Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth

June 21, 2010

Greenspan's Bias Continues to Threaten Workers

The saddest part of this disaster of an economy, is that the guy who helped create the conditions, continues to make us suffer under his illusions. Paul Krugman weighs in:

Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Gr...Image via Wikipedia
There are many things to say about Alan Greenspan’s op-ed yesterday, none of them complimentary. But what struck me is the passage highlighted by Tim Fernholz:
Despite the surge in federal debt to the public during the past 18 months—to $8.6 trillion from $5.5 trillion—inflation and long-term interest rates, the typical symptoms of fiscal excess, have remained remarkably subdued. This is regrettable, because it is fostering a sense of complacency that can have dire consequences.
You know, some people might take the fact that what’s actually happening is exactly what people like me were saying would happen — namely, that deficits in the face of a liquidity trap don’t drive up interest rates and don’t cause inflation — lends credence to the Keynesian view. But no: Greenspan KNOWS that deficits do these terrible things, and finds it “regrettable” that they aren’t actually happening.
The triumph of prejudices over the evidence is a wondrous thing to behold. Unfortunately, millions of workers will pay the price for that triumph.

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June 02, 2010

Historic UNSC Condemnation of Israel, and of Gaza Blockade; World Body Demands release of Aid Activists, Ships

Juan Cole provides a critically important news report that was absent from TV news. Guess why.
In a rare public denunciation of Israel, the United Nations Security Council on Monday condemned the Israeli raid on the Gaza aid flotilla and deplored the loss of innocent life that attended it. The world body insisted that Israel immediately release the 480 humanitarians it had taken captive, and demanded that it also let their ships go. The UNSC also instructed Israel to lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip, calling the siege “not sustainable.” Although the statement was weaker than the text urged by Turkey and the Arab world, it was brutal compared to the anodyne language usually insisted upon by Washington when it comes to Israel.
This development is head-spinning in its implications. The United States almost never allows UNSC resolutions condemning Israel to go forward (though this text was admittedly a presidential statement rather than a full resolution). But here it is clear that President Barack Obama instructed his ambassador to the UN to join in the condemnation of the Israeli “acts.” Since Turkey is currently a non-permanent member of the UNSC and led the charge on the condemnation of Israel, it is possible that the US felt it had to trade horses with Ankara if it has any chance of still getting a UNSC resolution tightening sanctions on Iran (a step that Turkey opposes, as does Brazil, though neither has a veto). It is also possible that Israel’s rash attack has sabotaged the Obama administration’s push for increased UN sanctions on Iran, hardening opposition to an Israel-driven policy toward Tehran.
The UN Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs, Argentina’s Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, gave us some idea of the UNSC’s thinking when he called on Israel on Monday to end its “counterproductive” and “unacceptable” blockade of the Gaza Strip. He pointed out that the fiasco around the Israeli commando attack on the civilian aid flotilla would not have occurred had there been no blockade in the first place. The demand that Israel give up the siege of Gaza was repeated by the United Kingdom and by Brazil. (Nick Clegg, the new LibDem deputy prime minister of the UK, has long been a vocal critic of Israeli policies toward the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza.)
As long as Israel, therefore, continues its blockade of the general Gaza population, it is no less in contravention of the United Nations Security Council instructions than Saddam Hussein was with regard to his weapons programs in the early 1990s.
While gathering the details of how some 16 humanitarian aid activists were killed and dozens were wounded by Israeli soldiers is important, above all for the sake of justice toward the idealistic persons mown down, it is far more important that the episode produce an end to the lockdown of the 1.5 million Gazans, who have been placed by the Israeli government in a sort of open-air penitentiary.
Contrary to the assertions of far-right Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, the Palestinians of Gaza, stripped of any citizenship and lacking any basic human rights, face continual shortages of medicine, medical equipment, electricity and even of food. They face crushing poverty and unemployment, along with inadequate hospitals. Many are still homeless after the Israelis destroyed their homes in the Gaza War, and they are being denied cement for rebuilding. They are not allowed to have a harbor or an airport. They are cut off from the market for their goods in Egypt, Jordan and the rest of the Arab world. As Uri Avnery points out, Israeli pledged in the Oslo accords 18 years ago to allow a deep water port for Gaza on the Mediterranean. Instead, it is assaulting even small aid vessels attempting to land at the pitiful excuse for a port.
The blockade is shameful. It is a gross violation of the international law governing the treatment of Occupied populations. And now the Security Council has roundly condemned it and insisted that it be lifted.
The Israeli peace organization, Gush Shalom, demonstrated in front of the detention center where the aid activists were being held..
There are no new details of the Israeli assault on the humanitarian aid flotilla early Monday morning, largely because the 480 eyewitnesses had been sequestered by the Israelis. Some, including an 81-year-old former US ambassador, a Turkish woman with a baby, and a former US navy sailor who had been on the USS Liberty when the Israelis attacked it in 1967, are now trickling home. The whereabouts and condition of many others is unconfirmed, including European parliamentarians, Nobelists, and Swedish mystery writer Henning Mankell (whose anti-imperialist novel The Man from Beijing I just read and enjoyed.)
The incident could have implications for the future relationship of Israel to the European Union. Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin hinted that Dublin might go so far as to cut expel the Israeli ambassador, thus cutting off diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv. Some 8 Irish citizens are among Israel’s prisoners, and one of these humanitarians, Fiachra O’Luain, is said by his father to have been wounded by Israeli gunplay. Martin thundered, “These citizens did not enter Israel illegally — they were essentially kidnapped from international waters, taken into Israel and are being asked to sign documents saying they entered illegally.”
The other big casualty of the Israeli raid may well be the special relationship between Turkey and Israel, as the BBC says. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the raid as “state terrorism.”
Thousands of demonstrators also gathered to chant against Israel in Baghdad, inspired by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Interior Minister Jawad Bulani, serving in the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said, “We want to send a message to the Palestinians to let them know they are not alone and that the Iraqis are with them . . . What is going on is a vicious crime. The international community must condemn it and take responsible action against them. This is the stand of all Iraqis, officially and publically.”
Historians may look back on the Marmara raid as the moment a new order began emerging in the Middle East, grouping Turkey with Iran, Syria, Iraq and Palestine rather than with Washington and Tel Aviv.
Aljazeera English has video on the world condemnation of the Marmara raid.
The enforced silence of the flotilla activists, in Israeli custody, has allowed Israeli spokesmen to shape the narrative of events for American news media. Former CIA analyst Ray Close blames President Obama for not being tougher with Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu to begin with, arguing that coddling the Likud leader led to this atrocity. As Jonathan Cook points out, the Israeli authorities have still not announced a definitive list of those killed and wounded by their commandos.
In response to Israeli official pronouncements, Amnesty International said, “Israel says its forces acted in self-defence, alleging that they were attacked by protestors, but it begs credibility that the level of lethal force used by Israeli troops could have been justified. It appears to have been out of all proportion to any threat posed.” 
Raw video posted to Youtube from the initial phase of the Israeli boarding of the Turkish vessel, Mavi Marmara demonstrates that as the Israeli commandos approached the ship, they were laying down suppressive fire and at that point killed two individuals aboard the ship. Even after the ship ran up a white flag, the Israelis continued to use live ammunition along with stun grenades and tear gas.
See Stephen C. Webster’s analysis of this video of the boarding:
If the crew and passengers of the Mavi Marmara were coming under fire and had taken casualties in the initial phase of the Israeli approach, that horror would help explain why some actively resisted the boarding and that in turn would explain the contextless snippet of video released by the Israeli army of Israeli commandos being fought as they commandeered the vessel. If the passengers thought the Israeli military had murderous intentions toward them, some would obviously attempt to forestall the boarding. It is also possible that there were no deaths on the other ships because they were boarded later and after the Israeli helicopter gunship crews had learned that suppressive fire during the initial approach was unnecessary and counterproductive, and so they ceased that tactic.
It is unclear why the commandos behaved in this way with regard to the Mavi Marmara in the first place, but it is possible that they believed their own propaganda. The Turkish aid ships were supported by a Muslim fundamentalist charity in Turkey, IHH, that has been accused of being sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Hamas, and in Israeli eyes that orientation would make them terrorists. So perhaps the commandos assumed they were boarding a ship full of Hamas operatives. In reality, it was just idealistic humanitarians. But even they could be provoked to active resistance if they thought they were about to be shot down.
It is a sign of to what depths the pride of the Israeli military has fallen that it is complaining of attempts to “lynch” its soldiers (none of whom was killed, while as many as 16 humanitarian aid workers appear to be dead). This is the Israeli army of the 1967 Six Days War and of Entebbe? They were in danger of being lynched as they boarded a small civilian vessel? Of course, they could have avoided this menace by simply not being uninvited on a ship in international waters. And, it is pretty obvious who is actually being lynched– the people of Gaza and anyone who objects to them being half-starved by the Israeli blockade.
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June 01, 2010

Turkey Promises to Send Supplies to Gaza With Naval Escort

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP - JANUARY 06:  Homeless ...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
This situation worsens by the day.



This post originally appeared on Booman Tribune.
Well, now Israel has done it. They have actually provoked Turkey to the point that they may start a war over this incident massacre:
Turkey has threatened Israel with unprecedented action after Israeli forces attacked an aid vessel, killing 10 peace activists headed to Gaza.Israel said 10 people died while those on the ship said at least 15 were killed.

A shocked world has responded with outrage. Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel and warned of unprecedented and incalculable reprisals.
Two Turkish activists were reported to be among those killed in the flotilla. Ankara warned that further supply vessels will be sent to Gaza, escorted by the Turkish Navy, a development with unpredictable consequences.
Israel has sounded an alert throughout the country fearing rocket attacks by Hezbollah in Lebanon.
If Turkey is promising to send new supplies with naval escort, then we’re headed for an epic showdown between two of Americas closest allies. I don’t think Obama is getting too much rest and relaxation this Memorial Day.
Meanwhile, the Arab League will meet tomorrow and put immense pressure on Egypt to lift their portion of the Gazan blockade. I can’t imagine that Egypt will refuse. In fact, I think Israel has jeopardized their peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan.
All this, and for what? To keep construction materials from the Gazan people? Israel is not behaving in anything resembling a rational manner. They just lost the only friends they had not named America. And who can help them now but Big Daddy? The problem is that Big Daddy has more to consider than Israeli’s deluded interests. We have to worry about our own image and international relationships.
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Israel's Deadly Attack on Peace Activists Provokes International Outrage, Diplomatic Crisis

Israel has shown it's face to the world. The Freedom Flotilla, inspired by Gandhi's non-violent movement, has led to a massacre on the high seas. We will see much posturing and lies in the next few days until finally, the truth comes out. The Turkish government claims all passengers were x-rayed for weapons before boarding.

Here is a truly balanced article, covers the essential truths.


Benjamin NetanyahuImage via Wikipedia

Days of tension between Israel’s hawkish government and the organizers of the Freedom Flotilla carrying 700 peace activists and 10,000 tons of desperately needed supplies to Gaza culminated in grisly carnage after a deadly pre-dawn attack by Israeli commandos. The operation left between nine and 19 international activists dead and dozens more injured and bleeding on the decks of the civilian vessels.
As Ha’aretz columnist Yossi Melman wrote, “No matter how one looks at the conduct of the Israeli government and the IDF, it is hard to understand how stupid and tragic it was. Time and again, Israel tries to prove that what can't be solved by force can be solved by more force.”
The international backlash against the Netanyahu government has been swift, and it will likely prove deep. Reuters reported that the attacks had “set off a diplomatic furor, drawing criticism from friends and foes alike.” Moscow condemned the attack as a “gross violation” of international law. The Turkish government called it an act of “state terrorism,” and recalled its ambassador to Israel. It joined Greece in canceling joint military exercises planned with the Israeli Defense Forces.
Israeli hawks and their defenders abroad frequently express deep concern about what they view as a campaign of “delegitimization” of the Jewish state. They see the international boycott movement, student divestment campaigns and criticism from human rights groups as grave threats to Israel’s continued support within the international community, especially from the United States and Europe. They fear the potential ramifications of global public opinion turning wholly and irreversibly against them; they see the potential for that scenario to re-define Israel’s most important strategic relationships.
When the UN released the Goldstone Report, which called out both Israel and Hamas for war crimes committed during the 2008 Gaza conflict, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters, "the delegitimization must be delegitimized." So it’s no small irony that the habitual use of lethal force by “Bibi’s” right-wing government -- against not only armed Palestinian resistance groups but also routinely against Palestinian and foreign civilians and peaceful protesters -- has done much more to turn Israel into a ”pariah state” than its critics could have ever hoped to do.
As Steven Walt of Harvard put it:
How could they possibly believe that a deadly assault against a humanitarian mission in international waters would play to their advantage? Israel's government and its hard-line supporters frequently complain about alleged efforts to "delegitimize" the country, but actions like this are the real reason Israel's standing around the world has plummeted to such low levels.
The attack on the Freedom Flotilla might ultimately prove as devastating to Israel’s blanket claim that it acts proportionally and in self-defense as it was brutal for the activists aboard the ships. The troops didn’t have to board the vessels to stop them. In 1988, when the PLO announced that a ship called The Return would embark for Israel filled with Palestinian refugees, Mossad agents sabotaged the craft before anyone boarded, causing extensive damage but no loss of life. As a last resort, military commanders could have used directed fire on the motors of the ships, halting their voyage without bloodshed. (To be clear, the blockade is both ineffective and an example of collective punishment -- I’m not endorsing these actions. The point is that the operation was a tragic example of thoughtless overkill.)
Although it went largely unnoticed in the U.S. media before this weekend’s deadly raid, the approach of the flotilla was a major news story elsewhere in the world. Activists and aid workers had won a victory against the Israeli blockade the instant they set off to deliver their relief supplies. The question was only how significant it would be.
If the Netanyahu government had allowed the vessels to offload their goods, the Freedom Flotilla would have had a modest impact at best. Gazans would have received some supplies, whose delivery might have raised awareness of the desperate crisis they have faced since 2006.  Perhaps the New York Times would have devoted a few hundred words to the event in its international section. That’s basically what occurred in 1988, when under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel permitted an aid ship filled with supplies and activists to enter Gaza unchallenged.
But when Israeli commandos dropped from the sky, swarmed the vessels and massacred the unarmed (or lightly armed) passengers, Israel lost a massive battle in its global public relations war, a campaign that’s ultimately based on deflecting criticism of its suppression of the Palestinians with endless claims to the moral high-ground. On the heels of the disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and the Gaza war in 2008, it may prove to be the greatest defeat in the young country’s history.
A reactionary Israeli government fell into a classic trap, one that was well understood by Gandhi when he fought the all-powerful British Empire for an independent Indian state. As Yosi Melman put it, “The organizers of the flotilla wanted to present the Israel Defense Forces to the world as an army that does not hesitate to use force. The flotilla organizers wanted deaths, casualties, blood and billows of smoke.” Melman added: “Every child knows that the conflict here is one of consciousness, images, emotion and gut-feelings; not one of justice or logic.”
Helena Cobban noted that the humanitarian group had “pursued textbook rules of nonviolent action … they allowed their ships to be inspected by governments before they took them to sea, they continually announced their intention of taking the humanitarian supplies to Gaza, and they worked hard to make their action as visible as possible.”
Cobban continued:
Israel's security forces have become accustomed over many decades to using lethal force against opponents, then claiming it was the opponents who "fired first." They have become accustomed, moreover, to their government and its cheerleaders around the world having such a dominant position in the media that they can hope to have this version of events generally accepted-- or at least, accepted by enough of the people in power around the world that they don't need to worry about the real facts getting out.
Israel’s hard-line government gambled that the usual tactics would prove effective on this occasion. The Guardian reported that “a sophisticated public relations operation was underway” in Israel to influence the international media’s coverage of the carnage. “Spinners and spokesmen from the Israeli military and government departments politely answered questions [from the international media] and offered their own narrative of the day's events,” reported the Guardian, as “a barrage of emails and text message alerts firing into inboxes” provided the official version of events. Here in the U.S., AIPAC, the Israeli right-wing’s premiere Washington lobbying group, shot off dozens of releases to reporters accusing “the terrorist-linked flotilla organizers” of being in league with Al Qaeda.
The Israeli Defense Force immediately expressed its “regret” over the deaths, while claiming that the killing was entirely justified. The Israeli Navy said that its heavily armed commandos were attacked by activists “armed with sticks and knives,” who tried to “lynch” them. Turkish television broadcast footage of some of the passengers hitting soldiers with sticks or pipes. But according to NBC, “a reporter on one of the boats said the Israelis fired” at the unarmed vessel before boarding it. In any event, when a civilian vessel comes under armed attack in international waters during the dead of night, its occupants have the right to defend themselves. When one wounded Greek activist was brought to a hospital for treatment, reporters asked him who had been responsible for his injuries. He replied, simply, “pirates.”
Israeli officials later claimed the activists had pulled out hidden guns when the commandos attacked. It’s an implausible tale. According to the Turkish daily Zaman, “Officials from the Customs Undersecretariat said every passenger was searched before getting on the ship with the help of X-ray machines and metal detectors. Senior officials from the undersecretariat said Israel's allegations were tantamount to ‘complete nonsense.’”
If the Netanyahu government believed the standard claims of self-defense would have their usual salutary effect, it likely made a critical miscalculation. This was not a group of protesters fired upon in the occupied territories. It was an attack on a convoy that NBC reports included 11 Americans -- among them a former ambassador -- as well as 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland. It took place in international waters, and the ships were sailing under the flag of Turkey, a member of NATO. Israeli officials may claim the flotilla was itself provocative -- and it was certainly intended to be -- but even if one accepts that as a premise to stop it, the massacre nonetheless represents a monstrously disproportionate use of force.
"I condemn the violence, and Israel must explain," said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. In a joint statement, Robert Serry, U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, and Filippo Grandi, commissioner general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency said: "We wish to make clear that such tragedies are entirely avoidable if Israel heeds the repeated calls of the international community to end its counterproductive and unacceptable blockade of Gaza."
Ultimately, defenders of Israel’s right-wing -- I don’t use the term “pro-Israel” -- fear a tipping point in international public opinion more than protests from other governments. Israel has long justified its oppression of the Palestinian population by portraying itself as a beleaguered underdog, surrounded by powerful and hostile enemies. That veil is lifting, even, or especially, among the American Jewish community. A generational divide has opened up as younger Jews, who don’t remember a time when Israel wasn’t a nuclear-armed regional superpower backed by the world’s greatest military force, are “distancing” themselves from the Jewish state. The right-wingers ascendant in Israeli politics are true believers, who think that God is on their side. That might help explain why they appear to be oblivious to the danger this kind of naked violence poses to the very legitimacy they work tirelessly to defend.
Seventy-five years ago Gandhi said that nonviolence is “the greatest force at the disposal of mankind,” and “mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.” He explained that the power of nonviolent resistance derives from its ability to expose an oppressor’s cruelty to the world and, ultimately, to himself. “Truth is my God,” he said. “Non-violence is the means of realizing Him.”
Commenting on the attack on the Freedom Flotilla in Ha’aretz, Bradley Burston wrote, “We were determined to avoid an honest look at the first Gaza war. Now, in international waters and having opened fire on an international group of humanitarian aid workers and activists, we are fighting and losing the second. For Israel, in the end, this Second Gaza War could be far more costly and painful than the first.”
History will prove him correct, and the most hawkish elements in Israeli society will be directly responsible for her pain. It’s a self-inflicted wound, with only the assistance of a small group of human rights activists who this past weekend turned their bloody bodies into “the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.”
Editor's note: Check out AlterNet's Change.org petition urging Obama and Congress to condemn Israel's attack.

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.
© 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/147061/

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