Sugar-coating austerity

I had a vicious teacher in primary school. This flame-headed brute used to enjoy slapping his pupils with two dark brown canes that he had christened Katie and Maggie. When he wasn't inflicting pain on our tender palms, Mr C lectured us about why violence was wrong.

José Manuel Barroso reminds me of Mr C - even if the two men bear no physical resemblance to each other. The European Commission chief is overseeing a sadistic experiment that has punished millions who had no role in causing the financial crisis. And now he pretends to have found a social conscience.

Barroso and his colleagues are starting this month with a cynical exercise in sugar-coating austerity. A new policy paper from the Commission advocates that there should be more monitoring of employment policies within the euro-zone countries. This is being presented as a bold effort to give the single currency a "social dimension".

Under orders

Don't expect the sadism to be abandoned. All euro-zone governments are under orders to hand in their national budgets for scrutiny to Brussels by 15 October. The spending rules that are leading to the evisceration of many welfare states are still being enforced with rigour.

Giving a "social dimension" to the euro ignores how it is a fundamentally antisocial project. I offer no apologies for seeking to repeatedly draw attention to how the 1988 blueprint for the currency was drawn up by a cabal of corporate high-flyers with zero democratic mandate. The Association for the Monetary Union of Europe, as that cabal was known, included representatives of Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Total and British American Tobacco. Its agenda was to realise the fantasies of fat-cats, not, as the spin-doctors told us, bring the peoples of Europe more closely together.

A quarter century later, a similar cabal is dictating the EU's economic policies. In June, the Union's governments committed themselves to providing every young person with a job or apprenticeship within four months of leaving college or becoming unemployed. Key elements of this "youth guarantee" proposal were copied and pasted from recommendations made by the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT), which bands together chairmen and chief executives of Shell, BP, Volvo, Nestlé and Heineken.

Yellow-pack jobs

Far from being altruistic to our young, the ERT wants to provide them with a future of stress, uncertainty and yellow-pack jobs. A litany of demands from the group states that "employment protection measures must be re-designed and modernised" in most EU countries.

Its idea of "modernisation" involves retreating to an era before organised labour had won significant advances. If the ERT gets its way, big companies will have to give much shorter notice before making workers redundant and severance payments for those losing their jobs will be drastically cut. Payments for overtime and unused holidays may be abolished in the name of "flexibility".

Jacques Delors is often hailed as a kind of visionary here in Brussels. If his objective was to widen inequality and immiserate millions, then I guess he was a visionary. For that is exactly what the Frenchman has achieved by backing the single currency project so effusively when he was the European Commission's president.

Today, Delors runs a "think tank" called Notre Europe that is partly-funded by the energy giant GDF Suez. His devotees continue to give the impression that the euro is worth saving, once its facade is scrubbed a little.

A new Notre Europe paper argues that the spending rule underpinning the euro should remain based on the principle that those disobeying them are punished. Any "social dimension" that is introduced, on the other hand, should rely on incentives, rather than sanctions.

Snuggling up

That sums it up, really. Governments can still be bullied and coerced into slashing expenditure on health and education. But any measures to cushion the blow will be considered optional.

It would be heartening if trade unions were fighting this antisocial agenda. While numerous union activists are on the frontlines of resistance, some big players in the labour movement are too busy snuggling up to the bosses.

The European Trade Union Confederation has recently teamed up with the corporate coalition BusinessEurope to issue a joint proposal on tackling youth unemployment. With its emphasis on "reforms" and "competitiveness" - both of which are synonyms for weakening labour rights - it reads like a diluted version of the ERT's aforementioned litany.

The euro has been a curse for ordinary people. Burying it is necessary if we are to envisage a fairer Europe.

•First published by EUobserver, 1 October 2013.

Why are Israel's worst racists welcome in European Parliament?

Anyone who has examined Zionist propaganda critically will have noticed a trend of depicting Israel as a liberal paradise. Among the myths manufactured by this PR machine are Tel Aviv is the world's most gay-friendly city; that Israel is a global leader in protecting the environment; and that Palestinians have never had it so good.

The memo telling Israel's diplomats and allies to "accentuate the positive" has been mislaid in Brussels, judging by an event held earlier this month. During it, a few members of the European Parliament (MEPs) teamed up with some of Israel's most reactionary politicians.

David Rotem, a representative of the Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) party, was guest of "honor" at a conference in the Parliament's headquarters. He was a curious choice for a discussion about those controversial EU guidelines on ending aid to firms and institutions active in the settlements Israel has built in the occupied West Bank.

Far from being a slick spindoctor, Rotem is overtly racist in his pronouncements. While two MEPs have landed themselves in hot water this year for applying the term "bongo bongo" to Africans, Rotem is able to make vile statements about Palestinians without fear of censure. "Every Jewish community needs at least one Arab," he has said. "Otherwise, who will repair my fridge when it breaks down on the Sabbath?"

Making apartheid more extreme

Perhaps the only commendable thing about Rotem is that he is more honest than many of his peers about the fact that Israel practices a form of apartheid. "Israel is a Jewish and democratic state, not a state of all its citizens," he has said.

Since joining Israel's parliament, the Knesset in 2007, Rotem has sponsored a number of bills designed to make Israeli apartheid more extreme. Among them were a bill requiring that citizens of Israel to take an oath of allegiance to a "Jewish and democratic state." He has also tried to exclude parties comprised of Palestinians living in present-day Israel from the Knesset and to ban public funding of organizations deemed not to respect Israeli "values" (the latter move was originally known as the "Nakba law" as it targeted those who regarded the founding Israel's foundation as a catastrophe).

Rotem has been a staunch defender, too, of Israeli government efforts to uproot Palestinian Bedouins from their villages in the Negev (Naqab). And he has argued that communities in the Galilee and the Negev should have be allowed to bar residents on grounds of race and religion.

Not marginal

It's important to note that Rotem is not a marginal figure in Israeli politics. On the contrary, he chairs the Knesset's committee on constitution, law and justice. He has used that position to hurl insults at political opponents. Two years ago, he told a member of that committee: "Get out of here, you are not even an animal."

Himself living in the Israeli settlement of Efrat, Rotem has put forward a bill to copper-fasten the State's "obligation" to invest in expanding settlements.

He was not the only settler invited to the European Parliament this month. Gershon Mesika, head of the Shomron Regional Council for Israeli settlers in the West Bank, also addressed its conference. While all Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, Mesika has also registered his contempt for Israeli government decisions limiting the settlements' growth. In 2009, he ripped up papers from Ehud Barak, then Israel's defense minister, ordering a freeze on construction in some settlements.

Sign of desperation?

The European Friends of Israel (EFI), a cross-party alliance of MEPs, was involved in the recent conference. Its embrace of hardcore racists like Rotem jars with the cuddlier image that it has been trying to project of Israel so far this year.

The EFI kicked off 2013 by celebrating Israel as a caring and open-minded place, with events dedicated to Israel's humanitarian aid program and the protests against Benjamin Netanyahu's economic policies.

Is rolling out a red carpet to Rotem a sign of desperation? I'm not sure if it is. The EU's new guidelines aren't simply opposed by Israeli settlers. John Kerry is also demanding that the guidelines be withdrawn. You don't need to be a doctorate in international relations to know that the EU is often servile towards America.

Kerry, of course, is more guarded and diplomatic in his choice of words than Rotem. But they are both striving to bolster a system that privileges one group of people and dehumanizes another.

EU refuses probe into why it rewarded contractor for apartheid tramway

John Kerry is miffed. Benjamin Netanyahu is raging. And Zionist lobby groups are apoplectic.

You might have guessed that I am referring to an ongoing controversy over guidelines stating that the European Union will cease giving grants and loans firms and institutions active in Israel's settlements in the West Bank. But the more I examine the surrounding matters, the more I conclude that Israel and its supporters have no reason to kick up a stink.

A few weeks ago, I submitted a formal query to the EU's executive, the European Commission, over how it is rewarding an Israeli entrepreneur who has helped build an illegal tramway in occupied East Jerusalem.

Gilad Rafaeli is the Commission's main contact point in Israel for a project on transport security, which enjoys some €25 million ($34 million) in EU support. Rafaeli's own resumé states that he was contracted to work on the "Jerusalem light rail" system between 2006 and 2011.

The EU-supported scheme -- known as Secured Urban Transportation or SECUR-ED for short -- was launched in April 2011. The overlap in dates suggests that Rafaeli was assisting the construction of a tramway designed to service illegal settlers, while he and his firm, MTRS3, were discussing the goals and activities of an EU-funded project with the Brussels authorities.

Yesterday, I received a response to my query from Daniel Calleja, who heads the Commission's department for enterprise and industry. Calleja confirmed that the EU executive was "not aware" of Rafaeli's involvement in the Jerusalem tramway. He admitted, too, that this issue did not arise when the SECUR-ED project was evaluated.

Infrastructure of apartheid

Surely, then, it is necessary to examine why someone who helped build Israel's infrastructure of apartheid and occupation was benefiting from the EU's largesse. Yet Calleja wrote that there are "no legal grounds" on which his colleagues "could perhaps launch an investigation."

Calleja's rationale was based on how the Jerusalem tramway has not received any support from the EU's "framework programme" for scientific research.

That is beside the point. My query reminded the Commission that it regards Israel's occupation and subsequent annexation of East Jerusalem as illegal under international law. By definition, then, a tramway designed to tighten Israel's occupation of Jerusalem is illegal. When the EU rewards people -- like Gilad Rafaeli -- who profit from that occupation, it is acquiescing in unlawful behavior.

Daniel Calleja also claimed that "at present, the Commission is not aware of any misuse by Israeli participants of the framework programme."

I am having difficulty remaining calm as I read Calleja's letter.

For more than two years, a number of Palestine solidarity activists have been undertaking a campaign against the EU's awarding of science grants to Ahava, a firm making cosmetics in the occupied West Bank. Brussels officials -- including those belonging to Calleja's department -- have been told both in writing and in face-to-face meetings about how the EU is giving money to this firm.

Maintaining a fiction

The officials are aware that the construction of Israeli settlements violates international law and that aiding firms active in them is, by definition, illegal. And yet Calleja tries to maintain the fiction that there is no problem here.

It would be nice to take heart from the EU's new guidelines and believe it will soon take a more robust stance towards Israel. Unfortunately, I am not optimistic. Catherine Ashton, the Union's foreign policy chief, has insisted that the EU wants to "continue to have a strong relationship with Israel" and that the guidelines do no more than reiterate existing policy.

Is Ashton signaling a "business as usual" approach? Will the EU continue to pose as a staunch defender of Palestinian rights, while furtively supporting Israeli apartheid?

If so, it would be wrong for people of conscience to think that a full boycott of Israel can be swapped for a few ever-so-timid guidelines.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 25 September 2013.

My jihad against arms industry

My latest rant against the arms industry appears to have upset a Very Important Person.

Think tank guru Giles Merritt has been described as one of the 50 most influential people in Brussels by his former employer The Financial Times. Admirably humble, Merritt is eager to downplay his clout.

In his response to my rant, Merritt takes me to task for drawing attention to links between his organization Security and Defence Agenda (SDA) and Lockheed Martin, the world's most profitable weapons producer. According to Merritt, Lockheed has "taken no part in SDA's activities nor funding since the middle of 2012."

His assertion is contradicted by the SDA's own publications. One of them states that in September last year, Luc van de Winckel, a "senior manager" with Lockheed, attended a conference that SDA hosted on the future of "missile defence".

SDA's entry to the register of "interest representatives" managed by the European Commission also names Lockheed as one of the organisation's members. This entry is dated 5 July this year and purports to relate to all of 2012. (Aside: SDA did not sign up to this database until last year. In May 2012, I asked Merritt why the SDA hadn't yet joined the register; he replied that this was merely an "oversight").

Thriving on war

If Lockheed has recently decided to leave the SDA, this does not alter my central point that the think tank serves the arms industry. Raytheon, another top arms manufacturer, is listed as one of SDA's current members on its website. Raytheon, too, supplies cruise missiles to the US military and would, more than likely, benefit directly from the type of Western attack on Syria that Merritt's colleague, Shada Islam, has urged.

I was intrigued to see that Merritt acknowledged that the entire purpose of the SDA was to "help move defence up the European agenda". This admission undermines the organisation's boast of providing a "neutral forum" for debating military matters.

Tough questions about how the SDA's "partners" thrive on war and human rights abuses are not allowed at its events, as I discovered myself. When I attended an SDA conference last year and asked the speaker from Lockheed, Chad Fulgham, if he was proud of his company's role in arming Israeli forces that illegally occupy Palestinian land, Merritt dismissed my query as irrelevant.

Horrified

According to Merritt, I declared a fatwah against SDA several years ago. In my view, the term jihad might be more apposite.

Jihad is a much misunderstood term that is usually translated as "holy war". The translation is wildly inaccurate; the word originates from the verb jahada, which means to "exert effort". In the views of many Islamic scholars, a jihad involves tackling injustice and poverty, both of which can be fought without the use of violence.

Although I'm a Christian, rather than a Muslim, I feel a sense of duty to exert effort against the entire arms industry (not just the SDA). My determination to wage this jihad was reinforced in 2009, when I was saw the after-effects of Israel's merciless three-week bombing campaign against Gaza.

At one point during my visit, I was given a tour by a local man, who repeatedly pointed to the ruins of buildings. "There, F-16," he said, explaining that an American warplane had fired a missile against that particular structure.

Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon have all been involved in F-16 programmes. All three have funded and taken part in the SDA's work over the past few years.

Giles Merritt might have convinced himself that he is doing nothing more sinister than putting "defence" on the agenda. I, on the other hand, remain horrified by what I have seen in Palestine. The companies that inflict suffering on civilians ought to be prosecuted. Instead, their executives pat each other on the back in royal palaces hired by SDA.

The only proper response to these obscene spectacles is outrage.

•First published by EUobserver, 24 September 2013.

EU more extreme than US on trade

If proof was needed that the European Union's bureaucracy was headed by ideological extremists, it can be found in the approach being taken to trade negotiations with the US.

Barack Obama has rightly encountered much criticism for allowing those Wall Street insiders - whose reckless behaviour led to the financial crisis - continue to dictate American economic policy. Yet in some respects he may have resisted the hypnotic power of top bankers more than policy-makers this side of the Atlantic.

Whereas the US wishes to remove financial services from the scope of talks aimed at reaching a trade agreement with the EU, Brussels officials are pushing for their inclusion. This means that the EU representatives are more in tune with the Republican James Baker than with those urbane Democrats they claim to identify with (in private conversations, at least). Baker, who was secretary of state when the US first attacked Iraq in the early 1990s, recently told the American Chamber of Commerce that nothing should be taboo in the negotiations.

Why is the EU being so gung-ho? The short answer is that banks have asked it to be.

Not long ago, the British press carried stories about how the City of London was furious with the Brussels institutions over attempts to cap bankers' bonuses. No such fury can be detected in the City's approach to trans-Atlantic trade. City lobbyist John Cooke has argued that "the gains of a truly comprehensive agreement could be lost if either side draws too many red lines too soon, cutting out subjects of potential sensitivity."

It is remarkable that film is the only sector that EU governments appear to regard as "sensitive". France - to the chagrin of European Commission chief José Manuel Barroso - has rightly argued that it must be able to protect its movie industry from Hollywood's predators. No similar passions have been aroused among EU governments when it comes to restraining banks.

Folly

Traditionally, trade agreements have been concentrated on reducing or withdrawing taxes levied on manufactured goods. The push to have them broadened to cover services intensified in the first decade of this century. In 2006, the European Services Forum - which represents Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and Zurich Financial Services - urged EU officials to seek the removal of capital requirements for banks throughout the world.

The financial crisis which erupted five years ago highlighted the folly of taking such a lax approach to regulation. And yet the EU's trade department is still following a script that was drawn up before that catastrophe.

My friends in the organisation Corporate Europe Observatory have obtained a list of 130 meetings that EU officials held with "stakeholders" as they prepared for the trade talks with America. A full 119 of these discussions - or 93 percent - involved lobbyists from big business.

The document confirms that financial services was one of the topics addressed. Kreab Gavin Anderson, a "public relations" firm that boasts Goldman Sachs, MasterCard and Bank of America Merill Lynch as clients, took part in these secret encounters. So did the Business Coalition for Transatlantic Trade (banks on its board: Citi and JP Morgan Chase). That coalition has been set up especially to push for a far-reaching trade and investment pact; it plans to send a delegation of American high-flyers to Brussels ahead of the round of EU-US talks scheduled for October.

The European Banking Federation, meanwhile, has advocated that any trans-Atlantic deal should be at least as ambitious as the one the EU clinched with South Korea in 2009. That agreement contained the principle that any new "products" dreamed up by Europe's financial whizz-kids should automatically be allowed in Korea, unless they had previously been restricted.

There are good reasons to be wary of "innovation" in the financial sector: the proliferation of exotic products called derivatives not only helped trigger the financial crisis, they continue to encourage speculation on food prices, thereby pushing up the grocery bills of the poor.

Earlier this month, I was reminded that the EU has already entered a trans-Atlantic trade pact.

A free trade agreement between the Union and Mexico entered into force in 2000. According to the spin, the accord has been an enormous success, leading to a doubling in commerce between the two sides.

A very different perspective was offered by Norma Castaneda from ALOP, an alliance of Latin American anti-poverty groups. She told me that the benefits of the deal have accrued to just a handful of major corporations. "Mexico hasn't profited," she said. "There has been no increase in investment from Mexico into the EU."

Resistance

When Karel de Gucht, the EU's trade commissioner, visited Mexico City last year, he argued that the "legal relationship" between the EU and Mexico "now risks falling behind," he said. That was because the EU was eyeing more "comprehensive" trade deals with Canada and the US. It would be logical, he suggested, to "upgrade" the agreement with Mexico so that it provided more openings for investments.

What he really meant is that he wished to have clauses from the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) copied and pasted into the EU's deal with Mexico. Known as "chapter 11", these clauses allow corporations to sue governments every time they encounter obstacles to making profits.

Elsewhere in Latin America, de Gucht is encountering stiff resistance to his agenda. Small farmers in Colombia have risen up against the ruinous effects of trade deals the Bogota government has signed with America and the EU; they have inspired solidarity strikes from numerous other workers.

These protests should inspire everyone concerned about the unending quest by big business to control almost every aspect of our lives. We need to act fast if we are to rekindle the dying embers of democracy.

•First published by EUobserver, 23 September 2013.

London "terrorism experts" have strong links with Israeli establishment

Duping the media isn't difficult. All you have to do is give yourself an impressive title and claim to be working for a prestigious institution.

The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) in King's College London excels at such deception. Its staff are treated as authoritative sources on "terrorism," without there being any explanation of their connections to the Israeli establishment.

Though headquartered in England, the ICSR was established as a partnership between the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and a few other universities. Each year the Herzliya center hosts a major conference on "security," at which powerful business and political figures discuss how to reinforce Israeli apartheid.

At the 2003 conference, Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel's finance minister, tried to defend the wall being built in the West Bank by contending it would help prevent a "demographic spill-over" of Palestinians into present-day Israel.

Shiraz Maher, a "senior research fellow", at the ICSR has been in demand recently as a pundit on Syria. During an appearance on Al Jazeera, he denounced the Iranian government-financed Press TV and Russia Today as "propaganda channels."

Echoing Israel

His description wasn't inaccurate (numerous media outlets warrant the same label). But it is telling that he implied those hostile to a Western assault on Damascus were resorting to propaganda, when he regularly parrots Israeli propaganda himself.

In a blog he writes for the right-wing British magazine The Spectator, Maher has praised Netanyahu for bombing Syria earlier this year. In other posts, he has stated it was a "palpable falsity" to call Israel an apartheid state (he didn't bother elaborating). And he has urged the European Union to blacklist Hizballah as a "terrorist organization," echoing an appeal made repeatedly by Israel.

I contacted Maher to ask how he defined terrorism and if he accepted that Israel resorted to state terrorism. "I don't see where the question is coming from," he replied. "It's a fairly technical legal question."

When I asked him why he never drew attention to his Herzliya links in his articles or TV appearances, Maher said that the ICSR has "no financial relationship" with the Israeli center. Yet he would not give any details on how the ICSR is funded, telling me that I would have to put any such questions on matters to John Bew, the center's director.

Bew did not respond to my requests for a copy of the ICSR's accounts. Yet Bew is known to answer requests from pro-establishment journalists. In July, he was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 program "Thinking Allowed," where he stated that "anyone who grew up in Northern Ireland, like I did, will know terrorism is not a concept" but an "objective fact."

The slot featuring Bew lasted for a full 26 minutes. That would be considered a long time by many broadcast journalists, yet neither Bew nor the presenter availed of the opportunity to explain that he is linked to an Israeli university supportive of state violence. (Bew, incidentally, will soon leave London for Washington, where he will take up the "Henry Kissinger chair in foreign policy" at the Library of Congress.)

Full picture?

The ICSR is registered as a charity and donations to it are tax deductible. Yet it is hard to believe that the information it has supplied to Britain's Charity Commission gives a full picture of its resources. This indicates that it had an income of £20,000 ($32,000) in the financial year which ended in August 2012 and that it spent only £5,000 during that year.

It appears that two of the main donors to the ICSR are businessmen Edward Atkin and Henry Sweetbaum.

Atkin, a businessman who amassed a fortune from manufacturing teats for baby bottles, sponsors a scholarship scheme that brings bright young students from Israel and Arab countries to London.

Neutral?

According to the ICSR's website, the students are able to discuss how to "further peace and understanding" in a "politically neutral environment." This is pure spin: projects of this nature are regarded as "normalization" by many Palestinians because they promote cooperation in a situation of inequality and injustice, without acknowledging that Israel practices a form of apartheid.

It is doubtful whether or not Atkin is "politically neutral" himself (can any wealthy entrepreneur really be apolitical?). He is also a donor to the Community Security Trust (CST), a group that has engaged in a witch-hunt against Jewish activists who speak out against Israeli apartheid.

As my colleague Asa Winstanley revealed in 2011, the CST has strayed from its official remit of monitoring anti-Semitic incidents to snoop on left-wing Jews, whom it has branded "extremist," a term it normally reserves for the far-right.

The ICSR was founded in 2007 by Henry Sweetbaum, a former head of the building supplies firm Wickes Companies. Sweetbaum is named as a donor to King's College London in that university's latest annual report. He also remains the ICSR's chairman.

Attempts by the ICSR's staff to distance themselves from Israel lack credibility. Boaz Ganor from the Herzliya center was another founding member of the ICSR and is still one of its official "partners." Ganor has encouraged Israel to commit even more war crimes than it already has: in a 2006 opinion piece, he advocated both "pre-emptive and reactive strikes" against "Palestinian terror." Civilians have been the main victims when Israel has undertaken those kinds of "strikes."

Given they are in a "partnership" with a man who openly calls for the murder of people based on the racial group to which they belong, perhaps the media should be a little more probing the next time it gives a platform to the ICSR and its "experts."

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 19 September 2013

Serving America's war machine

For many years, I regarded "think tanks" as a godsend. As a news reporter chasing deadlines, I'd regularly call their "experts" for quotes. Usually, they could give me a few succinct lines that appeared to lend a story some intellectual heft.

Then I started asking: who do these "experts" really represent? Can outfits financed by major corporations be independent?

Security and Defence Agenda (SDA) presents itself as a "neutral platform" for discussing military matters. Analysts with the Brussels-based think tank appear happy nonetheless to sound a bellicose note that chimes with the interest of those weapons manufacturers funding their activities.

Shada Islam, SDA's "strategic advisor", appeared on Euronews recently, where she argued that "several surgical strikes" should be undertaken against Syria (the interview was conducted before the US-Russia deal on removing Syria's chemical weapons). Referring to Bashar Assad, the Syrian president, Islam said: "We have an international treaty which bans the use of chemical weapons. If this man has really used them, we have a moral treaty obligation to act. If the West, if the international community, does not act, turns a blind eye to the use of poison gas, what message are we sending to other despots and dictators?"

Islam failed to spell out that some members of SDA would benefit directly from the attack that she advocated. Lockheed Martin, for example, produces cruise missiles that would almost certainly be used if America decided to bomb Damascus. When an attack looked imminent, the value of Lockheed's shares began to climb steadily.

Last week I contacted Islam asking her to explain why she did not alert viewers to her Lockheed connections. I also asked her Euronews interviewer, Rudolf Herbert, if he was aware that Islam is to all intents and purposes a lobbyist for the arms industry. Neither replied.

Selective abhorrence

SDA's abhorrence of non-conventional weapons may be of a selective nature. A report that it has published on "cyber-security" relied considerably on the "wisdom" dispensed by Yitzhak Ben-Israel, a former head of research with the Israeli military. The report did not mention that Ben-Israel has himself indicated that he provided advice on how that military could use a hideous weapon called DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive).

DIME was originally tested by a US Air Force Base in Florida, where the possibility of adding tungsten or other metal particles to an explosive chemical mixture was studied. Desmond Travers, an Irish colonel, has stated that there was much anecdotal evidence that Israel used DIME during its three-week assault on Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.

He has expressed particular concern about DIME containing powdered metal, which cannot be removed from any human body that it enters. Travers was part of the UN team headed by Richard Goldstone, a retired South African judge, which investigated the conduct of that offensive.

Why is SDA so perturbed by Syria possessing ghastly weapons, but not Israel? This may have something to do with how Lockheed Martin is the biggest beneficiary of US military aid to Israel. The $3 billion that America gives to Israel each year is conditional on it buying weapons from Lockheed and a few other US firms.

No democratic mandate

The SDA hasn't only been thinking about Syria lately. In June, it hosted a "debate" where Claude-France Arnould, chief executive of the European Defence Agency, was the keynote speaker. The weapons-makers in attendance used the occasion to argue that the EU's new scientific research programme, Horizon 2020, subsidise innovation of a military nature.

Although the Union is already financing a number of drone projects, its officials insist that these are purely civilian. The assurances they have given are less than credible, given that the arms industry is taking part in many of these schemes. But it is significant that the industry wants the EU to go further than it already has and actually bankroll the development of weapons.

The drive towards militarisation lacks any democratic mandate. The deep public opposition to a Western attack on Syria illustrated that taxpayers can think of better things to do with their money than supporting American, French or British imperialism.

Shada Islam and her colleagues are hardly concerned with public opinion, however. Their "neutral platform" caters for a tiny elite whose primary objective is to drum up new business for the merchants of death.

•First published by EUobserver, 17 September 2013.