Animating Youth: the Disnification of Children’s Culture

The notion that America is at war with meaning has taken on a much greater significance in the last few decades. This can be seen in the heated cultural battles that have been waged in current debates over what should be taught in schools, presented in the media, displayed in museum exhibitions, and housed in public libraries. Beneath the so called “culture wars” there exists serious debates and conflicts over more volatile issues involving national identity, abortion rights, cultural differences, family values, sexual orientation, and the meaning of public life. As important as these struggles are in expanding the possibility for public debate and social criticism, they have often diverted attention away from another cultural sphere in the United States, the terrain of children’s culture. Children’s culture is a sphere where entertainment, advocacy, and pleasure meet to construct conceptions of what it means to be a child occupying a combination of gender, racial, and class positions in society through which one defines oneself in relation to a myriad of others.

How toys find their into combat

Ralph Osterhout describes the “perverse symbiotic relationship” between the children’s toy industry and military innovation.

I suspect Donald ‘Opus Dei’ Rumsfeld and the rest of the Gladio ghouls crew masturbate each other and watch snuff films to this shit.
Hell, I thought the cerebral savage, Osterhout, was going to have an orgasm right infront of the audience; sadists that they are.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 1 2009 19:01 utc | 3

Former Army Employee Pleads Guilty to Acting as Israeli Agent

Kadish is a former employee of the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center at the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey (“the Arsenal”). On numerous occasions from about 1980 through 1985, Kadish provided classified documents relating to the U.S. military – including some relating to U.S. missile defense systems – to an agent of the Government of Israel, Yossi Yagur, who photographed the documents at Kadish’s residence.
Kadish, 85, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.

So when is espionage during wartime not espionage during wartime. When it involves Israel, of course! If you substituted “Iran” for “Israel” in the charges, the guy would be facing a firing squad.
Betcha Bush pardons him…

Posted by: Obelix | Jan 1 2009 22:23 utc | 5

Speaking of children and women and the trafficking thereof, Cynthia McKinney in the news…
Can remember if this has been posted on MOA or not, but…
Child Maid Trafficking Spreads to US

IRVINE, Calif. (Dec. 29) — Late at night, the neighbors saw a little girl at the kitchen sink of the house next door. They watched through their window as the child rinsed plates under the open faucet. She wasn’t much taller than the counter and the soapy water swallowed her slender arms.
To put the dishes away, she climbed on a chair.
Shyima Hall, 19, was just 9 when she began working as a servant for a wealthy couple in Alexandria, Egypt. A year later, the couple moved to California with their five children and took Shyima with them. She worked up to 20 hours a day with no days off. Her pay: $45 a week. She is part of a surge of child trafficking for domestic labor in the United States.
But she was not the daughter of the couple next door doing chores. She was their maid.

Wait, that’s not all…
Which Texan was going to buy a young girl for three hundred thousand dollars?
December 30th, 2008
I used to think that I could mentally handle any subject matter, no matter how horrible. What could be worse than what happened to Native Americans? The Soviet Union under Stalin and then what the Russians went through during World War II (estimates of the number of dead vary by millions)? The extermination programs of the Third Reich? Rwandan genocide… On and on. I was able to put these subjects in a sort of manageable, academic box. I could write papers about these things, discuss foreign policy failures, etc. blah blah without too much difficulty.
Some might call it clinical detachment. Objectivity. Whatever.
Later on, however, as I started to research trauma induced mind control, I also started to stumble over stories related to human trafficking and crimes against children.
You may or may not have noticed that I don’t post much about human trafficking and crimes against children. It’s not that I’m not aware of these stories (I am). For the first time, with these topics, I found myself wanting to un-read what I was reading, and I couldn’t.
There is palpable, opaque, murmuring evil in the world, and this shit, in my opinion, offers a crystal clear view of it.
So, I’m warning you, in the strongest possible terms: If this topic is new to you, and you proceed, know that you run the risk of not being able to go back. You never know how or when this stuff will haunt you, but it almost certainly will haunt you.
With the long preface/disclaimer/warning out of the way, I have just one question:
Which Texan was going to buy a young girl for three hundred thousand dollars? via cryptogon.org (sorry can’t link, typepad will spank me…)
We all know Foley walked away from his sexual deviance, he prolly wont get pardoned because he got off scott free, but I’d be willing to bet a pint, Scooter ‘sex with bears in Aspen or somesuch shit’ Libby got his annual X-mas party present this year for the big Don, this year it was two Guatamaln pre teen boys for Jr. and the hungry ghosts.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 2 2009 1:03 utc | 7

On a lighter note.. have you seen “The Winner is Georgia” campaign? Invest in Georgia
Prettier than Georgia, USA; better wine than the French; more honerst than the British; more encouraging to entrepreneurs than Germany; lower taxes than Hong Kong; greater economic growth than Japan; better location than Holland; less bureaucratic than Australia; etc.

Posted by: Tosk | Jan 3 2009 0:16 utc | 9

jarch watch – latest positioning for that oil
U.S. firm to invest in agriculture in South Sudan

January 2, 2009 (WASHINGTON) — A privately held U.S. investment firm entered into an agricultural investment with a company controlled by the son of a South Sudanese general.
Jarch Management Group, Ltd, which is registered in the Virgin Islands, is managed by commodities traders and former State Department and Central Intelligence Agency officials, among others.
The investment group announced that it has purchased a 70% interest, by way of sub-participation, in a company incorporated in Juba, the capital of the autonomous region of Southern Sudan. This company, Leac for Agriculture and Investment Company Limited, is controlled by Gabriel Matip, the eldest son of General Paulino Matip Nhial, deputy commander-in-chief of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
In addition, Jarch has leased a large tract of farmland in Mayom county of Unity State.
“Jarch has leased approximately 400,000 hectares gross of prime farmland from General Paulino Matip. In addition, Jarch will acquire more farm land within Southern Sudan,” said a statement issued by the investment group.
The statement also noted that Mayom county, where the farmland was leased, contains some mineral resources, for which contracts will be executed by the Government of Southern Sudan in early 2009.
A number of commanders of the SPLA are members of Jarch’s advisory board. These figures are drawn particularly from influential members of the former insurgency in Nuerland, including Paulino Matip and Peter Gadet. Notably, Vice-President Riek Machar and Major General Gulwak Deng were also invited to join the advisory board.
…
While U.S. companies are banned from doing business in Sudan, which the U.S. considers a state sponsor of terrorism, agriculture in Southern Sudan is exempted from sanctions provided that the Khartoum-based national government does not have any stake in the business and provided that no imports or exports pass through non-exempt areas.
“Jarch will only deal in Southern Sudan and will not involve any entity from the Government of Sudan,” said the company statement.
The privately-held firm operates in Africa to extract natural resources. The company is chaired by Philippe Heilberg, who during the 1990s worked in the commodities division of American International Group, a giant American financial company that nearly collapsed in 2008.
“Jarch continues to see tremendous opportunities in South Sudan as it continues to emerge to realize its full potential,” noted the investment group, which will look for a partner to help it maximize the value of this opportunity.

Posted by: b real | Jan 3 2009 8:03 utc | 11

Good words lizard. Here and on the other post too…
Thanks
dave

Posted by: David | Jan 3 2009 12:45 utc | 13

T. Terrific,
This is an interesting point. I wonder how much malicious financial malfeasance will crawl past under the smokescreen of the Gaza tragedy?
Dave

Posted by: David | Jan 4 2009 0:00 utc | 15

What about Neil? What about Marvin? What about Doro?

Posted by: alabama | Jan 5 2009 8:19 utc | 17

part of that first la times txt got chopped, it should read

Sudan has “given us specific information that is … important, functional and current,” said a senior State Department official who agreed to discuss intelligence matters on condition of anonymity. The official acknowledged that the Mukhabarat could become a “top tier” partner of the CIA. “Their competence level as a service is very high,” the official said. “You can’t survive in that part of the world without a good intelligence service, and they are in a position to provide significant help.”

relatedly, jonathan steele in the guardian
Darfur wasn’t genocide and Sudan is not a terrorist state
Even MI6 and the CIA are frustrated by the attitude of US neocons and the Christian right towards the Sudanese conflicts

Question: when do Bush administration officials cuddle up to leaders of states that the US describes as sponsors of international terrorism? Answer: when they are in Khartoum. I know because I saw it the other day. It was in the garden of the headquarters of Sudan’s intelligence service, not far from the Nile. Fairy lights twinkled on wires draped round palm trees. African drummers played. Sadly, no alcohol was served, but clearly there was something in the air.
Up stepped a senior CIA agent. In full view of the assembled company, he gave General Salah Abdallah Gosh, Sudan’s intelligence boss, a bear hug. The general responded by handing over a goody-bag, wrapped in shiny green paper. Next up was a senior MI6 official, with the same effusive routine – hug, hand-shake, bag of presents.
We were attending the closing dinner of a two-day conference of African counter-terrorism officials, to which the US and the UK were invited as observers. The western spooks were less than happy to have the press on hand, especially as their names were called out. But loss of anonymity was a small price for the excellent cooperation both agencies believe Sudan is giving in the campaign to keep tabs on Somali, Saudi and other Arab fundamentalists who pass through its territory.

Posted by: b real | Jan 6 2009 4:01 utc | 19

On a somewhat lighter note… this late obit, was interesting in so far as I loved RAW’s work, he was truly an unsung hero to me. Thought I’d pass it along…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 8 2009 1:55 utc | 21

GOOD NIGHT, GAZA
The words are children and they are dead.
Is late night comedy getting difficult to write?
I’m just mad at the slowness of city snow removal
and how long we have to wait until we’re saved (1-20-09)
See how the petty gripes of empire snip and quiver?
Thankfully Jon Stewart makes arab-killing palatable
What? Pieces and charred surfaces once faces and arms?
Quick, cartoon the grim scene into a gum I can chew
And do not even pretend to doubt the perspective of
their view.

Posted by: Lizard | Jan 8 2009 5:59 utc | 23

Three separate times this afternoon I tried to post a comment and was redirected to typepads log in screen, I did a screen capture of it here. I brought this up in the Russia Ukraine Gas Dispute thread (which I can’t link to*) and only David has responded, I ask again, has anyone else, MOA or otherwise, had this happen? To repeat myself, I was pretty pissed , as I and other MOA’s have discussed the recent incessant typepad issues.
I Assumed it was what I perceive as the methodical governing of free thought and as alarmist as that sounds, reading that “these were new features” I thought perhaps, we were to log in now merely to be able to post comments and other views, ana that perhaps typepad hadn’t even bothered to tell b, etc, but you know with shit like the following going on, what other conclusions can be drawn as to what they plan for the clamp down?
U.S. Armed Forces Attempts To Counter Bloggers
Military Psyops blogs promote domestic InfoWar
I’d really like to link to Debs excellent discussions of these matters but, guess what?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 8 2009 10:14 utc | 25

Speaking of said clamp down…
Nixon: It’s not illegal when the President does it.
Police apologist: It’s not murder when a guy in a blue uniform does it:
Riots in Oakland
So they shoot a hand cuffed man in the back, then according to the above video, try to take the video evidence?
Here’s a better angle of the Oscar Grant shooting…
thing is, the PTB want this, they want to amp it up… They’re itching to use their new toys…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 8 2009 10:35 utc | 27

UK – New powers for police to hack your PC

By Nigel Morris, Deputy Political Editor
Monday, 5 January 2009
Police have been given the power to hack into personal computers without a court warrant. The Home Office is facing anger and the threat of a legal challenge after granting permission. Ministers are also drawing up plans to allow police across the EU to collect information from computers in Britain.
The moves will fuel claims that the Government is presiding over a steady extension of the “surveillance society” threatening personal privacy.
Hacking – known as “remote searching” – has been quietly adopted by police across Britain following the development of technology to access computers’ contents at a distance. Police say it is vital for tracking cyber-criminals and paedophiles and is used sparingly but civil liberties groups fear it is about to be vastly expanded.
Remote searching can be achieved by sending an email containing a virus to a suspect’s computer which then transmits information about email contents and web-browsing habits to a distant surveillance team .
Alternatively, “key-logging” devices can be inserted into a computer that relay details of each key hit by its owner. Detectives can also monitor the contents of a suspect’s computer hard-drive via a wireless network.
Computer hacking has to be approved by a chief constable, who must be satisfied the action is proportionate to the crime being investigated.
Last month European ministers agreed in principle to allow police to carry out remote searches of suspects’ computers across the EU.
Details of the proposal are still being developed by the Home Office and other EU ministries, but critics last night warned it would usher in a vast expansion of police hacking operations.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights campaign group Liberty, said such a vast expansion of police powers should be regulated by a new Act of Parliament and that police should be forced to apply to a court for a warrant to hack into computers.
_________________

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 8 2009 11:13 utc | 29

@Uncle – and thanks for all your links. Always helpful!

Posted by: b | Jan 8 2009 15:30 utc | 31

Uncle, I second b’s #33.
I don’t know where you find the time, energy and perspicacity to find all those links and add your commentary to boot. I can barely keep up just reading them. But overall I find your communications quite valuable.
So I understand your frustration with typepad and hope it can be solved. I haven’t experienced anything like what you have but I post considerably less. It occurred to me that your effectiveness in uncovering and disseminating embarrassing information to the pinstriped bosses might have somehow gotten you targeted for harassment.
Whatever, I just wanted to bolster your spirits for further good work in the future. :-]

Posted by: Juannie | Jan 8 2009 16:55 utc | 33

Meanwhile, in the Obamamania department: Looking at Entitlements
Let’s take a journey back down the memory hole.
Remember Al Gore, the guy who promised to “put Social Security in a lock-box, and use the budget surpluses he inherited from the Clinton administration to pay down the national debt? Well, he was laughed out of town by the double-chinned Washington pundits, only eight short years ago.
Instead the Supreme Court selected a man who then hired Grover Norquist. Remember him? The guy who said, “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
When his braggadocio began interfering with elite consensus to privatize Social Security, he magically dropped out of sight. But not out of action.
Here’s this nugget from the LA Times about the budget deficit:

Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, an economic consulting firm in Lexington, Mass., noted that the $1.2-trillion projection is roughly 8% of the gross domestic product — a magnitude that is “off the charts.”
As a percentage of GDP, the projected deficit would be the worst since World War II, outstripping the record of 6% set in 1983.

Seems old Grover was so successful over the past eight years under Bush that it has become unpopular to even mention that such a situation was planned and lauded by the Washington pundits.
Yesterday, Obama gave a news conference announcing his appointment of Nancy Killefer to a new White House post of chief performance officer.
It fell to a reporter from the Wall Street Journal to ask the leading question that Obama’s campaign donors were waiting to hear: “What about the fate of Medicare and Social Security, among the largest federal expenditures?”
As the LA Times puts it (no links, Typepad):

But Obama also has pledged to take political risks that past presidents have avoided. Asked if he would consider cuts in two popular but costly programs — Medicare and Social Security — Obama said he would evaluate both as he tried to reduce the deficit.
He said announcements about his plans for those programs might come in February.
“We are beginning consultations with members of Congress around how we expect to approach the deficit,” Obama said. “We expect that the discussions around entitlements will be a central part of those plans.”

How nice for us working people, Obama is going to take risks. And why is it risky to do what he is planning? Simply put, because people don’t like to get fucked, even by their favorite rock star idol.
Do you get it yet? The money the government takes from the pockets of working people to pay for healthcare and old age are not rights. They are just entitlements, which the government must rein in, in order to control spending. As wsws.org notes, they are “the most important components of what remains of a social safety net in the United States —- the programs that provide at least minimal retirement benefits and medical coverage for tens of millions of elderly people, as well as medical coverage for millions of low-income families.”
Now why do we need to rein in spending? Could it be because Obama proposes to increase the troop level in Afghanistan to 60,000, a move which could cost up to $40B/yr., atop the Trillion plus we already spend on Orwellian “defense.” Nah, that couldn’t be the case. You see, military spending is not an “entitlement;” it is a necessity; it is vital for our national “defense.” If we were to cut back, or attempt to restrain its growth in any way, you can be sure a false flag operation designed to make 9-11 look like small potatoes would soon ensue. And no politician wants to be caught on the wrong side of that debate. In other words, what Bush has essentially done is to put the US on the same war footing it was on by the end of WWII with respect to both budget deficits and military spending as a percentage of GDP, and all without Congress ever having to vote on a war. Pretty neat trick, huh. And be sure, this was no accidental flight of incompetence: these changes were planned and discussed for years in conservative think tanks before they were quietly implemented.
But changes this vast come in small increments, single battles which the press duly covers with pre-polled nonsense quotes from both sides, designed to elicit emotional responses at the cost of intellectual understanding, sandwiched between whopping dollops of popular cultural distraction. And most people, conditioned as they are to react emotionally to discrete events, never see the vast sweep of history, planned and implemented by their elites, until it’s too late.
Few Democrats who voted for Obama, for instance, would acknowledge the established bi-partisan pattern: “Irresponsible” Republicans rack up huge budget deficits, and then “responsible” Democrats trim back social spending to balance the budget. Reagan/Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and now Obama. Each step has been pre-planned, and the relevant arguments have been poll-tested to ensure that the correct heartstrings are tugged, and the proper results follow with all the regularity of fine clockwork. Each battle is de-contextualized by emotionalizing it, and also by a press which conveniently drops all relevant context. (Unless it is to state that Israel called for a ceasefire, and Hamas answered by firing rockets.) Bewildered, people never see the forest for the trees.
Let’s examine these entitlements more closely. Wsws notes:

While both Social Security and Medicare are solvent, currently taking in more tax revenues than they pay out, the Social Security Trust Fund, which represents the accumulated contributions of three generations of working people, has been effectively plundered to pay for the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the wealthy, two wars and the immense US military establishment.
Out of $10.7 trillion in total federal debt, about 40 percent, or $4.3 trillion, is borrowed from Social Security. The Trust Fund is the largest holder of federal debt, followed by US private investors, who hold $3.4 trillion, and foreign investors, many of them governments, who hold $3 trillion.

We always hear about China buying our treasuries, along with worried plaints over what we would do if China ever stopped propping up the US government. Now we know the answer: It would come out of the “entitlements” for working people, the very thing that separates our society from Dickensian England. We, the US working public, already hold 50% more in government debt than do foreigners. We were never asked about this. No one polled the working public as to whether they would be willing to trade their meager old age safety net for a military capable of instilling a state of “shock and awe” upon the third world. Actually, the news of where this money mysteriously went would leave the average working person in “shock and awe.”
What does Obama have to say about this?

“Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four.”

Whoops, he was addressing the economy here, not entitlements, which he never addressed with this level of detail and honesty. You see, he is more “concerned” about growing our GDP, which military spending is designed to do (in a very non-distributive way, bringing vast profits to weapon producers, albeit at the cost of the lives of tens of thousands of sub-human peasants on the other side of the globe each year), than he is concerned with people’s “entitlements.” Despite Obama’s “concern,” his statistic is worse than meaningless, it is false, and went unchallenged by our corporate media — a pattern we should get used to now that our new Imperial Manager is a rock star. If our economy was producing at full capacity, no working family would receive a check for $12K every year. Actually, the costs of remediating the additional environmental damage of this production, if addressed, would take money away from people. But it would increase the GDP, a meaningless statistic which we are encouraged to worship, as we do Obama, because it has no relevance to our quality of life, but does to business profits.
Now, let’s say that he chose to address our budget and military spending honestly, what could Obama say? How about this:

“Because of our preposterously bloated military budget and the unconscionable tax cuts which our bi-partisan Congress gave to its wealthy benefactors, our government has been forced to borrow 4.3 trillion dollars from the future entitlements of America’s working class, an amount equal to over fifty thousand dollars in benefits for a family of four. Now we will find ways to trick you and trim that amount from what you would have received to stay alive in your time of need in order to transfer more money to the rich, ahem, balance our budget, which I’m sure you understand is only wise and prudent.”

(Repeat several times until all working-class and poor people’s entitlements have vanished. Follow with a healthy dose of entertainment. Maybe an overtime Super Bowl ending, or Janet Jackson’s other tit.)
Of course, if Obama were to say such a thing, were to let such a boldly honest statement as this fall from his magisterial lips, instead of mouthing empty platitudes about “Hope” and “Change,” then he “wouldn’t be electable,” in the code-words our corporate media uses for whorishly servicing its elite. And he would begin to sound more like Cynthia McKinney, a person of real honesty and character, and more properly considered as Black America’s true leader.
Back to Obama, what is his idea of leadership? Well, he did broach this little nugget:

To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that, within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized.

How nice for us. Are we to receive single-payer healthcare for all, as the rest of the industrial world enjoys, resulting in lower costs and longer, healthier, more worry-free lives? Of course not. Instead, we will be forced to provide the government with a print-out of our complete medical history for their (or Rumsfeld’s) database. In other words, the government, in addition to spying on your every communication, as Obama voted in favor of, and knowing all of your financial transactions, would also have access to your entire personal health records. In a time of crisis, these could be used in many ways to increase a government’s domination over their populace: to prevent government critics from getting jobs, to ensure that everyone took some government required vaccine, to monitor people’s financial spending, etc.
Wsws, never at a loss between a real leftist agenda which benefits the working class, and an elite-crafted and tested “socially left agenda,” which suckers in the NPR crowd and those who don’t have to work for an hourly wage, somberly concludes:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has close ties to the right-wing faction of House Democrats, the so-called Blue Dogs, added his voice to the chorus calling for long-term deficit-reduction measures, going so far as to suggest that the Obama administration might have to follow the example of the Republican administrations of the 1980s, when White House budget officials engaged in across-the-board budget cuts by executive order, a process called “sequestering.”
Congressional Democrats opposed sequestering 20 years ago, pointing out that there was no constitutional authority for such executive action without congressional authorization. It is a measure of how far to the right the Democratic Party has moved that one of its top leaders now embraces such a policy.
Robert Bixby, director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates fiscal austerity, provided an indication of what is being contemplated, saying, “I would analogize it to what the government is doing with the auto companies. Congress said, we’ll give you the money but you have to show us a plan for sustainability.” In return for emergency loans to the US auto companies, Congress demanded tens of thousands of layoffs, the closure of dozens of plants and draconian cuts in auto workers’ wages and benefits.
Four years ago, George W. Bush began his second term as president by proposing a sweeping privatization of Social Security, a measure which was never formally introduced in Congress due to overwhelming popular opposition. The plan was quietly shelved after the debacle of Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the Bush administration’s gross incompetence and utter indifference to the plight of poor and working class Americans. It has thus been left to Obama, who occasionally postures as the heir of Franklin Roosevelt, to take responsibility for dismantling the last legacy of the New Deal.

One notes that the financial firms, who were bailed out with almost one hundred times more money that the auto industry, never had to promise “draconian cuts in wages and benefits.”
And one notes that neither Obama nor Congress is talking about taxing the ultra-wealthy, who hold an even greater share of the country’s wealth than they did in 1929. Why that would make them all “unelectable.” No, the be-partisan plan is to take yet more money from the working people in order to enrich the US’s upper-crust, and to pay for yet more wars to kill more people.
How is Obama different from Bush again? Or “better than McCain would have been?,” an unprovable statement that Democrats reflexively throw at anyone when forced to confront cold hard facts which they insist upon denying.
How does that saying go?
“You can’t fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them that Obama has your interests at heart in order to advance an elite agenda.”
Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, which is probably why it will take so long for people to get it.
And so it goes….

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 9 2009 4:25 utc | 35

Here is an interesting situation that we’re gonna see more of.
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/186305
People brave enough (or stupid enough) to publicly support what israel is doing are going to find themselves in a world of hurt. It’s unfortunate how this situation is only going to further polarize an already polarized world.
Dave

Posted by: David | Jan 9 2009 15:51 utc | 37

a free pdf of craig murray’s new book the catholic orangemen of togo and other conflicts i have known is mirrored at cryptome

Craig has been forced to ‘self-publish’ because, in spite of extended negotiations, his regular publisher withdrew after legal threats from solicitors acting for certain individuals mentioned in the book -notably ex-British Army Colonel Tim Spicer, notorious for his defence of the murder of a Northern Ireland teenager by troops under his command, and for his mercenary activities in Sierra Leone and other African countries. The book is currently available through Amazon but, in anticipation of the legal threats being extended to Amazon, Craig is also making it available FOC from any internet site prepared to host it. To that end I am assisting in distributing it to as many potential hosts as possible.
Not only is the book a cracking read, in the mould of his first book Murder in Samarkand which emerged from similar extended battles, but its publication is a worthy contribution to the fight against arbitrary and unreasonable censorship by both governments and wealthy individuals through recourse to draconian UK official secrets and libel laws
…
Details of the threats: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/Schillings.pdf

looks like there’s a lot of material on ghana & sierra leone

Posted by: b real | Jan 9 2009 19:53 utc | 39

Malooga@37 —
Fine post, good observations — especially re the contrast between The Barockstar Obamiracle, and Cynthia McKinney.

Posted by: micah pyre | Jan 9 2009 23:39 utc | 41

Here is a youtube video showing Israelis in Tel Aviv protesting against the war. Quite a crowd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc9DN2Oi0-w
Also some images of israeli rednecks calling the protesters “traitors.” Kind of like life here in the US of A, but everyone is speaking one of them funny languages. The world would be easier if ya’all would speak english like us good Amerikans…
Dave

Posted by: David | Jan 10 2009 0:33 utc | 43

TV From Around the World: On Your PC

January 7, 2009 in News by Eric Garris | 6 comments
Want to see first-hand reporting from Gaza? Al-Jazeera’s team was there before journalists were banned.
Want to watch English-language TV news from Pakistan, India, Iran, Russia, Korea?
Want to watch Hezbollah TV without your provider going to prison?
Want to watch special movie channels, documentary channels, and various specialty channels without paying for them?
A new application called LiveStation allows you to watch thousands of different channels on your PC for free, in very high quality. Stations are being added daily, and users are able to add any stations that offer public feeds. Stations added by users become available to all LiveStation users. A chat function is also available to interact with other viewers.
The download is fast and free, and the program doesn’t appear to be buggy or a memory hog. The video quality is very good, even in full-screen mode.
LiveStation has become my new addiction. I highly recommend downloading the program and giving it a try. It is available for PC, Mac, and Linux.

This is just about the best tv/pc software I’ve seen so far, light weight, and clear, this software and video-audio stream works well. Check it out…
Watching current Gaza reporting from Al Jazeera, Russa and France TV etc…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 10 2009 4:45 utc | 45

Jony, I suggest maybe not trying to follow up another stellar analysis from the sharp lens of Malooga with more corn-flecked poo from the apologist section, thank you.

Posted by: Lizard | Jan 10 2009 7:03 utc | 47

Copeland,
you really want to believe, don’t you? I will grant you that a majority of US voters wanted change but what makes me very leery of your optimism is the simple fact that nearly 60 million voted for McCain.
If it had not been for extremely high gas prices and the economy going to hell in September we would be waiting for a split government with Dems in the House and Senate and Repubs in the White House.
at the end of the day, it is really quite silly to cheer for one man over the other, we do not really get to choose who these people are. it might be far more productive to get involved with local politics and try to influence the process from there. in other words be a player rather than a spectator.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 10 2009 7:47 utc | 49

dan of steele-
No, this is not so much about optimism, this is about what can be demonstrated in an argument and what cannot. Every president has been given 100 days to demonstrate what he is about. An obsession has set in with some of our commenters; and argument advances relentlessly, with the subtext that Barack Obama is the betrayer of all betrayers, and that the government being assembled is a lost cause before it begins. A number of commenters have succumbed. They should be asked how they know what they know with such certainty. Their epistomology is faulty; and then they conclude their posts by claiming that it is the others, the optimists, whose postulate is unprovable.
People who say let’s see what happens are optimists. Well, the bar for optimism has been set too low.
No, there is an obsession at work here, an obsession that worries me, one that argues that we are ruined politically, and nevermind that there have been qualitative changes in the tenor of our national conversation, or that the powerful election result has at least cut off a tangible evil, or that the public rejection of freakish political madness, is not some evidence of change, of some change having taken place already.
The reason I am beginning to reject this reasoning so strongly, is that it holds up to ridicule those who are labeled too naive, or optimistic, or levels the condescending charge that we have confused our chief executive with a redeemer. It is insulting and pointless and is beginning to bore me.

Posted by: Copeland | Jan 10 2009 8:57 utc | 51

I am with you Copeland wrt the levels of despair demonstrated here lately. I too almost hate myself for having put children on this earth. Looking at life from the point of view of many of the commenters here you can not help but be overcome by a sense of helplessness. The PTB are so very effective in framing the discussion and controlling public opinion that I for one see no way out.
What is there to do about that? Public demonstrations don’t work, writing or calling congress critters does not work, it is becoming increasing harder to organize on line because of counter measures put in place by those who wish to maintain the status quo (witness canoneer04 who proudly links back to his own site dedicated to pushing government propagenda), and the worst thing is that we have no single unifying cause. the right wingers buy allegiance by promising to end abortion on demand which satisfies one small group and buys other’s allegiances by promising to keep homosexuals from marrying each other, not to mention the groups who dearly love their guns and can be bought for a hollow promise (it was after all a republican Congress that passed the Brady bill). What would unify the entire group who post here? Would all the Kossacks get on board as well?
so it easy to be pessimistic and hard to be optimistic. what may have happened around here is that we have been shown time and time again that the very worst qualities of people are exhibited over and over and is to be expected rather than be something that surprises or shocks. this has probably caused more than just me to become jaded and cynical. I know that it is not helpful to be that way and make a conscious effort to not let it take over my life. I don’t want to end up on the sidewalk screaming at demons.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 10 2009 9:29 utc | 53

The following article shows that gas reserves off Gaza drive Israeli strategy and that Blair was in collusion with the Israelis in ensuring that Egypt didn’t sign an agreement with British gas in 2006 to pump gas to Egypt, fearing that it would strengthen Hamas. The pinprick Hamas Katyusha rocket attacks were the flimsy excuse Israel needed to pursue its natural gas strategy. It’s really amazing how little ‘investigative reporting’ the mainstream Western media bothers to do, instead preferring to parrot White House Statements and Israeli denials:
War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields
By Michel Chossudovsky
URL of this article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.ph…..;aid=11680
Global Research, January 8, 2009
The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.
This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.
British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon’s Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.
The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60 percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz, October 21, 2007).
The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001).
The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. (See Map below). It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.
The BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2. Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion cubic feet, valued at approximately 4 billion dollars. These are the figures made public by British Gas. The size of Palestine’s gas reserves could be much larger.
Map 1
Map 2
Who Owns the Gas Fields
The issue of sovereignty over Gaza’s gas fields is crucial. From a legal standpoint, the gas reserves belong to Palestine.
The death of Yasser Arafat, the election of the Hamas government and the ruin of the Palestinian Authority have enabled Israel to establish de facto control over Gaza’s offshore gas reserves.
British Gas (BG Group) has been dealing with the Tel Aviv government. In turn, the Hamas government has been bypassed in regards to exploration and development rights over the gas fields.
The election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 was a major turning point. Palestine’s sovereignty over the offshore gas fields was challenged in the Israeli Supreme Court. Sharon stated unequivocally that “Israel would never buy gas from Palestine” intimating that Gaza’s offshore gas reserves belong to Israel.
In 2003, Ariel Sharon, vetoed an initial deal, which would allow British Gas to supply Israel with natural gas from Gaza’s offshore wells. (The Independent, August 19, 2003)
The election victory of Hamas in 2006 was conducive to the demise of the Palestinian Authority, which became confined to the West Bank, under the proxy regime of Mahmoud Abbas.
In 2006, British Gas “was close to signing a deal to pump the gas to Egypt.” (Times, May, 23, 2007). According to reports, British Prime Minister Tony Blair intervened on behalf of Israel with a view to shunting the agreement with Egypt.
The following year, in May 2007, the Israeli Cabinet approved a proposal by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert “to buy gas from the Palestinian Authority.” The proposed contract was for $4 billion, with profits of the order of $2 billion of which one billion was to go the Palestinians.
Tel Aviv, however, had no intention on sharing the revenues with Palestine. An Israeli team of negotiators was set up by the Israeli Cabinet to thrash out a deal with the BG Group, bypassing both the Hamas government and the Palestinian Authority:
“Israeli defence authorities want the Palestinians to be paid in goods and services and insist that no money go to the Hamas-controlled Government.” (Ibid, emphasis added)
The objective was essentially to nullify the contract signed in 1999 between the BG Group and the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.
Under the proposed 2007 agreement with BG, Palestinian gas from Gaza’s offshore wells was to be channeled by an undersea pipeline to the Israeli seaport of Ashkelon, thereby transferring control over the sale of the natural gas to Israel.
The deal fell through. The negotiations were suspended:
“Mossad Chief Meir Dagan opposed the transaction on security grounds, that the proceeds would fund terror”. (Member of Knesset Gilad Erdan, Address to the Knesset on “The Intention of Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Purchase Gas from the Palestinians When Payment Will Serve Hamas,” March 1, 2006, quoted in Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, Does the Prospective Purchase of British Gas from Gaza’s Coastal Waters Threaten Israel’s National Security? Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, October 2007)
Israel’s intent was to foreclose the possibility that royalties be paid to the Palestinians. In December 2007, The BG Group withdrew from the negotiations with Israel and in January 2008 they closed their office in Israel.(BG website).
Invasion Plan on The Drawing Board
The invasion plan of the Gaza Strip under “Operation Cast Lead” was set in motion in June 2008, according to Israeli military sources:
“Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago [June or before June] , even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.”(Barak Ravid, Operation “Cast Lead”: Israeli Air Force strike followed months of planning, Haaretz, December 27, 2008)
That very same month, the Israeli authorities contacted British Gas, with a view to resuming crucial negotiations pertaining to the purchase of Gaza’s natural gas:
“Both Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler agreed to inform BG of Israel’s wish to renew the talks.
The sources added that BG has not yet officially responded to Israel’s request, but that company executives would probably come to Israel in a few weeks to hold talks with government officials.” (Globes online- Israel’s Business Arena, June 23, 2008)
The decision to speed up negotiations with British Gas (BG Group) coincided, chronologically, with the planning of the invasion of Gaza initiated in June. It would appear that Israel was anxious to reach an agreement with the BG Group prior to the invasion, which was already in an advanced planning stage.
Moreover, these negotiations with British Gas were conducted by the Ehud Olmert government with the knowledge that a military invasion was on the drawing board and that a new political-territorial arrangement for Gaza strip was being contemplated by Israel.
In fact, negotiations between British Gas and Israeli officials were ongoing in October 2008, 2-3 months prior to the commencement of the bombings on December 27th.
In November 2008, the Israeli Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Infrastructures instructed Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) to enter into negotiations with British Gas, on the purchase of natural gas from the BG’s offshore concession in Gaza. (Globes, November 13, 2008)
“Ministry of Finance director general Yarom Ariav and Ministry of National Infrastructures director general Hezi Kugler wrote to IEC CEO Amos Lasker recently, informing him of the government’s decision to allow negotiations to go forward, in line with the framework proposal it approved earlier this year.
The IEC board, headed by chairman Moti Friedman, approved the principles of the framework proposal a few weeks ago. The talks with BG Group will begin once the board approves the exemption from a tender.” (Globes Nov. 13, 2008)
Gaza and Energy Geopolitics
The military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel in violation of international law.
What can we expect in the wake of the invasion?
What is the intent of Israel with regard to Palestine’s Natural Gas reserves?
A new territorial arrangement, with the stationing of Israeli and/or “peacekeeping” troops?
The militarization of the entire Gaza coastline, which is strategic for Israel?
The outright confiscation of Palestinian gas fields and the unilateral declaration of Israeli sovereignty over Gaza’s maritime areas?
If this were to occur, the Gaza gas fields would be integrated into Israel’s offshore installations, which are contiguous to those of the Gaza Strip. (See Map 1 above).
These various offshore installations are also linked up to Israel’s energy transport corridor, extending from the port of Eilat, which is an oil pipeline terminal, on the Red Sea to the seaport – pipeline terminal at Ashkelon, and northwards to Haifa, and eventually linking up through a proposed Israeli-Turkish pipeline with the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
Ceyhan is the terminal of the Baku, Tblisi Ceyhan Trans Caspian pipeline. “What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel’s Tipline.” (See Michel Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, July 23, 2006)

Posted by: Parviz | Jan 10 2009 9:40 utc | 55

Parviz 57, 58,
Thanks for bringing those to the bar. Very helpful and informative.
Drinks on me.

Posted by: Hamburger | Jan 10 2009 13:13 utc | 57

No, this is not so much about optimism, this is about what can be demonstrated in an argument and what cannot. Every president has been given 100 days to demonstrate what he is about.
What a laugh. So the election campaigns are not what a president is about? The conventions are not about what a president is about?
Genius! So we should have voted for anyone and given him 100 days, you’re saying? Glad to hear it! Let’s elect Copeland, the mindless pseudo-intellectual! He gets 100 days to prove his mettle! Let’s hope it’s better than the feeble argument for The Barockstar Obamiracle he’s offering here.

Posted by: micah pyre | Jan 10 2009 14:47 utc | 59

Parviz, the offer stands.
I saw the effectively construced Khalidi piece in the NYT and wished it had appeared earlier (but better now than never), as I would bet serious $ that 99.99% of Americans have no such knowledge.
Thanks for the link to Porter. Saw Claire Short make the same argument clearly, strongly (appearing with Cynthia McKinney) on Riz Khan’s al-Jazeera interview show the other evening. So very few voices against the hurricane of propaganda blowing out of Israel to every newspaper around the world. I don’t expect to see McKinney and Short on any of the Sunday talking heads.
Will history record this slaughter? I feel there is little chance of cessation of the war on Gaza, condemnation of the US and Israel, justice for the Palestinians.

Posted by: Hamburger | Jan 10 2009 17:45 utc | 61

i’m with dan of steel on this – there can be fury in our arguments but we share aa history with one another & & demonising anyone here is itself, reactionary
fact & argument ought to be the path to the correctness of your commentary

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 10 2009 20:28 utc | 63

Parviz-
Nice to see you back with such important posts.
@57: So simply and elegantly stated
@58: I have continually mentioned this point but not developed it. Hard to argue in favor of the “jockeying for election” theory against this evidence, in addition to the planning evidence.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 10 2009 22:41 utc | 65

Intellectuals
Robinson Jeffers
It is so hard for men to stand by themselves,
They must hang on Marx or Christ, or mere Progress?
Clearly it is hard. But these ought to be leaders…
Sheep leading sheep, “The fold, the fold.
Night comes, and the wolves of doubt.” Clearly it is hard.
Yourself, if you had not encountered and loved
Our unkindly all but inhuman God
Who is very beautiful and too secure to want worshippers,
And includes indeed the sheep with the wolves,
You too might have been looking about for a church.
He includes the flaming stars and pitiable flesh,
And what we call things and what we call nothing.
He is very beautiful. But when these lonely have traveled
Through long thoughts to redeeming despair,
They are tired and cover their eyes; they flock into fold.

Posted by: Lizard | Jan 11 2009 5:55 utc | 67

Malooga, thanks for the warm welcome from you and Hamburger. I feel like the prodigal son, guilty at having strayed repeatedly from such an outstanding blog. I’ll try to read and contribute more often from now on:
Here is another exceptionally factual rebuttal of Israeli lies by Stuart Littlewood, published on December 31st. Each Israeli lie is exposed with a cutting rejoinder:
Why do the U.S.A. and Western Europe continue to appease the (true) Neo-Nazis (I know, referring to Israelis as Neo-Nazis is punishable under U.S. anti-Semitism guidelines, which shows how successfully AIPAC has installed self-protective mechanisms into U.S. Law. I wonder: How did AIPAC manage to obtain congressional approval of statutes defining ‘anti-Israeli’ comments as ‘anti-semitic’??? Is this 2009 or 1984?
Israel’s Lie Machine is Working Flat Out
by Stuart Littlewood
Global Research, December 31, 2008
Middle East Online
The core issue in this struggle is the illegality of Israel’s brutal occupation. Israel goes to great lengths to avoid and suppress all mention of it and play-acts the pathetic victim, notes Stuart Littlewood.
While the murderous assault on Gaza continues, I notice there’s a briefing document on the website of the Israeli Embassy in London which has a lie in every line. The West’s mainstream media repeat them, and even the most senior TV and radio interviewers don’t bother to challenge them.
The document is a transcript of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s statement to the Israeli press dated 27 December 2008 – a day that will live in infamy. It is a perfect example of the falsehoods used to dupe not only us westerners but Israel’s own people. The statement shows how the regime’s view of itself is constructed on a web of dishonesty and self-delusion.
For example:
– “Israeli citizens have been under the threat of daily attack from Gaza for years.”
Palestinians have been under harsh Israeli occupation for 60 years.
– “Only this week hundreds of missiles and mortars shells were fired at Israeli civilian communities.”
Only one in 500 Qassam rockets causes a fatality. How many thousands of Israeli bombs, missiles, rockets, grenades and tank-shells have been blasted into the crowded city and towns of the Gaza Strip by Israel’s high-tech weaponry?
– “Until now we have shown restraint. But today there is no other option than a military operation.”
The only legitimate option for Israel is to end the occupation and withdraw behind its 1967 border, as required under international law and UN resolution. Israel has been killing Palestinians at the rate of 8 to 1 since 2000, and children at the rate of nearly 12 to 1 (B’Tselem figures). This is somebody’s idea of restraint?
– “We need to protect our citizens from attack through a military response against the terror infrastructure in Gaza.”
Self defence is not a right exclusive to Israel. Palestinians have an equal right to protect their citizens from the terror tactics of Israel.
– “Israel left Gaza in order to create an opportunity for peace.”
Israel never left Gaza. It still occupies Gaza’s airspace and coastal waters and controls all entrances and exits.
– “In return, the Hamas terror organization took control of Gaza and is using its citizens as cover while it deliberately targets Israeli communities and denies any chance for peace.”
Hamas was voted into power as the legitimate government of Palestine. Israel chose not to accept the people’s choice, which amounted to a denial of their human rights, and immediately set about obliterating it.
– “We have tried everything to reach calm without using force. We agreed to a truce through Egypt that was violated by Hamas, which continued to target Israel, hold Gilad Shalit and build up its arms.”
Try talking. The Israelis’ ongoing siege and economic blockade, begun shortly after Hamas was elected early in 2006, was never going to generate calm. And why is Shalit considered more important than the 9,000 Palestinians abducted and held prisoner by Israel? As soon as a Hamas government was formed Israeli troops arrested 8 Hamas ministers and 20 other parliamentarians, making the work of government impossible.
– “Israel continues to act to prevent humanitarian crisis and to minimize harm to Palestinian civilians.”
Every agency operating in Gaza has warned of the deepening humanitarian crisis and protested about the starvation and suffering, especially of children many of whom show evidence of stunted growth.
– “The responsibility for harm to civilians lies with Hamas.”
Not according to the Fourth Geneva Convention.
– “Hamas is a terrorist organization, supported by Iran, that does not represent the legitimate national interests of the Palestinian people but a radical Islamist agenda that seeks to deny peace for the peoples of this region.”
Hamas was the popular choice of Palestinians at the last election. It is entitled under international law to take up arms against an illegal occupier and invader. If it is supported by Iran, so what? Israel receives mega-support from the US. When it comes to terror, it is Israel’s conduct which fits the US definition of terrorism so perfectly – see Bush’s Executive Order 13224, Section 3 – http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/programs/terror/terror.pdf
– “While confronting Hamas, Israel continues to believe in the two State solution and remains committed to negotiations with the legitimate Palestinian Authority in the context of the peace process, launched at Annapolis.”
Israel is busy establishing irreversible facts on the ground that make a viable Palestinian state impossible. As everyone knows, the regime has reneged on the peace process and carries on building illegal settlements and the illegal Wall, and demolishing Palestinian homes. Months ago Hamas accepted a Palestinian state based on internationally recognized (pre-1967) borders, in accordance with UN resolutions, with full sovereignty and its capital in Jerusalem, but this has been ignored. Hamas also offered a 10-year truce, also ignored. Earlier, Arafat and the PLO recognized the State of Israel in the Oslo agreement but what good did it do? Today’s US-backed, Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority is not representative of the Palestinian people.
– “Israel expects the support and understanding of the international community, as it confronts terror, and advances the interest of all those who wish the forces of peace and co existence to determine the agenda of this region.”
Israel, next to the US, is the biggest purveyor of terror in the region and only advances its own interests. It may get the support of Israel lobby stooges in other western governments but is rapidly earning the contempt of everybody else.
From a statement dated 22 December 2008:
– “Hamas, backed by Iran, has regularly stated its desire to see the complete destruction of Israel.”
Israel is itself a leading destroyer and currently engaged in trying to wipe out Hamas and the Gazans. Iran’s Ahmadinajad quoted the late Ayatollah Khomeini as saying that “this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” – fair comment considering Jerusalem, with Bethlehem, was designated an ‘international city’ under the UN Partition Plan. Israeli propaganda twisted the Iranian’s words to read “Israel must be wiped off the map”. Zionist sources and the manifestos of Israeli political parties have made it clear for a long time that Israel plans to wipe Palestine off the map, and every act and lie is directed towards that end.
– “Our fight is not with the people of Gaza; it is with the extremists of Hamas.”
Then why does the Israeli navy harass and fire on peaceable Gazan fishermen who are well within their own territorial waters? Why does Israel prevent Palestinian students from taking up places at foreign universities and block hospital spares, medicines, foodstuffs and foreign medics from entering Gaza? Why has the Israeli navy just rammed a mercy vessel in international waters taking doctors and medicines to Gaza? Latest air-strikes have hit the Islamic University and the ministry of education. These are direct attacks on Gazan civil society and its infrastructure.
– “Hamas started this conflict, and it bears responsibility for any harm to civilians on either side.”
The conflict, started by Jewish terrorists, has been going on for 60 years, decades before Hamas came into being.
– “Israel’s only responsibility is to protect Israeli citizens.”
As the occupying power Israel has a duty to see that the people of the occupied territories come to no harm.
– “Just as Israel seeks to defend its civilian population, Hamas seeks to kill them.”
This reads far better the other way round: “Just as Hamas seeks to defend its civilian population, Israel seeks to kill them.”
– “Rocket attacks have continued for years and are now a daily occurrence. How long does the international community expect Israel will wait before defending itself against them?”
The rocket attacks will end when Israel ends the occupation and stops terrorizing its neighbours.
– “In the south of Israel, Israeli citizens live with air raid sirens sounding every day – sometimes every hour. Their situation is intolerable.”
Not half as intolerable as it is for the Gazans, who live in constant fear of air raids and re-invasion and are constantly under surveillance by armed drones which can fire missiles under computer control from an armchair in Israeli headquarters.
– “For years, the international community has turned a blind eye to this onslaught. Only when Israel seeks to stop the rockets do they take notice.”
For years the international community has turned a blind eye to Israel’s violations of international law and human rights, which is why the problem remains unsolved.
– “Hamas is not only the enemy of Israel – it is the enemy of every Palestinian who believes in peace.”
Israelis just can’t come to terms with the Palestinians’ democratic choice and are bent on obliterating it.
– “It is Hamas’ attacks – not Israel’s reactions – that destroy every opportunity we have for peace.”
The world has managed to work out by now that Israel doesn’t want peace until it has stolen all the land and water it needs to expand its racist state into a ‘Greater Israel’. It is well on the way to achieving this and won’t be thwarted.
– “Palestinian militants targeted by Israel are not just the enemies of the Israeli people; they are criminals under international law, and enemies of peace.”
Israel is in no position to preach international law.
– “What is collective punishment? ‘Collective punishment’ is a city – schools, hospitals, homes – civilians being bombarded every single day by rockets and mortars.”
Collective punishment is keeping a whole population bottled up under siege and blocking supplies and exports, smashing their infrastructure, wrecking their economy and starving their children. Trying to equate Sderot with what’s happening in the Gaza Strip is idiotic.
– “Today’s Middle East is divided between extremists and pragmatists. Hamas, backed by Iran, belongs to the extremists, who must be defeated for the sake of the future of the Middle East…. Israel’s primary goal is peace.”
Israel’s primary goal is the expansion of Israel by making the occupation of the West Bank permanent and bringing the Gazans to their knees.
The core issue in this struggle is the illegality of Israel’s brutal occupation. Israel goes to great lengths to avoid and suppress all mention of it and play-acts the pathetic victim. As the official statements (above) show, the strategy is to frame and define the situation in Israel’s own terms regardless of the truth. It uses advanced propaganda skills, and the elaborate Israel lobby network, to persuade western politicians and media to accept Israel’s version of events (and even use Israel’s biased language) and not question its motives.
In political PR terms it works wonderfully well. The loony leaders of my own government happily spread the poison and don’t seem interested in halting Israeli aggression and the vaporizing, dismembering and crushing of Gaza’s population. In human PR terms it is a disaster.
I have been listening to the BBC’s senior interviewers these last few days. None has had the gumption to ask Israeli spokesmen the only question that matters – the ‘killer’ question on which hangs the key to peace: WHEN IS ISRAEL GOING TO END ITS OCCUPATION AND RETURN TO THE PALESTINIANS THEIR LANDS AND FREEDOM?
Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.
Global Research Articles by Stuart Littlewood

Posted by: Parviz | Jan 11 2009 8:22 utc | 69

b, I ask you to feature this video clip (only 5 minutes) on a new thread titled “WHY FOREIGNERS HATE AMERICA” and request comments:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/315.html
It’s titled “If Americans Knew” and shows distinguished U.S. career diplomats and others detailing U.S. crimes. The reasons for this ‘hatred’ have nothing to do with “jealousy of our way of life” and other such banal reasons, but everything to do with the U.S.A.’s blind and all-embracing support of Israeli terrorism, details of which are suppressed from the media by the Neocon-Zionist Conspiracy.
Thanks,
‘Parviz’

Posted by: Parviz | Jan 11 2009 13:19 utc | 71

apropos to nothing, what does an osprey do and why would two of them be flying low repeatedly over a suburban neighborhood for two days?? dos?

Posted by: beq | Jan 11 2009 20:12 utc | 73

Ukraine tries signing statements on Gazprom deal. Fails.

Posted by: biklett | Jan 11 2009 21:35 utc | 75

And would anyone care to comment on the video “If Americans Knew …”? Dan, don’t bother. I suppose you would categorize distinguished U.S. career diplomats also as ‘trolls’ …………… Tragic, really, how Israeli extremists and their supporters are actually destroying Israel.

Posted by: Parviz | Jan 11 2009 21:50 utc | 77

@ beq
I have been out of the Air Force for more than 10 years now and the Osprey is mostly a Marine aircraft. It is replacing a couple of large helicopters and is used for hauling anything from vehicles to a bunch of people. They may very well be bringing in extra equipment for the coronation due in a couple of weeks.
sorry I can’t be more help.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 11 2009 22:07 utc | 79

Parviz.
to put it simply, I think you mis-understood dan of steele’s post. And theres nothing unusual about that on this board. Whats most important is that we are learning from each other & your input is uniquely critical. You may not realize it but you have confirmed via your posts that there is an abundance of rigorous & progressive thinking in Iran thats not ordinarily revealed to most of us including myself. Not to state the obvious but I can assure you that dan of steele values your input as much as anyone else.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Jan 11 2009 23:46 utc | 81

@Parviz et al #58
I was going to post this as well, thank you. I have recently revisited this info and found it to be very convincing as they only fully plausible explanation for what we are witnessing in Gaza. Because even ethnic supremacy states don’t publicly go for broke the way Israel is doing… it is this resource issue COMBINED with the ethnic purity/deep racist society that are at play.
What I find so intriguing about that resource explanation is that it ties up other things as well. There is a whole pattern which if I had time I would research further. The first thing that comes to mind is Nahr al-Bared — same strategy on a smaller and less deadly scale. And lebanon. All this orgy of violence that we have seen in the past 9 or so years since 9/11 – I think it’s all tied up with this (I don’t mean only Gaza of course — some big resource grab in multiple places).
Parviz, I’m anxious to know your view about Israel’s intentions toward Iran at this moment. My greatest fear is that we are very close to an Israeli attack on your country. There are so many signs… I think this war in Gaza is also party meant as a springboard to justify that. God knows how — perhaps they’ll uncover some Iranian nuclear stockpile in some refugee camp hovel … that is, if any are left standing.
Please, can you share your thoughts on this?

Posted by: bea | Jan 11 2009 23:57 utc | 83

Thanks dan.
Practicing maybe unless there are more than 2, they’ve been around a lot. I’ve never seen one before. They’re LOUD (or maybe just low).
🙂

Posted by: beq | Jan 12 2009 0:03 utc | 85

r’giap, and others:
The audio quality is poor, but these two recordings from the Marxism 2008 conference in Britain are inspiring and applicable to the Palestinians.
CLR James And The Black Jacobins 1
CLR James And The Black Jacobins 2
The book itelf is an absolutely engrossing read, often referred to as the “War and Peace” of the Carribean.
Of course, the Haitian rebellion is the one single successful slave rebellion of modern times, one reason the Haitians are punished continually for their achievement.
Lots more good audio there for anyone with an mp3 player and time to listen while walking, etc.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 12 2009 0:47 utc | 87

viz. Iran:
This article came out about a week ago: Russia arms to Iran: A mistimed gambit?

Russia and Iran, according to those initial reports on December 21, were holding talks on supplying medium-range air defense systems – specifically, S-300 surface-to-air missile systems – and Esma’il Kowsari, the deputy head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, stated that Tehran had reached an agreement with Moscow on the future delivery of S-300 missile systems.
The following day, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was “checking” these reports. A spokesman for Russia’s state arms exporter was tight-lipped, saying only they could make no public comment on an agreement with its partners.
Yet, the signals are conflicting and were perhaps deliberately confusing.

This article, Ukraine: A key geopolitical battleground between Russia and the West bears study for its deep, yet subtle analysis of the trade-offs involved in diplomacy. Iran is referrenced:

Therefore, the Kremlin will resort to every available option at its disposal to defeat the pro-Western political factions in Ukraine (i.e. to prevent Viktor Yushchenko from being reelected). Now, Moscow has many tools at its disposal that it can use to win this critical geopolitical battle. Russia can:
Exploit Ukrainian dependence on Russian energy
Negotiate with the West a geopolitical tradeoff (i.e. Atlantist abandonment of Ukraine in exchange for Russian abandonment of Iran).
Capitalize pro-Russian sentiment and mobilize political support for Ukrainian forces of pro-Russian orientation, mainly the Party of Regions, and even Yulia Timosehnko.
Use Russian language media outlets operating in Ukraine.
Employ Russian intelligence agencies and exploit the assets they have developed in Ukraine.
Manipulate Russian oligarchs as a foreign policy tool as a vehicle to advance Moscow’s interests in Kiev.

The connection is obvious.
Those who accuse me of alternating between believing the US to be all powerful and believing it to be powerless, should read this too, as it lays out a realistic scenario of options and trade-offs actually involved in diplomacy.
Finally, considering how strongly the US feels that Iran not develop peaceful nuclear power (well within its rights), I find it notable that the radio program, “Earth and Sky,” a five-minute “progressive” squib played on college and public radio stations throughout the US, is championing the use of small boiler-sized nuclear reactors throughout the third world. The message is funded by our friends at Monsanto;-(

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 12 2009 1:06 utc | 89

taking this on to #20/21 from the previous screen
[flashback year=”2005″]

Up stepped a senior CIA agent. In full view of the assembled company, he gave General Salah Abdallah Gosh, Sudan’s intelligence boss, a bear hug. The general responded by handing over a goody-bag, wrapped in shiny green paper. Next up was a senior MI6 official, with the same effusive routine – hug, hand-shake, bag of presents.

[/flashback]
sudan tribune: Westerners could be targets post ICC warrant: Sudan

January 10, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — The top security official in Sudan warned that an arrest warrant for president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir may make western nationals targeted by radical groups in the country.
Salah Gosh, the head of Sudan’s National Security and Intelligence Service told a group of reporters that he expects security breaches by government and non-government parties if Al-Bashir is indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
…
Gosh accused Ocampo of being a “political activist who travels around the world doing diplomatic and media work with a political agenda. The court’s decision is a political one and not judicial”.
…
On relationship with other Security bureaus Gosh said that their cooperation with the CIA is “technical” and not political.
“They [CIA] cannot impose anything on us” he stressed.

Posted by: b real | Jan 12 2009 4:57 utc | 91

pincus: GAO Calls for A New Priority On Public Diplomacy

Improving the United States’ image abroad is No. 5 on the Government Accountability Office’s list of 13 urgent issues requiring the attention of Barack Obama and the 111th Congress during the first year of the new administration.
“In today’s highly volatile global environment, it is more critical than ever that the United States effectively coordinate, manage, and implement its public diplomacy and strategic communications activities to affect foreign public opinion,” the GAO said.
Public diplomacy has for decades been a State Department preserve, although its standing and funding have withered since 1999, when the U.S. Information Agency was merged into the department. Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Defense Department was a bit player in this arena. In recent years, however, the department has expanded its programs under the label of “strategic communications.” The Pentagon’s money and manpower have put its strategic communications activities in a position where in many key countries they have equaled or exceeded the efforts of State’s Foreign Service officers.
There is a difference in approach. Public diplomacy aims to foster understanding of the United States and its policies through traditional ways such as exchanges, cultural programs, publications, interviews and speeches. More recently, it has involved Internet activities, with State employees getting into foreign chat rooms to answer questions about the United States.
An October study titled “Fixing the Crisis in Diplomatic Readiness,” published by the Henry L. Stimson Center and the American Academy of Diplomacy, described public diplomacy this way: “To understand, inform, engage and influence global audiences, reaching beyond foreign governments to promote greater appreciation and understanding of U.S. society, culture, institutions, values and policies.”
Strategic communications, as described in a Defense Department document in August, involves “integrating actions, words, and images.” Associated with combat, it should “ideally operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries,” the document states. In Iraq, that means putting up posters, distributing leaflets, and creating radio and television spots that support the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. In North Africa, it means the Africa Command-sponsored Web site Magharebia.com, which is accessible in Arabic, French and English.

pincus mentions two recent rpts at the Public Diplomacy Council “designed to get the incoming administration to take notice” of what’s needed to facilitate the impression of diplomacy as the u.s. moves forward, enabling the in-progress neo-liberal agenda of “soft power” rather than the straight “hard” power politics of recent history. inclusive mulitlateralism instead of blatant unilateralism.
this fits into the push on nation-building (read: imperialism), which envisions a larger foreign service DoS apparatus tasked w/ development/stabilization/capacity-building/reconstruction/economic-transformation projects throughout geostrategic regions in the world, such as latin america & africa. DoD would love to drive, but trying to promote trained killers (the military) as humanitarians is a hard sell. so the idea is to let civilians lead w/ the soft sell.

Posted by: b real | Jan 12 2009 16:38 utc | 93

I was about to reply to posters’ questions when I received the following recent article that is both well written and well researched:
The Politics of An Israeli Extermination Campaign: Backers, Apologists and Arms Suppliers
by Prof. James Petras
Global Research, January 2, 2009
Introduction
Because of the unconditional support of the entire political class in the US, from the White House to Congress, including both Parties, incoming and outgoing elected officials and all the principle print and electronic mass media, the Israeli Government feels no compunction in publicly proclaiming a detailed and graphic account of its policy of mass extermination of the population of Gaza.
Israel’s sustained and comprehensive bombing campaign of every aspect of governance, civic institutions and society is directed toward destroying civilized life in Gaza. Israel’s totalitarian vision is driven by the practice of a permanent purge of Arab Palestine informed by Zionism, an ethno-racist ideology, promulgated by the Jewish state and justified, enforced and pursued by its organized backers in the United States.
The facts of Israeli extermination have become known: In the first six days of round the clock terror bombing of major and minor populations centers, the Jewish State has murdered and seriously maimed over 2,500 people, mostly dismembered and burned in the open ovens of missile fire. Scores of children and women have been slaughtered as well as defenseless civilians and officials.
They have sealed off all access to Gaza and declared it a military, free fire zone, while expanding their target to include the entire population of 1.5 millions semi-starved prisoners. According to the Boston Globe (December 30, 2008): Israeli military officials said their target lists have expanded to include the vast support network on which the Islamist movement relies to stay in power “…we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel (my emphasis)”. A top Israeli in its secret police apparatus is quoted saying, “Hamas’ civilian infrastructure is a very sensitive target” (ibid). What the Israeli Jewish politicians and military planners designate as “Hamas” is the entire social service network, the entire government and the vast majority of economic activity, embracing almost the entire 1.5 million imprisoned residents of Gaza.
Israel’s ‘target’ list thus involves the ‘total population’, using the totality of its non-nuclear weaponry and for an unlimited time period (until the ‘bitter end’ according to the Israeli Prime Minister). Israel’s defense ministry spokesman has emphatically reiterated the Jewish’s state’s totalitarian war concept emphasizing the targeting of civilians: “Hamas has used ostensibly civilian operations as a cover for military activities. Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target.”
Like all totalitarians in the past, the Jewish state boasts of having systematically pre-planned the extermination campaign – months in advance – up to and including the precise hour and day of the bombing to coincide with inflicting the maximum murder of civilians: The rockets and bombs fell as children were leaving school, as graduating police cadets were receiving their diplomas and as frantic mothers ran out from their homes to find their sons and daughters.
The mass military extermination campaign was a follow up of its non-stop total economic embargo and unremitting selective assassination campaign of the previous two years: Both were designed to purge Palestine of its Arab population, first via mass hunger, disease, humiliation and violent intimidation and the proxy power grab by the PLO Quislings under Zionist puppet Abbas. When they discovered that mass hunger and selective Israeli murder only strengthened the population’s links to its democratically elected government and the resolve of the Hamas government to resist Israel, the Israeli regimes unleashed its entire arsenal of weapons, including its new ‘American gifts’ up-to-date 1000 pound ‘bunker buster’ bombs and high tech missiles to incinerate large numbers of human beings within their deadly radius and to obliterate Palestinian civilization.
Moving directly from its totalitarian vision to its military blueprint to the savaging of Palestinian population centers, the Jewish state destroyed the principle university with over 18,000 students (mostly women), mosques, pharmacies, electrical and water lines, power stations, fishing villages, fishing boats and the little fishing port that provided a meager supply of fish for the starving population. They destroyed roads, transport facilities, food warehouses, science buildings, small factories, shops and apartments. They destroyed a women’s dormitory at the university. In the words of the Israel leader: “…because everything is connected to everything…” it is necessary to destroy each and every facet of life, which allows humans to exist with some dignity and independence.
The Israeli totalitarian leaders knew with confidence that they could act and they could kill with impunity, locally and before the entire world, because of the influence of the US Zionist Power Configuration in and over the US White House and Congress. They knew they had the full backing of all the major Israeli political parties (Right, Left and Center), trade unions, mass media and especially public opinion. Israeli state terror is backed by 81% of Jewish Israelis according to a poll taken by Israel’s Channel 10 (Financial Times December 30, 2008). Israeli totalitarian violence and extermination of Palestinians is extremely popular among the Jewish electorate, especially in raising support for the Labor Party candidate Minister Ehud Barak. They knew they would ‘succeed’ with virtually no casualties because they bombed, burned and dismembered a defenseless population totally lacking the minimum means to defend themselves from F16 bombers, helicopter gun ships and missile assaults. The vile depravity of the assault on the defenseless population is matched by the utter cowardice of the Israeli military command and its cheering bloodthirsty public ensconced behind their aerial monopoly. They suffered no threats of aerial retaliation, no wounded or dead pilots, helicopter gunners, as wave after wave swept in and over a defenseless imprisoned population in a crowded and besieged ghetto.
Hundreds of tanks and armored carriers are prepared to invade once the cities and towns have been leveled, once the population is too weakened by starvation to resist, once the leaders and fighters have been murdered and the normal Palestinian institutions of law and order have been pulverized, making way for the corrupt thuggish collaborators of the so-called Palestinian Authority…then and only then, will the Israeli General staff risk the skin of a precious Jewish ‘soldier’ and risk the anxiety and worry of their kin in Israel and the US.
Overseas Allies: The Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO)
From the moment that the Israeli Government decided it would destroy the newly elected Hamas government and punish the democratic electorate of Gaza with starvation and murder, the entire Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the US, including the PMAJO, pulled all stops in implementing the Israeli policy. The PMAJO encompasses the fifty-two Jewish organizations with the largest membership, with the greatest financial clout and the most influential backers. The most prominent lobbyist within the PMAJO is AIPAC, which has over 100,000 members and 150 full-time operatives in Washington actively pressuring the US Congress, the White House and all administrative agencies whose policies may relate to the interests of the State of Israel. However Israeli political extends far beyond its non-governmental agencies. Over two score legislators in the Congress and over a dozen senators are committed Zionists who automatically back Israel’s policies and push for US funding and armaments for its military machine. Top officials in key administrative positions, in Treasury, Commerce and the National Security Council, senior functionaries in the Pentagon and top advisers on Middle East affairs are also life-long, fanatically committed Zionists, who consistently and unreservedly back the policies of the State of Israel.
Equally important, the majority of the largest film, print and electronic media are owned or deeply influenced by Jewish-Zionist media moguls who are committed to slanting the ‘news’ in favor of Israel. The composition and influence of the ZPC is central to understanding three main characteristics of Israel’s power: (1) Israel can commit what leading United Nations and international human rights experts have defined as ‘crimes against humanity’ with total impunity; (2) Israel can secure an unlimited supply of the most technologically advanced and destructive weapons and use them without limit on a civilian population in violation of even US Congressional restrictions and (3) scores of almost unanimous United Nations condemnations of the construction of genocidal apartheid barriers against a native population, starvation embargoes and the current extermination campaign in Gaza are always vetoed by the US representative.
Many critics of Israel’s genocide in Gaza also condemn what they call ‘the complicity’ of Washington or ‘the United States’ without clearly identifying the actual socio-political forces influencing policy-makers or the ‘dual’ political loyalties and identities of the ‘American’ politicians who have long-standing and deep allegiances to Israel. As a consequence, most critics fail to counter, protest or even identify the ideology and politics of the organized power configurations which define US complicity with Israel, who intimidate potential critics, who write and mouth the pro-Israel editorials in the mass media and who filter out any criticism, any truth…even when Israel engages in sustained bloody extermination campaigns.
The ZPC and the Israeli War of Extermination in Gaza
The ZPC played a major role in all stages of Israel’s extermination campaign against Gaza including a sustained propaganda effort. The ZPC orchestrated a massive successful campaign through the extensive network of American mass media, which it controls and influences. It fabricated an image of the Hamas administration in Gaza as a terrorist organization, which allegedly seized power through violence – totally denying its rise to power through internationally supervised, democratic elections and its defense of its electoral mandate against a US-Israeli backed PLO military takeover. The entire Zionist Jewish leadership backed Israel’s land grabs, its ghetto wall around Palestinians, the hundreds of road blocks, the Jewish settlers violently taking over Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the criminal, genocidal Israeli economic embargo on Gaza designed to systematically starve the Palestinians into submission. Throughout the two years of this Israeli extermination campaign, American Zionists played a major role in leading the servile US government at home and abroad in backing each totalitarian measure: The vast majority of local synagogues became bully-pulpits defending the starvation and degradation of 1.5 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza caged on all sides by deadly force and the ‘walling off’ into economically and socially devastating cantons of the 4.5 million West Bank Palestinian population under foreign occupation. The US Congress shamelessly followed the Zionist lead, backing every single criminal measure taken by the State of Israel and approving dozens of resolutions, which in most cases were entirely written by AIPAC lobbyists acting as unregistered agents of the Israeli government (contrary to US federal statute, which requires foreign agents and lobbyists to be registered as such). Israel’s demands for the most up-to-date US warplanes, including F-16s, Apache helicopter gun ships, and 1,000 pound bombs were secured by dint of effort of the AIPAC lobbyists and their clients in the US Congress. In other words, the American ZPC created the ideological cover and military instruments for Israel’s ‘total war’ against the defenseless Palestinian population. Equally important, prominent Zionist leaders in the US Congress and members of the foreign policy establishment blocked or vetoed any international criticism of Israel – securing its impunity and immunity from any of the Congressional sanctions usually enacted against criminal states. In other words, Israeli policy makers operated with the knowledge that there would be no negative economic, diplomatic and military repercussions to their launching the planned Gaza extermination campaign because they knew, in advance, that ‘their people’ were in total control of US Middle East policy to the extent of actually repeating verbatim each and every propaganda lie in defense of Israel’s total war against the entire population of Gaza.
In Defense of Israel’s War of Extermination
The Zionist-controlled US print media, in particular the New York Times and the Washington Post, systematically fabricated an account that fit perfectly with Israel’s official line defending its massive assault on Gaza: Omitting any historical account of the hundreds of Israeli armed incursions and ‘targeted’ assassinations of Palestinian leaders and officials (even in their own homes) which repeatedly violated the ‘cease fire’ agreed by Hamas and provoked its retaliation in self-defense of its people; omitting the years of an Israeli enforced starvation embargo of food and essentials that threatened the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians and led to the desperate efforts of the elected Hamas leadership to secure supplies for the people’s survival via tunnels across the Egyptian border and through missile attacks against Israel to pressure the Jewish state to negotiate an end of the criminal blockade.
The Conference of President of the Major American Jewish Organizations, and the vast majority of Jewish communal groups and congregations, gave enthusiastic and unanimous support to Israel’s total war, its extermination campaign against the captive Palestinian population of Gaza. Even as images and reports of the massive destruction, killing and wounding of over 2,500 defenseless Palestinians filtered in the mass media, not a single major Jewish organization broke ranks; only individuals and small groups protested. All the ‘Majors’ persisted in the politics of the Big Lie: the destruction of hospitals, mosques, universities, roads, apartments, pharmacies and fishing ports were all labeled ‘Hamas targets’. The systematic all-out assault by uncontested helicopter gunships against 1.5 millions civilians was erased by tendentious accounts of Hamas’ homemade missiles falling ineffectively near Israeli towns.
A close reading of the most important propaganda organ of the PMAJO, The Daily Alert (TDA), during the first 5 days of Israel’s assault, reveals the propaganda tack taken by the leadership of the pro-Israel power configuration. TDA systematically worked to achieve the following:
1.
Exaggerate the threats to Israel by the Palestinian missiles from Gaza, citing 4 Israeli deaths, while omitting any mention of the 2,500 Palestinian dead and wounded and the total destruction of their economy and living conditions (without safe water, electricity, food, cooking fuel, medicine and heat in the winter).
2.
Promote Israel’s military assault as ‘defensive’, directed at eliminating Hamas rocket attacks while omitting mention of Israel’s clearly stated purpose of destroying all civil organizations, social welfare agencies, educational facilities, medical clinics and public security institutions connected in any way with the elected Hamas government and any auxiliary agencies.
3.
Cite select statement from Israel’s allies and clients (Washington, the US media, Germany and the UK) blaming Hamas for the conflict without mentioning the vast majority of countries in the United Nations General Assembly condemning Israel’s brutality.
4.
Reproduce Israeli slanders against any and all international human rights leaders and organizations that condemn the Jewish state’s policy of genocide against the native Palestinians. In this regard, TDA is the foremost ‘genocide denier’ in the United States and, perhaps outside of Israel, in the world.
5.
Repeatedly cite Israeli political and military leaders’ claims of acting ‘with restraint’, ‘safeguarding civilians’, and ‘targeting military objectives’, even in the face of reports and images of mass civilian destruction and loss of life documented in the vast majority of (non-US) Western media.
6.
Defend every Israeli bombing mission, every day, every hour, of every building, every home, and every economic, religious and educational institution in Gaza as ‘defensive’ or a ‘reprisal’, all the while quoting some of the most notorious, unconditional, perennial apologists of Israeli violence as if they were unbiased intellectuals, including Benny ‘Nuke Tehran’ Morris, Marty Peretz and Amos Oz.
7.
The Daily Alert
quotes US writers, journalists and editors who praise and defend Israel’s ‘total war’ without identifying their long-standing affiliation and identification with Zionist organizations, giving the false image of a wide spectrum of opinion behind the assault. Never has even the most moderate Jewish or Gentile critic of Israel’s massive extermination campaign appeared in any issues of The Daily Alert.
The principle American Jewish organizations have bombarded the US Congress, influencing, intimidating and purchasing the craven so-called ‘representatives’ of the American people, the media and public notables with lies in defense of Israel’s total war to exterminate a people. Their public, brazen, open complicity in genocide can be considered crime against humanity: The willful promotion of acts of a state designed to destroy an entire people.
And yet these willing accomplices, these ‘willing executioners’ of state mass murder go uncontested within the US political class. One of their leading mouthpieces in the incoming Obama Administration, Chief Presidential Adviser David Axelrod, even cites an Obama campaign speech defending Israeli assaults on the people of Gaza.
Israel arrogantly repudiates all calls to end this mass murder, because Israel knows that ‘its people’ are still in control of US policy toward the Middle East and will use their power in the new president’s administration to block any condemnation of this crime.
To date the entire human rights and anti-war movements have failed to even mention, let along challenge, the most powerful propaganda and political organizations, which influence US policy and manipulate the mass media in favor of Israel’s extermination campaign. They will play no restraining role on Israel’s totalitarian policies as long as its principle US backers are free to lie, manipulate and defend each and every crime.
There is little hope for an independent US Congressional policy as long as Israel’s war of extermination in Gaza can be defended by the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (and Zionist zealot) Congressman Howard Berman in the following terms: “Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza over the past week. No government in world would sit by and allow its citizens to be subjected to this kind of indiscriminate bombardment. The loss of innocent life is a terribly tragedy and the blame for that tragedy lies with Hamas.” Thus Congressman Berman cynically omits the 2 years of Israel’s embargo, the daily ‘targeted’ assassinations of Palestinians, the ‘targeted’ missile attacks against civilians, the land, sea and air blockades and the blatant ‘targeted’ destruction of the infrastructure of Gaza. No government, indeed a democratically elected Islamist government, can stand by while its people are starved and murdered into submission. But according to the respected Congressmen Bermans of the world, only the lives of Jews matter, not the growing thousands of murdered, dismembered and mutilated citizens of Gaza – they do not count as people!
What is to be Done
Israel’s crimes against humanity demand a public response: social action, which will force it to cease and desist from its campaign to exterminate the people of Gaza. Because the Jewish state has assaulted a vast array of Palestinian social institutions, which resonate with those in our own society, we can and should mobilize them to condemn and boycott their counterparts in Israel:
1.
We should urge the entire academic community to denounce Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza and the total destruction of all of its science facilities. An organized boycott of Israeli universities and all academic exchanges, especially scientific, should become university policy throughout the country. Special attention should be paid to the 450 US university presidents, who in the recent past, denounced a call by British academics for a boycott and who remain silent and complicit in the face of Israel’s total physical annihilation of all ten faculties for 20,000 Palestinian university students.
2.
All American health workers, doctors, nurses, technicians, should organize and denounce Israel’s medical embargo against the 1.5 million Palestinians crowded into the Gaza Strip. They must condemn Israel’s bombardment of Gaza’s Children’s Hospital, the neighborhood pharmacies and the attacks on any transport of those critically wounded Palestinian victims of its aerial and missile attacks. Medical personnel should raise the fundamental ethical issues regarding the collaboration of US medical personnel and programs with the Jewish State’s ‘total war’ policies of extermination.
3.
All citizens should demand the end of all US military aid to Israel, especially F-16 fighter planes, Apache attack helicopters, missiles, 1000 pound ‘bunker buster’ bombs used by the Israeli armed forces on the civilian infrastructure of Gaza and the murder and maiming of over 2,500 Palestinians, civilians, civil servants, police and national militia. In pursuit of a cutoff of US military aid to Israel, every effort should be made to target and denounce the most forceful, aggressive and successful Zionist advocates and lobbyists who influence the elected members of the US Congress and White House on foreign military aid budgets. No progress in ending US military aid for Israel’s ethnic cleansing will succeed unless the peace movement and others appalled by Israel’s mass murder tackles the Zionist lobby head on. This includes boycotts, rebuttals and demonstrations against the AIPAC, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and the other 50 leading American Jewish organizations, which initiate and secure US governmental endorsement of Israel’s extermination policies.
4.
US religious institutions should forcefully denounce Israel’s crimes against humanity, including its demolition of 5 mosques, uniting all faiths (Christian, Moslem, Buddhist) and especially reaching out to the tiny minority of rabbis and observant Jews willing to forthrightly denounce the totalitarian practices of the Israeli state.
5.
Port and long shore workers, sailors and other maritime workers and officials should boycott the handling of all trade with Israel and denounce its Navy’s violent illegal assault, in international waters, of civilian fishing boats and vessels carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. No ships carrying Israeli products should be loaded or unloaded as long as Israel maintains its criminal military blockade of the port facilities of Gaza.
6.
Tens of millions of US citizens subject to the one-sided pro-Israel bias of the electronic and print media, the lop-sided presentations of Zionist ‘op-ed’ writers, ‘news’ reports and the self-styled Middle East experts, should demand equal time, coverage and reportage for non-Zionist specialists, analysts and commentators. We should demand the end of euphemisms and fabrications, which convert victims into aggressors and exterminators into victims.
7.
We should wage a battle of ideas everywhere (in every public forum) against the efforts by the Zionist Power Configuration to monopolize discussion over the Israeli policy of genocide, to censor, intimidate and slander critics of Israeli apartheid – as UN General Assembly President Manuel d’Escoto so aptly calls Israel’s Ghetto Wall surrounding Palestinian villages. The outpouring of public protest over Israel’s war of extermination is an enormous step forward in countering the Zionist monopoly of the mass media and encouraging the tens of millions of Americans who clearly recognize and privately despise Israel’s crimes against humanity and resent the local Zionist elite’s thuggery against those who speak out. Mass pressure on elected representative may sway some to reconsider their abject servility to their Zionist ‘contributors’ and their ‘Israel First’ Congressional colleagues.
8.
A patriotic nationwide campaign should demand that the Israel lobby, especially AIPAC, come clean and register as a foreign agent of the State of Israel. This might undermine the Lobby’s appeal to American Jews, reduce its influence over Congress and open up judicial processes and investigations over its abuse of tax-exemptions, money-laundering and lead to revelations over its treasonous procurement of confidential US state documents for a foreign power. There is a powerful political and legal basis for such a denial of the ‘Lobby’s’ tax-exempt status and legality, apart from the transparent and overwhelming evidence that all Zionist organizations act as transmission belts for Israeli state policies: In the early 1950’s up to 1963, the forerunner of AIPAC was obligated to register as a foreign agent of the State of Israel. More recently, an Israeli prosecutor presented evidence that the Israeli-Jewish Agency and its US counterparts were laundering billions of dollars especially for the funding of Israeli colonial settlements on occupied Palestinian land, condemned as illegal under international law. Congressional hearings, law suits and further published research would reveal the role of the Lobby as a Fifth Column for the State of Israel against the interest of the people of the United States.
Until we neutralize the pervasive power of the Zionist Power Configuration in all of its manifestations – in American public and civic life – and its deep penetration of American legislative and executive offices, we will fall short of preventing Israel from receiving the arms, funding and political backing to sustain its wars of ethnic extermination.
When told that the great majority of the world’s people are sickened and incensed by Israel’s mass murder of the citizens of Gaza, we can easily imagine the contemptuous dismissal by Israel’s top leaders, paraphrasing Joseph Stalin: How many bombers, missiles, fighter planes and powerful lobbies do they (the outraged people of the world) have?
James Petras is the author of Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power, Clarity Press 2008.

Posted by: Parviz | Jan 13 2009 11:18 utc | 95

Sorry, this is an even better article, very well referenced, proving that not only did Israel break the cease-fire but had planned to break every cease-fire since Hamas’s democratic election. Even Hamas’s offer to “recognize Israel” was rejected because the Israelis planned from the beginning to suffocate and then subvert Palestine to its own rule:
The Bloodbath in Gaza: Separating the truth from the hype
by Mike Whitney
Bandits with planes …
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood.” (Pablo Neruda)
In a rare moment of honesty, the New York Times divulged the real motive behind the bombardment and invasion of Gaza. In Ethan Bronner’s article, “Israel Weighs Goal: Ending Hamas Rule, Rocket fire, or Both”, Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon said, “We need to reach a situation in which we do not allow Hamas to govern. That is the most important thing. If the war ends in a draw, as expected, and Israel refrains from reoccupying Gaza, Hamas will gain diplomatic recognition…No matter what you call it, Hamas will obtain legitimacy.”
According to the Times: “In addition, any truce would probably include an increase in commercial traffic from Israel and Egypt into Gaza, which is Hamas’s central demand: to end the economic boycott and border closing it has been facing. To build up the Gaza economy under Hamas, Israeli leaders say, would be to build up Hamas. Yet withholding the commerce would continue to leave 1.5 million Gazans living in despair.” (Israel Weighs Goal: Ending Hamas Rule, Rocket fire, or Both; Ethan Bronner)
If Israel wants to prevent Hamas from “obtaining legitimacy,” than the real objective of the invasion is to either severely undermine or topple the regime. All the talk about the qassam rockets and the so-called “Hamas infrastructure”, (the new phrase that is supposed to indicate a threat to Israeli security) is merely a diversion. What really worries Israel is the prospect that Obama will “sit down with his enemies”–as he promised during the presidential campaign–and conduct talks with Hamas. That would put the ball in Israel’s court and force them to make concessions. But Israel does not want to make concessions. They would rather start a war and change the facts on the ground so they can head-off any attempt by Obama to restart peace process.
Just days ago, Obama advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said in a televised interview, that the last eight years proves that resolving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is critical to US interests in the region. He added that the recent fighting shows that the two parties cannot achieve peace without US involvement. Brzezinski’s comments suggest that, at the very least, the Obama camp is considering low-level (secret?) talks with Hamas representatives. Every day that Hamas abstains from violence; its legitimacy as a political party grows and the prospect of direct negotiations becomes more likely. This is Israel’s worst nightmare, not because Hamas constitutes a real threat to Israeli security, but because Israel wants to install its own puppet regime and unilaterally impose its own terms for a final settlement. Neither Ehud Olmert or any of the candidates for prime minister have any intention of getting bogged down in another 8 years of fruitless banter like Oslo where plans for settlement expansion had to be concealed behind an elaborate public relations smokescreen. No way. The Israeli leadership would rather skip the pretense altogether and pursue their territorial aims openly as they have under Bush. And the goal is the same as always; to integrate the occupied territories into Greater Israel and leave the Palestinians trapped in bantustans. Negotiations just make that harder.
Ariel Sharon’s senior advisor, Dov Weisglass, clarified Israel’s position three years ago when he admitted, “The disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians… this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely.” “Formaldehyde”; that says it all. The point of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was to silence critics and to make it appear as though the Palestinians had achieved some type of statehood. It was a complete sham. Sharon believed that disengagement would stop foreign leaders from badgering him to sit down with the Palestinians and work out a mutually-acceptable agreement. He never expected that elections would throw a wrench in his plans and raise the credibility of Hamas to the extent that it has today. In the last two years, Hamas hasn’ t launched one suicide mission in Israel, which shows that it has abandoned the armed struggle and can be trusted to negotiate on its people’s behalf. That scares Israel, which is why they initiated hostilities. Now, they need to seal the deal by either removing Hamas before Obama is sworn in or face pressure from the new administration for dialogue. Meanwhile, Israeli troop movements indicate that a plan may be in place to divide Gaza into three parts, thus making it impossible for Hamas to rule.
The UK Guardian confirms that the invasion was really about regime change not rockets or Hamas infrastructure.
According to the Guardian: “A couple of days into the assault on Gaza, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, said it would continue for ‘as long as it takes to dismantle Hamas completely’. Infuriated Israeli officials in Jerusalem warned her that such statements could set back the diplomatic offensive.
Dan Gillerman, Israel’s ambassador to the UN until a few months ago, was brought in by the Foreign Ministry to help lead the diplomatic and PR campaign. He said that the diplomatic and political groundwork has been under way for months.
“This was something that was planned long ahead,” he said. “I was recruited by the foreign minister to coordinate Israel’s efforts and I have never seen all parts of a very complex machinery – whether it is the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry, the prime minister’s office, the police or the army – work in such co-ordination, being effective in sending out the message.”
In briefings in Jerusalem and London, Brussels and New York, the same core messages were repeated: that Israel had no choice but to attack in response to the barrage of Hamas rockets; that the coming attack would be on “the infrastructure of terror” in Gaza and the targets principally Hamas fighters; that civilians would die, but it was because Hamas hides its fighters and weapons factories among ordinary people.
Hand in hand went a strategy to remove the issue of occupation from discussion.” (UK Guardian, “Why Israel went to war in Gaza”)
The invasion was mapped out months ago, right down to the bullet points that were passed out to friends in the media. Nothing was left to chance. That said, the public relations campaign was on full display over the weekend when Israeli ground troops and armored divisions swept into Gaza unopposed. CNN had a coterie of ardent Zionists on hand to justify the invasion in a carefully scripted analysis of developments. Retired Brigadier Gen. David Grange accompanied the blatantly pro-Israel Wolf Blitzer saying that the IDF had been “lured” into Gaza by Hamas so that Hamas could execute its plan for “urban warfare”. Utter nonsense. Grange implied that the subsequent slaughter of civilians was the work of Hamas, not Israel. Even by CNN’s abysmal standards, this is new low.
The media has worked in concert with the IDF throughout, spinning a rationale from whole cloth and cheerleading from every available soapbox. But recent polls show that the public has remained skeptical. Anti-Israel protests have sprung up in capitals across the world, and support for Israel is at its nadir. . Many people are simply shocked to see the most advanced, technological weaponry in the world being used in densely populated areas where collateral damage is bound to be heavy. It just makes Israel look like a bully while the media looks like an enabler. So far, the war has been a public relations catastrophe. Over 500 Palestinians have been killed and 2,400 wounded in a debacle of Biblical proportions. Every day, new photographs circulate on the internet showing the carnage produced by the steady bombardment. On Monday, the IDF killed two more Palestinian families, in two separate incidents. The mother, father and eight children were killed when their house was bombed by an American made F-16 early Monday morning. Another family in the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, was butchered when their home was struck by a shell from an Israeli ship off the coast. The civilian toll continues to balloon with no end in sight.
Here’s how one Gaza resident summed up the bombing in an interview with an AP journalist: “The Israeli forces attack everywhere. They have gone crazy. The Gaza Strip is just going to die … it’s going to die. We were sleeping. Suddenly we heard a bomb. We woke up and we didn’t know where to go. We couldn’t see through the dust. We called to each other. We thought our house had been hit, not the street. What can I say? You saw it with your own eyes. What is our guilt? Are we terrorists? I don’t carry a gun, neither does my girl. What does Israel want? There’s no medicine. No drinks, no water, no gas. We are suffering from hunger. They attack us. Can it be worse than this?” All of Gaza has been traumatized.
The “invasion”–which is a word none of the Israeli-centric media dares to use–(Israel “entered” Gaza) is the equivalent of rampaging through a concentration camp. (similar to the massacre at Sabra and Shatilla) Still, newspapers, like the New York Times, provide cover for the attack by referring to Hamas “bases” within Gaza. In truth, there are no bases nor military installations of any kind. It’s just more lies. They have no army, no navy, and no air force. The only threat that Gaza poses to Israel is its people’s unshakable commitment to end the occupation.
On CNN, Alan Dershowitz and other prominent Zionists defend the invasion in their most polished, lawyerly prose, but the public remains unconvinced. What observers are seeing on the internet is the broken bodies of children pulled from the rubble of their homes and the terrifying explosions in a city that languishes in complete darkness. Nothing Dershowitz says can match the imagery splattered minute by minute on the screen. Israel has bombed mosques, ambulances, bridges, tunnels, even a terrorist girls dormitory. Since when is a girl’s dormitory part of “Hamas infrastructure”? Five sisters and their mother were blow apart as they sat peacefully in their own living room. Does Dershowitz really believe he can elicit sympathy for the perpetrators of these crimes? American support for Israel is being tested; and that support is quickly eroding.
War is a blunt instrument for achieving one’s political objectives, and the costs can be enormous for winner and loser alike. If Israel manages to incite Hamas to the point where they deploy suicide bombers to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem then, perhaps, attitudes will shift in Israel’s favor. It is impossible to predict. But, clearly, retaliation with suicide missions would be the worst possible strategy for Hamas at this point. Israel has lost the moral high-ground, but one suicide bomber can change all that in a flash. Besides, the bombings alienate the people who sympathize with the Palestinian cause and make it harder for them to be openly supportive. The only people who benefit from suicide missions are the right-wing fanatics within the Israeli political establishment. Every Israeli civilian that’s killed just strengthens the Likudniks and their ilk.
ENDING THE CEASEFIRE: Who’s to blame?
The media has made a big issue of the fact that Hamas ended its ceasefire with Israel just days before the bombardment of Gaza. But as Johann Hari points out in his article “The True Story Behind this War Is Not The One Israel Is Telling” Hamas offered to maintain the ceasefire if Israel agreed to lift the blockade.
According to Hari:
“The core of the situation has been starkly laid out by Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad. He says that while Hamas militants – like much of the Israeli right-wing – dream of driving their opponents away, “they have recognized this ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future.” Instead, “they are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967.” They are aware that this means they “will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals” – and towards a long-term peace based on compromise…..Halevy explains: “Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas.”
Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli government wants peace, but only one imposed on its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat by the Palestinians. It means the Israelis can keep the slabs of the West Bank on “their” side of the wall. It means they keep the largest settlements and control the water supply. And it means a divided Palestine, with responsibility for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up West Bank standing alone. Negotiations threaten this vision: they would require Israel to give up more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will be no peace at all: it will not stop the rockets or the rage. For real safety, Israel will have to talk to the people it is blockading and bombing today, and compromise with them. (Johann Hari, “The True Story Behind this War Is Not The One Israel Is Telling”)
Hari’s article further confirms our basic thesis that the aggression in Gaza has nothing to do with terrorism, security, or Hamas infrastructure. In fact, Hamas appears to be ready to settle for much less than they originally hoped for. In this particular case, all they wanted was a promise from Israel to end the blockade, but Israel refused. Collective punishment of Palestinians has become a habit, like smoking or taking drugs. Israel can do what it wants. If it decides to cut off the food and medicine to 1.5 million people or bomb them into oblivion; no one can stop them. The UN and Washington just roll over and play dead. Why should they negotiate; they can do whatever they want. The world is their apple.
ISMAIL HANIYEH: “We do not wish to throw the Jews into the sea”.
“Oh…who will stop the windmills in my head?
Who will remove the knives from my heart?
Who will kill my poor children…?
In order that they do not…grow up in the red
furnished apartments…” (“Ending” by Amal Dunqul; translated by Angry Arab News Service)
On Monday, Israeli warplanes bombed the offices of a man who has helped to save the lives of more Jews than anyone in the Knesset. That man is Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Haniyeh has supported the ban on suicide missions which has lasted for more than two years despite the blockade of food, medicine, fuel, and electrical power to the Gaza Strip and despite the daily bombings, incursions, arrests, assassinations and countless other humiliations associated with occupation. Hundreds of Israeli civilians are alive today because Haniyeh and his Hams colleagues abandoned the armed struggle and entered politics.
On Friday, Israeli spokeswoman, Major Avital Leibovich, announced that “Hamas leaders were also marked men. We have defined legitimate targets as any Hamas-affiliated target.” That means that Haniyeh is now on Israel’s hit list.
In a February 2006 interview with the Washington Post, Haniyeh dispelled many of the lies circulating in the western media about Hamas. He said that he wanted to see an end the “vicious cycle of violence” and vehemently denied the claim that “Hamas is committed to destroying Israel”. He said, “We do not have any feelings of animosity toward Jews. We do not wish to throw them into the sea. All we seek is to be given our land back, not to harm anybody….We are not war seekers nor are we war initiators. We are not lovers of blood. We are oppressed people with rights.”
Wa Post: “Would Hamas recognize Israel if it were to withdraw to the ’67 borders?”
Haniyeh: “If Israel withdraws to the ’67 borders, then we will establish peace in stages… We will establish a situation of stability and calm which will bring safety for our people.
Wa Post: “Do you recognize Israel’s right to exist?”
Haniyeh: “The answer is to let Israel say it will recognize a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, release the prisoners and recognize the rights of the refugees to return to Israel. Hamas will have a position if this occurs.”
Wa Post: “Will you recognize Israel?”
Haniyeh: “If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state and give them back all their rights, then we are ready to recognize them.”
Haniyeh’s answers are straightforward and rational. He asked for nothing that isn’t already required under existing United Nations resolutions; a return to the 1967 borders, basic human rights, and settlement of the final status issues. An agreement could be facilitated tomorrow if Israel was willing to conform to international law. Instead, Israel has chosen to invade Gaza. For 60 years it has employed the same failed strategy.
Haniyeh again:
“Israel’s unilateral movements of the past year will not lead to peace. These acts — the temporary withdrawal of forces from Gaza, the walling off of the West Bank — are not strides toward resolution but empty, symbolic acts that fail to address the underlying conflict. Israel’s nearly complete control over the lives of Palestinians is never in doubt, as confirmed by the humanitarian and economic suffering of the Palestinians since the January elections.”
“We want what Americans enjoy — democratic rights, economic sovereignty and justice. We thought our pride in conducting the fairest elections in the Arab world might resonate with the United States and its citizens. Instead, our new government was met from the very beginning by acts of explicit, declared sabotage by the White House. Now this aggression continues against 3.9 million civilians living in the world’s largest prison camps. America’s complacency in the face of these war crimes is, as usual, embedded in the coded rhetorical green light: “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
Haniyeh’s efforts for reconciliation are doomed. Israel will not bargain or compromise. The Israeli state is driven by an ideology which requires continuous expansion and subjugation. There’s nothing Haniyeh can do to change that. The answer to the present crisis lies within Zionism itself, the philosophical underpinning of Jewish nationalism.
In his recent article, “Israel’s Righteous Fury and its Victims in Gaza”, Ilan Pappe, the chair in the Department of History at the University of Exeter, explains Zionism in terms of its effect on Israeli policy vis a vis the invasion of Gaza:
“There are no boundaries to the hypocrisy that a righteous fury produces. The discourse of the generals and the politicians is moving erratically between self-compliments of the humanity the army displays in its “surgical” operations on the one hand, and the need to destroy Gaza for once and for all, in a humane way of course, on the other.
This righteous fury is a constant phenomenon in the Israeli, and before that Zionist, dispossession of Palestine. Every act whether it was ethnic cleansing, occupation, massacre or destruction was always portrayed as morally just and as a pure act of self-defense reluctantly perpetrated by Israel in its war against the worst kind of human beings. In his excellent volume The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel, Gabi Piterberg explores the ideological origins and historical progression of this righteous fury. Today in Israel, from Left to Right, from Likud to Kadima, from the academia to the media, one can hear this righteous fury of a state that is more busy than any other state in the world in destroying and dispossessing an indigenous population.
It is crucial to explore the ideological origins of this attitude and derive the necessary political conclusions form its prevalence. This righteous fury shields the society and politicians in Israel from any external rebuke or criticism. But far worse, it is translated always into destructive policies against the Palestinians. With no internal mechanism of criticism and no external pressure, every Palestinian becomes a potential target of this fury. Given the firepower of the Jewish state it can inevitably only end in more massive killings, massacres and ethnic cleansing.
The self-righteousness is a powerful act of self-denial and justification. It explains why the Israeli Jewish society would not be moved by words of wisdom, logical persuasion or diplomatic dialogue. And if one does not want to endorse violence as the means of opposing it, there is only one way forward: challenging head-on this righteousness as an evil ideology meant to cover human atrocities. Another name for this ideology is Zionism and an international rebuke for Zionism, not just for particular Israeli policies, is the only way of countering this self-righteousness.” (“Israel’s Righteous Fury and its Victims in Gaza”, Ilan Pappe)
It wouldn’t make a bit of difference if Hamas surrendered tomorrow and handed-over all its weapons to Israel, because the problem isn’t Hamas; it’s Zionism, the deeply-flawed ideology which leads to bombing children in their homes while clinging to victim-hood. Ideas have consequences. Gaza proves it.
Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Mike Whitney

Posted by: Parviz | Jan 13 2009 11:35 utc | 97

A complete digression:
How is it that Madoff, who caused $ 50 billion in losses, thousands of bankrupt retirees and mounting suicides, and who himself admitted right from the get-go that his was a Ponzi-scheme, has been placed under comfortable house arrest while infinitely smaller fish have been imprisoned instantly? Could it be that Jews are still being granted special treatment?
I don’t understand the U.S. Justice System any more.

Posted by: Parviz | Jan 13 2009 12:26 utc | 99