In De Groene Amsterdammer van woensdag 11 maart 2015 beweerde columnist Henk Hofland ditmaal het volgende:
De Iraanse bom
Vorige week heeft de Israëlische premier Netanyahu voor het Amerikaanse Congres geprobeerd drie vliegen in één klap te slaan. Ten eerste verklaarde hij dat de onderhandelingen met Iran over het staken van het werk aan een kernwapen op niets zouden uitlopen. Daarmee hielp hij de militante Republikeinen in de ontluikende verkiezingsstrijd.
Hij kreeg ovationele bijval. En zo leverde hij meteen een bijdrage tot de Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek. En ten derde diende deze toespraak ook zijn eigen verkiezingsstrijd. Op 17 maart zijn er verkiezingen in Israël en Netanyahu is niet alleen compromisloos als het om de Iraanse kernindustrie gaat; hij wil ook dat Washington dit standpunt volstrekt deelt. Overigens was president Obama voor deze rede niet uitgenodigd. In andere landen zou Netanyahu misschien beschuldigd zijn van inmenging in binnenlandse aangelegenheden. Maar daarvoor is de vriendschap tussen Amerika en Israël te hecht.
Ik begin met de conclusie: 'de vriendschap tussen Amerika en Israël [is] te hecht,' voor de 'Amerikanen' om 'Netanyahu' te kunnen beschuldigen 'van inmenging in binnenlandse aangelegenheden.' Allereerst blijkt uit deze overtuiging dat de 87-jarige nooit iets begrepen heeft van geopolitiek, want zoals Charles de Gaulle de echtgenote van Churchill probeerde duidelijk te maken, hebben landen geen vrienden, maar alleen belangen. Een opiniemaker die dit niet begrijpt, is niet in staat de politiek te doorgronden. Ten tweede is het Hofland kennelijk niet opgevallen dat na het verschijnen van de studie The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy in 2007, Amerikaanse politici en academici de 'Joodse staat' en haar zionistische lobby wel degelijk beschuldigen 'van inmenging in binnenlandse aangelegenheden' van de Verenigde Staten. Het boek, geschreven door twee vooraanstaande Amerikaanse geleerden, John Mearsheimer, professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, en professor of International Relations at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, was zelfs een 'New York Times Best Seller' en veroorzaakte zowel in de VS als in Israel aanzienlijke opschudding. Ter aanvulling voor Hofland en de redactie van De Groene: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
describes the lobby as a 'loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.' The book 'focuses primarily on the lobby's influence on U.S. foreign policy and its negative effect on American interests.'
Als Hofland zich over dit onderwerp had geïnformeerd dan zou hij hebben geweten dat beide academici acht jaar geleden over de zionistische lobby een voordracht in Amsterdam hadden gegeven.
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
12 Nov '07 - 11:50 by houck021
Interview with professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University, the American authors of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
November 2007 both authors spoke in Amsterdam about their book which had been translated into Dutch. The Dutch moderator during the meeting in the packed hall was himself a pro-Israel lobbyist. But this also happens sometimes in the US, both authors told me the next day, when I asked them if in general the public reactions were fundamentally different in the Netherlands than in the USA.
Door de grote invloed van lobby-organisaties als AIPAC wordt de Amerikaanse Midden Oosten politiek al langere tijd grotendeels bepaald door een kleine rechtse joodse lobby, zoals Bill Clinton uit ervaring wist toen hij verklaarde dat AIPAC 'beter dan wie dan ook in deze stad lobbyt… U bent verbluffend effectief geweest.' Niemand verbaasde zich over de woorden van deze president, wiens verkiezingscampagnes mede door de Israëllobby werden gefinancierd en wiens Midden-Oosten politiek dan ook door deze lobby sterk beïnvloed was. In 2003 omschreef de Republikein Condoleezza Rice de zionistische lobbygroep AIPAC als 'een grote aanwinst voor ons land,' en de hoofdredacteur van het goed geïnformeerde joodse dagblad The Forward, J.J. Goldberg, concludeerde dat
Israël vooral geluk heeft dat AIPAC in dit land bestaat om Israëls zaak te vertegenwoordigen. AIPAC werkt hard om er zeker van te zijn dat Amerika in grote lijnen Israëls kijk op de wereld en het Midden-Oosten bekrachtigt… AIPAC heeft veel invloed op de buitenlandse politiek.
Martin Sieff, de voormalige 'chief news analyst for United Press International and its former Managing Editor for International Affairs' constateerde in 1999 dat de
macht van AIPAC om financiële steun te mobiliseren voor pro-Israël-kandidaten… zo groot is dat dit jaar, zoals gebruikelijk, ongeveer de helft van de leden van de Senaat en een een derde van het Huis van Afgevaardigden verwacht worden… bij het politieke banket van AIPAC’s jaarlijkse conferentie.
In 1992 moest David Steiner als president van AIPAC terugtreden nadat was uitgelekt dat er geluidsopnamen bestonden waarop hij vrijmoedig spreekt over zijn grote politieke invloed in Washington. Zo had hij verklaard dat hij 'een deal had gesloten' met de regering-Bush senior om meer geld aan Israël te geven. Hij had gezorgd voor 'bijna een miljard dollar aan spullen,' en 'onderhandelde' met de aantredende regering-Clinton over de benoeming van een pro-Israël minister van Buitenlandse Zaken. 'Wij hebben een tiental mensen in zijn [Clintons] hoofdkwartier en ze gaan allemaal hoge posten krijgen,' aldus de president van AIPAC. De goed geïnformeerde journalist Michael Massing schreef in The New York Review of Books dat een staflid van het Congres hem verteld had dat 'we op meer dan de helft van het Huis van Afgevaardigden kunnen rekenen – 250 tot 300 leden – om voor elkaar te krijgen wat AIPAC wil.' Steven Rosen, de voormalige AIPAC-medewerker die werd aangeklaagd wegens spionage, nadat hij - naar verluidt - geheime Amerikaanse staatsdocumenten had doorgespeeld aan Israël, zei tijdens een diner met een journalist van The New Yorker:
Binnen 24 uur hebben wij de handtekeningen van 70 senatoren op dit servet staan als dat zou moeten.
oftewel 70 procent van alle senatoren, terwijl slechts 2 procent van de Amerikanen van joodse afkomst is, en een aanzienlijk deel van hen ook nog eens AIPAC absoluut niet steunt. Desondanks constateerde de voormalige Democratische senator Ernest Hollings dat voor de Amerikaanse volksvertegenwoordiging er 'geen andere Israël-politiek mogelijk [is] dan die welke AIPAC hier bepaalt.' Het zijn al deze feiten die Ehud Olmert ertoe bracht om als Israelische premier publiekelijk te verklaren:
Dank God dat wij AIPAC hebben, de grootste verdediger en vriend die we in de hele wereld hebben.
Ovationeel applaus van het Amerikaanse Congres voor Netanyahu's aanval op de poging van de Amerikaanse president om de wereld te behoeden voor een nieuwe oorlog in het chaotische Midden-Oosten. In een geld-cultuur spreekt geld het luidst.
Deze buitensporig grote invloed op vraagstukken van oorlog en vrede is natuurlijk ondemocratisch en bovendien levensgevaarlijk voor de hele wereld. Die ontwikkeling kan alleen tot nog meer bloedvergieten leiden, en voedt tegelijkertijd ook nog eens de wereldwijd groeiende weerzin tegen het extremisme van de zionistische staat. Toch verandert er niets in Washington. Het is algemeen bekend dat de Clinton's nauwe banden hebben met de extreem-rechtse joodse lobby. Hillary Clinton was tijdens haar senaatscampagne in 2006 'one of the top Democratic recipients of pro-Israel funds,' hetgeen resulteerde in haar overdreven pro-Israel steun. Voor wat hoort wat, Amerikaanse politici worden niet voor niets gekocht door kapitaalkrachtige lobbies.
During a Hanukkah dinner speech delivered in December 2005, hosted by Yeshiva University, (Hillary) Clinton prattled, 'I held a series of meetings with Israeli officials [last summer], including the prime minister and the foreign minister and the head of the [Israel Defense Forces], to discuss such challenges we confront. In each of these meetings, we talked at length about the dire threat posed by the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, not only to Israel, but also to Europe and Russia. Just this week, the new president of Iran made further outrageous comments that attacked Israel's right to exist that are simply beyond the pale of international discourse and acceptability. During my meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, I was reminded vividly of the threats that Israel faces every hour of every day… It became even more clear how important it is for the United States to stand with Israel…'
As Clinton embraces Israel's violence, as well as AIPAC's fraudulent posture on Iran, she simultaneously ignores the hostilities inflicted upon Palestine, as numerous Palestinians have been killed during the continued shelling of the Gaza Strip over the past year.
Clinton's silence toward Israel's brutality implies the senator will continue to support AIPAC's mission to occupy the whole of the occupied territories, as well as a war on Iran. AIPAC is correct – even President Bush appears to be a little sheepish when up against the warmongering of Hillary Clinton.
Dus wanneer H.J.A. Hofland in De Groene het heeft over de 'vriendschap tussen Amerika en Israël' die 'te hecht' is om in de VS 'Netanyahu' te beschuldigen 'van inmenging in binnenlandse aangelegenheden,' dan betekent dit dat de hoogbejaarde bewust verzwijgt dat de Midden-Oosten standpunten van de Amerikaanse volksvertegenwoordigers niet bepaald worden door 'vriendschap,' maar door de permanente chantage van de fanatieke zionistisch lobby. Hoeveel macht de zionistische lobby in de VS bezit, bleek opnieuw op 17 juli 2014 toen 100 van de 100 senatoren voor een pro-Israel motie stemde, daarmee aantonend dat ook de voltallige senaat in een neoliberale 'democratie' omkoopbaar is. Philip Weiss,
an American journalist who co-edits Mondoweiss ('a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective') with journalist Adam Horowitz. Weiss describes himself as an anti-Zionist and rejects the label 'post-Zionist'
concludeerde een dag later:
Bowing to AIPAC, Senate unanimously passes resolution supporting Israel.
The Senate yesterday unanimously passed a resolution backed by the Israel lobby group AIPAC expressing support for Israel’s attack on Gaza and saying not a word about Palestinian deaths.
The Hill says that the resolution passed 'through a unanimous consent agreement.'
'The United States Senate is in Israel’s camp,' [South Carolina Senator Lindsey] Graham said on the Senate floor Thursday.
The resolution describes Palestinian attacks on Israel as 'unprovoked' and says not a word about Palestinian deaths, but speaks of the survival of Israel in urging the dissolution of the unified Palestinian government:
Reaffirms the United States’ support for Israel’s right to defend its citizens and ensure the survival of the State of Israel…
Calls on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the unity governing arrangement with Hamas and condemn the attacks on Israel.
NJ Senator Cory Booker blamed Hamas for the violence:
'I strongly condemn the heinous attacks being perpetrated by Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel. No country should have to live under a constant threat of aggression against its people, and I stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel as it defends itself against this shocking violence. My heart goes out to the citizens of Israel and the countless civilians in Gaza caught in this Hamas-initiated violence.'
MJ Rosenberg says it’s all about pro-Israel money, and that Senators have a double standard for US military actions and Israeli ones:
Note that even progressive saints Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Sherrod Brown, and Bernie Sanders found nothing in this to object to.
For the record, no U.S. military adventure has had the support of all hundred senators in decades. But, hey, this is Israel. And, more important, this is AIPAC. And cash.
Here’s more about the money from the Israel lobby. The Nation is reporting that the “anti-Iran lobby machine dominates Capitol Hill." Reporter Eli Clifton is frank about 'The Money Behind the Lobby':
Sheldon Adelson
Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands Corporation
Estimated worth: $36.8 billion
Iran-related contributions:
Over $1.5 million to the FDD [Foundation for the Defense of Democracies] between 2008 and 2011;
at least $1.04 million to AIPAC since 2007
- In October 2013, Adelson—who along with his wife, Miriam, was the GOP’s biggest donor during the 2012 presidential campaign—said the United States should drop a nuclear bomb in the Iranian desert to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear program.
Paul Singer
Founder, Elliot Management hedge fund
Estimated worth: $1.5 billion.
Iran-related contributions:
$3.6 million to the FDD between 2008 and 2011;
$1.5 million to AIPAC between 2010 and 2011
- Singer was listed as the American Enterprise Institute’s second-largest donor in 2009, giving $2.31 million to the organization between 2009 and 2011. He was also a major fundraiser for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.
Bernard Marcus
Co-founder, Home Depot
Estimated worth: $3.6 billion
Iran-related contributions:
$10.7 million to the FDD between 2008 and 2011,
making him its biggest donor in that period;
$2.1 million to the FDD in 2012;
$650,000 to the AEI between 2007 and 2012;
$2.45 million to AIPAC between 2007 and 2012
- In the 2012 presidential campaign, Marcus contributed $60,000 to the Republican National Committee and $20,000 to a Mitt Romney Super PAC; he also maxed out his personal contributions to the Romney campaign.
The contributions to AIPAC from all three donors were directed to the American Israel Education Foundation, which calls itself 'the charitable organization affiliated with AIPAC.'
That last organization, AIEF, is what sent Florida Democratic Congresswoman Kathy Castor to Israel. And Castor refused to say anything publicly on behalf of her Palestinian-American constituent Tarek Abu Khdeir, who was brutally beaten by Israeli police.
Let’s be clear about this. Democrats are getting support from an organization backed by Republican high-roller Sheldon Adelson, who called on Obama to nuke Iran. Support for Israel transcends American politics. It has not been politicized. Even Rand Paul supported the Gaza resolution yesterday.
'Hello, there.' Hillary Clinton, de Democratische spreekbuis van de zionistische lobby, zwaait naar oude bekenden, die ook haar echtgenoot hadden gefinancierd.
Het is de rijke zionistische lobby die met veel geld het failliete Amerikaanse Midden-Oosten beleid dicteert. Op 2 november 2013 stelde de Amerikaanse emeritus hoogleraar James Petras de volgende diagnose onder de kop 'Israel Buys the US Congress: Sabotaging the US-Iran Peace Negotiations':
The Context of Israeli Military Supremacy in the Middle East
Since the end of World War II, Israel has bombed, invaded and occupied more countries in the Middle East and Africa than previous colonial power, except the US. The list of Israel ’s victims includes: Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Sudan and Yemen. If we include countries where Israel has launched quasi-clandestine terrorist attacks and assassinations, the list would be greatly expanded to include a dozen countries in Europe and Asia – including the US through its Zionist terror network.
Israel ’s projection of military power, its capacity for waging offensive wars at will, is matched by its near-total impunity. Despite their repeated violations of international law, including war crimes, Israel has never been censored at an international tribunal or subjected to economic sanctions because the US government uses its position to veto UN Security Council resolutions and pressure its NATO-EU allies.
Israel’s military supremacy has less to do with the native techno-industrial ‘brilliance’ of its war-mongers and more to do with the transfers and outright theft of nuclear, chemical and biological technology and weapons from the US (Grant Smith 'Ten Explosive US Government Secrets of Israel' IRMEP). Overseas Zionists in the US and France have played a strategic (and treasonous) role in stealing and illegally shipping nuclear technology and weapon components to Israel, according to an investigation by former CIA Director Richard Helms.
Israel maintains huge nuclear, chemical, and biological weapon stockpiles refusing any access to international arms inspectors and is not obliged to abide by the non-proliferation treaty, because of US diplomatic intervention. Under pressure from the local ‘Zionist power configuration’ (ZPC), the US government has blocked any action which might constrain Israel ’s production of weapons of mass destruction. In fact the US continues to provide Israel with strategic weapons of mass destruction for use against its neighbors — in violation of international law.
US military aid and technology transfers to Israel exceed $100 billion dollars over the past half century. US diplomatic and military intervention was crucial in rescuing Israel from defeat during the 1973 war. US President Lyndon Johnson’s refusal to defend the unarmed intelligence ship, the USS Liberty in 1967, after it had been bombed and napalmed by Israeli fighter planes and warships in international waters, constituted a tremendous victory for Israel thanks to Johnson’s Zionist advisers. Because of its impunity, even in killing American servicemen, Israel has been given a free hand to wage aggressive wars to dominate its neighbors, commit acts of terrorism and assassinate its adversaries throughout the world without fear of retaliation.
Israel’s uncontested military superiority has converted several of its neighbors to quasi-client collaborators: Egypt and Jordan have served as de facto allies, along with the Gulf monarchies, helping Israel repress the region’s nationalist and pro-Palestinian movements.
The most decisive factor in the rise and consolidation of Israel’s power in the Middle East has not been its military prowess but its political reach and influence via its Zionist agents in the US. Washington’s wars against Iraq and Libya, and its current support of the mercenary assault against Syria, have destroyed three major secular nationalist opponents of Israel’s hegemonic ambitions.
As Israel accumulates more power in the region, expanding its colonization of Palestinian territory, it looks eastward toward destroying the last remaining obstacle to its colonial policies: Iran…
After the ZPC successfully pushed the US into war against Iraq in 2003 — literally shredding its complex secular society and killing over a million Iraqis – it turned its sights on destroying Lebanon (Hezbollah) and the secular government of Syria as a way to isolate Iran and prepare for an attack. While thousands of Lebanese civilians were slaughtered in 2006, Israel ’s attack of Lebanon failed, despite the support of the US government and the ZPC’s wild propaganda campaign. Hysterical at its failure and to ‘compensate’ for its defeat at the hands of Hezbollah and to ‘boost morale’, Israel invaded and destroyed much of Gaza (2008/9) – the world’s largest open air prison camp.
Lacking military capacity to attack Iran on its own, Israel directed its agents to manipulate the US government to start a war with Teheran. The militarist leaders in Tel Aviv have unleashed their political assets (ZPC) throughout the US to work to destroy Iran – the last formidable adversary to Israel supremacy in the Middle East.
The Israeli-ZPC strategy is designed to set the stage for a US confrontation with Iran, using its agents in the Executive branch as well as its ongoing corruption, bribery and control of the US Congress. ZPC control over the mass media enhances its propaganda campaign: Everyday the New York Times and the Washington Post publish articles and editorials promoting Israel ’s war agenda. The ZPC uses the US State Department to force other NATO states to likewise confront Iran.
Israel’s Proxy War with Iran: US Political Pressure, Economic Sanctions and Military Threats
Alone, Israel’s ‘war’ with Iran would not amount to much more than its cyber sabotage, the periodical assassinations of Iranian scientists using its paid agents among Iranian terrorist groups and non-stop brow-beating from Israeli politicians and their ‘amen crowd.’ Outside of Israel , this campaign has had little impact on public opinion. Israel’s ‘was’ on Iran depends exclusively on its capacity to manipulate US policy using its local agents and groups who dominate the US Congress and through the appointments of officials in key positions in the Departments of Treasury, Commerce, and Justice, and as Middle East ‘advisors.’ Israel cannot organize an effective sanction campaign against Iran; nor could it influence any major power to abide by such a campaign. Only the US has that power. Israel ’s dominance in the Middle East comes entirely from its capacity to mobilize its proxies in the United States who are assigned the task of securing total submission to Israel ’s interests from elected and appointed government officials — especially in regard to Israel ’s regional adversaries.
Strategically placed, ‘dual US-Israeli citizens’ have used their US citizenship to secure high security positions in the Government directly involved in policies affecting Israel . As Israelis, their activities are in line with the dictates of Tel Aviv. In the Bush administration (2001-2008) high placed ‘Israel Firsters’ dominated the Pentagon (Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith), Middle East Security (Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross), the Vice President’s office (‘Scooter’ Libby), Treasury (Levey) and Homeland Security (Michael Chertoff). In the Obama administration the ‘Israel Firsters’ include Dennis Ross, Rahm Emanuel, David Cohen, Secretary of Treasury Jack 'Jake the Snake' Lew, Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Michael Froman as Trade Representative among others.
Israel ’s Proxy Power within the Executive branch is matched by its dominance of the US Congress. Contrary to some critics, Israel is neither an ‘ally’ or ‘client’ of the US . Evidence of the gross asymmetry of the relation abounds over the past half century. Because of these powerful proxies in Congress and the Executive branch, Israel has received over $100 billion dollar tribute from the US over the past 30 years, or $3 billion plus a year. The US Pentagon has transferred the most up-to-date military technology and engaged in several wars on Israel ’s behalf. The US Treasury has imposed sanctions against potentially lucrative trading and investment partners in the Middle East (Iran, Iraq and Syria) depriving US agricultural and manufacturing exporters and oil companies of over $500 billion in revenues. The White House sacrificed the lives of over 4,400 US soldiers in the Iraq War – a war promoted by Israel’s proxies at the behest of Israel’s leaders. The State Department has rejected friendly and profitable relations with over 1.5 billion Muslims by backing the illegal settlement of over half million Jewish colonists on military-occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
The strategic question is how and why this one-sided relation between the US and Israel persists for so long, even as it goes counter to so many strategic and elite US interests? The more immediate and pressing question is how this historically lopsided relation effects contemporary US-Iran sanctions and nuclear negotiations?
Iran and the Peace Negotiations
Undoubtedly the newly elected Iranian President and his Foreign Minister are prepared to negotiate an end to hostilities with the US by making major concessions ensuring the peaceful use of nuclear energy. They have stated they are open to reducing or even ending the production of highly enriched uranium; reducing the number of centrifuges and even allowing intrusive, unannounced inspections, among other promising proposals. The Iranian government proposes a roadmap with end goals as part of the initial agreements. The European Union’s Foreign Secretary Lady Ashton has commented favorably on the initial meeting.
The US Administration has given conflicting signals following the Iranian overtures and the opening meeting. Some individual comments are guardedly positive; others are less encouraging and rigid. Administration Zionists like Jack ‘Jake’ Lew, the Treasury Secretary, insists sanctions will remain until Iran meets all US (read ‘Israeli’) demands. The US Congress, bought and controlled by the ZPC, rejects the promising Iranian overtures and flexibility, insisting on military ‘options’ or the total dismantling of Iran’s legal and peaceful nuclear program – ZPC positions designed to sabotage the negotiations. To that end, Congress has passed new, more extreme, economic sanctions to strangle the Iran ’s oil economy.
How Israel’s Political Action Committees Control the US Congress and Prepare War with Iran
The Zionist Power Configuration uses its financial firepower to dictate Congressional policy on the Middle East and to ensure that the US Congress and Senate do not stray one iota from serving Israel ’s interests. The Zionist instrument used in the purchase of elected officials in the US is the political action committee (PAC).
Thanks to a 2010 US Supreme Court decision, Super PACs-linked to Israel spend enormous sums to elect or destroy candidates — depending on the candidate’s political work on behalf of Israel . As long as these funds do not go directly to the candidate, these Super PACs do not have to reveal how much they spend or how it is spent. Conservative estimates of ZPC-linked direct and indirect funds to US legislators run close to $100 million dollars over the past 30-year. The ZPC channels these funds to legislative leaders and members of Congressional committees dealing with foreign policy, especially sub-committee chairpersons dealing with the Middle East. Unsurprisingly, the largest Congressional recipients of ZPC money are those who have aggressively promoted Israel’s hard-line policies. Elsewhere around the world, such large scale payoffs for legislative votes would be considered blatant bribery and subject to felony prosecution and imprisonment for both parties. In the US , the purchase and sale of a politician’s vote is called ‘lobbying’ and is legal and open. The legislative branch of the US government has come to resemble a high-price brothel or white slavers’ auction — but with the lives of thousands at stake.
The ZPC has purchased the alliance of US Congress people and Senators on a massive scale: Of 435 members of the US House of Representatives (sic), 219 have received payments from the ZPC in exchange for their votes on behalf of the state of Israel. Corruption is even more rampant among the 100 US Senators, 94 of whom have accepted pro-Israel PAC and Super PAC money for their loyalty to Israel. The ZPC showers money on both Republicans and Democrats, thus securing incredible (in this era of Congressional deadlock), near unanimous (‘bipartisan’) votes in favor of the ‘Jewish State,’ including its war crimes, like the bombing of Gaza and Lebanon as well as the annual $3 billion dollar plus US tax-payer tribute to Tel Aviv. At least 50 US Senators have each collected between $100 thousand and $1 million in ZPC money over the past decades. In exchange, they have voted for over $100 billion in tribute payments to Israel... in addition to other ‘services and payments’. The members of the US Congress are cheaper: 25 legislators have received between $238,000 and $50,000, while the rest got peanuts. Regardless of the amount, the net result is the same: Congressional member pick up their script from their Zionist mentors in the PACs, Super PACs and AIPAC and back all of Israel ’s wars in the Middle East and promote US aggression on behalf of Israel.
The most outspoken and influential legislators get the biggest chunk of Zionist payola: Senator Mark Kirk (Bombs over Teheran!) tops the ‘pigs at the trough’ list with $925,000 in ZPC payoffs, followed by John McCain (Bombs over Damascus!) with $771,000, while Senators Mitch McConnell, Carl Levin, Robert Menendez, Richard Durban and other Zionophilic politicos are not shy about holding out their little begging bowls when the pro-Israel PAC bagmen arrive! Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen tops the ‘House’ list with $238,000 for her 100% pro-Israel record as well as for being more war-mongering than even Netanyahu! Eric Cantor got $209,000 for championing ‘wars for Israel’ with American lives while cutting Social Security payments to US seniors in order to increase military aid to Tel Aviv. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, got $144,000 for ‘whipping the few wobbly’ Democrats back into Israel’s ‘camp.’ House Majority Leader John Boehner was paid $130,000 to do the same among the Republicans.
The ZPC has spent huge amounts to punish and destroy a dozen or so dissident legislators who had stood up to Israel ’s wars and grotesque human rights record. The ZPC has poured millions into individual campaigns, not only financing opposition candidates who pledged allegiance to the Israel but mounting scurrilous character assassinations of Israel’s critics in office. These campaigns have been mounted in the most obscure parts of the US, including in majority African-American districts, where local Zionist interests and influence are otherwise absolutely nil.
There are no comparable PACs, Super PACs, party leaders, or civic organization that can contest the power of Israel ’s Fifth Column. According to documents archived by the courageous researcher, Grant Smith of IRMEP, when it comes to Israel , the US Justice Department has adamantly refused to enforce its own federal laws requiring the prosecution of US citizens who fail to register as foreign agents while working for a foreign country — at least since 1963. On the other hand, the ZPC, through the so-call ‘Anti-Defamation League,’ has successfully pressured the Justice Department, the FBI and NSA to investigate and prosecute law-abiding, patriotic US citizens critical of Israel’s land grabs in Palestine and the Zionist corruptors of the US political system on behalf of their foreign master.
The corruption and degradation of US democracy is made possible by the equally compromised and corrupted ‘respectable press’. Media critic, Steve Lendman, has pointed out the direct link between Israel and the mass media in his investigation of the New York Times. The leading (‘fair and balanced’) journalists reporting on Israel have strong family and political ties to that country and their articles have been little more than propaganda. Times reporter Ethan Bronner, whose son served in the Israel Defense Forces, is a long-time apologist for the Zionist state. Times reporter Isabel Kershner, whose ‘writing’ seem to come straight out of the Israeli Foreign Office, is married to Hirsh Goodman an adviser to the Netanyahu regime on ‘security affairs.’ The Times bureau chief in Jerusalem, Jodi Rudoren, lives comfortably in the ancestral home of a Palestinian family dispossessed from that ancient city.
The Times unflinching pro-Israel posture provides a political cover and justification for the corrupted US politicians as they beat the war drums for Israel. It is no surprise that the New York Times, like the Washington Post, is deeply engaged in disparaging and denouncing the current US-Iran negotiations – and providing ample space for the one-sided rhetoric of Israeli politicians and their US mouthpieces, while studiously excluding the more rational, pro-rapprochement voices of experienced former US diplomats, war-weary military leaders and representatives of the US business and academic communities.
To understand Congress’ hostility to the nuclear negotiations with Iran and their efforts to scuttle them through the imposition of ridiculous new sanctions, it is important to get to the source of the problem, namely the statements of key Israeli politicians, who set the line of march for their US proxies.
In late October, 2013, Former Israeli Defense Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin spoke of ‘having to choose between ‘the bomb’ or the bombing’ — a message which immediately resonated with the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (Daily Alert, October 24, 2013). On October 22, 2013, Israel ’s Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, called for harsh new sanctions on Iran and insisted that the US use them as leverage to demand that Iran agree to entirely abandon its peaceful nuclear energy and enrichment program. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon affirmed that ‘Israel will not accept any deal that allows Iran to enrich uranium’. It is Israel ’s position to threaten war (via the US ) if Iran does not submit to unconditional surrender of its nuclear program. This defines the position of all the major pro-Israel PACs, Super PACs and AIPAC. They in turn proceed to dictate policy to their ‘lick-spittles’ in the US Congress. As a result, Congress passes even more extreme economic sanctions on Iran in order to sabotage the ongoing negotiations.
Those who have received the biggest Zionist pay-offs from the pro-Israel PACs are the most vociferous: Senator Mark Kirk ($925,379), author of a previous sanctions bill, demands that Iran end its entire nuclear and ballistic missile program (!) and declared that the US Senate 'should immediately move forward with a new round of economic sanctions targeting all remaining Iranian government revenue and reserves' (Financial Times, 10/18/13, p. 6). The US House of Representatives (sic) has already passed a bill sharply limiting Iran ’s ability to sell its main export, oil. Once again, the Israel-ZPC — Congressional axis seeks to impose Israel ’s war agenda on the American people! In late October 2013, Secretary of State Kerry was ‘grilled’ for 7 hours by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu with the craven Kerry promising to promote Israel ’s agenda on dismantling Iran ’s nuclear enrichment program.
To counter the campaign to strangle Iran ’s oil economy, promoted by Israel’s flunkeys in the Congress, the Iranian government has offered generous contracts to the US and EU oil companies (Financial Times 10/29/2013, p 1). Existing nationalist provisions are being removed. Under the new terms, foreign companies book reserves or take equity stakes in Iranian projects. Iran hopes to attract at least $100 billion dollars in investments over the next three years. This stable country boasts the world’s largest gas and the fourth largest oil reserves. Because of the current US ( Israel )-imposed sanctions, production has fallen from 3.5 million barrels per day in 2011 to 2.58 million barrels per day in 2013. The question is whether ‘Big Oil,’ the giant US and EU companies have to power to challenge the ZPC-stranglehold over US-EU sanction policy. So far, the ZPC has dominated this critical policy and marginalized ‘Big Oil’ using threats, blackmail and coercion against US policymakers. This has effectively shut out US companies from the lucrative Iranian market.
Conclusion
As the US and the 5 other countries attempt to negotiate with Iran, they face enormous obstacles overcoming Israel ’s power over the US Congress. Over past decades Israel ’s agents have bought the loyalties of the vast majority of Congress people, training them to recognize and obey the whistles, signals and script from the war mongers in Tel Aviv.
This ‘Axis of War,’ has inflicted enormous damage on the world resulting in the deaths of millions of victims of US wars in the Middle East, Southwest Asia and North Africa. The gross corruption and widely recognized bankruptcy of the US legislative system is due to its slavish submission to a foreign power. What remains in Washington is a debased vassal state despised by its own citizens. If the ZPC controlled Congress succeeds once again in destroying the negotiations between the US and Iran via new war-like resolutions, we, the American people, will have to pay an enormous price in lives and treasure.
The time to act is now. It is time to stand up and expose the role played by the Israeli PACs, Super PACs and the 52 Major American Jewish Organization in corrupting Congress and turning 'our' elected representatives into flunkeys for Israel’s wars. There has been a deafening silence from our noted critics — few alternative media critics have attacked Israel ’s power over the US Congress. The evidence is openly available, the crimes are undeniable. The American people need real political leaders with the courage to root out the corrupted and corruptors and force their elected members in the House and Senate to represent the interest of the American people.
Al deze informatie verzwijgt Henk Hofland, opiniemaker van De Groene Amsterdammer, om te kunnen beweren dat 'de vriendschap tussen Amerika en Israël te hecht' is voor héél 'Amerika' om 'Netanyahu' te beschuldigen 'van inmenging in binnenlandse aangelegenheden.' Meer over de in de polder zo gerespecteerde charlatan de volgende keer.
A key target is socialist Venezuela, which is facing yet another destabilisation campaign, backed by Washington. The recent rounds of violence began in early 2014 and recently led to the arrest of several opposition figures for murder and coup plotting. The pretext for the violence has been that the government of President Nicolas Maduro is somehow democratically illegitimate.
However the radical, popular ‘Bolivarian’ governments have won 12 of Venezuela’s last 13 elections. Further, 80% of the voting age population participated in the 2013 election, won by Maduro (International IDEA 2015). That is a massive increase on 1990s levels, when the Chavez phenomenon effectively sidelined the old and moribund two party system. And the electoral system is secure. Even the political journalist for anti-government paper El Universal described Venezuela’s electoral system as ‘one of the most technologically advanced verifiable voting systems in the world’, with protections against fraud and tampering and scrutineered random recount mechanisms (Martinez 2013).
Sydney University’s ‘Electoral Integrity Project’ tells a very different story. According to their 2015 report, Venezuela’s Presidential election in 2013 was one of the worst in the world, ranking 110 out of 127. They corroborate their data with a survey claiming President Maduro only had a 24% popularity rating, with ‘85% believing that the country was heading in the wrong direction’ (Norris et al 2015: 31). The EIP did not mention the Hinterlaces Polls, which have had Maduro’s popularity (during the recent crisis) ranging from 39% to 52%; nor do they cite polls showing overwhelming rejection of the opposition’s violent attempts to remove the elected president (Dutka 2014).
The EIP produces an impressive forest of data to form its rankings on the legitimacy of elections worldwide; but what is the basis for all these numbers? Though it is not so easy to find, the method involves selecting a range of criteria and then seeking ‘expert opinion’, from a group of unnamed people. That is, the numbers and rankings rely on ‘expert opinion’, and those experts are anonymous. There is only anecdotal recourse to more standard methods, such as actual opinion polls, or actual participation rates.
Yet popular and expert perceptions are a curious thing. As most mass media remains in the hands of a tiny oligarchy, for whom Venezuela has long been a ‘black sheep’, image shaping is often distorted. Surveys by the Chilean-based company LatinoBarómetro (2014: 8-9) illustrate this point very well. The image of Venezuela’s democracy from outside the country is rather ordinary (seen as 41% and 47% favourable, between 2010 and 2013), whereas within Venezuela it is very different. Venezuelans rate their democracy at 70%, the second highest (after Uruguay) in Latin America. Latino Barómetro (2014: 9) itself is surprised by these results, saying: ‘The five countries which most appreciate their own democracy are countries governed by the left: Uruguay, Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador and Nicaragua ... the democracy of which citizens speak is clearly not the democracy of which the experts speak’.
Yet surely any democracy is best judged by those who are able (or unable) to participate in it? The opinions of expert outsiders seem of little relevance. That is an elite approach. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Art 25) describes democratic rights this way: ‘the right and the opportunity ... to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives’. That refers to the right of citizens in a particular body politic. Gauged against this principle, the method of EIP project, relying on outside expert opinion, seems poorly conceived.
Yet an elitist approach is consistent with the model promoted by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US government funded body launched by the Reagan administration in the second cold war of early 1980s. The NED (usually through intermediaries) funds a range of organisations in attempts to shape democracies or ‘civil societies’, to make them more friendly to or compliant with Washington. One of the founders and first President of the NED, Allen Weinstein, said in 1991, ‘A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA’ (Lefebvre 2013). Indeed, as with the ‘psy-ops’ of the CIA, the NED has been implicated in coups and destabilisation plans in a range of Latin American countries, including Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela (Kurlantzick 2004; Lefebvre 2013; Golinger 2006). The NED idea of democracy has been described as ‘[a] top-down, elite, constrained (or “polyarchal”) democracy ... [where] the elites get to decide the candidates or questions suitable to go before the people’ (Scipes 2014). French researcher Olivier Guilmain (in Teil 2011) says that the NED finances opposition parties in numerous countries and provides special aid to exiles and opponents of regimes targeted by the US State Department’.
Eva Golinger, whose book The Chavez Code exposed the Bush administration’s involvement in the failed coup of 2002, has documented the NED’s contribution to destabilisation and coups in Venezuela. In the last year or so the NED has spent many millions on Venezuelan opposition groups ‘including funding for their political campaigns in 2013 and for the current anti-government protests in 2014’ (Golinger 2014). She calls this ‘the same old dirty tactics’ of a coup in motion (Golinger 2015).
It might not come as a surprise then, to find that there are indeed NED and other US Government links to Sydney’s Electoral Integrity Project. Chief investigator Professor Pippa Norris proudly lists her work as a consultant for the NED, and at least six of the project partners (without whose support the EIP ‘would not have been possible’) have direct US government funding. The EIP method of relying on expert opinion seems quite consistent with that ‘elite, constrained ... democracy’.
Worse, the EIP relies on anonymous opinion. A member of the project clarified this to me in these words: ‘we have to maintain the confidentiality of our sources as part of our legal obligations ... revealing the names of the experts could potentially risk putting them in harm’s way in several states which do not respect human rights and which suppress critics’. Be that as it may, the opinions of anonymous people provide no way to assess the legitimacy of an independent state. It contradicts the principles of openness and transparency, values the EIP claims to both assess and promote. Who are these anonymous experts? Do they include opposition figures in the countries whose governments are under attack? Do they include the Washington insiders who advise on destabilisation and coup plans? There is little indication the EIP takes seriously the well-established principle of avoiding conflicts of interest.
It is also alarming that the EIP, as an Australian Government (ARC) funded academic project, whose subtitle (‘Why Elections fail and what we can do about it’) suggests a measures of praxis, shares the Washington phrase ‘failed elections [which] raised major red flags’, mentioning several states, including Syria. It is well known that a major military intervention in Syria was narrowly averted in September 2013, after false claims that the Syrian Government had used chemical weapons against children (for evidence of the falsity of these claims see: Hersh 2013 & 2014; Lloyd and Postol 2014; ISTEAMS 2013). Does the EIP seek to associate itself with ‘red flag’ military interventions, if countries fail to meet its dubious criteria?
The project rated Syria’s 2014 presidential elections near the bottom of its chart (125 of 127), on the basis of its anonymous expert opinions (Norris et al 2015: 11). The only rationale for this can be seen in a brief note which observes ‘the election was deeply flawed because some areas of the country were not under government control, so polling did not take place in the regions where insurgents were strongest’, and the fact that ‘National Coalition – the main western backed opposition group’ boycotted the election (Norris et al 2015: 27). While these are correct statements, they do not tell the whole story. Conflict in other countries did not seem to bother the EIP or its experts quite so much when they ranked the Ukraine election at 78 of 127 (Norris et al 2015: 10). Yet the election monitoring group International IDEA (2015), an EIP partner, puts participation rates in the Ukraine’s 2014 presidential election at 50%, while in the Syria’s 2014 presidential election it was 73%. Clearly the US foreign policy factor is at play. Washington arms the ‘opposition’ in Syria and the government in Ukraine. Similarly the NED has directly funded the Syrian opposition (NED 2006; Teil 2011; IRI 2015) while urging military support for the Ukraine government (Sputnik 2014; see also Parry 2014).
Finally we might observe that Israel’s 2013 elections were duly reviewed by the EIP, leading to a very healthy 17/127 ranking (Norris et al 2015: 8). Apparently being a racial state, with several million effectively stateless Palestinian people, held in military-controlled territories and with virtually no civil or political rights, has little impact on the EIP assessment. Yet this is consistent with what the Washington-Tel Aviv axis has long told us about Israel as ‘the only democracy in the region’ (e.g. Goldman 2015, etc). The double standards are breath-taking. With the Electoral Integrity Project’s US links and its elitist assumptions about democracy it seems the project has little sense of conflict of interest, let alone appropriate research method.
References
Anderson, Tim (2010) ‘Hegemony, big money and academic independence’, Australian Universities Review, Vol 53, No 2
Dutka, Z.C. (2014) ‘Polls Reveal Wider Concerns of Venezuelan Public’, Venezuelanalysis, 11 May, online:http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10679
Freedom House (2015) ‘Freedom in the World 2015’, interactive map, online:https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015?gclid=COrs_cHtqMQCFUccvAodgawAXA#.VQSxLY6bXT9
Goldman, Lisa (2015) ‘Bibi Bother: Netanyahu’s Strategy in Washington’, Foreign Affairs, 1 March, online:http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143203/lisa-goldman/bibi-bother
Golinger, Eva (2006) The Chavez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela, Olive Branch Press, Northampton, MA
Golinger, Eva (2015) ‘Venezuela: a Coup in Real Time’, Counter Punch, 2 February, online:http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/02/venezuela-a-coup-in-real-time/
Hersh, Seymour M. (2013) ‘Whose Sarin?’, London Review of Books, Vol. 35 No. 24, 19 December, 9-12, online:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin
Hersh, Seymour M. (2014) ‘The Red Line and the Rat Line’, London Review of Books, 36:8, 17 April, pp 21-24, online: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
International IDEA (2015) ‘Voter Turnout’, data by country, online: http://www.idea.int/vt/
IRI (2015) Syria, online: http://www.iri.org/country/syria
ISTEAMS (2013) ‘Independent Investigation of Syria Chemical Attack Videos and Child Abductions’, 15 September, online:http://www.globalresearch.ca/STUDY_THE_VIDEOS_THAT_SPEAKS_ABOUT_CHEMICALS_BETA_VERSION.pdf
Kurlantzick, Joshua (2004) ‘The Coup Connection’, Mother Jones, November, online:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/coup-connection
Latinobarometro (2014)’ La Imagen de los países y las democracias’, informe (report):
http://www.latinobarometro.org/latNewsShow.jsp
Lefebvre, Stephan (2013) ‘Analysis from National Endowment for Democracy Used in The Atlantic, with Significant Errors and Omissions’, Center for Economic Policy and Research, 30 July, online:http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/analysis-from-national-endowment-for-democracy-used-in-the-atlantic-with-significant-errors-and-omissions
Implementing “Democracy” and Regime Change
in “Enemy Countries”: The “Electoral Integrity
Project”
Global Research, March 16, 2015
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/implementing-democracy-and-regime-change-in-enemy-countries-the-electoral-integrity-project/5436945
http://www.globalresearch.ca/implementing-democracy-and-regime-change-in-enemy-countries-the-electoral-integrity-project/5436945
A multi-million dollar Australian Government funded project at the University of Sydney, linked to spin doctors in Washington, is using a biased and secretive method to help discredit elections in a range of ‘enemy’ countries. The Electoral Integrity Project (EIP) joins the United States Studies Centre (USSC), established in 2007, as another heavily politicised initiative which compromises the independence of Australia’s oldest university (see Anderson 2010).
However the radical, popular ‘Bolivarian’ governments have won 12 of Venezuela’s last 13 elections. Further, 80% of the voting age population participated in the 2013 election, won by Maduro (International IDEA 2015). That is a massive increase on 1990s levels, when the Chavez phenomenon effectively sidelined the old and moribund two party system. And the electoral system is secure. Even the political journalist for anti-government paper El Universal described Venezuela’s electoral system as ‘one of the most technologically advanced verifiable voting systems in the world’, with protections against fraud and tampering and scrutineered random recount mechanisms (Martinez 2013).
Sydney University’s ‘Electoral Integrity Project’ tells a very different story. According to their 2015 report, Venezuela’s Presidential election in 2013 was one of the worst in the world, ranking 110 out of 127. They corroborate their data with a survey claiming President Maduro only had a 24% popularity rating, with ‘85% believing that the country was heading in the wrong direction’ (Norris et al 2015: 31). The EIP did not mention the Hinterlaces Polls, which have had Maduro’s popularity (during the recent crisis) ranging from 39% to 52%; nor do they cite polls showing overwhelming rejection of the opposition’s violent attempts to remove the elected president (Dutka 2014).
The EIP produces an impressive forest of data to form its rankings on the legitimacy of elections worldwide; but what is the basis for all these numbers? Though it is not so easy to find, the method involves selecting a range of criteria and then seeking ‘expert opinion’, from a group of unnamed people. That is, the numbers and rankings rely on ‘expert opinion’, and those experts are anonymous. There is only anecdotal recourse to more standard methods, such as actual opinion polls, or actual participation rates.
Yet popular and expert perceptions are a curious thing. As most mass media remains in the hands of a tiny oligarchy, for whom Venezuela has long been a ‘black sheep’, image shaping is often distorted. Surveys by the Chilean-based company LatinoBarómetro (2014: 8-9) illustrate this point very well. The image of Venezuela’s democracy from outside the country is rather ordinary (seen as 41% and 47% favourable, between 2010 and 2013), whereas within Venezuela it is very different. Venezuelans rate their democracy at 70%, the second highest (after Uruguay) in Latin America. Latino Barómetro (2014: 9) itself is surprised by these results, saying: ‘The five countries which most appreciate their own democracy are countries governed by the left: Uruguay, Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador and Nicaragua ... the democracy of which citizens speak is clearly not the democracy of which the experts speak’.
Yet surely any democracy is best judged by those who are able (or unable) to participate in it? The opinions of expert outsiders seem of little relevance. That is an elite approach. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Art 25) describes democratic rights this way: ‘the right and the opportunity ... to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives’. That refers to the right of citizens in a particular body politic. Gauged against this principle, the method of EIP project, relying on outside expert opinion, seems poorly conceived.
Yet an elitist approach is consistent with the model promoted by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US government funded body launched by the Reagan administration in the second cold war of early 1980s. The NED (usually through intermediaries) funds a range of organisations in attempts to shape democracies or ‘civil societies’, to make them more friendly to or compliant with Washington. One of the founders and first President of the NED, Allen Weinstein, said in 1991, ‘A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA’ (Lefebvre 2013). Indeed, as with the ‘psy-ops’ of the CIA, the NED has been implicated in coups and destabilisation plans in a range of Latin American countries, including Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela (Kurlantzick 2004; Lefebvre 2013; Golinger 2006). The NED idea of democracy has been described as ‘[a] top-down, elite, constrained (or “polyarchal”) democracy ... [where] the elites get to decide the candidates or questions suitable to go before the people’ (Scipes 2014). French researcher Olivier Guilmain (in Teil 2011) says that the NED finances opposition parties in numerous countries and provides special aid to exiles and opponents of regimes targeted by the US State Department’.
Eva Golinger, whose book The Chavez Code exposed the Bush administration’s involvement in the failed coup of 2002, has documented the NED’s contribution to destabilisation and coups in Venezuela. In the last year or so the NED has spent many millions on Venezuelan opposition groups ‘including funding for their political campaigns in 2013 and for the current anti-government protests in 2014’ (Golinger 2014). She calls this ‘the same old dirty tactics’ of a coup in motion (Golinger 2015).
It might not come as a surprise then, to find that there are indeed NED and other US Government links to Sydney’s Electoral Integrity Project. Chief investigator Professor Pippa Norris proudly lists her work as a consultant for the NED, and at least six of the project partners (without whose support the EIP ‘would not have been possible’) have direct US government funding. The EIP method of relying on expert opinion seems quite consistent with that ‘elite, constrained ... democracy’.
Worse, the EIP relies on anonymous opinion. A member of the project clarified this to me in these words: ‘we have to maintain the confidentiality of our sources as part of our legal obligations ... revealing the names of the experts could potentially risk putting them in harm’s way in several states which do not respect human rights and which suppress critics’. Be that as it may, the opinions of anonymous people provide no way to assess the legitimacy of an independent state. It contradicts the principles of openness and transparency, values the EIP claims to both assess and promote. Who are these anonymous experts? Do they include opposition figures in the countries whose governments are under attack? Do they include the Washington insiders who advise on destabilisation and coup plans? There is little indication the EIP takes seriously the well-established principle of avoiding conflicts of interest.
It is also alarming that the EIP, as an Australian Government (ARC) funded academic project, whose subtitle (‘Why Elections fail and what we can do about it’) suggests a measures of praxis, shares the Washington phrase ‘failed elections [which] raised major red flags’, mentioning several states, including Syria. It is well known that a major military intervention in Syria was narrowly averted in September 2013, after false claims that the Syrian Government had used chemical weapons against children (for evidence of the falsity of these claims see: Hersh 2013 & 2014; Lloyd and Postol 2014; ISTEAMS 2013). Does the EIP seek to associate itself with ‘red flag’ military interventions, if countries fail to meet its dubious criteria?
The project rated Syria’s 2014 presidential elections near the bottom of its chart (125 of 127), on the basis of its anonymous expert opinions (Norris et al 2015: 11). The only rationale for this can be seen in a brief note which observes ‘the election was deeply flawed because some areas of the country were not under government control, so polling did not take place in the regions where insurgents were strongest’, and the fact that ‘National Coalition – the main western backed opposition group’ boycotted the election (Norris et al 2015: 27). While these are correct statements, they do not tell the whole story. Conflict in other countries did not seem to bother the EIP or its experts quite so much when they ranked the Ukraine election at 78 of 127 (Norris et al 2015: 10). Yet the election monitoring group International IDEA (2015), an EIP partner, puts participation rates in the Ukraine’s 2014 presidential election at 50%, while in the Syria’s 2014 presidential election it was 73%. Clearly the US foreign policy factor is at play. Washington arms the ‘opposition’ in Syria and the government in Ukraine. Similarly the NED has directly funded the Syrian opposition (NED 2006; Teil 2011; IRI 2015) while urging military support for the Ukraine government (Sputnik 2014; see also Parry 2014).
Finally we might observe that Israel’s 2013 elections were duly reviewed by the EIP, leading to a very healthy 17/127 ranking (Norris et al 2015: 8). Apparently being a racial state, with several million effectively stateless Palestinian people, held in military-controlled territories and with virtually no civil or political rights, has little impact on the EIP assessment. Yet this is consistent with what the Washington-Tel Aviv axis has long told us about Israel as ‘the only democracy in the region’ (e.g. Goldman 2015, etc). The double standards are breath-taking. With the Electoral Integrity Project’s US links and its elitist assumptions about democracy it seems the project has little sense of conflict of interest, let alone appropriate research method.
References
Anderson, Tim (2010) ‘Hegemony, big money and academic independence’, Australian Universities Review, Vol 53, No 2
Dutka, Z.C. (2014) ‘Polls Reveal Wider Concerns of Venezuelan Public’, Venezuelanalysis, 11 May, online:http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10679
Freedom House (2015) ‘Freedom in the World 2015’, interactive map, online:https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015?gclid=COrs_cHtqMQCFUccvAodgawAXA#.VQSxLY6bXT9
Goldman, Lisa (2015) ‘Bibi Bother: Netanyahu’s Strategy in Washington’, Foreign Affairs, 1 March, online:http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143203/lisa-goldman/bibi-bother
Golinger, Eva (2006) The Chavez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela, Olive Branch Press, Northampton, MA
Golinger, Eva (2015) ‘Venezuela: a Coup in Real Time’, Counter Punch, 2 February, online:http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/02/venezuela-a-coup-in-real-time/
Hersh, Seymour M. (2013) ‘Whose Sarin?’, London Review of Books, Vol. 35 No. 24, 19 December, 9-12, online:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin
Hersh, Seymour M. (2014) ‘The Red Line and the Rat Line’, London Review of Books, 36:8, 17 April, pp 21-24, online: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
International IDEA (2015) ‘Voter Turnout’, data by country, online: http://www.idea.int/vt/
IRI (2015) Syria, online: http://www.iri.org/country/syria
ISTEAMS (2013) ‘Independent Investigation of Syria Chemical Attack Videos and Child Abductions’, 15 September, online:http://www.globalresearch.ca/STUDY_THE_VIDEOS_THAT_SPEAKS_ABOUT_CHEMICALS_BETA_VERSION.pdf
Kurlantzick, Joshua (2004) ‘The Coup Connection’, Mother Jones, November, online:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/coup-connection
Latinobarometro (2014)’ La Imagen de los países y las democracias’, informe (report):
http://www.latinobarometro.org/latNewsShow.jsp
Lefebvre, Stephan (2013) ‘Analysis from National Endowment for Democracy Used in The Atlantic, with Significant Errors and Omissions’, Center for Economic Policy and Research, 30 July, online:http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/analysis-from-national-endowment-for-democracy-used-in-the-atlantic-with-significant-errors-and-omissions
Lloyd, Richard and Theodore A. Postol (2014) ‘Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013’, MIT, January 14, Washington DC, online:https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1006045-possible-implications-of-bad-intelligence.html#storylink=relast
Martinez, Eugenio (2013) ‘Venezuela’s Election System Holds Up As A Model For The World’, Forbes, 14 may, online: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2013/05/14/venezuelas-election-system-holds-up-as-a-model-for-the-world/
NED (2006) Syria – funding, December, online: http://www.ned.org/publications/annual-reports/2006-annual-report/middle-east-and-northern-africa/description-of-2006-12
Norris, Pippa; Ferran Martínez and Max Grömping (2015) ‘The year in Elections, 2014’, Electoral Integrity Project (Why Elections fail and what we can do about it), online:https://sites.google.com/site/electoralintegrityproject4/projects/expert-survey-2/the-year-in-elections-2014
Parry, Robert (2014) ‘New York Times on Syria and Ukraine: How Propaganda Works’, Global Research, 3 December, online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-york-times-on-syria-and-ukraine-how-propaganda-works/5417724
Sputnik (2014) ‘National Endowment for Democracy Urges US Military Support for Ukraine’, 20 October, online:http://sputniknews.com/world/20141020/194352130/National-Endowment-for-Democracy-Urges-US-Military-Support-for-Ukraine.html
Teil, Julian (2011) ‘Justifying a “humanitarian war” against Syria. The sinister role of the NGOs’, Global Research, 16 November, online: http://www.globalresearch.ca/justifying-a-humanitarian-war-against-syria-the-sinister-role-of-the-ngos/27702
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