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Six Years After Pro-European Revolution Moldova Is a ‘Captured State’

Sputnik – 11.08.2015

Six years after the so-called “Twitter Revolution” which ousted the ruling communist regime in Moldova and brought pro-Europeans to power, and one year since the ratification of the country’s association agreement with the EU, the country has found itself on the brink of ruin and in the tight grip of the oligarchs, according to a European official.

Six years of pro-European rule in Moldova has done little good for the country. Even though last year it signed and ratified an association agreement with the European Union, “corruption [in Moldova] remains endemic” and the state is “still in the hands of oligarchs, while punishingly low incomes have propelled hundreds of thousands of Moldovans to go abroad in search of a better life,” according to Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway, who is the current secretary-general of the Council of Europe.

“The value of the Moldovan currency, the leu, has dropped, interest rates have rocketed and a recession looms,” he adds in his article in The New York Times.

The high-ranking politician however suggests that the remedy is “outside financing”.

“If the authorities fail to do what is needed to restore external support — and quickly — the country will face serious economic turmoil. Social programs for the poor and vulnerable will be cut just before the harsh winter months,” he therefore predicts.

“Alongside the urgent measures needed to fix the banks, the government must immediately begin purging corrupt officials from public bodies. As a start, the dozens of judges — some very high-profile — who have been accused of egregiously abusing their power should be investigated. Law enforcement agencies must also do everything they can to arrest the individuals responsible for the massive bank fraud.”

“In order to give people confidence that justice will be served in these cases, murky political interference must be eliminated from the judicial system. Legislation currently before Parliament that would guarantee the impartiality of state prosecutors should be implemented without delay. And to prove that no one is above the law, the current blanket immunity from prosecution enjoyed by members of Parliament should be reduced.”

It yet remains to be seen what reforms Moldova, which the politician calls a “captured state” will introduce in the nearest future.

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Joel Pollak and Bill Kristol on Obama’s rabid anti-Semitism

By Kevin MacDonald — Occidental Observer — August 10, 2015

Not to be outdone by the Tablet article labeling Obama a “Jew baiter,” Joel Pollak writing in Breitbart came out with “Barack Obama’s Anti-Semitic Rant on the Iran Deal: President Barack Obama is using anti-Jewish language to sell the Iran deal.”

On Thursday, Obama led a conference call with left-wing activists in which he repeatedly railed against his political opponents by using the old canard of rich Jews using their money to exert control.

Accusing critics of the deal of being “opposed to any deal with Iran”–i.e. of advocating war–Obama railed against “well-financed” lobbyists, as well as the “big check writers to political campaigns,” and  “billionaires who happily finance super-PACs.” He complained about “$20 million” being spent on ads against the deal—a subtle reference to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC–whose support he had repeatedly courted when running for office).

Some of Obama’s references were thinly-veiled attacks on specific (Jewish) individuals—columnist Bill Kristol, for example, the Weekly Standard publisher and former New York Times resident conservative who served in the George H.W. Bush administration, and also helps run the Emergency Committee for Israel, which opposes the Iran deal; or billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who is a prodigious Republican benefactor, super PAC donor, and well-known hawk on Israel issues.

So now merely referring to the fact that the opposition to the Iran deal is well-funded makes Obama’s statements into an “anti-Semitic rant.” Calling attention to the deep pockets of political opponents is fair game with a long history in American politics. But if Jews are the ones with the deep pockets, suddenly, it’s “anti-Semitism” — defined I guess as “something Jews dislike because it brings attention to their actions.” 

Pollak also brings up Obama’s claim that the same people opposing the Iran deal supported the war in Iraq, claiming against all evidence that such a claim is “largely false.”

On the call, Obama twice accused his opponents of being the same people “responsible for us getting into the Iraq war.“ That sweeping, and largely false, characterization of the opponents of the Iran deal repeats the sensational accusations of The Israel Lobby, a widely discredited 2007 book that accused a group of pro-Israel, and largely Jewish, individuals and organizations of pushing the U.S. into war with Iraq, and seeking to drag America into a new war with Iran.

Nathan Guttman, of the left-leaning Forward, which covers Jewish issues, wrote of the call that “what many liberals hear as a powerful rallying call to avoid entering another military quagmire in the Middle East could seem tone deaf to some in the organized Jewish community.” Obama’s claims about the Iraq War, he added, were “likely to make many in the community feel uneasy.”

Uneasy because they are essentially true and everyone who is paying attention knows it. It’s okay to call attention to Jewish accomplishments and their influence on culture, as Joe Biden did (although even that was less than welcomed by the ADL), but there must never be any suggestion that Jews have used their power to advance their interests in a way that ends up being a disaster for America while at the same time benefiting Israel. Again, activist Jews essentially want a situation where Jews can act as Jews in the political process, supporting Jewish causes that are not necessarily in anyone else’s interests, but where it is illegitimate to ever talk about this. The fact that they have largely succeeded in this goal is an excellent marker of Jewish power.

And isn’t it amazing that simply calling attention to how well funded the effort is amounts to anti-Semitism. And yes, it’s amazing even if the other side has some funding as well, as Pollak tries to argue. (According to JTA in a July 23 article, AIPAC has raised $30 million for the effort and is flying in hundreds of activists to Washington, compared to a $2 million campaign for J Street, aided by prominent Israelis who endorse the deal).

None other than Bill Kristol picked up the theme on Twitter in a reference to the Tablet article:

Obama the incipient Nazi!

The problem the Lobby now has is mainly the left. On the cuckservative right, there is nothing but unanimity in opposition to the deal. And yes, you are far more likely to hear the truth about Jewish power at a White power rally than from anywhere else on the political spectrum.

Pollak (and Kristol would doubtless agree) goes on to label J Street a “radical group” and writes that Thomas Friedman’s use of the term “Israel lobby” (even without a capital L) is a “vicious slur” by linking to an article in an ultra-nationalist Israeli news service that “argues” against the existence of an Israel Lobby simply by saying that any such thought is simply “conjured up” and therefore nothing more than a figment of the fevered imagination of “anti-Semites.”

This is not the first time Friedman has conjured up the ugly, anti-Semitic specter of a nefarious “lobby” that uses Jewish money and votes to corrupt American lawmakers in order to mold U.S. policy to Israel’s benefit and  American harm. Two years ago, the columnist aroused the ire of elected U.S. representatives with similar offensive charges that denigrated those expressing support for the Jewish state as having been “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”

It’s so easy to argue when you can simply throw out accusations with no need to deal with what actually is happening. No need to go patiently deal with the evidence on where the Israel Lobby money actually goes as writers like Mearsheimer and Walt and many other critics of the Lobby do.

The effort to scuttle the Iran deal is an example of what happens when a powerful segment of the Jewish community becomes aroused to activism. The already very strong, everyday pressure on policy exerted by the Lobby has been ticked up a few notches, now including wild charges of “anti-Semitism” against the “first Jewish president.” This seems to me to be a risky strategy unless they think that the US is completely immune to a serious public examination of Jewish power — which it probably is given Jewish power in the media and the ability of the ADL to punish those who start to publicly connect the dots.

Right now Congress is beset by armies of Jewish lobbyists and thousands of phone calls from Jews opposed to the deal. It’s a full court press, not unlike that which occurred in 1992 when George H. W. Bush attempted to withhold loan guarantees for Israeli housing over the West Bank Settlement issue — merely confirming policy that every US government since Carter has paid lip service to. Bush eventually backed down after famously saying “I’m one lonely little guy” up against “some powerful political forces” made up of “a thousand lobbyists on the Hill.”

Obama probably feels the same way right now, but, unlike Bush (who seems to believe that his defeat in the 1992 election stemmed from this action), he needn’t fear that this uproar will prevent his reelection.

But win or lose (and most observers think the effort against the deal will fail to override Obama’s veto), after this battle, the lobby will move on to the presidential election. The fact that Hillary Clinton has endorsed the deal must worry the Lobby, even if she seems less dovish than Obama and has fanatically Zionist supporters like Haim Saban who would love to bomb Iran. The Republicans seem a much surer bet for the Lobby. At this point, they’re probably thinking that anyone would be better than Obama.

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Corbyn will not aid MidEast peace, Labour Friends of Israel official claims

RT | August 11, 2015

The chair of Labour Friends of Israel has urged party members not to back anti-war advocate Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership race because he previously called for Arab groups Hamas and Hezbollah to be involved in Middle East peace talks.

Joan Ryan said Monday there were “deep concerns” about Corbyn’s leadership campaign and in particular the positions he has taken on Israel.

The Labour Friends of Israel official asked supporters to back a candidate who could play a “constructive” role in negotiating peace between Israel and Palestine.

Corbyn has faced criticism during his leadership election campaign for previously calling Hamas and Hezbollah “friends” and insisting they be involved in regional peace discussions.

Ryan, who replaced Anne Mcguire as head of Labour Friends of Israel on Monday, told the Jewish Chronicle that Labour must be “steadfast” in its support for Tel Aviv.

She added that last month’s Jewish community hustings for the Labour leadership contenders had been a key step in the party’s efforts to “win back the trust and confidence of the Jewish community.”

Ryan, who nominated Blairite Liz Kendall in the leadership contest, went on to caution Labour voters that members should elect the candidate that is most likely to play a “constructive” role in the peace process.

“We hope that Labour party members and supporters will consider when they vote which candidate is best placed to ensure that the next Labour government can play a constructive and engaged role in the crucial search for a two-state solution,” she said.

“We recognize the deep concerns which exist about positions taken, and statements made, by Jeremy Corbyn in the past and recognize the serious questions which arise from these.”

Ryan, a former Home Office minister and party whip, said Labour Friends of Israel would “continue to work with progressives in both Israel and Palestine who share our commitment to peace and co-existence.

“At the same time, we remain adamantly opposed to boycotts and sanctions, which delegitimize Israel, do nothing to further these goals and have no place in the Labour Party.”

Corbyn was grilled by Channel 4 journalist Kristan Guru-Murthy in an interview in July for having previously called Hamas and Hezbollah “friends.”

During the interview the veteran left-winger rejected the idea that he agreed with the two organizations, which Israel considers to be terrorist groups.

Following intense questioning by Guru-Murthy, Corbyn explained his position.

“Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hezbollah and what they do? No,” the Labour MP said.

“There is not going to be a peace process unless there are talks involving Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas – and I think everyone knows that.”

Corbyn added that even the former head of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad agreed that more comprehensive talks must be pursued. The Israeli intelligence chief argued at the time that any viable peace process would involve negotiations with people who hold opposing viewpoints.

The socialist candidate has faced intense criticism from Labour elites since announcing his candidacy, with a number of high-profile politicians urging voters to back other candidates.

Attacks on Corbyn’s campaign became even more heated after a YouGov poll, published by The Times newspaper on Monday night, found that Corbyn had doubled his lead over the past week and would now poll 53 percent, meaning he could secure a first-round victory without needing to count the second preferences of Labour supporters.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Blair-era PR guru Alistair Campbell have all urged Labour supporters to reject Corbyn, arguing he would make Labour “unelectable” in the 2020 general election.

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | 2 Comments

MH17 investigators to RT: No proof east Ukraine fragments from ‘Russian’ Buk missile

RT | August 11, 2015

Investigators probing the downing of MH17 flight told RT that they cannot confirm that fragments found in eastern Ukraine are from a Buk missile system, refuting media reports that the parts belong to a Russian surface-to-air complex.

On Tuesday, the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) released a statement saying that it is investigating “several parts, possibly originating from a Buk surface-air-missile system.”

Following the release of the report, numerous media reports indicated that it was a “Russian” or “Russian-made” missile system – something JIT spokesman Wim de Bruin rejected to RT, stressing that “it’s too early to draw any conclusion at this moment.”

He described the whole procedure as a “forensic investigation to establish whether these parts… were parts of a Buk [missile] system or not” and added that it is difficult to set the deadlines for the final report to be presented.

The one thing the JIT is absolutely sure about, de Bruin said, is that “those parts were found in eastern Ukraine.”

JIT said in its statement that “at present the conclusion cannot be drawn that there is a causal connection between the discovered parts and the crash of flight MH17.”

The fragments “possibly” originating from a Buk surface-air-missile system were discovered during a recovery mission in eastern Ukraine and are in possession of the investigators.

Dutch prosecutors say that the parts found at the site “are of particular interest to the criminal investigation as they can possibly provide more information about who was involved in the crash of MH17.”

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was brought down over war-torn eastern Ukraine July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board.

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine Bans Dozens of Russian Books

Sputnik – 11.08.2015

Goskomteleradio, the State Committee of Television and Radio of Ukraine, has issued a ban on 38 books by Russian authors, prohibiting their import onto Ukrainian territory, the press service of the agency has declared.

Goskomteleradio deputy head Bogdan Chervak did his best to explain the decision, stating that it was “dictated by the need to prevent the Russian Federation from using methods of information warfare and disinformation against the citizens of Ukraine to spread the ideologies of hate, fascism, xenophobia and separatism.”

The list of banned books includes several works by Donetsk-born science fiction writer Fedor Berzin, as well as Tom Clancy-style works of fiction predicting the Ukrainian civil war by Ukrainian-born author Gleb Bobrov and by Georgi Savitskiy.

The ban also targets books in the areas of political science and social science by conservative Russian publicist Alexander Dugin, radical political dissident Eduard Limonov, Russian academic and presidential advisor Sergei Glazyev, and renowned Russian economist Valentin Katasonov. Most of the banned books are related in one way or another to Ukraine; many of them were published over the past two years in the midst of the Ukrainian crisis.

Goskomteleradio warned that the list of banned Russian books is likely to be expanded, saying that it would cite Article 28 of Ukraine’s Publishing Act, which prohibits the distribution of published works which can be used to threaten Ukraine’s independence, change the constitutional order by force, or violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state.

The agency launched its initiative early last month, referring to the country’s State Fiscal Service with a request to include Russian books in the list of goods prohibited from import onto Ukrainian territory from Russia.

Authorities did not clarify what would happen to those who violated the ban on the import of the banned literature, but noted that the books themselves would be confiscated and destroyed.

Russian authors and social scientists have begun reacting to the ban. Russian pop historian Nikolai Starikov, whose book “Ukraine: Chaos and Revolution: The Weapon of the Dollar” made the list of banned books, argued that Kiev’s move is an attempt to hide some basic truths. Starikov emphasized that his book had “neither hate, nor a call to separatism, nor fascist ideas –[in other words] none of the things listed by Ukrainian authorities,” adding that by banning his work, Ukrainian authorities were trying to hide a simple truth, that “Ukraine has witnessed an unconstitutional seizure of power… [and] come under the external control of the US.”

Popular Russian radio journalist Sergei Dorenko, one of whose books also made the list, noted that “in the age of the internet, it’s simply funny for the Ukrainians to try and ban something.” Dorenko referred to the fact that since the appearance of the internet in countries like Ukraine and Russia, books have often been made available on the internet, for free, even before being published and released in bookstores. With the appearance of e-readers and tablets, the trend has become so pervasive that many authors, especially academics, have deliberately released their works online, for free, in order to get a wider readership. In such a situation, it’s questionable how much effect, if any, a ban on physical copies of books will actually have.

The latest ban on Russian media is part of a growing trend. Over the past year, Ukraine has created and diligently expanded its list of banned Russian media, prohibiting nearly 400 Russian films and television series, issuing a blacklist for Russian artists said to be ‘threatening Ukraine’s national security’, and banning the broadcast of over a dozen Russian television channels on Ukrainian territory for their alleged contravention of Ukrainian legislation. With the prevalence of internet and satellite television technology, experts doubt the practical effectiveness of Kiev’s initiatives.

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Journalists arrested in Ferguson face charges a year later

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Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly (L) and Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery (R) © Twitter
RT | August 11, 2015

Two reporters have been summoned to face criminal charges related to their arrests last August in Ferguson, Missouri. Their media outlets, the Washington Post and the Huffington Post, have slammed the decision as “abuse” and “contemptible overreach.”

Ferguson police arrested Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post on August 14, 2014, at a McDonald’s on Florissant Avenue, where the reporters had set up shop to cover the ongoing protests over the shooting of black teenager Michael Brown.

When the police ordered them to clear out, Reilly tried to take a photo. Officers then demanded his ID, which he lawfully declined to provide. He was then detained, along with Lowery, “for not packing up fast enough.”

Both reporters were charged by the St. Louis county with “trespassing and interfering with a police officer,” almost a year after their arrest. They could face a fine of $1,000 and up to a year in a county jail, according to the St. Louis county’s municipal code.

Martin Baron, executive editor of the Washington Post, blasted the decision to prosecute the journalists in a statement Monday.

“Charging a reporter with trespassing and interfering with a police officer when he was just doing his job is outrageous,” Baron said. “You’d have thought law enforcement authorities would have come to their senses about this incident. Wes Lowery should never have been arrested in the first place. That was an abuse of police authority.”

“This latest action represents contemptible overreaching by prosecutors who seem to have no regard for the role of journalists seeking to cover a major story and following normal practice,” Baron said.

“At least we know St. Louis County knows how to file charges,” Washington bureau chief Ryan Grim and senior politics editor Sam Stein of the Huffington Post wrote, denouncing the decision. If a reporter can be “charged like this with the whole country watching, just imagine what happens when nobody is,” they said.

According to the San Francisco-based Freedom of the Press Foundation, 24 journalists were arrested in Ferguson between August and November 2014, including RT’s Denise Reese. Several have sued the St. Louis County for unlawful arrest. Last week, the county settled with Gerald “Trey” Yingst and Turkish photographer Bilgin Sasmaz, paying out several thousand dollars and pledging to expunge arrest records and not file criminal charges.

More lawsuits are pending. One American and three German reporters sued the St. Louis police in March over their August 2014 arrests. One of them, Ansgar Graw of Die Welt, said he had covered many disputed areas and conflict zones, from Gaza and Georgia to Iran and Cuba. “But to be arrested and yelled at and be rudely treated by police? For that I had to travel to Ferguson and St. Louis in the United States of America.”

READ MORE: State of emergency declared in St. Louis county; activists arrested at federal courthouse

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Palestinian Family Victimized by Immolation Ineligible for Compensation

By Stephen Lendman | August 11, 2015

Dawabsha family survivors aren’t afforded the same rights as Jews. Israel’s Property Tax and Compensation Fund Law (1961) provides monetary payments for property damage caused by terrorism.

Its Victims of Hostile Action Law (1970) provides compensation for bodily injuries suffered from terrorist attacks – as well as payments to family members of deceased victims.

Palestinians don’t qualify, only Jews, another example of a racist state, ignoring the rights of all people it’s obligated to protect.

Riham Dawabsha and her four-year-old son Ahmad are the remaining family survivors – both in intensive care precariously clinging to life with severe third-degree burns covering most of their bodies.

They’re physically unable to seek redress. They may not survive their ordeal. Yet Israeli law requires Palestinian victims of terrorism to appeal to a Defense Ministry committee – hostile to their interests – for compensation unlikely to be received.

Palestinian MK Yousef Jabareen called Israel’s system “absurd” and discriminatory. “Victims of nationalistic action must be eligible for compensation, and it doesn’t matter if they’re Arab or Jewish,” he said.

He wants Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to assure Palestinian terrorism victims are treated the same as Jews.

Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) attorney Dan Yakir called Israeli discrimination “another example of the intolerable disparity between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank in all areas of life.”

Firebombing the Dawbsha home on July 31 sparked worldwide outrage. Israeli officials called the attack “terrorism.” Riham and Ahmad deserve no less compensation and overall redress than Jews.

Nothing can replace the loss of 18-month-old Ali and Riham’s husband Saad. No amount of redress can reunite all family members in peace and security. Nothing can change what happened that fateful day.

Israeli security forces routinely conspire with settler terrorists against defenseless Palestinian victims – letting them rampage freely, commit near daily acts of violence and vandalism with virtual impunity.

Police states operate this way – including whitewashing their worst high crimes. Israeli forces last summer alone mass murdered over 2,200 Gazans, injured over 11,000, and turned large parts of the Strip to rubble – still not rebuilt because construction materials and other vital supplies are blocked from entering except in too small amounts to matter.

While horrendous crimes of war and against humanity were being committed, Israeli security forces viciously assaulted Arab citizens peacefully protesting ongoing carnage. Jewish activists joined them in solidarity.

On August 11, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel published a report titled “Silencing the Opposition: Israel’s Law Enforcement’s Restrictions on Freedom of Expression in Israel during ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in Gaza, 8 July – 26 August 2014.”

Israeli authorities “adopted a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to citizens opposing” aggressive war against 1.8 million Gazans trapped under siege, said Adalah.

The entire Strip was turned into a free-fire zone. No safe havens existed – not private homes, mosques, refugee camps, schools, or UN facilities to keep civilians out of harm’s way.

Israeli Arabs and Jews were denied their free expression right to protest. Police brutality confronted them. Serious violations of Israel’s Criminal Procedure Code and other statutes were committed.

“The police exhibited a complete disregard for the principles and criteria that apply to its authority for preventing and dispersing demonstrations, which are stipulated in rulings of the Israeli Supreme Court as well as Guideline 3.1200 issued by the Attorney General regarding the right to protest,” said Adalah.

After one month of conflict, over 1,500 protesters were violently arrested – mostly Arabs, some requiring hospitalization. Children were brutalized like adults.

Police viciously attacked every peaceful demonstration held throughout 51 days of conflict. Courts rubber-stamped their actions – ordering lengthy detentions for people exercising their legitimate rights peacefully, committing no crimes.

Judges showed overt sympathy with aggressive war murdering Palestinians in cold blood. They were intolerant of peaceful protesters.

Nearly 350 criminal indictments were filed on bogus charges of violating public peace, congregating unlawfully, acting unruly in public, assaulting police, inciting racism or committing violent acts.

Legitimate anti-war activism was criminalized – Israeli Arab citizens especially singled out for harsh treatment. Arab workers were fired for opposing government policies on Facebook and other social networking sites. Students and faculty members were disciplined the same way.

Adalah concluded its report saying “the attitude of the Israeli law enforcement authorities has not changed since the grave events of October 2000 (start of the second intifada), nor since the police’s gross misconduct against protestors during Israel’s previous military offensive in Gaza in 2009 (Operation Cast Lead).”

“(T)he incidents described in this report indicate that a public atmosphere of intolerance, racism, persecution and incitement characterized the most recent war.”

“Social networking sites became a frontier for targeting individuals opposed to the war on Gaza, with employees harassed and followed by co-workers and sometimes fired for online posts or statements.”

“The situation was just as severe for students and faculty members, whose political activities were closely monitored by universities and who faced disciplinary measures for speaking out against the military operation.”

“Altogether, the widespread phenomenon of Israel’s restrictions on the freedom of expression of Palestinians citizens reached a point to which that freedom was almost rendered non-existent, all with the aim of silencing opposition against a devastating war” – premeditated lawless aggression by any standard.

Stephen Lendman can be reached at [email protected].

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces demolish 3-story building in Qalandiya industrial zone

Ma’an – August 11, 2015

JERUSALEM – Israeli forces on Tuesday morning demolished a three-story commercial building in the industrial zone of Qalandiya north of Jerusalem, the owner told Ma’an.

Mazin Abu Diab said that Israeli forces stormed the industrial zone and sealed it completely before bulldozers demolished a three-story building he owns in the area.

He said that the building consisted of two meeting halls, four offices and additional utilities measuring 220 square meters in total.

Abu Diab said that part of the building was constructed in 1971, and another part measuring 100 square meters was added on in 2013.

He said that he had tried to obtain the necessary permits from the Israeli authorities for the additional structure, but said that the Jerusalem municipality decided to demolish the entire building rather than give him a license.

Abu Diab said that he started to refurbish the building about five months ago.

According to the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem, 98 percent of Qalandiya’s territories are classified as Area C.

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, building permits must be approved by the Israeli Civil Administration for Palestinians to build in Area C.

As a result of rarely-approved permits, however, Palestinian residents are often forced to build structures without permits, which are liable to be torn down later by Israeli forces.

According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Israel has demolished at least 27,000 Palestinian homes and structures since occupying the West Bank in 1967.

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Will Obama’s Clean Power Plan save consumers money?

By Dave Rutledge | Climate Etc. | August 10, 2015

On August 3, President Obama declared that “under the Clean Power Plan, by 2030, renewables will account for 28% of our capacity,” and “will save the average American family nearly $85 on their annual energy bill in 2030.”

In the accompanying EPA rule, the word renewables is not used consistently. Sometimes it includes hydroelectric power, sometimes not. Sometimes the focus is on wind and solar power, sometimes it is broader. As the readers are aware, capacity is not the same thing as generation, and for generation, prices vary widely during the day. This makes it unclear how we get from a 28% capacity to $85 in annual savings. It is common for energy analysts to use levelized costs to compare different sources, but a residential consumer is paying for 24/7 access to a working grid, not for electricity from individual sources.

Without any enabling legislation, President Obama plans to force the United States to make an enormous capital investment, of the order of a trillion dollars, in wind and solar power and the associated grid infrastructure. Politicians often talk about investments when they mean forced transfers, but this really would be an investment, and the goal of this post is to estimate the return for the consumer. The post was inspired by a post by Willis Eschenbach at What’s Up With That. I will not consider the health and climate impacts of the plan. Judy Curry started the discussion of these in her August 3 post.

If the residential electricity bills actually do go down $85 a year as President Obama promised, then that $85 would be the return on our investment. To evaluate an investment, we divide it by the annual return to get a payback time. The situation is different if the electricity bills go up. The return is negative. We are never paid back and we have also lost our investment. One can still calculate a payback time using the same formula but we get a negative payback time, which is worse than any investment with a positive payback time. The readers who are scientists and engineers may appreciate the analogy to negative-temperature systems that are hotter than any system with a positive temperature. Among those awful investments with negative payback times, the smaller the negative payback time the worse the investment.

One complication in assessing a return on wind and solar investments is that the primary subsidies for renewables in the United States are the 30% federal tax credit and the 2.2¢/kWh producer tax credit for wind. These subsidies are effectively paid for by the people who pay income taxes. The toll falls heavily on the upper 1% in income who pay 46% of net US income taxes. Another problem in assessing a possible return is that the US has not gotten very far in wind and solar power. They accounted for only 4% of the electricity generation in 2013.

Europe is a better place to evaluate an investment in wind and solar power. The primary subsidy in Europe is a feed-in-tariff. Who pays in the end is different from the US. The people who are well off enough to buy solar arrays effectively are paid by the people who are not well off enough to buy solar arrays. I will leave the question of whether this is good social policy or not to the Europeans, but for this post it is useful because it means that the residential electricity bills reflect the wind and solar installation costs. It also helps that Europe has installed more than twice as much wind and solar capacity as the US.

Our starting point is Figure 1, which shows a plot of residential electricity prices compared with the residential component of wind and solar capacity for OECD-Europe countries. The data and the figures for this post are available as an Excel file. Willis Eschenbach and Jonathan Drake also made price plots for EU countries. Our emphasis will be on the higher-income European countries that are members of the OECD. Some countries, like Norway and Switzerland, are in OECD Europe but not the EU, while Romania is in the EU, but not the OECD. BP deems that Estonia, Iceland, Luxembourg, and Slovenia are not significant enough to include in their electricity spreadsheets, and I omitted them also.

The residential component of the wind and solar capacity is calculated from the residential share of the final consumption reported by the IEA. At 15¢/kWh, Norway is an outlier, well below the other countries. It has a very large per-person residential consumption of electricity generated by hydroelectric power. Norway also provides profitable balancing services to the continent, consuming wind and solar electricity when the price is low and providing hydroelectric power when the price is high. Roger Andrews has an excellent post on this balancing. The trend line is calculated without Norway. Incidentally, the US residential price is 12¢/kWh, even lower than Norway. The US has low-cost natural gas and coal and the US emphasizes tax credits rather than feed-in-tariffs to subsidize wind and solar power. As Willis noted, higher wind and solar capacities are associated with higher prices. For European consumers the return on their wind and solar investment is negative.

Rutledge2015Fig1

Figure 1. Residential electricity prices vs the residential component of the per-person wind and solar capacity for OECD Europe Countries. The electricity prices are taken from the IEA, the capacities from BP, and the populations from the UN. Data are for 2013, except for the Spanish price, where I filled from 2011. The IEA prices are converted at the market exchange rates.

How negative is the return? I propose that we interpret the y-intercept of the trend line, 18.8¢/kWh, as the price of electricity without any wind or solar capacity. As a check, in Germany in 2000, when the wind and solar capacity were negligible, the price was 16.3¢/kWh, expressed in 2013 dollars with BP’s deflator. The difference between the actual price and the zero-wind-and-solar price becomes a per kWh surcharge for the wind and solar capacity.

If we multiply this by the annual residential consumption we get an annual per-person wind and solar surcharge. These are shown in Figure 2. Again there is a clear trend. More capacity is associated with a greater surcharge. The slope of the trend line in the figure is $1.14/y/W. If we divide this by the average cost of the cumulative wind and solar capacity, we get the return on the investment, which will be negative. I will take the average cost to be $4/W. Expressed as a negative payback time, this is 3.5 years. Expressed as a negative return, it is 29% per year.

Rutledge2015Fig2

Figure 2. Calculated annual per-person wind and solar surcharge vs the residential component of per-person wind and solar capacity for OECD Europe Countries. Hungary (11W/p, –$7/p/y) is omitted from the graph, but included in the trend calculation. The trend is constrained to go through the origin.

As investments, these are inconceivably bad and we would expect large opportunity costs at the national level. It is interesting that if we start on the right in our graphs and move left past Denmark and Germany, the big spenders are the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) that have been in the financial doghouse in recent years.

For consumers, the high electricity prices discourage the use of electricity for increasing safety. During the great European Heat Wave of 2003, 70,000 people died, most of them indoors. This is a horrible way to die. The people who were indoors could have been saved by a $140 Frigidaire window unit, but only if they could afford to pay for the electricity.

Dave Rutledge is the Tomayasu Professor of Electrical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology.

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Don’t Be Fooled by the Political Game: The Illusion of Freedom in America

By John W. Whitehead | Rutherford Institute | August 10, 2015

“The shaping of the will of Congress and the choosing of the American president has become a privilege reserved to the country’s equestrian classes, a.k.a. the 20% of the population that holds 93% of the wealth, the happy few who run the corporations and the banks, own and operate the news and entertainment media, compose the laws and govern the universities, control the philanthropic foundations, the policy institutes, the casinos, and the sports arenas.”—Journalist Lewis Lapham

Being a citizen in the American corporate state is much like playing against a stacked deck: you’re always going to lose.

The game is rigged, and “we the people” keep getting dealt the same losing hand. Even so, most stay in the game, against all odds, trusting that their luck will change.

The problem, of course, is that luck will not save us. As I make clear in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the people dealing the cards—the politicians, the corporations, the judges, the prosecutors, the police, the bureaucrats, the military, the media, etc.—have only one prevailing concern, and that is to maintain their power and control over the citizenry, while milking us of our money and possessions.

It really doesn’t matter what you call them—Republicans, Democrats, the 1%, the elite, the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—so long as you understand that while they are dealing the cards, the deck will always be stacked in their favor.

Incredibly, no matter how many times we see this played out, Americans continue to naively buy into the idea that politics matter, as if there really were a difference between the Republicans and Democrats (there’s not).

As if Barack Obama proved to be any different from George W. Bush (he has not). As if Hillary Clinton’s values are any different from Donald Trump’s (with both of them, money talks). As if when we elect a president, we’re getting someone who truly represents “we the people” rather than the corporate state (in fact, in the oligarchy that is the American police state, an elite group of wealthy donors is calling the shots).

Politics is a game, a joke, a hustle, a con, a distraction, a spectacle, a sport, and for many devout Americans, a religion.

In other words, it’s a sophisticated ruse aimed at keeping us divided and fighting over two parties whose priorities are exactly the same. It’s no secret that both parties support endless war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry’s basic rights, have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by Big Business, care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty.

Most of all, both parties enjoy an intimate, incestuous history with each other and with the moneyed elite that rule this country. Don’t be fooled by the smear campaigns and name-calling. They’re just useful tactics of the psychology of hate that has been proven to engage voters and increase voter turnout while keeping us at each other’s throats.

Despite the jabs the candidates volley at each other for the benefit of the cameras, they’re a relatively chummy bunch away from the spotlight, presenting each other with awards (remember when Jeb Bush presented Hillary Clinton with a Liberty Medal for her service to the country), attending each other’s weddings (Bill and Hillary had front-row seats for Trump’s 2005 wedding), and embracing with genuine affection.

Trump’s various donations to the Clintons (he donated to Hillary’s Senate campaigns, as well as the Clinton Foundation) are not unusual. Remember, FOX News mogul Rupert Murdoch actually hosted a fundraiser for Hillary’s Senate reelection campaign back in 2006 and contributed to her presidential campaign two years later. In fact, FOX News has reportedly been one of Hillary’s biggest donors for the better part of two decades.

Are you starting to get the picture? It doesn’t matter who wins the White House, because they all work for the same boss: Corporate America. In fact, many corporations actually hedge their bets on who will win the White House by splitting their donations between Democratic and Republican candidates.

We’re in trouble, folks, and picking a new president won’t save us.

We are living in a fantasy world carefully crafted to resemble a representative democracy. It used to be that the cogs, wheels and gear shifts in our government machinery worked to keep our republic running smoothly. However, without our fully realizing it, the mechanism has changed. Its purpose is no longer to keep our republic running smoothly. To the contrary, this particular contraption’s purpose is to keep the corporate police state in power. Its various parts are already a corrupt part of the whole.

Just consider how insidious, incestuous and beholden to the corporate elite the various “parts” of the mechanism have become.

Congress. Perhaps the most notorious offenders and most obvious culprits in the creation of the corporate-state, Congress has proven itself to be both inept and avaricious, oblivious champions of an authoritarian system that is systematically dismantling their constituents’ fundamental rights. Long before they’re elected, Congressmen are trained to dance to the tune of their wealthy benefactors, so much so that they spend two-thirds of their time in office raising money. As Reuters reports, “For many lawmakers, the daily routine in Washington involves fundraising as much as legislating. The culture of nonstop political campaigning shapes the rhythms of daily life in Congress, as well as the landscape around the Capitol. It also means that lawmakers often spend more time listening to the concerns of the wealthy than anyone else.”

The President. With the 2016 presidential election shaping up to be the most expensive one in our nation’s history, with estimates as high as $10 billion, “the way is open for an orgy of spending by well-heeled interest groups and super rich individuals on both political sides.” Yet even after the votes have been counted and favors tallied, the work of buying and selling access to the White House is far from over. President Obama spends significant amounts of time hosting and attending fundraisers, having held more than 400 fundraising events over the course of his two terms in office. Such access comes with a steep price tag. It used to be that $100,000 got you an overnight stay at the White House. Now it will cost you $500,000 for four meetings a year with President Obama. Yet as Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig asks, “[H]ow does a man, as a person, run the nation when he’s attending 228 fundraisers? And the answer is not very well. It’s pretty terrible for your ability to do your job. It’s pretty terrible for your ability to be responsive to the American people, because—let me tell you—the American people are not attending 228 fundraisers. Those people are different.”

The Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court—once the last refuge of justice, the one governmental body really capable of rolling back the slowly emerging tyranny enveloping America—has instead become the champion of the American police state, absolving government and corporate officials of their crimes while relentlessly punishing the average American for exercising his or her rights. Like the rest of the government, the Court has routinely prioritized profit, security, and convenience over the basic rights of the citizenry. Indeed, law professor Erwin Chemerinsky makes a compelling case that the Supreme Court, whose “justices have overwhelmingly come from positions of privilege,” almost unerringly throughout its history, sides with the wealthy, the privileged, and the powerful. For example, contrast the Court’s affirmation of the “free speech” rights of corporations and wealthy donors in McCutcheon v. FEC, which does away with established limits on the number of candidates an entity can support with campaign contributions, and Citizens United v. FEC with its tendency to deny those same rights to average Americans when government interests abound, and you’ll find a noticeable disparity.

The Media. Of course, this triumvirate of total control would be completely ineffective without a propaganda machine provided by the world’s largest corporations. Besides shoving drivel down our throats at every possible moment, the so-called news agencies which are supposed to act as bulwarks against government propaganda have instead become the mouthpieces of the state. The pundits which pollute our airwaves are at best court jesters and at worst propagandists for the false reality created by the American government.

The American People. “We the people” now belong to a permanent underclass in America. It doesn’t matter what you call us—chattel, slaves, worker bees, drones, it’s all the same—what matters is that we are expected to march in lockstep with and submit to the will of the state in all matters, public and private. Through our complicity in matters large and small, we have allowed an out-of-control corporate-state apparatus to take over every element of American society.

Our failure to remain informed about what is taking place in our government, to know and exercise our rights, to vocally protest, to demand accountability on the part of our government representatives, and at a minimum to care about the plight of our fellow Americans has been our downfall.

Now we find ourselves once again caught up in the spectacle of another presidential election, and once again the majority of Americans are acting as if this election will make a difference and bring about change—as if the new boss will be different from the old boss.

When in doubt, just remember what comedian and astute commentator George Carlin had to say about the matter:

The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.

They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork…. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. …The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice…. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on…. It’s called the American Dream, ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it.

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Britain had an Empire?

By Paul Cochrane | Dissident Voice | August 11, 2015

An online video of Indian MP Shashi Tharoor arguing that Britain should pay India reparations for its colonial legacy has gone viral. It prompted much enthusiasm in the Indian press and parliament, as well as responses in the British press arguing both for and against Tharoor’s proposal. Interestingly, it also prompted a short article in the Guardian newspaper, ‘How much did you really learn about the British empire in school?”

The article did not really answer the title’s question, even though the answer is ‘bugger all’.

It is quite extraordinary that British school children learn essentially nothing about an empire upon which ‘the sun never set’, which invaded every country on the planet bar 22 countries, spawned the world’s superpower, the United States, and that drew up the borders to so many countries with long-lasting negative results – Pakistan/India (Kashmir conflict), Sykes-Picot (divided up the Middle East), Nigeria, South Africa, and so on.

I had a British education in the 1980s and 1990s. In history lessons we touched on ancient Egypt, the Romans, the Vikings, then flash forwarded to Agincourt, Tudor England, the Industrial Revolution, the two World Wars, and some Cold War history. Colonialism was barely mentioned, or de-colonisation. Students had no idea about the true scale and the long history of the British empire. Then at university, where I studied international history and international politics, I encountered next to nothing about British colonialism; one course was on de-colonisation in Africa, but that was a class only history students took. In fact, I learned more about the British empire from the Flashman novels than I did at school or university – through George McDonald Fraser’s witty novels I read for the first time about the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42), the First Anglo-Sikh War (1845-6), the Indian War of Independence (or Mutiny as the Brits call it in 1857), the British and French invasion of China (the Second Opium War, 1856-1860), the invasion of Abyssinia (1868), and the White Rajah of Sarawak.

While Fraser had no real truck with imperialism, his extensive footnotes allowed you to read between the lines, and importantly learn something about what perfidious Albion was up to in the nineteenth century.

The Flashman novels aside, there are few other popular novels about the British empire (although J.G. Farrell’s excellent Empire Trilogy comes to mind), or films for that matter, certainly with a critical perspective produced over the past few decades. It is as if there is a collective amnesia about Britain’s imperial past. The one place you do encounter it is at the Imperial War Museum in London, but that is very much a hagiographic experience, not touching on the dark side of colonialism.

This amnesia extends to political studies too. Despite studying international relations at university, British foreign policy – old and contemporary – was not taught. An internet search showed that only one British university covers British foreign policy, as if Britain was not at all an actor on the world stage, not a part of the G8 or the UN Security Council, and was practising isolationism, when we know that is far from being the case. This is also extraordinary. There were – and still are – plenty of research papers and essays written about US foreign policy – invariably bashing it – but the same does not apply to British foreign policy; Europe yes, but not about what is coming out of Westminster and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Indeed, the FCO’s title says it all really, which should mean students, academics and journalists should be devoting as much, if not more, attention to its activities than Washington’s.

In conversation with Mark Curtis shortly after he published “Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses”, in which he states Britain bears “significant responsibility” since 1945 for the direct or indirect deaths of 8.6 million to 13.5 million people throughout the world, I asked him how many people were going through declassified British documents. He answered just one other research he knew of, Caroline Elkins, for her book “Britain’s Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya”.

No academics or investigative journalists? He answered in the negative. That may, one hopes, have changed since 2005. But the title to George Monbiot’s article in 2012 discussing Elkins’ book still holds true, ‘Deny the British empire’s crimes? No, we ignore them’.

To have discovered about Britain’s past – varnished and unvarnished – has been a long term endeavour, from one’s own volition. Travel has also helped to discover the true extent of Britain’s empire and its legacy. The fact that all plug sockets in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries are British speaks volumes. Unless I had been there and read about the Gulf, I would never have known that the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain all got their independence from Britain in 1971, and Kuwait in 1961. Or known that Cyprus got independence in 1960 – despite the ongoing presence of British Sovereign Base Areas – Uganda in 1962 and Tanzania in 1963. Hong Kong in 1997.

None of these ‘handbacks’ are very old, at all, yet few Brits below a certain age would know, and I would bet the vast majority of schoolchildren as well as university students today wouldn’t know either. Students wouldn’t be able to point on the map the countries that were British colonies. India perhaps. But would they know about the rest of Asia, Africa, South America, the Caribbean? Perhaps from the Commonwealth Games the public would have an idea, but the history of how Britain ‘acquired’ its colonies would be missing.

Tharoor’s suggestion that Britain should pay India reparations, even a token £1 ($1.54) a year as a form of apology for 200 years of occupation, should be strongly considered. Teaching children about the British empire should also be a major component of the curriculum. It is, quite simply, ridiculous that such a broad sway of history is not touched upon, especially a history that has had such a profound effect on the modern world.

Paul Cochrane is a freelance journalist and commentator based in Beirut, Lebanon for the past eight years. He covers the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. He can be reached at: [email protected].

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Britons sign petition, urging Netanyahu’s arrest

Press TV | August 10, 2015

B8ACu9NCUAAvgRPPeople in Britain have been signing a petition that calls on the government to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon his arrival in the UK next month.

The petition entitled “Benjamin Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes when he arrives in London” is available at a petitions website set up by the UK government and parliament.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is to hold talks in London this September. Under international law, he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the UK for the massacre of over 2,000 civilians in 2014,” the petition reads.

More than 26,000 people had signed the petition until GMT 1100 on Monday with the number of signatures dramatically on the rise.

The British government is expected to respond to the demand as all petitions that get more than 10,000 signatures should be seen into, according to law.

Rules governing the petition site also stipulate that any petition that receives in excess of 100,000 signatures must be considered by the UK parliament for debate.

The deadline for signing the petition is on February 7, 2016. … Full article

August 11, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , , | 2 Comments