Chile and Israel: a murderous match?

The New Arab

Since popular protests over extreme economic inequality engulfed Chile two weeks ago, at least 19 people have been killed. 

Over the course of a mere four days, more than 5,400 people have been detained by Chilean security forces, and reports of torture, sexual violence, beatings and other human rights violations abound.

In an unendearing throwback to the US-backed fascist dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet which lasted from 1973 until 1990, right-wing Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera proclaimed that "We are at war" - one of the late dictator's favourite lines - but was quickly forced to backpedal.

Reuters notes that Piñera asked for forgiveness for successive governments on both left and right that failed to act sooner to stem deep inequalities in Latin America's fifth-largest economy - a pretty rich move coming from a literal billionaire.Shortly after the protests broke out, The Independent ran an opinion piece by Benjamin Zinevich on the vibrant history of military collaboration between Chile and Israel, for which the subheading reads, "In recent years, the [Israeli army] has seemingly used a tactic of maiming Palestinian protesters rather than shooting to kill - and that's something we've seen reflected in Chile this week."

Of course, given that the Israeli army has also managed to do things such as kill 59 protesters in a single day in the Gaza Strip, it seems that tactic is somewhat flexible. 

Zinevich reminds us that, in the Pinochet era - during which tens of thousands were detained, tortured, killed or disappeared - Israel was a primary supplier of arms to the military junta.

And yet the partnership didn't end with the fall of the dictatorship: In 2018, for example, the two countries signed an agreement pledging further cooperation in military education, training and doctrine, among other perks. Zinevich writes that, in both regions, those who are affected the most negatively by the alliance are working class and Indigenous people. READ MORE AT THE NEW ARAB.

BOOK REVIEW: The Border System Is Criminal

Review of Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World, by Todd Miller (Verso, 2019). 

Jacobin

On October 1, the New York Times reported on some of Donald Trump’s visions for the United States-Mexico border, including “a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators” and a wall with “spikes on top that could pierce human flesh”:

After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down.

Trump would quickly take to Twitter to decry the moat-alligator-spikes allegations as “Crazy,” although shooting people was apparently still fine in his book. As the president has often said to justify his wall fantasies: “Just ask Israel” — another border-obsessed entity that delights in deploying lethal force against unarmed civilians.

Given the present international landscape, Todd Miller’s Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World couldn’t have come at a better time. Fittingly, part two of the book — “The Global Pacification Industry on the Palestine-Mexico Border” — addresses Israeli contributions to manic US border fortification schemes and other lucrative security endeavors. Israel’s access to a captive Palestinian population on which to test various methods of barbarism gives it a unique advantage in sustaining “a US structure of power and domination” in a world where — as Miller quotes late US diplomat George Kennan’s candid forecast — “we have to accept a certain unchallengeable antagonism between ‘him that has’ and ‘him that has not.’”

Crossing Israel’s notorious Qalandiya checkpoint in the West Bank, Miller observes that it “felt like being strained through the metallic innards of the global classification system . . . Qalandiya was the prime example of the twenty-first-century breed of war, hidden behind the word ‘security.’”

Empire of Borders is hardly just about the “post-9/11 planetary expansion of US border enforcement,” although there is certainly plenty of evidence of the 9/11 Commission Report’s proclamation that “the American homeland is the planet” (how else do you explain things like the presence in Iraq of US Customs and Border Protection officials?). In the course of his exploration, Miller finds that “the harmonized global border system was not necessarily attached to the nation-state, but rather to the global economy; the elite world was not beholden to the flags of individual countries, but rather to the banner of Walmart, Boeing, Google, and the power structure that sustains such corporations.” READ MORE AT JACOBIN.

Just how 'dictator loving' is Twitter?

Middle East Eye

On 2 October, Egyptian film star and political activist Amr Waked tweeted his opinion that Twitter and its CEO Jack Dorsey "should investigate their management and behavior of dictator loving @TwitterMENA@", a reference to what Twitter defines as "the official Twitter account for the Middle East and North Africa".

Waked continued: "Why are they leaving obvious dictator bots active and suspending anti dictator activists[?]"

This would seem to be a valid question in light of reports of a Twitter crackdown on critics of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's regime, which has pursued a typically "draconian response" to recent demonstrations across the country and once again exhibited its penchant for mass arbitrary arrests.

Waked himself announced back in March that he had been sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for “insulting state institutions”. Middle East Eye reported that he was additionally "facing fresh charges" for tweeting against the death penalty - clearly a much greater crime than, you know, manically executing people.

But in an age in which social media is lamentably central to - and sometimes a substitute for - life itself, just how “dictator loving” is Twitter? More broadly, has Twitter wilfully politicised itself, or is it merely haphazardly finding its way in a chaotic and often unregulatable digital realm? READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.