PERSPECTIVE: Nationalise the banks + green means zero growth

The ills besetting the financial system are currently devouring the global economy on which it relies. When one bank collapses another buys it, ensuring that the state will have to rescue it because it is now too big to fail. All of a sudden, with a knife to their throats, taxpayers everywhere are paying thousands of billions of dollars to bail out the biggest financial institutions. No one knows how many toxic assets are still concealed in their innards or how much more will have to be paid to buy up the rising mountain of tainted loans – a clear consequence of financial deregulation.

Once upon a time, it seems bankers had a 
nice easy life. They subscribed to the US “3-6-3” principle: borrow at 3%, lend at 6% and off 
for a round of golf at 3 o’clock. It did not take a regiment of mathematicians armed with econometric models to master this simple exercise. Then in the 1980s, everything changed. Diversification, risk-taking, opening up and removing barriers: these were the new watchwords. In 1933 the Glass-Steagall Act was passed prohibiting US banks from dealing on the stock exchange. Such old-fashioned New Deal nonsense was abolished in the euphoria of the new economics. Modernity beckoned and banks no longer depended on the confidence of their savers.

Most of them rushed to invest in new products: “derivatives” consisting of packages of loans they themselves once “securitised”. The bankers themselves hardly know what is going on (a 150-page handbook would sometimes be needed for this sort of exercise) though they appreciated the cash all this innovation generated for them. Lending more and more, in the dark and with less and less equity, was certainly taking a chance. But these were the days of bubbles, endless expansion, financial pyramids and astronomical salaries, all encouraging a policy of more of the same (1).

At the end of 2007, some banks lent up to 30 times the amount they held in their vaults. Insurance companies like American International Group (AIG) stood by, covering this daring exhibition 
of tightrope walking.

But one day, the rope gave way. Some debtors, ruined and unable to borrow any more, stopped repaying their loans. The banks were in a weak position: if a tiny fraction of the loans they had agreed could not be repaid, they too would be bankrupt – and their insurers with them. With house prices in free fall, economic activity grinding to a halt, unemployment soaring, how are the financial institutions to recover? The answer is: the state will take care of them, the same state which has too often let some genius shuttling between banks take the helm.

It is time for the state to address the problem. In any case, the financial sector can no longer look to private shareholders for its salvation: they only spring to life when the government announces a fresh injection of funds. Nationalising the banks – anathema only yesterday when everyone (even the French socialists) was in favour of financial deregulation – is now such an obvious move and the disaster it would prevent so imminent that Republican members of Congress are recommending it in the US, and neo-liberal magazines like The Economist are, regretfully, advocating the same line (2).

It seems, however, that as soon as the banks have been redeemed with taxpayers’ money, they will be returned to their shareholders. In short, put the house in order and then give it back to the people who looted it. Why? Nationalised banking systems have funded decades of expansion. What have private banks done of similar value?

Ref: Le Monde

Peter Custers: green means zero growth
June 2009

With the world economy in disarray and military expenditure spiralling, what hopes are there of a genuinely Green New Deal? In this month’s podcast, George Miller talks to Peter Custers, an expert on the international arms trade, about his article “Towards zero growth ”, which argues that “an economy that refuses to grow” is exactly what the world economy must aim for.

He sees positive signs in Germany’s policy on renewable energy and offers his verdict on how green Barack Obama will turn out to be.

Listen to the podcast here

El ejército toma las calles de la capital de Honduras / Coup d’Etat Underway in Honduras: OBAMA’S FIRST COUP D’ETAT

El Golpista

Israeli doctors colluding in torture + Doctors demand Yoram Blachar resign as ethics chief over Israeli torture + The UN Committee Against Torture Criticizes Israel

Israel’s watchdog body on medical ethics has failed to investigate evidence that doctors working in detention facilities are turning a blind eye to cases of torture, according to Israeli human rights groups.

The Israeli Medical Association (IMA) has ignored repeated requests to examine such evidence, the rights groups say, even though it has been presented with examples of Israeli doctors who have broken their legal and ethical duty towards Palestinians in their care.

The accusations will add fuel to a campaign backed by hundreds of doctors from around the world to force Yoram Blachar, who heads the IMA, to step down from his recent appointment as president of the World Medical Association (WMA).

More than 700 doctors have signed a petition arguing that Dr Blachar has disqualified himself from leadership of the WMA, the profession’s governing ethical body, by effectively condoning torture in Israel.

The campaign against Dr Blachar has gained ground rapidly since his appointment as president in November. Critics said his alleged complicity in the use of torture in Israeli detention facilities can be traced to 1995, when he became chairman of the IMA.

Until 1999, when Israel’s Supreme Court restricted torture, Israeli doctors routinely supervised the medical treatment of abused detainees, mostly Palestinians from the occupied territories.

During that period Dr Blachar surprised many colleagues by expressing support for Israeli interrogators’ use of “moderate physical pressure” in a letter to The Lancet, the British medical journal. The phrase covers a wide range of practices from beatings and binding prisoners in painful positions to sleep deprivation. It is regarded by human rights organisations as a euphemism for torture.

Despite the 1999 court ruling, a coalition of 14 Israeli human rights groups known as United Against Torture concluded in its latest annual report in November that Israeli detention facilities are still using torture systematically. Israeli doctors are also being relied on to treat the resulting injuries.

Last week, Physicians for Human Rights and the Public Committee against Torture in Israel published a joint report examining hundreds of arrests in which Palestinians were bound in “distorted and unnatural” ways to inflict “pain and humiliation” amounting to torture.

The report noted instances where prisoners, including a pregnant woman and a dying man, were shackled while doctors carried out emergency procedures in a hospital.

According to the report, the doctors violated the Tokyo Declaration, the key code of medical ethics adopted by the WMA in 1975 that bans the use of cruel, humiliating or inhuman treatment by physicians.

Ishai Menuchin, the head of the Public Committee, said his group had been lobbying strenuously against Israeli doctors’ complicity in torture since it issued a report, Ticking Bombs, in 2007, arguing that torture was routine in Israel.

The Public Committee highlighted the testimonies of nine Palestinians who had been tortured by interrogators. The report also noted that in most cases Israeli physicians treating detainees “return their patients to additional rounds of torture, and remain silent”.

In June last year, Physicians for Human Rights drew the IMA’s attention to two cases in which the attending doctor failed to report signs of torture on a Palestinian.

Anat Litvin of Physicians for Human Rights told the IMA: “We believe that doctors are used by torturers as a safety net – take them out of the system and torture will be much more difficult to enact.”

The groups stepped up their pressure in February, writing to Avinoam Reches, the chairman of the IMA’s ethics committee. They demanded that his association investigate six cases of doctors who failed to report signs of torture.

In one case, a prison doctor, under pressure from interrogators, agreed to retract a written recommendation that a detainee be immediately hospitalised for treatment.

Prof Reches promised to conduct an inquiry. However, last month the two human rights groups criticised him for failing to investigate their claims, accusing him of holding only “amicable and unofficial” conversations over the phone with a few of the doctors concerned.

“We have sent to the IMA many testimonies from victims of torture who were referred to doctors for treatment,” Dr Menuchin said. “But the IMA has yet to do anything about it.

“A significant number of doctors in Israel, in detention facilities and public hospitals, know torture is taking place, but choose to avert their gaze.”

This month, Defence for Children International issued a report on the torture of Palestinian children, noting that in several of the cases it cited, Israeli doctors had turned a blind eye. A boy of 14 who was beaten repeatedly on a broken arm reported the abuse to a doctor who, he said, replied only: “I had nothing to do with that.”

The report stated that the group “has not encountered a single case where an adult in a position of authority, such as a soldier, doctor, judicial officer or prison staff, has intervened on behalf of a child who was mistreated”.

Campaigners against Dr Blachar’s appointment as the head of the WMA say its Israeli sister association’s inaction on torture is unsurprising given its chairman’s public stance.

Derek Summerfield of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, said: “The IMA under Dr Blachar is in collusion with the Israeli state policy of torture. Its role is to put a benign face on the occupation.”

Dr Blachar told the Israeli website Ynet last week that such criticisms were “slanderous”, saying he and the IMA denounced all forms of torture.

The WMA, with nine million members in more than 80 countries, was established in 1947 as a response to the abuses sanctioned by German and Japanese doctors during the Second World War.

In 2007, the WMA’s general assembly called on doctors to document and report all cases of suspected torture.

Ref: Global Research

A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

Also read > Doctors demand Yoram Blachar resign as ethics chief over Israeli torture and Israel admits torture and Israel’s very own Guantanamos

The UN Committee Against Torture Criticizes Israel

On 15 May 2009, the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) concluded its 42nd session in Geneva by issuing concluding observations and recommendations on periodic reports submitted by five states, including Israel.
The Committee, which is made up of 10 independent experts, received written and oral submissions from government officials and non-governmental organisations before and during its review of Israel’s Fourth Periodic Report on 5 and 6 May 2009. Members of the United Against Torture Coalition jointly submitted three reports [1, 2, 3] and over 150 pages of evidence [1, 2] as well as they sent representatives to Geneva to give a presentation before the Committee.

Read more

De-Dollarization: Dismantling America’s Financial-Military Empire (bye bye US fucking A!)

The city of Yakaterinburg, Russia’s largest east of the Urals, may become known not only as the death place of the tsars but of American hegemony too – and not only where US U-2 pilot Gary Powers was shot down in 1960, but where the US-centered international financial order was brought to ground.

Challenging America will be the prime focus of extended meetings in Yekaterinburg, Russia (formerly Sverdlovsk) today and tomorrow (June 15-16) for Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The alliance is comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia. It will be joined on Tuesday by Brazil for trade discussions among the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

The attendees have assured American diplomats that dismantling the US financial and military empire is not their aim. They simply want to discuss mutual aid – but in a way that has no role for the United States, NATO or the US dollar as a vehicle for trade. US diplomats may well ask what this really means, if not a move to make US hegemony obsolete. That is what a multipolar world means, after all. For starters, in 2005 the SCO asked Washington to set a timeline to withdraw from its military bases in Central Asia. Two years later the SCO countries formally aligned themselves with the former CIS republics belonging to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), established in 2002 as a counterweight to NATO.

Yet the meeting has elicited only a collective yawn from the US and even European press despite its agenda is to replace the global dollar standard with a new financial and military defense system. A Council on Foreign Relations spokesman has said he hardly can imagine that Russia and China can overcome their geopolitical rivalry,1 suggesting that America can use the divide-and-conquer that Britain used so deftly for many centuries in fragmenting foreign opposition to its own empire. But George W. Bush (“I’m a uniter, not a divider”) built on the Clinton administration’s legacy in driving Russia, China and their neighbors to find a common ground when it comes to finding an alternative to the dollar and hence to the US ability to run balance-of-payments deficits ad infinitum.

What may prove to be the last rites of American hegemony began already in April at the G-20 conference, and became even more explicit at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 5, when Mr. Medvedev called for China, Russia and India to “build an increasingly multipolar world order.” What this means in plain English is: We have reached our limit in subsidizing the United States’ military encirclement of Eurasia while also allowing the US to appropriate our exports, companies, stocks and real estate in exchange for paper money of questionable worth.

“The artificially maintained unipolar system,” Mr. Medvedev spelled out, is based on “one big centre of consumption, financed by a growing deficit, and thus growing debts, one formerly strong reserve currency, and one dominant system of assessing assets and risks.”2 At the root of the global financial crisis, he concluded, is that the United States makes too little and spends too much. Especially upsetting is its military spending, such as the stepped-up US military aid to Georgia announced just last week, the NATO missile shield in Eastern Europe and the US buildup in the oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia.

The sticking point with all these countries is the US ability to print unlimited amounts of dollars. Overspending by US consumers on imports in excess of exports, US buy-outs of foreign companies and real estate, and the dollars that the Pentagon spends abroad all end up in foreign central banks. These agencies then face a hard choice: either to recycle these dollars back to the United States by purchasing US Treasury bills, or to let the “free market” force up their currency relative to the dollar – thereby pricing their exports out of world markets and hence creating domestic unemployment and business insolvency.

When China and other countries recycle their dollar inflows by buying US Treasury bills to “invest” in the United States, this buildup is not really voluntary. It does not reflect faith in the U.S. economy enriching foreign central banks for their savings, or any calculated investment preference, but simply a lack of alternatives. “Free markets” US-style hook countries into a system that forces them to accept dollars without limit. Now they want out.

This means creating a new alternative. Rather than making merely “cosmetic changes as some countries and perhaps the international financial organisations themselves might want,” Mr. Medvedev ended his St. Petersburg speech, “what we need are financial institutions of a completely new type, where particular political issues and motives, and particular countries will not dominate.”

When foreign military spending forced the US balance of payments into deficit and drove the United States off gold in 1971, central banks were left without the traditional asset used to settle payments imbalances. The alternative by default was to invest their subsequent payments inflows in US Treasury bonds, as if these still were “as good as gold.” Central banks now hold $4 trillion of these bonds in their international reserves – land these loans have financed most of the US Government’s domestic budget deficits for over three decades now! Given the fact that about half of US Government discretionary spending is for military operations – including more than 750 foreign military bases and increasingly expensive operations in the oil-producing and transporting countries – the international financial system is organized in a way that finances the Pentagon, along with US buyouts of foreign assets expected to yield much more than the Treasury bonds that foreign central banks hold.

The main political issue confronting the world’s central banks is therefore how to avoid adding yet more dollars to their reserves and thereby financing yet further US deficit spending – including military spending on their borders?

For starters, the six SCO countries and BRIC countries intend to trade in their own currencies so as to get the benefit of mutual credit that the United States until now has monopolized for itself. Toward this end, China has struck bilateral deals with Argentina and Brazil to denominate their trade in renminbi rather than the dollar, sterling or euros,3 and two weeks ago China reached an agreement with Malaysia to denominate trade between the two countries in renminbi.[4] Former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad explained to me in January that as a Muslim country, Malaysia wants to avoid doing anything that would facilitate US military action against Islamic countries, including Palestine. The nation has too many dollar assets as it is, his colleagues explained. Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan of the People’s Bank of China wrote an official statement on its website that the goal is now to create a reserve currency “that is disconnected from individual nations.”5 This is the aim of the discussions in Yekaterinburg.

In addition to avoiding financing the US buyout of their own industry and the US military encirclement of the globe, China, Russia and other countries no doubt would like to get the same kind of free ride that America has been getting. As matters stand, they see the United States as a lawless nation, financially as well as militarily. How else to characterize a nation that holds out a set of laws for others – on war, debt repayment and treatment of prisoners – but ignores them itself? The United States is now the world’s largest debtor yet has avoided the pain of “structural adjustments” imposed on other debtor economies. US interest-rate and tax reductions in the face of exploding trade and budget deficits are seen as the height of hypocrisy in view of the austerity programs that Washington forces on other countries via the IMF and other Washington vehicles.

The United States tells debtor economies to sell off their public utilities and natural resources, raise their interest rates and increase taxes while gutting their social safety nets to squeeze out money to pay creditors. And at home, Congress blocked China’s CNOOK from buying Unocal on grounds of national security, much as it blocked Dubai from buying US ports and other sovereign wealth funds from buying into key infrastructure. Foreigners are invited to emulate the Japanese purchase of white elephant trophies such as Rockefeller Center, on which investors quickly lost a billion dollars and ended up walking away.

In this respect the US has not really given China and other payments-surplus nations much alternative but to find a way to avoid further dollar buildups. To date, China’s attempts to diversify its dollar holdings beyond Treasury bonds have not proved very successful. For starters, Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs steered its central bank into higher-yielding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities, explaining that these were de facto public obligations. They collapsed in 2008, but at least the US Government took these two mortgage-lending agencies over, formally adding their $5.2 trillion in obligations onto the national debt. In fact, it was largely foreign official investment that prompted the bailout. Imposing a loss for foreign official agencies would have broken the Treasury-bill standard then and there, not only by utterly destroying US credibility but because there simply are too few Government bonds to absorb the dollars being flooded into the world economy by the soaring US balance-of-payments deficits.

Seeking more of an equity position to protect the value of their dollar holdings as the Federal Reserve’s credit bubble drove interest rates down China’s sovereign wealth funds sought to diversify in late 2007. China bought stakes in the well-connected Blackstone equity fund and Morgan Stanley on Wall Street, Barclays in Britain South Africa’s Standard Bank (once affiliated with Chase Manhattan back in the apartheid 1960s) and in the soon-to-collapse Belgian financial conglomerate Fortis. But the US financial sector was collapsing under the weight of its debt pyramiding, and prices for shares plunged for banks and investment firms across the globe.

Foreigners see the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization as Washington surrogates in a financial system backed by American military bases and aircraft carriers encircling the globe. But this military domination is a vestige of an American empire no longer able to rule by economic strength. US military power is muscle-bound, based more on atomic weaponry and long-distance air strikes than on ground operations, which have become too politically unpopular to mount on any large scale.

On the economic front there is no foreseeable way in which the United States can work off the $4 trillion it owes foreign governments, their central banks and the sovereign wealth funds set up to dispose of the global dollar glut. America has become a deadbeat – and indeed, a militarily aggressive one as it seeks to hold onto the unique power it once earned by economic means. The problem is how to constrain its behavior. Yu Yongding, a former Chinese central bank advisor now with China’s Academy of Sciences, suggested that US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner be advised that the United States should “save” first and foremost by cutting back its military budget. “U.S. tax revenue is not likely to increase in the short term because of low economic growth, inflexible expenditures and the cost of ‘fighting two wars.’”6

At present it is foreign savings, not those of Americans that are financing the US budget deficit by buying most Treasury bonds. The effect is taxation without representation for foreign voters as to how the US Government uses their forced savings. It therefore is necessary for financial diplomats to broaden the scope of their policy-making beyond the private-sector marketplace. Exchange rates are determined by many factors besides “consumers wielding credit cards,” the usual euphemism that the US media cite for America’s balance-of-payments deficit. Since the 13th century, war has been a dominating factor in the balance of payments of leading nations – and of their national debts. Government bond financing consists mainly of war debts, as normal peacetime budgets tend to be balanced. This links the war budget directly to the balance of payments and exchange rates.

Foreign nations see themselves stuck with unpayable IOUs – under conditions where, if they move to stop the US free lunch, the dollar will plunge and their dollar holdings will fall in value relative to their own domestic currencies and other currencies. If China’s currency rises by 10% against the dollar, its central bank will show the equivalent of a $200 million loss on its $2 trillion of dollar holdings as denominated in yuan. This explains why, when bond ratings agencies talk of the US Treasury securities losing their AAA rating, they don’t mean that the government cannot simply print the paper dollars to “make good” on these bonds. They mean that dollars will depreciate in international value. And that is just what is now occurring. When Mr. Geithner put on his serious face and told an audience at Peking University in early June that he believed in a “strong dollar” and China’s US investments therefore were safe and sound, he was greeted with derisive laughter.7

Anticipation of a rise in China’s exchange rate provides an incentive for speculators to seek to borrow in dollars to buy renminbi and benefit from the appreciation. For China, the problem is that this speculative inflow would become a self-fulfilling prophecy by forcing up its currency. So the problem of international reserves is inherently linked to that of capital controls. Why should China see its profitable companies sold for yet more freely-created US dollars, which the central bank must use to buy low-yielding US Treasury bills or lose yet further money on Wall Street?

To avoid this quandary it is necessary to reverse the philosophy of open capital markets that the world has held ever since Bretton Woods in 1944. On the occasion of Mr. Geithner’s visit to China, “Zhou Xiaochuan, minister of the Peoples Bank of China, the country’s central bank, said pointedly that this was the first time since the semiannual talks began in 2006 that China needed to learn from American mistakes as well as its successes” when it came to deregulating capital markets and dismantling controls.8

An era therefore is coming to an end. In the face of continued US overspending, de-dollarization threatens to force countries to return to the kind of dual exchange rates common between World Wars I and II: one exchange rate for commodity trade, another for capital movements and investments, at least from dollar-area economies.

Even without capital controls, the nations meeting at Yekaterinburg are taking steps to avoid being the unwilling recipients of yet more dollars. Seeing that US global hegemony cannot continue without spending power that they themselves supply, governments are attempting to hasten what Chalmers Johnson has called “the sorrows of empire” in his book by that name – the bankruptcy of the US financial-military world order. If China, Russia and their non-aligned allies have their way, the United States will no longer live off the savings of others (in the form of its own recycled dollars) nor have the money for unlimited military expenditures and adventures.

US officials wanted to attend the Yekaterinburg meeting as observers. They were told No. It is a word that Americans will hear much more in the future.

Ref: Global Research

Notes
1 Andrew Scheineson, “The Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” Council on Foreign Relations,

Updated: March 24, 2009: “While some experts say the organization has emerged as a powerful anti-U.S. bulwark in Central Asia, others believe frictions between its two largest members, Russia and China, effectively preclude a strong, unified SCO.”

2 Kremlin.ru, June 5, 2009, in Johnson’s Russia List, June 8, 2009, #8.

3 Jamil Anderlini and Javier Blas, “China reveals big rise in gold reserves,” Financial Times, April 24, 2009. See also “Chinese political advisors propose making yuan an int’l currency.” Beijing, March 7, 2009 (Xinhua). “The key to financial reform is to make the yuan an international currency, said [Peter Kwong Ching] Woo [chairman of the Hong Kong-based Wharf (Holdings) Limited] in a speech to the Second Session of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country’s top political advisory body. That means using the Chinese currency to settle international trade payments …”

4 Shai Oster, “Malaysia, China Consider Ending Trade in Dollars,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2009.

5 Jonathan Wheatley, “Brazil and China in plan to axe dollar,” Financial Times, May 19, 2009.

6 “Another Dollar Crisis inevitable unless U.S. starts Saving – China central bank adviser. Global Crisis ‘Inevitable’ Unless U.S. Starts Saving, Yu Says,” Bloomberg News, June 1, 2009. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aCV0pFcAFyZw&refer=asia

7 Kathrin Hille, “Lesson in friendship draws blushes,” Financial Times, June 2, 2009.

8 Steven R. Weisman, “U.S. Tells China Subprime Woes Are No Reason to Keep Markets Closed,” The New York Times, June 18, 2008.

FREE GAZA: We Do Not Seek a Confrontation + Activists say Israel Navy intercepted Gaza aid boat

“ALL WE WANT IS TO REACH GAZA. WE DO NOT SEEK A CONFRONTATION.”

Activists aboard Gaza justice boat demand they be allowed to visit their friends & family in besieged Gaza, and deliver their cargo of medical supplies, children’s toys, and reconstruction kits. They invite the world to join them.

(At Sea, 60km off the coast of the Gaza Strip) – Human Rights activists aboard the Free Gaza ship, the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, today demanded that the Israeli Navy immediately stop threatening them.

“This aid is desperately needed by the people of Gaza,” said Mairead Maguire, winner of the Noble Peace Prize and Pacem in Terris Award for her work in Northern Ireland. “President Obama has called upon the Palestinians to abandon violence but Israel is denying them the right to non-violently resist the siege of Gaza.”

The unarmed justice ship departed Larnaca Port in Cyprus at 7:30am Monday with its crew of 21 human rights activists, humanitarian workers and journalists from 11 different countries, including Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire and former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. The boat, a converted ferry, hopes to arrive in Gaza Tuesday afternoon, following a grueling 30 hour sea voyage.

At 1:30am, Israeli warships surrounded the small civilian boat and threatened to open fire if they did not turn around. When the activists refused to be intimidated, Israeli Occupation Forces began jamming their instrumentation, blocking their GPS, radar, and navigation systems. This jamming was in direct violation of international maritime law, threatening the welfare and safety of the civilian ship.

Responding to this intimidation, Congresswoman McKinney declared, “I am extremely angry. We demand that the Israeli government call off their attack dogs. We are unarmed civilians aboard an unarmed boat delivering medical and reconstruction aid to other human beings in Gaza. Why in God’s name would Israel want to attack us?”

Huwaida Arraf, Chairperson of the Free Gaza movement and delegation co-coordinator for this voyage, said, “All we want is to reach Gaza. We want to visit our friends and deliver our cargo of medical supplies, children’s toys, and reconstruction materials. Our ship was searched and received security clearance from the Port Authorities in Cyprus before we departed.”

Arraf continued, “We do not seek a confrontation. We have traveled from Cypriot waters to international waters and will enter Gazan waters. We’ve never gone anywhere near Israel. Israel’s closure of Gaza is an act of collective punishment and a blatant violation of international law. We call upon our governments to take action to uphold their obligations under the Fourth Geneva Conventions. If they won’t or until they do, we will act. We will come to Gaza again and again until this brutal siege is broken. We invite the good people of the world to join us.”

Free Gaza boats are the first international ships in 41 years to sail to the Gaza Strip. Since August 2008, the Free Gaza Movement has organized 8 sea missions, successfully arriving to Gaza on 5 separate occasions. One two earlier occasions, Israeli Occupation Forces used violence to stop the ships, physically ramming and almost sinking the DIGNITY boat in December 2008, and threatening to fire on and kill unarmed passengers in January 2008. The fate of this, the eighth mission to Gaza, is still uncertain.
###

For more information, please contact:
Greta Berlin (English/French) or Caoimhe Butterly (English/Arabic/Spanish) at 00357 99 081 767 / friends@freegaza.org Den här e-postadressen är skyddad från spamrobotar, du måste ha Javascript aktiverat för att visa den
www.FreeGaza.org

WHAT YOU CAN DO!

CALL or FAX Major Liebovitz from the Israeli Navy at:
Tel + 972 5 781 86248 or +972 3737 7777 or +972 3737 6242
Fax +972 3737 6123 or +972 3737 7175

CALL Mark Regev in the Prime Minister’s office at:
Tel +972 2670 5354 or +972 5 0620 3264
mark.regev@it.pmo.gov.il Den här e-postadressen är skyddad från spamrobotar, du måste ha Javascript aktiverat för att visa den

CALL Shlomo Dror in the Ministry of Defence at:
Tel +972 3697 5339 or +972 50629 8148
mediasar@mod.gov.il Den här e-postadressen är skyddad från spamrobotar, du måste ha Javascript aktiverat för att visa den

Activists say Israel Navy intercepted Gaza aid boat

Privately run checkpoint stops Palestinians with ‘too much food’

A West Bank checkpoint managed by a private security company is not allowing Palestinians to pass through with large water bottles and some food items, Haaretz has learned.

MachsomWatch discovered the policy, which Palestinian workers confirmed to Haaretz.

The Defense Ministry stated in response that non-commercial quantities of food were not being limited. It made no reference to the issue of water.

The checkpoint, Sha’ar Efraim, is south of Tul Karm, and is managed for the Defense Ministry by the private security company Modi’in Ezrahi. The company stops Palestinian workers from passing through the checkpoint with the following items: Large bottles of frozen water, large bottles of soft drinks, home-cooked food, coffee, tea and the spice zaatar. The security company also dictates the quantity of items allowed: Five pitas, one container of hummus and canned tuna, one small bottle or can of beverage, one or two slices of cheese, a few spoonfuls of sugar, and 5 to 10 olives. Workers are also not allowed to carry cooking utensils and work tools.

MachsomWatch told Haaretz that Sunday, a 32-year-old construction worker from Tul Karm, who is employed in Hadera, was not allowed to carry his lunch bag through the checkpoint. The bag contained six pitas, 2 cans of cream cheese, one kilogram of sugar in a plastic bag, and a salad, also in a plastic bag.

The typical Palestinian laborer in Israel has a 12-hour workday, including travel time and checkpoint delays. Many leave home as early as 2 A.M. in order to wait in line at the checkpoint; tardiness to work often results in immediate dismissal. Workers return home around 5 P.M. The wait at the checkpoint can take one to two hours in each direction, if not longer.

The food quantities allowed by Modi’in Ezrahi do not meet the daily dietary needs of the workers, and they prefer not to buy food at the considerably more expensive Israeli stores.

MachsomWatch informed the Israel Defense Forces about the new bans but received no response, the organization said. Modi’in Ezrahi issued a statement saying questions should be directed to the Defense Ministry’s crossings administration.

MachsomWatch activists said a security guard on duty told them the food restrictions were imposed due to “security and health risks.” However, at the nearby Qalqilyah checkpoint, which is still run directly by the IDF, workers have been allowed to carry through all the food items banned at Sha’ar Efraim.

However, responsibility for the Qalqilyah checkpoint is supposed to be transferred to a private company this week, and workers voiced concerns that similar restrictions might be imposed there.

The IDF Spokesman’s office said in a statement: “There are no limits on food quantities. They may take through food necessary for personal consumption during a day’s work. When a worker arrives with a large quantity of goods intended for sale rather than for personal use, he is asked to pass through the goods crossing instead, where the goods are handled appropriately and with the appropriate customs checks. This crossing is intended for pedestrians and not for goods.”

Ref: Haaretz

Second IDF soldier refuses to serve over violence towards Palestinians

A second IDF soldier has refused to continue following orders unless his complaints of violence toward Palestinians are investigated, Haaretz has learned. As with another infantry man from the same brigade – who was sentenced to 30 days in military prison last week after refusing to participate in his unit’s operations in the territories – the second soldier, who can only be identified as A., came to his decision following a raid by the brigade’s Haruv battalion in the village of Kifl Hares in the West Bank on March 26.

A. told his friends that soldiers from the platoon acted with unusual violence toward the residents of the village. “We were sent to look for firearms, but didn’t find any weapons,” the soldier said. “So we confiscated kitchen knives. But what I was most shocked about was the looting. One soldier took 20 shekels. Soldiers went into homes and looked for stuff to steal.”

A. also told of an assault on a mentally handicapped civilian. “He was just shouting at soldiers but then one soldier decided to attack him, so they beat the hell out of him – riffle butt to the head”.

A. informed his commanders he will no longer participate in battalion activities, after which he was not court-martialed, but was transferred to guard and kitchen duty. A. then left for home – to be arrested and so to attract greater attention to his claims. He was sentenced to 17 days of detention for absenteeism by battalion commander Lt. Col. Ilan Dikstein, and upon completing the sentence was reassigned to maintenance works in a rear base of the brigade.

The battalion is already being investigated by the Military Police following earlier reports in the media about its conduct.

The IDF spokesman’s office said in a statement that according to its information, “The soldier had been convicted of absenteeism, and after completing his sentence met with the battalion commander and informed him he wished to resign from combatant duty on conscientious grounds. The commander relocated him to administrative work at the battalion headquarters.”

Ref: Haaretz

A MUST READ: The End of Victory Culture

Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation

In a substantial new afterword to his classic account of the collapse of American triumphalism in the wake of World War II, Tom Engelhardt carries that story into the twenty-first century. He explores how, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the younger George Bush headed for the Wild West (Osama bin Laden, “Wanted, Dead or Alive”); how his administration brought “victory culture” roaring back as part of its Global War on Terror and its rush to invade Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; and how, from its “Mission Accomplished” moment on, its various stories of triumph crashed and burned in that land.

This book is an autopsy of a once vital American myth: the cherished belief that triumph over a less-than-human enemy was in the American grain, a birthright and a national destiny. The End of Victory Culture is a compelling account of how America’s premier story – of inevitable triumph against all odds – underwent a dizzying decomposition from Hiroshima to Iraq. As Tom Engelhardt reconstructs a half-century of the crumbling borderlands of American consciousness, he also offers a striking portrait of a post-Vietnam, and then Iraq-mired nation living an afterlife amid the ruins of its national narrative.

Praise for the new edition of The End of Victory Culture:

Juan Cole at his Informed Comment website: “It is in some ways an answer to Frederick Jackson Turner’s conundrum– if the Frontier had been so central to American identity, what would happen now that (in the 1890s) the frontier was closing up? Engelhardt’s work has two implications. First, the frontier has just been projected abroad, and other ‘native’ peoples substituted for the ‘Injuns.’ And, second, that frontier gets old fast, too. (There is a reason we don’t watch shows like Gunsmoke in prime time any more, folks). So, the American Right takes refuge in myths like ‘we could have won in Vietnam’ and remembers its boyhood games when heroes and villains were so easy to tell apart. Engelhardt’s book is a must read.”

Reviews for the new edition of The End of Victory Culture:

Daniel Luban at the Inter-Press Service website: “Engelhardt’s account of events up through the mid-1990s remains as insightful as when it was first published….”

Praise for The End of Victory Culture:

The Boston Globe: “Sets out to trace the vicissitudes of America’s self-image since World War II as they showed up in popular culture: war toys, war comics, war reporting, and war films. It succeeds brilliantly…. Engelhardt’s prose is smart and smooth, and his book is social and cultural history of a high order.”

The New York Times: “Engelhardt is absorbing and provocative…. Everything he writes is of a satisfyingly congruent piece.”

Studs Terkel: “America Victorious has been our country’s postulate since its birth. Tom Engelhardt, with a burning clarity, recounts the end of this fantasy, from the split atom to Vietnam. It begins at our dawn’s early light and ends with the twilight’s last gleaming. It is as powerful as a Joe Louis jab to the solar plexus.”

Marilyn Young: “A brilliant meditation on the past half-century of the American national story…. Its account of the disintegration of a confident post-World War II national identity is a stunning achievement.”

John Dower: “An extraordinarily original work that places postwar American history in an entirely new perspective.”

Todd Gitlin: “In this tour de force, Tom Engelhardt tracks the American ‘war story’ along its declining arc from the Indian conquests to the ‘total television’ of the Gulf War…. Full of brilliancies, this is one of those rare books that can change the way we see.”

Ahmadinejad’s victory: predicted and feared

As we know the Islamic Republic often applies the death penalty, detains political opponents, uses torture when it suits. Human rights are violated, as Gary Sick notes in his latest blog, “Gary’s choice”, 13 June, Iran’s elections – the human rights dimension. Women’s rights have often been flouted. And the political system is boxed in by a constitution which debars “non-conformist” candidates from standing for election.

Even so, Iranian women have gained since 1979 (mainly through the eradication of illiteracy) and there has been progress in the struggle against poverty, access to potable water and to mains electricity. But let’s focus on the presidential system. Astonishingly, Iran is the only country in the region (apart from Lebanon and Palestine) where the outcome of elections is not known in advance. In Egypt and Algeria, for example, the sole question is whether the president will obtain more than 90% of votes cast…

As Reuters reported on the evening of 12 June, there was a huge turnout in Iran. According to the official results announced on the morning of 13 June, Ahmadinejad gained two thirds of the votes and his opponent Mousavi one third. But this result is contested and the situation in Iran is tense.

As Mohsen M Milani, professor and chair at the department of government and international affairs, University of South Florida, pointed out in a 10 June interview published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Iranian Presidents Have a Critical Role in Policymaking, contrary to many people think, the Iranian president is an important figure, even if he’s less powerful than the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

Lively campaign

Observers noted that the presidential electoral campaign had been very lively, as Scott Peterson described in the Christian Science Monitor on 10 June, Once apathetic, young Iranians now say they’ll vote.
Hussein Mousavi was the most credible opposition candidate to Ahmadinejad, and on 10 June the TehranBureau website listed his election manifesto The Mousavi agenda.

Televised debates between the main candidates had enthralled viewers (some speeches are available with English subtitles on PressTV archive. The second debate between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, early in June, was watched by more than 40 million people. As the Los Angeles Times’s Tehran correspondent, Borzou Daragahi, reported on 4 June, Iranian president, rival spar in debate:

“Mousavi, struggling with his words during the beginning of the debate, hammered hard at Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy, accusing him of needlessly alienating other countries. He mocked what he described as Ahmadinejad’s erratic behaviour during several crises and trips abroad and repeatedly criticized Ahmadinejad for questioning the existence of the Holocaust, which he said hurt Iran’s national interests and unified the world behind Israel, Tehran’s rival,” Daragahi wrote.

As for the incumbent, “Ahmadinejad painted Mousavi as part of a cabal that includes Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential ayatollah and former president, and is dedicated to defeating him to secure vested interests. He named names, accusing several key political figures and their families of corruption and hinting at evidence showing Mousavi’s alleged wrongdoings.”

Such an attack on Rafsanjani, one of the country’s most powerful figures, is unprecedented. During the 2005 presidential campaign Ahmadinejad put himself forward as the candidate of social justice and the enemy of the mafia operators who had grabbed the country’s resources. He won after making many promises, some of which he has been able to keep because of high price of oil on the world market, but he has enjoyed no success in breaking the mafia rings (See Ramine Motamed-Nejad “Iran: money and the mullahs”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, June 2009). Economic and social issues were the main reason for the reformers’ defeat in 2005 and for Ahmadinejad’s victory. They will play a central role in the outcomes of this poll.

“Is the Rafsanjani aristocracy establishment supposed to perpetuate itself?” Ahmadinejad asked during the debate. Don’t hold your breath for the reply. In an open letter to the Supreme Leader, Rafsanjani protested against such attacks on him, as Muhammad Sahimi reported on 9 June for the TehranBureau website Rafsanjani’s Letter to the Supreme Leader :
Rafsanjani’s reply

“Following the presidential debates between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his reformist foes, Messrs Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, during which the president literally put the entire system of the Islamic Republic under question — he accused many national leaders and powerful politicians of nepotism and corruption, and claimed that since the 1979 Revolution only his administration has done extensive work for the nation (hence, indirectly attacking even the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was elected the president for two terms in the 1980s) — he was condemned by people across the political spectrum…

“In an unprecedented letter today to Ayatollah Khamenei, Mr Rafsanjani struck back at the president. The tone and clarity of the letter, especially for a politician who has always worked behind the scenes, were astounding. The letter starts:

“Unfortunately, the untrue and irresponsible statements of Mr. Ahmadinejad during his debate with Mousavi, the pre-debate statements [by him] and the events afterwards remind us of what the hypocrites [a reference to Mojahedin Khalgh Iran, an armed opposition group in exile] and counterrevolutionary groups said and did in the first few years after the Revolution, as well as the accusations during the 2005 [presidential] elections, the elections for the 6th Majles [during which Mr. Rafsanjani was strongly attacked by the reformists], and the nonsense that Paalizdaar propgated [a reference to Mr. Abbas Paalizdaar, who made numerous accusations similar to the President’s a few months ago in a speech], who has been convicted in the court of law. Since some of the [same] allegations had already been printed in the government-controlled media and had been repeated in the [president’s] speech in the holy [city of] Mashhad [a large city in northeastern Iran], the claim that he might have been influenced by the debate’s atmosphere and the attacks were unplanned is not acceptable. This is apparently an attempt to distract people’s attention from the many documented reports by the Government Accounting Office that $1 billion is missing [a reference to various reports that the GAO cannot account for $1 billion in the state budget], and that thousands of other unlawful acts have been committed with respect to the misuse of the national budget [approved by the Majles]; or it could be that he [the president] feels that his main competitor [Mr Mousavi] is a hero of a quarter of century of the Islamic Revolution [and, therefore, feeling vulnerable].

“The letter then asks if such unlawful acts are not stopped, and if the president, who has taken the oath of office to respect the law, can break the laws of the land without being persecuted, how can the nation consider itself the followers of the holy Islamic system of governance?

“The letter ends by asking Ayatollah Khamenei to ensure that the upcoming voting process will be devoid of any fraud.

“More than anything else, the letter reveals the deep fissures in the ruling establishment that have been created by Mr Ahmadinejad’s presidency. The letter in some way may also lessen the possibility of fraud in the Friday voting. In the 1997 elections that resulted in a landslide victory for Mr Mohammad Khatami, Mr Rafsanjani warned the nation a few days before voting about the possibility of fraud. Many believe that Mr Rafsanjani’s warning at that time was the prime reason why the conservatives could not resort to voting fraud, as they were terrified by a revolt by the people.”
Electoral fraud?

If we are to believe the reactions of Mousavi and his supporters the night that the results were announced, voting fraud was substantial all the same.

Rafsanjani’s position was supported by 14 clerics from the holy city of Qom according to Reuters on 9 June, Iranian cleric slams Ahmadinejad “fabrications”.

Moreover unconfirmed sources indicated that, in response to this open letter, the Supreme Leader had nominated Akbar Nategh Nouri, a conservative cleric critical of Ahmadinejad, to check for election irregularities in TeheranBureau’s 10 June Reaction to Rafsanjani’s Letter by Muhammad Sahimi.

A less optimistic, even alarmist, interpretation came from the Kamal Yaser Nassin of the Zurich-based International Relations and Security Network (ISN) on 11 June, Iran : Ahmadinejad’s Palace Coup.

“First, according to usually reliable sources, security forces are preparing for a massive crackdown on the protestors, once the winner of the contest is announced.

“Second, in a highly symbolic departure from past norms, the office of the Supreme Leader has issued an official disclaimer about alleged promises made to Hashemi Rafsanjani by Ayatollah Khamenei. The Supreme Leader also warned today against “ill-wishers” who spread malicious rumours and are lodged everywhere, adding “they may be found everywhere, in all agencies and groups.” Experts believe that since the Supreme Leader is not known as someone to bank on the losing side, this can be interpreted, with moderate confidence, as a sign that Mahmood Ahmadinejad is considered as the next president of the Islamic Republic.”
Concerning the nuclear issue, Rasool Nafisi, wrote on Radio FreeEurope’s website on 12 June, In Iran, The Election Is Being Televised :

“Despite some pretty fierce duels, the candidates have been careful not to cross any of the regime’s ‘red lines.’ All candidates have endorsed the country’s uranium-enrichment programme, and none has argued that continuing this policy in the face of UN resolutions and international sanctions is shaking the foundations of the economy or society. None of the candidates has asserted that the 25% inflation rate is at least partly due to the impact of sanctions.”

Washington had shown a deal of circumspection during this election campaign, fearing that favouring one candidate could backfire. In the Foreign Policy website of 10 June As Iran votes, all quiet on the western front , Luara Rozen spelt it out:

“We are committed to direct diplomacy with whatever government emerges,” a US official said Wednesday on condition of anonymity. The administration is “being tight-lipped on this one,” he acknowledged, noting that some planned interviews on the issue had been shut down out of apparent sensitivity to concerns that Iranian hard-liners could portray them as evidence of US meddling, a sensitive issue in Iran.
For the American and Israeli right – as Scott Harrop pointed out in Helena Cobban’s Just World News blog of 12 June, “Israel’s horse in Iran’s Race” – Ahmadinejad was the preferred candidate!

Elsewhere an influential American Democratic Senator pronounced, in a 10 June interview with the Financial Times’s Daniel Dombey, US senator opens Iran nuclear debate, that Iran had the right to enrich its own uranium and that arguments to the contrary made by the Bush administration were “ridiculous”.

And what next?

Ref: Le MOnde

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