Investigating the Freedom Flotilla Attack. By Stephen Lendman

Via: SteveLendmanBlog.

On June 2, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) approved formation of an international committee (like the Goldstone Commission) to probe the Flotilla attack, saying it will include lawyers and international law and human rights experts, its findings to be presented in September (during the Council’s three week session in Geneva) after visiting Gaza and contacting Israel, Turkey, Greece, and the Freedom Flotilla coalition.

HRC’s panel includes:

– Desmond de Silva, a UK lawyer and former chief prosecutor for the Sierra Leone Special Court investigation into widespread killings there;

– Karl Hudson-Phillips, a former International Criminal Court (ICC) judge and former Trinidad and Tobago attorney general and parliament member; and

– Malaysia’s Mary Shanthi Dairiam, active in gender equality issues, including on the UN Development Program’s gender equity task force.

In emergency session, the HCR criticized Israel’s “outrageous attack on aid ships attempting to breach a blockade on the Gaza Strip,” calling it “piracy, (an) act of aggression, (a) brutal massacre, (an) act of terrorism, (a) war crime, (a) crime against humanity -unprovoked….unwarranted….atrocious, (and) brutal,” calling activists “peaceful…innocent…noble…unarmed, (and) defenseless,” setting the tone for what’s to come, HRC president Sihasak Phuangketkeow saying:

“This is not about finger-pointing. It’s about establishing the facts of what took place because the incident was a humanitarian tragedy and it’s in the interests of everyone. So I’m hopeful and I’m urging all the parties concerned to render their full cooperation, because it is in their interests and it’s in the interests of the international community as a whole.”

“The expertise, independence and impartiality of the members of the mission will be devoted to clarifying the events which took place that day and their legality.”

Israel’s response was expected, a foreign ministry official saying the HRC acted in haste as part of its “obsession against Israel. The Israeli probe, conducted with transparency, makes the organization’s probe completely unnecessary.”

Israel, of course, won’t cooperate, and plans a whitewash like its July 20 Gaza Operational Investigations: Second Update, responding to the Goldstone Commission and other reports of widespread Cast Lead crimes of war and against humanity.

No serious investigation was conducted, the report citing only four criminal indictments – two for using a minor as a human shield, one regarding an attack on a family waving a white flag, and the other for credit card theft.

Hundreds of other serious crimes weren’t addressed, including high level culpability, a few low-level soldiers marginally hung out to dry to absolve government and IDF officials – Israel’s usual coverup of appalling war crimes.

Out of Afghanistan. By Ralph Nader

Via: The Nader Page.

The war in Afghanistan is nearly nine years old—the longest in American history. After the U.S. quickly toppled the Taliban regime in October 2001, the Taliban, by all accounts, came back stronger and harsher enough to control now at least 30 percent of the country. During this time, U.S. casualties, armaments and expenditures are at record levels.

America’s overseas wars have different outcomes when they have no constitutional authority, no war tax, no draft, no regular on the ground press coverage, no Congressional oversight, no spending accountability and, importantly, no affirmative consent of the governed who are, apart from the military families, hardly noticing.

This is an asymmetrical, multi-matrix war. It is a war defined by complex intrigue, shifting alliances, mutating motivations, chronic bribery, remotely-generated civilian deaths, insuperable barriers of language and ethnic and subtribal conflicts. It is fought by warlords, militias, criminal gangs, and special forces discretionary death squads. Millions of civilians are impoverished, terrified and live with violent disruptions. There is no central government to speak of. The White House uses illusions of strategies and tactics to bid for time. In Afghanistan, the historic graveyard of invaders, hope springs infernal.

Neatly dressed Generals—who probably would never have gotten into this mess if they, not the civilian neocon, draft dodgers in the Bush regime, had made the call—regularly trudge up to Congress to testify. There they caveat their status reports, keeping expectations alive, while cowardly politicians praise their bravery. General David Petraeus could receive the Academy Award in Hollywood next year, as long as he doesn’t say what he really thinks, obedient soldier that he is. Listen to General Stanley A. McChrystal, not known for his squeamishness. Speaking of civilian deaths and injured at military checkpoints, he said: “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none have ever proven to be a threat.”

Activists work to stop tax-exempt donations to Israeli settlements. By Alice Speri

Via: The Electronic Intifada.

Activists in the US are working to cut to the flow of tax-exempt donations to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. (Alice Speri)

As Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise in the occupied West Bank continues to be a strain on US-Israel relations, an unflattering light is being shone on US private donations towards the development of the settlements that are increasingly encroaching on Palestinian land.

Most of the construction work in the settlements is in the hands of American, Canadian and European developers. Much of the money needed for settlement development comes from private American donations. It is estimated that tens of millions of dollars reach the settlements in the form of charity, contributions that by virtue of their philanthropic nature enjoy tax-exempt status under the US’ Internal Revenue Code.

An examination by this writer of IRS documentation led to at least 32 organizations registered in the US as tax-exempt charities that support Jewish settlements in the West Bank including East Jerusalem with sizable financial contributions (“From New York to the West Bank: Following US Tax Dollars into Israel’s Settlements“). The groups, mostly Jewish but also Christian-Zionist, often adopt a particular community of settlers and for the most part claim on their tax forms to be contributing to charitable or educational projects.

The non-profit status some of these groups enjoy as designated 501(c)(3) organizations under IRS regulations implies an official US government recognition of their activity.

Some civil rights activists argue that private American funding of the settlements, while not necessarily illegal, does contradict stated US foreign policy as well as the government’s commitment against racial discrimination. But others have started to accuse organizations registered as 501(c)(3)s and supporting settlements of repeatedly violating US tax laws.

“The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” US President Obama said in his celebrated Cairo address to the Arab and Muslim world in June 2009. “This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.” Obama’s statement echoed those of previous US administrations, which have alternated in calling Israeli settlements “illegitimate” and “unhelpful.”

Last November, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed to a ten-month settlement freeze — with the exception of East Jerusalem — in order to resume peace talks. In January 2010, however, he also announced that the Etzion settlement block, south of Jerusalem, “will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel for eternity.” Several news outlets continue to report that construction has yet to stop even in areas where the Israeli government has mandated a freeze.

Meanwhile, US aid to Israel — the billions of dollars per year from the government as well as private donations — continues to flow unabated.

Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” and the Crisis of Capitalism. By John Reimann

Via: The Daily Censored.

It has been three years since Naomi Klein’s book, “The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” was published. Since that time, capitalism’s economic crisis has metastasized, and part of Klein’s analysis has proven extremely useful in understanding much of the response of the capitalist politicians. Another part of her analysis has also been shown to be faulty (at best).

CIA’s Mind Control Experiments

Klein opens her book with a brilliant analogy to a series of mind control experiments organized by the US’s CIA. The thesis of these experiments was that one could basically erase an individual’s personality, thereby leaving a blank slate upon which anything the experimenter wished could be written. Leaving aside the question of whether such psychologists and their handlers – the CIA – could be trusted to create a new human being from scratch, these inhuman experiments showed that far from creating a blank slate, what they created was an immensely scarred and hurting human being, one who could never fully recover from all the pain – physical and psychological – that they underwent.

This school of psychology had something in common with the thinking of the neo liberals being led by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. As he put it, “only a crisis – real or perceived – produces real change.” (Klein p.6) The change Friedman is talking about is the enforced introduction of the “free” market, which he claims is always in natural balance, a balance that is distorted by any sort of restriction such as any measure of state ownership, tariffs, high taxes, social welfare programs, etc. Presumably, labor unions themselves are also another such restriction of the natural balance of capitalism.

The period of the post war economic upswing was not a good time for such ideas. On the one hand, the upswing itself left room for concessions to the working class, one whose radical past was more present in the memory of millions of workers. Then there was the existence of the Soviet Union, which exerted a pressure on world capitalism. Finally, there was the colonial revolution and its counter part in the US – the revolt of black people against racism.

Military Coups

For all these reasons, the elimination of many concessions to workers was not possible through normal “democratic” means during this period. Thus it was that the first great opportunity came after the military coup led by General Pinochet of Chile against the left social democratic presidency of Salvador Allende in 1973. University of Chicago Friedman’s “Chicago Boys” were central to Pinochet’s economic plans.

In 1975, after Pinochet had consolidated himself in power, there was a 27% cut in public spending. State owned enterprises were sold off and protections for domestic industries were eliminated. The result of this and other such measures was a massive contraction in the Chilean economy, with thousands of companies going under and close to 200,000 workers in the industrial sector alone losing their jobs by 1983. The results for the average Chilean working class family were disastrous. As Klein writes: “Roughly 74 percent of (the income of a family living on a Pinochet prescribed ‘living wage’) went simply to buying bread…. By comparison, under Allende, bread, milk and bus fare took up 17 percent of a public employee’s salary.”

The claimed intent of these steps was to cut public debt and establish the Chilean economy on a healthy basis. Far from this, by 1982 its debt had exploded and inflation skyrocketed, while unemployment hit some 30 percent. As Klein explains: “The main cause was that the piranhas, the Enron-style financial houses that the Chicago boys had freed from all regulation, had bought up the country’s assets on borrowed money and run up an enormous debt of $14 billion.”

The Practice of Neoliberalism: How Think Tanks, Foundations, Big Oil and the CIA Undermine Democracy. By David Livingstone

Via: Global Research.

Canada’s Fraser Institute

How American right-wing foundations, Big Oil and the CIA collaborate to undermine the social democratic systems of Canada and other countries around the world.

Since the early 1970s, there has been a broad international agenda led by right-wing American foundations to sway public opinion towards greater acceptance of an economic philosophy called Neoliberalism, of which Canada’s Fraser Institute has been a pivotal part.

It is by tracing the connections between the Fraser Institute and several prominent Canadian politicians, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and other far-right conservatives, including BC Premier Campbell of British Columbia, that we can identify the source of their disdain for democracy, a penchant for slashing social programs, their unconditional support for American foreign policy expeditions, and an utter refusal to condemn the gross human rights abuses of Zionism in Israel.

Every year, the Fraser Institute announces a Tax Freedom Day, the first day of the year when the country of Canada has theoretically earned enough income to fund its annual tax burden, and its “Report Cards” of schools and the health care system, designed to convince Canadians of the importance of reducing public spending and privatizing these and other social services.

As reported in The Tyee, Paul Shaker, dean of the faculty of education at Simon Fraser University, said recently:

“Part of the international movement of neoliberalism is to treat schools as simply another service that can be commodified and deserve no special place in society. This movement has been coming along since Thatcher and Reagan, and reached a fevered pitch over the last 10 years.” If you want to analyze why things have deteriorated in Vancouver, Shaker said, “it probably has to do with this global and political movement.” The premise of Neoliberalism, and that of Neoclassical Economic theories in general, is the pessimistic view that human beings are selfish creatures. It develops from a crass darwinian attitude, that deems that people aught to be responsible for their own “failings”, like poverty, and therefore, that governments should not provide services to assist them when they are in need.

Ultimately, the pursuit of self-interest is thought to create efficiencies that should be favored over any form of government activity. However, while the profit motive is certainly tolerable in certain cases, it is actually contrary to the public good in others, as in cases of essential human needs, like education, health, water, energy sources and so on.

Essentially, Neoliberalism draws support from the philosophy of Adam Smith, who maintained it was not necessary for governments or any other social organizations to enforce a redistribution of wealth, because the free pursuit of self-interest would create enough surplus to benefit all. The disguised intent is to induce societies to expose what should be publicly held assets or industries to exploitation by private interests, and to then prevent governments from taxing these corporations, or regulating their activities in ways that might restrain their lust for profits.

The chief propagandists of Neoliberalism, were Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, who, in 1947, founded the Mont Pelerin Society, to coordinate the creation of an international network of think-tanks and foundations, to spread their philosophy of corporate greed. The basis of their propaganda was a scare-tactic of equating “big government” with totalitarianism. In Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Milton Friedman proposed that centralized control of the economy was always accompanied with political repression. Similarly, in The Road to Serfdom (1944), Hayek argued that “Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends.”

Christmas Break in Palestine. By Ashley McAdam, Becky Barbrow and Stuart Pike

Via: Vimeo.

This documentary explores the many social and political costs of the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories. It was filmed between January 1- 14, 2010 on a university-sponsored trip.

Credits:
Ashley McAdam
Becky Barbrow
Stuart (William) Pike

Israel destroys a whole Negev Village – 200 Children left Homeless

Via: Intifada Palestine.

Destruction implemented though land ownership still pending in court

Netanyahu calls Bedouin citizens of Israel “real threat” – and next, an entire village in the Negev is demolished

Early this morning police raided the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib in the Negev, destroyed all 40 of its houses, and evicted more than 300 residents. The residents, mostly children, were left homeless. The unprecedented raid began at about 4:30 in the morning, residents were surprised to wake up surrounded by a huge force of 1,500 police with guns, stun grenades, helmets and shields, including hundreds of Special Riot Police (Yasam) as well as mounted police, helicopters and bulldozers.

At the residents’ call, dozens of left-wing activists and volunteers arrived from all over the country, helping them to offer non-violent resistance. Several residents were bruised and beaten by police, thjough not needing medical attention. One woman demonstrator was detained by the police. The police removed the residents’ property into prepared containers, and bulldozers demolished the residential buildings and sheepfolds and destroyed the residents’ fruit orchards and olive tree groves.

The villagers, mostly children and old people, were left stunned near the destroyed village, shelterless and waterless under the blazing sun.

Revelations that just don’t shock

Via: Morning Star.

Top brass allegations that the Wikileaks materials shown to the Guardian, New York Times and Der Spiegel pose a threat to British troops’ safety in Afghanistan should be taken with a large bag of salt.

Do these military commanders imagine that the evidence comes as a huge surprise to the Afghan people?

Do they think that Afghans have been unaware of misdirected “precision bombs,” of wedding parties being wiped out as Taliban gatherings, of civilian buses, lorries and cars being riddled with bullets by jittery troops or of Nato assassination units causing a high level of “collateral damage?”

Is it plausible that Afghan opponents of the US occupation know nothing of the sophisticated, shoulder-mounted surface-to-air rockets deployed by Taliban forces against coalition helicopters?

The Afghan people are well aware of the ongoing slaughter and, even though civilian deaths have been caused by both Nato and Taliban actions, they blame the invaders for the conflict and for their losses.

While up-to-date casualty figures for each national contingent of Washington’s coalition of the complicit are readily available, we shall probably never know the true extent of Afghan civilian deaths.

Afghans are as expendable as Iraqis, for, as US General Tommy Franks noted when asked about the civilian death toll as a result of the 2002 invasion “We don’t do body counts.”

Fourteen Examples of Systemic Racism in the US Criminal Justice System. By Bill Quigley

Via: Common Dreams.

The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.

Saying the US criminal system is racist may be politically controversial in some circles. But the facts are overwhelming. No real debate about that. Below I set out numerous examples of these facts.

The question is – are these facts the mistakes of an otherwise good system, or are they evidence that the racist criminal justice system is working exactly as intended? Is the US criminal justice system operated to marginalize and control millions of African Americans?

Information on race is available for each step of the criminal justice system – from the use of drugs, police stops, arrests, getting out on bail, legal representation, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison, parole and freedom. Look what these facts show.

One. The US has seen a surge in arrests and putting people in jail over the last four decades. Most of the reason is the war on drugs. Yet whites and blacks engage in drug offenses, possession and sales, at roughly comparable rates – according to a report on race and drug enforcement published by Human Rights Watch in May 2008. While African Americans comprise 13% of the US population and 14% of monthly drug users they are 37% of the people arrested for drug offenses – according to 2009 Congressional testimony by Marc Mauer of The Sentencing Project.

Two. The police stop blacks and Latinos at rates that are much higher than whites. In New York City, where people of color make up about half of the population, 80% of the NYPD stops were of blacks and Latinos. When whites were stopped, only 8% were frisked. When blacks and Latinos are stopped 85% were frisked according to information provided by the NYPD. The same is true most other places as well. In a California study, the ACLU found blacks are three times more likely to be stopped than whites.

Three. Since 1970, drug arrests have skyrocketed rising from 320,000 to close to 1.6 million according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice.

African Americans are arrested for drug offenses at rates 2 to 11 times higher than the rate for whites – according to a May 2009 report on disparity in drug arrests by Human Rights Watch.

The Gaza “shopping mall”: reality and hasbara. By Ali Abunimah

Via: Ali Abunimah’s Blog.

When he came to Washington a few months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was touting the multiplex cinemas and shopping malls that have supposedly sprouted up in the West Bank as evidence of the “economic renaissance” going on there. There is no such economic renaissance — it is a mirage promoted by Israel and its collaborators — under the rubric of “economic peace.” In fact, in large parts of the West Bank, people are poorer even than in Gaza, which is saying something given the wretched poverty and unemployment in Gaza.

Now, Israel’s supporters have leapt on a minor story — the opening of a shopping “mall” in Gaza — to perform a similar hasbara trick: ‘there is no poverty in Gaza, no siege, no hunger, no malnutrition. Just look at them, they are living better than we do!’ I have seen such messages on many right-wing and pro-Israel sites.

Israel’s Ynet reported:

While Hamas continues to demand a full lifting of the blockade, the Gaza market seems to be doing alright. Gaza Mall, the first ever shopping center in the Strip was opened last Saturday with masses storming the new attraction.

The two-floor compound, each stretching over roughly 9,700 sq. ft, offers international brands as well as much-needed air conditioning. Tens of thousands of shoppers from Rafah to Beit Hanoun have already visited the site within a matter of days, making the center Gaza’s new craze.

First, note that the reported size is about 20,000 square feet (1,850 square meters). To put this in perspective, the average size of a Wal-Mart store in the US is five times larger than the entire Gaza “mall”: 108,000 square feet (with the largest Wal-Mart stores going up to 185,000 square feet!).

Now I have received this eyewitness account from a source in Gaza:

“I found out about the Gaza mall. Yes it exists. The goods in there are very expensive and it’s not a real mall, barely bigger than a little supermarket. It has 4 sections, one sells vegetables grown in Gaza, the 2nd section sells clothes and shoes, a 3rd section is like a huge supermarket with things brought to Gaza through the tunnels, and the last sells electric materials, TVs, stereos… The owners are very rich people in the Gaza Strip. Most of the stuff being sold are either made in Gaza, or brought via tunnels. And there are no thousands visitors, when I went there, I saw about 15-20 people only.”

Gaza is a territory with 1.5 million people. They ought to have a normal life. That this small store is being celebrated as a major achievement shows just how hard the Israeli siege is biting. It also shows — as I reported in a previous blog post — that the siege is producing a small wealthy economic elite, while the vast majority suffers.

Afghan leak: Wikileaks Julian Assange tells all

Via: theREALnews.

Channel 4 News speaks exclusively to founder of Wikileaks Julian Assange about the Afghan war logs

It is one of the biggest security breaches in US military history. As 200,000 secret US military documents go public, Channel 4 News speaks exclusively to founder of Wikileaks Julian Assange about the Afghan war logs.

In his own words Julian Assange explains how Wikileaks works and why he decided it was right to leak classified details about the war in Afghanistan.

What is Wikileaks?
It’s an international public service that claims it helps whistleblowers or journalists get suppressed information out to the public – and do it safely.

How did it come about?
A network of human rights activists, technical people and journalists were sick of being censored themselves and also having primary source material that they couldn’t publish in their newspaper or online for legal reasons or space constraints.

How does it work? Where is it based?
Physically Wikileaks does two things – it gets these disclosures from whistleblowers or journalists who can’t get their material into the press – and then it also publishes this material and keeps it up in the face of political or legal attack.

Secret files: Wikileaks reveals ‘unseen war’
What is Wikileaks?

So in the first part that’s a matter of protecting the source and there is some sophisticated infrastructure to do that, bouncing our submissions around the world in an encrypted way to lose the trail of surveillance activities and also to pass that information through protective legal jurisdictions like Sweden or Belgium, which have legislation to ensure communications between a journalist and a source are protected.

Then in the second part, the publishing aspect, we have other laws in different jurisdictions that protect the rights of people to communicate in public in different ways. So we have infrastructure situated in New York, Sweden, Iceland to take advantage of that protection.

The CIA: Beyond Redemption and Should be Terminated. By Sherwood Ross

Via: Global Research.

The Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) has confirmed the worst fears of its creator President Harry Truman that it might degenerate into “an American Gestapo.” It has been just that for so long it is beyond redemption. It represents 60 years of failure and fascism utterly at odds with the spirit of a democracy and needs to be closed, permanently.

Over the years “the Agency” as it is known, has given U.S. presidents so much wrong information on so many critical issues, broken so many laws, subverted so many elections, overthrown so many governments, funded so many dictators, and killed and tortured so many innocent human beings that the pages of its official history could be written in blood, not ink. People the world over regard it as infamous, and that evaluation, sadly for the reputation of America, is largely accurate. Besides, since President Obama has half a dozen other major intelligence agencies to rely on for guidance, why does he need the CIA? In one swoop he could lop an estimated 27,000 employees off the Federal payroll, save taxpayers umpteen billions, and wipe the CIA stain from the American flag.

If you think this is a “radical” idea, think again. What is “radical” is to empower a mob of covert operatives to roam the planet, wreaking havoc as they go with not a care for morality or, for that matter, the tenets of mercy implicit in any of the great faiths. The idea of not prosecuting CIA interrogators (i.e., torturers), as President Obama has said, is chilling. These crimes have to be stopped somewhere, sometime, or they will occur again.

“The CIA had run secret interrogation centers before—beginning in 1950, in Germany, Japan, and Panama,” writes New York Times reporter Tim Weiner in his book “Legacy of Ashes, The History of The CIA”(Random House). Weiner has won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the intelligence community. “It had participated in the torture of captured enemy combatants before—beginning in 1967, under the Phoenix program in Vietnam. It had kidnapped suspected terrorists and assassins before…”

In Iran in 1953, for example, a CIA-directed coup restored the Shah (king) to absolute power, initiating what journalist William Blum in “Rogue State” (Common Courage Press) called “a period of 25 years of repression and torture; while the oil industry was restored to foreign ownership, with the US and Britain each getting 40 percent.” About the same time in Guatemala, Blum adds, a CIA-organized coup “overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of military government death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling more than 200,000 victims—indisputably one of the most inhuman chapters of the 20th century.” The massive slaughter compares, at least in terms of sheer numbers, with Hitler’s massacre of Romanian and Ukranian Jews during the holocaust. Yet few Americans know of it.

Blum provides yet other examples of CIA criminality. In Indonesia, it attempted in 1957-58 to overthrow neutralist president Sukarno. It plotted Sukarno’s assassination, tried to blackmail him with a phony sex film, and joined forces with dissident military officers to wage a full-scale war against the government, including bombing runs by American pilots, Blum reported This particular attempt, like one in Costa Rica about the same time, failed. So did the CIA attempt in Iraq in 1960 to assassinate President Abdul Kassem. Other ventures proved more “successful”.