Just International

Escalating An Asian Arms Race

 

 

02 June, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Together with South Korea, America’s military plans expanding its Asian footprint on Jeju Island with a strategic naval base for Aegis class attack ships. They’re equipped with sophisticated SM-3 interceptor missiles intended mainly for offense, as well as powerful computers and tracking radar for first-strike capability against enemy targets.

In 2002, Seoul announced construction plans to accommodate Pentagon planners despite strong local opposition. Located south of Korea proper, Jeju Island is its only special autonomous province, situated in the Korea Strait, Southwest of Jeollanam-do Province it separated from in 1946.

Japan lies Northeast, China due West. Jeju is in central Northeast Asia, important for reasons other than military.

Strategically located Southwest of Japan, East of China between the East China Sea and Korea Strait shipping lanes, UNESCO declared Jeju a World Natural Heritage Site in 2007 under the name Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes. Korea has nine others chosen for their cultural or natural importance to humanity’s common heritage, vital to preserve and protect, not used as launch pads for belligerence and destruction.

In fact, former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun designated Jeju a “peace island.” It’s also a popular tourist spot and home to rare sea life, a VisitKorea.or.kr site calling it a “Volcanic Island full of Allure.”

During WW II, Japan stationed 75,000 soldiers there. The Pentagon later planned to use it strategically, today with another naval base cooperatively with South Korea and Japan against China’s military presence, as well as perhaps interdicting its ability to import oil, much of which comes through Yellow Sea shipping lanes.

According to a 2009 Pentagon report, China’s naval forces are formidable, numbering 260 vessels, including 75 or more major warships and over 60 submarines. However, Beijing regards powerful US and South Korean warships equipped with interceptor offensive missiles close to its border a strategic threat. According to South Korea’s Peace Network director Cheong Wook-sik:

“China regards missile defense as the 21st century’s greatest threat and is dissatisfied with US missile defense policy,” knowing it targets them offensively.

Lee Tae-ho, deputy secretary general of South Korea’s People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, in fact, believes:

“The Chines government has a response strategy that first attacks US missile defense in the case of an emergency. That means that the Jeju naval base will be targeted in an armed conflict between the United States and China,” or in case of one with Taiwan in which America intervenes.

Short of war, an Asian arms race and popular opposition are major bones of contention, reflected in a 2007 Geongjeong Village People’s Council vote showing 94% of residents against a naval base. They oppose one disrupting their lives by environmental destruction (including soft coral habitat), harming tourism, disrupting fishing, and displacing local citrus growers by confiscating their land for militarism and potential war.

Nonetheless, in May 2009, construction plans were approved followed by dredging the Joongduk coastline to accommodate large warships. As a result, several lawsuits were filed without success. On December 15, 2010, a Jeju court ruled building plans posed no infringement problems despite clear evidence otherwise.

As a result, villagers and supporters protested, including on Christmas day 2010, blocking cement trucks brought in to pour concrete over coral reefs vital to preserve. Moreover, local residents occupied the site, facing off with police to stop cranes from dredging their cherished shoreline for America, not their own country.

Bruce Gagnon, co-founder and coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, follows the base controversy on two web sites:

— Space4peace.org; and

— Space4peace.blogspot.com.

On May 19, he reported arrests of eight protest leaders, including Global Network board member Sung-Hee Choi for the second time recently. Moreover, “Gangjeong village resident Professor Yang Yoon-Mo (entered) his 45th day of his hunger strike while in jail for trying to block a construction truck.” He vowed to die there unless constructions stops.

Urging others offer support, he explained America’s destabilizing presence, contributing to regional militarism that could escalate to war. He also included a letter from South Korea supporter Jungjoo Park, saying:

Government security forces “are stepping up their efforts to silence all opposition to the naval base. This morning, May 19, the construction companies came with their heavy equipment together with around 100 members of the police and military” – specifically to destroy a Jungdeok coast greenhouse. Villagers chained themselves to it to stop them. Arrests followed. “Obviously the situation is still ever developing….”

On June 1, Gagnon reported Professor Yang’s release from jail after his 60-day hunger strike. “He was sentenced to one and one-half years in jail with a suspended sentence but with two years probation,” an affront for trying to preserve, not destroy, life and environmental sanity.

Widespread support helped free him weakened yet vowing to persist, saying:

“My struggle will be continued to the end. Gangjeong villagers are the teacher who led me to the road of justice.”

Her hunger strike ended, Global Network’s Sung-Hee Choi’s trial will begin June 10. The struggle against militarizing Jeju continues. “Many NGOs in South Korea launched the ‘Korean National Committee against Jeju Naval Base Construction’ on June 1.”

Gagnon continues daily commentaries, supporting Gangjeong residents struggle to preserve the “endangered soft coral reefs and a shoreline of remarkable beauty in this fishing and farming village.”

Imperial America opposes them for unchallenged global dominance. Trampling on sovereign nations, humanity and environmental sanity, it claims only its objectives matter, again proving it’s a rogue out-of-control menace.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

Saudi Arabia Scrambles to Limit Region’s Upheaval

 

New York Times

27 May 2011

 

 

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia is flexing its financial and diplomatic might across the Middle East in a wide-ranging bid to contain the tide of change, shield other monarchies from popular discontent and avert the overthrow of any more leaders struggling to calm turbulent nations.

From Egypt, where the Saudis dispensed $4 billion in aid last week to shore up the ruling military council, to Yemen, where it is trying to ease out the president, to the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco, which it has invited to join a union of Persian Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia is scrambling to forestall more radical change and block Iran’s influence.

The kingdom is aggressively emphasizing the relative stability of monarchies, part of an effort to avert any drastic shift from the authoritarian model, which would generate uncomfortable questions about the pace of political and social change at home.

Saudi Arabia’s proposal to include Jordan and Morocco in the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council — which authorized the Saudis to send in troops to quell a largely Shiite Muslim rebellion in the Sunni Muslim monarchy of Bahrain — is intended to create a kind of “Club of Kings.” The idea is to signal to Shiite Iran that the Sunni Arab monarchs will defend their interests, analysts said.

“We’re sending a message that monarchies are not where this is happening,” Prince Waleed bin Talal al-Saud, a businessman and high-profile member of the habitually reticent royal family, told the editorial board of The New York Times last week, referring to the unrest. “We are not trying to get our way by force, but to safeguard our interests.”

The range of the Saudi intervention is extraordinary as the unrest pushes Riyadh’s hand to forge what some commentators, in Egypt and elsewhere, brand a “counterrevolution.” Some Saudi and foreign analysts find the term too sweeping for the steps the Saudis have actually taken, though they appear unparalleled in the region and beyond as the kingdom reaches out to ally with non-Arab Muslim states as well.

“I am sure that the Saudis do not like this revolutionary wave — they were really scared,” said Khalid Dakhil, a Saudi political analyst and columnist. “But they are realistic here.”

In Egypt, where the revolution has already toppled a close Saudi ally in Hosni Mubarak, the Saudis are dispensing aid and mending ties in part to help head off a good showing by the Muslim Brotherhood in the coming parliamentary elections. The Saudis worry that an empowered Muslim Brotherhood could damage Saudi legitimacy by presenting a model of Islamic law different from the Wahhabi tradition of an absolute monarch.

“If another model of Shariah says that you have to resist, this will create a deep difficulty,” said Abdulaziz Algasim, a Saudi lawyer.

Saudi officials are also concerned that Egypt’s foreign policy is shifting, with its outreach to the Islamist group Hamas and plans to restore ties with Iran. The Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, also retains a personal interest in protecting Mr. Mubarak, analysts believe.

The Arab Spring began to unravel an alliance of so-called moderate Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which were willing to work closely with the United States and promote peace with Israel. American support for the Arab uprisings also strained relations, prompting Saudi Arabia to split from Washington on some issues while questioning its longstanding reliance on the United States to protect its interests.

The strained Saudi posture toward Washington was outlined in a recent opinion article by Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi analyst, in The Washington Post that suggested Riyadh was ready to go it alone because the United States had become an “unreliable partner.”

But that seems at least partly a display of Saudi pique, since the oil-for-military aid arrangement that has defined relations between the two for the past six decades is unlikely to be replaced soon. Saudi Arabia is negotiating to buy $60 billion in advanced American weapons, and President Obama, in his speech last week demanding that Middle Eastern autocrats bow to popular demands for democracy, noticeably did not mention Saudi Arabia. The Saudi ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir, sat prominently in the front row.

Saudi Arabia is taking each uprising in turn, without relying on a single blueprint. In Bahrain, it resorted to force, sending troops to crush a rebellion by Shiites because it feared the creation of a hostile government — a kind of Shiite Cuba — only about 20 miles from some of its main oil fields, one sympathetic to Iran, if not allied with it. It has deployed diplomacy in other uprisings, and remained on the fence in still others. It is also spending money, pledging $20 billion to help stabilize Bahrain and Oman, which has also faced protests.

In Yemen, Saudi Arabia joined the coalition seeking to ease out President Ali Abdullah Saleh because it thinks the opposition might prove a more reliable, less unruly southern neighbor. But Arab diplomats noted that even the smallest Saudi gestures provided Mr. Saleh with excuses to stay, since he interpreted them as support. This month, for example, the Saudis sent in tanker trucks to help abate a gasoline shortage.

On Syria, an initial statement of support by King Abdullah for President Bashar al-Assad has been followed by silence, along with occasional calls at Friday Prayer for God to support the protesters. That silence reflects a deep ambivalence, analysts said. The ruling Saudi family personally dislikes Mr. Assad — resenting his close ties with Iran and seeing Syria’s hand in the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, a Saudi ally. But they fear his overthrow will unleash sectarian violence without guaranteeing that Iranian influence will be diminished.

In Libya, after helping push through an Arab League request for international intervention, Saudi Arabia sat out and left its neighbors, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, to join the military coalition supporting the rebels. It has so far kept its distance publicly from Tunisia as well, although it gave refuge to its ousted president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

There are also suspicions that the kingdom is secretly providing money to extremist groups to hold back changes. Saudi officials deny that, although they concede private money may flow.

In 1952, after toppling the Egyptian king, Gamal Abdel Nasser worked to destabilize all monarchs, inspiring a regicide in Iraq and eventually the overthrow of King Idris of Libya. Saudi Arabia was locked in confrontation with Egypt throughout the 1960s, and it is determined not to relive that period.

“We are back to the 1950s and early 1960s, when the Saudis led the opposition to the revolutions at that time, the revolutions of Arabism,” said Mohammad F. al-Qahtani, a political activist in Riyadh.

Neil Graham MacFarquhar has been the United Nations bureau chief of The New York Times since June 2008. MacFarquhar’s second book, The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East, is a journal of MacFarquhar’s experiences in the region, starting with his childhood in Col. Qhadafi’s Libya, and an assessment of the prospects for political and social change.

 

 

Will Bibi And Obama Bomb Iran This Summer?

 

 

June 5th, 2011 • 9:04 AM

A recent article in Ha’aretz by Amir Oren warned that “between the end of June and Gates’ retirement, and the end of September and Mullen’s retirement, the danger that Netanyahu and [Ehud] Barak will aim at a surprise in Iran is especially great, especially since this would divert attention from the Palestinian issue.” This warning of an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz and other locations has been buttressed by senior U.S. military and intelligence sources, who have warned, in the past 24 hours, that U.S. military forces have been conducting big contingency planning drills over the past several weeks, for a U.S. intervention, following Israeli strikes on targets in Iran. These sources say that a target date for such a joint Israel-U.S. attack on Iran would be July and August of this year.

A number of other recent developments further fill out this picture of a potential Armageddon provocation by Netanyahu, Barak and Obama.

First, on June 3, Britain’s Guardian reported on an interview with recently retired Mossad head Meir Dagan, who attacked Netanyahu and Barak as “irresponsible and reckless.” Ha’aretz columnist Avi Shavit explained: “Dagan is extremely concerned about September 2011. He is not afraid that tens of thousands of demonstrators may overrun the settlements. He is afraid that Israel’s subsequent isolation will push its leaders to the wall and cause them to take reckless action against Iran.” Dagan told reporters that when he was head of Mossad, he and Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin and Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi could collectively veto any reckless behavior by Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak, but they have all been replaced by weaker figures who would not buck attack orders from the Prime Minister. “I decided to speak because when I was in office, Diskin, Ashkenazi and I could block any dangerous adventure. Now I am afraid that there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak.”

Second, the Obama White House launched a panicked, clumsy preemptive attack this week against New Yorker magazine writer Seymour Hersh, to spike his June 6 article, “Iran and the Bomb,” which provided previously unpublished details of a 2011 updated National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The new NIE, updating the December 2007 NIE, concluded that there was still no compelling evidence that Iran had resumed its quest for nuclear weapons, which had been frozen in late 2003, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. As Hersh documented, the 2011 NIE was delayed for more than four months, due to political pressures on the intelligence analysts to reverse the earlier findings. But the intelligence community experts, with backing from such senior officials as DIA Director Gen. Ronald L. Burgess, stood behind the analysts, and refused to bend to political pressures. DIA, in particular, assessed that the Iran nuclear weapons effort had been principally directed against Iraq—not Israel, and that the March 2003 invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein had taken the Iraq threat off the table, and Iran had shelved the nuclear weapons effort. Hersh quoted former DIA humint director Col. Patrick Lang that the intelligence community had “refused to drink the Kool Aid this time.”

On June 2, Salon magazine published a report by Glenn Greenwald, which read, in part: “Seymour Hersh has a new article in the New Yorker arguing that there is no credible evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons; to the contrary, he writes, ‘the U.S. could be in danger of repeating a mistake similar to the one made with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq eight years ago — allowing anxieties about the policies of a tyrannical regime to distort our estimates of the state’s military capacities and intentions.’ This, of course, cannot stand, as it conflicts with one of the pillar-orthodoxies of Obama foreign policy in the Middle East (even though the prior two National Intelligence Estimates say what Hersh has said). As a result, two cowardly, slimy Obama officials ran to Politico to bash Hersh while hiding behind the protective womb of anonymity automatically and subserviently extended by that ‘news outlet.'” The trash-Hersh campaign spread to other publications, in a futile Obama White House effort to kill the impact of the Hersh story.

A senior U.S. intelligence official, after initially dismissing the imminent threat of an Israeli military strike on Iran, made a compelling case for why Israel might launch such an attack in the nearterm. If Israel concluded that the recent computer virus, which greatly disrupted the work at the Natanz facility, had been countered, and a new generation of centrifuges had been successfully installed, Iran could be 12-18 months away from a nuclear weapons breakout. That alone would suppress any Israeli institutional resistance to an attack on Iran.

The source added that U.S. intelligence believes that Israel’s military capabilities have been seriously diminished and that an Israeli attack on Natanz and other facilities would most likely do only minimum damage. Therefore, the U.S. would have only two options in the event of such an Israel attack: Sit it out and make it clear that the attack was not sanctioned by Washington, or launch U.S. military operations to “finish the job.” Contingency plans for the latter option are definitely in place, the source explained, and it would thus be up to President Obama to make the call. While there is no love lost between Obama and Netanyahu, Obama’s decisions are all calibrated to ensure his 2012 reelection, and he would be very reluctant to buck the Israeli Lobby and leave Israel to fend for itself.

Of course, such a Netanyahu-Obama attack on Iran would be just what London ordered, given the accelerating disintegration of the entire Inter Alpha system, and the strong intention of a hardcore Armageddonist faction centered around Prince Philip to massively reduce the world’s population.

 

Egypt’s Brotherhood party chooses Christian VP

 

 

Written by Yahoo! news

Posted: 07 June 2011 09:41

CAIRO (AFP) – The Muslim Brotherhood said on Wednesday the party it formed to contest elections has chosen a Christian intellectual as vice president and numbers almost 100 Coptic Christians among its founding members.

The Freedom and Justice Party also has close to 1,000 female members, party official Saad al-Katatni said on the Islamist group’s website.

“The number of founding members has reached 8,821 …, including 978 women and 93 Copts. Coptic thinker Rafiq Habib has been chosen as the party’s vice president,” Katatni said.

He said Habib was chosen “not just because he is Christian but because he is a great intellectual and adds value to the party.”

“The presence of Copts among the party’s founders shows the Muslim Brotherhood does what it says it will do, and that our Coptic brothers are partners in the nation,” said the party official.

Katatni described the Freedom and Justice Party as a “civilian (movement) based on the principles of (Islamic) Sharia law.” Its activities are to kick off on June 17 after the formation of a political bureau, he said.

The formerly banned Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s best-organised movement, announced on April 30 the formation of a “non-theocratic party” to contest up to half of parliament’s seats in a September election.

In the wake of the February 11 ouster of longtime president Hosni Mubarak, the Brotherhood has also pledged not to field a candidate in a presidential poll to be held in November.

Copts, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 80-million population, complain of systematic discrimination and have been the target of several sectarian attacks.

18 May 2011
Yahoo! News

 

Pakistan – silencing the truth-seekers

 

 

Written by Karamatullah K Ghori

Posted: 07 June 2011 09:50

Where does one draw the line between a devoted journalist’s right to sift the truth from fiction and report, and an assassin’s bloodlust to silence him? The kidnapping and murder of Asia Times Online’s Pakistan bureau chief, Syed Saleem Shahzad, only days after he had exposed a possible link between al-Qaeda and Pakistani servicemen [1], in the macabre but gory drama of Karachi’s apparently well-guarded naval-aviation base, Mehran, invaded on May 22 by a handful of terrorists, raises that obvious question.

I had written a piece for Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online on that incident and was informed that the article would appear on Thursday, May 26. But my take on the brazen development didn’t appear because on the same day Saleem had filed a copious, ***two-part*** story on what had actually transpired and who might have been involved in that obvious breach of security at a prestigious naval base in the heart of Pakistan’s largest city. I felt sorry that my story had been killed, but appreciated the editor’s compulsion for doing it. Saleem was the man on the spot, whereas I was a distant observer from thousands of kilometers away.

But how I wish, now, that Asia Times Online hadn’t carried Saleem’s no-holds-barred analytical expose of what is without doubt a cloak-and-dagger story of which we haven’t, yet, seen all. Saleem, 40, disappeared on his way to a television interview in Islamabad on Sunday evening. On Tuesday, police said they had found his body in Mandi Bahauddin, about 150 kilometers southeast of the capital. There were indications that he had been tortured. He is survived by his wife, Anita, and two sons aged 14 and seven, and a daughter aged 12.

Those assassins who’ve silenced him forever may not have read what he wrote. But once a man makes a blip on their radar, he stays there, in their gun-sights, until they get him. Saleem isn’t the first, nor will be the last, Pakistani or foreign journalist whose life flame has been put out by the merchants of death who have apparently been roaming the land and plying their trade with virtual impunity. Pakistan had the most journalist deaths in the world in 2010 – 44 – and not one killer has been brought to justice. Pakistan is “the world’s most dangerous country for journalists” the Paris-based press-monitoring group Reporters Without Borders said last month.

Human Rights Watch cited a “reliable interlocutor” who said Saleem had been abducted by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). “This killing bears all the hallmarks of previous killings perpetrated by Pakistani intelligence agencies,” said a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in South Asia, Ali Dayan Hasan. He called for a “transparent investigation and court proceedings”. In mid-October last year, Saleem sent an e-mail to the editor of Asia Times Online, Tony Allison, which contained part of an exchange between Saleem and an official of the ISI. It read, “I must give you a favor. We have recently arrested a terrorist and recovered a lot of data, diaries and other material during the interrogation. The terrorist had a list with him. If I find your name in the list, I will certainly let you know.”

Saleem told Allison that he specifically interpreted this as a direct threat. He had been summoned to ISI headquarters over the publication of an exclusive report that Pakistan had released the supreme commander of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, so that he could play a pivotal role in backchannel talks through the Pakistani army with Washington. (Pakistan frees Taliban commander October 16, 2010.) The ISI demanded that Saleem reveal his sources, and also write a rebuttal. Saleem refused, to the obvious displeasure of the ISI officials who included Rear Admiral Adnan Nawaz and Commodore Khalid Pervaiz, both from the navy. At this point, Allison suggested to Saleem that he lay low for a little while. His response was abrupt and summed up the man, “If I hold back and don’t do my job, I might as well just make the tea.”

Saleem began his journalistic career as a bit-part reporter in the early 1990s in the southern port city of Karachi covering the municipal beat. He began writing for Asia Times Online 10 years ago and through a doggedness and burning desire to get to the truth that became a hallmark of his career he became internationally recognized as a leading expert on al-Qaeda and militancy. His book Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11 was released by Pluto Press last week. United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented on Saleem’s killing, “The United States strongly condemns the abduction and killing of reporter Syed Saleem Shahzad. His work reporting on terrorism and intelligence issues in Pakistan brought to light the troubles extremism poses to Pakistan’s stability.” Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has expressed sorrow and ordered an immediate inquiry.

Saleem’s journey took him into the badlands that span the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the mountainous region that is home to militants of all shades. In November 2006 he was held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan for six days, but within days he was back in business, literally sweating, as he would joke, up and down the valleys of North and South Waziristan. (See A ‘guest’ of the Taliban Asia Times Online, November 20, 2006.) He interviewed some of the most notorious militant leaders, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, a major player in the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and Ilyas Kashmiri, a Pakistani militant who heads 313 Brigade, the operational arm of al-Qaeda. (See Al-Qaeda’s guerrilla chief lays out strategy October 15, 2009.)

Killing, in cold blood a man of letters like Saleem amounts to an open declaration of war against the fundamental principles of Islam and defiance of the teachings of its Messenger, Prophet Mohammad, who bestowed the greatest honors on a seeker of truth by intoning that “the ink of a scholar’s pen is holier than a martyr’s blood”. The core problem in the context of Pakistan is the failure of the state as a whole – which includes its ruling elite, the military brass and civil society in general – to come to grips with the challenge of fundamentalists and their soul-comrades, the terrorists. Except for a small segment of the intelligentsia bemoaning the debasing of Pakistan’s moorings, there is hardly any backlash in evidence against the corrosive damage the fundamentalists are doing to its social order. The silence of the clergy against the defacing of Islam is simply deafening. Those few voices that articulated against terrorists have been brutally silenced.

The ruling elite has become almost irrelevant to the country’s crying need for wise and enlightened leadership to arrest the inexorable slide into anarchy. Their sole concern is with remaining in power by any means, even if it means subcontracting Pakistan to a United States agenda. The military leadership, on its part, has failed to check the spread of the festering cancer of fundamentalism and radicalism in its ranks – a damning legacy of General Zia ul-Haq’s 11 years at the head of Pakistan, and then General Pervez Musharraf’s rule until August 2008. Saleem’s last contribution to Asia Times Online focused intently on this “black hole” of Pakistan.

And he paid for it with his life.

Pakistan’s military brass remains hopelessly mired in its infatuation with parity with India in military hardware and it must therefore stay on the right side of US to keep its arsenal well stocked. Its latest decision to sign on to Washington’s demand for military action in North Waziristan – a central piece of Clinton’s visit to Islamabad on May 27 – is evidence of the US agenda in the region ruling the roost in Islamabad. A blitz in North Waziristan will, inevitably, lead to a more virulent terrorist backlash in the rest of the country and more spilling of innocent blood like Saleem’s.

Note

Al-Qaeda had warned of Pakistan strike Asia Times Online, May 27.
Additional reporting by Asia Times Online.)

Author:Karamatullah. K Ghori
Posted On:Thu,Jun 02,2011
Source:www.atimes.com

  K_K_ghori@yahoo.com

 

Record Emissions Of Carbon Dioxide: The Bells Are Ringing For Humanity

 

 

Written by Dr. Peter Custers

Posted: 07 June 2011 10:49

The alarm bells this time are not being rung by climate scientists or by environmental activists. They are being rung by none other than the International Energy Agency (I.E.A.), the institution set up in the 1970s to defend the interests of Western oil consuming nations. On May 30 last, the I.E.A. issued a press release that sent shock waves through the Western world. According to the release, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) have reached their highest level ever in 2010. Although after the financial crisis emission levels in 2009 temporarily dipped, – in 2010 they are calculated to have been 30.6 Giga-tonnes (Gt). For a lay person, the implications of this figure may not immediately be evident. But the figure squarely indicates that exponential growth in CO2 emissions has not been stopped, as was the purpose of joint international initiatives taken since the 1990s. Accumulation has continued up until today. A decade back, in 2000, the level of emissions was probably about 23 Giga-tonnes (Gt). This means that over the last ten years alone annual emission levels have increased by a staggering one quarter ! Hence, the I.E.A.’s chief economist, Fatih Birol, has rung the alarm bells stating: ‘Our latest estimates are another wake-up call. The world has edged incredibly close to the level of emissions that should not be reached until 2020, if the 2 degree Celsius target is to be attained.’ (1)

How to assess the implications of the I.E.A.’s May 30 statement for humanity’s efforts to avert a climate catastrophe? Let’s, to start, take a closer look at the position from which the I.E.A. sounds the alarm bells. Prominent climate scientists have for years been debating what target humanity should set itself. What maximum level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is permissible if runaway climate change is to be averted? A section of scientists has been arguing with force that the target should be set at 350 parts per million, – meaning that the presence of greenhouse gas molecules in the world’s atmosphere should not exceed 350 molecules in a million molecules of atmospheric air. Significantly, when the Copenhagen Summit was held in December of 2009, it witnessed a growing consensus among a majority of nations that the precautionary advice of alarmist climate scientists should be taken to heart, and that the target of a 1.5 centigree cap should be maintained. Hence, critics reading the I.E.A. press release will react or retort that the agency is not sounding the alarm bells as loudly as it should. For it is still working on the presumption that a 2 degree Celsius target is defendable. Whereas precautionary climate science teaches otherwise.

It may not be out of place here to cite evidence collected by James Hansen, one of the world’s foremost climate archeologists. Hansen has become internationally renowned, amongst others because in his scientific papers and publicity work he takes account of the evolution which the earth’s climate has undergone during the many hundreds of millions of years before civilization arose. Thus Hansen brings out data on the situation that prevailed three million years ago. At that time the earth was last 2 or 3 degrees warmer than it is today. And it was a different planet, with sea levels not just higher than they are now, but a staggering 25 meters higher! The lower levels of sea water existing in civilization time have facilitated the building of human settlements in many coastal areas previously flooded or covered by ice. The difference is, of course, basically to be explained by the existence today of huge ice sheets, notably the Antarctic and the Greenland ice sheets. Hansen further argues that, unlike previously believed, the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets won’t take thousands of years to melt. They will disintegrate rapidly once danger points are reached. Hence, the American scientist maintains that ‘a 2 degree Celsius global warming, or even a 1.7 degree warming, is a disaster scenario’ ! (2) Clearly, with the I.E.A.’s data on 2010 CO2 emissions at hand, James Hansen would ring shrieking, not soft alarm bells to shake humanity’s conscience.

What policy-consequences should be drawn from the I.E.A.’s revelations? So far the two key paths the world’s policymakers have treaded to stem the exponential growth in emissions have been ineffectual. These are the paths of ‘technological ‘ and of ‘ market-based’ fixes. Here it is striking that the I.E.A.’s chief economist Fatih Birol continues to express a holy belief in technological fixes. Thus, when releasing his data on CO2 missions, he is quoted as having advocated – of all technological fixes – continued reliance on nuclear energy. This is surprising for this reason already that any expansion in capital-intensive nuclear production requires many years to accomplish. Hence it helps preciously little to prevent exponential growth of CO2 emissions from emanating in a catastrophe soon. Worse: both nuclear production and reliance on fossil fuels emitting carbon dioxide result in forms of waste that are inescapable , meaning that they represent a dead-end for humanity today. This is not to deny there are great differences between the two types of waste. Greenhouse gases such as CO2 exist in nature; they have only turned into damaging waste under the industrial system axed on the fossil fuels, i.e. on coal, oil and gas. On the other hand, many of the radiating elements in nuclear waste do not exist in nature, but emerge as by-products when nuclear energy is generated. Yet both fossil fuels and the nuclear production chain threaten to saddle humanity with consequences that can’t be undone. In case of nuclear waste: the half-life of radiation in thorium-230, in plutonium-242 and in jodium-129 respectively lasts 76 thousand, 380 thousand and over 15 million years! (3).

Then, if a technological fix via expansion of nuclear production is questionable, – what about a ‘market-based’ fix to solve the problem of climate change? Here it might be too early to foreclose the debate. Yet the I.E.A.’s announcement regarding CO2 emissions in 2010 raises big questions regarding market-based approaches to avert run-away climate change. Under the Kyoto treaty of 1997 policymakers set concrete targets towards reducing global emissions of CO2. To stem their exponential growth, obligatory reductions were agreed on. Yet the main practical measures proposed to achieve reduction targets were market-based . They entailed making CO2 waste tradable , or transferring responsibility for storage of CO2 to countries of the Global South. Perhaps the historical lesson to be drawn from the I.E.A.’s alarming announcement on 2010 emissions is that the time for market-based experiments is over. Humanity can no longer afford to continue with failed experiments. From common sense, to avert a climate catastrophe, we need to rapidly embark on a different, a more ‘radical’ path. Compelled by James Hansen’s scientific analysis and the I.E.A.’s historic, if defective , announcement, – I venture to suggest that the Global South needs to insist on a new approach to avert a climate catastrophe. Why not propose that the Western world agrees to help enforce global rationing of energy access? Why not demand from the West it helps institute a worldwide system of energy rationing that is both equitable to the world’s poor and to its vulnerable nations, – and puts a permanent and strict cap on overall emissions? In 2011, the alarm bells on climate change are ringing. And people with sensitive ears will notice the ringing emits a shrieking sound.

Leiden, the Netherlands, June 3, 2011 –
www.petercusters.nl
(the author is Bangladesh-expert and a theoretician on nuclear waste)

03 June, 2011
Countercurrents.org

 

I Have Zero Respect For The Mainstream Media: Gilad Atzmon

 

 

 

Posted: 07 June 2011 10:52

Jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon has a blog where he denounces the policy of his country of origin, Israel. He is not afraid to bluntly tell what he regards to be the truth. He is impervious to the concept of self-censorship. He tells here how little respect he has for the Western press.

Silvia Cattori: Your political analyses, translated into dozen languages [1], reach a wide readership on the web. For whom exactly do you write?

Gilad Atzmon: I write mainly to myself. I try to understand the world around me. A few years ago, I understood that a lot of people out there are interested in the thoughts I indulge myself with, so I started to let other people have access into my boiling destructive mind.

Silvia Cattori: At a time when the press has reached its lowest point ever, are you among those who still continue to read newspapers?

Gilad Atzmon: No, for many years I do not buy newspapers, because I am interested in Middle East, and the mainstream media has very little to offer on that front. Probably the only expert within the British or even English-speaking media press is Robert Fisk. If I want to know what happens in the Middle East I go to “Counterpunch”, “Information Clearing House”, “Veterans Today”, “Rense.com”, “Uprooted Palestinian”, “PalestineTelegraph”, “Palestine Chronicle”, “Dissident Voice”, “Uruknet”, and other great sites. Our websites and blogs are far more informative than the mainstream media. We are the experts. We are becoming the main source of information. I see how many people are coming to visit my site. If there is a crisis in Gaza for instance, they want to see what Gordon Duff, Ramzy Baroud, Alan Hart, Israel Shamir, Alex Cockburn, Ali Abunimah have to say about it. I have zero respect for the mainstream media. And if the mainstream media wishes to survive, it had better move on quickly, otherwise it is finished.

Silvia Cattori: Doesn’t the disinformation regarding Israel relate to the fact that honest journalists are themselves subject to Israeli propaganda ?

Gilad Atzmon: As for Great Britain, it is far from being a secret that the biggest supporters of Blair’s criminal war against Iraq were journalists David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen, both who also write for the notorious Zionist Jewish Chronicle. I guess that these people are now exposed. As I mention often enough “The Tide Has Changed“.

Silvia Cattori: We see the same mechanisms of censorship and information control at work in the new alternative media. Anyone whose views are likely to jostle the agenda of the online donors is censored. Don’t you think that’s sad?

Gilad Atzmon: I guess that it is normal. You have to remember that every discourse is, in practice, a set of boundaries. This may explain why the artist is far more effective than the Marxist agitator or even the academic. While the Marxist or the academic are there to maintain the boundaries, the artist is there to present an alternative reality. My choice is obviously clear, I am an artist.

Silvia Cattori: In your opinion, is the Israeli press freer than our own press?

Gilad Atzmon: Interestingly enough, the Israeli press is not free but it is still more open than the Western media. In spite of the censorship, it is open to discussions about Jewish questions and more critical about the Israeli State than the Guardian, the New York Times or even the Socialist Worker. By the way, even the UK Zionist Jewish Chronicle (JC) is more open than the Guardian. I was in the JC where I read a report of David Miliband relentless attempts to amends the British universal Jurisdiction laws.

Silvia Cattori: Despite the harshness of your criticism against Israel, the Israeli daily Haaretz [2] or the Arte channel have not censored you. Is it the accomplished jazz musician or the Israeli opponent that appeals the interest of the Medias? Is it the sign that something has changed?

Gilad Atzmon: Both I guess. I am interesting for them in different ways. I offer them an opportunity to say what they think exactly where they lack the courage to say it themselves. However, the title of my new album is “The Tide Has Changed“ [3]. Something is changing and it is big, very very big actually. I can see that more people happen to admit that my writings are becoming influential. In Great Britain I can say that I am pretty famous within certain circles. When I tour around the world I give very many interviews and talks. I also have a few enemies who try to silence me and struggle to cancel my talks and concerts. As it happens, they have failed all along. I am still kicking and i do not have any plan to stop.

03 June, 2011
Silviacattori.net

 

God Bless America. And Its Bombs

 

Written by William Blum

Posted: 07 June 2011 11:00

When they bombed Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, El Salvador and Nicaragua I said nothing because I wasn’t a communist.

 

When they bombed China, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, and the Congo I said nothing because I didn’t know about it.

When they bombed Lebanon and Grenada I said nothing because I didn’t understand it.

When they bombed Panama I said nothing because I wasn’t a drug dealer.

When they bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen I said nothing because I wasn’t a terrorist.

When they bombed Yugoslavia and Libya for “humanitarian” reasons I said nothing because it sounded so honorable.

Then they bombed my house and there was no one left to speak out for me. But it didn’t really matter. I was dead. 1

The Targets

It’s become a commonplace to accuse the United States of choosing as its bombing targets only people of color, those of the Third World, or Muslims. But it must be remembered that one of the most sustained and ferocious American bombing campaigns of modern times — 78 consecutive days — was carried out against the people of the former Yugoslavia: white, European, Christians. The United States is an equal-opportunity bomber. The only qualifications for a country to become a target are: (A) It poses an obstacle — could be anything — to the desires of the American Empire; (B) It is virtually defenseless against aerial attack.

The survivors

“We never see the smoke and the fire, we never smell the blood, we never see the terror in the eyes of the children, whose nightmares will now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists, known only as Americans.” 2

NASA has announced an audacious new mission, launching a spaceship that will travel for four years to land on an asteroid, where it will collect dust from the surface and deliver the precious cargo to Earth, where scientists will then examine the material for clues to how life began. Truly the stuff of science fiction. However, I personally would regard it as a much greater accomplishment of humankind if we could put an end to America’s bombings and all its wars, and teach some humility to The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, the European Union and NATO — who recognizes no higher power and believe they literally can do whatever they want in the world, to whomever they want, for as long as they want, and call it whatever they want, like “humanitarian.”

The fall of the American Empire would offer a new beginning for the long-suffering American people and the long-suffering world.

Why is the United States waging perpetual war against the Cuban people’s health system?

In January the government of the United States of America saw fit to seize $4.207 million in funds allocated to Cuba by the United Nations Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the first quarter of 2011, Cuba has charged. The UN Fund is a $22 billion a year program that works to combat the three deadly pandemics in 150 countries. 3

“This mean-spirited policy,” the Cuban government said, “aims to undermine the quality of service provided to the Cuban population and to obstruct the provision of medical assistance in over 100 countries by 40,000 Cuban health workers.” Most of the funds are used to import expensive AIDS medication to Cuba, where antiretroviral treatment is provided free of charge to some 5,000 HIV patients. 4

The United States sees the Cuban health system and Havana’s sharing of such as a means of Cuba winning friends and allies in the Third World, particularly Latin America; a situation sharply in conflict with long-standing US policy to isolate Cuba. The United States in recent years has attempted to counter the Cuban international success by dispatching the US Naval Ship “Comfort” to the region. With 12 operating rooms and a 1,000-bed hospital, the converted oil tanker has performed hundreds of thousands of free surgeries in places such as Belize, Guatemala, Panama, El Salvador, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua and Haiti.

However, the Comfort’s port calls likely will not substantially enhance America’s influence in the hemisphere. “It’s hard for the U.S. to compete with Cuba and Venezuela in this way,” said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a pro-US policy-research group in Washington. “It makes us look like we’re trying to imitate them. Cuba’s doctors aren’t docked at port for a couple days, but are in the country for years.” 5

The recent disclosure by Wikileaks of US State Department documents included this little item: A cable was sent by Michael Parmly from the US Interests Section in Havana in July 2006, during the runup to the Non-Aligned Movement conference. He notes that he is actively looking for “human interest stories and other news that shatters the myth of Cuban medical prowess”.

Michael Moore refers to another Wikileaks State Department cable: “On January 31, 2008, a State Department official stationed in Havana took a made-up story and sent it back to his headquarters in Washington. Here’s what they came up with: [The official] stated that Cuban authorities have banned Michael Moore’s documentary, ‘Sicko,’ as being subversive. Although the film’s intent is to discredit the U.S. healthcare system by highlighting the excellence of the Cuban system, the official said the regime knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.” Moore points out an Associated Press story of June 16, 2007 (seven months prior to the cable) with the headline: “Cuban health minister says Moore’s ‘Sicko’ shows ‘human values’ of communist system.”

Moore adds that the people of Cuba were shown the film on national television on April 25, 2008. “The Cubans embraced the film so much it became one of those rare American movies that received a theatrical distribution in Cuba. I personally ensured that a 35mm print got to the Film Institute in Havana. Screenings of Sicko were set up in towns all across the country.” 6

The United States also bans the sale to Cuba of vital medical drugs and devices, such as the inhalant agent Sevoflurane which has become the pharmaceutical of excellence for applying general anesthesia to children; and the pharmaceutical Dexmetomidine, of particular usefulness in elderly patients who often must be subjected to extended surgical procedures. Both of these are produced by the US firm Abbot Laboratories.

Cuban children suffering from lymphoblastic leukemia cannot use Erwinia L-asparaginasa, a medicine commercially known as Elspar, since the US pharmaceutical company Merck and Co. refuses to sell this product to Cuba. Washington has also prohibited the US-based Pastors for Peace Caravan from donating three Ford ambulances to Cuba.

Cubans are moreover upset by the denial of visas requested to attend conferences in the field of Anesthesiology and Reanimation that take place in the United States. This creates further barriers for Cuba’s anesthesiologists to update themselves on state of the art anesthesiology, the care of severely ill patients, and the advances achieved in the treatment of pain.

Some of the foregoing are but a small sample of American warfare against the Cuban medical system presented in a Cuban report to the United Nations General Assembly on October 28, 2009.

Finally, we have the Cuban Medical Professional Parole (CMPP) immigration program, which encourages Cuban doctors who are serving their government overseas to defect and enter the US immediately as refugees. The Wall Street Journal reported in January of this year that through Dec. 16, 2010, CMPP visas had been issued by US consulates in 65 countries to 1,574 Cuban doctors whose education had been paid for by the financially-struggling Cuban government. 7 This program, oddly enough, was initiated by the US Department of Homeland Security. Another victory over terrorism? Or socialism? Or same thing?

Wait until the American conservatives hear that Cuba is the only country in Latin America offering abortion on demand, and free.

Items of interest from a journal I’ve kept for 40 years, part IV

>> “Remember the scene in Battle of Algiers in which, after the French have ‘killed off’ the revolution, mist fills the screen and then, gradually, coming out of the mist, the Algerians appear waving their fists, ululating with that sound both thrilling and frightening? That’s how I see 9/11 for those of us who grew up believing that the US stood for something grand, despite eras such as slavery, indigenous genocide, Jim Crow, etc. Many people say ‘Everything changed on 9/11.’ I think it’s more that ‘Everything became clear, finally, on 9/11.’ The mist cleared away.” — Catherine Podojil

>> From a reader in Slovakia: I used the word “democracy” and not “capitalism”, because we were told [after the dissolution of the Soviet Union] that democracy was introduced in Slovakia, not capitalism. Everything was done in the name of democracy and not in the name of capitalism.

>> “If someone other than Stalin had gained ascendancy in the Soviet Union, it is likely that millions of lives would have been spared — but millions of others still would have been caught up in the maw of the state machine, because the system itself was based on violence, repression and lawlessness — all in the name of ‘preserving the Revolution,’ a phrase which served the same function for the Kremlin as ‘national security’ does for the American elite, or the ‘higher law’ of God does for religious extremists of every stripe.” — Chris Floyd

>> Bill Richardson, as US ambassador to the UN, re the newly-formed International Criminal Court in 1998: The United States should be exempt [from the court’s prosecution] because it has “special global responsibilities”.

>> Russia might be a target of an American invasion some day because it’s the most powerful geopolitical opponent of the United States, with the power to extinguish the US in 30 minutes. The US might want to control the Russian oil and have complete control of Central Asia. That’s what’s behind the many missile sites the US has been building in Europe, not the stated fear of Iran.

>> Bolivia has South America’s largest hydrocarbon deposits after Venezuela.

>> “The notion that we ought to now go to Baghdad and somehow take control of the country strikes me as an extremely serious one, in terms of what we’d have to do when we got there. You’d probably have to put some new government in place. It’s not clear what kind of government that would be, how long you’d have to stay. For the U.S. to get involved militarily in determining the outcome of the struggle over who’s going to govern in Iraq strikes me as the classic definition of a quagmire.” – Dick Cheney, when he was Secretary of Defense in 1991.

>> When the plans for a new office building for the U.S. military were brought before the Senate on Aug. 14, 1941, Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan was puzzled. “Unless the war is to be permanent, why must we have permanent accommodations for war facilities of such size?” he asked. “Or is the war to be permanent?” (Steve Vogel, “The Pentagon: A History” (2007) p.84)

>> The combination of free trade and heavy US subsidies to American businesses has crippled the Mexican agricultural sector, causing impoverished former subsistence farmers to immigrate to the US by any means necessary. Conservative policies of supporting free trade while restricting immigration are inherently incompatible.
The head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the first US occupation administration of Iraq in 2003, Paul Bremer, made free enterprise a guiding rule, shutting down 192 state-owned businesses where the World Bank estimated 500,000 people were working. (UPI, July 25, 2007)

>> If an individual were behaving as Israel does as a country, that person would be removed to an institution for the criminally insane and subjected to intense drug therapy and a lobotomy. The person might find the guy next door to be named America.

>> The United States threatens other states sufficient to cause those states to engage in defensive responses in order to exploit these to justify increasing “defense” expenditures.
Bush, Obama and Western Europe have used criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism as a way of showing their publics how they allegedly stand up for democracy.

>> US right-wingers have a desire to replace our constitutional form of government with an authoritarian theocracy, and to (militarily) spread that theocratic construct around the world. (Ironically, the exact same objective fundamentalist Muslims have!) — Kerry Thomasi, Online Journal

>> “Behind the ‘unexamined nostalgia for the “Golden Days” of American intelligence’ lay a much more devastating truth: the same people who read Dante and went to Yale and were educated in civic virtue recruited Nazis, manipulated the outcome of democratic elections, gave LSD to unwitting subjects, opened the mail of thousands of American citizens, overthrew governments, supported dictatorships, plotted assassinations, and engineered the Bay of Pigs disaster. ‘In the name of what?’ asked one critic. ‘Not civic virtue, but empire’.” — Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (1999)

>> … a more just world, a deeper democracy and a liveable planet …

>> “Colin Powell’s presentation at the UN, February 5, 2003 seems like something out of Monty Python, with one key British report cited by Powell being nothing more than a student’s thesis, downloaded from the Web — with the student later threatening to charge U.S. officials with plagiarism.” — Bill Moyers

>> “Venezuela’s well-off complain endlessly that their economic power has been diminished; it hasn’t; economic growth has never been higher, business has never been better. What the rich no longer own is the government.” – John Pilger

Notes

1. Full list of US bombings since World War 2
2. Martin Kelly, publisher of a nonviolence website
3. Prensa Latina (Cuba), March 12, 2011
4. The Militant (US, Socialist Workers Party), April 4, 2011
5. Bloomberg news agency, September 19, 2007
6. Huffington Post, December 18, 2010
7. Wall Street Journal, “Cuban Doctors Come In From the Cold” (video), January 14 2011

 

03 June, 2011
Killinghope.org

William Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

 

Israelis Rush For Second Passports

 

 

Written by Franklin Lamb

Posted: 07 June 2011 11:02

Beirut: Perhaps historians or cultural anthropologists surveying the course of human events can identify for us a land, in addition to Palestine, where such a large percentage of a recently arrived colonial population prepared to exercise their right to depart, while many more, with actual millennial roots but victims of ethnic cleansing, prepared to exercise their right of Return.

One of the many ironies inherent in the 19th century Zionist colonial enterprise in Palestine is the fact that this increasingly fraying project was billed for most of the 20th century as a haven in the Middle East for “returning” persecuted European Jews. But today, in the 21st century, it is Europe that is increasingly being viewed by a large number of the illegal occupiers of Palestinian land as the much desired haven for returning Middle Eastern Jews.

To paraphrase Jewish journalist Gideon Levy “If our forefathers dreamt of an Israeli passport to escape from Europe, there are many among us who are now dreaming of a second passport to escape to Europe.

Several studies in Israel and one conducted by AIPAC and another by the Jewish National Fund in Germany show that perhaps as many as half of the Jews living in Israel will consider leaving Palestine in the next few years if current political and social trends continue. A 2008 survey by the Jerusalem-based Menachem Begin Heritage Center found that 59% of Israelis had approached or intended to approach a foreign embassy to inquire about or apply for citizenship and a passport. Today it is estimated that the figure is approaching 70%.

The number of Israelis thinking of leaving Palestine is climbing rapidly according to researchers at Bar-Ilan University who conducted a study published recently in Eretz Acheret, (“A Different Place”) an Israeli NGO that claims to promote cultural dialogue. What the Bar-Ilan study found is that more than 100,000 Israelis already hold a German passport, and this figure increases by more than 7,000 every year along an accelerating trajectory. According to German officials, more than 70,000 such passports have been granted since 2000.

In addition to Germany, there are more than one million Israelis with other foreign passports at the ready in case life in Israel deteriorates. One of the most appealing countries for Israelis contemplating emigration, as well as perhaps the most welcoming, is the United States. Currently more than 500,000 Israelis hold US passports with close to a quarter million pending applications.

During the recent meetings in Washington DC between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s delegation and Israel’s US agents, assurances were reportedly given by AIPAC officials that if and when it becomes necessary, the US government will expeditiously issue American passports to any and all Israeli Jews seeking them.

Israeli Arabs need not apply.

AIPAC also represented to their Israeli interrogators that the US Congress could be trusted to approve funding for arriving Israeli Jews “to be allocated substantial cash resettlement grants to ease transition into their new country.”

Apart from the Israeli Jews who may be thinking of getting an “insurance passport” for a Diaspora land, there is a similar percentage of Jews worldwide who aren’t going to make aliyah. According to Jonathan Rynhold, a Bar Ilan professor specializing on U.S.-Israel relations, Jews may be safer in Teheran than Ashkelon these days—until Israel or the USA starts bombing Iran.

Interviews with some of those who either helped conduct the above noted studies or have knowledge of them, identify several factors that explain the Israeli rush for foreign passports, some rather surprising, given the ultra-nationalist Israeli culture.

The common denominator is unease and anxiety, both personal and national, with the second passport considered a kind of insurance policy “for the rainy days visible on the horizon,” as one researcher from Eretz Acheret explained.

Other factors include:

The fact that two or three generations in Israel has not proven enough to implant roots where few if any existed before. For this reason Israel has produced a significant percentage of “re-immigration” — a return of immigrants or their descendants to their country of origin which Zionist propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding, is not Palestine.

Fear that religious fanatics from among the more than 600,000 settlers in the West Bank will create civil war and essentially annex pre-1967 Israel and turn Israel more toward an ultra-fascist state.

Centripetal pressures within Israeli society, especially among Russian immigrants who overwhelmingly reject Zionism. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, some one million Jews have come to Israel from the former Soviet Union, enlarging the country’s population by 25 percent and forming the largest concentration in the world of Russian Jews. But today, Russian Jews comprise the largest group emigrating from Israel and they have been returning in droves for reasons ranging from opposition to Zionism, discrimination, and broken promises regarding employment and “the good life” in Israel.

Approximately 200,000 or 22% of Russians coming to Israel since 1990 have so far returned to their country. According to Rabbi Berel Larzar, who has been Russia’s chief Rabbi since 2000, “It’s absolutely extraordinary how many people are returning. When Jews left, there was no community, no Jewish life. People felt that being Jewish was an historical mistake that happened to their family. Now, they know they can live in Russia as part of a community and they don’t need Israel.”

No faith in or respect for Israeli leaders, most of whom are considered corrupt.

Feelings of anxiety and guilt that Zionism has hijacked Judaism and that traditional Jewish values are being corrupted.

The increasing difficulty of providing coherent answers to one’s children, as they become more educated and aware of their family history, and indeed honesty to oneself, on the question of why families from Europe and elsewhere are living on land and in homes stolen from others who obviously are local and did not come from some other place around the World.

The recent growing appreciation, for many Israelis, significantly abetted by the Internet and the continuing Palestinian resistance, of the compelling and challenging Palestinians’ narrative that totally undermines the Zionist clarion of the last century of “ A Land without a People for a People without a Land.’

Fear mongering of the political leaders designed to keep citizens supporting the government’s policies ranging from the Iranian bomb, the countless ‘Terrorists” seemingly everywhere and planning another Holocaust, or various existential threats that keep families on edge and concluding that they don’t want to raise their children under such conditions.

Explaining that he was speaking as a private citizen and not as a member of Democrats Abroad Israel, New York native Hillel Schenker suggested that Jews who come to Israel “want to make sure that they have the possibility of an alternative to return whence they came.” He added that the “insecurities involved in modern life, and an Israel not yet living at peace with any of its neighbors, have also produced a phenomenon of many Israelis seeking a European passport, based on their family roots, just in case.”

Gene Schulman, a Senior American-Jewish fellow at the Switzerland-based Overseas American Academy, put it even more drastically, emphasizing that all Jews are “scared to death of what is probably going to become of Israel even if the U.S. continues its support for it.”

Many observers of Israeli society agree that a major, if unexpected recent impetus for Jews to leave Palestine has been the past three months of the Arab Awakening that overturned Israel’s key pillars of regional support.

According to Layal, a Palestinian student from Shatila Camp, who is preparing for the June 5th “Naksa” march to the Blueline in South Lebanon: “What the Zionist occupiers of Palestine saw from Tahir Square in Cairo to Maroun al Ras in South Lebanon has convinced many Israelis that the Arab and Palestinian resistance, while still in its nascence, will develop into a massive and largely peaceful ground swell, such that no amount of weapons or apartheid administration can insure a Zionist future in Palestine. They are right to seek alternative places to raise their families.”

04 June, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be contacted at fplamb@gmail.com

 

Israeli Troops Murder Palestinian And Syrian Protesters

 

Israeli troops killed 13 protesters, after opening fire on a peaceful and unarmed demonstration at the ceasefire line in the occupied Golan Heights.

After an attempt was made to cut a line of barbed wire in the Majdal Shams area, Israeli troops stopped firing warning shots and targeted protesters.

Syrian TV said 13 protesters were killed and 225 wounded.

According to AFP, its reporter saw “at least 20 people with injuries, some soaked in blood as they were evacuated from the scene”.

It noted, “On the Israeli side, Majdal Shams locals pleaded with soldiers to stop firing as troops used loudspeakers to warn demonstrators in Arabic that ‘anyone who comes close to the fence will be responsible for their own blood’”.

Fuad al-Sha’ar, an apple grower who lives in Majdal Shams, told Reuters, “This is like a turkey shoot”.

Dr. Ali Kanaan, the director of the Quneitra hospital, was reported by AP stating that five people had been killed and 94 wounded, with six in critical condition.

The Irish Times commented, “The event took on the trappings of a spectator event on Israeli television, which broadcast the scene live with running commentary from reporters on the ground. ‘Hopa!’ exclaimed a correspondent for Israel’s Channel 10 television. ‘A Palestinian youth just bolted from a trench. An Israeli sniper fired at him three times, but it looks like he missed’”.

Israel Radio reported that a large number of people were also hurt when an anti-tank mine was detonated at Quneitra, another protest site near the border.

Clashes also took place between hundreds of protesters who marched to the Qalandia checkpoint at Ramallah on the West Bank and at a Gaza march to the Erez border crossing. Troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets.

On the West Bank, a Palestinian medic said 14 Palestinians were wounded by rubber bullets. Israeli forces also deployed a ‘skunk mobile’, which sprays demonstrators with a foul-smelling liquid.

There were smaller demonstrations in Hebron and the village of Deir al-Hatab, where a march was attempted on the Israeli Elon Moreh settlement. Demonstrators gathered at a gas station near the village of Isawiyah in East Jerusalem, hurling rocks at security forces, and protesters near Mount Scopus hurled firebombs at the back of the Hadassah University Hospital.

There are numerous reports of injuries, though the numbers cited differ. Israel’s Channel 2 reported that over 50 people were wounded in clashes, while other sources cite over 100.

The protests were to mark the 44th anniversary of the Six-Day War, Naksa Day, when Israel captured the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

On May 15, Israel opened fire and killed at least 15 protesters who successfully breached the border with Syria and Lebanon—to mark the 1948 Palestinian exodus after the creation of Israel. This time, the Lebanese army banned any gatherings at its border with Israel.

The violence unleashed by the Israeli state and its treatment in the Israeli media suggest a regime that is increasingly desperate and unhinged, in the face of a wave of mass struggles now shaking the Arab world, from Tunisia and Egypt to Yemen and Bahrain. Indeed, there are growing signs of internal divisions over foreign policy, as top ex-Israeli intelligence officials publicly distance themselves from the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli government was unapologetic about suppressing both the most recent and the May 15 protests, claiming Syria was mounting the incursion in order to deflect attention from its own suppression of domestic anti-government protests. Israel’s chief military spokesman, brigadier-general Yoav Mordechai, described Israel’s response as “measured, focused and proper”.

Netanyahu told his cabinet, “Unfortunately, extremist forces around us are trying today to breach our borders and threaten our communities and our citizens. We will not let them do that”.

Israel’s military preparations were extensive. Thousands of troops were mobilised at Israeli borders with Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Syria and throughout the West Bank. Majdal Shams was classified as a military closed area, and a new fence and land mines were laid.

Responsibility for this latest Israeli outrage must also be laid at the door of the White House. Last month, President Barack Obama closed a week of discussion with Netanyahu by telling a May 22 meeting of the right-wing American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that the “commitment of the United States to the security of Israel is ironclad”, and that any final settlement with the Palestinians would have to take into account “the new demographic realities on the ground”.

Netanyahu has interpreted this correctly as giving him carte blanche to do whatever he sees fit to crush all resistance to Israel’s seizure of the Occupied Territories.

The Netanyahu government’s actions are so inflammatory that the former head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, who retired in January, described them as “irresponsible and reckless” in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

He stated that together with himself as head of Mossad, Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Bet internal security agency, and IDF head Gabi Ashkenazi, the three could prevent Netanyahu and Barak from making mistakes. Now, however, all three have been replaced by men chosen by the current government. “Now I am afraid that there is no one to stop Bibi [Netanyahu] and [Defence Minister Ehud] Barak”, he said.

Dagan has warned publicly against barely concealed plans for Israel to attack Iran, warning that this would put Israel at the centre of a regional war.

His statements prompted Science and Technology Minister Daniel Herschkowitz to state that Dagan should stand trial, and Minister without Portfolio Yossi Peled to state that he had behaved irresponsibly and harmed Israel. “Israel needs to say that it will do everything to ensure its existence, and that’s it”, he said.

However, Kadima MK and former director of Shin Bet, Avi Dichter, said, “I’m glad he spoke out…. I don’t think there are any operational comments here. He didn’t discuss times or methods of attack”.

Rami Igra, a former senior Mossad official, also told the Jerusalem Post that Dagan “has a right to say what he thinks, and his view is based on many years of experience in security”.

Israel is still divided on regime change in Syria, but Barak has stated, “Assad is approaching the moment in which he will lose his authority…. I don’t think Israel should be alarmed by the possibility of Assad being replaced”.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman also condemned the Western powers for not acting in support of the opposition in Syria like it has in Libya. “These inconsistencies send a damaging message to the people of the Middle East and further erode the path to peace, security and democracy for our region”, he said.

The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, has accepted an invitation from the Sarkozy government to attend a Paris conference in July seeking to revive peace talks with Israel, after French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé met with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last week.

The PA said it accepted the invite only if both sides agree to halt unilateral actions, including Israel halting settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu has no intention of doing so. He told the press, “We very much appreciate our French friends, and I will respond to them after weighing the matter…. We will study the proposal and also discuss it with our American friends”.

06 June, 2011
WSWS.org