US Special Operations forces rescue captured Private Jessica Lynch from Saddam Hussein Hospital hospital near Nasiriyah (see March 23, 2003). According to the Pentagon, the rescue is a classic Special Forces raid, with US commandos in Black Hawk helicopters blasting their way through Iraqi resistance in and out of the medical compound. [Baltimore Sun, 11/11/2003] The Associated Press’s initial report is quite guarded, saying only that Lynch had been rescued. An Army spokesman “did not know whether Lynch had been wounded or when she might return to the United States.” [Project for Excellence in Journalism, 6/23/2003]
‘Shooting Going In … Shooting Going Out’ – Subsequent accounts are far more detailed (see April 3, 2003). Military officials say that the rescue was mounted after securing intelligence from CIA operatives. A Special Forces unit of Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and Air Force combat controllers “touched down in blacked-out conditions,” according to the Washington Post. Cover is provided by an AC-130 gunship circling overhead; a reconnaissance aircraft films the events of the rescue. One military official briefed on the operation says: “There was shooting going in, there was some shooting going out. It was not intensive. There was no shooting in the building, but it was hairy, because no one knew what to expect. When they got inside, I don’t think there was any resistance. It was fairly abandoned.” [Washington Post, 4/3/2003] CENTCOM spokesman General Vincent Brooks says he is not yet sure who Lynch’s captors were, but notes: “Clearly the regime had done this. It was regime forces that had been in there. Indications are they were paramilitaries, but we don’t know exactly who. They’d apparently moved most of them out before we arrived to get in, although, as I mentioned, there were buildings outside of the Saddam Hospital, where we received fire—or the assault force received fire—during the night.” [New York Times, 4/2/2003] ‘Prototype Torture Chamber’ – According to a military official, the Special Forces soldiers find what he calls a “prototype” Iraqi torture chamber in the hospital’s basement, equipped with batteries and metal prods. US Marines are patrolling Nasiriyah to engage whatever Iraqi forces may still be in the area. [Washington Post, 4/3/2003]
How many pro-Israelis have to support the Arab uprisings before people begin to suspect that Israel might be partial to a little “democratic change” in the region?
The latest pro-Israel advocate of democracy promotion in the Middle East to come to my attention is Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) senior fellow Steven A. Cook. Writing on his CFR blog on May 3 about the unrest in Syria, the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies urged President Obama to publicly back the opposition, increase sanctions, and call for President Assad’s departure. Despite the risk of “generalized instability” that would likely ensue from Assad’s fall, Cook opined that the “potential for isolating Iran … is worth the risk.”
Like many a policy “expert” willing to take risks with American interests, Cook has quite an impressive pro-Israel pedigree. In the late 1990s, he was a Soref Research Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the AIPAC-created think tank. In 2004, he authored “The Unspoken Power: Civil-Military Relations and the Prospects for Reform” for the Saban Center for Middle East Policy — named after Haim Saban, the Egyptian-born Israeli-American media mogul who admitted to the New York Times that Israel was the only issue that concerned him. In that paper, Cook advocated political liberalization and economic reform in the Middle East and the broader Islamic world, a theme which he pursued as director of the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on U.S. policy toward reform in the Arab world, and in his 2007 book, “Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey.” But when he isn’t busy promoting democratic reform in Israel’s neighbourhood, he reportedly “works overtime” to make sure the U.S. shares Israeli policy objectives.
And like the National Endowment for Democracy’s program officer for Middle East and North Africa, Amira Maaty, and former State Department official and CFR adjunct fellow Jared Cohen, (who “has written about how technology can empower citizens in repressive regimes”), Cook just happened to arrive in Cairo in time to witness the protests that could herald the reform he has long sought.
As many already know. All operations, psychological or otherwise have multiple purposes.
The Abbottabad op, offered the US an opportunity to end the Osama Bin Laden psy-op, because plainly speaking, that ship had sailed, hit a storm and sunk long, long ago.
An aside, hoping we all recall that Osama Bin Laden was never wanted for 9/11?
What other opportunity was presented by the Abbottabad raid?
From what I have been reading we are looking at two fresh opportunities.
First: The US is stating, flat out they will carry out raids such as this again.
We’re not talking drone flights. We are talking targeted raids. So, who or what is going to be targeted? I guess we shall find out soon enough. But here is the talk–
The US will again carry out special operations in Pakistan if required.
( Meaning: as the US see’s fit)
Press Secretary Jay Carney said the Obama Administration would continue with this policy if that country(Pakistan) does not act against terror suspects holed up in that country.
Q) Are you saying that the US reserves the right to, as the President said back in the campaign, if Pakistan will not act against terror suspects, to go and enter Pakistani territory and act against them?”.
A) “Yes. He made very clear during the campaign that that was his view. He was criticized for it. He maintained that that was his view, and by the actions he has taken as President, feels that it was the right approach and continues to feel that way,” the press secretary said.”
US President Barack Obama has consistently said that he would go ahead to target high profile terrorists, if he had actionable intelligence and the Pakistani Government was not willing to act.
In other words, the US will begin undertaking targeted raids within Pakistan, when ever they dam well feel like it! Using any excuse they want. This OBL psy-op set the precedent. Pakistan and it’s people had better watch out. … Full article
Imperial interventions in civil wars have a devastating effect on countries that last for decades and affect the entire economy and society. One indicator of the long-term consequences of imperial military intervention is the tremendous increase of violent crime, the multiplication of gangs, homicides and general insecurity in Central America.
Violence increased far beyond what existed prior to imperial wars in such countries as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. In the period prior to imperial intervention in Central America, during times of revolutionary ferment, high levels of social organization via inclusive social movements, channeled discontent into political and social channels. Revolutionary movements organized armed resistance against specifics targets; repressive police, military and death squad militias. Imperial intervention included military advisers and counter-insurgency strategies which uprooted peasants via scorched earth policies and destroyed communities. Assaults on urban barrios led to the break-up of family and neighborhood networks. The social bonds which integrate people into a moral and social community were ruptured: the goal of imperial planners is to decimate any independent popular civil-society organization as a political threat to its illegitimate collaborator regime.
In El Salvador, the US provided over $300 million a year in arms and training for almost a decade. The Pentagon through its advisory missions, in collaboration with local landlords and generals, financed and forcibly recruited thousands of peasants into death squad ‘civilian militias’ to assassinate local movement activists and terrorize farm workers’movements and trade union organizations. Under imperial military pressure the leaders of the major Central American guerrilla organizations signed on to a peace agreement. The “peace accords” retained the US collaborator regimes in power and the promised social reforms were never implemented. As a result, the homicide rate skyrocketed. The discharged guerrilla militants and unemployed right wing militia members, armed and trained, and with no future, became the bases for gangs, drug and people traffickers, kidnappers and extortionists. The number of people who were annually killed in violent crime (1991-2011) exceeded the number who died each year during the revolutionary struggle (1979-1990).
Having successfully blocked the prospects of positive socio-economic transformations in wealth, land ownership, the judicial system and allocation of public investments, the US pushed for neo-liberal ‘free trade agreements’ which further decimated small farmers and retail commerce. Mass outmigration and crime became the ‘roads out of poverty’ in the aftermath of imperial intervention. Violent crime became so pervasive that the business elites of the US and Central America were hesitant to invest and profit from the low wages and the unemployed who crowded the labor market. The cost of hiring private security armies to protect upscale neighborhoods, business operations, country clubs, and exclusive restaurant and leisure centers became prohibitive. Faced with the “unfavorable climate for business” created by the very same pro-business Pentagon intervention, after two decades of murder and mayhem, the World Bank intervened. The World Development Report (WDR) for 2010 (published in 2011) focuses on the theme of “conflict, security and development”. The Report proposed a series of measures to lessen what it calls “mass violence”. The Report was taken up and elaborated in the Financial Times (4/27/11 p. 9) by Martin Wolf in an article titled “Remove the scourge of conflict”. The Report and Wolf provide time series data between 1999-2009 showing the vertical growth of “criminal violence after civil wars”; time series data show that countries with high poverty rates based on the (percent of population with income below $1.25 per day) have experienced greater violence than those with low poverty rate; time series data show that greater ‘violence’ reduced real GDP growth.
Both the WB Report and the Financial Times fail to identify the true nature of the ‘violent conflict’, the principle source of violence and the foreign and domestic elite economic policies which deepen and prolong ‘violence’.
In the case of Central America, particularly El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras, the WB and Financial Times resort to vacuous generalization to avoid discussing the massive military role of US imperialism in promoting large scale, long term violence in the countries. Instead the FT strikes a phony philosophical note “man is a violent animal” (Alas). In fact imperialist rulers are violent animals; especially with regard to poor countries attempting to free themselves of US backed oligarchies. To their discredit the WB and FT obfuscate the data by claiming that the deaths were a product of “civil wars”.
Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s the US and Israel provided arms, advisers, technical capacity to the murderous Guatemalan regime which slaughtered over 300,000; mostly Indians and wiped off the map over 420 villages. During the US decade long proxy war against the progressive Sandinista revolutionary movement via the Somoza dictatorship (1969-78) and the decade long Contra terror war against the Sandinista government (1979-89), over 50,000 people were killed, hundreds of thousands maimed and displaced and productive farms, factories, infrastructure, clinics and schools and co-operatives were targeted by US counter-insurgency advisers.
As mentioned earlier, El Salvador’s social movements and their supporters throughout civil society were targeted by US backed military and paramilitary groups forcing hundreds of thousands to flee to urban squatter settlements or across borders and overseas. Similar outcomes occurred during the US counter-insurgency campaign in Honduras and invasions of Grenada and Panama in the 1980’s.
Imperial backed invasions, counter-insurgency campaigns and the subsequent imposition of corrupt oligarchs led to the total disarticulation of local social networks and the bankruptcy of small scale farms because of the importation of subsidized US foodstuffs. These led to the presence of a deadly combination: thousands of automatic rifles, tens of thousands of unemployed displaced rural youth living in urban slums and an economy geared to enriching elite importers, exporters and US bankers and creditors. The WB Report in all of 301 pages and numerous tables does not contain a single phrase about the nature, consequences and the profound and lasting impact of imperial intervention on the out of control homicide rates in Central America or elsewhere. Instead we are told it’s all about a “civil war”.
The mendacious cover-up proceeds to the current decade. The WB Report and the FT sound an optimistic note claiming that annual battle deaths have “fallen to 42,000 in the 2000’s”. First, calling the US-NATO invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan a “civil war” is a travesty to common knowledge; and then falsifying the over 1 million Iraqi deaths into a few thousand, flies in the face of independent surveys published in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet.
What is striking about the imperialist interventions and most relevant to the growth of violent crime, is the fact that the subsequent client rulers, are themselves deeply enmeshed in international criminal networks. Drug dealing and large scale theft of billions in aid funds and public revenues is the hallmark of Central American clients who are most intimately tied to Washington. The same is true in Iraq and Afghanistan: tribal clans and ethnic gangs who pledged allegiance to the US occupiers run billion dollar heroin enterprises. They murder civil society activists and undermine the bases of community based organizations.
Policy Proposals
Based on a diagnosis that ignores the imperial causes of social breakdown and the subsequent spiraling violent crime rate, the WB Report and the FT propose “lessons” for a “successful transition to ending high rates of violence”.
Since their diagnosis of the historical roots of crime is deeply flawed, the prescriptions fail to come to terms with the political and economic transformations necessary to reduce spiraling homicide rates.
The WB Report proposes (1) “inclusive coalitions” for change, (2) impact programs that produce quick results and impress people, (3) reforms of the security and justice institutions, (4) a pragmatic perspective of several decades to bring about change. In other words the WB Report recognizes that its policies, allies and agencies are so embedded in the current system that its “reform proposals” are at best designed to co-opt local leaders in coalitions, to pursue incremental changes, which will not reverse homicide rates for several decades.
The WB Report proposes to create bottom-up “links” between the neo-liberal state and civic society: an impossible task when “the state” is the principle agency undermining employment via its free market policies. Their proposal to act against corruption and to reform the police and judicial system overlooks the fact that the past and present closest political and judicial collaborators of US counter-insurgency and dominance are precisely those corrupt officials willing to repress popular movements and provide military bases. The WB Report calls for greater intervention by “external institutions” (like itself and US AID) to “deliver support”, when it was precisely external intervention which short circuited changes fought for by “bottom up” grass roots movements.
The point of departure for a reduction of violent crime is precisely to reduce or eliminate external intervention by the US: the need to eliminate military aid and training programs which block and repress social movements and organize coups; to eliminate WB programs promoting agro-export elites and to promote agrarian reforms led by and for co-operatives and family farmers; to end free trade and the saturation of the local market with subsidized US food exports so as to allow peasants to produce for local markets. Above all there is a need for the US and WB to pay $ multi-million dollar compensation for the destruction caused by the counter-insurgency war and neo-liberal policies, as a way of creating alternative employment for young people tempted by the drug gangs. Because of the long term destruction resulting from imperialist wars, the process of decriminalizing society will require a profound revolution in institutions and culture, one which will by necessity need to root out the current crop of generals, oligarchs and World Bank trained economists who perpetuate the conditions which spawn crime. Those changes will require supporting social movements independent of the state; immediate positive impacts to attract popular support will result from movements engaged in direct action – like occupying large rural estates. Police and security reforms can only be instituted as part of a process of regime changes in which ties to repressive overseas experts are replaced by links to community councils. Crime will be reduced in direct relation to greater independence from the regional policemen and with greater freedom to pursue an alternative economy based on social solidarity.
As Marrickville Council’s BDS resolution was thrashed out in the media, misinformation about it abounded, writes Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the global BDS movement
The Palestinian civil society campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel came under attack in recent weeks from Murdoch media outlets, politicians and various interest groups as Sydney’s Marrickville Council struggled to keep the BDS resolution that they had adopted in December last year. The wild distortions and outright fabrications against BDS and its supporters in Sydney peaked in an article by Leo Shanahan, “Greens’ boycott rebounds”, published in The Australian on the day of the Council meeting when the BDS motion was rescinded.
Marrickville Council has since reaffirmed its support for the principles of the BDS campaign by actually spelling out the three fundamental Palestinian rights that constitute the minimum requirements for the Palestinian people to exercise our right to self determination.
Although the Council, after months of unprecedented bullying, threats, smear campaigns, and intimidation orchestrated by well-oiled Israel lobby groups, felt compelled not to put that principled support into action in the form of specific BDS measures, the fact that it stood its ground defending these basic Palestinian rights, as outlined in the BDS Call, is praiseworthy and quite inspiring. BDS is about asserting our long forgotten rights, first and foremost. Action to achieve those rights can come later, when the ground is fertile enough and resistance to intellectual terror and misinformation is higher.
Regardless, the record needs to be set straight. Misrepresentations of the type that litters Shanahan’s article should not go unchallenged. As the great Palestinian thinker Edward Said once said, “[D]espite the abuse and vilification that any outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and self determination earns for him or herself, the truth deserves to be spoken …”
Shanahan dismissively writes, “The BDS is a movement advocated by a multitude of left-wing political parties, universities, trade unions and other local governments throughout the world.” He writes this even though he admits just a few lines above that BDS is a Palestinian-led movement. In fact, BDS is called for by the largest and broadest coalition ever created of Palestinian civil society institutions, political parties, trade unions and NGO networks.
On 9 July 2005, the Palestinian BDS Call was issued, endorsed by more than 170 of the leading institutions in Palestinian society. It called for holding Israel to account for its three-tiered system of oppression, for its persistent violations of international law to compel it to end its 1967 occupation of all Arab lands, including East Jerusalem; its system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens which was described in the 2010 US Department of State human rights report as constituting “institutional, legal and societal discrimination”; and respecting the UN-sanctioned right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin, as stipulate in UN Resolution 194.
Shanahan quotes a member of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies making a baseless claim about me. He claims that I had said that BDS aims at “getting a Palestine next to a Palestine rather than a Palestine next to Israel.” This is categorically false; I never made this statement.
Israel lobby propagandists have intentionally fabricated this claim by omitting its crucial context to insinuate that the BDS movement is bent on what they characterise as the “destruction of Israel”. The remark above was part of a quote that I cited in an article and several presentations; it was first stated by a prominent Palestinian academic who argued that the right of return of Palestinian refugees in accordance with international law would lead, from an Israeli perspective, to a Palestine next to a Palestine. The point he was making is that Israel would not allow this aspect of international law to be implemented in order to maintain its ethnocentric and exclusivist nature in a two-state settlement. In responding to his argument, I insisted that the right of refugees to return home is deeply enshrined in international law and that implementing it would not “destroy” anyone or any people; it would simply end Israel’s apartheid regime and pave the road to real justice and democracy. If an unjust version of the two-state settlement is conditioned upon giving up the right of return, I argued, then we can do without that solution, but we cannot possibly surrender the UN-sanctioned rights of the refugees who make up two thirds of the Palestinian people.
For more than 28 years, I have, in my personal capacity, consistently and openly advocated a secular democratic state in the entire area of historic Palestine, where everyone enjoys equal rights, irrespective of ethnicity, religion or any identity attribute. This, to my mind, is the most ethically consistent formula that can accommodate the inalienable right of Palestian people to self determination with the rights of all the inhabitants of the land to justice, peace, equality, and democratic rights.
But this is certainly not the position of the BDS movement. The movement has consistently advocated a rights-based approach, consistently refraining from endorsing either of the one-state or two-state solutions. Any review of the hundreds of statements and media interviews by the BDS National Committee (BNC), the massive Palestinian coalition leading the international BDS movement, will confirm this. The BNC’s vision is for freedom, justice, and equal rights for all, regardless of identity and no matter what political solution is reached. People’s rights must be protected and respected above everything else. Furthermore, as a movement anchored in the universal principle of equality of all humans, BDS is firmly opposed to all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
This humanist platform is the essence of the BDS movement and the key behind its impressive growth. Many international trade union federations of the size of the Brazilian CUT (representing more than 20 million workers) and the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) and of the great symbolic significance of the South African COSATU and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, have joined the BDS campaign, selecting diverse forms of implementing it. Faith-based groups, Jewish organisations, leading artists and music groups, and iconic moral leaders of the calibre of Archbishop Desmond Tutu also support the boycott of Israel, drawing parallels with the ultimately successful boycott and divestment campaign utilised in the strategy to end apartheid in South Africa.
In his article, Shanahan also unquestioningly repeats the inaccurate claim that implementation of BDS “would cost Marrickville ratepayers $3.7 million”, an assertion that lazily ignores the track record of local council implementation of BDS.
Scores of councils across Europe have, at no cost at all, heeded the BDS call by excluding the French company Veolia from bidding on contracts. Why? Due to its involvement in an Israeli rail system serving illegal settlements that has been criticised by the UN Human Rights Council. Veolia is now considering ending its involvement. Local councils in Spain voted to support BDS and implemented their policy simply by switching bottled water provider to one other than Eden Springs, an Israeli company that sources its water from the Israeli-Occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Whether it is local councils changing service providers, artists such as Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and U2’s Bono refusing to play in Israel, or the University of Johannesburg severing its ties with an Israeli university complicit with violations of international law, standing up against Israeli spartheid needn’t cost a thing. It does, however, express a moral stand with the oppressed.
Finally, regarding the often discussed issue of violence and counter-violence, it is crucial to emphasise that Israel’s occupation, colonisation and denial of refugee rights are the roots of all violence. Israel’s illegal and patently immoral siege of Gaza, described recently by British Prime Minister David Cameron as a large “prison camp,” is the embodiment of violence. Israel’s gradual ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem is one of the cruelest manifestations of a policy of state violence aimed at further expulsion and dispossession of the indigenous Palestinians. To end all violence once must snuff out its causes: Israel’s decades-long, ruthless occupation and apartheid.
Those who truly care about all human life, as I do, and who think that any civilian life lost is a life too many should do their utmost to support the exceptionally effective, manifestly creative, morally consistent and impeccably non-violent BDS movement to end Israel’s impunity and violations of international law.
Together with the peace-loving peoples of this Earth, I condemn any form of violence — but surely we must recognize that people caged in, starved and stripped of their essential material and political rights must resist their Pharaoh? Surely resistance also makes us human? Palestinians have chosen, like we did, the nonviolent tools of boycott, divestment and sanctions.
The Marrickville Council was on the right side of history when it first chose to endorse the global BDS campaign. It remains so by insisting on Palestinian rights, despite the tactical setback. Brave Australians had done the same when responding to the calls from the oppressed South African majority under apartheid. We expect no less from conscientious Australians today in response to our urgent appeal for effective solidarity. I have no doubt that one day commentators and activists will mark Marrickville’s decision as the true beginning of mainstreaming BDS in Australia and of finally standing up to Israel’s lobby and for the rights of Palestinians.
More than three years ago torrential rains flooded the northern and central regions of the state of Chiapas. The rain seriously affected more than 1,200 families in 34 municipalities. This disaster, coupled with the inept dredging strategies of the National Water Commission (Conagua) and the Federal Electrical Commission (CFE), kept 404 households in 33 villages and 960 hectares of productive land under water for more than three months.Of all those concerned, the community of Juan de Grijalva suffered the worst fate: it was buried by the breaking away of a hill in the town of Ostuacán, in northern Chiapas. Shortly after the tragedy, the government, in the guise of a ‘philanthropic organisation’, held out its hand in solidarity to the people of Juan de Grijalva. Two years later they erected the brand new city of Nuevo Juan de Grijalva, the first Sustainable Rural City (SRC) in the whole of Mexico.
From being a poor village, Juan de Grijalva had become a leading city that had all the services that any Mexican could wish for: decent housing and quality basic services; drinking water; a water purification plant; drainage and sewerage; a waste treatment plant; electricity and public lighting using solar voltaic cells; a communications tower for fixed and mobile telephones; access to the Internet and information networks; a comprehensive basic education centre equipped with advanced technology; kindergarten, elementary and secondary schools; and a Health Centre with expanded services in the area of telemedicine equipment and technology. In addition, the inhabitants of the newly developed city were provided with opportunities for decent and gainful employment. Projects were launched for intensive production such as: greenhouses, nurseries, packing stations for tomatoes, poultry farms and a dairy processing plant. They also started ‘productive reconversion’, which allows residents to keep their land by replacing traditional crops with others of high commercial value.
It all sounded too good to be true. And, indeed, the dream became a nightmare. The city was from the beginning doomed to failure. There was not even the will to make a decent project: the houses are mousetraps, the basic services are inadequate, the health centers do not even have doctors, etc. But beyond these ‘details’, the new town is part of a state-wide program to rearrange the scattered population. As if we were in the sixteenth century, the aim is to create ‘authentic Indian villages’.
An Imposed Project
Under the pretext that most of the villages of Chiapas are scattered and that this high dispersion makes the provision of services and the economic and social development of communities difficult, the Rural Cities Program aims to focus on rural people in small villages. The aim is twofold: firstly, to take the land away from the small farmers (campesinos) and exploit it (with the participation of large businesses) and secondly, to concentrate the inhabitants of several villages in one place to serve as an ‘industrial reserve army’.
The ‘Believing People’ (el Pueblo Creyente) from the parish of San Pedro Chenalhó expressed it in these terms: “We are concerned that the rural cities project has been imposed, and that the people in the communities have not been consulted as to whether they agree with it or not, and if they do consult them, the consultation is based on lies and omissions, the government does not say clearly what this mega project actually brings or whether it is for the good or ill of the people. For example, it does not explain what ‘productive reconversion’ means, or who will be the beneficiaries of this reconversion.
“Rural cities were not invented by the state and federal government of this administration, but have a very long history, going back, for example, to the colonization of Latin America. At that time they were not called ‘rural cities’ but were known as ‘reducciones’, with the aim of making control of the population easier and more efficient in order to collect taxes (tribute), to use the people as labour for mines, plantations (most frequently sugar cane), for the construction of cities for the Spanish, and, of course, for political and military control. It is also true that then, as now, they argued that there would be benefits for the population directly affected, that by concentrating a population they can be provided with access to basic services of potable water, education, health, etc..”
The Wider Context
To address the issue of fighting poverty here in Chiapas, we must analyze the Sustainable Rural Cities in a broader context. On the one hand, in 2008 the presidents of Colombia, Mexico and other Central American countries signed the trade agreement Plan Mesoamerica (a new version of the Plan Puebla Panama). The purpose of this plan is to create an infrastructure and trade corridor that connects Southern Mexico to Colombia, and this area is intended to serve big capital. On the other hand, the political and economic plan of the World Bank, outlined in their report entitled ‘New Economic Geography’, suggests that economic integration is the fundamental way to bring development to all corners of the world. This report emphasizes population density as a key factor for the economic development of any country.
The construction of Santiago El Pinar, the second SRC, clearly unveils another facet of the project: that of a counterinsurgency strategy devised by the Chiapas government against the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). Located very close to the Zapatista autonomous municipalities of San Juan de la Libertad and San Andrés Sakamch’en, the ‘city’ breaks down the traditional ways of life, and forces people to enter the capitalist mode of production of small businesses oriented towards the external market. Clearly, the Sustainable Rural City is a challenge to the Zapatista caracoles, who have built true autonomous systems of health, education and production. It seems that the government forgets that it is dealing with the same people who took up arms in January 1994, a dignified people and one increasingly more aware.
As we said, so far they have established two Sustainable Rural Cities: Nuevo Juan Grijalva and Santiago El Pinar. There are three more under construction: Jaltenango, Ixhuatan and Emiliano Zapata (and a final one in the process of being built: Copainalá). It is obvious that private interests are a fundamental component of the Sustainable Rural Cities, so it does not take much imagination to realize who the real beneficiaries of this project are. Certain companies (among whom stand out Telmex, Fundación Azteca, BBVA Bancomer, Banamex, Grupo Carso, Farmacias del Ahorro and Coparmex) who operate through their ‘third level’ employees (the governor and his cronies), and certain university institutions (IPN and UNACH ) are the ones who have assessed, evaluated and supported with funding the construction of the ‘self-sustaining cities’. All these have a place of honor on the Advisory Council of the Sustainable Rural Cities.
With even more irony, these companies have their place within the very broad commercial corridors included in the plans of these ‘cities’, in places where little is known about money and where the people are still dying of curable diseases. Now, the residents will not only be free to sell their labour, but they will also be free to obtain un-repayable micro-loans, cell phones, domestic electrical appliances by means of small payments, and other ‘benefits’ that the modern world brings.
No Longer Slaves?
In fact, the two Sustainable Rural Cities are a disaster for their new inhabitants. The plan promoted by the government is solely focused on benefiting the companies involved in the construction of these cities. We all need to inform ourselves about these illusions and publicly denounce the government’s plans.
The Sustainable Rural Cities affect all the communities of Chiapas and are intended to alienate the people from their land, thus making the land available to large multinational corporations who focus on “cheap labour”, destroying ancient farming practices, imposing community development models and forcing the population into the financial circle of capitalism. We conclude with the words of the Civil Society organisation The Bees (Las Abejas):
“We are not the only ones who know that this project [of rural cities] is part of the Mesoamerica Project, previously Plan Puebla Panama. This plan did not start with the bad government of Calderon nor with that of Sabines, but with Salinas de Gortari when he signed NAFTA (the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement) which caused the uprising of our Zapatista brothers and sisters in the year 1994.
[…] Now they say we are no longer slaves, but it is just the same to make us work in their Mesoamerica Project with its plans for mines, sweatshops and plantations, which explains the campaign that the bad government is starting. This campaign is to have what they call ‘productive restructuring’.
“They do not explain much what this means, but we understand that now they do not want us to sow our cornfields (milpa), and our other ancestral foods any longer. They tell us that it is better for us to sow African (oil) palm and pine nuts, the reason they give us for this is to prevent fires.
“But what we see is that with the corn and beans we nourish ourselves; with oil palms and pine nuts they plan to produce biofuels to feed the cars and trucks. Do cars have more right to the food of Mother Earth than we do?”
The induced euphoria that characterizes discussions within the mainstream media around the upcoming declaration of an independent Palestinian state in September, ignores the stark realities on the ground and the warnings of critical commentators. Depicting such a declaration as a “breakthrough,” and a “challenge” to the defunct “peace process” and the right-wing government of Israel, serves to obscure Israel’s continued denial of Palestinian rights while reinforcing the international community’s implicit endorsement of an apartheid state in the Middle East.
The drive for recognition is led by Salam Fayyad, the appointed prime minister of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. It is based on the decision made during the 1970s by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to adopt the more flexible program of a “two-state solution.” This program maintains that the Palestinian question, the essence of the Arab-Israeli conflict, can be resolved with the establishment of an “independent state” in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. In this program Palestinian refugees would return to the state of “Palestine” but not to their homes in Israel, which defines itself as “the state of Jews.” Yet “independence” does not deal with this issue, neither does it heed calls made by the 1.2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel to transform the struggle into an anti-apartheid movement since they are treated as third-class citizens.
All this is supposed to be implemented after the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza. Or will it merely be a redeployment of forces as witnessed during the Oslo period? Yet proponents of this strategy claim that independence guarantees that Israel will deal with the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank as one people, and that the Palestinian question can be resolved according to international law, thus satisfying the minimum political and national rights of the Palestinian people. Forget about the fact that Israel has as many as 573 permanent barriers and checkpoints around the occupied West Bank, as well as an additional 69 “flying” checkpoints (“Promoting employment and entrepreneurship …,” Food and Agricultural Organization, 2010). And you might also want to ignore the fact that the existing Jewish-only colonies and roads and other Israeli infrastructure effectively annex more than 54 percent of the West Bank.
At the 1991 Madrid Conference, then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s hawkish government did not even accept the Palestinian “right” to administrative autonomy. However, with the coming of the “dovish” Meretz/Labor government, led by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, the PLO leadership conducted behind-the-curtains negotiations in Norway. By signing the Oslo accords, Israel was released of the heavy burden of administering Gaza and the seven crowded cities of the West Bank. The first intifada was ended by an official — and secret — PLO decision without achieving its interim national goals, namely “freedom and independence,” and without the consent of the people the organization purported to represent.
This same idea of “independence” was once rejected by the PLO, because it did not address the “minimum legitimate rights” of Palestinians and because it is the antithesis of the Palestinian struggle for liberation. What is proposed in place of these rights is a state in name only. In other words, the Palestinians must accept full autonomy on a fraction of their land, and never think of sovereignty or control of borders, water reserves and most importantly, the return of the refugees. That was the Oslo agreement and it is also the intended “Declaration of Independence.” No wonder, then, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes it clear that he might agree to a Palestinian state through negotiations.
Nor does this declaration promise to be in accordance with the 1947 UN partition plan, which granted the Palestinians only 47 percent of historic Palestine even though they comprised more than two-thirds of the population. Once declared, the future “independent” Palestinian state will occupy less than 20 percent of historic Palestine. By creating a Bantustan and calling it a “viable state,” Israel will get rid of the burden of 3.5 million Palestinians. The PA will rule over the maximum number of Palestinians on the minimum number of fragments of land — fragments that we can call “The State of Palestine.” This “state” will be recognized by tens of countries — South Africa’s infamous bantusan tribal chiefs must be very envious!
One can only assume that the much-talked about and celebrated “independence” will simply reinforce the same role that the PA played under Oslo. Namely providing policing and security measures designed to disarm the Palestinian resistance groups. These were the first demands made of the Palestinians at Oslo in 1993, Camp David in 2000, Annapolis in 2007 and Washington last year. Meanwhile, within this framework of negotiations and demands, no commitments or obligations are imposed on Israel.
Just as the Oslo accords signified the end of popular, nonviolent resistance of the first intifada, this declaration of independence has a similar goal, namely ending the growing international support for the Palestinian cause since Israel’s 2008-09 winter onslaught on Gaza and its attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla last May. Yet it falls short of providing Palestinians with the minimal protection and security from any future Israeli attacks and atrocities. The invasion and siege of Gaza was a product of Oslo. Before the Oslo accords were signed, Israel never used its full arsenal of F-16s, phosphorous bombs, and DIME weapons to attack refugee camps in the Gaza and the West Bank. More than 1,200 Palestinians were killed from 1987-1993 during the first intifada. Israel eclipsed that number during its three-week invasion in 2009; it managed to brutally kill more than 1,400 in Gaza alone. This does not include the victims of Israel’s siege in place since 2006 which has been marked by closures and repeated Israeli attacks before the invasion of Gaza and since.
Ultimately, what this intended “declaration of independence” offers the Palestinian people is a mirage, an “independent homeland” that is a bantustan in disguise. Although it is recognized by so many friendly countries, it stops short of providing Palestinians freedom and liberation. Critical debate — as opposed to one that is biased, demagogic — requires scrutiny of the distortions of history through ideological misrepresentations. What needs to be addressed is an historical human vision of the Palestinian and Jewish questions, a vision that never denies the rights of a people, which guarantees complete equality and abolishes apartheid — instead of recognizing a new Bantustan 17 years after the fall of apartheid in South Africa.
Haidar Eid is Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza’s al-Aqsa University and a policy advisor with Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, where this essay was first pubilshed.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has rejected assassination as a tactic in a response to the killing of Osama Bin Laden by US troops. The group also confirmed that while it rejects violence it supports legitimate resistance against foreign occupation of any country.
In an official statement, the Brotherhood called on Western people and governments alike “to stop linking Islam with terrorism” in order to correct “the erroneous image that has been promoted deliberately for several years.”
“Resistance against foreign occupation is a legitimate right sanctioned by all religions and international agreements,” said the Brotherhood’s statement. “Trying to confuse the issue by blurring the line between legitimate resistance and violence against innocent people is a deliberate ploy by the Zionist lobby.”
According to the statement, the Muslim Brotherhood is against the use of violence in general and assassination in particular. “We support fair trials for criminals, no matter what kind of crime they have committed.”
The Brotherhood demanded that the United States, NATO and the European Union “announce the end of the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and recognise the legitimate rights of the Palestinians” as a matter of urgency. It also called upon the United States to end its intelligence operations against those who oppose its policies and stop interfering in the internal affairs of Arab and Muslim countries.
Tal Aviv – Chairman of the Israeli Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Affairs and Security Shaul Mofaz of the right wing Kadima party asked the Israeli government to assassinate Palestinian leaders like the US did with Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.
Mofaz added that the new US assassination strategy comes from Israel’s policies of targeting Palestinian leaders after the attack on the Israeli Olympics team in Germany back in 1972.
During an interview with Israeli radio on Tuesday morning Mofaz said that the Israeli assassination strategy proved to be successful adding that it must be resumed targeting Hamas leaders based in Gaza if attacks come from there.
Even though international law prohibits the use of extra judicial assassination policies, Mofaz said that this is a legitimate act.
Yesterday, a majority of Councilors from Markham City Council adopted a motion to censor “Israeli Apartheid Week” that is organized each year in March by students on Canadian universities.
Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is a week of lectures and film screenings that takes place peacefully on campuses each year and hosts prominent academics and community leaders to very high-level political and academic discussions.
IAW condemns all forms of racism and discrimination. It explicitly condemns anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, and homophobia. Many Jewish students are involved in organizing IAW.
This year, for the seventh year, IAW was held in 95 cities and more than 75 universities on six continents, including 3 cities in Israel and 4 cities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Ironically, the motion passed by Markham City Council aims to deny Canadian students and academics the rights of freedom of expression and academic freedom, rights that are enjoyed by Israeli students and academics. In addition it interferes in University affairs.
The motion creates the absurd situation where Canadian students and academics are allowed to freely criticize their own government but are banned from criticizing a foreign government.
The motion put forward by Councilor Shore is one of those several attempts currently being undertaken to censor and suppress public debate on this subject in order to shield Israel’s actions from scrutiny and criticism.
Such actions are an attack on free speech the likes of which we have not seen since the 1950s McCarthy witch hunts.
By its decision, Markham City Council ignored the comprehensive study undertaken by Toronto City staff that determined the use of the phrase “Israeli Apartheid” does not promote hatred or discrimination, and does not violate the Criminal Code or the Ontario Human Rights Code.
Markham City Council also ignored the compelling evidence introduced from the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, the Conference of Southern African Christian Churches, the Association of Civil Rights of Israel and the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, that irrefutably proves Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel are systematically discriminated against and that the situation in the occupied West Bank and Gaza is reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa.
The spectrum of diversity was well-represented by those who spoke against the motion and in support of free speech and Palestinian rights. Those presenters included Jews, Christians and Muslims of all ages and gender, and from various ethnic and racial backgrounds.
Understandably, Councilor Shore’s motion placed the other Councilors in a corner. Markham City Council had unfortunately decided recently to send a trade mission to Israel. The rejection of Councilor Shore’s motion would have implied that they condone the labeling of Israel as an Apartheid state and would have placed them in the awkward position of doing business with an apartheid regime.
Regrettably, this politically expedient decision runs counter to the Town of Markham’s stated mission to recognize and accept the diversity of its residents, to respect the differences in all peoples and their right to hold different opinions, to promote the value of human rights, and to oppose racism and discrimination.
RAMALLAH — An Israeli military court sentenced Palestinian writer Ahmad Qatamish to six months of administrative detention late Tuesday, in an order that appeared to have been tampered with, Palestinian human rights group Addameer said Wednesday.
Israeli judicial authorities had indicated that Qatamish was to be released Tuesday, following 13 days of detention in Israel’s Ofer jail, but a last minute order was issued containing inaccurate information, the group said in a statement.
Qatamish’s lawyer was told by Ofer military court at noon Tuesday that the writer and intellectual would be release by 5 p.m. that day, the statement said, and Qatamish was given the same information by the Israeli prison service.
At 5:30 p.m. the court summoned Qatamish’s lawyer, indicating his detention would be extended, however the counsel was later assured by the military prosecutor that he would be released.
At 7:45 p.m. the lawyer was told a decision would be taken by 9 p.m., and 30 minutes before this deadline, informed that an administrative detention order had been issued for Qatamish.
Addameer said it had a copy of the order, which “disgracefully appears to be a copy of someone else’s detention order that has been tampered with to include Mr. Qatamish’s name.”
“This is clear evidence that these orders are not actually issued by the Israeli military commander of the West Bank after careful review of all the evidence against the suspect in question, but rather orchestrated by the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) and the military prosecution,” the statement continued.
Addameer added that the order is for an “extension” of Qatamish’s administrative detention, despite his not being detained under such conditions for several years.
The order also states that the writer is suspected of being a Hamas member, the group said, calling the claim “absurd” as the previous week Israeli police accused Qatamish of membership of leftist faction the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the group with which he has historically been associated.
Addameer added that the administrative detention order is for six months, and no date for review of the ruling has been set. The group called for the annulment of the order, saying it was a “case of arbitrary detention motivated solely by [Qatamish’s] opinions and peaceful activism.”
Qatamish was detained on April 21 from his Ramallah home by Israeli troops, and since held at the Ofer detention center at the Beituniya Israeli military base in the West Bank.
He has had several spells in Israeli jails, and spent 17 years in hiding from 1976 to 1992 to avoid re-arrest.
In 1992 Qatamish was held by Israel without charge for six years, writing about his experiences of torture and ill treatment in his prison memoir ‘I Shall not Wear Your Tarboush [fez].’
Following an international campaign for his release, he was freed in 1998, and has since been banned from traveling outside Palestinian territory.
He went on to finish his doctorate in political science and has since lectured at Al-Quds University and founded the Munif Barghouti Research Center.
On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Reggane region. According to official statistics, 17 nuclear tests were carried out in total over the next 6 years. The area remains affected, and local scientists say that radioactive contamination has caused genetic mutations and irreversibly changed the region.
There are no official statistics on the number of victims. The only figures can be found in the records kept by the French representative of the local church, which lists 42,000 victims of nuclear tests. Three years ago, the French Ministry of Defense issued a statement, putting the number at 27,000 people. The victims include French soldiers as well as local Algerians who lived in the surrounding areas. … continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News
