vrijdag 9 december 2016

US Power Will Decline Under Trump, Says Futurist Who Predicted Soviet Collapse

US Power Will Decline Under Trump, Says Futurist Who Predicted Soviet Collapse

Written by

NAFEEZ AHMED

COLUMNIST

December 6, 2016 // 09:30 AM EST

Johan Galtung, a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated sociologist who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, warned that US global power will collapse under the Donald Trump administration.

The Norwegian professor at the University of Hawaii and Transcend Peace University is recognized as the ‘founding father’ of peace and conflict studies as a scientific discipline. He has made numerous accurate predictions of major world events, most notably the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

Back in 2000, Galtung first set out his prediction that the “US empire” would collapse within 25 years.

Galtung has also accurately predicted the 1978 Iranian revolution; the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989 in China; the economic crises of 1987, 2008 and 2011; and even the 9/11 attacks—among other events, according to the late Dietrich Fischer, academic director of the European University Center for Peace Studies.

Back in 2000, Galtung first set out his prediction that the “US empire” would collapse within 25 years. After the election of President Bush, though, he revised that forecast five years forward because, he argued, Bush’s policies of extreme militarism would be an accelerant.

After the election of Trump, I thought it might be prudent to check in with Galtung to see how he was feeling about the status of his US forecast. Galtung told Motherboard that Trump would probably continue this trajectory of accelerated decline—and may even make it happen quicker. Of course, with typical scientific caution, he said he would prefer to see what Trump’s actual policies are before voicing a clear verdict.

The model

Galtung has doctoral degrees in both sociology and mathematics, and some decades ago developed a theory of “synchronizing and mutually reinforcing contradictions”, which he used to make his forecasts. The model was based on comparing the rise and fall of 10 historical empires.

In 1980, Galtung used his theoretical model to map the interaction of various social contradictions inside the Soviet empire, leading him to predict its demise within 10 years.

“Very few believed him at the time”, writes Dietrich Fischer in the main biography and anthology of Galtung’s works, Pioneer for Peace, “but it occurred on November 9, 1989, two months before his time limit, 1990.”

For the USSR, Galtung’s model identified five key structural contradictions in Soviet society which, he said, would inevitably lead to its fragmentation—unless the USSR underwent a complete transformation.

The model works like this: the more those contradictions deepen, the greater the likelihood they will result in a social crisis that could upend the existing order.

In the case of the USSR, the main structural contradictions were as follows: the working class was increasingly repressed and unable to self-organise through trade unions (ironic given the country’s Communist pretensions); the wealthier ‘bourgeoisie’ or elite had money to spend, but nothing to buy from domestic production, leading to economic stagnation; Russian intellectuals wanted more freedom of expression; minorities wanted more autonomy; and peasants wanted more freedom of movement

The model works like this: the more those contradictions deepen, the greater the likelihood they will result in a social crisis that could upend the existing order.

Eventually, as the highly centralised structures of the Soviet empire were unable to accommodate these intensifying pressures, the top-down structures would have to collapse.

Galtung later began to apply his model to the United States. In 1996, he wrote ascientific paper published by George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis & Resolution warning that “the USA will soon go the same way as [previous] imperial constructions… decline and fall.”

Fascism?

But the main book setting out Galtung’s fascinating forecast for the US is his 2009 book, The Fall of the American Empire—and then What?

The book sets out a whopping 15 “synchronizing and mutually reinforcing contradictions” afflicting the US, which he says will lead to US global power ending by 2020—within just four years. Galtung warned that during this phase of decline, the US was likely to go through a phase of reactionary “fascism”.

He argued that American fascism would come from a capacity for tremendous global violence; a vision of American exceptionalism as the “fittest nation”; a belief in a coming final war between good and evil; a cult of the strong state leading the fight of good against evil; and a cult of the “strong leader”.

Galtung warned that during this phase of decline, the US was likely to go through a phase of reactionary “fascism”.

All of which, Galtung said, surfaced during the Bush era, and which now appear to have come to fruition through Trump. Such fascism, he told Motherboard, is a symptom of the decline—lashing out in disbelief at the loss of power.

Among the 15 structural contradictions his model identifies as driving the decline, are:

economic contradictions such as ‘overproduction relative to demand’, unemployment and the increasing costs of climate change;
military contradictions including rising tensions between the US, NATO, and its military allies, along with the increasing economic unsustainability of war;
political contradictions including the conflicting roles of the US, UN and EU;
cultural contradictions including tensions between US Judeo-Christianity, Islam, and other minorities;
and social contradictions encompassing the increasing gulf between the so-called ‘American Dream’, the belief that everyone can prosper in America through hard work, and the reality of American life (the fact that more and more people can’t).

Galtung’s book explores how the structural inability to resolve such contradictions will lead to the unravelling of US political power, both globally, and potentially even domestically.

Global collapse

Trump has made clear that he thinks US troops are still needed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even proposed sending more troops to Iraq. He also said that we should have ‘grabbed’ the country’s oil. But he has also heavily (and incoherently) criticized US military policies.

Domestically, Trump has promised to deport 11 million illegal migrants, build a wall between the US and Mexico, compel all American Muslims to sign up to a government register, and ban all Muslim immigration to the US.

On the one hand, Trump might well offer an opportunity to avoid potential conflicts with great power rivals like Russia and China—on the other, he may still, stupidly, fight more unilateral wars and worsen domestic contradictions relating to minorities.

For Galtung, Trump’s incoherent policy proposals are evidence of the deeper structural decline of US power: “He [Trump] blunts contradictions with Russia, possibly with China, and seems to do also with North Korea. But he sharpens contradictions inside the USA”, such as in relation to minority rights.

On the one hand, Galtung said, Trump might well offer an opportunity to avoid potential conflicts with great power rivals like Russia and China—on the other, he may still, stupidly, fight more unilateral wars and worsen domestic contradictions relating to minorities.

Motherboard asked Galtung whether he thinks Trump would speed up his forecast of “collapse”, or slow it down.

Even if we give Trump the benefit of the doubt, he said, and assume that he “prefers solving underlying conflicts, particularly with Russia, to war—in other words for the US not be imperial—then yes, that still speeds up the decline from above, and from the center… Of course, what he does as a President remains to be seen.”

But what exactly is collapsing?

“An empire is more than violence around the world,” said Galtung. “It is a cross-border structure with a center, the imperial country, and a periphery, the client countries. The point about imperialism is to make the elites in the periphery do the jobs for the center.”

The center country may be a dictatorship or a democracy. So for Galtung, the collapse of the US empire comes “when the periphery elites no longer want to fight US wars, no longer want to exploit for the center.”

For Galtung, a key sign of collapse would be Trump’s attitude to NATO. The President-elect has said he would be happy to see NATO break-up if US allies aren’t willing to pay their dues. Trump’s ‘go it alone’ approach would, Galtung said, accelerate and undermine US global empire at the same time.

“The collapse has two faces,” said Galtung. “Other countries refuse to be ‘good allies: and the USA has to do the killing themselves, by bombing from high altitudes, drones steered by computer from an office, Special Forces killing all over the place. Both are happening today, except for Northern Europe, which supports these wars, for now. That will probably not continue beyond 2020, so I stand by that deadline.”

US break-up?

But this global collapse, also has potential domestic implications. Galtung warned that the decline of American power on the world stage would probably have a domestic impact that would undermine the internal cohesion of the United States:

“As a trans-border structure the collapse I am thinking of is global, not domestic. But it may have domestic repercussion, like white supremacists or even minorities like Hawaiians, Inuits, indigenous Americans, and black Americans doing the same, maybe arguing for the United States as community, confederation rather than a ‘union’.”

Galtung warned that the decline of American power on the world stage would probably have a domestic impact that would undermine the internal cohesion of the United States.

Galtung is not pessimistic about his forecasts, though. Having always seen the collapse of the “US empire” as inevitable—much like the collapse of the Soviet empire—he argues that there is real opportunity for a revitalization of the “American republic.”

The American republic is characterised by its dynamism, its support for the ideals of freedom and liberty, its productivity and creativity, and its cosmopolitanism toward the ‘other.’

Might Trump help revitalize the American republic?

Galtung’s answer is, perhaps, revealing: “If he manages to apologize deeply to all the groups he has insulted. And turn foreign policy from US interventions—soon 250 after Jefferson in Libya 1801—and not use wars (killing more than 20 million in 37 countries after 1945): A major revitalization! Certainly making ‘America Great Again’. We’ll see.”

That’s a big if.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/us-power-will-decline-under-trump-says-futurist-who-predicted-soviet-collapse

donderdag 8 december 2016

Jill Stein: US election recount is vital to reform our broken voting system

Rebecca Solnit, who has written passionately about the recount, interviews Stein about getting an accurate count and ending systematic violation of voting rights

Jill Stein: ‘This is really not only about this election, this is about reforms that need to be made to create an election system that we can believe in.’ Photograph: D. Ross Cameron/AP

Rebecca Solnit

The election didn’t end on 8 November. It just morphed into a crisis whose resolution is not in sight. Hillary Clinton’s campaign was impacted by an October surprise delivered by a partisan FBI, but November was not short on surprises, and there may yet be one in December. A little more than a week ago, while people were wondering what it would take to get the Clinton campaign to pursue a recount, Jill Stein’s campaign amazed everyone by taking on the job. Exuberance for the idea immediately inspired small donors to contribute $6.5m in about 48 hours.

Stein launched the recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania at the behest of election experts John Bonifaz and J Alex Halderman, who said the irregularities they saw merited further investigation. Those errors include discrepancies in Donald Trump’s favor between the usually reliable exit polls and the votes in several swing states, beyond what some experts consider the margin of error and other anomalies. One they noted was that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7% fewer votes in counties with electronic voting machines than in counties that have paper ballots. In Michigan, more than 80,000 ballots were said to be blank where the votes for president would be marked, twice the number left blank in the previous election, and several times the margin between the two candidates.

There were also numerous reports of foreign intervention into state voting systems and other forms of election interference, including the news that Obama called Putin on the “nuclear phone” to tell Russia to stop meddling. This astonishing news item has had no apparent follow-up, beyond Senator Lindsey Graham demanding an investigation and the seven Democratic members of the Senate intelligence committee urging the White House to release its classified information on the subject. Which is to say, we don’t know what happened in our election, and in a democracy we really should.

All this serves as a reminder that the United States’ voting system is an incoherent patchwork of systems of varying degrees of reliability, many with easily hackable machines, all managed by local election officials of varying levels of probity and competence on computers with no notable security. In Pennsylvania, the gap between Clinton’s and Trump’s votes narrowed dramatically even before the recount, as officials got around to actually counting all the ballots (according to Decision Desk HQ, on the day after the election Trump was reported to be ahead in Pennsylvania 126,091 votes, but that lead had narrowed to 44,321 this week, after officials actually counted a lot of the ballots). In Michigan, the difference between the two candidates is a little more than 10,000 votes; in Wisconsin, around 20,000.

There are grounds to wonder whether Trump won those swing states and whether the results are trustworthy. If the recount reveals he didn’t – well, the biggest upset in American political history could be around the corner. People assert it’s unlikely, but things we call unlikely happen routinely, which we forget, because after the Berlin Wall falls or some planes crash into a couple of skyscrapers, it all looks perfectly likely in hindsight.

On Tuesday I talked to Stein, who declined to speculate on the outcome of the process, saying: “We are still so fully engaged right now in the fight to defend the recount and to defend the constitutional right to vote and to have our votes counted. That has occupied, I would say, 200% of our time and our energy so that we have not yet begun to ask such critical questions.”

She remarked that the Trump campaign and Republican state officials’ furious reaction to the recount is “not reassuring that the Trump campaign has confidence in the outcome of the election”. The recount has plowed through numerous obstacles. Last Thursday, Trump’s lawyers challenged the recount in Michigan, but their appeal was denied on Friday. On Wednesday the judge effectively ended the recount, tying his decision to a state court ruling that found Stein had no legal standing to request another look at ballots. Some participants in the recount in Detroit are reporting that representatives of the Trump campaign are intimidating and interfering with the volunteers and paid ballot counters.

Stein’s recount can try to determine the intent of those who actually voted, but there is no way to compensate now for those who were prevented from voting altogether. She said: “We are seeing again this evidence in Michigan that communities of color are systematically disenfranchised through the machinery that constitutes really another form of electoral Jim Crow. I don’t know if you saw the article in [the] Detroit News. It’s pretty staggering. Eighty-seven optical scanners [in Detroit] broke on election day.”

The state has a law preventing recounting votes where there are discrepancies between the machines and the hand-tabulated ballots, which is exactly what you get in a poor city with old voting machinery.

Ballots are examined in Michigan before a judge’s ruling effectively ended the recount there. Photograph: West/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

“It’s shocking, absolutely shocking, that Michigan has a law precluding a recount exactly where you would need it. Where the discrepancy exists, you are forbidden from recounting. So we have a battle shaping up right now between the state’s politicized effort to disrespect and discount the vote of the African American community against the federal court which is standing up for the constitutional right to a vote.”

She continued, “What is happening in Detroit, which is enabled by state law, is a systematic violation of basic constitutional voting rights. This is really the underlying question about this voting machine technology, which is that it’s extremely prone to fail in poor communities and communities of color. The US Civil Rights Commission showed that the odds of your vote being miscounted or discounted increases 900% in communities of color. They were referring to the so-called “spoiled vote”. A spoiled vote is where you have filled out your paper ballot and you put it into a counting machine, an optical scanner, and those scanners are highly prone to malfunction if they aren’t properly calibrated. So poor communities that don’t have adequate maintenance and programming and where the machines are not up to date: this is exactly where your ballot is spoiled and it gets essentially tossed aside.”

This is one of the sad realities of the recount. It can perhaps render a more accurate count of votes that were cast, but it cannot bring in those who were excluded in the first place. Stein says: “The value of this recount is not only to get clarity on what the real results of this election are and to have an election we can believe in. Because right now we don’t – as Donald Trump himself is saying. He’s saying that the votes were rigged as well. But the point here is not to help one candidate and hurt another ... I should add, I would have filed for a recount in the Democratic primary since several of those elections were also screaming for scrutiny, but you can’t create a recount unless you have standing in that election. So this is a bipartisan issue. Let’s be very clear about this: Green votes are very much at risk here as well. If there is vote suppression going against a Democratic candidate, you can be sure there is vote suppression going on here against a third-party candidate.

Evidently there is no love lost between Stein and the Clinton’s team. “When the Clinton team weighed in, which was, shall we say, minimalist and a day late,” it was, she said with “about as passive an expression of interest as one could imagine.”

But she reiterates: “This is really not only about this election, this is about reforms that need to be made to create an election system that we can believe in. That means not only getting rid of these error-prone, hack-prone voting machines, that is the touch screens, the DREs [direct-recording electronic machines], we need to get rid of them, as many states have done. Other states are in the process. They need to be banned once and for all in all states.”

I asked Stein about the electoral college the day after one Republican elector announced that he could not and would not vote for Trump, as projects such as the Hamilton Electors were at work trying to sway the votes of enough electors to deny Trump the presidency. They argued that the electoral college was created as a safety check to prevent unqualified candidates from taking office should the popular vote have selected them. She replied: “The electoral college is also on the agenda here. It should be eliminated, and we should have a direct national popular vote. That, as you know, is a very steep hill to climb because it requires a constitutional amendment. There is some discussion, which merits closer exploration, that there is a constitutional basis for assigning the electoral college votes proportional to the popular vote in that state. That might be a plan B that could achieve what sounds like the same thing as the direct national popular vote. In my view, the point is not to help one candidate and hurt another. The point is to create a process that has integrity.”

There has been much written of the large funds Stein has raised throughout this process – and what will happen to what is left unspent. Stein’s view is that: “It’s really quite outrageous and unjust and a symptom of a democracy run amok here, where in order to have transparency and certainty about our votes we voters have to go out and hold bake sales on steroids to raise millions of dollars.” But to her detractors who have questioned what happens to unspent funds she argues: “I can tell you there’s unfortunately about zero chance that we’re going to have excess funds.”

Whether the recount changes the outcome in three states, it calls attention to the ways that the count was already off. As federal Judge Mark Goldsmith has stated, “the right to vote, and to have that vote conducted fairly and counted accurately – is the bedrock of our nation.” Except that what we were told was bedrock has maybe long been quicksand.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/08/jill-stein-interview-us-election-recount-rebecca-solnit

woensdag 7 december 2016

Israel Issues New Directive To Its ‘Free Press’: ‘Censorship: The Freedom To Speak Responsibly!’

Israel Issues New Directive To Its ‘Free Press’: ‘Censorship: The Freedom To Speak Responsibly!’

By Richard Silverstein @richards1052 | February 25, 2016

Israeli's read the morning paper on Ben Yehuda Street. Israel’s new military censor, Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, has mandated expanded monitoring and censorship of Israeli media, requiring social media activists and bloggers to have 'security related content' vetted by the government.

Israeli’s read the morning paper on Ben Yehuda Street. Israel’s new military censor, Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, has mandated expanded monitoring and censorship of Israeli media, requiring social media activists and bloggers to have ‘security related content’ vetted by the government.

SEATTLE — Israel’s new military censor, Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, has greatly expanded the scope of her brief in monitoring Israeli media by requiring social media activists and bloggers to submit “security-related material” for approval prior to posting.

In the past, the Israeli Defense Forces censors have confined themselves to overseeing Israeli mainstream media — TV, radio, and print, conceding the digital realm as a “Wild West” too big and too chaotic to tame. But in order to prove her bona fides as a censor, Col. Ben Avraham has declared far more ambitious plans.

-----------------------------

Obtained exclusively by MintPress News © 2016 Copyright Mint Press, LLC

The State of IsraelCensorship for Print & Media List of subjects which obligate you to present [material] for priorapproval to the Censor General Directive.

This list is an aid for your use and includes chapter headings only. The full detailed list which is attached is the one to be used in determining what material to present [to the Censor] For the sake of removing any doubts, it should be noted that:

A. The obligation to present material for prior review applies both to the written format, which may include maps, diagrams/charts, photographs and other publications.

B. Along with photocopies of the materials, you must provide any accompanying explanation, headlines or notes which accompany the photographs or maps.

C. You must provide for review materials which had previously been approved [for publication], including photographs approved at an earlier time, with the Censor’s signature imprinted [on them]

D. The source of a news item does not automatically satisfy us from the Censor’s perspective. Also foreign sources which are quoted or material provided [to you] by official or military sources, to the extent that they touch on the subjects listed here, require prior review.

E. The Censor will treat news which is presented as a quotation of a foreign source (news agency or world press) as a quotation which is considered intrinsically correct. Such news will be approved for publication, but if subsequently it turns out that the quotation is not precise or even nonexistent, responsibility for security damage caused as a result of such publication will be upon the editor.

F. [You] may not leave blank spaces or any other signs that testify to the delection of censored material.

List of Censored Topics:

IDF and Security Forces

1.The structure or identity of units

2. States of readiness and calling up of reserve units

3. Preparations for [military] operations

4. Locations of [military] bases

5. Military exercises and work projects

6. Special units [Special Forces, Intelligence units, etc.]

7. War Materiel:: Development, production of weapons, experiments

8. Cooperation with foreign militaries

9. Manpower: appointments, resignations, firings, rumors about activities of IDF and its commanders

10. Announcements concerning casualties from operations, training, accidents, and illnesses

11. Letters to the editor on military or security matters

The Enemy:

Arab Armies and Terror Groups

1. News about what is happening within enemy armies and terror groups like: weapons, methods of operation, and preparedness. Ministry of Defense and Military Industries: Rafael, Elbit, Israel Aircraft Industries, civilian research institutes working on behalf of the defense/security apparatus: 1. Security budget

2. Development, experimentation, production and maintenance of war materiel within civilian and military companies..

3. Contacts with foreign countries including agreements to import gasoline.

4. Anything connected with nuclear [issue]

5. Location of operations of the defense ministry and civilian operations and identification of secret employees.

6. The means of transportation by civilian [bus] companies when drafted in time of emergency [war].

Security Arrangements:

1. Security of ministry employees within Israel and abroad

2. Official delegations abroad

3. The movements and residences of VIPs

4. Security of strategic facilities: oil, electricity, water, ports, railways, buses, ministry facilities, and structures considered likely targets for attack

5. Information security within the security apparatus

6. Aerial reconnaissance photos and maps.

The Intelligence Communities:

AMAN, Shabak, Mossad, MALMAB, Research Department of Foreign Ministry

1. The structure of operations inside Israel and abroad

2. Location of bases

3. Identities and photos of employees, agents, work methods.

4. The detention of those suspected of security offenses.

Captives and the Missing:

1. Personal details

2. Details concerning negotiations for their return

3. Any material whose publication constitutes a danger to peoples’ lives

Courts

1. Deliberations about security matters Government Decrees

1. Deliberations of the ministerial committee for security.

2. Immigration from endangered nations

3. EilatAshkelon Oil Pipeline

4. Movement of gas to and from Israel

5. Loans from external sources to Israel and Israeli institutions.

Censorship: the Freedom to Speak Responsibly!

Censor Unit/ Beit Yachin 2 Kaplan St. Tel Aviv

Telephone: 037605800/1 Fax: 037605879/90

-----------------------------

While the bloggers can not reveal it, Ynet has already published the list (Hebrew).The censor has notified at least 32 Israeli bloggers and social media activists that they must submit to her any material they publish either in their blogs or social media accounts when they deal with a wide variety of security-related subjects. She submitted a list of relevant subjects to those targeted, but they may not disclose its contents. (Ironically, this directive comes from the same government touted as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” and, as we all know, a free press is critical to a democracy.)

This is the English translation of the flier distributed to Israeli media listing subjects which must be submitted to the censor for pre-approval:

The State of Israel — Censorship for Print & Media

The censorship directive lists just about every subject any self-respecting military or intelligence journalist or blogger would wish to cover. Taken literally, these writers and activists would have to submit virtually anything they want to report to the censor, or simply ignore most of the rules and only submit material that would be certain to draw harsh rebuke from the censor if published without prior review.

This also brings up the issue of self-censorship, which is rife in Israeli reporting. There are scores of stories I’ve tried to interest Israeli reporters in covering and their first response is: “Isn’t that under censorship?” or, “Isn’t that under a gag order?” They know they can’t touch these stories with a ten-foot pole.

There are other stories which are neither censored nor under security gag, but the media still will not report them. The two most prominent examples of self-censorship involve stories I broke about sex scandals involving Israeli diplomats abroad. In one case, Israeli media never reported the story at all. In the other, Israeli media reported the identity of the diplomat, but not the sexual nature of the charges against him, even though British media and I did.

‘1984’: War is peace, freedom is slavery, and censorship is … responsibility.

The closing slogan of the censor’s recent directive is also astonishingly ironic: “Censorship: The Freedom to Speak Responsibly.” This statement would be right at home in George Orwell’s “1984,” in which everything is the opposite of what it really is. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” And, in Israel, censorship is responsibility.

Just as patriotism is the hobgoblin of little minds, “responsibility” is the hobgoblin of the Israeli national security state. The citizen owes his allegiance to the collective. Neither the state nor the collective owe the individual much of anything. That is why whistleblowers like Anat Kamm are arrested and imprisonedinstead of supported, and why journalists like Uri Blau are exiled for years and sentenced for the “crime” of journalism.

It’s also clear from the directive that censorship covers not just security matters, but economic and political ones as well. Indeed, in the Israeli national security state almost all matters critical to the state are security matters. So, for example, any major loan from a foreign government comes under censorship as a “security matter”? And a major scandal involving a potential billion-dollar lawsuit by the government of Iran against Israel regarding the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company falls under censorship as well. This is certainly not a security matter; it’s a matter involving a deeply embarrassing scandal in which Israel stole oil that was part of an Israeli-Iranian partnership and refused to pay for it — for decades.

This is what happens when a society permits a censor to replace common sense in determining what is fit for the average citizen to know or read. It turns adults into children and the state into a nanny. You, the citizen, may not be the judge of what you should know. The state, like the father in the popular 1950s American TV show, “knows best.”

I translated an August 2015 interview with the outgoing military censor, Brig. Gen. Sima Vaknin-Gil, in which she reviews much of the structure, thinking and operations of censorship for Israel’s media advocacy publication, 7th Eye. It is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the mind of a censor or a nation afflicted with censorship.

Among what will be most eye-opening for average Israelis who know little about the inner-workings of censorship is that an individual petty bureaucrat censor sits in every newsroom and TV news studio, and reviews all headlines and copy before publication or airing. The first names mentioned below are those of prominent Israeli TV newscasters:

[Vaknin-Gil] “I want you to read a newspaper, watch the news and listen to radio without knowing that beforehand Razi took direction [from the censor], Ilana went over Uvdah [Israel’s equivalent of “60 Minutes”] with me, and Ron Ben-Yishai sent me the report before publication.”

[Interviewer] “Or that a representative of the censor sits in the offices of the news channel?”

[Vaknin–Gil] “Yes, when you watch the 8 o’clock TV news, the censor’s already been there since 6 and managed to go through the whole [news] line-up. OK? We don’t want you [the viewer] to know that.”

This blows to hell the image of Israel as a state which values a free press. It also explains why Israel’s ranking on international surveys of press freedom is so low (101 out of 170 in the most recent ranking).

It’s no accident that Vaknin-Gil, after leaving her IDF post as chief censor, transferred directly to the Ministry of Public Diplomacy (which uses the term “hasbara” in its Hebrew title), where she became director general or chief of staff to Minister Gil Erdan. Here’s how she described the Global Coalition for Israel, the $26-million initiative to fight the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement:

“Some of the funds are earmarked for Israeli tech companies, many of them headed by former military intelligence officers, for digital initiatives aimed at gathering intelligence on activist groups and countering their efforts.

‘I want to create a community of fighters,’ said Sima Vaknin-Gil … to Israeli tech developers at a forum last month dedicated to the topic.

Initiatives are largely being kept covert. Participants at the invite-only forum, held on the sidelines of a cyber technology conference, repeatedly stood up to remind people that journalists were in the room.”

Frank Luntz’s magical “sentence that will defeat BDS.” Perhaps a bit of wishful thinking…

In effect, this is a nation-state seeking to smear and suppress legitimate political activism not just in its own country, but around the world. To accomplish this task, Vaknin-Gil recruited (Hebrew) none other than the GOP’s leading brand consultant, Frank Luntz. Just as he did in his infamous “Hasbara Handbook,” Luntz trained the 150 specially-invited guests in the political language of combatting BDS. Among other things, the golden boy of GOP-messaging attacked the ministry of tourism’s failed attempts at branding Israel as “a cool destination.” “Girls and bikinis,” he warned, just don’t cut it anymore.

The hypocrisy of Luntz’s enterprise may be seen in one of his suggested slogans: “Solutions come from engagement, not silence.” This is his way of saying that the attempt by the BDS movement to boycott Israel and silence its supporters is illegitimate. In truth, it is the Israel lobby, with its massive campaign to pass legislation throughout the Western world outlawing BDS that is engaged in silencing.

Indeed, The Associated Press reported:

“Vaknin-Gil said her ministry is encouraging initiatives to expose the funding and curb the activities of anti-Israel activists, as well as campaigns to ‘flood the Internet’ with content that puts a positive face on Israel. She said some of these actions will not be publicly identified with the government, but that the ministry will not fund unethical or illegal digital initiatives.”

In perhaps the most ominous characterization of the government program, two former military intelligence agents described their anti-BDS work as akin to a covert military attack on Israel’s enemies. From the AP’s report:

“Inspiration, an Israeli intelligence analysis company founded by Ronen Cohen and Haim Pinto, former military intelligence officers, launched a technological initiative some months ago to collect intelligence on BDS organizations in Europe, particularly Scandinavian countries, the U.S., and South America, Cohen said. He said the initiative aims to dismantle the infrastructure of groups he said were responsible for incitement and anti-Semitism against Israel. He declined to give specifics.

‘It’s no different than an operation, which you sometimes read about in the newspaper, in Syria or Lebanon,’ Cohen said. ‘It’s the kind of thing that, if you want to do it in the future … you can’t work in the open.’”

The impulse to militarize political discourse and designate critics as not just political, but mortal enemies is troubling. It is also deeply anti-democratic. The world should take notice of this development and take it into account when Israel demands that foreign states suppress these critics with the same vehemence used to do so inside Israel.

Conflicting responses by Israeli Jewish bloggers, digital media to censor’s demands

The new, expanded censorship rules mentioned above target subjects who are left-wing Jews (I don’t know of any Palestinians contacted about the directive) and deeply critical of the Israeli security apparatus. But Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, the chief censor, didn’t confine herself to those who are anti-Zionist or most extreme; she even targeted +972 Magazine and its Hebrew sister outlet, Sicha Mekomit, which are largely liberal Zionist in their political orientation.

State of Israel–Censorship for Print Media

Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, Israel’s chief military censor and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on August 30, 2015 (Ariel Hermoni/Defense Ministry)

The responses from those designated for monitoring has moved from one pole to the other. Yossi Gurvitz is one of the worst thorns in the side of the security forces, and has been interrogated by the Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet, before. He writes the Friends of George [Orwell] blog and refused outright to have anything to do with the demand.

+972, on the other hand, “reluctantly” agreed to cooperate. A senior staff member explained to me that the publication did so on advice of counsel and because it desperately wants to obtain official designation as an approved media source. According to him, this would open up +972’s reporting to a broader range of official government sources who will not talk to them now.

+972’s managing editor, Jonathan Omer Man, explained the implicit and explicit muzzling effect that the Government Press Office has on the diversity of reporting in Israel. He also explained that despite all this, +972 felt it was important to accept the terms of the directive because of the benefits government accreditation offers:

“In a number of ways the state is able to influence what information is reported, how it is reported, and who can report it through the Government Press Office (GPO). …

Carrying a GPO card gives journalists access to official events, the scenes of newsworthy incidents, is often a condition for cooperation from official spokespeople, and offers protection from arrest while covering protests. In other words, government accreditation makes reporting much safer and more effective. (Foreign journalists must have the GPO’s endorsement in order to even receive a visa to work in Israel.)

But by giving itself the power to decide who is a legitimate journalist, the GPO (which operates as part of the Prime Minister’s Office) also inherently gets to decide who is not a legitimate journalist. And as with any decision made by government bureaucrats subordinate to politicians such decisions can at times be driven by political considerations. …

That has been true in the past and under the current government.”

He also noted: “+972 Magazine is currently engaged in a years-long battle to be accredited by the GPO as a recognized, and therefore legitimate, news organization.”

Over years of reporting about Israeli national security issues I’ve learned that the closer one cooperates with the government the more likely one is to be co-opted. Co-optation takes many forms and it can creep up on a journalist without his or her awareness.

On the heels of the censor’s crackdown, Israeli police arrested the bureau chief of the Washington Post near Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate. William Booth and his Palestinian stringer were interviewing Palestinian youth when police told him to stop. Booth refused and moved farther away from the officers. Annoyed at his refusal to comply with their demand, they arrested him and held him at a police station for one hour.

Israeli police offered this brazenly false justification of the arrest: An unnamed “passerby” claimed to have witnessed Booth offering the Palestinians money to stage a protest so he could cover it. It’s also no accident that Michael Oren, a Knesset member and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., recently claimed that Palestinian protests were “staged and orchestrated” solely for the press’ benefit, as if they otherwise would have no legitimate reason for such demonstrations.

J'lem police spo says civilian told cops journalists at Damascus Gate

were offering money to Palestinian youths to make disturbances (1/2)

— Ben Hartman (@Benhartman) February 16, 2016

The foreign ministry has made a big show of protesting Booth’s treatment, calling it “heavy-handed.” But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s press officer, Ofir Gendelman, rejected any criticism. He tweeted that it was much ado about nothing and that Israel remains a country in which the press is completely free. (However, the facts tell a different story, as does Gregg Carlstrom in this eye-opening Columbia Journalism article about the Netanyahu government’s unprecedented assault on a free press.)

PM on the brief detention of @washingtonpost's @BoothWilliam:

He was released immediately.We don't detain journalists.The press here is free.

— Ofir Gendelman (@ofirgendelman) February 16, 2016

Israel’s suppression of Palestinian free speech even more brutal

Of course, Booth and his colleague received far milder treatment than what’s accorded to Palestinian journalists and media outlets, who are often violently assaulted and even killed by Israeli security forces. In fact, by the time this is published Palestinian reporter Mohammed al-Qeeq may be dead of a hunger strike. He is protesting his administrative detention without charge or trial by Israeli security forces.

An emaciated Mohammed al-Qeeq, 33, who has been on hunger strike for more than 70 days to protest at his administrative detention in an Israeli jail, is seen at Haemek hospital in the northern Israeli city of Afula February 5, 2016. (Photo: Ammar Awad/Reuters)

Further, unlike the military censor, who demands prior approval for social media publication by Israeli Jewish bloggers and activists, the Shin Bet arrests Palestinian non-journalists, even teenagers like Asmaa Hamdan, for publishing poems to Facebook. Several have been arrested under administrative detention, held without charge, access to attorney, or trial.

These detainees never got an “invitation” from the censor to submit their posts. They were summarily arrested, after which the Shin Bet threw away the key. In yet another form of state censorship, it secured a gag order prohibiting Israeli media from reporting Hamdan’s arrest or name. Hamdan and her expressions of defiance and resistance have been erased before they could enter the consciousness of the Israeli public. This, too, is a means of exercising control over not just Israeli Palestinian citizens but Jews as well.

Breathtaking scope of new censor’s mandate

The scope of Col. Ben Avraham’s mandate (as she defines it) is breathtaking. She presumes to demand that the most effective and hard-hitting independent Israeli bloggers and social media activists muzzle themselves unless they receive her prior approval. A new 7th Eye article (Hebrew) by respected Hebrew University law professor Moshe Negbi equates the Israeli military censor’s new directives to Internet censorship in China:

“The attempt to preemptively deny someone freedom of expression and the right to disseminate information and opinions on security matters, and to censor social media, is without precedent in the democratic world. It is typical of totalitarian regimes like China.“

Imagine if the repressive Arab regimes had been able to impose such a regime of draconian censorship on the young Arab Spring activists. Their revolution would’ve died aborning. As it is, the military and oligarchic elites in many of these countries managed to counter-attack and overthrow the democratic impulses of the Arab Spring. But think if the regimes had been monitoring and suppressing social media even before the protests occurred, how much more effective their repression would’ve been.

In the ever-widening dissolution of democratic impulses within Israel, figures like Col. Ben Avraham step forward seeking to impose their definition of homogeneity and acceptable thought. Because there are few remaining normative stable values or democratic institutions, they strive desperately to fill the vacuum. Because they do not have legitimacy, they must fail in these efforts — but not before doing enormous harm to the society they purport to defend.

Draconian state censorship indicates a nation in decline

Israel today is a nation in a rapid state of decline. Racist, ultra-nationalist forces reign supreme. Those institutions and values which characterize democratic societies like free press, free speech, academic freedom and cultural expression are all under threat. By this, I do not mean that the state is merely nibbling away at these freedoms; it is taking bite-sized chunks out of them, rendering them more toothless each day.

The result will be a country in which everyone is taught to think within an extremely narrow range. Those who diverge from the norm will be ridiculed at best and exiled or silenced at worst. In fact, Israel has already passed laws which would punish those who refer to the Nakba. It plans to pass similar legislation which permit citizens or businesses to sue anyone who supports BDS. It also seeks to force Israeli human rights NGOs seeking to lobby the Israeli Knesset on behalf of their mission to wear the equivalent of a Jewish star, a badge that would indicate they accept money from anti-Israel foreign governments and betray the state.

This will drive the most educated, creative and entrepreneurial individuals into the Diaspora, where they can express themselves more freely. Even more importantly, it will protect their children from serving in the army of the permanent-war state.

Though Israel has recently trumpeted the gains in aliyah from France, purportedly in the aftermath of Islamist terror attacks, these numbers are temporary and short-term. The longer term trend, as Israel becomes more and more authoritarian, theocratic and racist, is to drive away those who are most needed for a diverse, innovative, cosmopolitan population.

Israeli censorship spreads outward, infects international debate on Israel-Palestine

Israel’s widening attack on speech, thought and activism will ripple outward into the broader world. Glenn Greenwald recently catalogued the legislation either passed or proposed in France, Germany, Britain and the U.S. which would criminalize support of BDS. Various states in this country are considering legislation that would punish schools, businesses or individuals who advocate BDS or fulfill its principles.

The advertisement sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace which was rejected by Variety after being deemed ‘ been deemed “too sensitive” a topic.

The advertisement sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace which was rejected by Variety after being deemed ‘ been deemed “too sensitive” a topic.A broad human rights coalition, including Jewish Voice for Peace, recently sought to purchase an ad in Hollywood Variety advising Oscar nominees to #SkipTheTrip, a free junket to Israel offered by the government of Israel valued at $55,000. The Hollywood media outlet refused to accept the ad unless it adopted “a softer tone.” Meanwhile, Variety has run numerous pro-Israel ads which were not changed or censored in any way. One sponsored by the right-wingEmergency Committee for Israel, even accused President Obama of using Israel “like a punching bag.” (On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times ran the ad Variety rejected.)

Israeli ministers have met with executives from both Google and Facebook, seeking to pressure the U.S.-based Internet giants to censor material deemed anti-Semitic for being critical of Israel. So far, the efforts have been rejected by the U.S. firms. But Israel has only just begun these efforts and they will become more intense as time goes on.

These are examples of the state and its domestic agent, the Israel lobby, amplifying the reach of Israeli censorship and inducing major domestic political, cultural and media institutions to impose limits on their own speech concerning Israel-Palestine.

It is one thing if Israeli rightists wish to impose their values within their own borders, but quite another when they attempt to impose the same values on the rest of the world. Must we become accomplices to Israeli injustice? Must we, too, muzzle ourselves because criticism and activism offends Israel’s far-right leadership? Since when are we not permitted to think our own thoughts on such matters? Since when does a foreign state tell us what we can or cannot say or think?

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Obtained exclusively by MintPress News © 2016 Copyright Mint Press, LLC The State of IsraelCensorship for Print & Media List of subjects which obligate you to present [material] for priorapproval to the Censor General Directive This list is an aid for your use and includes chapter headings only. The full detailed list which is attached is the one to be used in determining what material to present [to the Censor] For the sake of removing any doubts, it should be noted that: