Julio Godoy

"The attacks in Oslo and Utøya “surely [are] not the last acts of terror in the name of the armed fight against Islam”.

Common to the informal North Atlantic neo-fascist coalition is the hatred of Islam, the radical opposition to immigration and to multicultural society, the belief in white racial supremacy and in Christian fundamentalism, the unconditional support of Israel, sympathies for the U.S. ‘Tea Party’ movement, and contempt for democratic institutions.

Sympathetic to these neo-fascist groups are extreme right wing parties functioning in practically all European countries, from the Norwegian Progress Party, the Sweden Democrats, the True Fins, and the Danish People’s Party, to the French Front National (FN), and the Italian Lega Nord. The perpetrator of the massacre on Jul. 22 was a long-standing member of the Norwegian Progress Party.

Further evidence of the pervasiveness of extremist right wing views is the fact that 14 of the 27 countries represented in the European Parliament have at least one MP who defends xenophobic views and calls for stern anti-immigration policies.

While some of the parties – such as the FN in France, the Freedom Party in Austria, and the Lega Nord in Italy – have a relative long history, most of them were founded in the late 1990s and early 2000s, in reaction to the growing multiethnic character of European communities and to immigration, especially of Muslims.

Leaders of all these parties and groups, including the Norwegian Progress Party, are trying to disassociate themselves from the mass murders in Oslo and on Utøya Island.

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Stephen Lendman

Co-founded (with Meir Marglit) and directed by Jeff Halper, the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) "is a non-violent, direct-action organization established in 1998 to resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories."

ICAHD also helps rebuild homes. In addition, it resists "land expropriation, settlement expansions, by-pass road construction, policies of 'closure' and 'separation,' " as well as destruction of agricultural land and crops. It also works for peace, equity, and ending Israel's illegal occupation.

Access its web site through this link.

It estimates over 24,800 West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza houses demolished since 1967 (4,247 during Cast Lead, according to the UN).

It classifies demolition types as:

● punishment for actions associated with the structures (about 8.5%);
● administrative for lacking building permits (about 26%);
● land-clearing/military demolitions for any reason, including achieving IDF goals or accompanying extrajudicial assassinations (about 65.5%); and
● other undefined reasons.

In fact, Israel's demolition and displacement policies are serious international law breaches for any reason. Nonetheless, they continue as official state policy to steal Palestinian land for Israelis, an issue Western media ignore, as well as other Israeli crimes of war and against humanity.

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Robert Morgan

[Photo: Humanitarian intervention being prepared for delivery in Libya... ]

US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks expose some of the real reasons and diplomatic tensions behind NATO’s ongoing bombardment of Libya. Far from initiating a “humanitarian” intervention to protect civilians against Muammar Gaddafi’s government, Washington backed the NATO intervention for one reason only—the installation of a regime that better serves the strategic interests of the US, as well as the operations of the giant oil and gas companies.

The cables date back to 2007, some three years after the Bush administration had lifted sanctions and formally re-established relations with the Gaddafi regime in a bid to secure access to Libya’s highly prized resources. Until the outbreak of revolutionary uprisings across the Middle East this year, Gaddafi was welcomed with open arms in Washington and internationally.

As the cables show, as recently as August 2009, US Senator John McCain led a high-profile bipartisan congressional delegation to meet with Gaddafi. McCain characterised the “overall pace of the bilateral relationship as excellent”. Senator Joe Lieberman said “we never would have guessed ten years ago that we would be sitting in Tripoli, being welcomed by a son of Muammar al-Qadhafi,” before calling Libya an “important ally in the war on terrorism.”

It comes as no surprise that the cables refer to Libya’s “hydrocarbon producing potential” and the “high expectations” among international oil companies. Significantly, the Gaddafi regime held out to Washington the prospect of even greater riches. According to a September 2009 cable, then acting head of Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC), Ali Sugheir, told the US embassy that major “sedimentary basins with oil and gas resources had been discovered in Libya,” with seismic data indicating “much more remained to be discovered across the country.”

The scramble by dozens of international oil and gas companies to cash in on the lifting of sanctions, however, soon produced two major problems for the US government. Firstly, in the words of a November 2007 cable, “Libyan resource nationalism”—policies designed to increase the Libyan government’s “control over and share of revenue from hydrocarbon resources.” The cable ominously concludes that the US should demonstrate “the clear downsides” to the Libyan regime of such an approach.

Gaddafi’s policy forced oil and gas corporations to renegotiate their contracts under the latest iteration of Libya’s Exploration and Productions Sharing Agreement (EPSA IV). Between 2007 and 2008, major companies such as ExxonMobil, Petro-Canada, Repsol (Spain), Total (France), ENI (Italy), and Occidental (US) were compelled to sign new deals with the NOC—on significantly less favourable terms than they had previously enjoyed—and were collectively made to pay $5.4 billion in upfront “bonus” payments.

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Ellen Brown

Why aren’t banks lending to local businesses? The Fed’s decision to pay interest on $1.6 trillion in “excess” reserves is a chief suspect.

Where did all the jobs go? Small and medium-sized businesses are the major source of new job creation, and they are not hiring. Startup businesses, which contribute a fifth of the nation’s new jobs, often can’t even get off the ground. Why?

In a June 30 article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Smaller Businesses Seeking Loans Still Come Up Empty,” Emily Maltby reported that business owners rank access to capital as the most important issue facing them today; and only 17% of smaller businesses said they were able to land needed bank financing. Businesses have to pay for workers and materials before they can get paid for the products they produce, and for that they need bank credit; but they are reporting that their credit lines are being cut. They are being pushed instead into credit card accounts that average 16 percent interest, more than double the rate of the average business loan. It is one of many changes in banking trends that have been very lucrative for Wall Street banks but are killing local businesses.

Why banks aren’t lending is a matter of debate, but the Fed’s decision to pay interest on bank reserves is high on the list of suspects.

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