By FRANK SCOTT
Columnist
Pt. Richmond, CA

What began in Tunisia and was dubbed an Arab Spring has spread to the rest of the world, seemingly for different reasons in different places but slowly becoming one vast movement toward democracy and the political economic transformation necessary for humanity’s survival. But while this hopeful sign of people on the move increases, the threats to it become more numerous and deadly. As electronic communication tools help the tendency toward unity and democracy among the 99%, they also increase the destructive power of the 1% . The imperial minority’s ability to kill more people, destroy more governments , enslave  more populations and increase damage to the environmental basis of all life while rushing to further exploit it in pursuit of profit has brought dangers of a newer and more deadly kind. The dawning consciousness among people across the globe needs to overtake and end the destructive process of private profit accumulation at the loss of all publics on the planet, wherever they may reside and whatever belief system they practice or preach.

The American phase of this movement began with the Wall Street occupation in New York and has spread to many American cities since, with success in highlighting a radical democratic governance technique and message of unity that surpasses its flaws and overcomes attacks by agents of the 1% . This is all happening at a time when American belief in supposedly democratic government has sunk to deservedly new lows. Established power is at an extremely bipolar phase in response as it simultaneously attempts to crush, subvert or incorporate the growing demands of a public frustrated into becoming what minority power fears most: a majority democratic movement for substantial and not merely cosmetic change in the system.

Minority dominators practice obsessive concern for their economic private parts and this masturbatory focus brings the system closer to moral and financial bankruptcy. As the perverse lust for private profit reduces well paid employment in the center by increasing low paid labor in peripheral parts of the shrinking empire, it attacks meager social safety nets in that center which were created to save capitalism during its last global crisis in the 1930s. Public sector work forces are savagely slashed and pensions are cut as less and less people are employed in a political economy that has further reduced humanity from commodities in a market to electronic symbols on a computer screen.

Positive changes in communications offer an opportunity for a massive democratic leap forward but private profiteers still control staggering wealth and their blind lust to amass even more billions has eclipsed – until now – the need to trans-form and not simply re-form material reality.

The American movement has corporate media parroting the political line in the same bi-polar fashion that often lauds the democratic aspect of what’s going on while questioning its purpose. Meanwhile, military slaughters continue unabated, sometimes with long distance murderers who kill innocents with electronic devises that enable them do their dirty work in rooms thousands of miles away from their victims with no more human contact than someone playing a video game while seated on a commode. The isolated assassins are an ironic contrast in a world that sees millions in contact they have never before been able to achieve. While some agents of the 1% operate in solitude totally removed from the bloody murders they commit, Bradley Manning sits in prison for acting on his conscience and informing his fellow citizens of the crimes of modern warfare. His action, representative of the high moral ground most people at least wish to occupy, contrasts with the murderous idiocy of what passes for “normal” material reality, and what the new global movement stands against .

Electronic media have finally become truly social but they are not simply the domain of those organizing demonstrations that represent the 99%. Agents of the 1% operate networks of murder and spying that can’t succeed in the long term but add to producing confusion and more violence in the short term. Attacks on the 99% in order to maintain criminal profit margins for the 1% and their agents are taking on increasingly insane character, with even some ruling class members worrying that this could destroy everything and not just their personal wealth.

As an example, continued and ever more feverish claims that Iran is threatening to annihilate Jews with nuclear weapons which do not exist, while the hundreds of nuclear weapons which do exist in Israel are unmentioned by the fanatics there and alleged American government representatives who work for them here. More deadly war is threatened, with death and destruction that would make the present crisis  even greater, and it is already slipping beyond the control of the ruling 1% and its agents. Truly, it has never been more essential that the great majority of the 99% move towards the radical economic restructuring and totally transformed political process that is the only thing that will save humanity. And political democracy means the end of private profit accumulation in control of the social and natural environment of planet earth, and the beginning of a system that acknowledges the rights of all people to share the benefits of their world.

We should thank the demonstrators in Tunisia, Egypt and of the Occupy Wall Street Movement for calling our attention to the fact that another world is not only possible but necessary. And then we should join them in bringing it about. Quickly.

While the United States, Britain and Canada are planning to announce a coordinated set of sanctions against Iran’s oil and petrochemical industry today, longtime investigative journalist Seymour Hersh questions the growing consensus on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. International pressure has been mounting on Iran since the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency revealed in a report the “possible military dimensions” to Iran’s nuclear activities, citing “credible” evidence that “indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.” In his latest article for The New Yorker blog, titled “Iran and the IAEA,” Hersh argues the recent report is a “political document,” not a scientific study. “They [JSOC] found nothing. Nothing. No evidence of any weaponization,” Hersh says. “In other words, no evidence of a facility to build the bomb. They have facilities to enrich, but not separate facilities to build the bomb. This is simply a fact.”

AMY GOODMAN: Today the United States, Britain and Canada plan to announce a coordinated set of sanctions against Iran. ABC News and theWall Street Journal report the sanctions will target Iran’s oil and petrochemical industry. Last weekend, President Obama warned no options were being taken off the table.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The sanctions have enormous bite and enormous scope, and we’re building off the platform that has already been established. The question is, are there additional measures that we can take? And we’re going to explore every avenue to see if we can solve this issue diplomatically. I have said repeatedly, and I will say today, we are not taking any options off the table.

AMY GOODMAN: International pressure has been mounting on Iran since the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency revealed in a report the, quote, “possible military dimensions” to its nuclear activities. The IAEA said “credible” evidence, quote, “indicates [that] Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.” The IAEA passed a resolution Friday expressing, quote, “increasing concern” about Iran’s nuclear program following the report’s findings.

The speaker of Iran’s parliament said yesterday Iran would review its relations with the IAEA following the report. Ali Larijani indicated it may be difficult for Iran to continue to cooperate with the nuclear watchdog.

ALI LARIJANI: [translated] If the agency acts within the framework of the Charter, we accept that we are a member of it and will carry out our responsibilities. But if the agency wants to deviate from its responsibilities, then it should not expect the other’s cooperation.

AMY GOODMAN: Iranian parliamentary speaker. Meanwhile, some Iranians have expressed the desire for increased cooperation with the IAEA.

SAID BAHRAMI: [translated] Considering the fact that the government has made plenty of clarifications, it would be better for it to expand its cooperation with the IAEA and let them see for themselves, close up, so there would be no pretext for the superpowers.

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, the Pentagon confirmed it has received massive new bunker-busting bombs capable of destroying underground sites, including Iran’s nuclear facilities. The 30,000-pound bombs are six times the size of the Air Force’s current arsenal of bunker busters.

The new sanctions against Iran also follow last month’s allegations by the United States that Iranian officials were involved in a thwarted plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington. The U.S. is expected to announce today that Iran’s financial sector is of “primary money-laundering concern.” This phrase activates a section of the USA PATRIOT Act that warns European, Asian and Latin American companies they could be prevented from doing business with the United States if they continue to work with Iran.

Well, to talk more about the sanctions and the implications of the IAEAreport, we go to Washington, D.C., to speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. He’s been reporting on Iran and the bomb for the past decade. His latest piece is titled “Iran and the IAEA.” It’s inThe New Yorker.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Sy. Talk about what you feel should be understood about what’s happening in Iran right now in regards to its nuclear power sector.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, you mention, going in—by the way, the piece was in the blog. It wasn’t in the magazine; it was on the web page.

But you mentioned Iraq. It’s just this—almost the same sort of—I don’t know if you want to call it a “psychosis,” but it’s some sort of a fantasy land being built up here, as it was with Iraq, the same sort of—no lessons learned, obviously. Look, I have been reporting about Iran, and I could tell you that since ‘04, under George Bush, and particularly the Vice President, Mr. Cheney, we were—Cheney was particularly concerned there were secret facilities for building a weapon, which are much different than the enrichment. We have enrichment in Iran. They’ve acknowledged it. They have inspectors there. There are cameras there, etc. This is all—Iran’s a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nobody is accusing them of any cheating. In fact, the latest report that everybody’s so agog about also says that, once again, we find no evidence that Iran has diverted any uranium that it’s enriching. And it’s also enriching essentially at very low levels for peaceful purposes, so they say, 3.8 percent. And so, there is a small percentage being enriched to 20 percent for medical use, but that’s quite small, also under cameras, under inspection.

What you have is, in those days, in ‘04, ’05, ’06, ’07, even until the end of their term in office, Cheney kept on having the Joint Special Operations Force Command, JSOC—they would send teams inside Iran. They would work with various dissident groups—the Azeris, the Kurds, even Jundallah, which is a very fanatic Sunni opposition group—and they would do everything they could to try and find evidence of an undeclared underground facility. We monitored everything. We have incredible surveillance. In those days, what we did then, we can even do better now. And some of the stuff is very technical, very classified, but I can tell you, there’s not much you can do in Iran right now without us finding out something about it. They found nothing. Nothing. No evidence of any weaponization. In other words, no evidence of a facility to build the bomb. They have facilities to enrich, but not separate facilities for building a bomb. This is simply a fact. We haven’t found it, if it does exist. It’s still a fantasy. We still want to think—many people do think—it does.

The big change was, in the last few weeks, the IAEA came out with a new report. And it’s not a scientific report, it’s a political document. It takes a lot of the old allegations that had been made over the years, that were looked at by the IAEA, under the regime or the directorship of Mohamed ElBaradei, who ran the IAEA for 12 years, the Egyptian—he won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work—somebody who was very skeptical of Iran in the beginning and became less so as Iran went—was more and more open. But the new director of theIAEA, a Japanese official named Amano, an old sort of—from the center-right party in Japan—I’m sure he’s an honorable guy, he believes what he believes. But we happen to have a series of WikiLeak documents from the American embassy in Vienna, one of the embassies in Vienna, reporting on how great it was to get Amano there. This is last year. These documents were released by Julian Assange’s group and are quite important, because what the documents say is that Amano has pledged his fealty to America. I understand he was elected as a—he was a marginal candidate. We supported him very much. Six ballots. He was considered weak by everybody, but we pushed to get him in. We did get him in. He responded by thanking us and saying he shares our views. He shares our views on Iran. He’s going to be—he’s basically—it was just an expression of love. He’s going to do what we wanted.

This new report has nothing new in it. This isn’t me talking. This is—in the piece I did for the New Yorker blog, it’s different for the blog because it has more reporting in it. I talked to former inspectors. They’re different voices than you read in the New York Times and the Washington Post. There are other people that don’t get reported who are much more skeptical of this report, and you just don’t see it in the coverage. So what we’re getting is a very small slice in the newspaper mainstream press here of analysis of this report. There’s a completely different analysis, which is, very little new.

And the way it works, Amy, is, over the years, a report will show up in a London newspaper, that will turn out to be spurious, turn out to be propaganda, whether started by us or a European intelligence agency—it’s not clear. This all happened, if you remember the Ahmed Chalabi stuff, during the buildup to the war in [Iraq], all about, you know, the great arsenals that existed inside [Iraq]. The same sort of propaganda is being used now—pardon me, I have a slight cold—that shows up over the years, over the last decade, in various newspapers. The IAEA would look at it, rule it not to be—be a fabrication, or certainly not to be supportable by anything they know. All of these old reports, with the exception of, I think, in a new study that was put out by the IAEA—there were maybe 30 or 40 old items, with only three things past 2008, all of which are—they—many people inside the IAEA believe to be spurious, not very reliable fabrications. So there you are.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Sy Hersh, you’re saying that it’s not new information. It’s a new head of the IAEA that’s making the difference here. Can you talk more about U.S. infiltration of Iran, JSOC in Iran, surveillance, as well, in Iran?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Sure. I mean, the kind of stuff they did. I could tell you stuff that was secret eight, nine years ago. We would—for example, we developed—if there was an underground facility we thought was—where we saw some digging, let’s say, in a mountain area, we would line the road, when there were trucks going up and down the road, we would line the road with what seemed to be pebbles. In fact, they were sensors that could measure the weight of trucks going in and out. If a truck would go in light and come out with heavy, we could assume it was coming out with dirt, they were doing digging. We did that kind of monitoring.

We also put all sorts of passive counters, measures, of radioactivity. Uranium, even plutonium—most of the stuff that’s being done there is enriched uranium. They’re not making plutonium. But you can track. At a certain point, you have to move it. Once you take it out and start moving it around, you can track it. You can find Geiger counters, if you will, to use that old-fashioned term. You can measure radioactivity and see increases. We would go into a building, our troops, sometimes even with Americans, go into a building in Tehran, where we thought there was something fishy going on, start a disturbance down the street, take out a few bricks, slam in another section of brick with a Geiger counter, if you will, or a measuring device to see if, in that building, they were doing some enrichment we didn’t know about.

And we also have incredible competence at looking for air holes from the air, from satellites. If you’re building an underground facility, you have to vent it. You have to get air into it. You have to find a way to remove bad air and put in fresh air. And so, we have guys that are experts, tremendous people in the community. Some of them retired and set up a private company to do this. They would monitor all of the aerial surveillance to look for air holes, so we could find a pattern, try to find a pattern, of an underground facility. Nada.We came up with nothing.

And the most important thing is, we also—and the IA—even this new report also says—let me emphasize this: if you’re not diverting uranium, if you’re not taking uranium out of the count and smuggling it someplace so that you can build a bomb—and that, the IAEA is absolutely categorical on—everything that they are enriching, whatever percentage they enrich to, is under camera inspection, and under inspection of inspections. It’s all open, under the treaty, the safeguard treaty. Nobody is accusing Iran of violating the treaty. They’re just accusing them of cheating on the side, or some evidence they are. And there’s been no evidence of a diversion. So if you’re going to make a bomb, you’re going to have to bring it in from someplace else. And given the kind of surveillance we have, that’s going to be hard to do, to import it from a third country, bring in uranium and enrich it, or enriched uranium. It’s just a long shot.

And what you have is—as I said, it’s some sort of a hysteria that we had over Iraq that’s coming up again in Iran. And this isn’t a plea for Iran. There’s a lot of things that the Iranians do that is objectionable, the way they treat dissent, etc., etc. So I’m just speaking within the context of the hullabaloo that’s up now. And as far as sanctions are concerned, you know, excuse me, we’ve been sanctioning Cuba for 60 years, and Castro is—you know, he may be ill, but he’s still there. Sanctions are not going to work. This is a country that produces oil and gas—less and less, but still plenty of it. And they have customers in the Far East, the Iranians. They have customers for their energy. We’re the losers in this.

AMY GOODMAN: How would you compare the Obama administration to the Bush administration when it comes to Iran?

SEYMOUR HERSH: I can’t find a comparison. Same—a little less bellicose, but the same thing. I do think—I have every reason to believe that, unlike Mr. Bush, President Obama really is worried about an attack. He doesn’t want to see the Israelis bomb Iran. That’s the kind of talk we’ve been getting in the press lately.

And there’s new—as you mentioned, the 30,000-pound bombs built by Boeing, I think. The problem is that most of Iran’s facilities, the ones that we know about, the declared facilities under camera inspection, a place called Natanz, is about 80, 75 to 80 feet underground. And you’d have to do a hell of a lot of bombing to do much damage to it. You could certainly do damage to it, but the cost internationally would be stupendous. The argument for going and bombing is so vague and so nil. There’s been studies done showing—technical studies, MIT and other places, and the Israeli government also has had its scientists participate in these studies, showing it would be really hard to do a significant amount of damage, given how deep the underground facilities are. But you hear this talk about it.

And there’s—you know, look, this president has said nothing about what’s going on in Tahrir Square again. We’re mute. He’s been mute on this kind of bellicosity. But my understanding is that, purely from inside information, is that he does understand the issues more. I think it’s right now a political game being played by him to look tough. You know, everybody’s chasing, you know, the independent vote. I don’t know why—what’s so important to go after people that can’t decide whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, but that seems to be the name of the game.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s turn to the response in Israel to the IAEA report. Yesterday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview with CNNthe time has come to deal with Iran. When asked specifically whether Israel would attack Iran, this is how he responded.

DEFENSE MINISTER EHUD BARAK: I don’t think that that’s a subject for public discussion. But I can tell you that the IAEAreport has a sobering impact on many in the world, leaders as well the publics. And people understand that the time had come. Amano told straightly what he found, unlike Baradei. And it became a major issue, that I think, duly so, becomes a major issue for sanctions, for intensive diplomacy, with urgency. People understand now that Iran is determined to reach nuclear weapons. No other possible or conceivable explanation for what they had been actually doing. And that should be stopped.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak. Sy, your response?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, what makes me nervous is Barak and Bibi, Bibi Netanyahu, are together on this. They’re not always together on many things. They both agree, and that’s worrisome because, again, it’s a political issue there. Everybody—the country is moving quickly to the right, Israel is, obviously. And I can just tell you that I’ve also talked—unfortunately, the ground rules are so lousy in Israel, I can’t write it, but I’ve talked to very senior intelligence people in Iran—in Israel, rather. If you notice, you don’t hear that much about it, but the former head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, who left—who was the guy that orchestrated the attempted assassinations in Dubai, etc.—no dove—has been vehement about the foolishness of attempting to go after Iran, on the grounds that it’s not clear what they have. They’re certainly far away from a bomb. Israel has been saying for 20 years they’re, you know, six months away from making a bomb.

But I can tell you that I’ve talked to senior Israeli officers in Israel who have told me, A, they know that Iran, as the American intelligence community reported—I think it was in ‘07—there was a National Intelligence Estimate that became public that said, essentially, Iran did look at a bomb. They had an eight-year war with Iraq, a terrible war, 1980 to 1988. And we, by the way, the United States, sided with Iraq, Saddam Hussein at that time. Iran then, in the years after that, they began to worry about Iraq’s talk about building a nuclear weapon, so they did look, in that period, let’s say ‘87 to—’97 to 2003, no question. The American NIE said in ‘07—it was augmented in 2011. I wrote about it a year ago in The New Yorker. It said, yes, they did look at a bomb, but not—they knew that they couldn’t—there was no way they could make a bomb to deter America or Israel. They’re not fools. This Persian society has been around for a couple thousand years. They can’t deter us. We have too many bombs. They thought maybe they could deter Iraq. After we went in and took down Iraq in ‘03, they stopped. So they had done some studies. We’re talking about computer modeling, etc., no building. They—no question, they looked at the idea of getting a bomb or getting to the point where maybe they could make one. They did do that, but they stopped in ’03.

That’s still the American consensus. The Israelis will tell you privately, “Yes, we agree.” They stopped most of their planning, even their studies, in ‘03. The Israeli position is they stopped not because they saw what we did to Iraq, but they thought that we could—we destroyed Iraq—I had a general tell me this—we destroyed Iraq in—it took them—we did in three weeks what they couldn’t do in eight years. They thought they would be next. But the consensus was, yes, they stopped. And also, if you asked serious, smart, wise Israelis in the intelligence business — and there are many — “Do you really think, if they got a bomb—and they don’t have one now—they would hit Tel Aviv?” and the answer was, “Do you think they’re crazy? We would incinerate them. Of course not. They’ve been around 2,000 years. That’s not going to happen.” Their fear was they would give a bomb to somebody else, etc.

But there’s an element rationality in the Israeli intelligence community that’s not being expressed by the political leadership. It’s the same madness we have here. There’s an element of rationality in our intelligence community which says, in ‘07, and it has said it again last year, they don’t have the bomb. They’re not making it. It’s at NIE, 16 agencies agreed, 16 to nothing, in an internal vote, before that—they did an update in 2011 on the ‘07 study and came to the same place. It’s just not there. That doesn’t mean they don’t have dreams. It doesn’t mean scientists don’t do computer studies. It doesn’t mean that physicists at the University of Tehran don’t do what physicists like to do, write papers and do studies. But there’s just no evidence of any systematic effort to go from enriching uranium to making a bomb. It’s a huge, difficult process. You have to take a very hot gas and convert it into a metal and then convert it into a core. And you have to do that by remote control, because you can’t get near that stuff. It’ll kill you. So radioactive.

I mean, so, look, I’m a lone voice. And you know how careful The New Yorkeris, even on a blog item. This piece was checked and rechecked. And I quote people—Joe Cirincione, an American who’s been involved in disarmament many years. These are different voices than you’re seeing in the papers. I sometimes get offended by the same voices we see in the New York Timesand Washington Post. We don’t see people with different points of view. There are, inside the—not only the American intelligence community, but also inside the IAEA in Vienna. There are many people who cannot stand what Amano is doing, and many people who basically—I get emails—and this piece came out, was put up, I think, over the weekend. And I get emails, like crazy, from people on the inside saying, “Way to go.” I’m talking about inside the IAEA. It’s an organization that doesn’t deal with the press, but internally, they’re very bothered by the direction Amano is taking them.

It’s not a scientific study, Amy. It’s a political document. And it’s a political document in which he’s playing our game. And it’s the same game the Israelis are picking up on, and those who don’t like Iran. And I wish we could separate our feelings about Iran and the mullahs and what happened with the students from 1979, into the reality, which is that I think there’s a very serious chance the Iranians would certainly give us the kind of inspections we want, in return for a little love—an end to sanctions and a respect that they insist that they want to get from us. And it’s not happening from this administration.

AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, I want to thank you very much for being with us. His latest piece is on the blog at The New Yorker. It’s called “Iran and the IAEA.” Seymour Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize. His piece, you can see at The New Yorker’s website.

Interview courtesy of DemocracyNow! and Seymour Hersh

By Juan Cole

From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to Oakland, a new generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state that has dominated the world ever since the Cold War ended. The massive popular protests that shook the globe this year have much in common, though most of the reporting on them in the mainstream media has obscured the similarities.

Whether in Egypt or the United States, young rebels are reacting to a single stunning worldwide development: the extreme concentration of wealth in a few hands thanks to neoliberal policies of deregulation and union busting. They have taken to the streets, parks, plazas and squares to protest against the resulting corruption, the way politicians can be bought and sold, and the impunity of the white-collar criminals who have run riot in societies everywhere. They are objecting to high rates of unemployment, reduced social services, blighted futures and above all the substitution of the market for all other values as the matrix of human ethics and life.

Pasha the Tiger

In the “glorious thirty years” after World War II, North America and Western Europe achieved remarkable rates of economic growth and relatively low levels of inequality for capitalist societies, while instituting a broad range of benefits for workers, students and retirees. From roughly 1980 on, however, the neoliberal movement, rooted in the laissez-faire economic theories of Milton Friedman, launched what became a full-scale assault on workers’ power and an attempt, often remarkably successful, to eviscerate the social welfare state.

Neoliberals chanted the mantra that everyone would benefit if the public sector were privatised, businesses deregulated and market mechanisms allowed to distribute wealth. But as economist David Harvey argues, from the beginning it was a doctrine that primarily benefited the wealthy, its adoption allowing the top one per cent in any neoliberal society to capture a disproportionate share of whatever wealth was generated.

In the global South, countries that gained their independence from European colonialism after World War II tended to create large public sectors as part of the process of industrialisation. Often, living standards improved as a result, but by the 1970s, such developing economies were generally experiencing a levelling-off of growth. This happened just as neoliberalism became ascendant in Washington, Paris and London as well as in Bretton Woods institutions like the International Monetary Fund. This “Washington consensus” meant that the urge to impose privatisation on stagnating, nepotistic postcolonial states would become the order of the day.

Egypt and Tunisia, to take two countries in the spotlight for sparking the Arab Spring, were successfully pressured in the 1990s to privatise their relatively large public sectors. Moving public resources into the private sector created an almost endless range of

opportunities for staggering levels of corruption on the part of the ruling families of autocrats Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunis and Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. International banks, central banks and emerging local private banks aided and abetted their agenda.

It was not surprising then that one of the first targets of Tunisian crowds in the course of the revolution they made last January was the Zitouna bank, a branch of which they torched. Its owner, Sakher El Materi, a son-in-law of President Ben Ali and the notorious owner of Pasha, the well-fed pet tiger that prowled the grounds of one of his sumptuous mansions. Not even the way his outfit sought legitimacy by practicing “Islamic banking” could forestall popular rage. A 2006 State Department cable released by WikiLeaks observed, “One local financial expert blames the [Ben Ali] Family for chronic banking sector woes due to the great percentage of non-performing loans issued through crony connections, and has essentially paralysed banking authorities from genuine recovery efforts.”  That is, the banks were used by the regime to give away money to his cronies, with no expectation of repayment.

Tunisian activists similarly directed their ire at foreign banks and lenders to which their country owes $14.4bn. Tunisians are still railing and rallying against the repayment of all that money, some of which they believe was borrowed profligately by the corrupt former regime and then squandered quite privately.

Tunisians had their own one per cent, a thin commercial elite, half of whom were related to or closely connected to President Ben Ali. As a group, they were accused by young activists of mafia-like, predatory practices, such as demanding pay-offs from legitimate businesses, and discouraging foreign investment by tying it to a stupendous system of bribes. The closed, top-heavy character of the Tunisian economic system was blamed for the bottom-heavy waves of suffering that followed: cost of living increases that hit people on fixed incomes or those like students and peddlers in the marginal economy especially hard.

It was no happenstance that the young man who immolated himself and so sparked the Tunisian rebellion was a hard-pressed vegetable peddler. It’s easy now to overlook what clearly ties the beginning of the Arab Spring to the European Summer and the present American Fall: the point of the Tunisian revolution was not just to gain political rights, but to sweep away that one per cent, popularly imagined as a sort of dam against economic opportunity.

Tahrir Square, Zuccotti Park, Rothschild Avenue

The success of the Tunisian revolution in removing the octopus-like Ben Ali plutocracy inspired the dramatic events in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and even Israel that are redrawing the political map of the Middle East. But the 2011 youth protest movement was hardly contained in the Middle East. Estonian-Canadian activist Kalle Lasn and his anti-consumerist colleagues at the Vancouver-based Adbusters Media Foundation were inspired by the success of the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square in deposing dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Their organisation specialises in combatting advertising culture through spoofs and pranks. It was Adbusters magazine that sent out the call on Twitter in the summer of 2011 for a rally at Wall Street on September 17, with the now-famous hash tag #OccupyWallStreet. A thousand protesters gathered on the designated date, commemorating the 2008 economic meltdown that had thrown millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes. Some camped out in nearby Zuccotti Park, another unexpected global spark for protest.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has now spread throughout the United States, sometimes in the face of serious acts of repression, as in Oakland, California. It has followed in the spirit of the Arab and European movements in demanding an end to special privileges for the richest one per cent, including their ability to more or less buy the US government for purposes of their choosing. What is often forgotten is that the Ben Alis, Mubaraks and Gaddafis were not simply authoritarian tyrants. They were the one per cent and the guardians of the one per cent, in their own societies – and loathed for exactly that.

Last April, around the time that Lasn began imagining Wall Street protests, progressive activists in Israel started planning their own movement. In July, sales clerk and aspiring filmmaker Daphne Leef found herself unable to cover a sudden rent increase on her Tel Aviv apartment. So she started a protest Facebook page similar to the ones that fuelled the Arab Spring and moved into a tent on the posh Rothschild Avenue where she was soon joined by hundreds of other protesting Israelis. Week by week, the demonstrations grew, spreading to cities throughout the country and culminating on September 3 in a massive rally, the largest in Israel’s history. Some 300,000 protesters came out in Tel Aviv, 50,000 in Jerusalem and 40,000 in Haifa. Their demands included not just lower housing costs, but a rollback of neoliberal policies, less regressive taxes and more progressive, direct taxation, a halt to the privatisation of the economy, and the funding of a system of inexpensive education and child care.

Many on the left in Israel are also deeply troubled by the political and economic power of right-wing settlers on the West Bank, but most decline to bring the Palestinian issue into the movement’s demands for fear of losing support among the middle class. For the same reason, the way the Israeli movement was inspired by Tahrir Square and the Egyptian revolution has been downplayed, although “Walk like an Egyptian” signs – a reference both to the Cairo demonstrations and the 1986 Bangles hit song – have been spotted on Rothschild Avenue.

Most of the Israeli activists in the coastal cities know that they are victims of the same neoliberal order that displaces the Palestinians, punishes them and keeps them stateless. Indeed, the Palestinians, altogether lacking a state but at the complete mercy of various forms of international capital controlled by elites elsewhere, are the ultimate victims of the neoliberal order. But in order to avoid a split in the Israeli protest movement, a quiet agreement was reached to focus on economic discontents and so avoid the divisive issue of the much-despised West Bank settlements.

There has been little reporting in the Western press about a key source of Israeli unease, which was palpable to me when I visited the country in May. Even then, before the local protests had fully hit their stride, Israelis I met were complaining about the rise to power of an Israeli one per cent. There are now 16 billionaires in the country, who control $45bn in assets, and the current crop of 10,153 millionaires is 20 per cent larger than it was in the previous fiscal year. In terms of its distribution of wealth, Israel is now among the most unequal of the countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Since the late 1980s, the average household income of families in the bottom fifth of the population has been declining at an annual rate of 1.1 per cent. Over the same period, the average household income of families among the richest 20 per cent went up at an annual rate of 2.4 per cent.

While neoliberalism has produced more unequal societies throughout the world, nowhere else has the income of the poor declined quite so strikingly. The concentration of wealth in a few hands profoundly contradicts the founding principles of Israel’s Labour Zionism, and results from decades of right-wing Likud policies punishing the poor and middle classes and shifting wealth to the top of society.

The indignant ones

European youth were also inspired by the Tunisians and Egyptians – and by a similar flight of wealth. I was in Barcelona on May 27, when the police attacked demonstrators camped out at the Placa de Catalunya, provoking widespread consternation. The government of the region is currently led by the centrist Convergence and Union Party, a moderate proponent of Catalan nationalism. It is relatively popular locally, and so Catalans had not expected such heavy-handed police action to be ordered. The crackdown, however, underlined the very point of the protesters, that the neoliberal state, whatever its political makeup, is protecting the same set of wealthy miscreants.

Spain’s “indignados” (indignant ones) got their start in mid-May with huge protests at Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Plaza against the country’s persistent 21 per cent unemployment rate (and double that among the young). Egyptian activists in Tahrir Square immediately sent a statement of warm support to those in the Spanish capital (as they would months later to New York’s demonstrators). Again following the same pattern, the Spanish movement does not restrict its objections to unemployment (and the lack of benefits attending the few new temporary or contract jobs that do arise). Its targets are the banks, bank bailouts, financial corruption and cuts in education and other services.

Youth activists I met in Toledo and Madrid this summer denounced both of the country’s major parties and, indeed, the very consumer society that emphasised wealth accumulation over community and material acquisition over personal enrichment. In the past two months Spain’s young protesters have concentrated on demonstrating against cuts to education, with crowds of 70,000 to 90,000 coming out more than once in Madrid and tens of thousands in other cities. For marches in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, hundreds of thousands reportedly took to the streets of Madrid and Barcelona, among other cities.

The global reach and connectedness of these movements has yet to be fully appreciated. The Madrid education protesters, for example, cited for inspiration Chilean students who, through persistent, innovative, and large-scale demonstrations this summer and fall, have forced that country’s neoliberal government, headed by the increasingly unpopular billionaire president Sebastian Pinera, to inject $1.6bn in new money into education. Neither the crowds of youth in Madrid nor those in Santiago are likely to be mollified, however, by new dorms and laboratories. Chilean students have already moved on from insisting on an end to an ever more expensive class-based education system to demands that the country’s lucrative copper mines be nationalised so as to generate revenues for investment in education. In every instance, the underlying goal of specific protests by the youthful reformists is the neoliberal order itself.

The word “union” was little uttered in American television news coverage of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, even though factory workers and sympathy strikes of all sorts played a key role in them. The right-wing press in the US actually went out of its way to contrast Egyptian demonstrations against Mubarak with the Wisconsin rallies of government workers against Governor Scott Walker’s measure to cripple the bargaining power of their unions.

The Egyptians, Commentary typically wrote, were risking their lives, while Wisconsin’s union activists were taking the day off from cushy jobs to parade around with placards, immune from being fired for joining the rallies. The implication: the Egyptian revolution was against tyranny, whereas already spoiled American workers were demanding further coddling.

The American right has never been interested in recognising this reality: that forbidding unions and strikes is a form of tyranny. In fact, it wasn’t just progressive bloggers who saw a connection between Tahrir Square and Madison. The head of the newly formed independent union federation in Egypt dispatched an explicit expression of solidarity to the Wisconsin workers, centering on worker’s rights.

At least, Commentary did us one favour: it clarified why the story has been told as it has in most of the American media. If the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were merely about individualistic political rights – about the holding of elections and the guarantee of due process – then they could be depicted as largely irrelevant to politics in the US and Europe, where such norms already prevailed.

If, however, they centred on economic rights (as they certainly did), then clearly the discontents of North African youth when it came to plutocracy, corruption, the curbing of workers’ rights, and persistent unemployment deeply resembled those of their American counterparts.

The global protests of 2011 have been cast in the American media largely as an “Arab Spring” challenging local dictatorships – as though Spain, Chile and Israel do not exist. The constant speculation by pundits and television news anchors in the US about whether “Islam” would benefit from the Arab Spring functioned as an Orientalist way of marking events in North Africa as alien and vaguely menacing, but also as not germane to the day to day concerns of working Americans. The inhabitants of Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan clearly feel differently.

Facebook flash mobs

If we focus on economic trends, then the neoliberal state looks eerily similar, whether it is a democracy or a dictatorship, whether the government is nominally right of centre or left of centre. As a package, deregulation, the privatisation of public resources and firms, corruption and forms of insider trading and interference in the ability of workers to organise or engage in collective bargaining have allowed the top one per cent in Israel, just as in Tunisia or the US, to capture the lion’s share of profits from the growth of the last decades.

Observers were puzzled by the huge crowds that turned out in both Tunis and Tel Aviv in 2011, especially given that economic growth in those countries had been running at a seemingly healthy five per cent per annum. “Growth”, defined generally and without regard to its distribution, is the answer to a neoliberal question. The question of the 99 per cent, however, is: Who is getting the increased wealth? In both of those countries, as in the US and other neoliberal lands, the answer is: disproportionately the one per cent.

If you were wondering why outraged young people around the globe are chanting such similar slogans and using such similar tactics (including Facebook “flash mobs”), it is because they have seen more clearly than their elders through the neoliberal shell game.

Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History and the director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. His latest book, Engaging the Muslim World, is just out in a revised paperback edition from Palgrave Macmillan. He runs the Informed Comment website.

Article courtesy Al Jazeera English online

By MAZIN QUMSIYEH
Courtesy of Popular Resistance

Israel reported a record $7.2 billion weapons exports solidifying its position in the top four countries profiting from war and destruction.  The other two main official sources of income for Israel (foreign aid and its pillaging of the Palestinian economy) are also at a record high.  A fourth source of income that is less publicized but certainly is in the billions is money laundering and other criminal activities.  Many make billions by illicit schemes in their own countries and then move to Israel or at least move their money there (there are many example among Russian and American Zionists).  Israel is indeed in a very strong position financially and militarily.  Israel is also aided by a massive media campaign that vilifies Palestinians (and now Muslims and Arabs in general). On the ground, Jerusalem has largely been transformed and its multi-ethnic, multi-religious character meticulously eroded just like what happened to Jaffa and Haifa before and just like what is happening in Hebron and elsewhere today.  But we are not entirely helpless in facing the last remaining bastion of fascism and racism that is protected by state power and a global network of hate peddlers.

Yes, it is true that our struggle is more difficult than what transpired against apartheid in South Africa. Yes, it is true that our “leadership” has been reduced making weak declarations in fancy hotels and conference centers and to the media. This “leadership” is paid handsomely for doing nothing useful to change the political discourse or even increase the cost of this colonial Zionist venture.  Worse yet, a good segment of this “leadership” actually aids and abets the occupiers.  Salam Fayyad who worked at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), declares that he is fully in favor of the appointment of the head of the Central Bank in Israel as head of the IMF!  He also worked hard to get funding to pave alternative roads that made it easier on the apartheid system isolating Palestinians in cantons than need not interfere with the plans to control the natural resources and best lands of the West Bank. And then there is Mahmoud Abbas who declared on more than one occasion and also even signed a provisional agreement with Israelis that also declared that refugees need not return to their homes and lands but only to the demilitarized denuded bantustan called a Palestinian state.  Abbas also declared repeatedly that his options are negotiations, negotiations, negotiations.  He and his associates (Saeb Erekat, Abu Ala’ etc) have been negotiating for 20 years with the only tangible accomplishment being giving Israel economic and diplomatic space to consolidate Zionist colonialism.  But this era of Israeli colonial superiority must and is coming to an end.

While we in the civil society still hope for these “leaders” to change their ways, we have not been waiting.  We have been acting and must act more. The upcoming escalation in confrontation will not be between states nor will it be with “insurgency” in its classic sense.  What we see instead is a growth in boycotts, divestment, and sanctions and what transpired by freedom flotilla I, events of May 15, June 5th, the upcoming freedom flotilla II, and July 8-16 are so critical.  We have individual and collective responsibility to change things by moral and determined ways.  The other options have been proven catastrophically negative: relying on politicians (elected or self-appointed) or on the vagaries of shifting military capabilities (a dangerous development in the era of advanced science that makes development of weapons of mass destruction relatively easy even for small state and non-state actors).  Let no one have any illusion: we are coming to a major confrontation.  It can either be 1) a civil confrontation where civil society wins the struggle because it got engaged in these tactics of strong and determined popular resistance, or 2) it can happen via armed insurgency that uses modern technology to challenge conventional military forces.  Hezbollah in Lebanon provides a model of mixing the two but with more reliance on the second.  In challenging local dictatorship, we saw the power of civil resistance in Egypt and Tunisia.  Challenging colonialism successfully happened with a mix of the two in Algeria (liberated in the 1960s) and South Africa (more recently).  But the mix in South Africa was improved thanks to International civil participation. Each situation is unique and our local history here and the upcoming confrontation will also be unique to Palestine and different than in these other places. But it is clear that we have a responsibility as individuals in our society to try to shape the coming confrontation so that it is not catastrophically violent (i.e less “military might makes right” and more “people power”).  Our future as humans depends on us working together to change our circumstances.  Those who think they can afford to sit and wait (and watch TV news) will miss the moving train of justice and will regret their apathy.  We Palestinians must carry the bulk of the weight (I remember the image of the old man carrying Jerusalem and Palestine on his back).  But we humans are all responsible.  We cannot be lulled by “humanitarian aid” or by “state” and non-state structures that give the illusions of safety and security whether in the US, Europe, Australia, the apartheid state of Israel, or in the bantustans called a Palestinian state.  Everyone knows that that old system merely makes the rich richer, the poor poorer, destroys our environment, and lets us have fake elections between waves of certain economic downturns and the occasional war or terror attack that aims to distract us.

For those of you in Palestine, you may want to join us for a workshop this Saturday, 18 June, at 11 Am in the Bethlehem area that will bring dozens of activists from throughout Palestine and some internationals to help organize us better for the week of activities in July and beyond.  We also just updated our website with new answers to frequently asked questions on this (see http://palestinejn.org/section-blog ).  For those of you abroad, you could intensify your efforts to challenge the status quo.  We are one world and our struggles are one.

By IBRAHIM HEWITT

We will probably never really know if, as Israel’s Prime Minister claimed, Iran and Syria orchestrated the Nakba demonstrations which led to the deaths of at least 12 Palestinians over the weekend. Accusations and counter-accusations will fill the media for a few days and then life will carry on as abnormal as it does in Israel and the territories it has occupied since 1967. There is clearly going to be no outcry from Israel’s friends in the West about abuses of human rights and democratic freedoms of the kind we have seen in response to the killing of demonstrators in other parts of the Middle East. Nor are we likely to see an ICC warrant for the arrest of Israeli leaders on war crimes charges, even though the independent evidence is at least as strong as that against Gaddafi who now faces such charges. Israel, as usual, is allowed to get away with murder.

Benjamin Netanyahu, of course, knows this full well, which is why he can continue to make statements which illustrate that Zionists have a completely different worldview: Israelis, he said after Sunday’s shootings, “are determined to defend our borders and sovereignty.” Media reports follow suit, each describing the clashes taking place “on Israel’s borders”. This is all fantasy, because Israel has never declared what its borders are and has taken every opportunity since 1948 to push the extent of the territory under its control ever further outwards. The Golan Heights, where Palestinians exiled in Syria crossed rather ineffective (thank goodness) minefields at the weekend, are in fact the occupied Syrian Golan Heights; the border that was breached was not and if justice prevails never should be “Israel’s border”. The Zionist state may have control of the area but the demonstration last weekend was not a breach of its “sovereignty” as Netanyahu claimed.

Such realities do not deter Zionists and the well-oiled pro-Israel lobby from purveying distortions of the truth as “facts” in their hasbara (propaganda). This well-funded campaign which answers to the Israeli Foreign Ministry focuses its current efforts to “de-legitimise” those who would “de-legitimise” the state of Israel. Hence, the pressure on Amnesty International to close its doors to a MEMO-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) event looking at if and how the media assists Israel in its hasbara. Zionists are experts at ignoring the issues and shooting the messengers instead, but even when they do set out to purvey their own version of reality, they twist the facts to suit their agenda. Few dare to ask if Israel actually ever had any legitimacy in the first place, but should a state founded on terrorism and ethnic cleansing ever be accorded any legitimacy by democratic states?

Convinced of Israel’s right to do what it likes to the Palestinians if they have the gall to resist the occupation and settlement of their land such propagandists peddle lies and half-truths to brush away criticism of the state’s actions. Hence, the massive wall being built across the occupied West Bank is described rather benignly as the “separation wall”; even “separation fence”, as if 8m high concrete blocks with gun emplacements and watchtowers could ever constitute a “fence” in any normal person’s mind. It is, almost exclusively, being built on Palestinian land; it encircles major Palestinian population centres and somehow – purely for the purposes of “separation”, you understand – manages to put the West Bank’s major water sources on the Israeli side; surprise, surprise. If this monstrosity is really about keeping two peoples apart, why was it not built on the old Green Line, the armistice line between Israel and the West Bank? The answer is simple: the intention was never separation alone, but annexation of as much of the West Bank as possible. While the Palestinian Authority has been kept talking for the past 20 post-Oslo years in the quest for a Palestinian state, the Israelis have been working to ensure that if such a state ever comes into existence it will be a fraction of the size envisaged when the “peace negotiations” began.

That is the nature of Zionism, a pernicious ideology which is both racist and unjust, an ideology backed by governments across the Western world due to the power and influence of the pro-Israel lobby; that influence ensures that Netanyahu can talk about Israel’s “borders and sovereignty” without fear of any dissenting voice emanating from Berlin, London or Washington.

On the contrary, an Editorial in the Washington Post bemoans the lack of any “concessions” by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as if the Al Jazeera Palestine Papers leaks hadn’t revealed the extent to which Palestinian negotiators had been willing to concede on major issues such as the right of return for refugees. The principle is simple: keep repeating a lie often and loud enough and the world will come to believe it. The whole “peace process” has been one long concession by the Palestinians: is there any other example of illegal activity – such as Israeli settlements   by a state anywhere in the world that Western governments have allowed the cessation of which to be subject to negotiations? The very fact that the Palestinians actually agreed to sit in the same room as the occupying power while the occupation is ongoing and as brutal as ever is itself a massive concession that no other people have been asked to make. The Post’s editorial is one good reason of many why the MEMO-PSC event on the media and its bias is both essential and the target of the Israel lobby’s ire.

The concept behind all of this is “exceptionalism”, a euphemism for “we will do whatever we want, to whomsoever we want and whenever we want, in order to dominate and serve our own narrow, selfish interests, and if it means throwing the baby out with the bath water and riding roughshod over the principles which we claim to uphold, so be it”. Exceptionalism is demanded by the Americans and the Israelis in the delivery of their policies. Moreover, evidence suggests that if push ever came to shove, even the US would play second fiddle to the Zionist state; a cursory glance at US foreign policy and its favouring of Israel to no apparent benefit for the people of the United States illustrates this point. The EU is also guilty of this hypocritical approach to foreign relations.

The world can expect little of US presidents or European prime ministers by way of justice for the oppressed of the world, especially if they are Palestinians. Obama and his cohorts in European capitals are in thrall to other interests, despite their grand pronouncements about democracy and human rights. If the latter conflict with their national interests, or those of Israel, they are discarded or ignored, in clear breach of their treaty obligations under the UN charter. The hypocrisy of these politicians is so obvious that it would be funny if it wasn’t so serious, and the fact that Israel is a nuclear-armed state means that Zionism’s warped version of reality backed by Obama et al is a very serious matter indeed. Israel and its supporters have lost touch with reality and they are prepared to lie through their back teeth to push the Zionist agenda. How long are we in the West going to be complicit in perverting the course of justice with our silence?

By TAMMY OBEIDALLAH
Staff Writer, Dayton, OH

The celebration following President Obama’s announcement that Osama Bin Laden was killed by a team of Navy Seals and his body dumped in the ocean was predictably raucous:  the mentality of the celebrants identifying them as the same people who still believe 19 hijackers brought down the Twin Towers in the first place. From drunken college kids to old biddies, the simple-minded euphoria spread with no questions asked as to why the story of the operation into Pakistan changes with every passing minute, the real reason as to why no photos were released, the un-Islamic disposal of the body—or bodies—the lack of dialysis equipment in the compound (Bin Laden allegedly suffered from kidney disease) and most importantly, why an unarmed man was shot in front of his family without benefit of an arrest or trial. Over one-third of Americans do not believe that Bin Laden was the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks, well beyond the “shadow of a doubt” necessitating acquittal in a court of law.

Unfortunately, groupthink spread to the very organizations which are supposed to be advocating for the Arab and Muslim communities here in America. The Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) issued this statement:

“We join our fellow citizens in welcoming the announcement that Osama bin Laden has been eliminated as a threat to our nation and the world through the actions of American military personnel. As we have stated repeatedly since the 9/11 terror attacks, bin Laden never represented Muslims or Islam. In fact, in addition to the killing of thousands of Americans, he and Al Qaeda caused the deaths of countless Muslims worldwide. We also reiterate President Obama’s clear statement tonight that the United States is not at war with Islam.”

If the United States is not at war with Islam, someone needs to explain why over 1 million Iraqis are dead, in a country known to have had nothing to do with 9/11.  If there is no war on Islam, why—after Bin Laden’s alleged demise—do we now have the capability of flying 54 Predator drone missions at a time, with a goal to increase that number to 65 round-the-clock missions by 2013?  In fact, drones have not abated in their slaughter of innocent civilians in Waziristan since Bin Laden’s death. Drone attacks have expanded into Yemen, as seen in a recent botched attempt to murder Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, whose only apparent crime is to have e-mailed Army Major Nidal Hassan, the Ft. Hood shooter. The strike resulted in the deaths of two Yemenis.

Not to be outdone, Salam Al-Marayati, President of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) stated: “We hope this is a turning point away from the dark period of the last decade, in which bin Laden symbolized the evil face of global terrorism. His actions and those of Al-Qaeda have violated the sacred Islamic teachings upholding the sanctity of all human life. His acts of senseless terror have been met with moral outrage by Muslims worldwide at every turn in the past decade.”

It does indeed appear to be a turning point; however it is turning from a “dark period” to an even darker one, both in the United States and abroad. Hate crimes against Muslims have spiked in the wake of Bin Laden’s alleged demise. A mosque in Portland, Maine was spray painted with the words “Go Home,” among other things; the Islamic Center of Minnesota received no less than five hate mails immediately following reports of Bin Laden’s death. A schoolteacher in Texas is currently under suspension for making insensitive remarks to a Muslim student, telling her “I bet you’re grieving.”

Perhaps the most repugnant of sentiments came from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). The Michigan chapter issued a wordy diatribe, abbreviated here in the interest of space:
“ADC Michigan joins fellow Americans and all peace seeking people across the globe in rejoicing over the execution of Osama Bin Laden, head of the Al Qaeda terrorist group responsible for the national tragedy of September 11th as well as mass killings of innocent civilians in various parts of the world…While the death of Bin Laden ends one phase of our war on terror, the execution of the most recognized symbol of terrorism does not eradicate the ideology that Bin Laden represented.  Despite this great victory…the threat of terror is still sound and strong.  This mandates us to stay on alert and continue to be vigilant in a world that may be safer without Bin Laden.  Additionally, the beginning of this new chapter requires our US Administration to re-examine policies and actions in regards to the war on terror… Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist group hijacked the noble faith of Islam and, in its name, committed heinous crimes against us in America, and the rest of humanity, including Muslims.  His malevolent actions have unfortunately and unjustly cast a shadow of suspicion over the heads of the Arab and Muslim American communities in the US and abroad.  Now is the time to remove this ignorance and doubt and stand united once more as we celebrate our country’s triumph.  ADC Michigan salutes President Obama, his administration, and the American heroes who risked their lives for this mission on behalf of peace and humanity.”
Cast a shadow of suspicion? Who are they kidding? Muslims and Arabs have always been portrayed as terrorists in movies and television, years before 9/11. I recall watching then CBS anchor Dan Rather as those nightmarish events unfolded and he advised us “caution” when placing blame. Why did he say that? Because the first thing that came to everyone’s mind was Muslim hijackers. And “heroes?” We’re talking about a group of guys who, by the government’s own convoluted admission—threw grenades into a house full of women and children and shot unarmed people.

It is imperative that Arab and Muslim advocacy organizations start fulfilling their purpose instead of being lockstep with the U.S. administration. It is their responsibility to speak out, condemning in the strongest terms the aggression with which the U.S. has attacked Muslim countries since 9/11, and to hold the government and media accountable for the false statements, half-truths and blatant lies which allow such aggression to continue.

Delighted Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Wednesday celebrated the signing of a reconciliation deal between bitter rivals Hamas and Fatah.

As Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal joined Fatah head and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas for a ceremony in Cairo to finalise the deal, hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets across the territories to show their support.

In Gaza, around 700 people marched to the Square of the Unknown Soldier waving Palestinian flags as well as the green and yellow flags of the two factions for a celebration of the long-awaited accord.

The atmosphere was festive, with demonstrators dancing in circles and letting off firecrackers as they cheered the deal aimed at ending years of division between the two rival national movements.

Many participants waved the green flag of Hamas, and there were more than a dozen people raising the yellow Fatah flag, which has been banned in Gaza for the past four years since the secular movement was ousted by the Islamists.

“This is the first time in four years I can hold a Fatah flag alongside a Palestinian flag,” said Mahmud al-Riati, a 20-year-old engineering student wearing a Palestinian flag tied around his shoulders like a cape.

Among Gaza’s youth, the mood was overwhelmingly optimistic, despite the long road ahead for the two sides.

“This is the day that we’ve all been waiting for,” an announcer shouted to the cheering crowd, praising the so-called March 15 movement of young Palestinians that organised mass demonstrations calling for a unity deal.

“It is our liberation today,” he bellowed, saying it was all down to the youth who suffered arrests and beatings as they repeatedly called for the two factions to reconcile. “It has all been worth it!”

Ebaa Razeq, a 20-year-old student, was confident that the agreement’s provisions, including a new transitional government of independents and elections within a year, would be carried out.

“We can’t wait,” she said with excitement. “It’s one of the most important days in the history of the Palestinian cause because we’ve been suffering from this situation for four years so you can imagine our excitement.”

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad described the signing of the deal as a “very happy moment.”

“We’ve been waiting a long time for this to happen,” he said.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, hailed the move as part of the “pursuit of democracy in the Middle East.”

The agreement “marks an important step towards Palestinian statehood and lasting peace,” she said.

Several dozen demonstrators gathered in Ramallah’s Manara Square and outside the parliament building, but they were considerably more cautious about the prospects of the reconciliation working.

“It’s a positive thing, but it must be brought to life,” said one member of the March 15 movement, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Having Meshaal and Abbas in one room is a good first step, but it must be noted that the reconciliation’s problem was not just signing a piece of paper.”

Bashir Saleh, who works for a local NGO, said everyone was aware how much was at stake.

“Signing the agreement is very important because the Palestinian people don’t have any choice except reconciliation,” the 48-year-old told AFP.

“I hope it will continue on the ground because if they fail this time, it will be a big failure for Hamas and Fatah.”

Back in Gaza City, Yasser Muhessin wandered through the crowd wearing a cape made up of a green Hamas flag stitched together with the green flag of Fatah.

It was up to the Palestinian people to push their leaders to make the deal work, he said.

“The agreement is newborn like a new baby and the Palestinian people must come together to protect it. They have to work together,” he told AFP. “There’s no other choice.”

(Article courtesy AFP – Photo courtesy Reuters)

By TAMMY OBEIDALLAH
Staff Writer, Dayton, OH

Goldstone’s waffling diatribe in the Washington Post—although hardly the “retraction” of his report so heralded by the pro-Israel camp—should not have come as a surprise. Given the amount of Zionist pressure put on Goldstone, it is a wonder that his backpedaling took so long. He was blackballed throughout the international Jewish community, even prohibited from attending his own grandson’s bar mitzvah. It would be difficult for anyone to bear the extraordinary pressure wielded by such a powerful concerted effort and Goldstone must have been particularly susceptible because he was—and is—a self-described Zionist. Granted, in light of his initial report alleging Israeli war crimes, he could be labeled a “soft Zionist,” but a Zionist nonetheless.

The Jewish Virtual Library defines Zionism as “the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel…” In other words, Goldstone, along with every other Zionist, believes Jews have an unalienable right to come from the four corners of the world to take over Palestine. So, Goldstone’s betrayal of Operation Cast Lead’s victims, particularly the al-Simouni family, who lost 29 members in a single Israeli attack, was to be expected:

“The shelling of the (al-Simouni) home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly.” –“Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel War Crimes”

Of course Goldstone’s more recent conclusions are self-contradictory; they ignore the fact that, according to paragraph 1756 his original report, “The Mission found major structural flaws that in its view make the (Israeli investigatory) system inconsistent with international standards….there is the absence of any effective and impartial investigation mechanism and victims of such alleged violations are deprived of any effective or prompt remedy.” We are all too familiar with the criminal cover-ups inherent to IDF internal investigations, dubbing the attack on the Mavi Marmara an act of “self-defense” and Rachel Corrie’s murder an “accident.”

But Goldstone most blatantly reveals his true Zionist colors with the statement, “I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.”

Come again? A history of bias? Israel’s proxy, the USA, has a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council; hence the vast majority of resolutions critical of the Jewish State are vetoed. In fact, a mere 79 resolutions condemning various forms of Israeli aggression managed to slip through since 1948.

It is this type of victimhood on which Israelis and their apologists rely; sadly we Palestinian activists have fallen prey to this phenomenon and feel the need to appease this victimization at every turn. We now spend far too much of our time qualifying all our statements with “…now I don’t have a problem with Jews or Judaism, but rather Zionism…” If you are a Jew who is against Zionism, you know who you are and don’t need the constant caveats from pro-Palestinian groups living in constant fear of being labeled “anti-Semitic.”

Moreover, many of the organizations supposedly advocating for Palestinian rights support the defunct “Two-State Solution,” which is inherently Zionist. Israeli settlements are ensconced in what is left of the West Bank, Palestinian communities are isolated by Jewish-only roads and the non-contiguous Gaza Strip is under siege. A Palestinian state under such circumstances is not viable and to declare statehood under these conditions only legitimizes the Israeli occupation of more than 85% of historic Palestine.

Some Arab-American and Muslim organizations have even praised J Street, the “kinder, gentler” face of Zionism to “counter” AIPAC in our halls of Congress. .” According to the Jerusalem Post, one of J Street’s finance committee members – with a $10,000 contribution threshold – is none other than Lebanese-American businessman Richard Abdoo, a current board member of Amideast and former board member of the Arab American Institute. If there was any doubt about J Street’s motives, New Israel Fund CEO Daniel Sokatch removed all doubt when addressing their conference thusly: “And we believe that working for justice and equality in Israel is the best way to re-ignite a commitment to Israel in our own American community.”

Somehow another recipient of the “balanced and moderate” label is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. His condescending tripe entitled “US Must Step In to Pull Israel and Turkey Back to the Middle” in the aftermath of  the Mavi Marmara massacre included a quote from one of his Israeli friends “…and the Palestinians are beginning to act rationally.” I wonder how rational Friedman would act if he was denied the opportunity to work, travel, go to the hospital, or have access to little more than 6 hours of electricity a day for years and then watch close family members be blown apart?

Come on, people. We should know the “good cop-bad cop” routine by now. The reality of so called “moderate” voices such as Goldstone, Friedman, and J Street is that they represent the most insidious and virulent form of Zionism: the idea that this poisonous ideology can peacefully co-exist with the rest of humanity.

Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, is dead.

US president Barack Obama said bin Laden, the most-wanted fugitive on the US list, had been killed on Sunday in a US operation in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, about 61km north of Islamabad.

“Tonight, I can report to the people of the United States and the world, the United States had carried an operation that has killed Osama bin Laden, a terrorist responsible for killing thousands of innocent people,” Obama said in a statement.

“Today, at my direction, the United States carried out that operation… they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

“The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date against al-Qaeda.

“We must also reaffirm that United states is not and will never be at war against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader, in fact, he slaughtered many Muslims,” Obama said.

Four people, including one of bin Laden’s sons, were also killed in the operation.

According to New York Times, bin Laden’s body was taken to Afghanistan and later buried at sea.

Hours after Obama made the announcement, a top al-Qaeda ideologue promised revenge for bin Laden’s death. The commentator, going by the online name Assad al-Jihad2 posted on websites a long eulogy for the al-Qaeda leader and promised to “avenge the killing of the Sheik of Islam”.

The Pakistani Taliban also threatened attacks against government leaders, including President Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistan army and the United States.

“Now Pakistani rulers, President Zardari and the army will be our first targets. America will be our second target,” Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

US celebrations

Barack Obama called bin Laden’s death the ‘most significant achievement’ against al-Qaeda [EPA]

But as the news of bin Laden’s death spread, crowds gathered outside the White House in Washington DC to celebrate.

Former US president George Bush called his death a “momentous achievement”.

“The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done,” Bush said in a statement.

According to Al Jazeeera’s Rosalind Jordan in Washington, the operation had been in the making for the last nine or 10 months.

“The fact that it happened inside Pakistan, there have been suggestions that Pakistani intelligence may have been protecting them,” she said.

Patty Culhane, another Al Jazeera correspondent, said the US authorities got intelligence last September and were able to track bin Laden down through his couriers. They followed them to his compound which was reported to be worth over a million dollars.

Reporting from Pakistan, Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder said the development had caught a lot of people by surprise .

“He was considered by many as a hero, but not to the extent that people would come out on the streets. The reaction so far not likely to be strong on the streets, perhaps a protest here or there by the religious parties,” he said.

‘Symbolic victory’

Qais Azimy, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Kabul, said Afghan officials described bin Laden’s killing as a “symbolic victory”, since he was no longer directly connected to the group’s field operations.

Mark Kimmit, a US military analyst, said bin Laden’s death “was not the end of terrorism, but an end of a chapter.”

“Capturing or killing bin Laden has more iconic value. It will have symbolic value, because it has been a number of years since bin Laden has exercised day to day control over operations. We still have an al-Qaeda threat out there and that will be there for a number of years.

“This organisation (al-Qaeda) is more than bin Laden, it may be symbolised by bin Laden, but it definitely is more than bin Laden,” he said.

It is, however, a major accomplishment for Obama and his national security team. Obama’s predecessor, George Bush, had repeatedly vowed to bring to justice the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, but never did before leaving office in early 2009.

He had been the subject of a search since he eluded US soldiers and Afghan militia forces in a large-scale assault on the Tora Bora mountains in 2001. The trail quickly went cold after he disappeared and many intelligence officials believed he had been hiding in Pakistan.

While in hiding, bin Laden had taunted the West and advocated his views in videotapes spirited from his hideaway.

Besides September 11, Washington has also linked bin Laden to a string of attacks – including the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 bombing of the warship USS Cole in Yemen.

(Courtesy Al Jazeera English)

Ramallah – PNN –On April 22, 16 civilians injured, four arrested as Israeli troops attacked the weekly anti-wall protests in the villages of Bil’in, Nil’in and al-Nabi Saleh, in central West Bank as well as the village of al-Ma’ssra, in the south.

In Bil’in, 15 protesters were injured when troops attacked the weekly march. Today the protest in Bil’in ended the three day conference on popular struggle in Palestine. On Wednesday the village of Bil’in started its Sixth International Conference on the Palestinian Popular Struggle. This year the conference was dedicated to the Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni who was killed last Friday by a Salafist group in Gaza.

The conference was aimed at providing opportunities to build and strengthen ties between Palestinian, Israeli and international activists working against Israeli “apartheid” as organizers called it.

Today international and Israeli activists joined the villagers and marched towards the wall built of farmers lands after the midday prayers. Soldiers stopped protesters before the wall and fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets at them to force them back. People continued forward and reached to the gate of the wall as they do every Friday since 2005.

Troops fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets at them, injuring 15 people among them a journalist and three international supporters. Later soldiers forced people back into the village and stormed it firing tear gas at people’s homes; many were treated for the effects of tear gas inhalation.

In 2009 the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled in favor of Bil’in residents and ordered the military to reroute the wall giving back the village half of the land originally taken by the army to build the wall. Till today the military has not adhered to the court order.

In the nearby village of Nil’in, many were treated for the effects of tear gas inhalation today during the anti wall protest there. Troops attacked people using tear gas as soon as they reached the gate of the wall separating farmers from their lands.

Meanwhile two locals and two internationals were arrested when troops attacked the weekly protest against the wall and settlements in the village of al- al-Nabi Saleh. Villagers along with international and Israeli supporters marched to their lands where Israel is trying to build a new settlement. Troops fired tear gas at them to force them back into the village.

In southern West Bank, the villagers of al-Ma’ssara along with their international and Israeli supporters protested the Israeli wall being built on local farmers lands. Israeli soldiers attacked the protesters before leaving the village using tear gas; many were treated for the effects of tear gas inhalation.