Tag Archive for 'United States'

Time for the media to ask some deeper questions about Israel/American relations (ie. it’s in pretty good shape)

Published on 17 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Everybody calm down. Hillary Clinton has reaffirmed Washington’s “absolute commitment to Israel’s security”.

Jerusalem is facing growing Palestinian protests, especially since Hamas called for a “day of rage”.

Bradley Burston writes in Haaretz a completely over the top comment:

Washington is beginning to relate to the Netanyahu government as if it were Hamas.

Please. Israel has not suffered any financial or diplomatic pain from America. The occupation continues. Settlements expand. Rightists are emboldened.

Here’s food for thought:

Washington ought to remember one thing, however: The majority of Israelis wholly oppose halting construction in east Jerusalem. They may be angry over the timing of the announcement – but most want building to continue.

The latest on the supposed rift between Israel and (usually) compliant Washington

Published on 16 March 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

A running, mainstream media commentary on Israel’s current spat with Washington is below. Countless articles are now appearing across the world detailing the supposed crisis between the close allies.

Frankly, I’m skeptical. I don’t doubt that the Obama administration is upset with Israel’s apparent dissing of Vice President Biden but what matters is a serious reversal of building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Without threatening financial or diplomatic punishment, Israel has nothing to worry about. Is this coming? Watch this space.

The Guardian:

President Barack Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, are on a collision course today in a row described by a senior Israeli diplomat as the worst crisis between the two countries for more than three decades.

An Obama administration source told the Guardian that the White House and US state department are intent on pushing Israel into substantive peace talks with the Palestinians and will not shy away this time as they did when the last effort ended in embarrassing failure in September.

“No one gets anywhere by accusing each other. We are hoping to lay the foundations for negotiations,” the source said. In order to get negotiations under way, the US is demanding that Netanyahu cancel or freeze plans to build 1,600 planned Jewish homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem. But Netanyahu, speaking at a meeting of his own Likud party, showed no signs of backing down. “The building in Jerusalem, and in all other places, will continue in the same way as has been customary over the last 42 years,” he said.

The Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, in a weekend telephone call to other Israeli diplomats, expressed alarm about the extent of the confrontation.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted the normally cool Oren, an academic-turned diplomat, as saying: “Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975 … a crisis of historic proportions.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial:

In recent weeks, the Obama Administration has endorsed “healthy relations” between Iran and Syria, mildly rebuked Syrian President Bashar Assad for accusing the U.S. of “colonialism,” and publicly apologized to Moammar Gadhafi for treating him with less than appropriate deference after the Libyan called for “a jihad” against Switzerland.

When it comes to Israel, however, the Administration has no trouble rising to a high pitch of public indignation. On a visit to Israel last week, Vice President Joe Biden condemned an announcement by a mid-level Israeli official that the government had approved a planning stage—the fourth out of seven required—for the construction of 1,600 housing units in north Jerusalem. Assuming final approval, no ground will be broken on the project for at least three years.

But neither that nor repeated apologies from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prevented Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—at what White House sources ostentatiously said was the personal direction of President Obama—from calling the announcement “an insult to the United States.” White House political chief David Axelrod got in his licks on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday, lambasting Israel for what he described as “an affront.”

Since nobody is defending the Israeli announcement, least of all an obviously embarrassed Israeli government, it’s difficult to see why the Administration has chosen this occasion to spark a full-blown diplomatic crisis with its most reliable Middle Eastern ally. Mr. Biden’s visit was intended to reassure Israelis that the Administration remained fully committed to Israeli security and legitimacy. In a speech at Tel Aviv University two days after the Israeli announcement, Mr. Biden publicly thanked Mr. Netanyahu for “putting in place a process to prevent the recurrence” of similar incidents.

The subsequent escalation by Mrs. Clinton was clearly intended as a highly public rebuke to the Israelis, but its political and strategic logic is puzzling. The U.S. needs Israel’s acquiescence in the Obama Administration’s increasingly drawn-out efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear bid through diplomacy or sanctions. But Israel’s restraint is measured in direct proportion to its sense that U.S. security guarantees are good. If Israel senses that the Administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations, it will care much less how the U.S. might react to a military strike on Iran.

As for the West Bank settlements, it is increasingly difficult to argue that their existence is the key obstacle to a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew all of its settlements from Gaza in 2005, only to see the Strip transform itself into a Hamas statelet and a base for continuous rocket fire against Israeli civilians.

Israeli anxieties about America’s role as an honest broker in any diplomacy won’t be assuaged by the Administration’s neuralgia over this particular housing project, which falls within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries and can only be described as a “settlement” in the maximalist terms defined by the Palestinians. Any realistic peace deal will have to include a readjustment of the 1967 borders and an exchange of territory, a point formally recognized by the Bush Administration prior to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. If the Obama Administration opts to transform itself, as the Europeans have, into another set of lawyers for the Palestinians, it will find Israeli concessions increasingly hard to come by.

That may be the preferred outcome for Israel’s enemies, both in the Arab world and the West, since it allows them to paint Israel as the intransigent party standing in the way of “peace.” Why an Administration that repeatedly avers its friendship with Israel would want that is another question.

Then again, this episode does fit Mr. Obama’s foreign policy pattern to date: Our enemies get courted; our friends get the squeeze. It has happened to Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras and Colombia. Now it’s Israel’s turn.

Foreign Policy’s The Cable:

As Washington went to bed Monday night, officials, wonks, and reporters were still struggling to digest where the diplomatic crisis between the U.S. and Israel stood.

Following Friday’s public dressing down of Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, announced via a State Department spokesman’s readout of an angry call with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Israeli side thought that a détente would follow and cooler heads would soon prevail. The Obama administration had made its point, and the Israeli side believed the harsh rhetoric would subside while Clinton waited for Netanyahu to respond to the list of demands she had read to him.

But that plan unraveled and confusion set in Monday after a roller-coaster couple of days where public and private signals crossed and different parts of the Obama administration seemed to be sending different messages.

As of late Monday evening, even Special Envoy George Mitchell didn’t know what to do, after having delayed his trip back to the region by one day. A State Department official said Monday afternoon that Mitchell wasn’t sure he could go ahead with his planned meetings unless he heard something constructive from the Israelis. Maybe he would just go on to Moscow for the scheduled meeting of the Quartet, the high-level diplomatic contact group that includes the European Union, Russia, the United Nations, and the United States.

Late Monday evening, the same official told The Cable that Mitchell would still leave Washington Monday night, “but he wants to be informed by the Israeli response before he departs.” That struck Israeli sources as odd because in Israel it was the middle of the night at the time.

“They are waiting for some kind of response from Prime Minister Netanyahu and I’m under the impression the response is coming soon,” an Israeli official who had no direct knowledge about Netanyahu’s thinking told The Cable. But, he added quickly, “If they don’t like the response … then what?”

So what happened between Friday and Monday?

A State Department official confirmed to The Cable that initially there was a U.S. effort to avoid talking about Clinton’s list of demands in order to allow Netanyahu to mull them over without feeling public pressure from all sides. It had been agreed an answer would come within “a couple of days,” the Israel official said.

But then on Sunday, White House political advisor David Axelrod doubled down, talking openly about the administration’s displeasure over the announcement that Israel would move forward with 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, calling it an “affront” and an “insult.”

“We thought they would ratchet down the rhetoric on Saturday, but Axelrod didn’t tone it down,” the Israeli official said.

That led to a push on Sunday night and Monday by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful lobbying group that is usually in step with the Israeli government, calling on the administration to step back from the ledge. AIPAC was involved in encouraging  almost a dozen senior Congressmen and Senators issue statements on Monday criticizing the White House for escalating the war of words.

More worrying, perhaps, is the growing realization that Clinton’s demands on Netanyahu might be impossible for him to fulfill, and therefore the administration may have drawn lines that will further reduce the possibility the “proximity” talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians can get off the ground.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Monday that Clinton wants Netanyahu to prove Israel is “willing to address the core issues at the heart of the peace process.” The Israeli official said that there is no belief inside the Israeli government that final status issues such as borders can be negotiated through a third party, even the Americans.

Clinton also wants Netanyahu to reverse the announcement of the new East Jerusalem homes, but that also may be a complete nonstarter for the Israelis, because it would force them to abandon their long-held position that any issues related to Jerusalem are their own domain and prerogative.

A further complicating factor is that the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party has threatened to withdraw from Netanyahu’s governing coalition if he puts Jerusalem up for discussion in peace talks with the Palestinians. Shas controls the Interior Ministry, which issued the settlement announcement that started the crisis in the first place.

“It’s in Netanyahu’s power to try to reverse the decision, but I doubt politically that can be achieved. Beyond that I don’t see him as willing to do so,” the Israeli official explained. “It could be a tactical starting point. But on the issue of Jerusalem per se, nobody’s led the administration to believe there can be any kind of movement on our part.”

And so, Mitchell heads to the region Tuesday without knowing what his plans are; Clinton heads to Moscow for a Quartet meeting later this week in which nobody knows what the path forward is; and Netanyahu prepares a response that he must know will conflict with what the White House wanted, at least as of last Friday.

And time is of the essence because Netanyahu is coming to Washington at the end of the week and Clinton is scheduled to speak at the AIPAC convention next Monday.

Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg tried to lend an adult voice to the discussion Monday evening.

“Making peace in the Middle East is not easy, but you have to keep at it. And you have to deal with the fact that we have challenges on both sides,” Steinberg said. “It’s the responsibility of both sides to help create the conditions that make it possible to engage on this difficult task. Even with that, success is not guaranteed.”

“Despite the difficulties and despite differences that we have with Israel over certain things, in particular the settlements, we have a deep and abiding commitment to Israel’s security,” Steinberg continued.

“That we pursue this not because we are uninterested in Israel’s security, but precisely because we’re interested in Israel’s security.”

American Jewish groups take sides (and most love Israel far more than Obama).

Watch Obama spokesman avoid answering why America backs a Jewish state that flouts laws

Published on 16 March 2010 in Israel. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas asks a question to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs that too few journalists do: Why does the US support Israel when it continues to violate international law?

Why Washington is scared of a website that doesn’t care about its secrets

Published on 16 March 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The ground-breaking website Wikileaks – unafraid to publish pretty much any information that comes its way – is clearly a threat to the empire:

This document is a classifed (SECRET/NOFORN) 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks. “The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the U.S. government are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out”. It concocts a plan to fatally marginalize the organization. Since WikiLeaks uses “trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whisteblowers”, the report recommends “The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistlblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site”. [As two years have passed since the date of the report, with no WikiLeaks' source exposed, it appears that this plan was ineffective]. As an odd justificaton for the plan, the report claims that “Several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Kora, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the Wikileaks.org website”. The report provides further justification by enumerating embarrassing stories broken by WikiLeaks—U.S. equipment expenditure in Iraq, probable U.S. violations of the Cemical Warfare Convention Treaty in Iraq, the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah and human rights violations at Guantanmo Bay.

Stop the presses: Petraeus links Israel/Palestine to US impotence

Published on 16 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Praise the Lord. Finally, somebody realises that Israeli actions are directly affecting American interests and lives.

Sure, this has been clear for decades but better late than never.

The likely outcome from Washington? More “disappointment” with Israeli actions in Palestine and little else:

On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) “too old, too slow … and too late.”

The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus’s instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. “Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.” But Petraeus wasn’t finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command — or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus’s reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged  in the region’s most troublesome conflict.

Obama has no issue with settlements (if he did, he’d pull money)

Published on 15 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Just in case it wasn’t clear that America essentially approves Israeli building in East Jerusalem, read here. The sound and fury coming from Washington is purely for show. And it means nothing on the ground.

Meanwhile, the US Zionist lobby is getting angry with the Obama administration. How dare you say anything critical of Israel, you anti-Semites:

Amid continued tensions between Washington and Jerusalem after an Israeli government announcement last week during the goodwill visit of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that it would approve the construction of 1,600 new Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, the influential pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) says recent U.S. criticism of the Israeli government  is “a matter of serious concern” and has called on the Obama administration to defuse tension with Israel.

The AIPAC statement comes in advance of the group’s major annual strategy conference in Washington starting next weekend, at which both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are due to speak.

It follows Biden’s condemnation of the housing announcement while on a goodwill trip to Israel last week, and a 45-minute follow up call by Clinton to Netanyahu Friday in which she blasted the housing announcement, saying it undermines trust and confidence in the peace process and in American interests.

White House advisor David Axelrod told NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday the White House was insulted by the Israeli announcement, and considered it “an affront,” coming just two days after the Palestinians had agreed to go into U.S.-mediated indirect proximity talks with the Israelis.

Netanyahu on Sunday said the timing of the announcement was “regrettable” and “hurtful,” but done in innocence. A Jerusalem planning committee also reportedly canceled this week’s planned construction-related agenda items, although not the project itself that was the source of the latest controversy.

Middle East Peace Envoy George Mitchell is slated to return to the region on Tuesday to try to salvage the proximity talks.

“What happened to Vice President Biden this week in Jerusalem was egregious but hardly new,” former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, now vice president of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, wrote at The Daily Beast Saturday. “Right-wing governments in Israel have regularly embarrassed high-level U.S. officials by making announcements about new settlement activity during or just after their visits.”

AIPAC statement below the jump:

“AIPAC CALLS RECENT STATEMENTS BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT “A MATTER OF SERIOUS CONCERN” URGES OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO WORK TO IMMEDIATELY DIFFUSE THE TENSION WITH ISRAEL The Obama Administration’s recent statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel are a matter of serious concern. AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to diffuse the tension with the Jewish State. Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East. The foundation of the U.S-Israel relationship is rooted in America’s fundamental strategic interest, shared democratic values, and a long-time commitment to peace in the region. Those strategic interests, which we share with Israel, extend to every facet of American life and our relationship with the Jewish State, which enjoys vast bipartisan support in Congress and among the American people. The Administration should make a conscious effort to move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel, with whom the United States shares basic, fundamental, and strategic interests. The escalated rhetoric of recent days only serves as a distraction from the substantive work that needs to be done to with regard to the urgent issue of Iran’s rapid pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the pursuit of peace between Israel and all her Arab neighbors. We strongly urge the Administration to work closely and privately with our partner Israel, in a manner befitting strategic allies, to address any issues between the two governments. As Vice President Biden said last week in Israel, “Progress in the Middle East occurs when there is no daylight between the United States and Israel.”

How “illegal” immigrants are held by the civilised West

Published on 15 March 2010 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

The voices of refugees around the world deserve to be heard. Instead, demonisation seems order of the day.

Britain:

Torture survivors seeking sanctuary in Britain are being wrongly held in government detention centres, despite independent medical evidence supporting claims of brutal violence against them in their home countries.

According to Home Office guidelines, in cases where there is evidence that a person seeking asylum has been tortured they should be detained only in “exceptional circumstances”. But medical charities that carry out hundreds of independent assessments of torture survivors every year have accused the government of routinely ignoring their reports, with victims held in detention centres until their asylum claims are heard – and, in almost every case, rejected.

America:

Friedman asks America to do to Israel what it has never done

Published on 15 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Everybody’s favourite American supporter of bombing civilians to freedom, Thomas Friedman, writes in yesterday’s New York Times that the rift between America and Israel is serious.

I’ll believe this when Israel’s colonisation program actually decreases. Until then, it’s cheap rhetoric, at best:

I am a big Joe Biden fan. The vice president is an indefatigable defender of U.S. interests abroad. So it pains me to say that on his recent trip to Israel, when Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s government rubbed his nose in some new housing plans for contested East Jerusalem, the vice president missed a chance to send a powerful public signal: He should have snapped his notebook shut, gotten right back on Air Force Two, flown home and left the following scribbled note behind: “Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our country.”

I think that — rather than fuming and making up — would have sent a very useful message for two reasons. First, what the Israelis did played right into a question a lot of people are asking about the Obama team: how tough are these guys? The last thing the president needs, at a time when he is facing down Iran and China — not to mention Congress — is to look like America’s most dependent ally can push him around.

And second, Israel needs a wake-up call. Continuing to build settlements in the West Bank, and even housing in disputed East Jerusalem, is sheer madness. Yasir Arafat accepted that Jewish suburbs there would be under Israeli sovereignty in any peace deal that would also make Arab parts of East Jerusalem the Palestinian capital. Israel’s planned housing expansion now raises questions about whether Israel will ever be willing to concede a Palestinian capital in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem — a big problem.

Iran is fearful and may therefore want the bomb

Published on 15 March 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Noam Chomsky, speaking last week at Harvard, says that the Islamic Republic has every right to fear American foreign policy and is therefore acting rationally to protect itself:

No one in their right mind wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons. If they’re not developing a nuclear deterrent, they are crazy.

Goldstone threatens the chances of killing civilians, anywhere

Published on 15 March 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , .

Surprise, surprise. So the real issue with the UN Goldstone report over Gaza isn’t really the innocents killed, it’s that the recommendations could be used against the West (via the Forward):

In Congress, New York Democrat Gary Ackerman, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, is one of those leading the new argument against the report. Ackerman stressed, in a February 25 Foreign Affairs Committee hearing with Clinton, “It’s not Israel that I raise the concern about.” He said he was worried about the implications of Goldstone’s report for the United States.

The number of civilians killed by America’s military in Iraq and Afghanistan is “certainly a number multiplied by some huge multiple compared to the number of civilians that were killed as Israel pursued terrorists in Gaza,” Ackerman said. He warned that if Goldstone’s report were to be adopted as an international standard, American officials could be prosecuted for war crimes outside the United States.

How many American Jews are upset with Israel?

Published on 15 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The Jewish Forward newspaper is unhappy (sure, it’s pitifully weak, but unlike the Australian Jewish News, Israel can occasionally step out of line):

There were the expected handshakes and bear hugs, the slaps on the back and supportive words amiably expressed before the media. Just what ought to happen when Israel welcomes the vice president of the United States, the second in command of its greatest ally and the highest-ranking official of a still-new administration to visit Jerusalem.

Then, dafka, the proverbial stab in the back.

Hours after Vice President Joe Biden declared that there is “no space” between Israel and the U.S., the Israeli government announces the approval of 1,600 new housing units in contested East Jerusalem, expanding the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood for ultra-Orthodox Jews on land that Palestinians also claim. The announcement from the Interior Ministry, run by the head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, claimed that the expansion has been in the works for years (true) and that the timing was just a coincidence (hard to believe).

The day after, press reports said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was surprised and embarrassed by the timing of the announcement. If true, that suggests he is incapable of managing his sprawling administration, so packed with patronage that it is the largest in Israel’s history — hardly an encouraging thought.

In any case, this is no way to treat a guest. The timing and the substance of the announcement left Biden in a terrible spot, forced to condemn his host’s behavior even as he was trying to launch a new round of indirect negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis.

As Americans, we feel insulted. Contrary to the spin generated in some quarters, the Obama administration has gone out of its way to support Israel and the Netanyahu government. As the Forward has reported, cooperation between the two nations is flourishing — the Obama administration has worked hard to bolster Israel’s qualitative military edge, which had eroded during the final year of the presidency of George W. Bush. America continues to do the heavy lifting required to fend off unfair criticism of Israel in unfriendly venues. And American Jews continue to pour money, resources and energy into ensuring Israel’s future.

Some Jews believe that all of Jerusalem belongs under Israeli control, but that is a political position, not an indisputable fact. Another people also lays claim to this holy city. This is why negotiations are so desperately needed — and why expanding Ramat Shlomo by fiat may serve the narrow purposes of a political agenda, but it obstructs the broader goal of a negotiated settlement. As Israeli writer (and Forward contributing editor) Uri Dromi wrote the day after this debacle: “By expanding settlements, instead of separating from the Palestinians while we still can, we Israelis are dooming ourselves to lose the Jewish and democratic state that has been won with so much sacrifice.”

But our reaction to this announcement is more personal. The American vice president was placed in a humiliating position. Note to Israel: That’s not how you treat your best friend.

Murdoch casts a spell over already gutless corporate reporters

Published on 14 March 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Former executive editor of the New York Times Howell Raines writes in the Washington Post that American mainstream journalists are scared of the power of Fox News and should fight back:

Why has our profession, through its general silence — or only spasmodic protest — helped Fox legitimize a style of journalism that is dishonest in its intellectual process, untrustworthy in its conclusions and biased in its gestalt? The standard answer is economics, as represented by the collapse of print newspapers and of audience share at CBS, NBC and ABC. Some prominent print journalists are now cheering Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp. (which owns the Fox network) for his alleged commitment to print, as evidenced by his willingness to lose money on the New York Post and gamble the overall profitability of his company on the survival of the Wall Street Journal. This is like congratulating museums for preserving antique masterpieces while ignoring their predatory methods of collecting.

Obama is managing America’s empire very nicely, thank you

Published on 14 March 2010 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Worried that Barack Obama is not protecting and expanding the American empire?

Rest easy, writes Alexander Cockburn:

Obama is just what the Empire needed. Plagued though it may be by deep structural problems, he has improved its malign potential for harm – the first duty of all U.S. presidents of whatever imagined political stripe.

How many more online addicts will we soon find in Havana?

Published on 13 March 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

What is the effect of Washington’s recent decision to allow web companies such as Google and Yahoo to operate in closed societies, such as Cuba and Iran?

Slowly realising why the Middle East is on fire

Published on 13 March 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

Gee, things are tough in the Middle East when Murdoch’s Australian sounds depressed. Maybe, just maybe, more corporate journalists based in Israel will start to write about the reasons for the bleakness; fundamentalist Jews:

The Middle East peace process was in tatters last night and Israel’s coalition government faced crisis after it announced a huge new housing development in the Arab area of East Jerusalem.

Israeli Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon said the Labour Party was considering quitting the coalition government, and Palestinian negotiators said they were pulling out of the US-brokered “proximity talks”.

The crisis erupted during the visit of US Vice-President Joe Biden to Israel to support the talks.

Mr Simhon said: “Members of the Labour Party have more and more difficulty in taking part in a coalition government that they joined with the purpose of relaunching the peace process with the Palestinians.

“The anger of Biden is justified. A grave error has been committed, and there is a price to pay.”

The Arab League, which pressed Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to accept renewed talks even though Israel had not agreed to freeze Jewish settlements, withdrew support for the discussions.

…

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Mr Biden had said privately Israel’s decision to build in East Jerusalem was liable “to set the Middle East on fire”.

It said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent three officials to tell the US delegation he did not know the announcement was coming, but “US administration officials didn’t buy the explanation” and “officials in both the White House and the State Department accused Israel of having set Biden up”.

What happens when Bush destroyed the city of Fallujah? Cancer, that’s what

Published on 13 March 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I’ve written over the years about the many health effects of depleted uranium in Iraq. American forces stand accused of causing a massive rise in cancer amongst the local population.

Now, more questions are being asked about the Iraqi city of Fallujah, after at least two massive American attacks in the years after 2003.

Al-Jazeera reports (and features leading American reporter Dahr Jamail, who was actually in Fallujah in 2004 during the American siege):

Just one more sign that Washington loves Israel like its only child

Published on 13 March 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

The predictable Israeli slap to America’s modest demands should surprise nobody.

Besides, the real test of America’s love affair with Israel and contempt for Palestinians is clear:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be the keynote speaker at this month’s annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, The Cable has confirmed.

Clinton will speak on the morning of Monday, March 22, the second day of a conference that will bring together a star-studded roster of American, British, and Israeli leaders in downtown Washington, D.C. Monday is shaping up to be the biggest day of the three-day event, with opposition leader Tzipi Livni giving the next major speech after Clinton and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak Monday night.

A host of U.S. lawmakers will also convene on the conference Monday, including U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as well as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD, and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-VA.

Retiring Indiana Senator Evan Bayh will speak to the group Sunday, March 21, as will Israel’s Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren and the head of Google Israel Meir Brand. An interesting roundtable that day will feature the Foreign Policy Initiative’s Bob Kagan, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Robert Satloff, and former Bush administration spokesman/soon-to-be Senate candidate Dan Senor.

Tuesday morning, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will address the conference, just before the thousands of participants flood the halls of Capitol Hill, making their annual pilgrimage to lobby for strengthened sanctions against Iran and in support of robust foreign aid. The plan is to emphasize the group’s support for proximity talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, “provided they lead to direct negotiations,” our insider said.

One conference speaker who isn’t as famous but should make for a lively discussion is Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, who has disputed that Israel committed any war crimes during 2008 and 2009 operations in Gaza.

“I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza,” Kemp told the BBC in this video.

How Washington treats friends

Published on 13 March 2010 in General. 2 Comments Tags: .

A handy reminder of a noble American past:

In 1951 a quiet village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were committed to asylums and hundreds afflicted.

For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now an even more extraordinary explanation has emerged, with evidence suggesting the CIA peppered food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind-control experiment at the height of the Cold War.

New York Times prefers to view the Middle East as a balanced tiff between two old mates

Published on 12 March 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

The New York Times editorialises about the Middle East with its usual “he said/she said” mentality. Both the Israelis and Palestinians must work towards peace but why the hell should anybody in the Middle East see America and Barack Obama as anything other than a nearly unquestioning friend of Israel?

Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. used rare and decidedly undiplomatic language on Tuesday to upbraid Israel after it announced plans to build 1,600 new housing units in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem. “I condemn the decision. …,” he said in a statement.

The Obama administration is understandably furious. Mr. Biden was in Israel working to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The word came after he had spent the day vowing the United States’ “absolute, total and unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.”

Aides say Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blindsided by the announcement from Israel’s Interior Ministry, led by the leader of right-wing Shas Party. But he didn’t disavow the plan. And it is hard to see the timing as anything but a slap in the face to Washington.

There were conflicting reports on whether the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, would go ahead with “proximity talks” — in which George Mitchell, the Middle East envoy for the United States, is supposed to shuttle between Jerusalem and the West Bank in hopes of making enough progress to revive direct negotiations on a two-state solution. Mr. Abbas should stick with the talks.

President Obama seriously miscalculated last year when he insisted that Israel impose a full stop on all new settlement building, only to have Mr. Netanyahu refuse. The goal was — and is — just. The Palestinians are legitimately fearful that the more Israel builds in the West Bank or East Jerusalem the less likely it is to ever negotiate away any disputed territory. A settlement freeze could well have jump-started serious negotiations.

But one of the basic rules of diplomacy is that American presidents never publicly insist on something they aren’t sure of getting — at least not without a backup plan. By the time Mr. Netanyahu finally acceded to a 10-month partial halt that exempted Jerusalem, the Palestinians felt so burned that the peace effort collapsed.

It must be noted that Mr. Obama and Mr. Mitchell also failed to persuade Arab leaders to agree to make any gestures to Israel in return for a settlement freeze.

The Obama administration worked hard to get Mr. Abbas to agree to renewed talks, arguing that more stalemate was not in the Palestinians’ interest. And it made some rare headway with Arab leaders, persuading them to endorse the American proposal for talks — giving Mr. Abbas needed political cover. Suggestions that Arab leaders might now renege on that support are worrisome.

Mr. Mitchell will have to keep working all sides to move this ahead. He must continue to press Israel on the settlements issue. And if Israel is to make real concessions, it will need more than gestures from the Arab states.

Mr. Biden said on Wednesday that the administration would hold both Israelis and Palestinians “accountable for any statements or actions that inflame tensions or prejudice the outcome of talks.” That would be a very important start. We also hope that if progress lags, the administration will be ready to put forward its own proposals on the central issues of borders, refugees, security and the future of Jerusalem.

Mr. Obama has another chance to move the peace process forward. This time he has to get it right.

Look, says reporter, we’re winning the war in Afghanistan…the military says so

Published on 12 March 2010 in General. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

How many Western journalists either fell for the spin or were happy to propagate lies helpfully provided by Washington and her allies?

The U.S. media told the public for weeks that a big, offensive battle was taking place in Marja, in Afghanistan, a “city of 80,000 people” in Helmand province which was also the logistical hub of the Taliban. The description gave the impression that the U.S. presence in Marja was a major strategic objective, and that the city was more important than other district centers in the province. But the picture the military painted of Marja and duly reported by a biddable news media was one of the most dramatic pieces of misinformation so far in the entire war, aimed at hyping the offensive as a big turning point in the conflict. In truth, Marja is not a city or even a town, but either a few groups of farmers’ homes or a large farming area encompassing much of the southern Helmand River Valley. The sparsley populated area is completely rural, with no incorporated city or town. The fiction that Marja was a city of 80,000 got started at a briefing given by officials on February 2 at the U.S. Marine base called Camp Leatherneck. Officials referred to Marja as a populous city. The Associated Press put out an article that same day saying they expected up to 1,000 insurgents were “holed up” in the “southern Afghan town of 80,000 people,” a statement that evoked a picture of house-to-house, urban street fighting. ABC News perpetuated the myth the next day, in a story that referred to the “city of Marja” and claiming that the city and its surrounding area were “more heavily populated, urban and dense than other places the Marines so far have been able to clear and hold.” The rest of the news media fell in line, giving fake descriptions of a densely populated, urban Marja, often using the terms “city” and “town” interchangeably, without fact-checking the descriptions. On February 22, the Washington Post reported that the decision to launch the big offensive against Marja was intended largely to impress U.S. public opinion with the military’s effectiveness in Afghanistan by showing that it could achieve a “large and loud victory.” The false idea that Marja was a significantly large city center was an essential part of that message.