/2012

Zionism, anti-Semitism and colonialism - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/201212249122912381.html

State-sponsored anti-Semitism would prove most helpful to Zionism. Indeed, Zionist leaders consciously recognised that state anti-Semitism was essential to their colonial project. Herzl did not mince words about this. He would declare in his foundational pamphlet that “the Governments of all countries scourged by Anti-Semitism will be keenly interested in assisting us to obtain [the] sovereignty we want”; and indeed that not “only poor Jews” would contribute to an immigration fund for European Jews, “but also Christians who wanted to get rid of them”.
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Herzl would conclude in his Diaries that “the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies”. These were not slips or errors but indeed a long-term strategy that Zionism and Israel continue to deploy to this very day.

That Arthur Balfour was a well-known Protestant anti-Semite who in 1905 sponsored a bill (The Aliens Act) to prevent East European Jews fleeing pogroms from immigrating to England was not incidental to the fact that the Zionists rushed to court him, let alone to his own support of the Zionist project through the “Balfour Declaration”, which would reroute Jews away from England.

When the Nazis took over power in Germany, the Zionists, sharing Herzl’s understanding that anti-Semitism is the ally of Zionism, were the only Jewish group who would collaborate with them. In fact, contra all other German Jews (and everyone else inside and outside Germany) who recognised Nazism as the Jews’ bitterest enemy, Zionism saw an opportunity to strengthen its colonisation of Palestine.

In 1933, Labour Zionism signed the Transfer “Ha’avara” Agreement with the Nazis, breaking the international boycott against the regime: Nazi Germany would compensate German Jews who emigrate to Palestine for their lost property by exporting German goods to the Zionists in the country thus breaking the boycott. Between 1933 and 1939, 60 percent of all capital invested in Jewish Palestine came from German Jewish money through the Transfer Agreement. Thus, Nazism was a boon to Zionism throughout the 1930s.

Losing the plot: Why did Israel attack Gaza - again?
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/11/20121128105331462162.html

But underlying all these factors is Netanyahu’s instinctive fear of the Arab Spring, of the succession of Arab revolutions - the democratic uprising from one end of the Arab world to another - that poses THE existential threat to Israel. To imagine Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or even the Islamic Republic, as an existential threat to Israel is a silly joke that the Israeli propaganda machinery has turned into a deadly serious phantasm. 

But the Arab revolutions, even in this nascent and turbulent stage (or particularly in this stage) are the existential threat to the Jewish apartheid settler colony - and neither the Likudnik nor the liberal Zionists seem to have a clue how to reconfigure the fate of six million plus human beings trapped inside a bankrupt ideology, within thick apartheid walls and now even capped by an Iron Dome.

Israel: Ethnic cleansing in the Negev
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/2012102114393741506.html

In September 2011, Israel’s government approved a plan to forcibly relocate tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens in the Negev from their unrecognised villages to government-approved shanty towns. The Prawer Plan, as it is known, advanced again in March this year, when it was endorsed by a committee in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Around half of the Bedouin population in Israel live in 45 “unrecognised villages”, with a handful in the "process of recognition" by the state (see Israeli NGO Adalah’s “Myths and Misconceptions”). The Israeli government wants to force them out, claiming that their “squatting” is taking over the Negev. In fact, while constituting 30 per cent of the region’s population, today Bedouin are claiming "less than five per cent of the total area".

Although the law that will serve as the implementing arm of the Prawer Plan has not yet begun the legislative process in the Knesset, events on the ground indicate that the focus on demolition and displacement is already shaping policy targeting the Bedouin. In other words: Prawer is happening now.

La série culte Homeland : que nous dit-elle sur les discours sur les Arabes, les musulmans ? à l’ère du président Obama

’Homeland,’ Obama’s Show - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/2012102591525809725.html

#islamophobie #homeland

Eritrea and its refugee crisis - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/20121013164211672211.html

This article is the thirteenth in a series by Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, a former Pakistani high commissioner to the UK, exploring how a litany of volatile centre/periphery conflicts with deep historical roots were interpreted after 9/11 in the new global paradigm of anti-terrorism - with profound and often violent consequences. Incorporating in-depth case studies from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Ambassador Ahmed will ultimately argue that the inability for Muslim and non-Muslim states alike to either incorporate minority groups into a liberal and tolerant society or resolve the “centre vs periphery” conflict is emblematic of a systemic failure of the modern state - a breakdown which, more often than not, leads to widespread violence and destruction. The violence generated from these conflicts will become the focus, in the remainder of the 21st century, of all those dealing with issues of national integration, law and order, human rights and justice.

Under the baking sun of Sinai early last month, a group of Eritrean refugees with little food or water had been stranded at the border between Egypt and Israel for over a week, attempting to cross the border. They huddled together beneath the feeble shade of a sheet of plastic that they held aloft.

#érythrée #migrations #asile #israël #sinaï

The ’Arab Spring’ and other American seasons - Joseph Massad
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201282972539153865.html

Hence, unlike the rest of the Arab world where the US and its West European allies quickly moved from sponsoring the dictators to sponsoring the counter-revolutions to restore them or a similar regime in their stead (Yemen) and then later moved to establish a new alliance with the victorious Islamists (in Egypt and Tunisia), they opted to support the uprisings in Libya and Syria and take them over rapidly to ensure an outcome that serves their interests (France, Italy and the United Kingdom secure the oil while the US hopes to move its AFRICOM military command headquarters from Stuttgart to Libya once the dust settles).

While in Libya, the takeover was quick and successfully executed, in Syria, it ran into trouble on account of the differing nature of the regime and the opposition and the class coalitions that support them.

What the US and the new regimes in Tunisia and Egypt are debating at the moment is how much representativity and accountability the new system should have and whether granting certain measures of representativity and accountability could lead to future unpredictable demands for economic rights by the majority of the people in both countries, which could further threaten the interests of the US and its local regime and class allies.

The recent visit by the head of the International Monetary Fund to Cairo to discuss Egypt’s request for $4.8bn could result, as in the South African precedent, in introducing further contractual and legal bans on improving the lives of the poor in the country. The next few months will clarify the final arrangement of governance in both countries, especially in light of the increasing and mobilised popular opposition to any anti-democratic measures in both of them.

Passionnant éditorial de Joseph Massad : Hamas and the old/new American crescent. Il décrit notamment la toute récente compatibilité, promue par le Qatar, d’une partie des islamistes avec les intérêts de l’impérialisme américain (Libye, Tunisie, Égypte, Syrie… et maintenant Palestine). Un article qui permet notamment de comprendre la soudaine défense d’un certain islamisme américano-compatible de la part d’un BHL (« il y a charia et charia »).
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128217513887730.html

The competition is now on as to who will prove to be more effective in serving US interests in Jordan, Fateh or Hamas. As Qatar has been reassuring the Americans, increasingly successfully, that the takeover of political power by Islamist forces, specifically the Muslim Brothers and kindred groups, is the best option for the US to stabilise the region for decades to come without its imperial strategy being threatened, its push to bring Hamas into the fold of US strategy may soon prove successful.

This is in line with Qatar’s support of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and the Ennahda party in Tunisia, as well as its support of the Muslim Brothers in Syria and assorted Islamist forces in Libya.

Lire l’article complet :
– parce que c’est nettement plus subtile que l’extrait ci-dessus (il interroge notamment les limites de cette compatibilité),
– parce que le passage sur la Jordanie est vraiment édifiant,
– parce que la compatibilité de partis islamistes avec les intérêts réactionnaires et contre-révolutionnaires, et l’impérialisme américain est un sujet vital mais rarement abordé (on préfère continuer à se focaliser sur l’incompatibilité réelle ou fantasmée de l’islamisme avec la démocratie ou avec… « nos valeurs »). L’article de Joseph Massad rend ce genre de débat obsolète et propose une lecture plus pertinente.

EU-Israel: One hand whitewashes the other - Ben White
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201287194144393945.html

While those on the hard right portray the EU as representing a continent of anti-Semitic Israel-bashers on the path to “Eurabia”, the reality is that the EU is one of Israel’s most important allies - whose policies are playing a crucial role in frustrating the Palestinian struggle for justice.

The problem in a nutshell - a gaping disparity between rhetoric and deeds - was exemplified recently by the contrast between a European Parliament resolution on the one hand, and plans to enhance economic ties on the other.

When philosophers join the kill chain - Mark LeVine
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128710139185997.html

And now, at least one philosopher, Bradley Jay Strawser, has taken up the challenge of offering a viable justification for the use of drones. A recent hire at the Naval Postgraduate School, his arguments have caused enough of a stir to warrant a profile and opinion piece in the Guardian. Strawser now claims that the Guardian profile in fact misrepresented some of his views; but after reading two of his published papers on the subject, the profile in fact underplays the glaring problems in his arguments. When applied to US policy more broadly, they reveal just how far into a moral and ethical quagmire the United States has sunk under the Bush and Obama administrations.

American lessons in (in)tolerance | Joseph Massad (Al Jazeera English)
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201282134633756703.html

In the last week, officials of the Obama administration have been visiting Egypt and issuing instructions to the new Egyptian president regarding the question of religious tolerance and Egyptian Christians, demanding and insisting that they be included in the new administration in certain capacities or else. This concern of American government officials about Muslim tolerance of Christians, however, is hardly a new concern. More than a century ago, in March 1910, while on a visit to British-occupied Egypt, former US President Theodore Roosevelt, who had just left office, addressed Egyptians at the then recently established Egyptian University (later Cairo University) on the question of self-government. (...) Source: Al Jazeera English

Passionnant article de Joseph Massad: American lessons in (in)tolerance
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201282134633756703.html

Obama had lived in Indonesia from 1967 to 1971, in the wake of the massive US-sponsored massacres of almost one million Indonesians following the US-supported coup of General Suharto. Yet, while Obama remembers well Muslim “tolerance” towards Christians, he seems to remember little of the US-imposed terror and American sponsorship of right-wing Indonesian Muslim groups to kill communists in the wake of the 1965 Suharto coup, an intolerance the US had engineered and called for since the 1950s, and which would expand later to Afghanistan and spill over to right-wing Islamist groups’ intolerance of Christians in places like Egypt (many of whose right-wing sectarian Islamists were recruited by the US for its anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan) to which Obama was now counselling tolerance. 

Indeed, it is this same US-induced and supported intolerance that feeds the ongoing sectarian right-wing Islamist attacks on non-Sunni Muslims in Iraq (attacks that are depicted in the US media as an expression not of the US policy of sectarian agitation in Iraq, but on account of the indigenous “parochial” identities of Iraqis, which seem to have been unfortunately released by US-imposed “freedom”) and in Syria as well (in the latter case at least, with the full complicity of the Western press, if not Western governments, where sectarian attacks are being represented as part of the struggle for “democracy”). 

The US has continued to be the hegemon over Indonesia for the last 47 years, not only under the murderous regime of Suharto which it helped bring to power in 1965, but also and especially during the post-Suharto “democratic” phase where neoliberal former army generals would be elected to the presidency in accords with US interests. The current President Susilo Bambana Yudhoyono (a retired army general trained in the United States and an accused war criminal for his military role during Indonesia’s US-supported genocidal occupation of East Timor), and his vice-president Boediono (former governor of the Bank of Indonesia and a Wharton School graduate), are the crowning efforts of US policy in the country. With such examples of tolerance, like the United States and Indonesia under US tutelage, Muslim-majority countries indeed have much to learn about tolerance and more so about intolerance.

Merci, Monsieur Badiou
Secular fanaticism must be exposed for its own hatred and xenophobia, and get over the old cliches of #East and #West.

New York, NY - In a powerful new essay for Le Monde [Fr], Alain Badiou, arguably the greatest living French philosopher, pinpoints the principal culprit in the success of the far-right in the recent French presidential election that resulted in the presidency of Francois Hollande.

At issue is the evidently not-so-surprising success of the French #far-right, #anti-immigration, #Islamophobe nationalist politician #Marine Le Pen - to whom the French electorate handed a handsome 20 per cent and third place prestige.

As Neni Panourgia has recently warned, “the phenomenon of Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi in Greek), the #neo-Nazi organisation that received almost seven per cent of the vote in the Greek elections of May 6” is a clear indication that this rise of the right is not limited to France. The gruesome mass murderer Anders Breivik signalled from Northern Europe a common spectre that hovers over the entirety of the continent - most recently marked by the trial of the Bosnian Serb mass murderer General Ratko Mladic - accused of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including orchestrating the week-long massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim boys and men at Srebrenica in 1995 during the Bosnian war.

►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/2012521133112754351.html

agitprop suite -
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/20125412511925359.html

Anonymous : tout ce que vous voulez savoir... selon une canadienne opinion
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201255152158991826.html

Azawad: The latest African border dilemma - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/20124149184982408.html

Azawad: The latest African border dilemma

Last Modified: 18 Apr 2012 12:41

Mali has long had an uneasy relationship with its Tuareg population, given a history of ’governance by southern agriculturalists’ who marginalised the nomadic pastoral group [EPA]

On April 6, Tuareg rebels in the West African city of Timbuktu unilaterally declared their independence from Mali and announced the birth of a new nation called Azawad. The declaration was widely ignored or condemned by neighbouring African states and the international community.

However, considering the arbitrary nature of many national borders in Africa which date to the colonial era, and the likelihood of protracted strife in a hunger prone area if rebel claims are simply dismissed, the international community ought to think carefully about how best to engage with this potential new African country known as Azawad.

The history of contemporary African borders is problematic to say the least. The European colonial powers carved up Africa, and capriciously set territorial borders, at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 at which no Africans were present. These borders, which largely continued to exist long after independence, often split tribes, lumped incompatible ethnic groups together, or created countries which struggled economically because they were too big, too small, or landlocked. Given the problematic way in which African borders were originally set, it is not surprising that we see struggles to redefine national boundaries in the contemporary era.

How the #West de-democratised the #Middle_East

Rather than promote democracy in the Middle East, the West has a long history of doing the exact opposite.
Melbourne, Australia - With the momentous convulsion in the Middle East sparked by Mohamed Bouazizi’s martyrdom in January 2011, it is time to ask what happened to the question which for long dominated Western discourse on the Middle East: Is Islam compatible with democracy? The predominant answer for many years was “no”. Among others, Elie Kedourie, MS Lipset, and Huntington advocated such a position. Bernard Lewis, “the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East”, who offered “the intellectual ammunition for the Iraq War”, was most vociferous in upholding this position. Their main argument was that, unlike Christianity, Islam was unique in not differentiating religion from the state and hence democracy was impossible in Muslim polities. Against this doxa, I make three arguments.

First, the position that Islam is incompatible with democracy was false from the beginning, because it served imperial ambitions of the West and violated Muslims’ self-perception that, not only is Islam compatible with democracy, it was one of the engines of democratic empowerment.

Second, I argue that the West’s discourse of democratisation of the Middle East is dubious because it hides how the West actually de-democratised the Middle East. My contention is that, from the 1940s onwards, democratic experiments were well in place and the West subverted them to advance its own interests. I offer three examples of de-democratisation: The reportedly CIA-engineered coup against the elected government of Syria in 1949, the coup orchestrated by the US and UK against the democratic Iran in 1953 and subversion of Bahrain’s democracy in the 1970s. I also touch on the West’s recent de-democratisation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Third, I explain that the Middle East was de-democratised because the West rarely saw it as a collection of people with dynamic, rich social-cultural textures. The Western power elites viewed the Middle East as no more than a region of multiple resources and strategic interests; hence their aim was to keep it “stable” and “manageable”. To Ernest Bevin, foreign secretary (1945-51) of imperial Britain, without “its oil and other potential resources” there was “no hope of our being able to achieve the standard of life at which we [are] aiming in Great Britain”.

►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/201232710543250236.html

#democracy

What if democracy is just an illusion? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/2012311123627435712.html

It’s hard to imagine a better illustration of Marx’s theory of the ruling class than Citizens United, the 2010 case brought before the US Supreme Court in which the majority decided that political action committees (or PACs) cannot be subject to campaign finance laws. PACs do not formally represent candidates and instead, express their own political views. So the money they spend is more like free speech. Therefore, political money is speech protected by the US Constitution’s First Amendment.

In theory, this is an egalitarian ruling. Any citizen can spend any amount of money to promote or attack any issue they want. But we don’t live in an egalitarian society. As Gore Vidal has said, America is a very good place to live if you have money and property. Not so much if you don’t.

Now we have 364 so-called super PACs dominating the national political dialogue as candidates compete for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. These organisations can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money as long as they don’t explicitly endorse or challenge a specific candidate. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, they have raised more than $130m in 2012 and spent almost $75m on attack advertisements carried over broadcast, cable and radio. Of that total amount, 25 per cent comes from just five people.

What these ads say is less important than their results, one of which is the curious political phenomenon of the zombie candidate. Without a billionaire casino tycoon who keeps obligingly writing checks to a super PAC, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich would have quit a long time ago. Then there are candidates like Mitt Romney who need not be especially good at being candidates. Romney is preternaturally unable to ignite the party’s base, yet he continues winning primaries because his backer, a super PAC called Restore Our Future, has spent $37m in two and a half months, more than any sum spent on any candidate in any election ever.

Some super PACs don’t even support candidates, but instead attack incumbents. The Campaign for Primary Accountability is spending millions to oust representatives who’d otherwise be safe. Political activity, moreover, isn’t restricted to super PACs. Americans for Prosperity, officially a “non-profit advocacy group”, has supported Tea Party candidates and has launched propaganda campaigns in Wisconsin that touted Governor Scott Walker’s austerity measures and newly passed anti-union laws. Americans for Prosperity is funded by libertarians Charles and David Koch, brothers whose combined worth is estimated to be about $50bn. Instead of targeting politicians vying for public office, the Kochs are taking aim at ordinary middle-class workers who might otherwise have reason to believe in the American Dream.

Columnist EJ Dionne of the Washington Post summed it up when he wrote:

Oh, yes, it works nicely for the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, especially if they want to shroud their efforts to influence politics behind shell corporations. It just doesn’t happen to work if you think we are a democracy and not a plutocracy.

And perhaps there’s the real problem. If you believe the US is a democracy, if you believe in the rule of the many and not the rule of the few, then the Citizens United ruling could not be more troubling. But what if this is not a democracy? What if this, as Dionne suggests, is an oligarchy of billionaire capitalists? More horrible to ponder, what if democracy is yet more intellectual cover, another one of those illusions, for the exploitation of American workers?

Then the theory of the ruling class fits perfectly. Citizens United and the United States were made for each other.

The disappearing virtual library
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012227143813304790.html

Last week a website called “library.nu” disappeared. A coalition of international scholarly publishers accused the site of piracy and convinced a judge in Munich to shut it down. Library.nu (formerly Gigapedia) had offered, if the reports are to be believed, between 400,000 and a million digital books for free. 

And not just any books - not romance novels or the latest best-sellers - but scholarly books: textbooks, secondary treatises, obscure monographs, biographical analyses, technical manuals, collections of cutting-edge research in engineering, mathematics, biology, social science and humanities.

The texts ranged from so-called “orphan works” (out-of-print, but still copyrighted) to recent issues; from poorly scanned to expertly ripped; from English to German to French to Spanish to Russian, with the occasional Japanese or Chinese text. It was a remarkable effort of collective connoisseurship. Even the pornography was scholarly: guidebooks and scholarly books about the pornography industry. For a criminal underground site to be mercifully free of pornography must alone count as a triumph of civilisation.

To the publishing industry, this event was a victory in the campaign to bring the unruly internet under some much-needed discipline. To many other people - namely the users of the site - it was met with anger, sadness and fatalism. But who were these sad criminals, these barbarians at the gates ready to bring our information economy to its knees? 

They are students and scholars, from every corner of the planet.

The $100bn Facebook question: Will capitalism survive ’value abundance’? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
▻http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/20122277438762233.html

La justice ordonne la fermeture de Library.nu et ifiles.et de leurs ebooks
►http://www.01net.com/editorial/558642/library-nu-et-ifile-it-contraints-de-fermer-leurs-ebooks

et aussi
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012227143813304790.html

#téléchargement, #bibliothèque, #basededonnée, #propriété_intellectuelle
#copyright