'This Time, Israel Has Defied the Whole World'

December 4, 2012

Europe is furious with Israel for its plan to build 3,000 new settler units to punish the Palestinians, following their elevation to "non-member observer status" in the UN last week. While sanctions appear not to be on the table, German commentators say it is time to get tough with Israeli premier Netanyahu.

One might think that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Wednesday visit to Berlin could provide for some fireworks. He has come under significant criticism from the European Union for Israel's announcement last Friday that it would build 3,000 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Britain and France denied reports on Monday that they were considering recalling their ambassadors from Israel, though both nations, in addition to Sweden, did vent their anger by summoning the Israeli ambassadors to voice their concerns.


On Tuesday, cooler heads seem to be prevailing. British Foreign Secretary William Hague ruled out the possibility of European sanctions on Israel. "I don't think there is enthusiasm around the European Union … about economic sanctions in Europe on Israel," he said. "I don't believe there would be anywhere near a consensus nor is that our approach." France too has indicated that it would not pursue sanctions.

Furthermore, despite Merkel's own warning on the settlement construction plan -- her spokesman said on Monday that the chancellor was "extremely concerned" -- it seems more likely that the experienced stateswoman would chide Netanyahu in private rather than openly.

remainder: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-commentators-blast-israel-for-settlement-building-plan-a-870924.html

Study: Wealthy Nations’ Fossil Fuel Subsidies 5 Times Greater Than Climate Aid to Countries in Need

From Democracy Now:

A new report by Oil Change International has found wealthy nations are spending five times more money on fossil fuel subsidies than climate aid. In 2011, rich nations spent $58 billion on subsidies and just $11 billion for climate adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. According to the study, the United States spent $13 billion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2011 and just $2.5 billion in climate aid. We’re joined by David Turnbull, campaigns director of Oil Change International. [includes rush transcript]

snip* Today we’re joined by David Turnbull, campaigns director of Oil Change International, the former director at Climate Action Network.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about this report. And what exactly does "climate aid" mean?

DAVID TURNBULL: Well, so, you know, in the halls here in Doha, where the negotiators are talking about how they can help to support developing countries adapt and act on climate change—and what we found is that that support is really lacking. Developing countries are in need of at least $100 billion per year in 2020. And what we’re seeing is that fossil fuel subsidies from the rich countries that could help support that need for adaptation and mitigation efforts, the developed countries are supporting fossil fuel subsidies at five times the rate of the climate finance.

in full: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/4/study_wealthy_nations_fossil_fuel_subsidies

A Tribute to Blacklisted Lyricist Yip Harburg: The Man Who Put the Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz

November 22, 2012

From Democracy Now:


His name might not be familiar to many, but his songs are sung by millions around the world. Today, we take a journey through the life and work of Yip Harburg, the Broadway lyricist who wrote such hits as "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" and who put the music into The Wizard of Oz. Born into poverty on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Harburg always included a strong social and political component to his work, fighting racism and poverty. A lifelong socialist, Harburg was blacklisted and hounded throughout much of his life. We speak with Harburg’s son, Ernie Harburg, about the music and politics of his father. Then we take an in-depth look at The Wizard of Oz, and hear a medley of Harburg’s Broadway songs and the politics of the times in which they were created.

[includes rush transcript, at link]

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/11/22/a_tribute_to_blacklisted_lyricist_yip

Joseph Stiglitz (Full Lecture) - Restoring Growth and Stability in a World of Crisis and Contagion

Yoo, Latif, and the Rise of Secret Justice

By Scott Horton

One of the lasting challenges to America’s federal judiciary will be addressing American complicity in the tortures and disappearances of the past ten years. Two recent appeals-court decisions show us how judicial panels are tackling these issues: by shielding federal officials and their contractors from liability, and even by glorifying the fruits of their dark arts. In the process, legal prohibitions on torture are being destroyed through secrecy and legal sleight of hand, and our justice system is being distorted and undermined.

Last week, the Ninth Circuit reversed a district-court decision allowing a suit against torture-memo author John Yoo to go forward. The suit had been brought on behalf of José Padilla by his mother, who argued that Padilla was tortured while in U.S. custody as a result of Yoo’s advice—a claim that seems pretty much unassailable, and that had to be accepted as true for purposes of the preliminary rulings. In a decision that has left international-law scholars dumbstruck, the Ninth Circuit granted Yoo immunity, concluding that the law surrounding torture was so muddled when he dispensed his advice that he should be given the benefit of the doubt. The best authority the judges could muster for this outlandish perspective was a European Court of Human Rights decision from 1978, which found that a series of grim techniques used by Britain against Irish internees was not torture—rather it was “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

Hovering in the background of the Ninth Circuit’s opinion is a troubling fact: John Yoo had a co-author when he crafted his torture memoranda, Jay Bybee. And Bybee is now a judge on the Ninth Circuit. Had the court handed down any other ruling, it would have been exposing one of its own. The court’s twisted reasoning and distortions of legal precedent otherwise make very little sense. Indeed, the Ninth Circuit judges seemed to be uncomfortable with torture, issuing an opinion that was comparable to a surgical excision: do what is essential to shelter Yoo and Bybee, and not an iota more.

The D.C. Circuit, conversely, has developed a real hankering for torture. Exhibit A in its judicial immorality tale is the astonishing 2–1 decision handed down in October in the Latif case, in which two movement-conservative judges overruled a district court that had concluded that Latif—a thirty-six-year-old Yemeni who has spent the past ten years of his life in prison in Guantánamo without being charged and with only vague suspicions connecting him to terrorist groups—should be released because the record did not contain sufficient evidence to warrant a life sentence in the absence of charges. Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote that the usual presumptions had to be reversed in cases involving Guantánamo detainees: the government’s secret conclusions had to be presumed correct unless they were contradicted by compelling evidence to the contrary. In Brown’s perspective, the analytical report on Latif prepared by CIA officers—who were under immense pressure to justify detentions even when the evidence plainly indicated very little to no basis for them, as Glenn Carle and other CIA case officers have openly acknowledged—was entitled to a “presumption of regularity.” Because key parts of this report were classified, it was not entirely accessible by the petitioner, denying him the ability to effectively rebut it.

remainder: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008612

Every Nation for Itself: Six Questions for Ian Bremmer ( Harper's - Scott Horton )

The world is quickly being reshaped, writes political economist Ian Bremmer. America established itself as the paramount power following the collapse of Communism, but the emerging system is one in which no nation or group of nations stands out as its leader. What will this mean for the global economy and for conflict in the near future? In Every Nation for Itself, Bremmer looks at the world forming now and sees glimmers of hope, but a somber future. I put six questions to him about his new book.

1. We have the G–7, the G–8, and the G–20—explain how you came up with the idea of the G-Zero?

Simply put, the G–7 and the G–20 no longer reflect the world we live in—each for their own reasons. After the financial crisis of 2008, it was clear that the G–7 was too narrow to solve the problem—the United States and its allies alone could not stem a crisis that was impacting so much of the world. The result was an empowered G–20, in which a lot more players with a lot more voices briefly came together to provide global leadership. This moment of coordination proved to be fleeting—the G–20’s component nations only worked together as long as there was a looming crisis that affected them to a similar degree, and for a similar duration.

When the dust settled, we saw the fundamental shift occurring today: the West is riddled with debt and less capable of providing global leadership, while emerging markets like China have proven resilient and increasingly important on a global scale. Yet those markets remain unwilling to set an international agenda as they focus, first and foremost, on the domestic growing pains that come with development.

So if the G–7 can function but doesn’t reflect the global balance of power, and the G–20 is representative but cannot function, what do we have left? I call it the G–Zero: a volatile period during which no country or group of countries can set the global agenda and solve the world’s most pressing problems. We need answers on global concerns like climate change, the availability of food and water, nuclear proliferation, and international security. In the G–Zero, we’re not going to get them.

in full: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008577

Army closes investigation into the killing of 21 members of the a-Samuni family in Gaza

Published:
1 May 2012

The MAG (Military Advocate's General) Corps informed B'Tselem today that it has closed the Military Police investigation file in the complaint submitted by B'Tselem into the killing of 21 members of the a-Samuni family in the Gaza Strip. The file was closed without taking any measures against those responsible. In a letter sent to B'Tselem and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza (PCHR) that filed a complaint into the matter as well, major Dorit Tuval, from the MAG Corps for operational matters wrote that the investigation completely disproved any claim about deliberate harm to civilians, as well as haste and recklessness regarding possible harm to civilians, or criminal negligence. The military's response does not detail the findings of the investigation, nor does it provide the reasons behind the decision to close the file or any new information about the circumstances.

In response, Adv. Yael Stein, B'Tselem's head of research, said: it is unacceptable that no one is found responsible for an action of the army that led to the killing of 21 uninvolved civilians, inside the building they entered under soldiers' orders, even if this was not done deliberately. The way the army has exempted itself of responsibility for this event, even if only to acknowledge its severity and clarify its circumstances, is intolerable. Shirking the responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of other civilians and the immense damage caused by operation Cast Lead demonstrates yet again the need for an Israeli investigation mechanism that is external to the army.

in full: http://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20120501_samuni_investigation_closed

Israeli Security Elite Slams Netanyahu, sidetracks War on Iran

Posted on 04/30/2012 by Juan

Not only are high officials and former officials of the Israeli security establishment pushing hard back against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s seeming rush to war with Iran, they appear actually to be attempting to unseat him, as it becomes possible that Israel may go to early elections in September.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has become the latest former high-ranking figure to savage Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak, for their threats to attack Iran unilaterally and soon.

In contrast to Netanyahu’s circles, who have threatened a unilateral Israeli strike this summer, Olmert said categorically in a television interview that this is “definitely not to initiate an Israeli military strike.” Olmert, no dove, had himself launched the 2006 Lebanon and the 2008-9 Gaza Wars. But neither went well for Israel, and Olmert may have learned something from that.

On Friday, the former head of Israeli domestic intelligence, Yuval Diskin, warned that attacking Iran would likely impel it to begin a nuclear weapons program, which Israeli and US intelligence believe it does not now have.

remainder: http://www.juancole.com/2012/04/israeli-security-elite-slams-netanyahu-sidetracks-war-on-iran.html

Putting Even More Con in Conservative ( Paul Ryan )

Jonathan Chait has an excellent piece on Paul Ryan, which shows not just that he’s a fake deficit hawk now, but that he always was — he was an enthusiastic supporter of all of Bush’s budget-busters, spending as well as taxes.

Yet, as Chait also says, Ryan is still — still — beloved by “centrists”, who get very annoyed when someone (i.e., me) points out the fraudulence. How can this be?

Chait’s main answer is that reporters don’t know policy, so they’re easily taken in by image. But I don’t buy that. For one thing, they do generally love the “gotcha” style of journalism — you say A, but you used to say B — and as Chait has just demonstrated, you can have a field day doing that on Ryan.

Also, what about the Very Serious deficit-hawk groups that gave Ryan an award for fiscal responsibility? They can crunch numbers; they can surely see as clearly as I can that Ryan’s plans are fake, that when you strip out the implausible and unspecified they amount to a deficit-increasing plan to take from the poor and give to the rich.

in full: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/


The Legendary Paul Ryan
Mitt who?

By Jonathan Chai

http://nymag.com/news/features/paul-ryan-2012-5/

Paul Krugman: ‘Israeli government policies are a form of national suicide’

New York Times columnist and Nobel prize winner: criticism of Israel silenced by accusations of anti-Semitism.

By Haaretz

New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman believes that the policies of the current “narrow minded” Israeli government “are basically a gradual long-run form of national suicide.”

Writing in his New York Times blog “Conscience of a Liberal” about Peter Beinart’s controversial book “The Crisis of Zionism”, Krugman writes, “Like many liberal American Jews I basically avoid thinking about where Israel is going. It seems obvious from here that the narrow-minded policies of the current government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide – and that’s bad for Jews everywhere, not to mention the world.”

Krugman’s unusually harsh critique of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is sure to elicit howls of protest from Israeli spokespersons and American Jewish organizations – more so, perhaps, as they come on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day. It is also sure to further inflame the continuously deteriorating relationship between the Israeli government and the New York Times, considered by many to be the most important newspaper in the world. Last December, Netanyahu declined an offer by the Times’ to pen an article for the paper’s opinion pages, citing the newspaper’s alleged anti-Israel bias.

Krugman, probably the world’s leading economic columnist, won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (informally the Nobel Prize in Economics) in 2008 for his contributions to the theories of free trade. Born to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Krugman, 59,has written only rarely about Israel. At an economic conference in Tel Aviv in 2009 he had only high praise for Israel’s economic performance.

in full: http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/paul-krugman-israeli-government-policies-are-a-form-of-national-suicide-1.426387