| 01/07/2010 - 11:07 PM |
By Khalid Amayreh 2 July, 2010 Last week, 338 members of the US House of Representatives signed a petition calling on President Obama to veto any resolution by the United Nations denouncing the murderous Israeli raid on the Gaza freedom Flotilla on 31 May, in which 9 Turkish peace activists were brutally but needlessly killed. “We urge you to continue to use US influence and, if necessary veto power, to prevent any biased or one-sided resolutions from passing.” The petition, sponsored by Ted Poe (R-TX) and Gary Peters (D-M) viewed the naked Israeli assault, which occurred in international waters, as an act of self-defense. “We believe that it is in the national security interests of the United States to unequivocally reiterate that the US stands behind its longtime fried and ally.” A similar letter signed by 87 US senators was also sent to President Obama, urging him to uphold Israeli interests irrespective of any other consideration. In fact, the two letters stopped short of demanding that the US back Israel right or wrong, even if that proves detrimental to American national interests, including national security. In the final analysis, we are talking about a breed of unprincipled politicians who would have us believe that Israel makes no mistakes, does no wrongs, and commits no crimes. This is an optimal embodiment of political whoredom in America. Nothing else can sufficiently describe the moral blindness plaguing the US government as a result of this rampant manipulation of American politics. Congress is undoubtedly the citadel of Zionist power in the United States. After all, we are talking about a vicious, secretive clique that has succeeded in utilizing the most powerful country on earth in order to expedite the Nazi-like goals of Zionism, namely to annihilate the national existence of the Palestinian people by completing the process of swallowing up their ancestral homeland. Congress does represent the core of political corruption in America where a few Jewish tycoons have thoroughly corrupted the American political discourse, by transforming most of America’s politicians into willing political whores without any modicum of moral conscience, readily bowing before Jewish money and Jewish pressure. Congress is more than just blind and misguided when it comes to Israel. It is actually malicious and dishonest. Having unhesitatingly backed every Israeli crime (Israel itself can be described as a huge crime against humanity) so consistently, so totally and so enthusiastically caricatures a body that is decidedly immoral, mendacious and nefarious. Congress may occasionally come up with arguments justifying its total embrace of Israeli Nazism. However, most serious pundits know too well that these arguments are too superficial, bereft of truth, and void of substance. I am quite sure that most of these senators and congressmen know deep in their hearts that Israel is a criminal state that murders innocent children and lies about the murder. They know that Israel practices racism and apartheid in the most pornographic manner. They know that Israel deliberately and constantly breaks the rule of international law. They know that the modus operandi of Israeli policies is nearly totally incompatible with declared American ideals, such as the First Amendment freedoms and equality before the law. They should also know much more about the brutal ugliness of Zionism. However, because of cheapness of character, moral cowardice and fear of standing up to the Zionist ghoul enslaving America, the American lawmakers just content themselves with being “yes-men and yes-women” in the service of the lobby. After all, when money appears, heads bow, as Saadi Shirazi said. This clarion moral failure in upholding moral responsibility has already corroded and is corroding America’s moral standing throughout the world. True, America is still being viewed as an economic and military giant. But America is also increasingly being viewed as moral midget. The robber barons of Israel have already succeeded in brining about the moral downfall of America. It is only a matter of time before they succeed in bringing about America’s final downfall. Well, I know that many would think that I am indulging in hyperboles. None the less, it is amply clear that a country that either fervently supports or just keeps silent in the face of Nazi-like atrocities in Gaza has lost its moral compass. And when a country does lose its moral compass, it is finished no matter how many years its demise is postponed. It doesn’t matter if the ultimate downfall occurs today or tomorrow or even the day after. The important thing is that it places itself on a sure track leading to self-destruction. Remember, the Soviet Union went down not for a dearth of missiles and tanks, but rather for the loss of a moral fabric. I have no doubt that Israel and its tribal supporters in Washington are taking America to the moral abyss. In fact, the US is already languishing in an abyss of moral confusion as a result of the Zionist stranglehold on the American government. Thanks to Zionist bullying and manipulation, the US was made to invade and occupy two sovereign countries, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people, including many American young men and women. Now, Israel’s firsters would like to see America declare war on a third Muslim country in order to enable Israel to retain nuclear supremacy in the Middle East. In short, Israel and its tribal supporters are hell-bent on transforming the world’s estimated 1.6 billion Muslims into avowed enemies of the United States, all in order to enable Israel to arrogate more Palestinian land and liquidate the enduring and just Palestinian cause. America can inflict a lot of damage on Muslims. However, a prolonged confrontation with the Muslims of the world would dissipate American power and squander American resources. This is how great empires meet their ultimate demise. And America’s is looming. |
Friday, July 2, 2010
The Political Whores of Washington
$3.4B Mea Culpa to Tribes Added to Defense Bill
"The U.S. House of Representatives attached a $3.4 billion government settlement with Indian trust beneficiaries to a war-funding bill it passed just before breaking for the July Fourth holiday.
The legislation authorizes the Obama administration to settle the Cobell v. Salazar lawsuit with between 300,000 and 500,000 American Indians. The lawsuit claims the Interior Department mismanaged billions of dollars held in trust by the government.
The settlement was one of several additions made late Thursday to the bill that authorizes funding for President Barack Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan.
The House had already authorized the settlement in May. But last month, it became caught in a Senate filibuster of the Democrats' jobs legislation."
And from the Buffalo Post:
“We expect that the Senate must give prompt and serious consideration to the bill because, without enactment, there are no funds for our war efforts and no funds for FEMA,” plaintiffs attorney Dennis Gingold said Friday. “The bill is too important to this country. Partisan politics must not obstruct passage.”
Gingold credited House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer with moving the settlement authorization forward, calling him a “true champion for individual Indian trust beneficiaries.” Hoyer’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Sen. John Barrasso, the vice chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, has said the settlement should be a stand-alone bill with several changes, such as capping lawyer fees at $50 million.
Barrasso spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said the Wyoming Republican was at a funeral Friday and could not immediately comment on the House’s action.
Under the proposed settlement, $1.4 billion would go to individual Indian account holders. Some $2 billion would be used by the government to buy broken-up Indian lands from individual owners willing to sell, and then turn those lands over to tribes. Another $60 million would be used for a scholarship fund for young Indians.
Lawsuit participants would receive at least $1,500, and many would receive considerably more.
Elouise Cobell, the Blackfeet woman from Browning, Mont., who filed the lawsuit in 1996, has urged passage of the settlement, saying it’s long overdue."
Thursday, July 1, 2010
The United States and the Muslim World: Has Obama Reneged on his Cairo Promise ?
| By Khaled Hroub Director of the Cambridge Arab Media Project, United Kingdom Responding to a student's question in his landmark visit to Istanbul in April 2009, Barack Obama said, "States are like big tankers, they're not like speedboats. You can't whip them around and go in another direction ... you turn them slowly, and eventually you end up in a very different place."[1] Obama has begun to turn the American tanker, but this gradual change does not satisfy the expectations that swept the Muslim world upon his election. The image of the United States, badly damaged in recent years, requires a speedier overhaul than the one currently underway. Many Muslims and mainstream Islamists around the world wonder whether the turning of the tanker will be permanent. A policy reversal is more than likely when Obama leaves office, and the burst of fresh air that Obama's election brought to U.S.-Muslim relations could easily run out. Islamist Ambivalence Between these extremes, another Islamist writer, Nabil Shabib, a Syrian living in Germany, is skeptical. He believes Obama's choice to visit Turkey first among Muslim countries was a loaded move. Shabib contends that Turkey is the type of majority-Muslim state the West wants to see--a secular Muslim country. More importantly, Obama wants to exploit the respected position of Recep Tayyip Erdugan's Turkey in order to implement American policies in the Muslim world. Obama wants Turkey to adopt a more active role in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, and in the Arab/Israeli conflict. For Shabib, this amounts to "Turkey becoming a Trojan horse for American policy in two components: soft political discourse; and political substance that is based on the continuation of hegemony in a new transformed ‘soft hegemony' after military failures."[10] Hamas and Obama However, despite early signs in January 2009 that the Obama administration was ready to engage with Hamas,[16] putting an end to American isolation of the party and the 1.5 million Palestinians under its jurisdiction in the Gaza Strip, nothing tangible took place. Democratization Deficit Notes 1 "Obama Urges Iraqis to Take Larger Role in Controlling Country," PBS NewsHour, April 7, 2009. (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/jan-june09/obamairaq_04-07.html) |
International Law in Israel's Gaza Flotilla Attack
By Anthony DiMaggio
*Original Article Title: Erasing International Law in Israel's Gaza Flotilla Attack / Rogue State Politics
There has been much intense discussion of Israel's recent attack against a flotilla of aid ships that was travelling to Gaza, intent on violating the blockade imposed by Israel against the government of Hamas and the Palestinian people. Much of the debate, unfortunately, has taken place under limited, propagandistic pretenses.
The Israeli attack took place on May 31 in the Mediterranean Sea, approximately 80 miles off the coast of the Gaza Strip. More than 660 pro-Palestinian activists were detained, and another nine were killed as the Israeli military intercepted the flotilla to prevent it from reaching the Gaza shore. The activists were known to pose no military danger to Israel; instead they were carrying much needed humanitarian supplies to ease the suffering of Palestinian civilians who have been the subject to an unofficial Israeli siege policy, following their election of the Islamist group Hamas to power.
Reactions among U.S. officials and in the American media were predictably favorable to Israel. Obama and the press are largely ignoring or discounting international law. Obama refuses to condemn Israel, instead tepidly pushing it to conduct its own investigation (in which Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak opposes). In its recent editorial, "Israel and the Gaza Blockade," the New York Times mildly criticizes Israel for having "mishandled the incident." The blockade is deemed "unjust," although the paper's editors seem more concerned with the PR fallout of the incident to Israel's reputation than with the loss of civilian lives. This is evidenced in the Times' own statement that "this is a grievous, self inflicted wound [for Israel]. It has damaged Israel's ties with Turkey, once its closest ally in the Muslim world".
The Times generically calls for "an impartial international investigation" into the incident - pre-determined to lead to no punishments considering it would be undertaken by the same government guilty of war crimes.
Similarly, in "The Flotilla Fiasco," the Washington Post's editors are even more hostile in their response to the activists challenging the Israeli blockade. The paper complains that "Israel's response to the pro-Palestinian flotilla was both misguided and badly executed," but then admits that "we have no sympathy for the motives of the participants in the flotilla".
The famous Edward Said lambasted American and European media, and political and cultural discourse as heavily Orientalist, framing Muslims as dangerous and exotic others. This practice continues today, with U.S. media heavily privileging Israeli narratives over Palestinian ones. A Lexis Nexis database search finds that in 31 stories referencing Israel or the Gaza Strip that were printed in U.S. from May 31 to June 2 (the three days following the attack), 23 stories, or 74 percent of the total, contained a headline that led withreferences to Israel or Israel's actions. In contrast, only 8 stories, or 16 percent of the total, were accompanied by headlines that led withreferences to the Gaza Strip or the actions of Palestinian officials.
Media outlets are more than happy to obfuscate international law in order to absolve Israel of criticism. Tellingly, neither of the editorials from the Washington Post and New York Times even bothers to reference the implications of international law for Israel's attack on civilians travelling in the flotilla.
When the Washington Post does reference international law, the contents of such stories are hardly critical of Israel. In one story, "Israeli Flotilla Raid Revives Question of International Law," the Post argues that "international law experts differ over the legality of the Israel action, with some asserting that the raid constituted a clear cut violation of the Law of the Sea, while others maintain that Israel can board foreign vessels in international waters as part of a naval blockade in a time of armed conflict." The article goes on to cite the denials of illegality by Israeli officials, such as Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister, who argues that, under the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea: "if you have a boat that is charging a blockaded area you are allowed to intercept even prior to it reaching the blockaded area if you've warned them in advance, and we did a number of times, and they had a stated goal which they openly expressed, of breaking the blockade. That blockade is in place to protect our people." International law is generally not a salient theme for stories on Israel's attack.
Just four of the 27 stories in the New York Times referencing Israel also mention the words "international law," while just one of 21 stories in the Washington Post contain those words, according to a Lexis Nexis analysis from May 31 to June 2nd. As a student of political science, international law has long been an area of interest - one in which I did much research as an undergraduate and graduate student. It's worthreflecting briefly below on just what international legal agreements have to say on Israel's Flotilla attack. After undertaking this analysis, it should be clear that the legal justification made by Israeli officials is unconvincing and self-serving.
Key Legal Points Regarding the Flotilla Assault
• The U.N. Security Council has already weighed in on the blockade (of which the flotilla attack is one part), attacking it in Resolution 1860 for collectively punishing the people of Gaza. The resolution calls for "the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including food, fuel, and medical treatment." The criticism of the embargo as illegal is heavily rooted in the logic of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 3 of which mandates that states take all possible steps (even when formal wars have not been declared between two states) to protect noncombatants. Behavior that is expressly prohibited includes any actions that are a threat to individual life (9 civilian activists were killed in the flotilla attack). The taking of hostages (including the more than 660 seized by Israel) for political or military purposes is also prohibited. The blockade is illegal in that it violates the legal principles behind the Geneva Conventions, which were created for the general purpose of prohibiting states from engaging in collective punishment against civilians during times of conflict. Israel's collective attack on the civilians of Gaza (and its refusal to even acknowledge that they are under assault) represents a clear violation of the spirit and letter of the Geneva Conventions.
• The U.N. Charter is quite explicit that use of force is only allowed under two conditions: in the case of immediate self defense against an ongoing attack (not a theoretical one) or in the case of Security Council authorization. Israel could claim neither of these (for more details on the U.N. Charter and limits on the use of force, see my recent piece, "War Takes No Holiday." Any attacks against the flotilla have not been convincingly linked in any way to previous military conflicts between Hamas and Israel. Apologists for Israeli aggression like to argue that international law outlaws the use of force (outside of the two conditions listed in the U.N. Charter and discussed above), while also arguing that the U.N. Charter allows states like Israel to annex land in the West Bank and to control of Gaza's territorial space, in light of the fact that the Occupied Territories are not formally states. Under this line of thinking, since the West Bank and Gaza Strip do not formally constitute a state, they are not parties to the U.N. Charter - hence Israel is not bound by to respect their sovereignty. There's little reason to take these objections seriously. The U.N. Security Council has long deemed Israel's occupation and control of Palestinian lands and territorial space as illegal under international law, despite the fact that Palestine is formally a nation, rather than a state (see Security Council resolutions 242, from 1967, and 338, from 1973, which declared the inadmissibility of occupying or annexing land by force).
• The U.N. Charter's restrictions on the use of force are relevant in their relation to Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, Israel's longstanding efforts to demolish prospects for Palestinian sovereignty (in this case through the embargo and attacks on civilians), and Israel's belligerence against foreign nationals who were assaulted on May 31st. The blockade and the attack on the flotilla are an integral part of Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and its unauthorized control over their airspace, waters, and borders. The Security Council's condemnations of Israeli behavior must be understood in light of the country's illegal 40-year campaign to deny Palestinian sovereignty (Israel has violated more than 90 Security Council resolutions in relation to its behavior in the Occupied Territories). Furthermore, Israel's attack on the flotilla can be understood as an informal declaration of war against states such as Turkey, whose own nationals were on board the attacked ships.
• The much cited San Remo agreement, used by Israel to justify its attacks on the flotilla, is a non-starter as a legal permission slip. There is nothing in the San Remo agreement that allows a belligerent state to target and kill civilians who are known to be on a non-violent mission in international waters, especially when they are dedicated to opposing an illegal embargo. The San Remo agreement allows for countries to stop "merchant vessels" in international waters under the following conditions:
o If the vessels "are believed on reasonable grounds to be carrying contraband
or breaching a blockade, and after prior warning they intentionally and clearly
refuse to stop, or intentionally and clearly resist visit, search or capture."
o If the vessels "engage[s] in belligerent acts on behalf of the enemy"
o If vessels are "act[ing] as auxillaries to the enemy's armed forces"
o If vessels "are incorporated into or assist the enemy's intelligence system"
o If vessels "sail under convoy of enemy warships or military aircraft"
o Or if vessels "otherwise make an effective contribution to the enemy's military action."
There is no legitimate basis for invoking the San Remo agreement in regards to humanitarian shipments from the flotilla. There is no reason to believe the ships were contributing to Hamas' military power; rather they were being provided needed relief to civilians targeted by Israel's illegal siege strategy. This basic reality means that five of the six provisions above (B, C, D, E, and F) are inapplicable in terms of authorizing the Israeli flotilla attack. The only provision left, point "A," does not justify actions undertaken under an illegal embargo.
In the case of the Israeli flotilla attack, and as mentioned above, the legality of the blockade itself is clearly in question, as it represents a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions' protections of civilians during wartime.A more relevant international treaty in the case of this attack is the 1982 Law of the Sea Treaty. This agreement allows for the "innocent passage" of ships in international waters if their behavior is not deemed "prejudicial to the peace, good order or the security" of the respective coastal state. The Israeli attack took place 80 miles offshore, clearly outside of Israel's sovereignty (which extends no further than 12 miles from Israel's coast), and in a zone where the Law of the Sea Treaty is clearly applicable. Furthermore, it's difficult to make an argument that humanitarian supplies sent to a population under an illegal siege are a threat to the national security of Israel - unless national security is defined through illegal aggression, illegitimate land expansion, and the terrorizing of civilians.
The comatose political debate over Israel's actions is hardly surprising to those who critically follow U.S. public discourse on the Middle East. American narratives have long privileged Israel over its Arab neighbors, and this case is no exception. Still, the growth of domestic or international pressure may play a positive role in pushing the U.S. to take a more critical stance toward Israel. Whether this will happen, however, remains to be seen.
Anthony DiMaggio is the author of Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008) and the forthcoming When Media Goes to War (2010). He can be reached at adimagg@ilstu.edu
Emilio Freixas
Taken from an assortment of Freixas comic pages originally posted at Mania Dos Quadradinhos.
See more in this post at El Desvan del Abuelito.
Article on Freixas at Lamiek.
Grograou - Diary Of Inhuman Species
See many many more here.
Glad to see the monster making still going strong after the three years since I posted a link to Diary Of Inhuman Species.
See more at Graou's flickr gallery.