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From: nd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Add to People Section To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Subject: A MUST READ: ISRAEL'S NEW ECONOMY AND THE INTIFADA MIME Ver: 1.0 Attachments: ISRAEL'S NEW ECONOMY AND THE INTIFADA: A note on the boycott campaign. by Naxos This article is Copyleft [see below] December 2001. At one end of London's Oxford Street the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has mounted a picket on Selfridge's department store, to persuade the management to stop selling produce from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. A similar campaign has been organised [March 2002] by Ya Basta in Italy (http://www.yabasta.it). In this article I take these actions as the starting point for a discussion of the radical transformations that have taken place in the Israeli economy during the past decade, and Israel's very specific location within the global knowledge economy. To Summarise: I would argue that Israeli capitalism of today offers a precious microcosmic possibility for the study of immaterial labour in action. It is also crucial that we understand this economy, because in a real "world war" sense our futures depend on what is happening here. In recent years the Israeli economy has undergone fundamental changes. An entirely new class composition was created by the ex-Soviet migrations of the 1990s. Markets for traditional Israeli produce became more restricted. The Internet created the conditions for transnational exports of high-value immaterial labour (knowledge) products to replace previous low-value products with high transit costs. And the nature of the new knowledge economies opened new interstitial possibilities for insertion. A new and technically skilled workforce proves capable of creating the flows of innovation that are the precondition for the survival of the large capitalist firms of this and the preceding era (head-hunting of promising new start-ups). Among other things, Israeli companies are particularly well-suited to meet the new demand for biomedical products. They also have a powerhouse of R&D represented by the Israeli Defence Force's high-tech academies. And they have a guaranteed point of entry into the US military-industrial complex by virtue of lines of communication between "Silicon Valley" and the "Silicon Wadi" of Northern Israel. More than this, Israel also exports models of behaviour ñ biopower ñ in the form of knowledges of how to limit, constrain and eventually crush dissident behaviours. This is marketed as "methods for defeating terrorism", but is in fact a set of methods for the creation and freezing of an adversarial "other". I shall deal with each of these aspects in turn. In passing I would say that this conjunctural shift in the Israeli economy, this radical change in the composition of both class and capital in Israel, have been the necessary precondition for ñ and partial explanation of ñ the Israelis' radical break with the Palestinian labour-power which had served previous phases of production (notable in agriculture and construction). Put briefly, the inflow of Soviet ("Russian") Jews made possible the break with Palestinian labour power. And simultaneously the Soviet Jews have turned out to be the electoral bedrock of the Israeli government's "final solution" for the Palestinians. Thus the political and economic precondition for Israelís radical break with Palestinian labour-power was the shift from traditional forms of agriculture and manufacture into the arena of immaterial labour which took place in the 1990s. But more than that, I would argue that the Israelis' war with the Palestinians operates as a "factory of immaterial labour export possibilities". This war is, in a real sense, productive for the Israeli economy. Calls for boycotts of Israeli produce are symbolically significant and completely worthwhile. A necessary element of ethical hygiene. They should be supported. But the way in which the campaign is framed is simple-minded to the point of naivety. We are not talking a few packets of pretzels, a crate of Jaffa oranges and a face-pack of cosmetics. Two things need to be said. First, Israel's new immaterial economy and its immaterial-labour products are organically integrated into the very highest levels of the globalised high-tech communications, military and security economy. Second, and perhaps more importantly it appears that the trade-mark Israeli model of suppression of opponents has been exported and projected onto the world stage, to become the dominant paradigm of US foreign policy. The characteristics of this model are (a) radical negation of the Other (for several decades, in Israeli discourse the Palestinians have always and only been "the terrorists"; (b) Preventive security strikes, extending increasingly to assassination; (c) micro-level capillary monitoring of populations at all levels, and installation of administrative and technological means to that end; (d) intransigent and defiant unilateralism. We are at a crucial turning point. After the first phase of the Afghan war world opinion seemed to be expecting a Powellisation of Israeli policy (towards negotiation). Instead we have seen a Sharonisation of American policy [Note 1]. 1. The necessity of leaving the old economy. A large part of Israelís ìold economyî consisted of agricultural products. Citrus fruits in particular. ìTwenty years ago Israelís main industry was oranges.î By the early 1950's, fuelled by mass immigration and large capital investments, the citrus subsector grew rapidly. Hectarage rose from 14,000 to over 40,000 hectares. With the well respected "Jaffa" label Israeli oranges and grapefruit dominated many markets. However, by the late 1970's stiff competition from Spain, Morocco and Cyprus and changing consumer tastes led to a levelling off of demand. The 1980's saw a major decline in international competitiveness and profitability with more than 20% of its planted citrus area uprooted, packing houses mothballed and volume levels falling to 1930's levels. Several factors led to Israel's decline. These included:- a) rapid cost inflation in the mid 1980's; b) the strength of the $US vis ý vis European currencies; c) a rise in international shipping costs in the early 1980's; d) financial crisis within Israel's agricultural settlements. [Note 2] We may also adduce the resulting dependence on Palestinian or foreign migrant labour; the use of agricultural land for housing (eg in Jaffa); susceptibility to international trade boycotts; and the fact that water is a military resource in the Middle East. Exporting oranges is to export water. I shall not deal here with the question of the diamond trade, except to note that it lies at the heart of some of the warmongering which is destroying a good part of Africa. For example the gangster economy in Sierra Leone, and in Liberia "a major centre for massive diamond-related criminal activity, with connections to guns, drugs and money-laundering throughout Africa and considerably further afield. Diamonds are a key part of Israel's economy. [Note 3] 2. The material precondition for a new economy The first precondition for the ìnew economyî is highly skilled technical labour-power. That was provided by the mass arrival of the ìRussianî Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union. Coming in two distinct waves, with the second in the 1990s. Upwards of 600,000 arrived, and many of them were highly skilled personnel ñ doctors, lawyers, musicians, scientists and computer programmers. More than 13,000 doctors arrived in Israel, more than half of them women. The health service could only absorb 20%, leaving the rest excess to requirements and needing to be redeployed elsewhere. The ìRussiansî constituted 15% of the 4.5 million electorate, had their own political parties, and were notoriously hostile to any negotiation with the Palestinians. A further 600,000 went to the USA and settled in the Los Angeles area. In 1999 an article in the Los Angeles Magazine spoke of an emerging Russian underworld in the LA region: ìThey come from a dog-eat-dog ëdemocracyí where the shortest books in the library are the ones on business ethics and criminal justice, theyíre not only tougher and slyer, but their crooks, according to our cops, are the smoothest thing since iced vodka.î [Note 4] In LA there was talk of a Russian mafia, with organised gangs involved in kidnappings, financial fraud and Internet crime. Some of this talk has since been denounced as racist. However the newly emerging transnational diasporic Israelo-American nexus constituted by "the Russians" clearly invites analysis. A job for another time. 3. Conjunctural factors in the promotion of high-tech sectors The global ìknowledge economyî took off in the 1990s. Special factors applied in Israel, assuring the rapid growth of a networked society. During the Gulf War the threat of Iraqi rockets and gas/biological weapons set in place ìnational emergency planningî, whereby communities used Internet and related technologies as a means of civil defence, thereby turning Israel into one of the worldís most wired societies. By law, all Israeli houses built since the Gulf War are required to have a secure room that can function as a shelter against terrorist attack. Israel is also dotted with ìneighbourhood response centresî ìLocated in the basement of a community center, the command room is staffed by citizen volunteers and army conscripts. Radios and ubiquitous cell phone links, as well as homing beacons and microphones built into settlersí cars, allow travellers to be closely tracked, and let authorities know right away when trouble is developing.î [Note 5] The presence of excesses of skilled and unemployed immigrant labour was a pressure in the direction of innovation. By its nature the emerging immaterial sector of the Internet and communications was a huge, lumbering thing, open to experimentation, but most of all subject to the pressures of its own growth. In growing very big very fast it opened interstitial possibilities for small start-up companies. There was a huge need for innovation. Small start-up companies could get big very fast. And intelligent applications were required in order to clear the blockages imposed by the scale of the sectorís growth. ìWith revenue growth for PC chips slowing, communication chips have become the hottest growth area in the semiconductor market [...] ëThe driving force is the increased demand for bandwidth in every aspect of communications, whether itís home users accessing the Internet, providing a corporation, or the emerging demand in the third world. The demand is literally everywhere.î[Note 6] This sector has a strong presence of start-up companies in Israel. The US-based giant Intel, suffering from the drop in demand for PC chips, moved to buy up communication-chip companies. By 2002 Intel-Israel, with 5,0005 employees in Jerusalem, Haifa and Kirya Gat, had exports of $2 billion, compared with $810m the previous year, a growth deriving from the opening of a new plant at Kiryat Gat.[Note 7] The Israeli government provided favourable terms and conditions for high-tech start-up companies, creating ìtechnological incubatorsî in areas such as Yokneam. The Israeli company DSP, which has developed chips used in wireless and mobile phone communications, was recently sold to Intel for $1.6 billion.[Note 8] At this point a large part of Israeli intervention in the high-tech sector was interstitial ñ seeking emerging niche possibilities within the overall growth of the sector: For instance when ìYear 2000î (Y2K) emerged internationally as a problem area, Israeli company Sapiens International [Note 9] built a Year 2000 remediation niche and staffed it almost entirely with immigrant Russian programmers. These were people who had worked for Soviet governments building computer systems for the railway, oil and auto industries. About 70 of Sapiensí s 100-strong staff were emigrÈ Soviet Jews. The firm also applied itself to another window of conjunctural opportunity ñ Europeís changeover to the euro currency. And it built a specialisation in converting computer systems from old languages into new languages (converting assembler code into C code).[Note 10] Remediation was a key word at this stage ñ upgrading and problem-solving in older computer systems. This new Israeli high-tech sector operated through the extended networks of the Jewish diaspora, seeking opportunities for fleet-footed action and innovation. In a sense the diaspora offers a metaphor for the new realities of the cybertariat within immaterial labour. Networks and connections meant that the ìSilicon Wadiî which emerged in Israel became a fundamental, necessary and integrated part of the ìSilicon Valleyî operating in the USA. The technology park at Yokneam, for instance, has a twinning relationship with St Louis. The American-Israel Chamber of Commerce organises trade visits of small Israeli companies to St Louis, where future trade relations are developed with the likes of Boeing. Similar trips were organised by the AICC of Minnesota, which has the four largest medical devices companies in the world (and the Israeli immaterial labour sector is developing a strong presence in biomedicals and high-tech healthcare ñ see below) [Note 11]. 4. Israel as a military economy Israel is a highly militarised society. Decades of war (against the British, against the Arabs, and internal war against the Palestinians) has created a powerhouse of military techniques and technologies. These include hardware (rockets, bombs, guns and ammunitions) and systems (integrated battlefield computer systems), and also the ìbio-powerî spin-off of the production of mindsets, philosophies and ways of being in the world. Israel Military Industries was founded in 1933, producing munitions to fight the British. In 1990 it became a government owned corporation. A 4,000 workforce, of whom over half are engineers, scientists and technology experts. It recruits top-level skilled personnel, the product of Israelís prestige military academies. As well as traditional armaments, it also has a telecomms subdivision, IMI Telecom, which ìspecialises in the field of telecommunications and electronic commerceî.[12] Capitalising on its unique experience as a wired society geared to daily disaster mitigation and capillary counterinsurgency, it was well placed to exploit the niche offered by Americaís vulnerability to the attacks of September 11. On 5 February 2002 it organised an international ìNational Emergency Managementî seminar for foreign local and national governments and private companies. In a real sense this is an Israeli export of imaterial labour. As is the output of another of its ìfactoriesî ñ the IMI Academy for Advanced Security and Anti-Terror Training, a large campus with an interdisciplinary team of instructors who are ìall former commanders from elite Israeli security unitsî.[Note 13] To this extent we can say that the Israelisí war against the Palestinians is effectively a productive sector, a factory of expertises and techniques which are then marketed worldwide. Another case in point is Krav Maga. This is a self-defence martial arts technique. Created and developed by the Israeli Army, Krav Maga is not only the official combat system of the Israeli Army, but is also taught in Israeli schools as part of the curriculum. It has a characteristically Israeli vocation of democracy: "It is our belief that everybody, no matter what age, weight, gender or body type, has the right to defend themselves and their loved ones." The method was developed to suit everyone ñ men, women, children, old people ñ as a way of saving their own lives or minimising harm from attack. It developed originally in the 1940s, in training elite units of the Hagana and Palmach, and embodies "preventive self-defence". It is a stance, a whole way of being in the world, based on objective paranoia and pre-emptive preparedness. Ariel Sharon (formerly of the Hagana) is of this school. I suggest that as well as being exported to the world as a martial arts technique, this stance is being marketed as a geopolitical product.[Note 14] 5. Israelís integration into the US military-industrial complex The Gulf War provided moments of both tension and cooperation between Israel and the US military-industrial complex. As the price for Israeli restraint and inactivity in the face of incoming Iraqi missiles, the US and Israeli military collaborated in the production of anti-missile devices. One of these (designed to combat Katyusha missiles incoming from S. Lebanon) was the Tactical High-Energy Laser (THEL). However there are also tensions. Ehud Barak was forced by Bill Clinton to renege on a contract with China, already signed, for supply of Phalcon AWACS surveillance systems.[Note 15] The business opportunities accruing to Israel from the September 11 attacks includes interest in a ìrevolutionary explosives sniffer deviceî ñ again a spin-off from Israelís war with the Palestinians. The MS-Tech company developed the ìMini-Nose for Detectionî with 80% of the funding being provided by the US Department of Defense and theMinistry of Defense. Company founder Moses Shalom is also negotiating with Ion Track Instruments, which provides security systems for the perimeters of jails.[Note 16] What is more interesting than these public manifestations of collaboration is what happens behind the scenes in universities and research institutes. One of the new paradigms of military thinking is C3I ñ command, control, communications and intelligence ñ operating in cyberspace. "The rapid progress in computer power and miniaturization in the 1980s and 1990s made it possible to think of introducing computers and computerized systems into every element of combat, including the complex and often incoherent environment of gound battlesÖ Every component of US military forces is now being designed and rebuilt around computerized weapons, systems, and C3I".[Note 17] It is no surprise that the Israeli military plays a role in the development of these US military systems. Intelligence Online reported in 2000 that "The US concern Mercury ComputerSystems, a leading manufacturer of computers able to gather and analyse signal intelligence, has just signed a $1.2 million contract with Israel's defence ministry" for research collaboration.[Note 18] Israel is known for its military academies which provide advanced research bases for the cream of the countryís high-tech personnel. However this ìnationalî personnel operates within the global context of the diaspora, and is equally at home in the military-industrial complex of the USA. A detailed search through lists of US university personnel would throw up many people who trained initially in Israel and then moved to the US to pursue further studies. One person whose research has both an Israeli and a US dimension is Professor Ouri Wolfson of the University of Chicago at Illinois. His project funding ranges between the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Isaeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He has developed a DOMINO software, designed for tracking cars and aircraft, which was developed with the US Army Research Laboratories. Wolfsonís early research was in computer science at the Technion University of Haifa. (In a civilian spin-off from this, a company has been set to provide systems for lorry freight companies to track their vehicles). I suggest that this would be a good time to return to the 1960s US radical methodology of charting interlinking directorships between companies in order to establish the true nature of Israel's involvement in this newly-emerging global military-industrial economy. Some of this information can be gleaned from NASDAQ share flotation documents.[Note 19] 6. A medieval model The history of intellectual and scientific development of the medieval West cannot be written without acknowledging the key contribution of the Jewish intellectual diaspora in Andalus, Provence and elsewhere. The Ibn Tibbon family, with their translations of Greek scientific texts mediated through the Arabs, and the school of Jewish mathematicians, c.1250-1350. Their contribtion the productive and military techniques and technologies of their time was immense. The Prophatian Quadrant (a remodelling of the complex Arab astrolabe onto a device that was simply a piece of card and a bit of string) is one example, as theorised by Jakob ben Mahir Ibn Tibbon.[Note 20] There are tantalising parallels with the globalised diasporic intelligentsia of today. One observer has suggested that the medieval Jews, with the daily realities of comercial life in the diaspora, were in a real sense the precursors of globalisation. As I suggest above, the Israeli capitalism of today ñ the extent of its global reach, the deterritorialised space in which it operates and the merceological nature of the commodities it produces ñ offers a precious microcosmic possibility for the study of immaterial labour in action within globalisation. 7. Visionics Inc ñ Biometrics as a growth sector The unexpected domestic vulnerabiliy of the US revealed by September 11 mant that fast responses were needed at the level of security. Paranoia, xenophobia and the fear of dying provided a massive market opportunity. The Airport Security Improvement Act (2001) was passed, requiring a dramatic upgrading of security systems. Into the picture steps Visionics Inc. This company produces face-recognition and fingerprint recognition equipment, based on the new science of ìbiometricsî. The chairman of Visionics Inc., Joseph Atick, lived in Israel (on the West Bank) till he was 15. He dropped out of high-school and set about writing a large textbook on physics ñ in Arabic. He was accepted into the Maths programme of Stanford University in the US. And moved on from there to become professor at the Rockefeller University. The elements of diaspora, movement, Arabic, mathematics, university, radical conceptual innovation leading to new technologies are strikingly reminiscent of the medieval predecessors.[Note 21] Here science and mathematics are used to generate a police-state technology. The software and technology involved in these products have a strongly Israeli dimension. Biometrics is one of the fields being explored by Israeli software companies, and these in turn have a symbiotic relation with the Israeli military. One of the earliest uses of Visionics face recognition technology was to monitor the faces of commuting Palestinian day labourers at Israeli army checkpoints. An article describing this Israeli-American productive node as it operates in Minnesota speaks of "high-tech companies joining in a mad dash to develop and market a dazzling new generation of security devices". It is worth noting the extent, the depth of intellectual labour that has gone into this venture. We are just now at the point where our entire picture of the physical composition of the universe is being revised way from particles to superstrings. This is frontier science. Atick's work on biometrics and facial recognition derives precisely from his earlier work as a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, where he researched superstrings and the related theories of supersymmetry.[Note 22] 8. Loosening up the lumbering monster I referred above to the success of Israeli companies in the "increased growth in the demand for bandwidth in every aspect of communications". Characteristically, the boom new-technology economy has internal problems created by the very speed of its growth. A large, lumbering monster creates for itself blockages and restrictions which need to be overcome. This has proved a characteristic area of intervention by small Israeli start-up companies monitoring and removing problems of blockages of delivery, bottlenecks, restrictions of bandwidth etc. Speeding up the flow of information-as-capital. The following is a small list of such ventures: Foxcom Wireless: Makes an RFiber optic-fibre product, which enables wireless technologies to operate in hard-to-reach urban and shadow areas such as railway stations, tunnels etc. Chiaro Networks: Uses the scalability of optic fibre to remove capacity bottlenecks from intersections of optical carrier backbones. Unique optical switching technology. These expand the availability of bandwidth. Xact Technologies: of Ramat Gan and Santa Clara: "A Santa Clara start-up" which monitors Internet customers' usage of the network on the basis of how much bandwidth they use. Like estimating a gas bill. The crucial aspect of Xact software is that it enables Internet usage to be monetised. Mavix: Produces a multimedia streaming system for monitoring and security. It routes all security inputs into one control unit. Can be used for surveillance of football stadiums, metros, ferries, prisons etc. Mercado Software: A product entitled Intuifind which adds more refined searchability to e-commerce search engines. Integrated search and browse facilities. Sapiens International: Specialises in programmes that gather discrete packets of information and shuttle them around at speed. For instance, remediation of insurance quotation systems, where installation of new systems would be hugely expensive. Operates via internetted cyberspace conferencing for its global marketing.[23] 9. Biomedical production As we know, the concept of immaterial labour extends far into the fields of the caring and the corporal, and here too Israeli companies have made major interventions. This development is driven in part by commercial spin-out interests of teaching-hospitals in Israel, and in part by the excesses of medical skilled labour-power in-migrating from the Soviet Union in the 1990s.[Note 24] "The evolution of new medical device companies in Israel continues its unabated growth, spurred by the influx of highly trained immigrants in the physical, biological and engineering sciences, and expanding sources of capital from venture firms in Israel and the US, as well as from corporate strategic partners." [Note 25] This growth is so marked that the multinational pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson maintains a permanent office in Israel to search for start-up companies in which to invest. The following is a small list of such ventures. As is the case with the companies cited above, most of these companies have one foot in Israel and the other in the USA, clearly catering to the massively emerging US market for health products. Applied Spectral Imaging: Techniques for treating retinal eye diseases that otherwise might lead to blindness. Biocontrol: An electronic device to control urinary incontinence. Vision Cure: Implantable telescopic lenses for treatment of macular degeneration. Or Sense: A non-invesive technology to measure cholesterol levels and blood viscosity. Novamed: Clinical diagnostic tests. Transdermics: Through-the-skin non-invasive drug delivery technology. Advanced Monitoring Systems: Home-use salival testing techniques, to monitor safe levels of drug administration. It is important to stress that in no sense are these "caring and sharing" technologies separate from the military industrial complex outlined above. For instance: Given Imaging has delivered a pill-sized capsule for transmitting pictures as it passes through the patient's intestine. This is a spin-off from a CMOS device developed by NASA. Galil Medical: Cryosurgery techniques which enable minimally invasive treatment of prostate cancers. This is an outgrowth of the Rafael Development Corporation, the largest R&D organisation in Israel, which seeks commercial applications of defence technologies. We should also be in no doubt about the radicality of some of these interventions. They will affect our lives fundamentally. For instance, I have spoken of Israeli start-up projects involving the monitoring and resolution of problems of blockage and delivery. In this vein, Labour Control Systems of Nesher, Israel, has produced a vaginal electronic monitor which will reduce the need for frequent examination of dilation during child-birth. Such a process is likely to contribute immensely to the ongoing factoryisation of the birth process. 10. Back to the start In a moment it will be time to return to Oxford Street, December 2001. But first we should look at the case of one of the most famous Israeli new-technology start-ups. Mirabilis, founded by "legendary high-tech entrepreneur Yassi Vardi" produced an internet messaging system which identifies which of your Internet correspondents are on-line at any given time, and enables you to exchange messages with them.[Note 26] I imagine that this is a direct spin-off of Israeli electronic battlefield technology. The product was known as ICQ ("I-seek-you"). In a very short time Mirabilis built a community of users of over 50 million, covering most of Western Europe. In 1998 Mirabilis was bought by AOL.com, and the system became an industry standard in messaging technology. It is now part of the operating system of AOL, the world's biggest Internet, e-mail and chatroom operator. The most notable political characteristic of this Israeli export-product is that it disappears, it becomes invisible, it becomes grafted into the very flesh and bone of the operating systems of today's capitalism. In short, it is more or less immune from being boycotted. And that characteristic is shared by many of the products described above. Which brings us to Mercado Software, a company with Israeli roots and a Palo Alto headquarters. Mercado produces the Intuifind software system. This product is the outcome of advanced studies in psycholinguistics combined with new search-engine technologies. In provides an "intuitive and easy to navigate on-line shopping experience". Put briefly, on-line shopping is developing very fast. But the systems are stupid, monolithic and lumbering. A shop's catalogue may have many "lamps" in store, but if you search on-line for a "light" you will get no result. Therefore, teaming up with technology >from Backweb.com (Ramat Gan and San Jose), Intuifind has built a system "utilising more that 50 powerful linguistic knowledge banks, including stemming, spelling and thesauri, which help customers define requests in their own words." A truly immaterial labour product. This system has been installed at Macy's, Caterpillar, Sears, Blockbuster Video etc. And now the irony. At the same moment that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was picketing Selfridges Store against the sale of Israeli goods, at the other end of Oxford Street the John Lewis store (much frequented by Britain's liberal middle classes) was installing a new Israeli export product ñ Mercado's "Intuifind" search-and-shop technology ñ as a central part of its operating system. Grafted, invisible, immune to boycott. 11. A note on Jaffa Oranges To end, I would merely add that many people in the Internet community have had the experience of using the opportunites for anonymity which the Internet affords. Israeli capitalist companies are no exception. They begin their life as small locally-based Israeli start-ups. In no time at all they set up their websites. They provide themselves with a nominal HQ in the leafier high-tech glades of the USA and UK. They market their produce on-line, often by offering on-line cyberspace teleconferencing facilities which transcend national border problems. Then, very quickly, these companies merge, blend, are bought up by bigger non-Israeli companies. There is a tendency to conceal their "Israeli-ness", which anyway becomes effaced in the merger process. Thus they become a neutral capitalist product, free of the taint of association with the country in which they were produced. Incidentally, those among us who are boycotters of Jaffa oranges might note the following. On 27 December 2001 the Jerusalem Post reported that the Chinese government is negotiating "to market its own fruit under the Jaffa brand name and purchase the rights" from the Israeli Citrus Marketing Board. Jaffa is now playing the logo-game. So it could turn out to be a Chinese orange that you are boycottingÖ[Note 27] NOTES 1. Interview with Alain Joxe, Multitudes No. 7, Paris, December 2001. 2. S. Carter, Global Agricultural Marketing Management, FAO, Rome, 1997. Available on-line at http://www.fao.org. 3. "Criminal diamond trade fuels African war, UN is told", by Victoria Brittain, Guardian online edition, 13 January 2000. I cannot say whether Israeli companies are involved in the dirty side of this trade, but in 2000 the American Drug Enforcement Administration sent a team to train Israeli police in how to detect and seize money from drug dealing. Article in Intelligence Online, at http://www.indigo-net.com/intel.html. See also Note 19 below. 4. Thomas Cornay, in Los Angeles Magazine Internet edition, March 1999. 5. Eli Lehrer, in The American Enterprise Online, December 2001, p. 2. 6. "Specialty chips find their niche", by Wylie Wong, http://news.cnet.com, 5 April 1999. 7. Article at http://www.start-ups.co.il, 12 February 2002. 8. ibid. 9. The name itself suggests a vocation for globalised immaterial labour. http://www.sapiens.com 10. Article at http://www.cnn.com, 19 September 1999. 11. http://www.aiccmn.org 12. http://www.imi-israel.com 13. ibid. 14. http://www.krav-maga.com. There was a similar export of "stance" in Britain's global marketing of Margaret Thatcher's privatisation agenda in the 1990s. 15. Articles in Pravda On-line, 20 December 2001 and Arabicnews.com, 14 May 1999. 16. Dror Marom. ìUS Cos interested in Israelís MS-Tech explosives snifferî, http://new.globes.co.il, 18 December 2001. 17. Rochlin, Trapped in the Net, Princeton University Press, 1997. Online summary. 18. Article at Intelligence Online, at www.indigo-net.com/intel.html. 19. Where are they now? For instance, Tamir Segal, whose "Truster" technology featured in the Guardian On-line on 21 January 1998: "How much would you pay to know when people are lying to you? How about $149? Because that's what Israeli based Makh-Shevet is asking for a software package that turns your multimedia PC into a lie detector." The technology was "originally envisaged for the security forces at entry points into Israel (a military version is undergoing tests)". http://www.truster.com. And "Danny Yatom, who was forced to resign as head of Mossad last April following an abortive attempt by Israeli agents to assassinate Khaled Meshal, the political boss of Hamas, in Amman in September 1997, has switched to making a living in business." Yatom, "infamous for his creative torturing techniques and well known to many Palestinians who were tortured under his supervision" (Ghazi Saudi, article at http://star.arabia.com, November 2000) is cited in an exemplary article by Christian Dietrich, in connection with the firm Strategic Consulting Group, and its involvement in Kazakhstan, Algeria and "a large security project in Angola". Angola, significantly, is diamond country. Christian Dietrich, "Blood Diamonds: Effective African-based monopolies", in African Security Review, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2001, available at http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/ASR/10No3/Dietrich.html. 20. http://www.astrolabes.QUADRANT.HTM 21. International Herald Tribune, 23 January 2002. 22. Superstrings ñ http://www.sciam.com 23. Other Israeli high-tech companies which can be search-researched via the Internet include Opticom (integration of biometric technology), Shonut ñ Probabilistic Solutions Ltd (voice recognition, fingerprint analysis), TeKey (biometrics and human recognition simulation), Tadiran Co. ("over 40 years experience in military communications technology"), Proneuron, Net2Wireless, Batm Advanced Communications, Luz Industries, Mercury Interactive, Team Computers, and SAFe-Mail.. The strength of the Israelo-American diasporic nexus in military-security technologies can be gauged from the following. On 27 November 2001, BIO-key International (formerly the Israeli company SAC Technologies, optical fingerprint scanning, founded 1993) announced from its US headquarters in Minnesota that it was taking on former prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu as its Senior Strategy Advisor. "The current addition [sic] of his book "Fighting Terrorism" is a terrific example of the insights he possesses to combat terrorism and secure freedom for us all". Article at http://biz.yahoo.com/bw011127/272262_l.html. 24. See Note 10 above. 25. Jeffrey Berg, in The BBI (Biomedical Business International) Newsletter, September 2000. 26. Article at http://www.malibutel.com/mobilemediaworld/features/israeli.html. The AOL buy-out of Mirabilis was "an event which spurred Israel's high-tech frenzy". 27. Jerusalem Post Internet edition, 27 December 2001. +++++++++++++++++++++ Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided that the following notice is preserved. Copyleft Naxos Inc. [2002] You are encouraged to alter, edit and add to the material contained in this article and you may create further postings, but only on condition that the copyleft is preserved. 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