Barry Rubin on journalism in Israel

BARRY RUBIN: PROPAGANDA, LIES, AND WIRE SERVICE ARTICLES
By • Barry Rubin -->
Published in: Gloria Center - Global Research in International Affairs
June 22, 2008
Today, journalism students, in our course, "Absolutely Introductory Basic Rules of Journalism, we will discuss the absolutely introductory basic rules of journalism.
I don't think I'm an old fogey but in my hazy memories of the good old days I think there was a time when reporters were supposed to represent both sides of the story. I hear some gasps of amazement in the classroom. Yes, it is true. Nowadays we are more enlightened and the process goes something like this:
Decide which side is the good guys. This can be based on your ethnic-communal background (unless you are Jewish since then you must lean over backward to prove yourself fair by supporting the other side), political ideology, or--if all else fails--which ever side is weaker. (The word "underdog" might not be PC any more so I will avoid it.)
Slant your article completely in favor of the "good guys" because they are after all the good guys. Writing an advocacy article for them is thus a good and moral deed. There can be no compromise with evil and since the bad guys lie all the time why even bother to listen to their arguments.
Incidentally, questions of past credibility are irrelevant. If one side can be shown to have lied repeatedly that doesn't count. Pointing this out could get you accused of racism or imperialism, while the "good guys," once so designated, are allowed to lie because they are pursuing a "good cause." Governments are held to lie always, especially if they are democratic ones.
While the above is written to be humorous and is no doubt somewhat exaggerated it does give a pretty good idea about the genesis of all too many newspaper articles nowadays.
Consider, for example, Dalia Nammari, "Israel curbs Palestinian building on disputed land ," AP. The article has 1,107 words long which by contemporary standards is quite long. Number of words used to explain Israel's position: 76. Number of words used to advocate the Palestinian cause? You do the math.
Basically, as so often happens, the reporter serves as the mouthpiece for one side (it always seems to be the same side) in language calculated to tug at the readers' heart-strings. Here's the lead:
"AQABEH, West Bank - The elders of this West Bank village hold their meetings under a carob tree, sitting on boulders arranged in a circle. It looks idyllic, but is born of necessity, the council doesn't have a meeting hall."
"Aqabeh, home to 299 people, has never received Israeli construction permits despite many requests, its mayor says. After losing a battle in Israel's Supreme Court in April, the village now lives with the threat of seeing 37 of its 47 structures demolished, according to a U.N. count. That includes 27 homes, a clinic, a mosque and a kindergarten that was co-financed by a U.S. charity, the Building Alliance. All were built illegally, Israel says."
Let's stop here a moment and rest under the shade of that carob tree. Israel's Supreme Court has often ruled against the Israeli government. For example, in response to Palestinian suits, the route of the security fence has often been altered at great expense to the Israeli taxpayer so as to make the lives of Palestinians easier. (Occupying powers usually don't let people from the side carrying out terrorist attacks against them to sue and win in court. Why, that might even be a good topic for a 1,107 word article some day!)
Why, then, did these villagers lose in court? The reporter might be expected to tell us, but that could ruin this touching story.
The article continues:
"Aqabeh's plight is similar to scores of Palestinian villages in `Area C,' the nearly two-thirds of the West Bank that remained under full Israeli control following a 1990s interim agreement with the Palestinian leadership."
Very cute. But wait a minute. Perhaps the reporter could tell us what percentage of the West Bank villagers live under Israeli rule in Area C. If we are talking about villages (not the town of Hebron) I would suspect the answer would not be much above 1 percent.
But wait, the article continues:
"On that land are Israel's 121 West Bank settlements, as well as military bases. But so are 150 Palestinian villages, home to tens of thousands of people."
So which is it? The answer is that even if villages are located in Area C, local control in most cases belongs to the PA, not Israel.
Note the deliberate dishonesty: yes, lots of land is in Area C but by the Oslo agreement's design Israel has full control over unpopulated land. Virtually all the villages are under Palestinian Authority (PA) rule.
And by the way, what is the housing situation for 99 percent of the West Bank villages? I would bet that they either have to pay off PA officials or just do what they want without regard to regulations.
But in one of the two sentences in which Israeli officials are allowed to speak, we get an interesting hint about that:
"Maj. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said demolition orders are usually issued early in cases of illegal construction, but are often ignored by residents."
So in fact Israel does not try to enforce these orders most of the time.
Why would Israeli authorities try to stop buildings from being constructed? The article tells us it is pure meanness or because it wants to take lands in future. But the overwhelming main reason for such denials is that the buildings would be close to roads or in other strategic locations where they could be used for ambushes. We aren't told this, in fact there is no mention of the fact that the Palestinian side is carrying out a war on Israel involving terrorism, which makes conditions significantly different than in a peaceful environment.
To a large extent, this article is merely an extended version of an interview with the village's mayor who is allowed to say whatever he wants, no matter how fantastic. For example, he says:
"Since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 eight villagers have been killed by stray bullets or by picking up unexploded munitions, and 42 have been wounded. The Israeli military could not confirm those numbers."
Now there are 299 people in the village. We are to believe that 50 of them--which would in practice mean one person in each family--has been killed or wounded by Israeli bullets. Is there any documentation for this? Are there any newspaper clippings, reports to humanitarian organizations, etc? And if so why aren't these cited.
I feel confident in suggesting that the mayor is lying and that the reporter is going along with the lies. As an Arab proverb goes: "How do you know it is a lie? Because it is so big."
Or this one:
"Aqabeh Mayor Sami Sadiq says Israeli officials told residents in 2004 that only buildings in the center, on 3 percent of the village's land area, would be safe from demolition. If all demolitions are carried out, two-thirds of the village's residents would be left homeless, he said."
Well, did they or is this a propaganda fantasy? The important thing to remember here is the test of logic. The village must be many decades, even centuries, old. So does this mean that 97 percent of the village dates from the last few years? It appears to be nonsense.
The article states, "Sadiq has been confined to a wheelchair since being hit by three stray bullets while cultivating his family's land in 1971, he said." Well, it should have been easy for the reporter to check this out since he would have filed compensation claims with the Israeli government. There would be documentation.
Sadiq's credibility doesn't strike me as being too good:
"In the past four decades, some 700 residents have left Aqabeh because of the many troubles, he said, mostly moving to neighboring villages outside of Area C that have approved zoning plans and where it is easier to build."
So there were 1,000 residents and now there are 300 but--let's use our brains, people--if that were true the village wouldn't need to be expanding, would it? Seventy percent of its housing would be empty. It would look like a ghost town. So why didn't the reporter mention this?
Why go on with more examples? This is nonsense on the face of it. In a world where professional standards applied, AP would be humiliated at making mistakes unacceptable in a high school newspaper. The reporter would be immediately fired and a stern memo sent to all staff members on avoiding such stupidities in future.
I must be an old fogey because I keep expecting things like this to happen.
And what really scares me is that I didn't even have to go hunting to find such propaganda masquerading as journalism--it was the first article I read in a 25-page compilation of AP stories.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal . His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism , with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). Prof. Rubin's columns can be read online .Barry Rubin is on the Board of Directors for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

How McCain will win-- disenfranchise Hispanics

May 12, 2008
Voter ID Battle Shifts to Proof of Citizenship
By IAN URBINA
The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.
The measure would allow far more rigorous demands than the voter ID requirement recently upheld by the Supreme Court, in which voters had to prove their identity with a government-issued card.
Sponsors of the amendment — which requires the approval of voters to go into effect, possibly in an August referendum — say it is part of an effort to prevent illegal immigrants from affecting the political process. Critics say the measure could lead to the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of legal residents who would find it difficult to prove their citizenship.
Voting experts say the Missouri amendment represents the next logical step for those who have supported stronger voter ID requirements and the next battleground in how elections are conducted. Similar measures requiring proof of citizenship are being considered in at least 19 state legislatures. Bills in Florida, Kansas, Oklahoma and South Carolina have strong support. But only in Missouri does the requirement have a chance of taking effect before the presidential election.
In Arizona, the only state that requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, more than 38,000 voter registration applications have been thrown out since the state adopted its measure in 2004. That number was included in election data obtained through a lawsuit filed by voting rights advocates and provided to The New York Times. More than 70 percent of those registrations came from people who stated under oath that they were born in the United States, the data showed.
Already, 25 states, including Missouri, require some form of identification at the polls. Seven of those states require or can request photo ID. More states may soon decide to require photo ID now that the Supreme Court has upheld the practice. Democrats have already criticized these requirements as implicitly intended to keep lower-income voters from the polls, and are likely to fight even more fiercely now that the requirements are expanding to include immigration status.
“Three forces are converging on the issue: security, immigration and election verification,” said Dr. Robert A. Pastor, co-director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University in Washington. This convergence, he said, partly explains why such measures are likely to become more popular and why they will make election administration, which is already a highly partisan issue, even more heated and litigious.
The Missouri secretary of state, Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who opposes the measure, estimated that it could disenfranchise up to 240,000 registered voters who would be unable to prove their citizenship.
In most of the states that require identification, voters can use utility bills, paychecks, driver’s licenses or student or military ID cards to prove their identity. In the Democratic primary election last week in Indiana, several nuns were denied ballots because they lacked the required photo IDs.
Measures requiring proof of citizenship raise the bar higher because they offer fewer options for documentation. In most cases, aspiring voters would have to produce an original birth certificate, naturalization papers or a passport. Many residents of Arizona and Missouri already have citizenship information associated with their driver’s licenses, and within a few years all states will be required by the federal government to restrict licenses to legal residents.
Critics say that when this level of documentation is applied to voting, it becomes more difficult for the poor, disabled, elderly and minorities to participate in the political process.
“Everyone has been focusing on voter ID laws generally, but the most pernicious measures and the ones that really promise to prevent the most eligible voters from voting is what we see in Arizona and now in Missouri,” said Jon Greenbaum, a former voting rights official at the Department of Justice and now the director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a liberal advocacy group.
Aside from its immediacy, the action by Missouri is important because it has been a crucial swing state in recent presidential elections, with outcomes often decided by a razor-thin margin.
Supporters of the measures cite growing concerns that illegal immigrants will try to vote. They say proof of citizenship measures are an important way to improve the accuracy of registration rolls and the overall voter confidence in the process.
State Representative Stanley Cox, a Republican from Sedalia and the sponsor of the amendment, said that the Missouri Constitution already required voters to be citizens and that his amendment was simply meant to better enforce that requirement.
“The requirements we have right now are totally inadequate,” Mr. Cox said. “You can present a utility bill, and that doesn’t prove anything. I could sit here with my nice photocopier and create a thousand utility bills with different names on them.”
From October 2002 to September 2005, the Justice Department indicted 40 voters for registration fraud or illegal voting, 21 of whom were noncitizens, according to department records.
In 2006, the Missouri legislature passed a photo identification bill that the State Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional because it placed too much of a burden on voters. It was that ruling that has spurred state lawmakers to try to change the constitution.
The proposed amendment does not require the signature of the governor but would need to be approved by the voters in the state’s August primary in the governor’s race to take effect before the presidential election.
If passed this week, the amendment clears the way for a pending bill that would require some kind of identification in order to prove citizenship and to register to vote. But many questions about the bill — like whether current registered voters will have to obtain a new form of identification — have not been resolved.
Lillie Lewis, a voter who lives in St. Louis and spoke at a news conference last week organized to oppose the amendment, said she already had a difficult time trying to get a photo ID from the state, which asked her for a birth certificate. Ms. Lewis, who was born in Mississippi and said she was 78 years old, said officials of that state sent her a letter stating that they had no record of her birth.
“That’s downright wrong,” Ms. Lewis said. “I have voted in almost all of the presidential races going back I can’t remember how long, but if they tell me I need a passport or birth certificate that’ll be the end of that.”
A 2006 federal rule intended to keep illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid was widely criticized by state officials for shutting out tens of thousands of United States citizens who were unable to find birth certificates or other documents proving their citizenship.
Supporters of citizenship requirements, however, say the threat of voting by illegal immigrants is real. Thor Hearne, a lawyer for the American Center for Voting Rights, a conservative advocacy group, cited a California congressional race in 1996 in which a Republican, Bob Dornan, was narrowly defeated. Mr. Dornan contested the results, claiming that illegal immigrants had voted.
After a 14-month investigation by state, county and federal officials, a panel concluded that up to 624 noncitizens may have registered to vote. The report came to no firm determination of whether any of those people had actually voted.
Mr. Hearne said the requirement would not pose a significant hardship on voters.
“There were a lot of the same alarmist charges regarding Indiana voter ID law and how it would disenfranchise so many people,” Mr. Hearne said, “and those allegations were not accepted by the Supreme Court.” He added that if states actively provided a free form of identification proving citizenship, the number of people who would be disenfranchised would be very low.
“To those who have spent great energy opposing some of the voter registration or voter identification requirements, I would say their energy would be much better spent working toward trying to provide identifications to those who need them or assisting these people with getting registered,” Mr. Hearne said.
But organizations working in Arizona say they are doing just that and running into problems.
“The requirement is having a devastating effect on our voter registration work in Latino communities because so many citizens simply don’t have a passport or original birth certificate,” said Michael Slater, deputy director of Project Vote, a liberal advocacy group that is working with Acorn, a national organizing group, to sign up new voters in Arizona.
But Arizona officials say the measure is broadly popular in the state
“The voters of Arizona feel strongly about proof of citizenship when registering to vote as a basic eligibility requirement,” said the secretary of state, Jan Brewer, a Republican, testifying before Congress in March.

Israeli spy? Or persecution?

What's Really behind the Screaming Headlines about the Arrest of an Octogenarian Spy for Israel? Lenny Ben-DavidFormer diplomat. Washington consultant to foreign embassies. Lobbyist. Writer. Editor.
American engineer Ben-Ami Kadish was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly providing to an Israeli "handler" classified data on nuclear weapons, F-15 fighter jets, and the Patriot missile air defense system.
A few important points of perspective are vital: Kadish is 84 years old. The alleged crime took place some 25-30 years ago (!), between 1979 and 1985. Today Mr. Kadish lives an open, active life in a New Jersey retirement village where, according to a community newspaper, he and his wife open their sukka every year to raise money for local charities and for Magen David Adom.
According to the New Jersey Jewish News, "Ben-Ami grew up in what was then Palestine and fought with the Hagana. He also served in both the British and American military during World War II and is an ex-commander of the Jewish War Veterans Post 609 in Monroe."
News accounts suggest that Kadish's handler was the same man who directed Jonathan Pollard. Probably to avoid any issue of statute-of-limitations, the indictment alleges that this Zayde maintained ties to his handler until last month.
Why now?
Do federal prosecutors really see octogenarian Kadish as a major criminal?
More likely, Kadish is being used by American officials as a means to loosen support for Israel as the two countries enter a tenacious period of negotiations.
This is a pattern of American pressure that repeats itself.
The tactic is geared to embarrass American supporters of Israel, particularly Members of Congress, who oppose weapons sales to Israel's foes, dangerous concessions to the Palestinians, or the abrogation of previous commitments to Israel.
During the last 30 years, particularly, in times of tension, American officials claimed that Israel stole plans for the Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, diverted nuclear material from a U.S. plant in the 1960s, illegally obtained krytron triggers for nuclear weapons, pilfered computer components from Patriot missiles, and used American technology on the Lavie aircraft that was later transferred to China. The 2005 arrest of two AIPAC staffers is more of the same, and they were charged under the creaky 1917 Espionage Act statute older than Kadish. For years, unnamed American spy-hunters have been looking for an accomplice to Jonathan Pollard. Leaks on these stories almost always took place on the eve of some contretemps with the U.S. State Department.
Today's case against 84-year-old Kadish reflects more the impatience of the U.S. Secretary of State with Israel's decision to continue building in Jerusalem and in settlement blocs and to retain security roadblocks. To push ahead in the illusionary Annapolis process at all costs, the State Department must de-emphasize President Bush's letter to Prime Minister Sharon stating that it is "unrealistic" to seek a "full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." With President George Bush on his way to Israel to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary, what better way to deflate the goodwill and cut-down the gifts the President is supposedly bringing?
Lastly, in the twilight of George Bush's administration, a presidential pardon for Jonathan Pollard is again being discussed, at least by Jewish and Israeli sources.
Disclosure of another Pollard-like spy would be an effective tool to keep Pollard locked up for good.
Lenny Ben-David

Pappe: Ben Gurion's Plan D for ethnic cleansing reviewed

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
by Ilan Pappé Oneworld Publications, 2006. 256 pp. $27.50Reviewed by Seth J. Frantzman
Middle East QuarterlySpring 2008, pp. 70-75http://www.meforum.org/article/1886
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Flunking History
Among many Israeli academics and Western revisionists, it has become fashionable to examine Israel's war of independence from an Arab perspective in which Jews were the aggressors and Arabs the victims.[1] This trend began in 1989 with works by Ben-Gurion University professor Benny Morris[2] and Oxford University professor Avi Shlaim,[3] and developed further with the writings of the late Hebrew University anthropologist Baruch Kimmerling,[4] Neve Gordon[5] at Ben-Gurion University, and Meron Benvenisti,[6] a political scientist who served as deputy mayor of Jerusalem between 1971 and 1978.
Many of these so-called New Historians and their fellow travelers may have embraced the notion of reverse victimization in order to rationalize the unexpected survival of Israel in the 1948 and 1967 wars. They present every massacre of Jews as an understandable response to a Jewish offense, for example portraying both the April 13, 1948 Mount Scopus convoy massacre and the May 15, 1948 murders of fifty Jews who had surrendered to the Arab Legion at Gush Etzion as an Arab reprisal for the April 9-11, 1948 Irgun attack on the Arab village of Deir Yassin.[7]
Pappé's Polemics
Ilan Pappé has now seized on what the New Historians started and brought it to new heights by promoting revisionist arguments that place exclusive blame on early Zionists for victimizing Arabs and destroying opportunities for peace and reconciliation. Indeed, it has become the strategy by which Pappé has salvaged his turbulent career: He left Haifa University in 2007 after the exposure of his research errors undercut his master's thesis and his endorsement of the British boycott of Israeli universities prompted the president of the university to call for his resignation.[8] From his new position at the University of Exeter, he has promoted his 2006 book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,[9] which argues that even prior to Israel's independence, Zionist officials plotted to expel Arabs from Palestine.
Pappé's thesis is that Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, working with the Zionist leadership in Palestine, made special preparations for ethnic cleansing known as Plan D. This plan envisioned the conquest by the Haganah—the Mandate-era precursor to the Israeli army—of areas occupied by Arabs but allotted by the United Nations to the Jewish state.
Pappé's evidence for a Zionist plan to cleanse Palestine of its Arab population derives from his interpretations of the Haganah archives and the Israel State Archives files. Among the evidence Pappé finds damning are Haganah intelligence surveys of Arab villages, including information on the number of armed men, the mukhtars (village or neighborhood headmen), and any anti-Zionist activities.[10] Pappé uses the presence of such lists to suggest parallels between Jewish suffering during the Holocaust and Palestinian Arab suffering as a result of Israel's creation.[11]
Pappé also argues that Jewish forces, whether Haganah, Irgun, or the Lehi group, which sought to evict the British from Palestine, attacked Arab villages prior to the May 15, 1948 Israeli declaration of independence. He writes:
On a cold Wednesday afternoon, 10 March 1948, a group of eleven men, veteran Zionist leaders together with young military Jewish officers, put the final touches to a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. That same evening, military orders were dispatched to the units on the ground to prepare for the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians from vast areas of the country … When it was over, more than half of Palestine's native population, close to 800,000 people, had been uprooted.[12]
This passage, characteristic of so much of Pappé's book, is a cynical exercise in manipulating evidence to fit an implausible thesis. Yigal Yadin, the chief of operations of the Haganah, adopted Plan D on March 10, 1948, as part of preparations for the onset of open warfare between Arabs and Jews in Palestine that the Arabs themselves were promising would follow a declaration of statehood. Morris described it as "a blueprint for securing the emergent Jewish state and the blocs of settlements outside the state's territory against the expected [Arab] invasion on or after 15 May,"[13] but recognized that "Plan D was not a political blueprint for the expulsion of Palestine's Arabs."[14]
Pappé does not agree and says that new material from Israeli military archives, a reassessment of older material, and Palestinian oral history suggest that the plan was far more nefarious.[15] But Pappé, in this example as in many others, is blinded by his need to fit events into a preferred narrative, and what little new evidence he includes does not persuade when considered in the context of historical events—a context that Pappé rigorously obscures.
The Importance of Context
Pappé would have his readers believe that in the years before the Israeli declaration of statehood, the Arabs living in Mandatory Palestine were lacking in the hostility to Jews that made Jewish war-planning necessary. To take just one time period, between the U.N. General Assembly vote to partition Palestine on November 29, 1947, and Israeli independence almost six months later, Arab irregulars killed 1,256 Jews in Palestine[16]—almost all of whom were civilians. Pappé might be onto something if Plan D had been drafted in the absence of Arab violence against Jews, or if the Arab states surrounding Palestine were not so serious about answering the declaration of a Jewish state with a war of annihilation. But inconveniently for Pappé, those were the realities of the time—realities that undermine the thesis of his book.
The Palestine Post provides a detailed window into the period. Between 1932 and 1948, the paper, which would later change its name to The Jerusalem Post, was Mandatory Palestine's newspaper of record. An English-language daily, it catered both to Palestine's British administrators and the relatively small number of Jewish residents in Palestine who spoke English. It was not always sympathetic to Zionists, especially not to those who resorted to force of arms, and often sided editorially with the British against the Irgun and Stern Gang. For instance, on February 20, 1948, it headlined a story about an Irgun attack on British servicemen, "Terrorists Murder Soldier in Jerusalem."[17] And rather than ignore the Arab population, The Palestine Post perhaps overemphasized their claims. Analysis of the newspaper's casualty reports shows that between November 1947 and May 1948, it over-reported Arab casualties threefold when its figure of over 3,500 is compared to British Mandatory statistics.[18] The editors of The Palestine Post did not know how history would be written, and there is every reason to believe the reports between November 29, 1947, and May 15, 1948, sought to depict events accurately.
Nor should historians ignore context, as Pappé willfully does. Those who read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine will not learn that in the first week after the passage of the U.N. partition plan, Arabs murdered 62 Jews. In the following month, Arabs killed an additional 200. By March 1, 1948, 546 Jews had been murdered and, by Ben-Gurion's declaration of independence, the total was over 1,000.[19] Arab paramilitaries, militias, and terrorists besieged Jerusalem and cut the Jewish neighborhoods' water supplies and surrounded Jewish villages in the Negev. Arab snipers attacked Jews in Haifa and other mixed villages.[20] A sniper from Beit Dajan shot a 14-year-old girl,[21] and Arab fighters attacked more than a dozen kibbutzim between December 1947 and March 1948.[22] Massacres were common: Arab rioters killed 39 Jews at Haifa's oil refinery on December 30, 1947, and two weeks later Arab irregulars killed 35 Jews trying to reach Gush Etzion. On February 1, 1948, an Arab terrorist blew up The Palestine Post building and, three weeks later, a terrorist's bomb killed 44 Jews on Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street. Massacres continued for weeks both inside Palestine and in the neighboring states.[23] On March 21, the bodies of 11 missing Jews were found; three had been burned.[24] Local Arab villagers or Bedouins may have precipitated the autumn 1947 violence,[25] but by spring 1948, Arab volunteers from Iraq and Syria were increasingly participating.[26] On April 11, 1948, for example, Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood attacked Kfar Darom near Gaza City.[27]
In this context—a state of low-level terrorism and violence that Pappé, given the narrative he wishes to promote, is loath to disclose—it is not the least bit curious that Zionist leaders in Palestine were developing plans to defend themselves in the case of the outbreak of full-scale war. It would indeed be strange if Jewish strategists were not doing so.
The Real "Plan D"
While no scholar disputes that Zionist leaders adopted Plan D, Pappé's argument—that Plan D is evidence of a desire to conduct ethnic cleansing and constituted a war crime—is a leap of logic. The reality of that time period is one in which Jewish leaders were faced with problems far more urgent and existential than altering the ethnic makeup of certain territories. On the same day that the Zionist leadership adopted Plan D, British Mandate authorities admitted that Fauzi el-Kaukji, leader of the Arab Liberation Army, was in Palestine operating in Samaria.[28] Snipers attacked Jews in Haifa, and Arabs launched mortar attacks on Tel Aviv. There were reports that British forces were evacuating.[29] The Zionist decision to seize land to deny Arab attackers strategic territorial advantages was inevitable and motivated by legitimate military considerations. Villages such as Ishwa and Jaffa hosted foreign fighters from Iraq, Syria, and even Yugoslavia,[30] and thereby, sacrificed their status as noncombatant areas.
The decision to implement Plan D had little effect on the Arab forces, which continued their assault on all parts of the Jewish yishuv (the pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine).[31] As Arab forces tried to isolate and eradicate pockets of Jews, Jews traveled in convoys that often became the focus of Arab ambushes,[32] some of which involved more than 500 Arabs.[33] Major Plan D operations, such as Operation Nachson to open the road to besieged Jerusalem, began on April 6, just five weeks before Israel's independence.
Nor do the lists that Pappé finds so damning provide conclusive evidence of malfeasance. Cobbled together over the course of the decade before Israel's independence, the Haganah lists were not a blueprint but rather an intelligence assessment. In 1943, the Palmach (the Haganah's regular fighting force) and the Haganah Intelligence Service began to survey villages in order to evaluate their capabilities should hostilities erupt. Jewish pilots also conducted aerial surveys.
These intelligence assessments were so parochial that, today, they could serve as a resource for research into Arab village life of the Mandate period. One representative Haganah intelligence report surveys the hamlet of Beit Umm el-Mais near Jerusalem and reveals that the sons of Hasan al-Jura moved to the ruins of the village around 1905, that the village consisted of one clan, and that its residents were illiterate and had no connections to nearby kibbutzim. The only terror suspect was Ismail Hamdan, who was involved in the 1936-39 Arab revolt. The village possessed 11 modern rifles divided among 25 men.[34] Another Haganah report noted that the nearby village of Beit Thul was 300 years old, possessed 400 sheep, and that Arab nationalists persecuted members of the village during the revolt.[35]
Nor were the Zionists the only ones to make such assessments. The British kept similar intelligence about kibbutzim and Arab villages alike, especially during the Arab Revolt, noting items such as the presence of weaponry and the extent of illegal immigration.[36] Such British lists are evidence of military preparedness and routine intelligence collection, not evidence of plans to ethnically cleanse the Jewish population. Moreover, the Haganah files may have saved Israeli lives by portraying an accurate picture of Arab defenses and probably saved Arab lives by enabling the Israel Defense Forces to avoid collateral damage.
As a work of scholarship, Pappé's book falls short, and it does so in a particularly damning way. He ignores context and draws far broader conclusions than evidence allows by cherry-picking some reports and ignoring other sources entirely. He does not examine Arab intentions in the five months between the U.N. endorsement of Palestinian partition and Israel's independence, nor does he consider the widespread public statements by Arab officials in Palestine and in neighboring states declaring their goal of eradicating the Jewish presence in Palestine.[37] It is obvious why a polemicist such as Pappé would cleanse—so to speak—his narrative of any such references: To avoid doing so would strike at the core of the reality that he wishes to foist upon his readers, one which precisely inverts the historical record and turns a coordinated Arab attempt at ethnically cleansing Palestine of its Jews into a Jewish attempt at ethnically cleansing Arabs.
Pappé's writings may win plaudits among his new British peers, whose disdain for the state of Israel is legendary. But his disregard for the obligations of the historian and his indifference to academic integrity condemn his work to the realm of the polemic, not scholarship.
Seth J. Frantzman is a doctoral candidate in historical geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His blog is available at http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/
[1] For background on the New Historians, see Efraim Karsh, "Rewriting Israel's History," Middle East Quarterly, June 1996, pp. 19-29.[2] Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestine Refugee Problem (London: Cambridge University Press, 1989).[3] Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).[4] Baruch Kimmerling, Politicide (New York: Verso Books, 2006).[5] Neve Gordon, Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel (London: Zed Books, 1995).[6] Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).[7] Shlaim, Collusion, p. 164; Walid Khalidi, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2006), p. 571; Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem (Chelmsford, U.K.: Grafton Books, 1982) p. 266; Hillel Cohen, author interview, Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University, Nov. 13, 2005; Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 (New York: Vintage, 2001), pp. 209, 214.[8] Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv), Apr. 26, 2005.[9] New York: Oneworld Publications, 2006.[10] Pappé, Ethnic Cleansing, pp. 17-22.[11] Ibid., pp. xiii, xvii, 235.[12] Ibid., pp. xii-xiii.[13] Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 163-4.[14] Ibid., p. 164.[15] "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," interview with Ilan Pappé, ZNET, Oct. 3, 2006, accessed Aug 3, 2007.[16] The Palestine Post (Jerusalem), May 6, 1948.[17] The Palestine Post, Feb. 20, 1948.[18] The Palestine Post, May 6, 1948; British mandatory figures published in The Palestine Post, Nov. 29, 1947 to May 1, 1948.[19] The Palestine Post, Jan. 2, 7, 27, Feb. 2, Mar. 2, Apr. 1, May 1, 1948.[20] The Palestine Post, Dec. 9, 11, 1947.[21] The Palestine Post, Mar. 21, 1948.[22] The Palestine Post, Dec. 1947 through Mar. 1948; David Tal, War in Palestine, 1948: Strategy and Diplomacy (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 57-123.[23] See, for example, Marina Benjamin, Last Days in Babylon (New York: Free Press, 2006), pp. 151-2; for Libya, see Joseph B. Schechtman, On Wings of Eagles: The Plight, Exodus, and Homecoming of Oriental Jewry (New York: A.S Barnes and Company, 1961), p. 138; for Egypt, see Michael M. Laskier, The Jews of Egypt, 1920-1970: In the Midst of Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and the Middle East Conflict (New York: New York University Press, 1993), pp. 126, 187.[24] The Palestine Post, Mar. 21, 1948.[25] The Palestine Post, Dec. 14, 1947.[26] The Palestine Post, Apr. 19, 1948; Tal, War in Palestine, 1948, p. 20.[27] The Palestine Post , Apr. 12, 14, 1948.[28] The Palestine Post, Mar. 11, 1948.[29] The Palestine Post, Mar. 5, 8, 9, 1948.[30] The Palestine Post, Mar. 23, 1948; Emilio Traubner, "Sarajevo to Tel Aviv," The Palestine Post, Dec. 3, 194[31] The Palestine Post, Mar. 19, 1948.[32] The Palestine Post, Mar. 23, 1948.[33] The Palestine Post, Mar. 19, 1948.[34] "Beit Um Al Mies," Village Survey Project of the Shai, Haganah Archives, Tel Aviv, 105/378.[35] "Beit Thul, May 22, 1943, Village Survey," Haganah Archives, 105/95 A 150.[36] "General Sir Al Cunningham to Secretary of State for the Colonies: Weekly Intelligence Appreciation, 13 March 1948," Public Record Office, London, CO 537/3869.[37] Martin Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 37; Zvi Elpeleg, The Grand Mufti: Hajj Amin al-Hussaini (Portland: Frank Cass, 1993), pp. 66-9.

Wrong Criticism of Israeli invasion of Gaza

MSM have opened most accounts of the Israeli invasion of Gaza by numbering the Palestinians who have been killed. Currently, the number is around six dozen, plus two Israelis killed in the fighting. The Security Countil has convened as usual to criticize Israeli self defense efforts, whereas Israeli prime minister Olmert has predictably lobbed the retort that no one at the Security Council cared when S'derot was shelled and Israelis killed or injured, for no good reason. Few have commented on the missile strike against Israeli efforts to convey food and medicine into Gaza at the crossing (does anyone outside Israel wonder why the crossing were all closed?). Nor have the MSM written about Hamas' decision to shell Israel from within heavily populated areas ( all but the unsophisticated are aware of this tactic, and all but the anti-Semitic condemn it).

However, the better question by far, is whether or not the Israeli effort will get the shelling to stop. This argument was also raised by Avi Dichter and published today in the Jerusalem Post. If Israel succeeds, the effort will have been worth it. If it fails, it will have been another botched Olmert war. The last war left with Gilad Schalit still in captivity and no information on the other three kidnapees in Lebanon.

Another question is what bounds the US has set on the war. This question is related to the first. One account, by debkafile, has Israel fighting -- on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Knock out Hamas and put old corrupt Abbas in there. Since Abbas is by all accounts with which I am familiar, party to the fighting, such a strategy begs the question of what will happen to the Qassams flying towards S'derot and Ashkelon. This will replace an Islamic terrorist outfit with a secular terrorist outfit. However, the fix will be temporary. Hamas is too strong, both in Gaza and the West Bank, to play second fiddle for long. Ironically, the perception of this war matches this argument, and Khaled Abu Toameh suggests the invasion will help Hamas and hurt the PA.

Unfortunately, the unrelenting hostility of the Gazans, against their own self interest as defined by a secular Westerner, leaves Israel no real choice except to do what they have to do: go against the United States. They must reconquer Gaza, including the borders, confiscate weapons, and stay. They don't wish to do that, but they have no choice. Ultimately, that will benefit the Israelis and the Gazans.

Don Siegleman, political prisoner

60 minutes reported last night that Don Siegleman, who was convicted of bribery and who was once the Alabama governor, was actually convicted in very unusual circumstances. Initially, the case brought by prosecutors was very weak and thrown out by the judge after the opening statements for lack of evidence. The prosecution was headed by the wife of the person who replaced Siegleman, and was influenced by Karl Rove, who asked the federal prosecutors to look at Siegleman. The Justice Department, which refused to release its notes to Congress, then interviewed many more available and potential witnesses a la a special prosecutor or IRS, investigating a "person" rather than a crime. Siegleman was retried on the strength of the testimony of a convicted felon who plea bargained that he saw Siegleman receive a check from Richard Scrushy, but who needed to spend a whole day with a prosecutor to "get his story straight." The notes of his attempts to "remember" were discoverable but never released to the defense team. The Alabama Republican judge sent the jury back after they deadlocked twice, and the third time they convicted. After conviction, the judge had Siegleman manacled and remanded immediately instead of giving him his customary 45 days. In essence, Siegleman was tried because he was a Democrat running for governor. The whole 60 minutes segment is available here: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/todays_must_read_283.php

If the elements of this story are true, and I don't doubt they are, then the federal prosecutors have now joined independent counsels, and the IRS, and other rogue government agencies in looking for crimes where none exist. This is a political prosecution, and Siegleman is a political prisoner of the federal court.

Contrary to the NIE report, Iran is building nuclear weapons

Reported by debkafile:

The Iranian exile group exposed this week Iran’s secret B1 Nori-8500 nuclear facility .
This classified data, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources report, was released on the initiative of France and Israel to finally rebut the NIE’s conclusions.
It was also timed to pre-empt the report Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei, director of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is due to present Friday, Feb. 22, to the UN Security Council on the state of Iran’s nuclear program.

Washington sticks to the NIE’s clearance of Iran
A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in Washington, said the US intelligence community’s view has not changed since the NIE’s release. Convinced that the US intelligence estimate of last December tied President George W. Bush’s hands for a military option against Iran’s nuclear sites, the French and Israeli leaders , Srakozy and Olmert decided to go forward without America towards an Israeli military operation. France intends to take America’s place in providing intelligence and diplomatic backing in the European and international arenas.

The chronology of events leading up to this ultimate prospect, as listed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly, is instructive:
September 6, 2007: Israeli air and ground forces raided two presumed nuclear sites in Syria. North Koreans were involved in their development.
The information broadcast by these attacks was that Israel is capable of striking nuclear sites similar to Iran’s B1 Nori 8500 facility. This capability demonstratively extends to demolition and removing the equipment housed at the facility, lock, stock and barrel, to home base.
The operation also demonstrated that the Russian air defense systems guarding Iran’s most sensitive military sites were electronically permeable and therefore not proof against Israel air attack.
January 17, 2008: Israel tested a ballistic missile over the Mediterranean fitted with a powerful new propulsion engine. This told Tehran that the Israel Defense Forces has missiles capable of reaching any point on earth. Before this test, the Iranians had judged large areas of their north and east outside Israeli missile range.
February 4, 2008: Tehran quickly responded by launching its Kavoshgar-1 long-range missile “to test its launching systems.”
February 12, 2008: Imad Mughniyeh, master of Tehran’s overseas military-terrorist branch, was killed in the heart of Damascus. Iran thus lost the key strategist assigned with charting and commanding its overseas reprisals for a possible Israeli attack.
That day, too, Israel took the precaution of placing its military forces and intelligence services on the ready in case of a comeback from Iran, Syria, or Hizballah.
February 20, 2008: Iran’s secret plants for producing nuclear weapons and warheads were identified and exposed at the Brussels news conference.

Sarkozy’s game

Sarkozy’s believes an unambiguous and strong French line on Iran’s ambition to attain a nuclear bomb could be the vehicle that carries him to European if not world leadership.
Secondly, he is bound by a commitment to Saudi and other Gulf rulers.
During his mid-January tour of their region, Sarkozy informed his hosts that French intelligence had obtained incontrovertible evidence that Iran had begun building nuclear bombs and warheads. The decision to establish a French base in Abu Dhabi was presented as necessary for tracking Iran’s nuclear and military activities. He promised to keep Gulf rulers abreast of events with full updates.
At home, the French public had been told repeatedly by officials in the president’s bureau and government from the end of last year that Iran is heading for a nuclear bomb. Sarkozy needs to show he is not all talk, but also capable of action.

BLOGGER COMMENT
These events prove that the CIA is still bound by political considerations rather than the need to provide accurate information to the government. Still smarting over the Iraq war, the CIA is determined not to give the president the opportunity to justify a strike on another country. That the NIE report is political, not factual, gives the debka report credibility.

The US (Bush) has publicly stated his understanding of Israel's need to do what it has to do to Iran. However, the US will be on the sideline when/if that transpires. In the cyclic Franco-Teutonic-Russian poltical machinations, France is now on the side of Israel against Iran and presumably Russia.

However, Israel has a number of limitations in its ability to carry out a strike against Iranian nuclear weapons. Iran is a much larger country, and has the capacity to hurt Israel not only from Iran but also from Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip, and to hurt Jewish communities around the world, such as they did in the past in Argentina. Israel specialized in surgical strokes against small but vital targets such as Osiraq in 1981 and Syria earlier this year (twice; once against their nuclear station if it was that, and once against Mughniyeh if they indeed were involved). A counter strike against Israel could be potentially devastating and even potentially destroy the country.

Moreover, the United States would not automatically support Israel in a future administration. President Obama and President McCain might have different views than President Bush about an Israeli strike. If Israel is planning to strike Iran it most likely would do so before Bush leaves office.

Imad Mughniyeh-- may he rot in hell for eternity

The master terrorist is dead. Ding dong, the witch is dead, which witch, the wicked witch, the wicked witch is dead. Make no mistake, Imad Mughniyeh is a bigger catch than Osama Bin Laden. Perhaps as big a hit as any. 46 countries owed Mughniyeh justice, and one delivered. Whoever did it, delivered a blow to the networks of terror of which he was the epicenter, that include Hizbollah, Iran, Hamas and al Qaida. The one time mentee of Yasir Arafat, plotter of hijackings, Beirut marine barracks bombing, Khobar bombing, Iraqi resistance, and Hizbollah military shenanigans, Mughniyeh's exploits can be read thoughout the internet.

So why did we not know about him? Why did George Bush, who declared "Mission Accomplished" in 2003, ignore Valdimir Putin's warnings about Mughniyeh? Why did Syria become the conduit for Iranian-Iraqi-Lebanese terror networks yet escape the designation "Axis of Evil." All good questions.

In 2003, the only outfit to report on Mughniyeh was debkafile, an intelligence site run out of Jerusalem. The established his biography, credentials, his ties to multiple countries' terror outfits and the Iraqi resistance. For this reporting, debkafile deserves our gratitude and placement as an investigative reporting link that serves our right to know.

JFK Whodunnit? And who is Abraham Bolden?

We are fascinated because there were more people that stood to benefit from JFK's death than could fill Madison Square Garden. Equal numbers of fair minded people are convinced alternatively that Lee Oswald acted alone or that he did not. Yet nearly all people have a sure sense that not all has been explained.

Who stood to benefit from JFK's demise? Within the US, the Mafia did. RFK's hearings on the Mafia embarrassed many. One (Carlos Marcello) was briefly deported. J Edgar Hoover denied the Mafia existed for 50 years and shared the Mafia's distaste for RFK; he felt the hearings signified that he would not get reappointed as director. Lyndon Johnson felt the Kennedys blocked his ascension to be President. The right wing Dallas millionaires all disliked the civil rights legislation. Cuba/Castro had endured the Bay of Pigs and feared another invasion. The USSR, knowing that Cuban nuclear weapons were under local control, knew better than anyone how close the world had come to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis and thought JFK was a loose cannon and unpredictable. Israel deceived JFK about its nuclear ambitions which JFK wanted to quash, but which Israel was determined to pursue.

Once JFK was killed, Carlos Marcello returned to the US, Hoover served several more terms, and LBJ became President. LBJ turned the nation's focus from Cuba to Vietnam. Israel built over 200 nuclear devices between 1963-1973 under the benign neglect of Presidents Johnson and Nixon.

In Ultimate Sacrifice, Lamar Waldron makes a compelling case that the Mafia dunnit. He argues that Jack Ruby's finishing off Oswald both proves mob involvement and that therewas a conspiracy of at least 2 . After the murder, the FBI prematurely announced that Oswald "acted alone" and thereby limited investigation.

Forget all the red herrings: the grassy knoll, the magic bullet, etc. Concentrate on what is known. The proof of a conspiracy is that there were two failed attempts at assassinating JFK in the weeks leading up to Dallas. Each was planned for a car procession with a tall building and multiple gunmen. The first attempt happened in Chicago, the second in Tampa. Dallas was the third chance, and probably last chance for the mob to get JFK. The Secret Service knew all about the first two attempts. Had the public known at the time, they would never have accepted Hoover's statement, immediately after the shooting, that one did it and he did it alone. However, they never knew.

Abraham Bolden knew. Bolden happened to be the first black Secret Service agent, and he had been briefed on the Chicago attempt, and was prepared to testify before the Warren Commission. The day he went to testify before Warren, he was arrested and charged with counterfeiting. Two Mafioso, including one he had previously arrested, testified against him, and he spent decades seeking a pardon. Remember that name-- Bolden will be famous by the end of the year.

The crux of the book is that the government was not all in on the conspiracy to kill JFK as presented by Oliver Stone and others. However, the government did participate en masse in a conspiracy after the murder to prevent the truth from coming to light. The FBI stopped investigating-- on Hoover's orders-- once the announcement was made that Oswald acted alone.

Waldrop contends that JFK had a secret plot to invade Cuba by December 1, but that plot was infiltrated and known to the Mafia. RFK (who personally directed his brother's botched autopsy by a telephone connection at Walter Reed Hospital) and other confidantes wanted to protect that plot and did not allow JFK's murder investigation to go in directions that might expose the plot. Because different forces all wanted to cover up different aspects of the plot in different ways for unique reasons, the truth died. The plot to invade Cuba was not known to the Warren investigators nor to the Sprague investigators in the 1970's. However, Abe Bolden, the first African American Secret Service agent who took the fall as the patsy of the Mafia, still is alive and is going to tell his tale.

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307407375

Project Censored 2008 review

The book covers the most important news stories not covered by the MSM last year. Here are a few of them:

1. October 17, 2006 President Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act that does away with habeas corpus for any person(s) that are deemed by the President of the United States to be enemy combatants.
2. The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 allows the president to station troops anywhere in the US without the consent of the governors or local law enforcement. This law effectively negates the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that prevented military operations against the US people, and according to the report, paves the way for martial law.
3. The US is moving its defense activities in Africa from the longstanding jurisdiction of Centcom (Europe) to its own jurisdiction, Africom. This is linked to the massive natural resources contained by the continent. Attacks on pipelines, etc. are characterized as "terror" without evidence of involvement by international terror groups, but in a way to justify American military involvement in the continent. Human rights issues , eg. Sudan, are also used in this regard.
4. Destructive free trade agreements with developing countries close our markets but open theirs; intellectual property laws allow Western interests to patent indigenous seeds and make them unavailable to farmers who always have used them. Foreign investors can even sue for "lost profits." See oxfam report.
5. The new US embassy in Iraq is being built by Asian slaves, smuggled through Kuwait. The State Department whitewashed the evidence and exonerated the contractors. See corpwatch.
6. Operation Falcon (federal and local cops organized nationally) mass arrests of fugitives and so called sex offenders occurred throughout the US in 2005 and 2006. However, contrary to the publicity, less then ten percent were actually sex offenders and less than 2000 had firearms. The names and crimes of the others are not known. The authors speculate the real person is to have a dry run with a chain of command stemming from the federal government. This is the first time in history that all local police were under the control of the federal government. See sourcewatch and artificial intelligence.
7. Blackwater has 20,000 soldiers and is led by Erik Prince, a right wing Christian supremacist and former SEAL. There are currently 48,000 private soldiers in Iraq and Blackwater protects US diplomats with almost no oversight. Their lawyer is Ken Starr the Whitewater idependent counsel.
8. KIA (Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture) opens India to Archer Daniel Midland, Cargill and Walmart. Monsanto gets access to seed banks and favorable intellectual property laws, and India gets favorable US treatment for its nuclear program. The seed patents will in effect deliver India's seed banks into US hands. See gmwatch.org and mindully.org
9. We are in the process of secretly privatizing our interstates and other infrastructure to foreign private concerns. Part of this will involve building a NAFTA ten lane superhighway next to Interstate 35.
10. Vulture funds such as Donegan International (based in England) aka as distressed debt funds, are going beyond buying up distressed companies and going after distressed countries such as Zambia with the full support of Gordon Brown and George W Bush.
11. The reconstruction of Afghanistan includes much "phantom aid" that lines the pockets of US corporations (5 in particular). These corporations build lousy roads, charge tolls that give them recurring revenue and do a "worse job than the Taliban."
12. UN "peacekeeper" backed masacres of 8,000 have occurred since elected President Aristide was ousted in 2004. Indiscriminate shootings in city de soleil and other places were wholly political. See IJDH, BAI, haitiinformationproject.net, haitianalysis.com for starters.
13. Immigrant roundups of undocumented are really an effort to prevent them from unionizing and allowing their employers who have structural need for poor workers to survive. se nnirrr.org.
14. The Military Commission Act 2006 exempts torturers and their bosses from being prosecuted in accordance with the Geneva Convention. It was agreed to by John Warner, Lindsey Graham and JOHN MCCAIN. The law evolved in response to a Supreme Court Declaration that US war tribunals are unconstitutional.
15. Epigenetics is a field that is partly about how toxins can change the genetic expression in offspring of the exposed. The REACH act is a European initiative designed to force chemical companies to test products before not after they come to market, and is opposed by the United States.
16. The FBI does not list Osama Bin Laden as most wanted because of a "lack of evidence." The FBI has not provided evidence authenticating OBL's "confession tape" of 2001 that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan.
17. Ethanol production leads to atrazine in our streams at higher concentrations than are known to be safe. The Defense department has sought waivers for limitations on its right to dump toxins such as trichloroethylene into public aquifers. TCE is a known carcinogen. In 2001 the Supreme Court ruled that non-navigable isolated intrastate waters do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Restoration Act of 2007 which has not passed replaced the term "navigable waters" with "waters of the United States" to fill the loophole. See USPIRG.org
18. In contravention of the law, US political firms including Dick Morris and others, and in contravention of Mexican law, the outgoing Mexican President Vicente Fox, intervened on bhelaf of the campaign of Felipe Calderon to be the next president of Mexico. Calderon supported opening the Mexican oil company property, PEMEX to US exploitation. The election was beset by massive fraud.
19. Leaders of Venezuala (Hugo Chaves), Cuba (Fidel Castro), Ecuador (Rafel Correa), Nicaragua (Daniel Ortega), Bolivia (Evo Morales), and Argentina (Nestor Kirchner) are setting up economic growth engines apart from US/IMF demands for privatization.
20. The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) of 2006 describes as "terror" acts that interfere with or promote interference with "animal enterprises." Teh ACLU pointed out that lawful and peaceful protests or calls for boycotts of inhumane companies would "disrupt" animal businesses and "chill and deter Americans" from exercising their First Amendment rights. The Shac 7 were animal rights activists that organized to expose illegal and inhumane activities of Huntingdon Life Sciences. Three were charged with interstate stalking and conspiracy to comit interstate stalking and for running a website publishing the names of vivisectionists. They were fined 1,000,001 dollars adn sentenced collectively to 21 years in prison-- and that was BEFORE AETA! It was passed by voice vote with 6 comgressmen present, and only one (Dennis Kucinich) voting against. See noaeta.org. The FBI has declared the Animal Liberation Front as the number one domestic terrorism organization.
21. US seeks wto immunity for illegal farm subsidies that drive foreign farmers into the ground.
22. From 2001-2005, Dianne Feinstein voted for billions in subsidies for her husband's firms, Perrini and URS Corp. Perrini went from 7 million in US contracts to 2000 to 1.7 billion in 2005. Feinstein's husband Richard Blum also got former Cal governor Gray Davis to appoint him a regent at University of California, where he steered millions in construction contracts to his 2 firms. It was rejected by a series of national magazines but published the North Bay Bohemian and probably killed Feinstein's hopes of being on a national ticket.
23. Native American land holds lots of natural resources. The 2005 Energy Policy Acts gives the US the right of way through Indian lands without permission of the tribes if in the strategic interests of an energy related project. It exempted the US government complying with regulations, or oversight.

Israel Behind the News

The agenda to "get" Israel is not necessarily run by anti-Semites, Arabs, or John Birchers. Sometimes, the agenda drivers live in Tel Aviv. Some of you may have seen a recent exhortation by the liberal Ha'aretz editor that he had a "wet dream" that the United States would "rape" Israel in the aftermath of the Annapolis conference. The statement is offensive on so many levels that is beyond the mission of this blog to address or analyze.

The key point of this coverage is that the liberal agenda, in this case, of the MSM, in this case in Israel, prevents Israelis from getting accurate information about their government. The United States and Israel have decided that a peace process must exist, so they have a puppet government, with no real power, in the form of Abu Mazen, or Mohammed Abbas. The real power, Hamas, still is sworn to destroy Israel. As a result, coverage is tilted to prevent accurate information about Abu Mazen's role, his two-facedness,and his support for terror from coming to light.

The issue is not who owns the land, or what the contours of a peace settlement ought to be, but the lack of truth of the reporting that is driven to support a narrow agenda. Of the many sites devoted to the Middle East, one stands out: David Bedein's Israel Behind the News. Bedein is a reporter who writes what is said, not what is supposed to be the party line. Please click on his link to find more about issues in Israeli politics.

Little green footballs

Littlegreenfootballs.com is included in the links to this site. We need to be true to our mission, which is not to provide a left or right agenda, but a platform for investigative journalism. LGF.com is in the forefront of the blogger agenda of debunking garbage that is presented as news by the MSM. If you wish to vote for the left, as many of us do, God bless you. However, do so with open eyes and the best information available. The MSM lied to us a number of times to present not the story, but their chosen narrative. Whether the issue is Dan Rather trying to expose Bush' service record in the guard, or Reuters photoshopping pictures of the most recent Lebanon war to exaggerate Israeli "destruction" of Lebanon, LGF has been there to expose lies and to promote truth in media. Thank you little green footballs.

Book Review Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast

Palast is a controversial and iconic figure for 2008 investigative journalists. He claims that not only Al Gore but John Kerrey beat George Bush in national elections (think OHIO) but that shenanigans (some supported by Democrats) kept GWB in power. He believes a "fix" is in for 2008 based on various sophisticated techniques for challenging black and Hispanic voters.

In international affairs, Palast argues that US policy in Iraq is based on undercutting the ability of Iraqis from digging out of their economic hole, and enables corporations such as Cargill to dump crops and destroy local agriculture and other industries, systematically.

Americans may not be ready to believe that political considerations entered into Bush efforts post-Katrina to provide relief (New Orleans is Democratic).

One irony of Palast publishing outside of the MSM is that his views do not get scrutinized the way they should, by others. Palast inspires those investigative journalists who, since a brief respite in the 1970's, have not had an outlet for their reports.

Palast's book is a must read for anyone interested in politics. It deserves to see the light of day, and rise above the mythical iconic status it presently holds. Investigative journalism should not be bound by artificially set fences, but by the quality of their reporting.