Chris Harman: A masterful book. By Graham Turne

Via: Socialist Review.

Zombie Capitalism is a masterful book, a culmination of Chris Harman’s work spanning four decades as one of the world’s leading Marxist economists. The timing of his passing is both tragic and deeply ironic.

For years Chris argued passionately that capitalism was a system uniquely prone to crisis. Many of his warnings were borne out by the credit crunch. He consistently warned that there would be no easy solutions to the current economic debacle. Events are likely to prove him right.

As a revolutionary socialist peering in from the “outside”, Chris always used to say that it was never easy to access the data that would unravel capitalism’s darker secrets, allowing one to pinpoint when economic cycles would break. But he compensated with an impressive grasp of the longer-term dynamics of the free market that few could rival.

Chris sparred with many other Marxist economists over the issue of corporate profitability. He argued strongly that companies in the industrialised west were running deeper into trouble, with real rates of return trending down to such low levels they would expose the contradictions of capitalism sooner rather than later. His analysis on this critical issue was first rate.

Stock markets have continued to rise, even as the Wall Street Journal warns that companies have only been able to report higher profits by cutting costs aggressively. The flipside has been soaring unemployment.

There are very few economists of recent years who have shaped and influenced our thinking at GFC Economics. But Chris was one of them. He could be a critic, and we had some differences over the interpretation of Keynes. But Chris was always fair, objective and, above all, honest. I learnt a lot from his observations on our work. His critique of The Credit Crunch, which we published in the spring of 2008, was by far and away the most honest. He rightly concluded that we had not followed the logic of our analysis to its ultimate conclusion. However, he phrased his comments in a positive way that encouraged us to look closer at the underlying causes of boom and bust.

Chris will be a hard act to follow. His appetite and work ethic, covering such a vast range of material, were extraordinary. Zombie Capitalism has been selling well. Perhaps in his memory we can all promote this book as a fitting tribute to an outstanding economist.

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Graham Turner is an economist and author of The Credit Crunch

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Related:

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=18242

Will Congress Criminalize Anti-Semitism and Israeli Criticism? By Steve Lendman

Via: SteveLendmanBlog.

Will Congress Criminalize Anti-Semitism and Israeli Criticism? – By Stephen Lendman

In the current climate, perhaps given:

– America’s police state laws;

– no due process or judicial fairness for any state target;

– mass illegal surveillance;

– targeting dissent; and

– the power of the Israeli Lobby over Congress, the media, academia, the clergy, and most anyone confronting them.

During Israel’s war on Gaza, only 5 of 535 congressional members dissented on pro-Israeli resolutions.

On January 8, 2009, the Senate unanimously passed S 10: “A resolution recognizing the right of Israel to defend itself against attacks from Gaza and reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel in its battle with Hamas, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian (no peace) peace process.”

On January 9, the House, by a 390 – 5 vote, passed HR 34 “Recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza, reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian (no peace) peace process.” More on this below.

Then on October 28, Obama signed the expanded 2009 Hate Crimes Prevention Act, some call a stealth war on free expression and civil liberties. More on this as well.

Also consider events in Canada, initiated by a body called the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA), a voluntary association of 22 MPs investigating anti-semitism because, it says:

Its “extent and severity is widely regarded as at its worst level since the end of the Second World War,” despite contrary evidence and much to show how Israel twists opposition to Zionism and its international law violations to be an attack on Jews.

Blackwater Founder Tells of Extensive Government-Contracted Assassinations. By Yana Kunichoff

Via: Truth Out.

The head of Blackwater revealed the details of his collaboration with the CIA to locate and assassinate top al Qaeda operatives as part of a covert antiterror operation Tuesday, and blamed Democrats for the leak that ended the program.

In an article published in Vanity Fair, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, spoke about the extent of his involvement with the CIA, which ranged from putting together, funding and executing operations to bring personnel into “denied areas” to targeting specific people for assassination who were deemed enemies by the US government.

Prince was one of a secret network of American citizens with special skills or access chosen to help the CIA access targets of interest. The program was kept secret for nearly eight years until it was revealed to lawmakers in a closed session with the House and Senate Intelligence Committee. During this meeting, CIA director Leon E. Panetta named both Prince and Blackwater as major players.

Prince blames Congressional Democrats for the leak. “[W]hen it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus,” he said. “The left complained about how [CIA operative] Valerie Plame’s identity was compromised for political reasons. Well, what happened to me was worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it.”

According to current and former government officials, former Vice President Dick Cheney told CIA officers in 2002 that they did not need to inform Congress about the program because they were already legally authorized to kill al Qaeda leaders. Under an executive order signed by President Gerald Ford in 1976, the CIA was barred from carrying out assassinations. But President George W. Bush took the position shortly after 9/11 that killing al Qaeda members was comparable to killing enemy soldiers in battle, and therefore assassinations were permissible. Prince was hired in 2004.

Activists in Honduras tell Amnesty International of hidden human rights crisis

Via: Amnesty International.

As Honduras’ president elect Porfirio Lobo prepares to take power, new questions arise about events that have taken place since the coup d’etat last June.

An Amnesty International delegation in the country talked to human rights activists about the hidden crisis affecting the Central American nation.

Read interviews with activists:
Dina Meza – “We have gone back 30 years”
Donny Reyes – “Most crimes against LGBT people are lost in limbo”
Alexis Quiroz – “The population needs to be informed to make objective decisions”

Gilda Rivera: “Women are at higher risk because they are considered second class citizens”

Gilda Rivera works in an apparent oasis of calm on a hill in Tegucigalpa. When you are there, among the plants and paintings which decorate the building, it’s hard to imagine the stories she and her organization hear. But some days, an unknown car appears and parks suspiciously in the close vicinity of the offices for no apparent reason and waits, then it leaves.

Gilda is the director of the Centre for Women’s Rights (Centro para Derechos las Mujeres), a group that works to document and combat violence against women in Honduras.

In a report published recently, the group painted a dark picture of what it is like to be a woman in Honduras, where hundreds have been victims of sexual abuse, domestic violence and murder.

Gilda says the situation for Honduran women has always been worrying but since the coup d’etat of June 2009, things have deteriorated rapidly.

“When the whole population is facing human rights violations, women are at even greater risk because we are considered second class citizens,” said Gilda.

Native Orientalists at the Daily Times. By Shahid Alam

Via: The Palestine Chronicle.

This will take hard work; some Pakistanis insist that this hard work is underway.

The more a ruling class is able to assimilate the foremost minds of the ruled class, the more stable and dangerous becomes its rule.’ — Karl Marx

A few days back, I received a ‘Dear friends’ email from Mr. Najam Sethi, ex editor-in-chief of Daily Times, Pakistan, announcing that he, together with several of his colleagues, had resigned from their positions in the newspaper.
In his email, Mr. Sethi thanked his ‘friends’ for their “support and encouragement…in making Daily Times a ‘new voice for a new Pakistan.’” Wistfully, he added, “I hope it will be able to live up to your expectations and mine in time to come.”

I am not sure why Mr. Sethi had chosen me for this dubious honor. Certainly, I did not deserve it. I could not count myself among his ‘friends’ who had given “support and encouragement” to the mission that DT had chosen for itself in Pakistan’s media and politics.

Contrary to its slogan, it was never DT’s mission to be a ‘new voice for a new Pakistan.’ The DT had dredged its voice from the colonial past; it had only altered its pitch and delivery to serve the new US-Zionist overlords. Many of the writers for DT aspire to the office of the native informers of the colonial era. They are heirs to the brown Sahibs, home-grown Orientalists, who see their own world (if it is theirs in any meaningful sense) through the lens created for them by their spiritual mentors, the Western Orientalists.

Pakistanis had failed to seize sovereign control over their country at its birth. In August 1947, the departing British had few worries about losing their colonial assets in Pakistan.

Joe Sacco: A long drawn out conflict

Via: Socialist Review.

Interview by Tim Sanders and Patrick Ward, December 2009

Joe Sacco talks to Tim Sanders and Patrick Ward about how he got into comic journalism and the power of cartoons

Why did you decide to make your new book, Footnotes in Gaza?

I went to the Gaza Strip with Chris Hedges, an American journalist for Harper’s magazine. He was writing and I was illustrating. This was at the beginning of the second Intifada. We decided that we would focus on one town in Gaza, Khan Yunis.

In the back of my head I remember reading something about Khan Yunis some years ago in a Noam Chomsky book, just a reference to a large-scale killing there in 1956. We got there and I told Chris about this incident and we thought it would be a good idea if he could talk to older people about it.

It turned out the incident was pretty traumatic. About 275 people were killed, according to a UN report. He wrote this up into his wider story on Khan Yunis and what was going on in contemporary times. But the historical bit was cut by the editors, for whatever reason. That irked me, because it’s one of the main historical episodes that gets cut out because it doesn’t seem to be as relevant as what’s going on now. Those historical bits are the building blocks of the modern catastrophe. And if the reports were true, it’s the largest massacre of Palestinian civilians on Palestinian soil ever.

So I decided I’d go back and research the incident. I found out that about ten days later in Rafah there was another incident where 111 people were killed and my focus began to shift a bit to Rafah because I wanted to do something fresh. But to tell the story of Rafah you have to tell the story of Khan Yunis.

In Rafah Palestinians were screened to find soldiers and Fedayeen. This was in 1956 during the Suez crisis when the Israelis occupied Gaza. In the process of the screening a number of people were killed. The book basically looks at those two incidents. It comes out of this desire to refocus the spotlight on some historical incident that’s been forgotten. That’s why the book is called Footnotes in Gaza, because it barely rated a footnote. Nothing’s been written about it in English as far as I know except Chomsky mentioning a UN report.

Paul Craig Roberts: The Twin Frauds of Obama

Via: Counter Punch.
Goldman Sachs senior executives are arming themselves with New York gun permits, according to Alice Schroeder on Bloomberg.com. The banksters “are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.”

One can understand why the banksters are worried. The company, now known as Gold Sacks, has a large responsibility for the financial crisis and the fraudulent “securities” that wrecked the world economy and Americans’ pensions. A former Gold Sachs CEO had control of the US Treasury during the Bush regime from which he diverted $750 billion to bail out the banks, thus supplying them with free capital. Gold Sachs made $27,000 million during the first three quarters of 2009 and is paying out massive bonuses, leaving the busted taxpayers with the debt and interest charges.

Little wonder the US can’t afford health care for the uninsured and unemployed. It is far more important to finance multi-million dollar bonuses for investment bankers. I mean, what would we do without capitalism?

Of course, it is not really capitalism. It is an oligarchy or a financial plutocracy.

In a failed state, the government’s priorities are totally separate from those of the people. The US can’t afford health care or a bailout for jobless homeowners, but it can afford a pointless war and multi-million dollar bonuses for banksters who wrecked the economy.

Millions of laid-off workers lost their health insurance subsidies on December 1, the day President Obama announced a $30 billion “surge” in Afghanistan.

Read the rest: Here.

Lebanon: An End to Sectarian Politics? By Rannie Amiri

Via: Global Research.

“To encourage vast participation in political life, a national committee should be established and charged with abolishing political sectarianism.” – Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, in a televised address on the eve of the nation’s 66^th anniversary of independence, 21 November 2009.

“Political sectarianism is blocking the development of the Lebanese political regime and standing as an obstacle in the face of a democracy … We want a Lebanon that is united through its land, its people, its state and institutions.” – Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, in a news conference announcing the party’s new manifesto, 30 November 2009.

Lebanon’s entire political structure and climate revolves around sectarianism. The country’s 128-member parliament or “Chamber of Deputies,” is based on a confessional distribution of seats, divided equally between Muslims and Christians irrespective of political affiliation (as is the prime minister’s cabinet). In parliament, the Christian side is further subdivided in a fixed allotment among seven dominations, and the Muslim half among four.

The country’s top three political posts – president, prime minster, and speaker of the parliament – must be assigned to a Maronite Christian, Sunni Muslim, and Shia Muslim respectively. Sectarian quotas have even found their way into the public sector, the military and the security services.

None of the above is based on actual demographic information, of course.

Shell must clean up its act in Nigeria. By Chima Williams

Via: The Guardian.

As Nigerian villagers take Shell to court over huge oil spills, it’s time for the group to take responsibility for polluting practices

A court in The Hague is considering whether Shell can be held liable for alleged pollution in Nigeria, and a ruling is expected on 30 December. This case could set a precedent for corporations based in Europe that exploit lax environmental regulations and violate the rights of communities in the developing world.

In the village of Ikot Ada Udot, south-eastern Nigeria, a rusty complex of tubes pokes five feet out of the ground. A familiar sight to locals, it is known as the “Christmas tree”. But unlike its innocuous namesake, this “tree” is an abandoned oil wellhead owned by oil multinational Shell. According to environmentalists, the wellhead spewed toxic oil and gas into the land and fish ponds of local villagers for months in August 2006, and again in 2007. As of May 2008, the area around the Christmas tree was still heavily polluted and villagers remain destitute.

This is one of three oil spills in the case against Shell that will begin its first hearing at The Hague civil court this week. Four Nigerian villagers, in conjunction with Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands), are charging Royal Dutch Shell with causing massive oil spills that have resulted in loss of livelihoods. The case provides a snapshot of the environmental and social devastation caused by Shell in the Niger Delta.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Tony Blair. By Matthew Carr

Via: Dissident Voice.

At some point in the New Year Tony Blair will appear before the Chilcot Inquiry established by the British government to assess the historical ‘lessons’ of the Iraq war. Few individuals bear more responsibility for the invasion and its calamitous aftermath than Blair. Not only was his single-minded determination crucial in bringing his own country into the war, but his close political relationship with the Bush administration, also helped US hawks present the case for war to a sceptical American public.

The consequences of this intervention are well-known; hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths and four million refugees and internally displaced persons; thousands of British and American soldiers killed or wounded; an Iraqi society devastated by war and counterinsurgency, by criminal and terrorist violence, ethnic cleansing and death squads; a neo-colonial occupation marked by torture and brutality and barely-credible levels of financial corruption and incompetence.

All these consequences constitute one of the most extraordinary disasters – and one of the greatest crimes – in British political history. Yet the man who did so much to make this disaster possible has yet to be made accountable. The Chilcot Inquiry is unlikely to make much progress in this direction. Sir John Chilcot has already made it clear that his inquiry does not intend to ‘apportion blame’ and his commission contains two of Blair’s self-professed admirers. Blair himself will undoubtedly be at his slickest and most Teflon-like best, indignant at any suggestion of lowly motives behind his actions or slurs on his ‘reputation’. But accountability is necessary, and not only because of Iraq. As one of the most militaristic prime ministers in British history, Blair is an emblematic symbol of the new imperial violence of the 21st century.

The Afghan Quagmire. By Ralph Nader

Via: Nader.org.

Misusing professional cadets at West Point as a political prop, President Barack Obama delivered his speech on the Afghanistan war forcefully but with fearful undertones. He chose to escalate this undeclared war with at least 30,000 more soldiers plus an even larger number of corporate contractors.

He chose the path the military-industrial complex wanted. The “military” planners, whatever their earlier doubts about the quagmire, once in, want to prevail. The “industrial” barons because their sales and profits rise with larger military budgets.

A majority of Americans are opposed or skeptical about getting deeper into a bloody, costly fight in the mountains of central Asia while facing recession, unemployment, foreclosures, debt and deficits at home. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), after hearing Mr. Obama’s speech said, “Why is it that war is a priority but the basic needs of people in this country are not?”

Let’s say needs like waking up to do something about 60,000 fatalities a year in our country related to workplace diseases and trauma. Or 250 fatalities a day due to hospital induced infections, or 100,000 fatalities a year due to hospital malpractice, or 45,000 fatalities a year due to the absence of health insurance to pay for treatment, or, or, or, even before we get into the economic poverty and deprivation. Any Obama national speeches on these casualties?

Palestinian Reflections on American Political Ideology. By Dr. Haidar Eid

Via: The Palestine Chronicle.

The Palestinians have ‘realized,’ thanks to Hilary Clinton, that the US is biased towards Israel. According to the American Secretary of State, negotiations between “the two parties” should resume without preconditions. The Americans have even praised Netanyahu’s “unprecedented concessions!” Gone is the sweet talk of the American president Barak Obama; gone is the euphoria following his “ground breaking” speech in Cairo university.

We are back to square one.

The question that begs for answers is why does America hate us Palestinians? Do the American people really believe that we have no rights even though those rights are enshrined in international law? Does President Obama truly believe that we are only a nuisance?

American hegemonic political philosophy judges a belief by its effects not its causes. The emphasis is on the connection between the truth of statements and their practical applicability by one measure only: how will they work for America? This is American pragmatism. That is, White, liberal American politicians (including President Obama!) are interested in the function of ideas and statements and their effects rather than the sources and conditions of their production.

‘Workability’ and ‘practicability’ are the basis of the justification of positions taken by the American establishment. However that does not take into account the circumstances under which these positions are ‘workable,’ neither historically nor socially. Whatever ‘we’, white liberal Americans, want is justifiable and thus legitimate since it is ‘workable’ and ‘practical’ regardless of the means through which it is achieved. Thus Apartheid, Nazism, Zionism, American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan can be “easily” justified and sold to CNNized citizens.

The Israel Lobby Celebrates Espionage in New York. By Grant Smith

Via: AntiWar.

The recent sting operation against former NASA scientist Stewart Nozette involved an undercover FBI employee posing as Mossad agent.  Meeting in the posh Mayflower hotel in Washington, the agent set up clandestine payments in exchange for highly classified information.  Nozette began delivering requested classified national defense information believing it to be destined for Israel while confidentially assuring the FBI agent that he thought he was already spying for Israel.  This allegedly occurred under Nozette’s prior “consulting” contract with Israel Aerospace Industries, a major military contractor.   Although the US has traditionally ignored, forgiven, or quashed investigations into Israeli espionage, the cost to America’s national security and economy may now have pushed law enforcement agencies toward a tipping point.  Ironically, this very week, the Israel lobby is celebrating in New York the biggest clandestine operation ever conducted against US industries and workers.

Israel Aerospace Industries was once called Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), a company launched by the legendary flight engineer and entrepreneur Adolph “Al” Schwimmer.  Schwimmer was a key man in the vast underground Haganah smuggling (PDF) effort across the US trafficking in surplus WWII arms, supplies and veteran manpower for war in Palestine. He purchased heavily discounted surplus US military aircraft from the War Assets Administration but violated laws prohibiting their export use in armed conflict by creating a fake Panamanian shell corporation and flying the transport wing to Palestine to battle for the creation of Israel in 1948.  None of the key American financial backers of the effort went to jail, though a handful of small operators such as Nathan Liff did eventually appear in criminal court.  They received lenient sentences pleading they were only giving guns to “young Jewish boys who went to the door of Hitler’s ovens to bring Holocaust survivors to a Jewish homeland.” Schwimmer, a convicted felon who served no prison time, left the US to become managing director of IAI with the backing of David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres.

Bolivia: The Economy During the Morales Administration

Via: CEPR.

December 2009, Mark Weisbrot, Rebecca Ray and Jake Johnston

This paper examines the Bolivian economy since President Evo Morales took office in 2006. It finds that Bolivia’s economic growth in the last four years has been higher than at any time in the last 30 years, averaging 4.9 percent annually since the current administration took office in 2006. Projected GDP growth for 2009 is the highest in the hemisphere and follows its peak growth rate in 2008.

The paper looks at how Bolivia’s economy has been able to progress despite a number of significant shocks, including falling remittances, declining foreign investment, the United States’ revocation of trade preferences, serious bouts of political instability as a result of separatist political opposition movements, and recent declines in export prices and markets, along with other impacts of the global recession.

Key to the Bolivian economy’s relative success has been expansionary fiscal policy and control over national resources, especially the hydrocarbons sector – a relatively recent development.

In the last three years the government has begun several programs targeted at the poorest Bolivians. These include payments to poor families to increase school enrollment; an expansion of public pensions to relive extreme poverty among the elderly; and most recently, payments for uninsured mothers to expand prenatal and post-natal care, to reduce infant and child mortality. Although the last two years of new programs will probably show some improvement when data is available, Bolivia still has some of the highest extreme poverty rates and infant and child mortality rates in the hemisphere.

Report – PDF  | Flash

Boycott of Ahava Dead Sea products makes an impact. By Adri Nieuwhof

Via: The Electronic Intifada.

The international campaign to boycott Ahava beauty products has recently won the support of a Dutch parliamentarian and an Israeli peace group. During the past few months, activists in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Israel, the United States and the Netherlands have campaigned against the sale of Ahava products because of the company’s complicity in the Israeli occupation.

The Stolen Beauty campaign has included protest actions by “bikini brigades” around the United States organized by the American peace group CODEPINK, and allied actions have taken place in London, Paris, Vienna, Montreal and Amsterdam. The Dutch “bathrobe brigades” that appeared in shopping centers in Amsterdam and Haarlem, not only caught the eye of the press, but also that of Dutch parliamentarian Harry van Bommel.

Ahava manufactures its cosmetics in a factory in the illegal Mitzpe Shalem settlement in the occupied West Bank. However, Ahava labels its skin care products imported into the EU as originating from “The Dead Sea, Israel.” Van Bommel, concerned about this misleading labeling, asked Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Verhagen to investigate the origin of Ahava cosmetics, and Verhagen agreed.

U.S. Christian Right Promotes Homophobia in Africa

Via: Black Agenda Report.

by Political Research Associates

The following is a press release from Political Research Associates, of which Rev. Kaoma is the director. We thought our readers would find it of interest. – The Editors

“The U.S. Right – once isolated in Africa for supporting pro-apartheid, White supremacist regimes – has successfully reinvented itself as the mainstream of U.S. evangelicalism.”

Sexual minorities in Africa have become collateral damage to our domestic conflicts and culture wars as U.S. conservative evangelicals and those opposing gay pastors and bishops within mainline Protestant denominations woo Africans in their American fight, a groundbreaking investigation by Political Research Associates (PRA) has discovered.
Globalizing the Culture Wars [1]: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia, a new report by the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, PRA Project Director, exposes the U.S. Right’s promotion of an agenda in Africa that aims to criminalize homosexuality and otherwise infringe upon the human rights of LGBT people while also mobilizing African clerics in U.S. culture war battles. U.S. social conservatives, who are in the minority in mainline churches, depend on African religious leaders to legitimize their positions as their growing numbers makes African Christians more influential globally.
The investigation’s release could not be timelier, as the Ugandan parliament considers the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009. Language in that bill echoes the false and malicious charges made in Uganda by U.S antigay activist and Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively that western gays are conspiring to take over Uganda and even the world.

“U.S. social conservatives depend on African religious leaders to legitimize their positions.”

These partnerships have succeeded in slowing the mainline Protestant churches’ recognition of the full equality of LGBT people, in part due to liberals’ sensitivity to the charge of colonialism. However, as Kaoma argues, it is U.S. conservatives who are imposing their own concerns about homosexuality on Africa. Further, although U.S. conservatives have organized African religious leaders as a visible force opposing LGBT equality, it would be wrong to conclude that all of Africa stands with these clerics and their U.S. patrons.

Overview about Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Via: The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem.

Overview about Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

The aim of the report is to enlighten a wider audience about the reality of Israeli settlements inside the Palestinian Territory, although many political and security reasons exist to protect the facts around them, which has let the problem constantly grow up in the almost complete indifference of the international community.

‘Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and an obstacle to peace and to economic and social development [... and] have been established in breach of international law’, commented the International Court of Justice on July 2004. Four years after, nothing really changed actually.

Israel has used a complex legal and bureaucratic mechanism to take control of more than 50 percent of the land in the West Bank. This land was used mainly to establish settlements and to create reserves of land for the future expansion of the settlements.

The principal tool used to take control of land was to declare it as ’state land’. This process began in 1979 and is based on an engineered implementation of the Ottoman Lands Law of 1858, which applied in the area at the time of occupation. Other methods employed by Israel to take control of land include seizure for military needs, declaration of land as ‘abandoned assets,’ and the expropriation of land for public needs. Each of these is based on a different legal foundation. In addition, Israel has assisted private citizens purchasing land on the ‘free market’.

The process employed in taking control of land breaches the principles of the procedures and natural justice. It means that, in many cases, Palestinian residents were unaware that their land was registered in the name of the state, and by the time they discovered this fact, it was too late to appeal. The amount of proof always rests with the Palestinian claiming ownership of the land. Even if the Palestinian is able to establish meet such burden and establish ownership beyond doubt, the land may still be registered in the name of the state simply because it was transferred to the settlement ‘in good faith’.

Sri Lankan government must permanently release all civilians

Via: Amnesty International.

Amnesty International is calling on the Sri Lankan government to permanently release civilians who have been illegally detained in camps following the end of the civil war six months ago.

“The authorities must make good on their declared intentions to free some 120,000 people and do so unconditionally,” said Yolanda Foster, Amnesty International’s expert on Sri Lanka.

“A permanent release from camps must be accompanied by assurances that people are not subjected to further questioning or re-arrest in new locations.”

“It’s also critical that the government maintain its responsibility to care for displaced people wherever they choose to go.”

The Sri Lankan government said today that families living in camps for the displaced in Vavuniya will be given a choice about whether to remain in camps, to seek alternative accommodations or attempt to return home.

However, Amnesty International has received information about restrictions on the way in which families can leave the camps. Media reports have suggested that some people may be asked to return to the camps after only 15 days.

The West’s Double Standards – First North Korea Now Iran! By Bryan Rayner

Cartoon Khalil Bendib

Via: Atlantic Free Press.

What the west fears is a sovereign state that is prepared to oppose the west’s worldwide dominance – expansionist & controlling imperialism, & refuses to bow down before it.

Weapons of mass destruction double standards & the non proliferation treaty charade!

According to The Independent 13-01-06 the number of Warheads held by the USA is:

Six thousand three hundred and ninety, and by the Queen’s Imperial and Expansionist Kingdom of Britain, Two hundred!

It is knowledge of statistics such as this that make a mockery of the whole pseudo NPT accord. When it is revealed that repressive Crusading powers in the West have stockpiled such a colossal arsenal, where is the point in non proliferation??? The treaty is stating quite clearly that the USA will not enlarge its stockpile by a single warhead beyond 6,390, and likewise the Queen’s government will not augment their arsenal by one to 201?! Moreover to argue that Non Proliferation should inhibit the freedom of other nations to attain them for their own security and defence is baloney and hypocrisy of the highest order. The dominant West is blatantly affirming that we (the West) can be trusted whereas you (Middle East Nations) cannot!! Instead of fretting about Non Proliferation, the West should concentrate on a massive reduction in it’s and Israel’s nuclear stockpile.

America the hungry. By Patrick Martin

Via: World Socialist Web Site.

A front-page report in Sunday’s New York Times, detailing the skyrocketing rise in food stamp use, provides a far different picture of America at the end of 2009 than the complacent assurances of economic “recovery” voiced by Wall Street and the Obama administration.

The Times conducted a statistical analysis of food stamp use by county, in an effort to present a more detailed social portrait of the 36 million people currently on the food stamp rolls. “They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare,” the report noted.

Among the significant findings:

• In 239 counties, more than a quarter of the population receives food stamps.
• In more than 750 counties, at least one in three African-Americans receives food stamps.
• In more than 800 counties, more than one-third of all children depend on food stamps.
• In 62 counties, food stamp rolls have doubled over the past two years.
• In 205 counties, food stamp rolls are up by two-thirds.

The geographical dispersal of the mounting social need for food is staggering, from traditional centers of poverty such as rural Appalachia and inner-city urban ghettos to the suburbs built up in the Sunbelt in the last two decades. The map showing the counties where food stamp usage is growing most rapidly includes the affluent Atlanta suburbs, most of the state of Florida, most of Wisconsin, western and northern Ohio, and most of the Mountain West, including large swathes of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado and Idaho.

Hasbara Author vs Iran’s Bomb. By Gilad Atzmon

Via: Gilad Atzmon.Hasbara author (1) David Aaronovitch is pretty much unstoppable. The man who together with the Jewish Chronicle writer Nick Cohen encouraged the war in Iraq, is now warning us about the evolving Iranian bomb. “Wake up”, he urges us in The Times, “this threat is too big to ignore”.  As if more than one million Iraqis killed in a war he advocated were not enough, the enthusiastic Hasbara author has a new conflict to propel.
Aaronovitch, who back in 2003 was mobilized by an imaginary threat that was crudely forged by Blair & Co, seems to be shaken again. This time it is the Iranian nuclear threat. “Most experts seem to agree, training the steed is mostly a matter of time.” There is something Aaronovitch is failing to mention. The state that lists him as its ‘Hasbara author’, the state that was recently found complicit in some colossal crimes against humanity, evidently possesses hundreds of nuclear bombs that has kept the entire region in constant red alert for more than four decades. The Jewish state has not signed the non-proliferation treaty and does not let any IAEA inspectors into its nuclear facilities.

Aaronovitch is worried because “there are suggestions from different sources that Iran is indeed researching a weapons capability.” I would ask Aaronovitch, or any other Hasbara operator, to come with an answer to this rather pertinent question: why shouldn’t they?

Holiday Greetings: President and Man-of-Peace Obama has a Xmas Present for Afghanistan. By Dave Lindorff

Via: This Can’t Be Happening!

Merry Xmas Jarheads!! The Man of Peace, Nobel Laureate-to-be (and the latest Chickenhawk in the Whitehouse), President Barack Obama, your commander-in-chief, is going to be shipping you out as a holiday gift to the people of Afghanistan.

You will be delivering bullets and bombs, with my name and the name of other American taxpayers on them, to the long-suffering people of Afghanistan by December 25, according to press reports ahead of the Mr. Hope and Change’s planned nationwide speech tonight.

US bombing victims in Afghanistan

Back here in America, the land of the free and brave, come the holidays, we will be scraping together the cash to buy small gifts for our kids, hopefully without having to miss a rent payment or a mortgage payment. Fortunately, we’ve got Food Stamps, which are now, we are told, flooding the suburbs, and are “no longer a stigma,” so we won’t be hurting too much for Christmas dinner—though you still can’t use the stamps to buy eggnog.

It will be interesting to hear what your commanders tell you your mission is.

Dubai: Trouble in Paradise. By Kieran Allen

Via: Socialist Workers Party.

On Wednesday 25^th November, Dubai World made an announcement that shocked the global financial markets: they would not pay interest to international bondholders for at least six months. By a happy co-incidence, the announcement was made on a day when the Muslim festival of Eid co-incided with the traditional US holiday of Thanksgiving. It helped to bridge a supposed ‘clash of civilisations’ and united all who worshiped at the altar of Mammon.

Dubai’s debts amounted to €80 billion – not the same scale of Lehman’s Brothers $613 billion crash – but serious enough to scare the markets.
Bondholders are very rich people who control huge reserves of cash that have been created by the work of millions of people.

They scour the world looking for investment opportunities that will give a ‘good return’. For two decades, they poured money into Dubai, even though it was only a tiny strip of land adjacent to a magnificent natural harbour. Then, suddenly, the spooked investors started to shuffle around their cash in a desperate effort to find a new haven of security. Worried news presenters spoke once again of sharps falls on the FTSE and Nikkei indexes.

These events turned a spotlight on to the tiny Emirate of Dubai which has become a fitting symbol of hyper-capitalism – a sort of beach party dreamt up by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics.

Until the late fifties, Dubai was a tiny port for pearl fishermen and smugglers, where the population lived in traditional houses made from palms leaves and drew water from communal wells. After the British withdrew, the local sheik joined with other Gulf states to found the United Arab Emirates, a grouping of Arab principalities that remained friendly to the US and Britain during the Cold War.

In 1969, a small amount of oil was discovered and this enabled Dubai’s rulers to take the first steps in developing its economy into a hub of finance and property speculation. From then on, it became both a fantasy location for the wealthy and a real space where capital could move quickly without any regulation or traces.

Elections in Honduras: Whitewashing the Coup. By Lisa Sullivan

Via: Monthly Reveiw.

I came to Honduras to participate as a human rights observer of the electoral climate in a delegation organized by the Quixote Center.  Several delegations converged, connecting some 30 U.S. citizens with dozens more from Canada, Europe, and Latin America.  In the days prior to the elections we scattered to different cities, towns, and villages, meeting with fishermen, farmers, maquila workers, labor leaders, teachers, and lawyers, as well as those who were jailed for carrying spray paint, hospitalized for being shot in the head by the military, and detained for reporting on the repression.  It was, most likely, a bit off the 5-star, air-conditioned path of most of the mainstream journalists who are filling your morning papers with the wonders of today’s elections.

But by the evening of the day of the elections, what we had witnessed in previous days pushed those of us from the U.S. directly to the doors of our embassy in Tegucigalpa.  We realized that this place, not the polling stations, was where this horrific destiny of Honduras, and perhaps all of Latin America, was being determined.  And so the U.S. citizens among us took our statements and signs and determination there.

We were, indeed, greeted by many: dozens of guards with cameras, some 30 journalists, Honduran police with guns and also cameras, as well as a low-flying helicopter that at least made us feel important.  While the journalists let us read our entire statement of why these elections should not be recognized by our government because of the egregious repression, the embassy guards wouldn’t even let us leave our slip of paper.  That, in spite of the fact that the embassy’s human rights officer, Nate Macklin, told our delegation leader to make sure to let him know if there were any human rights abuses.

Israeli courts give permission for settlers to move into Palestinian home in Sheikh Jarrah

Via: International Solidarity Movement.

For immediate release

Israeli settlers take over Palestinian home, elderly resident suffers severe medical complications

On Tuesday morning at around 9.30am, a group of settlers surrounded the al-Kurd family home in Sheikh Jarrah and took over a section of the house.

Fifteen to twenty settlers, accompanied by private armed security and Israeli police forces, entered an extension of the Palestinian house, and started clearing it of the family’s belongings. The family was not present in this section of the house in compliance with a previous court order, however local sources reported that the settlers also attempted, on several occasions, to gain entry to the inhabited part of the house.

One Palestinian resident, Khamis al-Gawi, has been arrested shortly after the settlers arrived, and is still being held at a local police station. Two international activists, American and Swedish nationals, who were filming the settlers taking over the house were also arrested by the police and their video cameras confiscated.

Later in the day, two Palestinian women suffered medical complications as a result of the take-over and had to be transported to a local hospital in an ambulance. One of them, the daughter of the owner of the house Refka al-Kurd, Nadia, was taken to the hospital with a suspected heart attack.

The take-over came minutes after an appeal, challenging an earlier court decision that deemed this section of the house illegal and gave the settlers the right to enter the property, submitted by the family’s lawyer, was rejected by the Magistrate Court this morning. The al-Kurd family only found out that their appeal was rejected when they saw the settlers approaching their home.