By Pierre Beaudet (Alternatives)
Published at Rabble

Burqin is an old village. The story is that one day, Jesus stopped here on his way to Jerusalem. He met lepers and told to these wretched of the world that they would be healed and indeed they were, so says Luke in the New Testament . We visit a very antique church in the middle of the village where our Palestinian guide tells us this is precisely where the miracle occurred.

Today, Burqin is part of a densely-populated circle of villages living off what remains of their land. Most people identify themselves first and foremost as farmers even if, in real terms, their income now mostly comes from outside through, now declining, remittances from brothers and fathers that have migrated everywhere in the world.

Indeed, Burqin is in the middle of the storm. It’s been like that for quite some time. So is the whole Jenin district, a green and hilly region inhabited by over 250 000 Palestinians. The villagers revolted against British rule in the 1930s under the leadership of the famous Ezzedeen Al-Qassam. Later, they fought hard in subsequent wars against Israel. Finally in 1967, Jenin and the West Bank were occupied. In 1987 with the first Intifada, the whole district became a burning field of revolt. And despite the ‘interim agreement’ of 1993, it remains so even today. Technically speaking, Jenin is now ‘co-managed’, so to speak, by Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), as part of the ‘deal’ agreed under the Oslo agreement.

This evening, things are pretty quiet. Gathered to enjoy the usual narghile, people chat and share jokes. The weather is cool and pleasant. It seems so far away from any sort of conflict and tension. The ‘mukhtar’ (traditional village head) is happy because he has finished completing his house (after 25 years) where a large part of his extended family resides. When the night falls, we move to a marriage where hundreds of people have come to celebrate. In the center place of the village men gather to cheer the groom. In the surrounding houses, women are looking by as much as they can, but they also are enjoying their own ceremony. Marriage is really a way to assure redistribution. Before the end of the evening, the new family will have gathered enough money to start building their house, most probably over the top or beside the rest of the extended family (‘hamula’) which is at the heart of the Palestinian society.

Later, the loudspeakers call men to dabke, the Palestinian dance. They hold themselves by the shoulder and go around in ardent foot-trumping runs. There is no doubt about the substance of the matter, as songs, symbols and gestures are all about resistance, patriotism and ‘sumud’ (steadfastness). Toddlers run around with elders, with a majority of teens and very young men. It is taken seriously, you can see that in their faces. But it’s neither dramatic nor romantic. It has no other sense than expressing this combative identity which characterizes Palestinians. The party continues until late at night.

Most of the village has now gone to sleep. Arafat, Karim, Jihad, Refaat and many others are moving in and out to engage in the other favorite Palestinian art, politics. All of them, and indeed most of their age group have participated in resistance activities. ‘We are all graduates of the 1987 Intifada’ says Refaat. Most have gone to jail, many were tortured or maimed at one point or the other. This ‘generation’ came hard against the occupation. But it was also a challenge, although implicitly, to the original leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). After a while however, the PLO under Yasser Arafat was able to prevail. Nonetheless even today, the memory of the Intifada is very strong. ‘Israel was on the defensive when we pushed back their tanks with our bare hands’.

After the agreement between the PLO and Israel in 1993, there was hope that some sort of a deal would come true, even if not perfect. But rapidly, the house of cards came down. Successive Israeli administrations accelerated the locking-up of the occupied territories through the expansion of settlements and so-called «by-pass roads’, destroying the idea of a sovereign Palestinian state. Things got sour and very tough, especially when resistance pushed up again. When the second Intifada erupted in 2000, Jenin, as usual, became the epicenter. The whole Northern region became the nightmare for Israel because of the suicide bombers that came from it to blow themselves up in Tel-Aviv and other Israeli cities. In fact, many of these ‘shahid’ were from Burqin. ‘We were really surprised that so many of our neighbors became Martyrs. We understood later how many young men were so angry and determined to use their own body for what they saw as an act of resistance’ says Arafat. Later in 2002, Jenin became famous again when fierce Palestinian resistance caused scores of Israeli soldiers’ casualties. The army came in full force and literally bulldozed the refugee camp, killing 56 Palestinian civilians and fighters in a few hours.

Today apparently at least, Burqin and Jenin are ‘pacified’. The Palestinian authorities are working hand in hand with Israeli security under the guidance of US general Keith Dayton. It’s part of the latest deal which was approved by President Mahmood Abbas and implemented by his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. The fighters linked with Hamas or Fatah’s dissidents have been arrested or forced into hiding. Over 1000 Palestinians are detained by the PNA, without trial or accusation, just like over 10 000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israel. According to the human rights organizations, torture and maltreatment is abundant in the Palestinian jails.

However in terms of securing Israel, this not enough. Indeed, encirclement of Palestinian cities and lands remains tight. Even if some control points have been closed, there are literally hundreds of Israeli-controlled check-points in the West Bank. Otherwise, the ‘border’ remains closed except for a few dozen Palestinian workers who can work in Israel. Palestinians from inside the green line, who used to come shopping into the district, are not often seen, as they are discouraged by the roadblocks, therefore adding on the economic decline of the Palestinian areas. The destruction of Gaza is used as a terrorist threat: ‘do not dare to resist because we will do with you (in the West Bank) as we have done with them in Gaza’.

Around the table however, people are not here to lament about the occupation which they consider the ‘normality’. They have no illusion about the ‘peace process’ or on the economic benefits that were announced by the PNA and Israel in the last period. ‘The battle early in 2009 in Gaza destroyed any illusion that was left around’ says Refaat, a teacher currently managing a Palestinian NGO in Ramallah. ‘The idea that somehow, a political settlement is about to come is buried’. In the meantime, the economic and social situation remains dreadful, with unemployment rates of 50-80% and a very serious deterioration of living conditions. Before his illness, Ariel Sharon, the then Israeli PM had said it clearly, ‘we are going to put Palestinians on a diet’, meaning the kind of siege that has been imposed on the Palestinian society in the last seven years. Everything is done to weaken, humiliate, destroy the Palestinians except an all-out massacre which would remind the world of the situation. ‘Killing us slowly is more efficient from the official point of view in Israel’ says Refaat.

Ok, this is ‘normal’ from the point of view of people living under the occupation. But what next then? What can happen?

Everyone agrees that the Al-Aqsa Intifada triggered by Yasser Arafat in 2000 failed and in fact was used by the occupiers to strengthen their position. In the meantime, Fatah, the movement that led Palestinian resistance for the last 40 years, is agonizing as a credible and legitimate political force. Military resistance by Hamas also failed and even worst, the Islamist movement has fallen into the same pitfalls that were manifested by Fatah standing in as the ‘PNA’. This became evident with the events in 2007. After a brief fight, Hamas organized a ‘counter-coup’ to the move planned by the Israelis and the US through their Palestinian surrogate, Fatah’s boss in Gaza, Mohamed Dahlan. The problem however is that after this, Hamas became itself very authoritarian, using the ‘good old’ tactics of nepotism and control. ‘The ‘take over’ of the strip by Hamas in 2007, says Refaat, badly damaged the reputation of a movement that was initially seen by many as an alternative to the declining and corrupted post-Arafat Fatah’.

In the meantime under Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli regime seems to be determined to erase once and for all the possibility of ending the occupation. Is that the end of the story I asked my Burqin friends?

Our capacities are presently limited’ says Arafat, the local leader of the Democratic Front, one of the three left Palestinian parties [1]. He explains that the DF that used to have thousands of activists back in the late 1980s has now ‘only’ 100 members in Burqin. He is surprised when I say that very few villages in the world, even in countries with a strong activist tradition, can claim ‘only’ 100 local members (out of a population of 5000). Nonetheless for Arafat, the issue is rather qualitative. As for most of the people around the table, the fact is that currently, the Palestinians have ‘no leadership’. As DF activists, they do not really respect their own leadership although everyone agrees that Abd al-Karîm, otherwise known as Abu Laila (the current DF leader in the occupied territories), is brilliant and honest. ‘Our leaders have been transformed into the ‘loyal opposition’ and are not really opposing the capitulationism of the PNA’. Moreover, the leadership has accepted to play a minor role in the management of an unacceptable regime. ‘They criticized Fatah all the time, but the salaries of the officials is paid by Abu Mazen’ (nom de guerre of Mahmood Abbas).

In fact, even Abu Laila admits himself that his ‘hands are tied’: ‘We have now two police states, one in Gaza and one in the West Bank’. He believes that Abbas is cooking a deal with Hamas to perpetuate the impossible status quo, for ‘each one to have relative control over ‘his’ territory, leaving the occupation in command’. He is hoping to raise the issues of the social and economic dimensions of the present crisis so as to attract angry youth, but that is problematic. Traditionally, the DF as well as groups like the PFLP were perceived by the population as more ‘radical’ nationalists, all geared towards national liberation, rather than left-leaning socialist groups struggling for the social empowerment of the poor.

At another level, leftists factions like the DF are not well positioned to criticize the authoritarianism of the PNA and of Fatah, having themselves shaped by heavily-centralized decision-making. This democratic deficit is coming back to haunt the left. It is now discussed, and there are moves to implant another culture. But there is still a long way to go.

Mustapha Barghouti, now the head of the Palestinian National Initiative (al-Mubadara), was one of the few that saw this problem before others. He defected from the Communist party to promote another political culture, more open and inclusive, focusing on civil non-armed resistance against the occupation as an apartheid society contradicting all provisions of the international human rights convention. But now Mustapha is also pessimistic. Although a fervent supporter of the peace process, he cannot be but very somber: ‘ The Israelis have no incentive to compromise. They are not pressed in any fashion by the Palestinian authorities. They are comforted in their intransigence by the continuous support from the US, despite and beyond Obama’. Despite initial hopes and frequent encounters with the new administration in Washington, Mustapha sees no result to affect the sinister alliance condoning Israeli practices in the occupied territories as well as their aggressive behavior towards the Arab and Muslim countries.

So the spirit is a bit low tonight in Burqin. Nonetheless, I am informed that the activist core of ‘only’ 100 members remains active through social projects of different kinds. The ‘social safety net’ provided by a politicized civil society (closely linked with the left) is crucial for the people, apart from family support. My friends also animate a workers’ coalition against the local (municipal) authorities and UN agencies who, despite the fact that they employ many Palestinians, are not very respected because of inefficient and corrupted practices. The flame is kept alive and like nowhere in the struggling global south, activists remain connected with their people.

Is the solution through civil resistance initiatives like the well-publicized movement in Bil’in (near Ramallah)? It has been much promoted as the way to confront Israeli apartheid practices through peaceful demonstrations and well-planned media events. Around the room, there is a consensus that the tactics used in Bil’in are effective. Moreover, it was the most spectacular aspect of the first Intifada.‘We were able then to paralyze the occupation by confronting, without arms, the Israeli occupation. The non-military component of the struggle became the centerpiece of resistance.

However, it is ‘premature, says Arafat, to abandon altogether the military part of our struggle. This is not India here, and the Israeli occupiers are not like the British, who had no will to fight’. He concedes at the end that traditionally, the Palestinian struggle was ‘overmilitarized’ and did not, except during the first Intifada, build enough strength through mass mobilization. Political discussions carry on over the night. As people slowly retire, I am left with a contradictory impression. I am still struck with the statement about the ‘only’ 100 activists remaining. I keep thinking, ‘wow, if we could have this in my country!’

But the permanence of resistance goes beyond that. I understand that most of the people in Burqin are well aware of what is happening not only locally, but at a larger, even international level. On this of course the impact of Al-Jazeera, in addition to the wide use of the internet and mobile phones, cannot be neglected. ‘People now see and hear directly the voices of the opposition in Palestine and the Arab world’ says Refaat. ‘We have lost our naivety towards our self-proclaimed leaders. We are free thinkers now’.

In this village of 5000, there is no capitulation. ‘We are ready to rise up again, as we have no choice really’. Israeli occupation forces, even supplemented by PNA military and police, do not control the area. ‘This is not Egypt or Jordan, we do not bow down to the Sultan’ say my friends. Even if General Dayton is working hard to develop local repressive capacities, the occupation cannot rule by force only.

From the Palestinian side, resistance is not based on a ‘grand strategy’, therefore the inherent tendency within the movements to reproduce some of the same mistakes and impasses. But because it is a people’s struggle and not a movement of a minority, resistance remains basically uncompromising, so it is quasi impossible to crush it. Is this enough? Certainly not. But one day probably not far ahead, the facades of the occupation will crack again, resulting from the complex fractures that undermine the Israeli society and State (not talking about the declining evolution of the US Empire). Occupation will also crack from the imagination of Palestinians fighting endlessly, generation after generation. For sure, the people of Burqin will continue to be part of this invisible accumulation.

Notes:

[1] The DFLP originally came out of the Popular Front (PFLP), which remains numerically speaking the largest leftist force. There is also the People’s Party (former Communist Party).

By Tim Di Muzio

“The technologies of the self found in global slums aim to cultivate the capacities of the poor and range from educating the self about sanitation and hygiene to undertaking skills training and learning to be responsible debtors, savers, and entrepreneurs. For instance, one of the most widespread modes of subjectification in informal settlements is entrepreneurial. Associated with the microcredit revolution, this approach encourages poor women and men to give their lives an entrepreneurial form as a way of generating income and securing the livelihood of their household. Although microcredit, over its thirty-five-year history as an antipoverty strategy, has been heralded as a panacea for people living in deep poverty—and one of its key spokespersons, founder of the Grameen Bank Muhammad Yunus, won the Noble Peace Prize—there has been little evidence of microlending’s success. What is certain is that microlending schemes help privatize and individualize peoples’ responsibility for earning a livelihood, thus lessening their dependence on the state or subnational governments. In this way, encouraging the poor to participate in their own survival strategies by accumulating personal debt and creating small businesses displaces any sense that poverty and unemployment may be structural or that the state has any responsibility for collective welfare.”

(…)

“The built environments of global slums are a testament to the ongoing dispossession of people around the world and to a more commodified, liberalized, and marketized world order facilitated by neoliberal policies. Thus,any discussion of biopolitical campaigns must take care to recognize how these interventions to improve life are informed and ultimately constrained by neoliberal policies and the forms of capital accumulation they are meant to encourage and secure. In some senses, this twenty-first-century indictment of neoliberalism is reminiscent of Karl Polanyi’s condemnation of an earlier period of economic liberalism. Polanyi argued that a rationality of rule centered on the belief in free markets, and the price mechanism implied a “stark utopia” where the natural and human substance of society would inevitably be annihilated if society did not take measures to protect itself. For Polanyi, this stark utopia was averted only after World War II, when governments abandoned economic liberalism in favor of social planning and collective welfare schemes. The growth and proliferation of global slums could be taken as both the spatial instantiation of this stark utopia and the apartheid of life chances that has accompanied neoliberalism. The scale of this problem is tremendous and represents one of the key governance challenges of the twenty-first century—one that seems increasingly unable to be met without a radical turn away from neoliberal policies and an overreliance on nongovernmental and community-based organizations.”

Read if full at Global Governance

By Nasser Abourahme

“The slum in and of itself creates a different kind of governmentality;
AlSayyad and Roy point out that the apparently unregulated practices of
squatting are in fact a distinct form of regulation, “a set of tactics
that recreate informality as governmentality” [2006: 8]. This
informality operates through the constant negotiability of value (as
opposed to the fixing of value that characterises formality) and can be
seen as an expression of the sovereign power to establish the state of
exception – i.e. in the sense that the legal and planning apparatus of
the state enact suspension and define what is informal and what is not.
Informal squatting, then, is in fact a highly regulated practice with
distinct forms of governance and particular forms of negotiated
citizenship. This negotiation does not only, or even necessarily,
involve state actors: “non-state actors have emerged as the de facto
state in informal settlements in various world-regions” [ibid: 10].
Davis [2004] points to the role religious groups play in providing
urban services in slums across cities in the global South; in parts of
Cairo and other Arab cities Islamic groups provide almost all social
services as well as popular leaders, in Mumbai the Hindu
fundamentalists Shiv Sena are involved in acquiring and transferring
habitable land and in Latin American slums Pentecostalism has emerged
as the “main logic of governance and politics” [Alsayyad and Roy 2006:
11; Davis 2004]. Even when religious groups are not involved slums
develop their own distinct politics, regimes of rule and institutional
dynamics. Balbo highlights the example of Villa el Salvador, a famous
barriada of Lima “where the 300,000 residents have given themselves a
set of norms and laws of local bosses over which the state has hardly
any control” [1993: 25]. In slums the state, religious associations,
NGOs can all compete as different territorialized forms of association
and patronage [Alsayyad and Roy 2004: 12].
Gated communities embody
a similarly “distinctive territorialisation of citizenship” or a new
“spatial governmentality” [ibid: 6]. Key here is the fact these
enclaves are usually governed by private bodies as exemplified in
‘community associations’ or ‘common interest developments’. Both
involve “reciprocal rights and obligations enforced by a private
governing body” [ibid]; they are “contractual associations that deliver
some form of neighbourhood-level governance in the forms of regulations
and local civic good and services on the basis of assessments (fees)
collected from members” [Webster et al 2002: 315]. In this sense gated
communities, with their internal regulations and codes, represent new
forms of private government in which “contract law is the supreme
authority; property values are the foundation of community life; and
exclusion is the foundation of social organisation” [AlSayyad and Roy
2006: 6]. As such they are more than just the ‘effects’ of neoliberal
urban reform but active “technologies of subjectivation, sovereignty
and spatiality” [ibid]. Or as Jeremy Seabrook puts in a nicely sardonic
polemic: in “gilded captivity” Third World Elites “cease to be citizens
of their own countries and become nomads belonging to, and owing
allegiance to, a superterrestrial topography of money; they become
patriots of wealth, nationalists of an elusive and golden nowhere”
[cited in Davis 2006: 120].
Slums and gated communities, thus, can be read as part of a process
that carves up the city into different orders of citizenship in which
the “logic of patronage becomes the logic of rule” [ibid: 11-12].
Neither slum nor gated community fall wholly under the domain of
nation-state regulation; they both straddle a fuzzy inside-outside
nexus.”

Read it full at http://www.occupiedlondon.org/

Por Francisco Olaso

BERLÍN, 15 de mayo (apro).- El deseo creciente del Estado y las empresas alemanas por captar, almacenar, usar e incluso vender los datos personales de los ciudadanos, ha motivado una inusual advertencia pública del juez más importante del país.

Hans Jürgen Papier, presidente del Tribunal Constitucional Federal, máxima instancia de la justicia germana, alertó sobre la posibilidad de que se produzca una catástrofe de dimensiones imprevisibles en torno de la protección de datos personales.

En declaraciones realizadas al periódico Bild Zeitung, el pasado 3 de mayo, el juez Papier sostuvo que el derecho básico a la protección de datos personales está sometido a amenazas desde los sectores público y privado.

Advirtió que si el Estado incumple su obligación constitucional de velar por una adecuada protección de los datos personales de sus ciudadanos, se cierne la amenaza de una catástrofe de dimensiones imprevisibles, debido a las posibilidades que ofrece la técnica moderna y al grado de interrelación existente en todo el mundo. Y comparó el peligro en torno de la desprotección de datos personales con un accidente en un reactor nuclear.

“El juez que hace temblar a nuestro gobierno”, título que el diario dio a la entrevista, puede sonar un poco exagerado. Lo cierto es que casi todas las leyes importantes pasan por la revisión final del Tribunal Constitucional Federal. Sus jueces no pueden ser relevados. Sus fallos son inapelables.

Repetidas veces, el tribunal supremo le ha torcido el brazo a los intentos gubernamentales que pretenden recortar las libertades individuales, en aras de la lucha contra el terrorismo.

La insuficiente protección de los datos personales también ha sido motivo de diversos fallos en los últimos años. La lista de escándalos recientes vinculados a este tema es larga y frondosa. En 2005 involucró a miembros del servicio secreto federal BND en el espionaje a periodistas. Alcanzó también a altos directivos de grandes consorcios, tales como la empresa telefónica Deutsche Telekom, en junio de 2008.

Y más recientemente ha salpicado a la compañía de ferrocarriles alemanes, Deutsche Bahn, donde se espió a cientos de miles de empleados, a sindicalistas e incluso a otros miembros del consejo de dirección. Ciudadanos, clientes y consumidores no corren mejor suerte. La información personal que los consorcios y bancos acumulan sobre sus clientes suele ser vendida a otras empresas con fines de marketing publicitario.

La motivación que mueve a la economía privada a recolectar datos personales de sus clientes es explicada de manera concisa por Thilo Weichert, director del Centro Independiente para la Protección de Datos Personales de la ciudad de Kiel.

“En este sector se trata sólo de una cosa: ganar dinero. Los datos relacionados con las personas tienen hoy en día un valor de mercado, y se intenta obtener este valor en dinero”, dice Weichert a Apro.

La acumulación de datos personales permite confeccionar el perfil de consumidor de un inmenso número de ciudadanos. El marketing se ajusta al perfil del cliente. Cuanto mayor es la información que las empresas tienen de los consumidores, más alta es la probabilidad de hacerles llegar ofertas personalizadas –sobre todo a través de internet– y de concretar las ventas.

“Desde la esfera oficial, se trata de la lucha contra el terrorismo, pero también se quiere lograr un mayor control social”, comenta Christian Thorun, especialista de la Central Federal de Consumidores (VZBV, según sus siglas en alemán).

Desde comienzos de este año rige una ley federal que faculta a la Policía de Investigaciones para intervenir correos electrónicos, comunicaciones telefónicas e instalar dispositivos de video o audio en viviendas privadas.

“La privacidad del ciudadano, núcleo de su libertad, es cada vez más restringida por el gobierno de la Gran Coalición”, ha dicho la exministra de Justicia, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.

En declaraciones al diario berlinés Tagesspiegel, el pasado domingo 3, la política del Partido Liberal (FDP, según sus siglas en alemán) habló de un “dramático recorte de derechos ciudadanos”.

(…)

“El peligro no proviene tanto por la acción del Estado sino la de las empresas privadas”, sostiene Thorun, y advierte que “los datos que éstas recogen sobre los consumidores, a través de tarjetas de cliente, en internet o en redes sociales, cobran poco a poco dimensiones que superan largamente lo que George Orwell escribió en su libro 1984.”

Read full article at http://www.proceso.com.mx

Many consider the village of Jale to be one of the most beautiful hamlets on Albania’s Riviera. Two authors of children’s books who come from the area have often featured its deep-blue waters and sandy beaches, giving this coastal village on the Ionian Sea the image of a paradise on earth.

The families living here have a history dating back 300 years, owning small plots of land that were handed down from father to son. Their prosperity has ebbed and flowed like their sea-surrounds. Neglected by the Stalinist regime of the late Enver Hoxha, the village was spared the mass industrialization that blighted the landscapes of other parts of the country. The majority of houses in the village were little more than shacks when the regime imploded in 1991.

But the World Bank has recently achieved what Stalinism did not. Amidst accusations of corruption and attempts at a cover-up, a World Bank project meant to safeguard Albania’s coast was used to demolish parts of Jale and leave many families homeless.

It happened like this. After a decade of tumultuous transition to democracy, Albania’s tourism industry started slowly to recover, bringing a renaissance to Jale. The old houses serving the growing numbers of tourists were suddenly not big enough. Residents applied for but were refused building permits. Driven by economic necessity, they went ahead and added rooms within their fences.

These were a fraction of the estimated 220,000 unauthorized buildings that sprang up across Albania as a result of wildcat construction. So the country adopted a law to legalize illegal construction. Although the Jale villagers applied under the new law, on 3 April 2007 they were notified that their houses were illegal and would be demolished. They launched an appeal at the local court. But construction police did not wait for the case to come to trial, and on 17 April 2007 they demolished all the newly built houses in the village.

‘They surrounded the village like we were in state of war,’ recalls Vasilika Koka, who saw her parents’ house in ruins. ‘For three days the road was blocked and no-one could bring even food.’

The televised scenes of the demolition caused a furore. The head of the Union of Civil Liberties Party, Vangjel Dule (who represents the area in Parliament), slammed Prime Minister Sali Berisha, arguing that the demolition was being done for business interests close to Berisha. One week after the demolitions, then-Minister of Transportation Lulzim Basha told Parliament that the demolition was a result of a scheme backed by a World Bank project on ‘Integrated Coastal Zones Management and Clean-Up’.

It transpires that the project was significantly funded by a $17.5 million World Bank loan, distributed through the International Development Association (an arm of the World Bank Group). A subsequent investigation by the World Bank’s own Inspection Panel found that the project acted in disregard of World Bank policies. The Panel’s leaked report finds the project aided the forced displacements of Jale villagers by pressuring local construction police to take action and by supplying them with equipment and aerial photos of the homes to be demolished. The investigators also noted allegations of corruption, in addition to complaints that the demolition of the Jale settlements was part of a bigger scheme to develop the area as a tourist resort. The Panel accused World Bank management of misrepresenting facts during the probe and hampering the investigation by withholding access to data.

The investigation – described by the Panel as one of the most difficult in its 14 years of operation – raises a number of critical issues about standards of transparency and accountability that ought to trigger major changes in the way that the World Bank Group does business.

Besar Likmeta and Gjergj Erebara

Read it at NewInt

This article first appeared at www.balkaninsight.com

By Robert Kurz

“Oggi tutti noi ci comportiamo “autoregolativamente” come robot della responsabilità personale dell’economia di mercato.Quell’antico concetto di “libertà” cui mirava l’autonomia sociale appare oggi primitivo e preindustriale. Naturalmente noi non possiamo e non vogliamo ritornare ad un angustomodo di vivere agrario, da contadini ed artigiani. Ma il prezzo del progresso deve consistere nella degradazione sociale dell’uomo a “cane di Pavlov” della macchina del mercato? Davvero l’umanità è incapace di regolare le moderne forze produttive attraverso l’autodeterminazione e il cosciente accordo, invece di consegnarsi ad un cieco automatismo economico? l’assolutismo di mercato non rappresenta un’alternativa all’assolutismo di Stato. Il nostro compito per il 21° secolo è quello di reinventare l’antico concetto di “libertà sociale” contro la “libertà orwelliana” del liberalismo.”

Reat full article at Exit-Online

By Plan B Bureau

“The biopolitical metropolis is administrated exclusively using governance. Social movements, autonomous forces and all those who truly have the desire to subvert the status quo understand that when a struggle begins one should never commit the fatal error of going straight to negotiate with governace, sit at it’s “tables”, accept its forms of corruption and thus become its hostage. On the contrary, it is necessary right from the beginning to impose the battleground, the deadlines and even the modality of struggle on governance. Only when the balance of power is overturned in favor of the metropolitan autonomy will it be possible to negotiate governance’s surrender while standing up, on solid legs.”

Read full content at http://www.occupiedlondon.org/

By Neve Gordon

“The experiment in famine began on January 18, 2008. Israel hermetically closed all of Gaza’s borders, preventing food, medicine and fuel from entering the Strip. Power cuts, which had been frequent for many months, were extended to 12 hours per day. Because of the electricity shortage, at least 40 percent of Gazans have not had access to running water (which is channeled through electric pumps) for days and the sewage system has broken down. The raw sewage that has not spilled onto the streets is being poured into the sea at a daily rate of 30 million liters. Hospitals have been forced to rely on emergency generators, leading them to cut back, yet again, on the already limited services offered to the Palestinian population. The World Food Programme has reported critical shortages of food and declared that it is unable to provide 10,000 of the poorest Gazans with three out of the five foodstuffs they normally receive.

After five days of extreme suffering, a group of Hamas militants took the lead and blew-up parts of the steel wall along the Egyptian border. Within hours, more than 100,000 Gazans crossed the border into Egypt. They were hungry, thirsty, and sick of being locked up in a filthy cage. Once in Egypt, they bought everything they could get their hands on and waited patiently for the international community to intervene on their behalf. Yet the world leaders failed them again, and on January 28, after a five-day respite, the iron wall was re-erected and the Palestinians were pushed back into the world’s largest prison—the Gaza Strip.”

Read full artilce at In These Times

By Yosefa Loshitzky

“Israel’s cruelty — manifested through its use (or rather abuse) of
language, and creative “strategy” of “re-branding” its continuous
assaults on the Palestinians as a war of defense, using their
tautological logic to justify the extermination of an “entity” which
they designate as “hostile” — should be interpreted in the spirit of
Giorgio Agamben. The influential Italian philosopher argued in relation
to the Nazi death camps that the “correct question to pose concerning
the horrors committed in the camps is, therefore, not the hypocritical
one of how crimes of such atrocity could be committed against human
beings” but what were “the juridical procedures and deployments of
power by which human beings could be so completely deprived of their
rights and prerogatives that no act committed against them could appear any longer as a crime.”

Read full artilce at The Corner Report