For the Record

A welcome statement

Clinton says that Israeli settlement activity on Palestinian lands is illegitimate.

Barack Obama wins Nobel peace prize?

What for?

Some apt astonishment from Glenn Greenwald here and Matt Taibi here.

Benj and Leiter correctly point out that the award is aimed at messaging positive value to not being a Republican.  That's something, I guess.

Update:  speaking of other reasons for not handing Obama the Prize on a platter, how about the fact that he put the foxes in charge of the financial bailout and failed to implement any real reform, causing continuing misery and violence to millions of Americans, as their houses and hard-earned cash continue to go up in smoke and mirrors?  The U.S.: all scam, all the time.

The Goldstone report on Israel's attack on Gaza

If you were really in any doubt about whether Israeli forces have engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians, you can put those doubts to rest.

The full UN site on the fact-finding mission is here.

The summary report is here.

The full report is here.

Time to divest from the Israeli occupation

I recently received an email update from Mazin Qumsiyeh:

It is sometimes really hard to even begin to describe our feelings living under brutal Israeli occupation and noting the indifference, complicity, and hypocrisy of so many people in Israel, in America, in Europe and elsewhere. Every day, the Israeli “system” violates dozens of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Examples just in the past week include imposing a curfew on Jayyus village and terrorizing its population (this after confiscating most of its very rich agricultural lands), kidnapping of over 100 Palestinians in a spat of four days (to add to the 11,000 political prisoners held in Israeli torture cells), denial of right of movement, continued siege on Gaza strip, denial of rights of education, more land confiscation, pillaging a big portion of the humanitarian aid and much more.  If I was to write details of these violations, many readers would stop reading very quickly.  Visitors to this area think that Israel is doing these things “to defend itself” and sometimes may go overboard in “security measures.” Security measure that puts millions under a siege.  This maddening description is like saying the Apartheid White South Africa or Nazi Germany in occupied Poland were acting in self defense and sometimes they went a bit too far. Occupiers and colonizers do not have the right of self defense against the resistance of people who they occupy and colonize.

Indeed.  Forty-two years on, just what does Israel expect?  And how is Palestinian resistance (such as it is) to the illegal and brutal occupation supposed to justify yet more illegal and brutal actions? 

For the sake of both Israelis and Palestinians, the occupation must end.  I agree with Naomi Klein that

It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.

On Feb 7, Hampshire College became the first U.S. institution of higher learning to pledge to divest from companies based on their activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. You can write to President Hextor in support of this action here.

UPDATE: Here's a film, 'Closed Zone', by Israeli Yoni Goodman, that brings certain effects of the Gaza blockade to animated life.

Grateful for small favors

More house members stood up to Israel today than in 2006.

Tutu barred from speaking for speaking up against Israel: updated

How very tiresome that reactionary members of Zionist lobbies (how many profit from, or are friends with those who profit from, the arms and munitions industry, I wonder?) persist in persecuting rational observers of the continuing human rights abuses of the Israeli government against the long-suffering (40 years and counting) Palestinians.  Not content with hounding top-flight academics like Norman Finkelstein (who was "retired" from his position at DePaul University) and Juan Cole (whose offer from Yale was withdrawn), pro-Israel-no-matter-what attack dogs have now scuttled a talk  at the University of St. Thomas---thanks to the helpful interference of University President "Father knows best" Dennis Dease---by Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace prize, among other accolades.

As if this supression of reasoned observation weren't outrageous enough, the cancellation was accompanied by the removal of Cris Toffolo, the chair of the Justice and Peace Studies program (which had sponsored Tutu's talk), from her position as chair, for "the way she questioned the administration's decision".  Toffolo has tenure (thank heavens) but no longer heads the department.

Muzzlewatch has further details and the means to write a letter of protest here.

UPDATE: Facing widespread condemnation for its decision to block a speaking invitation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the University of St. Thomas announced Wednesday that he would be welcome on the campus after all. While many on the campus said that they were pleased with the reversal, some also questioned whether the university was doing enough to undo damage from the incident.

http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/11/tutu

When the basic illusions have been exhausted...

[What follows is from John Cusack's interview with Naomi Klein, a journalist in the tradition of Robert Fisk and Seymour Hersh, and author of recent articles and a book on Disaster Capitalism.]

Cusack: One of my favorite quotes is from Arthur Miller, who said: "An era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted."  And with The Shock Doctrine, you are basically trying to shatter and obliterate the illusion of the neo-liberal or neo-con fundamentalist free market -- this official narrative wherein we not only are supposed to worship free markets that really aren't free, we must actually kill to feed them.

What the book rightly asks is what many have felt for a very long time: shouldn't we make a moral choice that you either make defense policy or you profit from it? I think that kind of transparency would be very important to have in the public sphere. Those people who go on CNN and are treated as impartial statesmen when, in reality, the book -- which is triple footnoted and sourced -- suggests otherwise. They did hold their former jobs...I guess by defintion they are statesmen....but if we are compelled to be honest we know they are other things as well... I'm speaking of people like George Shultz or Richard Perle.

Klein: Right.  If we look at who the real intellectual engines of this war are, we'd see a web of people who are not simply the statesmen they appear to me but card-carrying members of the disaster capitalism complex -- shareholders, board-members and directors of companies that profit directly and enormously from war and other disasters --

Cusack: Who would these people be..?

Klein: Well, for instance, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was a propaganda arm of the Bush administration, publicly making the case for the invasion of Iraq.  And it was founded by Bruce Jackson, a vice president of Lockheed Martin who had been out of his job for just three months.  Jackson stacked the committee with old colleagues from Lockheed -- Charles Kupperman, Lockheed Martin's vice president for space and strategic missiles was on it, and so was Douglas Graham, Lockheed's director of defense systems. And even though the committee was formed at the explicit request of the White House to make the case for war in the public mind, no one had to step down from Lockheed or sell his shares. Which was certainly good for committee members, since Lockheed's share price jumped 145 percent thanks to the war they helped engineer -- from $41 in March 2003 to $102 in February 2007. The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was chaired by George Shultz, who wrote op-eds and went on TV beating the drums, and was presented just as this respected statesman. But Shultz hasn't been in office for decades.  And in the meantime, he'd been working for Bechtel -- at the time he was calling for the invasion, he was still on its board, and since Bechtel is a privately held company, we don't know anything about his holdings. We do know that Bechtel was one of the biggest winners of the reconstruction game in Iraq, landing $2.3-billion in contracts.

Cusack: How about James Baker and the $1 billion kickback that the Carlyle Group used him to try to get from the government of Kuwait, which you wrote about in The Nation?

Klein: Right.  I talk about the incredible power of the "formers." One of the distinguishing features of the Bush administration has been its reliance on outside advisers and freelance envoys to perform key functions: James Baker, Paul Bremer, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Richard Perle, Bruce Jackson, and so on. So you have Congress playing a rubber-stamp role during the pivotal decision-making years, and Supreme Court rulings treated as little more than gentle suggestions, while these mostly volunteer advisers have wielded enormous influence, especially when it comes to Iraq. Their power stems from the fact that they used to perform key roles in government -- they are former secretaries of state, former ambassadors and former undersecretaries of defense. All have been out of government for years and, in the meantime, have set up lucrative careers in the disaster capitalism complex. And because they are freelance government contractors, they aren't subject to the same conflict-of-interest rules as elected or appointed politicians. The effect has been to eliminate the so-called revolving door between government and industry and allow the disaster industries to simply set up shop inside the government, using the reputations of these supposedly illustrious ex-politicians as cover.

As you say, in the press, they maintain their credibility as statesmen -- their current, far more relevant work in the corporate world is almost never mentioned. You brought up Baker. He was Bush's debt envoy to Iraq while he was still a partner in the Carlyle Group, which is a major arms trader whose fortunes have exploded since the war. He was also still a partner at Baker Botts, which represents some of the largest oil companies in the world, as well as Halliburton.  Kissinger is another classic example of the power of the formers because he's primarily been a businessman, not a statesman, now for some 25 years. He met with Bush and Cheney regularly making Iraq policy -- according to Bob Woodward, more than any other advisor. But who was he representing in those meetings? Kissinger has repeatedly put his business interests ahead of the public interest, most dramatically when he resigned as chair of the 9/11 Commission rather than disclose his list of corporate clients at Kissinger Associates.

Another example is Richard Perle.  Richard Perle headed the Defense Policy Board. Just two months after 9/11 he launched a venture capital firm called Trireme Partners that exists to invest in the homeland security and defense sectors.  One of his first investors was Boeing -- it sunk $20 million in Trireme. Meanwhile, Perle is using the Defense Policy Board to make the case for war. And of course Boeing was another one of the huge winners from the invasion of Iraq.

So I asked the question, "Why is it that we refer to Richard Perle merely as an ideologue -- rather than, say, as an arms dealer with an impressive vocabulary?"

Cusack: The question becomes one of intellectual honesty and basic morality. I wanted to talk about the players or the heirs of the Friedman legacy who are in the public sector today... The Grover Norquists and Bill Kristols of the world come to mind ...You also talk about the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute as pursuing the goal of the elimination of the public sphere and the total liberation of corporations.

Klein: I refer to the people in those think tanks as "the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks" because a huge amount of the funding for these think tanks is coming directly from the weapons and homeland security industry. They are funded by some of the wealthiest families and the wealthiest corporations in this country so the question of intellectual honesty really has to come up. They exist in a strange intellectual gray zone where they get money in order to think. And besides, I'm not sure thinking really belongs in tanks.

Cusack: So you're saying that the Shultzes and the Perles and the Kissingers and the Jim Bakers of the world are embedded in the homeland security/privatized war economy?

Klein: More than embedded. I mean, they are it.

Cusack: I was trying to --

[laughter ]

Klein: Why are you trying to be polite?

Cusack: I don't know. I don't know. That's part of the problem, too: being polite with this immorality and not having the courage to call something what it is...The refusal of the Congress to challenge Bush in a meaningful way is proof of the Democratic complicity in the new economy. To name only right wing people is to ignore the central thesis of intellectual honesty as the first step in a long corrective march... So we'll have to talk about what Democrats are in on this game and name them, too...we'll have to get into that later.

The true measure of power

The true measure of power is how much you can get away with, which makes the gangsters running the U.S. effectively all-powerful.

Impressive honesty

Jimmy Carter must have known that even the title of Palestine Peace Not Apartheid would draw fire, in daring to implicate Israel in systematic racial oppression of Palestinians.  But evidently he's had it up to here with this particular denial of the obvious, especially as perpetuated by his fellow Democrats:

[Good Morning America host] Robin Roberts told Carter that "many people find surprising that you come down a little hard on Israel, and that there have been some key Democrats who have distanced themselves a little bit from your view on Israel."

"In fact, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said 'it is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based suppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously,'" Roberts said. "What is your response to that?"

"Well, Robin, I have spent the last 30 years trying to find peace for Israel and Israel's neighbors, and the purpose of this book is to do that," Carter responded. "But you can't find peace unless you address the existing issues honestly and frankly."

Carter said that there was "no doubt now that a minority of Israelis are perpetuating apartheid on the people in Palestine, the Palestinian people."

[...]   

Carter called Israel's occupation the "prime cause" of continuing violence in the Middle East.

"And contrary to the United Nations resolutions, contrary to the official policy of the United States government, contrary to the Quartet so-called road map, all of those things -- and contrary to the majority of Israeli people's opinion -- this occupation and confiscation and colonization of land in the West Bank is the prime cause of a continuation of violence in the Middle East," said Carter.

"And what is being done to the Palestinians under Israeli domination is really atrocious," Carter continued. "It's a terrible affliction on these people."

In his book, Carter argues that "peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens and honor its own previous commitments by accepting its legal borders."

Indeed.  An excerpt from Carter's book can be found here.

Yet more Abu Ghraib images

For the strong of stomach: the Australian SBS Dateline report and the Salon article publishing new photos and video clips of detainee torture, abuse, and murder at Abu Ghraib.  As ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh (speaking on the Dateline report) reminds us, the overwhelming majority of detainees are in all likelihood innocent (not that their being guilty would justify these atrocities).

The photos published with the Salon article come from a leaked DVD of photographic evidence associated with an internal Army investigation into the abuse.  Evidently the DVD contains 1,325 photographs and 93 video clips of suspected abuse of detainees, 546 photographs of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of military working dogs being used in abuse of detainees, and 125 images of "questionable acts".

Based on date stamps, all images were recorded between October 18 and December 30 2003.  In other words: these represent a very small fraction of abuse (presumably most such events weren't preserved for posterity) occuring during a short period of time.

No independent investigation into the abuse has been conducted.

"Specialist" Charles Graner was sentenced to a mere 10 years; Pvt. Lynndie England just 3 years; involved higher-ups, Singh notes, have frequently been promoted.

One of the creepiest scenes in the Dateline report shows Graner being led handcuffed and shackled to a van.  A reporter calls out "Any regrets?"  "No, ma'am", Graner says, shaking his head.

UPDATE: As Juan Cole says: US Constitution RIP.