Brazil joins South Africa’s ‘genocide’ case against Israel at ICJ

Al-Jazeera

Brazil now joins Spain, Ireland, Mexico, Turkiye and others who have signed on to the case. 

Brazil has formally joined the case launched by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that alleges Israel is committing “genocide” in the Gaza Strip.

The Hague court confirmed in a statement on Friday that Brazil invoked Article 63 of the ICJ statute, filing a declaration of intervention in the case.

The article gives any United Nations member state the right to intervene in a case when the interpretation of a treaty to which it is a party is in question. Brazil used the article to formally recognize that Israel is violating the Genocide Convention of 1948.

South Africa and Israel are now invited to “furnish written observations on the declaration of intervention”, the World Court said.

The Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in July it intended to join the case, citing “impunity” that undermined international law as it denounced Israeli aggression in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Brazil now joins Spain, Ireland, Mexico, Turkiye and others who have intervened in favor of South Africa to join the case against Israel over the genocidal war, which has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023.

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Another “suicide” of a child sex trafficking whistleblower

The Sun

 

AN ACTIVIST whose claims led to the "rape" arrest of a celebrity healer called John of God has taken her own life at her hideaway in Spain.

Sex abuse support group Victimas Unidas, which worked with Sabrina Bittencourt, said she had left a note explaining why she killed herself.

Eldest son Gabriel Baum confirmed her death, writing on Facebook: “She took the last step so that we could live. They killed my mother.”

More than 600 women have accused John of God - real name Joao Teixeira de Faria - of sexually abusing them during so-called healing sessions.

He was arrested in his homeland of Brazil in December and remanded in prison before being charged with rape and sexual assault.

The cult leader gained international fame in 2010 when US TV star Oprah Winfrey visited his retreat to interview him for her talk show.

She wrote she left feeling “an overwhelming sense of peace”, although she later deleted the comments and has since said she hopes justice is done. 

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Doctor on trial over Spain 'stolen babies' scandal

BBC News 

When an 85-year-old gynaecologist goes on trial in Madrid on 26 June accused of abducting a baby, thousands of victims of a sinister, sprawling network of illegal adoptions will be looking for answers.

They will also be hoping that the case triggers wider investigations into the scandal.

Dr Eduardo Vela will become the first person to stand trial for what victims' groups claim was a secret practice that saw hundreds of thousands of babies stolen and sold under the dictatorship of Gen Francisco Franco and after his death in 1975. 

In the years immediately after Spain's 1936-1939 civil war, children were removed from families identified by the victorious fascist regime as Republicans and given to families considered more deserving. 

Little was known about the private trafficking of babies that continued in the 1960s until two men went public with their story in 2011.

Antonio Barroso and Juan Luis Moreno revealed they had been bought by their respective fathers from a priest in Zaragoza.

Mr Barroso, who founded the association Anadir (National Association for Irregular Adoption Victims) calculates that 15% of adoptions in Spain between 1965 and 1990 were the result of babies being taken without consent from their biological parents.
That would amount to some 300,000 people.

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Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy Ousted From Power; Sanchez Is New Socialist Prime Minister

Zero Hedge

As was widely expected, this morning Mariano Rajoy's six year reign as Spain's prime minister, ended when he become the first prime minister in Spain’s democratic history to be ousted by parliament after losing a vote of no-confidence amid a corruption scandal engulfing his Popular party. He will be replaced by the Socialist opposition leader Pedro Sánchez.

A small but sufficient majority of Spanish lawmakers was sufficient to end Rajoy's career, voting 180 to 169 to remove the prime minister, cutting short the second term of one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders currently in power. The center-left Socialist Party had called the no-confidence vote last week and proposed its leader to replace Mr. Rajoy. 

Quoted by the FT, in his brief final speech to parliament, Rajoy bade farewell to the country after seven years in power: “It has been an honour to leave Spain better than I found it. Thank you to all Spaniards and good luck.” The speech came after a last meal of sorts:

Mr Rajoy spent eight hours in a Madrid restaurant on Thursday afternoon instead of sitting through the first part of the parliamentary debate, but appeared composed on Friday during his resignation speech.

Socialist Party leader Pedro Sánchez, who becomes prime minister immediately, told lawmakers that his policy goals include bolstering social policies to address problems such as unemployment and poverty levels, both of which remain high despite Spain’s strong growth. Among Sanchez' challenges will be managing the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy and dealing with internal problems such as the crisis in Catalonia.

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Spain to Deliver 5 Warships Worth $2.5Bln to Saudi Arabia - Defense Ministry

Sputnik 

 

MADRID (Sputnik) - Spanish Defense Minister Maria Dolores Cospedal and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Thursday signed an agreement, under which Madrid will deliver five Avante 2200 corvette patrol vessels worth $2.47 billion to the Middle Eastern country, the Spanish Defense Ministry said. 

 

The warships will be build by firm Navantia at its shipyard in San Fernando, Southern Spain, according to the ministry. 

 

Salman arrived to Spain on Wednesday. Earlier on Thursday, the Saudi crown prince held talks with Spain's King Felipe VI and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. 

 

In the period between 2015 and mid-2017, Spain has exported military equipment and weapons worth $901 million to Saudi Arabia, according to data drawn by four non-governmental organizations — Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Oxfam, and FundiPau — from official sources. 

 

In October, four NGOs demanded an independent investigation into the destination of arms acquired by Saudi Arabia, after increasing evidence suggested that Spanish weapons have been used in the conflict in Yemen.

Spain: Thousands 'March for Dignity' through Madrid's city centre Against Austerity

Ruptly TV

Organizers from the so-called 22M movement estimated that more than 8,000 people joined the rally, the EFE news agency reported.

In Latest Political "Coup", Catalan Parliament Votes To Secede From Spain

Zero Hedge

In the aftermath of last month's Brexit vote, there was an outpouring of concern in Europe that the British decision would embolden similar separatist movements across the continent. Earlier Wednesday, this is precisely what happened when Catalan nationalists voted to approve a plan to secede from Spain, defying the nation’s Constitutional Court and challenging acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who is currently in political limbo as he struggles to form a government.

The decision was approved by 72 regional MPs out of 135. Ten MPs from the CSP group linked to Podemos, Partido Popular and Ciudadanos walked out of the assembly and the Socialists did not vote. A recent poll shows that 48% of the Catalan population currently supports independence compared with 43% against it.

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Thousands of Italians, Spaniards Protest Against NATO War Games in Europe

Sputnik

Thousands of citizens took to the streets in Spain and Italy in protest of NATO’s destabilization policies in which their countries are involved, Contra Magazin wrote.

Activists demonstrated against the NATO’s "2015 Trident Juncture" military exercise in particular.

In the Italian city of Naples, the protesters carried signs demanding the dissolution of NATO. In the Spanish capital of Madrid, NATO opponents marched carrying anti-war posters and shouting "No to NATO, bases out", "imperialism is terrorism" and "Yankees go home".

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Spain says to charge tax of 0.03 percent on bank deposits

Reuters


Reuters) - Spain on Friday said it would introduce a blanket taxation rate of 0.03 percent on all bank account deposits, in a move aimed at harmonising regional tax regimes and generating revenues for the country's cash-strapped autonomous communities.

The regulation, which could bring around 400 million euros ($546 million) to the state coffers based on total deposits worth 1.4 trillion euros, had been tipped as a possible sweetener for the regions days after tough deficit limits for this year and next were set by the central government.

Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria announced the move at a news conference following a weekly cabinet meeting.

Spain is aiming for an end-of-year deficit of 5.5 percent after ending 2013 with a deficit of 6.6 percent of gross domestic product, just short of its 6.5 percent target. The regions have been set a deficit limit of 1 percent of GDP.

The government had last year fixed a zero percent tax rate on deposits across the 17 autonomous communities to prevent some of them charging their own rates, but never ruled out raising the taxation level.

The country has one of the lowest tax takes in the European Union after a burst property bubble crippled the construction sector, one of the largest contributors to government coffers.

Madrid passed in June a blueprint for tax reform which aims to cut income and corporate taxes to stimulate consumer demand and investment in the midst of a nascent economic recovery. ($1 = 0.7331 Euros) (Reporting by Paul Day; Editing by Julien Toyer and Hugh Lawson)

Will Spain Default?

Zero Hedge

With 10Y yields trading below those of US Treasuries, asking the question of Spain's rising default risk seems risible but as Bloomberg's Maxime Sbaihi notes, the longer the euro flirts with deflation, the higher the risk that the heavily indebted (and becoming more so) countries will be tempted to default. Of course, this 'concern' is entirely ignored by the 'market' as Draghi has promised enough liquidity to soak up every short-dated bond but as the European Union's so-called "1/20 rule" suggests - requiring states to reduce excessive (over 60% Debt/GDP) by 1/20th every year or face a fine of 0.2% of GDP - Spain, it appears has 5 options to escape this vicious circle... and one of those is restructuring...

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Thousands Stage Anti-Monarchy Protests Across Spain

Anti-monarchy demo held in Madrid, Spain on Saturday, June 7, 2014. Thousands of protesters in Spain urge the abolition of monarchy following the king's recent abdication.

Common Dreams

Anti-monarchy demonstrations were held in over 50 cities across Spain Saturday in protest actions called by leftist groups. In Madrid over 15,000 people marched. Similar demonstrations were held in Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, Oviedo and many other Spanish cities.

Five days after Spanish King Juan Carlos announced his intention to abdicate the throne, the demonstrators demanded a referendum on whether Spain should continue as a monarchy or become a republic.

Monday, shortly after the abdication, a spontaneous outpouring of 20,000 people poured onto Madrid’s streets in a protest led by the 15-M anti-austerity movement. “Spain, tomorrow, will be Republican,” protesters chanted.

An El Pais poll, published Sunday, shows that nearly two thirds, about 62 percent, of Spaniards believe a referendum is necessary to decide whether Spain should continue to have a monarchy.

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Spain to ‘spy’ on 34 million bank accounts

Strat Risks

The Spanish Government plans to collect data on all of the country’s 34 million bank accounts in what it calls a bid to crack down on money laundering and terrorist activity. But the move has drawn plenty of fire.

 Spain plans to set up a German-style archive of data on the financial activity of Spaniards and residents in Spain, national daily El País reported on Sunday.

 

The move will see banks having to supply details of all the personal and business current accounts, savings accounts and fixed-term accounts they hold to the Secretary of State for the Economy.

Groups including the Tax Office, the military, the General Council of the Judiciary and the secret services will then be able to access that information.

Transactions over €1,000 ($1,370) will be flagged if suspicious, while all transactions over €30,000 can be checked. Transfers of over €3,000 a month will also come under the spotlight, according to the new rules.

Politicians and top-ranking officials will also see their financial dealings come under closer scrutiny as the country tackles corruption.

The move is also a key part of the fight against money laundering and terrorism, authorities say.
The plans have been rubber stamped by the Spanish Council of State and the country’s data protection agency, the AEPD, and officials have stated authorities won’t keep data on the balance of individual accounts.

The move is also in line with anti-money laundering recommendations of the 35-country Financial Action Task Force.

But the plans have drawn fire from within the legal system, as well as from banks and bank customers.
Judges consulted by El País expressed concern the information held could be used for political leverage, and said they already had access to information provided by the tax office for investigations into tax fraud.

One Supreme Court judge stressed, however, that account information could only be accessed with a court order.

Spain’s top banking association, the AEB, said it was “willing to work with authorities” but highlighted that the confidential nature of this information had to be maintained.

It was consumer groups, though, that were most damning….

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Spain austerity: Huge Madrid protest turns violent

BBC News

Violence has broken out at the end of an anti-austerity protest attended by tens of thousands of people in the Spanish capital Madrid.

Dozens of youths threw projectiles at police, who responded by charging at them.

Demonstrators were protesting over issues including unemployment, poverty and official corruption.
They want the government not to pay its international debts and do more to improve health and education.

Irreparable damage
 
The BBC's Guy Hedgecoe in Madrid says protesters travelled from all corners of Spain, many of them making the journey on foot, in order to voice their anger. 

The BBC's Guy Hedgecoe in Madrid says protesters travelled from all corners of Spain, many of them making the journey on foot, in order to voice their anger. 

 

 

Police were confronted by protesters who trekked from the furthest corners of Spain

 

 

 

Police responded to the violence by charging at demonstrators

 

 

 

The government's austerity policies have provoked widespread anger

 

 

 

The protesters blame the policies for high unemployment rates

They called their protest the march of dignity, our correspondent says, because they say that the government of Mariano Rajoy is stripping Spaniards of just that.

For many of them, the cutbacks that Mr Rajoy has implemented, in particular to health and education, are causing Spain irreparable damage. 

Although most of the demonstration took place peacefully, violence broke out later on Friday with a number of arrests and several policeman injured.

Analysts say that Spain came out of recession in the second half of 2013.

But unemployment soared with the government's labour reforms which reduced the cost of hiring and firing.

The terrifying surveillance case of Brandon Mayfield

 

Portland lawyer Brandon Mayfield speaks at a press conference May 24, 2004 in Portland, Oregon. Mayfield was exonerated of involvement in terrorist activities connected with the train bombings in Spain.

Al Jazeera

During a live Web chat in late January, National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden explained one of the least discussed dangers of bulk collection. By indiscriminately sweeping up the call records and the international communications of Americans, the government has the ability to engage in retroactive investigation, or mining the historical data of targets for any evidence of suspicious, illegal or simply embarrassing activities. It is a disturbing capability that should make even those fully convinced of their own propriety to think twice before uttering out loud, “What do I have to fear if I have nothing to hide?”

But there’s another danger that Snowden didn’t mention that’s inherent in the government’s having easy access to the voluminous data we produce every day: It can imply guilt where there is none. When investigators have mountains of data on a particular target, it’s easy to see only the data points that confirm their theories — especially in counterterrorism investigations when the stakes are so high — while ignoring or downplaying the rest. There doesn’t have to be any particular malice on the part of investigators or analysts, although prejudice no doubt comes into play, just circumstantial evidence and the dangerous belief in their intuition. Social scientists refer to this phenomenon as confirmation bias, and when people are confronted with data overload, it’s much easier to weave the data into a narrative that substantiates what they already believe. Criminologist D. Kim Rossmo, a retired detective inspector of the Vancouver Police Department, was so concerned about confirmation bias and the investigative failures it causes that he warned police officers in Police Chief magazine to always be on guard against it.

“The components of confirmation bias,” he wrote, “include failure to seek evidence that would disprove the theory, not utilizing such evidence if found, refusing to consider alternative hypotheses and not evaluating evidence diagnosticity.”

To get a better sense of the dangers, consider the case of Brandon Mayfield.

Mistaken identity

On March 11, 2004, Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists coordinated a massive bombing of the Madrid commuter train system during the morning rush hour, killing 193 people and wounding approximately 1,800. Two latent fingerprints recovered during the investigation on a bag of detonators by the Spanish National Police (SNP) were shared with the FBI through Interpol. When the prints were run through the bureau’s database, it returned 20 possible matches for one of the fingerprints, one of whom was Brandon Mayfield. A former U.S. Army platoon leader, Mayfield was now an attorney specializing in child custody, divorce and immigration law in Portland, Ore. His prints were in the FBI system because of Mayfield’s military service as well as an arrest two decades earlier because of a misunderstanding. The charges were later dropped.

Despite finding that Mayfield’s print was not an identical match to the print left on the bag of detonators, FBI fingerprint examiners rationalized away the differences, according to a report by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Under the one discrepancy rule, the FBI lab should have concluded Mayfield did not leave the print found in Madrid — a conclusion the SNP reached and repeatedly communicated to the FBI. The FBI’s Portland field office, however, used that fingerprint match to begin digging into Mayfield’s background. Certain details of the attorney’s life convinced the agents that they had their man. Mayfield had converted to Islam after meeting his wife, an Egyptian. He had represented one of the Portland Seven, a group of men who tried to travel to Afghanistan to fight for al Qaeda and the Taliban against U.S. and coalition forces in a child custody case. He also worshipped at the same mosque as the militants. In the aftermath of 9/11, these innocent associations and relationships, however tangential, were transformed by investigators into evidence that Mayfield wasn’t a civic-minded American, but a bloodthirsty terrorist intent on destroying the West. 

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Spanish royalty in the dock: Princess Cristina fraud case opens

Comment: I dread to think what goes on with the British royalty and civil list ... If ever a stratum of folks lived in a different reality to most of us, its these people.  But they are all at it at one time or another. Money laundering and corruption is part and parcel of the socio-economic power structure they inhabit. So, I suspect there is a vendetta or some kind of example/warning being made perhaps. 

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The Independent

For more than six hours in Palma de Mallorca yesterday, Princess Cristina, daughter of King Juan Carlos and seventh in line to the throne, had the dubious honour of becoming the first direct member of the modern-day Spanish royal family to be questioned in court. 

Facing a summons over allegations of being complicit in her husband's alleged tax fraud and money laundering, the princess avoided a full 40-metre "perp walk" to the five-storey stone court house in central Palma in front of dozens of television crews. She and her husband refute all allegations and deny any wrongdoings.

For security reasons, she was driven to the court's back door then very briefly faced the cameras before entering, her black jacket and dark trousers as low-key as her arrival. Once inside, as she sat in a high-backed chair opposite investigating judge Jose Castro, remaining incommunicado was a less easy option. For weeks, Spain's media had speculated about every detail of the king's daughter's court appearance. In a display of the intensity of interest, one television company measured the distance between Cristina's chair and Judge Castro – 2m, 20cms.

In the closed hearing, Cristina was expected to explain how and why she and her husband Iñaki Urdangarin racked up considerable personal expenses on a company credit card. The company in question, Aizoon, may have acted as a "shell" for laundering around ¤6m (£5m) of public money, allegedly acquired by Mr Urdangarin and his former business partner, Diego Torres, through a non-for-profit institute, Noos, in a separate case where Urdangarin faces possible accusations of tax evasion, falsification of documents and embezzlement. Princess Cristina has been cleared in the "Noos case".

Co-owned by Cristina and her husband, Aizoon outlays allegedly ranged from renovation of the family home in Barcelona – seized by the courts after her husband failed to post a bond for ¤6m in the Noos case – to a cocktail party costing ¤4,591, salsa classes and Harry Potter books. "She is acting very calmly, she's well-prepared," one lawyer at the hearing was reported as saying. That she had to make her declaration below a portrait of her father King Juan Carlos – present in all Spanish courts – was a reminder of the effects of the case for Spain's monarchy.

Once Europe's most beloved royal family, a series of public relations blunders and the drip-feed of lurid headlines surrounding the Urdangarin case have damaged their popularity. In 1998, El País reported yesterday, 78 per cent of Spaniards were in favour of the monarchy and 11 per cent preferred a republic. By 2012, 53 per cent remained pro-royal, while the pro-republican vote had more than tripled – to 37 per cent.

Yesterday, a noisy anti-royal demonstration was kept well away from the court, behind barriers. The closest streets to the court were closed and some 200 police officers had been drafted in. Not everybody was complaining, though. Enterprising flat owners had rented balconies overlooking the court at up to ¤1,500 a day. "A case like this may not sink the monarchy, but it's damaged their prestige," said Patricia Felix Navarro, a teacher, before the hearing. "Cristina is just another citizen and if I pay my taxes and obey the law, then so should she and her husband."

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Clashes in Madrid as protest over govt spending spreads to 46 cities

RT

Rallies that started in the Spanish city of Burgos have spread nationwide, including Madrid, leading to 14 arrests in the capital. The initial protest to a costly government project quickly infected other cities in the recession-stricken country.

The capital, Madrid, saw one of 46 protests take place in Spain on Wednesday.

There, several hundred people came out onto Puerta del Sol square in the city center in support of those who had been gathering in Burgos’ Gamonal district for about a week to protest the government’s plans to re-model a street, as well as its brash spending in times of economic difficulties for the country. 

But the protest in Madrid quickly turned into a riot, resulting in several dozen of the more radical protesters clashing with the police, several hours later in the afternoon. 

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Spain's Princess Cristina Charged With Tax Fraud And Money-Laundering

Reuters

MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish judge charged Princess Cristina - younger daughter of King Juan Carlos - with tax fraud and money laundering, possibly paving the way to an unprecedented trial of a member of the royal family, the Superior Justice Tribunal of the Balearic Islands said on Tuesday.

After a lengthy investigation, Palma de Mallorca Examining Magistrate Jose Castro said in a 200-page ruling there was evidence that Cristina, 48, had committed crimes and summoned her to appear in court on March 8.

The princess's husband, former Olympic handball player Inaki Urdangarin, has been charged with fraud, tax evasion, falsifying documents and embezzlement of 6 million euros ($8 million) in public funds through his charitable foundation which put on sports business conferences in Mallorca and elsewhere in Spain.

The princess and Urdangarin both deny wrongdoing.

The case is one of many high-level corruption scandals in Spain that have undermined Spanish faith in public institutions at a time of severe economic crisis marked by deep cuts in public spending.

Opinion of the royal family in particular has sunk to its lowest level ever. A Sigma Dos poll published on January 5 showed more than 83 percent of Spaniards think the royal family has mishandled the Urdangarin case and an unprecedented 62 percent want the once-popular King Juan Carlos to abdicate.

Judge Castro, who opened his investigation into the royal couple three years ago, has struggled to make charges stick against Princess Cristina.

In April last year he ruled there was evidence that she had aided and abetted Urdangarin. A higher court threw out those charges in May, saying the evidence was not sufficient, but gave Castro more time to investigate an accusation of tax fraud.

In bringing the new charges, Castro went against the recommendations of the anti-corruption prosecutor on the case who in December argued there was no evidence she committed crimes.

In Spain the prosecutor and the judge on a case carry out separate investigations and may disagree on proceedings. The princess is expected to appeal the charges and they could be thrown out again, or the judge may be given a period of several months to build his case ahead of trial.

While they have been under investigation, the princess and her husband have ceased to participate in public appearances. She and the couple's four children moved last year to Geneva where she works for a Spanish bank's charity. Urdangarin remains in Spain.

The case is centered on Urdangarin's non-profit Noos Foundation. He is accused of using his powerful connections to win public contracts to put on events in Mallorca and elsewhere in Spain. 

The judge has said there is evidence that the foundation overcharged for organizing conferences and then hid the proceeds abroad.

The Shift towards an Authoritarian Future: Why the West Slowly Abandons its Civil Liberties

  V-For Vendetta (2006)

RINF Alternative News
Werner de Gruijter, Arnout Krediet and Sven Jense 

Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic who construct an image of toughness – tough on crime, on terrorism, on humanistic-inspired idealism etc. – are tapping into a sensitive spot that blocks critical thought among the public. Obama‘s brute and harsh reaction on Edward Snowden‘s revelations is just another example. Somehow it seems like ,,We, the people…” lost track of ourselves. Four main reasons why we abandon our once hard fought civil rights.

Many countries in the West, like Britain, France, Spain the US and the Netherlands have experienced in recent years an exponential increase in technological surveillance and a resolute decline in parliamentary and judicial control over state police and secret service. Issues like the ban on torture, the possibility of detention without charge, privacy and freedom of speech were in the public debate reframed in favour of state control. And everybody accepted it. To be fair, there was some opposition – but it lacked intensity. Why is this happening?

To give an example, under former British Prime Minister Tony Blair 45 criminal laws were approved creating 3000 new criminal offences. British writer John Kampfer argues that in the past ten years more criminal offences were made in his country than in a hundred years before. All this was legitimized by the idea that a ‘terroristic’ virus attacked Western civilization. Of course, there is some truth in it – but these risks were grossly exaggerated. Still, we fearfully went along with the proposed measures.

This cultural shift towards perhaps a more authoritarian future for the West is no coincidence of nature. It is manmade. If the opportunity is there, top down induced shifts happen only if politicians, corporations, media pundits and other cultural icons are able to find the right symbols and techniques to get a new message across.

But first, besides these techniques, famous American psychologist Abraham Maslow is probably aware that there is also something else which stimulates our apathy in this respect. He signified the importance of leisure time for our own personal well being as well as for the well being of the community as a whole – it creates so to speak the possibility to make well informed decisions. 

Currently our leisure time is under assault. Thirty years of income stagnation in the midst of rising prices – people have to struggle to earn a living – meant that for most of us there is less time for critical thought.

But it has even been made harder to reflect on important issues since politicians and opinions leaders use marketing tools in order to seduce. Remember that soon after the 2008 banking bailout the discussion was reframed in such a way that government spending instead of the unregulated financial sector itself, was the root cause of all ‘evil’ – this message was repeated like a commercial, over and over again. This technique of repetition effectively neutralizes critical thinking. Hence, Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebels, was on to something when he famously stated: ,,If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Long after Goebbels died, psychologists experimentally discovered that it is a natural tendency of human beings to react more receptive to whatever kind of message the more they are exposed to it. They call this ,,the law of mere exposure”. We should question ourselves if this habit is healthy for our general welfare.

Furthermore, psychologists discovered that our ability to think critically is severely limited when we act under stress. Frightened people tend to perceive reality through a prism of simple right and wrong answers, leaving the complexities aside. Scared, we are easily fooled. Politicians and corporations can’t resist the temptation to manipulate this animal instinct – like when we started a war without having been shown any serious proof of its legitimacy.

One could expect that the mainstream media in its role as guard dog was attacking those politicians that create black & white polemics. However, currently most (privately owned) media echo the voice of corporations, which these days doesn’t differ much in substance from that of the government. As a result alternative and more nuanced voices are underrepresented in cultural discourse which, again, makes it harder to produce well informed decisions.

And, when considering the information that is filtered thru to a broad audience – one also notes the slow, but steady disappearing of the separation line between news media and entertainment. 

American academic Daniel Hallin argues that the average time for sound bites politicians are given in media performances has shrunk from forty seconds in the 1960s to ten seconds in 1988. Hallin’s crucial point is that he believes that the biggest victim of this still on going process is the careful scrutinizing of social problems. This results in so called ‘horse race’ news – news about politics presented as a game of ,,who’s the most witty” in which politicians try to be popular instead of reasonable. The blur of catchy one-liners reaching the audience creates a further alienation from reality.

Taken together an assault on leisure, repetition of information, fear policies and the transformation of our media outlets from guard dogs to lap dogs create a situation wherein our spirit for the common good slowly dissolves into an ocean of noise, distraction and misinformation.

Meanwhile, the social environment which politicians, corporations and media gurus are constructing produces anxieties and illusions in order to make profits or political gains. Together these social forces act as a gravitational pull for government and corporate empowerment. That is to say, they pull away strength from the people to participate in the maintenance of a mentally healthy, meaningful democratic environment.

Thomas Jefferson once argued that a government should fear the power of the people. In that respect the apathy with which the audience in general responds to the revelations of Snowden is a cynical demonstration of our time frame. Although, however little, a message this confronting does still stir society a tiny bit. We are not completely brain-dead – and there is some hope in that. 

Probably the best question contemporary Westerners can ask themselves is: will today’s power structure be able to obscure these clear violations of human civil rights or is this message too loud to ignore? 

Or to say it more bluntly than that: will there be a transition to a meaningful democracy in the West or to an advanced form of authoritarianism? What’s your point of view…

Spanish police arrest 25 in 'Nigeria sex-trafficking ring'

 

 More than 100 vans were also seized, filled with high-end goods

BBC News

Spanish police say they have arrested 25 people in a sex-trafficking ring that brought women from Nigeria to work as prostitutes.

The women, allegedly lured with the promise of good jobs in Europe, were first flown to Mexico or Brazil, travelling on false identity documents.

From there, they were flown to Paris, then smuggled into Spain to work in the sex trade, police say. Five women who were victims of the sex ring were freed in the raids. 

Police found one member of the gang performing an abortion on one of the five women, reports the BBC's Madrid correspondent, Tom Burridge.

Hidden goods
 
Arrests were made across Spain - in Madrid, Toledo, Cantabria and Palma de Mallorca.

More than 100 vans concealing luxury goods were also seized.

The gang used the vans to launder their profits and send them back to Lagos, police say.
The vans, with dark-tinted windows and welded doors, were stocked full of beer but had luxury items hidden deeper inside. 

Goods worth an estimated 5m euros (£4.1m; $6.6m) were found in 94 vans seized in Madrid and another 26 in the port of Valencia, including high-end televisions and cases of alcohol.

Police say the gang was formed more than 20 years ago in Nigerian universities and was also known for sending so-called Nigerian letters by email, asking recipients to send money.

Eight of the 25 people arrested were in Spain illegally, they say.

Spain's Stolen Babies

 BBC News

Spain is reeling from an avalanche of allegations of baby theft and baby trafficking. It is thought that the trade began at the end of the Spanish civil war and continued for 50 years, with hundreds of thousands of babies traded by nuns, priests and doctors up to the 1990s. This World reveals the impact of Spain's stolen baby scandal through the eyes of the children and parents who were separated at birth, and who are now desperate to find their relatives.

Exhumations of the supposed graves of babies and positive DNA tests are proof that baby theft has happened. Across Spain, people are queuing up to take a DNA test and thousands of Spaniards are asking 'Who am I?

Katya Adler has been meeting the heartbroken mothers who are searching for the children whom they were told died at birth, as well as the stolen and trafficked babies who are now grown up and searching for their biological relatives and their true identities.