Is the EU handing over our welfare states to Goldman Sachs?

At first I thought it was a joke. Goldman Sachs, the epitome of greed and power, wants to look after the little people. Bigwigs from the bank's offices in the City of London have been in touch with the European Commission about initiatives that seem to be of a social nature, according to internal documents that I've seen.

Then it dawned on me that the idea wasn't as fanciful as it appeared. If there's a whiff of money in the air, then the "vampire squid" (as Rolling Stone memorably christened Goldman) can't be far away.

In a "social investment package" -- to be published shortly -- the EU executive will set out some proposals for "modernising" the welfare state. One of the suggestions being toyed with is to encourage the use of "social impact bonds".

These instruments were introduced in Britain during 2010. They were first tried out in Peterborough prison in Cambridgeshire, which is run by the for-profit corporation Sodexo. Under the bond programme, released detainees are helped to find housing and jobs. If the men and women in question desist from re-offending, their "investors" reap a handsome reward.

A similar scheme has begun in the New York "correctional facility" Rijkers Island. Goldman is the key backer of the scheme, along with Bloomberg Philanthropies, a foundation run by the city's mayor. (Philanthropy, by the way, is something rich guys do to avoid paying tax).

Offensive

Am I alone in finding this offensive? Bankers have for the most part not been punished for their reckless behaviour leading to the financial crisis. And now these same bankers are gambling on whether run-of-the-mill criminals will re-offend.

Of course, this all fits in with a wider push to hand over almost every aspect of the economy to corporations. It was that supposedly unhip prime minister John Major who set a trend for "public private partnerships". His successor Tony Blair was sympathetic to some of the surrounding thinking. Yet it is David Cameron's current government that is really advancing this malign ideologically-driven agenda. The fiasco of last summer's Olympics -- when G4S wasn't up to the task of meeting the games' security requirements -- illustrated why key services must be kept under public control. That, however, hasn't restrained the Tories.

Common interest?

Preparation of EU's new "social investment package" has been followed closely by the employers' federation BusinessEurope. Towards the end of January, BusinessEurope organised a breakfast meeting to discuss ways of promoting corporate involvement in social policy. The group had the neck to claim that "public private partnerships" are in the "common interest".

This is manifestly not the case. Reforms to Britain's arguably most egalitarian institution, the National Health Service, are not designed to benefit the masses. They are designed to let a handful of companies make a killing. The health care and social care act, which came into effect last year, provides for the NHS' evisceration. Analyses published by the British Medical Journal show how it paves the way for restricting the provision of free medical care. A system financed by taxation is being replaced with a model more akin to that in place in the US, where health insurance firms have the power to decide who gets life-saving operations and who doesn't. None of this is in the "common interest".

The constant refrain from supporters of "public private partnerships" is that they want to guarantee efficiency. In their warped worldview, markets cut out any unnecessary flab and so the exchequer ends up footing a smaller bill.

It doesn't work that way in practice. When my daughter was born in Brussels last month, I was deeply impressed with the quality of health care in this city. To my astonishment, I learned that Belgium spends only about half as much per capita on medical care as the US. Having a hugely unfair health care system such as America's places a higher burden on the public purse than having a more equitable one. So the "efficiency" case made by proselytisers for privatisation is essentially a canard. (Belgium, admittedly, has a mixture of private and public healthcare providers but without the extremes found on the other side of the Atlantic).

Veneer of compassion

The "social investment package" is being presented as the brainchild of László Andor, the Union's employment and social affairs commissioner. Andor signalled recently that he wishes to give a "human face" to economic policies, especially to the euro.

His veneer of compassion does not conceal how the euro is an inhuman project designed by bankers (Goldman Sachs was represented on the Association for the Monetary Union of Europe, which drafted a blueprint for the single currency). Cutbacks demanded by Andor's colleagues have triggered a humanitarian catastrophe in Greece. The homelessness situation there - affecting an estimated 40,000 people - is unparalleled for a Western European country in modern times. Ireland, meanwhile, is still being pressed to reduce its health spending by the EU and International Monetary Fund. Spain has been told by the European Central Bank that cutbacks forcing teachers to work in overcrowded classrooms has put the country on the "right track".

"We must not allow those at the bottom of society pay the highest price for the moral failure and misconduct of others on the top," Andor has said. He can't really have believed those words. If he did, he wouldn't be so intent on "modernising" the welfare state to please corporations headed by moral degenerates.

•First published by New Europe, 17-24 February 2013.

Ireland's elite abets Israel's crimes

Way back in 1979, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn became the first female minister in an Irish government since Constance Markievicz in 1919.

Unfortunately, however, Geoghegan-Quinn is not a feminist trailblazer. In her current role as a European commissioner, she is implementing policies that are deeply harmful to the women and children of Palestine.

Israel is the most active non-European participant in the EU's programme for scientific research, which Geoghegan-Quinn oversees. Under her direction, Israel has taken part in hundreds of EU-financed cooperation schemes, the total value of which exceeds €4 billion ($5.3 billion).

Among the recipients of these grants are the makers of drones that were used to terrorize the people of Gaza when Israel bombed them for eight consecutive days in November 2012.

Geoghegan-Quinn and her advisers have been alerted to how the EU is subsidising Israel's war industry by many Palestine solidarity campaigners. Yet she has refused repeatedly to take any action.

This can only mean one thing: Ireland's representative in the European Commission is abetting Israel's crimes against humanity.

Immoral

Why is Geoghegan-Quinn embracing Israel?

Privately, some members of her entourage have told me that the EU needs to have close links with Israel because it is something of a world leader in information technology. Their argument is that companies and policy-makers must try to emulate Israel if the EU's own technology sector is to flourish.

This argument skirts around the fact that Israel's technology boom cannot be viewed separately from the occupation of Palestine. Brochures published by Israel's enterprise promotion authorities make no bones about how the occupation provides Israel with a "competitive advantage", particularly in terms of developing products for the "homeland security" market.

What this really means is that Israel regards the West Bank and Gaza as laboratories for new weapons and surveillance equipment. The Palestinian people are accorded a status similar to animals used in cruel experiments.

Geoghegan-Quinn speaks regularly about how she is pursuing an agenda that is of fundamental importance to Europe's economic policies.

Let us be clear: any policy that relies - even partly - on supporting Israel's war industry is by definition immoral.

A number of Irish universities are actively collaborating with Israeli arms companies.

Trinity College, here in Dublin, is part of an EU-funded consortium called Total Airport Security System (TASS). As its title suggests, this has involved testing new scanning equipment in airports, including Heathrow in London.

While the idea of keeping airline passengers safe appears laudable, the involvement of Elbit, Israel's top weapons manufacturer, in the project raises questions about its precise purpose.

Here is the kind of question that must be raised: why has a famous institution, situated just across the River Liffey, teamed up with Israel's war industry?

Friction?

Over the past few months, there have been quite a few news stories published indicating that there is serious friction between the EU and Israel over the expansion of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank.

These stories give the impression that the EU and its governments have a strong aversion to Israeli conduct. But if we examine the situation a little more closely, we will see that the EU is facilitating the very conduct it claims to oppose.

Some of the companies receiving grants administered by Geoghegan-Quinn benefit directly from the construction of Israeli settlements. These companies include Motorola Israel, which has installed an "intruder detection" system in some settlements to ensure that Israelis in the West Bank can live free from contact with the indigenous people of that territory. In other words, then, Geoghegan-Quinn is rewarding firms that profit from Israeli apartheid.

Even worse, the European Commission sponsored an arms exhibition held in Tel Aviv just a few days before Israel's offensive against Gaza in November. And in the past few weeks, the Commission has launched a new project on using drones to intercept cars and boats that law enforcement bodies want to search. Israel Aerospace Industries, another maker of drones used to bomb civilians in Gaza, is among the project's "partners."

Representatives of the European Union constantly say that they regard respect for human rights as sacrosanct. But in reality there is an enormous gap between the EU and genuine advocates of human rights.

Whereas Palestinians and their supporters have been calling for a boycott of Israel, the European Union has been determined to increase its trade with Israel. As well as dramatically reducing the tariffs and customs duties levied on Israeli exporters, the EU has set up an official forum for "business dialogue", where European and Israeli executives can brainstorm on how to maximize their profits.

U2 losing credibility

Some firms which benefit from the EU's close commercial ties with Israel are less than transparent about what they are up to.

Let me give you an example. There is a firm in Belgium called Barco, which makes electronic screens for warplanes. In promotional material available on the firm's website, Barco says that it has provided screens for a drone programme called Watchkeeper.

This material omits some salient facts. Watchkeeper drones are made jointly by two arms companies, Elbit from Israel and Thales from France. They are intended for use by the British Army in Afghanistan. So Barco is helping to support not only the occupation of Palestine but also the military occupation of Afghanistan.

You can be forgiven if the name Barco does not mean anything to you. But I assume you have heard of a Dublin-based quartet called U2.

When not working out new ways to avoid paying income tax, U2 has been known to undertake the occasional concert tour. During its last world tour, U2 hired Barco to install massive video screens in the group's futuristic stage The Claw.

To put it mildly, it is ironic that Bono, the group's singer, used technology provided directly to him from a company profiting from human rights abuses to preach about human rights.

According to reports I have seen, U2 is threatening to release a new album and to play further concerts in the foreseeable future.

A clear message must, therefore, be sent to the band and its management: if you sign any more contracts with the weapons industry, you can no longer be taken seriously as human rights campaigners.

Intifada in jails

Two years have passed since the uprising which brought down Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt. And in those two years, it has been fashionable for pundits to remark that the Arab Spring bypassed Palestine.

Yet this "analysis" ignores the daily acts of resistance by Palestinians against Israeli apartheid.

It ignores how Palestinian prisoners have begun a kind of intifada in Israeli jails.

The hunger strikes undertaken by numerous prisoners have proven to be an effective tactic against Israel's use of administrative detention: that is to say indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial.

Administrative detention is a sadistic practice that the Israelis inherited from the British Mandate, which governed Palestine from 1923 to 1948. Britain introduced a version of administrative detention -- known as internment without trial -- in the north of Ireland during the 1970s. Not only was it manifestly unjust, internment fanned the flames of conflict.

It is not entirely surprising that the EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, has refused to explicitly condemn Israel's use of administrative detention. Ashton is a protégé of that war criminal, Tony Blair. Ashton's silence indicates that the British and European elite continue to view Palestine from a colonial perspective.

If Israel is copying the practices of the British Empire, then it deserves zero respect from people of conscience worldwide.

Fortunately, a movement determined to isolate Israel is gaining strength. This movement urges boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

Just as the black majority in South Africa called on the world to boycott that country during its apartheid era, representatives of a broad cross section of Palestinian society have urged the world to boycott the apartheid state of Israel.

If we are serious about demonstrating solidarity with the Palestinians, the least we can do is to heed their call.

This speech was delivered at a "counter-summit", held in Dublin, to mark Ireland's presidency of the European Union.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 17 February 2013.

Shale gas distracts EU "action heroes" from saving the climate

Has environmentalism replaced patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel?

I'm not referring here to those bona fide greens whose commitment to saving the earth is demonstrated both by their personal lifestyles and their activism. Rather, I'm calling out politicians and institutions that claim to be defending the earth, when they are really conniving in its destruction, as abject hypocrites.

Last month, two Canadian ministers - Cal Dallas and Diana McQueen - undertook a tour of Europe, where they distributed fliers bragging of how the Ottawa government is "showing global leadership in the fight against climate change". As a new study by Friends of the Earth suggests, the evidence to support this boast is a little threadbare, considering that Canada withdrew from the Kyoto protocol -the main international agreement on climate change - in 2011 and appears determined to extract and export highly polluting tar sands oil.

Star struck by being in the same room as Arnold Schwarzenegger at the end of January, José Manuel Barroso gushed that "we all need to be a little more like climate action heroes". The European Commission chief tried to cast himself as such a hero by indicating that he favoured setting a new target for reducing EU greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.

Unconvincing

Barroso is the least convincing action hero since Austin Powers. Whenever he has mooted ostensibly strong measures in the past, he has offered energy-intensive industries - in other words, the biggest polluters - massive loopholes (particularly in the operation of the EU's emissions trading system). This is akin to Batman signing a pact with the Joker.

Our "hero" also used his encounter with Arnie - in Vienna - to state that "sustainability is now deeply engrained in all our policies".

That must have been news to Günter Oettinger, the man Barroso appointed as the Union's energy commissioner. When the then European Community introduced a law providing for freedom of information on the environment back in 1990, it implicitly recognised that sustainability requires transparency. Yet Oettinger continues to peddle dodgy ideas, without being totally upfront about who put them in his head.

His latest contribution to the annual general meeting of the rich and powerful, the World Economic Forum in Davos offers a case in point. Oettinger availed of his Alpine sojourn to plug The Carbon Crunch, a recent book by Dieter Helm. In the transcript of his speech, Oettinger simply calls Helm an "Oxford academic". There was no acknowledgement that Helm was made a personal adviser to Oettinger in 2011 or that Helm has his own consulting firm. Helm's website gives no details of who his clients are - although Oxera, a firm that he founded, indicates that providing advice on energy issues to the private sector is one of its main activities. He also does not appear to have signed up to the EU's register of "interest representatives".

Evangelist

These omissions are hugely problematic. Helm is something of an evangelist for shale gas. In a 2011 piece published by the Centre for European Reform (CER), he exulted over how shale gas "turns out to be super-abundant" and predicted that switching from coal to gas could halve Europe's carbon dioxide emissions. The CER is a little bit more open about its clients than Helm: the latest available annual report for the "think tank" says that it receives funding from BG Group (formerly British Gas), BP and Shell, along with a number of weapons manufacturers and banks. The idea that it is a neutral forum for analysis and debate is, therefore, risible.

Helm's enthusiasm has rubbed off on Oettinger. The "energy roadmap" that Oettinger issued - with Helm's assistance - says that "as conventional shale gas imports decline", Europe will have to rely on "potential indigenous shale gas exploitation".

Promoting shale gas as a panacea is similarly misleading to promoting Canada as an exponent of "global leadership" on climate or Barroso as an "action hero".

Because it is found in shale rock reservoirs deep underground, shale gas is more difficult to extract than conventional gas. The method used to extract it - hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" - involves widespread ecological damage, both from drilling and the use of chemicals such as benzene, a known cause of cancer.

Exit route from coal

Not everyone in the European Commission shares Oettinger's faith in shale gas. A report for the Commission's "climate action" department concluded that shale gas activities have a bigger impact on the environment than oil and conventional gas. One particularly worrying aspect of its extraction is that it would probably release significant quantities of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a more potent heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide.

I agree with Helm on one thing: we need an exit route from coal. Despite the EU's commitments to reduce fossil fuel use, the amount of energy produced by coal rose by 50% in France and Britain during the first three months of 2012, when compared to the same period in 2011.

The exit route should be obvious: subsidise wind and solar power heavily (don't leave energy issues up to the market, as Oettinger has argued). Pinning hopes on a shale gas "revolution" is a dangerous distraction from the work that needs to be done now. The only people who stand to benefit from this distraction are corporations determined to burn every fossil fuel they can find - along with the planet itself.

•First published by , 10-17 February 2013.

Turkey crawls back under America's thumb

Staff in NATO's headquarters have been busy lately - trying to conceal the truth. Deploying missile interceptors in Turkey is a purely defensive manoeuvre, aimed at protecting Turkey's population and territory, according to the alliance's queen of spin Oana Lungescu. As a vegetarian, I refuse to swallow that porky pie.

Let's put the stationing of the Patriot interceptors in a broader context. The concept of missile interception can be traced back to Ronald Reagan's Star Wars programme. Its essential purpose was to enable America to launch a massive first strike on a country and then to able to neutralise any weapons fired in retaliation. Before bringing the Patriots, the US placed an X-Band "transportable missile radar" in south-eastern Turkey last year. The Obama administration is also overseeing the installation of a missile interceptor system in various parts of Europe and the Mediterranean. This is the same Obama administration that routinely kills children - with pilotless drones - in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The likelihood of all this being defensive is about as strong as me becoming a professional wrestler.

Next, there is the small matter of where Turkey is located. Yes, Turkey borders Syria - the pretext for deploying the Patriots. But Turkey also borders Iraq and Iran. We are approaching the tenth anniversary of a vote by the Ankara parliament to block the US from using Turkish soil (though not airspace) during the invasion of Iraq. Now that America is striking an increasingly bellicose posture towards Iran, it is doubtlessly determined to keep Turkey obedient. It's not necessary to be a military strategist to surmise that having radars and military interceptors in Turkey could prove helpful to America if it wishes to use that country as a launching pad for a war against Iran.

Lungescu loyalists might believe the waffle from NATO about rallying to the aid of an ally by all means necessary. Yet Western nations can be quite selective in supporting Turkey. Germany is one of the three NATO members (along with the Netherlands and the US) to have generously donated Patriots to Turkey. This generosity would appear uncharacteristic of Angela Merkel, who has blocked Turkey's decades-old ambitions of joining the European Union because of an anti-Muslim bias that is tantamount to racism.

Precedents

Recent history nonetheless offers precedents for what Germany is doing. In the early 1990s, Germany was second only to the US as a supplier of arms to Turkey. When it emerged that these weapons were being used against Kurdish civilians in south-east Turkey, the Bundestag voted to cease giving Turkey military aid. The ban was circumvented: in 1992, Germany's defence minister Gerhard Stoltenberg had to resign after officials working in his department gave the nod for the delivery of 15 combat tanks to Turkey.

Over the past few years, pundits have mulled over whether Turkey has been turning its back on the West. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, teamed with Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva, then Brazil's president, to try and broker a deal over Iran's nuclear programme. Erdogan engaged in a public spat with Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, over the bombardment of Gaza in late 2008 and 2009. And relations with Israel became very tense when nine Turkish peace activists were killed in cold blood as they tried to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza in 2010.

Could there be a flipside to Erdogan's championing of the Palestinians? Could he have pounced on this issue in order to divert attention from how Turkey continues to violate the rights of its Kurdish citizens?

In December 2011, the Turkish air force bombed a number of Kurdish villages in south-eastern Turkey. Seventeen children were killed. Despite how Erdogan has promised to respect Kurdish rights, the Turkish authorities continue to deny the Kurds basic freedoms, including the freedom to express opinions. During 2012, Turkey jailed more journalists - most of them Kurds - than any other country.

Inexcusable

Although Erdogan was right to excoriate Israel over the medieval siege of Gaza, I've long been sceptical of how deep his commitment to Palestinian rights is. The Palestinians have few, if any, real friends in high places. Leaders who profess to share the pain of Palestinian families have been known to be cooperate with Israel whenever it is deemed politically expedient to do so.

Erdogan appears little different. Towards the end of last year, Turkey lifted its objections to Israel's participation in NATO meetings and conferences. Turkey's capitulation is all the more inexcusable, when you consider that it occurred so soon after Operation Pillar of Cloud, Israel's eight-day offensive against Gaza in November.

Furthermore, Erdogan's protests had something of a "too little, too late" ring about them. His concern for the victims of Israeli drone strikes in Gaza appears less sincere when one considers that Israeli drones have been used by Turkish forces during their incursions into northern Iraq.

Turkey has also worked alongside Israel in NATO's Operation Active Endeavour. That patrol mission in the Mediterranean was originally presented as part of George Bush's "war on terror" but its remit has subsequently been expanded to cover migration issues. This means that Turkey and Israel have been cooperating to try and stop impoverished Africans and Asians from reaching Europe's shores.

NATO is not a search and rescue service, as its apologists imply. It is a military alliance dedicated to preserving American hegemony. The stationing of interceptors in Turkey serves that agenda.

•First published by New Europe, 3-9 February 2013.

Palestinian babies are just as precious as my new daughter

It is six days since my beautiful daughter Caitríona was born. These past six days have been the happiest in my life.

For many years, I have heard other parents rhapsodize about the joy of seeing their little one enter the world safely. But it was only when I held Caitríona for the first time that I fully understood what they were talking about. The warm glow I felt was better than any previous sensation I have ever had. Magic.

Caitríona was delivered to us a week earlier than expected. I am deeply indebted to the gynaecologist who checked Caitríona's progress in her mother's womb so meticulously. When this gynaecologist spotted that Caitríona was not growing quickly enough last week, she promptly arranged for a caesarean to be performed. Her professionalism and kindness -- and that of many fellow doctors and nurses -- helped settle our nerves as we waited for Caitríona to emerge.

It is marvellous to live at a time when medicine has become so advanced that every step of a pregnancy can be monitored, so that potential risks to a mother and her child can be averted. It is marvellous, too, that my adopted country, Belgium, has a world-class system of health care, as well as generous child benefits. Some American friends of mine were surprised to learn that it is standard for a mother and her baby to remain in hospital here for a full five days after a birth.

Explaining why -- irrespective of income -- Europeans tend to have access to better quality care than Americans doesn't require a doctorate in economics. Belgium spends only half as much per capita on health as the US. Yet though medical insurance here is largely handled by a confusing network of "mutual associations" (often linked to political groups), government supervision has meant that each of them offer almost identical services. Fortunately, we have been spared the marauding behaviour that is so rampant among American insurers, who have been known to block patients from undergoing vital procedures based on considerations of profit and "efficiency."

Defending decency

My daughter's birth has underscored for me why we must fight to protect our health systems from the "reforms" imposed by the European and international institutions. Such "reforms" have fundamentally altered the nature of healthcare in Greece and Spain recently, meaning that the jobless and poor in those countries are finding themselves uninsured. Steadily, our "political masters" are dismantling Europe's welfare states and the decencies that distinguish us from America.

As Naomi Klein explained in The Shock Doctrine, slash-and-burn measures ostensibly aimed at reducing the role of the state are often accompanied by state violence. This partly explains why Europe has been developing stronger bonds with Israel. During both his terms as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has presided over a weakening of the social safety net for Israeli citizens and the tightening of the noose around the necks of Palestinians. Despite claiming to be upset by some of his actions, the EU has been willing to step up its cooperation with him.

Becoming a dad has underscored to me why it is so important to express solidarity with the Palestinian people, without dictating to them how they should resist the Israeli occupation. The most distressing image I saw during Israel's eight-day bombardment of Gaza in November was of Jihad Masharawi weeping as he carried the corpse of his 11-month-old son, Omar. No parent should have to go through the pain that was so evident on that man's face.

No threat

There is a high probability that the weapons used to kill Omar were made by an Israeli company that receives EU scientific research grants. Certainly, other Palestinian children have been murdered with bombs dropped by EU-subsidized firms. That is why I have decided to concentrate on exposing how my tax euros are being used to abet crimes against humanity. And that's why I intend to demand that my money is spent on saving lives, not helping to destroy them.

Palestinian babies are every bit as precious as Israeli, American or European babies or as my darling Caitríona. Israeli apartheid -- a system that treats Palestinian babies as a "demographic threat" -- must be opposed.

I have learned many things in the past few days: how to change a diaper; how every item of clothing designed for babies buttons up differently; how to cope with sleep deprivation. Just as it is important to learn new skills, it's also sometimes important to be reminded of things we knew previously. The advent of fatherhood has reminded me that ultimately we are all equal; that discrimination is the result of decisions by the powerful, not by laws of nature.

Irrespective of what we do in adulthood, we all come into the world naked and squawking. We all need to be cuddled and nourished. We all need love.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 28 January 2013.

France's power games in Africa

Supporters of France's military intervention in Mali want us to applaud it as a great act of charity. François Hollande, their argument goes, is protecting the government in Bamako from armed extremists. The "free world" should be grateful that he has taken this selfless stance.

The problem with this "analysis" is that it is wrong.

Hollande may try to give the impression that he has launched some kind of "humanitarian" mission. This idea falls apart when you realise that the Malian authorities - which Hollande is so determined to help - stand accused of many human rights violations. Amnesty International has documented how the Malian security forces have carried out extrajudicial executions of Touareg civilians, killings of farm animals on which nomads depend for their livelihood and an indiscriminate attack on a Touareg camp.

In reality, Hollande is pursuing a policy that can be traced back to Charles de Gaulle, who believed that - despite granting its colonies independence - France must retain a strong influence in sub-Saharan Africa.

Indeed, the French elite seems to have had trouble accepting that it no longer "owns" a big chunk of Africa. When the Cold War ended, France had 10,000 troops and a number of military bases in Africa. This presence has been largely retained, even if the pretexts that "justified" it have disappeared. Recent history is also littered with cases of France meddling in the continent: it undertook 45 military operations in its former colonies between 1960 and 2005.

A "new El Dorado"

A glance at a map is sufficient to understand how Mali fits into France's ambit. It borders other ex-colonies like Algeria, which Hollande visited in December, accompanied by 40 senior businessmen, and Niger, a major source of uranium used by the French nuclear firm Areva.

Total, the French energy giant, has indicated that there may be an abundance of oil and gas to explore in northern Mali and neighbouring Mauritania. Jean François Arrighi de Casanova, a Total representative, has even spoken of a "new El Dorado" in that area.

Northern Mali is - according to the EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton - a hotbed "for all kinds of trafficking, drugs, arms smuggling" by those "terrorists" (her word) that France is fighting. One does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to suspect that the French elite is more interested in preventing insurgents from interfering with Total's work than in championing Mali's population.

It is interesting that Ashton is perturbed only about arms smuggling and not the wider weapons trade. The latest official EU report on weapons sales shows that France is the Union's top exporter, issuing 9.9 billion euros worth of licenses in 2011. The Mali operation has provided France with an opportunity to showcase its Mirage and Rafale planes and Sagaie tanks.

I have no doubt that the insurgents in northern Mali have done appalling things - including, it seems, recruiting child soldiers. But is France solely motivated by revulsion at their human rights abuses?

Of course, it isn't. France was willing to tolerate the activities of insurgents in other parts of Africa, whenever it was deemed politically expedient to do so. France had little difficulty with how insurgents controlled the northern part of Côte d'Ivoire between 2002 and 2011. In that case, the insurgents were described as "rebels", not "terrorists" in Europe. That was because they backed Alassane Outtara, the one-time International Monetary Fund staffer who is now his country's president. France had been eager to have Outarra in power. The official narrative says that France was acting against the brutality of his predecessor Laurent Gbagbo. Yet there are good reasons to surmise that France's real aim was to have someone in office who could be relied on to look after its commercial interests, particularly in Côte d'Ivoire's electricity and water networks.

Some MEPs have lamented lately how the European Union has not collectively rushed to assist France in Mali. France's neo-imperial machinations have nonetheless left their mark on EU foreign policy.

Committed to help?

In 2008, the Union undertook an operation in Chad that was presented as a response to the refugee crisis caused by violence in Darfur, western Sudan. It appeared, though, that the primary purpose of the operation was to shore up the Chadian dictator Idriss Déby. More than half of the troops deployed were from France - Chad's former colonial overlord. To give the mission a fig-leaf of impartiality, an Irish soldier was appointed its commander.

If France was truly committed to helping sub-Saharan Africa, it would have honoured its decades-old pledge to devote at least 0.7 percent of its gross domestic product to alleviating global poverty. As things stand, France allocates less than 0.5 percent of its GDP for that purpose. And the proportion of its development aid going to vital health and education projects is below 20 percent. The life expectancy of a Malian is just 51 years, compared to 81 for a French person.

By contrast, France spends more than 2 percent of its GDP on the military. Despite how it was vilified in the US a decade ago for Jacques Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war, France rivals Britain for the title of Western Europe's most trigger-happy nation. Two years ago, it was the first to attack Libya. Now it has bombed Mali on equally spurious grounds.

Let us be clear: France's policies towards Africa are not about altruism. They are about power.

•First published by New Europe

Israel named "world humanitarian leader" in EU propaganda blitz

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or scream when tipped off about the latest propaganda blitz planned by European Friends of Israel, a key lobby group in Brussels.

Its calendar for the next few weeks -- not yet posted on the EFI website -- features a number of events designed to present Israel as a caring and liberal country, which has managed to inoculate itself from financial crises.

Later this month (23 January) the EFI will host a mini-conference titled Humanitarian aid - Israel as a world leader. According to the EFI's blurb, Israel has "aid teams poised to respond in the wake of natural or man-made disasters anywhere in the world." One of these teams, apparently, was "first on the scene in January 2010 after the earthquake hit Haiti."

Have those few words broken all previous records for chutzpah? At the time Israel was rushing to help Haiti (or so we are told), it was enforcing a medieval siege on more than 1.5 million people in Gaza. Israel was in no hurry to address the "man-made disaster" its own policies had caused. Rather, it was only after Israeli troops murdered nine activists trying to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza on a flotilla in May 2010 that it moved to ease, but not lift, the blockade.

"Self-congratulation"

Nor, it should be added, is there anything heroic about having the first aid workers in Haiti. As a short new book -- L'échec humanitaire: le cas haïtien (The humanitarian failure: the Haitian case -- by Frédéric Thomas illustrates, that Caribbean nation has been betrayed and misled by the Western aid industry. Of $10 billion pledged to Haiti at an international donors' conference in New York during March 2010, less than $2.5 billion had been released by July 2012.

Thomas is especially scathing of how aid pledges are made for purposes of "self-congratulation", in which the "first recipient of the message is not the Haitian people but voters in the donor country, who are invited to agree with their governments, so generous and effective." While he does not mention Israel, the criticism can be applied to it.

Israel sent over 250 soldiers to Haiti after the earthquake, and posted videos in their honor on Facebook. Not only was this a clear case of hasbara -- as propaganda is called in Hebrew -- it violated a principle which genuine humanitarians regard as fundamental: that emergency assistance should be of a civilian nature and be seen as impartial.

Sandy solidarity?

The EFI is a cross-party alliance of members of the European Parliament (MEPs). Its conference -- to be hold in the Parliament's headquarters -- will be addressed by Navonel Glick from the Israeli Forum for International Humanitarian Aid (IsraAid). Glick has been in New York lately in an apparent gesture of solidarity with victims of Hurricane Sandy.

IsraAid took advantage of that catastrophe by claiming that having a strong military enables Israel to undertake emergency missions. Of course, the less humane side of the same army was displayed when Israel rained its bombs down on Gaza for eight consecutive days in November, again making a mockery of its claim to be a "world leader" in humanitarianism.

Soon after mythologizing about Israel's aid operations, the EFI will turn the spotlight on Israel's economic prowess. A promotional note for a 29 January meeting says that though Israel is small "a host of reforms aimed at liberalizing the economy have allowed it to stand out as one of the world's most competitive economies." The main speaker will be Chaim Hurvitz from Israel's top pharmaceutical firm Teva.

In a March 2012 study, Who Profits? -- a project set up by Palestinian and Israeli women -- documented how Teva benefits from the occupation. The construction of Israel's apartheid wall has meant that pharmacies and hospitals in occupied East Jerusalem have been prevented from dispensing medicines manufactured in the West Bank. As a result, healthcare services on which all Palestinians in East Jerusalem and many others from across the West Bank rely have been forced to buy Israeli and foreign drugs.

Ironic twist

In an ironic twist, EFI will switch from applauding "competitiveness" -- a doctrine which holds that social protections should be dismantled -- to embracing young Israelis who demand that the welfare state be preserved. On 20 February, its special guest will be Daphne Leef, who the EFI has appointed "leader" of last year's Tel Aviv protests against the right-wing policies of Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

Leef has a skewed sense of justice. In a much-circulated speech delivered during September 2011, she grew emotional over how "one million Israelis were living under the threat of missiles" fired from Gaza, without saying anything about how four million Palestinians live under a brutal occupation.

It is not hard to see why the EFI is happy to court her. Leef is a useful pawn for lobbyists determined to perpetuate the lie that Israel is a vibrant democracy.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 14 January 2013.