; you must let the sorrow of the city soak into your unconsciousness.
And so I went to Nablus and wandered the Old City streets and talked with families and with students and listened to their stories.
It was not the first time I had visited the city, but the first time I had spent more than a day there.
The people of Nablus are welcoming of a stranger into their streets. It is not so common for them to see foreigners there and many stop you to ask what you are doing in Nablus and how you see their city. It is a hard question to answer; you want to tell them about the beauty of the ancient stoned city and its unique geography, nestled in the valley of two imposing mountains, daring the northern slopes of one to build almost to its peak; but you can not, because this is not the feature that strikes you most noticeably as you enter the outskirts of Nablus.
You are first struck by the ruins of the Municipality building and the destruction of the as-yet un-rebuilt Mucata. You are struck by the houses, windowless and scarred with bullet holes that line every street you walk down; you are struck by the overwhelming feeling that this city has seen war again and again and has had no time of respite to begin to rebuild.
And how can you tell the eager residents of Nablus that all you see in their city is the ravaging signs of war and hardship and the heartbreaking signs of children with no future?
The latest of these fierce and deathly times has left numerous residents of Nablus dead and many more wounded.
It began in June when the Israeli army invaded the center of Nablus at midday. They came in twenty jeeps to arrest one man. On that day they shot three people dead and imposed a curfew on the whole of the city.
Since then they have been in the city every night and sometimes during the day.
They have killed civilians including two children 14 and 16 years old. They have totally demolished the Mucata and have bulldozed an apartment block that housed 9 families. They have invaded the refugee camps and have carried out assassinations against militants whose posters now cover the walls of every shop in the city.June, July August and September 2006
The streets now empty at 9 pm and the only sounds in the night time are those of gun-fire and explosions.
'This is Nablus.' My taxi driver said. This is the prison of the West Bank.
I was to speak with Fadi, a leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades in Nablus. A friend from Nablus had talked to Fadi and Fadi had agreed to speak with me on Saturday about his life and his resistance against the occupation.
But he is now dead.
I arrived in Nablus the day after he was assassinated by Israeli Special Forces.
The city salutes him and every shop displays his poster, prepared by himself for himself. He stands one-armed and defiant. He lost his right arm in the struggle a year ago.
I came too late to speak with him. So instead of his story I will write of him, as told me by his family, his friends and his city that is now mourning his death.
Ahmad is a medical relief worker and has worked as an ambulance doctor for three years. I met him by chance in a youth project office in the center of Nablus.
I asked him about the last month in the city and he shook his head and said it has been a 'hell-of-a-time'. He has been evacuating wounded and dead people almost daily, the most heartbreaking of these he said was having to try and evacuate Fadi after he had been fatally injured.
It was late at night in the old city of Nablus.
Fadi was warned not to enter the old city, but he did and was shot by snipers.
He had a massive hole through his belly.
Ahmad told me how he tried to stop the bleeding by pressing two pillows against each side of Fadi's body, but it was impossible to stop the bleeding and he and his two helpers were being shot at the whole time and the ambulance could not approach. His two friends were wounded.
'Fadi was still alive. But he couldn't speak. He just looked at us and pointed. I suppose he was telling us that he was going'
I asked Ahmad if he knew Fadi. He answered, yes, that he did and it was not the first time he had tried to evacuate him after an Israeli attack.
'Once he had his whole insides hanging out of a horrible hole in his stomach and I had to push them back inside and he said ''thankyou Ahmad!'' and there was the time when he had his arm blown off.
'But this time was a nightmare. We were trying to drag him through the street and we were right in the sights of ten or so snipers sitting on the rooftops. I could see red laser beams all over my chest. I finally had to turn and run for cover and that is not an easy thing to do when you are a trained emergency worker.
After half an hour we managed to drag Fadi to a building, but by the time we reached the hospital he was already half-an-hour dead.
He was a good man. Ask anyone here.
'Every one knew him and every one loved him.'
When evening came I wound my way up the mountain to a quiet sanctuary, surprising in such a battle-wearied city. The sanctuary is in the garden of an old woman who has been trained as a psychologist and spends her days working with the women of Nablus. Too often the bearers of tragedy.
'The women must carry too much.' She said. 'Sometimes all their frustration and fear and torture come out of their hearts when they sit here in my small garden.'
We talked for hours and I never thought I could hear so many stories at once that would bring tears to my eyes.
'.Can you imagine?' she said, late in the evening. 'That women come to me and talk and begin to cry and then to shout and then to beat the earth with their bear fists. Can you imagine what that is like?
When the mothers tell me about their sons taken from them. Killed in front of them, or arrested from their family home. Some mothers tell me that their fourteen or fifteen year old sons rush to them when the army arrives in their street and cry to them to hide them. Some say that their sons ask to be put back inside their bellies because they would be safe there.
Can you imagine this? Fifteen year old boys! And the world hears of them only as terrorists.'
One mother came to the sanctuary and for an hour sat on the stones and howled till her heart would break: 'I could not hide him! I could not hide my son!' She cried over and over again.
To us, arrest may not seem like the end of hope, but we do not know the reality of the arrest system in Palestine. The women of Nablus know.
They know that they will not hear news of their son for maybe 21 days after his arrest. They will not know if he is alive or dead. All they will know is that he will be facing interrogation and torture alone. That his court hearing will be held in Hebrew. That his charges will be kept in a 'secret file' and that they might not see their sons again until they are grown men. This they know.
'And sometimes' the old woman told me 'the mother needs to cry her anguish, however heartbreaking it is.
'One young woman is married to a wanted man. She comes to me because she has become useless. She can not sleep in the night and can not wake in the day. She lies in her bed because she is paralyzed with fear.
She has two daughters. The eldest started school today. Four days ago the young woman's husband visited her with three new dresses for their daughter. The husband said he did not want anyone else to have to prepare his daughter for her first day at school. Later in the evening he sat with his young family and listened to his youngest girl singing a song he had taught her. He said to his wife quietly, 'I don't think I will hear this song again.' He was killed yesterday.
I knew then it was Fadi the old woman was telling me about. She stopped talking because she too was crying.
'I loved him like a son' she finally said; 'and his wife like a daughter.'
She wept because however strong she is and however many tragedies she bares with her clients, she too sometimes needs to weep.
It was hard to sleep that night. I sat at the window and watched the sleeping city below me, wondering how many homes were nursing broken families and broken hearts.
I could see the ruined outlines of homes that had been bulldozed and could see the pile of rubble that had been the Mucata, razed to the ground three weeks before.
I realized that it would take months to hear the stories this city harbors, months before I could appreciate the depths of despair the people are driven to by the harshness of the occupation.
I wondered what future was in store for all the children I had seen that day rummaging through rubbish in the Old City because there is not even a school for them to go to. I found myself wondering at the little twelve year old boys I had seen running after the militants who roam the old city with guns slung over their shoulders, looking to them like they ought to be looking to their teachers.
I found myself asking the question if it was so very surprising that these youngsters turned to the military factions of the city and joined them, and by so doing, giving up any hope of a future except that of imprisonment or death at the hands of the Israeli forces.
Because that could well be their future anyway
I finally slept as the dawn call to prayer sounded over the city.
When I returned to Ramallah I knew that it was true about Nablus.
If you wander the streets of the Old City and listen to even a few of the tales that are imprisoned within it, you will understand better the reality of this occupation, and the sadness of the city will seep into your unconscious
'But beware of becoming hopeless.even the women who cry in my garden grow strong again and return to their homes and continue to attend to their daily work. If they didn't do this Israel would have destroyed us long ago.'
Eliza Ernshire can be reached at eliza_ernshire@yahoo.co.uk
Stay informed. Subscribe and get the best of PEJ News by email. Free.
Death and Tears in Nablus
Counterpunch~ Eliza Ernshire ~The people of Nablus are welcoming of a stranger into their streets. It is not so common for them to see foreigners there and many stop you to ask what you are doing in Nablus and how you see their city. It is a hard question to answer; you want to tell them about the beauty of the ancient stoned city and its unique geography, nestled in the valley of two imposing mountains, daring the northern slopes of one to build almost to its peak; but you can not, because this is not the feature that strikes you most noticeably as you enter the outskirts of Nablus.
Death and Tears in Nablus
ELIZA ERNSHIRE
Nablus
While war raged in Lebanon throughout the month of July and death was a daily occurrence in Gaza, other regions in this war-torn part of the world also experienced weeks of torment and torture at the hands of the Israeli Military.
Among these regions is Nablus. A city filled with tragedy and the knowledge of how unjust and unforgiving the occupational forces can be. Invasions, incursions and curfews are not new to the people of Nablus, nor are the sights of bleeding children and mourning families.
Many people say if you want to know the Occupation of the West Bank and what it actually entails then you must go to Nablus and spend some days wandering in the Old City and surrounding districts talking to residents, nearly every one of whom have lost members of their family in the decade-long struggle against Occupation; you need to talk to the students of An Najar University and listen to their stories of suffering and how many difficulties they must overcome if they want to continue their education; you must let the sorrow of the city soak into your unconsciousness.
And so I went to Nablus and wandered the Old City streets and talked with families and with students and listened to their stories.
It was not the first time I had visited the city, but the first time I had spent more than a day there.
The people of Nablus are welcoming of a stranger into their streets. It is not so common for them to see foreigners there and many stop you to ask what you are doing in Nablus and how you see their city. It is a hard question to answer; you want to tell them about the beauty of the ancient stoned city and its unique geography, nestled in the valley of two imposing mountains, daring the northern slopes of one to build almost to its peak; but you can not, because this is not the feature that strikes you most noticeably as you enter the outskirts of Nablus.
You are first struck by the ruins of the Municipality building and the destruction of the as-yet un-rebuilt Mucata. You are struck by the houses, windowless and scarred with bullet holes that line every street you walk down; you are struck by the overwhelming feeling that this city has seen war again and again and has had no time of respite to begin to rebuild.
And how can you tell the eager residents of Nablus that all you see in their city is the ravaging signs of war and hardship and the heartbreaking signs of children with no future?
The latest of these fierce and deathly times has left numerous residents of Nablus dead and many more wounded.
It began in June when the Israeli army invaded the center of Nablus at midday. They came in twenty jeeps to arrest one man. On that day they shot three people dead and imposed a curfew on the whole of the city.
Since then they have been in the city every night and sometimes during the day.
They have killed civilians including two children 14 and 16 years old. They have totally demolished the Mucata and have bulldozed an apartment block that housed 9 families. They have invaded the refugee camps and have carried out assassinations against militants whose posters now cover the walls of every shop in the city.June, July August and September 2006
The streets now empty at 9 pm and the only sounds in the night time are those of gun-fire and explosions.
'This is Nablus.' My taxi driver said. This is the prison of the West Bank.
I was to speak with Fadi, a leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades in Nablus. A friend from Nablus had talked to Fadi and Fadi had agreed to speak with me on Saturday about his life and his resistance against the occupation.
But he is now dead.
I arrived in Nablus the day after he was assassinated by Israeli Special Forces.
The city salutes him and every shop displays his poster, prepared by himself for himself. He stands one-armed and defiant. He lost his right arm in the struggle a year ago.
I came too late to speak with him. So instead of his story I will write of him, as told me by his family, his friends and his city that is now mourning his death.
Ahmad is a medical relief worker and has worked as an ambulance doctor for three years. I met him by chance in a youth project office in the center of Nablus.
I asked him about the last month in the city and he shook his head and said it has been a 'hell-of-a-time'. He has been evacuating wounded and dead people almost daily, the most heartbreaking of these he said was having to try and evacuate Fadi after he had been fatally injured.
It was late at night in the old city of Nablus.
Fadi was warned not to enter the old city, but he did and was shot by snipers.
He had a massive hole through his belly.
Ahmad told me how he tried to stop the bleeding by pressing two pillows against each side of Fadi's body, but it was impossible to stop the bleeding and he and his two helpers were being shot at the whole time and the ambulance could not approach. His two friends were wounded.
'Fadi was still alive. But he couldn't speak. He just looked at us and pointed. I suppose he was telling us that he was going'
I asked Ahmad if he knew Fadi. He answered, yes, that he did and it was not the first time he had tried to evacuate him after an Israeli attack.
'Once he had his whole insides hanging out of a horrible hole in his stomach and I had to push them back inside and he said ''thankyou Ahmad!'' and there was the time when he had his arm blown off.
'But this time was a nightmare. We were trying to drag him through the street and we were right in the sights of ten or so snipers sitting on the rooftops. I could see red laser beams all over my chest. I finally had to turn and run for cover and that is not an easy thing to do when you are a trained emergency worker.
After half an hour we managed to drag Fadi to a building, but by the time we reached the hospital he was already half-an-hour dead.
He was a good man. Ask anyone here.
'Every one knew him and every one loved him.'
When evening came I wound my way up the mountain to a quiet sanctuary, surprising in such a battle-wearied city. The sanctuary is in the garden of an old woman who has been trained as a psychologist and spends her days working with the women of Nablus. Too often the bearers of tragedy.
'The women must carry too much.' She said. 'Sometimes all their frustration and fear and torture come out of their hearts when they sit here in my small garden.'
We talked for hours and I never thought I could hear so many stories at once that would bring tears to my eyes.
'.Can you imagine?' she said, late in the evening. 'That women come to me and talk and begin to cry and then to shout and then to beat the earth with their bear fists. Can you imagine what that is like?
When the mothers tell me about their sons taken from them. Killed in front of them, or arrested from their family home. Some mothers tell me that their fourteen or fifteen year old sons rush to them when the army arrives in their street and cry to them to hide them. Some say that their sons ask to be put back inside their bellies because they would be safe there.
Can you imagine this? Fifteen year old boys! And the world hears of them only as terrorists.'
One mother came to the sanctuary and for an hour sat on the stones and howled till her heart would break: 'I could not hide him! I could not hide my son!' She cried over and over again.
To us, arrest may not seem like the end of hope, but we do not know the reality of the arrest system in Palestine. The women of Nablus know.
They know that they will not hear news of their son for maybe 21 days after his arrest. They will not know if he is alive or dead. All they will know is that he will be facing interrogation and torture alone. That his court hearing will be held in Hebrew. That his charges will be kept in a 'secret file' and that they might not see their sons again until they are grown men. This they know.
'And sometimes' the old woman told me 'the mother needs to cry her anguish, however heartbreaking it is.
'One young woman is married to a wanted man. She comes to me because she has become useless. She can not sleep in the night and can not wake in the day. She lies in her bed because she is paralyzed with fear.
She has two daughters. The eldest started school today. Four days ago the young woman's husband visited her with three new dresses for their daughter. The husband said he did not want anyone else to have to prepare his daughter for her first day at school. Later in the evening he sat with his young family and listened to his youngest girl singing a song he had taught her. He said to his wife quietly, 'I don't think I will hear this song again.' He was killed yesterday.
I knew then it was Fadi the old woman was telling me about. She stopped talking because she too was crying.
'I loved him like a son' she finally said; 'and his wife like a daughter.'
She wept because however strong she is and however many tragedies she bares with her clients, she too sometimes needs to weep.
It was hard to sleep that night. I sat at the window and watched the sleeping city below me, wondering how many homes were nursing broken families and broken hearts.
I could see the ruined outlines of homes that had been bulldozed and could see the pile of rubble that had been the Mucata, razed to the ground three weeks before.
I realized that it would take months to hear the stories this city harbors, months before I could appreciate the depths of despair the people are driven to by the harshness of the occupation.
I wondered what future was in store for all the children I had seen that day rummaging through rubbish in the Old City because there is not even a school for them to go to. I found myself wondering at the little twelve year old boys I had seen running after the militants who roam the old city with guns slung over their shoulders, looking to them like they ought to be looking to their teachers.
I found myself asking the question if it was so very surprising that these youngsters turned to the military factions of the city and joined them, and by so doing, giving up any hope of a future except that of imprisonment or death at the hands of the Israeli forces.
Because that could well be their future anyway
I finally slept as the dawn call to prayer sounded over the city.
When I returned to Ramallah I knew that it was true about Nablus.
If you wander the streets of the Old City and listen to even a few of the tales that are imprisoned within it, you will understand better the reality of this occupation, and the sadness of the city will seep into your unconscious
'But beware of becoming hopeless.even the women who cry in my garden grow strong again and return to their homes and continue to attend to their daily work. If they didn't do this Israel would have destroyed us long ago.'
Eliza Ernshire can be reached at eliza_ernshire@yahoo.co.uk
Stay informed. Subscribe and get the best of PEJ News by email. Free.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
PRISON, PRESS, and PISSED
from Betty
Betty waiting to retrieve her belongings outside of Alouette Women's Prisonafter her August 2nd release.Vancouver, September 6th, 2006
PRISON, PRESS, AND PISSED!
by Betty Krawczyk
Okay, so maybe pissed isnt a nice word for a great-grandmother to be using but I find I dont care, nice is not what is happening. To any of us. Not to prisoners, the press, and/or the public at large. Prisoners are being mistreated at Alouette Correctional Centre for Women and the press is not allowed in to report it. Are the women being beaten?
Yes and no. Not with whips, but with privatization of the prison. Women are required to work at Alouette as do I when Im there. Prisoners pay? Two dollars and fifty cents a day. Thats a day, not an hour. Before privatization, women prisoners were paid four dollars and fifty cents a day. Cut it in half, was Campbells solution. And privatize everything. Including the food. Especially the food. Eggs? Well, we wont have to worry about cholesterol. Two eggs a week. Fruit? Four pieces a week. Milk? A little powdered milk poured out of a pitcher by an attendant on a half a bowl of cereal for breakfast, a cup (thats a cup, not a glass) of powdered milk for supper. Meat, when there is any, has been frozen for awhile (a long while, I know freezer burn when I see it) and sometimes cant even be cut with the plastic knives. And the paucity of fresh vegetables is a crime. There were ten pregnant women in that prison when I left August 2 and the diet fed to them (the regular with only slight modifications) is outrageous. But this is a private food service and the company has to make a profit out of the prisoners.
Prisons have become a business and the canteen is also privatized. All of the items on the canteen list cost more than they would outside and they are of the cheapest, poorest quality available. And the beauty of this arrangement for the private company is that the ruling of the Attorney General and Solicitor General is that they wont allow anything to be brought into the prison for the inmates, anything at all. Everything the women need or want has to be bought from the canteen or done without. Isnt this a lovely set up for the canteen company? A captive group of women who are forced to buy the crappiest brands of everything for inflated prices. And thats not all.
Due to a sweetheart deal with Telus, we at Alouette (and Ill be back there soon as my trial begins on Sept.18 and Madam Justice Brown wants to teach me a lesson) must pay ninety cents for a local phone call. Thats a local phone call, one that would cost a quarter on the outside. But women who make two dollars and fifty cents a day must pay ninety cents for a local phone call. Theres more, but I want to get to how Campbell handles members of the press who request prison interviews.
Just before I was released from Alouette a reporter from the Georgia Straight came and took some photos of me sitting in front of a blank wall. He was told by prison authorities in no uncertain terms to delete the photos and after he left I was advised that in the future there would be no more private interviews which meant that any reporter who wanted an interview would have to come in during regular visiting hours. The hitch is that there are no private visits. Visits take place in a communal hall, one crowded room, lots of noise, no privacy. And no visitor can bring in anything for the visit, not even a pencil or writing pad. And that means reporters, too.
So freedom of the press seems about like my own freedom to protest, just swallow the lies and dont do anything to upset Gordon Campbell and his offices and the courts. However, in the final analysis freedom of the press is up to the press, both main stream and alternate. To honestly have freedom of the press, the press has to demand access to wherever that want to go that is paid for by taxpayers, to investigate whatever they want to investigate that the public pays for, to film whatever they want to film that is built and paid for with taxpayer funds. Thats enshrined in our constitution, for Petes sake.
Betty Krawczyk
For up to date news by betty, please see her blog:
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Four dead in Lebanon 'assassination' bid
Tuesday 05 September 2006, 21:20 Makka Time, 18:20 GMT
The bomb went off in the village of Rimaila near Sidon
A Lebanese intelligence officer investigating the murder of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former prime minister, has been wounded in an bomb attack that left four of his bodyguards dead.
Lieutenant-Colonel Samir Shehade and three other men were wounded when an explosion ripped through their convoy as it left the town of Rmeileh, about 30km south of Beirut early on Tuesday.
Ahmed Fatfat, the Lebanese interior minister, said the blast was caused by a roadside bomb loaded with nails.
The attack came 10 days ahead of the release of a report on al-Hariri's assassination, which Western countries suspect was the work of Syria.
A massive blast killed al-Hariri and 22 other people on February 14 last year.
In September last year, Shehade, the deputy director of the internal security force's intelligence unit, directed the arrest of four top Lebanese intelligence officials believed to have been involved in al-Hariri's murder.
Lebanese security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said Shehade had received threats because of his work in the al-Hariri probe.
Al-Hariri's son, Saad Hariri, a prominent lawmaker in Lebanon, called the attack a terrorist act.
"This is a message which we reject," he said.
Syrian denial
Fares Soueid, a former parliamentarian and Saad Hariri ally, said the attack was aimed at sabotaging the creation of an international tribunal over al-Hariri's assassination.
Syria has denied any responsibility for the killings, but has come under heavy international pressure to co-operate with the investigations.
An international outcry over the murder of al-Hariri forced Syria, which had dominated Lebanese politics for three decades, to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in April 2005.
Since then, relations between the two neighbouring countries have soured considerably, and leaders of the anti-Syrian majority that emerged in parliamentary elections two months later have repeatedly claimed they fear for their lives.
The bomb went off in the village of Rimaila near Sidon
A Lebanese intelligence officer investigating the murder of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former prime minister, has been wounded in an bomb attack that left four of his bodyguards dead.
Lieutenant-Colonel Samir Shehade and three other men were wounded when an explosion ripped through their convoy as it left the town of Rmeileh, about 30km south of Beirut early on Tuesday.
Ahmed Fatfat, the Lebanese interior minister, said the blast was caused by a roadside bomb loaded with nails.
The attack came 10 days ahead of the release of a report on al-Hariri's assassination, which Western countries suspect was the work of Syria.
A massive blast killed al-Hariri and 22 other people on February 14 last year.
In September last year, Shehade, the deputy director of the internal security force's intelligence unit, directed the arrest of four top Lebanese intelligence officials believed to have been involved in al-Hariri's murder.
Lebanese security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said Shehade had received threats because of his work in the al-Hariri probe.
Al-Hariri's son, Saad Hariri, a prominent lawmaker in Lebanon, called the attack a terrorist act.
"This is a message which we reject," he said.
Syrian denial
Fares Soueid, a former parliamentarian and Saad Hariri ally, said the attack was aimed at sabotaging the creation of an international tribunal over al-Hariri's assassination.
Syria has denied any responsibility for the killings, but has come under heavy international pressure to co-operate with the investigations.
An international outcry over the murder of al-Hariri forced Syria, which had dominated Lebanese politics for three decades, to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in April 2005.
Since then, relations between the two neighbouring countries have soured considerably, and leaders of the anti-Syrian majority that emerged in parliamentary elections two months later have repeatedly claimed they fear for their lives.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Merkel Wimps Out on Israeli Cluster Bombs
Merkel Wimps Out on Israeli Cluster Bombs
Thursday August 31st 2006, 1:36 pm
German Development Aid Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul was spot on when she criticized Israel for its obscene and wanton use of cluster bombs in Lebanon.
But Chancellor Angela Merkel was quick to jump up and kiss the hem of Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of German Jews, after she angrily complained that mentioning such is antisemitic.
“Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor, has repeatedly complained about what she terms a growing mood against Israel and Jews in Germany,” reports Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
Wieczorek-Zeul and Oskar Lafontaine, members of Germany’s Left Party, according to Knobloch, “support the anti-mood against Jews in Germany.” In other words, if a German complains about Israel’s obvious war crimes—and in Germany, considerable parliamentary activity on cluster munitions is underway—he or she is obviously a raving antisemite, an accusation that imputes unspoken comparisons with Hitler and the Nazis.
“German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Charlotte Knobloch, the president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Wednesday to address Jewish anger over remarks made by overseas development minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul about Israel’s offensive in Lebanon,” reports Deutsche Welle. “Government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said Wednesday that Germany believed it carries a historical responsibility towards the Jewish state because of the Holocaust, and said all government ministers respected this policy.”
In other words, once again, the Holocaust was used as a cudgel by Jews who apparently believe Israel has the right to mass murder innocent Arabs, for as Alan Dershowitz wrote in the Los Angeles Times last month, there is a “new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare,” that is to say some civilians—Israeli civilians—are more innocent than other civilians, mostly Arabs, who are to be conflated with terrorists out of hand. In effect, the feelings of Germany’s Jews are more important than the lives of Lebanese children and grandmothers. How dare Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul think otherwise. No doubt she is a closet Nazi.
It does not matter that Wieczorek-Zeul and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have lashed “out at human rights abuses regardless who may have committed them.” After all, we’re talking about Israelis here and victims of the Holocaust, an event exploited over the last six decades to shake down not only Germany but virtually every other country that feels somehow responsible for what the Nazis did, a guilt expertly milked to the tune of billions of dollars.
Of course, the Nazis killed nearly 7 million Russian civilians (others put this estimate at 16 million) and thousands of communists, socialists, “degenerate artists,” homosexuals, and Roma were executed or sent to die in concentration camps, but we hear little about these poor souls.
Obviously, UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland often retreats to the secrecy of his closet and dons a Nazi uniform, glimmering with SS-Totenkopfverbande, or death’s head regalia. “What’s shocking, and I would say completely immoral, is that 90% of [Israel’s] cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict when we knew there would be a resolution, when we knew there would be an end,” Egeland said.
UN chief Kofi Annan is also a Nazi fellow traveler, as he criticized Israel’s use of cluster bombs as well. “Those kinds of weapons shouldn’t be used in civilian and populated areas,” said Annan, obviously not understanding that Israel (and the United States in Iraq) use these weapons primarily to kill civilians and inflict terror on populations considered less than civilian, as Dershowitz would have it.
“Up to yesterday night we had figures saying there were 405 locations of cluster-bomb strikes in southern Lebanon,” declared Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Coordination Center in southern Lebanon. “Per day, we are receiving an average of 30 new locations of cluster-bomb strikes because we have survey teams going to the field and getting information, and the picture is still emerging more and more.”
Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch, “who’s just returned from a visit to southern Lebanon, says the least the Israelis can do is hand over maps of where they dropped these munitions,” but then this would be considered surrendering to Islamofascists and an unforgivable effrontery to Jews around the world who suffered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno, Dachau, etc., or rather the ancestors of said victims, as most of the actual victims have passed on.
But merely mentioning such crimes in relation to Israel is verboten in Germany. “A German Jewish leader has lashed out at German Development Aid Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul for demanding a UN inquiry into Israel’s use of cluster bombs against civilians in Lebanon, the daily Frankfurter Rundschau reported in its Wednesday edition,” reports IRNA. “The vice-president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Salomon Korn, accused Wieczorek-Zeul of being biased against Israel…. ‘The demand shows once again that the minister has reacted in a reflexive manner with regard to Israel,’ Korn said.”
Instead of complaining about Lebanese school kids maimed or killed by the uninhibited dispersal of cluster bombs—often painted in bright colors and thus attractive to children—Korn demanded “Wieczorek-Zeul should have first visited Israel to express her ’sympathy’ with the Israelis and not the Lebanese,” who are, recall, conflated with terrorists.
Meanwhile, “Germany’s powerful and influential Central Council of Jews removed the head of the Jewish community in the north German city of Luebeck from office for strongly criticizing the 34-day Israeli war in Lebanon, the Hamburg-based daily Die Welt reported on Thursday,” reports IRNA. “Rolf Verleger who was chairman of the Jewish community in Luebeck, was dismissed from office after writing an open letter to the Central Council of Jews in which he lashed out at Israel’s brutal and murderous policies in Lebanon and the Palestinian-run areas.”
In the letter, Verleger lambasted Israel for its target killings, the collective punishment and discriminatory policies of other people and the massive bombing of civilian areas in Lebanon.
He urged the Central Council of Jews not to remain silent towards Israel’s atrocities.
The Central Council of Jews is seen as a die-hard defender of the Zionist regime as it automatically equates any criticism of Israel with anti-semitism.
In addition, Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, the daughter of the late German Jewish leader Heinz Galinski, “lashed out at Germany’s powerful Central Council of Jews, accusing it of being nothing more than a mouthpiece of Israel,” reports IRNA. “Evelyn Hecht-Galinski expressed her outrage over continued attempts by the Central Council of Jews to stifle any criticism of Israel in Germany…. ‘As a German Jew, I am ashamed of Israel. Target killings, humiliating the Palestinian population, land dispossessions, destroying infrastructure, border checkpoint harassments, building the wall, blowing up houses, bombing UN monitors,’” Hecht-Galinski wrote for Stern magazine.
Obviously, Rolf Verleger and Evelyn Hecht-Galinski are self-hating Jews, for as “Natan Sharansky made clear, where Israel is criticized illegitimately, that is anti-Semitism,” writes Fiamma Nirenstein. “Israelis have difficulty understanding the nature of the polemical attacks used against the Jewish state. By being tarred as an apartheid, colonial, racist state, the enemy is merely employing anti-Semitic canards against Israel,” thus all criticism of Israel—beyond a tourist taking an Israeli restaurateur to task for bad dining experience or complaining about a rude hotel concierge—is antisemitism.
According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, Third New International Edition, antisemitism is defined as “opposition to Zionism” and “sympathy for the opponents of Israel,” most notably the Palestinians and more recently the people of Lebanon, who are less innocent than Israelis because they attempted to defend their country against invasion.
“Ken Jacobson, the associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League, urged Merriam-Webster to retain the definition,” notes Wikipedia, after the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee complained to Merriam Webster directly over the inclusion of the spurious entry. “Zionism is the national expression of the Jewish people,” he told the New York Times, “and to deny that, it seems to me, most often reflects anti-Semitic views.” In other words, if you complain about Israel killing Palestinian school children or targeting Lebanese apartment buildings in the middle of the night, you are denying the “national expression of the Jewish people.”
Fearful of denying this “national expression of the Jewish people”—in reality translated as stealing Arab land and invading neighboring countries—and angering the Jews of Germany, Angela Merkel wimped out.
“Merkel and Knobloch, in the first meeting of its kind since the council’s president took office, discussed the situation of the Jewish community in Germany, the state of affairs in the Middle East and Germany’s cooperation with the United Nations in stabilizing Lebanon for over an hour.”
In short, the German head of state kissed Knobloch’s heinie and begged for forgiveness, never mind the cluster bombs and merciless Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.
Of course, this was to be expected, as Merkel is essentially a German version of a neocon, fully in support of Israel’s invasion and mass murder campaign in Lebanon.
“At a press conference in Germany [on July 13], Chancellor Angela Merkel lined up behind US President George Bush in supporting Israel’s expanding war of attrition in the Middle East. On the same day that Israeli fighter planes bombed Lebanon’s main airport, Bush and Merkel stood shoulder to shoulder to declare their solidarity with Israel,” writes Stefan Steinberg. “Merkel … raised the issue of the intensified fighting in the Gaza Strip and laid the entire blame for the Israeli invasion of Gaza and the expansion of its aggression into Lebanon on the Palestinians. The main issue, she said, was for Palestinian and Lebanese militants to return their captured prisoners and cease rocket attacks on Israel,” in other words, the Palestinians and Lebanese must accept Israeli domination and ethnic cleansing without resistance.
It would seem the question now is how long it will be before Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul is bounced.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
War, Crime, Propaganda, and Judeo-Fascism
PEJ News - C. L. Cook - Slithered back recently into the lexicon of the Bush administration, Israel's Ohmert crowd, and their supporters in the corporate media, a new meme to help you better understand what the dated, "War on Terror" really means, and what it demands of the citizenry: "Islamo-Fascism," and its interchangeable synonyms, "Islamic Fascism," and "Islamic Terrorism" are the action phrases of the day, and as with much of the language heard coming from these actors over the past years, the au courant terms describe best their authors' values and methods.
www.PEJ.org
www.PEJ.org
War, Crime, Propaganda, and Judeo-Fascism
C. L. Cook
PEJ News
August 31, 2006
We needn't have witnessed the systematic destruction of Lebanon last month to appreciate the nature of Israel, we need only remember the ongoing systematic destruction of the Palestinian peoples, a project escalated this summer and quaintly dubbed by Israel 'Operation Summer Rains'.
Those "rain drops" are naturally not water, but a torrent of blazing steel and lead. These "rains" don't bring life to the hills, rivers, orchards, and beasts beneath them, but terrible death and heart-rending loss. And, for the Palestinians there is no umbrella, they are caught in the storm; no United Nations troops are urged to protect them from the Rainmakers across the wall.
The Palestinians, those surviving the repeated pogroms perpetrated by their neighbour to remain depite the murderous, and continuing Diaspora, are left to scratch a living out of the rubble, while Israeli tower guards snipe at their children, and rockets destroy their civic leaders and any unfortunates within a hundred yards of them. Daily, news of the freshly killed in Gaza and the West Bank could be heard before a shot was fired in Lebanon.
Every day, more civilians killed. Remember the family cut down while they barbecued on the beach? Remember the family dismembered in their flat by a "stray" Israeli missile? Recall the doctor kidnapped from Gaza, with his young son before Palestinians attacked a military outpost, killing several soldiers, and abducting one?
No? How about the campaign of "Sonic Straifing" carried out continuously over Gaza commencing last Autumn, (a tactic deployed too against the Lebanese last month)?
What the media and the U.N. have consistently failed to address in the recent tragedy brought upon Lebanon through the agency of the Israeli leadership, in collusion with their armourers in America, and callously carried out by the Israeli military is context. The depth of the United Nations' abrogation of their duty to justice for peoples and nations, as presented in the pitiful Resolution 1701 makes clear: The truth of the matter will not be addressed; Israel will not be punished for its blatant illegalities; No reproach either offered to the United States, Canada, and others in the international community who sanctioned Israel's unilateral destruction and continued blockade of Lebanon.
Of course these, Israel's signature pursuits, identically apply in Palestine, but are of no issue. Despite Kofi Annan's, seemingly made suddenly aware of Israel's brutality in occupied Palestine, harsh words parting directed to the rogue of the region are meaningless. It's doubtful Kofi's successor to the helm of the U.N. will waiver from Annan's long-practiced inaction where Israel is concerned; and, 1701 insures that.
Littered again with Israeli land-mines, uncounted thousands of unexploded cluster bomb "bomblets," and other munitions, the land and waters polluted with oil and Depleted Uranium, Lebanon is in ruins. More than a thousand Lebanese civilian dead counted so far, more to be discovered when the wreckage of their homes and offices are cleared, and more being killed and wounded daily by Israel's "left-behind" ordnance, and not a single line in Resolution 1701 calls on Israel to make reparations. In fact, that duty, as with the "DMZ- like buffer zone" is assigned to others, and to be implemented at Israel's pleasure, most incredibly, while Israeli soldiers continue to occupy portions of Lebanon.
While rumours of a greater war in the middle east and beyond near deafening, the United Nations sees fit, at this late date, to reward recalcitrant, reprobate, scofflaw Israel for its unwarranted aggression against a sovereign nation. This is, as the soon late-to-be Saddam Hussein may have called it, "The Mother of All Crimes." And, those sitting at Nuremberg and Geneva, Washington, London, and Paris agreed. They explicitly cite: "Unprovoked war of aggression" as the ultimate war crime, a crime against the peace from which all others follow. Yet today, neither the United Nations, nor the European Union, are willing to apply the law. America stands silent on this too, naturally, as it has stood silent so many times in the past, opting instead to further embolden its "client state" to loose ever more American-made munitions upon its neighbours.
With the November mid-term elections in the U.S. drawing close, George W. Bush has brushed off the old "Islamic Fascists" doggerel in hope to carry again his disreputable Republican regime to control of both Houses of Congress. It proves the desire, and desperation of his administration for further wars. In an article, linked here, Toronto Star writer, Eric Margolis cites, Colombia University Professor Robert Paxton’s 2004 book, 'The Anatomy of Fascism,' and Paxton's definition of fascism as:
"1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign 'contamination.'"
As Margolis observes: "Fascism demands a succession of wars, foreign conquests, and national threats to keep the nation in a state of fear, anxiety and patriotic hypertension. Those who disagree are branded ideological traitors."
With wars already burning in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and battered Lebanon teetering, all these of the making of the Bush administration and it's allies, those same criminals would call the world to arms to fight the "Islamic Fascists," proving again the verity of the schoolyard rejoinder: "What you say is what you are."
C. L. Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News, and hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. You can check out the GR Blog here.
Can You Really Not See?
| By Amira Hass |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)