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Interview By Kourosh Ziabari

05 March, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 removed from power the U.S. ally Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the White House decided to impose economic sanctions on Iran to punish the Iranian people for the choice they had made. The only crime the Iranian people had committed was that they didn’t want to be under the umbrella of the U.S. imperialism anymore. However, in the recent decades, the United States intensified the sanctions on Iran and prodded its European allies to stop trading with Iran over the allegations that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. They couldn’t bring forward any evidence to substantiate their claim, but they’re tightening the grip on the Iranian people every day.

In order to study and investigate the impact of the sanctions on the Iranian people, the decision by some countries to evade them and the effects they’ll have on the future of Iran-West relations, we have began doing interviews with renowned academics, journalists and authors about the anti-Iranian sanctions and their different aspects.

We have sat down with the world-renowned French journalist and political activist Thierry Meyssan to discuss the sanctions. Meyssan is the founder and editor of the Voltaire Network, an independent news and analysis website which publishes articles and analyses in English, French, Deutsch and Italian. In 2002, Meyssan published his first book “9/11: The Big Lie” in which he argued that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by a fraction of the U.S. military industrial complex. The book was translated into 28 languages. He has also published 13 other books in French and English.

What follows is the text of Iran Review’s interview with Thierry Meyssan to whom we have talked about the anti-Iranian sanctions, their humanitarian impact, the effects of EU’s oil embargo on the continent’s economy, Israel’s war threats against Iran and the political treatment of international trading protocols by the U.S. and its allies.

Q: The United States and the European states pretend that their intention is to prevent Iran from getting access to nuclear weapons, but from what they’re doing in imposing sanctions on medicine, foodstuff and other consumer goods, it’s evident that they’re targeting the daily lives of the Iranian citizens. What’s your viewpoint on that?

A: I think there’s absolutely no connection between the claims of the United States and the Europeans, and what they’re doing. The claim that they want to prevent Iran from diverting to a military nuclear program is the only justification for the sanctions, but the sanctions are aimed at other purposes. There’s really no connection between the sanctions and what they claim.

Q: Are the sanctions meaningful and relevant in the context of the demands and standards of the globalized economy in the contemporary world?

 

A: Of course no. From one hand, you promote free trade, and from the other hand, you organize sanctions. But most important is that the sanctions are against the international law. The only regular sanctions are those which are decided by the Security Council. Any unilateral sanction is the violation of the human rights.

Q: Do you think that the process of passing Iran’s nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council was legal and lawful?

A: You can ask this question about Security Council’s performance on different topics. Why not about that? That’s only a way to legalize what is illegal.

Q: You already mentioned that the sanctions are against human rights. Isn’t the United States violating the essential rights of Iranian people through these sanctions while it claims that it cares for the protection of human rights across the world?

A: Sanctions are an act of war, and this is an aggression. They have also prohibited trade for medicine and it’s obvious that this is an attack on human rights and there’s no question about that. It’s very shocking to note that in the Western countries, the people don’t react to such aggressions.

Q: Some Russian officials, as well as a number of political commentators have affirmed that the objective of the sanctions is not only to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, but to create social unrest and bring about regime change in the country. Is this an accurate analysis?

A: I think that in the United States, there are some theories according to which, by imposing sanctions on a country, you will push the people to rise against their own government. This theory was first developed by the U.S. military to justify total war during the WWII. They wanted to pit the German people against the Nazi government. They continued with this stupid theory in different parts of the world, but it didn’t work all the time. However, they’re still teaching this theory in the military universities in the United States. They extended this theory to the sanctions, and now they have big sanctions against different countries, especially against North Korea with which they have already been at a war through these sanctions. They did the same to Cuba and now with Iran. But we can see that the result is always absolutely the opposite of what they expect of this theory.

Q: It can be seen that along with the expansion of the sanctions, the resistance of the Iranian nation has also increased. Do you think that the U.S. and its allies have succeeded in realizing their goal that is to bring the Iranian nation to its knees?

A: I think that there are two different aims for the sanctions. Firstly, some countries want to destroy the axis of resistance, and to prevent the expansion of the Islamic Revolution. But for other countries, the aim is only to maintain the colonial system and the big technological gap between the dominant nations and the dominated nations. So, all of them expect that the Iranian economy will quickly collapse, but what we can see is absolutely the contrary. You have to compare the situation of the economy of Iran with that of the other countries in the same part of the world. Some countries decided to make alliance with the United States to be sure they’ll not be attacked by it and expected that with the help of the United States, they will have economic progress. But now we can see that the economy of Iran is growing faster than them. And most importantly, the economy of the allies of the U.S. in this part of the world is always dependent on the West. But Iran now has its own industry and its own production in different fields. So, the U.S. allies made a bad choice. It was more difficult for the Iranians, but the results are much better.

Q: What do you think about the impact of EU’s oil embargo against Iran, especially in the wake of the current economic crisis? Some analysts believe that around 15 to 20 percent of the current price of the oil is a result of the sanctions. What’s your viewpoint on that?

A: When you decide to impose sanctions, it means that you want to stop trade between two countries. So, Iran is harmed by the sanctions, but the Western countries are also harmed by the sanctions. The sanctions mean suffering for the Western countries. You cut the hands of Iran [with the sanctions] but you also cut the hands of the other countries. Especially for the European countries which have long faced an economic crisis, the sanctions are obviously very costly. You know that the best example in France is the story of Peugeot. They decided to stop trade with Iran, while Iran was the best market for Peugeot. So, this pushed Peugeot to close some factories in France with a big problem of unemployment and what is strange in this story is that Peugeot doesn’t apply official sanctions. You have the Security Council sanctions, you have the unilateral sanctions of the EU and U.S. and now you have the private sanctions from big companies.

Q: Currently, some countries try to evade the sanctions and do trade with Iran, while a number of others prefer not to do so. So, the sanctions have turned into an opportunity for the countries which do business with Iran. What do you think about it?

A: This is absolutely true. Because all the countries are obliged to follow the sanctions of the Security Council, and the other sanctions including the unilateral and private sanctions are illegal. So, this opens up opportunities for the countries which respect the international law.

Q: It seems that through issuing repeated war threats against Iran, Israel intends to persuade the United States and EU to impose harsher sanctions against Iran and isolate the country. Is that true?

A: You can see that there’s now a big lobby called United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) which is running a campaign inside the United States and European Union for the increasing and addition of the sanctions and is campaigning for private sanctions, such as in case of Peugeot. What is surprising is that everybody says it’s an NGO. Of course it’s non-governmental in the United States, but in fact it is completely governmental. Interestingly, it’s titled United Against “Nuclear” Iran and not United Against “Military Nuclear” Iran. This group is led by former heads of intelligence services of different countries; you have Meir Dagan of Israel, former CIA director R. James Woolsey, former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove and former Director of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service August Hanning. So all this is a secret war against Iran using official legit.

Q: The United States, European states and Israel are trying to complement the sanctions with war threats and intelligence operations inside Iran, such as assassinating the nuclear scientists, and other acts of sabotage. Have they succeeded in realizing their goal that is to undermine Iran’s security?

A: This policy of targeted killing to impede the scientific and technological capabilities of Iran is a big failure. But this is really because of the reaction of the Iranian people. This technique would not work in Iran. Because in Iran, the young people have started a big movement to study high technologies to help the country; in a lot of countries, the students are undecided on what they want to learn for their future career. But here in Iran, we see the reaction of the people as a body to protect the country. So this policy won’t work.

Q: Cutting Iran’s access to such mechanisms as SWIFT, which is an international trading protocol, made some countries like the member states of the BRICS group to think of alternative mechanisms for doing business, because they think that the U.S. and its allies can overnight cut one country’s access to such mechanisms. Doesn’t the political treatment of such mechanisms endanger their credibility?

A: SWIFT and all these banking systems in the Western countries regulate the relationship between the different banks. They were organized after the World War II by General Eisenhower himself. Now if you do any big transaction between two banks in Europe, some media claim that they will be all monitored by the CIA. They know everything; every transferring of the secret money. They can blackmail the people they want; they can challenge every financial coalition. They can do everything with that. It’s a very bad idea to use SWIFT and the compensation chambers they have organized in Luxemburg and Belgium and it’s very important for the free countries to have an independent system not monitored by the U.S. and its allies.

Kourosh Ziabari is an award-winning Iranian journalist and media correspondent. He writes for Global Research, CounterCurrents.org, Tehran Times, Iran Review and other publications across the world. His articles and interviews have been translated in 10 languages. His website is http://kouroshziabari.com

By Hakim & The Afghan Peace Volunteers

04 March, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VW43_Y2qkWw

Two young Afghan boys herding cattle in Uruzgan Province of Afghanistan were mistakenly killed by NATO forces yesterday.

They were seven and eight years old.

Our globe, approving of ‘necessary or just war’, thinks, “We expect this to happen occasionally.”

Some say, “We’re sorry.”

Therefore today, with sorrow and rage, we the Afghan Peace Volunteers took our hearts to the streets.

We went with two cows, remembering that the two children were tending to their cattle on their last day.

We are those two children.

We want to be human again.

Don’t we see it? Don’t we hear it?

All of nature, the cows, the grass, the hills and the songs, crave for us to be human again.

We want to get out of our seats of pride and presumption, and give a cry of resistance.

We want the world to hear us, the voice of the thundering masses.

“We’re so tired of war.”

“Children shouldn’t have to live or die this way.”

“This hurts like mad, like the mad hurt of seeing a child being caned while he’s crying from hunger.”

“We have woken up, and we detest the method of mutual killing in war that the leaders of the world have adopted.”

We say, with due respect to the leaders, but with no respect for their or any act of violence, “We are very wrong. You are very wrong.”

“We cannot go on resolving conflicts this warring way.”

Unless we see the cattle’s submission upon being blown up to pieces, and understand the momentary surprise of the seven year old listening to music on his radio, and empathize with the eight year old who had taken responsibility for the seven year old, and weep torrentially with the mother of the children, we are at risk of losing everything we value within ourselves.

Hearing the NATO commander General Joseph Dunford say that they’re sorry makes us angry; we don’t want to hear it.

We don’t want ‘sorry-s’. We want an end to all killing. We want to live without war.

We want all warriors to run back anxiously to their own homes, and fling their arms around their sons and daughters, their grandsons and grand-daughters, and say, “We love you and will never participate in the killing of any child or human being again.”

In the days to come, we’ll remember the distraught mother and family of the two children.

We know they won’t eat, or feel like breathing or living. They will remember, yet not want to remember.

Their mother will feel like giving away tens of thousands of cows just so she can touch her two children’s faces again. No, she’ll not only touch their faces, she will shower them with the hugs and kisses only mothers can give.

Do not insult her grief or her poverty by giving her monetary compensation for her children.

If they were alive, they would say along with their mother, “We are not goods.”

We went out there with our hearts and two cows this morning. We stood in front of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, next to a trash-lined river no one wants to clean up, and we began to feel human again.

We had begun to cry for our world.

By Desmond Tutu

04 March 2013

@Guardian UK

    No nation should own nuclear arms – not Iran, not North Korea, and not their critics who take the moral high ground.

We cannot intimidate others into behaving well when we ourselves are misbehaving. Yet that is precisely what nations armed with nuclear weapons hope to do by censuring North Korea for its nuclear tests and sounding alarm bells over Iran’s pursuit of enriched uranium. According to their logic, a select few nations can ensure the security of all by having the capacity to destroy all.

Until we overcome this double standard – until we accept that nuclear weapons are abhorrent and a grave danger no matter who possesses them, that threatening a city with radioactive incineration is intolerable no matter the nationality or religion of its inhabitants – we are unlikely to make meaningful progress in halting the spread of these monstrous devices, let alone banishing them from national arsenals.

Why, for instance, would a proliferating state pay heed to the exhortations of the US and Russia, which retain thousands of their nuclear warheads on high alert? How can Britain, France and China expect a hearing on non-proliferation while they squander billions modernising their nuclear forces? What standing has Israel to urge Iran not to acquire the bomb when it harbours its own atomic arsenal?

Nuclear weapons do not discriminate; nor should our leaders. The nuclear powers must apply the same standard to themselves as to others: zero nuclear weapons. Whereas the international community has imposed blanket bans on other weapons with horrendous effects – from biological and chemical agents to landmines and cluster munitions – it has not yet done so for the very worst weapons of all. Nuclear weapons are still seen as legitimate in the hands of some. This must change.

Around 130 governments, various UN agencies, the Red Cross and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons are gathering in Oslo this week to examine the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons and the inability of relief agencies to provide an effective response in the event of a nuclear attack. For too long, debates about nuclear arms have been divorced from such realities, focusing instead on geopolitics and narrow concepts of national security.

With enough public pressure, I believe that governments can move beyond the hypocrisy that has stymied multilateral disarmament discussions for decades, and be inspired and persuaded to embark on negotiations for a treaty to outlaw and eradicate these ultimate weapons of terror. Achieving such a ban would require somewhat of a revolution in our thinking, but it is not out of the question. Entrenched systems can be turned on their head almost overnight if there’s the will.

Let us not forget that it was only a few years ago when those who spoke about green energy and climate change were considered peculiar. Now it is widely accepted that an environmental disaster is upon us. There was once a time when people bought and sold other human beings as if they were mere chattels, things. But people eventually came to their senses. So it will be the case for nuclear arms, sooner or later.

Indeed, 184 nations have already made a legal undertaking never to obtain nuclear weapons, and three in four support a universal ban. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of apartheid nigh, South Africa voluntarily dismantled its nuclear stockpile, becoming the first nation to do so. This was an essential part of its transition from a pariah state to an accepted member of the family of nations. Around the same time, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine also relinquished their Soviet-era atomic arsenals.

But today nine nations still consider it their prerogative to possess these ghastly bombs, each capable of obliterating many thousands of innocent civilians, including children, in a flash. They appear to think that nuclear weapons afford them prestige in the international arena. But nothing could be further from the truth. Any nuclear-armed state, big or small, whatever its stripes, ought to be condemned in the strongest terms for possessing these indiscriminate, immoral weapons.

By Marjorie Cohn

01 March, 2013

@ CommonDreams.org

Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty to 10 charges including possessing and willfully communicating to an unauthorized person all the main elements of the WikiLeaks disclosure. The charges carry a total of 20 years in prison. For the first time, Bradley spoke publicly about what he did and why. His actions, now confirmed by his own words, reveal Bradley to be a very brave young man.

When he was 22 years old, Pfc. Bradley Manning gave classified documents to WikiLeaks. They included the “Collateral Murder” video, which depicts U.S. forces in an Apache helicopter killing 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, and wounding two children.

“I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general as it applied to Iraq and Afghanistan,” Bradley told the military tribunal during his guilty plea proceeding. “It might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day.”

Bradley said he was frustrated by his inability to convince his chain of command to investigate the Collateral Murder video and other “war porn” documented in the files he provided to WikiLeaks. “I was disturbed by the response to injured children.” Bradley was bothered by the soldiers depicted in the video who “seemed to not value human life by referring to [their targets] as ‘dead bastards.’”

People trying to rescue the wounded were also fired upon and killed. The actions of American soldiers shown in that video amount to war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit targeting civilians, preventing the rescue of the wounded, and defacing dead bodies.

No one at WikiLeaks asked or encouraged Bradley to give them the documents, Bradley said. “No one associated with the WLO [WikiLeaks Organization] pressured me to give them more information. The decision to give documents to WikiLeaks [was] mine alone.”

Before contacting WikiLeaks, Bradley tried to interest the Washington Post in publishing the documents but the newspaper was unresponsive. He tried unsuccessfully to contact the New York Times.

During his first nine months in custody, Bradley was kept in solitary confinement, which is considered torture as it can lead to hallucinations, catatonia and suicide.

Bradley maintained his not guilty pleas to 12 additional charges, including aiding the enemy and espionage, for which he could get life imprisonment.

Bradley’s actions are not unlike those of Daniel Ellsberg, whose release of the Pentagon Papers helped to expose the government’s lies and end the Vietnam War.

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past President of the National Lawyers Guild, is the deputy secretary general for external communications of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd). Her anthology, The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse, is now available. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

1-3 March, 2013

@ counterpunch.org

Most Americans do not realize the extent to which the U.S. is becoming involved militarily in the welter of conflicts throughout Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa (check out the chaos as mapped here).

Although recent reports have tended to focus on the French effort to kick Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) out of Mali — an effort that may now be devolving into a far more complex guerrilla war, that French operation is just one operation in what may be shaping up to be a 21st Century version of the 19th Century Scramble for the resources of Africa. It’s a policy that, from the U.S. point of view, may not be unrelated to the pivot to China,  given China‘s growing market and aid presence in Africa.  Together, the scramble and the pivot will be sufficient to offset the near term effect of an sequester in the Pentagon with a torrent of money flows in the future.

Last year, Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post provided a mosaic of glimpses into the widespread U.S. involvement in Africa.  He authored a series of excellent reports, including here, here and here.  The map below is my rendering of the basing information in Whitlock’s report (and others), as well as the relationship between that basing information to distribution of Muslim populations in central Africa. Consider the distances involved in this swath of bases loosely portrayed by the red dots: the distance between these bases along the axis from northwest to southwest on the African continent alone is greater that the distance from New York to Los Angeles.  Think of the ethnic and tribal differences between Burkina Faso and Kenya, not to mention the differences within those countries!  And remember, virtually all of North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt is over 90% Muslim.

While the correlation between Muslim populations and our intervention activities in this variety of cultural mosaics will suggest a welter of differing messages to different audiences, one generalization is certain, given our recent history of intervention: Africom’s continuing presence and involvement will further inflame our relationship with militant Islam and perhaps the far larger number of moderate Muslims.

But think of the other possibilities for one’s imagination to run wild.  For example: In view of the recent Libyan adventure, conspiratorially-minded North African Islamic radicals (and moderates?) with a penchant for seeing visions in cloud formations may well interpret the swath of Africom’s bases structure in Sub-Saharan Africa as early bricks in the construction an anvil, against which, they will be smashed by a new generation of European neocolonialists, attacking from the north in obedience with the new “leading from behind” doctrine of President Obama.  Of course, given the distances involved and the porosity those distances imply, such divagations of the paranoid mind are silly from a military point of view.  But given the US’s murderous track record of lies in Iraq, incompetence in Afghanistan, and our blatant disregard for the Palestinians by constructing a peace processes that facilitated the growth of settlements in a forty-year land grab by Israel, that kind of characterization nevertheless will be grist for the propaganda mill as well as the fulminations of a paranoid mind.  And remember, just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you.

Another sense of the metastasizing nature of our involvement in Africa can be teased out of the leaden, terrorist-centric, albeit carefully-constructed verbiage in the prepared answers submitted by Army General David M. Rodriguez  to Senate Armed Services Committee in support of his 13 February 2013 confirmation to be the new commander of the  U. S. Africa Command or Africom. I urge readers to at least skim this very revealing document.

The terrorist “threats” in sub-Saharan Africa that are evidently so tempting to the neo-imperialists at Africom do not exist in isolation. They are intimately connected to the ethnic/tribal discontent in Africa, a subject alluded to but not really analyzed by Rodriquez or his senatorial questioners in their carefully choreographed Q&A.

Many of these tensions, for example, are in part a legacy of artificial borders created by the European interventionists of the 19th century. These interventionists deliberately designed borders to mix up tribal, ethnic, and religious groups to facilitate “divide and rule” colonial policies. The 19th Century colonialists often deliberately exacerbated local animosities by placing minorities in politically and economically advantageous positions, thereby creating incentives for seething discontent and payback in the future. Stalin, incidentally, used the same strategy in the 1920s and 1930s to control the Muslim soviet republics in what was formerly known as the Turkestan region of Central Asia. In the USSR, the positioning of the artificial borders among these new “Stans” were widely known as Stalin’s “poison pills.”

The hostage crisis at the gas plant in eastern Algeria last January illustrates some of the deeply-rooted cultural complexities at the heart of many of these conflicts. Akbar Ahmed recently argued this point in one of his fascinating series of essays published by Aljazeera.  This series, which I believe is very important, is based on his forthcoming book, The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a War on Tribal Islam, to be published in March by Brookings Institution Press.

Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is the former Pakistani high commissioner to the UK, and he now holds the the appropriately named Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, D.C.  Considered to be one of fathers of modern historiography and the social sciences, Ibn Khaldun is also one of history’s most influential scholars of  spontaneous nature of tribalism and its role in establishing social cohesion.  The central thrust of Professor Ahmed’s work is in that spirit.  He aims to explain why discontent is so widespread throughout the former colonial world and how it is partially rooted in a complex history of oppressions of ethnic groups and in tribal rivalries throughout the region. This has created a welter of tensions between the weak central governments of the ex-colonial countries and their peripheral minority groups and tribes. Ahmed argues that these tensions have been exacerbated by our militaristic response to 9/11. He explains why military interventions by the U.S. and former European colonial powers will worsen the growing tension between central governments and these oppressed groups.

Among other things, Ahmed, perhaps inadvertently, has laid out a devastating critique of US failure to abide by the criteria of a sensible grand strategy in its reaction to 9/11. By confusing a horrendous crime with an act of war, declaring an open ended global war on terror, and then conducting that war according to a classically flawed grand strategy that assumed “You are either with us or against us,” the US has not only created enemies faster than it can kill them, but in so doing, it has mindlessly exacerbated highly-volatile, incredibly-complex, deeply-rooted local conflicts and thereby helped to destabilize huge swathes of Asia and Africa.

Mindless? Consider please the following: Most readers of this essay will have heard of AQIM and probably the the Tuaregs as well. But how many of you have heard of the Kabyle Berbers and their history in Algeria? (I had not.)  Yet according to Professor Ahmed, a Kabyle Berber founded AQIM, and that founding is deeply-rooted in their historical grievances. So, there is more to AQIM than that of simply being an al Qaeda copycat. You will not learn about any of this from Rodriquez’s answers, notwithstanding his repeated references to AQIM and Algeria; nor will you learn anything about this issue from the senators’ questions.

You can prove this to yourself.

Do a word search of General Rodriquez’s Q&A package for any hint of an appreciation of the kind of complex history described by Ahmed in his Aljazeera essay, The Kabyle Berbers, AQIM, and the search for peace in Algeria. (You could try using search words like these, for example: AQIM, Kabyle, Berber, history, Tuareg, tribe, tribal conflict, culture, etc — or use your imagination). In addition to noting what is not discussed, note also how Rodriquez’s threat-centric context surrounding the words always pops up. Compare the sterility his construction to the richness of Ahmed’s analysis, and draw your own conclusions.  Bear in mind AQIM is just one entry in Africom’s threat portfolio. What do we not know about the other entries?

As Robert Asprey showed in his classic 2000 year history of guerrilla wars, War in the Shadows, the most common error made by outside interveners in a guerrilla war is succumbing to the temptation to allow their “arrogance of ignorance” to shape their military and political efforts.

Notwithstanding the arrogance of ignorance being reaffirmed in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, it is beginning to look like Asprey’s timeless conclusion will be reaffirmed Africa.

Franklin “Chuck” Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. He be reached at chuck_spinney@mac.com

 

 

 

By Marjorie Kelly

28 February, 2013

@ YES! Magazine

How cooperatives are leading the way to empowered workers and healthy communities

Pushing my grocery cart down the aisle, I spot on the fruit counter a dozen plastic bags of bananas labeled “Organic, Equal Exchange.” My heart leaps a little. I’d been thrilled, months earlier, when I found my local grocer carrying bananas—a new product from Equal Exchange—because this employee-owned cooperativeme outside Boston is one of my favorite companies. Its main business remains the fair trade coffee and chocolate the company started with in 1986. Since then, the company has flourished, and its mission remains supporting small farmer co-ops in developing countries and giving power to employees through ownership. It’s as close to an ideal company as I’ve found. And I’m delighted to see their banana business thriving, since I know it was rocky for a time. (Hence the leaping of my heart.)

I happen to know a bit more than the average shopper about Equal Exchange, because I count myself lucky to be one of its few investors who are not worker-owners. Over more than 20 years, it has paid investors a steady and impressive average of 5 percent annually (these days, a coveted return).

Maneuvering my cart toward the dairy case, I search out butter made by Cabot Creamery, and pick up some Cabot cheddar cheese. I choose Cabot because, like Equal Exchange, it’s a cooperative, owned by dairy farmers since 1919.

At the checkout, I hand over my Visa card from Summit Credit Union, a depositor-owned bank in Madison, Wis., where I lived years ago. Credit unions are another type of cooperative, meaning that members like me are partial owners, so Summit doesn’t charge us the usurious penalty rate of 25 percent or more levied by other banks at the merest breath of a late payment. They’re loyal to me, and I’m loyal to them.

On my way home, I pull up to the drive-through at Beverly Cooperative Bank to make a withdrawal. This bank is yet another kind of cooperative—owned by customers and designed to serve them. Though it’s small—with only $700 million in assets, and just four branches (all of which I could reach on my bike)—its ATM card is recognized everywhere. I’ve used it even in Copenhagen and London.

With this series of transactions on one afternoon, I am weaving my way through a profoundly different and virtually invisible world: the cooperative economy. It’s an economy that aims to serve customers, rather than extract maximum profits from them. It operates through various models, which share the goal of treating suppliers, employees, and investors fairly. The cooperative economy has dwelled alongside the corporate economy for close to two centuries. But it may be an economy whose time has come.

Something is dying in our time. As the nation struggles to recover from unsustainable personal and national debt, stagnant wages, the damages wrought by climate change, and more, a whole way of life is drawing to a close. It began with railroads and steam engines at the dawn of the Industrial Age, and over two centuries has swelled into a corporation-dominated system marked today by vast wealth inequity and bloated carbon emissions. That economy is today proving fundamentally unsustainable. We’re hitting twin limits, ecological and financial. We’re experiencing both ecological and financial overshoot.

If ecological limits are something many of us understand, we’re just beginning to find language to talk about financial limits—that point of diminishing return where the hunt for financial gain actually depletes the tax-and-wage base that sustains us all.

 

Here’s the problem: The very aim of maximum financial extraction is built into the foundational social architecture of our capitalist economy—that is, the concept of ownership.

If the root of government is sovereignty (the question of who controls the state), the root construct of every economy is property (the question of who controls the infrastructure of wealth creation).

Many of the great social struggles in history have come down to the issue of who will control land, water, and the essentials of life. Ownership has been at the center of the most profound changes in civilization—from ending slavery to patenting the genome of life.

Throughout the Industrial Age, the global economy has increasingly come to be dominated by a single form of ownership: the publicly traded corporation, where shares are bought and sold in stock markets. The systemic crises we face today are deeply entwined with this design, which forms the foundation of what we might call the extractive economy, intent on maximum physical and financial extraction.

The concept of extractive ownership traces its lineage to Anglo-Saxon legal tradition. The 18th century British legal theorist William Blackstone described ownership as the right to “sole and despotic dominion.” This view—the right to control one’s world in order to extract maximum benefit for oneself—is a core legitimating concept for a civilization in which white, property-owning males have claimed dominion over women, other races, laborers, and the earth itself.

In the 20th century, we were schooled to believe there were essentially two economic systems: capitalism (private ownership) and socialism/communism (public ownership). Yet both tended, in practice, to support the concentration of economic power in the hands of the few.

Emerging in our time—in largely disconnected experiments across the globe—are the seeds of a different kind of economy. It, too, is built on a foundation of ownership, but of a unique type. The cooperative economy is a large piece of it. But this economy doesn’t rely on a monoculture of design, the way capitalism does. It’s as rich in diversity as a rainforest is in its plethora of species—with commons ownership, municipal ownership, employee ownership, and others. You could even include open-source models like Wikipedia, owned by no one and managed collectively.

These varieties of alternative ownership have yet to be recognized as a single family, in part because they’ve yet to unite under a common name. We might call them generative, for their aim is to generate conditions where our common life can flourish. Generative design isn’t about dominion. It’s about belonging—a sense of belonging to a common whole.

We see this sensibility in a variety of alternatives gaining ground today. New state laws chartering benefit corporations have passed recently in 12 states, and are in the works in 14 more. Benefit corporations—like Patagonia and Seventh Generation—build into their governing documents a commitment to serve not only stockholders but other stakeholders, including employees, the community, and the environment.

Also spreading are social enterprises, which serve a social mission while still functioning as businesses (many of them owned by nonprofits). Employee-owned firms are gaining ground in Spain, Poland, France, Denmark, and Sweden. Still another model is the mission-controlled corporation, exemplified by foundation-owned companies such as Novo Nordisk and Ikea in northern Europe. While publicly traded, these companies safeguard their social purpose by keeping board control in mission-oriented hands.

If there are more kinds of generative ownership than most of us realize, the scale of activity is also larger than we might suppose—particularly in the cooperative economy. In the United States, more than 130 million people are members of a co-op or credit union. More Americans hold membership in a co-op than hold shares in the stock market. Worldwide, cooperatives have close to a billion members. Among the 300 largest cooperative and mutually owned companies worldwide, total revenues approach $2 trillion. If these enterprises were a single nation, its economy would be the 9th largest on earth.

Often, these entities are profit making, but they’re not profit maximizing. Alongside more traditional nonprofit and government models, they add a category of private ownership for the common good. Their growth across the globe represents a largely unheralded revolution.

What unites generative designs are the living purposes at their core, and the beneficial outcomes they tend to generate. More research remains to be done, but there is evidence that these models create broad benefits and remain resilient in crisis. We’ve seen this, for example, in the success of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota, which remained strong in the 2008 crisis, even as other banks foundered; this led more than a dozen states to pursue similar models. We’ve seen it in the behavior of credit unions, which tended not to create toxic mortgages, and required few bailouts.

We’ve seen it in the fact that workers at firms with employee stock ownership plans enjoy more than double the defined-benefit retirement assets of comparable employees at other firms. And we’ve seen it in the fact that the Basque region of Spain—home to the massive Mondragon cooperative—has seen substantially lower unemployment than the country as a whole.

Together, these various models might one day form the foundation for a generative economy, where the intent is to meet human needs and create conditions in which life can thrive. Generative ownership aims to do what the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker have always done: make a living by serving the community. The profit-maximizing corporation is the real detour in the evolution of ownership, and it’s a relatively recent detour at that.

The resilience of generative design is a key reason that people have often turned to these models in times of crisis. When the Industrial Revolution was forcing many skilled workers into poverty in the 1840s, weavers and artisans banded together to form the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, the first modern, consumer-owned cooperative, selling food to members who couldn’t otherwise afford it.

During the Great Depression in the United States, the Federal Credit Union Act—ensuring that credit would be available to people of meager means—was intended to help stabilize an imbalanced financial system. Today, credit union assets total more than $700 billion. In the recent financial crisis, their loan delinquency rates were half those of traditional banks. Since the crisis, credit unions have added more than 1.5 million members. In Argentina in 2001, when a financial meltdown created thousands of bankruptcies and saw many business owners flee, workers—with government support—took over more than 200 firms and ran these empresas recuperadas themselves, and they’re still running them.

Last year, with financial and ecological crises mounting worldwide, the U.N. named 2012 the Year of the Cooperative, and cooperative activity, is advancing around the globe. Cooperatives were largely sidelined during the rise of the industrial age. But current trends indicate that conditions may be ripe for a surge in cooperative enterprises. As people lose faith in the stock market, feel mounting anger at banks, and distrust high-earning CEOs, there’s growing distaste for the business-as-usual Wall Street model. Meanwhile, the Internet has enabled the expansion of informal cooperation on an unprecedented scale—with the Creative Commons, for example, now encompassing more than 450,000 works. As the speculative, mass-production economy hits limits, cooperatives may be uniquely suited to a post-growth world, for they are active in sectors related to fundamental needs (agriculture, insurance, food, finance, and electricity comprise the top five co-op sectors).

If many of us fail to recognize an emerging ownership shift as a sign of progress, it may be because it arises from an unexpected place—not from government action, or protests in the streets, but from within the structure of our economy itself. Not from the leadership of a charismatic individual, but from the longing in many hearts, the genius of many minds, the effort of many hands to build what we know, instinctively, that we need.

This goes much deeper than legal or financial engineering. It’s about a shift in the cultural values that underpin social institutions. History has seen such shifts before—in the values that underlay the monarchy, racism, and sexism. What’s weakening today is a different kind of systemic bias. It’s capital bias: capital-ism—the belief system that maximizing capital matters more than anything else.

The cooperative economy—and the broader family of generative ownership models—is helping to reawaken an ancient wisdom about living together in community, something largely lost in the spread of capitalism. Economic historian Karl Polanyi describes this in his 1944 work, The Great Transformation, tracing the crises of capitalism to the fact that it “disembedded” economic activity from community. Throughout history, he noted, economic activity had been part of a larger social order that included religion, government, families, and the natural world. The Industrial Revolution upended this. It turned labor and land into commodities to be “bought and sold, used and destroyed, as if they were simply merchandise,” Polanyi wrote. But these were fictitious commodities. They were none other than human beings and the earth itself.

Generative design decommodifies land and labor, putting them again under the control of the community.

It’s no accident that the deep redesign of our economy isn’t beginning in Washington, D.C. It is rooted in relationships: to the living earth and to one another. The generative economy finds fertile soil for its growth within the human heart. The ownership revolution is part of the “metaphysical reconstruction” that E.F. Schumacher said would be needed to transform our economy. When economic relations are designed in a generative way, they’re no longer about sole and despotic dominion. Economic activity is no longer about squeezing every penny from something we imagine that we own. It’s about being interwoven with the world around us. It’s about a shift from dominion to community.

Marjorie Kelly wrote this article for How Cooperatives Are Driving the New Economy, the Spring 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Marjorie is a fellow with the Tellus Institute and is director of ownership strategy with Cutting Edge Capital consulting firm. She is author of the new book, Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution. She was co-founder and for 20 years president of Ethics magazine.

Interested?

The Cooperative Way

Co-ops—just like people—can get more done together than anyone can do alone. They come in many forms, and are more common than you might imagine.

Gar Alperovitz on the Cooperative Economy: “I’ll Bet My Life On It”

Gar Alperovitz was in Seattle for the annual meeting of the National Cooperative Business Association and spoke at Town Hall Seattle immediately following a live screening of the first presidential debate. YES! Magazine’s executive editor Sarah van Gelder introduced him.

Why Won’t The Wall Street Journal Cover the Cooperative Economy?

Cooperative businesses are proliferating quickly, but you wouldn’t know it from reading the Wall Street Journal.

In the shadow of North Korea’s universally condemned third nuclear test, the inauguration this week of Park Geun-hye, Northeast Asia’s first female president, is a momentous event.

Her father, former president Park Chung-Hee, was one of South Korea’s most iconic and controversial figures. Having lost both her parents to political assassinations, and being targeted herself by violent attacks throughout her career, Park’s ascension to South Korea’s top spot undoubtedly makes for a highly inspirational narrative.

The sight of the president gracefully donning a traditional hanbok dress after returning to Seoul’s Blue House after 33 years speaks volumes of the ever-shifting gender roles in South Korea’s traditionally Confucian male-dominated society.

In addition to confronting issues of unaffordable healthcare, crippling school tuition fees and the challenges that come with a rapidly aging society, Park also carries the burden of maintaining inter-Korean stability.

While Pyongyang offered signals of diplomacy when it reportedly requested permission to send a North Korean delegation to attend Park’s inauguration ceremony, the North’s state media appears to have already made up its mind on Park, likening her to a “political prostitute”, in addition to a myriad of other colorfully offensive titles.

Relations between the two Koreas hit a low point during the tenure of Park’s predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, and Pyongyang has voiced its discontent at what it views as Park’s collusion with the Lee administration.

Following its nuclear test this month, Pyongyang threatened Seoul with “final destruction”, and the rogue nation will likely offer more provocative rhetoric in the days to come to undermine the transition process.

Even so, the probability of a military strike from the North is low, and its actions follow a predictable pattern of procuring aid concessions in exchange for dialogue. Park campaigned on advocating a softer-line on Pyongyang, which will be difficult to accomplish in the current scenario she finds in office.

The new president has a new opportunity to roll back the policies of her predecessor by engaging in meaningful dialogue with Pyongyang, ensuring that her country avoids falling into serious military confrontation with the North that could potentially yield vast civilian causalities on both sides.

During his New Year’s Address, North Korean leader Kim Jong-eun struck a conciliatory tone toward the South, voicing intentions to bolster his isolated state’s moribund economy. It’s no secret that Kim is a figurehead backed by close advisers, the most prominent being Jang Sung-taek, known to be the husband of his late father Kim Jong-il’s sister.

Park can best ensure the stability of inter-Korean relations by proposing a new inter-Korean dialogue that should take place with the respective nations’ power brokers. Economic exchange would be the core of any genuine reconciliation between the two Koreas, and for that reason, the Kaesong Industrial Zone (KIZ) is of prime importance.

Undercover reports claim that smuggled South Korean media has started to subtly erode the regime’s ideological grip on people in the North, and Pyongyang will certainly be hesitant to facilitate greater opportunities where North and South Korean civilians can interact.

One of the objectives Park campaigned on was reestablishing trust with Pyongyang, and this can best be accomplished by reestablishing the KIZ as an economic space, not a political one. North Korea provides the cheapest labor rates in Asia, and a new emphasis on the KIZ would benefit South Korea’s mass-production economy, in addition to providing the North with much-needed financial incentives.

To ensure security on the Korean Peninsula, Park should not lure Pyongyang with concessions, but offer it a tangible stake in both economic and technological development.

Park has previously stated that the North’s denuclearization is a perquisite. Washington continues to station 28,500 troops in the South, controlling all military forces south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). At this point, Pyongyang has very little incentive to disarm. After the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994, his son, Kim Jong-il oversaw general economic mismanagement and a series of natural disasters that led to widespread starvation.

To legitimize his tenure, Kim Jong-il introduced Songun politics, a “military-first” policy aimed at appeasing the army and building up national defenses. The attainment of a “nuclear deterrent” has been trumpeted as a major accomplishment in domestic North Korean propaganda – simply put, Pyongyang is not going to cease its pursuit of a nuclear deterrent.

Park may be in a better position to negotiate with Pyongyang when the US draws down its forces and hands over operational control of the South Korean military to Seoul, currently scheduled to take place in 2015.

She has spoken of taking a middle-of-the-road approach with the North, but if her policy rests solely on being open to Pyongyang only on the condition that they disarm, the incoming administration will find itself mired in president Lee’s legacy of tension.

One of the stated goals of Park’s administration is to begin to construct the foundations for reunification. It would be a practical necessity for both Koreas to eventually come to an agreement on security issues, and as long as the US maintains a presence in South Korea, Park’s administration must learn to accept Pyongyang’s pursuit of a nuclear deterrent, perhaps on the condition that it vows not to threaten South Korea.

In a 2011 article published in the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs website titled, “A New Kind of Korea,” Park advocated the formation of a cooperative security regime between Asian states that would “help resolve persistent tensions in the region”, in addition to threatening the North that it would “pay a heavy price for its military and nuclear threats”.

This approach is not new, but in order to change the current situation, it must be enforced more vigorously than in the past”. If Park intends on bolstering the status quo foreign policy direction established under president Lee, her administration’s objectives of laying the foundations for reunification will not succeed.

2013 will be a critical year for South Korea; it will assume non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council for the first time in its history. The year will be critical in shaping the conditions necessary to bring about a “second miracle on the Han River” that Park promised in her campaign speeches. As a world leader in the production of consumer electronics and boasting the status of the most-wired nation, South Korea is now focusing on building a dynamic economy focused on digital and bio technologies.

As an answer to South Korea’s economic problems, Park has advocated a two-pronged approach that utilizes a “creative economy” to counter slowed growth and “economic democracy” to counter growing income polarization.

Park sanctioned the newly created Ministry of Future Creation and Science to combine information technology with various other sectors to provide entirely new jobs to grow the national economy. Critics have scrutinized the fact that “economic democracy” – one of her main election-time slogans – was absent from a recently published list of governance goals, prompting some to raise serious questions about the substance of her goals and the vagueness of her concepts.

“Since the election, she has not made a single detailed reference to economic democratization. Now, the fact that she even removed the phrase from her administration goals sends a message to bureaucrats and to the finance sector that even Park Geun-hye will back down if you push hard enough. From now on, the lobbyists will push even harder,” stated Kim Sang-jo, an economics professor at Hansung University.

Park’s stated economic objective is to bring about a climate where large corporations and small and medium-sized enteprises can prosper side by side, shifting the focus from exports and big business to domestic demand, services, and small businesses, and marking a clear departure from her predecessor’s neo-liberal policy.

Park has also come under criticism for watering down promises to strengthen the sentencing processes for unlawful activity committed by the directors of family-owned corporations such as Hyundai, Samsung, and LG, referred to as chaebol.

Opposition spokesperson Park Yong-jin for the Democratic United Party took aim at Park on the issue. “Lowering the priority of tasks related to economic democratization is more than just a violation of a key presidential campaign pledge. It is sure to spark allegations that all of the talk about economic democratization during the campaign was a lie. We are seeing the same old politics by politicians who don’t keep their word,” said Yong-jin.

Park Geun-hye has come to power with the lowest approval ratings of any previous president, hovering at 44%. High dissatisfaction exists among the South Korean public toward Park’s nominations for cabinet and other key positions; respondents of surveys published in South Korean media gave “mistaken nominations and the hiring of unscrutinized figures” as their reason for Park’s low ratings.

She has also indicated significant increases in the nation’s defense spending. Recent polls indicate that two-thirds of the South Korean public support the continuance of humanitarian aid to North Korea “regardless of the political situation”, with over half the population supporting direct talks with Pyongyang.

The new leader can recapture public support by delivering on her campaign promises and reducing income equality by leveling the playing field for small businesses, but if she pursues the kind of defense policy that she has advocated, she may find herself in an unpopular position with both Pyongyang and the South Korean people.

This article originally appeared in the Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is an independent political analyst based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com

 

 

By Gerald A. Perreira

Until the philosophy
that holds one race superior
and another inferior
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned
Everywhere is war

Anyone listening to the imperialists and corporate media reports/analyses of what is taking place in Mali,   will be left feeling confused. But we know that confusion and commotion are an integral part of the imperialists’ game plan.

Both the Bible and the Quran warn us that the devil is the author of lies and confusion.

The Hon Elijah Muhammad taught us to recognize the nature of the devil and how the devil operates in the contemporary context. He taught us to see the devil not as some mythical figure, but as a reality, a   living force moving amongst us, who knows its time is up and will do anything to maintain its rule upon the earth. This worldview is way outside the bounds of Western discourse, but integral to an understanding of what is really taking place in Mali and across the region.

The situation in Mali is not that confusing – actually it’s as simple as this:

Go back many years. Imagine you are the Brother Leader, Muammar Qaddafi. Your goal is one of a unified, strong Africa, able to throw off the yoke of imperialism and neo-colonialism. You know that Africa’s liberation cannot be realized without unity, and also that the first step on this long journey is to rid Africa of its remaining inept, neo-colonial regimes.

Leading the African Union meant that Qaddafi had to deal at a state to state level with the very neo-colonial regimes that he also knew had to be removed. To further complicate the matter, Qaddafi had long-standing and strong relationships with a number of liberation movements, revolutionary organizations and parties throughout Africa, that were opposing the neo-colonial regimes in some of these countries.

All sides of the political and ideological divide knew this about Qaddafi – that he had assisted liberation struggles throughout Africa, and for that matter throughout the world, with the sole intention of achieving African liberation and the victory of the oppressed worldwide. That his intentions were genuine was clear, since in many instances, under his leadership, Libya provided assistance to groups which definitely did more harm than good to Libya’s geo-political interests, simply complicating things for this often beleaguered nation.

I recently heard a National Geographic travel writer, trying to pass himself off as an expert on North Africa, and in particular, Libya and Mali, saying that Qaddafi played one tribe off against the other. What nonsense!

When I hear European journalists and some African factotums talking about Qaddafi playing one tribe off against the other, then I realize that we have to tell this story. Muammar Qaddafi was listened to by all sides, which is why he was so often asked to mediate in negotiations to resolve conflicts. Only someone who had not been at these meetings, and did not understand the ancient and complex nature of the African environment, could dismiss what Qaddafi was doing as ‘playing one off against the other’.

On Our Own Terms – African Solutions to African Problems
Those involved in the struggle for African unity know that mediating in the affairs of tribes cannot be achieved within the confines of the Westminster model of governance. Qaddafi was struggling to make peace in Africa in order to lay the groundwork for real development and liberation. As already mentioned, he understood that the only way for Africa to be free was for Africa and Africans, on the continent and in the Diaspora, to unite into a power bloc, and he also knew that it was imperative to apply African solutions to African problems.

The Libyan Jamahiriya, emerging as it did out of an African-Arab cultural environment, does not separate the individual from the community, but rather sees both as interdependent and part of an integral whole. In such a worldview, values which solidify and integrate the community are emphasized, while at the same time recognizing the rights, responsibility and role of the individual. This is in contrast to the liberal democratic tradition of the European community of nations or so-called ‘developed world’, where the individual is considered ‘absolute’ and where rugged individualism is encouraged.

In this framework of inter-connectedness, the prosperity of one means the prosperity of the other. Instead of pitting the interests of the individual and the community against one another, as is found in both capitalist and communist states, African communalism, or what Qaddafi refers to as ‘natural socialism’, recognizes the interests of all.

African philosopher, Polycarp Ikuenobe points out that:

‘While Africans recognize that individuals have natural rights, which derive from their natural individuality, interests and desires, these rights and individuality would be abstract and meaningless except when they are contextualized, made substantive, given material contents, and made meaningful in the context of a community.’

The detached, atomized individual is a European concept and is alien to the African traditions of Ubuntu, Ujamaa and Ishtirakiyah, principles which form the foundation of  systems of governance based on African communalism  or what was referred to in the Libyan Jamahiriya as ‘natural socialism’.

Where the multiparty system, emerging as it did out of the European cultural and historical context tends to fragment and divide, the Jamahiriyan system seeks to build social cohesion, unity and partnership.

In the Green Book, Qaddafi outlines clearly the social architecture that derives from what he understands to be a ‘natural order’:

The tribe is an extended family that has grown as a result of procreation. The tribe is in effect, a large extended family, and it then follows that the nation is the tribe that has also grown as a result of procreation. The nation is a large extended tribe; and the world is the nation that has diversified into a multitude of nations. The world therefore is an enlarged nation.

The relationship that binds a family together is the same relationship which binds the tribe together, the nation and the world. Nevertheless, the larger the multitude of people, the weaker this bond becomes… This is a sociological fact, denied only by the ignorant.

…This is why it is very important for the human community to preserve the cohesion of the family, the tribe, the nation and the world, in order to profit from the advantages, benefits, values and ideals yielded by the solidarity, cohesion, unity, familiarity and love of the family, tribe, nation and humanity…the tribe provides its members with the natural benefits and social advantages that the family provides for its members, for the tribe is a secondary family. It is worth mentioning here that an individual may sometimes behave in a dishonorable manner that a family will not condone: yet because the family is relatively small in size, this individual will not be aware of its supervision. In contrast, individuals, as members of the tribe, cannot be free of its watchful eyes.’

Qaddafi understood the primacy of ‘culture’ and that the cultural context is the foundation out of which all ideologies and social systems emerge.  He agreed with the view of Afrocentric psychologist, Wade Nobles, that culture is ‘a general design for living and patterns for interpreting reality’. That is why he chose to work so closely with traditional leaders/chiefs throughout Africa and the Tuaregs of the Sahel. Both groups had managed to keep their African traditions/culture alive, despite having been marginalized under colonialism and by successive neo-colonial regimes. This conception of culture is also why, from the outset of the Al Fateh revolution in 1969, Qaddafi necessarily rejected the Western multi-party parliamentary system and Western ideologies.

In 2010, at a meeting in Tripoli, Qaddafi addressed 175 traditional leaders from across the African continent. He told them that ‘African traditions were being replaced with Western culture and that multi party politics was destroying Africa’.   The chiefs agreed, accusing Africa’s political leaders of ‘neglecting traditional values and marginalizing Africa’s indigenous institutions.’

Yahaya Ezemoo Ndu, leader of Nigeria’s African Renaissance Party and Chairperson of the newly formed Pan-African international, ARM, in a recent interview, quoted Professor Catherine Achaolonu-Olumba, when he warned Africans that if they failed to recognize the importance of their own culture and cultural institutions, they would never achieve liberation:

‘To all Africans, Blacks and all deprived peoples all over the world, we say culture is everything! Those who took your cultures from you took everything from you. Your culture is your life, your past, your present, your science, your religion, your closest link to the One True God. You are your culture and your culture is all you have – it is your link to all knowledge available in the Universal Mind of the Creator. Your culture is you…’

Ndu went on to say:

‘Most of the problems confronting Africans are traceable to inappropriate governance systems. The Western World, led by the United States, has been forcing electocracy down the throat of Africans, claiming that it is ‘democracy’, while in fact, the United States does not experience, and has never experienced true democracy’.

There are over 100 tribes in Libya alone innumerable tribal groups throughout Africa. The concept of the ‘tribe’ is misunderstood in European political discourse, and tribal forms of organization are automatically dismissed as being backward and having no merit. However, as Qaddafi rightfully acknowledges, family and tribe are the basis of all African societies and tribal forms of organization will never be relinquished. The current nation-state borders in Africa are colonial constructs, and often secondary to indigenous concepts of tribe and tribal nations. That is why tribes do not always recognize nation-state boundaries drawn up and left by the colonizers, and furthermore why some tribes, even if they exist across a number of ‘nation-state’ borders, can be considered as constituting a nation in and of themselves.

This is one of the reasons why the imposition of the alien system of multi-partyism into Africa, where tribal loyalties are so honored, has led to disaster. Political parties can never demand the loyalty and support that one’s tribe can. Eventually, the multi-party system exacerbates any tribal conflict that exists and even creates tribal conflict where it did not previously exist. It actually works against the existing indigenous forms of social organization, creating chaos and failed states.

Abd-l Alkalimat points out the contradiction of importing the very systems which have been used to destroy us:

‘The basis for our social, political and economic systems can better be found among the communal traditions of our people rather than among those who have used their systems to oppress if not annihilate us.’

The success of a given system is entirely dependent on whether the particular system in place is in tune with and meets the needs of the people it is meant to serve.

As Africans, our struggle must be focused on achieving our inalienable right to self-determination – to develop our own political and economic systems and put in place our own political structures, free of interference from the outside world. Only we can turn the tables – only we can achieve our own liberation from systems that continue to keep us in a state of dependency and disarray.

Talk is cheap…
Bringing about the kind of unity, prosperity, and dignity that could lead to an independent and democratic United States of Africa is a long and tumultuous journey, which not everyone would have the courage to embark on. Theory is one thing, and a vital component, however, concrete action has to start somewhere. Qaddafi and the revolutionary Libyan Jamahiriya put Libya’s wealth where their mouth was and began to work with others to support the coming together of Africa, by upgrading telecommunications systems, enhancing infrastructural development, engaging in joint commercial projects, building educational institutions, providing healthcare, advancing  loans to African governments, and the setting up of African based lending institutions with plans for an African currency, which would have put an end to our continued dependency on the Euro/American Empire and their financial institutions.

Much analysis is produced by those who are not actively engaged in the struggle to change the world, but engaged only in interpreting it. They provide us with endless academic critiques of those who are active, finding fault with everything.  The late African revolutionary, Kwame Ture, always said, ‘never to waste our energies in lengthy conversation or debate with anyone who was not actively involved in the struggle for liberation in one way or other, since they would never be able to fully understand the issues at stake and would necessarily be dealing only with abstraction.’

Anyone who is engaged in struggle knows that the world is a brutal and complex arena. African unity is a journey that is fraught with overwhelming challenges that cannot always be resolved the way we would wish. This is not to act as an apologist for mistakes made, but simply to acknowledge that if criticism is to be constructive then it must be part of a discourse that is anchored in the reality of what it means to fight imperialism and injustice on all its fronts in 2013.

The intellectual warrior, Franz Fanon understood this, based on his own involvement in the Algerian struggle for liberation, when he boldly claimed,

‘Everybody will have to be compromised in the fight for the common good. No one has clean hands; there are no innocents and no onlookers. We all have dirty hands; we are all soiling them in the swamps of our country and in the terrifying emptiness of our brains. Every onlooker is either a coward or a traitor’.

As we say in the Caribbean – ‘yuh think it easy?’

The Mali story…
When the progressive leader, Amadou Toure, was elected president of Mali in 2002, Muammar Qaddafi welcomed him onto the scene. Toure believed that African conflicts/problems should be resolved within the framework of the African Union and he supported the vision of a United States of Africa. In such an environment, Qaddafi was able to broker a peace agreement between the Tuaregs and the Toure administration. Qaddafi had offered the Tuaregs what no one else had – to live in Libya with all of the benefits that that brought – free healthcare, education, housing etc. This was a gift to the Tuareg people and also in line with Qaddafi’s understanding of this part of the world outside of the boundaries of the artificial borders created by colonialism. In fact, the Libyan Jamahiriya had authorized Africans from all over the continent to cross its borders freely.

Once Qaddafi was murdered and Libya was handed over to the current barbaric alliance of Arab supremacists, monarchists and Al-Qaeda affiliated Wahabi-Salafi heretics, the Tuaregs, many of whom had been integrated into the Jamahiriyan military since the early 70s, had no choice but to return home.

What happened next?
The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), largely made up of Tuareg returnees, laid claim to a land mass in Northern Mali which they call Azawad. They claimed Azawad as their ancestral homeland and it came under their jurisdiction with little opposition from the Malian army.

In 2009, there was a major Tuareg uprising against the Malian government and Muammar Qaddafi was asked by both sides to play a mediating role. During these negotiations, President Toure made a number of concessions, promising to address the legitimate long term grievances of the Tuareg. These promises were not honored, and with Qaddafi no longer there to guide and mediate, and the Tuaregs now being forced to return to Mali, they had no choice but to claim their homeland.

 

 

Tuaregs integrated into the Jamahiriyan Army

 

Muammar Qaddafi inspects troops wearing  traditional Tuareg dress

 

 

President Toure quickly realized that a military solution was not possible and agreed to enter into negotiations with representatives of the MNLA. Days later, seemingly from out of nowhere, we saw a full blown coup in Mali. The US trained coup leader, Captain Amadou Sanogo, opposed the idea of Tuareg autonomy. At the time of the coup he claimed that President Toure was benefitting financially from the drug trade, suggesting that this was why he was ready to make concessions to the MNLA. This was untrue. For one thing the MNLA are not the ones who are involved in the expansive and lucrative drug trade in the Sahel – in fact they oppose it. It is well documented that the drug traffickers are Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and their front organizations across the region. That is why Qaddafi said that the so-called rebels in Benghazi were not only Al-Qaeda affiliated but were on drugs. It is interesting to note that Captain Sanogo was photographed recently with US ambassador, John Price, and the two were said to be laughing and talking like long lost friends. President Toure ended up in Senegal.

 

Next Move…
Also, from out of nowhere – Salafi militias enter Mali – Ansar Al Dine and the Movement for Unity and Jihad. Groups never before seen or heard of in Mali – made up primarily of non Malians and backed by guess who? Correct, the Gulf State Pretenders to Islam and NATO. They had one shared objective – to crush the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), since they shared Qaddafi’s vision for a united Africa and would have set up a Jamahiriya type state – Azawad style. The MNLA also adhere to an Islamic theology of liberation, rather than the Wahabi aberration parading as Islam, that the Gulf States and their imperialist backers depend on for their continued repression and plunder. The setting up of such a liberated zone would have provided a refuge for those loyal to Qaddafi and his ideas.

And so, they got rid of Toure and all hope of a peaceful solution to the issue of an autonomous Azawad and they unleashed their dogs of war, the Islamists, into Mali to beat back the progressive National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). The MNLA, however, were too clever to be seduced into an all out war with these foreign and reactionary Islamist forces, financed by one of the biggest sponsors of terrorism, the Qatari ruling elite, so they melted into the population, as only a liberation force with the backing of the people can do.

The MNLA had made it abundantly clear from the outset that they had no interest in seizing any territory outside of Azawad, including the capital Bamako, or causing havoc in Mali. This further ruffled the imperialists, since there is nothing they dislike more than the prospect of peaceful, progressive African based solutions to African conflicts.

With no MNLA to fight, the Islamists then proceeded to wreck havoc in Mali as they do everywhere they are deployed, and went on a killing spree and the French invaded to reign in their own proxy army,   definitely not to save Malians from the brutality of the Islamists.  The French realized that they had better reign in the dogs of war they themselves had unleashed, lest, unsuspectingly, while using the Islamists to prevent the huge deposits of uranium, which France depends on for their continued energy supply, from falling into MNLA hands, the Islamists themselves stole Mali from under France’s nose.

European Warlords in Re-scramble for African Resources
Unfortunately for Africa, we have everything that the US and Europe want and need. The story is not as complex in Mali, or for that matter throughout Africa, as they would have us believe – actually it is quite simple – the lifestyle enjoyed by Europeans on this earth – life as only they know it – is over without unfettered access to African resources.

With Qaddafi out of the way, one of the biggest remaining threats to their free reign in Africa is African resistance movements which are loyal to his vision. Groups such as the MNLA and JEM are high priority targets for imperialist military operations and their killer drones, a weapon straight out of their own Sci-Fi, which enables them to kill by remote control.  The US, imposing itself as the judge, jury and executioner, has killed thousands of human persons this way, while at the same time posturing as the world’s leading democrats. Their world is undeniably bizarre and Orwellian.

 

 

Unmanned Predator Drone firing missile

 

It is estimated that there are over 60 Drone bases in the US alone and more than 60 across the globe.  The most recently installed Drone base is in Niger, Northwest Africa. The plan is for such bases to be installed throughout the continent. US president, Barack Hussein Obama, has shown himself to be little more than a warlord and black only in color. Mentally incarcerated, he is the perfect candidate for the role of first black US president – and what a public relations coup: to have a black man at the helm when re-colonizing Africa.

While the Euro-American ruling elite plunder the world’s resources, cynically paying lip service to the ‘American Dream’, the tragedy is that Barak Obama seems to believe in it. He has taken it upon himself to target for execution, at whim, anyone, anywhere in the world, whom the Empire deems necessary to exterminate, in order to maintain White Supremacy. Make no mistake: the White House is still the White House.

 

Licensed to Kill

 It is reported that John Brennan, whose official title is Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and Assistant to the President, draws up the weekly list of those targeted for assassination by drones. These lists are then signed off by the President at a meeting of ‘counterterrorism security officials’ (War Council) held every Tuesday, now dubbed ‘kill list Tuesdays’ in White House circles.

 

Last year one of those targeted for assassination was Dr Khalid Ibrahim, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), one of the largest groups within the Sudanese Revolutionary Front. He and some senior members of JEM had also been forced to leave Libya and were working to establish a liberated zone in Kordofan.

Only days ago, Tahir El-Faki, a spokesperson for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), accused the Bashir regime in Khartoum of transporting Salafi jihadists from Mali to North Darfur. He added that some of them had already been in Darfur before being moved to Mali last year. It was reported that the ‘Jihadists’, who are from different countries in the region, including Niger, Chad and Algeria, had been transported using Qatari airplanes. Africa is up for grabs.

And finally, there is the hugely threatening factor of China’s rise as an economic superpower on the global stage. However, China, which is also completely dependent on African resources for its continued economic growth, has an entirely different approach. Not interested in military expansion, they pursue economic and commercial expansion instead. In contrast to the Euro/American Empire, China is willing to negotiate a fair deal within a win-win framework, and is therefore becoming a preferred trading partner for many African states, especially those who want to free themselves from their dependence on economic relations with the unjust and hypocritical Empire. To disrupt the increasingly closer ties between China and Africa is a priority for the imperialists, and so an already crumbling Empire, threatened with its own extinction, is now in full military swing.

Malcolm X knew the enemy well:

‘…when you and I begin to look at him and see the language he speaks, the language of a brute, the language of someone who has no sense of morality, who absolutely ignores law – when you and I learn how to speak his language, then we can communicate. But we will never communicate talking one language while he’s talking another language. He’s talking the language of violence.’

Fact is they will never stop warring for Africa’s resources until we Africans put an end to the fight ourselves. That is why imperialism can only be buried once and for all in Africa…

And until that day,
The African continent
Will not know peace,
We Africans will fight – we find it necessary –
And we know we shall win
As we are confident
In the victory
Of good over evil

 

 

References
Ikuenobe Polycarp, Philosophical Perspectives on Communalism and Morality in African Traditions, Lexington Books, OX, UK, 2006

Ndu, Yahaya Ezemoo, Africa’s Role in the Global World, African Executive Magazine, Online Edition, February, 2011

Nobles, Wade, Africanity and the Black Family, Black Family Institute Publications CA, USA, 1985

Qaddafi, Muammar, The Green Book Ithaca Press, UK, 2005 (first published 1975)

Shabazz, Malik (Malcolm X), By Any Means Necessary, Pathfinder, NY, USA, 1970

Title, opening and closing remarks from a speech delivered to the United Nations General Assembly by Haile Selassie in 1963, and later put to music by Robert Nesta Marley.

Gerald A. Perreira is a founding member of the Guyanese organizations Joint Initiative for Human Advancement and Dignity and Black Consciousness Movement Guyana (BCMG). He lived in Libya for many years, served in the Green March, an international battalion for the defense of the Al Fateh revolution and was an executive member of the World Mathaba based in Tripoli. He is the International Secretary for the newly formed, Afrocentric Pan-African International – ARM (African Revolutionary Movement).

 

 

Robert J. Burrowes

Can we take meaningful action to prevent our own extinction without ending human violence first?

The scientific evidence that human extinction will now occur before 2050 continues to rapidly accumulate. (See, for example, ‘Global Extinction within one Human Lifetime as a Result of a Spreading Atmospheric Arctic Methane Heat Wave and Surface Firestorm’: http://climatesoscanada.org/blog/2012/04/30/global-extinction-within-one-human-lifetime-as-a-result-of-a-spreading-atmospheric-arctic-methane-heat-wave-and-surface-firestorm/) Of course, we can deny this scientific evidence because it frightens us, we can delude ourselves that someone or something else (perhaps governments) will fix it, or we can delude ourselves that a few painless measures, primarily taken by others, will sort it all out. Another option is to powerfully take responsibility for the problem and play a vital role in addressing it ourselves. This is the choice for each of us.

On 11 November 2011 a movement to end violence in all of its forms was launched around the world: ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’. So far this movement has gained individual and organizational participants in 47 countries and the movement expands every day. But this is not a movement for the faint-hearted. This movement requires individuals and organisations that are willing to contemplate and take action on a range of deep and unpleasant truths about the state of our world because the time for pretence and prevarication is over.

So what is unique about ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’? The Nonviolence Charter is an attempt to put the focus on human violence as the pre-eminent problem faced by our species, to truthfully identify all of the major manifestations of this violence, and to identify ways to tackle all of these manifestations of violence in a systematic and strategic manner. It is an attempt to put the focus on the fundamental cause – the violence we adults inflict on children – and to stress the importance of dealing with that cause. (See ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence) It is an attempt to focus on what you and I – that is, ordinary people – can do to end human violence and the Nonviolence Charter invites us to pledge to make that effort. And it is an attempt to provide a focal point around which we can mobilise with a sense of shared commitment with people from all over the world.

In essence then, one aim of the Nonviolence Charter is to give every individual and organisation on planet Earth the chance to deeply consider where they stand on the fundamental issue of human violence. Will you publicly declare your commitment to work to end human violence? Or are you going to leave it to others?

And what, precisely, do you want to do? And with whom? The Charter includes suggestions for action in a wide variety of areas; for example, by inviting people to participate in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ – http://tinyurl.com/flametree – which is a simple yet comprehensive strategy for individuals and organisations to deal with the full range of environmental problems. The Charter also provides an opportunity to identify and contact others, both locally and internationally, with whom we can work in locally relevant ways, whatever our preferred focus for action. In that sense, each participating individual and organisation becomes part of a worldwide community working to end human violence for all time.

So far, the movement has attracted some exceptional people long known for their work to create a world without violence. These people include renowned international peace activist and ‘living legend’ Ela Gandhi (granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi), Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire, pre-eminent public intellectual Professor Noam Chomsky, president of the Malaysian-based International Movement for a Just World Professor Chandra Muzaffar, Director of Aksyon para sa Kapayapaan at Katarungan at the Pius XII Catholic Center in the Philippines Dr Tess Ramiro, the Deputy Moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa Dr Braam Hanekom, prominent nonviolent activists (including Anita McKone, Anahata Giri, Tom Shea, Leonard Eiger, Tarak Kauff, Jill Gough, Jim Albertini, Lesley Docksey and Bruce Gagnon), the jurist Judge Mukete Tahle Itoe of Cameroon, author Anna Perera of the UK and the eminent human rights and communal harmony activist Professor Ram Puniyani in India. Apart from these and other prominent signatories, however, it is mostly ‘ordinary people’ who are making the pledge to work for a world without violence.

Many organisations are making the pledge too. These include Pax Christi Australia, Nonviolence International in Canada, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Cymru (Wales), the Human Rights Center in Georgia, the GandhiServe Foundation in Germany, Muslim Peacemaker Teams in Iraq, Women for Human Rights in Nepal, the Pan-African Reconciliation Centre in Nigeria, the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand, the Holy Land Trust in Palestine, Buddha Dharma in Slovenia, the Forum for Community Change and Development in South Sudan, Facilitate Global and Share the World’s Resources in the UK as well as Bay Area Women in Black, the Blauvelt Dominican Sisters Social Justice Committee, It’s Our Economy and Veterans for Peace in the USA. There are many others.

The Nonviolence Charter acknowledges our many differences, including the different issues on which we choose to work. But it also offers us a chance to see the unity of our overarching aim within this diversity. Hence, whatever our differences, we are given the chance to see that ending human violence is our compelling and unifying dream.

If you think it is time to end violence before we end life, you can join this movement. You can read and, if you wish, sign the pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ online at http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com/

Biodata: Robert has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach’, State University of New York Press, 1996. His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his personal website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

 

By Mazin Qumsiyeh

25 February 2013

@ http://popular-resistance.blogspot.com

I just returned to Palestine after a productive but tiring short tour of European cities (Paris, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Geneva) to rejoin the growing uprising against the occupation/colonization (a change) and to witness the PA and Israel still engaged in “security coordination” with our own tax money used as “leverage” (a no change).  Today was a day of anger as we buried Arafat Jaradat, a 32 year old father of two (and a third on the way) whose autopsy clearly showed he was tortured to death in Israeli jails (over 200 Palestinians lost their lives in Israeli prisons).*

The tour featuring me and Jeff Halper to discuss the one-state solution was organized by the European branch of “Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace”. The organizers are mostly young students (though some of them are in graduate programs).  They did a tremendous amount of work.  They had invited me and Jeff to speak on the issue knowing that we hold somewhat different views (he is for a binational state within a confederation of Middle Eastern states while I am for one democratic secular state).  We both agree though that any dreams about the mirage of a two-state solution must be abandoned.  The discussions both during and between presentations were rather useful to all concerned including me.

I had written a book on the subject called “Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle”.  As it is out of (second) print now, I went ahead and put it on my website (http://qumsiyeh.org/sharingthelandofcanaan/ ).  Briefly I argued then (nearly 10 years ago) that a just peace can be achieved and that it can be durable and a win-win situation for all involved.  I suggested that instead of wasting time and energy talking about fictional solutions (like that of two-states) or less workable ones (vague binational state), we should insist on human rights as a basis for our activism.  Human rights are well enunciated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).  These basic rights include the right not to be removed from one’s own lands and thus the rights of refugees to return to their homes and lands.  They include the rights to equality regardless of religion (thus Israel’s basic laws favoring Jews and discriminating against the native Christians and Muslims are against human rights).

The various provisions of the UDHR clearly present us with only one way forward: one country for its entire people.  This happens to be also the main demand made by the native Palestinians from their first encounter with the harmful effects of political Zionism in 1880 (the colony of Petah Tikveh).  It remained our demands despite the Nakba of 1948, the Naksa of 1967, and the political setback of the Oslo “process”.  The latter was like a second Nakba: devastating to the psyche of the people. This year will mark the 20th anniversary of these disastrous “Declarations of Principles” and the agreements emanating from them.  They were supposed to be for a five-year (1993-1998) interim period while Palestinians and Israelis “negotiated” the final status issues.  But as most people realized then and all people realize now, no peace can be achieved by negotiating between a weak, imprisoned population and a strong colonial power that has no incentive to give up any stolen lands/resources.  After all, the occupation of the 1967 areas is the most profitable occupation in history (>$10 billion in direct profit annually to the state of Israel).  And this is not taking into account the benefit Israel gets from continued use of the land it occupied in 1948 by continuing to deny the refugees the right to return to their homes and lands.  It is also not taking into account the hundreds of billions Israel got over the past 65 years from Western Government and individual “donors” by playing the victim card while it was the most repressive regime engaged in massive war crimes and crimes against humanity.

These kinds of facts are slowly being recognized by civil societies around the world.  Many of those people finding these facts are also acting on them.  The Israel-Palestine question remains the most pressing issue in the world agenda since the collapse of apartheid in South Africa.  This is because, like that situation, the racism and apartheid in Palestine presents a severe challenge to the “world order” created after WWII.  After all, what value is all this talk about democracy, human rights, international law, and peace if the western governments continue to support a racist apartheid regime that ethnically cleansed 530 villages and towns and imprisons the remaining Palestinians in open air prisons (ghettos, Bantustans, cantons, people warehouses)?  Add to that this is the Holy Land where members of one religion now determine everything that happens with a set of discriminatory laws against members of other religions.

My humble recommendations for going forward (not in any order):

-Palestinians should rise-up against the system created in Oslo and rejuvenate the Palestine Liberation Organization to be representative of all 12 million Palestinians. This must be based on a clear strategy advocating for one democratic state.

-Palestinians continue and intensify resisting the occupation and colonization schemes of the Israeli government and settlers including pushing for a new wave of resistance (the 14th or 15th uprising)

-The international community intensifies its efforts at Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) in the same manner as we did with apartheid South Africa.  We encourage all to act by visiting Palestine and see for themselves the horrors of apartheid and then to act by many methods (see http://qumsiyeh.org/whatyoucando/ for 64 ways to act)

-We intensify the use of the internet (social networking, Tweets, Facebook etc.) to bring millions more to join the global struggle against Zionist apartheid and colonization.

-We should increase outreach among Israeli Jews who were isolated and brainwashed by their own government, so that they can see reality and the writing on the wall that there is no future for the programs of racism and ethnic cleansing done grotesquely in the name of “Jewish nationalism” (a false messiah).

“Our food is our curse” was a title of an article in an Egyptian newspaper I read on the way back home.  The author argued that Egyptians have become so focused on making their daily living as individuals that interest in issues, knowledge, and societal improvement have diminished or disappeared.  I agreed somewhat especially after being tricked to pay more on three occasions just in the last day of my travels.   But I would think he was a bit too pessimistic.  I think there is still a lot of good in Egypt, in Palestine, and in the Arab world.  The fact that he can write and critique is in itself a good indication.  I am also optimistic because the growth of the internet made change inevitable.  There is now hundreds of millions of people logging in and socially networking and learning from each other.  Ideas spread like viruses and power, previously concentrated in the hands of the few, is slowly diffusing to the hands of the many.  While we have no illusions about the obstacles we face (greed, institutionalized racism, western politicians beholden to Zionist lobbies, apathy etc.), we are 100% confident in the inevitability of democracy, justice and peace.  Much of our work will only help speed up the arrival of that inevitable future.  This acceleration will save lives and reduce other forms of suffering.  I see the change happening all around our shared blue planet.

*see http://mondoweiss.net/2013/02/autopsy-revealed-torture.html

Action: Please work for the release of all prisoners: Israel continued to kidnap Palestinians including several people we know or are friends of friends.  For example they arrested our activist colleague Mohammad Shabaaneh was kidnapped by the Israeli occupation authorities and has been isolated without seeing a lawyer and without charges.  He is a cartoonist.  He is added to the thousands of Palestinians imprisoned in the apartheid jails. http://mondoweiss.net/2013/02/palestinian-cartoonist-international.html

See also this report about other human rights violations including the arrest of 27 year old Yazan Mohammad Sawalha who was imprisoned years before and returned to university and was about to graduate

http://tinyurl.com/ahdru8z