Tag: us

Blood money

Israel, U.S. formally sign new defense agreement – Haaretz

Israel and the United States signed Thursday the Memorandum of Understanding on the new American defense package for Israel. Under the new aid agreement, the U.S. will transfer $30 billion to Israel over 10 years, compared with $24 billion over the past decade.

Israel is slated to receive the first pay out in October 2008, amounting to $2.550 billion. That sum will grow each year by $150 million, until it reaches $3.1 billion in 2011.

In addition, the agreement permits Israel to convert into shekels 26.3 percent of the aid money, thereby enabling it to procure defense equipment from Israeli companies. The rest of the aid must be used to purchase equipment from American military industries.

That last part, about being able to purchase from Israeli companies, shows the extent to which the lobby works in favor of Israel, not the United States. Most military aid deals, while they may have valid strategic or diplomatic reasons, are supported in Congress because they generate business for the armaments industry and create jobs and economic activity in a wide range of states. That is probably the most important facet of the recent $20 billion aid program for Arab Gulf states. But in this case, American taxpayer money is not even going to be spent on American firms, with a sizable chunk going instead to Israel’s military-industrial complex, one of the backbones of the occupation.

Incidentally, the fact that this agreement went through today meant that Egypt has already agreed to the changes in ratio in US military aid to Cairo and Tel Aviv. When was this done? When Omar Suleiman went to DC several weeks ago, separately from Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit? When Condoleeza Rice was in Sharm al-Sheikh as part of her military aid tour? Egyptians, you can ask yourself why your government has not told you that the Camp David agreement was amended.

Daniel Pipes’ racist campaign marks a victory

Daniel Pipes’ fascist-style campaign against an Arabic-language school in Brooklyn and its principal is succeeding:

The Evening Bulletin – Stop The NYC Madrassa:
When Dhabah (“Debbie”) Almontaser resigned on Aug. 10 as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, her action culminated a remarkable grass-roots campaign in which concerned citizens successfully criticized the New York City establishment. But the fight continues. The next step is to get the academy itself canceled.

Remember, his main objection is that “the more basic problems implicit in an Arabic-language school: the tendency to Islamist and Arabist content and proselytizing.”

Perhaps someone can start a campaign against the Lycée Français in New York, where French-language education will have a tendency to pro-France content and will encourage cheese-eating and surrender-monkeying.

U.S. Weighing Terrorist Label for Iran Guards – New York Times

U.S. Weighing Terrorist Label for Iran Guards – New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 — The Bush administration is preparing to declare that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is a foreign terrorist organization, senior administration officials said Tuesday.

If imposed, the declaration would signal a more confrontational turn in the administration’s approach to Iran and would be the first time that the United States has added the armed forces of any sovereign government to its list of terrorist organizations.

In other words, the government of Iran will be officially designated as a terrorist organization, a decision that has myriad consequences and will probably limit diplomatic solutions to the current crisis.

LRB: The Middle East Peace Process Scam

LRB | Henry Siegman : The Middle East Peace Process Scam:

Both Bush and Olmert have spoken endlessly of their commitment to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it is their determination to bring down Hamas rather than to build up a Palestinian state that animates their new-found enthusiasm for making Abbas look good. That is why their expectation that Hamas will be defeated is illusory. Palestinian moderates will never prevail over those considered extremists, since what defines moderation for Olmert is Palestinian acquiescence in Israel’s dismemberment of Palestinian territory. In the end, what Olmert and his government are prepared to offer Palestinians will be rejected by Abbas no less than by Hamas, and will only confirm to Palestinians the futility of Abbas’s moderation and justify its rejection by Hamas. Equally illusory are Bush’s expectations of what will be achieved by the conference he recently announced would be held in the autumn (it has now been downgraded to a ‘meeting’). In his view, all previous peace initiatives have failed largely, if not exclusively, because Palestinians were not ready for a state of their own. The meeting will therefore focus narrowly on Palestinian institution-building and reform, under the tutelage of Tony Blair, the Quartet’s newly appointed envoy.

. . .

The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history. Since the failed Camp David summit of 2000, and actually well before it, Israel’s interest in a peace process – other than for the purpose of obtaining Palestinian and international acceptance of the status quo – has been a fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and an occupation whose goal, according to the former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, is ‘to sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people’. In his reluctant embrace of the Oslo Accords, and his distaste for the settlers, Yitzhak Rabin may have been the exception to this, but even he did not entertain a return of Palestinian territory beyond the so-called Allon Plan, which allowed Israel to retain the Jordan Valley and other parts of the West Bank.

This is the fundamental truth of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: as long as the Israelis are strong and supported by the major powers, they will not concede anything of real value.

Lebanon’s Daily Star, USAID, and Solidere

There’s been an interesting scandal brewing in the last few days about Lebanon Examiner, a section of the Beirut Daily Star sponsored by USAID to carry out investigative journalism. A piece that recently came out about Solidere — surely the first and foremost investigative business journalism story to do in Lebanon — apparently pissed off the paper’s USAID backers and their friends in government. Solidere, the Downtown Beirut real estate rehabilitation project, was THE post-civil war reconstruction initiative of the 1990s. It was an odd creature, partly government-backed and partly owned by the late Rafiq al-Hariri. Some of its shares also belonged to the inhabitants of Downtown Beirut, and it was traded on the Beirut stockmarket. It has always been controversial, for architectural/aesthetic reasons as well as for financial and political ones, especially considering the rather murky share splits and ways the company was managed. In other words, it is a perfect topic for an investigative newspaper story, and the one written a few days ago Lysandra Ohrstrom begins the scratch the surface of what may be a key aspect of 1990s Lebanese politics by focusing on a recent lawsuit:

On May 29, a committee of 500-dogged, disenfranchised former downtown property owners filed a suit at the Majlis al-Shura against a two-month old ministerial decree approving Solidere’s decision to create an international branch in Dubai. The case is the latest in a long line of lawsuits against Solidere over the past 12 years that raises questions about the company’s dubious legal foundations and its checkered past. Solidere’s operations range from the “immoral to the unconstitutional,” according to its most vocal critics, and all were perpetrated under the cover of the Lebanese state in the name of “national interest.”

Like its predecessors, the current case may never receive a ruling, but the Downtown Rights Holders Committee is optimistic that with the government led by staunch-Solidere ally Premier Fouad Siniora in danger of collapse, and the possibility of a power sharing agreement increasingly imminent, they may be able to hem in Solidere’s “unlawful expansion” – 37 percent of which was financed with local capital – so company profits are used to complete outstanding rehabilitation commitments in BCD, and not to finance speculative ventures in countries outside the state’s control.

“We don’t like this move because [Solidere] is still supposed to be a public purpose company whose main mission is development, whose mission is to serve downtown property owners by finishing project quickly and distributing [dividends] to us so we can buy back our property in downtown. We don’t want Solidere to go do other projects when they are barely 25 percent done in Lebanon.” explained Constantine Karam, who filed the petition on behalf of the rights holders committee.

That sounds straightforward enough. But successive leaks to the Angry Arab allege that USAID and the Siniora government are angry about the story, and trying to reign in the Daily Star:

My highly reliable (and well-placed) sources in Beirut are telling me that there were very strong reactions against the article by the Sanyurah government and its allies in the US embassy. The strongest reaction came from the USAID which funds the investigative page through an “accountability and transparency” grant. Don’t you like how the US defines “accountability and transparency”? The person who secured the USAID grant wrote that “the political agenda of the donors is not to undermine the fuoad Siniora government”. Long live transparency, accountability, and democracy. The person* complained for the second time that the examiner has become a “hizbollah rag”-the first was after Jim Quilty wrote a story on the reconstruction of bint jbeil, the person said donors were “bored” with the reconstruction topic. Long live the donors. Apparently the donors received phone calls from march 14 people all day yesterday, accusing the staff of the Daily Star of having timed the release of the story to the elections to prop up the opposition. The staff of the paper were ordered to print a full rebuttle. They “ordered” them to cover the following topics in the following three issues:
1) Municipal governmence at the Interior Ministry–they included four sources for reporters to interview who surely would allow for a “balanced” article. 2) The Finance Ministry’s ease of doing business reforms. 3) The five year industrial program drafted by the Ministry of Industry under Pierre Gemayel. 4) Sami Hadad’s leadership at the economy ministry. One editor from the daily star is resigning and telling them to find someone else who does not mind being subject to editorial oversight from the US government.

So not only do they want a rebuttal but also to place their own story with positive spin for the government… More allegations of US embassy micro-management of the Daily Star here.

Now, this post is not meant to be about taking sides in the Lebanese political deadlock. It’s not like al-Manar is a bastion of independent journalism, or that many Lebanese papers don’t slavishly follow the party line of whoever is paying this month. Even well-regarded papers such as as-Safir and al-Akhbar in Lebanon are frequently accused of being bought one way or another, and there sure seems to be a lot of esteem for the Saudi royal family in pretty much every Arab newspaper. However, there is something particularly cynical about using a grant to develop investigative journalism and micro-manage a paper’s coverage. At least Rafiq Hariri would write the cheques and send them personally (or simply send them without even a quid-pro-quo, hoping to curry favor. It often worked). This particularly the case because a USAID program to boost serious investigative journalism in the Arab world is a great idea considering the general lack of such type of stories and one that should be carried out seriously. As someone who has worked in small Arab world publications, I find it particularly offensive and even frankly dangerous. The Daily Star’s reporting has never been known for its frank coverage of Lebanese politics, particularly during the civil war. (Its editorial pages, edited by the quite forthrightly pro-March 14 Michael Young, are a different thing and indeed the best thing about the paper even if you might not agree with Young.) But political caution is a different thing than being told what to do by a foreign embassy’s staffers. I hope the Daily Star does not rebut the story and keeps on doing this kind of work.

“A madrassa grows in Brooklyn”

When I was in New York last year, I heard about a new middle school that was going to open in Brooklyn and offer classes in Arabic. The Khalil Gibran school was going to be the first American public school to have “Arabic language and culture” as part of its curriculum. I’m pretty sure a few of my colleagues at NYU looked into possible teaching there. Good thing they didn’t, because apparently, this public New York high school is actually going to be a radical madrasa!This has been discovered thanks to the efforts of the usual band of credible organizations: a group calling itslef the “Stop the Madrassa Community Coalition,” Daniel Pipes (whose recent column provided me with the hilarious title of this post), Militant Islam Monitor, and the New York Sun. As the New York Times reports:

Alicia Colon, a columnist for The New York Sun, wrote that Osama bin Laden must have been “delighted� to hear the news of the school. “New York City, the site of the worst terrorist attack in our history, is bowing down in homage to accommodate and perhaps groom future radicals,� she said. “I say break out the torches and surround City Hall to stop this monstrosity.�

Then Fox decided to cover the story, with predictable results.No matter that the school is open to students from all backgrounds, and that it will teach the standard state curriculum. Its principle Debbie Almontaser, a Muslim woman long involved in inter-faith efforts, apparently has an “Islamist agenda.” And no mattter that almost everyone in the US government agrees we are in dire need of more Arabic speakers–apparently it’s OK to promote Americans speaking Arabic; but Arabs (Arab-Americans are still Arabs) speaking Arabic on U.S. soil can clearly be up to no good.All this I understand perfectly; what I can’t figure out is why the New York Times calls Daniel Pipes “the director of the Middle East Forum, a conservative research center that says its goal is to promote American interests in the region.” I don’t expect the Times to tell the truth (the Middle East Forum’s agenda is to smear real academics, spread racism against Arabs and Muslims, and blindly support Israe). But surely they could get a bit closer.

Hiltermann’s “A Poisonous Affair”

Although it has become well-known as one of Saddam Hussein’s worse crimes, the gassing of the Kurdish village of Halabja in March 1988 has not been the subject of extended reflection, particularly the tacit acceptance of Saddam Hussein’s policy of using chemical weapons against Kurdish dissidents and in his war with Iran that preceded Halabja. Joost Hiltermann, who in the early 1990s wrote for Human Rights Watch the first thorough report on the Halabja massacre, has now published a book on it in which he looks at the operation in itself (led by the recent sentenced Saddam henchman Chemical Ali) as well as its international context. A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja looks specifically at how Reagan administration officials turned a blind eye to Saddam’s war crimes and continued to support him against Iran, which had also suffered from Iraqi chemical attacks. Hiltermann recently wrote in an op-ed:

Chemical Ali’s reign lasted two years, long enough to crush the Kurdish revolt, level the countryside, and seek to prevent a viable Kurdish national movement from ever arising again. Appointed by Hussein, his cousin, in March 1987, Chemical Ali, who headed Iraq’s security police, the Amn, wasted no time in sending a message to the Kurds that their time was up. “Jalal Talabani asked me to open a special communications channel with him,” he said later in a chilling speech to Baath party faithful, referring to the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who today, in vindication of his long struggle, is president of Iraq. “That evening I went to Suleimaniya and hit them with special ammunition.””Special ammunition” was the regime’s euphemism for poison gas. In 1987, chemical attacks on guerrilla strongholds multiplied, extending to villages and, in a horrifying climax, an entire town: Halabja, in March 1988. Thousands died in Halabja, and the overpowering fear this attack instilled ensured that when Chemical Ali launched his counterinsurgency campaign, called Anfal, a few days later he caused mass panic by deploying gas at the outset of each of the operation’s eight stages.Terrified villagers ran straight into the Iraqi military’s arms, who handed them over to the Amn. They in turn hauled tens of thousands of men, women, and children to areas far from Kurdistan, where execution squads completed the job. The affair was over in six months. Some 70,000 to 80,000 (the numbers are uncertain and disputed) never returned home.Much of this was known to the Reagan administration, according to government documents and interviews with some of the principals. But knowledge is only half of it. Spooked by the specter of an Islamic revolution radiating throughout the Gulf from Khomeini’s Iran, the administration threw its weight behind Hussein’s unsavory regime in its eight-year war with Iran, providing it with millions of dollars in credit guarantees as well as diplomatic cover, satellite intelligence, and, indirectly, weapons.US intelligence was fully aware of Iraq’s chemical weapons use, but the administration didn’t do anything about it. When it did go so far as to condemn it, in 1984, it did so with a wink and a nod, sending Donald Rumsfeld as envoy to Baghdad to appease the Iraqis by offering to restore diplomatic relations.

One of the things that Hiltermann points out is that since Chemical Ali’s trial took place before a trial specifically on Halabja taking place later this year, Kurds will most probably able to get answers out of him on certain crucial issues concerning the planning of the massacre:

The Anfal trial has now ended and although Chemical Ali’s sentence will be reviewed on appeal, he is likely to follow his cousin in death by hanging. This means that neither man will be present at the Halabja trial later this year. This is a pity, as their absence will reduce the trial’s impact and may deprive the Kurds of information that could help them understand the circumstances that prompted the regime to order the devastating attack.Absent from the courtroom also, but casting an enormous shadow on the proceedings nonetheless, will be the Reagan administration that condoned if not encouraged its proxy’s chemical weapons use and, when Hussein’s behavior proved too embarrassing, in Halabja, did its best to defuse the fallout through cover-up and deceit.

A pox on both their houses

Republican candidate advocates threat to bomb Islamic holy sites as response to terrorist attack on U.S.:

WASHINGTON: Republican presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo says the best way he can think of to deter a nuclear terrorist attack on the U.S. is to threaten to retaliate by bombing Islamic holy sites.

The Colorado congressman on Tuesday told about 30 people at a town hall meeting in the state of Iowa that he believes such a terrorist attack could be imminent and that the U.S. needs to hurry up and think of a way to stop it.

“If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina,” Tancredo said at the Family Table restaurant. “Because that’s the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they otherwise might do.”

Yes, this is not a major candidate, but that anyone running for office is saying these things is incredible. To be fair and spread some bipartisan scorn, in a way it’s more shocking that Barack Obama wants to invade Pakistan:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama issued a pointed warning yesterday to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying that as president he would be prepared to order U.S. troops into that country unilaterally if it failed to act on its own against Islamic extremists.

In his most comprehensive statement on terrorism, the senator from Illinois said that the Iraq war has left the United States less safe than it was before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that if elected he would seek to withdraw U.S. troops and shift the country’s military focus to threats in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“When I am president, we will wage the war that has to be won,” he told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center in the District. He added, “The first step must be to get off the wrong battlefield in Iraq and take the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

So if I get this right, Obama thinks Iraq is a piece of cake and American troops should withdraw, but believes Pakistan would be a piece of cake? While I certainly think Pakistan is much more of a problem than Iraq ever was, by now one would expect someone as electable as Obama to be more cautious about making this kind of statement.