Stephen Lendman

Unaffordable housing prices ignited mass social justice protests in Israel. At issue is settlement developments at the expense of other construction, creating a supply/demand imbalance enough to cause prices to skyrocket. Israelis demand that issue be addressed responsibly.

In response, Netanyahu's government announced thousands of illegal new West Bank/East Jerusalem settlement units on stolen Palestinian land, harming them grievously. At the same time, he arrogantly ignored the urgency of addressing serious shortages in Tel Aviv, Haifa, West Jerusalem, and other Israeli cities.

In addition, Israel's Knesset passed a controversial housing bill despite popular protests against it. It calls for solving Israel's housing crisis by expanding West Bank settlements, defiantly avoiding what's needed.

It also called for quick action to expedite construction of 50,000 apartments, circumventing planning commissions that take time to decide. Doing so, however, will exacerbate Israel's housing crisis, making an intolerable situation worse.

Since protests began, Netanyahu signaled no meaningful change, saying "solutions (must be) economically sound." In other words, business as usual will continue, papered over with minor cosmetic concessions sure to ignite greater anger sooner or later.

In early August, he appointed Professor Manuel Trajtenberg to head a 14-member "panel for socioeconomic change," saying its "recommendations will reflect the need to maintain fiscal responsibility in the state budge. Such responsibility is especially necessary at a time of economic uncertainty," signaling minimal changes at best, far less than vitally needed and demanded.

Neoliberally constructed, Trajtenberg's panel will conduct discussions, propose solutions, and present them to Israel's socioeconomic cabinet (composed of establishment figures headed by neoliberal finance minister Yuval Steinitz) by late September.

In late October, Steinitz will present his own recommendations to Netanhayu, who'll review them and deliver a final proposal to Israel's cabinet by early November, giving officials enough time to let street protests subside. Or so they hope to get away with minimal changes, if any.

More »

Paul Stuart

The British political establishment and its state apparatus are imposing the most vicious class justice against young people accused of involvement in the riots that swept London and other cities last week, following the police killing of 29-year-old father of four Mark Duggan.

Nearly 3,000 people have so far been arrested as police continue to raid homes across the capital. Already, almost half of these have been dragged before kangaroo courts with barely any pretence of due process. Despite the fact that most have no previous convictions, more than two thirds of those rounded up are being held without bail and subject to punitive custodial sentences.

Collective punishment is now the order of the day, as whole families face eviction from council housing in a fundamental assault on their democratic and social rights.

The family of 18-year-old youth Daniel Sartain-Clark, from Battersea, South London, is the first to have been served with an eviction notice. This is despite Sartain-Clark pleading innocent to charges of involvement in the riots in neighbouring Clapham.

His mother, Maite De La Calva, accused the police of beating up her son and his girlfriend. “It was brutal the way Daniel was treated”, she said. “My child and J-Niel [Daniel’s girlfriend] were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were being stupidly curious.… The police have made mistakes. They have beaten two children up.”

Daniel, his mother and 14-year-old sister face homelessness. De La Calva has made clear the family has nowhere to go. Not only are they unable to afford the astronomical rents in the private sector—especially under conditions where the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government is cutting housing subsidies as part of its £80 billion package of austerity measures. But a campaign is underway to block legislation designed to protect people against destitution from being used to provide emergency accommodation to those evicted.

The Conservative leader of Wandsworth council, Ravi Govindia, said the eviction notice against De La Calva and her children was only the start. Local authority “officers will continue to work with the courts to establish the identities of other council tenants or members of their households as more cases are processed in the coming days and weeks,” he threatened.

Labour-controlled councils in other parts of the capital, and in Manchester, the West Midlands and elsewhere, are following suit. In Manchester, the Labour-controlled city council has said it plans to evict the family of a 12-year-old boy accused of stealing a bottle of wine from a supermarket during the disturbances.

More »

Dallas Darling

It is said that John Stuart Mill once rebuked Jeremy Bentham for being interested only in the question "Is it true?" Mill believed a more significant question was "What is the meaning of it?"[1] (Recall that Mill was a British philosopher and economist who believed in individual liberties instead of unlimited state control. He was also a proponent of Utilitarianism, or "the greatest good for the greatest number.")

When British rioters flooded the streets over deferred opportunities and dreams, Prime Minister David Cameron should have asked "What is the meaning of it?" Instead, ruling elites, backed by powerful corporate entities and financial institutions, sent thousands of security forces to arrest and beat "looters" and "gang" members. Social networking was banned, houses indiscriminately raided. Youthful dissent was crushed and criminalized.

Discontent and grievances over social, economic and political conditions and disparities in Britain is not new. The contentious but enlightening exchange between Mill and Bentham occurred during the Industrial Revolution. It was an era that disrupted families by forcing them from their small farms and imposing a harsh and regimental factory system, one that favored Britain's aristocracy and monopolists and large land owners.

To survive, family members, including children and youth, were forced to labor for long hours and low pay in squalid conditions and unsafe work environments. The factory system, a kind of techno-natural selection, caused mass unemployment, homelessness, poverty, and death. Strikes, protests and riots were common. Britain's rulers combated public disturbances with penal colonies, mass hangings, work houses, and even massacres.

More »

Stefan Steinberg

The growth of long-term unemployment for a broad layer of European youth, including very many highly educated young people with academic qualifications who are unable to find work, has led a number of commentators to refer to a “lost generation”.

According to the latest figures from the German Statistical Office and Eurostat, youth unemployment across Europe has increased by a staggering 25 percent in the course of the past two and a half years. The current levels of youth unemployment are the highest in Europe since the regular collection of statistics began.

In the spring of 2008, prior to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the financial crash of that year, the official unemployment rate for youth in Europe averaged 15 percent. The latest figures from the German Statistical Office reveal that this figure has now risen to over 20 percent.

In total, 20.5 percent of young people between 15 and 24 are seeking work in the 27 states of the European Union. At the same time, these numbers conceal large differences in unemployment levels for individual European nations.

More »

Matthew Nasuti

Pentagon pressure to increase the body count is to blame

On May 12, 2011, a U.S. Navy SEAL team killed a 12-year old Afghan girl named Nelofar Muhammed and then shot her uncle once in the chest, finishing him off with a shot to the head, execution-style. This is the same tactic [allegedly] used to kill Usama bin Laden. The SEALs then filed a false report with NATO/ISAF claiming that Nelofar was armed and fleeing and had to be shot! In reality the SEALs had attacked the wrong house, Nelofar was killed while she slept and her uncle was a 25-year old Afghan police officer named Shukrullah. At this time the SEALs are not under arrest and judging by the Pentagon’s history, there will be no prosecutions for these crimes.

The facts in this case are not coming from NATO or U.S. Special Operations Command but from the Afghan police in Nangarhar Province and from Nelofar’s father Neik Muhammed. The home that was attacked belonged to Neik. Officer Shukrullah was his brother-in-law. According to Neik, the Americans attacked without warning at midnight by throwing a hand grenade into the family’s yard where they were all sleeping because it was too hot to sleep inside. Nelofar was killed instantly by shrapnel to her head. Officer Shukrullah then pulled his police pistol to protect the family. He was shot and then finished off. The Americans later apologized to Neik for the killings. Officer Shukrullah leaves behind a wife and two daughters.

In the United States, television anchors such as CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and ABC News’ Kiran Chetry have embraced euphemisms in order to protect a sensitive American public. SEALs do not kill people - they “take them out.” Women and children do not die, they are merely “collateral damage." The idea is to make war sound surgical and fun with no pain or horror. Graphic photos of SEAL killings are never shown so as to spare the American public from the ugly realities of its wars. With that in mind Mr. Blitzer and Ms. Chetry would likely have no problem with the title of this article, or perhaps they would begin to realize that killing another human being should never be sanitized. War is horrible for a good reason - so people will avoid it at all costs.

The standard Pentagon and NATO refrain is that accidents always happen in wartime. The fact is that civilian killings many times can be avoided. Not every civilian death is inevitable. Some are true accidents, some are the result of military carelessness and sometimes a few are due to such reckless conduct that they warrant criminal prosecution. American law defines an “intentional act” to include a situation where the suspect acted with gross negligence or reckless disregard. Under U.S. law the killing of little Nelofar may well have been intentional.

More »