Climate Catastrophe and Israel’s Denial of Palestinians’ Access to Water: Two Aspects of Contemporary Barbarism

Amnesty International has recently released two reports on Israeli water policy that present a rather thoroughgoing indictment of the Zionist colonization project broadly conceived. Entitled “Thirsting for Justice: Palestinian Access to Water Restricted” and “Troubled Waters: Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water,” the reports join many other studies of both more and less recent memory that have provided similar perspectives critical of Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinian people. In the reports, Amnesty finds the Israeli state to be fundamentally violating the right to water of the 4 million Palestinians living under its ongoing military occupation, and hence also to be massively violating Palestinians’ right to an adequate standard of living. It seems important to consider that this aspect of Israel’s active deprivation of the Palestinian people in many ways mirrors and previews the acute deprivation of much of the world’s population that capitalist societies are enacting through their contributions to dangerous anthropogenic interference with the Earth’s climate

For those familiar with the present situation in Palestine, Amnesty’s reports may not prove to be terribly surprising; they are, however, no less offensive and shocking for all that. Amnesty finds that Israelis consume over 80 percent of the water available in the so-called Mountain Aquifer that lies beneath the West Bank, leaving the remaining 20 percent for the 2.3 million West Bank-residing Palestinians. Indeed, it is claimed that these 2.3 million consume a total amount of water equal to or less than that consumed by the 450,000 Israeli settlers living illegally in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Amnesty’s reports further find that Palestinians are totally barred from accessing the waters of the Jordan River, and that some 200,000 rural-dwelling Palestinians go without access to running water in the present day. Palestinian daily per capita consumption of water, we are told, stands at 70 liters, some 30 short of the minimum daily amount recommended by the World Health Organization. According to Amnesty, furthermore, between 90 and 95 percent of the water available to Gazan Palestinians is contaminated and hence “unfit for human consumption.”

The two reports explore this systematic life-denial in detail. Though the reports caution that recent episodes of drought in the region are to account in some way for these bleak statistics, Amnesty also make clear that discriminatory Israeli policies bear far more of the blame for the general situation. It examines some of the various military orders imposed by Israel following the capture of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 that relate to the problem of water in the occupied territories—one establishes complete control by the Israeli military over water resources in the region, and another requires that any construction by Palestinians of new water installations be authorized by an Israeli-issued permit. Amnesty tells us that only 13 such permits were issued in the nearly 30 years that the Israeli military handled water permits prior to transferring such responsibilities to the Oslo-created Palestinian Water Authority. The reports further explore the rendering-inaccessible to Palestinians of several water-rich areas of the West Bank designated by Israel as closed military zones in addition to the destruction on several occasions of existing Palestinian water infrastructure in both Gaza and the West Bank as well as the forced displacement of a number of Palestinian communities whose water resources have been confiscated by Israeli occupation forces. Amnesty also examines the implications of the Israeli separation barrier for Palestinian access to water: it finds that the wall’s route within the West Bank, together with the settlements it protects, affords Israel access to the areas deemed best for the extraction of water from the Mountain Aquifer. It hardly need be said that such privileged access comes by means of the denial of the same to Palestinians, many of whom have seen their former access to wells entirely cut off. Amnesty’s reports also focus on the decidedly detrimental effects of the Israeli blockade of Gaza for the water situation there, as restrictions on the movement of goods constrain Gazans’ ability to maintain existing water and sanitation facilities and rebuild those destroyed by Israel during its attack of December 2008 and January 2009.

Amnesty’s reports find Israel’s water policies to flagrantly violate several extant tenets of international law, most notably the Fourth Geneva Convention and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Beyond such condemnations, though, comes rhetoric deeply critical of the Zionist project in general: Amnesty complements the findings of its reports by claiming Israel’s policy as a whole to be “to limit the overall amount of water (and land) available to the Palestinian population, while preserving for itself privileged access to most of the water and land in the OPT.”

The water situation in Palestine, then, is monstrous, just as is much else related to the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine. Indeed, Israeli water policy is reminiscent of what Salih Booker and William Minter refer to in a different context as global apartheid,¹ and in this sense parallels many similar horrors of the contemporary world. One of the most pressing such parallels that bears mention here is that of climate change.

Climate change, or global warming, refers to the looming catastrophic atmospheric changes that have accompanied the historical rise of industrial capitalism. As is well-known, the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases for which industrial-capitalist societies have been responsible threatens to radically deprive the access of much of currently existing humanity and many of its potential descendants to water. It is in the destruction by Israel of Palestinian cisterns and water-treatment plants as in its rendering of entire Palestinian communities into environmental refugees through the wholesale cutting-off of their access to water that can be seen a few of the likely realities of the totality toward which the world is moving as a result of climate change.

The likely future of access to water in such a world is dark, indeed. George Monbiot of The Guardian writes that an increase in average global temperatures of 1.5° C—that is, a mere 0.7-0.8° C beyond the level relative to pre-industrial temperatures that has already been achieved due to historical emissions—exposes some 400 million humans to what he refers to rather dryly as water stress, while an average global temperature increase of 2.1° C is estimated to place between 2.3 and 3 billion people at risk of outright water shortages.² Monbiot’s compatriot Mark Lynas finds a 2° C rise in average global temperatures to nearly eradicate the mountain glaciers on which the millions who currently reside in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia depend upon for their water, and he claims a 3° C such rise to imply a drastic reduction in the Himalayan glaciers that today provide life for more than half of humanity.³

Without serious action aimed at mitigating the consequences of climate change in the near term, these average temperatures increases—to say nothing of even more apocalyptic ones—will likely come to pass. A poll conducted in April found nine out of ten climatologists to believe that humanity would fail to limit global warming to 2° C,⁴ while the UK Met Office recently concluded that a 4° C average-temperature increase—a temperature increase that Met scientists claim would threaten the water supply of half the world’s population—could well occur by the year 2060.⁵ Just two weeks ago, in fact, scientists with the Global Carbon Project found the prospect of a 6° C average-temperature increase by the end of the century—an eventuality that would problematize the existence of the vast majority of currently existing humanity—to be entirely within the realm of possibility.⁶

With regard to climate change then, present reality seems far worse than even the most pessimistic observers could have imagined some time ago. Both the present concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as well as their current rates of emission are far higher than they should be if much of humanity is to have a chance of flourishing in the foreseeable future. The world’s leaders, especially the most powerful among them, have decidedly failed to address this emergency with the sense of urgency it requires. The climate legislation proposed by the lawmaking body of the society most responsible for climate change—the United States—calls for reductions in carbon emissions on a scale entirely inadequate for preventing catastrophic climate change, and Barack Obama has recently expressed that no binding treaty should be expected from the decidedly critical Copenhagen climate summit that will take place next month. Parallels with other examples of imperial arrogance—the recent overwhelming rejection by U.S. legislators of the Goldstone report, for example, or the Obama administration’s caving on the question of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—could be made.

Reflection on the active deprivation of Palestinians by Israel highlighted in Amnesty’s recent reports on water may help to illuminate the deprivation of humanity generally considered that is being prosecuted by capitalist societies’ contributions to climate catastrophe and their concurrent lack of action aimed at mitigating such. The racist monstrousness implicit in both these projects must surely be resisted as such; indeed, resistance to the suffering inflicted by the Zionist project should be complemented by resistance to the suffering brought about by climate change, for, as the German social critic Max Horkheimer writes, it is crucial that people come to oppose injustice not just in the particular, as in Palestine, Iraq, Darfur, Afghanistan, or Tibet, but instead in general, as a whole.⁷ It is imperative that opposition to the totality somehow be effectively realized rather soon, for the overturning of currently prevailing trends—of barbarism—may not only help the Palestinians in their struggle to reverse the ordeals that have been imposed upon them; debarbarization, in the words of Horkheimer’s friend and colleague Theodor W. Adorno, may indeed constitute “the immediate prerequisite for survival.”⁸

1. “Global Apartheid.” The Nation, 21 June 2001. [↩]
2. Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning (Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press, 2007), p. 15, 6. [↩]
3. Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2008), p. 102-107, 159-167. [↩]
4. David Adam. “World will not meet 2C warming target, climate change experts agree,” The Guardian 14 April 2009. [↩]
5. David Adam. “Met Office warns of catastrophic global warming in our lifetimes,” The Guardian 28 September 2009. [↩]
6. Steve Connor and Michael McCarthy. “World on course for catastrophic 6°C rise, reveal scientists,” The Independent, 18 November 2009. [↩]
7. Sociedad, razón y libertad (Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2005), p. 126. [↩]
8. Critical Models (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2005), p. 190. [↩]

Source: Dissident Voice

March of the state spies: One in 78 adults came under state-sanctioned surveillance last year

Britain's extraordinary march towards a surveillance state is revealed today by shock new figures.

They show that one request is made every minute for officials to spy on someone's phone records or email accounts.

The number of Big Brother snooping missions by police, town halls and other public bodies has soared by 44 per cent in two years.

Spying on the public: One adult in 78 has come under some type of surveillance - from storing petrol without a licence to not quarantining a dog

Last year there were 504,073 new cases - an average of 1,381 a day. It is the equivalent of one adult in 78 coming under state-sanctioned surveillance.

The snoopers are using a law originally aimed at terror suspects. But their targets include people suspected of storing petrol without a licence and bringing a dog into the country without quarantining it.

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said last night: 'It cannot be a justified response to the problems we face in this country that the state is spying on half a million people a year.

'The Government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning, not a blueprint. We are still a long way from living under the Stasi - but it beggars belief that it is necessary to spy on one in every 78 adults.'

The requests to intercept email and telephone records were made under the hugely controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

A total of 653 state bodies, including 474 local councils, are allowed to use its surveillance powers.

CCTV nation: The laws were originally brought in as an anti-terror measure, but are instead becoming a way of life

The Daily Mail has discovered that Sandwell Borough Council checked phone records to locate a bogus faith healer, while Lewisham Council used the anti-terror power to pursue a rogue removal firm and a rogue pharmacist.

Kent County Council carried out 23 phone checks as part of probes into storing petrol illegally and breaking the law over importing a dog.

Other bodies authorised to carry out surveillance include the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service, fire authorities and prison governors.

Chris Huhne: 'The state is spying on half a million people'

They are not allowed to find out the content of phone calls and emails, but can access details of when and to whom they were made or sent.

People who are found to have done no wrong have no right to know they were snooped on.

The figure for access requests in 2008 emerged in a report by the Interception of Communications Commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy.

In a previous report, based on nine months in 2006, the Commissioner said there had been 253,557 requests, the equivalent of 338,000 over a full year.

The Lib Dems said this shows a 44 per cent increase between 2006 and 2008. The vast majority are understood to have been approved, though no figures are available.

Mr Huhne said it made a mockery of a supposed crackdown on the use of RIPA by the Home Office.

He added: 'We have sleepwalked into a surveillance state but without adequate safeguards. Having the Home Secretary in charge of authorisation is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse.'

Alarmingly, in 2008 there were 595 'errors' by public authorities and the private firms who supply them with phone and e-mail information.

One of the most common mistakes was typing in the wrong phone number when making a request - leading to details being disclosed about the wrong person.

Sir Paul said: 'Errors may result in catastrophic consequences for members of the public'.

He cited a police investigation into a paedophile ring in which an address for a suspect was obtained from internet records. It led to the arrest of an entirely innocent man.

Despite the huge number of requests, the Home Office says there is a need to go further than giving public bodies access to phone and internet records.

Under plans unveiled earlier this year, the police and security services would gain access to the public's every internet click and phone call.

This would include, for the first time, monitoring the use of social networking sites such as Facebook. Every internet and phone company would have to allocate an ID to each customer.

They would then have to store details of calls, text messages and internet sites for a minimum of 12 months. The actual content of calls and emails would not be kept.

As well as phone and email checks, councils and other public bodies have been using actual covert surveillance, though undecoveragents or hidden cameras.

Last year, councils and government departments such as benefits officials were given 9,894 authorisations for this, up from 9,535 a year earlier.

The police and the security services were given 16,118 direct surveillance authorisations, giving a total of more than 26,000, or 71 every day.

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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205419/March-state-spies-One-78-adults-came-state-sanctioned-surveillance-year.html#ixzz0NrZKjTUP

Police told to ignore human rights ruling over DNA database

Chief constables across England and Wales have been told to ignore a landmark ruling by the European court of human rights and carry on adding the DNA profiles of tens of thousands of innocent people to a national DNA database.

Senior police officers have also been "strongly advised" that it is "vitally important" that they resist individual requests based on the Strasbourg ruling to remove DNA profiles from the national database in cases such as wrongful arrest, mistaken identity, or where no crime has been committed.

European human rights judges ruled last December in the S and Marper case that the blanket and indiscriminate retention of the DNA profiles and fingerprints of 850,000 people arrested but never convicted of any offence amounts to an unlawful breach of their rights.

Britain already has the largest police national DNA database in the world, with 5.8m profiles, including one in three of all young black males. Thousands more are being added each week.

So far the Home Office has responded to the judgment by proposing a controversial package to keep DNA profiles of the innocent for six to 12 years, depending on the seriousness of the offence. The official consultation period ended today.

The advice to senior officers comes in a letter from the Association of Chief Police Officers criminal records office. The letter, seen by the Guardian, tells chief constables that new Home Office guidelines following the ruling in the case of S and Marper are not expected to take effect until 2010.

"Until that time, the current retention policy on fingerprints and DNA remains unchanged," it says. "Individuals who consider they fall within the ruling in the S and Marper case should await the full response to the ruling by the government prior to seeking advice and/or action from the police service in order to address their personal issue on the matter.

"Acpo strongly advise that decisions to remove records should not be based on [the government's] proposed changes. It is therefore vitally important that any applications for removals of records should be considered against current legislation."

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats' shadow home secretary, said it was clear from the letter that the government intends to string out its response to the European court ruling that they should not keep the DNA of innocent people.

"It is unacceptable that new guidance won't be provided to police until 2010. In that time thousands more innocent people will have been added to the database, where they will remain for years.

"It is not up to police forces to ignore court judgments because they or their masters do not like them."

The tone of the letter is in sharp contrast to what the Home Office told the House of Lords in June when peers sharply criticised the government's intention to push through their plan to keep innocent people's DNA for up to 12 years by using "back door" secondary legislation to get it through parliament. The Home Office told peers that they could not afford the delay that would be involved in making the changes in primary legislation that would allow MPs and peers to fully debate the changes.

Home Office officials said they face a possible "surge of pressure" from individuals seeking deletion of their data from the relevant databases. Ministers have already received some legal challenges.

But the Lords committee on delegated powers and regulatory reform has told ministers that provision "about this important and complex subject should be in primary legislation".

Source: The Guardian

NO TORTURE NO COMPROMISE

NO TORTURE NO COMPROMISE

By sidestepping our legal and moral obligations to prevent torture we undermine human rights everywhere. Liberty is calling for an independent judicial inquiry into the UK's involvement in torture.

• No Torture No Compromise
• What is extraordinary rendition?
• Listen to Liberty Director discuss torture on R4 Today

Settlers make land grab in latest outpost east of Tulkarem

On Friday, more than 50 Israeli settlers attacked two farmers and erected a tent on Palestinian farmland in the village of Kfar Al-Labad, east of Tulkarem.

Eyewitnesses saw the three dozen settlers descend on the Ras Al-Masid area lands, owned by Ibrahim Kayid. They expressed horror as the group erected a tent and place an Israeli flag over top.

Kayid, whose sons Samer, 30, and Jamal, 20, were attacked by the descending mass and forced off the land. The farmer was dismayed, saying "this land is my only source of livelihood, what will I do now?"

Residents are unsure whether the new tent will be declared a new outpost to the nearby Enev settlement. Similar cases in Hebron where Israelis erected small tents and clapboard structures were declared closed military zones and were henceforth off limits for Palestinians and even the owners of the land.

Deputy PLC speaker Hasan Khreishah commented on what appeared to be the most recent settlement land grab and urged rival factions to unify so attention could be paid to such actions.

The settler action comes despite calls from the United States, Europe, the UN and now the G8 to halt settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Source: The Institute for Middle East Understanding

Zionist Bullshit

By Mantiq al-Tayr

June 27, 2009 ·

1. It must be nice to be a member of a religion that allows, nay encourages, you to steal others people’s land and resources and feel good about it. Then, if anyone objects to your obnoxious disgusting behavior you get to label them as bigots. What a great deal. Want to be an asshole – well here comes your role model.

Aron Raskas is a Baltimore lawyer and Israeli firster who believes that since he is a Jew he gets to live on land stolen from Palestinians and he thinks this is a “morally sound” thing to do. I guess he must be fleeing all the anti-Semitism that is rampant in Baltimore. It’s so bad in Baltimore that Zionist slumlord Sam Zell had to buy the local newspaper – no not the Baltimore Jewish Times – but rather the Baltimore Sun – otherwise the Jews would have been driven out from their over forty synagogues there. Others would have had to seek refugee at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall or hide out under their desks at the Baltimore Hebrew University. Of course, due to the rampant anti-Semitism in Baltimore, BHU has had to merge with Towson. This will no doubt cause a flood in refugees from Baltimore into the West Bank. But I digress.

No doubt some others would have had to hide in the basement of the Jewish Museum of Maryland. Other hiding places have been fortified by 900 hundred thousand dollars in grants from the federal goverment to protect Jewish places from terrorism. Noted Islamofascist Senator Barbara Mikulski very proudly announced this grant in October of 2007. No doubt her colleague, also an Islamofascist, Senator Benjamin Cardin, approved. Yup, Maryland is a tough place for a Jew to live. So it’s off to the West Bank.

That rascal Raskas had to flee to the “settlement” of Rimonim which he informs us is in the “heart of the West Bank.” (Please note, that means he is living on land acquired by Israel in the 1967 war that Israel started. Therefore he is in violation of the Geneva Conventions. )
Now, Raskas knows that he is doing something illegal and immoral. It pervades the piece he wrote for that great anti-Semitic newspaper known as the Baltimore Sun. So he has to justify it by telling us that there just aren’t any Palestinians there. Obviously, you can’t steal land from people who do not exist – right?

As one looks out from Rimonim, the most telling fact is what one does not see. Over the miles of rolling hills that unfold across the landscape, there is not a village, building, home or even a herd of sheep to be seen. The scene is the same at other Jewish settlements as well.
It would be sort of like going into Jewish parts of Germany or Poland after WWII and taking over empty Jewish houses because you just couldn’t find any Jews anywhere. But again, I digress. Read the rest HERE

Found Source: Curt Maynards Newest Blog

Why Taxes Enslave… Period.

I often find myself in discussions with people. People who insist that the state is their best friend. People who believe that waging mass murder on the rest of the world is keeping us safe. People who believe that being a serviceman/woman does still serve the good of the world. People who believe that our support for the state is necessary for our well being and that of the world at large. Some people cannot be broken out of this infinitely flawed view. Some of these are the same people who can’t see that capitalism is not the culprit of the current economic crisis or that the same issues that caused alcohol prohibition to fail will be the same causes that make the “War on Drugs” fail.

Oddly, these same people are the ones who’ve never heard of the torture that we carry out at Guantanamo and other “black sights” around the world. They’ve never heard of the illegal detention and kidnapping of people around the world who were tortured, in some cases, and never had the chance to file for grievances with their captors. The daily killings of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan somehow escape their world view. What do these things have in common? The killing, detentions, torture, economic crises, and their continuation are made possible by you and I. Our tax money has not only turned life into a living HELL for other foreign people but it has also enabled the state to use our money to crack down on us. Taser’s, tanks, pistols, missiles, jets, and aircraft carriers are all bought and built with our money.

The money coerced out of me and you not only has resounding macro effects but it also has micro effects like the police state here in the US. Woman, children, and the disabled are being assaulted by cops who are paid by the very people they violate. How else can this occur other than in a state run system. Imagine a company who routinely violates it’s customers. This could not occur in a purely Free Market society because the victimized customers would quickly switch to the competitor and the aforementioned company would suffer great loses and possibly go out of business. Instead we are stuck with a system where the state has a monopoly on security which means that they can treat us any way they want without the risk of losing income. Other municipal systems operate this way too. Instead of water systems finding ways to maximize their water output or conserve they simply cut off water to their customers because they can. Of course in a free market one would be able to switch water companies or other technologies would be created to acquire water in other ways to keep water providers afloat.

So, as I’ve shown above taxes not only fuel wars, torture, monopoly’s, police states, and the war machine, but there are also many indirect consequences. For example the unlawful detention and torture of civilians in other countries creates resentment and hatred for the occupying power. When people are killed then you have others who want revenge against the occupying power (or invader) who committed the atrocity. As a result more enemies are created against the state (who took it’s people’s money (taxes) and used it to create war and mass murder in the foreign land). Some foreigners will want to take revenge on the people who enabled the occupying or invading state to carry out the attacks that killed their loved ones. The attacks that these people carry out in the homeland of the occupying/invading force will in turn be used by that occupying/invading force to justify it’s interventions in foreign countries and might be used to expand these operations. As a result more and more people are hostile toward the occupying/invading country. As a result the occupying/invading state is forced to crackdown more and more on it’s people to stem any attacks that might be carried out by it’s foreign enemies. Thus, the people who enabled their state to take their money for “security” are eventually the ones who the state has to keep itself safe from.

However, this is just one facet of the enslavement that taxes enable. The other facet is one that undermines private property. Certain things like your labor or property (that is acquired from another party) have nothing to do with the state yet they find it appropriate to come in and tax these things. The state has never owned or contributed to 100% of the property in it’s borders so how can it claim to be owed a taxes for 100% it’s use? Likewise, how can the state claim to have a stake in the income you receive from your job? Your labor never belonged to the state so how can they tax you when you trade it for private income (at your job)? The fact that you are taxed in these two ways means that the state feels that it owns us. You can never truly own private property because you must always pay taxes on it or the state will take it. Likewise, if you do not pay income taxes, even though they never owned the money or your labor, they will either take some of your money (a fine) or your time and labor (prison time). Does this sound like an entity “that’s for and by the people”? NO!

In-other-words the state makes freedom impossible for others and it’s own people. The state claims the right to wage mass murder in it’s people’s name while simultaneously taking it’s people’s rights. It creates monopoly’s in certain markets and undermines capitalism. It claims to provide security while being the biggest threat to it. It takes people’s money and converts it into death and destruction on foreign countries. It claims to own everything. It claims to be accountable to nobody.

Peace…

Source: Last Free Voice