Category Archives: Issues

Biggest jump ever seen in global warming gases

The Associated Press reports: The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

“The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing,” said John Reilly, co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That’s an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries – China, the United States and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.

It is a “monster” increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past.

Extra pollution in China and the U.S. account for more than half the increase in emissions last year, Marland said.

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Former Mossad chief warns Israel: ‘Religious extremism is a greater threat than nuclear Iran’

The Jerusalem Post reports: Former head of the Mossad Efraim Halevy condemned religious extremism in the IDF on Thursday night, warning that “Israel’s true existential danger comes from within.”

According to Halevy, religious extremism is a growing peril to Israel’s existence and is more threatening than Iran’s nuclear program.

“When I was in Bnei Akiva, there were boys and girls [mixed]. Were we not religious? Were the rabbis then not religious? What happened to us?” he asked, speaking at a military academy meeting commemorating 130 fallen soldiers.

“Thousands of children are born to parents who immigrated to the state and were told that they are Jews, and here the religious authorities decided that they aren’t Jews. A generation grew up here without personal status,” he said.

Last month, Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger said in a religious ruling that the IDF must ensure that religious soldiers are not forced to listen to performances by female singers.

The statement came after an incident in which nine officer cadets left an army event involving a performance by female soldiers, and some subsequently refused to return after their unit commander ordered them to do so. Four of the soldiers were expelled from the Officers Training School – better known as Bahd 1 – after refusing to apologize for the incident.

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Israelis seize boats carrying supplies to Gaza Strip

The Los Angeles Times reports: Israel’s navy intercepted a pro-Palestinian protest flotilla Friday as it attempted to break a sea blockade around the Gaza Strip, the third such attempt in less than two years.

Israeli officials said the takeover of two boats carrying 27 activists, journalists and crew members occurred without the kind of violent clash seen in May 2010, when nine Turkish activists, including one with dual U.S. citizenship, were shot and killed as they resisted takeover by Israeli commandos.

The latest ships, the Canadian-owned Tahrir and Irish-owned Saoirse, were escorted to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where crew and passengers were expected to be detained for questioning.

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‘New setback’ for Palestinian hopes on U.N. membership

BBC News reports: A UN diplomat says the UK, France and Colombia have told Security Council members they would abstain in any vote on Palestinian membership.

None of these countries have officially confirmed this yet.

But their decision is a setback for the Palestinians, who have been trying to win support from European states.

A Council committee is considering a Palestinian application to become a UN member state and is expected to present its report next week.

The UN diplomat said Britain, France and Colombia stated their positions in a private meeting of the Security Council committee dealing with the Palestinian application.

The diplomat said Germany also declared it could not support the Palestinian bid, without clarifying whether it would abstain or vote against.

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Israel Navy contacts Gaza-bound aid vessels

Haaretz reports: Two protest boats approached the Gaza coast on Friday with the intent to violate Israel’s naval blockade of the territory and were met by Israeli navy vessels, Palestinian activists said.

In Gaza, activist Amjad Shawwa said the boats were about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Gaza and had been warned over the radio by an Israeli navy ship to change course.

The Israelis told the boats, carrying supplies and 27 international pro-Palestinian activists, that they were entering a closed military zone, Shawwa said.

He said the passengers intended to continue to Gaza.

Activists in Gaza and Ramallah said they lost radio contact with the ships shortly after 1 p.m.

The Israel Defense Forces said that the Israel Navy had contacted the Gaza-bound ships and informed them that Gaza is under a maritime security blockade. The IDF told the ships they could turn around or dock in the Egypt or at the Ashdod port. The ships deed not heed that call and continued towards Gaza.

Israel’s navy has intercepted similar protest ships in the past, towing them to the Israeli port of Ashdod and detaining participants. Israel says its naval blockade of Gaza is necessary to prevent weapons from reaching militant groups like Hamas, the Iran-backed group that rules the territory. Critics call the blockade collective punishment of Gaza’s residents.

Israel’s government has said the activists can send supplies into Gaza overland.

In May 2010, nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed when they resisted an Israeli operation to halt a similar flotilla. Each side blamed the other for the violence.

The incident sparked an international outcry and forced Israel to ease its land blockade on Gaza, which was imposed in 2006 and tightened, with Egyptian cooperation, after Hamas seized control of the territory the following year.

Militants in Gaza have fired thousands of rockets into Israel in the past decade, and now have much of southern Israel in range.

Speaking after prayers at a Gaza City mosque, Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, addressed the passengers aboard the boats, saying, “Your message has been delivered whether you make it or not.”

“The siege is unjust and must end,” Haniyeh said.

On Thursday, the Obama administration warned U.S.citizens on the boats that they may face legal action for violating Israeli and American law. The activists include Americans and citizens of eight other countries.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S.was renewing its warning to Americans “not to involve themselves in this activity.”

The U.S., like Israel and the European Union, considers Hamas a terrorist organization.

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On road to reconciliation, Libya meets trail of anguish

The New York Times reports: The present and future are daunting enough for the wobbly authorities here, but then there is the tormented past to consider as well: four decades of state crimes whose wounds demand attention.

With mass murders, disappearances and public executions, the victims of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s People’s Court, Internal Security Agency and State Security Court number in the tens of thousands, human rights advocates here and abroad say. How will Libyans come to terms with their past?

Already, the provisional leaders are pondering options for exposing the long catalog of killings and torture, looking to models from South Africa, Europe and Latin America. They are motivated by a conviction, they say, that a new nation cannot be built unless light is shed on the dark corners of the old.

The specifics are being worked out, like so much else in a country that appears to be shaking itself awake after a long, bad dream. But the interim minister of justice, a veteran of legal jousting with the Qaddafi government from within and without, said there was a tentative plan: investigation, public hearings and prosecution, with the inquiry reaching all the way back to the earliest days of Colonel Qaddafi’s rise to power in 1969.

“We look to Chile, Argentina, South Africa — we take part of South Africa,” said the interim justice minister, Mohammed al-Alagi, referring to the approach of that country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which emphasized fact-finding and accountability rather than punishment.

Most important, Mr. Alagi suggested in an interview in the empty and echoing Justice Ministry here, was the imperative for Libyans to confront Qaddafi-era crimes in a country where there were no independent media to report them.

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At Abu Ghraib, ambivalence on America’s departure

The New York Times reports: On a recent day off, Hussam Saad stood at a roadside vegetable stand across the highway from the prison where he says he works.

“I can still remember guarding the prison at night, and hearing the voices and the shouting while people were being tortured,” said Mr. Saad, recalling the time when the Americans were in charge at Abu Ghraib.

Even so, he claims, it is worse there now.

“It would be better,” he said, “if the Americans were still in charge of the prison.”

It is difficult to verify Mr. Saad’s claims; the government denies harming any inmates although the State Department says cases of torture throughout the country have been documented by Iraq’s own government watchdogs. But as an indication of what type of country the United States is leaving behind, Mr. Saad’s comments were striking.

Given the legacy of the torture scandal at the prison, this would seem as likely a place as any for the imminent departure of American troops to be greeted with unabashed happiness.

The ambivalence reflects how much is left to be done to reinvent this ethnically fractured country as a functioning democracy. Efforts to bring Sunnis into the Shiite-led government have been haphazard at best. Laws for splitting precious oil dollars among ethnic groups and regional fiefs remain unwritten. And nearly two years after a national election, the country’s bitterly divided political blocs cannot agree on who should run the Defense and Interior Ministries.

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‘If you don’t like free speech you should move to another country,’ the cop tells the banker

At Daily Kos, marvinborg writes: At around noon, I put on my best suit, white shirt and tie. I went and stood outside Chase during rush-hour and handed out flyers.

“Good afternoon Sir/Ma’am – The big banks are run by CROOKS, they played casino with your money and crashed the economy. Your money is not safe with them,” and handed them a flyer. Big smile, totally non-threatening, not blocking the sidewalk, kept walking the entire time.

Outside the bank was an armed private security guard. His name is George. I know this because I first introduced myself, gave him a flyer and told him I would cause him no trouble. George is one of the 99% and he had no beef in the banks game.

Within a few minutes, both banks stationed an employee just inside the door to prevent me from entering. They also called mall security to come and shoo me away. Inside the branches, employees were running around like headless chickens terrified of a single guy, in a suit, politely handing out flyers.

The first “senior” security guy arrives, George’s boss. Now there’s two.

Sec2: “Are you the one handing out flyers?”
MB: “Yes Sir, would you like one?”
Sec2: “You can’t do that here!”
MB: “Is that so Sir, why not?”
Sec2: “This is private property!”
MB: “The sidewalk is private property? It looks to me like it is open to the public. I’m the public and I’m not blocking or bothering anyone. As you can see, I am being polite and respectful, just handing out flyers. Excuse me [person was walking by] Hi Ma’am, this bank is run by crooks – [hand out a flyer]”
Sec2: “Well I did my job and warned you.”
MB: “Well thank you for the warning. I will not cause you any trouble, Sir, but I will not stop handing out flyers.”

10 minutes later. Another security guy arrives, with backup. Now there’s four.

Sec3 to Sec2: “Where is he?”
MB: “I’m right here!!”
Sec3: “You need to leave”
MB: “Why is that, Sir? Would you like a flyer?”
Sec3: “You can’t do that here.”
MB: “On the contrary, Sir, I have every right to be here and every right to hand out flyers, respectfully. I will not cause you any trouble.”
Sec3: “We’ll see about that [grabs a flyer], we’ll see about that.”
MB: “Have a great afternoon, Sir.”

5 minutes later, a huge guy arrives, goes to talk to the branch manager. Now there’s 5. The BofA manager (spiffy suit!) walks out with him from the branch.

BofABoss: “What, are you working for the credit union?”
MB[my best line of the day]: “No Sir, they work for me, unlike your bank that works for investors and shareholders.”
BofABoss: “Get a job!”
MB: “I have a job. I run a company. I created 17 jobs in the last 5 years, while you were blowing up the economy. How many jobs did you destroy?”
BofABoss: “Well go do your job then.”
MB: “Right now, my job is telling your customers that your bank is run by crooks.”
BofABoss: “We’ll see about that.”

10 minutes later, the police arrive. Two motorcycle cops, one male, one female.

I calmly walk up to them as they are dismounting their bikes, keep about 10 ft of distance and smiling with both hands visible.

MB “Good afternoon officers. Are you here for me?”
Off1: “Why, what did you do? [hehe, trick question]”
MB: “Nothing, officers. I’m politely and calmly handing out flyers and talking to people. I’m not blocking the sidewalk or causing any disturbance.”
Off1: “Well, let’s see what’s going on, wait here.”
MB: “Yes officer, I will not leave, thank you.”

Both officers go into the bank to talk to BofABoss. They come out a few minutes later.

Off1: “They say you are trespassing. Did you go into the bank?”
MB: “No Sir, I did not enter the premises at any time. I have been walking along the sidewalk, not blocking traffic or their business and I have been handing out flyers. If you ask George here he will tell you that I’m not bothering anyone, he’s watched me for almost an hour.” George nods, and says, “this guy, no problem.”

BofABoss comes out with a triumphant smirk. Officer1 turns to him:

“He has the right to speak and the right to hand out flyers. Unless he blocks you or causes a disturbance, he has the right to be here – please don’t call the police again if he is not bothering you. If you don’t like free speech you should move to another country.”

MY JAW IS ON THE FLOOR.

The banker turns bright red and storms back inside.

Off1: “Keep it peaceful, now. This is the way to protest, I have no problem with you as long as you don’t block.”

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Biggest public firms paid little U.S. tax, study says

The New York Times reports: Warren E. Buffett, take note. It is not just a few wealthy individuals paying unusually low taxes to the federal government. Corporate America is not far behind.

A comprehensive study released on Thursday found that 280 of the biggest publicly traded American companies faced federal income tax bills equal to 18.5 percent of their profits during the last three years — little more than half the official corporate rate of 35 percent and lower than their competitors in many industrialized countries.

Mr. Buffett, the billionaire investor, has said that the tax code is unfair, allowing him to pay just 17 percent in federal taxes last year, about half the percentage his secretary paid.

The corporate study, prepared by the left-leaning advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice, examined the regulatory filings of the companies to compute each year’s current federal taxes. Some of the companies disputed the findings, saying that the study understated their tax payments by omitting deferred taxes that they may pay in future years.

Using information from the companies’ own corporate filings, however, the study concluded that a quarter of the 280 corporations owed less than 10 percent of profits in federal income taxes and 30 companies had no federal tax liability for the entire three-year period.

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World history at warp speed

Helena Cobban asks: From Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Pakistan, to Somalia, to Yemen– and now, to Libya… What has the U.S. military brought in its wake?? The collapse of communities, of whole economies, of institutions, and families… Tragedies, wherever you look.

This is not to indict individual members of the military, which as a group of people probably contains as great a proportion of decent, competent people as any group of that size. What has happened has not been the fault of the individual people in the military, but in the fact that it was the military that was used at all in response to all these problems. For each and every one of those “problems”, there were non-military policies that were available and could have been pursued– most likely with, at the end of the day, a lot more success from the American people’s point of view than we ended up winning. But the rush, the urge, the unseemly push to use military force proved overwhelming. Especially to those three presidents– Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama– who had never themselves experienced the horrors of war.

Almost none of this destruction need have happened– if only these men and their advisers had kept fast to the older, more principled visions of America as a country that upholds and strengthen the rule of international law and all the institutions built up around it… If only these men had not been so easily tempted by the ‘flash-bang’ wizardry and testosterone-driven arrogance of war.

But here we are. And at the other end of the Mediterranean this week, there have been two notably different kind of gatherings. At one of them, on Monday, world leaders gave a strong vote to Palestine’s application to become a member of the UN’s Educational, Scientific, and Cultural organization (UNESCO). In that vote, 107 nations (including several substantial European allies of Washington) defied vigorous American arm-twisting to support the Palestinian request.

The U.S. State Department announced almost immediately that it would stop providing the funding it has been giving to UNESCO. Far-reaching legislation passed over recent years by the strongly Israeli-controlled U.S. Congress means that the administration may have to extend its funding cut-off to other agencies, too.

How very, very far the United States has come from those idealistic days, 60 years ago, when it was a victorious America, standing unchallenged astride the the whole world, that exercised wisdom and restraint by setting up the United Nations as a set of institutions based on the key principles of human equality, respect for the rule of law, and the need to stress nonviolent, negotiated ways to resolved conflicts whenever possible.

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Time for us to challenge the idols of high finance

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, writes: Many people are frustrated beyond measure at what they see as the disastrous effects of global capitalism; but it isn’t easy to say what we should do differently. It istime we tried to be more specific.

There is help to be had from a bold statement on our financial situation emerging last week from the Vatican. This document, from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, is entitled ‘Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority‘. It contains, with sharp critical analysis, a rather utopian vision of global regulation. But, more important, it offers recommendations that seek not to change everything at once but to minimise the damage of certain practices and assumptions.

One is something we have now heard clearly from many sources – a plea endorsed by the Vickers Commission that routine banking business should be clearly separated from speculative transactions. The rolling-up of individual and small-scale savings into high-risk and high-return adventures in the virtual economy is one of the more obvious danger areas. Early government action in this area is needed. A second plea is to recapitalise banks with public money. Banks should be obliged in return to help reinvigorate the real economy.

The third suggestion is probably the most far-reaching. The Vatican statement strongly backs the proposal of a Financial Transaction Tax – a “Tobin Tax” or, popularly, a “Robin Hood Tax” in the form in which it has been talked about most recently. This means a comparatively small rate of tax (0.05 per cent) being levied on share, bond, and currency transactions and their derivatives, with the resulting funds being designated for investment in the “real” economy, domestically and internationally. The modest rate of taxation conceals the high levels of return that could be expected (some $410bn globally on one estimate).

This has won the backing of significant experts who cannot be written off as naive anti-capitalists – George Soros, Bill Gates and many others. It is gaining traction among European nations, with a strong statement in support this week from Wolfgang Schaüble, the German finance minister. The objections made by some who claim it would mean a substantial drop in employment and in the economy generally seem to rest on exaggerated and sharply challenged projections – and, more important, ignore the potential of such a tax to stabilise currency markets in a way to boost rather than damage the real economy.

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Occupy the no-spin zone

Dahlia Lithwick writes: Occupy Wall Street is not a movement without a message. It’s a movement that has wisely shunned the one-note, pre-chewed, simple-minded messaging required for cable television as it now exists. It’s a movement that feels no need to explain anything to the powers that be, although it is deftly changing the way we explain ourselves to one another.

Think, for just a moment, about the irony. We are the most media-saturated 24-hour-cable-soaked culture in the world, and yet around the country, on Facebook and at protests, people are holding up cardboard signs, the way protesters in ancient Sumeria might have done when demonstrating against a rise in the price of figs. And why is that? Because they very wisely don’t trust television cameras and microphones to get it right anymore. Because a media constructed around the illusion of false equivalencies, screaming pundits, and manufactured crises fails to capture who we are and what we value.

For the past several years, while the mainstream media was dutifully reporting on all things Kardashian or (more recently) a wholly manufactured debt-ceiling crisis, ordinary people were losing their health care, their homes, their jobs, and their savings. Those people have taken that narrative to Facebook and Twitter—just as citizens took to those alternative forms of media throughout the Middle East as part of the Arab Spring. And just to be clear: They aren’t holding up signs that say “I want Bill O’Reilly’s stuff.” They aren’t holding up signs that say “I am animated by toxic levels of envy and entitlement.” They are holding up signs that are perfectly and intrinsically clear: They want accountability for the banks that took their money, they want to end corporate control of government. They want their jobs back. They would like to feed their children. They want—wait, no, we want—to be heard by a media that has devoted four mind-numbing years to channeling and interpreting every word uttered by a member of the Palin family while ignoring the voices of everyone else.

And there’s this. The mainstream media thrives on simple solutions. It has no idea whatsoever of how to report on a story that isn’t about easy fixes so much as it is about anguished human frustration and fear. The media prides itself on its ability to tell you how to clear your clutter, regrout your shower, or purge your closet of anything that makes you look fat—in 24 minutes or less. It is bound to be flummoxed by a protest that offers up no happy endings. Luckily for us, #OWS doesn’t seem to care.

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Fresh or refreshed fears about a nuclear Iran?

Tony Karon writes: President Obama’s point man on Iran, Dennis Ross, had written before joining the Administration that if governments reluctant to impose harsh measures on Iran believed the alternative was Israel starting a war, they would be more inclined to back new sanctions. And there’s certain a new sanctions push in the works, right now. The “intelligence” being cited by the Guardian’s sources to suggest a new urgency is hardly new — it’s material collected some time ago by Western agencies that purports to show that Iran has been doing theoretical work on designs for a nuclear warhead. What’s new is the fact that the U.S. has been pressing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to include those allegations in its latest report on Iran, scheduled for release later this month. The IAEA has questioned Iran’s intent and raised questions about many of is activities, but it has not until now accused Iran of running an active nuclear weapons program. A Western official told the Guardian that revelations about bomb-design work will be a “game-changer” that forces Russia and China to get on board with U.S. sanctions efforts.

It’s not clear, though, whether those charges will make it into the IAEA report — China and Russia are lobbying against what they see as an attempt to enlist the nuclear watchdog in the service of a U.S. agenda — but even if they’re in the report, Moscow and Beijing are unlikely to join the sanctions push. It wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. had assumed that some new ‘gotcha’ piece of intelligence would change the game, only to be disappointed.

Indeed, former Bush Administration national security staffer Michael Singh argued in Foreign Policy this week that the only way to change China’s position on sanctions would be to prepare for a military attack, which, if it went ahead, would disrupt China’s energy supplies. A familiar argument, that one.

As to the claim by the Guardian’s sources that Iran had lately adopted a more belligerent posture, the evidence offered was the bizarre Saudi embassy bombing plot, which much of the international community remains to be convinced was actually an official Iranian effort.

For the rest, there’s not much new: Iran is restoring its uranium enrichment capability damaged by the Stuxnet computer worm and protecting it in hardened facilities. But none of that provides anything close to a casus belli that might be deemed credible by most of the international community. The chances of getting legal authorization for a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities from the U.N. Security Council right now are slender, at best.

The Guardian piece, in fact, deflates its own alarmist premise when a government source notes that there has been “no acceleration toward military action by the U.S. but that could change.” Well, yes, although it’s hard to imagine why a government source would require anonymity for sharing a truism. There’s no obvious reason for the urgency of the timetables suggested by the officials briefing the Guardian — they suggested Obama would have to make a fateful decision next spring — other than the fact that the Iranians haven’t changed tack, despite four rounds of U.N. sanctions plus a raft of additional measures adopted unilaterally by Western powers, and considerable saber rattling by the Israelis. The urgency would need to be politically generated, however, because of the assumption that Iran wins the long game absent some dramatic game-changing action on the part of its adversaries. And then there’s the fact that the U.S. is entering an election year.

In a companion piece to its UK preparations for military action story, the Guardian notes that despite Obama’s reluctance to drag the U.S. into another Middle East war with potentially disastrous consequences, he enters his reelection year under pressure from Israel over Iran. Prime Minister Netanyahu could even force Obama’s hand by initiating an attack on Iran that the U.S. might feel compelled to join in order to ensure its success. (The Israeli leader has certainly shown a willingness to defy Obama on issues where he believes he has the support of Capitol Hill, and attacking Iran would certainly be one of those.) Obama is no closer to persuading or pressuring Iran into backing down on its nuclear program than when he ran for office four years ago, promising the engagement he said had been missing from the Bush approach. Washington hawks say engagement was tried and failed, and it’s time to ratchet up the pressure. Doves argue that engagement wasn’t given a serious go or was disrupted by Iran’s internal power struggle, and should be resumed.

Electoral calculations, however, would more likely prompt Obama to toughen up his stance. The problem, of course, is that a harder line appears no more likely to persuade Iran to back down than a softer one, but more bellicose rhetoric from Obama could have the unintended effect of narrowing his options. A U.S. military strike on Iran would not mark the first time in history that a country had found itself marching to war without having really intended to do so.

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Israel test-fires new ballistic missile

Al Jazeera reports: Israel has test-fired a ballistic missile capable of reaching Iran, from the Palmachim base, Israeli radio says.

The test of a rocket propulsion system on Wednesday comes amid increased debate around the likelihood of an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear programme.

Speculation around the basis for the first missile test since 2008 was heightened after a newspaper commentator had suggested over the weekend that Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, may have decided without cabinet approval to launch an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities.

A defence ministry statement said that the test-firing “had been planned by the defence establishment a long time ago and has been carried out as scheduled”.

Wednesday’s test-fire, the first in three years, was declared a success.

Though defence officials would not elaborate on the type of missile tested, the military affairs correspondent at Israel Radio, regularly briefed by officials, said a ballistic missile had been launched.

In an address at parliament’s opening session on Monday, Netanyahu repeated that a nuclear-armed Iranian state would prove a serious threat to Israel and the world.

Israel is believed to have a sizeable and the Middle East’s sole atomic arsenal, along with a technologically superior air force.

However, it lacks long-range bombers which could deliver lasting damage to Iran’s distant, dispersed and fortified facilities.

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UK military steps up plans for Iran attack amid fresh nuclear fears

The Guardian reports: Britain’s armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran amid mounting concern about Tehran’s nuclear enrichment programme, the Guardian has learned.

The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government.

In anticipation of a potential attack, British military planners are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles over the coming months as part of what would be an air and sea campaign.

They also believe the US would ask permission to launch attacks from Diego Garcia, the British Indian ocean territory, which the Americans have used previously for conflicts in the Middle East.

The Guardian has spoken to a number of Whitehall and defence officials over recent weeks who said Iran was once again becoming the focus of diplomatic concern after the revolution in Libya.

They made clear that Barack Obama, has no wish to embark on a new and provocative military venture before next November’s presidential election.

But they warned the calculations could change because of mounting anxiety over intelligence gathered by western agencies, and the more belligerent posture that Iran appears to have been taking.

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Goldstone’s ‘apartheid’ denial sparks strife

After his famous article earlier this year on Gaza, Judge Richard Goldstone has written a new op-ed, this time seeking to defend Israel against charges of apartheid.

There are numerous problems with Goldstone’s piece, but I want to highlight two important errors. First, Goldstone – like others who attack the applicability of the term “apartheid” – wants to focus on differences between the old regime in South Africa and what is happening in Israel/Palestine. Note that he does this even while observing that apartheid “can have broader meaning”, and acknowledging its inclusion in the 1998 Rome Statute.

As South African legal scholar John Dugard wrote in his foreword to my book Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide, no one is saying the two situations “are exactly the same”. Rather, there are “certain similarities” as well as “differences”: “It is Israel’s own version of a system that has been universally condemned”.

Goldstone would appear not to have read studies by the likes of South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council and others, who conclude that Israel is practicing a form of apartheid. The term has been used by the likes of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, President Jimmy Carter, and Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem.

Goldstone’s second major error is to omit core Israeli policies, particularly relating to the mass expulsions of 1948 and the subsequent land regime built on expropriation and ethno-religious discrimination. By law, Palestinian refugees are forbidden from returning, their property confiscated – the act of dispossession that enabled a Jewish majority to be created in the first place.

As an advisor on Arab affairs to PM Menachem Begin put it: “If we needed this land, we confiscated it from the Arabs. We had to create a Jewish state in this country, and we did”. Within the “Green Line”, the average Arab community had lost between 65 and 75 per cent of its land by the mid-1970s. Across Israel, hundreds of Jewish communities permit or deny entry according to “social suitability”. Goldstone’s claim that there is merely “de facto separation” rings hollow.

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Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah accuses army of hijacking revolution

The jailed Egyptian revolutionary Alaa Abd El Fattah has written a secret letter from his prison cell, accusing the country’s military rulers of murder and lamenting what he views as the army’s hijacking of the revolution.

The letter, produced covertly from inside Bab el-Khalq prison where Abd El Fattah is being held, was handed to his pregnant wife, Manal, during a visit on Monday. It is being published in Arabic by the Egyptian newspaper al-Shorouk and in English by the Guardian, and is likely to intensify the growing divisions between Egypt’s increasingly repressive army junta and pro-change activists on the street.

Abd El Fattah, one of Egypt’s most prominent anti-regime voices and a former political prisoner under the Mubarak dictatorship, was taken into military custody on Sunday evening following public criticisms of the army’s conduct on the night of 9 October, when at least 27 people were killed during a Coptic Christian protest in downtown Cairo.

Like many other activists, Abd El Fattah accused the army of direct involvement in the bloodshed, a claim that appears to be supported by extensive witness reports and video footage. He was charged by military prosecutors with “inciting violence against the army”, and is being held initially for 15 days – a detention period that can be renewed indefinitely by the authorities. His arrest has provoked outrage across the Middle East and beyond.

Alaa Abd El Fattah’s letter begins: I never expected to repeat the experience of five years ago: after a revolution that deposed the tyrant, I go back to his jails?

The memories come back to me, all the details of imprisonment; the skills of sleeping on the floor, nine men in a six-by-12-foot (two-by-four-metre) cell, the songs of prison, the conversations. But I absolutely can’t remember how I used to keep my glasses safe while I slept.

They have been stepped on three times already today. I suddenly realise they’re the same glasses that were with me in my last imprisonment; the one for supporting the Egyptian judiciary in 2006. And that I am locked up, again pending trial, again on a set of loose and flimsy charges – the one difference is that instead of the state security prosecutor we have the military prosecutor – a change in keeping with the military moment we’re living now.

Last time my imprisonment was shared with 50 colleagues from the “Kifaya” movement. This time, I’m alone, in a cell with eight men who shouldn’t be here; poor, helpless, unjustly held – the guilty among them and the innocent.

As soon as they learned I was one of the “young people of the revolution” they started to curse out the revolution and how it had failed to clean up the ministry of the interior. I spend my first two days listening to stories of torture at the hands of a police force that insists on not being reformed; that takes out its defeat on the bodies of the poor and the helpless.

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