The Memory Hole

Playing with fire

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:01:19 +0200

“Undoubtedly the science is changing. Anyone who plots a learning curve – and we have all been plotting these things for years – would be able to tell you that whatever we think was fairly good before becomes bad now. The situation gets worse and worse …

“We have not learned from this. All the time we underestimate the scale of the problem. … We have no learning curves there at all. We get burned every time, and we put our hand back in the fire again. And we will no doubt do it again.”

– Kevin Anderson, Director of the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, speaking before the House of Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee, 23 June 2009.

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Guardian's steady flow of greenwash continues

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:28:59 +0200

From Private Eye (hat-tip):

"Panic stations at the Guardian this month where plans to become "the world's foremost media organisation for environmental coverage" as deputy editor Ian Kazt likes to tell staff, seem to have exploded like so much crude oil in a poorly-maintained refinery.

"First, the Independent on Sunday reported the boasts of Shell executives that they may have persuaded the Guardian to soften its line on the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa - a Nigerian environmentalist executed in 1995 for protesting at the exploitation of the Niger delta by the oil company. Then, at the Grauniads's ill-fated Climate Change Summit in London last week, protesters dressed as "greenwash detectors" handed round mock-ups of the paper pointing out that the event's main sponsor, E.ON, plans to build the UK's first new cola-fired power station for decades at Kingsnorth in Kent.

"Unabashed, the Guardian ran a glowing full-page interview with E-ON chief executive Paul Golby last Friday ("Energy boss strives to generate debate about green goals"), which omitted to mention that his company was bankrolling the Grauniad summit. Meanwhile Alan Rushbridger and fellow-executives were considering whether to publish an entire supplement sponsored by Shell.

"All of which is rather distressing for the paper's environmental icon George Monbiot, who only three weeks ago tried to assuage jaded readers with a blog posting titled: "Newspapers must stop taking advertising from environmental villains." And utterly mortifying for the Guardian's highly-paid "head of environment", Damian Carrington - who no longer seems to have much to head up."

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Beautiful

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:26:43 +0100

“That’s the beauty of Gaza. You see a man walking, he doesn’t have to have a weapon, and you can shoot him.”

- an IDF soldier explains to Danny Zamir, the head of Israel’s Rabin pre-military academy, why a company commander ordered the shooting of an elderly woman.

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Six degrees, here we come

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:51:00 +0100

What a five degree global average temperature rise looks like:

What six degrees’ global average temperature rise looks like:

What business-as-usual now looks like:

Global temperatures ‘will rise 6C this century’

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5882341.ece

World on track for 6 degree warming, says report

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/world-on-track-for-6-degree-warming-says-report-20081112-5o4x.html

And even these predictions could be conservative. As the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen put it last week, “business as usual is dead”. He was right about that – though perhaps not in the sense he intended. Simply put, the greatest crime against humanity ever witnessed is being committed before our eyes, with our complicity. We can bury our heads in the sand; we can get a good seat and watch it unfold; we can complain a little before getting on with other business. Or we can do everything in our power to stop this in its tracks.

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King of corruption

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:33:26 +0100

Anyone notice this creep popping up on Comment Is Free today? No? Well, consider the various pies in which this car industry shill and PR man has found the opportunity to plant his petroleum-greased fingers over the course of his career:

Profile

Edmund King is President of the Automobile Association. He has worked as a committee secretary for the Social Science Research Council, for a Government Department in Whitehall, in public relations for a wine company in Burgundy, in the motor industry in California, as a broadcaster in Los Angeles, as Campaigns Co-Coordinator for the British Road Federation and more recently for RAC and the RAC Foundation.

King provides a neat illustration of just one form of endemic institutional corruption in this country, and in the US. Our educational institutions, information networks, Government - every one of them has been compromised by the revolving door relationship with the business lobby (and a lot more besides). If you’re still wondering how it is we have come to be throwing bucketloads of cash at a failing, unsustainable and profoundly anti-social industry - and in exactly the way this man proposed last November - the career path of individuals like Edmund King should go some way to providing you with an answer.

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A modest proposal

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:34:37 +0100

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Quotes o’t’ day

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:54:40 +0100

Some fresh thinking on constitutional reform (from the 17th Century):

“If the very existence of arbitrary powers take away freedom, because they take away consent to power, then the first thing you have to do is to abolish abritrary powers, which have not been consented to at least by the represented will, at least by election.

“So the monarchy has to go straight away. The House of Lords has to go straight away. All ministerial discretion with respect to statute has to go, straight away. Furthermore your most fundamental rights must be enshrined beyond the powers even of the sovereign and elected legislature. So there must be a written constitution as well. So there you have four features of a constitutional revolution, which were proposed at the time of the regicide and the establishment of the English Republic, none of which four features have we yet managed to establish.”

On beauty:

“Who does the beauty industry benefit, other than the beauty industry? It sells products that don’t really work to people who don’t really need them at prices they can’t really afford - and it does this by making them hate the present and fear the future.”

And some handy tips for aspiring bloggers:

“Your blog can get you fired, remember. If you are going to have a Bebo or Hi5 page that is accessible to the public, then the best bet is apparently to project the image of a smiley, outgoing, success-driven, active, sporting, party-hard, go-getting sort of narcissistic dimwit: a miniature celebrity, with friends apparently growing out of every crevice. Employers love that shit.”

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“Who elected you?”

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:16:49 +0100

Nice promotional video from the US-based media reform campaign group Free Press:

In the words of Robert McChesney:

“The real issue is, why do we create and subsidize media systems built around profit-maximization and advertising in the manner that we do? I am reminded of the Chinese student dissidents in the late 1980s, when they protested the meetings of Chinese government leaders with elected heads-of-state. “Who elected you?” they would chant. That is the question to be asked about the WGNs and AT&Ts in our world: “who elected you?””

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“I can confirm that we are a bunch of lawless thugs …”

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:35:05 +0100

Out of the mouths of babes and British Colonels (hat-tip):

“We have exactly the same problem [as Israel] ourselves when, for example, we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and of course we have to use aerial weapons like artillery and white phosphorus, and we do use those weapons, even in areas that do have a certain amount of civilian population.”

Richard Kemp, speaking on Radio 4’s The World Tonight, is “an army veteran of 30 years who commanded British forces in Afghanistan in 2003”, and “was a senior adviser to the Government on military issues”, according to the programme. The practice he’s describing – the use of indiscriminate conventional and chemical weapons in civilian areas – is, of course, a major war crime.

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Who makes the news? Not journalists

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:54:47 +0100

An insight, courtesy of the lovely people at pro-aviation lobby group Flying Matters, into a vital outsourced arm of the modern news factory:

“Michelle di Leo denied the suggestion Flying Matters had offered funding. “We did not offer the All Party Parliamentary Aviation Group money. We offered to help them with their secretarial work, not set their agenda. Our role is to get attention for issues. Yes we generated headlines. That's what PR people do. They place stories.

“The Flying Matters papers claim that the group’s lobbying of politicians, civil servants and the media persuaded MPs and ministers to adopt the industry line on airport expansion, despite environmental concerns. It adds: “A combination of media coverage and private briefings by Flying matters helped ensure the Conservatives backed away from Quality of Life recommendations on a [green] air tax. And The DfT [and] the secretary of state [are] adopting Flying Matters lines in public comment.” ...

“The group also claims that it has “generated” sympathetic headlines about the need to expand airports and avoid green taxes in the Sun, the Sunday Times, and the Evening Standard. It also claims to have placed stories in the Times and Independent. “FM-led stories [have been] placed and hundreds of FM comments and mentions [have been made] in articles”, says the document.”

If generating headlines and placing stories is what PR people do these days, what, we may be moved to wonder, do journalists actually do? Edit and arrange PR people’s copy? Actually, more often than not the answer is yes.

Do read the Guardian’s report on this in full, incidentally - it attests to a shocking level of endemic corruption in our political system and media (if more evidence of this phenomenon were needed). Delightfully, some kindly soul has also dropped a copy of Flying Matters’ report into Greenpeace’s inbox - it’s now available here. Have a gander.

UPDATE: Now this – from Elliott Morley, “a minister in the environment department Defra from 2003 to 2006” – is rather interesting an’ all ...

“Britain’s efforts to cut carbon emissions have been hampered by government infighting and a reluctance to stand up to industry, according to the UK’s former climate change minister.

“... Policies to cut carbon and help the environment were dismissed inside Whitehall as “idealistic and not giving enough attention to the pragmatic needs of industry”, he said.

“... Crucial changes to building standards to make homes more energy efficient were delayed because of industry lobbying, he said.

““It came down to this argument about the costs to industry, which is what the energy people thought was their priority,” Morley said. “Defra would sometimes be presented as a department that was too idealistic and not giving enough attention to the pragmatic needs of industry.”

“... “Why on earth are we still building hospitals without combined heat and power? The answer is the tendering process and the private finance initiative.””

As ever, business as good as runs the country – and runs the rest of us into the ground.

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The “new anti-semitism” returns, again

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:15:24 +0100

There is an unending supply of dubious claims in the British media. Some, however, are rather more easy to discern than others. When Prozac Nation author and noted plagiarist Elizabeth Wurtzel wrote in the Guardian – at the height of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza – of an upwelling of “the purest antisemitism since the Nazi era” evident everywhere outside America, it didn’t take a genius to start raising eyebrows. “Excepting a business trip I took to England, Scotland and Ireland in early 2002,” wrote Wurtzel, “I have not been to Europe since 9/11. It’s become an unbearable place to be”. A startling claim indeed – though, as Steven Poole was moved to wonder, if Wurtzel hadn’t in fact been to Europe in the last seven years, how exactly did she arrive at this assessment? The same way, presumably, she found out that Chomsky’s work pertains to “the distinctions between Leninist and Trotskyite philosophy”.

Other dubious claims are not quite so easy to spot. The Observer, for instance, recently reported some scary statistics under the heading “Rise in anti-Semitic attacks ‘the worst recorded in Britain in decades’”. Citing figures produced by the Community Security Trust, “the body that monitors anti-Jewish racism”, and comments made by CST spokesman Mark Gardner, the report painted a bleak picture of anti-semitism in Britain, with reports of “members of Britain’s Jewish community fleeing the UK with antisemitic incidents running at around seven a day this year”.

Leading Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland later relayed the same statistics from the CST. “According to the Community Security Trust, the body that monitors anti-Jewish racism,” he writes, “the four weeks after Cast Lead began saw an eightfold increase in antisemitic incidents in Britain compared with the same period a year earlier. It reports 250 incidents - nearly 10 a day - the highest number since it began its work 25 years ago.” Freedland goes on to jab the finger of blame firmly in the direction of the left. There is “more than a sin of omission here” he claims – continuing:

“At the London events, there were multiple placards deploying what has now become a commonplace image: the Jewish Star of David equated with the swastika. From the podium George Galloway declared: “Today, the Palestinian people in Gaza are the new Warsaw ghetto, and those who are murdering them are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw in 1943.”

“Now what, do you imagine, is the effect of repeating, again and again, that Israel is a Nazi state? Even those with the scantest historical knowledge know that the Nazis are the embodiment of evil to which the only appropriate response is hate. How surprising is it if a young man, already appalled by events in Gaza, walks home from a demo and glimpses the Star of David - which he now sees as a latter-day swastika - outside a synagogue and decides to torch the building, or at least desecrate it? Yet Galloway, along with Livingstone, who was so careful in July 2005, did not hesitate to make the comparison (joined by a clutch of Jewish anti-Israel activists who should know better).”

So determined is Freedland to indict the left for helping foment such despicable anti-semitic attacks that he drags in the most threadbare claims to support his argument. Are we really meant to believe that the kind of person inclined to torch synagogues is going to be spurred on by a particular sensitivity to the evils of Nazism? Are we really meant to believe that those who are sensitive to the evils of Nazism are likely to be so profoundly affected by the fusion of a swastika and the Israeli flag (not the isolated Star of David) that the bloodlust will descend upon them at the mere sight of a synagogue?

The Guardian’s editors joined in a few days later. As they stated in a Leader column:

“There is an ill-considered tendency to reach for the language of Nazism in order to excoriate Israel, regardless of its impact on the climate of tolerance. Last month, a rally in defence of the people of Gaza that included verbal attacks on the so-called “Nazi tendencies” of Israel was followed by actual attacks on Jewish targets in north London.”

It is hard to imagine a sentence more irresponsible than the one with which this passage concludes. Where exactly is the connection between the rally, the verbal attacks, and the physical violence except in the minds of the paper’s editors? Replicating Freedland’s logic, the paper is insinuating what it cannot substantiate, let alone prove. And once again, it cites the Community Security Trust’s figures on “anti-semitic incidents”.

So who in fact are the CST? As it turns out, the organisation have a record of producing spurious accusations of anti-semitism. Their 2007 “Anti-Semitic Discourse” report (pdf), for instance, condemns the “Boycott Compendium” of the laudable Boycott Israeli Goods campaign as exemplifying a “highly pernicious form of anti-semitism”. Its Director of Communications even wrote to the Independent recently to condemn an innocuous letter by Rod Cox as “repeating the self-serving canard … that Jews are cunning co-ordinated liars”, and concluding that “[f]or Cox and so many others, [Independent writer] Howard Jacobson’s identity obviously counts for far more than his many carefully written words and articles ever will” (you can read the original letter, and Gardner’s reply, here). Yet the organisation has had its “anti-semitic incidents” figures replicated right across the British media, including by the BBC, the Independent and the Telegraph.

It is certainly true – at least on a certain fringe of the left – that “some within its ranks now risk sloppily allowing their horror of Israeli actions to blind them to anti-Semitism”, as the Guardian suggests; but this process has been hugely exacerbated, if not primarily driven, by the spurious accusations of anti-semitism continually levelled against critics of Israel by its supporters. It is true also – as though it were ever open to doubt – that those despicable individuals who vandalise graves, spread anti-semitic graffiti and target Jewish people with verbal abuse or physical violence on account of their ethnicity or religion deserve to be condemned in the strongest terms. Israel and its supporters are emphatically not congruent with the Jewish community in general – much as its most fervent supporters, in enthusiastically conflating the two, have again helped contribute to that impression. But, in an apparent attempt to present an image of moderation and distance itself from the “crazies”, the Guardian has not only been levelling spurious accusations of fomenting racism at the left. Along with the rest of the British media, it has been purveying claims that “anti-semitic incidents” are at an all-time high – the kind of claim that always seems to emerge, expressed in ever-more alarming terms, with each fresh spike in Israeli violence – via a source with a record of publicly conflating criticism and activism against Israel with anti-semitism. Vigilance against racism is a very necessary endeavour. But where, we might ask, is the vigilance against those who would impugn critics of Israel with unfounded accusations? If this recent performance is anything to go by, it is nowhere to be seen.

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Inverting reality

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:49:30 +0100

Witness the mysterious alchemy of the British press: a persistent pattern of Israeli provocation (discernible even when one leaves aside the crucial context of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories) becomes a persistent pattern of Israeli retaliation:

AMW Study: The British Media & 'Retaliation' in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The portrayal of retaliation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is of crucial importance. Where a news outlet consistently represents one side as retaliating against the other, it promotes an understanding of that party as the victim of a conflict instigated by the other, and influences public opinion to be sympathetic with the former. Any action taken by the retaliating party is contextualised and potentially legitimised as defensive.

For this study, Arab Media Watch monitored the representation of retaliation in British press coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from January through June 2008 to determine in what proportion Israel and the Palestinians are represented as retaliating in the conflict. The study reveals that when the British press represents a party as retaliating in the conflict, that party is Israel almost three-quarters of the time.

The full report can be viewed / downloaded here.

The Israeli Ambassador has also been popping up all over the British press, according to another illuminating report by AMW - receiving 2000% more coverage the Palestinian Ambassador. What better example can there be of the media acting as a propaganda organ on behalf of the powerful?

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Purity of arms

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:05:48 +0100

Via the Miami Herald:

"The evidence we've gathered in two of the cases so far is exceedingly strong," said Fred Abrahams, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch working in the Gaza Strip. "All the research so far suggests they shot civilians that were leaving their homes with white flags." ...

"This was not a rogue unit," said Abrahams. "The needless civilian deaths resulted from concrete decisions made by the military." ...

"Iyad Nasr, a Red Cross spokesman in Gaza, said Israeli soldiers had fired at ambulances that tried to reach some areas, even when medical officials had received approval from the Israeli military to enter certain neighborhoods."

Plus: more purity ...

"“Fire on anything that moves in Zeitoun” – that was the order handed down to Israeli troops in the Givati Shaked battalion, who reduced the eastern Gaza City suburb to little more than rubble in a matter of days. ...

"The stories that have emerged from Zeitoun have been some of the most shocking of the war. The Samuni family said they lost 29 members after soldiers forced them all into one building that subsequently came under fire. Survivors said that the initial shelling killed 22 people, while others slowly bled to death after being denied medical care for nearly three days.

"Others, including the Helw and Abu Zohar families, have similar accounts of watching loved ones dying of their wounds and coming under fire after emerging from their homes carrying white flags."

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That Gaza appeal

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:27:33 +0100

And Tony Benn had a go earlier in the week ...

If you've been awake at all over the last few days, you'll have noticed that this issue has now provoked a bit of a political storm, with Archbishops, MPs, Ministers and just about every major newspaper pitching in to condemn the BBC for its decision. Journalists' unions have urged a review, and staff at the BBC are said to be utterly enraged, but face the sack if they speak out. What is perhaps most remarkable has been the exposure of these routine professions of "impartiality" as little more than a fig-leaf - a form of protective excuse-making to ward off criticism. When two high-profile journalists (prompted by the charlatans who broadcast Channel 4's fraudulent documentary on climate change) laid into the BBC for its "Planet Relief" proposal in 2007, one of the objections was that it was not the business of the organisation to campaign on such issues (though they were apparently unable to explain why this level of complaint was not applied whenever Crimewatch takes it upon itself to do the work of the police). This time, however, astonishingly the BBC has been complementing its appeals to "impartiality" precisely with attempts to tell the aid agencies how to do their job, expressing concerns about delivering aid in an area of conflict (though DEC has frequently been able to broadcast appeals for the populations of conflict-stricken areas in the past), and claiming, as you can see in the Tony Benn broadcast above, that the aid might fall into the "wrong hands" (again, apparently not a concern in the Congo or Darfur).

It's pretty clear that the Israel lobby has been working overtime to pressure the BBC into submission. In the words of a former senior editor, cited by the London Evening Standard, "There was a formidable lobby backing Israel and the letters would stream in. The pressure was immense." And, after Lord Hutton's body blow on behalf of the Government claimed the scalps of Dyke and Gilligan, the tirades of the right-wing press and (God help us) the Russell Brand-Jonathan Ross affair, the corporation is now more sensitive to such pressure than ever. As veteran BBC journalist Martin Bell put it on Newsnight last night, "they're flinching from blows they haven't even received". It was particularly unedifying to see that of only two interviewees invited to discuss the matter on the programme - the Telegraph's Janet Daly and former Director General Greg Dyke - both backed the decision not to air the broadcast; and not only this, but in a supreme irony, a decision resulting from the pressure of the Israel lobby and the right-wing press was used to further berate the BBC along the same lines, as Daly laid into both the license fee and the BBC's insulation from market forces. Indeed on the same day that this affair was blowing up in the Corporation's face, Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail was complaining about "The BBC’s bias in favour of wild radical causes", which are "not just to be found in its news and current affairs output", apparently. This is just one example of the dominant political climate that has so cowed the Corporation that it cannot broadcast a short appeal for a civilian population suffering an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. Meanwhile the liberal press have evinced their usual surfeit of timidity. According to the Observer's editorial, for instance,

Israeli and Palestinian groups both regularly accuse the corporation of institutional bias, which is probably a crude indication that, in its journalism, the BBC gets the balance about right.

A more telling non sequitur it is hard to imagine. As the leading American media scholar Robert McChesney points out in his book The Problem of the Media, some extreme factions of the Nazi party apparently criticised the German media under Hitler for being too soft on communists and Jews. The fact that there is always a group insane enough to keep complaining to the media on behalf of the powerful has no bearing on whether the content of that media's coverage actually supports them or not. Indeed if the coverage is biased enough, will it not in fact help foster and create such a deranged lobby?

A more illuminating account of the major forces acting on the BBC is provided by Mark Lawson in a recent piece for the Media Guardian. Though he gives the BBC far too much credit (it's his employer after all), particularly on the subject of the Falklands war, and if anything underplays the extent of the pressure brought to bear on it, Lawson does provide some insight into the problematic position that has bedevilled the broadcaster since its inception. As he puts it,

At the moment when the BBC was incorporated by Royal Charter - after five years as a private company, created in 1922 by Marconi and other early wireless interests - a magnificent but probably impossible paradox was attempted. The company would be dependent on the government for its existence and funding - beginning with a 10 shilling radio licence that gradually expanded to become a de facto tax on viewing and listening - but the political overlords were required to refrain from editorial interference, even though the actions of the ruling administration were certain to be a frequent subject for the service.

And, apart from this internal contradiction, the birth was also attended by external tension. Newspapers were immediately nervous of the competition to their interests represented by radio and would later be even more alarmed by the extension into television. Print's suspicion of the cosseted newcomer would frequently manifest itself in a desire to undermine the state broadcaster.

So, from the earliest days of its life, the BBC was under brooding scrutiny from two groups: politicians, who suffered a nagging irritation at having to pay but having no say, and a press that resented a rival granted unprecedented national significance and a unique method of funding. In these two ways, the broadcaster's founders were inviting trouble and, at various moments between 1927 and 2008, it has catastrophically arrived.

The UK Government's relationship with the US and with Israel have naturally made the Israel/Palestine conflict a far more sensitive issue for the corporation than it would otherwise have been. As former Middle East correspondent Tim Llewellyn puts it, "BBC managers try to second-guess our government and even outreach it in grovelling to the United States and Israel". Papers like the Telegraph - which inhereted (and has maintained) a viscerally pro-Israeli line from its former owner Conrad Black - have helped to reinforce the "red lines" the corporation fears to cross. And then there's the constant roar of the Israel lobby, kicking up "dust-storms of propaganda" and piling constant pressure on journalists and editors. The results, as we can now see, have been pretty dismal. As the FT recalled yesterday (and similar studies have shown likewise):

An independent panel on BBC coverage of the conflict, published in 2006 reported shortcomings that objectively favoured Israel: more coverage of Israeli fatalities; more Israeli spokesmen; and, above all, “the failure to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, reflecting the fact that one side is in control and the other lives under occupation”.

This is why the efforts to resist its decision on the Gaza appeal - including occupations of BBC headquarters in England and Scotland - deserve our heartfelt praise and admiration. I would like to hope that the indignation displayed in these protests can be channeled into a serious and formidable movement for democratic media reform. Yet the auspices are not great. At the moment, such protests are in danger of being co-opted to further the interests of the corporate media vultures forever circling the BBC - the same which have played no small part in leading us to this depressing outcome in the first place. It would be regrettable if those activists currently disposing of their TV licenses played into this agenda. But I must admit, the disgracefulness, the sheer callous inhumanity of the BBC's decision, may have left them with little choice.

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The “impartiality” of the psychopath

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:46:11 +0100

Even I didn’t think they could stoop quite this low, but the BBC appear to have outdone themselves. The Corporation has just refused to air a humanitarian appeal for the people of Gaza by the Disasters Emergency Committee – the kind of appeal that the BBC has in the past aired routinely – on the grounds that this would compromise the public’s belief in their “impartiality”. Once again, the BBC is defending the interests of the powerful, hypocritically covering its tracks with professions of adherence to high-minded journalistic principle.

Below is my complaint. Please send one yourself, here.

“The BBC has refused to broadcast an appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee relating to the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, on the grounds that this would “risk ... compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story”.

“Why does it constitute “impartiality” to freely transmit broadcasts about serious +natural+ disasters, but not those caused by military action on the part of Governments? Is this not in fact a major breach of the BBC’s impartiality requirements, since it applies a double-standard in deciding which humanitarian disasters deserve airtime and which do not, on a transparently political basis?

“Please stop this ridiculous farce, and help the DEC get emergency assistance to suffering people, as you have in the past. It is an utterly shameful, disgraceful decision you have taken on this issue, and it can only further confirm the impression that the BBC’s coverage has been cowed by the Israeli PR machine, and by the UK lobby that supports it. That is to say, it will “compromis[e] public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story”.”

You can also join the national protest taking place tomorrow at Broadcasting House in London, calling for an end to British arms sales to Israel, the lifting of Israel’s siege of Gaza, an end to the occupation; and protesting the BBC’s persistent pro-Israeli line in covering the assault on Gaza.

UPDATE: My note to the BBC, it turns out, is significantly misleading. As it happens, the BBC do give airtime to Disasters Emergency Committee appeals in the case of disasters “caused by military action on the part of Governments” and other armed groups, including where such cases are connected to issues of major political controversy. There’s an archive of Disasters Emergency Committee appeals screened on the BBC and other channels available here. It includes appeals, broadcast by the BBC, for the civilian populations of conflict-ridden countries such as the Congo, Liberia, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Kosovo. Yes, Kosovo - the subject of a DEC appeal shown by the BBC in 1999. So while appeals for Kosovan refugees can be shown without any problem (and rightly so) in the same year that this country was debating whether or not to go to war with Serbia - surely as serious a political controversy as one can imagine - appeals for the population of Gaza are refused permission to air. This, reader, is known as “upholding impartiality”.

You can donate to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Gaza appeal here.

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Suffra-jets brick the windows of the Department for Transport

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:21:32 +0100

With some groups now threatening a campaign to shut down the whole of Heathrow airport, and a member of the Cabinet admitting that the “opponents had succeeded in talking the plan down to ‘half a runway’” (let’s go the whole hog, eh?), an errant band of “suffra-jets” have just taken their fight to the heart of Government. Good work, ladies.

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Israel must lose.

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:34:29 +0100

An honest appraisal, published on the Guardian letters page today:

The massacres in Gaza are the latest phase of a war that Israel has been waging against the people of Palestine for more than 60 years. The goal of this war has never changed: to use overwhelming military power to eradicate the Palestinians as a political force, one capable of resisting Israel's ongoing appropriation of their land and resources. Israel's war against the Palestinians has turned Gaza and the West Bank into a pair of gigantic political prisons. There is nothing symmetrical about this war in terms of principles, tactics or consequences. Israel is responsible for launching and intensifying it, and for ending the most recent lull in hostilities.

Israel must lose. It is not enough to call for another ceasefire, or more humanitarian assistance. It is not enough to urge the renewal of dialogue and to acknowledge the concerns and suffering of both sides. If we believe in the principle of democratic self-determination, if we affirm the right to resist military aggression and colonial occupation, then we are obliged to take sides... against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West Bank.

We must do what we can to stop Israel from winning its war. Israel must accept that its security depends on justice and peaceful coexistence with its neighbours, and not upon the criminal use of force.

We believe Israel should immediately and unconditionally end its assault on Gaza, end the occupation of the West Bank, and abandon all claims to possess or control territory beyond its 1967 borders. We call on the British government and the British people to take all feasible steps to oblige Israel to comply with these demands, starting with a programme of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Professor Gilbert Achcar, Development Studies, SOAS
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, Politics and International Studies, SOAS
Dr. Nadje Al-Ali, Gender Studies, SOAS
Professor Eric Alliez, Philosophy, Middlesex University
Dr. Jens Andermann, Latin American Studies, Birkbeck
Dr. Jorella Andrews, Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths
Professor Keith Ansell-Pearson, Philosophy, University of Warwick
John Appleby, writer
Dr. Claudia Aradau, Politics, Open University
Dr. Walter Armbrust, Politics, University of Oxford
Dr. Andrew Asibong, French, Birkbeck
Professor Derek Attridge, English, University of York
Burjor Avari, lecturer in Multicultural Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University
Dr. Zulkuf Aydin, International Development, University of Leeds
Dr. Claude Baesens, Mathematics, University of Warwick
Dr. Jennifer Bajorek, Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths
Professor Mona Baker, Centre for Translation Studies, University of Manchester
Jon Baldwin, lecturer in Communications, London Metropolitan University
Professor Etienne Balibar, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities
Dr. Trevor Bark, Criminology, WEA Newcastle
Dr. Susan Batchelor, Sociology, Glasgow University
Dr. David Bell, Tavistock Clinic and British Psychoanalytic Society
Dr. Anna Bernard, English, University of York
Professor Henry Bernstein, Development Studies, SOAS
Anindya Bhattacharyya, writer and journalist
Dr. Ian Biddle, Music, Newcastle University
Sana Bilgrami, filmmaker and lecturer, Napier University, Edinburgh
Professor Jon Bird, School of Arts & Education, Middlesex University
Nicholas Blincoe, writer
Dr. Jelke Boesten, Development Studies, University of Leeds
Dr. Julia Borossa, Psychoanalysis, Middlesex University
Dr. Mark Bould, Film Studies, UWE
Dr. Mehdi Boussebaa, Said Business School, University of Oxford
Professor Wissam Boustany, Trinity College of Music, London
Professor Bill Bowring, Law, Birkbeck
Dr. Alia Brahimi, Politics, University of Oxford
Professor Haim Bresheeth, Media Studies, University of East London
Professor John D Brewer, Sociology, Aberdeen
Victoria Brittain, writer and journalist
Professor Celia Britton, French, UCL
Professor Charles Brook, Paediatric Endocrinology, UCL
Dr. Muriel Brown, writer
Professor Ian Buchanan, Critical and Cultural Theory, University of Cardiff
Professor Ray Bush, African Studies and Development Politics, University of Leeds
Professor Alex Callinicos, European Studies, KCL
Dr. Conor Carville, Irish Studies, St. Mary's University College
Professor Noel Castree, Geography, University of Manchester
Matthew Caygill, lecturer in History and Politics, Leeds Metropolitan University
Dr. Rinella Cere, Arts, Design, Communication and Media, Sheffield Hallam University
Dr. John Chalcraft, Government, LSE
Dr. Claire Chambers, English Literature, Leeds Metropolitan University
Dr. Sue Chaplin, Cultural Studies, Leeds Metropolitan University.
Dr. Sharad Chari, Geography, LSE
Dr. Lorenzo Chiesa, Critical Theory, University of Kent
Dr. Andrew Chitty, Philosophy, University of Sussex
Professor Emilios Christodoulidis, Law, Glasgow
Professor Sue Clegg, Education, Leeds Metropolitan University
Professor Claire Colebrook, English Literature, Edinburgh University
Dr. John Collins, Philosophy, UEA
Professor Guy Cook, Education and Language Studies, The Open University
Professor Diana Coole, Politics and Sociology, Birkbeck
Professor Annie E. Coombes, History of Art, Birkbeck
Charlie Cooper, lecturer in Social Policy, University of Hull
Julia Copus, poet
Professor Andrea Cornwall, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex
Dr. Don Crewe, Criminology, Roehampton University
Professor Simon Critchley, Philosophy, University of Essex
Dr. Stephanie Cronin, Social Sciences, University of Northampton
Eleanor Crook, sculptor & lecturer, University of the Arts London
Laura Cull, artist and researcher, Drama, University of Exeter
Dr. Sonia Cunico, Modern Languages, University of Leicester
Dr. David Cunningham, English, University of Westminster
Catherine Czerkawska, writer and historian
Dr. Sarah Dadswell, Drama, University of Exeter
Dr. Gareth Dale, Politics and History, Brunel University
Dr. Gary Daniels, Public Policy and Management, Keele University
Neil Davidson, Senior Research Fellow, Geography and Sociology, University of Strathclyde
Dr. Graham Dawson, Cultural History, University of Brighton
Christophe Declercq, lecturer in Translation, Imperial College London
Dr. Helen May Dennis, English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick
Dr. Caitlin DeSilvey, Geography, University of Exeter
Dr. Mark Devenney, Humanities, University of Brighton
Dr. Pat Devine, Social Science, University of Manchester
Dr. Jorge Díaz-Cintas, Translation, Imperial College London
Professor James Dickins, Arabic, University of Salford
Kay Dickinson, Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College
Jenny Diski, writer
Dr. Bill Dixon, Sociology & Criminology, Keele University
Noel Douglas, lecturer and graphic designer, University of Bedfordshire
Professor Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Law, University of Oxford
Professor Allison Drew, Department of Politics, University of York
Dr. Judit Druks, Psychology & Language Science, UCL
Professor Mick Dunford, Geography, University of Sussex
Dr. Sam Durrant, English, Leeds University
Dr. Graham Dyer, Economics, SOAS
Professor Abbas Edalat, Computer Science, Imperial College
Professor Rasheed El-Enany, Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter
Gregory Elliott, writer and translator
Dr. Richard Elliott, Music, Newcastle University
Professor Hoda Elsadda, Arabic Studies, University of Manchester
Bernardine Evaristo, writer
Dr. Howard Feather, Sociology, London Metrolitan University
Professor Patrick ffrench, French, King's College London
Dr. Clare Finburgh, Theatre Studies, University of Essex
Professor Jean Fisher, Fine Art, Middlesex University
Dominic Fox, writer
Dr. Jennifer Fraser, Spanish, Birkbeck
Professor Murray Fraser, Architecture, University of Westminster
Dr. Des Freedman, Media and Communications, Goldsmiths
Maureen Freely, writer and journalist, English, University of Warwick
Dr. Diane Frost, Sociology, University of Liverpool
Dr. Geetanjali Gangoli, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol
Juliet Gardiner, writer
Dr. James Garvey, philosopher
Professor Conor Gearty, Centre for the Study of Human Rights, LSE
Dr. Julie Gervais, Government, LSE.
Dr. Jeremy Gilbert, Cultural Studies, University of East London
Dr. Aisha Gill, Criminologist, Roehampton University, UK
Professor Paul Gilroy, Sociology, London School of Economics
Charles Glass, writer
Dr. Andrew Goffey, Media, Middlesex
Professor Barry Goldson, Sociology and Social Policy, University of Liverpool
Professor Philip Goodchild, Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham
Dr. Paul Goodey, lecturer and oboist
Professor Ian Gough, Social Policy, University of Bath
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Dr. James Graham, Media Culture and Communication, Middlesex University
Professor Penny Green, Law, Kings College London
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Professor Peter Hallward, Philosophy, Middlesex University
Keith Hammond, lecturer in Education, University of Glasgow
Dr. Sameh F. Hanna, Translation Studies, University of Salford
Nicky Harman, lecturer in Translation, Imperial College London
M John Harrison, writer
Dr. Rumy Hasan, Science & Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex
Owen Hatherley, journalist and academic
Dr. Jane Haynes, writer & dialogic psychotherapist
Dr. Jonathan Hensher, French Studies, University of Manchester
Dr. Barry Heselwood, Linguistics & Phonetics, University of Leeds
Tom Hickey, Tutor in Philosophy, Politics and Aesthetics, University of Brighton
Dr. Jane Hiddleston, Modern Languages, University of Oxford
Dr. Nicki Hitchcott, French and Francophone Studies, University of Nottingham
Professor Eric Hobsbawm, President, Birkbeck
Dr. Jane Holgate, Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University
Professor Derek Holt, Mathematics, University of Warwick
Professor Ted Honderich, Philosophy, UCL
Professor David Howell, Politics, University of York
Professor Richard Hudson, Linguistics, UCL
Professor John Hutnyk, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths
Dr. Colin Imber, Turkish, University of Manchester
Professor Lyn Innes (emeritus), English, University of Kent
Professor Yosefa Loshitzky, Film, Media and Cultural Studies, University of East London
Dr. Lars Iyer, Philosophy, Newcastle University
Dr. Ian James, French, University of Cambridge
Dr. Daniel Katz, English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick
Dr. Mark Kelly, Philosophy, Middlesex University
Joanna Gilmore, lecturer in the School of Law, University of Manchester
Susan Kelly, lecturer in Fine Art, Goldsmiths
Dr. Christian Kerslake, Philosophy, Middlesex University
Dr. Alexander King, Anthropology, University of Aberdeen
David Kinloch, poet
Dr. Dianne Kirby, History and International Affairs, University of Ulster
Dr. Graeme Kirkpatrick, Sociology, University of Manchester
Dr. Laleh Khalili, Politics and International Studies, SOAS
Dr. Stathis Kouvelakis, European Studies, KCL
Professor Basil Kouvaritakis, Engineering Science, University of Oxford
Dr. John Kraniauskas, Spanish, Birkbeck
Dr. Cecile Laborde, Political Science, UCL
Professor Ernesto Laclau, Government, Essex
Dave Laing, writer and journalist
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Nicholas Lawrence, lecturer in English & Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick
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Professor Esther Leslie, English and Humanities, Birkbeck
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Simon Lynn, lecturer in Social Work, UEL
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Professor Susan Marks, Law, KCL
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Professor Lauro Martines, historian
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Dr. Nur Masalha, Religion and Politics, St Mary's University College
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Professor (emeritus) Moshé Machover, Philosophy, KCL
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Professor Susan Melrose, Performing Arts, Middlesex University
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Dr. Mahmood Messkoub, Business, University of Leeds
Dr. China Miéville, writer and academic
Dr. Anna-Louise Milne, French, University of London Institute in Paris
Dr. Surya Monro, Politics, University of Sheffield
John Moore, lecturer in Sociology & Criminology, University of the West of England
Professor Bart Moore-Gilbert, English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths
Dr Farhang Morady, Globalisation and Development, University of Westminster
Dr. Stephen Morton, English, Southampton University
Dr. Pablo Mukherjee, English and Comparative Literature, University of Warwick
Professor John Mullarkey, Philosophy, University of Dundee
Professor John Muncie, Criminology, The Open University
Professor Martha Mundy, Anthropology, LSE
Dr. Alex Murray, English, University of Exeter
Dr. Karma Nabulsi, Politics, University of Oxford
Ali Nasralla, Senior Fellow (retired) at Manchester University Business School
Professor Mica Nava, Cultural Studies, University of East London
Marga Navarrete, Lecturer in Spanish and Translation, Imperial College
Dr. Nick Nesbitt, French, Aberdeen
Dr. Michael Niblett, Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Warwick
Professor Christopher Norris, Philosophy, University of Cardiff
Julia O'Faolain, writer
Michael Oliva, composer and lecturer, Royal College of Music
Wendy Olsen, Development Studies, University of Manchester
Professor Peter Osborne, Philosophy, Middlesex University
Dr. George Paizis, French, UCL
Professor Ilan Pappé, History, University of Exeter
Professor Benita Parry, English and Comparative Literature, University of Warwick
Dr. Diana Paton, History, Newcastle University
Dr. Ian Patterson, Queens' College, Cambridge
Lara Pawson, writer and journalist
Dr. Maeve Pearson, English, University of Exeter
Carmen Perea-Gohar, lecturer in Spanish, Imperial College
Dr. Luis Perez-Gonzalez, Translation Studies, University of Manchester
Dr. Andrea Phillips, Art, Goldsmiths
Dr. Nina Power, Philosophy, Roehampton University
Dr. Jane Poyner, English, University of Exeter
Professor Scott Poynting, Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University
Dr. Nicola Pratt, Political, Social & International Studies, UEA
Professor Al Rainnie, Centre for Labour Market Studies, University of Leicester
Dr. Kamran Rastegar, Arabic and Persian Literatures, University of Edinburgh
Professor Jane Rendell, Architecture, UCL
Professor Dee Reynolds, French, University of Manchester
Dr. Chris Roberts, School of Community Based Medicine, University of Manchester
Dr. Mark Robson, English Studies, University of Nottingham
Professor William Roff, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh
Professor Bill Rolston, Sociology, University of Ulster
Caroline Rooney, English and Postcolonial Studies, Kent
Professor Hilary Rose, Social Policy, University of Bradford
Michael Rosen, writer
Dr. Elaheh Rostami-Povey, Development Studies, SOAS
Professor William Rowe, Spanish and English, Birkbeck
Dr. Juliet Rufford, Theatre Studies, University of Reading
Professor Jonathan Rutherford, Cultural Studies, Middlesex University
Professor Alfredo Saad Filho, Development Studies, SOAS
Dr. Gabriela Saldanha, English Language, University of Birmingham
Dr. Shahira Samy, Politics, University of Oxford
Dr. Stella Sandford, Philosophy, Middlesex University
Professor Sanjay Seth, Politics, Goldsmiths
Carole Satyamurti, writer
Professor Yezid Sayigh, War Studies, KCL
Professor Phil Scraton, Law and Criminology, Queen's University Belfast
Professor Richard Seaford, Classics and Ancient History, University of Exeter
Amanda Sebestyen, writer and asylum campaigner
Professor David Seddon, Development Studies, University of East Anglia
Richard Seymour, writer and activist
Dr. Subir Sinha, Development Studies, SOAS
Dr. Debra Benita Shaw, Social Sciences, Media & Cultural Studies, University of East London
Professor Avi Shlaim, International Relations, St Antony's College, University of Oxford
Mark Shuttleworth, lecturer in Translation, Imperial College London
Professor David Slater, Geography, Loughborough University
Dr. Andrew Smith, Sociology, Anthropology and Applied Social Science, University of Glasgow
Dr. Graham Smith, Law, University of Manchester
Professor Neil Smith (emeritus), Linguistics, UCL
Olivia Smith, Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, Queen Mary, University of London
Dr. Anthony Soares, Portuguese, Queen's University Belfast
Ahdaf Soueif, writer and journalist
Professor William Spence, Physics, QMUL
Dr. Robert Spencer, Postcolonial Literatures, University of Manchester
Professor Paul Stewart, Human Resource Management, University of Strathclyde
Dr. Alison Stone, Philosophy, Lancaster
Colin Stoneman, writer
Professor Paul Sutton, Caribbean Studies, London Metropolitan University
Professor Helen Taylor, English, University of Exeter
Professor Phil Taylor, Business, University of Strathclyde
Dr. Jennifer Terry, English Studies, University of Durham
Dr. Nicholas Thoburn, Sociology, University of Manchester
Adriana Tortoriello, translator
Dr. Alberto Toscano, Sociology, Goldsmiths
Professor Martin Upchurch, Business, Middlesex University
Dr. Anastasia Valassopoulos, English and American Studies, University of Manchester
Dr. Rashmi Varma, English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick
Dr. Ritu Vij, International Relations, University of Aberdeen
Professor Dennis Walder, Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies, Open University
Dr. Geoffrey Wall, English, University of York
Sean Wallis, Survey of English Usage, UCL
Dr. Vron Ware, Social Sciences, The Open University
Dr. Eyal Weizman, Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths
Professor Lynn Welchman, Law, SOAS
Dr. Jutta Weldes, Politics, University of Bristol
Tony White, writer
Geoff Whittam, Reader in Entrepreneurship, University of the West of Scotland
Dr. David Whyte, Sociology, University of Liverpool
Dr. Paula Wilcox, Criminology, University of Brighton
Dr. Caroline Williams, Politics, QMUL
Professor Eddie Williams, Linguistics, Bangor University
Professor James Williams, Philosophy, University of Dundee
Dr. Carla Willig Psychology, City University
Dr. Jon E. Wilson, History, KCL
Dr. Nicole Wolf, Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths
Dr. Jim Wolfreys, French and European Politics, KCL
Professor Andy Wood, History, University of East Anglia
Professor Geof Wood, International Development, University of Bath
Robin Yassin-Kassab, novelist
Professor Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender & Ethnic Studies, University of East London
Dr. Shamoon Zamir, American Studies, KCL
Professor Slavoj Zizek, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities
Dr. Paquita de Zulueta, Medicine, Imperial College

Comments

And so it begins ...

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:08:13 +0100

Here’s the ugly truth no-one is mentioning: the climate now appears to be a lot more sensitive than we thought. In terms of the atmospheric “stock” of carbon, we are already over the limit that we need to remain below to prevent runaway climate change – and we need urgently to scramble to get back into the safe zone. Even before this most recent scientific evidence came to light, the expansion of our aviation sector to meet (and, by providing further capacity, help create) increasing demand was already set to produce an environmental disaster. There is no carbon-neutral, or even significantly carbon-reducing substitute for air travel, and none on the horizon. That means that even the current level of aviation-based emissions, in light of the emissions reductions we will need to make across the entire economy, is unsustainable. By giving the go-ahead to a new runway at Heathrow, therefore, Labour has not only just committed its final betrayal – in environmental terms it is dragging us at full-pelt, kicking and screaming, in the wrong direction. For this Government, even easing its foot ever so slightly off the accelerator is unacceptable. And, perhaps most shamefully of all, those who have historically professed international solidarity with the poor are backing this insane development. Indeed “the TUC has been pressing the government to make Heathrow a genuine travel hub”, according to its General Secretary, Brendan Barber. If Barber is of the opinion that Heathrow doesn’t currently amount to a “genuine travel hub”, one can only imagine what hellish Orwellian vision he has in mind for the future. Aftering pandering to the whims of the financial sector and dragging us into economic meltdown, the Government is now pandering to the whims of business, backed by the unions, and leading us off an ecological precipice.

Is there hope on the horizon? Well, perhaps. The good news is that the wave of political pressure on the Government has split the Cabinet, prompted a good deal of backbench resistance from Labour MPs (which the whips are now disgracefully moving to clamp down on), prompted the Liberal Democrats and Tory party to refrain from giving Heathrow’s expansion its blessing, and looks set to give rise to a serious escalation in the current campaign of civil disobedience. We ain’t seen nothing yet.

Moreover, two heroes of the hour deserve special mention: the activists who devised the amazing initiative that is “Airplot” – buying up a piece of land in the middle of the runway, now being split between as many “beneficial owners” as decide to sign up (join them); and Hayes and Harlington MP John McDonnell, fighting tooth-and-nail for his constituents, many of whose homes will be bulldozed to make way for the new runway, for the victims of climate change, and for the right of Parliament to vote on this matter of national importance. Do watch the footage of his amazing act of protest, carried out in the House of Commons today: you can tune in here and here, and watch a brief interview with him here. Perhaps most extraordinarily, it is for once genuinely difficult to disagree with the verdict of the Daily Mail.

Comments

The Guardian forfeits its last shred of moral credibility

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:19:57 +0100

Guardian editorial, Tuesday 23 March 1999 (via):

“The only honorable course for Europe and America is to use military force to try to protect the people of Kosovo... If we do not act at all, or if there is a limited bombing campaign which still fails to change Milosevic’s mind, what is likely to be Kosovo’s future?”

Guardian editorial, Tuesday 13 January 2009:

“... the talk elsewhere is now of boycotts, of arms embargos, of revoking trade agreements, withholding financial support and cancelling export credit guarantees. These are not all appealing options, nor should they be yet necessary.”

So what, pray, would it take for the country’s leading left-wing paper to back even the revocation of active support for Israel on the part of Britain? And given the paper’s prediction that a continued campaign on the part of Milosevic against the Kosovo Liberation Army “might be done quite quickly and the casualties would not necessarily be huge” - do they dare say the same of Gaza? - why does one case demand active, military intervention, while the other demands little more than strong words and a tap on the wrist? (You may want to direct this question towards this gentleman, or this lady.)

Comments

The BBC lets Israeli propaganda mould its coverage

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:00:53 +0100

BBC Director of News Helen Boaden provides an insight into BBC editorial policy today, in explaining the discrepancies in its reporting of the LRA in Uganda and the IDF in Gaza:

“The LRA is alleged to have deliberately slaughtered more than 400 civilians; the Israelis would claim that they intended only to attack Hamas militants (who had been firing rockets into Israel). They would claim the civilian casualties were unintentional.”

Lucky, lucky Israel. All it has to do is to issue an explicit denial that its attacks on civilians are deliberate, and – despite the many and various authoritative allegations that it has itself “deliberately slaughtered more than 400 civilians” (the current death toll is around 900, including at least 270 children and 95 women; meanwhile 3 Israeli civilians and 7 soldiers have been killed), that in fact “Civilian residential homes and other buildings, including a university, have been targeted by Israeli air strikes”, that Israel has been “targeting civilian objects in the Gaza Strip”, that “civilians – particularly the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza – continue to both be targeted and suffer disproportionately in this conflict”, that “this is deliberate”, that Israel is engaging in the “continuous targeting of civilians”, that Israel is conducting “an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population” – BBC coverage will accordingly be adjusted in its favour. Mass murderers everywhere, take note.

And have no doubt: if anyone regarded as an official enemy carried out the pattern of attacks we have been seeing over the past 18 days, there would be no questions asked about whether or not these were deliberately targeted against civilians. Across the media, commentators would be lining up to talk about genocide. Scenting an opportunity, those Western leaders who thought it would advance our interests would be talking about military intervention against the aggressor (such a situation is hardly without precedent, even in far more ambiguous cases than Israel’s assault on Gaza presents). Instead, as Chomsky comments, with his usual precision – in a clearly-recognisable pattern, only a little less marked in the UK than in the US,

“Readers of the mainstream press … are presented daily with the picture of Israel desperately seeking peace, but under constant attack by Palestinian terrorists who want to destroy it.”

Yet in spite of this – and in spite of the marginal attention given to British complicity in selling Israel arms, eagerly supporting the EU-Israel preferential trade agreement and some apparent assistance to the US in its diplomatic stonewalling – it seems that people are beginning to wake up. There were credible mainstream reports of at least 100,000 protestors marching in London on saturday, and it may even have been as high as 200,000, if the organisers are to be believed. This is the biggest march in support of Palestine in British history. As ever, the evidence is that there is a bedrock of progressive sentiment to public opinion in the UK; imagine what the public reaction might look like if a vigilant media were providing us with the fair and accurate picture of the world we require.

UPDATE: The Times carries an important article citing the direct statements of Israeli soldiers about their tactics in Gaza. Along with several implicating them in grossly indiscriminate attacks, we learn:

“the Israeli lieutenant [Alon] explained ... “We are treating everything as hostile right now. We were told not to take chances — to shoot rather than ask questions.” ...

“I’m not a newcomer in the army,” Alon told The Times. “Both my brothers served in combat units that saw action in Gaza. And I can say that this is the most aggressive line that we have ever taken towards fighting the Palestinians. As you say in English, the gloves were off.”

He was shocked by some of the scenes inside Gaza, describing whole neighbourhoods levelled. “It doesn’t look like we’ve been there a few weeks — it looks destroyed, demolished, like we were bombing it for years. You can’t imagine what damage we have done ...”

And it’s worth comparing this new, “gloves off” approach with the approach that preceded it. Israeli soldiers have testified that their orders were to “fire at anything that moved”; that they were told “‘[e]very person you see on the street, kill him’. And we would just do it”; that there was “pressure to get kills”; that “[t]he commanders said kill as many people as possible”; that “Gaza was considered a playground for sharpshooters”. This, it would appear, is how Israel conducts war with the gloves on.

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New book by Craig Murray; British libel law

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:57:49 +0100

Craig Murray, the UK’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, is currently facing legal threats for libel after attempting to publish his latest book, The Catholic Orangemen of Togo, and Other Conflicts I Have Known. As a consequence, he is having severe difficulty in getting a print version published. I am therefore, along with around 100 other bloggers, publishing it myself at the bottom of this post, for readers to download, share and enjoy. Grab your copy early to avoid disappointment!

British libel law has increasingly come to resemble little more than the privatisation of the prerogative of state censorship - a phenomenon of which you can read some extraordinary examples in the latest edition of Private Eye (no. 1227; see also here). Those with sufficient money can effectively use it to silence publications that offend them, leaving those who have to face down threats of punitive legal action with little or no recourse. Even if authors such as Murray are courageous enough to withstand such pressures, publishers, printers and distributors often are not. In the age of the internet, legal firms often target the hosts of domains - who have tended to prove more reticent and easily cowed than bloggers. Papers become ever more disinclined to put scarce resources into the kind of costly investigative journalism that may land them in hot water. This legal framework is badly in need of urgent reform. Editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger (though I have had my differences with him, and with his publication) makes some worthwhile and productive proposals in a recent overview of the subject for the New York Review of Books. As he writes:

“British libel laws—with the burden of proof on the defendant, conditional fee arrangements, the ability of lawyers to ratchet up eye-watering costs, and a still uncertain degree of qualified privilege protection for “responsible” journalism—remain a formidable weapon in the hands of claimants, whether rich individuals or powerful corporations. Before putting journalism on trial, a more responsive standard of public interest should surely be applied. If a news organization is self-evidently seeking to publish material of high public importance—matters to do with corporate responsibility, government, fiscal risk and management, health, science, security, and so on—then the law ought to find better ways of protecting it. Before any corporation is given the green light to sue, one possibility worth considering is a requirement that it must first attempt to resolve matters via mediation—whether through ombudsmen or regulatory or self-regulatory bodies.”

If constrained and mandated by a framework of democratically-agreed laws and regulations, the power of the state can be a force that liberates the media from the shackles of overweaning economic power. As I have noted before, the Scandinavian model of neutrally-allocated press subsidies, though its future may currently look less than propitious, has allowed for the survival of some extraordinary popular papers - including the Norwegian Marxist daily Klasskampen - that would have faced severe struggles to survive under an advertising-reliant press system. This is a great example of the kind of mandated state intervention that ought to be strongly encouraged. The British legal system’s punitive libel laws have the dubious honour of effectively achieving the opposite - rather than enabling the survival of the weak, they serve as a bludgeon in the hands of the economically powerful. This is a typical feature of what is ever more implausibly referred to as neoliberalism - not the roll-back of the state, as its ideological proponents aver, but rather its re-purposing to serve the interests of the rich. If we wish to see a media system that serves the interests of the public, this situation needs to be reversed.

By challenging this pernicious legislation, as in so many other cases, Craig Murray reinforces his outstanding record of putting fundamental moral principles before the requirements of his self-interest and his career - including in some extremely tough and forbidding circumstances. His book Murder in Samarkand, about his experiences as a British ambassador in Uzbekistan, is essential reading on our country’s involvement in the amoral and blatantly hypocritical conduct of the inaccurately named “War on Terror” - containing passages that make the blood boil and the skin crawl; and featuring revelations of US and UK complicity in horrors almost beyond belief. We need more committed public servants - in the true meaning of that phrase - like Murray; his work deserves, nay, demands to be widely read.

The Catholic Orangemen of Togo
and Other Conflicts I Have Known
by Craig Murray

Front cover

Front pages

Main section

UPDATE: And it appears that we are winning!

Comments

SAY IT WITH SHOES: for an end to Britain's support for Israel

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:44:33 +0100

For those of my readers who are on Facebook, this is a new group I've just set up, shamelessly nicking an idea from Jo Abbess of the Campaign Against Climate Change (much obliged, Jo) to send shoes and accompanying messages to Downing Street in a campaign against British military, diplomatic and commercial support for Israel. Please join, and tell anyone you can about this - with any luck we can get it to go viral, and create a bit of a wave of pressure ...

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43299124603

SAY IT WITH SHOES: for an end to Britain's support for Israel

"Say It With Shoes" is a group for all those who want to take action to prevent the horrific violence we are seeing day after day in Gaza, and to help bring about a just peace in the Middle East, in accordance with international law. It is a group for those that are not prepared to tolerate in silence our Government's continuing military support for Israeli aggression and atrocities. It is a group for all those who want to go beyond writing emails and signing petitions, to join with others in making a direct, physical statement to our Government.

Above all, "Say It With Shoes" is an experiment in democracy - an attempt to see whether we can harness the power of people, linked through the internet, to push for a real and lasting change in Government policy. Every bit of pressure we can bring to bear on our Government takes us a step in the right direction - which may mean fewer lives lost, and more suffering averted in the long run.

To participate in this action, all you have to do is to complete six simple steps:

1. Find an old shoe (or even a new one, if you prefer);
2. Write a short, punchy, personalised, note - signed, and with your name and address - calling for an end to Britain's diplomatic, military and commercial support for Israel;
3. If you have a camera, take a picture (or record a short video message) of your shoe;
4. Attach your note to your shoe, and send it off to Downing Street (10 Downing Street, London, SW1A 2AA);
5. Leave a message on our wall; if you have one, post up your picture or video for all to see - and let others know that you have joined them in taking action;
6. Tell your friends - and help spread the word about this action.

Your shoes can be as bland or as flashy as you want. We may award prizes for the most interesting, original or amusing shoes and/or messages however - so feel free to be creative!
______

WHY THE SHOE?

Shoes are a symbol of anger. Ever since Iraqi journalist Muntader Al-Zaidi hurled his shoes at George Bush during a press conference in December - shouting "this is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq" - the shoe has come to embody the anger felt across the Arab world and beyond at the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people as a result of Western and Western-backed actions in the Middle East.

Shoes are a symbol of empathy. In conversation, we talk about "being in his shoes"; "walking a mile in her shoes", or ask "what would you do in my shoes?" Shoes can be a potent metaphor for putting ourselves in the place of suffering others.

Shoes are a symbol of grief. During Israel's 2006 attack on Lebanon, marchers in London laid pairs of children's shoes by the Cenotaph. Like other residual physical traces of human lives, shoes can be a powerful and moving reminder where such lives have been cut short.
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BACKGROUND: FACTS AND FIGURES

What military support does Britain give Israel?

Britain has consistently provided Israel with arms and military equipment, including during some of its worst atrocities. While Britain's contribution is small compared to the billions of dollars in military aid given annually by the US, Israeli military officials have attested that it includes essential items of equipment. Its contribution is also growing - the latest Foreign Office figures show that Britain exported £24 million in arms and military equipment to Israel over the first half of 2008, including £18,847,795-worth of weapons in the first three months - a massive increase compared to the £7.5m it provided in the whole of 2007. This includes essential components in the US-supplied F-16 fighters which, according to Amnesty, Israel has "routinely used" to "bomb and shell Palestinian residential areas". It also includes components for combat aircraft and military aero engines, "helmet-mounted display equipment", equipment for the use of weapons sights and military communications equipment.

Why does Britain give this support?

For two reasons: the interests of British arms dealers, and to maintain good relations with the US. According to former Foreign Office Minister Jack Straw, “Any interruption to the supply of these components would have serious implications for Britain’s defence relations with the United States”; and the sale of F16 parts is also a policy which ministers have said "was dictated by the interests of British arms companies".

What's the problem with arming Israel?

The Israeli military uses weapons both in indiscriminate attacks, and in the direct targeting of civilians. Former Israeli soldiers have attested to acting on "standing orders" to "open fire on people regardless of whether they were armed or not, or posed any physical threat", including young children. They have also spoken of orders to "fire at anything that moved", to kill "every person you see on the street", and of "pressure to get kills". In the words of one former soldier, "The commanders said kill as many people as possible".

During its assault on Gaza, Israel has attacked, among other targets, schools, medics and ambulance crews, mosques, a television station, a university, and civilian homes. As the human rights groups Amnesty International and B'Tselem have noted, Israel has deliberately targeted civilians and civilian buildings over the course of the assault, and statements by Israeli officials indicate a clear policy of attacking civilian targets. Deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians for political ends are ordinarily described as terrorist acts: by arming Israel, Britain is giving direct support to terrorism.

As a spokesman for Oxfam noted in March, Israel's economic and humanitarian blockade against the civilian population in Gaza constitutes collective punishment - a "serious crime against humanity". Human Rights Watch have also described Israel's blockade as "a policy of protracted collective punishment, a serious violation of international humanitarian law" - and note that it has been "tacitly or openly supported by the UK and other Israeli allies".

Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is in violation of international law, as has been re-iterated by countless UN resolutions, and by the International Court of Justice. Israel has also demonstrated a systematic pattern of ending pauses in the conflict by launching attacks. The most recent ceasefire with Hamas, established in June 2008, was ended by Israel in an attack on the 4th of November. And while Hamas has continued to moderate its position, signalling its willingness to participate in a long-term peace between Israel and a Palestinian state within its internationally-recognised borders, Israel has refused even to negotiate with Hamas.

What other support does Britain give?

While providing public backing for a ceasefire in Gaza, Britain appears to have been lending diplomatic support to US efforts at stonewalling such efforts. According to the former UK diplomat Craig Murray, a "former colleague in the UK Mission to the United Nations" attests that "British diplomats on the United Nations Security Council are under direct instructions to offer "tacit support" to United States' efforts to block a ceasefire."

Along with the rest of the EU, Britain participates in the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which allows preferential access for Israeli imports to EU markets. The UK voted to upgrade these commercial ties twice in 2008, in June and December. This is in spite of the “surprise” expressed by the House of Commons International Development Committee that "the EU has decided to upgrade its relationship with Israel while it continues to flout international law".

Can we win this?

Yes. Already there are a whole host of efforts to hold Israel to account, and to encourage Britain to curtail its direct support for Israel. Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has already put political pressure on the Government by calling for a suspension of the upgrade to the EU trade agreement with Israel, and to arms supplies. On January 10, Britain witnessed its biggest march in defence of Palestine to date. Recent polls of the British public have found that 65% view Israel's role in the world as "mainly negative", and 79% favour the Government not taking sides in the conflict. The UK Government has also recently taken steps towards clamping down on goods imported from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. By seizing the initiative, we can bring about positive change. There is no better time to do so than now.

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Israel: the pre-eminent provocateur

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:09:51 +0100

An extraordinarily revealing analysis from the Huffington Post (via) reveals that Israel’s violation of the most recent ceasefire is far from a one-off. In fact, Israel has displayed a systematic pattern of provocations and attacks during lulls and pauses in the conflict with Palestinian armed groups. As Nancy Kanwisher, Johannes Haushofer and Anat Biletzki write:

We analyzed the entire timeline of killings of Palestinians by Israelis, and killings of Israelis by Palestinians, in the Second Intifada, based on the data from the widely-respected Israeli Human Rights group B'Tselem (including all the data from September 2000 to October 2008).

We defined "conflict pauses" as periods of one or more days when no one is killed on either side, and we asked which side kills first after conflict pauses of different durations. As shown in Figure 2, this analysis shows that it is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict: 79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day). In addition, we found that this pattern -- in which Israel is more likely than Palestine to kill first after a conflict pause -- becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses. Indeed, of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days.

Figure 2. For conflict pauses of different durations (i.e., periods of time when no one is killed on either side), we show here the percentage of times from the Second Intifada in which Israelis ended the period of nonviolence by killing one or more Palestinians (black), the percentage of times that Palestinians ended the period of nonviolence by killing Israelis (grey), and the percentage of times that both sides killed on the same day (white). Virtually all periods of nonviolence lasting more than a week were ended when the Israelis killed Palestinians first. We include here the data from all pause durations that actually occurred.

Thus, a systematic pattern does exist: it is overwhelmingly Israel, not Palestine, that kills first following a lull. Indeed, it is virtually always Israel that kills first after a lull lasting more than a week.

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Avi Shlaim: How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:43:14 +0100

“A wide gap separates the reality of Israel’s actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel’s objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. ...

“This brief review of Israel’s record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination.”

The leading historian of Israel and the Arab world, Oxford professor of international relations and former IDF soldier Avi Shlaim, tears hole after hole in the official version of events in a piece for the Guardian today. If you want to understand what is really happening in Gaza, and the overarching historical context of Israel’s latest onslaught, this article is a must-read.

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National Demonstration: Saturday 10 January; daily protests continuing outside the Israeli embassy in London

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:17:42 +0100

Via Stop The War:

National Demonstration: Saturday 10 January
Stop the Massacre: Israel Out of Gaza
Assemble 12.30pm Speakers Corner, Hyde Park
March to Israeli Embassy, High St Kensington, London

Daily protests 5 - 9 January, 5.30pm-7.00 pm
Israeli Embassy, High St, Kensington, London

“This is Dante’s Inferno, hell. There are injuries here you just don’t want to see in this world. Children coming in with their abdomens open and legs cut off. We just had a child and we had to amputate both legs and an arm. Their only crime is that they are civilians, Palestinians, living in Gaza. The bombing has to stop immediately. This cannot go on. Anyone who portrays this as a clean war against another army is lying. This is an all out war against the civilian population in Gaza. They cannot flee as other populations can in war time because Israel has them trapped in a cage. Israel is bombing one and a half million people trapped in a cage.” - Mads Gilbert, Norwegian Doctor working in Gaza

UPDATE: Stop the War have just publicised yet another important reason to make sure you are on that march on Saturday - the British Government are trying to prevent it from taking place:

Stop the War Coalition
Press Release
Saturday 3 January 2009
Immediate
www.stopwar.org.uk
Contact:
Andrew Burgin: 07939 242 229

GOVERNMENT BLOCKS GAZA DEMONSTRATION AT ISRAELI EMBASSY

Ministers are obstructing the holding of a national demonstration on Saturday
to protest against the Israeli invasion of Gaza, march organisers said today.

Officials of the Royal Parks Agency, acting under the authority of Culture
Secretary Andy Burnham, have blocked a plan to hold a rally in Kensington
Palace Gardens near the Israeli Embassy in London.

The demonstration, organised by the Stop the War Coalition, Palestine
Solidarity Campaign and British Muslim Initiative, is expected to attract tens
of thousands of people from across the country, outraged at the massacre of
Palestinians taking place in Gaza.

"The arrangements for our march and rally were notified to the police days
ago," Stop the War Coalition chair Andrew Murray said today. "We have now
found that they are being blocked by the Parks authorities, in consultation
with ministers, on the spurious pretext of a lack of precedent.

"This nonsensical argument recalls government attempts to stop the rally
against the Iraq war in February 2003 on the grounds that the grass in Hyde
Park might be damaged.

"Ministers should understand that the anger against Israeli aggression against
the Palestinian people is also without precedent. We are determined to
exercise our democratic right to express that outrage in a public space near
the Israeli Embassy.

"Attempting to block our plans - which have been drawn up with a view to
ensuring a peaceful and orderly protest on Saturday - risks making thousands of
people angrier still.

"We are therefore seeking an urgent meeting with Mr Burnham to ensure that he
removes these bureaucratic obstructions and allows our protest to proceed as
planned."

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Andrew Burgin: 07939 242 229
Press Office
Stop the War Coalition
27 Britannia Street
London WC1X 9JP
www.stopwar.org.uk

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Israel’s propaganda war

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:19:11 +0100

As was entirely predictable, Israel’s extremely well-co-ordinated propaganda effort continues to enjoy an extraordinary level of success in dominating the mainstream media agenda, and is even branching out into new media. Meanwhile, the underlying facts of this conflict remain available - to those who know where, in the labyrinthine back-streets of the Internet, to look - and provide a chilling corrective to the official narrative.

UPDATE: More on that “terrorist infrastructure” we keep hearing about from Jamie at the Heathlander - a brilliant overview, which should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand what Israel is really doing. And, if British complicity in Israeli aggression were not already damning enough, it appears that, under the cover of publically calling for a ceasefire, we are taking further strides in that direction - if the account of this former UK ambassador is correct. As David Wearing comments, the two-faced strategy is likely to be a result of the political costs paid by Brown’s predecessor as a result of his acquiescence in Israel’s vicious attack on Lebanon in the Summer of 2006, which ultimately helped lead to his ejection from office. This delicate strategy of balance, in which Britain attempts to maintain a facade of international respectability while not alienating its ally in the “special relationship” (not to mention its “special relationship” with Israel) has a long history, which you can find out more about here. In the meantime, we must try to embarrass the Government into reversing course. Tell your Parliamentary representatives about what Craig Murray has just revealed; keep pressuring journalists to get it into the news. We may not be able to save every life - but every bit of pressure we succeed in putting on our Government and on Israel may amount to more lives saved, more suffering alleviated in the long run.

Also ... As I noted in a piece written a couple of years ago for my University newspaper, Britain’s “defence relations with the United States” - along with the “interests of British arms companies” - are also implicated in the maintenance of our arms sales to Israel, according to the then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, and other UK ministers. So it looks extremely likely that Britain is now making itself complicit in the mass killing of children so that it can continue to cosy up to corporate power at home and American power abroad. Just a thought.

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PROTESTS PLANNED: 3 January, central London and across the UK.

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:12:58 +0100

Be there.

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Gaza: war crimes and crimes against humanity

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 03:17:20 +0100

Deliberate violation of a ceasefire agreement; deliberate targeting of civilians, civilian homes and buildings; “reckless and unlawful Israeli attacks against densely populated residential areas”, leading to a “horrific death toll”; the deliberate starvation of a civilian population; and a blockade on medical and humanitarian supplies that has left the health sector “completely overwhelmed and unable to cope”. Amnesty International and B'Tselem on Israel's assault on Gaza.

31 Dec. '08: B'Tselem to Attorney General Mazuz: Concern over Israel targeting civilian objects in the Gaza Strip

Since the beginning of the military operation in the Gaza Strip, on 27 December 2008, the army has bombed dozens of houses, public buildings, and other structures throughout the Gaza Strip.

The principle of distinction, one of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, states that all parties engaged in combat must distinguish between civilian objects and military targets, and are forbidden to intentionally attack civilians and civilian objects. The First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions establishes two conditions that must be met for an object to be considered a legitimate military target: it must effectively contribute to military action and its total destruction or partial neutralization offers a clear military advantage.

Despite this, other statements made by Israeli officials in recent days raise the suspicion that the army is not maintaining the requisite distinction in its attacks in Gaza. Prime Minster Ehud Olmert stated that, “Israel is not at war with the Palestinian people but with Hamas, which has dedicated itself to acting against residents of Israel. Accordingly, the objects attacked today were selected with the emphasis on the imperative to prevent harm to innocent persons.” In an article published in yesterday’s Washington Post, a senior military official was quoted as follows: "There are many aspects to Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel." Major Avital Liebowitz, of the IDF Spokesperson’s Office, told the correspondent that the army had indeed widened its target list in comparison to previous operations, saying Hamas has used ostensibly civilian actions as a cover for military activities. "Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target," she said.

These comments suggest that the operation in Gaza is aimed against every person and entity tied in some way to Hamas, even if they are not engaged in military action against Israel. An examination of the sites that were bombed in recent days raises questions regarding the legality of targeting many of them.

For example, the military bombed the main police building in Gaza and killed, according to reports, forty-two Palestinians who were in a training course and were standing in formation at the time of the bombing. Participants in the course study first-aid, handling of public disturbances, human rights, public-safety exercises, and so forth. Following the course, the police officers are assigned to various arms of the police force in Gaza responsible for maintaining public order.

Another example is yesterday’s bombing of the government offices. These offices included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Labor, Construction and Housing. An announcement made by the IDF Spokesperson’s Office regarding this attack stated that, “the attack was carried out in response to the ongoing rocket and mortar-shell fire carried out by Hamas over Israeli territory, and in the framework of IDF operations to strike at Hamas governmental infrastructure and members active in the organization.”

These are just examples of what appear to be clear civilian objects attacked by the army. On the face of it, the activity carried out in these places is not military activity aimed against Israel, and the IDF spokesperson does not even make this claim. Clearly, then, they cannot be considered military objects in accordance with the provisions of international humanitarian law – they do not make an effective contribution to the military activity against Israel and the attack provides Israel with no militaryadvantage whatsoever, and certainly not a clear militaryadvantage.

Hamas is certainly responsible for missile fire at Israeli civilians, which constitutes a war crime. However, as the entity effectively governing the Gaza Strip, it is also responsible for maintaining daily life. As such, it supervises the activity of all civilian frameworks in Gaza – among them the welfare, health, housing, and legal systems. Hamas must also ensure public order and safety by means of a police force. Therefore, even if Hamas is a “hostile entity” whose principle objective is to undermine the existence of the State of Israel, this does not lead to the conclusion that every act it carries out is intended to harm Israel and that every government ministry is a legitimate target.

The argument that striking at objects of this kind is consistent with international humanitarian law is untenable. Such an interpretation, which relates to these bodies as military objects, stretches the provisions of international humanitarian law in a way that is inconsistent with the articles cited above, and contravenes the principle of distinction that lies at the foundation of international humanitarian law. An intentional attack on a civilian target is a war crime.

http://www.btselem.org/English/Gaza_Strip/20081231_Gaza_Letter_to_Mazuz.asp

End unlawful attacks and meet Gaza's emergency needs

29 December 2008

Palestinian civilians remain at risk of being killed or injured in the Israeli air strikes and are increasingly lacking adequate medical care, food, medicines, electricity, water and other necessities, Amnesty International said on Monday after three days of the Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip in which more than 300 Palestinians have been killed.

"The horrific death toll risks growing due to the unavailability of adequate medical care for the hundreds of injured. The health sector in Gaza lacks equipment, medicine and expertise at the best of times and has been further depleted due to the prolonged Israeli blockade. It is now completely overwhelmed and unable to cope with the large number of casualties," said Amnesty International.

Israel must grant the wounded access to hospitals in Israel and to Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. The Egyptian authorities should also open Egyptian hospitals to those in need of medical care which is not available in Gaza and must ensure that its border guards do not resort to excessive use of force against those fleeing the bombing . The Hamas de-facto administration must also ensure that its security forces and militias do not, under any circumstances, hinder or prevent the passage of the wounded or others patients trying to leave Gaza.

Despite assurances from the Israeli authorities’ that humanitarian aid is being allowed into Gaza, the reality is that the quantity of humanitarian aid and supplies which has been allowed into Gaza in recent months is only a fraction of what is required.

"It is utterly unacceptable for Israel to continue to purposefully deprive 1.5 million people of food and other basic necessities. Such a policy cannot be justified on any security or other grounds and must end immediately," said Amnesty International. "Israel must allow international humanitarian and human rights workers immediate and safe access to Gaza."

Amnesty International reiterates its call for an end to reckless and unlawful Israeli attacks against densely populated residential areas which have killed more than 300 Palestinians since 27 December, including scores of unarmed civilians and police personnel not taking part in the hostilities, and injured several hundred others.

Amnesty International also calls once again on Hamas and all other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza to stop firing indiscriminate rockets against towns and villages in southern Israel, which have killed two Israeli civilians and injured several others in the past three days.

Following reports that an unconfirmed number of detainees, including political detainee members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, were killed and injured in Israeli air strikes on security installations and detention centres, Amnesty International calls on Israel not to target detention facilities. Hamas should also promptly provide information about the fate of the detainees to their families and allow families to visit them where possible.

Civilian residential homes and other buildings, including a university, have been targeted by Israeli air strikes. Compounding the atmosphere of fear resulting from the Israeli bombardments, Israeli forces have been sending seemingly random telephone messages to many inhabitants of Gaza telling them to leave their homes because of imminent air strikes against their houses. Such messages have been received by residents of multi-storey apartment building, causing panic not only for those who received the calls but for all their neighbours. Such practice was widely used by Israeli forces both in Gaza and in Lebanon in 2006, but has not been reported since. The threatening calls seem to aim to spread fear among the civilian population, as in most cases no air strikes were carried out against the buildings. If this is the purpose, rather than to give effective warning, this practice violates international law and must end immediately.

The international community, especially the members of the Quartet (the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States of America) as well as countries of the League of the Arab States, must go beyond the rhetoric and exert concrete pressure on both parties to the conflict to end the abuses of international law they are committing. The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions should also consider holding an emergency meeting to address the situation.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/end-unlawful-attacks-and-meet-gazas-emergency-needs-20081229

Civilians must be protected in Gaza and Israel

28 December 2008

Amnesty International calls on Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups to immediately halt the unlawful attacks carried out as part of the escalation of violence which has caused the death of some 280 Palestinians and one Israeli civilian since December 27.

This is the highest level of Palestinian fatalities and casualties in four decades of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Scores of unarmed civilians, as well as police personnel who were not directly participating in the hostilities, are among the Palestinian victims of the Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip.

"Such disproportionate use of force by Israel is unlawful and risks igniting further violence in the whole region,” said Amnesty International. “The escalation of violence comes at a time when the civilian population already faces a daily struggle for survival due to the Israeli blockade which has prevented even food and medicines from entering Gaza.”

"Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, for their part, share responsibility for the escalation. Their continuous rocket attacks on towns and villages in southern Israel are unlawful and can never be justified,” Amnesty International said.

"The international community must intervene without delay to ensure that civilians caught up in the violence are protected and that the blockade on Gaza is lifted."

This latest Israeli onslaught brings the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces this year to some 650, at least a third of whom are unarmed civilians, including 70 children. In the same period, Palestinian armed groups have killed 25 Israelis, 16 of them civilians, including four children. In the past eight years the Israeli-Palestinian violence has cost the lives of some 5,000 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis. Most of the victims on both sides have been unarmed civilians, including some 900 Palestinian and 120 Israeli children.

In recent weeks UN agencies, on whose food handouts 80 percent of Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants depend, have repeatedly complained about the Israeli authorities’ refusal to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

The Israeli blockade meant that the recent five-and-a-half-month ceasefire between Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, Gaza residents experienced little or no improvement to their lives. The ceasefire effectively ended after six Palestinian militants were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza force on 4 November and a barrage of Palestinians rockets were launched on nearby towns and villages in the south of Israel.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/civilians-must-be-protected-gaza-and-israel-20081228

Meanwhile, humanitarian organisations are saying the situation on the ground is the worst it’s been for 40 years, describing Israel's humanitarian blockade of the Strip as collective punishment of the civilian population, a “serious crime against humanity”:

For the best sources of information as Israel's assault continues, check out The Heathlander, The Democrat's Diary, Lenin's Tomb, Norman Finkelstein and the Electronic Intifada.

You can also take action for a ceasefire here, get involved with the campaign against the UK's arming of Israel here, and join the UK's Palestine Solidarity Campaign here. There is a list of the aid agencies working to provide humanitarian relief available here. please give whatever you can. Protests are taking place in central London and across the country on 3 January - more information is available here.

UPDATE: My apologies to readers - the video posted above, although it has resurfaced again more recently, is in fact from March this year. What this indicates could hardly be more plain: Israel, on top of creating a humanitarian crisis so grim that it has pushed Gaza to its worst state in 40 years, is now driving it past the brink of collapse. Is it necessary to recall the terms in which deputy defence Minister Matan Vilnai described the horrors his country was inflicting, and would inflict, on the territory’s 1.5 million inhabitants the previous month? Given that the current onslaught was itself in planning over six months ago, it does not seem entirely irrelevant.

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What do they even hope to achieve? Er, rather a lot, as it turns out

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 02:58:35 +0100

Direct action gets the goods. Let me repeat that: direct action gets the goods. And once more for luck: direct action gets the goods.

All we need now is a hell of a lot more of it.

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to sit on a runway for a few days …

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Climate change: it’s not (just) the economy, stupid

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:09:41 +0100

The widespread tendency to discuss climate change as if it were, at root, a matter of costs and benefits that can be worked out in purely economic terms is dragging us into a realm of overt moral depravity perhaps unrivalled since educated, intelligent men coolly discussed the economic costs and benefits of buying and selling black people for profit. This is not an original observation – in the journal Climatic Change, as Mark Lynas pointed out recently, one Dr Marc Davidson of the University of Amsterdam has noted some of the stark parallels between the arguments advanced by contemporary slave-owners and those of today’s vested interests and their lackeys. But it surely says rather a lot about our prevailing political culture that the primary reaction of many commentators to a process that threatens to kill and severely harm hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, to destroy nations and to create war, famine and refugee crises on an almost unimaginable scale (those who believe I exaggerate should have a close look at Lynas’s Six Degrees – recently the winner of a prize from the Royal Society for popular science authorship – and compare its predictions with the already rapidly-accumulating evidence of a climate more sensitive and under ever-greater anthropogenic pressure than we had supposed) is to ask how much money it’s going to cost. This is a point that has been well made recently by George Monbiot, in response to Nicholas Stern’s artful re-valuation of human life in dollars and cents, but it has also been made in the consistently excellent work of Paul Baer (much of which is available here).

Thankfully, a number of writers from the field of ethics are now wresting this subject back to its rightful domain, as chiefly a matter that concerns questions of right and wrong. One work I would very highly recommend for both lay readers and those more deeply involved in the issue is The Ethics of Climate Change, by Secretary of the Royal Institute of Philosophy James Garvey. (A short interview with Garvey on the same subject from the rather good series of podcasts Ethics Bites is also available here.) This is a really excellent book which, as well as exploring how we can best apply fundamental ethical ideas and principles to this problem, cuts through the notion that we can talk about the costs of climate change in purely economic terms, with questions of human life and human suffering merely an afterthought.

Below you can watch another excellent exposition from the always sharp and scrupulously rational Australian philosopher Peter Singer – justly one of the most distinguished writers in the field of ethics. If you’ve got the time, this lecture is well worth listening to. Perhaps most compellingly, Singer concludes his talk by offering rather a different view of climate change from the one we are most accustomed to consider. As he suggests:

“As well as all of these principles of justice that I’ve been talking about – which seem to me to point unequivocally to the need for drastic reductions and to the need for US leadership, or US and European leadership in this issue – there is also this perspective from Africa, from the President of Uganda, Museveni, suggesting actually that what we are doing is not just injustice in dividing up a common resource, but is actually aggression – is actually a form of aggression that we are waging on other nations, that we are harming them, and particularly that Africa is going to be harmed – that whereas it may benefit some nations, it may benefit Alaska or Siberia, then Africa is going to be the one that is most harmed by it. And I guess the model of aggression is simply that, well, we are doing something, we are emitting something which does not stay within our borders – so it’s almost as if we attack this nation by let’s say destroying the dams that hold the water that it needs to irrigate – because climate change will be worse for these nations, will make rainfall unpredictable, will make areas currently suitable for agriculture unsuitable. So I’m just throwing this out there, I’m not actually saying that it’s right, but I also don’t think that it’s stupid or completely absurd to say that we might look back on this as a form of aggression that we have committed against other nations, and are still continuing to commit.”

Given that the UN Environment Programme and Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon have pointed to climate change-driven water shortages as a prime cause of the conflict in Darfur, for instance, it is already possible to identify some truly horrendous atrocities in which this form of international aggression – as it is quite plausible we should consider climate change – makes us complicit. What we choose to do about this is fundamentally a moral question – one that all of us are going to have to face up to, and soon.

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