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By Ali Abunimah

16 November, 2012

Electronicintifada.net

An Israeli minister has called for the army to bomb Gaza until the population flees en masse into Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, and for water and electricity supplies to be cut, a clear case of incitement to war crimes.

Israel Katz, Israel’s transport minister, was quoted on the Orthodox website B’Hadrei Haredim on 11 November:

Israel must act in Gaza with a very clear policy. The leadership of the Hamas, which is responsible for all the attacks and shooting, must be eliminated. Beyond that, we must detach from Gaza in a civilian manner – electricity, water, food, and fuel – and transition into a policy of deterrence, just like in Southern Lebanon.”

Why don’t they shoot at us from Southern Lebanon and do from Gaza? Because there is no clear boundary with Gaza. Because the civilian link with Gaza is unreasonable. Gaza should be considered a border, and every time we are hurt, hurt back [retaliate]. When I see Palestinian citizens escaping into Sinai, the way Lebanese citizens escape toward Beirut when there is a round of fire against Israel – we will then know that the deterrence has been achieved.”

Calling for war crimes

Katz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, appears to be inciting war crimes of the kind Israel committed in Lebanon and previously in Gaza.

In July 2006, hundreds of thousands of civilians in Lebanon fled their homes to escape an indiscriminate Israeli onslaught that left 1,200 people, mostly civilians, dead, and the country’s infrastructure devastated.

Israel’s bombardment of the civilian areas came to be known as the “Dahiya doctrine” after the southern suburb of Beirut that was leveled by Israeli attacks.

According to the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report, Israel applied the “Dahiya doctrine” again during its 2008-2009 attack on Gaza. The report said on page 23:

The tactics used by Israeli military armed forces in the Gaza offensive are consistent with previous practices, most recently during the Lebanon war in 2006. A concept known as the Dahiya doctrine emerged then, involving the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations.

The Goldstone report noted that Israeli officials had explicitly articulated the goals and methods of this strategy.

Such use of indiscriminate and “disrproportionate” force (there is no such thing as proportionate force against civilians), calculated to destroy civilian infrastructure and cause suffering, amounts to a war crime.

Now, just as in those previous cases, Israeli ministers are not shy about publicly stating their criminal intent, confident of the international impunity and complicity that has so far protected them from accountability.

Israel’s current assault, which it began by breaking a truce with Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza, has claimed at least 22 Palestinian lives in recent days, with dozens of injuries.

Sixteen Palestinians have been killed since 14 November, the latest a 10-month old baby named Hanin Tafish. Yesterday, Israeli bombardment killed 11-month-old Omar Masharawi, the son of a BBC staffer in Gaza.

Three Israelis were killed this morning in retaliatory rocket fire from Gaza.

With thanks to Dena Shunra for spotting and translation.

By Alan Hart

16 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

I imagine I am not the only one who feels the need to vomit (dictionary definition – “to throw up the contents of the stomach through the mouth”) when Israel’s Goebbels justifies the Zionist state’s ferocious and monstrously disproportionate attacks by air and sea on the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, the prison camp which is home to 1.5 million besieged and mainly impoverished Palestinians. The Israeli to whom I am referring is, of course, Australian-born Mark Regev, the prime minister’s spokesman, for which read spin doctor. The more I see and hear him in action, the more it seems to me that he makes Nazi Germany’s propaganda chief look like an amateur.

In a piece for The Observer on 6 June 2010, Ruth Sutherland wrote the following. “If the men from Mars ever wanted to manufacture a PR man, they would model their robot on Regev. No matter how formidable the interviewer, or how aggressive the questioning, he never buckles under pressure. His disarming Aussie accent and unfailing politeness – he calls interviewers ‘Sir’ and uses phrases like ‘I beg to disagree’ – almost lulls listeners into overlooking his aggression. He is always regretful about death and horror – he regrets that the non-Israeli victims brought their fate on themselves. Viewers are reduced to a trance of slack-jawed amazement at what he is prepared to say with a straight face. He is unlikely to win sceptics to Israel’s cause, but as a PR performer he is horribly compelling.”

Compelling he certainly is but, as Sutherland indicated (I will be more explicit), only to Westerners and Americans in particular who have been conditioned for decades by Zionist propaganda and, as a consequence, know nothing or little worth knowing about the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel.

In the immediate aftermath of Israel’s targeted assassination of Hamas’s military commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, Regev was at his best. Via the BBC and many other networks his main message to the Western nations was that Israel is just like them – democratic and civilized. “I would ask them all,” he said, “how would you act?” (respond to rocket fire from “terrorists”). By obvious implication he was saying something very like, “You would take all necessary action against the terrorists to defend and protect your people, and that’s why I am sure you will understand and support what we are doing.”

The flaw in that presentation is that Israel is NOT like the Western nations. It is a brutal occupying power, and the cause of the incoming rockets is its occupation and on-going colonization and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and its blockade of the Gaza Strip. That plus the fact that Israel’s leaders have no interest in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept.

Regev also appealed for Western understanding and support on the grounds that “they” (Hamas) say my country should be wiped off the map.”

That’s one of the many big, fat Zionist propaganda lies. The truth is that Hamas is firmly on the record with the statement that while it will never recognize Israel’s right to exist, it is prepared to live in peace with an Israel inside its 1967 borders.

 

Regev’s master, Netanyahu, was also up to his old tricks – diverting attention. He played the Iranian nuclear threat card to get Palestine off the international community’s agenda. With Israel’s next election less than 70 days away, one of his reasons for authorizing Operation Pillar of Defense was, as a report in The Times of Israel put it, “to divert public discourse from social justice to security issues and silence the government’s critics.”

The Mossad’s motto is “By way of deception, thou shall do war.”

Netanyahu obviously believes that by way of deception he can not only retain power but emerge from Israel’s next election with more power than ever. (Enough to tell Obama to go to hell if that ever becomes necessary).

The support (by default if not design) of Western governments for Israel’s latest ferocious and monstrously disproportionate attacks also makes me want to vomit.

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 Alex Kane

16 November, 2012

@ Mondoweiss.net

You know the drill by now: an escalation occurs in the Gaza Strip that is automatically blamed on Palestinian fighters. The New York Times does it, as the Electronic Intifada’s Maureen Murphy points out, and now the Washington Post prints a story with a similar narrative.

Here’s how the Post reports on how the bombardment in Gaza started:

The latest round of fighting began Saturday, when militants from a non-Hamas faction fired an antitank missile at an Israeli jeep traveling along the Israel-Gaza border, injuring four Israeli soldiers. Israel responded with shelling and firing that Gaza medical officials said killed at least four people, including two children, and wounded about two dozen others. Militants then fired about 130 rockets and mortar rounds at population centers of southern Israel over several days. After mediation from Egypt, the flare-up appeared to have waned by Tuesday.

But that’s now how “the latest round of fighting began.” The Institute for Middle East Understanding published an excellent timeline that shows how the fighting actually began:

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8

Following a two-week lull in violence, Israeli soldiers invade Gaza. In the resulting exchange of gunfire with Palestinian fighters, a 12-year-old boy is killed by an Israeli bullet while he plays soccer.

Shortly afterwards, Palestinian fighters blow up a tunnel along the Gaza-Israel frontier, injuring one Israeli soldier.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10

An anti-tank missile fired by Palestinian fighters wounds four Israeli soldiers driving in a jeep along the Israel-Gaza boundary.

An Israeli artillery shell lands in a soccer field in Gaza killing two children, aged 16 and 17. Later, an Israeli tank fires a shell at a tent where mourners are gathered for a funeral, killing two more civilians, and wounding more than two dozen others.

As you can see, the escalation began when Israel killed a 12-year-old boy. The rockets and missiles fired in response were what the Gaza-based militant group Popular Resistance Committees called a “revenge invoice.”

By Rami Almeghari

15 November 2012

@ The Electronic Intifada

Gaza Strip: “What do they want from us? What do they want from us?” — this is the question posed to me by my son Munir who is now 13 years old. I had just returned from touring nearby towns here in Gaza out of journalistic duty on the second day of Israel’s massive military attacks.

Since the Israeli assassination of a top Hamas military commander yesterday afternoon, I have been following up on the news, reporting and writing the story of 13-year-old Ahmad Abu Daqqa, who was fatally shot in the stomach by an Israeli soldier last week while he played football outside his home in Khan Younis.

Munir and Ahmad are both schoolboys and each have a hobby. Ahmad was a football fan, while Munir is interested in news like his father. Whenever Munir approaches me, it’s inevitably to tell me some news or inquire about something.

Both Ahmad and Munir have spent their childhoods in the harsh, intolerable conditions in Gaza. As they were both similar in age and in terms of living conditions, they surely had the same question: ” What do they want from us?”

Ahmad has already got the answer. He was killed last Thursday by an Israeli bullet that ripped through his little body.

Meanwhile, Munir is outraged by the intensity of Israeli air strikes on Gaza, worried for the safety of his brother, two sisters, mother and other family members whenever a loud explosion is heard nearby. He wanted an authentic answer from his journalist father.

I wracked my mind for an answer that he could understand.

My wish for peace

I have always believed in peace. I have always believed in coexistence and I have always stayed away from violence. When I was a child like Munir, the first Palestinian uprising of 1987 broke out. Since then, I have believed in my right as a human being to live in freedom in a clean environment.

I recall that around that time, then secretary-general of the United Nations Javier Perez de Cuellar was visiting the occupied Gaza Strip in an observation mission. I picked up a broom and started cleaning the front door of my family home in Maghazi town in the central Gaza Strip.

“Ah, I see you are cleaning, apparently for the UN envoy who is coming over,” Ibrahim Mansour, an older neighbor of mine, told me while I was sweeping. I answered him: yes, I want these people to know that we are a life-loving nation!

This has truly been my dream. When I was able to join a UN-run media training program in New York City in 2001, I felt great, interacting with UN officials including Kofi Annan, the secretary-general at the time. I immediately talked about the people of Gaza. I mentioned the same cleaning story to the chief of the Palestine and Decolonization Center of the UN, Salim Fahmawi, who was in charge of the training program as well.

Since my return from the UN training program, I have dedicated my career to the sake of peace and coexistence, working relentlessly to tell the people outside Gaza that the Palestinians are a nation who love life and badly want to live normally like any other nation.

Do not even dream

Back to Munir’s question. Despite the fact that I do believe strongly in the power of peace instead of war, I felt I had to properly answer my son. “What do they want?” I exclaimed to Munir. “What they want is obviously to deprive us of our humanity, taking away our dream to live normal lives like other nations, and to throw us into the ocean.”

Munir got a theoretical answer that he might not understand now. His memory is still collecting images, only without processing those images into facts and figures. Yet the slain child Ahmad Abu Daqqa and his family got a clear-cut answer from the Israelis themselves: You are not allowed to play football, even outside your front door. You are not allowed to enjoy yourselves. You are not even allowed to live.

Munir is now locked inside my Maghazi home along with his brother Muhammad and his two sisters, Aseel and Nadine, and their mother, Um Munir, watching a TV filled with horrible images from the current Israeli military escalation.

Munir and Muhammad are not allowed now to even play games on their computer, as I am occupying the room for important work, filled with tension, worry and stress.

Wait. Munir has just told me that the Rafah crossing terminal on the Egyptian side of Gaza’s southern border is now fully prepared to welcome possible injuries from the Gaza Strip, to be medicated in nearby Egyptian hospitals!

Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.

 

 

 

By Jonathan Cook

14 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Don’t expect a second-term Obama to take on Israel

Nazareth: Barack Obama’s victory in the US presidential election last week was greeted with general unease in Israel.

Surveys conducted outside the US shortly before polling day showed Obama was the preferred candidate in every country but two – Pakistan and Israel. But unlike Pakistan, where the two candidates were equally unpopular, he scored just 22 per cent in Israel against a commanding 57 per cent for Mitt Romney.

Given these figures, it is unsurprising that Israel’s rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made little effort to conceal his political sympathies, laying on a hero’s welcome for Romney when he visited Jerusalem in the summer and starring in several of his TV campaign ads.

Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli prime minister, accused Netanyahu of “spitting” in the president’s face, warning that Israel would now be exposed to Obama’s second-term wrath.

The general wisdom is that the president, freed of worries about being re-elected, will seek his revenge, both for Netanyahu’s long-term intransigence in the peace process and for interfering in the US campaign.

Newspaper cartoons summed up the mood last week. The liberal Haaretz showed a sweating Netanyahu gingerly putting his head into the mouth of an Obama-faced lion, while the rightwing Jerusalem Post had Netanyahu exclaiming “Oh bummer!” as he read the headlines.

The speculation among Israelis and many observers is that an Obama second term will see much greater pressure on Israel both to make major concessions on Palestinian statehood and to end its aggressive posturing towards Iran over its supposed ambition to build a nuclear warhead.

Such thinking, however, is fanciful. The White House’s approach towards Netanyahu and Israel is unlikely to alter significantly.

Netanyahu’s bullish mood was certainly on display as voting in the US election was under way: his government announced plans to build more than 1,200 homes for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem, the presumed capital of a future Palestinian state.

The reality, as Netanyahu understands well, is that Obama’s hands are now tied as firmly in the Middle East as they were during his first term.

Obama got burnt previously when he tried to impose a settlement freeze. There are no grounds for believing that Israel’s far-right lobbyists in Washington, led by AIPAC, will give the president an easier ride this time.

And as Ron Ben Yishai, a veteran Israeli commentator, noted, Obama will face the same US Congress, one that has “traditionally been a stronghold of near-unconditional support for Israel”.

Obama may not have to worry about re-election but he will not want to hand a poisoned legacy to the next Democratic presidential candidate, nor will want to mire his own final term in damaging confrontations with Israel. Memories are still raw of Bill Clinton’s failed gamble to push through a peace deal – one that, in truth, was a far-more generous to Israel than the Palestinians – at Camp David in the dying days of his second term.

And whatever his personal antipathy towards the Israeli prime minister, Obama also knows that, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict aside, his policies in the Middle East are either aligned with Israel’s or dependent on Netanyahu’s cooperation to work.

Both want the Israel-Egypt peace agreement to hold. Both need to ensure the civil war in Syria does not spiral out of control, as the cross-border salvos in the Golan Heights have indicated in the past few days. Both prefer repressive West-friendly dictators in the region over Islamist gains.

And, of course, both want to box in Iran on its nuclear ambitions. So far Netanyahu has reluctantly toed the US line on “giving sanctions a chance”, toning down his rhetoric about launching an attack. The last thing the White House needs is a sulking Israeli premier priming his cohorts in Washington to undermine US policy.

A sliver of hope for Netanyahu’s opponents is that a disgruntled US president might still take limited revenge, turning the tables by interfering in the Israeli elections due in January. He could back more moderate challengers such as Olmert or Tzipi Livni, if they choose to run and start to look credible.

But even that would be a big gamble.

The evidence shows that, whatever the makeup of the next Israeli governing coalition, it will espouse policies little different from the current one. That simply reflects the lurch rightwards among Israeli voters, as indicated in a poll this month showing that 80 per cent now believe it is impossible to make peace with the Palestinians.

In fact, given the mood in Israel, an obvious attempt by Obama to side with one of Netanyahu’s opponents might actually harm their prospects for success. Netanyahu has already demonstrated to Israelis that he can defeat the US president in a staring contest. Many Israelis are likely to conclude that no one is better placed to keep an unsympathetic Obama in check in his second term.

Faced with a popular consensus in Israel and political backing in the US Congress for a hard line with the Palestinians, Obama is an unlikely champion of the peace process – and even of the Palestinians’ current lowly ambition to win observer status at the United Nations.

A vote on this matter is currently threatened for November 29, with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas apparently hoping that the anniversary of the 1947 UN partition plan for Palestine will provide emotional resonance.

Meanwhile, all Israel’s main parties are battling for the large pool of rightwing votes. Shelley Yacimovich, leader of the opposition Labor party, last week denied her party was “left-wing”, in a sign of how dirty that word has become in Israel. She has studiously avoided mentioning the Palestinians or diplomatic issues.

And the great new hope of Israeli politics, former TV star Yair Lapid, has rapidly come to sound like a Netanyahu-lite. Last week he publicly opposed giving up even the Palestinian parts of East Jerusalem, arguing that the Palestinians could be browbeaten into surrendering their putative capital.

The reality is that the White House is stuck with an Israeli government, with or without Netanyahu, that rejects an agreement with the Palestinians. As tensions flare again on the Israel-Gaza border – threatening an Israeli attack, just as occurred in the run-up to the last Israeli election – it looks disturbingly like four more years of the same.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His new website is

www.jonathan-cook.net

A version of this article originally appeared in the National (Abu Dhabi).

 

 

 

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich’s Blog

13 November 12

@ readersupportednews.org

I hope the President starts negotiations over a “grand bargain” for deficit reduction by aiming high. After all, he won the election. And if the past four years has proven anything it’s that the White House should not begin with a compromise.

Assuming the goal is $4 trillion of deficit reduction over the next decade (that’s the consensus of the Simpson-Bowles commission, the Congressional Budget Office, and most independent analysts), here’s what the President should propose:

First, raise taxes on the rich – and by more than the highest marginal rate under Bill Clinton or even a 30 percent (so-called Buffett Rule) minimum rate on millionaires. Remember: America’s top earners are now wealthier than they’ve ever been, and they’re taking home a larger share of total income and wealth than top earners have received in over 80 years.

Why not go back sixty years when Americans earning over $1 million in today’s dollars paid 55.2 percent of it in income taxes, after taking all deductions and credits? If they were taxed at that rate now, they’d pay at least $80 billion more annually – which would reduce the budget deficit by about $1 trillion over the next decade. That’s a quarter of the $4 trillion in deficit reduction right there.

A 2% surtax on the wealth of the richest one-half of 1 percent would bring in another $750 billion over the decade. A one-half of 1 percent tax on financial transactions would bring in an additional $250 billion.

Add this up and we get $2 trillion over ten years – half of the deficit-reduction goal.

Raise the capital gains rate to match the rate on ordinary income and cap the mortgage interest deduction at $12,000 a year, and that’s another $1 trillion over ten years. So now we’re up to $3 trillion in additional revenue.

Eliminate special tax preferences for oil and gas, price supports for big agriculture, tax breaks and research subsidies for Big Pharma, unnecessary weapons systems for military contractors, and indirect subsidies to the biggest banks on Wall Street, and we’re nearly there.

End the Bush tax cuts on incomes between $250,000 and $1 million, and – bingo – we made it: $4 trillion over 10 years.

And we haven’t had to raise taxes on America’s beleaguered middle class, cut Social Security or Medicare and Medicaid, reduce spending on education or infrastructure, or cut programs for the poor.

Mr. President, I’d recommend this as your opening bid. With enough luck and pluck, maybe even your closing bid. And if enough Americans are behind you, it could even be the final deal.

Robert B. Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock” and “The Work of Nations.” His latest is an e-book, “Beyond Outrage.” He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

By Countercurrents.org

13 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Nuke shutdown in Germany has started producing benefits. The country is getting economic and environmental benefits, which is reaching investors, businesses and farmers.

With wide political support the German government took off the county’s eight oldest nuclear reactors following the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant accident in 2011. A following legislation will close the country’s last nuclear power plant by 2022.

A special issue, “The German Nuclear Exit”, of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists shows that the nuclear power plant shutdown and the following initiative to move toward renewable energy are generating economic and environmental benefits, and the benefits are measurable.

One expert called the German nuclear power plant phase-out a probable game-changer for the nuclear industry worldwide.

Alexander Glaser, a Princeton researcher, in his article, “From Brokdorf to Fukushima: The long journey to nuclear phase-out,” discusses the historical context of the German decision. The country experienced widespread police-anti-nuclear demonstrator clashes. There is strong public opposition to nuclear power in Germany. Very few persons in Germany support plan for new reactor construction.

Glaser notes that Germany’s decision last year to pursue a nuclear phase-out was anything but precipitous; serious planning to shutter the nuclear industry and greatly expand alternative energy production.

Glaser concludes: “Germany’s nuclear phase-out could provide a proof-of-concept, demonstrating the political and technical feasibility of abandoning a controversial high-risk technology. Germany’s nuclear phase-out, successful or not, is likely to become a game changer for nuclear energy worldwide.”

Miranda Schreurs, professor of politics, Freie Universitat, Berlin says the nuclear phase-out and accompanying shift to renewable energy have brought financial benefits to farmers, investors, and small business.

Felix Matthes of the Institute for Applied Ecology in Berlin concludes that the phase-out will have only small and temporary effects on electricity prices and the German economy.

Alexander Rossnagel and Anja Hentschel, legal experts, University of Kassel explain that electric utilities are unlikely to succeed in suing the government over the shutdown.

Lutz Mez, co-founder of Freie Universitat Berlin’s Environmental Policy Research Center, presents the most startling finding. The shift to alternative energy sources being pursued in parallel with the German nuclear exit has reached a climate change milestone, Mez writes: “It has actually decoupled energy from economic growth, with the country’s energy supply and carbon-dioxide emissions dropping from 1990 to 2011, even as its gross domestic product rose by 36 percent.”

The German experience help a lot to learn.

By Barbara H. Peterson

13 November, 2012

@ Farmwars.info

In case you didn’t know, genetically modified mosquitoes have been unleashed numerous times on planet Earth. Thus far, millions mosquitoes were released in various locations; Cayman Islands, Malaysia, and Brazil. Now, the GM mosquito creator Oxitec may release millions of genetically modified mosquitoes in the fields of crops, including olives, citrus fruits, cabbage, tomatoes, and cotton

Look out people of planet earth, genetically engineered bugs are here. Just in case you haven’t figured it out yet, our technocracy is working ever diligently on genetically engineering every last living cell on the planet – WITHOUT EXCEPTION. What does this mean for life here on earth? Ever hear the expression “soup sandwich?” Well, after these “scientific” geniuses are through with us, that is exactly what all life will be – a genetic soup sandwich, made in a lab, and stamped with a corporate logo embedded in our DNA.

If the following report from Testbiotech doesn’t send chills up your spine, I don’t know what will. Get ready world, because nothing will ever be the same. Ever. There is no remediation technique available to clean up genetically engineered mutations released into the wild and spread through horizontal gene transfer. Barb

Regulatory decisions on releasing genetically modified (GM) insects biased by corporate interests

Dr Helen Wallace, Director of GeneWatch UK said “The public will be shocked to learn that GM insects can be released into the environment without any proper oversight. Conflicts-of-interest should be removed from all decision-making processes to ensure the public have a proper say about these plans.”

London/ Munich Thursday 8th November 2012 A briefing published today by public interest groups highlights how regulatory decisions on GM insects in Europe and around the world are being biased by corporate interests.

The briefing shows how UK biotech company Oxitec has infiltrated decision-making processes around the world. The company has close links to the multinational pesticide and seed company, Syngenta. Oxitec has already made large-scale open releases of GM mosquitoes in the Cayman Islands, Malaysia and Brazil and is developing GM agricultural pests, jointly with Syngenta. Plans to commercialise GM insects would result in many millions of GM insects being released in fields of crops, including olives, tomatoes, citrus fruits, cabbages and cotton. In future, any insect species might be genetically modified.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is highlighted as one of several examples showing how industry organises its influence. In EFSA´s GM insects working group, which was established to develop guidance for risk assessment of genetically engineered insects, there are several cases of conflicts of interest, including experts with links to Oxitec who only partially declared their interests. The draft Guidance on risk assessment of GM insects shows some significant deficiencies: for example it does not consider the impacts of GM insects on the food chain. Oxitec’s GM insects are genetically engineered to die mostly at the larval stage so dead GM larvae will enter the food chain inside food crops such as olives, cabbages and tomatoes. Living GM insects could also be transported on crops to other farms or different countries. EFSA has excluded any consideration of these important issues from its draft guidance. Many other issues are not properly addressed.

The briefing also highlights problems with a World Health Organisation (WHO)-funded project which has allowed the company to bypass requirements for informed consent for the release of GM mosquitoes. The WHO-funded Mosqguide project, which was supposed to be developing best practice, also allowed the company to gain approval from Brazilian regulators to release 16 million GM mosquitoes before draft regulations on the release of GM insects had been finalised or adopted, without publishing a risk assessment.

 

Dr Helen Wallace, Director of GeneWatch UK said “The public will be shocked to learn that GM insects can be released into the environment without any proper oversight. Conflicts-of-interest should be removed from all decision-making processes to ensure the public have a proper say about these plans.”

Christoph Then, Executive Director, Testbiotech, said: “Risk assessment of genetically engineered animals touches many areas where there is lack of knowledge. We are concerned that EFSA will apply a biased and selective protocol to safety without really sorting out potential hazards.”

François Meienberg, Berne Declaration, said: “Companies such as Syngenta and Oxitec have to learn that negative impacts on the environment or health can arise from their lobbying activities. To act responsibly they have to change their lobbying behaviour immediately.”

Nina Holland, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), said: “Experts on EFSA’s working groups should not be allowed to have any conflict of interests with industry, let alone ties with companies producing the very product they are assessing – in this case GM insects. This clearly shows that EFSA’s rules to deal with conflicts of interest still have major gaps.”

Tina Goethe, SwissAid, said: “The development of GM-insects for agriculture implies unforeseeable risks for human health and environment. In order to meet the challenges of small scale agriculture in poor countries, we do not need expensive and high risk technologies, but agro-ecological solutions.”

The briefing highlights multiple attempts by Oxitec to influence regulation around the world, which have included:

>> Attempts to define ‘biological containment’ of the insects (which are programmed to die at the larval stage) as contained use, by-passing requirements for risk assessments and consultation on decisions to release GM insects into the environment;

>> Attempts to avoid any regulation of GM agricultural pests on crops which will end up in the food chain;

>> Avoidance of any discussion of how GM insects can be contained at a site, or products produced using GM insects can be labelled;

>> Exclusion of many important issues from risk assessments, including impacts of surviving GM mosquitoes on the environment and health, and impacts of changing mosquito populations on human immunity and disease;

>> Failure to follow transboundary notification processes for exports of GM insects correctly;

>> Undermining the requirement to obtain informed consent for experiments involving insect species which transmit disease;

>> Attempts to avoid liability for any harm if anything goes wrong;

>> Pushing ahead with large-scale open releases of GM mosquitoes before relevant guidance or regulations are adopted.

For further information contact:

Helen Wallace, GeneWatch UK, Tel +44 (0)1298-24300 (office); +44 (0)7903-311584 (mobile), helen.wallace@genewatch.org

Christoph Then, Testbiotech, Tel + 49151 54638040, info@testbiotech.org

François Meienberg, Berne Declaration, Ph: +41 44 277 70 04, Email: food@evb.ch

Nina Holland, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), Tel: +32 2 8930930, Mobile: +31 (0) 6 302 85 042, nina@corporateeurope.org

Tina Goethe, SwissAid, Tel.: +41-(0)31-350 53 75, t.goethe@swissaid.ch

Read the full report here:

Genetically modified insects: under whose control? GeneWatch UK, Testbiotech, SwissAid, Berne Declaration, Corporate Europe Observatory briefing. October 2012. http://www.testbiotech.de/node/729

Also Read

Can GM mosquitoes rid the world of a major killer? By Conl Urquhart, The Guardian

 

 

By Cathy Breen

13 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Najaf–I returned from Baghdad last night. Over coffee this morning, I filled the father of my host family in on my trip. I told him it was wonderful to see everyone, but I only heard sad stories.

A few minutes ago a fierce wind rose, blowing the trees and dust and everything in its path. We hurried to close the windows, but there was no way to prevent the fine powdery dirt from entering. It covers everything. The weather seems to fit my mood somehow. There are forces beyond our control.

Yesterday in Baghdad I was able to visit with two families who both have grown children in the U.S. The parents of a third family, whom we know from Syria , met with me briefly on a quickly decided location, one of the roads that exits through the concrete walls encompassing their neighborhood.

I wanted to give them a package from the states, and they were hesitant to have me come to their neighborhood, an area which has seen much violence and conflict over the last years.

It was an emotional moment as the mother and I exited our respective car and taxi and embraced. She wept. I hope I will be able to see their seven children before I leave Iraq , but for now I am grateful for the five minutes I had with them. Thank God for the driver who is able to negotiate all these encounters. Somehow, between his little English and my little Arabic, we have been able to manage. In the other two families we visited, someone spoke English well enough to serve as a translator. Of course both families have contact with their relatives in the U.S. by internet and phone, but somehow my presence connects them physically, like a bridge.

My first task this morning is to review and resize some of the photos taken yesterday, so that I can send them off with an account to the sons and daughters in the U.S. As I look at the faces before me, I imagine how emotional it will be for those opening the attachments when they catch the wistful longing in the eyes of their family members, see how they have aged, or behold the youngest members of the family whom they have not yet gotten to meet personally.

This is what war does, no? It separates families; it destroys the fiber and lifeblood of a society. I remember as a young adult, and not so young adult, being separated by oceans for years at a time from my own family. There were moments when I would become so choked up to hear their voices over the phone that I was unable to speak.

My visit was anticipated, and as is the beautiful custom here each family welcomed me warmly and served me. We were able to visit unhurriedly, and I had brought a few photos of their loved ones to show them. After assuring them that their family members were working hard but doing alright in the U.S. , I asked them what stories they had to tell me!

One family told of having to move to another area because there were a lot of explosions where they lived, and any young man in the vicinity of an attack was randomly rounded up. This family feared for their young sons. One mother, a teacher, spoke of the crowded classrooms, and of how fatigued teachers felt upon arriving at school after being held up at checkpoint after checkpoint in unendurable heat. “One can wait over half anhour just to go through one checkpoint.” This was exactly our experience that same morning as we made our way through Baghdad to their neighborhood.

“The children all want to be cops, and to carry guns.” The teacher spoke of the many orphans in her class and of the widowed teachers. “Everyone is exhausted from the situation. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Sometimes there are 10-15 explosions, other days there are none. With the situation in Syria we are all tense and feel insecure.” This family fled to Syria for some years and then returned to Iraq .

“I don’t think any of my dreams will come true,” said one of the sons, a bright handsome 17 year old with an easy smile. “There is nothing to do but stay home.” The parents felt that since the era of sanctions things have only gone backwards, not forward. “Young people don’t have any hope for a job here, except driving a taxi. Only if they go to another country will it be better…Most of our traditions have been lost, it is all about money now. You can’t do anything without bribes.”

In the other family I visited, the grandmother has bad asthma. There is an increase in asthma due to pollution, to lack of factory and vehicle emission controls, to the frequent use of generators for electricity. Even the benzene still has lead. One family member, a doctor, commented, “Nine years and no electrical system. Where is the big investment money? It is all about political decisions. The U.S. brought terrorists to our country, they came from all over the world, to fight terrorism in our country and destroy our country. I am sorry to tell you this, but it is the truth.” I told him that I didn’t disagree. We all sat together. “We are helpless and hopeless,” he said. After a long pause he added “but we are adapting.” Two little children were playing gleefully in our midst on the carpet.

What is there left to say?

Cathy Breen co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). She is traveling for six weeks in Iraq .

By Nile Bowie

 

As China’s 18th Communist Party Congress draws to a close, the world’s most populous nation prepares to install the country’s fifth generation of leadership since the Chinese Revolution of 1949. Despite overseeing a stringent police state with heavy limitations on political expression, China’s leadership have taken the nation from starvation to space travel in just a few decades, lifting approximately 600 million people out of poverty. [1] Of course, the Communist Party still has a fair share of trouble on its hands; managing an economic slowdown, finding ways to raise incomes while keeping production costs competitive, and dealing with radical pro-secessionist sentiment in Tibet and Xinjiang. Undoubtedly, China’s leadership has maintained its legitimacy by overseeing massive economic growth – its inability to continue on such a path would ultimately create trouble for the Communist Party. Chairman Mao once preached, “An army of the people is invincible!” – hence, China spends an astounding $111 billion on internal security, more than what is allocated to the People’s Liberation Army. [2]

 

President Hu Jintao’s administration oversaw the construction of new infrastructure and high-speed rail networks, the rise of emerging provincial metropolises such as Shenzhen and Chongqing, and China’s lucrative economic engagement with Africa. During an address at the Party Congress, President Hu hinted at some kind of reform to the existing system:

 

“We must continue to make both active and prudent efforts to carry out the reform of the political structure, and make people’s democracy more extensive, fuller in scope and sounder in practice; however, we will never copy a Western political system.” [3]

 

It remains to be seen exactly what kind of “democracy” President Hu is referring to, however it is apparent that China’s leadership recknogizes the need to address the complete lack of public participation in the political direction of the country. Hu spoke of “diversifying the forms of democracy” and “democratic elections,” and with that, one would hope for the incremental relaxation on political expression and dissent.

 

In combating the severe wealth gap between the rich and poor, President Hu has also called for China to double its 2010 GDP and per capita income for both urban and rural residents by 2020, the first time that per capita income has been included in the country’s economic growth target. [4] Hu also called for the rapid modernization of national defense and armed forces, and the need to build China into a maritime power to protect its marine resources and interests. [5] Additionally, Hu praised the pro-autonomy policies of the “one country, two systems” arrangement, the need for integrating urban and rural development, and the possibility of military cooperation with Taiwan. [6] Of course, Hu himself will not be at the helm to steer China into its planned trajectory; it is safely assumed that Xi Jinping and his designated deputy, Li Keqiang, will be installed as president and premier in March 2013.

 

Xi Jinping is noted for ushering in positive economic reforms in the coastal province of Zhejiang, where GDP has grown by 10% annually over the past 30 years through bolstering small-scale entrepreneurs, providing supportive credit to private ventures, and governing with very little intervention in firm management. [7] Xi is the son one of the Communist Party’s founding fathers, Xi Zhongxun, and was banished to labor in the remote village of Liangjiahe as a teenager during the Cultural Revolution before studying chemical engineering at the elite Tsinghua University in Beijing. Xi belongs to the ‘princeling’ faction, the offspring of party veterans who favor crony-capitalism by steering economic growth with high levels of state intervention, many of whom (such as Bo Xilai) champion a revival of Maoist socialism with contemporary values. Xi will be the first ‘princeling’ in the seat of power and it is unclear if his policies will reflect the governing style of others in his faction, or that of his own approach of adopting lesser government intervention. Xi appears to relate little to Maoist policy, only to the nostalgia of singing red songs and using the Chairman’s aphorisms. [8]

 

Incoming premier Li Keqiang, who also toiled in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, is from the ‘tuanpai’ faction. The ‘tuanpai’ have come from lesser-privileged backgrounds and have been groomed for leadership through the Communist Youth League; the faction is more focused on populist policies, rural development, and improving the conditions of farmers and migrant workers. The ‘princelings’ orbit around former President Jiang Zemin, while the ‘tuanpai’ favor the direction taken under Hu Jintao; the incoming administration has likely been selected to strike a balance between the two factions. A more dismissive analysis of these factional differences by US-based Chinese dissident Yu Jie could potentially be more accurate:

 

“People say Hu and Xi belong to different political factions. They say Hu comes from the Communist Youth League and is therefore more populist, whereas Xi, because he represents the “princelings” — sons and daughters of high officials — works in service of the wealthier coastal provinces. I think they’re not that dissimilar. No matter if it’s Hu or Xi, they’re still only representative of the few-hundred families who make up the Chinese aristocracy. They are not in office thanks to a Western-style election, but are the products of a black-box operation. They didn’t rise because they’re clever and capable, but precisely because they’re mediocre. They are where they are today because they are harmless to the special interest groups that run China.” [9]

 

Since a large demographic of people in China have benefitted from economic development, many have become complacent or exorbitantly wealthy, and are generally uninterested in political activism. While public trust in the government may be higher today than in 1989, the new leadership has a chance to rebuild public confidence by raising per capita incomes and loosening restrictions on expression. If Xi governs the country using the “Zhejiang Model” and supports local entrepreneurship, this would help reduce the wealth gap and wouldn’t necessarily hinder the extraordinary monopoly profits of China’s state-owned enterprises. China has avoided the mistake of the Soviet Union when it attempted to reform politically before doing so economically, however it still remains unclear if the Communist Party is willing to engage in any meaningful reform of their political system.

 

As the United States shifts its economic and military focus to the Asia Pacific, the question of Sino-US relations under the Xi Administration is an important one. Beijing’s desire to flex its maritime muscle and exercise its sovereignty over disputed territories in the South China Sea will certainly not sit well with the Obama administration, which has ostensibly adopted a policy written about by American foreign policy theoreticians such as Robert Kagan, who has argued in favor of pressuring China through territorial containment. There are a myriad of ways in which the United States can accomplish these goals; it is more likely that Washington will continue supporting dissident groups and attempting to hamper China’s overseas development projects, rather than engage in any military exchange. The Korean Peninsula remains a tense flashpoint capable of drawing both the United States and China into military conflict. The incoming Xi administration must be a mediator; it should more adamantly oppose the US military presence in South Korea and more actively assist economic development and social programs in North Korea. Xi Jinping is known to be a straight talker of sorts, and Washington can likely expect less diplomatic rhetoric from Beijing if it continues its current policy:

 

“Some foreigners with full bellies and nothing better to do engage in finger-pointing at us. First, China does not export revolution; second, it does not export famine and poverty; and third, it does not mess around with you. So what else is there to say?” [10]

 

Notes

 

[1] China Wealth Gap to Stay in Danger Zone, Government Adviser Says, Bloomberg, September 24, 2012

 

[2] China to Spend USD 111 Billion on Internal Security, Outlook India, November 14, 2012

 

[3] Hu says China will not copy Western system in political reform, Xinhua, November 08, 2012

 

[4] China adds resident’s per capita income into economic growth target, Xinhua, November 08, 2012

 

[5] Hu calls for efforts to build China into maritime power, Xinhua, November 08, 2012

 

[6] Hu suggests military security trust mechanism, peace agreement with Taiwan, Xinhua, November 08, 2012

 

[7] Zhejiang Province: A Free-Market Success Story, Bloomberg, October 20, 2008

 

[8] Xi Jinping’s Chongqing Tour: Gang of Princelings Gains Clout, The Jamestown Foundation, December 17, 2010

 

[9] Empty Suit, Foreign Policy, February 13, 2012

 

[10] BBC News – Profile: Xi Jinping, BBC, November 08, 2012

 

Nile Bowie is a Kuala Lumpur-based American writer and photographer for the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal, Canada. He explores issues of terrorism, economics and geopolitics.