The World from Behind the Wall

Look at the World from Behind the Wall

by William A. Cook

“Put yourself in their shoes. Look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own. Living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements not just of those young people but their parents, their grandparents, every single day. It’s not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It’s not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands; or restricting a student’s ability to move around the West Bank; or displace Palestinian families from their homes Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land.” (President Barak Obama in Israel 2013).

Would that the President might take his own advice—“Put yourself in their shoes.

Look at the world through their eyes”—he need only open his eyes beyond the wall that imprisons the Palestinians he speaks about: see how the wall blinds the Jews to the plight of the people they drove from their land, see the barren landscape on the other side rubble strewn, savaged by bulldozers and missiles, see the people caught in a maelstrom of poverty and deprivation, listen to the mothers and wives weep for their husbands and sons jailed without charge in Israel’s Gulag where escape comes by self-starvation as the only defense against indefinite torture and lives lost to family and friends, listen to the cries of the people of the world who have condemned this barbaric behavior only to run into the President’s own wall--the veto in the UN Security Council that effectively denies the justice he so righteously exalts, “Peace is also just.”

How true and how easily it could be made a reality if he were to simply abstain during the vote that sought to bring this defiant state before the International Court of Justice finally after 64 years of impunity to the very justice this President mouths, as though saying it levitates him beyond criticism.

Indeed, “Look at the world through their eyes,” let Americans look at the state of Israel through Palestinian eyes to witness the monstrous injustice that exists in this “democratic state” that “shares America’s values,” America’s only “friend” in the mid-east. Let’s look at how the Israeli government responds to the President’s call for justice for the Palestinians, within three days of his visit. Let’s report on a peaceful protest that has gone unnoticed by the American press with the exception of Tim King’s Salem-News: “Israeli forces have sprayed Palestinian homes in the village of Nabi Saleh with "skunk"* as a punishment for organizing weekly protests against the Apartheid Wall built on occupied West Bank land (March 26, 2013). See the video provided by the paper that the eyes of all might be opened.

While the American press offered nothing about this incident, Reuters and the Guardian did as well as The Middle East Monitor which provided this background information:

“Israeli forces have sprayed Palestinian homes in the village of Nabi Saleh with raw sewage … as a punishment for organising weekly protests against the Apartheid Wall built on occupied West Bank land. Human rights watchdog B’Tselem published a video showing Israel’s armoured tanker trucks fitted with “water cannons” which spray the foul fluid at Palestinian protesters. B’Tselem said in a statement that the Israeli forces also targeted all the houses of the village with the sewage. The powerful jet broke windows and caused a great deal of damage in the houses, said the Israeli organisation. “It also causes environmental damage,” it pointed out. The non-lethal weapon has been added to the Israelis’ armoury for crowd control, said B’Tselem, even though the video shows clearly that it is also used against Palestinian-owned property” - “link to www.middleeastmonitor.com).

Israeli soldiers use a truck to fire a water cannon containing a foul smelling substance during a protest against the controversial Israeli barrier in the West Bank village of Bilin near Ramallah July 17, 2009.
Credit: Reuters/Fadi Arouri/Files

How can the people of the United States tolerate such despicable and inhumane behavior from a supposed friend? When did Americans decide that peaceful protests should not be allowed? When did Americans decide that their tax dollars should provide a state the means to shower humans and their homes in foul smelling chemicals that literally cloaks them in animal smell used by animals for self-protection but used here to prevent intelligent dissent from oppressive military aggression. Literally forcing silence to prevent disagreement. These are the ruthless and barbaric actions of a state that has no respect for humans other than its own; it casts a pall over its ”friend,” the American people, by making them complicit in such abominable behavior, it smells to high treason, an insult to those who have provided an estimated 3 trillion dollars of support that this state might exist (Rense.com).

What is particularly disturbing is the fact that minds have designed this “strategy” to quell dissent, a fundamental right and duty of democratic people. It tells us that the state of Israel does not value dissent; its newspapers can carry debates by its Jewish citizens but it will not tolerate dissent from those it occupies or its non-Jewish citizens.

Look through the eyes of the Palestinian mother and father who have struggled mightily to maintain a home through these years of deprivation; watch them see this “shit,” a term used in Vermont to describe the spreading of cow manure on the fields in the spring, but this is not Vermont nor are the Israelis “shitting the fields,” pulverize the house breaking through the windows saturating furniture, beds, even kitchen utensils depriving them of basic forks and knives to use at dinner. What is this but collective punishment of the innocent who at worst wanted to demonstrate against the occupation peacefully. There is no self-defense here; it is rather sheer racist hatred of others, demeaning, shameful, a means to inflict uncontested force against the defenseless, the coward’s way to self-fulfillment.

No state can spread such “shit” on its people with impunity except Israel protected as it is by our captured Senators like Lindsey Graham, who had the audacity to interrogate a true patriot, Senator Hagel, who pledged his oath of office to the United States not a foreign government, because he was beholden to AIPAC knowing as he sat there the answer to his question to Hagel, name a Senator Mr. Hagel who is afraid of Israel, with the answer written all over his obsequious face, you Senator Graham.

This is not the democracy Americans practice; it is a sham democracy that protects the few and emasculates those excluded. Democracy is inclusive. Had I not witnessed this behavior in this decade of advanced civilization, I would have thought that it came from the mind of our most enlightened sci-fi satirists, Kurt Vonnegut, Aldous Huxley, or George Orwell, minds capable of dreaming the impossible couched in scenes of the savage country or 1984; perhaps reality has caught up with comic satire.

Obama’s trip to Israel demonstrated, in the words of AIPAC, America’s “resilient friendship, based in large part on an unshakable dedication to common values. Commitment to democracy, the rule of law, freedom of religion and speech and human rights are all core values shared between the United States and Israel” (AIPAC). What is that rule of law that binds these two countries together that such a vicious display of animosity against neighbors would be inflicted so shortly after the President of this “resilient friendship” left the country having asked the Israeli people to consider “Looking through the eyes of their neighbors at the conditions imposed on them by the Israeli occupation”?

The Israeli government has imposed Military Order 101 that requires an Israeli permit if more than 10 people gather, something similar to the “parade permits” required in the old south to ensure no demonstrations against “Bull Connor’s peaceful world.” Martin Luther King had to face that same logic in the United States in August of 1963. Certainly our President knows the brilliance of King’s logic that tore apart the logic of occupiers and oppressors that denied the rights of people who live in a free, open and equitable land, a truly democratic land that treats all its citizens by rules of law as civilized societies must:

“…I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown.” 

Is not this the purpose of the President’s visit to Israel, to announce to the world that America will not tolerate injustice done in its name by its “resilient friend” that receives 8 million a day from the largesse of the American taxpayer?

But there’s more, much more that King argued before the American government when it was forced to confront its immorality and illegality after 90 years of segregation, oppression and deceit against its own people.

“I am cognizant,” King asserted, “of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly...You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being.”

How prophetic of the conditions that have yoked the United States to the state of Israel. Indeed that state wants to forge a “security agreement” that would link its behavior to that of the United States and literally drive our policies in concert with theirs. Skunk tankers would become American tools against its own people even as we permit, even encourage, the lawlessness that drives Israeli policies against its neighbors whether the American people agree or not. Thus do we become complicit in the evil perpetrated by that rogue state.

But some will assert that America had laws requiring permits to gather, to protest peacefully, to march against the immoral actions of its local military authority. And King demolished that logic by appeal to a human nature that knows barbarity does not and should not rule in a civilized state.

“One may well ask, "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all." Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

We, the humans that design and implement the rules of law, do so to ensure that all are treated equally under that law; if not we have abrogated the responsibility of civilized humans to act on behalf of all and thus have become but beasts dependent on instinct and ruthless force to exist. That is not the principled foundation upon which the United States was fashioned. And while the nation did not begin its days in keeping with its principles, it never erased them but rather attempted in time to reconcile its beliefs with the implementation of laws that corrected its deficiencies.

Well might we ask how this President reacted to the foul actions of the Israeli government when it uses such despicable actions against the people it is responsible for protecting under the rules of international occupation?

This is what he said:

“So peace is necessary. But peace is also just. Peace is also just. There is no question that Israel has faced Palestinian factions who turned to terror, leaders who missed historic opportunities. That is all true.”

[But it is as well deceitful; it addresses only the concerns of one side, the “resilient friend” of the U.S. Why no mention of the Nakba, the defiant use of illegal terrorist destruction by the Jewish Agency and its armies against the legal authority of the Mandate Government charged by the international community to protect both the indigenous people of Palestine and the immigrants arriving from Europe? Why no mention of the 64 years of intentionally stalled peace negotiations’ that resulted in the virtual takeover of all the land of Palestine? Why no mention of the original intention of the Jewish Agency and its adherents to remove by whatever force necessary the Arabs from the land of Israel when in fact they didn’t own it or have “historical” right to it? Why pretend to the world that the Palestinians have been the perpetrators of terrorism when they have the legal right to defend their homeland against illegal occupiers and oppressors?]

“And that’s why security must be at the center of any agreement.”

[Security for whom? Do not the Palestinians need security when the reality on the ground has been the theft of virtually all their land? Only security for the state of Israel against the Palestinians when the state of Israel has the fourth largest military in the world and the Palestinians have no military?]

“It has to be done by the parties.”

[Certainly it is obvious to all that the United States cannot be a broker for peace between these parties. It is yoked to the state of Israel irrevocably. Only the UN can bring resolution by bringing Israel before the Security Council to determine how it will reconfigure its borders so that the state of Palestine can be fashioned legitimately and justice for all can be established.]

“But the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, their right to justice, must also be recognized.”

[If this is Obama’s desire than does he have a responsibility to take action to ensure it happens. Doing nothing will change nothing. Let the 95% of the world’s population that has recognized the rights of the Palestinian people (188 nations out of 193 allowed by their vote acceptance of the people of Palestine to member status in the UN) direct the process by which justice can be done.]

If we look at the world from behind the wall that imprisons the Palestinian people, we must accept the injustice that pervades the Zionist government’s treatment of their neighbors. Any law that degrades human personality as Martin Luther King states is unjust. What is more degrading to the human personality than to be drenched in the sewage that flows from the Jewish squatters’ settlements or sprayed by the skunks that use their protective innards to deny the democratic right of dissent?

A just people create just laws, laws that uplift human personality. Peace is just as the President said; would that he would make it so.

Shell's "Screwed Up" Drilling Plans Prompt Quick Arctic Pullout

Mother Nature, US Gov't. Chase Shell Out of Arctic

by Damien Gillis - The Canadian.org

Shell Oil, the first energy company granted coveted Arctic drilling permits by the US Government, is shutting down operations for all of 2013, nearly as quickly as they began.

Shell's hand is being forced by the Interior Department, following a scathing report which castigated the company for a series of misadventures in 2012 and early 2013.

The cancellation of this year's drilling program represents an about-face from the confident predictions made last year by the Shell executive heading up the operation, David Lawrence. 

The Arctic drilling would be "relatively easy", Lawrence told Dow Jones at the outset of Shell's foray into Alaska's Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. 

The report by the Interior Department, released earlier this month, found Shell was unprepared for Arctic drilling and failed to properly oversee its contractors. Department Secretary Ken Salazar put it succinctly in a telephone press conference discussing the report. 

"Shell screwed up in 2012,” remarked Salazar, who stipulated that future drilling would be contingent on more detailed plans and an independent audit of the company's management systems.

The "Cypriot Poison" Pill Within Harper's Economic Action Plan 2013

Streamlining Conflict of Interest Provisions

by New Government of Canada (Stephen Harper)

[from pp. 144-5 of Economic Action Plan 2013]

The Government will examine whether the conflict of interest provisions contained in the financial sector statutes remain consistent with the overall Government policy as outlined in the Conflict of Interest Act.

To ensure the continued strong governance and oversight of federally regulated financial institutions, the Government will examine whether the conflict of interest provisions contained in the financial sector statutes remain consistent with overall Government policy as outlined in the Conflict of Interest Act.

Establishing a Risk Management Framework for Domestic Systemically Important Banks

Economic Action Plan 2013 will implement a comprehensive risk management framework for Canada’s systemically important banks.

Canada’s large banks are a source of strength for the Canadian economy. Our large banks have become increasingly successful in international markets, creating jobs at home. The Government also recognizes the need to manage the risks associated with systemically important banks — those banks whose distress or failure could cause a disruption to the financial system and, in turn, negative impacts on the economy.

This requires strong prudential oversight and a robust set of options for resolving these institutions without the use of taxpayer funds, in the unlikely event that one becomes non-viable.

The Government intends to implement a comprehensive risk management framework for Canada’s systemically important banks. This framework will be consistent with reforms in other countries and key international standards, such as the Financial Stability Board’s Key Attributes of Effective Resolution Regimes for Financial Institutions, and will work alongside the existing Canadian regulatory capital regime.

The risk management framework will include the following elements:

• Systemically important banks will face a higher capital requirement, as determined by the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. 

• Supporting Jobs and Growth

• Helping Manufacturers and Businesses Succeed in the Global Economy

The Government proposes to implement a ―bail-in regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital. This will reduce risks for taxpayers.

The Government will consult stakeholders on how best to implement a bail-in regime in Canada.

Implementation timelines will allow for a smooth transition for affected institutions, investors and other market participants.

Systemically important banks will continue to be subject to existing risk management requirements, including enhanced supervision and recovery and resolution plans. This risk management framework will limit the unfair advantage that could be gained by Canada’s systemically important banks through the mistaken belief by investors and other market participants that these institutions are ― too big to fail.

Supporting the Financial Sector’s Contribution to the Economy

Supporting International Growth of the Canadian Financial Sector

Economic Action Plan 2013 will enhance the Government’s support for the strategic international expansion of Canadian financial institutions.

The Government will enhance its activities aimed at promoting the Canadian financial sector internationally.

As part of the Government’s efforts to intensify Canada’s pursuit of new and deeper trade relationships, it will partner with financial institutions to promote the Canadian brand with key decision makers in foreign markets.

Strategic expansion of Canadian financial institutions internationally will create skilled financial sector jobs in Canada and allow the industry to increase its contribution to the Canadian economy.

Combating International Tax Evasion and Aggressive Tax Avoidance 

(pp. 154-5)

Economic Action Plan 2013 proposes a number of measures to address international tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance.

International tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance entail a fiscal cost to governments and taxpayers worldwide, and are unfair to businesses and individuals who play by the rules
.
The Government of Canada is committed to protecting the revenue base and ensuring public confidence in the fairness and equity of the tax system. Accordingly, Economic Action Plan 2013 proposes to:

• Require certain financial intermediaries including banks to report international electronic funds transfers of $10,000 or more to the CRA. Funding of $15 million over five years will be provided to the CRA for this initiative.

• Extend the normal reassessment period by three years for a taxpayer who has failed to report income from a specified foreign property on their annual income tax return and failed to properly file the Foreign Income Verification Statement (Form T1135).

• Revise Form T1135 reporting to provide more detailed information including the names of specific foreign institutions and countries where offshore assets are located and the foreign income earned on those assets.

• Streamline the process for the CRA to obtain information concerning unnamed persons from third parties such as banks.

The CRA will also launch the Stop International Tax Evasion Program aimed at reducing international tax evasion and avoidance. Under this program, the CRA will pay rewards to individuals with knowledge of major international tax non-compliance when they provide information to the CRA that leads to the collection of outstanding taxes due.
 
The CRA will pay a reward to an individual only if the information results in total additional assessments exceeding $100,000 in federal tax. In this way, the CRA will target high-income taxpayers who attempt to evade or avoid tax using complex international legal arrangements.

A reward will not be paid to an individual who has been convicted of tax evasion in connection with the non-compliance.

Preying on Minority Communities for the Multiculturapocolypse

Waiting for the Multicultarapocolypse, Turko-Hispanic Edition

by Peter Lee - China Hand

I saw this billboard while motoring through the LA suburbs.

The sentiment is not drive-off-the-road gobsmacking, but it provided considerable food for thought.

Wonder if the Corps would celebrate its respect for “Caucasian” or “African-American” values.* Unlikely, because attributing certain “values” to racial groups is, well, racist. I assume the idea is to characterize “Hispanics” as an ethnicity with certain cultural characteristics, like, you know, the Irish. This leads us pretty far down the slippery slope to ethnic stereotyping, and I wonder what martial characteristics on the Frito Bandito-to-Zorro spectrum the Marines’ ad agency was thinking of when it crafted this campaign.

Actually, thanks to the website “Hispanic Marketing and Public Relations”, we don’t have to wonder:

“The ideals of honor, courage and commitment are not exclusive to the Marine Corps,” said Lieutenant Colonel Darrin Kazlauskas, assistant chief of staff for advertising, Marine Corps Recruiting Command. “Hispanic American families, like all great families, instill these values so that each generation can move forward and become positive members of their communities. We are proud to serve with all our Marine brothers and sisters who hold these values in high esteem.”
“Through Family Values the Marine Corps set out to offer the public a window into the personal lives of the Hispanic Marines profiled in the ads with the intent of leading the audience to believe that there are ways in which the fundamental values of Hispanic Americans and the Marine Corps are one.”

Well, don’t get me started on the “values” thing, and I won’t ask the Marines to reveal what other groups are relatively deficient in honor, courage, and commitment compared to a) the USMC and b) the "Hispanic community."

To unpack this a little more, “Hispanics” is something of a catch-all demographic category to characterize people in the US and the Latin and South American countries who can speak Spanish.

“Hispanics” often define themselves according to nationality, current or ancestral (“Mexican, Mexican-American”). Bear in mind, some indigenous Americans—Indians, per the traditional, wildly inaccurate nomenclature that prevails in the United States—such as the Oaxacans, who form a distinct underclass of immigrants in Los Angeles, employ their traditional pre-Colombian languages and speak Spanish as a second language and, sometimes, don’t speak Spanish at all. And some people of mestizo extraction who do speak Spanish nevertheless accentuate their local origins and dislike the European cultural, imperial, and linguistic implications of “Hispanic”.

So, “Hispanic” is something of an artificial category that assists non-“Hispanic” people who are looking for a convenient way to characterize, investigate, analyze, and slice-and-dice an increasingly important element in US economics and culture. I assume Hispanicism, the New World successor to Edward Said’s Orientalism—which explored the creation of “The Orient” as an object of Western penetration, exploitation, and conquest—has already been written by some bright, Foucault-steeped scholar, but I just don’t know about it.

Of course, what’s also interesting is that the sign is in English, not Spanish. Of course, one has to speak English to serve in the Marine Corps, but one might think that a recruiting poster would target Spanish-speaking parents as well.

I wonder how much deep thinking Lieutenant Colonel Kazlaukas put into this campaign. Is it part of a sophisticated effort to identify and attract English-speaking people with a Spanish-speaking background who self-select as having an uncertain grasp of anthropology, ethnography, and Marx’s critique of Hegelian idealism? Or a reflection of the fact that recruitment of “Hispanics”—actually, a certain undefined subset of this arbitrary class—has been quite successful and the Corps is trying to consolidate its gains by throwing the ad campaign at the wall and seeing if it sticks?

*The Marines do run a Black History Month campaign, but it accentuates the victories of black Marines in their struggle to overcome racism rather than attributing specific admirable values to African-Americans.

The second data point comes courtesy of the very interesting blog The Istanbulian, by Emre Kizilkaya, an editor of Hurriyet, the leading Turkish daily.

The modern Turkish state is based on a rather muscular, army-backed secularism that, in recent years, has come into increasing conflict with Islam-friendly political movements such as the one that Prime Minister Recip Erdogan rode into power. The government does reveal some Islamicizing tendencies which are nervously recorded by advocates of secular liberalism.

An exam in a local religious class included this priceless image under the heading “Learning to Pray”.



Spidey, we never knew!

What I like about the image is, if you rotate it 90 degrees, he looks like he’s praying at the Wailing Wall! While climbing it!




Kizilkaya’s blog is well-worth bookmarking. Turkey, in addition to serving as freedom’s eager handmaiden in Syria, is the world leader in imprisoning journalists. Kizilkaya performs the invaluable task of documenting the trends in repression, politics, religion, and the complex and volatile Assad-rebels-Syrian/Iraqi/PKK Kurd security equation for an English-speaking audience.

Obama's Middle East Antics: Four More Years of This?

Obama’s Peace Antics in Israel – Four More Years of This?

by Ramzy Baroud - PalestineChronicle.com

At the precise moment US President Barack Obama’s Air Force One touched down at Ben Gurion Airport on March 20, persisting illusions quickly began to shatter. And as he walked on the red carpet, showered with accolades and warm embraces of top Israeli government and military officials, a new/old reality began to sink in: Obama was no different than his predecessors. He never had been.

On the day of Obama’s arrival, Israeli rights group B’Tselem, released a disturbing video. It was of Israeli soldiers carrying out a ‘mass arrest’ of nearly 30 Palestinian children on their way to school in the Palestinian city of al-Khalil (Hebron).

The children plead and cried to no avail. Their terrified shrieks echoed throughout the Palestinian neighborhood as they tried to summon the help of passersby. “‘Amo’ – Uncle,” one begged, “for God sake don’t let them take me.” Nonetheless, several military vehicles were filled with crying children and their school bags. But what made the release of the video truly apt is the fact that it was released on the day president Obama was meeting Israeli children at a welcoming ceremony at the home of Israeli President Shimon Peres.

“Their dreams are much the same as children everywhere,” he said, referring to Israeli children, of course. “In another sense though their lives reflect the difficult reality that Israelis face every single day. They want to be safe, they want to be free from rockets that hit their homes or their schools.”

Many Palestinians immediately pointed out the moral discrepancies in most of Obama's statements throughout his stay in Israel. Still, his visit was ‘historic’ declared numerous headlines in the US and Israeli media.

However, aside from the fact that it was his first trip to Israel as a president, it was barely momentous. His unconditional support for Israel has been tedious and redundant, predictable even. Those who have followed his unswerving pro-Israel legacy – including his visit to Israel as a presidential candidate in 2008, his talks before the Israeli lobby group AIPAC and many other examples – could barely discern a shift, except perhaps, in the total disinterest in political sensibility and balance.

He truly delivered in Israel. This was to the total satisfaction of the Israeli Prime Minister and his pro-settler government which was assembled shortly before Obama’s arrival. Obama spoke as if he were entirely oblivious to the political shift to the extreme right underway in Israel. Indeed, the new Israeli government is more right-wing than ever before. The extremist Jewish Home party has three important ministries, including Jerusalem and Housing and the ultra-nationalists of Yisraeli Beiteinu have been awarded the tourism ministry. It means that the next few years will be a settlement construction bonanza, ‘ethnic cleaning’ and greater Apartheid.

“It’s good to be back in The Land (Israel),” Obama said in Hebrew, at the Tel Aviv airport. “The United States is proud to stand with you as your strongest ally and your greatest friend.”

It is believed that for four years, Obama has failed to live up to the nearly impossible expectations of Israel. Israel requires a president with good oratory skills – for example, to emphasize the ‘eternal’ bond between his country and Israel, as Obama did - who is able to sign big checks and ask few questions. Obama has of course done that and more. Aside from the 3.1 billion dollars in financial support, he has rerouted hundreds of millions of US funds to bankroll Israel’s air defense system, the Iron Dome, whose efficiency is questionable at best.

Obama’s past transgressions, as far as Israel is concerned, is that he dared ask the right-wing government of Netanyahu to temporarily freeze settlement construction as a pre-condition to restart the stalled – if not dead – peace process. Of course, there is the widely reported matter of Obama’s lack of fondness of Netanyahu, his antics and renowned arrogance. But that matters little, since Israel’s illegal settlements continued to thrive during Obama’s first term in office.

Expectedly, Netanyahu was gloating. He has managed to assemble a government that will cater mostly to extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank and also masterfully managed to humble the US president, or at least quash his ambitions that the US is capable of operating independently in the Middle East, without Israeli consent or interests in mind.

Now that Jewish colonies are flourishing - with occupied East Jerusalem area EI being another major exploit - Netanyahu is once more aspiring for a war against Iran, one that would not be possible without US funding, support and likely direct involvement.

“Thank you for standing by Israel at this time of historic change in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said while standing near the mostly US-funded Iron Dome. “Thank you for unequivocally affirming Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself, by itself against any threat.”

Obama did in fact spare a few, although, spurious thoughts for Palestinians.

“Put yourself in their shoes -- look at the world through their eyes,” he said to an Israeli audience. “It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day.”

One would even applaud the seeming moral fortitude if it were not for the pesky matter that the US had voted against a Palestinian state at the United Nations last November and tried to intimidate those who did. And of course, much of the horror that Palestinian ‘eyes’ have seen throughout the years was funded and defended by US money and action. If Obama is trying to resurrect the myth that the US is a well-intentioned bystander or an ‘’honest broker’ in some distant conflict, then he has utterly failed. His country is fully embroiled in the conflict, and directly so. Many Palestinian children would still be alive today if the US government had conditioned its massive support of Israel by ending the occupation and ceasing the brutality against Palestinians.

In a joint press conference in Ramallah, alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama even demanded Palestinians drop their condition (proposed by Obama himself) of a settlement freeze in order to return to the so-called peace talks.

“That's not to say settlements aren't important, that's to say if we resolve the (main) problems, then settlements will be resolved,” he said. “If to begin the conversation we have to get everything right from the outset ... then we're never going to get to the broader issue,” 

Obama added. The broader issue, according to the US president is “how do you structure a state of Palestine,” which again, Obama voted against last year, and passionately so.

Aside from resounding rhetoric about peace, Obama is finally towing the Israeli line exactly as Netanyahu and the lobby would expect of him, or of any other US president. He has little to offer Palestinians, or Arab nations, but much to expect from them. Arab states must seek normalized relations with Israel, and Palestinians must “recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state, and that Israelis have the right to insist upon their security,” he lectured in Jerusalem on the second day of his trip, reported CNN online.

The obvious danger here lies in the fact that Israel oftentimes conflates ‘security’ and its ‘right to defend itself’ by mass arresting children on their way to school in Hebron, or by inflicting or supporting wars against other nations – Lebanon, Iraq and now Iran.

Obama will eventually get back to his Oval Office desk, ready to resume work as usual. This will include the signing of many papers concerning additional funds, loans, military technology transfers and much more for Israel. Palestinians meanwhile will carry on with their long fight for freedom, without his noted oratory skills.

Meanwhile, the families of the 30 children kidnapped by the Israeli army in Hebron will have many days ahead of them in Israeli military court. But that, of course, is a different matter, of no concern to Obama and his many quotable peace antics.



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).

Austerity Rules: Ottawa's Auto-Pilot Economic Plan

Canadian Budget "Austerity on Autopilot"

by TRNN

Jim Stanford: In spite of data showing the Canadian economy is slowing down, the new Federal Budget pushes cuts and a balanced budget which will make recession worse - true under-utilization of labor is 12 percent.

Jim Stanford is an Economist in the Research Department of the Canadian Auto Workers, Canada's largest private-sector trade union. He received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1995 from the New School for Social Research in New York. He also holds economics degrees from Cambridge University in the U.K. (1986) and the University of Calgary (1984). Jim is the author of Paper Boom (published in 1999 by James Lorimer & Co.) and co-editor (with Leah F. Vosko) of Challenging the Market: The Struggle to Regulate Work and Income (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004).

Dr. Troika and the Cypriot Cure: Day 1in Nicosia

Cyprus Day 1: Fear and Loathing in Nicosia

Patrick Henningsen - 21st Century Newswire

NICOSIA - In approximately three weeks time, the island of Cyprus will begin receiving its annual cash injection – from holiday tourism. That’s what’s know as a ‘good injection’.

After only a day here, it’s become very clear that the people of Cyprus are concerned, some even scared – about a financial contagion and shock treatment which threatens their future prosperity.

Soon, they will get another ‘bad’ injection, which we are told will be deadly. So we are treating this like a crime scene.

The next injection will be administered by ‘Dr Troika’. Just utter his name in public here and you will see wrinkles in people’s faces.

Dr Troika’s injection is the equivalent, in economic terms, to an experimental vaccine – designed to treat a financial contagion which originated in Greece, and Wall Street before that. It is certain to provoke an auto-immune reaction.

The people of Cyprus did not ask for this, yet, they are being forced to take it by the mad economic doctors in Brussels, Berlin and the IMF. It’s the sort of bad medicine that the banking syndicates and corrupt officials have been administering for a while now, in order to take down governments and economies all over the globe with devastating effect.

I arrived in Cyprus on Wed night, and was joined by UK-based writer and talk show host Jason Liosatos from Global Peace Radio at 5am Thursday morning, as we headed in to the capital city of Nicosia to document what many were expecting to be a run on the island’s banks at 12pm after 15 days of closed doors to hundreds of thousands of residents whose savings has been locked inside the banks during the extended “bank holiday”. This particular ‘holiday’ will go down in history as one of the worse on record.

The lines began forming around 11am, but to everyone’s surprise – except the Cypriots’ of course, the lines were not as long as many expected, and not as long as the corporate mainstream media expected either, most of whom were hoping for a fight in front of both the old town’s Bank of Cyprus (good bank) and Laiki Banks (bad bank) branches.

The majority of those queuing were older people, but these included many of the top depositors whose life saving have been clipped by the Troika.

We asked around and quickly learned why the Cypriots did not all rush the bank on Thursday at high noon. Many residents told us that there was a community feeling that islanders did not want to stress the Bank of Cyprus by storming its branches. Strict capital controls have been put into place to slow the cash hemorrhaging this week, with most residents restricted to 300 euros per day, for four days, followed by an official assessment of the situation.

There’s a lot of talk of Cyprus’s potential riches from untapped gas and oil, and many residents believe the bankers have taken down the economy here in order to exchange the island’s future riches for a series of expensive (if not utterly debilitating) ECB and IMF loans. But that’s still a ways off, and more pressing matters are salary cuts, pension cuts, a flight of wealth off of the island, and of course – that fact that people’s money is being literally stolen from their accounts.

When elites go to war, and fight their financial battles, it seems that the only victims are the average mom and pop. After meeting 5 or six local residents and business owners, it came abundantly clear that even the street sweepers knew that a criminal banking syndicate had held a gun to their heads and then stolen their money in broad daylight.

PHOTO: We sit down with the neighborhood guys who 
really know what’s going on with Cyprus bank collapse, 
and do foreign exchange over coffee.

A retired resident, Mr Andreas, explained;

“We Cypriots have dignity. I have only 3 euros in my pocket for the last week – enough only to buy a cup of coffee, but I will not line up today and beg the Troika for my daily withdraw of 300 euros.”

He adds; “Our friends in Europe have treated us like gangsters and criminals. Our government leaders have made mistakes, yes; but why are we being forced to pay? It’s blackmail. This is stealing from the people, that’s all.”

Not surprisingly, there were no Russian Oligarchs waiting to get inside any of the island’s branches on Thursday, many of them apparently withdrew their money from still open Russian branches of Laiki and Cyprus banks – at the same time that the banks in Cyprus were shut.

Mr Kiriakos, a local bar owner lamented over a beer with us before closing shop, explaining the reality of this latest banker-led heist in Cyprus. 

“I’ve been working all my life – 30 years, so I can send my daughters to university and give them a better life than I had, and they can just come and take that money? They are running a big casino, when they win they put the money in their pockets, but if they lose they take the money out of our pockets.”

Listen to daily reports this week from Cyprus at:

The Pete Santilli Show, M-F 12pm PST/6pm GMT.

Liberal Zionism and the Palestinian Solidarity Industry

Is Palestinian Solidarity an Occupied Zone?

by Gilad Atzmon - CounterPunch

Once involved with Palestinian Solidarity you have to accept that Jews are special and so is their suffering; Jews are like no other people, their Holocaust is like no other genocide and anti Semitism, is the most vile form of racism the world has ever known and so on and so forth.

But when it comes to the Palestinians, the exact opposite is the case. For some reason we are expected to believe that the Palestinians are not special at all - they are just like everyone else. Palestinians have not been subject to a unique, racist, nationalist and expansionist Jewish nationalist movement, instead, we must all agree that, just like the Indians and the Africans, the Palestinian ordeal results from run-of-the-mill 19th century colonialism – just more of the same old boring Apartheid.

So, Jews, Zionists and Israelis are exceptional, like no one else, while Palestinians are always somehow, ordinary, always part of some greater political narrative, always just like everyone else. Their suffering is never due to the particularity of Jewish nationalism, or Jewish racism, or even AIPAC dominating USA foreign policy no, the Palestinian is always a victim of a dull, banal dynamic – general, abstract and totally lacking in particularity.

This raises some serious questions.

Can you think of any other liberation or solidarity movement that prides itself in being boring, ordinary and dull? Can you think of any other solidarity movement that downgrades its subject into just one more meaningless exhibit in a museum of materialist historical happenings? I don’t think so! Did the black South Africans see themselves as being like everyone else? Did Martin Luther King believe his brothers and sisters to be inherently indistinguishable?

I don’t think so. So how come Palestinian solidarity has managed to sink so low that their spokespersons and supporters compete against each other to see who can best eliminate the uniqueness of the Palestinian struggle into just part of a general historical trend such as colonialism or Apartheid?

The answer is simple. Palestinian Solidarity is an occupied zone and, like all such occupied zones must dedicate itself to the fight against ‘anti Semitism’. Dutifully united against racism, fully engaged with LGBT issues in Palestine and in the movement itself, but for one reason or another, the movement is almost indifferent towards the fate of millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps and their Right of Return to their homeland.

But all this can change. Palestinians and their supporters could begin to see their cause for what it is, unique and distinctive. Nor need this be all that difficult. After all, if Jewish nationalism is inherently exceptional as Zionists proclaim, is it not only natural that the victims of such a distinctive racist endeavor are at least, themselves, just as distinctive.

So far, Palestine solidarity has failed to liberate Palestine, but it has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in creating a Palestine Solidarity Industry, and one largely funded by liberal Zionists. We have been very productive in schlepping activists around the world promoting ‘boycotts’ and ‘sanctions’ meanwhile Israel trade with Britain is booming and Hummus Tzabar is clearly apparent in every British grocery store.

All those attempts to reduce the Palestinian ordeal into a dated, dull, generalised materialist narrative should be exposed for what they are – an attempt to appease liberal Zionists. Palestinian suffering is actually unique in history at least as unique as the Zionist project.

Yesterday I came across this from South African minister Ronnie Kasrils. In a comment on Israeli Apartheid he said : “This is much worse than Apartheid..Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had Jets attacking our townships; we never had sieges that lasted months after months. We never had tanks destroying houses.”

Kasrils is dead right. It is much worse than Apartheid and far more sophisticated than colonialism. And why? Because what the Zionists did and are doing is neither Apartheid nor is it colonialism. Apartheid wanted to exploit the African, Israel wants the Palestinian gone. Colonialism is an exchange between a mother and a settler state. Israel never had a mother State, though it may well have had a few ‘surrogate mothers’.

Now is the time to look at the unique ordeal of the Palestinian people. Similarly, now is the time to look at the Zionist crime in the light of Jewish culture and identity politics.

Can the solidarity movement meet this challenge? Probably, but like Palestine, it must first, itself, be liberated.




The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics and Jewish Left's spin in particular Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

The Cost of Moral Cowardice: America's Shameful Anniversaries

American Anniversaries from Hell - What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

by Tom Engelhardt - TomDispatch

It’s true that, last week, few in Congress cared to discuss, no less memorialize, the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Nonetheless, two anniversaries of American disasters and crimes abroad -- the “mission accomplished” debacle of 2003 and the 45th anniversary of the My Lai massacre -- were at least noted in passing in our world. In my hometown paper, the New York Times, the Iraq anniversary was memorialized with a lead op-ed by a former advisor to General David Petraeus who, amid the rubble, went in search of all-American “silver linings.”

Still, in our post-9/11 world, there are so many other anniversaries from hell whose silver linings don’t get noticed. Take this April. It will be the ninth anniversary of the widespread release of the now infamous photos of torture, abuse, and humiliation from Abu Ghraib. In case you’ve forgotten, that was Saddam Hussein’s old prison where the U.S. military taught the fallen Iraqi dictator a trick or two about the destruction of human beings. Shouldn’t there be an anniversary of some note there? I mean, how many cultures have turned dog collars (and the dogs that go with them), thumbs-up signs over dead bodies, and a mockery of the crucified Christ into screensavers?

Or to pick another not-to-be-missed anniversary that, strangely enough, goes uncelebrated here, consider the passage of the USA Patriot Act, that ten-letter acronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”? 

 

 Tomgram: Engelhardt, The 12th Anniversary of American Cowardice

[Note to TomDispatch Readers: Our thanks for the outpouring of contributions for Nick Turse’s bestselling new book, Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, now in its sixth printing. It’s been an overwhelming show of support both for this website and for the book -- and most useful for our (modest) coffers. A while back, we simply ran out of books, but last week our new shipment came in. So all of you who contributed should by now have (or soon have) your personalized, signed copies. If there are any TD readers who still want to make a contribution of $100 (or more) and get a signed, personalized copy, check out the offer at our donation page by clicking here. Tom] 

 

 

American Anniversaries from Hell - 

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

by Tom Engelhardt

 

This October 26th will be the 11th anniversary of the hurried congressional vote on that 363-page (essentially unread) document filled with right-wing hobbyhorses and a range of provisions meant to curtail American liberties in the name of keeping us safe from terror. “Small government” Republicans and “big government” Democrats rushed to support it back then. It passed in the Senate in record time by 98-1, with only Russ Feingold in opposition, and in the House by 357-66 -- and so began the process of taking the oppressive powers of the American state into a new dimension. It would signal the launch of a world of ever-expanding American surveillance and secrecy (and it would be renewed by the Obama administration at its leisure in 2011).

Or what about celebrating the 12th anniversary of Congress’s Authorization for Use of Military Force, the joint resolution that a panicked and cowed body passed on September 14, 2001? It wasn’t a declaration of war -- there was no one to declare war on -- but an open-ended grant to the president of the unfettered power to use “all necessary and appropriate force” in what would become a never-ending (and still expanding) “Global War on Terror.”

Or how about the 11th anniversary on January 11th -- like so many such moments, it passed unnoted -- of the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, that jewel in the crown of George W. Bush’s offshore Bermuda Triangle of injustice, with its indefinite detention of the innocent and the guilty without charges, its hunger strikes, and abuses, and above all its remarkable ability to embed itself in our world and never go away? Given that, on much of the rest of the planet, Guantanamo is now an icon of the post-9/11 American way of life, on a par with Mickey Mouse and the Golden Arches, shouldn’t its anniversary be noted?

Or to look ahead, consider a date of genuine consequence: the CIA’s first known assassination by drone, which took place in Yemen in 2002. This November will be the 11th anniversary of that momentous act, which would embed "targeted killing" deep in the American way of war, and transform the president into an assassin-in-chief. It, too, will undoubtedly pass largely unnoticed, even if the global drone assassination campaigns it initiated may never rest in peace.

And then, of course, there are the little anniversaries from hell that Americans could care less about -- those that have to do with slaughter abroad. If you wanted to, you could organize these by the military services. As last year ended, for instance, no one marked the 11th anniversary of the first Afghan wedding party to be wiped out by the U.S. Air Force. (In late December 2001, a B-52 and two B-1B bombers, using precision-guided weapons, eradicated a village of celebrants in eastern Afghanistan; only two of 112 villagers reportedly survived.) Nor in May will anyone here mark the ninth anniversary of an American air strike that took out wedding celebrants in the western Iraqi desert near the Syrian border, killing more than 40 of them.

Nor, this July 12th, to switch to the U.S. Army, should we forget the sixth anniversary of the infamous Apache helicopter attacks on civilians in the streets of Baghdad in which at least 11 adults were killed and two children wounded? All of this was preserved in a military video kept secret until released by WikiLeaks. Or how about the first anniversary of the “Kandahar massacre,” which passed on March 11th without any notice at all? As you undoubtedly remember, Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales allegedly spent that night in 2012 slaughtering 16 civilians, including nine children, in two Afghan villages and, on being taken into custody, “showed no remorse.”

When it comes to the Marines, here’s a question: Who, this November 19th, will mark the eighth anniversary of the slaughter of 24 unarmed civilians, including children and the elderly, in the Iraqi village of Haditha for which, after a six-year investigation and military trials, not a single Marine spent a single day in prison? Or to focus for a moment on U.S. Special Forces: will anyone on August 21st memorialize the 90 or so civilians, including perhaps 15 women and up to 60 children, killed in the Afghan village of Azizabad while attending a memorial service for a tribal leader who had reportedly been anti-Taliban?

And not to leave out the rent-a-gun mercenaries who have been such a fixture of the post-9/11 era of American warfare, this September 16th will be the sixth anniversary of the moment when Blackwater guards for a convoy of U.S. State Department vehicles sprayed Baghdad’s Nisour Square with bullets, evidently without provocation, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and wounding many more.

All of the above only begins to suggest the plethora of blood-soaked little anniversaries that Americans could observe, if they cared to, from a decade-plus of the former Global War on Terror that now has no name, but goes on no less intensely. Consider them just a few obvious examples of what former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once called the “known knowns” of our American world.

Impossible Anniversaries

In anniversary terms, Rumsfeld’s second category -- the “known unknowns” -- is no less revealing of the universe we now inhabit; that is, our post-9/11 lives have been filled with events or acts whose anniversaries might be notable, if only we knew the date when they occured. Take, for instance, the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. Sometime in the first part of 2002, President Bush granted the National Security Agency the right to eavesdrop without court approval on people in the United States in the course of its terrorism investigations. This (illegal) program’s existence was first revealed in 2005, but it remains shrouded in mystery. We don’t know exactly when it began. So no anniversary celebrations there.

Nor for the setting up of the “Salt Pit,” the CIA “black site” in Afghanistan where Khaled el-Masri, a German car salesman kidnapped by the CIA in Macedonia (due to a confusion of names with a suspected terrorist) was held and mistreated, or other similar secret prisons and torture centers in places like Lithuania, Poland, Rumania, and Thailand; nor for the creation of Camp Nama in Iraq, with its ominously named “Black Room,” run as an interrogation center by the Joint Special Operations Command, where the informal motto was: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it."

Or how about the anniversary of the date -- possibly as early as 2006 -- when Washington launched history’s first known cyberwar, a series of unprovoked cyberattacks ordered by George W. Bush and later Barack Obama, against Iran’s nuclear program (and evidently some Middle Eastern banks dealing with that country as well). Given its potential future implications, that would seem to be a moment significant enough to memorialize, if only we knew when to do it.

Don’t for a moment think, though, that any little survey of known knowns and known unknowns could cover the totality of America’s unacknowledged anniversaries from hell. After all, there’s Rumsfeld’s third category, the “unknown unknowns.” In our advancing world of secrecy, with the National Security Complex and parts of the U.S. military increasingly operating in a post-legal America, shielded from whistleblowers and largely unaccountable to the rest of us or the courts, you can be guaranteed of one thing: there’s a secret history of the post-9/11 era that we simply don’t know about -- yet. Call this last category "the unknown anniversaries." We not only don’t know when they began, but even what they are.

A Hidden History Waiting to Be Written

When I was a boy, I loved a CBS TV series called "You Are There," "anchored" by Walter Cronkite. It took you into history -- whether of Joan of Arc’s burning at the stake, the fall of the Aztec ruler Montezuma, or the end of the U.S. Civil War -- and “reported” it as if modern journalists had been on the spot. (For years, I used to joke that the typical moment went like this: “General Lee, General Lee, rumor has it you’re about to surrender to Grant at Appomattox!” “No comment.”) The show had a signature tagline delivered in one of those authoritative male voices of the era that still rings in my head. It went: "What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times... all things are as they were then, and you were there."

If such a show were made about the post-9/11 years, it might have to be called “You Weren’t There.” Our days, instead of being filled with “those events that alter and illuminate our times,” would be enshrouded in a penumbra of secrecy that could -- as with Bradley Manning, CIA agent John Kiriakou, or other whistleblowers -- only be broken by those ready to spend years, or even a lifetime in prison. If the National Security Complex and the White House had their way, we Americans would be left to celebrate a heavily cleansed and censored version of our own recent history in which the anniversaries that should really matter would be squirreled away in the files of the state apparatus. There can be no question that a hidden history of our American moment is still waiting to be uncovered and written.

And yet, despite the best efforts of the last two administrations, secrecy has its limits. We should already know more than enough to be horrified by the state of our American world. It should disturb us deeply that a government of, by, and for the war-makers, intelligence operatives, bureaucrats, privatizing mercenary corporations, surveillers, torturers, and assassins is thriving in Washington. As for the people -- that’s us -- in these last years, we largely weren’t there, even as the very idea of a government of, by, and for us bit the dust, and our leaders felt increasingly unconstrained when committing acts of shame in our name.

So perhaps the last overlooked anniversary of these years might be the 12th anniversary of American cowardice. You can choose the exact date yourself; anytime this fall will do. At that moment, Americans should feel free to celebrate a time when, for our “safety,” and in a state of anger and paralyzing fear, we gave up the democratic ghost.

The brave thing, of course, would have been to gamble just a little of our safety -- as we do any day when we get into a car -- for the kind of world whose anniversaries we would actually be proud to mark on a calendar and celebrate.

Among the many truths in that still-to-be-written secret history of our American world would be this: we the people have no idea just how, in these years, we’ve hurt ourselves.

 

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.

Copyright 2013 Tom Engelhardt

 

VPD Arrests "Dangerous" Cyclist

VPD Arrests "Dangerous" Cyclist

Iraq Redux in Syria: "Now Where Are Those WMD?"

Iraq 2.0: West will now lean on UN to delivery a WMD verdict in Syria

by Patrick Henningsen - 21st Century Wire

Much is being made by the international media and western politicians about recent alleged chemical weapons attacks in northern Syria, with speculation rife regarding which side is responsible.

Too few are asking the most fundamentally important question here: were any real conventional chemical weapons actually used at all? Indeed, it’s a question worth asking.

On March 19, it was reported that missiles were fired that contained ‘a chemical substance’ into Khan al-Assal village near Syria’s northern city of Aleppo. The incident is said to have claimed some 25 lives with many others injured following a series of chemical explosions, where some witnesses reported “the smell of chlorine in the air”, prompting strong speculation that munitions deployed during the incident had released ‘a deadly chlorine gas’.

The Syrian government is blaming the rebels, and the rebels are blaming the Syrian armed forces. Lines are also being drawn inside the UN Security Council.

The term ‘Scud missile’ has also been injected into the mix – itself, an established and recognised WMD media brand name made infamous during Saddam Hussein’s reign prior to 2003.

Qassim Saadeddine, a rebel commander in Aleppo, told Reuters by telephone last week, “We were hearing reports from early this morning about a regime attack on Khan al-Assal, and we believe they fired a Scud with chemical agents”.



House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers is pushing for a WMD guilty verdict against Assad.

The US leadership also seem convinced that forces loyal to President Bashar al Assad are the only party in Syria who would possibly possess, and deploy, chemical weapons on the field of battle. Both President Barrack Obama and US House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers have already made sweeping statements to that effect this past week – but how much truth is actually in such statements?

What we do know is that US-led NATO and Gulf state allies are already neck-deep in a proxy war in Syria, both funding and arming various elements of the rebel opposition confab. Heavy pressure is being put the bear on the Syrian government by the west, with US-lead NATO allies having stated their ultimatum in precious months – that should any such weapons be found in the battlefield, it would be a ‘red line’ crossed, and would give the west a justification for direct military intervention in the conflict.

The debate will continue to rage on both sides about who set-off such attacks, further thrusting this issue into a media-driven propaganda and counter-propaganda downward spiral, fought in public through the UN Security Council and opposing media outlets.

Were chemical weapons really used in Aleppo?

Though no longer stationed inside Syria, even U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford is on record as stating that the Obama administration has no evidence so far to who fired the chemical attack accusations, or that an actual chemical weapons attack occurred at all.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon says he intends to investigate the Aleppo incident, but already there are complaints from other member states, that the US and Britain might be delaying this process by injecting further unsubstantiated reports of another Damascus ‘chemical attack’ – perhaps a red herring of sorts, included to divert attention from ‘who did what’ in Aleppo. French UN Ambassador Gerard Araud entered this alleged new incident into the record, based on the Syrian National Coalition’s own allegations of a second chemical weapon attack last Tuesday in the Damascus.

This struggle to control the narrative is almost inseparable from the NATO and Gulf alliance’s own vested interests on the ground in Syria.

The UN Russian Security Council envoy Vitaly Churkin has described some of these new claims as mere “propaganda balloons.”

Churkin added, “As far as I know, there is only one allegation of the use of chemical weapons…. There have been no other allegations”. Churkin has tried to delineate the two separate incidents by explaining, “To me, a concern which I expressed in the Council, was that this was really a way to delay the need for immediate, urgent investigation of allegations pertaining to March 19 (chemical attack) by raising all sorts of issues”.

The truth of what happened in Aleppo might be something completely different than the initial media narrative of events.

According to recent reports found at SyriaTruth.org which also includes some very relevant comments human rights investigator Nizar Nayouf, a rebel paramilitary group called “Front Victory” reportedly led by foreign fighters and under the guidance of Turkish Intelligence last August 2012, had seized a chlorine gas (possibly CL17) bottling plant located some 50km east of Aleppo. The UN authority was apparently made aware of this at the time, and despite efforts by the Russians to persuade rebel militants to withdraw from this site and allow it to be occupied by neutral international observers, the rebels refused.

“In the end it was agreed to close the lab, but remained cylinders in the laboratory, where the gunmen refused remove them and move them to a safe place or dropped into the Euphrates River.”



Evidence suggests industrial chlorine was taken from factory and used by rebels to make bombs.

The lab in question is said to have contained dozens of large chlorine disc, each weighing nearly 100 kilograms. Aside from the obvious danger of assembling makeshift chlorine bombs, by some people’s estimates, there was enough stock present at the time “to sterilise an entire medium size city’s water supply for a month.”

There is some evidence to suggest that the rebel group known as “Front Victory”(name translated from Arabic) is no stranger to both violent insurgency, or the use of chlorine bombs for terrorist purposes.

The same online report also describes the group’s previous destabilisation exploits in Iraq here (translated from Arabic to English):

“Front Victory” has experience in the use of chlorine gas as a chemical weapon to Iraq. After the withdrawal of the U.S. military, and in the context of the Jordanian-Saudi intelligence war in Iraq to undermine the Maliki government…

(…) Jordanian intelligence proceeded to facilitate the smuggling of chlorine gas from Jordan to the organization known as “Islamic State of Iraq”, the first to use chlorine gas technology (with the help of Jordanian Intelligence and Saudi Arabia) as a “chemical weapon” – a taboo issue in the media in the context of covering genocide….

Given the fact that the “first generation” and “second generation” of the founders and staff of “Front Victory” hailed originally out of the “Islamic State of Iraq” organisation, they were the only ones among the insurgent Syrians who are schooled in this technique. In addition, the organization “Islamic State of Iraq” deliberately to be the first installments of his gunmen who were sent to Syria as of fall 2011…

Weeks ago, “Front Victory” are reported to have begun manufacturing chlorine gas shells to be used in mortars and homemade rockets around Aleppo, utilizing the stock from the chlorine gas plant. Note that the said missile was launched from an area “Kafr Daal” in northwest of Aleppo.”

(…)”its cargo of chlorine gas, with the effects that left it in the area of ​​the explosion. (…) Two British chemist commented… (…) One British chemists said without hesitation, “the effects of chlorine gas combustion.” The second said, “chemical or gaseous nature can be transformed from a liquid to a gas, but I can not identify.”

Numerous historical references to Iraqi insurgent chlorine attacks are available through news archives online, with one incident in 2006 clearly described below, but usage of chlorine munitions dates back as far as World War I in Europe. Note the following summary currently available from Wikipedia:

“Chlorine bombings in Iraq began as early as October 2006, when insurgents in Al Anbar province started using chlorine gas in conjunction with conventional vehicle-borne explosive devices.

The inaugural chlorine attacks in Iraq were described as poorly executed, probably because much of the chemical agent was rendered nontoxic by the heat of the accompanying explosives.[1]Subsequent, more refined, attacks resulted in hundreds of injuries, but have proven not to be a viable means of inflicting massive loss of life. Their primary impact has therefore been to cause widespread panic, with large numbers of civilians suffering non life-threatening, but nonetheless highly traumatic, injuries.

Chlorine was used as a poison gas in World War I, but was delivered by artillery shell, unlike the modern stationary or car bombs. Still, its function as a weapon in both instances is similar. Low level exposure results in burning sensations to the eyes, nose and throat, usually accompanied by dizziness, nausea and vomiting. Higher levels of exposure can cause fatal lung damage; but because the gas is heavier than air it will not dissipate until well after an explosion, it is generally considered ineffective as an improvised chemical weapon.”

In the corridors of the UN, it would benefit certain parties to buy some time right now, in order to either legally reclassify makeshift chlorine munitions as conventional ‘chemical weapons’, or the build another case around the alleged chemical attack in Damascus.

NATO looking for its green light to escalate

Based on the US and NATO’s promise of military intervention in the event of any chemical attack and their stated goal of Regime change in Syria, the motivation of qui bono resides exclusively in both the rebel’s and the NATO-Gulf alliance interests, and not in the interests of Bashar al Assad’s Syria government.

Despite the western media’s aggressive pursuit of a chemical weapon aka ‘WMD’ narrative in Syria – official statements out of Washington, Paris and London alluding to a guilty verdict for the Assad regime, does not actually square with the facts on the ground. In the case of Aleppo, there is no actual evidence of made-for-purpose, military grade chemical weapons being deployed by either side, and thus efforts to substantiate a case for foreign military on this basis are, as yet, non existent.



UN appoints Swede Ake Sellstrom to play the role of Hans Blix.

UN head Ban Ki Moon has just appointed a Swedish scientist, Ake Sellstrom, as his new head of a chemical weapons investigations team for Syria. As with his Scandinavian predecessor, Hans Blix, Sellstrom will lead the fact-finding mission to determine the existence of WMD’s in Syria.

The comparisons to Iraq in 2003 are obvious here. One would hope that lessons learned from Iraq, namely, building a case a military intervention based on a pre-existing conclusion, based mainly on ambiguous association, or fabricated intelligence – would have already been learned by the west, and thus should avoided at all costs.

The elephant in the room is this: NATO, its political leaders and the western media have yet to acknowledge the most obvious fundamental flaw in their own aggressive position towards Syria – that their own diplomatic objectivity is effectively disqualified by the fact that they are financing and arming a parallel government to takeover in Syria. This fact alone renders the UN almost inoperable in terms of reaching any fair diplomatic solution to this crisis.Could this really be Déjà vu Iraq?

"Monsanto Protection Act" Slithers Silently Through Congress

"Monsanto Protection Act" Slips Silently Through Congress

by CLG

26 Mar 2013  


The US House of Representatives quietly passed a last-minute addition to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill for 2013 last week - including a provision protecting genetically modified seeds from litigation in the face of health risks. The rider, which is officially known as the Farmer Assurance Provision, has been derided by opponents of biotech lobbying as the "Monsanto Protection Act," as it would strip federal courts of the authority to immediately halt the planting and sale of genetically modified (GMO) seed crop regardless of any consumer health concerns.

The provision, also decried as a "biotech rider," should have gone through the Agricultural or Judiciary Committees for review.

Instead, no hearings were held, and the piece was evidently unknown to most Democrats (who hold the majority in the Senate) prior to its approval as part of HR 993, the short-term funding bill that was approved to avoid a federal government shutdown [that Obama signed].

[Hungary got rid of Monsanto by 'burning and booting.' First, farmers burned Monsanto's poisonous crops to the ground. Then, the people kicked Monsanto out of the country. 'Burn and boot.' That's how they roll in Hungary.]

Canadian Big Telecom Attacks Citizen's Org. Campaign

With your help, we have a tool to fight back

by OpenMedia

As you may know, following the release of our Time for An Upgrade study, Big Telecom’s lobbyist army targeted the media to suppress your voice and our message of change – they even went after journalists on Twitter to get them to change the story.2

And there’s more:

Last week one Big Telecom lobbyist went so far as to write a 42-page attack paper using cherry-picked data to undermine Canadians’ call for more affordable and respectful telecom services.3

Members of our online community caught no less than three telecom lobbyists spamming our Facebook Page.4 Those lobbyists only admitted they were employed by Big Telecom after being outed.

Canadians are getting under Big Telecom’s skin; we’re starting to win. It’s not often that we get to see the execs’ out-of-control sense of entitlement undermine their credibility like this.

We recently asked for your support to help us all fight against Big Telecom’s army of lobbyists and public relations experts and you answered. Today, thanks to your contributions, we’re launching a powerful tool to help Canadians speak out in local papers. It’s your tool, so you should give it a try.


We’re making progress because tens of thousands of you sent our Time For an Upgrade study to your Members of Parliament and signed our petition against Big Telecom price-gouging. Taking action online is how we continue to demonstrate our momentum, and get attention from the media and decision-makers. Thank you so much for being a part of this.

Your letter-writing tool is a powerful way to speak out and wake up your local MPs. Write to your local newspaper to speak out against disrespectful service, price-gouging, and a lack of choice for telecom services in Canada.

Thank you for playing a special role in safeguarding the possibilities of our digital future – you inspire us to keep going. We couldn’t do any of this without you.

For a connected Canada,

Steve and Josh, on behalf of your OpenMedia.ca team

P.S. OpenMedia.ca is a small non-profit organization working overtime to safeguard your digital future. We rely on donations from people like you to continue our efforts. If you can, please join us by chipping in whatever you can afford to sustain us today.

Footnotes

[1] Your Cell Phone Horror Stories in the News. Source: OpenMedia.ca.

[2] Telus Spokesperson Shawn Hall versus Globe and Mail reporter Iain Marlow. Source: Twitter.

[3] Internet law expert Michael Geist notes that “the oldest data I've seen in the myriad of recent posts on these issues can be found in McTaggart's [from Telus] response as he relies on 2005 data to argue that Canadians use their wireless devices more than most people in the world.” Both Professor Michael Geist and Internet policy reporter Peter Nowak’s analysis point to a severe lack of credibility and understanding in Telus’ response to the cell phone grievances of Canadians.

[4] Telus lobbyist spams our Facebook page. Source: OpenMedia.ca.

Support OpenMedia.ca

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Attending the "Bush Lie Bury" Opening

Why I'm Attending the Dedication of the Bush Lie Bury

by David Swanson - War is a Lie

On April 25th the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum and General Rehabilitation Project will be dedicated in Dallas, Texas. It takes up 23 acres at Southern Methodist University, 23 acres that neither humanity nor any other species may ever reclaim for anything decent or good.

I'll be there, joining in the people's response (http://ThePeoplesResponse.org) with those who fear that this library will amount to a Lie Bury.

"The Bush Center's surrounding native Texas landscape," the center's PR office says, "including trees from the Bush family's Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas, continues President and Mrs. Bush's longstanding commitment to land and water conservation and energy efficiency."

Does it, now? Is that what you recall? Bush the environmentalist?

Well, maybe you and I remember things differently, but do we have a major educational institution that will effectively repeat our corrections of the Lie Bury's claims for decades to come?

According to the Lie Bury, Bush was and is an education leader, saving our schools by turning them into test-taking factories and getting unqualified military officers to run them. This is something to be proud of, we're told.

The Lie Bury's annual report shows Bush with the Dalai Lama. No blood is anywhere to be seen. The Lie Bury's website has a photo of a smiling George W. golfing for war. "The Warrior Open," it explains, "is a competitive 36-hole golf tournament that takes place over two days every fall in the Dallas area. The event honors U.S. service members wounded in the global war on terror."

Now, I actually know of some soldiers wounded in what they call by that name who don't feel honored by Bush's golfing, just as millions of Iraqis living as refugees within or outside of the nation he destroyed find Bush's liberty to walk outdoors, much less golf for the glory of war, offensive. But none of them has a quarter-billion dollar "center" from which to spread the gospel of history as it actually happened -- as it happened to its losers, to those water-boarded, shot in the face, or otherwise liberated by Bush and his subordinates.

When Bush lied about excuses to start a war on Iraq -- as with everything else he did -- he did so incompetently. As a result, a majority of Americans in the most recent polls, still say he lied to start the war. But few grasp the lesson as it should be applied to wars launched by more competent liars. And memory of Bush's lies is fading, buried under forgetfulness, avoidance, misdirection, revisionism, a mythical "surge" success, and a radically inaccurate understanding of what our government did to Iraq.

I won't be attending the Lie Bury ceremony for vengeance, but in hopes of ridding our culture of the vengeance promoted by Bush. He based a foreign policy and a domestic stripping away of rights on the thirst for vengeance -- even if misdirected vengeance. We have a responsibility to establish that we will not support that approach going forward.

Bush himself is relevant only as his treatment can deter future crimes and abuses. No one should wish Bush or any other human being ill. In fact, we should strive to understand him, as it will help us understand others who behave as he has.

Bush, of course, knew what he was doing when he tried to launch a war while pretending a war would be his last resort, suggesting harebrained schemes to get the war going to Tony Blair. Bush knew the basic facts. He knew he was killing a lot of people for no good reason. He was not so much factually clueless as morally clueless.

For Bush, as for many other people, killing human beings in wars exists outside the realm of morality. Morality is the area of abortions, gay marriage, shop lifting, fornicating, or discriminating. Remember when Bush said that a singer's suggestion that he didn't care about black people was the worst moment in his presidency? Racism may be understood by Bush as a question of morality. Mass murder not so much. Bush's mother remarked that war deaths were not worthy of troubling her beautiful mind. Asked why he'd lied about Iraqi weapons, George W. Bush asked what difference it made. Well, 1.4 million dead bodies, but who's counting?

I won't be attending the Lie Bury because Bush's successor is an improvement. On the contrary, our failure to hold Bush accountable has predictably led to his successor being significantly worse in matters of abusing presidential power. And not just predictably, but predicted. When we used to demand Bush's impeachment, people would accuse us of disliking him or his political party. No, we'd say, if he isn't held accountable, future presidents will be worse, and it won't matter from which party they come.

I helped draft about 70 articles of impeachment against Bush, from which Congressman Dennis Kucinich selected 35 and introduced them. I later looked through those 35 and found 27 that applied to President Barack Obama, even though his own innovations in abusive behavior weren't on the list. Bush's lying Congress into war (not that Congress wasn't eager to play along) is actually a standard to aspire to now. When Obama went to war in Libya, against the will of Congress, he avoided even bothering to involve the first branch of our government.

When Bush locked people up or tortured them to death, he kept it as secret as he could. Obama -- despite radically expanding secrecy powers and persecuting whistleblowers -- does most of his wrongdoing wide out in the open. Warrantless spying is openly acknowledged policy. Imprisonment without trial is "law." Torture is a policy choice, and the choice these days is to outsource it. Murder is, however, the new torture. The CIA calls it "cleaner." I picture Bush's recent paintings of himself washing off whatever filth his mind is aware he carries.

Obama runs through a list of men, women, and children to murder on Tuesdays, picks some, and has them murdered. We don't know this because of a whistleblower or a journalist. We know this because the White House wanted us to know it, and to know it before the election. Think about that. We moved from the pre-insanity state we were in circa 1999 to an age in which presidents want us to know they murder people. That was primarily the work of George W. Bush, and every single person who yawned, who looked away, who cheered, who was too busy, who said "it's more important to elect a new president than to keep presidential powers in check," or who said "impeachment would be traumatic" -- as if this isn't.

In Guatemala a prosecutor has charged a former dictator with genocide, remarking, "It's sending the most important message of the rule of law -- that nobody is above the law." It's not so many years ago that the United States had the decency at least to hypocritically propose that standard to the world. Now, we advance the standard of lawlessness, of "looking forward, not backward."

That's why the people need to respond to the lie bury. Ann Wright is going to be there. And Diane Wilson. Robert Jensen and Ray McGovern are coming. So are Lon Burnam and Bill McElvaney and Debra Sweet. Hadi Jawad and Leah Bolger and Marjorie Cohn and Kathy Kelly are coming. As are Coleen Rowley and Bill Moyer and Jacob David George and Medea Benjamin and Chas Jacquier and Drums Not Guns.

Also coming will be many familiar faces from the days when we used to protest in Crawford. When we'd go into that one restaurant at the intersection in Crawford, there'd be a cardboard cut-out Dubya standing there. We picked him up and stood him in the corner, facing the corner. We said he needed to stay there until he understood what he'd done wrong. In reality, of course, he was cardboard. The lesson was for everyone else in the restaurant. It's a lesson that still needs to be taught.

Provoking Intifada: Israeli Army Roguery or Cunning?

During Funeral Procession, Army Fires Gas Bombs At School Students In Hebron

by IMEMC & Agencies

Hebron - Tuesday March 26 2113 - Palestinian medical sources reported that several female school students have been treated for the effects of teargas inhalation after Israeli soldiers fired gas bombs at them as they participated a funeral north of Hebron city, in the southern part of the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

File - PalInfo

Local sources reported that the army invaded Hebron from an area close to the graveyard while the Palestinians were holding a funeral procession to a deceased Palestinian, and fired several gas bombs. A number of students have been treated for the effects of teargas inhalation.

Also in Hebron, the army kidnapped one Palestinian, identified as Amro Jaber, east of Hebron and took him to a nearby interrogation facility.

The soldiers also installed several roadblocks leading to different Palestinian towns near Hebron, stopped dozens of vehicles and inspected the ID cards of dozens of Palestinians.

In related news, soldiers fired several rounds of live ammunition in Bab Al-Zawiya area, in the center of Hebron City.

Local sources reported that it remains unclear why the army opened fire as no clashes or confrontations were taking place in the area before or during the incident.