Theft by no other name......

A general view over the construction site of the Israeli settlement Har Homa
built on land confiscated from the West Bank city of Bethlehem

September 8, 2006.

If this isn't rampant theft of land in breach of international law, it is hard to think what might be.......

From Ma'an News Agency:

"As Palestinians commemorate Land Day, the anniversary of an uprising against Israel's land confiscation, a report from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics released a report showing Israel's settlement project is rapidly escalating.

Thirty-five years on from the uprising, in which six young protesters were killed by Israeli forces, Palestinians constitute almost half of the population of the Palestine under the British Mandate, but have access to less than 15 percent of the land, the PCBS report said.

Israel's separation wall has confiscated around 733 square kilometers of occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, the report notes. Israel says the wall was built to prevent attacks, but its route runs deep inside the West Bank, often as far as 22 kilometers, according to UN reports. Land between the wall and the Green Line has been used for illegal Israeli settlements and military bases.

PCBS found that in 2010, Israel built 6,794 Jewish-only housing units on occupied Palestinian land, four times more than in 2009.

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, it is illegal for an occupying power to transfer its population into territory it occupies."

In a vice and hard decisions [of his own making] loom for PM

Israeli PM Netanyahu has been able to have things pretty much his own way the last years. The Americans were compliant and Jordan, Egypt and Syria were "safe" in that they created no "issues" for Israel. As for the Palestinians, they could be kept under control given the might of the Israeli's as occupiers of Gaza and the West Bank.

But times have changed - rapidly! - and the PM has now created a vice for himself and his country.

"Hamstrung politically, diplomatically and militarily, Netanyahu has come under growing domestic criticism. The complacency which he has demonstrated with his policy of clinging to a "no war, no peace" status quo risks exacerbating regional instability even more, warned Yossi Sarid, a renowned Israeli opinion-maker.

In a Ha'aretz article entitled "When Israel's politicians sit idle, terrorists step forward", Sarid wrote sarcastically: "Hamas cannot believe the good fortune of Israel doing its bidding by weakening Israel's partners.

"The status quo is always followed by the status quo ante. The wheel of fortune always comes back to where it started; what was is what will be," he added gloomily.

"Say farewell to peace," lamented columnist Ari Shavit, also in Ha'aretz. "The status quo has become a firetrap, and all the familiar ways of escaping it have been blocked."

In mid-term, Netanyahu faces his greatest test, say political pundits. He has promised a "bold initiative by May".

But most expect yet another "familiar way of escaping" the status quo – reportedly, an interim agreement with the PA over only fifty per cent of the West Bank. That would not satisfy the US, let alone the Palestinians.

On Tuesday, answering to criticism of the opposition that the standstill in peace talks creates propitious conditions for renewed hostilities, Netanyahu retorted in the Israeli Knesset parliament that the "Palestinians are not ready for peace".

For statehood, though, the Palestinians are ready. After he was updated on the Gaza situation by Netanyahu, the US defence secretary was updated by prime minister Salaam Fayyad on the PA plan for Palestinian statehood in September.

The only political 'ace' left with Netanyahu's fast depleting play of cards is that the Hamas rockets will convince the international community that were Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, the area would quickly turn into more launching pads against Israel.

This argument, Netanyahu still seems to hopes, might put the brakes on the drive for international recognition of a Palestinian state.

An independent Palestine that would still be under Israeli occupation would trap Israel in between a status quo and a power vacuum of its own making."

Superinjunctions in the digital age

Crikey, the Australian online magazine [worth subscribing to by the way] has an editorial today on the ever-increasing use of superinjunctions - and how they don't really sit well with and in the digital age.

"Today Crikey features an article by Bernard Keane that would be in contempt of court were it published in the United Kingdom, relating to an extraordinary, and legally novel, form of "superinjunction" that has blocked reporting of a case arising from a financial dispute within the Lumley family. Material relating to the case is freely available online, even if British media outlets are not permitted to say where.

The regular use of superinjunctions to block reporting of inconvenient, damaging or occasionally even simply embarrassing material by companies and prominent individuals has reached scandalous proportions in the United Kingdom, to the extent that MPs are using Parliamentary privilege to breach them.

The merits or otherwise of the individual cases are not the issue here; the demand for court-sanctioned censorship, and the willingness of British judges to grant it, is.

But the broader problem for judges and lawyers, whether in Britain or anywhere else, is that the legal system's traditional obsession with controlling information about cases before it is now fundamentally at odds with the digital world.

We have seen this pattern played out repeatedly as music executives, movie studios and media proprietors rail against the internet and swear they will use all means available to them to restore the control they exercised over information before the internet arrived to make their lives difficult. In all cases, they have failed.

And more recently we have seen it played out by politicians and the foreign policy establishment, railing against WikiLeaks for releasing US Government material. They, too, have failed. Critics insist this is an argument about what should be, about the morality of WikiLeaks releasing cables, about the morality of downloading audio-visual content -- even, according to Australian retailers, about patriotism.

But the nature of information, and the relationship between those who have it, and those who want it, will never be the same again. Industries, courts and governments are now struggling to deal with the widening gap between what they should think should be, and what is. The sooner they understand how fundamentally the world has changed, the smaller that gap will become."

Syria: The State of Emergency - which started in 1963

Let it not be said that Syria's State of Emergency hasn't been in place for a long time. Since 1963 in fact. That is what many Syrians now want removed or lifted - and which the President did not when addressing the nation today.

David W. Lesch, a professor of Middle East history at Trinity University, is the author of “The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria.”. Writing an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Lesch provides an insight into the Syrian President.

"Will he be like his father, Hafez al-Assad, who during three decades in power gave the security forces virtually a free hand to maintain order and sanctioned the brutal repression of a violent Islamist uprising in the early 1980s? Or will he see this as an opportunity to take Syria in a new direction, fulfilling the promise ascribed to him when he assumed the presidency upon his father’s death in 2000?

Mr. Assad’s background suggests he could go either way. He is a licensed ophthalmologist who studied in London and a computer nerd who likes the technological toys of the West; his wife, Asma, born in Britain to Syrian parents, was a banker at J. P. Morgan. On the other hand, he is a child of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the cold war. Contrary to American interests, he firmly believes Lebanon should be within Syria’s sphere of influence, and he is a member of a minority Islamic sect, the Alawites, that has had a chokehold on power in Syria for decades."

****

"The world is strewn with unemployed dictators who blamed “a plot” and nameless “enemies” for their country’s problems.

Yet when President Bashar al-Assad did just that in his long-awaited speech to the nation today, he was exhibiting a typically Syrian conspiratorial mindset, one that will sway those of his citizens who were already primed to believe him. This, however, totally denies the genuine socio-economic, political and personal frustration of ordinary Syrians that generated the protests to begin with.

President Assad spoke of some reforms in a disappointingly ambiguous manner that is unlikely to quell the demonstrations. No one denies the difficulty of announcing, much less carrying out, serious reforms in a country like Syria. Certainly, Mr. Assad would have to bargain with a variety of the country’s powerful established interests to get anything done. But he had the opportunity with this speech to build up a critical mass of public support for reform before a critical mass of opposition forms against him that would make anything he says too little, too late.

Sadly, he did not do so."

The news shouldn't be one-sided

It's not only NPR which is guilty of not presenting diverse or contrary views to those of the government - the Australian ABC isn't all that good either, nor the BBC - as FAIR details what has been happening in the US.

"If public television's mission is to bring diverse viewpoints to the airwaves, the discussions about the war in Libya on the PBS NewsHour haven't lived up to that standard. Over the past two weeks, the NewsHour has featured an array of current and former military and government officials in its discussion segments--leaving little room for antiwar voices, U.S. foreign policy critics and legal experts."

What Mission?

Credited to R. J.Matson, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Roll Call

1 billion people to face water shortages in 2050

Yes, it might be far off, but if a report on water resources is correct, by 2050 something like 1 billion people will face water shortages in 2050.

"More than one billion urban residents will face serious water shortages by 2050 as climate change worsens effects of urbanization, with Indian cities among the worst hit, a study said Monday.

The shortage threatens sanitation in some of the world's fastest-growing cities but also poses risks for wildlife if cities pump in water from outside, said the article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study found that under current urbanization trends, by mid-century some 993 million city dwellers will live with less than 100 liters (26 gallons) each day of water each -- roughly the amount that fills a personal bathtub -- which authors considered the daily minimum.

Adding on the impact of climate change, an additional 100 million people will lack what they need for drinking, cooking, cleaning, bathing and toilet use."

10 days of US "involvement" in Libya = US$550 million bill

It's obviously easy to spend money at the Pentagon - when the President gives the green light.

Politico reports on what the Pentagon has already spent after only 10 days into the US being part of the military involvement in Libya.

"The Pentagon says it has spent $550 million on U.S. military operations in Libya since efforts to protect civilians from Muammar Qadhafi’s regime began 10 days ago.

Details of expenditures on the Libya mission show the Defense Department spending more than 60 percent of the $550 million on bombs and missiles, Pentagon spokeswoman Navy Cmdr. Kathleen Kesler told POLITICO. The rest of the costs, she said, “are for higher operating tempo of U.S. forces and deployment costs.”

The total — the first official tab released by the Pentagon — reflects costs incurred in the mission between March 19 and March 28. It doesn’t include day-to-day military costs like troop salaries and the upkeep of ships that the Pentagon would have had to pay regardless of the action in Libya. The funding is being shifted from other U.S. operations.

Moving ahead, Kesler said, “future costs are highly uncertain,” though the Defense Department expects to incur added costs of about $40 million over the next three weeks as the operation transfers to NATO’s leadership. After that, if U.S. forces stay at the levels planned, U.S. military involvement would total about $40 million each month.

Several news organizations have estimated that the cost of the Libya mission has already exceeded $600 million. In an accounting published Monday, ABC News’s $600 million-plus estimation included $60 million to replace the Air Force F-15E fighter jet that crashed last week after experiencing mechanical problems. The Pentagon’s official total does not include the cost of replacing the jet.

The total includes $268.8 million spent on at least 191 Tomahawk cruise missiles that have been launched, ABC estimated."

An analysis of the Obama speech.

Stephen Walt, Professor of International Relations at Harvard, in his blog on FP has an excellent analysis of the Obama speech to the American people on how / why the US is involved in the military action in Libya.

"The president is tiptoeing through a mine-field of conflicting imperatives, seeking to justify a war that he has launched even though there are no vital strategic interests at stake. And make no mistake: it is a war. When your forces are flying hundreds of sorties, and firing missiles and dropping bombs on another country's armed forces, it is Orwellian to call it anything else.

It is a war being fought for humanitarian objectives -- and there's nothing inherently wrong with that -- but the president's somewhat tortured parsing of the reasons for his action betrays an awareness that he's on shaky ground. And notice that almost all of his justifications were anticipatory in nature: we went to war to prevent a potential bloodbath in Benghazi, to prevent evens in Libya from possibly affecting developments elsewhere in the Arab world, and to forestall some future tarnishing of America's reputation. When you are as strong and secure as the United States really is, everything becomes a "preventive" operation. (Too bad we don't think that way when it comes to financial matters). Ironically, if the United States faced real threats to its security, it wouldn't be wasting much time or effort on operations like this one.

My main objection to the speech was that Obama lied when he said the United States would only pursue regime change through "non-military means," and when he said that "broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake." In today's New York Times, for example, we find the following lede:

'Even as President Obama on Monday described a narrower role for the United States in a NATO-led operation in Libya, the American military has been carrying out an expansive and increasingly potent air campaign to compel the Libyan Army to turn against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi."

In other words, no matter what Obama said last night, the United States is in fact using its military forces to produce regime change in Libya. And notice also that Obama's carefully parsed wording -- his willingness to use "non-military means" leaves open the possibility of covert action by the CIA, or even CIA-operated drone strikes. I'm not shocked by the president's "misspeaking" in this fashion, because leaders lie all the time and he's got to pretend to be conforming to the U.N. Security Council Resolution. But we shouldn't be taken in by this particular deception.

My second observation about the speech is that it probably didn't make much difference what Obama said last night. Because this was clearly a war of choice, what matters is not the justification that he provided for it or the ways he attempted to assuage concerns about possible precedents, the risks of getting bogged down, etc. What matters is what actually happens in Libya over the next few weeks or months. If Qaddafi is soon ousted and the rebel forces can establish a reasonably stable order there, then this operation will be judged a success and it will be high-fives all around. If a prolonged stalemate occurs, if civilian casualties soar, if the coalition splinters, or if a post-Qaddafi Libya proves to be unstable, violent, or a breeding ground for extremists, than Obama's eloquence last night will be disregarded and his decision will be judged a mistake.

Words and justifications do matter on occasion, but in the end its results that count."

Who are those "rebels" they refer to in Libya?

As military action in and in relation to Libya continues - where will it all end one might legitimately ask - reference is constantly made to the "rebels" fighting the Gadhafi regime. But who are these "rebels?". Veteran journalist Jon Lee Anderson, writing in The New Yorker, has some answers.

"President Obama, who is torn between the imperatives of rescuing Libyan innocents from slaughter and not falling into yet another prolonged war, described the same rebels rather differently: “people who are seeking a better way of life.”

During weeks of reporting in Benghazi and along the chaotic, shifting front line, I’ve spent a great deal of time with these volunteers. The hard core of the fighters has been the shabab—the young people whose protests in mid-February sparked the uprising. They range from street toughs to university students (many in computer science, engineering, or medicine), and have been joined by unemployed hipsters and middle-aged mechanics, merchants, and storekeepers. There is a contingent of workers for foreign companies: oil and maritime engineers, construction supervisors, translators. There are former soldiers, their gunstocks painted red, green, and black—the suddenly ubiquitous colors of the pre-Qaddafi Libyan flag."

****

"Gheriani tried to assure me that the new state the rebels envision would be led not by confused mobs or religious extremists but by “Western-educated intellectuals,” like him. Whether this was wishful thinking, of which there has been a great deal here in recent weeks, was uncertain. After forty-two years of Muammar Qaddafi—his cruelty, his megalomaniacal presumptions of leadership in Africa and the Arab world, his oracular ramblings—Libyans don’t know what their country is, much less what it will be.

Some things are clear, though. In Benghazi, an influential businessman named Sami Bubtaina expressed a common sentiment: “We want democracy. We want good schools, we want a free media, an end to corruption, a private sector that can help build this nation, and a parliament to get rid of whoever, whenever, we want.” These are honorable aims. But to expect that they will be achieved easily is to deny the cost of decades of insanity, terror, and the deliberate eradication of civil society."

Look who is helping block the web in the Middle East

Perhaps not really surprising, but American companies are assisting regimes in the Middle East to block use of the internet. But doesn't that fly in the face of US foreign policy?

"As Middle East regimes try to stifle dissent by censoring the Internet, the U.S. faces an uncomfortable reality: American companies provide much of the technology used to block websites."

****

"According to a forthcoming report from OpenNet, ISPs in at least nine Middle East and North African countries have used "Western-made tools for the purpose of blocking social and political content, effectively blocking a total of over 20 million Internet users from accessing such websites."

This doesn't look or smell like a democracy to me!

Israel and its supporters are forever banging-on about it being the only democracy in the Middle East. In many material respects, nothing could be further from the truth. Each day sees Israel move further and further to the right and adopt tactics which smack of the McCarthy era in the USA.

The latest "outrage" is reported on by veteran journalist Uri Avnery in a piece "Who is Annexing Whom?" on CounterPunch:

"In a rare late-night session, the Knesset has finally adopted two obnoxious racist laws. Both are clearly directed against Israel’s Arab citizens, a fifth of the population.

The first makes it possible to annul the citizenship of persons found guilty of offences against the security of the state. Israel prides itself on having a great variety of such laws. Annulling citizenship on such grounds is contrary to international law and conventions.

The second is more sophisticated. It allows communities of less than 400 families to appoint “admission committees” which can prevent unsuitable persons from living there. Very shrewdly, it specifically forbids the rejection of candidates because of race, religion etc. – but that paragraph is tantamount to a wink. An Arab applicant will simply be rejected because of his many children or lack of military service.

A majority of members did not bother to show up for the vote. After all, it was late and they have families, too. Who knows, some may even have been ashamed to vote.

But far worse is a third law that is certain to pass its final stages within a few weeks: the law to outlaw the boycott of the settlements."

Continue reading here.

The politicians decide. The troops suffer [badly!]

One has to wonder whether politicians really think about the consequences when they decide to declare war or even just send troops into an area of conflict - let alone ever get to appreciate what suffering the decision has caused to the troops.

This piece "Aftershock: The Blast That Shook Psycho Platoon" on propublica should be compulsory reading for George Bush, Blair and Howard - the main protagonists for the Iraq War - and now Obama.

"More than 2 million troops have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Tens of thousands have returned with a bedeviling mix of psychological and cognitive problems. For decades, doctors have recognized that soldiers can suffer lasting wounds from the sheer terror of combat, a condition referred to today as post-traumatic stress disorder. They also have come to know that blows to the head from roadside bombs -- the signature weapon in Iraq and Afghanistan -- can result in mild traumatic injuries to the brain, or concussions, that can leave soldiers unable to remember, to follow orders, to think normally."

Studies have estimated that about 20 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered a mild traumatic brain injury while deployed. Of those, anywhere between 5 percent to nearly 50 percent may suffer both PTSD and lingering problems from traumatic brain injuries. It is an epidemic so new that doctors aren't even sure what to call it, let alone how best to diagnose and treat it."

The collapse of globalisation

Chris Hedges is a one time Bureau Chief in Jerusalem of The New York Times. He has been awarded a Pulitzer and now writes for truthdig.

To say the least, Hedges paints a gloomy picture in his latest piece for truthdig. He asserts that globalisation has collapsed - and the facts he presents to support his argument are not without merit.

"Adequate food, clean water and basic security are already beyond the reach of perhaps half the world’s population. Food prices have risen 61 percent globally since December 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund. The price of wheat has exploded, more than doubling in the last eight months to $8.56 a bushel. When half of your income is spent on food, as it is in countries such as Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia and the Ivory Coast, price increases of this magnitude bring with them malnutrition and starvation. Food prices in the United States have risen over the past three months at an annualized rate of 5 percent. There are some 40 million poor in the United States who devote 35 percent of their after-tax incomes to pay for food. As the cost of fossil fuel climbs, as climate change continues to disrupt agricultural production and as populations and unemployment swell, we will find ourselves convulsed in more global and domestic unrest. Food riots and political protests will be inevitable. But it will not necessarily mean more democracy.

The refusal by all of our liberal institutions, including the press, universities, labor and the Democratic Party, to challenge the utopian assumptions that the marketplace should determine human behavior permits corporations and investment firms to continue their assault, including speculating on commodities to drive up food prices. It permits coal, oil and natural gas corporations to stymie alternative energy and emit deadly levels of greenhouse gases. It permits agribusinesses to divert corn and soybeans to ethanol production and crush systems of local, sustainable agriculture. It permits the war industry to drain half of all state expenditures, generate trillions in deficits, and profit from conflicts in the Middle East we have no chance of winning. It permits corporations to evade the most basic controls and regulations to cement into place a global neo-feudalism. The last people who should be in charge of our food supply or our social and political life, not to mention the welfare of sick children, are corporate capitalists and Wall Street speculators."

Libya: Obama explains....and it remains obscure

Obama has, at last, spoken publicly on why the US has been "involved" in the military activities in relation to Libya.

Unfortunately, he hasn't made things any clearer, as AlJazeera explains:

"Obama spoke on the eve of a 35-nation conference in London to tackle the crisis in the North African oil-exporting country and weigh political options for ending Gaddafi's 41-year rule.

Obama's challenge was to define the limited purpose and scope of the US mission in Libya for Americans preoccupied with domestic economic concerns and weary of costly wars in two other Muslim countries, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US took the initial lead in the Western-led military action against Gaddafi, before NATO agreed to take over the operations. Obama said the US will transfer control to NATO on Wednesday.

Obama said once that transfer occurs, the risk and cost to American taxpayers will be reduced significantly.

But Al Jazeera's Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington, said Obama's speech had two striking contradictions.

"The president said we must stand alongside those who work for freedom and at the same time he said we cannot be the policemen of the world only when it applies to our national interest.

"The president [seem to] be trying to explain why we have seen a lesser response to allies like Bahrain or Yemen," she said.

Also, he said nothing about the exit strategy, our correspondent said.

"He said nothing about ... how does this end for the US military and he did not really mention anything about the cost, so this was a broad speech to the American public. but for those people, especially members of congress who have some very pointed questions, I don't know if they are going to feel if they got the answers they were looking for," she said."

After 63 years, what's left?

From Scoop in "81 Reasons Why Gaza has the right to Self Defense":

"If the international community has abandoned its responsibilities towards Palestinians, and particularly towards Gaza, as the above examples over the last 63 years plus this map of Palestinian territories so graphically illustrate, what else is left to Gaza but self-defense?"

*****

"Seventy-nine of them can be found in United Nations Security Council Resolutions “directly critical of Israel for violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions, the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Conventions, international terrorism, or other violations of international law.” (1)

Number 80 can be found in the Goldstone Report (2), the recommendations of which have yet to implemented some 18 months after its submission to the Human Rights Council, and Paragraph 1912 of which stresses “all States parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 have in addition the obligation, while respecting the United Nations Charter and international law, to ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention."

Has that happened? Clearly not. (3)"

Nuclear radiation: 'The greatest public health hazard'

"A pediatrician, [Helen] Caldicott came from her native Australia to become an instructor on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, where she specialized in the treatment of cystic fibrosis at the Children's Hospital Medical Center. She soon helped revive the moribund Physicians for Social Responsibility, a health organization dedicated to halting the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

While she was president, from 1978 through 1984, the group grew to 23,000 physician members and in 1985 shared in a Nobel Peace Prize with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. "We led the nuclear weapons freeze movement with many other professional groups," she said. "I think we helped to end the Cold War."

CNN conducted a Q & A with Caldicott. Sample:

"CNN: Is it possible to have a safe nuclear power plant?

Caldicott: No. They are very complicated machines containing the energy released when an atom is split: Einstein's formula e=mc², the mass of the atom times the speed of light squared. Anything can go wrong: natural disasters, failure of cooling systems, human and computer error, terrorism, sabotage. Radioactive waste must be isolated from the ecosphere for half a million years or longer, a physical and scientific impossibility, and as it leaks it will concentrate in food chains, inducing epidemics of genetic diseases, leukemia and cancer in all future generations, the greatest public health hazard the world will ever see.

Einstein said, "The splitting of the atom changed everything save man's mode of thinking; thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe." He also said, "Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water."

Torture: What George Bush really wanted and was after

There is little which Governments can hide which doesn't, eventually, see the light of day by one means or the other.

Remember the reason George Bush gave to justify torture? Well, it was a lie, as this piece in truthout reveals.

"Bush administration officials have long asserted that the torture techniques used on "war on terror" detainees were utilized as a last resort in an effort to gain actionable intelligence to thwart pending terrorist attacks against the United States and its interests abroad.

But the handwritten notes obtained exclusively by Truthout drafted two decades ago by Dr. John Bruce Jessen, the psychologist who was under contract to the CIA and credited as being one of the architects of the government's top-secret torture program, tell a dramatically different story about the reasons detainees were brutalized and it was not just about obtaining intelligence. Rather, as Jessen's notes explain, torture was used to "exploit" detainees, that is, to break them down physically and mentally, in order to get them to "collaborate" with government authorities. Jessen's notes emphasize how a "detainer" uses the stresses of detention to produce the appearance of compliance in a prisoner."

Continue reading here.

Child slavery? In 2011?

We pride ourselves as living in an enlightened and civilised world. All sadly, leaving aside that we are continually engaged in wars at some spot in the world, we still have widespread hunger around the globe - and slavery! Yes, slavery, including that of children.

In a piece "Victims of Child Slavery Learning to Fight Back" on Spiegel OnLine International on child slavery in Nepal, this:

"In Nepali, the word kamalari means "hardworking woman." But these aren't women being sold off and forced to work; they're children between the ages of five and 15, thin-armed girls forced to work 14-16 hours a day in the households of families, fully at the mercy of their owners and exposed to their moods and their beatings. About one in 10 of the girls is sexually abused.

Aid organizations estimate that 10,000 girls work as kamalari in Nepal. As long ago as 1956, the United Nations declared that forms of child labor and bonded labor were slavery and should therefore be outlawed. However, although human trafficking has been officially illegal in all countries for a long time, it still exists to a significant degree in about 70 countries. Indeed, roughly 27 million people across the world are victims of modern slavery -- living in debt bondage, as forced prostitutes and as bonded laborers. Between 40 percent and 50 percent of these are children, and many are in Asia.

In many poor countries, there is a tradition of using child slaves in private households. Children are practical because their personalities are flexible and their characters are as malleable as clay on the sculptor's wheel. Child slaves go by many names: the kamalari in Nepal, the restavék in Haiti and the abd in Mauritania."

The drum-beats for another war

Informed commentary asserts that it isn't a question of if, but rather when, Israel yet again unleashes a war against Gaza. The last one (Operation Cast Lead) just over 2 years ago saw a mighty Israeli force pitted against a pitiful collection of basically defenceless people - and hence the large causalities suffered by the Gazans, especially children.

Meanwhile, those with a sober voice are suggesting that Israel should be alive to its position in the world, the region, what is happening inside Israel - as it veers dangerously to the Right - and events as they have been unfolding.

First up Gideon Levy writing in "Israel's dissidents are saving the country" in Haaretz:

"In the new high-tech world, there is no longer a difference between what is written and what is said from here or from there. In the new world, which is mainly hostile to Israel, there is significance to alternative voices coming out of Israel, voices other than the official, threatening and harmful. These voices belong to Israel's true patriots, who fear for its fate and are concerned over its image much more than the people who are threatening to silence them. The dissidents do not need to apologize to their country for anything. Their country owes them a great deal: They are the force that is saving its image in the world. "Thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth from thee"? (Isaiah 49:17 ) Indeed, indeed. Netanyahu and Lieberman, the lawmakers on the right and the instigators of nationalism and racism, the hilltop youth and the indifferent of Tel Aviv. Ask (almost ) any European or American intellectual."

Second, Ari Shavit, also writing in Haaretz in "Israel can say farewell to peace":

"Say farewell to everything you thought until January 2011. The Middle East has been transformed, root and branch. This is a new, fluid, revolutionary reality. There is no longer any foundation for a solid peace like that with Egypt. There are no longer any strong forces for peace like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf emirates. There are no longer any potential peace partners like Assad and Mahmoud Abbas.

On the other hand, there is also no longer any option of deploying force against the rebellious masses. The occupation is even more dangerous than it was. The settlements are even more delusional than they were. The status quo has become a firetrap, and all the familiar ways of escaping it have been blocked.

U.S. President Barack Obama bears a share of the responsibility for this new situation. When he decided to play an active role in ousting Egypt's president, he didn't realize that as a result of this move, he would be forced within a month to fire Tomahawk missiles at Libya. He didn't understand that he was undermining the old Middle Eastern order without creating a new one. He didn't understand that he was dooming Israeli-Syrian peace and Israeli-Palestinian peace and endangering Israeli-Egyptian peace.

It could be that Obama acted correctly. Perhaps he will be remembered in the end as the great liberator of the Arab peoples. Nonetheless, the U.S. president must acknowledge the consequences of his actions. He must realize that this new historical situation requires a new diplomatic paradigm. What was right in 2010 is no longer correct in 2011.

This means that Obama must reject the false dichotomy of total impasse or total peace. He must reject the dichotomy of historic reconciliation or corrupting occupation. Instead, he must propose a new type of diplomatic path based on a partial Israeli withdrawal and the strengthening of Fayyad. In order to stop the Cairo revolution from setting Jerusalem on fire, Obama must urgently forge a third way."

See also "We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Conflict" on FP.

All the new words [with some surprises] in the Oxford English Dictionary

From Mashable:

"Before you take to the comments to ream us out about the above headline: “OMG,” “LOL” and the symbol for “heart” have all been added to the Oxford English Dictionary Online.

According to the OED‘s site, the newest edition of the dictionary (which comes out online today) revises more than 1,900 entries and includes a ton of new words — including the neologisms above.

So what do OMG and LOL mean to the OED? In the electronic realm, they’re merely shorthand for surprise and mirth. In the real-world space — according to the OED’s blog post — “The intention is usually to signal an informal, gossipy mode of expression, and perhaps parody the level of unreflective enthusiasm or overstatement that can sometimes appear in online discourse, while at the same time marking oneself as an ‘insider’ au fait with the forms of expression associated with the latest technology.”

So, we’re going with irony rather than pre-teen sincerity here, huh, OED? Fair enough.

The OED also reveals that these neologisms aren’t as neo as we might think: The first quotation the dictionary uses for the definition of OMG is from a letter dating back to 1917, and LOL meant “little old lady” back in 1960.

The heart sign, however, is perhaps the most interesting addition. As the post says, “This update may be the first English usage to develop via the medium of T-shirts and bumper-stickers.”

All this is fine and good, but I’m holding out for the next edition, which will hopefully include some of those symbols all those witch house bands have been throwing around of late. OMG, I would <3>"

The Technology section of The Miami Herald also takes up all the "new" words now with some imprimatur in "OMG! Online abbreviations make Oxford dictionary".

But one example:

- "muffin top," "a protuberance of flesh above the waistband of a tight pair of trousers."

A Q & A on Law of Wars issues in Libya

"The following Questions and Answers (Q & A) address aspects of international humanitarian law (the laws of war) governing the armed conflict between the government of Libya and the international coalition, and between Libya and Libyan opposition armed groups. The purpose is to provide legal guidance on the fighting, including to the parties to the conflict and those with the capacity to influence them. This Q & A does not address the justifications or the legitimacy of resorting to war by any party."

From Human Rights Watch.....go here for the Q & A.

Who is "delegamitising" whom?

This is what it has come to.....as Israel, swings ever-more to the Right, and takes on even those Jews who question its actions in relation to the Palestinians, Occupation and Israel's own Arab population.

From Tikun Olum:

"After the IDF’s intelligence unit, Aman, came up with the bright idea to create a special unit to investigate, monitor and spy on Diaspora groups opposed to the Occupation (enemies now known by the catchy phrase, “delegitimizers”), I thought the only proper response was to step up proudly and say: “I am one.” Not a delegitimizer in the terms they employ since they falsely claim that delegitimizers wish Israel’s destruction. That’s not the kind of delegitimizer I am. I delegitimze Occupation as do all the groups they’ll be harrassing. So Michael Levin and I came up with this poster which we hope you will share, promote, circulate via social media, etc.

Let’s tell the generals, spooks, inquisitors and ideologues that we want to be first on the list to be investigated. I delegitimize Occupation. There. Now I said it. I feel better already.
Now when can I be expecting that knock on the door in the middle of the night from someone from headquarters saying they just have a few questions?"

As another Middle Eastern country erupts, inside Syria

From Global Voices Online:

"Massive protests broke in several cities in Syria today in response to calls for a “Friday of Dignity” after a brutal governmental crackdown left dozens of protesters dead in the southern city of Daraa and nearby villages.

Today the world was mesmerized by videos of Syrian protests many though would never happen, especially after an earlier call for protest on 5 February failed to bring anyone to the streets. The following video was taken in Hama–where in 1982 the Syrian Army massacred around 10,000 people to squash a Muslim Brotherhood uprising–and you can hear protesters chanting “Freedom!” and “we sacrifice our souls and blood for Daraa.”

Not the sort of Rising Sun you would want

Credited to Michael Ramariz

Biggest corporation in the US [if not the world] pays zero tax - plus benefits

Hard to believe, but it obviously "pays" to be the USA's, and perhaps even, the world's largest corporation - because then you can arrange "things" so that you end up paying zero tax. Yes, you read that correctly!

"Something to think about as tax day nears: General Electric is so good at doing their taxes, the government pays them. In 2010, the company reported global profits of $14.2 billion, $5.1 billion of which came from the U.S. But using a combination of offshore accounts and aggressive lobbying for tax breaks, GE managed to not only pay no taxes, but get a benefit of $3.2 billion. GE spent $200 million on lobbying in the last decade. At one point, when a generous tax break was about to expire, the head of GE's tax team met with Representative Charles Rangel, then chairman of the ways and means committee, and begged for an extension on one knee. Supposedly it was a joke, but GE got its extension, and Rangel got a $30 million gift for New York City schools. GE is an extreme example of a historical trend: The corporate share of the nation's tax receipts went from 30 percent in the 1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009."

Read more here.

Hey! Has anyone asked what Arab Street thinks?

A thought-provoking piece from the Columbia Journalism Review - reflective of what an editor at the Sydney Morning Herald responded, just before the invasion of Iraq, when asked why the newspaper wasn't publishing anything of what the Iraqis thought about the whole situation in Iraq, that it hadn't ever occurred to her.

"On Wednesday, I went to hear Ayman Mohyeldin, the Cairo correspondent for Al Jazeera English, speak at the office of the Committee to Protect Journalists. His subject was the risks and realities of covering the Mideast, and at one point he was asked to reflect on the current situation in Libya. In his answer, he said something that stunned me: The vast majority of Arabs support the no-fly zone.

Despite all their suspicions about Western intervention in the region and all their doubts about U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, “nobody in the Mideast would denounce the U.S. military intervention in Libya,” Mohyeldin said. Muammar Qaddafi had baldly stated his intentions of carrying out a bloodbath, he explained, and most Arabs were delighted to see the West act to prevent it.

In the vast outpouring of coverage of Libya and the no-fly zone, I’ve seen little discussion of what ordinary Arabs think about the situation. As much reporting as there’s been on the position of the Arab League, there’s been next to nothing about opinion on the Arab street."

Obama faithfully follows in Bushs' footsteps - and more!

No comment need be added to Glenn Greenwald's excellent piece on Salon. How Obama, even exceeds George Bush in abrogating rights of the individual. So much for the lawyer-lecturer Obama - plus yet another broken election promise.

"One of the central pledges of Barack Obama's campaign was that -- as he put it early in his presidency -- the Bush administration had gone wildly wrong because it "established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable -- a framework that failed to rely on our legal traditions and time-tested institutions; that failed to use our values as a compass." Instead, he implored, we must fight Terrorism only "with an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process, in checks and balances and accountability." Thus, he thunderously vowed, "We must never -- ever -- turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake."

The number of instances in which Obama has violently breached his own alleged principles when it comes to the War on Terror and the rule of law are too numerous to chronicle in one place. Suffice to say, it is no longer provocative or controversial when someone like Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin writes, as he did the other day, that Obama "has more or less systematically adopted policies consistent with the second term of the George W. Bush Administration." No rational person can argue that or even tries to any longer. It's just a banal expression of indisputable fact.

Today, the Obama DOJ unveiled the latest -- and one of the most significant -- examples of its eagerness to assault the very legal values Obama vowed to protect. The Wall Street Journal reports that "new rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades." The only previous exception to the 45-year-old Miranda requirement that someone in custody be apprised of their rights occurred in 1984, when the Rehnquist-led right-wing faction of the Supreme Court allowed delay "only in cases of an imminent safety threat," but these new rules promulgated by the Obama DOJ "give interrogators more latitude and flexibility to define what counts as an appropriate circumstance to waive Miranda rights."

The Israel-Palestine conflct: It's defintely not all one-sided

The horrific killing of an Israeli-settler family cannot be condoned on any account. It is but a manifestation of the violence which Israeli's inflict on Palestinians - and, on occasion, vice versa.

Jewish Voice for Peace puts the subject-matter in some context.

"Any act of violence, especially one against civilians, marks a profound failure of human imagination and causes a deep and abiding trauma for all involved. In mourning the nine lives lost in Gaza and the one life lost in Jerusalem this week, we reject the pattern of condemning the deaths of Israelis while ignoring the deaths of Palestinians. We do not discriminate. One life lost is one life too many--whether Palestinian or Israeli.

Within the context of 44 years of the Israeli occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, in the past two years (January 31, 2009 to January 31, 2011, starting just after Operation Cast Lead), over a thousand Palestinians have been made homeless by home demolitions, hundreds have been unlawfully detained, and over 150 men, women and children have been killed by the IDF and settlers, according to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem.(1) Many acres of Palestinian land have been taken and orchards uprooted by armed settlers. Countless hours have been lost at checkpoints, often fruitlessly, while Palestinians attempted to get medical care, jobs, and access to education. One and a half million Gazans have been living with a limited food supply, lack of electricity and dangerously toxic sewage.

This is occupation: daily, persistent acts of structural violence. All in the service of a government that constantly expands illegal Israeli settlements on land that rightfully belongs to Palestinians.

These acts don't reach our headlines because they are so habitual, so we learn not to see them. But Palestinians live them and their profound consequences everyday, and we must keep that in mind, even as we ponder the terrible events of the past few weeks:(2)

A person or persons, (we don't know who), bombed a bus stop in Jerusalem, injuring 30 and killing 1 Israeli civilian;

An Israeli bombing killed 3 children and an older man in Gaza;

A person or persons, (we don't know who), murdered 5 members of a family, including three children, in Itamar, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank;

The Israeli government suddenly tightened the siege of Gaza and escalated military attacks, killing a total of 11 Palestinians and injuring more than 40 since mid-March;(3)

Palestinians fired over 50 shells and rockets from Gaza into civilian areas in southern Israel.

Just this week:

The very act of publicly commemorating the Nakba, a crucial nonviolent act of Palestinian remembrance, was essentially criminalized in Israel by the Knesset.(4)The Knesset also passed a law allowing small communities in the Galilee and Negev to discriminate against anyone wanting to reside there who does not fit in with the community’s “socio-cultural” character.(5)

The Knesset also held hearings to assess whether the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group J Street was sufficiently pro-Israel.(6)

The IDF announced a new military intelligence-gathering unit solely dedicated to monitoring international left-wing peace and human rights groups that the army sees as a threat to Israel. The department will work closely with government ministries.(7)

Dozens of Israeli soldiers raided the home of Bassem Tamimi, Head of the nonviolent Nabi Saleh Popular Committee , and beat his wife and daughter while arresting him presumably on charges of "incitement" and "organizing illegal demonstrations."(8)

A Q & A with the “Simone de Beauvoir of Egypt”

White-haired and feisty, the 80-year-old Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi has been protesting against various Egyptian regimes for decades. A medical doctor by training and a prolific author by disposition, she has tackled difficult topics such as prostitution, female genital mutilation and discriminatory family laws in nearly fifty works of fiction and non-fiction. The Nation spoke to the “Simone de Beauvoir of Egypt” before a speaking engagement in New York.

A sample of the Q & A:

"What do you think of how the international media covered the protests?

Well, the big media is capitalist, so it serves the interests of big corporations, and that is why they lie. There were a lot of lies and rumors about the revolution in Egypt, and the role of women in our society. In the United States, it was very bad. I was censored in America, by Christiane Amanpour. She censored everything she didn’t like, which shows there is no real democracy here.

How did that manifest itself in the news coverage of the protests themselves?

It was all either sensational or lies. They can do whatever they like. They can say the opposite of what happened by cutting and montage. But there is also alternative media—I spoke with Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! and Ms. magazine and a feminist group yesterday, and they didn’t cut anything. You can’t generalize; you have to see how each institution is funded and whose interests it is serving.

Do you have a wish list for the revolution? What are the top three things you’d like to see happen going forward?

I have complete confidence in the young people. I lived with them in Tahrir Square, and we still have discussions in my home all the time, and I always learn from them. We older people must be modest enough to confess that we should not be advising the younger people all the time but should instead have an equal exchange of ideas."

Your plastic whatever doing untold damage

Who can't be appalled and horrified when reading this latest news - "Plastic Particles Circulating Endlessly in World's Oceans" on CommonDreams - about what we are doing to our environment and the creatures on it. We seem hell-bent to do untold unthinking damage - and then it will be too late to retrieve an intolerable situation.

"That plastic bottle or plastic take-away coffee lid that has 20 minutes of use can spend decades killing countless seabirds, marine animals and fish, experts reported here this week.

On remote Pacific island atolls, diligent albatross parents unknowingly fill their chicks' bellies with bits of plastic that resemble food. The chicks die of malnutrition, and when their bodies decay all those plastic bottle tops, disposable lighters, and the ubiquitous bits of plastic detritus get back into the environment in a cruel perversion of 'recycling'.

There is now so much plastic in the oceans it is likely that virtually every seabird has plastic in its belly if its feeding habits mean it mistakes plastic bits for food. The same is true for sea turtles, marine animals or fish, experts say."

A real warm, and close up, welcome to the USA

Are there no bounds to the "welcome" visitors might expect on arrival to the USA? Then again, with this latest piece of news of what might await one on entry to America, people might re-direct their travels elsewhere.

From the Barr Code on ajc:

"In a breathtaking statement delivered in an official court proceeding, the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims authority to strip search every airline passenger; and to begin such a practice without even soliciting comment from the public.

This outrageous statement recently was delivered to the American people by a DHS lawyer in arguments before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is considering a challenge to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) nude body scanner devices. The suit was brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

Currently TSA, which is a component of DHS, claims authority to subject passengers to either an intrusive hand searches or to x-ray scans that reveal a nude image of the passengers’ bodies. Many, including this author and EPIC, consider such searches unconstitutional as violative of the the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution, which prohibits “unreasonable” searches, because they are being conducted without any suspicion at all that such passengers are attempting to bring weapons or explosives on board commercial aircraft.

The U.S. House is scheduled to open hearings today on TSA searches and authorities.

Most observers expect the D.C. Appeals Court to uphold TSA’s current practices. This would leave only the Congress to put a stop to these outrageous, privacy-invasive and unconstitutional searches by the federal government. If TSA and DHS are permitted to continue unchecked, then truly the Fourth Amerndment will have been gutted; and with it, the single most important and effective check on government power enjoyed by the American People for over two centuries."

A better digital library than Google's

Robert Darnton is a professor and the director of the Harvard University Library.

He writes in an op-piece in The New York Times that there is a better digital library than that Google wants to establish.

"On Tuesday, Denny Chin, a federal judge in Manhattan, rejected the settlement between Google, which aims to digitize every book ever published, and a group of authors and publishers who had sued the company for copyright infringement. This decision is a victory for the public good, preventing one company from monopolizing access to our common cultural heritage.

Nonetheless, we should not abandon Google’s dream of making all the books in the world available to everyone. Instead, we should build a digital public library, which would provide these digital copies free of charge to readers. Yes, many problems — legal, financial, technological, political — stand in the way. All can be solved."

****

"That’s why what we really need is a noncommercial option: a digital public library.

A coalition of foundations could come up with the money (estimates of digitizing one page vary enormously, from 10 cents to $10 or more), and a coalition of research libraries could supply the books. The library would respect copyright, of course, and it probably would exclude works that are now in print unless their authors wanted to make them available. It would include orphan books, assuming that Congress passed legislation to free them for non-commercial use in a genuinely public library.

To dismiss this as quixotic would be to ignore digital projects that have proven their value and practicability throughout the last 20 years. All major research libraries have digitized parts of their collections. Large-scale enterprises like the Knowledge Commons and the Internet Archive have themselves digitized several million books.

A number of countries are also determined to out-Google Google by scanning the entire contents of their national libraries. France is spending 750 million euros to digitize its cultural treasures; the National Library of the Netherlands is trying to digitize every Dutch book and periodical published since 1470; Australia, Finland and Norway are undertaking their own efforts.

Perhaps Google itself could be enlisted to the cause of the digital public library. It has scanned about 15 million books; two million of that total are in the public domain and could be turned over to the library as the foundation of its collection. The company would lose nothing by this generosity, and might win admiration for its good deed.

Through technological wizardry and sheer audacity, Google has shown how we can transform the intellectual riches of our libraries, books lying inert and underused on shelves. But only a digital public library will provide readers with what they require to face the challenges of the 21st century — a vast collection of resources that can be tapped, free of charge, by anyone, anywhere, at any time."

Now that's clear as mud!

David J Rothkopf writing in "Thanks for clarifying that: The known unknowns of the WH's Libya policy" on FP's blog:

"Where's Donald Rumsfeld when you need him? Once upon a time, the irrepressible former Defense Secretary insured his enshrinement in Barclay's Familiar Quotations with the line:

'There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.'

It was hilariously convoluted. As it happens, it also made some sense if you parsed it. Which puts it leagues ahead of the clarification offered by the White House's Ben Rhodes today concerning what America's policy in Libya actually is. In short, what he said was: "I know we said we were for regime change but we're actually not for it except of course for the fact that it is our primary objective."

But let me let him say it for you because the painful, verbose, circular logorrhea of it all really needs to be experienced to be understood.

'Given the fact that there has been some reporting off of a quote from the gaggle, the quote that says 'they underscored their shared commitment of helping provide the people of Libya the opportunity to transform their country by installing a system of government that is democratic and responsive to the will of the people,' we're clarifying, as we've said repeatedly, that the effort of our military operation is not regime change, that as we actually say in this READOUT, it's the Libyan people who are going to make their determinations about the future. We support their aspirations, their democratic aspirations, and have stated that Gaddafi should go because he's lost their confidence.'

So, let's go to the chalk board and break that down, shall we? What had been said was that the administration was seeking to help the people of Libya "transform their country" by installing a new system of government. Now, Rhodes was explaining that the "effort" of the intervention ... by which he presumably meant the goal of the effort ... was definitely not regime change. That's not something we would do. In fact, noted Rhodes, we've been saying it over and over again. No, really, seriously, we would never support regime change. But just so we all would understand better, he went on to "clarify" that our effort is instead to support them in realizing their democratic objectives. The core objective of which is to replace the country's government. Which is why we have repeatedly stated that Qaddafi has got to go.

Oh, now I see. Regime change is not our goal. We are just intervening with the collective firepower of NATO in order to help the Libyans get rid of Qaddafi. Who really has to go. That's much clearer. Thank you very much."

Gadhafi: From pariah to friend... back to foe

No wonder that politicians are beside themselves about what WikiLeaks has been revealing - when you read this "gem". Initially a terrible man who the US bombed, Gadhafi became an ally until recently, when again reverted to being a pariah.

"Following a meeting in Tripoli between Libyan leader Colonel Qaddafi, his son Muatassim and a United States Congressional delegation led by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman on 14 August 2009, the American embassy classified diplomatic cable to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton highlighted the close working relationship both nations enjoy to combat the Global War on Terrorism.

The American embassy classified cable, released by WikiLeaks, quotes Senator Lieberman, the Chairman of the US Senate’s highly important Homeland Security Committee as calling Libya “an important ally in the war on terrorism.”

Lieberman in his discussion with the Libyan leader and his son further noted that “common enemies sometimes make better friends. The Senators recognized Libya's cooperation on counterterrorism and conveyed that it was in the interest of both countries to make the relationship stronger. They encouraged Libya to sign the Highly Enriched Uranium transfer agreement by August 15 in order to fulfill its obligation to transfer its nuclear spent fuel to Russia for treatment and disposal.”

The embassy in a foot note to the diplomatic cable noted: “The Libyan Government subsequently informed us of its intent to sign the agreement on August 17 and has begun taking good-faith steps to do so.”

The American embassy cable to Secretary Clinton further noted Senator McCain, a leading Republican and former presidential candidate in the November 2008 election, encouraging the Libyan Leader Colonel Qaddafi’s son Muatassim “to keep in mind the long-term perspective of bilateral security engagement and to remember that small obstacles will emerge from time to time that can be overcome.”

The diplomatic cable said McCain described the bilateral military relationship as strong and pointed to Libyan officer training at U.S. Command, Staff, and War colleges as some of the best programs for Libyan military participation.


Secretary Clinton meets Mutassim Gaddafi in Washington April 21, 2009.
The cable further noted “Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi, who joined the group in the same tent in which Muatassim had met the CODEL, likewise highlighted the strength of the U.S.-Libya relationship. Qadhafi commented that friendship was better for the people of both countries and expressed his desire to see the relationship flourish.”

The DIP NOTE continued to say “Congressional Delegate (CODEL) McCain's meetings with Muammar and Muatassim al-Qadhafi were positive, highlighting the progress that has been made in the bilateral relationship. The meetings also reiterated Libya's desire for enhanced security cooperation, increased assistance in the procurement of defense equipment, and resolution to the C130s issue.”

The Asian Tribune presents the full text of the classified diplomatic cable sent by the American embassy in Tripoli to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and for the consumption of Obama White House and the National Security Council following the meeting of the US Congressional Delegation on 14 August 2009 signed by the acting American Ambassador Joan Polaschik."

No "Jasmine Revolution" for the Chinese

The Chinese are back at their old "game". Troubling report out of China from Amnesty International about how the authorities are cracking down on use of the internet in China. No "Jasmine Revolution" for China's 1.4 billion people!

"Online calls for China to stage its own ‘Jasmine Revolution’ following protests in the Middle East and North Africa has prompted the heaviest wave of arrests of Chinese activists for several years, Amnesty International has said.

More than 100 activists, many of them active on Twitter and blogging networks, have been detained, subjected to monitoring and intimidation by the security forces, or have gone missing since late February.

“The authorities are not only detaining seasoned dissidents; they are trying to silence a whole new generation of online activists” said Catherine Baber, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Asia-Pacific.

“The Chinese authorities must end their repression of calls for peaceful political reform and instead listen to voices demanding change.”

The sweep is the worst since 2009 when thousands were detained following deadly riots in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region."

Consistency clearly missing

MPS isn't the only one to comment on the West's inconsistency in its dealings, and actions, in relation to the nations of the Middle East. At the present time, Libya is in the sights of mainly the French, the UK and USA. Then again, as a letter-writer to The Age asked yesterday, where was Australia, and the world, as the Sri Lankan government-forces pummelled and attacked its Tamil people?

At truthdig, Robert Scheer asks a like pertinent question.

"But this time, in the glaring light of the democratic currents sweeping through the Mideast, the contradictions in supporting one set of dictators while toppling others may prove impossible for the U.S. and its allies to effectively manage. The recognition, widely demanded throughout the region, that even ordinary Middle Easterners have inalienable rights is a sobering notion not easily co-opted. Why don’t those rights to self-determination extend to Shiites in the richest oil province in Saudi Arabia or for that matter to Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza?

The fallback position for U.S. policymakers is the “war on terror” standard under which our dictators are needed to control super-fanatic Muslims. That’s why the U.S. trained the Republican Guard, led by a man who is the son of the despised ruler of Yemen and also is the counterterrorism liaison with Washington. On Tuesday it was the tanks of the lavishly U.S.-equipped Republican Guard that stood as the final line of support surrounding the Presidential Palace as calls for departure of Yemen’s dictator increased in intensity. The U.S. was still following the lead of Saudi Arabia, long a financier of the Yemeni ruler.

The Saudi lead was made clearer in the kingdom’s support for the royal family in neighboring Bahrain as Saudi troops were sent in along with forces from the United Arab Emirates to suppress Bahraini democracy advocates claiming that freedom would enhance the power of the majority Shiite population. The fraud here is to locate Shiite Iran as the center of terrorism when it was the Sunni monarchies that were most closely identified with the problems that gave rise to al-Qaida. Not only did 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 come from Saudi Arabia but Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with Pakistan, were the only countries to diplomatically recognize the Taliban regime that harbored al-Qaida. In Bahrain the majority Shiite population is dismissed as potentially under the sway of the rulers of Iran without strong evidence to that effect. Once again it is convenient to ignore the fact that Iran, as was the case with Saddam’s Iraq, had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack that launched the U.S. war on terror.

All of which elevates the question of how long will the U.S. and its allies ignore the elephant in the room posed by an alliance for human rights and anti-terrorism with regimes in the Middle East that stand for neither? While the jury is still out on whether the West’s attack on Libya will prove to be a boon for that nation’s population, at the very least it should expose the deep hypocrisy of continuing to sell huge amounts of arms and otherwise supporting Saudi Arabia and its contingent tyrannies."

The Sun King wouldn't want any of these applicants

Aah.... .unusually, a newspaper, albeit a small one, spells out what sort of journalist it is looking for. Refreshing - and rare!

"We want to add some talent to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune investigative team. Every serious candidate should have a proven track record of conceiving, reporting and writing stellar investigative pieces that provoke change. However, our ideal candidate has also cursed out an editor, had spokespeople hang up on them in anger and threatened to resign at least once because some fool wanted to screw around with their perfect lede.

We do a mix of quick hit investigative work when events call for it and mini-projects that might run for a few days. But every year we like to put together a project way too ambitious for a paper our size because we dream that one day Walt Bogdanich will have to say: “I can’t believe the Sarasota Whatever-Tribune cost me my 20th Pulitzer.” As many of you already know, those kinds of projects can be hellish, soul-sucking, doubt-inducing affairs. But if you’re the type of sicko who likes holing up in a tiny, closed office with reporters of questionable hygiene to build databases from scratch by hand-entering thousands of pages of documents to take on powerful people and institutions that wish you were dead, all for the glorious reward of having readers pick up the paper and glance at your potential prize-winning epic as they flip their way to the Jumble … well, if that sounds like journalism heaven, then you’re our kind of sicko.

For those unaware of Florida’s reputation, it’s arguably the best news state in the country and not just because of the great public records laws. We have all kinds of corruption, violence and scumbaggery. The 9/11 terrorists trained here. Bush read My Pet Goat here. Our elections are colossal clusterf-cks. Our new governor once ran a health care company that got hit with a record fine because of rampant Medicare fraud. We have hurricanes, wildfires, tar balls, bedbugs, diseased citrus trees and an entire town overrun by giant roaches (only one of those things is made up). And we have Disney World and beaches, so bring the whole family."

Fukushima Daiichi : A disaster waiting to happen

The Japanese have an appalling record in the way their nuclear facilities have been operated and supervised - let alone what information has been revealed to the public.

As the world watches with more than baited breath about the current problem with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility in Japan, The Guardian reveals this "Japan Nuclear Firm Admits Missing Safety Checks at Disaster-Hit Plant":

"The power plant at the centre of the biggest civilian nuclear crisis in Japan's history contained far more spent fuel rods than it was designed to store, while its technicians repeatedly failed to carry out mandatory safety checks, according to documents from the reactor's operator.

The risk that used fuel rods present to efforts to avert disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant was underlined on Tuesday when nuclear safety officials said the No 2 reactor's storage pool had heated to around boiling point, raising the risk of a leakage of radioactive steam.

"We cannot leave this alone and we must take care of it as quickly as possible," Hidehiko Nishiyama, of the nuclear and industrial safety agency, said.

According to documents from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the company repeatedly missed safety checks over a 10-year period up to two weeks before the 11 March disaster, and allowed uranium fuel rods to pile up inside the 40-year-old facility.

When the plant was struck by a huge earthquake and tsunami, its reactors, designed by US scientists 50 years ago, contained the equivalent of almost six years of highly radioactive uranium fuel produced by the facility, according to a presentation Tepco gave to the International Atomic Energy Agency and later posted on the company's website."

A bookshop without its owner / manager - as Israel acts appallingly

From Mondoweiss [compulsory reading if one wants to keep abreast of what is happening in Israel and issues surrounding its treatment of its Arab population and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank].

"Editor's note: A petition campaign has begun on behalf of Munther Fahmy, who runs the book store at the American Colony Hotel in occupied East Jerusalem. Israel is seeking to deport him. Fahmy sent us the following note about his case:

"I was born in Jerusalem in 1954 and therefore when the Israelis had conquered Jerusalem in 1967, I was given, as the rest of the Arab population in East Jerusalem, an Israeli ID resident card. In 1975 I left Jerusalem to continue my university education in the USA. Graduation, starting a business, marriage, having a child years later in 1994-95 and intoxicated with prospects of peace after the signing of the Oslo agreement, I flew home and was told at the airport in Tel-Aviv that my Jerusalem ID was revoked and the only way I could enter then was as a tourist on my US passport..which I reluctantly did and continued to do as I thought there was no other way to reinstate my residency.

The Israelis started giving me a hard time entering and leaving the country as a tourist 2 years ago, and especially last month, when I was told that the next time I will be allowed to reenter the country, after this current tourist visa expires on April 3rd, is next year in April for 3 months only during that entire year. I then started legal proceedings to re-capture my ID card back. A lawyer later told me that I was lied to in 1995 when I arrived-- my Israeli blue ID card was valid till it was finally revoked in 2002 while I was going and coming as a tourist!!

So, a year ago we took the Interior Ministry to court to reinstate my residency status and I lost because they invoked a racist law they have on the books which strips any resident of Jerusalem (all residents of Jerusalem who holds ID cards are Arabs, Jews in Jerusalem and everywhere in Israel are citizens) who left Jerusalem for 7 years or more and holds a foreign passport of his or her blue Israeli residency ID card and right to live there.

So, I appealed to the Supreme Court and after 4 postponement of the court date in the last year, in which I needed to leave and come back to renew my tourist visa several times, be at the mercy of the passport control people every time wondering if I will be allowed to enter and if allowed to enter wondering for how long they will allow me to stay, the Supreme Court date was set for Feb 17 this year.

On that day, my request was rejected in the first minute of the session! To add insult to injury, I was told to consider myself lucky that I was allowed to come and go as a tourist that long and even dare to start a business while I am a tourist, and then finally saying that "if this happens in YOUR country the USA, you would be deported on the first plane" . Unfortunately, the session was in Hebrew and I was not privy to this remark by the judge until the end of the session. I would have loved to remind the judges that people born in the USA don’t have to go to the Supreme Court to ask it to intervene with the Immigration authorities to let them live in their country of birth!

The last insult was that I should write a letter within 30 days from Feb 17 2011 "begging" the Interior Ministry (the one I am suing!) to please reinstate my residency!

Anyway, my lawyer sent the letter on March 17 and if the interior ministry rejects it, which we are almost certain of, I will be deported when I exceed my tourist visa on April 3rd."