Antony Loewenstein

I recently visited Christmas Island to investigate the role of the Serco-run prison for asylum seekers.

Very few journalists visit the place due to its isolation and cost but in this Crikey piece today, referencing a discussion on SBS TV last night, there is a remarkable admission:

Former Channel Ten Producer Jim Carroll blames the pressures of a 24/7 news cycle coupled with dwindling resources on the continuing the convenient asylum narrative.

“It cost us more than $100, 000 to send us a crew up there [to Christmas Island],” Carroll says. “If you want depth and analysis that’s when commercial broadcasters go to the shock jocks.”

More than $100k? I simply can’t understand how a visit there could have cost this much. If this is the corporate media’s rationale for becoming increasingly parochial, then they should seriously examine why reporting on an island so close to Australia presumably requires such a large team.

It doesn’t.

American mercenary company Blackwater (now known as Academi, to ensure even more lucrative contracts) has an appalling record of human rights abuses. Gawker recently obtained a massive cache of documents that highlight this cowboy firm:

Blackwater, the private mercenary firm that became synonymous with Bush-era war profiteering and reckless combat-tourism,announced yesterday that it has changed its name to Academi (after a previous incarnation as Xe Services) in a bid to distance itself from its history of wanton lawlessness. We’ve obtained a 4,500-page record of that history in the form of State Department incident reports documenting every time a Blackwater guard shot at an Iraqi between 2005 and 2007.

We got them in response to a Freedom of Information Act request we filed four years ago. They come from the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which was charged with overseeing and monitoring the contractors hired by State to secure its diplomats and other VIPs in the war zone. While firms like DynCorp and Triple Canopy make frequent appearances, the reports are dominated by Blackwater, which was paid roughly $1 billion between 2004 and 2009 to provide “worldwide protective services” for State Department personnel. (It continues to surreptitiously weave its tentacles into various government contracts; hence the name changes.)

In Iraq, Blackwater’s “protective services” consisted in large part of preemptively shooting any car that drove near its convoys. Page after page of the reports feature drivers (and occasionally boat pilots) who were fired upon simply because they drove “aggressively,” attempted to pass, or didn’t heed warnings to keep their distance. There was no routine mechanism for following up with the drivers to determine if they were injured or were actually hostile. Blackwater (and DynCorp and Triple Canopy) guards roamed Iraqi cities and highways, ignoring traffic rules and shooting at other drivers literally at will, and driving on. According to a 2007 investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform [pdf], between 2005 and 2007 Blackwater operatives fired on Iraqis at least 195 times, or an average of 1.4 times per week. That included an infamous Baghdad firefight at Nisour Square that killed 17 civilians.

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On February 19, 2007, a Blackwater motorcade carrying a dignitary to a local juvenile prison was attempting to make a left turn when a parked white four-door sedan entered oncoming traffic. “The lead [vehicle's] rear gunner…noticed that the lone occupant had a device in his hands,” reads a report on the incident. “Suspecting that the vehicle may be a Vehicle-Born Explosive Improvised Device, [redacted] fired one round from his rifle into the grill of the suspicious vehicle…. The impact of the round caused the driver to bring the vehicle to an immediate stop. He raised his hands in the air revealing that he held a cell phone.” The same Blackwater team fired on cars three other times that day.

Life in Palestine is often transmitted to the West by people who don’t live there, merely passing through. Father Peter Bray, the Vice Chancellor of Bethlehem University, has regularly written missives about reality under occupation. This is his Christmas message:

22nd December 2011

Greetings again from this holy place! I still find it amazing to be here in this place where the whole  Christian world focuses it attention in just a few days, the place where it all began – the place where  Jesus was born.

I have written a Christmas message for Bethlehem University to go to our supporters here and  around the world. However, this letter is directed to people I know from the past or with whom I  have made some special connections since coming here to Bethlehem University. I mentioned in my Christmas message on our website (www.bethlehem.edu) that the whole Christmas event is about bringing new life to people. This is something we are doing here at Bethlehem University.

What I want to do in this letter is take some small examples which I believe illustrates that. Rather than going over many things that are happening on campus, I want to focus on what Bethlehem University is doing in small isolated villages.  In August 2007 the Bethlehem University nursing programme began to be offered in the village of Qubeibeh. This was the outcome of some long discussions Brother Dan Casey, the then Vice Chancellor of Bethlehem University, had had with Sister Hildegard Enzenhofer SDS. Sister  Hildegard is responsible for a home for elderly women in Qubeibeh and in her work with the women in the village was constantly asked if it was possible to arrange some educational programme for the young people in this very isolated village. After thinking about it for some time  and consulting with others, she approached Brother Dan to ask that Bethlehem University offer the Nursing programme there.

What Brother Dan and Sister Hildegard began then has had amazing results. During the graduation ceremony at Bethlehem University on 10 June 2011 the first group of ten students from the programme in Qubeibeh graduated. It was an amazing experience for them and something their  parents and family were so proud to experience.

Qubeibeh is a small very traditional Muslim village isolated by the Israeli Separation Wall. Having the nursing programme offered in this village has had a significant impact on the lives of the students and their families, but also on the village.  Apart from the sound education the students at Qubeibeh are receiving, students there are being empowered. This is particularly noticeable among the young women in the programme. When the first group of students began they were rather unsure of themselves and the young women rather timid and reticent to be too involved. However, by the end of the programme that had changed remarkably.

Qubeibeh is a very conservative, traditional Muslim village where the father of a family is the dominant figure. The custom in the village has been that the father generally marries off a daughter when the best opportunity comes along. One young woman had discussed her future with her father and had built up the courage to indicate to her father that she did not want to get married until she had a master’s degree. He eventually accepted this and so she intends to follow that goal now she has graduated. This young woman mentioned that before this programme was available graduating from a university was a dream beyond the grasp of anyone in her village. As well, nursing was something girls were not encouraged to think about. Now looking back she says that the opportunity to study in the programme has changed her life and her future. It has also changed her family. With the opportunity to explore different ideas with others in the programme, she brought home new ideas to talk about. The impact on the family has led to a more open attitude towards different ways of seeing things and ways of thinking which has brought a new sense of life to the family.

The father of another young woman had decided to withdrawn her from the programme towards the end of the second year to marry her off to the son of a friend. She also had developed the courage to talk to her father about her desire to complete the four-year programme. She then enlisted the help of Sister Hildegard with the result that her father cancelled the engagement and allowed her to complete her study. It was wonderful for me to see her here at Bethlehem University for the graduation and to be introduced to her parents who were obviously so proud that their daughter had graduated from Bethlehem University. This young woman mentioned that being part of the programme not only changed her perception of nursing and learning, but also changed her personality. She is deeply grateful for the way she has grown.

At one stage last year there were some false rumours going around the village about what was happening during classes and about nursing not being a suitable occupation for girls to be involved in. Two sisters in the programme who heard about these rumours decided on their own initiative to do something about what was being said. They organize a group of the nursing students to visit the local schools and also to meet with parents to make sure these people understood what the truth of the situation was and to outline what a very worthwhile occupation nursing is. They began to challenge the mentality that existed among so many about nursing. Being prepared to take such a stand and do something about the rumours showed how the experience of being in the programme had inspired them and given them the courage to speak out! The awareness they have of the value of nursing and their willingness to confront the misconceptions about it, particularly in going into boys’ schools, took courage and determination, which they showed very clearly.

These examples of students being empowered are but scratching the surface of the impact Bethlehem University is having on individuals and this small village. Apart from individuals who are being empowered and educated, there have been changes in the attitudes of people in the village to the programme. Initially, among other things, there was concern about young men and women being in the same classroom and about the young women touching naked flesh. By the end of the second year of the programme these were no longer concerns and the arrangements in the programme had been accepted and supported by the vast majority of people in the village. One of the impressive things is that in a village where there is so much unemployment, every one of the students who graduated in June now has a job, in neighbouring health centres, in hospitals, in clinics and so on.

When I reflect on the impact Bethlehem University is having in that village I am reminded of Jesus’ mission that he came that we “may have life and have it to the full.” It seems to me that one of the fruits of Bethlehem University’s presence in Qubeibeh is that it is bringing life to people there in a way that had not been expected. The experience there has also reminded me of the quote attributed to St. Francis that we should “preach the Good News at all times and, if necessary, use words.” It seems to me that what is happening at Qubeibeh is that Bethlehem University is indeed preaching the Good News without using words!

So this past year has been the source of great encouragement for me when I visit villages like Qubeibeh and see the outcome of that work. I was also down south of Hebron for the graduation ceremony for a course the Bethlehem University Institute for Community Partnership ran. It was for women in three isolated villages and was designed to help them understand the very basic aspects of democracy: what it means to vote, how to identify candidates, how to decide what these candidates stand for, how to decide which candidate best represented what they valued, how to go about voting and so on. I found it very moving to listen to these women talk about how this course had given them, for the first time, some understanding of what democracy was about. They were excited about being so aware and empowered to be involved. This again is bringing life to these people and an example of living the Good News.

There are many other aspects of Bethlehem University I could talk about which highlight the value we are bringing to the lives of people here. However, all this takes place in the midst of occupation and increasing restrictions. Unfortunately, the Wall continues to be extended at an even faster rate.

People near Bethlehem are feeling the impact of that now. In the Cremisan valley in the next town to Bethlehem of Beit Jala, the extension of the Wall will cut some fifty eight families from their land and make it impossible for them to access land that has been in their families for generations. The continuation of this taking of Palestinian land has meant that the Bethlehem area is now only 13% of what it used to be. The Wall keeps rolling on and absorbing land. This extension of the Wall, the confiscation of Palestinian land, the destruction of homes, expansion of settlements and other restrictions is making it very difficult for the Palestinians to really believe that the Israeli government is serious about the peace process. Yet in the midst of all this the people remain resilient and positive. I find this amazing and inspiring.

I am very fortunate to have my sister and brother in law with me for three weeks to see something of this land and to celebrate Christmas with us. It is indeed a great blessing to have them here. As we move to celebrate Christmas in this holy place where it all began, I wish you God’s peace and a deepening awareness of what this extraordinary celebration is about. Peace and justice is at the heart of the incarnation and something we can all be involved in promoting. We can also stand in solidarity with people like the Palestinians who are suffering such injustice. Thank you for your support. Please keep us in your prayers as we here at Bethlehem University seek to be a source of new life for the Palestinian people.

Special Christmas blessing to you from this holy place.

My following essay appears in Lebanon’s Al Akhbar English:

Radical Jewish colonists in the occupied Palestinian West Bank have been attacking Arabs for decades. In the past these incidents barely rated a mention in the Israeli press, let alone the global corporate media.

It was only this month after a small group of Zionists rioted at an Israeli army base that the Israeli government expressed outrage over their behaviour. The violence “shocked” Israel, wrote the New York Times, while the torching of mosques has now become a regular event.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his military to apply administrative detention orders to Jewish extremists, as is routinely done with Palestinians in the territories. Aside from the fact that such a change in policy highlighted the apartheid nature of Israel’s matrix of control in the West Bank – different laws apply to Jews and Arabs – even the Israeli army claimed it would make little difference.

Successive Israeli leaders since 1967, across the political spectrum, have indulged, funded, supported, defended and armed hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank (and Gaza until 2005). The effect of this mass colonization project, condoned by Western powers, has been the impossibility of a viable two-state solution and growth in ultra-nationalism. Acceptance in a post Arab Spring Middle East is a remote dream.

On countless occasions I’ve seen young Israeli soldiers standing idly by while settlers hit Arabs in the West Bank and destroy their fields. The main job of the army in the territories is to maintain and enlarge the Zionist hold on valuable land.

The Israeli government and the vast bulk of the Zionist Diaspora have remained silent for years when colonists attack Palestinians in “price tag” missions. Indeed, public fund-raising events in America, including those held by the Hebron Fund, openly collect tax-exempt donations for the very people the Israeli government now claims to be against.

In Australia similar fund-raisers are held for the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an organization directly complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian properties. A JNF board member in America quit this month after the organization launched eviction proceedings against a Palestinian home in East Jerusalem.

The rot has well and truly set into the Israeli political establishment. A columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz, Yossi Sarid, argued that all the settlements were illegal and damned the horror currently felt by the Israeli army (no mention of the Arabs, of course, with violence against them seemingly less important than harming Israeli soldiers):

“So there is no need to be overly impressed by the orchestrated shouting about the Frankenstein that has gotten out of hand, because the denouncers are the ones who created him. They were warned a thousand times about creating a state within a state, an army within an army, but they didn’t want to listen. They were too scared of the settlers and their rabbis. We see them in their disgrace, dancing in front of Zionism’s coffin, and despise them.”

The depth of the problem was revealed by right-wing Zionist publication, The Jewish Voice, who proudly published tips for settlers keen to sabotage army equipment. One read:

“The engines of vehicles, especially armoured vehicles, are highly sensitive to sand or sugar. The same is even more true about the vehicles’ oil and gas tanks. Carelessness about that could do serious damage to the unit’s ability to carry out destruction, just because of a little inattention, wouldn’t it be a pity?”

It would be a mistake to presume Israel’s democratic deficit simply occurs in the occupied territories. The current Knesset has revealed the dark authoritarianism that beats inside the Jewish state.

I recently spoke to a leading independent American journalist Joseph Dana, currently living in Ramallah, who told me that it was impossible to find more than a select few Israelis who understood the depth of the problem and what was required to force an ideological change on the population.

Liberal Zionism is in crisis, pushed into silence by its cherished two-state dream disappearing and far happier to demonise boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) than propose any serious alternatives to Knesset-backed fascism. Importantly, few Israelis chose to enter the West Bank and witness the creeping apartheid against Palestinians living there; the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem bubbles are far more comforting. The vast bulk of the Israeli media class see no evil and remain on the establishment drip feed.

An increasing number of pieces of legislation aim to disenfranchise Arabs, liberal Jews, secular Jews, Palestinians and the Jewish Diaspora without which the nation would not survive.

The Financial Times, in a scathing essay in early December, highlighted the myriad issues. Hagai El-Ad, the director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, repeated the mantra that I hear amongst the real activist Left in Israel. “This is not just about anti-democratic bills, this is about anti-democratic society,” he said. “It is about the idea that human rights are somehow synonymous with treason, and about creating an atmosphere of suspicion.”

These trends caused Philip Weiss, founder of the influential American website Mondoweiss, to write, “Israel isn’t good for the Jews anymore.” He railed against mainstream Israeli opposition to multiculturalism, pluralism and tolerance.

It is something growing numbers of liberal Jews worldwide are rejecting. Even former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in his Atlantic blog, “I think we’re only a few years away, at most, from a total South-Africanization of this issue.” The one-state solution is happening by default, whether those bleating about maintaining a Jewish majority like it or not.

Israel has always relied on unlimited Western largesse to fund its racism. When arguably America’s most influential columnist, New York Times’ Thomas Friedman – a man with a long history of defending Israeli extremism, explains a new book by Belén Fernández – starts denouncing the “Israel lobby” for buying the US Congress and blindly acquiescing with discriminatory policies towards Palestinians, the mood is shifting:

“If the 2.5 million West Bank Palestinians are not a real people entitled to their own state, that must mean Israel is entitled to permanently occupy the West Bank and that must mean — as far as Newt is concerned — that Israel’s choices are: 1) to permanently deprive the West Bank Palestinians of Israeli citizenship and put Israel on the road to apartheid; 2) to evict the West Bank Palestinians through ethnic cleansing and put Israel on the road to the International Criminal Court in the Hague; or 3) to treat the Palestinians in the West Bank as citizens, just like Israeli Arabs, and lay the foundation for Israel to become a binational state. And this is called being “pro-Israel”?”

None of these attitudes concern the pro-settler Jerusalem Post who this week editorialised in favour of a Republican front-runner, Newt Gingrich, who didn’t even acknowledge the existence of Palestinians as a legitimate people. Other measures to delegitimize any opposition to Zionism include this recent essay published by the neo-conservative haven American Enterprise Institute that argues, “How Israel’s defence industry can help save America.”

The Western liberal love for Israel ended many years ago. What remains less accepted, however, is what has been taking place instead of the myth. Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken enlightened his readers that the ideology of [settler movement] Gush Emunim has dominated Israel for decades. It is irreversible. It is Israel:

“This is a strategy of territorial seizure and apartheid,” he despaired. “It ignores judicial aspects of territorial ownership and shuns human rights and the guarantees of equality enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.”

The wilful ghettoization of communities is now endemic.Take the example of a religious school in the town of Afula that recently discovered that their children had seen a Muslim wedding during class. They were so appalled – under the influence of an NGO that aims to prevent any Arab and Jewish mingling – that a Rabbi had to be called to “purify” the facilities before they could return.

Such racism is not reserved for a few extreme communities on the fringes of society. They are views shared and enacted by leading members of the Israeli government.

It is the natural outcome of over 60 years of global Zionist indulgence.

Antony Loewenstein (http://antonyloewenstein.com/) is an Australian journalist, author of My Israel Question and co-editor of the forthcoming title After Zionism.

As the US and Israeli backed Egyptian regime escalates its rhetoric and violent actions against those pushing for democracy (something deeply feared by Washington and Tel Aviv), local blogger Sand Monkey unleashes on those who helped spark the revolution:

One of the biggest mistakes of this revolution, and there are plenty to go around, was that we allowed its political aspects to overshadow the cultural and social aspects. We have unleashed a torrent of art, music and creativity, and we don’t celebrate or enjoy it, or even promote it. We have brought the people to a point where they were ready to change. To change who they are and how they act, and we ignored that and instead focused all of our energies in a mismanaged battle over the political direction of this country. We clashed with the military, and we forgot the people, and we let that small window that shows up maybe every 100 years where a nation is willing to change, to evolve, to go to waste. Even the work that was being done, it focused on teaching them their political rights, or superficial behavioral things like “don’t litter” or “don’t break traffic laws”, and nothing regarding respecting the women or the people from other faiths that share this cursed land. Wasn’t a priority back then, because in our arrogance and hubris we assumed that people will change by themselves. That they will act right, despite the fact that throughout the history of humanity, there wasn’t a single proof that people, by themselves, will act right. Sorry everyone, we were arrogant and idealistic. Forgive us.

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There is a disconnect between the revolutionaries and the people, and that disconnect exists in regards of priorities. Our priorities are a civilian government, the end of corruption, the reform of the police, judiciary, state media and the military, while their priorities are living in peace and putting food on the table. And we ignore that, or belittle it, telling them that if they want this they should support what we want, and deriding their economic fears by telling them that things will be rough for the next 3 to 5 years, but afterwards things will get better on the long run. Newsflash, the majority of people can’t afford having it even rougher for 3 to 5 years. Hell, they can’t afford to have it rough for one more month. We tell them to vote for us for a vague guarantee and to not to sell their votes or allow someone to buy their loyalty, while their priorities are making sure there is food on the table for their families tonight. You sell them hope in the future, and someone else gives them money and food to survive the present. Who, do you think, they will side with?

Amira Hass on a people who one day will be seen as having suffered under the rule of a Zionist ruled dictatorship (funded and indulged by a global, Jewish Diaspora, including countless liberal Zionists, who remain silent or conflicted):

The Palestinians are heroes, and that’s the only fact that’s relevant after the slight shock of the hilltop thugs. The hands are the hands of thugs, and the head? The head is the head of the hostile regime under which the Palestinians live and which harasses them every moment of every day, week after week for decades. To live this way and remain sane – that’s heroism. “And who says we’re sane?” Palestinians answer me. Well, here’s the proof: self-irony.

The thugs of the hills are only the icing on the cake. Most of the work is being done by thugs wearing kid gloves. Unlike the people who threw the stone at the deputy brigade commander, these are fan favorites in Israel. The flesh of our flesh. Officers and soldiers, military jurists, architects and contractors in the service of the army, Interior Ministry and National Insurance Institute clerks. The hands are their hands. The head is the head of the demos, the Israeli-Jewish people, who by the democratic process send governments to be the dictator over the Palestinians.

What is the Israeli dictatorship over the Palestinians? Not only control of their space and the creation of isolated enclaves; not only the 19-year-olds who are sent – masked and armed to the teeth – on military raids (560 last month, according to the monitoring group in the PLO’s negotiations department ); not only daily arrests (257 arrests in November, including 15 Gazans ) and the 758 temporary roadblocks that were placed on West Bank roads that month.

The dictatorship is not even just a ban on Palestinian construction in more than 60 percent of the West Bank, permission to invent a new law every day to disenfranchise and expel, and the demolition, during 2011, of 500 Palestinian dwellings, wells, cisterns, animal pens, toilets and other essential structures. The dictatorship is all that together, and much more.

It is an issue that receives far too little attention, despite the government in Colombo committing egregious human rights abuses for years. Mass murderers run the country. Emanuel Stoakes, a colleague, writes the following for New Statesman:

Earlier this week, a piece was published by the Daily Telegraph that contained the latest in a powerful body of evidence that indicates the Sri Lankan army committed atrocities during the final phase of the country’s civil war.

It referenced damning allegations of war crimes committed by government forces during the conflict’s conclusion. These were sourced from an affidavit containing the testimony of a former member of the military who held a very senior position during the war, and had access to the flow of orders from the highest levels of the military command. The source asserted that government-sanctioned “hit squads” operated during the war to kill civilians; that the army killed surrendering enemy combatants and civilians in contravention of international law; and, most crucially, included the assertion that these were ordered by the Defence Minister, Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

But yet, as the Sri Lankan government publishes its anaemic in-house “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Committee” report (politely described by Amnesty International on Monday as “ignoring serious evidence of war crimes”) and Tamil asylum seekers get deported from this country to face the risk of intimidation — even death — at home, the left appears not to be paying the sort of attention the issue deserves.

Why? Not only do human rights organisations suspect that tens of thousands of civilians were intentionally shelled into annihilation by the Sri Lankan army’s unilaterally declared “no fire zone” in the North East of the Island nation in 2009, it appears that the survivors are being kept in camps not dissimilar to internment centres for prisoners of war. Civilians kept in these places are experiencing rape, brutalisation and malnourishment if reports by rights groupsand journalists are to be taken seriously.

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The more people willing to raise their voice and call for accountability for the Rajapaksa regime, the more people standing up for the rights of asylum seekers not to be deported home to risk of torture, the greater the possibility that, at the very least, the issue of Sri Lankan Tamil suffering will become more widely known.

It would be a source of disappointment for those who naively assume that it is the province of the left to lead the charge for such causes to discover that this was merely wishful thinking.

If this is the future of warfare and intelligence gathering, rest assured it won’t only be Washington doing it.

Last month philosopher Patrick Lin delivered this briefing about the ethics of drones at an event hosted by In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture-capital arm (via the Atlantic):

Let’s look at some current and future scenarios. These go beyond obvious intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), strike, and sentry applications, as most robots are being used for today. I’ll limit these scenarios to a time horizon of about 10-15 years from now.

Military surveillance applications are well known, but there are also important civilian applications, such as robots that patrol playgrounds for pedophiles (for instance, in South Korea) and major sporting events for suspicious activity (such as the 2006 World Cup in Seoul and 2008 Beijing Olympics). Current and future biometric capabilities may enable robots to detect faces, drugs, and weapons at a distance and underneath clothing. In the future, robot swarms and “smart dust” (sometimes called nanosensors) may be used in this role.

Robots can be used for alerting purposes, such as a humanoid police robot in China that gives out information, and a Russian police robot that recites laws and issues warnings. So there’s potential for educational or communication roles and on-the-spot community reporting, as related to intelligence gathering.

In delivery applications, SWAT police teams already use robots to interact with hostage-takers and in other dangerous situations. So robots could be used to deliver other items or plant surveillance devices in inaccessible places. Likewise, they can be used for extractions too. As mentioned earlier, the BEAR robot can retrieve wounded soldiers from the battlefield, as well as handle hazardous or heavy materials. In the future, an autonomous car or helicopter might be deployed to extract or transport suspects and assets, to limit US personnel inside hostile or foreign borders.

In detention applications, robots could also be used to not just guard buildings but also people. Some advantages here would be the elimination of prison abuses like we saw at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This speaks to the dispassionate way robots can operate. Relatedly–and I’m not advocating any of these scenarios, just speculating on possible uses–robots can solve the dilemma of using physicians in interrogations and torture. These activities conflict with their duty to care and the Hippocratic oath to do no harm. Robots can monitor vital signs of interrogated suspects, as well as a human doctor can. They could also administer injections and even inflict pain in a more controlled way, free from malice and prejudices that might take things too far (or much further than already).

Many in the corporate press love to luxuriate over drones, those seemingly silent and deadly killers against America’s “enemies”.

The reality is rather different, explains Nick Turse in TomDispatch:

According to statistics provided to TomDispatch by the Air Force, Predators have flown the lion’s share of hours in America’s drone wars.  As of October 1st, MQ-1’s had spent more than 1 million hours in the air, 965,000 of those in “combat,” since being introduced into military service.  The newer, more heavily armed MQ-9 Reaper, by comparison, has flown 215,000 hours, 180,000 of them in combat.  (The Air Force refuses to release information about the workload of the RQ-170 Sentinel.)  And these numbers continue to rise.  This year alone, Predators have logged 228,000 flight hours compared to 190,000 in 2010.

An analysis of official Air Force data conducted by TomDispatch indicates that its drones crashed in spectacular fashion no less than 13 times in 2011, including that May 5th crash in Kandahar.

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The failure to achieve victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with a perceived success in the Libyan war – significantly fought with airpower including drones – has convinced many in the military not to abandon foreign wars, but to change their approach.  Long-term occupations involving tens of thousands of troops and the use of counterinsurgency tactics are to be traded in for drone and special forces operations.

Remotely piloted aircraft have regularly been touted, in the press and the military, as wonder weapons, the way, not so long ago, counterinsurgency tactics were being promoted as an elixir for military failure.  Like the airplane, the tank, and nuclear weapons before it, the drone has been touted as a game-changer, destined to alter the very essence of warfare.

Instead, like the others, it has increasingly proven to be a non-game-changer of a weapon with ordinary vulnerabilities.  Its technology is fallible and its efforts have often been counterproductive in these last years.  For example, the inability of pilots watching computer monitors on the other side of the planet to discriminate between armed combatants and innocent civilians has proven a continuing problem for the military’s drone operations, while the CIA’s judge-jury-executioner assassination program is widely considered to have run afoulof international law – and, in the case of Pakistan, to be alienating an entire population.  The drone increasingly looks less like a winning weapon than a machine for generating opposition and enemies.

Centre for Constitutional Rights launches a necessary case:

Last night, attorneys for Iraqi torture victims abused in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison and other detention centers in Iraq challenged two private military contractors’ claims to immunity from being sued on the grounds that their alleged torture occurred during wartime. Today, a coalition of groups, including retired military officers and human rights NGO’s and experts, supported their claims by filing amicus briefs that argue that for-profit corporations cannot be considered equivalent to U.S. soldiers and should face justice under traditional legal principles governing any illegal conduct.

Said Center for Constitutional Rights Senior Staff Attorney Katherine Gallagher, “Our plaintiffs – innocent Iraqi civilians – were subjected to horrifying acts of torture because these multi-billion-dollar corporations violated military policies and U.S. law prohibiting torture and other war crimes. We are in no way challenging battlefield conduct, but rather, our plaintiffs seek accountability for gratuitous and sadistic acts of violence by private companies in Iraq for profit.”

The lawsuits charge that the two U.S. corporations directed and participated in illegal conduct at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq, including subjecting plaintiffs to electric shocks, sexual assaults, forced nudity, broken bones, and deprivation of oxygen, food and water. Originally filed in 2008, the two federal lawsuits,Al-Shimari v. CACI and Al-Quraishi v. Nakhla, were brought on behalf of 76 Iraqis who were subjected to abuse and torture in Iraq by employees of the corporations, CACI and L-3. In both cases, the district court ruled the claims could proceed to discovery. The two cases are now being consolidated for the Court of Appeals to assess whether corporate defendants can invoke the immunity available to the United States government and military in order to evade legal, moral and financial responsibility for their role in one of the most notorious episodes in recent American history. The corporations, which had been hired to provide interpretation and interrogation services, argue their actions are protected under the mantle of sovereign immunity and thus beyond review of the courts because they are “combatant military activities.” Court martial and other testimony from soldiers convicted of serious abuse in Iraq directly link both companies to instances of torture.

Said Shereef Akeel of Akeel & Valentine PLC, “A key principle is at stake here, which is that no one is above the law. It has been a 7 years struggle and these corporate defendants have not yet been held accountable for their involvement in the Abu-Gharib torture scandal.” 

Debate over Israel/Palestine is shifting. Can you imagine even five years ago a Palestinian-American such as Ahmed Moor (co-editor with me on a book coming out in 2012 called After Zionism) talking constructively to a Jewish Rabbi about the one-state solution?

Meanwhile, in mad Zionist land, where another Holocaust is always around the corner, the Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick (a woman who makes a good living scaring Jews about a litany of Muslim “threats”) is back today with another piece that praises the increasingly paranoid and aggressive tactics of hardline Zionists who want to shut down any debate over Israel/Palestine. This is her ideal future:

For decades New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman balanced his substantively anti-Israel positions with repeated protestations of love for Israel.

His balancing act ended last week when he employed traditional anti-Semitic slurs to dismiss the authenticity of substantive American support for Israel.

Channeling the longstanding anti-Semitic charge that Jewish money buys support for power-hungry Jews best expressed in the forged 19th century Protocols of the Elders of Zion and in John Mearshimer’s and Stephen Walt’s 2007 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Friedman denied the significance of the US Congress’s overwhelming support for Israel.

As he put it, “I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”

It would be nice if Friedman is forced to pay some sort of price for finally coming out of the closet as a dyed-in-the-wool Israel hater. But he probably won’t. As he made clear in his column, he isn’t writing for the general public, but for a very small, select group of elitist leftists. These are the only people who matter to Friedman. And they matter to him because they share his opinions and his goal of indoctrinating young people to adopt his pathologically hostile views about Israel and his contempt for the American public that supports it.

It doesn’t matter to Friedman that overwhelming survey evidence, amassed over decades, show that the vast majority of the American public and the American Jewish community support Israel. It doesn’t matter to him that the support shown to Netanyahu in Congress last May was a reflection of that support.

As he put it, “The real test is what would happen if Bibi tried to speak at, let’s say, the University of Wisconsin. My guess is that many students would boycott him and many Jewish students would stay away.”

Embedded in this statement are two key points. First, Friedman assesses that the prevailing view on US college campuses are his own radical views. And he is convinced that college students share his views.

As he sees it, if college students share his views, then it doesn’t matter that Congress supports Israel today. Through the youth, he and his anti-Israel colleagues will own the future.

The key question then is is Friedman right? Do he and his friends on the Israel bashing Left own the future? Are their efforts to convince young Americans in places like University of Wisconsin to embrace leftist dogmas, including rejection of Israel’s rights working? Is support for Israel diminishing? A plethora of data indicates that while the picture is mixed, the dominant trends do not favor Friedman’s views. This is true not only in the US but in Israel as well.