The European Union: Where Corporate Fantasies Come True
By David Cronin | New Left Project | July 18, 2013
Edward Snowden has exposed more than a massive spying operation. The whistleblower has – perhaps unintentionally – drawn attention to just how obsequious Europe’s political leaders are towards the US.
Angela Merkel and François Hollande are reportedly furious over revelations that America has been reading their diplomats’ emails (though their fury can’t be that intense given that a rumour that Snowden was on a flight to Bolivia was sufficient for France to block the plane from its airspace). There were hints too that a planned trans-Atlantic trade agreement could be in jeopardy as a result of the controversy. Yet the talks have opened this month as planned. With many of the world’s most powerful corporations adamant that the talks take place, they were unlikely to be derailed by a spat over snooping.
In May this year, a ‘business alliance’ to support the planned trade deal was established. Many of the firms belonging to this coalition – BP, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank, British American Tobacco, Nestlé – have been involved in similar initiatives since the 1990s. Using a highly dubious methodology, the alliance estimates that a transatlantic trade and investment partnership (known by the ugly acronym TTIP) would bring benefits of €119 billion to the EU and €95 billion to the US per year. What they don’t spell out is that the price of any such benefits could be the destruction of democracy.
A leaked document detailing what EU officials wish to achieve in the negotiations says that an eventual agreement should include ‘state-of-the-art’ provisions on ‘dispute settlement’. Under this plan, special tribunals would be set up to allow corporations to sue governments over laws that hamper them from maximising their profits.
When clauses like those being envisaged have been inserted into previous investment treaties, corporations have invoked them in order to challenge health and environmental laws that were not to their liking. Australian rules that all cigarettes be sold in unattractive packaging and Germany’s decision to abandon nuclear power are among the measures that corporations have tried to torpedo in the name of ‘investor protection’.
What will the masters of the global economy take on next: minimum wage levels; restrictions on hazardous chemicals; food quality standards? All of these advances are the results of struggle by workers and campaigners. All of them could be at risk if European and American negotiators go ahead with their plan to set up a special court system that corporations alone may use.
Peter Mandelson must shoulder some of the blame for the extremist agenda now being pursued. In 2006, when he was EU trade commissioner, Mandelson published an official blueprint called Global Europe. It committed the Brussels bureaucracy to work in tandem with corporations to remove any obstacles they encountered throughout the world.
The blueprint closely resembled recommendations made by pressure groups like the European Services Forum (ESF). Bringing together Microsoft, BT, Veolia and – at the time – Goldman Sachs, the ESF has its origins in the 1999 conference of the World Trade Organisation, best remembered for the ‘Battle of Seattle’ – the large-scale protests against it.
In The Brussels Business, an excellent film about corporate lobbying, the ESF’s Pascal Kerneis waxes emotional as he recalls how some ‘high-VIPs’ were unable to attend important meetings in Seattle because of the demonstrations outside their hotel. Kerneis, however, did not allow this display of people power to weaken his determination to refashion the international economy in the way that his elitist pals wanted.
In his dealings with Mandelson’s team of advisers, Kerneis argued that if the EU is unable to have the wishes of corporations fulfilled at the WTO level, it should concentrate on twisting the arms of individual governments. The stilted phrasing of some ESF briefing papers though could not conceal that they were designed to turn some of the wildest capitalist fantasies into reality. One advocated that the EU should strive to remove all capital requirements for banks and caps on foreign ownership of companies in its key trading partners, as well as any pesky rules preventing corporations from sending profits abroad (to, say, a tax haven).
As they were drafted before the financial crisis that erupted in 2008, these papers have a carefree, almost naive feel to them. And yet the European Commission is still striving to attain the core goals identified in such documents. The Commission’s latest annual report on ‘trade and investment barriers’ says that all ‘relevant instruments and policies’ will be marshalled worldwide ‘to make sure the playing field is levelled’. On the surface, that may sound innocuous. In practice though, it means that corporations are accorded more rights than human beings.
If an Indian arrived in Heathrow Airport tomorrow and demanded to automatically have the same entitlements as a British citizen, he or she would probably be arrested. Yet the EU executive believes that big Western companies active in India should enjoy ‘national treatment’ – that is they should be treated exactly like Indian firms. Britain’s industrialisation was achieved at least partly because the textiles sector was shielded from foreign competition. Yet blinkered by neoliberal ideology, Brussels officials want to prevent poorer countries from applying the same tactics, which they now describe as ‘protectionist’ (a dirty word, according to these ideologues).
The willingness to allow corporate lobbyists to set the rules is not confined to trade policy. Financial regulation too has been heavily influenced by the world’s most powerful banks.
Charlie McCreevy, the EU’s single market commissioner from 2004 to 2010, displayed a deep aversion to oversight during his time in office. His hands-off approach can be attributed to the fact that the ‘experts’ he appointed to guide him held exorbitantly-paid posts at the investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. A consultative group on hedge funds that the Irishman assembled was comprised entirely of insiders from the financial services industry.
When Michel Barnier was tasked with taking over McCreevy’s portfolio, Nicolas Sarkozy (remember him?) contended that giving this post to a Frenchman was a defeat for the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism. Like many of Sarkozy’s proclamations, it was fanciful. Barnier has kept up the dishonourable tradition of relying primarily on advice from the private sector. An ‘expert group’ on banking reform set up at his behest last year had a token representative from the European Consumers’ Organisation (known by the French acronym BEUC) and a couple of academics. Most of its eleven members, however, were sitting or former bankers – or, worse still, weapons salesmen.
Financial service whizzkids are held in awe by EU policy-makers. This became much apparent during 2009. Boris Johnson hopped on the Eurostar to Brussels that year to champion the City of London and predictably grabbed the headlines. Away from the glare of publicity, however, an army of hedge fund managers succeeded in eviscerating a law designed to restrain their gambling. When the law went before the European Parliament, the hedge fund industry prepared a voluminous set of amendments. Sharon Bowles, a Liberal Democrat MEP who chairs the Parliament’s economics committee, admitted to me that she signed amendments drafted by the financial industry and then tabled them in her own name. This obviously begs the question of whether she is really working on behalf of her constituents or on behalf of banks.
The corporate lobby has proven adept at concocting myths. Whereas it was patently obvious that the economic crisis was caused by the reckless behaviour of banks, powerful groupings have spread the falsehood that extravagance in public spending was really to blame. The European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) – which includes the chief executives or chairmen of Shell, Volvo, Nestlé, Vodafone and Heineken – has been leading efforts to demolish the welfare state. Among its core demands are that healthcare should be privatised so that Europe more closely resembles the US. The ERT enjoys the kind of access to top-level politicians that defenders of the underprivileged are denied. Herman Van Rompuy, the EU’s unelected ‘president’, is known to have dined with ERT delegations in private clubs, without any details of these encounters being posted on his website. And in March this year, Merkel and Hollande, along with the European Commission’s head José Manuel Barroso, met ERT representatives in Berlin. The ERT is pushing the Union’s governments to agree on a ‘competitiveness pact’ over the next twelve months. Under this pact, each EU country would become obliged to drive down its wage levels and dilute its labour laws.
‘Competitiveness’ is a byword for crony capitalism. It should not be confused with competition: among the ERT’s demands are that the EU becomes less fussy about controlling mergers between large companies. Far from encouraging diversity, it wants to have wealth concentrated in increasingly fewer hands.
Repeated so often, the idea of ‘competitiveness’ has assumed an almost religious significance among the EU elite. Opposing it is regarded as heretical.
Despite Thatcher’s tetchy relationship with the EU institutions, the main tenets of Thatcherism have gone mainstream in Brussels. Attempts made in earlier decades to give the Union a social dimension – by, for example, championing gender equality – always amounted to fig-leafs for a project that was essentially right-wing and anti-democratic. In more recent years, these fig-leafs have become increasingly slender.
Barroso is among a new generation of leaders who are demonstrably in thrall to the ‘Iron Lady’. While he habitually describes the EU as a ‘social market’ economy, it is evident from his favoured policies that his real agenda is to bolster corporate power. One key objective of the European Commission is to promote ‘public-private partnerships’. This idea of handing over services financed by taxpayers to unaccountable companies can be traced back to Thatcher and her successor, John Major.
With few exceptions, the Union is cuddling up to big business and screwing the rest of us. Building a mass movement to confront corporate power has never been more urgent.
US, Israel launch joint aerial drill
Press TV – July 21, 2013
The United States and Israel have begun a joint aerial drill. According to a statement by the Israel military the two-week “Juniper Stallion 13” aerial exercise began Sunday morning.
An undisclosed number of F-15 and F-16 fighter jets from both sides are participating in the training event. It’s held at Uvda Base in the southern Negev Desert, during which pilots will practice air-to- air combat maneuvers, mid-air refueling, bombing runs and other missions.
The United States European Command (EUCOM) is involved in the aerial war games which will focus air-to- air combat maneuvers, mid-air refueling, bombing runs and other missions.
The exercise comes after a two-day visit to Israel on July 14 by EUCOM’s Commander General Philip M. Breedlove.
“The combined exercise is designed to improve the interoperability and cooperation between the Israeli and U.S. air forces, and has been planned for more than a year,” an Israeli military source told Xinhua.
The U.S. is Israel’s biggest ally and international supporter. It supports Tel Aviv financially, militarily and diplomatically. Washington is providing billions of dollars of military aid to Tel Aviv annually.
During Fiscal Year 2013, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8.5 million per day in military aid.
Meanwhile Times of Israel has reported that “Israel would receive $3.4 billion in total military aid under the 2014 U.S. budget proposal sent to Congress by President Barack Obama”. The proposal is inclusive of “$3.1 billion in general military aid for Israel, similar to 2013, plus a separate request for $220 million to finance the Iron Dome anti-rocket defense system.”
“Obama’s 2014 proposal also allocates $96 million for joint U.S.-Israel research and development projects, including the David’s Sling and Arrow missile defense systems. The overall budget proposal that Obama submitted to Congress on Wednesday totalled $3.8 trillion.”
The If Americans Knew website (http://ifamericansknew.org/stats/usaid.html) reports that “Beginning in 2007, the U.S. has increased military aid by $150 million each year. Beginning 2012, we will be sending Israel $3.1 billion a year (or an average of $8.5 million a day) and will continue to provide military aid at that level through 2018. U.S. tax dollars are subsidizing one of the most powerful foreign militaries.”
In Israel’s last two wars on the Gaza Strip alone, Operation Cast Lead (27 December 2008- 18 January 2009) and November 2012, hundreds of civilians, including many women and children were killed.
In addition to financial and military aid, the U.S. has vetoed over 40 UN resolutions that have been critical of Israel and its policies towards Palestine.
Israeli regime a replication of S. African apartheid?
Press TV – July 22, 2013
The Israeli regime has been accused of replicating the former South African Apartheid regime by the UN investigators, politicians and human rights groups.
Former South African leader Nelson Mandela once said “we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”.
Last month, Ismail Coovadia, outgoing South African ambassador to Tel Aviv, said the regime is a “replication of apartheid” and built on “stolen land”.
The relation between Tel Aviv and the Apartheid regime in South Africa has even become the subject of a book — “Unspoken Alliance; Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa.
All these call for a look at the similarities between the two regimes and their cozy relations with Britain.
The Israeli regime is treating Palestinians, especially those living in the West Bank just like blacks, who were confined to Bantustans equal to West Bank enclaves and the besieged Gaza Strip by the Apartheid regime.
Palestinians are confined to security zones in the West Bank where they should have permits to pass military checkpoints while those in the Gaza Strip are under a military siege and have limited access to food, water, drugs and fuel, among others.
Palestinians are indeed under Israeli military occupation and face control of movement, physical separation from Zionists even on the roads and lack equal rights with them.
The physical separation, which is similar to the black Bantustans enforced by a variety of measures, is imposed on the Palestinians by creation of Israeli-only roads, limiting their access to lands and resources in the occupied territories and most recently by erecting of the separation barrier (otherwise known as the “Apartheid Wall”) in the West Bank.
Palestinians are also subjected to a totally different legal system than do Israeli occupiers to the extent that Palestinians are turned into secondary residents of their own lands by the occupiers, just like blacks versus white settlers during apartheid rule in South Africa.
In terms of equal rights, Palestinians also do not have the right to vote in the Israeli elections as was the case in the South African Apartheid regime.
They were given an illusion of a democracy by the Oslo Accords that enabled them to vote in the Palestinian Authority elections that brings to mind the local black polls for Bantustans, but that illusion was shattered in 2006 after Hamas won the PA elections but was not allowed to form a government.
The Israeli regime had also warm ties with the apartheid regime and the man behind the concept and implementation of apartheid, former South African Premier Hendrik Verwoerd, once said “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state”.
The two regimes signed a military agreement in 1975 and the Zionist side helped the apartheid regime circumvent international sanctions until its end in the 1994, to the point that the UN General Assembly condemned Tel Aviv’s “collaboration with the racist regime of South Africa”.
The apartheid regime was also considered a close ally of Britain and London used its weight to prevent sanctions against the regime while maintaining extensive trade with South Africa especially by importing gold.
Later in the 1980’s, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher proved a staunch support of the racist regime describing the anti-apartheid Mandela as a terrorist in 1987.
Such a position is now clearly seen in the London-Tel Aviv ties and it goes without saying that Britain laid the cornerstone of a Zionist entity in the Palestinian lands in the first place.
In 2002, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote an article named “Apartheid in the Holy Land” that that his recent trip to Palestine had reminded him “so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa”.
He had earlier written in 1984 that the Bantustans, which were pretended to be self-governing homelands by the apartheid regime were deprived of “territorial integrity or any hope of economic viability”.
They were, he wrote, merely “fragmented and discontinuous territories, located in unproductive and marginal parts of the country” with “no control” over natural resources or access to “territorial waters”.
The description that appears to be a depiction of the occupied territories just now has been echoed by the UN Human Rights Rapporteur John Dugard, who is a South African legal professor and apartheid expert.
Dugard said “Israel’s laws and practices” in the Occupied Territories “certainly resemble aspects of apartheid”.
The analogy is also seen by British Labour MP Gerald Kaufman and former minister for international aid Clare Short who are pushing for sanctions against Tel Aviv.
The description of the situation in the occupied territories by Clare Short in the Commons back in June 26, 2007 is illuminating.
“I have followed developments in the Middle East carefully over many years, and I was well aware before my recent visit how bad things are for the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, I was deeply shocked by Israel’s blatant, brutal and systematic annexation of land, demolition of Palestinian homes, and deliberate creation of an apartheid system by which the Palestinians are enclosed in four Bantustans, surrounded by a wall, with massive checkpoints that control all Palestinian movements in and out of the ghettos,” she said.
A key difference, however, remains, that is apartheid rulers exploited blacks as cheap laborers while Zionists are ethnically cleansing Palestinians.
A South African newspaper editor, Mondli Makhanya, put it in a nutshell after a 2008 trip to the Middle East.
“It seems to me that the Israelis would like the Palestinians to disappear. There was never anything like that in our case. The whites did not want the blacks to disappear,” he said.
Jabari family once again facing harassment from settlers and soldiers
International Solidarity Movement | July 22, 2013
Hebron, Occupied Palestine – On Saturday the 20th, whilst taking his sheep out to graze on his land, 56 year old Abd Al-Karim Ibrahim Al-Jabari was stopped and harassed by settlers and soldiers before being taken for questioning to the police station in Givat Ha’avot, an illegal settlement in occupied Hebron.
Abd Al-Karim’s land is located between the two illegal settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Ha’avot. When he took his sheep out to graze on his land yesterday morning, he was stopped by settler security guards from the nearby settlement of Givat Ha’avot who subsequently called the Israeli occupation forces. He spent several minutes discussing with the soldiers, who refused to believe that he is the owner of the land and insisted it was Jewish land, as the settlers had told them. A soldier said to Abd Al-Karim: “This land and this house is mine and I will get you out of it”. The soldiers then decided to take him to Givat Ha’avot police station for further questioning. Abd Al-Karim, who speaks Hebrew, heard the soldiers say to each other that they wanted to handcuff him and then push him out of the jeep whilst driving. However, he managed to calmly insist and persuade them that there was no need for him to be handcuffed or blindfolded.
When they arrived at Givat Ha’avot police station, a police officer who knows Abd Al-Karim and his situation scolded the soldiers for bringing him there, confirmed that he owns the land, and told the soldiers to take him home again, which they did. Abd Al-Karim explained that the soldiers who arrested him are Shabbat reinforcements from another brigade that is not normally stationed in Hebron and therefore do not know the Jabari family and their situation.
After Abd Al-Karim was arrested, his son continued discussing with Israeli soldiers and asked them to stay to protect them from settlers, who were gathering in a tent set up on the Jabari family’s land which serves as a synagogue. However the soldiers refused to stay and said they would only come back after a one-hour coffee break. They also prevented international activists from filming the scene. Two hours later, the soldiers still hadn’t returned, leaving the Jabari family vulnerable to settler attacks. Abd Al-Karim explained that this has happened many times before.
The Jabari family used to live where Givat Ha’avot settlement now is, and they owned two more houses that were demolished. They have been living in their current house for 16 years.
The Jabari family has suffered countless attacks by both settlers and soldiers over many years. The settlers regularly come to harass and attack the Jabari family when they are out on their land grazing sheep or tending to their trees. They also steal vegetables from their land before the Jabari family can harvest them. In the past, settlers have often thrown rubbish, stones and empty alcohol bottles into their garden. Abd Al-Karim says he has recorded about 1,500 incidents since 2001. Everyone in his family has been arrested at some point or other. They have filed countless complaints at the police station, which has only led to further aggression and arrests by the Israeli military, who are seemingly trying to crush their spirit of resistance and defiance. Abd Al-Karim believes that his family is more vulnerable to settler attacks than their neighbours because they refuse to back down and insist on continuing to enter and use their land.
A few years ago, a couple of thousand settlers entered the Jabari family’s property and prayed outside their house. The settlers have said many times that they intend to take over the Jabari’s house and land.
Once, settlers were throwing stones at one of Abd Al-Karim’s sons. Soldiers came and twisted his arms behind his back and told the settlers to continue throwing stones at him. He was hit in the face by a stone and badly injured.
Two years ago, during Ramadan, soldiers would come to several houses in the neighbourhood just a couple of minutes before the call to prayer for iftaar (breaking the fast). They would force the whole family to move into one room and lock them inside, with all the food prepared and ready outside. The Jabari family’s neighbours were locked inside a room for 24 hours without food or water and were only released for iftaar the next day, meaning they had to fast for 48 hours. They were at the mercy of the soldiers to let them out to use the toilet.
When the soldiers attempted to do this to the Jabari family one day, Abd Al-Karim argued with them and refused to move into a room. The soldiers nevertheless entered their house and watched them break their fast. They then demanded to be shown around the house, but again Abd Al-Karim refused and insisted on calmly drinking his coffee and smoking a cigarette. He told them to go look around the house on their own, but refused to have his break ruined. The soldiers checked the house and left after an hour. Abd Al-Karim says he is proud that he refused to be locked into a room like his neighbours and that the soldiers could not force him.
As the Jabari family was sitting with ISM volunteers telling their story, a settler entered their garden. Abd Al-Karim and his son reassured the worried internationals and explained that this settler was an old friend and came to visit them regularly. They offered him coffee and cigarettes, and told stories of how they already used to play together as children. “We’re not against Jews or Israelis living here. All we ask of God is to live in peace with our children.”
Related articles
- Settlers building illegal road on Palestinian land in Hebron (palsolidarity.org)
- Palestinian activist detained in Israeli raid (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Settlers from Bracha attack and harass farmer on his land (alethonews.wordpress.com)
NSA docs prove Germany complicit in spying program: Report
Press TV – July 22, 2013
A report has revealed that German intelligence services themselves used one of US National Security Agency’s most valuable spying programs.
The new information was published by German weekly Spiegel on Sunday and was based on secret documents from the US intelligence service.
This report comes as another blow to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her ministers, who all claim that they first learned about the NSA spying programs from press reports.
The documents show that Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, and its domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), both used an NSA surveillance program called XKeyScore.
The obtained documents also revealed that the XKeyScore program collected the major part of the up to 500 million phone calls and data activities monitored monthly by the NSA.
The XKeyScore program is able to reveal retroactively any terms the target person has typed into a search engine through collected metadata, i.e. information about which data connections were made and when, according to an internal NSA presentation from 2008.
The system is also capable of receiving a “full take” of all unfiltered data over a period of several days, including contents of communications.
Furthermore, the secret documents show that the BND head, Gerhard Schindler, had an “eagerness and desire” for Germany’s intelligence agencies to intensify cooperation with the NSA.
“The BND has been working to influence the German government to relax interpretation of the privacy laws to provide greater opportunities of intelligence sharing,” the NSA stated in January.
Elsewhere in the document, the NSA said that in Afghanistan the BND had proved to be the agency’s “most prolific partner” when it came to information gathering.
Moreover, the documents show that a 12-member high-level BND delegation was invited to the NSA at the end of April to meet with various experts on “data acquisition”, just a few weeks before first revelations by the NSA surveillance programs by Edward Snowden were published.
In June, Snowden, an American former technical contractor for the NSA and a former employee of the CIA, leaked documents showing the US spied on the European Union and monitored up to a half-billion German telephone calls and internet activities each month.
Related article
The ginned-up Syrian death toll
left i on the news | July 21, 2013
Today the U.N. claims that “5000 people a month” are dying in Syria. As I have before, I have to demonstrate why I find this claim utterly non-credible. 5000/month would be 167 every single day. Now we don’t know what the standard deviation might be, but we have to assume it would be reasonably large, which would mean that some days would be much lower, while on other days, we could easily expect 300 or more to be killed in a single day, if the 5000/month were to be believable.
So let’s look at a report from today, when major battles are being reported. Looking through the article, we find (claims of) six mediators shot in Homs, eight Nusra front militants killed by Kurds, nine people killed at a checkpoint, and “several” regime fighters killed. All in all fewer than 30 were reported killed on a day when major battles are being fought. Is it remotely credible that an average of 167 are being killed every single day? Just yesterday we read about 40 people being killed in a single bombing in Iraq; when is the last time we read about an event in Syria which killed even that many people? And when was the last time we read about a day when more than 200 people died in Syria in just a single day? For my part, the answer would be: never.
I don’t know what the statistics are, and I’ll also state clearly that they make no difference whatsoever to my stand, which is: Hands off Syria! No U.S. intervention in Syria. However, because these numbers are being used (and, in my opinion, “ginned up”) to justify ever-increasing intervention in Syria, it is important to understand them, and rebut them, if they are false. Which, in my opinion, is without question.
Related articles
- Kurdish leader says Syria Kurds not after forming own government (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Syrian Kurds to declare autonomy from Damascus (timesofisrael.com)
Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War
Part one, section one of an investigative report by Cory Morningstar | Wrong Kind of Green | September 10, 2012
“I wish you a refreshing bath of conscience, I wish that you may be able to try out looking at others eye to eye, I wish that the spring of truth makes life more humane for you.” – Excerpt from the profound message to Avaaz by poet Gabriel Impaglione of Argentina
The Art of Social Engineering | The Art of Social Genocide
Image: U.S. President Barack Obama with Avaaz co-founder and former U.S. Representative Tom Perriello.
The Ivy League bourgeoisie who sit at the helm of the non-profit industrial complex will one day be known simply as charismatic architects of death. Funded by the ruling class oligarchy, the role they serve for their funders is not unlike that of corporate media. Yet, it appears that global society is paralyzed in a collective hypnosis – rejecting universal social interests, thus rejecting reason, to instead fall in line with the position of the powerful minority that has seized control, a minority that systematically favours corporate interests.
This investigative report examines the key founders of Avaaz, as well as other key sister organizations affiliated with Avaaz who, hand in hand with the Rockefellers, George Soros, Bill Gates and other powerful elites, are meticulously shaping global society by utilizing and building upon strategic psychological marketing, soft power, technology and social media – shaping public consensus, thus acceptance, for the illusory “green economy” and a novel sonata of 21st century colonialism. As we are now living in a world that is beyond dangerous, society must be aware of, be able to critically analyze, and ultimately reject the new onslaught of carefully orchestrated depoliticization, domestication of populace, propaganda and misinformation that is being perpetrated and perpetuated by the corporate elite and the current power structures that support their agenda. The non-profit industrial complex must be understood as a mainspring and the instrument of power, the very support and foundation of imperial domination.
Within part I of this investigative report:
- The Simulacrum
- Modus Operandi: The 21st Century NGO
- 2004: The Soft Power Imperative | 2011: Mission Accomplished
- Introduction: The Non-profit Industrial Complex: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War
- Historical Amnesia
- Corporate “Green” Pedophilia
- The Commerce of Trust
- The Cat is Out of the Bag
- New York City Occupy Wall Street Embraces Otpor and Bombing for Peace
- The WikiLeaks Connection
- Unidentified “Freedom of Speech”
- 15M – Europe’s Occupy Movement
- The Commerce of Exploitation: Change.org
- Indoctrinated Subservience & Whitism
- Avaaz’s Founder and MoveOn.org Announce the U.S. “Spring”
Part II:
- Bread and Circuses
- Avaaz: The Emperor of the NGO Network
- Did Libya’s Citizens Demand Foreign Intervention?
- The Avaaz Gate-Keepers
- Avaaz Co-Founder and Executive Director: Ricken Patel
- Avaaz Co-founder: Tom Perriello
- Indoctrination of the Youth is Essential
- The Humanitarian Industrial Complex: The Ivory Towers Within the Dark Triad
- The Empire
- Avaaz Co-founder: Tom Pravda
- Avaaz Co-founder: David Madden
- Avaaz Co-founder: Eli Pariser
- Avaaz Co-founder: Jeremy Heimans
Part III:
- Behavioural Change
- May 2010: Avaaz’s Co-Founders Seek a Purpose-Driven Consumer Life | Behavioral Economics
- The Behavioral Economics of Hatred
- Purpose
- Res Publica
- Avaaz Founding Board Member: Ben Brandzel
- Purpose: James Slezak
- MoveOn.org
- GetUp
- The 21st Century Social Movements
- The Non-Profit Industrial Complex Finally Finds “Success”
- Avaaz Co-founder: Andrea Woodhouse
- Avaaz Co-founder: Paul Hilder
- The Avaaz “Core Campaign Team Members”
The Simulacrum
“As regards the ‘foundations’ created for unlimited general purposes and endowed with enormous resources, their unlimited possibilities are so grave a menace, not only as regards to their own activities and influence but also the numbing effect which they have on private citizens and public bodies, that if they could be clearly differentiated from other forms of voluntary altruistic effort, it would be desirable to recommend their abolition.” – Senator Frank Walsh, 1915
In his Sophist, Plato speaks of two kinds of image-making. The first is a faithful reproduction, a precise copy of the original. The second is distorted intentionally in order to make the copy appear correct to viewers. Plato gives the example of Greek statuary, which was crafted larger on top than on bottom so that viewers from the ground would see it correctly, whereas if they could view it in scale, they would realize it was malformed.
This latter representation serves as a visual art metaphor for the non-profit industrial complex. A semblance of entities, united in an ideology encompassing truth, justice and ethics – which is false. This is the simulacrum, distorted in such a way that it appears accurate unless viewed from the proper angle. This report aims to allow you, the reader, to view the matrix from such an angle. By denying the reliable input of our senses while accepting the non-profit industrial complex’s manipulative constructs of language and “reason,” global society has arrived at a grossly distorted copy of ethics and intrinsic worth – a warped simulacrum of thespian complexity, a vast work of superficial depth.
Modus Operandi: The 21st Century NGO
“What a cluster-fuck of disinformation this world has become. The sinister forces of greed and avarice are, through consolidation of wealth and power, more powerful than ever. Humankind has a huge uphill battle to wage.” — Comment at How Avaaz is Sponsoring Fake War Propaganda from Syria
The 21st century NGO is becoming, more and more, a key tool serving the imperialist quest of absolute global dominance and exploitation. Global society has been, and continues to be, manipulated to believe that NGOs are representative of “civil society” (a concept promoted by corporations in the first place). This misplaced trust has allowed the “humanitarian industrial complex” to ascend to the highest position: the missionaries of deity – the deity of the empire.
Modus operandi (plural modi operandi) is a Latin phrase, approximately translated and backronymed as “mode of operation.” The term is used to describe someone’s habits or manner of working, their method of operating or functioning. In English, it is frequently shortened to M.O.
The expression is often used in police work when discussing a crime and addressing the methods employed by the perpetrators. It is also used in criminal profiling, where it can help in finding clues to the offender’s psychology. It largely consists of examining the actions used by the individual(s) to execute the crime, prevent its detection and/or facilitate escape. [Source: Wikipedia]
2004: The Soft Power Imperative | 2011: Mission Accomplished
“Existing soft power initiatives and agencies, particularly those engaged in development and strategic communications, must be reinvigorated through increased funding, human resources and prioritization. Concurrently, the U.S. government must establish goals, objectives and metrics for soft power initiatives. Furthermore, the U.S. government can better maximize the effectiveness of soft power instruments and efforts through increased partnerships with NGOs. By providing humanitarian and development assistance in areas typically inaccessible to government agencies, NGOs are often able to access potential extremist areas before the government can establish or strengthen diplomatic, developmental or military presence, including intelligence.” — Joseph S. Nye, former US assistant secretary of defense, June 2004
The non-profit industrial complex represents a rich portfolio of soft power tools readily available to the ruling elite. Today we witness the near complete metamorphosis of the complex having successfully morphed into the absolute idyllic clearinghouse for the collective and coordinated imperialist agenda shared by a broad spectrum of government institutions, dominated by the financial industrial complex, corporate power and hegemonic rule – all under the guise of a global conscience reflective of “civil society” via self-appointed NGOs.
Joseph S. Nye (quoted above) is a former US assistant secretary of defense, former chairman of the US National Intelligence Council and professor at Harvard University. A world renowned scholar of international relations, Nye co-founded the liberal institutionalist approach to international relations, theorizing that states and other international powers possess more or less “soft power” (a term first coined in the 1980s). In a 2004 article titled The Rising Power of NGO’s, Nye peddled his soft-power theory as the quintessential element that must be employed in order to protect the American public from “terrorists.” Of course, Nye neglected to include the fact that the true “terrorists” are those who hold power within our very own EuroAmerican governments/establishments, waging violence upon sovereign, resource-rich states. It’s an easy sell as it enables one to conveniently deny their assent to (our own) state-sponsored terrorism and continued collective and voluntary servitude as well-behaved, rapturous consumers under the influence of American (non) culture.
If a state can present its power as legitimate in the eyes of others, it will encounter far less resistance to its foreign policies and agendas. Further, if the Western states’ (non) culture and (illusory) ideology are desirable, other states will more willingly acquiesce. This is an area where the NGOs excel. They do so by never referring to their own “leaders” as dictators or fascists, yet more than willing to apply these derogatory terms to leaders targeted for regime change. Simultaneously, while reporting on human rights abuses or environmental violations in states exploited by industrialized capitalism, the NGOs neglect to comment on their own states’ escalating assault on “democracy.” Most important, the non-profit industrial complex certainly does not address the fact that industrialized and globalized capitalism (imposed by hegemonic rule) is the crux of most all suffering and ongoing crisis in the very states they criticize and deem culpable. A continuous subtle undertone of support/belief in their own states’ democracy is achieved simply by never opening a dialogue on the legitimacy of power structures within their own (imperialist) states.
In essence, soft power is “the universalism of a country’s culture and its ability to establish a set of favourable rules and institutions that govern areas of international activity [that] are critical sources of power” or, more simply, the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce and rather than using force or money as a means of persuasion. This is where states such as Bolivia (and Libya until its recent annihilation) are very real threats to the American superpower. States such as Bolivia and Libya (past-tense) serve the people to advance themselves to a more enlightened, more democratic existence in a very real sense, while democracy and freedoms in the Americas mean little more than “freedom to shop” and buy as much sweatshop junk as one can(not) afford. If corporate-owned/controlled media and corporate-funded/controlled educational institutes actually educated the American public on intellectual enlightenment and progressive advances in other countries – Americans would truly wonder what the fuck was going on. Rather, we are kept in the dark; doped up by big pharma and stupefied by Big Brother, all while such states and leaders are continually vilified and demonized in the media (both corporate and foundation-funded “progressive”), all while NGOs remain silent on their own accelerating fascist governments. American “exceptionalism” is, undoubtedly, the biggest lie ever told sold.
Introducing the Non-Profit Industrial Complex: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War
Packaging – Uncle Sam is the best in packaging and selling illusions.
“I am convinced that some NGOs, especially those funded by the U.S.AID, are the fifth column of espionage in Bolivia, not only in Bolivia, but also in all of Latin America.” — Evo Morales, February 2012
In 2001, it was George W. Bush who propelled an illegal invasion of Iraq by way of relentless pounding of repetitive messaging of discovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq coupled with incessant images of the Twin Towers being destroyed. This psyop (or psychological operation, a new form or warfare) reverberated throughout a mainstream media that obediently fed the lies to the masses. The role of the media was absolutely essential. Yet, in spite of Bush calling for the invasion of Iraq, citizens of the globe, in united cohesion, held the largest mass protests and peace vigils the world had ever witnessed.
Today, however, the push to invade under the guise of humanitarianism is no longer a message from predominantly imperialist governments alone. Rather, there is a new game in town. Flash forward one decade to 2011 and the push for war no longer comes from the lone vacuity of despised war criminals such as George Bush or his charismatic alter-ego, Barack Obama. Rather, the message is now being spoon-fed to global society via the “trusted” NGOs, with Avaaz, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch at the forefront, as documented prior to and during the attack on and subsequent occupation of Libya, and more recently, the destabilization of Syria. [One of many reports of such malfeasance include “HUMAN RIGHTS” WARRIORS FOR EMPIRE | Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch“, by Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report.]
“While much was made of the United Nations decision to establish a Human Rights Council in 2006, those who’ve witnessed the evolution of this institution are well aware that the UN was designed by (and functions to serve) the interests of modern states and their supplicants, not the Indigenous nations they rule. For those attached to charitable organizations like Human Rights Watch and other pashas of the piety industry, this is a bitter pill to swallow.” — Jay Taber, Obstacles to Peace, 13 July 2012
“The UN Human Rights Council stands as one of the significant obstacles to dynamic political development in the Fourth World. Many individuals and the peoples they represent in the Fourth World have come to believe that the UN Human Rights Council will relieve their pain from the violence of colonialism. It cannot, and it will not.” — Dr. Rudolph Ryser, Chair of the Center for World Indigenous Studies
A decade later, thanks to the non-profit industrial complex awash in an influx of money that flows like the river Nile, partnered with the corporate media complex, it is now “the people” – having been swayed by fabrications, omissions and lies – who lead the demand for invasion of these sovereign states. And, most ironic, it is not the so-called “right” at the vanguard; rather, it is the “progressive left.”
Historical Amnesia
“False reality” requires historical amnesia, lying by omission and the transfer of significance to the insignificant. In this way, political systems promising security and social justice have been replaced by piracy, “austerity” and “perpetual war”: an extremism dedicated to the overthrow of democracy. Applied to an individual, this would identify a psychopath. Why do we accept it? — John Pilger, award–winning journalist, in History is the Enemy as “Brilliant” Psy-ops Become the News, 21 June 2012
Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, David Hilliard, Fred Hampton, and Erica Huggins – forgotten heroes indeed. The Black Panthers, who emerged on the scene in 1966, drew much inspiration from the ideologies of Malcolm X. Rejecting pacifism and reformism, under the leadership of Fred Hampton, the Panthers recognized the necessity of militant action and self-defense (“by any means necessary”) against racists and the state. The Panthers were effective in organizing the struggle towards a true revolutionary faction, with the state full-well recognizing the very real potential the Panthers held to gain mass support for their revolutionary movement. The state was terrified at this very real threat. It must be noted that during this same time period, white youth were demonstrating against the Vietnam war while 45% of Blacks fighting in Vietnam proclaimed they would be prepared to take up arms within their own state to secure justice for the American people. Considering that in 1960 almost half of America’s population was under 18 years of age, the ample surplus of youth made the threat of a widespread revolt against the status quo a very real possibility. By 1967, the rise in militancy and “Black Power” drew a very tactical response from very anxious foundations. Rockefeller and Ford created the National Urban Coalition (NUC) with the intent of transforming “Black Power” into “Black capitalism.” This was the vehicle designed/created to crush the building momentum that was confronting/challenging the prevailing system of economic control and oppression. By 1970, as Black capitalism took hold, foundations were funneling over $15 million into “moderate” Black organizations in order to effectively deflect the Black Power movement into non-threatening channels. With Black Power successfully transitioning itself into Black capitalism, American corporations utilized the opportunity to cast themselves in a liberal, progressive light by financing Black Power conferences.
The evidence that the Panthers’ revolutionary movement was a very real threat to the American state is indisputable: the FBI (under J. Edgar Hoover) declared the Panthers the number one threat to the internal security of the US. The state tried to eradicate the Panthers “by any means necessary,” gunning down scores of Panthers in the street.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was also closely affiliated with the Rockefellers via the 1957 founded Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), which received money from the church and the Rockefellers. Although quite radical, elites considered SCLC moderate and “workable” because of its stance on nonviolence (which protects the state), alongside goals of integration rather than revolution. However, by the late 1960′s, Martin Luther King, Jr. had embraced militancy and radical positions espoused by both the Panthers and Malcolm X. As Martin Luther King, Jr.’s refusal to compromise increased, the foundation funding decreased. A respected man of such stature, speaking out, thus educating a vast public of the oppression caused by the capitalist system/racism, was indeed (and remains so today) a great threat to the powers that dominate. Thus, King was assassinated. Today, in united cohesion, the states work ardently with “progressive” (foundation-funded) media and the non-profit industrial complex, in ensuring that the King legacy is continually and relentlessly sanitized, watered down and co-opted to serve the elitist agenda. The pacifist doctrine, fondly funded by hegemonic rule, is continuously pumped through and circulated throughout the gentrified “movement” like fluoride in the city water – a neutral benevolence of slow poison we drink in voluntary servitude. [June 27, 2012: Black On The Old Plantation | Civil Rights Organizations Enslave Themselves to Corporate Funding]
“We do not fight racism with racism. We fight racism with solidarity. We do not fight exploitative capitalism with black capitalism. We fight capitalism with basic socialism. We fight imperialism with proletarian internationalism.” — Bobby Seale, a founder of the Black Panthers
While Huey P. Newton advocated armed struggle, his ideology did not mean that the end product would be a world in which violence reigns. Rather, Newton believed that the oppressed must use guns as the means to a peaceful end of the oppression. He quoted Mao Tse-tung: “We are advocates of the abolition of war, we don’t not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.” Within the Panther Party, the gun was not upheld as a means of violence, rather, it was a symbol for empowerment and self-determination. [Huey P. Newton :: Philosophy :: Armed Self-Defense]
In October of 1969, hundreds of youth clad in football helmets marched through an elite shopping district of Chicago. Utilizing lead pipes, they shattered shop windows and demolished parked cars. This was the first demonstration known as the “Days of Rage” – organized by a group who called themselves the Weather Underground. Outraged by the war on Vietnam and the rampant racism in America, the Weather Underground waged a strategic low-level war against the state that continued throughout much of the seventies. The Underground had the state on the run. Members of the Underground bombed state property including the Capitol building (never incurring a single casualty) and even broke Timothy Leary out of prison all while successfully evading one of the largest FBI manhunts ever conducted in US history.
Weather Underground Bombs the Capitol, Pentagon, and State Department (Running time 10:00)
Today, most all the past revolutionary leaders of the Weather Underground, now conformed, apologize for their “tactics,” having been isolated and framed as “violent” by the co-opted left and status quo. [http://youtu.be/S6kPGh0w_-c]
It was during this time of true revolutionary uprising that money and “opportunities” began to siphon into the movements. The art of co-optation had begun with the only weapon (palatable to the public) the oligarchy possessed – money. This money would serve to indulge, thus co-opt, inflated egos scouted from within the left. Co-opting was an absolute necessity for the state to protect the dominant power structures from true systemic change that would effectively transfer power to the people. Examples of revolutionary movements in history, as evidenced in The Weather Underground, the Panthers and others, demonstrate unequivocally that the left became more jingoistic for war only after an influx of money began pouring in from the state and plutocrats via their foundations, which were in many cases set up for this very purpose.
A case in point: Roy Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality/CORE (who advocated “Black control of Black communities” in order to allow for the manifestation of “Black capitalism”) was named a Ford Foundation fellow and became a board member of the Rockefeller/Ford-created NUC/National Urban Coalition. Ford granted CORE Cleveland $175,000 in 1967 to help elect Carl Stokes, who was very much pro Black-capitalism.
Lesser known are the events led by CIA operant Gloria Steinem. The “Black Feminist” movement was created, funded and manipulated by the CIA from the very beginning with Steinem leading the charge. Steinem planted faux “Black feminists” in revolutionary Black Power movements/grassroots organizations in order to instill division and hatred and, ultimately, to dismantle the growing movement. Steinem’s “success” would assist the state’s crushing of the Black Power movement itself. [Read: BLACK FEMINISM, THE CIA AND GLORIA STEINEM]
Throughout the world, there are organizations identifying themselves as the Black Panthers and other true revolutionary movements in existence. However, blinded by the shiny veneer of the big NGOs, few people are aware that such revolutionary movements even exist today. It is the job of the non-profit industrial complex, while waving the pacifist bible in one hand, to deliberately ensure that these groups are not only marginalized, but ignored altogether. Such movements, which have to potential to disrupt (or even dismantle) the power structures that enslave us, must remain invisible or framed in a negative light – if co-opting them is not possible, that is.
And that is something that the Western culture has perfected: co-optation. Forrest Palmer writes: “I am writing a blog post called ‘Malcolm X on a postage stamp.’ It is exactly what you see here [http://www.movements.org/pages/team]. If you know that something is happening at the grassroots and you can’t stop it, the West accepts it, places their handpicked leaders in the forefront who appease the masses into thinking what they are doing is still ‘revolutionary,’ negotiate with the ‘leaders’ ensuring they acquiesce to the state, compromise and either end up with things status quo or so watered down that the compromise doesn’t help the masses at all, but instead helps the state. The best example of a singular event of this: The March on Washington. It went from a black mass rebellion to a benign walk in the park masquerading as a movement. They had all their speeches proofread by the state, including King’s ‘great’ I Have a Dream speech. If the speeches weren’t what the state wanted, they either changed them (John Lewis) or weren’t allowed to speak (James Baldwin).”
“Malcolm predicted that if the civil rights bill wasn’t passed, there would be a march on Washington in 1964. Unlike the 1963 March on Washington, which was peaceful and integrated, the 1964 march Malcolm described would be an all-Black ‘non-violent army’ with one-way tickets.” [Wikipedia, speaking of Malcolm X and his speech The Ballot or the Bullet.]
And so it goes. Malcolm X was assassinated on 21 February 1965. And while our brothers and sisters in Africa, the Middle East and the Global South continue to be grossly exploited or altogether annihilated by the imperialist forces, the movement is ever-so acquiescent. Five hundred dollars a day for lodging at the Rio+20 Summit has never been so easy for those within the champagne circuit. And with a Democratic administration and a Black American president in the White House, the modern civil rights movement and dominant left organizations have never found it so easy to remain silent, with little to no criticism from civil society who, self-appointed, they falsely claim to represent.
“While in the US those puppets have traditionally taken on the form of talking heads on corporate and public television, they are increasingly represented in the form of NGO PR puppets employed in the moral theatrics industry…. As the credibility of politicians and pundits plummets, it is these PR puppets that are increasingly responsible for bolstering public support for militarism in general and militarized humanitarian intervention in particular.” — Jay Taber, Intercontinental Cry; Pious Poseurs, 24 June 2012
Although now seemingly normalized, one must consider it slightly ironic that it is in fact no longer the dominant “progressive left” beating the drums against war. [Exceptions include legitimate grassroots groups such as Peacelink in Italy.] Rather, as in the case of climate change, it is primarily the countries seeking to free themselves from the chains of imperialist enslavement that vocally oppose the escalating destabilization campaigns, inclusive of the most recent, in Syria. On 16 February 2012, the 12 sovereign states who voted against the resolution to condemn Syria at the United Nations included North Korea, China, Russia, Iran and Syria, along with states who primarily compose ALBA; Bolivia, Belarus, Cuba, Ecuador, Venezuela and Nicaragua. And it is not coincidence that most all the leaders of all these same states, who continue the struggle for autonomy, are all similarly vilified and demonized by the corporate-media complex, joined recently by the non-profit industrial complex. It is critical to note that the imperialist powers (inclusive of the UN) do not criticize or demonize or withdraw their support from such leaders on any ethical or moral ground. Denunciation of state leaders and emotive language is merely theatre. Rather, the imperialist states strategically set out to destroy any state leader that is unwilling to be controlled by US interests and foreign policy. A case in point is unwavering support of the Saudi royal family responsible for atrocious human rights violations to which the imperialist countries turn a blind eye.
Demonization is a key psyop, directly sponsored by the US Pentagon and intelligence apparatus to influence and sway public opinion and build consensus in favour of invasion. [Prof. Michel Chossudovsky] A recent example can be extracted from the failed 2011 destabilization campaign against the Morales government in Bolivia led by US-funded NGOs including the “Democracy Centre,” which declared: “But the abuses dealt out by the government against the people of the TIPNIS have knocked ‘Evo the icon’ off his pedestal in a way from which he will never fully recover, in Bolivia and globally.” [Further reading: U.S. Funded Democracy Centre Reveals Its Real Reason for Supporting the TIPNIS Protest in Bolivia: REDD $$$. ¿Por qué se defiende el tipnis?, http://youtu.be/RPiw3cDotHA]
A similar situation (developing nations, rather than the “environmental movement,” taking the lead) has taken place on the issue of climate change. ALBA nations, with Bolivia at the forefront, led while the non-profit industrial complex purposely and grossly undermined the strong positions necessary to mitigate the climate emergency. The climate justice movement was acquiescent and thus kowtowed to the “big greens”; “big greens” such as Avaaz, 350.org and Greenpeace who had partnered with HSBC, Lloyds Bank, nuclear giant EDF, Virgin Group, Shell (via TckTckTck partner, the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change) and other corporate giants constituting the “TckTckTck campaign” whereby “the objective was to make it become a movement that consumers, advertisers and the media would use and exploit” (Havas Press Release). There was no justice to be found, only a cohesive hypocrisy amongst the professional left that flourished like a cancer.
Next: Part one, section II.
Avaaz Investigative Report Series [Links]|Further Reading: Part I | Section I | Part I | Section II | Part I | Section III | Part II | Section I | Part II | Section II
Kurdish leader says Syria Kurds not after forming own government
Press TV – July 21, 2013
A senior Syrian Kurdish leader has rejected earlier reports that Kurds are planning to establish an independent Kurdish government in northern Syria.
China’s Xinhua news agency on Sunday quoted Salih Muslim, the leader of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), as saying, “There is no intention among the Kurds to form their own government, nor to secede from Syria.”
On Saturday, Qatar-based al-Jazeera news network quoted Muslim as saying that Syria’s Kurds were planning to create a “temporary autonomous government to administer their regions in the north.”
The Syrian government has granted the Kurds a certain level of autonomy since 2012 and they are now controlling security of the region.
In recent months, Kurdish fighters, who are opposed to foreign interference in Syria, have been battling foreign-backed militants in the north.
This comes as clashes continued between PYD-linked Kurdish militants and foreign-backed Takfiri militants around several villages in northeastern Syria near the border with Turkey on Saturday.
The Kurdish militants took control of a checkpoint and also seized light weapons, ammunition, a vehicle mounted with a heavy machinegun, and a mortar launcher.
On July 17, the Kurdish fighters took control of the town of Ras al-Ain in the border province of Hasakah, forcing out the al-Qaeda-linked militants.
Foreign-sponsored militancy has taken its toll on the lives of many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, since March 2011.
Western powers and their regional allies including the Israeli regime, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are supporting anti-Syria militant groups, including al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.
New Israeli settlement in occupied Jerusalem given go-ahead
MEMO | July 20, 2013
Israel’s Planning and Construction Committee has issued licenses for 165 settlement units in Nafea Yacob Settlement in occupied Jerusalem.
In a press release, researcher in settlement issues Ahmed Soblaban said that the new project is part of a bigger plan to connect Nafea Yacob and Bezgat Zeaf Settlements. The particular danger of this project, warned Soblaban, is that it separates North Jerusalem from its occupied West Bank hinterland.
The project was originally proposed and approved in 2008, when the green area between both settlements was turned into an area ready for building. According to Soblaban, this project reinforces Israel’s racism against Palestinian residents in Jerusalem, who are prevented from building to cater for their population increase. Although Palestinians are usually not given building permits, they are in any case forbidden from building anything more than four stories high. Jewish settlers can build as high as they want.
Soblaban pointed out that the Israeli authorities have also started the ground works for another new settlement near Bezgat Zeaf.
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Does Kevin Barrett Seek to “Absolve Islam of a Terrible Crime”?
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Last part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 28, 2016
Amidst his litany of condemnations, Jonathan Kay reserves some of his most vicious and vitriolic attacks for Kevin Barrett. For instance Kay harshly criticizes Dr. Barrett’s published E-Mail exchange in 2008 with Prof. Chomsky. In that exchange Barrett castigates Chomsky for not going to the roots of the event that “doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution.” The original misrepresentations of 9/11, argues Barrett, led to further “false flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide.”
In Among The Truthers Kay tries to defend Chomsky against Barrett’s alleged “personal obsession” with “vilifying” the MIT academic. Kay objects particularly to Barrett’s “final salvo” in the published exchange where the Wisconsin public intellectual accuses Prof. Chomsky of having “done more to keep the 9/11 blood libel alive, and cause the murder of more than a million Muslims than any other single person.” … continue
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