Author Archives: News Sources

EU must back Palestinians cut off from farmlands by Israel

Human Rights Watch: The farmers of the West Bank village of Beit Surik used to make their living selling oil from their olive trees. Now, says Abu Rami, the head of the village farmers’ association, they cannot produce enough olive oil for their own families. The problem is the system Israel has set up for getting access to their land in the West Bank is on the other side of Israel’s separation barrier. In effect, Israel treats all Palestinians living in or seeking to reach their own lands on the Israeli side of the barrier as though they were security threats.

Israel began building its separation barrier – in some places a fence, in others an eight metre-high concrete wall with guard towers – in 2002, for the stated purpose of preventing Palestinian suicide bombers from attacking Israeli civilians. The International Court of Justice ruled, in 2004, that the barrier route violates international law where it veers into the occupied Palestinian territories. Today, 85 per cent of the barrier’s route lies inside the West Bank, cutting tens of thousands of Palestinians off from lands they own or previously farmed without restriction.

Israel argues that it has opened gates in the barrier to allow West Bank Palestinians to reach their lands. But the daily reality belies this claim. By preventing these Palestinian farmers from reaching their land for most of the year, Israel is reducing many of them to poverty. To pass through the gates, Palestinians must “coordinate” – the Israeli term for getting advance permission from the military. The Palestinians must also obtain special military permits to reach the more than 18,400 hectares on the other side that Israel has designated “seam zones”: areas that are closed military zones to Palestinians, though not to Israelis.

In a confidential report from July 2011, which was later leaked; European Union heads of mission dealing with Palestinian issues recommended that the EU should “encourage Israel to open the gates to the seam zone on a more regular basis without prior coordination”. One affected area is known as the Biddu enclave. It consists of eight villages with 30,000 residents surrounded by the barrier on three sides. The barrier has cut off a group of Palestinian farmers there from 50 per cent of their farmlands and 70 per cent of their grazing lands.

In response to petitions to Israel’s High Court of Justice, the military built five gates for Palestinian farmers in the barrier around the enclave. All five gates require advance “coordination”. And one is also a seam zone gate, meaning Palestinians need special permits to use it. The result has been that farmers from the enclave were unable to reach their farmlands for 268 days in 2009, 282 days in 2010, 328 days in 2011 and 84 days in 2012 – as of April 3, according to UN monitors. On the limited days that Israel grants access, it does so without adequately considering the seasonal variations in farming and harvesting. A farmer from the village of Biddu, Faruq Radad, says that he owns two hectares of grape vines beyond the barrier – but that for the past two years, the days that Israel allowed access did not correspond to the grape harvest season. His grapes rotted on the vine.

Israel’s High Court has rejected arguments that security needs could be met with a less restrictive system, such as soldiers checking farmers for weapons before allowing them to cross the barrier. But Israel imposes a much less restrictive system on Palestinians working in Israeli settlements. For example, about 150 Palestinians from one of the villages in the Biddu enclave work in the settlement of Har Adar – according to the Beit Iksa village council. Their settler employers collect their identification documents and give them to the Israeli military for security checks. The Palestinians receive permits that are typically valid for three months, generally renewed, and they can cross through a gate in the separation barrier six days a week. It appears that Israel is willing to adopt a more discerning security system when the issue is the convenience of settlers, but not when it concerns Palestinian farmers trying to make a living on their own land.

The Israeli military now allows only 15 farmers from Beit Iksa to pass through the same gate, and has only opened that gate to them on 10 days so far in 2012 – according to United Nations monitors. In November 2010, the military granted permits to 70 farmers – which were valid for three weeks. Months later, in March 2011, the military renewed only 15 of the 70 – for bureaucratic rather than specific security reasons. It has been 10 years since Israel began constructing its separation barrier. Without meaningful pressure on Israel to change its barrier policies, Palestinian farmers are likely to suffer continued rights violations. The EU could best help Biddu’s farmers avoid being forced into poverty by vigorously advocating for Israel to allow them to work their land.

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At Israel’s behest, woman removed from Air France flight for not being Jewish

Ali Abunimah writes: Air France demanded to know the religion of a passenger on a flight from Nice to Tel Aviv and removed her because she is not a Jew.

The 15 April incident, confirmed by an Air France official, may violate international and European law by subjecting prospective passengers to illegal religious discrimination.

Over the past few days, Israeli authorities have reacted to an effort by hundreds of European travelers to visit the occupied West Bank at the invitation of Palestinians, by stationing hundreds of armed police and soldiers at the main international airport at Lydd, detaining and expelling travelers, and ordering European airlines to prevent boarding of travelers that Israel has placed on a political blacklist.

Several European airlines meekly complied with these Israeli orders, canceling tickets of those arbitrarily blacklisted by Israel.

The revelation that passengers are being subjected to religious tests takes this complicity with Israel’s apartheid policies to shocking new levels. [Continue reading…]

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First they come for the Muslims

Chris Hedges writes: Tarek Mehanna, a U.S. citizen, was sentenced Thursday in Worcester, Mass., to 17½ years in prison. It was another of the tawdry show trials held against Muslim activists since 9/11 as a result of the government’s criminalization of what people say and believe. These trials, where secrecy rules permit federal lawyers to prosecute people on “evidence” the defendants are not allowed to examine, are the harbinger of a corporate totalitarian state in which any form of dissent can be declared illegal. What the government did to Mehanna, and what it has done to hundreds of other innocent Muslims in this country over the last decade, it will eventually do to the rest of us.

Mehanna, a teacher at Alhuda Academy in Worcester, was convicted after an eight-week jury trial of conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq and providing material support to al-Qaida, as well as making false statements to officials investigating terrorism. His real “crime,” however, seems to be viewing and translating jihadi videos online, speaking out against U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and refusing to become a government informant.

Stephen F. Downs, a lawyer in Albany, N.Y., a founder of Project Salam and the author of “Victims of America’s Dirty War,” a booklet posted on the website, has defended Muslim activists since 2006. He has methodically documented the mendacious charges used to incarcerate many Muslim activists as terrorists. Because of “terrorism enhancement” provisions, any sentence can be quadrupled—even minor charges can leave prisoners incarcerated for years.

“People who have committed no crime are taken into custody, isolated without adequate recourse to legal advice, railroaded with fake or contrived charges, and ‘disappeared’ into prisons designed to isolate them,” Downs told me when we met last week at Brown University in Providence, R.I.

Downs calls the process of condemning people before they have committed a crime “pre-emptive prosecution.” The concept of pre-emptive prosecution mocks domestic law as egregiously as pre-emptive war mocks the foundations of international law. [Continue reading…]

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Does the 2012 Presidential Election matter?

Matt Stoller writes: If you picked up a newspaper in DC this week, it would have been hard to avoid noticing that a bizarre and irrelevant spat is consuming much of the insider political media and top political officials. Earlier this week, a corporate lobbyist named Hilary Rosen tweeted a vague insult at GOP Presidential nominee wife Ann Romney. Rosen said that Romney had never worked a day in her life, and so could not credibly speak to the economic concerns of women. The Republicans demanded an apology. Rosen refused. Obama advisors like David Axelrod and Jim Messina then weighed in on Romney’s side. Eventually, Rosen caved to the pressure and apologized. This is why.

By the end of Thursday, the most prominent voices in Washington had weighed in, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the first lady, Michelle Obama, and the president himself, who said that there is “no tougher job than being a mom” and that anyone who thinks otherwise “needs to rethink their statement.”

Just what is going on? How did one mildly annoying tweet from a corporate lobbyist who isn’t working on a political campaign come to dominate the electoral coverage for days for the office of the most powerful political position in the world?

Political scientist Tom Ferguson has noted that there are always two elections at work concurrently in America, a public election that voters see, and a hidden election where funders operate in shifting coalitions to pull the levers of power. In this case, it’s the very triviality that is on display that speaks to what is going. Rosen, a corporate lobbyist who represents or has represented copyright interests, for-profit colleges, and BP, is fighting with David Axelrod, who has made money from the nuclear industry, and Anna Romney, who rides expensive horses bought by her husband’s private equity millions. This is staged kabuki between powerful millionaires, none of whom can credibly speak from recent experience on economic struggles.

The 2012 election, in other words, is at this point a completely empty enterprise, bereft of substance, or integrity. This is new to our era, reminiscent of the late 19th century electoral landscape which was dominated by policy consensus around corruption and plutocracy while electoral contests were organized around “bloody shirt” smear campaigns. Populism intruded briefly, but there’s a reason that time period was known as the time of the robber barons. It’s increasingly analogous to our time.

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Inside the mind of Anders Breivik

The Independent reports: They met for the first time on 19 February: Terje Torrisen, the Norwegian psychiatrist given the task of assessing the sanity of a mass murderer, and Anders Behring Breivik, the man who today goes on trial for one of the most shocking crimes in European post-war history.

Breivik was well-mannered and co-operative, according to Mr Torrisen: “My first impression was that he was a polite man. He was answering all of our questions and did whatever he could to make the process as smooth as possible.”

Throughout the 24-hour-a-day observation Mr Torrisen and the rest of his team were able to watch and analyse how the self-confessed mass murderer eats, sleeps and interacts with others. When Breivik sleeps alone in his cell – or spends time weight-training, or reading world history – the team has always been around him, scrutinising his behaviour for more than 200 hours, building up the most complete profile of Norway’s worst-ever serial killer.

“He’s not like a normal person,” Mr Torrisen told The Independent, seemingly stating the obvious by adding that Breivik has an extreme personality. “During conversations, he is friendly,” Mr Torrisen explained. He said Breivik spends a lot of time, as he has done during his handful of public appearances, talking about his own thoughts and political opinions. He “smiles every time he discovers himself in newspapers or on television,” Mr Torrisen said.

Breivik has told the psychiatrists and doctors that he is “incredibly proud” of what he has done, and that “the operation was a major ego boost, in a way I am probably a little attention-whore”.

Last week, Mr Torrisen and Agnar Aspas, the other analyst to assess Breivik’s mental state, delivered a report about his mental health to the court in Oslo. The report was commissioned after an earlier assessment declared him insane. According to newspapers in Norway, the new report – still confidential – concludes that Breivik has a narcissistic and antisocial personality disorder – a diagnosis that has certain similarities with other psychopaths. It concludes, however, that he is mentally fit enough to face trial.

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Prominent rabbis rally to aid of Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner

Ynet reports: Several prominent rabbis expressed their support for Lieutenant-Colonel Shalom Eisner, who was suspended after assaulting a Danish pro-Palestinian activist with an M-16 rifle, saying that the military’s decision to suspend him was impetuous.

Eisner expressed remorse over his action, saying that while he should not have flung his weapon at the activist, the video footage released depicted only “60 seconds out of a two-hour event.”

Rabbi Haim Drukman, who was Eisner’s mentor, described his former pupil as “a fine man, an idealist. He didn’t choose a military career because he needed a job – he is there to give his life for the security of Israel,” he told Ynet Monday.

“Seeing such images is naturally disturbing, he continued, “But that’s just a few seconds that do not depict the entire incident. This is not someone who likes violence. He found himself in an unusual situation and this is what happened.”

Rabbi Drukman further said that he was sure the IDF inquiry into the incident will “get to the bottom of things.”

Former Chief IDF Rabbi Avihai Ronski slammed the decision to suspend Eisner, who he described as “a highly ethical individual.”

The reaction, he said, “most likely stemmed from the fact that the activist had just assaulted him and broke his hand. It was instinctual.”

Ronski also questioned what he called the rash decision to suspend the officer: “What’s the rush? Conduct your inquiry first and impose discipline only if the result warrants it.

“How can you say this was ‘a serious event’ after only a few seconds of footage? These kinds of incidents are why today’s commanders feel they have no backing.”

Military Judge Advocate General Brigadier-General Avi Mandelblit ordered a criminal investigation against Eisner.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen Benny Gantz condemned the incident, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “Such conduct does not represent the IDF, its officers and soldiers and is utterly unacceptable.”

The Jerusalem Post reports: Chairman of the Yesha Council Danny Dayan on Monday condemned the “overwhelming hysteria” in Israel over an IDF officer’s attack on a pro-Palestinian activist Sunday.

Speaking to Israel Radio, Dayan said that the officer who struck the activist should not have been judged by a 7-second video from an incident that lasted two hours. Moreover, the fact that the IDF had already condemned the officer just hours after the incident displays a loss of control on the part of the IDF and an irresponsible course of action taken by Israeli political institutions.

Dayan called the pro-Palestinian activist an enemy of Israel and implied that the Jewish State is more concerned with its image abroad than protecting its soldiers.

Dayan also condemned the Israeli political and military establishment for its “hysteria” over the incident, saying there was no reason for the prime minister, the defense minister, and other high-ranking political authorities to be involved.

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ICG conflict risk alert: Bahrain

International Crisis Group: Beneath a façade of normalisation, Bahrain is sliding toward another dangerous eruption of violence. The government acts as if partial implementation of recommendations from the November 2011 Independent Commission of Inquiry (the Bassiouni Report) will suffice to restore tranquillity, but there is every reason to believe it is wrong. Political talks – without which the crisis cannot be resolved – have ground to a halt, and sectarian tensions are mounting. A genuine dialogue between the regime and the opposition and a decision to fully carry out the Bassiouni Report – not half-hearted measures and not a policy of denial – are needed to halt this deterioration.

Clashes between young protesters and security forces occur nightly, marked by the former’s use of Molotov cocktails and the latter’s resort to tear gas. Several have died, in most cases reportedly due to tear gas inhalation. The 9 April explosion of a handmade bomb in al-Akar, a Shiite village in the east of the Kingdom, which injured seven policemen, crossed a significant threshold and could be followed by worse. Already, even before authorities could investigate, pro-government Sunni vigilante groups retaliated, vandalising two cars and a supermarket owned by a Shiite firm accused of supporting the February 2011 protests.

Amid these and other violent events – including the death of a young protester apparently shot from a civilian car – there are two potential time bombs. The first concerns Bahrain’s scheduled hosting of a Formula 1 race on 22 April. On 8 April, the Coalition of the Youth of the February 14 Revolution, an umbrella for an array of opposition groups that commands the loyalty of Shiite neighbourhoods, warned that it would consider participants, sponsors and spectators as regime allies and declared that it would not accept blame for “any violent reaction” during the event. The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights has pledged to use the expected presence of foreign tourists and journalists to highlight human rights violations; the government’s 15 April arrest of human rights activists shows that it will try hard to prevent this.

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Video — Michael Provence: Understanding Syria

Michael Provence is the director of the Middle East Studies Programs at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on the colonial and post-colonial Arab world, particularly popular insurgency and nationalism, and he has travelled and lived in many countries in the region including Lebanon and Syria. In this two-part interview, Ed Sweed of Alternate Focus asks Michael about the current situation in Syria and its implications for the wider region.

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As shells fall, U.N. few say can save Syria truce

Reuters reports: A handful of soldiers in blue caps put a tentative United Nations presence on the ground in Syria on Monday, predicting success for their mission to stabilize a shaky four-day-old ceasefire even as shells continued to fall.

Charged with overseeing an end to 13 months of violence, the unarmed multinational squad of six professed their optimism.

“We are going to organize ourselves in order to be ready to do our task as soon as possible,” the leader of the advance guard, Colonel Ahmed Himmiche of Morocco, told reporters at a Damascus hotel before meeting Syrian officials in the capital.

“All peacekeepers are optimistic,” he added when asked if he was hopeful an observer mission that will be expanded to 250 could cement a truce that has been marked by persistent, sporadic violence.

Activists trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad said his army was still shelling targets in the battered city of Homs and rounding up opponents, despite its promise to U.N. peace envoy Kofi Annan to withdraw from cities.

Security forces in armored vehicles stormed the village of Khattab in Hama province and carried out raids, the activist Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, and dozens of people were detained.

Activists said the army on Monday once again shelled the Bayada and Khalidiya districts in Homs with heavy mortars. A video posted by them on YouTube showed explosions followed by clouds of smoke and dust.

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Taliban free 384 inmates in Pakistan

The New York Times reports: In what is being called the biggest jailbreak in Pakistani history, Taliban fighters stormed a prison in the northwestern town of Bannu early Sunday, freeing almost 400 prisoners, including a militant commander who tried in 2003 to assassinate the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

The assault started at 1:30 a.m. when at least 100 militants driving pickup trucks and armed with grenades and small arms attacked the main gate of the prison, which housed 900 inmates, provincial government officials said.

After blasting their way into the prison, the attackers broke open cell doors and freed 384 inmates, including several who had been condemned to death, said Mohammad Azam Khan, the home minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

A senior security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said prison guards had offered little resistance to the Taliban, who were in “total control” of the facility for over two hours. “The militants asked them to get aside and leave,” he said.

The fierce, disciplined raid represented an operational boost and a propaganda coup for the Pakistani Taliban, which wasted little time in claiming responsibility.

“We have released our men without losing a single man,” said Ihsanullah Ihsan, a spokesman for the group, speaking from an undisclosed location. “We had been planning this blessed operation for months.”

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Complex attack by Taliban sends message to the West

The New York Times reports: Taliban suicide bombers and gunmen barraged the diplomatic quarter and the Parliament in the Afghan capital for hours on Sunday and struck three eastern provinces as well, in a complex attack clearly designed to undermine confidence in NATO and Afghan military gains.

Though the overall confirmed death toll was low, with six victims initially reported across four provinces, they were among the most audacious coordinated terrorist attacks here in recent years. The multiple sieges ended in Kabul on Monday morning after nearly 18 hours, and silence fell on the city with roads in the bullet-strafed areas beginning to reopen. The last of the attacks to be resolved was the one on the Parliament, which ended at 7:30 a.m., according to a statement by the Afghan Interior Ministry. “The situation is normal,” the ministry said.

The attacks came near the peak of the American military troop “surge” in Afghanistan, some of it designed around ensuring the security of the capital. And they were an early test for the Afghan National Security Forces, who responded with only minimal help from NATO, Western military officials said.

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Iran demands U.S., Europe hold off attack as long as nuclear talks continue, sources say

Haaretz reports: The round of nuclear talks between the six major world powers and Iran ended on Saturday in Istanbul without a significant breakthrough but with an agreement to reconvene next month. Sources close to the talks told Haaretz that the Iranians are demanding an American and European commitment not to carry out a military attack on their country as long as the talks continue.

Western and Turkish diplomats said Saturday’s meeting, which involved the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China – in addition to Germany and the Iranians, was held in a positive atmosphere.

“They met in a constructive atmosphere,” said Michael Mann, a spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, after the morning session of talks Saturday. “We had a positive feeling that they did want to engage.”

Iran’s ISNA news agency reported that an American envoy had asked for a meeting with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili and that Jalili had accepted, but another news agency, Fars, later denied that.

The Istanbul talks were the first such meeting for 15 months. A second round is scheduled to take place in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on May 23.

Expectations for the talks in Istanbul had been low at the outset. The United States termed them a last chance at a diplomatic solution to the crisis over the Iranian nuclear program. The U.S. and Israel have not ruled out military action to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites.

The major drama at the talks in Turkey was simply the fact that they took place, this time without prior conditions. In January last year, the Iranians refused to enter into discussions without a commitment to lift international sanctions against their country. For its part, the U.S. had refused at the time to discuss removing sanctions without a halt by the Iranians of their nuclear fuel enrichment operations.

This time around, among the details leaked from the conference hall was an indication that the world powers would agree to continued Iranian nuclear enrichment activities at the relatively low level of 3.5 percent, and would not require that the Fordo underground facility near the Iranian city of Qom be dismantled. The world powers would require continuous monitoring of nuclear fuel production sites, according to the leaks.

Western officials have made clear their immediate priority is to persuade Tehran to cease the higher-grade uranium enrichment it began in 2010. It has since expanded that work, shortening the time it would need for the relatively rapid development of nuclear weapons. Iran has signaled some flexibility over limiting its uranium enrichment to a fissile purity of 20 percent, compared with the 5 percent level required for nuclear power plants, but also suggests it is not ready to do so yet.

A Turkish government source told Haaretz that following a series of contacts by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the Iranian leadership, there was a sense that Iran was ready to forgo uranium enrichment at a level of 20 percent for a short period, but would demand the immediate lifting of some of the international sanctions in return and the gradual scrapping of others.

Also to be considered in the next round of discussions is a Russian proposal for a blueprint for the talks including a time line, in an effort to build a sense of trust between Iran and the Western powers. The plan would call for Iran to gradually halt uranium enrichment while the West would at the same time remove sanctions. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed that his country would not cede its right to enrichment activities, claiming that they are designed for peaceful purposes.

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Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails to go on hunger strike

The Guardian reports: Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are expected to embark on hunger strikes this week to draw attention to imprisonment without charge and solitary confinement. They will build on a protest that has resulted in deals to release two inmates who refused food for prolonged periods.

At least 11 prisoners are already on hunger strike, three of whom have been transferred to hospital. One began refusing fluids last week, increasing concern about the rate of deterioration of his health.

A wave of hunger strikes is planned to begin on or around Prisoners’ Day on Tuesday, held under the slogan: “We will live in dignity.” About 1,600 prisoners have agreed to take part in the protest, according to Palestinian prisons minister Issa Qaraqi. “The situation inside Israeli prisons has become very dangerous and serious,” he was quoted as saying.

There are around 4,600 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, according to the prisoners’ rights group Addameer. More than 300 are held under “administrative detention”, meaning they and their lawyers are not informed of accusations or evidence against them, no trial is held, and their term of imprisonment is determined by an Israeli military judge.

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A lack of vision is making Israel a short-term state

Gideon Levy writes: There’s no country like Israel. The United States is uncertain how many Americans will be unemployed and have health insurance in a decade; Europe is asking how many more immigrants will enter and whether the euro will exist by 2022. In Israel, the existential issues are immeasurably more profound and wide-ranging, but no one bothers to address them.

The prime minister talks as if his problems were of the European kind (not including the Iranian nuclear hysteria ), yet much more fateful issues remain open and somehow nobody discusses them. Israel is 64 years old and the issues remain pending, as if the state had been established yesterday and there are no answers.

Nobody can say what this country will look like in 10 years. Some people even doubt that it will exist by then, an issue not raised about any other country. But even the preoccupation with this groundless question is reduced to sowing fear and whining at Friday night dinner. All other issues, no less critical, don’t even come up. Does anybody know whether Israel will be a democracy in a decade? Can anyone promise that it will be? Will it be a secular state or one based on Jewish law? Will it be a welfare state or a capitalist one? How many nations will live in it in a decade?

Who will be the majority in 10 years – another question you won’t hear anywhere else – and what will the borders be? That question, too, is raised only in Israel, the only borderless state.

Everything is open, fluid and alarmingly fragile. The three future scenarios for Israel as an occupation state – continuing the status quo forever, two states or one – appear groundless, and people have stopped addressing them, as if the absence of discourse will produce a feasible solution. But all other critical questions have no real answer either and hardly appear on the agenda, even though Israelis should focus on them.

A state without a (clear ) future, wallowing in the past and focusing on the present, is tantamount to a short-term state. Even on the eve of our national days of pathos, nobody asks what Israel will be like in a decade, which is no time at all in historical terms.

Last week I joined the pilgrims to Hebron on Passover eve. In the bus, one of them, using a derogatory term for Arabs, said loudly: “All the Arabushim should be sent to the stone crushers straight from the hospital, as soon as they’re born.” The whole bus roared with laughter. Some passengers muttered at us, a reporter and a photographer, the only secular people on the bus: “Collaborators, there are collaborators on the bus.” Nobody protested, naturally.

The thousands of pilgrims to Hebron, with their myriads of supporters, belong to another nation, with no connection or resemblance to the nation of Tel Aviv. Every society has an extreme right wing today, but in a small, fragile society like ours, this could become fatal. The United States can afford its dark Christian right and remain a democracy. Israel cannot. Can anyone guarantee that the hostile tone from the fortified bus to Hebron won’t turn into the prevailing tone? Clearly things are heading in that direction and nobody is doing anything to stop it.

Nobody is doing anything to stop democracy from rupturing, nobody is stopping Israel on its way to becoming a pariah, even more than it is already. Today, when 650 police officers will bravely storm a handful of human rights activists and harshly turn them away from Ben-Gurion International Airport, solely for seeking to visit Bethlehem in a display of solidarity, few people will protest or stop them. Neither the mobilized media nor the flaccid justice system will do anything to stop the disgrace.

This is how things stand regarding several other events and developments shaping Israel’s image, without any real discussion. The strong, not necessarily the many, triumph, battle by battle, and the majority, if it still is a majority, is silent. The question where we are heading remains unanswered.

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The return of CREEP

By Kim Barker, ProPublica, April 12, 2012

With 300-plus super PACs and counting, it would be easy to miss CREEP. But last Thursday, a new super PAC ingeniously named the Committee for the Re-Election of the President registered with the Federal Election Commission.

The committee is based out of a post office box at the Watergate Complex2014an homage, of course, to the other Committee for the Re-Election of the President, the fundraising committee for President Richard Nixon that became embroiled in the Watergate scandal.

It’s an inside joke with a serious punchline. The old CREEP (which used the acronym CRP and at one point was called the Committee to Re-Elect the President) helped spur the creation of the FEC. The website for CREEP Super PAC says it’s committed “to raising voices not dollars” and advocates disclosure.

“It’s an excellent chance for people to step back and say, 2018Are we happy with 40 years of campaign finance and the lack of disclosure?'” said Robert Lucas, 22, founder of the new CREEP and a graduate student in public policy at Georgetown University. “There’s a lot of irony, with the 40th anniversary of Watergate and where we are now.”

The latest FEC disclosures show that super PACs are forming at an accelerated pace, taking advantage of court rulings in 2010 that opened the door to political action committees that can raise unlimited amounts of money as long as they don’t coordinate with a candidate.

Seven new super PACs turned up yesterday morning alone, while one dropped out today, bringing the tally to 324. Only 159 have reported raising or spending any money. Of those, just 11 reported having more than $1 million in their coffers in their most recent filings with the FEC, led by GOP super PAC American Crossroads, which had more than $23.5 million at the end of February. (CREEP, being new, hasn’t reported raising any money, and Lucas says he has no plans to do so.)

Another 27 super PACs reported having at least $100,000 in the bank. The rest seem to be counting their pennies and hoping for a millionaire. (The Friends for a Democratic White House PAC, for instance, reported having only $12.02.)

Several of the money-less super PACs appear to be following the mocking trail blazed by comedian Stephen Colbert with his super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow. These have names like Just Drink the Koolaid, Joe Six PAC, Americans for America, and Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Yesterday.

Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney’s decision to put his dog in a kennel strapped to the roof of his car for a 1983 family vacationhas sparked the formation of four super PACs: DogPAC, Dogs Against Romney, I Ride Inside-The Pets Against Romney Committee, and, the latest in the genre, Mitt Is Mean2014The Animal Lovers Against Romney Committee.

Despite being accused of chronic deadlock and doing nothing to rein in super PACs, the FEC has quietly taken action against certain committees. It warned 15 for failing to file annual financial reports from 20112014unless they do, they’ll be off the list. (Which might mean the end of super PACs such as the Brady Bunch PAC, Men Against Prostitution and Trafficking and the Bucket Tea Party Political Action Committee.)

The FEC also has shed 60 super PACs registered by super PAC man Josue Larose.  All of Larose’s super PACs were terminated by the FEC on March 7, apparently because they didn’t do much for a year. So farewell to the Unites States Celebrities Super PAC, the United States Billionaires Super PAC and the Wall Street Corporations Super PAC.

It was never quite clear what Larose was doing with all his super PACs. They attracted virtually no donations. (One exception: the $5,000 contributed by a PAC of employees of Contran Corp. to Larose’s Rick Perry 2012 Victory Committee super PAC, which had nothing to do with Rick Perry. Contran is run by billionaire Harold Simmons, the largest single donor to GOP super PACs.)

Florida just filed more than 2,000 counts of state election violations against Larose.  

So what does all this mean for the 2012 election? CREEP’s back, but we won’t have Larose to kick around anymore.


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Multiple attacks on Kabul, Taliban claims “spring offensive”

Reuters reports: Gunmen launched multiple attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday, assaulting Western embassies in the heavily guarded, central diplomatic area and at the parliament in the west.

Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the assault, one of the most serious on the capital since U.S.-backed Afghan forces removed the group from power in 2001.

“These attacks are the beginning of the spring offensive and we had planned them for months,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters.

The Taliban said the main targets were the German and British embassies and the headquarters of Afghanistan’s NATO-led force. Several Afghan members of parliament joined security forces repelling attackers from a roof near the parliament.

Taliban fighters also launched assaults in at least two provinces, a spokesman for the insurgents said.

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Limping out of Afghanistan

Immanuel Wallerstein writes: The two candidates for the U.S. presidency seem to be trying to outshout each other concerning Iran, Syria, and Israel/Palestine. Each is claiming he is doing more to support the same objectives. Isn’t it therefore strange that no similar verbal contest is going on at the moment concerning Afghanistan? [ Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse/Getty] In February 2012, some Korans were burned by U.S. soldiers, which led to violent public protests in Afghanistan. (Photo: Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse/Getty

Not so long ago, we were witness to the same Democratic-Republican game about Afghanistan. Which party was the more macho? Remember the concept that a “surge” in troops would win the war, a concept embraced by President Obama in his speech to the U.S. Military Academy in December 2009. Now all of a sudden, since March 2012, it seems to have become a subject no one wants to espouse too loudly.

There are some simple explanations. In the longest war that the United States has ever waged, the war in Afghanistan, the United States has precious little to show for it. The designated enemy, the Taliban, constitute an ever-resilient force, particularly of course in the Pashtun areas, which constitute the largest single ethnic zone in the country.

The United States more or less single-handedly imposed Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun but not a Taliban, as president of Afghanistan. Karzai was not, is not, appreciated by the leaders of the various other ethnic zones in the north and west of the country, who have tried over the years to oust him. These other groups find support in some external powers: Russia, Iran, and India, all of which are as determined as the United States to prevent the return to power of the Taliban. But the United States won’t work with Iran, is doubtful about working with Russia, and doesn’t seem to co-ordinate with India.

In February 2012, some Korans were burned by U.S. soldiers, which led to violent public protests in Afghanistan. Then 16 Afghan children, women, and men were massacred by a U.S. soldier. The United States apologized for both of these, but that hardly calmed the storm. On March 18, President Karzai denounced the Americans in Afghanistan as “demons” engaged in “Satanic acts.” He said Afghanistan was beset by two demons – the Taliban and the Americans.

The New York Times cited an anonymous European diplomat as saying: “Never in history has any superpower spent so much money, sent so many troops to a country, and had so little influence over what its president says and does.”

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