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The War Party’s Atrocity Porn

By William Norman Grigg | March 1, 2011

“This is a massacre,” the frantic Libyan woman, speaking by telephone while cowering in her apartment in Tripoli, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

“I hope you know that people around the world are watching and praying and wanting to do something,” Anderson told her, as if he were a stage prompter hinting at a performer’s next line. Whether or not she had been given a copy of the script, the caller performed as expected: “[T]he first step [is to] make Libya a no-fly zone. If you make Libya a no-fly zone, no more mercenaries can come in…. There needs to be action. How much more waiting, how much more watching, how much more people dying?”

It’s entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that the subject of Cooper’s interview was simply a terrified but resolute woman who risked her life to describe the violence devouring her country amid the death throes of Khadaffy’s police state.

It’s likewise possible that her call for international action to impose a no-fly zone was a desperate plea from a victim, rather than an act of media ventriloquism in which an anonymous figure endorsed the first plank of a military campaign proposed by the same neo-conservative kriegsbund that manipulated us into Iraq.

Surely it was a coincidence that the “Cry in the Night” from Libya was echoed on the same network a few nights later by Iraq war architect, former World Bank president, and accused war criminal Paul Wolfowitz, who several days prior to Cooper’s dramatic broadcast called for a NATO-enforced “no fly zone” over Libya.

In fact, the day following that interview, an ad hoc group calling itself the Foreign Policy Initiative, which coalesced from the remnants of the Project for a New American Century, published an “open letter” to Mr. Obama demanding military intervention – beginning with a no-fly zone – in Libya.  The neo-con framework for managing the Libyan crisis would create a regional protectorate administered by NATO on behalf of the “international community.” This would nullify any effort on the part of Libyans, Egyptians, Tunisians, and others to achieve true independence.

On previous experience with media campaigns on behalf of humanitarian conquest, my incurable cynicism leads me to hear in Cooper’s “Cry in the Night” a faint but unmistakable echo of the tearful, palpably earnest testimony of “Nayirah” –   the wide-eyed Kuwaiti girl who, using an assumed name to “protect her family,” described what had befallen her country in the wake of the Iraqi invasion.

Bravely composing herself as she recounted horrors no human eyes should behold, the precociously self-possessed 15-year-old volunteer nurse related to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus how Iraqi soldiers stormed into the al-Addan Hospital, tore newborn infants from incubators, and hurled them to the floor. A short time later this testimony was “confirmed” by others who offered similarly anguished testimony before the UN Security Council.

During the three-month build-up to the January 1991 attack on Baghdad, the image of Kuwaiti “incubator babies” was endlessly recycled as a talking point in media interviews, presidential speeches, and debates in Congress and the UN. A post-war opinion survey found that the story of the “incubator babies” was the single most potent weapon deployed by the Bush administration in its campaign to build public support for the attack on Iraq.

This atrocity account was particularly effective in overcoming the skepticism of people espousing a progressive point of view.

“A pacifist by nature, my brother was not in a peaceful mood that day,” recalled Christian Science Monitor columnist Tom Regan, describing his sibling’s reaction to “Nayirah’s” testimony. “We’ve got to go and get Saddam Hussein – now,” Regan’s brother insisted.

“I completely understood his feelings,” Regan pointed out. After all, “who could countenance such brutality? The news of the slaughter had come at a key moment in the deliberations about whether the U.S. would invade Iraq. Those who watched the non-stop debates on TV saw that many of those who had previously wavered on the issue had been turned into warriors by this shocking incident. Too bad it never happened.”

“Nayirah” was not a traumatized ingénue who had witnessed an act of barbarism worthy of the Einsatzgruppen; she was actually the daughter of Saud Nasi al-Sabah, Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States (and a member of the emirate’s royal family). Her script had been written by the Washington-based PR firm Hill & Knowlton, which – under the supervision of former Bush administration Chief of Staff Craig Fuller – had put together a campaign to build public support for the impending war.

It wasn’t difficult to convince the public that Saddam was a hideous thug. Selling the idea of a major war in the Middle East was a more daunting proposition. In late 1990, Hal Steward, a retired Army propaganda officer, defined the problem for the administration: “If and when the shooting starts, reporters will begin to wonder why American soldiers are dying for oil-rich sheiks. The U.S. military had better get cracking to come up with a public relations plan that will supply the answers the public can accept.”

The image of newborn Kuwaiti infants being ripped from incubators was an updated riff on a classic war propaganda theme performed by British intelligence – and its American fellow travelers – in their efforts to provoke U.S. intervention in World War I.

The WWI-era equivalent of the Kuwaiti “incubator babies” were the Belgian infants who were supposedly spitted on bayonets by hairy-knuckled Huns in Pickelhaube helmets. German soldiers did this to amuse themselves once they could no longer sate their prurient interests by raping Belgian women and then amputating their breasts. So the American public was told, in all seriousness, by people working on behalf of a secretive British propaganda committee headed by Charles Masterman.

In 1915, an official Commission headed by Viscount James Bryce, a notable British historian, “verified” those atrocity stories without naming a specific witness or victim. This didn’t satisfy Clarence Darrow, who offered a reward of $1,000 to anyone who could produce a Belgian or French victim who had been mutilated by German troops. That bounty went unclaimed.

“After the war,” recounts Thomas Fleming in his book Illusion of Victory, “historians who sought to examine the documentation for Bryce’s stories were told that the files had mysteriously disappeared. This blatant evasion prompted most historians to dismiss 99 percent of Bryce’s atrocities as fabrications.”

War emancipates every base and repulsive impulse to which fallen man is susceptible. So it’s certain that some German troops (like their French, Belgian, British, and American counterparts) exploited opportunities to commit individual acts of depraved cruelty. But the purpose of the war propaganda peddled by the Anglo-American elite, as Fleming observes, was to create a widespread public image of Germans as “monsters capable of appalling sadism” – thereby coating an appeal to murderous collective hatred with a lacquer of sanctimony.

I’ve described agitprop of this variety as “atrocity porn.” It is designed to appeal to prurient interests and manipulate a dangerous appetite – in this case, what Augustine calls the libido domimandi, or the lust to rule over others.

The trick is to leave the target audience at once shivering in horror at a spectacle of sub-human depravity, panting with a visceral desire for vengeance, and rapturously self-righteous about the purity of its humane motives. People who succumb to it are easily subsumed into a hive mind of officially sanctioned hatred, and prepared to perpetrate crimes even more hideous than those that they believe typify the enemy.

Rhetoric of that kind abounded during the French Revolution, particularly the Jacobin regime’s war to annihilate the rebellious Vendee. It also figured prominently in the Lincoln regime’s war to conquer the newly independent southern states. However, it’s difficult to find a better expression of that mindset than the one offered in an editorial published in 1920 by Krasni Mech (The Red Sword), a publication of the Soviet Cheka secret police:

“Our morality has no precedent, and our humanity is absolute, because it rests on a new ideal. Our aim is to destroy all forms of oppression and violence. To us, everything is permitted, for we are the first to raise the sword not to oppress races and reduce them to slavery, but to liberate humanity from its shackles … Blood? Let blood flow like water … for only through the death of the old world can we liberate ourselves forever.” (Emphasis added.)

In pursuing his Grand Crusade for Democracy, Woodrow Wilson was squarely in that tradition, extolling the supposed virtue of “Force without stint or limit … the righteous and triumphant Force which shall make Right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion in the dust.” To fortify the American “war will” through a steady diet of atrocity porn, the Wilson administration created a Department of Public Information that liaised with its British equivalent, as well as quasi-private British propaganda fronts such as the Navy League. That organization, Fleming points out, included “dozens of major bankers and corporate executives, from J.P. Morgan Jr. to Cornelius Vanderbilt.”

Through absolutely no fault of his own, Anderson Cooper is a great-great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Of considerably greater interest is the fact that as a student at Yale, Cooper spent two summers as an intern at Langley in a CIA program designed to cultivate future intelligence operatives.

When asked about Cooper’s background with the CIA, a CNN spokeswoman insisted that he chose not to pursue a job with the Agency after graduating from Yale. The same can be said, however, of many of the CIA’s most valuable media assets.

As Carl Bernstein documented decades ago, the CIA “ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were ‘taught how to make noises like reporters,’ explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management. ‘These were the guys who went through the ranks and were told, ‘You’re going to be a journalist,’ the CIA official said. Relatively few of the 400-some [media] relationships described in Agency files followed that pattern, however; most involved persons who were already bona fide journalists when they began undertaking tasks for the Agency.”

By way of an initiative called “Operation Mockingbird,” the CIA built a large seraglio of paid media courtesans. This was carried out through the Office of Policy Coordination, which was created by Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner – the latter being the official who went on to organize coups (and the attendant propaganda campaigns) against governments in Iran and Guatemala. (Wisner’s son and namesake, incidentally, was a vice chairman at AIG – the CIA’s favorite global insurance conglomerate – until 2009; more recently he was tapped by the Obama administration to serve as a back-channel contact with Hosni Mubarak and Omar Suleiman.)

The tendrils of “Operation Mockingbird” extended through every significant national media organ, from the Washington Post and Newsweek to the Time-Life conglomerate, from the New York Times to CBS. As a result, according to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, the Fourth Estate “has been captured by government and corporations, the military-industrial complex, the intelligence apparatus.” It is, in everything but name, an appendage of the Regime. This is clearly seen every time the Regime decides the time has come to mount another campaign of humanitarian bloodshed abroad.

Having “learned nothing from the horrors that they cheer-led like excitable teenage girls over the past 15 years, these bohemian bombers, these latte-sipping lieutenants, these iPad imperialists are back,” sighs a wearily disgusted Brendan O’Neill in the London Telegraph. “This time they’re demanding the invasion of Libya.”

On O’Neill’s side of the Atlantic, the Fleet Street Samurai are peddling “rumors of systematic male rape” in Libya. Others insist that the prospective war in Libya would in no way resemble “the foolishness of the Iraq invasion” – just as similar self-appointed sages promised that the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, each of which has lasted at least as long as the Vietnam War, would not be “another Vietnam.”

For some reason, this brings to mind the image of Bullwinkle repeatedly trying to pull a rabbit from his hat, blithely batting aside Rocky’s complaint that the trick “never works” by exclaiming, “This time for sure!” This time, we’re supposed to believe – or at least, pretend to believe – that the atrocity accounts are true, that military action sanctified by the “international community” is a moral obligation, that warlust and hatred are virtuous, and that the impending bloodshed will be a cleansing stream.

As is the case, one supposes, with any other variety, war pornography is nothing if not predictable. However, unlike Bullwinkle’s inept attempts at thaumaturgy, war porn is a trick that seems to work every time.

~

“All war is based on Deception” – “in war, the first casualty is truth“; Sun Tzu’s Art of War

The reports of Libya mobilizing its air force against its own people spread quickly around the world. However, Russia’s military chiefs say they have been monitoring from space — and the pictures tell a different story. According to Al Jazeera and BBC, on February 22 the Libyan government inflicted airstrikes on Benghazi — the country’s largest city — and on the capital Tripoli. However, the Russian military, monitoring the unrest via satellite from the very beginning, says nothing of the sort was going on on the ground:

March 2, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

The PNACers who pushed for “democratic change” in Egypt

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate attachment | March 1, 2011

From the New York Times:

“[Obama] got on the right side of this thing when a lot of the foreign policy establishment was cautioning otherwise,” said Robert Kagan, a Brookings Institution scholar who long before the revolution helped assemble a nonpartisan group of policy experts to press for democratic change in Egypt. “And he got it right. This may strengthen his confidence the next time this kind of thing happens.”

Kagan, who co-founded the Project for a New American Century with William Kristol in 1997, was joined on that “nonpartisan group” by PNAC founding member Elliott Abrams and PNAC deputy director Ellen Bork. Bork is currently “democracy and human rights” director at PNAC’s successor, Foreign Policy Initiative, where Kagan and Kristol are directors. Not surprisingly, Kristol wrote in the Weekly Standard on January 29 that he was “in complete agreement” with his fellow PNACers’ Working Group on Egypt in its demands that the U.S. suspend aid to Mubarak.

Considering how deeply concerned PNAC was about Israel’s security, could Mubarak’s ouster really not be in the Jewish state’s strategic interest, as so many seem to believe? Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Kagan looked positively sanguine about the prospects for a post-Mubarak Egypt. Like George Soros, he seems confident that Israel has “much to gain from the spread of democracy in the Middle East.”

Update: Arianna Huffington, who praised Kagan for his prescience on ABC’s This Week, was prescient herself in a December 13, 2010 op-ed in Lebanon’s Daily Star titled “Social media will help fuel change in the Middle East.” The “progressive” media entrepreneur, who has enjoyed very profitable business ties to the Israeli arms industry, once dated Mortimer Zuckerman, the pro-Israel media magnate.

Update II: The New York Times article also quotes Kenneth Wollack:

“The stirring events in Egypt and Tunisia should reinforce what has always been a bipartisan ambition because they are vivid reminders of universal democratic aspirations and America’s role in supporting those aspirations,” said Kenneth Wollock [sic], president of the National Democratic Institute, a government-financed group affiliated with the Democratic Party that promotes civil society abroad.

From 1973 to 1980, Wollack served as legislative director of AIPAC.

March 1, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Israel bars ICRC aid from reaching homeless Bedouin

Ma’an – 23/02/2011

HEBRON — Residents of the tiny Bedouin hamlet of Amniyr crowded into a small cave in the rocky hills south of Hebron to sleep on Wednesday night, after their tent homes were destroyed by Israeli demolition crews claiming the hamlet as state land.

Village elder Hajj Mahmoud said the three families that live in the area spent the day in the open air, trying to salvage items from the buried heaps left by Israeli demolition crews.

Hajj Mahmoud said the International Committee for the Red Cross had attempted to deliver aid and supplies, after calls from residents and observers from the Christian Peacemaker Teams to provide new shelters.

The elder said he was unsure what the ICRC had brought, however, because Israeli troops prevented ICRC crews from unloading the supplies.

An informed official in Hebron confirmed to Ma’an that the ICRC encountered difficulties delivering the supplies, which were sent back.

An attempt was made to deliver several housing kits, food and blankets to the families, the official said, adding that it was the first time such a delivery had been barred.

“We stayed out in the air until late,” Hajj Mahmoud said, explaining that the families retired to a small cave.

“We found a snake inside the cave, we had to kill it before we slept.”

The five tent shelters, a cistern and water well were buried on Monday, and olive trees uprooted then covered with earth.

Residents had moved back to the area during the winter, saying settler harassment at a second location one kilometer away had driven them out. Years earlier the same harassment had forced them from the location where the tents were demolished.

Ownership papers for the land existed at one point, residents said, but according to the CPT observer every week for the past month Israeli officials from the Civil Administration have delivered notices saying the community was living on state land and must evacuate.

On Tuesday morning, CPT observers published a video of the destruction in the hamlet, and issued a release saying teams would continue to have a presence in the area.

February 23, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Video | Leave a comment

Madison Wisconsin Budget Protest Movement

cinderbelle319 | February 19, 2011

I don’t feel that national news has been giving accurate coverage of the rallies in Madison, WI, so I’m here to tell you what people are REALLY protesting about. Hint: it’s not about pay-cuts.

Here’s the Legislative Fiscal Bureau Memo:
http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb/Misc/2…

Source for the $140 Million in tax breaks:
http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/press/…

And if you think that’s not bad enough, consider this: 2/3 of corporations in WI don’t pay any taxes AT ALL. Where do YOU think the money should be coming from?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02…



February 22, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism, Video | Leave a comment

Press TV News Analysis-Bahrain Uprising

PressTVGlobalNews | February 18, 2011

This edition of Press TV’s News Analysis is discussing the developments in Bahrain. Friday saw the funerals of those killed in that early morning attack on Pearl Square at 3a.m. on Thursday. The day saw those funerals turn into protests while the army stood by and watched. But as those funeral goers walked silently to the mosque for sunset prayers, everything took a violent turn. The army started firing live ammunition on the crowds, from behind. Many were injured, some are feared dead. We have spoken to eyewitnesses who were scared to give us their names. We have spoken to doctors, human rights activists and MPs on the ground and at the hospital. Emotional telephone cries desperately crying for help, in a state of shock. So what does this second violent day in Bahrain mean for the uprising there?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Anti-government protests continue – February 20, 2011

February 20, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Video | Leave a comment

US vetoes UN resolution on Illegal Jewish only settlements

Aletho News | February 19, 2011

Despite receiving the backing of 14 out of 15 members of the United Nations’ security council, a UN resolution branding Israeli settlements illegal was vetoed by the United States Ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice.

Susan Rice is not related to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice but there is a connection between Condoleeza Rice and Susan Rice’s godmother, Madeleine Albright. Condoleezza Rice was Dr. Joseph Korbel’s star student at the University of Denver. Madeleine Albright is Korbel’s daughter. Rice has said that her role at the U.N. will be to battle “the anti-Israel crap.”

Rice has been involved with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) a hawkish pro-Israel think tank which has been a home for many of the neocon architects of the invasion of Iraq. WINEP’s advisory board has included militarists such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Edward Luttwak, James Woolsey (who is also ostensibly a Democrat), and Mort Zuckerman. Susan Rice took part in a WINEP “2008 Presidential Task Force” study which resulted in a report entitled, “Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen US-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge”. WINEP was founded in coordination with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Al Jazeera spoke with Susan Rice about the Obama administration’s veto of the Security Council resolution:

February 19, 2011 Posted by | Author: Atheo, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Tens of thousands mourn Bahraini victims

Press TV – February 18, 2011

Tens of thousands of furious Bahrainis have participated in mass funerals for anti-government protesters killed by security forces on Thursday.

The funeral of two men killed by police began in the Shia village of Sitra, east of Manama, on Friday, Press TV correspondent reported.

The burial ceremonies of two others are to take place after the noon prayers.

The mourners chanted anti-government slogans and called for national unity against the government.

The state-funded BBC dubbed the demonstrations, “The biggest anti-government protests since last week.”

On Thursday, at least four protesters were killed, 67 have gone missing and about 230 others were reported injured after Bahraini security forces stormed a protest camp in Pearl Square in downtown Manama and fired tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators.

Medical sources believe that most of those missing are dead.

Bahraini protesters have renamed the square as Tahrir Square, after the square in Egypt that became the focal point of pro-democracy protests, leading to Hosni Mubarak’s ouster.

Later in the day, eighteen members of the Bahrain parliament resigned from their posts in a show of rage against the violent crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators in the Persian Gulf kingdom.

However, after that, Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa praised the military for its nighttime crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

The king paid a visit to the Defense Force General Command on Thursday and discussed the raid as well as his government’s ongoing strategy with Commander-in-Chief Marshal Shaikh Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa and top-ranking defense officials.

He later addressed troops and praised them for their “bravery and readiness to assume their national duties.”

The Bahraini army has warned protesters not to take to the streets. It has threatened to do whatever it takes to maintain security.

The government is trying to quell the protests, which have been inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

The magnitude of the pro-democracy protests in Bahrain is unprecedented in the history of the kingdom and the authorities’ efforts to quell them have so far been ineffective.

The demonstrators are demanding a new constitution that would move the country toward democracy and limit the king’s powers.

Bahrain is ruled by a royal family that has been blamed for discrimination against the country’s majority Shia population — accounting for 70 percent of the total population.

Protesters have called on the Bahraini king to fire his uncle, Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, who has been the country’s prime minister since 1971.

Meanwhile, foreign ministers from the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council held an emergency meeting in Manama on Thursday night to discuss the latest developments in Bahrain.

The US Department of Defense has refused to condemn the Bahraini government’s crackdown on protesters, saying Washington is monitoring the developments in Bahrain.

The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet is based in the kingdom of Bahrain.

.

Al-Jazeera:

February 18, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Video | Leave a comment

Tanks in Bahrain block ambulances

Press TV – February 17, 2011
At least four killed as security forces raid protesters camped out in central Manama

Tanks in the Bahraini capital, Manama, prevented ambulances from taking the victims of clashes to hospitals, as the pro-democracy uprising in the country has entered its fourth day, a report says.

The report also added that Bahraini security forces attacked and beat medical workers who are helping the victims on Thursday.

Pro-democracy uprising in Bahrain has entered its fourth day, as protesters, inspired by revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, have taken to the streets to protest against the government’s dictatorial policies.

More than a dozen army tanks and several military ambulances and trucks are seen in a main highway in the central Manama.

According to witnesses, the nearby roads have almost been cleared of civilian traffic. Security forces have also put up barbed wire around Pearl Square.

On Thursday, security forces raided the protesters camped out in Pearl Square in central Manama and fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the people to disperse them, Reuters reported.

Four people were killed in the incident, raising the number of the deaths to seven since Monday.

At least 2,000 protesters were occupying the Pearl Square on Wednesday, calling for a new constitution and an elected prime minister.

On Wednesday, Bahraini authorities said that they would seek to restore calm in the streets on Thursday, after days of protests inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and intensified by the deaths of two protesters in 24 hours.

The magnitude of the pro-democracy protests in Bahrain is unprecedented in the history of the kingdom and the authorities’ efforts to quell them have so far been ineffective.

The demonstrators are demanding a new constitution that would move the country toward democracy and limit the king’s powers.

Bahrain is ruled by a royal family, who are blamed for discrimination against the country’s Shia population — comprising 70 percent of the population.

Protesters have called on the Bahraini to fire his uncle, Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, who has been the country’s prime minister since 1971.

The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet is based in the kingdom of Bahrain.

~

~

Al-Jazeera:

February 17, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Video | Leave a comment

Our Story – Promo

November – 2010

Video describing the modern history of  Palestine by Mustapha Barghouti.

February 16, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

COLOMBIA VIDEO: Biofuel Terrorism

“Land and Territory—The Key to Peace in Colombia”

CPTnet – 14 February 2011

Christian Peacemaker Teams Colombia invites you to watch the video, “Land and Territory: The Key to Peace in Colombia,” produced by The Grassroots Communities and Peace Initiatives Network, which covers the story of three communities and their struggle for land in Colombia.  As the title indicates, land, along with legal title, must be returned to these communities and all displaced communities in order for peace and justice to emerge in Colombia.  One cannot talk about the Colombian conflict without discussing the takeover of land by multinational companies, both through legal means and through armed paramilitary violence.  CPT Colombia is accompanying the communities of El Garzal and Las Pavas, featured in the video, as they struggle to remain on their land and protect their communities.

 

The “greening” of a shady business – Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil

World Rainforest Movement | Grain | October 2010

Oil palm plantations have spread rapidly around the globe in recent decades, with profound implications for local communities and the environment. A“Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil” (RSPO) was formed to promote sustainable production practices. But is this possible? Or does the RSPO merely amount to the greenwashing of an inherently destructive industry? The World Rainforest Movement produced an analysis.1

Over the past few decades, oil palm plantations have rapidly spread throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, where millions of hectares have already been planted and millions more are planned for the next few years. These plantations are causing increasingly serious problems for local peoples and their environment, including social conflict and human rights violations. In spite of this, a number of interests – national and international – continue actively to promote this crop, against a background of growing opposition at the local level. It is within this context that a voluntary certification scheme has emerged – the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) – with the aim of assuring consumers that the palm oil they consume – in foodstuffs, soap, cosmetics or fuel – has been produced in a sustainable manner.2

To pretend that a product obtained from large-scale monocultures of mostly alien palm trees can be certified as “sustainable”3 is – to say the least – a misleading statement, especially for oil palm plantations, with their history of tropical deforestation and widespread human rights abuses.4 This, however, is precisely what the RSPO is doing.
The first shipment of palm oil certified as “sustainable” arrived in the Netherlands in November 2008, under enormous controversy. Greenpeace pointed out that “United Plantations, the company producing the sustainable palm oil, is cutting down trees from vulnerable peat forests in Kalimantan, Indonesia.” It added that this company “does not comply with local Indonesian laws that protect the environment” and that it is “entangled in land conflicts with the local population.” It was not a good start for RSPO’s credibility.5

Corporations’ firm grasp

The power balance between corporations and NGOs is clearly shown in the RSPO’s current Executive Board (February 2010), where the majority of its members represent corporations or associations of corporations:

President: Jan Kees Vis – Unilever
Vice-President I: Adam Harrison – WWF Scotland
Vice-President II: Derom Bangun – Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association (GAPKI)
Vice-President III: Jeremy Goon – Wilmar International
Vice-President IV: Marcello Brito – Agropalma, Brazil
Treasurer: Ian McIntosh – Aarhus United UK
Members:
Marc den Hartog – IOI Group (Malaysia/Netherlands)
Paul Norton – HSBC Bank Malaysia Berhad
Johan Verburg – Oxfam International
Timothy J. Killeen – Conservation International
Faisal Firdaus – Carrefour Group, France
John Baker – Rabobank International
Christophe Liebon – Intertek
Tony Lass – Cadbury plc
Mohd Nor Kailany – FELDA
Abetnego Tarigan – Sawit Watch

Only two environmental/nature conservation NGOs (WWF and Conservation International) and two social/development NGOs (Oxfam and Sawit Watch) are represented on the board. The other 12 members represent oil palm growers (4), palm oil processors and/or traders (2), consumer goods manufacturers (2), retailers (2), banks/investors (2).

Additionally, its ordinary and affiliate members include some very well-known corporations typically associated with social and environmental damage – Cargill, Cognis, International Finance Corporation, British Petroleum, Bunge, Syngenta and Bayer, among others.

The RSPO has been a long, time-consuming and expensive process, involving industry, commerce and some social and conservation NGOs.6 The question is: why did the private sector get involved in it? The answer is given very clearly in an “Overview of RSPO” included in a press release on 24 November 2008:

As a result of all the above-mentioned issues [tropical deforestation, social conflicts over land rights, food versus fuel] some environmental and social NGOs are actively campaigning against palm oil. There is a risk that the adverse publicity might lead the European Union to stop buying palm oil for biodiesel blending or remove tax support for palm biodiesel until palm oil meets the minimum sustainability criteria. Consumer outcry for sustainably produced palm oil in their food, soaps, detergents and cosmetics is also growing louder and must not be ignored.7

When the RSPO process started, the oil palm industry had already managed to achieve a bad reputation as a result of its direct involvement in human rights violations and environmental destruction. Documentation of these include Eric Wakker’s 1999 publication, Forest Fires and the Expansion of Indonesia’s Oil Palm Plantations, and one year later, Wakker and others produced the book Funding Forest Destruction.8

In 2001, having documented the impacts of oil plantations over several years, WRM published its first book on the subject (The Bitter Fruit of Oil Palm), which included three case-studies in countries that were major players in Asia (Indonesia), Latin America (Ecuador) and Africa (Cameroon), accompanied by a number of articles describing struggles in those and other countries against oil palm plantations. Apart from the environmental impacts of these plantations, the book documented a large number of human rights violations linked to oil palm expansion.9

The fact that both issues – forest destruction and human rights violations – had been well documented led large corporations linked to the palm oil chain (from plantations to retailers) to think strategically about the negative effects that growing opposition and negative publicity might have on their businesses in the future. What they felt they needed was a mechanism that could certify that the activity – from the production of oil palm fruit to the industrialisation of palm oil – could meet “minimum sustainability criteria” and garner sufficient credibility with importing country governments and consumers.

No World Bank money for palm oil

Rettet den Regenwald*

The World Bank has invested US$2 billion in palm oil cultivation and use since 1965, at least half of it in Indonesia and Malaysia. Palm oil companies such as Wilmar International were regularly granted loans and development funds by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group. Over the last 45 years, oil palm plantations have grown eightfold worldwide – 23-fold in Indonesia, according to the World Bank. The World Bank has financed 15 palm oil projects in Indonesia and boasts about the “successful establishment of 100,000 hectares of oil palm plantations”.
The impacts have been disastrous: oil palm expansion is the main cause of hundreds of – often violent – land conflicts, rainforest destruction and species extinction in south-east Asia. Indigenous peoples have been deprived of their homes and livelihoods for palm oil. Thousands of orang-utans are killed as rainforest is cut and burned down for plantations. In Africa and Latin America, too, people and nature are suffering as a result of fast-expanding, export-oriented oil palm plantations.
Last year, the World Bank could no longer ignore the complaints: in August 2009, World Bank President Robert Zoellick suspended all palm oil funding and announced a comprehensive palm oil strategy. Now, however, the World Bank seems determined to go back to “business as usual”. The new World Bank Draft Framework for Palm Oil is a farce.
The World Bank claims to want to promote “sustainable” palm oil production, but the vast industrial plantations which they want to continue funding and the production of great quantities of palm oil for the global market can be neither environmentally nor socially sustainable. Palm oil production consumes vast quantities of energy, land, fertile soils and water. RSPO certification cannot change this fact. Palm oil is now contained in ever more products, from food to cosmetics and cleaners, and it is being increasingly used for biodiesel and in power stations. This disastrous development must be stopped.
On 21 September 2010, environmental and social campaigners worldwide marked the International Day Against Tree Monocultures. Several NGOs collected signatures to a letter to be sent to the World Bank. The letter can be read at: http://www.rainforest-rescue.org/protestaktion.php?id=623

* Rettet den Regenwald (“Save the rainforest”) is a German-based NGO. For more information, see: http://www.rainforest-rescue.org/index.php

The “solution”: voluntary certification

The chosen mechanism –the RSPO – was to a large extent modelled on the previous WWF-led process of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). As in the FSC, the RSPO came up with a set of Principles and Criteria resulting from a negotiation process involving a broad range of “stakeholders”; compliance with those standards would be assessed by third-party certification. Both mechanisms also assure consumers that their certified products are sustainably produced: the RSPO through its own name, “Sustainable Palm Oil”, and the FSC through its stated commitment that “products carrying the FSC label are independently certified to assure consumers that they come from forests that are managed to meet the social, economic and ecological needs of present and future generations”.10

The fundamental problem here, however, is that large-scale monoculture tree plantations cannot be socially and ecologically “sustainable”. In the case of FSC, WRM has produced ample documented evidence proving that large-scale monoculture tree plantations are uncertifiable due to their social and environmental impacts.11 The same is true for large-scale monoculture oil palm plantations. The only forms of palm oil production that are ecologically sustainable is that of local communities using natural palm stands in West Africa – where oil palm is a native species.12

However, most of the oil traded internationally – even from West Africa – comes from large-scale monoculture oil palm plantations with profound social and environmental impacts. As with plantations of other trees – such as eucalyptus and pines – the problem is not the species planted but the form and scale in which they are cultivated.
To avoid confusion, it is important to note that industrial production13 of palm oil fruit is carried out in three main forms: 1) large, corporate-owned plantations; 2) smallholder farmers’ land; 3) a combination of both – the “nucleus estate-outgrowers” model. However, in all three cases the result is the same: a large area of contiguous land is occupied by monoculture oil palm plantations.

The impact of such plantations on plant and animal biodiversity is enormous, because they destroy the habitat – usually forest ecosystems – of a large number of species. This impact is magnified by the heavy use of agrotoxins, ranging from herbicides to insecticides, that result in the elimination of yet more animal and plant species. The chemicals pollute local water resources, which are also affected by the extensive drainage systems put in place for the plantations. Monoculture plantations, moreover, provoke erosion, because land formerly covered by forest is cleared prior to plantation, leaving the soil exposed to heavy tropical rains.

The consequences of plantations for local communities are often severe, particularly in corporate-owned plantations that appropriate large areas of land which had hitherto been in the hands of indigenous or peasant populations and had provided for their livelihoods. The dispossession generates resistance from local people, who are then confronted by repression from state forces and the oil palm companies themselves. The violation of land rights is thus typically followed by other human rights violations, including even the right to life.

Leaving aside other social and environmental impacts, it is a well-known fact that most of the plantations owned by companies involved in the RSPO process have been established at the expense of tropical forests. In spite of that, the fruit harvested from those same plantations will be industrialised and sold as “sustainable” palm oil. This is made possible by one of the RSPO’s criteria (7.3), which states that certification will check that “New plantings since November 2005 have not replaced primary forest”. This of course means that all deforestation prior to that date will not be taken into account, and that plantations where such deforestation occurred will still receive the RSPO seal of approval. Given that oil palms can be harvested for up to 30 years, this implies that much of the palm oil traded with the RSPO “sustainable” seal in the next 10–20 years will be harvested from plantations that have “replaced primary forest”.

The scenario most likely to result from the RSPO process is that in the future there will be two production sectors supplying different markets. On the one hand there will be a group of companies with certification that will attempt to a greater or lesser extent to comply with the principles and criteria adopted by the RSPO, while on the other hand there will be a second group of uncertified companies that will continue with “business as usual”. The first will cater for markets like the European Union, where consumers – and governments – demand compliance with certain social and environmental standards, while the second will supply all the other, less demanding markets.

To complicate matters further, what is being certified is not the overall performance of an oil palm company, but specific plantation areas. This means that it is possible that one company will have some of its operations certified under RSPO principles and criteria while it carries out other operations that violate those same principles. This would be a likely scenario in plantations owned by one company in different regions within a country, as well as in different countries.

The final result will be that the cultivation of oil palm will continue to expand, and the accumulated impacts of both “sustainable” and other plantations will continue to have serious impacts on people and their environment. The RSPO will have fulfilled its main objective: growth (as stated in the RSPO website: “Promoting the Growth and Use of Sustainable Palm Oil”).

Global oilpalm area, 1980–2009 from 4.3m to 14.7m hectares

oilpalmchart

Source: FAOSTAT

Sustainable, improved or greenwashed?

The problem with the RSPO is that it conveys the message that palm oil can be certified as “sustainable”. Confronted with that claim, the only possible response from anyone who knows about the impact of large-scale oil palm monoculture is that RSPO certification is a fraud.

Most people would of course agree that a company that complies with some of the more progressive social and environmental criteria included in the RSPO’s principles and criteria will have improved its performance. Even when the wording of almost every criterion allows for some “flexibility” in its interpretation, some criteria are at least a step forward as compared with currently prevailing practices. For instance, criterion 6.5 establishes that “Pay and conditions for employees and for employees of contractors always meet at least legal or industry minimum standards and are sufficient to provide decent living wages.” It is not much to require “minimum standard” wages, and it is difficult to define what the phrase “decent living wages” means, but it is obviously better than nothing.

Some social organisations, particularly in Indonesia  have seen this process as an opportunity for helping to open up political space for indigenous peoples and affected communities. It is clear to them that the RSPO cannot solve the fundamental problems of land tenure and community rights, but it has been successfully used by some communities to assert their rights, and to force member companies to respect the rights of communities affected by their oil palm operations. As some companies attempt to apply the RSPO standard, this is helping to show that companies and the industry overall will not be able to respect indigenous peoples’ and communities’ rights unless there is legal reform.

The bigger question, however, is not whether the RSPO contributes to improving current practices –which it probably will in some cases – but whether it can be a useful means for addressing the industry’s most severe impacts on forests, local peoples, soils, water, biodiversity and climate. And the answer is: no.

With forests, the RSPO legalises past, present and future destruction of all types of forest, with the exception of “primary forests” and “rare, threatened or endangered species and high conservation value habitats”. As for the rights of local people, the criteria do not provide sufficient safeguards against the further expansion of oil palm plantations over their territories, which will deprive them of their lands and means of livelihoods and adversely affect their health. When it comes to soils, water and biodiversity, the RSPO will serve only to disguise the inevitable impacts of oil palm plantation management on these three crucial resources, while forest destruction will add further CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.

Widespread civil society opposition

In contrast to the Forest Stewardship Council – and probably as a result of experience with it – few civil society organisations have joined the RSPO process, and many are actively opposing it.

In October 2008, a large number of national and international organisations responded to the first Latin American meeting of the RSPO with an “International Declaration Against the ‘Greenwashing’ of Palm Oil by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil”.14 The choice of Colombia as the site of the meeting only confirmed the concerns of those organisations. The Colombian military and paramilitary forces have routinely used murder, torture, rape and “disappearances” in evicting whole communities to make way for oil palm plantations.

The declaration called the RSPO “a tool for the expansion of the palm oil business” and “another attempt at camouflaging and denying the true situation, providing ‘a green-wash’ to make a model of production that is intrinsically destructive and socially and environmentally unsustainable, appear to be ‘responsible’.” It gave several reasons for rejecting the RSPO, including:

  • that the principles and criteria proposed by RSPO to define sustainability include large-scale plantations;
  • that the RSPO is designed to legitimate the continuous expansion of the palm oil industry;
  • that any model that includes the conversion of natural habitats into large-scale monoculture plantations cannot, by definition, be sustainable;
  • that the RSPO is interested in economic growth and opening up markets for palm oil, not social and environmental sustainability;
  • that the RSPO is dominated by industry and does not genuinely consult affected communities;
  • that the participation of NGOs in RSPO, such as the WWF, only legitimates an unacceptable process;
  • that the RSPO allows companies to certify individual plantations, eluding overall assessment of their whole production.

A year later, just before the RSPO’s 2009 general assembly in Malaysia, an open letter was sent to RSPO and WWF by a number of organisations under the heading “Oil palm monocultures will never be sustainable”.15 The letter stated:

We are deeply concerned that RSPO certification is being used to legitimise an expansion in the demand for palm oil and thus in oil palm plantations, and it serves to greenwash the disastrous social and environmental impacts of the palm oil industry. The RSPO standards do not exclude clear cutting of many natural forests, the destruction of other important ecosystems, nor plantings on peat. The RSPO certifies plantations which impact on the livelihoods of local communities and their environments. The problems are exacerbated by the in-built conflict of interest in the system under which a company wanting to be certified commissions another company to carry out the assessment.

The need to step up the struggle

Regardless of the good intentions of the NGO representatives participating in the RSPO process, or even those of participants from other sectors, it is obvious that the majority of the members and affiliate members of the RSPO do not question the expansion of oil palm monocultures. On the contrary, they are actively seeking to boost both production and consumption in traditional markets (food, soaps, detergents and cosmetics) and in the emerging market of agrofuels. While it is true that many aspects of the production process can be improved, it is equally true that the model as a whole – even with these improvements – continues to be unsustainable.

The RSPO process did not emerge out of the blue, but was in fact an industry response to the many local resistance struggles and national and international campaigns waged to denounce the current situation. Therefore, rather than supporting or opposing the RSPO process, what is most important now is to step up these struggles and campaigns to curb the further advance of this essentially destructive industrial model. The key challenge today is not to improve large-scale monoculture oil palm plantations, but rather to halt their expansion.

1 – This article is an edited version of a briefing by the WRM. The full briefing, which was published in March 2010,  can be downloaded from: http://www.wrm.org.uy/publications/briefings/RSPO.pdf
2 – The website of RSPO is:  www.rspo.org
3 – Although the concept of sustainability is open to many interpretations, most people would probably agree with the following definition from Wikipedia: “Sustainability is the capacity to endure. In ecology the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. For humans it is the potential for long-term maintenance of well-being, which in turn depends on the well-being of the natural world and the responsible use of natural resources.”
4 – See section on oil palm plantations on the WRM’s website at http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/palm.html
5 – http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/241082,greenpeace-first-sustainable-palm-oil-shipment-not-sustainable.html
6 – The RSPO was established in 2004 and the process for starting certification was completed in August 2008
7 – http://www.rspo.org/resource_centre/Press%20Release%20-%20Post%20RT6_1.pdf
8 – Eric Wakker et al., Funding Forest Destruction. The Involvement of Dutch Banks in the Financing of Oil Palm Plantations in Indonesia, Amsterdam, Bogor, Castricum: AIDEnvironment, Telapak and Contrast Advies, 2000.
9 – In September 2006, WRM published a second book: Oil Palm: From Cosmetics to Biodiesel – Colonization Lives On.
10 – http://www.fsc.org/vision_mission.html
11 – See WRM web page section on certification: http://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/FSC/index.html
12 – Wild groves are harvested by subsistence farmers, who extract the oil by traditional methods. In West Africa, palm oil is a major food item and it is typically used for making foodstuffs, as its natural flavour has a distinguishable effect on dishes.  Palm oil is also used to make palm wine and local medicines.  The leaves may also be used to make thatches, which are used as roofing material in certain areas.
13 – Harvesting from wild groves or small scale plantations is not considered to be “industrial production”.
14 – See: http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/docs/17-11-2008-ENGLISH-RSPOInternational-Declaration.pdf
15 – http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/RSPO_letter.html

GOING FURTHER

WRM, “RSPO: The ‘greening’ of the dark palm oil business”, Montevideo, March 2010.
http://www.wrm.org.uy/publications/briefings/RSPO.pdf
“International Declaration Against the ‘Greenwashing’ of Palm Oil by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil” signed by 256 Organisations.
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/docs/17-11-2008-ENGLISH-RSPOInternational-Declaration.pdf
“Oil palm monocultures will never be sustainable” Open letter to RSPA and WWF.
http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/RSPO_letter.html
“Sustainable monocultures no thanks!”, GRAIN, Against the grain, June 2006.
http://www.grain.org/articles_files/atg-6-en.pdf
The WRM website, with a special resource page on plantations: http://www.wrm.org.uy/

February 14, 2011 Posted by | Environmentalism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Revolution in Egypt – Divergent Views

Press TV | February 11, 2011

‘Military top brass atop Egypt pyramid’

Interview with Said Zulficar, political analyst, Cairo, Egypt

Egyptians are jubilant over achieving the first step in forcing decades-long dictator Hosni Mubarak out of power, as the military is now in charge.
The following is the transcription of Press TV’s interview with Said Zulficar, a political analyst in the capital Cairo, regarding the latest developments in the crisis-hit country and what might follow.

Press TV: Mr. Zulficar, how are you feeling right now? It must just be an electric time in Cairo at the moment.

Zulficar: Well I was in Tahrir (Liberation) Square when the news came that the president has resigned. I knew that a couple of hours before he had left Cairo and was in Sharm el-Sheikh. I was in front of the television station which was surrounded by several thousand demonstrators and I walked to Tahrir (Liberation) Square when the news came out. Of course there was over joy, jubilation, etc… I still have reservations about this whole thing because although we have the first step or the first necessity demanded by people that the president resigns and leaves but the regime seems still to be in place because the person who is the head of the military council is one of his closest associates. General Tantawi has been minister of defense for more than 25 years and he is a very close friend of President Mubarak. So what has happened is, I think, the military top brass have found out that the president was a liability and that they must put order, they must save the bridges, the opposition and the state and they are taking over.

Now what is [Vice President] Omar Suleiman’s position? No one knows that he remains in his position as vice president. The government of course is going to be changed. But the top brass, all of the members of this military council, [are] all very close hand-picked generals picked by Mubarak over the years. And obviously screened by CIA. So I still have reservations, we’re just starting. We have succeeded in a very important step which is getting rid of Mubarak. But Mubarak for the past five years has not been governing this country. He’s been sitting in Sharm el-Sheikh where he is now; he has been for five years. He hardly ever comes to Cairo. It has been run by General Omar Suleiman who was vice president until a couple of hours ago, may still be. It was run, from security point of view and from a foreign policy point of view by Omar Suleiman. He is a close friend of the Israelis and of the Americans. Nothing has changed.

Press TV: The question I want o pose to you is 18 days, such a short amount of time for such an uprooting revolution that people want. What does this 18 days signify to us? Does it signify that the army possibly in coordination with other powers has implemented a plan B or is that assessment taken from people’s success and their achievement in 18 short days?

Zulficar: My assessment is the fear which is for the populations to be afraid of the regime has changed camps. The people are no longer afraid. They have shown that they can overturn an oppressive government. But fear is in the other camp. And the other camp was not just the regime but the people are supporting the regime, which was the army. I still think that the top brass of the army has not changed that fundamental feeling. They are doing what they call the crisis management. They are in daily, maybe in hourly contact with the Pentagon, these people. They are all hand-picked. So I suspect that the Pentagon has been advising them what to do. That they have to get rid of Mubarak who was a total liability and that they must do some crisis management, which is take over power and try and have certain amounts of reform which I fear might be cosmetic unless the people who are no longer afraid must continue the movement. They must not be demobilized by what happened tonight. They must not demobilize. They must still maintain the aims of the movement. They must maintain the demands which are the dissolution of both houses of the parliament, the abrogation of the emergency law, the establishment of social justice and a normal, legal justice and having a civilian government.

We don’t want a military dictatorship here. We don’t trust this top brass even though they have changed style but they only changed style because they are in fear. They are in fear of popular power.

Press TV: You’re still in touch with what’s going on on the streets. I guess tonight people are going to be just thinking about celebrating and not about politics at all.

Zulficar: Yes, they are celebrating right now with fireworks right now just outside my window. So people are celebrating but I just hope they will not demobilize. This is only the very beginning of a long process. We must be sure that we have civilian rule and not military rule. We must be sure that the remnants of this regime that are still in positions of power do not remain in these positions.

As I said this military committee is handpicked by Mubarak. They are all American stooges basically and they all have relations with Israel. As long as these people run the show we have to be very vigilant. And one last word I have is to give thanks to the Tunisian people who showed us the way. They showed that you could overthrow oppressive, terrible, dictatorial regimes just by people’s power and by specific means by civilian upsurge. The national Intifada which is unheard of in our part of the world. The dictators in all over the Arab world must be shivering now. They must be trembling because their time will come and I am sure people in Washington must be very distraught because their whole so-called new Middle East is falling apart. And people are freeing themselves from the shackles of American imperialism and its Israeli acolyte, Israeli colonialism.

Press TV: I would like to ask your predictions now because you have been on defense over the last couple of weeks. What would be the determining factor for you?

Zulficar: As I said I have reservations about being overjoyed. Of course we have to be overjoyed but as I said Mubarak was not ruling this country over the past five years. It was ruled by Omar Suleiman and people around him. So we have to be very vigilant. We must not lay down our arms. We must not demobilize. I have discovered some young people, the leaders of the April Sixth Movement, Ahmad Maher people like Honein …who just came out of prison. These young people who are their late twenties or early thirties who started this whole Internet revolution through Facebook. They deserve to become ministers in this country. They deserve to have a role and get rid of all these old faces that have been mismanaging for 60 years a country which could have been wealthy, which is now in chaos and in poverty because it has been looted by the people who have been mismanaging and running it, by the family of Hosni Mubarak and wild-cat capitalists that they have around it. We should make sure not to lay down our arms and let the young people take over from these generations of old people that have mismanaged and misruled what used to be ‘the mother of the world.’ Now when you look at it, it is nothing but debris.

February 12, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Boycott roundup: international day of action called for Land Day

Report, The Electronic Intifada, 11 February 2011

As part of a regular feature, The Electronic Intifada reports on the latest developments of the Palestinian-led global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli violations of human rights and policies of apartheid.

BDS campaigners scored a significant victory this month as the London Borough of Tower Hamlets voted to exclude Veolia, a French firm that has provided services to the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, from receiving any contracts with the municipality. Activists have also staged protests and launched campaigns in Ireland, Belgium, Palestine. Meanwhile, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) announced the third annual global day of action to be held on 30 March 2011.

Ireland

Activists with the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) are calling for a global boycott against Israeli “blood diamonds” on Valentine’s Day, 14 February.

In a statement on the campaign’s website, IPSC activists are urging consumers to make conscious choices in buying jewelry gifts for their loved ones.

“This Valentine’s Day, don’t let dazzling diamonds blind you to the plight of those whose misery and suffering is funded by revenue from the Israeli diamond industry,” IPSC stated (“Global Call to Action – Flashy Stones and Broken Bones,” January 2011).

IPSC has campaigned against the Israeli diamond industry for more than a year, petitioning Irish jewelry associations to stop carrying Israeli gemstones.

Sean Clinton, chairman of the Limerick branch of IPSC, wrote last year for The Electronic Intifada that “The diamond industry is a major pillar of the Israeli economy … No other developed country is so heavily dependent on a single luxury commodity and the goodwill of individual consumers globally.”

Clinton added that Israel holds a “dominant position” in the diamond industry, and the state currently chairs the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, an international regulation and certification program that is tasked with eliminating “blood diamonds” from the industry. Blood diamonds are gemstones mined from areas in the world — mostly in the African and Asian continents — that are involved in, or directly finance, ongoing human rights violations, violence and war.

In its campaign statement, the IPSC added: “[diamonds] are the currency of broken bones and bombed out homes in Gaza. The burning glow of the white phosphorous that rained down on Gaza doesn’t come cheap, but the $1 billion the Israeli military derives from revenue from the Israeli diamond industry each year helps to fill the coffers of the criminal military regime.”

IPSC stated: “Every time someone buys a diamond processed in Israel some of the money goes to funding the Israeli war machine that stands accused of war crimes. Israeli diamonds are blood diamonds.”

United Kingdom

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK is intensifying its efforts to urge local authorities to exclude French urban services corporation Veolia from major public contracts. This comes on the heels of the recent findings of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine that Veolia is liable for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law because of its numerous contracts with the Israeli government’s settlement industry in the occupied West Bank (“The Boycott VEOLIA Campaign-A Fortnight of Actions In February,” February 2011).

Campaigners around the UK are planning a series of actions, including sit-in protests at two London borough council meetings to protest possible city contracts with Veolia for waste management systems. On 1 February, the group organized a protest at Veolia’s UK headquarters in Islington, North London.

On 2 February, Tower Hamlets, one of the London Borough councils, passed a motion to formally exclude Veolia from its urban waste management contracts, citing that the corporation has “clearly committed acts of grave misconduct in relation to the Palestinian people and the maintenance of illegal settlements …” (“Full text of the Council meeting,”2 February 2011 [PDF]).

Additionally, the council voted to support the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign “against the pariah state of Israel,” and stated that “urgent steps should be taken to review all contracts with Veolia and not to place any further contracts with the company.”

The council also passed a motion to urge the Mayor of London to write to Veolia to communicate the council’s “determination to terminate any relationship” to the company.

The action by Tower Hamlets is reminiscent of similar actions by many UK local authorities during the 1980s campaigns against apartheid in South Africa.

After the Russell Tribunal, Veolia Environmental Services UK spread the news that the company had pulled out of the operation of the Tovlan landfill site in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank. The landfill serves mainly illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and municipalities in Israel. Meanwhile, Who Profits? (www.whoprofits.org) — a project of the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace — verified the information against facts on the ground. The Israeli environmental protection authority of the settlements in the West Bank told Who Profits? in early February that Veolia is still operating the Tovlan landfill.

Belgium

Solidarity activists staged a protest inside an international tourism industry exhibition in Brussels on 5 February, encouraging attendees to boycott the Israeli exhibit. Wearing matching T-shirts emblazoned with “Free Palestine” and “Palestine Vivra” (Palestine will live), with “Boycott Israel” on the back, activists formed a human chain around the Israeli tourism tent and chanted in support of boycott.

The protest, organized by European solidarity group Generation-Palestine (generation-palestine.org), was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube.

Palestine

Palestine-based activists with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) continued to put pressure on American singer Macy Gray, who has stated she will perform in Tel Aviv despite repeated protests by Palestinian, Israeli and international boycott campaigners.

In its statement on 9 February, PACBI expressed “great dismay” at Gray’s decision to keep her Tel Aviv performance date, and warned her that she would be “electing to serve directly the interests of the [public relations] campaign to Brand Israel” (“Open letter to Macy Gray,” 9 February 2011)

“This is a campaign that has been launched by the Israeli government and promoted by institutions throughout the country and abroad in order to whitewash Israel’s violations of international law and project a false image of normalcy,” PACBI added.

PACBI stated that Gray has promoted this campaign already, by playing at the opening of the Israeli consulate offices in Los Angeles and, more recently, releasing a statement declaring her support for Israel at the request of Israeli diplomats in California.

After Gray announced that she would proceed with her planned performance, she said she would visit Ramallah, the West Bank city where the US-supported Palestinian Authority is based, during her visit, a move which PACBI said is a “a patronizing attempt to dictate the terms of the Palestinian people’s struggle — by wanting to visit Palestinian schools or play a show in Ramallah, as though the Palestinian people need your pity.”

PACBI added: “We have asked, as an occupied people, for the minimum act of solidarity by not playing in Tel Aviv. We have been answered with your dismissal of our struggle in favor of your own way of helping, as though you know better. While we acknowledge there are many ways to help, we ask that people who do so are not directly delegitimizing the popular will of the Palestinian people. By playing in Tel Aviv you will do this and more. Your action will imply support of the occupation and the colonial Israeli state, denial of the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, and dismissal of a system of apartheid.”

Global boycott, divestment and sanctions day of action

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) announced the third annual global day of action to be held on 30 March 2011, in a call to intensify boycott actions around the world while commemorating an historic day in the Palestinian anti-colonialist movement (“Commemorate Land Day 2011 by Joining the Global BDS Day of Action“).

“Inspired and buoyed by the popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia and their unique manifestation of courage, dignity, civility and determination, we stand resolutely with worldwide struggles for self-determination, freedom, democracy, social justice and equality, and we call for intensifying BDS actions globally as the main form of solidarity with Palestinian rights,” the BNC stated.

The BNC said it is calling on people of conscience all over the world to join the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement by launching and supporting local, national and international divestment initiatives; by taking part in consumer boycotts; to pursue legal action against Israeli war criminals and violations of international law by corporations complicit in Israeli military policies; and more.

The date of the global day of action, 30 March, is the annual commemoration of Land Day. In 1976 the Israeli military shot and killed six young Palestinian citizens of Israel during a massive uprising in protest of the Israeli government’s plan to build new Jewish-only colonies and expand existing Jewish cities.

“Today, Land Day symbolizes Palestinian resistance to Israel’s ongoing land expropriation, colonization, occupation and apartheid,” the BNC wrote in its statement.

The first Global BDS Day of Action was announced by Palestinian civil society with overwhelming support at the World Social Forum in 2009.

February 11, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Video | Leave a comment

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