Sixty Percent Of Global Drone Exports Come From Israel — New Data

Rania Khalek

Drones developed by the Israeli firm Elbit have been tested in attacks on Gaza’s children. (Flickr)

Israel has supplied 60.7 percent of the world’s drones since 1985, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

As a result, Israel is the single greatest source of drone proliferation in the world.

In second place is the United States, which accounts for 23.9 percent of global drone exports, followed by Canada at 6.4 percent, France at 1.6 percent, Austria at 1.4 percent, Italy at 1.1 percent, Germany at 1 percent and China at 0.9 percent.

Conversely, the United Kingdom is the world’s number one importer of drones. Between 2010 and 2014, the UK bought 55 drones from Israel and six armed drones from the US, which accounted for one third of global drone deliveries in that time period.

The vast majority of the drone market is comprised of surveillance drones,

The US, UK and Israel are the only countries in the world known to have used armed drones, deployed exclusively against nonwhite predominantly Muslim populations in nations and territories that have been pillaged and destroyed by Western conquest.

The besieged Gaza Strip has served as the leading testing ground for both armed and surveillance drones.

Tested on Palestinians

Over the last decade, Israel’s use of robotic warfare against Palestinians has escalated dramatically, with each new military assault on Gaza relying more heavily on drones than the last.

Last summer, Israel’s 51-day bombing campaign against Gaza killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, including more than 500 children.

Based on data collected by the Al Mezan Center for Human rights, a Corporate Watch investigation found that at least 37 percent of those killed, or 840 people, died in drone strikes alone.

Corporate Watch chart of drone deaths in Gaza by year.

Lost in the numbers is the psychological terror inflicted on the people of the Gaza ghetto, especially children, by the constant presence of drones buzzing overhead with the capacity to rain death on those below at any moment.

This has been wildly lucrative for Israeli arms companies, which exploit Israel’s frequent military assaults as opportunities to expedite the testing of their products on human subjects.

Easy access to a captive Palestinian population to experiment on allows Israeli arms producers to market their products as “combat proven,” a coveted seal of approval that gives Israel a competitive edge in the international arms trade. Israel’s repression technology is then exported to regimes that are similarly invested in subjugating the poor and marginalized.

This dystopian arrangement has paved the way for Israel, a country the size of New Jersey, to rank among the globe’s top arms exporters.

A case in point is Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest military technology firm, which produces 85 percent of the drones that make up the Israeli army’s vast arsenal.

The Hermes 900, a drone manufactured by Elbit, was deployed operationally for the first time against Palestinians in Gaza last summer, even though it was still undergoing testing. Nicknamed the Kochav — which is Hebrew for “star” — the Hermes 900’s blood-soaked performance garnered widespread praise at Israel’s annual drone conference, held less than a month after the Gaza slaughter.

The Hermes 900 is a more advanced version of the Hermes 450, an aerial attack and surveillance drone that was used by the Israeli army to deliberately target civilians in Gaza during Israel’s previous onslaught in late 2008 and early 2009, according to Human Rights Watch.

The Hermes drone was also used to kill civilians in Israel’s attack on Lebanon in 2006, including Red Cross workers, ambulance drivers and dozens of people fleeing their homes in a desperate search for safety from Israeli bombardment.

Marketed in the company brochure as “combat-proven” and “Fighting terror for over a decade,” the Hermes 450 boasts “a class-leading safety and reliability record.”

Apparently impressed by the aircraft’s capacity for bloodshed, the Brazilian government purchased a fleet of Hermes drones to help crush the massive protests that erupted across Brazil against the 2014 World Cup.

Thales UK — a subsidiary of the French company, Thales, which is ranked as the eleventh largest arms producer in the world — signed a $1.6 billion joint venture with Elbit Systems in 2011 to develop a new drone fleet called Watchkeeper for the British military.

The Watchkeeper is being modeled on the Hermes 450, which has been deployed by the British army in Afghanistan.

Elbit might be Israel’s largest drone producer, but it’s hardly the only Israeli company selling equipment tested on Palestinians to regimes around the world.

According to an investigation by Drones UK, Israel has exported drone technology to at least fifty different countries, enabling atrocities and fueling war.

With America’s blessing, Israel sold drones and fighter jets to Sri Lanka, which were used to commit atrocities against Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil minority.

South Korea recently purchased the Heron drone, which is produced by Israel Aerospace Industries and has been deployed for surveillance and target acquisition in Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza.

In addition to helping crush World Cup protests, Israeli drones have been used by Brazilian police to invade the nation’s favelas.

In certain instances, Israel has sold drones to both sides in a given conflict. Both Russia and Georgia — between whom a conflict took place in 2008 — were armed with Israeli drones. Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have reportedly both used Israeli drones.

Meanwhile, Israel’s drone exports to India have provoked a drone “arms race” with neighboring Pakistan, according to the organization Drones UK.

Israel invented drones

Israel was instrumental in pioneering the modern drone due largely to the ideology at its core.

Israel’s creation as a majority Jewish state was precipitated by the pre-meditated ethnic cleansing of 750,000 indigenous Palestinians by Zionist militias in 1948 — which Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Israel has spent every day since then consolidating and expanding its Jewish majority in historic Palestine, which has required tremendous levels of violence, including the ongoing containment and exclusion of the native Palestinian inhabitants still under its control.

The Israeli economy has been built around advancing this goal, giving rise to a booming “homeland security” industry that caters to the designs of Zionism and then repackages occupation-style repression for export and profit.

Drone technology has been crucial to this endeavor.

After suffering heavy losses in its 1973 war with Egypt, the Israeli regime, for the first time in its existence, was met with backlash from an Israeli Jewish public unaccustomed to high soldier casualties.

It was in the aftermath of the 1973 war that the Israeli government began investing heavily in drone technology, minimizing the risk to its soldiers, effectively pacifying future opposition to endless war, expansion and conquest.

Israel Aerospace Industries, known as Israel Aircraft Industries at the time, and the Israeli company Tadiran were tasked with designing drones for real-time intelligence collection in the occupied Sinai.

Soon enough, IAI invented the Scout drone, which was deployed in 1982 to coordinate targeting during Israel’s deadly invasion of Lebanon. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Israel tested and refined a variety of drones on the people of southern Lebanon in an attempt to crush armed resistance to its occupation. With each operation came another wave of advancements in drone technology.

With the start of the second intifada and Israel’s forced withdraw from southern Lebanon in 2000, the occupied West Bank and Gaza became Israel’s primary testing grounds for drone warfare.

Israeli drones provided hidden attack helicopters with coordinates to fire on during Israel’s ruthless 2002 attack on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. As early as 2004, Israeli drones were raining down missiles on the Gaza Strip in targeted assassinations of Palestinians fighters.

Though the US started utilizing and investing in drone technology before Israel, Israel was always one step ahead.

It’s no coincidence that Abraham Karem, an Israeli citizen, designed the Predator drone, which has been deployed by the US military and the CIA to carry out targeted assassinations that have left hundreds of innocent people dead. The Iraqi-born Karem received a degree in aeronautical engineering at the Haifa-based Israel Institute of Technology — better known as the Technion — and got his start at IAI before immigrating to the US after he was blackballed by the Israeli government for starting his own drone company.

Today, Gaza is surrounded with Israeli drones by air, land and sea.

In addition to the surveillance drones that hover overhead, the walls of the Gaza cage will soon be reinforced by Border Patroller, an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), or land drone, armed with remote-controlled weapons. Designed by the Israeli company G-NIUS, a joint venture between Elbit Systems and IAI, the Border Patroller, like the walls it fortifies, will prevent the Palestinian refugees of Gaza from escaping their cage.

The Protector, produced by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, is an unmanned sea vehicle (USV), or boat drone, that roams Gaza’s coast to obstruct Palestinian fishermen from making a living.

If the proliferation of Israel’s aerial drones is any indication, it won’t be long before land and sea drones spread to all corners of the globe.

As long as Israel’s economy is shaped by the subjugation and elimination of Palestinians, it will continue to function as a factory for cutting-edge repression technology that sustains racism and inequality around the globe.

Glyphosate "Probably" Causes Cancer

Colin Todhunter

On Friday 20 March, the World Health Organisation stated that the world's most widely-used weed killer can "probably" cause cancer. The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said that glyphosate was "classified as probably carcinogenic to humans."

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. By Monday, Monsanto's shares had fallen by 2%.

It was no surprise then that the work of WHO cancer specialists from 11 countries was speedily dismissed by Monsanto. In a press release, the company argued the findings are based on ‘junk’ science and cherry picking and are agenda driven.

Philip Miller, Monsanto's vice-president of global regulatory affairs, said:

"We don't know how IARC could reach a conclusion that is such a dramatic departure from the conclusion reached by all regulatory agencies around the globe."

It's not so dramatic given that the sanctioning and TESTING of glyphosate for commercial use has been a seriously flawed affair due to the actions of and conflicts of interest within various regulatory agencies (for example, see this, this, this and this). Moreover, Monsanto itself knows a thing or TWO about junk science, cherry picking and biased agendas being a long-time exponent of such things.

Glyphosate is widely used on crops and has been detected in food, water and in the air after it has been sprayed. Its use has previously been strongly associated with various diseases (see this and this). The evidence for the WHO's conclusion is derived from studies in the US, Canada, and Sweden that have been published since 2001.

To coincide with the IARC’s findings, public promoter of GM golden rice Patrick Moore recently said during an interview on French TV that:

“I do not believe that glyphosate in Argentina is causing cancer. You can drink a whole quart and it won’t hurt you.”

(See here for information about glyphosate use and cancer rates in Argentina).

The interviewer asks if he would like to drink it because he has some available.

Moore: “I’d be happy to… not really. I know it wouldn’t hurt me.”

The interviewer again challenges Moore to drink some.

Moore: “No. I’m not stupid… People try to commit suicide with it and fail fairly regularly.”

The interviewer urges Moore to tell the truth.

Moore: “No, It’s not dangerous to humans.”

Interviewer: “So are you ready to drink ONE glass of glyphosate?”

Moore: “No, I’m not an idiot… Interview me about golden rice… then the interview is finished… you’re a complete jerk.”

Then Moore storms out.

And the lesson is: do not make statements that cannot be substantiated.

Perhaps Monsanto could learn a thing or TWO from Moore's interview.

Watch Moore’s foot-in-mouth interview HERE:

http://www.canalplus.fr/c-infos-documentaires/pid3357-c-special-investigation.html?vid=1122650&sc_cmpid=TWShareInfo

Herbicide US Sprays Over Millions Of Acres In Columbia “Drug War” Linked To Cancer

Robert Barsocchini

The Associated Press reports that “the world’s most-popular weed killer” has been discovered to be “a likely cause of cancer”:

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a French-based research arm of the World Health Organization, has reclassified the herbicide glyphosate as a result of what it said is convincing evidence the chemical produces cancer in lab animals and more limited findings it causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in humans.

…the glyphosate-containing herbicide Roundup [made by Monsanto] is a mainstay of industrial agriculture.

This has implications, AP continues, for the US “aerial spraying program in Colombia”:

[A] fumigation program, which is FINANCED by the U.S. and partly carried out by American contractors [has sprayed] 4 million acres of land in the past two decades to kill coca plants, whose leaves are used to produce cocaine.

Colombia’s left likens [the program] to the U.S. military’s use of the Agent Orange herbicide during the Vietnam War.

In 2013, Colombia agreed to pay Ecuador $15 million to settle a lawsuit over economic and human damage tied to spraying along the countries’ border.

The US government has stated:

…damage to the environment and health risks from production of cocaine far outweigh the adverse effects of aerial eradication.

And, AP notes:

…the spraying program is operating as usual.

…

As the spraying of Columbia with known likely carcinogens is being carried out due to purported US hand-wringing over the adverse effects of drugs on humans, the US continues to push the world’s most lethal drug, tobacco:

The United States is consistently the world’s number 4 producer of tobacco.

In 2002, the US Department of Agriculture recorded that that US was the world’s number 2 exporter of tobacco, and that was after a steep decline in US exports, as noted below.

A report to Congress on “U.S. Tobacco Production, Consumption, and Export Trends” finds:

The report notes that US share of global tobacco exports has declined in recent years, but this only a “problem” for US manufacturers, not US cigarette corporations themselves, as they are simply shipping their manufacturing overseas:

The apparent lack of COMPETITIVENESS of domestic cigarette manufacturers may be more of a problem for U.S. growers than for the manufacturers. Philip Morris, the largest domestic manufacturer is addressing the problem by acquiring foreign manufacturing plants. These foreign operations will likely be the source of cigarettes supplying the growing global demand for American-style cigarettes. As anecdotal evidence, Philip Morris claims in its 2002 Annual Report to stockholders a 3.5% increase in sales from its international operations. That increase pushed Philip Morris International’s total shipments (non-U.S.) to 723.1 billion cigarettes. In contrast, total U.S. output was 565 billion (22% less than Philip Morris off-shore production), and U.S. exports declined 5%.

The US uses its position of dominance to forcefully push its lethal drugs on weaker countries, including its “allies”:

A research paper on Tobacco Control reports:

The US Cigarette Export Association (USCEA), an association of US tobacco companies, successfully utilised the 1984 amendments to Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act to enlist cooperation of theexecutive branch of the US government in threatening trade sanctions against countries in Asia where quotas, high tariffs, high retail taxes, and advertising and distribution restrictions on tobacco were alleged to unfairly limit the markets for US tobacco products.13 The challenge was especially harmful to youth and women, who had historically low rates of cigarette smoking. A Goverment Accountability Office study showed that smoking among South Korean male teens rose from 18.4% to 29.8% in a single year, and quintupled among teen women, rising from 1.6 to 8.7%.

The World Health Organization reports that tobacco is a:

Leading cause of death, illness, and impoverishment

The tobacco epidemic is ONE of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced,killing nearly six million people a year. More than five million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while more than 600 000 are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke. Approximately ONE person dies every six seconds due to tobacco, accounting for one in 10 adult deaths. Up to half of current users will eventually die of a tobacco-related disease.

Tobacco users who die prematurely deprive their families of income, raise the COST of health care and hinder economic development.

Tobacco caused 100 million deaths in the 20th century.

If current trends continue, it may cause one billion deaths in the 21st century.

Unchecked, tobacco-related deaths will increase to more than eight million per year by 2030.

Bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship [like the ONES the US uses threats to prevent, as noted above] can reduce tobacco consumption.

These alarming findings suggest that Columbia should immediately enter the US “war on drugs” and START spraying the US with carcinogenic chemicals to kill the tobacco leaves that are used to produce cigarettes. If Columbia can’t do it alone, perhaps an alliance of countries would be up to the task. Clearly, the benefits would far outweigh the adverse effects of aerial eradication and, as AP reports, while the “left” and “leftists” in the US might be against it, the program would have the support of the center, the right, and the US government.

While Columbia is here spraying, they might want to hit US fast food corporations and some other institutions, as well. Benefits will far outweigh the COSTS.

World’s Richest One Percent Undermine Fight Against Economic Inequalities

Thalif Deen

The growing economic inequalities between rich and poor – and the lopsided concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the world’s ONE percent – are undermining international efforts to fight global poverty, environmental degradation and social injustice, according to a civil society alliance.

Comprising ActionAid, Greenpeace, Oxfam and Civicus, the group of widely-known non-governmental organizations (NGO) and global charities warn about the widening gap and imbalance of power between the world’s richest and the rest of the population, which they say, is “warping the rules and policies that affect society, creating a vicious circle of ever growing and harmful undue influence.”

The group identifies a list of key concerns – including tax avoidance, wealth inequality and lack of access to healthcare – as being unduly influenced by the world’s wealthiest ONE percent.

In a statement released Thursday, on the eve of the World Social Forum (WSF) scheduled to take place in Tunis Mar. 24-28, the group argues the concentration of wealth and power is now a critical and binding factor that must be challenged “if we are to create lasting solutions to poverty and climate change.”

The statement – signed by the chief executives of the four organizations – says: “We cannot rely on technological fixes. We cannot rely on the market. And we cannot rely on the global elites. We need to help strengthen the power of the people to challenge the people with power.”

“Securing a just and sustainable world means challenging the power of the ONE percent,” the group says.

The signatories include Adriano Campolina of ActionAid, Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah of Civicus, Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace and Winnie Byanyima of Oxfam.

Asked about the impact of economic inequalities on the implementation of the U.N.’s highly touted Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Ben Phillips, campaigns and policy director at ActionAid International, told IPS economic inequalities have meant that in many countries progress on poverty reduction has been much slower than it would have been if growth had been more equal.

For example, he said, Zambia has moved from being a poor country (officially) to being (officially) middle income. Yet during that time the absolute number of poor people has increased.

India’s persistently high child malnutrition rate and South Africa’s persistently high mortality rate are functions of an insufficient focus on inequality, he added.

Papua New Guinea has the highest growth in the world this year and won’t meet any MDG, because the proceeds of growth are so unequally shared, he pointed out.

Speaking on behalf of the civil society alliance, Phillips said inequality has also been the great blind spot of the MDGs – even when countries have met the MDGs they have often done so in a way that has left behind the poorest people – so goals like reducing maternal and infant mortality have been met in several countries in ways that have left those at the bottom of the pile with little or no improvement.

The four signatories say: “We will work together with others to tackle the root causes of inequality. We will press governments to tackle tax dodging, ensure progressive taxes, provide universal free public health and education services, support workers’ bargaining power, and narrow the gap between rich and poor. We will together champion international cooperation to avoid a race to the bottom.”

The statement also says that global efforts to end poverty and marginalization, advance women’s rights, defend the environment, protect human rights, and promote fair and dignified employment are all being undermined as a consequence of the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few.
“Decisions are being shaped in the narrow interests of the richest, at the expense of the people as a whole,” it says.

“The economic, ecological and human rights crises we face are intertwined and reinforcing. The influence of the one percent has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished,” the group warns.

“Faced with this challenge, we need to go beyond tinkering, and address the structural causes of inequality: we cannot rely on technological fixes – there is no app for this; we cannot rely on the market – unchecked it will worsen inequality and climate change; and we cannot rely on the global elites – left alone they will continue to reinforce the structures and approaches that have led to where we are”.

People’s mobilization and active citizenship are crucial to change the power inequalities that are leading to worsening rights violations and inequality, the group says.

However, in all regions of the world, the more people mobilize to defend their rights, the more the civic and political space is being curtailed by repressive action defending the privileged.

“We therefore pledge to work together locally, nationally and internationally, alongside others, to uphold and defend universal human rights and protect civil society space. A more equal society that values everyone depends on citizens holding the powerful to account.”

Phillips told IPS even the U.N.’s proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to be approved at a summit meeting of world leaders in September, will not be achievable if economic inequalities continue.

As leading economist Andy Sumner of King’s College, London has demonstrated, “we find in our number-crunching that poverty can only be ended if inequality falls.” Additionally, healthy, liveable societies depend on government action to limit inequality.

It is also a question of voice, and power. In the words of Harry Belafonte, a Hollywood celebrity and political activist: “The concentration of money in the hands of a small group is the most dangerous thing that happened to civilization.”

Or as Jeff Sachs, a widely respected development expert and professor at Columbia University, has noted: “Corporations write the rules, pay the politicians, sometimes illegally and sometimes, via what is called legal, which is FINANCING their campaigns or massive lobbying. This has got completely out of control and is leading to the breakdown of modern democracy.”

Phillips said tackling inequality is core to progress on tackling poverty – both because extreme and growing economic inequality will undermine poverty reduction and because the warping of power towards the ONE percent is shifting the focus of governments away from their citizens and towards corporations.

“Inequality is about more than economics and growth – it is now at such high levels that we risk a return to the oligarchy of the gilded age. We need to shift power away from the ONE percent and towards the rest of society, to prevent all decisions being made in the narrow interests of a privileged few,” he declared.

IMF: Ukraine Must Now Steal $1.5 Billion+ From Russia To Buy Arms

German Economic News

In December, a multi-billion-dollar loan [variously stated as $3-$3.5 billion] to Ukraine comes due, which Ukraine had received from Russia. The IMF has provided a new debt plan, however, dictating that existing loans to Ukraine that have an expiration-date are to be subjected to a haircut. Thus, the resource gap of the country totaling $40 billion is to be reduced.

Since the crisis, Ukraine has received several loans from the IMF and the EU [and the U.S.]. These loans must be repaid in a few years from now. However, the financial situation of the country remains vulnerable. Over the next four years overdue loans totaling $15 billion need to be paid [they're mostly loans from Russia]. Only three billion of them are an old loan Russia that has to be paid in December of this year. The IMF might prevent it [from being repaid in full, even though it has seniority over the new loans that are coming from the West].

The IMF has developed a program for Ukraine, under which the current financial hole is to be filled in the amount $40 billion. The due debts [the senior debt] are part of the plan, and will be restructured, according to the IMF. Exactly how it is to happen, the IMF does not explain. Experts say that the IMF believes that Russia should participate in a haircut. The Financial Times reports ["Bailout projections indicate Ukraine will not repay Russia debt” 5:21 PM, 22 March 2015] that the IMF requires that Russia's $3.5 billion bond issue be included in the restructuring. Charles Blitzer, a former IMF employee, has informed the FT of this.

However, Blitzer is uncertain how large the haircut will be. "It is up to the Ukrainian authorities to determine the extent and nature of the debt restructuring,” he said. [In other words: the IMF will grant Ukraine the right to determine how much of that $3-3.5B will be repaid to Russia. The Kyiv Post puts it this way: “Kyiv does not intend to fully repay a $3 billion bond owed to Russia this year according to official projections underpinning Ukraine's new international bailout, say credit experts.”] Government sources close to the matter estimate that there will be a planned debt reduction of 50 percent. "But creditors would rather try to agree on a term extension,” said Blitzer.

Whether all international creditors will accept a haircut, and if so, to what extent, is not yet clear. Last week, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanow said that Russia still expects that the $3.5B debt will be repaid this December in full. And Franklin Templeton [Funds], the largest bondholder of Ukraine, has brought in Blackstone legal help for debt negotiations.

Last week, the Ukrainian Finance Minister [the American] Natalija Jaresko told the WSJ that so far pledged loans to Ukraine [$40B] will not be enough to bring Ukraine back onto its feet. "The package will stabilize the banking system, but it is not enough to seriously re-stimulate growth," said Jaresko. "I need more support.” She said that no nation currently pays more to protect the entire world from a nuclear power [Russia] than does Ukraine, and that, "if our partners, for whatever reason, are not able to assist us with defensive military means, then they should provide us more financial assistance [so that we can buy the weapons against Russia ourselves]."

This past Friday, the Ukrainian central bank had to explain why three of Ukraine's banks were being declared insolvent. The VAB Bank, Astra Bank and the City Commerce Bank are now deprived of their licenses. At the same time, Ukraine is already planning an expansion of military resources. In sum, for the year of 2015, a total of $3.8 billion will be spent on armaments. [This by a country that cannot even pay its bondholders, when all of the new Ukrainian bonds are actually paying only for Ukraine's war against the residents of its own former Donbass region.]

The Capitalist Takeover of Higher Education

Robert Abele

The great under-reported crime against education by corporate America is not the buying and selling of schools by for-profit corporations; that this is a significant threat to education is indubitable and well-documented. But the little-discussed threat to education is the deliberate “hollowing-out” of education from within—i.e. by the philosophy which views education, especially at and up through the community-college level, as preparing students to take jobs in the business world upon their graduation, rather than to learn the art of deepening their distinctly human character by engaging in learning and reflection through courses and content that cannot be bought or sold in the business world, such as philosophy, art, humanities, the history of human cultures, logic and critical thinking, ethical decision-making, etc. These are all activities the deepening of which has traditionally been seen as part of the very definition of a college-level education. These are the activities usually called “academic,” and their function was to deepen and expand the humans who engaged in them, in what, for many students, would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

There are three ways in particular in which this hollowing out is being done: emphasis on and money thrown into “basic skills” courses, used to get students to levels of reading and writing they need for jobs; emphasis on “student success,” defined as the numbers of students who pass a given course; and deliberately starving, reducing, and eliminating programs that widen student’s views and teach them to rationally reflect on and analyze their society and its trends.

The focal point of this corporate shift in educational philosophy is clearly reflected in President Obama’s so-called “community college initiative.” That Obama’s plan is not advocating academic education, but turning college-level education into job training, was put succinctly in a news story on PBS, which characterized Obama’s community college proposal as “a plan to better connect the training of students at community colleges with specific types of jobs in the marketplace.” Even more specifically, “the plan would offer $600 million in grants to support job-driven training, like apprenticeships, that will expand partnerships with industry, businesses, unions, community colleges, and training organizations to train workers in the skills they need,” said a White House statement. (April 14, 2014).

According to the White House’s own press releases, “The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act includes $2 billion over four years for community college and career training. These resources will help community colleges and other institutions develop, improve, and provide education and training, suitable for workers who are eligible for trade adjustment assistance. The initiative will be housed at the Department of Labor and implemented in close cooperation with the Department of Education.”

Note, too, that Obama’s plan also stipulates where students will see the most direct influence of that $2 billion: the offer of free tuition being touted by the administration would apply to students who maintain a grade point average of 2.5 or better.

So connect the dots of Obama’s plan: emphasis on higher graduation rates, minimal GPA (B average) requirements, teaching basic skills to be used for jobs, and focus on cooperatives between corporations and colleges so that the latter is used as a free (or very cheap) training ground for the former, and one can see the planned trend: community colleges are now to become the new vocational schools for American industry, not the traditional less expensive way to begin one’s collegiate-level academic studies before transferring to a four-year college. Add to that the increased pressure for grade inflation in order to increase the numbers of passing students per class, in order increase the graduation numbers, in order to receive more federal money under Obama’s plan for colleges, and the true academic experience of providing a college education all but disappears, replaced by a “get ‘em ready for the workplace—as quickly as you can (i.e. pass ‘em!)—so we can make our money” educational philosophy,” with the clearly implied enjoinder: “…and for godssake stop teaching them to think about things or to know human or cultural history!”

This latter phrase was not simply added for effect. Part of the process of corporatizing education through the philosophy of administrators currently running America’s colleges has been the deliberate shrinking or even the killing-off of philosophy and humanities departments in higher education, both at community colleges and four-year colleges, across the nation. This is a well-documented development, but it is not often tied to the philosophy behind it. But in brief, one cannot be a critical thinker, or engage in deepening one’s knowledge of human ideas or cultural development, if one is to be an employee of an American business. The corporate philosophy which is killing such programs does so primarily for two reasons: 1) such education does not have a monetary payback for the business world; 2) critical thinkers and those with knowledge are dangerous to corporate hegemony. (Former CEO’s have told me this directly, although not in these terms.)

For more evidence of the corporate philosophy that has infiltrated and changed college education, over-and-above this “reading and writing” and job training focus, note how the corporate “bottom line” mentality now prevails in administrative decisions concerning which courses and majors are maintained. For one example, in every college course now, there must be a pre-determined measureable outcome of student success—the latter defined as the numbers of students who pass the course—that justifies the retention of the course and/or its instructor. The goals are called “Student Learning Outcomes,” and the vocabulary of each such outcome must be specifically formulated in such a way that an examining administrator can quantify the “successful” outcomes by how many students pass the objective and then pass the course. Aside from the obvious fact that the education process cannot be so quantified—that there are significant elements of education that are qualitative in nature, such as expanding the student’s intellectual horizon, whether they pass the objective or the course or not—this “downward pressure” from the institutional custodians now in control of the education system results directly in grade-inflation and also in reduction in emphasis on content, the latter of which is certainly a part of the definition of “higher education.” Now, instead of focusing on students learning content, deepening their understanding of themselves and their societies, and developing a self-conscious worldview, college education is being measured strictly by its outcome in terms of total numbers of “successful” students.

Diane Ravitch summarized this new method succinctly. In her new book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, she summarizes the situation quite well: “In recent decades, the utilitarian argument for higher education has nearly supplanted understanding the role of higher education in developing intellectual, cultural, political, and aesthetic judgements…These are the fruits of higher education as distinct from vocational education. It may be a vain hope, but we should continue to urge our policy makers not to lose sight of the intangible values of higher education as they promote higher college graduation rates” (p. 83).

Good advice, and something which needs to be done. However, since the proverbial horse has already left the barn, the chances are slim that simply urging policymakers not to capitulate educational philosophy to the capitalistic philosophy of means-ends quantification and profitability will stem the tide of a shift in American educational philosophy that began in the 1990’s. It is likely that more active measures will have to be engaged, such as nonviolent resistance to this devolution of education into a branch of corporate America through refusal to cooperate in the hollowing-out of education. It will have to start with organized faculty setting limits to such corporatizing by refusals to cooperate with it.

No one is arguing here that teaching basic skills and offering job training should never be a part of a community college’s mission. But when that type of training becomes the primary emphasis of community college education, as it does both in Obama’s “community college initiative” and in current administrative practice in colleges today, and when it is made clear that this corporate educational philosophy determines where the money for education will be funneled, then the mission and value of a distinctively academic education are clearly at risk.

Most importantly for our democracy, when students are perceived as “future laborers,” when the college curriculum emphasizes skills needed for the marketplace, with downward pressure put on human disciplines such as philosophy and humanities (to name but two), and with added downward pressure from the top for grade inflation in order to gain more money for the college, at the risk of an instructor and/or course being cut completely, then ignorance and irrationality come to rule the day, in education, in culture, and in politics. Contrary to that, witness the stark warning from Thomas Jefferson about drifting from studying the human arts and sciences in academia. Jefferson himself was a staunch supporter of what has been, until lately, the traditional definition of college education. He believed that such studies were inestimable in having a functioning democracy: “In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.” He added to that the critical need for “an informed citizenry” in the democratic process. As he wrote to his nephew, an integrated, cross-disciplinary college education enhances just that process by providing the skills and information content needed for “the art of reasoning.”

The bottom line is that there is something in our humanity being lost when the national philosophy of education becomes a means-to-an-end capitalist-oriented enterprise. The understanding of who we are and where we have been as a country and as a species, along with being able to improve our ability to reflect and think, to learn new content that is interesting and informative rather than just useful for the directly practical end of employment, are all valuable and significant parts of being a human. But when students become simply commoditized as mere future job-holders, when education is defined as the numbers of successful passing grades in courses and in graduation numbers, when content-based education that deepens the human mind and widens the human perspective are downplayed as “irrelevant” to the marketplace, and when education is hollowed out into a matter of creating new or better employees, as Obama’s plan clearly states, then education is clearly in trouble in America. Note that this danger to education is not due to teacher incompetence, as the media and right-wing politicians like to portray it. It is because of a lack of vision from those politicians and college administrators who cannot see anything but the flow of money, and who are allowing the revered institutions to be hollowed out and die by using them as conduits of capital.

Greece: Fascists At the Gate

Conn Hallinan

When some 70 members of the neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn go on trial sometime this spring, there will be more than street thugs and fascist ideologues in the docket, but a tangled web of influence that is likely to engulf Greece’s police, national security agency, wealthy oligarchs, and mainstream political parties. While Golden Dawn—with its holocaust denial, its swastikas, and Hitler salutes—makes it look like it inhabits the fringe, in fact the organization has roots deep in the heart of Greece’s political culture

Which is precisely what makes it so dangerous.

Golden Dawn’s penchant for violence is what led to the charge that it is a criminal organization. It is accused of several murders, as well as attacks on immigrants, leftists, and trade unionists. Raids have uncovered weapon caches. Investigators have also turned up information suggesting that the organization is closely tied to wealthy shipping owners, as well as the National Intelligence Service (EYP) and municipal police departments.

Several lawyers associated with two victims of violence by Party members—a 27-year old Pakistani immigrant stabbed to death last year, and an Afghan immigrant stabbed in 2011— charge that a high level EYP official responsible for surveillance of Golden Dawn has links to the organization. The revelations forced Dimos Kouzilos, director of EYP’s third counter-intelligence division, to resign last September.

There were several warning flags about Kouzilos when he was appointed to head the intelligence division by rightwing New Democracy Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Kouzilos is a relative of a Golden Dawn Parliament member, who is the Party’s connection to the shipping industry. Kouzilos is also close to a group of police officers in Nikea, who are currently under investigation for ties to Golden Dawn. Investigators charge that the Nikea police refused to take complaints from refugees and immigrants beaten by Party members, and the police Chief, Dimitris Giovandis, tipped off Golden Dawn about surveillance of the Party.

In handing over the results of their investigation, the lawyers said the “We believe that this information provides an overview of the long-term penetration ands activities of the Nazi criminal gang with the EYP and the police.” A report by the Office of Internal Investigation documents 130 cases where Golden Dawn worked with police.

It should hardly come as a surprise that there are close ties between the extreme right and Greek security forces. The current left-right split goes back to 1944 when the British tried to drive out the Communist Party—the backbone of the Greek resistance movement against the Nazi occupation. The split eventually led to the 1946-49 civil war when Communists and leftists fought royalists and former German collaborationists for power. However, the West saw the civil war through the eyes of the then budding Cold War, and, at Britain’s request,  the U.S. pitched in on the side of the right to defeat the left. In the process of that intervention—then called the Truman Doctrine—U.S. intelligence services established close ties with the Greek military.

Those ties continued over the years that followed and were tightened once Greece joined NATO in 1952. The charge that the U.S. encouraged the 1967 fascist coup against the Greek government has never been proven, but many of the “colonels” that initiated the overthrow had close ties to the CIA and the U.S. military.

Golden Dawn was founded by some of the key people who ruled during the 1967-74 junta, and Greek dictator Georgios Papadopoulos, the leader of the “colonels” who led the 1967 coup, groomed the Party’s founder and current leader, Nikos Michaloliakos. Papadopoulos was a Nazi collaborator and served with the German “security battalions” that executed 130,000 Greek civilians during WW II. Papadopoulos was trained by the U.S. Army and recruited by the CIA. Indeed, he was the first CIA employee to govern a European country.

Golden Dawn’s adherence to Hitler, the symbols of Nazism, and the“Fuehrer principle”—investing the Party’s leader with absolute authority—is, in part, what has gotten the organization into trouble. According to an investigation by Greek Supreme Court Deputy Prosecutor Haralambos Vourliotis, Golden Dawn is split into two wings, a political wing responsible for the Party’s legal face and an operational wing for “carrying out attacks on those deemed enemies of the party.” Michaloiakos oversees both wings.

Prosecutors will try to demonstrate that attacks and murders are not the actions of individuals who happen to be members of Golden Dawn, because independent actions are a contradiction to the “Fuehrer principle.” Many of the attacks have featured leading members of Golden Dawn and, on occasion, members of Parliament. Indeed, since the leadership and core of the Party were jailed last September, attacks on non-Greeks and leftists have fallen off.

There is a cozy relationship between Golden Dawn and some business people as well, with the Party serving as sort of “Thugs-R-Us” organization. Investigators charge that shortly after two Party MPs visited the shipyards at Piraeus, a Golden Dawn gang attacked Communists who were supporting union workers. Golden Dawn also tried to set up a company union that would have resulted in lower pay and fewer benefits for shipyard workers. In return, shipping owners donated 240,000 Euros to Golden Dawn.

Investigators charge that the Party also raises funds through protection rackets, money laundering and blackmail.

Journalist Dimitris Psarras, who has researched and written about Golden Dawn for decades, argues that the Party is successful not because it plays on the economic crisis, but because for years the government—both socialists and conservatives—mainstream parties, and the justice system have turned a blind eye to Golden Dawn’s growing use of force. It was the murder of Greek anti-fascist rapper/poet Pavlos Fyssas that forced the authorities to finally move on the organization. Killing North Africans was one thing, killing a Greek quite another.

Instead of challenging Golden Dawn in the last election, the New Democracy Party railed against “Marxists,” “communists” and—pulling a page from the 1946-49 civil war—“bandits.” Even the center parties, like the Greek Socialist Party (PASOK) and the new Potami Party, condemned both “left and right” as though the two were equivalent.

New Dawn did see its voter base shrink from the 426,025 it won in 2012, to 388,000 in the January election that brought left party Syriza to power. But then New Dawn is less interested in numbers than it is in wielding violence. According to Psarras, the Party’s agenda is “to create a climate of civil war, a divide where people have to choose between leftists and rightists.”

Some of the mainstream parties have eased Golden Dawn’s path by adopting the Party’s attacks on Middle East and African immigrants and Muslims, albeit at a less incendiary level. But, as Psarras points out, “Research in political science has long since showed that wherever conservative European parties adopt elements of far-right rhetoric and policy during pre-election periods, the upshot is the strengthening of the extreme far right parties.”

That certainly was the case in last year’s European Parliamentary elections, when center and right parties in France and Great Britain refused to challenge the racism and Islamophobia of rightwing parties, only to see the latter make strong showings.

According to the Supreme Court’s Vourliotis, Golden Dawn believes that “Those who do not belong to the popular community of the race are subhuman. In this category belong foreign immigrants, Roma, those who disagree with their ideas and even people with mental problems.” The Party dismisses the Holocaust: “There were no crematoria, it’s a lie. Or gas chambers,” Michaloliakos said in a 2012 national TV interview. Some 60,000 members of Greece’s Jewish population were transported and murdered in the death camps during World War II.

The trial is scheduled for April 20 but might delayed. Golden Dawn members, including Michaloliakos and many members of Parliament, were released Mar. 18 released because they can only be held for 18 months in pre-trial detention. The Party, with its ties in the business community and its “wink of the eye” relationship to New Democracy—that mainstream center right party apparently printed Golden Dawn’s election brochures—has considerable resources to fight the charges. New Dawn has hired more than 100 attorneys.

If convicted, New Dawn members could face up to 20 years in prison, but there is not a great deal of faith among the anti-fascist forces in the justice system. The courts have remained mute in the face of Golden Dawn’s increasing use of violence, and some magistrates have been accused of being sympathetic to the organization.

One of the laws the Party is being prosecuted under is Article 187A, which can be a bit tricky. While Golden Dawn is charged with being a criminal organization, murder, assault, and illegal weapons possession, Article 187A kicks in when those crimes take on a political dimension and reach the level of trying to intimidate a group of people or population. But that is a slippery concept, because the prosecution will have to prove “intent.” It gives the defense plenty of gray area to work with, particularly if the defense is well financed and the courts are sympathetic.

Thanasis Kampagiannis of “Jail Golden Dawn” warns that the Party will not vanish on its own. “Many are under the impression that if we stop talking about Golden Dawn the problem will somehow disappear. That is not the case. The economic crisis has burnished the organization, but there are other causes that have contributed to its existence and prominence, such as the intensification of state repression and the institutionalization of racism by the dominant parties.”

But courts are political entities and respond to popular movements. Anti-fascists are calling on the Greeks and the international community to stay in the streets and demand that New Dawn be brought to justice. Germans missed that opportunity with the Nazi Party and paid a terrible price for it.

Rich Men in London Still Deciding Africa’s Future

Colin Todhunter

Some £600 million in UK aid money courtesy of the taxpayer is helping big business increase its profits in Africa via the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. In return for receiving aid money and corporate INVESTMENT, African countries have to change their laws, making it easier for corporations to acquire farmland, control seed supplies and export produce.

Last year, Director of the Global Justice Now Nick Dearden said:

“It’s scandalous that UK aid money is being used to carve up Africa in the interests of big business. This is the exact opposite of what is needed, which is support to small-scale farmers and fairer distribution of land and resources to give African countries more control over their food systems. Africa can produce enough food to feed its people. The problem is that our food system is geared to the luxury tastes of the richest, not the needs of ordinary people. Here the British government is using aid MONEY TO MAKE the problem even worse.”

Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, NIGERIA, Benin, Malawi and Senegal are all involved in the New Alliance.

In a January 2015 piece in The Guardian, Dearden continued by saying that development was once regarded as a process of breaking with colonial exploitation and transferring power over resources from the ‘first’ to the ‘third world’, involving a revolutionary struggle over the world’s resources. However, the current paradigm is based on the assumption that developing countries need to adopt neo-liberal policies and that public money in the guise of aid should facilitate this. The notion of ‘development’ has BECOME hijacked by rich corporations and the concept of poverty depoliticised and separated from structurally embedded power relations.

To see this in action, we need look no further to a conference held on Monday 23 March in LONDON, organised by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This secretive, invitation-only meeting with aid donors and big seed companies discussed a strategy to make it easier for these companies to sell patented seeds in Africa and thus increase corporate control of seeds.

Farmers have for generations been SAVING and exchanging seeds among themselves. This has allowed them a certain degree of independence and has enabled them to innovate, maintain biodiversity, adapt seeds to climatic conditions and fend off plant disease. Big seed companies with help from the Gates Foundation, the US government and other aid donors are now discussing ways to increase their market penetration of commercial seeds by displacing farmers own seed systems.

Corporate sold hybrid seeds often produce higher yields when first planted, but the second generation seeds produce low yields and unpredictable crop traits, making them unsuitable for SAVING and storing. As Heidi Chow from Global Justice Now rightly says, instead of saving seeds from their own crops, farmers who use hybrid seeds BECOME completely dependent on the seed, fertiliser and pesticide companies, which can (and has) in turn result in an agrarian crisis centred on debt, environmental damage and health problems.

The LONDON conference aimed to share findings of a report by Monitor Deloitte on developing the commercial seed sector in sub-Saharan Africa. The report recommends that in countries where farmers are using their own seed saving networks NGOs and aid donors should encourage governments to introduce intellectual property rights for seed breeders and help to persuade farmers to buy commercial, patented seeds rather than relying on their own traditional varieties. The report also suggests that governments should remove regulations so that the seed sector is opened up to the global market.

The guest list comprised corporations, development agencies and aid donors, including Syngenta, the World Bank and the Gates Foundation. It speaks volumes that not ONE farmer organisation was invited. Farmers have been imbued with the spirit of entrepreneurship for thousands of years. They have been “scientists, innovators, natural resource stewards, seed savers and hybridisation experts” who have increasingly been reduced to BECOMING recipients of technical fixes and consumers of poisonous products of a growing agricultural inputs industry. So who better than to discuss issues concerning agriculture?

But the whole point of such a conference is that the West regards African agriculture as a ‘business opportunity’, albeit wrapped up in warm-sounding notions of ‘feeding Africa’ or ‘lifting millions out of poverty’. The West’s legacy in Africa (and elsewhere) has been to plunge millions into poverty. Enforcing structural reforms to benefit big agribusiness and its unsustainable toxic GMO/petrochemical inputs represents a continuation of the neo-colonialist plundering of Africa. The US has for many decades been using agriculture as a key part of foreign policy to secure global hegemony.

Phil Bereano, food sovereignty campaigner with AGRA Watch and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Washington says:

“This is an extension of what the Gates Foundation has been doing for several years – working with the US government and agribusiness giants like Monsanto to corporatize Africa’s genetic riches for the benefit of outsiders. Don’t Bill and Melinda realize that such colonialism is no longer in fashion? It’s time to support African farmers’ self-determination.”

Bereano also shows how Western corporations only intend to cherry-pick the most profitable aspects of the food production chain, while leaving the public sector in Africa to pick up the tab for the non-profitable aspects that allow profitability further along the chain.

Giant agritech corporations with their patented seeds and associated chemical inputs are ensuring a shift away from diversified agriculture that guarantees balanced local food production, the protection of people’s livelihoods and agricultural sustainability. African agriculture is being placed in the hands of big agritech for private profit under the pretext of helping the poor. The Gates Foundation has substantial shares in Monsanto. With Monsanto’s active backing from the US State Department and the Gates Foundation’s links with USAID, African farmers face a formidable force.

Report after report suggests that support for conventional agriculture, agroecology and local economies is required, especially in the Global South. Instead, Western governments are supporting powerful corporations with taxpayers money whose thrust via the WTO, World Bank and IMF has been to encourage strings-attached loans, monocrop cultivation for export using corporate seeds, the restructuring of economies, the opening of economies to the vagaries of land and commodity speculation and a system of globalised trade rigged in favour of the West.

In this vision for Africa, those farmers who are regarded as having any role to play in all of this are viewed only as passive consumers of corporate seeds and agendas. The future of Africa is once again being decided by rich men in LONDON.

Get Ready for the Third Intifada

John Wight

Bibi’s re-election makes the prospect of a third intifada more likely than ever. And when it does come it would take a surfeit of optimism to believe that it won’t be as widely supported among the Palestinians as the First Intifada (1987-1991) or as violent as the Second Intifada (2000-2005).

The so-called international community, consisting of Washington and its European allies, has failed the Palestinian people miserably over many years by now. Its unfailing and ignoble pandering to Israel that informs the West’s entire policy with regard to the Middle East has only succeeded in creating a monster in the shape of the intransigent, rejectionist, and brutal political culture that now holds sway there. It is a culture underpinned by a flagrant disregard for international law and the human rights of some 3 million people in the occupied West Bank and 1.8 million in Gaza, which at time of writing remains a pile of rubble after Israel’s summer 2014 air, land, and sea assault in which 2100 Palestinians were slaughtered – around 500 of them children – and up to 9000 injured or maimed, many of those permanently.

Gaza remains under siege, hermetically sealed from the outside world, its people and their suffering a symbol of the hypocrisy and indifference of an international order in which Palestinian blood is not only cheap it is worthless. Israel’s exceptionalism, meanwhile, remains sacrosanct.

Nobody should be fooled by talk of a rupture between the Obama administration and Netanyahu. The President, the world knows by now, holds Bibi somewhere between disdain and disgust in his feelings towards him. The studied insult delivered to the president by the Israeli Prime Minister when he addressed the US Congress a few weeks ago, where Netanyahu attempted to undermine talks between the P5+1 and Iran in Switzerland, couldn’t have been more wounding. It undermined both the President’s authority in Washington and his influence overseas.

The Israeli election that followed was marked by the new low Netanyahu went to in order to scoop up enough votes to WIN. Scaremongering, apocalyptic rhetoric, and out and out racism issued from his lips in the lead up to the polls, leaving no doubt that along with the so-called Islamic State, Benjamin Netanyahu poses the gravest threat to the stability of the region.

Yet despite this – despite the phone conversation reported to have taken place between Obama and Netanyahu after the Israeli Prime Minister’s re-election, during which Obama told him that he would have to “reassess” his administration’s policy towards Israel White House in the wake of Netanyahu’s pre-election statements negating the prospects of a TWO state solution, US policy towards Israel isn’t about to undergo any meaningful reorientation anytime soon.

During an interview with the Huffington Post, Obama confirmed that despite his differences with Mr Netanyahu, US aid to Israel to the tune of £3 billion a year will not be affected. And therein lies the rub, for until there is willingness in Washington to punish Netanyahu’s and the Israeli right’s rejectionist policy with the threat to suspend aid, the chances of a shift in said policy are less than zero.

The impotence of the Obama administration has been laid bare over these past couple of weeks. The anti-Obama coalition comprising Congressional Republicans and the Likud Party knows that the worst-case scenario involves waiting out the remaining year of the first black president’s tenure. The best-case scenario, which is far more likely, will see Obama cave just as he’s caved when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians. Whether on settlements expansion, the continuing annexation of East Jerusalem, Gaza, or meaningful steps towards the realization of a TWO state solution, the president has been played like a violin by Netanyahu these past few years.

That said, the much vaunted TWO state solution is but a canard. There is no possibility of a two state solution, as Netanyahu knows full well. The idea of anything approaching a viable Palestinian state comprising what is left of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is an insult to the collective intelligence of the Palestinian people. What we have now is a de facto single state in which 4.8 million people living in it are regarded and treated as Helots. As such, it is only when Israel is forced to comply with international law and human rights that any meaningful progress can hope to be made. That force must take the form of economic sanctions.

The only issue over which Obama will likely defeat the Israeli leader at PRESENT is Iran. The recent talks in Switzerland look to have made significant progress, which in conjunction with the unanimous aversion to the deployment of hard power against Tehran by the other nations involved in those talks, this has left Netanyahu and his Washington allies increasingly isolated as yesterday’s men.

This still leaves the Palestinians, who cannot be expected to continue to endure the injustice that defines their existence for much longer without there being an explosion. Yes, the international boycott campaign grows and has scored some notable successes over the past year, but nonetheless at this stage the Palestinians could be forgiven for considering themselves more or less abandoned to their fate.

A third intifada is heading down the track as a consequence – and when it comes neither Washington nor its allies should be in any doubt that it arrived as a direct result of their weakness, double standards, and perfidy.

The cause of the Palestinian people remains the cause of humanity in our time. All else is embroidery.

Obama and the Veil Secrecy

Eoin Higgins

The White House’s Sunshine Week decision to provide for the exemption of the Executive Branch’s Office of Administration from the Freedom of Information Act should make all Americans nervous. Although the OA’s exemption from FOIA requests has been official policy for both the Obama and Bush administrations, the new decision makes that exemption official policy.

The exemption comes as a continuation of President Obama’s pledge to maintain “the most transparent administration in history,” a line repeated by his Press Secretary Josh Earnest as recently as last week. A well known step taken to provide for “the most transparent administration in history” has been an unprecedented and SELECTIVE war on whistleblowers, the details of which should be familiar at this point to even the most aloof observer of American politics. In the context of the war on unauthorized leaks the administration has waged, the implications of the official refusal of FOIA authority over yet another branch of the executive is highly problematic and disturbing.

When this administration has been faced with the types of leaks it doesn’t like- those which expose government mismanagement and waste, or those that shine a light on the bulk surveillance of American citizens- the administration hits back and hits hard. Chelsea Manning languishes in prison, Stephen Kim was jailed for an innocuous comment to a reporter about North Korea, and Edward Snowden cannot return to the US for fear of a promised zealous government prosecution. Not to belabor the point, but the Espionage Act has been used to prosecute government leakers 11 times in our history, and 7 of those times under this administration.

Conversely, the leaking of information that benefits the administration is unaddressed as a criminal matter. The administration itself routinely leaks beneficial information to the press in attempts to manage news stories or to promote the image of the President as a strong leader and warrior. Similarly, the unprecedented access of the journalist Bob Woodward to both Presidents Bush and Obama to write his series of serious books about serious wars has led to Woodward having his hands on very sensitive documents. And when David Petraeus leaked classified documents to his girlfriend/biographer, he was given a slap on the wrist and is now advising the White House on Iraq. The administration has different rules when the leaks come from the top and don’t have the potential to educate the public on stories that don’t glorify the presidency.

The White House’s declaration of ineligibility for FOIA for the Office of the Administration also comes at a curious time, given the auspices of the office. The OA controls email archiving, a hot topic today given the current predicament of former Secretary of State Clinton in the line between her private and professional emails. Furthermore, the OA has oversight for the “operational activities that maintain and run the physical.. aspects of the EOP complex,” which though it does not include the Secret Service, works alongside them to protect the President. The Office of the Administration is an important part of the Executive Branch, and its exemption from FOIA requests is highly problematic.

The Office of Administration was one of a dwindling number of divisions within the Executive Branch subject to the FOIA until it JOINED such venerable company as the National Security Council, the Office of the Vice President, and, of course, the President’s White House Office in the departments which are beyond the ability of mere citizens to request information on. By closing off yet another department of the executive from direct public scrutiny, the administration has ensured that more information from the executive branch can be filtered by the state and not open to dissemination by the public at large.

The administration has shut the door on another of increasingly few avenues by which the American public can BECOME informed on all the government does, not just what it wants us to know. That the Obama administration has been so aggressive on the behalf of government secrecy, especially in the face of its pledge to provide historic transparency, is not only disheartening, it is incredibly dangerous. It’s a lesson of the past that when the state takes away power and information from its citizenry, it is loath to give it back. Whatever you may think of the Obama administration, there is no question that some day in the future, there will be a President who will take the secrecy farther.

It’s Sunshine Week in DC, the week where government transparency is celebrated. The irony of this latest assault on openness in government falling on the Tuesday of that week has not been lost on many commentators, too few of whom are on the left. When Barack Obama promised to give the American people “the most transparent administration in history,” many Americans believed him. Instead of that promise, this administration has delivered a more insular and secretive state that reserves the right to look at everyone, while not being seen, and to whisper SELECT secrets in friendly ears, while cutting the tongues out of those who shout out the wrong secrets in public.