nato is an eyesore

Sevastopol dwellers crush NATO-touting billboards
RIA Novosti, Nov 29 2008

Residents of the Crimean city of Sevastopol in south Ukraine are destroying billboards put up by the country’s authorities to promote NATO membership, a RIA Novosti correspondent said Saturday. A campaign urging people to support the country’s bid for NATO membership has started in 40 towns of the Crimean Peninsula, on orders from the Foreign Ministry, ahead of next month’s NATO session in Brussels. Sevastopol residents are tearing down and splashing paint over posters saying Ukraine Plus NATO Equals Security! and Next Stop Is NATO!, despite threats from police to open criminal probes for doing so. Local Communist Party leader Vasily Parkhomenko said:

The propaganda of the aggressive military bloc in the city which hosts the main base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, where 97% of population are ethnic Russians, is Kiev’s political provocation.

Organizers say the campaign aims to tell people that NATO is a “peacekeeping organization by no means threatening Russia.” “We must convey the truth about the alliance to Ukrainians now that they have chosen the European path,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. According to opinion polls, most Ukrainians are opposed to joining NATO. The foreign ministers of the 26 NATO member states will meet in Brussels on Dec 2-3 to decide whether Ukraine and Georgia are ready to join the NATO Membership Action Plan. NATO refused at its summit in April to let Georgia and Ukraine into MAP, a key step towards membership of the alliance, but promised to review the decision in December. The countries had received strong US backing for their bids.

second half of this is lies & cya

IAEA chief baffled over lack of Syria nuclear info
AP via IHT, Nov 27 2008

VIENNA, Austria: The chief UN nuclear inspector said Thursday that his agency’s Syria probe has been hampered because key satellite images of an alleged nuclear reactor bombed by Israel are inexplicably unavailable on the market. ElBaradei did not point any fingers in the “baffling” failure of his agency’s efforts to obtain the images of the Syrian site immediately after it was bombed by Israel last year, but diplomats familiar with the IAEA’s Syria investigation said agency officials were considering several scenarios, including the possibility that Syria or other nations with an interest in a cover-up had bought the photos and all rights to them from commercial satellite companies. ElBaradei’s comments at the start of a two-day full meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation board partially reflected the focus of the gathering — suspicions about Syria’s and Iran’s nuclear activities. On Iran, ElBaradei told the meeting that he “cannot exclude the existence of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.” The US and EU both expressed alarm at Tehran’s defiance of UNSC resolutions meant to curb its suspected nuclear activities, and Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran’s IAEA representative, accused Washington and its allies of dragging it before the SC as part of a “hidden agenda.”

In the case of Syria, ElBaradei noted that his “agency was unable to obtain commercial satellite imagery” of the site immediately after the bombing, adding: “It is regrettable, and indeed baffling, that imagery for this critical period … was not available.” Syrian nuclear chief Ibrahim Othman was dismissive, telling AP: “The theory that we bought all the photos is nonsense.” The IAEA often turns to commercial images beyond any spy satellite photos shared by governments, but the two nations most likely to have satellite intelligence were unlikely to have provided it with immediate information. Israel still has not confirmed it was behind the strike, while the US waited for more than six months before sharing knowledge with the IAEA. The possibility that commercial companies simply did not know where to look immediately after the bombing was raised by David Albright, who closely tracks suspected secret proliferators. “No-one knew where the site was immediately after the bombing ; the US and Israel went to great lengths to prevent others from finding out where the site was,” said Albright, who on Oct 24 2007 was the first to publish commercial satellite images of the site, taken on Aug 10, and to identify it as a likely North-Korean-model nuclear reactor (.pdf).

Albright also noted that ElBaradei was initially skeptical of the US assertions, which could have led to Washington and Israel to withhold satellite photos. “Why would US intelligence give photos to ElBaradei if he was predisposed not to believe?” Albright asked in an interview. Meanwhile, a senior diplomat familiar with the Syria probe suggested that the comments by ElBaradei were at least partially out of date. He said the agency had “very recently” been able to locate commercial images showing the site after the Israeli strike. IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said the agency would not comment on the issue. All of the diplomats asked for anonymity in exchange for speaking to AP because their information was privileged. While the agency was unable to find satellite images immediately after the bombing, it acquired photos showing the building at other stages. An IAEA report said those images and other information showed the bombed building had the features of a reactor, adding that agency inspectors had found traces of processed uranium on location. The US says the target was a nearly completed reactor that would have produced plutonium, a possible fissile warhead component. Syria has signaled it will not permit IAEA inspectors to return to the country after their initial visit to the bombed site in June, or permit initial visits to three other suspicious locations. Such a ban would make satellite images become even more important in the IAEA probe.

bizarre american jewish insider bullshit

On Trial For Espionage, Steve Rosen Attacks Gen. Jones
as NSC Adviser, While Martin Peretz Attacks Obama
for Talking To Shimon Peres
M.J. Rosenberg, Talking Points Memo, Nov 25 2008

Only in America. Steve Rosen, the AIPAC official who was dismissed by the organization after being indicted for espionage, is leading the charge against the appointment of General James L. Jones as President Obama’s National Security Adviser. Rosen says that Jones is too strenuous in opposition to the occupation of the West Bank (Jones has said that he would consider replacing IDF occupation forces with NATO troops as an interim step to separate Israelis and Palestinians). And Rosen has been calling reporters all over town to badmouth Jones. Huh? Why would Rosen think that anyone cares what a guy charged with espionage against the United States thinks of an American general? Jones served as Secretary Rice’s security coordinator in the West Bank and did an outstanding job. He was fair and honest and trusted by both sides. He served his country well, as he has since Vietnam. But Rosen doesn’t trust him.

What is wrong with this picture? Call me naive, but I would think that anyone on trial for espionage would keep his mouth shut about security issues and personnel relating to the country he is charged with betraying. Nor would I expect him to attack a decorated American marine for insufficient devotion to Israel or any country other than this one. But Rosen is undaunted. Talk about chutzpah! One more point, Rosen is now an employee of Daniel Pipes, the anti-Muslim agitator. In the same Pipes’ publication in which Rosen attacks Jones, Pipes goes after Obama … for being associated with RFK’s assassin Sirhan Sirhan. Are these people crazy? Yes. But I’m beginning to think that they are rapidly becoming crazy/irrelevant rather than crazy/dangerous. It’s about time.

Other signs that the Jewish right has become unhinged by Obama’s election. Martin Peretz, former owner of the New Republic (his wife purchased it for him as a Christmas present back in the 70’s and he ran it into the ground) has lost his shit over reports that Obama endorsed the Saudi peace initiative in a conversation with the President of Israel, Shimon Peres. I don’t know what Obama told Peres but President Peres says that Obama told him that Israel would be crazy to reject the initiative (which is true, very true). So what does Peretz have to say. He calls Peres a “liar, actually a mythomaniac.” “Duplicity and sanctimony” are his “essence.” He wishes he could “contain my disrespect” for Peres. And why this disrespect, this hatred for Peres and Rabin? Because they negotiated the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians, which came closer to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than anything before or since. Because they treated Arafat with respect, as the leader of the Palestinian people. Because they learned to stop hating Arabs while while Peretz is consumed by his hatred of them. Because they escaped the ghetto while Peretz embraces it.

Peres drives Peretz crazy. And so will the policies of the Obama administration. Peretz supported Obama’s candidacy but for only one reason. He hates Hillary Clinton (he thinks she is a ferocious enemy of Israel because she once kissed Arafat’s wife). So he backed Obama. But now Obama is going to do what he can to end the conflict Peretz cherishes, and he’s going to do it with Hillary at his side (and General James Jones, too). This is Marty’s worst nightmare. (He can hardly sleep at night, agonizing over why he didn’t listen to his to his buddy Podhoretz and back Rudy and then McCain. Why did he go with the party of McGovern, of Carter, of the Clintons?) Poor Peretz. Actually, rich Peretz. He’ll always have the money. It’s all he has ever had and all he’s ever needed. I’m jealous. If only my wife could have bought me a magazine. Oh well. Another reason I’m so grateful to the web. You don’t have to be rich to shoot your mouth off and be heard.

useful long article from about a year back

Muting the Alarm over the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict :
The New York Times versus Haaretz, 2000-06
by Jerome Slater
International Security, Vol. 32 (Fall 2007), Issue 2, pp. 84-120

ABSTRACT
The prospects for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remain poor, largely because of Israeli rigidity as well as Palestinian policies and internal conflicts. The US has failed to use its considerable influence with Israel to seek the necessary changes in Israeli policies, instead providing almost unconditional support. The consequences have been disastrous for the Palestinians, for Israeli security and society, and for critical US national interests in the Middle East. A major explanation for the failure of US policies is the largely uninformed and uncritical mainstream and even elite media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the US. In contrast, the debate in Israel is more self-critical, vigorous, and far-ranging, creating at least the possibility of change, even as US policy stagnates. A comparison of the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the two most prestigious daily newspapers in the US and Israel — in particular the breakdown of the peace process in 2000 and the ensuing Palestinian intifada, the nature of the Israeli occupation, the problem of violence and terrorism, and the prospects for peace today — underscores these differences. While the New York Times has muted the alarm over the dangers of the US’s near-unconditional support for Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, Haaretz has sought to sound the alarm.

IS3202_pp084-120_Slater.pdf (169K)

semi-otics, not semi-ology?

	My comment to Advertising firms censor signs for fear of vandalism, Jonathan Lis, Haaretz
Talkback
Title: The female body as symbolic territory Name: Rowan Berkeley City: London State: England
This subject has been discussed at great length by semiologists. The question, though, is: who owns Israel? Zionists, or rabbis? The charade of the combined `zionist-rabbi` broke down with the decline of the influence of the Kook family and its unique kabbalistic (and some say sabbatian) synthesis. Into the vacuum stepped Lubavitcher messianists, Kachists, and only the most holy ancient one knows what else.

another chance to feature this photo

Advertising firms censor signs for fear of vandalism
Jonathan Lis, Haaretz, Nov 27 2008

Livni discovered last week that her portrait had been expunged from dozens of Kadima‘s campaign billboards in Jerusalem. The reason for this, her advisers explained to her, was the fact that the billboard company with rights for Jerusalem, Maximedia, forbids displaying pictures of women in the city for fear of offending ultra-Orthodox sensibilities. Livni refused to toe the municipal line, and ordered her adviser, Reuven Adler, to replace the signs at once with signs that include her picture. Wherever placing her picture should prove impossible, Livni ordered that her signs be removed altogether. Livni is not the only one to have her picture censored in recent months from billboards in the capital. Pictures of women who ran for a spot on the city council, election slogans that were considered too blunt, and even photographs of children who are not wearing skullcaps failed to get approved for billboards.

Just a few weeks ago the High Court of Justice ordered the Egged bus company and Canaan, the company that has the advertising franchise for its Jerusalem buses, to advertise the pictures of women candidates from the youth party Hitorerut! Yerushalmim. Canaan and Egged were worried about ultra-Orthodox extremists vandalizing the buses. A few weeks earlier, city council members from Meretz were surprised to discover that their campaign advertisements on buses had also been censored. The reason for this was the slogan that Meretz had chosen – “Putting an end to Haredization,” which Egged said was offensive to the ultra-Orthodox public. “Two days after the campaign was launched, Egged took down our ads without informing us of anything,” Meretz faction head on the city council, Yosef Papa Alalu, said yesterday. “They claimed they would have to guard the buses on a daily basis so they would not be harmed.” A compromise was reached only after the parties went to court, and the election slogan was subsequently changed to “Jerusalem Free or Haredi.”

Jerusalem city council officials yesterday insisted there is no written “advertising code” that dictates censorship of ads throughout the city, or any “modesty control” for Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. Municipality spokesman Gidi Schmerling said this week that the municipality has a committee whose job is to examine controversial publicity but that this committee has almost never banned an advertisement submitted for its consideration. It is actually the various advertising firms which have internalized the need for sensitivity in Jerusalem, that are the ones who ban pictures and slogans even before they can take the street test. The unofficial code stipulates that in advertisements intended for the Zionist Orthodox public, and especially the ultra-Orthodox public, pictures of women will not be used, even if they are dressed modestly, and that children will always be shown wearing skullcaps.

A response yesterday from Egged spokesman Ron Ratner stated: “We do not wish to cause displeasure and dissatisfaction among hundreds of thousands of passengers from the ultra-Orthodox sector. Therefore we will not allow nude or semi-nude women.” Egged appointed a committee to examine any controversial advertisements. “In most cases there was no problem,” Ratner said, “The slogans ‘Peres will divide Jerusalem’ or ‘Bibi is bad for the Jews’ will not go up on buses because they send offensive messages. Nor will we call for draft dodging on the buses.” Maximedia did not respond to Haaretz‘s request for a response.

sheldon adelson’s chinese connections

Neocon Lobby Group Loses Its Angel
Eli Clifton, IPS, Nov 26 2008

HONG KONG – The right-wing US advocacy group Freedom’s Watch is reportedly shutting down, as its main funder, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, becomes one of the high-profile casualties of the global economic downturn. Freedom’s Watch, which according to the Las Vegas Review Journal, has scheduled huge staff layoffs for the end of the year, was one of the most prominent advocacy groups aligned with the Republican Party. Adelson contributed over $30m to Freedom’s Watch in 2007 and 2008, but has had to cut back on his philanthropy as his net worth, estimated at $36b in 2007, shrunk by $13b. His company, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, faces huge losses, as its aggressive expansion in Singapore and Macau coincided with the global financial crisis.

Freedom’s Watch was conceived in Mar 2007 as an offshoot of the Florida Republican Jewish Coalition, in which Adelson is a longtime member. The stated mission of Freedom’s Watch has been to “support mainstream conservative public policies,” but the focus of the group’s lobbying and media campaigns has reflected the staunchly pro-Iraq war and pro-Likud politics of its chief benefactor. In Nov 2007, Adelson placed himself to the far right of AIPAC, when he denounced the organization’s support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “If someone is going to jump off a bridge, it is incumbent upon their friends to dissuade them,” he told the JTA. “I don’t continue to support organizations that help friends committing suicide just because they say they want to jump.” Freedom’s Watch spent $15m dollars on an ad blitz in the summer of 2007 supporting the George W. Bush administration’s troop surge in Iraq, and the group bought both print ads and television time, in four Senate and over 30 House races in the Nov 4 election. But recent reports have suggested that Adelson’s grip on the group’s purse-strings and his need to authorize and approve every media campaign and expenditure have led Freedom’s Watch board members and top Republican party operatives to express frustration with his top-down management style.

The global economic downturn and the rapid expansion of Adelson’s casino empire in Asia has coincided with a split between Adelson and Christian evangelicals who had aligned themselves with the neoconservative foreign policy interests promoted by Freedom’s Watch. Tensions between the Christian right and Adelson’s business interests boiled over on Sep 29 when the Christian Coalition of Alabama’s president, Dr. Randy Brinson, denounced Adelson as “not sharing our values as Alabamans.” Adelson’s casino interests in Macau, a Chinese gambling enclave near Hong Kong, has called attention to his expanding casino empire and his backroom politicking on behalf of the Chinese government who the Christian right are quick to point criticism at for its human rights violations, restrictions on religion and the government’s communist identity. On May 25 2008 a Las Vegas Nevada jury awarded Richard Suen, a Hong Kong businessman, $43.8m in damages against the Sands Corporation. The judgment was the conclusion of Suen’s lawsuit which claimed he had served as a “fixer” for Adelson and the Sands Corp. in arranging meetings with high-level Chinese government officials in Beijing. Suen’s version of events is that Adelson and the Sands Corp. had been seeking a casino license to enter the lucrative gambling market in Macau. In meetings, arranged by Suen in 2001, Adelson learned that Beijing was concerned about an effort led by US House Republicans to stop China from winning their 2008 Olympic bid. Testimony given by Suen revealed that Adelson, eager to curry favor with Beijing, immediately phoned then House Majority Whip Tom Delay and, after getting off the phone with DeLay, reportedly turned to the mayor of Beijing and said, “The bill will never see the light of day, Mr. Mayor. Don’t worry about it.” Sands Corp. received the lucrative casino license and has since opened the Cotai Strip development and the Venetian Macau at a cost of $2.4b and an estimated $10b to $12b in costs by 2010.

The close relationship between Adelson and the Chinese government damaged Adelson’s alliances with the Christian Right – a powerful constituency within the Republican Party. “Where Sheldon Adelson has placed his treasure makes it quite clear where his heart is: in gambling and backing the regime in China that persecutes Christians,” said Brinson. Adelson’s shrinking fortune has also meant huge cutbacks in his other high-profile philanthropic venture – Birthright Israel – which sends young Jews on all-expense paid trips to Israel. With his wife Miriam, Adelson contributed $70m over the past two years but his pledged contributions for 2009 and 2010 have been reduced to $20m and $10m, respectively. The combination of the global financial crisis, increased media attention on his business dealings in China, and a split between Christian evangelicals and Freedom’s Watch has marked a particularly inauspicious year for a man who in 2006 ruefully commented to the interviewer Charlie Rose, “A billion dollars doesn’t buy what it used to.”

eat it, heinonen

UN watchdog clears Syria bid for atomic aid, despite world doubts
Reuters via Haaretz, Nov 27 2008

IAEA governors on Wednesday approved a disputed Syrian bid for atomic aid after being assured it would be kept under scrutiny while Damascus is being investigated for alleged covert nuclear activity. Diplomats said the US, Canada and Australia, part of a Western drive to block the project, made last-minute objections but finally joined a consensus in favour since they could not have won if they forced a rare vote in the 35-nation body. Syria’s request for IAEA technical aid in planning a nuclear power plant, the sort of IAEA aid routinely rubber-stamped for many member states, became controversial after a Nov 19 agency report (by Heinonen, not Baradei – RB) suggesting Damascus might have tried to build a nuclear reactor in secret.

olmert ‘flashes his sharp wit’

Meeting with Hebrew-language reporters at Blair House, the residence for foreign leaders across the street from the White House, Olmert seemed relaxed and in good spirits, at times flashing his sharp wit. Challenged by a reporter from the giveaway Israeli daily Yisrael Hayom about his policy of not dealing with reporters from the newspaper, which is funded by right-wing US casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and has promoted Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Olmert retorted, “Until now I was not aware that Yisrael Hayom was a newspaper.”

from Ron Kampeas, JTA, Nov 25 2008

some grainy 1968 radical cinema

D. A. Pennebaker’s 1972 “One P.M.”
an edit of Godard’s 1968 “One A.M.”

Godard undertook a collaborative project with the US filmmakers Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker in Oct 1968. Provisionally entitled One A.M., or One American Movie, the project was to be shot in the US, but never reached completion under Godard’s direction. Pennebaker and Leacock continued with the project under the title One P.M., or One Parallel Movie, and did not release the film until 1972. Here it is, in ten short segments.

01. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NnZyUsqhDY
02. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGWmfDkqfSQ
03. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCjnr4cK1as
04. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-eG6h5XthU
05. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwyxZcqsozA
06. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5o7x2w8Exw
07. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIFiGjuOZS4
08. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avQSHjGaRoY
09. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkA161Mx8RY
10. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nJKGUCyUdM