Bonding with Israel

Middle East Eye

While in Mexico earlier this month, I was searching for a word in an online dictionary when I was accosted by a two-pronged advertisement in Spanish—at the top and side of the screen—declaring Israel “the best gift” for Hanukkah.

The ad directed me to the website of the Development Corporation for Israel, commonly known as Israel Bonds, the New York-based broker-dealer and underwriter for securities issued by the state of Israel in the United States.

Israel Bonds was founded in 1951 by David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, and has done a particularly brisk business as of late, with 2015 sales reportedly exceeding $1 billion for the third consecutive year. Worldwide, nearly $40 billion worth of bonds have been sold since their emergence on the scene nearly 65 years ago.

In 2011, bonds were made available for purchase online, generating more than $100 million in four years. Bond names range endearingly from Maccabee to Sabra to Mazel Tov to eMitzvah.

Such is the outfit’s prestige, it seems, that Israel Bonds President and CEO Israel “Izzy” Tapoohi got to ring the closing bell for the Nasdaq Stock Market in Times Square this past 17 December.

As usual, the press release on the Nasdaq website made the closing bell sound like the sensational equivalent of the first moon landing—with “exciting viral content and ceremony photos” promised on the Nasdaq Tumblr page and a webcast offered at two different online locations.

Some may wonder why the state of Israel requires yet more billions on top of the billions of dollars it already receives from the U.S. on an annual basis. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

Change in Spain: Podemos or no podemos?

Al Jazeera English

In a recent interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, Spain's interior minister and candidate for Congress Jorge Fernandez Diaz revealed that he possesses his very own guardian angel named Marcelo, who helps him with tasks such as parking the car. Coming from a man who awards national policing medals to statues of the Virgin Mary, such expressions of faith are not enormously surprising.

As Spain heads to vote in general elections on December 20, it remains to be seen whether Marcelo's services also extend to the ballot box. Various polls have put the right-wing People's Party (PP) - the domain of Fernandez Diaz and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy - in the lead, but these aren't your run-of-the-mill Spanish elections.

The traditional showdown between the PP and the Socialist Party (PSOE), the two entities that have dominated Spain's political scene in the post-Franco era, has been expanded to include two additional contenders for a substantial piece of the pie: the right-wing Ciudadanos Party and the left-wing Podemos (meaning "we can" in Spanish).

The latter materialised just last year and rapidly accrued a widespread following with its anti-austerity, pro-transparency message - one that resonated with sectors of the population devastated by the financial crisis.

Much of the devastation was a result of the fact that, in exemplary neoliberal fashion, the Spanish powers that be had shunted blame for the crisis onto the lower echelons of society, slashing education, healthcare, and other necessities and evicting people en masse from their homes. Meanwhile, those same powers continued to indulge in the privileges of institutional corruption. READ MORE AT ALJAZEERA ENGLISH.

Elections in Spain: The End of an Era

TeleSUR ENGLISH

A recent headline in Spain’s digital newspaper El Diario announced that, according to spokesperson Pablo Casado of the right-wing People’s Party (PP), Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had “won the debate he didn’t attend.” Rajoy happens to head the PP. 

The debate in question was organized by the prominent Spanish paper El País ahead of the country’s general elections on December 20. Rajoy had refused to grace with his presence the other participants: the leaders of the PSOE, Ciudadanos, and Podemos—the three political parties that appear poised to take second, third and fourth place, respectively, in the elections, at least according to an opinion poll by the state-funded Center for Sociological Research. (Other pollsters have warned of the extreme unpredictability of the outcome.) 

It is of course the function of spokespeople everywhere to warp reality in favor of whatever product they’re selling—otherwise they’d be out of a job—but Casado’s declaration of victory in absentia is particularly misleading. After all, the real loser on Dec. 20 will be, hands down, the two-party system that has traditionally dominated Spanish politics, of which Rajoy’s PP constitutes one half. 

Additional delusions surface in Casado’s claim that it’s wrong to assume that “new politics are better than good politics,” the implication being that the “old politics” are automatically good. Consider the fact that it was none other than the bipartisan stewardship of crippling austerity measures and home evictions in the aftermath of the financial crisis—itself also incidentally a hallmark of politics as usual—that spurred the eruption of Podemos in the first place. READ MORE AT TeleSUR ENGLISH.

The Cult of Countering Violent Extremism

TeleSUR English

Here’s an acronym you may start hearing more of: CVE. It stands for “Countering Violent Extremism,” and it’s all the rage these days in U.S. establishment circles.

Sarah Sewall—the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights—described the CVE phenomenon in a recent speech as “abroader approach to address the underlying forces that make people vulnerable to violent extremism.” These “civilian-led… and preventive efforts” are, she said, “an essential complement to our military and intelligence actions against terrorism”—because, while “we must continue to capture and kill terrorists of all stripes… we must remember that no number of air strikes, soldiers, or spies can eliminate the complex motives and hateful ideologies that feed terrorism.”

Were we not willfully delusional, we might also remember that it is precisely our military “actions” that produce much of the violent extremism that must then be countered. Case in point: prior to the devastating U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq experienced not a single suicide bombing. Furthermore, the fact that America’s anti-terror efforts have entailed massive civilian casualties might render some cases of individual and/or communal hatred slightly less than “complex.”

This is not, of course, to offer a blanket excuse for acts of terrorism, but rather to propose that entities interested in countering violent extremism could start by ending their own extreme violence.

However, since there’s no place for logic in imperial hypocrisy, we end up instead with the CVE enterprise, which cleanly diverts all blame for extremist production onto afflicted communities and encourages them to engage in self-policing. As Sewall noted in her speech, CVE urges a “whole of society” approach encompassing “local officials, businesses, religious leaders, researchers, women, youth, and… former members and victims of violent extremist groups,” all of whom are supposed to work together to discourage extremism by reporting “suspicious activity” and identifying individuals who may be on a “path to radicalization.” READ MORE AT TeleSUR ENGLISH.

Here’s an acronym you may start hearing more of: CVE. It stands for “Countering Violent Extremism,” and it’s all the rage these days in U.S. establishment circles.

Sarah Sewall—the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights—described the CVE phenomenon in a recent speech as “a broader approach to address the underlying forces that make people vulnerable to violent extremism.” These “civilian-led … and preventive efforts” are, she said, “an essential complement to our military and intelligence actions against terrorism”—because, while “we must continue to capture and kill terrorists of all stripes … we must remember that no number of air strikes, soldiers, or spies can eliminate the complex motives and hateful ideologies that feed terrorism.”

Were we not willfully delusional, we might also remember that it is precisely our military “actions” that produce much of the violent extremism that must then be countered. Case in point: prior to the devastating U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq experienced not a single suicide bombing. Furthermore, the fact that America’s anti-terror efforts have entailed massive civilian casualties might render some cases of individual and/or communal hatred slightly less than “complex.”

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-Cult-of-Countering-Violent-Extremism-20151204-0014.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

Here’s an acronym you may start hearing more of: CVE. It stands for “Countering Violent Extremism,” and it’s all the rage these days in U.S. establishment circles.

Sarah Sewall—the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights—described the CVE phenomenon in a recent speech as “a broader approach to address the underlying forces that make people vulnerable to violent extremism.” These “civilian-led … and preventive efforts” are, she said, “an essential complement to our military and intelligence actions against terrorism”—because, while “we must continue to capture and kill terrorists of all stripes … we must remember that no number of air strikes, soldiers, or spies can eliminate the complex motives and hateful ideologies that feed terrorism.”

Were we not willfully delusional, we might also remember that it is precisely our military “actions” that produce much of the violent extremism that must then be countered. Case in point: prior to the devastating U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq experienced not a single suicide bombing. Furthermore, the fact that America’s anti-terror efforts have entailed massive civilian casualties might render some cases of individual and/or communal hatred slightly less than “complex.”

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-Cult-of-Countering-Violent-Extremism-20151204-0014.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

Here’s an acronym you may start hearing more of: CVE. It stands for “Countering Violent Extremism,” and it’s all the rage these days in U.S. establishment circles.

Sarah Sewall—the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights—described the CVE phenomenon in a recent speech as “a broader approach to address the underlying forces that make people vulnerable to violent extremism.” These “civilian-led … and preventive efforts” are, she said, “an essential complement to our military and intelligence actions against terrorism”—because, while “we must continue to capture and kill terrorists of all stripes … we must remember that no number of air strikes, soldiers, or spies can eliminate the complex motives and hateful ideologies that feed terrorism.”

Were we not willfully delusional, we might also remember that it is precisely our military “actions” that produce much of the violent extremism that must then be countered. Case in point: prior to the devastating U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq experienced not a single suicide bombing. Furthermore, the fact that America’s anti-terror efforts have entailed massive civilian casualties might render some cases of individual and/or communal hatred slightly less than “complex.”

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-Cult-of-Countering-Violent-Extremism-20151204-0014.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/englishHere’s an acronym you may start hearing more of: CVE. It stands for “Countering Violent Extremism,” and it’s all the rage these days in U.S. establishment circles.

Sarah Sewall—the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights—described the CVE phenomenon in a recent speech as “a broader approach to address the underlying forces that make people vulnerable to violent extremism.” These “civilian-led … and preventive efforts” are, she said, “an essential complement to our military and intelligence actions against terrorism”—because, while “we must continue to capture and kill terrorists of all stripes … we must remember that no number of air strikes, soldiers, or spies can eliminate the complex motives and hateful ideologies that feed terrorism.”

Were we not willfully delusional, we might also remember that it is precisely our military “actions” that produce much of the violent extremism that must then be countered. Case in point: prior to the devastating U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq experienced not a single suicide bombing. Furthermore, the fact that America’s anti-terror efforts have entailed massive civilian casualties might render some cases of individual and/or communal hatred slightly less than “complex.”

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-Cult-of-Countering-Violent-Extremism-20151204-0014.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

HELL IN A SMALL PLACE: THE SAUDI-U.S. WAR IN YEMEN

The Washington Spectator

The travel warning for Yemen the U.S. State Department issued in April 2015 describes a “high security threat level . . . due to terrorist activities and civil unrest.”

Citing continuing activity by organizations like Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the warning specifies that the “U.S. government remains extremely concerned about possible attacks on U.S. citizens.” This is no doubt a valid concern, especially in light of the ongoing United States drone campaign in Yemen and the fact that, as The Washington Post puts it, “the U.S. keeps killing Americans in drone strikes, mostly by accident.” Non-Americans perish at a much higher rate.

If we want to talk about “terrorist activities,” it’s hardly a stretch to point out that the United States is directly and indirectly responsible for terrorizing broad swathes of the Yemeni population. Since the inauguration of its covert action program in Yemen in 2002, the United States has killed up to 1,580 people and wounded hundreds more, according to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The casualties are often collateral damage, not intended targets. Death and injury randomly visited upon unsuspecting victims naturally boosts the sense of terror among Yemenis who, by mere circumstance of their geographic location, are eligible for just such a fate.

Other casualty statistics cast doubt on U.S. claims that it is effectively combating terror. According to a report on Yemen by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “as many as 40 civilians” were killed by drones from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015. The civilian casualties of AQAP-claimed attacks were reported to be “at least 24,” all of them occurring after the March commencement of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition’s aerial bombardment of the country—a lethal intervention into Yemen’s civil war by a coalition that also includes Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, and the Arab states on the Persian Gulf. READ MORE AT THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR.

Remembering Operation Condor

Al Jazeera English

Four decades ago, on November, 25, 1975, the Chilean capital of Santiago hosted a meeting of South American intelligence chiefs, military officers, and government officials with a common commitment to exterminating leftism on the continent.

It was the launch of Operation Condor, a collaborative effort between six countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. With the United States' encouragement, the alliance would go on to torture and murder tens of thousands of civilians.

The codename "Condor", an avian emblem of various Andean nations, was darkly appropriate in other ways. In Argentina, for example, some 30,000 suspected leftists were disappeared during the "dirty war" waged by the military junta that seized power shortly after Operation Condor took off; many were dropped from aircraft into bodies of water.

In other words, this wasn't an innocent flight of the condor.

As historian Greg Grandin notes in his book, Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman, the former US secretary of state offered the following - thinly veiled - murderous advice to the junta's foreign minister in 1976: "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly."

And if the US view wasn't already clear enough, he added: "We understand you must establish authority." READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Interpol on the frontlines against terrorism?

Middle East Eye

From 18-20 November, the Spanish city of Seville hosted the sixth Interpol Counter-Terrorism Working Group Meeting on Foreign Terrorist Fighters. Interpol is the world’s largest international police organisation.

According to the Interpol website, the encounter was meant to enable participants from approximately 40 countries “to exchange best practice on how to address and neutralize the threat posed by ISIS and other terrorist groups using expertise gained in the wider conflict zone as a platform to train and plan attacks against Western and other targets”.

Of particular concern are terrorists who, having departed from Europe itself to join the fight, later bring their expertise back home.

An article about the meeting in Spain’s El Pais newspaper reports Interpol’s calculation that, of an estimated 25,000 international fighters, less than one-fourth have been identified - the majority of them in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Hence the apparent need for ever-tighter collaboration and information-sharing between countries fighting on behalf of “civilization,” as Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz characterised the showdown at his inaugural address in Seville.

Interpol Secretary General Jurgen Stock stressed in his own speech that “information is key to the police battle”. Two days later, it seemed a key battle had already been won on that front; an Interpol news brief announced that Stock had “welcomed the decision by European Union ministers for all EU external border control points to be connected to Interpol’s global databases and for automatic screening of travel documents to be introduced by March 2016”.

In other words, welcome to the age of Even Bigger Brother - and even smaller spaces in which human rights and civil liberties may be asserted. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

Catalonia's declaration of independence

Al Jazeera English

"They are trying to liquidate the unity of a nation with more than five centuries of history."

This dramatic proclamation was made by right-wing Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, up in arms over the resolution just passed by the parliament of Catalonia committing that region to proceed with preparations to secede from Spain.

With a population of more than seven million, Catalonia accounts for approximately one-fifth of Spain's economic output.

Of course, given the country’s long history of repression of Catalan identity and nationalism, the whole "unity" bit is rather disingenuous. As economist Daniel Raventos, a lecturer at the University of Barcelona, recalled to me in an email, the constitutional enshrinement of the "indivisible unity of the Spanish nation" is in fact a relic of the era of Francisco Franco.

Among his many claims to notoriety, the former dictator outlawed the Catalan language and even the use of Catalan names, as well as the Catalan national dance and other customs.

Meanwhile, if we want to talk about liquidating things, it's no doubt helpful to bring up the wanton elimination of Spanish livelihoods in the aftermath of the financial crisis, which saw youth unemployment soar to nearly 60 percent. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Syria Burning

WARSCAPES

Two of the four chapters of Charles Glass’ new book, Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring, begin with jokes. In the first joke, a relic of civil war-era Lebanon, a war-weary Lebanese dog escapes to Syria only to return a couple of months later, to the confoundment of the other dogs:

“Seeing him better groomed and fatter than before, they asked whether the Syrians had been good to him. ‘Very good.’ ‘Did they feed and wash you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then why did you come back?’ ‘I want to bark.’”

The second joke, which Glass describes as a Cold War favorite among Syrians, features a survey question posed to citizens of different nations: “What is your opinion of eating meat?” In Poland, the overwhelming response is, “What do you mean by ‘meat’?” In Ethiopia, it is, “What do you mean by ‘eating’?” The Syrian response, finally, is, “What do you mean by ‘what is your opinion’?”

To be sure, freedom of expression hasn’t exactly been the most salient characteristic of the Syrian Arab Republic under the leadership of the al-Assads—first Hafez, who ruled until his death in June of 2000, and now Bashar—although, as the Lebanese dog attests, there were certainly other comforts. Glass notes in his book that, prior to the 2011 onset of the Syrian civil war, the country not only “fed itself” but also boasted health care and educational services that were “among the best in the region.”

During my own first visit to Syria in 2006, part of an extended and somewhat aimless hitchhiking journey with my friend Amelia, Syrians we spoke to who were not fond of al-Assad generally refrained from criticizing him too loudly. They were, however, less hesitant to voice their negative opinions of our souvenir preferences: colorful posters and decals of the ruling family, which we found amusingly ridiculous, and fake Syrian military epaulettes that we sewed onto wife-beaters.

Now, of course, Syria is far from a joking matter. More than 200,000 people have been killed in the war over the past four years, and millions have been displaced. As Patrick Cockburn remarks in the foreword to Syria Burning, it’s difficult to find an account of the conflict that isn’t hopelessly biased in favor of one side—and indeed, it’s Glass’ defiance of this tradition that makes his work valuable. READ MORE AT WARSCAPES.

Beirut and Paris: A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

TeleSUR English

Where was the global sympathy when a terror attack left at least 44 people dead and 239 others injured in Lebanon?

As news arrived yesterday of terror attacks in Paris that ultimately left more than 120 people dead, U.S. President Barack Obama characterized the situation as “heartbreaking” and an assault “on all of humanity.”

Presidential sympathy had been conspicuously absent the previous day when terror attacks in Beirut left more than 40 dead. Predictably, Western media and social media were much less vocal about the slaughter in Lebanon. And while many of us are presumably aware, to some degree, of the discrepancy in value assigned to people’s lives on the basis of nationality and other factors, the back-to-back massacres in Beirut and Paris served to illustrate without a doubt the fact that, when it comes down to it, “all of humanity” doesn’t necessarily qualify as human.

Of course, there’s more to the story than the relative dehumanization of the Lebanese as compared with their French counterparts. There’s also the prevailing notion in the West that — as far as bombs, explosions, and killings go — Lebanon is simply One of Those Places Where Such Things Happen. The same goes for places like Iraq, to an even greater extent, which is part of the reason we don’t see Obama mourning attacks on all of humanity every time he reads the news out of Baghdad.

The situation in Iraq is also obviously more complicated — not to mention the ones in Afghanistan, Yemen, and other locations on the receiving end of U.S. military atrocities. Why doesn’t it break the president’s heart to order drone attacks and other life-extinguishing maneuvers?

Short answer: because it’s not the job of superpowers to engage in self-reflection. Thus, Obama’s selective vision enables him to observe in the case of Paris: “We've seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians.” READ MORE AT TeleSUR ENGLISH.

Where was the global sympathy when a terror attack left at least 44 people dead and 239 others injured in Lebanon?
As news arrived yesterday of terror attacks in Paris that ultimately left more than 120 people dead, U.S. President Barack Obama characterized the situation as “heartbreaking” and an assault “on all of humanity.”

Presidential sympathy had been conspicuously absent the previous day when terror attacks in Beirut left more than 40 dead. Predictably, Western media and social media were much less vocal about the slaughter in Lebanon. And while many of us are presumably aware, to some degree, of the discrepancy in value assigned to people’s lives on the basis of nationality and other factors, the back-to-back massacres in Beirut and Paris served to illustrate without a doubt the fact that, when it comes down to it, “all of humanity” doesn’t necessarily qualify as human.

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Beirut-and-Paris-A-Tale-of-Two-Terror-Attacks-20151114-0016.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

The ‘Hezbollah stronghold’: Dehumanising Dahiyeh

Middle East Eye

Imagine, for one moment, that on 11 September 2001, you turned on your television set to find the following news headlines: “Headquarters of murderous American war machine hit by attacks”; “Epicentre of US financial exploitation rocked by blasts”; “Many deaths as planes hit belligerent global hegemon”.

Chances are you’d view such renderings as al-Qaeda-inspired propaganda and a repulsive affront to the civilians who perished.

When it comes to brutal attacks on cities further from home, however, this exact sort of media approach is shamelessly allowed to fly. It helps, of course, when the people on the receiving end of the attacks have already been so dehumanised as to eliminate the option for civilian identity. Think Iraq or Afghanistan - where, in November of 2001, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman took the liberty of placing “Afghan ‘civilians’” in quotation marks in order to excuse their slaughter by the US.

Nowadays, Lebanon is an increasingly frequent victim of media efforts that are at once sloppy and pernicious. This is particularly true in the case of Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, which are reduced ad nauseam to a “Hezbollah stronghold”. Google “Hezbollah stronghold” and you’ll see what I mean.

The most recent Google results will pertain to yesterday’s double suicide bombings in the neighbourhood of Burj al-Barajneh, which killed more than 40 people and wounded more than 200. The attacks were claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

Criminalizing Syrian Refugees in Lebanon

TeleSUR English

On the corniche in Beirut, the Lebanese capital’s seaside promenade, I recently witnessed the following scene: four Syrian boys who looked to be in their early teens were harmlessly partaking of some snacks on a bench when two members of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) descended upon them on bicycles. Identity papers were demanded, one of the boys was physically searched, and another was made to get down on his hands and knees and painstakingly collect every last sunflower seed shell that had accumulated at the group’s feet while one of the cops inexplicably took photographs of him. (They’ll surely make a great addition to any future brochure showcasing the ISF’s services.)

When my companion approached the boys afterward to ask for details, they claimed the intervention was triggered by their Syrian accents — a plausible hypothesis given the fact that the Lebanese present on the corniche continued to blissfully scatter remnants of their own snacks without meriting attention from the forces of law and order.

The boys added that the police had asked them if they also littered in their own country — to which they had appropriately responded that they could not properly dispose of the sunflower seed shells because the Lebanese government had nowhere to put Beirut’s trash. Indeed, willful incompetence on the part of the state has resulted in an ongoing rubbish crisis, which has meant that, for the past several months, sizable sectors of the capital and environs have found themselves inundated with festering garbage. Needless to say, much of this waste is far less biodegradable than sunflower seeds.

Profiling and harassment are only two of the ways the Lebanese government has complicated Syrian refugee existence. Last October, for example, it flat out stopped admitting refugees, and now requires the ones already present to pay an annual fee of US$200 to remain in the country. A host of other requirements further defy logic: refugees must provide a notarized pledge not to work in Lebanon, as well as copies of a lease agreement or property deed. For refugees who are both poor and forcibly jobless, it’s anyone’s guess where the money for housing — or the US$200 — is supposed to come from. READ MORE AT TeleSUR English.