GIORGIO GRIZIOTTIEqualize the world

Giorgio Griziotti, Effimera, 16/11/2024
Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

The other day, disembarking at Orly airport from Italy, I was heading with other passengers toward the exit when at one point a queue formed in front of a lighted tunnel with doors that let in one person at a time. Yet another automatic control and detection system, as if during air travel the passenger, already checked at boarding, could obtain weapons, drugs or other illicit products. This umpteenth anxiety-provoking airport novelty is one of many manifestations of the ubiquitous securitarian obsession in the real as well as the virtual accompanied by rhetoric that feeds the perception of continuous danger as promoting a culture of fear.

In fact, the danger often exists because proponents of the securitarian narrative and agents of cyberespionage are in the same camp and feed off each other.
Equalize, the now-investigated Italian corporate risk analysis company-read industrial espionage and not just industrial espionage since clients include the Mossad and the Vatican-is exemplary in this regard: its owner, in addition to being president of the Milano Fair Foundation, appointed in 2022 by the League member and Chamber of deputies chairman Lorenzo Fontana, and an advisor to Bocconi University, had close ties with senior government figures including none other than the president of the Senate and the much-investigated minister of tourism Daniela Santanchè.
Equalize is thus a contemporary illustration of the new power dynamics between controllers and controlled in the era of “Surveillance Capitalism”[1]. Zuboff, when she wrote the book a few years ago, hoped that capitalism was reformable; today a striking fact seems to disprove this assumption once and for all: the rise to power of Elon Musk.
As recounted by those who have been able to make forays into the future,[2] Musk's smashing arrival in the spheres of governance seals the entanglement between the state and techno-tycoons or techno-oligarchs, whatever you want to call them. Since the days of the industrial era, big business has been used to acquire and control the then mainstream media but now we are witnessing an unprecedented quantum leap. The seventeen billion impressions generated by Musk alone with his tweets during the election campaign exert a biopolitical influence incomparable even to that of the precursor Berlusconi with his electric media à la Mc Luhan. It is precisely the possession of enormous amounts of data that enables the platforms of neurocapitalism, largely autonomous in defining their own rules of operation, to exert relevant influence on narratives, perceptions, emotions and decisions. This power actively shapes elections, markets and even personal relationships, redefining their dynamics and directing their developments in profound and pervasive ways.
Now, returning to Equalize, it is not surprising that, in such a global context, intermediary actors are also emerging as new centers of private power. Through the use of artificial intelligence, data mining and hacking, they are managing to turn information into a tool of coercion and control.
In this particular case, Equalize's ambition was to become a kind of “Google of intelligence.” To this end, it had developed a platform called Beyond, which allowed for sophisticated reports simply by entering a query about a person or company. These reports offered detailed analysis and suggested further insights or investigation if needed.
Up to this point, Beyond might seem similar to other legal platforms. However, its deeply illicit nature, as discovered by investigators, lies in illegally obtaining information from protected and confidential databases through the use of RAT (Remote Access Trojan) malware, with which to gain full remote control of the target system.
Among the databases attacked are those, of the Internal Revenue Service [Serpico system, measuring the match between taxpayers' standard of living and their tax returns, Transl. note]), Istat (National institute of statistics), INPS (National Institute of Social Welfare), the National Registry Office (ANPR), the Currency Information System (Siva) of the Automobile club Italia (Aci), but above all the SDI,  the Survey System of the Ministry of the Interior[3].
The relative ease, thanks in part to complicity and infiltration, with which Equalize/Beyond succeeds in downloading data directly from the Ministry of the Interior's servers highlights how even the most sensitive databases, managed by the central organs of the State, which should be hyper-protected, are now vulnerable and end up in the black market of stolen data. This is probably also the result of the increasing subcontracting of some of the most critical nodes of state functioning to the private sector. It is an erosion not only of the boundaries between public and private, but also of those between those who control and those who are controlled.
Users, often without being aware of it, voluntarily contribute to their own monitoring through the use of connected devices and digital platforms. This “participatory surveillance” generates a continuous feedback loop, in which the data produced is reprocessed to again influence the very individuals who generated it. An example of this mechanism can also be found in the case of Equalize, where, as one manager explained, detailed reports on site visits were collected daily, including information on who had logged in, from where, with what device and browser. This process allowed in-depth profiling of users, monitoring not only who accessed the platform, but also what they searched for.
Equalize is probably only the first major case to emerge, while others in Italy, Europe and elsewhere continue to operate in the shadows. They are the collateral and local symptoms of the wave of fascist techno-solutionism that gives the coup de grace to the now unreformable Western democracies as Emanuele Braga argues in a recent article in Effimera in which among other things he denounces the (stupid) bad faith of politicians and intellectuals of the late left. In this regard, to conclude, I was struck by the recent interview of David Colon, to the Manifesto with the significant title “The new frontier of the techno-oligarchs.” From the height of his chair at Science Po in Paris, Colon states that “tech billionaires intend to dethrone politics in favor of technology, artificial intelligence, in other words the tools that have made their fortunes.” Babbling, on the very day of Trump's election, about the “good” Western democracies to be saved because they are being seriously endangered by the “bad” autocracies of the rest of the world, the good “leftist” prof. does not even realize the nonsense of his claims. No technology has taken or will take the place of politics while Elon Musk & Co. are already the new political leaders of 21st century capitalism...

Post-scriptum
As we know, platform capitalism bases its profitability in the transformation of data from use value to exchange value (the so-called network value). The Equalize case is no exception. The democratic issue has relatively little to do with it. It is capitalism, my dear! The sale of data manipulated, managed, selected and profiled by the Beyond platform is in fact the main business of the operation. From what could be read from telephone intercepts published in some newspapers, a simple and single request for information (requiring no special ad hoc investigation) had an average cost of about 200 euros. The cost of retrieving such information was more or less 60 euros, with a certainly significant profit margin. The fact to remember is that this information is gathered from the profiling of the acts of daily life of each of us, bar none. In fact, recent algorithmic and cloud computing technologies make it possible to catalogue, select, manipulate, and classify the raw data that comes from the use of apps on cell phones, tablets, and computers into readable and saleable data, depending on the needs of the customer and the business. Not surprisingly, this is referred to as business intelligence. What is relatively new (at least for Italy) is the particularity of the data processed by the Equalize/Beyond platform: it is, in fact, extremely sensitive data that have to do with the issue of privacy and security, thus data with very high added value. We are no longer only faced with life being directly put to value and the becoming annuity of profit, but with the “political” becoming of profit, with all the implications that this entails (Andrea Fumagalli)

NOTES
[1] Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance capitalism. PublicAffairs, 2019.
[2] Griziotti, Giorgio. Cronache del Boomernauta (Chronicles of the Boomernaut) Mimesis Editions, 2023 (to be published in English in 2025)
[3] The complex and extensive interagency information system, which is divided into 13 main application areas into which all kinds of information flows from complaints and investigations, from weapons management to foreigner control, from police intelligence to tender monitoring.

LIVE VIDEO: Haaretz Conference, Israel After October 7th: Allied or Alone?

The aftermath of the 7th October and the war in the southern and northern regions have far-reaching implications for Israel, the Middle East, and the broader international order. Since 7th October, the UK has assumed a pivotal role, emerging as one of the primary global powers engaged in resolving the crisis and shaping a post-war landscape. In light of these developments and the new government in the UK, the conference will engage our community, allies, and thought leaders in reflecting on the situation in Israel, Palestine, and the wider region.

MOSTAFA GHAHREMANIThe German Federal Foreign Office and Mrs. Annalena Baerbock are out of mind!

Mostafa Ghahremani, 1/11/2024

The Federal Republic of Germany has reacted to the execution of an Iranian citizen with a German passport by closing all three Iranian consulates general in Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main and Munich. Furthermore, 32 diplomats and other employees of these institutions have been informed that they must leave the country within a certain period.

This hostile act by Germany must in any case be regarded as an unprecedented, disproportionate and unjustifiable action and reaction and has already been judged in Tehran as interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign State.
The executed Jamshid Sharmahd, a 69-year-old native Iranian with a German passport, has been known for years as an opponent of the regime and the head of a royalist radio station that incites violence.
Jamshid Sharmahd was the one who, with his words and deeds, repeatedly called for terrorist attacks within the borders of an independent country called Iran and against its armed forces. He has publicly claimed responsibility for the attack on a mosque in Shiraz in southern Iran that killed 14 people in April 2008.
The Federal Foreign Office must answer the question of what advantage German foreign policy sees in supporting such a terrorist.
In the last 46 years, I have never seen such unjustified hostility and negative and biased bias in German foreign policy towards Iran just because a terrorist has been judged by the judiciary of an independent country.
All this is further proof of the inefficiency and incompetence of Mrs. Annalena Baerbock's ministry!
It is deeply regrettable that after the events in Ukraine and the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the Foreign Office, the apparatus of German foreign policy, is in a deep crisis and mired in mismanagement, technical errors and political disorientation.

Sharmahd claimed publicly responsibility for the attack in Shiraz

 

COP DiverGenteManifesto to Colombia and the World

  

COP DiverGente - Citizen and Autonomous Environmental Summit, Cali, October 26th and 27th, 2024
Spanish Original
Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

Gathered in the “COP DiverGente - Environmental, Citizen and Autonomous Summit”, we record the words of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. António Guterres, on the occasion of the COP16: “Developing countries are being plundered. The digitized DNA of biodiversity underpins scientific discovery and economic growth. But developing countries are not benefiting equitably from these advances, despite harboring extraordinary wealth.” 

COP 16 is a long way from resolving these imbalances. Despite the glowing speeches with the slogan “Peace with nature”, COP 16 corroborates that it is one more phase of the commodification of nature and of our cultural and biological diversity, against the exclusive sovereignty rights of our Peoples.

The statements of the Colombian Minister of Environment are revealing: “What we are proposing in substance,” she says, “is a new financial pact, so we invite the private sector to build hand in hand a sustainable model that puts the care of nature at the center and enhances the opportunities that arise from it; we hope that this portfolio will be an incentive for capital and progress for all sectors; above all, to mobilize regional development and global leadership”. And she adds: “We must translate this portfolio into three currencies: biodiversity, carbon and hard currency”, defining COP16 as a “Fair of economies” (El Tiempo, September 28, 2024).

We reiterate that COP 16 is the commodification of the biological and cultural diversity of our Peoples, we disagree with this Conference and declare that we are against biopiracy, as appropriation by transnational corporations of the financial benefits of the use of digital sequence information on genetic resources; input for pharmaceutical biotechnology, the agrochemical market, as well as biological weapons and pathogens against the struggles of the peoples, by the great powers of the global north. Colombia -second most biodiverse country on Earth- is a victim, like our “second order” countries, of the plundering of the information of its genetic resources, without any benefit for our Peoples, since the large corporations have already appropriated these resources and created DNA information banks with secret agendas.

Background. The action of our Divergent COP does not begin or end today. It has as background, among others, the most powerful environmental citizen mobilization existing in Colombia, which is the defence of water and the Santurbán Paramo, which joins the struggle for an autonomous water policy where the management of water sources by the communities is respected; the struggle against the sugar mafia in the geographical valley of the Cauca; the defence of the Colombian Massif and Colombian rivers such as the Magdalena, the Cauca and the Atrato; and the forests, such as the Amazon and the Biogeographic Chocó, in indissoluble union with their inhabitants, subjected to ethnocide and ecocide.

Within the most immediate background of this process, undoubtedly, the defence of Gorgona Island occupies a central place, to prevent the construction of military works of a Coast Guard Station, which transgress the mega biodiversity of this fragile ecosystem, included in the Green List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature; works that harm the right of exclusive sovereignty of the ancestral peoples (without prior and informed consultation), which could lead to an ecocide. On April 9, we achieved the defence of these collective rights before the Court of Bogotá, by means of a court order to suspend the questioned environmental license. We demand that the government, without further formalities, proceed to revoke it.

Rights animate our alternative action. From our perspective, we agree with other thoughts that there is an indissoluble union of human beings with nature. Nature is the source of the goods indispensable for life, which is why we are environmentalists. Can a civilization or a society, lacking in solidarity, that does not respect human life and its natural environment, make a pact of “peace with nature”? A civilization defined by hunger, misery and the destruction of nature!

The “exchange of the external debt for nature” (formulated in 1989 by the Economic Commission for Latin America, and the Caribbean ECLAC) is offered to our Peoples as environmental redemption. This is the main banner of the Colombian Government before the Global North, which is equivalent to saying: “he who pollutes pays and he who pays pollutes”. We affirm that what is essential are the indigenous, Afro-Colombian, Raizal, Roma (Gypsy) and peasant peoples, with their inalienable, individual, collective, territorial and self-determination rights. Consequently, we affirm that there is no solution without the peoples. It is they, the irreplaceable protagonists, who in the first place can defend nature and their own rights against colonialism and neocolonialism.

In the Amazon basin, strategic for the climatic balance of the Planet, the brutal offensive of the landowners and cattle ranchers, of the megaprojects of extractivist transnationals continues, with the deforestation and destruction of the jungle, to the detriment of the original Peoples. We agree in the defence of the cross-border unity of all Peoples, so that the exclusive popular sovereignty is internationalist.

Food and nutritional security and sovereignty must be framed within the policies for the dignified survival of humanity, focusing its plans, programs and activities on the continuous improvement of the conditions of existence within the right to a dignified life, plans based on the right of the Peoples to define their own agrarian, production, distribution and consumption policies; with the capacity to self-supply, autonomously and adequately to their communities; the activities, in the peasant and ethnic Peoples' grassroots, must promote the permanent formation and training, linked and directed to the development of the solidarity economy, fundamental basis for the construction of popular power. Our option in rural and agrarian development is the peasant and ethnic peoples' way. Their own economies promote food sovereignty and security in our countries.

The national and international context. In the context of the new technological and energetic revolution of capitalism, in the face of the decline of fossil fuels, imperialist and geopolitical powers are jostling for zones of influence and the natural resources of the planet. One of the causes of the deployment of large military forces in the world and in America is the control of “natural resources” and their sources, under neocolonial relations of extractivism; which, with the participation of the local ruling classes, leads to the destruction of nature and social injustices that harm the rights of the Peoples. In the energy transition, big capital does not abandon its brutal methods of accumulation and reproduction. It is not the purpose of capitalism to “save the Planet”, nor to cease its predatory condition of human beings and nature.

The seas are the fundamental means, in more than 90%, of communication, of commercial and military relations in the world; therefore the inter-oceanic routes and channels, actual or potential, have a privileged place in the “maritime” and military strategy of the USA. In the “Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor” -which includes the Ecuadorian archipelago of the Galapagos Islands, Malpelo and Gorgona of Colombia, Coiba of Panama, Coco of Costa Rica-, the US Southern Command promotes a regional project with extension to the Caribbean Sea (over the isthmic region of the Continent); which, in Gorgona, as everywhere, violates the territorial rights of the ancestral Peoples, their exclusive sovereignty and leads to ecocide. 

Our alignment and solidarity is with all Peoples, as today with the Palestinian People subjected to genocide. Some plausible diplomatic actions are not enough, such as the rupture of relations with the government of Israel for the genocide of the Palestinian People; nor are speeches and declarations for peace. Coherence is indispensable and Colombia must leave NATO, the subordination to the Southern Command, renounce the Combined Maritime Force that under US command operates today in the Middle East and exclude any possibility of military agreement with the world geopolitical powers.

In the face of the worrying lurks of the ultra-right aimed at destabilizing and executing a fascist plan, we are on the side of the governmental alternative represented by the Historical Pact, without abandoning our critical approaches, especially in matters of environmental policies. We essentially defend the popular mandate expressed at the ballot box and demand coherence.

Immediate objectives. Our immediate objective is to articulate a citizens' alliance, autonomous from the government and its institutions. We demand that governments fulfil their social obligations and effectively guarantee the rights of civil society. Our action seeks to articulate existing organized environmental and social expressions, to strengthen the defence of human rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians and peasants, and the rights of nature. We seek to build a process to join wills and citizen powers, to reach consensus on objectives and to agree on mobilization initiatives around proposals that arise from debate and consensus, amid creative dissent. We propose today to strengthen a process of mobilization, debate and action. With a perspective of struggle against economic models predatory of nature and human beings. A cultural effort must be prioritized toward children and youth, to overcome the dominant paradigms that have led us to crisis and war. Our struggle is for life and for rights!

This Manifesto has as its initial bases the “Call” and the “Preliminary Declaration” of this Divergent Environmentalist, Citizen and Autonomous COP. It gathers contributions from previous forums and from this event held in Cali, on October 26 and 27, 2024, with a representative group of environmental and social leaders.

Convening Organizations: Indepaz; Poder Negro; Foundations: Biodiversidad, Pangea, Multipropaz, and Huella de Agua; EkoInc; Fraternales y Revolucionarias; Corporación Compromiso; Movimiento Cívico Conciencia Ciudadana, Comité para la Defensa del Agua y el Páramo de Santurbán, Instituto para la Igualdad de Oportunidades, with an attendance of 120 environmental and social leaders gathered at the Institución Educativa Multipropósitos.

 

Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary InstitutionsA letter by writers, translators, publishers, and other book workers

Monday, October 28, 2024:

We, as writers, publishers, literary festival workers, and other book workers, publish this letter as we face the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century. The overwhelming injustice faced by the Palestinians cannot be denied. The current war has entered our homes and pierced our hearts. 

The emergency is here: Israel has made Gaza unlivable. It is not possible to know exactly how many Palestinians Israel has killed since October, because Israel has destroyed all infrastructure, including the ability to count and bury the dead. We do know that Israel has killed, at the very least, 43,362 Palestinians in Gaza since October and that this is the biggest war on children this century. 

This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months. Israeli officials speak plainly of their motivations to eliminate the population of Gaza, to make Palestinian statehood impossible, and to seize Palestinian land. This follows 75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. 

Culture has played an integral role in normalizing these injustices. Israeli cultural institutions, often working directly with the state, have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising and artwashing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.

We have a role to play. We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement. This was the position taken by countless authors against South Africa; it was their contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.

Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians. We will not cooperate with Israeli institutions including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that:

• Are complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel's occupation, apartheid or genocide, or 

• Have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law. 

To work with these institutions is to harm Palestinians, and so we call on our fellow writers, translators, illustrators and book workers to join us in this pledge. We call on our publishers, editors and agents to join us in taking a stand, in recognising our own involvement, our own moral responsibility and to stop engaging with the Israeli state and with complicit Israeli institutions.

➤First 1496 signatories

➤ To add your name to this letter, please fill and submit the form here 

MILENA RAMPOLDIWe need a pedagogy of resistance

Milena Rampoldi, 28-10-2024

Pedagogy is one of the fundamental sciences when it comes to changing the world, which we do not like the way it looks right now. Pedagogy thus has the task of anticipating the socio-political utopia that we would like to see in the near future. Pedagogy should sow the desire in our minds and in the minds of our children to bring these ethical ideals forward in time, to stop dreaming about them and to experience them first hand. Any change in people and in society begins with the education of children and of society as a whole in the sense of lifelong learning.

‘Autonomous education builds different worlds where many true worlds with truths fit’, mural by a collective led by Gustavo Chávez Pavón, Zapatista primary school in Oventic, Chiapas, Mexico.

‘Autonomous education builds different worlds where many true worlds with truths fit’, mural by a collective led by Gustavo Chávez Pavón, Zapatista primary school in Oventic, Chiapas, Mexico.
The pedagogy of human rights is also often mentioned. Children should be sensitised from an early age to grow into people who neither discriminate nor exploit others. They should develop into people who show empathy, oppose violence and war, and work actively and dynamically for a better world in the spirit of peace and justice. They should grow up to be tolerant and cooperative people who support the weak, oppose all violence in their environment, denounce racism and discrimination, advocate for a just starting point and think in a tolerant and open way.
But for people who have been subjected to extreme oppression or genocide, human rights education is not enough. In an environment of total dehumanisation, where the killing and suffocation of every human life dream is brutal, no pedagogy for human rights can take root, because that would mean that people have not been deprived of their humanity, but that is the case. Because the narrative of genocide requires the dehumanisation of the enemy. I can only kill if I know that there are no humans in front of me. Only then can I pull the trigger and only then can I kill children en masse. And that was the case in the Nazi regime. And it is being repeated today in Gaza. The victims are children who have been dehumanised in advance so that they can be killed coldly and without any ethical consideration.
What we urgently need in an environment of dehumanisation is not a pedagogy of human rights, but an education in resistance. And the goal of this resistance, which is the result of the pedagogy of resistance, is the renewed recognition of the humanity of the dehumanised, along with overcoming their role as victims and their reification.
What Theodor Adorno says, albeit with some ethnocentric restrictions, applies to all of humanity. In his essay from 1966, the Jewish philosopher expressed the following view on the ‘never again’ of the concentration camp of Auschwitz and the killing of fellow citizens who were gassed because they belonged to a Jewish and thus inferior Semitic ‘race’:
“The first demand of education is that Auschwitz not happen again. It precedes all others to such an extent that I believe I neither have to nor should justify it. I cannot understand why it has been given so little attention to date. Justifying it would be monstrous in view of the monstrosity that occurred […] …. Any debate about educational ideals is futile and irrelevant compared to this one: that Auschwitz must never be repeated. It was barbarism that all education is directed against.”
And this paradigm of the pedagogy of resistance is precisely the common thread running through the book by the Colombian history professor Renán Vega Cantor, entitled “Education after Gaza”, which I have just translated from Spanish into English and German.
Resistance in such an enclave, which symbolises the quintessential example of Zionist, imperialist oppression of the Other, is not only a universal right, but a universal obligation that must come from both within as well as from without. Educators from all over the world are called upon to name Israeli human rights violations and denounce the brutality of this genocide. Because neither Auschwitz nor Gaza must be repeated. Resistance to the killing machine of the Zionist state, which completely reverses Jewish ethics and religious thought, can only be guaranteed by this reversal: the children of Gaza are not victims, but fighters.
The Palestinian-Brazilian poet Yasser Jamil Fayad has summed up this concept in a few brief but eloquent words:
“Running/ Dancing/ Crying/ Kissing/ Loving/ Suffering/ Helping/ Screaming/ There are countless verbs in life/ I am only Palestinian/ My verb is fighting!’
This is the pedagogy of resistance that we need worldwide. This is a paradigm of pedagogical thinking that will take its place in schools all over the world.
The No is a universal No to the dehumanisation of any human being, of the Jews of yesteryear and the Palestinians of today.

RENÁN VEGA CANTOREducation after Gaza

The title of this text paraphrases Education After Auschwitz, the title of a radio lecture given by the German philosopher Theodor Adorno in 1966 and later published in printed form, the first lines of which read as follows: “Demanding that Auschwitz never happen again is the first requirement of all education. It precedes all others so much that I don't think I should or can justify it. I can't understand why we didn't care so much about it until today. Justifying it would be somewhat monstrous in the face of the monstrosity of what happened. […] Discussing ideals in the field of education leads to nothing in the face of this demand: never again Auschwitz. This was the type of barbarism against which all education stands.”

Today we are faced with repetition the genocidal barbarism by Israel against the Palestinian people.   In this essay, Colombian historian Renán Vega Cantor outlines what critical educators driven by a humanist ethic could and should be doing.

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ALAIN GRESH/SARRA GRIRA Gaza – Lebanon, a Western war

Alain Gresh and Sarra Grira, Orient XXI, 30/9/2024
Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

Alain Gresh (Cairo 1948) is a French journalist specialising in the Mashreq region and director of the OrientXXI website.

 Sarra Grira is a doctor in French literature and civilisation, with a thesis entitled Roman autobiographique et engagement: une antinomie? (XXe siècle), and is editor-in-chief of OrientXXI.

How far will Tel Aviv go? Not content with reducing Gaza to a field of ruins and committing genocide, Israel is extending its operations to neighbouring Lebanon, using the same methods, the same massacres and the same destruction, convinced of the unfailing support of its Western backers who have become direct accomplices in its actions.

Hassan Bleibel

The number of Lebanese killed in the bombardments has exceeded 1,640, and the Israeli ‘exploits’ have multiplied. Inaugurated by the episode of the pagers, which caused many Western commentators to swoon over the ‘technological feat’. Too bad for the victims, killed, disfigured, blinded, amputated, written off. It will be repeated ad nauseam that, after all, it was just Hezbollah, a ‘humiliation’, an organisation that, let's not forget, France does not consider to be a terrorist organisation. As if the explosions had not affected the whole of society, killing militiamen and civilians alike. Yet the use of booby-traps is a violation of the laws of war, as several specialists and humanitarian organisations have pointed out [1].

The summary assassinations of Hezbollah leaders, including that of its Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, each time accompanied by numerous ‘collateral victims’, do not even cause a scandal. Netanyahu's latest thumbing of his nose at the UN was to give the go-ahead for the bombing of the Lebanese capital at the organisation's own headquarters.

In Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories, the members of the UN Security Council are ignoring the opinions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) more and more every day. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is delaying issuing a warrant against Benyamin Netanyahu, even though its prosecutor reports pressure ‘from world leaders’ and other parties, including himself and his family[2]. Have we heard Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron or Olaf Scholz protest against these practices?

For almost a year now, a handful of voices - who would almost seem to be the village fools - have been denouncing Israeli impunity, encouraged by Western inaction. Such a war would never have been possible without the airlift of USAmerican - and to a lesser extent European - weapons, and without the diplomatic and political cover of Western countries. France, if it wanted to, could take measures that would really hit Israel, but it is still refusing to suspend the arms export licences it has granted. It could also lobby the European Union, with countries like Spain, to suspend the association agreement with Israel. It is not doing so.

The never-ending Palestinian Nakba and the accelerating destruction of Lebanon are not only Israeli crimes, but also Western crimes for which Washington, Paris and Berlin bear direct responsibility. Far from the posturing and theatrics of the UN General Assembly over the last few days, let's not be fooled by Joe Biden's anger or Emmanuel Macron's pious hopes for the ‘protection of civilians’, who has never missed an opportunity to show his unwavering support for Benyamin Netanyahu's extreme right-wing government. Let's not even forget the number of diplomats who left the UN General Assembly hall when the Israeli Prime Minister took the floor, in a gesture that had more to do with catharsis than politics. For while some Western countries bear primary responsibility for Israel's crimes, others, such as Russia and China, have taken no action to put an end to this war, whose scope is expanding daily, spilling over into Yemen today and perhaps Iran tomorrow.

This war is plunging us into a dark age in which the laws, the law, the safeguards, everything that would prevent humanity from sinking into barbarism, are being methodically torn down. An era in which one side has decided to put the other side to death, judging it to be ‘barbaric’. ‘Savage enemies‘, in Netanyahu's words, who threaten ’Judeo-Christian civilisation’. The Prime Minister is seeking to drag the West into a war of civilisation with religious overtones, in which Israel sees itself as the outpost in the Middle East. With undoubted success.

Through the arms and munitions they continue to supply to Israel, through their unwavering support for a spurious ‘right to self-defence’, through their rejection of the Palestinians' right to self-determination and to resist an occupation that the ICJ has declared illegal and ordered to be halted - a decision that the UN Security Council refuses to implement - these countries bear responsibility for Israel's hubris. As members of such prestigious institutions as the UN Security Council and the G7, the governments of these states endorse the law of the jungle imposed by Israel and the logic of collective punishment. This logic was already at work in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003, with familiar results. Back in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, occupied the south, laid siege to Beirut and oversaw the massacres in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila. It was this macabre ‘victory’ that led to the rise of Hezbollah, just as Israel's policy of occupation led to 7 October. Because the logic of war and colonialism can never lead to peace and security.

---

[1] Read Lebanon: Establish international investigation into deadly attacks using exploding portable devices, by Amnesty International, 20 Sept. 2024

[2] Listen to Karim Khan’s interview by Nick Robinson, 7 Sept. 2024

SCARLETT HADDADDespite criticism of Hezbollah, this is no time for internal discord among the Lebanese

Scarlett Haddad, L’Orient-Le Jour, 28/9/2024
Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

 

Scarlett Haddad is a journalist and analyst for the French-language Lebanese daily L'Orient-Le Jour. She specializes in Lebanese domestic political issues in addition to Syrian, Palestinian and Iranian matters from Lebanon's perspective, including topics concerning Hezbollah and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

 At a time when it is waging a ferocious war, albeit a supportive one, against the Israelis, Hezbollah fears it could face internal unrest. At a time when the inhabitants of the South have taken to the streets again because of the violence of the Israeli bombardments in their region, political and other voices have been raised to criticise Hezbollah and ask it to close the ‘support front’. This may be pure coincidence or the expression of popular unease about this front and the prospect of its enlargement, but it may also be a step in a plan to put Hezbollah against the wall as a prelude to its weakening.

Kamal Sharaf, Yemen

After having more or less avoided criticising Hezbollah too openly, particularly after the Israeli escalation of recent days, some political figures have decided to raise their voices. This may be entirely justified by the intensification and broadening of Israeli attacks on several regions of Lebanon and by the threat of a ground invasion, but the simultaneous nature of these criticisms raises questions for Hezbollah.

At a time when it is the target of murderous attacks and is conducting an internal investigation into possible infiltration, which its opponents are exploiting to undermine its credibility among its supporters, Hezbollah is wondering whether this sudden wave of criticism is spontaneous or whether it is orchestrated by foreign parties. It is also wondering whether this is just an indirect means of putting pressure on it to accept certain conditions or whether there is a wider plan.

What really catches its attention is the timing of this campaign, which comes at a time when truce negotiations are due to be held in New York. These talks, led by the USAmericans and the French, should in principle involve a 21-day halt to the fighting, the time needed to reach an agreement on an in-depth solution to the situation on Lebanon's southern border. Hezbollah and with it official Lebanon are insisting that the agreement should also cover Gaza, but the Israelis and the USAmericans want to separate the two issues. They could therefore try to put pressure on Hezbollah to change its mind on the latter point.

However, Hezbollah is adamant that it will continue to support Hamas in Gaza through the open front in southern Lebanon. It considers that all attempts to change its mind are doomed to failure, especially since, after the latest Israeli attacks, any concession on its part would be interpreted as a defeat. It is therefore prepared to face the consequences of this position, but what would worry them is if this sudden wave of criticism were not the prelude to internal unrest. In addition to the Israeli attacks, they will have to deal with the notorious intercommunal discord that has become an obsession for Hezbollah since the coup of 7 May 2008 and the clashes that followed.

Over the last few months, those close to Hezbollah consider that one of the greatest achievements of the opening of the ‘support front’ has been the consolidation of relations between the group's supporters and the Sunni street that favours Hamas. This sort of ‘honeymoon’ that Sunnis and Shiites in Lebanon are currently experiencing, united for the Palestinian cause, means that Hezbollah can feel that its back is protected and it can therefore devote itself fully to the front and its popular environment. Moreover, the fact that from time to time Palestinian fighters and others from various Sunni groups launch missiles against the Israeli North from the South is a way of showing the extent of the understanding and coordination between them and Hezbollah. Similarly, the welcome given to displaced persons from the South in predominantly Sunni regions is further proof of the good relations that currently exist. This is a terrible blow to any attempt to spark discord between Sunnis and Shiites. Even after the so-called beeper and walkie-talkie attacks, many young Sunnis, particularly from Tarik Jdideh neighbourhood, rushed to give blood to the wounded.

As far as the Druze community is concerned, Hezbollah can also rest easy because of the positions taken by its leader Walid Joumblatt, who has repeatedly expressed his support for the Palestinian cause and Hamas in particular in this war that has been going on for over 11 months. He has also made numerous statements urging the inhabitants of the Mountain to open their doors to displaced persons from the South, and has increased the number of so-called reconciliation and rapprochement meetings with numerous parties in the Mountain and elsewhere, with the declared aim of nipping in the bud any attempt at internal discord.

That leaves the Christians, who seem to be more difficult for Hezbollah to manage in the current period. Its relations with the Free Patriotic Movement have become more complicated and it can no longer count on unfailing support from the party's base. Admittedly, the FPM has drawn up a plan to help displaced persons in the South, but the sensitivity of its base is no longer as favourable to Hezbollah. On the other hand, most of the other parties are downright hostile to Hezbollah and even if their leaders waited before openly expressing their criticism, it was already in the air.

In this respect, there is no doubt nothing new. But rumours have been circulating recently that some parties are organising and training for a possible confrontation with Hezbollah. Immediately, the spectre of the civil war, in all its stages, which took place between 1975 and 1990, reappeared. Of course, the parties concerned deny any desire to engage in a new armed confrontation and claim that their criticisms are merely the expression of a justified political position. Similarly, well-informed military sources totally deny rumours of a possible militarisation of the political conflict, assuring us that there are no preparations in that direction. Reassuring statements in these anxious times. So there should not be time for discord.

José Alberto Rodríguez Avila, Cuba

Conclusions of the First Congress of the Anti-Fascist International (AI), Caracas, September 2024

World Congress against fascism, neo-fascism and other similar expressions

Simón Rodríguez Convention Centre
La Carlota. Caracas Venezuela
10 and 11 September 2024

CONCLUSIONS OF THE FIRST CONGRESS OF THE ANTI-FASCIST INTERNATIONAL (IA)

Spanish Original
Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala
French version

The event was attended by more than 1,200 participants from 97 countries, especially from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
With four keynote speeches and eight panels, the event had more than 30 speakers.
Social, feminist, youth and cultural movements, intellectuals and academics, trade unions and political parties, , celebrities, indigenous organisations, human rights collectives, organisations of the peoples of the world.

Internationalism in defence of human life and the planet cannot be disassociated from the struggle for peace, social justice and human rights, nor from the anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, anti-patriarchal and anti-imperialist struggles, based on the principles of 21st Century Socialism.

20th Century Fascism

Fascism in the 20th century emerged as a response to a series of economic, social and political crises that shook Europe after World War I. Against this backdrop of despair and disillusionment with liberal democracies, authoritarian movements such as Italian fascism and German Nazism found fertile ground.

Both movements shared a visceral hatred of communism and socialism, and  used fear of the ‘enemy within’ to consolidate their power.

The fascist movements of the 20th century shared common characteristics: exacerbated nationalism, authoritarianism, anti-communism, anti-liberalism, militarism, violence, propaganda and media control, racial supremacism and anti-intellectualism. These elements allowed for the consolidation of absolute power, using censorship, propaganda and repression as key tools.

21st century digital neo-fascism

We are witnessing a profound transformation in the structure of global capitalism, a phase that can be referred to as digital capitalism.

A new neo-fascist capitalist phase marked by the increasing concentration of power in the hands of a new financial and technological aristocracy that controls vast economic resources and dominates information and communication technologies.

In 2022, the 10 richest men in the world owned more wealth than the 3.1 billion poorest people. The richest 10% of the world's population

receives 52% of global income, while the poorest half receives only 8.5%. The poorest half of the world's population owns 2% of the world's total wealth while the richest 10% own 76%.

 According to Forbes there are 141 billionaires more in 2024 than in 2023 and 26 more than the record set in 2021.

In addition, billionaires are richer than ever before, with an aggregate value of $14.2 trillion.

  Rise of Digital Neo-Fascism:

 This context of the development of a new capitalist phase, has given rise to the emergence of extremist ideologies linked to the interests of this new financial and technological aristocracy, represented by figures like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, who operate alongside think tanks, multilateral organisations, NGOs, military corporations (Academi, Erick Prince), paramilitaries and drug trafficking cartels, linked to networks of right-wing and far-right political parties.

Financial and Technological Aristocracy:

 According to the Forbes ranking:

 Bernard Arnault: owner of LVMH, with 75 brands in the fashion and cosmetics industry  (Louis Vuitton, Sephora, etc.). Wealth of 233 billion dollars.

Elon Musk: co-founded six companies, including the automotive company Tesla and the aerospace company SpaceX, and bought social network Twitter (rebranded as X) in October 2022. Wealth of $195 billion.

Jeff Bezos: founder of e-commerce giant Amazon, owner of The Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company that develops rockets. Wealth: 194 billion dollars.

Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Meta (where he merged the platforms of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, among others). Net worth of $177 billion.

Larry Ellison, chairman, chief technology officer and co-founder of the software giant Oracle. Net worth $141 billion

New Phase and Neo-Fascism

This neo-fascism differs from its previous stages by a strategic control of advanced technologies, which are reshaping social, political and economic relations.

Technologies such as the internet of things, artificial intelligence, 5G and 6G networks, the metaverse, nanotechnology and robotics have turned digital platforms into ‘new factories’, where capital exploits leisure and rest time, converting it into production time.

This technological revolution has colonised every aspect of our lives, radically transforming the way we work, relate to each other and participate politically.

Extremist ideologies:

Rise of neo-fascist figures around the world, articulated in the self-styled Global Alt-Right Movement and the self-defined neo-reactionary ideology (NRX). Here they pay tribute to such figures as Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel), Donald Trump (USA), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), Santiago Abascal (Spain), Javier Milei (Argentina), Maria Corina Machado (Venezuela), Nayib Bukele (El Salvador), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Volodimir Zelensky (Ukraine), Marine Le Pen (France).

These leaders use populist discourses to legitimise regimes that promote the repression of social movements, xenophobia, racism, political violence and the violation of human rights, appealing to fear, terror and insecurity as a means of legitimising coup plans and anti-democratic policies, while widening the gap in economic inequality and guaranteeing the plundering of resources.

Intolerance and hate speech:

Neo-fascism, as the new phase of fascism, perpetuates and deepens the violence against women and diversity, exacerbating structural inequalities generated by capitalism, racism and patriarchy. This system of oppression is reflected in the enforced disappearance of political women leaders and feminist activists, as well as in the high rates of feminicides, strategies that seek to discipline and silence those who fight for social justice.

The feminisation of the right wing and the use of female figures by fascisms and neo-fascisms are tactics designed to manipulate and legitimise reactionary policies.

Against this background, it is crucial to globally articulate a popular, revolutionary, anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-colonialist, anti-Zionist and anti-fascist programme. Only in this way is it possible to reject policies that promote exclusion, racism and xenophobia as tools of domination.

Social networks and cognitive warfare:

We live in a time where digital technologies play a central role. Social networks and media platforms are the central arena for the manipulation of perceptions and social alienation. The so-called ‘fourth industrial revolution’ promotes the appropriation and utilisation of scientific and technological developments for the fragmentation of societies and cognitive warfare, through algorithms that seek to perpetuate the domination of a global elite with its epicentre in the ‘West’.

Social networks and cognitive warfare:

Online life, marked by emotional disassociation, facilitates the disengagement from the effects of one's actions, often serving as a bridge to violence in reality.

Think tanks and research centres, organised in global networks, use digital devices to conduct influence campaigns, with segmented messages that affect individual and collective subjectivity.

The need to make visible and address the aggravation of mental health problems. Incidence of anxiety and depressive disorders, addictions, apathy and youth suicide.

Importance of the construction and articulation of tools enabling young people to confront the manipulation of digital platforms, through critical reflection and collective struggle.

 Youth and Cognitive Warfare:

Digital neo-fascism seeks to depoliticise the younger generations through the use of screens, promoting individualism and social hyperfragmentation, irrational consumerism, meritocracy and denying historicity.

New technologies are used for propaganda and mass disinformation, and for the construction of an internal enemy that becomes an  ‘us versus them’, exploiting fear and the dehumanisation of the fellow human beings

It attempts to disengage them from their cultural and patriotic identities, from community values and care for life. The aim is to fragment the social fabric and alienate young people from collective struggles, weakening their ability to respond to the injustices of the system.

 Neocolonialism 2.0:

 The model of death that capitalism is deepening in this new phase is  starkly reflected in the Zionist and fascist genocide against Gaza. This has escalated the conflict in the Middle East, with an ‘axis of resistance’ that fights at the forefront in solidarity with the people of Palestine.

Day after day, the Palestinian people resist, sustained by bonds of international solidarity, in the face of the fascist regime that seeks to crush their dignity and erase their existence, embodied  in the figure of Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is crucial to understand and make visible the connections between Zionism and fascism, identifying  its new expressions, as part of the recognition of the common enemy of the world's peoples.

Neo-colonialism 2.0:

NATO's imperialist intervention in Ukraine, with the support of Western powers, has turned the country into a geopolitical battleground. In this scenario, Volodymir Zelensky has emerged as a pawn of imperialism.

In Africa, European neo-colonialism is experiencing a time of heavy defeats. The peoples of the world are looking with enthusiasm at the emergence of the Confederation of Sahelian States, between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the attacks directed against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, together with the recent coup attempts in the sister republics of Honduras, Colombia and Bolivia, are evidence of a neo-fascist and neo-colonial offensive.in the region.

Neo-colonialism 2.0:

Economic warfare inflicts violence in a number of countries, especially Cuba and Venezuela. In Argentina, Javier Milei's abrupt rise to the presidency is a neo-reactionary phenomenon within the new global economic and political structure.

Irregular armies, linked to drug trafficking, are a real drama in some regions of Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador and the so-called ‘northern triangle’ of Central America Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. However, the entire region is suffering from the increase in drug trafficking violence.

The Anti-Fascist International (AI)

Need to create an Antifascist International to coordinate the efforts of social and political movements in defence of the of social and political movements in defence of popular and proactive democracy, social justice and human rights on a global level.

This collective front of struggle must not only confront neo-fascism in the political, street and ideological spheres, but must also use the digital space technological tools to counter the ongoing multidimensional and cognitive warfare.

The Anti-Fascist International as a space for the articulation of anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, anti-patriarchal and anti-racist struggles.

Consolidate a coordinated offensive that promotes the values of social justice, peace, sovereignty and self-reliance.

Global solidarity and territorial struggles:

The proposal to build an anti-fascist International includes the creation of sectoral agendas, regional and national chapters, as well as multiple global solidarity networks to confront the resurgence of fascism.

This implies an international articulation of strategies of struggle, involving all political social, cultural, feminist, trade union and cultural organisations throughout the length and breadth of the planet.

It is central to understand this digital capitalism and its new forms of exploitation of human labour and knowledge. Common leisure time is now a new field of surplus value extraction.

Chapters by region and country: building concrete agendas in the five continents to confront the threat of fascism.