Iran 313

IRAN: New Revelations Tear Holes in Nuclear Trigger Story
Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (IPS) - New revelations about two documents leaked to The Times of London to show that Iran is working on a "nuclear trigger" mechanism have further undermined the credibility of the document the newspaper had presented as evidence of a continuing Iranian nuclear weapons programme.

A columnist for the Times has acknowledged that the two-page Persian language document published by The Times last month was not a photocopy of the original document but an expurgated and retyped version of the original.

A translation of a second Persian language document also published by The Times, moreover, contradicts the claim by The Times that it shows the "nuclear trigger" document was written within an organisation run by an Iranian military scientist.

Former Central Intelligence Agency official Philip Giraldi has said U.S. intelligence judges the "nuclear trigger" document to be a forgery, as IPS reported last week. The IPS story also pointed out that the document lacked both security markings and identification of either the issuing organisation or the recipient.

The new revelations point to additional reasons why intelligence analysts would have been suspicious of the "nuclear trigger" document.

On Dec. 14, The Times published what it explicitly represented as a photocopy of a complete Persian language document showing Iranian plans for testing a neutron initiator, a triggering device for a nuclear weapon, along with an English language translation.

But in response to a reader who noted the absence of crucial information from the document, including security markings, Oliver Kamm, an online columnist for The Times, admitted Jan. 3 that the Persian language document published by The Times was "a retyped version of the relevant parts of that original document".

Kamm wrote that the original document had "contained a lot of classified information" and was not published "because of the danger that it would alert Iranian authorities to the source of the leak".

In offering the explanation of the intelligence agency that leaked the document to The Times, Kamm was also damaging the credibility of the document. A document that had been both edited and retyped could obviously have been doctored by adding material on a neutron initiator.

The reason for such editing could not have been to excise "classified information", because, if the document were genuine, the Iranian government would already have the information.

Furthermore there would have been ways of avoiding disclosure of the source of the leak that would not have required the release of an expurgated version of the document. The number of the copy of the document could have been blacked out, for example.

The Times claimed in a separate story that the "nuclear trigger" document was written within the military technology development organisation run by Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

A second document, also published in Persian language by The Times, shows Fakhrizadeh's signature under the title, "Chief, Department of Development and Deployment of Advanced Technology", and includes a list of 12 "recipients" within that organisation, and is dated the Persian equivalent of Dec. 29, 2005 on the Western calendar, according to an English translation obtained by IPS.

The Times reporter, Catherine Philp, wrote that the neutron initiator document "was drawn up within the Centre for Preparedness at the Institute of Applied Physics", which she identifies as "one of the organization's 12 departments".

But the reference to a "Centre for Preparedness at the Institute of Applied Physics" is an obvious misreading of a chart given to The Times by the intelligence agency but not published by The Times.

The chart, which can be found on the website of the Institute for Science and International Security, shows what are clearly two separate organisations relating to neutronics - a "Center for Preparedness" and an "Institute of Applied Physics" – under what the intelligence agency translated as the "Field for Expansion of Advance Technologies' Deployment".

But George Maschke, a Persian language expert and former U.S. military intelligence officer, provided IPS with a translation of the list of the 12 recipients on the cover page document showing that it includes a "Centre for Preparedness and New Defense Technology" but not an "Institute of Applied Physics".

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports have referred to the Institute of Applied Physics as a stand-alone institution rather than part of Fakhrizadeh's organisation.

The English translation of the document shows that none of the other five Centres and groups on the list of recipients is a plausible candidate to run a neutron-related experimentation programme, either.

They include the chiefs of the Centre for Explosives and Impact Technology, the Centre for Manufacturing and Industrial Research, the Chemical and Metallurgical Groups of the Centre for Advanced Materials Research and Technology, and the Centre for New Aerospace Research and Design.

Contrary to The Times story, moreover, the other five recipients on the list of 12 are not heads of "departments" but deputies to the director for various cross-cutting themes: finance and budget, plans and programmes, science, administration and human resources and audits and legal affairs.

The absence of any organisation with an obvious expertise in atomic energy indicates Fakhrizadeh's Department of Development and Deployment of Advanced Technology is not the locus of a clandestine nuclear weapons programme.

The nuclear weapons programmes of Israel, India and Pakistan prior to testing of an atomic bomb were all located within their respective atomic energy commissions. That organisational pattern reflects the fact that scientific expertise in nuclear physics and the different stages through which uranium must pass before being converted into a weapon is located overwhelmingly in the national atomic commissions.

The Times story claimed a consensus among "Western intelligence agencies" that Fakhrizadeh's "Advanced Technology Development and Deployment Department" has inherited the same components as were present in the "Physics Research Centre" of the 1990s. It also asserts that the same components were present in the alleged nuclear weapons research programme that the mysterious cache of intelligence documents now called the "alleged studies" documents portrayed as being under Fakhrizadeh's control.

Those claims were taken from the chart given to The Times by the unidentified intelligence agency.

But the idea that Fakhrizadeh has been in charge of a covert nuclear weapons project can be traced directly to the fact that he helped procure or sought to procure dual-use items when he was head of the Physics Resource Center in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The items included vacuum equipment, magnets, a balancing machine, and a mass spectrometer, all of which might be used either in a nuclear programme or for non-nuclear and non-military purposes.

The IAEA suggested in reports beginning in 2004 that Fakhrizadeh's interest in these dual-use items indicated a possible role in Iran's nuclear programme.

That same year someone concocted a collection of documents – later dubbed "the alleged studies" documents - showing a purported Iranian nuclear weapons project, based on the premise that Fakhrizadeh was its chief.

Iran insisted, however, that Fakhrizadeh had procured the technologies in question for non-military uses by various components of the Imam Hussein University, where he was a lecturer.

And after reviewing documentation submitted by Iran and verifying some of its assertions by inspection on the spot, the IAEA concluded in its Feb. 22, 2008 report that Iran's explanation for Fakhrizadeh's role in obtaining the items had been truthful after all.

But instead of questioning the authenticity of the "alleged studies" documents, IAEA Deputy Director for Safeguards Olli Heinonen highlighted Fakhrizadeh's role in Iran's alleged nuclear weapons work in a briefing for member states just three days after the publication of that correction.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

(END/2010)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49889

Parijs 2010

Parijs, woensdag 6 januari 2010

.

De Nuance van de NRC 158

Ik kreeg dit gemaild van oud-ambassdeur Jan Wijenberg:

Geachte heer Van Es,

Dank voor uw reactie. Ik vermoed dat andere lezers evenmin gecharmeerd zijn van de foto's, noch van de achterliggende gedachten. Daarom ben ik wel benieuwd welke reactie(s) NRC Weekblad voor plaatsing zal kiezen.

Met vriendelijke groeten.

Jan Wijenberg
----- Original Message -----
From: E-mail Weekblad
To: jjwijenberg@gmail.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 3:39 PM
Subject: RE: Gadverdamme ...........

Geachte heer Wijenberg,

Het spijt mij dat u zich heeft gestoord aan de fotoreportage over de vrouwelijke Israëlische soldaten in NRC Weekblad van 2 januari jl. De redactie van NRC Weekblad heeft de foto's niet gepubliceerd om geweld in het algemeen en van het Israëlische leger in het bijzonder te romantiseren. Wij menen dat onze lezers de rol van Israël en z'n leger in dit conflict kennen en er een eigen oordeel bij kunnen vormen. Ikzelf heb de foto's niet gezien als romantisering maar als een scherp "statement", als een illustratie voor het absurde contrast tussen enerzijds deze foto's en anderzijds het gebruik van geweld. U heeft gelijk dat het tijdstip van publicatie niet gelukkig is gekozen.

Wat betreft plaatsing van uw brief in NRC Weekblad moet ik u laten weten, dat wij, aangezien het aanbod van reacties de beschikbare ruimte overtreft, plaatsing van uw brief niet kunnen garanderen. Wel zullen wij uw reactie op onze site plaatsen.

Vriendelijke groet,
Gijsbert van Es,
chef NRC Weekblad

Aangezien ik een paar dagen in Parijs ben, kom ik hier later uitgebreid op terug, want de rechtvaardiging van de NRC-porno door chef Gijsbert van Es lijkt me wartaal. De NRC plaatst namelijk terecht geen foto's van bijvoorbeeld sexy bedoelde foto's van Latijns Amerikaanse vrouwelijke militairen die onderdeel zijn van een leger dat met doodseskaders werkt, of pin-ups van andere terreurgroepen die via 'disproportioneel geweld' vooral gewone burgers treffen. Daarentegen heeft de NRC-redactie precies een jaar geleden wel het Iraelisch terrorisme laten rechtvaardigen via de krant. De slijpsteen voor de geest heeft er een traditie van gemaakt om de zionistische terreur op talloze manieren te rechtvaardigen. Het filosemitisme van de NRC getuigt van een ernstig gebrek aan intellectuele integriteit. Inderdaad, zij kunnen ook doden, en de militairen kunnen het niet alleen, ze doen het ook. Meer dan 300 Palestijnse kinderen werden in Gaza vermoord in drie weken tijd, met als rechtvaardiging in de NRC dat die kinderen nu eenmaal 'de kans [lopen] een zeer hoge prijs te betalen. Mais c'est la guerre.' Letterlijk citaat!

Zie: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/search?q=van+creveld

De Israelische Terreur 1101

Israel Has No Intention of Granting a Palestinian State

If Hamas Did Not Exist

By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN

Let us get one thing perfectly straight. If the wholesale mutilation and degradation of the Gaza Strip is going to continue; if Israel’s will is at one with that of the United States; if the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and all the international legal agencies and organizations spread across the globe are going to continue to sit by like hollow mannequins doing nothing but making repeated “calls” for a “ceasefire” on “both sides”; if the cowardly, obsequious and supine Arab States are going to stand by watching their brethren get slaughtered by the hour while the world’s bullying Superpower eyes them threateningly from Washington lest they say something a little to their disliking; then let us at least tell the truth why this hell on earth is taking place.

The state terror unleashed from the skies and on the ground against the Gaza Strip as we speak has nothing to do with Hamas. It has nothing to do with “Terror”. It has nothing to do with the long-term “security” of the Jewish State or with Hizbullah or Syria or Iran except insofar as it is aggravating the conditions that have led up to this crisis today. It has nothing to do with some conjured-up “war” – a cynical and overused euphemism that amounts to little more the wholesale enslavement of any nation that dares claim its sovereign rights; that dares assert that its resources are its own; that doesn’t want one of the Empire’s obscene military bases sitting on its cherished land.

This crisis has nothing to do with freedom, democracy, justice or peace. It is not about Mahmoud Zahhar or Khalid Mash’al or Ismail Haniyeh. It is not about Hassan Nasrallah or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These are all circumstantial players who have gained a role in the current tempest only now that the situation has been allowed for 61 years to develop into the catastrophe that it is today. The Islamist factor has colored and will continue to color the atmosphere of the crisis; it has enlisted the current leaders and mobilized wide sectors of the world’s population. The primary symbols today are Islamic – the mosques, the Qur’an, the references to the Prophet Muhammad and to Jihad. But these symbols could disappear and the impasse would continue.

There was a time when Fatah and the PFLP held the day; when few Palestinians wanted anything to do with Islamist policies and politics. Such politics have nothing to do with primitive rockets being fired over the border, or smuggling tunnels and black-market weapons; just as Arafat’s Fatah had little to do with stones and suicide bombings. The associations are coincidental; the creations of a given political environment. They are the result of something entirely different than what the lying politicians and their analysts are telling you. They have become part of the landscape of human events in the modern Middle East today; but incidentals wholly as lethal, or as recalcitrant, deadly, angry or incorrigible could just as soon have been in their places.

Strip away the clichés and the vacuous newspeak blaring out across the servile media and its pathetic corps of voluntary state servants in the Western world and what you will find is the naked desire for hegemony; for power over the weak and dominion over the world’s wealth. Worse yet you will find that the selfishness, the hatred and indifference, the racism and bigotry, the egotism and hedonism that we try so hard to cover up with our sophisticated jargon, our refined academic theories and models actually help to guide our basest and ugliest desires. The callousness with which we in indulge in them all are endemic to our very culture; thriving here like flies on a corpse.

Strip away the current symbols and language of the victims of our selfish and devastating whims and you will find the simple, impassioned and unaffected cries of the downtrodden; of the ‘wretched of the earth’ begging you to cease your cold aggression against their children and their homes; their families and their villages; begging you to leave them alone to have their fish and their bread, their oranges, their olives and their thyme; asking you first politely and then with increasing disbelief why you cannot let them live undisturbed on the land of their ancestors; unexploited, free of the fear of expulsion; of ravishment and devastation; free of permits and roadblocks and checkpoints and crossings; of monstrous concrete walls, guard towers, concrete bunkers, and barbed wire; of tanks and prisons and torture and death. Why is life without these policies and instruments of hell impossible?

The answer is because Israel has no intention of allowing a viable, sovereign Palestinian state on its borders. It had no intention of allowing it in 1948 when it grabbed 24 per cent more land than what it was allotted legally, if unfairly, by UN Resolution 181. It had no intention of allowing it throughout the massacres and ploys of the 1950s. It had no intention of allowing two states when it conquered the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine in 1967 and reinterpreted UN Security Council Resolution 248 to its own liking despite the overwhelming international consensus stating that Israel would receive full international recognition within secure and recognized borders if it withdrew from the lands it had only recently occupied.

It had no intention of acknowledging Palestinian national rights at the United Nations in 1974, when –alone with the United States—it voted against a two-state solution. It had no intention of allowing a comprehensive peace settlement when Egypt stood ready to deliver but received, and obediently accepted, a separate peace exclusive of the rights of Palestinians and the remaining peoples of the region. It had no intention of working toward a just two-state solution in 1978 or 1982 when it invaded, fire-bombed, blasted and bulldozed Beirut so that it might annex the West Bank without hassle. It had no intention of granting a Palestinian state in 1987 when the first Intifada spread across occupied Palestine, into the Diaspora and the into the spirits of the global dispossessed, or when Israel deliberately aided the newly formed Hamas movement so that it might undermine the strength of the more secular-nationalist factions.

Israel had no intention of granting a Palestinian state at Madrid or at Oslo where the PLO was superseded by the quivering, quisling Palestinian Authority, too many of whose cronies grasped at the wealth and prestige it gave them at the expense of their own kin. As Israel beamed into the world’s satellites and microphones its desire for peace and a two-state solution, it more than doubled the number of illegal Jewish settlements on the ground in the West Bank and around East Jerusalem, annexing them as it built and continues to build a superstructure of bypass roads and highways over the remaining, severed cities and villages of earthly Palestine. It has annexed the Jordan valley, the international border of Jordan, expelling any ‘locals’ inhabiting that land. It speaks with a viper’s tongue over the multiple amputee of Palestine whose head shall soon be severed from its body in the name of justice, peace and security.

Through the home demolitions, the assaults on civil society that attempted to cast Palestinian history and culture into a chasm of oblivion; through the unspeakable destruction of the refugee camp sieges and infrastructure bombardments of the second Intifada, through assassinations and summary executions, past the grandiose farce of disengagement and up to the nullification of free, fair and democratic Palestinian elections Israel has made its view known again and again in the strongest possible language, the language of military might, of threats, intimidation, harassment, defamation and degradation.

Israel, with the unconditional and approving support of the United States, has made it dramatically clear to the entire world over and over and over again, repeating in action after action that it will accept no viable Palestinian state next to its borders. What will it take for the rest of us to hear? What will it take to end the criminal silence of the ‘international community’? What will it take to see past the lies and indoctrination to what is taking place before us day after day in full view of the eyes of the world? The more horrific the actions on the ground, the more insistent are the words of peace. To listen and watch without hearing or seeing allows the indifference, the ignorance and complicity to continue and deepens with each grave our collective shame.

The destruction of Gaza has nothing to do with Hamas. Israel will accept no authority in the Palestinian territories that it does not ultimately control. Any individual, leader, faction or movement that fails to accede to Israel’s demands or that seeks genuine sovereignty and the equality of all nations in the region; any government or popular movement that demands the applicability of international humanitarian law and of the universal declaration of human rights for its own people will be unacceptable for the Jewish State. Those dreaming of one state must be forced to ask themselves what Israel would do to a population of 4 million Palestinians within its borders when it commits on a daily, if not hourly basis, crimes against their collective humanity while they live alongside its borders? What will suddenly make the raison d’etre, the self-proclaimed purpose of Israel’s reason for being change if the Palestinian territories are annexed to it outright?

The lifeblood of the Palestinian National Movement flows through the streets of Gaza today. Every drop that falls waters the soil of vengeance, bitterness and hatred not only in Palestine but across the Middle East and much of the world. We do have a choice over whether or not this should continue. Now is the time to make it.

Jennifer Loewenstein is the Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She can be reached at amadea311@earthlink.net

http://www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein01012009.html

Yochanan Visser als Crimineel 35

Yochanan Visser met petje van het Joods Nationaal Fonds, een organisatie die betrokken was en is bij de diefstal van Palestijns land.

Yochanan Visser,

De weerzin tegen de Israelische terreur groeit. Fatsoenlijke burgers in het Westen beginnen dwars door de zionistische propaganda heen te prikken. De vraag is nu: wat is uw reactie hierop? U en de uwen kunnen die omslag niet blijven negeren. Leest u deze reactie van de bekende kunstenaar Brian Eno eens:

An Experiment in Provocation

Stealing Gaza

COUNTERPUNCH

By BRIAN ENO

It's a tragedy that the Israelis - a people who must understand better

than almost anybody the horrors of oppression - are now acting as

oppressors. As the great Jewish writer Primo Levi once remarked

"Everybody has their Jews, and for the Israelis it's the

Palestinians". By creating a middle Eastern version of the Warsaw

ghetto they are recapitulating their own history as though they've

forgotten it. And by trying to paint an equivalence between the

Palestinians - with their homemade rockets and stone-throwing

teenagers - and themselves - with one of the most sophisticated

military machines in the world - they sacrifice all credibility.

The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people who fully deserve the

right to live in peace, but who seem intent on squandering every

chance to allow that to happen. It's difficult to avoid the conclusion

that this conflict serves the political and economic purposes of

Israel so well that they have every interest in maintaining it. While

there is fighting they can continue to build illegal settlements.

While there is fighting they continue to receive huge quantities of

military aid from the United States. And while there is fighting they

can avoid looking candidly at themselves and the ruthlessness into

which they are descending.

Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million

people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity,

food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate

them regularly...and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why

would you want to make that experiment?

Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now 'under

attack' you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the

helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks

and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains

of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then

you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a

terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an

accommodation.

And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing

their homeland.

Brian Eno is a musician and music producer.

http://www.counterpunch.org/eno01022009.html

Yochanan Visser, wordt het niet tijd dat u en de uwen stoppen met de terreur tegen de Palestijnse bevolking?

In afwachting van uw antwoord:

Stan van Houcke

Journalist/schrijver

Amsterdam

Yochanan Visser is a Dutch-language analyst for the Israel Facts Group (www.israelfacts.eu), a European media watchdog organization, as well as manager of Israel Facts Monitorgroup and www. israelfacts. eu. He lives in Efrat, Israel.

Nederland en Afghanistan 242

Mark Steel: Here's one soldier who told the truth about this war
L/Cpl Glenton's crime was to say we were making matters worse

Wednesday, 6 January 2010

Politicians and newspapers love to revere a war hero from Afghanistan, so it's strange that they haven't got round to Lance-Corporal Joe Glenton. When Joe went out there he must have been warned he could end up being held in captivity, but he can't have expected that would mean getting locked away by the British Army.

His crime was to conclude that the war was making matters worse, and it was immoral to carry on fighting, and to say this publicly. So they put him in a military jail, presumably to stop him doing it again. Leave this dangerous felon at liberty and he might refuse to fight in the Congo, in Kashmir, in a re-enactment of the Battle of Bosworth; who knows what danger he'd be to the public.

Joe Glenton might have escaped arrest if he'd been prepared to keep his opposition to the war quiet, rather than speak about his experience openly. Because, as a soldier, he's not supposed to air an opinion about the war. But every week there are reports in which soldiers tell us we're slowly winning, and none of them get court-martialled. So the real crime wasn't to voice an opinion but to voice the wrong opinion.

In any case Army leaders make statements about every aspect of the war, to the extent that Richard Dannatt, head of the whole force, criticised the Government just before announcing his allegiance to the Tories. Maybe there's a formula that goes, "Officers of the rank of Captain or above shall he be entitled to thoughts. (However, ranks down to Sergeant-Major may be permitted certain impulses, at the rate of up to three per calendar month)."

It must be hard for a soldier not to hold an opinion on the war, when they can see they're often arming one set of warlords against another, to the extent we call the ones we like the "Moderate Taliban". Presumably these are the ones who say "One tower was fine, but we shouldn't have done the two".

There must be signs all round the barracks saying "You are ordered not to notice that the honest government you're risking your lives to defend fiddled the election so blatantly the UN ordered it to be re-run – or that the heroin production you were told you'd be eliminating has gone up – or that many of the civilians you're here to protect want you to leave. You must also be careful not to remember that one of the reasons given for the war was to capture Bin Laden, which we never did. Therefore anyone who sees him must not notice him, as this will serve to dampen morale."

This might be why Joe described his time in the barracks since his imprisonment by saying "The response was fantastic. Soldiers shook my hand and patted me on the back. One guy said, 'You're saying what everyone else is thinking'. Talking to soldiers in other units, you get the impression that people are questioning why we're in Afghanistan."

This questioning has spread through every layer of society, to the extent that the audience for a recent Question Time in Wootton Bassett, the town that lines the streets for each returning dead soldier, warmed to the arguments of anti-war campaigner Salma Yaqoob. So the politicians and supporters of the war must be thankful to Anjem Choudary, who's planned a march through Wootton Bassett for his group called Islam4UK.

To give him credit, no one could accuse Islam4UK of pandering to Middle England. If one of his supporters suggested "Maybe we should call ourselves Islam4UK, except for Surrey", he'd probably say "If you're going soft you can sod off and join the Liberal Democrats". Next week, you assume, he'll announce a parade demanding the ritual slaughter of all kittens live on Blue Peter.

The march allows supporters of the war to define the situation as sensible Britain versus militant Islam. But sensible Britain is turning against this war.

Joe Glenton has recently been released on bail, and his court martial takes place in three weeks, around the time another participant in war will be giving his evidence. So the rules seem to be that if you tell a lie to start a war, you're called up seven years later for a polite inquiry. And if you tell the truth to stop a war you're likely to get banged up. To someone somewhere I presume this all makes sense.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-heres-one-soldier-who-told-the-truth-about-this-war-1858857.html

De Israelische Terreur 1100

Terwijl in de polder nagenoeg iedere kunstenaar, politicus en autoriteit die z'n geld verdient met mensenrechten zich muisstil houdt, spreken hun collega's in de grote mensenwereld zich wel uit, zoals Brian Eno:

An Experiment in Provocation

Stealing Gaza

COUNTERPUNCH

By BRIAN ENO

It's a tragedy that the Israelis - a people who must understand better

than almost anybody the horrors of oppression - are now acting as

oppressors. As the great Jewish writer Primo Levi once remarked

"Everybody has their Jews, and for the Israelis it's the

Palestinians". By creating a middle Eastern version of the Warsaw

ghetto they are recapitulating their own history as though they've

forgotten it. And by trying to paint an equivalence between the

Palestinians - with their homemade rockets and stone-throwing

teenagers - and themselves - with one of the most sophisticated

military machines in the world - they sacrifice all credibility.

The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people who fully deserve the

right to live in peace, but who seem intent on squandering every

chance to allow that to happen. It's difficult to avoid the conclusion

that this conflict serves the political and economic purposes of

Israel so well that they have every interest in maintaining it. While

there is fighting they can continue to build illegal settlements.

While there is fighting they continue to receive huge quantities of

military aid from the United States. And while there is fighting they

can avoid looking candidly at themselves and the ruthlessness into

which they are descending.

Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million

people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity,

food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate

them regularly...and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why

would you want to make that experiment?

Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now 'under

attack' you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the

helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks

and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains

of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then

you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a

terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an

accommodation.

And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing

their homeland.

Brian Eno is a musician and music producer.

Het Neoliberale Geloof 495

Three top Wall Street banks to award $49.5 billion in year-end bonuses

By Barry Grey
5 January 2010

The US media has been virtually silent on the colossal year-end bonuses for 2009 that will shortly be handed out by major American banks and financial firms. This is doubtless a deliberate response by the corporate-controlled media to popular anger over the financial gains reaped by Wall Street executives, who have been bailed out at taxpayer expense while working people have been left to face depression levels of unemployment and mounting home foreclosures, hunger and poverty.

A brief article published on the inside pages of the business section of the January 1 New York Times (“With Bigger Bonuses, An Upside for Banks”) notes in passing that the three top Wall Street banks will pay out an estimated $49.5 billion in cash bonuses and stock awards.

Those banks—Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley—received a combined $45 billion in cash under the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) passed by Congress in October of 2008. Along with the rest of the banks, they have benefitted from trillions of dollars in nearly interest-free loans, debt guarantees, securities purchases and other subsidies from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board.

The government has further underwritten bank profits and surging bonuses by keeping interest rates at near-zero and pumping trillions of dollars of cheap credit into the financial markets, while placing no restrictions on the ability of the banks to resume the speculative practices that precipitated the financial crash of 2008.

Meanwhile, the American people have lost $11 trillion in wealth, primarily through the collapse of home values. For their part, the banks have sharply curtailed lending over the past 15 months, draining more than $3 trillion of credit from the economy.

In the fall of 2008, the Bush administration, with the support of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, sought to sell the bailout to the public on the grounds that it would enable the banks to resume lending. However, the TARP law imposed no strings on the bailed out banks, allowing them to do with the money what they wanted, without even requiring that they tell the government how they were using their cash windfalls.

The curtailment of lending by the banks has played a major role in deepening and prolonging the recession. Instead of increasing credit to businesses and consumers, the banks have made large—in some cases, record—profits through speculative trading in stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities.

The same article in the Times cites Robert Willens, an accounting and tax analyst in New York, who estimates that US banks will hand out $200 billion in total compensation, a figure that does not take into account the hedge fund industry.

To place this sum in perspective, it is roughly equal to the annual median salary of 4 million American workers.

All of the major banks have been allowed by the Obama administration to repay their TARP cash injections, thereby freeing them from minor restrictions on executive pay imposed on banks that continue to hold TARP money.

According to Willens, the banks will reap $80 billion in tax savings from the $200 billion in compensation, since most employee compensation is a tax deductible expense under existing tax laws. The biggest tax break will go to Goldman Sachs, which expects to award its employees a record $23 billion in bonuses. Goldman will save about $9 billion in federal income taxes on the bonuses it pays out for 2009.

Altogether, Goldman, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley will gain nearly $20 billion in tax breaks from their employee compensation this year.

Indicative of the year-end bonanza for bankers, the Times reported in a separate article on January 1 that Wells Fargo, the fourth largest US bank by assets, which received $25 billion in TARP cash, plans to pay its top four executives a combined $25 million in bonuses. These are to be paid entirely in stock options, rather than cash.

In awarding the bonuses in stock rather than cash, Wells Fargo is following the example of other big banks, including Goldman Sachs. Under prodding from the administration, banks are paying a greater portion of executive compensation in deferred stock, supposedly to tie pay awards to long-term growth rather than short-term gains. However, as the Times points out, “If banks… continue to rebound from the financial crisis, their shares—and the executive payouts—could surge.”

Since the government has made clear that it will impose no genuine reforms or restrictions on the banking industry, and will spend unlimited sums to protect the wealth of the Wall Street elite, the bankers have every reason to believe that stock bonuses will prove more lucrative than cash.

The government’s undiminished commitment to rescuing Wall Street was underscored on Christmas eve, when the Treasury announced that it was removing a $400 billion cap on government aid to the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and approving cash pay packages of $6 million each to the CEOs of the government-controlled firms.

Surging bank profits and bonuses go hand in hand with a dizzying rally on the US stock market. In a year that saw the permanent destruction of millions of jobs, all three major US stock indexes recorded massive increases. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 2009 up 18.8 percent for the year. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index surged 23.5 percent, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq rose 43.9 percent.

From their lows in early March, the stock indexes recorded even more staggering gains in a “rally many investors had not seen in their lifetime,” according to the January 1 Washington Post. The Dow rose 59 percent, the S&P 500 soared 65 percent and the Nasdaq was up 79 percent.

Financial stocks were up 15 percent for the year, including Bank of America, whose share price quadrupled from its March low. Ford stock increased 532 percent from its low point in March.

In all, the value of US stocks increased by $5.6 trillion from the market’s nadir, the resulting windfall going disproportionately to the wealthiest investors.

A major factor in the stunning rebound in the financial markets was the refusal of the government to impose any serious reforms in the wake of the worst financial crash since the Great Depression. As the Wall Street Journal noted in a year-end review on January 4: “But more than a year after Lehman Brothers, American International Group Inc., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Washington Mutual collapsed or were saved by the government and financial markets swooned, it is striking how little on Wall Street has changed.”

The scale and character of the government bailout was summed up aptly by Simon Johnson, the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, in a review of recent books on the financial crash. Writing in the December 27 Washington Post, Johnson said, “The Wall Street executives kept their jobs, their bonuses and their pensions; they benefitted from unprecedented rule changes and unlimited monetary and fiscal support; and their firms became even bigger and more dangerous to the economic health of society…

“The executives of our largest banks ran their firms into the ground, taking excessive risks that even now they fail to understand fully. But, as these individuals saw it, unless they personally were saved on incredibly generous terms, the world’s economy would grind to a halt.”

The Obama administration and the Democrats, no less than Bush and the Republicans, agreed that their chief mission was to rescue the personal fortunes of these executives and the financial oligarchy they represent.

Zie: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/bonu-j05.shtml

Het Neoliberale Geloof 494

Key Theme In Interview With ShadowStats' John Williams - (You Guessed It)
Hyperinflation And The Death Of The US Economy

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/key-theme-interview-shadowstats-john-williams-you-guessed-it-hyperinflation-and-death-us-eco

If you thought John Williams, who a month ago prophesied that the US could
be facing hyperinflation as soon as 2010, has changed his tune, think
again. In an interview conducted by Phil Maymin of the Fairfiled Weekly,
the man who has made a business out of debunking the government's data
fabrication machine, dishes out some very hard to swallow truths about the
US economy and where the fiat world is headed. As always, Williams'
perspectives are debate-worthy by all, whether inflationist or
deflationist: in a field of media sycophants, JW is not afraid to speak
what we all know, yet rarely wish to acknowledge.

Maymin: So we are technically bankrupt?

Williams: Yes, and when countries are in that state, what they usually do
is rev up the printing presses and print the money they need to meet their
obligations. And that creates inflation, hyperinflation, and makes the
currency worthless.

Obama says America will go bankrupt if Congress doesn't pass the health
care bill.

Well, it's going to go bankrupt if they do pass the health care bill, too,
but at least he's thinking about it. He talks about it publicly, which is
one thing prior administrations refused to do. Give him credit for that.
But what he's setting up with this health care system will just accelerate
the process.

Where are we right now?

In terms of the GDP, we are about halfway to depression level. If you look
at retail sales, industrial production, we are already well into
depressionary. If you look at things such as the housing industry, the new
orders for durable goods we are in Great Depression territory. If we have
hyperinflation, which I see coming not too far down the road, that would be
so disruptive to our system that it would result in the cessation of many
levels of normal economic commerce, and that would throw us into a great
depression, and one worse than was seen in the 1930s.

What kind of hyperinflation are we talking about?

I am talking something like you saw with the Weimar Republic of the 1930s.
There the currency became worthless enough that people used it actually as
toilet paper or wallpaper. You could go to a fine restaurant and have an
expensive dinner and order an expensive bottle of wine. The next morning
that empty bottle of wine is worth more as scrap glass than it had been the
night before filled with expensive wine.

We just saw an extreme example in Zimbabwe. ... Probably the most extreme
hyperinflation that anyone has ever seen. At the same time, you still had a
functioning, albeit troubled, Zimbabwe economy. How could that be? They had
a workable backup system of a black market in U.S. dollars. We don't have a
backup system of anything. Our system, with its heavy dependence on
electronic currency, in a hyperinflation would not do well. It would
probably cease to function very quickly. You could have disruptions in
supply chains to food stores. The economy would devolve into something like
a barter system until they came up with a replacement global currency.

What can we do to avoid hyperinflation? What if we just shut down the Fed
or something like that?

We can't. The actions have already been taken to put us in it. It's beyond
control. The government does put out financial statements usually in
December using generally accepted accounting principles, where unfunded
liabilities like Medicare and Social Security are included in the same way
as corporations account for their employee pension liabilities. And in
2008, for example, the one-year deficit was $5.1 trillion dollars. And
that's instead of the $450 billion, plus or minus, that was officially
reported.

Wow.

These numbers are beyond containment. Even the 2008 numbers, you can take
100 percent of people's income and corporate profit and you'd still be in
deficit. There's no way you can raise enough money in taxes.

What about spending?

If you eliminated all federal expenditures except for Medicare and Social
Security, you'd still be in deficit. You have to slash Social Security and
Medicare. But I don't see any political will to rein in the costs the way
they have to be reined in. There's just no way it can be contained. The
total federal debt and net present value of the unfunded liabilities right
now totals about $75 trillion. That's five times the level of GDP.

What can we, the people, do to stop the government from, you know, taking
all our money?

We should have acted 20 years ago. There's not much you can do at this
point to prevent the eventual debasement of the dollar. This involves both
sides of the political spectrum. It's not limited to the Republicans or the
Democrats. They've both been very active in setting this up.

What can individuals do?

The only thing individuals can do now is look to protect themselves. I wish
I could see a way, but shy of severe slashing of the social programs that
is so politically reprehensible and would create such problems and social
unrest, I don't see that as a practical solution.

If you're a young 20- or 25-year-old guy or gal, would you move to another
country? What would you do?

We still have a great country. We're going through a period of economic
pain. It's happened before. This is the kind of thing that's taken us
decades to get into and it will take us decades to get out. Although the
hyperinflation is going to be limited largely to the U.S., the economic
downturn will affect things globally. I can't tell you how things will go
with a hyperinflationary Great Depression, which is where I see things
going.

It's the type of thing that will tend to lead to significant political
change. People tend to vote their pocketbooks. You could have the rise of a
third party. You could even have rioting in the streets. I'm not formally
predicting that — anyone can run these different scenarios. For the
individual, what you need to do, from an investment standpoint, look to
preserve your wealth and assets. Don't worry about the day-to-day
fluctuations in the markets. What I'm talking about here is over the long
haul...

[Gold is] going to be highly volatile, as will the dollar, over the near
term, but longer term, physical gold I would look at as a primary hedge for
preserving the purchasing power of your wealth and assets. Maybe some
physical silver. Get some assets outside the U.S. dollar. I might even look
to move some assets physically outside the United States. The key here is
to look at a longer range survival package, battening down the hatches, and
preserving your wealth and assets during a very difficult time. Once you're
through that, you'll have some extraordinary investment opportunities, and
I can't tell you what it's going to be like on the other side of this
crisis.

Dr. Phil Maymin is an Assistant Professor of Finance and Risk Engineering
at NYU-Polytechnic Institute.

Reflexmatige Angst

Consensual Paranoia: The War Against Terrorism, McCarthyism, and the Case of US Air Force Lieutenant Milo Radulovich By Carl K. Savich Introduction: Consensual Paranoia What causes mass hysteria, fear, and panic? It is the perception of danger and fear that is the cause. A perception is a sensory or sense impression, or image we create in our own minds. The danger may not be real at all, but illusory. But the perception of danger is what leads to fear, insecurity, and a sense of danger that sets in motion psychological mechanisms.

Fear and panic lead to consensual paranoia, a primordial tribal psychological need to find an enemy or a scapegoat that a tribe seeks to destroy. Invariably, the tribe, society, nation, or government seeks to create a bipolar opposition, that is, a division between US and Them, the Tribe against the Enemy/Other, the Good Us against the Evil Them. This is a primal/fundamental psychological need that is an evolutionary vestige from when man was animalistic in evolutionary development. So while a regressive and infantile orientation, it is nevertheless a basic and primary orientation. We create tribal, societal, and national solidarity by delineating our tribe, the Good Tribe from the Other Tribe, the Evil Tribe, the Tribe of Strangers/Foreigners/Aliens whom we know nothing about.

Ignorance induces fear, xenophobia, induces a sense or perception of danger, induces paranoia, an imaginary or illusory impression of danger or threat. The need to find an Enemy, the need to create a bipolar opposition, Us versus Them, is a primordial animalistic impulse that goes back to when mankind was in a primitive, tribal state. In primeval times, man perceived the unknown and strangers as dangerous and as a threat. This was an almost unthinking reflex or instinct that was motivated by self-preservation. As man evolved, his reasoning faculty evolved to the point where reasoning overrode this primitive reflex.

But governments and political leaders and nations continue to exploit this primitive human psychological orientation to foment war. Aggregations of individuals into crowds, groups, religious groups, nationality and ethnic groups, must be motivated and incited to act. To do this, reason becomes secondary and governments and political leaders resort to the primordial impulses of the herd or tribe or crowd/mob, to a regressive or backward psychological orientation. Fear and insecurity must be engendered in the tribe/clan/nation. Concomitantly to fear and danger and insecurity the impulses of hatred and anger and intolerance are engineered. Governments and political leaders self-induce this irrational fear, paranoia, to advance national objectives. Invariably, a consensual paranoia is fomented and results, creating Outsiders versus Insiders, Us versus Them, the Good versus the Evil, the Free World versus the Communist bloc, “Freedom” versus “the Axis of Evil”, Christians versus Jews versus Muslims versus Hindus. The psychological mechanism is the same/identical in every case, consensual paranoia, a paranoia needed to foment hate, racism, bigotry, intolerance, and war, that is, the killing of others. Reason becomes degraded while a primordial paranoia is self-induced.

A perception of danger and of threat leads to intolerance and racism. The perception is what is needed to induce the paranoid orientation needed to kill. The danger or threat may be illusory or imagined, but it is only the sense of danger that is needed, the danger need not be real or present at all. Projection and transference then allow us to project or impute our worst vices onto a chosen enemy or scapegoat. What is the origin of a scapegoat? The term “scapegoat” was coined in 1530 by English religious reformer William Tyndale for a primal worldwide psychological mechanism for expiation of sin and crime. A scapegoat is a group, individual, nation, ethnic group, or religious group upon whom the crimes, sins, mistakes, or guilt of others is placed upon or imputed to. The term is derived from Late Latin caper emissaries, emissary goat, which is a translation of the Hebrew word azazel, name of a desert demon, or ezozel, a goat that escapes or leaves. In Leviticus 16:7-26, the Jewish high priest Aaron confessed the sins of the people of Israel over the head of a goat which was then let loose into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement. Transference or projection whether unto a goat, onto a nation, people, or religious group, or individual, thus serves a psychological function, a primordial and universal function.

The War against Terrorism

The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC and the subsequent Anthrax attacks created a panic and hysteria in the US not seen since the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The 9/11 attacks resulted in approximately 3,000 deaths and the destruction of the twin World Trade Center Towers and outlying buildings and areas and considerable damage to the Pentagon building and the downing of a third hijacked plane in Pennsylvania with the loss of all life on board. The attack was an unprecedented assault on the US mainland, perceived as impregnable and immune to attack. The shock the attack caused was massive and deep, resulting in panic and hysteria. The impact was psychological. An emphasis on national security emerged as an overriding focus. A “war on terror” or “war against terrorism” was declared by President George W. Bush. Invariably, individual rights and liberties were sacrificed for national security.

Throughout American history, during times of crisis and perceived threats or dangers from outside the country, a patriotic/nationalist hysteria or panic emerged. During the Civil War, Edward Everett Hale published “The Man Without a Country”, whose protagonist was Philip Nolan, a man who had forsaken his country. The story extolled the virtues of unity over secession and patriotism over independence. The story was reissued during the Spanish-American War in 1898 to stir up patriotic fervor. Waves of ultra-patriotism and ultra-nationalism were engendered which were manifested in flag waving, the singing of the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful and The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the display of the symbolic colors of red, white, and blue of the American flag. This was a crude form of jingoism. Following 9/11, Irving Berlin’s anthem “God Bless America” from 1938 and the World War II period was revived. Moreover, moral superiority was maintained by claiming that justice and morality was on our side and by invoking the slogan that “In God We Trust”, that God too was on our side. It was a fight between good, us, and evil, them, between Freedom, and the “Evil” or the “Evil Doers” or “the Axis of Evil”. The dichotomy is a primordial archetype of the psychology of enmity. Every nation, people, and country seeks to gain the moral high ground by invoking God. German soldiers, for instance, wore on their belt buckles the slogan “Gott mit uns”, God is with us. In all wars, all combatants claim moral superiority over the others.

Fear and insecurity results in consensual paranoia. The Salem Witch Trials resulted from the consensual paranoia and panic caused by fears of a French and Indian attack. Salem was settled by Puritans, who had a rigid and austere moral code. The Salem witch-hunt hysteria began when a slave and two other women were accused of witchcraft. In the ensuing panic and hysteria, hundreds of persons were arrested. Many accused were tried using “spectral evidence”, evidence gleaned from voices which the accused and accusers heard. Nineteen were hanged as witches. Then there was the Red Scare of the 1920s, following the establishment of Bolshevik Russia in 1917 and the spread of Marxist/Communist/Socialist movements to the United States. In the North there was legalized racial discrimination and segregation, “separate but equal”, as established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In the South, there was Jim Crow and KKK terror enforced by lynchings. There were race riots in Detroit in 1943 and 1967 and in Los Angeles in 1965 and 1992. In 1921 a race riot erupted in Tulsa, Oklahoma in “The Negro Wall Street” whereby 35 districts were burned and looted by white vigilantes and police and National Guard troops which resulted in 36 to 300 people killed and 800 injured. Over 6,000 blacks were interned/held for eight days due to the “Negro uprising”. The Tulsa Riots were covered up by the media and government. In times of perceived threat, there have been eruptions of mass hysteria and intolerance and violence.

Lees verder: http://www.maknews.com/html/articles/savich/savich5.html

Het Neoliberale Geloof 493

How Main Street Got Shafted While Wall Street Bounced Back
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog. Posted January 5, 2010.

Unless you work on Wall Street, you've probably had a hard year. Don't expect 2010 to be any better. Tools

In September 2008, as the worst of the financial crisis engulfed Wall Street, George W. Bush issued a warning: "This sucker could go down." Around the same time, as Congress hashed out a bailout bill, New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the leading Republican negotiator of the bill, warned that "if we do not do this, the trauma, the chaos and the disruption to everyday Americans' lives will be overwhelming, and that's a price we can't afford to risk paying."

In less than a year, Wall Street was back. The five largest remaining banks are today larger, their executives and traders richer, their strategies of placing large bets with other people's money no less bold than before the meltdown. The possibility of new regulations emanating from Congress has barely inhibited the Street's exuberance.

But if Wall Street is back on top, the everyday lives of large numbers of Americans continue to be subject to overwhelming trauma, chaos and disruption.

It is commonplace among policymakers to fervently and sincerely believe that Wall Street's financial health is not only a precondition for a prosperous real economy but that when the former thrives, the latter will necessarily follow. Few fictions of modern economic life are more assiduously defended than the central importance of the Street to the well-being of the rest of us, as has been proved in 2009.

Inhabitants of the real economy are dependent on the financial economy to borrow money. But their overwhelming reliance on Wall Street is a relatively recent phenomenon. Back when middle-class Americans earned enough to be able to save more of their incomes, they borrowed from one another, largely through local and regional banks. Small businesses also did.

It's easy to understand economic policymakers being seduced by the great flows of wealth created among Wall Streeters, from whom they invariably seek advice. One of the basic assumptions of capitalism is that anyone paid huge sums of money must be very smart.

But if 2009 has proved anything, it's that the bailout of Wall Street didn't trickle down to Main Street. Mortgage delinquencies continue to rise. Small businesses can't get credit. And people everywhere, it seems, are worried about losing their jobs. Wall Street is the only place where money is flowing and pay is escalating. Top executives and traders on the Street will soon be splitting about $25 billion in bonuses (despite Goldman Sachs' decision, made with an eye toward public relations, to defer bonuses for its 30 top players).

The real locus of the problem was never the financial economy to begin with, and the bailout of Wall Street was a sideshow. The real problem was on Main Street, in the real economy. Before the crash, much of America had fallen deeply into unsustainable debt because it had no other way to maintain its standard of living. That's because for so many years almost all the gains of economic growth had been going to a relatively small number of people at the top.

President Obama and his economic team have been telling Americans we'll have to save more in future years, spend less and borrow less from the rest of the world, especially from China. This is necessary and inevitable, they say, in order to "rebalance" global financial flows. China has saved too much and consumed too little, while we have done the reverse.

In truth, most Americans did not spend too much in recent years, relative to the increasing size of the overall American economy. They spent too much only in relation to their declining portion of its gains. Had their portion kept up -- had the people at the top of corporate America, Wall Street banks and hedge funds not taken a disproportionate share -- most Americans would not have felt the necessity to borrow so much.

The year 2009 will be remembered as the year when Main Street got hit hard. Don't expect 2010 to be much better -- that is, if you live in the real economy. The administration is telling Americans that jobs will return next year, and we'll be in a recovery. I hope they're right. But I doubt it. Too many Americans have lost their jobs, incomes, homes and savings. That means most of us won't have the purchasing power to buy nearly all the goods and services the economy is capable of producing. And without enough demand, the economy can't get out of the doldrums.

As long as income and wealth keep concentrating at the top, and the great divide between America's have-mores and have-lesses continues to widen, the Great Recession won't end -- at least not in the real economy.


See more stories tagged with: economy, wall street
Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He also served on President Obama's transition advisory board. His latest book is Supercapitalism.

Zie: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144922/how_main_street_got_shafted_while_wall_street_bounced_back/

Spinoza

Vanmiddag, bij mij in de buurt, de dissident Spinoza, die moest uitwijken naar Den Haag omdat hij in conflict kwam met de joodse gemeenschap in Amsterdam. De burgerij vreesde zijn vrijheid van geest. De wereld verandert niet echt.

De Israelische Terreur 1099

Viva Palestina Arrives in Egypt to Enter Gaza

Viva Palestina humanitarian aid convoy has arrived in the Egyptian port city of El-Arish to pass thought the Rafah border crossing into the Gaza Strip.

A Turkish ship, which carries the convoy from the Syrian port of Lattakia to Egypt, arrived in El-Arish on Sunday evening, said Gamal Abdel Maqsoud, head of El-Arish port.

The ship carrying the 250-vehicle convoy will be unloaded at the port and be transferred to the Gaza Strip via Rafah crossing, according to Egypt's official MENA news agency.

According to the report, 528 activists from 17 countries who are onboard the convoy will also travel to Gaza.

Five Turkish lawmakers will also join the UK-based convoy on Monday.

They are expected to enter Gaza on Tuesday evening and will stay for 24 hours to deliver all humanitarian aids to the Gazan authorities.

The convoy, which departed from London on December 6, was scheduled to deliver medical, humanitarian and educational aid to Gazans on December 27.

It was, however, forced to return to Syria from the Jordanian port city of Aqaba after Cairo refused to allow it to go through the Red Sea port of Nuweiba — the most direct route.

Cairo insisted that the convoy can only enter through the Mediterranean port city of El-Arish.

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/news.php?id=c191ca3bc92fafae92e72f44804603fa&mode=details#c191ca3bc92fafae92e72f44804603fa

Yochanan Visser als Crimineel 34

Lucas verwijst naar de complexe relatie slachtoffer-beul die het gevolg is van uiterst traumatische gebeurtenissen. Een soortgelijke ontkenning of onderdrukking ziet men bij de zionistische propagandist Yochanan Visser wanneer hij het publiekelijk doet voorkomen alsof de Palestijnse bevolking blij is met de Joods-Israelische bezetting. Een dader zoals Visser moet op een of andere manier zijn geweten sussen en dus ontkent hij de werkelijkheid of zet die werkelijkheid in een absurd daglicht, net zoals een ernstig getraumiseerd slachtoffer dit soms doet.

Israel's Nazi-porn problem

Hot she-wolves of the SS, rescued from the memory hole. Also: Buddhism for murderers, housewife seeks Asian stud and more.

BY ANDREW O'HEHIR

Photo courtesy of Heymann Brothers Films

Taking their name from the Nazi prison camps in which they were set, Stalags were Israeli pornographic paperbacks featuring Nazi themes.

How do you make a movie about a disreputable and totally defunct literary genre? That question never quite gets answered by Ari Libsker's hour-long documentary "Stalags," but the questions Libsker raises about truth, fiction, sexuality and post-Holocaust Jewish identity are so interesting the film's lack of cinematic sensibility may not matter. For some reason Libsker shot most of "Stalags" on black-and-white video, a distracting and perverse choice given that the Nazi-themed pulp novels of his title sported titillating covers in lurid color. Maybe he wants to dampen the sensationalistic aspect of his subject matter, but there's really no way to do that.

As many older Israelis evidently remember, the then-new nation was afflicted by a perverse pop-culture craze in the early '60s, at a time when nearly half the population consisted of Holocaust survivors, nationalist sentiment ran high and moral codes were extremely puritanical. Yet the newsstands in the Tel Aviv bus station sold racks of semi-pornographic pulp novels known as "Stalags," whose utterly implausible, Penthouse Forum-meets-Marquis de Sade plots ventured into the most forbidden terrain imaginable. Stalags all followed essentially the same formula: An American or British World War II pilot (generally not Jewish) is shot down behind enemy lines, where he is imprisoned, tortured and raped by an entire phalanx of sadistic, voluptuous female SS officers. His body violated but his spirit unbroken, the plucky Yank or Brit escapes in the end to rape and murder his captors.

Stalags thrived for a few years and then disappeared, banished to the memory hole as a massive cultural embarrassment. Libsker meets a couple of the dubious characters who collect them; one insists that his face be obscured on camera (like a corporate whistleblower or a child molester on "60 Minutes"), and also appears to believe that the scenarios depicted actually occurred during World War II, or at least could have. (Just in case you're wondering, there were no female SS officers, nor any other women assigned to guard Allied POWs.) Israel's national library appears to contain a trove of them, buried deep in the catalog software and hidden from public view. Yet as some Israelis who were children and teenagers at the time testify, the Stalags provided sexual titillation in a society that repressed it, and also the illicit thrill of accessing a dark, secret recent past their European-born parents never discussed. They offered a Stockholm-syndrome equation of evil with eros and a juvenile revenge fantasy, all rolled into one.

As an outsider to both Judaism and Israeli society, I don't find the existence of the Stalags mysterious in the least. Given the scale of trauma that brought the State of Israel into being, and brought so many of its inhabitants over the sea, some kind of twisted and perverse fantasy reaction was inevitable. As Libsker's film further explains, the televised trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann transfixed Israelis in the early '60s, providing many younger people their first look at the horrific and dramatic events many of their parents had witnessed first hand. The Stalags may be understood as a dream-world, midnight version of the Eichmann revelations.

Libsker tracks down a former Stalags author, who still seems injured that the phenomenon did not bring him massive literary fame, along with a publisher who cheerfully shrugs the whole thing off: We gave the public what they wanted, and who am I to judge? But "Stalags" is most interesting when Libsker explores the deeper significance of this craze, as it reflects Israel's pseudo-pornographic relationship to the past. Many Jews and non-Jews remain fixated on salacious details of the Holocaust, such as the "Night Porter" idea that female camp inmates ensured their survival by sleeping with German officers, or that the Nazis maintained brothels of Jewish women at Auschwitz and other camps. Such things may have happened here and there, but they are not clearly attested, and in any case fade into total insignificance against the scale of the tragedy.

"Stalags" comes with a perfect companion piece, a short film called "Two Women and a Man" by avant-garde Israeli artist Roee Rosen, who has offended audiences worldwide with his interactive exhibition "Live and Die as Eva Braun." I can't tell you much about "Two Women and a Man" without giving Rosen's gambit away, but it purports to be a film about Justine Frank, a rediscovered Belgian Jewish surrealist of the 1930s and '40s whose pornographic and scatological art outraged even her artistic peers by repurposing Jewish themes and images in many distasteful directions. Not to be missed if you're fond of intellectual parlor games.

"Stalags" and "Two Women and a Man" are now playing at Film Forum in New York. Other engagements will follow.

• http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2008/04/11/stalags/index.html