Jean Shaoul

The Jewish state: settlement building takes precedence over peace.

Benyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government has begun the legal process to retrospectively authorise four outposts as settlements in the Occupied West Bank.

The move came on the eve of United States Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to the Middle East. Kerry’s muted response makes clear that both the US and Israel have rejected any notion of establishing a truncated Palestinian state alongside Israel.

All settlements and outposts built on occupied land are in violation of international law.

Many of the 100 or so outposts, established on hilltops by nationalist zealots, now have cement houses, paved roads, playgrounds and day-care centres, because the Israeli authorities are providing the resources to link them to water, sanitation and electricity, and to fund the housing. Their purpose is to establish “new facts on the ground” that make it impossible to negotiate a mini-Palestinian state, as anticipated under the Oslo Accords signed two decades ago, in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the 1967 war.

The government instructed the Civil Administration, the unit within the Defence Ministry that administers the West Bank, to initiate the legal process. Its intention to legalise four of the outposts in defiance of court orders dating back to 2003 only emerged from the government’s official response to a Peace Now petition to the Supreme Court. The settlement watchdog had petitioned the court to effect the evacuation of six of these outposts, including Givat Assaf, east of Ramallah, which had had a court order for its demolition, Haroeh, north of Ramallah, Maale Rehavam, east of Bethlehem, and Mitzpe Lachish, south of Hebron.

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Wayne Madsen

Bound and determined to reverse Latin America’s progressive drift and movement away from the dictates of Washington, President Obama has quietly called forth from America’s sordid history south of the border a demon the Latin Americans know only too well: Israel. During the Ronald Reagan administration, Israel propped up with military equipment, intelligence, counter-insurgency training, and money a number of right-wing fascist governments in Latin America.

Israel’s support for fascism in Latin America actually began during the Jimmy Carter presidency. After Carter embargoed U.S. weapons exports to Nicaragua’s brutal dictator Anastasio Somoza, Israel stepped in to fill the void.

Today, Obama has permitted Israel and Israel’s agents of influence in his own administration, to use all the means at their disposal to undermine progressive governments in Latin America. After the death of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, a bitter critic of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, the subversive activities of Israeli and American operatives, operating under George Soros-linked non-governmental organization (NGO) cover, have increased across the region.

Although Obama, unlike Reagan, does not have congressional bans like the Boland Amendment, to stymie efforts to overthrow progressive Latin American leaders, he does have a public perception that he, as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, is committed to peace. Rather than sacrifice his public persona with bloody moves to overthrow Latin American governments, Obama has chosen stealthily to work through Israel and its sayanim foreign foot soldiers to return Latin America to the status quo ante of a series of dictatorships that protect the wealthy and subjugate the poor and working class.

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Andrew Gavin Marshall

The following is my first original piece for The Hampton Institute, “a working class think tank,” at which I chair the Geopolitics Division. This essay is meant as an introduction to modern American geopolitics, and a reference piece for future research and published material through The Hampton Institute’s Geopolitics Division.

Educating yourself about empire can be a challenging endeavor, especially since so much of the educational system is dedicated to avoiding the topic or justifying the actions of imperialism in the modern era. If one studies political science or economics, the subject might be discussed in a historical context, but rarely as a modern reality; media and government voices rarely speak on the subject, and even more rarely speak of it with direct and honest language. Instead, we exist in a society where institutions and individuals of power speak in coded language, using deceptive rhetoric with abstract meaning. We hear about 'democracy' and 'freedom' and 'security,' but so rarely about imperialism, domination, and exploitation.

The objective of this report is to provide an introduction to the institutional and social structure of American imperialism. The material is detailed, but should not be considered complete or even comprehensive; its purpose is to function as a resource or reference for those seeking to educate themselves about the modern imperial system. It's not an analysis of state policies or the effects of those policies, but rather, it is an examination of the institutions and individuals who advocate and implement imperial policies. What is revealed is a highly integrated and interconnected network of institutions and individuals - the foreign policy establishment - consisting of academics (so-called "experts" and "policy-oriented intellectuals") and prominent think tanks.

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