Go to Original
By Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Indifference to criticism of the bombing and invasion of Gaza is the result of indulgence by the West
When Lord Derby asked Sir Lewis Namier, the great historian of Georgian England, why he, as a Jew, didn't write Jewish history, Namier replied: "There is no modern Jewish history, only a Jewish martyrology, and that is not amusing enough for me." It might be said that the underlying purpose of the Zionist project – which Namier passionately supported – was to reject Jewish martyrology, and to turn the Jews from passive victims to active makers of their destiny.
That has been accomplished to a fault, many would say as they watch the news from Gaza, where one image after another has caused deep revulsion. But then that rejection of martyrdom and victimhood may also explain what has puzzled as well as dismayed onlookers – the fact that Israel seems to be quite oblivious to international opinion.
In Muslim countries there is, of course, intense hostility to Israel, which, in return, has long since followed the Latin principle oderint dum metuant towards her neighbours: Let them hate us, so long as they fear us. Since there's no point in even trying to win their hearts and minds, they should be taught to respect brute force, a precept which, it should be admitted, has enjoyed considerable practical success.
The West is different, and European sentiment can be changed by events, as indeed it has been. Israel and Zionism were once very popular causes in Europe, not least on the liberal left, until the 1967 Six Day War and after. Since then, European sympathy has steadily ebbed away as Israel attacked Lebanon in 1982, and again in 2006, with the suppression of the intifadas between. And yet Israel shrugs off all strictures and rebukes. No criticism from relief agencies or the Red Cross makes any difference.
Even more strikingly, Israel has ignored the Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire. One reason for this is that the only Western country that really counts is the United States, and Israel has for many years been able to rely on unconditional American support. Having threated to veto previous draft resolutions, the US took part in drafting the security council resolution calling for a ceasefire, and was evidently going to vote for it.
Then late on Thursday the American representative shocked other council members by abstaining. This volte face came on direct orders from the White House, after president Bush had spoken to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and the Israelis have taken abstention as permission to continue their action. "Israel is not going to show restraint," Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister, told The Washington Post yesterday, understandably enough in the circumstances.
Although Israel is sometimes described as an American client state, which receives huge financial subsidy from Washington, she is unique as a client state: she can do exactly as she likes in the knowledge that she will never be seriously restrained by her sponsor. Even when the White House is privately irritated by Israeli actions, Congress is absolutely reliable, never knowingly outbid in its unswerving loyalty. During the bombardment of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the House of Representatives passed a resolution of total solidarity with Israel by 410 votes to eight, and the Senate has just passed another on a hand vote, not even bothering to take a formal tally.
Anyone who thought that there would be a change of heart and direction after the last American election hasn't been concentrating. The Senate in question is the newly elected, strongly Democratic one, which has just met for the first time. During the presidential campaign Barack Obama went out of his way to endorse Israel. He has appointed in the form of Hillary Clinton perhaps the strongest supporter of Israel ever to serve as Secretary of State, not excluding Henry Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from Hitler, though even she is surpassed in her commitment by Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff.
But there is more to it, and Israeli intransigence or indifference to outside opinion goes back before the birth of the state. As it happens, Emanuel has something in common with Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni: their fathers all served in the Irgun. This was the intransigent Zionist militia – described as terrorists by Isaiah Berlin among others, and as fascists by Albert Einstein among others – which waged a campaign of violence against the British, and the Palestinian Arabs, in the last years of the British Mandate in 1946-48. Its exploits included the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, with great loss of life, the hanging of two captured British sergeants in reprisal, and the massacre of villagers at Deir Yassin.
Behind that brutality lay something else. Men take revenge for small wrongs, Machiavelli said, unable to avenge the larger, and the Irgun was avenging an incomparably and unimaginably greater crime just suffered by the European Jews. The Jews had tried to be nice to the goyim, Zionism said in effect, and see where it had got them. A Jewish state would now be created and guarded with all necessary force, indifferent to what the outside world thought. If need be, Israel will borrow the old chant of the Millwall fans, "No one likes us, we don't care"– and no more Jewish martyrology.
Not that Namier was the only Zionist to use "Jewish" in a derisive sense. When someone mentioned Trotsky's phrase "No war, no peace", David Ben-Gurion said that it was "some stupid Jewish idea", and there is a well-known Israeli story about Moshe Dayan, the military hero of the Six Day War. When he taught at the Israeli staff college, Dayan used to expound a problem, ending with the words, "And I want no Jewish solutions here."
He meant that, on the sand table or the field, he expected his battles to be won by dash and ferocity, rather than than by the traditional Jewish virtues of subtlety and patience. Zionist toughness has worked for a long time, but it could be that Israel will one day discover that there's something to be said for Jewish solutions.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Rethinking Zionism
Go to Original
By Philip Weiss
By Philip Weiss
Dana Goldstein, whose thoughtful condemnation of the Gaza slaughter after years of reserve I welcome, is a little uncomfortable with the embrace. She points out that I have identified myself as a non- or anti-Zionist, and says that anti-Zionism is redolent of antisemitism. She's a post-Zionist, she says. Goldstein's comments deserve a response, especially at this moment in intellectual life, when so many people are crowding the doorways of this conversation.
I also used to say post- or non-Zionist to avoid being negative. The playwright David Zellnik told me that anti-Zionist felt to him like a denial of Israel's considerable achievements and I respected David's view. Now I've come to say that I'm an anti-Zionist for several reasons.
First: My feelings are not neutral about Zionism; I don't like it. As a Jew, I think about it a lot and there is nothing I can really feel positive about outside of the Jewish pride and its historical significance of it and its visionary component. All these elements have lost their value: Zionism privileges Jews and justifies oppression, and this appalls me. Saying I'm anti-Zionist is a sincere expression of my minority-respecting worldview.
Second, Post-Zionist strikes me as an evasion. At this moment, Zionism reigns in historical Palestine and in American Jewish leadership. To say you're a post-Zionist is like saying you're a post-Communist during the Stalin purges. You are tastefully separating yourself from the world, dainty as an English person drinking tea with their little finger in the air. Zionism remains a very powerful force in Middle East affairs and American society. It's not helpful to those who are trying to understand these matters to evade this fact or suggest that post-Zionism is actually a real factor in, say, the life of Gaza City. I urge people to take a stand if they find Zionist beliefs that privilege 6 million Jews over 5-6 million non-Jews and that have entailed apartheid on the West Bank and ethnic cleansing a supportable ideology, especially in the age of our mutt president-to-be.
Third, anti-Zionism is an idealistic Jewish tradition. In fact, it draws on the same visionary and If-you-dream-it feeling that Zionism did 100 years ago, before the militants ruined it, and engages the same young restless sensibilities and liberationist feeling as Zionism did by imagining Israel as a state of its citizens, not a Jewish state. We anti-Zionists can say with honor that anti-Zionists like Rabbi Elmer Berger identified the problems with Zionism 60 years ago, accurately when he said that Zionism meant contempt for the Arab population, dependence on a backroom lobby in the United States, and the introduction of dual loyalty into American Jewish life. All true. Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin and Norman Mailer all opposed Zionism to one degree or another out of concerns with ethnocentrism--didn't like its Is-it-good-for-the-Jews backbeat. These problems are larger today than ever, especially post-Iraq-war and the Iraq war's idiot stepson, Gaza.
Finally, declaring I'm anti-Zionist is a way of trying to make room in American life for this view. Right now being critical of Israel means that you can hurt your business, as a Bay Area professional told the San Francisco Chronicle. True and disgusting. As Jimi Hendrix said when he was changing attitudes: I'm going to wave my freak flag high!
As to the antisemitism point, the American Jewish Committee has said the same thing: anti-Zionism is antisemitism. It thus conflates Jewishness with Zionism, and this conflation is damaging the Jewish experience around the world. When Dana says she worries about the antisemitic suggestion of anti-Zionism, I feel a shadow of censoriousness. There are things you can and can't say. Well, I am an empowered Jew who has never experienced functional antisemitism ever in my life, and my empowerment is also part of this conversation: I insist on speaking about Jewish cultural/financial power in the U.S. as a component of my Zionist critique. Do I think that Jews should be denied power? No! Do I think that there should be quotas on Jewish inclusion in elite institutions? No! Well: I would like Jewish participation in mainstream media roundtables on the Middle East held to 50 percent. That is my quota. These ideas have made some of my readers uncomfortable. They've made me uncomfortable. I grew up in fear of lurking antisemitism. But I have decided in my 50s that these are things I think about all the time as a mature person, however flawed I am, and I think they're important--so I am going to talk about them.
And I would add that shutting down debate in the name of "antisemitism" strikes me as selfish. Our phantom worries about a second Holocaust take precedence over the real evidence that surrounds us of man's inhumanity to man, not just man's inhumanity to Jews. And our phantom worries mean that we cannot address the incredible, everyday, real suffering of Palestinians that has been perpetrated politically in large part by empowered American Jews who are all over the media and political establishment, some of whom limit debate of the issue by citing a possible infraction of our tremendous freedoms. Believe me, when our freedoms are encroached upon, I will howl. Today and tomorrow I howl for the Jewish leadership's actual crushing of the Palestinian right of self-determination.
The Collapsing US Economy
Go to Original
By Paul Craig Roberts
Will the Government Turn to the Printing Press?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonfarm payroll employment declined by 3,445,000 from December 2007 through December 2008.
The collapse in employment is across the board.
Construction lost 520,000 jobs. Manufacturing lost 806,000 jobs. Trade, transportation and utilities lost 1,495,000 jobs (retail trade accounted for 1,120,000 of this loss). Financial activities lost 145,000 jobs. Professional and business services lost 713,000 jobs. Even government lost 188,000 jobs.
Only in health care and social assistance has the economy been able to eke out a few new jobs.
Many analysts believe the job losses will be as great or greater during 2009.
Moreover, the reported job losses are likely understated. Noted statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that biases in measurement have understated the job loss over the last 12 months by 1,150,000 jobs.
Williams also notes that the official unemployment rate is an enormous understatement, due in part to the Clinton administration’s decision not to count as unemployed those discouraged workers who have been without jobs for more than one year. Williams reports the unemployment rate as it was measured prior to “reforms” designed to minimize the measured rate of unemployment. According to the methodology used in 1980, the US unemployment rate in December 2008 reached 17.5 percent.
Yes, “our” government lies to us about economic statistics, just as it lies to us about “terrorists,” “weapons of mass destruction,” “building freedom and democracy in the Middle East,” and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
An objective person would be hard pressed to find any statement made by the US government that is reliable.
The collapse of the job market means even harder times for last year’s and this year’s crops of college graduates. The offshoring of professional jobs and the widespread use by US corporations of H-1b, L-1, and other work visa programs for foreigners have left many recent American university graduates without careers.
Recently, Bill Gates of Microsoft was pleading with Congress to allow even more foreigners in on work visas. According to Gates, there is a shortage of American workers despite a 17.5 percent unemployment rate. I personally know American computer engineers, both seasoned and recent graduates, who cannot find jobs.
What Gates and American corporations want is cheap labor, in effect indentured servants, unprotected people who don’t demand an American standard of living and who have no student loans to repay.
If Congress expands the work visas as US unemployment mounts, we will have one more piece of evidence that “our” representatives have no sympathy for the American people.
Where were America’s leaders while the economy slipped over the precipice?
Our leaders were telling us lies in behalf of special interests into whose pockets Washington was pouring the taxpayers’ money. Our leaders engineered wars that put billions of dollars into such disreputable pockets as Halliburton’s, the firm of the American outlaw, Dick Cheney, and into Blackwater, supplier of the overpaid mercenaries that the Bush Regime uses to beef up its military force in Iraq. Some of the taxpayers’ billions, of course, recycled into “our” representatives reelection campaign funds.
Our leaders were too busy making trips to Israel to reaffirm their support for Israel’s ongoing theft of Palestine and for wars that enable this theft.
Our leaders were too busy serving financial interests by dismantling regulatory barriers to over-leveraged greed. The extraordinary level of leveraged debt and the fraudulent financial instruments resulted in annual compensation for hedge fund managers and investment bankers larger than a king’s ransom.
When the leveraged mortgages went bust, the banksters declared a “crisis” and Congress responded by ripping off the American taxpayers for another trillion dollars.
More is to come. Credit card debt, car loans, and commercial real estate mortgages have been securitized, too. There is little doubt there are derivatives based on this enormous pile of debt. As each “crisis” unfolds, it will mean more bailout rewards for the crooks who deep-sixed the US economy.
It is not implausible that by the end of this year the unemployment rate, honestly measured, will be as high as during the Great Depression.
Few in Washington think there is any cause for alarm. Obama is calling the situation “serious” not because he believes it is but in order to get another trillion dollar “stimulus” package on the taxpayers’ books. Stimulus will do the trick, economists say, and, moreover, the Federal Reserve has already extended $2 trillion in loans, but won’t say to whom the money has been lent.
This massive expansion of new debt, economists think, is going to fix the economy and put people back to work. They think the solution to excessive debt is more debt.
The federal government budget deficit for the 2009 fiscal year will be $2 trillion at a minimum. That is five times larger than the 2008 budget deficit.
How can the Treasury finance such a massive deficit?
There are three sources of financing. Possibly people will flee from stocks, bank deposits, and money market funds into Treasury “securities.” This would require a form of “money illusion” on the part of people. People would have to believe that investments can be printed, and that printing so many new Treasury bonds would not dilute the value of existing bonds or reduce their chance of redemption. They would have to believe that the bonds would be repaid with honest money, not by running the printing presses.
A second source of financing might be America’s foreign creditors. So far in our descent into massive debt foreigners have footed the bill. Our foreign creditors now hold very large amounts of US debt and other dollar-denominated “securities.” They are likely to develop a case of cold feet when they see a $2 trillion expansion in US debt in one year. Their most likely response will be to start selling their existing holdings.
Who would purchase them? The only way the Treasury can redeem the bonds that come due each year is by selling new bonds. Not only must the Treasury find purchasers for $2 trillion in new debt this year but also must find buyers for the bonds that must be sold in order to redeem old bonds that come due.
If foreigners cease buying and instead start selling from their existing holdings--China alone holds $500 billion in Treasury debt--a deluge will fall on an already flooded market.
The third source of financing is for the Federal Reserve to monetize the debt. In other words, the Treasury prints bonds and the Fed purchases them by printing money. The supply of money thus expands dramatically in relation to goods and services, and high inflation, possibly hyperinflation, would engulf America.
At that point the US dollar, if still on its feet, collapses. The import-dependent American population, dependent on imports for their mobility, their clothes, shoes, manufactured goods, and advanced technology products, no longer will be able to afford these imports.
A scary scenario? Yes. Overdrawn? Perhaps, but perhaps not. The United States has spent the last 7 years in pointless wars that benefited only the military-security complex and Israel’s aggression against Palestinians and Lebanon. According to prominent experts, the out-of-pocket cost and already incurred future liabilities of Bush’s wars comes to $3 trillion.
The cost of the Bush Regime’s wars, together with the 2009 budget deficit that Bush has bequeathed to Obama, equals half of the accumulated national debt of the United States.
Several years ago United States Comptroller General David Walker informed Congress and the White House that the accrued liabilities of the US government exceeded the ability to pay. Yet, “our” leaders ignored the Comptroller General and rushed headlong to add more trillions of dollars to federal liabilities. In effect, the United States is bankrupt at this present moment. According to generally accepted accounting principles, the federal government has a negative net worth of $59.3 trillion.
Who is going to lend to a bankrupt government that is ruled by financial crooks, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby? How long will the world finance US aggression that disrupts energy prices, keeps the world on edge, and makes America’s creditors complicit in war crimes?
By Paul Craig Roberts
Will the Government Turn to the Printing Press?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonfarm payroll employment declined by 3,445,000 from December 2007 through December 2008.
The collapse in employment is across the board.
Construction lost 520,000 jobs. Manufacturing lost 806,000 jobs. Trade, transportation and utilities lost 1,495,000 jobs (retail trade accounted for 1,120,000 of this loss). Financial activities lost 145,000 jobs. Professional and business services lost 713,000 jobs. Even government lost 188,000 jobs.
Only in health care and social assistance has the economy been able to eke out a few new jobs.
Many analysts believe the job losses will be as great or greater during 2009.
Moreover, the reported job losses are likely understated. Noted statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that biases in measurement have understated the job loss over the last 12 months by 1,150,000 jobs.
Williams also notes that the official unemployment rate is an enormous understatement, due in part to the Clinton administration’s decision not to count as unemployed those discouraged workers who have been without jobs for more than one year. Williams reports the unemployment rate as it was measured prior to “reforms” designed to minimize the measured rate of unemployment. According to the methodology used in 1980, the US unemployment rate in December 2008 reached 17.5 percent.
Yes, “our” government lies to us about economic statistics, just as it lies to us about “terrorists,” “weapons of mass destruction,” “building freedom and democracy in the Middle East,” and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
An objective person would be hard pressed to find any statement made by the US government that is reliable.
The collapse of the job market means even harder times for last year’s and this year’s crops of college graduates. The offshoring of professional jobs and the widespread use by US corporations of H-1b, L-1, and other work visa programs for foreigners have left many recent American university graduates without careers.
Recently, Bill Gates of Microsoft was pleading with Congress to allow even more foreigners in on work visas. According to Gates, there is a shortage of American workers despite a 17.5 percent unemployment rate. I personally know American computer engineers, both seasoned and recent graduates, who cannot find jobs.
What Gates and American corporations want is cheap labor, in effect indentured servants, unprotected people who don’t demand an American standard of living and who have no student loans to repay.
If Congress expands the work visas as US unemployment mounts, we will have one more piece of evidence that “our” representatives have no sympathy for the American people.
Where were America’s leaders while the economy slipped over the precipice?
Our leaders were telling us lies in behalf of special interests into whose pockets Washington was pouring the taxpayers’ money. Our leaders engineered wars that put billions of dollars into such disreputable pockets as Halliburton’s, the firm of the American outlaw, Dick Cheney, and into Blackwater, supplier of the overpaid mercenaries that the Bush Regime uses to beef up its military force in Iraq. Some of the taxpayers’ billions, of course, recycled into “our” representatives reelection campaign funds.
Our leaders were too busy making trips to Israel to reaffirm their support for Israel’s ongoing theft of Palestine and for wars that enable this theft.
Our leaders were too busy serving financial interests by dismantling regulatory barriers to over-leveraged greed. The extraordinary level of leveraged debt and the fraudulent financial instruments resulted in annual compensation for hedge fund managers and investment bankers larger than a king’s ransom.
When the leveraged mortgages went bust, the banksters declared a “crisis” and Congress responded by ripping off the American taxpayers for another trillion dollars.
More is to come. Credit card debt, car loans, and commercial real estate mortgages have been securitized, too. There is little doubt there are derivatives based on this enormous pile of debt. As each “crisis” unfolds, it will mean more bailout rewards for the crooks who deep-sixed the US economy.
It is not implausible that by the end of this year the unemployment rate, honestly measured, will be as high as during the Great Depression.
Few in Washington think there is any cause for alarm. Obama is calling the situation “serious” not because he believes it is but in order to get another trillion dollar “stimulus” package on the taxpayers’ books. Stimulus will do the trick, economists say, and, moreover, the Federal Reserve has already extended $2 trillion in loans, but won’t say to whom the money has been lent.
This massive expansion of new debt, economists think, is going to fix the economy and put people back to work. They think the solution to excessive debt is more debt.
The federal government budget deficit for the 2009 fiscal year will be $2 trillion at a minimum. That is five times larger than the 2008 budget deficit.
How can the Treasury finance such a massive deficit?
There are three sources of financing. Possibly people will flee from stocks, bank deposits, and money market funds into Treasury “securities.” This would require a form of “money illusion” on the part of people. People would have to believe that investments can be printed, and that printing so many new Treasury bonds would not dilute the value of existing bonds or reduce their chance of redemption. They would have to believe that the bonds would be repaid with honest money, not by running the printing presses.
A second source of financing might be America’s foreign creditors. So far in our descent into massive debt foreigners have footed the bill. Our foreign creditors now hold very large amounts of US debt and other dollar-denominated “securities.” They are likely to develop a case of cold feet when they see a $2 trillion expansion in US debt in one year. Their most likely response will be to start selling their existing holdings.
Who would purchase them? The only way the Treasury can redeem the bonds that come due each year is by selling new bonds. Not only must the Treasury find purchasers for $2 trillion in new debt this year but also must find buyers for the bonds that must be sold in order to redeem old bonds that come due.
If foreigners cease buying and instead start selling from their existing holdings--China alone holds $500 billion in Treasury debt--a deluge will fall on an already flooded market.
The third source of financing is for the Federal Reserve to monetize the debt. In other words, the Treasury prints bonds and the Fed purchases them by printing money. The supply of money thus expands dramatically in relation to goods and services, and high inflation, possibly hyperinflation, would engulf America.
At that point the US dollar, if still on its feet, collapses. The import-dependent American population, dependent on imports for their mobility, their clothes, shoes, manufactured goods, and advanced technology products, no longer will be able to afford these imports.
A scary scenario? Yes. Overdrawn? Perhaps, but perhaps not. The United States has spent the last 7 years in pointless wars that benefited only the military-security complex and Israel’s aggression against Palestinians and Lebanon. According to prominent experts, the out-of-pocket cost and already incurred future liabilities of Bush’s wars comes to $3 trillion.
The cost of the Bush Regime’s wars, together with the 2009 budget deficit that Bush has bequeathed to Obama, equals half of the accumulated national debt of the United States.
Several years ago United States Comptroller General David Walker informed Congress and the White House that the accrued liabilities of the US government exceeded the ability to pay. Yet, “our” leaders ignored the Comptroller General and rushed headlong to add more trillions of dollars to federal liabilities. In effect, the United States is bankrupt at this present moment. According to generally accepted accounting principles, the federal government has a negative net worth of $59.3 trillion.
Who is going to lend to a bankrupt government that is ruled by financial crooks, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby? How long will the world finance US aggression that disrupts energy prices, keeps the world on edge, and makes America’s creditors complicit in war crimes?
Gaza Slaughter Exposes Truth About Zionism
Go to Original
By Mark H. Gaffney
The Wrong Side of History
The reason given by Israel for its massive assault upon Gaza, which continues as I write, is to halt the Qassam rocket launches into southern Israel staged by Hamas. But even the Israeli military admits that its ongoing operations will not necessarily halt the Qassams. The only way Israel could militarily do this would be to permanently reoccupy all of Gaza: lock it down. But this alternative has no support with the Israeli public. Permanent military reoccupation would expose thousands of Israeli soldiers to continued guerrilla attacks from Hamas. Over time, Israel would take unacceptable losses. Indeed, the Israeli army ended its occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000 for this very reason, because it sustained heavy losses from Hezbollah fighters. This means, quite simply, that there is no military solution to the Qassam rocket attacks.
The Qassam is not a guided missile. It is a crude device, a kind of homemade weapon, something you might fabricate in your garage or basement. The rockets often misfire, are wildly inaccurate, and sometimes injure other Palestinians. In fact, from a military standpoint the Qassam is a nearly useless weapon. Over a period of years the Qassams have killed only a handful of Israelis. So, why do the Palestinians lob useless weapons at Israel? It is an important question, and one the western press has not honestly addressed.
The answer is that the Qassams have become a symbol of Palestinian resolve. The launches show defiance at Israel’s siege of Gaza, which has continued over many years and which greatly intensified after Hamas swept to victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections. At the time, the Israeli government was incensed that its preferred candidate, Fatah chief Abbas, went down to defeat. Among Palestinians Abbas is widely regarded as an Israeli collaborator.
Israel’s Blockade of Gaza
By most accounts, the 2006 election was a fair one. Yet, Israel’s leaders refused to accept the outcome. This is strange and repugnant, given Israel’s reputation as a democracy. But evidently Israel (and the US) apply a double standard when it comes to Arabs. In any event, Israel reacted by imprisoning and even assassinating the elected Hamas officials. Israel also collectively punished the people of Gaza by curtailing all disbursements of Palestinian taxes for public services. As a result, civil servants in Gaza, including local police, worked without pay for many months. Why did Israel withhold these civil funds? Obviously, to disrupt Palestinian society and foment chaos by undermining law and order. Israel also tightened its military blockade. Israel controls the border crossings into Gaza and for years had arbitrarily blocked shipments of food, fuel, medicines, and other essential commodities from entering. By one report, even shoes and clothing are among the forbidden goods.
Israel’s decision to intensify its blockade after the Hamas victory caused great suffering. What remained of the Gaza economy collapsed and many Palestinians became destitute. For the first time malnutrition became a serious issue. Many Gaza residents now live just one or two meals away from starvation. Indeed, this was the plan: to starve the people of Gaza into submission. The Palestinians refused to be broken, however. Hence the Qassams.
Collective punishment is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In fact, Israel’s siege was a belligerent act of war. But the western press, including the US media, failed to report it honestly and now they blame the victims. The Palestinians, we are told, are responsible for Israel’s attacks upon them because of the Qassams. Of course, due to the media filter the average American probably has never heard of the siege, and doesn’t even know it happened.
If the goal were truly to end the Qassam rocket attacks, Israel could have done so, at any time, simply by sitting down and negotiating with Hamas. Such is the view of Neve Gordon, chair of political science at Ben Gurion University. Professor Gordon has been following the Gaza situation for years from Beersheba, located just down the road, and he even authored a book upon the subject. His analysis is undoubtedly correct. But evidently this is too simple for Israel’s leaders, who deem Hamas an unsuitable negotiating partner.
In fact, Israel’s military operation in Gaza probably has as much to do with political expedience as halting the Qassams. Israel’s leaders have resorted to violence in the past for temporary political gain: to boost their standing with voters; and the present Gaza offensive appears to be another case. It was in the planning for months and probably became inevitable after far-right Likud candidate Benjamin Netanyahu moved ahead in the polls. With Prime Minister Olmert’s Kadima party facing a tough uphill fight in the upcoming February 2009 elections, Olmert no doubt hoped to recoup Kadima’s chances by showing toughness. It is telling that Israeli voters will choose between the right and the far-right, another inconvenient truth ignored by the western press, which sees only Arab extremism.
For the record, I do not support the firing of Qassam rockets by Hamas into Israel. It is wrong. But on a scale of violence it is a mere pin-prick compared with the wholesale terror being unleashed against the Palestinians, who are almost defenseless. A comparison of the casualty figures shows that 99% of the violence is being directed at the Palestinians; and the numbers do not lie. Unfortunately, due to the media filter their significance has been lost. The US media always portrays Israel in the best possible light and the Palestinians in the worst. It is a formula that distorts real events beyond recognition. As a result, most Americans do not understand what is happening.
The Critical US Role
Indeed, it is remarkable that even though the US Senate just voted unanimous support for Israel many Americans probably still think the United States is not directly involved in the Gaza violence. Nothing could be further from the truth. The US is deeply involved.
On December 28th, the US government used its UN Security Council veto to block the international community from ending the bloodshed. From that point the US was officially on record: openly supporting Israel’s attacks. But US support long predates the recent crisis. Israel's refusal to negotiate with Hamas was only possible because of US diplomatic and military support dating back over many years. The US has used its UN veto on forty occasions, spanning almost four decades, to shield Israel from accountability. But for this the UN would have intervened to resolve the conflict, long ago. In which case Hamas would never have come into existence and there would be peace in Palestine, today.
US military assistance is also crucial. Israel is slaughtering the people of Gaza with US-made F-16s, US-made helicopter gun ships, and US-made bombs/ammunition. Other US-made equipment includes enormous Caterpillar bulldozers which the Israeli army uses to flatten Palestinian homes, often arbitrarily, even entire neighborhoods. During Ariel Sharon’s 2002 offensive in the West Bank these bulldozers were used to level wide swathes of urban real estate in Jenin and other towns. No doubt, the dozers are being put to similar use in Gaza as I write.
Most of the violence directed at the Palestinians is being kept from American eyes. Israel has barred the western press from Gaza because what is happening cannot stand the light of day. But the truth is reaching the world anyway via the Arab press, which is covering the attacks in graphic detail. Although Americans are not seeing the grisly reality, elsewhere in the world people are watching the uncut unedited version of events, including gruesome videos of dead children, body parts, smoking ruins and starving refugees. Surely the world is no less aghast by the mendacity of America’s political leaders, who continue to mouth transparent lies about Israel defending itself when the whole world can plainly see that Israel is engaging in near-genocidal attacks against a civilian population.
To describe all of this as a public relations disaster for the US fails to capture the reality. The international community was already alienated from Washington because of President George W. Bush’s self-proclaimed right to treat the world as a US free-fire zone. Continuing US support for Israel’s state terrorism is like throwing gas on this fire, and the temperature is rising.
The nature of Zionism
But the slaughter of more than 800 Palestinians, as I write, in addition to more than 3,000 injured, has had one positive effect: It has brought the deeper issue, the nature of Zionism, into sharper focus. The question that Americans should be asking is how 1.4 million Palestinians came to be crowded into Gaza in the first place. After all, the length and breadth of Israel/Palestine is the homeland of these Palestinians, no less than the home of the Jews. Both peoples have an equal claim to the land. Why, then, are Israelis free to fulfill their dreams and lives in the greater part of Palestine, I should add, a right they take for granted, while these 1.4 million Arabs are confined to a tiny coastal Gaza strip that is essentially a prison? Some aptly compare it to the Warsaw ghetto of World War II.
The answer is that these Arabs are unwanted people. The Israeli government regards them as surplus humanity. They are the descendants of the original flood of at least 700,000 Palestinian refugees ethnically cleansed by Israel during its 1948 war of independence. The shocking fact is that these Arabs remain incarcerated in Gaza today for the same reason they were driven from their homes in the first place. In Israel this is euphemistically referred to as the "demographic problem," a polite way of saying that in 1948 the Palestinians stood squarely in the path of the Zionist plan to settle all of Palestine with Jews. For this reason they had to be made to disappear. This is why the Palestinians were herded into refugee camps at that time and it is why they continue to be incarcerated in Gaza today. Israel will not incorporate them because their sheer numbers would pollute the ethnic/racial purity of the Jewish state.
This is the deeper issue, and it brings to mind the Apartheid "solution" cooked up by the racists in South Africa, where unwanted blacks were segregated into separate Bantustans to keep them out of sight (and out of mind) of the white minority rulers. Fortunately, the people of South African dismantled their Apartheid system years ago. But it survives today in Israel/Palestine in an even more pernicious form. In fact, Israel is probably the last of the settler colonies that were common during the heyday of colonialism, in the 18-19th centuries, when Europeans lorded over the rest of humanity. Britain, for example, financed its industrial revolution with wealth stolen from India, at the time the jewel in the British crown. Nor was that stolen wealth ever repaid.
My point is that in 2009 this hierarchical way of organizing society is far out of step with present-day standards of morality and justice. Uncritical US support for Israeli-style Apartheid has thus placed the United States on the wrong side of history, an ugly reality that ought to be a source of concern, indeed, of alarm, for each and every American. At issue is the racist nature of the Zionist enterprise, and it’s long past time that we call the thing by its true name.
By Mark H. Gaffney
The Wrong Side of History
The reason given by Israel for its massive assault upon Gaza, which continues as I write, is to halt the Qassam rocket launches into southern Israel staged by Hamas. But even the Israeli military admits that its ongoing operations will not necessarily halt the Qassams. The only way Israel could militarily do this would be to permanently reoccupy all of Gaza: lock it down. But this alternative has no support with the Israeli public. Permanent military reoccupation would expose thousands of Israeli soldiers to continued guerrilla attacks from Hamas. Over time, Israel would take unacceptable losses. Indeed, the Israeli army ended its occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000 for this very reason, because it sustained heavy losses from Hezbollah fighters. This means, quite simply, that there is no military solution to the Qassam rocket attacks.
The Qassam is not a guided missile. It is a crude device, a kind of homemade weapon, something you might fabricate in your garage or basement. The rockets often misfire, are wildly inaccurate, and sometimes injure other Palestinians. In fact, from a military standpoint the Qassam is a nearly useless weapon. Over a period of years the Qassams have killed only a handful of Israelis. So, why do the Palestinians lob useless weapons at Israel? It is an important question, and one the western press has not honestly addressed.
The answer is that the Qassams have become a symbol of Palestinian resolve. The launches show defiance at Israel’s siege of Gaza, which has continued over many years and which greatly intensified after Hamas swept to victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections. At the time, the Israeli government was incensed that its preferred candidate, Fatah chief Abbas, went down to defeat. Among Palestinians Abbas is widely regarded as an Israeli collaborator.
Israel’s Blockade of Gaza
By most accounts, the 2006 election was a fair one. Yet, Israel’s leaders refused to accept the outcome. This is strange and repugnant, given Israel’s reputation as a democracy. But evidently Israel (and the US) apply a double standard when it comes to Arabs. In any event, Israel reacted by imprisoning and even assassinating the elected Hamas officials. Israel also collectively punished the people of Gaza by curtailing all disbursements of Palestinian taxes for public services. As a result, civil servants in Gaza, including local police, worked without pay for many months. Why did Israel withhold these civil funds? Obviously, to disrupt Palestinian society and foment chaos by undermining law and order. Israel also tightened its military blockade. Israel controls the border crossings into Gaza and for years had arbitrarily blocked shipments of food, fuel, medicines, and other essential commodities from entering. By one report, even shoes and clothing are among the forbidden goods.
Israel’s decision to intensify its blockade after the Hamas victory caused great suffering. What remained of the Gaza economy collapsed and many Palestinians became destitute. For the first time malnutrition became a serious issue. Many Gaza residents now live just one or two meals away from starvation. Indeed, this was the plan: to starve the people of Gaza into submission. The Palestinians refused to be broken, however. Hence the Qassams.
Collective punishment is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In fact, Israel’s siege was a belligerent act of war. But the western press, including the US media, failed to report it honestly and now they blame the victims. The Palestinians, we are told, are responsible for Israel’s attacks upon them because of the Qassams. Of course, due to the media filter the average American probably has never heard of the siege, and doesn’t even know it happened.
If the goal were truly to end the Qassam rocket attacks, Israel could have done so, at any time, simply by sitting down and negotiating with Hamas. Such is the view of Neve Gordon, chair of political science at Ben Gurion University. Professor Gordon has been following the Gaza situation for years from Beersheba, located just down the road, and he even authored a book upon the subject. His analysis is undoubtedly correct. But evidently this is too simple for Israel’s leaders, who deem Hamas an unsuitable negotiating partner.
In fact, Israel’s military operation in Gaza probably has as much to do with political expedience as halting the Qassams. Israel’s leaders have resorted to violence in the past for temporary political gain: to boost their standing with voters; and the present Gaza offensive appears to be another case. It was in the planning for months and probably became inevitable after far-right Likud candidate Benjamin Netanyahu moved ahead in the polls. With Prime Minister Olmert’s Kadima party facing a tough uphill fight in the upcoming February 2009 elections, Olmert no doubt hoped to recoup Kadima’s chances by showing toughness. It is telling that Israeli voters will choose between the right and the far-right, another inconvenient truth ignored by the western press, which sees only Arab extremism.
For the record, I do not support the firing of Qassam rockets by Hamas into Israel. It is wrong. But on a scale of violence it is a mere pin-prick compared with the wholesale terror being unleashed against the Palestinians, who are almost defenseless. A comparison of the casualty figures shows that 99% of the violence is being directed at the Palestinians; and the numbers do not lie. Unfortunately, due to the media filter their significance has been lost. The US media always portrays Israel in the best possible light and the Palestinians in the worst. It is a formula that distorts real events beyond recognition. As a result, most Americans do not understand what is happening.
The Critical US Role
Indeed, it is remarkable that even though the US Senate just voted unanimous support for Israel many Americans probably still think the United States is not directly involved in the Gaza violence. Nothing could be further from the truth. The US is deeply involved.
On December 28th, the US government used its UN Security Council veto to block the international community from ending the bloodshed. From that point the US was officially on record: openly supporting Israel’s attacks. But US support long predates the recent crisis. Israel's refusal to negotiate with Hamas was only possible because of US diplomatic and military support dating back over many years. The US has used its UN veto on forty occasions, spanning almost four decades, to shield Israel from accountability. But for this the UN would have intervened to resolve the conflict, long ago. In which case Hamas would never have come into existence and there would be peace in Palestine, today.
US military assistance is also crucial. Israel is slaughtering the people of Gaza with US-made F-16s, US-made helicopter gun ships, and US-made bombs/ammunition. Other US-made equipment includes enormous Caterpillar bulldozers which the Israeli army uses to flatten Palestinian homes, often arbitrarily, even entire neighborhoods. During Ariel Sharon’s 2002 offensive in the West Bank these bulldozers were used to level wide swathes of urban real estate in Jenin and other towns. No doubt, the dozers are being put to similar use in Gaza as I write.
Most of the violence directed at the Palestinians is being kept from American eyes. Israel has barred the western press from Gaza because what is happening cannot stand the light of day. But the truth is reaching the world anyway via the Arab press, which is covering the attacks in graphic detail. Although Americans are not seeing the grisly reality, elsewhere in the world people are watching the uncut unedited version of events, including gruesome videos of dead children, body parts, smoking ruins and starving refugees. Surely the world is no less aghast by the mendacity of America’s political leaders, who continue to mouth transparent lies about Israel defending itself when the whole world can plainly see that Israel is engaging in near-genocidal attacks against a civilian population.
To describe all of this as a public relations disaster for the US fails to capture the reality. The international community was already alienated from Washington because of President George W. Bush’s self-proclaimed right to treat the world as a US free-fire zone. Continuing US support for Israel’s state terrorism is like throwing gas on this fire, and the temperature is rising.
The nature of Zionism
But the slaughter of more than 800 Palestinians, as I write, in addition to more than 3,000 injured, has had one positive effect: It has brought the deeper issue, the nature of Zionism, into sharper focus. The question that Americans should be asking is how 1.4 million Palestinians came to be crowded into Gaza in the first place. After all, the length and breadth of Israel/Palestine is the homeland of these Palestinians, no less than the home of the Jews. Both peoples have an equal claim to the land. Why, then, are Israelis free to fulfill their dreams and lives in the greater part of Palestine, I should add, a right they take for granted, while these 1.4 million Arabs are confined to a tiny coastal Gaza strip that is essentially a prison? Some aptly compare it to the Warsaw ghetto of World War II.
The answer is that these Arabs are unwanted people. The Israeli government regards them as surplus humanity. They are the descendants of the original flood of at least 700,000 Palestinian refugees ethnically cleansed by Israel during its 1948 war of independence. The shocking fact is that these Arabs remain incarcerated in Gaza today for the same reason they were driven from their homes in the first place. In Israel this is euphemistically referred to as the "demographic problem," a polite way of saying that in 1948 the Palestinians stood squarely in the path of the Zionist plan to settle all of Palestine with Jews. For this reason they had to be made to disappear. This is why the Palestinians were herded into refugee camps at that time and it is why they continue to be incarcerated in Gaza today. Israel will not incorporate them because their sheer numbers would pollute the ethnic/racial purity of the Jewish state.
This is the deeper issue, and it brings to mind the Apartheid "solution" cooked up by the racists in South Africa, where unwanted blacks were segregated into separate Bantustans to keep them out of sight (and out of mind) of the white minority rulers. Fortunately, the people of South African dismantled their Apartheid system years ago. But it survives today in Israel/Palestine in an even more pernicious form. In fact, Israel is probably the last of the settler colonies that were common during the heyday of colonialism, in the 18-19th centuries, when Europeans lorded over the rest of humanity. Britain, for example, financed its industrial revolution with wealth stolen from India, at the time the jewel in the British crown. Nor was that stolen wealth ever repaid.
My point is that in 2009 this hierarchical way of organizing society is far out of step with present-day standards of morality and justice. Uncritical US support for Israeli-style Apartheid has thus placed the United States on the wrong side of history, an ugly reality that ought to be a source of concern, indeed, of alarm, for each and every American. At issue is the racist nature of the Zionist enterprise, and it’s long past time that we call the thing by its true name.
The United States Promotes Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinians
Go to Original
By Professor Francis A. Boyle
As long ago as October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for inflicting “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people, most of whom are Muslims. The reader has a general idea of what a war crime is, so I am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more serious war crimes denominated “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, the world has seen those heinous war crimes inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian people living in occupied Palestine: e.g., willful killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and by Israel’s illegal paramilitary settlers. These Israeli “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for the perpetrators and their commanders, whether military or civilian, including and especially Israel’s political leaders.
But I want to focus for a moment on Israel’s “crimes against humanity” against the Palestinian people—as determined by the U.N. Human Rights Commission itself, set up pursuant to the requirements of the United Nations Charter. What are “crimes against humanity”? This concept goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals in Europe. In the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, drafted by the United States Government, there was created and inserted a new type of international crime specifically intended to deal with the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people:
Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
The paradigmatic example of “crimes against humanity” is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people. This is where the concept of “crimes against humanity” came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian people: crimes against humanity. Expressed in legal terms, this is just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews. That is the significance of the formal determination by the U.N. Human Rights Commission that Israel has inflicted “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people. The Commission chose this well-known and long-standing legal term of art quite carefully and deliberately based upon the evidence it had compiled.
Furthermore, the Nuremberg “crimes against humanity” are the historical and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The theory here was that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people was so horrific that it required a special international treaty that would codify and universalize the Nuremberg concept of “crimes against humanity.” And that treaty ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
As documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), Israel’s genocidal policy against the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the very foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing and even intensifying against the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza. Zionism’s “final solution” to Israel’s much touted “demographic threat” allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians has always been genocide.
Certainly, Israel and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have committed genocide against the Palestinian people that actually started on or about 1948 and has continued apace until today in violation of Genocide Convention Articles II(a), (b), and (c). For at least the past six decades, the Israeli government and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) group constituting the Palestinian people. This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also caused serious bodily and mental harm to the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also deliberately inflicted on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.
Article I of the Genocide Convention requires all contracting parties such as the United States “to prevent and to punish” genocide. Yet to the contrary, historically the “Jewish” state’s criminal conduct against the Palestinians has been financed, armed, equipped, supplied and politically supported by the “Christian” United States. Although the United States is a founding sponsor of, and a contracting party to, both the Nuremberg Charter and the Genocide Convention, as well as the United Nations Charter, these legal facts have never made any difference to the United States when it comes to its blank-check support for Israel and their joint and severable criminal mistreatment of the Palestinians—truly the wretched of the earth!
The world has not yet heard even one word uttered by the United States and its NATO allies in favor of “humanitarian intervention” against Israel in order to protect the Palestinian people, let alone a “responsibility to protect” the Palestinians from Zionist/Israeli genocide. The United States, its NATO allies, and the Great Powers on the U.N. Security Council would not even dispatch a U.N. Charter Chapter 6 monitoring force to help protect the Palestinians, let alone even contemplate any type of U.N. Charter Chapter 7 enforcement actions against Israel – shudder the thought!. The doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” so readily espoused elsewhere when U.S. foreign policy goals are allegedly at stake has been clearly proved to be a joke and a fraud when it comes to stopping the ongoing and accelerating Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.
Rather than rein in the Israelis—which would be possible just by turning off the funding pipeline—the United States government, the U.S. Congress, and U.S. taxpayers instead support the “Jewish” state to the tune of about 4 billion dollars per year, without whose munificence this instance of genocide – and indeed conceivably the State of Israel itself – would not be possible. What the world witnesses here is (yet another) case of “dishumanitarian intervention” or “humanitarian extermination” by the United States and Israel against the Palestinians and Palestine. In today’s world genocide pays so long as it is done at the behest of the United States and its de jure or de facto allies such as Israel.
Of course miracles can always happen. But I anticipate no fundamental change in America’s support for the Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinians during the tenure of the Obama/Clinton administration.
By Professor Francis A. Boyle
As long ago as October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for inflicting “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people, most of whom are Muslims. The reader has a general idea of what a war crime is, so I am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more serious war crimes denominated “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, the world has seen those heinous war crimes inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian people living in occupied Palestine: e.g., willful killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and by Israel’s illegal paramilitary settlers. These Israeli “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for the perpetrators and their commanders, whether military or civilian, including and especially Israel’s political leaders.
But I want to focus for a moment on Israel’s “crimes against humanity” against the Palestinian people—as determined by the U.N. Human Rights Commission itself, set up pursuant to the requirements of the United Nations Charter. What are “crimes against humanity”? This concept goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals in Europe. In the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, drafted by the United States Government, there was created and inserted a new type of international crime specifically intended to deal with the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people:
Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
The paradigmatic example of “crimes against humanity” is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people. This is where the concept of “crimes against humanity” came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian people: crimes against humanity. Expressed in legal terms, this is just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews. That is the significance of the formal determination by the U.N. Human Rights Commission that Israel has inflicted “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people. The Commission chose this well-known and long-standing legal term of art quite carefully and deliberately based upon the evidence it had compiled.
Furthermore, the Nuremberg “crimes against humanity” are the historical and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The theory here was that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people was so horrific that it required a special international treaty that would codify and universalize the Nuremberg concept of “crimes against humanity.” And that treaty ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
As documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), Israel’s genocidal policy against the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the very foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing and even intensifying against the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza. Zionism’s “final solution” to Israel’s much touted “demographic threat” allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians has always been genocide.
Certainly, Israel and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have committed genocide against the Palestinian people that actually started on or about 1948 and has continued apace until today in violation of Genocide Convention Articles II(a), (b), and (c). For at least the past six decades, the Israeli government and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) group constituting the Palestinian people. This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also caused serious bodily and mental harm to the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also deliberately inflicted on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.
Article I of the Genocide Convention requires all contracting parties such as the United States “to prevent and to punish” genocide. Yet to the contrary, historically the “Jewish” state’s criminal conduct against the Palestinians has been financed, armed, equipped, supplied and politically supported by the “Christian” United States. Although the United States is a founding sponsor of, and a contracting party to, both the Nuremberg Charter and the Genocide Convention, as well as the United Nations Charter, these legal facts have never made any difference to the United States when it comes to its blank-check support for Israel and their joint and severable criminal mistreatment of the Palestinians—truly the wretched of the earth!
The world has not yet heard even one word uttered by the United States and its NATO allies in favor of “humanitarian intervention” against Israel in order to protect the Palestinian people, let alone a “responsibility to protect” the Palestinians from Zionist/Israeli genocide. The United States, its NATO allies, and the Great Powers on the U.N. Security Council would not even dispatch a U.N. Charter Chapter 6 monitoring force to help protect the Palestinians, let alone even contemplate any type of U.N. Charter Chapter 7 enforcement actions against Israel – shudder the thought!. The doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” so readily espoused elsewhere when U.S. foreign policy goals are allegedly at stake has been clearly proved to be a joke and a fraud when it comes to stopping the ongoing and accelerating Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.
Rather than rein in the Israelis—which would be possible just by turning off the funding pipeline—the United States government, the U.S. Congress, and U.S. taxpayers instead support the “Jewish” state to the tune of about 4 billion dollars per year, without whose munificence this instance of genocide – and indeed conceivably the State of Israel itself – would not be possible. What the world witnesses here is (yet another) case of “dishumanitarian intervention” or “humanitarian extermination” by the United States and Israel against the Palestinians and Palestine. In today’s world genocide pays so long as it is done at the behest of the United States and its de jure or de facto allies such as Israel.
Of course miracles can always happen. But I anticipate no fundamental change in America’s support for the Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinians during the tenure of the Obama/Clinton administration.
The chance for a new world order
Go to Origial
By Henry A. Kissinger
As the new U.S. administration prepares to take office amid grave financial and international crises, it may seem counterintuitive to argue that the very unsettled nature of the international system generates a unique opportunity for creative diplomacy.
That opportunity involves a seeming contradiction. On one level, the financial collapse represents a major blow to the standing of the United States. While American political judgments have often proved controversial, the American prescription for a world financial order has generally been unchallenged. Now disillusionment with the United States' management of it is widespread.
At the same time, the magnitude of the debacle makes it impossible for the rest of the world to shelter any longer behind American predominance or American failings.
Every country will have to reassess its own contribution to the prevailing crisis. Each will seek to make itself independent, to the greatest possible degree, of the conditions that produced the collapse; at the same time, each will be obliged to face the reality that its dilemmas can be mastered only by common action.
Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources. Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being. It will fragment disastrously if the various priorities cannot be reconciled.
The nadir of the existing international financial system coincides with simultaneous political crises around the globe. Never have so many transformations occurred at the same time in so many different parts of the world and been made globally accessible via instantaneous communication. The alternative to a new international order is chaos.
The financial and political crises are, in fact, closely related partly because, during the period of economic exuberance, a gap had opened up between the economic and the political organization of the world.
The economic world has been globalized. Its institutions have a global reach and have operated by maxims that assumed a self-regulating global market.
The financial collapse exposed the mirage. It made evident the absence of global institutions to cushion the shock and to reverse the trend. Inevitably, when the affected publics turned to their national political institutions, these were driven principally by domestic politics, not considerations of world order.
Every major country has attempted to solve its immediate problems essentially on its own and to defer common action to a later, less crisis-driven point. So-called rescue packages have emerged on a piecemeal national basis, generally by substituting seemingly unlimited governmental credit for the domestic credit that produced the debacle in the first place - so far without more than stemming incipient panic.
International order will not come about either in the political or economic field until there emerge general rules toward which countries can orient themselves.
In the end, the political and economic systems can be harmonized in only one of two ways: by creating an international political regulatory system with the same reach as that of the economic world; or by shrinking the economic units to a size manageable by existing political structures, which is likely to lead to a new mercantilism, perhaps of regional units.
A new Bretton Woods-kind of global agreement is by far the preferable outcome. America's role in this enterprise will be decisive. Paradoxically, American influence will be great in proportion to the modesty in our conduct; we need to modify the righteousness that has characterized too many American attitudes, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
That seminal event and the subsequent period of nearly uninterrupted global growth induced too many to equate world order with the acceptance of American designs, including our domestic preferences.
The result was a certain inherent unilateralism - the standard complaint of European critics - or else an insistent kind of consultation by which nations were invited to prove their fitness to enter the international system by conforming to American prescriptions.
Not since the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy half a century ago has a new administration come into office with such a reservoir of expectations. It is unprecedented that all the principal actors on the world stage are avowing their desire to undertake the transformations imposed on them by the world crisis in collaboration with the United States.
The extraordinary impact of the president-elect on the imagination of humanity is an important element in shaping a new world order. But it defines an opportunity, not a policy.
The ultimate challenge is to shape the common concern of most countries and all major ones regarding the economic crisis, together with a common fear of jihadist terrorism, into a common strategy reinforced by the realization that the new issues like proliferation, energy and climate change permit no national or regional solution.
The new administration could make no worse mistake than to rest on its initial popularity. The cooperative mood of the moment needs to be channeled into a grand strategy going beyond the controversies of the recent past.
The charge of American unilateralism has some basis in fact; it also has become an alibi for a key European difference with America: that the United States still conducts itself as a national state capable of asking its people for sacrifices for the sake of the future, while Europe, suspended between abandoning its national framework and a yet-to-be-reached political substitute, finds it much harder to defer present benefits.
Hence its concentration on soft power. Most Atlantic controversies have been substantive and only marginally procedural; there would have been conflict no matter how intense the consultation. The Atlantic partnership will depend much more on common policies than agreed procedures.
The role of China in a new world order is equally crucial. A relationship that started on both sides as essentially a strategic design to constrain a common adversary has evolved over the decades into a pillar of the international system.
China made possible the American consumption splurge by buying American debt; America helped the modernization and reform of the Chinese economy by opening its markets to Chinese goods.
Both sides overestimated the durability of this arrangement. But while it lasted, it sustained unprecedented global growth. It mitigated as well the concerns over China's role once China emerged in full force as a fellow superpower. A consensus had developed according to which adversarial relations between these pillars of the international system would destroy much that had been achieved and benefit no one. That conviction needs to be preserved and reinforced.
Each side of the Pacific needs the cooperation of the other in addressing the consequences of the financial crisis. Now that the global financial collapse has devastated Chinese export markets, China is emphasizing infrastructure development and domestic consumption.
It will not be easy to shift gears rapidly, and the Chinese growth rate may fall temporarily below the 7.5 percent that Chinese experts have always defined as the line that challenges political stability. America needs Chinese cooperation to address its current account imbalance and to prevent its exploding deficits from sparking a devastating inflation.
What kind of global economic order arises will depend importantly on how China and America deal with each other over the next few years. A frustrated China may take another look at an exclusive regional Asian structure, for which the nucleus already exists in the Asean-plus-three concept.
At the same time, if protectionism grows in America or if China comes to be seen as a long-term adversary, a self-fulfilling prophecy may blight the prospects of global order.
Such a return to mercantilism and 19th-century diplomacy would divide the world into competing regional units with dangerous long-term consequences.
The Sino-American relationship needs to be taken to a new level. The current crisis can be overcome only by developing a sense of common purpose. Such issues as proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, energy and the environment demand strengthened political ties between China and the United States.
This generation of leaders has the opportunity to shape trans-Pacific relations into a design for a common destiny, much as was done with trans-Atlantic relations in the immediate postwar period - except that the challenges now are more political and economic than military.
Such a vision must embrace as well such countries as Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, whether as part of trans-Pacific structures or, in regional arrangements, dealing with special subjects as energy, proliferation and the environment.
The complexity of the emerging world requires from America a more historical approach than the insistence that every problem has a final solution expressible in programs with specific time limits not infrequently geared to our political process.
We must learn to operate within the attainable and be prepared to pursue ultimate ends by the accumulation of nuance.
An international order can be permanent only if its participants have a share not only in building but also in securing it. In this manner, America and its potential partners have a unique opportunity to transform a moment of crisis into a vision of hope.
By Henry A. Kissinger
As the new U.S. administration prepares to take office amid grave financial and international crises, it may seem counterintuitive to argue that the very unsettled nature of the international system generates a unique opportunity for creative diplomacy.
That opportunity involves a seeming contradiction. On one level, the financial collapse represents a major blow to the standing of the United States. While American political judgments have often proved controversial, the American prescription for a world financial order has generally been unchallenged. Now disillusionment with the United States' management of it is widespread.
At the same time, the magnitude of the debacle makes it impossible for the rest of the world to shelter any longer behind American predominance or American failings.
Every country will have to reassess its own contribution to the prevailing crisis. Each will seek to make itself independent, to the greatest possible degree, of the conditions that produced the collapse; at the same time, each will be obliged to face the reality that its dilemmas can be mastered only by common action.
Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources. Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being. It will fragment disastrously if the various priorities cannot be reconciled.
The nadir of the existing international financial system coincides with simultaneous political crises around the globe. Never have so many transformations occurred at the same time in so many different parts of the world and been made globally accessible via instantaneous communication. The alternative to a new international order is chaos.
The financial and political crises are, in fact, closely related partly because, during the period of economic exuberance, a gap had opened up between the economic and the political organization of the world.
The economic world has been globalized. Its institutions have a global reach and have operated by maxims that assumed a self-regulating global market.
The financial collapse exposed the mirage. It made evident the absence of global institutions to cushion the shock and to reverse the trend. Inevitably, when the affected publics turned to their national political institutions, these were driven principally by domestic politics, not considerations of world order.
Every major country has attempted to solve its immediate problems essentially on its own and to defer common action to a later, less crisis-driven point. So-called rescue packages have emerged on a piecemeal national basis, generally by substituting seemingly unlimited governmental credit for the domestic credit that produced the debacle in the first place - so far without more than stemming incipient panic.
International order will not come about either in the political or economic field until there emerge general rules toward which countries can orient themselves.
In the end, the political and economic systems can be harmonized in only one of two ways: by creating an international political regulatory system with the same reach as that of the economic world; or by shrinking the economic units to a size manageable by existing political structures, which is likely to lead to a new mercantilism, perhaps of regional units.
A new Bretton Woods-kind of global agreement is by far the preferable outcome. America's role in this enterprise will be decisive. Paradoxically, American influence will be great in proportion to the modesty in our conduct; we need to modify the righteousness that has characterized too many American attitudes, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
That seminal event and the subsequent period of nearly uninterrupted global growth induced too many to equate world order with the acceptance of American designs, including our domestic preferences.
The result was a certain inherent unilateralism - the standard complaint of European critics - or else an insistent kind of consultation by which nations were invited to prove their fitness to enter the international system by conforming to American prescriptions.
Not since the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy half a century ago has a new administration come into office with such a reservoir of expectations. It is unprecedented that all the principal actors on the world stage are avowing their desire to undertake the transformations imposed on them by the world crisis in collaboration with the United States.
The extraordinary impact of the president-elect on the imagination of humanity is an important element in shaping a new world order. But it defines an opportunity, not a policy.
The ultimate challenge is to shape the common concern of most countries and all major ones regarding the economic crisis, together with a common fear of jihadist terrorism, into a common strategy reinforced by the realization that the new issues like proliferation, energy and climate change permit no national or regional solution.
The new administration could make no worse mistake than to rest on its initial popularity. The cooperative mood of the moment needs to be channeled into a grand strategy going beyond the controversies of the recent past.
The charge of American unilateralism has some basis in fact; it also has become an alibi for a key European difference with America: that the United States still conducts itself as a national state capable of asking its people for sacrifices for the sake of the future, while Europe, suspended between abandoning its national framework and a yet-to-be-reached political substitute, finds it much harder to defer present benefits.
Hence its concentration on soft power. Most Atlantic controversies have been substantive and only marginally procedural; there would have been conflict no matter how intense the consultation. The Atlantic partnership will depend much more on common policies than agreed procedures.
The role of China in a new world order is equally crucial. A relationship that started on both sides as essentially a strategic design to constrain a common adversary has evolved over the decades into a pillar of the international system.
China made possible the American consumption splurge by buying American debt; America helped the modernization and reform of the Chinese economy by opening its markets to Chinese goods.
Both sides overestimated the durability of this arrangement. But while it lasted, it sustained unprecedented global growth. It mitigated as well the concerns over China's role once China emerged in full force as a fellow superpower. A consensus had developed according to which adversarial relations between these pillars of the international system would destroy much that had been achieved and benefit no one. That conviction needs to be preserved and reinforced.
Each side of the Pacific needs the cooperation of the other in addressing the consequences of the financial crisis. Now that the global financial collapse has devastated Chinese export markets, China is emphasizing infrastructure development and domestic consumption.
It will not be easy to shift gears rapidly, and the Chinese growth rate may fall temporarily below the 7.5 percent that Chinese experts have always defined as the line that challenges political stability. America needs Chinese cooperation to address its current account imbalance and to prevent its exploding deficits from sparking a devastating inflation.
What kind of global economic order arises will depend importantly on how China and America deal with each other over the next few years. A frustrated China may take another look at an exclusive regional Asian structure, for which the nucleus already exists in the Asean-plus-three concept.
At the same time, if protectionism grows in America or if China comes to be seen as a long-term adversary, a self-fulfilling prophecy may blight the prospects of global order.
Such a return to mercantilism and 19th-century diplomacy would divide the world into competing regional units with dangerous long-term consequences.
The Sino-American relationship needs to be taken to a new level. The current crisis can be overcome only by developing a sense of common purpose. Such issues as proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, energy and the environment demand strengthened political ties between China and the United States.
This generation of leaders has the opportunity to shape trans-Pacific relations into a design for a common destiny, much as was done with trans-Atlantic relations in the immediate postwar period - except that the challenges now are more political and economic than military.
Such a vision must embrace as well such countries as Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, whether as part of trans-Pacific structures or, in regional arrangements, dealing with special subjects as energy, proliferation and the environment.
The complexity of the emerging world requires from America a more historical approach than the insistence that every problem has a final solution expressible in programs with specific time limits not infrequently geared to our political process.
We must learn to operate within the attainable and be prepared to pursue ultimate ends by the accumulation of nuance.
An international order can be permanent only if its participants have a share not only in building but also in securing it. In this manner, America and its potential partners have a unique opportunity to transform a moment of crisis into a vision of hope.
Veterans say CIA tested drugs, mind control on them
Go to Original
By Jay Price
It was 1968, and Frank Rochelle was 20 years old and fresh out of Army boot camp when he saw notices posted around his base in Virginia asking for volunteers to test uniforms and equipment.
That might be a good break after the harsh weeks of boot camp, he thought, and signed up.
Instead of equipment testing, though, the Onslow County native found himself in a bizarre, CIA-funded drug testing and mind-control program, according to a lawsuit that he and five other veterans and Vietnam Veterans of America filed last week. The suit was filed in federal court in San Francisco against the Department of Defense and the CIA.
The plaintiffs seek to force the government to contact all the subjects of the experiments and give them proper health care.
The experiments have been the subject of congressional hearings, and in 2003 the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs released a pamphlet said nearly 7,000 soldiers had been involved and more than 250 chemicals used on them, including hallucinogens such as LSD and PCP as well as biological and chemical agents. Lasting from 1950 to 1975, the experiments took place at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. According to the lawsuit, some of the volunteers were even implanted with electrical devices in an effort to control their behavior.
Rochelle, 60, who has come back to live in Onslow County, said in an interview Saturday that there were about two dozen volunteers when he was taken to Edgewood. Once there, they were asked to volunteer a second time, for drug testing. They were told that the experiments were harmless and that their health would be carefully monitored, not just during the tests but afterward, too.
The doctors running the experiments, though, couldn't have known the drugs were safe, because safety was one of the things they were trying to find out, Rochelle said.
"We volunteered, yes, but we were not fully aware of the dangers," he said. "None of us knew the kind of drugs they gave us, or the aftereffects they'd have."
Rochelle said he was given just one breath of a chemical in aerosol form that kept him drugged for two and a half days, struggling with visions. He said he saw animals coming out of the walls and his freckles moving like bugs under his skin. At one point, he tried to cut the freckles out with a razor.
Not all the men in his group tested drugs. But he said even those who just tested equipment were mistreated.
"Their idea of testing a gas mask was to give you a faulty one and put you in a gas chamber," he said. "It was just diabolical."
The tests lasted about two months. Later, Rochelle was sent to Vietnam.
Now he's rated 60 percent disabled by the VA, he said, and has struggled to keep his civilian job working on Marine bases. He has breathing problems, and his short- term memory is so bad that he once left his son at a gas station. Among other problems, he said, his doctor diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and said it came from the drug experiment. He has trouble sleeping and still sometimes has visions from the drug, he said.
A big goal of the lawsuit, Rochelle said, is to get the word out to the thousands of soldiers who were tested. Some may have forgotten all about the tests and not know that's why they have health problems now.
By Jay Price
It was 1968, and Frank Rochelle was 20 years old and fresh out of Army boot camp when he saw notices posted around his base in Virginia asking for volunteers to test uniforms and equipment.
That might be a good break after the harsh weeks of boot camp, he thought, and signed up.
Instead of equipment testing, though, the Onslow County native found himself in a bizarre, CIA-funded drug testing and mind-control program, according to a lawsuit that he and five other veterans and Vietnam Veterans of America filed last week. The suit was filed in federal court in San Francisco against the Department of Defense and the CIA.
The plaintiffs seek to force the government to contact all the subjects of the experiments and give them proper health care.
The experiments have been the subject of congressional hearings, and in 2003 the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs released a pamphlet said nearly 7,000 soldiers had been involved and more than 250 chemicals used on them, including hallucinogens such as LSD and PCP as well as biological and chemical agents. Lasting from 1950 to 1975, the experiments took place at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. According to the lawsuit, some of the volunteers were even implanted with electrical devices in an effort to control their behavior.
Rochelle, 60, who has come back to live in Onslow County, said in an interview Saturday that there were about two dozen volunteers when he was taken to Edgewood. Once there, they were asked to volunteer a second time, for drug testing. They were told that the experiments were harmless and that their health would be carefully monitored, not just during the tests but afterward, too.
The doctors running the experiments, though, couldn't have known the drugs were safe, because safety was one of the things they were trying to find out, Rochelle said.
"We volunteered, yes, but we were not fully aware of the dangers," he said. "None of us knew the kind of drugs they gave us, or the aftereffects they'd have."
Rochelle said he was given just one breath of a chemical in aerosol form that kept him drugged for two and a half days, struggling with visions. He said he saw animals coming out of the walls and his freckles moving like bugs under his skin. At one point, he tried to cut the freckles out with a razor.
Not all the men in his group tested drugs. But he said even those who just tested equipment were mistreated.
"Their idea of testing a gas mask was to give you a faulty one and put you in a gas chamber," he said. "It was just diabolical."
The tests lasted about two months. Later, Rochelle was sent to Vietnam.
Now he's rated 60 percent disabled by the VA, he said, and has struggled to keep his civilian job working on Marine bases. He has breathing problems, and his short- term memory is so bad that he once left his son at a gas station. Among other problems, he said, his doctor diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and said it came from the drug experiment. He has trouble sleeping and still sometimes has visions from the drug, he said.
A big goal of the lawsuit, Rochelle said, is to get the word out to the thousands of soldiers who were tested. Some may have forgotten all about the tests and not know that's why they have health problems now.
Did Speculation Fuel Oil Price Swings?
Go to Original
About the only economic break most Americans have gotten in the last six months has been the drastic drop in the price of oil, which has fallen even more precipitously than it rose. In a year's time, a commodity that was theoretically priced according to supply and demand doubled from $69 a barrel to nearly $150, and then, in a period of just three months, crashed along with the stock market.
So what happened? It's a complicated question, and there are lots of theories. But as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, many people believe it was a speculative bubble, not unlike the one that caused the housing crisis, and that it had more to do with traders and speculators on Wall Street than with oil company executives or sheiks in Saudi Arabia.
To understand what happened to the price of oil, you first have to understand the way it's traded. For years it has been bought and sold on something called the commodities futures market. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, it's traded alongside cotton and coffee, copper and steel by brokers who buy and sell contracts to deliver those goods at a certain price at some date in the future.
It was created so that farmers could gauge what their unharvested crops would be worth months in advance, so that factories could lock in the best price for raw materials, and airlines could manage their fuel costs. But more than a year ago those markets started to behave erratically. And when oil doubled to more than $147 a barrel, no one was more suspicious than Dan Gilligan.
As the president of the Petroleum Marketers Association, he represents more than 8,000 retail and wholesale suppliers, everyone from home heating oil companies to gas station owners.
When 60 Minutes talked to him last summer, his members were getting blamed for gouging the public, even though their costs had also gone through the roof. He told Kroft the problem was in the commodities markets, which had been invaded by a new breed of investor.
"Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the oil contracts in the futures markets are now held by speculative entities. Not by companies that need oil, not by the airlines, not by the oil companies. But by investors that are looking to make money from their speculative positions," Gilligan explained.
Gilligan said these investors don't actually take delivery of the oil. "All they do is buy the paper, and hope that they can sell it for more than they paid for it. Before they have to take delivery."
"They're trying to make money on the market for oil?" Kroft asked.
"Absolutely," Gilligan replied. "On the volatility that exists in the market. They make it going up and down."
He says his members in the home heating oil business, like Sean Cota of Bellows Falls, Vt., were the first to notice the effects a few years ago when prices seemed to disconnect from the basic fundamentals of supply and demand. Cota says there was plenty of product at the supply terminals, but the prices kept going up and up.
"We've had three price changes during the day where we pick up products, actually don't know what we paid for it and we'll go out and we'll sell that to the retail customer guessing at what the price was," Cota remembered. "The volatility is being driven by the huge amounts of money and the huge amounts of leverage that is going in to these markets."
About the same time, hedge fund manager Michael Masters reached the same conclusion. Masters' expertise is in tracking the flow of investments into and out of financial markets and he noticed huge amounts of money leaving stocks for commodities and oil futures, most of it going into index funds, betting the price of oil was going to go up.
Asked who was buying this "paper oil," Masters told Kroft, "The California pension fund. Harvard Endowment. Lots of large institutional investors. And, by the way, other investors, hedge funds, Wall Street trading desks were following right behind them, putting money - sovereign wealth funds were putting money in the futures markets as well. So you had all these investors putting money in the futures markets. And that was driving the price up."
In a five year period, Masters said the amount of money institutional investors, hedge funds, and the big Wall Street banks had placed in the commodities markets went from $13 billion to $300 billion. Last year, 27 barrels of crude were being traded every day on the New York Mercantile Exchange for every one barrel of oil that was actually being consumed in the United States.
"We talked to the largest physical trader of crude oil. And they told us that compared to the size of the investment inflows - and remember, this is the largest physical crude oil trader in the United States - they said that we are basically a flea on an elephant, that that's how big these flows were," Masters remembered.
Yet when Congress began holding hearings last summer and asked Wall Street banker Lawrence Eagles of J.P. Morgan what role excessive speculation played in rising oil prices, the answer was little to none. "We believe that high energy prices are fundamentally a result of supply and demand," he said in his testimony.
As it turns out, not even J.P. Morgan's chief global investment officer agreed with him. The same that day Eagles testified, an e-mail went out to clients saying "an enormous amount of speculation" ran up the price" and "140 dollars in July was ridiculous."
If anyone had any doubts, they were dispelled a few days after that hearing when the price of oil jumped $25 in a single day. That day was Sept. 22.
Michael Greenberger, a former director of trading for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that oversees oil futures, says there were no supply disruptions that could have justified such a big increase.
"Did China and India suddenly have gigantic needs for new oil products in a single day? No. Everybody agrees supply-demand could not drive the price up $25, which was a record increase in the price of oil. The price of oil went from somewhere in the 60s to $147 in less than a year. And we were being told, on that run-up, 'It's supply-demand, supply-demand, supply-demand,'" Greenberger said.
A recent report out of MIT, analyzing world oil production and consumption, also concluded that the basic fundamentals of supply and demand could not have been responsible for last year's run-up in oil prices. And Michael Masters says the U.S. Department of Energy's own statistics show that if the markets had been working properly, the price of oil should have been going down, not up.
"From quarter four of '07 until the second quarter of '08 the EIA, the Energy Information Administration, said that supply went up, worldwide supply went up. And worldwide demand went down. So you have supply going up and demand going down, which generally means the price is going down," Masters told Kroft.
"And this was the period of the spike," Kroft noted.
"This was the period of the spike," Masters agreed. "So you had the largest price increase in history during a time when actual demand was going down and actual supply was going up during the same period. However, the only thing that makes sense that lifted the price was investor demand."
Masters believes the investor demand for commodities, and oil futures in particular, was created on Wall Street by hedge funds and the big Wall Street investment banks like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, and J.P. Morgan, who made billions investing hundreds of billions of dollars of their clients’ money.
"The investment banks facilitated it," Masters said. "You know, they found folks to write papers espousing the benefits of investing in commodities. And then they promoted commodities as a, quote/unquote, 'asset class.' Like, you could invest in commodities just like you could in stocks or bonds or anything else, like they were suitable for long-term investment."
Dan Gilligan of the Petroleum Marketers Association agreed.
"Are you saying that companies like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and Barclays have as much to do with the price of oil going up as Exxon? Or…Shell?" Kroft asked.
"Yes," Gilligan said. "I tease people sometimes that, you know, people say, 'Well, who's the largest oil company in America?' And they'll always say, 'Well, Exxon Mobil or Chevron, or BP.' But I'll say, 'No. Morgan Stanley.'"
Morgan Stanley isn't an oil company in the traditional sense of the word - it doesn't own or control oil wells or refineries, or gas stations. But according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Morgan Stanley is a significant player in the wholesale market through various entities controlled by the corporation.
It not only buys and sells the physical product through subsidiaries and companies that it controls, Morgan Stanley has the capacity to store and hold 20 million barrels. For example, some storage tanks in New Haven, Conn. hold Morgan Stanley heating oil bound for homes in New England, where it controls nearly 15 percent of the market.
The Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs also has huge stakes in companies that own a refinery in Coffeyville, Kan., and control 43,000 miles of pipeline and more than 150 storage terminals.
And analysts at both investment banks contributed to the oil frenzy that drove prices to record highs: Goldman's top oil analyst predicted last March that the price of a barrel was going to $200; Morgan Stanley predicted $150 a barrel.
Both companies declined 60 Minutes' requests for an interview, but maintain that their oil businesses are completely separate from their trading activities, and that neither influence the independent opinions of their analysts. There is no evidence that either company has done anything illegal.
Asked if there is price manipulation going on, Dan Gilligan told Kroft, "I can't say. And the reason I can't say it, is because nobody knows. Our federal regulators don't have access to the data. They don't know who holds what positions."
"Why don't they know?" Kroft asked.
"Because federal law doesn't give them the jurisdiction to find out," Gilligan said.
It's impossible to tell exactly who was buying and selling all those oil contracts because most of the trading is now conducted in secret, with no public scrutiny or government oversight. Over time, the big Wall Street banks were allowed to buy and sell as many oil contracts as they wanted for their clients, circumventing regulations intended to limit speculation. And in 2000, Congress effectively deregulated the futures market, granting exemptions for complicated derivative investments called oil swaps, as well as electronic trading on private exchanges.
"Who was responsible for deregulating the oil future market?" Kroft asked Michael Greenberger.
"You'd have to say Enron," he replied. "This was something they desperately wanted, and they got."
Greenberger, who wanted more regulation while he was at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, not less, says it all happened when Enron was the seventh largest corporation in the United States. "This was when Enron was riding high. And what Enron wanted, Enron got."
Asked why they wanted a deregulated market in oil futures, Greenberger said, "Because they wanted to establish their own little energy futures exchange through computerized trading. They knew that if they could get this trading engine established without the controls that had been placed on speculators, they would have the ability to drive the price of energy products in any way they wanted to take it."
"When Enron failed, we learned that Enron, and its conspirators who used their trading engine, were able to drive the price of electricity up, some say, by as much as 300 percent on the West Coast," he added.
"Is the same thing going on right now in the oil business?" Kroft asked.
"Every Enron trader, who knew how to do these manipulations, became the most valuable employee on Wall Street," Greenberger said.
But some of them may now be looking for work. The oil bubble began to deflate early last fall when Congress threatened new regulations and federal agencies announced they were beginning major investigations. It finally popped with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the near collapse of AIG, who were both heavily invested in the oil markets. With hedge funds and investment houses facing margin calls, the speculators headed for the exits.
"From July 15th until the end of November, roughly $70 billion came out of commodities futures from these index funds," Masters explained. "In fact, gasoline demand went down by roughly five percent over that same period of time. Yet the price of crude oil dropped more than $100 a barrel. It dropped 75 percent."
Asked how he explains that, Masters said, "By looking at investors, that's the only way you can explain it."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The regulatory lapses in the commodities market that many believe fomented the rampant speculation in oil have still not been addressed, although the incoming Obama administration has promised to do so.
About the only economic break most Americans have gotten in the last six months has been the drastic drop in the price of oil, which has fallen even more precipitously than it rose. In a year's time, a commodity that was theoretically priced according to supply and demand doubled from $69 a barrel to nearly $150, and then, in a period of just three months, crashed along with the stock market.
So what happened? It's a complicated question, and there are lots of theories. But as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, many people believe it was a speculative bubble, not unlike the one that caused the housing crisis, and that it had more to do with traders and speculators on Wall Street than with oil company executives or sheiks in Saudi Arabia.
To understand what happened to the price of oil, you first have to understand the way it's traded. For years it has been bought and sold on something called the commodities futures market. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, it's traded alongside cotton and coffee, copper and steel by brokers who buy and sell contracts to deliver those goods at a certain price at some date in the future.
It was created so that farmers could gauge what their unharvested crops would be worth months in advance, so that factories could lock in the best price for raw materials, and airlines could manage their fuel costs. But more than a year ago those markets started to behave erratically. And when oil doubled to more than $147 a barrel, no one was more suspicious than Dan Gilligan.
As the president of the Petroleum Marketers Association, he represents more than 8,000 retail and wholesale suppliers, everyone from home heating oil companies to gas station owners.
When 60 Minutes talked to him last summer, his members were getting blamed for gouging the public, even though their costs had also gone through the roof. He told Kroft the problem was in the commodities markets, which had been invaded by a new breed of investor.
"Approximately 60 to 70 percent of the oil contracts in the futures markets are now held by speculative entities. Not by companies that need oil, not by the airlines, not by the oil companies. But by investors that are looking to make money from their speculative positions," Gilligan explained.
Gilligan said these investors don't actually take delivery of the oil. "All they do is buy the paper, and hope that they can sell it for more than they paid for it. Before they have to take delivery."
"They're trying to make money on the market for oil?" Kroft asked.
"Absolutely," Gilligan replied. "On the volatility that exists in the market. They make it going up and down."
He says his members in the home heating oil business, like Sean Cota of Bellows Falls, Vt., were the first to notice the effects a few years ago when prices seemed to disconnect from the basic fundamentals of supply and demand. Cota says there was plenty of product at the supply terminals, but the prices kept going up and up.
"We've had three price changes during the day where we pick up products, actually don't know what we paid for it and we'll go out and we'll sell that to the retail customer guessing at what the price was," Cota remembered. "The volatility is being driven by the huge amounts of money and the huge amounts of leverage that is going in to these markets."
About the same time, hedge fund manager Michael Masters reached the same conclusion. Masters' expertise is in tracking the flow of investments into and out of financial markets and he noticed huge amounts of money leaving stocks for commodities and oil futures, most of it going into index funds, betting the price of oil was going to go up.
Asked who was buying this "paper oil," Masters told Kroft, "The California pension fund. Harvard Endowment. Lots of large institutional investors. And, by the way, other investors, hedge funds, Wall Street trading desks were following right behind them, putting money - sovereign wealth funds were putting money in the futures markets as well. So you had all these investors putting money in the futures markets. And that was driving the price up."
In a five year period, Masters said the amount of money institutional investors, hedge funds, and the big Wall Street banks had placed in the commodities markets went from $13 billion to $300 billion. Last year, 27 barrels of crude were being traded every day on the New York Mercantile Exchange for every one barrel of oil that was actually being consumed in the United States.
"We talked to the largest physical trader of crude oil. And they told us that compared to the size of the investment inflows - and remember, this is the largest physical crude oil trader in the United States - they said that we are basically a flea on an elephant, that that's how big these flows were," Masters remembered.
Yet when Congress began holding hearings last summer and asked Wall Street banker Lawrence Eagles of J.P. Morgan what role excessive speculation played in rising oil prices, the answer was little to none. "We believe that high energy prices are fundamentally a result of supply and demand," he said in his testimony.
As it turns out, not even J.P. Morgan's chief global investment officer agreed with him. The same that day Eagles testified, an e-mail went out to clients saying "an enormous amount of speculation" ran up the price" and "140 dollars in July was ridiculous."
If anyone had any doubts, they were dispelled a few days after that hearing when the price of oil jumped $25 in a single day. That day was Sept. 22.
Michael Greenberger, a former director of trading for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that oversees oil futures, says there were no supply disruptions that could have justified such a big increase.
"Did China and India suddenly have gigantic needs for new oil products in a single day? No. Everybody agrees supply-demand could not drive the price up $25, which was a record increase in the price of oil. The price of oil went from somewhere in the 60s to $147 in less than a year. And we were being told, on that run-up, 'It's supply-demand, supply-demand, supply-demand,'" Greenberger said.
A recent report out of MIT, analyzing world oil production and consumption, also concluded that the basic fundamentals of supply and demand could not have been responsible for last year's run-up in oil prices. And Michael Masters says the U.S. Department of Energy's own statistics show that if the markets had been working properly, the price of oil should have been going down, not up.
"From quarter four of '07 until the second quarter of '08 the EIA, the Energy Information Administration, said that supply went up, worldwide supply went up. And worldwide demand went down. So you have supply going up and demand going down, which generally means the price is going down," Masters told Kroft.
"And this was the period of the spike," Kroft noted.
"This was the period of the spike," Masters agreed. "So you had the largest price increase in history during a time when actual demand was going down and actual supply was going up during the same period. However, the only thing that makes sense that lifted the price was investor demand."
Masters believes the investor demand for commodities, and oil futures in particular, was created on Wall Street by hedge funds and the big Wall Street investment banks like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, and J.P. Morgan, who made billions investing hundreds of billions of dollars of their clients’ money.
"The investment banks facilitated it," Masters said. "You know, they found folks to write papers espousing the benefits of investing in commodities. And then they promoted commodities as a, quote/unquote, 'asset class.' Like, you could invest in commodities just like you could in stocks or bonds or anything else, like they were suitable for long-term investment."
Dan Gilligan of the Petroleum Marketers Association agreed.
"Are you saying that companies like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and Barclays have as much to do with the price of oil going up as Exxon? Or…Shell?" Kroft asked.
"Yes," Gilligan said. "I tease people sometimes that, you know, people say, 'Well, who's the largest oil company in America?' And they'll always say, 'Well, Exxon Mobil or Chevron, or BP.' But I'll say, 'No. Morgan Stanley.'"
Morgan Stanley isn't an oil company in the traditional sense of the word - it doesn't own or control oil wells or refineries, or gas stations. But according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Morgan Stanley is a significant player in the wholesale market through various entities controlled by the corporation.
It not only buys and sells the physical product through subsidiaries and companies that it controls, Morgan Stanley has the capacity to store and hold 20 million barrels. For example, some storage tanks in New Haven, Conn. hold Morgan Stanley heating oil bound for homes in New England, where it controls nearly 15 percent of the market.
The Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs also has huge stakes in companies that own a refinery in Coffeyville, Kan., and control 43,000 miles of pipeline and more than 150 storage terminals.
And analysts at both investment banks contributed to the oil frenzy that drove prices to record highs: Goldman's top oil analyst predicted last March that the price of a barrel was going to $200; Morgan Stanley predicted $150 a barrel.
Both companies declined 60 Minutes' requests for an interview, but maintain that their oil businesses are completely separate from their trading activities, and that neither influence the independent opinions of their analysts. There is no evidence that either company has done anything illegal.
Asked if there is price manipulation going on, Dan Gilligan told Kroft, "I can't say. And the reason I can't say it, is because nobody knows. Our federal regulators don't have access to the data. They don't know who holds what positions."
"Why don't they know?" Kroft asked.
"Because federal law doesn't give them the jurisdiction to find out," Gilligan said.
It's impossible to tell exactly who was buying and selling all those oil contracts because most of the trading is now conducted in secret, with no public scrutiny or government oversight. Over time, the big Wall Street banks were allowed to buy and sell as many oil contracts as they wanted for their clients, circumventing regulations intended to limit speculation. And in 2000, Congress effectively deregulated the futures market, granting exemptions for complicated derivative investments called oil swaps, as well as electronic trading on private exchanges.
"Who was responsible for deregulating the oil future market?" Kroft asked Michael Greenberger.
"You'd have to say Enron," he replied. "This was something they desperately wanted, and they got."
Greenberger, who wanted more regulation while he was at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, not less, says it all happened when Enron was the seventh largest corporation in the United States. "This was when Enron was riding high. And what Enron wanted, Enron got."
Asked why they wanted a deregulated market in oil futures, Greenberger said, "Because they wanted to establish their own little energy futures exchange through computerized trading. They knew that if they could get this trading engine established without the controls that had been placed on speculators, they would have the ability to drive the price of energy products in any way they wanted to take it."
"When Enron failed, we learned that Enron, and its conspirators who used their trading engine, were able to drive the price of electricity up, some say, by as much as 300 percent on the West Coast," he added.
"Is the same thing going on right now in the oil business?" Kroft asked.
"Every Enron trader, who knew how to do these manipulations, became the most valuable employee on Wall Street," Greenberger said.
But some of them may now be looking for work. The oil bubble began to deflate early last fall when Congress threatened new regulations and federal agencies announced they were beginning major investigations. It finally popped with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the near collapse of AIG, who were both heavily invested in the oil markets. With hedge funds and investment houses facing margin calls, the speculators headed for the exits.
"From July 15th until the end of November, roughly $70 billion came out of commodities futures from these index funds," Masters explained. "In fact, gasoline demand went down by roughly five percent over that same period of time. Yet the price of crude oil dropped more than $100 a barrel. It dropped 75 percent."
Asked how he explains that, Masters said, "By looking at investors, that's the only way you can explain it."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The regulatory lapses in the commodities market that many believe fomented the rampant speculation in oil have still not been addressed, although the incoming Obama administration has promised to do so.
Are the US and Israel Planning a Broader Middle East War?
Go to Original
By Michel Chossudovsky
By Michel Chossudovsky
A very large delivery of US weaponry to Israel consisting of 3,000 tons of "ammunition" is scheduled to sail to Israel. The size and nature of the shipments are described as "unusual":
"Shipping 3,000-odd tons of ammunition in one go is a lot," one broker said, on condition of anonymity.
"This (kind of request) is pretty rare and we haven't seen much of it quoted in the market over the years," he added.
"Shipping brokers in London who have specialized in moving arms for the British and U.S. military in the past said such ship charters to Israel were rare. (Reuters, Jan 10, 2009)
The Pentagon has entrusted a Greek merchant shipping company to deliver the weapons to Israel:
"The U.S. is seeking to hire a merchant ship to deliver hundreds of tons of arms to Israel from Greece later this month, tender documents seen by Reuters show.
The U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC) said the ship was to carry 325 standard 20-foot containers of what is listed as "ammunition" on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January.
A "hazardous material" designation on the manifest mentions explosive substances and detonators, but no other details were given.(Ibid)
It is worth noting that a similar unusually large shipment of US ordinance to Israel was scheduled in early December:
"Tender documents indicate that the German ship hired by the US in early December also carried a massive cargo of weapons that weighed over 2.6 million kg [2600 tons] and filled up to 989 standard 20-foot containers to Ashdod from North Carolina." (Press TV, 10 Jan 2009)
Are These Large Shipments of Ordinance Connected to the Invasion of Gaza?
The request by the Pentagon to transport ordinance in a commercial vessel, according to Reuters, was made on December 31, 4 days after the commencement of the aerial bombings of Gaza by F16 Fighter jets.
Analysts have hastily concluded, without evidence, that the 2 shipments of "ammunition" were intended to supply Israel's armed forces in support of its military invasion of Gaza.
"A senior military analyst in London who declined to be named said that, because of the timing, the shipments could be "irregular" and linked to the Gaza offensive." (Reuters, January 10, 2009)
These reports are mistaken. Delivery of ordinance always precedes the onslaught of a military operation. The ordinance required under "Operation Cast Lead" was decided upon in June 2008. Further to Tel Aviv's request under the US military aid program to Israel, the U.S. Congress approved in September 2008 the transfer of 1,000 bunker-buster high precision GPS-guided Small Diameter Guided Bomb Units 39 (GBU-39).
The GBU 39 smart bombs produced by Boeing were delivered to Israel in November. They were used in the initial air raids on Gaza:
"...The Israel Air Force has used the new lightweight GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb acquired from the USA, in the recent attacks in Gaza. The [Jerusalem] Post mentioned the new weapons ordered last September having arrived last month [November], and already put to action with the IAF fighters. These weapons could have been deployed by the Boeing/IAF F-15Is, since sofar SDB is cleared for use only with this type of aircraft.
It is highly unlikely that the bulk of the weaponry included in these two large shipments, scheduled to arrive in Israel in late January, is intended to be used in Israel's military operation in Gaza. The GBU-39 is lightweight (130 kg). The entire shipment of GBU 39s (1000 units) would be of the order of a modest 130 tons. In other words, the specifications of the GBU 39 do not match the description of the "unusually large" and "heavy" shipment of ordinance.
GBU-39
Escalation Scenario
The shipment ordered on December 31 is of the order of 3000 tons, an unusually large and heavy cargo of "ammunition" pointing to the transfer of heavy weaponry to Israel.
According to US military statements, the ordinance is for stockpiling, to be used "at short notice" in the eventuality of a conflict:
"This previously scheduled shipment is routine and not in support of the current situation in Gaza. ...The U.S. military pre-positions stockpiles in some countries in case it needs supplies at short notice." (Reuters, 10 Jan 2009, emphasis added)
Whatever the nature of these large weapons shipments, they are intended for use in a future military operation in the Middle East.
Since the launching of the Theater Iran Near Term Operation Operation (TIRANNT) in May 2003, an escalation scenario involving military action directed against Iran and Syria has been envisaged. TIRANNT was followed by a series of military plans pertaining to Iran. Numerous official statements and US military documents have pointed to an expanded Middle East war.
What these shipments suggest is that the "escalation scenario" not only prevails, but has reached a more active stage in the process of US-Israeli military planning.
Whether these weapons will be used or not is not known. The central question, in this regard, is whether the Gaza invasion is part of a broader military adventure directed against Lebanon, Syria and Iran, in which heavier weaponry including US made bunker buster bombs will be used.
History of US Weapons Shipments to Israel
The stockpiling of US made bunker buster bombs by Israel has been ongoing since 2005:
"The United States will sell Israel nearly 5,000 smart bombs in one of the largest weapons deals between the allies in years.
Among the bombs the [Israeli] air force will get are 500 one-ton bunker busters that can penetrate two-meter-thick cement walls; 2,500 regular one-ton bombs; 1,000 half-ton bombs; and 500 quarter-ton bombs. The bombs Israel is acquiring include airborne versions, guidance units, training bombs and detonators. They are guided by an existing Israeli satellite used by the military.
The sale will augment existing Israeli supplies of smart bombs. The Pentagon told Congress that the bombs are meant to maintain Israel's qualitative advantage [against Iran], and advance U.S. strategic and tactical interests." (Jewish Virtual Library: September 21-22, 2004, Haaretz / Jerusalem Post.)
The actual shipments of US made bunker buster bombs started in 2005. The US approved in April 2005, the delivery of:
some 5,000 "smart air launched weapons" including some 500 BLU 109 'bunker-buster bombs. The (uranium coated) munitions are said to be more than 'adequate to address the full range of Iranian targets, with the possible exception of the buried facility at Natanz, which may require the [more powerful] BLU-113 bunker buster [a variant of the GBU 28]'" (See Michel Chossudovsky, Planned US-Israeli Nuclear Attack on Iran, Global Research, May 1, 2005)
The BLU-109 is smaller than the GBU 28. "It is a 2,000lbs warhead that can be used in combination with a GPS guidance kit [...], and can penetrate up to 15 feet of fortified concrete." (See F16.net)
In 2006 at the height of the Lebanon War in August 2006, a major shipment of the 2.2 ton GBU 28 bombs, according to the New York Times, was dispatched to Israel.
The GBU 28 is produced by Raytheon. It was used against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, has the the capability of penetrating some 20 feet of reinforced concrete. (Haaretz, 9 Nov 2008) In contrast to the GBU 39 smart bombs (130 kg) used against Gaza, each GBU-28 weighs a hefty 2.2 tons.
"The Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28) is a special weapon developed for penetrating hardened Iraqi command centers located deep underground. The GBU-28 is a 5,000-pound laser-guided conventional munition that uses a 4,400-pound penetrating warhead." Federation of American Scientists,
(For a visual depiction see "Bob Sherman, How the GBU-28 works", USA Today on-line.).
GBU-28
The recent unusually large shipments of weaponry to Israel are part of the 2004 agreement between Washington and Tel Aviv, financed by US military aid to Israel.
As mentioned above, there is a history of delivery of bunker buster bombs (including the GBU 28), going back to 2005. While the nature and composition of these recent weapons shipments to Israel are not known, one suspects that they include the heavier version of the bunker buster bombs including the GBU-28.
In this regard, it is worth noting that last Summer, Israel requested the Pentagon to deliver GBU-28 bunker buster bombs. The stated purpose was to use them in the eventuality of a military operation directed against Iran.
In September 2008, according to US and Israeli press reports quoting Pentagon officials, Tel Aviv's request was turned down. According to the reports, Washington categorically refused to deliver the shipment of GBU 28 bunker buster bombs, to be used to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. "Instead" Washington accepted to deliver the lightweight GBU-39 for use against Gaza.
The U.S. had "rejected an Israeli request for military equipment and support that would improve Israel's ability to attack Iran's nuclear facilities."
The Americans viewed [Israel's] request, which was transmitted (and rejected) at the highest level, as a sign that Israel is in the advanced stages of preparations to attack Iran. They therefore warned Israel against attacking, saying such a strike would undermine American interests. They also demanded that Israel give them prior notice if it nevertheless decided to strike Iran. In early September, Haaretz reported that the request had included GBU-28 "bunker-buster" bombs.
In mid-September, the U.S. agreed instead to sell Israel 1000 GBU-39 "bunker buster" bombs which Israeli military experts said "could provide a powerful new weapon" in Gaza, AP reported.
So: when Israel requested weapons that the U.S. expected would be used for bombing Iran, the U.S. said no, and added explicitly that it did not want to see an Israeli attack on Iran. And there was no Israeli attack on Iran. (Defense Update.com, December 2008)
Media Disinformation
The official statements and press reports are bogus. Israel and the US have always acted in close coordination. Washington does not "demand that Israel give them prior notice" of a military operation:
The report in Haaretz suggests that the Bush Administration was adamant and did not want the Israelis to attack Iran. In fact, the reports suggested that the US would shoot down Israeli planes, if they tried to attack Iran:
"Air-space authorization: An attack on Iran would apparently require passage through Iraqi air space. For this to occur, an air corridor would be needed that Israeli fighter jets could cross without being targeted by American planes or anti-aircraft missiles. The Americans also turned down this request. According to one account, to avoid the issue, the Americans told the Israelis to ask Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for permission, along the lines of "If you want, coordinate with him." (Haaretz Nov 9, 2008)
This Israeli report is misleading. Israel is America's ally. Military operations are closely coordinated. Israel does not act without Washington's approval and the US does not shoot down the planes of its closest ally.
The Nature and Composition of the Recent US Weapons Shipments to Israel
These unusually large shipments of ordinance would normally require Congressional approval. To our knowledge, there is no public record of approval of the unusually large shipments of heavy "ammunition" to Israel.
The nature and composition of the shipments are not known. Was Israel's request for the delivery of the 2.2 ton GBU 28 accepted by Washington, bypassing the US Congress? Are GBU 28 bombs, each of which weighs 2.2 tons part of the 3000 ton shipments to Israel. Are tactical bunker buster mini-nuclear bombs included in Israel's arsenal? These are questions to be raised in the US Congress.
The two shipments of "ammunition" are slated to arrive in Israel, respectively no later than the 25th and 31st of January.
Secretary Robert Gates who remains at the helm of the Department of Defense ensures continuity in the military agenda.
Preparing for a Confrontation with Iran: Beefing Up Israel's Missile Defense System
In early January, the Pentagon dispatched some 100 military personnel to Israel from US European Command (EUCOM) to assist Israel in setting up a new sophisticated X-band early warning radar system. This project is part of the military aid package to Israel approved by the Pentagon in September 2008:
"The Israeli government requested the system to help defend against a potential missile attack from Iran. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates signed off on the deployment order in mid-September. ....
Once fully operational, the system will be capable of tracking and identifying small objects at long distance and at very high altitude, including space, according to U.S. Missile Defense Agency officials. It also will integrate Israel’s missile defenses with the U.S. global missile detection network.
“This will enable the Israelis to track medium- and long-range ballistic missiles multiple times better than their current radar allows them to,” Morrell said. “It will … more than double the range of Israel's missile defense radars and increase its available engagement time.”
This, he said, will greatly enhance Israel’s defensive capabilities. “There is a growing ballistic missile threat in the region, particularly from Iran,” Morrell said. “And no one in the region should feel more nervous about that threat than the Israelis. And they clearly do, and they have asked for our assistance.” (Defense Talk.com, January 6, 2009, emphasis added.)
The new X-band radar system 'permits an intercept soon after launch over enemy instead of friendly territory" (Sen. Joseph Azzolina, Protecting Israel from Iran's missiles, Bayshore News, December 26, 2008).
The X-band radar would "integrate Israel’s missile defenses with the U.S. global missile detection network, which includes satellites, Aegis ships on the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and land-based Patriot radars and interceptors." (Ibid)
What this means is that Washington calls the shots. The US rather than Israel would control the Air Defense system: ''This is and will remain a U.S. radar system,' Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. 'So this is not something we are giving or selling to the Israelis and it is something that will likely require U.S. personnel on-site to operate.'" (Quoted in Israel National News, January 9, 2009, emphasis added).
In other words, the US military controls Israel's Air Defense system, which is integrated into the US global missile defense system. Under these circumstances, Israel cannot launch a war against Iran without the consent of the US High Command.
The large shipments of US ordinance, slated to arrive in Israel after the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States and Commander in Chief are part of the broader program of US-Israeli military cooperation in relation to Iran.
The reinforcement of Israel's missile defenses combined with the large shipments of US weapons are part of an escalation scenario, which could lead the World under an Obama Administration into a broader Middle East war.
New Cold War?
There has been a military build on both sides. Iran has responded to the Israeli-US initiative, by beefing up it own missile defense system with the support of Russia. According to reports (December 21), Moscow and Tehran have been holding talks on the supply by Russia of "medium-range air defense systems - specifically, S-300 surface-to-air missile systems" (Asian Times, January 9, 2009)
The Afghan Scam
Go to Original
By Ann Jones
The Untold Story of Why the U.S. Is Bound to Fail in Afghanistan
By Ann Jones
The Untold Story of Why the U.S. Is Bound to Fail in Afghanistan
The first of 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops are scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan next month to re-win the war George W. Bush neglected to finish in his eagerness to start another one. However, "winning" the military campaign against the Taliban is the lesser half of the story.
Going into Afghanistan, the Bush administration called for a political campaign to reconstruct the country and thereby establish the authority of a stable, democratic Afghan central government. It was understood that the two campaigns -- military and political/economic -- had to go forward together; the success of each depended on the other. But the vision of a reconstructed, peaceful, stable, democratically governed Afghanistan faded fast. Most Afghans now believe that it was nothing but a cover story for the Bush administration's real goal -- to set up permanent bases in Afghanistan and occupy the country forever.
Whatever the truth of the matter, in the long run, it's not soldiers but services that count -- electricity, water, food, health care, justice, and jobs. Had the U.S. delivered the promised services on time, while employing Afghans to rebuild their own country according to their own priorities and under the supervision of their own government -- a mini-Marshall Plan -- they would now be in charge of their own defense. The forces on the other side, which we loosely call the Taliban, would also have lost much of their grounds for complaint.
Instead, the Bush administration perpetrated a scam. It used the system it set up to dispense reconstruction aid to both the countries it "liberated," Afghanistan and Iraq, to transfer American taxpayer dollars from the national treasury directly into the pockets of private war profiteers. Think of Halliburton, Bechtel, and Blackwater in Iraq; Louis Berger Group, Bearing Point, and DynCorp International in Afghanistan. They're all in it together. So far, the Bush administration has bamboozled Americans about its shady aid program. Nobody talks about it. Yet the aid scam, which would be a scandal if it weren't so profitable for so many, explains far more than does troop strength about why, today, we are on the verge of watching the whole Afghan enterprise go belly up.
What's worse, there's no reason to expect that things will change significantly on Barack Obama's watch. During the election campaign, he called repeatedly for more troops for "the right war" in Afghanistan (while pledging to draw-down U.S. forces in Iraq), but he has yet to say a significant word about the reconstruction mission. While many aid workers in that country remain full of good intentions, the delivery systems for and uses of U.S. aid have been so thoroughly corrupted that we can only expect more of the same -- unless Obama cleans house fast. But given the monumental problems on his plate, how likely is that?
The Jolly Privateers
It's hard to overstate the magnitude of the failure of American reconstruction in Afghanistan. While the U.S. has occupied the country -- for seven years and counting -- and efficiently set up a network of bases and prisons, it has yet to restore to Kabul, the capital, a mud brick city slightly more populous than Houston, a single one of the public services its citizens used to enjoy. When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s, they modernized the education system and built power plants, dams, factories, and apartment blocs, still the most coveted in the country. If, in the last seven years, George W. Bush did not get the lights back on in the capital, or the water flowing, or dispose of the sewage or trash, how can we assume Barack Obama will do any better with the corrupt system he's about to inherit?
Between 2002 and 2008, the U.S. pledged $10.4 billion dollars in "development" (reconstruction) aid to Afghanistan, but actually delivered only $5 billion of that amount. Considering that the U.S. is spending $36 billion a year on the war in Afghanistan and about $8 billion a month on the war in Iraq, that $5 billion in development aid looks paltry indeed. But keep in mind that, in a country as poor as Afghanistan, a little well spent money can make a big difference.
The problem is not simply that the Bush administration skimped on aid, but that it handed it over to for-profit contractors. Privatization, as is now abundantly clear, enriches only the privateers and serves only their private interests.
Take one pertinent example. When the inspectors general of the Pentagon and State Department investigated the U.S. program to train the Afghan police in 2006, they found the number of men trained (about 30,000) to be less than half the number reported by the administration (70,000). The training had lasted eight weeks at most, with no in-the-field experience whatsoever. Only about half the equipment assigned to the police -- including thousands of trucks -- could be accounted for, and the men trained were then deemed "incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work."
The American privateer training the police -- DynCorp -- went on to win no-bid contracts to train police in Iraq with similar results. The total bill for American taxpayers from 2004 to 2006: $1.6 billion. It's unclear whether that money came from the military or the development budget, but in either case it was wasted. The inspectors general reported that police incompetence contributed directly to increased opium production, the reinvigoration of the Taliban, and government corruption in general, thoroughly subverting much ballyhooed U.S. goals, both military and political.
In the does-no-one-ever-learn category: the latest American victory plan, announced in December, calls for recruiting and rearming local militias to combat the Taliban. Keep in mind that hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly donated by Japan, have already been spent to disarm local militias. A proposal to rearm them was soundly defeated last fall in the Afghan Parliament. Now, it's again the plan du jour, rubber-stamped by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
America First
In other areas less obviously connected to security, American aid policy is no less self-serving or self-defeating. Although the Bush administration handpicked the Afghan president and claims to want to extend his authority throughout the country, it refuses to channel aid money through his government's ministries. (It argues that the Afghan government is corrupt, which it is, in a pathetic, minor league sort of way.)
Instead of giving aid money for Afghan schools to the Ministry of Education, for example, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funds private American contractors to start literacy programs for adults. As a result, Afghan teachers abandon the public schools and education administrators leave the Ministry for higher paying jobs with those contractors, further undermining public education and governance. The Bush administration may have no particular reason to sabotage its handpicked government, but it has had every reason to befriend private contractors who have, in turn, kicked back generously to election campaigns and Republican coffers.
There are other peculiar features of American development aid. Nearly half of it (47%) goes to support "technical assistance." Translated, that means overpaid American "experts," often totally unqualified -- somebody's good old college buddies -- are paid handsomely to advise the locals on matters ranging from office procedures to pesticide use, even when the Afghans neither request nor welcome such advice. By contrast, the universally admired aid programs of Sweden and Ireland allocate only 4% and 2% respectively to such technical assistance, and when asked, they send real experts. American technical advisors, like American privateers, are paid by checks -- big ones -- that pass directly from the federal treasury to private accounts in American banks, thus helping to insure that about 86 cents of every dollar designated for U.S. "foreign" aid anywhere in the world never leaves the U.S.A.
American aid that actually makes it abroad arrives with strings attached. At least 70% of it is "tied" to the purchase of American products. A food aid program, for example, might require Afghanistan to purchase American agricultural products in preference to their own, thus putting Afghan farmers out of business or driving even more of them into the poppy trade. (The percentage of aid from Sweden, Ireland, and the United Kingdom that is similarly tied: zero.)
Testifying before a congressional subcommittee on May 8, 2001, Andrew Natsios, then head of USAID, described American aid as "a key foreign policy instrument [that] helps nations prepare for participation in the global trading system and become better markets for U.S. exports." Such so-called aid cuts American business in right from the start. USAID has even developed a system for "preselecting" certain private contractors, then inviting only those preselected companies to apply for contracts the agency wants to issue.
Often, in fact, only one of the preselected contractors puts in for the job and then -- if you need a hint as to what's really going on -- just happens to award subcontracts to some of the others. It's remarkable, too, how many former USAID officials have passed through the famed revolving door in Washington to become highly paid consultants to private contractors -- and vice versa. By January 2006, the Bush administration had co-opted USAID altogether. The once independent aid agency launched by President Kennedy in 1961 became a subsidiary of the State Department and a partner of the Pentagon.
Oh, and keep in mind one more thing: While the private contractors may be in it for the duration, most employees and technical experts in Afghanistan stay on the job only six months to a year because it's considered such a "hardship post." As a result, projects tend not to last long and to be remarkably unrelated to those that came before or will come after. Contractors collect the big bucks whether or not the aid they contracted to deliver benefits Afghans, or even reaches them.
These arrangements help explain why Afghanistan remains such a shambles.
The Afghan Scam
It's not that American aid has done nothing. Check out the USAID website and you'll find a summary of what is claimed for it (under the glorious heading of "Afghanistan Reborn"). It will inform you that USAID has completed literally thousands of projects in that country. The USAID loves numbers, but don't be deceived by them. A thousand short-term USAID projects can't hold a candle to one long, careful, patient program run, year after year, by a bunch of Afghans led by a single Swede.
If there has been any progress in Afghanistan, especially in and around Kabul, it's largely been because two-thirds of the reconstruction aid to Afghanistan comes from other (mostly European) countries that do a better job, and partly because the country's druglords spend big on palatial homes and services in the capital. But the one-third of international aid that is supposed to come from the U.S., and that might make a critical difference when added to the work of others, eternally falls into the wrong pockets.
What would Afghans have done differently, if they'd been in charge? They'd have built much smaller schools, and a lot more of them, in places more convenient to children than to foreign construction crews. Afghans would have hired Afghans to do the building. Louis Berger Group had the contract to build more than 1,000 schools at a cost of $274,000 per school. Already way behind schedule in 2005, they had finished only a small fraction of them when roofs began to collapse under the snows of winter.
Believe me, given that same $274,000, Afghans would have built 15 or 20 schools with good roofs. The same math can be applied to medical clinics. Afghans would also have chosen to repair irrigation systems and wells, to restore ruined orchards, vineyards, and fields. Amazingly enough, USAID initially had no agricultural programs in a country where rural subsistence farmers are 85% of the population. Now, after seven years, the agency finally claims to have "improved" irrigation on "nearly 15%" of arable land. And you can be sure that Afghans wouldn't have chosen -- again -- the Louis Berger Group to rebuild the 389-mile long Kabul/Kandahar highway with foreign labor at a cost of $1 million per mile.
As things now stand, Afghans, as well as Afghan-Americans who go back to help their homeland, have to play by American rules. Recently an Afghan-American contractor who competed for reconstruction contracts told me that the American military is getting in on the aid scam. To apply for a contract, Afghan applicants now have to fill out a form (in English!) that may run to 50 pages. My informant, who asked to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, commented that it's next to impossible to figure out "what they look for." He won a contract only when he took a hint and hired an American "expert" -- a retired military officer -- to fill out the form. The expert claimed the "standard fee" for his service: 25% of the value of the contract.
Another Afghan-American informed me that he was proud to have worked with an American construction company building schools with USAID funds. Taken on as a translator, he persuaded the company not only to hire Afghan laborers, but also to raise their pay gradually from $1.00 per day to $10.00 per day. "They could feed their families," he said, "and it was all cost over-run, so cost didn't matter. The boss was already billing the government $10.00 to $15.00 an hour for labor, so he could afford to pay $10.00 a day and still make a profit." My informant didn't question the corruption in such over-billing. After all, Afghans often tack on something extra for themselves, and they don't call it corruption either. But on this scale it adds up to millions going into the assumedly deep pockets of one American privateer.
Yet a third Afghan-American, a businessman who has worked on American projects in his homeland, insisted that when Bush pledged $10.4 billion in aid, President Karzai should have offered him a deal: "Give me $2 billion in cash, I'll kick back the rest to you, and you can take your army and go home."
"If Karzai had put the cash in an Afghan bank," the businessman added, "and spent it himself on what people really need, both Afghanistan and Karzai would be in much better shape today." Yes, he was half-joking, but he wasn't wrong.
Don't think of such stories, and thousands of others like them, as merely tales of the everyday theft or waste of a few hundred million dollars -- a form of well-organized, routine graft that leaves the corruption of Karzai's government in the shade and will undoubtedly continue unremarked upon in the Obama years. Those multi-millions that will continue to be poured down the Afghan drain really represent promises made to a people whose country and culture we have devastated more than once. They are promises made by our government, paid for by our taxpayers, and repeatedly broken.
These stories, which you'll seldom hear about, are every bit as important as the debates about military strength and tactics and strategy in Afghanistan that dominate public discourse today. Those promises, made in our name, were once said to be why we fight; now -- broken -- they remind us that we've already lost.
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