Decolonizing Together | Moving Beyond a Politics of Solidarity Toward a Practice of Decolonization

briarpatch magazine

January 1, 2012

by Harsha Walia

Illustrations by Afuwa

Amnesty International, War Propaganda, and Human Rights Terrorism

Dissident Voice

August 8, 2013

by Gearóid Ó Colmáin

Meanwhile in the “land of human rights”, Parisians sipped coffee reading France’s “journal sérieux” Le monde. The French daily published a story from an organization internationally recognized for its role in defending ‘human rights’: Amnesty International. →

The Empire’s New Clothes: The Naked Imperialism of Humanitarian Intervention

Black Agenda Report

June 18, 2013

by Ajamu Baraka

The U.S. imperial juggernaut attempts to bamboozle its home audience with the fiction that its war against Syria is a “humanitarian” venture. “The immediate priority for anti-war, anti-imperialist, human rights activists in the U.S. is to strip away the moral pretext of humanitarian intervention and expose its ugly, imperialist reality.”

“Humanitarian intervention has nothing to do with humanitarian concern, and instead is a propaganda tool.”

Some critics from the left and the right characterized my recent article “Syria and the Sham of Humanitarian Intervention” as an unnecessarily harsh indictment of a policy that provides a necessary tool for the international community to protect human rights and save innocent lives. →

Stella Calloni: Disinformation Against Syria is Criminal

Stella Calloni, a member of the current leadership of the Union of Press Workers of Buenos Aires (UTPBA), is a highly respected correspondent in South America of the Mexican daily La Jornada and director of Challenge Magazine. She is also an author of numerous books including “The years of the Wolf: Operation Condor” (1999) and “Argentina, the crisis of resistance” (2002), among others.

Political Writings of Silvia Cattori 

June 11, 2012

by Stella Calloni

Originally published by Prensa Latina, June 9, 2012

Nor did they echo of serious complaints registered about the crimes and massacres carried out by mercenaries who are the Special Forces of the great powers seeping across borders with Syria.

The (Illusory) Green Economy – A Critical Analysis by Dr.Joanna Boehnert

The work of environmental scientists supporting the UN’s GEP will give scientific authority the project, but the important decisions will have already been made. The project is a deepening commitment to neoliberal free markets. On a macroeconomic level “the subordination of social and environmental considerations to macroeconomic policy imperatives” is the fundamental basis of neoliberalism (Nadal, 2012, p.15). Once “macroeconomic objectives are determined, every other policy target is chiseled in accordance” (Ibid., p. 15). The lessons of the recent economic crisis in regards to the fallibility of the financial sector are entirely ignored.

 

The architects of the project have failed to acknowledge the most expansive systemic dynamics of capitalism and ignored the political and historic context. Despite claims by the UNEP, the UN’s GEP is not policy neutral (Ibid., p. 23).

 

The UN’s GEP is supported by the financial and corporate sectors because they recognize the programme as a continuation of the neoliberal model, an expansion of the scope of market and also an exceptional opportunity to create entirely new financial instruments. Similarly to the financial deregulation that set up conditions for the dramatic plunder of public wealth during the current economic crisis, the UN’s GEP establishes new markets that will lead to new avenues for financial speculation. The speculative bubble during the 2008-2009 period has been estimated to cost governments globally at least $12 trillion (Conway quoting IMF, 2009) leaving several bankrupt national governments and severe economic austerity in its wake. This is the context in which the UN’s GEP is operating. The designers of the project have closely aligned themselves to the same financial institutions that played leading roles in the economic crisis.

 

Meanwhile, scientific institutions, environmental NGOs and government agencies are working to build institutional infrastructure to give scientific authority to the UN’s GEP. …The historical critique of capitalism presented by John Bellamy Foster (2002) and others describes that the appropriation of the commons is an integral aspect of capitalism. Capitalism is always looking for new means of producing profit from activities that were otherwise not managed through commodity relationships.

 

The Indigenous People’s Kari-Oca 2 Declaration describes the UN’s GEP as ‘a continuation of colonialism… a perverse attempt by corporations, extractive industries and governments to cash in on Creation by privatizing, commodifying and selling off the Sacred and all forms of life and the sky’ (2012, p.1-2). The programme of re-visioning of the commons as sets of commodities ripe for exploitation is diametrically contrary to the environmental rhetoric used to sell the project. →

Essential Summer Reading | Managing Democracy, Managing Dissent

Democracy was once considered a dangerous new idea and a threat to ruling elites. It brought to mind fearful images of oppressed masses demanding social and political equality. Fast forward to today and democracy is a key method by which the inequality and injustices of capitalism are legitimated and popular consent engineered. Despite the fact that capitalism can tolerate neither equal access to decision-making or truly open dissent, and in fact prioritises profit-making above all social or environmental concerns, we are nonetheless persuaded to believe that capitalism is, or at least can be, democratic. Now a new book – published by Corporate Watch* – uncovers how this contradiction is sustained, and the anti-democratic rule of capitalism protected. →

Under Empire, All Life is Imperiled

One Year On

Counterpunch Weekend Edition May 24-26, 2013

by JAVIER SETHNESS CASTRO

Human Rights Last (Imperialism First)

Human Rights Investigation

March 18, 2013

USAID: A Front for CIA Intelligence Gathering

Watch: Thomas Tighe Describing the Relationship between USAID and NGOs

President and CEO of Direct Relief International, Thomas Tighe, in a provocative piece of video describing the unsavory relationship between international NGO’s and the U.S. Government – specifically that of USAID (the US Agency for International Development). The organizations only get funding according the their acquiescence to the government’s terms and conditions. Therefore, the ‘beneficent’ relationship is inextricably linked to the criteria of Western imperialism.

In 1995, self-sufficient Eritrea, another target of US destabilization, also expelled USAID in order to protect and build Eritrean autonomy.

http://youtu.be/_ctbVfLuuXw

+++

Excerpt from the article written by Bill Keisling published on Sept 2, 2007 by the Yardbird Reader

“Is there a tie-in to foreign intelligence in all this? Public records show that USAID has long been a front for CIA intelligence gathering, as well as a conduit for CIA funding to foreign governments and agencies.

The USAID’s infamous Office of Public Safety, for example, received cover and funding from the USAID while directed by the CIA. More information on all this was released in July 2007 with the publication of the CIA’s long-suppressed “Family Jewels” set of documents. (Pages 607 to 613 of the Family Jewels papers describe this program as a “joint CIA/USA training program.”)

“According to a 1973 document revealed in the Family Jewels CIA documents, around 700 police officers were trained a year (by the Office of Public Safety), including in handling of explosives,” Wikipedia summarizes. “The United States has a long history of providing police aid to Latin American countries. In the 1960s the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Public Safety (OPS) provided Latin American police forces with millions of dollars worth of weapons and trained thousands of Latin American police officers. In the late 1960s, such programs came under media and congressional scrutiny because the U.S.-provided equipment and personnel were linked to cases of torture, murder and ‘disappearances’ in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.

“In Washington, DC, the Office of Public Safety had remained immune to public embarrassment as it went about two of its chief functions: allowing the CIA to plant men with the local police in sensitive places around the world; and after careful observation on their home territory, bringing to the United States prime candidates for enrollment as CIA employees. The OPS’s director in Washington, Byron Eagle, was close to the CIA.”

Former USAID Tobias was believed to have held a Top Secret security clearance, the result of what is known as a supposedly rigorous “Single Scope Background Investigation,” or SSBI.”

+++Read the article in its entirety here.

Also see CIA Spying Under USAID Cover, Fears NAB (Pakistan, April 29, 2011)

ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau has unofficially conveyed its apprehensions to some leading security agencies of the country that certain USAID officials, apparently monitoring and executing development work in the tribal areas and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, are spying for the CIA.

+++Read the article in its entirety here.

The Deeply Distorted ‘Syria Deeply’

“Sites like Syria Deeply & Storyful need to be exposed for what they are –minions of an imperial mindset that act as the propaganda arm for the military industrial complex and profit on war & suffering. Any aid group that aligns with this is either deeply delusional or capitalising on obscene atrocities.”

April 11, 2013,

Lisa Inti, Wrong Kind of Green Critical Thinking Collective

Syria Deeply launched on March 12, 2012. It describes itself as “an independent digital media project led by journalists and technologists, exploring a new model of storytelling around a global crisis.” The word ‘independent’ appears to be a loose and vague term these days. Various members of the Syria Deeply team have been involved in ABC News, Bloomberg Television, the International Herald Tribune, the Business Insider, Monocle Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, ABC and PBS. Deborah Amos, the senior editorial advisor is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations. →