Silvio's Army - A Dangerous Indictment of Italy's Political Landscape

Italy is witnessing a surreal development - or maybe we should say another surreal development - in its political world. On May 28th, 2013, a hotelier from the city of Padova in Veneto, Mr. Simone Furlan, founded "Silvio's Army" (l'Esercito di Silvio). "Silvio" is the first name of former Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

Simone Furlan with Silvio Berlusconi 

(From: esercitodisilvio.it)

The "Army" has already recruited over eight-thousand active members in the past three days who have pledged themselves to "defend President Berlusconi and to fight alongside him during the Twenty-year War"1 and to take part in an assortment of activities such as joining demonstrations against the judiciary and in support of Mr. Berlusconi. The application can be taken online and takes just a few minutes to compile, and it accepts all over the age of sixteen.

Home Page of the Army's Website

Silvio Berlusconi has, for the better part of two decades now, been involved in numerous civil and criminal trials for a variety of incidents - bribing lawyers, fiscal fraud, falsifying records2 and, most recently, his involvement in an underage sex scandal, as well as a cocktail of other charges. You can check this Wikipedia page for a full listing. He has been repeatedly accused of having utilized his political charge to indemnify himself of the charges brought against him, or pass tailored laws that would achieve the same result. In any other nation on the planet, including many "developing" ones, Mr. Berlusconi would be absolutely ineligible to any political charge.

The founder of this movement has stated that "we cannot remain inert spectators of this unjust Twenty-year war that has seen our leader defend himself from defamatory accusations of all sorts which are the fruits of a judicial persecution without historical precedents"3.

When asked for why he thought Mr. Berlusconi has been targeted so heavily by what he calls "absurd judicial persecution", Mr. Furlan claims that it is because "Berlusconi did not allow Communists to rise to power" which have been engaged in a war to discredit him with their allies - the magistrates.

This rhetoric has been used by Berlusconi for over twenty years, and so it is only natural that the sheer repetition of the "Communist judges and magistrates are persecuting me and my freedom" is bound to take hold amongst a small segment of the population. It is however shocking that over eight-thousand people would be so eager to sign up so quickly to such an organization in support of a convicted criminal.

Although the founder of the movement insists that his intentions are for it to be entirely pacific, the "Army" is actually organized and arranged in a true paramilitary fashion and Mr. Furlan has declared that he would use his body as a human shield, should it be necessary, and take a bullet for Mr. Berlusconi. When asked "Is this faith?" in an interview, Mr. Furlan stated "Of course it is... [I am] proud, very proud that I have always voted for Berlusconi. And I love him with my whole self. We are the evangelizers of Berlusconi and want to give testimony of his word with determination..."4.

The organization of bodies such as this are reminiscient of the fascist brigades, a dark era in Italy's history, in which the infamous "Blackshirt Brigades" roamed the nation seeking to intimidate or eliminate those that would dare oppose the fascist state. Given Mr. Berlusconi's associations with philo-fascist political figures, and the fanatically messianic these developments only seem to indicate the present and future deterioration of the Italian political landscape.

Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and Fake Philanthropy

This article actually started, as many of them actually do, as a frustrated late night facebook rant, which turned out to be too long not to turn it into an article. I've tried to provide as many sources as possible for the facts that I state, and will be writing an additional article soon about Bill Gates' recent ventures into Biotech. I've been invited to give a talk at my university specifically on this topic and will also upload the talk when the time comes. Dady Cheri, who has actually also been an inspiration for this article, of newsjunkiepost.com (which I will quote later) has also done some great journalism on this and would strongly recommend her writings - you can search her name on the aforementioned website and all her articles will appear.

I know many people admire Bill gates for his intelligence, his entrepreneurial spirit and, most recently, his philanthropy. That is all well and good, but we mustn't forget that he is a relentless capitalist who throughout his life he has dedicated his efforts to one purpose only - making a ridiculous amount of money. Let us not forget that corporations are BY LAW required to do everything possible to maximize their profits and as such, every single action they take is to be viewed as a money-making scheme. Sometimes that means repairing or improving their image through apparently charitable actions but which, in the long term, are designed to allow them to exploit more people without scrutiny or resistance.

Now, I'm not going to get into all the conspiracy theories about the fact that he is part of a global population reduction scheme. But I think that it is not too far-fetched to say that there has been a systematic and historical tendency of using the less developed continents (especially Africa) for "non-consensual research"1 in the pioneering of new money making techniques disguised as "development", and that Bill Gates could be a part of it. After all, the Big Pharma industry is one of the most profitable on the planet, and it strongly relies on the enforcement of patents and intellectual rights, for which Bill Gates is notorious due to his work in Microsoft. The African continent has been that which has been most severely affected by the strict provisions of patent rights enforced by transnational corporations with the aid of the IMF/WB/WTO cartel.

There is also a huge body of documented evidence that the pharmaceutical industries have, for a long time and repeatedly, used vulnerable populations both in the developed and developing world as guinea pigs for the development of new drugs and pharmaceuticals (Look up the Tuskegee Experiment, among many others). This is not just isolated to Big Pharma by the way, it applies to nearly every sector of the industrial capitalist economy which, by definition, is based on exploitation of an underclass.

Now, having established those premises (and i invite you all to feel free to challenge them), let's analyze the facts:

Shortly before leaving Microsoft, Bill Gates sold a total of US$58 million, on November 2nd, 2012 he sold 5,500,000 shares for $27.95, generating $153.7 million and just a month ago, on April 25th, 2013, he sold 12,605,492 shares for $390,360,320. These are but two of the most recent incidents, you can do a quick search and find out by yourself that he has been selling his shared by the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more2.

According to Security Exchange Commission's records, Bill has sold 90 million shares in the past year and at the moment, he holds 591 million shares, which equals around 7% of 8.4 billion total, and he continues to be the "largest single stockholder"3 of the company for the time being.

He is, of course, investing in a wide variety of firms such as retail (Walmart), food and beverages (Coca Cola & McDonalds), energy and transportation (British petroleum and Toyota) and Biotech ( Nimbus Discovery and Foundation Medicine)4,5. But none of those investments match the ones he has made in the pharmaceutical industry. As a matter of fact one of the first acts he did after withdrawing his shares from Microsoft after stepping down was to invest the British Pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith Kline.

On September 9th, 2002, Gates sold almost half a billion dollars worth of Microsoft stock, and begun to invest heavily in Big Pharma. In the second half of 2002 he bought 2.5 million shares in Eli Lilly, manufacturer of Prozac, and also made major investments in Merck and Pfizer6.

On May 17th, 2002 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF) purchased shares in nine big pharmaceutical companies valued at nearly $205 million7. Here is when we begin to see a shift of his personal investments in Big Pharma, to those of the foundation. This was an important step in convincing people to donate their own personal fortunes, a sort of "lead by example" to fool the rich people in need of their conscience being stroked, or simply have their image restored or improved.

Now, as an investor in Merck & Co., Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson and others, the Gates foundation has a financial interest in common with makers of AIDS drugs, diagnostic tools, vaccines and other drugs. Now, as mentioned briefly before, remember that Mr. Gates has attained his demi-trillionaire status is based on a "nasty little monopoly-protecting trade treaty" called “TRIPS” – the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights rules of the World Trade Organization.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s endowment mainly comes from Bill Gates’ personal fortune and stock in Berkshire Hathaway given to the Foundation as a gift from Hathaway’s CEO Warren Buffett. However in recent times other extremely large people have poured enormous amounts of their personal fortunes in the B&MGF.

Most recently, multi-billionare Warren Buffet has jumped on the bandwagon, and Bill Gates has decided to focus his efforts on Malaria and Polio. These are two prime examples of the last piece to this magnificently intricate scheme. About $1 billion of Bill Gates donation/tax deduction was ear marked for research to find a vaccine to prevent malaria which is the number one killer in Africa.

Now, quite literally hundreds of studies, papers and analyses have determined that the best way to reduce infection and mortality rates from diseases such as Malaria and Polio, is to increase the standard of living and education of its population 8,9,10.

We can easily confirm this with the story of Eritrea, in the Horn of Africa, which managed to reduce it's Malaria infection rates by 80% by good old fashioned public health systems and increasing the standard of living of its population - engaging in public education campaigns of nutrition of disease prevention, free insecticide treated mosquito nets in areas where Malaria is endemic, the establishment of community based medical clinics where the population can get free blood tests, and finally filling in breeding sites and/or spraying insecticide on these areas (I'm not normally a fan of insecticide, but I'm just trying to prove a larger point). These three simple, basic public health practices have resulted in the biggest breakthrough in malaria mortality prevention in history and to this date I have not been able to find a single story on it from any mainstream media outlet. These techniques has also widely been the case across Europe nearly a century ago, a process which has brought the complete eradication of such exotic infectious diseases on the European Continent.

It should also be added that Eritrea, through the already established public healthcare system, has been the only country in Africa to effectively reduce it's HIV/AIDS infection rates (by 40% over a decade) through a national sexual education and condom distribution program.

Back to Bill Gates. He is a pretty smart guy, as a matter of fact he is considered to be one of the most intelligent people on the planet. I am quite certain that he is also not ignorant, so why would he embark on a massive vaccination campaign when the same amount of money could have been invested in genuine sustainable community development and public health programmes? Because that doesn't make money.

Instead, the B&MGF has invested one billion dollars on the development of a Malaria vaccine, produced by GlaxoSmithKline, which (yep, you guessed it) Bill gates holds large amounts of share in and considerable influence over11. GSK recently had to settle US$ 3 Billion to resolve criminal and civil liability charges related to illegal drug marketing and withholding information about health hazards associated with its diabetes drug Avandia 12, and in 2012 was found guilty of "experimenting with human beings as well falsifying parental authorizations so babies could participate in the vaccine-trials conducted by the laboratory from 2007 to 2008" by an Argentinian court 13.

GlaxoSmithKline CEO Andrew Witty

The GSK Website claims that "When administered along with standard childhood vaccines, the efficacy of RTS,S in infants aged 6 to 12 weeks (at first vaccination) against clinical and severe malaria was 31% and 37%, respectively, over 12 months of follow-up after the third vaccine dose.14"

Sounds swell right? However, it also mentions (and notice how they try to spin this to their advantage) "Insecticide-treated bed nets were used by 86% of the trial participants, which demonstrated that RTS,S provided protection beyond existing malaria control interventions" 15. Recently, the tests have also show a decrease efficacy, creating what many have described as a "flop" 16. Not to mention that there is considerable body of evidence showing that Malaria "vaccines" increase the virulence of Malaria strains 17.

In addition, the Malaria vaccine despite being "a flop", it is also required to be taken with an additional drug to be at least effective in the slightest and although the B&MGF and GSK have made a huge publicity and marketing campaign out of the fact that they will donate the vaccine, they did not mention that they will make a fortune from the catalyst, which will be required for the vaccine to be in any way effective.

Polio is the other example.

In India, in many areas where Polio was nearly eradicated and the B&MGF engaged in vaccination campaigns, Polio is now rampant. This was due to the use of an ACTIVE Polio Vaccine (called Oral Polio Vaccine - OPV), which is based on the oral administration of attenuated live polio virus18 and is banned in most western nations because recurrent shots of it actually increase the development of more aggressive polio strains and their mutation into deadly forms. Subjects in India were given up to 10 injections of this vaccine19 instead of the 1-2 of the Inactive Polio Vaccine (IPV - which, as the name alludes to, uses an inactive polio virus) used here in Europe and in the United States. The new strain's outbreak, however, has "non-polio" (no, i'm not kidding) in its name - “non-polio acute flaccid paralysis” (NPAFP) - in an attempt to deflect the responsibility and to blur the link between the B&MGF and the outbreak, despite the fact that the strains are nearly identical.

"Back in 2001, when polio was disappearing on its own from improved nutrition and availability of clean water, and fewer than 500 cases remained in the entire world, the Gates Foundation launched a multi-billion dollar polio eradication project. Now that more than $8 billion have been spent on this project, in India in 2011 alone, there were over 47,500 cases of an infectious disease with polio’s symptoms but twice the lethality. This disease is ironically labeled “non-polio acute flaccid paralysis” (NPAFP) despite its incidence being directly correlated with the number of doses of the oral vaccine a person receives. India is held up as a success of the eradication campaign because its cases of the standard “polio” dropped to zero in 2012, and NPAFP is not counted as being a nastier kind of polio." - Dady Cheri 20

The U.S. Army's (the largest single consumer of vaccines worldwide) Basics manual states:

"A single dose of trivalent OPV is administered to all enlisted accessions. Officer candidates, ROTC cadets, and other Reserve Components on initial active duty for training receive a single dose of OPV unless prior booster immunization as an adult is documented"21.

It is additionally strange that for professing themselves as pioneers of global health, the B&MGF holds significant shares in some of the most "unhealthy" companies on the planet, responsible for millions of cases of obesity and diabetes such as McDonald’s (9.4 million shares representing about 5% of the Gates’ portfolio), and Coca-Cola (with more than 15 million shares, over 7% of the Foundation’s portfolio, not counting Berkshire Hathaway holdings)22. It is also strange that they would have invested enormous amounts of money in the very drug companies stopping the shipment of low-cost AIDS drugs to Africa, despite professing to want to provide one million people with medicine by the end of the decade - too bad he didn't specify that he meant HIS medicine, the one coming from the companies in which he has millions invested in.

In essence, the Bill & Melinda Gates "Foundation" is a huge tax avoidance scheme for enormously wealthy capitalists which have made billions on the exploitation of the world's people, who give large amounts of money either for financial, promotional, or naive reasons. The "foundation" then invests, TAX FREE, his own money and that of others who have "donated" it in the very companies that he has millions of stocks personally invested in, guaranteeing a return through both sales and intellectual property rights. Lastly, to add insult to injury, the system actually perpetuates the spread of diseases instead of aiding in their eradication, thus perpetually justifying his endeavours to "eradicate" them (solving a problem they are creating).

So, would the world be better without the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is what I often get asked, and without philanthropists such as Bill Gates? 

That is a very difficult hypothetical question, that would have to consider a completely different socio-economic arrangement than the one we currently have, and which I am not able to answer with certainty. However, it is almost certain that if enormously wealthy individuals and firms were held accountable for their actions instead of being allowed to "whitewash" them in misleading and dishonest philanthropy, it would be a better world. It is almost certain that if  philanthropy was genuine, and not designed as a tax-avoidance scheme and one in which "donations" act as investments into the very firms in which the donors have enormous stakes in, it would be a better world. It is also quite certain that should the enormous amounts of investments (or "donations") had been focused toward community-based nutrition and public health programs, and community-based sustainable enterprises, it would be a better world.

Ruben Rosenberg Colorni.

Hell On Earth - The Plight of Refugees in the Netherlands

The Netherlands is known worldwide as a beacon of tolerance and democracy, and a defender of human rights and international law. Unfortunately, these things could not be farther from the truth. 

Entire articles could be written on numerous incidents and subjects related to the aforementioned concepts, but today I want to focus particularly on one which perhaps embodies a complete disregard for all these values - the Dutch Government's treatment of refugees and Asylum seekers, in which regard (and many others) the Netherlands can be compared to a fascist state.

According to a regional governmental survey the estimated number of refugees in the Netherlands ranges from 200,000 to 250,000. These are refugees from some of the most devastated regions of the world - many come from Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, and many other places that the EU, U.S. and NATO has bombed, or propped up fascist governments, for the sake of advancing economic and political interests; some of them come from sub-Saharan Africa  where their livelihoods have been plundered by over five-hundred years of colonial oppression followed by neoliberal exploitation; some of them are eastern Europeans or refugees from former Yugoslavia  trying to escape the misery, poverty and crime that arose from the capitalist "renaissance" following the fall of the Soviet Union, and consequent engineered ethnic and sectarian wars by none other than the aforementioned NATO. None of these people have committed any crime other than that of crossing an imaginary line to find a better life.

Figure 1.1 - A table showing the origins of refugees in the Netherlands as of 2011

At least nine refugees locked up in the Rotterdam detention centre were beaten by guards between May 16th, 2013, and today. Protesters holding a daily solidarity support demonstration at the prison were shown numerous bruises by the refugees through the windows, some of which also had arm slings.

Figure 1.2 - Refugees (above half) showing solidarity demonstrators (bottom half) bruises they received following a beating.

One of the abused refugees, whose name will not be mentioned to avoid reprisals to his person for giving us the information, revealed events which took place on May 16th. “They came is and said 'you must be put in isolation because you have suicidal tendencies'. I insisted that I did not want to go. 'You must go to isolation', they insisted. I refused once again. Then they pushed me to the ground and beat my arm and back. Now [Saturday] I continue to be in a lot of pain. I went to the medical services, I was only given paracetamol”.

Someone who visited the centre, whose name will also not be mentioned, confirmed this story. One other of the refugees s/he visited also displayed bruises

On May 18th, 2013, activists noticed an internal assistance team (IBT in Dutch) going inside the detention centre. IBT is an internal riot-control team, especially used for prisons.

On Sunday (May 19th) we received reports from activists at the detention centre that the external medical supervisor for the Refugees' hunger strike was denied access to the refugees to assess their health. Despite the precarious conditions of the refugees due to the strike, and despite the likely beatings they received the day prior, the detention centre seems unwilling to allow independent health professionals to assess and advise on their health.

Yesterday some of the daily activists and myself organized for a larger group to attend the daily demonstration. We had nearly fifty people who, as usual, went around the detention centre with megaphones shouting messages of support to the refugees. We were shown messages, written on pieces of paper and held on the windows, saying "24 years in the Netherlands, I have 4 children, have been in 9 months", or "we [heart] u all".

Figure 1.2 - Demonstrators in support of the refugees at the detention centre.

We provided them with phone numbers of journalists and doctors that may be able to help them. Unfortunately, the centre was actually closed due to a public holiday (Pentecost) and they were making signs that they had no credit on their phones.

After taking three hours to go all around the entire complex, we ended the day by chanting "Shame on you! Shame on you!" to the G4S employees who had just finished their shifts and driving out of the complex, as well as "No Justice, No peace, Fuck the Police!" to the nearby police and marechaussee who tailed us menacingly for the last part of the demonstration. Many of the G4S employees rolled down their windows and waved at us, smiling, mockingly, in a show of complete disregard and moral apathy for the atrocities that they and the company that employs them are responsible for.

It should be pointed out that G4S Just found out that G4S, other than providing "security services" to Israel by managing their illegal checkpoints and torturing Palestinian prisoners in Israeli Jails, is also the "security services" provider for the Refugee Detention Centre in Rotterdam, where refugees are also being beaten, abused and tortured to discourage them from pursuing their hunger strike. G4S is the largest private security company, and the fourth largest private employer, on the planet. It is also now widely documented as being complicit in human rights violations worldwide. Such a company should not be sponsored by any government, company, institution or individual that claims to respect and abide by international and human right law.

Unknown to us, probably at the time we were showing our support outside, the Guinean refugee mister Bah was being severely beaten by a guard of the detention centre, for the second time. Around 17:00 he was transferred to the high security prison in Vught. He has not had any access to medical care yet and his confidential doctor was not allowed to visit him either.

Mister Bah has been on thirst strike for five days now; last Saturday TV show Nieuwsuur broadcast the news of his abuse by the guards. Monday afternoon he told his medical adviser over the phone what happened: “I was served breakfast, but I refused. Then the guard hit me in the face and he insulted me. He freaked out and started to hit and kick me on the head. Other guards had to force him to get off me. I have a severe headache and wounds on my head.”

A report from a Dutch website dedicated to unearthing such abuses reads as follows:

"This morning, around 9 am, the doctor has visited mister Bah. “He has been heavily abused”, she says. “He has a big bump on his forehead, and a cut in his right cheek  caused by a pen the guard was using. He has bruised on his forehead and his temple.” The ministry of Justice stated that Bah himself was being violent, but according to the doctor he is “barely able to walk”, because of his weakened condition. Since Friday noon he has not eaten or drunk anything. Apart from the visit this morning, he has not had any medical care.

Bah demands to see images of the camera that filmed the abuse in his cell, but the management says the camera was not working when it happened. The doctor was not allowed to take pictures of Bah this morning, when she visited him. She thinks he will be transported to the prison hospital in Scheveningen this afternoon.

Today the doctor will report to the police about abuse and obstruction of medical care." -  Deportatie Verzet

The excuse that the camera in Mr. Bah's cell was not functional at the time of the attack seems like an obvious and blatant cover-up for images that would not only have sparked the rage of many Dutch people against their own government, but also against one of the most powerful companies on the planet.

Today, May 21nd, 2013, there is a large demonstration in support of the refugees in Rotterdam (https://www.facebook.com/events/175007195992684/) and tomorrow, May 22rd, 2013 there will be a demonstration to denounce the Dutch asylum policies in The Hague (https://www.facebook.com/events/406023276171629/). 

We hope to see you fired up and numerous!

For continuous updates on this topic please check: http://deportatieverzet.nl/