By the Numbers: Escalating Violence Perpetrated by Jewish Israelis Against Palestinians and Other Non-Jews

FACT SHEET: A Culture of Impunity: Violence Against Non-Jews in Israel & the Occupied Territories
IMEU, Aug 20, 2012

Last week, two incidents involving Jewish Israeli civilians attacking Palestinians made headlines in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. On August 16, 2012, a firebomb was thrown at a Palestinian taxi in the occupied West Bank, injuring six members of one family, and the next day four Palestinian young men were beaten, one of them severely, by a mob of dozens of Jewish teens in Jerusalem. These incidents come just a few weeks after the US State Department Country Report on Terrorism for the first time described settler violence against Palestinians as "terrorism."

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials frequently condemn violence by settlers and other Jews against Palestinians, human rights organizations, the United Nations, and European Union officials have questioned their sincerity, accusing the Israeli government of being complicit in, and even encouraging, violence against Palestinians and other non-Jews living in Israel and the occupied territories.

To put these latest acts of violence and the response of Israeli authorities into context, the IMEU offers the following fact sheet:

A CULTURE OF IMPUNITY: VIOLENCE AGAINST NON-JEWS
 in ISRAEL and the OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Jump to a section:

Increasing Violence by Jewish Israelis Against Palestinians & Other Non-Jews

--Recent High-Profile Cases

--Skyrocketing Settler Violence

Israeli Government Complicity

--Failure to Investigate & Racism in the Legal System

--Incitement by Jewish-Israeli Politicians

--Incitement by Jewish Religious Leaders

INCREASING VIOLENCE BY JEWISH ISRAELIS AGAINST
PALESTINIANS & OTHER NON-JEWS

- Recent High-Profile Cases-

• On August 17, 2012, four young Palestinian men were attacked without provocation and severely beaten by a mob of dozens of Jewish teens in Jerusalem. According to witnesses, the teens had been roaming the neighborhood searching for Arabs to beat up. One of the victims was admitted to hospital in critical condition. Police and an eyewitness described the attack as a "lynching."

• On August 16, 2012 a firebomb was thrown at a Palestinian taxi traveling in the occupied West Bank. Six Palestinians, all members of the same family, were injured, including two four-year-old boys. As the car was clearly identifiable as belonging to a Palestinian, bearing a Palestinian license plate that distinguishes it from settler vehicles, and the attack took place in daylight, the perpetrator is believed to be a Jewish settler.

• In May 2012, a wave of anti-African racism and violence, including physical assaults and a string of arson attacks, hit Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel, fueled by inflammatory statements made about asylum seekers by Israeli politicians including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Eli Yishai. (See below: Incitement by Jewish-Israeli Politicians.)

• Also in May 2012, an Israeli settler was caught on video shooting at Palestinians near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, hitting one man in the face, while Israeli soldiers stood idly by.

• In March 2012, hundreds of mostly young, Jewish-Israeli soccer fans of the Beitar Jerusalem team entered the Malha Mall in West Jerusalem chanting "Death to the Arabs," jumping on tables, and attacking Palestinian workers.

- Skyrocketing Settler Violence -

• In July 2012, the UN and human rights organizations including B'Tselem and Al Haq, released a report documenting a sharp increase in the number of settler attacks against Palestinians and their property in recent years. According to the report, there has been approximately a 150% rise in violent settler attacks against Palestinians each year since 2008, with 154 attacks in the first half of 2012 alone.

• According to an April 2012 report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in 2011 three Palestinians were killed and 183 injured by Israeli settlers, and approximately 10,000 Palestinian-owned trees, primarily olive trees, were damaged or destroyed by settlers.

• In recent years, settlers have carried out a string of arson and vandalism attacks against mosques in the occupied territories and Israel. In 2011, there were 10 such attacks, part of the "price tag" campaign waged by hardline settlers in response to Israeli government actions they deem harmful to the settlement movement.

Click here for more on settler violence

ISRAELI GOVERNMENT COMPLICITY

• In June 2012, Dan Halutz, former chief of staff of the Israeli Army, said that the Netanyahu government isn't serious about stopping settler violence, stating: "If we wanted, we could catch them [settlers who are attacking Palestinians] and when we want to, we will."

• In March 2012, the Guardian newspaper reported that senior European Union officials had drafted a confidential report concluding that Jewish settlers are engaged in a systematic and growing campaign of violence against Palestinians and that "settler violence enjoys the tacit support of the state of Israel."

• Also in March 2012, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released a report documenting the growing use of threats, violence and intimidation by Jewish settlers to deny Palestinians access to their water resources in the West Bank. The report criticized Israeli authorities for having "systematically failed to enforce the law on those responsible for these acts and to provide Palestinians with any effective remedy."

• In February 2012, it was revealed that Israeli Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman had been offering advice to extreme right-wing activists on how to seek pardons for Israeli Jews convicted of violent attacks against Palestinians and others.

- Failure to Investigate & Racism in the Legal System -

• According to Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, of the 642 cases of settler violence Palestinians reported to Israeli police between 2005 and 2012, 90% were closed after authorities failed to mount a proper investigation.

• Between September 2000 and December 2011, Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem lodged 57 complaints against Israeli soldiers who stood by and did nothing to prevent settler violence against Palestinians or their property. Of the 57 complaints, investigations were opened into only four, two of which were closed with no action taken.

• In July 2012, a Jewish teenager was sentenced to just 8 years in prison for brutally murdering a Palestinian man in February 2011, prompting renewed accusations that Israel's legal system treats Jews who commit violent acts against Palestinians more leniently that it does Palestinians accused of violence against Jews. The teen and three friends beat and stabbed a Palestinian to death after provoking a fight with him with racist verbal abuse.

• In August, 2012, in a plea deal with prosecutors, the only Israeli soldier to face serious charges stemming from Israel's bloody military assault on Gaza in the winter of 2008-9, was sentenced to just 45 days in prison for shooting and killing a 64-year-old Palestinian woman and her 37-year-old daughter who were carrying white flags. The decision again prompted criticism that Israel's military justice system doesn't place as much value on Palestinian lives as it does on Jewish Israeli lives.

- Incitement by Jewish-Israeli Politicians -

• In May 2012, Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, helped incite a wave of anti-African racism and violence targeting asylum seekers from countries such as Sudan and Eritrea. According to press reports, Netanyahu warned members of his cabinet that the "phenomenon of illegal infiltrators from Africa is extremely serious and threatens Israel's social fabric and national security." A few days later, a surge of violence against Africans, including physical assaults and arsons, erupted following a Tel Aviv rally where members of the Israeli parliament made inflammatory remarks. Miri Regev, of Netanyahu's Likud party, told the crowd that Sudanese asylum seekers were a "cancer in our body."

• In June 2012, Shas party leader and Interior Minister Eli Yishai told an interviewer that Israel "belongs to us, to the white man." The previous month, Yishai helped fuel anti-African violence, complaining that African asylum seekers threatened to "bury the Zionist dream."

• In July 2012, Israeli parliamentarian Aryeh Eldad called publicly for the destruction of Al Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem's Old City and for a new Jewish temple to be built in its place. Eldad is reportedly planning to introduce an extremely provocative bill to the Knesset calling for the mosque to be opened for Jewish prayer half of the time.

• Following the wave of racist incitement and violence against African asylum seekers in May 2012, a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 52% of Israeli Jews agreed with the claim made by parliamentarian Miri Regev, of Prime Minister Netanyahu's Likud party, that Africans living illegally in Israel were a "cancer" in the body of Israel, and that 33.5% of Israeli Jews said they supported violent attacks against Africans.

Click here for more on institutionalized discrimination against non-Jews in Israel

- Incitement by Jewish Religious Leaders -

• In May 2012, Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman, the spiritual leader of the United Torah Judaism party, which is a part of Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government, told a conference in the city of Beit Shemesh that non-Jews are "murderers, thieves and senseless," stating: "Today they say there are eight billion people in the world. And what are they all? Murderers, thieves and senseless. Did God create the world for these murderers? The world was created for the righteous people who study Torah. That is the purpose of creation ... The nations of the world have no redeeming qualities."

• Also in May 2012, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party, which is part of Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government, said that doctors who were religious Jews shouldn't treat non-Jews on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, even if the patient's life was in danger, stating: "If a gentile were to get injured in a car accident during Sabbath, and he is brought to the hospital – Israel must not treat him." He concluded "the Torah forbids to violate the Sabbath for gentiles." (See below for more on Yosef's history of making racist and inflammatory remarks.)

• In February 2012, the influential chief rabbi of settlements in Hebron and Kiryat Arba, Dov Lior, called President Barack Obama a "kushi," a derogatory term for individuals of African descent, and compared him to Haman, a biblical enemy of the Jewish people. He also called for increased settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, in order to "eradicate the jungle."

• In September 2011, Lior, who's salary is paid by the Israeli government, told a conference that Arabs are "wolves," "savages," and "evil camel riders." Earlier in 2011, he warned Jewish women against marrying non-Jewish women, stating: "Gentile sperm leads to barbaric offspring."

• In October 2011, former Chief Military Rabbi Avihai Rontzki told an interviewer that Palestinians suspected of being involved in militant activity should "be shot, exterminated," and killed "in their beds," instead of being arrested.

• In the summer of 2011, the chief rabbi of the city of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, who is also on the government payroll, told reporters: "Arab culture is very cruel; a Jew should not run away from an Arab. A Jew should chase away Arabs," and "Expelling Arabs from Jewish neighborhoods is part of the strategy." Eliyahu had previously decreed in 2010 that it was forbidden for Jews to rent or sell property to non-Jews, advocated the carpet bombing of Gaza, and called on the government to hang the children of Palestinian militants.

• In December 2010, dozens of municipal chief rabbis on the government payroll signed a letter supporting Eliyahu and his decree prohibiting Jews from renting property to Gentiles. One of the signatories, Rabbi Yosef Scheinen, head of the Ashdod Yeshiva, stated, "Racism originated in the Torah…The land of Israel is designated for the people of Israel."

• Also in December 2010, the wives of 30 prominent rabbis signed an open letter calling on Jewish women not to date or work with non-Jews. The letter stated: "For your sake, for the sake of future generations, and so you don't undergo horrible suffering, we turn to you with a request, a plea, a prayer. Don't date non-Jews, don't work at places that non-Jews frequent, and don't do national service with non-Jews."

• In September 2010, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party, which is part of Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government, declared that non-Jews were created to "serve" Jews, stating: "Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world - only to serve the People of Israel... Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat."

• In August 2010, on the eve of peace talks between Palestinian and Israeli leaders in Washington DC, Yosef delivered a sermon describing Palestinians as "evil, bitter enemies" and calling on god to make them "perish from this world" by striking them with a plague. Previously, in 2001,Yosef gave a sermon in which he stated: "It is forbidden to be merciful to [Arabs]. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable…The Lord shall return the Arabs' deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them, devastate them and vanish them from this world."

• In August 2010, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, head of a state-funded religious school in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, published a book condoning the murder of non-Jewish children because they may grow up to pose a threat to the state, writing that non-Jews are "uncompassionate by nature" and attacks against them "curb their evil inclination." The book was subsequently endorsed by a number of other high-profile rabbis. In July 2012, an investigation by Israeli authorities into allegations that the book amounted to incitement was closed without any charges being filed.

Pussy Riot Cat's Paw of Western NGO's

Pussy Riot, The Unfortunate Dupes of Amerikan Hegemony

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

My heart goes out to the three Russian women who comprise the Russian rock band, Pussy Riot. They were brutally deceived and used by the Washington-financed NGOs that have infiltrated Russia. Pussy Riot was sent on a mission that was clearly illegal under statutory law.

You have to admire and to appreciate the spunk of the young women. But you have to bemoan their gullibility. Washington needed a popular issue with which to demonize the Russian government for standing up to Washington’s intention to destroy Syria, just as Washington destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and as Washington intends to destroy Lebanon and Iran. 

By intentionally offending religious worshipers--which would be a hate crime in the US and its European and British puppet states--the talented young women violated a statutory Russian law.  

Prior to the women’s trial, Russian President Putin expressed his opinion that the women should not be harshly punished. Taking the cue from Putin, the judge gave the women, deceived and betrayed by the amerikan-financed NGOs, two years instead of seven years. 

I am advised that after six months, Putin will see that the women are released.  But, of course, that would not serve the propaganda of the Amerikan Empire.  The instructions to the Washington-financed fifth column in Russia will be to make any government leniency for Pussy Riot impossible. 

Washington-organized protests, riots, property damage, assaults on state and religious images by Washington’s Russian dupes will make it impossible for Putin to stand up to nationalist opinion and commute the sentences of the Pussy Riot women.

This is what Washington wants. As Washington continues to murder vast numbers of people around the globe, it will point its finger at the fate of Pussy Riot. The western bought-and-paid-for presstitute media will focus on Russia’s evil, not on the evil of Washington, London, and the EU puppet states who are slaughtering Muslims by the bucket-full.

The disparity between human rights in the west and in the east is astonishing. When a Chinese trouble-maker sought protection from Washington, the Chinese “authoritarian” government allowed the person to leave for America.  But when Julian Assange, who, unlike the presstitute western media, actually provides truthful information for the western peoples, was granted political asylum by Ecuador, Great (sic) Britain, bowing to the country’s amerikan master, refused the obligatory free passage from the UK.

The UK government, unlike the Chinese government, doesn’t mind violating international law, because it will be paid buckets of money by Washington for being a pariah state.

As Karl Marx said, money turns everything into a commodity that can be bought and sold:  government, honor, morality, the writing of history, legality. Nothing is immune to purchase.  

This development of capitalism has reached the highest stage in the US and its puppet states, the governments of which sell out the interest of their peoples in order to please Washington and be made rich, like Tony Blair’s $35 million. Sending their citizens to fight for Washington’s empire in distant parts of the world is the service for which the utterly corrupt European politicians are paid. 

Despite the wondrous entity known as European Democracy, the European peoples and the British are unable to do anything about their misuse in Washington’s interest. This is a new form of slavery. If a country is an amerikan ally, its people are amerikan slaves.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. www.paulcraigroberts.org/

US Drone Strikes Target Rescuers in Pakistan – and the West Stays Silent

Attacking rescuers – a tactic long deemed by the US a hallmark of terrorism – is now routinely used by the Obama administration

By Glenn Greenwald

August 20, 2012 "Information Clearing House" ----   The US government has long maintained, reasonably enough, that a defining tactic of terrorism is to launch a follow-up attack aimed at those who go to the scene of the original attack to rescue the wounded and remove the dead. Morally, such methods have also been widely condemned by the west as a hallmark of savagery. Yet, as was demonstrated yet again this weekend in Pakistan, this has become one of the favorite tactics of the very same US government.

A 2004 official alert from the FBI warned that "terrorists may use secondary explosive devices to kill and injure emergency personnel responding to an initial attack"; the bulletin advised that such terror devices "are generally detonated less than one hour after initial attack, targeting first responders as well as the general population". Security experts have long noted that the evil of this tactic lies in its exploitation of the natural human tendency to go to the scene of an attack to provide aid to those who are injured, and is specifically potent for sowing terror by instilling in the population an expectation that attacks can, and likely will, occur again at any time and place:

"'The problem is that once the initial explosion goes off, many people will believe that's it, and will respond accordingly,' [the Heritage Foundation's Jack] Spencer said … The goal is to 'incite more terror. If there's an initial explosion and a second explosion, then we're thinking about a third explosion,' Spencer said."

Assange Speaks from Ecuador's London Embassy

by Democracy Now!

Goring Vidal's Political and Literary Legacy

'The Man Who Knew Everyone' - Gore Vidal Through The Eyes Of The One Per Cent Press

by David Edwards - Media Lens

Gore Vidal took great delight in demolishing the fragile confections of ‘mainstream’ politics. While corporate journalists typically portray US Presidents as benign demigods, Vidal described George W. Bush as ‘the stupidest man in the United States’. In 2008, Vidal said of the 2003 war on Iraq:

‘You can see little Bush all along was just dreaming of war, and also Cheney dreaming about oil wells and how you knock apart a country like Iraq and of course their oil will pay for the damage you do. For that alone, he should have been put in front of a firing squad… They - Cheney, Bush - they wanted the war. They’re oilmen. They want a war to get more oil. They’re also extraordinarily stupid. These people don’t know anything about anything.'

When asked how he wanted to be remembered, Vidal replied: ‘I don’t give a goddamn.’

Just as well. As the above comments make clear, not only did Vidal's analysis lack any semblance of what corporate journalists call ‘nuance’, he poured scorn on their entire profession:

‘I tried to explain to the press club what it is they do that they don't know they do. I quote David Hume: “The Few are able to control the Many only through Opinion.” In the eighteenth century, Opinion was dispensed from pulpit and schoolroom. Now the media are in place to give us Opinion that has been manufactured in the boardrooms of those corporations - once national, now international - that control our lives.’ (Vidal, Virgin Islands - Essays 1992-1997, Andre Deutsch, 1997, p.188)

This, of course, is the same 'press club' that has been reviewing Vidal's life and work since his death on July 31.

Sex, Flag, Foetus

A celebrated novelist, essayist and screenwriter, Vidal's primary focus in the last two decades of his life was overwhelmingly on radical political analysis. He wrote books with titles likes ‘Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace’ (2002), ‘Dreaming War – Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta’ (2003), and ‘Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia’ (2004). Vidal argued that corporate power had overthrown democracy in the United States and was waging a permanent war for profit around the planet.

So how much attention would we expect the corporate media to afford Vidal's political dissent in accurately and honestly reviewing his oeuvre? This comment from 1998 indicates his own expectation:

‘When a ruling establishment will not let daylight in on their workings because they own the media as well as the permanent rental of most of Congress, judiciary and executive, that doesn’t leave much to talk about at election time except sex, the flag, the foetus and, in the good old days, Communism. So the fact that Clinton’s sex life is now central to our political discourse is par for the current course.' (Vidal, ‘New World Ordure,’ The Observer, January 25, 1998)

And indeed reviews of Vidal’s own life have mostly focused on ‘sex, the flag, the foetus’, as it were, with literary editors leading the way. In the Independent, Boyd Tonkin opened with:

‘One evening, when I dined with Gore Vidal, he told me all about the time he outpolled his good friend Jack Kennedy. There: does that capture the late Master's sleek tone of name-dropping omniscience?’

Gaby Wood, Head of Books at the Telegraph, wrote:

‘There was a time when a visit to Gore Vidal at his villa in Ravello was the literary equivalent of Lourdes… He was related to Jackie Kennedy, he campaigned (unsuccessfully) with Eleanor Roosevelt. He would shake his head over stars of Hollywood’s golden age as if he were their maiden aunt mourning an unfortunate choice of boyfriend (“Well, Rita [Hayworth] never had any luck”)… ’

And so on…

Thus is the life of an important political dissident boiled down and strained through the ‘culture’ pages of the one per cent press, leaving a glutinous residue of ‘celebrity’ and ‘glamour’. Wood added:

'It does not, perhaps, fall to strangers to wonder whether the great literary socialite was bitter because he was lonely. But eventually, his famous bon mots became so outlandish that they rattled many of his sometime admirers. Was it the drink, the passing of time, or a consistent commitment to the holding of unpredictable opinions? Some rolled their eyes, others laughed, and one or two, at least, took it upon themselves to hold him to account.'

In the Telegraph, Philip Hensher noted that Vidal was ‘the man who knew everyone’. But there was a dark side: ‘an immense series of perverse, but massively well-informed, anti-readings of American history’ and ‘even more perverse essays on public and literary matters’.

This recalled Steve Crawshaw’s comment in the Independent on how ‘Chomsky knows so much... but seems impervious to any idea of nuance.’ (Crawshaw, ‘Furious ideas with no room for nuance,’ The Independent, February 21, 2001)

Hensher had nothing serious to say about why Vidal’s reading of American history should be considered ‘perverse’. In the Independent, Christopher Hawtree described how Vidal would often look at the country of his birth ‘askance’. Again, readers had to work out for themselves what that might mean, with Vidal’s ‘opposition to the Israeli lobby within America’ offered as a throwaway clue.

Quoting Vidal in the Sunday Times, Andrew Sullivan provided a rare mainstream glimpse of what Hensher and Hawtree surely had in mind:

‘There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats... But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.’ (Andrew Sullivan, ‘The twin sources of Vidal's vitriol; The death of a young love and despair for his country gave the writer his voice,’ Sunday Times, August 5, 2012)

Clearly, then, Sullivan observed, when it came to covering 20th century America, Vidal’s ‘anger, bile and resentment got the better of him’.

Alas, the same weakness afflicted the late Harold Pinter. In The New York Times, James Traub found the playwright’s politics ‘so extreme... it is hard to think of anyone save Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal who would not choke on Pinter's bile’. (Traub, ‘Their Highbrow Hatred of Us,’ New York Times, October 30, 2005)

The sage minds of the corporate media occasionally puzzled over Pinter’s malfunctioning moral gallbladder. In the Independent, the precocious Johann Hari wrote:

‘Ever since Pinter was a teenager, he has been relentlessly contrarian, kicking out violently against anything that might trigger his rage that day.’

Pinter was just a classic left loon, then, the target of his ire incidental.

Sullivan at least found a little more method in Vidal’s madness:

‘Why such anger? That's the question of his life.’

‘His soulmate died in warfare at the age of 19… Vidal carried this wound for a lifetime - building an armoury of wit, bile and erudition to protect himself from another. But another was coming. For Vidal, his other great love, the American republic, died of warfare in 1941. So much of his writing after that is rooted in anger.’

To this psycho-political babble, Sullivan added the standard smear:

‘Vidal ruined his case by exaggeration, of course, and absurd moral equivalence. There were times when he blithely dismissed the horrors committed by America's enemies - such as the Vietcong or Al-Qaeda - while never failing to note America's own hypocrisy and paranoia and occasional clumsy cruelty abroad.’

It is tempting to psychoanalyse Sullivan’s own view of America’s cruelty as ‘occasional’, ‘clumsy’ and 'abroad'. He concluded of Vidal: ‘his [gay] sexual orientation was surely central to this: it fuelled a grief that he could never be the statesman he once yearned to be, in a country he subsequently loved to hate’.
There is an alternative explanation: Vidal had a functioning brain and heart, and a sufficiently independent mind to perceive the mass killing of innocents in pursuit of maximised US profit.

David Aaronovitch wrote in The Times:

‘Bit by bit Vidal transformed himself from thinker to polemicist. His political essays, much loved in the anti-American press over here, began to take on a mildly unhinged quality.’ (Aaronovitch, ‘Praise to the man who beat about Mr Bush; Gore Vidal dazzled in his early novels and essays, but gradually turned into a mildly unhinged isolationist,’ The Times, August 2, 2012)

Readers will struggle to find a better example of what psychologists call ‘projection’.

Echoing the standard obsession, a Guardian article was entitled: ‘Adam Mars-Jones my lunch at the Dorchester with Gore Vidal.’ Mars-Jones commented: ‘few writers have shown so much flair in using television to maintain their public image’.

In fact, as Vidal made clear, his political analysis had long been banished from our screens:

‘The press won't report me, television is shut to me, I've been erased. Noam Chomsky never had a chance, he never had a great public; but I had one through my books and movies and plays and of course essay writing. Now I am no longer a guest on anything where I might cause trouble, where I might say something that they would find embarrassing, which would be practically anything I would say about how the country is run. So I am the perfect example of censorship in the United States.’ ('I am the perfect example of censorship in the United States'. Gore Vidal talks to Michael March about history, the cold war and who really runs America, the Guardian, March 29, 2001)

Consider, as discussed, that Vidal was a rare honest and articulate opponent of the Iraq war. In October 2002, we checked the Guardian/Observer website and found that it had mentioned Iraq in some 2,381 articles in that crucial year of propaganda hype before the war was launched in March 2003. By October 19, the words ‘Bush’ and ‘Iraq’ had been mentioned in 1,263 of these articles. The words ‘Gore Vidal’ and ‘Iraq’ had been mentioned in seven articles.

Precisely because Vidal's dissent was excluded by the media, the Telegraph obituary was able to get away with this dumbed down version:

‘By the 1980s, Vidal observed, politics had become trivialised by television, its substance and debate replaced by flickering images, its figures transmuted into talking heads allowed only seconds to make arguments about the future of the nation and the world.’

He ‘detected a failure of education, manners on the decline, and political leaders cynical, ignorant and blinded to the realities of the outside world’.

The analysis was itself a good example of the kind of trivialisation it was describing. Quite simply, since Vidal's death the corporate media have had nothing serious to say about his political dissent warning against the dominance of corporate power.

Vidal's summing up certainly generalises to UK politics and media:

‘The bullshit just flows and flows and flows, and the American media is so corrupt and so tied into it that it never questions it.’

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Rod Marining, Ramzy Baroud, Janine Bandcroft Aug. 20, 2012

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca.  He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.com

Every day seems to bring news of more proposed pipelines and projects in British Columbia, and though the citizenry has overwhelmingly voiced opposition to the new carbon rush sweeping the land, Stephen Harper has vowed unstoppable support. The two best known project proposals for the province are the so-called "twinning" of the existing Kinder Morgan pipeline, that has until now quietly issued Tar Sands product all the way from Alberta's Satanic Mills, disgorging at the Port of Vancouver, and the proposed creation of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, that hopes to see the Tar Sands goo transported to Kitimat, then transshipped through the treacherous coastal fjords and inland islands en route to China's insatiable industrial maw. Lesser known than these though is the Pacific Trail Pipeline, designed to facilitate gas Fracked from B.C.'s Northwest. Earlier this month, the Caravan to Wet'suwet'en launched from towns and cities across B.C. and North America, to converge at the Pacific Trail/Enbridge Northern Gateway right-of-way.

Rod Mariner is a long-time environment defender, a co-founder of Greenpeace International, navigator of the Sea Shepherd vessels Farley Mowat and Steve Irwin, among others, Chair of the BC Environmental Network, Listserve manager for the Landwatch Campaign, and Coordinator for PATH, or People's Action for Threatened Habitats. Rod departed with the Caravan to Wet'suwet'en from the lower mainland a couple of weeks back, and joins us in the first segment with reports of the caravan and their getting in the path of a promised pipeline at the heart of B.C.

And; they're baaack. Yes, the Neocons have resurfaced! Rebranded and up to their bloody elbows in mischief again, the folks that brought you the Balkans, Iraqs I and II, Afghanistan, and Libya, are front and centre of the Washington war lobby pack and afroth at the mouth for more gore. Syria is just one project for the Foreign Policy Initiative, or FPI. That is the new monicker for the war mongers formerly known as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). You remember them don't you: William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Prince of Darkness, Richard Perle? You may recall too some of their fellow travelers: Daniel Pipes, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, and the rest who spent thousands of hours between them convincing the world, - yeah convincing - that bin Laden did 9/11, and Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, etc., etc. Oh, it's just like old times on the Potomac. Yes, with war and rumours of war in the air, Suite 325 11 DuPont Circle, Washington, D.C.  is the address to go to to find Kristol's and Kagan's reformed war factory, busy spinning truth, justice, and the American way.

Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian-American journalist, editor, educator, and former Al-Jazeera producer. Ramzy is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Chronicle and author of the books, 'Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion,' 'The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle,' and his latest book, 'My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.' Ramzy's work can also be found at his website, ramzybaroud.net. Ramzy Baroud and Neocons on the Wing over Syria in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us newz from the city's streets and beyond. But first, Rod Marining and the next stage of resistance to Big Oil in B.C.

What's with Sinai?

The Sinai Joins the Axis of Resistance

by FRANKLIN LAMB

Beirut
The Sinai Peninsula has rejoined the Arab and Islamic Resistance as this great awakening spreads inexorably across the region toppling Western imposed security states and replacing them with governments of greater popular legitimacy.  Egypt and other countries in the region are contributing to righting the historic wrong done to the Palestinian people as millions around the World are employing an increasing variety of resistance strategies in solidarity with this regions central cause of liberating Palestine from the crumbling but ultra-violent Zionist colonial project.

Historically, the 23,000 sq. mile triangular Sinai Peninsula has been an area of Resistance against a series of occupiers and despots since it was joined to Egypt during in Mamluk Sultanate (1260-1517) when the Ottoman sultan, Selim the Grim, won the Battles of Marj Dabiq and al-Raydaniyya, and added Egypt to the Ottoman Empire.

Following the establishment of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty‘s rule over the rest of Egypt in 1805, the Ottoman Porte, faced with increasing resistance from Sinai, transferred administration of the restive Peninsula to the Egyptian government, by this time under the control of the colonial power, the United Kingdom. The British occupied Egypt since 1882 and imposed the border in an almost straight line from Rafah on the Mediterranean to Taba on the Gulf of Aqaba which has remained the eastern border of Egypt. At the beginning of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egyptian forces invaded Palestine from Sinai to support the Palestinian Resistance in their struggle against the imposed State of Israel.

Last week’s  Sinai operation by “terrorists in Bedouin clothing” against the occupiers of Palestine resulted in the deaths of 16 Egyptian guards protecting the Israeli border as well as several of the Fedayeen, signals again that the Sinai Peninsula has returned to its historic role in confronting colonialism on Egypt’s border.  The Egyptian people, if not yet fully their leaders are returning to their historic struggle to liberate Palestine.
The regime of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would purposefully undermine relationship between the Egyptian and Palestinian people. However, over the past 18 months, much of the Sinai has become more Resistance oriented, as police stations in the Sinai were dismantled, the gas line with Israel repeated severed, and Bedouin tribes and others began to stockpile weapons arriving from Libya and from Israel’s black market and elsewhere.  The area is becoming a major Resistance base with fighters vowing to repel any attempt by the US and Israel to retain control.

No proof positive has been proffered to support a number of claims being made regarding those responsible for the Sinai attacks and other recent attacks against  Israeli installations that number more than 30 just since last year’s Tahrir revolution.

A spokesman for the Hamas government has claimed that the Sinai attack was an Israeli “attempt to tamper with Egyptian security and drive a wedge between the Egyptians and the residents of the Gaza Strip.” Tarek Zumar, a spokesman for the group, claimed that Israel was behind all recent terror attacks against the Egyptians “because it wants to make changes along its border with Egypt.” The day after the attack, and relying on its own intelligent sources, Hamas announced that:  ”This crime can be attributed to the Mossad, which has been seeking to abort the revolution since its inception and the proof of this is that it gave instructions to its Zionist citizens in Sinai to depart immediately a few days ago.”

An American critic of Israel’s influence over the U.S. Congress, who is an Assistant Staff Director on a Congressional Committee, emailed that “We are looking into what Israeli leaders knew about the Sinai attack and when they knew it, but no definite responsibility for this operation has been established.”
The Muslim Brotherhood has also blamed Mossad for the attack.

One of the reasons the Egyptian public is increasingly calling for abolishing or at least re- negotiating the “Treaty of Shame” as the Camp David agreement is commonly known, is that Egyptian security forces in Sinai are not enough to protect the borders.   Under Camp David’s “Peace Agreement” it is Israel, and not the Egyptian government who determines how many Egyptians security personnel can stand guard at Egypt’s border.

On 8/4/12, Egypt’s new pro-Palestinian President, Mohammad Morsi, responded to the attack by sacking the pro-Israeli intelligence chief Murad Muwafi, as well as the governor of Northern Sinai  Abdel Wahab Mabrouk. The same day Mursi  ordered his defense minister to relieve the head of the country’s military police, as his spokesman said  to “turn a page” in the Palestinian struggle and also as a confidence  building move in the face of a predicted  Zionist campaign to blame the Muslim Brotherhood for the attack. There has been a relentless campaign by Zionist leaders since Mubaraks ouster, to weaken the Egyptian public’s determination to isolate Israel and cancel their governments relations with the occupiers of Palestine.

Supporters of Morsi’s rival in the presidential election, Ahmed Shafik, a former air force commander, have called for Egyptians to rise up against the Brotherhood and President Morsi as a result of the Sinai operation. Such attacks underscore the divide between new pro-Palestinian government and the military, which continues to hold enormous political power and has limited the president’s authority.

The Resistance operation comes only a week after Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya made a rare visit to Egypt to meet with Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi to discuss easing travel restrictions on Gaza imposed by Israel’s siege, restrictions respected by Mubarak for years. That meeting, coupled with Morsi meeting both Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal and Palestinian President Abbas last month, resulted in the opening the Rafah border for 12 hrs a day and increasing the daily limit on passengers from Gaza to 1,500. By opening the border Morsi was following through on a campaign promise he made during the run up to Egypt’s hotly contested election. With the advent of the Arab Spring a number of Egyptian pro Resistance organizations demanded the complete opening of the Rafah crossing to all traffic, including commercial. During his campaign Morsi stated that “the time has come to open the Rafah crossing to traffic 24 hours a day and all year round.”

Unfortunately, following the most recent operation the Rafah crossing has been indefinitely closed  just like  it was under the deposed Egyptian president which will cause great hardship to Gazans and  amounts to nothing less than Israeli style “collective punishment” as claimed by Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official.

As one Gazan young woman, Rana Baker, a member of the Gaza-based BDS organizing committee recently observed, “It is worth recalling here the official Egyptian stance on the murder of two Egyptian security guards in an Israeli raid along the Israeli-Egyptian border last year. Not one Egyptian helicopter took off in search of the assailants and not one bullet was aimed at “suspects” from the Israeli side. Not only did the SCAF bury the incident as if it had never happened, but it went as far as to quell Egyptian protestors at the Israeli embassy in Cairo almost a year ago today. Days later the SCAF erected a high wall around the embassy to “protect” it against “extremists.”

The Gaza Strip has now been closed off, as it was during the time of deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The siege is now expected to intensify following the indefinite closure of the Rafah and Karm Abu-Salem border crossings. The siege is now expected to intensify following the indefinite closure of the Rafah and Karm Abu-Salem border crossings.

Robert Satloff , Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), founded by AIPAC,  presented the Zionist lobby’s reaction to the Sinai operations and the expanding geography of Resistance. He offered the following suggestions presented on their website and in Lobby publications:
“The US must undertake firm communication to Egypt’s Morsi that if he wants international support to bolster his flagging economy, he cannot pander to the worst instincts of Egyptian public opinion. Indeed, any serious effort to prevent terrorist infiltration in Sinai requires coordination with Israel, and this will not proceed in an environment of public vilification.”

“Second, U.S. policymakers should reaffirm to the Egyptian military that Washington views securing Sinai as an essential aspect of Egyptian-Israeli peace, and that continued provision of substantial military aid, which has exceeded 35 billion over the past three decades, is absolutely contingent on the investment of adequate personnel and resources to do the security job. Failure to direct the right people and resources to the peninsula will trigger an overall reassessment of the U.S. military assistance package, with an eye to updating this 1980s-era relationship for the current environment.”

Satloft’s views are reflective of the vast disconnect between reality and expectations of Zionist officials and their shills, over  what the past 18 months has birthed in the Middle East with respect to Resistance to the continuing colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

With the Sinai Peninsula returning to the era and culture of Resistance the liberation of Palestine draws every nearer and more certain, perhaps sooner than later.


Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com.

Legal Clarification on Sea Shepherd Skipper

Setting the Record Straight on Paul Watson's Legal Status: Sea Shepherd Addresses the Impact Of Interpol ‘Red Notice’ On Captain Watson and the Organization’s Operations

by SSCS

After much speculation and misinformation about the impact of the recently announced ‘Red Notice’ issued by Interpol for Captain Paul Watson, founder and president of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society who was arrested at Frankfurt airport on May 13th and held in Germany for 70 days until his departure on or around July 22nd, Sea Shepherd is setting the record straight.  Using information posted to its website as provided in a letter from Captain Watson’s lead legal counsel in Germany, Oliver Wallasch, Sea Shepherd addresses the speculation head-on with the legal facts of this case. Click the thumbnail to read the entire unedited letter.

Questions & Answers

 
Q.: What is the impact of Captain Watson forfeiting bail to leave Germany?
 
A.: Skipping bail in Germany is not a crime! This is totally different from U.S. jurisdiction and from other countries in the world. Article 2 of the German constitution states, that Germany grants personal freedom. Therefore it is not even a crime in Germany to escape from prison. The decision of the client to leave the country leads only to the consequence that the local (not international!) arrest warrant of the Higher Regional Court was set into force, and that bail is seized (forfeited) on decision by the court. Because of the fact that the client was arrested in an extradition procedure, Germany is not actively searching for Mr. Watson locally or internationally.

Letter from Paul Watson's lawyer. (Click to read the entire unedited letter)

 
Q.: What is the extradition procedure in Germany as it pertains to this case?
 
A.: In the case of Mr. Watson, we knew that besides the request of Costa Rica, there was also a ‘blue’ note issued by Interpol on charges from Japan against the client. This ‘blue’ note on the warrant from Japan has been active since 2010 and has not converted into a ‘red’ notice with Interpol during the whole extradition procedure with Costa Rica. But we learned that Japan was highly interested concerning the procedure with Costa Rica because they sent requests through Interpol Tokyo to the Higher Regional Court to gather more information on the procedure itself. This was absolutely unusual. The German authorities are allowed to extradite even without a special treaty with the requesting country. Therefore it was very likely that Japan would ask for extradition itself on a bilateral basis; after Mr. Watson left the country, we learned that such an extradition request was forwarded by the Japanese Embassy through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the General Public Prosecution Office in Frankfurt.  The scenario would have been that Mr. Watson would have been extradited to Costa Rica, and then extradited after the procedure to Japan.
 
These facts show, that there was a link between the extradition request from Costa Rica and the 
upcoming extradition request from Japan. Having in mind that the president of Costa Rica visited Japan at the end of 2011, having in mind that Japan granted an enormous amount of money for “environmental protection” in Costa Rica, it is obvious that these two countries have a very close relationship.

Q.: Is the Interpol ‘Red’ Notice a warrant and what is its impact?

A.: Interpol Notices are international alerts allowing police in member countries to share information. Interpol is not actively issuing arrest warrants, Interpol is not actively searching for the defendant, and Interpol is not involved in the extradition procedure.  Interpol just exchanges information between the police in the member countries.
The information that Interpol has issued a ‘red’ notice against Mr. Watson on the charges of Costa Rica only means that the police in the member countries shall be aware that Mr. Watson is wanted by Costa Rica.   It is up to the police and the judicial authorities within the Interpol member countries whether or not they want to act on this local arrest warrant from Costa Rica.

Q.: What is the impact of the ‘Red Notice’ on Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (S.S.C.S.)?

A.: Because of the fact that these are individual cases and charges against Mr. Watson (in Costa Rica and in Japan) which are as stated probably politically motivated, there is no impact on the work of S.S.C.S. as an NGO itself; it is a general principle that criminal charges are against individuals, not against legal bodies.

Q.: Will Captain Watson be able to travel for the upcoming Antarctic and other campaigns?

A.: “I am convinced that Captain Paul Watson is able to continue his work, even with these bogus charges against him,” Wallasch said.

Statement by Sea Shepherd's Administrative Director

In speaking about Japan’s transparent attempts to thwart Sea Shepherd’s campaigns, Susan Hartland, Administrative Director of Sea Shepherd, had this to say:  “The warrant and ‘blue’ notice generated is just another feeble attempt by Japan to try and keep us from our mission to protect, conserve and defend our oceans,” she said.  “We operate within the legal confines of the United Nations World Charter for Nature. We are an enforcement entity acting legally against their relentless and archaic illegal whaling operations in a designated sanctuary and, as such, we will continue our direct action to protect the oceans and the wildlife in and around it.  Our supporters expect no less and that is what we will continue to deliver.  Our supporters stand by us and we stand by Captain Watson, all the other captains of our ships, and all of our courageous crew,” she said.

Hartland added:  “Of course, we know that Japan would love nothing more than to have their own ‘red’ notice issued on Captain Watson. They tried for ‘red’ but Interpol recognized their attempts as politically motivated, so they were forced to settle for a ‘blue’ notice instead,” she said. “Colluding with Germany and Costa Rica, Japan tried to extradite him, they have brought suit against us in the US, they have harassed and arrested Sea Shepherd crew members, and charged them with benign or bogus offenses when they’ve had the chance,” she said.

“Nothing Japan does will stop us from returning to Antarctica this season with four vessels and four crews of committed and passionate volunteers to shut down the Japanese whaling fleet,” she added.

In 2010, when the initial ‘blue notice’ for Captain Watson was issued by Interpol, Captain Watson knew it was as a result of Japan wielding their political and financial might once again, just like they continue to buy off member nations of the IWC.  At the time, Captain Watson had this to say: "Give me my name on a blue list, the red list, the black list, or the death list, for it is preferable to the I-don’t-give-a-crap list.”
 
Background:
The specific incident in question took place in Guatemalan waters, when Sea Shepherd encountered an illegal shark-finning operation run by the Costa Rican vessel, the Varadero I. On order of Guatemalan authorities, Sea Shepherd instructed the crew of the Varadero I to cease their shark-finning activities and head back to a Guatemalan port to be prosecuted. While escorting the Varadero I back to port, the tables were turned and a Guatemalan gunboat was dispatched to intercept the Sea Shepherd crew. To avoid the Guatemalan gunboat, Sea Shepherd then set sail for Costa Rica, where the crew uncovered even more illegal shark-finning activities in the form of dried shark fins by the thousands on the roofs of industrial buildings.

The Curious Sinai Attack

Shifting Truths in Sinai: Who Stands to Gain from the Carnage?

by Ramzy Baroud

Two Toyota Land Cruisers filled with about 15 well-built gunmen in ski masks and all-black outfits appear seemingly out of nowhere. Behind them is vast, open desert. They approach a group of soldiers huddled around a simple meal as they prepare to break their Ramadan fast. The gunmen open fire, leaving the soldiers with no chance of retrieving their weapons.

This is not an opening scene of a Hollywood action movie. The massacre actually took place at an Egyptian military post in northern Sinai on August 5. The description above was conveyed by a witness, Eissa Mohamed Salama, in a statement made to The Associated Press (AP; Aug 8).

The gunmen were well trained. Their overt confidence can only be explained by the fact that "one militant got out a camera and filmed the bodies of the soldiers". One is immediately baffled by this. Why would the masked militants wish to document the killings if they were about to embark on what can be considered a suicide mission in Israel? "The gunmen then approached the Israeli border," with two vehicles, one reportedly a stolen Egyptian armored personnel carrier. The British Broadcasting Corp, citing Israeli officials, reported that one of the vehicles "exploded on the frontier", while the other broke through the Israeli border, "travelled about 2 kilometers into Israel before being disabled by the Israeli air force" (BBC News Online, Aug 7).

According to the BBC report, citing Israeli sources, there were about 35 gunmen in total, all clad in traditional Bedouin attire. Their mission into Israel was suicidal, since, unlike in Sinai, they had nowhere to escape. But who would embark on such a logistically complex mission, document it on camera, and then fail to take responsibility for it?

 The brazen attack seemed to have little military wisdom, but it did possess a sinister political logic. Only 48 hours before the attack, the media were awash with reports about the return of electricity in the Gaza Strip. The impoverished Strip's generators have not run at full capacity for about six years, since Hamas was elected. The Israeli siege and subsequent wars killed and wounded thousands, but they failed to bend Gaza's political will. For Gazans, the keyword to their survival in the face of Israel's blockade was "Egypt".

The Egyptian revolution on January 25, 2011, carried a multitude of meanings for all sectors of Egyptian society, and the Middle East at large. For Palestinians in Gaza, it heralded the possibility of a lifeline. The nearly 1,000 tunnels dug to assist in Gaza's survival would amount to nothing compared with a decisive Egyptian decision to end the siege by opening the Rafah border. In fact, a decision was taking place in stages. Hamas, which governs Gaza, was a branch of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. The latter is now the leading political force in the country and, despite the military's obduracy, it has managed to claim the country's presidency as well.

In late July, a high-level Hamas delegation met in Cairo. All the stress and trepidation of the last 16 months seemed to have come to an end, as Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, his deputy Musa Abu Marzouq and other members of the group's politburo met with President Mohammed Morsi. Egypt's official news agency reported Morsi's declarations of full support "for the Palestinian nation's struggle to achieve its legitimate rights". According to Reuters, Morsi's top priority was achieving unity "between Hamas and Fatah, supplying Gaza with fuel and electricity and easing the restrictions on the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt".

Juxtapose that scene - where a historical milestone has finally been reached - with an Agence France-Presse photo of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, standing triumphantly next to a burned Egyptian vehicle that was reportedly stolen by the Sinai gunmen. The message here is that only Israel is serious about fighting terror. Israeli newspaper Haaretz' accompanying article started with this revelation: "Israel shared some of the intelligence it received with the Egyptian army prior to the incident, but there is no evidence Egypt acted on the information."

This was meant to humiliate Egypt's military further.

Naturally, Israel blamed Gaza, even though there is no material evidence to back such accusations. Some in Egypt's media jumped on the opportunity to blame Gaza for Egypt's security problems in Sinai as well. The loudest among them were completely silent when, on August 18, 2011, Israel killed six Egyptian soldiers in Sinai. Then, Israel carried out a series of strikes against Gaza, killing and wounding many, while claiming that Gaza was a source of attacks against Israeli civilians. Later the Israeli media dismissed the connection as flawed. No apologies for the Gaza deaths, of course, and AP, Reuters and others are still blaming Palestinians for the attack near Eilat last year.

Then, Palestinian factions opted not to escalate to spare Egypt an unwanted conflict with Israel during a most sensitive transition. None of that seems relevant now. Egypt is busy destroying the tunnels, continuing efforts that were funded by the US a few years ago. It also closed the Gaza-Egypt crossing, and is being "permitted" by Israel to use attack helicopters in Sinai to hunt for elusive terrorists. Within days, Gaza's misfortunes were multiplied and once more Palestinians are pleading their case. Israeli officials and analysts are, of course, beside themselves with anticipation. The opportunity is simply too great not to be utilized fully.

Commenting in Egypt-based OnIslam, Abdelrahman Rashdan wrote that according to the Israeli intelligence scenario, "Iranians, Palestinians, Egyptians, and al-Qaeda operatives all moved from Lebanon to attack Egypt [and] Israel and defend Syria." In Western mainstream media, few asked who benefits from all of this - from once more isolating Gaza, shutting down the tunnels, severing Egyptian-Palestinian ties, embroiling the Egyptian military in a security nightmare in Sinai, and much more.

The Muslim Brotherhood website had an answer. It suggested that the incident "can be attributed to the Mossad". True, some Western media reported the statement, but not with any degree of seriousness or due analysis. The BBC even offered its own context: "Conspiracy theories are popular across the Arab world," ending the discussion with an Israeli dismissal of the accusation as "nonsense". Case closed. But it shouldn't be. Before embarking on a wild goose chase in Sinai, urgent questions must be asked and answered. Haphazard action will only make things worse for Egypt, Palestine and Sinai's long-neglected Bedouin population.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London.)

A Pipeline by Another Name: Pacific Trail Pipeline LTD and Enbridge

You are right, the Oil and Gas Commission is under strict lock down. All files are being kept in Fort St John. However, as each of us explore the tidbits of info, a picture of is emerging. Verifying facts will take time and many FOI requests. My understanding is comes from some inside sources. There are 8 pipeline at the Morice River area planned, 2 for Enbridge and 2 for PTP and Apache, EnCana and EOG. Security and forest fires are a concern and thus the planned R/W could be up to 3 kilometers wide. This R/W is dubbed the "Energy Cooridor". There is a contract between PTP and Enbridge. In other words, Enbridge is also a part owner in PTP limited partnership. However, they were left out of the Google search announcement below for obvious reasons. Many first nations are beginning to check out the wording of an energy corridor approval and realize that Enbridge could piggy back their pipeline through this Energy Corridor. I can't reveal all I know at this time, however, both PTP and Enbridge have run into problems getting there Free, prior informed consent from the Wet'suwet'en territory. The Chief and Council (imposed by the Indian Act) who's jurisdiction does not extend past the reserve boundaries, were rumour for the gas project, in order that they would receive a sizeable chunk of the 514 million dollars. They fiqured that the money would go far to battle Enbridge pipeline. I can say that the R/W at Morice River has not been granted yet. There is an Investigated pipeline licence permit issued to PTP from the Crown, but these permits do not give you any rights like logging the R/W. It only give you the right of investigation. And Investigated Permits do not need the Free, Prior, Informed Consent from First Nations. Canfor was stopped at the recent blockade at Morice River last Tuesday and were turned back. The Blockade or Action Camp at Morice River had over 200 hard core environmentalists. Later, Rod PACIFIC TRAIL PIPELINES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP The Pacific Trail Pipelines Limited Partnership (PTP LP) is a partnership between managing operator Apache Canada Ltd. with a 40 per cent interest and EOG Resources Canada Inc. and Encana Corporation each holding 30 per cent interests. The PTP LP is developing the natural gas transmission pipeline system from Summit Lake to Kitimat, British Columbia to serve Kitimat LNG’s export facility near Kitimat, British Columbia. The Kitimat LNG facility is the only proposed LNG export facility on the west coast of North America with major environmental approvals in place. One of the facility’s competitive advantages is the ability to access the world class natural gas supplies in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. The proximity to the large Asian LNG markets gives the Kitimat LNG facility a competitive advantage over liquefaction facilities in the Atlantic basin. The 463-kilometre Pacific Trail Pipelines project will provide the facility with a direct connection to the Spectra Energy Transmission pipeline system and excellent access to natural gas supplies in British Columbia and Alberta.

Prry audio

http://www.gorilla-radio.com/index.php?id=300

Bump: http://www.gorilla-radio.com/index.php?id=300

New Animal Health Act advances Agrifoods Strategy

NEWS RELEASE For Immediate Release 2012AGRI0014-000577 April 30, 2012 Ministry of Agriculture http://www2.news.gov.bc.ca/news_releases_2009-2013/2012AGRI0014-000577.htm New Animal Health Act advances Agrifoods Strategy VICTORIA – Proposed changes to the Animal Health Act will ensure B.C.’s reputation as a producer of safe and healthy foods and animals. The changes would help prevent the spread of animal disease as well as improving the response to a potential outbreak. These changes are essential to meet our Agrifoods Strategy commitment to expand domestic and international markets. The proposed changes follow consultation with B.C.’s livestock, poultry and honey producers, federal and provincial government agencies and more than 300 submissions to the ministry’s web-based citizen consultation. Today’s emphasis on food safety and security require we modernize the act, which has not been substantially changed since 1948. B.C. Agrifoods Strategy included the development of a new animal health framework as one of 49 actions that will lead the B.C. agrifoods sector to becoming a $14-billion-a-year industry by 2017. Quotes: Don McRae, Minister of Agriculture – “These measures reinforce the importance British Columbian food producers place in providing their local and international customers with a healthy and trusted product. Our government is absolutely committed to ensuring B.C. uses the best disease prevention methods possible, and is prepared to immediately and effectively respond to an animal health emergency.” Bill Vanderspek, manager, Chicken Marketing Board – “An animal-health emergency can be devastating to producers who have invested their entire lives in producing the best possible foods for British Columbians, and the communities they are part of. The poultry industry has invested significantly in disease prevention measures on farm. The modernized act complements this preventative approach and better prepares all to respond to emergencies, to the benefit of all British Columbians.” Kevin Boon, B.C. Cattlemen’s Association – “Producers and governments need to be active in disease prevention and ready for possible outbreaks. A strong Animal Health Act will help us to ensure we have the best plan possible. The new legislation should also support our ongoing efforts to expand markets for B.C. beef by offering consumers in Canada and abroad the assurance that their beef is being raised to the highest of standards.” Learn More: The legislative process for Bill 37, The Animal Health Amendment Act, can be followed at: http://www.leg.bc.ca/39th4th/votes/bills-list_hansard.htm A backgrounder follows. Ministry of Agriculture 250 356-1674 Connect with the Province of B.C. at: www.gov.bc.ca/connect BACKGROUNDER For Immediate Release 2012AGRI0014-000577 April 30, 2012 Ministry of Agriculture Measures to improve food and consumer safety Proposed changes to the Animal Health Act will enable the Province to: · Bring B.C.’s legislation into harmony with other provinces and trading partners, and provide increased assurances about the safety and traceability of B.C. animals and products. · Improve the early detection of animal diseases by working with animal producers to implement expanded monitoring programs. · Clearly state the process producers must follow in the event they identify a disease that has been designated as having significant consequences for animal or human health. · Take immediate, effective and direct action to investigate animal disease outbreaks and if necessary, act on an emergency basis with expedited procedures. · Introduce surveillance zones, and actions that must be taken within them, to monitor areas around a quarantine zone. · Require producers to take preventive measures to reduce the risk of introducing and spreading disease, ensure employees are trained to prevent and respond to disease, maintain records of animal origin and movement, abide by inspector’s orders, and report any incidents of disease or unusual illness. · Increase disease control measures such as restricting the movement or sale of animals, food products and animal by-products such as wool or hides derived from them. · Cleary define the role and powers inspectors have regarding the enforcement of the act, regulations, conditions of licences and permits, and orders. · Increase the maximum penalty under the act from $2,000 to $75,000 and create an administrative penalty system for less serious contraventions. 250 356-1674 Connect with the Province of B.C. at: www.gov.bc.ca/connect

Blue Bridge Fates

Debate delayed as councillor reined in by mayor Session on Johnson Street Bridge replacement project moved in camera By Bill Cleverley, Times Colonist May 4, 2012 Dean Fortin called the bridge project "the biggest we have." Dean Fortin called the bridge project "the biggest we have." Photograph by: Darren Stone , timescolonist.com (May 2012) Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin felt compelled to call a time-out to rein in Coun. Ben Isitt during a debate Thursday on approval of a modified charter for the Johnson Street Bridge replacement project. Fortin abruptly moved the meeting into an in camera session when Isitt suggested the charter include provision for an independent oversight monitor to report to council on financial and technical aspects of the project. Asked after the meeting why he moved the meeting in camera to take Isitt to the proverbial woodshed, Fortin said: "The Johnson Street project is the biggest project we have and there's a high level of risk. It's appropriate always for us to understand that some of that risk is political interference. "That can cause the greatest uncertainty," he continued. "So for us, we want to make sure and have an understanding what those risk levels are. So an opportunity to get that clarity was welcome." Isitt said he could not comment on what occurred in the in camera session. The first-term councillor had already been admonished by Fortin earlier in the meeting and ruled out of order when he tried to include a provision in the charter that one of the new bridge's three traffic lanes be built to a structural standard capable of supporting rail. Councillors retired to a private lounge for about 20 minutes. When they returned, Isitt withdrew his motion "in light of information" he received. The previous council removed rail from the bridge project in order to shave an estimated $12 million off the costs. They did retain a right of way for a rail crossing in the future, should funding for it be found. But Isitt persisted in trying to make a case for rail on the new bridge, saying now that federal funding has been announced, planned improvements to the E&N rail added to the importance of the rail line being brought into downtown instead of terminating in Vic West. "We have not discussed the issue of rail connectivity to our core since the E&N railroad got the green light. A quarter of all the ties on the tracks between Victoria West and Courtenay are going to be repaired; 49 bridges are going to be repaired," Isitt said. "Rail is feasible. There's a large group that's enthusiastic about it, and I don't want to see downtown Victoria left out of this exciting and sustainable transportation lifeline for the Island. "I want to see downtown Victoria remain the commercial and employment core of the capital region of this province and I think rail coming is vital." A Vic West terminus would be 50 metres from downtown. Fortin said the $15 million in improvements to the E&N track does not cover needed improvements to bridges or rail crossings. Estimates are B.C. Transit would need to subsidize the cost of commuter rail on the E&N at the rate of $40 per passenger per trip, he said. "So there are some major questions that need to be answered," Fortin said. bcleverley@timescolonist.com © Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/Debate+delayed+councillor+reined+mayor/6565345/story.html#ixzz1vWPl9TL2

Woodley

Bio for Thomas Woodley, President of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East Thomas Woodley has been CJPME’s president since early 2008, and the organization has seen dramatic expansion and growth under his leadership. In terms of academic background, Tom has a BS EE from Carnegie-Mellon University and an MS EE from Stevens Institute of Technology. Tom also has an MPA from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs, with a focus on Public Policy and Public Finance. Tom has a strong professional background in the public sector, having worked in Federal government for several years. He is also experienced in project management and organizational development. Tom also has long experience working in the NGO and volunteer sector, having volunteered for several international NGO’s in Africa and the Middle East. Tom has been involved with CJPME since it’s founding in 2004. Bio for Ilan Pappé, guest speaker on tour in Canada, hosted by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East Dr. Ilan Pappé was born in Haifa to German-Jewish parents who fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s. He graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1978, and got his PhD in history from the University of Oxford, UK in 1984. Dr. Pappé is currently a professor at the University of Exeter in the UK, and he is Director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies. Prior to Exeter, Dr. Pappé was a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa from 1984 until 2007. He was fired from the university in 2007 after he had taken a public position in support of the international boycott of Israeli universities. Pappé is considered one of Israel's "New Historians" who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, have shed important new perspective on the creation of Israel, and the corresponding dispossession of the Palestinian people. Dr. Pappé’s recent books include: · Gaza in Crisis – the book that was mentioned earlier… · Peoples Apart: Israel, South Africa and the Apartheid Question · The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel · Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel · and, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

This Week on GR

This http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifWeek on GR
by C. L. Cook
This week: Earlier this month, the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Centre, in concert with the Global Footprint Network released a new economic and environmental index. The Eco2 Index is designed to gauge the threat of climate change on ecological and economic security. Rated were the most and least healthy national economies based on this new model's values.

Rashid Sumaila is the director of the UBC Fisheries Centre and he joins us in the first half.

And; is a sustainable world possible under the capitalist economic system; and if not, how else can we organize our societies? For a growing number, cooperatives are the viable alternative.

Listen. Hear.

Joan Russow is former leader of the Green Party of Canada. Since stepping down from the Greens, Joan has worked as a reporter and film maker, recording the climate change conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun, and more recently working on the film, 'Cooperatives: Counterpoint to Capitalism.'

She'll be traveling down to Venezuela later this month to chronicle the groundbreaking progress cooperatives have made there since the Bolivarian Revolution.

Joan Russow, looking south to the future in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us from the road somewhere in Manitoba at the bottom of the hour to bring us newz from our city's streets and beyond.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.com

As we approach the annual commemoration for our planet home, Earth Day, perhaps it's time we ask ourselves how much we really value our lonely blue orb in space. Time and again, we've seen economics trump environmental conservation; and it's not even sound economics, but more often than not the short-term financial bonanzas for the few favoured over the life-force sustaining the natural world.

This trick is won by corporate interests and their captured legislators in a variety of ways; the arcane language of professional economists, like the current prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, being primary among them. Using the accounting deception called "externalities," economists disappear both the damages done to and the intrinsic value of our shared environment. But who balances the books for the natural world?

Earlier this month, the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Centre, in concert with the Global Footprint Network released a new economic and environmental index. The Eco2 Index is designed to gauge the threat of climate change on ecological and economic security. Rated were the most and least healthy national economies based on this new model's values.

Rashid Sumaila is the director of the UBC Fisheries Centre and he joins us in the first half.

And; is a sustainable world possible under the capitalist economic system; and if not, how else can we organize our societies? For a growing number, cooperatives are the viable alternative. Joan Russow is former leader of the Green Party of Canada. Since stepping down from the Greens, Joan has worked as a reporter and film maker, recording the climate change conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun, and more recently working on the film, 'Cooperatives: Counterpoint to Capitalism.' Joan will be traveling down to Venezuela later this month to chronicle the groundbreaking progress cooperatives have made there since the Bolivarian Revolution.

Joan Russow, looking south to the future in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us from the road somewhere in Manitoba at the bottom of the hour to bring us newz from our city's streets and beyond. But first, Valuing the Oceans with Rashid Sumaila


G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and
providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.


Some past guests include: M. Junaid Alam, M. Shahid Alam, Gilad Atzmon, Joel Bakan, Maude Barlow, David Barsamian, Mark and Rhoda Berenson, Diana Beresford-Kroeger, William Blum, Luciana Bohne, William Bowles, Mordecai Briemberg, James J. Brittain, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Michel Chossudovsky, Diane Christian, Paul Cienfuegos, David Cromwell, Ezili Danto, Jon Elmer, Yves Engler, Anthony Fenton, Jim Fetzer, Laura Flanders, Chris Floyd, Connie Fogal, Susan George, Stan Goff, Amy Goodman, Denis Halliday, Chris Hedges, Sander Hicks, Julia Butterfly Hill, Scott Horton, Robert Jensen, Dahr Jamail, Chalmers Johnson, Diana Johnstone, Malalai Joya, Kathy Kelly, Naomi Klein, Brewster Kneen, Betty Krawczyk, Anthony Lappe, Frances Moore Lappe, Jason Leopold, Jeff Leys, Dave Lindorff, Jim Lobe, Jennifer Loewenstein, Stephen Marshall, Robert Massoud, Loretta Napoleoni, John Nichols, Ken O'Keefe, David Orchard, Riki Ott, Greg Palast, Mike Palecek, Michael Parenti, Robert Parry, John Pilger, Kevin Pina, William Rivers Pitt, Justin Podur, Lila Rajiva, Jack Random, Sheldon Rampton, Paul Craig Roberts, David Robb, Paul de Rooij, John Ross, David Rovics, Danny Schechter, David Schindler, Vandana Shiva, Tim Shorrock, Norman Solomon, Jean Saint-Vil, Starhawk, Grant Wakefield, Harvey Wasserman, Paul Watson, Bernard Weiner, Andy Worthington, Mickey Z., Howard Zinn and many others.

Holiday the Desolation Road

Holidaying Along the Desolation Road
by C. L. Cook l Pacific Free Presshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
I took a break from the daily grind, packed up the three cylinder Firefly and hit the road. Me and my companion headed from the house, here in the Garden City of Victoria, "up-island" in the local parlance, along the west coast of Vancouver Island.

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Famous among the surfing set, our route took us past first China Beach, then the fabulous French and Sombrio Beaches.

There the wild Pacific shores up, only slightly impeded by the Olympic Peninsula to the south, its waves crashing home after their long journey from Japan.

On Sombrio, the most popular and magnificent of the three beaches for both the surf and prospect, the boarders cajole rides out of the cold curlers, some of the more intrepid bobbing a-way off the shore, looking not so much sitting astride their boards as people, but more like the families of sea lions once prevalent here.

Surf-widowed dogs roam the Sombrio, befriending interlopers like us, while balefully casting an eye out to sea for absent friends. Driftwood fires smolder, cowboy coffee cans brewing tea and soups to warm those back in from the sub-50 degree Fahrenheit waters.

The paradisaical Sombrio is unique among the trio too for its Miltonesque legend of an Eden "lost." Local filmmaker, Paul Manly describes the great injustice done there in his film, 'Sombrio.' Here's his brief outline:

"Since the 1960’s, Sombrio Beach, a picturesque paradise of rainforest and beach on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, BC, has been home to a unique community of “squatters” living in a funky array of beach shacks. A magnet for surfers, social misfits, those who simply wanted off the modern grid, or to live a simpler life, the Sombrio community was an experiment in cooperation, anarchy and self-sufficiency. This ended in 1997 when the government evicted the squatters after the integration of Sombrio beach into the greater Juan de Fuca provincial park."


You can find more about Manly's film and other works here: http://manlymedia.com/.

From Sombrio, we head for the end of the West Coast Road. Port Renfrew sits at the mouth of the inlet named in 1790 by Manuel Quimper, the Spaniard who charted much of the west coast of Vancouver Island, and the Straits named for Juan de Fuca on its south and east sides.

Long a destination for salmon fishers, (and still famously so)
Renfrew is home to Botanical Beach, an amazing stretch of
coastal tide pools and other-worldy rock formations,
and is the jumping off point for access to the newly
named, Avatar Grove, home of 'Canada's Gnarliest Tree.'

This is timber country, and for the few hundreds living in Renfrew and environs logging is still a mainstay employer, but things are changing.

Lucas, the oversize character running the Big Fish Lodge, says in days past 90% of his guests had come for the fish and perhaps 10% for eco-tours and hiking. Today, while fishing is still the main hook, he says as much as 30% of his business is with the eco-crowd, anxious to see what remains of the great marvels of the coastal rainforest.

Until recently, Port Renfrew was the literal end of the road for car travel. Though still isolated, in the old days, you could only take the logging roads out overland, or grab a boat across the "Graveyard of the Pacific" to pick up the trek further west.

Millions have done just that over the years, heading for Pacific Rim National Park's renowned West Coast Trail. Today however, there's also the "loop road," built over the bones of the broader of the logging roads, taking you northeast, interior bound, for Lake Cowichan. It's along this newly opened route some of the effects of industrial logging are starkly revealed.

We pass mile after mile of devastated valley bottoms and hillsides; great swathes of trees taken out in blocks, the infamous "clear-cutting" decried by environmentalists and "sustainable development" proponents for decades are here evident, and the practice continues yet even as the jobs big timber provides dwindle.

Today, trees of any considerable girth taken are routinely exported "raw;" that is, without providing tertiary local employment. At Botany Bay, massive barges equipped with cranes fore and aft ply by, piled high with logs no doubt destined to be loaded whole onto China-bound freighters.

There has been innumerable demonstrations against raw log exports in Victoria and along the logging roads for years, all to no avail.

Victoria-based eco-defender, Janine Bandcroft has too taken the desolation road, and recorded some of it in pictures here: http://janinebandcroft.ca/Activist_Gallery/Pages/avatar_grove.html

We make, my companion and I, the loop, our good 'Gelding,' the road-weary and ancient Firefly carrying us over the mountains, past the depressed town of Lake Cowichan, (where the local Burgermeisters decided to clear-cut the face of the publicly-owned forested slopes overlooking the lake and their town) and down the big highway to our Garden City home.

We arrive the same day the American Coast Guard, (will ironies not cease!) sink a "ghost ship" off the coast near Haida Gwaii, far to the north of us.

The Ryou-Un Maru had been adrift for more than a year, washed out to sea by the terrible tsunami that struck Japan in March of 2011. Deeming the ship a nighttime marine hazard, the Coast Guard opened fire on the vessel, sending it and its cargo of more than two thousand gallons of diesel to the bottom. At least, sending the Ryou-Un Maru to the bottom; its bunker fuel will of course rise again.

And, the Ryou-Un Maru is not the only devastated thing currently crossing the Pacific from the horror of the Japanese tsunami last year. As the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility continues to smolder, clouds of radiation rise and join the jet stream, poisoning the great Pacific and us.

With three reactors melted down already, and a fourth on the verge of engendering a global catastrophe former Japanese ambassador Mitsuhei Marata fears will be like none ever seen, - a game-ender for life as we've known it here these last hundreds of thousands of years or so - I can only be thankful for the chance to have seen some of this world as it was made still surviving.

And so I say; "Happy holidays to we all, and sayonara to you, my beautiful Pacific island."

Valuing the Ocean

Valuing the Ocean Environment: Economic Perspectives
http://www.sei-international.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-Preview-ValuingTheOceanEnvironment-EconomicPerspectives.pdf

Some things are too valuable to be assigned meaningful prices; some questions are too big for meaningful answers. Life as we know it would cease without the ocean: it – and the wondrous variety of life it supports – is literally ‘priceless’.

Rather than asking what the ocean itself is worth, this chapter seeks to at least partially answer the question ‘what is the value of avoiding further damage to the ocean?’. Or, framing the question another way: ‘what is the cost of the environmental damage that could be done to the ocean if we do not take action?’.

The analysis is restricted to five categories of damages that can be priced, and can realistically be affected by policy decisions taken today and in the coming decades. Past damage, and unavoidable future damage that is already in the pipeline, is excluded, as are all fundamentally priceless values.

For example, the value of the whale-watching tourism industry can be estimated, but the value of whales themselves cannot. The value of the storm damage protection provided by coastal wetlands can be estimated, but the value of wetlands themselves and the biodiversity they contain cannot.

Awareness of the difference between what we can and cannot change, and what we can and cannot price, is essential to understanding the global costs of inaction.

Pricing the distance between our hopes and our fears

The avoidable portion of future climate damage is in effect the distance between our hopes and our fears. Our hopes are represented by a ‘low emissions, low climate impacts’ future, our fears by a ‘high emissions, high climate impacts’ future, based in this analysis on the recently developed IPCC Representative Concentration Pathways RCP2.6 and RCP6 scenarios.

Comparisons to unattainable twentieth-century norms or to an imaginary world with no climate change are effectively pointless. The first scenario, RCP2.6, is a rapid-emission-reduction pathway, whereby temperatures are estimated to reach 2.2°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

The second, RCP6, is a business-as-usual pathway that sees temperatures rising 4.0°C by 2100. To simplify comparisons, the same projections for global population, GDP and carbon price are used for both scenarios.

Impacts are estimated for five specific categories of ocean services, which have measurable damages that can meaningfully priced. This chapter builds on the analysis of the six specific threats provided in previous chapters, and on the most significant and up-to-date climate economics and science literature from a variety of sources, in order to develop monetary valuations of major impacts on ocean ecosystems and services.

It is the difference between the low- and high-climate-impact costs – the avoidable
damages – that really counts for policy-makers.

The cost of inaction: Five easy pieces By 2050, the value of these important climate impacts is estimated to be more than four times higher under a high emissions, high impact scenario. By 2100, the cost of damage if we follow the high emission pathway rises to US$ 1,980 billion, equivalent to 0.37 percent of global GDP. The difference between the two scenarios, or the amount that can be saved by lowering emissions, is US$ 1,367 billion; that is more than a trillion dollars per year by 2100, equivalent to 0.25 percent of GDP.

It is the trillion-plus dollars a year difference that policy-makers should take particular note of, and which should be included in the complex web of climate change accounting. Decisions taken in the coming years will determine whether this figure becomes part of the savings made by rapidly reducing carbon emissions, or is yet another cost of inaction.

Uncertainties, variabilities, unquantifiabilities: The floor is open At first glance these figures may not make everyone sit up and take notice. Compared to the global
economy, they are certainly significant, but they are not so shockingly high that political commitment and public action will necessarily be mobilised to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Indeed, the measure of the problem, and the need for immediate action, cannot be based solely on hard dollar estimates; respect for the priceless value of the ocean, and precautionary responses to the risks of tipping points and catastrophic losses (see Chapter 10) add crucial, qualitatively different dimensions to the story.

The figures developed in this chapter are not as staggering as some previous estimates – such as the controversial calculation by Robert Costanza and co-authors in 1997, which valued the ocean at US$ 33 trillion, a figure greater than global GDP at the time – but our aim was to avoid subjective and problematical valuations and provide a basis for continued discussion of the components of the problem that have meaningful prices.

Much is still unknown and uncertain, and this figure represents just a fraction of the ocean services that we know are at risk from avoidable climate damage. Uncertainty and variability are themselves a challenge, creating a need for adaptation but making it difficult – and very expensive – to achieve.

Sadly, it is the poorest countries that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change on the ocean. Severe economic problems already being felt include the
losses suffered by African and east Asian countries, due to the latitudinal shifts of capture fisheries, the cost of preparing for sea-level rise in countries such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, and the downturns predicted for the tourism industry in the Caribbean and Pacific island nations.

Coupling an analysis of these threats with a global-scale economic analysis of the consequences of action or inaction is a huge and ongoing challenge. In addition to the predictable, measurable risks of gradual change, as discussed in this chapter, a
complete economic analysis must also consider the uncertain but potentially catastrophic consequences that could ensue as the world reaches tipping points for climate change.

This important topic is the subject of Chapter 10 of Valuing the Ocean Environment Economic perspectives

Shirley's Goldfinger