Well, it’s been quite the mindshift transplant for me the past couple of days, getting my head around budgets, HR policies, management structures, etc in my speedily assumed new job as Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.
When I say “national interest”, I mean– as readers of my book Re-engage will surely remember– “the true interests of the American citizenry”, and not simply the interests of some big US-based multinational corporations, working in the arms industry or whatever…
Last weekend, I was talking with my fabulous son about some of the lifestyle changes involved. He’s an environmental engineer on the west coast. I was telling him, “You know, this past week I’ve been trying to train myself to be ready for this. Up till now, I would get up around around 7 or 7:15, do some leisurely yoga. But now I’ve been setting my alarm at 6:40 and– ”
“Right,” he said, “then doing frantic yoga instead…”
I love his sense of humor. I love and admire all of my kids so much for what they do in the world, and who they are.
But anyway, yes. Frantic yoga is kind of what it’s all been feeling like this past couple of days.
So, ommmmmmm.
People, if you support what I’ll be doing at the Council for the National Interest, or if you want to express appreciation for what I’ve done here at JWN, I urge you to support our work at CNI with a donation.
Also, okay, I understand that getting up at 6:40am and putting in 9- to 10-hour days at an office job is what a lot of people do. It’s no big deal. My daughter Leila gets up at 6 each morning to look after her baby and then go off and teach a class of fourth graders in New York City. You can see why I admire her! But still, if you support what we’re doing at CNI, please do consider giving as big of a donation as we can. this organization can– and will– become so much more effective than it has been until now!
That’s it for now. End of corporate thang.
Nozette: Pollard, 2.0?
So, Obama’s Justice Department has finally decided to play some degree of hardball with Israel?
Back in May, Obama’s Justice Department decided to back down on the indictment against AIPAC’s Steve Rosen.
Last month, Obama’s special peace envoy, George Mitchell, apparently decided to back down on pushing Netanyahu for “the settlement freeze.”
So make no mistake: This decision that the Justice Department announced today, to issue an indictment against a US citizen who was apparently quite ready to betray US national secrets to someone he thought to be an agent of the government of Israel, is a big development.
The Department of Justice website tells us that,
- A criminal complaint unsealed today in the District of Columbia charges Stewart David Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, with attempted espionage for knowingly and willfully attempting to communicate, deliver, and transmit classified information relating to the national defense of the United States to an individual that Nozette believed to be an Israeli intelligence officer. The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case.
Nozette was arrested earlier today by FBI agents and is expected to make his initial appearance tomorrow in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
“The conduct alleged in this complaint is serious and should serve as a warning to anyone who would consider compromising our nation’s secrets for profit,” said David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security.
“Those who would put our nation’s defense secrets up for sale can expect to be vigorously prosecuted,” said Channing D. Phillips, Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. “This case reflects our firm resolve to hold accountable any individual who betrays the public trust by compromising our national security for his or her own personal gain.”
…According to an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint, Nozette received a Ph.D. in Planetary Sciences from MIT in 1983, and worked at the White House on the National Space Council, Executive Office of the President, in 1989 and 1990. He developed the Clementine bi-static radar experiment that purportedly discovered water on the south pole of the moon. Nozette also worked at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from approximately 1990 to 1999 where he designed highly advanced technology. At the Department of Energy, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department Top Secret and Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information clearances. Department of Energy clearances apply to access to information specifically relating to atomic or nuclear-related materials.
… According to the affidavit, on Sept. 3, 2009, Nozette was contacted via telephone by an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer, but who was in fact an undercover employee of the FBI (UCE). During that call, Nozette agreed to meet with the UCE later that day at a hotel in Washington D.C. According to the affidavit, Nozette met with the UCE that day and discussed his willingness to work for Israeli intelligence.
Nozette allegedly informed the UCE that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information. Nozette also allegedly said that he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The UCE explained to Nozette that the Israeli intelligence agency, or “Mossad,” would arrange for a communication system so that Nozette could pass information to the Mossad in a post office box. Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information to the UCE and asked for an Israeli passport…
So, the formerly “permeable membrane” between the US strategic-scientific community and the Israeli strategic-scientific community, that had benefitted the Israeli community so much over the past 16 years, suddenly doesn’t look quite so permeable any more?
Interesting.
Significant too, of course, that the DOJ statement spelled out that, “The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case.”
Also significant: that Nozette’s main motivation seems to have been monetary.
And of course, this:
- The public is reminded that a criminal complaint contains mere allegations and that every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
Absolutely. (I mean, isn’t that the same rule the US government applies when deciding whom to snuff out in the drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan??)
Legitimacy: Who can generate it?
This is a huge question in Afghanistan. It was earlier a huge question in Iraq– but it turned out that Nuri al-Maliki had a wily (and previusly unrecognized) understanding of this question.
Does Abu Mazen understand it? Good question…
(Note: John Locke may have been a racist, an investor in the transatlantic slave trade, and had many other moral flaws. But he was, nonetheless, the prime author in western thinking of the concept that legitimacy stems from the consent of the governed.)
These days, generating “legitimacy” in Afghanistan is a deep, deep problem. So are elections, which are (a) very hard to organize, and (b) necessarily very divisive in post-conflict contents.
Back to the more inclusive loya jirga approach, maybe? December 2001.
New horizons ahead!
Check out my big news here.
It will be quite the lifestyle change for me, working with the excellent people at CNI/CNIF to put some real organizing oomph into the campaign for fair US policies in the Middle East — and fair discussion about those policies, here in the US.
As you can see, one of the first things I’ll be doing at CNI/CNIF is co-leading a “political pilgrimage” tour that’s leaving October 30 for Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt.
I’m looking forward to maybe meeting JWN readers who live in those countries!
I am planning to blog as much of this tour as I have time for– and I’m planning to get other members of the group to do some blogging about it, too.
We have a new, CNI/CNIF blogging venture in the advanced planning stage, and ready to unveil soon. So from Wednesday, when I officially go on board at CNI/CNIF, that’s where I’ll be doing all my blogging on all matters related to to Arab-Israeli peace issues.
I don’t have any immediate plans for JWN. But it does seem to me that as of Wednesday, I need to stay aware that my public voice will be that of the organization, not of me personally. So the main thing I’ll be using it for is to (hopefully) build CNI/CNIF to new heights of organizational effectiveness.
Of course I’ll keep the readers here posted about the new blog. I’ll miss the kind of intimacy and excitement we’ve had here. But I have to say I’m really excited about what we can all achieve together, organizing-wise, at CNI/CNIF.
You know, folks, I’ve never put a Donate button here at JWN. But if you appreciate what I’ve done here over the past nearly-seven years and support what I’m planning to do over at CNI/CNIF, then I urge you to donate everything you can– money, volunteer hours, organizing ideas, etc– over there at CNI/CNIF.
Here’s the page for online monetary donations. And here’s the contact page, for you to write in with organizing suggestions, offers to do some volunteer work for us, or yes, even a nice handy check. Write us into your will, or whatever… You can be assured I’ll do everything I can to make every donated dollar go a long way.
More, soon…
J Street blogger panel–next Monday!
J Street’s big inaugural conference starts next Sunday evening… And at lunchtime on Monday, Oct. 26, there’ll be a great affiliated event: a panel discussion involving a large number of pro-peace bloggers, including yours truly.
All JWN readers who are at the conference, come along! Blogs have played a large role in breaking the tight blockade that previously prevented real facts and fair-minded opinions about the Palestine Question from getting anything like a fair hearing in the American public discourse.
I’m really excited because I’ll get to meet, in real physical space, many bloggers whose work I have long admired but whom I have not yet actually met.
They include panel organizers Richard Silverstein of Tikkun Olam and Jerry Haber of the Magnes Zionist. Also Phil Weiss of Mondoweiss and Max Blumenthal, who blogs various various places– and also does those famous videos.
Laila El-Haddad of Gaza Mom is coming, and Matt Duss of the Wonk Room, and a bunch of other great bloggers. I imagine the best way to keep updated on the participant list will be to check Richard’s blog.
The panel will run 12:30 – 2:00pm, and be in the McPhearson Square Room at the Grand Hyatt. I think you have to be a registered participant in the conference to attend, and that lunch will be provided. (H’mmm. That probably means people will take 20 minutes going thru the lunch line so we won’t get started till around 1? People: go through those lunch lines as fast as you can, okay?)
Richard reminds us of the following:
- Our event is not officially sponsored by J Street and nothing said during our session should be construed as representing J Street’s views. We are bloggers and independent actors. We do not speak for J Street and they do not endorse our statements. They have graciously offered us a physical space during their conference. But that is where the relationship ends.
…J Street has agreed to our panel and understands the independent role we play in the blogosphere and at their conference. That is something that is important and praiseworthy.
I hope to see many of you there!
Olmert, author of assault on Gaza, shunned in Chicago
The Harris School for Public Policy at the University of Chicago presumably thought it was quite “normal” and appropriate– perhaps, even a boon for fundraising!– to invite former Israeli p.m. Ehud Olmert to give a lecture.
Olmert, however, is not just any old former prime minister. He was also the prime author of the decision to launch two extremely inhumane wars of choice: against Lebanon in 2006 and against Gaza last winter.
Israel’s conduct of the latter war– as well as a lot of other Olmert-era policies like the prolonged and lethal siege of Gaza and the continued attacks on the Palestinian community in Jerusalem– rightly came under severe criticism from the UN’s Goldstone Commission.
Judge Richard Goldstone, an experienced international prosecutor and investigator (and also Jewish and a self-proclaimed Zionist) determined that many of Israel’s actions against Gaza constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.
So why would the University of Chicago or any other university in the democratic world consider it appropriate or “normal” to give a podium to an accused war criminal like this?
Today, Ali Abunimah and numerous other supporters of the simple proposition that the rights of Palestinians should be protected just as much as anyone else’s rights were, as it happened, there in the lecture hall too.
You can see the series of exchanges that resulted in this great report on Electronic Intifada.
It’s also worth reading this piece of analysis by Aluf Benn in tomorrow’s Haaretz.
Benn writes,
- Operation Cast Lead in Gaza was perceived in Israel as a shining victory. Rocket fire from Gaza was brought to a halt almost completely… “The world” let the operation continue and did not impose a cease-fire. A wonderful war.
Ten months later, it seems the victory was a Pyrrhic one. Israel did not realize that the rules have changed with Barack Obama’s election as U.S. president.
He also noted this about last winter’s war:
- The defense minister, Ehud Barak, wanted to halt Cast Lead after two or three days, but was overruled by Olmert who wanted to keep the campaign going, and then going further.
It seems that the accused war criminal Olmert is planning to speak at other US universities, too.
The University of Arkansas on October 27, for example.
IPS analysis of ‘Galbraith-gate’
It’s here, and also archived here.
Y’all know the story here already. (Renewed kudos to Reidar Visser for breaking it for all those of us who don’t read Norwegian… Reidar, I know I should have slotted in a quotoid from you there… Sorry that I didn’t.)
My conclusion in the IPS piece is,
- Here in the U.S., Galbraith has long been associated with the “liberal hawk” wing of the Democratic Party, which has argued since the early 1990s that U.S. military power can, and on occasion should, be used to impose a U.S.-defined human rights agenda in various parts of the world.
Many members of this group have been liberal idealists – though some of those who, on “liberal” grounds, gave early support to Pres. George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq later expressed their regret for adopting that position.
Galbraith has never expressed any such regrets, and last November, he was openly scornful of Bush’s late-term agreement to withdraw from Iraq completely. The revelation that for many years Galbraith had a quite undisclosed financial interest in the political breakup of Iraq may now further reduce the clout, and the ranks, of the remaining liberal hawks.
When I was researching the piece today, I was intrigued to see that until he took up his UN-Afghanistan position in March, Galbraith was a “Senior Diplomatic Fellow” at the DC-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, which occupies the currently fairly influential, soggy-left end of the spectrum of Washington’s power-connected think-tanks.
I really do hope that the revelation of Peter Galbraith’s sordid– and until recently painstakingly concealed– financial dealings with the KRG and DNO yet further diminishes the influence of liberal hawks in the US power elite and US society.
UN-HRC endorses Goldstone; Netanyahu’s over-reach unraveling?
The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva today endorsed the report of the Goldstone Commission that identified probable war crimes and and crimes against humanity committed by Israel and by some Palestinian armed groups during last winter’s Israeli assault on Gaza.
That report from AFP tells us that,
- 25 of the council’s 47 members, led by the Arab and African states, voted for the resolution. Six, including the United States, voted against while 16 others either abstained or did not vote.
The resolution calls for the endorsement of “the recommendations contained in the report” produced by a fact-finding mission led by international war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone to probe the 22-day conflict.
It also “calls upon all concerned parties including United Nations bodies, to ensure their implementation.”
It was tragic that the US voted against the HRC resolution. However, it seems likely the Goldstone report will now be considered by the Security Council at the session it will be holding on the matter next week.
The world– and especially perhaps the majority-Muslim countries of the world– will be watching closely to see that the US does not cast a veto there.
The fact that the HRC took up the Goldstone report once again, and that it endorsed its main findings and recommendations, marks a double setback for Israel’s current, extremely rightwing government, which had fought tooth and nail to quash or bury it.
In the first instance, the HRC’s decision to take up the report once again this week was due to the fact that the PLO leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, which ten days took its own– quite clearly Israel-spurred– action to bury the report, was forced by the overwhelming strength of Palestinian public opinion to reverse that policy.
In the second instance, the fact that the report won such strong endorsement in the HRC marked a notable setback for the campaign Netanyahu waged against it there.
Netanyahu and his coalition partners– many of whom are even more extreme than he is– have been riding high in recent weeks. They had completely bypassed all the efforts of the Obama administration to win a freeze on the construction of new (illegal) Israeli settlements in east Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied West Bank. They had persuaded Obama to force Abbas into a humiliating three-way meeting along with Netanyahu and Obama, despite Abbas’s previously oft-stated refusal to meet with Netanyahu in the absence of a settlement freeze. The actions of extremist, government-backed Israeli settler organizations to penetrate, settle, and excavate deep inside areas of Palestinian East Jerusalem were accelerating full-steam ahead.
Oh, Netanyahu must have been feeling so happy… Especially at his ability to keep the Obama administration completely off his back.
Not so fast, Mr. Netanyahu.
Right now, Pres. Obama and his most senior military and diplomatic advisers are meeting in prolonged, solemn session to reach some extremely serious decisions about the deployment of reinforcements for, and the mounting threats to, the many scores of thousands of US and allied troops who are deployed deep into the heart of many very distant portions of the Muslim world.
And Netanyahu, the prime minister of a small country of some seven million citizens, thinks his government’s interest in colonial expansion should necessarily trump the rights of the Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank and Gaza, the strong concern that the world’s more than one billion Muslims have in the wellbeing of Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem, and the safety and security of the US and allied troops who are deployed throughout the Muslim world?
He’s been dreaming– and pursuing– some dreams that are extremely hazardous to international peace and stability.
But now, there are some signs that the extent of Netanyahu’s colonialist over-reach is becoming more clear, including to decisionmakers here in Washington; and that it may, finally, be meeting its limits here.
In one of my early reactions to the Goldstone report last month, I noted that many of the folks who have wanted to bury or set aside Goldston’s recommendations about winning accountability for past actions in Gaza said they wanted to do so “in the interests of peacemaking; that is, the interests of the future rather than the past.”
However, I also noted that Gaza’s 1.45 million people face conditions of horrendous inhumanity and stress in the present; and that those conditions continue, day by day by day.
The prime interest of everyone concerned about relieving suffering in the Israeli-Palestinian theater should therefore surely be on lifting Israel’s quite inhumane siege of Gaza. A siege that is, as Godlstone noted, itself an instance of quite illegal collective punishment.
I gather that last night, at a dinner hosted by the American Task Force on Palestine, Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. Jim Jones, told attendees that “All three of the crossings between Israel and Gaza should be opened.” (HT: Gene Bird)
Those are the crossings through which goods, and a small number of people, flow. Since it is still, under international law, the occupying power in Gaza, Israel has direct responsibility for the wellbeing– we could even say, the normal human flourishing– of the residents of Gaza. So obviously, those gates should be opened.
Winter approaches, but the Gazans haven’t been able even to rebuild their homes, businesses, and basic infrastructure after the destruction Israel wrought last winter.
Gen. Jones can tell an audience that “the gates should be opened.” But the US government continues to provide immense, and in many fields quite unequalled, benefits to the government of Israel– in the military, economic, diplomatic, and many other arenas.
So when will we see the Obama administration start to apply some strict accountability to Israel’s government regarding lifting the siege of Gaza?
Deeds, not words, please. On all aspects of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and the protection of Palestinian– along with Israeli– rights.
Good reporting from RFE/RL on Galbraith/DNO
Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty is a relic of the Cold War that in the mid-1990s got rebranded by Tom Dine (as you can read in my Nation piece) as a very serious lever of US soft power in the Muslim world.
What RFE/RL does is technically termed “surrogate broadcasting.” The current director-general says what they aim to produce is “something like the same National Public Radio station we have here in the US”– but produced by nationals of the countries to which RFE/RL broadcasts.
Which is another way of saying that though RFE/RL is funded by the S government, it aims to provide quality news coverage to the countries it broadcasts to. Unlike, for example the Alhurra t.v. channel or the Iraq-only Radio Sawa, which were established (under a single, and for-profit umbrella) during the Bush administration: Those latter two provide “news” that is much more propagandistic and/or ill-considered.
So today, I’m following Reidar Visser’s tip and looking at the RFE/RL coverage of the Galbraith affair… And yes, it is very good .
The writer, Charles Recknagel, gives us a concise description of the legal-affairs backstory for last week’s revelation by the Norwegian daily Dagens Naeringsliv that Peter Galbraith had a very significant material interest in the Kurdish Regional Government’s achievement of control over exploitation of new oil fields within its boundaries– at the very same time he was arguing strongly, as a supposed constitutional “expert”, that the new, post-invasion “regional governments” in Iraq (of which the KRG is thus far the only one) should gain exactly that and other new rights, at the expense of the central government.
The RFE/RL account of “Galbraithgate” seems to clearly give the lie to those (like Laura Rosen and others) who argue that last week’s revelation of Galbraith’s strong financial interest in the devolution of powers inside Iraq was timed to embarrass him at a point when he has just had gotten into a very public spat with the (as it happens, Norwegian) head of the UN mission in Afghanistan.
Recknagel writes,
- The financial news editor of “Dagens Naeringsliv,” Terje Erikstad, says the discovery of Galbraith’s name was completely unanticipated.
“We started out the investigation looking at the fine levied against a mid-sized Norwegian oil company, DNO,” Erikstad said. “It is often in the news because it was a pioneer in northern Iraq and its shares on the Oslo stock exchange go up and down with developments there. We were not looking for Galbraith’s name at all, so finding it on [Porcupine’s] founding documents in Delaware was quite a surprise for us.”
Recknagel also gives an estimate of how much money is at stake in the current litigation between Galbraith’s company, Porcupine, and DNO:
- The paper [DN] published a document from 2006 that lists the partners in the Tawke field and shows Porcupine as having a 5 percent interest in it.
The paper estimates that the total amount of compensation being sought jointly by Porcupine and the Yemeni businessman is some $525 million. A ruling is expected in the first half of next year.
DNO has the capacity currently to export roughly 43,000 barrels per day from Iraqi Kurdistan [presumably, all of this from Tawke field], worth approximately $30 million annually. However, exports are currently blocked as the KRG and Baghdad continue to dispute the same kind of issues Galbraith once tried to resolve.
Yes, isn’t that the crux of the story: That Galbraith was actively working for the KRG to acquire these kinds of revenue-producing powers that were previously in the sovereign domain of Iraq’s central government– at exactly the same time, 2004-2006, that he was already in a business relationship with both the KRG and DNO whereby he stood to reap considerable personal benefit from the new arrangements he was arguing for.
Good job, RFE/RL.
So when will we see some similarly hard-headed reporting in organs of the US mainstream media other than the Boston Globe? The Globe did have a piece about “Galbraith-gate” in today’s paper– but it was not nearly as well researched and written as the one in RFE/RL.
‘The Nation’ piece on AIPAC’s Tom Dine
This piece is online now, here. It was really fascinating to work on– just as it has been really interesting to work with Dine on the US-Syria Working Group, as is mentioned in the article.
Th Nation has two linked pieces– both by Phil Weiss and Adam Horowitz: American Jews Rethink Israel, and Israel vs. Human Rights.
Great work, Phil and Adam! I’m proud to be up there with you!