Mazin Qumsiyeh, Gaza under seige and more," July 11, 2009.

[Mazin Qumsiyeh calls himself a bedouin in cyberspace. I have reproduced the whole of his newsletter. You can subscribe to it here => -jlt]

Quote from the past (1938):
"There is in existence already a considerable body of literature in English and other European languages on the history of the British mandate in Palestine. But it has to be used with care partly because of the high percentage of open or veiled propaganda, and partly because the remoteness of the indispensable Arabic sources has militated against real fairness, even the works of neutral and fair-minded historians...Zionist propaganda is active, highly organised and widespread; the world Press, at any rate in the democracies of the West, is largely amenable to it; it commands many of the available channels for the dissemination of news, and more particularly those of the English-speaking world. Arab propaganda is, in comparison, primitive and infinitely less successful: the Arabs have little of the skill, polyglottic ubiquity or financial resources which make Jewish propaganda so effective. The result is, that for a score of years or so, the world has been looking at Palestine mainly through Zionist spectacles and has unconsciously acquired the habit of reasoning on Zionist premisses. ...No lasting solution of the Palestine problem is to be hoped for until the injustice is removed. ...To those who look ahead, beyond the smoke-screen of legend and propaganda, the way to a solution is clear: it lies along the path of ordinary common sense and justice. " From The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement by George Antonius Intl Book Centre (1938, reprinted 1985)

If it was in any other situation this smuggled video would be all over the news. This is a video of the "Spirit of Humanity" ship under attack in open sea in International waters by an occupying army that claims it is not an occupying army.
http://www.ricenpeas.com/2009/July/cynthia_mckinney_intvw.html
Activists in many part of the world do things to protest. A Houston, TX campaign featuring billboards around the city referred residents to its website http://www.prayforgaza.org
and this action was met by the Zionists putting up their own billboards "Save Gaza from Hamas" (as if it is Hamas who is blockading people. Meanwhile another patient died in Gaza due to the siege with the death toll reaching 349 due to the Israeli blockade http://www.imemc.org/article/61076

The largest ever US humanitarian aid convoy to Gaza left the US July 4th and is now gathering in Egypt to head across the border into Gaza on Monday, July 13. They are encountewring delays and the Egyptian government representatives have stopped over 100 of the estimated 200+ activists from reaching the border. Activists are now sleeping at the Suez canal (see http://www.vivapalestina-us.org/).

Action: US citizens can set-up a meeting with congressmen and senators during the summer recess (see http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=2308 )
Also write to media, inundate list and commentary sections on websites (e.g. Twitter and Facebook) with information demanding action.

The United Nations demanded Wednesday that Israel implement a five-year-old ruling of its International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague that deemed most of the West Bank apartheid wall illegal and affirmed illegality of settlement and infrastructure construction in the occupied West Bank. And according to the Christian Science Monitor "Risking Israel's ire, US takes 1,350 Palestinian refugees" (these are some of the thousands of 1948 refugees who were living in Iraq peacefully until the US invasion when they were driven out and stayed in limbo at borders between Iraq and Syria with no place to go).

Last week's email mentioned how we miss departed friends and activists. Many of you emailed with their own memories on people they miss. I reflect on how intellectual contributions by people like Edward Said made a difference in the way we think. I reread some of his articles and we see that they are relevant today (here is one for example that shows how little has changed since 1998: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/1948/370_said.htm

Israel has started to quietly sell refugee property to private individuals. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab minority rights in Israel has issues details reports and press releases on the subject of these basic violations of rights.
Arabic: http://adalah-english.c.topica.com/maancSKabRl3PbKv71fbafpMz1/
English: http://adalah-english.c.topica.com/maancSKabRl3QbKv71fbafpMz1/
Hebrew: http://adalah-english.c.topica.com/maancSKabRl3RbKv71fbafpMz1/

Action: The Palestine Freedom Project Speakers Bureau is pleased to ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnnounce the Fall 2009 North American speaking tour of Ghada Karmi, author of In Search of Fatima and Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine. Karmi is a powerfully eloquent speaker, a renowned commentator, who deals critically and honestly with the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. To celebrate the 2nd edition of her memoir, Karmi will be speaking across North America from September 24 - October 10, 2009. We invite you to read about her work, and if you are interested, to host a lecture and book signing in your community. For details, please visit www.karmitour.org

.(in Spanish) Interview in spanish about the Pope's visit to occupied Palestine (with Nicole Safie)
Una de las vocas mas lucindas de la cause palestina. Al Damir (Fundacion Paestina, Bethlehem-Chile), Vol 71, June 2009, p. 20-21
http://www.palestinos.com/website2/revista.html

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
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Sisule F. Musungu, "Obama's Africa Policy - A response to the Ghana speech," Ideas in Development, July 11, 2009.

It was another eloquent and powerful speech. That was President Barack Obama’s speech, laying out his Africa policy, delivered to the Parliament of Ghana today morning. In the main, Obama outlined four key planks of the United States of America’s (U.S.A) policy on Africa during his administration. The four planks are:

* Good governance.
* Supporting development that provides opportunity for more people.
* Strengthening public health.
* Addressing conflict.

If this were the only big things in the speech, it would have been disappointing. Reading through the whole speech, however, a range of other big topics come up as well. In this post, I offer my response, focusing on some of key issues I consider important in the speech.

Africa’s future is up to Africans

Though this is a self-evident truth, the state of Africa requires that one keeps repeating the refrain. The key message from Obama was, however, not the plain meaning of the phrase. He made a crucial point about pointing fingers. Those who wrong Africa must be held responsible but Africa must also stop looking outside for the cause of all the continent’s major problems. We must take responsibility for our failures not just within the national borders but in international diplomacy and engagement. If African governments send cronies or incompetent Ambassadors to negotiate trade, for example, they should not expect improved terms of international trade. If positions not grounded in reality are taken in climate change, intellectual property, health, refugees issues and migration, human rights etc we should not expect any better. As Obama argues, Africa will be what we make it.

The emerging issues regarding intellectual property and access to adaptation technologies will need to be tackled pragmatically.

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"Leaner GM emerges from bankruptcy," BBC, July 10, 2009.

[BBC correspondent says, "It's easy to dismiss, even ridicule these changes. But they're more than purely cosmetic." He can say that again. Now the US Government owns 61% of GM. While the World Bank and IMF strain at gnats in Africa and Latin America, it's nice to know Uncle Sam can still swallow elephants. Humanitarian aid isn't just for the poor you know.

Meanwhile the price of oil continued its roller-coaster ride, falling to below $60 on Friday.

The BBC joined the National Post and the CBC in presenting Canada's worst economic performance in 18 years as "fewer jobs lost than expected." Dale Orr said, "...it would have been much better had the jobs been full-time." He was referring to the "better than expected" result: last month Canadians lost 47,500 full-time jobs and gained 40,100 part-tmers. Happy days.

Just a week ago, American job losses were "worse than expected." -jlt]

General Motors (GM) says it has emerged from bankruptcy protection after creating a "new GM" made up of the carmaker's best assets.

GM chief executive Fritz Henderson said it was the beginning of a "new era".

"they still need to put a product out there that everyone is excited about purchasing."

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Heather Scofield, "Ricardian Equivalence makes comeback," Globe and Mail Report on Business, July 6, 2009.

A long-forgotten theory suggesting that stimulus spending is doomed to failure draws attention nearly 200 years later.

Stimulus is supposed to be the key to recovery, and governments around the world are embracing it as never before.

But a long-forgotten theory dating back almost 200 years is increasingly weighing on the minds of policy makers: Ricardian equivalence.

Named after the writings of David Ricardo in the early 1820s, the theory suggests that stimulus spending is doomed to failure because taxpayers tend to save their stimulus dollars rather than spend them.

“People see today's stimulus as tomorrow's tax hike.”

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Roger Pulvers, "Double standards fly high when it comes to bombing of civilians," Japan Times, July 5, 2009.

Sad to say, every generation for the past century has known its own war — wars that have touched so many millions through the loss or traumatization of relatives, friends or fellow citizens.

"My war" was America's in Indo-China, centered on Vietnam. Abhorrence of what my country, the United States, was doing to the region caused me, and many in my generation, to choose the life of an expatriate.

But it wasn't until years later that I came to realize exactly how masterly criminal the prosecution of that war was. I didn't know that Laos, for instance, is the country on which more bombs were dropped per capita than on any other in history. Between 1964 and 1973, 90 million cluster bomblets were rained on Laos in approximately 500,000 missions. Up to a third of those didn't detonate; and, as a result, there are now about 25 million of them lying around in that country unexploded.

If anything, civilians are brought together by terror bombing, their resolve reinforced.

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"Scores killed in China protests," BBC, July 6, 2009.

[This is not a new conflict. There is a history of violence on both sides. Why now? Is the Beeb playing a role in this, do you think? -jlt]

Violence in China's restive western region of Xinjiang has left at least 140 people dead and more than 800 people injured, state media say.

Several hundred people were arrested after a protest, in the city of Urumqi on Sunday, turned violent.

The Xinjiang government blamed separatist Uighurs based abroad for orchestrating attacks on ethnic Han Chinese.

Most of the violence is reported to have taken place in the city centre, around Renmin (People's) Square, Jiefang and Xinhua South Roads and the Bazaar.

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"African leaders slam ICC over Bashir's arrest warrant," Afrique en ligne, July 6, 2009.

African leaders remained united in their condemnation of the arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir and called such a move a “slap in the face” on the ongoing efforts to restore peace in restive Darfur.

The issuance of an arrest warrant against the Sudanese President, Bashir has been a hot issue during the African leaders' meeting in Sirte, central Libya and could end up with a total rejection of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

...the issuance of this arrest warrant would compromise several milestones in Sudan, Muhammad Mumuni Foreign Minister, Ghana

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David Goldman, "The rise in savings rates has only begun," Inner Workings, June 22, 2009.

[A word about words. In 1973, Tower of Power asked "What is hip?" Now you can just look it up in your favorite internet dictionary. Today's question: What is stupid? For the answer to that, you have to read the Business Section of your favorite newspaper before the multinational behemoth that owns it goes bust.

In this article, Goldman writes about the US economy and has grown a bit peevish about what he calls "entrepreneurs' rights." I thought entrepreneurs in the neoliberal universe were independent creative types who wanted nothing more than to be left to their own financial innovations (aka scams). But it seems they require certain conditions to be preserved by governments--as long as there are such--to protect their asses, I mean assets. Stealing from the poor and giving to the rich for instance.

This investment analysis business is full of interesting concepts. Back in February we were hearing about the "vicious cycle of thrift" and the "Chinese savings glut." I had always thought that thrift was a virtue even during times when I didn't have it--sort of like sobriety. But no. In the investment biz, everyone can be a six million dollar shortstop. All we need is for consumers to engage in a "virtuous cycle of undisciplined spending."

Governments can set a good example here by "throwing money" at intractable problems. Is Western Civilization "too big to fail?" Too big maybe but not too smart. This week the Bank of Sweden moved to combat the vicious cycle of thrift by dropping interest rates ondeposits to minus 0.25%. That ought to be a good conversational gambit for your company's next cocktail party. That means in Sweden, taking your money out of the bank and putting it in a sock is a good investment. They may not have trillions to throw, but we can all do our bit. I'll have another piece of that pie-in-the-sky please.

Goldman's main theme in this piece actually is the vicious cycle of thrift, but someone has alerted him to how silly it sounds when you say the whole thing all at once. So he breaks it down into pieces and plays it backwards.

He admits that "speculating in human misery" looks bad "at this stage of the cycle" and recognizes that the Chinese are not going to step in and "buy significant parts of the US economy at discounted prices...for the same stupid political reasons."

It's all Obama's fault of course. The dollar is going to collapse because Obama is pals with the UAW. (Unions are for unswerving neoliberals what the Masons are for conspiracy theorists and the Jews are for Nazis.) You have probably already guessed that this means the recession is going to "be L-shaped," which is a euphemism for "last indefinitely"--or until neoliberals get their heads out of their assets, which could take even longer.

Goldman has the moral values of a boa constrictor, but he can read the handwriting on the wall. It is only doom and gloom if you were committed to becoming a six-million dollar shortstop. -jlt]

In a recent post entitled, “The Stealth Deterioration in Asset Quality,” I argued that the rise in the US savings rate had only begun. That implies falling consumption, a weak housing market, and an L-shaped recession as far as the eye can see. That is just what we observe in the household spending and consumption data, as Bloomberg reports this morning [June 22]:

"June 26 (Bloomberg) — Consumer spending rose in May as benefits from the Obama administration’s stimulus plan spurred a jump in American incomes, a sign that efforts to revive the economy are starting to pay off.

"The 0.3 percent increase in purchases was the first gain in three months, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Earnings climbed 1.4 percent, the most in a year, driving the savings rate to a 15-year high. Another report showed consumer sentiment rose in June to the highest level since February 2008.

"Government efforts to restore the flow of credit and prop up incomes are making it possible for consumers to spend even as unemployment climbs to levels last seen in the early 1980s. At the same time, the wealth destruction caused by the housing slump may force households to keep rebuilding savings, indicating an economic recovery will be slow to develop."

Quotation Author

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Tichaona Sibanda, "ZANU PF militias back in action in rural areas," Zimbabwe News, July 2, 2009.

There are reports suggesting ZANU PF backed militias have been reactivated to play a pivotal role in mobilising people in rural areas to actively participate in the constitution making process. While they might have ‘laid down’ their weapons, their mere presence has raised tensions and fears that they might be resuming the type of violence that plagued the MDC during last year’s presidential elections.

Our correspondent Simon Muchemwa told us most militias have been deployed in areas where the MDC made major inroads in last year’s polls. He said Zanu PF fears if its supporters do not participate in the reform exercise, the consequences could be dire for the party. "Already there have been skirmishes involving these militias and officials from the MDC in Mutare, Masvingo and some parts of Mashonaland central.

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Carlotta Gall, "US faces resentment in Afghan region," the venerable NYT, July 2, 2009.

[Resentment! It took the Marines to figure this out. Wait till they find out about Pakistan. -jlt]

Related story: The warlords casting a shadow over Afghanistan

LASHKAR GAH — The mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan, presenting incoming American forces with an even harder job than expected in reversing military losses to the Taliban and winning over the population.

Villagers in some districts have taken up arms against foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger after losing relatives in airstrikes, several community representatives interviewed said. Others have been moved to join the insurgents out of poverty or simply because the Taliban’s influence is so pervasive here.

People from Marja said that foreign troops carrying out counter-narcotics operations conducted nighttime raids on houses, shot people dead inside their homes and used dogs that bit the occupants.

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"Soldiers break into the Al Aqsa Mosque yard, kidnap three Palestinians." IMEMC, July 3, 2009.

The Al Marwani prayer area, Al Aqsa Mosque

Local sources in Jerusalem reported on Thursday evening that Israeli soldiers and security men broke into the yard of the Al Aqsa Mosque and Al Marwani prayer area, and kidnapped three residents, including a reporter.

The sources stated that dozens of armed Israeli policemen broke into the yard as the Palestinians were holding a celebration honoring Palestinian children who won a portrait contest about the Al Aqsa Mosque.

The police initially attempted to bar 300 children from participating in the competition, but the organizers and the children continued their festival despite the Israeli attack, and the attempt to sabotage the activities.

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Nick Buxton, "UN undermined by G20," Open Veins, June 29, 2009.

[This is a conference that Harper missed. Steven Edwards at CanWest's Ottawa Citizen opined that "developed countries fear the three-day gathering will descend into a raucous denunciation of the capitalist system;" the BBC said much the same in less candid language. Nick Buxton got closer to the flame than our chickenshit leaders and found people asking tough questions. Harper has no anwsers. The last thing Stephen Harper wants to hear is tough questions. That's why being allowed into the PM's press conferences is like getting an invitation to a Royal Wedding; it's why questions have to be submitted in advance. I don't think Buxton is as pissed as I am. He's just puzzled, like the kid who just discovered that the Emperor Has No Clothes. -jlt]

Maybe I was being a naïve activist, but I thought I would be covering an important and consequential event. The world is facing a devastating economic crisis, accompanied by a toxic mix of crises of climate chaos, food prices and even flu outbreaks, so surely the world's eyes would be on the UN as 192 nations gathered this week to supposedly develop a smart, effective response to these pressing and interconnected issues.

Yet, here I am on the second day of the UN conference on the Global Economic Crisis and its Impact on the development, and for the press it is as if the meeting did not exist. Until Michael Jackson’s death, the latest dull exploits of US celebrity misfits Jon and Kate - famous mainly for their ability to reproduce- were the only stories staring out at me on most front pages.

“How can the G20 argue that they represent the world? We cannot entrust the authors of the crisis with finding the solution. They created a situation where you could say anything no matter how stupid in support of free movement of capital and it would be accepted.” President Rafael Correa of Ecuador

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Dahr Jamail, "Marching out of step in the US military," Asia Times, July 2, 2009.

[As a deserter myself from the US Army during the Vietnam War, I find these young men walk a much more difficult walk than I did. In an all-volunteer army, it takes a more searing, personal experience of the fundamental immorality of US foreign policy to convince a patriotic young soldier that he and his country are embarked on a vicious and inhuman path. Suicide, as Jamail points out, is more frequent. And the social support for them is not deep enough to matter. People continue their quest for useless crap they can't afford.

Canada is more of a warlike lapdog of the US than it was during the Trudeau era and not at all the sanctuary that so many Canadians still think they live in. But the worst of it is not the government. Many in the public, for some reason, believe that a volunteer soldier is a mindless and obedient robot who must live up to the inviolable contract he has signed, even though the military routinely breaches that contract with "stop-loss" re-assignments on a massive scale.

Moreover, the contract, as has been shown by the writings of several recruiters, is often signed under deceitful and possibly even fraudulent circumstances that will probably never be called to account.

Like me, when they try to do what you are supposed to under the circumstances, and apply for discharge or reassignment as conscientious objectors, their applications are judged by men who haven't a clue about pacifism, who haven't even an intellectual background in its history and practise, and who could care less to find out. The price of all this is yet to be paid. When the bill comes due, the ones with the courage to fight the lonely fight will be there to collect. More power to them.

Having listened almost obsessively to the Winter Soldier testimonies, I believe that the volunteer army strategy has seriously backfired. These young men have made decisions that are far more difficult than most, and they have been radicalised by obsolete policies and practises that will necessarily change even if the Western Empire must go the way of the Pharoahs. If climate change and the Great Market Failure don't do the trick, maybe the moral effect of these soldiers' awakening will. May their sacrifice not be in vain.

As the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan grinds on for another decade or more and begins to produce casualties in truly war-like numbers (hundreds and thousands a week), some Canadians may begin to lose their self-righteous moral superiority for good. That will be a social transformation worth being around for. Remembrance Day will never be the same. -jlt]

On May 1, at Fort Hood in central Texas, Specialist Victor Agosto wrote on a counseling statement, which is actually a punitive United States Army memo:

There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer. It has the opposite effect.

Ten days later, he refused to obey a direct order from his company commander to prepare to deploy and was issued a second counseling statement. On that one he wrote, "I will not obey any orders I deem to be immoral or illegal." Shortly thereafter, he told a reporter, "I'm not willing to participate in this occupation, knowing it is completely wrong. It's a matter of what I'm willing to live with."

Between 2000 and 2006, more than 40,000 troops from all branches of the [US] military deserted, more than half from the army. Author

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Jalal Ghazi, "Six reasons why Iran cannot be explained in a Twitter feed," New American Media, July 2, 2009.

The world’s attention is on Iran. But the rhetoric of reformists vs. conservatives and students vs. mullahs cannot capture the complexity of what is happening on the streets of Tehran. Here are six reasons why the situation in Iran cannot be reduced to simplistic headlines or Twitter feeds.

First, the post-election crisis in Iran is not only a reflection of divisions between conservatives and reformers. Perhaps more importantly, it has brought divisions within the conservatives to the forefront.

...security forces were not the only side that used violence.

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"No consensus on Iran," World Report, June 23, 2009.

[Here is a text for Tuesday's broadcast. A longer version is coming soon. -jlt]

Naomi Klein doesn't say much about Iran in her book Shock Doctrine. But what she does say is worth repeating.

After World War II, the Western powers accepted the idea that “market economies needed to guarantee enough basic dignity that disillusioned citizens would not go looking once again for a more apealing ideology, whether fascism or Communism” (62-63). In a similar spirit, economic nationalists in the developing world articulated the position that poverty could be eliminated only if they adopted an “inward-oriented” or nationalistic (some today would say “protectionist”) industrializing strategy instead of relying on the export to Europe and North America of natural resources and the profits from them.

"Election fraud in Iran is no different than what happens in liberal states during elections. The struggle over the election results in Iran is internal and is unconnected to its strategic aspirations, including its nuclear program." Meir Dagan Head of Mossad

Pursuing policies such as “import substitution” and “supply management” these “developmentalist economists” advocated the nationalization of oil, mineral and other key industries. They invested public money in infrastructure and local businesses, manufactured their own “cars and washing machines,” used tariffs to keep out foreign competition, and restricted foreign ownership.

American and European corporations saw their products blocked at the borders. Their workers demanded higher wages and owners feared nationalization of their enterprizes. That meant their companies would be purchased by governments, and operated by locals. Natural resources and the profits from them would stay in-country. And it was working.

This was during the height of Senator Joseph Macarthy's anti-Communist witch hunts in the United States. So it was an easy step to portray leaders like Argentina's Peron, Guatamala's Arbenz, and the Congo's Lamumba as evil reds.

Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was one of these. His crime was that he nationalized the Iranian oil industry which had been under British control through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), (later known as British Petroleum or BP). He was removed from power on August 19, 1953 in a coup supported and funded by the British and American governments. Reactionary members of the clergy dissatisfied with his secular government may have been part of the mix as well.

Klein also writes a few sentences about Iran's 1979 revolution which brought the ayatollahs to power.

“the US-backed shah was overthrown by a coalition of leftists and Islamists. While the stories of hostages and ayatollahs made the news, the economic side of the program was also raising alarms in Washington. The Islamic regime, which had not yet transitioned to full-blown authoritarianism, nationalized the banking sector and then brought in a land redistrubution program. It also imposed controls on imports and exports, a reversal of the shah's free-trade policies.”

Even if we were not to view the events of the last few weeks against this background, part of what is so difficult about the Iranian elections of June 2009 is that they are multi-faceted. There is, of course, the question of of whether or not the results are legitimate. There is the probability that both the American and British governments have been trying replace the Iranian regime using Azeris in the northern part of the country and Balochis along the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan possibly going as far as to bomb mosques. Then thereis the authoritarian crackdown on the press and the demonstrators.

As if all this weren't enough, the Iranian nuclear program and the threat posed by continued proliferation of nuclear weapons, not only to Israel but to stability of the Eurasian continent which is home to about 75 per cent of the world's people, most of the world's physical wealth, and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources—the threat, whatever the intentions of this particular country's particular government, the threat to all that is real.
Finally, there is Obama. Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a senior advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently asked Reuters, “What is the new administration actually offering, that George Bush didn't?” This echos a perspective on the left in the US that Obama is following Bush's policies but with different rhetoric.

It's not possible in 12 minutes to go detail the essential complexities of these different facets of the issue. So I will cut directly to some comments on the nuclear issue and then wrap up with a few highlights that have not received the mind-numbing repetition from the mainstream. To summarize, I would say that there is no consensus about the issues associated with the Iranian elections and no basis for the usual good-guys-versus-the-bad-guys dualism propagated in our media.

Iran's nuclear program

Two weeks ago, I pointed out that that in my experience stories that deal with the Iranian elections have little to say about the Iranian nuclear program and stories about the nuclear program say little if anything at all about the nuclear program.

The most common mainstream line is that Mousavi offers some chance that Iran can be persuaded to abandon its nuclear program.

Yossi Alpher concludes that “any Iranian government will pursue the country's nuclear program, if only as a bargaining card (Mousavi, after all, inaugurated that project some 20 years ago)” when he was Prime Minister. (Alpher bitterlemons international Edition 23 Volume 7 - June 18, 2009)

As far as I can tell, there is no Iranian anti-nuclear movement and all four presidential candidates support their country's nuclear program.

Meanwhile, the West is witnessing a significant rebirth of the disarmament movement, this time with big time support in the form of a new group called Global Zero.

In an article for the American Center for Defense Information's newsletter, the Defense Monitor, the new group argues that now is the time to begin eliminating nuclear weapons.

The group includes nine former heads of state; eight former foreign ministers from the United States, Russia, Britain and India; six former national security advisors from the United States, India and Pakistan; and 19 former top military commanders from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, India and Pakistan.

They write:

“With a clear, realistic and pragmatic appreciation of the challenges of achieving our goal, Global Zero is developing a step-by-step plan for getting to zero.
"This will not happen overnight nor unilaterally. Getting to global zero will require the reduction of all nations' arsenals over many years. Because American and Russian stockpiles account for 96 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, these two countries should begin with deep reductions to their arsenals, while beginning a dialogue with the other nuclear weapons states. Clearly, multilateral negotiations for global zero with China, France, India, Britain, Pakistan and Israel must deal effectively with concrete national and regional security concerns. Progress on this agenda will be accelerated if the pressing issues of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and getting North Korea to relinquish its nuclear arsenal are solved. A commitment by nuclear powers to begin serious negotiations for global zero would strengthen the case against any non-nuclear nation that strives to acquire nuclear weapons." (The moment for eliminating nuclear weapons is now, Defense Monitor, vol 38, April-June 2009, p 5)

About Iran, they say simply, "Progress on this agenda will be accelerated if the pressing issues of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and getting North Korea to relinquish its nuclear arsenal are solved."

Asia Times's Bhadrakumar suggests that “paradoxically, negotiating with Ahmadinejad might prove easier for the West, as he has a genuine constituency.”

Francesco Sisci, the Asia Editor of La Stampa adds some detail to this view: "China,” he says, “has a further political calculus. If Ahmadinejad, already domestically weak, were to emerge from elections that everybody knows he lost and to come to the fore to speak about Iran's nuclear program, he may be very vulnerable and thus willing to accommodate foreign requests. Conversely, if someone else, perhaps Mousavi, surfaces out of the ongoing demonstrations, he will have strong popular support and thus might be unwilling to make concessions on something considered a matter of national security and pride: Iran's nuclear program" (China makes a choice in Iran, Asia Times, June 25, 2009).

Bhadrakumar's analysis is based on two unlikely sources. The first is the leaked testimony to Israel's Knesset Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense by Mossad head, Meir Dagan:

"Election fraud in Iran is no different than what happens in liberal states during elections. The struggle over the election results in Iran is internal and is unconnected to its strategic aspirations, including its nuclear program."

The second is prominent Iranian-born US neocon and advocate of regime change in Iran, Amir Tahiri, who is quoted at length. For example,

"So-called 'Iran experts' did not realize that Mousavi was a balloon that a section of the Iranian middle class inflated to show its anger not only at Ahmadinejad but also at the entire Khomeinist regime. Otherwise, there is nothing in Mousavi's record ... to make him more attractive than Ahmadinejad."

Bhadrakumar concludes that

"At the end of it all, the international community can only heave a sigh of relief that while this complex and extremely confusing political drama unfolded, George W Bush was no more in the White House in Washington. United States President Barack Obama could grasp the subtleties of the situation and adopted a well-thought-out, measured policy and broadly stuck to it despite apparent pressure from conservatives."

Listeners wondering how Canada is involved in US-led black ops in Iran will find some clues in Dawn Paley's contribution to the Dominion Blogs.

She cites a cryptic June 19 press release by Ontario based Psiphon Inc.

"The company is employing dedicated 'psi-operators' - staff whose job it is to propagate Psiphon nodes and engage with the Iranian community both inside and outside Iran - working 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

"The psi-operators are using social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook, as well as emails [sic] lists and forums, to propagate connection information to Psiphon's 'Right2know' nodes, which contain customized content sourced from BBC BBC Persian, Radio Farda, YouTube and other websites and services banned by Iranian authorities."

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Howard Knopf, "Excess Access Copyright Tariff ruling," Excess Copyright, June 26, 2009

[This beginning of this article is heavy on the side of technical terms that are not explained. For example, "K-12 reprography" refers to making copies for classroom use in schools from Kindergarten to Grade 12. FTE is an abbreviation for "Full Time Equivalent" which is a concept used by teachers and their employers to blend part-time students and full-time students into a single number.

Access Copyright is one of a growing number of Canadian organizations demanding and getting a tariff for the use of material that is copyrighted by their members. Mostly it represents a variety of writers and their publishers. Music, moving picture, broadcasting, and software companies each negotiate separate, usually multiple, sets of tariffs.

It isn't working. This February, CARFAC (Canadian Artists Representation Le Front des Artistes Canadien), an Access Copyright member, noted the widening gap between wealth created and wealth earned by Canadian visual artists.

Ottawa, February 4, 2009 – Recently released statistics from Hill Strategies shows that the discrepancy between the wealth created and the wealth earned by visual artists has widened.

While the cultural sector contributes more than $46 billion to the Canadian economy, visual artists earned an average of $13,976 in 2005. This is down from $20,936, in 2000, and $6,824 below the Statistics Canada low-income cutoff.

Breaking the numbers down gives an even bleaker picture. The median, or typical, earnings for a visual artist is less than $8,000 placing them in a position of extreme low-income. CARFAC has discovered that even Governor General Award winning artists find it difficult if not impossible to make a living from their art. Some have incomes that fall significantly below the national average and others work full time jobs to subsidize their practice.

It is a little reminiscent of what has happened to farmers, or for that matter codfish and rainforests. The middlemen in a dysfunctional, globalized, mass-distribution system incapable of living within its means and driven to desperation by the inevitable paying of the piper want you and your loved ones to pay more for something you thought you had already paid for, i.e, negative externalities and other market failures, bad decisions, deferred costs and transferred risks.

Will the Copyright Board's decision enable students to learn more more easily? Will it make teaching better? Will it nourish those who create content? Will it, in any small way, make the world a better place? Doubtful. More likely it will open the door to more Pirates Bay and Jammie Thomas cases, this time among teachers who are already overworked and school districts that are strapped for cash.

As usual, Knopf offers some useful tidbits that make ploughing through the whole article well worth the struggle. He isn't brief or folksy, but he is thorough and pragmatic--and he's on our side. -jlt]

While both sides will no doubt claim some element of victory, the Copyright Board's decision today in the K-12 reprography matter is bad news for Canadian educators, librarians, students, and taxpayers. The price of knowledge just went up a lot today in Canada.

Access Copyright (“AC”) was opposed by the provincial Ministers of Education (other than Quebec) and each of the Ontario School Boards (“the Educators”). It took that Board almost two years to issue a decision that essentially divides the amount sought by AC ($8.92) and the amount proposed by the Educators of $2.43 per FTE more or less down the middle to arrive at $5.16 per FTE. The exact arithmetic average would have been $5.68. Oh yes - there is a lot of detail about fair dealing - with a little bit of water in everybody's wine.

...the landmark 2004 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in CCH v. LSUC ...opens the door to fair dealing for purposes of research or private study, and says in crystal clear language that copying of an entire work may well be fair dealing.

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" Pakistani militants abandon deal," BBC, June 30, 2009.

[Neither NATO nor the US has ever approved of Pakistan's efforts to negotiate with their tribal citizens. The result is that coalition policy and strategic behaviour sabotages whatever deals the tribal people are silly enough to make with their government. Here BBC portrays the result as evidence that you can't negotiate with terrorists. So it's the "militants" who have "abandoned" the deal--after their people have been killed in growing numbers. Pakistan, and to a lesser degree Afghanistan, is the Western Empire's battlefield. That it also happens to be the homeland of the Taliban and a good many Muslim civilians and indigenous people is, to our leaders, far less important than getting their women to give up burquas for mini-skirts and liquor stores. The West has finally got a government in Pakistan that sees Washington as a more important political constituency than NWFP. -jlt]

A wing of the Taliban based in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan say they have scrapped a peace deal with the government.

The group led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan withdrew from the deal as the army stepped up its offensive against the Taliban in the north-west.

Announcing their decision, spokesman Ahmedullah Ahmedi, also said they would now carry out attacks on military targets in the region until the army left and US drones strikes were halted.

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"Obama says Honduras coup illegal," BBC, June 29, 2009.

[Bush's "loss" of Latin America was recognized among specialists in the region, but was relatively unlamented in the press because of other more spectacular foreign policy failures during the Bush regime. Although much remains to be seen, Obama's support for Zelaya could be a turning point, at least on the US side. -jlt]

US President Barack Obama has described the removal of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya as illegal.

His remarks came after left-wing Latin American leaders declared their support for the deposed leader, who was expelled by the military on Sunday.

The military, Congress and the Supreme Court in the Central American nation had all opposed Mr Zelaya's referendum.

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Stephanie Nebehay, "Gaza civilians mired in poverty after war - ICRC," Reuters AlertNet, June 29, 2009.

* Palestinians trapped in rising poverty, despair, ICRC says

* Says Israel's import restrictions crippling reconstruction

* Gaza's water and sanitation system on brink of collapse

GENEVA, June 29 (Reuters) - Six months after Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip, 1.5 million Palestinians remain trapped in rising poverty, unable to rebuild their lives, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday.

Each day, 69 million litres of partially treated or completely untreated sewage -- the equivalent of 28 Olympic-size swimming pools -- are pumped directly into the Mediterranean because they cannot be treated

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"Leftist leader says exclusive talks between Fateh and Hamas are destructive to Palestinian cause," PNN, June 27, 2009.

Nablus / PNN - Tayseer Khaled, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and member of the Political Bureau of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is calling for an immediate cessation of bilateral dialogue.

The talks to which he is referring take place in closed rooms between Fateh and Hamas and are preparing for a new distribution of power agreement. If signed, Khaled said today, would be have a negative impact on the broader political life and on national Palestinian relations.

Khaled asked that Fateh and Hamas return to a real national dialogue, one that is inclusive, and move away from bilateral negotiations that exclude the Palestinian people and other parties.

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Thelma Mejía, "HONDURAS: Referendum row rocks democracy," IPS, June

[The Honduran Supreme Court is playing a role in this "coup" that has received little attention from our press. -jlt]

TEGUCIGALPA, Jun 26 (IPS) - Honduras is caught up in a crisis following the dismissal of the head of the armed forces for refusing to provide logistics and security for a non-binding referendum called by President Manuel Zelaya for Sunday, the legality of which is disputed by the courts and the opposition.

The government has called the referendum to decide whether or not to hold a formal vote on creating a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the constitution, during the Nov. 29 national elections.

Vásquez refused Friday to step down, after the Supreme Court revoked Thursday the president’s decision to dismiss him.

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"Troops arrest Honduran president ," BBC, June 28, 2009.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has been arrested by troops ahead of a controversial constitutional referendum.

Mr Zelaya's secretary said that the president had been taken to an airbase outside the capital, Tegucigalpa.

In an interview with Spain's El Pais newspaper published on Sunday, Mr Zelaya - an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - said a planned coup attempt against him had been thwarted after the US refused to back it.

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Tito Drago, "RIGHTS-SPAIN: ‘Universal Justice’ Threatened," IPS, June 23, 2009.

[Spain's universal jurisdiction law and its implementation were seen as a solution to the "institutional conflict of interest" that comes into play when national courts attempt to try violators of international laws. As Amnesty International puts it,

"Recognizing that impunity exists mainly when the national authorities of countries affected by the crimes fail to act, it is important that the national criminal and civil justice systems of all countries can step in to prosecute the crimes on behalf of the international community and award reparations to victims."

As this IPS article points out, an international criminal may be "well-loved and well-known" at home. National courts are notoriously polite to their own nationals where international crimes are concerned. The Bronze Star awarded to the drugged American pilot who accidentally killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and Ariel Sharon's loss of a cabinet portfolio for his role in the Sabra and Chatilla massacres are classic examples. But the list goes on.

In Canada and the US, "self-regulation" is a concept appropriated from individual psychology where it is a laudable, if not fully achievable, aspiration. Transferred to the legal realm where it is used, largely by ideologues who don't believe in regulation, to create the illusion that corporate entities and collectives of professionals such as police, doctors and educators embody such specialized and arcane values that they can be regulated (if at all) by no one but themselves. Environmental self-monitoring and self-regulation are the norm in British Columbia. It does save money.

IPS doesn't identify the interests behind the change in the Spanish legislation, but it does quote Mónica Cavagna, head of the Asociación Argentina Pro Derechos Humanos de Madrid (Argentine human rights association of Madrid), who describes the new law as "an effort to merge the interests of the people with the interests of their governments." It also cites Spanish lawyer Gonzalo Boyé, who told IPS the law "would demonstrate that political and economic interests are stronger than respect for the law." -jlt]

MADRID, Jun 23 (IPS) - Spain, considered a pioneer in the area of universal justice and especially legal action in human rights cases, is about to take a step backwards in that regard. On Tuesday, activists and legal experts criticised a draft law that would limit the Spanish courts’ ability to investigate human rights abuses committed in other countries.

Leading jurists called together Monday and Tuesday by a score of human rights groups to discuss the situation agreed that the draft law to be introduced by the Spanish government to Congress Thursday would undermine human rights advances made in this country’s legislation.

68 cases of crimes committed outside of Spain are currently being prosecuted here, including those investigated by the internationally renowned Garzón.

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Daniela Estrada, "SOUTH AMERICA: Anti-Nuclear Activists to Form Common Front," IPS, June 22, 2009.

SANTIAGO, Jun 22 (IPS) - Environmental organisations in Chile plan to revive the anti-nuclear movement in the Southern Cone of South America, in response to vigorous lobbying by corporations and politicians in favour of nuclear energy in the region.

"The anti-nuclear movement in Latin America has lapsed and no longer exists. We have to rebuild it. If we can get through the next three years we will have won the battle; if not, we will be in trouble," said Sara Larraín, head of the non-governmental Sustainable Chile Programme.

The front-runners for the December presidential elections are sitting on the fence.

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"Suicide blast hits Pakistan Kashmir," Al Jazeera, June 26, 2009.

Two soldiers have been killed and several others wounded after a suicide bomber attacked an army vehicle in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, the military says.

The attack took place on Friday near the city of Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani-administered part of the divided Himalayan region.

"The bomber blew himself up near a military vehicle," a military spokesman said. "Two of our soldiers embraced martyrdom."

It was the first suicide attack in the Pakistani part of Kashmir, according to Choudhry Imtiaz, a senior administrative official.

The use of the tactic has raised fears that Taliban fighters from the northwest of the country are spreading their campaign against the government further afield.

"It may be a sign of desperation at a time when they are coming under tremendous pressure because of the offensive." Pakistani General Talat Masood (ret.)

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Bitta Mostofi and Bill Quigley, "Time for Solidarity With Iran," Voices for Creative Nonviolence, June 25, 2009.

[For what it's worth, Iran ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on March 23, 1976, three years before the revolution. National declarations and reservations regarding international protocols are normally filed at the time of ratification, accession or succession but may also be filed later. As of February 5, 2002, the new Iranian regime had not done so. Evidently, the VCNV authors are correct in assuming that Iran is a signatory of the ICCPR. -jlt]

In Isfahan, Iran, an 80-year-old woman stood defiantly in her doorway. Twenty baton-wielding Basij men arrived on motorcycles and threatened to enter her house in pursuit of a group of young demonstrators. Instead of running with fear or turning her back on the demonstrators, this woman looked the pursuers straight in the eye and said, “You will not get past me.”

Stories of extraordinary bravery and nonviolent defiance to aggression and injustice have slowly but consistently found their way over the Alborz Mountains and across rivers and oceans. They have found their way into the hearts and minds of people across the globe who have been captivated for the past week by this most unlikely of uprisings.

Whether you believe the election was a fraud is beside the point. What is happening today is a popular movement that deserves the solidarity of all people of good will.

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Kaveh L Afrasiabi, "Crunching the numbers," Asia Times, June 26, 2009.

[Afrasiabi cites two other statistical analyses that challenge the Chattam House findings. University of Michigan political scientist and statistician Professor Walter Mebane, a leading expert on election fraud, notes that "a model can never prove fraud - it can identify places where there may be fraud". Mebane has made a similar statistical analysis of the Iranian election. He concluded that there is "no solid evidence of fraud." In a later analysis, based on new evidence, he concluded that there is "moderately strong support" for electoral fraud in the Iranian elections. Another American statistician, Nate Silver, has concluded that the voting result was "valid based on statistical analysis." All of which indicates that no responsible and unambiguous conclusion can be reached on the basis of the fragmentary information available--hardly a basis for sending in the Marines or maintaining a blockade.

The press is not the place for this issue to be resolved. In fact, there may be no way of resolving it since the Khomeinist regime has the same institutional conflict of interest the Bush Administration had in the 2004 American case. Another Asia Times article, this one by Francesco Sisci, is subject to the same limitations. Sisci repeats the refrain that "In a modern country, with electronic devices and spotless organization, it could take days to have the final results." Canadians tend to swallow this whole even though we know well that winners in Atlantic Canada are largely known before the polls close in the West. That happens with hand-counted, paper ballots.

The crackdown on protesters and Western responsibility for attempts to destabilize Iran and cause a regime change are separate, but related, questions. -jlt]

A few days ago, just as the "color" movement's ferocious struggle to overturn the results of the 10th Iranian presidential elections was fading, it received a new lease of life via the publication of a British study [1] that casts serious doubt on the official results that saw President Mahmud Ahmadinejad re-elected.

"Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran's 2009 Presidential Election" was published by Chatham House and the Institute of Iranian Studies, University of St Andrews, and edited by Iranian political scientist Professor Ali Ansari, director, Institute of Iranian Studies.

...the leading losing candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, had some 40,676 observers at the ballot boxes, and none has provided a formal complaint. Author

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"The moment for eliminating nuclear weapons is now," Defense Monitor, April-June 2009.

When presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev meet today for the first time, they will have an historic opportunity to confront the most urgent security threat to our world: the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the risk of nuclear terrorism. The two leaders can move beyond traditional arms control and, in a bold move, set the world on a course towards the total eliminationof all nuclear weapons--global zero.

Our group includes nine former heads of state; eight former foreign ministers from the United States, Russia, Britain and India; six former national security advisors from the United States, India and Pakistan; and 19 former top military commanders from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, India and Pakistan. With a clear, realistic and pragmatic appreciation of the challenges of achieving our goal, Global Zero is developing a step-by-step plan for getting to zero.

In Lodon, they should agree that the United States and the Russian Federation will begin work immediately to achieve an accord for deep reductions in their arsenals and then lead a longer-term effort with other nuclear powers to eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide through phased and verified reductions.

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"Up to 14,000 Federal Projects to Evade Environmental Assessment," The Green Pages, July 26, 2009.

OTTAWA – Two months after announcing the enactment of controversial regulations that will allow more than 2,000 projects across the country to evade legally required environmental assessments, the federal government has revealed that the number of projects being exempted from assessment will now be up to 14,000 over the next two years.

“It is clear that the Harper government is having troubles with basic mathematics,” said Ecojustice lawyer Justin Duncan. “In addition to a spiralling fiscal debt, they’re saddling Canadians with an environmental debt that may never be paid back.”

In April, Ecojustice launched a lawsuit on behalf of Sierra Club Canada claiming that the federal government acted unlawfully in issuing two federal regulations that gut the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA). The Federal Court has just allowed the groups to amend their filings to challenge the expanded exemption of 14,000 projects.

In throwing 14,000 economic stimulus projects out of the EA [Environmental Assessent] process, the federal government is effectively saying we don’t want to know the environmental effects. Stephen Hazell Executive Director Sierra Club Canada

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"Pirate Bay retrial call rejected ," BBC, June 26, 2009.

[More handwriting on the wall (some rights reserved. -jlt]

A Swedish court has thrown out a request for a retrial by the four men behind The Pirate Bay website.

The four were found guilty of promoting copyright infringement in April and face jail sentences and hefty claims for damages.

The Pirate Bay's lawyers called for a retrial when it emerged that one of the judges in the case belonged to several copyright protection groups.

The Swedish court said the judge's affiliations did not bias the case.

The four men behind The Pirate Bay...were sentenced to one year in jail and told to pay damages of 30m Swedish kronor (£2.3m, 2.7m euros) Author

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Joe McDonald, "Doubt cast on Chinese bid for Hummer," Globe and Mail, June 26, 2009.

[We North Americans love the ostentation of driving our kids to the ski hill in an armoured military vehicle with tiny windows. It makes us feel that we will be ready for the revolution when the time comes. It also helps to create the illusion that we know how to drive in the snow.

The G&M caption writer tries to remind us that the Chinese are just a bunch of crazy tyrants by saying that "China's regulator reportedly believes gas guzzlers violate conservation goals." This "reported belief" is only possible because the Chinese government apparently has conservation goals and may actually intend to meet them. In Canada we used to have Kyoto goals and some limits on investment in and by foreign interests, but no more. One benefit of GM bankruptcy is that some of the company's worst ideas will drop dead on the spot. It's not enough, but it's a start. -jlt]

China's planning agency is likely to reject a Chinese company's bid to acquire General Motors Corp.'s Hummer unit, in part because its gas-guzzling vehicles conflict with Beijing's conservation goals, state radio reported.

The National Development and Reform Commission is also likely to say Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Corp., a maker of construction machinery, lacks expertise to run Hummer, China National Radio said late Thursday. It cited no source.

“Some people may have views and speculation but the Chinese government has a process that we respect...” Statement by unspecified company

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Nate Anderson, "Thomas verdict: willful infringement, $1.92 million penalty," Ars Technica, June 18, 2009.

[If you follow the Fair Copyright for Canada movement, you will know that this American case foreshadows what is in store for Canadians if and when Parliament passes Bill C-61. As the story points out, even the RIAA got more blood than they were hoping for. Thanks to Ottawa lawyer, Howard Knopf, at Excess Copyright for calling attention to this story. -jlt]

A new lawyer, a new jury, and a new trial were not enough to save Jammie Thomas-Rasset. In a repeat of the verdict from her first federal trial, Thomas-Rasset was found liable for willfully infringing all 24 copyrights controlled by the four major record labels at issue in the case. The jury awarded the labels damages totaling a whopping $1.92 million. As the dollar amount was read in court, Thomas-Rasset gasped and her eyes widened.

Kiwi Camara, Thomas-Rasset's lead attorney, spoke briefly after the trial. He told reporters that when he first heard the $80,000 per song damage award, he was "angry about it" and said he had been convinced that any liability finding would have been for the minimum amount of $750 per song.

As for Camara, he intends to press ahead with his class-action lawsuit against the recording industry, in which he will take up the daunting task of trying to claw back all the money that the recording industry has collected in the course of its legal campaign to date.

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Alison Evans and Dirk Willem te Velde, "The UN, the great recession, and the world's poor," openDemocracy, June 23, 2009

[What interests me most about openDemocracy's discussion of the UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development currently under way in New York, is that is gives not so much as a hint of a reason behind the bizarre outburst disguised as a news story in which CanWest Global's Ottawa Citizen announced that economist and PM Stephen Harper would not be attending this important meeting. (See Steven Edwards, "Harper among leaders to skip UN 'summit' on financial crisis," Ottawa Citizen, June 24, 2009.) Heaven forbid that our glorious leader should muck about with those from countries facing bankruptcy. Insolvency might be catching. For his part, Harper has decided he would rather do some pre-season election campaigning in Quebec instead. -jlt]

The title of the summit being held at the United Nations in New York on 24-26 June 2009 - the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development - suggests a large ambition that some observers already think is misplaced. Their argument is that it has already been overtaken by events. After all, the global financial crisisis already almost two years old. The problems in the United States housing market emerged in Augu st 2007, in banks and financial institutions (such as Bear Stearns and Northern Rock) by early 2008, and the implosion of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. The crisis is, in this perspective, well into its third wave. A summit held now to pinpoint the action needed to ease its impact, particularly on the most vulnerable, seems - at first sight - "too little, too late".

There are arguments to the contrary - status (it is being attended by heads of state and government, as mandated in December 2008 at the Financing for Development conferencein Doha), timing (it comes neatly between the G20 summit in London on 2 April 2009 and its follow-up in Pittsburgh on 24-25 September), and reach (this, unlike the G20 discussions, is a meeting of the entire UN membership - the most wide-ranging and inclusive body able to reflect seriously on the scale of the global financial crisis and its impact on development). The last point in particular should in principle be the summit's strength; but it could also be its weakness.

Quotation Author

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M K Bhadrakumar, "'Color' revolution fizzles in Iran," Asia Times, June 26, 2009.

[Bhadrakumar's analysis is based on two unlikely sources. The first is the leaked testimony to Israel's Knesset Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense by Mossad head, Meir Dagan:

"Election fraud in Iran is no different than what happens in liberal states during elections. The struggle over the election results in Iran is internal and is unconnected to its strategic aspirations, including its nuclear program."

The second is prominent Iranian-born US neocon and advocate of regime change in Iran, Amir Tahiri, who is quoted at length. For example,

"So-called 'Iran experts' did not realize that Mousavi was a balloon that a section of the Iranian middle class inflated to show its anger not only at Ahmadinejad but also at the entire Khomeinist regime. Otherwise, there is nothing in Mousavi's record ... to make him more attractive than Ahmadinejad."

Bhadrakumar concludes that

"At the end of it all, the international community can only heave a sigh of relief that while this complex and extremely confusing political drama unfolded, George W Bush was no more in the White House in Washington. United States President Barack Obama could grasp the subtleties of the situation and adopted a well-thought-out, measured policy and broadly stuck to it despite apparent pressure from conservatives.

-jlt]

Israelis are realists par excellence. This is why it is always gainful to buttonhole an Israeli counterpart over a single-malt on the diplomatic circuit. He will invariably weave into the tapestry of the plain tale a nylon thread until then obscure to the naked eye.

Thus, the first warning that the adventurous project to mount a "Twitter revolution" in Iran was doomed to fail had to come from the Israelis. It meshes well with the indications that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's capacity to command the seemingly explosive political situation was never really been in doubt, no matter the hype in the Western media that Tehran was on the 'knife's edge".

If any doubt lingers, that also is dispelled by the fury in the state-controlled Saudi Arabian media's unprecedented, vicious personal attack on both Khamenei and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad - of a kind alien to the culture of ta'arof (politesse) or even taqiyah (dissimulation) in that part of the world. Riyadh's fond hopes of witnessing the Iranian regime debilitated by a protracted crisis have been dashed. Its principal interlocutor, former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has vanished from the chessboard. Riyadh seems bracing for Tehran's wrath.

Paradoxically, negotiating with Ahmadinejad might prove easier for the West, as he has a genuine constituency.

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James Petras, "Iranian elections: The ‘Stolen Elections’ hoax," CounterCurrents, June 20, 2009.

[In retrospect, I think this is one of the best articles to date on the Iranian elections. It appeared also in the Palestine Chronicle and Mostly Water. CounterCurrents is a socialist publication in Kerala, India. -jlt]

“Change for the poor means food and jobs, not a relaxed dress code or mixed recreation…Politics in Iran is a lot more about class war than religion.”

Financial Times Editorial, June 15 2009

There is hardly any election, in which the White House has a significant stake, where the electoral defeat of the pro-US candidate is not denounced as illegitimate by the entire political and mass media elite. In the most recent period, the White House and its camp followers cried foul following the free (and monitored) elections in Venezuela and Gaza, while joyously fabricating an ‘electoral success’ in Lebanon despite the fact that the Hezbollah-led coalition received over 53% of the vote.

The recently concluded, June 12, 2009 elections in Iran are a classic case: The incumbent nationalist-populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (MA) received 63.3% of the vote (or 24.5 million votes), while the leading Western-backed liberal opposition candidate Hossein Mousavi (HM) received 34.2% or (3.2 million votes). Iran’s presidential election drew a record turnout of more than 80% of the electorate, including an unprecedented overseas vote of 234,812, in which HM won 111,792 to MA’s 78,300. The opposition led by HM did not accept their defeat and organized a series of mass demonstrations that turned violent, resulting in the burning and destruction of automobiles, banks, public building and armed confrontations with the police and other authorities. Almost the entire spectrum of Western opinion makers, including all the major electronic and print media, the major liberal, radical, libertarian and conservative web-sites, echoed the opposition’s claim of rampant election fraud. Neo-conservatives, libertarian conservatives and Trotskyites joined the Zionists in hailing the opposition protestors as the advance guard of a democratic revolution. Democrats and Republicans condemned the incumbent regime, refused to recognize the result of the vote and praised the demonstrators’ efforts to overturn the electoral outcome. The New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, the Israeli Foreign Office and the entire leadership of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations called for harsher sanctions against Iran and announced Obama’s proposed dialogue with Iran as ‘dead in the water’.

The great majority of voters for the incumbent probably felt that national security interests, the integrity of the country and the social welfare system, with all of its faults and excesses, could be better defended and improved with Ahmadinejad than with upper-class technocrats supported by Western-oriented privileged youth who prize individual life styles over community values and solidarity.

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Erica Thompson, "Interview with Irma and Herbert: Members of El Salvador's Radio Zurda," Upside Down World, June 26, 2009.

Radio Zurda is a radical youth media collective that broadcasts a weekly radio program on 22 community stations in El Salvador. Through a live Internet feed, the program has the capacity to reach millions of people around the world with critical and otherwise under or un-reported news and a consistent drive for community engagement, collective process, and political empowerment.

Radio Zurda formed in 2004, after the Salvadoran right wing and major media engineered a dirty campaign against FMLN leader and presidential candidate Schafik Handal, costing the Left a devastating loss in their third electoral bid for state power. Lamenting a severe lack of community-based news and information as well as an urgent need for urban and rural youth to engage in meaningful, internal dialogue around the historical memory of El Salvador and political issues of the day, three youth activists began what they expect to be a long, diligent process in reclaiming media to serve these ends.

UDW: Take us back to the first discussions or realizations you had that led to the formation Radio Zurda

Herbert: After Shafik Handal lost the presidential election in 2004, a group of comrades came together to critique the campaign and to examine the media’s damaging role in influencing the results. The media strategy was to demonize Schafik - to label him a terrorist and incite fear among the people about the prospect of an FMLN government. We saw that this strategy really worked to confuse a lot of people and swing votes in favor of the Right. People had no way to connect with each other on a national level and debate the real issues. We decided it was up to us to create another kind of media - one that gave space to various opinions, specifically those of alternative youth - and we were determined to do this through the radio. We began by writing a short pamphlet called “The Beginning of Left-Handed Radio” which we distributed at marches that were happening at the time.

Later, an opportunity emerged to propose a radio project to Mayavisión. With the purpose of providing information and generating critiques among youth, our fundamental objectives were to inform, educate, and entertain with liberated perspectives. Within a couple of months, two more compañer@s joined us to bring a more solid feminist voice to the collective and to broaden the team.

We create and produce the Radio Zurda program ourselves. We completed the first two years of transmission without interruption, though we faced a lot of prejudice. Some people thought we wouldn’t take our program seriously, that we were going to do it halfway and not complete the job but we did it successfully. That was the first phase.

We have just completed two more phases and have continued to transmit through ARPAS satellite network - 22 community radio stations throughout the country - as well as through the Internet. There are eight other allied organizations in El Salvador, Europe, and the U.S. who transmit our programs on the Internet. Stations like Radio Tazulam in Ahuachapan, El Salvador can also use our program and put it into their schedule whenever they want. They can edit our program in a way that is useful for them, cut the songs that we put in of it doesn’t work for them and replace them with music that they like. Or they can select the content that they want and use it in other community programs.

When the government wanted to privatize our only public University four years ago, we talked to the student movement, not those who wanted to buy it. We want to raise other points of view so that people can develop their own critiques with as much real information as possible. Irma

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Peter Lee, "China's copper deal back in the melt," Asia Times, June 12, 2009.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the People's Republic of China do not make for an easy fit. The most conspicuous clash between the IMF and China is going on today in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with copper the big issue at stake.

In 2007, as Congo emerged from civil war, a Chinese consortium concluded a US$9 billion agreement with the government. The Chinese investors would develop mines and infrastructure - including $3 billion in projects over the next four years - and obtain the right to mine 10 million tonnes of copper and 600,000 tonnes of cobalt in return (quantities that are undoubtedly subject to adjustment based on changes in market price for these commodities).

The IMF is working to obstruct it.

Nkunda included examination of the Chinese deal (but not of a contract involving a copper project by Freeport MacMoRan of the United States) as one of the eight demands he made to the UN special envoy last year, when his insurrection was at its height.

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Imogen Foulkes, " Ebadi speaks out over Iran poll," BBC, June 19, 2009.

Iranian Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi has criticised the "harsh" treatment of post-election protesters by the Iranian government.

Ms Ebadi, a prominent human rights lawyer, was speaking at a news conference in Geneva.

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"UN guns down one, Opens Fire on crowd at funeral of revered Haitian priest," The Dominion, June 19, 2009.

HIP - Port au Prince, Haiti -One protestor was killed as UN forces opened fire during a funeral for Catholic priest Father Gerard Jean-Juste. A human rights advocate and well-known supporter of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his Lavalas movement, Jean-Juste died on May 27 in a Miami hospital from complications following a stroke and long respiratory illness.

Eyewitnesses report today's shooting incident involving the UN began after mourners began chanting slogans for the return of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide outside of Haiti's national cathedral.

Members of Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti's largest political party were barred from participating in the last Senate election...

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Afshin Rattans, "The international media and Sudan," Pambazuka News, June 11, 2009.

In an interview with British television producer Colette Valentine and media consultant Ali Gunn following their visit to Sudan, Afshin Rattansi discusses Western media distortions of actual conditions in the Darfur region. Emphasising that they saw no evidence of genocide and were free to talk to whomever they chose within government camps, Valentine and Gunn state that much of the media's reporting on Darfur is 'cheap and lazy'. The interviewees also report that the International Criminal Court's (ICC) indictment of President Omar al-Bashir has actually increased the president's popularity among the electorate, and that they themselves were confronted over the international media's portrayal of Darfur. --Pambazuka editors

George Clooney, Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, Cindy Crawford, Bono, Michael Caine, Claudia Schiffer, Bob Geldof, Hugh Grant, Mia Farrow, Mick Jagger and so many others have expressed their solidarity with the people of the oil-rich region of Darfur. A few weeks ago, Democrats John Lewis of Georgia, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Lynn Woolsey of California, Donna Edwards of Maryland and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts were all arrested as they demonstrated against the Sudanese government. When Colin Powell used the word genocide in 2004, it kicked off a $1 billion-a-year international aid programme, much higher than that afforded Somalia or Congo.

But why?

In the past few months, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity and war crimes. The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is appealing the setting aside of genocide charges, claiming that there is 'ongoing genocide' in Darfur. The Sudanese government has expelled some foreign aid groups, accusing them of espionage. They include Oxfam, Save the Children and Médecins Sans Frontières. According to the Save Darfur Campaign, it was the relief organisations that provided clean water, food and medical attention to roughly 1.5 million people. The Sudanese government claims these aid-agencies deliberately exclude Arab Darfuris in their ranks, exacerbating sectarian tensions.

And at the moment, President Obama’s Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration is on a diplomatic tour, while Britain is sending $185 million in aid and $140 million in 'peacekeeping' money.

Collette Valentine, a TV producer visiting from the United Kingdom, and Ali Gunn, a British media consultant, last week returned from Darfur, where they attended the first 'International Conference on the Challenge Facing Women in Darfur' in Al-Fasher in the north. Valentine says that articles about Darfur in the international press make her feel as if she visited a completely different region, a completely different country. It all adds weight to the thesis of Columbia University’s Professor Mahmood Mamdani that there is something very murky about Western aid agencies’ insistence that there has been a genocide in Darfur, and that at the heart of the campaigns around Darfur is the culmination of a powerful, imperial desire to suppress citizenry from US high school classrooms to right across the developing world.

I was appalled that so much reporting in our newspapers has no basis in reality. Cheap and lazy journalism at its worst. Ali Gunn

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"Documents expose the influence of US lobbies on the EU WorkGroup on Open Source, 2009," Wikileaks, May

Summary

This ZIP archive contains three files related to the influence of US copyright industry lobbies on EU WorkGroup on Open Source.

Open Source is software that is free to use and modify. Large copyright holders such as the US-based MicroSoft Corporation exert pressure to prevent government adoption of free software.

The three files complete the previous WikiLeaks release about the influence of US lobbies such as MicroSoft on the EU Open Source Software WorkGroup (see: How to Hijack an EU Open Source Strategy Paper and European Commission OSS Strategy Draft, Mar 2009).

The files present draft versions of the group's report, so it can be seen how the lobbies pressure change inside the very reports which are supposed to be a base for the European Commission legislation propositions.

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W Joseph Stroupe, "Awakening ahead on bond delusion," Asia Times, June 16, 2009.

Washington and London are engaged in the most shortsighted and destructive friendly fire assault on the future of their own government bonds and currencies in recorded history. It is all being done in a vain and hazardous bid to revive their faulted bubble-based economic models that crashed last autumn.

As in any friendly fire incident, they aren't aiming to attack and destroy their own bonds and currencies, but rather they believe they are attacking what they see as the real the enemy, collapsed international confidence, with what they see as their most advanced weapon - colossal spending. But their weapon's guidance system has gone haywire and it now has their own bonds and currencies in the crosshairs.

All this government spending and the costs of servicing that debt will have to be subtracted from future growth prospects as the bill for all of it inevitably comes due in the form of higher taxes, higher interest rates, higher inflation and a much weaker dollar.

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"Grudge against CBC seen as funding block," Pollara, May 26. 2009.

[I missed this one. It certainly suggest that cuts to the CBC are palatable only to a loudmouthed minority on the right. -jlt]

Levels of support and satisfaction with the CBC are high but Canadians believe their national public broadcaster is being starved of funds by a government with a vendetta against it. These are among the findings from a major new Pollara study of Canadians' attitudes about and expectations for the CBC. A $170 million funding shortfall and Ottawa's decision to review CBC's budget to find new potential cuts of up to $56 million - pressures that are diminishing the CBC's creative capacity and programs, leading to 800 layoffs - are in full view of Canadians. Against this backdrop, Pollara found Canadians believe that Prime Minister Harper is intent on hobbling the CBC.

- 63% agree that "Prime Minister Harper and the Conservative government are hostile to the CBC and would like to diminish public broadcasting in Canada."
- 51% agree that, when it comes to the CBC "the Harper government has a hidden agenda that favours private corporate broadcasters". 25% disagree and 25% don't know.
- 70% agree that "Canada's level of public broadcaster funding is indicative of the federal government's treatment of the cultural sector overall".

"The good news is that Harper's disdainful treatment of the CBC flies in the face of public opinion," says Ian Morrison, spokesperson for the broadcast watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, which commissioned the survey.

82% tune in to some form of CBC programming every week. 76% rate the CBC's performance in fulfilling its mandate 'good', 'very good' or 'excellent". 83% believe "the CBC is important in protecting Canadian identity and culture". 80% believe "the CBC is best suited to provide Canadian programming on TV".

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Seymour M. Hersh, "Preparing the battlefield," New Yorker, June 29, 2008.

[Sometimes past reports are more reliable indicators of what is really going on than news reports of the day. The Information Clearing House presents this year-old New Yorker piece by Seymour Hersh with the tag "In case you missed it." -jlt]

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

“Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians.” US Admiral William Fallon

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"Canada will not 'stay out' of Iranian politics: Cannon," CBC, June 19, 2009.

[Meddling in the domestic politics of other countries is an American tradition. See Dominican Republic, Haiti, Venezuela, and most recently Lebanon where voters were threatened with a loss of aid money if they didn't vote right. Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine are instances US sponsored color revolutions that have certain cookie-cutter characteristics in common with the Iranian street protests--the focus on presumed electoral irregularities, the use of students and the fine-tuning of PR messages for liberal Anglophone audiences. It won't be the first time the Harper government has adopted a monkey-see-monkey-do policy in imitation of the most offensive aspects of American policy.

The CBC, which has done little to resist or even report on our PM's restrictive information policies as long as their reporters get a story of some kind, concentrates on Iran's media offenses. The performance of cops in the street--also not a strong basis for Canadian self-righteousness--is scarcely mentioned. The Iranian government is doing what governments do, what the Canadian government did during the October Crisis and the Gustafson Lake standoff. This is another impossible battle for the moral high ground in a war of pots and kettles. Impossible because governments--whether democratic or otherwise--seem structurally incapable of introspection, i.e., reflecting on or even acknowledging their own failures. -jlt]

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Canada will not remain silent on the political situation in Iran after Tehran added Canada to a list of countries that it says is meddling in its internal affairs.

The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called Canada's chargé d'affaires in Tehran to a meeting on Thursday, reportedly complaining that Canada has been spouting meddlesome comments and decrying media coverage of the outcome of Friday's presidential election that showed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning by a 2-to-1 margin.

Journalists working for foreign media have been restricted from first-hand reporting on the streets in an attempt to block images and eyewitness accounts from the rallies.

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"Classified note on US-Canadian embassy contact about Abousfian Abdelrazik currently exiled in the Sudan," Wikileaks, July 19, 2006.

June 17, 2009
Summary

This previously unreleased document describes a demarche by the US Government on the orders of the White House to the Government of Canada, concerning the wish to have Abousfian Abdelrazik, a man wrongly accused of terrorism, prosecuted in the USA. Mr. Abdelrazik is currently being exiled in Sudan by the Government of Canada, and this document suggests it is because of US pressure. The current issue of The Economist, the internationally-known news magazine, has a brief story on the Abdelrazik case, demonstrating its significance.

The document was obtained under the Privacy Act, but it appears that the person censoring it made an error and did not completely black out the document (hundreds of other pages were blacked out).

Dickson's main message was that the US would like Canada's assistance in putting together a criminal case against Abedelrazik so that he could be charged in the US.

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