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.