“If I can’t dance – I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” Thus spoke Emma Goldman (1869-1940) and it’s been variously repeated and attributed since.

PAL JAM is a combination concert, party and workshop to raise funds for Palestine direct action. If you’re in London and you’ve got an empty Saturday the 11th of September laying around, there’s 12 hours of great things to fill it between 4pm and 4am. I know I can’t think of a better way to spend a September 11.

“Direct actions in support of Palestine, such as blockades of Ahava or Carmel Agrexco don’t pay for themselves, van hire, D-locks etc all cost cash money. Therefore a network of people who carry out such actions are putting on a fundraiser to pay for future actions. Come on down, with a banging line up and a great social centre to have a party in (the Ratstar comes with 2 rooms of music, a cinema room and even a roof terrace, oh yes), there has never been a funner way to support a great cause.”

Find out more!

Corbin is a member of the Panorama documentary team and a self-styled “renowned expert on the al-Qaeda network and Islamist threat” that faces us all. I know this because it’s how she advertises herself. She even wrote a book on it.

Corbin ostensibly set out in Monday’s docu-drama to answer the question of what happened on the ship Mavi Marmara that led to the deaths of nine of its passengers by the guns of the Israeli commandos that stormed it. Spoiler alert: After a half an hour, the viewer is none the wiser. 80% of the program was devoted to commandos who killed 9 civilians while, at the most, 20% was devoted to all other comments. Her lengthy, fawning interviews with Israeli Navy flacks and TV-approved commandos failed to provide a definitive answer. The scant time dedicated to eye witnesses who had been aboard the Mavi Marmara on the night of May 31 also apparently failed to suit her narrative of choice. As a result, what we the TV audience received was pure propaganda.

Here’s what Jane Corbin covered instead of the actual incident:

The Islamists
Corbin repeatedly referred to the Free Gaza flotilla action in which the Mavi Marmara was involved as “Islamist.” There are a couple of issues with this. First, I’d like to share what Kamil Mahdi, a Iraqi academic and journalist in the UK had to say about it: “The Freedom Flotilla was reduced to a ‘Turkish’ one-boat show and an ‘Islamist’ one (the whole tone and framing is utterly islamophobic and racist and demonizing of muslim activists) with IHH [the charity that bought the Mavi Marmara] cast as a ‘terrorist’ group in tone and insinuation ignoring the facts about the organization and that the whole flotilla that was made up of a coalition of groups and representative of a diverse and unapologetically political – solidarity NOT charity focused – movement).

I agree with that, but think there’s more. As a friend of mine pointed out in an email, “What does the word ‘Islamist’ mean?” It’s used by far right groups for the demonising of muslim activists.  Would the BBC ever say the ‘Judaized’ Israeli army?”

Source: Free Gaza Flickr photos. Farrakhan Dogan was a 19-year-old American citizen who had planned to become a doctor. He was shot five times at close range.

That IHH is an Islamic charity and that some terrorist groups call themselves Islamic does not a connection make. And Israel had already tried that route and had to make yet another retraction and apology. But let’s turn Corbin’s use of guilt-by-association syllogistic reasoning on her and see how it works:

Corbin works for the BBC (broadcasters of Panorama) had in January, 2009, broken its otherwise consistent record of running donation calls for the Disasters and Emergencies Committee (DEC) by banning a nonpartisan public appeal for people in Gaza following the recent Israeli bombardment that had killed thousands and injured more. This illustrates some bias against Palestinians by the BBC, and Corbin is employed by them. She’s also married to the former Conservative MP John Maples (Lewisham West 1983-92; Stratford-upon-Avon in ’97-2010). Maples resigned after it was disclosed in the expenses scandal earlier this year that he’d listed the Royal Automobile Club as his principal residence, but we’re not here to talk about that. Just a year ago, he was listed as one of the most influential members of the Conservative party. That was the same year it was reported that the lobby group Conservative Friends of Israel was donating to at least half the Tory party members’ campaigns. Corbin has never said on the record whether or not her primary residence was in fact the Royal Automobile Club, or whether she was living apart from her husband.

I’m not saying, I’m just saying. Corbin has essentially done the above with her line of reasoning, which apparently doesn’t need to be ensconced in verifiable evidence to make it on to Panorama. What I put above is on a blog, so who cares? She got hers on the BBC. But we’re not here to talk about that Jane Corbin’s probable Tory background or likely Zionist sympathies. The point is to look at how her reporting which broadcast on Monday evening further tarnished the BBC and Panorama’s reputation.

Maybe it comes from retaining an American ear for the media while living abroad. As a past supporter of the Free Gaza movement more involved in issues online as opposed to seaside, and as an atheist, I can say that there are a mix of theists, polytheists and notheists involved. As an atheist I allow myself the luxury of recusing from all sorts of things. I don’t pray, fast or avoid certain meats for example. Some activists I know who took part in Free Gaza flotilla are likewise inclined. Corbin’s Panorama piece continually made reference to the word “Islamist,” sometimes interspersing it with the word “Islamic.” She was also sure to include ample video clips showing people engaged in prayer, saying “God is Great” in Arabic, and highlighting in words of images other Muslim traits of select participants. Getting accustomed to the fact that different people poses their own interpretations as to what degree the spiritual plain exists and in what form is what we’re supposedly aiming for in society. Solidarity activists have this down. Panorama focused just on the activities of some participants with the aim of delivering an image to an audience who would find the scenes alien or uncomfortable, especially when spliced with open-ended unanswered questions of What Were They Really Up To? Scaremongering, essentially.

By the episode’s count, the blockade challenge was devoid of not just of unbeleivers, but of Jews, Christians and those in the “other” category. It was also lacking Muslims in the everyday sense of the word. In their place we had Islamists. In the English language this is a politicized word, lugging with it the connotations of radicals and fundamentalists. It’s the word choice used by the likes of Daniel Pipes, and other borderline hate groups that have no problem with property rights so long as they don’t include building mosques.

My own impression is that Corbin used this word to tie the Mavi Marmara incident to her alleged expertise on the “Islamist threat.” She needed to have a stage from which to set herself up as the authoritative figure to either sanction or rebuff quotes. She reinforced this by focusing on the Turkish charity IHH (Turkish abbreviation for what translates to “The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief”), which purchased the Mavri Marmara to join the Free Gaza flotilla. She attempted — as other more anti-Muslim groups have tried — to link IHH to terrorist movements by citing “reports” and mentioning that one of the IHH workers  “recently returned from Afghanistan.” Without qualifying that statement (IHH supports aid initiatives there and elsewhere) What relevance does it have, except to say that “spent time in Afghanistan” is media shorthand for “supporting Al Quaeda and Islamic terrorism” if the statement refers to a Muslim. And we’re back to syllogistic logic, which would lead one to ask Corbin how much she benefited from her marriage to an MP in furthering her career as an expert.

Living the Dream
Journalist Robert Fisk has often referred to the “legend and myth” of the cutting-edge expertise of Israel’s intelligence and military prowess. We know the image that is cultivated through shrewd public relations, but we’ve also seen repeated evidence to the contrary. Israel is a huge recipient of U.S. aid which certainly allows its military to ‘punch above their weight’ but if you take the cynics view you can see this is the absolute most and best they can do with the resources available. So why did Corbin blindly go along with myth and legend? Instead of probing for provable fact, asking difficult questions or attempting to verify statements, she set journalism back a few years by merely being another ‘stenographer to Power’ and passing on Israeli hasbara as objective fact with her fawning adoration of commandos, turning this episode of Panorama into a documentary more in the Leni Riefenstahl tradition.

Source: Ken O'Keefe. An Israeli Commando, once disarmed, receives first aid from passengers on the Mavi Marmara.

Multiple people on board the Mavi Marmara reported gunshots before commandos landed. So what? One of the Israeli sources was quoted as saying It is “not possible to fire whilst absailing.” Corbin accepts this. Missing was any sort of follow up regarding the murder of  the Turkish film maker who had been shot between the eyes while filming soldiers absailing down from helicopters overhead. Weird.

Nine people on board were killed. In the entire segment we see them get their screen time for a few seconds just the once; it’s obviously cribbed from a Turkish video that had been broadcast to a local audience. Again, this is a matter of messaging. Panorama is primarily created for an English-language western audience. Media from the Middle East has a very different aesthetic. Had she wanted to convey the somber mood that one would think the deaths deserved, the images of those killed would have been formatted in a way its target audience was accustomed to. Instead, we see the scrolling images bordered in digital gold frames with foreign pop music sans context. The idea is that these deaths are fueling the Islamist threat in some sort of martyr theater. We never see in what context the video clip was actually made. It’s there, then it’s gone.

But scads of time is dedicated to the soldiers’ accounts, which are not challenged in any significant way. Commandos claimed they’d received potentially mortal injuries, but we are never shown a single scar or proof of these. Corbin takes their statements of being held captive and worried for their lives at face value, but questions the validity of on-deck reports from ship crew who say they were disarmed and handed over the invaders. Corbin offers one passenger, activist Ken O’Keefe, the chance to tell another side, but his single statement is not given the corroborative attention that the Israeli military account receives. He recorded the conditional agreement he made with Corbin for his interview to be used and posted it online. He’s currently attempting to get the entire thing from the BBC to publish himself.

Source:VeteransToday.com. Ken O'Keefe interviewed by Jane Corbin.

The unassailable facts remain that Israeli commandos boarded a ship flying under a foreign flag (that country’s territory) involved in no illegal activity in international waters with cargo and destination that is allowed under international law. They attacked its passengers and killed nine people. Had they not been there, they’d have no injuries to report. Corbin quickly brushes over this. “And the story goes that we are the aggressors, ‘terrorists’, ‘extremists’ and killers” O’Keefe has since blogged. “Only in this context can the poor Israeli commandos be victims.  How is it possible to dominate and control commandos simply to let them go if we are killers?  Answer, it isn’t.  And that is precisely why Panorama blatantly lied.”

More to the point, Corbin has picked a side, she just didn’t openly state it in the program. You can see it through the course of the 30 minutes, and it’s actually all over the Panorama website, which boasts that “Panorama is given unique access to Israel’s Naval Commando 13,” which carried out the attack. They have extra web-only exclusives with fetish titles “Inside Israel’s commando unit” and “In pictures: At sea with Israel’s elite commandos.” This is not the first time Corbin has promised Israeli forces a blatantly one-sided account in exchange for access. In her other piece for Panorama, “Passports to Kill,” Corbin’s romanticized version of the Mossad stands the test of all evidence to the contrary as she dotingly looks on and nods as Israeli officials neither admit or deny anything, and ends by saying if it is Mossad, it’s not the one she knows. Obviously.

Clipped audio
While not giving much credit to Mavi Marmara footage or audio recordings that don’t support the commando’s story (more on that below), Corbin takes media supplied by the Israeli military very seriously, and unquestioningly. Some of what she allowed to be aired in Panorama on Monday was already discredited, as first reported by the BBC. On the tape, we here people on the Mavi Marmara radio say in what seems like an American accent,  “go back to auschwitz” and “We’re helping Arabs go against the US, don’t forget 9/11.” The only problem is, no one else has ever corroborated that this happened, and no other audio of the incident includes the above lines.

Had Corbin talked to passengers or crew on the Mavi Marmara or the others on the other ships, she would have had to show more suspicion about the authenticity. Journalist Kamil Mahdi was on another ship in the Flotilla. “I heard everything myself in the wheelhouse of the Challenger 1. We had every channel open.” Corbin left out the the Israeli Navy admitted it had doctored the clip since its release, or that others there have questioned its authenticity as well.

Bad Medicine
There’s a particularly melodramatic scene in the Panorama episode in which Corbin pulls out a box of pills of some sort from a cardboard container we are to believe consists of confiscated aid bound for Gaza on the ships. This is an interesting segment because it accomplishes two goals. First: to question whether there was any usable aid on the ships at all. Israeli military press releases had initially claimed there was nothing but passengers and their personal belongings. This didn’t work well with its other promise to personally deliver the seized aid, so what they’ve said since is that it’s no good. Corbin held aloft some pills which she seemed to indicate were representative of the entire haul and said they’re all past their use by date.

Greta Berlin, a Free Gaza flotilla organizer said that’s hardly the case, and one wonders if Panorama dedicated the resources to inspecting each box of confiscated goods before making the claim. Were they out of date when they were put on the ships, or while they sat in an Israeli warehouse? Were they brought by IHH or one of the other groups? And how much of the aid consisted of pills with expiration dates? None of these questions are answered, because none of them were asked. To anyone. “As far as the medicine is concerned,” Berlin has said, “some may have been close to the expiration date, such as May 2010. By the time Israel chose to deliver the medicine, more might have been out of date. But most of the supplies we took in was equipment, and they refused to allow the wheelchairs in with batteries, rendering them useless.” What Corbin failed to mention was that all supplies to be shipped had been vetted in advance and were permissible under international law.

Why this goes unsaid is open to speculation, but it helped Corbin make her other point: She plainly said on TV that the expired pills prove that those on board the Mavi Marmara (and by extension the other ships, one would guess) were not on a humanitarian aid mission at all, but out to purely make a political statement under the guise of aid work. That’s the other thing the segment accomplished. It doesn’t even take investigative journalism to visit the Free Gaza website and look at the mission statement: “We want to break the siege of Gaza. We want to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation.” What about that is unclear?

Stolen content
I’d be really interest in learning what the BBC has to say about content created by others for their own projects making its way into a program that the BBC will copyright and forbid others from using. The Beeb doesn’t exactly slap a Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0 license on its stuff (though, as a TV license fee payer, I can say it really should). “Is the BBC culpable?” Berlin has asked. “It would make an interesting lawsuit.”

There’s another problem with the fact that Panorama used video content obtained from Israeli military sources confiscated from Free Gaza flotilla ships. Nowhere in the program does Corbin acknowledge that much of the footage used, edited and spliced together came from seized video, and no attempt to compare it with any unseized video was aired in the program. This is problematic, because there’s no statement saying that the footage may not be original or untampered. And it’s pretty obvious that the footage has been at least lightly altered.

In some of the footage shown on the Panorama episode, a time code appears in the upper right hand corner of one of the first IDF video clips indicating it was shot at around 4:23 am. From then on, all times codes except one have been covered up, obscuring whether the images are being shown in the proper order. Israeli Navy public relations likes to argue that those on board began arming themselves before anything began. Those on the ship assert that they began scouring for implements to defend themselves after the invasion kicked off. Corbin should have sought the raw footage, not some doctored highlights clip. And if they wouldn’t release the raw footage, unedited, she should have said so on the program.

Corbin also used footage obtained under unclear terms from Irara Lee’s documentary production company Cultures of Resistance. The program made it appear as if this was part of a collaborative effort with Lee’s company. Here’s what she had to say about its use in her Facebook profile update: The “BBC has produced a pro-IDF account of the attack on the Gaza freedom flotilla for their show Panorama. We are reviewing the report for errors, omissions, and inclusion of unchecked propaganda from the Israeli military.”

This is not the first time a BBC journalist has resorted to using the confiscated creative works of other filmmakers to pad their own perspective of an incident having to do with Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories. During the siege of the Church of the Nativity in 2002 Jacquie Soohen was the only filmmaker to get footage from inside the Church. The Israeli military confiscated all Soohen’s footage and the next time she saw it was on TV, in the BBC’s (and most likely the IDFs) edited version of the account.

Left uncovered
Corbin paid scant attention to details behind the nine people killed (shot a combined 30 times), compared to the time she spent to the alleged injuries the commandos reported. There was no examination of how they died, the level of violence used against them, or whether their deaths were avoidable. She also failed to mention that over 50 passengers suffered serious injuries.

But what’s really unfortunate about the coverage is that it leaves out the most important piece. That people were actually working on humanitarian aid through a direct challenge to the blockade. That was the intent. What was also left out was that everything the Free Gaza flotilla publicized: it’s route, timetable and cargo, were exactly as as they said. No one, not even the Israeli Navy, denies that. And left uncovered was that the inhumane policy of turning the most populated bit of ground on the planet into a sort of The Stanford Prison Experiment writ large carries on. The unstated editorial policy of the episode was that the Palestinians belong to Israel, and everyone else should keep out.

“If you’ve been affected by any of the issues in Monday night’s program…” then you probably live under a criminal occupation and couldn’t watch it. Or you were on one of the Free Gaza ships and your mouth is still agape at the sheer volume of misinformation that can be packed into 30 minutes of commercial-free television. You can see the Panorama episode for yourself (only while it’s still online). If you feel so inclined, give some feedback.

You can also see it here:

Wikileaks editor Julian Assange showing the decrypted military video from Baghdad attacks July 2007. Photo by jenny8lee via flickr

Before launching into the diatribe, I thought I’d accomplish the inverse of what most blog posts do (including those found on this site) and make my point first.

• Go to Wikileaks’ Afghan War Diary page and download all 75 mb of the 91,000 leaked documents regarding U.S. activity in Afghanistan.
• Next up, download the slightly larger 1.4 GB creepily titled “Insurance file” whatever that is.

Now that we’ve got that sorted, what to do with it all? I don’t know what to say about the encrypted insurance file yet, no one knows what’s in it. Keep it, though. With the other one, well, have at it. do anything you want.

Be like the Guardian and mash it up in different ways and share how you did it. Crunch the data yourself and post it online. Save it on your hard drive somewhere in case different sites mirroring the information should for some mysterious reason come under attack. Burn it onto CDs and write “Dixie Chicks” on them in black marker. Copy them onto spare USB flash drives and leave them on busses, subways or any of your other preferred means of mass transit (In the UK some government agency workers do this by accident anyway) Make image files out of them and share them. Print them off and make wallpaper.

This is how the web works and it is an example of the web working. At Middle East Online Christian Christensen writes that “Wikileaks is nothing like Twitter or YouTube. What separates it from other forms of social media is the review process that submitted material must go through in order to be posted to the site.” That’s essentially true, but that’s not what does it. What Wikileaks does (what successful Wikis accomplish) is distill functions that the entire web actually provides only on a single topic or niche interest. It’s not that there’s an exclusive cabal of people vetting everything that goes on the site, htough for some things there seems to be. It’s that anyone can log in and alter the pages, but no one can get rid of the information or the history of edits to a page. You can add to someone’s work or critique it. Wiping it from the site is by design not so easy. That’s actually what the entire web does between all its social network websites, blogs, social bookmarking tools, forums and so on.

But any online thing’s success requires that people find it, make use of it and share it. There’s a lot of information people aren’t making use of. Forget Afghanistan for a minute. Had Wikileaks released files that the U.S. had conclusive intelligence findings that Iraq posed no threat before the invasion in 2003, perhaps the White House would have released a condemning statement and made the fairly ludicrous demand to “return” all files posted online. Such details are coming out nearly daily in UK, and yet most U.S. mdiea is completely ignoring testimony at the Iraq Inquiry. The head of MI5 not only confirmed that Tony Blair was briefed that Iraq posed no threat, but also that U.S. intelligence about Iraq were completely fabricated for the purpose of garnering support for the invasion from Congress.

You could argue that is that the above information about Iraq is already known, and thus not new news. And you’d be correct. The Wikileaks issue is considered new news. What about it makes it so new? Is it the contents of the documents? Hardly. That’s old news. Anyone paying attention knows that the Taliban has not been routed, that civilian casualties are a ritual and that there are no actual achievable aims to the war and occupation there.

One thing that the documents on Afghanistan accomplish is what the Iraq Inquiry is doing at it’s own inimitable snail’s pace as well: Putting names, places and figures to what is collectively understood. And that’s important. Just because the truth has been deduced doesn’t mean it can last without substantial amounts of evidence. But that’s observably not a newsworthy event in and of itself. Somehow it needs to work in the testimony of a super model to make the news.

So unlike the evidence in the Iraq Inquiry — coming out very soberly and judiciously — what makes the Afghanistan information so newsworthy? Why is the White House so much more concerned about it than it is about the Iraq Inquiry? Why do blowhards like Marc Thiessen (Wikileaks must be stopped) call for an American Jihad against Iceland and Sweden for not turning Julian Assange over for public execution while not also demanding the head of the Queen of England?

Disruptive Technologies. Source: www.absoluteastronomy.com

The answer is that the general public gets to use the data. In any way they see fit. They can share it how they like, interpret it anyway they choose and spread it around using whatever tools they like using best. Christensen says Wikileaks is effective because it “has an organisational review structure in place that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and most blogs (for obvious reasons) do not.” That’s false.

Wikileaks’ success is actually dependent on those other services, as coporate as they may be. Procedural structures exist in all sorts of information organizations that are not as successful. The fact that Wikileaks trusts visitors to absorb unfiltered information, find its value themselves and share it via their own preferred methods is what makes it work. Old Media’s model is based on a lack of trust in its audiance. People need things explained to them and need to not be distracted by what isn’t important. New Media says whatever its users post must be important to someone and those people will pass it on.

Jack Shafer presumes to tell Wikileaks what it could learn from the New York Times in a column written for Slate. Among the bad advice he attempts to pass on is that Wikileaks should have followed mainstream news’ example and blacked out certain names and places that allegedly could put some individuals in danger. He writes, “Had Assange been in direct contact with the U.S. intelligence establishment, as national security reporters are, and had he heard U.S. officials’ arguments without any intermediates, would he have published so many raw documents to the Web? I don’t think he would have.”

My advice to Assange would be: Never get in touch with those people. And after that I’ll just leave Glenn Greenwald’s much retweeted tweet here: “So the WikiLeak-ed documents might put Afghans at risk? You know what else does? 10 yrs of bombings, air raids, checkpoint shootings, drones.”

Since then, the following organisations have also called on Wikileaks to blot out spefic names of people: The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International, The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict and the Open Society Institute and the International Crisis Group. All good groups I respect, and all unified in an incredibly inept and useless argument which may seems solid on first reading, and certainly stems from good intentions. They want to “protect civilians who’ve worked alongside the U.S. and other foreign forces from reprisals.” But in doing so, they’re supporting a classic asymmetric paradigm: Supporting one side against another. There’s no talk about not using civilians in the first place, or what danger Afghanistan’s occupation forces have put them in. And there’s nothing in their statement warning against the listing of names or identifying specifics of civilians who may be accused assisting the insurgency, who could also now be at risk.

Again, part of Wikileaks’ current success is in simply publishing unfiltered  information online. That’s why it’s still talked about and stands as a much better chance of making waves.

Success was also secured in giving media outlets like the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel advance notice and time to do something with the information. These organisations were allowed to do whatever they wanted with it, but with the knowledge that the raw, unredacted content was going to be released no matter what. In effect, they acted as part of an open invitation for more people to try their hand at data analysis.

The spreading insurgency

Drew Conway has done just that, as reported by Wired. The NYU political scientist grad student crunched the Afghan War Logs using R, an open source statistical programming language, and graphical plotting software ggplot2. And what’s been revealed is an insurgency that has done pretty much what most everyone but the U.S. war planners predicted: Increased in popularity and spread out to more regions.

In spite of its name, Wired is very much Old Media Establishment. It acts as gatekeeper, using trained journalists to decypher what is of interest to its target audiance… Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Wired is thriving on the Wikileaks news, as are other media outlets who have seen exactly what online social media now provides them: Scores of experts in their own specific areas of interests poring over the same date in unique ways. For free.  That’s something that gives a story legs, and it bothers those entrenched in the current power structure. The Pentagon’s (and Congress, the White House, etc.) problem with the information being out isn’t that it’s simply out there; it’s the fact it is available in a format that allows for multiple forms of analysis, interpretation and portrayal.

“In government, the real scandal is usually not what’s illegal, but legal and routine,” writes journalist and True/Slant blogger John McQuad. “The day-to-day status quo that, when examined closely by fresh eyes, turns out to be something monstrous.”

A few journalists don’t seem to get this.  Foreign Policy magazine’s blogger on National Security Tom Ricks is among them. “I know of more stuff leaked at one good dinner on background.,” he quips. This line, and the pithy entry on Wikileaks to which it belongs, goes a long way to illustrating the flaws that continue to haunt Old School journalism.

Most likely he’s exaggerating things. But on the off chance that he somehow receives precise geographic and statistical data on how the Afghanistan campaign is going: then he is another example of the limits that traditional journalism’s gate-keeper ethos have to offer: At the end of the day, if a reporter’s career is tied to maintaining a good relationship with sources, the audience is only going to get as much information that helps maintain that relationship. And as we’ve seen, that’s not much. It’s nice to know that Ricks is getting the information, but if he’s getting all that, he’s not being too generous with the rest of us.

There’s this notion that one must beseech insiders and power brokers to get the Real Picture about what’s going on. What we need to realize is that this is no longer the case, if it ever was. Information no longer necessarily flows along that narrow course. Those in traditional power positions are now as likely to get information about what is happening or going to happen from very common sources. The stream analogy no longer works. It’s an ocean that may have certain tidal currents, but is not necessaily flowing from or to a single source.

There was a line in a now fairly old Ron Suskind article in New York Times Magazine (October 17, 2004) about the Bush Administration that used to haunt me: “The aide (to President Bush) said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about Enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study, too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’ ”

It doesn’t bother me anymore, and here’s why: That aide to president Bush was correct for a time. Or at least a lot of people pretended like he was and that’s kind of all that’s needed.  But here’s the new reality: We can turn the tables. Any one of us can be history’s actors now and leave it to them to analyze what we do. And while they’re working through what it is we’ve done, we can act again. They’ve established an empire, so the hell what? What’s that mean anymore? Have it — the bloated, obtuce and outdated instrument that it is. It’s no longer relevent.

http://be-evil.com

We live in the new era of Asymmetric Threats. I know it’s true because Google’s CEO says it is, and he’s provided me with the quote to spook the next decade.  In a CNet article on the recent Techonomy Conference, Ina Fried writes that “[Eric] Schmidt said that in an era of asymmetric threats, ‘true anonymity is too dangerous.’ “

The quote should be taken in context. CNet: “Schmidt noted that using artificial intelligence, computers can take 14 pictures of anyone on the Internet and stand a good chance of identifying that person. Similarly, the data collected by location-based services can be used not only to show where someone is at, but to also predict with a lot of accuracy where they might be headed next.” It’s not entirely speculative.  The CIA and Google have both invested in a company called Recorded Future that is working toward a reality that would give Philip K. Dick goosebumps.

When exactly did the era begin? To be honest, we’ve always lived with asymmetric threats. Corporations, governments and (before them) The Church have long posed asymmetric threats against individuals who expressed ideas or pursued actions outside the accepted orthodoxy. Only now that things are shifting and better tools are becoming availbable to small groups and individuals is asymmetry an issue, though. It sort of became an issue the way international human rights abuses only became an issue some time after the end Europe’s colonial period; Other people are doing it now, so something’s got to be done.

In actuality we live in an era of new kinds of asymmetric threats. Perhaps they should be categorized, but I’m running out of steam. One type is the Wikileaks’ Aghan War Diaries, and the leaked video of U.S. soldiers firing on Iraqi civilians. Information dissemination tools are now everywhere and people use them for various means. Wikileaks may have its own special process for maximising the chances for anonymity, but it’s not a sure thing, and it doesn’t matter. It is becoming reflexive to share experiences. Once shared, nothing can be done to unshare it.

Prosecution only has value so long as the perpetrator is within the borders of the offended nation, and even then it’s more of a matter of maintaining an image as opposed to damage control. When Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell  demanded all copies of classified war documents be returned, he must have known it was a useless thing to say even before the words tumbled out. Returned from where?

Another example of the new asymmetry is the Free Gaza flotilla movement. With much advance warning about everything from cargo to route and intention, the Israeli government still loused up, killing unarmed participants and injuring others. As a result, sympathy for people in Gaza has increased around the world and inspried more people to send ships. Geopolitically it has led Turkey to rethink its foreign policy and a UK prime minister to openly declare Gaza is a prison camp. It put the White House in another in a series of awkward position of yet again having to defend an ally willing to kill U.S. citizens regardless of the lack of threat they pose. Economically it’s added fuel to an already growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

In another example, take file sharing: The entertainment industry goes after P2P services and file sharing enthusiasts, and Pirate Bay is created. It attempts to get governments involved, and Pirate Bay spawns the Pirate Party. Having secured a seat in the Swedish parliament, the Pirate Party can now host Pirate Bay on government internet servers. Having started its own ISP, the Pirate Party is now prepared to offer hosting to Wikileaks as well.

Those of us harboring post-nationalist daydreams should take into account Christensen’s last point in his Middle East Online column: “If the Wikileaks case has taught us anything, it is that the nation-state is most certainly not in decay. A great deal of discourse surrounding the internet, and social media in particular, revolves around the premise that we now live in a borderless digital society.”

The problem is that Christensen is again both right and wrong. Digital society is borderless, but it exists in a world where borders are still the reality in many other facets of life. As individuals this is an important message. Our ideas and creations may travel the globe at light speed over fibre-optic and wireless networks, but the minds from which they originate are still trapped within physical bodies which, as of this writing, can typically only exist one place at a time.

An individual is at the mercy of whatever authority that manages the borders she or he happens to find themselves in. Some people realize this fact at great personal cost. Wikileaks frontman Julian Assange found this out to a degree when the Australian government temporarily barred him from leaving the country. As soon as he could travel again, he did. Not everyone has the resources to do likewise and as individuals we must always be assessing the limits of what we can do where we are. Most people don’t even come close, though.

Organizations are another matter. They can literally exist no where and consist of whatever structure suits the specific need. If Al Jazeera is barred from reporting on something in one country, it just releases the story from a bureau in another. Movements can and should operate much in the same way.

As the Pirate Bay example shows, we live in an international society now, not a nationless one. And that’s fine, because it takes into account a key feature of the new asymmetry: With proper organization and the right mindset, law becomes akin to a buffet dining experience.

“When the United States is on the side of injustice, it harms our country, it harms our integrity, it harms our principle, it harms our standing in the world. People want to believe that we, as the world’s leading superpower, live up to our highest virtues. And when we fail to do that, it threatens, and endangers, and undermines us.”

— Rep. Brian Baird, speaking at the 9th Annual National Organizers’ Conference for the US Campaign to End the Occupation

Hey Brian,

I hear you’re stepping down from Congress soon. Sorry to hear about it, really. It seems like you’ve finally arrived to a place where I could vote for you again, and now the whole process has to start over and I have to listen to a new representative get it wrong for years upon years. Perhaps you’ve decided that your awakening has come with the unfortunate side effect of being unable to win another election while also saying what you believe. That may be true, but so what?

I think that’s the best time to run for re-election. As much as possible, we need it on the public record how many people actually vote and campaign against rationality. Elections are when these people out and say things which can be recorded. We need that. When need to know which fellow Democrats, Republicans and other parties will or won’t do so, because more importantly than serving democracy for yet another election cycle, we can measure public reaction and see exactly where your part of the United States stands.

So, put it to the test and run again. You’ve got nothing to lose.

Date and Time: Monday 26th July 2010 18:43:37

IP address: 96.243.197.224 (pool-96-243-197-224.tampfl.fios.verizon.net)

Message: HEY JULIAN — I HOPE YOU ARE PROUD OF YOURSELF. FOR SOMEONE WITH SUCH A BIG MOUTH, YOU ARE PRETTY SLICK IN HIDING YOURSELF. IN MY OPINION, YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE. YOU DON’T CONSIDER OUR BOYS FIGHTING FOR US. NO MATTER WHAT THE COST, YOU HAVE TO FORCE YOUR WAY OF THINKING ON THE WHOLE WORLD. IN MY OPINION, YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A CANDY ASS–JERK OFF. GET A LIFE AND DO SOMETHING WORTHWHILE INSTEAD OF COSTING SOLDIERS THEIR LIVES. YOU ARE A REAL COWARD FOR HIDING. WHY NOT EXPOSE YOURSELF AND YOUR LOCATION TO DEBATE–IT FIGURES WHY YOU ARE HIDING — JUST LOOK IN THE MIRROR.

92,000 documents showing in detail how the U.S. brutally “pushes its opinion” on the world and this is what she comes up with?

In this film, Fida captures what was happening in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught in 2008, “Operation Cast Lead,” which killed and injured thousands of Palestinian civilians, and the aftermath since. You can help complete this moving film, a story that can engage the minds and touch the hearts of people in the U.S. Distribution isn’t cheap. Deep Dish is working to raise $30,000. Donations are tax deductible, which is more than you can say about the part of your taxable income that goes to perpetuate the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Visit the Deep Dish website to help this project move along.

HIstorian rock star Howard Zinn

People’s historian Howard Zinn has given permission to the folks at History Is A Weapon to put his classic A People’s History Of The United States, online, but that hasn’t stopped HarperCollins from chasing after the website’s developers with threats of a lawsuit for doing so. Last month HIAW published its response to the publishing giant.

While HarperCollins claims both they and the author have not given permission, but the person writing the Cease & Desist order didn’t seem to check her or his facts with Zinn, who had met the HIAW crew in advance and and also gave positive feedback after seeing it online. Download your archived copy here (while supplies last).

The online copy is far from an identical experience to the dead trees version . The site creators scanned the book’s some 650 pages and coded it via hand to correct scanning mistakes, missing some here and there. A lawsuit seems a little ridiculous. The site developers have said they’ll take it offline if and when they ever are asked to do so by Zinn or his family, so HarperCollins could quickly ascertain whether permission was given.

One of the great things about the text is all the ways in which you can get it these days.There are public performances of it, posters, radio programs and lesson plans based on it. An online version seems like a natural progression for something that indeed belongs to the people. For scads of reasons why it’s better to publishin your print book online and give it away for free, you can read pretty much any forward to a book by Cory Doctorow (here’s one now), but we can dispense with the bulk of them that have to do with helping the humans and focus on the one HarperCollins is interested in: money. As publishing giant Tim O’Reilly asserts: it’s not piracy that costs sales, but obscurity. 37 Signals offers an online version of its book Getting Real to sell copies of that book as well as its other one, Rework.

A People’s History of the United States has achieved cult status that any publishing house should be clamoring for. Part of the price of cult status is that you give up a certain degree of control. The advantage is that the community forms a self-creating market and your book is sold to each member who sees it as a point of honor to have and give out to others. HarperCollins should see the book for the national treasure that it is, do away with the copyright and offer it under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 license where ever there’s a market for it, and with an attribution-only license in parts of the world where there may not yet be a market and get the book translated quickly and efficiently by people in other countries who could turn it into a DIY economic stepping stone.

How much better to share the ideas carried in this book by turning it over to the people themselves?

READ: A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn

CHAPTERS:

1. Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress

2. Drawing the Color Line

3. Persons of Mean and Vile Condition

4. Tyranny is Tyranny

5. A Kind of Revolution

6. The Intimately Oppressed

7. As Long As Grass Grows Or Water Runs

8. We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God

9. Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom

10. The Other Civil War

11. Robber Barons And Rebels

12. The Empire and the People

13. The Socialist Challenge

14. War Is the Health of the State

15. Self-help in Hard Times

16. A People’s War?

17. “Or Does It Explode?”

18. The Impossible Victory: Vietnam

19. Surprises

20. The Seventies: Under Control?

21. Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus

22. The Unreported Resistance

23. The Clinton Presidency and the Crisis of Democracy

24. The Coming Revolt of the Guards

25. The 2000 Election and the “War on Terrorism”

Cultures of Resistance the film is a feature-length documentary directed by Iara Lee. The film draws connections between people on every continent and highlights the work of artists, musicians, and dancers throughout the world who are re-conceiving resistance as a fundamentally creative act. The Cultures of Resistance website seeks to get audiences involved with the activist groups and campaigns featured in the film.

Delegitimize.com is a new media library project by Nigel Parry that plans to publish a series of both topic-specific and current event-focused archive websites, with the help of the pro-Palestinian community and beyond.

The Gaza Flotilla archive is a freely-available research resource on the events that took place in international waters off the coast of Gaza on 31 May 2010.

Image: chemicallygreen.com

“Hindsight bias is the inclination to see events that have occurred as more predictable than they in fact were before they took place. Hindsight bias has been demonstrated experimentally in a variety of settings, including politics, games and medicine. In psychological experiments of hindsight bias, subjects also tend to remember their predictions of future events as having been stronger than they actually were, in those cases where those predictions turn out correct. This inaccurate assessment of reality after it has occurred is also referred to as ‘creeping determinism.’” — Wikidpedia

BP would have done all those things differently if they could turn back time, I’m sure.

Read: British Petroleum has a long record of bold claims and clever slogans.

Tony Blair takes a photo of himself in front of the human rights travesty he helped create in Iraq.

Shut the hell up. Here’s what you had to say on the Israeli massacre of nine humanitarian aid activists from Turkey and the illegal boarding and abduction of others in international waters and the theft of their cargo legally bound for Gaza under international law: “I am 100% on Israel’s side.” … “There are no questions at all. There have been rockets fired from Gaza, there are people in Gaza who want to kill innocent Israelis.” (entirely unrelated) … “When it comes to security, I am 100% on Israel’s side.”

Thus, Tony Blair, you are in 0% support of international law, human rights, a peace process, the United Nations or common sense. People need to stop blathering on about Helen Thomas and look at a real hate monger: You.

Quite the envoy of “The Quartet” you are in the name of coming up with some sort of solution to a conflit: A war criminal with a great smile. I don’t get why so many in Labour actually seem to miss you. I’m waiting for someone to actually explain to me what you brought to the table that could be identifiable as “helpful.” You pretty much delivered UK foreign policy to the White House, dragged your country into the most ridiculously insane war in modern history that Iraq is still in ruins from, and you did so knowingly based on false information.

And is now here you are proselytizing for Israel’s right to ethnic cleansing and apartheid and to pop a bullet in the head of anyone it wants to in international waters. You display nothing but disdain for the poeple in the entire region of the Middle East it seems, and you’ve managed to propel this into a profitable business opportunity for yourself. Way to go, you.

Some of the participants of the humanitarian flotilla. (Maan Images)

Israel exercises “effective control” over Gaza and as such remains an occupying power. Under international law Israel’s blockade of Gaza is illegal. Its attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla – meant to enforce an illegal blockade – is illegal as well.

1. Why is Israel’s siege of Gaza illegal under international law?

2. Why does the international community continue to consider Israel an occupying power in Gaza?

3. If Israeli claims to have ended its occupation of Gaza were true would the blockade still be illegal?

4. Did Israel have the legal right to prevent the passage of the humanitarian aid flotilla?

5. Did Israel have the right to board the flotilla ships in international waters?

6. Can maritime blockades be imposed in international waters?

7. Did Israel’s actions constitute self-defense?

UPDATE: MV Rachel Corrie crew is requesting a UN escort and has said they will allow UN observers to inspect cargo for anything that is outside of international law. That should be sufficient for Israel . I’m still in favor of the Turkish option.

Products (source: the Israeli human rights organization Gisha) barred from Gaza by the Israeli occupation. Graphic by that bastion of the radical left, The Economist

“UN statistics show that around 70% of Gazans live on less than $1 a day, 75% rely on food aid and 60% have no daily access to water. Humanitarian aid is in theory allowed in, but UN agencies and charities claim that the Israelis have banned any items that are humanitarian in nature but could be put to alternative use. Items said to face delays getting into Gaza include shelter kits, health and paediatric hygiene kits, bedding, kitchen utensils, school textbooks and stationery. The World Bank estimates that 80% of Gaza’s imports are smuggled in by tunnel. The goods, which are taxed by Hamas, attract inflated prices that are out of the reach of most ordinary residents.” — The Guardian

freegaza.org

The embargo on goods to Gaza is illegal under international law. The United Nations Security Council has called for it to be lifted. — UN Security Council Resolution 1860

The Israeli embargo meets the definition of “collective punishment,” a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. “Art. 33. No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.” — ICRC

No foreign power, even an occupying power, has the authority to restrict delivery of Humanitarian aid under any circumstances according to the Fourth Geneva Convention. — ICRC

“Israel has no right to control Gaza’s sea as its own territorial waters and to stop aid convoys arriving that way. In doing so, it proves that it is still in belligerent occupation of the enclave and its 1.5 million inhabitants. And if it is occupying Gaza, then under international law Israel is responsible for the welfare of the Strip’s inhabitants. Given that the blockade has put Palestinians there on a starvation diet for the past four years, Israel should long ago have been in the dock for committing a crime against humanity.” — Jonathan Cook

A ship delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza was flying under the Turkish flag when it was attacked by Israeli commandos last night leading to a still unknown number of civilian deaths. Turkey is a member of NATO. Article 5 of the NATO charter declares that armed attacks against any NATO member in Europe or North America will be considered an attack against all of them, with each taking action. Article 6 lists the Mediterranean Sea as one location where an attack will bring about a response. — NATO

The Law of the Sea also applies to the attack on the Turkish vessel, and the U.S. was wrong to suggest in the UN that Israel should lead (or even take part) in any investigation of the incident. In international waters, the applicable laws are those of the country whose flag the ship where the altercation took place was flying. It was a Turkish ship, hence it’s Turkish territory and Turkish laws and jurisdiction apply. — The Law of the Sea

Unless…

Because the action took place on open waters, one of two scenarios currently exists provided by Craig Murray (citation link at bottom):

1. ” Possibility one is that the Israeli commandos were acting on behalf of the government of Israel in killing the activists on the ships. In that case Israel is in a position of war with Turkey, and the act falls under international jurisdiction as a war crime.”
2. “Possibility two is that, if the killings were not authorised Israeli military action, they were acts of murder under Turkish jurisdiction. If Israel does not consider itself in a position of war with Turkey, then it must hand over the commandos involved for trial in Turkey under Turkish law.”

So, if Israel isn’t at war with Turkey then it should turn over any suspects to Turkish authorities. If Israel claims it has the authority, it’s an act of war. — Craig Murray, former British Ambassador and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Lancaster School of Law

Taking all this into account, you’d think the MV Rachel Corrie would find some smooth sailing into the Port of Gaza. But then you’d be thinking about a government that was behaving in a rational manner. Think again.

What follows are some decent statements on the Israel’s attack on humanitarian ships in international waters:

“Hillary Clinton on North Korea: ‘I think it’s important to send a clear message to North Korea that provocative actions [sinking a war ship] have consequences. We cannot allow the attack on South Korea to go unanswered by the international community.’ … Hillary Clinton on Israel’s attack on a humanitarian aid convoy: Silence.” – Diana Buttu

***

“If an armed group of Somali pirates had yesterday boarded six vessels on the high seas, killing at least 10 passengers and injuring many more, a Nato taskforce would today be heading for the Somali coast. What happened yesterday in international waters off the coast of Gaza was the work of Israeli commandos, not pirates, and no Nato warships will in fact be heading for Israel. Perhaps they should be.” –  The Guardian editorial

***

“It is unclear how anyone could credibly adopt an Israeli narrative of ‘self-defense’ when Israel had carried out an unprovoked armed assault on civilian ships in international waters. Surely any right of self-defense would belong to the passengers on the ship. Nevertheless, the Freedom Flotilla organizers had clearly and loudly proclaimed their ships to be unarmed civilian vessels on a humanitarian mission.” – Electronic Intifada

***

***

“If we needed any evidence of the degree to which Western TV journalists are simply stenographers to power, the BBC, CNN and others are amply proving it. Mark Regev, Israel’s propagandist-in-chief, has the airwaves largely to himself.” – Jonathan Cook

We could spend some time here talking about the various laws being broken under this action involving international waters, but that seems a bit aside the point right now. People once again have been killed for supporting the reconstruction and right to existence in Gaza.

The Free Gaza ships were part of a humanitarian project that seeks not just to deliver medical and food for the basic subsistence of people in Gaza, but also sought to bring visitors to its ports and assert the rights of people in Gaza to have control over their own sea space. That its neighbor Israel should not have control over what goes in and out if it is in fact not an occupying power.

The fact is that Israel still does occupy Gaza, still considers it part of the Greater Project and is simply using different means to keep it unsustainable than it did before the settlements were removed. Those in the Free Gaza flotilla went knowing that there would be resistance from Israeli ship illegally occupying international waters.

The Free Gaza movement remains an inspiring, and fantastic endeavor on behalf, in support of, and with Palestinian participation. The movement has non-profit status in the U.S. and charitable status in the UK. Please donate now. The cost of freedom is apparently higher for some than it is for others.

Update: Ali Abunimah writes: ” I received the following message from a member of the Belfast Palestine Solidarity Committee which has received word from the Free Gaza Movement that those aboard the Irish vessel “Rachel Corrie” have decided to proceed to Gaza. A full press release is expected shortly.”

You can’t keep a good movement down.

Evidence of things even worse than cat juggling!

Image via Adbusters

I love an online presentation. This one by Mike Milken (yes, that Milken) , “Our Pathetic History Of Foreign Oil Dependence,” isn’t bad and is currently being traded around by a few armchair eco-warriors. Milken’s look at eight presidential lies on foreign oil dependency points out an inconvenient and “pathetic” truth, but pathetic for whom? It’s always been a hunch of mine that the operative political buzz-word in scare mongering about dependence on foreign oil is “foreign.”

I’ve used an extraction from the whole thing below to pull out the main points:

1. In 1974 with 36.1% of oil from foreign sources, President Richard Nixon said, “At the end of this decade, in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need.”
2. In 1975 with 36.1% of oil from foreign sources, President Gerald Ford said, “We must reduce oil imports by one million barrels per day by the end of this year and by two million barrels per day by the end of 1977.”
3. In 1979 with 40.5% of oil from foreign sources, President Jimmy Carter said, “Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 – never.”
4. In 1981 with 43.6% of oil from foreign sources, President Ronald Reagan said, “While conservation is worthy in itself, the best answer is to try to make us independent of outside sources to the greatest extent possible for our energy.”
5. In 1992 with 47.2% of oil from foreign sources, President George Bush said, “When our administration developed our national energy strategy, three principles guided our policy: reducing our dependence on foreign oil…”
6. In 1995 with 49.8% of oil from foreign sources, President Bill Clinton said, “The nation’s growing reliance on imports of oil…threatens the nation’s security…[we] will continue efforts to…enhance domestic energy production.”
7. In 2006 with 65.5% of oil from foreign sources, President George W. Bush said, “Breakthroughs…will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.”
8. In 2009 with 66.2% of oil from foreign sources, President Barack Obama said, “It will be the policy of my administration to reverse our dependence on foreign oil while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs.”

Americans don’t seem to have too much trouble with the environmental impact of oil (aside from the one washing up on its shores, anyway). The United States still consumes 24.3% of the world supply, with heavily populated China coming in second at just 8.9%. More oil is being used per year in the U.S., not less. And even with a complete change over from the use of oil (unlikely until it does actually run out) energy dependency would still need to stretch beyond U.S. borders. The real problem with U.S. energy policy isn’t a dependence on foreign oil, but entrenched xenophobia, which limits its prospects of obtaining sustainable energy stability.

Robert Bryce, author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of ‘Energy Independence,’ cited five myths peddled by the energy independence movement in 2008 that still are peddled today. Three out of five have xenophobic overtones as opposed to environmental reasoning.

Ken Malloy argued here that “Oil imports are an easy target at least in part because of energy profiling. “Oil imports” are a synonym for Arabs and, especially after 9/11, Arabs are the one group it is seemingly ok to despise. Indeed, it may be seen by some as un-American to defend oil imports.”

Looking at both Malloy and Bryce’s lists, we can see the logic being made:
Foreign oil dependence = Arab/Muslim dependence = American weakness and threat of terrorism = security weakness.

But as Malloy and Bryce point out, these reasons don’t wash. There’s no provable correlation between foreign oil markets and national security. By far the the greatest oil imports into the U.S. come from Mexico and Canada.

As someone who is a fan of alternative fuels and sustainable development, it bugs me when like-minded environmentalists jump on the scare train and prefix the word “foreign” just to boo-scare people about the dangers of oil overdependence.

Just being rational for a moment, any sort of alternative energy solution that would bring about an effective, positive global environmental impact would also have to be international in scope. You would still be getting a substantial amount of whatever mix of alternafuels you would be using from abroad and sharing surplus abroad.

“The idea that America is going to find defense in self-sufficiency is alluring but false. Even the Hermit Kingdom needs support from the outside world,” wrote Greg Scoblete earlier this month, with regards to the White House decision allow more oil and gas exploration off the coast. This won’t bring the United States closer to its closed-borders solution to keeping the lights on than Green solutions of wind farms and solar panels.

If the United States really wanted to tackle energy sustainability and its self-confessed embarrassment of oil dependency, then it needs to tackle something even more embarrassing, that the notion that it can go it alone is absolutely false. The environmental movement does no favors to its cause by employing right-wing rhetoric by bellowing about “foreign oil.”

It’s the same language being pushed in the Energy Reform Bill, which promises to “transform our economy, set us on the path toward energy independence and improve the quality of the air we breathe.”

But how does this get sold to the American public?

“Every day Congress doesn’t pass a clean energy climate plan our enemies get stronger.”  Forget about green ambitions of clean air and fish in the streams. Iran is going to nuke you so long as you’re buying black gold from abroad! No, it doesn’t need to make sense. Sahil Kapur points out in the Guardian that in the United States — where denial that humans contribute to global warming is as sacred as gun ownership rights — cutting “our dependence on foreign oil” and cutting “oil profits for hostile nations” sells.

Sustainable energy production will ultimately prove how interconnected the world population now is. Xenophobic closed-border energy policies are things of the past.

ORSMP is expected to be the largest Palestine solidarity mural in the world. It is located on the north side of the Labor Temple building in downtown Olympia. To date, this olive tree, with branches spanning 100 feet, has been completed and is waiting for its leaves to unfold.

Finally, the side of the Brotherhood tavern in Olympia, WA, is something worth looking at:

The Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural is a community building memorial honoring all who have lost their lives in struggle and all who are resisting oppression. I’m looking forward to checking it out this July when we visit folks back home. The project was just getting under way when we there the year before last.

The mural was inspired by the killing of Rachel Corrie, a resident of Olympia who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer while defending the home of a Palestinian pharmacist and his family.  The mural tells a tale of two cities linked through tragedy, Olympia WA and Rafah, Palestine.  It is the tale of people working together for a better world. The mural uses technology and advancements in printing processes to include artists from Palestine who are forbidden to travel.

Event Marks the Completion of the Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural: 6 p.m. Saturday, May 8, Labor Temple, Olympia WA

• 4,000 square foot Multi-Media project
• Collective effort of 150 Olympia locals, national and international groups and individuals
• Uses technology to include artists from Palestine – a break in the siege on Gaza

— Olympia-Rafah Mural Project

The guy this film is about is my new hero.

New sign proposed for U.S. border control following the beating of science fiction author Dr Peter Watts who was just trying to head home to Canada and was clubbed, gassed, charged with a felony, and left in wet clothes in an unheated cell overnight during a snow-storm just for asking why his car was being searched. Thanks Boing Boing.

First place: The Lib Dem Manifesto mashup creator. Wins hands down for unique interface and getting the message across in an engaging way. It gives the person the feeling of control by picking subjects. Minus points for the fixed width. It only fits on my blog because I hacked the height and width in the code snippet.

Second place: Labour’s youtube video nested in it’s own menu system is all right. I’m not crazy about the cartoon, which seems to be more aimed at the CBeebies crowds than the BBC crowd. While you can click around, the numbered chapters aren’t that helpful because they don’t list what the topics are. The size will fit most websites should anyone want to post it, but there aren’t any size options, so you’d have to change the source, which most people won’t do (similar to the Liberal Democrats’ video manifesto). HAving said that, the style of animation will get it more widely discussed and bandied around the web and they’ve made it simple enough to share.

Web page for the Conservative Party manifesto

Third place: Conservatives. The above link is as much as there is worth sharing because I’m not going to list all 33 links to download (yes, download) mp3 files for audio or your choice of either the 3.04mb or whopping 77.04 high-resolution version of the text pdfs. In effect, what we have is a web page, as sharable as any other, and looks clawing-you-eyes-out boring to sift through just to see how these people want to spend your taxes. I realize they want to invoke JFK by adopting the strapline “ask not what your country can do for you,” but the least they could do would be to offer a better navigation system to undersand exactly in what ways it’s going to do nothing for you.

The latest issue on the stands

Yoani Sanchez: Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The piece starts off looking at current Web-rights It Woman Yoani Sánchez. I know a lot of people who like to champion Cuba’s defiance in the face of  the huge empire sitting just off its shores. That’s all well and good, but just because a government may be bullied by a bigger government, that doesn’t mean it’s not guilty of shabby treatment toward a substantial portion of its people.

Cuba has human rights problems, and it’s not alone in Latin America. While it’s good to remind ourselves of Reagan-era meddling led to some of the most grusome massacres on the continent in the twentieth century, post Reagan-era rising stars such as Venezuela under Hugo Chavez are not exactly utopian wonderlands of equality, Bolivarian rhetoric aside.

The Independent World Report is a bimonthly print magazine focused on human rights, international politics, peace and justice. It’s got a solid mix of articles, such as a critical look at whether the international boycotting of Burma works, Swedish women converting to Islam, African migrant workers in Italy and all sorts of other examples which to me point out that nationalist identity is drifting away, but a lot of nations don’t seem to handle it very well.

One of the popular web-inspired memes I decided to attack here was that notion of the “shrinking planet” due to the rise of instant communication. The phrase doesn’t come close to describing the actual physics of what we’re all currently witnessing.

The world may seem small and group-huggy when you post your latest tweet to your thousands of followers, but it must suddenly feel like you’re as close to those people as one of Saturn’s moons when the police come to your door to talk to you about it. The rest of the world is still pretty far off when you’re in solitary confinement because of some political statement you posted online.

— Wikileaks with the help of YouTube

Wikilieaks released the above classified military footage on April 5, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site.  Amongst the small group of what looks to be civilians killed and injred were two children and two Reuters journalists.

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff. Reuters was unable to obtain the footage through a Freedom of Information Act, but a whistleblower somewhere in the military correctly acted in the public’s interest and sent the footage on to Wikileaks.

I’ts worth pointing out that the person who leaked the footage is deserving of support should they ever face prosecution, as is Wikileaks for its audacity to publish it and Youtube for keeping the video online. This is how the unfiltered, unregulated internet helps socieity.

It’s not news that civilians in Iraq die in huge numbers each day due to U.S. foreign policy and military action. We all know that, including those denying it happens. That this footage has been made public is the news, and that the military — and much of U.S. mainstream media it seems — has tried to hide it or play it down remains news.

Somebody posted the following screen grab (via reddit.com), illustrating how CNN’s front website coverage looked as compared to Al Jazeera just after news broke about this video. Do you want to see the facade (CNN’s coverage) or the underlying structure that props it up (Al Jazeera’s coverage)?

Stay awake, or go back to sleep? Do you take the red pill or the blue pill?

“It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don’t have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don’t have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or bought, or sold or read. That’s all I have to say on that subject.”

– Philip Pullman, upon being asked whether his book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, was offensive.

Thanks Mr. Pullman, for saying things I think, but, you know, a lot better than I would.

• 1968: Israel Colonizing Occupied Territory: First the land was designated as “captured,” then “occupied,” then “liberated,” and now it is being called the “new territory.
• 1968: Israel Rapped For Taking Arab land: The U.S. State Dept. announced yesterday that the United States had refused Israel’s move to incorporate a sector of old Jerusalem
• 1969: U. S. Deplores Israeli Acts in Jerusalem: Ambassador Charles W. Yost, chief of the United States delegation to the United Nations, today expressed regret at changes Israel is making in the occupied Arab sector of old Jerusalem
• 1976: US accuses Israel of taking illegal acts: US Ambassador William Scranton said Tuesday Israel’s takeover of Jerusalem and the construction of Jewish settlements are regarded by the US as illegal
• 1977: Israelis Deny Report of New Settlements: Israel had assured the United States that despite an Israeli press report to the contrary, it has not begun any new Jewish settlements in occupied Arab land.
• 1978: U.S. Again Says It Opposes Israel On Settlements: The Carter Administration underscored today its strong opposition to Israel’s continued establishment of settlements on occupied Arab land, as President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt was telling members of Congress that such Israeli settlements were a major barrier to peace.
• 1982: U.S. Assails Israeli Settlements: Ignoring President Reagan’s appeal for a moratorium on Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, Israel on Sunday approved three new outposts in the West Bank
• 1990: Israel Retracts Pledge to U.S On East Jerusalem Housing
• 1992: U.S. Offer Insists Israel Stop Building Settlements
• 1998 Jerusalem mayor defiant // Says Jewish settlement will go on in east sector
• 2006: Israel builds West Bank settlement: Action breaks vow to U.S. about not building in area
• 2009: Netanyahu defies U.S. on East Jerusalem settlement
• 2010: This is your year, man. Give us some of that change we can believe in.

Source: BLG432 on Reddit.com

UPDATE: Thanks, Obama. I knew you read this blog.

Get them on the record before they trash your digital media rights

Reposting from Cory Doctorow’s post here, and 38 Degrees post here. Ah, the echo chamber…

The House of Lords failed to take reasonable action on the threat posed by the Digital Economy Bill and let it slide back into the House of Commons for final amendments and approval. Of the three main parties, it seems only the Liberal Democrats have started coming around to seing how bad this is for UK’s citizens and its actual real-world digital economy. They at least want to retract the bad bit they’d originally submitted, but that would still leave an incredibly flawed law.

Cory says, “38 Degrees is asking Britons to write to their MPs and ask them to call for a full debate on this law before they vote on it. It seems stupid that we’d have to ask our elected reps to actually give sweeping proposals consideration before turning them into law, but there you have it. No matter what side you come down on for the Digital Economy Bill, is there anyone who wants law to be made without debate.”

38 Degrees says, “Peter Mandelson is rushing to force the Digital Economy Bill into law before the General Election. The draconian law is opposed by industry experts, internet service providers (like TalkTalk and BT), web giants including Google, Yahoo and Ebay and even the British Library. Despite all this opposition, the Government is trying to rush it through quietly just before the election without proper debate – without a chance for us to voice our opposition. Email your MP now and urge them to stop the government rushing this law through.

There’s plenty to oppose in the Digital Economy Bill, it gives the government the ability to disconnect millions. Schools, libraries and businesses could see their connection cut if their pupils, readers of customers infringe any copyright. But one group likes it, the music industry. In a leaked memo a few days ago they admitted the only way to get the bill through would be to rush it through without a real parliamentary debate. Let’s stop that happening.

Write to your MP now urging them to stop the Government rushing the bill through. It’ll take you less than 2 minutes. Just enter your postcode above (so we can find your MP) and click “participate” to get started.”

I say: If you want to keep free wi-fi available in your cities and towns, don’t like the idea of content being blocked because of out-of-date copyright restrictions, don’t like the idea of millions of people being judged guilty of crimes until they prove theirselves innocent and don’t want to see Hollywood stymie innovation and technological advancement simply to maintain inflated prices on DVDs in Zone 2, then its in your best interest to see this bill killed. It’s bad for the economy, free speech and you.

<—- Possible template to base your letter to your MP on —->

Use www.writetothem.com for speedy delivery
You can also contact them through 38 Degrees

Dear [Insert MP Name]

I’m writing to you today because I’m very worried that the Government is planning to rush the Digital Economy Bill into law without a full Parliamentary debate.

The law is controversial and contains many measures that concern me. The controversial Bill deserves proper scrutiny so please don’t let the government rush it through. Many people think it will damage schools and businesses as well as innocent people who rely on the internet because it will allow the Government to disconnect people it suspects of copyright infringement.

Industry experts, internet service providers and huge internet companies like Google and Yahoo are all opposing the bill – yet the Government seems intent on forcing it through without a real debate.

As a constituent I am writing to you today to ask you to do all you can to ensure the Government doesn’t just rush the bill through and deny us our democratic right to scrutiny and debate.

[Insert your Name]

“Seven years after my daughter Rachel was killed, I was finally able to hear Rachel’s friends, who were with her, testify in a court of law. Despite some disheartening procedural challenges, we remain hopeful that the truth about what happened to Rachel will be revealed, and that the people responsible for her killing will be held accountable.” — Rachel’s mother, Cindy Corrie

via International Solidarity Movement.

I had been following with growing frustration the issue of Israel’s U.S. sponsored occupation and annexation of Palestinian lands since the outbreak of the second Intifada, and my own tepid beginnings as an activist on the issue were spurred by two killings in Gaza, really. The first was the shooting of Mohammed al-Dura, a 12-year-old boy hunkered behind is father as the pair were trapped in the middle of a shooting fight. I watched the boy get killed on TV along with others in the same news room where I worked back then, and it was one of those images that lingered on.

The entire wrongness of the situation was there in display and had to be dealt with. But it was still a bit too distant. Just about a year later, Rachel Corrie was killed in Gaza as well. Locals began to organise, begin building a sister city project. Getting involved with this didn’t shrink the world. That had been done for us all when the U.S. began subsidizing the illegal campaign against Palestinians. What it did was show more people that they can go ahead and meet with and even travel to meet the people on the wrong end of U.S. foreign policy.

One of the most revolutionary acts that can be taken is recognizing the humanity of those our own systems have sought to dehumanize. Not because that’s the end in and of itself, but because once that’s happened, people more quickly begin to not just demand action and change (because who is it that you’re demanding it from?),  but take steps to make it happen.

Rachel’s legacy is different depending on your perspective, but to me it was the notion that getting involved is actually a fairly easy thing to do. You can get on a plane, meet people and get the low down yourself instead of being told what to think about it. But as a result you’re going to be changed, and what you do with that in the months and years that follow is what takes some serious effort.

I hope the Craig and Cindy and the family get the resolution that they very much need from this hearings. I don’t put an amazing amount of faith in the system through which it’s being conducted, though. But there’s a greater thing to be achieved, and that’s the detailing and archiving in the public record what has happened in gaza and continues to happen today. Rachel’s writings opened up a window for many people into the lives of people there. And it seems that it still is. The more this is done, the more people may decide to figure out what’s going on for themselves.

Other Media coverage of the hearing:

Associated Press, ‘Trial begins over death of US activist in Gaza’
CNN, ‘Parents demand answers from Israel in bulldozer death’
Democracy Now, ‘Civil Trial Begins over Israeli Army Killing of Rachel Corrie’
Guardian, ‘British activist saw Rachel Corrie die under Israeli bulldozer, court hears’
Ha’aretz, ‘State accused of whitewash as Rachel Corrie suit begins’
Ha’aretz, ‘State: IDF not to blame for activist Rachel Corrie’s death’
Ha’aretz, ‘Corrie’s sister to Haaretz: U.S. encouraged family to sue Israel’
Huffington Post, ‘Rachel Corrie’s (Posthumous) Day in Court’
Independent, ‘I saw Israeli bulldozer kill Rachel Corrie’
Ma’an News, ‘Israeli Defense Ministry goes on trial for Corrie death’
Reuters, ‘Family of slain U.S. activist sues Israel’
The National, ‘Corrie family finally puts Israel in dock over daughter’s death’
YNet News, ‘Dozens protest near Haifa Court in memory of Rachel Corrie’

To be a part of history (or an over-hyped gimmick), click here on the 14th of March.

]]> http://drew3000.net/2010/03/11/pi/feed/ 0 http://drew3000.net/2010/03/10/settlers-destroy-natural-spring-used-by-palestinians-for-farming-near-salfit/ http://drew3000.net/2010/03/10/settlers-destroy-natural-spring-used-by-palestinians-for-farming-near-salfit/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:14:23 +0000 yours truly http://drew3000.net/2010/03/10/settlers-destroy-natural-spring-used-by-palestinians-for-farming-near-salfit/ Settlers destroy natural spring used by Palestinians for farming near Salfit

Here’s the thing, and the thing is this: There is no negotiating partner for Palestinians to talk to. Not a one. What is Joe Biden doing in Jerusalem right now? Absolutely nothing useful.