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By Andrew Gavin Marshall, Occupy.Com

24 November 12

@ Readersupportednews.org

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the most secretive and “least transparent” trade negotiations in history.

Luckily for the populations and societies that will be affected by the agreement, there are public research organizations and alternative media outlets campaigning against it – and they’ve even released several leaks of draft agreement chapters. From these leaks, which are not covered by mainstream corporate-controlled news outlets, we are able to get a better understanding of what the Trans-Pacific Partnership actually encompasses.

For example, public interest groups have been warning that the TPP could result in millions of lost jobs. As a letter from Congress to United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk stated, the TPP “will create binding policies on future Congresses in numerous areas,” including “those related to labor, patent and copyright, land use, food, agriculture and product standards, natural resources, the environment, professional licensing, state-owned enterprises and government procurement policies, as well as financial, healthcare, energy, telecommunications and other service sector regulations.”

In other words, as promised, the TPP goes far beyond “trade.”

Dubbed by many as “NAFTA on steroids” and a “corporate coup,” only two of the TPP’s 26 chapters actually have anything to do with trade. Most of it grants far-reaching new rights and privileges to corporations, specifically related to intellectual property rights (copyright and patent laws), as well as constraints on government regulations.

The leaked documents revealed that the Obama administration “intends to bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations,” as Obama and Kirk have emerged as strong advocates “for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws.”

In other words, the already ineffective and mostly toothless environmental, financial, and labor regulations that exist are unacceptable to the Obama administration and the 600 corporations aligned with the TPP who are giving him his orders.

The agreement stipulates that foreign corporations operating in the United States would no longer be subject to domestic U.S. laws regarding protections for the environment, finance or labor rights, and could appeal to an “international tribunal” which would be given the power to overrule American law and impose sanctions on the U.S. for violating the new “rights” of corporations.

The “international tribunal” that would dictate the laws of the countries would be staffed by corporate lawyers acting as “judges,” thus ensuring that cases taken before them have a “fair and balanced” hearing – fairly balanced in favor of corporate rights above anything else.

A public interest coalition known as Citizens Trade Campaign published a draft of the TPP chapter on “investment” revealing information about the “international tribunal” which would allow corporations to directly sue governments that have barriers to “potential profits.”

Arthur Stamoulis, the executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign, explained that the draft texts “clearly contain proposals designed to give transnational corporations special rights that go far beyond those possessed by domestic businesses and American citizens… A proposal that could have such broad effects on environmental, consumer safety and other public interest regulations deserves public scrutiny and debate. It shouldn’t be crafted behind closed doors.”

Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, a public interest organization, undertook an analysis of the leaked document on investment and explained that the international corporate tribunal would allow corporations to overturn national laws and regulations or demand enormous sums in compensation, with the tribunal “empowered to order payment of unlimited government Treasury funds to foreign investors over TPP claims.”

Even under NAFTA, over $350 million has been paid by NAFTA-aligned governments to corporations for “barriers” to investment “rights,” including toxic waste dumps, logging rules, as well as bans on various toxic chemicals.

Because let’s be clear: for corporations, such regulations and concerns over health, safety and environmental issues are perceived solely as “barriers” to investment and profit. Thus their “government” would sue the foreign government on behalf of the corporation, on the premise that such regulations led to potential lost profits, for which the corporation should be compensated.

The TPP allows the corporations to directly sue the government in question. All of the TPP member countries, except for Australia, have agreed to adhere to the jurisdiction of this international tribunal, an unelected, anti-democratic and corporate-staffed kangaroo-court with legal authority over at least ten nations and their populations.

Further, TPP countries have not agreed on a set of obligations for corporations to meet in relation to health, labor or environmental standards, and thus a door is opened for corporations to obtain even more rights and privileges to plunder and exploit. Where corporate rights are extended, human and democratic rights are dismantled.

One of the most important areas in which the TPP has a profound effect is in relation to intellectual property rights, or copyright and patent laws. Corporations have been strong advocates of expanding intellectual property rights, namely, their intellectual property rights.

Pharmaceutical corporations are major proponents of these rights and are likely to be among the major beneficiaries of the intellectual property chapter of the TPP. The pharmaceutical industry ensured that strong patent rules were included in the 1995 World Trade Organization agreement, but ultimately felt that those rules did not go far enough.

Dean Baker, writing in the Guardian, explained that stronger patent rules establish “a government-granted monopoly, often as long as 14 years, that prohibits generic competitors from entering a market based on another company’s test results that show a drug to be safe and effective.” Baker noted that such laws are actually “the opposite of free trade” since they “involve increased government intervention in the market” and “restrict competition and lead to higher prices for consumers.”

Essentially, what this means is that in poor countries where more people need access to life-saving drugs, and at cheaper cost, it would be impossible for companies or governments to manufacture and sell cheaper generic brands of successful drugs held by multinational corporate patents. Such an agreement would hand over a monopoly of price-controls to these corporations, allowing them to set the prices as they deem fit, thus making the drugs incredibly expensive and often inaccessible to the people who need them most.

As U.S. Congressman Henry Waxman correctly noted, “In many parts of the world, access to generic drugs means the difference between life and death.”

The TPP is expected to increase such corporate patent rights more than any other agreement in history. Generic drug manufacturers in countries like Vietnam and Malaysia would suffer. So would sales of larger generics manufacturers in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, which supply low-cost drugs to much of the world.

While the United States has given up the right to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical corporations (hence the exorbitant price for drugs purchased in the U.S.), countries like New Zealand and even Canada to a lesser extent negotiate drug prices in order to keep the costs down for consumers. The TPP will grant new negotiating privileges to corporations, allowing them to appeal decisions by governments to challenge the high cost of drugs or to go with cheap alternatives. Referring to these changes, the U.S. manager of Doctors Without Borders’ Access to Medicines Campaign stated, “Bush was better than Obama on this.”

But that’s not all the TPP threatens: Internet freedom is also a major target.

The Council of Canadians and OpenMedia, major campaigners for Internet freedom, have warned that the TPP would “criminalize some everyday uses of the Internet,” including music downloads as well as the combining of different media works. OpenMedia warned that the TPP would “force service providers to collect and hand over your private data without privacy safeguards, and give media conglomerates more power to send you fines in the mail, remove online content – including entire websites – and even terminate your access to the Internet.”

Also advanced under the TPP chapter on intellectual property rights, new laws would have to be put in place by governments to regulate Internet usage. OpenMedia further warned that, from the leaked documents on intellectual property rights, “there can be heavy fines for average citizens online,” adding: “you could be fined for clicking on a link, people could be knocked off the Internet and web sites could be locked off.”

The TPP, warned OpenMedia founder Steve Anderson, “will limit innovation and free expression.” Under the TPP, there is no distinction between commercial and non-commercial copyright infringement. Thus, users who download music for personal use would face the same penalties as those who sell pirated music for profit.

Information that is created or shared on social networking sites could have Internet users fined, have their computers seized, their Internet usage terminated, or even get them a jail sentence. The TPP imposes a “three strikes” system for copyright infringement, where three violations would result in the termination of a household’s Internet access.

So, why all the secrecy? Corporate and political decision-makers study public opinion very closely; they know how to manipulate the public based upon what the majority think and believe. When it comes to “free trade” agreements, public opinion has forced negotiators into the darkness of back-room deals and unaccountable secrecy precisely because populations are so overwhelmingly against such agreements.

An opinion poll from 2011 revealed that the American public has – just over the previous few years – moved from “broad opposition” to “overwhelming opposition” toward NAFTA-style trade deals.

A major NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll from September of 2010 revealed that “the impact of trade and outsourcing is one of the only issues on which Americans of different classes, occupations and political persuasions agree,” with 86% saying that outsourcing jobs by U.S. companies to poor countries was “a top cause of our economic woes,” with 69% thinking that “free trade agreements between the United States and other countries cost the U.S. jobs.” Only 17% of Americans in 2010 felt that “free trade agreements” benefit the U.S., compared to 28% in 2007.

Because public opinion is strongly – and increasingly – against “free trade agreements,” secrecy is required in order to prevent the public from even knowing about, let alone actively opposing, agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And this, as U.S. Trade Representative Kirk explained, is a very “practical” reason for all the secrecy.

Part III of Marshall’s investigative series on the Trans-Pacific Partnership will appear Monday.

By Alan Hart

23 November, 2012

Alanhart.net

It’s too soon to know whether the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will be more than a sticking plaster to be ripped off by more violence whether provoked by Israel or not, but while we wait for events to give us the answer, there is a good case for saying that under Netanyahu’s leadership the Zionist (not Jewish) state has suffered a significant defeat.

One small clue that Netanyahu and his leadership colleagues know this was a statement to the BBC this morning by Mark Regev, the prime minister’s Goebbels-like spin doctor. He said, “We didn’t want this escalation.” Even by Regev’s own standards that was a big, fat propaganda lie. It was to trigger the escalation that Netanyahu ordered the assassination of Hamas’s military chief. (It now seems more than reasonably clear that he was within an hour or so of signing an Egyptian-sponsored agreement for a prolonged truce when he was murdered).

The three main reasons for believing that Israel has suffered a significant defeat are these:

1. Israel did not get what it wanted and was demanding – an unconditional and unilateral ceasefire by Hamas.

2. Hamas’s isolation is over, ended. The Obama administration and European governments may still refuse to recognise Hamas and talk directly and openly to it, but they are as good as doing so when they engage with Egypt’s President Morsi.

3. President Obama had the good sense to realise that he can do business with the pragmatic Morsi.

In today’s Ha-aretz there is a fascinating and revealing account by Barak Ravid of what happened behind Netanyahu’s closed doors. The essence of it was that Defense Minister Barak “wanted it” (the truce on more or less Egypt’s terms); Foreign Minister Lieberman (who subsequently changed his mind) started out “demanding a ground invasion”; and Netanyahu “vacillated”.

My own speculation is that Netanyahu finally decided that it would be too costly for Israel in diplomatic and political terms to say “No” to Obama and many other leaders who insisted that Israel had to agree to a ceasefire on more or less Egypt and Hamas’s terms in order to prevent further de-stabilization in the region. (The extent to which Netanyahu was worried about the possible consequences for Israel of saying “No” was indicated by the fact that a few rockets were fired into Israel after the ceasefire came into effect, and Netanyahu did not allow himself to be provoked into responding with more bombs and missiles).

That said it is also the case that Netanyahu’s negotiators did create some wriggle room for their master. How so? The ceasefire document is not a binding agreement. It is a list of undertakings which are still to be worked out in detail and agreed. (It has to be acknowledged that Zionism is without equal in the business of finding ways not to honour commitments it makes in agreements).

There are three main and related questions arising.

The first is to what extent will Israel actually lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip?

The second is to what extent will Egypt succeed in preventing Hamas being re-armed by smuggling even if President Morsi has the will to succeed on this front where Mubarak failed? (The nuclear-armed Zionist state insists that it must be allowed to go on expanding its arsenal with the latest weapons, actually for offensive purposes, but Hamas must not have any weapons for defensive purposes).

The third is does Hamas have the ability to prevent violent Islamic fringe groups firing rockets into Israel? (It has to be said that its ability to do so has not been helped by the assassination of its military chief).

Another interesting question is this: What impact if any will Netanyahu’s acceptance of a ceasefire on more or less Egypt and Hamas’s terms have on his chances of emerging from Israel’s January election with a stronger than ever and unchallengeable coalition majority? According to a snap poll taken very soon after the ceasefire announcement, 70 per cent of Israel’s Jews said they were opposed to the deal, meaning, presumably, that Netanyahu was wrong to agree to it. If that is and remains the view of a majority, we can expect to see Netanyahu aligning himself even more closely with the forces of the truly fascist right between now and the election.

In a best case scenario the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will last and life for the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip will improve, but the fundamental problem will remain – Israel’s on-going colonization and ethnic cleansing by stealth of the occupied West Bank, the proof that Zionism is not remotely interested in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept.

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent. He is author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs at http://www.alanhart.net and tweets via http://twitter.com/alanauthor

By John Pilger

23 November, 2012

@ JohnPilger.com

In Peter Watkins’ remarkable BBC film, The War Game,which foresaw the aftermath of an attack on London with a one-megaton nuclear bomb, the narrator says: “On almost the entire subject of thermo-clear weapons, there is now practically total silence in the press, official publications and on TV. Is there hope to be found in this silence?”

The truth of this statement was equal to its irony. On 24 November, 1965, the BBC banned The War Game as “too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting”. This was false. The real reason was spelt out by the chairman of the BBC Board of Governors, Lord Normanbrook, in a secret letter to the Secretary to the Cabinet, Sir Burke Trend.

“[The War Game] is not designed as propaganda,” he wrote, “it is intended as a purely factual statement and is based on careful research into official material… But the showing of the film on television might have a significant effect on public attitudes towards the policy of the nuclear deterrent.” Following a screening attended by senior Whitehall officials, the film was banned because it told an intolerable truth. Sixteen years later, the then BBC director-general, Sir Ian Trethowan, renewed the ban, saying that he feared for the film’s effect on people of “limited mental intelligence”. Watkins’ brilliant work was eventually shown in 1985 to a late-night minority audience. It was introduced by Ludovic Kennedy who repeated the official lie.

What happened to The War Game is the function of the state broadcaster as a cornerstone of Britain’s ruling elite. With its outstanding production values, often fine popular drama, natural history and sporting coverage, the BBC enjoys wide appeal and, according to its managers and beneficiaries, “trust”. This “trust” may well apply to Springwatch and Sir David Attenborough, but there is no demonstrable basis for it in much of the news and so-called current affairs that claim to make sense of the world, especially the machinations of rampant power. There are honourable individual exceptions, but watch how these are tamed the longer they remain in the institution: a “defenestration”, as one senior BBC journalist describes it.

This is notably true in the Middle East where the Israeli state has successfully intimidated the BBC into presenting the theft of Palestinian land and the caging, torturing and killing of its people as an intractable “conflict” between equals. Standing in the rubble from an Israeli attack, one BBC journalist went further and referred to “Gaza’s strong culture of martyrdom”. So great is this distortion that young viewers of BBC News have told Glasgow University researchers they are left with the impression that Palestinians are the illegal colonisers of their own country. The current BBC “coverage” of Gaza’s genocidal misery reinforces this.

The BBC’s “Reithian values” of impartiality and independence are almost scriptural in their mythology. Soon after the corporation was founded in the 1920s by Lord John Reith, Britain was consumed by the General Strike. “Reith emerged as a kind of hero,” wrote the historian Patrick Renshaw, “who had acted responsibly and yet preserved the precious independence of the BBC. But though this myth persisted it has little basis in reality… the price of that independence was in fact doing what the government wanted done. [Prime Minister Stanley] Baldwin… saw that if they preserved the BBC’s independence, it would be much easier for them to get their way on important questions and use it to broadcast Government propaganda.”

Unknown to the public, Reith had been the prime minister’s speech writer. Ambitious to become Viceroy of India, he ensured the BBC became an evangelist of imperial power, with “impartiality” duly suspended whenever that power was threatened. This “principle” has applied to the BBC’s coverage of every colonial war of the modern era: from the covered-up genocide in Indonesia and suppression of eyewitness film of the American bombing of North Vietnam to support for the illegal Blair/Bush invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the now familiar echo of Israeli propaganda whenever that lawless state abuses its captive, Palestine. This reached a nadir in 2009 when, terrified of Israeli reaction, the BBC refused to broadcast a combined charities appeal for the people of Gaza, half of whom are children, most of them malnourished and traumatised by Israeli attacks. The United Nations Rapporteur, Richard Falk, has likened Israel’s blockade of Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto under siege by the Nazis. Yet, to the BBC, Gaza – like the 2010 humanitarian relief flotilla murderously attacked by Israeli commandos – largely presents a public relations problem for Israel and its US sponsor.

Mark Regev, Israel’s chief propagandist, seemingly has a place reserved for him near the top of BBC news bulletins. In 2010, when I pointed this out to Fran Unsworth, now elevated to director of news, she strongly objected to the description of Regev as a propagandist, adding, “It’s not our job to go out and appoint the Palestinean spokesperson”.

With similar logic, Unsworth’s predecessor, Helen Boaden, described the BBC’s reporting of the criminal carnage in Iraq as based on the “fact that Bush has tried to export democracy and human rights to Iraq”. To prove her point, Boaden supplied six A4 pages of verifiable lies from Bush and Tony Blair. That ventriloquism is not journalism seemed not to occur to either woman.

What has changed at the BBC is the arrival of the cult of the corporate manager. George Entwistle, the briefly-appointed director general who said he knew nothing about Newsnight’s false accusations of child abuse against a Tory grandee, is to receive £450,000 of public money for agreeing to resign before he was sacked: the corporate way. This and the preceding Jimmy Savile scandal might have been scripted for the Daily Mail and the Murdoch press whose self-serving hatred of the BBC has long provided the corporation with its “embattled” façade as the guardian of “public service broadcasting”. Understanding the BBC as a pre-eminent state propagandist and censor by omission – more often than not in tune with its right-wing enemies – is on no public agenda and it ought to be.

John Richard Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker, based in London. He has twice won Britain’s Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US

 

 

 

By Nour Samaha

22 November, 2012

@ Aljazeera.com

House of Hijazi family was hit and wiped out by Israeli missile, killing three members and seriously wounding the rest.

Palestinian mourners gather around the bodies of Foud Hijazi, 45, and his sons Suhaib, 2, and Mohammed, 4, killed in an Israeli strike, during their funeral at a mosque in the Jebaliya refugee camp, in Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2012.

Gaza Strip: Fouad Hejazi Family Massacre

JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP: “For a split second I thought it had struck our neighbour’s home. The next thing I know, I’m waking up in hospital,” said 19-year-old Nour Hijazi, lying in a hospital bed in Jabaliya’s Kamal Edwan Hospital with a shattered spine.

The Hijazi family, consisting of six boys and two girls, were sitting with their parents watching television on Monday evening when the Israeli missile hit their home, killing three of them, and seriously wounding the rest.

“I’m really angry and upset that my whole family were injured in this,” she said.

Nour, in her final year at school, has yet to be told that her two brothers, four-year-old Mohammad and two-year-old Suhaib, and her father Fouad, were killed in the air strike.

Suhaib’s identical twin Mosaab, sustained injuries but survived the attack. The other children; Sondoss, Osama, and Mustapha, all sustained serious injuries, and are currently undergoing treatment in various hospitals across Gaza City.

Nour’s younger brother, 17-year-old Ashraf, remembers when the missile struck the house.

“There was no warning, we just felt the entire house collapse around us,” he said from his hospital bed.

“I was stuck under the rubble. I heard the voices of our neighbours trying to pull us out,” he said. “There is no reason for them to have targeted us. We’re just normal residents.”

A statement released on Tuesday morning by the Israeli army summarising the attacks they perpetrated throughout the evening said: “The sites that were targeted have been positively identified by precise intelligence over the course of months.”

 

Nothing but sand and rubble

On Tuesday, there was nothing but sand and rubble left in the area where their home once stood.

Neighbours and other camp residents spent the day clearing up the debris and salvaging what few belongings were still lying around to give back to the remaining Hijazis once they come out of hospital.

As crowds of people continued to gather around the explosion site, Israeli drones could still be heard buzzing in the skies.

Every so often, the sounds of explosions in different parts of the city resonated through the streets, as children discussed among themselves whether they came from the Israeli navy ships or from the Israeli airplanes.

“Why is there a war on Gaza? It’s because the Israelis want our lands, right?” asked 14-year-old Hamza Abu Gamsar, a friend of the Hijazi boys. “Every year there is a war on Gaza.”

“These people are just civilians. Fouad worked as a security guard for a school, he had nothing to do with politics,” decried Hisham Salem, a neighbour whose front-door was blasted off its hinges because of the explosion.

Hisham and his family were in their own living room when the missile hit their neighbours. Two of his children, 11 years old and 12 years old, ran screaming to the corner of the room, almost trampling their two-month-old brother in panic.

“We never heard any bomb coming. We only heard the front door explode, and then saw a rush of flames come through the opening,” he said, pointing to the gaping entrance.

‘We will continue to resist’

They tried to get out, but were forced to retreat back to the room because the smoke was too strong. After a few minutes they forced their way through the smoke to reach outside. “We didn’t see any of the family. We just saw a pile of rubbish.”

He spent Tuesday with other neighbours piling up the Hijazis belongings in his home. “These are all we could find,” he said, about the pile of dusty clothing and ornaments.

When asked why his neighbour’s house was targeted, Hisham said, “Everyone in Gaza is a target. This is not about Hamas,” he said, adding this was not the first time the Hijazi family had been affected by Israeli attacks. In 2008, their eldest son was also killed by Israeli air strikes.

Pointing to where the Hijazi house once stood, Hisham went on to say, “You can see with your own eyes, there are no words. Just look.”

The death-toll continued to mount on Tuesday, bringing the total since it began a week ago to at least 131 killed, and several hundred more wounded. While the streets in Gaza City are now relatively empty, with most storefronts closed, residents remain resilient.

Moaqassim Al Digis, 10 years old, was a friend of the Hijazi boys. He described how they would play football together on the street next to the house, how the Hijazi children were friendly and sociable.

“Yet, we are not afraid of this war. Why not? Because we exist,” he said, standing atop the rubble of his friend’s house.

“We will be patient, but we will continue to resist. We will not give up, and we will not raise the white flag.”

From his hospital bed, Ashraf remained defiant. “God will take revenge for this, and we are asking for the resistance to keep going.”

By George Capaccio

22 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Four years ago, when Israel’s Operation Cast Lead pogrom against the people of Gaza was underway, President-elect Barack Obama was asked about it. His response: “I can’t comment on that, I am not president.” Although he had lots to say about other matters before his election, apparently the magnitude of Israel’s righteous response to Palestinian rockets was simply too much for the great orator, humanitarian, and Peace Laureate. To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps his silence was a splendid example of political savvy. After all, he neither condoned nor condemned Israel’s onslaught. Could it be that discretion really was the better part of valor? Or was it more a matter of moral cowardice that prevented Obama from sticking his neck out and openly calling for an end to Israel’s criminal aggression against a defenseless people?

In 2008, during a visit to Israel, Obama expressed his profound sympathy for Israeli citizens who live under the constant threat of terrorist attacks in towns like Siderot. Like any loving parent, he would not countenance anyone deliberately endangering the lives of his own children: “If somebody shot rockets at my house where my two daughters were sleeping at night, I’d do everything in my power to stop them.” As prominent progressive bloggers duly noted, Obama’s understandable concern did not extend to the children of parents in Gaza. Judging by his words, we can reasonably conclude that for Obama only Israeli children matter, in addition to his own, of course. As for the children of Palestinian parents, we can only speculate about what must go through his head when staffers brief him about the rising death toll.

A study of civilian casualties undertaken by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, after the conclusion of Operation Cast Lead, found that “313 children were killed among the 1414 who died over a 23-day period. Of the 5300 injured (many seriously), 1606 were children. In all cases, the vast majority were noncombatants.” [http://www.globalresearch.ca/israeli-war-crimes-against-children-during-operation-cast-lead/13956Operation Cast Lead]

Operation Pillar of Defense, a re-play of Israel’s previous cold-blooded massacre of Palestinians, has provided Obama with another opportunity to weigh in on the side of humanity. This time, however, instead of silence, he re-discovered his glorious voice. During a news conference in Thailand, he had this to say about Israel’s deployment of overwhelming force against a captive and largely civilian population in Gaza already suffering from a five-year-old blockade: “There’s no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders . . . We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Until the ceasefire took effect on Wednesday, the 21st of November, Israeli missiles, bombs, and artillery shells rained down hard on the citizens of Gaza, killing and wounding hundreds. Isn’t it strangely wonderful how this latest onslaught stopped the day before Thanksgiving. I suppose it just wouldn’t do for Americans to celebrate the holiday against a backdrop of unmitigated murder carried out by our number one ally with the aid of US-supplied weaponry.

Coincidently, in 2008, Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s even more brutal attack on Gaza, conveniently ended in time for the inauguration of the new US President. One wonders how politicians like Obama and Netanyahu calibrate the cost of their bloodletting. Do they and their cabinets agree beforehand on an acceptable upper limit which, when reached, will allow these world leaders, or their representatives, to take to the airwaves and declare that peace is at hand, that once again the defenders of Western civilization have triumphed over terror through the purity of their arms and the righteousness of their cause.

Last night, in Boston, I took part in a well-attended demonstration against the Israeli government’s butchering of innocents. In front of the Israeli Consulate, we briefly stopped marching. A group of us held the edges of an enormous Palestinian flag, billowing in the wind while we achanted “Hey, Israel, what do you say! How many kids did you kill today?” I remembered chanting nearly the same words near the campus of MIT in Cambridge where President Clinton, in 1998, was giving the commencement speech. At that time, our concern was Clinton’s support of the genocidal sanctions regime imposed on Iraq.

How little has changed since then, at least in respect to our government’s continuing practice of attacking relatively defenseless populations while enabling other rogue governments to carry out their own homicidal practices. And so it goes. Obama, how many kids did you kill today with your drones, your special forces, your black ops, your “all options are on the table” stance toward Iran, and your willingness to look the other way when strategically important partners commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.

To tell the truth, I could not bear to join those who were chanting on the streets of Boston about the number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs. I could only think of the children and their families and the grief that flows like blood from the wounded heart of Gaza.

No, chanting will never do. Something more is needed in response to this tragedy. For our Native American sisters and brothers, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning. It will be the same for me, but not because my ancestors were rounded up like cattle and driven from their land on forced migrations, or wantonly killed by soldiers and settlers.

I will mourn the senseless deaths of innocents in Israel and Palestine. I will mourn the dearth of compassion, wisdom, and courage in the hearts of our so-called leaders. I will mourn the failure on the part of so many fellow citizens to understand the role our government plays in enabling Israel’s crimes. I will mourn their apparent lack of empathy not only for the victims of Israel’s high-tech violence but for all the families in Muslim lands we have terrorized, starved, and murdered while prattling on about our “values” and our noble reverence for the sanctity of life.

And when Thanksgiving has passed, though I may still feel my heart weighed down with sorrow, I will do my best to carry on with my own small part in the struggle for a far better, saner, and more just world than the one we shoulder now.

George Capaccio is a writer and activist living in Arlington, MA. During the years of US- and UK-enforced sanctions against Iraq, he traveled there numerous times, bringing in banned items, befriending families in Baghdad, and deepening his understanding of how the sanctions were impacting civilians. His email is Georgecapaccio@verizon.net. His website is: www.georgecapaccio.com/

By Ali Abunimah

22 November 2012

@electronicintifada.net

On the night a ceasefire came into effect ending eight days of Israeli slaughter that left 162 people, the vast majority unarmed civilians, dead in Gaza, Dutch columnist and author Leon de Winter proposed adding chemicals to Gaza’s water supply to sterilize the population.

The website PowNed reported that de Winter “made his proposal for forced eugenics yesterday evening in Amsterdam at a solidarity meeting of Dutch Jews,” and that the speech by de Winter was broadcast this morning by Dutch mainstream and publicly-funded Radio 1.

PowNed said:

De Winter responded in his speech to the accusations of genocide leveled against Israel, saying that the population of Gaza had only increased over the last few years. “Maybe we should secretly add some means of birth control to Gaza’s drinking water,” De Winter proceeded to propose.

The suggestion was met with roaring laughter by the public. Among the participants that evening were the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands, Hiam Devon, and the cheerful leader of the [religious ultra-conservative] SGP party, Kees van der Staaij.

De Winter blogged until 2008 on the mainstream liberal news site Elsevier. He is also an “an adjunct fellow” at the Hudson Institute, a right-wing American think-tank.

While de Winter, known for his “humor,” might have intended his suggestion as some sort of sick joke, the reported reaction suggests that the audience were only too ready to mock an already dehumanized population.

De Winter’s comment fits neatly with Israel’s racist conception of Palestinians as a “demographic threat” simply because they are not Jews.

Such genocidal comments are particularly disturbing in The Netherlands given the upsurge of Islamophobia and xenophobia in recent years, and because the country had a particularly shameful history of collaboration with the Nazis in deporting Jews to their deaths during the Second World War.

Event backed by major Dutch Jewish communal and Zionist organizations

The 21 November event where de Winter spoke, titled “We Stand with Israel” and held at Amsterdam’s Jewish Cultural Center, was co-sponsored by a who’s who of Jewish communal and Zionist organizations, among them CIDI, Christians for Israel, WIZO (the Women’s International Zionist Organization), Collectieve Israel Actie (Israel Action Collective) and Mifgash, an organization that aims to encourage Jews to leave their home countries and emigrate to Israel.

De Winter’s repulsive comment is reminiscent of a genocidal call by American “academic” and former Harvard University fellow Martin Kramer at a conference in Israel in 2010 for the “surplus” population of Gaza to be reduced by cutting off humanitarian aid.

Daniel Bugel-Shunra, who translated the PowNed post, noted that the reader comments below it indicated little support for de Winter’s statement.

“Quite the contrary, which is a big surprise to me, especially since this website has strong anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant tendencies,” Bugel-Shunra told The Electronic Intifada.

By Khalid Amayreh

22 November 2012

@ The Palestinian Information Center

Having satiated its people’s thirst with Palestinian blood, Israel has ostensibly agreed to a truce with the Palestinian resistance factions in the Gaza Strip.

The fragile understanding, however, doesn’t mean that Israel is quite content with the huge number of Palestinian civilians murdered at the hands of the Jewish Wehrmacht. Indeed, the cannibalistic Zionist instinct is intrinsically insatiable. This is what we have learned rather too well from Israel ever since the creation of the nefarious entity 64 years ago.

During the latest aggression, the “only democracy in the Middle East” murdered 33 children, 14 women, and more than 60 other innocent civilians. Moreover, as many as 1300 people, the vast majority of whom innocent civilians, including more than 400 children, were injured, many sustaining life-threatening injuries and burns.

Israeli spokespersons appearing on TV screens claim shamelessly that their Nazi-like army doesn’t deliberately target innocent civilians. But both man and God know this is an obscene Zionist lie. In the final analysis, Israeli Zionists qualify, par excellence, for the title “God’s lying people.”

Israel has always been a crime against humanity from day-1 of its existence. It conspicuously lacks the moral credentials that would qualify her to be a normal state with a semblance of a moral government, let alone a moral army. Israeli politicians and military commanders from the lowest-ranking private to the President are certified war criminals with tons of innocent blood on their hands.

Most Israelis would only elect irredeemable criminals and murderers as their political leaders. Being a mass murderer of Arabs and perpetrator of massacres is therefore the main and most important qualification for being worthy of leading Israel.

Unfortunately, these atrocities raise no eyebrows in Washington, Paris, London or even Moscow. Instead, they generate admiration for the Nazis of our time. But the pot can’t call the kettle black. The Americans are themselves too criminal and have a long history of genocidal mass murder to object to Jewish Nazism. Didn’t the Americans exterminate 10-15 million Native Americans and called the genocide manifest destiny?

Interestingly, the same thing applies to the French, the British and the Russians as well.

Another aspect of the obscene western discourse vis-à-vis the latest conflict is the mendacious claim that it was Hamas that provoked Israel to slaughter Palestinian civilians. Well, has the western media so easily forgotten that Israel herself is an exotic plant that is strange to the Middle East?

After all, it was Jewish invaders, supported by western countries that came from Eastern Europe, hijacked Palestine, terrorized and massacred its people, destroyed their homes, and expelled them to the four winds. Yet, these Zionists now have the audacity and shamelessness to accuse their victims of terror and violence.

Moral victory

We Palestinians are not conceited and don’t give in to national hubris. We know Israel is a regional superpower which also controls rather tightly the government of the United States. We also know that American and European political whores grovel at Israel’s feet, looking for a certificate of good conduct from the evil Jewish golem.

But we also realize and know deep in our hearts that Israel is a morally bankrupt state that thrives on murder and oppression. Needless to say, a state as such, which has dishonesty as its shield, oppression as its policy and murder as its modus operandi, will not live long.

Indeed, every child Israel murders and every civilian home Israeli war-planes destroy will be a curse that would accelerate and expedite Israel’s ultimate demise.

Israel, thanks to its immense firepower, may have succeeded in killing so many innocent Palestinians. Israel, like Nazi Germany, has always done that.

But the Palestinian resistance has remained largely intact and is retaining the ability to keep Israel and its settlers, who live on land that belongs to another people, in a state of existential anxiety.

The Palestinian resistance will ultimately learn the right lesson from this round of Israeli aggression. It is hoped that the resistance will be much more powerful when Israel decides to wage another round of aggression on the Palestinians.

Palestinians don’t fire rockets on Israel out of a feeling of insolence, or arrogance or even pugnacity and bellicosity. They fire the poor-man’s weapons in the hope of deterring a manifestly murderous enemy, which also happens to be their tormentor and occupier of their ancestral homeland, from slaughtering their children. And the slaughter of their children is too realistic to be propaganda. It just transcends reality.

Indeed when there are five or six killed on one side while thousands of casualties occur on the other side; we are not talking about war, but rather about a massacre. Israel may continue to dwell in her insolence and megalomania, but eventually those who have the higher moral ground will prevail. Israel is doomed to an early demise, thanks to her evilness and iniquity.

Khalid Amayreh is a journalist living in Palestine. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983. Since the 1990s, Mr. Amayreh has been working and writing for several news outlets among which is Aljazeera.net, Al-Ahram Weekly, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), and Middle East International. He can be reached through politics.indepth@iolteam.com

By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER

November 22, 2012

@ The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The conflict that ended, for now, in a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel seemed like the latest episode in a periodic showdown. But there was a second, strategic agenda unfolding, according to American and Israeli officials: The exchange was something of a practice run for any future armed confrontation with Iran, featuring improved rockets that can reach Jerusalem and new antimissile systems to counter them.

It is Iran, of course, that most preoccupies Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama. While disagreeing on tactics, both have made it clear that time is short, probably measured in months, to resolve the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.

 

And one key to their war-gaming has been cutting off Iran’s ability to slip next-generation missiles into the Gaza Strip or Lebanon, where they could be launched by Iran’s surrogates, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, during any crisis over sanctions or an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Michael B. Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States and a military historian, likened the insertion of Iranian missiles into Gaza to the Cuban missile crisis.

“In the Cuban missile crisis, the U.S. was not confronting Cuba, but rather the Soviet Union,” Mr. Oren said Wednesday, as the cease-fire was declared. “In Operation Pillar of Defense,” the name the Israel Defense Forces gave the Gaza operation, “Israel was not confronting Gaza, but Iran.”

It is an imprecise analogy. What the Soviet Union was slipping into Cuba 50 years ago was a nuclear arsenal. In Gaza, the rockets and parts that came from Iran were conventional, and, as the Israelis learned, still have significant accuracy problems. But from one point of view, Israel was using the Gaza battle to learn the capabilities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad — the group that has the closest ties to Iran — as well as to disrupt those links.

Indeed, the first strike in the eight-day conflict between Hamas and Israel arguably took place nearly a month before the fighting began — in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, as another mysterious explosion in the shadow war with Iran.

A factory said to be producing light arms blew up in spectacular fashion on Oct. 22, and within two days the Sudanese charged that it had been hit by four Israeli warplanes that easily penetrated the country’s airspace. Israelis will not talk about it. But Israeli and American officials maintain that Sudan has long been a prime transit point for smuggling Iranian Fajr rockets, the kind that Hamas launched against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem over recent days.

The missile defense campaign that ensued over Israeli territory is being described as the most intense yet in real combat anywhere — and as having the potential to change warfare in the same way that novel applications of air power in the Spanish Civil War shaped combat in the skies ever since.

Of course, a conflict with Iran, if a last-ditch effort to restart negotiations fails, would look different than what has just occurred. Just weeks before the outbreak in Gaza, the United States and European and Persian Gulf Arab allies were practicing at sea, working on clearing mines that might be dropped in shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz.

But in the Israeli and American contingency planning, Israel would face three tiers of threat in a conflict with Iran: the short-range missiles that have been lobbed in this campaign, medium-range rockets fielded by Hezbollah in Lebanon and long-range missiles from Iran.

The last of those three could include the Shahab-3, the missile Israeli and American intelligence believe could someday be fitted with a nuclear weapon if Iran ever succeeded in developing one and — the harder task — shrinking it to fit a warhead.

A United States Army air defense officer said that the American and Israeli militaries were “absolutely learning a lot” from this campaign that may contribute to a more effective “integration of all those tiered systems into a layered approach.”

The goal, and the challenge, is to link short-, medium- and long-range missile defense radar systems and interceptors against the different types of threats that may emerge in the next conflict.

Even so, a historic battle of missile versus missile defense has played out in the skies over Israel, with Israeli officials saying their Iron Dome system shot down 350 incoming rockets — 88 percent of all targets assigned to the missile defense interceptors. Israeli officials declined to specify the number of interceptors on hand to reload their missile-defense batteries.

Before the conflict began, Hamas was estimated to have amassed an arsenal of 10,000 to 12,000 rockets. Israeli officials say their pre-emptive strikes on Hamas rocket depots severely reduced the arsenal of missiles, both those provided by Iran and some built in Gaza on a Syrian design.

But Israeli military officials emphasize that most of the approximately 1,500 rockets fired by Hamas in this conflict were on trajectories toward unpopulated areas. The radar tracking systems of Iron Dome are intended to quickly discriminate between those that are hurtling toward a populated area and strays not worth expending a costly interceptor to knock down.

“This discrimination is a very important part of all missile defense systems,” said the United States Army expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe current military assessments. “You want to ensure that you’re going to engage a target missile that is heading toward a defended footprint, like a populated area. This clearly has been a validation of the Iron Dome system’s capability.”

 

The officer and other experts said that Iran also was certain to be studying the apparent inability of the rockets it supplied to Hamas to effectively strike targets in Israel, and could be expected to re-examine the design of that weapon for improvements.

Israel currently fields five Iron Dome missile defense batteries, each costing about $50 million, and wants to more than double the number of batteries. In the past two fiscal years, the United States has given about $275 million in financial assistance to the Iron Dome program. Replacement interceptors cost tens of thousands of dollars each.

Just three weeks ago, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited an Iron Dome site as a guest of his Israeli counterpart during the largest American-Israeli joint military exercise ever. For the three-week exercise, called Austere Challenge, American military personnel operated Patriot land-based missile defense batteries on temporary deployment to Israel as well as Aegis missile defense ships, which carry tracking radars and interceptors.

Despite its performance during the current crisis, though, Iron Dome has its limits.

It is specifically designed to counter only short-range rockets, those capable of reaching targets at a distance of no more than 50 miles. Israel is developing a medium-range missile defense system, called David’s Sling, which was tested in computer simulations during the recent American-Israeli exercise, and has fielded a long-range system called Arrow. “Nobody has really had to manage this kind of a battle before,” said Jeffrey White, a defense fellow for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “There are lots of rockets coming in all over half the country, and there are all different kinds of rockets being fired.”

By John Scales Avery

22 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

On Wednesday, November 14, 2012, Ahmed Jabari, leader of the military wing of Hamas, was assassinated by a targeted Israeli missile. Hours earlier, Jabas had received a draft of a permanent peace agreement with Israel. The assassination of Jabari must have been carefully planned in order for his whereabouts to have been known so accurately. The probable motive for the killing was to provoke the response that did indeed follow: the firing of Hamas rockets towards Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government responded to the rockets with a massive attack on civilian targets in Gaza, a response that also seems to have been carefully planned in advance, the timing being motivated by the nearness of elections in Israel.

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, collective punishment is war crime. Article 33 states that “No protected person may be punished for an offense that he or she did not personally commit.” Articles 47-78 also impose substantial obligations on occupying powers, with numerous provisions for the general welfare of the inhabitants of an occupied territory.

Thus Israel violated the Geneva Conventions by its collective punishment of the civilian population of Gaza in retaliation for the largely ineffective Hamas rocket attack which the Jabari assassination provoked. The larger issue, however, is the urgent need for lifting of Israel’s brutal blockade of Gaza, which has created what Noam Chomsky calls the “the world’s largest open-air prison”.

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, states that “What we’re seeing in Gaza now, is pretty much slow-motion genocide against the 1.5 million people who live in Gaza… If you read the 1948 Genocide Convention, it clearly says that one instance of genocide is the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a people in whole or in part… And that’s exactly what has been done since the imposition of the blockade by Israel. ”

Because of its limitless military and financial backing of Israel, the United States shares the blame for allowing Israel to create an Apartheid state even more gruesome than the one that the world unanimously condemned in South Africa.

John Avery received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from MIT and an M.Sc. from the University of Chicago. He later studied theoretical chemistry at the University of London, and was awarded a Ph.D. there in 1965. He is now Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen. Fellowships, memberships in societies: Since 1990 he has been the Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. He was the Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998. Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (1988- 1997). Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, April 2004. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm

By Dan Glazebrook

21 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

With over 100 now reported killed by Israeli airstrikes, and a further 700 injured, the attack on Gaza is already starting to resemble the 2008-9 ‘Operation Cast Lead’ massacre. A ground invasion is feared, and Israeli politicians are again trotting out the usual Zionist crowd-pleasers about the need to “bomb Gaza back to the Middle Ages” (Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai ) and “flatten all of Gaza” (Ariel Sharon’s son Gilad). Yet the regional situation today is very different to what it was back then. In 2009, the ‘resistance axis’ of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas was strong, and Iran took concrete steps to provide military supplies to Hamas at a time when the best most other states had to offer was impotent – and generally hypocritical – ‘condemnation’. As intelligence analysts Stratfor have noted, where “ the rest of the region largely avoided direct involvement….Iran was the exception. While the Arab regimes ostracized Hamas, Iran worked to sustain the group in its fight.” The report elaborates: “In early January 2009, in the midst of Operation Cast Lead, Israel learned that Iran was allegedly planning to deliver 120 tons of arms and explosives to Gaza, including anti-tank guided missiles and Iranian-made Fajr-3 rockets with a 40-kilometer (25-mile) range and 45-kilogram (99-pound) warhead…The long-range Fajr rocket attacks targeting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the current conflict are a testament to Iran’s continued effort.”

Despite having distanced themselves from the ‘resistance axis’ recently, moving their headquarters out of Damascus and voicing support for the anti-government militias in Syria, Hamas continue to rely on Iranian weapons as their most effective response to Israeli aggression. Indeed, it is precisely these Iranian weapons – the Fajr-5 missiles – that are causing such unprecedented disruptions in Israel, having reached the suburbs of Tel Aviv and forcing the city’s residents into bomb shelters for the first time since 1991. Israelis are not used to their military operations having such a direct impact on their own lives, and it is this aspect of the conflict that has led to, in what is surely a first for Israel, overwhelming Israeli opposition to a ground invasion of Gaza, with less than a third supporting such a move.

Nevertheless, the Palestinians, whilst well-equipped, are in some ways more isolated than ever. Whilst on the face of it, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood across the region in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’ should have been good news for Hamas – who are, after all, an offshoot of the Brotherhood themselves – the seeming descent of the Arab Spring into a sectarian conflict directed against the region’s Shia Muslims has actually served to disempower Hamas’ allies, and thus leave Gaza more vulnerable to precisely the attack it is now enduring. More specifically, the ongoing destruction of Syria under the onslaught of armed gangs trained and sponsored by the West and its allies, has crippled a key Palestinian ally, and thus encouraged Israel to believe it can attack with impunity. As Hezbollah leader Nasrallah (“the smartest guy in the Middle East”, according to former US deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage) noted in a speech last week, “Israel is taking advantage of the turmoil in Syria in its onslaught against Gaza. Today’s aggression is happening in a different context from 2008. In 2008, the Resistance Axis was more capable of extending support to Gaza and the resistance there and this was the case before 2008 and after 2008 and we can see the results of this on the ground today. One of the supply lines to Gaza has now been cut and that is Syria. It can no longer provide logistical support, although it can still take a political stand. Israel is taking advantage of the fighting in Syria, of the reversal of priorities, of the transformation of enemies into friends and friends into enemies. It sees this as a good opportunity to restore its deterrence and to strike at missile capabilities in Gaza, which Israel is aware will be hard to replace in light of the situation in Syria.” Indeed, with the sectarian attacks taking place in Syria spilling over into Lebanon, Hezbollah itself is similarly in little position to lend the type of support to Gaza that it did in 2006, for example, by opening a second front in response to Israeli shelling of Palestinians. Stratfor again: “ Hezbollah will likely be extremely cautious in deciding whether to participate in this war. The group’s fate is linked to that of the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad; should Syria fracture along sectarian lines, Lebanon is likely to descend into civil war, and Hezbollah will have to conserve its strength and resources for a battle at home against its sectarian rivals.”

If Syria does fall, therefore, we can expect to see far more Israeli massacres of the type now currently under way. Not only will Syria be knocked out of the ‘resistance axis’ altogether, and Hezbollah left without a supply line from Iran, but Iran itself will be left isolated and less able to provide the Gazans with the missiles that currently provide their only effective deterrent to a renewed Israeli occupation.

This goes some way to explaining why the Israelis have been so supportive of the Syrian rebels, with Peres and Barak both throwing their weight behind the militias. Syria’s support for Hezbollah, and the link it provides to Iran, has been a key obstacle to Israel’s ability to attack the Palestinians with impunity, and therefore to its ability to unilaterally impose a final settlement on Palestine. For now, the main obstacle to Israeli diktat remains the Fajr-5.

Dan Glazebrook is a political writer and journalist. He writes regularly on international relations and the use of state violence in British domestic and foreign policy.. He can be reached at danglazebrook2000@yahoo.co.uk