The Daily Sketch

Letter to Michael Spagat

2012-01-02T12:54:00.002+01:00

11 May 2009

Dear Michael Spagat,

Many people have been wondering why you have such a bee in your bonnet about the Lancet Iraq Mortality Studies. I don't. Its pretty obvious to me. Your own conflict of interest and that of colleagues such as Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks is patently obvious.

In previous research papers such as "Universal patterns underlying ongoing wars and terrorism", calculations and conclusions were made, based on data for civilian killings provided by: IBC! You are also intimately connected to CERAC (as is Dr. Hicks), whose own CERAC Integrated Iraq Dataset (CIID) "builds on the event description from three datasets that monitor violence in Iraq: Iraq Body Count , iCasualties and ITERATE." Further, the Dept. of Economics at the Royal Holloway, University of London, also uses IBC in its country specific datasets.

Let's be clear, using figures from an organization that itself admitted were an undercount of victims ("Our maximum therefore refers to reported deaths - which can only be a sample of true deaths unless one assumes that every civilian death has been reported. It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media") and then deleting figures from that undercount, as you did for example in the above mentioned paper, can only mean that the conclusions reached in these papers and indeed any other that used the IBC figures, have been seriously compromised, especially considering the numbers reported in the 2 Lancet studies. And this explains your mania with Lancet.

Apart from the conflict of interest, which you fail to mention in any of your work, you also have a strange tendency to attack any critics of the Colombian government of Uribe, connected in his early days in Medellín to the cocaine cartels, and recently to all sorts of human rights abuses. I wonder if the fact that some of your funding has come from Colombia's central bank: Banco de la República has anything to do with this, or is it simply an ideological thing?

In 2007 you took it upon yourself to attempt to discredit AI & HRW's reports on Colombia in your paper The Work of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch: Evidence from Colombia. This work and your attempts to discredit these 2 NGOs is characterised by a clear attempt to reduce the figures of victims as well as attempting to muddy the waters regarding state complicity with the paramilitaries in the human rights atrocities in Colombia. This is comparable to the work of Holocaust deniers who look to reduce at all costs, the number of Jews killed in that horrific crime. As you yourself acknowledge "The free flow of accurate information on patterns of violence can make a critical contribution to conflict resolution. Yet warring parties tend to compete to distort the relevant information in their favor." One can see which warring party you are working for...

In "The Colombian Conflict: Uribe's First 17 Months (J. Restrepo and M. Spagat), CEPR Discussion Paper 4570, 2004" you stated: "paramilitary groups...neither belong to the institutional apparatus nor are under the command and control of the state" That has now been shown to have ignored the reality that there has been tight collaboration between both. Both AI & HRW challenged these suppositions and still do as their reply to your paper shows: "Recent revelations about the degree of paramilitary infiltration in various state institutions, including the security forces, the legislature, and the DAS appear only to have confirmed what AI and other NGOs have been saying publicly for years. In many cases, AI has found it difficult to separate security force from paramilitary responsibility in killings, since there is evidence of the involvement of both. In fact, in many cases in which the article might describe the evidence for collusion as being "soft", subsequent research and/or judicial investigations have corroborated AI’s initial claims."

As both HRW and AI reports challenged many of your basic assumptions, they too had to be discredited. However, as your work is based on false assumptions and inaccurate staistics, it is actually your work that should be discredited.

David Sketchley
Seville, Spain

Needless to say, a reply was never received.

The Shock Doctrine

2012-01-02T10:45:00.001+01:00

A documentary adaptation Naomi Klein's 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine. An investigation of disaster capitalism, based on Naomi Klein's proposition that neo-liberal capitalism feeds on natural disasters, war and terror to establish its dominance.

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism -- the rapid-fire corporate re-engineering of societies still reeling from shock -- did not begin with September 11, 2001.

The film traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today.

New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, shock and awe warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

El Mono Egoista - The Selfish Ape

2012-01-02T10:37:00.000+01:00

Increible documental sobre el primate egoísta: nosotros.

This documentary is trying to point out that despite the development of our civilization in this the 21st century, our genetic legacy is still there and the primate we used to be remains in us and determines our lives much more than we suspect.

The human being is not as smart as he thinks and has simply become a SELFISH APE.

Written and directed by Fernando López - Mirones

Mentira (The Lie) - Manu Chao

2011-11-14T11:08:00.000+01:00

Manu Chao telling us about politicians and media in todays world:

Debtocracy. Deudocracia

2011-11-08T21:21:00.001+01:00

A must watch, Want to know what's behind the Greek Debt? Ever heard of 'Odious Debt'? In international law, odious debt is a legal theory that holds that the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation, should not be enforceable. Such debts are, thus, considered by this doctrine to be personal debts of the regime that incurred them and not debts of the state.

Now watch;

Arquitectura y Urbanismo Romano

2011-10-11T12:02:00.000+02:00

Arquitectura y Urbanismo Romano

View more presentations from antiquitasgl

Prof. Joseph E. Stiglitz: The State of the Global Economy

2011-10-02T12:18:00.000+02:00

Prof. Joseph E. Stiglitz at the World Bank. Will they listen though?

Prof. Joseph E. Stiglitz: The State of the Global Economy from World Bank on Vimeo.

Felipe Gonzalez 'preocupado' con gestión de Zapatero en política exterior

2011-09-04T13:33:00.000+02:00

En cable con fecha 22 fevrero 2010:

Gonzalez "compartió sus preocupaciones sobre la gestión de la política exterior española en general del presidente Zapatero"

No solo eso, pero el 'socialista' Gonzalez estaba "en gran medida de acuerdo con el enfoque de los EE.UU" en latino-america.

Wikileaks: La seguridad de los centrales nucleares españoles tienen debilidad

2011-09-04T12:52:00.001+02:00

Según el cable del 19 febrero 2010 la seguridad de los centrales nucleares tienen debilidad: no protegen de un ataque de alguién de dentro y el gobierno de España está bastante preocupado con como defenderse de esta posibilidad...

Geoană assured US: Romania's fundamentally pro-US orientation "safe" for at least two more generations

2011-09-04T12:33:00.001+02:00

Reference ID	Created	Released	Classification	Origin
06BUCHAREST1665	2006-10-31 16:38	2011-08-30 01:44	CONFIDENTIAL	Embassy Bucharest

VZCZCXRO5399

OO RUEHDBU RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHROV RUEHSR

DE RUEHBM #1665/01 3041638

ZNY CCCCC ZZH

O 311638Z OCT 06

FM AMEMBASSY BUCHAREST

TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 5470

INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BUCHAREST 001665 

 

SIPDIS 

 

SIPDIS 

 

INR PLEASE PASS TO DNI 

 

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/30/2016 

TAGS: PGOV PREL RO

SUBJECT: DNI NEGROPONTE MEETING WITH OPPOSITION PSD PRESIDENT MIRCEA GEOANA 

 

 

Classified By: Amb. Nicholas Taubman for Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). 

 

¶1. (C) Summary: At a meeting with DNI Negroponte and the 

Ambassador, opposition PSD head Mircea Geoana evinced concern 

about a posssible post-EU accession malaise in Romanian 

politics, with weak and divided governance for the next 

several years.  Geoana was skeptical about prospects for 

early elections and favored creation of a "grand coalition" 

of leading moderate parties on the German model.  On 

attitudes towards the U.S., Geoana said some "rebalancing" 

between Romania's "transatlanticist" and "European" 

orientations might take place, but geopolitics assured that 

Romania's fundamentally transatlanticist orientation was 

"safe" for at least two more generations. Geoana argued for a 

regional solution to the Kosovo issue, noting that the 

international community could move relatively fast on Kosovar 

independence if it was linked to a renewed commitment to the 

Balkan region as a whole.  With EU entry for many Balkan 

nations unlikely, NATO had to pick up the slack as default 

"mentor" in the region.  Geoana argued that Romania was 

wasting an opportunity to work with new Eastern European 

members of the EU in creating a new "Vilnius Group" 

encompassing the Baltics to the Black Sea.  On intelligence 

matters, Geoana encouraged new links between Romanian 

parliamentary committees overseeing the intelligence 

community and their US counterparts.  End Summary. 

 

¶2.  (C) Opposition PSD President Mircea Geoana met with 

Director of National Intelligence Negroponte and Ambassador 

Taubman October 29.  Geoana prefaced the meeting by comparing 

Romania's political scene to an ice skating competition; 

Romania had performed superbly in the obligatory routines 

needed for acceptance into all of the right clubs--WTO, NATO, 

and now the European Union--but it was uncertain whether it 

could do as well in the "freestyle" segment now that the 

constraints of candidacy were lifted.  He said Romanian 

politics exemplified the lack of an overall strategic vision 

among Romania's political leaders as well as a vicious 

political culture that stressed the "total demolition" of 

one's political enemies. 

 

¶3.  (C) Geoana was skeptical about prospects for early 

elections, noting that elections for the European Parliament 

would likely occur in May 2007, with municipal elections in 

June 2008 and a Presidential election taking place in 2009. 

President Basescu was alone in pushing for early elections, 

hoping to capitalize on his current high popularity ratings. 

Basescu also feared that a weak PD showing in future 

municipal elections could erode his prospects in the 

Presidential contest.  Geoana opined that a reshuffle among 

coalition partners was possible depending on how long Prime 

Minister Tariceanu survived.  Tariceanu was weakened, but 

still fighting for his political life.  Geoana warned that if 

Tariceanu goes, Romania could return to the "piranha 

politics" of the 1990s, with Basescu installing a more 

compliant puppet as Prime Minister. 

 

¶4.  (C) Regarding future coalition combinations, Geoana said 

that anything was possible, including continuation of the 

PD/PNL alliance; a strong PD combined with satellite parties; 

a PD/PSD alliance, or even a PSD/PNL government.  Two likely 

options included a "new majority" centered around Basescu, or 

some sort of "grand coalition" akin to Germany.  The latter 

option (which he preferred) would use as a pretext the need 

for mainstream Romanian parties to collectively meet the 

challenges of EU membership.  A PD/PNL merger was unlikely 

given the liberals' pride in their 100-year history and 

traditions.  Geoana anticipated that the next two and half 

years could prove an extraordinarily "unconstructive" time 

for Romanian politics, with political paralysis and loss of 

momentum after the January 1 EU accession.  Romania risked 

following in Poland's footsteps in mismanaging the first few 

years after EU entry, providing an opening for extremist and 

populist voices to dominate Romanian politics in the future. 

 

¶5.  (C) On attitudes towards the United States, Geoana said 

that Romania was currently so pro-American that one had to 

anticipate a future rebalancing between its 

"transatlanticist" and "European" orientations. Geography 

would never allow Romania to "relax" and hence the current 

security construction with the United States was safe for at 

least two more generations.  He added that the U.S. shouldn't 

take Romania's future pro-US orientation for granted or 

assume that it would be automatic. Geoana added that while he 

didn't like the President, he had to admit that Basecsu was 

"solid" with regards to his transatlanticist inclinations. 

Geoana also noted the need to develop new institutions to 

anchor US-Romanian ties after USAID pulled out.  These might 

include the Black Sea Trust Fund, the Aspen Institute, even 

the Harvard Club.  He added that it was not a question of USG 

 

BUCHAREST 00001665  002 OF 002 

 

 

funding, since there was now a huge network of influential 

Romanians who knew and loved the United States, including 

many corporate leaders. 

 

¶6.  (C) On Kosovo, Geoana said that Kosovar independence must 

be linked to a "package" of measures for the Balkan region as 

a whole.  Bringing Croatia into the EU and NATO without 

accounting for the rest of the Balkans was the wrong 

strategy.  With the right "package", the international 

community could move relatively fast in terms of fostering 

Kosovo's independence, but changing the status quo in Kosovo 

must be backed by a renewed commitment to the Balkan region 

on the part of NATO and the EU.  Geoana was doubtful that 

Macedonia or Alabania were capable of qualifying for EU 

accession, thus handing NATO the default role of "mentor" to 

these states.  Geoana argued for a strategy other than just 

"punishing" the Serbs, noting that the Serbian military 

understood what had to be done, but the Serbian public was 

still "intoxicated" with the idea of retaining Kosovo. 

Geoana added that the upcoming German EU Presidency was an 

opportunity for the United States to work closely with 

Chancellor Merkel on Kosovo.  The relative weakness or lame 

duck status of other European leaders gave Merkel the 

opportunity to demonstrate that she could be a "global 

leader" on this and other issues.  Geoana suggested that with 

the right preparation, Merkel would be receptive to working 

in tandem with President Bush on a renewed Kosovo strategy as 

part of Germany's bid for a successful EU presidency. 

 

¶7.  (C) Comparing Russia to "an athlete on steroids" Geoana 

said that he saw both Ukraine and Moldova slowly bending to 

growing Russian pressure, with Georgia increasingly isolated 

through Russian energy politics and other "booby traps" from 

Moscow.  Geoana also accused President Basescu of harboring 

plans to trade Moldovan unification with Romania for tacit 

acquiescence to allowing Transnistria to become a Russian-run 

"Kaliningrad" to the east. Geoana said Romania was wasting an 

opportunity to work with new Eastern European members of the 

EU in creating a "new European neighborhood policy" from the 

Baltics to the Black Sea, acting as a Vilnius Group writ 

large that could influence EU policy towards the East. 

 

¶8.  (C) On intelligence matters, Geoana said that the PSD had 

agreed to Senator Maior becoming the head of Romania's 

internal service.  He said that it was "refreshing" to see a 

new generation take over the intelligence services given the 

need to remove the taint of the Ceaucescu-era Securitate, but 

both Maior and SRI Director Saftoiu were inexperienced and 

"needed help."  He said that he was trying to institute a 

"new rule" in Romanian politics that the domestic 

intelligence directorship always go to an opposition 

politician, adding that this was a "precondition" for sending 

"one of our best young guys" for the post.  Geoana also 

encouraged the DNI to promote contacts between Romanian 

parliamentary committees overseeing intelligence matters with 

their counterparts in the United States, as this would be an 

investment in a more democratic Romania and a better 

respected intelligence service. 

 

¶9. (C) Comment: Mircea Geoana's views carrry some weight as 

he is the heir presumptive in any future coalition government 

involving the PSD.  His views on many issues--including his 

fundamentally transatlanticist orientation, his comments on 

Kosovo, and remarks on the desirability of creating an 

Eastern European bloc within the EU--track closely with those 

shared by many of his ruling coalition counterparts, 

underscoring that what separates the PSD from the ruling PD 

and PNL are frequently matters involving personalities, 

parties, and political nuance, not ideology or policy. 

Geoana's skepticism regarding the likelihood of early 

elections, on the other hand, reflects the fact that the 

PSD's prospects are not encouraging if President Basescu 

succeeds in getting an early election contest.  End Comment. 

 

 

Taubman

Are al-Shabaab & Al Qaeda linked?

2011-08-01T12:08:00.003+02:00

Reading the press or listening to the TV news you could be forgiven for thinking that these organisations are tied a the hip.

What are the facts?

According to Karen Greenberg in Guardian America CiF:

"According to the National Counterterrorism Centre, al-Shabaab's links to al-Qaida have not reached the organisational level; it can therefore in no way be classified as a strong partner in the al-Qaida network. To quote from the NCC's website:

"While most of [Shabaab's] fighters are predominantly interested in the nationalistic battle against the TFG and not supportive of global jihad, al-Shabaab's senior leadership is affiliated with al-Qaida, and certain extremists aligned with al-Shabaab are believed to have trained and fought in Afghanistan."

A summary report by the Council on Foreign Relations concurs:

"Experts say there are links between individual al-Shabaab leaders and individual members of al-Qaida, but any organizational linkage between the two groups is weak, if it exists at all."

Bill Blum: An updated summary of the charming record of US foreign policy

2011-07-30T11:05:00.002+02:00

An updated summary of the charming record of US foreign policy. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States of America has ...

Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of which were democratically-elected. ⁷
Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries. ⁸
Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries. ⁹
Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries. ¹⁰
Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders. ¹¹

In total: Since 1945, the United States has carried out one or more of the above actions, on one or more occasions, in the following 69 countries (more than one-third of the countries of the world):

Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Angola
Australia
Bolivia
Bosnia
Brazil
British Guiana (now Guyana)
Bulgaria
Cambodia
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Congo (also as Zaire)
Costa Rica
Cuba
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Fiji
France
Germany (plus East Germany)
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Honduras
India
Indonesia
Iran

Iraq
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Kuwait
Laos
Lebanon
Libya
Mongolia
Morocco
Nepal
Nicaragua
North Korea
Pakistan
Palestine
Panama
Peru
Philippines
Portugal
Russia
Seychelles
Slovakia
Somalia
South Africa
Soviet Union
Sudan
Suriname
Syria
Thailand
Uruguay
Venezuela
Vietnam (plus North Vietnam)
Yemen (plus South Yemen)
Yugoslavia

(See a world map of US interventions.)

Rumors of US plans for Libya, Syria cause concern

2011-06-28T20:56:00.003+02:00

I came across this article today on Deutsche Welle: "Rumors of US plans for Libya, Syria cause concern".

Its main purpose appears to be to discredit a recent infowars.com exclusive: Military Sources Reveal Ground Force Invasion of Libya

"a number of unsubstantiated reports based on anonymous military sources began flooding the Internet claiming that US forces were already being readied for a full-scale ground invasion of Libya.

The alleged military sources at the US Army's Fort Hood base in Texas, where these preparations were said to be taking place, revealed to the Infowars.com website that the invasion was being planned for October. This report spawned a wave of similar extrapolations on the theme of a potential escalation in Libya, again with little solid evidence to back them up."

However, on the same site is another article "Huge Marine Drill Confirms Ground Invasion of Libya", which quotes a CNN article from 19 June "Headed to the beach? Heads up for an invasion force":

"The exercise is designed to test the capability of every type of Marine Corps aircraft, including MV-22 Ospreys and F/A 18 Hornets, as well as some Navy ships and Air Force planes.

The drill will stretch from Quantico Marine Base in northern Virginia to the Navy's Pinecastle Bombing Range in Florida.

With thousands of Marines and other service members involved, it's the biggest such drill ever on the U.S. East Coast."

But that's not all: in a small Spanish provincial news paper, the Diario Cadiz, there is also a world exclusive.

We find that there is a major US military exercise happening at this very moment and until Friday on the south coast of Spain at Barbate not far from Cape Trafalgar which go under the name of Phiflex 2011. However, if you do a search of Phiflex 2011 the only mention comes from the local Spanish newspaper: The Diario de Cadiz (which also covers the US base at Rota).

2400 US marines including the Marine Expeditionary Force are practicing beach assaults and landings.

This goes under the cover of joint exercises with the Spanish armed forces, who, however, are only providing 380 marines along with Piranha armoured fighting vehicles and Harrier jets.

According to the Diario de Cadiz there are up to 4 aircraft carriers participating, along with US planes.

Now it may be just the time of year but there is certainly a lot of marine activity right now.

Españistán, de la Burbuja Inmobiliaria a la Crisis (por Aleix Saló)

2011-06-02T10:51:00.000+02:00

Propuestas aprobadas en la asamblea de Sol:

2011-06-01T08:59:00.002+02:00

Hola, estas son las propuestas aprobadas en la asamblea de la protesta de Sol. Difícilmente se oirán en los medios y la página web no para de caerse así que está bien difundirlas por email.

Haced un esfuerzo por leerlas!!

Estas son algunas de las medidas que, en cuanto ciudadanos, consideramos esenciales para la regeneración de nuestro sistema político y económico. ¡Opina sobre las mismas y propón las tuyas en el foro!

1. ELIMINACIÓN DE LOS PRIVILEGIOS DE LA CLASE POLÍTICA:
o   Control estricto del absentismo de los cargos electos en sus respectivos puestos. Sanciones específicas por dejación de funciones.

o   Supresión de los privilegios en el pago de impuestos, los años de cotización y el monto de las pensiones. Equiparación del salario de los representantes electos al salario medio español más las dietas necesarias indispensables para el ejercicio de sus funciones.

o   Eliminación de la inmunidad asociada al cargo. Imprescriptibilidad de los delitos de corrupción.

o   Publicación obligatoria del patrimonio de todos los cargos públicos.

o   Reducción de los cargos de libre designación.

2. CONTRA EL DESEMPLEO:
o   Reparto del trabajo fomentando las reducciones de jornada y la conciliación laboral hasta acabar con el desempleo estructural (es decir, hasta que el desempleo descienda por debajo del 5%).

o   Jubilación a los 65 y ningún aumento de la edad de jubilación hasta acabar con el desempleo juvenil.

o   Bonificaciones para aquellas empresas con menos de un 10% de contratación temporal.

o   Seguridad en el empleo: imposibilidad de despidos colectivos o por causas objetivas en las grandes empresas mientras haya beneficios, fiscalización a las grandes empresas para asegurar que no cubren con trabajadores temporales empleos que podrían ser fijos.

o   Restablecimiento del subsidio de 426€ para todos los parados de larga duración.

3. DERECHO A LA VIVIENDA:

o   Expropiación por el Estado de las viviendas construidas en stock que no se han vendido para colocarlas en el mercado en régimen de alquiler protegido.

o   Ayudas al alquiler para jóvenes y todas aquellas personas de bajos recursos.

o   Que se permita la dación en pago de las viviendas para cancelar las hipotecas.

4. SERVICIOS PÚBLICOS DE CALIDAD:
o   Supresión de gastos inútiles en las Administraciones Públicas y establecimiento de un control independiente de presupuestos y gastos.

o   Contratación de personal sanitario hasta acabar con las listas de espera.

o   Contratación de profesorado para garantizar la ratio de alumnos por aula, los grupos de desdoble y los grupos de apoyo.

o   Reducción del coste de matrícula en toda la educación universitaria, equiparando el precio de los posgrados al de los grados.

o   Financiación pública de la investigación para garantizar su independencia.

o   Transporte público barato, de calidad y ecológicamente sostenible: restablecimiento de los trenes que se están sustituyendo por el AVE con los precios originarios, abaratamiento de los abonos de transporte, restricción del tráfico rodado privado en el centro de las ciudades, construcción de carriles bici.

o   Recursos sociales locales: aplicación efectiva de la Ley de Dependencia, redes de cuidadores locales municipales, servicios locales de mediación y tutelaje.

5. CONTROL DE LAS ENTIDADES BANCARIAS:

o   Prohibición de cualquier tipo de rescate o inyección de capital a entidades bancarias: aquellas entidades en dificultades deben quebrar o ser nacionalizadas para constituir una banca pública bajo control social.

o   Elevación de los impuestos a la banca de manera directamente proporcional al gasto social ocasionado por la crisis generada por su mala gestión.

o   Devolución a las arcas públicas por parte de los bancos de todo capital público aportado.

o   Prohibición de inversión de bancos españoles en paraísos fiscales.

o   Regulación de sanciones a los movimientos especulativos y a la mala praxis bancaria.

6. FISCALIDAD:

o   Aumento del tipo impositivo a las grandes fortunas y entidades bancarias.

o   Eliminación de las SICAV.

o   Recuperación del Impuesto sobre el Patrimonio.

o   Control real y efectivo del fraude fiscal y de la fuga de capitales a paraísos fiscales.

o   Promoción a nivel internacional de la adopción de una tasa a las transacciones internacionales (tasa Tobin).

7. LIBERTADES CIUDADANAS Y DEMOCRACIA PARTICIPATIVA:
o   No al control de Internet. Abolición de la Ley Sinde.

o   Protección de la libertad de información y del periodismo de investigación.

o   Referéndums obligatorios y vinculantes para las cuestiones de gran calado que modifican las condiciones de vida de los ciudadanos.

o   Referéndums obligatorios para toda introducción de medidas dictadas desde la Unión Europea.

o   Modificación de la Ley Electoral para garantizar un sistema auténticamente representativo y proporcional que no discrimine a ninguna fuerza política ni voluntad social, donde el voto en blanco y el voto nulo también tengan su representación en el legislativo.

o   Independencia del Poder Judicial: reforma de la figura del Ministerio Fiscal para garantizar su independencia, no al nombramiento de miembros del Tribunal Constitucional y del Consejo General del Poder Judicial por parte del Poder Ejecutivo.

o   Establecimiento de mecanismos efectivos que garanticen la democracia interna en los partidos políticos.

8. REDUCCIÓN DEL GASTO MILITAR--------------------------------------------------------

ELIMINAR EL SENADO.

NORUEGA, SUECIA, DINAMARCA, NO TIENEN SENADO, ALEMANIA SOLO 100 SENADORES y EE.UU. UN SENADOR POR CADA ESTADO.

LOS GRANDES TEÓRICOS DEL DERECHO INTERNACIONAL Y CONSTITUCIONAL OPINAN QUE ES UNA CÁMARA INNECESARIA, PRESCINDIBLE Y QUE ESTÁ EN EXTINCIÓN, ¿ENTONCES POR QUÉ TENEMOS QUE MANTENER A 260 SENADORES?

DE ESTA FORMA AHORRAREMOS 3.500 MILLONES DE EUROS CADA AÑO.

ELIMINAR LA PENSIÓN VITALICIA DE TODOS LOS DIPUTADOS, SENADORES Y DEMÁS

"PADRES DE LA PATRIA".

ELIMINAR A TODOS los diplomáticos excepto un embajador y un cónsul en cada país. No es posible que gastemos en esto más que Alemania y el Reino Unido).

Con eso, y con rebajar un 30% las partidas 4, 6 y 7 de los PRESUPUESTOS GENERALES DEL

ESTADO (transferencias a sindicatos, partidos políticos, fundaciones opacas y varios), se ahorrarían más de 45.000 millones de Euros y no haría falta tocar las pensiones ni los sueldos de los funcionarios, como tampoco haría falta recortar 6.000 millones de Euros en inversión pública.

CON LA MITAD DEL DINERO QUE EL ESTADO SE AHORRARÍA CON ESTAS MEDIDAS,
SE ACABARÍA LA CRISIS EN ESPAÑA

Por el cambio de la ley electoral, y por una democracia participativa de verdad, donde nuestra opinión, la de los ciudadanos, sea lo que gobierne, no una papeleta cada cuatro años y que hagan con ella lo que quieran sin dar cuentas ni explicaciones.

Por el cambio de la ley electoral, y por una democracia participativa de verdad ¡Espabilemos de una vez! ¡No sigamos dormidos y aletargados!

SI ESTÁS DE ACUERDO, DIFÚNDELO.

UK training Saudi forces used to crush Arab spring - Letter to Nick Clegg

2011-05-29T11:33:00.002+02:00

This really is a scandal of the highest order: "UK training Saudi forces used to crush Arab spring" :

"Britain is training Saudi Arabia's national guard – the elite security force deployed during the recent protests in Bahrain – in public order enforcement measures and the use of sniper rifles. The revelation has outraged human rights groups, which point out that the Foreign Office recognises that the kingdom's human rights record is "a major concern"."

"The MoD response, obtained yesterday by the Observer, reveals that Britain sends up to 20 training teams to the kingdom a year. Saudi Arabia pays for "all BMM personnel, as well as support costs such as accommodation and transport".
Bahrain's royal family used 1,200 Saudi troops to help put down demonstrations in March. At the time the British government said it was "deeply concerned" about reports of human rights abuses being perpetrated by the troops.
"Britain's important role in training the Saudi Arabian national guard in internal security over many years has enabled them to develop tactics to help suppress the popular uprising in Bahrain," said Nicholas Gilby of the Campaign Against Arms Trade."

Here is the text of my letter to Nick Clegg:

Sir,
I find it hard to understand how you can look yourself in the mirror with the absolutely scandalous news that British troops are training "Saudi Arabia's national guard – the elite security force deployed during the recent protests in Bahrain – in public order enforcement measures and the use of sniper rifles."
I repeat: this is a scandal of the highest order and I demand action to cease this forthwith, considering the F.O considers S.A.'s human rights record as "a major concern".
It is even more scandalous considering the supposed backing your government and party have been giving to the Arab Spring and knowing that Bahrain used 1200 Saudi troops to help put down demonstrations in March amid reports of the use of snipers in putting down said demonstrations.
Isn't it time you put your power hunger to one side and started looking after human rights issues. Or is it that you quite frankly don't give a damn.?

Royal Navy and Gibraltar police try to obstruct Spanish police from arresting drug traffickers

2011-04-25T16:19:00.001+02:00

The Guardia Civil patrol were chasing a suspect vessel at high speeds. The vessel had come from Morocco and was trying to make for Gibraltar, where no doubt they had paid off the police and the Navy, when they were intercepted by the Guardia Civil fast patrol boat. The occupants of the unknown vessel started desperately to throw bales overboard but were apprehended 3 kms from the Rock by the Guardia Civil.

Suddenly they were surrounded by 5 or 6 vessels from the Gibraltar Customs, Gibraltar Police and the Royal Navy and subjected to threats and insults. The Guardia Civil finally managed to extricate themselves and their capture and returned to Algeciras port with the 2 occupants under arrest and over 100 kgs of hashish confiscated.

Gibraltar and Britain are trying to claim that Gibraltar has territorial waters, however, the Treaty of Utrecht gives no territorial waters to Gibraltar apart from the waters of its port. And in their efforts to claim these waters it appears the Gibraltarians don't give a fuck whether drug gangs, criminals get away.

Let's face it, Gibraltar is and always has been a safe haven for pirates, thieves, and crooks.

Link.

Letter to the Daily Telegraph - Reply to Robin Yapp

2011-04-22T11:31:00.002+02:00

Sir,

In his article "Israel 'supplied arms to Argentina during Falklands War", Robin Yapp describes Irgun as "the Zionist underground paramilitary movement which Begin commanded before the state of Israel was established."

Irgun was considered a terrorist organisation not only by the British authorities at the time (& Winston Churchill & the NYT) but also by the brand new Israeli government itself, which passed the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance in 1948 with the specific purpose of eliminating Irgun (& the other Zionist terrorist organisation, Lehi aka the Stern Gang). If one examines the list of Irgun attacks from 1937 on, one can see that they include indiscriminate attacks on civilians: bombs planted on trains, buses, and in cafés and cinemas, thrown into crowded markets - there is even record of a donkey-bomb killing 20 civilians in Haifa market - not to mention the truck bombs, shootings and assassinations of British officials and the bombing of the King David Hotel. Let us also not forget the Deir Yassin massacre carried out by Irgun and the assassination of the UN Mediator and President of the Swedish Red Cross: Count Folke Bernadotte which lead directly to the passing of the 1948 Israel Terrorism Act..

Further, considering that all these crimes constitute 'terrorism' under the definitions in the UK Terrorism Act 2000, one wonders exactly why Robin Yapp prefers to call the Irgun an 'underground paramilitary movement'. And in order to maintain impartiality will he and the Telegraph now be referring to Hamas as a 'Palestinian underground paramilitary movement'?

Yours Sincerely

Nuevo Radar de la DGT en España

2011-03-28T12:23:00.000+02:00

Esta maquinita de fotos, aparentemente un inocente indicador de desvío por obras, es realmente un radar encubierto que lo están poniendo precisamente en esas zonas de obras de mantenimiento donde hay limitaciones de 20 Km/h o de 30 Km/h y cazan como moscas a los que van a la deslumbrante y peligrosa velocidad de 40 ó 50 Km/h y le atizan 200,00 Euretes y un par de puntos. No te digo si pasas, por no haber coches delante, a 80 ó 90 Km/h .
Se está utilizando incluso en carreteras sin obras a las que le ponen una limitación, un par de conos y a esperar 300 m más adelante a los pardillos.
Las están poniendo en todas las carreteras españolas y las cifras de recaudación son mareantes.

Yuri da Cunha kuma directed by dj marcell

2011-03-13T14:00:00.000+01:00

Do you like African music? I do. Try this one:

Yuri da Cunha kuma directed by dj marcell

Los Desayunos de TVE 16 Fevrero 2011: Respuesta a Joaquín Estefanía y Eduardo San Martín

2011-02-16T11:01:00.000+01:00

Hablando de Berlusconi y Camps y todos los demás, Sr Estefania preguntó ¿qué hemos hecho mal?

En primer lugar, no hay ningún control psicológico sobre los que entran en la política. Por eso hay tantos y tantos psicópatas y/o sociópatas - solo hay que mirar al Sr. Tony Blair o Berlusconi mismo para ver el ejemplo perfecto en la política internacional, y los Srs. Camps, Fabra, Matas, Aznar, Zapatero, Chaves, etc., etc., etc., los ejemplos nacionales. Para la propia seguridad mundial deberían someterse a pruebas psicológicas todos que ocupen un cargo político, a nivel local, regional, nacional o internacional.

En segundo lugar, y haciendo eco del Sr. San Martin, las democracias occidentales están podridas, y la mayoría de la gente no ve ninguna salida y desconectan de la política. La culpa tienen la clase política - los psicópatas, los ladrones y mafiosos, y los que 'trabajan' (por decirlo así) para las grandes corpraciones (la mayoría)y para quienes hay una puerta giratoria entre la política y esas corporaciones (su sueldo se paga al final de la vida política).

También la culpa tiene algo que ver con 'Panem et circenses'. Las corporaciones han creado un sinfín de circos para mantener al pueblo distraído de la política: deportes por todas partes (hasta la misma TVE en la publicidad para la Champions viste las estrellas de futbol como gladiadores), los reality y las series de TV, los videojuegos. Y último pero no menos importante, no hay tiempo para la gran mayoría de estar bien informada, especialmente cuando los periodistas y los medios están en manos de las mismas corporaciones, y as veces ocultan deliberadamente o directamente censuran información importante.

Solo cuando toda esta gentuza empiezan a tomer demasiado el pelo al pueblo y comienza a faltar el pan, verremos escenas como Tunez, Egipto, Yemen, aquí, en Occidente.

Reagan Celebration Hides Brutal History

2011-02-07T20:22:00.000+01:00

Wilkerson and Parry on Reagan Centennial: Many of today's catastrophes traced to Reagan's presidency

More at The Real News

Where are the US riots?

2011-01-27T10:33:00.002+01:00

While the Arab world seems to finally be waking up, the people of the US are still fast asleep.

Inspired by the Tunisian revolution against its dictatorial president and government, protestors in Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan and Albania have taken to the streets, and up to 4 Moroccans have set themselves on fire. Reports are even coming in of an Egyptian stock market crash.

One just has to look at what the majority of people have been demonstrating against in these countries to wonder why these revolutions haven't yet hit the US: chronic unemployment and government corruption, something in abundance in the US.

I person in 7 - that's 15% of the population, or 45 million Americans - are poor according to Associated Press. There are well over 15 million officially unemployed. But the US considers the labour force the number of people employed plus the number unemployed but seeking work, while it considers the non-labour force tincludes those who are not looking for work, those who are institutionalised (eg prison) and those serving in the military. And its the shrinking numbers of the actual labour force that keeps the unemployment rate from going through the roof.

One must ask if they're brain dead too, as one wonders why they aren't all out in the streets...

Amnesty International: Inhumane Treatment of WikiLeaks Soldier Bradley Manning

2011-01-24T19:58:00.002+01:00

Amnesty International has finally written a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates objecting to the conditions of Bradley Manning's detention:
Inhumane Treatment of WikiLeaks Soldier Bradley Manning | Human Rights Now - Amnesty International USA Blog

Both Glenn Greenwald and Prof. Juan Cole both have pieces on this:

Glenn Greenwald: "America's treatment of detainees"

Prof. Juan Cole: "Bradley Manning and Mohamed Bouazizi"

But why haven't they declared him to be a Prisoner of Conscience?

The UK's most senior civil servant, Sir Gus O'Donnell, covering up crimes against peace.

2011-01-19T12:43:00.003+01:00

The UK's most senior civil servant, Sir Gus O'Donnell, is covering up crimes against peace. According to the Guardian:

"Britain's top civil servant, Sir Gus O'Donnell, is preventing the official inquiry into the Iraq invasion from publishing notes sent by Tony Blair to George W Bush - evidence described by the inquiry as of "central importance" in establishing the circumstances that led to war.

O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, consulted Blair before suppressing the documents, it emerged tonight."

What has the UK country become? How is it possible that in this day and age, unelected officials can have so much power? It's completely anti-democratic. Someone somewhere should take this man to court for covering up evidence of a crime.

Chilcott has written to this unelected, anti-democratic official at least 3 times and has received the same fobbing off each time: 'The Cabinet Office said: "There is an established convention covering papers of a previous administration whereby former ministers would normally be consulted before release of papers from their time in government."'

So what the Cabinet Office is really saying is that if Hitler had been British, it would have been impossible to release any papers without his consent, a full two fingers, basically telling the British electorate to fuck off.

It's high time that 'conventions' like this were made illegal by law. Or that there be a higher law that makes these conventions non-binding in cases of possible criminal conduct.

Somebody ought to have a serious word in O'Donnell's ear and tell him that if he doesn't release these papers it's off to the Hague with him. These fucking civil servants, they think they're so civilised yet they're nothing more than common criminals...

Kiko Veneno - La rama de barcelona (both versions)

2011-01-11T20:49:00.001+01:00

Listen/watch Version 1 first then Version 2. Love it!

Kiko Veneno - La rama de barcelona (Version 1)

Kiko Veneno - La rama de barcelona (Version 2)

War and Hypocrisy

2011-01-10T17:08:00.000+01:00

Respuesta a Felipe González en "Los Desayunos de TVE" con Ana Pastor

2011-01-10T10:46:00.001+01:00

Hablando del Tea Party y la última matanza en EEUU, noto que el Sr. Gonzalez utilizaba los mismos términos que el 'establishment' estado-unidense. Que el autor de la matanza es un loco y que las palabras no matan... creo que este hombre debería quedarse callado ya que es mayor y no deja de hablar tonterías, vamos, que la edad no perdona ni al Sr. Gonzalez.

Nadie habla del terrorismo blanco como hacen en el portal de Michael Moore o en el excelente blog del Prof. Juan Cole. Y comentaristas como Krugman en el NYT apunta a una retórica eliminacionista (eliminationist rhetoric): las 'sugerencias que se debe eliminar los del otro lado del debate por cualquier medio necesario, retórica utilizado contra Julian Assange y por los descerebrados de la derecha de EEUU contra los Demócratas y que ha llevado a esta matanza.'

Como dice Juan Cole, este discurso es de hipócritas, ya que no se desestime de manera similar, obviamente, los musulmanes inestable quienes, como los llamados "patriotas" de la banda McVeigh, a veces se recurren a la violencia...De hecho, los chiflados musulmanes de derecha y los chiflados estadounidenses de derecha están obsesionados por ansiedades similares, acerca de un gobierno poderoso en Washington.

Por otro lado quisiera felicitar a la Sra. Pastor por su vuelta al programa con las esperanzas de que sea tan contundente y combativa con otros como con el Sr Gonzalez - por ejemplo ya quejé sobre su entrevista servil al colombiano Uribe.

Chris Hedges: 2011: A Brave New Dystopia

2010-12-28T02:15:00.004+01:00

This really is a must read.

Chris Hedges: 2011: A Brave New Dystopia

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.

We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled.

Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” Orwell wrote in “1984.” “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin uses the term “inverted totalitarianism” in his book “Democracy Incorporated” to describe our political system. It is a term that would make sense to Huxley. In inverted totalitarianism, the sophisticated technologies of corporate control, intimidation and mass manipulation, which far surpass those employed by previous totalitarian states, are effectively masked by the glitter, noise and abundance of a consumer society. Political participation and civil liberties are gradually surrendered. The corporation state, hiding behind the smokescreen of the public relations industry, the entertainment industry and the tawdry materialism of a consumer society, devours us from the inside out. It owes no allegiance to us or the nation. It feasts upon our carcass.

The corporate state does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader. It is defined by the anonymity and facelessness of the corporation. Corporations, who hire attractive spokespeople like Barack Obama, control the uses of science, technology, education and mass communication. They control the messages in movies and television. And, as in “Brave New World,” they use these tools of communication to bolster tyranny. Our systems of mass communication, as Wolin writes, “block out, eliminate whatever might introduce qualification, ambiguity, or dialogue, anything that might weaken or complicate the holistic force of their creation, to its total impression.”

The result is a monochromatic system of information. Celebrity courtiers, masquerading as journalists, experts and specialists, identify our problems and patiently explain the parameters. All those who argue outside the imposed parameters are dismissed as irrelevant cranks, extremists or members of a radical left. Prescient social critics, from Ralph Nader to Noam Chomsky, are banished. Acceptable opinions have a range of A to B. The culture, under the tutelage of these corporate courtiers, becomes, as Huxley noted, a world of cheerful conformity, as well as an endless and finally fatal optimism. We busy ourselves buying products that promise to change our lives, make us more beautiful, confident or successful as we are steadily stripped of rights, money and influence. All messages we receive through these systems of communication, whether on the nightly news or talk shows like “Oprah,” promise a brighter, happier tomorrow. And this, as Wolin points out, is “the same ideology that invites corporate executives to exaggerate profits and conceal losses, but always with a sunny face.” We have been entranced, as Wolin writes, by “continuous technological advances” that “encourage elaborate fantasies of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, actions measured in nanoseconds: a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose denizens are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge.”

Our manufacturing base has been dismantled. Speculators and swindlers have looted the U.S. Treasury and stolen billions from small shareholders who had set aside money for retirement or college. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus and protection from warrantless wiretapping, have been taken away. Basic services, including public education and health care, have been handed over to the corporations to exploit for profit. The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate establishment as freaks.

Attitudes and temperament have been cleverly engineered by the corporate state, as with Huxley’s pliant characters in “Brave New World.” The book’s protagonist, Bernard Marx, turns in frustration to his girlfriend Lenina:

“Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?” he asks.
“I don’t know that you mean. I am free, free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody’s happy nowadays.”
He laughed, “Yes, ‘Everybody’s happy nowadays.’ We have been giving the children that at five. But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else’s way.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she repeated.

The façade is crumbling. And as more and more people realize that they have been used and robbed, we will move swiftly from Huxley’s “Brave New World” to Orwell’s “1984.” The public, at some point, will have to face some very unpleasant truths. The good-paying jobs are not coming back. The largest deficits in human history mean that we are trapped in a debt peonage system that will be used by the corporate state to eradicate the last vestiges of social protection for citizens, including Social Security. The state has devolved from a capitalist democracy to neo-feudalism. And when these truths become apparent, anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity. The bleakness of our post-industrial pockets, where some 40 million Americans live in a state of poverty and tens of millions in a category called “near poverty,” coupled with the lack of credit to save families from foreclosures, bank repossessions and bankruptcy from medical bills, means that inverted totalitarianism will no longer work.

We increasingly live in Orwell’s Oceania, not Huxley’s The World State. Osama bin Laden plays the role assumed by Emmanuel Goldstein in “1984.” Goldstein, in the novel, is the public face of terror. His evil machinations and clandestine acts of violence dominate the nightly news. Goldstein’s image appears each day on Oceania’s television screens as part of the nation’s “Two Minutes of Hate” daily ritual. And without the intervention of the state, Goldstein, like bin Laden, will kill you. All excesses are justified in the titanic fight against evil personified.

The psychological torture of Pvt. Bradley Manning—who has now been imprisoned for seven months without being convicted of any crime—mirrors the breaking of the dissident Winston Smith at the end of “1984.” Manning is being held as a “maximum custody detainee” in the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. He spends 23 of every 24 hours alone. He is denied exercise. He cannot have a pillow or sheets for his bed. Army doctors have been plying him with antidepressants. The cruder forms of torture of the Gestapo have been replaced with refined Orwellian techniques, largely developed by government psychologists, to turn dissidents like Manning into vegetables. We break souls as well as bodies. It is more effective. Now we can all be taken to Orwell’s dreaded Room 101 to become compliant and harmless. These “special administrative measures” are regularly imposed on our dissidents, including Syed Fahad Hashmi, who was imprisoned under similar conditions for three years before going to trial. The techniques have psychologically maimed thousands of detainees in our black sites around the globe. They are the staple form of control in our maximum security prisons where the corporate state makes war on our most politically astute underclass—African-Americans. It all presages the shift from Huxley to Orwell.

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling,” Winston Smith’s torturer tells him in “1984.” “Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression. Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone records turned over to the government. We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history. Many of us have our daily routine caught on dozens of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits are recorded on the Internet. Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are patted down at airports and filmed by scanners. And public service announcements, car inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to report suspicious activity. The enemy is everywhere.

Those who do not comply with the dictates of the war on terror, a war which, as Orwell noted, is endless, are brutally silenced. The draconian security measures used to cripple protests at the G-20 gatherings in Pittsburgh and Toronto were wildly disproportionate for the level of street activity. But they sent a clear message—DO NOT TRY THIS. The FBI’s targeting of antiwar and Palestinian activists, which in late September saw agents raid homes in Minneapolis and Chicago, is a harbinger of what is to come for all who dare defy the state’s official Newspeak. The agents—our Thought Police—seized phones, computers, documents and other personal belongings. Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury have since been served on 26 people. The subpoenas cite federal law prohibiting “providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.” Terror, even for those who have nothing to do with terror, becomes the blunt instrument used by Big Brother to protect us from ourselves.

“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?” Orwell wrote. “It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.”

Wikileaks Cables Spain: U.S. used the arrest of a Marine from the Sixth Fleet to brand Spanish police as racist

2010-12-27T13:30:00.000+01:00

Translated from the Spanish daily El País (with links to the cables):

Mount Whitney, The flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet

An incident between agents of the Guardia Urbana of Barcelona and several crew members of the Mount Whitney, the flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, in early 2009, caused a serious diplomatic incident between the governments of Madrid and Washington.. In addition, last summer, the State Department used this incident to warn Afro-American tourists traveling to Spain that they were at risk of arrest. Barcelona City Council now says that its officials were carrying out actions against petty drug dealing and scoffed at the accusations of racism.

After the altercation with the staff of the U.S. Navy, the government of Barack Obama sent a diplomatic note in February 2009 that a Marine and several colleagues were targeted at gunpoint. The U.S. Consulate General in Barcelona warned then that the Sixth Fleet had said that after that incident, it was "reluctant" to re-anchor in the Catalan port.

The case erupted on January 22, 2009, when a crew member of the Mount Whitney was "accosted" by plainclothes municipal police who "did not identify themselves properly" and that, moreover, "who pointed a gun at his shipmates " During his detention, the sailor claimed he was knocked to the ground, and that he needed several stitches in his head. He was arrested and later released without charge. "There were suggestions the incident might have been racially motivated (the crewmember was African-American)," points out a confidential note from the embassy.

The Barcelona Town Hall (responsible for the local police under Spanish law) version said: "The plainclothes officers were conducting undercover drug dealing surveillance work in the Drassanes Plaza. They detected a conversation between George Thomas Kee and two youths of North African origin, and suspected a possible drug transaction, the officers proceeded to identify the suspects."

"An agent identified himself by showing his badge, but Mr. Kee began to gesture angrily, trying to leave the scene. The agent tried to take his arm, and when a corporal approached him, Mr. Kee hit him in the neck and punched the policeman. Then a group of 15 or 20 people (marines) started approaching the police in a hostile manner, shouting in English. (...). Seeing that this group continued to move forward, the agent drew his gun pointing it toward the ground, making the group stop and begin to move back, " according to the municipal report.

Kee was taken to Pere Camps Hospital and a corporal and an officer of the Guardia Urbana were taken to the Mutua Universal clinic suffering from "injuries of varying degrees." Kee made a statement at the Ciutat Vella (Old City) police station saying he had no intention of attacking the agents, but thought they were going to rob him, as in the US "police identify themselves to suspects by showing their badge in one hand and in the other hand they point their gun at the suspect." After he was arrested "for assault on law enforcement officers" in Les Corts police station, he was visited by a consular representative, two Liaison Officers from the Spanish Navy and two from the U.S. Navy.

Barcelona Court number 20 closed the case shortly afterwards. The internal investigation of the local police concluded without finding any irregularities in the police officers' conduct, despite finding some mistakes in their actions.

The embassy emphasized the "gravity" of the matter and "the potential negative effects that could result if the Spanish Government did not take appropriate action." The embassy sent the foreign minister a "verbal complaint" demanding an explanation of the altercation (190 015 cable).

Two weeks later, the Consul General Todd Robinson met with the Barcelona Councillor for Security and Mobility, Assumpta Escarp, along with the Quartermaster of the Guardia Urbana. The consul "told Barcelona authorities that quick communication either directly with the Commanding Officer of the ship or the Consul General might have kept the situation from spiraling out of control and causing subsequent reactions in Barcelona, Madrid, Naples, and Washington, DC" (Cable 190 628). The authoritiesvundertook to contact Sixth Fleet officials in Naples (Italy) as well as liaison officers at the base in Rota (Spain) to clarify the situation.

After a few days, the Consul wrote to the then President of the Generalitat, José Montilla, the Mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Hereu, and the director of the Guardia Urbana, Xavier Vilaro. At the same time, he contacted the Office of Human and Civil Rights. The Embassy in Madrid and the chairman of the Standing Committee on Bilateral Co-operation in Defense Affairs raised their unease with the Spanish authorities. And the Chargé d'Affaires sent a complaint to the Secretary General for Defence Policy.

After all these complaints, the only response received was a letter from Vilaró, who lamented the "inconveniences" arising from the incident and stated that the case was the subject of an internal investigation, according to the cable. The US Consul in Barcelona again met with several representatives of the City and told them the Sixth Fleet was reluctant to re-anchor in Barcelona and that the case had attracted the attention at the highest level of the Department of State. The diplomat stressed that the U.S. Government demanded "assurances that U.S. ships would be welcome to the city."

Conclusion: US Marines are quite happy dishing it out when they're holding the weapons, but can't take the heat themselves...just as well the Barcelona police didn't do as the US Marines and police do: shoot first and ask questions later...

Washington Post: Soft on Nicaragua

2010-12-26T17:49:00.004+01:00

Who writes this crap? Yet another piece of revisionism by the WaPo, showing how much US media is in bed with its criminal govt. instead of holding its criminal actions to account.

The first sentence is as far as anyone need go: "AQUARTER-CENTURY ago the United States went to extraordinary lengths to prevent consolidation of a leftist dictatorship in Nicaragua, funding an opposition army and even mining the country's harbors."

A 'dictatorship' in WaPo language is a govt than doesn't let US corporations run riot as though they owned the country.

'Funding an opposition army', is creating, financing, training and arming a terrorist force to instill fear throughout a country, and is illegal under international law. The International Court of Justice found the US "in breach of customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another state".

And,'mining the country's harbors', was an action so completely illegal under international law that the same judgement condemned it as ""in breach of its obligations under customary international law not to use force against another State, not to intervene in its affairs, not to violate its sovereignty and not to interrupt peaceful maritime commerce" technical terms for international terrorism.

What a bunch of sick hypocrites.

Open Letter to John Whittingdale, chairman of the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee

2010-12-23T20:13:00.002+01:00

Mr Whittingdale,

The Guardian writes today: "John Whittingdale, chairman of the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee, attacked Boyle's comments as "deeply offensive" and hard for Channel 4 to justify. He also called for an immediate Ofcom investigation."

Your comments are outrageously hypocritical and blatant, cheap demagoguery that one would expect from a ruling member in a totalitarian state, which is what this country's government is increasingly beginning to look like.

Anyone with half a brain could see that Boyle's use of the terms, as Channel 4 state, was "clearly intended" as satirical. It is apparent that John Stuart Mill's comments on Conservative's are right on the ball where you are concerned. Either you are incredibly stupid or, as I suspect, you are a deeply cynical, amoral phsycopath.

What is 'deeply offensive', however, is that you sir, voted for an illegal, criminal war of aggression on Iraq. You voted for rejecting a second UN resolution, you voted to reject the motion that the case for was unproven, and you voted to reject the motion that the case for war was not established. Your voting record on this issue puts you firmly on the same moral level as the 1939 Nazi party led by one Adolf Hitler, and clearly shows your hatred of true democracy, as you ignored the democratic wishes of the British people, the majority of whom were firmly against the war, and could see through the lies used to sell it.

What is 'deeply offensive' sir, is your complete lack of concern, for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, or as Frankie Boyle stated, "we are murdering a load of shepherds. What gets me is our callousness as a society when we read out our dead on the news first, because our lives are more important. Other people's aren't worth as much."

I suggest you read Mark Curtis's book 'Unpeople' to read the history of the British government's "Ministry of War, department of nigger bombing,", and his article "The colonial precedent", which ends with this passage, remarkably similar to Mr Boyle's remarks: "Iraqis are in practice regarded as "unpeople" whose deaths matter little in the pursuit of western power; the major block on committing atrocities is the fear of being exposed and ministers will do all they can to cover them up. The public is the major threat to their strategy, which explains why they resort to public deception campaigns." It is this public deception which Wikileaks is highlighting, and to which Boyle was referring.

I also suggest you take a good read of Pullitzer prize-winning journalist Chris Hedge's piece at truthdig.com: "Bitter Memories of War on the Way to Jail" in which he writes:

"War perverts and destroys you. It pushes you closer and closer to your own annihilation—spiritual, emotional and, finally, physical. It destroys the continuity of life, tearing apart all systems, economic, social, environmental and political, that sustain us as human beings. War is necrophilia. The essence of war is death. War is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. It is organized sadism. War fosters alienation and leads inevitably to nihilism. It is a turning away from the sanctity of life.

And yet the mythic narratives about war perpetuate the allure of power and violence. They perpetuate the seductiveness of the godlike force that comes with the license to kill with impunity. All images and narratives about war disseminated by the state, the press, religious institutions, schools and the entertainment industry are gross and distorted lies. The clash between the fabricated myth about war and the truth about war leaves those of us who return from war alienated, angry and often unable to communicate. We can’t find the words to describe war’s reality. It is as if the wider culture sucked the words out from us and left us to sputter incoherencies. How can you speak meaningfully about organized murder? Anything you say is gibberish.

The sophisticated forms of industrial killing, coupled with the amoral decisions of politicians and military leaders who direct and fund war, hide war’s reality from public view. But those who have been in combat see death up close. Only their story tells the moral truth about war. The power of the Washington march was that we all knew this story. We had no need to use stale and hackneyed clichés about war. We grieved together.

War, once it begins, fuels new and bizarre perversities, innovative forms of death to ward off the boredom of routine death. This is why we would drive into towns in Bosnia and find bodies crucified on the sides of barns or decapitated, burned and mutilated. That is why those slain in combat are treated as trophies by their killers, turned into grotesque pieces of performance art. I met soldiers who carried in their wallets the identity cards of men they killed. They showed them to me with the imploring look of a lost child.

We swiftly deform ourselves, our essence, in war. We give up individual conscience—maybe even consciousness—for the contagion of the crowd and the intoxication of violence. You survive war because you repress emotions. You do what you have to do. And this means killing. To make a moral choice, to defy war’s enticement, is often self-destructive. But once the survivors return home, once the danger, adrenaline highs and the pressure of the crowd are removed, the repressed emotions surface with a vengeance. Fear, rage, grief and guilt leap up like snake heads to consume lives and turn nights into long, sleepless bouts with terror. You drink to forget.
...
The masters of war are slaves to the idols of empire, power and greed, to the idols of careers, to the dead language of interests, national security, politics and propaganda. They kill and do not know what killing is. In the rise to power, they became smaller. Power consumes them. Once power is obtained they become its pawn. Like Shakespeare’s Richard III, politicians such as Barack Obama (and indeed one John Whittingdale. DS) fall prey to the forces they thought they had harnessed. The capacity to love, to cherish and protect life, may not always triumph, but it saves us. It keeps us human. It offers the only chance to escape from the contagion of war. Perhaps it is the only antidote. There are times when remaining human is the only victory possible.

The necrophilia of war is hidden under platitudes about honor, duty or comradeship."

I personally will not be happy until you and all your cronies who voted for this illegal war are standing in the dock of the ICC. You are a disgrace to this country and to any peace-loving person.

Yours most sincerely,

David Sketchley

The War You Don't See - John Pilger

2010-12-23T02:23:00.001+01:00

John Pilger: The War You Don't See

Click here to download the press pack with John Pilger interview

In this new documentary John Pilger, the winner of journalism's top awards for both press and broadcasting, including academy awards in the UK and US, questions the role of the media in war. In The War You Don't See, Pilger, himself a renowned correspondent, asks whether mainstream news has become an integral part of war-making.

Focusing on the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Pilger reflects on the history of the relationship between the media and government in times of conflict stretching back to World War I and explores the impact on the information fed to the public of the modern day practice of public relations in the guise of 'embedding' journalists with the military.

Featuring interviews with senior figures at major UK broadcasters, the BBC and ITV, and high profile journalists on both sides of the Atlantic, including Rageh Omaar and Dan Rather, the film investigates the reporting of government claims that Iraq harboured weapons of mass destruction.

Pilger also speaks to independent film makers, and whistleblowers, including the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange and to former senior British Foreign Office official Carne Ross to investigate why what he believes were key voices and key details did not figure prominently on the mainstream media's agenda. The film also includes hard-hitting footage from independent media sources showing scenes in Afghanistan and Iraq, including footage leaked to Wikileaks.

Dan Rather, the famous CBS news anchor, and BBC World Affairs Correspondent Rageh Omaar both reflect on their own roles during the lead up to hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq and the lessons they have learned. Rather speaks about pressure felt by journalists who face the danger of becoming what he calls mere 'stenographers'. Rageh Omaar speaks about the proliferation of 24 hour news and the effects this has on war reporting, including his own experience reporting on the liberation of Basra.

Fran Unsworth, the BBC Head of Newsgathering and David Mannion, Editor in Chief of ITV News, both face questioning on their news departments' reporting of the Iraq war and the scrutiny of George Bush and Tony Blair's claims about weapons of mass destruction.

The documentary also focuses on the abuse of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers and speaks to Phil Shiner, a lawyer who is representing a number of Iraqi victims. It examines the notion that our media distinguishes between 'worthy' and 'unworthy' victims of conflicts and how

The War You Don't See also looks at the balance of the media's reporting on the hostilities between Palestinians and Israelis, with particular focus on mainstream broadcasters' coverage of the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla in Gaza earlier this year. Both the BBC and ITV are asked about the influence of Israeli government efforts to shape the reporting of such incidents on their coverage.

Amnistía Internacional se niega a declarar a Bradley Manning como prisionero de conciencia

2010-12-22T22:49:00.003+01:00

Primer correo mandado el 20 de diciembre de 2010 a las 09:20 -

Srs.

Hasta que la crisis me obligó a dejarlo hace un año, fui socio de AI durrante años.

¿Por qué al Sr. Bradley Manning Amnistía no le ha declarado como prisionero de consiencia? Está sufriendo un castigo brutal - lo han incomunicado - supuestamente por revelar graves abusos contra los derechos humanos, pero las autoridades ni siquiera han presentado ningún cargo contra él.

Dado la importancia del caso para el futuro de filtraciones sobre abusos de derechos hiumanos ¿no debería AI considerar el caso de Bradley Manning como alta prioridad?

Atentamente,

La respuesta de Amnistía Internacional, 22 de diciembre de 2010 a las 18:51:

Estimado Sr. Sketchley,

Me gustaría informarle que Amnistía Internacional está haciendo un seguimiento de la situación del Sr. Manning.

Para Amnistía Internacional es fundamental que todas aquellas personas que están presas lo estén acorde a las normas internacionales de derechos humanos. Ahora mismo, por lo que se refiere a la situación del Sr.Manning la información aparecida en los medios ah llegado a ser contradictoria e incompleta en algunos casos por lo que lo que desde Amnistía Internacional no se tiene claridad si su detención está teniendo lugar según estas normas internacionales.

Hasta que Amnistía Internacional no lleve a cabo una investigación independiente sobre toda la información aparecida sobre este caso y tenga la oportunidad de hablar con personas que disponen de información de primera mano sobre la situación del Sr. Manning no se pronunciará de forma explícita sobre este caso y sobre su situación.

Atentamente,

Amnistía Internacional Sección Española

Mi respuesta, 22 de diciembre de 2010 a las 22:32:

Estoy realmente decepcionado con Amnistía.

Esto no es una respuesta.

Nada impide AI pedir públicamente al gobierno de EEUU confirmar que no le están manteniendo incomunicado (confinamiento solitario) o pedir que dejan a Amnistía seguir muy de cerca las condiciones de su confinamiento. Expresar la preocupación de AI no requiere una investigación decisiva y obviamente hay motivos de preocupación. Además, AI debería haber investigado ya.

Es bastante fácil ponerse en contacto con el abogado de PFC Manning, quien ya ha publicado un informe sobre las condiciones bajo cuales PFC Manning está siendo objeto o a su amigo David House. Esas condiciones ya han sido analazidas por el abogado constitucional estado-unidense Glenn Greenwald aquí: "The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention" y han sido publicados en la página web de The New York Times y comentado en MSNBC.

Algunos extractos del análisis de Greenwald:

"From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs. Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not "like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole," but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.
...
Just by itself, the type of prolonged solitary confinement to which Manning has been subjected for many months is widely viewed around the world as highly injurious, inhumane, punitive, and arguably even a form of torture. In his widely praised March, 2009 New Yorker article -- entitled "Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture?" -- the surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande assembled expert opinion and personal anecdotes to demonstrate that, as he put it, "all human beings experience isolation as torture." By itself, prolonged solitary confinement routinely destroys a person’s mind and drives them into insanity. A March, 2010 article in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law explains that "solitary confinement is recognized as difficult to withstand; indeed, psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture."
...
In 2006, a bipartisan National Commission on America's Prisons was created and it called for the elimination of prolonged solitary confinement. Its Report documented that conditions whereby "prisoners end up locked in their cells 23 hours a day, every day. . . is so severe that people end up completely isolated, living in what can only be described as torturous conditions." The Report documented numerous psychiatric studies of individuals held in prolonged isolation which demonstrate "a constellation of symptoms that includes overwhelming anxiety, confusion and hallucination, and sudden violent and self-destructive outbursts." The above-referenced article from the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law states: "Psychological effects can include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis."
...
The Supreme Court's 1890 decision in In re Medley noted that as a result of solitary confinement as practiced in the early days of the United States, many "prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition . . . and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better . . . [often] did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community." And in its 1940 decision in Chambers v. Florida, the Court characterized prolonged solitary confinement as "torture" and compared it to "[t]he rack, the thumbscrew, [and] the wheel."
...
International treaty bodies and human rights experts, including the Human Rights Committee, the Committee against Torture, and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, have concluded that solitary confinement may amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment. They have specifically criticized supermax confinement in the United States because of the mental suffering it inflicts."

Esto se está convirtiendo en algo habitual en su organización cuando se trata de gobiernos u organizaciones 'amistosos'. Lo mismo ocurrió con la matanza perpetrado por soldados de la ONU en Haiti el 06 de julio 2005. AI tampoco investigó esa matanza.

Su respuesta no es aceptable, e insisto en pedir una declaración de PFC Manning como prisionero de conciencia ya.

Este asunto no va a desaparecer y voy a hacer todo en mi poder a dar publicidad a este asunto que afectará a la buena reputación de AI y mostrará a todo el mundo las dos barras de medir de AI. y su subordinación a los intereses del gobierno de EEUU.

Por cierto escribí "las autoridades ni siquiera han presentado ningún cargo contra él". Lo que quería decir era que no le han juzgado ni encontrado culpable de ningún delito hasta ahora.

Atentamente

Frost over the World - Julian Assange

2010-12-22T17:35:00.000+01:00

Rap News 6 - Wikileaks' Cablegate: the truth is out there

2010-12-20T10:24:00.000+01:00

Wikileaks Cuba: "very little evidence that the mainline dissident organizations have much resonance among ordinary Cubans."

2010-12-19T19:27:00.000+01:00

According to the US Chief of Mission in Cuba, Jonathan Farrar: there is "very little evidence that the mainline dissident organizations have much resonance among ordinary Cubans."

09HAVANA221 2009-04-15 13:01 2010-12-17 22:10 CONFIDENTIAL US Interests Section Havana

Other interesting bits:

"it is worth asking what the Cuban political opposition is doing and the role it may play in the future. Two recent op-ed pieces in the international press that have infuriated dissident leaders argue that the answers are: not much and none...Though dissidents have reacted very negatively to the articles in the international press, the fact is that they contain more than a grain of truth." Consequently, "we will need to look elsewhere, including within the government itself, to spot the most likely successors to the Castro regime."
...
"the dissident movement in Cuba has become as old and as out of touch with the lives of ordinary Cubans as the regime itself. The articles represented comprehensive and fairly balanced critiques of the dissident movement,"
...
"we see very little evidence that the mainline dissident organizations have much resonance among ordinary Cubans. Informal polls we have carried out among visa and refugee applicants have shown virtually no awareness of dissident personalities or agendas. Judging from the reactions we have heard from our dissident contacts, the most painful accusation made by the commentators was that the dissidents are old and out of touch."
...
"Despite claims that they represent "thousands of Cubans," we see little evidence of such support...we do not see platforms designed to appeal to a broad cross section of Cuban society. Rather, the greatest effort is directed at obtaining enough resources to keep the principal organizers and their key supporters living from day to day. One political party organization told the COM quite openly and frankly that it needed resources to pay salaries and presented him with a budget in the hope that USINT would be able to cover it. With seeking resources as a primary concern, the next most important pursuit seems to be to limit or marginalize the activities of erstwhile allies, thus preserving power and access to scarce resources."

Translated into ordinary English, this means they are more interested in lining their own pockets
...
"opposition members of all stripes complain that the intention of the exiles is to undercut local opposition groups so that they can move into power when the Castros leave. The islanders accuse Miami and Madrid-based exiles of trying to orchestrate their activities from afar, and of misrepresenting their views to policy makers in Washington."
...
"From our standpoint, however, there are few if any dissidents who have a political vision that could be applied to future governance. Though the dissidents will not acknowledge it, they are not widely known in Cuba outside the foreign diplomatic and press corps...it is unlikely that they will play any significant role in whatever government succeeds the Castro brothers. "

Wikileaks Colombia. "extrajudicial execution problem widespread"

2010-12-19T18:50:00.000+01:00

The cables from the US Embassy in Bogota make for interesting reading:

09BOGOTA542 2009-02-20 13:01 2010-12-08 21:09 CONFIDENTIAL Embassy Bogota
"the Soacha phenomenon originated in the 4th Brigade in Medellin (commanded at one time by both former Army Commander Mario Montoya and current Army Commander Oscar Gonzalez). The practice later spread to other brigades and commands in the region, including the Joint Caribbean Command."
...
"Army Commander General Oscar Gonzalez has impeded investigations of abuses"
...
"Gonzalez tried to intimidate witnesses not to testify about murders committed by the 11th Brigade in Sucre, and said Gonzalez tries to limit his office's resources. XXXXXXXXXXXX echoed Suarez's comments, noting that Gonzalez has transferred personnel from Suarez's office, reduced his bodyguard contingent, and tried to restrict the IG's mandate. Suarez added that his family has received indirect threats due to his work. His staff is searching for an email allegedly circulating within the military which shows photos of the members of the MOD Commission that investigated the Soacha murders with X's drawn through them."
...
"President Uribe continues to view military success in terms of kills, leaving him susceptible to the arguments of some military officers and politicians that the MOD's emphasis on human rights is overstated and is harming the war effort against the FARC."

Obama's Israel Policy: Speak softly and carry a very big carrot

2010-12-19T12:19:00.000+01:00

Gates Comes Clean: We Don't Give a Shite About Democracy

2010-12-17T13:04:00.001+01:00

The headline says it all: "Gates: Public opinion can't sway Afghan commitment"

"Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the U.S. can't let public opinion sway its commitment to Afghanistan.

Gates says it's the responsibility of leaders to focus on the public interest and the long-term implications of U.S. involvement in the region."

So public opinion has nothing to do with the public interest?

These people hate democracy. It's about time the American people had another revolution. This time though they should perhaps take a few lessons from the French Revolution or the overthrow of Ceaucescu in Romania.

Halliburton bribes Nigeria to get Cheney off bribery charges...!

2010-12-15T11:24:00.004+01:00

Talk about bare-faced cheek, but you just couldn't make up these news stories if you tried.

The headline reads: "Nigeria mulls $250 mln deal to drop Cheney charges". Of course the Nigerians were hoping for $500 million, but it looks as though they' may have to settle for just half that sum.

"Nigeria has negotiated a 250 million dollar settlement deal that would see it drop charges against US ex-vice president Dick Cheney and others over a bribery scandal, an official said Tuesday.
The deal reached by officials from Nigeria and energy firm Halliburton, Cheney's former company, must still be approved by the West African country's government, said Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for the anti-graft agency."

Right, it still has to be approved by one of the most corrupt governments in the world..

Let's not forget that the bribes paid by Cheney's companies are "estimated at $180 million" and are "linked to construction of a liquefied natural gas plant."

Halliburton has serious form:

"US authorities said last year that Halliburton and KBR had agreed to pay 177 million dollars to settle charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States over the scandal.
KBR agreed to pay a further 402 million dollars to settle criminal charges brought by the US Justice Department."

The world would not be sorry if Cheney were to do a Holbrooke - preferably sooner than later...

2010-12-07T19:00:00.003+01:00

The moral standards of WikiLeaks critics - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

2010-12-03T20:32:00.000+01:00

Another great, hard-hitting article from Glenn Greenwald

The moral standards of WikiLeaks critics - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Wikileaks and the El-Masri case: Innocent CIA torture victim more than just a leaked cable

2010-12-03T20:26:00.001+01:00

Khaled El-Masri is a German citizen, a father of six who the CIA kidnapped by mistake, then sent off to receive months of torture in Afghanistan.

When they realized he was innocent, he was flown to Albania and dumped on a back road without so much as an apology.

El-Masri's futile efforts at receiving justice in the U.S. are well-known, but cables recently leaked by Wikileaks reveal that the U.S. also warned German authorities not to allow a local investigation into his kidnapping.

The nearest he's gotten to justice is an arrest warrant for 13 CIA agents issued by prosecutors in Spain, which they entered on forged passports.

In this video, originally part of the Witness.org documentary OUTLAWED, El-Masri relates his experiences.

OUTLAWED website:
http://www.witness.org/index.php?opti...

Boing Boing post:
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/01/...

Wikileaks: US Hypocrisy Exposed

2010-12-03T19:42:00.000+01:00

Wikileaks : Israeli organised crime uses same MO in hits as used on Iranian scientists

2010-12-03T13:06:00.002+01:00

Wikileaks cable "09TELAVIV1098, Israel, A Promised Land For Organised Crime?"

This is the title of the Cable from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to the Secretary of State, Dept. of Homeland Security, the US Customs and Border Protection agency, and for some reason the US Embassy in Rome...

Among the fascinating snippets of information about the crime families in Israel, the real news is that the Israeli organised crime families use exactly the same MO as that on the recent assassination/murder of one Iranian nuclear scientist (and his wife), and the attempted assassination/murder of another at the same time.

The cable reveals this information:

"According to several media accounts, a motor scooter pulled up alongside Alperon's car and the rider attached a sophisticated explosive device with a remote detonator to the car door."

Now check this with the BBC report on the recent assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist:

"The scientists were targeted by men on motorbikes who attached bombs to the windows of their cars as they drove to work"

The cable details that previously, and despite their notoriety, Organised Crime (OC) figures were: "generally been viewed as a nuisance to be handled by local police. Law enforcement resources were directed to more existential security threats from terrorists and enemy states."

It continues: "In recent years, however, the rules of the game have changed. According to xxxxx, the old school of Israel OC is giving way to a new, more violent, breed of crime. xxxxx told conoffs that the new style of crime features knowledge of hi-tech explosives acquired from service in the Israeli Defense Forces, and a willingness to use indiscriminate violence, at least against rival gang leaders. New OC business also includes technology-related crimes, such as stock market and credit card fraud, and operates on a global scale."

I'd say that this was a pretty good pointer as to who masterminded the hit in Iran...

Documentary: Psychopath -- Axis of Evil -- Sott.net

2010-12-01T01:03:00.000+01:00

Documentary: Psychopath -- Axis of Evil -- Sott.net

Adam Curtis on Cameron's Behavioural Insights Unit: FROM PIGEON TO SUPERMAN AND BACK AGAIN

2010-11-25T21:46:00.000+01:00

BBC - Adam Curtis Blog: FROM PIGEON TO SUPERMAN AND BACK AGAIN

Adam Curtis | 16:53 UK time, Tuesday, 16 November 2010

I am fascinated by the group David Cameron has set up in No.10, called The Behavioural Insights Unit. I think it is evidence of a massive shift that is just beginning in British politics which will change the way politicians govern and manage the rest of us.

Tony Blair believed in a consumerist idea of democracy. He used focus groups to try and find out what people wanted as a way of shaping policy (except, of course, over Iraq). Like Mrs Thatcher, he believed that the people knew best. They expressed their desires and wants clearly through the market. And politics, he believed, should imitate this.

The Behavioural Insights Team believe the opposite. That in many cases you can't trust the people. That if you let them just follow their desires they will often do things that are bad both for themselves and for society.

This doesn't mean you get rid of the market. Instead governments should find ways to manipulate ordinary peoples' feelings and desires so they "choose" to do the right thing.

Behind this are the ideas of what is called Behavioural Economics. They were popularised by a book called "Nudge" written by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.

The idea of "nudging" citizens to do the right thing sounds cute. But in reality it marks the return of a powerful psycho-political theory that rose up in the mid-20th century. It was called Behaviourism. And it was hated by both the right and the left.

Behaviourism's most famous exponent was an American psychologist called B. F. Skinner who was an idealist and a utopian. He believed that his techniques of behaviour modification could be used to create a completely new kind of world.

...continues at link above.

Israeli War Criminals

2010-11-19T09:58:00.001+01:00

The following information was received anonymously; presumably from a member of the Israeli Military. It was presented as follows:

"Underlining the following people is an act of retribution and affront. They are the direct perpetrators, agents for the state of Israel that in Dec.- Jan. 2008- 2009 attacked scores of people in the besieged Gaza. The people listed here held positions of command at the time of the attack therefore not only did they perform on behalf of a murderous state mechanism but actively encouraged other people to do the same. They bear a distinctive personal responsibility. They range from low-level field commanders to the highest echelons of the Israeli army. All took an active and direct role in the offensive.

In underlining them we are purposefully directing attention to individuals rather than the static structures through which they operate. We are aligning people with actions. It is to these persons and others, Like them, to which we must object and bring our plaints to bear upon.

This information was pirated. We encourage people to seek out other such similar information, it is readily available in the public sphere and inside public officials' locked cabinets. This is a form of resistance that can be effectively sustained for a long while.

This project for one, has only just begun, do your bit so that this virtual list may come to bear upon the physical.

Disseminate widely."

List of Israeli War Criminals

Examples:

Agai Yehezkel אגאי יחזקאל	Brigadier General תא”ל	Head of the Armored Corps קצין שריון ראשי	19/04/66	22380406	26 Inbar st. Caesarea 30889 ענבר 26 קיסריה 30889
Aharon Haliwa אהרן חליוה	Colonel אל”מ	Head of “Bahad 1" (officer training academy) מפקד בית הספר לקצינים בה”ד 1	12/10/67	23050578
Alex Shakliar אלכס שקליאר	Second Lieutenant סג”מ	Nesher Field Inteligence Battalion, Squad Commander גדוד מודיעין השדה נשר, מפקד צוות	12/12/87	304074636
Amir Ulo אמיר אולו	Lieutenant Colonel סא”ל	Yahalom Engineering Battalion Commander מפקד גדוד ההנדסה יהל"ם	09/05/71	28542900	62 Hagai st. Har Adar 90836 הגיא 62 הר אדר 90836
Amir Abstein אמיר אבשטיין	Lieutenant Colonel סא”ל	7^th Regiment, 75 Romach Battalion Commander חטיבה 7 מג"ד 75 רומח	28/03/73	16436917	21 Yahalom st. Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut 71725 יהלום 21 מודיעין- מכבים- רעות 71725
Amir Shimon Eshel אמיר שמעון אשל	Major General אלוף	Head of the Planning Directorate ראש אגף התכנון	04/04/59	55652846	# 78 Kidron 70795 קידרון 78 70795
Amos Yadlin עמוס ידלין	Major General אלוף	Head of Intelligence Directorate ראש אמ"ן	20/11/51	51112027	11 Smadar st. Karmei Yosef 99797 סמדר 11 כרמי יוסף 99797

'Wealthy Israelis' behind illegal organ transplants in South Africa. NHS provider involved.

2010-11-11T13:16:00.005+01:00

In an online BBC article headline today "S African hospital group pleads guilty in organ scandal" we read:

"South Africa's largest private medical group has pleaded guilty to performing illegal kidney transplant operations at one of its hospitals.

It follows a seven-year investigation into transplants carried out at the facility in Durban.
The medical group Netcare admitted that children were recruited to donate their organs, and said the hospital had wrongly profited from the operations."

Who were the donors? According to the BBC it was "(p)oor donors, often from Brazil".

And where did the organs go? Again according to the BBC: "These were then given to those in need, who were often wealthy Israelis."

Note too how the BBC is extremely light on details, such as how much donors were paid.

Note how the BBC manages to get "wealthy Israelis" and "those in need" into the same sentence, and notice the word 'mostly':

In fact ALL those who benefited from the illegal organs were Israelis, and that the organs were 'donated by poor Brazilians, Romanians and Israelis', some of whom were paid as little as $6,000 while recipients paid $100,000 and the "Mercury newspaper reported on September 16 that Netcare allegedly made more than R22 million from the operations", equivalent to £2 million sterling.

Israelis have a history of being involved in organ trafficking scandals. As far back as 2001 Organ Watch called Israel a "pariah" in the organ transplant world. It was only in April this year (2010) that we read about another organ trafficking ring: "Police smash Israeli organ-trafficking ring", in which people were offered up to $100,000 for a kidney, were flown to 'poor countries' like Azerbaijan or the Phillipines, had their kidneys removed but who never received the money.

We also can see how the corporation behind all this, Netcare, has managed to escape scot-free, by a manoevre in which its own hospital declared itself guilty: "Netcare spokeswoman Martina Nicholson said Tuesday that the state had withdrawn charges after the hospital pleaded guilty to accepting payments for kidney donors and removing kidneys from minors."

Lets have a look at the original charges brought against Netcare: "Netcare, its head, Richard Friedland, Durban's St Augustine's Hospital, two transplant unit staff and an Israeli interpreter were yesterday served with summons on 11 charges. These include 109 counts of fraud, 21 counts of forgery, 21 counts of uttering, 109 counts of serious assault, and charges of contravening the Human Tissues Act and the Prevention of Organised Crime Act."

Here the BBC is more forthcoming:

"Several of those directly involved pleaded guilty at the time, but Netcare - which runs more than 50 hospitals in South Africa - had until now refused to accept responsibility.
Our correspondent says things began to change when prosecutors brought charges against Netcare's chief executive and the company made a plea bargain.
In return for those charges being dropped, Netcare accepted that some of its employees had known that the kidney donors and recipients had not been related.
It acknowledged that "payments must have been made to the donors for their kidneys, and that certain of the kidney donors were minors at the time that their kidneys were removed".
"Certain employees participated in these illegalities, and (the hospital) wrongly benefited from the proceeds," it said."

Netcare also has a profitable UK operation running UK private hospitals and NHS 'services'. The Netcare website itself tells us:

"The United Kingdom business provides the following key services:

Private hospital services through BMI, operating 56 acute care private patient hospitals with 2,907 registered beds, 152 operating theatres and 37 pharmacies.
NHS services through Netcare UK, an established independent service provider to the NHS, operating surgical centres, ophthalmic units (specialising in cataract operations) and an NHS Walk-in Centre in Leeds."

In fact, the Netcare business in the UK goes under the umbrella name of General Healthcare Group, which it acquired in 2006. Their " primary businesses are BMI Healthcare and Netcare UK." They are also "a major shareholder in CARE Fertility...Netcare UK provides specialised clinical services for the NHS"

"At 31 March 2007, Netcare managed 122 private hospitals and clinics, equipped with more than 12,100 beds. For the year ended 30 September 2006, Netcare had consolidated revenue of £799 million, operating profit of £108 million, total assets of £3,476 billion and a market capitalisation of £1,518 million. "

The company also has a joke page called "Corporate social responsibilty", where it says pretty much nothing about Corporate Social Responsibility, which is itself an oxymoron. Organ traffickers socially responsible? Pull the other one....

This is creeping privatisation of the UK health system to organ traffickers!!!

Al-Qaeda is a 'Western-made' group

2010-11-07T11:09:00.003+01:00

"Al-Qaeda is a 'Western-made' group". So says the Yemeni Prime Minister Ali Mujawar.

"Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians." So said the late Robin Cook, former UK Foreign Minister.

"Yemen orders US-born cleric found 'dead or alive'". So says the Associated Press.

Now we find out that there were "at least five cases in which US agencies were warned that David Coleman Headley, who became a central figure in the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, was training or working with Pakistani militants." We also read in the same story that "(i)n the seven years in which leads accumulated, Headley was not questioned or placed on a terror watch list, officials say." So, it turns out this guy was reported by his own wife to US authorities who did nothing. Not surprising considering he was a DEA agent at the time, and who knows what more.

What's the betting, that by using the CIA's own 'advanced interrogation techniques', I could make the radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and David Coleman Headley confess to being double agents for the US government?

Schutzstaffel, Völkisch & Untermenschen: Israel 2010

2010-11-04T12:35:00.005+01:00

Gideon Levy has yet another bold article in Israeli daily, Haaretz: "Israel is proud to present: The aggressor-victim"

In it he criticizes the hero-worship and "scandalous support of senior officers" for two Israeli Occupation Force soldiers who were found guilty of using an 11 year old child as a human shield during Operation Cast lead in Gaza in 2009, or as the BBC put it:

"The soldiers were found guilty of reckless endangerment and conduct unbecoming for forcing the nine-year-old boy to check suspected booby-traps...

A summary of the verdict said that - when rounding up residents of Tel al-Hawa - the soldiers came across bags in a home and ordered the Palestinian boy to search for suspected booby-traps.

"The boy, who feared for his fate and was under the stress of the situation, wet his pants," the three-judge panel wrote in the summary of the verdict.

"The court has noted that, unlike the soldiers, the child was, naturally, bereft of any form of protection.""

And guess what? The soldiers are the victims! And we notice that the names of the 2 cowards have not been released...and they call themselves the "most moral army in the world"!

Levy, on how the Israeli Occupation Forces frame the argument: "there has never been an occupier who presented himself like that, as a victim...The victimhood, it turns out, belongs not to an 11-year-old child whose life was put at risk and who has been suffering from insomnia ever since, but the soldiers who ordered him to check for explosives, in clear contradiction of a ruling by the Supreme Court...Not the Samouni family, 21 of whose members were butchered when the same Givati Brigade, under the same commander, bombed the house into which the soldiers ordered the family, but the brigade commander, Ilan Malka, whose conduct is now being investigated, shamefully late. And certainly not the residents of Gaza, who experienced Cast Lead with its hardships, horrors, destruction and war crimes, but the soldiers, who share responsibility with the commanders and politicians. "

Levy continues "The soldiers taking pictures of themselves dancing with prisoners and posing with corpses are proud of what they do. They upload the footage onto the Web, for all to see, and friends of the two Givati troops are equally proud of what their mates have done. They're proud of the conduct of people who broke the law."

It appears friends and colleagues of these two cowards protested outside the court wearing black T-shirts.

Well we all know the significance of black shirts...

Schutzstaffel: SS protective squads; who operated the concentration camps; also had an elite "Black Shirts" squad to guard the Nazi Party.

It's appearing more and more that the Israelis have developed a form of Stockholm Syndrome with the Nazis, their actions more and more resemble the actions of the Nazis, and let's face it, who needs gas chambers when you can use Hellfire missiles, GBU-39s, white phosphorous bombs and other experimental weapons such as Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) (even more cancer-inducing than depleted uranium which was also used) over densely populated areas?

Oh, and the other two terms in the title?

völkisch -- an adjective used to describe the racist, nationalist ideology which divided people into "pure" Aryans and inferior Untermenschen.
Untermenschen -- those peoples the Nazi's derided as subhuman

Just change the word 'Aryans' for 'Jews' and 'Nazis' to 'Zionists' and we have a pretty clear picture of today's Israel...

Kiko Veneno - La Rama de Barcelona

2010-11-03T19:56:00.004+01:00

WIKILEAKS PRESS CONFERENCE

2010-10-25T20:15:00.001+02:00

The Secret Iraq Files

2010-10-25T12:10:00.001+02:00

Dubai says hit team suspect arrested in Canada, Canada denies it

2010-10-20T13:21:00.006+02:00

Further to my recent post "New arrest revealed in Mabhouh assassination", in which I speculated "So, it's a 'western nation' that's not European...The US, Canada, Australia? "

Well, the answer is......CANADA!

According to Reuters, in their article "Dubai says hit team suspect arrested in Canada":

"Canadian police have arrested a suspect in the assassination of a Hamas militant in Dubai".

According to the Dubai police chief, who has received death threats from Mossad, Canadian police have offered Dubai police no information on the matter:

"Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim said he was frustrated by the lack of any details or information from Canadian authorities regarding the arrest.
"We want clarity on this issue. We want the Canadian authorities to tell us exactly what the details are -- the thing that is discomfiting is the lack of transparency on this," he told Reuters.
Tamim said he had been informed that Canada would send a representative to Dubai to provide further information, but did not know when a debriefing would take place.
Canadian officials have not responded to requests for comment from Reuters."

The Jerusalem Post goes further: "According to Tamim, the suspect arrested was a member of the so-called assassination team that was caught on video in Dubai’s Al-Bustan Rotana hotel, where Mabhouh was killed in January. The suspect he claimed was arrested by Canada is seen in video footage carrying tennis equipment and stepping out of an elevator after Mabhouh."

So it's one of these two terrorists:

Further, the Dubai police chief told the Globe & Mail that he had been informed by a "senior Canadian security official" who told him "in July".

"Lt.-Gen. Tamim said “the person informed me then that this information was not to be released in the media and was only for the police. Since then we have not heard any more information and I don’t understand the secrecy.”

Now, Ottawa is denying any of this ever took place: "“Baseless,” was the word one well-placed Ottawa official used to describe the general’s claim. " and is looking to muddy the waters even further by accusing the Dubai police chief of being involved in a plot "to embarrass Canada amid an ongoing row over airport rights"

According to the Globe & Mail "the reaction in Ottawa is mostly one of confusion. “We have nothing to say at this point,” said Sergeant Greg Cox, a spokesman for the RCMP...Two senior sources at the Canadian Embassy in the UAE told The Globe they did not inform the Dubai police chief about any arrest. “We are trying to verify this information with our colleagues in Ottawa,” one said, asking to remain anonymous. “Tamim said we gave this info to the Dubai police, and we didn’t.”"

The Dubai police chief has no reason to invent this story, regardless of any Canadian disinformation about a row over airport rights, but the Canadian police and government have every reason to deny it and obscure the affair, if as I originally and still maintain that "this terrorist...has probably already been sent home..." to Israel, the gangster state.

Shame on Canada!

Reply from BBC re July 2010 Complaint

2010-10-19T18:57:00.001+02:00

After a delay of nearly 3 months and a further complaint, the BBC has deigned to reply to my July 2010 complaint to their article on the resignation of Deputy Director of the IAEA, Olli Heinonen. The original said ""Mr Heinonen's department's five-year investigation drew on Western intelligence to help to build the IAEA's case that Iran was working to develop a nuclear-armed missile. Tehran says the intelligence is forged and that its atomic work is for civilian purposes only.""

"Dear Mr Sketchley,
I am very sorry that this has not been dealt with sooner.
You are quite right. The relevant line should read: "The five-year investigation by Mr Heinonen's department drew on Western intelligence to help an IAEA inquiry into whether Iran had conducted research into developing a nuclear warhead for a missile."
This is a genuine mistake. We did not mean to say and are quite aware that the IAEA has never formally stated that Iran is making or trying to make nuclear weapons. As we have reported, Mohammed ElBaradei specifically stated that there was no credible evidence of this.
We apologise for the mistake. I have made the correction, with a note at the bottom of the story to recognise the mistake.
Regards and thanks,
Tarik Kafala
Middle East Editor
BBC News website"

New arrest revealed in Mabhouh assassination

2010-10-11T11:02:00.005+02:00

As I pointed out last week in my post "AFP: Mossad 'issued death threats' to Dubai police chief" : "However, the real news in the AFP story - conveniently left out by the NYT - is not the Mafia-style behaviour of the Zionist state, which is nothing new, but the fact that a "Western country" has arrested a suspect involved in Mabhuh's assassination", I also asked the question: "When do you think the corporate media will enlighten us further?"

The answer appears to be never because the country concerned has probably pressured the press not to.
This is an article from the National of UAE:

"New arrest revealed in Mabhouh assassination".

"DUBAI // The Dubai Police chief says a major suspect in the killing of Mahmoud al Mabhouh was arrested in a western country about two months ago – but authorities in that country asked that nothing be made public.
“The suspect who was arrested played a key role in the killing, but we were informed by the ambassador during a meeting that they did not wish to release the information,” Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim, who declined to give any further details on the identity of the suspect, said yesterday.
Al Mabhouh, 50, a Hamas commander, was suffocated on January 19 in his hotel room at the Al Bustan Rotana in Dubai. His killers left the Emirates that day, before the murder was discovered.
The country that arrested the suspect two months ago is not believed to be European.
Lt Gen Tamim said investigators in that country need to be more forthcoming with information about what they have found.
“I do not have an explanation for why they do not want to make it public, but there is a need for more transparency in this case. Why is it that every time an Israeli is involved in a crime, everyone goes mute?” Lt Gen Tamim asked.
“We want anyone who is dealing with this case to deal with it as security case, and not to pay attention to any other consideration,” he added.
It is not clear whether the western nation is still holding the suspect."

This comes hot on the heels of another story, yesterday, in the Wall Street Journal:

"In Global Hunt for Hit Men, Tantalizing Trail Goes Cold", (echoed in Haaretz.: "Report: Suspect in Dubai assassination used identity of fallen IDF soldier")

in which the WSJ claims "No other arrests have been made"!

"In 1994, according to the investigation, someone named Lockwood had been known as Yehuda Lustig, born in Glasgow, Scotland to a Jewish family that had lived in British Mandatory Palestine and was killed in Sinai during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The question of who the real Christopher Lockwood was remained open. On the Internet, conjecture even surfaced that Yehuda Lustig, whose name was inscribed on a memorial, had not been killed and that 40 years later, Lockwood is the same person.
A glance at the side-by-side photographs of Lustig, the young soldier, and Lockwood provided by Interpol reveals an uncanny resemblance, particularly in their eyes, noses, mouths and the outlines of the chins.
An examination of Interior Ministry registration documents pointed to even more mystery regarding the true identity of Lustig-Lockwood.
An Israeli citizen by the name of Yehuda Lustig is registered within the state's information archives. The details of this Lustig's life are suspiciously similar to that of the fallen IDF soldier: He was born in 1948 in Britain, and his father was also named Martin.
The living Lustig is listed by the Interior Ministry as a bachelor, with an address at Allenby 10 in Tel Aviv. That address, however, proved to be false: there is no residential building at Allenby 10, only a convenience store."

So, it's a 'western nation' that's not European... Who could that realistically be and why would the WSJ publish a verifiable lie? The US, Canada, Australia? If it's one of those 3, this terrorist will never see the inside of a prision cell he so richly deserves, and has probably already been sent home...And why the WSJ story now? Answers on a postcard, please...

PressTV - Ex-senator: US manipulating UNSC

2010-10-07T12:03:00.000+02:00

PressTV - Ex-senator: US manipulating UNSC

Tariq Ali | Obama No Better Than Bush

2010-10-07T12:02:00.001+02:00

Tariq Ali | Obama No Better Than Bush

Prof. John Mearsheimer: The Two State Solution Is Effectively Dead

2010-10-07T11:15:00.001+02:00

John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and co-author, along with Stephen Walt, of 'The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy ,' spoke with JPS about the Israel lobby.

Cléa Thouin, Assistant Editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, asked Mearsheimer about the state of the Lobby and the prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Transcripts.

This interview took place on September 28, 2010 :

Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed

2010-10-02T11:39:00.000+02:00

AFP: Mossad 'issued death threats' to Dubai police chief

2010-10-02T11:35:00.001+02:00

If there were any doubts that the Israeli state in general and its Mossad enforcers are anything but gangsters, here is the proof:

AFP: Mossad 'issued death threats' to Dubai police chief

The NYT also carries the story:

"United Arab Emirates: Police Chief Accuses Israeli Spy Agency of Threats"

"“Protect your back if you are still talking,” one message said"

Hoever, the real news in the AFP story - conveniently left out by the NYT - is not the Mafia-style behaviour of the Zionist state, which is nothing new, but the fact that a "Western country" has arrested a suspect involved in Mabhuh's assassination:

"The person arrested was among a number of suspects for which international red notices had been issued by global police agency Interpol on behalf of the UAE, he added, without giving details of the country or the person involved.
The UAE is seeking the extradition of the suspect, the daily added."

When do you think the corporate media will enlighten us further?

Ahmadinejad lost in translation

2010-09-24T11:30:00.000+02:00

Was it just 'technical' problems or did the US sabotage his speech?

Ahmadinejad lost in translation - Americas - Al Jazeera English

Weapons Bizarre by Justin Raimondo

2010-09-21T19:52:00.005+02:00

Raimondo's got an interesting take "About that arms sale to the Saudis". He writes that "it is clear that the US is arming its allies in the region – Israel and the Saudis – in preparation for an attack" on Iran, something I have been warning about here on different occasions over the last couple of years, especially during the Bush Administration when there was a real danger. The rhetoric has been hotting up of late yet again.

Raimondo continues:

"These twin arms sales, combined with the draconian sanctions just passed by the US Congress, are acts of war. Which isn’t exactly shocking, because we are in fact already at war with Iran, at least on a low level, in view of US-sponsored terrorist attacks on Iranian territory and our ongoing campaign to isolate Tehran internationally.

Obama is continuing and expanding the Bushian (sic) strategy of forging a Sunni-US-Israeli alliance against the “Shi’ite crescent,” i.e. Iran and its allies in Iraq and Lebanon, and the recent arms deals are just part of it. When things really come to a head is the moment it becomes politically expedient – and necessary – for the administration to blame the economic crisis on an “oil shock” that is sure to accompany a military conflict in the Gulf. No one can know precisely when that moment is coming, but its arrival is no longer very much in doubt."

While I agree war is what some lunatic 'Shermans' want, I feel that in the meantime, it could all be a sales ploy. Here's my comment:

"Could an alternative scenario not be that the US Administration has to create the conditions for the military-industrial complex to remain super-rich?

In other words, all this warmongering about Iran could just be a 'sales ploy'...and the benefits you have already pointed out:

1. $3 billion to Lockheed Martin for F-35 joint strike fighters, which would be funded primarily through U.S. military aid to Israel, i.e. the US taxpayer.

2. $60 billion to Boeing Co. and United Technologies Corp.for F-15 fighter jets and helicopters and choppers to Saudi Arabia.

All this after a 'sharp decline' in 2009 of the value of its arms trade down $16 billion from 2008's $38.1 billion to 2009's $22.6 billion which even so was "a dominating 39 percent of the worldwide market"

Is it not entirely possible that the same military-industrial complex and its bought-and-paid-for-politicians in Washington who exaggerated the Soviet threat are doing exactly the same now with Iran?"

Israeli Beauty Products Company Ahava Complicit in the Sins of Occupation | | AlterNet

2010-09-19T22:45:00.000+02:00

Israeli Beauty Products Company Ahava Complicit in the Sins of Occupation | | AlterNet

El Supremo, ¿imparcial?

2010-09-18T12:27:00.001+02:00

El Supremo, ¿imparcial?

Respuesta después de leer este artículo de Carlos Jiménez Villarejo : No.

Es un escándalo mayor que muy pocos medios están dispuestos a seguir...

Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor, interview with El Pais - translation

2010-09-17T09:53:00.012+02:00

On 12 September 2010, Spanish 'quality' daily El Pais published an interview with Alan Rusbridger, editor of UK 'quality' daily The Guardian. This is the translation of that interview. The interview was accompanied by a video: Alan Rusbridger: ""Journalism should be open, collaborative" which is in English, subtitled in Spanish.

"I should be more radical in the digital field”

He directs the prestigious British daily 'The Guardian', with the second most-visited English-speaking site in the world for quality newspapers. He is ahead of his time, a visionary, and an addict to new technologies. He affirms that the IPAD and iPhone applications are big steps in the digital media revolution

A year ago, Alan Rusbridger had in his hands information that he could not publish. It involved a petroleum company. He was tied hand and foot by a court order. So he put a message on Twitter, the social network of short messages, which, he recalls, went something like: "Sorry, we cannot publish the story of a company I cannot name for reasons that I cannot tell." Rusbridger says that in a matter of 24 hours, Twitter users managed to unravel which company it was, what the incriminating documents were and what was preventing the British newspaper from publishing the story. The snowball effect became so great that the story ended up breaking and the health and environmental abuses the oil company Trafigura had committed in the Ivory Coast became known.

This is the strength of the digital revolution. These are the advantages of the new tools. So says, enthusiastically, Alan Rusbridger, editor of the legendary British newspaper The Guardian, a journalist radically convinced that the best is yet to come, that the possibilities offered by new technologies will lead to better journalism. The website of his newspaper, www.guardian.co.uk is the second most important in the world among the quality English-language dailies, behind The New York Times. It can certify 35 million unique users, one third of them Americans. The old Manchester newspaper, which was founded in 1821, is today the paper of reference for the left that lives across the ‘pond’.

Rusbridger sits in a chair by the huge window that lights up his office. His hair is somewhat untidy, he doesn’t wear a tie, he doesn’t look anywhere near his 56 years of age. He gives the impression of being a calm man. He does ten minutes of yoga every morning and plays the piano and the clarinet. Furthermore, he is a real geek in the most technological sense of the word, a true addict to the new generation of gadgets. The first thing he does is to pick up the digital recorder with which this interview is being recorded and examine it carefully. He turns it around, fingering it. "Umm, it must be a very recent model," he murmurs.

"Twitter is the most powerful journalistic tool that has emerged in the past ... um ... ten years," he says hesitantly and after some thought about if it’s ten, fifteen or twenty (years). He speaks looking at the canal, which flows below his office, housed in a gleaming glass building standing in the middle of an old London industrial footprint. "When Twitter arrived I thought it had nothing to do with journalism. I was so stupid. For three months I thought, 'I'm too old for this'." Only 140 characters, forget it ". I was completely wrong. The media that have too narrow a view of what journalism is and how it is done are doomed. "

Rusbridger uses a recent example to explain the strength of the digital revolution. Two weeks ago, The New York Times published an obscure story about Rupert Murdoch and illegal wiretapping. It revealed that a reporter from the tabloid News of the World, owned by Murdoch, had tapped phones to get information and the editor at the time, Andy Coulson, now director of communication for new prime minister, David Cameron, was aware of it. "For 48 hours, no one in this country echoed the story," says Rusbridger. "Neither the BBC nor Sky News said anything. However, on Twitter, thousands of users were crying out: 'What’s happening, that's not a story'? The moment arrived when the power of people made the story impossible to ignore. And this is just one example."

Q: It's obvious that the traditional neswspapers (*originally translated as media) are (* originally translated in the singular 'is') failing somewhere, they are (*originally translated in the singular 'it's') doing something wrong...

A: Yes. There we have Wikileaks, which has become a brand of confidence, the place to leak documents. What has happened that traditional newspapers have been overtaken, from the point of view of customer confidence, by an Australian and a gang of hackers situated in different parts of the world? What have they done that we haven't?

Q: Perhaps the traditional media hobnobbed too much with the political, economic powers, with the large corporations? Perhaps they (the media) have forgotten what they should report?

A: People would like us (the traditional media) to investigate those big corporations, those centres of power; they'd like us (the traditional media) to do good journalism. But that kind of journalism is expensive, and we (the traditional media) don't think it's very ‘sexy’, so we (the traditional media) stopped doing it. (Update 12.00 17 Sep 2010: Please see Alan Rusbridger's comments below)

Irony appears. Rusbridger, with clear and discerning discourse, couldn’t be more British; he accompanies the start of each intervention with those little stutters so characteristic of the more ‘polite’ English.

He argues that, precisely because of this abandonment of traditional press functions, an open and collaborative web is key: "This philosophy of being open, publishing, linking, making information available, is a simple and powerful idea. As a means of communication, you have two options: you can be part of that open world or say: 'What we do is so valuable that we are going to hide it here. "

With regard to his own medium (The Guardian), he is clear: "The conservative, now, is to be radical. Thinking about the future of The Guardian, in preserving it, should I be conservative or radical with Internet? Seeing the future possibilities of print, which does not augur very well, if I want to be conservative on the issue of protecting the Guardian, my instinct tells me that I should be more radical in the digital field."

P. You are a staunch advocate of an open web and you're convinced that pay sites are not the way forward.

R. It's what my instinct tells me. The web is a matter of being open, of linking information. Journalistically, I think it's better to be part of this system: If you are open and collaborate, all the information that’s there will make you gain in wealth, power and will give you resources you aren’t going to get on your own. So I think there is a journalistic imperative and also financial imperative to be open. Linking to other sites perhaps publishing other people’s material, we become a content platform and not just our own editors. I think this is a very strong idea.

Instinct, instinct. Rusbridger uses the word six times during the interview. It was instinct that led him, without beating about the bush, to bet on the web in 1998. From the beginning, in The Guardian, it was clear they needed technology and a good team of (web-)developers. They invested more than twelve million euros to build a custom web site. They bet early on interactivity, the social point of view, they embraced blogs. The integration process between the digital culture of the recent arrivals and the print journalists was gradual, slow, measured. This, he says, is one of the factors that help explain his success: "If you carry out the integration too fast, you overwhelm the print people. You have to let people come to terms with things bit by bit."

Four years ago, at a time when some media companies cut their employees' access to Facebook to avoid distractions, Rusbridger made his journalists open pages on the social network to upload photos, videos. He did the same two years ago with Twitter. He says that of the 640 journalists writing for The Guardian, The Observer (Sunday paper) and the website, 90% are already "digital journalists."

P. How are you going to compete with new-age media, which have much fewer staff? Should we expect further job losses at the newspapers?

R. I do not know what the income will be, so I don’t know the answer to that question. At the moment, the money isn’t there, but the industry can change ... My instinct tells me it will be difficult to keep the staff sizes we've had in the past.

P. In fact, here at The Guardian there has been downsizing, and last year, 50 journalists left, is this the hardest part of the process?

R. In two years we lost 80 people, but all those who left did so voluntarily. We didn’t have to make compulsory redundancies. It’s very hard, we lost some very valuable people, but they all chose to leave.

The Guardian earned 48.6 million euros last year through its digital arm (about 10% of revenue, it had a turnover of 490 million). It sold 120 000 iPhone applications, programs that allow reading the newspaper on your Apple phone. "We are only six months into the applications revolution," he says, "it’s too soon to know how it will change our world." Rusbridger loves the IPAD: "It offers a great way to consume news. It's a step forward in the digital revolution, the first device in ten years that forces you to re-imagine how to arrange information, how to find your way in it, how you mix it with other media. " The Guardian is not rushing its IPAD application. Rusbridger doesn’t want an outdated application, such as The New York Times or Financial Times ones. He thinks the new device requires a new language.

"I'm addicted to technology, one has to be. I buy everything that comes out. The new readers, the new phones. Until you try them and feel them you don’t know what they’re like." To explain the moment his addiction for gadgets began, he gets up, obligingly, and begins to rummage through cardboard boxes behind his desk. Proudly, he extracts from the old appliances’ cemetery his first computer, a Tandy TRS-80. His fascination with technology was born the day that this relic fell into his hands. It was in 1984. He discovered a tool that allowed him to send his stories with the exact number of words; now the editors didn’t amputate the end of his columns, where he usually placed the punchlines.

Such was his expertise that in 1986, on a trip to cover the visit of the royal family to Australia, he contrived by himself to send his chronicle by phone: to do so he got in touch with the Australian telephone company, got a code and contacted a small company in London which was the only one able to convert that code and redirect it to a computer in the editorial office of The Guardian. He managed to send his story in ten minutes. To dictate it by telephone, as it used to be done then, would have taken ninety. "We must be smart with all the new platforms that are emerging and find a way to adapt our journalism to the platforms, software and habits of the readers."

P. At what point of the digital revolution are we now?

R. We are still in an incredibly early stage. So it is early to say that digital operations will never be able to support journalism, or to say we don’t see a clear business plan. There’s no reason to take drastic decisions so early.

P. The newspaper managers in the new digital age, seem to be less independent than before the business demands and pressures of the news corporations, do you agree?

R. Yes, I think it's true. It is because everything has become more complicated, I’m not saying that it was easy before, but you knew where the money was coming from: advertising and copies sold. Now, decisions are about technology, journalism and advertising; they’re more three-dimensional. We managers have to become more involved in that aspect and that distracts us from the task of editing.

P. And in this sense, combining this lessening independence with the fact that technology opens new doors, would you say we do better journalism than in the past?

R. Yes, the Guardian is reaching an infinitely greater audience than before. Its international impact and influence are far greater. Using the tools we're employing, what we offer to readers is broader, deeper and answers more questions than ever.

Translation: David Sketchley

------------------------------------------

UPDATE: 11.50am 17 SEPTEMBER 2010:

Here are comments sent to me by Mr Rusbridger:

"I was critiquing the atttitude (sic) of some media who do not think investigative journalism was very 'sexy'. I said it was time consuming and expensive, with the result that many people dropped it -- and then we wonder why, as a profession, we lose trust. I emphatically wasn't saying "we" (ie the Guardian) took that view and had abandoned investigations. Quite the opposite. If you look at our work over the past two years on tax avoidance, the death of Ian Tomlinson, BAe, torture, trafigura and phone hacking you'll see that the Guardian still believes in long, detailed invesgitations."

It is possible that the El Pais journalist, Joseba Elola, may have mistranslated Rusbridger's original English words when he translated them into Spanish for the article, but until he confirms this or corrects the Spanish version...the translation here stands.

UPDATE 2: 18.00 17 SEPTEMBER 2010

I have just spoken by phone with Joseba Elola, and he confirms that all translations are correct, both his and mine. He stressed in no uncertain terms that Rusbridger was talking about the 'traditional media' , not specifically The Guardian - that was the context of the interview at that point - and that Rusbridger was being ironic. He agreed that taken out of context it could appear that Rusbridger was saying something different. He also confirmed that there were two interviews, the video interview and a 'paper' interview.

Security and Control I by Noam Chomsky |

2010-09-16T11:15:00.003+02:00

ZCommunications | Security and Control I by Noam Chomsky

Another great piece by Chomsky, deciphering the Orwellian language of power:

"The term “stability” has a technical meaning in discourse on international affairs: domination by the US. The usage is so routine as to pass without notice. Thus no eyebrows are raised when a respected analyst, former editor of Foreign Affairs, explains that in order to achieve “stability” in Chile in 1973, it was necessary to “destabilize” the country -- by overthrowing the elected Allende government and installing the Pinochet dictatorship, which proceeded to slaughter and torture with abandon and to set up an international terror network that helped install similar regimes elsewhere, always with US backing, in the interest of stability and security."

Robert Fisk: Nine years, two wars, hundreds of thousands dead – and nothing learnt

2010-09-13T10:06:00.001+02:00

Another great article by Mr Fisk:

"Robert Fisk: Nine years, two wars, hundreds of thousands dead - and nothing learnt"

Did 9/11 make us all mad? Our memorial to the innocents who died nine years ago has been a holocaust of fire and blood . . .

OVERDOSE. The Next Financial Crisis.

2010-08-30T19:40:00.002+02:00

Having trouble understanding the financial crisis? Then this documentary is for you. The crisis explained in layman's terms, it makes the whole thing very simple, and understandable.

And when you've seen it, if you're angry, then you've understood.

The transformation of Latin America is a global advance

2010-08-20T11:02:00.002+02:00

Finally a decent article on Latin Ameria in the Guardian, albeit in the CiF section - opinion. However, there is so much more truth written in this one article than in Rory Carroll's entire output.

"The transformation of Latin America is a global advance"

"Nearly two centuries after it won nominal independence and Washington declared it a backyard, Latin America is standing up. The tide of progressive change that has swept the continent for the past decade has brought to power a string of social democratic and radical socialist governments that have attacked social and racial privilege, rejected neo-liberal orthodoxy and challenged imperial domination of the region.
Its significance is often underestimated or trivialised in Europe and North America. But along with the rise of China, the economic crash of 2008 and the demonstration of the limits of US power in the "war on terror", the emergence of an independent Latin America is one of a handful of developments reshaping the global order. From Ecuador to Brazil, Bolivia to Argentina, elected leaders have turned away from the IMF, taken back resources from corporate control, boosted regional integration and carved out independent alliances across the world."

"For all his popularity at home, Chávez has been the target for a campaign of vilification and ridicule throughout the US, European and elite-controlled Latin American media – which has little to do with his high-octane rhetoric and much more with his effectiveness in using Venezuela's oil wealth to challenge US and corporate power across the region.
Forget his success in slashing the Venezuelan poverty rate in half, tripling social spending, rapidly expanding healthcare and education, and fostering grassroots democracy and worker participation. Since the beginning of the year Venezuela's enemies have smelled blood as his government faltered in the face of drought-triggered power cuts, a failure to ride out recession with a stimulus package – as Morales's Bolivia did – and growing discontent over high levels of violent crime.
So expect a flurry of new claims that Chávez is a dictator who has stifled media freedom and persecuted bankers and businessmen, and whose incompetent regime is running into the sand. In reality the Venezuelan president has won more free elections than any other world leader, the country's media are dominated by the US-funded opposition, and his government's problems with service delivery stem more from institutional weakness than authoritarianism."

"If both Brazilian and Venezuelan elections are won by the left, the US and its friends may be tempted to look for other ways to divert Latin America from the path of self-determination and social justice it took while George Bush was busy fighting his enemies in the Muslim world. For all Barack Obama's promise to "seek a new chapter of engagement" and warning that a "terrible precedent" would be set if last year's bloody coup against the reforming Honduran president Manuel Zelaya were allowed to stand, there has been little change in US policy towards the region. The Honduran coup was indeed allowed to stand – or, as Hillary Clinton put it, the "crisis" was "managed to a successful conclusion".
The clear message was that the radical tide can be turned and the fear is now that another of the more vulnerable governments, such as Paraguay's or Guatemala's, could also be "managed to a conclusion" in one form or another. Meanwhile the US is attempting to shore up its military presence on the continent, using the pretext of "counter-insurgency" to station US forces in seven bases in Colombia.
But direct military intervention looks implausible for the foreseeable future. If the political and social movements that have driven the continent's transformation can maintain their momentum and support, they won't only be laying the foundation of an independent Latin America, but new forms of socialist politics declared an impossibility in the modern era. Two decades after we were told there was no alternative, another world is being created."

Harvard University fund sells all Israel holdings

2010-08-16T16:05:00.003+02:00

Although,the subtitle says "No reason for the sale was mentioned in the report to the SEC", there is no doubt that the campaign to boycott the criminal regime in Israel is gaining ground...

Update 17 Aug
:----------------

...in spite of their denial that: "The university has not divested from Israel." According to the Guardian "Harvard spokesman, John Longbrake, said today...the change had taken place because Israel had been part of its emerging markets portfolio but the country's status had been upgraded to developed market.
Longbrake added that the university retained shares in Israel: "We have holdings in developed markets, including Israel, through outside managers in commingled accounts and indexes, which are not reported in the filing in question."

The Guardian then quotes plagiarist and supporter of Israel's genocidal campaign against the Palestinians, Alan Dershowitz:

"There will be some irresponsible anti-Israel extremists who will try to portray this economic decision as an attack against Israel," Dershowitz said. "Shame on them. They will continue to lose their credibility among all reasonable and objective people if they try to take political advantage of this purely technical decision.He added: "The end result may well be that Harvard will have greater rather than lesser holdings of Israeli stocks. No one should misinterpret this purely economic decision as support for any form of divestment against Israel. Indeed, Harvard has publicly committed itself not to divest from Israel and not to participate in any campaign of boycotting the Jewish nation.""

Fuck you Dershowitz, you can try to spin it as much as you can, but the fact is that Harvard has "sold all its holdings in Israeli companies", for whatever reasons they care to state. If I was Harvard, I would also deny the divestment campaign had anything to do with the decision. It would keep nutters like Dershowitz off my back.

'In the hole!'

2010-08-12T21:28:00.001+02:00

There I was, idling away an hour or so on the sofa watching the opening day of the USPGA championship, whose coverage was focusing at the time on Tiger Woods' first round, when I noticed that the spectators weren't shouting "In the hole!" at Tiger's 'birdie' opportunities as usual. I admit it, the thought did make me chuckle...

Introducing a new blog: \kʌnts\

2010-08-07T14:35:00.002+02:00

I would like to introduce a new blog which I have started, called \kʌnts\, dedicated to outing all those \kʌnts\ out there, who through their actions are a negative influence on the world - some may indeed say that's what this blog is...

First on the list ~~Wan Ker~~-~~moon~~ sorry, Ban Ki-moon. Any suggestions, just send them in with reasons.

How facts backfire - The Boston Globe

2010-08-01T13:01:00.001+02:00

For all those desperate that their efforts at trying to inform the misinformed are not having any effect, a real kick in the balls:

How facts backfire - The Boston Globe

Update 07 August 2010:

These are some comments sent to me by Manuel Garcia, Jr., former physicist at Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laborator:

"Why we suffer, politically: How facts backfire - The Boston Globe

>From earlier MG writing:

"The social programming language of capitalist authoritarianism seeks to activate personal greed, intellectual insecurity and visceral racism as motivators of guided popular political reaction. The Pavlovian logic to this scheme of social manipulation is that all human beings are possessive, gullible and fearful." (from:'Decoding the Language of Social Control, Democracy is Communism and Must be Destroyed ...', 12 March 2010)

"The brain is a food-seeking antenna at the service of the stomach, the controlling organ of the body. To understand this is to be free of the delusion that we humans are rational beings who observe to gather data for analysis, analyze to formulate plans and arrive at decisions, and then employ our physical selves and our exosomatic mechanisms to enact these plans and decisions. Instead, we decide emotionally and largely unconsciously, generally on the basis of fear and prejudice, and we use our brains to fabricate post-facto rationalizations for our biases and predetermined actions. Some may feel this characterization of human motivation is unjustly insulting to human dignity, and severely dismissive of human intellect. I concede that it will not be universally applicable, but I think it sufficiently representative to help explain many social trends and popular attitudes." (from: 'On Voting, A Ritual of Justifying Biases',, 8 August 2008)

"Minds that remain largely unused because of ignorance, which is the child of laziness, will be found by mass media ("propaganda," in the old days), filled with easily swallowed psychic worms that are coated with syrupy sweet sex, glistening cherry-red violence, desire-fulfillment fantasy, voyeurism, and lowest-common-denominator semi-pornographic mass culture. Once embedded, the underlying psychic messages re-program the thought patterns of the consuming individual for ease of remote control by the social programming elite. If you don't think, someone will do it for you, but not for your benefit." (from 'The Imprisoned American Mind', 2 August 2004)

The psychological hurdle blocking human progress (the next challenge to human evolution?, the determining test of human survival?):
"Better that the world should end than my ideas should change."

All three articles are well worth the read...
Thanks Manuel!

Why Socialism? By Albert Einstein

2010-07-23T14:16:00.000+02:00

Why Socialism?

By Albert Einstein

This essay was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949).

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called "the predatory phase" of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.

For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.

Innumerable voices have been asserting for some time now that human society is passing through a crisis, that its stability has been gravely shattered. It is characteristic of such a situation that individuals feel indifferent or even hostile toward the group, small or large, to which they belong. In order to illustrate my meaning, let me record here a personal experience. I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supra-national organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: "Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?"

I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days. What is the cause? Is there a way out?

It is easy to raise such questions, but difficult to answer them with any degree of assurance. I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept "society" means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is "society" which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”

It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished—just as in the case of ants and bees. However, while the whole life process of ants and bees is fixed down to the smallest detail by rigid, hereditary instincts, the social pattern and interrelationships of human beings are very variable and susceptible to change. Memory, the capacity to make new combinations, the gift of oral communication have made possible developments among human being which are not dictated by biological necessities. Such developments manifest themselves in traditions, institutions, and organizations; in literature; in scientific and engineering accomplishments; in works of art. This explains how it happens that, in a certain sense, man can influence his life through his own conduct, and that in this process conscious thinking and wanting can play a part.

Man acquires at birth, through heredity, a biological constitution which we must consider fixed and unalterable, including the natural urges which are characteristic of the human species. In addition, during his lifetime, he acquires a cultural constitution which he adopts from society through communication and through many other types of influences. It is this cultural constitution which, with the passage of time, is subject to change and which determines to a very large extent the relationship between the individual and society. Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.

If we ask ourselves how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible, we should constantly be conscious of the fact that there are certain conditions which we are unable to modify. As mentioned before, the biological nature of man is, for all practical purposes, not subject to change. Furthermore, technological and demographic developments of the last few centuries have created conditions which are here to stay. In relatively densely settled populations with the goods which are indispensable to their continued existence, an extreme division of labor and a highly-centralized productive apparatus are absolutely necessary. The time—which, looking back, seems so idyllic—is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that mankind constitutes even now a planetary community of production and consumption.

I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.

For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production—although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists' requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free. Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense. In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the “free labor contract” for certain categories of workers. But taken as a whole, the present day economy does not differ much from “pure” capitalism.

Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers' goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service.

"BBC: Choosing the right word makes the difference"

2010-07-17T10:12:00.005+02:00

Thanks to Peter Charles over at the Media Lens Message Board, who spotted the fact that the BBC had changed the wording and meaning of one of the questions of the recent Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) survey on "the attitudes of Jews in Britain to Israel":

Here is what Peter wrote:

""A majority of British Jews believe Israel should swap territory for peace, and negotiate with Hamas, a survey suggests"

Wrong!

It doesn't say "swap" - it says "give up"

The BBC make it sound like it is their territory to begin with. "

Well spotted Peter!

Here is my e-mail to the BBC:

"Dear Sirs,

In its report of the British JPR Israel Survey, I was incredibly surprised to find that the BBC had changed the wording from the report, using a word that is not even a synonym of the word the JPR used.

In its article the unnamed BBC journalist writes "A majority of British Jews believe Israel should swap territory for peace...a survey suggests."

The actual wording used by the JPR survey was: "“Israel should give up territory in exchange for guarantees of peace with the Palestinians”"

This is incredibly misleading. I am a teacher of English and 'swap' and 'give up' just don't mean the same thing. They're not even close. Please correct this error immediately."

World Champions!!!!!

2010-07-12T11:53:00.002+02:00

Spain totally deserved to win.

The BBC’s pact with Israel > Global > Redress Information & Analysis

2010-07-10T10:21:00.000+02:00

The BBC’s pact with Israel > Global > Redress Information & Analysis

Exposed: The truth about Israel's land grab in the West Bank - Middle East, World - The Independent

2010-07-09T10:45:00.000+02:00

Exposed: The truth about Israel's land grab in the West Bank - Middle East, World - The Independent

BBC misleads yet again on Iran

2010-07-07T12:14:00.012+02:00

Last Thursday, the BBC carried what appeared to be an innocuous article on the resignation of Olli Heinonen, Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Safeguards at the IAEA.

Included in the article were these statements:

"Mr Heinonen's department's five-year investigation drew on Western intelligence to help to build the IAEA's case that Iran was working to develop a nuclear-armed missile.
Tehran says the intelligence is forged and that its atomic work is for civilian purposes only."

What case, I wondered?

For those who don't know Olli Heinonen, it's important to read Porter's article "IAEA to keep heat on Iran"to understand that, in sinc with the George W. Bush administration, "Heinonen was instrumental in making a collection of intelligence documents showing a purported Iranian nuclear weapons research program the central focus of the IAEA's work on Iran. The result was to shift much of opinion among Western publics to the view that Iran had been pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program...

Heinonen took over the safeguards department in July 2005 - the same month the George W Bush administration first briefed top IAEA officials on the intelligence collection...

The Bush administration was pushing the IAEA to use the documents to accuse Iran of having had a covert nuclear weapons program. The administration was determined to ensure that the IAEA governing board would support referring Iran to the UN Security Council for action on sanctions, as part of a larger strategy to force Iran to abandon its uranium-enrichment program.

Long-time IAEA director general Mohammed ElBaradei and other officials involved in investigating and reporting on Iran's nuclear program were immediately skeptical about the authenticity of the documents. According to two Israeli authors, Yossi Melman and Meir Javadanfar, several IAEA officials told them in interviews in 2005 and 2006 that senior officials of the agency believed the documents had been "fabricated by a Western intelligence organization".

Heinonen, on the other hand, supported the strategy of exploiting the collection of intelligence documents to put Iran on the defensive. His approach was not to claim that the documents' authenticity had been proven but to shift the burden of proof to Iran, demanding that it provide concrete evidence that it had not carried out the activities portrayed in the documents. "

In fact Heinonen was putting into practice the Bush doctrine, the same doctrine that had been so successfully used in the supreme crime against Iraq - that the accused must prove its innocence. Of course, we all know this is impossible, and the burden of proof must always be with the accusation not the defence.

I quickly rushed off the following complaint to the BBC:

"The anonymous author(s) write(s): "Mr Heinonen's department's five-year investigation drew on Western intelligence to help to build the IAEA's case that Iran was working to develop a nuclear-armed missile. Tehran says the intelligence is forged and that its atomic work is for civilian purposes only."

In fact, contrary to what the BBC writes, the IAEA has never made any such case that "Iran was working to develop a nuclear-armed missile", and it is not only Tehran that says the intelligence is forged, the Department of External Relations and Policy Coordination of the IAEA also has doubts as to whether the 'intelligence' is genuine.

These are part of the so-called "Alleged Studies" claims brought to the attention of the agency by the United States and based on the computer evidence it claims was obtained from a secret source in Iran, and which, according to Julian Borger of the Guardian, has caused a lot of controversy within the IAEA itself regarding authenticity.

As Gareth Porter has written: "Whether those documents are genuine or were fabricated has been the subject of a fierce struggle behind the scenes for many months between two departments of the IAEA (Department of External Relations and Policy Coordination & the Safeguards Department, headed by Olli Heinonen).

Some IAEA officials even began calling for a clear statement by the agency that it could not affirm the documents' authenticity after the agency obtained hard evidence in early 2008 that a key document in the collection had been fraudulently altered"

Further, the IAEA has consistently stated that it has no actual evidence to back up the claims.

The draft report of the Safeguards Dept., while saying that the IAEA "assesses that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device" (not a missile) also includes "other passages (that) indicate the authors regard such knowledge only as a possibility, based on suspicions rather than concrete evidence", as Porter puts it.

The draft is full of words such as "has information", "may still be conducting", "From the documents presented by a number of Member States and the Agency‟s own activities, it is possible to assess...", "Iran may have developed...which could be contained...", "Based on the information in the document, the Agency assesses that it is possible that Iran...", "The Agency suspects...", "“It is believed that Iran has developed...", "The Agency has evidence from which it is possible to assess...", "From the evidence presented to the Agency it is possible to suggest that..."

Finally the leaked draft report also includes this statement: "Overall the Agency does not believe that Iran has yet achieved the means of integrating a nuclear payload into the Shahab 3 missile"

I would kindly ask that the BBC rephrase these statements to reflect the facts of the matter, not opinions within one department at the IAEA. I would also ask the BBC to rewrite the article so that the information I have pointed out be included.

I would also like to know why the article is not authored? Who wrote the article?"

There is a deliberate attempt by the US and it's western NATO poodles to distort information so that they can eventually attack Iran - another act of naked aggression."

I'll post the reply if and when I get one.

SALVAR EL PALMAR by Coraje New Andalusian Folklore

2010-07-03T10:35:00.000+02:00

Bryan Hemming: Masked, Missing and Mossad - Pt II

2010-06-29T10:26:00.001+02:00

(The first part 'Bryan Hemming: Masked, Missing and Mossad - Are the Three Connected?' was published at this blog on 14 June 2010)

Last week, an unsolicited link to my last article Missing, Masked and Mossad, filed under the additional heading Disinformation, left me slightly bemused. Had I really joined the shady world of secret agents, government narks and spent hacks spreading lies and propaganda throughout the globe in order to confuse? Misinformed perhaps, ill-informed maybe, but does that amount to disinformation? Time to don the shades and search out a worn Burberry mac. I think not.

Where my speculations lack sufficient hard facts the fault lies with the deliberate withholding of evidence by the Israeli authorities. The eager complicity of the mainstream media to publish so much one-sided propaganda without question only compounded the problem.

More backhanded compliment, than serious charge, if anything, the additional heading proved counter-productive, serving to attract even more readers. After all, with much of it gleaned from official Israeli government public statements, any disinformation was based on disinformation from reliable sources. And we all know who they are.
Past masters of disinformation and self-delusion, the Mossad PR machine and its acolytes had been forced to drastically change course after the IDF had bloodied the decks of the Mavi Marmara with nine dead and many more wounded. The story of daring military success, they had been briefed to expect, had transformed into a nightmare for which none of them was prepared. And it showed.

Nevertheless, after a lot of mutual back-slapping and self-congratulation, within a week they declared themselves winners of the PR war. As if that were the point. Like the Eurovision Song Contest, where everybody gets to vote for their mates. And despite all evidence to the contrary, a slavish and sycophantic press - seeing an Israeli public relations victory as being its own - added to the impression we´d all been Eurovisioned up the Khyber. Anything else would´ve been an admission of failure, as compliant journalists played such a willing role in an ugly slugfest of self-congratulatory abandon.

But difficult questions remained. Not least of all, how can the unnecessary and illegal deaths of nine civilian activists be touted as any sort of success? If political and military successes are to be judged on realising objectives then the entire operation was a huge failure. Any success was won by those who braved the wrath of the IDF to deliver aid to Gaza.

Now the press claim even more successes for everybody, except the flotilla. ´International pressure´ - implying political leaders - forced a reluctant Israel into a promise of a partial lifting of sanctions, the new story goes. The truth is nothing of the sort. Nine men sacrificed their lives to bring to the world´s attention the illegal and inhumane blockade of the 1·5 million citizens of Gaza. Pressure from international leaders, or the MSM, had little to do with relieving it. To suggest otherwise is a despicable lie. The blockade was illegal from the start, and our leaders did virtually nothing against it. By doing nothing they encouraged more illegal acts by Israel.

And once forced to move, how slow they were to pick up the dying torch of freedom, how stingy their words. Boxed into a corner by public outrage they were left with little choice. Nevertheless, they still chose not to condemn Israel outright. ´Israel has the right to self-defence´ is still being touted, only weeks after that same right was denied the crew and passengers of a unarmed vessel sailing through international waters. That´s what disinformation is.

Disinformation is a communications blackout, turned into news blackout, it´s media outlets being commandeered, mobile phones, laptops, cameras and notebooks being stolen. Solely in order to prevent information being released. That´s disinformation. It´s kidnapping, and trying to force the kidnapped to sign papers saying they entered your country illegally. Disinformation is preventing alternative versions of events being heard while the PR machine tries to get the main protagonists reading from the same song sheet.

But, on such a large scale, there could never be enough time to make a bent story straight. Like a charging woolly mammoth forced to turn on a sixpence in a street crowded with shoppers, the machine had become too large and unwieldy. Extensive damage had become unavoidable.

Inconsistencies were always there for the seeing. Out of personal motives, Israeli government ministers and the military were a long way from speaking with one voice. Uncoordinated and incohesive attacks on the activists were cobbled together in a hurry, anything to distract attention from those who had planned and ordered the attack. A dizzying flurry of disinformation that would have us believe it was all a paintball game gone horribly wrong when a gang of Turkish bully boys stepped onto the playground. Or that a kindly group of elite commandos bent on charity work had abseilled onto to the decks of the Mavi Marmara to guide it into port and help distribute aid. But they were doomed to failure however many times they were repeated.

Possibly, the most cynical move of all, was the decoration for bravery of the soldier who proudly claimed to have shot six men at close range. All several times, and some between the eyes or in the back. No need for senior officer recommendations, no eyewitness accounts, no evidence of great valour required, just pin it on his chest. Something for the IDF to be proud of. Netanyahu´s eagerness to award it before knowing the full circumstances, smacks of a move to appease the men serving on the ground. I doubt all are impressed. However undeserved, awarding himself a medal couldn´t have been less perverse. As the main architect of the senseless slaughter, at least it would have been more honest.

But honesty is not Netanyahu´s strong point. Metaphorically, as well as literally, the prime minister of Israel is a balding man trying to convince himself, and the rest of us, he has a full set of hair. When image dictates political policy, we end up with hair mousse and orthodontology instead of coherent planning. To all intents and purposes, Israeli military strategy is now being run by an advertising agency.

Another sign of this can be seen with the Turkel Committee set up to investigate the attack on the Marmara. None of the members have any specialist knowledge of international maritime law or the laws of war according to Haaretz. Once again, these sages - as they have been dubbed - are more about PR than anything. But this time Netanyahu is taking no chances. A former supreme court justice takes the chair. Complete with wheels, the ninety-three year old buffer was pictured sitting in it, wearing pyjamas, in one Jewish daily. A smiling carer standing at his side, he might have just got out of bed for the photo shoot. At least one other member is over seventy. In a tight situation the sympathy vote can make a difference. In a further move to assure the Turks of impartiality his name is Jacob Turkel. Turk-el, geddit? If the committee gets it right no one can complain, if they get it wrong it´s because the senile old sods didn´t know what they were talking about. Works for me. Either way.

And for those who haven´t got it, Netanyahu and his cronies are covering their backs. A proper, impartial inquiry would lay the blame at their doors. Not only was the interception of a civilian vessel in international waters by armed commandos highly illegal, it was madness itself. Quite obviously, possible negative consequences were not on the agenda. Failure was not considered as an option. There was no plan B. Primarily, it was a publicity stunt. And if paintball guns were used, they were intended to add to the party atmosphere. What a laugh! Crew and passengers cowering on the deck before a couple of commandos with toy guns. Of course, they had to have real guns too. Just in case. The world would chuckle along with Israel at the daring of these lads. What they forgot was, that hand to hand fighting isn´t exactly the IDF´s forte anymore. They just send heavily-armed troops in to bulldoze and blast their way through these days, in the face very little resistance. No military officer worthy of his rank would try to land soldiers onto the deck of a ship in this way. Apart from anything, as evidence shows, they put their men at what could´ve been mortal risk were it not for the humanity of their captors. The slaughter started once they realised they were facing total humiliation. If the crew and passengers took even more men captive, which was very likely, they would be in the best bargaining position. Humiliation bred a callous and vindictive desire for bloody revenge. There is little doubt live ammunition was being fired prior to boarding to soften everyone up, but firing upwards from inflatables is not very effective. But once the extent of the disaster was realised, someone had to pay. Nine was the figure.

Attempt at further humiliation revealed the crew and passengers as dignified and courageous in the face of extreme adversity, something that cannot be claimed for the cowards who kicked and beat unarmed men and women after binding their hands behind their backs. Doesn´t paint a pretty picture. That´s why all the cameras, laptops and mobile phones were stolen. Nine men paid with their lives in what was nothing more than a failed publicity stunt. That´s what Netanyahu and Barak don´t want you to know. Both men must be made to understand any inquiry cannot only be framed to satisfy home consumption this time. The idea is for others to believe the propaganda, not the government employing it. If Israel fails to ask relevant questions it cannot suppose others won´t. Whether either likes it or not, Israeli is already on trial, and they should wake up to the reality of the situation

There are other things they don´t want you to know either.

Though hardly mentioned the Western media, Ultra-Orthodox Jews are starting to defy Israeli government in a manner that is threatening Israel´s extremely fragile appearance of democracy. There are things your newspaper isn´t telling you, but there are some that are. Despite difficult surroundings - unless you work under them you don´t know - Haaretz is often at the forefront of highlighting the dangerous precedent of pandering to extremists. Reports of demonstrations leading to violent confrontations with the Israeli police often feature in its columns. In a country where many civilians bear arms things could start to get very ugly.

According to Batsheva Sobelman and Edmund Sanders, reporting for Jerusalem for the the Los Angeles Times, in December Israel´s defence minister clashed publicly with a high-profile rabbi who was encouraging soldiers to disobey military orders to remove Jewish settlers (the italics are mine) from West Bank outposts.

Last week, huge demonstrations involving tens of thousands of Ashkenazi parents protesting at having to send their children to school with Sephardic Jews took place throughout Israel. Thousands of police officers had to be deployed in anticipation of violence. The parents have been accused of racism. Ashkenazis migrated to Israel from Eastern Europe mainly, whereas Sephardic Jews came from North Africa and the Middle East. Many Israelis see the Ashkenazi parents´ defiance as a key test of the Supreme Court and Israel´s commitment to rule of law. Retired Deputy Supreme Court President Mishael Cheshin called the case a "test of democracy". Tzipi Livni, leader of the opposition, not exactly known for lefty leanings, said that flouting a Supreme Court order put Israel "one minute before anarchy." Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) Jews are being seen more and more as a threat, and they don´t seem to care.

Due to an inherent weakness in a Likud desperate to cling onto power, the Knesset has surrendered control of government to a growing ultra-Orthodox right wing that wants to take Israel back to a nineteenth century that never existed. Not to be compared with Amish communities in the US, they have more in common with the Taliban than with the rest of their countrymen, many of whom are tiring of subsidising the extremist lifestyles of such a vociferous and demanding minority. Menachim Friedman of Bar-Ilan University, a sociology professor studying the ultra-Orthodox community, has said: "Netanyahu is dependent on the haredi politicians and he can´t divorce himself now. He will have to decide whether to surrender to the haredim or the Supreme Court decision."
Things are threatening to get out of control, and civil war could become a distinct possibility. With a nuclear first strike capability for the winners, the rest of the world has every reason to be terrified.

Israel has become like an extended family gathering at a reunion after many years apart. Against high hopes and expectations, family members are discovering how much they have grown to hate each other over the years. No longer under real threat from its neighbours the nation is turning in on itself, something it has successfully managed conceal from the rest of the world up until now. Through a series of deadly antics, Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to to focus attention on the domestic front, and things don´t look pretty. A nation deeply divided, constantly on the lookout for fragile compromises to keep themselves together, Israelis are starting to realise they don´t like each other, as much as they thought. Shared Jewishness is no longer a strong enough glue to hold them together. Feeling like foreigners in vast swathes of their own promised land, many liberal Israelis are beginning to accept they have far more in common with liberals in New York, Paris, London - or dare I suggest? - Beruit, Damascus, Istanbul and Tehran than they do with their next door neighbours.

Disinformation: the art of shooting yourself in the foot with one hand while stabbing your best friend in the back with the other.

Two useful links:

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-world-acts-netanyahu-reacts-1.297578

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/yossi-sarid-the-great-haredi-rebellion-is-raging-on-several-fronts-1.296631

US opposes ICC bid to make 'aggression' a crime under international law

2010-06-17T17:14:00.001+02:00

Mmm. Is it even worth bothering asking why? Why should they oppose this?

The CSM itself gives us the reason in the subtitle: "because it could impact US military operations abroad".

Ha!

In other words, aggression defines 'US military operations abroad', therefore it must be opposed.

However, we find there's nothing to worry about, according to State Department legal adviser Harold Koh, because "the US successfully negotiated the “aggression” statute’s wording so that US forces won’t be susceptible to it. “No US national can be prosecuted for ‘aggression’ while the US is not a signatory” to the ICC".

Phew! That's OK then.

They can carry on making aggressive wars to their hearts content...

Bryan Hemming: Masked, Missing and Mossad - Are the Three Connected?

2010-06-14T21:15:00.004+02:00

Masked, Missing and Mossad - Are the Three Connected?

Six passengers disappear without trace from the crowded deck of a ship. Normally, we might expect family members to report their loss in an incident beamed across the world. As yet, it appears no family members have come forward to report their disappearance. No government has inquired about the loss of its citizens. For all intents and purposes, we can suppose that nobody knew them; they were all loners without family or friends. But it seems impossible that the only ones who disappeared were precisely the same ones who nobody knew. By now, you have guessed the ship was the Mavi Marmara attempting to deliver aid to Gaza.

There is little doubt that when a small, but significant, number of people vanish without trace there has to be a reason. Yet, not a mention by the Israeli authorities of the disappearances, no denial of their existence; no affirmation. Puzzling, when it might be considered to be in Israeli interests to mention them. If they never existed in the first place, the claim they were missing could be touted as yet another piece of propaganda by Hamas to inflate the numbers of the dead.

There have been contradictory statements from other souces. A few days after the attack, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said there were no people missing. That was countered by Bulent Yildrim, chairmen of the Turkish relief organisation IHH, when he told reporters: "However, we have a longer list, there are still people missing". Presumably, he should know. In support of his claim that there was a list of passengers still unaccounted for, Libyan-Irishman Isam Bin Ali, - who had earlier been reported as missing - returned to Ireland and took part in a protest march to the Israeli Embassy. Whether his name was included among the missing six has not been confirmed. The Turkish Prime Minister may have had his reasons for his statement, which I will come to later.

Let´s assume for a moment there are six passengers still unaccounted for from the official passenger list, and try to assess what might´ve happened. The most obvious answer would seem that they went overboard, one way or another. Either they jumped, or fell accidentally, into the sea. They may even have been pushed. If we want to apportion blame, we can even go further and say their corpses were thrown overboard by the IDF in an attempted cover-up. But none of these explanations makes sense. The footage of passengers dropping one IDF commando onto the deck below has been played over and over again, yet nobody has come forward with photos, film, or even a reliable eyewitness account, of other bodies being thrown over the rails. And despite Israeli attempts to confiscate all material of the hi-jacking recorded by activists, a considerable amount managed to escape detection. Footage has been released showing, not only passenger dead and wounded being carried below decks for medical care, where appropriate, but also of injured Israeli soldiers being tended to by medics. None shows more corpses than those already reported and identified as killed. Let´s not forget, we are talking bodies here, not a body. The very lack of evidence belies suppostions that the six went missimg during the fray. The very same six who nobody claims.

There is absolutely no evidence pointing conclusively towards them going missing while the Mavi Marmara was at sea. Even though all passengers can be seen wearing fluorescent life jackets, no bodies have been washed up, nor have any sightings been reported so far. Not so much as a life jacket has been recovered. With such a lack of hard evidence, one would´ve expected someone might use it to demonstrate the six never existed. After all, apart from that pesky passenger list, there is very little to show they did. But, strangely enough, some proof of their existence has emerged from the most unexpected sources.

Within hours of news of the hi-jack reaching our TV screens, carefully controlled Israeli news bulletins, released information claiming the flotilla had been infiltrated by Islamic terrorists before it even left Turkey. Described variously as ´Al Quaeda´, ´Hizbollah´, ´Hamas´, ´Iranian´ and ´Turkish` in a pick ´n mix style of propaganda, they had boarded with the intent of ´lynching´ Israeli commandos as part of an audacious, pre-planned, attack, it was said. No proof of the claim has come to light so far.

By contrast, within days, Israeli sources were offering a completely different version of the same claim. The Washington Post quoted former Mossad agent, Victor Ostrovsky, as saying: "Mossad probably had more than one man on board." Senior IDF officer, Colonel Itzik Turgeman, told Haaretz: "they took care of" the engines of boats. The Guardian quoted an anonymous Israeli Defence Forces spokesman as saying ´grey operations´ were used against the convoy, in reference to the sabotage of at least two ships´ engines. On June 6th, none less than the Jerusalem Post reported Deputy Defence Minister, Manan Vilna'i, as hinting that Israel had sabotaged some of the ships which were meant to take part in a Gaza-bound flotilla.

As it is impossible to sabotage ship engines secretly, without boarding the vessels, it has to be considered the agents managed to escape detection by posing as passengers or members of the crews. Once aboard, it would´ve been so difficult to disembark before setting sail, without raising suspicions, as to be virtually impossible.

If we are to take all this information seriously, whether European, Jewish, Turkish or whatever in origin, it suggests that a number of passengers did go missing. But not at sea. And if they didn´t go missing at sea they had to have gone missing some time after being arrested, kidnapped, captured (choose which ever word suits you) and landed on Israeli shores. As there are no reports of passengers escaping, presumably, they were counted, imprisoned, and interrogated before being released. Just like everyone else. Or not quite like everyone else. Released and ´disappeared´. Some claims published in the media suggest that there could have been a number of agents from Egypt, Turkey and Iran mingling with the passengers (perhaps that might explain the Turkish PM´s statement I refer to earlier). But why not go the whole hog and say MI6, the CIA, and the Man from UNCLE were there? Perhaps everybody was a secret agent. However, as the disappearances could realistically have only occurred following docking in Ashdod, a Mossad presence is most likely.

To further that explanation, we must consider that, had they been members of a group designated terrorist by Israel, there would´ve been a watertight case for hanging on to them. The same would apply to Turkish agents. Apart from supporting the original plot claim - that there existed a plot to attack the boarding commandos - the world´s press would´ve united in condemning the flotilla and praising the IDF for their daring. The deaths of the innocent would have paled into insignificance. The captured six would´ve been paraded before the world´s cameras in what would´ve been a sensational scoop for a press hungry for Islamic conspiracy.

However, despite Israel´s desperate attempts to sway it, public opinion remains deeply divided over the issue. While the pro-Israeli case descends into incoherent, inconsistent blame, claim and vehement denial; full of ridiculous attacks on friends and foes alike, the pro-Gaza case has been strengthened by dignity and restraint, in the main. If anything, the contrary accounts given by Israel in defence of its actions has spawned Israel´s worse nightmare. Since the attack, support for Gaza has increased immeasurably. The IDF is no longer regarded as invincible and, along with many of his ministers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is beginning to be seen as a liability to even his closest ally. The international isolation he imposed on Gaza, could become reality for Israel itself, as whispers for sanctions against it resound through corridors of power. In such a situation, any conclusive evidence of Islamic terrorist involvement would be plastered over front pages everywhere. We can only conclude there isn´t any.

As the question of whether the flotilla was infiltrated or not is no longer being asked, we can only look at the scant evidence provided so far to surmise which side did the infiltrating. Israel has never denied the ships´ passengers were infiltrated. Far from it, they were the first to suggest they had. Where the issue clouds is over who exactly did the infiltrating? They just seem incredibly uncertain of whether they themselves did it, or whether it was carried out by this or that group of Muslim extremists.

Evidence of a planned attack on the IDF by Islamic terrorists has been presented in the form of photos of knives, wrenches, poles, sticks, and even an axe. Yet, nearly all are tools and equipment to be found on large ships the world over. Most households possess examples of some, if not all of them. That such instruments could be used as weapons cannot be denied. Nobody is denying it. The only question being asked is whether they were used in self-defence or in pre-meditated attack. As further proof of pre-planned action, photos showing a few passengers wearing gas masks have been released. Israelis have claimed these as conclusive proof that these passengers came prepared for violence. On the face of it, it does look as though they came prepared for confrontation. But not necesarily the confrontation claimed by the Israelis. A gas mask only shows the wearer being prepared for a particular type of confrontation involving tear gas and smoke bombs. It does not in itself prove the wearer is bent on attack. Nevertheless, as the majority of passengers seem to have been taken completely by surprise by an attack deploying not only tear gas, but also live ammunition, the fact that some had gas masks, while most didn´t, raises questions. A cynic might suspect the ones wearing masks had more than an inkling of how and when the attack would take place. They might also wonder how they came by such information.

I haven´t counted the number of passengers actually on the deck, which armed IDF commados abseilled down onto, whilst conveninetly being filmed from from many angles, but I would guess they numbered less than fifty. Of those, possibly twenty or so were involved in a real attempt to defend the ship. Most of the others seem to be in a state of panic. If the six missing are dead, then one has to suppose they were in the thick of things. If they were, there is no evidence to show it.

Back to the masks. Donning a gas mask is quite common in military confrontations, especially in situations where it is known the risk of gas being deployed is a real threat. But a gas mask also conceals the face of the wearer. In a situation where many cameras are being brandished, it´s not such a bad precaution, if you don´t want to be recognised as one of the attackers. Yet, in a situation where the identities of the people on board are well-documented, it seems a trifle unnecesary. Unless you were travelling under an assumed identity, that is, and wanted to avoid detection. In a world where we are told identity theft is common amongst secret service operatives, the appearance a real name on a list doesn´t necessarily mean it belongs to the person using it. In the case of cloned passports, families of the missing wouldn´t report missing members as they wouldn´t have gone missing.

Of course, wearing a mask away from the action, as some passengers wearing them seem to have done, might cause so much discomfort, they´d want to remove them. Not removing them might suggest alternative motives for wearing them. There is another advantage to wearing a mask of sorts. As well as concealing identity it can equally serve to identify a person as someone not to be shot at. I have yet to hear of anyone on the Mavi Marmara being shot in the head through a gas mask. From all the evidence admitted so far, it seems none of those shot were wearing them, which suggests the majority were identified before bullets were fired through heads at close range. As no mention has been made of these questions being asked in the in-house inquiry proposed by Israel and the US government, it would appear the the framework has been set to answer only questions where convenient answers already exist. An inquiry where answers dictate the questions is no inquiry at all.

(Additional research by David Sketchley)

Update from Bryan Hemming, 16 July 2010:

In a recent interview with Greta Berlin posted on the Intifada-Palestine site she said that all passengers on the flotilla had been accounted for. She added that there were five seriously ill passengers in hospital, two of whom were not expected to survive. I am very surprised that nobody in the mainstream media bothered to follow the story up. They created it. This is the sort of misinformation and lack of information we constantly come up against. The MSM ignores false claims they make when they find them out to be untrue later. They just pretend they never said it. Nevetheless, they are always eager to publish them without checking fully. We who comment on what they say, or don´t say are held to blame for disseminating the false information they give us. As I have said previously, if it´s disinformation, it´s disinformation from reliable sources.

The cold-blooded execution of 19 yr-old US citizen Furkan Dogan

2010-06-10T15:44:00.004+02:00

Israeli SS stormtroopers cold-bloodedly execute US citizen Furkan Dogan:

Update:

Juan Cole's post "Video Shows Israeli Commando Executing American" and Tikun Olam's "IDF Executed Mavi Marmara Victims" both have similar takes.

The 'paintball gun' theory is pure hasbara propaganda...

‘Israel is a Lunatic State’ – Finkelstein on Gaza Flotilla Attack

2010-06-05T11:42:00.000+02:00

Israel - Terrorist Gangster State

2010-06-01T11:25:00.000+02:00

The criminal regime occupying Palestinian land is a putrid sore festering the world. After the attack by the pirate state on a Turkish ship in international waters, with the murder of Turkish nationals we have yet more proof. By their continuous criminal, terrorist actions, Israel has forfeited any legitimacy as a state. The state which was, and is, run by gangsters.

One cannot now stand idly by. The whole world must now stand up and be counted. I propose that a massive effort be made to gather a massive fleet of hundreds of boats carrying thousands of people to do the same trip to Gaza all at the same time, carrying humanitarian aid to break the blockade. The Israelis will not be able to stop hundreds of boats at the same time.

Meanwhile I urge all who read this to sign the "BRussells Tribunal" petition:

"Appeal of the BRussells Tribunal (31 May 2010)

Please show your solidarity with the people of Gaza and the victims of Israeli killings by signing this appeal at http://www.petitiononline.com/GazaSol/petition.html

Israel’s killing of 19 innocents with 60 more injured must have maximal consequences

Israel impunity is a threat to all

Even for eyes burnt witnessing human suffering, there is something shocking, something impossible, about watching Israeli soldiers, armed and in gas masks, fast-roping from helicopters onto an aid ship filled with civilians — journalists, parliamentarians, human rights activists, mothers, doctors — headed to Gaza to break the inhuman siege that keeps 1.5 million people somewhere between life and death.

The Mavi Marmara, carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid, was flying a white flag: a universal symbol of non-violence. It was also flying the Turkish flag, in international waters, giving it status as a sovereign extension of Turkey. Regardless, Israel attacked. For what does Israel fight? Its existence, or the continuance of a regime of collective punishment calculated to destroy the Palestinians? Or are these the same thing? Dead: 19. Injured: 60. Who gave the order? Will NATO react to an attack on one of its members?

Simple public murder

The right to exist cannot be asserted through murder. The very acceptance of Israel into the United Nations System was — in 1948 — conditioned on the former recognising the equal rights of Arabs, in particular the right of return of Palestinians. Not only has Israel prevented the return of refugees, it took over by force and occupied in 1967 the rest of historic Palestine. From founding until now we have witnessed an unending catalogue of Israeli atrocities. By these countless atrocities, Israel has forfeited any claim to legality — it is moreover a state that refuses to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or consider giving up its nuclear weapons.

Gaza is both the world’s largest open-air prison and the 21st century’s undeclared concentration camp. Everybody knows it. The UN knows it. The US president knows it. Tens of thousands of civil servants in countries across the world know it. The siege is a way of sealing the exits, and of slow killing. It is an atrocity on the same level as genocide. Here every man and woman has a moral duty: inaction is complicity and a betrayal of humanity. All legal rights are with those who attempt to end this situation by whatever means.

The Freedom Flotilla is such an attempt: it is a refusal of inhuman suffering. Its symbolism is more powerful than any navy. As such, it remains what it was as it embarked on its journey: a signal of the collapse of the blockade. Where earlier lone vessels tried to reach Gaza, now they go in groups. More will follow. When a thousand ships set sail, what would Israel do?

Israel on trial

Israel lost the battle for international public opinion a long time ago. None can forget the relentless strafing of a captive civilian population in Israel’s last war on Gaza. Who can Israel hope to persuade now?

— We condemn the illegal, immoral and inhuman blockade on Gaza, and all who uphold it

— We condemn Israel

— We condemn Israel’s brutal attack on peace activists in international waters. We declare that 700 brave souls, from 50 nations, represent something real that Israeli propaganda cannot erase

— We mourn the 19 murdered and express hope and solidarity with the 60 injured. We demand of Israel the release of all activists detained

— We call on all international institutions — including the UN, the EU and human rights agencies and organisations — to declare themselves unequivocally on this latest Israeli atrocity and to work towards ending Israeli impunity

— We demand an international tribunal to judge all Israeli crimes, past and present. We call on the UN General Assembly to request of the International Court of Justice an advisory opinion on the legality of Israel within the United Nations System given its systematic and gross disrespect of international law and moral authority

— We support all efforts by all means to free the people of Gaza from their prison and their suffering, including sanctions and divestment against Israel, a general boycott, and the boycott — by workers federations — of all ships going to and from Israel

— We call upon people everywhere to express their solidarity with the dead and injured, and with Palestinians under occupation, in local expressions of outrage wherever it is deemed useful.

We call on all associations, unions, parliaments, professionals and others to endorse this appeal and its demands. Please distribute and act upon it.

The BRussells Tribunal Committee

http://brusselstribunal.org

Please circulate this appeal widely and show your solidarity with the people of Gaza and the victims of Israeli killings by signing this appeal at http://www.petitiononline.com/GazaSol/petition.html.

For information contact: info@brusselstribunal.org

Con Coughlin - MI6 stooge, the proof.

2010-05-31T11:40:00.002+02:00

Yet more proof that Daily Telegraph correspondent Coughlin works for MI6 and as MI6 is a minor department of the CIA, Con Coughlin also works for the CIA. Whether they pay him or not is beside the point.

The proof comes here, at Salon.com:in Louis Bayard's article on Pullitzer Prizewinner Ron Suskinds new book "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism":

"In September 2003, according to Suskind, CIA officials -- at the direct command of then-CIA director George Tenet and at the behest of the White House -- deliberately forged a backdated letter from Iraqi security chief Tahir Jalil Habbush to Saddam Hussein. The phony letter claimed that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had trained for his mission in Iraq and that al-Qaida had facilitated mysterious shipments from Niger to Iraq. The letter was the "slam dunk" the Bush administration had been seeking so desperately: evidence of a direct operational link between al-Qaida and Saddam's regime. Leaked to conservative British journalist Con Coughlin, the letter was made public just as Saddam was captured in his spider hole near Tikrit. In the course of a single news cycle, the war against Saddam had been "vindicated," Saddam himself had been flushed from hiding, and the Bush administration's war had seemingly reached its triumphal and foregone conclusion. "

The news is not new. It was first aired at Democracy Now! back in August 2008 - nearly 2 years ago in an interview with Ron Suskind, which also reveals that MI6 and Dearlove were aware back in early 2003 before the invasion that Iraq defintely had no WMD.

Now, having read Bayard's article and Suskinds inerview, here is Coughlin's disinformation:

"Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam"

By Con Coughlin
Published: 12:01AM GMT 14 Dec 2003

This is not ghe first time, as Coughlin has a history of publishing aticles with false information supplied by the intellifence services. See here:

"Con Coughlin, more MI6 disinformation?"