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Why Wikileaks Will Kill Big Business And Big Government | The New Republic
When people riff about the impact of Wikileaks, you typically hear how it’s forever changed diplomacy or intelligence-gathering. The more ambitious accounts will mention the implications for journalism, too.
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The Wikileaks revolution isn’t only about airing secrets and transacting information. It’s about dismantling large organizations—from corporations to government bureaucracies. It may well lead to their extinction.
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George Clooney | South Sudan | Sudan Referendum | Hollywood
George Clooney has initiated a cutting-edge human rights project that combines satellite photographs, field reports and Google technology to help prevent the resumption of a deadly civil war in Sudan.
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The actor came up with the idea of satellite surveillance when he visited the tense border area in October. Then he pulled together the unprecedented collaboration and finance needed to make it a reality.
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Clooney persuaded cooperation between Not On Our Watch, which is a Hollywood human rights group, and the Enough Project, a Washington-based anti-genocide group. He also orchestrated the involvement of UNOSAT (the United Nations Operational Satellite Applications Program), the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Google and Trellon, which is an internet strategy and development firm. Together, all the groups for a coalition that will provide an early warning system to focus world attention and generate rapid responses on human rights and human security concerns.
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Archive for 31 ديسمبر, 2010
My Bookmarx 12/31/2010
Posted in Uncategorized on 31 ديسمبر 2010| Leave a Comment »
My Bookmarx 12/29/2010
Posted in Uncategorized on 29 ديسمبر 2010| Leave a Comment »
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Scandal Threatens India’s Economic Growth : NPR
Some analysts say India’s surge in growth exposed conflicts and contradictions that have haunted the country since it won independence.
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India’s income tax department had tapped the phone of a prominent lobbyist named Niira Radia, looking for evidence of alleged tax evasion and money laundering.
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Saikat Datta is an assistant editor at Outlook, a weekly newsmagazine that has put some of the leaked tapes on its website. He says the tapes reveal that the country that prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy is really ruled by a small coterie of powerful people.
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Datta says that ultimately, the problem stems from the fact that, after independence in 1947, the Indian state never attempted land reform, leaving the country’s wealth in the hands of the same people who’d always held it — and still do.
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“In the process of shifting from a government-led economy to a private sector-led economy,” Prasad says, “the opportunities for graft were enormous, because those who were politically well-connected could most benefit from the private-sector expansion.”
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Aliya rises second year straight nearing 20,000 mark
Figures indicate 16% rise in aliya compared to previous year; Jerusalem most popular place for new Olim; oldest immigrant 99 years old.
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The Immigrant Absorption Ministry and the Jewish Agency for Israel reported Tuesday that 2010 had seen a steady rise in new immigrants with more than 19,000 people from places as diverse as Venezuela, Malta, Japan, and Rawanda choosing to make aliya.
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Why Wikileaks Will Kill Big Business And Big Government | The New Republic
The Wikileaks revolution isn’t only about airing secrets and transacting information. It’s about dismantling large organizations—from corporations to government bureaucracies. It may well lead to their extinction.
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In a Wikileaks world, the greater the number of people who intimately understand your organization,* the more candidates there are for revealing that information to millions of voyeurs.
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As a practical matter, that means the days of bureaucracies in the tens of thousands of employees are probably numbered. In a decade or two, we may not only see USAID spun off from the State Department. We may see dozens of mini-State Departments servicing separate regions of the world. Or hundreds of micro-State Departments—one for every country on the planet. Don’t like the stranglehold that a handful of megabanks have on the financial sector? Don’t worry! Twenty years from now there won’t be such a thing as megabanks, because the cost of employing 100,000 potential leakers will be prohibitive.
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Afghanistan is Now Open for Business – Anarkismo
American military and economic strategists recognize Afghanistan is a necessary bridgehead to engage America’s competitors China, Russia, and India on their home field as well as to contain and pacify potential spoilers to the expansion of free trade in Iran, Pakistan, and the volatile Central Asian states.
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Not only does Afghanistan contain some of the richest mineral deposits in the world, but it also sits astride the shortest trade routes between China and Europe as well as between Russia and India. In this age of globalizing free trade and an accelerating scramble for natural resources, Afghanistan sits at the epicentre of Eurasia.
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as Zbigniew Brzezinski noted in 1997: “What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy and historical legacy.”
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The first two industrial-scale development projects have proceeded beyond planning to implementation. In 2008, the Afghan government sold the concession to mine Aynak, one of the largest copper deposits in the world. On 11 December 2010, the presidents of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India signed a deal to proceed with the 1,700 kilometre TAPI pipeline, which will transport natural gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and Pakistan to energy-hungry India. Many more mega-projects currently in the planning stages will soon be implemented.
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Resource and infrastructure development projects on multi-billion dollar scales are rapidly proceeding. It is evident that states and investors are beginning to invest heavily in large-scale industrial development. Whether these investments will return profits for investors is yet unsure.
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It is more uncertain whether these investments will have any positive effect for most Afghans. Judging by the centuries of Western intervention in Afghanistan and the well-known effects of the “resource curse” experienced by resource rich but poor people around the world, it seems unlikely many Afghans have much to hope for.
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In 2010, the U.S. State Department reported Afghanistan “has taken significant steps toward fostering a business-friendly environment for both foreign and domestic investment.” Afghanistan’s new investment law allows 100 per cent foreign ownership and provides generous tax allowances to foreign investors, without providing any protection for Afghan workers or the environment.
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A time to protest – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
The demand by a group of academics and intellectuals that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspend the state-funded rabbis who signed the letter of incitement against Israeli Arabs, and to keep racist bills from being put to a Knesset vote, is an important and timely act of protest.
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Israelis have recently been exposed to massive incitement from two main sources: Knesset members and rabbis. The former purport to lead, the latter purport to speak in the name of God and morality. Both have assumed exclusive control of the public arena, creating the impression that everyone is in thrall to their benighted opinions – or at least accepts them submissively.
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Huge gas fields discovered recently under the Mediterranean seabed have raised high hopes in Israel, a small, high-consumption country seeking alternative energy resources and a greater degree of
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Israel had neglected to sort this out with Cyprus, which “owns” the other end of the Mediterranean. Now the two countries have divvied up the roughly 200 nautical miles between them and the maritime border was demarcated in a recent agreement signed in Nicosia by Cypriot Foreign Minister Markos Kyprianou and Landau.
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Cyprus says this doesn’t conflict with a similar agreement signed with Lebanon, still awaiting ratification in parliament.
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Now Egypt is watching, to ensure the agreement doesn’t infringe on Egyptian maritime territories and its interests. It too has signed a deal with Cyprus.
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Although Turkey has no claim to the area demarcated with Israel, the Turkish foreign ministry fiercely criticized the agreement saying it didn’t consider “Turkish Cypriot” rights and jurisdiction over the maritime areas of the island.
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The two main sites — Tamar and Leviathan — could answer Israel’s natural gas needs for decades. With the reserves’ value estimated at about $300 billion, a bitter public debate is raging over who will benefit most and how to divide profits between state, tycoons and small investors.
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The recent suicide of an unemployed 24-year-old man in Tunisia — who electrocuted himself by touching a high-voltage electrical pole after shouting “no for misery, no for unemployment” — and the ensuing unrest are signs of the frustration and despair felt by the country’s youth as Tunisia’s economy slows.
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Even as the level of education among job seekers in Tunisia has improved, the government has failed to make policies guaranteeing enough job creation to absorb new entrants to the labor market, especially among those with university degrees.
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Egyptian security forces uncovered a munitions stockpile, including anti-aircraft missiles, destined for Gaza, the Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported on Tuesday.
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This is not the first time that anti-aircraft missiles and other munitions destined to be smuggled into Gaza have been seized by Egyptian forces.
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In September, Israeli and Palestinian news reported that Egyptian troops recovered machine guns, ammunition, over 170 anti-aircraft shells, 90 artillery shells and anti-tank landmines in a series of raids across the Sinai Peninsula.
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My Bookmarx 12/28/2010
Posted in Uncategorized on 28 ديسمبر 2010| Leave a Comment »
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Defense firms lure retired generals – The Boston Globe
In large numbers, and with few rules, retiring generals are taking lucrative defense-firm jobs
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Brutal Artist Crackdown – The Daily Beast
The harsh sentencing of a world-renowned director prompted protests from Martin Scorsese and other artists this week. Omid Memarian on escalating repression in Iran.
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Iranian filmmaker Panahi receives prison sentence
Prominent Iranian director Jafar Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison and banned from making films, writing scripts, giving interviews and traveling abroad for the coming 20 years, his lawyer said Tuesday.
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Panahi, 50, an internationally acclaimed filmmaker, was officially convicted of conspiring against national security and spreading propaganda against the system, said his lawyer, Farideh Gheirat.
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After Ahmadinejad’s disputed victory in Iran’s 2009 presidential election, Panahi several times joined protesters and was once detained briefly by security forces. In March, while attempting to make a film inside his own house, he was again arrested and held for two months. Iran’s culture minister said Panahi was making a film against the government, but the director’s wife denied it.
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How Do We Shift Power to the People and Away from Concentrated Corporate Power? | Dissident Voice
The power of concentrated corporate capital was on display in Washington last week, as it has been all year. The incoming Chair of the Congressional committee responsible for banking regulation, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) says “my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.” And President Obama sat down with the CEOs of 20 large corporations to talk about how he could help Big Business increase their already record profits.
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These actions echo a year where Sen. Durbin complained the banks “own” the Congress and where President Obama worked with the health insurance industry to keep them in control of health care while claiming it was “reform,” and where the Supreme Court in Citizens United vastly increased corporate power in elections by allowing unlimited spending.
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My Bookmarx 12/27/2010
Posted in Uncategorized on 27 ديسمبر 2010| 1 Comment »
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Israeli military kills 20-year old Gazan for herding animals too close to buffer zone
Yesterday morning Salama Abu Hashish, 20 years, was herding his sheep and goats in Beit Lahya, in northern Gaza, when the Israeli Occupation Forces shot him without any warning. The bullet hit his back and went straight through one of his kidneys.
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Yesterday’s attacks come amidst an escalating Israeli assault on workers in the border area: in the past five weeks alone, 40 people have been injured in the buffer zone, an Israeli military-declared no-go zone that runs along the Gazan side of the border in a swathe 300 to 500 meters wide. However, according to the United Nations, the “high risk” zone stretches up to 1000-1500 meters. The total area amounts to 35% of Gaza’s arable land.
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The rolling blackouts thankfully hit Gaza in even more of a stutter than they used to. Some days, like today, the power remains on all day.
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Today I went to the martyr’s tent in Beit Lehiya. The shepherd who had died was freshly married. His child had been born two days before. His father said, “I am open,” indicating a line running along his sternum. The young man who had died had been his oldest son, leaving three brothers and two sisters. My friends working here, and the statistics, say that these murders, even more, the injuries, have been incessant since I left at the end of July. Incessant, and nearly banal, and marked in the West by a thundering silence—the silence of a racism that roars at the death of a Jewish Israeli and does not even bother to shrug at the death of a Bedouin living with his sheep
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My Bookmarx 12/26/2010
Posted in Uncategorized on 26 ديسمبر 2010| Leave a Comment »
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Inside the bizarre cabal of secretive donors, demagogic bloggers, European Neo-Fascists, violent Israeli settlers, and Republican politicians behind the anti-Muslim crusade.
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Bavaria Boom, but Germans Feel Economic Malaise – NYTimes.com
By nearly every measure this industrial region in Bavaria, home to exporting giants like Siemens Healthcare, Adidas and Puma, is at the center of Germany’s resilient economic success, driving the nation’s growth even as much of Europe struggles to stay solvent.
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many people in this region, and around the nation, seem subdued and uncertain about their own financial health. Germany’s good fortune, however conspicuous to other Europeans, is widely viewed here as having come at the expense of its workers, who for the past decade have sacrificed wages and benefits to make their employers more competitive.
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My Bookmarx 12/25/2010
Posted in Uncategorized on 25 ديسمبر 2010| Leave a Comment »
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A Provocative Blueprint for Peace in the Mideast | Books | AlterNet
Author Ilan Pappé recounts the growing support of introducing a one-state solution into the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks from his book with Noam Chomsky.
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Hidden Histories – Book Review
The clear majority of the modern works that examine the Palestine/Israel conflict do so with a strong emphasis on the ‘nakba’ of 1948, with subsequent arguments based on covering events that led up to it, and then arguments based on events that have followed from it.
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Basem L. Ra’ad’s new book “Hidden Histories – Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean” adds a relatively new component to the discussion of Palestinian and regional history. It is impossible to not include the above elements in a discussion of Palestine, yet they receive minimal treatment, almost as an already understood if understated context. Instead, Hidden Histories explores two perspectives that are not completely ignored but not fully well developed, in part because the dominant media discourse of the U.S., Europe, and Israel do not particularly want them to be heard.
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The first perspective is to examine the ancient histories of the region through current knowledge of archaeology and linguistics, a duality that highlights not the uniqueness of a chosen people and its exile and return, but the commonality of a stable indigenous population that underwent various permutations and adaptations as different forces controlled to the region to varying degrees.
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The second perspective looks at the modern implementation of the Israeli narrative – normally looked at in the manner in which the ethnic history is used to justify the appropriation and annexation of the physical landscape, of the declared intent to settle all of Eretz Israel, as a divine right of the Jewish people. Ra’ad turns this appropriation and annexation perspective and focuses on the appropriation of the cultural artefacts, the cultural heritage, the language, and the cultural beliefs of the indigenous Palestinians, to the extent, as he argues, that the Palestinians themselves are becoming unaware of their own true patrimony and unknowingly reflect Israeli mythology into their own background.
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One of the first things that struck me while reading the cables from the US embassy to Israel in Tel Aviv was how worried the Israeli government seems to be about the Goldstone Report into war crimes committed during Israel’s 2008-2009 attack on the people of Gaza.
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Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is reported to have said he “had consulted with Egypt and Fatah prior to Operation Cast Lead, asking if they were willing to assume control of Gaza once Israel defeated Hamas”. In other words, Fateh leader Mahmoud Abbas (whose term as PA president expired in January 2009) knew the massive Israeli onslaught was coming but said nothing. This was widely suspected, but to read confirmation of it from a confidential US government source is something new.
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One week after the beginning of the riots in Sidi Bouzid , following the immolation by fire of a young man, the assessment of the situation is more than necessary. Riots are continuing in Sidi Bouzid and they even disseminated to other parts of the area including: Meknassy, Menzel Bouzeyen, and Mezzouna.
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France24-Monte Carlo Doualiya – قتيل و10 جرحى في صدامات بين متظاهرين والشرطة في منزل بوزيان
أفاد مسؤول نقابي أن مواجهات عنيفة بين متظاهرين والشرطة أسفرت الجمعة عن مقتل شخص وإصابة عشرة آخرين بجروح في مدينة منزل بوزيان في ولاية سيدي بوزيد التي شهدت خلال أسبوع واحد حالتي انتحار بسبب تردي الأوضاع الاجتماعية وارتفاع نسبة البطالة.
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وقال محمد فاضل من نقابة التعليم الثانوي التونسية ان القتيل والجرحى اصيبوا بالرصاص في منزل بوزيان التي تبعد نحو 60 كلم عن مدينة سيدي بوزيد التي تشهد اضطرابات اجتماعية منذ عدة ايام.
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وقال المسؤول النقابي ان المتظاهر القتيل محمد عماري يبلغ من العمر 18 عاما وانه توفي اثر اصابته برصاصة في صدره.
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المتظاهرين اضرموا النار في ثلاث سيارات للشرطة ومكاتب للحزب الديموقراطي التقدمي الحاكم وقطار للبضائع ومركز للحرس الوطني.
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وتشهد ولاية سيدي بوزيد اضطرابات اجتماعية منذ 19 كانون الاول/ديسمبر اثر محاولة انتحار اقدم عليها جامعي تونسي يعمل بائعا متجولا احتجاجا على مصادرة الشرطة لعربته التي يستخدمها لبيع الخضر والفواكه في مدينة سيدي بوزيد.
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لهذه الأسباب، انتفضت ولاية سيدي بوزيد » Nawaat de Tunisie – Tunisia
لئن انطلقت أحداث العنف الدامية التي يعيشها مركز الولاية منذ أيام والتي اتسعت رقعتها لتشمل أنحاء منها، على خلفية التجمعات الشعبية العفوية المتعاطفة مع الشاب الذي أضرم النار في جسده احتجاجا على إهانته وظروفه السيئة، إلا أن جحافل الغاضبين كانت تستحضر كل المشاكل التي يهجسون بها سرا وعلانية احتجاجا على سوء خدمات إدارية كبر في نفوسهم ليتحول مع الأيام إلى إحساس بالحقرة والإقصاء. ولعل الملفت للانتباه أن من اكتفوا بالمتابعة عن بعد كانوا الأكثر غبطة لما يجري تعبيرا منهم عن حالة الاحتقان التي تقبض على نفوسهم
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البديل | البديل » مشاريع تنموية في ولاية تونسية عقب اضطرابات عنيفة احتجاجا على انتحار عاطلين
شهدت الولاية الواقعة على بعد ١٢٠ كيلومترا من العاصمة تونس احتجاجات واسعة طيلة الأسبوع الماضي بعد أن أشعل شاب النار في نفسه لعجزه عن العثور على فرصة عمل رغم أنه من حاملي الشهادات العليا. وقالت مصادر نقابية إن شابا آخر انتحر يوم الأربعاء الماضي للسبب نفسه.
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كانت مصادر نقابية في سيدي بوزيد أعلنت أن شابا ثانيا أقدم على الانتحار مساء الأربعاء أمام مقر معتمدية سيدي بوزيد الغربية، في وقت تحدثت فيه الأنباء عن تجدد أعمال الشغب والمواجهات العنيفة بين الشرطة ومئات المتظاهرين في عدد من مدن المحافظة. ونقلت جريدة الشعب الناطقة باسم الاتحاد العام التونسي للشغل عن مصادر نقابية في المدينة أن الشاب حسين الفالحي أقدم على الانتحار احتجاجا على البطالة التي يعيشها.
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نقلت وكالة الأنباء الألمانية عن النقابي محمد فاضل قوله إن مئات المتظاهرين الغاضبين أحرقوا مبنى معتمدية منزل بوزيان (التابعة للمحافظة) بالكامل. وأضاف أن المتظاهرين “يحاصرون مركز الحرس الوطني (فرع من قوات الأمن) بالمدينة ويحاولون اقتحامه، وهو ما اضطر قوات الأمن إلى إطلاق الرصاص الحي في الهواء لمنعهم من ذلك”.
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يشار إلى أن منطقة الجنوب الغربي في تونس شهدت في السنوات الأخيرة احتجاجات اجتماعية، إذ شهدت مدينة الرديف من محافظة قفصة تحركات احتجاجية كبيرة عام ٢٠٠٨ استمرت أشهرا ضد البطالة وغلاء المعيشة وتعثر التنمية بالمنطقة المعروفة باسم “الحوض المنجمي” لغناها بالفوسفات، وامتدت إلى مدينة أم العرائس المجاورة وفريانة من ولاية القصرين
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My Bookmarx 12/24/2010
Posted in Uncategorized on 24 ديسمبر 2010| 1 Comment »
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WikiLeaks Reveals U.S. Efforts to Change Egypt’s Military Strategy – Newsweek
Recently leaked diplomatic cables reveal that America’s staunchest Arab ally—and the recipient of the second-largest American military-aid package—is tenaciously resisting U.S. pleas to reform its military mission to meet 21st-century threats. Instead, Egypt, a waning regional power, insists on procuring additional conventional weapons more suitable for last century’s battles.
My Bookmarx 12/21/2010
Posted in Uncategorized on 21 ديسمبر 2010| Leave a Comment »
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ei: Book review: “Spy Trade” details history of Israel lobby in the US
“Grant F. Smith, author of the new book Spy Trade, is staggeringly knowledgeable about the Israel lobby. Spy Trade is the latest in a series of books on the lobby published by his organization, the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy.”
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In this volume, Smith offers a richly detailed narrative discussing the how and who of lobby activities in the United States from 1948-2009, uncovered through insistent Freedom of Information Act requests.
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Thousands flee fresh Darfur clashes
“As many as 12,000 people have fled following fresh fighting between army and Darfur rebels in Sudan, according to the United Nations.”
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Sudan’s army attacked fighters from the Sudan Liberation Movement loyal to Minni Minnawi last week and fighting continued on Friday.
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Minnawi was the only Darfur rebel leader to sign a 2006 peace deal with the government.
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Sudan’s army declared Minnawi a military target earlier this month, accusing him of breaking a ceasefireand plotting to join rebels still fighting the government.
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The fighting was the final nail in the coffin for the troubled peace deal, which was boycotted by the region’s two main rebel groups and did nothing to halt the spread of lawlessness, banditry and violence in the territory.
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Egypt blames Israel for impasse
“Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, has blamed Israel for the stalemate in peace negotiations with the Palestinians.”
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“I say that Israel must assume responsibility for the halt in the negotiations. It must know that the security of its people will come about through peace, not by force of arms or settlements” in occupied land, Mubarak said in his speech.
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“I say that the United States and other members of the international Quartet (the United Nations, the European Union and Russia) must assume their responsibilities in a serious and effective manner to end the current impasse.”
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My Bookmarx 12/20/2010
Posted in Uncategorized on 20 ديسمبر 2010| Leave a Comment »
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VIDEO: State Department Trembles As Journalist Asks About Peace Activist Jailed By Israel | TPMCafe
“Watch this whole sequence. If you ever wanted to see, not just read about, how the US is intimidated by Israel and the lobby, just watch this. “
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Maximilian Forte: The Wikileaks Revolution
“This is a conflict, with publicly announced goals, with actual confrontation, where strategies are at play and power is at stake. This may be obvious, but remembering that this is a political process, and should be analyzed as such, may help to prevent some from carting it off into some obscure, minimal sub domain of specialist discourse”
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But this war is not about information. The war is about what people accept as their relationship to a state that has been ardently expanding its power at our expense.
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we are fighting the effects of the rise of the modern state and its profoundly damaging impacts on human social relationships. This is a still unresolved clash between centralized power, a relative novelty in human history, and more egalitarian social forms that dominated the majority of human history for millennia. Now, the state wishes to reduce all of us to an infantile, vulnerable, dependent population—a bunch of thumb-sucking, head-bobbing, burbling toddlers preoccupied with “safety,” requiring the father state to “protect” us.
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never again will the relationship between state power, media, and citizenship be the same. It should be easy enough to agree with Julian Assange who recently stated: “geopolitics will be separated into pre and post cablegate phases;” and Carne Ross, a British diplomat, who wrote: “History may now be dated pre- or post-WikiLeaks.”
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Gaining Perspective on the Crisis in Haiti | CommonDreams.org
“Haitians are too often portrayed as people to pity or bent on burning tires. In a country of over 10 million people with the majority under 24, little is said about the level of restraint that has been shown by the masses of displaced and financially impoverished people who have seen little if any change in their quality of life since the earthquake, despite the high profile celebrity pandering and international donor (or more accurately public relations) conferences. “
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Cholera has gained some media attention, but to what avail and in what context? Systems are overwhelmed, their efforts and challenges underappreciated: try moving supplies around when the ports and airports may close at any moment, when roads are blocked and difficult to travel when not, when clearance through customs becomes an exercise in patience. Try explaining to a person who is severely rehydrated why there is nothing that can be done. Try understanding why estimates of patients are unknown, when those affected do not have the money (the equivalent of 8 cents) to pay for transportation to a treatment center.
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This is the world we live in and, yes, have helped create. Over 800 million people, almost three times the number of people in the United States, have no access to safe drinking water. In many ways, cholera is an accelerated version of the ordinary state of affairs, where water borne disease affects the most vulnerable and marginalized.
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“Wikleaks is upheld as a breakthrough in the battle against media disinformation and the lies of the US government. “
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Wikileaks is not a typical alternative media initiative. The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel are directly involved in the editing and selection of leaked documents. The London Economist has also played an important role.
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While the project and its editor Julian Assange reveal a commitment and concern for truth in media, the recent Wikileaks releases of embassy cables have been carefully “redacted” by the mainstream media in liaison with the US government. (See Interview with David E. Sanger, Fresh Air, PBS, December 8, 2010)
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The important question is who controls and oversees the selection, distribution and editing of released documents to the broader public?
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What US foreign policy objectives are being served through this redacting process?
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Is Wikileaks part of an awakening of public opinion, of a battle against the lies and fabrications which appear daily in the print media and on network TV?
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If so, how can this battle against media disinformation be waged with the participation and collaboration of the corporate architects of media disinformation?
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America’s corporate media and more specifically The New York Times are an integral part of the economic establishment, with links to Wall Street, the Washington think tanks and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
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Moreover, the US corporate media has developed a longstanding relationship to the US intelligence apparatus, going back to “Operation Mocking Bird”, an initiative of the CIA’s Office of Special Projects (OSP), established in the early 1950s.
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It should come as no surprise that David E. Sanger and his colleagues at the NYT centered their attention on a highly “selective” dissemination of the Wikileaks cables, focussing on areas which would support US foreign policy interests: Iran’s nuclear program, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s support of Al Qaeda, China’s relations with North Korea, etc. These releases were then used as source material in NYT articles and commentary.
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The leaked cables are used to feed the disinformation campaign concerning Iran’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. While the leaked cables are heralded as “evidence” that Iran constitutes a threat, the lies and fabrications of the corporate media concerning Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program are not mentioned, nor is there any mention of them in the leaked cables.
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The leaks, once they are funnelled into the corporate news chain, edited and redacted by the New York Times, indelibly serve the broader interests of US foreign policy, including US-NATO-Israel war preparations directed against Iran.
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Kosovo and the myth of liberal intervention | Neil Clark | Comment is free | The Guardian
“‘The United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles … Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values.” So declared the neocon US senator (and current foe of WikiLeaks) Joseph Lieberman back in 1999 at the height of the US-led military intervention against Slobodan Miloševic’s Yugoslavia.”
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It would be interesting to hear what Senator Lieberman makes of the report of the Council of Europe – Europe’s premier human rights watchdog – on his favourite band of freedom fighters. The report, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, details horrific rights abuses it claims have been carried out by the KLA, the west’s allies in the war against Yugoslavia 11 years ago.
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Holbrooke’s Legacy by Justin Raimondo — Antiwar.com
“As the panegyrics to Richard Holbrooke spread over the internet like a thickening fog, the real legacy of this State Department apparatchik came across the news wires a few hours after his death”
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Kosovo’s prime minister is the head of a “mafia-like” Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organized crime.
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It was Holbrooke, one of the chief architects of the Kosovo war, who midwifed the KLA regime in Kosovo, and created a gangster state.
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Blackwater Founder in Deal to Sell Company – NYTimes.com
“Erik D. Prince, the founder of the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, has reached a deal to sell his embattled firm to a small group of investors based in Los Angeles who have close ties to Mr. Prince, according to people briefed on the deal.”
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Yet questions remain about Mr. Prince’s continuing relationship with the company. While he is expected to step down from any management or operational role, he will have a financial interest in the company’s future, according to people briefed on the negotiations. As part of the deal, he will be paid an “earn out,” or a payment that depends on the company’s financial performance over the next several years, these people said.
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Mr. Prince, a former Navy Seal who created Blackwater in 1997, put his company up for sale in June and moved his family to Abu Dhabi, court records show. Mr. Prince, who built Blackwater using an inheritance from his family’s Michigan auto parts fortune, stepped aside as Xe’s chief executive in 2009 but has remained chairman until now.
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The new buyers are hoping to recast the company as a military training organization instead of a private security service. The company’s training center in Moyock has trained more than 50,000 United States government personnel and allied forces. The buyers hope to receive new contracts to train forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, among other locations, especially as the United States withdraws troops and needs to train local forces.
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WikiLeaks’ lesson on Haiti | Mark Weisbrot | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
“One area of US foreign policy that the WikiLeaks cables help illuminate, which the major media has predictably ignored, is the occupation of Haiti.”
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In 2004, the country’s democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown for the second time, through an effort led by the United States government. Officials of the constitutional government were jailed and thousands of its supporters were killed.
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“It’s more often used now as a jibe against someone who throws something at a protest, but anarchism has a long, complex history, and it’s never really gone away”
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Green Change : Some US gov’t contractors are too big to punish
“Weeks into the largest oil spill in American history, government officials met in Washington to discuss ways to compel BP, which leased the drilling rig, to move faster in stopping the spill.”
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BP, the regulators knew from experience, might be too big to ban. They recalled that last year, before the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, officials at the Environmental Protection Agency wanted to stop BP from getting government contracts until it addressed various environmental and safety violations. Then, according to a lawyer involved in the debarment process at the agency, the Pentagon objected: BP was its biggest supplier of fuel.
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My Bookmarx 12/19/2010
Posted in Uncategorized on 19 ديسمبر 2010| Leave a Comment »
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“The use of contractors could become a serious problem if controversies about them are not addressed, a senior British official warned during a recent visit to Washington.”
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The Pentagon’s Central Command had nearly 225,000 contractors working in Iraq and Afghanistan and other areas at last count, doing tasks ranging from providing security to base support. Intelligence agencies such as the CIA and the National Security Agency field thousands more under classified contracts that are not publicly disclosed, but extend into every U.S. military command around the world.
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What the lawsuit against BP can achieve | Thomas Noyes | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
“The US department of justice has filed a civil lawsuit against BP and associated companies like Anadarko and Transocean for damages resulting from the Deepwater Horizon explosion that erupted on 20 April, and spewed nearly 5m barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico before it was capped on 15 July. “
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WikiLeaks cables: Sudanese president ‘stashed $9bn in UK banks’ | World news | The Guardian
“Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, has siphoned as much as $9bn out of his impoverished country, and much of it may be stashed in London banks, according to secret US diplomatic cables that recount conversations with the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court”
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“Ocampo suggested if Bashir’s stash of money were disclosed (he put the figure at $9bn), it would change Sudanese public opinion from him being a ‘crusader’ to that of a thief,” one report by a senior US official states. “Ocampo reported Lloyds bank in London may be holding or knowledgeable of the whereabouts of his money,” the cable says.
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In a remarkable series of exchanges, the cables also reveal how Sudan’s mineral wealth had a direct bearing on the ICC proceedings against Bashir, as China balked at action against him that could harm its interests in the oil industry.
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the Chinese expressed “puzzlement” that the French – a member of the ICC and able to influence the deferral of proceedings against Bashir – supported Ocampo’s decision to pursue the Sudanese president, given France’s oil interests in the region. “[The Chinese] observed French companies have oil interests in Sudan as well as Chad,” the Americans stated.
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France ultimately supported Bashir’s indictment, but the cables suggest this was deliberately calculated to protect their oil interests. The French told the Americans they believed that firm action on Darfur was the only way to protect oil interests.
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WikiLeaks cables: BP accused by Azerbaijan of stealing oil worth $10bn | World news | The Guardian
“The president of Azerbaijan accused BP of stealing billions of dollars of oil from his country and using “mild blackmail” to secure the rights to develop vast gas reserves in the Caspian Sea region, according to leaked US cables.”
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Ilham Aliyev said the oil firm tried to exploit his country’s “temporary troubles” during a gas shortage in December 2006. In return for making more gas supplies available for domestic consumption that winter, BP wanted an extension of its lucrative profit-sharing contract with the government and the go-ahead to develop Caspian gas reserves, one cable from the US embassy in Baku reports. Aliyev also threatened to make BP’s alleged “cheating” public, cables show.
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BP controls the country’s crucial energy projects and is its largest foreign investor. One cable reveals BP was so concerned about a terrorist attack on its offshore facilities, and about the lack of protection offered by the government, that it provided Azerbaijan’s naval forces with “off-the-shelf” anti-collision radar to cover the company’s platforms – “the best one that the navy currently has”, according to BP.
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Aliyev’s hostility towards the company vanished, say the cables, after Russia invaded neighbouring Georgia in August 2008.
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According to one cable shortly after the invasion, “Aliyev’s expressed intention to reopen discussion with BP … after a long period of inaction, is significant, and likely a result of a new appreciation for the security benefits of a significant western presence in the energy sector in the wake of regional developments.”
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The row centred on how the consortium operating the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshi field, led by BP, would share profits with the government in what is known as a production sharing agreement (PSA). The contract was signed in 1994 and, as is customary, allowed for the companies initially to take more of the revenues to pay off their upfront costs to develop the field, with a higher proportion of revenues going to the government subsequently.
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BP told the state-controlled oil company Socar that because of higher transport costs and delays in production, the agreed staggered increases in government profits allocated to the government would take longer to materialise.
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WikiLeaks cables: BP suffered blowout on Azerbaijan gas platform | World news | The Guardian
“Striking resemblances between BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster and a little-reported giant gas leak in Azerbaijan experienced by the UK firm 18 months beforehand have emerged from leaked US embassy cables.”
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The leak happened at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshi (ACG) field, Azerbaijan’s largest producing oil field in the Caspian where vast undeveloped gas reserves also lie. BP is the operator and largest shareholder in the consortium, which includes US companies Chevron, ExxonMobil and Hess (formerly Amerada Hess), as well as Norwegian firm Statoil and Azerbaijani state owned oil company Socar.
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BP is in charge of Azerbaijan’s key energy projects, and has a significant influence across the region. In late 2006 discussions were taking place about when Turkey would be able to link up its own network to a new pipeline operated by BP transporting gas across the Caucasus from BP’s giant new Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan. The new pipeline was seen as crucial as reducing the region’s dependence on unreliable gas supplies from Russia, particularly amidst rising gas prices.
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The cables also reveal BP concerns on the lack of security at the time around its oil and gas installations, particularly in the Caspian Sea, which it believed made them vulnerable to terrorist attack.
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“The US energy firm Chevron negotiated with Tehran about developing an Iraq-Iran cross-border oilfield in spite of tight US sanctions, according to the Iraqi prime minister in leaked diplomatic cables.”
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Nouri al-Maliki‘s claim, reported in the cables, that Chevron was in discussions with the Iranian government will raise eyebrows in Europe and other parts of the world where international companies have come under significant pressure from Washington to end investments and other financial dealings with Tehran.
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According to the cable, Maliki asked “about the political feasibility of such a deal involving a US firm working both sides of a cross-border field, given current USG [United States government] policies toward Iran”.
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“PM al-Maliki said that he prefers to go with Chevron on the deal; however, he remarked that if US rules prevent Chevron from doing this project, he would approach a non-American firm.”
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