Marking Anniversary of Iraq War

Protests scheduled Thursday through Sunday nationwide.

Visit http://www.PentagonMarch.org for more info
As a socially conscious primate I'm committed to creating a better world than the one we have. We're now into year six of the Iraq war and year seven of the war in Afghanistan. Organizations and community members nationwide will be taking to the streets from Thursday, March 19 - Sunday, March 22 to insist that the occupations end and that no more service members or civilians be killed in this campaign.

Find an event in your city for the anniversary on March 19 and check your local Indymedia for a march this weekend.

While the Obama administration has announced the withdrawal of all combat troops by 2010, in reality it is following a preexisting Pentagon plan to shift some combat forces to Afghanistan (which is now rocking out of control) and renaming the existing combat brigades "training and assistance brigades". These troops would then continue to carry out missions in Iraq in much the same way that the "military advisers" did in Vietnam. The Pentagon has been authorized to have as many as 50,000 such troops in Iraq until long after the deadline. We're not out of this yet.

Click on the image below to download a copy of the flyer for your own community event (just cover up the top and bottom portions with your own info):

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Battlestar Galactica Meets with UN

President Roslyn and Admiral Adama with cast of Battlestar.
Image: SciFi.com
As the popular show on SciFi heads towards its final episode Friday, President Laura Roslyn and Admiral William Adama met with a panel of United Nations officials last night (this is true) for a discussion of humanitarian issues.

This comes not a moment too soon. It's about time the United Nations embraced some new ideas that can overcome the permanent state of negotiation and lack of regulatory teeth in their General Assembly and Security Council Resolutions.

I don't know what issues were under discussion, but I can only imagine the topics included something like the following:

*Using FTL drives to transport emergency supplies into Darfur region despite President al-Bashir's decision to expel all relief workers.

*How Kamala Extract induced visions can be useful for predicting future crises and might also be fun at state dinners.

*Suggesting "cylon goo" as a means for the United States to repair its estimated $2.2 trillion in ailing infrastructure.

*How Israelis and Palestinians can be induced to get along by eliminating their "Resurrection Ship" that makes both think they can live forever.

*Encouraging embattled world leaders to adopt Admiral Adama's approach of binge drinking during times of crisis. Proven useful for overcoming such difficulties as: working with sworn enemies, handling the deterioration of your only means of defense, overcoming the death of a loved one, or just to let people know that you're really sad despite your permanently stern demeanor. The Japanese Finance Minister and French President have already led the way (not to mention the famous boozer Richard Nixon).

*How it's about time to tell the distinguished delegate from the great country of North Korea to go frak himself.

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Picture Perfect

Caravaggio used early camera to capture his stunning images.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, "Judith Beheading Holofernes" (1598)
The Renaissance artist Caravaggio may have used an early form of photography, 200 years prior to the invention of the camera, in order to first capture his ultra-realistic scenes. Employing a variation of the camera obscura, first suggested by Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio used a light sensitive chemical that captured an image projected onto it through a series of lenses.

Caravaggio worked in a 'darkroom' and illuminated his models through a hole in the ceiling, said Lapucci, who teaches at the prestigious Studio Art Centres International in the Tuscan capital.

The image was then projected onto a canvas using a lens and a mirror, she said.

Caravaggio 'fixed' the image, using light-sensitive substances, for around half an hour – during which he used white lead mixed with chemicals and minerals that were visible in the dark to paint the image with broad strokes, Lapucci said.

Ironically, like the nervous system deterioration that has been proposed to explain Vincent Van Gogh's eccentric behavior, Caravaggio may have suffered the same unanticipated consequences.

One of the main elements of these mixtures was mercury – to which prolonged exposure can affect the central nervous system causing irritability and other symptoms – which Lapucci said would help explain Caravaggio's notorious temper.

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Death for Blasphemy in Kabul

A student in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death for passing out an article about women's rights in Islam.

The student, Parwiz Kambakhsh, 24, from northern Afghanistan, was arrested in 2007 and sentenced to death for blasphemy after accusations that he had written and distributed an article about the role of women in Islam. Kambakhsh has denied having written the article and said he had downloaded it from the Internet. His family and lawyers say he has been denied a fair trial.

And this wasn't some minor court in the mountains of Tora Bora, this was the Supreme Court in Kabul that made the decision. This is only the latest in a series of assaults against freedom of speech in Karzai's government.

An Afghan journalist, Javed Ahmad, 23, who worked for the Canadian broadcaster CTV, was shot and killed Tuesday evening in the center of the southern city of Kandahar, the second killing of an Afghan journalist in southern Afghanistan in nine months. Abdul Samad Rohani, a journalist in Helmand Province, was shot and killed last year, in an attack thought to be connected to his investigation of police involvement in the drug trade.

Three other well-established journalists have left Kandahar in recent months after receiving threats from Taliban insurgents over their coverage of events.

Another journalist, Ghows Zalmai, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for blasphemy after publishing a Dari translation of the Koran that hard-line clerics disputed, said Human Rights Watch, based in New York.

Western diplomats and human rights organizations have expressed concern that despite Karzai's assurances of press freedom and freedom of speech, journalists and civilians are under increasing threat from both insurgents and conservative religious clerics allied with the government. Karzai, his critics say, is reluctant to move against the clerics in an election year.

Afghanistan is now at the center of a perfect storm involving three disastrous elements: religious fundamentalism, a corrupt government backed by Western powers largely indifferent to human rights (or anything other than targeting "insurgents") and an economy based on being the world's largest supplier of heroin.

Meanwhile, the brave women of RAWA continue to work for peace and justice. They need economic, medical and legal support. Not increased militarism. That road will only strengthen the corrupt system that has been put in place.

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Of "Foreign Entanglements" Past

The resignation of Intelligence Chief Chas Freeman has been creating a lot of buzz in the political blogosphere. Robert Dreyfuss has additional insight in a web exclusive posted today in Mother Jones.

In the introduction Tom Englehardt compares the "Israel Lobby" today with the "China Lobby" of the 1950s in their influence on US policy towards defending the government of Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan. He argues that, like then, the lobby restricts US movements towards rational policy approaches that could substantially resolve a seething divide.

I don't know a great deal about China policy during this period, but the analogy is an interesting one.

An "island" nation in the Middle East, Israel today plays a role arguably similar to that of an actual island which held formidable sway in American domestic politics decades ago. Known then as Formosa, it became "the Republic of China" after Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, defeated in a fierce civil war by Mao Ze Dong's communist movement, moved what was left of his government there. From the late 1940s deep into the 1950s, that island version of China had a firm grip on what room for maneuver was available to any American government when it came to China policy. With various Nationalist Chinese representatives and their congressional and media allies, then known as the China Lobby, putting key issues and realities beyond discussion, the results were disastrous. It's a cautionary tale that shouldn't be ignored in the present debate.

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Some Messed Up Monkeys*

"Dance, Monkeys, Dance"
ErnestCline.com
Ernest Cline, director of the recent film Fanboys, has this hilarious spoken word piece that pretty sums up my philosophy perfectly. It's put to music by The Penguin Cafe Orchestra and is accompanied by an 80's style film strip which only adds to the fun.

For more of his great work (including spoken word, info on his films and his blog) click here.

*Obligatory note: Humans are not monkeys. We're apes along with chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons. In general, monkeys have tails whereas apes do not. But I agree that the word monkey is much funnier.

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Dershowitz Responds

I received two rather interesting e-mails this morning in response to my post Bodyguard of Lies. In this post I critiqued Alan Dershowitz (left), professor of law at Harvard, for claiming that former Chief National Intelligence Council nominee Chas Freeman "was a 'zealot' and an 'ideologue' whose 'extremist views' can only be explained by claiming that he 'has been bought and paid for by lobbies that he does not wish to alienate.'" It's my view that this is a gross mischaracterization of Freeman's position and is little more than slander.

This morning I received two responses. The first was from Norman Finkelstein (right), a previous target of Dershowitz, who wrote simply:

The second e-mail was from Alan Dershowitz himself who was kind enough to let me know the following:


Which should I heed? While Finkelstein's note was sent thirteen minutes earlier (and would clearly preempt the second) Dershowitz sent his response via BlackBerry, a fitting coincidence considering his opinion is so deliciously ripe with irony.

Alan Dershowitz is the same person who took this:

As well as voicing our opposition to the illegal occupation and the consistent human rights violations of the Palestinian people, we as members of an institute of higher education see it as our moral responsibility to express our solidarity with Palestinian students whose access to education is severely inhibited by the Israeli occupation.

And characterized it as this:

Several months ago, a rabidly anti-Israel group on the Hampshire College campus began a campaign to try to get the college to divest from six companies that they claim helped "the Israeli occupation of Palestine." Those who came up with this formulation regard all of Israel, including Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ben Gurion Airport, as "occupied Palestine." In other words, their goal is to end the existence of Israel.

I now call on all decent people - supporters and critics of Israel alike - to make no further contributions to a school that now promotes discrimination and is complicit in evil. There must be a price paid for bigotry, and the actions of Hampshire College in singling out only Israel for divestiture is bigotry plain and simple. Silence is not an option. Inaction is not an option. Fighting back against the likes of Cynthia McKinney is mandatory for all people of good will.

Yep, I think I'll go with Finkelstein on this one.

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Bodyguard of Lies

Dershowitz claims victory in withdrawal of Intelligence Chief.

U.S.-Israeli "special relationship" results in first casualty of the Obama administration.
Image: NBC News

In 1943 Winston Churchill reportedly told Joseph Stalin that "truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Then the truth was being hidden from the Axis powers, now it is the American public that is being protected against. As the recent events over the nominee for Chief of the National Intelligence Council indicate, the truth is that the U.S. is locked into a dangerous alliance with a country that is set to take us along on their self-destructive mission.

While Obama has quietly promised Israel $10 billion in military aid his administration has asked their only critic of Israeli foreign policy, Charles ("Chas") Freeman, to withdraw his name from consideration. Freeman's stated reason for stepping down as the nominee for head of the NIC was the attacks on him from right-wing members of the "Israel Lobby".

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.

The obvious hypocrisy was not lost on Freeman.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel.

Even though National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair expressed determination to support his hand-picked nominee before a Senate hearing, just hours later word from the top apparently overruled this decision. Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer reportedly spoke with Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel soon before Freeman announced his withdrawal, a conversation that apparently clinched the deal. Schumer is a firm supporter of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and has shown a consistent record of bending over backwards to accommodate their wishes.

The assault against Freeman's nomination began in early February with former AIPAC official Steve Rosen. Rosen, who has been indicted for espionage in leaking classified documents to Israel, wrote on his blog that Freeman was "a strident critic of Israel, and a textbook case of the old-line Arabism" with views that were "what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry." A few days later Rosen attacked Freeman as someone who "regularly fulminates vitriolic anti-Israel diatribes" and claimed that he had "received funds from Saudi Arabia to engage in systematic Israel-bashing." This is patent nonsense and was easily debunked as mere libel. But that didn't stop the ridiculous claims from being picked up and amplified by Fox News and the Wall Street Journal (both owned by Rupert Murdoch). Now that Freeman has stepped down other supporters are claiming victory and repeating these lies in justification.

Writing today in The Huffington Post Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz claimed that Freeman was a "zealot" and an "ideologue" whose "extremist views" can only be explained by claiming that he "has been bought and paid for by lobbies that he does not wish to alienate."

He has a long history of playing the tunes selected for him by those who have paid him. He is an ideological zealot when it comes to the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Paul Tiller, former National Intelligence Officer and Executive Assistant to the CIA Director had a remarkably different assessment of Freeman's abilities.

I would trust that Mr. Freeman would exhibit integrity in addressing issues on the Middle East as they may pertain to Israel or any other Middle Eastern country . . . The kind of 'anti-Israeli' perspective getting criticized is of course not new criticism or by no means unique to this particular target.

I think what is being missed [in this commentary] is the whole concept that a public servant ... and foreign affairs professional with a long career under different administrations ... can do his job in the best and most objective way he thinks is possible and isn't necessarily going to be working one policy slant vs. another policy slant.

Tillar is now a professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University and his 2003 book, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, was praised by Philip Zelikow (a high level intelligence officer in both Bush administrations, so clearly no dove where Israel is concerned) which clearly suggests that Freeman is well within the Beltway on intelligence issues. To have Dershowitz and company react as if Bandar bin Sultan had been nominated is beyond absurd, in fact it's downright loony toons.


Opposition to Israeli policy in any form results in harsh measures.
Image: K. Bendib

Alan Dershowitz is well known for his zealous attacks on any criticism of Israel. He has accused both Presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party of "anti-semitism", claimed that Harvard's Steve Walt and John Mearsheimer plagiarized from "anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi and radical Islamic hate sites" in their article "The Israel Lobby" (published in the London Review of Books) and has even accused Jimmy Carter of being "complicit in evil" following his tepid criticism of Israeli policy. Last year Dershowitz spearheaded an effort to have Israeli critic Norman Finkelstein denied tenure at DePaul University, calling him "an evil man" and "an overt anti-Semite with two Jewish parents." Most recently, Dershowitz intervened in the student effort to divest Hampshire College from companies supporting Israel's occupation of the Palestinian Territories. In the press he repeatedly accused the students of "bigotry" (despite their explicit statements and trainings focused on separating Jewish culture from Israeli policy), he personally threatened the members of Students for Justice in Palestine and offered a "contribution" to Hampshire President Ralph Hexter if he reversed the college's divestment agreement.

So, in other words, an ideologue with close political and economic ties to a powerful lobby is accusing someone of being beholden to special interests? A few years ago Dershowitz wrote a book entitled Chutzpah. Clearly, he knows what he's talking about. However, in this case, he takes the concept far beyond the pale to the point of abject hypocrisy. What's most unfortunate in this whole affair is that the stalwart pro-Israel hawks have prevented any meaningful change in U.S.-Israeli policy for the occupied territories.

As Israel marches ever onwards towards the abyss it comes upon ordinary citizens (both here and in the Middle East) to reign in the destructive aspects of this so-called "special relationship" and bring a just end to more than thirty years of humiliation, war and exile for the Palestinian people. While the official "truth" may require bodyguards, justice requires nothing more than exposure.

UPDATE I: Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein responded to this post here.

UPDATE II: For more on Freeman and his withdrawal see Foreign Policy's The Cable and Foreign Policy In Focus' Commentary.

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US Protestor Injured by Israeli Forces

I just received word that an American citizen, Tristan Anderson, has been critically injured by Israeli forces today. I'm relaying the information exactly as it's been communicated to me from my friends in the International Solidarity Movement.

URGENT- An American citizen has been critically injured in the village of Ni'lin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a tear-gas canister.

13th Friday 2009, Ni'lin Village: An American citizen has been critically injured in the village of Ni'lin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a tear-gas canister.

Tristan Anderson from California USA, 37 years old, has been taken to Israeli hospital Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. Anderson is unconscious and has been bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. He sustained a large hole in his forehead where he was struck by the canister. He is currently being operated on.

"Tristan was shot by the new tear-gas canisters that can be shot up to 500m. I ran over as I saw someone had been shot, while the Israeli forces continued to fire tear-gas at us. When an ambulance came, the Israeli soldiers refused to allow the ambulance through the checkpoint just outside the village. After 5 minutes of arguing with the soldiers, the ambulance passed."

Teah Lunqvist (Sweden) - International Solidarity Movement

The Israeli army began using to use a high velocity tear gas canister in December 2008. The black canister, labeled in Hebrew as "40mm bullet special/long range," can shoot over 400 meters. The gas canister does not make a noise when fired or emit a smoke tail. A combination of the canister's high velocity and silence is extremely dangerous and has caused numerous injuries, including a Palestinian male whose leg was broken in January 2009.

Please Contact:

Adam Taylor (English), ISM Media Office +972 8503948
Sasha Solanas (English), ISM Media Office - +972 549032981
Woody Berch (English), at Tel Hashomer hospital +972 548053082

Tristan Anderson was shot as Israeli forces attacked a demonstration against the construction of the annexation wall through the village of Ni'lin's land. Another resident from Ni'lin was shot in the leg with live ammunition.

Four Ni’lin residents have been killed during demonstrations against the confiscation of their land.

Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with live ammunition on 29th July 2008. The following day, Yousef Amira (17) was shot twice with rubber-coated steel bullets, leaving him brain dead. He died a week later on 4 August 2008. Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22), was the third Ni’lin resident to be killed by Israeli forces. He was shot in the back with live ammunition on 28 December 2008. That same day, Mohammed Khawaje (20), was shot in the head with live ammunition, leaving him brain dead. He died three days in a Ramallah hospital.

Residents in the village of Ni'lin have been demonstrating against the construction of the Apartheid Wall, deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Ni'lin will lose approximately 2500 dunums of agricultural land when the construction of the Wall is completed. Ni'lin was 57,000 dunums in 1948, reduced to 33,000 dunums in 1967, currently is 10,000 dunums and will be 7,500 dunums after the construction of the Wall.

UPDATE I: Also see the reports in today's New York Times and Ha'aretz.

UPDATE II: Anderson has undergone brain surgery and remains in critical condition. Anderson's story featured on Democracy Now!

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Cruelty to Chimps in Research Lab

Science questions the morality of invasive experimentation.

Chimpanzees suffering from isolation and disease in the name of science.
Image: Animal Aid
The National Institute of Health scandal involving the abuse of chimpanzees has a full write up in the just released issue of Science. After working undercover and filming cases of abuse at an NIH facility, the Humane Society has published a 100-page report (summary here) calling for an end to invasive experimentation on all great apes. The video footage can be found here.

The video shows a chimpanzee falling from a perch and smacking the floor after being darted by a tranquilizer gun, an anesthetized monkey rolling off a table, a baby monkey writhing while receiving a feeding tube, and other strong images of caged primates. "A major issue for us is the psychological deprivation and torment that these animals are enduring," said HSUS President Wayne Pacelle at a press conference.

A ban on invasive experiments has already been established in Europe, where personhood rights for great apes are much further along than in the U.S. Naturally, in the interest of "balance", Science felt the need to include the opinions of those who are in favor of inflicting needless suffering on our closest relatives.

Several researchers who conduct studies on chimpanzees say the legislation is shortsighted. Geneticist John VandeBerg, the chief scientific officer at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Texas, says researchers there use chimpanzees primarily for testing drugs and vaccines against hepatitis B and C, diseases that he notes affect nearly 500 million humans.

Neuroscientist Todd Preuss of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta complains that the bill defines "invasive" too broadly. It would prohibit his and other groups from sedating chimpanzees to perform brain scans or drawing blood for behavioral experiments and endocrinology studies. He calls these interventions "minimally invasive."

Since Dr. VandeBerg is such a humanitarian I'm sure he wouldn't mind testing the vaccines on himself or his family (or he can give his students extra credit for each injection). Chimpanzees have emotional and sensory lives as rich as our own. The pain and stress of isolation as well as the intentional infection with debilitating diseases is needlessly cruel and should be abolished. This concern about the definition of "invasive" is the same kind of verbal gymnastics that bent the definition of torture into utter meaninglessness. If you wouldn't perform an experiment on a person you shouldn't perform it on a chimpanzee. Period.

Jane Goodall has condemned the practices by the New Iberia Research Center, where the nine month investigation took place, and is a firm supporter of the Humane Society's proposed ban.

In no lab I have visited have I seen so many chimpanzees exhibit such intense fear. The screaming I heard when chimpanzees were being forced to move toward the dreaded needle in their squeeze cages was, for me, absolutely horrifying.

Today we rightly condemn the disgusting experiments conducted as part of the Tuskegee Study in the hope of understanding the course of syphilis. The intention was humanitarian then just as it is now. But to intentionally inflict suffering in order to reduce suffering elsewhere is an empty moral argument. Hopefully in a few decades our children will read about this current squabbling over how immoral we can afford to be in the name of science with the same disgust that we feel about such experimentation in the past.

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