poet816 posted: "Science v. Religion I I put these two terms together as if there is some essential war between them, or at least an antagonistic relationship, but both, we shall see, can be oppressive and dominating. In fact, in some sense, the German wor"
I put these two terms together as if there is some essential war between them, or at least an antagonistic relationship, but both, we shall see, can be oppressive and dominating. In fact, in some sense, the German word "Verhältnis," meaning not only relationship but also love affair is more appropriate here -- both share the love of truth and liberation, but both have been used for domination and oppression.
II
That, in short, is what a quote remembered from Nietzsche means, although it seems to have disappeared entirely as no one has been able to locate it. Still, the quote, as translated, is "Science has saved us from Religion; now what will save us from Science?" Few, if any can locate that quotation, a few can at least understand it, but the three aphorisms from Adorno reprinted below explain it in sufficient detail. I have eliminated the first sentence of the second aphorism as it unintentionally restricts the scope of the commentary and also shows the danger of referring to specific current even in philosophical discussions. To be fair, I am placing the sentence at the end of this entire post as a footnote.[i] Another statement by Nietzsche is "God is Dead," but it is repeated all too often by those who have no idea of what it means, where it came from, and who have never read Nietzsche at all. They merely quote what someone else had quoted. I will soon post my own version of his quote, along with the context, and explain not only that God died, but how He died (which I have not seen discussed elsewhere).
III
For centuries religion has served to subjugate individuality and free thought, one reason why Marx called it the "Opiate of the Masses." To some extent, the Scientific Revolution, or Cognitive Revolution, of the 17th Century liberated man as it relegated God to the role of some cosmic clockmaker who put things together, wound them up, and then left. At least the ominous warning that "God is watching" lost much of its authority amongst individualists and freethinkers.
IV
However, Science soon banished value from life and favored quantification. In many ways, the old barter system, which is still employed daily by many without awareness of it, was far more equitable as it was more concrete, less abstract. People traded services and objects based on their individual values, not on the basis on some abstract decimal system of valuation. When we hear the term "value" used today, almost always with refers to some monetary sum "owned" in one way or another by some person. Who, ultimately, has any meaning left when he says that one person is "worth" more than another? This is a subjective value judgment best left to each individual in relation to another.
V
We can see this rampant and manipulative quantification being used daily to manipulate the masses who have absolutely no concept of what is being done to them. In fact, some wealthy ideologues hand-pick their own statisticians to justify their own greed and economic elitism and actually wind up believing their own lies and are surprised when things do not transpire as their bribed soothsayers predict. The whole idea behind hiring these hacks was to fool the people, but the force of quantification was so great that the employers were actually convinced by their own lies.
VI
The brainwashing of the modern concept of science also banishes imagination or inspiration from the world, or discipline. Capra discusses this in his Tao of Physics. Allow me one small example: It is clear that electrons, orbiting a nucleus, can only be a specific, quantifiable defined, orbits, or energy states, or only so far from the nucleus. However, any electron may move from one state to another. The question is, where is it between one state and another? How does it travel from one level to another since there are no levels inbetween? Doesn't this mean that time itself is quantum? These is no smooth time, but simply intervals of time between which time does not exist? If so, what exists when time is moving from one interval to another? No physicist even considers these questions lest he loose any chance of grant money or reputation. Imagination is banished from the universe. In fact, such imagination has long since been sucked from his system.
VII
The ignorant and willfully blind will stick to their preconceived notions, however, as they have their entire life invested in this ignorance. To them, rising up and above this stupidity would cost them too much and they will remain content in their chains of ignorance which perpetuate their domination by the unseen "Thou Shalt," which will persist until they system itself destroys any chance of its own continuance. It is well on it's way with what is called "climate change," and uses religion, faith, patriotism, pseudo-science, and more simply to maximize its short-term profits while its long-term existence has already been self-assured. Perhaps in the 70s of the past century strong action could have prevented this, but that time has long passed. Here are Adorno's reflections from a safer past:
79
Intellectus sacrificium intellectus. [Latin: Intellectuals sacrifice to intellectuals]. To presume that thinking would profit from the decline of the emotions through increasing objectivity, or that it would remain indifferent to such, is itself an expression of the process of dumbing down. The social division of labor recoils on human beings, however much the former may facilitate the accomplishments required of the latter. The faculties, which develop through reciprocal effect, shrivel once when they are torn from each other. Nietzsche's aphorism, "The degree and kind of sexuality of human beings reaches into the furthest peak of their Spirit [Geistes]" strikes at more than just a psychological state of affairs. Because even the most distant objectifications of thought are nourished by the drives, to destroy the latter is to destroy the former's own condition. Isn't memory inseparable from the love, which wants to preserve, what nevertheless passes away? Doesn't every impulse of the imagination arise from the wish, which transcends the existent in all fidelity, by displacing its elements? Indeed isn't the simplest perception modeled on the fear of what is perceived, or the desire for such? It is true that the objective meaning of cognitions has, with the objectification of the world, separated itself ever further from the basis of the drives; it is true that cognition fails, where its objectified achievement remains under the baleful spell of the wishes. However if the drives are not at the same time sublated in the thought, which escapes such a baleful spell, then there can be no cognition anymore, and the thought which kills the wish, its father, will be overtaken by the revenge of stupidity. Memory is tabooed as uncalculable, unreliable, irrational. The intellectual asthma which results from this, which culminates in the breakdown of the historical dimension of consciousness, immediately debases the synthetic apperception which, according to Kant, is not to be separated from the "reproduction in the imagination," from commemoration. Imagination, today attributed to the realm of the unconscious and defamed in cognition as a childish, injudicious rudiment, creates alone that indispensable relation between objects, out of which all judgment originates: if it is driven out, then the judgment, the actual act of cognition, is exorcised as well. The castration of perception, however, by a controlling authority, which refuses it any desiring anticipation, thereby compels it into the schema of the powerless repetition of what is already familiar. That nothing more is actually allowed to be seen, amounts to the sacrifice of the intellect. Just as, under the unrestrained primacy of the production process, the wherefore of reason disappears, until it degenerates into the fetishism of itself and of externalized power, so too does it reduce itself down to an instrument and comes to resemble its functionaries, whose thought-apparatus only serves the purpose, of hindering thought. Once the final emotional trace is effaced, what solely remains of thinking is absolute tautology. The utterly pure reason of those who have completely divested themself of the capacity "to imagine an object even without its presence," converges with pure unconsciousness, with idiocy in the most literal sense, for measured by the overweening realistic ideal of a category-free actuality, every cognition is false, and true only if the question of true or false is inapplicable. That this is a question of wide-ranging tendencies, is evident at every step of the scientific enterprise, which is on the point of subjugating the rest of the world, like so many defenseless ruins.
80
Diagnosis. – A humanity is secretly emerging, which hungers for the compulsion and restriction, which the nonsensical continuation of domination imposes. These human beings however have, favored by the objective social arrangement, seized hold of the functions which by rights ought to generate dissonance against the pre-established harmony. Among all the cashiered slogans, one stands out: "pressure produces counter-pressure"– yet if the former becomes powerful enough, then the latter disappears, and society appears to want to contribute considerably to entropy, by a deadly equilibrium of tensions. The scientific enterprise has its exact equivalent in the kind of minds [Geistesart], which it harnesses: they need hardly do any violence to themselves, proving eager and willing administrators of their own selves. Even when they prove to be quite humane and reasonable beings outside of the enterprise, they freeze into pathic stupidity the moment they think professionally. Far from perceiving such prohibitions on thought as something hostile, the candidates – and all scientists are candidates – feel relieved. Because thinking burdens them with a subjective responsibility, which their objective position in the production-process prevents them from fulfilling, they renounce it, shake a bit and run over to the other side. The displeasure of thinking soon turns into the incapacity to think at all: people who effortlessly invent the most refined statistical objections, when it is a question of sabotaging a cognition, are not capable of making the simplest predictions of content ex cathedra [Latin: from the chair, e.g. Papal decision]. They lash out at the speculation and in it kill common sense. The more intelligent of them have an inkling of what ails their mental faculties, because the symptoms are not universal, but appear in the organs, whose service they sell. Many still wait in fear and shame, at being caught with their defect. All however find it raised publicly to a moral service and see themselves being recognized for a scientific asceticism, which is nothing of the sort, but the secret contour of their weakness. Their resentment is socially rationalized under the formula: thinking is unscientific. Their intellectual energy is thereby amplified in many dimensions to the utmost by the mechanism of control. The collective stupidity of research technicians is not simply the absence or regression of intellectual capacities, but an overgrowth of the capacity of thought itself, which eats away at the latter with its own energy. The masochistic malice [Bosheit] of young intellectuals derives from the malevolence [Bösartigkeit] of their illness.
81
Large and small. – One of the most disastrous transfers from the realm of economic planning into that of theory, which is actually no longer distinguished from the architectonic of the whole, is the belief that intellectual labor can be administered according to the criteria of whether what one is working on is necessary or reasonable. A ranking hierarchy of urgency is established. But to rob thought of the moment of involuntariness, is precisely to cashier its necessity. It reduces itself to detachable, interchangeable dispositions. Just as in the war economy, where priorities are decided in the distribution of raw materials, in the production of this or that type of weapon, so too is a hierarchy of importance creeping into the construction of theory, with a preference given for especially up to date or especially relevant themes, and disregard or indulgent toleration for what is secondary, which may pass merely as padding of the basic facts, as finesse. The notion of what is relevant is produced according to an organizational point of view, that of contemporaneity measured by the objectively most powerful tendency of the day. The schematization into important and subsidiary subscribes to the form of the value-order of ruling praxis, even when it contradicts such as content. In the origins of progressive philosophy, in Bacon and Descartes, the cult of the important is already at work. In the end, however, this latter reveals something unfree, something regressive. Importance is represented by the dog on a walk, which spends minutes sniffing at some random spot, unyielding, earnest, reluctant, and then satisfies its bodily needs, scrapes the ground with its feet and runs along, as if nothing had happened. In prehistoric times life and death may have depended on this; after millennia of domestication it has turned into a nutty ritual. Who is not reminded of this, when watching a serious committee determining the urgency of problems, before the staff of coworkers is given a carefully designated and time-tabled list of tasks. Everything of importance has something of such anachronistic obstinacy, and as a criterium of thought, it is tantamount to the latter's ensorceled fixation, to the renunciation of self-constitution. The great themes however are nothing other than the primordial odors, which cause the animal to hold still, and where possible to produce them once more. This does not mean that the hierarchy of importance is to be ignored. Just as its philistinery mirrors that of the system, so too is it saturated with all the latter's violence and stringency. However thought should not repeat it, but dissolve it through its completion. The division of the world into primary and subsidiary matters, which has always served only to neutralize the key phenomena of the most extreme social injustice as mere exceptions, should be followed to the point that it is convicted of its own untruth. It, which turns everything into objects, must itself become the object of thought, instead of steering the latter. The great themes will also appear, though scarcely in the traditional "thematic" sense, but rather refractedly and eccentrically. The barbarism of immediate magnitude [Grösse] remains philosophy's legacy of its earlier alliance with administrators and mathematicians: what does not bear the stamp of the overinflated world-historical bustle, is consigned to the procedures of the positive sciences. Philosophy behaves therein like bad painting, which imagines that the dignity of a work and the fame which it garners, depend on the dignity of the painted object; a picture of the Battle of Leipzig would be worth more than a chair in oblique perspective. The difference between the conceptual medium and the artistic one changes nothing in this bad naïvété. If the process of abstraction strikes all conceptual formation with the delusion of magnitude [Grösse], then what is also preserved in this, through the distance of the action-object, through reflection and transparency, is the antidote: the self-critique of reason is its ownmost ethics [eigenste Moral]. Its opposite in the most recent phase of a thought which disposes over itself is nothing other than the abolition of the subject. The gesture of theoretical labor, which arranges themes according to their importance, neglects those doing the laboring. The development of an increasingly smaller number of technical capacities is supposed to suffice, to adequately equip them to deal with every assigned task. The thinking subjectivity is however exactly what does not let itself be fitted into a heteronomous set of tasks arranged from above: it is adequate to the latter only insofar as it does not belong to such, and its existence is thereby the prerequisite of every objectively binding truth. The sovereign matter-of-factness, which sacrifices the subject to the investigation of truth, rejects at once truth and objectivity itself.
[i] That the world has meanwhile turned into the system which the Nazis unjustly berated as the lax Weimar Republic, is evident in the pre-established harmony between institutions and those who they serve.
poet816 posted: "GOD'S DEATH -- POSTMORTEM BY NIETZSCHE It reminds me of a remark of Tom Lehrer as saying that "Most patriotic Americans are feeling like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis." I am actually finding it either amusing or laughable. On "
It reminds me of a remark of Tom Lehrer as saying that "Most patriotic Americans are feeling like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis." I am actually finding it either amusing or laughable. On the other hand, when I realize that so many Americans take this nonsense seriously, it can become quite depressing.
One also remembers Bernard Shaw's dictum "Beware of the man whose God is in the skies." The problem is, of course, that these people simply state things as fact as coming from the word of God, and yet God does not have a phone number and is not available for confirmation.
Some time back, there was a great deal of consternation over the phrase "God is Dead!" Many people knew it somehow came from the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, but that was about it. They hated the idea, considered it blasphemy, and the kinder of them took pity on him and those who agreed. However, they never really understood what was meant by that phrase.
We are going to change all that right now.
First, an amusing bit a graffiti:
"God is Dead."– Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is Dead."– God
And thus it remained until the final statement, understood only by those who knew a bit about the subject:
"I was born posthumously." -- Nietzsche
And there it has stood for some time.
It seems quite clear that many of these people never read past the first mention of God's death in the Prologue to Book One of Zarathustra. In fact, many of them do not realize that the character Zarathustra was invented by Nietzsche and undergoes a change during the course of the work. He took the name of Zoroaster, the mystic, because he had experienced no prophet with whom he more intensely disagreed, and it is worth mentioning as well that the transliteration of Zoroaster is often Zarathustra, or something quite close to it.
I take it that few readers of Nietzsche also realize that he was trained as a classical philologist and studied a wide variety of languages. He was especially interested in pre-Homeric writers.
So, with this in mind, let us look at a few passages where Zarathustra discusses God's death. Nietzsche is nearly impossible to translate to anyone's satisfaction, but Walter Kaufmann, who came to Nietzsche hating everything he stood for BEFORE he did the translations, manage to translate him into sense in English and thus understanding what he actually stood for and changing his mind radically. R. Hollingsdale and M. Cowan have also produced excellent and scholarly accepted translations. I am providing my own, just because I don't want to bother worrying about the absurdity of "fair use" and because I want to translate it the way it came across to me originally. If you can read the original German, ignore the translation. Nietzsche abounds in plays of words, puns, double-meanings, and like to joke a great deal and one who takes everything seriously and as the last word will be helplessly lost.
Here is that first mention:
Als Zarathustra aber allein war, sprach er also zu seinem Herzen:
"Sollte es denn möglich sein! Dieser alte Heilige hat in seinem Walde
noch Nichts davon gehört, dass _Gott_todt_ ist!" -
Einst war der Frevel an Gott der grösste Frevel, aber Gott starb, und
damit auch diese Frevelhaften. An der Erde zu freveln ist jetzt das
Furchtbarste und die Eingeweide des Unerforschlichen höher zu achten,
als der Sinn der Erde!
OR
When Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in his forest not yet heard that God is dead!"-
Sacrilege was the greatest crime of blasphemy against God, but God died, and so also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the role and the entrails of the unknowable to ensure higher life as the meaning of the earth!
The key to that now is that the idea of God is dead, blasphemy is to be stupid enough to attack quantitative evolution, a leap upwards from Mankind. (I know, you can have your own interpretation.)
One of my favorite, however, comes at the end of the third book, after Zarathustra has absented himself from man twice before and gain a better perspective on things.
Ist es denn nicht _lange_ vorbei auch für alle solche Zweifel? Wer
darf noch solche alte eingeschlafne lichtscheue Sachen aufwecken!
Mit den alten Göttern gieng es ja lange schon zu Ende: - und wahrlich,
ein gutes fröhliches Götter-Ende hatten sie!
Sie "dämmerten" sich nicht zu Tode, - das lügt man wohl! Vielmehr: sie
haben sich selber einmal zu Tode - _gelacht_!
Das geschah, als das gottloseste Wort von einem Gotte selber ausgieng,
- das Wort: "Es ist Ein Gott! Du sollst keinen andern Gott haben neben
mir!" -
- ein alter Grimm-Bart von Gott, ein eifersüchtiger vergass sich also:
Und alle Götter lachten damals und wackelten auf ihren Stühlen und
riefen: "Ist das nicht eben Göttlichkeit, dass es Götter, aber keinen
Gott giebt?"
Wer Ohren hat, der höre. -
Also redete Zarathustra in der Stadt, die er liebte und welche
zubenannt ist die bunte Kuh. Von hier nämlich hatte er nur noch zwei
Tage zu gehen, dass er wieder in seine Höhle käme und zu seinen
Thieren; seine Seele aber frohlockte beständig ob der Nähe seiner
Heimkehr. -
Or
II is long passed for all such doubts? Who may still wake up those old light-shunning things!
With the old gods, it went so long since come to an end: - and verily, a good joyful Deity-end they had!
Their "falling asleep" is not to death - that is probably lying! Rather, they laughed themselves to death once!
That happened with the most godless word of a God himself, - The word: "I alone am God! Me! Thou shalt have no other gods before me! "-
- An old grim-beard of a God, a jealous old fart, forgot himself thus. And all the other gods then laughed, and shook upon their thrones and shouted: "Is this not just divinity that there are gods, but no God exists? "
Who hath ears to hear, listen!
And that is it. Obviously, Nietzsche did not write "fart," but it fits! You can supply whatever you like there – try Langenschiedt's (or however it is spelled). Later on, Zarathustra offers details as to how God died (as it is, I skipped over about 15 different versions between the first one and the last). In Book 4, after another hiatus in his life, Zarathustra speaks much more calmly and evenly as his audience is comprised of only the "highest" of mankind.
Probably the most salient reason is that God died of pity for man after he saw man nailed to the cross.
LePen defeated the opposition parties with her "Ultranationalist" party recently.A good part of this is the so-called "austerity" imposed by the European Union and the rest can be attributed to the Socialist Presidents' inability to act like a Socialist.Most of his campaign promises are unfulfilled, sort of like Obama here who has also been a disappointment.The only reason Obama doesn't look like a complete fool is that he has the Republicans and their right-wing nonsense.
A good example is the stupid Benghazi investigation.I'd support investigating why the hell we invaded or attacked Libya in the first place and whether that attack made it better.Another is the VA investigation.Most veterans who actually do get treatment at the VA are pleased with the service and results, but that can be attributed to the fact that it is a government run service, not a private, for profit, venture.A better investigation would be into the funding for the VA, who voted to increase its funding and who wanted to cut it.The last point on this is that we must realize that once a soldier is discharged, he is no longer government property and part of a war effort and becomes simply a human being in need of health care.Such are our values.
We do support the Fascist movement in Ukraine although the supporters of the Kiev government, for the most part, have stopped carrying around flags with swastikas on them.Still, more ultra nationalism.
About the only thing that keeps the U.S. from becoming totally fascist is its own racism.It is difficult for most people in the U.S. to think of the country in its entirety being made up of a "Mater Race," when so many of its own "races" hate each other.It is simply too petty and selfish to become classically fascist.
We do have some other crazy things going on.Feminists all over are screaming about this Elliott Rodger and all the variant spellings of the first name when he at least had the affliction of mental illness.Certainly, his attitude towards women was idiotic, but out of frustration.There is a real problem with that attitude in males who do not have that excuse, and far too many of the morons.
John Kerry, Secretary of State, has blathered wildly the past few months about a variety of subjects.Just recently, NBC, a corporate media enterprise, interviewed Snowden to ask about a number of things.It was a pretty far-ranging interview and surprising in its quality, although it is about a year late.One of the things John Kerry has been saying is that Snowden should "Man Up" and face trial in the U.S.I suppose he is implying that Snowden needs testosterone shots?
Many are saying he should come here and "face the music"?What music do they have in mind?Wagner?Verdi?Beethoven?Knowing the culture here, I shudder to think of what sort of "music" they have in mind.
I imagine we might as well close with a note on Egypt:
A fair trial?The law under which they want to prosecute him precludes, as Snowden pointed out, his presenting any exculpatory evidence whatsoever.Snowden is not stupid enough to believe that a return would be in any way profitable for him and would at the very least end with him in a prison.
I rather suspect that Kerry will have to find other uses for his testosterone shots.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 2014
Egyptian Regime Scrambles to Boost Low Turnout in Election Sealing General Sisi’s Grip on Power
Egypt’s presidential election has been extended for a third day in an apparent bid to boost voter turnout. The outcome is believed to be a foregone conclusion with former army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi widely expected to win. But the conspicuously low voter turnout threatens to undermine the credibility of the election and has led the military-backed government to take desperate measures. On Tuesday, the government declared a public holiday to encourage voter participation. It also waived public transportation fares, encouraged shopping malls to close early, and threatened to fine Egyptians who did not vote. Local politicians took to the airwaves to repeat messages from Muslim and Christian leaders about a "religious duty" to vote. If Sisi wins the election as predicted, he will become the sixth military man to run Egypt since the army overthrew the monarchy in 1952. He led the ouster of democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi last year. Some Islamic and liberal political groups have urged Egyptians to boycott the election, arguing that the vote is unfair and illegitimate. We go to Cairo to speak with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEENSHAIKH:We turn now to Egypt’s presidential election, which has been extended for a third day in an apparent bid to boost voter turnout. The result of the election is believed to be a foregone conclusion, with former Army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi widely expected to win. But the low voter turnout threatens to undermine the credibility of the election.
AMYGOODMAN:Well, for more, we go right to Egypt, where we’re joined by Sharif Abdel Kouddous,Democracy Now!correspondent in Cairo, joining us from a polling place. Can you describe where you are, Sharif, and the significance of the extension of the election and making yesterday a national holiday so people would turn out?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Yeah, that’s right, Amy. I’m speaking to you in front of a poll station in Dokki, a district in Cairo. As you can see behind me, there’s very few people lined up. In fact, there’s no line outside the polling station. And this has been the case for the past two days. There was a much lower-than-expected turnout for this election, which had the authorities desperate to boost people coming to the polls. So, initially, they extended voting hours on Monday by an hour. Then they declared Tuesday a holiday for both state and private employees. They closed the stock market. They suspended fares for the train and the metro to facilitate people getting to the polls. And they even had the Justice Ministry saying that people were going to get fined if they didn’t go to vote. It also spurred many of the hosts on—pro-military hosts on television, that dominate the airwaves, were in hysterics last night, criticizing people for not turning out, having a lot of elite disdain for the Egyptian people, one host calling people traitors for not voting, another telling business owners to check their employees’ hands to see if there was ink proving that they voted. So, there was really, I think, a lot of shock by the authorities at the level of turnout.
Now, some of the reasons for this lower-than-expected enthusiasm for this poll, there’s many, but one may be voter apathy. I mean, we have seen three—seven elections. This is the seventh poll in Egypt since the ouster of Mubarak just over three years ago. None of the people in office right now have been elected by any of those polls. And when those—when we did have elected officials, much of the political elites spent their time discussing issues over identity rather than issues, the deep—discussing the deep social and economic problems that plague Egypt. So, the electoral process has been increasingly dissatisfying and alienating for many Egyptian voters.
Another reason is, of course, the certainty of the outcome of this election. Unlike the 2012 poll, which had candidates from across the political spectrum, this election just has two candidates, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Hamdeen Sabahi, both of which espouse different brands of the same ideology, Nasserism. And Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is a candidate that’s backed by the state, he’s backed by the business elite, and is widely expected to win. And so the certainty of the results may have played into people not bothering to come.
And certainly, there is an active boycott. We have to remember that the largest political group in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood, is not taking part in this election. They’ve been the subject of an incredibly harsh crackdown. Many of their rank and file have been killed. Their leaders are jailed. And so they have refused to take part, as have groups like the April 6 Youth Movement. So, again, officials are saying the turnout is somewhere between—in the mid-thirties, but that is a much lower turnout than we saw in the runoff that elected Mohamed Morsi in 2012, which had 52 percent.
NERMEENSHAIKH:And, Sharif, el-Sisi is so guaranteed to win that he hasn’t even made one public appearance during his campaign?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?
NERMEENSHAIKH:That Sisi has not appeared publicly once himself during this campaign, even though his images are ubiquitous throughout the country?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Sorry, Nermeen, it’s cutting a bit, but I—from what I understand from your—what your question is, about Sisi’s campaign. He has run a very, very controlled campaign. He has not had any public appearances, preferring instead to meet people and officials at his campaign headquarters, or do events by video link to other parts of the country. He’s done very few media appearances, and those have been very managed, with very easy questions. And he’s made very clear that he’ll have no civilian oversight of the military; when he was asked bluntly this question, he refused to answer. And his electoral program is shrouded in mystery. He has said that the crisis, or what they call the war on terrorism, is his program.
AMYGOODMAN:Sharif, we’re going to have to leave it there. That does it for the show. Sharif Abdel Kouddous reporting from Cairo.
LePen defeated the opposition parties with her "Ultranationalist" party recently.A good part of this is the so-called "austerity" imposed by the European Union and the rest can be attributed to the Socialist Presidents' inability to act like a Socialist.Most of his campaign promises are unfulfilled, sort of like Obama here who has also been a disappointment.The only reason Obama doesn't look like a complete fool is that he has the Republicans and their right-wing nonsense.
A good example is the stupid Benghazi investigation.I'd support investigating why the hell we invaded or attacked Libya in the first place and whether that attack made it better.Another is the VA investigation.Most veterans who actually do get treatment at the VA are pleased with the service and results, but that can be attributed to the fact that it is a government run service, not a private, for profit, venture.A better investigation would be into the funding for the VA, who voted to increase its funding and who wanted to cut it.The last point on this is that we must realize that once a soldier is discharged, he is no longer government property and part of a war effort and becomes simply a human being in need of health care.Such are our values.
We do support the Fascist movement in Ukraine although the supporters of the Kiev government, for the most part, have stopped carrying around flags with swastikas on them.Still, more ultra nationalism.
About the only thing that keeps the U.S. from becoming totally fascist is its own racism.It is difficult for most people in the U.S. to think of the country in its entirety being made up of a "Mater Race," when so many of its own "races" hate each other.It is simply too petty and selfish to become classically fascist.
We do have some other crazy things going on.Feminists all over are screaming about this Elliott Rodger and all the variant spellings of the first name when he at least had the affliction of mental illness.Certainly, his attitude towards women was idiotic, but out of frustration.There is a real problem with that attitude in males who do not have that excuse, and far too many of the morons.
John Kerry, Secretary of State, has blathered wildly the past few months about a variety of subjects.Just recently, NBC, a corporate media enterprise, interviewed Snowden to ask about a number of things.It was a pretty far-ranging interview and surprising in its quality, although it is about a year late.One of the things John Kerry has been saying is that Snowden should "Man Up" and face trial in the U.S.I suppose he is implying that Snowden needs testosterone shots?
Many are saying he should come here and "face the music"?What music do they have in mind?Wagner?Verdi?Beethoven?Knowing the culture here, I shudder to think of what sort of "music" they have in mind.
I imagine we might as well close with a note on Egypt:
A fair trial?The law under which they want to prosecute him precludes, as Snowden pointed out, his presenting any exculpatory evidence whatsoever.Snowden is not stupid enough to believe that a return would be in any way profitable for him and would at the very least end with him in a prison.I rather suspect that Kerry will have to find other uses for his testosterone shots.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 2014
Egyptian Regime Scrambles to Boost Low Turnout in Election Sealing General Sisi’s Grip on Power
Egypt’s presidential election has been extended for a third day in an apparent bid to boost voter turnout. The outcome is believed to be a foregone conclusion with former army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi widely expected to win. But the conspicuously low voter turnout threatens to undermine the credibility of the election and has led the military-backed government to take desperate measures. On Tuesday, the government declared a public holiday to encourage voter participation. It also waived public transportation fares, encouraged shopping malls to close early, and threatened to fine Egyptians who did not vote. Local politicians took to the airwaves to repeat messages from Muslim and Christian leaders about a "religious duty" to vote. If Sisi wins the election as predicted, he will become the sixth military man to run Egypt since the army overthrew the monarchy in 1952. He led the ouster of democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi last year. Some Islamic and liberal political groups have urged Egyptians to boycott the election, arguing that the vote is unfair and illegitimate. We go to Cairo to speak with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEENSHAIKH:We turn now to Egypt’s presidential election, which has been extended for a third day in an apparent bid to boost voter turnout. The result of the election is believed to be a foregone conclusion, with former Army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi widely expected to win. But the low voter turnout threatens to undermine the credibility of the election.
AMYGOODMAN:Well, for more, we go right to Egypt, where we’re joined by Sharif Abdel Kouddous,Democracy Now!correspondent in Cairo, joining us from a polling place. Can you describe where you are, Sharif, and the significance of the extension of the election and making yesterday a national holiday so people would turn out?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Yeah, that’s right, Amy. I’m speaking to you in front of a poll station in Dokki, a district in Cairo. As you can see behind me, there’s very few people lined up. In fact, there’s no line outside the polling station. And this has been the case for the past two days. There was a much lower-than-expected turnout for this election, which had the authorities desperate to boost people coming to the polls. So, initially, they extended voting hours on Monday by an hour. Then they declared Tuesday a holiday for both state and private employees. They closed the stock market. They suspended fares for the train and the metro to facilitate people getting to the polls. And they even had the Justice Ministry saying that people were going to get fined if they didn’t go to vote. It also spurred many of the hosts on—pro-military hosts on television, that dominate the airwaves, were in hysterics last night, criticizing people for not turning out, having a lot of elite disdain for the Egyptian people, one host calling people traitors for not voting, another telling business owners to check their employees’ hands to see if there was ink proving that they voted. So, there was really, I think, a lot of shock by the authorities at the level of turnout.
Now, some of the reasons for this lower-than-expected enthusiasm for this poll, there’s many, but one may be voter apathy. I mean, we have seen three—seven elections. This is the seventh poll in Egypt since the ouster of Mubarak just over three years ago. None of the people in office right now have been elected by any of those polls. And when those—when we did have elected officials, much of the political elites spent their time discussing issues over identity rather than issues, the deep—discussing the deep social and economic problems that plague Egypt. So, the electoral process has been increasingly dissatisfying and alienating for many Egyptian voters.
Another reason is, of course, the certainty of the outcome of this election. Unlike the 2012 poll, which had candidates from across the political spectrum, this election just has two candidates, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Hamdeen Sabahi, both of which espouse different brands of the same ideology, Nasserism. And Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is a candidate that’s backed by the state, he’s backed by the business elite, and is widely expected to win. And so the certainty of the results may have played into people not bothering to come.
And certainly, there is an active boycott. We have to remember that the largest political group in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood, is not taking part in this election. They’ve been the subject of an incredibly harsh crackdown. Many of their rank and file have been killed. Their leaders are jailed. And so they have refused to take part, as have groups like the April 6 Youth Movement. So, again, officials are saying the turnout is somewhere between—in the mid-thirties, but that is a much lower turnout than we saw in the runoff that elected Mohamed Morsi in 2012, which had 52 percent.
NERMEENSHAIKH:And, Sharif, el-Sisi is so guaranteed to win that he hasn’t even made one public appearance during his campaign?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?
NERMEENSHAIKH:That Sisi has not appeared publicly once himself during this campaign, even though his images are ubiquitous throughout the country?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Sorry, Nermeen, it’s cutting a bit, but I—from what I understand from your—what your question is, about Sisi’s campaign. He has run a very, very controlled campaign. He has not had any public appearances, preferring instead to meet people and officials at his campaign headquarters, or do events by video link to other parts of the country. He’s done very few media appearances, and those have been very managed, with very easy questions. And he’s made very clear that he’ll have no civilian oversight of the military; when he was asked bluntly this question, he refused to answer. And his electoral program is shrouded in mystery. He has said that the crisis, or what they call the war on terrorism, is his program.
AMYGOODMAN:Sharif, we’re going to have to leave it there. That does it for the show. Sharif Abdel Kouddous reporting from Cairo.
LePen defeated the opposition parties with her "Ultranationalist" party recently.A good part of this is the so-called "austerity" imposed by the European Union and the rest can be attributed to the Socialist Presidents' inability to act like a Socialist.Most of his campaign promises are unfulfilled, sort of like Obama here who has also been a disappointment.The only reason Obama doesn't look like a complete fool is that he has the Republicans and their right-wing nonsense.
A good example is the stupid Benghazi investigation.I'd support investigating why the hell we invaded or attacked Libya in the first place and whether that attack made it better.Another is the VA investigation.Most veterans who actually do get treatment at the VA are pleased with the service and results, but that can be attributed to the fact that it is a government run service, not a private, for profit, venture.A better investigation would be into the funding for the VA, who voted to increase its funding and who wanted to cut it.The last point on this is that we must realize that once a soldier is discharged, he is no longer government property and part of a war effort and becomes simply a human being in need of health care.Such are our values.
We do support the Fascist movement in Ukraine although the supporters of the Kiev government, for the most part, have stopped carrying around flags with swastikas on them.Still, more ultra nationalism.
About the only thing that keeps the U.S. from becoming totally fascist is its own racism.It is difficult for most people in the U.S. to think of the country in its entirety being made up of a "Mater Race," when so many of its own "races" hate each other.It is simply too petty and selfish to become classically fascist.
We do have some other crazy things going on.Feminists all over are screaming about this Elliott Rodger and all the variant spellings of the first name when he at least had the affliction of mental illness.Certainly, his attitude towards women was idiotic, but out of frustration.There is a real problem with that attitude in males who do not have that excuse, and far too many of the morons.
John Kerry, Secretary of State, has blathered wildly the past few months about a variety of subjects.Just recently, NBC, a corporate media enterprise, interviewed Snowden to ask about a number of things.It was a pretty far-ranging interview and surprising in its quality, although it is about a year late.One of the things John Kerry has been saying is that Snowden should "Man Up" and face trial in the U.S.I suppose he is implying that Snowden needs testosterone shots?
Many are saying he should come here and "face the music"?What music do they have in mind?Wagner?Verdi?Beethoven?Knowing the culture here, I shudder to think of what sort of "music" they have in mind.
I imagine we might as well close with a note on Egypt:
A fair trial?The law under which they want to prosecute him precludes, as Snowden pointed out, his presenting any exculpatory evidence whatsoever.Snowden is not stupid enough to believe that a return would be in any way profitable for him and would at the very least end with him in a prison.I rather suspect that Kerry will have to find other uses for his testosterone shots.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 2014
Egyptian Regime Scrambles to Boost Low Turnout in Election Sealing General Sisi’s Grip on Power
Egypt’s presidential election has been extended for a third day in an apparent bid to boost voter turnout. The outcome is believed to be a foregone conclusion with former army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi widely expected to win. But the conspicuously low voter turnout threatens to undermine the credibility of the election and has led the military-backed government to take desperate measures. On Tuesday, the government declared a public holiday to encourage voter participation. It also waived public transportation fares, encouraged shopping malls to close early, and threatened to fine Egyptians who did not vote. Local politicians took to the airwaves to repeat messages from Muslim and Christian leaders about a "religious duty" to vote. If Sisi wins the election as predicted, he will become the sixth military man to run Egypt since the army overthrew the monarchy in 1952. He led the ouster of democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi last year. Some Islamic and liberal political groups have urged Egyptians to boycott the election, arguing that the vote is unfair and illegitimate. We go to Cairo to speak with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEENSHAIKH:We turn now to Egypt’s presidential election, which has been extended for a third day in an apparent bid to boost voter turnout. The result of the election is believed to be a foregone conclusion, with former Army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi widely expected to win. But the low voter turnout threatens to undermine the credibility of the election.
AMYGOODMAN:Well, for more, we go right to Egypt, where we’re joined by Sharif Abdel Kouddous,Democracy Now!correspondent in Cairo, joining us from a polling place. Can you describe where you are, Sharif, and the significance of the extension of the election and making yesterday a national holiday so people would turn out?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Yeah, that’s right, Amy. I’m speaking to you in front of a poll station in Dokki, a district in Cairo. As you can see behind me, there’s very few people lined up. In fact, there’s no line outside the polling station. And this has been the case for the past two days. There was a much lower-than-expected turnout for this election, which had the authorities desperate to boost people coming to the polls. So, initially, they extended voting hours on Monday by an hour. Then they declared Tuesday a holiday for both state and private employees. They closed the stock market. They suspended fares for the train and the metro to facilitate people getting to the polls. And they even had the Justice Ministry saying that people were going to get fined if they didn’t go to vote. It also spurred many of the hosts on—pro-military hosts on television, that dominate the airwaves, were in hysterics last night, criticizing people for not turning out, having a lot of elite disdain for the Egyptian people, one host calling people traitors for not voting, another telling business owners to check their employees’ hands to see if there was ink proving that they voted. So, there was really, I think, a lot of shock by the authorities at the level of turnout.
Now, some of the reasons for this lower-than-expected enthusiasm for this poll, there’s many, but one may be voter apathy. I mean, we have seen three—seven elections. This is the seventh poll in Egypt since the ouster of Mubarak just over three years ago. None of the people in office right now have been elected by any of those polls. And when those—when we did have elected officials, much of the political elites spent their time discussing issues over identity rather than issues, the deep—discussing the deep social and economic problems that plague Egypt. So, the electoral process has been increasingly dissatisfying and alienating for many Egyptian voters.
Another reason is, of course, the certainty of the outcome of this election. Unlike the 2012 poll, which had candidates from across the political spectrum, this election just has two candidates, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Hamdeen Sabahi, both of which espouse different brands of the same ideology, Nasserism. And Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is a candidate that’s backed by the state, he’s backed by the business elite, and is widely expected to win. And so the certainty of the results may have played into people not bothering to come.
And certainly, there is an active boycott. We have to remember that the largest political group in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood, is not taking part in this election. They’ve been the subject of an incredibly harsh crackdown. Many of their rank and file have been killed. Their leaders are jailed. And so they have refused to take part, as have groups like the April 6 Youth Movement. So, again, officials are saying the turnout is somewhere between—in the mid-thirties, but that is a much lower turnout than we saw in the runoff that elected Mohamed Morsi in 2012, which had 52 percent.
NERMEENSHAIKH:And, Sharif, el-Sisi is so guaranteed to win that he hasn’t even made one public appearance during his campaign?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?
NERMEENSHAIKH:That Sisi has not appeared publicly once himself during this campaign, even though his images are ubiquitous throughout the country?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Sorry, Nermeen, it’s cutting a bit, but I—from what I understand from your—what your question is, about Sisi’s campaign. He has run a very, very controlled campaign. He has not had any public appearances, preferring instead to meet people and officials at his campaign headquarters, or do events by video link to other parts of the country. He’s done very few media appearances, and those have been very managed, with very easy questions. And he’s made very clear that he’ll have no civilian oversight of the military; when he was asked bluntly this question, he refused to answer. And his electoral program is shrouded in mystery. He has said that the crisis, or what they call the war on terrorism, is his program.
AMYGOODMAN:Sharif, we’re going to have to leave it there. That does it for the show. Sharif Abdel Kouddous reporting from Cairo.
We have a couple of Latuff's cartoons this time.The first one, above, came to me the day after our last edition when we published the latest information over Sisi's election in Egypt.It remains the only virtue of Sisi that he at least not claim that God told him to do what he has been doing.Other than that, he attacks journalists, his own citizens, etc.Naturally, the U.S. likes him.Saudi Arabia does not and he will not return the money they sent Egypt while the Moslem Brotherhood was running the show over there.Hardly anyone showed up to vote, and Latuff makes the point.
The one above here is Latuff's impression of the vote in Syria.Obviously, he feels that the election was not entirely democratic.Still, most of his enemies are either U.S. supported or religious fanatics.Christians are especially terrified of these enemies as well as most sane Moslems.Still, Latuff at least speaks his mind and actually has a mind to speak of.
Around here, things are getting even more absurd than usual, especially concerning the military, and not because the military is a force for evil, either.Both the VA idiocy and the recent crap about a POW exchange has made most people in the mainstream media, not to mention the lunatic right, transparently subhuman, an argument for post-term abortion.(I realize that most of them will not even get that last clause.No matter.)
There are gloating idiocies coming from the right about the fact that the POW's home town has cancelled his welcome back.The reason, of course, in that the town only has a population of 8,000, is in Idaho, the county is larger that a few eastern states and has a population of 22,000, and the place is simply not equipped to handle the influx of media and morons that such a celebration would cause.They simply do not have enough electricity, for example, let alone police.
First, some important information about the POW himself.Our administration was told during negotiations that if word leaked about the impending exchange, the POW would be executed before being released.I would not trust our Congress to keep that secret for the 30 days they are complaining about, so Diane Feinstein is an even bigger liar than we first thought.
Second, the guy himself was hardly a deserter or a "coward," but more about cowardice later.There is no point educating these right wingers about military justice as they should at least know that much, but they will not know.To paraphrase, there are none so ignorant as those who *will* not know.
One of this group, now on the House Intelligence Committee thinks we need a President like Benjamin Franklin again.Right.
Third, the cowardice of these people is overwhelming.The argument against letting these "prisoners" go to Qutar is that they might attack us.I'm not afraid of them.Why are they?And weren't they kidnapped by us in the first place?
Forget the numbers now:the VA is next.It does not matter how many people the right wing manage to get fired over this.The real criminals in the lack of treatment for veterans are those people who manufactured so many veterans in the first place by sending people to Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places without providing adequate funding for their health care when they got back.Does anyone remember the families holding bake sales to send equipment to the sons in Iraq?
Well, another of these people wants to pass a bill providing that any woman who gets an abortion after being raped should get the same sentence as her rapist.I am not making this up.
At any rate, here are a couple of interviews of the military subject:
The backlash over the prisoner swap involving U.S. soldier Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and five members of the Taliban continues to grow. In Bergdahl’s hometown of Hailey, Idaho, community members have a canceled a celebration of his release over public safety concerns. In recent days, angry phone calls and emails poured into Hailey city hall and local organizations over the town’s support for the soldier. Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban in 2009 shortly after he left his military outpost in Afghanistan. Some of Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers have described him as a deserter. They have also said at least six soldiers died while searching for him, a claim the Pentagon rejects. We discuss the Bergdahl controversy and its local impact in Idaho with Larry Schoen, a county commissioner in Blaine County.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:The backlash continues to grow over the prisoner swap involving U.S. soldier Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl and five members of the Taliban. In Bergdahl’s hometown of Hailey, Idaho, community members have canceled a celebration of his release over public safety concerns. In recent days, angry phone calls and e-mails poured into Hailey City Hall and local organizations over the town support for the soldier. Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban in 2009 shortly after he left his military outpost in Afghanistan. He was held by the Taliban or five years. Some of Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers have described him as a deserter. They’ve also claimed at least six soldiers died while searching for him. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel rejected that claim.
CHUCKHAGEL:On Sergeant Bergdahl, I do not know of specific circumstances or details of U.S. soldiers dying as a result of efforts to find and rescue Sergeant Bergdahl. I am not aware of those specific details or any facts regarding that issue.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:On Capitol Hill, four top intelligence and military officials held an unusual closed-door briefing for the entire Senate on Wednesday to discuss why the White House decided to move ahead with the prisoner swap without notifying Congress. Senators were shown a recent video of Bowe Bergdahl depicting him in declining health. Meanwhile, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned that Republican lawmakers would call for Obama’s impeachment if you release more prisoners from Guantánamo Bay without congressional approval.
AMYGOODMAN:In another development,The Wall Street Journalreports that during the prisoner exchange negotiations, the Taliban warned that U.S. drone strikes had come close on several occasions to killing Sergeant Bergdahl while he was in captivity. To talk more about the story, we first go to Idaho where we’re joined by Larry Schoen, he’s the County Commissioner for Blaine County, Idaho. Hailey is one of the five cities in Blaine County. Welcome toDemocracy Now!Can you talk first about, first, Larry, the decision to cancel the celebrations upon the return of Bowe Bergdahl, though we don’t know when that will be?
LARRYSCHOEN:Well, first thing, good morning, and thank you for having me. And I speak very mindful of all of those who have given so much in service of the best intentions of the mission in Afghanistan. I was not in on the decision-making to cancel the event. But I think there were concerns about — that the event would become too large for local officials to manage. I think some people have felt the temperature rising here as disagreements about what may have happened have come to the floor on the national stage. Really, I think nobody here wants to channel some of the nastiness that is out there. People are rushing to judgment, and I think that is inappropriate. And I think in light of circumstances today, the decision was made to cancel the event several weeks ahead of it to tamp that down.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And Larry Schoen, can you tell us something about your corner of the country where Bowe Bergdahl grew up?
LARRYSCHOEN:Well, this is a beautiful part of the country. Idaho is a state with more wilderness than any state in the lower 48. People come here to recreate and be part of the great outdoors. Our community is small. It is about 22,000, but made up of people who have come to live here and visit here from all over the world. It is home to the Sun Valley resort, which was America’s first ski resort founded back in the 1930’s. And so it is a very close-knit community, well-educated community. People support one another in tough times. And I think that was the nature of this event, is to show support for the Bergdahl family and Sergeant Bergdahl who has been held by the Taliban for five years.
AMYGOODMAN:Larry Schoen, yours is in an usual community in that you have the great wealth of the celebrities like Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, their home there — though they are divorced, but what they have there. And then you have got working-class people. You’ve got for example, you the Bergdahls who moved from California, Calvinist, homeschooled their kids both Bowe and his older sister Skye. He worked at the Zany’s coffee shop. Can you tell us a little bit about that as a community center? And actually was was well-known for his ballet performances, Bowe Bergdahl was.
LARRYSCHOEN:Right, well, people focus on the celebrity aspects of this community because people have been coming here from Southern California since the 1930’s. In fact, that was part of the marketing of this resort when it first opened. But this is a working-class community. The Zaney’s is a coffee shop owned by an old friend of mine who opened it because that’s what — she loves being with people. She loves serving people. It is a place where Bowe worked and therefore has become kind of the Mecca in town. Our county is bigger than the state of Delaware with only 22,000 people. People tend to congregate in the towns, but the Bergdahls, like I, live out in the rural parts of the county. That has been a gathering place. I think that is appropriate. I think people have tried to show their support over the course of these five years. Needed a place to do that, and Zaney’s was a good place. The job that he held there was one of the many things this young man has done in his short life.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And how has the uproar in Washington and across the media, now nationwide, over whether Bowe Bergdahl was a deserter and should have been rescued — how has that affected the town and its support for the family?
LARRYSCHOEN:I think it has, I think it’s shaking the town because I think, first and foremost and certainly I as an elected official here, think about the family and the family and their son, our native son, and what they need to get through this ordeal. The whole five years of captivity and now this ordeal in the national press, the global press. So, we are thinking first about them. And this is — from our perspective, this is not, first and foremost, about national and military policy and U.S. foreign policy, but certainly, the issues surrounding his release — this is a very complex story. There are ties to U.S. foreign policy coming out of this really hometown story about this young man. So, I think people are shaken by that. I think people are trying to not rush to judgment here locally. I think everybody knows what is right and what is wrong, and many of the different actions that have occurred. So, we have many different components to the story. There is the question of what was his state of mind when he left his base and went missing, was it appropriate for the U.S. government to release these five Taliban under the circumstances? There are many different parts of that story. We are feeling the effects of the global story, but trying to focus, I think, on the health and welfare of the Bergdahl family.
AMYGOODMAN:And Larry Schoen, you know Bowe’s parents Bob and Jani Bergdahl. Can you tell us a little about them?
LARRYSCHOEN:They are wonderful people. It is a loving family. They are loving people. I am sure they instilled in their son the best values that America has to offer. And I support them 100% through all of this.
AMYGOODMAN:Bob Bergdahl worked at, what,UPSfor some — well, close to three decades.
LARRYSCHOEN:Yeah, I don’t really know how long he work forUPS, but he is well-known in town. He’s been criticized for having spoken local Afghanistan language, the Pashtun. And now he’s been criticized for a number of different things because people are just searching for things to criticize in this event. But really, Bob is a very thoughtful man. I think he — and he expressed publicly any times that his goals and intentions were to stand in solidarity with his son, and to try as best he could and as best they could to appreciate and understand his circumstances and the circumstances of his comrades in Afghanistan. I think the Bergdahls have acted with only the best intentions toward their son and this country.
AMYGOODMAN:Larry Schoen, I want to thank you for being with us, County Commissioner for Blaine County, Idaho. Hailey is one of the five cities in Blaine County. The Bergdahls live just outside Hailey b and Bowe grew up just outside Hailey and worked at this well known watering hole, Zaney’s coffee shop, which is why he was very well known in the community. This isDemocracy Now!When we come back, we’re going to speak to a soldier who served years in the military. He was in Afghanistan at the same time as Bowe Bergdahl. And when he came back to the United States, he applied for conscientious objector status. Stay with us.
Veteran: Politicians Using FreedPOWBowe Bergdahl as "Chess Piece to Win Political Matches"
The Obama administration is seeking to contain a congressional backlash over a prisoner exchange that saw the release of American soldier Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban leaders. On Wednesday, top intelligence and military officials held a closed-door briefing for the entire Senate showing them a recent video of Bergdahl in declining health. The administration says the video helped spur action to win his release over fears his life was in danger. Opponents of the deal say the White House failed to give Congress proper notice, and may have endangered American lives by encouraging the capture of U.S. soldiers. The criticism has exploded as news spread through right-wing media that Bergdahl may have left his base after turning against the war. We are joined by Brock McIntosh, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War who served in Afghanistan from November 2008 to August 2009. McIntosh applied for conscientious objector status and was discharged last month.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:As this controversy brews, it’s on so many different levels. You’ve got the controversial prisoner swap and the whole issue of is this leading to the closing of Guantánamo, and then you’ve got Bowe Bergdahl leaving the base, not really fully understood at this point because we have not talked to Bowe Bergdahl. And once he left the base, he was not spoken to again except through Taliban videos of him. The question is being raised, did he desert? The question is being raised and he’s being condemned in the mainstream media for his antiwar views.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Well, we’re going to talk more about the Bowe Bergdahl story. We go now to Brock McIntosh in Washington, D.C. He fought with Army National Guard in Afghanistan from November 2008 to August 2009. And was based near where Bergdahl was captured. McIntosh had later applied for conscientious objector status and joined Iraq veterans against the war. Brock McIntosh, welcome back toDemocracy Now!
BROCKMCINTOSH:Thanks for having me.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Your initial reaction to the uproar in Congress and around the country over the prisoner swap with Bowe Bergdahl?
BROCKMCINTOSH:You just played a song called "Masters of War" and there’s a lyric where it talks about you to hide behind walls, you that hide behind desks, I just wanted to know I can see through your masks. And I think that that is a perfect description of what we’re seeing in Congress right now. These people who hide behind walls and hide behind desks, and are using aPOWas a chess piece to win political matches. And that last week, used a wounded veteran with nearly 40 years of military service, General Shinseki, as a political chess piece. And so, I think it is outrageous we know nothing about the actual circumstances of why exactly Sergeant Bergdahl left. We don’t know what his intentions were. It is all speculation at this point. All we know for sure is that he was aPOWand he should have been welcomed home.
AMYGOODMAN:And Brock, tell us where you were in Afghanistan in relation to Bowe Bergdahl. You served at the same time, though didn’t know each other.
BROCKMCINTOSH:Sure Amy. I served in Paktika Province initially for six months. That’s where Bowe Bergdahl went missing for six months. Spent the last three months in Khost Province. Those last three months were when Bowe Bergdahl went missing. He went missing in June 30, and I left Afghanistan in August 2009.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And in terms of this whole — the allegations that in the search for Bergdahl, all of these soldiers, several American soldiers were lost or killed. The — onlyThe New York Times, among the commercial media, has really raised the issue that many of these soldiers are being brought out by Republican political operative and made available to the various media. Your — what you understand about these other soldiers who were killed around the same time while Bergdahl was in captivity?
BROCKMCINTOSH:Right, so I think the story that is being told in the media makes it seem as though there was a unit that received — that was briefed about some rescue mission and they went out on this rescue mission to locate and extract Sergeant Bergdahl and six people died in the process. That is really not the case. Bergdahl went missing on June 30. Those six soldiers that died died two months later in four separate missions. And it is not clear to what extent those missions had anything to do with searching for Bergdahl. They certainly were not rescue missions. I mean one of them — one of those deaths involved an American soldier being killed supporting an Afghan national security force mission. That is not a rescue mission. We don’t know why exactly the six soldiers died. There’s all sorts of things that could explain it. Let’s not forget that summer season is fighting season in Afghanistan. It could have been that they died in late August and early September because it was late in the summer, and it was right before the winter, and attacks always ramp up at that time of year. It could also be explained by the fact that in 2009, the Obama administration initiated this protracted insurgency campaign and a surge in Afghanistan. So, there are all sorts of things that could explain why the soldiers died. And I think it is unfair to assert that Bergdahl went missing and therefore these soldiers died. And another thing also, in Bergdahl’s unit, they had gone a few months without any fatalities. The first fatality was five days before Bergdahl went missing. So, it could have just been that he happened to have gone missing at a time when there were increased attacks and people were being killed. What’s unfortunate is that he is being used, again, as a political chess piece in a political game and conservatives are using the allegations of soldiers in his unit to imply that this man wasn’t a hero and therefore, President Obama is not a hero for bringing this soldier home.
AMYGOODMAN:Looking at Buzzfeed describing who Juan was just talking about, this former Bush administration official, hired then resigned, Mitt Romney foreign policy spokesperson, played a key role in publicizing critics of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. The involvement of Richard Grenell who once served as a key aide to Bush, to — rather to the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. ,John Bolton, later worked on Romney’s campaign. I wanted to go back, though, to 2009, to the soldiers who Bowe Bergdahl worked with in that tiny outpost that they built in Afghanistan. We had Sean Smith on a few days ago, aGuardianvideographer and photographer who produced a film back in 2009 as well as one when he went to Idaho and met Bowe’s father, Bob Bergdahl, which we also played and I encourage people to go to democracynow.org to see all of that. Sean Smith spent a month embedded with Bowe Bergdahl’s unit in Afghanistan. In this clip, we hear from some of the soldiers stationed with Bowe.
SOLDIERONE:These people just want to be left alone.
SOLDIERTWO:Yeah, they got dicked with from the Russians for 17 years and then now we’re here.
SOLDIERONE:Same thing in Iraq when I was there. These people just want to be left alone. Have their crops, weddings, stuff like that, that’s it man.
SOLDIERTWO:I’m glad they leave them alone.
SEANSMITH:A few weeks later, Bowe Bergdahl, pictured in this photo, disappeared. The circumstances are unclear.
AMYGOODMAN:That is from the 2009 video forThe Guardianproduced by Sean Smith. Michael Hastings would further right about that, the late reporter forRolling Stone. Brock McIntosh, can you talk about your feelings when you were in Afghanistan, what was happening there? We have seen the e-mails that Michael Hastings wrote about inRolling Stoneof Bowe to his parents, talking about his disillusionment with the war. What were your thoughts and the thoughts of other soldiers? Sean Smith, a reporter forThe Guardian, said it was not unusual, more so among Americans and British soldiers in Afghanistan, to be highly critical of what was happening.
BROCKMCINTOSH:It is really hard — it was really hard to hear that clip, Amy, because it reminded me so much of the conversations that I had while I was in Afghanistan. There was so much talk about — within my unit about these Afghan people and how they just want to be left alone. And we were all aware of the role the U.S. played during the Cold War. Using the Afghan people as a proxy to get back at the Soviet Union, using the lives of Afghans as political chess pieces and gamesmanship? And so to then be in Afghanistan to help people, to help the Afghan people felt very disingenuous. We never had any clear sense exactly why we were there, what it was that we were supposed to be doing, why these people are shooting at us, who was shooting at us. Who are we shooting at? Why are we shooting at them? And it really eats away at you and it becomes a situation where all you want to do is you just want to come home and want your buddies on your left and your right to come home. And it’s — what are you supposed to do in a situation where you find yourself — you find yourself in a conflict that you don’t agree with, where people are dying on both sides? What are you supposed to do? What recourse do you have? I did not know that the conscientious objector process existed. That’s one recourse you can take. But I didn’t know that that existed. There’s an overwhelming lack of awareness that there’s a formal process where you, when you have a conscientious shift, you can actually leave the military.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And even your commanders at times are not aware of these options. Could you talk about that confronting your own commander — or your sense that you wanted to go into conscientious objector status?
BROCKMCINTOSH:Right. When I initially applied, it through my commander off guard. I actually applied on the very first day in my new unit, and so my commander was thrown off guard both because it was my first day meeting him and also because he didn’t think that that process was possible. You can’t just leave because you morally disagree with war. But it turns out you can. And to his credit, he read about the regulations and he actually drafted a document that we signed together saying I did not have to study, use or bear arms.
AMYGOODMAN:Now, what did that mean? Where were you, Brock?
BROCKMCINTOSH:Well, I had applied actually after about a year or so after I had come home. And I transferred from an Illinois National Guard unit to a D.C. state unit, and that is when I applied.
AMYGOODMAN:And what was that process you went through? You started serving in, what, November 2008, you were in Afghanistan ’til August 2009.
BROCKMCINTOSH:I started serving in November, August 2008. Like so many soldiers, I wanted nothing more but to just make this war work and to help the Afghan people. And again, it became increasingly frustrated when you did not know why you were there and you didn’t why these people were shooting at you or who you were supposed to be — or why you were shooting and who you were shooting. I wanted to make the war work. And so, in that process of trying to make the war work, I started reading about the history and culture of Afghanistan, just like Bowe’s father did. And like Bowe, it became really discomforting to learn about the relationship that the U.S. has had with that country for the past 30 years and all the problems it has created for the past 30 years. And there were certain first-hand experience I had — experiences I had that were unnerving, like seeing a 16-year-old bomb maker get blown up. He came to our base to be treated. And we took turns babysitting his body in one hour shifts. And when I was alone with him in this room, thinking how crazy it is that me as a 20 world and the 16-year-old are being sent to kill each other by these adult for these ideologies that we don’t quite understand. It’s just a sad situation.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:According toRolling Stonemagazine Bergdahl sent a final e-mail to his parents on June 27, three days before he was captured. He wrote, "The future is too good to waste on lies... And life is way to short to care for the damnation of others as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I’ve seen their ideas and I’m ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. Is is all revolting. I am sorry for everything here... These people need help, yet what they get is the conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live. The horror that is America is disgusting." In that email, he also referred to seeing an Afghan child run over by U.S. military vehicle. Your reaction to some of those words?
BROCKMCINTOSH:I want to react to one thing — to one aspect of that statement, and that was about lies. We were lied — we as veterans were lied to about the Iraq war. We were lied to by the Bush administration and with the endorsement of Congress, we went into Iraq. Nearly 5000 American soldiers were killed, well over 100,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, based on that line. There has been a lot of talk over the last few months about a lie that was told that the Phoenix VA Hospital about these secret waiting lists. I find it really ironic that Congress is so obsessed about figuring out who lied at the Phoenix VA Hospital and the circumstances of that lie that are connected to the deaths of 40 veterans, when a lie that they told killed nearly 5000 American soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. And what they’re doing is they’re trying to defer blame from themselves. Congress is the reason that we have waiting lists. ’Congress is the reason that we deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and deployed over 2 million veterans and have this influx of veterans that are fighting to get V.A. health care.
AMYGOODMAN:You know, it is interesting you raise this, Brock, because last week at this time, everyone nonstop across all of the media was talking about whether General Shinseki would resign and about the horror of the V.A., the waits that people have when they come home from war, one to two years. And within two days, then that is all wiped off of the face of the media and this is the controversy that takes its place. But you see these as connected.
BROCKMCINTOSH:Well, I’m not sure if they’re connected. It could be that this happened at a time when the Obama administration anticipated General Shinseki stepping down. I don’t know, but I see a connection in Congress’ willingness to exploit other people’s service for political gamesmanship. Last week, they scapegoated General Shinseki, a wounded veteran who served for nearly 40 years, they scapegoated him to defer blame from themselves and the role that they played in creating these wait lists and failing to prepare for the cost of veterans coming home. When we went to Iraq and we went to Afghanistan, they did not set aside the necessary funds that would be required to care for our veterans to come home and to make the systematic changes that would need to be made. So the Congress played a huge role in creating those wait lists and the problems that the V.A. is facing and they scapegoated a veteran last week. And this week, they’re now taking advantage of aPOWand using him for political games and it is pretty sick and pretty disgusting and it’s pretty shameful.
AMYGOODMAN:Brock, finally, did you ever get conscientious objector status?
BROCKMCINTOSH:I did not get conscientious objector status. You know, the process for reserve soldiers, it’s supposed to take about six months, three months for active soldiers. But, the process is always — there are always obstacles and barriers in the process. You always have to butt has with officers. They lose your paperwork. You really need to have legal assistance in order to get c.o. status because the process is so difficult. If more veterans were aware, more soldiers were where aware that c.o. process exists and if there were reforms made to the c.o. process, we may not have had a situation where a soldier had a conscientious change of heart and left his post because he didn’t realize that there were formal recourses of actions that he could have taken. Not saying that that’s the reason why Sergeant Bergdahl left, we don’t know. But, the point is, I think we could avoid potential situations like this if we reform the c.o. process and if more soldiers are made aware that that process exists.
AMYGOODMAN:Brock McIntosh we want to thank you so much for being with us. A soldier served in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009, applied for conscientious objector status and was discharged in May of 2014. He’s a member of Iraq Veterans Against the war.
The juxtaposition of these particular aphorisms by Adorno may at first seem strange, but they all intertwine as a commentary of the human condition as opposed to the manufactured human condition.Even somewhat strange reading attempts to come to terms with Nietzsche seem antiquated today when he is much better understood.Certainly, there are at least two Nietzsches, as described below by Ernst, but a multitude -- even as he is now understood better than ever.As he himself said, "I was born posthumously."In fact, by the end of the 19th century, there was not the slightest hint that he was soon to become the single most influential thinker of the 20th, revolutionizing thought and impacting thinkers and writers either directly or indirectly for the entire century and beyond.This is remarkable in itself as his final and most productive year was 1888 and only a thousand copies of his last book of Zarathustra had been printed and most of them were given away.Soon after his last work, the Anti-Christ, he finally succumbed to brain cancer and could not be induced to utter a single syllable about his work.The Will to Power is an attempt by his sister to piece together many of his past writings and notebooks and it was published without his knowledge.The influence he was to have in the next Century was as well anticipated as was Quantum Mechanics in the Physical Sciences.This selection of aphorisms concludes with Adorno's own analysis of Nietzsche.Evaluation and explication of that is left to the reader.
#106 here discusses memory and memories and the discussion yields an ambivalent attitude towards it.It concludes, however, with a very powerful assertion of ints importance:in other words, without memories of past achievements or worth, one is doomed to die in despair.With such a warning, it is wise to revisit our own memories and reassess them rather than to dismiss them.It is certainly worth thinking about whether winning a baseball game with one swing of the bat, leaving all players to walk off the field, way back when one was in his teens is a more worthy achievement than obtaining a Ph.D. or having an I.Q. measured at least three standard deviations above the mean.In the last analysis, which of these three is the most valuable?There are many diverse elements involved in each situation, but perhaps the overwhelming one is the instantaneous accomplishment which put a final and irrevocable end to something.The point here is that there is value in all of these and one need not let society or societal prejudices determine the value of any of them, nor should one allow them to be tinged as either "good" or "bad" according to some external value system that seems to conspire to keep the individual humble and retiring and allow the wealthy and powerful to continue their own definition of success, which always seems to describe them.
#113 shows Adorno at his most irritating, and hence most interesting.He discusses Schopenhauer's attitude towards leisure time as expressed by an editor to his World as Will and Idea, indicates that therefore Schopenhauer preferred death to leisure time, found himself alienated from the concept, and then uses Baudelaire, Christianity, Marx (the concept of alienation), and Tolstoi's attitude towards the feeling after sex to support his points.On a very real level this is preposterous.In fact, when Schopenhauer felt the urge to copulate was so overwhelming that it distracted him from his thought and writing, he went out, paid a willing female, and discharged the offending urge and, with much relief, returned to his work.Such a logical and intelligent, and also stubborn, attitude is simply beyond the imagination of most human beings, yet who is to say that many males, at least, would have led happier and more productive lives had they followed Schopenhauer's advice and example?
#119 is an excellent discussion of morality as oppression and how it developed.It is amazing when one considers how a system of values that asserts the corrupting and pernicious effects of capital acquisition become a defense of the ruling class and the wealthy, what we today, in 2014, tend to call the 1% when we are in our most polite mode of discourse.Additionally, the ruling forces have always attempted to harness are acquire the rights to any sort of pleasurable or needy urges and allow then to be indulged only by permission.In a section here omitted Adorno uses the term "Ford" to refer to Henry Ford, the archetypical capitalist later identified as Fascist.It is little-known that he had manufacturing plants in Hitler's Germany and was supplying armaments to Hitler during World War II (he was doing the same here).It is even less known that we bombed one or more of these plants during the war and he sued the United States Government for damages.Even more preposterous is the fact that he won in the United States' Legal system.He became an obvious symbol of the first half of the 20th century and was used by Aldus Huxley in his Brave New World, a classic that illustrates much of what Adorno discusses in the next passages.Today, of course, no single person can be used a such an exemplar as there ae so many, all subsumed under the rubric of "Corporation," a concept which has been legally designated as human by our legal system as of a few years ago.
The rest of the discussion concerns the CULTURE INDUSTRY.This is a concept that the Frankfurt School has had difficulty in dealing with.At one time, Marcuse wrote a piece lamenting the phonograph as replacing the concert hall which led to much anger and indignation.He, of course, was not attacking the technology and the benefits but rather remarking on the importance of the traditional setting.At the same approximate time, a recording of the Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould was released and caused not only a sensation, but a revolution in the way people listened to serious music.Some classical pianists remarked that the recording reminded them of why they started on their arduous career in the first place.Gould erupted against the stuffy and traditional, appearing in an overcoat, sitting on an orange crate, wearing gloves with the fingertips cut off and performing in the most prestigious concert halls in the world.Eventually, he retired from public performance and dedicated himself exclusively to the recording studio.He hummed along, out of tune, with his brilliant playing and revived classical music and revolutionized how people listened to it. Adorno himself contributed to Thomas Mann's understanding of the technicalities of classical music, especially the twelve tone system of Arnold Schoenberg.I would not hesitate to recommend Dr. Faustus as the most accomplished novel of the twentieth century, although I would warn that not only is a familiarity with the Faust legend is required but also a close understanding of what "Classical" music is.Terms such as "Fugue,""Cantata,""Sonata," and several others are familiar enough and, if they are not, Faustus is not a work the reader will find rewarding. I must, however, contrast it to Finnegan's Wake and the works of Joyce.Joyce once said "It took me my whole life to write my books.You should spend your whole life reading them."I took him at his word, eagerly, and abandoned any attempts to come to terms with him.There were simply too many other authors to consider.Thomas Mann has never made such an idiotic statement. On the final issue: the culture industry.Mass media is simply too demeaning to discuss formally and is out of place here.Adorno does his best to deal with it and I leave his words to themselves.
106
All the little flowers. – The sentence, most likely from Jean-Paul, that memories are the only property which cannot be taken from us, belongs in the storehouse of a powerlessly sentimental consolation, which would like to think that the self-renouncing withdrawal of the subject into interiority is precisely the fulfillment, from which the consolation turns away. By establishing the archive of oneself, the subject commandeers its own stock of experience as property and thereby turns it once more into something entirely external to the subject. The past inner life turns into furniture, just as, conversely, every piece of Biedermeier furniture was memory made wood. The intérieur[French: interior], in which the soul stores its collection of curiosities and memorabilia, is invalid. Memories cannot be preserved in drawers and file cabinets, but rather in them is indissolubly interwoven what is past with what is present. No-one has them at their disposal in the freedom and arbitrariness, whose praise resounds in the swollen sentences of Jean-Paul. Precisely where they becomes controllable and objective, where the subject thinks of them as wholly secure, memories fade like soft wall-papers under harsh sunlight. Where however they retain their energy, protected by what is forgotten, they are endangered like anything which is alive. The conception of Bergson and Proust, aimed against reification, according to which what is contemporary, what is immediacy, constitutes itself only through memory, the reciprocity of what is now and what is then, has for that reason not merely a providential but also an infernal aspect. Just as no earlier experience truly exists, which was not detached from the rigor mortis of its isolated existence by involuntary memorialization, so too is the converse true, that no memory is guaranteed, as existing in itself, indifferent towards the future of the one who harbors it; nothing which is past is safe from the curse of the empirical present, through the transition into mere representation [Vorstellung]. The most blissful memory of a human being can, according to its substance, be repealed by a later experience. Whoever loved and betrayed love, does something awful not only to the picture of what has been, but to this last itself. With incontrovertible evidence, an unwilling gesture while awakening, a hollow cadence, a faint hypocrisy of pleasure, inveigles itself into the memory, making the nearness of yesterday already into the alienation, which it today has become. Despair has the expression of what is irrevocable not because things couldn’t go better next time, but because it draws the previous time into its maw. That is why it is foolish and sentimental, to wish to preserve what is past as pure in the midst of the dirty flood of what is contemporary. This latter, delivered unprotected to calamity, is left with no other hope than to emerge once more from this latter as something else. To those however who die in despair, their whole life was in vain.
113
Spoilsport. – The affinity between asceticism and euphoria, noted by the humdrum wisdom of psychology, the love-hate between saints and whores, has the objectively valid ground, that asceticism accords to fulfillment more of its rights than cultural installment-payments. The hostility to pleasure is certainly not to be separated from the consensus with the discipline of a society, which has its essence [Wesen] in demanding more than it grants in return. But there is also a mistrust against pleasure which comes from the intuition, that the latter is in this world nothing of the sort. A construction of Schopenhauer unconsciously expressed something of this intuition. The transition from the affirmation to the repudiation of the will to life occurs in the development of the thought, that in every delimitation of the will by a barrier “which is placed... between it and its former goal” there is suffering; in contrast, “its attainment of the goal” would be “satisfaction, well-being, happiness.” While such “suffering,” according to Schopenhauer’s intransigent cognition, could easily enough grow to the point that death itself would be preferable, the condition of “satisfaction” is itself unsatisfying, because “as soon as a shelter is granted to human beings from urgent necessity and suffering, boredom is so close at hand, that it requires the killing of time. What occupies all living beings and keeps them in motion, is the striving for existence [Dasein]. They don’t know what to do with existence, however, what it is assured: thus the second thing, which they set into motion, is the striving to be free of the burden of existence, to make it imperceptible, ‘to kill time’, that is, to escape boredom.” (Schopenhauer, Collected Works, Grand Duke Wilhelm-Ernst Edition, Volume I: The World as Will and Idea. I. Introduction by Eduard Grisebach. Leipzig 1920, pg 415). But the concept of this boredom which is sublated to such unsuspected dignity, is something which Schopenhauer’s sensibility, which is hostile to history, would least like to admit – bourgeois through and through. It is, as the experience of antithetical “free time,” the complement of alienated labor, whether this free time is supposed to merely reproduce expended energy, or whether it is burdened by the extraction of alien labor as a mortgage. Free time remains the reflex of the rhythm of production as something imposed heteronomously, to which the former is compulsorily held fast even in periods of weariness. The consciousness of the unfreedom of all existence, which the pressure of the demands of commerce, and thus unfreedom itself, does not allow to appear, emerges first in the intermezzo of freedom. The nostalgie du dimanche[French: Sunday nostalgia] is not homesickness for the workweek, but for the condition which is emancipated from this; Sundays are unsatisfying, not because they are observed, but because its own promise immediately represents itself at the same time as something unfulfilled; like the English one, every Sunday is too little Sunday. Those for who time painfully extends itself, who wait in vain, are disappointed that it failed to happen, that tomorrow goes past once more just like yesterday. The boredom of those however who do not need to work, is not fundamentally different from this. Society as a totality imposes, on those with administrative power, what they do to others, and what these latter may not do, the former will scarcely permit themselves. The bourgeoisie have turned satiety, which ought to be the close relation of ecstasy, into an epithet. Because others go hungry, ideology demands that the absence of hunger should count as vulgar. Thus the bourgeoisie indict the bourgeoisie. Their own existence, as exempt from labor, prevents any praise of laziness: the latter would be boring. The hectic bustle, which Schopenhauer refers to, is due less to the unbearable nature of the privileged condition than to its ostentation, which according to the historical situation either enlarges the social distance or seemingly reduces such through presumably important events and ceremonies, which are supposed to emphasize the usefulness of the masters. If those at the top truly felt bored, this stems not from too much happiness, but from the fact that they are marked by the general unhappiness; by the commodity character, which consigns the pleasures to idiocy, by the brutality of command, whose terrifying echo resounds in the high spirits of the rulers, finally by their fear of their own superfluousness. Noone who profits from the profit-system is capable of existing therein without shame, and it distorts even undistorted pleasure, although the excesses, which the philosophers envy, may by no means be so boring as they assure us. That boredom would disappear in realized freedom, is something vouchsafed by many experiences stolen from civilization. The saying omne animal post coitum triste [Latin: all animals are sad after mating] was devised by bourgeois contempt for humanity: nowhere more than here does what is human distinguish itself from creaturely sorrow. Not euphoria but socially approved love elicits disgust: the latter is, in Ibsen’s word, sticky. Those who are deeply moved by erotic sentiment transform fatigue into the plea for tenderness, and momentary sexual incapacity is understood as accidental, entirely external to passion. It is not for nothing that Baudelaire thought the bondage of erotic obsession together with the illuminating spiritualization, naming kiss, scent and conversation equally immortal. The transience of pleasure, on which asceticism stakes its claim, stands for the fact that except in the minutes heureuses [French: happy minutes], in which the forgotten life of the lover radiates from the arms and limbs of the beloved, there is no pleasure yet at all. Even the Christian denunciation of sex in Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata cannot entirely cancel out the memory of this in the middle of all the Capucin-style preaching. What he reproaches sensuous love for, is not only the grandiosely overweening theological motif of self-denial, that no human being may turn another into an object – actually thus a protest against patriarchal control – but at the same time the memorialization of the bourgeois malformation of sex, in its murky entanglement with every material interest, in marriage as a humiliating compromise, however much of an undercurrent of Rousseau’s resentment against pleasure raised to reflection runs in this. The attack on the period of the engagement is aimed at the family photograph, which resemblance the word “bridegroom.” ‘And moreover there was that ridiculous custom of giving sweets, of coarse gormandizing on sweets, and all those abominable preparations for the wedding: remarks about the house, the bedroom, beds, wraps, dressing-gowns, underclothing, costumes.’ [The Kreutzer Sonata, trans. R. Gustafson, Oxford UP: 1997, pg 107] He similarly mocks the honeymoon, which is compared to the disappointment after visiting an ‘extremely uninteresting’ fairground booth, extolled by a hawker. The exhausted senses are less to blame for this dégoût [French: disgust] than what is institutionalized, ordained, prefabricated in pleasure, its false immanence in the social order which adjusts it and turns it into something deathly sad, in the moment it is decreed. Such contrariness may grow to the point that all euphoria ultimately prefers to cease, inside renunciation, rather than violating the concept of euphoria through its realization.
119
Model virtue. – It is well-known how oppression and ethics [Moral] converge in the renunciation of the drives. But the ethical ideas do not merely oppress other ones, but are immediately derived from the existence of the oppressor. Since Homer, the concepts of good and wealth are intertwined in the Greek language. The kalokagathie[Greek: perfection], which was upheld by the humanists of modern society as a model of aesthetic-ethical harmony, has always put a heavy emphasis on property, and Aristotele’s Politics openly confessed the fusion of inner value with status in the determination of nobility, as “inherited wealth, which is connected with excellence.” The concept of the polis [Greek: city-state] in classical antiquity, which upheld internalized and externalized nature [Wesen], the validity of the individual [Individuum] in the city-state and the individual’s self as a unity, permitted it to ascribe moral rank to wealth, without inciting the crude suspicion, which the doctrine already at that time courted. If the visible effect on an existent state establishes the measure of a human being, then it is nothing but consistency to vouchsafe the material wealth, which tangibly confirms that effect, as the characteristic of the person, since the latter’s moral substance – just as later in Hegel’s philosophy – is supposed to be constituted on nothing other than their participation in the objective, social substance. Christianity first negated that identification, in the phrase that it would be easier to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven. But the particular theological premise on voluntary chosen poverty indicates how deeply the general consciousness is stamped by the ethos [Moralität] of property. Fixed property is to be distinguished from the nomadic disorder, against which all norms are directed; to be good and to have goods, coincided from the beginning. Good people are those who control themselves as their own possessions: their autonomous nature [Wesen] is modeled on material disposition. The rich are therefore not to be accused of being unethical – that reproach has ever belonged to the armature of political oppression – but given to understand, that they represent ethics [Moral] to others. In this latter is reflected having [Habe]. Wealth as goodliness [Gutsein: having goods/being good] is an element of the mortar of the world: the hard-bitten appearance [Schein] of such identity hinders the confrontation of the moral idea with the social order, in which the rich are right, while at the same time determinations of what is ethical different than those derived from wealth cannot be conceptualized. The more that the individual [Individuum] and society later diverged in the competition of interests, and the more the former is thrown back on itself, the more stubbornly do individuals hold onto the conception of moral nature [Wesen] as wealth. It is supposed to vouch for the possibility of reunifying what has been divided in two, into inside and outside. That is the secret of the inner-worldly asceticism, which Max Weber wrongly hypostatized as the limitless exertion of the businessman ad majorem dei gloriam [Latin: to the greater glory of God]. Material success binds individual [Individuum] and society not merely in the comfortable and meanwhile dubious sense, that the rich can escape loneliness, but in a far more radical sense: if the blind, isolated self-interest is driven only far enough, then it passes over, along with the economic one, into social power and reveals itself to be the incarnation of a universally binding principle. Whoever is rich or acquires wealth, experiences what is attained by the ego, “by one’s own initiative,” as what the objective Spirit [Geist], the truly irrational predestination of a society held together by brutal economic inequality, has willed. Thus the rich may reckon as benevolence, what testifies only to its absence. To themselves and to others, they experience themselves as the realization of the general principle. Because this latter is injustice, that is why the unjust turn regularly into the just, and not as mere illusion, but borne out of the hegemony of the law, according to which society reproduces itself. The wealth of the individual is inseparable from progress in society as “prehistory.” The rich dispose over the means of production. Consequently the technical progress, in which the entire society participates, is accounted for primarily as “their” progress, today that of industry, and the Fords necessarily appear to be benefactors, to the same degree which they in fact are, given the framework of the existing relations of production. Their privilege, already established in advance, makes it seem as if they were giving up what is theirs – namely the increase on the side of use-value – while those who are receiving their administered blessings are getting back only part of the profit. That is the ground of the character of delusion of ethical hierarchy. Poverty has indeed always been glorified as asceticism, the social condition for the acquisition of precisely the wealth in which morality [Sittlichkeit] is manifested, but nevertheless “what a man is worth” [in English in original] signifies, as everyone knows, the bank account – in the jargon of the German merchants, “the man is good,” i.e. they can pay. What however the reasons of state of the almighty economy so cynically confesses, reaches unacknowledged into the mode of conduct of individuals. The generosity in private intercourse, which the rich can presumably allow themselves, the reflected glow of happiness, which rests on them, and something of this falls on everyone who they consort with, all this veils them. They remain nice, “the right people” [in English in original], the better types, the good. Wealth distances itself from immediate injustice. The guard beats strikers with a billy club, the son of the factory-owner may occasionally drink a whisky with the progressive author. According to all desiderata of private ethics [Moral], even the most advanced kind, the rich could, if they only could, in fact always better be than the poor. This possibility, while truly indeed left unused, plays its role in the ideology of those who do not have it: even the convicted con artist, who may anyway be preferable to the legitimate boss of the trusts, is famous for having such a beautiful house, and the highly paid executive turns into a warm human being, the moment they serve an opulent dinner. Today’s barbaric religion of success is accordingly not simply counter-ethical [widermoralisch], rather it is the home-coming of the West to the venerable morals [Sitten] of the fathers. Even the norms, which condemn the arrangement of the world, owe their existence to the latter’s own mischief [Unwesen]. All ethics [Moral] is formed on the model of what is unethical [Unmoral], and to this day reproduces the latter at every stage. Slave-ethics [Sklavenmoral] is in fact bad: it is still only master-ethics [Herrenmoral].
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Customer service. – The culture industry sanctimoniously claims to follow its consumers and to deliver what they want. But while it reflexively denigrates every thought of its own autonomy and proclaims its victims as judges, its veiled high-handedness outbids all the excesses of autonomous art. It is not so much that the culture industry adapts to the reactions of its customers, as that it feigns these latter. It rehearses them, by behaving as if it itself was a customer. One could almost suspect, the entire “adjustment” [in English in original], which it claims to obey, is ideology; that the more human beings try, through exaggerated equality, through the oath of fealty to social powerlessness, to participate in power and to drive out equality, the more they attempt to make themselves resemble others and the whole. “The music listens for the listeners,” and the film practices on the scale of a trust the despicable trick of adults, who, when speaking down to a child, fall over the gift with the language which suits only them, and then present the usually dubious gift with precisely the expression of lip-smacking joy, that is supposed to be elicited. The culture industry is tailored according to mimetic regression, to the manipulation of suppressed imitation-impulses. Therein it avails itself of the method, of anticipating its own imitation by its viewers, and sealing the consensus that it wishes to establish, by making it appear as if it already existed. What makes this all the easier, is that it can count on such a consensus in a stable system and can ritually repeat it, rather than actually having to produce it. Its product is by no means a stimulus, but a model for modes of reaction of nonexistent stimuli. Thus the enthusiastic music titles on the silver screen, the moronic children’s speech, the eye-winking folksiness; even the close-up of the start calls out “How beautiful!,” as it were. With this procedure the cultural machine goes so far as to dress down viewers like the frontally photographed express train in a moment of tension. The cadence of every film however is that of the witch, who serves soup to the little ones she wants to ensorcel or devour, with the hideous murmur, “Yummy soup, yummy soup? You'll enjoy it, you'll enjoy it...” In art, this kitchen fire-magic was discovered by Wagner, whose linguistic intimacies and musical spices are always tasting themselves, and who simultaneously demonstrated the entire procedure, with the genius’ compulsion of confession, in the scene of the Ring, where Mime offers Siegfried the poisoned potion. Who however is supposed to chop off the monster’s head, now that its blond locks have lain for a long time under the linden tree? [Unter den Linden: famous boulevard in Berlin]
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Grey and grey. – Not even its bad conscience can help the culture industry. Its Spirit [Geist] is so objective, that it slaps all its subjects in the face, and so the latter, agents all, know what the story is and seek to distance themselves through mental reservations from the nonsense which they create. The acknowledgment, that films broadcast ideology, is itself a broadcast ideology. It is dealt with administratively by the rigid distinction between synthetic day-dreams on the one hand, vehicles of flight from daily life, “escape” [English in original]; and well-meaning products on the other hand, which promote correct social behaviors, providing information, “conveying a message” [in English in original]. The prompt subsumption under “escape” [in English in original] and “message” [in English in original] expresses the untruth of both types. The mockery against “escape” [in English in original], the standardized outrage against superficiality, is nothing but the pathetic echo of the old-fashioned ethos, which denounces gambling, because it cannot play along with such in the prevailing praxis. The escape-films are so dreadful not because they turn their back on an existence squeezed dry, but because they do not do so energetically enough, because they are squeezed just as dry, because the satisfactions which they pretend to give, converge with the humiliation of reality, with renunciation. The dreams have no dream. Just as the technicolor heroes don’t allow us to forget for a second that they are normal human beings, typecast prominent faces and investments, what is unmistakably revealed under the thin flutter of schematically produced fantasy is the skeleton of cinema-ontology, the entire prescribed hierarchy of values, the canon of what is unwanted and what is to be imitated. Nothing is more practical than “escape” [in English in original], nothing is more wedded to bustle: one is kidnapped into the distance only to have it hammered into one’s consciousness, that even at a distance, the laws of the empirical mode of life are undisturbed by empirical deviations. The “escape” [in English in original] is full of “message” [in English in original]. That is how the “message” [in English in original], the opposite, looks, which wishes to flee from flight. It reifies the resistance against reification. One need only hear experts talk about how a splendid work of the silver screen has, next to other merits, also a constitution, in the same tone of voice that a pretty actress is described as even having “personality” [in English in original]. The executive can easily decide at the conference, that the escape-film must be given, next to more expensive additions, an ideal such as: human beings should be noble, helpful and good. Separated from the immanent logic of the entity, from the thing, the ideal turns into something produced on tap, the reform of ameliorable grievances, transfigured charity, thereby simultaneously tangible and void. They prefer most of all to broadcast the rehabilitation of drunks, whose impoverished euphoria they envy. By representing a society hardened in itself, according to anonymous laws, as if good will alone were enough to help matters, that society is defended even where it is honestly attacked. What is reflected is a kind of popular front of all proper and right-thinking people. The practical Spirit [Geist] of the “message” [in English in original], the tangible demonstration of how things can be done better, allies itself with the system in the fiction, that a total social subject, which does not exist at present, can make everything okay, if one could only assemble all the pieces and clear up the root of the evil. It is quite pleasant, to be able to vouch for one’s efficiency. “Message” [in English in original] turns into “escape” [in English in original]: those swept up in cleaning the house in which they live, forget the ground on which it was built. What “escape” [in English in original] would really be, the antipathy, turned into a picture, against the whole, all the way into what is formally constituted, could recoil into a “message” [in English in original], without expressing it, indeed precisely through tenacious asceticism against the suggestion.
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Wolf as grandmother. – The strongest argument of the apologists for film is the crudest, its massive consumption. They declare the drastic medium of the culture industry to be popular art. The independence of norms of the autonomous work is supposed to discharge it from aesthetic responsibility, a responsibility whose standards prove to be reactionary in relation to film, just as in fact all intentions of the artistic ennoblement of film have something awry, something badly elevated, something lacking in form – something of the import for the connoisseur. The more that film pretends to be art, the more fraudulent it becomes. Its protagonists can point to this and even, as critics of the meanwhile kitschy interiority, appear avant-garde next to its crude material kitsch. If one grants this as a ground, then they become, strengthened by technical experience and facility with the material, nearly irresistible. The film is not a mass art, but is merely manipulated for the deception of the masses? But the wishes of the masses make themselves felt incessantly through the market; its collective production alone would guarantee its collective essence [Wesen]; only someone completely outside of reality would presume to see clever manipulators in the producers; most are talentless, certainly, but where the right talents coincide, it can succeed in spite of all the restrictions of the system. The mass taste which the film obeys, is by no means that of the masses themselves, but foisted on them? But to speak of a different mass taste than the one they have now, would be foolish, and what is called popular art, has always reflected domination. According to such logic, it is only in the competent adaptation of production to given needs, not in consideration of a utopian audience, that the nameless general will can take shape. Films are full of lying stereotypes? But stereotyping is the essence of popular art, fairy-tales know the rescuing prince and the devil just as films have the hero and villain, and even the barbaric cruelty, which divided the world into good and evil, is something film has in common with the greatest fairy-tales, which have the stepmother dance to death in red-hot iron shoes. All this is can be countered, only by consideration of the fundamental concepts presupposed by the apologists. Bad films are not to be charged with incompetence: the most gifted are refracted by the bustle, and the fact that the ungifted stream towards them, is due to the elective affinity between lies and swindlers. The idiocy is objective; improvements in personnel could not create a popular art. The latter’s idea was formed in agrarian relationships or simple commodity economies. Such relationships and their character of expression are those of lords and serfs, profiteers and disadvantaged, but in an immediate, not entirely objectified form. They are to be sure not less furrowed by class differences than late industrial society, but their members are not yet encompassed by the total structure, which reduces individual subjects to mere moments, in order to unite them, as those who are powerless and isolated, into the collective. That there are no longer folk does not however mean that, as Romanticism propagated, the masses are worse. On the contrary, what is revealed precisely now in the new, radical alienated form of society is the untruth of the older one. Even the traits, which the culture industry reclaims as the legacy of popular art, become thereby suspect. The film has a retroactive energy: its optimistic horror brings to light what always served injustice in the fairy-tale, and evokes in the parade of villains the countenances of those, which the integral society condemns and whose condemnation was ever the dream of socialization. That is why the extinction of individual art is no justification for one which acts as if it its subject, which reacts archaically, were the natural one, while this last is the syndicate, albeit unconscious, of a pair of giant firms. If the masses themselves, as customers, have an influence on the film, this remains as abstract as the ticket stub, which steps into the place of nuanced applause: the mere choice between yes and no to something offered, strung between the discrepancy of concentrated power and scattered powerlessness. Finally, the fact that numerous experts, also simple technicians, participate in the making of a film, no more guarantees its humanity than the decisions of competent scientific bodies vis-à-vis bombs and poison gas. The high-flown talk of film art stands indeed to benefit scribblers, who wish to get ahead; the conscious appeal to naïvété, however, to the block-headedness of the subalterns, long since permeated by the thoughts of the master, will not do. Film, which today clings as unavoidably to human beings, as if it was a piece of themselves, is simultaneously that which is most distant from their human determination, which is realized from one day to the next, and its apologetics live on the resistance against thinking through this antinomy. That the people who make films are by no means intriguers, says nothing against this. The objective Spirit [Geist] of manipulation prevails through rules of experience, estimations of situations, technical criteria, economically unavoidable calculations, the entire deadweight of the industrial apparatus, without even having to censor itself, and even those who questioned the masses, would find the ubiquity of the system reflected back at them. The producers function as little as subjects as their workers and buyers, but solely as parts of an independent machinery. The Hegelian-sounding commandment, however, that mass art must respect the real taste of the masses and not that of negativistic intellectuals, is usurpation. The opposition of film, as an all-encompassing ideology, to the objective interests of human beings, its entanglement with the status quo of the profit-system, its bad conscience and deception can be succinctly cognized. No appeal to a factually accessible state of consciousness would have the right of veto against the insight, which reaches beyond this state of consciousness, by disclosing its contradiction to itself and to objective relationships. It is possible, that the Fascist professor was right and that even the folk songs, as they were, lived from the degraded cultural heritage of the upper class. It is not for nothing that all popular art is crumbly and, like films, not “organic.” But between the old injustice, in whose voice a lament is still audible, even where it transfigures itself, and the alienation which upholds itself as connectedness, which cunningly creates the appearance [Schein] of human intimacy with loudspeakers and advertising psychology, there is a distinction similar to the one between the mother, who soothes the child who is afraid of demons with a fairy-tale in which the good are rewarded and the evil are punished, and the cinema product, which drives the justice of each world order into the eyes and ears of audiences of every land harshly, threateningly, in order to teach them anew, and more thoroughly, the old fear. The fairy-tale dreams which call so eagerly for the child in the adult, are nothing but regression, organized by total enlightenment, and where they tap the audience on the shoulder most intimately, they betray them most thoroughly. Immediacy, the community produced by films, is tantamount to the mediation without a remainder, which degrades human beings and everything human so completely to things, that their contrast to things, indeed even the bane [Bann] of reification itself, cannot be perceived anymore. Film has succeeded in transforming subjects into social functions so indiscriminately, that those who are entirely in its grasp, unaware of any conflicts, enjoy their own dehumanization as human, as the happiness of warmth. The total context of the culture industry, which leaves nothing out, is one with total social delusion. That is why it so easily dispatches counter-arguments.
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Expensive reproduction. [Piperdruck] – Society is integral, before it ever becomes ruled as totalitarian. Its organization encompasses even those who feud against it, and normalizes their consciousness. Even intellectuals who have all the political arguments against bourgeois ideology handy, are subjected to a process of standardization which, whether in crassly contrasting content or through the readiness on their part to be comfortable, brings them closer to the prevailing Spirit [Geist], such that their standpoint objectively becomes always more arbitrary, dependent on flimsy preferences or their estimation of their own chances. What appears to them as subjectively radical, objectively belongs through and through to the compartment of a schema, reserved for them and their kind, so that radicalism is degraded to abstract prestige, the legitimation of those who know what today’s intellectuals should be for and against. The good things, for which they opt, have long since been acknowledged, their numbers accordingly limited, as fixed in the value-hierarchy as those in the student fraternities. While they denounce official kitsch, their sensibility is dependent, like obedient children, on nourishment already sought out in advance, on the cliches of hostility to cliches. The dwellings of young bohemians resemble their spiritual household. On the wall, deceptively original color prints of famous artists, such as Van Gogh’s Sunflowersor the Café at Arles, on the bookshelf derivative works on socialism and psychoanalysis and a little sex-research for the uninhibited with inhibitions. In addition, the Random House edition of Proust – Scott Moncrieff’s translation deserved a better fate – exclusivity at reduced prices, whose exterior alone, the compact-economic form of the omnibus, is a mockery of the author, whose every sentence knocks a received opinion out of action, while he now plays, as a prize-winning homosexual, the same role with youth as books on animals of the forest and the North Pole expedition in the German home. Also, the record player with the Lincoln cantata of a brave soul, which deals essentially with railroad stations, next to the obligatory eye-catching folklore from Oklahoma and a pair of brassy jazz records, which make one feel simultaneously collective, bold and comfortable. Every judgment is approved by friends, they know all the arguments in advance. That all cultural products, even the non-conformist ones, are incorporated into the mechanism of distribution of large-scale capital, that in the most developed lands a creation which does not bear the imprimatur of mass production can scarcely reach any readers, observers, or listeners, refuses the material in advance for the deviating longing. Even Kafka is turned into a piece of inventory in the rented apartment. Intellectuals themselves are already so firmly established, in their isolated spheres, in what is confirmed, that they can no longer desire anything which is not served to them under the brand of “highbrow” [in English in original]. Their sole ambition consists of finding their way in the accepted canon, of saying the right thing. The outsider status of the initiates is an illusion and mere waiting-time. It would be giving them too much credit to call them renegades; they wear overlarge horn-rimmed glasses on their mediocre faces, solely to better pass themselves off as “brilliant” to themselves and to others in the general competition. They are already exactly like them. The subjective precondition of opposition, the non-normalized judgment, goes extinct, while its trappings continue to be carried out as a group ritual. Stalin need only clear his throat, and they throw Kafka and Van Gogh on the trash-heap.
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Contribution to intellectual history. – In the back of my copy of Zarathrustra, dated 1910, there are publisher’s notices. They are all tailored to that clan of Nietzsche readers, as imagined by Alfred Körner in Leipzig, someone who ought to know. “Ideal Life-goals by Adalbert Svoboda. Svoboda has ignited a brightly shining beacon in his works, which cast light on all problems of the investigative Spirit of human beings [Menschengeist] and reveal before our eyes the true ideals of reason, art and culture. This magnificently conceived and splendidly realized book is gripping from beginning to end, enchanting, stimulating, instructive and has the same effect on all truly free Spirits [Geister] as a nerve-steeling bath and fresh mountain air.” Signed: Humanity, and almost as recommendable as David Friedrich Strauss. “On Zarathrustra by Max Ernst. There are two Nietzsches. One is the world-famous fashionable philosopher, the dazzling poet and phenomenally gifted master of style, who is now the talk of all the world, from whose works a few misunderstood slogans have become the intellectual baggage of the educated. The other Nietzsche is the unfathomable, inexhaustible thinker and psychologist, the great discerner of human beings and valuer of life of unsurpassable spiritual energy and power of thought, to who the most distant future belongs. To bring this other Nietzsche to the most imaginative and serious-minded of contemporary human beings is the intent of the following two essays contained in this short book.” In that case I would still prefer the former. The other goes: “A Philosopher and a Noble Human Being, a Contribution to the Characteristics of Friedrich Nietzsche, by Meta von Salis-Marschlins. The book grabs out attention by the faithful reproduction of all the sensations which Nietzsche’s personality evoked in the self-conscious soul of a woman.” Don’t forget the whip, instructed Zarathrustra. Instead of this, is offered: “The Philosophy of Joy by Max Zerbst. Dr. Max Zerbst starts out from Nietzsche, but strives to overcome a certain one-sidedness in Nietzsche... The author is not given to cool abstractions, it is rather a hymn, a philosophical hymn to joy, which he delivers in spades.” Like a student spree. Only no one-sidedness. Better to run straight to the heaven of the atheists: “The Four Gospels, German, with introduction and commentary by Dr. Heinrich Schmidt. In contrast to the corrupted, heavily edited form, in which the gospels have been delivered to us as literature, this new edition goes back to the source and may be of high value not only for truly religious human beings, but also for those ‘anti-Christs’, who press for social action.” The choice is difficult, but one can take comfort from the fact that both elites will be as agreeable as the synopticists: “The Gospel of Modern Humanity (A Synthesis: Nietzsche and Christ) by Carl Martin. An astounding treatise of edification. Everything which is taken up in the science and art of the present has taken up the struggle with the Spirits [Geistern] of the past, all of this has taken root and blossomed , in this mature and yet so young mind [Gemüt]. And mark well: this ‘modern’, entirely new human being creates for itself and us the most revivifying potion from an age-old spring: that other message of redemption, whose purest sounds resonate in the Sermon on the Mount... Even in the form of the simplicity and grandeur of those words!” Signed: Ethical Culture. The miracle passed away nearly forty years ago, plus twenty more or so, since the genius in Nietzsche justifiably decided to break off communication with the world. It didn’t help – exhilarated, unbelieving priests and exponents of that organized ethical culture, which later drove formerly well-to-do ladies to emigrate and get by as waitresses in New York, have thrived on the posthumous legacy of someone who once worried whether someone was listening to him sing “a secret barcarole.” Even then, the hope of leaving behind a message in a bottle amidst the rising tide of barbarism was a friendly vision: the desperate letters have been left in the mud of the age-old spring, and have been reworked by a band of noble-minded people and other scoundrels to highly artistic but low-priced wall decorations. Only since then has the progress of communication truly gotten into gear. Who are we to cast aspersion on the freest spirits [Geister] of them all, whose trustworthiness possibly even outbids those of their contemporaries, if they no longer write for an imaginary posterity, but solely for the dead God?
All that is missing is to point out that these people now are being led by Saddam's Deputy. Wouldn't things be better if we had just left things alone? Of course, we told you so at the time.
Published on Thursday, June 12, 2014 byCommon Dreams
Obama Weighs 'All Options' for Iraq as Hawks Revive War Drums
Sen. McCain said Obama should "bring the team in who won the conflict in Iraq in to turn this situation around."
- Jon Queally, staff writer
Iraq War protest on January 27, 2007 in Washington, D.C. organized by United for Peace and Justice. (Photo: AudeVivere / Wikimedia Creative Commons)As the crisis in Iraq continues to escalate, with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)vowing to attack Iraqi Army forces head on by advancing on Baghdad, U.S. war hawks are pressuring President Obama to intervene militarily. Critical voices, however, warn that U.S. invasion is the root cause of the unfolding violence—not the solution.
Speaking at the White House on Thursday, President Obama said his military advisers are monitoring events in Iraq closely and that he and his team are "looking at all the options" in order to offer assistance to the Iraqi government. “I don’t rule out anything because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foot hold in either Iraq or Syria," said Obama, portending a decision about the possibility of U.S. military involvement in the coming weeks, if not days.
Prominent U.S. war hawks have put forth a narrative that blames the unfolding violence in Iraq on the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. soldiers.
On Thursday morning, the Pentagon delivered a briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the deteriorating situation in Iraq. As they exited the briefing, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Grahammade comments toThe Guardian's Dan Roberts.
"We are facing a disaster here, not only in Iraq but Syria," said McCain of the situation. "Extremist groups now control more territory than at any time in history."
"What I heard today scared the hell out of me," said Sen. Graham. "The briefing was chilling … Iraq is falling apart."
McCain said the U.S. failure "to leave forces behind in Iraq is the reason that Senator Graham and I predicted that this might happen and unfortunately our worst fears are being realized."
Offering his solution to the crisis, McCain said President Obama "should get rid of his entire national security team, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and bring the team in who won the conflict in Iraq in to turn this situation around."
Speaker of the House John Boehner also chimed in, calling for immediate action. "I think what we should do is provide the equipment and technical assistance that the Iraqis are requesting,"saidBoehner on the House floor. "It's not like we haven't seen this problem coming for over a year, and it's not like we haven't seen … these terrorists moving in and taking control. They're 100 miles from Baghdad, and where's the president? Taking a nap!"
Obama's real problem, writes Robert Parry, is his failure to make "a clean break with the neocon strategies of the Bush years and for not purging the U.S. government of hawks who are too eager to use military force."Others say the real and original culprit of the current crisis resides in the misguided and illegal U.S. invasion carried out by the Bush administration in 2003.
"The emerging neocon-preferred narrative,"explainsveteran journalist Robert Parry, "is that the jihadist victory in the northern city of Mosul and the related mess in neighboring Syria are the fault of President Barack Obama for not continuing the U.S. military occupation of Iraq indefinitely and for not intervening more aggressively in Syria’s civil war."
Obama's "real problem," according to Parry, was not removing troops in 2011 but his failure to make "a clean break with the neocon strategies of the Bush years and for not purging the U.S. government of hawks who are too eager to use military force."
"Rather than adopt realistic approaches toward achieving political solutions," argues Parry, "Obama has often caved in when confronted with pressure from Official Washington’s still influential neocons and the mainstream media that follows their lead."
WritingforThe Guardianon Thursday, journalist and commenter Owen Jones recounts how anti-war protesters who marched in opposition to the war in 2003 are singular in having their pre-invasion stance vindicated. In the single largest protest in world history, those who marched in cities around the world on February 15 warned that the U.S.-led invasion would not only cause immediate death and destruction but unleash other and long-felt catastrophes inside Iraq and across the region.
According to Jones, who counts himself among them, says even the anti-war movement failed to fully appreciate just how destructive the invasion would ultimately be:
We were wrong because however disastrous we thought the consequences of the Iraq war, the reality has been worse. The US massacres in Fallujah in the immediate aftermath of the war, which helped radicalize the Sunni population, culminating in an assault on the city with white phosphorus. The beheadings, the kidnappings and hostage videos, the car bombs, the IEDs, the Sunni and Shia insurgencies, the torture declared by the UN in 2006 to be worse than that under Saddam Hussein, the bodies with their hands and feet bound and dumped in rivers, the escalating sectarian slaughter, the millions of displaced civilians, and the hundreds of thousands who died: it has been one never-ending blur of horror since 2003.
The invasion was justified as an indispensable part of the struggle against al-Qaida. Well, to be fair, large swaths of Iraq have not been handed over to al-Qaida: they are now run by Isis, a group purged from al-Qaida for being too extreme. Iraq and Syria are trapped in a bloody feedback loop: the growth of Isis in Iraq helped corrupt the Syrian rebellion, and now the Syrian insurgency has fueled the breakdown of Iraq, too. Those who believe that the west should have armed Syria's rebels should consider the fact that Isis reportedly raided an arms depot in Syria which was stocked with CIA help. Support from western-backed dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Qatar has fueled the Syrian extremists now spilling over into Iraq.
All that is missing is to point out that these people now are being led by Saddam's Deputy. Wouldn't things be better if we had just left things alone? Of course, we told you so at the time.
Published on Thursday, June 12, 2014 byCommon Dreams
Obama Weighs 'All Options' for Iraq as Hawks Revive War Drums
Sen. McCain said Obama should "bring the team in who won the conflict in Iraq in to turn this situation around."
- Jon Queally, staff writer
Iraq War protest on January 27, 2007 in Washington, D.C. organized by United for Peace and Justice. (Photo: AudeVivere / Wikimedia Creative Commons)As the crisis in Iraq continues to escalate, with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)vowing to attack Iraqi Army forces head on by advancing on Baghdad, U.S. war hawks are pressuring President Obama to intervene militarily. Critical voices, however, warn that U.S. invasion is the root cause of the unfolding violence—not the solution.
Speaking at the White House on Thursday, President Obama said his military advisers are monitoring events in Iraq closely and that he and his team are "looking at all the options" in order to offer assistance to the Iraqi government. “I don’t rule out anything because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foot hold in either Iraq or Syria," said Obama, portending a decision about the possibility of U.S. military involvement in the coming weeks, if not days.
Prominent U.S. war hawks have put forth a narrative that blames the unfolding violence in Iraq on the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. soldiers.
On Thursday morning, the Pentagon delivered a briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the deteriorating situation in Iraq. As they exited the briefing, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Grahammade comments toThe Guardian's Dan Roberts.
"We are facing a disaster here, not only in Iraq but Syria," said McCain of the situation. "Extremist groups now control more territory than at any time in history."
"What I heard today scared the hell out of me," said Sen. Graham. "The briefing was chilling … Iraq is falling apart."
McCain said the U.S. failure "to leave forces behind in Iraq is the reason that Senator Graham and I predicted that this might happen and unfortunately our worst fears are being realized."
Offering his solution to the crisis, McCain said President Obama "should get rid of his entire national security team, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and bring the team in who won the conflict in Iraq in to turn this situation around."
Speaker of the House John Boehner also chimed in, calling for immediate action. "I think what we should do is provide the equipment and technical assistance that the Iraqis are requesting,"saidBoehner on the House floor. "It's not like we haven't seen this problem coming for over a year, and it's not like we haven't seen … these terrorists moving in and taking control. They're 100 miles from Baghdad, and where's the president? Taking a nap!"
Obama's real problem, writes Robert Parry, is his failure to make "a clean break with the neocon strategies of the Bush years and for not purging the U.S. government of hawks who are too eager to use military force."Others say the real and original culprit of the current crisis resides in the misguided and illegal U.S. invasion carried out by the Bush administration in 2003.
"The emerging neocon-preferred narrative,"explainsveteran journalist Robert Parry, "is that the jihadist victory in the northern city of Mosul and the related mess in neighboring Syria are the fault of President Barack Obama for not continuing the U.S. military occupation of Iraq indefinitely and for not intervening more aggressively in Syria’s civil war."
Obama's "real problem," according to Parry, was not removing troops in 2011 but his failure to make "a clean break with the neocon strategies of the Bush years and for not purging the U.S. government of hawks who are too eager to use military force."
"Rather than adopt realistic approaches toward achieving political solutions," argues Parry, "Obama has often caved in when confronted with pressure from Official Washington’s still influential neocons and the mainstream media that follows their lead."
WritingforThe Guardianon Thursday, journalist and commenter Owen Jones recounts how anti-war protesters who marched in opposition to the war in 2003 are singular in having their pre-invasion stance vindicated. In the single largest protest in world history, those who marched in cities around the world on February 15 warned that the U.S.-led invasion would not only cause immediate death and destruction but unleash other and long-felt catastrophes inside Iraq and across the region.
According to Jones, who counts himself among them, says even the anti-war movement failed to fully appreciate just how destructive the invasion would ultimately be:
We were wrong because however disastrous we thought the consequences of the Iraq war, the reality has been worse. The US massacres in Fallujah in the immediate aftermath of the war, which helped radicalize the Sunni population, culminating in an assault on the city with white phosphorus. The beheadings, the kidnappings and hostage videos, the car bombs, the IEDs, the Sunni and Shia insurgencies, the torture declared by the UN in 2006 to be worse than that under Saddam Hussein, the bodies with their hands and feet bound and dumped in rivers, the escalating sectarian slaughter, the millions of displaced civilians, and the hundreds of thousands who died: it has been one never-ending blur of horror since 2003.
The invasion was justified as an indispensable part of the struggle against al-Qaida. Well, to be fair, large swaths of Iraq have not been handed over to al-Qaida: they are now run by Isis, a group purged from al-Qaida for being too extreme. Iraq and Syria are trapped in a bloody feedback loop: the growth of Isis in Iraq helped corrupt the Syrian rebellion, and now the Syrian insurgency has fueled the breakdown of Iraq, too. Those who believe that the west should have armed Syria's rebels should consider the fact that Isis reportedly raided an arms depot in Syria which was stocked with CIA help. Support from western-backed dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Qatar has fueled the Syrian extremists now spilling over into Iraq.
Above: Latuff expresses a widely held view of what is going on.
First, this has taken longer than usual to get out, not for a lack of information, but because of an injury.
So, as I was about to say about a week ago, the best strategy for the United States in dealing with the situation in Iraq right now is to do nothing!Nothing at all.That will be a significant improvement on all of our past actions in the Mid-East for at least half a century or more.
In a sense, we find it fortunate that we were delayed as the information has slowly crept into the media in bits and pieces and much typing was saved.
About the only thing that has still been left fuzzy is that this ISIS, or ISIL, is not the same organization that has been terrorizing Syria for the past three years, "freedom fighter," as our leaders call them.In Syria, you had a crowd of various organizations, sometimes fighting one another as much as the legal government, and a bunch of maniacs, shouting and yelling in a mess of miscommunication.
Notice the orderly and precise movements of this march on Iraq's Shia government.One town after another, complete knowledge of the terrain, access to the bank and about half a billion dollars, plus gold.Wisely avoiding the Kurds for the time being, and then starting to surround the capital.
You may be able to see that old Ba'athist uniforms on the leaders.Al-Douri, one of the main people on the deck of cards is co-coordinating things.The uniforms had been buried to resurrect at the appropriate time.The Sunni maniacs are no more spokesmen for this movement than is a hellfire missile.In other words, they are weapons, nothing more.Also, below, you will see that in the silly deck of cards Bush used for the most wanted, 35 of the 52 were Shia, and one was Christian and spoke Aramaic.Saddam was not a religious nut.In fact, Bin Laden attacked him as an "infidel".
Earlier, George 41 messed things up as well.You'd have to get the truth our of April Gillespie for that one, and it's too far back anyway.
Bremer and Blair are talking about what a good idea de-Ba'athification was, but in reality it is the reason we are seeing the mess right now.There is much more, but this is enough.Interview one talks about the parties involved now and the U.S. and the Deck of Cards.It is continued before it moves onto Algeria where it is not that relevant.
Item two is a short Paragraph on Al-Douri.
Item three is another interview that talks about the Bath Party in charge.
So, Obama, do nothing.Anything you do will just screw things up more.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2014
Will Iraq or Syria Survive? UN Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Sectarian War & the Disastrous ’03 Invasion
As a Sunni militancy overtakes large parts of Iraq, former U.N.-Arab League special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi joins us to discuss the escalating Iraqi conflict, the long-term impact of the 2003 U.S. invasion, and the crisis in neighboring Syria. A former Algerian freedom fighter who went on to become Algeria’s foreign minister, Brahimi has been deeply involved in Middle Eastern diplomacy for decades. He has worked on many of the world’s major conflicts from Afghanistan and Iraq to South Africa. Brahimi resigned as the U.N.-Arab League special envoy for Syria last month after a lengthy effort that failed to bring about peace talks between the Syrian government and rebel groups. On the legacy of the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, Brahimi says: "The biggest mistake was to invade. I am tempted to say that every time there was a [U.S.] choice between something right and something wrong, not very often the right option was taken." On Syria, Brahimi says the conflict is "an infected wound … if not treated properly, it will spread — and this is what is happening."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:Sunni militants have seized part of Iraq’s largest oil refinery located in the northern Iraqi city of Baiji. The militants reportedly now control three-quarters of the refinery complex. Meanwhile, Shiite families are leaving the city of Baquba in droves out of fear the militants fromISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, will soon seize the city. Baquba is located just 40 miles from Baghdad. Many analysts say the fighting in Iraq has become a proxy war between the Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shiite-led Iran. On Tuesday, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, vowed on live television to protect Shiite shrines in Iraq. Rouhani said many Iranians have already signed up to go to Iraq to fight. This came as Iraq’s Shiite-led Cabinet accused Saudi Arabia of promoting genocide in Iraq by backing Sunni militants.
In Washington, President Obama is scheduled to meet today with the four top congressional leaders. There are conflicting reports of his plan of action.The Wall Street Journalreports Obama has decided against immediate airstrikes in Iraq, butThe New York Timesreports Obama is considering what the paper described as a "targeted, highly selective campaign" of airstrikes. One official told theTimesthe campaign would most likely use drones and could last for a prolonged period.
Joining us to discuss the situation in Iraq and across the wider region is Lakhdar Brahimi, who resigned his post last month as the United Nations-Arab League special envoy for Syria. Brahimi has been deeply involved in Middle Eastern diplomacy for decades. He’s a former Algerian freedom fighter who went on to become Algeria’s foreign minister. As a diplomat, he has worked on many of the world’s biggest conflicts, from Afghanistan and Iraq, from Haiti to South Africa. He’s a member of the Elders, a group of retired statesmen formed in July 2007 at the initiative of Nelson Mandela; it was originally chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, now by Kofi Annan.
Democracy Now!'s Nermeen Shaikh and I interviewed Lakhdar Brahimi on Tuesday. He's in Paris, France. I started by asking him to respond to what’s happening in Iraq right now.
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham have invaded and taken control of the second-largest city in Iraq, which is absolutely extraordinary. That is the city of Mosul. I understand that they went down also and took a part—or, you know, maybe they are still there—of the city of Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, and that they were marching on Baghdad, and they have been stopped somewhere. And I doubt very much that they will enter Baghdad in any significant manner. But this indicates the fragility of the state of Iraq that has been created by the Americans after they invaded the country in 2003. It’s really extraordinary that the state, as important and as rich, as a matter of fact, as Iraq, cannot protect the second-largest city in the country.
It also vindicates what the secretary-general of the United Nations and myself have been saying for months, years even. And that is that the situation in Syria is like an infected wound: If it is not treated properly, it will spread. And this is what is happening. You know, the secretary-general has very often warned that if Syria is not attended to properly, then most, if not all, of its neighbors were in danger. And this is one of the neighbors of Syria.
Of course, it had—it has its own problems. And this latest development is an addendum, something that has come on top of the problems that were there. Those problems were that the country was more and more divided along sectarian lines, and the corruption was rife, and the government was not capable—has not been capable of re-establishing services, like water, electricity, sewages and so on, at the level they existed under Saddam, when the country was under extremely severe sanctions.
So, this is where we are. Syria is—you know, there is fighting there. There is killing. There is—bombardments are taking place. And people are—you know, there is no development taking place, and people are leaving their homes, their villages, their cities, either remaining inside the country as internally displaced people or going to neighboring countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, in particular. And quite a few of them have gone to Iraq, actually.
NERMEENSHAIKH:Ambassador Brahimi, you mentioned the complicity of the United States invasion of 2003 in the present situation in Iraq.
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:Yes.
NERMEENSHAIKH:I want to turn to comments made by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair over the weekend. He said, in fact, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was not responsible for the violent insurgency now engulfing the country. He was speaking on the BBC’sAndrew Marr Show. Let’s just go to a clip.
TONYBLAIR:So my point is very simple: Even if you left Saddam in place in 2003, then, when 2011 happened and you had the Arab revolutions going through Tunisia and Libya and Yemen and Bahrain and Egypt and Syria, you would have still had a major problem in Iraq. Indeed, you can see what happens when you leave the dictator in place, as has happened with Assad now. But if you say to me, would I prefer a situation where we’d left Saddam in place in 2003—do I think the region would be safer, more stable, if we’d done that—my answer to that is unhesitatingly no.
NERMEENSHAIKH:Ambassador Brahimi, that was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair speaking over the weekend.
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:Yes.
NERMEENSHAIKH:Could you respond to the comments he made about the 2003 invasion?
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:You know, the situation in Iraq was extremely bad, and definitely it was called the "Republic of Fear" with reason. You know, you cannot justifypost factoan invasion that was absolutely horrible. I mean, first of all, it was unjustified. Second—I mean, it was built on a lie. You know, the weapons of mass destructions were just in the imagination of some people who wanted to invade Iraq. Second, things have—I mean, justifications were invented after—democracy, getting rid of a dictator, and I don’t know what. That very dictator, when he was just as a dictator as he was in 2003, was a very good friend of the United States and of Britain when he was fighting Iran in the '80s. But let's, you know, forget about that for the moment. So, the invasion was absolutely horrible.
And this—you know, it has—I mean, let’s talk about what is—what is important to talk about now: terrorism. There was no terrorism. There were no terrorists in Iraq in those days. Terrorism was sucked in, brought in, by—as a direct consequence of the invasion. And it flourished, first of all, in Iraq, and then it went to Syria, and now it is back in Iraq. So, to say that 2003 had nothing to do with what is happening now is a little bit an—I don’t know—overstatement, understatement. Certainly not reality.
AMYGOODMAN:Ambassador Brahimi, Paul Bremer, the first head of the so-called coalitional—Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, one of the first things he did in that role was to sign the Coalition Provisional Authority Orders 1 and 2, completely dismantling Iraq’s government and military. During your tenure as U.N. special envoy for Iraq, you referred to Bremer as, quote, "the dictator of Iraq." Writing inThe Wall Street Journalover the weekend in the wake of the present violence that’s engulfing Iraq,Bremersaid, quote, "It is time for both American political parties to cease their ritualistic incantations of 'no boots on the ground,' which is not the same as 'no combat forces.' Of course Americans are reluctant to re-engage in Iraq. Yet it is President Obama’s unhappy duty to educate them about the risks to our interests posed by the unfolding drama in Iraq." Can you elaborate, Ambassador Brahimi, on your comments about Paul Bremer being dictator of Iraq and what that meant for Iraq?
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:You know, I was just repeating something that he said himself. I think he said—and he has written, I think, in his memoirs—that nobody in the history of Iraq had as much power as he had. For my money, that is equivalent to being a dictator. And he was doing everything he wanted.
And you have mentioned, you know, the dissolution of the army. Every American who knew anything about Iraq, and there were quite a few, many of them in government—former ambassadors, people who know Arabic, who know the country, who know the region—they were all unanimous: Don’t touch the army. There are definitely, you know, 10, 15, 100, 1,000 officers that have, you know, blood on their hands, that are corrupt, that should be taken off the army. But keep the army. This is the backbone of the country, and it is going to cooperate with you. And as a matter of fact, a lot of people, including in the military, were already talking to some of the Iraqi militaries to see how they can come back and reorganize themselves and work with the occupying power. But Mr. Bremer—and he was saying that he was under instructions from the secretary of state for defense, Mr. Rumsfeld—said, "No, no, no. We will dissolve the army." And they went ahead and did it. I think that—you know, I don’t think there is any, any, any argument that that was a mistake then.
Should—what should the Americans do today? I fully understand the hesitation of President Obama to send foreign troops in, American troops into Iraq again. As a principle, foreign troops meddling in an internal situation like this is not a very good idea. I also hear that there is a possibility that they will be talking to Iran, and I’m sure that they will be talking to other neighbors of Iraq, chief of them—amongst them, Saudi Arabia, to see what needs to be done to help Iraq solve its problems and perhaps stop these terrorist organizations from making more progress. But be careful that this help from outside does not make things worse. I think that it’s—you know, there is a lot of sectarianism in Iraq. I don’t think there is a secret—that’s a secret or anybody ignores that fact or says it doesn’t exist. So, please, if you help face thisISIS, that’s great, but make sure that you don’t make things worse by making—by supporting more sectarianism, not less sectarianism.
NERMEENSHAIKH:Ambassador Brahimi, on the question of sectarianism, there have been several reports that suggest that in the initial days of the Iraq invasion in 2003, there were some neoconservative members of the Bush administration that actively fostered sectarianism between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds as a way of—as a policy of kind of divide and rule. Could you comment on that?
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:I have told my American friends several times, of course, I am not privy to what was taking place in the Pentagon, where responsibility lied for Iraq. President Bush had given full, total responsibility to the Pentagon over Iraq. What was discussed there and what they did there, I don’t know. But as somebody from the region just looking at what was actually taking place, it was extremely hard not to believe that sectarianism was being promoted and that the people that were being put in charge were—I mean, of course the Kurdish region was given to Kurds 100 percent, and no—the rest of the Iraqis had no part in it. But in the rest of Iraq, the impression one had was that the people that were preferred by the occupying powers were the most sectarian Shia and the most pro-Iranian Shia, so, you know, that Iran—that Iraq is now very, very close to Iran. Again, from the point of view of somebody who looks at things from outside, I have absolutely no knowledge of what went on in the high spheres of power in Washington. The impression we had is that these people were put in charge either out of total ignorance—and that is extremely difficult to accept—or intentionally. But the fact is, you know, that the system that was established was very sectarian.
AMYGOODMAN:Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi. He resigned his post last month as United Nations-Arab League special envoy for Syria. We’ll be back with him in a moment.
[break]
AMYGOODMAN:This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our conversation with Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi. He resigned as U.N.-Arab League special envoy to Syria last month.Democracy Now!'s Nermeen Shaikh and I interviewed him yesterday. He's in Paris, France. I asked him what the gravest error of the U.S. was in its 2003 invasion of Iraq.
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:The biggest mistake was to invade Iraq. Having invaded Iraq, you know, I would be probably very, very unfair, but I am tempted to say that every time there was a choice between something right and something wrong, not very often the right option was taken.
If you want one instance of what was wrong, it’s probably the dissolution of the army, because the army was the backbone of the country, because the army was nonsectarian. You know, the majority of the soldiers were Shia. And I think in the officer corps—it would be very interesting to take a look back—you would find that there were a lot of Shia in it. Saddam was not—you know, I mean, didn’t care about who was Sunni or who was Shia. What he cared for is who was with him and who was not, you know, who would—whom he considers as loyal 1,000 percent and whom he does not. You know, I asked some American friends, couple of times—I don’t know if you remember that deck of cards with Saddam being the ace of spades. Out of those 54 bad guys in Iraq, I used to ask my American friends whether they knew how many Shia were in that deck of cards. One of them said zero. One of them said four or five. Actually, the number of Shia in that deck of cards was 35.
During the war, I mean, Saddam was terribly unfair. Although a lot of Shia were fighting in the ranks of army of their country against Shia Iran, I think he was extremely suspicious of the Shia, because they were Shia. And he has killed a lot of religious leaders, a lot of—so, you know, there was—there was that, but nothing like what existed after that and what exists today.
NERMEENSHAIKH:Ambassador Brahimi, you’ve suggested that sectarianism was excarcerbated following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the U.S.
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:Yeah, sure.
NERMEENSHAIKH:One of the other effects, which you mentioned earlier, was the spread of terrorism, and in particular, of suicide attacks in Iraq, which prior to 2003 were unprecedented. In other words, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan nor Pakistan nor Syria had ever witnessed suicide attacks before 9/11 occurred and, subsequent to that, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. So could you talk about some of the implications of that, what the effects of that have been, and how you think that phenomenon, which is now so widespread, should be dealt with?
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:It did not exist in Iraq. And, you know, this al-Qaeda did not exist at all. It had no dormant cell in Iraq. It was brought in after the invasion as a way of people coming to fight a crusader, a power, invading a sister Muslim country. That is when al-Qaeda came in and started to recruit Iraqis and to bring in non-Iraqis. The ancestor ofISISwas created as a direct consequence of the invasion of Iraq, nothing else. And, you know, it developed and so on, and you remember 2005, 2006, 2007 were absolutely horrible years in Iraq, when civil war was really taking place, with the Americans at the receiving end themselves. And, of course, they destroyed Fallujah completely; the Americans destroyed the city of Fallujah completely.
Car bombs and so on did exist before, but it did no exist in Iraq, and al-Qaeda had absolutely no presence in Iraq before the invasion. It really became a reality as a direct consequence of the invasion in 2003 and developed from there. And what you see today there is the son or the grandson of what happened in—I mean, you know, I’m sure some of your viewers may remember the name of Zarqawi, a Jordanian, very, very cruel man who was one of the leaders of the al-Qaeda in Iraq in those years, 2005, 2006. So, this is it. Al-Qaeda and what—the terrorist organizations that exist today in—as far as Iraq is concerned, and Syria, as a matter of fact, their origin is definitely post-2003.
NERMEENSHAIKH:I want to turn to comments made by the former U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford. He resigned from his position in May. He was speaking to Christiane Amanpour onCNNearlier this month.
ROBERTFORD:I was no longer in a position where I felt I could defend the American policy. We have been unable to address either the root causes of the conflict, in terms of the fighting on the ground and the balance on the ground, and we have a growing extremism threat. And there really is nothing we can point to that’s been very successful in our policy, except the removal of about 93 percent of some of Assad’s chemical materials. But now he’s using chlorine gas against his opponents, in contravention of the Syrian government’s agreement in 2013 to abide by the Chemical Weapons Convention. The regime simply has no credibility, and our policy is not addressing the Syrian crisis as it needs to.
NERMEENSHAIKH:That was Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria. Ambassador Brahimi, could you comment on what he said and also what you see the flaws with U.S. policy vis-à-vis Syria being today?
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:I was very, very surprised when I heard him say that he left because he couldn’t support the American policy anymore. Very, very surprised that—you know, of course, I’m not familiar with what was going on inside the government and what discussions he had with the secretary of state and others before he left, but the impression I had was that he left because he reached retirement age and he was tired of dealing with a very, very difficult problem in Syria. That was understandable. This is—this is something, you know, very surprising to me, what he said about him not capable of supporting the U.S. policy anymore. Again, the view in the region was that he was making the policy, or at least he was taking a very, very important part in making that policy.
You know, what was wrong with American policy, I think every single party that dealt with Syria over the last three years have made mistakes. The United States, like everybody else, misjudged the meaning and the—you know, what was happening and, you know, where things were going. You know, mistakes were made in Tunisia, when everybody thought that, you know, President Ben Ali was so strong, so well organized, that these demonstrations are going to last two days, three days, three or two weeks, and then they will be over and the men will be there. He left after less than a month. Mubarak in Egypt—you know, Egypt is a stable country, a very well-organized country. Their police was tremendously strong and well equipped. They will manage to—you know, to ride this storm. And to be fair, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, they took quite a while. They were telling those young people, I mean, "Go home. You know, you are going to be killed for nothing. The regime is not going to fall." This is—this was—so, everybody made a mistake there. So when the—you know, and Libya, Libya, the country, you know, everybody thought that Libya would fall in a matter of days. It took several months and several billion dollars spent by the Americans, the French, the British and others in bombarding and destroying the country. And, by the way, look at the results: They are not great.
When the turn of Syria came, I think, understandably, everybody said, "Ah, OK, you know, this is now the trend. People—I mean, this regime resist one month, three weeks, six months. So this will be the case in Syria." So I think that the Americans, like everybody else, thought that the regime was going to fall, and everybody started talking about the day after. And people were afraid that they would not be ready for the day after, that the regime will fall, and we will not be ready how to help the country rebuild and so on and so forth. It has taken maybe almost three years, three, four years, before people started to realize that this was different. And by the way, the Russians were the first who said this—Syria is not going to follow suit to what happened in Tunisia and Egypt; the regime is not going to fall. And nobody listened to them. I think if we had, perhaps it would have been better for all of us.
AMYGOODMAN:Why did you quit as former U.N. and Arab League envoy for Syria?
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:You know, I wanted to quit one year before I did, because in these kind of jobs, you come and try a few ideas and then move on. This is not a 9:00 to 5:00 job that you do for years and years. That is one reason.
The second reason is that, you know, we organized that conference in Montreux, Switzerland, and we moved from there to what we thought was going to be negotiations between the opposition and the government. And that was a failure, mainly because of the government. And then the government announced that they were organizing presidential elections, meaning that they were going a totally different way from what we were discussing in Geneva. So I think it was the normal thing for me to do.
I have tried this working with the Russians and the Americans. Together, the three of us have organized the Geneva II Conference. I led those discussions, two rounds of discussions in Geneva. That has taken us nowhere. I think it is time to tell the Syrian people we are not delivering, and we—I apologize to them for that, but also to tell everybody else, "Please be careful. This is—this is a very, very bad, very complicated, very dangerous situation, and you have got to pay more attention to it." I hope that, you know, they will pay a little bit more attention and that they will help the secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, who is really devoting a great deal of attention to Syria. I hope that he will be helped to do a better job than I have been able to do until the end of May.
NERMEENSHAIKH:Ambassador Brahimi, you’ve also suggested, in an interview you gave to the German news magazineDer Spiegelearlier this month, that the situation in Syria is so much worse than it was in Afghanistan in 1999 when you resigned your U.N. position there. Could you explain why you think that’s the case?
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:You know, in Afghanistan, there was a, yeah, civil war, but the factions in Afghanistan were not over-armed the way the parties that are involved in Syria are. There was—you know, nobody had the aviation that the Syrian government has or the tanks and the artillery that they have. It was, you know, this horrible war, low-intensity civil war. And, you know, the Afghans were, in their way, much better organized and also much more open in their discussions with us. For example, we never had, in all those wars of civil war—you know, after the Russians left, anyway, that’s the part I know—we never had any problem going for the vaccination in spring. All the factions knew that teams from the United Nations were going to go all over the country and vaccinate kids. And that happened. It hasn’t been that easy in Syria.
You know, the Russians had destroyed quite a little bit of the country, and the Afghans, very early on, before the Taliban, destroyed Kabul when the Russians left. But after that, there wasn’t that kind of destruction that you see in Syria now. Homs—friends who went to Homs recently told me that it looks like the pictures we see of Berlin in 1945. So the level of destruction is absolutely horrible. You know, when I arrived on the scene in ’97, with the years of Russians and the—of the internal civil war between the factions, there was something like five million refugees from Afghanistan. In three years only, in Syria, we have two million and a half refugees, six or seven million internally displaced. And by next year, if things continue the way they are, we are going to have four million refugees—population being about the same, 23 million in Syria, maybe 25 or 26 [million] in Afghanistan. So, the level of violence and destruction is much higher in Syria than it was in Afghanistan.
AMYGOODMAN:Lakhdar Brahimi, who resigned his post last month as United Nations-Arab League special envoy for Syria. We’ll be back with him in a minute.
"Colonialism is Inhuman": Diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi on the Lessons of Algeria’s Independence Struggle
Weeks after his resignation as the U.N.-Arab League special envoy for Syria, the longtime diplomat and former freedom fighter Lakhdar Brahimi discusses his own country, Algeria, and its struggle for independence from the French. The Algerian rebellion was captured in the classic anti-colonial film "Battle of Algiers," which vividly depicts the Algerian struggle against the French occupation in the 1950s and early 1960s. "They dispossessed a whole nation," Brahimi says of the French occupation. "Colonialism was very inhuman."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:We continue our conversation with Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi. He resigned as U.N.-Arab League special envoy to Syria last month. Nermeen Shaikh and I interviewed him yesterday.
NERMEENSHAIKH:Do you think that this, what we are seeing in Syria and in Iraq, that this is just the beginning of a larger regional war? Do you think any of these states will survive intact, Iraq or Syria?
LAKHDARBRAHIMI:Syria, I think, I think will survive. I think that the people in Syria are not thinking themselves of any partitions. You know, if things go on as they are for 10 years, I don’t know what will happen. But, you know, if we start having a solution this year or next year, I think that Syria will remain united. And I said very early on that the risk in Syria is not a partition in states just like it happened in Yugoslavia, but Somalization, which means that the country will become a failed state with warlords all over the place. In Iraq, it’s—I don’t know, really. I hope that the country will stay united, but I think that the danger is bigger in Iraq than it is in Syria.
From the deck of cards:
Al-Douri and has been pointed out as one of the main commanders responsible for successful take over of North Iraq and the city of Mosul in June 2014 by rebel groups[14]The Naqshbandi Army along with other groups lead by former Ba'ath officers are reported to have assumed an increasingly large role in the governance and administration of occupied cities. Militants were reported to have appointed fellow Ba'ath generals Azhar al-Obeidi and Ahmed Abdul Rashid as the governors of Mosul and Tikrit.[15]
MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2014
As Obama Considers Drone Strikes in Iraq, Could U.S. Military Action Worsen Sectarian Conflict?
Over the weekend, militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) seized the northern town of Tal Afar after a fierce fight. Many fear Iraq could disintegrate asISIStakes more cities. Shiite militias are now fighting alongside the Iraqi army in an effort to retake cities from the control of Sunni militants. Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged today the United States is considering launching drone strikes inside Iraq to help shore up the Iraqi government. He also said he is open to talks with Iran on how Washington and Tehran could work together to help the Iraqi state. The United States appears to be moving closer to launching airstrikes. TheUSSGeorge H.W. Bush aircraft carrier has recently arrived in the Persian Gulf. The carrier is accompanied by theUSSPhilippine Sea guided-missile cruiser and theUSSTruxtun guided-missile destroyer, both of which carry Tomahawk missiles that can reach Iraq. The United States has also begun evacuating some employees from its massive embassy in Baghdad. Meanwhile in Britain, former Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing widespread criticism after he suggested the current crisis is not linked to the 2003 U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. Blair said, "We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this. We haven’t." To talk more about the crisis in Iraq, we are joined by Iraqi-American political analyst Raed Jarrar.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:The Obama administration is reportedly considering reaching out to Iran to find ways they could work together to help shore up the Iraqi regime as Sunni militants continue their offensive. U.S. officials toldThe Wall Street Journalthat the Obama administration may use the Iran nuclear talks starting in Vienna today to broach the subject of the Iraq crisis with envoys from Iran. On Friday, President Obama ruled out sending U.S. combat troops back to Iraq but left open other military options.
PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA:We will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq, but I have asked my national security team to prepare a range of other options that could help support Iraq security forces, and I’ll be reviewing those options in the days ahead. I do want to be clear, though: This is not solely or even primarily a military challenge. Over the past decade, American troops have made extraordinary sacrifices to give Iraqis an opportunity to claim their own future. Unfortunately, Iraqis’ leaders have been unable to overcome too often the mistrust and sectarian differences that have long been simmering there, and that’s created vulnerabilities within the Iraqi government as well as their security forces.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Unnamed U.S. officials toldThe Washington Postthat the Obama administration is now considering sending drones to Iraq. TheUSSGeorge H.W. Bushaircraft carrier has recently arrived in the Persian Gulf. The carrier is accompanied by theUSSPhilippine Seaguided-missile cruiser and theUSSTruxtun, also a guided-missile destroyer, both of which carry Tomahawk missiles that can reach Iraq. The United States has also begun evacuating some employees from its massive embassy in Baghdad.
AMYGOODMAN:Over the weekend, militants fromISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, seized the northern town of Tal Afar after a fierce fight in the city of 200,000 people. Shiite militias are now fighting alongside the Iraqi army in an effort to retake cities fromISIScontrol.
This comes asISISis claiming it had massacred 1,700 Shiite soldiers in the city of Tikrit, but the claim has not been verified. Graphic photos have also been published online showing masked Sunni militants shooting dead captured Iraqi soldiers.
Meanwhile, in Britain, former Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing widespread criticism after he suggested the current crisis is not linked to the 2003 U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. Blair said, quote, "We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this. We haven’t. We can argue as to whether our policies at points have helped or not; and whether action or inaction is the best policy and there is a lot to be said on both sides. But the fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it."
To talk more about the crisis in Iraq, we’re joined by Iraqi-American political analyst Raed Jarrar. He’s joining us from Washington, D.C.
Welcome back toDemocracy Now!, Raed. We’ve spoken to you so many times during the Iraq War. Why don’t you respond first to what the former prime minister of Britain said, that it has nothing to do with the U.S. invasion and occupation, and the British, as well, of Iraq?
RAEDJARRAR:Oh, I think it has everything to do with the U.S.-, British-led invasion and occupation. The idea of destroying the strong central government and creating three or more partitions in Iraq was heavily promoted at that time. It was promoted sometimes on the political level, but many times on the demographic level. We saw, during the occupation of Iraq, millions of Iraqis were displaced inside the country. Sunnis were kicked out of what we call now Shiite provinces, and Shiites were kicked out of what we call now Sunni provinces. Same happened with Kurds and Christians. So this ethnic cleansing happened during the occupation, laying grounds for making this partitioning a reality. So, I think, in retrospect, what’s happening in these few weeks of, you know, like an uprising in these Sunni-dominated provinces in Iraq can be directly traced to the divisions that were installed by the U.S.-led occupation in 2003.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And, Raed, I’m reminded of that very mundane, but prophetic, warning of Colin Powell to George Bush—if you break it, you own it—that in reality, the invasion of the United States and of Britain in 2003 really, it appears, has created instability still unresolved.
RAEDJARRAR:Correct. And in addition to that, the U.S. is still interfering in Iraq. Although the last U.S. soldier left the country at the end of 2011, the U.S. continues to supply the Iraqi central government with weapons, training and other military assistance. This year alone, the U.S. is sending billions of dollars’ worth of jet fighters and other weapons. We just included $150 million in the defense appropriations bill for training Iraqi forces, although many human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have flagged a number of Iraqi security forces and militias as human rights abusers that the U.S. should stop funding. So in addition to the military funding, of course, there is a lot of support that—to legitimize the Iraqi central government. So this week’s narrative from the U.S. side is a good example of how the U.S. has been taking one side in this conflict all along. It has been arming and supporting one side of the conflict, and this side happens to be the Iraqi central government and the militias affiliated with it.
AMYGOODMAN:Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby confirmed over the weekend the aircraft carrierUSSGeorge H.W. Bushwas en route to the Persian Gulf. He discussed the possibility of the U.S. carrying out what he termed "kinetic strikes."
REARADM.JOHNKIRBY:One of the capabilities that—that we are tasked to provide options for would be kinetic strikes, which can be incredibly effective and powerful, when done the right way, to achieve objectives. ... What we have is an armed militant group and network threatening the internal security of Iraq.
AMYGOODMAN:What is your understanding of what these, quote, "kinetic strikes" are, also the whole discussion about the drone strikes that could take place?
RAEDJARRAR:I think it’s another fancy name of a U.S. military intervention. We have heard so many different words describing U.S. military interventions in Iraq and the region. And whatever you name it, I think, from the Iraqi perspective, this will be yet another example of a U.S. military strike on Iraq that will not be a part of the solution. The U.S. has been bombing Iraq since 1991, so it’s been 13 years of bombings, bombardments, or like 23 years if you count all of the years of the sanctions. And none of these campaigns were ever a part of a solution. The U.S. has historically been a part of the problem. So I think if the U.S. were to attack Iraq yet again, this will add another layer of complexity. It will make the situation inside Iraq worse, and it will threaten the U.S. interests in the region and the world, because the U.S. will become an active participant in this very bloody conflict.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. We’re talking to Raed Jarrar. He is an Iraqi-American blogger, political analyst, joining us from Washington, D.C. What should the U.S. do? What should happen with Iraq? What will happen with the Iraqi regime? We’ll talk about al-Maliki, the prime minister. Stay with us.
[break]
AMYGOODMAN:This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Well, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would respond to any call for assistance from the Iraqi government as it fights an Islamist insurgency.
PRESIDENTHASSANROUHANI:[translated] Should the Iraqi government request any aid from us, we will of course address it. However, we haven’t received any request for specific aid so far. We are prepared to provide help within the frameworks of international law and the official request of the Iraqi government and nation.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Raed Jarrar, I’d like to ask you about not only the role of Iran right now and the potential for greater cooperation between the United States and the Iranian government, but also the role of Saudi Arabia and its relationship toISIS.
RAEDJARRAR:Let me start by saying the armed uprising in six Iraqi provinces has many other players from the Sunni side or the local population side. There has been a lot of focus onISISbecause it makes a good media story. It’s this crazy group. Everyone is an expert now onISISand where it came from. And it tells a compelling story for a U.S. intervention: There is an extremist terrorist group that is threatening a legitimate central government that is our friend. That is the narrative now. I think that is important to unpack and deconstruct, because, on the one hand,ISISis one of many players in this uprising. It’s really naive to believe that one crazy terrorist group can take 50 percent of Iraq’s territory in a week. There are many other players, including—I think the most important players are tribal leaders in all of these provinces, and their armed militias, and former Iraqi officials from the Saddam Hussein government, led by the former vice president, Izzat al-Douri, who runs a group called al-Naqshbandi, a group. There are other smaller players like the Iraqi Islamic Army, the Mujahideen Army, the 1920 Brigades. There are, I would say, at least 12 other players. So it’s more indigenous. The vast majority, I would say, maybe almost everyone who’s fighting, is an Iraqi, unlike what the image that is being drawn by the Iraqi authorities.
On the other hand, there is a central government, of course, that is being supported by the United States. It’s mostly comprised of Shiite parties, and the army is almost exclusively Shia. And it’s surrounded by many local and foreign militias and forces, which is a good leeway to answer your question. The last few days witnessed an actual military participation by Iran. According toThe Guardian, there are a couple thousand Iranian troops that entered Iraq. They’re most likely from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The first images of the first Iranian to be killed in Iraq from this Iranian Revolutionary Guard surfaced a couple of days ago online, and it seems that his funeral is held today in northern Tehran. From reading the captain’s biography online, the one who died in Iraq, it seems that he’s younger. He’s been sent to Syria before. So, it seems that there is an actual military involvement by Iran.
Saudi Arabia and other players have been involved very much in Iraq, as well. Saudi Arabia maintains strong relationships with the former Iraqi officials, including Izzat al-Douri, the vice president. And there are some rumors about Saudi Arabia supporting some other militant groups in Iraq. Let me take one step back and say that this regional intervention, whether it came from Iraq or—excuse me, from Saudi Arabia or Iran or Turkey or Jordan or whatever, these are also consequences of the destruction of the Iraqi central government in 2003, when Iraq had a legitimate, strong government. All of these neighbors existed around Iraq, but they were never able to manipulate the country and use their proxies for civil war inside the country before. And now, of course, with the new realities, this is how Iraq looks. I think everyone from the region has their hand in Iraq supporting one horse in that race.
AMYGOODMAN:Now, there’s been the whole question of whether the U.S. should intervene. The U.S. has been intervening to the tune of millions, if not billions, of dollars, with supporting weapons going to Iraq and the government of al-Maliki. Can you talk about al-Maliki, who he is, and what you feel needs to be done in Iraq, as an Iraqi yourself?
RAEDJARRAR:I mean, as an Iraqi, I think there are a million things that have to be done in Iraq. It is extremely messy. And I think Iraq is going now through the worst stage in its contemporary history. There are real doubts that Iraq can maintain its territorial integrity, because the very national identity of Iraq has been destroyed, and now maybe overwritten by Iraqi sectarian and tribal identities. We’re talking about issues that need decades to deal with, and the current Iraqi government is completely dysfunctional and incapable of resolving any of these issues.
So, I think, from an Iraqi perspective, there isn’t really an easy solution, other than attempting to start a real dialogue. And so far, the Iraqi government has refused to start any dialogue. They’re calling any—anyone who is supporting the uprising in the six provinces, anyone who is not a, you know, complete supporter of al-Maliki, they’re calling them al-Qaeda supporters andISISmembers. I mean, for God’s sake, yesterday the Iraqi official channels were calling the governor of Mosul and the president of the Parliament, who happen to be brothers from al-Nujaifi family—they were calling both of themISISsupporters. So, it’s—"ISIS supporters" is just a code for Sunni or, you know, not a member of the ruling elite now. So saying—I mean, from an Iraqi perspective, it seems that that is the most easy first step, which is sitting around the same table and stopping this polarization and calling anyone who does not agree with the government policies a terrorist.
From a U.S. perspective, as an American, I think we do have an easier mandate, an easier solution, and that starts with not interfering militarily. That is easier than having a proactive solution. From the U.S., I think not sending troops, not sending, you know, more airstrikes, not sending training and weapons is actually a step in the right direction. And there are other obligations that the U.S. can handle that are less controversial, such as humanitarian aid for refugees and IDPs and other nonpolitical issues.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And, Raed, how do you explain the breathtaking collapse of the Iraqi army in the face of what is not really a large guerrilla force lined up against them?
RAEDJARRAR:It is surprising for an outsider, I think, to see how fast it fell. But in reality, it did not really fall in a week. It fell in a long time. Some people argue a decade; some people argue a few months. If we just go back to January of this year, the Iraqi forces attacked two unarmed, peaceful protest sites in Iraq—one in Hawija near Kirkuk and one in Fallujah. And this created a huge backlash against the Iraqi government in Sunni-dominated areas. There has been attacks against and, you know, by the Iraqi army and the militias supporting it in Fallujah and Anbar for at least the last four months. They’ve been throwing bombs on residential neighborhoods, getting attacked back. So this has been going on, and I think the building the infrastructure for a counter-government attack has been in the making for quite a time. So it wasn’t very surprising for Iraqis who have been following the situation, but I think it is still a surprise that armed forces that have been funded by tens of billions of dollars would just collapse in a couple of days. It just shows how fragile and dysfunctional the entire Iraqi military system is. And the fact that the Iraqi Parliament failed to meet to pass martial laws, because they couldn’t get a quorum, shows how dysfunctional the political system continues to be, if—
AMYGOODMAN:Raed, I wanted to ask about what’s happening with the Kurdish pershmerga forces, what role they’ve been playing in the wake of theISISinsurgency, what’s happened with the takeover of Kirkuk by the Kurds. This is Brigadier General Sherko Fatah speaking Saturday.
BRIG.GEN.SHERKOFATAH:[translated] Because of the security situation in Kirkuk, peshmerga forces have taken over the positions of the 12th Infantry Brigade, who abandoned their posts, and soldiers abandoned their positions and fled. Because of the collapse of the morale, they could not defend themselves, and therefore they fled. In order to prevent the Islamic militants from taking over these positions and threaten Kirkuk city, higher orders were issued, first to move and take these positions.
AMYGOODMAN:Can you talk about the significance, Raed Jarrar, of the Kurds taking over Kirkuk in this oil-rich city in northern Iraq? And then there’s this breaking news: John Kerry has just spoken, the secretary of state, saying the U.S. is opening talks [sic] with Iran over Iraq, won’t rule out military cooperation. He says U.S. drone strikes may well be an option to stemISILadvances in Iraq. But respond first on the Kurds.
RAEDJARRAR:It’s very interesting to see the dynamic now between the uprising forces in the six Sunni provinces and the Kurdish authorities, because the Iraqi central government’s media have been criticizing the Kurdish authorities in the last couple of days, saying that they betrayed their relationships with al-Maliki, that they have been coordinating with the rebels, with the former Baathists, with the—like this type of accusations. Things on the ground actually suggest that there might be some coordination between the uprising forces and the Kurdish forces, because there were very minor clashes between the two sides, and so there might be actually some sort of political coordination. Keep in mind that the former Iraqi vice president of this regime, Mr. Tariq al-Hashemi, who fled to Turkey a few years ago, came out yesterday in support of the uprising in these six provinces. He called it the Iraqi Spring—very romantic, you know, for how destructive the situation has been. But Mr. al-Hashemi maintains very strong relationships with the Kurdish side. So, many people were reading that as maybe ha has been leading these coordinations between what’s going on in the six Sunni provinces and Kurdistan.
AMYGOODMAN:I just wanted to correct something in the breaking news: Kerry said that the U.S. is open to talks, not "has opened talks." But the significance of this?
RAEDJARRAR:Well, so, it’s not very significant. You know, I have been personally speaking about how the U.S. and Iran are in the same bunker when it comes to Iraq. I’ve been saying that for over six or seven years now. And it doesn’t add up for U.S. audiences, because we’re used to seeing the U.S. and Iran at odds. They are at odds in other parts of the Middle East and the world, but in Iraq the collaboration started very strongly from day one. Iran played a strong role in toppling the former Iraqi government, and the U.S. played a very proactive, collaborative role with Iran all along. So that never stopped. Saying that they are going to add that to a negotiating table does not make any sense. They’re, both sides, fighting on the same side. It’s like saying the U.S. and Maliki will negotiate over how to fight against the uprising. Well, they’re on the same side.
If you want to negotiate with someone, I would say we have to reach out to the other side, people who are involved in the uprising, whether they are tribal and youth leaders in these six provinces or former officials who are flooding back to the country, former army officers who are running these operations—running fighter jets, for God’s sake. There are two fighter jets that were seen yesterday attacking current Iraqi army, flying out of the—you know, out of Mosul. So it just gives you a hint of how there is real institution behind the uprising. You can’t train two pilots in a day, you know. These people know what they’re doing. We’re not sure who they are, but I think bringing them to the table is the right step, rather than negotiating with people who we agree with and people who we’ve been supporting all along.
AMYGOODMAN:Raed Jarrar, I want to thank you for being with us. Of course, we’ll continue to follow this critical situation in Iraq and the greater region. Raed Jarrar is an Iraqi-American blogger and political analyst, joining us from Washington, D.C.
When we come back, we’re going to Rio de Janeiro, to Brazil, to talk about the World Cup. Stay with us.
John Kerry, the defender of freedom everywhere, made a surprise visit to Egypt to talk to Sisi.No details of the conversation were given, but after he left, the Egyptian court sentenced 20 journalists to 7 to 10 years in prison.Only 3 were stupid enough to still be in the country.Why do these journalists think they are supposed to report anyway.They talk a lot about freedom of the press, but do not realize that "We report, you decide, and we tell you what to decide."This is the American tradition.Besides, everyone knows that Al-Jazeera is a terrorist organization with "close ties" to the Bin Laden crowd.Why do you think the great patriot George Bush had to bomb their headquarters in Iraq, anyway?Now Kerry has moved to Iraq to ensure freedom and the American way.
After we supplied ISIS with weapons to overthrow the evil Assad in Syria, financed by the Gulf States, these people invaded Iraq.Of course, we won't mention it on our mainstream media, our corporate media, oh what the hell, what are you going to do about it anyway, the Ba'ath party took over, more or less, and they have pretty much sealed off the borders and encircled Baghdad.Karry will fix this by talking to the leader we set up there, Maliki, and make him more inclusive.He will be effective, of course, as you can see how he straightened things out in Egypt.
Remember Israel?Of course you do.While all this diversion has been going on, Israel has been continuing its systematic campaign of slaughtering and displacing of the indigenous population, the Palestinians.See, they signed a "Peace Treaty," but then they get to interpret what it means and if you don't like it, you are Anti-Semitic, you horrible people, you.Remember the Holocaust?Six million. Yeah, sure, there were between 28 and 30 million Russians killed at the same time, but they were Russians.No one ever knew that the Russians are the "Chosen People."Only the Jews are.So, what happens?The Presbyterians go and divest their stock in companies that help Israel.Now, I'm not sure how investing in the stock market and separation of church and state fits into all of this, but what the hell -- we're talking God here, so shut up and listen, will ya?Remember, I talk and you decide (what I tell you to decide).How else are we ever going to have peace?
We have interviews on all three topics, below:
MONDAY, JUNE 23, 2014
"Journalism in Egypt is a Crime": Global Outcry After 3 Al Jazeera Reporters Sentenced to 7-10 Years
An Egyptian court has sentenced three Al Jazeera journalists to between seven and 10 years in prison on terrorism charges, including "spreading false news" in support of the Muslim Brotherhood, deemed by the government a "terrorist group." Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed have been jailed since December in a case that’s stoked international outrage. The sentence came down one day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cairo to meet with Egypt’s new president, the former army general Abdul Fattah el-Sisi. Amnesty International decried the jail sentences as "a dark day for media freedom in Egypt," while Al Jazeera said the verdict defied "logic, sense, and any semblance of justice." We go to Cairo to speak with Mohamed Fahmy’s brother Adel Fahmy, as well as Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who warns: "What this ruling means is that in Egypt journalism is a crime."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:An Egyptian court has sentenced three Al Jazeera journalists to between seven and 10 years in prison. Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed were convicted on terrorism charges including "spreading false news" in support of the Muslim Brotherhood, deemed by the government a "terrorist group." The three have been jailed since December in a case that’s stoked international outrage. The hashtag #FreeAlJazeeraStaff is trending worldwide.
The sentence came down one day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Egypt’s new president, the army chief, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Peter Greste’s brother Mike Greste was in the Egyptian courtroom when the sentence came down.
MIKEGRESTE:Wrong verdict. It’s—I don’t—I don’t know how the judge came to that decision. I’d be very interested to hear his reasons for giving that verdict. It doesn’t make any sense.
AMYGOODMAN:Amnesty International decried the jail sentences, saying it was, quote, "a dark day for media freedom in Egypt." The Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, also condemned the sentencing.
JULIEBISHOP:Peter Greste is a well-respected Australian journalist. He was in Egypt to report on the political situation. He was not there to support the Muslim Brotherhood. We respect the outcome of the recent elections in Egypt, and we will now initiate contact at the highest levels in the new Egyptian government to see whether we can gain some kind of intervention from the new government and find out whether intervention is indeed possible at this stage. I have spoken at length with Peter Greste’s parents. They are considering their legal options, including appeal options. We do not know how long an appeal process would take. But in the meantime, we will provide whatever consular assistance we can to Mr. Greste and, of course, to his family.
We understand that Egypt has been through some very difficult times and there has been a great deal of turmoil in Egypt, but this kind of verdict does nothing to support Egypt’s claim to be on a transition to democracy, and the Australian government urges the new government of Egypt to reflect on what message is being sent to the world about the situation in Egypt. Freedom and freedom of the press is fundamental to a democracy. And we are deeply concerned that this verdict is part of a broader attempt to muzzle the media freedom that upholds democracies around the world.
AMYGOODMAN:Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop condemning Egypt for sentencing three Al Jazeera journalists—Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed—to between seven and 10 years in prison.
We go directly to Cairo, Egypt, now, where we’re joined by Adel Fahmy. He’s the brother of journalist Mohamed Fahmy, an Egyptian-Canadian journalist who was Al Jazeera’s acting Cairo bureau chief at the time of his arrest. And we’re joined byDemocracy Now!video stream byDemocracy Now!correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who was in the courtroom today, as well.
Adel Fahmy, can you respond to the verdict of the court?
ADELFAHMY:Yes. So, that was an absolute shock for all of us. We totally expected the opposite. Leading up to this day, we had a politicians gave us reason to be optimistic, or at least cautiously optimistic. And then, the experience was extremely traumatic to all of us. I can’t even calm down my—I’m still trying to calm down my parents. We have to—we have to start now of the coming steps, but it’s very sad what the judicial system has given as a verdict. It’s a disgrace, and it shows that the judicial system—
AMYGOODMAN:I think we just lost Adel. We will try to get him back. Sharif, you were there with the families, with the packed courtroom. Tell us what happened today.
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Well, what this ruling means is that in Egypt journalism is a crime. The court found these three journalists guilty, giving Mohamed Fahmy and Peter Greste seven years in prison, and Baher Mohamed, as well, and adding a three-year prison sentence onto Baher Mohamed for possessing an empty shell casing of a bullet, which he said was a souvenir, and so he has 10 years in prison.
It was a really difficult time in the court today when the verdicts were read out. The family members were weeping. Fellow colleagues, journalists, were weeping. Mohamed Fahmy was pulled away, had to be hauled away by the police in the court, as he was trying to shout to journalists and respond to this outrageous verdict. Peter Greste said nothing; he simply held up a closed fist in the air. And Baher Mohamed was shaking his head.
You know, this is—the little margin of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, that has been continually shrinking in Egypt, took a very heavy blow today. They are accused of—the prosecution has accused these three journalists of tarnishing Egypt’s image abroad by portraying false scenes, as Egypt undergoing a civil war, to help a terrorist organization, which is the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been designated that. And the prosecution, throughout the trial, did not show a shred of evidence of anything that comes close to that. Some of the evidence it showed even included stuff that had nothing to do at all with Egypt, including footage from Peter Greste in Somalia and Kenya, you know, even shots of their parents and so forth. And so, essentially, the court put journalism itself on trial. Many of the journalists today could have faced these same charges, because they did nothing more than do their jobs. And Peter Greste himself was only in Egypt for a couple of weeks. And lawyers—defense lawyers throughout the trial have asked the prosecution and the judge whether simply airing the views of an opposing voice is a crime in Egypt, and this sentence has, you know, put freedom of the press really a large step back in the country.
And if you also—part of the prosecution’s case rested on this technical report by, you know, three experts that went through all of the footage that was seized in the arrest of these three journalists. And during the trial, these expert witnesses denied they had any authority to judge whether these journalists endangered national security, and that contradicted the initial claims made in—you know, to the prosecutor on which the entire case rests. So it’s a very, very weak, weak case. You know, the Amnesty International observer blasted this case and said it will have a very negative effect on freedom of the press in Egypt.
AMYGOODMAN:This is Mohamed Fahmy, from the cage in the courtroom, condemning the proceedings.
MOHAMEDFAHMY:Today’s proceedings show that there is—it seems like all the witnesses have some amnesia or something, Alzheimer’s. There is a lot of discrepancies in the documents and what they are saying themselves. The prosecutor has a lot to answer for, for allowing the four engineers from the Maspero state TV to have exactly the same copy/paste testimony, that we have seen in our video.
AMYGOODMAN:That’s Mohamed Fahmy speaking from the cage. As the sentence was read, Mohamed Fahmy also yelled out, "Where is John Kerry?"—again, a reference to secretary of state’s surprise visit to Egypt just the day before, just this weekend. Adel Fahmy is back with us. The significance of Secretary of State Kerry talking about the renewal of all aid to—military aid to Egypt, as your brother and the other journalists have been convicted and sentenced to seven to 10 years in prison, Adel?
ADELFAHMY:I think Egypt has to rethink how their [inaudible] in different parts of the world. I think everyone now is going to lobby—different governments are going to lobby together against this appalling verdict—and the U.S., as well, I’m sure. I heard that Mr. Kerry discussed this mistrial with President Sisi yesterday, but I don’t know how that—what resulted from that or if there was time for any corrective action to be taken. But now I think this case really requires a strong diplomatic intervention by all governments and to make a firm stand against this ridiculous justice system in Egypt.
AMYGOODMAN:Adel, could you tell us about Mohamed? He—tell us how he ended up in Egypt, his life as a journalist.
ADELFAHMY:Yeah, Mohamed worked in several countries prior to returning to Egypt. Of course, he lived in Canada for a big portion of his life. Then he worked in Dubai for awhile with TV, in Al Hurra TV. Then he went—he worked with the Red Cross in Lebanon. And then he also worked in theL.A. Timescovering the Iraq War and worked with theBBCand thenCNNwhen the revolution was [inaudible] to be in Egypt, January 25 revolution, 2011. And afterCNN, he joined Al Jazeera English only—and I emphasize on that—only since September 2013. So he was just only three months in his job. And—but that’s another point that we stressed in our defense, that, you know, he’s a professional journalist who was only sent to his job for three months and was [inaudible] very objectively and professionally. So—and he got arrested, of course, as you know, on December 29th.
AMYGOODMAN:Now, Sharif, it is not only these three journalists, although they are in prison and, according to the court, will be for the next seven to 10 years, but a whole group of other Al Jazeera reporters have been sentenced to up to 10 yearsin absentia.
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Right. The case named 20 defendants. There were five students who were charged in the case, which, you know, seemingly had no connection whatsoever to Al Jazeera. And the first time that the three journalists—Mohamed Fahmy, Peter Greste and Baher Mohamed—ever saw them was in the defendants’ cage. Four of those students were sentenced to seven years in prison. One of them, Anas el-Beltagy, who’s actually the son of the Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohamed el-Beltagy, was acquitted. Then a further 11 people were sentencedin absentiato 10 years in prison. Al Jazeera has said nine of the 20 named in the case have a connection to the network. So there’s some people in the case that are—you know, they’re not all journalists. But one of the people named met with Mohamed Fahmy in the Marriott just for half an hour for tea. She’s a Dutch journalist, and she found out that she was, you know, on the charge sheet and had to be—had to hide in the Dutch Embassy and flee the country.
So, really just a haphazard list of charges. The prosecution, again, really provided no evidence that showed that these journalists had done anything other than very basic journalism. The prosecutor accused Al Jazeera of, quote-unquote, "forming a devilish pact," that Qatar formed a devilish pact to bring down governments in Syria and Yemen and Egypt. And Mohamed Fahmy himself, in the last court session before this verdict, held up George Bush’s autobiography,Decision Points, and said, "To say that journalists can bring down a state like Iraq brings shame on all the media martyrs that died covering that war," and Mohamed Fahmy himself covered that war, and he said it was George Bush that destroyed Iraq, not Al Jazeera.
So, this case is going to have reverberations, I think, around the world. We saw a heavy diplomatic presence in the courtroom today with ambassadors from Canada, from Australia, from the Netherlands and from Latvia there. Both the Canadian and Australian ambassadors said that none of the evidence provided in the trial—they didn’t understand how the judge came to this verdict. So, we’ll have to see what happens going forward. They do have the right to appeal, of course, in this case. President Sisi does have the right to pardon them or provide amnesty.
But again, as you mentioned, this came a day after John Kerry, the secretary of state, visited—for the first time, a high-level meeting between secretary of state and the newly inaugurated president—and he voiced what appeared to be strong U.S. support for Egypt, for this new government, saying that, you know, the aid will be brought back to its previous levels, that he was confident that 10 Apache helicopters would be delivered to Egypt soon. So—and then, you know, the next day we have this really abominable verdict come down. So, we’ll have to see what—how the State Department responds after that.
AMYGOODMAN:I was watching Sue Turton, who is one of the Al Jazeera reporters who’s been sentencedin absentia. She was in the Al Jazeera studios in Doha earlier today, right after the sentence, saying, while she was much more concerned about the jailed journalists, of course, that this means, as journalists, it’s very difficult for them to travel, because any countries that Egypt has agreements with could have her extradited, or the other journalists convictedin absentia, because she has been convicted in an Egyptian court. I also wanted to ask Adel Mohamed—rather, Adel Fahmy, about his Mohamed’s condition. He had dislocated his shoulder?
ADELFAHMY:Yeah, he sustained this injury shortly before he was arrested back in December. And due to the negligence inside and the harsh condition and denying him to get an early diagnosis and treatment, it deteriorated substantially to become a permanent disability. So, as if this was not punishment enough, we get the verdict today. He has—his right arm, and it got reconfirmed with a recent secondMRIlast Tuesday to confirm that he will never have 100 percent functionality of his right arm again, [inaudible] of motion and considerable pain. So, even [inaudible] intervention, which he was trying to do right away, after his acquittal, can only be proved for things [inaudible].
AMYGOODMAN:And the significance of countries speaking out and the kind of worldwide outrage that’s been expressed? Does it matter at all? We just heard the foreign minister of Australia, Julie Bishop. What role has Canada played in putting pressure on the Egyptian government? And what difference does it make when people speak out around the world? Does it make any difference for—for your brother Mohamed, for Peter, in prison?
ADELFAHMY:Yes, it’s extremely important, in my opinion. The governments have to step up now and express how appalled they are by this, and Egypt will realize that they cannot defy the whole world. You know, this is—it’s already been—I mean, they’re very grateful for the journalists constantly covering this and keeping the story alive. And now it’s time for, you know, the diplomats to start getting into this, as well, and pressure has to continue.
AMYGOODMAN:I want to thank you both for being with us.
ADELFAHMY:This is the only way we can get results.
AMYGOODMAN:Adel Fahmy, of course, we’ll continue to cover the case of Mohamed Fahmy, Baher Mohamed and Peter Greste in prison in Egypt, as well as everything that’s happening there. Thanks so much toDemocracy Now!’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous, speaking to us from Cairo, Egypt.
When we come back, we’ll go to where Secretary of State John Kerry went after his surprise visit to Cairo, Egypt, and that’s to Iraq. We’ll be speaking with Patrick Cockburn. Stay with us.
"Baghdad is a Frightened City": AsISISGains Ground, Iraqi Capital Gripped by Fear & Uncertainty
Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise trip to Baghdad today to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Ahead of his arrival, Kerry signaled the Obama administration is prepared to drop support for Maliki, calling for leadership "prepared to represent all of Iraq." Kerry’s visit comes as Sunni militants with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have captured more territory. Over the weekend,ISISmilitants seized three border crossings with Syria and Jordan, as well as four nearby towns. An Iraqi government airstrike, meanwhile, has reportedly killed at least seven civilians and wounded 12 others in theISIS-held Tikrit. Residents say army helicopters fired on civilian cars lined up at a gas station. The Iraqi government is claiming it only killed insurgents. We go now to Baghdad to speak with Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise trip to Baghdad today to meet with Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. Ahead of his arrival, Kerry signaled the Obama administration is prepared to drop support for Maliki, calling for leadership, quote, "prepared to represent all of Iraq." Kerry’s visit to Baghdad comes as Sunni militants with the Islamic State of Iraq in Syria,ISIS, have captured more territory. Over the weekend,ISISmilitants seized three border crossings with Syria and Jordan, as well as four nearby towns. An Iraqi government airstrike, meanwhile, has reportedly killed at least seven civilians and wounded 12 others in theISIS-held Tikrit. Residents say army helicopters fired on civilian cars lined up at a gas station. The Iraqi government is claiming it only killed insurgents.
We go directly to Baghdad, where we’re joined by Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent forThe Independent.One of his recent headlined articlesis "In Baghdad, a City Gripped by Fear, News is Priceless—ButISISIs Winning the Propaganda War."
Patrick, talk about what you’re experiencing right now in Baghdad.
PATRICKCOCKBURN:Well, Baghdad is a very frightened city. Nobody quite knows what’s going to happen. You know, news keeps coming in of further gains byISIS, orDAIISH, as it’s always called here. The whole of Anbar province, this enormous province to the west, has fallen. And they’re only—ISIS is only about an hour’s drive to the north. Of course, Baghdad is a big, enormous city, six or seven million people. The majority are Shia. So people say, "Well, they’ll never break through because of all these armed Shia." But, you know, the fact remains that since the fall of Mosul, the government hasn’t won any victories, and the—andISIShas gone on taking more cities. You see militiamen in the streets of Baghdad. Prices of everything have gone up. A lot of people have got out of the city, big queues outside the passport office. So there’s is an atmosphere of barely suppressed panic.
AMYGOODMAN:And the significance of Kerry being in Baghdad right now, and what message he is sending to Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister?
PATRICKCOCKBURN:Well, the message is clearly, you know: "Leave. Go. We need a new prime minister, and we need a new political leadership." And that will probably happen. The sense I get with all these diplomatic maneuvers, with Kerry, with the Iranians, with the Iraqi government, are all in slow time, but the advance ofISISand the extreme Sunni Islamists, you know, is much faster than that. They’re really dictating the pace. So, you know, there’s no doubt that Maliki has been a disastrous prime minister. Nobody else could have spent that amount of money and had that size an army and just seen it dissolve. But to get somebody better and to get things up and running is going to take time, and the time isn’t really there.
AMYGOODMAN:What is the message that Kerry is sending? I want to turn to comments of the secretary of state. This is the secretary of state speaking in Cairo a day before the big verdict came down today on the Al Jazeera reporters who have now been convicted and sentenced to seven to 10 years in prison. This is what he said in Cairo.
SECRETARYOFSTATEJOHNKERRY:We will help Iraqis to complete this transition if they choose it. If they want, they have an opportunity to choose leadership that can represent all of Iraq, a unity government that brings people together and focus onISIL. And I am convinced that they will do so, not just with our help, but with the help of almost every country in the region, as well as others in the world who will always stand up against the tyranny of this kind of terrorist activity.
AMYGOODMAN:So, the role of the United States in whether Maliki will retain power, and also, Patrick Cockburn, the role of Iran?
PATRICKCOCKBURN:Well, you know, listening to Kerry, I get the sort of feeling that he hasn’t quite got a grip on the situation. I mean, the people who have taken Mosul and taken most of northern and western Iraq really aren’t interested in a unity government. What they’ve been doing is killing Shia in large numbers. Shia villagers, just out of Kirkuk, were driven out of their homes—I think it was yesterday—and machine-gunned. Twenty-one tribal chiefs from the same area were reported executed. You know, that’s whatISIS, the Islamic State, is all about.
So, you know, we could—the idea is, you could have a government which will include Sunni and Kurds, which we sort of have already in Baghdad, but this would be more representative, and then the main leaders of the Sunni community, apart fromISISand some of the Baathists, would so rally to the government. But it’s by no means clear that would happen, because the situation has changed, because these towns are now under the control ofISIS, and it will be very difficult to get them out. So, I think there’s a certain amount of—quite a lot of wish fulfillment and fantasy in what Kerry is saying.
You asked about Iran. The Iranians, one, they want to protect this government. They want to protect Baghdad. They want to—but at the same time, they don’t want to see a new government installed, which, in their eyes, would see Maliki, who’s sort of pro-Iranian or under Iranian influence, by a prime minister who’s under American influence. You know, this has not been good news for the Iranians, what has happened. The government that they supported, you know, is very clearly a dysfunctional and disastrous government. So they’re arguing, "Well, we’ll keep it in—the first thing is to deal with this attack fromISIS, and then we’ll think about changing the government." But, of course, if that attack is dealt with, the government won’t change. And if the government doesn’t change, then it’s very unlikely there’s going to be much progress in the war.
AMYGOODMAN:Let’s turn to voices of Baghdad residents. Ahmed is opposed to U.S. military intervention in Iraq.
AHMED:[translated] It cannot be solved through military intervention. It has to be solved through diplomatic and political channels. This is our message to Obama. We say to him that we do not want him to send reinforcements or an aircraft carrier. This cannot help us. The situation in Iraq is very critical, and it needs quick solutions.
QASSIMHASHIM:[translated] We hoped for such a stand. It is the American forces’ duty to protect the Iraqi people and its institutions, as stipulated in the Strategic Framework Agreement.
AMYGOODMAN:And I want to turn to comments made in protests in the United States. There have been protests against any kind of U.S. intervention in Iraq. This is antiwar protesters gathering outside the White House this weekend. Mara Verheyden-Hilliard was one of them.
MARAVERHEYDEN-HILLIARD:We’re here today to stand in opposition to any new war in Iraq. The U.S. government, the Obama administration, has said that they are sending 300 advisers into Iraq. He said that he will consider bombing as he determines whether there are appropriate targets. And the simple fact is, what we’re seeing in Iraq today is purely the result of U.S. militarism and U.S. intervention. This is a country that before the shock-and-awe invasion, the people of Iraq were not divided along sectarian or religious lines.
AMYGOODMAN:Another group of protesters stood next to the antiwar protesters holding Iraqi flags. Some of them called on U.S. President Obama to intervene in the crisis unfolding in Iraq, like David Barrows. I thought we had that clip, but let’s turn back to Patrick Cockburn, who is in Baghdad right now, hearing these different voices both in Iraq and in the United States. Patrick?
PATRICKCOCKBURN:Yeah, I mean, I can see the arguments on both sides. But, you know, there’s no question thatISISis closing in on Baghdad. But the people of Baghdad, who are mostly Shia, will fight, because they think they’ll be massacred if they don’t. You know, who is responsible for this? Well, you know, Maliki was put in, made prime minister by the United States, by the American ambassador. Later, then Washington regarded him as becoming—coming under the influence of Iran. So, in a way, it has been the fact that Iraqi leaders have been determined by outside powers which has led to the present disastrous situation. There simply haven’t been leaders here who have sufficient support. And—
AMYGOODMAN:Patrick? We may have just lost Patrick Cockburn. We’ll go to a break and see if we can get him back on. Patrick Cockburn is the Middle East correspondent forThe Independentwho’s been reporting from Baghdad. One of his recent pieces is headlined, "In Baghdad, a City Gripped by Fear, News is Priceless—ButISISIs Winning the Propaganda War." As we attempt to get him back on, we’re going to go to another clip. This is a clip that is of David Barrows, a peace protester who was in the White House—outside, this weekend.
DAVIDBARROWS:Well, I’m here because I don’t want another war to start. I don’t want bombing. I’m sick of these bombings. They do absolutely no good. You know, we’re bombing in Yemen. We’re bombing all over the place. We’re killing women and children and men who have nothing to do with war. It really makes me sick. I mean, I was born in this country. I just wonder what’s going on with the American people? Wake up, America! You’ve got to stop doing this terrorism. That’s what we’re doing. We’re becoming a people of terrorism.
AMYGOODMAN:That was David Barrows, a peace protester outside the White House this weekend. Let’s go to break and see if we can get Patrick Cockburn back on. Sounds like we just got him. Patrick, we’ve been hearing voices of people who are for and against U.S. intervention. Can you talk about the military advisers, as President Obama is calling them, the 300 or so advisers that are being sent to Iraq? Patrick, are you with us?
PATRICKCOCKBURN:Yeah, I suppose that one of their main objectives would be to find out what the real situation is on the ground. You know, for such an enormous government with—well, you know, there’s meant to be 350,000 men in the Iraqi army. They’ve spent $41-$42 billion in the last three years. But this army seems to have disappeared, hasn’t really fought for the last two weeks. So I guess they’ll want to find out why.
I think one must understand there are limitations to what the United States can do here. A lot of the debate in the U.S., looked at from abroad, seems to assume that the U.S. has sort of powers to wholly change things on the ground here, which I sincerely doubt. But, you know, so will they change anything? Well, they’ll probably give some—a little bit more confidence to the Iraqi army. If there was airstrikes, I suppose the Iraqi army would like it. But remember, you know, that five or six years ago, there was enormous, enormous U.S. Army here, there were plenty of airstrikes, and it really didn’t get anywhere. So, I wonder how much effect it will really have now.
AMYGOODMAN:Patrick Cockburn, I want to thank you for being with us, Middle East correspondent forThe Independent. We will link to yourarticlesinThe Independentat democracynow.org. We’ll go to break now and hear about the decision of the Presbyterian Church to divest from three companies doing business with Israel. Stay with us.
Pressuring Israel, Presbyterian Church Divests from Firms Tied to Occupation of Palestinian Land
In what is being hailed as a major milestone for the global campaign to boycott and divest from Israel over its treatment of Palestinians, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted to divest from three companies that it says supply Israel with equipment used in the occupation of Palestinian territory. According to the church, the three firms — Motorola Solutions, Caterpillar and Hewlett-Packard — profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land by selling bulldozers, surveillance technology and other similar products. The decision passed by seven votes, 310 to 303, making the Presbyterian Church the largest religious group to vote for divestment. We are joined by two guests: Dr. Nahida Gordon, a Palestinian-American professor who is a member of the steering committee of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); and Rabbi Alissa Wise, director of organizing at Jewish Voice for Peace.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:We turn now to a discussion on what’s being hailed as a major milestone for the global campaign to boycott and divest from Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. At its general convention in Detroit Friday, the Presbyterian Church of the U.S. voted to divest from three companies that it says supply Israel with equipment used in the occupation of Palestinian territory. The companies are Motorola Solutions, Caterpillar and Hewlett-Packard. The value of Presbyterian holdings in the companies is about $21 million. According to the church, the companies profit from Israeli occupation of Palestinian land by selling bulldozers, surveillance technology and other similar products. The decision by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to divest passed by seven votes, 310 to 303, making it the largest religious group to vote for divestment. Two years ago, the assembly rejected a similar divestment proposal by two votes. The vote also supported interfaith cooperation, the right of Israel to exist and a two-state solution.
To talk about the vote’s significance, we’re joined by two guests. In Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. Nahida Gordon is with us, professor emeritus—emerita at Case Western Reserve University. She’s a Palestinian American who was born in Jerusalem before 1948. She’s a Presbyterian, a member of the steering committee of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). In San Francisco, Rabbi Alissa Wise is with us, director of organizing at Jewish Voice for Peace. Her group supported the Presbyterian Church’s divestment decision.
We welcome you both toDemocracy Now!I want to begin in Cleveland. Let’s begin with Dr. Nahida Gordon. Explain what happened this time. What made this vote different from the vote before, when this was defeated?
NAHIDAGORDON:I think, with time, more people in the Presbyterian Church, particularly the commissioners who were on the floor of the General Assembly, are beginning to know more of what is really going on in the West Bank, in East Jerusalem and Gaza. Thanks to the news and news sources on the Internet, they’re beginning to see more and more of what is going on in Palestine and the terrible conditions under which the Palestinians are living. And I think we built from the last General Assembly to this assembly, and so we know more, we understand more. And we had some people on the floor who said some wonderful things to explain what is going on. And we organized. We worked very hard for this decision. And we succeeded, and we’re very gratified that we succeeded.
AMYGOODMAN:Can you talk about the companies that the Presbyterian Church will divest from?
NAHIDAGORDON:Yes. We feel that the church would be complicit in the occupation if we remain divested in these three companies. Caterpillar, I don’t know—most people have seen these very huge D9 bulldozers, which are weaponized—they have machine guns on them, and I believe some of them are electrified—destroy houses with just one simple swipe. We’ve seen them uproot olive trees. On May 19th, they used bulldozers to destroy, we believe, between 1,500 and 2,000 fruit trees at the Tent of Nations farm. They build the roads into the West Bank, which are for Israelis only. They have been used in building the separation wall, which goes deep into the West Bank into Palestinian territory. And they help build the settlements.
Now, Motorola Solutions produces fuses for bombs that the Israelis use against the Palestinians. As you well know, they bomb Gaza almost regularly. They also produce surveillance equipment for illegal settlements. These are illegal under international law, and they’re throughout the West Bank.
And Hewlett-Packard produces biometric—amongst other things, produces biometric scanners, which the Israelis use in checkpoints, which are throughout and inside the West Bank. There are—a few of them are on the border between Israel and the West Bank, but the majority, the large majority, are checkpoints within the West Bank.
AMYGOODMAN:Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the decision by the Presbyterian Church to divest from U.S. companies that operate in the Israeli-occupied territories. He spoke onMeet the Presson Sunday.
PRIMEMINISTERBENJAMINNETANYAHU:It should trouble all people of conscience and morality, because it’s so disgraceful. You know, you look at what’s happening in the Middle East—and I think most Americans understand this—they see this enormous area riveted by religious hatred, by savagery of unimaginable proportions. Then you come to Israel, and you see the one democracy that upholds basic human rights, that guards the rights of all minorities, that protects Christians. Christians are persecuted throughout the Middle East. So, most Americans understand that Israel is a beacon of civilization and moderation.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re bringing in Rabbi Alissa Wise now, director of organizing at Jewish Voice for Peace. Can you respond to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?
RABBIALISSAWISE:Sure. Thank you for having me on this morning. You know, I’m concerned about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s framing of, you know, what Israel is, because, quite certainly, as Dr. Nahida Gordon just described, there are really urgent and critical human rights issues that need to be addressed both within the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and also there’s a critical issue around lack of basic equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel. These are the reasons behind, you know, this Presbyterian call for divestment and the reasons so many around the world are urging divestment as a way to remedy the urgent human rights abuses going on on the ground.
AMYGOODMAN:And what is your role as a rabbi in arguing for this in the Presbyterian Church?
RABBIALISSAWISE:Well, I just spent the last week in Detroit at the Presbyterian General Assembly. And part of my role was, you know, I was invited there by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network and other friends within the Presbyterian community to serve as a witness and a support to the Presbyterian process. You know, there is—you know, as we like to say in the Jewish community, "Ask two Jews a question, get three opinions." So, there’s quite a bit of diversity within the Jewish community around these questions around, you know, what to do about what is now a 47-year-old occupation, and how do we—how do we stop these urgent human rights abuses against Palestinians. So, in part, it is to be a strong interfaith partner and support to our friends in the Presbyterian Church, which involves interfaith—strong interfaith partnerships involve kind of staying at the table, even in moments of deep disagreement.
And it is my sincere hope that those in the Jewish community and other faith communities, who might be—you know, disagree with this decision, will stay at the table and, not only that, will actually dig deep to actually hear the message of their Presbyterian brothers and sisters. And, you know, one of the things most frustrating that I find from those others in the Jewish community that oppose the divestment bills is that they have no real practical solution to what to do to end these human rights abuses. You never get to hear their ideas about what will stop settlement construction, what will stop the daily humiliation of Palestinians at checkpoints, what will stop, you know, the bulldozing of olive trees and the demolition of homes. That’s never the conversation at the table. And it’s my sincerest hope that this action by the Presbyterians will push all of us to kind of ask those critical questions.
AMYGOODMAN:I’d like to turn to comments made by the Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism. He was speaking toCNNin response to the vote.
RABBIRICKJACOBS:I represent the overwhelming majority of the American Jewish community, literally millions, and we are all united. We’re not united about everything, but on this, we are completely united, that this act of divestment, which is—whatever the language says, it is an affirmation of the globalBDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The globalBDShas already claimed this as a great victory. This is a very hurtful act that causes the entire Jewish community not only pain, but a sense of betrayal from the Presbyterian Church.
AMYGOODMAN:Rabbi Alissa Wise, your response?
RABBIALISSAWISE:Yes, I actually did have the opportunity to speak with Rabbi Jacobs myself when I was in Detroit briefly. We spoke about this very issue. You know, I think that because of the intense muzzling that exists within the Jewish community around these issues—there are severe restrictions that we’ve seen in the past year through the Open Hillel movement, Jewish students on college campus challenging what are truly McCarthyite restrictions on the way that debate and dialogue can happen around Israel and on college campuses—we actually don’t know exactly, you know, how many Jews are supportive of these—this Israel right or wrong idea, or those that are really—want to speak out for justice and feel kind of silenced by the policies of the Jewish community.
Beyond that, I think that, you know, Rabbi Jacobs at the Presbyterian General Assembly made a last-ditch effort to strong-arm the Presbyterians to vote against divestment by offering a last-minute meeting with Netanyahu, which, by all accounts, you know, backfired, because it was seen as a manipulation. And it’s clear that, you know, as I said before, there’s not consensus in the Jewish community on any issue, most certainly on this issue. And I think it does a disservice to the entire Jewish community and, most certainly, to our interfaith partners to misrepresent that.
AMYGOODMAN:How many rabbis signed on to the open letter to the Presbyterian Church, Rabbi Wise?
RABBIALISSAWISE:You mean the open letter from Jewish Voice for Peace?
AMYGOODMAN:Yes, the—
RABBIALISSAWISE:Or the open letter from—
AMYGOODMAN:From Jewish Voice for Peace.
RABBIALISSAWISE:I don’t know the exact number. The truth is that it’s not a numbers game, right? Because of this, you know, there are many rabbis that are supportive of these policies that simply cannot come out of the woodwork, for fear of losing their jobs. Right? So I think that what’s most important is that, you know, Jewish Voice for Peace is an organization that is small and growing and being able to kind of create a space for those in the Jewish community that wish to express these values of a hope for equality, justice and self-determination for Palestinians to really come to light and to bear fruit.
AMYGOODMAN:Finally, Dr. Nahida Gordon, where does the Presbyterian Church go from here?
NAHIDAGORDON:Well, technically, we will now not invest in these three companies. And where we go from here? We need to continue to work for the human rights of Palestinians. We are very much concerned with partners in Palestine, as well as with Israel. What we would like to do—we’re not against the Israeli people. What we would like to do is to see that the government of Israel starts treating the Palestinians better. We would like to see the end of the occupation. We’d like to see Palestinians have their human rights, have freedom. Basically, that’s it. We need to see that the Palestinians have their freedom.
AMYGOODMAN:Dr. Nahida Gordon, I want to thank you very much for being with us, professor emerita at Case Western Reserve University, a Palestinian American born in Jerusalem before 1948, member of the steering committee of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network in the Presbyterian Church. And thanks so much to Rabbi Alissa Wise of Jewish Voice for Peace.
That does it for today’s broadcast.Democracy Now!is hiring a seasoned Linux systems administrator. Visitdemocracynow.orgfor more information.
Yes, as Carlos points out, Ukraine was sold to the lowest bidder and they don't know it yet.Now they have the same opportunities as all the other E U Countries, almost, and at least austerity, which will sound good to them.They deserve it.They will be led down the path by the man they call "The Candy Man."
Another by the Great Carlos Latuff.Essentially, he says "Keep it up, but leave my oil alone."One of the great mysteries of recent times has been how our iol got under their land.
Now, we have not been publishing for awhile.The reason is simple -- we no longer give a shit.However, we did look into the Caliphate issue for you as the networks haven't covered it as the soccer matches have been going on.Essentially, Obama has done so much to encourage the terrorists in Syria, funded by the rich gulf states, that they have branched out as ISIS, then ISIL, and now the Emirate.All Moslems are to sear allegiance to their leader, whose name is hard to spell.
Anyway, the Emirate is supposed to grow.First to include all the known Islamic world, then all the world.I wasn't so sure about this, so I figured that if the Emirate will cover the world, it will eventually get to Chicago.So I called an old friend in Chicago who gave me the number of another Chicagoan a third generation Moslem, what he though about it.Here is a transcript of that interview"
Q. Hello?
A. Yeah, waddya want?Whosdis?
Q. This is the Absurd Times, and we got your number from a friend [identified here] who though you might give us your idea of the Emerite.
A. Yeah? Waddy wanna know?
Q/ Well, the first things is are you in favor or against?
A. Ah, dats right.It's ok, so long as I get ta be da big cheese, da Boss.So yeah, like da idea.
Q. But someone has also already said he is the leader.
A. Nah, no way.I'm older dan him, sos hes gotta respek his elders, see?
Q. I see.So, I suppose you'd have your headquarters in the Willis Building, or the Old Sears Towers?
A. Nope.
Q. Oh.
A. Iz dat all?
Q. No, can I print your name here for our readers?
A. Yeah, its Laith al Kouri Kakka nur Kallifi bin Farook al Numr abu Baghdadi Tiki.
Q. Er, could you say that once more?
A. He no, ya dumb fuck, waddya tink I'm here fer?I'm dad Calif.
Q. Very well, so where will you have your headquarters.
A. I'm tinkin dat Tel Aviv.
Q. But that's in Israel.
A. Naw -- Part a da Caliphate.
Q. I mean they are Jewish there.
A. Nah -- deys all gatta become Moslem.
Q. What if they dont want to.
A. Well make em.
Q. You're talking about another Holocaust?
A. Hall's a wat?
Q. I mean, they will bring up the Holocaust.
A. Oh, I against dat.Don't like da Holocaust.
Well, there you have it.The next Calif is totally against the Holocaust.
Obama is asking to $500 million to send to Assad's enemies.
The Supreme Court has decided that corporations have religious rights.Of course, it has always been against the corporate religion to pay taxes.
And you wonder why we haven't bothered lately?
MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2014
Egyptian Comedian Bassem Youssef Says His Satire Has Inspired Youth to Reject Military Propaganda
In a development many are linking to the Egyptian regime’s crackdown on dissent, Egypt’s most popular satirist announced this month that he was taking his program off the air. Bassem Youssef’s broadcast had been compared to Jon Stewart’s "The Daily Show" for its comedic take on politics in Egypt and the Middle East. The show was incredibly popular — reaching as many as 30 million views per episode. Youssef said he was ending his program rather than face censorship and threats on his life. Yousef was vague on the pressure he has faced, but suggested the military regime has made it impossible for him to continue. Speaking at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum, Youssef said his decision to suspend the show could be seen as a new beginning. "We have inspired a whole generation to go out there and express themselves in their own way," Youssef says. "Satire and comedy might be one of the few antidotes against fear. It liberates your mind. It sets your judgment free. That is why it is a threat."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:In a development many are linking to the Egyptian regime’s crackdown on dissent, Egypt’s most popular satirist announced earlier this month he’s taking his program off the air, just days after General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was elected president. Bassem Youssef’s broadcast has been compared to Jon Stewart’sThe Daily Showfor its comedic take on politics in Egypt and the Middle East. The show was incredibly popular, reaching as many as 30 million views per episode. Bassem Youssef said he was ending his program rather than face censorship and threats on his life. Youssef was vague on the pressure he has faced but suggested that the military regime has made it impossible for him to continue. Earlier today, Bassem Youssef, who is a heart surgeon by training, spoke here at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum.
BASSEMYOUSSEF:Fear sells. Fear works. Fear makes you get away with anything. And when people are afraid, they will not accept logic, let alone satire. Fear can drive the masses. Fear can turn them into ruthless organisms devoid of human mercy and intellectual logic. Fear can drive humans to give up their best-ever given trait: humanity. Under fear, they accept taking away the right to object, to oppose, and even applaud taking away other people’s rights. Under fear, fascism becomes coveted, and "human rights" becomes an indecent word.
Our job was to expose those irrational fears, to dissect through the unfair use of such human basic instinct in order to give up basic human rights and needs. This might sound strange, but again, let me remind you that fear sells, fear delivers. Fear is much, much more stronger. Fear might be the greatest mover of masses ever. You have experienced this during your history. The world has experienced Nazism, fascism, McCarthyism. All were movements that used fears and phobia and empty, vicious rhetoric in order to control the masses.
Sixty years later, those techniques are still valid. We saw how the most advanced democratic countries used fear to drag the whole world into war, like the Bush years in America. Their main weapon was not state-of-the-art aircraft carriers or stealth fighters, but good old national scare fear. Fear is the favorite weapon of all—democratic countries, autocratic countries, religious states and terrorist groups. It’s the favorite brand of all. Fear sells. Fear works. Fear is a winner.
Satire and comedy might be one of the very few antidotes against fear. It liberates your minds. It sets your judgment free. And that is why it is a threat. And that is why people who use satire will be alienated, marginalized or even scared off. It doesn’t matter if it was a government who thinks that they are closer to God than you or a regime that believes that they are more patriotic than you. You, as a satirist, has no place in the world. It is a world where fascism is celebrated and where fear rules. But satire comes to disrupt such an equation, because when you laugh, you cannot be afraid anymore, because—and thus the system will make sure to eliminate that powerful weapon of laughter, in order for fear to set in.
But maybe there is a small beacon of hope. Maybe change will come from the most unexpected places. The world today is a young world. Youth are connected now more than ever. The Internet and the open skies offers an opportunity that was not there many years ago, when regimes can get away with anything. When we started on the Internet three years ago, we might be the—at that time, the only one in our country who did that with such a unique idea and format, but now the Internet is full of young people coming up every single day to combat fear, intimidation and media deception. We were too big to be allowed to continue, but by the time we were banned, the change has already happened. Stopping the show might be viewed as a sad ending, but we would like to look at it as a new beginning. We have inspired a whole generation to go out there and express themselves in their own way.
The old techniques of the '40s and ’50s won't cut it with those youngsters. The propaganda that worked for their parents’ generation won’t be able to control them anymore. The plethora of fascism that plagues certain regions on the planet right now is only a temporary and transient moment of time that will be soon washed away by the upcoming generation. Fascism now is overwhelming, that you might think that the long-coveted freedom is stillborn. But that is not true. As Bevan once said, "Fascism is not a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born." But I tell you that the future is already here. It is just warming up. So fear might sell. Fear might work. Fear might win. But it will eventually face its defeat. And the battlefield for that glorious victory will be no other than the hearts and minds of vibrant, inspired young people who will not give in to fear.
AMYGOODMAN:That’s Bassem Youssef, Egypt’s most popular satirist, speaking here at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany. The Committee to Protect Journalists awarded Bassem Youssef the International Press Freedom Award in 2013. He received the award from Jon Stewart ofThe Daily Show, the comedian to whom he’s most frequently compared in Egypt.
And that does it for today’s broadcast. I’ll be speaking tomorrow morning at the Deutsche Welle Media Forum here inBonn, as well on—later in the week, I’ll be speaking inVisby, Sweden. I’ll be speaking at the Church of Sweden on the island of Gotland. You can checkdemocracynow.orgfor details.
In a Democracy Now! special, we go inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London to interview Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. He has been holed up there for more than two years, having received political asylum. He faces investigations in both Sweden and the United States. In the U.S., a secret grand jury is investigating WikiLeaks for its role in publishing a trove of leaked documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as classified State Department cables. In Sweden, Assange is wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual misconduct, though no charges have been filed. Late last week, there was the first break in the latter case in two years, when a Swedish court announced it would hold a hearing on July 16 about a request by his lawyers for prosecutors to hand over new evidence and withdraw the arrest warrant. In the first of a two-part interview, Assange discusses his new legal bid in Sweden, the ongoing grand jury probe in the United States, and WikiLeaks’ efforts to assist National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
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This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:We turn now to aDemocracy Now!exclusive. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has just entered his third year inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London where he has political asylum. Assange faces investigations in both Sweden and the United States. Here in the U.S., a secret grand jury is investigating WikiLeaks for its role in publishing a trove of leaked documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as State Department cables. In Sweden, he’s wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual misconduct, though no charges have been filed. Late last week, there was the first break in the Swedish case in two years. A Swedish court announced it would hold a hearing July 16th over a request by his lawyers for prosecutors to hand over new evidence and withdraw the arrest warrant.
Well, late last night, we flew back to New York after interviewing Julian Assange inside the embassy.
AMYGOODMAN:The Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where Julian Assange is holed up—he has been here for just over two years, just celebrated his 43rd birthday inside the embassy. Here you can see the British police, and right in front of me is the balcony where Julian Assange has come out and addressed his supporters and addressed the media. The Ecuadorean flag hangs from that balcony. As to when Julian Assange will come out, well, he is concerned, if he steps foot outside, he will be arrested by the British police. So, for now, he’s inside, this nomad of the digital age.
We’re in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where Julian Assange took refuge two years ago. He’s been detained in Britain for close now to four years.
Welcome toDemocracy Now!, Julian.
JULIANASSANGE:Thank you, Amy.
AMYGOODMAN:How are you doing here? It’s been over two years that you have really not seen daylight for any extended period of time.
JULIANASSANGE:There’s been nearly four years that I’ve been detained without charge, in one form or another, here in the United Kingdom, first in prison, the solitary confinement, then under house arrest for about 18 months, and now two years here in the embassy. The Ecuadorean government gave me political asylum in relation to the ongoing national security investigation by theDOJ, the Department of Justice, in the United States into our publications and also into sourcing efforts. So, did I enter into a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced last year to 35 years in prison?
So, the question as to how I’m doing, of course, personally, it’s a difficult situation, in a variety of ways. I would say that when someone’s in this position, what you are most concerned about is the interruption in your family relationships. So, because of the security situation, that’s made it very hard for my children and my parents.
But if we look at the bigger picture, WikiLeaks, as an organization, has survived that attack by the U.S. government, and we’ve gone on to do further work and some quite significant work. Unlike many media organizations during that period, we have not gone bankrupt, despite a worldwide, extrajudicial banking blockade by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and so on, and none of our members of staff have been fired. So, I think if you went back and said to yourself, "What are the chances that a small investigative publisher could publish this information about the Iraq War and the State Department and the Afghanistan War and many other documents about Guantánamo, and enter into conflict with the United States government in a very serious way, would they still be publishing? Would their people be in prison?" and you would think, probably, yes. But actually, we have managed to mostly overcome, apart from my situation here, the barriers that have been put up against us.
AMYGOODMAN:So, July 16th is a significant date. You are wanted in two investigations, or you’re being investigated by the U.S. government because, as you said, of WikiLeaks, of exposing many documents—tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? How many would you say? Around the Iraq War—
JULIANASSANGE:Eight million so far.
AMYGOODMAN:Eight million—around the Iraq War, around the Afghanistan War, and cables of the State Department that go back for decades. You’re also wanted by Sweden for questioning, often misstated as "because you’ve been charged"—
JULIANASSANGE:Yeah.
AMYGOODMAN:—for questioning around sexual misconduct. And July 16th is a big date in that case. Why?
JULIANASSANGE:While most of our resources have been concerned with the ongoing U.S. investigation and pending prosecution, which the U.S.—which theDOJadmits to in its court filing of the 25th of April this year, continues, the Swedish investigation has obstructed my asylum. So, United Kingdom says, "Look, there’s this questioning warrant that Sweden has put out for you. They may have dropped the case," which they did and re-raised it, "but nonetheless there’s this questioning warrant, and therefore we say you cannot go to Ecuador to accept asylum until we’ve extradited you to Sweden." Now, that is actually a violation of international law. The international law is quite clear: Asylum trumps extradition, because of the nature of the relationships with the U.N. and the 1951 asylum convention. So, every time we try and we get some traction publicly and politically in the U.S. case, people say, "Oh, no, no, the whole thing is really about the Swedish case." So it’s quite important to deal with the Swedish matter and kind of show it for what it is and that it should be dropped.
There has been no movement. Although the Swedish government is obligated to somehow progress the situation, they’ve been very happy to keep it a complete stasis. They’ve refused to come here to speak to me here or pick up a telephone or to accept an affidavit. They have also refused to provide a guarantee that I will not be extradited to the United States if I offer to go to Sweden. So, that situation means we have to tackle the Swedish matter, it seems, in Sweden. The only other alternative is perhaps going to the International Court of Justice in relation to the asylum.
Anyway, so it will be the first date in nearly four—in four years that the matter has been heard about in Sweden. And my lawyers are confident that either in the lower court, and more likely the appeal court, we will be able to dismiss the case, because the law is reasonably clear. You’re meant to proceed with—the Swedish government has an obligation under its own law to proceed with maximum speed, with minimum cost, and also with bringing the minimum suspicion on the person who’s being investigated. And it is in clear violation of all those points of law.
AMYGOODMAN:This hearing that will take place on July 16th is a result of an appeal by your Swedish lawyers. Why didn’t they appeal before?
JULIANASSANGE:Well, several things have happened in the interim. Because of the abuses in this case and some other cases, new European law was introduced and pulled in—and enacted in Sweden. And it was meant to be enacted by June the 1st this year; it wasn’t. But by July the 1st it should have come on board, so just recently. So that new legislation permits people who are suspects, who had their liberty deprived in some way, to be able to access evidence that shows that they’re innocent. And so, we understand that there’s significant evidence that was collected by the police that show that I am innocent, and they have thus far refused to hand it over. But this new European law means that they have to hand it over.
AMYGOODMAN:In affidavits that I have read, your lawyers were allowed to see text messages of the women who have accused you.
JULIANASSANGE:Well, what’s hard to—you have to be careful in saying that they have accused me, because actually when you read their correspondence and their early statements, they don’t say that at all. In fact, they say that they didn’t accuse me and that the police took the matter and the state accused me, that they didn’t want any charges, that they weren’t filing a formal complaint. That’s what they say in those text messages.
AMYGOODMAN:Your lawyers weren’t able to get copies of them at this point, but they were allowed to look at them.
JULIANASSANGE:Yeah.
AMYGOODMAN:One of them saying something like, "I did not want to put any charges on Julian Assange, but that the police were keen on getting a grip on him"?
JULIANASSANGE:Yeah, and that she was railroaded into things and really did not—she did not want what occurred to occur.
AMYGOODMAN:So, you were questioned in Sweden originally, and the chief prosecutor actually—is it the prosecutor who dropped the case against you?
JULIANASSANGE:The chief prosecutor of Stockholm reviewed the material very early on in the case and dropped the rape complaint, dropped it, said there’s no—said, "It’s not that I don’t believe what the women say, but there’s just no evidence that any crime has been committed." And so, the matter was dropped. Then, subsequently, a senior Swedish politician, Claes Borgström, who was running for election, then took it to Gothenburg, a city which has nothing to do with the case, and resurrected it under another prosecutor.
AMYGOODMAN:And so, what could happen on July 16th?
JULIANASSANGE:The options for them, they can simply—they can dismiss it; they can say that the law is unclear and ask maybe European Court of Justice to give clarity on this new European law and how it is to be implemented.
AMYGOODMAN:There’s also a law here that was just passed in Britain that seems to have come about as a result of your case. Unfortunately, you’re not protected under it.
JULIANASSANGE:That’s a very important development. So, as a result of the abuses in my case, which were seen by the Supreme Court—there was a split in the Supreme Court.
AMYGOODMAN:Here in Britain.
JULIANASSANGE:Here in Britain. And subsequently, theCambridge Journal of Comparative Lawwrote two papers about what had happened. And there’s a lot of concern about this idea that you could extradite someone without even charging them. So, political pressure—there was a backbench revolt in the British Parliament, principally amongst the conservative backbench, that this was—you know, that any police officer in Europe could just ask for someone in the U.K. to be extradited without it going before a court and without them being charged. And so new legislation was introduced to prevent that happening. So, no more extradition without charge from the U.K. But there was then debate that, "Well, will this in fact protect Assange?" And so, a specific clause was entered into it that it will not be retrospective for those people where the court has decided that they will be extradited, but they haven’t been extradited yet—which just applies to me.
AMYGOODMAN:WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he has been holed up for more than two years. When we come back, in this sitdown interview, I talk to Assange about my interview with the Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, about Assange’s case. And I get Assange’s response to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s comments calling for Edward Snowden to come back to the United States to face a trial. We also learn how Assange helped facilitate Snowden’s departure from Hong Kong. All that and more, coming up. Stay with us.
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AMYGOODMAN:This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, just back from London. We return now to my interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London this weekend, where he has political asylum and has been living for over two years.
AMYGOODMAN:I just came from Sweden, from Almedalen, where 25,000 people gather to talk about politics, and all the parties there and the leaders are there, among them the foreign minister,Carl Bildt, and I asked him about this challenge that was just introduced to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Let’s go to a clip of that.
AMYGOODMAN:Could I ask you—we’re looking at the case of Julian Assange, and 59 legal and human rights groups have made a submission to the U.N. Human Rights Council challenging the pre-charge detention, which makes it a foreign policy issue. As foreign minister, what are your thoughts on this?
FOREIGNMINISTERCARLBILDT:None, because it’s a question for the legal authorities and not a question for me.
AMYGOODMAN:But because it’s in the U.N. Human Rights commission—
FOREIGNMINISTERCARLBILDT:Well, that doesn’t make—
AMYGOODMAN:—the Council.
FOREIGNMINISTERCARLBILDT:That doesn’t make any difference whatever, because it’s still a legal issue within the legal system. And as you have in the U.S., I guess, you have the separation between the executive and judicial branch. And the executive—that’s sort of the nature of democracy or constitutional democracy. If you’re a representative of the executive branch, you have no say—and shouldn’t have any say—in what the judicial branch is doing. And that applies here, as well.
AMYGOODMAN:That was Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden, saying this is a judicial issue, an issue of the judiciary, and he won’t intervene. Your comment on that?
JULIANASSANGE:Well, I only wish that was the case. But, in fact, Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister, a hawkish trans-Atlanticist who was hired by the Liberation of Iraq Committee, for cash, to provoke the invasion of Iraq here in Europe, and has done many similar things—this year was his 14th Bilderberger, he’s an old friend of Henry Kissinger, etc. Carl Bildt has, in fact, continually, publicly interfered and denounced WikiLeaks and me, or statements that my lawyers have made, in various ways over the past four years—not only Carl Bildt, but the rest of the Swedish Cabinet, as well. So, it’s one of these situations where when someone doesn’t want to answer a question, they rely on principles—which are good principles, of not interfering in judiciary—but on the other hand, when they want to interfere, then they do just that.
AMYGOODMAN:And the significance of the U.S. government being involved with Sweden to a level we haven’t seen before? You have the secretary of state at the time, Hillary Clinton, coming to Sweden; the attorney general, Eric Holder, coming to Sweden; President Obama coming to Sweden. That’s never happened in U.S. history when it comes to Sweden.
JULIANASSANGE:And John Kerry, as well.
AMYGOODMAN:And John Kerry, the current secretary of state.
JULIANASSANGE:Yeah, yeah. The last secretary of state visit was Kissinger in 1976.
AMYGOODMAN:Do you believe this has to do with you?
JULIANASSANGE:I don’t think it’s just to do with me. There may be an element. For example, the Holder visit was unscheduled and was sudden and occurred at the time when there was a significant debate in Sweden about dropping the matter in relation to me. That’s possibly related to me. And the Hillary visit, yes, it was just a week before I was meant to be extradited to Sweden.
But I think it more likely reflects a very strong alliance between Sweden and the United States, which has developed since the end of the Cold War, and rapidly since 2006, when the center-right party, the moderates, entered into government. And that alliance we can see, for example, in that Swedish troops are under U.S. command in Afghanistan; that Sweden was the fifth into Libya; that Sweden was the number one seller of arms to the United States during the Iraq War, in absolute terms; that the National Security Agency and Sweden have an agreement, which is even stronger than the agreement between—that in aspects is even stronger than the agreement betweenGCHQ, the British intelligence agency, and National Security Agency to conduct bulk surveillance of traffic passing through Sweden.
AMYGOODMAN:Julian Assange, if the case dissolved in Sweden, if the allegations were dropped, could you walk outside of this embassy here on British soil?
JULIANASSANGE:No, but that case would stop obstructing part of the asylum. So we still have the issue as to whether the British would then activate a U.S. extradition request. The British are also conducting their own counterterrorism investigation in relation to our involvement andThe Guardian's involvement in Edward Snowden's documents. And there’s also questions about the Snowden grand jury that we’re not sure about. But the most clear aspect is the WikiLeaks grand jury in the U.S., which has been the largest investigation and pending prosecution of a publisher in U.S. history, more than a dozen different agencies involved. It’s very well documented, not just by us, but by other journalists andNew York Times. And, in fact, theDOJadmits it in court filings. So, that’s an issue.
Now, in 2012, when the conflict was at its height, and this embassy was completely surrounded by British police—it is still surrounded by British police. There is still a siege underway with about eight to 16 uniformed and undercover police officers around the embassy at any time. But going back to 2012, there was a siege involving, at various times of the day, over a hundred police officers. At that time, the British police were ordered to smash—ordered to smash into a diplomatic car, if I was in a diplomatic car; if I had diplomatic immunity, to arrest me. So, that’s quite extraordinary that there would be a direct instruction to violate the most tested part of international law, which is the Vienna Convention, which is the protection of embassies and diplomatic cars. It’s not like there’s any debate on whether it might be illegal and might be legal to do that under some circumstances. It’s completely illegal. And yet the British police were ordered to do it.
AMYGOODMAN:Do you sense a shift here? I mean, you have Baroness Jenny Jones, for example, who’s in charge of a police committee in the London House, saying, "Why are we spending this money?" In fact, hasn’t there been a breakdown of how much money has been spent? In U.S. dollars, something like $11 million.
JULIANASSANGE:Yeah, it’s come out under a Freedom of Information Act request just about two—about two weeks ago, that the U.K. had reached 6.5 million pounds, or about eleven-and-a-half million dollars. It’s now up to 6.7 million pounds. Interestingly, when there’s a request of the breakdown, because that only—that should be about 16 people full-time. When there’s a request of the breakdown, they refuse to reveal the breakdown under national security—for national security reasons. So the U.K. government—there’s something that they’re doing with that police surveillance that they say is a matter of national security.
AMYGOODMAN:So, let me ask you about this latest letter that was written to Attorney General Eric Holder, signed by many organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Anthony Romero of theACLU, Reporters Without Borders, World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters and many others, calling on the Justice Department to officially close all criminal investigations against WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief, you, Julian Assange, and to stop harassment and other persecution of WikiLeaks for publishing in the public interest. Talk about what this means and whether you think this will happen in the United States right now, whether this investigation against you, which has come up in everything from the Manning trial—
JULIANASSANGE:Yeah.
AMYGOODMAN:—to other places, will stop.
JULIANASSANGE:I think it’s a sign of a developing mood in the United States, to see conservative organizations like Human Rights Watch, which, as you well know, has a lot of former State Department people in it, to come out with that position, that this prosecution, or this pending prosecution of WikiLeaks by theDOJ, National Security Division, is a dangerous precedent to set and would be a significant stain on the record of the Democrats. And so, I think there is a view that that should be stopped, and a number of different organizations are pushing for it. Now, of course, that always should have been the view. You can ask the question: Why wasn’t Human Rights Watch in there two years ago saying these things? Well, I think people were scared. I think they really were scared and that they thought that perhaps they could isolate us and, "OK, let the U.S. government go after WikiLeaks, just as long as we can keep our media organizations and our human rights groups, and we can stay out of the fight."
But if you look at how the Espionage Act prosecutions have developed, there is now more investigations and prosecutions by the Obama administration of people under the Espionage Act—principally, whistleblowers and journalists—than all previous presidents combined, going back to 1917—in fact, more than double. And people understand that it’s not just us. In fact, the precedent has been set that you can perhaps do this to almost anyone. And that should be checked.
AMYGOODMAN:In this letter, they go on to quote Eric Holder, the attorney general, saying, "you promised that [quote] 'as long as I am attorney general, no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail.'"
JULIANASSANGE:Yeah.
AMYGOODMAN:He recently said this.
JULIANASSANGE:Well, unfortunately, you can see the conditional, which is doing his job. And we’re being—interestingly, this public statement by Holder reflects a development of thought in the State Department over the past two years that we have been following quite closely. And it is to somehow say that there are certain types of reportage which are legitimate and other types of reportage which are not legitimate. And the State Department has refused to recognize us as a media organization. And it’s done that in a number of different ways, not just in its public statements by its officials over a wide variety of time, but, for example, when the Bradley Manning trial was on and Kristinn Hrafnsson, our spokesperson—the top award-winning journalist of Iceland, has won journalist of the year three times—applied for a visa to go to the trial, to the U.S. State Department, a journalist visa, it was refused. And the grounds for refusal were not specified; they refused to specify them. But they are obviously that the State Department has a policy position that it will refuse to recognize WikiLeaks as a media organization, because then this would activate their other position that they’re not going to prosecute journalists for doing their jobs.
AMYGOODMAN:Here you are, Julian Assange, in the Ecuadorean Embassy, under siege by a number of governments, under surveillance by many. And yet you manage to work with Edward Snowden, perhaps the most famous whistleblower today in the world, to help him, once he gave over his documents in Hong Kong, the formerNSAcontractor, to the journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, make his way to Russia, where he got political asylum. Can you explain how you did this?
JULIANASSANGE:Well, I think it’s—first of all, will explain why WikiLeaks, as an organization, took on that case. Well, personally, I’ve been through a very similar—I could see the experience Edward Snowden was about to go through. I have been through a similar experience. And I’ve also watched Chelsea Manning go through an even worse experience, now sentenced to 35 years in prison and, at one stage, kept in cages in Kuwait and so on, and treated very, very badly. So, I have personal sympathy for what he was about to go through—and not just from the legal side, but also from the press side. But as a result of us having gone through it, we developed certain understandings about diplomacy, secure communications, which had long been our specialty, and we have a good kind of diplomatic network as a result of specializing in diplomatic publications. So we thought there was a chance that we could help him, and he reached out and asked for help, and we thought it was important to assist.
The other thing is about the sort of signal it sends. The U.S. government decided to smash Chelsea Manning—absolutely smash him—to send a signal to everyone: Don’t you ever think about telling people what’s really going on inside the U.S. military and its abuses. And they tried to smash also the next most visible person and visible organization, which was WikiLeaks, to get both ends—the source end and the publishing end. Now, we have mostly defended ourselves. I’m in a difficult position here, but WikiLeaks has never censored any of its publications in response to that attack. So we wanted to try and set a counterexample with Edward Snowden, that in fact you can blow the whistle, you can reveal this information to the public, which is of tremendous historical importance. It’s of importance to the ongoing development of civilization. Are we going to end up into a mass surveillance system with a very aggressive and strong military-industrial complex, or do we have an attempt to steer away from that? But if we could erect Edward Snowden as someone who blew the whistle and survived, and not even survived, but thrived and spoke about it and kept informing people of what was going on, then we wanted to do it, because that incentivized other sources coming forward.
AMYGOODMAN:And so, how did you do it?
JULIANASSANGE:Well, you know, you have to understand I need to speak carefully, because there is an ongoing Edward Snowden grand jury, which is looking at the matters of those people who assisted Edward Snowden, as well as Edward Snowden himself. But there’s a lot of surveillance of this embassy; on the other hand, we had developed certain techniques in defeating surveillance. And they’re not easy. They are hard techniques, and they do take diligence. But the reality is, the National Security Agency, for all its surveillance power, and theDOJ, for all their coercive power, in the end, they are bureaucracies. They are perfectly nasty, boring bureaucracies. And bureaucracies are inefficient, and they move slowly. And we knew this from our dealing with the State Department and the Pentagon previously.
And so, we were able to move quickly and fast and assess the situation, from a legal and political perspective, in Hong Kong and the mechanisms that would be needed to get him out, get him asylum, and the flight path that would be needed so he had protection at each step of the way and that none of the intermediary countries would grab him, due to us making pre-arrangements and also due to just the sort of where they stood geopolitically. So that’s what we did. And it’s not like it was guaranteed to work. In fact, there were certain stages where there were quite some risks. But the risks of inaction were even greater.
AMYGOODMAN:So you not only helped him from here, but Sarah Harrison, who we just recently interviewed in Germany, who is British, but concerned, if she comes back to Britain, she, too, will be arrested, actually accompanied him on that trip from Hong Kong to Russia, stayed with him at the—both at the airport for five weeks and then for months after that.
JULIANASSANGE:Yes, that’s right. Yeah, so, Sarah Harrison, one of our people, who went to Hong Kong to deal with the situation both from a legal perspective and a journalistic perspective, she was acting as a secure conduit to our lawyers, who were trying to understand the asylum situation and advise him. And from a journalistic perspective, of course, it’s a very interesting story. Accompanied him to Hong Kong—sorry, accompanied him out of Hong Kong to Moscow and dealt with a very difficult situation there of gaining him asylum, and, importantly, making sure—once it became clear that it would be difficult for him to go to Latin America, making sure that the situation into which he entered into asylum in Russia was a well-negotiated one, was not one of weakness. And so she stayed there for some three or four months to make sure that he had freedom in Russia and was well respected there. And to their credit, the Russian authorities did the right thing: They gave him asylum, and they didn’t interfere or coerce with his conditions there.
AMYGOODMAN:What do you think is the most significant revelation that’s come out of the Snowden-leaked documents? I mean, you who know so much from the documents that you’ve released.
JULIANASSANGE:Well, because it is our specialty to understand surveillance systems of various kind, and it was my profession beforehand, the broad—many of the broad parameters, we already knew about. But the confirmation of each one of those parameters was extremely important for others to realize it. I think what is most surprising is not any one thing. It’s the scale, the incredible scale, and that at any point where you could guess, "Are they doing this, or are they not doing it?" they are doing it. So, for example, intercepting packages that are sent out in the post and backdooring them, backdooring chips. So we see the corporation list between National Security Agency and U.S. hardware manufacturers, so Intel, Qualcomm, that makes the chips for telephones and so on. That’s quite surprising. That had been rumored and speculated on, but that the actual physical hardware is backdoored before you even get it, that, I think, is—that is a bit surprising. And then the absolute numbers, the billions of interceptions that are occurring per day. Actually, people who were studying this knew that, but to see a map of the world and the different countries with how many millions or billions of intercepts per day were coming in, I think that is probably the most consequential.
AMYGOODMAN:And the latest news that’s just come out of Berlin, the arrest of a German intelligence officer for spying for the United States on the inquiry that’s been opened—
JULIANASSANGE:Yeah.
AMYGOODMAN:—into the wholeNSAscandal?
JULIANASSANGE:Yeah, very interesting. No surprise at all that intelligence officers are being bribed by the United States. We have had volunteers being paid by theFBIand so on, being bribed by the United States. That’s no surprise at all. What is very interesting is that Germany has decided to make it public, that they have found someone and that they’re going to prosecute him, not just dismiss him. That’s a decision by the German government to cater to the popular will of the German population.
AMYGOODMAN:WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange. In our next segment, we ask him about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s comments calling for Edward Snowden to come back to the United States to face a trial. And Julian Assange describes his surroundings. He’s been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for over two years without any direct sunlight. He describes it as a kind of space station. He has been granted political asylum in Ecuador, but he’s concerned if he steps foot outside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, he’ll be arrested by British authorities. We continue our conversation with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy in a moment.
[break]
AMYGOODMAN:We’re just back from London for ourDemocracy Now!exclusive, the first time a U.S. TV/radio broadcast has had a sitdown interview inside the Ecuadorean Embassy with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. We go back to that interview right now. He has been granted political asylum in Ecuador but has been living in the embassy for over two years.
AMYGOODMAN:Hillary Clinton has been doing a number of interviews on her book-slash-pre-presidential tour, and she was interviewed byThe Guardian, where she talks about Edward Snowden.
HILLARYCLINTON:If he wishes to return home, knowing that he would be held accountable but also be able to present a defense, that is his decision to make. In any case that I’m aware of as a former lawyer, he has the right to mount a defense. And he certainly has the right to mount both a legal defense and a public defense, which of course can affect the legal defense. Whether he returns or not is up to him. He certainly can stay in Russia, apparently under Putin’s protection, for the rest of his life, if that’s what he chooses. But if he’s serious about engaging in the debate, then he could take the opportunity to come back and have that debate. But that’s his decision. I’m not making a judgment one way or the other.
AMYGOODMAN:Those are the words of Hillary Clinton, that Edward Snowden should come home and, as the current secretary of state says, "man up" and face a trial.
JULIANASSANGE:He has no possibility to conduct a meaningful defense in the United States. That’s just a sad reflection of how the federal court system has evolved in relation to national security cases. They will make sure, A, that the case is in Alexandria, Virginia. In fact, they already have. That’s where his grand jury is. It’s where the WikiLeaks grand jury is. It is the highest density of military intelligence contractors and government employees in all of the United States. That’s why it’s there, so they always get what they want.
The state secrets privilege is used in these espionage cases, where the government tries to work out a way to present evidence that it doesn’t allow to the defense under the basis that it’s classified. So, even at the sort of procedural level, he will not be able to conduct a meaningful defense.
Then, in relation to his obligations under law for classified access, it’s a strict liability. So he can’t conduct any whistleblower defense that it was in the public interest, etc. It’s strict liability.
And then we only need to—and you go, "Well, how does that all play out in practice?" Well, actually, we’ve seen the case of Bradley Manning: 35 years for speaking to the press, no allegation that there was any money involved, no allegation that he was dealing with any opponents of the United States government, and 35 years in prison. So, those are the actual conditions that people go through in cases like this.
AMYGOODMAN:In fact, when Hillary Clinton talks about his public defense, that he could mount one, when it came to Chelsea Manning, then Bradley Manning, when Manning was being tried, we could not even hear Manning’s voice, except that, you know, a tape of his voice—
JULIANASSANGE:As a result of a leak. That’s right. That’s right.
AMYGOODMAN:—was smuggled out of the courtroom, so we were able to play a very muffled tape. So how would Edward Snowden defend himself?
JULIANASSANGE:And in the Chelsea Manning case, it was even worse than that. We filed to get his—Center for Constitutional Rights, a number of cases, even to get any transcript out of that hearing. So, you’ll see a similar thing in the Snowden case, a lockdown under the basis that secrets are being discussed. And then the conditions that Snowden would be kept in in the United States would be SAMs, so special administrative measures, because it’s what they do in these national security cases. They say that there’s something in his head that’s valuable—it’s not just documents—and that by speaking, he could reveal this information. And so he’d basically be kept in incommunicado detention during the bail process, and the court case, I imagine, could go for five to seven years, even if in the end political constellations came together and he won in the Supreme Court.
AMYGOODMAN:Well, presumably, Julian Assange, this applies to you, as well. What do you think would happen if you’re extradited to the United States?
JULIANASSANGE:Well, just that. It’s not even what I think. WikiLeaks and I have a team of excellent lawyers—there’s about 30 of them now—that have been understanding the situation for several years. They include Michael Ratner from the Center for Constitutional Rights and others in the United States. And their advice is that, yes, there’s a high chance that you would be subject to SAMs, special administrative measures, during the whole time that the court case went on. You obviously wouldn’t get bail as a foreigner. And yeah, so, the punishment is in the process. And theDOJunderstands that. And if you look at other cases, like Thomas Drake, for example, former National Security Agency whistleblower, given 13 counts of espionage, and then, in the end, he beat it and beat them down to one count of mishandling classified information. So you see this attempt to punish people by drawing them into a long and extended, drawn-out process, and, OK, in the end maybe you’ll win it, but you don’t get all those years back again. And, you know, that I have responsibilities to the organization I’m running, to my family, and I’ve been advised to not go to the United States. And I think that’s good advice.
AMYGOODMAN:Finally, where we are here, in the Ecuadorean embassy, you have described it as a kind of space station. Can you describe it for us, how you live here 24 hours a day?
JULIANASSANGE:Well, it’s a space station in the sense that I’m sealed from the outside world and natural light, and therefore have to create my own cycle of light, like you also do in space. But, you know, it’s—
AMYGOODMAN:So you have a light machine.
JULIANASSANGE:Yes. But being in a—and timers and so on. But being in an embassy is actually, in some ways, not in others, a national security reporter’s dream, because there’s no subpoenas to an embassy. You can’t subpoena. The British police can’t come in. The Ecuadorean police can’t come in. No police can come in. There can be no raids in the night or during the day. And that’s quite a comforting position for the publisher of WikiLeaks to work from. It’s not a position I would like to keep forever, obviously, but it does at least allow me to continue working—yes, with a lot of constraints about can my family safely visit, can sources safely visit, can our most sensitive staff safely visit the embassy. There’s a lot of surveillance of the embassy. Some of that has been publicly declared. There’s a lot of other surveillance of the embassy that we are aware of, in different forms, surrounding what faces onto the embassy in different ways, which I don’t want to go into what we know and what we don’t know, for obvious reasons.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re right across from Harrods, the famous department store.
JULIANASSANGE:There is, under the Freedom of—under, actually, the Data Protection Act, we filed a act against Harrods and got information out showing how Harrods were in fact assisting the police surveillance operation.
AMYGOODMAN:How?
JULIANASSANGE:By permitting the police to use various buildings and facilities that Harrods has, not just the formal building, but they have a number of buildings which face onto the embassy. Additionally, it might be something of interest that Harrods was bought out by the Qatar sovereign fund a while ago, so it is ultimately Qatar that is supporting the surveillance operation of this embassy through its collaboration with the British government.
AMYGOODMAN:What about the outside security here? We just look beyond the curtains, and we see police vans.
JULIANASSANGE:Around the embassy, there are a number of uniformed police and plainclothes police operating and others. The publicly admitted expenditure is now 6.7 million pounds, $11.5 million. It’s about $15,000 per day. And so, there has been some analysis of that and what that means. There’s about eight visible people around the embassy. But the salaries cover 16 people, so there’s a number of others also involved in the processing and management of the information. That doesn’t include what MI5 is doing and whatGCHQis doing.
AMYGOODMAN:And you found—the embassy here found a bug in the ambassador’s office?
JULIANASSANGE:That’s right. The embassy security found, at the time of the visit of—shortly before the visit of Ricardo Patiño, the Ecuadorean foreign minister, in terms of the security—getting ready for the security of the minister’s visit, yes, they found a bug planted, aGSMbug planted in a hidden socket in the ambassador’s room.
AMYGOODMAN:Do you expect there are many others?
JULIANASSANGE:Well, some parts of the embassy. Fortunately, the embassy has a 24-hour security guard—me—who never leaves the building and is always watching or alarmed in one way or another. So not all places, but, yes, others.
AMYGOODMAN:What gives you hope? And what do you see as the greatest legacy of WikiLeaks?
JULIANASSANGE:Well, hopefully the greatest legacy is still to come. But WikiLeaks started in 2007, but it was really this very public confrontation that we had in 2010, 2011, which people saw watching. So it was not—a new generation saw history unfolding in real time, before their eyes, a history that they were part of. Young people see the Internet as their place, where they exchange ideas and culture and so on. And previously, they had been politically apathetic, because they didn’t feel that they could be a part of the power process. But seeing Hillary Clinton’s personal cables and equivalents for many different countries, and the fight that we were in, and being part of that in some way, by spreading this information or talking about it with others, educated a new generation. And the Internet went from being a politically apathetic space to being a political space. And that then spread into many different things. And so, I think this is actually the most significant thing that we have done.
We have also, in terms of the publishing industry, widened the envelope of what is acceptable to publish and so on. That’s been quite important and set off a cascade of examples, which—going through allegedly Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and Jeremy Hammond and many others, to come forward and reveal abuses in government.
AMYGOODMAN:Is there another Edward Snowden in the pipeline?
JULIANASSANGE:I’m sure—I’m sure there will be. In fact, I’m sure there already is.
AMYGOODMAN:WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange. We interviewed him inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London over the weekend. We just flew back. Julian Assange celebrated his 43rd birthday there on July 3rd, his third birthday inside the embassy. He’s been granted a political asylum by Ecuador, but concerned if he steps foot outside the embassy in order to get to Ecuador, he’ll be arrested by British authorities. On Wednesday, part two of our interview with Julian Assange. Special thanks to Mike Burke, John Hamilton and Denis Moynihan. If you’d like a copy of today’s show, go to our website at democracynow.org.
Above: LATUFF points it out, summarizes, everything.There is also a photograph of Bibi,See if you can tell which is which.
Perhaps the Disgusting Times would be a better title these days.Israel has long been the single most offensive agent and primary antagonist to sanity since 1948 and now it continues.The only surprise is seeing some more sane opposition in other countries.
What has been happening is summarized very well in the interview below.We can add that the party in Florida's satellite feed was not simply "lost," as mentioned, but the manner of termination clearly indicates deliberate action on someone's part in support of the genocide in Israel today.
We can only add a few inanities here: during all of this, Israel complained of rising "anti-Semitism" in Europe and demanded that all countries crack down on it.Perhaps the most direct way would be to force every European to wear a Beanie or be punished.For course, we can ask what causes this rising anti-Semitism, but the answer is too obvious.
The overwhelming of U.S. Citizens are simply too stupid to think about this seriously.A recent discussion on one of the "liberal" outlets talked about Carter's scandal of Iran-Contra.Now if a liberal outlet, so called, is so stupid and uninformed, what does one expect from FOX or the others?(For the record, it was Reagan and Ollie Northbehind that.Carter did not invade Panama, either.However, typing up all of the stupidities and misinformation in our media is simply and idiotic waste of time and an impossible task.
So, let's simply go to the interview:
TUESDAY, JULY 8, 2014
"Incitement Starts at the Top": After Arab Teen’s Murder, Israeli Gov’t Accused of Fueling Hatred
The threat of an Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip comes amidst heavy unrest in the West Bank and in Arab towns inside Israel following the killings of a Palestinian teenager and three teenage Israelis. The Israeli teens were abducted while hitchhiking near the West Bank settlement where they lived. Their bodies were found last week, after more than two weeks of Israeli raids throughout the West Bank that saw more than 200 Palestinians arrested and more than a dozen killed. In an apparent act of revenge right after the Israeli teens’ bodies were found, a Palestinian teenager named Mohammed Abu Khdeir was abducted near his home in East Jerusalem. His dead body was found shortly after, showing signs he was burned live. On Monday, Israel said it had arrested six suspects and that three have already confessed. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli leaders have condemned the killing, Khdeir’s death followed calls for vengeance from Israeli political leaders as well as in marches and on social media. We are joined by two guests: Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of the new book, "The Battle for Justice in Palestine," and Miko Peled, a peace activist and author of "The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine." The book’s title refers to a unique family history: Miko’s father, "Matti" Peled, served as a general in the 1967 war and later became a peace activist, calling for Israel to withdraw from the territory he helped to capture.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:Miko Peled is our guest, coming up. This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. He’s an Israeli peace activist and writer. His father was an Israeli general. He’s the author ofThe General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. His father was an Israeli general who ultimately became a peace activist, saying that Israel should give back the territories that he helped to capture in 1967. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Miko is with us in Jerusalem.
Can you talk about the Israeli soldiers that are amassing along the Israeli border—the Gaza border?
MIKOPELED:Yeah, hi. You know, I have to say, hearing Mohammed Omer and his description from Gaza—you know, he’s only about 45 minutes away from me. I’m sitting here in Jerusalem in an air-conditioned room, plenty of light, plenty of water, no shortages of any kind. And this horrendous, horrendous reality that he’s describing, that is about to become worse as the result of an impending Israeli ground invasion, is a direct result of the criminal siege that Israel has been imposing on Gaza for years now, putting 1.6 million people in a cruel and inexcusable—under a cruel and inexcusable siege.
But I think it’s important to take a look at this in a larger context. I think one of the problems is people look at all these—at the current state of affairs as though it’s isolated. Israel has been bombing and killing people in Gaza since it created the Gaza Strip in the early 1950s. On a regular base, Israel goes in and kills civilians in Gaza. This has been going on for six decades. Of course, it’s getting worse. The technology is getting better. And the casualty count is getting worse. But this is part of a larger issue, a larger problem. And the problem is that people equate the Palestinian response to Israeli violence and to Israeli aggression as terrorism, instead of realizing that this is an act of resistance. The Palestinians have been the subject of oppression and violence by Israel from the very beginning that the state of Israel was established. This is why we have a Gaza Strip. This is why we have hundreds of thousands of refugees in the Gaza Strip and other places. These people were forced out of their home as a result of an act of terrorism, which created the state of Israel in 1948. These people have been resisting, and they’ve been resisting in other places, mostly by nonviolent means. Of course, the more violent, the more the armed struggle gets a lot more media, but mostly by nonviolent means. They have been part of a brutal oppression for six decades.
And what we see today is, of course, the result of one straw that literally broke the camel’s back, and we see uprising in places that we haven’t seen before, like, you know, inside Palestinian communities inside Israel. These are Israeli citizens. And Israel planning to go in and kill more Palestinians, knowing full well they’re going to be burning more Palestinian children, just like the one who was burned by these four or five individuals who were not soldiers, but Israeli military has been doing this for decades. This is nothing new. And I think it’s important to take a look at this not as an isolated issue, not as an isolated incident, but as part of a larger issue that has to be resolved, has to be resolved so that Israelis and Palestinians can move forward finally.
AARONMATÉ:Miko Peled, you were arrested recently at a protest in the West Bank, protesting the occupation. You’re one of a group of Israelis who regularly takes part in these kind of solidarity actions. Has the brutal killing of Mohammed Khdeir done anything to raise discussion about the settlements, about the fact that this occupation is continuing and Palestinians are subjected to these types of—this type of brutality every day?
MIKOPELED:I think it only has done so in that the foreign press is suddenly interested again. But in terms of the discussion on the Palestinian side, this is nothing new. This particular brutal case of murder is really nothing new. I mean, Israel—what do you think happens when Israel drops tons of bombs from the air on Gaza? Children get burned.
The issue of the settlement is also one of these absurd issues that people talk about, knowing full well there can be no change. Israel will never stop building cities and towns wherever it likes, everywhere in the Middle—everywhere in what Israel considers the land of Israel. And so, this whole debate of settlements and no settlements, again, has to be taken in a larger issue. Israel has been building settlements on occupied Palestinian land since 1948, since the state of Israel was established. You know, the entire country is occupied Palestine. And it’s time to wake up and talk about it like this. This whole debate about the occupied Palestinian territories being only part of the country and the settlement problem being only part of the country is absurd. Palestinian towns within Israel, Palestinian towns where Palestinians who are Israeli citizens reside, have settlements all around them, and all of these settlements are not considered settlements because they’re within what is considered proper Israel, but these are all built on Palestinian land. And Palestinian towns within Israel are shrinking and getting smaller, their resources are declining, and their landmass is disappearing. So we have a larger issue here.
And, you know, I protest, others protest. Of course, Bil’in, where I was arrested last time—quite brutally, I have to say—is, has become the Mecca of the nonviolent resistance, and people from all over the world come and visit there. Yet the Israeli army shows up. They shoot amounts of tear gas that are obscene. They shoot shot grenades at point blank, pointing them at people. And then, of course, I stood there, and I was talking, or at least trying to talk, to one of the commanders, and at one point he got angry, pushed me around and then proceeded to detain me and arrest me. But, you know, my story is nothing. I get to go home at the end of the day. We have thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, the vast majority of whom have never been charged with acts of violence, which of course represents the Palestinian resistance. And these are the people that we have to be talking about. These are the people who have to be released.
The siege on Gaza has to be lifted. If Israel doesn’t like the Qassam rockets coming out of Gaza, Israel knows what to do, because this is a response to the Israeli occupation. This is the response to the Israeli brutal oppression of Palestinians for almost seven decades. So, again, it’s important to put this in perspective and not to treat this like it’s an isolated issue. And again, Mohammed Omer is 45 minutes away from me, and he has no access to clean drinking water. Families don’t know what to do once the bombs start falling. They have no shelters. They can’t escape. Israel has locked them in this massive prison. And I don’t know what kind of expectation there is that the Palestinians would just sit there in Gaza and not respond, and not respond with any kind of violence. You know, being as ineffective as these Qassam rockets are, at least they’re some expression of anger and some desire to be noticed.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re also joined in Los Angeles by Ali Abunimah, the co-founder ofThe Electronic Intifada, author of the new book,The Battle for Justice in Palestine. Ali, can you talk about the situation at this point—the soldiers amassed along the border of Gaza right now, the bombing that’s going on of Gaza, Israel setting up this operation—they call it Protective Edge, saying that they are responding to rocket fire coming from Gaza?
ALIABUNIMAH:Good morning, Amy. I’m very happy to hear the context and analysis of both Mohammed Omer and Miko because this has been totally missing from the mainstream media in this country and even, sadly, from progressive media for so long. But I think it’s so important to respond to this Israeli claim, which we heard in the news at the beginning of the show from the Israeli spokesperson, Peter Lerner, that Israel is just responding. And this talking point is repeatedad nauseamby Israel and its apologists in the media. I mean, just look at the numbers from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on protection of civilians. The reason this is happening now, in addition to everything we heard, is that the number of Palestinians killed by Israel since the start of this year is about triple the number in the same period as 2013. And it’s grim to talk about human beings in terms of statistics, but just up to the end of June—so, not even including the horrifying slaughter that we just heard about from Mohammed and that has occurred in the past few days—until the end of June, Israel had killed 31 Palestinians since the beginning of the year. That compares with 11 in the same period last year, so three times as many Palestinians killed, 1,463 injured. Why do we never hear that? We only hear about the rockets coming, which Miko talked about.
And this is happening, Amy, at a time when there is unprecedented—and I would even say genocidal—incitement against Palestinians. For example, the statement from the up-and-coming political star in Israel, Ayelet Shaked of the Jewish Home party, which is in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, who actually issued a call for genocide of the Palestinian people on June 30th. She declared that the entire Palestinian people is the enemy. And she justifies their destruction, including, quote, "its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure." And she said that Israel would be justified to slaughter Palestinian mothers because they give birth to little snakes. I wish I could say that that was an extreme or outlying expression of opinion in Israel, but she got something like 5,000 likes for that statement on Facebook. And we’re hearing this kind of incitement from Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, from every—virtually every Cabinet minister, and of course the chief inciter, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now pretending to be against violence, pretending to console the family of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the latest lynching victim of Israel and its occupation.
AARONMATÉ:Well, Ali, I wanted to get your response to Netanyahu. Speaking over the weekend, he vowed to punish those responsible for Mohammed Abu Khdeir’s death.
PRIMEMINISTERBENJAMINNETANYAHU:I know that in our society, the society of Israel, there is no place for such murderers. And that’s the difference between us and our neighbors. They consider murderers to be heroes. They name public squares after them. We don’t. We condemn them, and we put them on trial, and we’ll put them in prison.
AARONMATÉ:That’s Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to punish the killers of Mohammed Khdeir, but in doing so, also drawing, Ali, some sort of moral high ground. Your response?
ALIABUNIMAH:Where does one begin with that? This is the leader of a government that has killed more than 1,400 Palestinian children, including this year seven, 1,400 just since 2000. And Israel sanctifies these murderers. It treats them as heroes. It incites them. Netanyahu is the chief inciter. And the notion that Israel brings them to justice is just absurd. There is no case, in practically in living memory, of an Israeli being brought to justice for the killing of any of these 1,400 children. On May 15th, two Palestinian children were shot dead by snipers, and it was caught on camera. Everyone saw it. They were hunted like animals. It’s almost two months later. Has anyone been arrested? Do we know the names of the killers? Well, I’ll tell you, Israel knows the names of the killers, but they’re not telling, because they’ve placed a gag order, a censorship order, on that case.
The only reason Netanyahu was forced to make that cynical statement is because of the media attention that the case of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was lynched to death, who was burned alive, got—and his cousin Tariq Abu Khdeir, a U.S. citizen, brutally tortured on television. I mean, a question for Netanyahu I wish somebody would ask—Tariq Abu Khdeir—and I understand we’re going to hear from his aunt in a minute—was tortured on camera. We saw it. He was tortured. He was fined and put under house arrest, the 15-year-old boy, never having been charged with anything and having been tortured. Have the torturers who beat him up been arrested? Has Israel even announced that they were suspended from their positions? Of course it hasn’t. Does Israel go and demolish the homes of Israeli soldiers or settlers who attack Palestinians? And the figures from the U.N., by the way, show that attacks by settlers on Palestinians and their properties have been going through the roof in recent years. And this is all unchecked violence.
Netanyahu incites. The incitement starts from the top. And it’s not just against Palestinians. It’s against Africans. It’s against what they call leftists, anyone who criticizes their government. The chant is—the chant in the streets of Israel, in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, in other places, is "death to the Arabs, death to leftists." And the incitement comes from Netanyahu.
AMYGOODMAN:Ali Abunimah, we want to thank you very much for being with us. Miko Peled is still with us in Jerusalem, the Israeli peace activist and writer whose father, Matti Peled, was an Israeli general, military governor of the Gaza Strip and member of Parliament. Miko Peled is the author ofThe General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. Before we go to Tariq Abu Khdeir’s aunt in Tampa, Florida—Tariq, by the way, grew up in Tampa, born in Baltimore, the young man who was beaten by Israeli soldiers in East Jerusalem—I wanted to ask you, Miko Peled, about your own family’s journey. Your father, a famous Israeli general and considered Israeli war hero, ended up saying that Israel should withdraw from the territories back to the 1967 line. Why the change?
MIKOPELED:I think the change came as a result—and again, I tried to record it in the book, inThe General’s Son—as a result of, first, his experience as military governor in Gaza in the mid-1950s, when Israel occupied Gaza, and then when he saw that by occupying the entire country, and Israel is—it will, in fact, become a binational state and will have to enforce a brutal military force and a brutal military occupation upon the people, who are inevitable to—who will inevitably resist, because we are going to be a foreign occupation. So he felt that the right thing to do—and he said this immediately after the 1967 war was over, in the very first meeting of the Israeli high command—that we now have an opportunity to solve the Palestinian problem peacefully by negotiating with the Palestinians based on what we know today is called the two-state solution—a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital.
As he was saying these very words—this is the very last day, the very last moments of the 1967 Six Day War—the Israeli military was already forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of the West Bank, destroying cities and towns and villages in the West Bank, and building massively for Israeli Jews only in the West Bank, which is exactly what they did prior to 1967 in the rest of Palestine, which had become Israel. So, he retired from the military a year later, and he dedicated his life, or the remainder of his life, the second half of his life, I should say, to this idea of an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The problem was that nobody on the Israeli side was interested. In terms of Israeli thinking, in terms of the Zionist ideology, which is the foundation of the state of Israel, there cannot be any compromise on the land of Israel because it belongs to the Jewish people. You know, the law in Israel says that over 90 percent or 95 percent of the land in Israel is only—only Jews are permitted to purchase land on over 95 percent of the land here. So Palestinians, who are the indigenous people of the land here, are prohibited from buying, purchasing land here, if they like. So, this is a reality that he was trying to combat, but, of course, on the other side, there was nobody listening. In terms of Israeli thinking, Zionist thinking, the land is ours; the Palestinians are either going to have to live with Israeli domination, or they can leave.
And what, in essence, has happened is, Israel has given Palestinians two choices: either to completely surrender or to resist. And this has been going on for some almost seven decades. And now we see the results of that. But the things, the very things that he said in that very—on that very last day of the war in 1967, every single thing that he said actually came to be. Israel is a brutal occupying power. It is not a Jewish state. It is a binational state, because Israel governs the entire country, and there are two nations that live here, albeit in an apartheid regime where one nation has all the rights and the other nation is subservient and lives under a terrible, oppressive regime.
AMYGOODMAN:Miko—
MIKOPELED:And this is exactly what he was hoping to avoid.
AMYGOODMAN:Miko Peled is joining us from Jerusalem, again, an Israeli peace activist who was just arrested in the West Bank. His father, the famous Israeli war hero and general, Matti Peled, who ultimately called for the very land he had been responsible for capturing, among other Israeli military, saying that it should—Israel should withdraw.
"Absolutely Unjustifiable": Aunt of US Teen Decries Brutal Beating by Israeli Forces Caught on Video
Over the weekend, video emerged of the beating of Tariq Abu Khdeir, the 15-year-old Palestinian-American cousin of murdered Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir. Footage shows him being severely beaten by Israeli officers after being detained during protests over his cousin’s murder. Tariq says he was watching demonstrations in East Jerusalem when he was seized. The video shows him lying on the ground as the officers repeatedly beat him with batons. Tariq has been placed under house arrest pending an investigation into potential charges of assaulting a police officer. He lives in Tampa, Florida, but is in East Jerusalem for the summer visiting his family. He was with his cousin Mohammed just moments before he was kidnapped and murdered last week. In a statement, the State Department said it was "profoundly troubled" by the assault, calling for a "speedy, transparent and credible investigation and full accountability for the apparent excessive use of force." We are joined from Tampa by Tariq’s aunt, Suhad Abukhdeir. "This is absolutely unjustifiable," she says of Tariq’s beating. "You have three uniformed men, in full combat gear, against a 15-year-old."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re also joined by Tariq Abu Khdeir’s aunt right now in Tampa. Now, Tariq is the 15-year-old Palestinian-American cousin of the murdered Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was killed in apparent retaliation for the murder of three Israeli teenagers. Video emerged over the weekend of Tariq being severely beaten by Israeli officers after being detained during protests over his cousin’s murder. Tariq said he was watching demonstrations in East Jerusalem when he was seized. The video shows him lying on the ground as the Israeli officers repeatedly beat him with batons. He was left with facial bruises, severely swollen eyes. Let’s turn to Tariq Abu Khdeir in his own words.
TARIQABUKHDEIR:I was actually brutally attacked from the side and heard somebody screaming. They came and attacked me, and I actually went unconscious, and I woke up in the hospital.
REPORTER1:Why did they attack you?
TARIQABUKHDEIR:I don’t know. That’s why I ran.
REPORTER2:They said that you were throwing stones, something like this.
TARIQABUKHDEIR:No, I jumped the fence, and I tried to run away, because I just saw somebody running at me, so I tried to run away.
AMYGOODMAN:So, Tariq Abu Khdeir, the young man you just heard—if you’re listening on the radio, he has two black eyes—has been [placed under house arrest pending an investigation into potential charges of assaulting a police officer] in East Jerusalem. He actually lives in Florida but is in East Jerusalem for the summer visiting his family. He was with his cousin Mohammed just moments before Mohammed was kidnapped and murdered last week. In a statement, the State Department said it was "profoundly troubled" by the assault, calling for a "speedy, transparent and credible investigation and full accountability for the apparent excessive use of force."
Joining us now from Tampa, Florida, fromPBSstudiosWEDU, is Suhad Abukhdeir. She is Tariq’s aunt, as well as a relative of Tariq’s slain cousin, Mohammed.
Welcome toDemocracy Now!Thank you so much for joining us. Our condolences. Can you talk about what you now understand is happening with Tariq and what happened to Mohammed?
SUHADABUKHDEIR:Thank you for having me. What I understand now is, like you were saying, he’s on house arrest and has to pay a fine, which I think is very ridiculous, because after what he’s endured, we should be the ones compensated at this time. As far as Mohammed, we’re still in mourning. You know, the whole city of Shuafat is in mourning, because it’s such a close-knit family. Even the non-Abu Khdeirs in that village have grown up with the Abu Khdeir family for several generations. So everybody feels with us at this time, and we’re still in mourning.
AARONMATÉ:Suhad, I wanted to get your response to Micky Rosenfeld. He’s a spokesperson for the Israeli police. He said Tariq was one of six Palestinians arrested, three of them carrying knives, after a clash in which 15 Israeli officers were injured. And he said Tariq was part of this rally where hundreds of rioters, many of them masked, hurled at the Israeli forces pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, fireworks and stones. What’s your understanding of what Tariq was doing at this protest?
SUHADABUKHDEIR:First of all, when you’re inside your house and you’re 15 years old and you hear a commotion downstairs, it’s kind of hard to stay inside. So you go down and you look, and you wonder, "What’s going on here?" You know, and from a distance, he could see the protesting, but he was nowhere near it. If there was that many protesters around him, where were they when he was getting beat up? Wouldn’t they have intervened? Somebody would have intervened. And to have all these weapons that they’re claiming, somebody would have definitely intervened.
But as far as everybody’s claims that the six that were with him had all these weapons, all the weapons that they could have had in the world don’t even justify this brutal attack, with nobody around him. You can see in the video nobody is within the vicinity of Tariq. And this is absolutely unjustifiable. You have three uniformed men that are in full combat gear, weighing at least 200 pounds each, 150 pounds, against a 15-year-old who—
AMYGOODMAN:It looks like we lost, on the satellite feed, the aunt of Tariq Abu Khdeir. She was describing what happened to him at the hands of Israeli soldiers. The mother of one of the Israeli teenagers killed in the West Bank last month has spoken out against the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. This is Rachel Fraenkel, Naftali’s mother.
RACHELFRAENKEL:Even in the depth of the mourning over our son, it’s hard for me to describe how distressed we were over the outrage that happened in Jerusalem. The shedding of innocent blood is against morality. It’s against the Torah and Judaism. It’s against the basis of our life in this country. The murderers of our children, whoever sent them, whoever helped them, whoever incited towards that murder, will all be brought to justice. But it will be them and no innocent people. And it will be done by the government, the police, the Justice Department, and not by vigilantes. No mother or father should go through what we are going now, and we share the pain of the parents of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. The legacy of the life and death of Naftali, Eyal and Gilad is a legacy of love, of humanity, of national unity.
AARONMATÉ:That was Rachel Fraenkel, the mother of Naftali, who was one of the Israeli teens who was murdered in the West Bank last month. We are joined still in Jerusalem by Miko Peled. Miko Peled, the mother here of a murdered settler emerging as a voice of peace, your comments on that?
MIKOPELED:Yeah, I don’t think she’s emerging as a voice of peace at all. I think if she wanted to be recognized as a voice of peace, she would condemn, completely condemn, all Israeli violence towards the Palestinians. Ever since these three boys went missing, the Israeli military has gone completely mad. The Israeli soldiers have been marching through Palestinian towns and villages like Roman legions, destroying everything in their path, destroying homes, beating children, arresting, torturing. Countless have been killed, of innocent civilians have been killed. This has been complete madness. And if these parents were really interested in calming things down, they would tell Netanyahu to pull back his troops, to stop bombing Gaza, to relieve the people of Gaza of this brutal and inexcusable siege. People living 45 minutes from me, and they don’t have—they can’t have water fit for drinking or the most basic medicines, not to mention any way to deal with the horrific attacks that they’re subjected to right now. So, if anybody is really interested in calming things down, this is where they need to point the finger. This is who they need to be talking to.
Just yesterday, I happened to be at the grave of one of the boys killed on the 15th of May, Nadim Nuwara. And to listen to his father, Siam, speak at the gravesite of this 17-year-old boy, all he asks for is justice. All he asks for is justice, you know? And to compare that, to juxtapose that with the madness going on in the streets here in Israel and the madness that the Israeli military has been subjecting the Palestinians is just unbelievable.
AMYGOODMAN:Miko Peled, we want to thank you for being with us, Israeli peace activist, writer. His father was the Israeli general, Matti Peled. Miko Peled is the author ofThe General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.
Illustration: The cartoons of Carlos Latuff are spreading all over the world, being held up in demonstrations and protests, and reproduced widely and for good reason.He has summarized the feelings of most people internationally.
Fury, anger, hatred, indignation, frustration, bitterness, condemnation, contempt -- all of these are words that by themselves scarcely express the reaction world-wide to the vile and senseless massacre of helpless and defenseless people in the prison camp called Gaza.There is little more to be said on the subject.
About all individuals can do it to make sure they boycott any and all of Israel.It is difficult to imagine a self-respecting Christian or Moslem visiting the country and participating in any way to anything that would be of benefit to that country.Many Jews in Israel feel nothing but indignation and shame are what their government is doing and one is at a loss to suggest a course of action for them.
There is no point in saying anything further.The behavior is contemptible and does not merit any further discussion.There is nothing more to say.People can act, perhaps, but nothing will change the attitudes of the current government in Israel.
Latuff again: His images are now world-wide (except in the U.S.)
We will comment and give some context to this situation in the next issue. Right now, we can ask what sort of cease-fire proposal is sent only to one side (Israel) and not the other (Hamas)? Who would take it seriously in a sensible world?
MONDAY, JULY 14, 2014
"Israel Targets Civilians, the Casualties Speak Volumes": Int’l Protection Urged for Besieged Gaza
Thousands of Gazans have fled their homes amidst a relentless Israeli bombing campaign that has now killed more than 170 people, most of them civilians, since it began a week ago. The United Nations estimates at least 80 percent of the dead are civilian, of whom 20 percent are children — at least 36 dead. More than 1,200 Palestinians have been wounded, nearly two-thirds women and children. Some 940 homes have reportedly been severely damaged or destroyed, 400,000 people are without electricity, and 17,000 people are displaced. Hamas has fired an estimated 700 rockets into Israel, causing no direct killings but leaving an Israeli teen critically wounded. We get reaction from Palestinian attorney Diana Buttu, who has served as a legal adviser to the Palestinians in negotiations with Israel and to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "When Israel talks about who it’s targeting and what it’s targeting, they’ve never proffered any proof or any evidence for what it is they’re trying to hit," Buttu says. "At the end of the day, as much as Israel tries to claim they are not targeting civilians, they are — and the casualties speak volumes."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:We begin today’s show in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli Defense Forces and tanks are positioned along the border in the seventh day of Israel’s offensive. As of this morning, the Palestinian death toll has reached at least 172, among them 140 civilians, including 30 children. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, more than 1,200 people have been wounded. This weekend brought the deadliest strikes to date, including a bombing that killed 18 members of the same family. No Israelis have been killed.
On Sunday, the Israeli military dropped leaflets and sent text messages to warn residents of the northern Palestinian town of Beit Lahiya to evacuate the area as it planned to intensify its large-scale bombing campaign. One displaced resident described an Israeli leaflet telling locals, quote, "any moving body after noon will be struck," unquote.
In addition to bombing homes, Israel has carried out a number of attacks on Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights says the targets have included charities, parks, sports clubs and a mosque. The United Nations Humanitarian Affairs Office estimates thousands have been displaced in Gaza. Almost a thousand homes have been destroyed. On Saturday, Israeli shelling killed two disabled women and wounded four when a tank shell struck a rehabilitation center in Gaza City. A member of an ambulance crew spoke to the media.
AMBULANCECREWMEMBER:[translated] These are the targets of Bibi Netanyahu. These are the remains of children. These are dolls for children. These are the targets of Bibi Netanyahu. These are the targets of the Jews. They are children in an organization for the disabled.
AMYGOODMAN:The U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has expressed alarm at the escalation in fighting as the Security Council is demanding a ceasefire. His office released a statement that, quote, "The Secretary-General does not believe that what is inherently a longstanding, serious political dispute between Israelis and Palestinians can be resolved via military means by either side. He remains engaged with both sides to urge de-escalation and an end to violence."
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Israeli Cabinet that responsibility for civilian deaths in Gaza lies with Hamas.
PRIMEMINISTERBENJAMINNETANYAHU:[translated] We don’t know when this operation will be over. It may take a long time, and we need your support and your discipline. Hamas uses the residents of Gaza as a human shield and is bringing disaster on the residents of Gaza, and therefore the responsibility for any harm done to civilians in Gaza, which we regret, the responsibility is that of Hamas and its partners, and them alone.
AMYGOODMAN:Militants in Gaza have fired hundreds of rockets at Israel.
Well, for more, we’re joined from Harvard University by Diana Buttu, an attorney based in Palestine. She has served as a legal adviser to the Palestinians in negotiations with Israel. She was previously an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
We welcome you toDemocracy Now!Diana Buttu, can you respond to the latest news from Gaza right now?
DIANABUTTU:Yes, Amy, in addition to the killings of people, there have been more than 940 houses that have been destroyed by the Israeli army, in addition to much of the water infrastructure has also been targeted. This is a war that has been taking place against the Palestinian civilian population, deliberately designed to bring down the Palestinian civilian population. And this is why we’ve been calling for international intervention to hold Israel accountable to make sure that this precisely stops.
AMYGOODMAN:So, can you talk about how you see this ending?
DIANABUTTU:The problem is, Amy, is that I don’t see it ending. The real issue here is whether Israel is going to be held accountable. And so far there hasn’t been any international actors who have stepped forward to say anything to Israel or to do anything against Israel. There haven’t been sanctions lobbied against Israel. There haven’t been any statements. And at the end of the day, it’s going to be simply a question of whether Israel gets tired of continuing to bomb a civilian population. We’ve seen this in the past, when it’s carried out bombing campaigns against Lebanon and also the previous bombing campaigns against Gaza. They usually end when Israel—when public opinion turns against Israel. And at the point in time, I just don’t see that there’s any action that’s being taken the stop Israel from continuing to carry out these attacks.
AMYGOODMAN:I want to turn to comments made by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on the weekend on Fox News.
PRIMEMINISTERBENJAMINNETANYAHU:You know, here’s the difference between us. We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles. That’s basically the difference. They’re embedding these rockets that they’re firing wholesale into our cities, terrorist rocketing, trying to kill as many as they can. They’re not succeeding because of two reasons. One is because we’ve developed this incredible missile defense system, which I think is a historic development in the history of defensive warfare, with U.S. help, and I want to thank the American people, President Obama, the U.S. Congress for helping us fund this amazing development. But the other reason we’re succeeding—you have to understand some of the rockets do pierce through this shield, and the reason we’re succeeding is also because we’re targeting the rocketeers. The rocketeers are firing from homes. These homes are actually command posts of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad army. So, that’s where they have their secure communications, weapon caches, rockets, hidden map rooms and so on. These are their command posts. Obviously we’re not going to give them immunity, and so we have to attack them. And we try to minimize, as we can, civilian casualties.
AMYGOODMAN:That’s the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Fox this weekend. Diana Buttu, again, he said, "We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians; they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles. That’s basically the difference," he says.
DIANABUTTU:This is simply Israeli propaganda at its finest. When you look at the death toll and you see the numbers, then the numbers actually speak volumes. When you see that 80 percent of the people who have been killed are civilian, when you see that half of them are women and children, and when you see that who they’re actually bombing is a population 43 percent of whom are under the age of 14, then this is very easy to pierce through the propaganda.
But more importantly, I think it’s important to keep in mind that when Israel talks about who it’s targeting and what it’s targeting, they’ve never proffered any proof or any evidence for what it is that they’re trying to hit. They simply make these allegations, and networks like Fox take it in and simply accept it as being fact. But the fact of the matter is, is that when all of this is over, Israel has never allowed independent investigators to come in and see what it is that Israel is doing. At the end of the day, as much as Israel tries to claim that they’re not targeting civilians, they are, and the casualties speak volumes.
AMYGOODMAN:Last week we spoke toJoshua Hantman, the senior adviser to Israel’s ambassador to the United States. I asked him about the killing. At that point, it was more than a hundred Palestinians had been killed by Israeli airstrikes, most of them women and children. This was his response.
JOSHUAHANTMAN:For Israel, any civilian death is not only a tragedy, but it’s a failure, as well. And we review every single operation and every single strike to see how we can improve. We’ve hit over 800 targets to try and stop these rockets, to try and stop this indiscriminate missile fire against our civilians. Out of those 800 targets, I’ll be honest, the precision—the precision is quite outstanding. And there is no military in the history of the world that has actually used such precision targets. I mean, think about it from a military tactics point of view. We tell our enemies—we tell Hamas where we’re going to hit. We tell them with text messages, with phone calls, with leaflets. We tell them in order to get civilians out of harm’s way. But for them, civilian death is actually—it’s actually a success.
AMYGOODMAN:That’s Joshua Hantman, the senior adviser to Israel’s ambassador to the United States, again, responding to my question about the number of Palestinian children and women who have been killed. He talked about precision bombing. Diana Buttu, your response?
DIANABUTTU:Yes, he’s precise. He is precisely bombing children, and he’s precisely bombing women. If their targeting is so precise, then what he’s saying is actually correct, that they are actually targeting women and children and civilians. And so, at the end of the day, as much as they can try to coat this as being somehow an aggression against some elements within the Gaza Strip, we know otherwise. And the death tolls in these past three aggressions against the Gaza Strip, these past three massacres, really lay out the picture that is actually happening there.
Amy, it’s important to keep in mind exactly what we’re talking about here in the Gaza Strip. This is a place that is twice the size of D.C., Washington, D.C., and it’s got 1.8 million people in it. Half of the population is under the age of 18. As I said, 43 percent is under the age of 14. If you are age seven at this point in time, you’ve been through three bombing campaigns by the Israelis. So, at the end of the day, as much as the Israelis want to claim that they’re using this target precision devices, etc., the toll is really being taken out on Palestinian civilians. So far to date, the Israelis have dropped more weaponry and more bombings than over the three-week campaign that took place in 2009. They’ve admittedly dropped more than 800 tons of bombs on the Gaza Strip.
AMYGOODMAN:Israel says it’s launching its attacks in response to the rocket fire from Gaza.
DIANABUTTU:This is also another myth, Amy. It’s important to keep in mind what the events were that led up to this whole issue. There were three Israelis who had gone missing in the West Bank. The three Israelis, even though the Israelis knew that they were killed immediately, they ended up putting Palestinians under collective punishment. They ended up arresting more than 500 Palestinians. They killed 11 within that—even before the attack on the Gaza Strip. They ransacked 2,000 homes. They ended up demolishing quite a number of homes. And it became clear that this was going to spiral out of control. Bibi Netanyahu himself said that he was going to try to escalate to try to go after Hamas, even though they had absolutely no evidence. And what he really intended to do was to try to break this national unity government. He knew very well that the international support was alongside the Palestinians, because Israel had continued its settlement activity. It had failed when it came to the peace process. And it needed to bring international support back to Israel by carrying out a bombing campaign against Gaza.
AMYGOODMAN:Critics say the Israeli government is trying to destroy the Palestinian Authority—the unity deal with Hamas, as well as the recent efforts for international recognition by joining U.N. conventions. Can you respond to this, Diana Buttu?
DIANABUTTU:Yes, I think that this is very much part of the strategy. If you think back to where we were just a couple of months ago, we were at the end of the peace process, a peace process that had failed in large part because—or entirely because the Israeli side continued to build more and more settlements. Even Secretary Kerry had said that he was exasperated by the situation. The national unity government was formed. Israel kept trying to break that national unity government. The international community was not willing to side with Israel on this, recognizing that this national unity government was the best thing for Palestinians. And in particular, there aren’t any members of Hamas within the national unity government. And so, he did his best to try to break it. He tried to do it through propaganda, and now he’s trying to do it with this military assault, all the while trying to shift focus onto Hamas and what Hamas is doing and ignoring the fact that he’s actually heading a government that consists of people who call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
AMYGOODMAN:Can you explain who those are who are firing the rockets at Israel? Who are the forces within Gaza? And what is the response within the population?
DIANABUTTU:There are different people who are firing rockets. Some of them are members of Islamic Jihad, some of them are members of other smaller organizations, and some of them are members of Hamas. To be quite honest, I don’t know. I don’t live in Gaza at the moment; I used to, but I don’t at the moment. So it’s unclear.
The response of the Palestinian population is mixed. On the one hand, Palestinians recognize that there needs to be some defense and that they need to defend themselves against what Israel is doing. And on the other hand, there are some Palestinians who are critical and who are saying that this is just simply going to wreak more and more havoc on Palestinian lives. But at the end of the day, they recognize who is dropping the bombs, which is the Israelis.
And moving forward, I think that the only way that we can move forward is begin to talk about protecting Palestinians and having an international protection force that is there to protect Palestinians. This is something that the Israelis have refused to do over time. And I think now is the time that we begin to talk about this issue once again.
AMYGOODMAN:What has been the role of the United States?
DIANABUTTU:The United States has been the biggest enabler for Israel. We haven’t heard any condemnations by Secretary Kerry or Obama. Instead, we’ve simply heard that Israel has a right to defend itself, whereas we know what Israel is doing: It’s defending its military occupation. We haven’t heard anything regarding the death toll that’s been inflicted on Palestinians and the efforts made by some Palestinians to broker a ceasefire. Instead, it’s simply been a hands-off system of allowing Israel to do whatever it wants to do. And again, Amy, this is not going to bring us any further to ending this conflict.
AMYGOODMAN:Do you think Hamas is ready for a ceasefire?
DIANABUTTU:Hamas has indicated that they are ready for a ceasefire. They’ve listed out their conditions for a ceasefire. There was a call made last Thursday by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to Secretary Kerry to try to get him to broker a ceasefire. He indicated that Netanyahu had outright rejected it. Netanyahu keeps indicating that he will not entertain talk of a ceasefire. And if you think about it, he has no—there’s no urgency for him to do so, because of the fact that there has been no international response against what Israel is doing.
AMYGOODMAN:I know you have to leave, Diana Buttu, but what are the conditions that Hamas has laid out for a ceasefire?
DIANABUTTU:The primary conditions are for Israel to stop the attacks. Another condition is that they’ve indicated that they should release those prisoners that were re-arrested in this roundup after the three Israelis had gone missing. They’ve also indicated—they put forward other conditions relating to the movement of people, etc. But interestingly enough, they have actually not mentioned anything about the ongoing siege, which I think is one of the main reasons that this continues.
AMYGOODMAN:Diana Buttu, thank you for being with us, attorney based in Palestine, though she is at Harvard University right now, where we are speaking to her in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Diana Buttu has served as a legal adviser to the Palestinians in negotiations with Israel. She was previously an adviser to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. When we come back, we go directly to Gaza. Stay with us.
"We are Human Beings": Gaza Doctor Pleads for End to Israeli Bombing of Civilian Population
Civilians are bearing the brunt of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip, with civilians accounting for more than 80 percent of the reported casualties. We go to Gaza for a medical update on the injured from Dr. Mona El-Farra, director of Gaza projects for the Middle East Children’s Alliance and health chair of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society of the Gaza Strip. El-Farra describes treating severe burns, unexplained wounds that suggest Israel may be using banned weapons, and the trauma endured by Palestinian children. "We are not just numbers, we are human beings," El-Farra says.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:We continue to look at the situation in Gaza, where Israeli Defense Forces and tanks are positioned along the border in the seventh day of Israel’s offensive. In a minute we’ll be joined by two guests who have been monitoring the health situation on the ground in Gaza. As of this morning, the Palestinian death toll has reached at least 172, among them nearly 140 civilians, including 30 children. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, more than 1,200 people have been wounded. Militants in Gaza continue to fire rockets at Israel, though no Israelis have been killed.
We go now to Gaza, where we’re joined by two doctors on the line. Dr. Mona El-Farra is the director of the Gaza projects for the Middle East Children’s Alliance. She’s also the health chair of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society of the Gaza Strip. And Dr. Mads Gilbert is with us. He’s a Norwegian doctor providing medical assistance in Gaza, recently submitted a report to the United Nations on the state of Gaza health sector in 2014.
Let us begin with Dr. Mona El-Farra. Where are you now? And can you talk about the situation where you live and work?
DR.MONAEL-FARRA:Yeah. Hello, Amy. I am in the Red Crescent Society for Gaza Strip. The situation has been quiet since 4:00 in the morning—quiet, I mean, the raids against Gaza. But as you have said, the troops are positioned on the border for any minute to raid Gaza. And the assault against Gaza came on top of a very deteriorating humanitarian situation and a gloomy and ambiguous political situation, as well.
You have mentioned about the children and the number of civilians that have been killed. And I’m very appalled that the international community is buying Israeli lies about civilians and about that they are trying to avoid civilians during the war. This is not true. I am appalled about this.
And there is excessive use of power during this attack. And the cases that the hospital received, it is very severe, and there is burns, severe burns. And it’s unexplained all that our doctors cannot deal with it. So, I’m not sure about if Israel is using experimental weapons like theDIME; I’m not sure; I’ll leave it for Dr. Gilbert to explain about this. But our teams in the hospitals received a lot of amputations and a lot of, as I have said earlier, burns and then head injuries and different sort of wounds. Little one traumatized, the whole nation—the whole children and women and civilians in Gaza are home under home arrest because of the situation and the trauma, of course. And an increasing number of children are complaining of perforated eardrums because of the intensity of the shelling. It has been so severe.
I’m very—I don’t like to talk much about numbers, because you have—although numbers are very important. But I would like to give a message to the world that we are not just numbers: We are human beings with stories, dreams, anger, laughter and everything. And Israel tries to portray the story to the world that it is defending Israel from the Hamas militants. And just let me explain that Hamas was democratically elected in the year 2006. And so, in any place of Gaza, you’ll find hospitals, banks, streets, institutions linked to Hamas. That means that Israel is trying to destroy Gaza as a whole. Hamas is not just about the military wing of Hamas that is exchanging rockets with Israel. There is a population, 1.8 population, under very serious attack. And we hardly sleep, not only us health workers, I mean the population, the whole population, are not sleeping because of the intensity of the attacks.
Beside that, let me do this comparison very quickly. I care for children. I care for civilians everywhere. I am a doctor, and I care for Israeli children, as well. But there is a huge difference between children who are just terrified and in the shelters at the moment and other children who don’t have any shelter, children that don’t have clean water. They don’t—we don’t have shelters to go to, so—and living under a very dire and difficult situation because of lacking everything. There is a huge difference between these two categories. Beside that, up ’til now, zero were killed in the other side.
I am very angry, very appalled. And more attacks by Israel will generate more hatred, more bitterness, and it will never guarantee peace for Israel. That’s all what I’m trying to say at this moment. I’d like to add that hospitals have been attacked, banks, streets, institutions. No place is safe in Gaza. No place is safe at all in Gaza. This morning on my way to the Red Crescent Society in the early hours of the morning, streets are deserted. Even in the afternoon, just a few number of people are outside their homes. So, everybody here is looking for ceasefire, looking for ceasefire, and looking for at least to go back to the truce at the year 2012, with a complete lifting of the siege against Gaza and opening of the borders, and not to be subjected to these attacks every now and again. And it’s going on, this is the third time. And maybe another few words—
AMYGOODMAN:Dr.—
DR.MONAEL-FARRA:I was appalled. Sorry, go ahead.
AMYGOODMAN:Dr. Mona El-Farra, we’re also joined by Dr. Mads Gilbert, the Norwegian doctor who has just come back to Gaza, who submitted a report to the United Nations on the state of health in Gaza.
Norwegian Physician Treating Wounded Civilians: Stop the Bombing, End Israeli Impunity in Gaza
Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor, joins us from Gaza where he has been treating hundreds of victims wounded in Israel’s ongoing assault, including young children. Dr. Gilbert says hospitals are operating without electricity, water and proper medical supplies, but adds: "As a medical doctor, my appeal is don’t send bandages, don’t send syringes, don’t send medical teams. The most important medical thing you can do now is to force Israel to stop the bombing and lift the siege of Gaza." Gilbert recently recently submitted a report to the United Nations on the state of the Gaza health sector in 2014. "Where is the decency in the U.S. government allowing Israel this impunity to punish the whole civilian population in Gaza?" Gilbert asks.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:Dr. Mona El-Farra, we’re also joined by Dr. Mads Gilbert, the Norwegian doctor who has just come back to Gaza, who submitted areportto the United Nations on the state of health in Gaza. Dr. Gilbert, I know you have a long line of patients there, but—and we had hoped to have you all on a satellite connection, but it’s very difficult with the electricity going out constantly. You rarely in the media see direct reports from Gaza in the same way that you do from Jerusalem, from other parts of Israel. Dr. Mads Gilbert, what are you seeing right now?
DR.MADSGILBERT:Well, I’m seeing the staff in Shifa Hospital doing their utmost to care for the people, the Palestinian people who are being bombed constantly by the overwhelming military force of the Israeli military. And really, I mean, it’s extremely impressive to see their resilience, their determination and the way they cope with these extremely harsh conditions that they’re in now.
As you said, so far, close to 170 Palestinians have been killed, among them 36 children and 24 women. And among the 1,232 injured, there are 346 children and 256 women. So, 50 percent of the injured are women and children. Now, this tells you that these attacks are not targeting the militarists in Palestine, in Gaza. These attacks are targeting the whole population in order to intimidate them and to force them to give up their resistance. I’ve been to Gaza through the last 17 years, and every time it is the same story. Israelis are accusing the Palestinians of attacking them; they have to defend themselves, they claim. Actually, the truth is the exact opposite. Israel is the attacker, the occupant. Internationally, they are responsible, according to the law, for the security and the well-being of the occupied population, whereas in fact Israel is doing their utmost to kill them and to make their life as miserable as possible through these seven years of siege.
And I would like to add that I work in a Norwegian university hospital, and we are depending on the same sort of preconditions to handle mass casualty situations. The Palestinian hospitals are denied a constant supply of energy, of water, of disposables, medical drugs—all the items you need to run a university-level hospital. And on top of this, on top of this total drainage of resources from the siege, they are now exposed to this constant and very large flow of very severely injured. And they are not crippled. On the contrary, they stand tall. They have doubled or tripled their shifts. They do 24-hour shifts. Everyone is extremely tired and exhausted, but they don’t yield. They don’t leave their positions. And yesterday, the hospital director in Shifa, Dr. Nasr’s home was completely bombed and destroyed by the Israeli forces. And we have, of course, nurses and doctors and other ambulance drivers being injured and even killed. So, I think it’s important to understand that the Palestinians, yes, they are suffering, but they are not begging. Yes, they are oppressed, but they are standing extremely strong together in this time of crisis.
As a medical doctor, you know, my appeal is: Don’t send bandages. Don’t send syringes. Don’t send medical teams. The most important medical thing you can do now is to force Israel to stop the bombing, and it is to lift the siege of Gaza. Then the Palestinians will manage well themselves.
As for the injuries, there are all types of war injuries, from shrapnel injuries to these very extreme damages from theDIMEweapons, theDIMEexplosives, the dense inert metal explosives, that they are using, carried by Hellfire rockets connected to the drones of Israeli, and they are extremely destructive. So people are torn apart. I mean, they’re split at their midlevel. They lose their arms and legs, and they’re killed. They’re charcoaled by the burns, if they are hit by theseDIMEexplosives. We have had gruesome, absolutely gruesome injuries, which people cannot actually watch. But the most important injuries are those who maim without killing. I was just tending to a 24-year-old Palestinian student who has lost both his legs at hip level. We had to amputate both his legs. Both arms severely burned, now he has septicemia. And it’s really a hard struggle, even for a well-equipped American university hospital with all supplies and peace and security, to handle one such patient. Now they have by the hundreds. The other patient I tended to was a five-year-old. His house was bombed. The roof of the ceiling of his bedroom fell on his head. He has a closed head injury, very severe. We don’t know if he will survive.
What did these people do to deserve this treatment? What did these people do to deserve the support of the U.S. government to support Israel to attack the people of Gaza in this way? I mean, where is the humanity? Where is the decency of the U.S. government allowing Israel this impunity to punish the whole civilian population in Gaza? It’s just outrageous. And the main problem in the Middle East today, it is the Israeli impunity. They go on with these so-called military campaigns every third year. They kill. They maim. They try to sort of oppress the population to surrender. The Palestinians will never surrender. And our duty is to support them and to raise the awareness and to raise the solidarity work in our countries to pressure our politicians to change the attitude towards the real oppressor and the real criminal here. It is the state of Israel.
AMYGOODMAN:Dr. Mads Gilbert, the attack on the center for the disabled where two women were killed, can you talk more about that? Do you know of that?
DR.MADSGILBERT:Yes, of course I know about that. This is a well-established hospital, which is doing, you know, rehabilitation work for disabled, not at least the war injured. This hospital is located in an area which the Israeli military obviously wants to flatten in order to have more easy access for their tanks. I was not there, but the reports I had were that they actually had soldiers come in fairly close to the hospital, and then they targeted it, and killing these people, as you say. In 2009, there was absolutely no security for hospitals and ambulances, nor was it in 2012. So, I mean, if there is one nation firmly supported by the U.S. which is violating the Geneva Convention, violating the international treaties in all aspects, it is Israel. They don’t even respect hospitals. And why don’t they open corridors so that the hospitals in Gaza can have supplies? Why don’t they open Erez and Rafah, the Egyptians also, to evacuate those severely injured that need to be treated abroad? I mean, even those very, very basic provisions, which are anchored in international law, is denied the Palestinians.
AMYGOODMAN:Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor providing medical assistance in Gaza, he has just returned there and submitted areportto the United Nations on the state of Gaza’s health sector, submitted to the U.N. Refugee and Works Agency. Dr. Mona El-Farra, Gaza projects for the Middle East Children’s Alliance, also with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society of the Gaza Strip. I know you have a lot of work to do. Thank you for taking the time to speak to us.
Above: A collection of the recent work of Carlos Latuff.
Contrary to U.S. corporate media, there was no genuine ceasefire proposal by Egypt.A document presented to only one side of the conflict could hardly be taken seriously, and it was not presented to Hamas.
It made no provision for all that Israel is inflicting on Gaza.The recent bombings, such as the attack on a Center for the Disabled, are called "targeted precision attacks" against "militant" leaders.
ABC's Dianne Sawyer recent aired a devastated Palestinian home with people scraping through the rubble as "Israelis", so misinformed and biased is coverage here.
Below are a couple interviews that make all this clear, but first a word on the pernicious effect this coverage is having here:
We, fortunately, have been immune from such idiocy for a few years.Perhaps such ill-begotten and ill-raised ignorant idiots have long since abandoned all hope of spreading their delisions here, or perhaps out of sheer luck. However, the following nonsense was posted on a social site as a response to someone else who posted a note.All the same, I pointed out that all religions have been made ridiculous by their fanatics (defined somewhere as "Someone who would do what God would if He had all the facts").This included the Christian fanatics who spread their anti-gay mission to those in Africa who now torture and the execute anyone suspected of such deviancy.I quote it verbatim and as it appeared so as not to distort:
You are not going to persuade me to support the Palestinian Arab cause. I abhor the brutality of the Arab world. Beheadings, amputations, misogyny, ignorance. I shudder to think of Islamic jurisprudence ever being recognized in any country. Palestinians who live under the Israeli jurisdiction are better off financially, socially, psychologically and emotionally than Palestinians who live under Hamas. Che Guevara is long dead and so too is the mythology of the freedom warrior. The Arab world can not develop beyond its current pitiful state unless it recognizes the democratic rights of all people and that includes women and non-Arabs. Inside Israel Aabs are treated a whole lot better than they might be in Arab dominated counties. The may suffer the odd incidence of humiliation or some such slight, but they will be given due process of a humane and civilized law. The biggest favour Israel could do for Gaza is to rid Palestine of Hamas.
So, this is what is out there, boldly and proudly stated.
Now for some sense on the issues:
TUESDAY, JULY 15, 2014
After Palestinian Unity Deal, Did Israel Spark Violence to Prevent a New "Peace Offensive"?
It is widely thought that the flare-up in Israel and the Occupied Territories began with the kidnapping of three Israeli teens in the West Bank just more than a month ago. But our guests — author Norman Finkelstein and Palestinian political analyst Mouin Rabbani — argue that such a narrative ignores the broader context of decades of occupation and recent events highlighting the expansionist goals of the Israeli government in the Palestinian land under its control. "Whenever the Palestinians seem like they are trying to reach a settlement of the conflict — which the [Fatah-Hamas] unity government was — at that point Israel does everything it can to provoke a violent reaction, in this case from Hamas, break up the unity government, and then Israel has its pretext," Finkelstein says. Rabbani and Finkelstein are co-authors of the forthcoming book, "How to Solve the Israel-Palestine Conflict."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:Israeli musician and peace activist David Broza, ("What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding," recorded in an East Jerusalem recording studio with Israeli, Palestinian and American musicians. The Jerusalem Youth Choir, comprised of both Palestinian and Israeli members, lends their voice to the recording. This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté.
AARONMATÉ:Well, with the potential for a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, we turn now to the roots of the latest crisis and what can be done to avoid another in the future. It is widely thought the flare-up began with the kidnappings of three Israeli teens in the West Bank just over a month ago. Their dead bodies were found later on. But our next guests argue the narrative ignores the broader context of decades of occupation and recent events highlighting the expansionist goals of the Israeli government in the Palestinian land under its control.
AMYGOODMAN:For more, we’re joined by Norman Finkelstein, author and scholar. His most recent books areOld Wine, Broken Bottle: Ari Shavit’s Promised LandandKnowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End. And we’re joined by Mouin Rabbani, a Palestinian political analyst, formerly with the International Crisis Group. Today, both Norman Finkelstein and Mouin Rabbani have co-authored a forthcoming book,How to Solve the Israel-Palestine Conflict.
We welcome you both toDemocracy Now!Mouin Rabbani, we’re speaking to you over at The Hague. Can you respond to this latest news of the Egyptian ceasefire, Israel accepting and Hamas weighing this?
MOUINRABBANI:Well, I think Amira explained it quite well. So far as we can tell, Hamas has been neither directly nor indirectly consulted on a proposal that basically the Egyptians have concocted together with Tony Blair and the Israelis and some other parties, the purpose of which appears to be something that Hamas cannot accept and that can then be used to legitimize an intensification of the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip.
The problem for Hamas is twofold. On the one hand, as Amira explained, it basically restores an acceptable status quo, while, on the other hand, it has been endorsed by the Arab League, by the PA in Ramallah, by most of the Western powers and so on. So it will be difficult for them to either accept or reject it, so to speak, while at the same time I think the parties that are proposing this ceasefire are making it clear that they’re not really interested in any further negotiation of its terms.
AARONMATÉ:Norman Finkelstein, give us a sketch of the broader context for how this latest flare-up began.
NORMANFINKELSTEIN:Well, before I do, I’m going to just briefly comment on the ceasefire. The ceasefire, first of all, says nothing about the rampages by Israel against Hamas in the West Bank. And it was those rampages which caused the current conflict to escalate. It gives Israel a green light to continue arresting Hamas members, blowing up homes in the West Bank, ransacking homes and killing Palestinians, which was the prelude to the current fighting.
Secondly, if you look at the ceasefire, it’s exactly what was agreed on in June—excuse me, June 2008 and the same ceasefire that was agreed to in November 2012. Namely, in both cases, it was said that there would be a relaxing of the illegal blockade of Gaza. In both cases, after the ceasefire was signed, the blockade was maintained, and in fact the blockade was escalated. So now, in the current version of the ceasefire, it said the blockade will be lifted after there has been calm restored and the security situation has been established. But if Israel says Hamas is a terrorist organization, then the security situation can never be calm in the Gaza, and therefore there will be never a lifting of the blockade of Gaza. So we’re right back to where we were in June 2008, November 2012. Of course Hamas is going to reject that kind of agreement. It means it legalizes, it legitimizes the brutal, merciless, heartless, illegal blockade of Gaza.
As to how we got to where we are, the general context is perfectly obvious for anyone who wants to see it. A unity government was formed between the PA and Hamas. Netanyahu was enraged at this unity government. It called on the U.S., it called on the EU, to break relations with the Palestinian Authority. Surprisingly, the United States said, "No, we’re going to give this unity government time. We’ll see whether it works or not." Then the EU came in and said it will also give the unity government time. "Let’s see. Let’s see what happens."
At this point, Netanyahu virtually went berserk, and he was determined to break up the unity government. When there was the abduction of the three Israeli teenagers, he found his pretext. There isn’t a scratch of evidence, not a jot of evidence, that Hamas had anything to do with the kidnappings and the killings. Nobody even knows what the motive was, to this point. Even if you look at the July 3rd report of Human Rights Watch, they said nobody knows who was behind the abductions. Even the U.S. State Department, on July 7th, there was a news conference, and the U.S. State Department said, "We don’t have hard evidence about who was responsible." But that had nothing to do with it. It was just a pretext. The pretext was to go into the West Bank, attack Hamas, arrest 700 members of Hamas, blow up two homes, carry on these rampages, these ransackings, and to try to evoke a reaction from Hamas.
This is what Israel always does. Anybody who knows the history, it’s what the Israeli political scientist, the mainstream political scientist—name was Avner Yaniv—he said it’s these Palestinian "peace offensives." Whenever the Palestinians seem like they are trying to reach a settlement of the conflict, which the unity government was, at that point Israel does everything it can to provoke a violent reaction—in this case, from Hamas—break up the unity government, and Israel has its pretext. "We can’t negotiate with the Palestinian Authority because they only represent some of the Palestinian people; they don’t represent all of the Palestinian people." And so Netanyahu does what he always does—excuse me, what Israeli governments always do: You keep pounding the Palestinians, in this case pounding Hamas, pounding Hamas, trying to evoke a reaction, and when the reaction comes—well, when the reaction comes, he said, "We can’t deal with these people. They’re terrorists."
AMYGOODMAN:Mouin Rabbani, on this issue of the Israeli teens who were kidnapped and then killed, when did the Israeli government understand that they had been murdered, as they carried out the siege to try to find them?
MOUINRABBANI:Well, what we know is that one of these youths called the police emergency line immediately after they were abducted and that gunshots can be clearly heard on the recording of that telephone conversation. On that basis, the Israeli security establishment concluded that the three youths had been killed almost as soon as they were abducted. And this information was, of course, known to the Israeli government. Nevertheless, Netanyahu deliberately suppressed this information, using the broad censorship powers that the Israeli government has, and during this period launched into this organized rampage—
AMYGOODMAN:Put a gag order on reporters from reporting this?
MOUINRABBANI:Basically, yes, that, you know, this was treated as sensitive security information subject to military censorship. And there were only allusions to it, and only days after, by some Israeli journalists, and then only referring to some elliptical statements that were being made by Israeli military commanders suggesting that, you know, this is not a hostage rescue situation, as Netanyahu was presenting it, but is more likely to be a search for bodies, which is of course how it turned out. And the reason that Netanyahu suppressed this information is because it gave him the opportunity to launch this organized rampage throughout the West Bank, to start re-arresting prisoners who had been released in 2011 in the prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel, to intensify the bombing of the Gaza Strip, and generally to whip up mass hysteria within Israel, which of course resulted in the burning death of the 16-year-old Palestinian from Jerusalem several days later.
AARONMATÉ:Mouin, you’ve interviewed Hamas leaders. The response from the Israeli government is always that Hamas is committed to Israel’s destruction, so therefore how can we possibly negotiate with a unity government that includes them? What’s your sense of Hamas’s willingness over a long term to reach some sort of agreement or a long-term truce with Israel?
MOUINRABBANI:I think Hamas, or at least the organization and not necessarily all of its members, but its key leaders, have long since reconciled themselves with a two-state settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I think what’s been surprising in the past several months has been that the Hamas leadership has gone well beyond that, in the context of the reconciliation agreement signed on 23 April between Fatah and Hamas. In that agreement, they agreed to the formation of a new government, which neither Hamas nor Fatah would enter the Cabinet, but that the political program of that government would be the political program of the PA president—at the moment, Mahmoud Abbas. And what you basically had was Abbas stating publicly that he not only accepts the so-called Quartet conditions, but that in addition he would continue security coordination with Israel and, you know, was making these statements almost on a daily basis. And Hamas, more or less, looked the other way and didn’t withdraw from the government.
And this, I think, reflects, in some respects, the increasing difficulty Hamas was experiencing in governing the Gaza Strip and funding its government there, because of its—because of the increasing hostility or the exceptional [inaudible] the regime in Egypt, the deterioration in its relations with Iran, the inability to replace those with funding from Qatar or other sources. So you effectively had a government that was not only amenable to a two-state settlement with the support of Hamas, but it went significantly further and effectively accepted the Quartet conditions, which most [inaudible] view as illegitimate, and additionally was continuing security coordination with Israel that was largely directed at Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank. I think—you know, and this is—as Norman was explaining, this is a key reason why Netanyahu sought to undermine this agreement and the resulting government.
AMYGOODMAN:Norman Finkelstein, why do you think Israel has hesitated to launch the invasion? Their, you know, thousands of soldiers are lined up along the Gaza border.
NORMANFINKELSTEIN:Well, it’s interesting, because all the—there are a large number of theories that are being spun, in particular in the Israeli press. The answer, I think, to that question is pretty obvious. The Israeli domestic population won’t tolerate a large number of Israeli combatant casualties. That’s out. Israel likes to fight—not unlike President Obama, Israel likes to fight high-tech—likes to commit high-tech massacres, and it doesn’t want to fight a real war. And in 2008, Israel carried out, executed the big high-tech massacre in Gaza, killed about 1,400 Palestinians, up to 1,200 of whom were civilians, left behind 600,000 tons of rubble, dropped the white phosphorus and so forth. And for the first time, the international community reacted very harshly to it. The climax, of course, was the Goldstone Report.
And at that point, Israel was placed in a very difficult position, because on the one hand, it can’t stop the rocket attacks unless it conducts a ground invasion, which is exactly the situation it faced in Lebanon in 2006 also. The air force can’t knock out these rockets. They’re short-range rockets, mostly. They’re not even rockets, but we’ll call them that. The air force can’t knock them out. The only way to get rid of them—exactly as in Lebanon in 2006, the only way to get rid of them is by launching a ground invasion. However, the domestic population won’t accept a large number of casualties. And the only way you don’t have a large number of casualties is if you blast everything in sight within a mile’s radius, which is what Israel did in 2008, '09. There were only 10 Israeli military casualties; of those 10, half of them were friendly fire, Israelis accidentally killing Israelis. But after the Goldstone Report and after 2008, ’09, they can't do that again. They can’t carry out that kind of massive destruction, the 22 days of death and destruction, as Amnesty International called it. They can’t do that again. A new constraint has been placed on Israel’s political and military echelon.
So, that’s the dilemma for them. Domestically, they can’t tolerate large numbers of combatant casualties, but the only way to prevent that is blasting everything in sight. The international community says you can’t do that. You kill 150, even kill 200, Human Rights Watch said killing 200 Palestinians in Gaza, that’s not a war crime, they said. That’s just collective punishment. Only Hamas commits war crimes, because one woman apparently died of a heart attack while—Israeli woman apparently died of a heart attack while trying to enter a shelter, so that’s horrible, awful: That’s a war crime. But when you kill 200 Palestinians, 80 percent of whom are civilians, about 20 percent of whom are children, according to Human Rights Watch, that’s not a war crime. But the international community will accept that much, 200. But even Human Rights Watch won’t accept if you go in and you do 2008, '09, again. And so, the Israeli government is faced with a real dilemma. And that's the problem for Netanyahu. Domestically, he loses if there are large number of casualties, combatant casualties; internationally, he loses if he tries to do 2008, ’09, all over again.
AMYGOODMAN:Which resulted in how many deaths?
NORMANFINKELSTEIN:2008, '09, as I said, was about 1,400, of whom about up to 1,200 were civilians, I say 600,000 tons of rubble. They just left nothing there. And by the way, that was demanded by Tzipi Livni. On June 8th—excuse me, on January 18th, Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister then, the justice minister now, the person who's called a moderate by J Street, Tzipi Livni boasted—she went on TV and boasted, "We demanded hooliganism in Gaza. That’s what I demanded," she said, "and we got it." According to J Street, she’s the moderate.
AARONMATÉ:Norman, as we wrap, what needs to be done?
NORMANFINKELSTEIN:What needs to be done is perfectly obvious. Amnesty International, which is a real human rights organization, unlike Human Rights Watch—Amnesty International issued a statement. It said, number one, there has to be a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel and Palestine—perfectly reasonable because, under international law, it’s illegal to transfer weapons to countries which are major violators of human rights. So, comprehensive arms embargo on Israel and Palestine. Number two, international investigation of war crimes on both sides.
And I’m saying number three. Number three has to be—there has to be the imposition of sanctions on Israel, until and unless it negotiates an end to the occupation according to international law. Now, that’s not my suggestion. I’m basing it on the International Court of Justice. South Africa occupied Namibia. The International Court of Justice said in 1971, if South Africa does not engage in good-faith negotiations to end its occupation of Namibia, that occupation is illegal under international law. Israel has refused to engage in good-faith negotiations to end the occupation of Palestine, just like in the case of Namibia. It is now an illegal occupier of Palestine, and there should be a comprehensive sanctions imposed on Israel, until and unless it ends the occupation of Palestine under the terms of international law.
AMYGOODMAN:We’ll leave it there. Norman Finkelstein, author and scholar. Mouin Rabbani, senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies. That does it for this discussion today. Of course we will continue the discussion of what’s happening in Gaza. This isDemocracy Now!Back in a minute.
With 192 Dead in Gaza, Is Lasting Ceasefire Possible Under Israeli Occupation?
The next phase of the violence that has killed nearly 200 Palestinians in Gaza is in flux after a ceasefire proposal from Egypt. The Egyptian government proposed a temporary halt to violence and the reopening of Gaza’s border crossings, followed by talks in Cairo on a long-term truce. Israel’s Security Cabinet has endorsed the proposal, but Hamas has yet to officially respond. The Hamas military wing has rejected the pact as a "surrender," saying the ceasefire fails to meet any of its core demands. These include a lifting of the siege of Gaza, the release of prisoners recently detained in Israeli raids, an end to Israeli attacks on the Occupied Territories, and respect for the Palestinian unity government. But it is Hamas’ political wing that will have the final say. Earlier today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to widen the attack on Gaza if Hamas rejects the ceasefire and if rocket fire continues. The potential for a ceasefire follows a week that saw Israel kill at least 192 Palestinians in a massive bombing campaign on one of the world’s most densely populated areas. The United Nations estimates more than 80 percent of Gaza’s dead are civilians, including 36 children. More than 1,000 rockets from Gaza have hit Israel over the same period, with just a fraction landing in urban areas. Around a dozen Israelis have been wounded. No casualties have been reported. We are joined from Ramallah by Amira Hass, Ha’aretz correspondent for the occupied Palestinian territories, the only Israeli journalist to have spent several years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARONMATÉ:The next phase of the violence that’s killed nearly 200 Palestinians in Gaza is in flux today with a ceasefire still on the table. On Tuesday, the Egyptian government proposed a temporary halt to violence and the reopening of Gaza’s border crossings, followed by talks in Cairo on a long-term truce. Israel’s Security Cabinet has endorsed the proposal, but Hamas has yet to officially respond. The Hamas military wing has rejected the pact as a, quote, "surrender," saying the ceasefire fails to meet any of its core demands. These include a lifting of the seige of Gaza, the release of prisoners recently detained in Israeli raids, an end to Israeli attacks on the Occupied Territories, and respect for the Palestinian unity government. But it’s Hamas’s political wing that will have the final say. Earlier today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to widen the attack on Gaza if Hamas rejects the ceasefire and if rocket fire continues.
PRIMEMINISTERBENJAMINNETANYAHU:[translated] We agreed to the Egyptian proposal in order to give an opportunity for the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, from missiles, from rockets and from tunnels, through diplomatic means. But if Hamas does not accept the ceasefire proposal, as would now seem to be the case, Israel would have all international legitimacy to broaden the military operation to achieve the required quiet.
AMYGOODMAN:The threat of more violence follows a week that saw Israel kill at least 192 Palestinians in a massive bombing campaign on one of the world’s most densely populated areas. The United Nations estimates more than 80 percent of Gaza’s dead are civilians, including 36 children. More than a thousand rockets from Gaza have hit Israel over the same period, with just a fraction landing in urban areas. Around a dozen Israelis have been wounded. There have been no Israelis reported killed.
For more, we’re joined by Amira Hass. She’s theHa’aretzcorrespondent for the occupied Palestinian territories, the only Israeli journalist to have spent years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. She is joining us from Ramallah.
Amira Hass, can you talk about this latest development, the Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire, Israel accepting it, Hamas is weighing it?
AMIRAHASS:Yeah, it’s exactly because Hamas feels that this was a proposal boiled up with Israel without any consultation with Hamas. And this is something that’s forced on them and also reported through the media and not through negotiations or prior negotiations. Everybody knows that the leadership of Egypt right now is an enemy of Hamas, an enemy of the Muslim Brothers. And they feel humiliated, and they feel that it is not meant to bring progress and change for the Palestinians in Gaza, but to further marginalize them as a movement, as a political movement.
AARONMATÉ:Amira, you’ve spoken to members of Hamas. You’ve interview them forHa’aretz. What demands do they have for a ceasefire that they would respect?
AMIRAHASS:Their demands are, of course, to return first to the 2012 agreement or understanding, that Israel should open the crossings at least for goods and raw material, and then allow people to leave through Rafah. They more or less neglected the idea, I mean, the hope that Israel would allow Palestinians leaving from Erez from the northern west—northern Gaza Strip to the West Bank. This is something they have neglected, but—or don’t have much hope about this. But at least for goods and raw materials and movement, people’s movement through Egypt. This is one.
Another thing that they say: "We see that Israel always does not abide by its commitments, and we need guarantees, international guarantees, that it does, for next ceasefire, because it’s time we find—have some understanding." Israel comes and has breaches—for example, the fishermen. It was agreed in 2012 the fishermen would be able to fish and not be shot at all, whenever they move—I don’t know—one kilometer away, one maritime mile from the shore, as Israel does shoot at them. Things like that, this is one.
Another one, of course, is the release of all the prisoners that had been released in the last two, three years within the Shalit exchange of prisoners, that Israel in the past two months arrested most of them, or many, the great majority of them who are associated with Hamas. And there is a demand to release them again. There is a demand to—yeah, these are the basic demands. There are other prisoners that Israel—Hamas prisoners, Hamas activists in the West Bank, political activists, who have been arrested, and they should also be released.
So these are very, very—as I was told by somebody who is a great Israel—an old opponent of Hamas, he said these demands are very, very reasonable and even minimal. We should even demand more. We should demand more that Israel does not fight, for example, the reconciliation government, that it allows it to function. We should demand that people move, leave the West Bank—leave Gaza Strip and be able to reconnect with the West Bank. So, the demands, the Hamas demands, are quite basic.
AMYGOODMAN:So far, Amira Hass, here in the United States, the coverage of the Egyptian ceasefire proposal is that here is a ceasefire that Israel says it will embrace, it will stop the attack, and Hamas is probably going to reject it. That is the story here in the United States that is being told.
AMIRAHASS:Yeah, unfortunately, just as the story has been told that Israel was attacked and the Palestinians are the aggressor. And, I mean, we know—I don’t remember which channel, but there was this absurd report showing destruction of a Palestinian home that was bombed by Israel, and it was said that this was an Israeli home, Israeli house.
AMYGOODMAN:That was Diane Sawyer’s report onABC, showing a weeping Palestinian mother in front of her destroyed home—
AMIRAHASS:Yes.
AMYGOODMAN:—and it said Palestinians destroyed this Israeli home.
AMIRAHASS:[inaudible] But so far it seems that the international, or at least the Western, community is not appalled by Israel’s attack, onslaught. And as somebody told me, if this is OK according to international law, then there is something—something stinks with international law. A senior diplomat told me that, who does not succeed in convincing his government to have a clear stand against it.
Now, it’s true that according to international law, Palestinians also—the Palestinian rockets are against international law and also targeting civilians. And they succeeded. They have succeeded, Hamas, in inflicting fear among many, many Israelis, and also in somehow ridiculing the Israeli security establishment, who boasted in the first two days that Hamas has suffered a big blow, a great blow, which it hasn’t, I mean, militarily speaking.
The great gain of Hamas is that it has united—or Israel, actually, has united also the opponents of Hamas who are behind Hamas. The people see the ability of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to launch missiles at Israel, toward Israel, while they are being attacked, and so severely, by such a strong military power, it’s already an achievement. And somebody told me it’s not about killing, it’s about a message, a message that we are not going—that if you expect Palestinians to give up the struggle against the end of occupation, you are mistaken. This is how Palestinians understand the missiles, the launching of missiles. It’s true that there are—also the international media gives a lot of—and also, of course, the Israeli—gives a lot of prominence to demands of Palestinians for revenge. But this is not so much about the revenge as the feeling that one is standing up against Israel. And this is something that the Palestinian Authority has not done. Israel has been really humiliating the Palestinian Authority for so many years, even though the Palestinian Authority has given so many—has had so many concessions and agreed with so many demands of the Israeli government. So people are weighing this, one against the other. And they, even secular, who really detest Hamas’ ideology, feel that right now Hamas represented them in saying, "No, we are not going to give up the struggle against occupation."
AARONMATÉ:Amira, and can you give us a rundown of what you see as Israel’s goals here in this Gaza conflict?
AMIRAHASS:That’s even more difficult. Every fight, Israel did everything possible to foil the very, very weak reconciliation government, which is not a unity government, because Hamas has left it. So, it does over and over what people say mistake, but we think it’s not a mistake. But it has had a policy for the past 20 years to disconnect Gaza from the West Bank. It succeeded in it enormously, and especially when Hamas and Fatah had split and created the two governments of the two territories, Gaza and the West Bank. But now when Palestinians show signs that they understand that this is so much against their struggle, this split between Gaza and the West Bank, a split within the Palestinian movement, and they tried to change it, Israel comes and has to defend its main achievement of the past 20 years, which was this separation between Gaza and the West Bank, because the two-state solution is based on the, not only assumption, but on this principle that Gaza and the West Bank are the Palestinian state alongside Israel. And Israel has done everything possible to foil it, from ’93, ’94—actually, since ’91. So, in essence, this war, again, is in order to protect or to maintain this main achievement of Israeli policy of the past 20 years.
In the past five, six years, both Fatah and Hamas played into the hands of the Israel in that the Hamas government did not think really about reconnecting with the West Bank, and the PA in Ramallah really didn’t care about Gaza and made all kind of mistakes to let it go and create a vacuum there that Hamas, with full right, filled in, especially vacuum in the administration of Gaza. And now they tried to fix it. Because the results were public-demanded, popular demand, mostly in Gaza—I think in the West Bank people do not—it has always been so people in the West Bank feel very far away, detached from Gaza. And we see these days, during the attacks on Gaza, there isn’t mobilization in the West Bank to show the shock that people feel. I’m sure they are, but there isn’t much movement, except of some villages where villagers, young people, young men of also refugee camps, go and clash with the army as a symbol of protest.
But this is the main—this is the main goal. And, of course, the main goal is to maintain the occupation, I mean, to repress any opposition, any resistance. So, the means change. Sometimes it is a mass arrest in the West Bank and then a mass—I mean, intensive colonization of what is left in the West Bank or more construction. And sometimes it is a negotiation process that leads nowhere. And sometimes these are bloody attacks, as we are experiencing now.
AMYGOODMAN:Amira Hass, we want to thank you for being with us,Ha’aretzcorrespondent for the occupied Palestinian territories. She’s the only journalist to have spent—well, she lived for 20 years in Gaza and the West Bank, reporting from there. She was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award by the International Women’s Media Foundation. The award was presented by Christiane Amanpour. This isDemocracy Now!When we come back, we continue our coverage. Stay with us.
Carlos Latuff has covered this so well and so prolifically that we are at a loss as to which illustration to use in our next issue on Gaze. So, we have printed out as many as our server will take at one time and decided to leave this issue to him in his honor. Thank you, Latuff, without talent like yours, many would be left in much greater despair.
Illustration by Latuff: An idiot tries to suppress a demonstration.
I understand NBC has changed their mind after a tremendous social media onslaught and will re-station the journalist in Gaza.Yahoo news so reports.I'll believe it when I see it.
About 20 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the aggression and invasion of Gaza.Some reports say as many as 80.One has been captured.Since they have universal conscription there, a backlash is quite possible.It is only when the U.S. had to either end the war in Vietnam or end the draft that it was ended here.
A few months ago, it has been reported that oil had been discovered about 5 miles out from the coast of Gaza.Thus the space Palestinians are allowed was reduced from 6 to 3 miles recently.
Demonstrations against Israel are taking place around the world, including the U.S.An attempt was made to quash them in France by Holland who merely besmirched the name "socialist" by so doing.
Here are a few interviews:
FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2014
Glenn Greenwald: Why DidNBCPull Veteran Reporter After He Witnessed Israeli Killing of Gaza Kids?
NBCis facing questions over its decision to pull veteran news correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin out of Gaza just after he personally witnessed the Israeli military’s killing of four Palestinian boys on a Gaza beach. Mohyeldin was kicking a soccer ball around with the boys just minutes before they died. He is a longtime reporter in the region. In his coverage, he reports on the Gaza conflict in the context of the Israeli occupation, sparking criticism from some supporters of the Israeli offensive. Back in 2008 and 2009, when he worked for Al Jazeera, Mohyeldin and his colleague Sherine Tadros were the only foreign journalists on the ground in Gaza as Israel killed 1,400 people in what it called "Operation Cast Lead." We speak to Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, who has revealed that the decision to pull Mohyeldin from Gaza and remove him from reporting on the situation came fromNBCexecutive David Verdi. Greenwald also comments on the broader picture of the coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict in the U.S. media.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:NBCis facing questions over its decision to pull its veteran news correspondent out of Gaza. Ayman Mohyeldin personally witnessed the Israeli military’s killing of four Palestinian boys on a Gaza beach Wednesday. Mohyeldin was kicking a soccer ball around with the boys just minutes before they died. He’s a veteran reporter who has placed the Gaza conflict in the context of the Israeli occupation, sparking criticism from some supporters of the Israeli offensive. Glenn Greenwald ofThe Intercepthas revealed the decision to pull Mohyeldin from Gaza and remove him from reporting on the situation, it came fromNBCexecutive David Verdi.
AMYGOODMAN:NBCexecutives have reportedly claimed the decision was motivated by "security concerns" ahead of Israel’s ground invasion, but late WednesdayNBCsent correspondent Richard Engel to Gaza. During the 2008-2009 war on Gaza, Ayman Mohyeldin, who then worked for Al Jazeera, was one of the only foreign journalists reporting from Gaza.
NBCNews did not respond toDemocracy Now!’s repeated requests for comment on its decision.
For more, we’re joined by Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. HispieceforThe Interceptat First Look Media is "NBCNews Pulls Veteran Reporter from Gaza After Witnessing Israeli Attack on Children."
We are also withDemocracy Now!correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who knows Ayman well. Sharif is in Gaza City.
Glenn, talk about what you found out yesterday.
GLENNGREENWALD:Interestingly, Amy, the way that this came to my attention was that there are people insideNBCNews, including some very recognizable and high-profile journalists, who were very angry that, first of all, whenNBCNews with Brian Williams reported on the killing of those four boys on the beach, instead of having their journalist who made this event known to the world and who witnessed it firsthand, Ayman, report on it, they instead had Richard Engel in Tel Aviv do the reporting, and Ayman never appeared at all on theNightly Newsbroadcast. But that, you can chalk up to sort of standard network news machinations about who’s a bigger star and who’s more senior and the like.
But what was really stunning was, later that day, after what arguably was his biggest or one of his biggest events in his journalism career, where he really made a huge impact on having the world understand what’s happening in Gaza, they not only blocked him from appearing on the air to talk about it onNBCNews, but then they told him to leave Gaza immediately. And when I interviewedNBCexecutives and the like, none of whom would talk to me on the record but who talked to me on background and the like, they claimed that the reason they told him to leave was because they had security concerns, not specific to him, but just general ones about whether journalists could be safe with the imminent Israeli ground invasion. And yet, as you just said, later that day, they sent into Gaza not only Richard Engel, but also a producer who works forNBCwho had never been to Gaza, who doesn’t speak Arabic, who doesn’t know the area at all, in contrast to Ayman, who’s been there for many years, who speaks fluent Arabic and who is a very experienced war reporter. And so it raises very serious questions about what the real reason is that they told him, over his objections, that he had to leave.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And, Glenn, there have been questions raised about not just whetherNBCwas concerned about his reporting, but also about his post on social media. Could you talk about that, as well?
GLENNGREENWALD:What happened on the day that he witnessed the beach attacks was he posted some incredible tweets and, as well, some amazing photos and videos on both his Facebook and Instagram accounts about the reaction of the parents of the Palestinian boys learning right that moment that they had been killed—very, very powerful stuff. And he had also tweeted a couple of what I guess in the network news business is viewed as some unusually pointed tweets about the position of the U.S. government. Namely, the State Department spokeswoman was asked about this killing, and she essentially absolved Israel and blamed Hamas, what the U.S. government always does, even in the most egregious cases of Israeli war crimes. And he went onto Twitter and Facebook and posted some very mild comments essentially noting what the State Department had said and then inviting people to comment on it. And later that day, he deleted it. There’s speculation that he was either asked to delete it or that that was a cause in why he was removed. I don’t know whether that’s the case at all, because there’s still questions about what the real reason is.
But certainly, the whole context of what has happened here is that he is a very unique reporter, especially for a network news position. You know, the kind of reporting that—the amazing reporting that we just hear from Sharif usually is not the kind of reporting that you hear on the network news. And Ayman does that kind of reporting. And he’s been criticized for it by neoconservative outlets, calling him a Hamas sympathizer and the like. And so, forNBCto remove him at exactly the moment where he brought the humanity of this war and the humanity of Gazans to the world, at the same time that he posted some tweets that in network news land would be considered controversial because it questions the U.S. government and the Israeli position, at the very least, looks awful, and I think, forNBCNews’s credibility, demands that they provide some answers about what really happened here.
AMYGOODMAN:Sharif Abdel Kouddous, I know that you’re going to have to leave that area, and I want to ask you about the reporting, overall, of Ayman Mohyeldin, who is very well known around the world for his reporting. Among the tweets he put out, "Moutaz Bakr, 1 of the boys who survived #Israeli shelling, was shaking w a broken [arm], blood shot eyes, says he saw 3 of his friends killed." He also tweeted, "4 Palestinian kids killed in a single Israeli airstrike. Minutes before they were killed by our hotel, I was kicking a ball with them." But talk about the years of his reporting in Gaza. You also know him from Egypt.
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Well, yeah, Amy, I’m honored to count Ayman as a close friend. He’s truly an incredible reporter. And when we’re talking about Gaza, literally, I don’t think that there is a better reporter in the world who understands Gaza—an international correspondent, that is—who understands Gaza, who has covered Gaza as much. There literally isn’t another reporter, international reporter, who has covered all three Israeli assaults on Gaza, the 2008-2009 assault, the 2012 assault and the assault that we’re undergoing now. He’s connected here. He understands the place. He understands the area. He’s always the first guy at the story.
And we saw his incredible reporting in these past few days. It was really noted, if you looked at media discussion sites and other columns noting howNBCwas totally changing its coverage compared to the other U.S. networks, and this was Ayman’s goal all along. You know, when he first left Al Jazeera after 2011 and moved to a mainstream U.S. network, this was what he had in mind, is to bring this kind of coverage that is never or very, very rarely seen on the corporate media in the States. And he was succeeding in doing that. And we don’t know the reasons why he was taken out of Gaza. You’re taking one of—the most experienced reporter in Gaza out of Gaza. Citing security reasons is just not very credible. So we don’t know why they removed him, whether this was a fight about, you know, a bigger star and having Engel come in, or whether it was about that his coverage was really having a serious effect, showing the true side of this assault, the true side of this conflict, and that political considerations came into play.
AMYGOODMAN:You talk about that history, Sharif, 2008-'09, right after President Obama was elected. This was the period when the world was talking about the United States and the Israeli assault on Gaza began. Al Jazeera was the only network inside Gaza. And I wanted to go to a film that he and Sherine Tadros made, the documentary that's calledThe War Around Us, which shows Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros reporting from Gaza during that 2008 Israeli war known as Operation Cast Lead, at the time, again, the only Western journalists in Gaza due to the media blockade. In this clip, Ayman reports from the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
AYMANMOHYELDIN:We’re actually standing in the orthopedic section of the hospital, because it was made into a makeshift emergency intensive care unit. And I’m going to take you in here and have to warn you, though, that the pictures may be a bit disturbing, but these are some of the cases that are being treated. This woman right here, 55-year-old Fatma, a charity worker, she was working in a building that was adjacent to one of the buildings that was struck. But I have to again emphasize that the place we are standing is not an emergency care facility, nor is it an intensive care or special care unit. This is a makeshift room. All of these appliances that are being put to use here have been put really on anad hocbase relatively quickly, as the cases were brought in.
AMYGOODMAN:I want to turn to another clip from their documentary,The War Around Us. Here, Ayman Mohyeldin explains how one of the most difficult parts of reporting from Gaza during Operation Cast Lead was challenging Israeli propaganda.
AYMANMOHYELDIN:You had a propaganda machine that was in full swing to portray the war as a just war, as a necessary war, a war of self-defense. And when you have a PR machine that is portraying everyone in Gaza as a Hamas sympathizer, as a terrorist sympathizer, and that justifies the kind of bombardment, that was the biggest challenge that we had to contend with—reporting the truth in the face of that spin.
AMYGOODMAN:That was an excerpt ofThe War Around Us. Again, Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros, the only international reporters broadcasting during what the Israeli military called Operation Cast Lead. Over 1,400 Palestinians were killed in that assault.
Glenn Greenwald, if you can talk more broadly now about the U.S. media coverage of what is taking place right now? For that, I wanted to go to a clip for one minute of Diane Sawyer. This is a clip of Diane Sawyer reporting just a few days ago. Diane Sawyer, of course, the news anchor onABC. Last week, she misidentified scenes of the aftermath of the Israeli missile strikes in Gaza as destruction caused by Palestinian rocket fire.
DIANESAWYER:We take you overseas now to the rockets raining down on Israel today, as Israel tried to shoot them out of the sky, all part of the tinderbox, Israelis and Palestinians. And here an Israeli family trying to salvage what they can, one woman standing speechless among the ruins.
AMYGOODMAN:For our radio listeners, as Diane Sawyer was speaking, there was video footage of a Palestinian family gathering belongings in the smoking debris after an Israeli missile hit their home. Well, on Thursday, Sawyer apologized for misidentifying the victims of that attack.
DIANESAWYER:On Tuesday evening, we made a mistake, and I want to put up these pictures again, because during an introduction to a story on the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, I misidentified these powerful images. The people in these photos are Palestinians in Gaza in the aftermath of an airstrike by Israel—not Israelis, as I mistakenly described them. And we want you to know we are truly sorry for the error.
AMYGOODMAN:That was Diane Sawyer’s apology a week ago. Glenn Greenwald, can you comment?
GLENNGREENWALD:Interestingly, you know, from working in the last several years in media, I’ve gotten to know a lot of journalists. I’ve gotten to understand a lot more about how these large media outlets function. I’ve worked with some of them over the last year in the reporting I’ve done. And it really is remarkable, and not hyperbole, that there is nothing that makes major media figures and news executives more petrified than reporting on Israel. I mean, the way in which they become so frightened to do any sort of reporting that could make what they call Israel’s supporters inside the United States angry really can’t be overstated.
And that’s the reason why thisABC, quote-unquote, "error" resonated so greatly, is because one of the things that you almost never see in major American media reporting is anything that shows the suffering of the Palestinians, that shows the brutal savagery of the Israeli military inside of Gaza. It was almost like they showed it by accident there and then just misreported it as being Israeli suffering because that’s what they’re so accustomed to showing, even though Israeli suffering is so much less than the havoc that is wreaked on the Palestinians.
But the one thing I will say that I think is actually encouraging is this is one case where social media really does make a difference. You have now Gazans inside of the worst attack zones that are able to go onto Twitter, that are able to go onto Facebook, that are able to upload video imagery, that are able to be heard in their own voices. And you have lots of pushback on social media, as well, toward media outlets and their unbelievably just grotesque pro-Israel bias, in a way that I think has really kind of improved the coverage this time, so that we are now seeing more of the reality of Israeli militarism and aggression. And they’re not being able to get away with calling every victim a Hamas terrorist or a Hamas supporter or a human shield, because social media enables the stark reality of what the Israelis are doing to be seen. It’s just part of the overall trend where major media outlets are losing their monopoly on how we understand the world, but it is still the case that nothing puts fear into the heart of American journalists—and American politicians—like the word "Israel." It’s really remarkable to watch.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And, Glenn, in terms of this issue of the pressure on these media companies and also the ability of the Israeli government and their supporters to manage news coverage—for instance, the invasion was actually—the stage was set for it when an unnamed, high-ranking Israeli official conducted interviews withThe Washington Post,The New York Times, all of whom wrote stories before the invasion began that it was likely to happen, but yet never named the official and, in essence, participated in the trial balloon that was set up for the invasion.
GLENNGREENWALD:American media officials are incredibly subservient to American political officials. That’s been—you know, American media figures are. But when it comes to Israeli political officials, it’s virtually cringe-inducing to watch how accommodating and deferential and submissive they become. And it really is true that American media outlets play a very similar role when it comes to Israeli military operations as they played in the run-up to the Iraq War, which is that they give constant anonymity to any Israeli military or political official who request it, they launder those claims without the slightest bit of skepticism expressed, and there’s never or virtually never the other side presented, which is the views of the people living in those areas that are attacked by Israeli aggression, or the politicians or the military officials who are in Gaza or who are in the West Bank. It’s incredibly one-sided, it’s propagandistic, and it really is deliberate. I mean, it’s so overwhelming and extreme in terms of how one-sided they are. They barely pretend even to be even-handed in their coverage.
And, you know, you’ve seen—I mean, I think one of the most amazing things was, the producer, the longtime producer atCNN, Octavia Nasr, she was there for 20 years, a completely competent, well-liked employee, never had any kind of disciplinary problems. A Shia imam in Lebanon, who had links to Hezbollah, died. He was beloved by millions and millions of Shia around the world. She went on Twitter and very innocuously just expressed condolences, and she was instantly fired.
And this has happened over and over, where major media figures have been stigmatized or lost their jobs or had their careers destroyed for the slightest amount of deviation from pro-Israel orthodoxies. And those lessons have been really well learned, just in the same way that American members of Congress are petrified of uttering a peep of criticism of Israel, which is why you see pro-Israel resolutions unanimously passing in the U.S. Congress, even as public opinion is sharply divided around the world or even against the Israelis. I mean, the evidence is just so conclusive, so clear, about all kinds of pressure and intimidation that are put on American media and political figures, such that we have less of an ability in the United States to debate Israel policy than they even do in Israel.
AMYGOODMAN:Glenn Greenwald, I want to thank you for being with us, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. HispieceforThe Interceptis "NBCNews Pulls Veteran Reporter from Gaza After Witnessing Israeli Attack on Children." We’ll link to that. His new book isNo Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, theNSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State.
"A Terrifying Night in Gaza": Sharif Abdel Kouddous Reports on Israeli Ground Invasion
The Israeli military is pushing deeper into Gaza and threatening to "significantly widen" its ground offensive that began on Thursday night. Over the past 11 days, at least 264 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians. The death toll of children is approaching 50, including three teenagers killed today by Israeli tank shelling near the northern town of Beit Hanoun. Israel suffered its second fatality when one of its soldiers was killed in Gaza. Israeli media says the soldier was likely killed by friendly fire. Israel maintains the new ground offensive was needed to target tunnels used by Palestinian militants, but many civilian facilities have been hit, including a media office in Gaza City and the al-Wafa rehabilitation hospital, forcing the evacuation of patients. We speak to Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, whose new article for The Nation magazine is "Death and Destruction in Gaza as Israel Launches Ground Invasion."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:The Israeli military is pushing deeper into Gaza and threatening to "significantly widen" its ground offensive that began Thursday night. At least 25 Palestinians have died and 200 have been injured since thousands of troops stormed into Gaza backed by tanks, bulldozers and warplanes. Israel maintains the new ground offensive was needed to target tunnels used by Palestinian militants, but many civilian facilities have been hit, including a media office in Gaza City and the al-Wafa rehabilitation hospital, forcing the evacuation of patients.
AMYGOODMAN:Over the past 11 days, at least 264 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians. The death toll of children is approaching 50, including three teenagers killed today by Israeli tank shelling near the northern town of Beit Hanoun. Israeli suffered its second fatality when one of its soldiers was killed in Gaza. Israeli media says the soldier was likely killed by friendly fire.
The Israeli military said another 18,000 reserve soldiers would be mobilized to join more than 30,000 already called up. This marks Israel’s first major ground invasion of Gaza since Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 and ’09, when some 1,400 Palestinians were killed. Earlier today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayahu defended the ground invasion.
PRIMEMINISTERBENJAMINNETANYAHU:[translated] Since it is impossible to deal with the tunnels only by aerial means, our troops are also dealing with it on the ground. Here, as well, there are no guarantees for total success, but we will do the utmost to achieve the best result.
AMYGOODMAN:Mufeed al-Hasayna, the Palestinian minister of public works and housing, denounced Israeli strikes on the territory and the destruction of homes.
MUFEEDAL-HASAYNA:[translated] Israel has deliberately destroyed the homes of civilian residents on top of the heads of children and the elderly in the ugliest of war crimes and amid a [peculiar] silence. More than 800 houses were destroyed completely, and 750 were partially destroyed. And there are more than 16,000 that sustained some damage. And with that, the occupation has turned Gaza and its streets into destruction.
AMYGOODMAN:We go now to Gaza City, where we’re joined byDemocracy Now!correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous. He has just written apieceforThe Nationheadlined "Death and Destruction in Gaza as Israel Launches Ground Invasion."
Describe what took place overnight, Sharif.
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Well, Amy, it was really a terrifying night for the people of Gaza. After sunset, and just a few hours after the ceasefire that Israel had announced, the Israeli military began to pound Gaza from the land, from air, from the sea, with naval guns, with Apache helicopters, with F-16 strikes. They cut power lines, and Gaza went dark. They fired flares into the air to illuminate the battlefield. It was a constant barrage of bombardment that lasted throughout the night. And then we heard this announcement that they had approved this ground invasion and that they were coming in.
The shelling has continued throughout the day today. Just moments ago, there was a shelling that happened, strikes that took out a residence just next to us. But it appears—you know, people talk of this big ground invasion. From what I understand from people—speaking to people fleeing from the north and the east, that the Israeli military has not pushed in very far—by some accounts, just a few hundred meters into the border. But what they are doing is shelling very intensely from the north and from the east, and pushing people into the city center.
As you mentioned, more children have been killed. I believe the number now—I spoke to the Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson; he says 56 children have been killed. A total of 27—since this invasion was announced last night, 27 people have been killed.
House demolitions continue. I went to the eastern area of Shijaiyah, which is just a couple of kilometers from the border with Israel, and a resident there had just had his house destroyed. He said he got a call on his cellphone by an Israeli military officer, who named him by name and said, "You have to leave your house now." He told him that he had five families living with him, that he had 15 children in the house, and that he had no weapons. The officer said he had five minutes to leave. He woke up his family, ushered them out of the house. Then they got hit with a drone strike, followed by an F-16 missile which completely demolished the house. So the Gazans are living also in this Orwellian atmosphere where they get calls and the Israeli officers know their names on their cellphones and tell them to leave.
As you mentioned in the lead, there’s also been attacks on the media. I went this morning to the building that was struck on the eighth floor, which houses the Watania News Agency, a TV production company. It was hit at 7:00 a.m. this morning—there was no warning whatsoever—with a triple strike by an Apache helicopter. Thirty employees of the media production company, who have been sleeping and living there for 24 hours since the war began, doing coverage, were sleeping there. Miraculously, only one of them was injured. They said that this is a very known office and most of them are known, and they don’t understand why it was struck.
And as you mentioned also, there’s been targeting of medical facilities. Again, the Health Ministry spokesperson told me that a hospital in Beit Hanoun has been shelled just a couple of hours ago. It’s housing, he said, up to 400 children who are taking shelter there. And also, during the night, the al-Wafa Hospital, which is a rehabilitation center, came under attack. It had been previously shelled a couple of days earlier and has been shelled repeatedly since then several times. They said that after Iftar, the sunset meal that breaks the fast, they got a call from the Israeli military telling them to leave.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Well, Sharif—
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:The doctor said they couldn’t, that they had severely disabled people.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Sharif, if I could interrupt you for a second, we have—you mentioned the al-Wafa Hospital. We have Dr. Basman Alashi, the executive director of the hospital in Gaza, on the phone.
Israel Bombs Gaza’s Only Rehab Hospital: Staff Forced to Evacuate Paralyzed Patients After Shelling
Al-Wafa Hospital, the only rehabilitation hospital in Gaza and the West Bank, was shelled by Israel on Thursday. At the time of the attack, the hospital was filled with patients who were paralyzed, unconscious and unable to move. We speak with the hospital’s executive director, Basman Alashi, who says the hospital received a warning call ahead of the assault. "I don’t understand why they hit us," Alashi says. "We’ve been in this place since 1996, we are known to the Israeli government." Alashi says no one was injured but the building was heavily damaged.
Image Credit: Charlie Andreasson / palsolidarity.org
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Sharif, if I could interrupt you for a second, we have—you mentioned the al-Wafa Hospital. We have Dr. Basman Alashi, the executive director of the hospital in Gaza, on the phone. He was forced to evacuate his patients on Thursday.
Welcome toDemocracy Now!
DR.BASMANALASHI:Thank you. Thank you.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Could you tell us, Doctor, what happened at the hospital in the last few days?
DR.BASMANALASHI:Last night, just before 9:00, they sent us a warning over the phone that "We will bomb the hospital, so you need to evacuate." And we’ve been receiving these calls for the last 11 days, so we did not take that call, that issue and matter seriously, because of repeated calls from the Israeli forces that "We will bomb you, we will bomb you," but they haven’t done anything. And we insisted that we cannot leave the hospital. Our patients are, all of them, paralyzed, unable—they’re unconscious. They’re unable to move, so we need to stay in this hospital. And this is the only rehabilitation hospital in Gaza and in the West Bank.
But just few minutes after the call, shells start falling down on the hospital—the fourth floor, third floor, second floor. Smoke, fire, dust all over. We lost electricity. Many of our nurses, they lost control of themselves. They were unable to stand up on their feet. They left the hospital. Patients were left alone, unknown what will happen to them. I was able to call many ambulances around the area, plus the fire department, and we were able to move all of them. Some of them needed an oxygen, so we have to wait until 11:00 until we receive that oxygen. So, the few patients that we have, luckily, nobody got hurt. Only burning building, smoke inside, dust, ceiling falling, wall broke, electricity cutoff, water is leaking everywhere. So, the hospital became [uninhabitable]. At that time, we said evacuation is much more healthier for the patients and for the nurses—
AMYGOODMAN:Dr. Alashi—
DR.BASMANALASHI:—not to live in an environment—
AMYGOODMAN:Dr. Alashi, how do you get warned? Who actually calls you to say that they’re going to bomb your hospital?
DR.BASMANALASHI:He identified himself as if he is from the Israeli army, with a Hebrew accent.
AMYGOODMAN:And that’s who tells you that you’ve got to clear out the hospital. Now, a few days ago, two women were killed in a rehabilitation home. Is that different from the al-Wafa Hospital?
DR.BASMANALASHI:It is different.
AMYGOODMAN:When the Israelis shelled it.
DR.BASMANALASHI:Yes, it is different. It’s about 10 kilometers away from us. That home was for handicapped children and young ladies, and these are the ones that are born with deficiency. And Israelis have targeted this clinical hospital.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:The call then would indicate that this was a deliberate attack; it wasn’t an errant missile, because they knew beforehand that they were going to hit. Why would they hit your hospital?
DR.BASMANALASHI:I don’t understand why they hit us. We’ve been in this place since 1996. We are known to the Israeli government. We are known to the Israeli Health Center and Health Ministry. They have transferred several patients to our hospital for rehabilitations. And we have many success stories of people come for rehabilitation. They come crawling or in a wheelchair; they go out of the hospital walking, and they go back to Israel saying that al-Wafa has done miracle to them. So we are known to them, who we are, what we are. And we are not too far from their border. Our building is not too small. It’s big. It’s about 2,000 square meters. If I stand on the window, I can see the Israelis, and they can see me. So we are not hiding anything in the building. They can see me, and I can see them. And we’ve been here for the last 12 or 15 years, neighbors, next to each other. We have not done any harm to anybody, but we try to save life, to give life, to better life to either an Arab Palestinian or an Israeli Jew. Whoever comes to this hospital, we treat him for his humanity, not for his nationality or his religion.
AMYGOODMAN:Where did you put all of the patients? How many did you have, Dr. Alashi?
DR.BASMANALASHI:We moved 17. There’s a clinic that—they called us, and they said they will clear a floor, complete floor, for us. The clinic’s name is Sahaba clinic. And we were able to move to that place, and we are there right now. The only thing that we’re missing is the medications for our patients. All of it was burned or destroyed. So we are trying on Friday—Friday, you know, in that part of the world, Friday is a holiday. We’re trying to have many of the suppliers open their stores and get some of the medications. But still I’m trying to allocate all over Gaza, and it is extremely difficult to move in a car in Gaza because Israeli drones are targeting any vehicle that moves around here.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And, Dr. Alashi, have you been able to assess the extent of the damage? Can the hospital be repaired quickly once the hostilities and the attacks from Israel stop?
DR.BASMANALASHI:We are determined to go back to our building once the hostility stops. We will be using the ground floor and the first floor. The second, the third, the fourth is [uninhabitable], and we need to do a lot of repair. And I estimated—just roughly an estimate—the cost of repairs about $3 million.
AMYGOODMAN:Dr. Basman Alashi, how do you respond to the Israeli military saying they’re launching this ground invasion to stop the shelling of Israel by the rockets?
DR.BASMANALASHI:I have no answer to them. I need them to stop shelling, because this area, Gaza, is similar to a concentration camp. They are squeezing people from the ground, from the air, from the sea, and they are expecting people to just sit there as a duck and shooting. People here are responding naturally, that they have the right to defend themselves, as Israelis have the right, but we also have the right to defend ourselves. But I’m asking the Israelis, since they are the superpower in that area, is to act responsibly, wisely. They are the big brother, and they have to sacrifice a little bit for that little land in Gaza.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, you’re still with us. There were reports that up to 80—electricity was cut in up to 80 percent of Gaza. What’s the situation now in terms of basic utilities there?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Well, power lines were cut, and Gaza was dark much of the night. Many of the hotels and media centers do have generators and power. There’s a severe problem with water, with water lines being cut, as well. And this has been a problem for Gaza not only during the war, but Gaza under siege. And that’s what people keep saying, is that, you know, "We have to come out of this with something." And I think also that Hamas, as a movement, has nothing to lose at this point, because if they don’t achieve anything out of this war, it all stops, and they’re still under siege. Nothing changes. The borders are closed. You know, people are desperate here, and so they need to see some lifting of the occupation; otherwise, if we just have a ceasefire and the occupation continues, then it will just be a very tenuous truce that will inevitably come apart, as it has done for the last six years.
AMYGOODMAN:Sharif, when the Israeli military drops pamphlets, calls people and says, "Leave," where do people go?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Well, Amy, it’s funny you say that. I mean, they’ve dropped leaflets and warned people to leave areas in the north—just in the last two days, in the north, in the South and in the east. You know, the only thing left is the west, and that’s where the sea is. So, you know, they’re driving people, a lot of people, from border areas into the city center. But, you know, here in Gaza, there’s no shelters, there’s no sirens, there’s no Iron Dome system. There is just this bombardment from the sky, and you don’t know a lot of the times where to go once you get this warning. You have a few minutes to get out, you and your family, and your house is completely destroyed with all your belongings. And, of course, many people have been killed in these strikes, as well, you know, 264, the vast majority of them civilians.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re going to break and then come back to our discussion. We’ll also be joined by Glenn Greenwald to talk about where is Ayman Mohyeldin, theNBCreporter who has been reporting extensively from Gaza. Why didNBCpull him?
Ukraine is being used as camouflage for war crimes by Israel in Gaza, and the coverage is wrong as well.Since our media is flooded with propaganda on this, only a few facts may be of help here.1. All missiles in the area are Russian made and from the 70s and 80s. (Soviet era).2. The independents (called "Separatists" could have been taught by Ukraine.3. There are suspicions that Ukraine mistook the plane for Putin's jet returning from the BRICs conference.4. Ukrainian fighter jet was approaching the plane jest before the crash.
Now, on Gaza.The only network semi-available in the US covering Gaza is AlJazeera America.NBC was forced to return its journalist to Gaza -- another triumph for social media.
Israel is bombing hospitals.Hamas has captured one Israeli soldier.
There was also a peace demonstration in Israel, with opposition demonstrators bussed in.There were shouts of "gas the left-wingers".Pardon me, but where do we remember that image from?The idea of dissenters being led off to be gassed?It seems to me that was one of the excuses for creating Israel in the first place, no?
The rest is covered below:
Sharif Abdel Kouddous on Israel’s Gaza Massacres: F-16 Kills 24 Relatives After 72 Die in Shejaiya
The Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip has seen its bloodiest day so far, bringing the Palestinian death toll to more than 500. More than 100 Palestinians were killed in a 24-hour period between Saturday and Sunday nights. The dead include 72 residents of one of Gaza’s poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods. In the single worst attack to date, Israeli forces shelled homes and fought militants in Shejaiya, leaving behind a scene of carnage that survivors called a massacre. Frightened civilians fled along streets strewn with dead bodies. Wounded residents bled to death in their homes. An unconfirmed report said more than 20 children and 14 women were killed. Scores of homes were destroyed. Hundreds of people were wounded and taken to the overrun Shifa Hospital, which struggled to find room for the bodies. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the attack on Shejaiya as an "atrocious action." The fighting in Shejaiya killed 13 Israeli soldiers, bringing the Israeli military toll to 18 since the ground invasion began last week. Joining us from Gaza City, Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous details the assault on Shejaiya and describes a new Israeli strike that killed 24 members of the Abu Jamaa family in Khan Younis. Kouddous documented their bodies collected together inside a local morgue.
Image Credit: Sharif Abdel Kouddous
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARONMATÉ:The Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip has seen its bloodiest day so far, bringing the Palestinian death toll to over 500. Over 100 Palestinians were killed in a 24-hour period between Saturday and Sunday nights. The dead include 72 residents of one of Gaza’s poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods. In the single worst attack so far, Israeli forces shelled homes and fought militants in Shejaiya, leaving behind a scene of carnage that survivors called a massacre. Frightened civilians fled along streets strewn with dead bodies. Wounded residents bled to the death in their homes. An unconfirmed report said more than 20 children and 14 women were killed. Scores of homes were destroyed. Hundreds of people were wounded and taken to the overrun Shifa Hospital, which struggled to find room for the bodies. At the hospital morgue, a survivor said residents were bombed as they slept.
SHEJAIYARESIDENT1:[translated] The shells were between the houses. They killed children, women! There is no one left! It is a massacre! There is a massacre in Shejaiya! Go and see!
SHEJAIYARESIDENT2:[translated] We are residents sleeping at home. We are at home, civilians. We are not pro-Hamas or pro-Fatah or pro-Israel. We are poor people sleeping at home with children, women and old people. All the shells were randomly fired. At least each house got 10 shells. More than a thousand shells were fired at Shejaiya.
AMYGOODMAN:In a statement, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel’s attack on Shejaiya as a, quote, "atrocious action." The mass killings there have helped push the Palestinian death toll to over 500 since the assault on Gaza began two weeks ago. The dead include more than a hundred children. Over 3,100 people have been wounded and more than 81,000 displaced. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees,UNRWA, has warned it’s running out of food and medicine at the schools housing over 50,000 people. The number seeking refuge has nearly tripled since the Israeli ground invasion began Thursday. At least 130 Palestinians have been killed during that time.
AARONMATÉ:The ground invasion has also caused Israel’s first military casualties. Eighteen soldiers have died in Gaza since Thursday, including 13 fighting militants in Shejaiya. On Sunday, Palestinian militants with the Qassam Brigades announced the capture of an Israeli soldier, but Israel denies the claim. Two Israeli civilians have been killed from rocket fire from Gaza. On Sunday, as Israeli forces carried out their deadliest attacks so far, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue the assault on Gaza for as long as necessary.
PRIMEMINISTERBENJAMINNETANYAHU:[translated] Israel did not choose to enter this campaign. But from the moment it was forced on us, we will implement it until we achieve its result—restoring quiet for the Israeli people for an extended period while significantly damaging Hamas’s infrastructure and the rest of the terror organizations in Gaza. We are undeterred. We shall continue the operation as long as it is required.
AMYGOODMAN:In his remarks, Netanyahu cited the backing of foreign allies, saying he has, quote, "laid the diplomatic foundation that has given us international credit to operate," he said. The Obama administration has provided critical support, claiming Israel has acted in self-defense, blaming Hamas for the civilian toll. The White House now says it wants an immediate ceasefire, and Secretary of State John Kerry has been sent to join talks in Cairo.
For more, we go directly to Gaza City, where we’re joined byDemocracy Now!’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous.
Sharif, you’ve just come from Khan Younis. We’re getting the latest news from there. Can you tell us what you saw?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Amy, I’ve come from the site of yet another massacre. Twenty-four members—at least 24 members of the same [Abu Jamaa] family were killed in their own home in an F-16 strike in Khan Younis. This happened last night at around Iftar, during the sunset call to prayer, the time that Muslims sit to break their fast. And an F-16 missile strike hit this family in their home as they were sitting down to eat. A grandmother, her three sons, their wives and all their children were killed. I went to the site where the house was. The house is completely gone. There’s only a crater left. The family says—the surviving family members said that they used two cranes and a bulldozer, working for 12 hours throughout the night, to retrieve all the bodies out.
At the hospital morgue, it was really a very difficult scene. One of the dead was less than one years old. She was still, you know, in her Pampers, dead. A father of one of the women killed said that the bodies were dispersed between two hospitals in Khan Younis—14 in one and 10 in the other. And the father had to go to two hospitals to pick up one of his daughters’ bodies, because half of her was in one hospital and half of her was in the other.
This is the kind of tragedies that we hear almost on a daily basis here in Gaza. Families are being wiped out in such massive numbers. There’s the al-Batsh family who lost 18 members in an airstrike last week. I went to near Beit Hanoun in the north the other day where a family—eight of them were killed while they were sitting, watching TV when a tank shell, an artillery shell, hit their home, so—while they were watching TV. So this is a very—this is a war on civilians. Civilians are paying the very highest of prices for this. And the killing doesn’t seem to stop.
AARONMATÉ:Sharif, the toll from Sunday, the highest figure I saw was 120, more than a third women and children. Of course, there was this mass killing in Shejaiya that we mentioned. You went to the hospital. You interviewed survivors. You interviewed victims. And you also went to the site of the attack. Can you tell us what you know about what happened in Shejaiya?
SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS:Well, from speaking to residents evacuating, it was very hard to get in. You know, this attack began, everyone says, at around sunset time, around Iftar time. And there was a barrage after barrage of tank shells that rained down on Shejaiya, which is one of Gaza’s poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods. People said that there was no help. They called for ambulances. Paramedic workers said that they couldn’t get in because of the amount of the shelling, and so people waited for hours. They were left alone. And they finally decided to escape on foot. And when we got there in the early morning Sunday morning, there was just families streaming out, many of them carrying nothing, some of them barefoot, many, many families, young women and children, in complete panic trying to hail cars or trucks to get on or take off. Many of them just walked out. And they spoke of bodies strewn in the streets of Shejaiya. It was very hard to get in to confirm, although some reporters did and confirmed those reports, and there was some footage of it.
And in the hospital, it was just very difficult scenes, again, scenes of such indescribable anguish and loss. In the morgue in Shifa, there was two children—one was nine years old and her brother seven years old next to her. And there was what appeared to be relatives arguing about the name of the seven-year-old brother, whether it was Hamza or whether it was Khalil. They couldn’t tell because his head had been completely shorn off in this attack. So, these are the kinds of scenes of horror that have become a daily occurrence in Gaza, and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight to the bloodshed.
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