position:mayor

Secret 1970 document confirms first West Bank settlements built on a lie
In minutes of meeting in then-defense minister Moshe Dayan’s office, top Israeli officials discussed how to violate international law in building settlement of Kiryat Arba, next to Hebron.
By Yotam Berger | Jul. 28, 2016 | 10:17 AM

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It has long been an open secret that the settlement enterprise was launched under false pretenses, involving the expropriation of Palestinian land for ostensibly military purposes when the true intent was to build civilian settlements, which is a violation of international law.

Now a secret document from 1970 has surfaced confirming this long-held assumption. The document, a copy of which has been obtained by Haaretz, details a meeting in the office of then-defense minister Moshe Dayan at which government and military leaders spoke explicitly about how to carry out this deception in the building of Kiryat Arba, next to Hebron.

The document is titled “The method for establishing Kiryat Arba.” It contains minutes of a meeting held in July 1970 in Dayan’s office, and describes how the land on which the settlement was to be built would be confiscated by military order, ostensibly for security purposes, and that the first buildings on it would be falsely presented as being strictly for military use.

Aside from Dayan, the participants include the director general of the Housing Ministry, the Israel Defense Forces’ commander in the West Bank and the coordinator of government activities in the territories.

’Construction will be presented as ...’

According to the minutes, these officials decided to build “250 housing units in Kiryat Arba within the perimeter of the area specified for the military unit’s use. All the building will be done by the Defense Ministry and will be presented as construction for the IDF’s needs.”

A “few days” after Base 14 had “completed its activities,” the document continued, “the commander of the Hebron district will summon the mayor of Hebron, and in the course of raising other issues, will inform him that we’ve started to build houses on the military base in preparation for winter.” In other words, the participants agreed to mislead the mayor into thinking the construction was indeed for military purposes, when in fact, they planned to let settlers move in – the same settlers who on Passover 1968 moved into Hebron’s Park Hotel, which was the embryo of the settler enterprise.

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2015 map of West Bank settlement Kiryat Arba credit:Peace Now

The system of confiscating land by military order for the purpose of establishing settlements was an open secret in Israel throughout the 1970s, according to people involved in creating and implementing the system. Its goal was to present an appearance of complying with international law, which forbids construction for civilian purposes on occupied land. In practice, everyone involved, from settlers to defense officials, knew the assertion that the land was meant for military rather than civilian use was false.

This system was used to set up several settlements, until the High Court of Justice outlawed it in a 1979 ruling on a petition against the establishment of the settlement of Elon Moreh.

Participant: We all knew the score

Maj. Gen. (res.) Shlomo Gazit, who was coordinator of government activities in the territories at the time of the 1970 meeting in Dayan’s office about Kiryat Arba, told Haaretz it was clear to all the meeting’s participants that settlers would move into those buildings. He said that to the best of his recollection, this constituted the first use of the system of annexing land to a military base for the purpose of civilian settlement in the West Bank. He also recalled Dayan as the one who proposed this system, because he didn’t like any of the alternative locations proposed for Kiryat Arba.

Nevertheless, and despite what the document advocated, Gazit said, army officers told the mayor of Hebron explicitly that a civilian settlement would be established next to his city, rather than telling him the construction was for military purposes.

Hagit Ofran, head of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch project, also said this appears to be the first use of the system of using military orders to seize land for civilian settlement. And while this system is no longer in use, she said, “Today, too, the state uses tricks to build and expand settlements. We don’t need to wait decades for the revelation of another internal document to realize that the current system for taking over land – wholesale declarations of it as state land – also violates the essence of the law.”

Gazit said that in retrospect, the system was wrong, but that he was just “a bureaucrat, in quotation marks; I carried out the government’s orders, in quotation marks.”

“I think this pretense has continued until today,” he added. “Throughout my seven years as coordinator of government activities in the territories, we didn’t establish settlements anywhere by any other system.”

But government officials had no idea Kiryat Arba (pop. 8,000) would become so big, Gazit insisted. They only sought to provide a solution for the squatters in the Park Hotel, who “weren’t more than 50 families.”

Today, even Kiryat Arba residents admit that this system was a deception. Settler ideologue Elyakim Haetzni, one of Kiryat Arba’s original residents, noted that during a Knesset debate at the time, cabinet minister Yigal Allon said clearly that this would be a civilian settlement.

“It’s clear why this game ended; after all, how long could it go on? This performance had no connection whatsoever to Herut (the predecessor to Likud); it was all within Mapai,” Haetzni added, referring to the ruling party at the time, a precursor of today’s Labor Party.

Bernie Sanders’ Democratic National Convention speech / Boing Boing
▻http://boingboing.net/2016/07/25/bernie-sanders-democratic-na.html

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Thank you. Good evening.

It is an honor to be with you tonight and to be following in the footsteps of Elizabeth Warren, and to be here tonight to thank Michelle Obama for her incredible service to our country. She has made all of us proud.

Let me begin by thanking the hundreds of thousands of Americans who actively participated in our campaign as volunteers. Thank you.

Let me thank the 2 1/2 million Americans who helped fund our campaign with an unprecedented 8 million individual campaign contributions . Anyone know what that average contribution was? That’s right, $27. And let me thank the 13 million Americans who voted for the political revolution, giving us the 1,846 pledged delegates here tonight – 46 percent of the total.

And delegates: Thank you for being here, and for all the work you’ve done. I look forward to your votes during the roll call on Tuesday night.

And let me offer a special thanks to the people of my own state of Vermont who have sustained me and supported me as a mayor, congressman, senator and presidential candidate.

And to my family – my wife Jane, four kids and seven grandchildren –thank you very much for your love and hard work on this campaign.

I understand that many people here in this convention hall and around the country are disappointed about the final results of the nominating process. I think it’s fair to say that no one is more disappointed than I am. But to all of our supporters – here and around the country – I hope you take enormous pride in the historical accomplishments we have achieved.

Together, my friends, we have begun a political revolution to transform America and that revolution – our revolution – continues. Election days come and go. But the struggle of the people to create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 percent – a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice – that struggle continues. And I look forward to being part of that struggle with you.

Let me be as clear as I can be. This election is not about, and has never been about, Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders or any of the other candidates who sought the presidency. This election is not about political gossip. It’s not about polls. It’s not about campaign strategy. It’s not about fundraising. It’s not about all the things that the media spends so much time discussing.

This election is about – and must be about – the needs of the American people and the kind of future we create for our children and grandchildren.

This election is about ending the 40-year decline of our middle class the reality that 47 million men, women and children live in poverty. It is about understanding that if we do not transform our economy, our younger generation will likely have a lower standard of living then their parents.

This election is about ending the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that we currently experience, the worst it has been since 1928. It is not moral, not acceptable and not sustainable that the top one-tenth of one percent now own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, or that the top 1 percent in recent years has earned 85 percent of all new income. That is unacceptable. That must change.

This election is about remembering where we were 7 1/2 years ago when President Obama came into office after eight years of Republican trickle-down economics.

The Republicans want us to forget that as a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, our economy was in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Some 800,000 people a month were losing their jobs. We were running up a record-breaking deficit of $1.4 trillion and the world’s financial system was on the verge of collapse.

We have come a long way in the last 7 1/2 years, and I thank President Obama and Vice President Biden for their leadership in pulling us out of that terrible recession.

Yes, we have made progress, but I think we can all agree that much, much more needs to be done.

This election is about which candidate understands the real problems facing this country and has offered real solutions – not just bombast, not just fear-mongering, not just name-calling and divisiveness.

We need leadership in this country which will improve the lives of working families, the children, the elderly, the sick and the poor. We need leadership which brings our people together and makes us stronger – not leadership which insults Latinos, Muslims, women, African-Americans and veterans – and divides us up.

By these measures, any objective observer will conclude that – based on her ideas and her leadership – Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States. The choice is not even close.

This election is about a single mom I saw in Nevada who, with tears in her eyes, told me that she was scared to death about the future because she and her young daughter were not making it on the $10.45 an hour she was earning. This election is about that woman and the millions of other workers in this country who are struggling to survive on totally inadequate wages.

Hillary Clinton understands that if someone in this country works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty. She understands that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And she is determined to create millions of new jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure – our roads, bridges, water systems and wastewater plants.

But her opponent – Donald Trump – well, he has a very different point of view. He does not support raising the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour – a starvation wage. While Donald Trump believes in huge tax breaks for billionaires, he believes that states should actually have the right to lower the minimum wage below $7.25.

Brothers and sisters, this election is about overturning Citizens United, one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of our country. That decision allows the wealthiest people in America, like the billionaire Koch brothers, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying elections and, in the process, undermine American democracy.

Hillary Clinton will nominate justices to the Supreme Court who are prepared to overturn Citizens United and end the movement toward oligarchy in this country. Her Supreme Court appointments will also defend a woman’s right to choose, workers’ rights, the rights of the LGBT community, the needs of minorities and immigrants and the government’s ability to protect our environment.

If you don’t believe that this election is important, if you think you can sit it out, take a moment to think about the Supreme Court justices that Donald Trump would nominate and what that would mean to civil liberties, equal rights and the future of our country.

This election is about the thousands of young people I have met all over this country who have left college deeply in debt, and tragically the many others who cannot afford to go to college. During the primary campaign, Secretary Clinton and I both focused on this issue but with somewhat different approaches. Recently, however, we have come together on a proposal that will revolutionize higher education in America. It will guarantee that the children of any family this country with an annual income of $125,000 a year or less – 83 percent of our population – will be able to go to a public college or university tuition free. That proposal also substantially reduces student debt.

This election is about climate change, the greatest environmental crisis facing our planet, and the need to leave this world in a way that is healthy and habitable for our kids and future generations. Hillary Clinton is listening to the scientists who tell us that – unless we act boldly and transform our energy system in the very near future – there will be more drought, more floods, more acidification of the oceans, more rising sea levels. She understands that when we do that we can create hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs.

Donald Trump? Well, like most Republicans, he chooses to reject science. He believes that climate change is a “hoax,” no need to address it. Hillary Clinton understands that a president’s job is to worry about future generations, not the short-term profits of the fossil fuel industry.

This campaign is about moving the United States toward universal health care and reducing the number of people who are uninsured or under-insured. Hillary Clinton wants to see that all Americans have the right to choose a public option in their health care exchange. She believes that anyone 55 years or older should be able to opt in to Medicare and she wants to see millions more Americans gain access to primary health care, dental care, mental health counseling and low-cost prescription drugs through a major expansion of community health centers.

And What is Donald Trump’s position on health care? Well, no surprise there. Same old, same old Republican contempt for working families. He wants to abolish the Affordable Care Act, throw 20 million people off of the health insurance they currently have and cut Medicaid for lower-income Americans.

Hillary Clinton also understands that millions of seniors, disabled vets and others are struggling with the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs and the fact that Americans pay the highest prices in the world for the medicine we use. She knows that Medicare must negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry and that drug companies should not be making billions in profits while one in five Americans are unable to afford the medicine they need. The greed of the drug companies must end.

This election is about the leadership we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform and repair a broken criminal justice system. It’s about making sure that young people in this country are in good schools and at good jobs, not rotting in jail cells. Hillary Clinton understands that we have to invest in education and jobs for our young people, not more jails or incarceration.

In these stressful times for our country, this election must be about bringing our people together, not dividing us up. While Donald Trump is busy insulting one group after another, Hillary Clinton understands that our diversity is one of our greatest strengths. Yes. We become stronger when black and white, Latino, Asian-American, Native American – when all of us – stand together. Yes. We become stronger when men and women, young and old, gay and straight, native born and immigrant fight together to create the kind of country we all know we can become.

It is no secret that Hillary Clinton and I disagree on a number of issues. That’s what this campaign has been about. That’s what democracy is about. But I am happy to tell you that at the Democratic Platform Committee there was a significant coming together between the two campaigns and we produced, by far, the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party. Among many, many other strong provisions, the Democratic Party now calls for breaking up the major financial institutions on Wall Street and the passage of a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. It also calls for strong opposition to job-killing free trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
We have got to make sure that the #TPP doesn’t get passed by Cogress during a lame-duck session.

Our job now is to see that platform implemented by a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency – and I am going to do everything I can to make that happen.

I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight for universal health care. I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce advocate for the rights of children, for the women, and for the disabled.

Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her tonight.

Thank you all very much.

#USA #politique

Hollande’s promise to respond militarily to the Nice attack just continues the West’s vicious circle of terror and war | Voices | The Independent
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nice-terrorist-attack-france-isis-francois-hollande-response-syria-ir

At some point, we in the West are going to have to learn that if we intervene militarily in Mali or Iraq or Libya or Syria or interfere in Turkey, or Egypt, or the Gulf, or the Maghreb – then we will not be safe ’at home’

Painful memories of civil war purge live on in southern Spain - France 24

LA ALGABA (SPAIN) (AFP) -

“They would say: ’We have to eliminate the red seed’,” said Rogelia Beltran as she recalled how her grandfather died in a purge against leftists in southern Spain during the country’s civil war.

The bloody conflict pitted forces loyal to the elected Socialist-led government known as Republicans against rebel Nationalist troops that rose up under General Francisco Franco in a military putsch.

After Nationalist troops staged a coup on July 18, 1936, large landowners in the southern region of Andalusia aided the revolt by persecuting day labourers who they believed backed the government.

In Beltran’s hometown of La Algaba the pro-Nationalist landowners were led by a matador, Jose Garcia Carranza, also known as “El Algabeno”, who became known as the “killer of bulls and reds”.

Civilian supporters of the military uprising like “El Algabeno” received “carte blanche” from the military men who quickly seized control of the region, historian Francisco Espinosa told AFP.

“They were members of the rural bourgeoisie” who offered to repress opposition to the coup “mounted on their own horses and using their own weapons”, he said.

Eighty years after the war began, the memory of the purge carried out against leftists in Andalusia, known today for its sandy tourist beaches, lives on.

– Hunted like animals -

Paramilitaries and the rebel troops “carried out clean-up operations in the mountains” where leftists and unionists sought sanctuary, said Juan Jose Lopez, a member of an association of victims of the civil war and the dictatorship that followed.

His great uncle was killed in November 1936 in a raid near the village of El Madrono.

“It was like a deer or wild boar hunt. The raiders would sweep the mountains so the prey would flee” and then shoot them, he said.

As he speaks he holds a photo of his relative which is part of a travelling exhibition called “The DNA of Memory” which aims to give visibility to victims of the conflict eight decades after it started.

A 1977 amnesty law prevents Spain from investigating and trying the crimes of the civil war era and the repressive right-wing dictatorship of General Francisco Franco that followed until his death in 1975.

“They did horrible things. They would leave bodies scattered in the streets as an example and would prevent them from being collected so they would be eaten by animals,” said Antonio Narvaez, 83, a retired steelworker.

He was just three-years-old when his father was killed in Marchena. A day labourer who did not belong to a union and had no political affiliation, his only crime was that he knew how to read, said Narvaez.

“He would read the press to his colleagues,” he said with a toothless smile.

Widows were also punished. Supporters of the right-wing coup would confiscate their homes and goods, leaving them without work and stigmatised with young children to raise.

“They would shave their hair off and parade them around the town,” said Antonio Martinez, 80, a retired hotel worker whose father was repressed during the war in the town of Escacena del Campo.

– ’Ideological purge’ -

Beltran, a 53-year-old nursing assistant, said the idea was “’if you don’t think like me, I will eliminate you’ and that is called genocide”.

“It was an ideological purge which also included teachers, lawyers, journalists, writers with a liberal ideology,” added Paqui Maqueda, 52, a social worker whose great-grandfather and three great-uncles were killed in the town of Carmona near Seville.

She gave the example of the celebrated Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, known for works including the play “Blood wedding”, who was shot for his suspected leftist sympathies by supporters of the military uprising near the southern city of Granada in 1936.

“But the lower classes were the most repressed,” said Maqueda.

Plagued by high levels of illiteracy and miserable living conditions, farm workers had formed a strong union movement.

And wealthy landowners like “El Algabeno”, who is said to have speared day labourers as if they were bulls, decided to quash their movement, historians and victims say.

“Many of Garcia Carranza’s crimes were gathered and detailed by witnesses and contemporaries,” said Diego Aguera, the mayor of La Algaba, the matador’s hometown.

In a narrow street of white houses near the bougainvillea-lined main square of the town, a plaque reads: “Jose Garcia Carranza Street”.

Aguera in March got the town hall to approve changing the name to “Equality Street” because of the “countless murders he carried out, the majority in cold blood, the countless detentions and tortures he practiced”.

Several family members of the late matador, contacted by AFP, refused to be quoted about his legacy.

“Sometimes you think you are doing good and you are doing bad,” said one of his great-nieces who declined to be named.

But for now, the street sign bearing Carranza’s name remains in place as local authorities wrestle with the bureaucracy needed to change it.
by Anna Cuenca

▻http://www.france24.com/en/20160713-painful-memories-civil-war-purge-live-southern-spain

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#espagne #memoire #guerre_d'espagne

U.S. flag at half-staff 328 days last year : Is the tribute overused ? - San Jose Mercury News
▻http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_30080628/u-s-flag-at-half-staff-328-days
#en_berne

Nearly every day, somewhere in the country, the Stars and Stripes was lowered to half-staff last year in one of the most significant official gestures of mourning and respect, an Associated Press analysis found.

The centuries-old practice can be a visible, public answer to extraordinary loss, as when more than four dozen people were killed last month at a gay nightclub in Florida. But as the nation marks Independence Day on Monday, flag buffs have noted that the honor has been extended more widely over time, including to celebrities and police dogs. And some have questioned whether the country has lowered the bar on the lowering of the flag.
[…]
Eight states had orders lowering the U.S. flag in effect over more than 30 days; Massachusetts led all others, keeping the flag at half-staff for over a quarter of the year, including on the Fourth of July.
[…]
Even denying flag honors to a convicted felon didn’t fly in Rhode Island. Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo initially declined to lower flags this year for longtime former Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci, a Republican-turned-independent who’d been convicted of corruption. Amid an outcry from Cianci fans, Raimondo changed her mind “out of respect for the office he held for 20 years.”

Difficile d’imaginer en effet que Levallois-Perret ne porte pas le deuil de son maire emblématique lorsque celui-ci achèvera le cours de son existence. Et son patronyme mériterait de rejoindre, voire remplacer, ceux des immortels spéculateurs fonciers qui ont donné leurs noms à la commune.

’Menstrual equity’: Free tampons for New York City schools and jails - BBC News
▻http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36597949

Free tampons and pads are coming to New York City’s public schools, prisons and homeless shelters.

The city will be the first in the US to introduce such a programme.
Why are city authorities doing this, how will it work and how much will it cost?

New York City council voted unanimously on Tuesday for a series of measures to provide menstrual hygiene products free of charge in public schools, prisons and homeless shelters.

The bills are not yet law as Mayor Bill de Blasio needs to enact them, but he is a supporter, he says, “because tampons and pads aren’t luxuries - they’re necessities”.

The measures were sponsored and promoted by city councillor Julissa Ferrares-Copeland, who says “periods have been stigmatised for too long”.

She said she was happy to be known as the “period legislator”.

In #Winooski, Many See Refugee Resettlement As Economic Advantage

#Rutland Mayor Christopher Louras says his efforts to create a refugee resettlement community in Rutland are morally and economically based. Rutland’s population is declining and aging and Louras says young refugee families are hard working, entrepreneurial and will bring much needed diversity to the city.

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▻http://digital.vpr.net/post/winooski-many-see-refugee-resettlement-economic-advantage#stream/0
#économie #accueil #réfugiés #USA #Etats-Unis #refugees_welcome #migrations #asile #solidarité

British MP Jo Cox shot and killed — FT.com
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Hithem Ben Abdallah, 56, was in the café next door to the library shortly after 1pm when he heard screaming and went outside. He told the Press Association: “There was a guy who was being very brave and another guy with a white baseball cap who he was trying to control, and the man in the baseball cap suddenly pulled a gun from his bag.”

After a brief scuffle, he said the man stepped back and the MP became involved.

He added: “He was fighting with her and wrestling with her and then the gun went off twice and then she fell between two cars and I came and saw her bleeding on the floor.”

15 minutes, the shop owner said emergency services arrived and tended to her with a drip.

The Manchester Evening News reported that the attacker had shouted “Britain first” before the attack, according to a witness. The man then walked away slowly. Britain First said it was looking into the reports.

Ms Cox grew up in the area, before becoming the first person in her family to graduate from university.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the country would be “in shock at the horrific murder” of MP Jo Cox, who was a “much loved colleague”.

Boris Johnson, the former London mayor and leader of the Leave campaign, said: “Just heard the absolutely horrific news about the attack on Jo Cox MP. My thoughts are with Jo and her family.”

Ms Cox, who was married with two children, also worked as an adviser to Sarah Brown, the wife of former prime minister Gordon Brown. She was one of 36 MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn for the party leadership in mid-2015, but later voted for Liz Kendall. In recent weeks she had campaigned for the Remain camp.

Her husband, Brendan, was one of a number of Remain campaigners involved in a light-hearted clash with their Leave counterparts on the river Thames on Wednesday.

About Jo | Jo Cox MP
▻http://www.jocox.org.uk/about-jo

Jo Cox – The Labour Party
▻http://www.labour.org.uk/people/detail/jo-cox

Jo grew up in Batley and Spen, attended Heckmondwike Grammar School and became the first in her family to graduate from university finishing her degree at Cambridge University in 1995.

Jo’s career has involved working all over the world for charities fighting to tackle poverty, suffering and discrimination. She has worked with Oxfam, Save the Children and the NSPCC both here in the UK and in some of the world’s poorest and most war-torn regions.

Jo Cox is national chair of Labour Women’s Network and a senior advisor to the anti-slavery charity, the Freedom Fund.

A dedicated campaigner nationally and locally, Jo focuses heavily on fighting for our public services, particularly against the decision to downgrade Dewsbury and District Hospital. She is also involved with efforts to strengthen our manufacturing base in Yorkshire and in campaigns and initiatives to tackle poverty and the cost of living crisis, such as Batley Food Bank.

Jo is married to Brendan and they have two young children. She enjoys climbing mountains, boats and running.

Jo Cox MP - UK Parliament
▻http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/commons/jo-cox/4375

403 - Error: 403
▻http://www.daviesandpartners.com/our-people/jo-cox

Jo Cox - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Cox

With Regret, I Feel I Have No Other Option But to Abstain on Syria
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/jo-cox/syria-vote_b_8698242.html

02/12/2015 15:49
Jo Cox, Labour MP for Batley & Spen

The Syria debate has been unhelpfully framed by two extremes.

The ’something must be done’ brigade who understandably are desperate to respond to the fascism of Isis and the threat to the UK, but who are often less reflective on the type of action that might be needed, the danger of unintended consequences or the specific conflict dynamics in Syria. There’s a danger of them falling into the trap of the man with a hammer who thinks everything is a nail. We need a nuanced approach not a one tactic fits all plan.

On the other hand there are the ’nothing can be done’ sect who see military action as an anathema in all circumstances, who view the role of Britain with suspicion and who trace back most if not all injustices in the world to UK imperialism. This depressing lack of sophistication airbrushes from history the role we played in cases such as Kosovo or Sierra Leone - where civilian protection was key - and fixates on Iraq as the sole frame. This group deny they are against action per se (we want a ’new diplomatic push’ goes the cry), they assert they are just against military action. Yet almost all of them have remained remarkably silent about Syria while hundreds of thousands have been killed, only now raising their voices to state what they are against rather than what they are for. It is best personified by the ’Stop the War’ coalition, a coalition who don’t seem to know or care that there is already a war in Syria and has been for many years. If they were really the ’Stop the War’ coalition they would have been actively campaigning for resolute international action to protect civilians and end the war in Syria for many years.

Both extremes are completely unhelpful to the debate.

Jeremy Corbyn, these election results mean it’s time to show us that you are a leader
▻http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyn-election-results-mean-7920830

Jo Cox: Brexit is no answer to real concerns on immigration - Yorkshire Post
▻http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/jo-cox-brexit-is-no-answer-to-real-concerns-on-immigration-1-795682

Kirklees MP Jo Cox apologises after aide claims she “knifed” Corbyn - Huddersfield Examiner
▻http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/kirklees-mp-jo-cox-apologises-11305865

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#Royaume_Uni #Labour #Brexit #assassinat

#Paris mayor plans official camp for homeless refugees

Anne Hidalgo says current situation, with makeshift migrant settlements springing up before being cleared, is not acceptable

▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/31/paris-mayor-plans-official-camp-for-homeless-refugees?CMP=share_btn_tw
#SDF #campement #France #asile #migrations #réfugiés #camp #Hidalgo

Greek Syrian mayor and refugees bring tourist village back to life

A Greek summer resort that closed over five years ago as a result of the financial crisis has been turned into a haven for more than 300 refugees.

http://www.unhcr.org/thumb1/57569f4c4.jpg

#asile #migrations #réfugiés #accueil #tourisme #Grèce #solidarité #renaissance

#LM_Village comme #Riace, en Italie...

The Spanish Town That Runs on Twitter - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/technology/the-spanish-town-that-runs-on-twitter.html

Using #Twitter has also reduced the need for some jobs. Jun cut its police force by three-quarters, to just one officer, soon after turning to Twitter as its main form of communication when residents began tweeting potential problems directly to the mayor.

“We don’t have one #police officer,” Mr. Rodríguez Salas said. “We have 3,500.”

Le maire de Tel Aviv impute l’attaque meurtrière contre un café à l’occupation israélienne
MEE | 9 juin 2016
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/reportages/le-maire-de-tel-aviv-927730193

Ce jeudi, le maire de Tel Aviv a attribué à l’occupation israélienne des territoires palestiniens l’attaque meurtrière menée par deux Palestiniens armés qui a tuée quatre Israéliens dans cette ville de la côte méditerranéenne.

Le maire travailliste Ron Huldai (71 ans) a déclaré à la radio de l’armée israélienne que l’occupation était responsable de l’attaque de mercredi soir, au cours de laquelle deux Palestiniens armés, originaires des alentours de Hébron dans le sud de la Cisjordanie, sont entrés dans un café populaire et ont ouvert le feu sur des personnes faisant la fête.

« Nous sommes sans doute le seul pays au monde, où une autre nation est sous occupation sans aucun droit civique », a-t-il déclaré. « Vous ne pouvez pas maintenir les gens dans une situation d’occupation et espérer qu’ils vont conclure que tout va bien. »

Ron Huldai a ajouté que « personne n’a le courage » de faire la paix avec les Palestiniens et il a demandé de tenter de conclure un accord lorsque les attaques se seront calmées.

« Il y a eu une occupation qui dure depuis 49 ans, dont j’ai fait partie, et dont je connais la réalité, et je sais que les dirigeants ont besoin de courage pour ne pas se contenter de parler.

« Nous devons montrer à nos voisins que nous avons véritablement l’intention de revenir à une réalité avec un État juif plus petit, avec une nette majorité juive. »

Le vice-ministre de la Défense Eli Ben-Dahan a répondu à Ron Huldai, qualifiant ses remarques d’« étranges » et « délirantes ».

Bilderberg : Liste des participants et agenda de la réunion 2016
▻http://www.brujitafr.fr/2016/06/bilderberg-liste-des-participants-et-agenda-de-la-reunion-2016.html

RéUNIOn BILDERBERG 2016 Dresde, Allemagne 9-12 Juin Liste finale des participants CHAIRMAN Castries, Henri de (FRA), Chairman and CEO, AXA Group Aboutaleb, Ahmed (NLD), Mayor, City of Rotterdam Achleitner, Paul M. (DEU), Chairman of the Supervisory Board,...

Le tribunal administratif de Toulouse a autorisé la tenue d’une réunion en faveur du BDS. Quelqu’un a t il vu passer cela dans les médias français ?
French court overturns « illegal » ban on BDS event | The Electronic Intifada
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/french-court-overturns-illegal-ban-bds-event

A court in France struck a blow for free speech when it overturned a government ban on a meeting to support individuals facing trial for their Palestine solidarity activism.

The decision comes as governments and organizations around the world are showing increasing willingness to defend the legitimacy of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in support of Palestinian rights.

On 26 May, the mayor’s office in the southern city of Toulouse banned the gathering scheduled for Tuesday evening at a public facility, featuring Mohammed Khatib of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network and writer Eric Hazan.

The meeting was sponsored by the Support Committee for the BDS Accused of Toulouse, a coalition of dozens of groups backing four activists facing trial next month for handing out leaflets calling for the boycott of Israeli goods.

But on Monday, the Toulouse administrative court overturned the mayor’s ban and ordered the city to provide a space for the meeting to take place.

The court stated that the mayor’s ban on the meeting was “a grave and manifestly illegal infringement of the fundamental freedom of assembly,” according to BDS France and Association France Palestine Solidarité.

#BDS

#réfugiés : Anne Hidalgo veut installer un campement « humanitaire » à Paris
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/310516/refugies-anne-hidalgo-veut-installer-un-campement-humanitaire-paris

Pour prévenir l’apparition de campements de fortune, et face à la défaillance de l’État, pourtant compétent en la matière, la maire de Paris a annoncé mardi 31 mai l’ouverture d’un campement, sur le modèle de celui de Grande-Synthe (Nord), dans le nord de la capitale.

#France ##OpenEurope #asile #migrants

NOAH Internet Conference 2016 | Berlin 08 - 09 June
▻https://www.noah-conference.com
Une rencontre des protagonistes de la disruption à l’européenne se tiendra le 8 et 9 juin à Berlin. Si vous avez envie de découvrir un nid de crabes de casseurs d’aquis sociaux suivez les infos sur cette rencontre digne d’un Bilderberg des économies dites « nouvelles » . On y rencontrera les acteurs représentant les commanditaires principales des nouveaux lois du travail en Europe. La plupart des participants actifs sont des jeunes à la recherche de capital pour leurs startups déjà bien vus par les investisseurs.

The preeminent European event where Internet CEOs, executives and investors gain deep insights into the latest proven concepts, network with senior executives and establish new business relationships.

Now in our 8th year, we are delighted to be hosting two upcoming events with very different underlying themes. NOAH Berlin (8-9 Jun 2016) presents a unique discussion platform for CEOs and founders from established champions and disruptive challengers across a number of key industry verticals. NOAH London (10-11 Nov 2016) is focused on connecting capital with great companies and helping service providers to find relevant customers.

Day 1

Welcome Note
Marco Rodzynek CEO NOAH Advisors Ltd
Jens Mueffelmann CEO Axel Springer Digital Ventures
Keynote
Klaus Hommels CEO Lakestar
Keynote
Carlos Watson Founder & CEO OZY

Home Automation & IoT
Niall Murphy Founder & CEO Evrythng
Ludovic Le Moan CEO Sigfox
Christian Deilmann CEO tado
Andreas Rudyk CEO Smartfrog
Philipp Pausder Managing Director Thermondo

Keynote
Thomas Ebeling CEO ProSiebenSat.1

B2B
Karim Jalbout Head of the European Digital Practice Egon Zehnder
Thomas Bergen Co-Founder & CEO getAbstract
Steve Oriola CEO Pipedrive
Peter F. Schmid CEO Wer Liefert Was
Or Offer CEO SimilarWeb
Andreas Koenig CEO TeamViewer
Torben Majgaard Founder & CEO Ciklum
Mark Schwerzel Deputy CEO Bureau van Dijk

Fintech
Roelant Prins CCO Adyen
Antonio Gagliardi Co-Founder and Managing Director CompareEuropeGroup
Jacob de Geer CEO iZettle
Phil Lojacono CEO Advanon
Jeremias Meier CEO & Co-Founder Bexio
Yoni Assia CEO & Founder Etoro
Oren Levy CEO Zooz
Raffael Johnen Co-Founder & CEO auxmoney

Fintech - Banking Deep Dive
Markus Pertlwieser CDO Private, Wealth & Commercial Clients Deutsche BankAlexander Graubner-Müller CEO & Co-Founder Kreditech
Valentin Stalf Founder & CEO Number26

Who Will Win the Banking Client of the Future? - 2:2
Markus Pertlwieser CDO Private, Wealth & Commercial Clients Deutsche Bank
Dr. Tim Sievers CEO & Founder Deposit Solutions
Alexander Graubner-Müller CEO & Co-Founder Kreditech
alentin Stalf Founder & CEO Number26
Christin Martens Editor-in-Chief Business Insider

VC Panel
Rainer Maerkle General Partner Holtzbrinck Ventures
Yann de Vries Partner, Investments Atomico
Yaron Valler General Partner Target Global
Christian Leybold Managing Director E.ventures
Timm Schipporeit Principal Index Ventures
Luciana Lixandru Vice President Accel Partners
Ankur Kamalia Managing Director – Head of Venture Portfolio Management & DB1 Ventures Deutsche Börse AG
Bo Ilsoe Managing Partner Nokia Growth Partners (NGP)

Fireside Chat
Oliver Samwer Founder & CEO Rocket Internet
Marco Rodzynek CEO NOAH Advisors Ltd

NOAH Top Picks
Dr. Holger Klärner VP Fast Growing Tech McKinsey & Company

Mobility
Hakan Koç Founder & Managing Director Auto1 Group
Harold Goddijn CEO TomTom
Christian Vollmann Patron of smart urban pioneers smart
Nir Erez CEO Moovit
Daniel Ishag Founder & CEO Karhoo
Nicolas Brusson COO & Co-Founder BlaBlaCar
Shahar Waiser Founder & CEO Gett
Simone Menne CFO Lufthansa Group

Keynote
Greg Ellis CEO Scout24

NOAH Top Picks
Rudolph W. Giuliani Former Mayor of New York City Chair Cybersecurity and Crisis Management Practice, Greenberg Traurig LLP Greenberg Traurig

1:1
Peter Terium CEO RWE
Rainer Sternfeld Founder & CEO Planet OS
Marco Rodzynek CEO NOAH Advisors Ltd

1:1
Dr. Mathias Döpfner CEO Axel Springer SE
Henry Blodget CEO, Editor-In-Chief Business Insider

Mobility - 1:1
Travis Kalanick CEO UBER
Dr. Dieter Zetsche Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars Daimler

Music
Thomas Hampson Baritone | Ambassador IDAGIO
Wolfram Rieger Pianist IDAGIO

Day 2

Day 1 Summary
Marco Rodzynek CEO NOAH Advisors Ltd

Company Presentation
Michael Gross Vice Chairman WeWork

Winners Make Winners - The Strong Performance of Interhyp with ING - 1:1
Ralph Hamers CEO ING Group
Michiel Goris CEO Interhyp

Consumer Goods
Olaf Koch Chairman of the Management Board Metro Group
Olivier Marcheteau COO Vestiaire Collective
Jeff Lipkin CFO Harry’s
Robyn Ward Founder Mahtay
Fabian Siegel Co-Founder & CEO Marley Spoon
Daniel Sobhani CEO Freeletics
Luke Waite Co-Founder Titan Black

Consumer Goods - 1:1
Herbert Hainer CEO adidas Group
Florian Gschwandtner CEO & Co-Founder Runtastic
Marco Rodzynek CEO NOAH Advisors Ltd

NOAH Top Picks
Euan Davis Senior Director Cognizant

Credit Suisse: Corporate Private Banking `connecting your wealth
Henrik Herr Head Germany & Austria International Wealth Management Credit Suisse
Florian Gschwandtner CEO & Co-Founder Runtastic

Retail
Tim Stracke Co-CEO Chrono24
Rubin Ritter Member of the Management Board Zalando SE
Dr. Oliver Lederle Founder & CEO MYTOYS GROUP
Niklas Östberg CEO Delivery Hero
Alexander Frolov General Partner Target Global
Dr. Philipp Kreibohm Co-Founder Home24
Thierry Petit Co-Founder & Co-CEO Showroomprive.com
Philip Rooke CEO Spreadshirt
Susanne Zacke Member of the Board Auctionata

Travel & Tourism
Johannes Reck CEO GetYourGuide
Bo Ilsoe Managing Partner Nokia Growth Partners (NGP)
Glenn Fogel Head of Worldwide Strategy and Planning Priceline Group
Hugo Burge CEO Momondo Group
Joachim Hunold Founder Air Berlin
Jochen Engert Founder & Managing Director FlixBus

7 Steps Needed for the Internet Economy in Europe
Clark Parsons CEO Internet Economy Foundation

Advertising
Ragnar Kruse CEO Smaato
Zvika Netter CEO & Co-Founder Innovid
Jürgen Galler Co-Founder and CEO 1plusX
Tim Schumacher Chairman Eyeo
Carl Erik Kjærsgaard Chairman and Co-Founder Blackwood Seven

Healthcare, Science & Education
Mariusz Gralewski Founder & CEO Docplanner
Markus Witte Founder and CEO Babbel
Dr. Torsten Oelke Executive Chairman CUBE
Jessica Federer Chief Digital Officer Bayer
Friedrich Schwandt Founder & CEO Statista
Stanislas Niox-Chateau CEO Doctolib

Fintech - 1:1
Christian Mylius Managing Partner Innovalue Management Advisors
Julian Teicke Founder & CEO FinanceFox

Technology, Media & Gaming
Polina Montano Co-founder and COO JobToday
Klaas Kersting Founder & CEO flaregames
Hermione Mckee Head of Finance Wooga
Hanna Aase CEO Wonderloop
Christian Sauer CEO Webtrekk
Nora-Vanessa Wohlert
Founder and Managing Director EDITION F
Susann Hoffmann Founder and Managing Director EDITION F
Peter Würtenberger CEO upday
Eric Léandri President and Co-Founder Qwant
Lucas von Cranach Founder & CEO Onefootball

What We’re Working on at NOAH: An Outlook for the Next 3 Years
Marco Rodzynek CEO NOAH Advisors Ltd

Les organisateurs se comportent comme une secte extrémiste - même les musiciens du « get together » font partie d’une startup potentiellement disruptive. Comme ca on est sûr de toujours communiquer sur la même longueur d’ondes bien à l’abri des critiques et contestations.

Les conditions générales de vente le disent explicitement :

The event is invitation only and generally tickets are not transferable. However, please contact us with your request and we can review.
...
The ticket price for NOAH16 Berlin is EUR 690 for Internet companies and corporates, EUR 850 for service providers; EUR 990 for small investors, EUR 1,490 for large investors and EUR 3,000 for investment bankers. All mentioned prices are excluding VAT. This price includes two full days including breakfast, lunch, and drinks and cocktail party.

Effectivement.

#Berlin #disruption #startup #économie #politique #capitalisme

Israel lobby fails to block screening of Palestinian film at Cannes | The Electronic Intifada
►https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-lobby-fails-block-screening-palestinian-film-cannes

https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2016-05/hajjaj-still.jpg?itok=1N-jYsX9×tamp=1463485398

A Palestinian work was screened at the Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film as planned on Monday, despite an intense campaign by Israel lobby groups to have it canceled.

Nasri Hajjaj’s Munich: A Palestinian Story was one of four films excerpts of which were screened to industry professionals in collaboration with the Dubai International Film Festival.

Hajjaj told The Electronic Intifada from Cannes that the screening of a 14-minute segment passed without incident and he received a positive response from those present.

As The Electronic Intifada reported last week, France’s main pro-Israel lobby group CRIF had been exerting intense pressure on authorities to ban the film, even enlisting the support of the mayor of Cannes.

CRIF claimed that the film engages in “historical revisionism” about the 1972 raid on the Munich Olympics by the Palestinian group Black September, in which 11 Israeli athletes, a German police officer and five hostage takers died.

But CRIF could not know this since the unfinished documentary had never been publicly screened.

Hajjaj said that CRIF and other critics have made a number of false claims about his film, which they have not seen.

CRIF boss Roger Cukierman even claimed on Twitter that he had been personally assured by Cannes Film Festival president Pierre Lescure that Hajjaj’s film would not be shown.

Dutch mayor helped Syrian family hide after asylum refusal

The mayor of a Dutch city took matters into his own hands when a family of Syrian refugees had their asylum application rejected, according to local media.

▻http://www.politico.eu/article/dutch-mayor-jos-heijmans-weert-syrian-family-refugees-asylum-refusal-migrat
#désobéissance_civile #réfugiés #solidarité #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Pays-Bas #résistance

Global press reaction to Sadiq Khan a mix of curiosity and ignorance
▻http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/06/london-mayor-global-press-reaction-sadiq-khan-curiosity-ignorance

Labour candidate for London mayor judged by his faith, rather than actions or politics, in several European and US media outlets
#uk #racisme #londres

End of an Era: Is the British Jewish Vote for Labour in Terminal Decline? -

The party’s current anti-Semitism crisis and the collapse of community support means it’s easy to forget that decades ago most British Jews felt that Labour was their natural home. What happened?
Colin Shindler May 06, 2016 11:28 AM

▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.718288

http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.713193!/image/3254735881.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/3254735881.jpg

Many Labour Jews voted for Sadiq Khan as Mayor of London with a heavy heart. Khan’s past association with unsavory Islamists who were not shy about peppering their views with anti-Semitic tropes undoubtedly jarred. Yet during the election campaign Khan went out of his way to court the Jewish community and instantly denounced the view of his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, that “Hitler supported Zionism.” However, the feeling lingers – if he changed his views once, could he now do it again when in office?

Fifty years ago, it was all very different. Most British Jews felt that Labour was their natural home. The Conservatives, it was argued, had a streak of snobbish English anti-Semitism running through their veins. As the Conservative prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, pointed out after Kristallnacht: “No doubt the Jews aren’t a loveable people. I don’t care about them myself, but that is not sufficient to explain the pogrom.” In contrast, the British Left, together with the Jews, fought the local fascists in London’s East End in the 1930s.

Labour leader Harold Wilson was regarded as “a friend of Israel” and even sent his son to Kibbutz Yagur to learn Hebrew. The parliamentary Labour Party boasted of between 30 and 40 Jewish members of the House of Commons – a hugely disproportionate number, given the small number of Jews in Britain (around 400,000, less than 1% of the population). Gerald Kaufman, currently “Father of the House of Commons” (its most veteran member) and now a virulent critic of Israel, was Wilson’s intermediary with the Israel Embassy, admirer of Ben-Gurion and all-round uber-Zionist.

Wilson had been a follower of Aneurin Bevan, the acknowledged leader of the Labour Left (but never PM) in post-war Britain and the revered founder of the National Health Service. Bevan was a dyed-in-the-wool Zionist and threatened to resign from Atlee’s government because of British policy in Mandate Palestine in the 1940s. Bevan’s wife, Jennie Lee, a politician in her right and founder of Britain’s Open University, wrote after their visit to Israel in 1954:

“They gather in their own from every kind of area, none so humble, so diseased, so illiterate, so despised and downtrodden that they are not welcome. This is the kind of passion that socialist workers everywhere who have had their own experience of victimization and of exile through poverty, should particularly understand.”

The further left that was travelled, the more sympathetic to the Zionist experiment. Labour politicians such as Tony Benn were enthralled at the prospect of building socialism in Israel. They were deeply aware that the Allies may have won the war, but the Jews had certainly lost it. The survivors had crawled out of the camps and were constructing something unique in a promised land.

Today’s Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and indeed Livingstone himself, were members of the succeeding generation. A “New Left” that had not experienced the Shoah or lived through the rise of Israel came of age during the post-war period of decolonization. They understood the nascent Palestinian national movement in the context of other national liberation movements – and this mindset was in place before Israel’s settlement drive after the Six-Day War. The establishment of West Bank settlements merely exacerbated this outlook. The New Left was often indifferent to the right of the Jews to national self-determination. For them, Zionism was wrong, not different.

Such a view of Israel has moved from the political periphery in the 1960s to the center of the Labour Party in 2016. Corbyn has not been a mediator in the past in bringing Israelis and Palestinians together, but a facilitator of Palestinian hasbara. Like Sadiq Khan, he has shared platforms with reactionaries and looked the other way when anti-Zionism has tipped over into anti-Semitism.

One feature that has gone largely unnoticed in this current controversy has been the willingness of many Jewish liberals to now publicly attack the Labour Party. This would have been unthinkable a short time ago.

While many on the Jewish Right would say “I told you so,” it is clear that there have been profound changes in the Labour Party during the last five years. For example, the pejorative term “Zios” is a recent introduction. Yet the comprehensive academic survey of the attitudes of British Jews towards Israel a few months ago indicated that an overwhelming 93% identified in some fashion with Israel. Who then are the “Zios” if not practically every British Jew?

The Britain of 2016 is very much an operating multi-cultural society. Many of the post-war and newer immigrants identify with an anti-colonial ethos. Moreover, just as a majority of British Jews look to Israel, a majority of British Muslims identify with the Palestinians. The Muslim population of the UK is seven or eight times as large as the Jewish population and thus far more electorally significant. It’s no surprise that all political parties, especially during election campaigns, take note of this.

The trade unions (a faction of the party with significant voting power) parachuted Ed Miliband into the Labour leadership in 2010 over the wishes of both local constituencies and the parliamentary party (who preferred his brother David). His disastrous tenure was marked by a new system of party membership which enabled an influx of hundreds of thousands. Many were young people who wished to rid Labour of the men in blue suits and return the party to its traditional values on behalf of working people. For others, this was a subtle form of entryism such that many members of the far Left found a new home. The unlikely figure of Jeremy Corbyn on Labour’s most peripheral Left was carried on a wave of messianic fervor to the leadership.

Operation Protective Edge in 2014 was a turning point. The large number of Palestinian civilian casualties blotted out any rational explanation of the conflict. It was accentuated by instant and blanket media coverage in Britain and became a cause célèbre on the Left. The election of Corbyn last year was a psychological green light to what had been bubbling up below to overflow publicly. Social media acted as a loudspeaker. Ken Livingstone’s outburst, reminiscent of the mutterings of the white working-class far-right, was the spark that ignited the fire – and persuaded many Jewish Labour supporters to think twice about voting for Sadiq Khan.

While undoubtedly Jews have moved to the Right as a result of a growing affluence, and the philo-Semitism of Margaret Thatcher’s long tenure, there is also a widening schism between Labour-voting Jews and the party. Anti-Semitism is a live issue now for British Jews and Jeremy Corbyn is seen as an albatross around Labour’s neck. Some two-thirds of Jewish Labour voters have deserted Labour since Tony Blair’s period in office. A Survation poll for the Jewish Chronicle which was conducted this week indicates that only 8.5 percent of British Jews would vote Labour if a general election was held tomorrow.

Accusations of anti-Semitism and covert racism are an ideological dagger pointed at Labour’s heart, and it shouldn’t be a problem only for British Jews. While some members are being suspended and an inquiry has been established, will this be successful? Is it a political environment that is the problem or simply the opinions of a few individual members?

Perhaps the victor in this controversy is the depth of ignorance about the Israel-Palestine conflict among party members and an indifference to inappropriate and racist language – when it’s targeted at Jews. Education doesn’t only start with the young, but also with the ignorant.

Colin Shindler is an emeritus professor at SOAS, University of London. His book Israel and the European Left was published by Century/Bloomsbury.

Livingstone’s Nonsense on Hitler Nonetheless Touches Raw Zionist Nerve -
The explosive dilemma of ’collaboration’ with the Nazis in order to save German Jews split the Zionist movement in the 1930s.
Chemi Shalev May 01, 2016
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.717126

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone has a long history of anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic remarks. He has described Israel as racist, accused it of ethnic cleansing, called for its leaders to be put on trial for crimes against humanity. He once said that Likud and Hamas are two sides of the same coin. He likened a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard, compared British Jews who enlist in the Israeli army to British Muslims who join terrorist groups and opined that Jews wouldn’t vote for Labour “because they were rich.”

Now he’s in hot water for having declared that Adolf Hitler supported Zionism, which is of course a ridiculous statement, though, frankly, not ridiculous enough to make it the one definitive assertion that will finally do him in. Hitler wasn’t a Zionist, but he did give his passive and sometimes active support to the limited collaboration between the Zionist movement and the Nazi regime throughout the 1930s. It was Adolf Eichmann, in fact, who once reportedly declared, “I am a Zionist.” He didn’t mean that he supported the Jewish people’s right to self-determination or safe refuge, only that Zionism provided an efficient way of getting rid of Jews before more drastic measures were conceived.

The “Hitler as Zionist” canard is one that anti-Zionists, Holocaust deniers and Nazi sympathizers have been pushing for years. The former seek to tarnish Israel and cast it as a successor to the Nazi state while the latter want to cast a more positive light on their heroes’ unspeakable crimes. Livingstone must be getting his information from the small coterie of Marxist and/or anti-Zionist historians who have adopted the same narrative: Lenni Brenner’s book “Zionism in the Age of Dictators,” which was cited by Livingstone, is the most successful of the lot.

Nonetheless, it is also true that Livingstone has put a spotlight on a chapter in history that most Zionists would rather leave untouched: their limited shared interests and consequent ad hoc cooperation with the Nazi regime. It lasted for about seven years, from 1933 until 1940, when the international blockade prevented further emigration of Jews from Germany, just before Hitler gave the order to annihilate the Jews instead.

At the center of the give and take between the powerful Nazis and the rather desperate pre-state Zionists was the 1933 Transfer Agreement, Heskem Haavara in Hebrew. It was a deal negotiated by German Zionists by which some Jews would be able to sell their properties in Germany in exchange for funds that would allow them to buy property in then-Palestine. The Zionists would also refrain from participating in the international boycott declared by World Jewry against Germany and would try to persuade Jewish leaders to revoke it.

By virtue of the deal, about 60,000 Jews, mostly well educated but mainly well to do, came to Palestine and were saved from extermination. They had to deposit a minimum of 1,000 British pounds – close to $100,000 in current terms – in order to qualify. The agreement provided critical help to the Yishuv, which was reeling at the time from Arab riots in Palestine and from the global Great Depression. German immigrants injected eight million British pounds, close to a billion dollars in today’s terms, directly into the Palestinian economy and another six million pounds indirectly. They were part of the Fifth Aliyah that significantly strengthened the struggling Yishuv with their talents and knowhow. My mother, of blessed memory, was the beneficiary of a similar agreement signed in Czechoslovakia after the Nazis took over, which allowed students to emigrate.

There is no denying that a few Zionists saw the rise of a racialist Nazi regime in the early 1930s as confirmation of their ideological claim that assimilation for Jews in Europe was an illusion. There were others, on the far end of the Revisionists Movement, who actually admired Hitler and Mussolini’s fascism, but they were soon shut down by their leader Vladimir Jabotinsky and by the increasing reports of anti-Jewish measures undertaken by the Nazis after 1933. Most Zionists had no illusions about the odious nature of Hitler and the Nazis, but they sharply disagreed about the way they should react to it: the Transfer Agreement was a deal with the devil by all accounts, but the question was whether it was a necessary evil or a mortal sin.

It is this dispute, in fact, that shaped Zionist politics for a half a century and in some ways continues to serve as its backdrop to this very day. One June 16, 1933, the promising Mapai leader Haim Arlosoroff , who had been one of the champions of dialogue with the Nazis, was murdered on the beach in Tel Aviv by two unknown assailants. David Ben Gurion and most the Yishuv leadership were convinced that the murder was perpetrated by militant Revisionists as retribution. Three members of a right wing splinter group were indicted for the crime but later acquitted by the courts. Among the Revisionist sympathizers who sought to rebuff what they described as the “blood libel” perpetrated by Labor Zionists were Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, Benzion, as well as his grandfather, Nathan Milikovsky.

Despite Arlosoroff’s involvement, the Transfer Agreement was initially concluded between the Nazis and German Zionists alone. Ben Gurion and other Zionist leaders in Palestine kept their distance, especially as public opinion seemed to oppose the deal. But as a result of Nazi pressures, increasingly desperate appeals by German Zionists as well as their own recognition of the critical importance of the deal, the Zionist leadership in Palestine signed on to the agreement in 1935. It was then discussed and ratified in the 19th Zionist Congress that convened in Luzerne in 1935. It was this Congress that marked the final split between Labor Zionism and the Revisionists, who accused the leadership of the Yishuv, much like Livingstone, of being “Hitler’s allies.” The question of “Who Killed Arlosoroff” reverberated throughout Zionist politics for decades ever since.

Historians have been unable to trace Hitler’s personal response to the initial Transfer Agreement. He certainly didn’t block it. In 1937 he personally intervened in order to keep it going and did so for the next two years as well. That does not make Hitler into a supporter of Zionism by any stretch, as Livingstone annoyingly claims, because Hitler wiped out millions of Jews, including millions of potential Zionists, who would have changed the arc of Jewish history completely. As for the Zionists themselves, all that can be said is that it was a desperate time that required desperate measures that are still difficult to judge today, even with the benefit of 80 years of hindsight.

Mexico City is crowdsourcing its new constitution using Change.org in a democracy experiment — Quartz
▻http://qz.com/662159/mexico-city-is-crowdsourcing-its-new-constitution-using-change-org-in-a-democrac

The idea, in the words of the mayor, Miguel Angel Mancera, is to “bestow the constitution project (Spanish) with a democratic, progressive, inclusive, civic and plural character.” There’s a big catch, however. The constitutional assembly—the body that has the final word on the new city’s basic law—is under no obligation to consider any of the citizen input. And then there are the practical difficulties of collecting and summarizing the myriad of views dispersed throughout one of the world’s largest cities.

That makes Mexico City’s public-consultation experiment a big test for the people’s digital power, one being watched around the (...)

Saudi Arabia, 9/11, and what we know about the secret papers that could ignite a diplomatic war
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/finding-discussion-and-narrative-regarding-certain-sensitive-narrativ

A Saudi prince, claimed Mr [Rudi] Giuliani, had given him a cheque for $10m (£7m) in an effort to persuade him to deflect attention away from the Kingdom. The former mayor said he returned the cheque after tearing it up.

#Arabie_saoudite #Etats-Unis

Death by Rescue
THE LETHAL EFFECTS OF THE EU’S POLICIES OF NON-ASSISTANCE AT SEA
►http://deathbyrescue.org

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The week commencing 12 April 2015 saw what is believed to be the largest loss of life at sea in the recent history of the Mediterranean. On 12 April, 400 people died when an overcrowded boat capsized due to its passengers’ excitement at the sight of platform supply vessels approaching to rescue them. Less than a week later, on 18 April, a similar incident took an even greater toll in human lives, leading the deadliest single shipwreck recorded by the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the Mediterranean. Over 800 people are believed to have died when a migrants’ vessel sank after a mis-manoeuvre led it to collide with a cargo ship that had approached to rescue its passengers. More than 1,200 lives were thus lost in a single week. As Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) commented at the time, these figures eerily resemble those of a war zone.

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The frantic tangle of Automatic Identification System (AIS) vessel tracks in the Mediterranean following the 18 April shipwreck. Credit: Forensic Oceanography. GIS analysis: Rossana Padeletti. Design: Samaneh Moafi.

Beyond the huge death toll, what is most striking about these events is that they were not the result of the reluctance to carry out rescue operations, which has been identified as a structural cause of migrants’ deaths in the Mediterranean Sea. In these two cases, the actual loss of life has occurred during and partly through the rescue operation itself. The detailed reconstruction of these two successive tragedies provided in this report shows, however, that in all likelihood the merchant vessels involved complied with their legal obligations and did everything they possibly could to rescue the passengers in distress. While it could appear that only the ruthless smugglers who overcrowded the unseaworthy boats to the point of collapse are to blame, the report focuses on the deeper responsibilities of EU agencies and policy makers.

REPORT
▻http://deathbyrescue.org/report/narrative

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The following report, produced by Forensic Oceanography – a research team based within the Forensic Architecture agency at Goldsmiths (University of London) that specialises in the use forensic techniques and cartography to reconstruct cases of deaths at sea – in collaboration with WatchTheMed and in the framework of the ESRC-supported “Precarious Trajectories” research project, seeks to understand the conditions that made these events possible.

It does so by mobilising a vast array of methodologies and techniques. First, the report offers, through a series of visualizations, diagrams and figures, a detailed spatio-temporal reconstruction of various cases of shipwrecks. This work was an exercise in the culling of disparate data that was eventually recombined in an effort to assemble a coherent spatial narrative of the chain of events. The reconstructions provided by the report are in fact based on numerous sources, in particular survivors’ testimonies, distress signals, Search and Rescue (SAR) reports provided by Frontex, Automatic Information System (AIS) vessel tracking data, judicial documents obtained from public prosecutors’ offices in Sicily investigating these cases, and photographs taken during the events by rescue teams. At times, elements of information were also extracted from secondary sources such as news reports and human rights reports by international organizations such as Amnesty International.

The policy decisions that led to these shipwrecks, however, sought precisely to keep state-operated assets at a distance from the area in which these were occurring. Focusing exclusively on the reconstruction of the events, then, would not have allowed for an accurate description of the mechanisms of this form of killing by omission. Therefore, in addition to case reconstruction, the report undertook an analysis that could be characterized as a “policy forensics”. This consisted of a comprehensive textual analysis of various technical assessments produced by Frontex, official statements by policy makers and EU officials, minutes of operational meetings between Frontex and other member states agencies, and transcripts of debates in the European Parliament and in its Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) committee. This endeavour was necessary, first of all, in order to gain a fine-grained understanding of the successive institutional steps that led to the retreat of state-led SAR operations. Secondly, it has allowed us to assess with precision the degree of knowledge concerning the risks to migrants’ lives the actors taking these decisions possessed. On this basis, the report points to the responsibility of the various agencies and individuals that took those decisions.

Finally, the report seeks to attend to the materialisation of these policies at sea, in terms of: the operational zones, operational logics and practices of state actors; how these policy shifts affected the practices of other actors operating at sea, such as smugglers and merchant ships; and the conditions and danger of migrants’ crossings. Here key sources were: spatial analysis of operational zones; interviews with state officials (the Italian Coast Guard, Customs Police and Frontex) concerning their operations at sea; and statistical data referring to migrant arrivals, deaths and SAR operations.

The diversity of sources and types of data required the report to draw upon the methodologies and expertise of a variety of disciplines. The material has thus been analysed in collaboration with experts in the relevant fields of geographic information science, vessel tracking technologies, image forensics, oceanography, statistical analysis, EU policy, international law and migration studies.”

Un nouveau site

Precarious Trajectories – Understanding the human cost of the migrant crisis in the central Mediterranean
▻https://precarioustrajectories.wordpress.com

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Palermo Open City: From the Mediterranean Migrant Crisis to a Europe Without Borders? – Precarious Trajectories
▻https://precarioustrajectories.wordpress.com/2016/03/21/palermo-open-city-from-the-mediterranean-migrant-c

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Leoluca Orlando is one of the longest lasting and most successful political leaders in post-war Italy. He has been elected mayor of Palermo – a city that was once the stronghold of the Sicilian mafia, no less than four times since 1985 – most recently in 2012 with over 70% of the popular vote. This despite campaigning to rid his city and region of what Orlando refers to as the plague of organized crime. A plague which nevertheless maintains its tenacious hold on important areas of economic, social and political life on the island.

The walls of the Council Chamber in Palermo are studded with plaques to the memories of public servants, priests and ordinary citizens who have been murdered by the Mafia, including several of Orlando’s closest partners. Indeed, it was the murder of Piersanti Mattarella – the then-regional president of Sicily in 1980 – that obliged the young human rights lawyer to abandon a promising university career for the highly dangerous vocation of public office. Piersanti’s brother Sergio is currently the President of the Italian Republic and remains a close friend and confidant of Palermo’s outspoken mayor.

Now aged 68 and three years into what may well be his final mandate, Orlando is fired with a new mission – that of restoring Palermo to its historical primacy as the cradle of a cosmopolitan “Arab-Norman” Mediterranean culture. “The city of Palermo is not a Mediterranean city,” argues Orlando, “it is a Middle Eastern city in Europe” that shares as much in common with Beirut and Djibouti as with Rome or Hamburg.

@cdb_77

Photography Cambridge School of Art : Eaton Portrait Prize 2016 Winners announced
▻http://photographycsa.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/eaton-portrait-prize-2016-winners.html

Eaton #Portrait Prize 2016 Winners announced 1st Place
‘Sterrin’ - Anna Kressler

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A girl is smiling in a refugee #camp in the #Dunkirk suburb of Grand-Synthe in France. According to the mayor Damien Lent ‘in late July [2015], there were sixty [refugees] in Grande-Synthe, then 180 in mid-August. And 2,400-2,500 today [Jan | Feb 2016]", including more than 200 #children like Sterrin, who live in the camp in squalid conditions. I don’t know what happened to Sterrin but I hope that despite this uncertain future she and her family will one day be able to reach their desired destination, #England.

#photography #refugees