politics - Tom on Diigo

17 Jul 08

He puts his finger on something that bothers me about all this "too big to fail" business, and it's namely this: that if investors come to believe that the government won't let something fail, then there's no reason for that something to take risks responsibly. The whole thing ends up being a confidence game. The other morning I was listening to an interview on the (excellent) public radio program Marketplace with Jim Rogers, a Singapore-based US investor, who was ripping the federal quasi-bailout of Fannie and Freddie. Here's an excerpt from the Rogers interview:

03 Jul 08

Don't Vote Labour

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labour politics uk-politics

Here’s a great idea for reducing poverty. We’ll employ a load of people to take some money off some other people using some very expensive and unreliable computer software to track the process.
Recently, some idiot police chief or other said something along the lines of ‘society is breaking apart because people walk on by when the see trouble’. Deep breath: I’ve got some news for you mate, it doesn’t take a PhD in anthropology from Oxford, which I’m sure you don’t have anyway, to figure out why this is the case. Why would I, or anyone else for that matter, risk intervening in a situation involving people I don’t know when there is, literally, nothing but downside for me? If I don’t get knifed in the process, I risk getting arrested instead. The numpty policeman might well reply, “that’s ok, it’ll all get sorted out later and there’s very little chance of you actually being charged with anything”.
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- Well, again, I’ve got some more news for you: you are completely and utterly wrong about this. By the time I’ve been arrested, finger printed, DNA tested and held in the cells overnight with an assorted bunch of crack addicts, binge drinkers, wife beaters and heaven-knows which other categories of miscreant, it is, most decidedly, not ok. Got it? No, I suspect not. Let me try some more then: try explaining to your boss that the reason you didn’t turn up for work was because you’d been arrested for kidnap, what impact do you think that’s going to have on your future promotion prospects? Try getting a visa to visit the US on holiday or business after being arrested (you’ll need to apply in advance since, once you’ve been arrested for something, going on the visa waiver program is foolish at best).
- Try applying for any number of jobs that require criminal background checks and see how far you get – declaring that you were once arrested for something won’t necessarily disbar you but you can bet it won’t help you get onto the short list. The list is endless as, indeed, is the length of time the police will keep your DNA on their database regardless of what you were arrested for and whether or not you were ever found guilty of anything. Get this message into your thick skulls: the system is so far stacked against the ordinary law abiding individual that they’d have to be deluded or, possibly, stupid to get involved.

25 Jun 08

Ethics Newsline » Commentary » Ethics and Earthquakes

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ethics business ethics politics corruption workplace morality china

Those who think ethics is merely an option — one of life’s electives, rather than an essential for survival — need to look closely at a photograph from last week’s news. It shows a pile of post-earthquake rubble in China’s Sichuan Province. Taken by a New York Times photographer, it captures all that is left of Xinjian Primary School, once a four-story building in the city of Dujiangyan. According to the accompanying story, several hundred children died in its May 12 collapse.
What makes the photograph remarkable, however, is not the rubble. It’s the two buildings flanking the pile. One is a kindergarten some 20 feet away. The other, a 10-story hotel, stands behind the site. Neither was seriously damaged. Nor was the Beijie Primary School, a five-minute walk away. Beijie, however, is for the children of the elite. Xinjian was for poorer children.
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- while violent events are natural, they only become disasters through human failure. These failures sometimes are charged to specific areas of study — engineering, architecture, hydrology, economics — or to related technological and logistical arenas, like transportation, emergency response, or building inspection services. But the real problem lies in the human application of ideas and practices within these areas. Hundreds more children could well be alive today if over time these applications had been managed rightly.
- So what went wrong? In a word, ethics.
- It’s probably safe to say that before a single floor collapsed at Xinjian or a single pillar buckled, there already had been an ethical collapse, a buckling of integrity. These moral failures are most visible in three ways:
- Negligence. In its tamest and subtlest form, moral failure begins with well-meaning managers and officials who are so beleaguered and overwhelmed that they neglect their obligations. When the tyranny of the immediate pushes the potentially devastating into the background, the polite phrase is deferred maintenance. In reality, what’s happening is the slow, impersonal, hardly visible assembly of a time bomb. The Xinjian Primary School apparently had a history of problems: Some years earlier one wing had been declared unsafe, torn down, and rebuilt. In hindsight, those in charge should have allocated more funds to reconstruction — and demanded results. If ethics is about fairness, neglecting Xinjian while building higher-quality schools nearby is profoundly unethical.
- Incompetence. If the negligent knew they were inviting disaster, they still might be vigilant. Incompetence, by contrast, is more dangerous, simply because those in charge usually know they lack the requisite knowledge and skill yet push forward anyway. Globally, a lot is known about designing safe schools in earthquake-prone areas and establishing standards for their construction. If laborers are hired despite not knowing how to implement those standards, that’s an irresponsible tolerance of incompetence — especially if the laborers are only there because they’re someone’s relative, neighbor, or loyal lackey. Find wholesale incompetence and you’ll also find the lack of another core ethical value, responsibility.
- Corruption. Neither negligence nor incompetence is necessarily unlawful, and each can be corrected by knowledge. Corruption, by contrast, is the worst kind of unethical behavior. It wallows in illegality, recognizes its own evil, and has no desire for correction. It can destroy even the most dutiful and competent organizations. Bribery, shakedowns, graft, and other pocket-lining ploys of the powerful — these unethical behaviors, according to the World Bank, cost the global economy more than $1 trillion annually. The parents in Dujiangyan had every reason to be suspicious that someone, somewhere, was paid off to build a substandard school — a towering dishonesty that no one could call ethical.

23 Jun 08

J. Budziszewski -- The Problem With Conservatism

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social entrepreneurship ethics conservative religion politics

Christians, of course, are not the only ones to have criticized mammonism. Warnings against the love of wealth were a staple even of ancient pagan conservatism. The idea was that virtue makes republics prosper, but prosperity leads to love of wealth, love of wealth leads to loss of virtue, and loss of virtue makes republics fall.
A more temperate but still objectionable form of mammonism is found in Toward the Future, a "lay letter" published in 1984 by a committee of prominent Catholic conservatives. Jesus told the story of a master who entrusts his servants with the care of his money while he is traveling to a distant place to receive a kingship. Upon his return, he finds that one servant has buried his share while the other two have made investments. The timid servant he scolds and dismisses, but the bold ones he praises and rewards with yet greater responsibilities. Traditionally the Church has understood this parable to mean that just as a king in this world expects his agents to take risks, not burying his money but investing it to earn a return, so God expects his people to take risks, not burying their gifts but using them to build up the Kingdom of Heaven. By contrast, the lay letter understands it to mean simply that God expects his people to invest their money to earn a return. "Preserving capital is not enough," the authors teach; "it must be made to grow." The use of gifts for the sake of the Kingdom becomes the growth of wealth for the sake of wealth.
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- even Adam Smith recognizes that the invisible hand does not work unless laborers and businessmen submit themselves to the restraints of justice, and that an interest in wealth alone will not induce them to do so. After all, if winning is all that matters, why keep the competition going at all? Why not use one's wealth to wring special privileges from the government and so become more wealthy still? Capitalism depends on a moral spirit which it cannot supply and may even weaken; it is, in the most exact of senses, a parasite on the faith. But a Christian parasite is not by that fact Christian.
- The eighth moral error of political conservatism is meritism. According to this notion I should do unto others as they deserve. With the addition of mammonism, matters become even simpler, for then those who need help are by definition undeserving, while those in a position to help are by definition deserving. That meritism is not a Christian doctrine comes as a surprise to many people. Large numbers think the meritist motto "God helps those who help themselves" is a quotation from the Bible. What the New Testament actually teaches is that in what we need most, we are helpless; the grace of God is an undeserved gift. According to Christianity I should do unto others not as they deserve, but as they need.
- What does the contrast between meritism and charity look like in ordinary human relationships? Consider the governmental policy of paying women cash prizes for bearing children out of wedlock. Liberals want to continue the policy because they cannot tell need from desire. Meritists propose ending it because the subsidies are undeserved. Although a Christian may accept the cutoff, he cannot accept it for the reason given. All of us at all times need and receive many things that we do not deserve. The problem with the subsidies is that they are not what is needed. They so completely split behavior from its natural consequences that they infantilize their supposed beneficiaries; to infantilize them is to debase them, and no one needs to be debased.
- After achieving the cutoff, the meritist thinks his work is done, but the Christian thinks his work has only begun. He must now find another way to offer help; and he had better be prepared to pay the price. For a portrait of that price, don't think of a bureaucrat, think of Mother Teresa.

Roger Scruton -- In the Footsteps of Moll Flanders, Banished to Rappahannock

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scruton conservative philosophy politics rappahannock

In these circumstances, who can wonder if we conservatives look with envy to the United States, where the real issues of modern politics are debated and confronted; where conservatives seem to be not only permitted to speak their mind but also invited to act on it;
Arriving in Rappahannock, however, we have become more keenly aware of the deep difference between English and American conservatism. Without intending any such thing, the English conservative finds himself embroiled in class warfare, in which his posture is always defensive. Whatever the cause—monarchy, private schools, the House of Lords, the Union, the countryside, field sports—he finds himself defending privileges associated with a landed upper class. Even if the aim is to make those privileges more widely available, they are nevertheless privileges, and by definition a privilege is something that not everyone can share.
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- In America, by contrast, conservatism means getting closer to the people, and adhering to a Constitution designed to give every citizen the right to pursue his own happiness in his own chosen way. It is not that America is without class-distinctions or that American conservatives are unaware of the social utility of hierarchies or of their need for protection. It is, rather, that hierarchies cause less offence when they are seen as the innocent results of choice. The democratic ethos liberates American conservatives from the burden of class, and enables them to address the fundamental issue of modern politics, which is freedom. By defending freedom, we also defend tradition, which is its spontaneous by-product. But there is no need to labour the point, when there is no party of Labour. Moreover, thanks to 9/11, Americans have woken up to the fundamental fact of modern politics, which is that freedom breeds resentment and will, therefore, always be under attack, not least from its own spoiled children, once they are comfortably installed, at public expense, in their university chairs.

05 Jun 08

YouTube - Inside USA - Lobbying for Israel - 05 April 08 - Part 2

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lobbying israel aipac politics propaganda

27 May 08

Why the presidential candidates won't talk about Israel | csmonitor.com

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israel propaganda political_correctness politics

Since its birth, Israel has received at least $114 billion from the US in direct foreign economic and military aid, says Shirl
McArthur, a retired US diplomat who periodically updates his Israel cost estimates for the Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs (WREMA), a magazine often critical of US policy toward Israel.
The late Washington economist Thomas Stauffer did that calculation several years ago. He found total official aid to
Israel, up to 2002, came to $247 billion. He added other costs of US support of Israel (interest on debt, higher oil prices,
etc.) to reach a highly controversial total of $1.6 trillion.
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- In March, a Memorandum of Understanding from the White House to Congress urged an additional $30 billion in military aid to
  Israel, a sum spread at about $3 billion a year through fiscal year 2018. Currently, Israel ranks as the top recipient of
  American foreign aid ($2.4 billion in 2007 by an official calculation) if reconstruction money for Iraq is excluded. Next
  are Egypt ($1.8 billion) and Afghanistan ($1 billion).
- To Findley, the "most powerful instrument of intimidation" used by pro-Israel groups is the charge of "anti-Semitism." The
  meaning of that term has been expanded. It used to be applied to those hostile to a race or faith, that is, against Jews or
  Judaism. Now it's often applied to critics of Israel or US-Israel policy, says Findley.
- Another fear of politicians involves the campaign contributions of pro-Israel political action committees (PACs). Last week
  WREMA reported that more than 20 of these PACs have contributed $1.1 million to Washington politicians in the 2007-08 election
  cycle. That amount is dwarfed by what the three presidential candidates have raised for their campaigns.
- Since Israel now has a relatively prosperous per capita national income comparable to Cyprus or Slovenia, direct US economic
  aid to Israel has been replaced gradually by military aid. Since money is fungible, that would make little real economic difference
  to Israel as its government pays its high military bills. In fact, Congress allows Israel to use 26 percent of the aid it
  receives to buy arms outside the US, thereby helping build up its own weapons industry. "We are thus shooting ourselves [the
  US weapons industry] in the foot," charges Janet McMahon, managing editor of WREMA.
- Professor Walt maintains he's pro-Israel. The US refusal to put pressure on Israel to settle with the Palestinians on a two-state
  solution, he argues, is not helpful.
  
  "Giving any country unconditional backing encourages irresponsible behavior," he says. It could lead to an apartheid state,
  or as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it, Israel facing "a South African-style struggle."

24 May 08

Smart politics: honesty is now my policy

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cs politics

My husband and I were the campaign managers for our state representative.
Our candidate (we'll call him Rick) was a UPS truck driver, a small-town mayor
running for the open seat in our district and his politics were right up my
alley. Rick’s opponent was a well-known local lawyer.
For the state party committee, our campaign became a high priority.
Soon the committee took more control, and my husband and I watched as the
race developed into a bitter battle.
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- We battled it out, too. Our anger grew with each insult aimed our candidate. Can
  you believe he said that? Can you believe they did that?
  That’s simply not true!
- And then, about a week before election night, I received dozens of political
  flyers and pamphlets through the mail slot of my front door. On top was the
  one our committee had just sent out, questioning our opponent's "family values."
  That’s when I began to realize how wrong it all was.
- I consider myself a prayerful person, someone who deeply values spirituality.
  But the slanderous flyers helped me to see that over the years, I had led
  myself to believe that political "truth" was separate from the real truth.
- We were working to let the public know "the truth" about our opponent.
  But for me, Truth is another name for God. Were my motives in that race to
  present truth to the public, or were my motives to destroy the reputation
  of another human being? To label him as dishonest, untrustworthy and incapable—even
  if he wasn’t?
- I took some time to think. The real truth was that although the other
  candidate had different values, he was a good, honest man. I needed to be
  willing to let my spiritual perspective overrule my political perspective.
  And that was very hard.
- Then something happened that I didn't expect.
  
  I became aware that really, both candidates were good. And both parties
  were offering worthy public figures who sincerely wanted to serve their community.
- I can only tell you that after 15 years in political work, I had never considered
  that option! I felt impelled to prayerfully support either candidate
  in office.
- We lost the election that night, but I had no regrets. Our opponent
  went on to serve for more than 10 years and represented the interests of our
  community very well.

19 May 08

Adventure of Strategy: Cry the Beloved Country

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zimbabwe africa politics

This photo could have come from the darkest days of apartheid, but it didn't. It was taken just days ago, of a Zimbabwean that had been set on fire by rampaging South Africans in an informal settlement near Johannesburg, in a fit of xenophobia. Police extinguished the blaze within seconds of the photo being taken by a press photographer, but doctors were unable to save the man. In the last week, at least twelve foreigners have been murdered and dozens more brutally assaulted. Apparently, crowds watching the man burn laughed hilariously when they were told that their behaviour was barbaric.

Words fail me.

04 May 08

Crunchy Con - Rod Dreher, Conservative blog, Beliefnet conservative politics and religion blog

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economics politics conservative

Yesterday at the newspaper, several of us met with a group of religious-left activists who came in to discuss some of the organizing they'd been doing, or intended to do, around the subject of income inequality. They were filled with ardor over the shrinking middle class, and mad about the fact that people are working longer and not getting ahead. It's hard not to share their concern, and in fact I do share it. But their idea for fixing it, as far as I could tell, came down to soaking the rich with taxes, and redistributing the wealth via the government. While I wouldn't mind seeing the ultrawealthy shoulder a higher share of the tax burden, that hardly begins to account for our condition.

Crunchy Con - Rod Dreher, Conservative blog, Beliefnet conservative politics and religion blog

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military politics propaganda corruption

You know all those retired generals and other military officers we've all seen on TV these past few years, explaining events in Iraq? Turns out that most of them were, or have been, more or less on the Pentagon's payroll. Few if any of these connections have been made public, but the New York Times sued to see 8,000 pages of records, and this is what they found. Excerpt:

26 Apr 08

Lessons on integrity in politics

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integrity ethics politics spirituality law

When you’re appointed to a position at higher levels of government,
the document that represents your commission opens with this statement: “Reposing
special trust in your integrity, prudence, ability, I do appoint you ...”—and
then goes on to describe the position to which one is appointed.
My own integrity
was tested in the White House while I was Deputy Counsel to then-President
Nixon, and appointed to co-chair the “Plumbers,” a team tasked with discrediting
Dr. Daniel Ellsberg. He was an antiwar activist who released classified documents
about the US Vietnam War strategy to two major newspapers. We were also supposed
to track down any other “leaks” of classified documents. But in carrying out
our assignment, we broke the law.
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- I chose to plead guilty and willingly accept any sentence the court would
  impose because I felt I needed to do that in order to reestablish my own sense
  of integrity.
- About 15 years ago, I began to think through what had led to the breakdown
  in legal and ethical conduct while I was in government. And I realized those
  words “Reposing special trust in your integrity” weren’t
  always taken seriously.
- I began to examine what the idea of integrity really
  signifies. The definition of the word derives from the root integer,
  which means “whole.” An integer is a whole number. From this, I worked out
  three questions I could ask to keep my bearings under pressure.
- The first question is primarily intellectual, or analytical: “Is it
  [the proposed action] whole and complete?”
- The second question addresses the moral dimension to integrity, which
  we often associate with honesty and uprightness. It asks: “Is it right?”
- The third question, fundamentally spiritual in nature, is this: “Is
  it good?”
- I added this third question just a few years ago, because I felt
  that integrity also means “perfection, an unimpaired state.” Since God is
  good, this question really asks, “Is the proposed action Godlike?” Whenever
  I’m under enormous pressure or the stakes are high, I’ve found that’s the
  time to be still and to ask those three questions. And my experience has taught
  me that when you can answer them affirmatively, you’re safe.
- I realized that it was important
  to acknowledge the mistake I’d made, take responsibility for it, and pay the
  legal consequences, so I could reestablish my innocence as I went forward.
- Mrs. Eddy made a very interesting observation where she asked, “If you
  commit a crime, should you acknowledge to yourself that you are a criminal?”
  And her answer was, “Yes.” I’ve learned in my study and practice of Christian
  Science that to recognize a sin aids you in destroying it. I had to be clear
  about the abuse of power that I’d engaged in, so I could honestly say, “That’s
  not the kind of thought with which I want to be associated any longer.” Then
  I had to take responsibility for it and be willing to pay the full legal consequences.
- To the extent that I’m clear in consciousness about that truth, then
  the path unfolds before me. And that’s what actually happened. Within two
  weeks of my pleading guilty, a good friend told me that one of the most respected
  Seattle lawyers, William L. Dwyer, was willing to talk to me about representing
  me in the attorney discipline process. When he took my case, he said we were
  going to take “the long view.” We needed to find ways for me to make amends—to
  show that I’d understood what went wrong and to take steps to correct it—and
  that it could take years.
- it took us seven years from that moment until I was eventually
  reinstated by the court to the practice of law. But it all came together because
  of that farsighted, long-term view.
- Now some 30 years have passed. It’s not necessarily pleasant to bring
  these events back into the public discourse. But to me, the lessons of Watergate
  are still relevant because breakdowns in integrity and abuses of power are
  so very much in the news these days. They still need healing in government,
  in sports, in the professions—in just about any human activity.
- In many situations, the premium on winning is so high that it overrides
  a person’s inner sense of what’s right and wrong. You get swept up in an almost
  mesmeric state, and you can become so identified with a leader, or with a
  group and its “groupthink,” that you lose your individual ability to see and
  perceive what’s going on.
- There are also other threats to our integrity that
  come in the form of vanity, or sometimes arrogance or hubris—“I can do anything!”
  Or immaturity. But we all have within us, from God, the essential qualities
  that keep us safe, such as humility and meekness.
- The challenges and the threats that come along may change. But to stay
  absolutely anchored in what we know is right and good and constitutional is
  a perennial lesson and a demand. The only requirement, as I see it, is for
  each individual to stay tightly connected to his/her deepest sense of what
  is right and what is good—to one’s own highest sense of integrity.
- After serving prison time, Bud Krogh spent five years teaching
  graduate school and rebuilding his record of integrity. In 1980 he was readmitted
  to the bar in Washington State. He currently practices law, teaches, and trains
  others based on what he learned through his experiences.

31 Mar 08

Free market defenders need to find their voice - Telegraph

'The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back."

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bankers free-markets government philosophy politics social entrepreneurship

'The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back."

04 Apr 07

The Business of Global Poverty — HBS Working Knowledge

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economics harvard hbs politics poverty social-entrepreneurship

To be a positive, effective force for development, Scott concludes, a capitalist system must be understood to be more than the "invisible hand" that is implicit in the pricing mechanism. "Capitalism also has a visible hand that is the expression of public policy through legislation and regulations administered by a bureaucracy," he says. "That visible hand creates, enforces, and modernizes all market frameworks. To ignore this reality is like ignoring segregation in the Old South."
"Poverty can only be truly addressed if you meet four conditions," Chu explains. "You must have huge scale to reach the billions who are in poverty; solutions must be enduring and last over generations; solutions must be truly effective and make a difference; and all this must happen efficiently. Only through a commercial approach can you achieve all those things, and the great power of microfinance comes through its ability to generate profit. There is no contradiction between social impact and good profitability; in fact, profitability is central to that social impact."
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- While GPP faculty note that it is too early to declare any models runaway successes, they point to some unique ways that multinational corporations (MNCs) and local businesses are serving the previously invisible BOP market: Nestlé, with its "milk-district model" that encourages supporting businesses to spring up around its dairies in rural India; CEMEX's program of affordable payments and materials that enables impoverished Mexican families to build their own housing; or in Brazil, with Kodak's no-frills camera/film packages, or the department store Magazine Luiza's … merchandise, payment plans, and customer service, all designed to make consumers out of those outside the formal economy. "The GPP's intent is not to discover the next big idea," Rangan says, "but to find models that business can use to engage with the base of the pyramid."
- Today, market forces, private-sector know-how, and grassroots initiatives such as microfinance are all being looked to as tools to alleviate poverty. Business, once viewed by many critics as part of the problem, is increasingly being called on to be part of the solution. How business can do this most effectively is the focus of the GPP's research and scholarly activity.
- As members of the School's Global Poverty Project (GPP), Kash Rangan, John Quelch, and other faculty members have studied and researched the issue of business and global poverty for some time. They believe that in pursuing its own self-interest in opening and expanding the BOP market, business can make a profit while serving the poorest of consumers and contributing to development.
- Absent a Visible Hand, Capitalism Can Make Matters Worse
  
  by HBS Professor Bruce Scott
  
  Unfettered capitalism exacerbates income inequality and can undermine capitalism or democracy, or both, asserts HBS professor Bruce Scott. "To put an egalitarian face on capitalism, it's often noted that more than 50 percent of Americans are shareholders," Scott observes. "But it's also true that 10 percent of Americans own about 80 percent of the stock. In Latin America, 2 or 3 percent could easily hold 90 percent. So when we talk about 'maximizing for the value of the shareholder,' we are talking about enriching the rich. In much of the world, and in Latin America in particular, thoughtful business leaders worry that capitalism, especially U.S.-style capitalism, threatens to destabilize their democracies."

25 Mar 07

How I found myself with the Islamic Fascists, Counterpunch, 11 Aug 2006

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author:jonathan.cook information-bias jonathan.cook politics propaganda

Unlike
us, they do not sigh, they burn with fury.

This is
something President Bush and his obedient serf in Britain, Tony Blair, need to
learn. But of course, they do not want to understand because they, and their
predecessors, are responsible for creating those patterns and for writing that
epic tale in blood. Bush and Blair and their advisers know that the plan is far
more important than the rage, the "red" alert levels at airports, or even planes
crashing into buildings and plunging out of the sky.
As we
approach the fifth official anniversary of the "war on terror", the foiled UK
"terror plot" has neatly provided George W Bush, the "leader of the free world",
with a chance to remind us of our fight against the "Islamic fascists". But what
if the war on terror is not really about separating the good guys from the bad
guys, but about deciding what a good guy can be allowed to say and think?
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- What if
  the "Islamic fascism" President Bush warns us of is not just the terrorism
  associated with Osama bin Laden and his elusive al-Qaeda network but a set of
  views that many Arabs, Muslims and Pakistanis -- even the odd humanist --
  consider normal, even enlightened? What if the war on "Islamic fascism" is less
  about fighting terrorism and more about silencing those who dissent from the
  West's endless wars against the Middle East?
- I have
  my reasons, good ones I think, but would anyone take them seriously? What would
  the officials make of my argument that, before Israel's war on Lebanon, no one
  could point to a single terrorist incident Hizbullah had been responsible for in
  at least a decade? Would the authorities appreciate my comment that a terrorist
  organisation that doesn't do terrorism is a chimera, a figment of the
  President's imagination?
- what would they say if I claimed that this war is not really about Lebanon, or
  even Hizbullah, but part of a wider US and Israeli campaign to isolate and
  pre-emptively attack Iran?
- our news bulletins are too busy to concentrate on more than one atrocity
  at a time. This month it is Lebanon. Next month it will probably be Iran. Then
  maybe it will be back to Baghdad or the Palestinians. The horror stories sound
  so much less significant, the need for action so less pressing, when each is
  unrelated to the next. Were we to watch the Arab channels, where all the blood
  and suffering blends into a single terrible Middle Eastern epic, we might start
  to make connections, and maybe suspect that none of this happens by accident.

From the new 'Anti-Semitism' to Nuclear Holocaust, Counterpunch, 23 Sept

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aipac anti-semitism israel politics propaganda usa

The
trajectory of a long-running campaign that gave birth this month to the
preposterous all-party British parliamentary report into anti-Semitism in the UK
can be traced back to intensive lobbying by the Israeli government that began
more than four years ago, in early 2002.
In Beyond Chutzpah, Norman Finkelstein documents the
advent of claims about a new anti-Semitism to Israel's lacklustre performance in
the 1973 Yom Kippur War. On that occasion, it was hoped, the charge of
anti-Semitism could be deployed against critics to reduce pressure on Israel to
return Sinai to Egypt and negotiate with the Palestinians.
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- What distinguished the new anti-Semitism from traditional anti-Jewish
  racism of the kind that led to Germany's death camps, said its promoters, was
  that this time it embraced the progressive left rather than the far right.
- Like
  its precursors, argued Israel's apologists, the latest wave of anti-Semitism was
  the responsibility of Western progressive movements -- though with a fresh
  twist. An ever-present but largely latent Western anti-Semitism was being stoked
  into frenzy by the growing political and intellectual influence of extremist
  Muslim immigrants. The implication was that an unholy alliance had been spawned
  between the left and militant Islam.
- Netanyahu proposed "lancing the boil" by beginning an aggressive public
  relations campaign of "self-defence". A month later Israel's president, Moshe
  Katsav, picked on the softest target of all, warning during a state visit that
  the fight against anti-Semitism must begin in Germany, where "voices of
  anti-Semitism can be heard".
- as
  ever, the main target of the new anti-Semitism campaign were audiences in the
  US, Israel's generous patron. There, members of the Israel lobby were turning
  into a chorus of doom.
- In the
  early stages of the campaign, the lobby's real motivation was not concealed: it
  wanted to smother a fledgling debate by American civil society, particularly the
  churches and universities, to divest -- withdraw their substantial investments
  -- from Israel in response to Operation Defensive Shield.
- It is
  now clear that Israel and its loyalists had three main goals in mind as they
  began their campaign. Two were familiar motives from previous attempts at
  highlighting a "new anti-Semitism". The third was new.
  
  The
  first aim, and possibly the best understood, was to stifle all criticism of
  Israel, particularly in the US. During the course of 2003 it became increasingly
  apparent to journalists like myself that the American media, and soon much of
  the European media, was growing shy of printing even the mild criticism of
  Israel it usually allowed. By the time Israel began stepping up the pace of
  construction of its monstrous wall across the West Bank in spring 2003, editors
  were reluctant to touch the story.
- McCarthyite organisations like CampusWatch helped enforce the reign of
  intimidation. Academics who stood their ground, like Columbia University's
  Joseph Massad, attracted the vindictive attention of new activist groups like
  the David Project.
- By
  suggesting that Europe in particular had become a hotbed of Islamic
  fundamentalism, it was hoped that Israeli Jews, many of whom have more than one
  passport, would be afraid to leave. A survey by the Jewish Agency taken as early
  as May 2002 showed, for example, that 84 per cent of Israelis believed
  anti-Semitism had again become a serious threat to world Jewry.
- In
  France, for example, peculiar anti-Semitic attacks were given plenty of media
  coverage: from a senior rabbi who was stabbed (by himself, as it later turned
  out) to a young Jewish woman attacked on a train by anti-Semitic thugs (except,
  as it later emerged, she was not Jewish).
- The
  third goal, however, had not seen before. It tied the rise of a new
  anti-Semitism with the increase of Islamic fundamentalism in the West, implying
  that Muslim extremists were asserting an ideological control over Western
  thinking. It chimed well with the post 9-11 atmosphere.
- This
  theory of a "free-floating" contagion of hatred towards Jews, being spread by
  Arabs and their sympathisers through the internet, media and international
  bodies, found many admirers. The British neo-conservative journalist Melanie
  Philips claimed popularly, if ludicrously, that British identity was being
  subverted and pushed out by an Islamic identity that was turning her country
  into a capital of terror, "Londonistan".
- Netanyahu's implication was transparent: Iran is looking for another Final
  Solution, this one targeting Israel as well as world Jewry. The moment of
  reckoning is near at hand, according to Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister,
  who claims against all the evidence that Iran is only months away from
  posssessing nuclear weapons.

Israel's Plan for a Military Strike on Iran, Counterpunch, 12 Oct 2006

www.jkcook.net/0286.htm - Preview

bbc iran israel media politics propaganda usa war weapons

The Middle
East, and possibly the world, stands on the brink of a terrible conflagration as
Israel and the United States prepare to deal with Iran's alleged ambition to
acquire nuclear weapons. Israel, it becomes clearer by the day, wants to use its
air force to deliver a knock-out blow against Tehran. It is not known whether it
will use conventional weapons or a nuclear warhead in such a strike.
It does not
clarify that Israel's own large nuclear arsenal was secretly developed and is
entirely unmonitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or that it is
perceived as a threat by its neighbours and may be fuelling a Middle East arms
race.
13 more annotations...
- there
  is no consideration of how in the longer term unilateral action by Israel, with
  implicit sanction by the international community, is certain to provoke a steep
  rise in global jihad against the West.
- BBC, decided this week that it should air
  a documentary entitled "Will Israel bomb Iran?". It is the question on
  everyone's lips
- interviews with three former
  Israeli prime ministers, a former Israeli military chief of staff, various
  officials in Israeli military intelligence and a professor who designs Israel's
  military arsenal.
  
  All of them
  speak with one voice: Israel, they claim, is about to be "wiped out" by Iranian
  nuclear weapons and must defend itself "whatever the consequences".
  
  They are
  given plenty of airtime to repeat unchallenged well-worn propaganda Israel has
  been peddling through its own media, and which has been credulously amplified by
  the international media: that Iran is led by a fanatical anti-Semite who, like
  Adolf Hitler, believes he can commit genocide against the Jewish people, this
  time through a nuclear holocaust.
- Binyamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister and the current
  leader of the opposition. He claims repeatedly that the only possible reason
  Iran and its president could want a nuclear arsenal is for Israel's
  "extermination". "If he can get away with it, he'll do it." "Ayatollahs with
  atombic bombs are a powerful threat to all of us." A nuclear Iran "is a threat
  unlike anything we have seen before. It's beyond politics" -- apparently worse
  than the nuclear states of North Korea and Pakistan, the latter a military
  dictatorship and friend of the US barely containing within its borders some of
  the most fanatical jihadist movements in the world.
  
  Apart from
  a brief appearance by an Iranian diplomat, no countervailing opinions are
  entertained in the BBC programme; only Israel's military and political
  leadership is allowed to speak.
- But, as has
  now been pointed out on numerous occasions (though clearly not often enough for
  the BBC to have noticed), Khomeini and Ahmadinejad were referring to the need
  for regime change, the ending of the regime occupying the Palestinians in
  violation of international law. They were not talking, as Netanyahu and co
  claim, about the destruction of the state of Israel or the Jewish people. The
  implication of the speech is that the current Israeli regime will end because
  occupying powers are illegitimate and unsustainable, not because Iran plans to
  fire nuclear missiles at the Jewish state or commit genocide.
- Overlooked
  by the programme makers is the fact that "fragile" Israel is currently the only
  country in the Middle East armed with nuclear warheads, several hundred of them,
  as well as one of the most powerful armies in the world, which presumably make
  most of its neighbours feel "fragile" too, with far more reason.
- As should
  be clear by now, the Israeli government's fingerprints are all over this BBC
  "documentary". And that is hardly surprising because the man behind this
  "independent" production is Israel's leading film-maker: Noam Shalev.
  
  Shalev,
  a graduate of a New York film school, has been making a spate of documentaries
  through his production company Highlight Films, based in Herzliya, near Tel
  Aviv, that have been lapped up by the BBC and other foreign broadcasters. With
  the BBC's stamp of approval, it is easy for Shalev to sell his films around the
  world.
- Shalev's
  films always humanise his Israeli subjects, showing them as complex, emotional
  and caring beings, while largely ignoring the millions of Palestinians the
  Israeli government and army are oppressing.
- According
  to a profile of Shalev published in the Israeli media in 2004, his success
  derives from the fact that he has developed a "soft-sell approach", showing
  Israel in a good light without "the straightforward 'hasbara' [propaganda]
  efforts which explain Israel's case that Israel's Foreign Ministry is required
  to disseminate to European and American news outlets."
- Shalev's
  latest film, "Will Israel bomb Iran?", follows this well-trodden path. Arabs and
  Muslims are again deprived of a voice, as are non-Israeli experts.
- It might
  have occurred to someone at the BBC to wonder why Shalev gets these chances to
  show things no one else is allowed to. Could it be that the "hasbara" division
  of the Israeli Foreign Ministry has got far more sophisticated than it once was?
- Is the
  Israeli government using Shalev, wittingly or not, and is he in turn using the
  BBC, to spread Israeli propaganda? Propaganda that may soon propel us towards
  the "clash of civilisations" so longed for by Israel's leadership.
- But the
  programme's unequivocal main theme -- echoing precisely Israel's own agenda --
  is that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is hellbent on destroying Israel.
  The film-makers treat seriously, bordering on reverentially, preposterous
  comments from Israel's leaders about this threat.

Israel's Minister of Strategic Threats, Counterpunch, 25 Oct 2006

www.jkcook.net/0287.htm - Preview

author:jonathan.cook iran israel jonathan.cook politics

In the
newly established post of Minister for Strategic Threats, Lieberman -- the
avowed Arab hater -- will shape Israel's response to Iran, leading the chorus
threats being made by Israel that the country is only a hair's breadth from
dropping bombs, possibly nuclear warheads, on Tehran. After that, he will
presumably help the government decide what other "strategic threats" it faces.
So why are
Israel's politicians, of the left and right, so comfortable sitting with
Lieberman, the leader of Israel's only unquestionably fascist party? Because, in
truth, Lieberman is not the maverick politician of popular imagination, even if
he is every bit the racist -- a Jewish Jorg Haider or Jean Marie Le Pen.
7 more annotations...
- From their
  political infancy, the latter three were schooled in the minor arts of Israeli
  diplomacy: feel free to speak plainly in the womb of the party; speak firmly but
  cautiously in Hebrew to other Israelis; and speak in another tongue entirely
  when using English, the language of the goyim, the non-Jews.
- He rapidly
  rose through the ranks to become director-general of Likud from 1993-96 and soon
  afterwards to head the office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. For many
  years he was the darling of the Likud, a party that today exists in two halves:
  its original incarnation, once again led by Netanyahu; and the renovated,
  sleeker model, Kadima, founded by Sharon.
- But it was
  in breaking from Likud and founding his own party, Yisrael Beiteinu, in 1999
  that Lieberman finally found his voice outside the Likud's smoke-filled rooms.
  The audience for his message was as untutored in the deceits of Israeli
  politicking as Lieberman himself.
- Neither
  Olmert nor Netanyahu can afford to say what is really on their minds: that they
  want to cleanse the region of as many Palestinians as they can manage -- most
  certainly those in the occupied territories, and later the even bigger nuisance
  of the ones who have citizenship and undermine Israel's Jewishness.
- they can let a Lieberman, the charismatic leader of a popular party who does
  dare to say these things, join the government with minimal damage to their own
  reputations.
- Even now
  they do little to conceal the fact that such thoughts are uppermost in their
  minds. Netanyahu, currently Israel's most popular politician and leader of the
  opposition, has repeatedly called the 1.2 million Arab citizens of the country a
  "demographic timebomb". Back in 2002, for example, he told an audience of
  policymakers: "If there is a demographic problem, and there is, it is with the
  Israeli Arabs who will remain Israeli citizens We therefore need a policy that
  will first of all guarantee a Jewish majority."
- Israel already has
  legislation requiring all parties running for the Knesset to support Israel
  remaining a "Jewish and democratic state". Technically, the only non-Zionist
  parties -- two Arab parties and the small joint Jewish and Arab Communist party
  -- could quite legally be disqualified from all general elections under the
  current legislation. They expect that at some point in the near future they will
  be too.

War on Lebanon Planned for at least a Year

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14159.htm - Preview

idf israel lebanon media politics propaganda subterfuge usa war

Matthew Kalman reveals that Israel's wideranging assault on
Lebanon has been planned in a general way for years, and a
specific plan has been in the works for over a year. The "Three
Week War" was shown to Washington think tanks and officials last
year on powerpoint by a senior Israeli army officer:

"More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began
giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis,
to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks,
setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing
detail."
The Israelis tend to launch their wars of choice in the
summer, in part because they know that European and American
universities will be the primary nodes of popular opposition,
and the universities are out in the summer. This war has nothing
to do with captured Israeli soldiers. It is a long-planned war
to increase Israel's ascendency over Hizbullah and its patrons.
7 more annotations...
- The Israelis have their own Domino
  Theory, which haunts them the way the original haunted Lyndon
  Johnson-- and just as foolishly.
- There was zero likelihood of
  Hezbollah launching such a strike unprovoked. But this capacity
  formed at least a slight drag on the Israeli ability to strike
  Iran and the Palestinians with impunity. The destruction of the
  Hizbullah arsenal may be the precursor of even more drastic
  action against the Palestinians and perhaps a bombing raid on
  Iran's nuclear research facilities near Isfahan.
- Since Egypt opted out of the military struggle for economic
  reasons and since the US invasion broke Iraq's legs, there is no
  conventional military threat to Israel. Israel seeks complete
  military superiority, for several reasons.
- The Right in Israel is
  determined to permanently subjugate the Palestinians and
  forestall the emergence of a Palestinian state. This course of
  action requires the constant exercise of main force against the
  Palestinians, who resist it, as well as threats against Arab or
  Muslim neighbors who might be tempted to help the Palestinians.
  Thus, Iraq and Iran both had to be punished and weakened.
  Likewise, the Israeli Right has never given up an expansionist
  ideology. For instance, the Israelis have a big interest in the
  Litani River in south Lebanon. If and when the Israeli military
  and political elite felt they needed to add territory by taking
  it from neighbors, they wished to retain that capability.
- For the Bush administration, Iran and Hizbullah are not
  existential threats. They are proximate threats. Iran is hostile
  to US corporate investment in the oil-rich Gulf,, and so is a
  big obstacle to American profit-making in the region.
  
  Rumsfeld is worried about Iran's admission as an observer to the
  Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is to say, that he
  is worried about a budding Chinese-Islamic axis that might lock
  up petroleum reserves and block US investments.
- At some
  points, the Pentagon has even tried to blame Iran for the
  radical Sunni Arab violence in Iraq, which makes no sense at all
  (and thus that propaganda campaign has been put on the back
  burner).
- Because of their fetish for states, the Neoconservatives of the
  Bush administration are unable to see that the Levant and points
  east are now the province of militia-parties that dominate
  localities and wield asymmetrical paramilitary force in such a
  way as to stymie states, whether local host states, local
  adversaries, or imperial Powers. Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas and
  other groups in Gaza and the West Bank, al-Qaeda/ radical
  Bedouins in the Sinai, the Muslim Brotherhood in some Sunni
  areas of Syria, the tribes and gangs of Maan in Jordan, the
  Peshmerga of the Kurds, the guerrilla groups of the Sunni Arabs
  in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, Badr Corps and Marsh Arabs of the Iraqi
  Shiites, the Basij and Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Iran, the
  party-tribes of Afghanistan--whether the Tajik Jami'at-i Islami
  or the Pushtun Taliban--and the biradaris and ethnic mafias of
  Pakistan, are all arguably as significant actors as states, and
  often more significant.

Jews for Justice for Palestinians

www.jfjfp.org/about.htm - Preview

israel middle.east middleeast peace politics resource source uk

WHO ARE WE?

Jews for Justice for Palestinians is a network of Jews who are British or live in Britain, practising and secular, Zionist and not. We oppose Israeli policies that undermine the livelihoods, human, civil and political rights of the Palestinian people.

We support the right of Israelis to live in freedom and security within
Israel's 1967 borders.

As well as organising to ensure that Jewish opinions critical of Israeli policy are heard in Britain, we extend support to Palestinians trapped in the spiral of violence and repression. We believe that such actions are important in countering antisemitism and the claim that opposition to Israel’s destructive policies is itself antisemitic.

We cooperate with other organisations on specific issues without necessarily endorsing everything they do.
The Torah teaches: 'Justice,
justice, you shall pursue' (Deuteronomy 16:20).

To secure a lasting settlement to the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis so they can live in peace and security, thrive side by side, and co-operate together, Jews today are obligated to pursue justice on behalf of both peoples.”

RABBI ELIZABETH TIKVAH SARAH
7 more annotations...
- a founding member of European Jews for a Just Peace, a federation of Jewish groups in ten European countries whose principles include:
  
  condemnation of all violence against civilians in the conflict,
  no matter by whom it is carried out.
  recognition of Israel's 1967 'green line' borders;
  commitment to the Palestinians' right to a state in the territories
  currently occupied by Israel in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza;
  calling on Israel to acknowledge its part in the creation of the
  Palestinian refugee problem and its obligation to negotiate a just, fair
  and practical resolution of the issue.
- In mid 2006, our over twelve hiundred signatories included five rabbis;
  99 professors (including four Fellows of the Royal Society and two fellows
  of
  the British
  Association); 107 medical and academic doctors; three OBEs; several OBEs,
  CBEs and MBEs, three
  knights
  and
  one Member
  of
  Parliament.
- The list includes Geoffrey Bindman, Stephen Fry, Eric Hobsbawm, Nicolas
  Kent, Mike Leigh, Miriam Margolyes, Jonathan Miller, Susie Orbach, Harold
  Pinter, Jacqueline Rose, Alexei Sayle, Antony Sher, Gillian Slovo, Tom Stoppard,
  Janel Suzman and Zoë Wanamaker.
- We support Israeli peace and human-rights organizations morally
  and financially including:
  
  Bat Shalom (Women for Peace), Breaking the Silence,
  
  Courage to Refuse, Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc),
  
  the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD),
  
  Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch, Physicians for Human Rights,
  
  Rabbis for Human Rights, Ta'ayush (Arab-Jewish Partnership),
  
  Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit) and Zochrot (Remembrance).
- We channel humanitarian aid through the British Shalom Salaam Trust, an
  independent grant-giving charity.
- We provide practical support to the Palestinian economy: planting olive
  trees, supporting Zaytoun, a fair-trade organisation marketing Palestinian
  olive oil and encouraging fact-finding trips to the area.
- HOW YOU CAN HELP
  
  Encourage Jewish friends, relatives and colleagues to join our
  growing list of signatories.
  Join one of our local or special interest groups. Currently there
  are groups in Manchester, Brighton, Bristol, Oxford, Hertfordshire, Leicester,
  Norwich, the West Midlands, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow. There is
  also a Writers Against the Occupation group, an Academic network, a Therapists
  Group, which supports counselling work in Palestine, and Jewish Students
  for Justice for Palestinians.

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