Israel's battered image and the International Jewish Lobby
California, Crescent-online
March 10, 2010, 11:00 am PST
Israel is attempting to refurbish its tattered image after a number of credibility-eroding incidents. The European Jewish lobby has blocked the EU Congress from implementing the Goldstone Report, fueling international outrage. In addition, Dubai has announced that they have uncovered more evidence that Israel is forging European passports.
The European Jewish Congress, the European version of AIPAC, has pressured European politicians against implementing the Goldstone Report. That report, prepared by Dr Richard Goldstone, a respected South African jurist and a self-confessed zionist, chronicled Israel’s massacres in Gaza, unhesitatingly declaring that its actions against Gaza civilians "amount to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity."
Since the Goldstone Report was released, Israel has launched a political and diplomatic offensive to contain its disastrous impact. If the EU had adopted the Report's recommendations, Israeli politicians and military commanders would have faced trial at the International Criminal Court.
Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, warned that implementing it would gravely damage EU-Israel relations.
However, while Israel may have been able to evade legislative action, the news has stirred worldwide public indignation, fueling rather than abating perceptions of Israel as a rogue state. The news has confirmed perceptions that Israel’s power rests on its influence on powerful countries through its Diaspora lobbies, rather than on its much vaunted democratic institutions and military. Gaza provided incontrovertible proof of Israel’s brutality despite its well-oiled PR machine. Israeli officials touring universities have been shouted down by students, while Muslims, leftists, and people of conscience from all backgrounds have united in staging protests and demonstrations.
Meanwhile, Dubai’s announcement that Israel is regularly forging European passports has embarrassed European countries standing behind Israel in the Goldstone incident. Dubai Chief of Police Dahi Khalfan declared to the AFP: “I ring alarm bells. Israel is forging Western passports on a large scale. We discover forged passports on a daily basis.” After Mossad’s exposure in the murder of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhuh in Dubai, the spy agency’s illegal tracks over the Middle East are becoming increasingly visible. European allies of Israel have been discomfited by the emerging evidence that Israel is flouting their countries’ laws through such forgeries.
Israel has been lobbying for years to be admitted to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), founded in 1961 for wealthy industrialized democracies to meet and co-ordinate their programs. It includes the US and most of Europe. While Israel has been told that its membership is certain, its tarnished reputation is affecting the legitimacy of regimes collaborating with it.
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Kahrizak trial in Iran exposes US hypocrisy
MD-Toronto, Crescent–online
March 10, 2010 – 12:00 noon EST
Iran has put on trial 12 police officers charged with violating detention procedures at the Kahrizak detention center. Allegations of police misconduct surfaced after the US-instigated post-election riots in Tehran last June. While the rioters indulged in wanton destruction of property and arson, some police officers overstepped their lawful limits when dealing with them in detention.
After the revelations of unlawful behavior by the police at Kahrizak detention center surfaced, Iran's Supreme Leader, Sayed Ali Khamenei immediately ordered an investigation. As soon as the preliminary results revealed acts of unlawful conduct by some police officers, the detention center was instantly shut down and those responsible were arrested.
Unlike the US and its allies whose egregious crimes against detainees are not only never punished but often officially supported and justified, Iran has once gain demonstrated that its system of governance is far superior to what the US falsely propagates about it. Muslim detainees have been brutally tortured in the US's illegal gulag at Guantanamo Bay as well as at Bagram in Afghanistan and numerous other ghost prisons worldwide.
One is forced to contrast Iran's scrupulous adherence to lawful conduct with what happens in such US-backed tyrannies as Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. These regimes not only refuse to take legal action against the criminal actions of police and other agencies, they often punish those who report them. In January 2010 a UAE court acquitted Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of the Emirates' ruling family, of torture charges that were confirmed through a video tape. Instead the UAE court sentenced in absentia the person who exposed the sadistic behavior of Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan to five years in prison.
The recent trial of 12 police officers accused of improper conduct at Kahrizak detention center once again exposes the US's fraudulent championing of “democracy” and “freedom”. The US has historically backed some of the most brutal regimes in the world. The US backs the despotic regimes in such places as Azerbaijan, Egypt and Zionist-occupied Palestine while indulging in a vicious campaign to destabilize Iran under the slogan of “freedom.” The latest trial in Iran is another blow to the US propaganda machinary that will further diminish its credibility worldwide.
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Rightwing US think tank outlines Iran destabilization plan
Washington DC, Crescent-online
March 09, 2010 - 11:00 am EST
There is no shortage of US think-tanks urging aggression against Iran. If it is not individuals like Daniel Pipes, a hardcore zionist and Islamophobe as well as his fellow travellers urging the bombing of Iran, there are think-tanks demanding similar action. Every group, think tank or individual that believes in crippling Iran is also, not surprisingly a staunch supporter of the zionist state of Israel and its criminal behavior.
The latest in a series of such attacks has come from the Heritage Foundation, an extreme rightwing American group. In its latest outpouring of venom against Iran, the Heritage Foundation has outlined a 10-point plan, "Ten Steps to a Free Iran", to undermine the Islamic Republic of Iran. It not only calls for sanctions but also support for opposition groups inside Iran as well as financial backing for Iranian opposition media outlets outside to undermine the Islamic Republic.
The Heritage Foundation, of course, would not call this undermining Iran; instead, it says that such media outlets would educate Iranians about "genuine representative democracy". Presumably, the Heritage Foundation has in mind the kind of " genuine representative democracy" practised in the US where two successive elections were stolen by George Bush (2000 and 2004), where Barack Obama was elected through the financial handouts of big corporations to whom he immediately shoveled nearly $1 trillion after they had wrecked the US economy, and where US congressmen and women are in the pocket of the zionist lobby.
Among the steps the Heritage Foundation has urged against Iran are to "help opposition groups communicate privately with each other using Web-based groups outside Iran and Bluetooth technology that can evade government surveillance and censorship;" that "US intelligence services should provide covert financial and material assistance to democratic opposition groups to strengthen opposition to the regime, similar to the help extended to the Polish Solidarity movement during the Cold War;" and "Target covert actions to discredit the regime. Intelligence services should distribute printouts of Iranian officials' foreign bank accounts and other assets and pictures of their mansions and villas outside Iran to drive a wedge between the corrupt regime and the people."
The Heritage Foundation also calls for the US to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons and to aid allies with military hardware to undermine the Islamic Republic. The US already has the biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons yet more are being urged despite the fact that the US has been leading a campaign to deny Iran even its legitimate use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
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Azeri president's young children acquire huge Dubai properties
MD-Toronto, Crescent–online
March 9, 2010 – 10:00am EST
Dubai, the tiny shaikhdom on the western shores of the Persian Gulf, has crafted an image for itself as a huge shopping mall. Upon landing at Dubai's sprawling new airport, visitors are immediately confronted by this spectacle. Dubai also holds an annual fest where people from all over the world come to buy goods. Dubai has been aptly named, "Do Buy".
Some people have taken this literally to heart. Take the case of Heydar Aliyev, the 12-year-old son of President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan. According to Dubai Land Department, 12-year-old Heydar Aliyev is the proud owner of nine waterfront mansions, worth a cool $44 million, according to the Washington Post (March 5).
The Post had some other interesting revelations. "His name, according to Dubai Land Department records, is Heydar Aliyev, which just happens to be the same name as that of the son of Azerbaijan's president, Ilham Aliyev. The owner's date of birth, listed in property records, is also the same as that of the president's son."
President Ilham Aliyev's annual salary is about $228,000, far short of what is needed to buy even the smallest Palm property in expensive Dubai. Heydar Aliyev, the 12-year-old schoolboy, is not alone in this shopping spree. "Dubai's Land Department also has files in the names of Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva. President Aliyev has two daughters with the same names and roughly the same ages,” according the the Post.
Interestingly, such revelations have not come as a shock to the people of Azerbaijan. Corruption is so pervasive that people have come to accept it as a routine part of life. What is surprising is how the so called “opposition” parties have attempted to safeguard Ilham Aliyev and spin the story. Yeni Musavat, newspaper of the main “opposition” party, printed the story with its own twist.
Yeni Musavat claimed that Washington Post was "ordered" to publish these accusations against Ilham Aliyev because he had not been so cooperative with the US. This claim is obviously useful to Ilham Aliyev, but it cannot pass a reality check.
Ever since Ilham Aliyev usurped power in 2003 and falsified election results, the US has accepted him as the legitimate president. Even when Ilham Aliyev falsified the referendum results in March 2009 and opened the way for himself to rule Azerbaijan for life, the US immediately accepted the results of the “referendum.”
Aliyev also supports the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Azerbaijan has sent troops to Iraq to legitimize the so called “coalition of the willing” and provide an “international” backing to the US colonization of Iraq.
The embarrassing facts leaked to Washington Post could be a PR ploy by Dubai. Over the last year or so, Dubai has faced much negative publicity tarnishing its image as an island of political stability and investment haven. If the president of a country, or his children, invest $44 million in the Dubai property market, it is a big boost for Dubai. This sends a message that Dubai’s investment climate is sound and even presidents are willing to invest there.
Regrettably, Aliyev’s misuse of public funds has not been given the kind of publicity by the Islamic media as it deserves. Instead of using such revelations to demand greater freedom and justice for the people of Azerbaijan, Islamic media outlets have bought into the explanation given by the secular “opposition.”
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Pakistani FATA lawmakers refuse to submit to US body scanning, fly home
Washington, Crescent-online
March 8, 2010, 14:40 EST
There may yet be hope for Pakistan. A six-member delegation of Pakistani parliamentarians--both senators and members of the National Assembly from the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA)--on an official visit to the US, refused to submit to body scanning at Washington Dulles Airport and instead decided to fly home. They had arrived in the US on February 28 and said that at the US embassy in Islamabad, they were assured that they would not subjected to full-body scanning.
On Saturday March 6 morning, while flying from Washington to New Orleans as part of their tour, two members of the six-member delegation were pulled out for full body scan. The FATA senators and MNAs flatly refused.
They said they would rather go home than be subjected to such humiliating treatment. Other members of the delegation backed them up. They all returned to their hotel, packed their bags and boarded a Kuwait Airways flight from Washington Dulles airport to return home.
Senator Abbas Khan Afridi, a senior member of the delegation, told journalists that other lawmakers backed their colleagues and told US officials that they too would go home if their colleagues were not exempted.
At the hotel, US State Department officials, who were travelling with the delegation, as well as Pakistan’s deputy chief of mission and other senior US officials, tried to persuade the lawmakers to change their minds, telling them that all passengers in the US had to go through random checking. Even US generals, members of Congress and senior officials are not exempted. But the FATA lawmakers refused to accept such argument.
Senator Afridi said that lawmakers considered the scanning order an insult to the parliamentarians of a sovereign country and decided to call off their visit. He further revealed that officials at the US Embassy in Islamabad had assured them that they would not be subjected to a full-body scan.
While other Pakistani officials, including President Asif Zardari, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gailani as well as generals (General Rashid Qureshi, for instance, who was a spokesman for General Pervez Musharraf while the latter was president) have been subjected to such degrading treatment at US airports and sheepishly complied, it appears that senators and MNAs from FATA have a trifle more dignity and are not prepared to barter it away for a shoulder of mutton.
Perhaps, FATA members should occupy the posts of president and prime minister of Pakistan. They would bring some dignity to these and other positions that have been cheapened by the craven attitude of the likes of Musharraf, Zardari, Gailani, Rahman Malik and Hussain Haqqani. Self respect is an unknown quantity in the lives of most Pakistani politicians and officials except the members of FATA.
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