tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65061153571501183292024-03-13T06:38:13.360-06:00Aletho NewsΑΛΗΘΩΣAletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.comBlogger595125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-26251796030923224172014-04-10T15:09:00.001-06:002014-04-10T15:09:12.026-06:00Aletho News Currently at Wordpress<a href="http://alethonews.wordpress.com/">http://alethonews.wordpress.com/</a>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-6273378706631468412014-04-09T10:14:00.004-06:002014-04-09T10:14:49.192-06:00Memo From the Wretched: Enough About Nonviolence<div class="posttitle">
<div class="post-info">
<br /> </div>
</div>
<div class="byline">
<span style="color: #073763;">By Steven Salaita | September 8, 2009</span></div>
<div class="byline">
<br /></div>
No people has been the recipient of more unsolicited advice than the
Palestinians. The exemplars of barbarity to neoconservatives and the
subjects of anguished progressive reprimands, the Palestinians often
serve as a pretext for blowhards of all political affiliations to dust
off their soapboxes. A particularly egregious form of sermonizing to
which the Palestinians are subject is the admonition that they undertake
nonviolent modes of resistance. I would like to argue that this sort of
admonition is both ignorant and immoral.<br />
<br />
I do not want to explore whether or not nonviolence is the best
strategic or moral form of anti-colonial resistance. The difference
between violence and nonviolence is not as trenchant as most
commentators imagine. Violence and nonviolence, both amorphous terms,
are in constant dialectic, and no historical example can be found of
either of these approaches being effective without the other present.
Undertaking nonviolent resistance is an ethical and strategic decision
with which I have no quarrel. In fact, I have tremendous admiration for
those who practice this method at the risk of their personal safety and
in the service of national liberation.<br />
<br />
I dislike the frequent lecturing from Western liberals to
Palestinians about the merits of nonviolence, an act as misguided as it
is patronizing. Michael Tomasky of <em>The Guardian</em>, for example,
posed the following hypothetical amid Israel’s January, 2009, massacre
of civilians in the Gaza Strip: “A hypothetical question for you.
Suppose the Palestinian liberation movement, going way back to the
founding of the PLO in 1964, had been dedicated to nonviolent struggle
as opposed to armed struggle, and the Palestinians had had a Gandhi, and
not an Arafat.” The Palestinians, Tomasky surmises, would have had a
state over twenty years ago. His colleague Gershom Gorenberg argues that
“[t]hrough violence—from airplane hijackings to suicide bombings and
rocket fire—Palestinians have failed to reach political independence….
So why not adopt the strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience, the
methods of Gandhi?” Gorenberg wonders, “Is that kind of radicalism
imaginable in Islam?”<br />
<br />
On <em>CommonDreams.org</em>, Marty Jezer explains, “Palestinian
nonviolence seems a romantic fantasy, an idealistic dream. But perhaps
idealism is the most realistic approach at this time; and nonviolence
the solution most grounded in reality. I challenge anybody to come up
with an equivalent strategy, one that assures Israelis their security
and Palestinians their state.” Michael Lerner asks what he imagines to
be a self-evident question: “Who are Palestine’s friends? Those who
encourage a path of non-violence and abandoning [sic] the fantasy that
armed struggle combined with political isolation of Israel will lead to a
good outcome for Palestinians.”<br />
<br />
It would be too time consuming to respond to all the problems in
these passages, but in them we can identify some useful points of
analysis. The most important point is that the Palestinians do practice
nonviolence. They have done so ever since Zionists began settling their
land, a process that is by its very nature violent. Today, as throughout
the twentieth century, one can find ample examples of intrepid and
imaginative civil resistance. I have met very few Westerners who have
traveled to Palestine and didn’t return home inspired.<br />
<br />
An interesting feature of Palestinian nonviolence is that it usually
evokes a ferocious response by Israel. During the 1980s, peaceful
demonstrators had their bones broken at the behest of Yitzhak Rabin.
Earlier generations were deported and had their homes demolished.
Today’s nonviolent activists are often shot, imprisoned, or beaten. The
village of Bi’lin in the West Bank has done a weekly protest for over
four years. During the course of these peaceful gatherings, the Israeli
military has been utterly brutal. In April, 2009, soldiers shot and
killed an unarmed demonstrator, Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahmah. Abu Rahmah
was hit in the chest with a tear-gas grenade, the same weapon that
earlier in the year cracked open the skull of American demonstrator
Tristan Anderson. In June, 2009, one of the leaders of the Bi’lin
demonstrations, Adeeb Abu Rahme, was arrested and kept in military
detention without due process. The breathless appeals by concerned
Western liberals for the Palestinians to practice nonviolence are both
ludicrous and immoral in light of the historical record and the
invidious violence of the Israeli state.<br />
<br />
The Palestinians have always mixed violence and nonviolence, like all
anti-colonial movements. It is through a host of racist presuppositions
and an inherent commitment to Zionism that American liberals imagine
that somehow Palestinians are a special case, that their reliance on
violence is culturally innate (Gershon Gorenberg) or that they are
motivated by factors other than liberation, such as anti-Semitism and
civilizational envy (Alan Dershowitz). The inability or unwillingness of
so many liberal intellectuals to recognize the long tradition of
Palestinian nonviolent resistance bespeaks tacit racism in addition to a
hypocritical devotion to Israel’s normative and continuous state
violence.<br />
<br />
These calls for Palestinian nonviolence pretend to be ethically
disinterested, but they are entangled with troublesome politics that are
fundamentally destructive and undemocratic. For instance, they are
often accompanied by appeals to avoid criticism of Zionism (Norman
Finkelstein), to eschew effective nonviolent tactics such as boycott and
divestment (Michael Lerner), and to reject counterproductive things
like binationalism and right of return (Finkelstein and Lerner). In
other words, the Palestinians should reject violence, and while they’re
at it go ahead and give up all of their legal entitlements and
decolonial aspirations.<br />
<br />
My good friend, the philosopher Mohammed Abed, pointed out to me
recently that the grueling endurance of life under military
occupation—waiting hours at checkpoints, being denied medical care,
having universities shut down—is itself a testament to an unusual
commitment to nonviolence. I suspect that when many Western liberals
urge the Palestinians (and other colonized people) to undertake
nonviolence, they are using a truncated definition of the term informed
by a poor or distorted understanding of the concept. In this usage, they
conflate nonviolence with passivity. It is a great convenience to the
liberal advocates of colonization to have a colonized population
comprised of passive resistors. But colonized people are never as stupid
and gullible as their liberal saviors imagine them to be.<br />
<br />
The Palestinians, anyway, are far too evolved to listen to those who
would use their courage and diligence to dispossess them of their right
to active resistance. Violent or nonviolent, their choice of resistance
isn’t the business of liberal armchair ethicists. Those ethicists are
fond of claiming that if the Palestinians resisted nonviolently they
would have already achieved their liberation. This claim is factually
untrue. It is just as likely that if liberal commentators would assess
their own profound support of violence they would have a lot less to say
to others and more time to devote to their own failed selves.<br />
<br />
Steven Salaita’s latest book is <em>The Uncultured Wars: Arabs, Muslims, and the Poverty of Liberal Thought</em>.Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-80270533290226955742014-04-09T07:35:00.002-06:002014-04-09T07:44:16.848-06:00U.S. Argument Against Nuclear Abolition Profoundly Flawed<a href="http://peaceandhealthblog.com/2014/04/08/humanitarian-message-is-the-key-to-nuclear-abolition/" target="_blank">By Ira Helfand | International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War | April 8, 2014</a><br />
<br />
Back in the 1980s there was a very, very widespread understanding of
what was going to happen if there were a nuclear war. We’ve lost that
understanding, by and large. Certainly, in the general population,
there is very little understanding about what nuclear weapons can do or
even how many there are in the world.<br />
<span id="more-2947"></span><br />
What is really quite new, I think, is the discovery in the last eight
years, starting in 2006, that even a very limited use of nuclear
weapons would cause a global catastrophe. In a war in which cities were
targeted with nuclear weapons, perhaps as many as 20 million people
would be killed in the first week directly from the explosions, from the
firestorm, from the direct radiation. In all of World War II, about 50
million people died over eight years. This is 20 million people dying
in the course of a single week.<br />
<br />
Moreover, this limited use of nuclear weapons—far less than half of a
percent of the world’s nuclear arsenals—causes profound global climate
disruption. Temperatures worldwide drop about 1.3 degrees centigrade
and this effect lasts for about a decade. As a result of that, there
would also be a very significant disruption of global precipitation
patterns. And as a result of these combined effects, there would be a
very profound impact on food production. We issued a report in April of
2012 suggesting that up to a billion people worldwide could die of
famine. Since then, new data shows that there will be widespread hunger
in China as well – another 1.3 billion people at risk.<br />
<br />
We have never had an event like this in human history where anywhere
from 15 to 30 percent of the human population dies over the course of a
decade. And this is a real possibility in the event of a war between
India and Pakistan, which is itself a real possibility.<br />
<br />
The effects of a large-scale war dwarf even these horrors. If only
300 warheads in the Russian arsenal detonated over targets in American
urban areas, between 75 and a hundred million people would be dead in
the first 30 minutes, and a U.S. counterattack on Russia would cause the
same kind of destruction. In addition to killing this many people in
half an hour, this attack would also completely destroy the economic
infrastructure of this country.<br />
<br />
But again, as mind-boggling as this kind of direct toll is, it is not
the worst part of the story because a war between the United States and
Russia also causes profound climate disruption. A hundred small
warheads in South Asia put 5 million tons of debris into the upper
atmosphere and dropped global temperatures 1.3 degrees centigrade. A war
between the United States and Russia, using only those weapons that are
still allowed when New START is fully implemented in 2017 – that war
puts 150 million tons of debris into the atmosphere, and it drops global
temperatures 8 degrees centigrade on average. In the interior regions
of Eurasia and North America, the temperature decline is 25 to 30
degrees centigrade. We have not seen temperatures on this planet that
cold in 18,000 years, since the coldest moment of the last ice age. In
the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, there would be three
years without a single day free of frost. Temperature goes below
freezing at some point every single day for three years. And that means
there is no agriculture, there is no food production. Most of the
ecosystems in this zone collapse. The vast majority of the human race
starves to death, and it is possible that we become extinct as a
species.<br />
<br />
Now, if that is the starting point of the conversation, the next
thing that flows from that is these weapons cannot exist. We know that
there is a real and finite possibility every day that they will be
used. And if that is true, then it is simply a matter of time until
they actually are used, and that means they cannot be allowed to exist. And that is a very different starting point than where we are in the
current conversation about disarmament. And that’s why this argument, I
think, has become so powerful.<br />
<br />
The plans of the nuclear weapon states to maintain their nuclear
arsenals indefinitely are simply unacceptable, and we need a
fundamentally different new approach. They say that politics is the art
of the possible. Statesmanship, I think, is clearly the art of the
necessary. And it is time that we ask our leaders to act like
statesmen, not like politicians. It’s time that we demand that behavior
of them. And I think that’s what this whole movement is about at this
point. It is calling the nuclear weapons states, saying that we will
not accept their behavior anymore, and demanding that they change.<br />
<br />
So the question becomes, how do we move the process forward? Well,
people could just abandon the NPT, or they could try to engage in some
kind of productive international diplomatic initiative to achieve the
stated goals of the NPT, which is the elimination of nuclear weapons. And I think the people who have been advocating for a convention to ban
nuclear weapons understand this is not the end stage; this is a way of
trying to move the ball down the field, of trying to put some pressure
on those nuclear weapon states that are using the NPT process, frankly,
to preserve their nuclear monopoly. And there’s just no patience left
in this idea of acceptable nuclear apartheid.<br />
<br />
The nuclear-weapon states can’t have it both ways. They can’t say
“it’s OK for us to have nuclear weapons because we’re never going to use
them” on the one hand, and on the other hand say “our policy is based
on deterrence. For deterrence to work, we have to convince people that
we will use them.” You just can’t do this. It’s one or the other. You
can’t say we’re never going to use nuclear weapons and then talk about
the circumstances in which we can use them legitimately and safely and
without it being a humanitarian disaster. Either you’re going to say
that you’re never going to use them, or you’re going to say that you are
going to use them. And if you’re going to say that you are going to
use them, then if it’s OK for the U.S. to use them and to have them so
we can use them, then how can you tell the rest of the world that they
can’t? And the fact of the matter is, we have lost that argument. The
rest of the world rejects that—and rightly so—because the argument is
profoundly flawed.<br />
<br />
The nuclear ban treaty that’s been proposed is a political tool to
try to create pressure to get to a nuclear weapons convention. What has
been proposed is a treaty that bans not just use, but also possession,
to make the point that these weapons should not be maintained, even when
countries say they’re never going to use them, because of the very
clear fact that the countries that say they’re never going to use them
in fact do have plans for using them. If this administration in the
United States, which is so allergic to the idea of a ban treaty, put
forward any significant initiative at this point, I think we would all
rally behind it. A ban treaty really does move things forward in a very
dramatic way and I would encourage people to support that, but I think
if other ideas come forward, you know, it’s fine – whatever moves the
ball forward. We’ve just got to get some movement in the right
direction and we’re not getting it right now.<br />
<br />
The humanitarian message, I think, is the key. The thing that
motivated Gorbachev, according to his memoirs, to take the initiatives
which he took in the 1980s were the conversations he had with physicians
from my organization, in which they explained to him what was going to
happen if the weapons were used. And remarkably, as the head of a
nuclear power, he didn’t fully understand what was going to happen if a
nuclear war took place. The same is true of most of the leaders of the
nuclear weapons states today.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>On March 31, IPPNW co-president Ira
Helfand participated in a roundtable discussion on the NPT and the
humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, co-sponsored by the Arms
Control Association and IPPNW's US affiliate, Physicians for Social
Responsibility. This article is adapted from Dr. Helfand's
remarks. A <a href="http://armscontrol.org/events/the-NPT-and-the-Humanitarian-Consequences-of%20N-Weapons-March-31" target="_blank">complete transcript</a>, including presentations by Ambassador Desra Percaya<b>, </b>Mission
of Indonesia to the United Nations; Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, Senior
Research Associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies; and
George Perkovich, Director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace is available at the <a href="http://armscontrol.org/events/the-NPT-and-the-Humanitarian-Consequences-of%20N-Weapons-March-31" target="_blank">Arms Control Association website</a>.</i>
Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-32671928982852983702014-04-09T06:30:00.000-06:002014-04-09T06:31:07.217-06:00George Monbiot in the Guardian lobster pot<a href="http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2014-04-08/george-monbiot-in-the-guardian-lobster-pot/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #073763;">By Jonathon Cook | April 8, 2014 </span></a><br />
<br />
Back in February the <i>Guardian</i> quietly announced a deal with the
global consumer goods corporation Unilever. Here is the beginning of the
<i>Guardian’s</i> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/guardian-launches-guardian-labs-with-unilever-partnership" target="_blank">press release</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Guardian News</i> and Media today officially launches
<i>Guardian Labs</i> – its branded content and innovation agency – which offers
brands bold and compelling new ways to tell their stories and engage
with influential <i>Guardian</i> audiences. The official launch of the new
commercial proposition is marked by the announcement of a pioneering
seven-figure partnership with Unilever, centred on the shared values of
sustainable living and open storytelling. … The new Unilever partnership
will create a bespoke engagement platform to increase awareness of, and
foster debate about, sustainability issues, and ultimately encourage
people to live more sustainable lives.</blockquote>
I wonder how many of those who proudly declare themselves “<i>Guardian</i>
readers” recognised their beloved newspaper in that statement.<br />
<br />
In fact, it makes perfect sense for Unilever – a corporation whose
brand “positioning” depends on its customers identifying it as a
responsible and caring business, despite the evidence to the contrary –
to team up with the <i>Guardian</i>, another corporation whose brand
positioning has already persuaded most of its customers that it is a
responsible and caring business.<br />
<br />
Today the <i>Guardian</i> columnist George Monbiot does something pretty
brave for a <i>Guardian </i>columnist: he alerts his readers to the existence
of this arrangement and gently questions what it represents, in an
article bewailing the fact that “corporations have colonised our public
life”.<br />
Here is what he says:<br />
<blockquote>
I recognise and regret the fact that all newspapers
depend for their survival on corporate money (advertising and
sponsorship probably account, in most cases, for about 70% of their
income). But this, to me, looks like another step down the primrose
path. As the environmental campaigner Peter Gerhardt puts it, companies
like Unilever “try to stakeholderise every conflict”. By this, I think,
he means that they embrace their critics, involving them in a dialogue
that is open in the sense that a lobster pot is open, breaking down
critical distance and identity until no one knows who they are any more.</blockquote>
It’s worth noting how rarely journalists criticise the nature of the
media they work in. Maybe that is not so surprising: few businesses, the
media included, are happy having their flaws paraded in public. But
what Monbiot has done here is to appear brave while really shrinking
from the truth. He criticises the <i>Guardian</i> while really not criticising
it.<br />
<br />
<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Monbiot’s implication in the </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">nice metaphor above </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">is
that Unilever is the the lobster pot, while the poor <i>Guardian</i> is the
lobster in danger of being “stakeholderised”. Or, in another metaphor he
uses, the <i>Guardian</i> is the one being led up the primrose path.</span><br />
<br />
What he encourages his readers to infer is that the <i>Guardian</i> is the
victim in this deal, being seduced and violated by Unilever. The reality
is that Unilever and the <i>Guardian</i> are both wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The arrangement works to the benefit of them both. In Monbiot’s
reckoning, the <i>Guardian</i> is “public life” being colonised by Unilever. In
fact, the <i>Guardian</i> is no more public life than Unilever. Both have
colonised the public space, in the interests of maximising profits
whatever the consequences to the public good and the planet. (And
please, no one try to claim that my argument is refuted by the fact that
the <i>Guardian</i> loses money. It is not a charity. Its goal is not to lose
money; its goal is to find a strategy, like the one with Unilever, to
revive its fortunes in a dying industry.)<br />
In fact, the lobster pot metaphor would be much more apt to describe
Monbiot’s relationship with the <i>Guardian</i>. The newspaper has “embraced”
him, “breaking down his critical distance and identity until he no
longer knows who he is”. Now if he told us that, I really would be
cheering him for his honesty.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/08/corporations-public-life-unilever" target="_blank">www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/08/corporations-public-life-unilever</a> <br />
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
</div>
Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-3050390213967563792014-04-09T06:19:00.001-06:002014-04-09T06:19:47.183-06:00Killer Drones in a Downward Spiral?<span style="color: #073763;"><a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/04/killer-drones-in-a-downward-spiral/">By Medea Benjamin and Kate Chandley | <i>Dissident Voice</i> | April 7, 2014</a></span><br />
<br />
Illegal US drone strikes continue<b> </b>(the <i><a href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/multimedia/Yemen/code/Yemen-strike.php">Long War Journal</a></i>
says there have been 8 drones strikes in Yemen so far in 2014), but
efforts to curb the use of killer drones have made remarkable headway
this year.<br />
<br />
While the faith-based community has taken far too long to address the
moral issues posed by remote-controlled killing, on February 13, the
World Council of Churches — the largest coalition of Christian churches —
came out in<a href="https://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/use-of-drones-condemned-by-wcc"> opposition to the use of armed drones</a>.
The Council said that the use of armed drones poses a “serious threat
to humanity” and condemned, in particular, US drone strikes in Pakistan.
This is a breakthrough in the religious community, and should make it
easier for individual denominations to make similar pronouncements, as
the <a href="http://www.brethren.org/about/policies/2013-resolution-against-drones.pdf">Church of the Brethren</a> has.<br />
<br />
There have also been major developments in the secular world. In
February, the European Union, with an overwhelming vote of 534-49,
passed a<a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+MOTION+P7-RC-2014-0201+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=en"> resolution</a>
calling on EU Member States to “oppose and ban the practice of
extrajudicial targeted killings” and demanding that EU member states “do
not perpetrate unlawful targeted killings or facilitate such killings
by other states.” This resolution will pressure individual European
nations to stop their own production and/or use of killer drones
(especially the UK, Germany, Italy and France), and to stop their
collaboration with the US drone program.<br />
<br />
People on the receiving end of US drone strikes have also stepped up
their opposition. On April 1, a group of friends and family of drone
strike victims in Yemen came together to form the<a href="https://www.facebook.com/stopdrones.yemen"> National Organization for Drone Victims</a>.
This is the first time anywhere that drone strike victims have created
their own entity to support one another and seek redress. The
organization plans to conduct its own investigations, focusing on the
civilian impact of drone attacks. At the official launch, which was
packed with press, the group said any government official supporting the
US drones should be tried in a criminal court. “Today, we launch this
new organization which will be the starting point for us to get justice
and to take legal measures on a national and international scale against
anyone who is aiding these crimes,” said the organization’s president
Mohammad Ali al-Qawli, whose brother was killed in a drone strike.<br />
<br />
The Pakistani government has taken its opposition to drone strikes
directly to the UN Human Rights Council. Pakistan, with the
co-sponsorship of Yemen, introduced a<a href="http://justsecurity.org/2014/03/28/unhrc-adopts-drones-resolution/"> resolution</a>
calling for transparency in drone strikes and for setting up a
committee of experts to address the legal issues. Despite the opposition
of the United States, which <a href="http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/03/19/exclusive_us_boycotts_un_drone_talks">boycotted the talks</a>
and lobbied to kill the resolution, it passed on March 24 by a vote of
27-6, with 14 abstentions. The panel of experts that will be convened is
scheduled to present its findings at the UN Human Rights Council
session in September 2014.<br />
<br />
UN Special Rapporteur on Terrorism, Ben Emmerson, also used this
session of the UN Human Rights Council to release a detailed report on
the issue of drones. Emmerson examined 37 instances of drone strikes in
which civilians were reportedly killed or injured and <a href="http://www.unog.ch/unog/website/news_media.nsf/%28httpNewsByYear_en%29/657F9425CE107AEBC1257C98005624E2?OpenDocument">concluded </a>that
nations using drones must provide a “public explanation of the
circumstances and a justification for the use of deadly force.” Emmerson
said it was critical for the international community to reach a
consensus on many issues presented by drones strikes, including state
sovereignty and whether it is legal to target a hostile person in a
non-belligerent state.<br />
<br />
These new developments have come about due to increasing public
scrutiny and protests against drone attacks, such as the ongoing
protests at the Hancock, Beale, and Creech Air Force Bases, the
headquarters of drone manufacturer General Atomics, the White House,
CIA, Congress and the Pentagon. The entire month of April has been
designated for <a href="http://nodronesnetwork.blogspot.com/p/april-days-of-action-2013.html">Days of Action</a>,
with film showings, talks, die-ins, re-enactments of drone strikes and
other creative actions happening throughout the country.<br />
<br />
Activists opposing weaponized drones are pleased to finally see more
movement at the international level, and hope this will result in
heightened pressure on the Obama administration, both internationally
and domestically, to stop its policy of targeted assassinations and
instead adhere to the rule of law.Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-76578281759855574122014-04-08T20:30:00.001-06:002014-04-08T20:30:38.442-06:00The saturated fat scam: What’s the real story?<span style="color: #003366;"><b>The “Coca Cola conspiracy” and the obesity epidemic</b></span><br />
<br />
<i>Aletho News</i> | February 7, 2010<br />
<br />
In the late 1960′s the US, through conventional hybridization
techniques, succeeded in creating new types of corn dramatically
increasing yield per acre by reducing the space required per plant as
well as increasing the number of ears per stalk. This development was
seen as a phenomenal opportunity for the nation with the world’s
greatest capacity of corn production. All that was needed was a way to
increase demand for corn. Although shifting the Western diet to grits
was not likely there were other options.<br />
<br />
Corn fed hogs and Chicken would now become less expensive to produce
in confined animal feeding operations which would later proliferate. But
due to the inherent inefficiency of converting grain calories into
animal calories the development of processed foods that use corn itself
and not animal products would be far more profitable than selling pork
or chicken.<br />
Corn syrup and corn syrup solids had seen their uses multiply under
the post WWII “better living through chemistry” paradigm. Now they would
also be much cheaper to produce. In 1973, Richard Nixon’s Secretary of
Agriculture, Earl Butz, altered US farm policy to permanently subsidize
the increased production of corn, opening a new era in which corn-based
processed foods would become far cheaper than their rivals. The
convenience and fast food industries were poised to take off. Soft
drinks that cost pennies to produce could be marketed at phenomenal
profit. Corn derivatives would find their way into virtually every
processed food.<br />
<br />
In the video below, Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of
Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused
by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not
enough) are the cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their
effects on insulin.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dBnniua6-oM" width="420"></iframe>
The processed foods industry knew that their products would cause an
epidemic of obesity among their customers, but they also realized that
their bottom line would grow exponentially. The FDA and USDA provided
all the cover needed and then some by pointing the finger in the wrong
direction. Saturated fat was demonized as a health hazard despite the
fact that it had been a major part of traditional diets for the entirety
of recorded history among most European cultures.<br />
<br />
Subsequently, while Americans reduced the percentage of calories from
fats in their diets to 30% from 40%, rates of obesity and
cardio-vascular disease steadily increased.<br />
The “low-fat” foods fad was a complete fraud. Convincing consumers to
choose “lite” products allowed producers to substitute high fructose
corn syrup for the relatively expensive saturated fat content in its
products. The industrial trans-fats which were combined with the corn
syrup turned out to actually increase the risk of cardio-vascular
disease when compared to the consumption of saturated fats. These
developments would have enormous implications for public health not just
in the US but worldwide over the ensuing decades. The damage would
eventually become too great to conceal.<br />
<br />
In April 2009 Harvard School of Public Health would issue a <a href="http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2009-releases/low-sugar-beverages-sugary-drink-consumption-obesity-diabetes-epidemics.html">press release</a> revealing the following research results:<br />
<blockquote>
Strong evidence developed at Harvard School of Public
Health (HSPH) and elsewhere shows that sugary drinks are an important
contributor to the epidemic rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes in the
United States. Faced with these growing public health threats, experts
from the Department of Nutrition at HSPH believe beverage manufacturers,
government, schools, work sites and homes must take action to help
Americans choose healthier drinks. They propose that manufacturers
create a class of reduced-calorie beverages that have no more than 1
gram of sugar per ounce-about 70 percent less sugar than a typical soft
drink-and that are free of non-caloric sweeteners. They also propose
that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) require beverage
manufacturers to put calorie information for the entire bottle-not just
for a single serving-on the front of drink labels. [...] </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Americans consume sugary beverages in staggering amounts. On a
typical day, four out of five children and two out of three adults drink
sugar-sweetened beverages. Teen boys drink more than a quart of sugary
drinks, on average, every day. A 12-ounce can of soda or juice typically
has 10-12 teaspoons of sugar and 150 or more calories; the popular
20-ounce bottle size now prevalent on store shelves and in vending
machines carries nearly 17 teaspoons of sugar and 250 calories. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
According to research at HSPH and elsewhere, sugared beverages are the
leading source of added sugar in the diet of young Americans. If a
person drank one can of a sugary beverage every day for a year and
didn’t cut back on calories elsewhere, the result could be a weight gain
of up to 15 pounds. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Consuming sugary drinks may have other harmful health outcomes: The
latest research from HSPH published in the April issue of the <i>American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,</i>
followed the health of 90,000 women over two decades and found that
women who drank more than two servings of sugary beverages each day had a
nearly 40 percent higher risk of heart disease than women who rarely
drank sugary beverages.</blockquote>
They make the following recommendations:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Beverage manufacturers:</i> Create reduced-calorie
beverages with no more than 1 gram of sugar per ounce and that are free
of non-caloric sweeteners, such as aspartame, sucralose or stevia.
That’s about 3 teaspoons per 12 ounces and about 50 calories.
Manufacturers should also offer smaller (8-ounce) bottles of sugary
drinks. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>Individuals:</i> Choose beverages with few or no calories; water
is best. Call manufacturers’ customer service numbers and ask them to
make sugar-reduced drinks. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>Food shoppers:</i> Purchase less juice and cross the soda off
your home shopping list. Skip the “fruit drinks” too, since these are
basically flavored sugar-water.<br />
<i>Schools and workplaces:</i> Offer several healthy beverage choices and smaller serving sizes. Also make sure water is freely available. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>Government:</i> The FDA should require companies to list the
number of calories per bottle or can-not per serving-on the front of
beverage containers.</blockquote>
In January of 2010 the <i>American Journal of Clinical Nutrition</i> released the following abstract of a <a href="http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajcn.2009.27725v1">newly completed study</a> which finds no link between saturated fat intake and heart disease:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div id="p-5">
<b>Background:</b> A reduction in dietary saturated fat has generally been thought to improve cardiovascular health. </div>
<div id="p-5">
<br /></div>
<div id="p-6">
<b>Objective:</b> The objective
of this meta-analysis was to summarize the evidence related to the
association of dietary saturated fat with
risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, and
cardiovascular disease (CVD; CHD inclusive of stroke) in prospective
epidemiologic
studies.
</div>
<div id="p-7">
<b>Design:</b> Twenty-one
studies identified by searching MEDLINE and EMBASE databases and
secondary referencing qualified for inclusion
in this study. A random-effects model was used to
derive composite relative risk estimates for CHD, stroke, and CVD. </div>
<div id="p-7">
<br /></div>
<div id="p-8">
<b>Results:</b> During 5–23 y of
follow-up of 347,747 subjects, 11,006 developed CHD or stroke. Intake
of saturated fat was not associated
with an increased risk of CHD, stroke, or CVD. The
pooled relative risk estimates that compared extreme quantiles of
saturated
fat intake were 1.07 (95% CI: 0.96, 1.19; <i>P</i> = 0.22) for CHD, 0.81 (95% CI: 0.62, 1.05; <i>P</i> = 0.11) for stroke, and 1.00 (95% CI: 0.89, 1.11; <i>P</i> = 0.95) for CVD. Consideration of age, sex, and study quality did not change the results. </div>
<div id="p-8">
<br /></div>
<div id="p-9">
<b>Conclusions:</b> A
meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is
no significant evidence for concluding that dietary
saturated fat is associated with an increased risk
of CHD or CVD. More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are
likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients
used to replace saturated fat.
</div>
Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-72233543107147093512014-04-08T20:10:00.000-06:002014-04-08T20:10:11.142-06:00Biomass Energy: Dirty and Unsustainable <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">
<em><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Aletho News</span></span></em><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"> | December 26, 2009</span></span><em><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><br /></span></span></em><br />
<em><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><br /></span></span></em>
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">President
Obama's continuing "all-out, all-in, all-of-the-above" energy strategy
still supports biomass energy development despite its increasingly
obvious problems, numerous abandoned facilities, and public rejection.
An asserted need to reduce America's reliance on imported oil is
frequently cited in arguments made for funding projects which are
otherwise environmentally and economically dubious. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The <strong>US Department of Energy</strong> uses the term “renewable” when introducing visitors at its <a href="http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/" target="_blank">website</a>
to the topic of biomass energy. Perhaps it can be argued that biomass
energy is renewable, but is it accurate to describe the repeated removal
of biomass from agricultural or forested lands as sustainable? A quick
review of some basics on the role of organic matter in soils belies the
claim. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">To
support healthy plant life, soil must contain organic matter—plants
don’t thrive on minerals and photosynthesis alone. As organic matter
breaks down in soil, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur are released.
Organic matter is the main source of energy (food) for microorganisms. A
higher level of microbial activity at a plant’s root zone increases the
rate of nutrient transfer to the plant. As the organic matter decreases
in soil so does this biochemical activity. Without organic matter, soil
biochemical activity would nearly stop. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">In
addition to being a storehouse of nutrients, decaying plant matter
keeps soil loose, helping soil remain both porous and permeable as well
as gaining better water-holding capacity. This is not only beneficial to
plant growth but is essential for soil stability. Soil becomes more
susceptible to erosion of all types as organic matter content is
reduced. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The
value of returning organic matter to the soil has been well-known to
farmers since the earliest days of agriculture. Crop residues and animal
waste are tilled back into the soil to promote fertility. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Denny Haldeman, steering committee member of the national <a href="http://energyjustice.net/biomass/" target="_blank"><strong>Anti-Biomass Incineration Campaign</strong></a>,
asserts that there is no documentation of the sustainability of
repeated biomass removals on most soil types. Most documentation points
to nutrient losses, soil depletion and decreased productivity in just
one or two generations. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">A
cursory search of the Department of Energy website does not reveal that
they have given the issue of soil fertility any consideration at all.
However the biomass industry is supported by both Federal and State
governments through five main advantages: tax credits, subsidies,
research, Renewable Portfolio Standards, and preferential pricing
afforded to technologies that are labeled “renewable” energy. Without
government support, biomass power plants wouldn’t be viable outside of a
very limited number of co-generation facilities operating within lumber
mills. But under the Sisyphean imperative of “energy independence” and
with generous access to public assistance, the extraction of biomass
from our farmlands and public forests is set to have a big impact on
land use (or abuse). </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The
creation of an artificial market for agricultural “wastes” harms entire
local agricultural economies. In Minnesota, organic farmers are
concerned that a proposed turkey waste incinerator will drive up the
price of poultry manure by burning nearly half of the state’s supply.
The establishment of biomass power generation will likely make it more
difficult for family farms to compete with confined animal feeding
operations and will contribute generally to the demise of traditional
(sustainable) agricultural practices. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Similar
economic damage will occur in the forest products industries.
Dedicating acreage to servicing biomass wood burners denies its use for
lumber or paper. Ultimately, the consumer will shoulder the loss in the
form of higher prices for forest products. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">As
available sources of forest biomass near the new power plants diminish,
clear-cutting and conversion of native forests into biomass plantations
will occur, resulting in the destruction of wildlife habitat. Marginal
lands which may not have been previously farmed will be targeted for
planting energy crops. These lands frequently have steeper grades and
erosion, sedimentation and flooding will be the inevitable result. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">It gets worse. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Municipal
solid waste as well as sewage sludge is mixed with the biomass and
burned in locations where garbage incineration was traditionally
disallowed due to concerns over public health. Dioxins and furans are
emitted in copious quantity from these “green” energy plants. Waste
incineration is already the largest source of dioxin, the most toxic
chemical known. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Providing
increased waste disposal capacity only adds to the waste problem
because it reduces the costs associated with waste generation, making
recycling that much more uneconomic. In terms of dangerous toxins,
land-filling is preferable to incineration. The ash that is left after
incineration will be used in fertilizers, introducing the dangerous
residual heavy metals into the food supply. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">In reality biomass fuel isn’t sustainable or clean. </span></span><br />
</div>
</div>
</div>
Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-83040582261180211642014-04-08T20:03:00.000-06:002014-04-08T20:03:09.847-06:00Investment bankers salivate over North Africa<b>Chaos and strife create the revolutionary atmosphere in which opportunity abounds</b><br />
<blockquote>
<h5>
<span style="color: #003366;"><i>Aletho News</i> | March 8, 2011</span></h5>
</blockquote>
Investment banking is usually thought of as a field that values stability. Yet the greatest rewards are often attained through <i>destabilization</i>.<br />
North African regimes and leaders have their obvious faults and flaws.
Autocracies have an inherent weakness in their tendency to
ossification. This basic reality is reflected not just in the obvious
lack of democratic institutions, but also in the economic structures of
the North African states. Regimes which have persisted for many
decades tend to retain many of the economic characteristics of the era
in which they were formed.<br />
In the developing economies, during the decades prior to the
neo-liberal reforms of the 1990′s, state owned industries were fostered
in order to provide basic services such as telecommunications,
transport and public utilities. Local manufacturing industries were
protected from offshore competition as a means of furthering
development goals and enhancing balance of trade accounts. These well
established practices have come to be seen by today’s promoters of
‘free trade’ and privatization as an impediment to maximizing profits.
Once established, these industries are in many cases difficult to
dislodge.<br />
Therefore, a clean break is required for restructuring primary domestic
industries in order for international investors to reap a greater
share of locally generated profits. This process is referred to as
‘creative destruction’. To facilitate the emplacement of the new order,
the old order must first be swept aside. This requirement of upending
the existing order explains why Western neoconservatives have been
promoting the revolutionary uprisings in North Africa. Neoconservative
think tanks and publications are closely associated with the banking
interests. Evidence of their designs on North Africa is abundant.<br />
A 2010 Bertelsmann evaluation titled <a href="http://www.bertelsmann-transformation-index.de/bti/laendergutachten/laendergutachten/naher-osten-und-nordafrika/tunisia/" target="_blank">Transformation Tunisia</a> reported:<br />
<blockquote>
Tunisia’s decision makers have once again advanced
transformation too sluggishly. Despite the formal abolition of trade
barriers for industrial goods with the European Union as of 1 January
2008, in practice, <i>Tunisia has seen too little progress in terms of trade liberalization</i> [emphasis added].<br />
[The] Tunisian banking sector and capital market are regularly cited as
one major hindrance to the country’s economic modernization. Although
they have been formally brought up to international standards,
financial supervision and regulation remain subject to political
influence. This is partly due to direct state control over financial
flows and partly to the state’s direct involvement therein. Although it
sold its stakes in two banks in 2002 and 2005, respectively, the
state remains the controlling shareholder in at least four other banks
because it controls 50% of their assets. Under these conditions,
top-rank bank executives are de facto appointed by the president
through a controlling body.</blockquote>
On January 7, 2011, Elliott Abrams wrote for the <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cfr.org%2F&ei=I_QtTZnVG9SxhQftxeCVCQ&usg=AFQjCNFVAccupKDo5VyV0azCoIgY199Feg&sig2=lYwoWcb6jCCPytS-BfX2vQ">Council on Foreign Relations</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
“Tunisia, whose literacy rate has long been the highest in
Africa at nearly 80% and whose per capita GDP is about $8,000, should
have the ability to sustain a democratic government—<i>once the Ben Ali regime collapses</i> [emphasis added].<br />
“Tunisians are clearly sick of looking at all the giant photos and
paintings of Ben Ali that appear on walls, posters, and billboards all
over the country. [...]<br />
“If Tunisia can move toward democracy, Algerians and Egyptians and even Libyans will wonder why they cannot. <i>This kind of thing may catch on</i> [emphasis added]. In fact, in Algeria it may already be catching on.” (<a href="http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2011/01/07/is-tunisia-next/" target="_blank">Elliott Abrams: Is Tunisia Next?</a>)</blockquote>
On February 13, the <i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/weekinreview/13baker.html">New York Times</a></i> described Robert Kagan as “a Brookings Institution scholar who <i>long before the revolution helped assemble a nonpartisan group of policy experts to press for democratic change in Egypt.</i>” [emphasis added]<br />
<a href="http://thepassionateattachment.com/2011/03/01/the-pnacers-who-pushed-for-democratic-change-in-egypt/" target="_blank"> Maidhc Ó Cathail </a> has noted that:<br />
<blockquote>
Arianna Huffington … was prescient in a December 13, 2010 <a href="http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=122449#axzz1FNBsHmwn">op-ed</a> in Lebanon’s <i>Daily Star</i> titled “Social media will help fuel change in the Middle East.”</blockquote>
And also that:<br />
<blockquote>
Robert Kagan, who co-founded the Project for a New
American Century with William Kristol in 1997, was joined on that
“nonpartisan group” by PNAC founding member Elliott Abrams and PNAC
deputy director <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Bork_Ellen">Ellen Bork</a>. Bork is currently “democracy and human rights” director at PNAC’s successor, <a href="http://www.foreignpolicyi.org/about/staff"> Foreign Policy Initiative</a>, where Kagan and Kristol are directors. Not surprisingly, Kristol <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/working-group-egypt-calls-suspension-us-aid_537669.html">wrote</a> in the <i>Weekly Standard</i>
on January 29 that he was “in complete agreement” with his fellow
PNACers’ Working Group on Egypt in its demands that the U.S. suspend
aid to Mubarak. [...]<br />
Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Kagan looked positively sanguine about the prospects for a post-Mubarak Egypt. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/02/AR2011020205041.html">Like George Soros</a>, he seems confident that Israel has “much to gain from the spread of democracy in the Middle East.”</blockquote>
It
should be recalled that many of these same individuals and
institutions were principle actors in the promotion of the ‘color
revolutions’ in many of the former Soviet Republics as well as in Iran’s
failed ‘green revolution’ during the summer of 2010.<br />
Former CIA officer <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2011/03/02/uncle-ned-comes-calling/" target="_blank">Philip Giraldi points out</a> that the direction that events take is not being left to local forces:<br />
<blockquote>
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was interviewed by Rachel Maddow <a href="http://thepassionateattachment.com/2011/02/25/albright-weve-been-working-within-egypt-for-a-long-time/">several weeks ago</a>
and revealed that Washington has already begun meddling. Albright
denounced Egyptian ex-president Mubarak … and then confirmed that the
National Endowment for Democracy was already hard at work in Egypt,
even though Mubarak had not yet stepped down, building up
infrastructure and supporting party development. Recall for a moment
that Albright believes that a heavy fist is an essential part of
diplomacy and that US interests always trump whatever suffering local
people have to endure. [...]<br />
Those who are aware of the insidious <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa">activities</a>
of the National Endowment for Democracy or NED, an ostensibly private
foundation that spreads “democracy” and is largely funded by the
government, will not be surprised to learn that it is already active in
North Africa because it is almost everywhere. NED, which has a
Democratic Party half in its National Democratic Institute, and a
Republican Party half in its International Republican Institute, was the
driving force behind the series of pastel revolutions that created
turmoil in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. Remember when
the Russians and others complained about the activities of NGOs
interfering in their politics? NED was what they were referring to.<br />
Albright is in charge of the NED Dems while John McCain leads the NED GOP. [...]<br />
Neoconservative Ken Timmerman has identified the core NED activity
overseas as “training political workers in modern communications and
organizational techniques,” surely a polite way to describe interfering
directly in other countries’ politics.</blockquote>
On February 27, John McCain and Joe Lieberman visited Cairo. As reported by<i> <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/politicolive/0211/Lieberman_optimistic_about_Egypt.html?showall" target="_blank">Politico</a></i><i>:</i><br />
<blockquote>
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who’s on a quick trip through
the Middle East, said Sunday he found Cairo to be a “very exciting
place.”<br />
“We went to Tahrir Square today. Got a warm, enthusiastic welcome,” he
said of his visit to Cairo with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).</blockquote>
Of
course, to suggest that the uprisings have been orchestrated solely by
these interests would ignore genuine grassroots concerns. Nothing
here is meant to suggest that conditions for unrest were not present or
that sacrifices for social change have not been made by the peoples of
North Africa. This article is only meant to inform as to the
activities of the interventionists. The real accomplishments of the
uprisings may yet predominate.<br />
Within a month after demanding cessation of military aid to Mubarak,
the very same neocon cabal was demanding military intervention in the
less pliable Libya. Jim Lobe reports for <a href="http://www.lobelog.com/neo-con-hawks-take-flight-over-libya/" target="_blank"><i>IPS</i></a><i>:</i><br />
<blockquote>
In a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage
U.S. intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of
neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to
“immediately” prepare military action to help bring down the regime of
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and end the violence that is believed to
have killed well over a thousand people in the past week.<br />
The appeal, which came in the form of a letter signed by 40 policy
analysts, including more than a dozen former senior officials who served
under President George W. Bush, was organised and released by the <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Foreign_Policy_Initiative">Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI)</a>, a two-year-old neo-conservative group that is widely seen as the successor to the more-famous – or infamous – <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Project_for_the_New_American_Century">Project for the New American Century (PNAC)</a>.<br />
Warning that Libya stood “on the threshold of a moral and humanitarian
catastrophe”, the letter, which was addressed to President Barack
Obama, called for specific immediate steps involving military action,
in addition to the imposition of a number of diplomatic and economic
sanctions to bring “an end to the murderous Libyan regime”.<br />
In particular, it called for Washington to press NATO to “develop
operational plans to urgently deploy warplanes to prevent the regime
from using fighter jets and helicopter gunships against civilians and
carry out other missions as required; (and) move naval assets into
Libyan waters” to “aid evacuation efforts and prepare for possible
contingencies;” as well as “(e)stablish the capability to disable Libyan
naval vessels used to attack civilians.”<br />
Among the letter’s signers were former Bush deputy defence secretary <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Wolfowitz_Paul">Paul Wolfowitz</a>; Bush’s top global democracy and Middle East adviser; <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Abrams_Elliott">Elliott Abrams</a>; former Bush speechwriters Marc Thiessen and <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Wehner_Pete">Peter Wehner</a>; Vice President <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Cheney_Dick">Dick Cheney</a>’s former deputy national security adviser, <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Cheney_Dick">John Hannah</a>, as well as FPI’s four directors: <i><a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Weekly_Standard">Weekly Standard </a></i>editor <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Kristol_William">William Kristol</a>; Brookings Institution fellow <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Kagan_Robert">Robert Kagan</a>; former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/senor_dan">Dan Senor</a>; and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Ambassador to Turkey, <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Edelman_Eric">Eric Edelman</a>.<br />
It was Kagan and Kristol who co-founded and directed PNAC in its heyday from 1997 to the end of Bush’s term in 2005.<br />
The letter comes amid growing pressure on Obama, including from liberal hawks, to take stronger action against Gaddafi.<br />
Two prominent senators whose foreign policy views often reflect neo-conservative thinking, Republican <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/McCain_John">John McCain </a>and Independent Democrat <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Lieberman_Joe">Joseph Lieberman,</a>
called Friday in Tel Aviv for Washington to supply Libyan rebels with
arms, among other steps, including establishing a no-fly zone over the
country.</blockquote>
By March 6, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/06/uk-mideast-investment-idUSLNE72500220110306" target="_blank"><i>Reuters</i></a> was already reporting the hoped for results:<br />
<blockquote>
As entrenched monopolies and patronage give way in the
Middle East and North Africa, governments in the region could open
their markets further and divest some state assets.<br />
Wealthy Gulf states such Kuwait and Qatar have little cause to sell,
but post-revolutionary states such as Tunisia will likely lower
protectionist barriers…<br />
“… this crisis is going to reveal some opportunities as structures
linked to old regimes will be unwound,” said Julian Mayo, investment
director at Charlemagne Capital. [...]<br />
“When you have an economy moving from socialist dictatorship to full-fledged free market, <i>the spider in the web of that transformation will be the banks,</i>” [emphasis added] said Bjorn Englund, who runs an investment fund focused on Iraq.</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
~</div>
<i><b>Related video post:</b></i><br />
<a href="http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/2011/03/09/alliance-for-youth-movements-the-state-dept-%e2%80%99s-new-vehicle-for-regime-change/">Alliance for Youth Movements: The State Dept.’s New Vehicle for Regime Change</a><br />
<b><i>Update March 13, 2011:</i></b><br />
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/12/AR2011031202234.html">US training quietly nurtured young Arab democrats</a><br />
<i><b>Update March 15, 2011:</b></i><br />
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-regional-strategy-for-democracy-in-the-middle-east/2011/03/14/ABR8d1Z_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions" target="_blank">A regional strategy for democracy in the Middle East</a><br />
<blockquote>
<h5>
<span style="color: #003366;">Zalmay Khalilzad | <i>Washngton Post </i>| March 15, 2011</span></h5>
</blockquote>
…
The Middle East uprisings that hold the greatest promise are in
anti-American dictatorships. The immediate challenge is to ensure the
ouster of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. [...]<br />
… Gaddafi’s overthrow and the consolidation of a liberal,
pro-American regime would bolster prospects for reform in Iran and
Syria by countering Iranian propaganda that the current revolts are
Islamist in character and directed only at partners of the United
States.<br />
We can follow up with a variety of steps to foment democratic
revolutions against Tehran and Damascus, beginning with clarion calls
for change. These include: training and support for opposition forces
in and outside the countries; pressure directed against regime
officials who attack their own people, including targeted sanctions
and referrals in international tribunals; surrogate broadcasting and
other pro-democracy messaging; funds for striking workers; and covert
efforts to induce defections by regime and security officials. …Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-63637473355364350872014-04-08T19:56:00.000-06:002014-04-08T19:56:32.779-06:00Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA <h1 class="title" id="page-title">
</h1>
<div class="tabs">
</div>
<div class="meta submitted">
<span rel="sioc:has_creator"><span class="username">Aletho News</span></span> | January 9, 2012</div>
<div class="meta submitted">
</div>
<div class="meta submitted">
<span content="2012-01-11T05:18:51+00:00"></span>This
article will examine some of the connections between the US and UK
National Security apparatus and the appearance of the anthropogenic
global warming (AGW) theory beginning after the accident at Three Mile
Island.</div>
<br />
In the mid 1970<small>s</small> “climate cooling” was the topic of articles in popular magazines such as<a href="http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf" target="_blank"> <em>Newsweek</em></a>
with reports of meteorologists being “almost unanimous” that the trend
could lead to catastrophic famines, another little ice age or worse. In
1974 <em>Time</em> magazine published an article titled “<a href="http://www.nationalcenter.org/Time-Ice-Age-06-24-1974-Sm.jpg" target="_blank">Another Ice Age?</a>.” In 1975 the <em>New York Times</em> ran an article titled “<a href="http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50B1FFD395D137B93C3AB178ED85F418785F9&scp=2&sq=cooling+climate&st=p" target="_blank">Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate Is Changing; a Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable</a>,” while in 1978 they reported that “<a href="http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40715F7395A13728DDDAC0894D9405B888BF1D3&scp=1&sq=cooling+climate&st=p" target="_blank">an
international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of
climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last
30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere</a>.”<br />
<br />
While it may be true that the “newspaper of record” is not the best
source for topics that go beyond the pronouncements of official or “off
the record” statements from government agents, it is instructive that
the message changed by the end of the decade, after the March 28, 1979
accident at Three Mile Island which had sounded the death knell for the
nuclear power industry that is.<br />
<br />
Daniel Yergin writes that by the early 1980s “a notable shift in the
climate of climate change research was clear-from cooling to warming.”<small>1</small>
Yergin reports that the Department of Defense’s JASON committee had
concluded that “incontrovertible evidence that the atmosphere is indeed
changing and that we ourselves contribute to that change,” adding “a
wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late.” Political
action was now being called for. That action would entail reducing
carbon emissions, something which could be achieved through increased
reliance on the now unpopular nuclear power industry.<br />
<br />
Nuclear weapons programs rely on the existence of large nuclear
processing facilities including mining, milling and enrichment of
uranium as well as a highly specialized and experienced labor pool.
While it is possible to produce nuclear weapons without a nuclear power
industry it is far preferable to have a dynamic nuclear industry in
place. The nuclear facilities that existed in 1979 would not last
forever and the industry was seen as an essential component of the
military industrial complex. These factors might have been over-riding
considerations in the JASON committee report.<br />
<br />
One of the principle scientists engaged in formulating the AGW theory
was Roger Revelle, a US Navy oceanographer who was employed at the
Office of Naval Research. The US Navy was actually central to the
development of the civilian nuclear power industry in the US due to its
reactor designs for nuclear powered submarines and ships.<br />
<br />
Another outspoken early proponent of AGW theory was Britain’s
Margaret Thatcher who also sought the construction of new nuclear power
plants as well as Trident nuclear submarines along with new nuclear
weapons. Her Conservative party also sought to crush the coal miner’s
unions with which they had intractable disputes. Britain went on to
begin construction of new nuclear power plants during the 1980s while
firing tens of thousands of coal miners.<br />
<br />
In the US, the Carter administration sponsored the establishment of
the solar energy industry, another carbon free energy source. George
Tenet (later named as director of the CIA) became the promotion manager
of the Solar Energy Industries Association which included companies
such as Grumman, Boeing, General Motors and Exxon.<br />
<br />
In 2008 another CIA director, James Woolsey would also become
involved in promoting “a Fortress America of tanks and solar panels,
plug-in hybrids and nuclear reactors,”<small>2</small> only in his case the service to the carbon free industry would come <em>after</em>
the CIA stint rather than before. Woolsey has recently appeared in an
anti-oil print ad for the American Clean Skies Foundation.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/woolsey_james" target="_blank">Institute for Policy Studies</a> reports on Woolsey’s focus as an energy security advisor to the John McCain presidential campaign:<br />
<blockquote>
A founding member of the <a href="http://www.setamericafree.org/" target="_blank">Set America Free</a>
coalition, a pressure group aimed at highlighting the “security and
economic implications of America’s growing dependence on foreign oil,”
Woolsey sees himself as helping pioneer a new political coalition that
combines his militarist security ideology with green politics. He says,
“The combination of 9/11, concern about climate change, and $4 a gallon
gasoline has brought a lot of people together. I call it the coalition
of the tree-huggers, the do-gooders, the cheap hawks, the
evangelicals, and the mom and pop drivers. All of those groups have
good reasons to be interested in moving away from oil dependence.”3<br />
</blockquote>
The Set America Free coalition includes liberal groups such as the
Apollo Alliance, the American Council on Renewable Energy and the
Natural Resources Defense Council.<br />
In promoting the reduction in reliance on Middle Eastern oil imports
Woolsey is joined by prominent hawks such as Senator Joseph Lieberman,
former Senator Sam Brownback, Representative Eliot Engel, former
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former national security adviser
Robert McFarlane, Thomas Neumann of the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs (JINSA), Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, Frank
Gaffney head of the neoconservative Center for Security Policy (CSP),
Cliff May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), Gary
Bauer of American Values and Meyrav Wurmser of the Hudson Institute.<br />
<br />
An outcome of energy independence would be greater freedom to
initiate wars of aggression across the Middle East region that would
destroy any potential resistance to the greater Israel project.
Woolsey’s positions as an advisor to the neoconservative-led <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Foundation_for_Defense_of_Democracies">Foundation for the Defense of Democracies</a>; and advisory board member of the Likudnik <a href="http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Jewish_Institute_for_National_Security_Affairs">Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs</a> might shed some light on his aims.<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
1<em> </em>Daniel Yergin, The Quest, Penguin Press<br />
2 Jackson West, “<a href="http://valleywag.com/392752/r-james-woolsey-and-the-rise-of-the-greenocons#viewcomments" target="_blank">R. James Woolsey and the Rise of the Greenocons</a>”<br />
3 Tim Shipman, “John McCain Hires Former CIA Director Jim Woolsey As Green Advisor,” <em>Daily Telegraph</em>, June 21, 2008.Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-13913941248582781812009-12-03T22:18:00.006-07:002009-12-03T22:31:56.904-07:00There's more to climate fraud than just tax hikesAletho News<br />December 3, 2009<br /><br />By now we know that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory has been built on a mixture of hype and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html" target="_blank">massaged data</a>. Various carbon tax schemes have been put forward, even unprecedented proposals for a world wide taxation authority to be overseen by the UN. Does it follow that the primary agenda behind the fraud was the implementing these new taxes, or, were these proposed tax schemes secondary and part of a proclivity on the part of the state to seize any opportunity to enhance revenue?<br /><br />In the three decades since AGW was <a href="http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm" target="_blank">made into a political tool</a> by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party, tax laws have been "reformed" many times in Britain, as well as other Western nations dominated by the AGW meme. Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Party were known for their opposition to social leveling through taxation. Reduction of public services, combined with hectoring the disadvantaged about self reliance, were hallmarks of British politics through the 1980's and beyond. In Europe and North America, today's overall level of taxation is not higher than that prevalent in 1979.<br /><br />In Britain and the US, governments have been able to utilize the issuance of sovereign debt to increase military budgets while at the same time reducing capital gains and corporate tax rates creating an era of "borrow and spend" growth for the state sector. In the US, the higher income tax brackets have come down while middle class employees have seen increased social security deductions from their paychecks. These revenues were then "borrowed" by the general fund and in fact replaced the revenues lost due to the reduction of corporate taxes.<br /><br />The burden of financing government spending has been increasingly shifted to the median wage earner and away from the investor and high income earner. Adoption of a tax collection system based on the consumption of energy would seem to fit into this general pattern, since working people spend a larger portion of their earnings on energy, and goods derived from energy, than do the wealthy. However, this outcome could be easily achieved by implementing a flat tax on income or a national sales tax. The rationale used to promote the flat tax is much simpler and would have been more likely to succeed than pushing the AGW carbon tax through fraudulent scaremongering. Right now a national sales tax would be politically far easier to implement in the US.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Since the 1970's we have seen capital controls lifted allowing for the free movement of capital through most of the world. New tax credits and deductions came into existence which were, in fact, incentives for multinational corporations to shift their operations from industrialized nations to the third world. Lower corporate tax rates could be found in the third world while profits were repatriated at favorable rates. This enabled the shifting of production, and later services, to the third world through tax policies. The Kyoto protocol looked suspiciously similar to these tax policies in that it also created an advantage for the deployment of capital in low wage nations.<br /><br />A "free trade" regime without tariff barriers would allow for the hyper-exploitation of third world labor while at the same time driving down first world labor costs. But due to the combined competitive disadvantages of poor infrastructure, inexperienced workforces, and transport costs, as well as the necessity of writing off stranded production assets in the developed nations, corporations based in the advanced economies demanded that their governments finance the restructuring of the global economy. Lower labor costs just couldn't compensate for the disadvantages of moving to China or India, at least not until infrastructure was improved and workforces were trained. Without government assistance offshoring corporations would fail to compete in the marketplace with established industry at home. This motive, providing advantages to investment in the developing nations, is more plausible than the commonly assumed notion that the motive behind the AGW fraud was an excuse to raise taxes on consumers. There is a weakness in this proposition that is similar to the weakness described above regarding carbon taxes though, governments could have aided their corporations through tax advantages without all the complexity and risk involved in AGW fraud.<br /></div><br />Yet, there is another motive that is much more certain than either of the above possibilities, even more certain than the profits that Goldman Sachs stood to gain from carbon credits trading schemes. To understand this motive we must return to the time when the AGW meme was first promoted. Three Mile Island had recently been shut down following a near melt down. Unknown quantities of radioactive material were released across a vast area of Pennsylvania. 2,400 <a href="http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2009/1733" target="_blank">lawsuits</a> were filed for death or disease suffered by family members which were ultimately denied access to federal courts. In the US, applications for construction of new nuclear power plants had a zero chance of approval by local authorities. The nuclear industry had come to a standstill. At the same time national policy makers, in conjunction with the military industrial complex, wanted to maintain a dynamic nuclear industry that included ongoing mining, milling, enrichment, research and development as well as a large pool of personnel with nuclear expertise. In fact, Thatcher's situation was particularly strained in that she wanted to discharge tens of thousands of coal miners, replacing them with the politically poisonous nuclear power plants. This feat would require an overriding fear, something that calls for the public to acquiesce and reserve their strong objections. There would be no way to sell such policies to the public without resorting to a paradigm changing ruse, one that defines any dissidence as a danger to the safety of society. AGW would provide that cover. In fact, it is hard to imagine any other paradigm change that could have subverted the environmentalist opposition to the nuclear industry.<br /><br />If the AGW theory could be planted within a co-opted or deceived environmental movement, general acceptance of the alarmism would be seen as a victory for the environment despite the fact that CO2 is not actually a pollutant. The din of propaganda would be constant until a state of emergency appeared imminent. Nuclear power plants would be presented as the way out while the absence of any solution for nuclear waste disposal would be ignored. The high financial cost of the nuclear facilities would be absorbed later by rate payers while the government would underwrite the investor's risks.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TnDThSQGhrI/SxicWAKBWlI/AAAAAAAAB48/mFQanmeIA24/s1600-h/00goor.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 159px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TnDThSQGhrI/SxicWAKBWlI/AAAAAAAAB48/mFQanmeIA24/s200/00goor.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411246854098737746" border="0" /></a>The AGW Svengali, Al Gore, is no stranger to promotion of the nuclear industry. Since the late 70's, he has been <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair03032007.html">outspoken in support of new reactors</a>, defending the aborted Clinch River Breeder Reactor, which was was scheduled to produce weapons grade plutonium, to the bitter end. Representation of nuclear interests is actually a <a href="http://www.allthingspass.com/uploads/html-69VT%20Yankee%20Nuke%20Final.htm">Gore family tradition</a> going back to the industry's foundation. Keith Harmon Snow reports:<br /><blockquote>A 1957 study by the Brookhaven National Laboratory estimated “the consequences of a very large reactor accident at a hypothetically small nuclear plant near a large city” at 43,000 injuries, 3,400 deaths and $7 billion in 1957 losses. <b style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Congress passed the “Gore Bill” of 1956, championed by then U.S. Senator Albert Gore (Sr.) of the pro-nuclear Gore dynasty</b>. This became the Price Andersen Act -- reauthorized by Congress again in 2002 – shielding the industry from significant liability for any major nuclear accident. The 1989 Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Catastrophic Nuclear Power Accidents determined that private nuclear corporations would be unlikely to survive unless the federal government insured the industry against such “unexpected and unknown” potential liabilities as the Bhopal disaster (Union Carbide), Agent Orange (Dow) and the Dalkon Shield.</blockquote>To better appreciate the imperative of maintaining the nuclear industry one must acknowledge the tenuous hold on power that the Western elites possess. The global mass of humanity have little interest in the perpetuation of the existing power structure. While it is possible for a minority to rule over the majority, without an overwhelming technological advantage, military dominance is too costly both in lives and finance. Weapons of mass destruction have provided the ultimate terror instrument necessary to check organized challenges to military supremacy. This was why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated. Pax Americana arose from the annihilation of non-combatants. The capability of mass murder is why some nations have seats on the UN Security Council with veto power while others have one vote in the General Assembly. Maintenance of this disparity in destructive power is essential to the <a href="http://www.albionmonitor.com/0209a/pc2001.html">continued dominance</a> over the non-nuclear nations according to Peter Phillips:<br /><blockquote>The U.S. Government is blazing a trail of nuclear weapon revival leading to global nuclear dominance. A nuke-revival group, supported by people like Stephen Younger, Associate Director for Nuclear Weapons at Los Alamos, proposes a "mini-nuke" capable of burrowing into underground weapon supplies and unleashing a small, but contained nuclear explosion. This weapons advocacy group is comprised of nuclear scientists, Department of Energy (DoE) officials, right wing analysts, former government officials, and a congressionally appointed over-sight panel. <b style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">The group wants to ensure that the U.S. continues to develop nuclear capacity into the next half century</b>.</blockquote> The US nuclear energy industry is overseen by the Department of Energy, which also oversees the nuclear weapons complex through the National Nuclear Security Administration. The reliable lifespan of the current nuclear arsenal is measured in decades. Due to the untested decay characteristics of plutonium it is possible that much of the present arsenal could become unserviceable with little advance warning. The existence of a robust nuclear industry is a prerequisite for new weapons production capability which may be the main factor in Energy Secretary Chu's strident support for a new generation of nuclear power plants.<br /><br />AGW has been instrumental in the resurrection of nuclear power in the US and Britain. Seen in this light the AGW fraud is not surprising. The mass collusion of lies is actually a normal occurrence when "national security" is perceived to be involved. Institutions and foundations are can be relied upon to perform their roles. Entire industries conform to the dominant anticipated cap and trade system. Other nations have been co-opted or pressed into accepting the AGW meme. One only has to examine the warmongering lies about Iraqi WMDs or Iranian nuclear weapons programs to put the AGW fraud into perspective.Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-71247113997776241092009-12-03T08:17:00.003-07:002010-09-23T19:47:54.203-06:00US base divides Japan coalition government<span id="ctl00_body_spnTitle"><div class="newsDetailPublishDateTime"><a href="http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=112743&sectionid=351020406">Press TV </a>- December 3, 2009 <br /><br />Japan's Social Democratic Party (SDP) says it will quit the ruling coalition if the government decides to keep a US military base in Okinawa.<br /><br />SDP leader Mizuho Fukushima said on Thursday that "the Social Democratic Party and I will have to make an important decision" if the government decides to go ahead with the plan.<br /> <br />Tokyo is under pressure from Washington to implement a 2006 Japan-US deal, under which the military base would be replaced by a new one to be built elsewhere on Okinawa Island.<br /><br />As a junior partner in the three-way coalition government, the SDP has advocated relocating the base elsewhere in Japan or overseas.<br /><br />Since the new government took office, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has formed a coalition with the pacifist Social Democrats, whose support he needs to pass legislation.<br /><br />The premier noted that he would take the SDP's views seriously, and added, "Finding a solution in this situation will be no easy matter, but we must work hard."<br /><br />Washington has about 47,000 troops based in Japan, more than half of them in Okinawa. Local residents have been angered by crimes committed by the US service personnel as well as the risk of accidents.<br /><br />In 1995, the rape of a schoolgirl by three US servicemen infuriated residents of Okinawa. Demands to close the base on safety grounds rose when a US helicopter crashed in the grounds of a local university in 2004.<br /><br />Japanese media reports predicted on Thursday that Hatoyama was likely to postpone the decision until next year. </div></span>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-24943651642628641662009-12-03T07:57:00.001-07:002009-12-03T08:00:12.254-07:00Boycott of Ahava Dead Sea products makes an impactAdri Nieuwhof, <i><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10925.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electronicIntifadaPalestine+%28Electronic+Intifada+%3A+Palestine+News%29">The Electronic Intifada</a>,</i> 2 December 2009 <br /> <br /> <span class="content"> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="2" width="483"> <tbody><tr> <td> <img src="http://electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/2/091202-ahava-holland.jpg" alt="" border="1" width="483" height="321" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td><div style="text-align: center;"> <span class="text11" style="font-size:85%;">Bathrobe brigades in Amsterdam informing people about the dirty secrets of Ahava beauty products in front of a store that sells the product. (<a href="http://www.toalaolivares.com/">Cris Toala Olivares</a>)</span></div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table><br />The international campaign to boycott Ahava beauty products has recently won the support of a Dutch parliamentarian and an Israeli peace group. During the past few months, activists in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Israel, the United States and the Netherlands have campaigned against the sale of Ahava products because of the company's complicity in the Israeli occupation.<br /><br />The Stolen Beauty campaign has included protest actions by "bikini brigades" around the United States organized by the American peace group CODEPINK, and allied actions have taken place in London, Paris, Vienna, Montreal and Amsterdam. The Dutch "bathrobe brigades" that appeared in shopping centers in Amsterdam and Haarlem, not only caught the eye of the press, but also that of Dutch parliamentarian Harry van Bommel.<br /><br />Ahava manufactures its cosmetics in a factory in the illegal Mitzpe Shalem settlement in the occupied West Bank. However, Ahava labels its skin care products imported into the EU as originating from "The Dead Sea, Israel." Van Bommel, concerned about this misleading labeling, asked Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Verhagen to investigate the origin of Ahava cosmetics, and Verhagen agreed.<br /><br />The settlements Mitzpe Shalem and Kalia, located deep within the Israeli-occupied West Bank, own 44 percent of the shares of the company. Before the June 1967 war, Palestinians lived on some of the lands that are now part of the two settlements; there were Palestinian communities in Nabi Musa where Kalia is now located and in Arab al-Taamira next to Mitzpe Shalem.<br /><br />According to the Israeli group Who Profits From the Occupation? (<a href="http://www.whoprofits.org/">www.whoprofits.org</a>), the mud used in Ahava products is taken from a site on the shores of the Dead Sea inside the occupied territory, next to Kalia. Ahava uses Palestinian natural resources without the permission of or compensation to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, Israel denies Palestinians access to the shores of the Dead Sea and its resources, although one-third of the western shore of the Dead Sea lies in the occupied West Bank.<br /><br />This week Palestinian tourism minister Khouloud Daibes voiced her disagreement with Ahava's practices in the West Bank. In protest of Israel's aspirations to nominate the Dead Sea for the Seven Natural Wonders of the World competition, Daibes wrote her Israeli counterpart a letter to express her objection to "promoting the Dead Sea in the competition, alongside products like Ahava, which are produced illegally in the Israeli settlement on occupied Palestinian lands."<br /><br />Recently, the international campaign to boycott Ahava beauty products received support from the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, which sent an open letter on 17 November to Ahava's management, urging the company to move its operations out of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Gush Shalom stated: "Your decision to locate in Occupied Territory and make use of natural resources which do not belong to Israel was a mistaken gamble which already harmed your interests and might harm them even much further. Sooner or later you will have to get out of this damaging and illegal location -- and the sooner, the better."<br /><br />Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, parliamentarian Van Bommel told The Electronic Intifada he welcomes the international Ahava campaign. "It might appear a minor issue, but it is important as an example of [Israel] economically hampering the realization of a Palestinian state." He added that he would welcome initiatives in other EU countries to raise the issue in their parliaments. "Subsequently, the pressure on Israel will increase and more importantly, we can engage the public in the debate."<br /><br /><em>Adri Nieuwhof is an independent consultant based in Switzerland.</em></span>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-58870784979123876442009-12-02T18:05:00.001-07:002009-12-02T18:11:07.462-07:00Israeli police demolish the only shelter of evicted Palestinian family for the fourth time<div class="entry"> <p><strong><a href="http://palsolidarity.org/2009/12/9556">International Solidarity Movement</a> - 2 December 2009 </strong></p> <p>At approximately 9am this Wednesday, four police vehicles containing eight Jerusalem police and four border police armed with automatic weapons came to Sheikh Jarrah and demolished the Gawi tent for the fourth time. The demolition took place as there were several people sleeping in the tent. The police failed to alert those sleeping to their destructive actions. The Palestinian family’s possessions were confiscated and removed in police pick-up trucks and golf carts. One hour later, a British national was arrested. The Gawi family has lived in the tent for four months now, since 2 August 2009 when they were forcefully evicted from their home, now occupied by settlers.</p> <p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vwYR0u5-nwo&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vwYR0u5-nwo&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p> <p>This action comes in the wake of yesterday’s settler invasion of the front section of the al-Kurd family home. As the settlers moved some of their possessions from the occupied Gawi home to the newly-confiscated al-Kurd home, the police were destroying and stealing the blankets, chairs, mattresses, lights and shelter from the evicted Gawi family. The settlers have also run electrical wires from the confiscated Gawi house to the confiscated al-Kurd house. As the constant crowd watched the settlers’ actions and those of the police, a British national was arrested, seemingly, for standing in the entrance of the al-Kurd family’s garden.</p> </div>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-70257623745386343832009-12-02T16:18:00.003-07:002009-12-02T16:23:22.633-07:00DuPont Accused of Massive Water PollutionBy SONYA ANGELICA DIEHN<br />December 2, 2009<br /><br />COLUMBUS, Ohio (CN) - DuPont has been covering up and refusing to take responsibility for its toxic pollution of the Ohio River for a quarter of a century, and the poisons it uses to make Teflon stay in the environment for 2,000 years, a nonprofit water association claims in Federal Court.<br /><br />The Little Hocking Water Association says that air and water emissions of perflourinated compounds from DuPont's Washington Works Plant have been polluting its wellfields since 1984.<br /><br />These chemicals, which DuPont uses to make Teflon products, stay in the environment for up to 2,000 years, and accumulate in the tissue of living things, causing developmental and immunological problems, the water group says.<br /><br />It claims at least four wells on 45 acres along the Ohio River were polluted by DuPont's disposal of hazardous waste in landfills, injection wells and burn pits.<br /><br />The water association claims that DuPont hid the threats of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, despite knowing of its risks - including the birth of deformed babies to its employees in 1981.<br /><br />DuPont allegedly acknowledged the contamination by buying out one local water supplier, but refused to extend such an offer to Little Hocking. DuPont for many years also refused to allow the single laboratory with the ability to test for such substances to do so, the group says.<br />Little Hocking claims that in 1991 DuPont set a "community exposure guideline" for the chemical, a liver toxin, at 1 part per billion. Sampling from the water association's wellfields in 2001 showed levels of 7.69 ppb, the complaint states. Current tests put that figure as high as 78 ppb.<br /><br />A March 2009 level of .4 ppb, set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is not enough to protect the water association's 12,000 consumers, it says, due to their chronic exposure and potential "synergistic" effects with other perflourinated compounds in the water.<br />The group cites a 2003 class action in which the court determined that DuPont's release was active and intentional. Little Hocking says that an EPA consent order does not adequately protect its customers.<br /><br />The Water Association says it has suffered financial hardship since 2001, when it began to address the problem on its own. This includes funding a bottled water program, for which it claims DuPont promised to it; it says DuPont stopped doing so in 2007.<br /><br />The water association wants DuPont ordered to stop polluting, clean up what it has done, and conduct a scientific study on the effects of PFOA. It is represented by David Altman of Cincinnati.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/12/02/DuPont_Accused_of_Massive_Water_Pollution.htm">Source</a>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-92187410956819784812009-12-02T12:39:00.007-07:002009-12-02T14:08:39.903-07:00Rwanda, the RPF and the Myth of Non-Intervention<span style="font-style: italic;">originaliy published at </span><a style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank" href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/">lenin's tomb</a><p></p> <p><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >Jamie reports on a recent UN </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://heathlander.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/chomsky-on-responsibility-to-protect/"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><b>conference</b></span></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" > on the doctrine of 'Responsibility to Protect', attended by Gareth Evans, Noam Chomsky, Jean Bricmont and Ngugi wa Thiong’o. In the course of the debate, an interesting one as these things go, the assertion is repeatedly made by Evans, and accepted by others, that the story of the Rwandan genocide was one of non-intervention. The 'West', or the Euro-American powers so designated, demonstrated 'indifference'. They considered it just another example of ancient tribal hatreds finding an outlet in a new blood-letting, failing to accept that what was taking place was a genocide that demanded urgent intervention to protect the innocent. (These racist spiels about ancient tribal hatreds are certainly culpable, but I wonder if the reactionary discourse of 'good-vs-evil' that imperialists are fond of is really any better?) The lesson drawn from this by those advocating 'humanitarian intervention' is that new norms of intervention, mandating the use of military force in emergency cases, have to be elaborated and embedded in international law. Now, even if it were true that the 'West' had not intervened, it would by no means follow that it </span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ><i>should</i></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >: you have to make another series of assumptions to justify that conclusion. But it isn't true, and the widespread acceptance of this idea cultivates the claim of US innocence, the obverse of 'indifference'. Jamie links to this blog, obviously looking for a post where I have dealt with the myth of non-intervention. I did write a bit about the background to the genocide, but the only occasion on which I discussed this particular issue was briefly in this </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.readysteadybook.com/Article.aspx?page=richardseymour"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><b>interview</b></span></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >. So, this post deals with two themes. The first is the nature and conduct of the RPF before and during the 1990 invasion of Rwanda, and the second is the nature of US support for the RPF. I won't have much to say about French intervention - a crucial part of the story, but one familiar enough to us, I hope.</span></p> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TnDThSQGhrI/SxbC4JEz1ZI/AAAAAAAAB4s/t_c4dd-6rp8/s1600-h/rwanda.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 142px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TnDThSQGhrI/SxbC4JEz1ZI/AAAAAAAAB4s/t_c4dd-6rp8/s200/rwanda.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410726272096785810" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >Our narrative does not conveniently begin on the night of April 6-7, 1994, following the assassination of Habyarimana, when the first massacres were reported by observers. It doesn't begin with the invasion of Rwanda by armed Tutsi exiles from Uganda in 1990, either. As usual, a much wider historical perspective is called for. As the origin of the 'ethnic'* conflict in colonial rule has already been discussed </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/10/genocide-that-isnt-quite-over-yet-and.html"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><b>here</b></span></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, though, we can confine ourselves to a number of simple points to start from. (And if you really want a good account of that history and its implications, see Mahmood Mamdani's </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QUEamxb89JcC&source=gbs_navlinks_s"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><i><b>When Victims Become Killers</b></i></span></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, Princeton, 2001). First, Belgian rule had created a sort of bipolar order of ethnicity, in which a minority of Tutsis were integrated into the elite, while most Hutus were subject to degrading forms of forced labour, including corvée. Secondly, the Tutsi diaspora was created by the overthrow of a monarchical ruling caste after the defeat of Belgian rule, and the repressive policies pursued by the new Hutu rulers. Thirdly, institutional discrimination against the Tutsi minority was accompanied by several refugee waves in response to state repression: in 1959-1961 immediately after the overthrow of the Belgians; in 1963-64 after an attempted insurgency by Tutsis from Burundi and Uganda, which the government responded to with violent repression; and in 1972-1973, just before Habyarimana's coup d'etat, during the genocide against Hutus in Burundi. The latter was the result of an attempt by a failing regime to brand itself as a friend of Hutus, and was effectively aborted by the coup.</span> <p><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >Tens of thousands of Tutsis had been killed in these waves of repression, and hundreds of thousands driven out. For approximately two decades, though, that violence more or less abated. Most of the repression under Habyarimana was class-based. Nonetheless, the forms of institutional discrimination mattered enough to maintain certain forms of separation, discouraging intermarriage for example - if a Hutu's daughter married into a Tutsi family, it was sure that she would suffer from lack of education, jobs and prospects. And Habyarimana did ban the return of refugees based in Uganda in 1986. (See Catherine Newbury, </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.jstor.org/pss/1166500"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><b>'Background to Genocide: Rwanda'</b></span></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, </span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ><i>Issue: A Journal of Opinion</i></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, Vol. 23, No. 2, Rwanda, 1995; Mamdani, </span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ><i>When Victims Become Killers</i></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, pp. 3-18; Mamdani, </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=1842"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><b>'From Conquest to Consent as the Basic of State Formation: Reflections on Rwanda'</b></span></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, </span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ><i>New Left Review</i></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, March-April 1996).</span></p> <p><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >The exiles in Uganda also faced repression and expulsions, particularly under Obote's two presidencies. For that reason a minority allied with the Idi Amin regime from 1971 to 1980, and then with Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Movement which overthrew the second Obote presidency in 1985. It was in this period that the </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RANU"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><b>Rwandese Alliance for National Unity</b></span></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" > (RANU) was formed as the precursor to the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Representing a minority of the exiles, this movement initially tried to build a broad movement that could transform the Rwandan state. They articulated their goals in a quasi-marxist language, though this was later dropped, expressing what they believed were potentialy popular, liberatory aims. By 1987, RANU was still trying to find a mass base, emphasising that it was 'non-political' and merely wanted to unite all Rwandans. It was in that spirit that it re-branded itself the Rwandan Patriotic Front and restricted its agenda to eight core aims, including democracy and national unity. But in private, it seems, the leadership had settled on a military option. And by 1988, Tutsis integrated into the Ugandan army were openly preparing to invade Rwanda. (Alan J Kuperman, </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/SS12.pdf"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><b>'Explaining the Ultimate Escalation in Rwanda: How and Why Tutsi Rebels Provoked a Retaliatory Genocide'</b></span></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, delivered to the American Political Science Association in August 2003; 'Wm Cyrus Reed, </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.jstor.org/pss/1166507"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><b>'The Rwandan Patriotic Front: Politics and Development in Rwanda'</b></span></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, </span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ><i>Issue: A Journal of Opinion</i></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, Vol. 23, No. 2, Rwanda, 1995; Mamdani, 2001, pp 159-185). Increasingly, the RPF had became a project for conquering Rwandan state power. The question is, how did this happen? Part of the explanation is that the victory of the NRM in Uganda had proven that a small, self-sustaining military force could defeat an internationally recognised government. But this could not have become a successful strategy had the RPF not become the proxy army of United States intervention in Rwanda.</span></p> <p><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >Increasingly, Museveni was under pressure to expel Rwandans from senior positions in the national government, and the sabre-rattling of the RPF was becoming a liability. For that reason, he dismissed General Rwigenya from his position of army chief-of-staff in November 1989, and relieved General Kagame of his title of military intelligence chief in Kampala. Both of these were RPF leaders, but it was Kagame who then made his way to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas to be trained by the US military. Having spent months in training by Special Forces, he departed to assist the invasion of Rwanda, already in progress. Kagame was not the only RPF member to be trained under the IMET programme, but as the effective leader of the invasion following Rwigenya's death on the battle field, his presence there has been widely noted. (According to journalist and former naval attache Wayne Madsen's testimony to Congress, in 1999, Kagame's subordinates were also given training at Luke Air Force base in Arizona, in such matters as the deployment of surface-to-air missiles.) As far as I can gather, however, the main way in which the US supported the RPF was through the application of its diplomatic muscle - with important consequences, as we will see. The RPF's martial adeptness and armaments mainly derived from the support it received from the Ugandan military (another US ally)</span></p> <p><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >Initiatives undertaken between Museveni and Habyarimana to prevent an invasion resulted in pledges of political liberalisation, the legalisation of opposition parties, and proposals for the staged return of refugees, but these were flatly ignored by the RPF. In fact, it was a trifle inconvenient for them that the Rwandan state was suddenly prepared to, cautiously, address the issues that supposedly motivated the insurgents, for they were no longer interested merely in reforms: they wanted a share of state power. Reportedly, the RPF even went to the extent of assassinating Tutsis who supported compromise deals. The steps taken by the Habyarimana regime could have something to do with the timing of the invasion, which was partially intended to thwart compromises of this kind. (Kuperman, 2003; Newbury, 1995). Three days before the invasion, Habyarimana declared before the UN that Rwanda would grant citizenship documents and travel rights to refugees, and that it would repatriarte those who did return. Again the RPF did not respond. (Mamdani, 2001, p 159). I suppose it's worth highlighting that at the time, the RPF were the 'good guys' as far as the British press were concerned. A report in the <i>Independent</i> claimed that "The rebel movement ... aims to overthrow President Habyarimana and his clique ... and replace it with a democratic, honest non-tribal regime." Ah, bless.</span></p> <p><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >When the invasion was launched, the RPF discovered to their chagrin that Hutu peasants weren't altogether eager to 'liberated', and generally fled from guerilla zones. Habyarimana had responded to the invasion by locking up tens of thousands of political opponents, both Hutu and Tutsi, and launching a violent crackdown that killed hundreds of civilians. This didn't work to the RPF's advantage since they had no base and most, barring a section of the Hutu opposition, resented them for bringing this repression down on them. The RPF began to rely on coercion, driving thousands of refugees into Uganda (irony alert) to create free-fire zones, and engaging in forced recruitment. They could not, unlike Museveni's NRA, form alternative structures of government based on 'resistance councils' because they lacked a mass base. Most Rwandans suspected that the RPF was about to re-impose Tutsi domination, a fact that Hutu nationalists could use to their advantage in opposing Habyarimana's efforts at compromise. (Mamdani, pp 188-189).</span></p> <p><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >It was often assumed in the early literature on the genocide that a lengthy and bloody battle with the Rwandan military was completely unanticipated by the RPF. Thus, Rene Lemerchand wrote: "On the eve of the October 1, 1990 invasion, no one within the RPF had the slightest idea of the scale of the cataclysm they were about to unleash." (Lemerchand, </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.jstor.org/pss/1166499"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><b>'Rwanda: The Rationality of Genocide'</b></span></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, </span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ><i>Issue: A Journal of Opinion</i></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, Vol. 23, No. 2, Rwanda, 1995). In retrospect, this was false - perhaps it was an image that the RPF preferred to project at that time. However, since then Alan Kuperman of Johns Hopkins has interviewed a number of senior RPF members who participated in the invasion and subsequent war. He writes that, in fact: "Rwigyema and other senior rebel officials anticipated a protracted struggle against a more numerous and better equipped Rwandan army." (Kuperman, 2003). But just as the RPF was being forced into retreat and looked weakest, the US stepped in and told the Habyarimana government that it should treat the RPF not as an invading army but as a legitimate opposition. This wasn't just friendly advice: it came with America's immense clout, including its ability to disburse aid and loans. In response to Rwandan concessions, Bush's ambassador to Rwanda announced an increase of aid from $11.6m to $20m. (Barrie Collins, 'New Wars and Old Wars? The Lessons of Rwanda', in David Chandler, ed., </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iZTP0cQZCVsC&printsec=frontcover"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><i><b>Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Approaches to International Politics</b></i></span></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, p. 161)</span></p> <p><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >In stressing the concessions and negotiations available to the RPF, I will not imply that the Habyarimana regime was somehow the 'nice guy' of the conflict - far from it. The pogroms and massacres unleashed by the government even in the early years of the insurgency were part of a strategy of attempting to undermine the leverage of the invaders by punishing the Tutsi population. Their sole rationale for making any concessions at all was self-preservation. But the RPF believed they could gain more, and were determined to press for maximum advantage. During the negotiations they had improved their military capability, and they now found that the world's sole superpower was backing them. They launched a new offensive in March 1992 and continued with further attacks throughout the year. At the behest of the US, the Habyarimana government intensified negotiations at Arusha in July 1992. A seven month ceasefire ensued, broken by the RPF in February 1993. Claiming that they were responding to pogroms and massacres of Tutsi civilians by the Rwandan military and death squads (which certainly happened), they doubled the amount of territory under their control, and came within 20 miles of the capital, killing Hutu civilians as they did so and displacing about a million people.</span></p> <p><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >At this point the Habyarimana regime was faced with an internal opposition that considered that he had conceded far too much to the RPF. This sentiment was galvanising the nationalists, increasing their standing among the general population. And after the RPF's attacks in Spring 1993, even those elements of the Hutu opposition that were sympathetic to the RPF expressed a feeling of betrayal, and were forced on the retreat. Faustin Twagiramungu, the leader the opposition MDR party, criticised the RPF for being exactly like Habyarimana's party, seeking total control rather than a negotiated settlement. Even so, the military successes of the RPF ensured further concessions, and the resulting agreement at Arusha was nothing short of a coup for the Front. If the accords had actually succeeded, the RPF would have been given a total of five cabinet seats out of a total of 21, and eleven seats in the transitional national assembly out of a total of 70, putting it on par with the ruling MNRD. This reflected military leverage, not popular support. During the Arusha negotiations, moreover, successful offensives by the RPF enabled [them] to demand that their representation in the army be increased from 40% to 50%. (they gained 50% representation in the officer corps, but 40% in the proposed combined army). (Kuperman, 2003; Collins, p 166).</span></p> <p><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >US negotiators were fully aware that such concessions were impossible for Habyarimana to defend, but insisted that he offer them or risk losing the support of the 'international community' (the US). If he lost the 'international community', he would lose aid, and potentially lose the war. This is a crucial point: the US knew that nothing was surer to drive hardline factions in the army and state into a paranoid abyss than forcing them to accept what amounted to an effective coup. The RPF's "unceasing demand that Habyarimana hand over to them effective political and military control of Rwanda" was hardly balanced by the few concessions on their part. If Habyarimana went through with it, he was sure to wind up dead: so he did the only thing that he could be counted on to do for the sake of his own political survival. He signed, but did everything he could to avoid implementation. He co-opted all the Hutu nationalist currents behind his 'Hutu Power' alliance, and - in light of ongoing attacks - could make a resonant case that success for the RPF represented an existential threat to the country's Hutu population. (This can't be reduced to the propaganda of a dying regime - it was because people could easily believe that this was what was at stake that substantial layers of the Hutu population, well beyond the small circles that planned the genocide, later participated in its execution. ) At the same time, according to former RPF officer Jean-Paul Mugabe, the RPF were advising their soldiers not to take the Arusha accords seriously and to prepare for a 'final' conflict with the Rwandan government. (Kuperman, 2003; Collins, p 167-171).</span></p> <p><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >The RPF at this point had a choice, as Kuperman puts it: "They could finally make concessions in their demands for power – for example, by letting the now dominant Hutu Power wings pick the opposition parties’ representatives in the transitional government – in the hope of averting massive retaliatory violence against Tutsi civilians. Or the rebels could maintain their hard line and prepare a final military offensive to conquer Rwanda. They chose the latter." Their escalation and the atrocities that they certainly committed (especially during their final sweep to power) only assisted the invocation of an existential peril faced by the Hutu population. Even as the genocide was promulgated, they treated "retaliation against Tutsi civilians as the price of achieving" their goals "even as the price climbed much higher than expected." The Front did make some belated efforts to win over those it had expelled or mistreated, and even to try and organise some self-defence for the anticipated victims of the genocide. But that was secondary. As Kuperman argues: "the battle plan was designed to conquer the country, rather than to protect Tutsi civilians from retaliatory violence". The insurgents avoided the areas where genocide was being perpetrated, or where people were at most risk, for fear of the military costs that they would bear. Instead, they swept through the eastern half of the country, bypassing most of the fighting army units, and took the capital as the Hutu military was disintegrating. They accomplished their goal, capturing state power - though, of course, at a tremendous price.</span></p> <p><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" >To state the obvious, again, in stressing the RPF's responsibility for its own decisions, there is no attempt to 'balance' their conduct with that of the Hutu Power faction that promulgated genocide. The responsibility for the annihilation of 80% of the Tutsi population of Rwanda lies first and foremost with those who planned it, and those who executed it. Nothing could mitigate that responsibility. But the RPF's role was destructive, and American intervention on its behalf made it far more destructive than it might have been. And the reason for their ruthless conduct was rooted in their nature as an elitist military outfit that sought, through alliances with local and international powers, to impose minority rule on Rwanda regardless of the consequences for the Tutsi population. In fact, this is exactly what it succeeded in doing. The resulting regime continued to benefit from US military training, has become one of the closest allies of the UK and US in the continent, has been party to genocidal violence in the Congo and has violently repressed opponents. If the Rwandan Patriotic Front had been a liberation movement of the kind sought in the early RANU, with popular interests at heart, it would have shown in their strategy, their tactics of war, their relationship to the masses, and their subsequent mode of rule. It did not: they were not. If there had been no 'Western' intervention, as is often asserted, the 'civil war' that resulted from the invasion would probably have resulted in far less bloodshed. But the actual intervention that took place, so far from proving an excellent antidote to genocide, as 'Western' intervention is supposed to be, helped bring it about.</span></p> <p style="color: rgb(0, 51, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ><i>*The category of ethnicity almost always demands scare quotes. In this case it is particularly problematic since the terms 'Hutu', 'Tutsi' and 'Twa' were historically highly changeable in their meaning and tended, under colonial rule, to shade into 'racial' categories. This polysemy has had implications for the course of present history. Mahmood Mamdani recalls that: "one of the issues hotly debated in the Rwandese Alliance for National Unity (RANU), formed by refugees in Uganda in 1979, was whether the difference between Bahutu and Batutsi was one of class or ethnicity". (Mamdani, </i></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=1842"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><i><b>'From Conquest to Consent as the Basic of State Formation: Reflections on Rwanda'</b></i></span></a></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ><i>, New Left Review, March-April 1996)</i></span></p><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:85%;">This article is at 3quarksdaily.com, where it was entered in a contest for the best political blog posting of 2008. Visit the site and cast a vote. Hat tip - <a href="http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/rwanda-rpf-and-myth-non-intervention">BAR</a><br /></span></span>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-54139199368103609202009-12-02T11:40:00.000-07:002009-12-02T11:42:02.040-07:00Bhopal water still toxic 25 years after deadly gas leak, study finds<div class="A_AuthName">By Randeep Ramesh</div> <div class="A_ArtSource"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/01/bhopal-chemical-studies-toxic-levels">The Guardian</a> </div> <div class="A_ArtDate">December 1, 2009</div><br /> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Groundwater found near the site of the world's worst chemical industrial accident in Bhopal is still toxic and poisoning residents a quarter of a century after a gas leak there killed thousands, two studies have revealed.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Delhi's Centre for Science and the Environment said that water found two miles from the factory contained pesticides at levels 40 times higher than the Indian safety standard.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">In a second study, the UK-based Bhopal Medical Appeal (BMA) found a chemical cocktail in the local drinking water – with one carcinogen, carbon tetraflouride, present at 2,400 times the World Health Organisation's guidelines.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Around 5,000 people were killed when clouds of toxic gas escaped from Union Carbide's pesticide plant at midnight on 3 December 1984. 15,000 more died in the following weeks, and activists say that the disaster is still poisoning a new generation of victims.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The Sambhavna clinic, a charity campaigning in Bhopal, has conducted a survey of 20,000 people and says it has found alarmingly high rates of birth defects. A preliminary study suggests as many as one child in 25 is born with a congenital defect.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">"We are seeing birth defects at 10 times the incidence at national levels," said Satinath Sarangi, of the Sambhavna clinic.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">"The government have been trying to say that the factory is safe and open for the public to tour it. But these results show how polluted the site has become."</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Earlier studies have also pointed out that boys who were either exposed as toddlers to gases from the Bhopal pesticide plant or born to exposed parents were prone to "growth retardation".</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Survivors in Bhopal have received meagre compensation: most of them got a Rs 25,000 cheque (£310) for a lifetime of suffering caused by damage to their lungs, liver, kidneys and the immune system.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Mohini Devi, 52, spent three months in hospital after inhaling the gas. For 25 years she has had difficulty breathing and suffered shooting pain through her abdomen. Her children have all been affected – one died from "gas complications" 15 years ago.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">"My real worry is my grandchildren. Already some have been born without eyes. Why is nobody doing anything for us?" she said.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">In Bhopal the legacy of the city's night of death is there for all to see. The disused Union Carbide factory remains a rusty symbol of bureaucratic indifference, legal actions and rows over corporate responsibility. Not only did the government wind up research into the after effects of the poison gas in 1994, it failed to gather evidence of culpability in the case against the US company.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Campaigners say the site now contains about 8,000 tonnes of carcinogenic chemicals that continue to leach out and contaminate water supplies used by 30,000 local people. Union Carbide says it is no longer responsible for the factory and pointed out it has already made a settlement of $470m (£284m).</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The company's chief executive at the time, Warren Anderson, was briefly arrested after the leak 25 years ago but was released and fled India. He has been declared "untraceable" by Indian consular authorities although his address in a New York suburb is publicly listed.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The Indian government has also drawn fire for trying to pass the disused factory off as a tourist spot – with local politicians last month proposing to build a Hiroshima-like memorial there depicting a detailed account of the disaster. Adding insult to injury, India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh mocked activists on a visit to the city by picking up a fistful of waste and saying "see, I am alive".</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Sarangi says the government has been trying to tempt Union Carbide's successor, Dow Chemical, back to India and to secure $1bn of investment.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">In return, say campaigners, the government plans to let Dow evade its responsibility to clean up the Bhopal plant site. "This is all about the money. Politicians in India would rather do this than fight for people who suffered," Sarangi said.</span></span></p>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-2274889817610275442009-12-02T11:02:00.001-07:002009-12-02T11:05:36.633-07:00Swiss Daily: Israel Eavesdropped on UN Sessions over Hariri’s Assassination<a href="http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=113337&language=en">Al - Manar TV</a><br />30/11/2009<br /><br />A Swiss newspaper said that a number of UN employees in Geneva have concluded that Israel is eavesdropping on UN court sessions. The Neue Zuericher Zeitung (NZZ) added that bugging devices have been found in the organization’s deliberations room in the Swiss capital.<br /><br />The newspaper pointed out that during regular maintenance procedures on the electrical network, three years ago, two bugging devices were found in a room set for the UN Disarmament Committee meetings. It added that ‘secret’ meetings were also held in the room over the Second Gulf War and the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri. NZZ revealed that other spying devices have also been found in other parts of the building, including courtrooms. The daily quoted UN employees as saying that Israel was behind planting the devices. UN security experts estimate that the planting process might have taken at least two days with the collaboration of UN employees. An expert in intelligence affairs told NZZ that the “technical level of the [spying] system and the great danger inherent in it, indicates that the planting decision was taken at the highest [Israeli] level.” The Neue Zuericher Zeitung said that only seven countries could have been behind the incident: The United States, Britain, France, Chinaa, Russia, North Korea, and Israel. “If I had to estimate which country was behind it, I would say Israel,” an intelligence officer told NZZ.<br /><br />A European diplomat supported the conclusion saying: “I’ve always been amazed at the level of good information the Israeli mission posses.”<br /><br />The Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth, quoted Israeli diplomats as denying any connection to the issue.Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-50533144011932624402009-12-02T10:23:00.000-07:002009-12-02T10:25:27.998-07:00Daimler Workers Protest Against Relocations to U.S.<h4 style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span id="lbDeck">Jobs could move to factory in Alabama, union said</span></h4> <p> </p><div id="pnlAuthor"> <div id="Panel1"> <span id="lblBy">By</span><a id="hypAuthor" href="http://www.industryweek.com/Author.aspx?AuthorID=26"> Agence France-Presse</a> </div> </div> <span id="lbArticleDate">December 1, 2009</span><br /><br />About 12,000 Daimler workers demonstrated on Dec. 1 against the possible partial relocation of output to a plant in the U.S., a works committee spokeswoman said. "Three thousand jobs are threatened" by plans to move production from Sindelfingen, in southwestern Germany where the rally took place, to a factory in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, spokeswoman Silke Ernst said.<br /><br />The Sindelfingen plant employs more than 28,000 workers.<br /><br />Daimler executives might decide to move production of the Class C sedan in 2014, the works committee said.<br /><br />The automaker declined to comment.<br /><br />Daimler seeks to rebound from the global auto crisis in part through a cost-cutting plan that initially sought to save four billion euros (US$6 billion), an amount which could be raised before the end of the year.<br /><br />Producing the car in the U.S. would also reduce foreign exchange effects that have weighed on Daimler's accounts.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><span style="font-size:78%;">Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2009</span></div>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-2353848127616442712009-12-02T10:08:00.004-07:002009-12-02T10:18:44.415-07:00Canada: Redactions hamper Afghan detainee probe<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Unreadable documents make meaningful inquiry ‘almost impossible’ and reflect government efforts to keep record a secret<br /><br /></span><div id="lead-photo" class="img-left" style="width: 360px; height: 202px;"><div style="text-align: center;"> <img src="http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00360/Palu_-_Afghainst_360941gm-a.jpg" alt="A detainee captured by the Afghan Army on a joint patrol with Canadian troops sits by a wall at a Canadian Forward Operating Base in Howz E Madad in Zhari District, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan." width="360" height="202" /> </div><p id="lead-caption" style="width: 350px; display: none;">A detainee captured by the Afghan Army on a joint patrol with Canadian troops sits by a wall at a Canadian Forward Operating Base in Howz E Madad in Zhari District, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. <span class="credit">Louie Palu/ZUMA Press</span></p> <script type="text/javascript"> $('#lead-photo').hover(function() { $('#lead-caption').slideDown(300); }, function() { $('#lead-caption').slideUp(300); }); </script> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-size:78%;" ><br />A detainee captured by the Afghan Army on a joint patrol with Canadian troops<br /> Louie Palu/ZUMA Press</span><br /></div><br />By Paul Koring<br />Globe and Mail<br />Nov. 30, 2009 <p></p><p></p> <!-- /#credit --> <div class="copy"> <p><span class="first-letter">T</span>he Harper government has blacked out large sections of relevant files handed over to the independent inquiry probing allegations of transfer to torture of detainees in Afghanistan, despite the fact that its investigators have the highest levels of national security clearance.</p> <p>The heavily redacted documents, obtained by The Globe and Mail, underscore the sweeping nature of the government's efforts to keep the documentary record from the Military Police Complaints Commission, which is attempting to conduct an inquiry into allegations that Canada knowingly transferred prisoners to likely torturers in Afghanistan.</p> <p>The MPCC's repeatedly thwarted effort to get to the heart of the detainee-transfer issue – it has faced attempts by the Harper government to gag witnesses, limit the scope of the investigation and withhold documents – prompted opposition politicians to open their own limited probe through a parliamentary committee, leading to last week's explosive testimony by diplomat Richard Colvin. But that committee's efforts have been similarly stymied, since it has no power to compel the government to deliver the documentary record and no real opportunity to cross-examine witnesses.</p> <p>In the material delivered to the MPCC, government blackouts render unreadable many of the documents, some drafted by Mr. Colvin. The sweeping redactions were imposed even though everyone who works with or serves on the MPCC must have at least “secret” clearance and all of the senior investigators, as well as the panelists who would conduct the inquiry, have the highest security clearances.</p> <p>“I'm not sure ‘cover-up' is the right word but someone is going to considerable lengths not to disclose what was known,” said Stuart Hendin, an expert in the law of war and international-rights issues who represented now-retired Brigadier-General Serge Labbé, one of the most senior Canadian officers embroiled in the Somalia affair 16 years ago.</p> <p>“It's almost impossible for any independent authority to conduct a meaningful inquiry” with documents rendered so unreadable, Mr. Hendin added. “It all suggests someone knew there were issues.”</p> <p>Some documents dating back to spring of 2006, a full year before ministers and senior officers said they first heard of abuse allegations, are entirely blacked out. Others have whole sections censored.</p> <p>The redactions aren't based on freedom-of-information or privacy laws, but on an untested claim that the government can block access by the MPCC, an independent investigative body created in the wake of a high-level cover-up that was partly exposed by the Somalia inquiry before it was shut down in 1997.</p> <p>The government contends that Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act gives it the latitude to withhold some documents – and heavily redact others – even through the MPCC was created by Parliament with a structure and investigators capable of dealing with highly classified issues involving the military police, who are responsible for the custody and transfer of prisoners captured on the battlefield.</p> <p>Until recently, the government routinely provided documents with such classifications to the MPCC, investigators say. But when it sought to investigate allegations that Canadian military police had been ordered by ministers and senior bureaucrats to transfer detainees to Afghan authorities knowing they would probably be abused and tortured, the government claimed in Federal Court that the commission had exceeded its mandate.</p> <p>Transfer to torture is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. It is also outlawed by international convention.</p> <p>The Globe has only a limited number – roughly 80 documents – totalling fewer than 200 pages out of thousands sought by the MPCC. Most of the heavily redacted documents carry low-level security designations, such as “CEO,” which means “Canadian Eyes Only” – a level below secret. “Many have top secret and we have secure facilities to allow for rigorous security,” said Nancy-Ann Walker, a spokeswoman for the MPCC.</p>[...]<br /><p>Defence Minister Peter MacKay has chosen not to renew Mr. Tinsley's appointment as chairman of the MPCC, despite the fact it is in the midst of the most complex and serious case in its 10-year history.</p><p><a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/redactions-hamper-afghan-detainee-probe/article1383375/">Full article</a><br /></p> </div>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-15609223855508121642009-12-02T09:32:00.003-07:002009-12-02T09:39:16.301-07:00Lithuanian Govt. Investigation Confirms News Report on Secret CIA PrisonBy MATTHEW COLE and MARK SCHONE<br />Nov. 30, 2009<br /><br />A Lithuanian government investigation has confirmed an exclusive ABC News report that the CIA operated a secret black site prison in the country, according to a report on Lithuanian television.<br /><br />According to Lithuania's LNK TV, sources have told investigators that state security was involved in coordinating the construction of the prison, and have also provided the code name of the operation to transport terror detainees to the prison.<br /><br />Arydas Anusauskas, head of the parliamentary committee investigating the prison, told ABC News he would not comment on the investigation until it is completed. He has previously said the results of the probe will be made public Dec. 22.<br /><br /><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/investigation-confirms-secret-prison/story?id=9209929">Full article</a><br /><br />Background:<br /><h3 class="post-title entry-title"> <a href="http://alethonews.blogspot.com/2009/11/video-cia-secret-torture-prison-found.html">VIDEO: CIA Secret 'Torture' Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy</a> </h3> <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"></span>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-29126690333235423502009-12-02T09:16:00.001-07:002009-12-02T09:18:38.688-07:00Obama Approval on Afghanistan at 35%By Jeffrey M. Jones - December 1, 2009<br /> <p>PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans are far less approving of President Obama's handling of the situation in Afghanistan than they have been in recent months, with 35% currently approving, down from 49% in September and 56% in July.</p> <p align="center"><img alt="2009 Trend: Do You Approve or Disapprove of the Way Barack Obama Is Handling the Situation in Afghanistan?" src="http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/egppbbphfeqic2d2zkkbbw.gif" border="0" width="455" height="264" hspace="0" /></p><a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/124520/Obama-Approval-Afghanistan-Trails-Issues.aspx?CSTS=tagrss">Full article</a>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-59549042621139286712009-12-02T08:04:00.002-07:002009-12-02T08:22:09.424-07:00Yen Drops After Hatoyama Says Its Strength Can’t Be ToleratedBy Lukanyo Mnyanda<p></p> <p> Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The yen fell against all of its major counterparts after Japanese Prime Minister <a href="http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Yukio+Hatoyama&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1" onmouseover="return escape( popwSearchNews( this ))">Yukio Hatoyama</a> was cited by the Nikkei newspaper as saying the currency’s strength can’t be left as it is. </p> <p>Japan’s currency headed for its first back-to-back losses in two weeks against the dollar following the Nikkei report. Chief Cabinet Secretary <a href="http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Hirofumi+Hirano&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1" onmouseover="return escape( popwSearchNews( this ))">Hirofumi Hirano</a> said later Hatoyama wasn’t indicating the government is ready to intervene. The dollar traded at almost a 16-month low versus the euro on increased demand for riskier assets before a report forecast to show U.S. companies cut fewer jobs last month. </p> <p>“The market is quite aware that the Bank of Japan will likely intervene if the yen appreciates too much,” said <a href="http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Lutz%0AKarpowitz&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1" onmouseover="return escape( popwSearchNews( this ))">Lutz Karpowitz</a>, a currency strategist in Frankfurt at Commerzbank AG, Germany’s second-largest lender. “Risk appetite is also driving the market at the moment, and the dollar will also be under pressure due to the low financing costs.” </p> <p>The yen weakened 0.6 percent to 87.18 per dollar at 7:43 a.m. in New York, from 86.68 yesterday. Japan’s currency declined 0.6 percent to 131.51 against the euro, from 130.74. The dollar was little changed at $1.5086 versus the euro, compared with $1.5081. It depreciated to $1.5144 on Nov. 25, the weakest level since August 2008. </p> <p>Rapid fluctuations in the currency market are undesirable, and the government is closely monitoring the situation, Hirano told reporters in Tokyo following Hatoyama’s comments. </p> <p style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Intervention View </p> <p>Volatility may hamper growth, and the central bank is open to taking steps to support the economy, a Bank of Japan board member, <a href="http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Miyako+Suda&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1" onmouseover="return escape( popwSearchNews( this ))">Miyako Suda</a>, said in a speech in Kofu, west of Tokyo. Central banks intervene by buying or selling currencies to influence exchange rates. </p> <p>The yen rallied 4.3 percent versus the dollar in November, helping to erode profits of exporters including Sony Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. It reached a 14-year high of 84.83 against the U.S. currency on Nov. 27. </p> <p>The Australian dollar rose 0.9 percent to 80.86 yen and was up 0.2 percent against the dollar at 92.71 cents today. The New Zealand dollar gained 0.9 percent to 63.48 yen and strengthened 0.2 percent to 72.76 cents. </p> <p>Benchmark interest rates are 3.75 percent in <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=RBACTR%3AIND" onmouseover="return escape( popwQuoteShort( this, 'RBACTR:IND' ))">Australia</a> and 2.5 percent in New Zealand, compared with 0.1 percent in Japan and as low as zero in the U.S., attracting investors to the South Pacific nations’ higher-yielding assets. </p> <p>The so-called Aussie got a boost as gold, Australia’s third-most-valuable raw-material export, advanced to a record for a second straight day, reaching $1,217.23 an ounce. </p>[...]<br /><p>Japan should ask the U.S. and Europe to take coordinated action to weaken the yen, Financial Services Minister <a href="http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Shizuka%0AKamei&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1" onmouseover="return escape( popwSearchNews( this ))">Shizuka Kamei</a> said in an interview in Tokyo today. </p> <p>“We need international coordination,” Kamei said. Kamei, whose <a href="http://www.kokumin.or.jp/" target="_blank" onmouseover="return escape( popwOpenWebSite( this ))">People’s New Party</a> is a coalition partner to the <a href="http://www.dpj.or.jp/english/" target="_blank" onmouseover="return escape( popwOpenWebSite( this ))">Democratic Party of Japan</a>, said he has urged Finance Minister <a href="http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Hirohisa+Fujii&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1" onmouseover="return escape( popwSearchNews( this ))">Hirohisa Fujii</a> to seek international cooperation to halt the currency’s rise.<br /></p><p><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a4oe0z4uuI1w">Full article</a><br /></p>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-6156087256711292672009-12-02T07:46:00.000-07:002009-12-02T07:48:30.694-07:00Iran to enrich uranium to 20 percent for needed fuel<span id="ctl00_body_spnTitle"><div class="newsDetailPublishDateTime"><a href="http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=112687&sectionid=351020104">Press TV</a> - December 2, 2009 13:09:21 GMT</div></span> <span id="ctl00_body_spnPubDate"></span> <div style="text-align: right;"><br /> </div> <span id="ctl00_body_spnImage"><div id="divImages"><div id="divImageContent"><table cellspasing="0" cellpadding="0"><tbody><tr><td><div class="imgSrc"><img src="http://www.presstv.ir/photo/20091202/sadeghzadeh20091202164903390.jpg" /></div></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div></span> <span id="ctl00_body_spnBody"><div class="newsDetailBody"><br />Days after Iran announced that it would start building ten new industrial scale enrichment plants, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran will start enriching uranium to a level of 20 percent.<br /><br />Addressing a crowd in Iran's central province of Isfahan, President Ahmadinejad said the West has been making efforts to get in the way of Iran's nuclear progress.<br /><br />"We asked for 20 percent enriched uranium fuel which according to the regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) they can provide us with. However, they refused to do so," President Ahmadinejad said.<br /><br />"God willing, Iran will produce [nuclear] fuel enriched to a level of 20 percent," the Iranian president announced.<br /><br />The remarks came as earlier Deputy Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Baqeri warned that should the IAEA fail to provide Iran's needed fuel, the country would move to enrich uranium to a level of 20 percent on its own.<br /><br />The new nuclear development comes as Tehran's research reactor has run out of fuel after years of operation and therefore Iranian nuclear officials called on the IAEA to provide the required fuel for the medical reactor.<br /><br />"Based on legal terms, we have no problem to obtain the fuel for the Tehran reactor as enrichment to a level of more than 5 percent or 20 percent is not prohibited to be carried out by different countries [that are signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)]," Baqeri, who is a deputy to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said earlier. </div></span>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-64502222375224773592009-12-01T21:11:00.002-07:002009-12-01T21:16:06.203-07:00Obama Sells Escalation With Vague Pullout Promise<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_TnDThSQGhrI/SxXpXN1JeQI/AAAAAAAAB4k/1kaA3wb0lOw/s1600-h/aa-barack-obama-as-warmonger1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 206px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_TnDThSQGhrI/SxXpXN1JeQI/AAAAAAAAB4k/1kaA3wb0lOw/s320/aa-barack-obama-as-warmonger1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410487112414361858" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-size:85%;" >Obama Increases Total Military Outlays 10% Above Bush levels</span><br /></div><div class="details"> by Jason Ditz, December 01, 2009 </div> <p>With the Afghan War getting worse all the time it may seem like putting the cart before the horse for the administration to start talking about a timetable for its victory and pullout, but with the war’s popularity cratering all the time it seems the president believes that selling the escalation as an “endgame” strategy is about the only viable public relations strategy possible.</p> <p>So tonight, President Obama tried to sell the American public on a 30,000 man escalation of the Afghan War with vague assurances that he hopes the escalation <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34218604/ns/politics-white_house/?ns=politics-white_house">will go so swimmingly that he can begin pulling those troops out in July 2011</a>.</p> <p>Whether this is collective amnesia amongst administration officials who failed to notice that <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29898698/">March’s 21,000 man escalation</a> only made matters worse or a shrewd political move designed to placate a war weary public, the comparisons to Iraq cannot possibly be avoided, and were even made directly by the president.</p> <p>Particularly in length, as both those “start the pullout in July 2011″ claim and the <a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2009/12/01/2009/11/25/white-house-eyes-afghan-exit-by-2017/">promise to be out of Afghanistan by 2017</a> came <span style="font-style: italic;">after</span> the administration’s last meeting on Afghanistan and must therefore be seen as part of the same strategy.</p> <p>This likely spells a glacial pace “drawdown” in Afghanistan, even assuming the escalation can be painted as a success. <a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2009/12/01/2009/07/01/odierno-predicts-less-than-10-percent-of-troops-in-iraq-will-leave-by-years-end/">America’s 2007 surge in Iraq was declared a success by Summer 2007, and only now, on the eve of 2010 are troops at pre-surge levels</a>, with administration officials forever non-committal about meeting the August 2010 goal, let alone the 2011 deadline.</p> <p>Yet the 2007 “success” in Iraq was largely a function of ethnic and religious cleansing of neighborhoods leading to a drop in violence, something which the administration won’t stumble into in Afghanistan.</p> <p>Rather in this case the six year drawdown may be more aimed at quieting domestic dissent, as the public appears to have forgotten entirely about Iraq the moment the vague, multi-year drawdown strategy was said to begin, rising violence and enormous American military commitments be damned.</p><p><a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2009/12/01/obama-aims-to-sell-escalation-with-vague-pullout-promise/">Source</a><br /></p>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6506115357150118329.post-47169637849997774582009-12-01T17:47:00.003-07:002009-12-01T18:17:31.850-07:00U.S. Postpones Decision on Ethanol Blend in GasolineBy Daniel Whitten and Mario Parker - Excerpts<br /><br />Dec. 1 (<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601130&sid=a0ejwJJyDG_c">Bloomberg</a>) -- U.S. regulators postponed a decision on raising the percentage of ethanol allowed in gasoline until mid-2010 to allow more time to assess effects on engines.<br /><br />The Environmental Protection Agency said it would keep the blend at 10 percent and could expand it based on a study on higher ethanol mixes in engines for cars and equipment such as lawn mowers. Growth Energy, an ethanol industry trade group, had asked that the agency permit 15 percent, also known as E-15.<br /><br />“While not all tests have been completed, the results of two tests indicate that engines in newer cars likely can handle an ethanol blend higher than the current 10 percent limit,” the EPA said today in a statement. The agency “expects to make a final determination in mid-2010 regarding whether to increase the allowable ethanol content in fuel.”<br /><br />Raising the so-called blend ratio would increase demand for the fuel, benefiting producers battered by volatile corn and fuel prices. At least 10 ethanol companies have sought bankruptcy protection since last year, including VeraSun Energy Corp. and Aventine Renewable Holdings Inc. Automakers and refiners have opposed a change, saying added ethanol would damage engines.<br /><br />[...]<br /><p style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Environmental and petroleum-industry groups aligned in opposition to a higher ethanol blend </p> <p>“It’s time we recognize that ethanol has been unable to attain independent viability as a motor fuel despite lavish subsides and mandates for use, and even more important, has been unable to prove that its production and use are beneficial to the environment,” said Craig Cox, the <a href="http://www.ewg.org/" target="_blank" onmouseover="return escape( popwOpenWebSite( this ))">Environmental Working Group’s</a> Midwest vice president. He hailed the EPA decision as a sign the agency is giving the matter further scrutiny. </p> <p style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">More Testing </span> </p> <p>The <a href="http://www.npra.org/" target="_blank" onmouseover="return escape( popwOpenWebSite( this ))">National Petrochemical & Refiners Association</a> also supported the delay. </p> <p>“In making this decision, EPA correctly recognizes that there is more study and comprehensive testing to be done to ensure that higher ethanol blends will be safe for consumers and not threaten the reliability of their fuels or operation of their vehicles, engines and outdoor equipment,” said <a href="http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Charles+T.%0ADrevna&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1" onmouseover="return escape( popwSearchNews( this ))">Charles T. Drevna</a>, the group’s president, in a statement.<br /></p><p>[...]</p><p style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">ADM, Monsanto, Deere</span> </p> <p>ADM, the second-biggest U.S. ethanol producer, and agricultural companies such as <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=MON%3AUS" onmouseover="return escape( popwQuoteShort( this, 'MON:US' ))">Monsanto Co.</a> and <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=DE%3AUS" onmouseover="return escape( popwQuoteShort( this, 'DE:US' ))">Deere & Co.</a> stand to gain if the EPA eventually allows a 15 percent formula, Morgan Stanley analysts led by <a href="http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Vincent+Andrews&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1" onmouseover="return escape( popwSearchNews( this ))">Vincent Andrews</a> in New York said in a report yesterday.<span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> [Left unaddressed in the report is the impact that a 50% increase in the ethanol mandate would have on the world's food insecure.]</span><br /></p>Aletho Newshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15258376626576041549noreply@blogger.com0