A Good Reason for American Pessimism
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 4:42 PM
0 comments
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Israelis Rush for Second Passports
CounterPunch
Weekend Edition
June 3 / 5, 2011
"Perhaps as many as half of the Jews living in Israel will consider leaving Palestine in the next few years if political and social trends continue."
By FRANKLIN LAMB
Beirut
Perhaps historians or cultural anthropologists surveying the course of human events can identify for us a land, in addition to Palestine, where such a large percentage of a recently arrived colonial population prepared to exercise their right to depart, while many more, with actual millennial roots but victims of ethnic cleansing, prepared to exercise their right of Return.
One of the many ironies inherent in the 19th century Zionist colonial enterprise in Palestine is the fact that this increasingly fraying project was billed for most of the 20th century as a haven in the Middle East for “returning” persecuted European Jews. But today, in the 21st century, it is Europe that is increasingly being viewed by a large number of the illegal occupiers of Palestinian land as the much desired haven for returning Middle Eastern Jews. To paraphrase Jewish journalist Gideon Levy “If our forefathers dreamt of an Israeli passport to escape from Europe, there are many among us who are now dreaming of a second passport to escape to Europe.”
Several studies in Israel and one conducted by AIPAC and another by the Jewish National Fund in Germany show that perhaps as many as half of the Jews living in Israel will consider leaving Palestine in the next few years if current political and social trends continue. A 2008 survey by the Jerusalem-based Menachem Begin Heritage Center found that 59 per cent of Israelis had approached or intended to approach a foreign embassy to inquire about or apply for citizenship and a passport. Today it is estimated that the figure is approaching 70 per cent.
The number of Israelis thinking of leaving Palestine is climbing rapidly according to researchers at Bar-Ilan University who conducted a study published recently in Eretz Acheret, (“A Different Place”) an Israeli NGO that claims to promote cultural dialogue. What the Bar-Ilan study found is that more than 100,000 Israelis already hold a German passport, and this figure increases by more than 7,000 every year along an accelerating trajectory. According to German officials, more than 70,000 such passports have been granted since 2000. In addition to Germany, there are more than one million Israelis with other foreign passports at the ready in case life in Israel deteriorates.
One of the most appealing countries for Israelis contemplating emigration, as well as perhaps the most welcoming, is the United States. Currently more than 500,000 Israelis hold US passports with close to a quarter million pending applications. During the recent meetings in Washington DC between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s delegation and Israel’s US agents, assurances were reportedly given by AIPAC officials that if and when it becomes necessary, the US government will expeditiously issue American passports to any and all Israeli Jews seeking them. Israeli Arabs need not apply.
AIPAC also represented to the Israelis that the US Congress could be trusted to approve funding for arriving Israeli Jews “to be allocated substantial cash resettlement grants to ease transition into their new country.”
Apart from the Israeli Jews who may be thinking of getting an “insurance passport” for a Diaspora land, there is a similar percentage of Jews worldwide who aren't going to make aliyah. According to Jonathan Rynhold, a Bar Ilan professor specializing on U.S.-Israel relations, Jews may be safer in Teheran than Ashkelon these days—until Israel or the USA starts bombing Iran.
Interviews with some of those who either helped conduct the above noted studies or have knowledge of them, identify several factors that explain the Israeli rush for foreign passports, some rather surprising, given the ultra-nationalist Israeli culture. The common denominator is unease and anxiety, both personal and national, with the second passport considered a kind of insurance policy “for the rainy days visible on the horizon,” as one researcher from Eretz Acheret explained.
Other factors include:
The fact that two or three generations in Israel has not proven enough to implant roots where few if any existed before. For this reason Israel has produced a significant percentage of “re-immigration” — a return of immigrants or their descendants to their country of origin which Zionist propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding, is not Palestine. Fear that religious fanatics from among the more than 600,000 settlers in the West Bank will create civil war and essentially annex pre-1967 Israel and turn Israel more toward an ultra-fascist state.
Centripetal pressures within Israeli society, especially among Russian immigrants who overwhelmingly reject Zionism. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, some one million Jews have come to Israel from the former Soviet Union, enlarging the country's population by 25 per cent and forming the largest concentration in the world of Russian Jews. But today, Russian Jews comprise the largest group emigrating from Israel and they have been returning in droves for reasons ranging from opposition to Zionism, discrimination, and broken promises regarding employment and “the good life” in Israel.
Approximately 200,000 or 22 per cent of Russians coming to Israel since 1990 have so far returned to their country. According to Rabbi Berel Larzar, who has been Russia’s chief Rabbi since 2000, "It's absolutely extraordinary how many people are returning. When Jews left, there was no community, no Jewish life. People felt that being Jewish was an historical mistake that happened to their family. Now, they know they can live in Russia as part of a community and they don’t need Israel."
No faith in or respect for Israeli leaders, most of whom are considered corrupt.
Feelings of anxiety and guilt that Zionism has hijacked Judaism and that traditional Jewish values are being corrupted.
The recent growing appreciation, for many Israelis, significantly abetted by the Internet and the continuing Palestinian resistance, of the compelling and challenging Palestinians narrative that totally undermines the Zionist clarion of the last century of “ A People without and land for a land without a people.”
Fear mongering of the political leaders designed to keep citizens supporting the government’s policies ranging from the Iranian bomb, the countless ‘Terrorists” seemingly everywhere and planning another Holocaust or various existential threats that keep families on edge and concluding that they don’t want to raise their children under such conditions.
Explaining that he was speaking as a private citizen and not as a member of Democrats Abroad Israel, New York native Hillel Schenker suggested that Jews who come to Israel "want to make sure that they have the possibility of an alternative to return whence they came." He added that the "insecurities involved in modern life, and an Israel not yet living at peace with any of its neighbors, have also produced a phenomenon of many Israelis seeking a European passport, based on their family roots, just in case."
Gene Schulman, a former American-Jewish fellow at the Switzerland-based Overseas American Academy, put it even more drastically, emphasizing that all Jews are "scared to death of what is probably going to become of Israel even if the U.S. continues its support for it." Many observers of Israeli society agree that a major, if unexpected recent impetus for Jews to leave Palestine has been the past three months of the Arab Awakening that overturned Israel’s key pillars of regional support.
According to Layal, a Palestinian student from Shatila Camp, who is preparing for the June 5 “Naksa” march to the Blueline in South Lebanon: “What the Zionist occupiers of Palestine saw from Tahrir Square in Cairo to Maroun al Ras in South Lebanon has convinced many Israelis that the Arab and Palestinian resistance, while still in its nascence, will develop into a massive and largely peaceful ground swell such that no amount of weapons or apartheid administration can insure a Zionist future in Palestine. They are right to seek alternative places to raise their families.”
Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be contacted clo fplamb@gmail.com
Weekend Edition
June 3 / 5, 2011
"Perhaps as many as half of the Jews living in Israel will consider leaving Palestine in the next few years if political and social trends continue."
By FRANKLIN LAMB
Beirut
Perhaps historians or cultural anthropologists surveying the course of human events can identify for us a land, in addition to Palestine, where such a large percentage of a recently arrived colonial population prepared to exercise their right to depart, while many more, with actual millennial roots but victims of ethnic cleansing, prepared to exercise their right of Return.
One of the many ironies inherent in the 19th century Zionist colonial enterprise in Palestine is the fact that this increasingly fraying project was billed for most of the 20th century as a haven in the Middle East for “returning” persecuted European Jews. But today, in the 21st century, it is Europe that is increasingly being viewed by a large number of the illegal occupiers of Palestinian land as the much desired haven for returning Middle Eastern Jews. To paraphrase Jewish journalist Gideon Levy “If our forefathers dreamt of an Israeli passport to escape from Europe, there are many among us who are now dreaming of a second passport to escape to Europe.”
Several studies in Israel and one conducted by AIPAC and another by the Jewish National Fund in Germany show that perhaps as many as half of the Jews living in Israel will consider leaving Palestine in the next few years if current political and social trends continue. A 2008 survey by the Jerusalem-based Menachem Begin Heritage Center found that 59 per cent of Israelis had approached or intended to approach a foreign embassy to inquire about or apply for citizenship and a passport. Today it is estimated that the figure is approaching 70 per cent.
The number of Israelis thinking of leaving Palestine is climbing rapidly according to researchers at Bar-Ilan University who conducted a study published recently in Eretz Acheret, (“A Different Place”) an Israeli NGO that claims to promote cultural dialogue. What the Bar-Ilan study found is that more than 100,000 Israelis already hold a German passport, and this figure increases by more than 7,000 every year along an accelerating trajectory. According to German officials, more than 70,000 such passports have been granted since 2000. In addition to Germany, there are more than one million Israelis with other foreign passports at the ready in case life in Israel deteriorates.
One of the most appealing countries for Israelis contemplating emigration, as well as perhaps the most welcoming, is the United States. Currently more than 500,000 Israelis hold US passports with close to a quarter million pending applications. During the recent meetings in Washington DC between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s delegation and Israel’s US agents, assurances were reportedly given by AIPAC officials that if and when it becomes necessary, the US government will expeditiously issue American passports to any and all Israeli Jews seeking them. Israeli Arabs need not apply.
AIPAC also represented to the Israelis that the US Congress could be trusted to approve funding for arriving Israeli Jews “to be allocated substantial cash resettlement grants to ease transition into their new country.”
Apart from the Israeli Jews who may be thinking of getting an “insurance passport” for a Diaspora land, there is a similar percentage of Jews worldwide who aren't going to make aliyah. According to Jonathan Rynhold, a Bar Ilan professor specializing on U.S.-Israel relations, Jews may be safer in Teheran than Ashkelon these days—until Israel or the USA starts bombing Iran.
Interviews with some of those who either helped conduct the above noted studies or have knowledge of them, identify several factors that explain the Israeli rush for foreign passports, some rather surprising, given the ultra-nationalist Israeli culture. The common denominator is unease and anxiety, both personal and national, with the second passport considered a kind of insurance policy “for the rainy days visible on the horizon,” as one researcher from Eretz Acheret explained.
Other factors include:
The fact that two or three generations in Israel has not proven enough to implant roots where few if any existed before. For this reason Israel has produced a significant percentage of “re-immigration” — a return of immigrants or their descendants to their country of origin which Zionist propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding, is not Palestine. Fear that religious fanatics from among the more than 600,000 settlers in the West Bank will create civil war and essentially annex pre-1967 Israel and turn Israel more toward an ultra-fascist state.
Centripetal pressures within Israeli society, especially among Russian immigrants who overwhelmingly reject Zionism. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, some one million Jews have come to Israel from the former Soviet Union, enlarging the country's population by 25 per cent and forming the largest concentration in the world of Russian Jews. But today, Russian Jews comprise the largest group emigrating from Israel and they have been returning in droves for reasons ranging from opposition to Zionism, discrimination, and broken promises regarding employment and “the good life” in Israel.
Approximately 200,000 or 22 per cent of Russians coming to Israel since 1990 have so far returned to their country. According to Rabbi Berel Larzar, who has been Russia’s chief Rabbi since 2000, "It's absolutely extraordinary how many people are returning. When Jews left, there was no community, no Jewish life. People felt that being Jewish was an historical mistake that happened to their family. Now, they know they can live in Russia as part of a community and they don’t need Israel."
No faith in or respect for Israeli leaders, most of whom are considered corrupt.
Feelings of anxiety and guilt that Zionism has hijacked Judaism and that traditional Jewish values are being corrupted.
The recent growing appreciation, for many Israelis, significantly abetted by the Internet and the continuing Palestinian resistance, of the compelling and challenging Palestinians narrative that totally undermines the Zionist clarion of the last century of “ A People without and land for a land without a people.”
Fear mongering of the political leaders designed to keep citizens supporting the government’s policies ranging from the Iranian bomb, the countless ‘Terrorists” seemingly everywhere and planning another Holocaust or various existential threats that keep families on edge and concluding that they don’t want to raise their children under such conditions.
Explaining that he was speaking as a private citizen and not as a member of Democrats Abroad Israel, New York native Hillel Schenker suggested that Jews who come to Israel "want to make sure that they have the possibility of an alternative to return whence they came." He added that the "insecurities involved in modern life, and an Israel not yet living at peace with any of its neighbors, have also produced a phenomenon of many Israelis seeking a European passport, based on their family roots, just in case."
Gene Schulman, a former American-Jewish fellow at the Switzerland-based Overseas American Academy, put it even more drastically, emphasizing that all Jews are "scared to death of what is probably going to become of Israel even if the U.S. continues its support for it." Many observers of Israeli society agree that a major, if unexpected recent impetus for Jews to leave Palestine has been the past three months of the Arab Awakening that overturned Israel’s key pillars of regional support.
According to Layal, a Palestinian student from Shatila Camp, who is preparing for the June 5 “Naksa” march to the Blueline in South Lebanon: “What the Zionist occupiers of Palestine saw from Tahrir Square in Cairo to Maroun al Ras in South Lebanon has convinced many Israelis that the Arab and Palestinian resistance, while still in its nascence, will develop into a massive and largely peaceful ground swell such that no amount of weapons or apartheid administration can insure a Zionist future in Palestine. They are right to seek alternative places to raise their families.”
Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be contacted clo fplamb@gmail.com
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 12:32 PM
0 comments
Pat Robertson: Muslims are the New Nazis
*Tim Murphy is a reporter at Mother Jones.
June 3, 2011 at 11:05
PAT ROBERTSON HAS FINALLY CROSSED THE LINE AND GONE OVER THE EDGE
Televangelist Pat Robertson isn’t the powerful political force he once was, but as the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, he’s still an influential voice on the Christian Right. Yesterday, on his television show, The 700 Club, Robertson delivered a warning to a weary nation: Muslims are the new Nazis:
Robertson: I was thinking, you know, if you oppose Muslims, what is said? Well, you’re a bigot, right? Terrible bigotry. I wonder what were people who opposed the Nazis. Were they bigots?
Co-host: Well, in that day I think they were looked down upon and frowned upon.
Robertson: Why can’t we speak out against an institution that is intent on dominating us and imposing Sharia law and making us all part of a universal caliphate? That’s the goal of some of these people. Why is that bigoted? Why is it bigoted to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and to say we don’t want to live under Nazi Germany?
Not to nitpick here, but people who opposed the Nazis were not “looked down upon and frowned upon” as bigots. This was a few decades ago, so it’s understandably a little obscure, but the United States actually went to war with Nazi Germany. There was a movie about it and everything.
As you’d probably guess, this is hardly the first time Robertson has compared a large and diverse group of people to Nazis:
Watch the following compliments of Sabbah’s Report…
Here’s Robertson in 1995:
“Since the advent of the head of the Justice Department, Janet Reno, things have gotten out of control. Something is going on that is just very unwholesome in this nation….this is a shocking abuse of federal power. It is reminiscent of the Nazis. Something has got to be done.”
And in 1993:
“Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It’s no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians.”
Also in 1993:
“When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together.”
And in 1990:
“[T]he liberal media and the screenwriters…are the spiritual descendants of Goebbels and the Nazis. They’re not just talking about kikes and Jews; they’re not talking about, quote, ‘n—–s.’ They’re talking about Christians now.”
And in 1984:
“The state is steadily attempting to do something that a few states other than the Soviets and the Nazis have attempted to do, namely, to take the children away from the parents and educate them in a philosophy that is amoral, anti-Christian and humanistic and to show them a collectivist philosophy that will ultimately lead to Marxism, socialism, and a communistic type of ideology.”
So as you can see, Muslims are the new gays are the new Clinton Justice Department are the new gays (again) are the new screenwriters are the new public schools are the new Nazis; it’s worse than we thought.
June 3, 2011 at 11:05
PAT ROBERTSON HAS FINALLY CROSSED THE LINE AND GONE OVER THE EDGE
Televangelist Pat Robertson isn’t the powerful political force he once was, but as the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, he’s still an influential voice on the Christian Right. Yesterday, on his television show, The 700 Club, Robertson delivered a warning to a weary nation: Muslims are the new Nazis:
Robertson: I was thinking, you know, if you oppose Muslims, what is said? Well, you’re a bigot, right? Terrible bigotry. I wonder what were people who opposed the Nazis. Were they bigots?
Co-host: Well, in that day I think they were looked down upon and frowned upon.
Robertson: Why can’t we speak out against an institution that is intent on dominating us and imposing Sharia law and making us all part of a universal caliphate? That’s the goal of some of these people. Why is that bigoted? Why is it bigoted to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and to say we don’t want to live under Nazi Germany?
Not to nitpick here, but people who opposed the Nazis were not “looked down upon and frowned upon” as bigots. This was a few decades ago, so it’s understandably a little obscure, but the United States actually went to war with Nazi Germany. There was a movie about it and everything.
As you’d probably guess, this is hardly the first time Robertson has compared a large and diverse group of people to Nazis:
Watch the following compliments of Sabbah’s Report…
Here’s Robertson in 1995:
“Since the advent of the head of the Justice Department, Janet Reno, things have gotten out of control. Something is going on that is just very unwholesome in this nation….this is a shocking abuse of federal power. It is reminiscent of the Nazis. Something has got to be done.”
And in 1993:
“Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It’s no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians.”
Also in 1993:
“When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together.”
And in 1990:
“[T]he liberal media and the screenwriters…are the spiritual descendants of Goebbels and the Nazis. They’re not just talking about kikes and Jews; they’re not talking about, quote, ‘n—–s.’ They’re talking about Christians now.”
And in 1984:
“The state is steadily attempting to do something that a few states other than the Soviets and the Nazis have attempted to do, namely, to take the children away from the parents and educate them in a philosophy that is amoral, anti-Christian and humanistic and to show them a collectivist philosophy that will ultimately lead to Marxism, socialism, and a communistic type of ideology.”
So as you can see, Muslims are the new gays are the new Clinton Justice Department are the new gays (again) are the new screenwriters are the new public schools are the new Nazis; it’s worse than we thought.
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 12:15 PM
0 comments
Did a pork-coated bullet kill Bin Laden?
Yes, says firm who claim its pig fat gun oil is bought by U.S. military personnel
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:18 PM on 2nd June 2011
Was Osama bin Laden shot with a bullet soaked in pork fat, denying him a place in paradise?
Yes, if one rather shady website, that peddles gun oil containing liquefied pig fat, is to be believed.
The makers of Silver Bullet Gun Oil claim it contains 13 per cent USDA liquefied pig fat thus making the product 'a highly effective counter-Islamic terrorist force multiplier.'
The apparent owner of the gun oil site, who goes by the name 'The Midnight Rider,' explains how the pig fat will transfer onto anything the bullet strikes.
This 'effectively denies entry to Allah's paradise to an Islamo-fascist terrorist,' Rider adds.
The oil, which costs $8.95 for 4oz, apparently puts the 'fear of death into them (terrorists)'.
In Islam consumption of pork is forbidden, but the Quran also states that if one is forced to consume the meat then they are guiltless and therefore not disqualified from paradise.
The website also notes its customers include members of the U.S. military.
'Thousands of bottles of Silver Bullet Gun Oil have been distributed since July of 2004 by its creator to members of ALL U.S. Military branches,' it claims.
A promotional YouTube video for the oil shows a picture of Bin Laden and the claim: 'Killed with a weapon using Silver Bullet Gun Oil'.
'Midnite Rider' also known as 'Warrior of YAHWEH,' claims to be a former Marine scout sniper on the site.
Pictures of the 'production line' show a masked men wearing regulation Marine camouflage uniform, that is officially off-limits for civilians.
A disclaimer on the website also reads: 'This product is for use on armed Muslim terrorists only.
'We do not promote discrimination against any race or religion, only terrorists.'
A spokesman for the U.S. Army's weapons-procurement command told the Southern Pverty Law Center's Hatewatch - a not-for-profit that monitors the evolving problem of online bigotry - that he was unfamiliar with Silver Bullet, 'though he conceded that a soldier or marine could theoretically purchase the oil on his or her own and use it on the battlefield.'
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:18 PM on 2nd June 2011
Was Osama bin Laden shot with a bullet soaked in pork fat, denying him a place in paradise?
Yes, if one rather shady website, that peddles gun oil containing liquefied pig fat, is to be believed.
The makers of Silver Bullet Gun Oil claim it contains 13 per cent USDA liquefied pig fat thus making the product 'a highly effective counter-Islamic terrorist force multiplier.'
The apparent owner of the gun oil site, who goes by the name 'The Midnight Rider,' explains how the pig fat will transfer onto anything the bullet strikes.
This 'effectively denies entry to Allah's paradise to an Islamo-fascist terrorist,' Rider adds.
The oil, which costs $8.95 for 4oz, apparently puts the 'fear of death into them (terrorists)'.
In Islam consumption of pork is forbidden, but the Quran also states that if one is forced to consume the meat then they are guiltless and therefore not disqualified from paradise.
The website also notes its customers include members of the U.S. military.
'Thousands of bottles of Silver Bullet Gun Oil have been distributed since July of 2004 by its creator to members of ALL U.S. Military branches,' it claims.
A promotional YouTube video for the oil shows a picture of Bin Laden and the claim: 'Killed with a weapon using Silver Bullet Gun Oil'.
'Midnite Rider' also known as 'Warrior of YAHWEH,' claims to be a former Marine scout sniper on the site.
Pictures of the 'production line' show a masked men wearing regulation Marine camouflage uniform, that is officially off-limits for civilians.
A disclaimer on the website also reads: 'This product is for use on armed Muslim terrorists only.
'We do not promote discrimination against any race or religion, only terrorists.'
A spokesman for the U.S. Army's weapons-procurement command told the Southern Pverty Law Center's Hatewatch - a not-for-profit that monitors the evolving problem of online bigotry - that he was unfamiliar with Silver Bullet, 'though he conceded that a soldier or marine could theoretically purchase the oil on his or her own and use it on the battlefield.'
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 12:05 PM
0 comments
White House, Jewish Dems defend president’s Israel policies
June 3, 2011
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The White House website posted a defense of President Obama's Israel record, and several prominent Jewish Democrats penned Op-Eds defending his policies.
"President Obama: Advancing Israel's Security and Supporting Peace," which appeared online on Friday, addressed the controversy over the president's call in a May 19 Middle East policy speech for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to based on 1967 lines, with mutually agreed swaps.
"He has stated frankly what everyone knows -- a lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people, each state enjoying self determination, mutual recognition, and peace," the post said.
At least two conservative pro-Israel groups have launched media campaigns in recent days suggesting that Obama is distancing himself from Israel.
The post lists a number of Obama's pro-Israel statements, including his remark that Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with Hamas as long as the group does not recognize Israel and does not renounce terrorism; his pledge to combat delegitimization of Israel; his increases in security assistance to Israel and his efforts to isolate Iran.
In addition to the White House posting, defenders of Obama's Israel record took to newspaper's Op-Ed pages, with his former White House chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel writing for the Washington Post, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, and Robert Wexler, a former Florida congressman, both penning opinion articles for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Florida, with a substantial Jewish populations, is seen as a swing state in the 2012 election.
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The White House website posted a defense of President Obama's Israel record, and several prominent Jewish Democrats penned Op-Eds defending his policies.
"President Obama: Advancing Israel's Security and Supporting Peace," which appeared online on Friday, addressed the controversy over the president's call in a May 19 Middle East policy speech for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to based on 1967 lines, with mutually agreed swaps.
"He has stated frankly what everyone knows -- a lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people, each state enjoying self determination, mutual recognition, and peace," the post said.
At least two conservative pro-Israel groups have launched media campaigns in recent days suggesting that Obama is distancing himself from Israel.
The post lists a number of Obama's pro-Israel statements, including his remark that Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with Hamas as long as the group does not recognize Israel and does not renounce terrorism; his pledge to combat delegitimization of Israel; his increases in security assistance to Israel and his efforts to isolate Iran.
In addition to the White House posting, defenders of Obama's Israel record took to newspaper's Op-Ed pages, with his former White House chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel writing for the Washington Post, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, and Robert Wexler, a former Florida congressman, both penning opinion articles for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Florida, with a substantial Jewish populations, is seen as a swing state in the 2012 election.
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 11:58 AM
0 comments
Conservative groups launch anti-Obama campaigns
By Ron Kampeas · June 2, 2011
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Conservative pro-Israel groups launched TV ads and robo-calls attacking President Obama's call for negotiations based on 1967 lines.
The Emergency Committee for Israel on Wednesday posted on its website a TV ad that reportedly will appear on cable news networks in the Washington and New York markets.
The ad thanks Democrats in Congress who it said "stood with Israel" after Obama "sided with the Palestinians."
Obama, in his May 19 Middle East policy speech called for negotiations based on the 1967 lines, but with mutually agreed land swaps, secure borders for Israel, and a non-militarized Palestinian state that recognizes Israel as Jewish.
The Republican Jewish Coalition separately is targeting Jewish voters with robo-calls that call on Obama to "retract his statements, and support secure and defensible borders for Israel," according to a Wall Street Journal report.
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Conservative pro-Israel groups launched TV ads and robo-calls attacking President Obama's call for negotiations based on 1967 lines.
The Emergency Committee for Israel on Wednesday posted on its website a TV ad that reportedly will appear on cable news networks in the Washington and New York markets.
The ad thanks Democrats in Congress who it said "stood with Israel" after Obama "sided with the Palestinians."
Obama, in his May 19 Middle East policy speech called for negotiations based on the 1967 lines, but with mutually agreed land swaps, secure borders for Israel, and a non-militarized Palestinian state that recognizes Israel as Jewish.
The Republican Jewish Coalition separately is targeting Jewish voters with robo-calls that call on Obama to "retract his statements, and support secure and defensible borders for Israel," according to a Wall Street Journal report.
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 11:57 AM
0 comments
A Former Spy Chief Questions the Judgment of Israeli Leaders
June 3, 2011
NYT
By ETHAN BRONNER
JERUSALEM — The man who ran Israel’s Mossad spy agency until January contends that Israel’s top leaders lack judgment and that the anticipated pressures of international isolation as the Palestinians campaign for statehood could lead to rash decisions — like an airstrike on Iran.
The former intelligence chief, Meir Dagan, who stepped down after eight years in the post, has made several unusual public appearances and statements in recent weeks. He made headlines a few weeks ago when he asserted at a Hebrew University conference that a military attack on Iran would be “a stupid idea.”
This week Mr. Dagan, speaking at Tel Aviv University, said that attacking Iran “would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program.” He added, “The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible.”
Mr. Dagan went on to complain that Israel had failed to put forward a peace initiative with the Palestinians and that it had foolishly ignored the Saudi peace initiative promising full diplomatic relations in exchange for a return to the 1967 border lines. He worried that Israel would soon be pushed into a corner.
On Thursday he got more specific, naming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, but this time through a leaked statement to journalists. The statement had to do with his belief that his retirement and the retirement of other top security chiefs had taken away a necessary alternative voice in decision making.
In recent months, the military chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, and the director of the Shin Bet internal security agency, Yuval Diskin, have also stepped down. Mr. Dagan was quoted in several newspapers as saying that the three of them had served as a counterweight to Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak.
“I decided to speak out because when I was in office, Diskin, Ashkenazi and I could block any dangerous adventure,” he was quoted as saying. “Now I am afraid that there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak,” he added, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname.
Journalists recalled that Mr. Dagan, who had refused contact with the media during his time in office, called a news briefing the last week of his tenure and laid out his concerns about an attack on Iran. But military censorship prevented his words from being reported.
“Dagan wanted to send a message to the Israeli public, but the censors stopped him,” Ronen Bergman of the newspaper Yediot Aharonot said by telephone. “So now that he is out of office he is going over the heads of the censors by speaking publicly.”
Mr. Dagan’s public and critical comments, at the age of 66 and after a long and widely admired career, have shaken the political establishment. The prime minister’s office declined requests for a response, although ministers have attacked Mr. Dagan. He has also found an echo among the nation’s commentators who have been ringing similar alarms.
“It’s not the Iranians or the Palestinians who are keeping Dagan awake at night but Israel’s leadership,” Ari Shavit asserted on the front page of the newspaper Haaretz on Friday.
“He does not trust the judgment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.”
It was Mr. Shavit who interviewed Mr. Dagan on stage at Tel Aviv University this week. And while Haaretz is the home of the country’s left wing, Mr. Shavit is more of a centrist.
“Dagan is really worried about September,” Mr. Shavit said in a telephone interview, referring to the month when the Palestinians are expected to ask the United Nations General Assembly to recognize their state within the 1967 border lines. The resolution is expected to pass and to bring new forms of international pressure on Israel. “He is afraid that Israel’s isolation will cause its leaders to take reckless action against Iran,” he said.
Nahum Barnea, a commentator for Yediot Aharonot, wrote on Friday that Mr. Dagan was not alone. Naming the other retired security chiefs and adding Amos Yadlin, who recently retired as chief of military intelligence, Mr. Barnea said that they shared Mr. Dagan’s criticism.
“This is not a military junta that has conspired against the elected leadership,” Mr. Barnea wrote. “These are people who, through their positions, were exposed to the state’s most closely guarded secrets and participated in the most intimate discussions with the prime minister and the defense minister. It is not so much that their opinion is important as civilians; their testimony is important as people who were there. And their testimony is troubling.”
This concern was backed by a former Mossad official, Gad Shimron, who spoke Friday on Israel Radio.
Mr. Shimron said: “I want everyone to pay attention to the fact that the three tribal elders, Ashkenazi, Diskin and Dagan, within a very short time, are all telling the people of Israel: take note, something is going on that we couldn’t talk about until now, and now we are talking about it. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and that is the decision-making process. The leadership makes fiery statements, we stepped on the brakes, we are no longer there and we don’t know what will happen. And that’s why we are saying this aloud.”
Neither Mr. Ashkenazi nor Mr. Diskin has made any public statements, and one high-level military official said he did not believe that they shared Mr. Dagan’s views.
While in office, Mr. Dagan served three prime ministers, was reappointed twice and oversaw a number of reported operations that Israelis consider great successes — forcing delays in Iran’s nuclear program through sabotaging its computers and assassinating scientists; setting the groundwork for an attack on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007; and assassinating Imad Mughniyeh, a top Lebanese Hezbollah operative, in 2008.
When Ariel Sharon, the prime minister in 2002, appointed Mr. Dagan, he was reported to have told him he wanted “a Mossad with a knife between its teeth.” Mr. Dagan is widely thought to have complied and is not seen as a soft-hearted liberal.
Although Mr. Dagan is barred by law from elected office for three years, some suspect that he is laying the foundation for a political career. Others, like Yossi Peled, a government minister from the Likud party and a former military commander, think he is doing more harm than good.
“It damages state security,” Mr. Peled said on Israel Radio. “There is no need to give the other side directions of thought, activity or readiness. I am sure he is very worried and is acting out of good intentions, but I still think there are things that shouldn’t be declared in public.”
NYT
By ETHAN BRONNER
JERUSALEM — The man who ran Israel’s Mossad spy agency until January contends that Israel’s top leaders lack judgment and that the anticipated pressures of international isolation as the Palestinians campaign for statehood could lead to rash decisions — like an airstrike on Iran.
The former intelligence chief, Meir Dagan, who stepped down after eight years in the post, has made several unusual public appearances and statements in recent weeks. He made headlines a few weeks ago when he asserted at a Hebrew University conference that a military attack on Iran would be “a stupid idea.”
This week Mr. Dagan, speaking at Tel Aviv University, said that attacking Iran “would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program.” He added, “The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible.”
Mr. Dagan went on to complain that Israel had failed to put forward a peace initiative with the Palestinians and that it had foolishly ignored the Saudi peace initiative promising full diplomatic relations in exchange for a return to the 1967 border lines. He worried that Israel would soon be pushed into a corner.
On Thursday he got more specific, naming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, but this time through a leaked statement to journalists. The statement had to do with his belief that his retirement and the retirement of other top security chiefs had taken away a necessary alternative voice in decision making.
In recent months, the military chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, and the director of the Shin Bet internal security agency, Yuval Diskin, have also stepped down. Mr. Dagan was quoted in several newspapers as saying that the three of them had served as a counterweight to Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak.
“I decided to speak out because when I was in office, Diskin, Ashkenazi and I could block any dangerous adventure,” he was quoted as saying. “Now I am afraid that there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak,” he added, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname.
Journalists recalled that Mr. Dagan, who had refused contact with the media during his time in office, called a news briefing the last week of his tenure and laid out his concerns about an attack on Iran. But military censorship prevented his words from being reported.
“Dagan wanted to send a message to the Israeli public, but the censors stopped him,” Ronen Bergman of the newspaper Yediot Aharonot said by telephone. “So now that he is out of office he is going over the heads of the censors by speaking publicly.”
Mr. Dagan’s public and critical comments, at the age of 66 and after a long and widely admired career, have shaken the political establishment. The prime minister’s office declined requests for a response, although ministers have attacked Mr. Dagan. He has also found an echo among the nation’s commentators who have been ringing similar alarms.
“It’s not the Iranians or the Palestinians who are keeping Dagan awake at night but Israel’s leadership,” Ari Shavit asserted on the front page of the newspaper Haaretz on Friday.
“He does not trust the judgment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.”
It was Mr. Shavit who interviewed Mr. Dagan on stage at Tel Aviv University this week. And while Haaretz is the home of the country’s left wing, Mr. Shavit is more of a centrist.
“Dagan is really worried about September,” Mr. Shavit said in a telephone interview, referring to the month when the Palestinians are expected to ask the United Nations General Assembly to recognize their state within the 1967 border lines. The resolution is expected to pass and to bring new forms of international pressure on Israel. “He is afraid that Israel’s isolation will cause its leaders to take reckless action against Iran,” he said.
Nahum Barnea, a commentator for Yediot Aharonot, wrote on Friday that Mr. Dagan was not alone. Naming the other retired security chiefs and adding Amos Yadlin, who recently retired as chief of military intelligence, Mr. Barnea said that they shared Mr. Dagan’s criticism.
“This is not a military junta that has conspired against the elected leadership,” Mr. Barnea wrote. “These are people who, through their positions, were exposed to the state’s most closely guarded secrets and participated in the most intimate discussions with the prime minister and the defense minister. It is not so much that their opinion is important as civilians; their testimony is important as people who were there. And their testimony is troubling.”
This concern was backed by a former Mossad official, Gad Shimron, who spoke Friday on Israel Radio.
Mr. Shimron said: “I want everyone to pay attention to the fact that the three tribal elders, Ashkenazi, Diskin and Dagan, within a very short time, are all telling the people of Israel: take note, something is going on that we couldn’t talk about until now, and now we are talking about it. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and that is the decision-making process. The leadership makes fiery statements, we stepped on the brakes, we are no longer there and we don’t know what will happen. And that’s why we are saying this aloud.”
Neither Mr. Ashkenazi nor Mr. Diskin has made any public statements, and one high-level military official said he did not believe that they shared Mr. Dagan’s views.
While in office, Mr. Dagan served three prime ministers, was reappointed twice and oversaw a number of reported operations that Israelis consider great successes — forcing delays in Iran’s nuclear program through sabotaging its computers and assassinating scientists; setting the groundwork for an attack on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007; and assassinating Imad Mughniyeh, a top Lebanese Hezbollah operative, in 2008.
When Ariel Sharon, the prime minister in 2002, appointed Mr. Dagan, he was reported to have told him he wanted “a Mossad with a knife between its teeth.” Mr. Dagan is widely thought to have complied and is not seen as a soft-hearted liberal.
Although Mr. Dagan is barred by law from elected office for three years, some suspect that he is laying the foundation for a political career. Others, like Yossi Peled, a government minister from the Likud party and a former military commander, think he is doing more harm than good.
“It damages state security,” Mr. Peled said on Israel Radio. “There is no need to give the other side directions of thought, activity or readiness. I am sure he is very worried and is acting out of good intentions, but I still think there are things that shouldn’t be declared in public.”
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 11:52 AM
0 comments
Friday, June 03, 2011
Libya: SAS veterans helping Nato identify Gaddafi targets in Misrata
Ex-SAS soldiers and private security firm employees passing information to Nato attack helicopters, sources tell Guardian
Richard Norton-Taylor and Chris Stephen in Misrata
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 May 2011 18.25 BST
Former SAS soldiers and other western employees of private security companies are helping Nato identify targets in the Libyan port city of Misrata, the scene of heavy fighting between Muammar Gaddafi's forces and rebels, well-placed sources have told the Guardian.
Special forces veterans are passing details of the locations and movements of Gaddafi's forces to the Naples headquarters of Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, Canadian commander of Nato forces, the sources said.
The targets are then verified by spy planes and US Predator drones. "One piece of human intelligence is not enough," a source said.
The former soldiers are there with the blessing of Britain, France and other Nato countries, which have supplied them with communications equipment. They are likely to be providing information for the pilots of British and French attack helicopters, who are expected to start firing at targets in and around Misrata this week.
Four Apache helicopters are on board HMS Ocean, which is approaching Libyan waters. Twelve French Tiger helicopters are on board the amphibious assault ship Tonnerre, which is understood to be already within striking distance of the Libyan coast. The French defence minister, Gerard Longuet, has refused to say exactly when they would be deployed, but added: "In any case, very rapidly."
The revelations about the role of the rebels' advisers follow the filming of armed westerners on the frontline with rebel fighters in Misrata. A group of six were visible in a report by al-Jazeera from Dafniya, described as the westernmost point of the rebel lines in the city. Five of the men were armed, wearing sand-coloured clothes, baseball caps and cotton Arab scarves. The sixth, who seemed to be in charge, carried no visible weapon and wore a pink short-sleeved shirt. The six were seen talking to rebels, and quickly left after they realised they were being filmed.
The Ministry of Defence insisted it had no combat forces on the ground. The only MoD personnel were in Benghazi, it added, referring to about 10 military advisers and mentors the UK has sent there. William Hague, the foreign secretary, described the advisers as "experienced military officers", and said they would advise the rebels on intelligence gathering, logistics and communications.
Senior British defence sources revealed in April that they were urging Arab countries to train the rebels. The sources said they were looking at hiring private security companies, many of which employ former SAS soldiers.
These private soldiers are reported to be paid by Arab countries, notably Qatar. British officials said they were not being paid by the UK government.
Those countries in favour of the decision to impose a no-fly zone, and hostile to Gaddafi, would be strongly opposed to any direct – or official – link between western advisers and Nato commanders. The advisers are being kept at arm's length, but their role is privately welcomed.
Inside Misrata, rebel fighters are prepared for the arrival of Nato attack helicopters. One rebel commander told the Guardian Nato had issued instructions for all three sections of the frontline around the city, warning rebel fighters not to move beyond prearranged "red lines" but allowing Nato to attack anything beyond.
As a result, rebel troops were falling back, leaving many checkpoints deserted. Misrata airport, which includes military facilities abandoned by pro-Gaddafi forces, was abruptly closed to visitors and ringed with armed fighters.
Rebel commanders would not give a reason, except to say that "facilities" were being constructed there, prompting speculation that Nato may be using the airport either as a base or an emergency landing zone for helicopters that are damaged over the nearby frontline.The day before, al-Jazeera filmed armed western employees of private security companies liaising with rebel units on the frontline at Dafniya.
After Monday's lull in the daily shelling of outlying areas of the Misrata pocket, pro-Gaddafi forces fired Grad rockets and mortars at frontline positions around Dafniya morning. The shooting halted abruptly when two Nato jets circled the area.
In Misrata itself, rebel troops echoed their ruling National Transitional Council in rejecting Gaddafi's offer of a ceasefire followed by negotiations, which emerged after a peace mission to Tripoli by South Africa's president, Jacob Zuma.
"Look around you. You see how much value we give to Gaddafi's promises," said one fighter, Hishaw Muhammad, 41, as he sat in a battered, bullet-scarred shipping container that serves as a city-centre checkpoint. He pointed to the ravaged buildings on either side of the road, the result of street fighting and bombardment. "He must step down. No other solution."
Muhammad knows well the price the town has paid for its resistance: one of his brothers is dead, his three younger brothers are at the frontline, and he is manning a checkpoint because, his father having died before the war, he must look after his mother, sisters, wife and children.
"With the Apaches. We are ready," he said. "Before, when we were attacked, we were not experienced. But now we have leaders. We are stronger than they are."
Rebel commanders say Gaddafi's forces deployed around the Misrata pocket may be weakened. In recent days, the rebels have launched raids to bring back prisoners, finding mostly teenagers and terrified mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa.
The rebel troops still lack heavy weapons, but have acquired the Nato Milan anti-tank missile, which was used with devastating effect to clear fortified positions earlier in the month.
The fate of civilians in the Gaddafi-held town just west of the frontline, Zlitan, is of great concern. It is home to a heavy force from the 32nd brigade, loyal to Gaddafi's son Khamis. Soldiers and Grad rocket launchers are interspersed among civilian housing. Any assault on the town would see civilians caught in the crossfire.
A Reuters photographer in Misrata said there was heavy fighting in the suburb of Dafniyah, in the west of the city, where the frontline is now located. Speaking from a field hospital near the frontline, she said 14 rebel fighters had been injured on Tuesday, one of them seriously.
"Gaddafi's forces are firing Grad rockets," she said. "The rebels tried to advance, but Gaddafi's forces pushed them back."
Rebel fighters, out of their familiar urban battleground and now in open ground, were being outgunned, one of their spokesmen said.
"The situation is getting more difficult for the revolutionaries because fighting is going on in open places. They do not have the same heavy weapons as the [pro-Gaddafi] brigades," their spokesman, Abdelsalam, said from Misrata.
Major General John Lorimer, the MoD's chief military spokesman, said RAF Tornado and Typhoon aircraft over the past few days destroyed a main battle tank near Jadu and attacked a multiple rocket launcher and support vehicles south of Zlitan. On Monday, further RAF patrols near Zlitan located five heavy transporters carrying main battle tanks; all had been destroyed or severely damaged, he said.
In Tripoli, unconfirmed reports last night suggested the anti-Gaddafi opposition was again stirring. Witnesses in the Souq al-Juma suburb of Tripoli said a large anti-government protest took place there on Monday. The protest, apparently the biggest in Tripoli since western forces began bombing the country in March, was broken up by security forces firing weapons, residents said.Asked about the incident at a news conference on Tuesday, a government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said: "I have heard of the event. I did not have enough time to get information."
Gaddafi's officials had earlier denied that a large anti-government demonstration took place on Monday. Large scale demonstrations in Tripoli have not taken place since protests were crushed by the security forces in February. Two large explosions were heard in the Libyan capital on Tuesday but it was not immediately clear where the bombs fell.
Richard Norton-Taylor and Chris Stephen in Misrata
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 May 2011 18.25 BST
Former SAS soldiers and other western employees of private security companies are helping Nato identify targets in the Libyan port city of Misrata, the scene of heavy fighting between Muammar Gaddafi's forces and rebels, well-placed sources have told the Guardian.
Special forces veterans are passing details of the locations and movements of Gaddafi's forces to the Naples headquarters of Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, Canadian commander of Nato forces, the sources said.
The targets are then verified by spy planes and US Predator drones. "One piece of human intelligence is not enough," a source said.
The former soldiers are there with the blessing of Britain, France and other Nato countries, which have supplied them with communications equipment. They are likely to be providing information for the pilots of British and French attack helicopters, who are expected to start firing at targets in and around Misrata this week.
Four Apache helicopters are on board HMS Ocean, which is approaching Libyan waters. Twelve French Tiger helicopters are on board the amphibious assault ship Tonnerre, which is understood to be already within striking distance of the Libyan coast. The French defence minister, Gerard Longuet, has refused to say exactly when they would be deployed, but added: "In any case, very rapidly."
The revelations about the role of the rebels' advisers follow the filming of armed westerners on the frontline with rebel fighters in Misrata. A group of six were visible in a report by al-Jazeera from Dafniya, described as the westernmost point of the rebel lines in the city. Five of the men were armed, wearing sand-coloured clothes, baseball caps and cotton Arab scarves. The sixth, who seemed to be in charge, carried no visible weapon and wore a pink short-sleeved shirt. The six were seen talking to rebels, and quickly left after they realised they were being filmed.
The Ministry of Defence insisted it had no combat forces on the ground. The only MoD personnel were in Benghazi, it added, referring to about 10 military advisers and mentors the UK has sent there. William Hague, the foreign secretary, described the advisers as "experienced military officers", and said they would advise the rebels on intelligence gathering, logistics and communications.
Senior British defence sources revealed in April that they were urging Arab countries to train the rebels. The sources said they were looking at hiring private security companies, many of which employ former SAS soldiers.
These private soldiers are reported to be paid by Arab countries, notably Qatar. British officials said they were not being paid by the UK government.
Those countries in favour of the decision to impose a no-fly zone, and hostile to Gaddafi, would be strongly opposed to any direct – or official – link between western advisers and Nato commanders. The advisers are being kept at arm's length, but their role is privately welcomed.
Inside Misrata, rebel fighters are prepared for the arrival of Nato attack helicopters. One rebel commander told the Guardian Nato had issued instructions for all three sections of the frontline around the city, warning rebel fighters not to move beyond prearranged "red lines" but allowing Nato to attack anything beyond.
As a result, rebel troops were falling back, leaving many checkpoints deserted. Misrata airport, which includes military facilities abandoned by pro-Gaddafi forces, was abruptly closed to visitors and ringed with armed fighters.
Rebel commanders would not give a reason, except to say that "facilities" were being constructed there, prompting speculation that Nato may be using the airport either as a base or an emergency landing zone for helicopters that are damaged over the nearby frontline.The day before, al-Jazeera filmed armed western employees of private security companies liaising with rebel units on the frontline at Dafniya.
After Monday's lull in the daily shelling of outlying areas of the Misrata pocket, pro-Gaddafi forces fired Grad rockets and mortars at frontline positions around Dafniya morning. The shooting halted abruptly when two Nato jets circled the area.
In Misrata itself, rebel troops echoed their ruling National Transitional Council in rejecting Gaddafi's offer of a ceasefire followed by negotiations, which emerged after a peace mission to Tripoli by South Africa's president, Jacob Zuma.
"Look around you. You see how much value we give to Gaddafi's promises," said one fighter, Hishaw Muhammad, 41, as he sat in a battered, bullet-scarred shipping container that serves as a city-centre checkpoint. He pointed to the ravaged buildings on either side of the road, the result of street fighting and bombardment. "He must step down. No other solution."
Muhammad knows well the price the town has paid for its resistance: one of his brothers is dead, his three younger brothers are at the frontline, and he is manning a checkpoint because, his father having died before the war, he must look after his mother, sisters, wife and children.
"With the Apaches. We are ready," he said. "Before, when we were attacked, we were not experienced. But now we have leaders. We are stronger than they are."
Rebel commanders say Gaddafi's forces deployed around the Misrata pocket may be weakened. In recent days, the rebels have launched raids to bring back prisoners, finding mostly teenagers and terrified mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa.
The rebel troops still lack heavy weapons, but have acquired the Nato Milan anti-tank missile, which was used with devastating effect to clear fortified positions earlier in the month.
The fate of civilians in the Gaddafi-held town just west of the frontline, Zlitan, is of great concern. It is home to a heavy force from the 32nd brigade, loyal to Gaddafi's son Khamis. Soldiers and Grad rocket launchers are interspersed among civilian housing. Any assault on the town would see civilians caught in the crossfire.
A Reuters photographer in Misrata said there was heavy fighting in the suburb of Dafniyah, in the west of the city, where the frontline is now located. Speaking from a field hospital near the frontline, she said 14 rebel fighters had been injured on Tuesday, one of them seriously.
"Gaddafi's forces are firing Grad rockets," she said. "The rebels tried to advance, but Gaddafi's forces pushed them back."
Rebel fighters, out of their familiar urban battleground and now in open ground, were being outgunned, one of their spokesmen said.
"The situation is getting more difficult for the revolutionaries because fighting is going on in open places. They do not have the same heavy weapons as the [pro-Gaddafi] brigades," their spokesman, Abdelsalam, said from Misrata.
Major General John Lorimer, the MoD's chief military spokesman, said RAF Tornado and Typhoon aircraft over the past few days destroyed a main battle tank near Jadu and attacked a multiple rocket launcher and support vehicles south of Zlitan. On Monday, further RAF patrols near Zlitan located five heavy transporters carrying main battle tanks; all had been destroyed or severely damaged, he said.
In Tripoli, unconfirmed reports last night suggested the anti-Gaddafi opposition was again stirring. Witnesses in the Souq al-Juma suburb of Tripoli said a large anti-government protest took place there on Monday. The protest, apparently the biggest in Tripoli since western forces began bombing the country in March, was broken up by security forces firing weapons, residents said.Asked about the incident at a news conference on Tuesday, a government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said: "I have heard of the event. I did not have enough time to get information."
Gaddafi's officials had earlier denied that a large anti-government demonstration took place on Monday. Large scale demonstrations in Tripoli have not taken place since protests were crushed by the security forces in February. Two large explosions were heard in the Libyan capital on Tuesday but it was not immediately clear where the bombs fell.
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 6:30 AM
0 comments
U.S. to boycott global racism conference over anti-Semitic history
June 1st, 2011
By: CNN Senior State Department Producer Elise Labott
WASHINGTON (CNN) – The Obama administration is boycotting the 10-year commemoration of a global conference to combat racism because previous meetings have included what it called "ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism."
The first conference, which took place in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, focused in large measure on Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Delegates produced a draft resolution at the conference that equated Zionism with racism.
The U.S and more than a half-dozen other nations boycotted a subsequent U.N. conference on combating racism held in Geneva in April 2009 over concerns about the treatment of Israel. European delegates at the conference walked out of the conference after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad railed against Israel during his speech, calling it a "repressive, racist regime."
In a letter to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Joseph E. Macmanus said the U.S. would boycott the conference. He wrote that the Obama administration had voted against the United Nations resolution establishing the meeting because earlier events "included ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism and we did not want to see that commemorated."
In a speech to the AIPAC, the main pro-Israel lobby, President Barack Obama promised “efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of the United States.”
"I commend the Obama administration decision to withdraw from this event," Gillibrand said in a statement. "It is an insult to America that the United Nations has decided to hold the Durban III conference in New York City just days from the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks."
The meeting is to be held on September 21 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
By: CNN Senior State Department Producer Elise Labott
WASHINGTON (CNN) – The Obama administration is boycotting the 10-year commemoration of a global conference to combat racism because previous meetings have included what it called "ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism."
The first conference, which took place in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, focused in large measure on Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Delegates produced a draft resolution at the conference that equated Zionism with racism.
The U.S and more than a half-dozen other nations boycotted a subsequent U.N. conference on combating racism held in Geneva in April 2009 over concerns about the treatment of Israel. European delegates at the conference walked out of the conference after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad railed against Israel during his speech, calling it a "repressive, racist regime."
In a letter to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Joseph E. Macmanus said the U.S. would boycott the conference. He wrote that the Obama administration had voted against the United Nations resolution establishing the meeting because earlier events "included ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism and we did not want to see that commemorated."
In a speech to the AIPAC, the main pro-Israel lobby, President Barack Obama promised “efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of the United States.”
"I commend the Obama administration decision to withdraw from this event," Gillibrand said in a statement. "It is an insult to America that the United Nations has decided to hold the Durban III conference in New York City just days from the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks."
The meeting is to be held on September 21 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 6:29 AM
0 comments
The WH/Politico Attack on Seymour Hersh
Published on Thursday, June 2, 2011 by Salon.com
by Glenn Greenwald
Seymour Hersh has a new article in The New Yorker arguing that there is no credible evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons; to the contrary, he writes, "the U.S. could be in danger of repeating a mistake similar to the one made with Saddam Hussein's Iraq eight years ago -- allowing anxieties about the policies of a tyrannical regime to distort our estimates of the state's military capacities and intentions." This, of course, cannot stand, as it conflicts with one of the pillar-orthodoxies of Obama foreign policy in the Middle East (even though the prior two National Intelligence Estimates say what Hersh has said). As a result, two cowardly, slimy Obama officials ran to Politico to bash Hersh while hiding behind the protective womb of anonymity automatically and subserviently extended by that "news outlet":
the Obama administration is pushing back strongly, with one senior official saying the article garnered "a collective eye roll" from the White House . . . two administration officials told POLITICO's Playbook that's not the case. . . . a senior administration official said. . . . "There is a clear, ongoing pattern of deception" from Iran . . ."the senior administration official added" . . . And a senior intelligence official also ripped Hersh, saying his article amounted to nothing more than "a slanted book report on a long narrative that's already been told many times over" . . .
Dutifully writing down what government officials say and then publishing it under cover of anonymity is what media figures in D.C. refer to as "real reporting." ...
by Glenn Greenwald
Seymour Hersh has a new article in The New Yorker arguing that there is no credible evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons; to the contrary, he writes, "the U.S. could be in danger of repeating a mistake similar to the one made with Saddam Hussein's Iraq eight years ago -- allowing anxieties about the policies of a tyrannical regime to distort our estimates of the state's military capacities and intentions." This, of course, cannot stand, as it conflicts with one of the pillar-orthodoxies of Obama foreign policy in the Middle East (even though the prior two National Intelligence Estimates say what Hersh has said). As a result, two cowardly, slimy Obama officials ran to Politico to bash Hersh while hiding behind the protective womb of anonymity automatically and subserviently extended by that "news outlet":
the Obama administration is pushing back strongly, with one senior official saying the article garnered "a collective eye roll" from the White House . . . two administration officials told POLITICO's Playbook that's not the case. . . . a senior administration official said. . . . "There is a clear, ongoing pattern of deception" from Iran . . ."the senior administration official added" . . . And a senior intelligence official also ripped Hersh, saying his article amounted to nothing more than "a slanted book report on a long narrative that's already been told many times over" . . .
Dutifully writing down what government officials say and then publishing it under cover of anonymity is what media figures in D.C. refer to as "real reporting." ...
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 6:27 AM
0 comments
Iran and the Bomb
How real is the nuclear threat?
by Seymour M. Hersh June 6, 2011
ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF NATIONAL SECURITY about whether Iran’s nuclear program is being exaggerated. Is Iran actively trying to develop nuclear weapons? Members of the Obama Administration often talk as if this were a foregone conclusion, as did their predecessors under George W. Bush. There’s a large body of evidence, however, including some of America’s most highly classified intelligence assessments, suggesting that the U.S. could be in danger of repeating a mistake similar to the one made with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq eight years ago—allowing anxieties about the policies of a tyrannical regime to distort our estimates of the state’s military capacities and intentions. The two most recent National Intelligence Estimates (N.I.E.s) on Iranian nuclear progress have stated that there is no conclusive evidence that Iran has made any effort to build the bomb since 2003. Yet Iran is heavily invested in nuclear technology. In the past four years, it has tripled the number of centrifuges in operation at its main enrichment facility at Natanz, which is buried deep underground. International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) inspectors have expressed frustration with Iran’s level of coöperation, but have been unable to find any evidence suggesting that enriched uranium has been diverted to an illicit weapons program. In mid-February, Lieutenant General James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, provided the House and Senate intelligence committees with an updated N.I.E. on the Iranian nuclear-weapons program. A previous assessment, issued in 2007, created consternation and anger inside the Bush Administration and in Congress by concluding, “with high confidence,” that Iran had halted its nascent nuclear-weapons program in 2003. Mentions the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.), W. Patrick Lang, and Lieutenant General Ronald L. Burgess, Jr. Thomas E. Donilon, Obama’s national-security adviser, said in a speech on May 12th that the U.S. would continue its aggressive sanction policy until Iran proves that its enrichment intentions are peaceful and meets all its obligations under the nonproliferation treaty. Obama has been prudent in his public warnings about the consequences of an Iranian bomb, but he and others in his Administration have often overstated the available intelligence about Iranian intentions. Mentions Robert Einhorn. Israel views Iran as an existential threat. Nevertheless, most Israeli experts on nonproliferation agree that Iran does not now have a nuclear weapon. A round of negotiations five months ago between Iran and the West, first in Geneva and then in Istanbul, yielded little progress. Mentions Benjamin Netanyahu. The unending political stress between Washington and Tehran has promoted some unconventional thinking. One approach, championed by retired ambassador Thomas Pickering and others, is to accept Iran’s nuclear-power program, but to try to internationalize it, and offer Iran various incentives. Pickering and his associates are convinced that the solution to the nuclear impasse is to turn Iran’s nuclear-enrichment programs into a multinational effort. Mentions a 2008 essay Pickering, Jim Walsh, and William Luers published in The New York Review of Books. Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient who is now a candidate for the Presidency of Egypt, spent twelve years as the director-general of the I.A.E.A., retiring two years ago. In his recent interview, he said, “I don’t believe Iran is a clear and present danger. All I see is the hype about the threat posed by Iran.”
by Seymour M. Hersh June 6, 2011
ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF NATIONAL SECURITY about whether Iran’s nuclear program is being exaggerated. Is Iran actively trying to develop nuclear weapons? Members of the Obama Administration often talk as if this were a foregone conclusion, as did their predecessors under George W. Bush. There’s a large body of evidence, however, including some of America’s most highly classified intelligence assessments, suggesting that the U.S. could be in danger of repeating a mistake similar to the one made with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq eight years ago—allowing anxieties about the policies of a tyrannical regime to distort our estimates of the state’s military capacities and intentions. The two most recent National Intelligence Estimates (N.I.E.s) on Iranian nuclear progress have stated that there is no conclusive evidence that Iran has made any effort to build the bomb since 2003. Yet Iran is heavily invested in nuclear technology. In the past four years, it has tripled the number of centrifuges in operation at its main enrichment facility at Natanz, which is buried deep underground. International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) inspectors have expressed frustration with Iran’s level of coöperation, but have been unable to find any evidence suggesting that enriched uranium has been diverted to an illicit weapons program. In mid-February, Lieutenant General James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, provided the House and Senate intelligence committees with an updated N.I.E. on the Iranian nuclear-weapons program. A previous assessment, issued in 2007, created consternation and anger inside the Bush Administration and in Congress by concluding, “with high confidence,” that Iran had halted its nascent nuclear-weapons program in 2003. Mentions the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.), W. Patrick Lang, and Lieutenant General Ronald L. Burgess, Jr. Thomas E. Donilon, Obama’s national-security adviser, said in a speech on May 12th that the U.S. would continue its aggressive sanction policy until Iran proves that its enrichment intentions are peaceful and meets all its obligations under the nonproliferation treaty. Obama has been prudent in his public warnings about the consequences of an Iranian bomb, but he and others in his Administration have often overstated the available intelligence about Iranian intentions. Mentions Robert Einhorn. Israel views Iran as an existential threat. Nevertheless, most Israeli experts on nonproliferation agree that Iran does not now have a nuclear weapon. A round of negotiations five months ago between Iran and the West, first in Geneva and then in Istanbul, yielded little progress. Mentions Benjamin Netanyahu. The unending political stress between Washington and Tehran has promoted some unconventional thinking. One approach, championed by retired ambassador Thomas Pickering and others, is to accept Iran’s nuclear-power program, but to try to internationalize it, and offer Iran various incentives. Pickering and his associates are convinced that the solution to the nuclear impasse is to turn Iran’s nuclear-enrichment programs into a multinational effort. Mentions a 2008 essay Pickering, Jim Walsh, and William Luers published in The New York Review of Books. Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient who is now a candidate for the Presidency of Egypt, spent twelve years as the director-general of the I.A.E.A., retiring two years ago. In his recent interview, he said, “I don’t believe Iran is a clear and present danger. All I see is the hype about the threat posed by Iran.”
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 6:27 AM
0 comments
Thursday, June 02, 2011
Making peace with the Taliban? UN pressed to lift Afghan sanctions
Britain and US accept insurgents' demand to end sanctions on ex-Taliban leaders including notorious Mohammed Qalamuddin
Jason Burke in Kabul
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 June 2011 20.24 BST
Britain and the United States are pressing for United Nations sanctions against 18 former senior Taliban figures to be lifted later this month in the strongest indication yet that the western powers are looking for a negotiated peace with the Taliban.
Candidates include the controversial former head of the regime's religious police, Mohammed Qalamuddin, whose officers were responsible for some of the worst atrocities under the Taliban regime.
Officals believe the move would send a clear signal to insurgents that reintegrating into Afghan society is possible if they put down their arms.
The sanctions were imposed in 1999, when the Taliban were in power, and were expanded after the 9/11 attacks on America. They ban about 140 individuals from travelling or holding bank accounts. Removing the restrictions has been a key demand of insurgents in Afghanistan and has long been supported by the Afghan government.
The removal of men like Qalamuddin is likely to be controversial. Patrols run by the religious police chief beat women and men in the street to enforce the Taliban's rigorous interpretation of Islam. As a minister, Qalamuddin also issued his own edicts, including a ban on women wearing makeup or high heels.
Other candidates include well-known figures who have acted as intermediaries in contacts between the Afghan government and the insurgents in recent years such as Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban education minister, as well as Qalamuddin, who has kept a low profile since being released from prison in 2005.
An Afghan minister also said that lifting the sanctions on such men would facilitate the establishment of a political office for the Taliban in a third country as it would allow key intermediaries, mainly former senior figures in the movement now living in Kabul, to travel.
Turkey, Turkmenistan and Qatar have all offered to host such an office, Afghan and western officials in Kabul have told the Guardian.
Senior Afghan officials in Kabul also said that contacts with the Taliban leadership could now be described as "systematic" and a "significant advance" on earlier "disorganised" discussions.
The talks involve an envoy travelling between Kabul and Pakistan on a regular basis relaying proposals and counterproposals, said the minister, who has direct knowledge of the "peace process" as it is known in the Afghan capital.
The meetings come at a time of intensifying effort to find a negotiated solution to the 10-year-old conflict in Afghanistan as western governments prepare to withdraw troops.
It was recently disclosed that US officials and a Taliban representative have held three meetings in the last two months, two in Qatar and one in Germany.
In another important development, representatives of the Haqqani network, one of the most effective and intractable of the insurgent factions, visited Kabul "very recently", the officials told the Guardian.
The Haqqani network, named after its leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, is widely believed to have a relationship with the ISI, Pakistan's main military intelligence service.
In the last six years only 15 names have been removed from the sanctions list. A key shift has been in Washington where there is now almost unanimous support for the delisting of dozens of individuals.
Delisting requires the assent of the five permanent members of the UN security council. Russia has made clear that it currently opposes any such move and may block any mass lifting of sanctions. France supports the move while China appears ambivalent.
A request for the delisting of 47 individuals was supposed to be submitted by Kabul to the UN sanctions committee before a key meeting on 16 June. However, the necessary documentation for only 18 individuals was assembled in time by Afghan officials.
Further opportunities to remove individuals will come later in the year.
Britain and America are also keen to scrap the sanctions list in its present form, replacing it with a list that distinguishes between al-Qaida and the Taliban.
However, the proposed lifting of UN sanctions has not been met with universal approval in Afghanistan.
"If there is a deal with the Taliban and people like him [Qalamuddin] come back to power it will all go back to being like before and we will lose all our freedoms," said Monisa, a 24-year-old female NGO worker in Kabul.
Earlier this week Qalamuddin told the Guardian the restrictions weighed on him "as a human being" and that he has "rights like anyone else".
Active Taliban are unlikely to be among those removed from the sanctions list, officials told the Guardian. "Don't expect to see Mullah Omar [the Taliban overall leader] among them," one said.
• This article was amended on 3 June 2011, to clarify a reference to "scrapping" the sanctions list.
Jason Burke in Kabul
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 June 2011 20.24 BST
Britain and the United States are pressing for United Nations sanctions against 18 former senior Taliban figures to be lifted later this month in the strongest indication yet that the western powers are looking for a negotiated peace with the Taliban.
Candidates include the controversial former head of the regime's religious police, Mohammed Qalamuddin, whose officers were responsible for some of the worst atrocities under the Taliban regime.
Officals believe the move would send a clear signal to insurgents that reintegrating into Afghan society is possible if they put down their arms.
The sanctions were imposed in 1999, when the Taliban were in power, and were expanded after the 9/11 attacks on America. They ban about 140 individuals from travelling or holding bank accounts. Removing the restrictions has been a key demand of insurgents in Afghanistan and has long been supported by the Afghan government.
The removal of men like Qalamuddin is likely to be controversial. Patrols run by the religious police chief beat women and men in the street to enforce the Taliban's rigorous interpretation of Islam. As a minister, Qalamuddin also issued his own edicts, including a ban on women wearing makeup or high heels.
Other candidates include well-known figures who have acted as intermediaries in contacts between the Afghan government and the insurgents in recent years such as Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban education minister, as well as Qalamuddin, who has kept a low profile since being released from prison in 2005.
An Afghan minister also said that lifting the sanctions on such men would facilitate the establishment of a political office for the Taliban in a third country as it would allow key intermediaries, mainly former senior figures in the movement now living in Kabul, to travel.
Turkey, Turkmenistan and Qatar have all offered to host such an office, Afghan and western officials in Kabul have told the Guardian.
Senior Afghan officials in Kabul also said that contacts with the Taliban leadership could now be described as "systematic" and a "significant advance" on earlier "disorganised" discussions.
The talks involve an envoy travelling between Kabul and Pakistan on a regular basis relaying proposals and counterproposals, said the minister, who has direct knowledge of the "peace process" as it is known in the Afghan capital.
The meetings come at a time of intensifying effort to find a negotiated solution to the 10-year-old conflict in Afghanistan as western governments prepare to withdraw troops.
It was recently disclosed that US officials and a Taliban representative have held three meetings in the last two months, two in Qatar and one in Germany.
In another important development, representatives of the Haqqani network, one of the most effective and intractable of the insurgent factions, visited Kabul "very recently", the officials told the Guardian.
The Haqqani network, named after its leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, is widely believed to have a relationship with the ISI, Pakistan's main military intelligence service.
In the last six years only 15 names have been removed from the sanctions list. A key shift has been in Washington where there is now almost unanimous support for the delisting of dozens of individuals.
Delisting requires the assent of the five permanent members of the UN security council. Russia has made clear that it currently opposes any such move and may block any mass lifting of sanctions. France supports the move while China appears ambivalent.
A request for the delisting of 47 individuals was supposed to be submitted by Kabul to the UN sanctions committee before a key meeting on 16 June. However, the necessary documentation for only 18 individuals was assembled in time by Afghan officials.
Further opportunities to remove individuals will come later in the year.
Britain and America are also keen to scrap the sanctions list in its present form, replacing it with a list that distinguishes between al-Qaida and the Taliban.
However, the proposed lifting of UN sanctions has not been met with universal approval in Afghanistan.
"If there is a deal with the Taliban and people like him [Qalamuddin] come back to power it will all go back to being like before and we will lose all our freedoms," said Monisa, a 24-year-old female NGO worker in Kabul.
Earlier this week Qalamuddin told the Guardian the restrictions weighed on him "as a human being" and that he has "rights like anyone else".
Active Taliban are unlikely to be among those removed from the sanctions list, officials told the Guardian. "Don't expect to see Mullah Omar [the Taliban overall leader] among them," one said.
• This article was amended on 3 June 2011, to clarify a reference to "scrapping" the sanctions list.
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 11:54 AM
0 comments
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Record amount approved for U.S.-Israel missile defense program
June 1, 2011
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The U.S. House Appropriations defense subcommittee awarded the highest-ever level of funding to the joint U.S.-Israel missile defense program.
The subcommittee on Wednesday appropriated $235.7 million in funding for the coming year.
In a statement, committee member Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) said it was "a mark of importance" of the three joint defense programs -- Arrow 2, Arrow 3 and David's Sling -- that they were given such high funding during the current economic climate.
"The growing proliferation and increasing deadliness of missiles and rockets around the world -- including those possessed by dangerous regimes such as the one headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and President Bashar al-Assad in Syria -- pose a direct threat to U.S. national security," Rothman said. "Funding these new technologies serves our interests in the volatile Middle East, and wherever America's troops and citizens are stationed."
Funding for such cooperative ventures is separate from the $3 billion in U.S. defense assistance Israel receives each year.
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The U.S. House Appropriations defense subcommittee awarded the highest-ever level of funding to the joint U.S.-Israel missile defense program.
The subcommittee on Wednesday appropriated $235.7 million in funding for the coming year.
In a statement, committee member Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) said it was "a mark of importance" of the three joint defense programs -- Arrow 2, Arrow 3 and David's Sling -- that they were given such high funding during the current economic climate.
"The growing proliferation and increasing deadliness of missiles and rockets around the world -- including those possessed by dangerous regimes such as the one headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and President Bashar al-Assad in Syria -- pose a direct threat to U.S. national security," Rothman said. "Funding these new technologies serves our interests in the volatile Middle East, and wherever America's troops and citizens are stationed."
Funding for such cooperative ventures is separate from the $3 billion in U.S. defense assistance Israel receives each year.
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 7:15 AM
0 comments
U.S. spies want computers to analyze metaphors
May 30, 2011 6:22 PM PDT
CNET
by Tim Hornyak
Here's a linguistic can of worms for you: a U.S. intelligence agency is training computers to analyze metaphors used in foreigners' conversations to determine if they are a threat to national security.
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a spy version of DARPA under the director of National Intelligence, is working on something called The Metaphor Program. It's no 1960s quiz show.
The program is meant to "exploit the fact that metaphors are pervasive in everyday talk and reveal the underlying beliefs and worldviews of members of a culture."
Researchers will apparently identify and define metaphors from English, Farsi, Spanish, and Russian texts and compile them into a database. But computers will do most of the work.
The first phase of the five-year program will "develop automated tools and techniques for recognizing, defining, and categorizing linguistic metaphors." Analysts would later compare subjects' statements to the database to try to determine their intentions. There's more info in a presentation here (PDF).
----------------------------------------------------
Metaphor Program Broad Agency Announcement
Solicitation Number: IARPA-BAA-11-04
Agency: Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Office: Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity
Location: IARPA1
Notice Type:
Combined Synopsis/Solicitation
Posted Date:
May 20, 2011
Response Date:
Jul 19, 2011 5:00 pm Eastern
Archiving Policy:
Automatic, on specified date
Archive Date:
June 19, 2012
Original Set Aside:
N/A
Set Aside:
N/A
Classification Code:
A -- Research & Development
NAICS Code:
541 -- Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services/541720 -- Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities
Synopsis:
Added: May 20, 2011 5:02 pm
The Metaphor Program will exploit the fact that metaphors are pervasive in everyday talk and reveal the underlying beliefs and worldviews of members of a culture. In the first phase of the two-phase program, performers will develop automated tools and techniques for recognizing, defining and categorizing linguistic metaphors associated with target concepts and found in large amounts of native-language text. The resulting conceptual metaphors will be validated using empirical social science methods. In the second phase, the program will characterize differing cultural perspectives associated with case studies of the types of interest to the Intelligence Community. Performers will apply the methodology established in the first phase and will identify the conceptual metaphors used by the various protagonists, organizing and structuring them to reveal the contrastive stances.
IARPA invites the private sector to assist it with operationally testing its new web-based electronic proposal submission system. IARPA has recently brought IARPA Distribution and Evaluation System (IDEAS) on-line, and seeks industry assistance with operationally testing and validating the system's performance.
In addition to delivering proposals to the McLean, VA address listed in BAA Section 4.C.2., IARPA encourages offerors to upload their proposal documents to the website at https://iarpa-ideas.gov. However, submitting proposals to IDEAS is not a requirement and is not a substitute for delivering proposals in accordance with BAA Section 4.C.2. Moreover, the Government will not evaluate proposal documents submitted to IDEAS. Rather, submissions to IDEAS will be compared to your formal submission for completeness only, to enable IARPA leadership to make a decision to move to Full Operating Capability for this new web-based system.
As stated in BAA Section 4.A.1., reviewers receive the electronic copy submitted by CD. Hard copies are primarily for archival purposes. In the case of inconsistencies between the hard copy and the CD copy, the CD copy takes precedence.
CNET
by Tim Hornyak
Here's a linguistic can of worms for you: a U.S. intelligence agency is training computers to analyze metaphors used in foreigners' conversations to determine if they are a threat to national security.
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a spy version of DARPA under the director of National Intelligence, is working on something called The Metaphor Program. It's no 1960s quiz show.
The program is meant to "exploit the fact that metaphors are pervasive in everyday talk and reveal the underlying beliefs and worldviews of members of a culture."
Researchers will apparently identify and define metaphors from English, Farsi, Spanish, and Russian texts and compile them into a database. But computers will do most of the work.
The first phase of the five-year program will "develop automated tools and techniques for recognizing, defining, and categorizing linguistic metaphors." Analysts would later compare subjects' statements to the database to try to determine their intentions. There's more info in a presentation here (PDF).
----------------------------------------------------
Metaphor Program Broad Agency Announcement
Solicitation Number: IARPA-BAA-11-04
Agency: Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Office: Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity
Location: IARPA1
Notice Type:
Combined Synopsis/Solicitation
Posted Date:
May 20, 2011
Response Date:
Jul 19, 2011 5:00 pm Eastern
Archiving Policy:
Automatic, on specified date
Archive Date:
June 19, 2012
Original Set Aside:
N/A
Set Aside:
N/A
Classification Code:
A -- Research & Development
NAICS Code:
541 -- Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services/541720 -- Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities
Synopsis:
Added: May 20, 2011 5:02 pm
The Metaphor Program will exploit the fact that metaphors are pervasive in everyday talk and reveal the underlying beliefs and worldviews of members of a culture. In the first phase of the two-phase program, performers will develop automated tools and techniques for recognizing, defining and categorizing linguistic metaphors associated with target concepts and found in large amounts of native-language text. The resulting conceptual metaphors will be validated using empirical social science methods. In the second phase, the program will characterize differing cultural perspectives associated with case studies of the types of interest to the Intelligence Community. Performers will apply the methodology established in the first phase and will identify the conceptual metaphors used by the various protagonists, organizing and structuring them to reveal the contrastive stances.
IARPA invites the private sector to assist it with operationally testing its new web-based electronic proposal submission system. IARPA has recently brought IARPA Distribution and Evaluation System (IDEAS) on-line, and seeks industry assistance with operationally testing and validating the system's performance.
In addition to delivering proposals to the McLean, VA address listed in BAA Section 4.C.2., IARPA encourages offerors to upload their proposal documents to the website at https://iarpa-ideas.gov. However, submitting proposals to IDEAS is not a requirement and is not a substitute for delivering proposals in accordance with BAA Section 4.C.2. Moreover, the Government will not evaluate proposal documents submitted to IDEAS. Rather, submissions to IDEAS will be compared to your formal submission for completeness only, to enable IARPA leadership to make a decision to move to Full Operating Capability for this new web-based system.
As stated in BAA Section 4.A.1., reviewers receive the electronic copy submitted by CD. Hard copies are primarily for archival purposes. In the case of inconsistencies between the hard copy and the CD copy, the CD copy takes precedence.
posted by Hanan Elbadry at 6:34 AM
0 comments
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