The house of cards continues to topple

Israeli Police Chief Resigns in Scandal

JERUSALEM Feb 18, 2007 (AP)

Israel's police commander resigned Sunday after a government commission said he ignored ties between senior officers and underworld figures and failed to ensure a thorough investigation into the 1999 killing of a suspected crime boss.

So it's business as usual in the Middle East's only democracy and most moral of nations.

The resignation of Moshe Karadi was the latest in a series of public scandals and controversies involving Israel's top leadership including rape allegations against the president and questions over the prime minister's role in a bank sale.

Anyone starting to notice a pattern here?

Earlier Sunday, commission chairman Vardi Zeiler, a retired judge, said Karadi should lose his job for the incomplete investigation and for ignoring ties between senior police officers and top organized crime figures. Karadi was not police commissioner at the time of the killing, but a departmental head.

Terminating Karadi's appointment would "highlight a clear norm for generations to come that someone who behaves like Karadi would be unable to complete his term as police commissioner," Zeiler told reporters.

So Karadi is not just a sacrificial lamb being offered up to create the illusion that the Israeli police force are accountable to anyone other than themselves?

"If the (panel's) suspicions are correct, this is the beginning of a very corrupt police force, and the infiltration of underworld figures to the police, which corrupts the police and the regime," Zeiler added.

I sincerely doubt that this is "the beginning". Such corruption is woven into the fabric of Israeli society.

The commission was formed to examine whether police properly closed the case of the murder, in which a rogue police officer confessed to shooting a suspected crime boss hospitalized under police guard after an assassination attempt.

The officer, who said he operated at the behest of a well-known Israeli crime family, was later murdered in Mexico, allegedly by members of the crime family angered by his confession. The case was later closed after police concluded there was not enough evidence.

These guys do get around, don't they?

Karadi insisted that the allegations against him were untrue, but said he was resigning to "set a personal example" and spare the police the harm of a scandal.

How magnanimous of him. If you were falsely accused, would you leave your job quite so easily? I don't think so.

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An apple a day... the faulty rhetoric of Yabloko and the faux outrage of the 'international community'

During a recent visit to Germany, blame for the murder of the Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, was laid at the feet of Vladimir Putin by a crowd of 2000 protesters, one of whom shouted "murderer!" as Mr Putin got out of his limousine.

Later Mr Putin publicly acknowledged her death for the first time during a joint press conference with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. During the press conference, he stated that although Ms Politkovskaya was a journalist known to be critical of the authorities in Russia, her influence on political life in Russia was insubstantial. He also promised that the murder, which he described as a "dreadful and unacceptable crime" will be fully investigated and the perpetrators apprehended. During talks with Mr Putin, Angela Merkin is reported to have raised the concerns of the mythical 'international community' with regard to the possibility of state involvement in the murder.

The murder of Ms. Politkovskaya is without doubt a cause for concern, as would be any suggestion of state intimidation of the media. However, the assumption that the murder was carried out on the orders of Mr Putin is either the product of simplistic thinking or ulterior motives. As with any significant event of this type, the first question any sane person should ask is 'cui bono'?

Who benefits? Certainly not Vladimir Putin, who is - without any real evidence - being accused of using murder to suppress media freedoms. If the Russian state had wanted to do away with a vocal opponent, their demise would have been made to look like an accident. Whoever perpetrated this murder wanted it to be clearly seen as an execution - in order to once more make the Putin administration the focus of the faux righteous indignation and moral outrage so beloved of those who regularly instigate or perpetrate atrocities all over the world. Those who benefit from this murder are those who want to demonise and punish the current Russian administration for their strident economic nationalism and for their attempts to review the flawed privatisations of the Yeltsin era.

When asked for comment about the murder, Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the opposition Yabloko party stated that "Russia is becoming an authoritarian and corrupt country". The reality is that Russia is less corrupt now than it was when Yeltsin was busy selling off the Russian family silver to a small number of ultra-greedy oligarchs.

He went on to say that "This killing opens a new phase when the physical elimination of political opponents becomes possible". He has obviously had his eyes closed while the oligarchs and other assorted criminals were busy ordering hits on each other in their drive to establish exclusive control over the natural resources that rightly belong to all of the Russian people.

While I do not for one minute believe that the administration of Vladimir Putin is blameless or free from mistakes, I am sickened by the hypocritical critique of those who point fingers at Russia for their actions in Chechnya while simultaneously committing far greater atrocities in the Middle East, or at least tacitly supporting them.

I also find it ironic that the leader of a party that espouses the kind of liberal economic policies that allowed Yeltsin to divest the Russian state of its natural resources and large industries has the audacity to bemoan the increasing corruption in the country. Mr Yavlinsky believes that these fundamentally corrupt privatisations should be deemed legal and should not be open to administrative review. It is clear from this that Mr Yavlinsky does not represent the interests of the Russian populace at large, but is far more interested in protecting the ill-gotten assets of a small clique of kleptocrats.

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A word in your $hell...like...

The Irish Daily Mail, in their editorial comment from yesterday's edition, rails against the left-wing agitators who are attempting to stoke a conflict so they can revive a long-discredited ideology. The conflict in question is the long-standing protest over the Shell Corrib pipeline.

Precisely which long-discredited ideology the Daily Mail has in mind is left unsaid, but through the references later in the piece where the protesters are described as dreamers who seek to turn back the tide of internationalisation and global trade. Admittedly, there are two distinct threads to the protests against the pipeline and the tendency has been for the two to become intertwined. The first thread of the protests objects to the pipeline route on the grounds of public safety. The second objection is broader and encompasses the economics of the project, and in particular the lack of benefit to the Irish people - the beneficiaries will be Norway's Statoil - who own a 36.5% stake, Shell - who own a 45% stake and Marathon - who own the remaining 18.5%. That the government of Ireland has been selling off the national resources at bargain-basement prices is evident, when even the likes of Mike Cunningham, the former director of Statoil Exploration (Ireland) stated that "No other country in the world has given such favourable terms as Ireland."

The Irish media have largely been subservient to the corporate cause, liberally sprinkling their editorial comment with anonymous allegations claiming that protesters are only interested in violence and destruction.

For instance the Sunday Independent of July 17th, 2005 claimed that:

Paramilitary style death threats have been made against workers on Shell's controversial Corrib gas pipeline project in Co Mayo.

The article in the Sunday Independent went on to claim that:

Two Scottish workers employed by the Norwegian-owned Statoil corporation were approached by a gang of men outside a pub in Belmullet and told they would be shot "in the back of the head".

What the Sunday Independent article did not make clear in that article, or in any article on the subject since then, is that their owner, Tony O'Reilly, is also part-owner of an Irish exploration company, Providence Resources, in which he holds a 45 per cent stake. Through this company he is the part-owner, along with Exxon-Mobil, of oil and gas fields off the coast of County Clare.

He has even admitted that he (mis)used his position as a "media mogul" to access the most lucrative exploration licenses, when in September 1983, he told Forbes magazine that “Since I own 35 per cent of the newspapers in Ireland I have close contact with the politicians. I got the blocks he wanted". The "he" referred to in the statement is the geologist working for the company.

So the Sunday Independent can hardly claim to be neutral on this issue - leaving aside their obvious attachment to neo-liberal economic principles. Whether the The Irish Daily Mail and their sister paper, the Sunday Mail, have any fiscal interest in the project is open to question, but their religious belief in the legalised pillage that goes by the name of globalisation - and the attendant repressive legislation to stiffle protest most certainly is not.

Going back to the Irish Daily Mail editorial, the ideology to which they refer - which is best expressed as economic nationalism - is hardly long-discredited, despite how much their wags might like to think it is. It is the reason why Iraq was invaded (forget the toppling a repressive regime excuse - the coalition of the willing tolerate far more repressive regimes elsewhere). It is the reason why Iran is ripe for invasion. It is the reason why Hugo Chavez is being demonised. It is the underlying motive for the constant attacks on the administration of Vladimir Putin, despite the fact that his alleged "crimes" pale in comparison to those of the current U.S. administration.

This ideology is a straightforward concept that states that the exploitation of the natural resources of a country should directly benefit all the people of that country and not just line the pockets of a few vested interests, and it is rapidly gaining ground. Globalisation - the legalised and unhindered plundering of the assets of countries and the exploitation of their peoples by corporations - is, on the other hand, becoming increasingly unpopular - despite how many times the Daily Mail stamp their collective feet in opposition.

Despite the attempts by the likes of the Daily Mail to smear all opposition as "left wing", opposition to the dominance of corporations is far from exclusively left-wing territory, as anyone who reads the writings of the likes of Paul Craig Roberts - a former advisor to former U.S. President Ronald Reagan will conclude.

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